I love city building games. They’re my genre of choice. This one is hyped up to 11 as this great agent based logistics chain focused city sim. It’s not. Like at all. The numbers are obfuscated to hell and back. It’s got the slowest tier one to tier 2 transition I’ve ever played in a game like this. Very little does what it’s reported to do. They added a useless tech tree to lock stuff up to get a sense of progression, when in reality it just adds a second layer of requirements and time to progress to the next stage of your city. They have a really frustrating combat system which is cool in thought, but poorly executed. The economy is fucked and barely makes any sense.
The most frustrating thing that’s the biggest deal breaker is that pops don’t move into the city upon building housing. You need extra people to fulfill basic laborer roles. I can fill up every job I’ve plopped and have 20 extra workers doing basic labor or nothing. Or I can have two extra workers and build more houses to increase the pop count. Problem is nobody moves in. One of the requirements to get to tier 3 is 200 pop. I can’t break the 64 barrier let alone 100 because for some awful reason the dev decided to use a desirability score and not move pops in upon building a house. I have a population cap of 140 people and there’s vacant houses everywhere. Yet shit don’t change. I don’t think peasants in the fucking 1400s gave a shit about market prices and luxury amenities when fucking bears and wolves attack every 5 minutes. Just move people in the houses when I build them.
The game is a looker. I’ll give it that. Everything else is frustratingly bad.
I’m going to make this point again because it went unnoticed due to the sheer amount of comments, but you wouldn’t complain about a Rubik’s cube or crossword puzzle being too hard or anything else designed to challenge you. I’d argue that without the difficulty of solving a Rubik’s cube that toy would be lost to time. The only reason it still exists today is because it was so hard to solve for children when it was released. Souls games are the same. The only reason we still talk about them and the only reason they gained the popularity that they did is because of the difficulty.
I remember distinctly picking up dark souls on sale on a whim before it started really entering mainstream discussion. The guy working at Gamestop warned me that people kept returning it because it was too hard. I took it home and played it and really learned the mechanics then I brought it to my friends to try. They learned the mechanics and since then we’ve had an unofficial race to see who can beat the newest FromSoft game fastest. It was the difficulty of the game that made it so addicting. Without that the game would be boring and no one would know what it was in 2025. If you don’t believe me install the easy mode mods and come back to let us know what your experience was like.
There’s nothing wrong with a difficult game, but there’s also nothing wrong with difficulty selection or easy games. Why does a game need to be remembered if the goal is to make something fun? The fun alone is what makes something memorable
I never said there is anything wrong with easy games. I play many easy games that were designed to be easy and accessible. Games can be memorable for different reasons. I play Souls games because I love the difficulty. I also play farm sims and VNs because I love story telling and other aspects. My point is that Souls games only exist and are only memorable because of the difficulty.
I’ll go back to the Rubik’s cube. It was released in the 70s. It’s a square puzzle that isn’t flashy or intricate. Do you think it would still be relevant over 50 years later if it wasn’t difficult? That doesn’t invalidate other games or puzzles that survived the test of time that are much easier. The Rubik’s cube was designed to be difficult as were Souls games. Without that difficulty they don’t have much else to offer.
Not sure how recent we’re talking but within the last year or so my 2 biggest disappointments have been once human and nightingale. I can usually work around jank and weird creative decisions, but unfortunately neither of these two were worth any of the time I’ve spent playing em since they felt like they didn’t seem to want you to progress.
Played once human for about 3 days, nightingale for around 3 hours and then refunded.
I was actually a beta tester on the discord. Played it for an hour gave my feedback in return they only replied with “yeah we already know those things” whiv i think is a weird reply… Anyway I always liked the art style and still have hope that this will be a good game. Maybe I try it next year again. Your review set up new hopes :)
As a game dev myself, I’ve had to learn to just quietly accept repeat feedback. I’m often already aware of most problems and bugs during some playtests, and I used to say “I know I gotta fix that” to some lower priority bugs, but it’s better to encourage any and all feedback for sure.
I don’t see what’s weird about it, if they are aware of it and possibly have other things that take priority what else could they say? They were just truthful and straight to the point. It’s extremely hard to handle all feedback and stuff from a community as solo/indie devs, it’s not easy on any level for that matter. If you took several seconds more and emotional effort to be super nice to every single person who interacts with your game we wouldn’t have any games releasing at all. It’s important to keep your responses to a minimum while also making it clear what the situation is. I think that was a good reply, not offensive at all and made you understand that they know and will fix it.
