Dark Souls: an experiment in logic

[Windcaler]

Without the unforgiving difficulty the accomplishments and sense of discovery (along with the rewards) are lessened if not lost.

For you, it might, but it is not the same for everyone.

Again I disagree. Nothing worth having is easily obtained. Its a universal philosophical ideal that has dwelled in the human psyche long before we began examining the human psyche. In the sense of Dark souls while I might just shrug at a greatsword drop from one of the Berenike knights a new player will go nuts about the new weapon. Likewise Ive seen Ash lake several dozen times by now so going there is no big deal, while a new player is going to be spellbound by the music, setting, and curiousity of whats in this hidden place.

The difference here is how easily obtained these things are. Ill kill a berenike knight without getting hit, a new player might die 3 or 4 times before they get the tells down. Going to ash lake means a trip through the great hallow which is an area you'll only find through an illusionary wall. I know its there and what lies down there, a new player wont so they'll have to overcome the myconids, curse frogs, and deadly falls to find it.

The fallacy with this whole argument is that you retain all your previous players and attract new ones. However as history has shown us, that never happens and the games suffer for it. Hows that quote go? Those that dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it?

So, by adding an easy mode, you lose all of your target audience? How does that work?

Not all but a large portion of it. History has shown that games that reinvent themselves always have the same three major 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 you're specfically asking about the 1st problem. When the core fanbase becomes disatisfied with the games. Many veteran dark souls players will tell you that they think an easy mode cheapens the game but most wont be able to articulate why. For a time I was one of those players but after a great deal of self examination I was able to come up with an explanation. That said from my point of view an easy mode removes the risk of failure that is an important tool that the developer has put in to give a genuine sense of accomplishment.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

We aren't talking about changing the gameplay though. We are talking about adding an easy difficulty level.

There is a MASSIVE assumption built into that statement, one that contradicts both logic and video game history.

I am not arguing for that, though. Adding an easy mode would not favor a new audience any more than adding an easy mode to XCOM means that XCOM favors a new audience. It just expands the audience. Adding an easy mode does not mean that anything else has to be changed. All the compelling stuff is still there and does not need to be removed, because that is all still compelling.

The presence of the easy mode, the mere existence of it, makes the game less enticing for me. You can ignore that but I can't. Beside that, it is extremely unrealistic to expect the normal gameplay to remain totally unchanged. If you want to tell me why those changes don't have to be bad, that's one thing, but pretending that's not only plausible but even likely just seems to me like burying your head in the sand.

I don't know anything about XCOM but I'm guessing it doesn't build it's game-play and setting around the learning process in the way that Dark Souls does. This is not an issue that is relevant to all games, or at least not as relevant. It is specific to Dark Souls.

We are going in circles now and all I'm taking from this is that you don't see the obvious implications of yet another niche series pursuing an expanded audience, you don't understand how making the game easy guts the core design thus necessitating changes to accommodate the new audience, and you don't care that I would get shafted by this change.

For you, it might, but it is not the same for everyone.

Of course for him, who else would he be talking about? That is not an argument for anything.

So, by adding an easy mode, you lose all of your target audience? How does that work?

Please stop pretending you don't know exactly what we're talking about. Either you just warped in from 1987 or you know damned well how it works.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Not all but a large portion of it. History has shown that games that reinvent themselves always have the same three major 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 you're specfically asking about the 1st problem. When the core fanbase becomes disatisfied with the games. Many veteran dark souls players will tell you that they think an easy mode cheapens the game but most wont be able to articulate why. For a time I was one of those players but after a great deal of self examination I was able to come up with an explanation. That said from my point of view an easy mode removes the risk of failure that is an important tool that the developer has put in to give a genuine sense of accomplishment.

A: Okay? That's nice and all, but I don't see what it has to do with adding an easy mode. We are not reinventing the game, just changing it slightly. Also, B: adding an easy mode does not remove risk of failure. We are not talking about making the player invincible, we are just talking about making them less easily killable.

