As a man who has never played Elden Ring and really knows nothing about it beyond it being the name of a game, the people getting all het up in these comments are very amusing. I think you guys proved her point.
I’m vegan btw
I once made the mistake googling easy mode for Elden ring that someone gifted to me. Once I saw the gatekeeping on Reddit, I decided it’s not a game for me and uninstalled. I’m sorry that I suck at video games
You want to feel alienation? But isn’t this what you are already experiencing?
As for the bait: I don’t need easy mode, I don’t want easy mode; but it really isn’t my decision.
Why stop there, though? Some of those big weights at the gym are way too hard to lift. They should have an easy mode that lets people lift weights labeled a heavy weight but are actually made of foam. Or in school, if someone can’t grasp a difficult concept, there should be an easy mode that just gives them the answer.
I play games to relax. If I want a treadmill, I’ll go to the gym.
If there was an easy mode where you could lift lighter weights and get just as fit (which would be the correct analogy here), I think a lot of people would opt for that.
Souls games just require patience, you can get better. It’s the stupidly complex games I have trouble with. Games like BG3 are like taking freshmen chemistry again. Too much effort trying to figure out whats going on.
All of the Souls games kinda have an easy mode baked in. Ranged weapons/Sorceries generally provide an easier experience. Honestly though, I just find I don’t really care if there is an easy mode or not. I enjoyed the challenge and if a difficulty slider was added, it would not have detracted from my experience in the slightest. I played through the games for the challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. If someone else doesn’t enjoy the challenge, then that’s okay. I’m not going to gatekeep them. We’re all SunBro’s at our core and I will always drop my Summon Sign for others in need to find
Praise the Sun, my friend
All difficult games should have an easy mode for accessibility.
Signed, a Dark Souls enjoyer.
I recently noticed the accessibility settings in Brotato, which are a great example of this. In addition to the normal difficulty setting, in accessibility they give you access to sliders for enemy health/damage/speed and some toggles for other visual and difficulty features.
The only option I use is being able to restart a wave after a death rather than losing the whole run, and it’s kept me occasionally playing the game and enjoying what the devs have created.
I see where you’re coming from, but when a game’s message is that meaning and purpose is born through hard work and struggling against impossible odds then that message is kinda undercut by a button that turns the struggle off, even if it’s there for a good reason.
I would say that the number of games where that message is core and is reliably reinforced through the gameplay is small.
Getting Over It, for example, would not need an ‘easy mode’, but the vast majority of games should be accessible to as wide an audience as possible - not by compromising the devs’ vision, but by simply allowing players the tools to handle the game at their own pace.
Sucks for console users. On PC there are trainers.
It’s one of the reasons I got my grandparents to transition from consoles to PC. I knew how to fiddle with PC games to make things easier on them.
Still, oftentimes I would end up sending an email of thanks to a dev of some sort, usually along the lines of “I know this isn’t your target audience, but thank you so much for putting in native controller support/UI scaling/story mode/etc in, being able to get this working for my grandparents is a big joy in their lives.”
It’s one of the reasons I got my grandparents to transition from consoles to PC.
The most unexpected sentence I expect I’ll run into today.
My grandparents were the ones who taught me how to play games! It skipped a generation - my mother was never a gamer, but she remembers them always having the latest consoles when she was growing up in the 70s and 80s. I grew up on my grandparents’ laps, watching them pass the PS1 controller back and forth on a dozen different genres. Shooters and horror for my grandfather, puzzles and platformers for my grandmother, and RPGs for both.
My grandparents were poor, so they were always trading in their games down at Gamestop, and then kicking themselves when they had a hankering for it again. And god, having an original copy of Final Fantasy Tactics too scratched to play, and then finding out the only place you could get it in the mid-2000s was on Ebay for 100$? When I learned how emulators and less than legal rom acquisition worked, they were delighted to suddenly have every game they ever traded away back in their hands.
But another problem was that they just couldn’t keep up with modern console gaming. The 360 was the last console they got, and most games were just… not friendly enough for them, especially since their reflexes were in decline (not that grandpa’s were ever great, as he himself would have been first to admit; he was a perpetual cheater with DOOM and Duke Nukem). Being able to transfer them over to PC gaming entirely, and difficulty adjustments as an increasingly standard feature of RPGs in the early 2010s, went a long way towards letting them play modern games again.
My grandfather passed away earlier this year. It’s been weird without him on call every weekend. Miss him terribly.
Yep, I’ve been trying my best to also say thank you to devs that go out of their way when they don’t have to. (And also to musicians since I mainly listen to metal and 99.9% of those guys don’t get the recognition they deserve)
Honestly… I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They’re also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It’s about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.
IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn’t a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.
There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y’know, why From Soft haven’t done it yet.
Accessibility isn’t just a case of ‘accessible to the handicapped’, man.
That’s a fair argument then, but… this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can “access” the thing.
If someone isn’t willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that’s a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like “Prepare to Die” is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They’ve done essentially everything but creating an explicit “easy mode” to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, that’s not inaccessible but it’s less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem can’t be solved for every player unfortunately. And they don’t need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldn’t ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying “I’d love to enjoy the art you’ve made, but I can’t. My disability/inability is stopping me” then I’d change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and you’re right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but can’t just because of difficulty.
For mechanically difficult games, definitely agree. Celeste is an example I usually bring up - it’s a platformer that can get pretty tough at times, especially in the after-story optional levels. But it also has one of the most flexible and useful accessibility modes I’ve ever seen. It allows you to adjust basically every aspect of the game a player might struggle with (game speed, additional jumps, timed mechanics, you name it). And the game itself is very good as well.
It also has a different sort of difficulty. It’s all in bite size chunks, and you can try again immediately. It never feels punishing in the way Souls games do.
I agree. It’s a good think FromSoft doesn’t make difficult games. They make challenging games. Their games can be trivialize by meeting it on its own terms. If you pay attention to what things are weak to, it’s often pretty easy. Also, you always have the option to level up and improve your situation. Outside of secondary content, everything is easy, but it wants to challenge you to see if you’re paying attention. The issue is this is abnormal for modern games, so it’s seen by some as being hard. Modern gamers expect to have their hands held, which I don’t think developers should always oblige if it weakens the intended experience.
I’ve never had vitriol spewed at me quite like when I argue in favor of easy mode for soulslike games. I’m at a point where I hate soulslike games, half because I don’t want to spend ten hours on a boss that I can’t beat, and half because I don’t want to associate with soulsborne players
Hard games should be hard. Welcome to Tarkov
One thing I’ve never understood is devs making a game that is 100% intended to be difficult to complete and then some people come along to said game that has essentially been advertised as a hard game and complaining it’s too hard and an easy mode should be implemented for them.
Not every game needs an easy mode and I fully support the idea that devs shouldn’t have to put in an easy mode because people think a game is too hard. Especially if it’s a souls game. They’ve never been easy and hopefully never will be.
Not saying they should have to, just saying it would be better if it had it.
I don’t really enjoy the way hardness is implemented in souls like games: long health bars just make the game take longer and make it boring for me, so I don’t play them. That’s OK if they don’t want my money 🤷
I know there’s also the argument that a lot of players wouldn’t bother with the hard mode if easy was available and you’re denying the players that experience if you implement easy mode, but I think it’s a flawed argument because if you add any small incentive to play on hard mode such as a simple cosmetic reward that’s enough to incentivise most players to do it.
I love how all the comments insist on discussing the difficulty, despite OP literally pointing it out as bait.
That’s good bait.
I know it’s bait. I’m just looking for an opportunity to unload.
The circle of “just want to feel something” wraps round and round.
For anyone interested, shameless plug: !soulslike@lemmy.zip
Easy mode ftw. I’ve only got so much free time. I wanna chill when I’m gaming.
You don’t want to spend twenty hours trying to beat one boss, and being told to git gud whenever you ask for advice on the internet? But think of the sense of pride and accomplishment you’ll feel when you finally beat it! The best part is you get to go through this like 10 times
/s
Counterpoint: not every game needs to be chill
It’s a choice. You don’t have to take it
Yes it’s a choice, but there need to be games that are difficult for that choice matter.
Many hard modes are just bullet sponges and extra grinding.
Where else can we find difficult games that are meant to be difficult in every aspect and not just a tacked on mode with larger health numbers?
That’s what souls games are. If you want an easy mode play ER or a different game. Not every game is designed for you.
The choice existing would impact how players play, which may also go against the artistic vision. You don’t have to play a non-chill game.
You can also choose to play a game designed to be easy. A game like hotline Miami on “chill mode” is not the same as the actually hard hotline Miami.
If you want to just walk from cut scene to cut scene just watch someone else play the game.
I am playing Sekiro with a easy mode mod.
Even with being able to kill everything with 1-4 hits, I was getting TRASHED by bosses. People play this without the mod? 😭
You need to understand the absolute bliss of finnally beating that fucking ape, after hours of trying only for you to decapitate him, then the arm reaches over and picks up the head for the second health bar. Do you know what the reward is after days of attempts? 20 minutes later, you fight two at once, and you’ll do it like it was stomping a goomba in Mario Brothers.