Short? The way they responded. I totally respect that but it felt like a 2 sentence reply to a long feedback I tried to give and it just felt like “yeah stop annoy us if ya dont got something New”
I know gamedev is hard and my previous comment shouldnt read like “what a bunch of jerks…” more like a… Was my first game testing and the reply felt a bit off 🤔
That’s my wife’s style. She did Exposition 33 the opposite way from me and we both enjoyed it in our own ways. It was way more fun to break the game by perfect dodging things I had no business fighting, lol.
It may be a difficult debate between accessibility, experience and artistic vision. Though considering how many games are made every year, I think we can have difficult games with no easy mode. People who don’t enjoy them or can’t play them can simply play the thousands of other games.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for accessibility. During my time in the video game industry, I personally paid great attention to options for colorblind people. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else was outside my scope. But it doesn’t make any sense to potentially ruin the entire work just so 3 more people on the planet will play it.
If a game is frustrating to play, but I enjoy the story - I watch a playthrough. If a game contains elements that I don’t like - it’s probably not a game for me, so I move on to other games. If I had some disability that made it very hard or impossible to play some games - okay, fair enough, that would genuinely suck. But again, I’d move on to other games.
Of course, it’s possible to add detailed difficulty settings, so that everyone can customize their experience. Mostly a great solution, if the team has the time and resources to implement it well, which isn’t always the case. However, it may still interfere with the artistic vision of the developers.
Some movies can cause epileptic seizures due to some of their scenes. Should the authors throw their vision and ideas out the window, because some people cannot safely watch the movie? I’d say no, because that would kind of ruin the whole point of artistic expression. I think we need to be able to depict and express all kinds and forms of art, even if some groups will be unable to experience them.
Maybe some time in the future we’ll be able to solve all of this easily and reliably (e.g., some kind of neuralink for people with various conditions). But as of right now, it seems to me that this is practically a non-issue. The impact is incredibly limited, while proposed solutions are either costly, unrealistic or straight up counterintuitive.
Really well put. In general, I find it frustrating how many people use the word “acccessibility” as a means to argue no games like Dark Souls (intentionally having only 1 difficulty for a single intended experience) should ever exist. But to me that’s conflating disability-accessibility with a more literal “accessible to more people” type of accessibility. I’d argue “approachable” would be a better word for the latter.
People with motor skill issues or whatever else beat Dark Souls all the time. Heck, fully abled people are intentionally giving themselves equivalent experiences by beating it with dance pads and guitar or drum controllers or whatever else all the time. So the difficulty isn’t an accessibility issue, the game is actually pretty slow paced (you can make a decent argument that more recent From Soft titles speed things up to an unreasonable degree for some motor disabilities, but I’m talking about the OG here).
What I hear instead, most of the time, is some version of “I’m a dad, I don’t have hours to throw at a boss every night”. And my instinctive response, most of the time is simply… I just don’t think you like this game? Getting your ass beat and needing hours and dozens of deaths to learn a boss or beat an area is the intended experience, and you’re having it, whether you put those hours in 1 or 12 at a time. If you don’t enjoy that, that’s just fine, there are millions of great games that don’t force you into such a punishing experience. It’s a little bit like complaining a puzzle game has too many puzzles in the way of the platforming.
Anyway, my point being, I think centering the From Software “accessibility” conversation around difficulty options, something the devs have determined is a pillar of the game’s design that they won’t change, prevents us from having a proper conversation about accessibility, in terms of actual disability accessibility. I think there’s really cool conversations we should be having about how we can make attack animations more readable to a visually impaired player without compromising on difficulty, for example. None of the Souls games even have so much as a colourblind mode, and we should be putting pressure on From Soft to add something as trivial as that as the franchise explodes in popularity, but “dark souls accessibility” is an entirely unrelated conversation instead, which kinda drowns out any other.
I think there’s really cool conversations we should be having about how we can make attack animations more readable to a visually impaired player without compromising on difficulty, for example.
Good post, I agree with you and the above poster.
This brings to mind the parry system in Metroid Dread. Enemies flashed yellow before a parryable attack signalling you should hit the button at that moment. It’s possible and it works.
So then why don’t all games do this? Because Metroid Dread was designed from the beginning to support this system. In Souls games, parrying is not just a matter of timing on attacks, but if the attack can even be parried at all given the specific attack (not all can)/player stats/equipped items, 3D positioning of hitboxes for both the attack and the player’s defensive parry, as well as variable parry windows based on the specific shield or weapon equipped. Now take into account that Souls enemies often have multiple attacks each and this becomes a very significant amount of developer work. Not to mention that given all these factors, timing a button press to a parry flash may not always result in 100% success rate. Imagine how frustrating a system like this would be if even when you did everything “right”, the physical placement of hitboxes only resulted in an 80% success rate on any given parry. Would players not find this frustrating? The point I’m trying to make is how complex this system would actually be and how much work it would take to implement.