I am not arguing for that, though. Adding an easy mode would not favor a new audience any more than adding an easy mode to XCOM means that XCOM favors a new audience. It just expands the audience. Adding an easy mode does not mean that anything else has to be changed. All the compelling stuff is still there and does not need to be removed, because that is all still compelling.

The presence of the easy mode, the mere existence of it, makes the game less enticing for me. You can ignore that but I can't.

I honestly have no idea why (and it seems ridiculous to me to think that way), but whatever.

Beside that, it is extremely unrealistic to expect the normal gameplay to remain totally unchanged. If you want to tell me why those changes don't have to be bad, that's one thing, but pretending that's not only plausible but even likely just seems to me like burying your head in the sand.

Here is the problem: likely does not mean it will (and I don't even think it is likely). Adding an easy mode does not directly lead to dumbing down the the game, but you are acting like it is. And, it is especially unlikely it would happen in this case. Those who want to play the game don't want it dumbed down, they just want the enemies to hit for less damage. That. Is. It. That does NOT necessitate a dumbing down of the core experience. If From can design the game so that the difficulty scales up (via NG+), they can design it so that it can go down too.

 

[Windcaler]

Not all but a large portion of it. History has shown that games that reinvent themselves always have the same three major 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 you're specfically asking about the 1st problem. When the core fanbase becomes disatisfied with the games. Many veteran dark souls players will tell you that they think an easy mode cheapens the game but most wont be able to articulate why. For a time I was one of those players but after a great deal of self examination I was able to come up with an explanation. That said from my point of view an easy mode removes the risk of failure that is an important tool that the developer has put in to give a genuine sense of accomplishment.

A: Okay? That's nice and all, but I don't see what it has to do with adding an easy mode. We are not reinventing the game, just changing it slightly. Also, B: adding an easy mode does not remove risk of failure. We are not talking about making the player invincible, we are just talking about making them less easily killable.

Incorrect on both counts. Im going to reply to the second point first since its the easier one and leads into a nice segway for the other pont. Easy modes, since the days of the NES (maybe before but thats before my time), have always been designed in such a way that players know they can succeed. An easy mode creates a chain reaction of events. A player that knows they can succeed will never experience failure or the pressure that coming close to failure brings. Without the chance to fail a player will not feel they accomplished something. From a philosophical and artistic standpoint this goes against Dark souls goals

The easy mode addition you mention also neglects the fact that there already is an easy mode in the game, its just not a menu choice. Any player can use the upgrading and leveling system to overpower bosses but it still requires them to have some aptitude with the games mechanics such as blocking, dodging, and hitting things

In my extremely long post I talked about the artistic side of dark souls and how the difficulty is used as an artistic method. An easy mode goes directly against the artistic method used to give that sense of accomplishment and discovery. Thats just the artistic side, not the business side which Ill explain next.

Dark souls is known for its unforgiving difficulty. The game tells you to prepare to die, giving good advice in a seemingly threatening manner. Ask anyone what they think of dark souls and Im pretty sure the majority of what you'll hear is "its really hard". That said it was designed to be a niche game but when you change a game to target people outside your core audience you are reinventing it. In Dark souls case adding an easy mode to bring in new players is a reinvention of the franchise and history has shown that it will hurt sales, cause the core fanbase to leave, leave new players with a mediocre experience, and ultimately kill the franchise.

 

[TrevHead]

Okay, so everybody needs to be forced by the game to learn all the mechanics? They can't learn it by exploring what different weapons can do, what they get from talking to different merchants, and what they get from exploring the environment? They have to be forced to learn by the difficulty of the game, they cannot learn by exploring. That is basically what this is coming across as: that people don't learn mechanics as they explore the game, they have to be forced to use them because of the difficulty. And that is absurd.

You make it sound like From are Nazi's for forcing players to learn and think for themselves. While I do sometimes want to switch off my brain and relax to a button masher, for me gaming is at its most rewarding when it won't allow me to progress without learning 2 play. Ppl can't stop singing the praises of FTL and that does much the same thing. IE it throws you in the deep end and you have to discover for yourself the best strategies that work. The trailing enemy fleet forces players forward at the games pace so if they aren't good at the game they get killed by the ever harder enemies, and since the game is a rogue-like with no save scumming player who don't learn the ropes don't get to beat the game.

