Current Events > Dark Souls games should be able to adjust difficulty.

(+) Yeah! (+)

they do have adjustable difficulty, its just not in the form of sliders

itd be weird if they add sliders on top of it but i wont knock them for it

the get gud toxic bullshit is a lie greaselords tell themselves because they hinge their ego on having beaten the game. it doesn't take getting good by any stretch

nah thats lame

As someone who finds these games incredibly difficult and at times unenjoyable: no.

You fucking can

Gatekeeping is the savior of communities.

I think the arguments against difficulty sliders are a bit up their own arse.

But the developers shouldn't be under any obligation.

My wife is infamously bad at these kinds of games. She still plays them, and so far has beaten Bloodborne and Elden Ring, working on Dark Souls 1 and 2

All games should have adjustable difficulty. From Pokemon to Dark Souls to pretty much everything. Somehow we've gone backwards on this. People who want a challenge should be able to get one without needing self-imposed limitations. People who want to take it easy, should be able to do so as well. I'm not sure why this is a crazy concept.

they should have like an offline only w/ god mode ON option

what they really have no excuse for is not being able to pause in offline mode

it didnt hurt sekiro one bit

They should. The games are too easy and need higher difficulties

Define what difficulty means in this context.

Would an easy mode give the enemies lower health? Buff the player's damage/decrease incoming damage? Increase I-Frames for the player? Stamina is not affected by armor?

Its the same questions you have to answer when instituting a higher difficulty mode. Do you just decrease player damage or increase enemy health? Make AI smarter/more prone to mixing up their movesets? Fallen Order is in the broader Soulslike take but it makes parries more difficult, makes enemies more aggresive and increases damage taken.

Finding a balanced difficulty that remains challenging and fair within the confines of the difficulty of the gameplay is difficult.

It wouldnt bother me if they did but they shouldnt feel like they have to.

As others have stated, Difficulty adjustments in Dark Souls are less like a straightforward easy mode and more like using tools that make encounters easier to deal with. Stuff like using ranged attacks to pick off enemies one by one or keeping a shield with high damage reduction.

BoomerKuwanger posted...

But Souls games have fights that are meant to be a very specific type of challenge and learning the tricks is what makes them rewarding.

I'm actually encountering this in Crisis Core Reunion right now in the more difficult missions. Where the enemy types you encounter require specific/more tailored setups to withstand abilities or disrupt enemies. The missions are meant to be difficult and take (full) advantage of your knowledge of what items, materia and accesories the game has available. At first, I didn't fully understand why there was so much variety in the stuff the game was giving me but the more difficult fights have clued me in.

For a while (AAA) games seemed to be in a rut where difficulty in the game was about testing your reaction skills or being able to skimp by with default or upgraded but still 'default' weapons(Gun Z does more damage than Gun A but it is still a Gun). Or about not getting shot/hit (see Halo Legendary).

When it comes to (AAA) games like the Souls games, though, they want you to 'die' so you learn the gameplay mechanics and are (well)-versed enough to figure out what works and why/how it works. It isn't really exploits but developing knowledge and using what the developers are telling you in order to win.

just get them on pc and use trainers

Souls game should be whatever the developers want them to be.

Cocytus posted...

Some people don't have time to get good.

Play a different game then

Welcome to gfaqs, home of Stale Takes and Weak Bait

the games do a poor job of making the HP stat attractive to level and a lot of the assumed difficulty comes from players taking one to two hits from bosses and dying and grinding until they rng through it, and thinking that's the intended experience.

in ds1, 30 vit is normal mode, and 50 is easy mode.

if i were to try and make an easy mode to dark souls 1 that i think didn't take away from it, it would just be that you get more souls per kill. idea being it just nudges the player into the systems a little harder instead of having them disengage.

JRPGs have all forms of difficulties in their games. Not everyone plays lunatic mode but its there for the ones who want to maximize the games mechanics. Dark souls doesn't have that much in terms of mechanics. I was learning to master the parry and dodge roll but doing that on all enemies gets boring after awhile.

Miyazaki's philosophy about how to persevere and get better at the games would be ruined by difficulty options. His vision = his rules.

The thing about this debate that annoys me is the assumption that difficulty is sheerly defined by boilerplate settings and not, say, ease of use of certain strategies you can pick. It's a very limited view and understanding of game design that feels like it's the antithesis to truly comprehensive game design since a vast RPG-like environment probably should just naturally have easier routes to take.