It’s a difficult game for sure. Probably the most difficult out of the FromSoft games. Not to feed into the meme but the game does click once you get to a certain boss in the game. The combat feels natural, you know what to do and how to do it usually etc. It’s a really difficult game and the final boss might just be the most difficult I’ve ever had the displeasure of fighting against (they get a lot easier once you know what you’re doing)
Git gud casul?
Otherwise…
Finger but, whole.
I never understood the obsession with stupid difficult games at all. It’s like, let me bang my head on a coffee table for 3 hours trying to make 5 minutes of progress. No thanks
Edit: Wow, this blew up, quite a controversial take, and not a hint of irony from all the people commenting about how I don’t get it.
Edit 2: For what it’s worth, I have played Dark Souls 1 all the way through, some of Dark Souls 2, got to the end of Bloodborne, played about 3 hours of Elden Ring, and a bit of Lies of P. These games just aren’t for me. I played them bcz my friend loves them, and I was trying to make a soulslike bcz that seems to be all the rage right now.
On the flip side, I don’t understand why people like playing video games that just tell a story and pretty much spoon feed every victory to the player. It feels hollow and incredibly boring.
On the flip side, I don’t understand why people like playing video games that just tell a story and pretty much spoon feed every victory to the player. It feels hollow and incredibly boring.
Do you feel that way about movies? Because what you’re essentially describing there is an interactive movie. Maybe they’re selling it as a game, but that’s because there’s no market for a product that calls itself an interactive movie.
It’s me, the target audience for “walking simulators.” Sometimes I just like experiencing stories that stick with me, be it as a movie, book or game. On the other hand, I can’t stand games that try to have a story but it’s just not a good story (or only good by video game standards).
You know there’s a middle ground, right? There exist games that manage to balance difficulty in a way that gives players a consistent challenge that they’re just able to overcome. The best games have these things called “difficulty settings” that let you customize that challenge so that you can decide how hard you want it to be
like movies?
I will agree with that sentiment somewhat. I don’t play games on easy either, that’s boring. I don’t mind dying a few times to a boss. It’s the soul crushing difficulty of Souls games I don’t enjoy. 17 deaths in, and i still have barely cracked half health of some bosses. Not my cup of tea.
ER is not even difficult unless you specifically want it to be
I played it for 3 hours. Unless I’m missing something, it’s incredibly difficult.
Here’s 2 tips:
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Level up Vigor. Health is how you make early game easier.
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Skip bosses. There isn’t a hard linear progression path and different builds struggle with different parts of the game.
Counter-point: No.
I rather play something fun.
Everyone experiences fun in their own ways. You’re allowed to not want to play hard games just like other people are allowed to want to play hard games. It doesn’t have to be an argument about which is “better.”
Fun is subjective. For me, challenge is fun.
That’s fair, maybe I’ll give it another shot one of these days. A friend of mine also suggested running from some of the enemies.
Yeah, that’s what my 2nd point is about also. It is natural to hit roadblocks, and in ER usually the correct move is to pursue a different path and come back once you’re stronger. It can be a fun game, but forcing yourself to play it is not right either
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Did you spend that time trying to fight the Tree Sentinal (mounted knight boss) just in front of where you start? You don’t have to, and you shouldn’t unless you’re extremely skilled or masochistic. You can go around and find less dangerous enemies.
I don’t remember anymore. This was like two years ago now.
I think you’re missing something.
You don’t have to engage with the angry strong monsters.
Video games have made us believe we are the heroes. In Elden Ring, we are specks.
I’ve refused to play it cause I’m bad at video games and I don’t feel like playing something punishingly difficult cause that isn’t fun for me. This is the first time I’m hearing someone claim it’s not difficult
I mean, it’s a valid point. I won’t claim soulslikes are all easy and it’s easy to play them all the time - they definitely have a difficulty curve, and not everyone is comfortable with the kind of difficulty this genre has. But to claim they’re all so difficult as to be unplayable and it never changes is equally fallacious
Agreed for the most part. That final DLC boss on release was pretty tough, even considering the other games. No orphan though. F that thing.
That final DLC boss on release was pretty tough
Yeah he was way overtuned. The last patch has nerfed him heavily though, and finally made the cross-slash attack dodgeable.
Nice. I played through a couple times near release on a high level character. Started a new character and haven’t attempted him again yet. Maybe I’ll go and do that.