However, it may still interfere with the artistic vision of the developers.
I’m going to be honest here, I did not end up caring for Metroid Dread much. For a number of reasons I won’t go into here, but partly because of this parry system. Parry windows were clearly telegraphed, did huge amounts of damage often resulting in one hit kills AND they guaranteed to drop health/ammo pickups. With the risk/reward system practically non-existent you were so highly incentivized to use them that it made combat feel much more defensive. Rather than attack enemies, it was often more beneficial to approach them, bait out an attack, and punish.
Now I do take some responsibility for my actions here. It was my choice to begin playing the game this way. But I do also think there’s something to be said for design elements that train or at least encourage players to engage with them in certain ways. Difficulty options are not just game design decisions but also attempts to understand how individual players may engage with those decisions. Expecting developers to have the ability or even foresight to anticipate all these different interactions is an extremely high, if not unreasonable barrier.
But in the end, I simply say that Dread was not a game to my liking. I know there are a lot of people who absolutely love it. Just not a game for me.
I’ve heard the same excuses about Souls games that I hear about learning an instrument. Many times it’s from the same people and no they aren’t disabled. They just say I don’t have the dexterity or it’s too hard I could never do this or that. To them I show them this amazing man: youtube.com/
This man has an obvious disability, but plays guitar better than like 90% of guitarists. The same argument can be made about paralympic athletes. They’re often in better shape and more talented than people who aren’t disabled and the reason obviously isn’t some natural talent they have. They’ve put in the work to be great. That’s what it takes to master anything. You have to practice, you have to try, you have to push yourself.
SCP-4098 seemingly changes people spreading communication properly, specifically communication proximally Site-94 centered, procedurally. Said communication prohibits speaker’s choices, producing speech constructional primaries: SCP.
“Git gud or die” literally is a genre. It’s called soulslike.
Also “every game should have difficulty options” and “every game should be a survival crafter” are both fundamentally “every game should be what I like.”
You can set a difficulty option to the default, what it would be if there weren’t a choice. Changing the genre of a game isn’t generally in the settings menu.
“Soulslike” is an absurdly nebulous term that just means “hard.” It isn’t a genre. It gets applied to games of every conceivable genre based solely on their difficulty. Battletoads is a Soulslike. Path of Exile is a Soulslike. Dead Cells is a Soulslike. Never mind that all of Fromsoft’s Souls games are specifically action-adventure RPGs, which is a genre.
Lets say they keep everything as it is right now, like they literally have the games they already have and add some difficulty options like less annoying backtracking. How does this “ruin” your experience?
Every one of these arguments is based on the entirely made up idea that sacrifices must be made to achieve these improvements.
What makes you think every game should be for every person?
No, it absolutely isn’t a made up idea that allowing barnacles to glomp on to an experience so that they can feel included cheapens the whole experience.
I do not want McDonald’s Souls. I get that you’re fine with it, I’m not.
What makes you think every game should be for every person?
What makes you want to make such a clear strawman argument?
No, it absolutely isn’t a made up idea that allowing barnacles to glomp on to an experience so that they can feel included cheapens the whole experience.
I love that you literally cant answer the question because you know its immature gamer gate keeping. You just completely avoided it.
I’ll repeat:
Lets say they keep everything as it is right now, like they literally have the games they already have and add some difficulty options like less annoying backtracking. How does this “ruin” your experience?
Edit: for a real answer, since the advent of video games there have been people like you claiming that they’re too hard. Video games are meant to be beaten. They are literally designed that way, just because you can’t seem to beat them doesn’t mean everyone should conform to you.
Seriously, go pick a different game. Thousands of games exist with difficulty sliders. Pick one and shut the fuck up about the ones that don’t.
for a real answer, since the advent of video games there have been people like you claiming that they’re too hard. Video games are meant to be beaten. They are literally designed that way, just because you can’t seem to beat them doesn’t mean everyone should conform to you.
This is not a real answer at all.
This is you first poisoning the well by insinuating that I’m bad at games firstly, and then pretending that these settings only have to do with hardness in 1 dimension. Its not remotely a good faith effort to answer.
Why would I assume anything but ineptitude on your part?
You either have a fundamentally flawed understanding of why single difficulty games exist or you are just bad at games. I don’t care which, I will say that Atomfall is extremely fucking boring.
Why would I assume anything but ineptitude on your part?
If you were being a reasonable well rounded human being and not a toxic gamer trope, that would be a reason.
