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Ok this is funny, this video was on the top bar of YT subcriptions list when I got home

I am just going to stop. I have made my case, a case based on experience and extensive research in to game design and theory as well as an established case illustrating my point. At this point it would just turn into a full blown argument rather than a debate so I am willingly withdrawing.

It was done poorly because it cannot BE done correctly. At least not with a soulsborne game. Literally every part of the game comes together to create it: Item scaling, enemy health and damage, level design, player mentality, enemy placement, character leveling, boss placement, pvp invasions, healing items, and spell effects. There are probably a ton more, but altering ANY of these elements ruins the way the game feels, and to make a proper easy mode you would have to change EVERYTHING. To the point that you would be making an entirely different game. Cannot be done, literally impossible from a technical perspective. Note: Player mentality is controlled building up an expectation of the games, in this case that you will die often, and that expectation is the real wall most people have with these games. "Git gud" doesn't actually have any toxic implications, its a joke, because the only thing stopping people from progressing in these games are themselves. You don't actually "git gud" you overcome your own hesitations and embrace the failures as learning experiences rather than obstacles. Rilled off a cliff? Time to be more aware of your surroundings. Got ambushed? Time to be more careful entering new areas. Got smashed by the boss? Time to pay more attention to his movements to see the tells. All of this would be lost in an "easy mode" and thus making the easy mode pointless, so why even try if it was possible?

That's just it. I'm NOT good at soulsborne games. Takes me forever to get over some of the hurdles, but every loss is MY fault, not the games. Games don't have to cater to everyone. Trying is how you get the shitty, watered down abominations EA and Activision like to call games... Oh, I'm sorry... Live services. You say I am stubborn, but the people demanding easy modes in games not even made for their gaming demographic is not only extremely stubborn, it's entitled.

Learning to not lose your shit on a death is the first step to learning how to play a soulsborne game. Death is part of the process and does, in fact, lead to few secret areas in some of the games.

Please watch the videos I linked. They explain what I mean better. Basically it's not just the enemies that create the difficulty of DS and games like them. It's people's own ability or inability to see the tells and the level itself

No. My argument is that it failed when they tried because the difficulty is so intrinsically tied to ever other aspect of the game that tweaking it mucks up the formula.

I'm trying to explain to you, that from a sheer technical Aspect to make a game focused on a rock hard, but fair difficulty you have to be laser focused on balancing around that trait. Trying to make "options" for a more casual audience distracts from the overall goal of the game's design. It hurts it. Dark Souls 2 is UNIVERSALLY seen as the weakest entry in the series by the core audience the game is geared to. Yes, some people adapt to games differently and will find some installments harder than others, the point you seem to be missing in that explanation is this: They tried to make the Souls series accessible and made it OBJECTIVELY worse mechanically. there is a reason DS3, Bloodborne, and now Sekiro abandoned most of the features added in it. They didn't work, and reason for that is no matter how much they try Fromsoft cannot makes a souls style game that still maintains what made them famous to begin with AND appeal to the more casual audience cause the casual audience is still not going to enjoy the mechanics. They clash. It's an Oil and Water scenario. Hard Games (in modern times referred to as Souls Like) are a Genre btw. Just like: Looter Shooters, Grind Heavy games, and Modern Military Shooters. Those Genre tags aren't as popular as Action RPG, MMO, FPS, etc. But they exist to make it easier for people to find games similar to ones they KNOW they will like. also this:

It's not a matter of "git gud" when creating an easy mode for games designed to be hard. The 2 design philosophies just don't mesh. It's either gonna be a "tough but fair hard mode and babbies first video game easy mode" or "unfair difficulty hard mode and slightly challenging easy mode" The options listed for lowering the difficulty here (health and damage changes) only work on games designed from the ground up to have multiple difficulties, and even then the hard modes are usually just more frustrating than fun. Video game difficulty is a carefully balanced and very delicate process of give and take. Most games designed to be hard, like souls, have systems already in place to ease new players: co-op summons, higher end gear that can be obtained with some exploration, and level grinding to over power some sections. The game was designed with these systems in mind and don't effect overall balance. You just have to go a little out of your way sometimes instead of charging headlong into the difficulty wall. Edit: Not trying to talk down or rage. Hard to set tone in text. I get why people want easy modes, I used yo be on that side. I am merely explaining why some games simply can't accommodate them.

