current souls fans, would an easier souls game make you not want to play it

[WoW Killer]

But I played it on Hard.
I didn't find it that different. The Dragon and the Ur-Dragon were more aggressive. Beyond that, I found no real difference in terms of it being harder. But Capcom also decided that on Hard mode, more money is dropped by defeated monsters. It's nothing to see bags with 10,000g in them drop from a lowly bandit mook (the biggest possible money drop). Made levelling my gear so much quicker.

So how about you have an easy/hard split that's exactly like that only you don't up the money dropped on hard mode. In other words, the hard mode is exactly as in the original. Kaboom! You've now got an easy/hard split without changing anything.

 

[Raioken18]

The only time I found the environment to be an issue was:

A- when an enemy was attacking me and I had to limit my battlefield to a small area, this still only made up for like 1/16 the enemies in the game and a lot of those were just because I had worked myself onto a ledge.

B- in some of the puzzle trap areas but it was usually 1 death to tell me I was headed in the wrong direction.

C- due to fiddly camera angles and me walking towards the camera without being able to see a fall coming.

D- in the Fortress of Sen? swingy blades are tricky, but that's just one area and was more a puzzle of figuring out the timing for pendulum blades, rather than an unfair environment.

or

E- during the Tauros Demon fight where I would sometimes get stuck in place while running past him. But I consider this to be a glitch rather than something intentional.

 

[Raioken18]

How does one go about making an easy mode without completely redesigning the levels? The whole point of how the game works is that you get the timing/positioning right and you live, or you don't and you die. There's not really anything you could slider up or down to make it easier, or harder for that matter.

I guess you could basically put the game in slow motion for the easy mode or something, so you can more easily dodge enemies and obstacles and so on? Make enemies telegraph their moves more flamboyantly?

I'm just... confused. Because if it's things damaging you that's killing you, I'm not sure what to tell you, that's the _easy_ part of the games, so maybe you should find a new hobby. What makes it hard for people that don't suck at videogames is getting knocked off things, mistiming combos and getting staggered into hits, failing to dodge, dodging at the wrong time, equipping the wrong gear for a segment, etc. And those are all things that increasing or decreasing some numerical stat won't help you with that much.

(I guess you could go full-on easy and remove damage bleed on shields and give people infinite spells per day or something, that could help them on the endurance sections.)

Oh, I get the hard game thing. But I feel that implies that your deaths will be fair, complementing the revival system where you lose your souls but have a chance to recover them.

When it came to Co-op and trying to seek help, the pvp deaths were in my experience very very excessive, averaging 20-1 (invasion to summon) odds every time I used humanity, also resulting in many 1 hit kills as soon as a stage loaded. I would be all for a fair pvp style, but the thing was that there were so many exploits anyone playing naturally would not be able to win.

Now aside from my own gripe about that. I don't understand wanting to have a closed community of people who could appreciate the Souls series. There is clearly a demand for an easy mode, adding one could ensure that a few more games are released, and that overall more people would have a similar gaming experience to you. Just because it's "easier" does not mean that it is going to be a cakewalk for casuals either.

Here let me put it like this.

Easymode A - They increase player HP and increase player damage, the player still needs to memorize what to do, but will have slightly more opportunity to do so. It wouldn't really provide that much of an advantage.

Easymode B - Less enemies, more souls, for the few enemies that still remain... the player would still have to defeat them in the normal way, there is just less enemies to challenge, but the challenge of those enemies would stay the same, if anything this would steepen the learning curve.

Easymode C - Enemies movements and attacks are slower. A less likely scenario, however the slower attacks would provide more time to react for others, but they would still have to react the right way.

Now... combinations of these is unlikely but not impossible. What I am trying to get at is there are different types of easy mode, but the base difficulty and traps would likely remain the same. They would simply be reducing their chance to fail by a little, not getting rid of it all together. For most of those players it would still provide quite an adequate challenge for their level.

So... the challenge would still be there for others, even if you chose to play easy mode it would be easier for you. But having an easy mode wouldn't effect you in the slightest unless you CHOSE to play it.

Hence my lack of understanding at "Prepare to Die" being a definite term for an only hardcore game, when deaths are relative to the style of player and really are likely to be just as common for the casual players on easy, as they are for the hardcore players on normal.

Pick one. They are all valid in terms of an easy mode (though I prefer the first 2), require minimal programming, have positives and negatives for easy mode players. I really fail to understand why people think it needs to be some big redesign. Me as a "dirty casual" had a majority of my deaths to enemies... and invading players 1 shotting me...

