I’ll keep saying it: I already have a job. I want to play a game to unwind.
This is not a universal response. Some people like difficult games for many reasons. Overcoming a challenge can give me a taste of triumph absent from my day job.
Implementing a wide gamut of difficulty settings is also an accessibility feature, and allows people with certain physical or mental challenges the opportunity to enjoy your game firsthand. Why would you want to deny your audience this opportunity?
Sure, maybe, but the devil is in the details.
I suppose it’s not the game maker’s responsibility to stop people from ruining their own experiences. I’m pretty confident that some people would just easy-mode through dark souls and have a vastly diminished experience. “I don’t see the big deal. It’s just an action game”, they might say, because easy mode gave unlimited healing and no monster respawn. The difficulty (which is vastly overstated) is part of what makes it work. People remember Blight Town and Sen’s Fortress because of the ordeal. I can’t remember a single dungeon from Skyrim.
Furthermore, meta game options found in menus is not the only way to do difficulty options. Elden Ring, for example, is very generous with spirit summons.
I’m not sure there’s an agreed upon definition of “artificial difficulty”. The whole game is artificial so I’m not sure what “natural difficulty” would be.
What are the rest of the mechanics? It’s almost all combat and exploration (that leads to more combat). There’s no, like, base building or grand strategy or romance plots.
That said, I don’t think you can please everyone. I found the games enjoyable as they are.
I consider the weapon system part of the combat. I guess the leveling system is its own mechanic, but it’s super shallow compared to many other games (eg: path of exile, or even Baldur’s gâte)
Some people wouldn’t be happy with a difficulty slider. Some people would use the slider to make themselves unhappy. Either by turning it too high due to hubris, or too low from lack of confidence. The unified difficulty of the souls games for many people is a plus, and creates a sense of shared struggle they enjoy.
And as I said elsewhere, I really don’t think meta game options are the only way to do difficulty.
I really don’t think that’s a productive use of “gatekeeping”.
Do you apply this to other mediums? There are books and movies that are difficult to follow, but no one demands that authors and publishers release a simpler edition. Video games seem to be an exception.
Accessibility like “let me remap the controls” or “give me subtitles” is a whole different beast from “let me be invulnerable”. Treating those as the same is strange to me.
I’m not particularly against difficulty options. I didn’t have the patience to finish Nine Sols without turning the difficulty down. I wouldnt have felt “gate kept” if I just had to put the game down without finishing it.
You’re saying some people shouldn’t get to play a game where difficulty options are an easy solution.
They can play it (assuming they have the money to buy the software and hardware, but that’s a whole other accessibility problem). There’s no guarantee they’ll be able to 100% it. I don’t think it’s axiomatic that everyone should be able to 100% every game.
You’re right that it doesn’t really matter in single player games. I did once have an argument on this topic where the other person said they should be able to change the rules in multiplayer to suit their desires. They wanted more forgiving dodge windows, just for them, unilaterally. That can fuck off.
A book or a movie isn’t an equivalent comparison.
Why not?
Not too mention there ARE simplified versions of popular books or abridged versions and movie guides and so on anyway.
There are let’s plays and wikis for games.
No one is asking for the subject matter to be dumbed down, or for the story to be shallow or transparent.
In some cases, they are. It’s cliché now, but part of the story of dark souls is often cited repeatedly struggling against an uncaring, dying, world until you persevere. If you rip that out and make all the creatures docile, I don’t know if I would call it “dumbed down” but it would certainly be a substantial change. Sometimes the medium is the message. But, often, you are correct that it is not really the case.
Why should someone not get to play through a game because they insisted their hand and can’t dodge anymore?
No one’s arguing against accessibility for controls. I’m not even against well done difficulty options. (The Bethesda style “we just give the enemies more health and damage” is a poorly done difficulty slider, in my view). I just think “I cannot hear so I need subtitles” and “I just want to win on the first try” don’t belong together.
Though, introspecting a little, I think what’s going on is maybe ableism or something like it. I don’t actually believe some of the people who say “this game is too hard. I want an easy mode” are disabled. I read them as just half-assing it. Like someone who wants to play pro soccer but doesn’t want to actually get in shape so run, so they want a smaller field. And, as you say, it doesn’t really matter what someone does in a single player game on their own time, but for some reason it irritates me when someone’s like “I’m just as disabled as that blind guy” when they’re perfectly capable, they just haven’t practiced. Something about “I’ve spent an hour on this task and I haven’t mastered it, I’m disabled” sits wrong with me.
Sports are games and have some degree of artificial difficulty. The size of the goal and ball, for example, is arbitrary (within the bounds of practicality. No moon sized basketballs, for example)
But that doesn’t really address what I was trying to get it. I feel like sometimes people online complain about “artificial difficulty” in video games, and it’s unclear what they actually want. I’ve seen it applied to everything from “The enemies hide around corners” to “you can’t quicksave”. I think it’s a kind of duckspeak thing that people say to just mean “i don’t like it” while making it sound less subjective.
isnt difficult in a sense that you have to think a lot but rather that you memorise what moves the boss has and press your buttons fast enough.
I see this a lot, but that wipes out like most games. Baldur’s gate you just click on stuff. Tekken you just hit buttons. Tetris is just moving blocks around.
Also you often don’t rote memorize the moves. People play by reaction or without knowing exactly what’s coming.
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.
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.
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!
Sure, but that seems like a separate, closely related, topic.
I was mostly objecting to the idea that souls games are just memorizing and pushing buttons. That accusation could be leveled at most single player games, but people seem to mostly bring it up to denigrate souls games.
Multiplayer often has less memorization though, as you say.
I found Pop!_OS worked out of the box fine on my new desktop.
Mint had problems, but worked fine on my older computers.