First: people have been using outside sources for video games since the dawn of video games. (first it was magazines, then official/unofficial guides, then FAQs, and now YT). Difficulty be damned for this one. Easy and hard games have em and players have used em for both. Second: I flat out said it's not something everyone was going to have, and that it was ok not to. Third: Tuning for difficulty is not just tweaking health and damage in hard games. It's a total rework in spawns, difficulty curve, and enemy abilities. This stuff take up a lot of time and since most hard focused games are done by small teams it's not viable even if they wanted to. Fourth: Gaming IS a recreation activity like movies or books. You don't see people who don't like horror movies demanding that they be made less scary so they can experience it do you? No. Because it's stupid. A lot of games can have multiple difficulties. And that's great. Like the recent God of War had a fantastically designed difficulty variations. It was also a heavily story based game, so you could glide through on normal or easy for the story or grind that hard mode (I played second highest difficulty to beat it for context) if you want. It was never designed to focus on that hard mode so it needed those difficulty variations and benefited from having them. The closest a souls game ever had to an easy mode was DS2. They stripped out the labrynthian level design for a linear experience, game fast travel immediately, introduced a heal over time item that could be used functionally limitlessly, and pulled back on the traps and ambushes. The game suffered (in comparison to the others) as a result. All these features to promote more people to play turned off the core fanbase. The whole "but you dont have to use the stones" is a fallacy (people will always choose the quickest and easiest route in gaming, it's a fact) and was only one part of the problem. DS3 took out the healing stones, brought back the labyrinthian level designed, upped the traps and ambushes, but kept the fast travel (the only feature everyone agreed was worth keeping) and the game shined as a result. The point is, a game designed from the ground up to be hard suffers when an attempt to add an easy mode or tweaked for more accessibility. It's ok not to like hard games, but that doesn't mean it's ok to demand they change for you. I like Digital Extremes (warframe devs) design philosophy: They understand and accept that the type of game they make isn't for everyone, but instead of trying to appeal to people who won't like their genre, they doubled down on what made people like their game instead. As a result they have a solid, stable user base. They would have failed if they had tried to make those appeals because then they wouldn't have such a committed group of players keeping the game going.

That's not what I am saying. If you don't like hard games then don't buy them, but if you want to then there are massive communities that give real and solid advice on how to approach the game from every skill level. Example: I was originally really against Dark Souls due to its rep for difficulty and as someone who, at the time, didn't care for that sort of thing gave it a hard pass. My curiosity got the better of me though after the pc version was on a steam sale for 5 bucks. I tried it, got my ass beat then went to YT for tips. I found a video that could be summed up like this "Yo, you new to this thing? Can't deal enough damage? Ok, go here and get these items then run back to start and easily over power the early game stuff to get used to the mechanics" and then it clicked. I followed the vid and tried again and felt like a god sweeping through the beginning and as the game got harder going in I slowly adapted to the dodging, parrying, and backstab mechanics. That was my "Hard games ARE fun" moment. Not everyone will have that though, and it's ok not to, but to call it gatekeeping is insincere to the community who WANT more people to experience the games they love as they are. It's nothing like implementing color blind modes (which all games 100% need).

I just don't think games should have to cater to everyone mostly. Don't like hard games? Dont buy em. Wanna see the story in said game though? Youtube. That's your option.

Depends on the game to be Honest. When the difficulty is one of the games appeals then absolutely not. Ex: Any Fromsoft game. The reason is that those type of games are so finely tuned for their difficulty that they cannot be simply "tweaked" for easy modes, you'd have to break the whole design of the game for them. Just look at Dark Souls 2 with those fucking healing stones, broke the whole balance to make it "more accessible" Outside of that though, sure why not, as long as you leave the harder difficulty in and dont sacrifice the quality of the gameplay to accomodate the easier difficulty.