You either have a fundamentally flawed understanding of why single difficulty games exist or you are just bad at games.
Given that not a single person has been able to make a cogent argument for them existing and the second thing is the comment of a toddler, Im going to go with the third option that Im shocked this level of toxicity exists on lemmy.
I don’t know why I expected better, but this is bottom of the barrel. You get better conversation on reddit, legitimately. This is all over a difference in opinion on difficulty settings in gaming. Its amazing really. Like you never sat back for a second and thought about how you were acting over a video game opinion.
No, this is all over you deciding that what you think is superior to everyone simply because you’ve declared it.
There are games that are designed to have varying difficulties. There are games that are not. Both can be complete experiences, both can be dogshit and lazy. I really don’t care what you ‘expect’ because Atomfall absolutely falls in the ‘lazy as fuck’ category. Gunplay is basic. Melee combat is basic. Stealth consists of ‘be behind something, don’t not be behind something’.
And you want to know something? It’s ok to be entertained by a game like that! What’s not ok is turning around and acting like you have some valuable opinion centered on games being more like fucking Atomfall.
Edit: I’m gonna quote you
Apples are so much better than oranges. You don’t have to peel Apples, the skin is actually good for you. I honestly fucking hate oranges because I can’t just bite into them.
If the above seems like an unreasonable statement to you, congratulations — you have conceded the argument. If you agree with the above statement, congratulations — you have outright lost the argument.
No, this is all over you deciding that what you think is superior to everyone simply because you’ve declared it.
At this point you arent even pretending to argue in good faith so there isn’t much point in continuing. You’re incapable of good faith discussion it seems, cant answer simple questions and couldn’t make an honest comparison to save your life.
Hopefully you don’t explode over every minor disagreement you have.
What was that? I couldn’t hear you over the ad hominem, you can cry in this cup I’m holding.
Difficulty sliders have existed for decades, just because you’re an idiot that’s never noticed that the games they’re attached to are typically bad isn’t my problem. Maybe go research game balance and why different designs exist for different games, it isn’t my responsibility to drag you to the finish line.
You are so toxic right now that if you ever grow as a person you’ll think back to how shitty you were right now in time.
Literally talking like a 4channer to someone, calling them an idiot, pretending you know what an adhominem attack is because you … don’t like adjustable difficulty settings in video games (and seem to think that sliders are all that difficulty settings are).
I have already addressed that you can have complete experiences from both single difficulty games and variable difficulty games.
The only thing that is unique about Atomfalls difficulty settings outside of the difficulty sliders is that there’s a very very easy mode instead of a very hard mode.
Again, research design philosophy for video games. Because as other users have mentioned — you are objectively incorrect. In the exact same way as someone who believes that games should only have one difficulty are incorrect.
Edit: actually, fuck you — I’ve read the rest of these comments. You’ve earned the tag “Terrible at video games”.
Edit 2: no no, I’ve got an even better tag — “IGN Game Journalist”.
The only one posed in the question this spawns from??
Lets say they keep everything as it is right now, like they literally have the games they already have and add some difficulty options like less annoying backtracking. How does this “ruin” your experience?
You’re objectively wrong. I just wanted to make sure you understood that.
No one cares what “you” want, unless “you” perfectly describe the purchasing power of 100k potential customers.
FROMsoft doesn’t care if you play their game, which is great for me because I like their artistic vision unfettered by useless contrarianism.
Oh, and to answer the question you think is a gacha - I’d rather the team spend every second making the game they want to then to spare even one developers afternoon to add “difficulty settings” - that employee could have been doing something actually useful to the game and its target audience.
You really following me around to just assert that your bad take is “objectively” right over and over again?
No one cares what “you” want, unless “you” perfectly describe the purchasing power of 100k potential customers.
This is a common complaint, and its what the folks like you are bitching about; the idea that anyone would dare have criticisms that you dont agree with.
Oh, and to answer the question you think is a gacha - I’d rather the team spend every second making the game they want to then to spare even one developers afternoon to add “difficulty settings” - that employee could have been doing something actually useful to the game and its target audience.
This isn’t an answer at all, as expected from you given that the stipulations are that this is separate to the games creation. The fact you can’t answer really goes to show that it is indeed just useless gatekeeping. That you follow me around for this really goes to show how toxic your mentality is.
You’re right, that was overly harsh. I have 0 respect for this clown shoes opinion of yours, don’t bother, goodbye. It’s possible not all of your opinions are this asinine - not likely, but possible. Not interested in learning really.
Why do you keep commenting to me? You seem to be extremely bothered by my opinions, I assume mostly because you have no real rebuttal, just weird gatekeepy anger.