 

[WoW Killer]

How does one go about making an easy mode without completely redesigning the levels?

Take stuff that one-shots you, and make it two-shot you instead. Done.

 

[Windcaler]

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You make some good points at face value, unfortunately its only at face value and not in reality. Lets take a closer look shall we?

The creators: The development team said, before dark souls was released, that the difficulty was an important tool to create a sense of accomplishment and discovery. With the inclusion of an easy mode that sense of accomplishment is lessened, if not lost. So yes, it cheapens the game for them in the sense that the stated goals of the game and their artistic method are lessened

The investors: On paper targeting people outside the core audience of a franchise sounds like more sales. The problem is history has proven this to be completely false. Anytime a franchise has reinvented itself to pull in more players it has always had the same 3 core problems. 1. The core audience it was targeting becomes disatisfied and leaves. 2. The reinvention never really targets new people, giving a mediocre experience to them and translates into less sales. 3. The franchises are quickly forgotten or slowly die out. Now your argument also falls flat because investors are often less concerned about good products and more concerned about getting a good company name. The more money companies make when they're sold the more of a cut an investor gets. So yes, it cheapens it for the investor since they have less money coming in over the long haul (although thats not being fair to investors like me who invest because they believe in the project and not purely for monetary reasons)

The consumers: Which consumers are you talking about exactly? I assume it to be the people who bought and currently play dark souls. Ive said many times before that for Dark souls to have any sense of accomplishment there must be a chance of failure. An easy mode removes that chance to fail therefore making our experience mean nothing. So yes, it cheapens it for us too

Now for the artistic side. I have a similar view. I believe artistic method is sacrosanct. Unless a gamer has been promised something (and I only put that exception in there because of the ME3 endings debacle) they have no right to demand change. However every person has a right to criticize art. This isnt comparing two lawn mowers and writing a review on which cuts my lawn better its looking at a piece of art and deciphering the expressions of the development team, then expressing how those expressions could have been done better. Now we know that the expression of Dark souls is in the form of difficulty, made to give the player a sense of accomplishment and discovery. How does an easy mode better provide a player with an equal or greater sense of accomplishment and discovery if it removes the chance of failure in the process?

I think you're points are great, but I still think there's some stuff to consider. I'm gonna tackle them in a slightly different order though.

The investors: I think these are really good points, but it seems like these are all failures. It probably doesn't have to be this way. If done right I think its possible for the easy mode to be implemented, and draw new customers who would like and speak well of the company that made the game. I agree it probably wouldn't be the easiest thing to do, but I don't think those 3 outcomes you listed are all the possible outcomes.

Creators and Consumers: Ya we're lumping these together for now, because the core argument in both these sections was difficulty and accomplishment. For people playing the game its important to remember that what might be easy for you might not be easy for me or everyone else. I know personally that I can't (don't want to) play most racing games on max difficulty, because I find it annoying (and I swear the computer cheats), but some of my friends don't even get a slight rush if the difficulty in those games isn't maxed out. To me its an accomplishment to win a nice close race on normal, while to them its boring so they don't bother. When I think of adding an easy mode its almost like a whole separate game in my mind, if that helps in any way. I picture the normal dark souls you guys are playing now still being there, along with an entirely separate and isolated easy mode which is essentially the same game, but not as challenging (an extra health thing here, some more money here, one less enemy here; that kind of thing). So the way I envision difficulty being implemented, the current players would be completely unaffected (that's in my opinion the way to properly do it).

I think ultimately the developers could release a game with varying difficulty levels and let players customize the level of difficulty and accomplishment they'd get from it. This goes both ways too. Looking round this thread there are lots of people who called the game fairly easy, and I think that a harder mode for them shouldn't be excluded as well.

Fromsoft can release a game with multiple difficulty levels (although that doesnt touch on the fact that there already are difficulty levels but not in the form of menu options). I could spend a few hundred thousand dollars and make my neighbors kids tricycle go 200 mph too. Just about anything can be done, what were arguing is if it should be done. I maintain that the answer in this case is no. There are a variety of objective and subjective reasons why an easy mode should not be implimented

In the case of giving us greater difficulty the dark souls community already has that covered. We have many challenges that members constantly do. One Im working on right now is a base level, base equipment, no upgrade win. This is a challenge where you face every boss in the game at base level of your class, with your base gear unupgraded, and it kind of goes without saying that you cant heal during them. Fromsoft also helped us out in that department with the new content. In it theres a ring called the calamity ring and it doubles all damage you receive. From my experience it basicly means you'll be doing totally fine and then all of a sudden get one shot on bosses. IMO the calamity ring is just a gimmick though, making enemies do more damage isnt more challenging for me. Now if they had new tactics and attacks that would be another story

I think the only point to further consider is, as I understand it, you havnt played the game. You havnt experienced that pressure to succeed in it along with the rewards that success brings. Neither have you failed and understand how, to quote a friend of mine, hollow that experience feels. Since you're in a unique position of, for lack of a better word, ignorance I dont really feel you are educated enough for what should or shouldnt be done to the game to make it better. There's a simple way to change that, that bieng buy and play the game

 

[WoW Killer]

Not done.