That was overtuned, I’ll give you that. Tho you still have to play through the other 99% of the game to get to it
Definitely agree.
Overcoming adversity, or maybe they just want to be the guy
It definitely was a nice distraction while shit in my life was going down. That and the gym…now only if I could get back into the gym.
It’s not for everyone, but there’s a subset of people who enjoy hitting their desk 10 hours straight just to beat a single boss. It’s very satisfying in the end, and often also repeating the fight perfectly just feels so damn good it’s worth the struggle.
It’s really not different than fighting hard battles with your other hobbies, learning that difficult technique or whatever
It feels like old 2-d shooters on NES. You’re just expected to memorize patterns in order to win. So you have to die a couple times to figure it out, but it’s just tedious to me. I enjoy things designed for you to figure out on the fly without requiring dying in your first try.
Sometime, I want to make a VR vs Action “Proof of Concept” game that shows how much modern game combat is memorization. The VR player can do as much extensive windup as he wants, essentially creating a new “attack animation” on each go, and the action player must desperately try to work out when to dodge for iframes or parry.
I have no experience in neither dark souls or the NES shooters, but used to do a lot of raiding in world of warcraft and I feel it’s kind of mix of both, memorizing patterns, thinking on your feet and on top of that coordination of the 25man raid group. Loved that shit
I found Elden Ring much easier than people said it was, but I did get some very good advice on grinding early so I was kinda overleveled through a lot of it. I had a blast, though! I’m finding the expansion extremely tough, but I need to explore for more buffs!
I spent like 3 days trying to beat Ornstein and Smough in Dark Souls 1. One of the hardest bosses in the game from what I’m told. Just not my taste, but I played it bcz one of my friends loves it, and I was trying to make a soulslike game at one point.
I remember that fight. It was my first souls game and I went in blind and didn’t summon. Took me like a week straight of trying in-between studying for exams in the last year of uni.
I remember my partner and I had a friend over for a study party and I decided to take a quick break for a try. Somehow I beat them, and proceeded to scare the others when they heard my yelling. Great times.
100 % my favorite moment in my gaming experience.
For me it was great challenge. Sure it was not easy but it’s doable and the feeling of overcoming a fight you thought to be impossible gives a great feeling of growth and succes.
See, I feel that way about some games, Celeste for example. I guess I just don’t like the punishing difficulty of souls games.
I get that, that’s what my friend says too. He really enjoys Souls games. I just don’t feel the same way.
The draw of elder ring and soulsborne games in general is the challenge. Taking the time, failing, learning and getting good, finally beating that challenging boss, the thrill and rush of seeing the big “You Defeated” text across the screen is truly unmatched by most other games.
I also totally get not wanting to go through that. The low moments in the game can hit really hard on the motivation to play. Hitting a difficulty wall and just not having the ability to progress, dying a second time and losing a ton of souls/currency you were going to use to level up.
I’ve actually gotten to the point that I can stomach playing Soulslikes, I just don’t care to play them. My friend loves games like this, so I’ll once in a while give them a try. I played some of the classics, DS1, DS2, and Bloodborne with him. But by myself, I’m pretty meh about these games.
Totally understandable, not trying to say you need to play the genre if its not your cup ofntea, I’m just highlighting what draws people to these games.
Oh and beyond the “it’s a challenge to overcome” crowd, Soulsborne games also draw in the lore nerds too. There’s a lot of stories about the world and it’s inhabitants to discover though the flavor text on items and through the environmental storytelling.
Maybe stop and think that it isn’t that difficult to everyone? I don’t want to sound elitist, but people have different level of skills at video games (or anything really).
Saying no games should be hard is like saying no books should be difficult to read. To take the book analogy further, at some point after reading a lot of books you want to read more and more complex books. To say we shouldn’t have difficult books would be a disservice to those who want them.
Both easy and hard games should exist. And everything in between. Not every game needs to be played by everyone, which I think really is the issue. People feeling left out or pressured into games that aren’t their play style.
Complaining that the game is too hard , or the opposite, that the player is too bad. Both of these are the wrong approach. The best approach is “I’m not the intended audience for this game”
But what if I want to play ER for the story that everyone keeps gushing about?
See, there are many soulslike games that have attempted this; make the base game play normally, but also add invincibility options or low-difficulty modes for those who prefer it. BUT, those games don’t work, and utterly fail, because --TODO: INSERT BULLSHIT MADE UP REASON BEFORE POSTING–
Then watch someone on YouTube do the suffering for you. At that point it’s just a movie.
I’d recommend looking up guides to help griding up to level 150 and do a guided build. Then you can take on every boss pretty easily with 20min of practice.