Dark souls would be a very different experience if the monsters weren’t threatening and there were no setbacks for defeat. People believe the experience is important. Accepting that defeat is only a temporary setback and you can just try again is a significant experience, and if you make the game trivial you won’t achieve that.
Dark souls would be a very different experience if the monsters weren’t threatening and there were no setbacks for defeat.
Crazy strawman argument here. Its not even remotely close to what is being argued.
People believe the experience is important.
What Im suggesting doesnt prevent them from having that. The fact they feel it must be imposed on others for them to play those games is ridiculous and childish.
Accepting that defeat is only a temporary setback and you can just try again is a significant experience, and if you make the game trivial you won’t achieve that.
This assumption that difficulty settings are all about making a game trivial is just so obviously bad faith nonsense.
More than that, some people do just enjoy things that way and they don’t care about the other parts of the experience. There is literally no reason all people involved cant have cake. Its literally just angsty gatekeepers whining that they think there needs to be a bar to entry to play a video game; something people do for fun.
Let me just skip ahead to asking you the question none of you annoying gatekeepy folks can answer.
Lets say they keep everything as it is right now, like they literally have the games they already have and add some difficulty options like less annoying backtracking. How does this “ruin” your experience?
I think our assumptions are not shared, so arguing more isn’t going to be productive until that’s straightened out.
When you say difficulty settings, I think of lowering enemy effectiveness, raising player effectiveness, and removing consequences for bad play (eg: permadeath of characters). Is that what you mean?
You mention less annoying backtracking. Can you imagine a game where the “annoying back tracking” is fulfilling an important role (eg: resources attrition, encouraging revisiting areas)?
If so, is there a threshold beyond which is too much? If there’s a slider that adjusts enemy damage, should it go to zero? If no, how do you decide the limits? What about the players who want to exceed them?
It seems like you have the assumption that everyone should be able to complete every game. Is that correct? Is that true for all media, or only video games?
I would write more but I’m on my phone and almost to my destination.
When you say difficulty settings, I think of lowering enemy effectiveness, raising player effectiveness, and removing consequences for bad play (eg: permadeath of characters). Is that what you mean?
Can be, doesn’t have to be.
Can be things like making it such that you can fast travel instead of travelling slowly back. Can be that you skip a minigame you just don’t think adds anything to the game. Can be that you do or don’t want certain queues etc.
Can be a lot of things and the point is basically that there are a lot of things which can be toggleable settings which are extremely easy to implement, and greatly improve the experience for some players, while players who want “what the developers envisioned” or whatever, can play it that way just fine.
Others can make certain elements harder or easier or non existent based on their preferences.
You mention less annoying backtracking. Can you imagine a game where the “annoying back tracking” is fulfilling an important role (eg: resources attrition, encouraging revisiting areas)?
I can imagine some situations where it could be sure, but most of the times it isn’t and the times it isn’t isn’t worth the effort for me. It just makes the game less fun for no conceivable benefit most of the time. The backtracking Im describing here is essentially filler (the type I don’t think most people like).
If so, is there a threshold beyond which is too much? If there’s a slider that adjusts enemy damage, should it go to zero? If no, how do you decide the limits? What about the players who want to exceed them?
I think the idea here that you seem to be putting out is that there is some point at which a players choice to change the difficulty is no longer valid, and I don’t think any such point exists. Let people do what they want, and give them some reasonable defaults that you’ve actually tested for/think blend well.
It seems like you have the assumption that everyone should be able to complete every game. Is that correct? Is that true for all media, or only video games?
I’ve seen someone ask this before and I think its an absurd question to ask. No one in their right mind buys any media to not finish it. No one walks into a movie hoping its so shit they walk out half way, or starts a novel hoping they’re so bored they put it down.
Of course everyone should be able to complete every game. I can’t even think of what point this could be leading to except the obvious absurd idea that people should be expecting not to be able to enjoy the things they purchase.
Still on my phone so this might be a little limited.
I can imagine some situations where it could be sure, but most of the times it isn’t and the times it isn’t isn’t worth the effort for me. It just makes the game less fun for no conceivable benefit most of the time. The backtracking Im describing here is essentially filler (the type I don’t think most people like).
So when it is not filler, should you be disallowed from skipping it? Who is to say what the benefit is? Does the design intent matter?
Of course everyone should be able to complete every game. I can’t even think of what point this could be leading to except the obvious absurd idea that people should be expecting not to be able to enjoy the things they purchase.