Back up any important software (like, on a separate drive or online). Get a couple flash drives. Try out mint, popos, bazzite. They’re all free so it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t like one.
I don’t recommend trying to dual boot on one drive because windows is a rude room mate.
In a not-so-scientific benchmark conducted by YouTuber Cyber Dopamine, the Rog Xbox Ally managed to perform better without Windows, the operating system it ships with out of the box. Cyber installed Bazzite, a popular Linux distro for handhelds built specifically to offer that console-esque, seamless experience. Visually,...
None of the guys at my old job liked lae’zel. I think because she’s kind of mean. I’m like that’s what I’m here for. I don’t want some pushover passive aggression like shadow heart, and karlach is fine I guess, but lae’zel making people lick her boots is the shit. I’m not even into being dominated but I do like women with agency.
I feel like the average video game player has really poor media and political literacy, but maybe it’s just the ones who make noise online who fit that profile.
One of the many things that’s infuriating about this is that these people are so profoundly stupid, but they keep getting all the money and power. If there was any justice in the world, people like the decision makers in your stories would be living a very spartan life somewhere, reflecting on how they are so fucking senseless.
And yet people continue to worship these “job creators” and “visionaries”.
No… no that’s impossible… fuck. 14 years, huh? I remember it was 11/11/11 and there were ads for it on city buses, and I thought “wow i guess video games are mainstream now”
I feel like they’d make more money if they started lower end machines. My friend has a potato laptop and would enjoy borderlands, so they’re out of luck. They’re not going to spend any money on a new gaming toy because it’s not that big a hobby for them. I imagine there are many such people.
I liked that one but weirdly there’s no NG+ and the DLC kind of sucked. I finished it with a friend and we were like, “that’s it?”. It’s not very long, and it ends shortly after your end of skill tree powers become available.
I forgot they were even making this game. BL3 was kind of bad, the pre sequel was painful. The tiny Tina one was okay but weirdly had no ng+ and shitty dlc. Meh.
[alt text: a screenshot of a tweet by @no_goblins. The tweet says: “Ladies if you go to a man’s house and the only games he has are COD and 2k DON’T SLEEP WITH HIM! You deserve someone who plays open world RPGs”.]
(Unless she also likes MMOs, then you’re meant for each other)
My friend’s brother and brother’s wife play WoW together. They have their living room set up so they can play side by side. It’s nice they have a fun hobby they do together. (They also engage with real life, but they live far away so I rarely personally see them)
You’re probably more correct than not. I’d be curious to see like those people’s budgets. How many are carrying credit card debt or neglecting other parts of their life to spend on digital gambling?
TL;DW: Journalists played Elden Ring on Switch 2 on gamescom. They weren't allowed to record gameplay but performance is really bad. Tons of stuttering and reportedly dips to
Using a tower shield and poke weapon was the easiest playthrough of the game I’ve done. Easiest of all the from soft games I’ve played, even. The final boss went down in 4 minutes and I barely had to heal.
I think a problem some people get with these games is they have a sort of tunnel vision. They’ll have a scimitar and lose to the boss lose to the boss lose to the boss, and they don’t really consider trying something else.
Yes, for example, famously pokemon with the elemental gyms was bad design. You should totally be able to use your fire pokemon to fight the fire gym. /s
And certainly no other game has something like a fire elemental boss that you can’t use fire on.
There’s just such a contingent of people who get off on hating from soft. It’s tedious as heck
Your post was nonsense. “You can’t have a boss that is strong against something else that used to work” is a stupid design “rule” you made up. Like every game that has meaningfully different builds is going to have parts that are easier or harder for a build.
Easier and harder are not the goal posts being discussed.
Back when game design was an actual artform, having a boss who’s easy with one build but terrible against another up-to-then valid build indicates BAD GAME DESIGN
Three developers' different philosophies on difficulty for their games angielski
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Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever (www.tomshardware.com) angielski
cross-posted from: lemmy.nz/post/29912814
ROG Xbox Ally runs better on Linux than the Windows it ships with — new test shows up to 32% higher FPS, with more stable framerates and quicker sleep resume times (www.tomshardware.com) angielski
In a not-so-scientific benchmark conducted by YouTuber Cyber Dopamine, the Rog Xbox Ally managed to perform better without Windows, the operating system it ships with out of the box. Cyber installed Bazzite, a popular Linux distro for handhelds built specifically to offer that console-esque, seamless experience. Visually,...
Who's your favorite female protagonist in a video game? (Add pic of character in response) angielski
Mine is Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark N64)
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source...
Former BioWare lead writer reads the runes on EA-Saudi deal and speculates that 'guns and football' are in, 'gay stuff' is out, and the venerable RPG studio may be for the chop (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed (insider-gaming.com) angielski
I’m sure that the new Saudi owners and Jared Kushner will be looking into hacking up human developer cost by any means necessary.
Microsoft starts rolling out Gaming Copilot on Windows 11 PCs (www.bleepingcomputer.com) angielski
GTA V was released on this day, 12 years ago angielski
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Wait, that's illegal angielski
Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing (www.thegamer.com) angielski
AAA game? Performance issues and crashing on release? Why I never.
have some standards (beehaw.org) angielski
[alt text: a screenshot of a tweet by @no_goblins. The tweet says: “Ladies if you go to a man’s house and the only games he has are COD and 2k DON’T SLEEP WITH HIM! You deserve someone who plays open world RPGs”.]
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Elden Ring on Switch 2 Is a Disaster in Handheld Mode - IGN (www.youtube.com) angielski
TL;DW: Journalists played Elden Ring on Switch 2 on gamescom. They weren't allowed to record gameplay but performance is really bad. Tons of stuttering and reportedly dips to
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