And how do you factor in the frequent environmental deaths which will now occur in even greater number, since the survivability rate has been increased against enemies?

You don't need to critique this mode. This won't be the mode you're playing. It's the people playing on easy that get to judge the experience they get out of it. The relevant question is, can an easier mode be implemented without affecting the main mode in any way. The answer is yes. Being two shot in combat makes for an easier experience than being one shot, and the main mode can remain unchanged. I'm not suggesting this would make for good gameplay by the way, but that's not the point here. So long as the main mode is unchanged, then the core fanbase is happy, right?

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

well kind of, I'd def. toss away any respect I had from "From Software". I't's a lot harder to cater to a more smaller but dedicated group, than pander to a bunch of casuals who would toss away the game after they beat it.

Not done.

And how do you factor in the frequent environmental deaths which will now occur in even greater number, since the survivability rate has been increased against enemies?

You don't need to critique this mode. This won't be the mode you're playing. It's the people playing on easy that get to judge the experience they get out of it. The relevant question is, can an easier mode be implemented without affecting the main mode in any way. The answer is yes. Being two shot in combat makes for an easier experience than being one shot, and the main mode can remain unchanged. I'm not suggesting this would make for good gameplay by the way, but that's not the point here. So long as the main mode is unchanged, then the core fanbase is happy, right?

Why would people who busted their ass to beat the game be happy about someone who took an easy way out. The souls game ultimate reward was the satisfaction of beating it. Besides an easy mode option would have to completely redefine the way the game plays. If it's just stat changers that people wanted this debate wouldn't exist. The idea stands that people who can't muster the patience to beat the game even with the help of the internet, shouldn't really be interested in the game anyway. If not the internet, I hear player assists are the way to go. I just don't know, please don't respond to this post I feel like a broken record that keeps on playing

 

[Broderick]

my issue with daks souls' difficulty is that oftentimes it's not because you are playing wrong, or badly, but the game is often times designed to be soul crushingly,flat out cheap. Personal examples include:

1) Cruse frogs. Fuck those guys. I can take the insta kill from the fog, but requiring me to grind 6k souls just to restore myself? not fun. Add to that you lose 33% HP and can no longer summon helpers into your world until it's cured, and frustration goes through the roof.

2) Twin silver knight archers in Anor Londo when you're climbing up the butresses.

3) Bed of Chaos. Getting pushed straight into a hole as you try to open up the other side's orb is a nightmare. And its a bloody long run back.

4) Tying to parry anything, ever. Nano-second timing required, and it's just crushingly difficult to learn. And then you have to learn it for every weapon you will see from every enemy in the game you want to do it too.

5) multiplayer connectivity. Recently I have been (trying) to play with friends, but attempting to summon specific others into your world is oftentimes a nightmare. PLEASE PLEASE give us buddy lists and drop in drop out in the next one!

6) Hellkite dragon. Yusomean!

7) Invader twinks with maxxed out armor and lightning weapons. soooooo many players like this. I really wish the invasion cauculation for matchmaking was based on the players equipment invested soul level, rather than character level.

I'm sure there others have played through and never experienced these issues, and others still have had worse than what I just described. Difficulty is relative, but I think we can all agree. Dark souls is hard. I don't want an easier game; I just want less BS cheap game that doesn't give me a brain aneurysm.

When I die because i rolled into the fatty demon bosses fire attack, I blame myself. When I allow myself to get surrounded and get gang raped by mobs, I blame myself. When I get invaded and lose to a guy in nothing but his under pants, I blame myself. When I fall off the environment, I sometimes blame myself. Don't change this. Just get rid of those damn curse frogs!

Just to expand on your points and respond, I found very few parts of the game "cheap" really. I agree with most of your points, except for maybe the frogs(basilisks) . I'm not sure how many other people have had problems with them, but I have never died from them, ever. They telegraph their attacks a lot and usually only take a hit to kill. However, I suppose I can see how they might cause such rage, as being cursed is not a good thing.