This is a big disagreement. I don’t think everyone should be able to finish every game. They should be able to work the controls. If someone made Calculus Souls I’m just not going to beat it. I’m not good at math. I don’t expect them to give me the answers or add in an Arithmetic mode. If it’s there, fine, but that’s gravy. That’s like getting a second game for free.
Did you ever read the book House of Leaves? It’s great. Unreliable narrators, unconventional layout and use of form. Several friends of mine bounced right off of it. “Can’t read this”, they said. I wouldn’t say they were gatekept. I wouldn’t say the author is ableist because they didn’t also provide a linear narrative, without all the footnotes. I accept that not everyone is going to finish that book. Even if they paid money for it.
My dad bought a big jigsaw puzzle once. Loves puzzles. Couldn’t do this one. He put it back in the box and never finished it. He didn’t say it was an accessibility problem. It would never occur to him to ask for, like, the backs of the pieces to be numbered
People routinely accept that things will be hard, and maybe they can’t beat them. Maybe they could with more practice, but it’s not worth it. This is not a failure of the game or toy.
That’s what a lot of these discussions feel like. Someone made something interesting and challenging, and people want it changed. If you take all the footnotes out of house of leaves, you get a very different, much reduced, result.
I think the idea here that you seem to be putting out is that there is some point at which a players choice to change the difficulty is no longer valid, and I don’t think any such point exists. Let people do what they want, and give them some reasonable defaults that you’ve actually tested for/think blend well.
Well, earlier I said something about tuning difficulty down to the point of triviality, and you said that was a straw man.
But look, I’m not against options in games (assuming everyone playing gives informed consent. Unilaterally cheating is not okay). I just think the framing of it as accessibility in the same way that subtitles or changing controller inputs is dicey. “I think this would be more fun” is a fine, subjective, argument. “This game is ableist” is much shakier.
Of course, if you’re not saying lack of options is ableist but having them makes the game more fun, then I guess we violently agree.
Well, with the footnote that I do believe some people would ruin their own fun by turning the difficulty too high or low, but that’s not my business, and could be a net zero when compared to people not having fun with the available options. (But like for real when I was a kid I briefly ruined Diablo by cheating myself all the cool items.)
And the thing I was waiting for in real life has occurred. No more editing! Post away!
So when it is not filler, should you be disallowed from skipping it? Who is to say what the benefit is? Does the design intent matter?
Why should you? Why should the player be disallowed from doing anything? They bought the game. They should be allowed to do whatever to the point of unreasonable hardship for the developer. Like if a dev has to go out of their way, fair enough, but if its like, they’re just not exposing the ability to change a setting, thats ridiculous.
Did you ever read the book House of Leaves? It’s great. Unreliable narrators, unconventional layout and use of form. Several friends of mine bounced right off of it. “Can’t read this”, they said. I wouldn’t say they were gatekept. I wouldn’t say the author is ableist because they didn’t also provide a linear narrative, without all the footnotes. I accept that not everyone is going to finish that book. Even if they paid money for it.
These aren’t comparable situations. That one person almost certainly would have had to actually make significant effort, probably exceeding the effort of making the book to make it accessible. Video games aren’t that. More than that, the changes we are talking about are minor and relatively (compared to the scale of a game) easy to add. to add to that, people can still be into the majority of a game and not like one particular element, and there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to remove the bug bear. It is for entertainment after all.
That’s what a lot of these discussions feel like. Someone made something interesting and challenging, and people want it changed. If you take all the footnotes out of house of leaves, you get a very different, much reduced, result.
The question, as before, is, if the people who want that original experience can still just choose that, why are they up in arms at the idea of allowing people to experience things differently that don’t affect them?
Outside of completely made up arguments that this is not possible, no one has had an answer for this, just anger, as if they are mad at the idea of people not having to go through the “struggle” they feel they went to. Not having to have the “skills they built up”.
I’ve had countless people say the most toxic things I’ve seen on lemmy in this very thread over that idea, and I think thats the core of it. That behind all the bullshit excuses people have come up with, they feel like their achievements would somehow be worth less if other people could play the game differently to how they played. Like their other way of playing isn’t “official” enough and shouldn’t be supported at all.
I’ve had someone really iron in that this is the true intent when they revealed that they would prefer someone cheat in the game rather than the developer simply exposing those same things as options.
Well, earlier I said something about tuning difficulty down to the point of triviality, and you said that was a straw man.
It was. My point initially wasn’t about that, but when asked specifically, I think yea, why not, who cares. Why are other people caring so much about how others enjoy their media product.
But look, I’m not against options in games (assuming everyone playing gives informed consent. Unilaterally cheating is not okay).