I played Devil May Cry 1 and 2 recently. DMC 1 is the harder and better thought out game compared to DMC 2 that has easier enemies that can be killed by just button mashing. In the former I found it rewarding to try out new combos and to mix up my playstyle, in DMC 2 I just button mashed away putting very little effort into exploring any depth its combat system had to offer.

I'm not saying that every game shouldn't hold the players hand and help them learn the game, I'm currently learning how to properly play 2D VS fighters and the tutorial section in Skullgirls has been invaluable in teach me how to mix up and what cancelling and supers are. However some games like DS and FTL most of the fun is in trial and error and discovering how to play myself.

 

[BreakfastMan]

Not all but a large portion of it. History has shown that games that reinvent themselves always have the same three major 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 you're specfically asking about the 1st problem. When the core fanbase becomes disatisfied with the games. Many veteran dark souls players will tell you that they think an easy mode cheapens the game but most wont be able to articulate why. For a time I was one of those players but after a great deal of self examination I was able to come up with an explanation. That said from my point of view an easy mode removes the risk of failure that is an important tool that the developer has put in to give a genuine sense of accomplishment.

A: Okay? That's nice and all, but I don't see what it has to do with adding an easy mode. We are not reinventing the game, just changing it slightly. Also, B: adding an easy mode does not remove risk of failure. We are not talking about making the player invincible, we are just talking about making them less easily killable.

Incorrect on both counts. Im going to reply to the second point first since its the easier one and leads into a nice segway for the other pont. Easy modes, since the days of the NES (maybe before but thats before my time), have always been designed in such a way that players know they can succeed. An easy mode creates a chain reaction of events. A player that knows they can succeed will never experience failure or the pressure that coming close to failure brings.

Really? Damn. All devs must be doing easy mode wrong then. I think in a couple games I played, I died once or twice on easy! Can devs do nothing right?

Without the chance to fail a player will not feel they accomplished something.

Because everyone feels accomplishment the same way you do, obviously.

The easy mode addition you mention also neglects the fact that there already is an easy mode in the game, its just not a menu choice. Any player can use the upgrading and leveling system to overpower bosses but it still requires them to have some aptitude with the games mechanics such as blocking, dodging, and hitting things.

So, it shouldn't matter if it is made formal then, should it? I mean, if it is already in the game, what does it matter if it is turned into a menu choice?

Dark souls is known for its unforgiving difficulty. The game tells you to prepare to die, giving good advice in a seemingly threatening manner. Ask anyone what they think of dark souls and Im pretty sure the majority of what you'll hear is "its really hard". That said it was designed to be a niche game but when you change a game to target people outside your core audience you are reinventing it.

So, any change to increase playability results in reinventing the game? Gotcha.

In Dark souls case adding an easy mode to bring in new players is a reinvention of the franchise and history has shown that it will hurt sales, cause the core fanbase to leave, leave new players with a mediocre experience, and ultimately kill the franchise.

Hyperbole, much?

 

[BreakfastMan]

I played Devil May Cry 1 and 2 recently. DMC 1 is the harder and better thought out game compared to DMC 2 that has easier enemies that can be killed by just button mashing. In the former I found it rewarding to try out new combos and to mix up my playstyle, in DMC 2 I just button mashed away putting very little effort into exploring any depth its combat system had to offer.

You know what DMC 1 also had? An easy mode. Same with DMC 3, a game many love and revere as the hardest, most satisfying games of all time. Funny, that...

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I honestly have no idea why (and it seems ridiculous to me to think that way), but whatever.

I find that very hard to believe. It affects tension, atmosphere, sense of accomplishment, sense of community, and things like that. The impact of an easy mode on those things is noticeable in other titles, but pretty negligible. But in Dark Souls? Definitely not negligible. You may be just as scared of Nito even if you know the game was designed to gaurantee that you will beat him. But I wouldn't be. I really wouldn't be.