The Anor Londo archers were a pain, especially because before that point, the player did not fight a single silver knight, and therefor did not know what to expect when in melee range(which would have been nice, as it is easy to parry them once you know their attack pattern).

Bed of chaos was a terribly designed fight. While it wasn't hard exactly, I died more times trying to jump to that branch in the middle of the room(that leads to the bug thing) than the boss itself.

Twinks are a pain in the ass, but everyone's experience with them will vary, so I don't have much to say here, Other than that, I hope a "bottomless box" like glitch does not appear.

Connectivity is pretty terrible, and I really hope they fix this in the next game. Had tons of trouble fighting anyone(or helping/summoning) anywhere that was not the forest covenant pvp area.

As for the helkite dragon? I thought that first flame he does from behind was cheap, that is until I went back with a second character and noticed that you can see and hear him behind you, and can avoid the attack by running back to the area with Solaire. As for the other times with the dragon? Well didnt have too much trouble after I figured out he has a specific aggro range for his flames.

As for the topic at hand, I agree with both sides. I would love for fromsoft to be able to make an easy mode so other players could enjoy the game. I however, like many others, believe that to implement an easy mode would be hard to do, as most deaths from the game are a combination between the enemies and the environment. To make an easy mode, the tweaking of the enemies would probably be easy, by slowing down their attack speed or make them have less poise, health, that sort of thing.

The Environment though...that is where I believe it would be hardest to implement without making it too easy for people whom want hard. How does one go about splitting funds for creating environments for both easy and hard? How would the environment be altered? As an example, let me talk about sen's fortress for dark souls.

Spoiler

To make it easier, would you have the timing on the traps altered? Have less pitfalls? Maybe less enemies in general hindering your progress? This is where it starts to get a bit hard in finding a balance between too hard and too easy.

As for the core of the game, the "Dark soul" if you will(har har), I think that even the easy mode should still be challenging. The very core of the game is "hard", "prepare to die" is on the front of the newer versions of the game. People should come in expecting an experience that is harder than what they might be used to. However this game awards those who pay attention, both in having an easier time with the game, and in the vast amount of interesting lore scattered throughout the game.

As for multiplayer, I suppose they would have to separate easy mode players from hard, as I am unsure how you would calculate damage between the two characters if there was a pvp battle. Perhaps the easy mode character has more health and does more damage? At any rate, that is something I am not familiar with, so I will not address that point any further.

While many people might think the community is exclusive, it really isn't. Just ask any player of the game, usually they all have a story about how a veteran of the game helped them in some way. There are tons of message boards, wikis, and even groups for souls players to talk to and use if they ever need any help. A bit of hyperbole yes, but I assure you that it is quite true for most people playing the game(being helped that is).

My final point: As long as the easy mode does not effect the hard, I am all for it. As long as the "soul" of the game stays intact(that being a challenging, oppressing world that wants to kill you), I have no problem with an easy mode. For all of those who have not played the game, give it a try. It is a wonderful action rpg that rewards players for using their thinking cap, and is (usually) never cheap. Pick up a copy, play it at a friends house, rent it. I am sure that if you like these sorts of games, it will entertain you for hours to come(and not just because you might die a lot)!

For anyone who has finished this whole post without breaks, I salute you! If anyone wants to add or refute my points, go ahead and do so, as long as you remain civil. With that, I am out. If you wanna add me on the steam, or are a new souls player needing help, do not hesitate to ask me for some help or advice. Hope you all have a nice new years!

Edit: As someone pointed out, I do believe there needs to be a better tutorial for the game. It explained how to work the controls yes, but did not explain anything about stats(except if press select on the stat screen)stat requirements(even if it is straightforward), item scaling, or what poise/humanity does. A better explanation of these and any new technicalities of the game would be nice for newer players.

 

[Termagent]

Dark/Demon souls both suffer from a lot of Noob traps in terms of levelling up, that if you didn't have an understanding of the game you can easily amplify the difficulty tenfold.
On this front I can totally get behind improving. Better understanding of what each stat does when you level up, or way specific mechanics work (In demon's souls I had no idea about how important Thief's ring would be or what pure black tendency did) is a welcome change.

Easy mode however I suspect would be a lot more difficult to implement. Most of the time when you die (assuming you're not doing something like rolling a base VIT mage and getting one shot) it's due to mechanics. No amount of easy mode is going to help when you get toxic put on you in blight town and you have no Moss to deal with it. Or deal with the Rapier knights in undead burg where if you don't realize that when they are in a specific stance they will parry the shit out of you. Even when you're able to one shot the trash mobs up to a boss there's always a chance you can make a mistake and die.