I mean this conversation, I think, has pretty clearly morphed into a bunch of people vehemently angry about the prospect of souls like games having any difficulty changes, harder or less hard.
I don’t think anyone has been thinking about multiplayer.
I just think the framing of it as accessibility in the same way that subtitles or changing controller inputs is dicey. “I think this would be more fun” is a fine, subjective, argument. “This game is ableist” is much shakier.
I’m not sure I’ve used that as the core of my argument or my argument at all actually. Not sure though as, like you’ve probably seen, there are a shit ton of comments on this tree.
I think some forms of media will inherently be somewhat inaccessible, but there is no reason to go out of your way to support things being less accessible, even if accessible means to people who simply don’t like a thing one way vs the other.
Well, with the footnote that I do believe some people would ruin their own fun by turning the difficulty too high or low, but that’s not my business
See thats the thing. Everyone else in this thread has been violently angry at the idea that other people could have fun differently to them.
Ill give you one example. I liked Cyberpunk. It was a decent game, and I’ve played through it a few times.
The first time I played it, I played without any mods, very hard, just because (I’m honestly only including this to stop bs arguments, though you haven’t seemed supremely disengenous like many others on this thread so far, and feel I shouldnt need to, to make my point), and then every time after that I played with mods, and I wish I just played with the mods from the start.
What did I change? I completely removed the breach protocol minigame (I generally feel all minigames suck, add no fun, and are just literally wasting my time, easy or difficulty), I used teleportation to avoid needing to do lengthy backtracking or worrying too much about missing items, I added a multiplier to xp to reduce grind and I used mods to remove useless mods (in game term) from guns and skip the randomized store inventories in the game. These were all downsides to the game that some people swear up and down add to the game. They absolutely do not to me.
With much experience now, I can confidently say that had I been presented with the options to simply tune things in that way, it would have massively improved my experience with the game.
Cyberpunk luckily, is relatively open for a game in that mods like this are plentiful and easy to come by, and the code fairly accessible. Many games are not. In many games, you just have to deal with the shitty minigame, or random loot or whatever.
Its not that I would necessarily hate those games or that they “aren’t made for me” as many assholes in this thread have tried to imply must be the logic behind every critique, its that those elements were just generally subtractive to the experience, and I have yet to see anyone explain why I should be forced to play with them.
To many people, dying over and over isn’t fun, and in Cyberpunk if that was a problem for me, I probably wouldn’t find it all that fun either. Given this game has so many ways to solve every problem, and the combat I found pretty easy, I played with very hard, but if I was getting annoyed by having to repeat the same thing for hours on end, I would have no problem changing difficulties for this.
Cyberpunk is no worse for wear for having these options available to people. People who don’t know modding exists and who like the game as it is, aren’t affected by this.
I think its a great example of how this mentality of “made to be played this way” is all elitist gatekeeping in gaming. People don’t know fuck all about development. Their opinions aren’t coming from some deep love of a genre. They’re coming from feeling like a part of their identity will die if the game they feel they are “good at” is more accessible, and thats it really. This isn’t a job or for money, so that idea is just absurd.
What a trite, immature, troll like response this is.
Not having good difficulty settings is not a genre. It’s a lacking.
This tired response of pretending any criticism of anything means a person “must clearly not be the target audience” is extremely thoughtless gatekeeping.
It’s such a bad argument on its face too, as if someone disliking a flaw in something means they clearly must haste the thing in its entirety. insufferable people.
I don’t know where all your hatred is coming from. My comment was a genuine suggestion to a problem you’re facing that worked for me. Do you need to be able to consume and experience everything there is? Personally, I don’t. If a game is not for me, then it’s not for me and I move on. It has never stroke me as ‘gatekeeping’.
Furthermore, what you’re expressing are neither criticism nor preferences. It’s just pure hate towards anything and anyone you don’t like, as displayed here:
I fucking hate creatives who believe super deeply they’ve created some masterpiece meant to be played one way.
Sure, ‘hate’ doesn’t have to be literal. I sometimes say it too, without meaning it literally. However, I’d argue that the second comment has clearly showed the intent and meaning behind the first one.
I don’t know where all your hatred is coming from.
Yes, you do
My comment was a genuine suggestion
You know it wasn’t
Do you need to be able to consume and experience everything there is?
No one has made the claim they do. They’re discussing something they dislike, in this, a place for discussion.
Meanwhile, you’re over here like “just dont play games then if you’re going to complain”. Why don’t you just not use lemmy if you’re going to complain. See how useless and bad faith that argument genuine suggestion* is?
Personally, I don’t. If a game is not for me, then it’s not for me and I move on.