And here is the problem with elden ring.
Grinding.
Since when is grinding fun? The word itself, grinding isn’t even fun.
Elden ring is my most played most hated game. I come back for the vistas, the art. But there is no story and if there is it’s stupidly well hidden. Some story quests are so very easily missed and other things just impossible to do without a guide. Also the fact that there is no quest log (do this for that guy) makes returning to elden ring after a hiatus almost impossible.
Choosing a fighter class makes the game way too hard. But if you choose a caster the difficulty drops like 400% or even more.
No guidance. Nothing. Fuck you if you chose a samurai because he looked cool on your first playthrough.
Everything is hidden behind a grind wall. And so many quests are so very buggy. In my current playthrough I should meet blaidd the half wolf down below looking up to whats the cities name. But he isnt there. Doesn’t spawn. Apparently i went of on another quest and it conflicts or something. Now im stuck.
Do bushes talk? Here they do. Because one of them isn’t a bush. A voice says: over here! But what is that, exactly? Here? Where is here? Im on a computer, directional audio doesn’t really work. It took me hours to find that useless guy.
Jellyfish. Just kill them, they are inconsequential and do not really interact with the player. They cant talk. Untill… You’re far into the game and suddenly you hear a voice. Talking about his/her lost spouse. Who? Where? You just slay that jellyfish because they cant talk, that cant be it. Or… It could? Fuck it was. Important item forever locked to you.
If you like that kind of foolery in a game i seriously recommend the 80s/90s sierra online games. Police quest, kings quest, the larry games. But i thought we where way past those kind of stupid game mechanics. Ken sent me. Flush the toilet. But not too many times because then you drown. Go to the hooker but if you forgot to buy a condom you die. Dont give a too big tip to the cabbie. He will buy liquor, get drunk and kill you both. The dialog made that fun. The first time.
The difference was, in those ganes i could save scum. Here I can’t.
I fucking love AC6. that’s a masterpiece by from software. But ER? ER shouldn’t be easier, it should explain more. Not much but a little. I see you chose a fighter. Are you sure? We recommend a caster class for beginners. Give me a quest log. Unbug those quests. Give a warning if something breaks something else.
And thats the problem with ER. It could be fantastic
I love grinding. That’s why I still play wow 15 years later.
Then you gotta push through, beat it. Or decide it’s not worth it.
I’ve done that couple times with Silmarillion, decided that the story is not worth it.
I have played Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, and Bloodborne. I just don’t like Souls games, but my friend does, so i played them with him.
What I like about ER compared to the other games is that if I find a section too challenging, I have the option to go explore somewhere else and come back better leveled.
Do you like a 1000 piece puzzle or a 100 piece
I’m not a big puzzle person, but when I do them with my wife, I usually go for like 500ish piece puzzles.
They gotta make something their personality!
Sarcastic hilarity must be yours!
Because finally conquering that boss and getting to explore further feels so good. It feels good to git gud
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Always someone in here who unironically comes in here with some weird elitist attitude assuming I haven’t played Souls games.
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I agree. So, let me explain it to you:
People play video games for a large variety of different reasons. Some people appreciate the media as an art form, possibly for the story writing, and possibly for the unique and stylized graphics of certain games like Okami or the cel-shaded Zelda titles.
Other people appreciate the media as a way to scratch an itch, like the drive to optimize that comes with playing games like Satisfactory.
Or, sometimes people play games because they want to be intellectually challenged. There’s nothing quite like figuring out the answer to a cryptic puzzle in FromSoft games.
Another reason people appreciate games is because they want something physically challenging in terms of reaction times and coordination. The Osu! community is an excellent example of this, with some truly impressive demonstrations of gamer skills.
Sometimes, people enjoy being frustrated so that they feel accomplished after failing repeatedly. I’m sure there’s some developer dedicated to this kind of game that I can’t quite remember, but I know Getting Over It is a good example of one such game.
Interestingly, some people play games for an adrenaline rush. Horror games like Amnesia and Outlast are excellent such titles for building up tension and adrenaline.
Video games can also be a wonderful social experience. Nintendo has always been good at offering couch co-op and party games, but we have a lot of other good offerings these day too, like with Jackbox games.
They’re also a good way to unwind after a day, like with a good couple levels of Candy Crush. In fact, the majority demographic of people who play video games are those who play games on their smartphones.
And, last and certainly least, some people play video games because they have nothing else going for them in life and want to feel superior over others.
Not everyone’s content to be spoon fed their dopamine.
I guess…
