I have successfully (?) played (sometimes semi-suffered, cough, Sekiro) through a buncha popular hard games and have a way less „strong“ opinion on this but also think that an „easy mode“ as an accessibility feature is a good thing.
If, for example, a parent wants to connect with their child and also experience that game they‘re playing, it‘s really no big deal to me if they could turn on easy mode in, say, Sekiro to stand a chance. Not like it‘d impact my own experience at all, and I don‘t feel the need to force them to go through my own experience either. In Celeste, for instance, you can literally fly through the whole game if it makes you happy, and yet I still grabbed all strawberries the normal way and don‘t care if others did as well or just flew to them.
It‘s less of a demand from me and more of a „if you can you should definitely include it,“ though. Obviously doesn‘t work for full on competitive multiplayer titles or something similar though.
Not even sure how much of this addresses your remark specifically, but my feelings on this felt best placed below yours lol
Far Cry games at least until 4. I like mindlessly collecting 300 map markers sometimes. Funny enough, I don‘t like 5 cause there doesn‘t seem to be a collectibles map that lets me just move up and down the map collecting everything lol
I don‘t get why they’d cheap out on artists, a couple people drawing illustrations is surely not gonna balloon development cost - and arguably one of the easiest places to spot when it‘s AI slop. It‘s as if they think there must be gen AI stuff in the game somewhere or the game‘s worse or something.
Horizon: Zero Dawn. I have yet to finish it but apart from robot dinosaurs, it feels so generically open world… Admitedly, a very pretty-looking open world. Can‘t really get into the story so far either since it takes itself so seriously while I‘m having a hard time not thinking too much about how ridiculous its world is. So apart from sight-seeing, there hasn‘t been much in this game for me thus far.
Edit: This comment section is a treasure trove of hot takes, so many of my beloved games mentioned making me go „What the fuck…,“ I love it
Idk if someone from Bethesda said this or if it was just a Youtuber regarding the stupid ways to level up in Oblivion (like jumping around for hours), but: If that‘s how people enjoy playing the game, then let them. And I agree with this.
Regarding abuse of game mechanics and not just bugs/glitches… I can only think of some Dark Souls bosses that can be baited into killing themselves by fall damage. For some it‘s clearly intentional (Iron Guard thing in Dark Souls 1), for some arguable (Dark Souls 2 the guy in the sunken area), and some clearly rather unintended (first real boss in Dark Souls 1 for example, it‘s really hard to do and when it happens the dude drops like a rocket lol)
I cannot fathom how this move is better for them than a larger audience with baked-in ads. This isn‘t some huge event with mainstream appeal. I‘d hope they ran the numbers, but nowadays I‘m not so sure.
…in my cart, but considering I‘m unlikely to get around to any of them this year, I‘ll let them sit in the cart throughout the sale and see whether I’ll pull the trigger on anything.
Yeah, but that‘s usually stakeholder-driven. Of course, it could be all the same if and when they go private, but this move just seems unprecedented to me so it‘s interesting to observe if it does have any impact in this regard.