This right here is annoying, trolling, gatekeepy bullshit too where you pretend that if someone has any criticism of anything, clearly it’s not for them.
Furthermore, what you’re expressing are neither criticism nor preferences. It’s just pure hate towards anything and anyone you don’t like, as displayed here:
This is the most ridiculously blatant words twisting I’ve ever seen. Your brain stem must be tied into knots with those mental gymnastics.
In this context, though, yes, you are obviously not the target audience and that is specifically your issue with it. You really are just being a crybaby about something not having a specialized programming element to allow you to customize the game to make it just right for your specific taste and play style preference.
Should every restaurant make sure to have everyone’s favorite food available even if it’s entirely antithetical to the intention of the menu?
In this context, though, yes, you are obviously not the target audience and that is specifically your issue with it.
It literally isnt at all. You know you’re wrong too and thats why this is a frustrating argument. You aren’t arguing with your real opinions here.
If you made your restaurant analogy honest, it would be like a restaraunt has peanuts sprinkled on a dessert you like, so you ask them not to sprinkle peanuts there, and some other patreons flip their tables and bark like dogs at the idea that you would dare ask them not to do that, acting as if it must mean you don’t like the dessert if you don’t get the peanuts.
You really are just being a crybaby about something not having a specialized programming element to allow you to customize the game to make it just right for your specific taste and play style preference.
While I like games that have multiple difficulties to make them more accessible this is an unrealistic expectation. Difficulty settings can add a lot of extra development time. Its not always as easy as just adding a slider in the menu. There is a lot of Q&A that needs to go on behind the scenes. I do appreciate the games that put in the effort to flesh out a good difficulty system. Single difficulty games also have a rough balancing act as now matter what they do there will be people that say its to easy or too hard.
In what way is any of what I said unrealistic? Its already been done. Many games have much higher standards than just one difficulty.
Difficulty settings can add a lot of extra development time.
Literal nonsense. This is one of the things that modders change most easily. Many of the things I want in difficulty settings are as simple as flipping a boolean.
I’m not saying difficulty settings that are robust are nothing, but you’re pretending they take up way more effort than they do.
Difficulty is a way some devs express their vision - nearly anything by FROMsoft, for example.
Why would you want to limit their artistic expression to suit your needs? Just play something else. Or mod the difficulty down if it’s so important to you, but it’s not their job to make sure you, personally, enjoy the game, because that’s how you end up with mediocre catch all by-the-numbers fests like GTA.
Why would you want to limit their artistic expression to suit your needs?
This is a nonsensical argument as no ones artistic vision is limited with what I’ve suggested.
You are now following me around and its kinda weird you are so entrenched and toxic about it.
The fact you could not answer the question regarding fromsoft of
Lets say they keep everything as it is right now, like they literally have the games they already have and add some difficulty options like less annoying backtracking. How does this “ruin” your experience?
Combined with this super weird behaviour of following me around with comments varying from just insults to half-assed answers tells me that your toxicity is something you are aware of and don’t have a problem with.
Have never thought about it so dunno how awkward it'd be, but maybe NES and SNES turn-based RPGs? Quite like Mystic Quest out of them, Final Fantasy on easy mode pretty much but pretty chill and enjoyable imo.
Would recommend also hasicontent, Slipways Classic and Dust Bunny, all for PICO-8 and on Itchio, and those I think that'd be more feasible one-handed. Also Final Fantasy II for the PSP specifically as it's the most feature complete version, and this one iirc is feasible with one hand.
Also more feasible and native to Android if that's your phone system, Chloe Playtime (Google Play), Codemancer (Itchio), Deeper Down Dungeons (Google Play), Quest of Dungeons (Google Play, Humble Bundle, Itchio), REDDEN (dunno if still distributed anywhere) and Tyrant's Blessing (Google Play).
And don't remember any, but if there's any game compatible, maybe also check stuff playable on ScummVM, Joiplay, and other similar projects?
Oftentimes, devs are practically the only person who can. Especially small hobbyist devs. They’ll spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours playing their own game as they build it and forget they have to then circle back and tune it for people who haven’t.
Potentially my hottest take, but this is my biggest criticism of Silksong. Even as someone who likes difficult games, I bounced off it. I’ll get back to it eventually, I know I’ll love it once I crack it, but it was taking a lot of effort I just can’t devote to it right now.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s too difficult or that the difficulty level is bad, but it’s overtuned. The devs spent 7 years developing it, playing it, replaying it, adding, tweaking. I believe they made exactly the thing they wanted, but that makes it very dense and intricate and you gotta be on just the absolutely correct wavelength to get there …
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