That being said I don't get the feverish opposition since it mostly boils down to ego. I just don't like gaming as a medium being constrained by forcing weird design choices when you can increase accessibility in other ways

Grinding is how you adjust the difficulty.

you should just get good.

Oh, joy of joys, it's this topic again.

It might have made me a fan of the genre if they did, however if the creators only want to cater to their hardcore base obsessed with the genre and not expand their fanbase, then that's fine.

Tried Demon Souls, gave DSII multiple attempts, and a little bit of Bloodbourne.

I honestly just don't feel like I'm missing out on anything that is worth all the frustration. If others do, fine, however I don't.

Also, I'm totally against the inability to pause a game when offline. Fuck any games that do that, regardless of genre.

The creator of the series has said he doesn't consider multiple difficulties as part of his artistic vision. Respect the creative outlets of others, kthxbaiiiiiiiiiii

Also, I mean, there's tons of other games you could play instead of just gitting gud. This is like ordering super spicy hot wings and then having the kitchen tone them down for you because you don't know what you actually want, chud bud.

Kradek posted...

Also, I'm totally against the inability to pause a game when offline. Fuck any games that do that, regardless of genre.

This is actually a technical snafu. Nerds will defend to the death that it's part of the """artistic vision"" but it's really not lmao. Coding is hard sometimes.

You already can

Npc summons
Real life people summons
Using magic

VirtuousWrath posted...

This is actually a technical snafu. Nerds will defend to the death that it's part of the """artistic vision"" but it's really not lmao. Coding is hard sometimes.

I appreciate the explanation, however it's literally their job to not fuck it up.

They should definitely have different difficulty levels:
Standard
Very Hard
Insane

This is actually a technical snafu. Nerds will defend to the death that it's part of the """artistic vision"" but it's really not lmao.

do you have anything to back that up?

like, it's been what, six games? kind of not buying that it's a mistake.

Considering you can summon help anytime in the games makes the difficulty for those that suck really minimum.

Im curious TC, is this something you really think and care about, or did you just want to rile up CE, and possibly get a 500 topic?

It does, you just have to use stuff in game to make it easier rather than sliders, which are one of the worst ways to adjust difficulty. Using a shield, actually upgrading your weapons, exploring the world, git gud, summons and simply levelling up go a long way. Magic has universally been the easy mode and I'd say str builds entered this in ER too.

ER has by far the most ways of adjusting the difficulty too btw, which shows that they are adding in more easy mode options. 90% of the bosses are straight up skippable, as are half of the areas and several of the legacy dungeons. If you don't want challenging content, you can literally just not do it. You have literally overpowered summons that can solo bosses for you. Some incredibly strong weapons and talismans are in the starting areas if you just explore a tiny bit.

At this point, if someone still wants an easy mode added then they're asking for a game that isn't Souls. It's totally fine of course to want stuff that isn't Souls, but you don't have to take away from the Souls games to do this.

Accessibility options are always a plus, especially in games where customization and lore are a big draw. Devs shouldn't be forced to compromise, but a simple "take x% less damage" would be enough for most people complaining about difficulty. And no, I don't believe being forced into one specific play style is a difficulty slider.

It's not a big deal either way though

a simple "take x% less damage" would be enough for most people complaining about difficulty

isn't that what leveling vitality does?

Oh good, this again. No. However in my theoretical Soulslike the way I'd do it is make it so easy mode sets your stats to max and all enemies HP to 1.

I voted for yes, but laughing at people who forced it to have one.

If they don't want to add it, so be it. Just don't play the game. You won't miss it and it won't miss you either.

Fluttershy posted...

This is actually a technical snafu. Nerds will defend to the death that it's part of the """artistic vision"" but it's really not lmao.

do you have anything to back that up?

like, it's been what, six games? kind of not buying that it's a mistake.

You've never played Sekiro, I take it

VirtuousWrath posted...

You've never played Sekiro, I take it

Sekiro doesn't have drop in drop out co-op/PVP.

I mean, ER has those things and can be "paused", but that's besides the point.

Difficulty isn't the same as difficulty.

I think something like 95% of all "Dark Souls is too hard" complains would already be solved with the removal of any death penalty.

At least for me that was always the biggest turnoff for these games. The risk of loosing quite some progress because I did a stupid mistakes because I'm not at full concentration after a day of work.

I'm fine with dying and dying and dying for 3 hours straight, making 0 progress at all, but when my progress ends up negative, that's when I drop the controller and go to bed.