Easy mode works in a lot of archtypes of games. In RTS you can just shackle the AI, reduce the number of enemies and reduce the damage/ the enemy units deal. FPS you can do the same or add target assist.

But how are you meant to implement an easy mode when most of the time it's the way the mechanics work that get you killed without affecting the integrity of the game. Sure you can reduce damage but if you can't avoid their attacks it won't matter. You could reduce the number of enemy units but the player is going to feel bored when the game boils down to kill one enemy move along and then kill another enemy as it is rare to fight more then 2-3 units at once.
The AI is already relatively basic and shackling it would have probably little effect at all. Bosses might go down faster but if you can't dodge their attacks then you're going to die full stop.

Also on a side note, I'm all about improving. If I play a game and find it difficult I will keep playing until I get better and whilst I feel for people who have time constraints I believe if you really enjoy a game you'll put time into playing and completing it regardless of if you hit a brick wall difficulty wise.

 

[Raioken18]

Dark/Demon souls both suffer from a lot of Noob traps in terms of levelling up, that if you didn't have an understanding of the game you can easily amplify the difficulty tenfold.
On this front I can totally get behind improving. Better understanding of what each stat does when you level up, or way specific mechanics work (In demon's souls I had no idea about how important Thief's ring would be or what pure black tendency did) is a welcome change.

Easy mode however I suspect would be a lot more difficult to implement. Most of the time when you die (assuming you're not doing something like rolling a base VIT mage and getting one shot) it's due to mechanics. No amount of easy mode is going to help when you get toxic put on you in blight town and you have no Moss to deal with it. Or deal with the Rapier knights in undead burg where if you don't realize that when they are in a specific stance they will parry the shit out of you. Even when you're able to one shot the trash mobs up to a boss there's always a chance you can make a mistake and die.

Easy mode works in a lot of archtypes of games. In RTS you can just shackle the AI, reduce the number of enemies and reduce the damage/ the enemy units deal. FPS you can do the same or add target assist.

But how are you meant to implement an easy mode when most of the time it's the way the mechanics work that get you killed without affecting the integrity of the game. Sure you can reduce damage but if you can't avoid their attacks it won't matter. You could reduce the number of enemy units but the player is going to feel bored when the game boils down to kill one enemy move along and then kill another enemy as it is rare to fight more then 2-3 units at once.
The AI is already relatively basic and shackling it would have probably little effect at all. Bosses might go down faster but if you can't dodge their attacks then you're going to die full stop.

Also on a side note, I'm all about improving. If I play a game and find it difficult I will keep playing until I get better and whilst I feel for people who have time constraints I believe if you really enjoy a game you'll put time into playing and completing it regardless of if you hit a brick wall difficulty wise.

Firstly, I like your post. It was one of the only legitimate retort we've had in pretty much this whole thread.

I'm also glad that they are going to make stat distribution more transparent, it should hopefully lead to more structured class builds.

As for the rest of your post, I still think most of those things could be easily reduced by altering the statistical probability of those things happening. You are making it sound a lot more difficult than it should be to implement those changes.

For example, if you have more hp, also have easy mode have a limit to the amount of damage poisons do. So moss would still have a purpose, but the immediate threat of you outright dying without a specific item would be reduced, but there would still be an advantage to having said item to stem the poison earlier. (This one is actually pretty comon for easy modes, poisons don't last as long).

For the rapier knights, reduce their chance to parry... again just a numbers game. There's still the potential, but they would no longer be as much of a brick wall. But still would provide advantages in return for learning to read their stances.

Please also notice that even with statistical reductions there is still the potential to fail and reward for learning, an easy mode should not mean the complete removal of those challenges just a slight increase in a chance for success for the player.

Personally I didn't run into many environmental hazards apart from Sens fortress, oh but I did find it hard to see the ladders in blight town until I looked up that there were torches next to them...

Slowing down the projection for boss attacks is also a numbers game, mind you it is a little more complicated because there would need to be a balance between the projection and the execution of an attack. But... is it really that hard to understand that increased hp would allow you more time within that boss battle to learn the attacks instead of OHKO-ing? That challenge would also still be there.

I get your side note, however, not everyone has that sort of time or dedication. Nor is your reward for that sort of effort being taken away. You can still put in your grinding and hours spent working on boss fights, but for the people who aren't quite that skilled, they would have the chance to play as well.

It's just... it's not a massive restructure that people are claiming... and it wouldn't effect your normal mode at least not with an equivalent level design to Dark Souls, which I assume was what the comparison is.

It is simply making the game more accessible to non-hardcore gamers.