You can just say "Sense of accomplishment? Pfff, who cares" but that is the whole point of this game.

Here is the problem: likely does not mean it will (and I don't even think it is likely). Adding an easy mode does not directly lead to dumbing down the the game, but you are acting like it is. And, it is especially unlikely it would happen in this case. Those who want to play the game don't want it dumbed down, they just want the enemies to hit for less damage. That. Is. It. That does NOT necessitate a dumbing down of the core experience. If From can design the game so that the difficulty scales up (via NG+), they can design it so that it can go down too.

It will not directly lead to dumbing down the game, but dumbing down the game is the obvious thing to do when you have already decided to pursue an audience outside your niche. It will also be necessary to make the easy version of Dark Souls into something somebody would want to play. It is extremely difficult to walk that line between satisfying your original niche client base and your expanded broader audience at the same time.

You're telling me I should just accept that it won't happen because it doesn't have to in the most technical sense of the word. But it's obvious to anyone who is paying attention that it most likely will because that's what happens in almost all cases for reasons that are very easy to understand and empathize with. You seem to want to keep that discussion focused on the ideal and not what is likely to happen in reality.

I already explained why scaling HP or damage UP and scaling them DOWN do not have the same effect on the game. You are not taking into account what those numbers mean in the context of the mechanics they effect (or don't). You are reducing the difficulty to a linear equation where reducing the enemy damage to 75% reduces the difficulty to 75%. Dark Souls does not work that way. By adding easy mode, you are creating a tier that plays fundamentally different from the normal game and NG+ for most players. Breaking that threshold of difficulty means the player can beat an enemy without knowing how to beat it the 'proper' way or coming up with a creative way of their own. That's the primary thing you change by lowering enemy damage or HP- now a player can beat an opponent without really knowing how. But the whole game is designed around learning how to win. What you just effectively cut out of the game is the part the whole game was designed around.

They did not make the game hard just to be dicks to people who don't want to play hard games. The difficulty in Dark Souls is utilized in an unusual way and you don't seem to want to acknowledge that. The way Dark Souls takes advantage of it's difficult content distinguishes it from other games, and what works for other games may not work for Dark Souls. Not every game needs to be the same.

Not every game needs to be the same. Not every game needs the same options. Let us have the one friggin' game for chrissake. Let the people who don't care about the things I care about play EVERY SINGLE OTHER AAA TITLE and just leave me with Souls.

 

[TrevHead]

Let me say it once again: If Demon's Souls was an easier game, it would have had much less sales. Dark Souls would probably not have been made thanks to that.
There's a psychological aspect to difficulty selection: people usually aren't masochists. They choose the difficulty appropiate for beating the game faster and with less hassle. I know I would. By giving us no alternative, the game is making us play it the way it wants to. I do believe, yes, that in this case, more choice is a detriment to the game.

This is very true, making the game easy doesn't automatically translate into better sales. How much has DS sold so far? 1 or 2 million right? Well thats better than many easy mode AAA games out there. There have been tons of AAA games recently that are preforming poorly sales wise. Darksiders 2 is a close approximation to an easy mode Souls, and its just been revealed that THQ have only so far made less than half of the 2 million sales they need to make.

I think there is a large number of gamers who are getting rather sick of the easy mainstream games and are wanting more niche and rewarding gaming experiences, especially when so many similar games can be bought for peanuts used and from the bargin bins at gamestop. I think many AAAs who continue to hold the belief that all games should be watered down to suit the widest demographic are going to have to quickly change their ways or find themselves losing more ground to indie and kickstarter games.

I think what happened to Ninja Gaiden 3 is a good example for From not to go down the same path.

 

[Windcaler]

Not all but a large portion of it. History has shown that games that reinvent themselves always have the same three major 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 you're specfically asking about the 1st problem. When the core fanbase becomes disatisfied with the games. Many veteran dark souls players will tell you that they think an easy mode cheapens the game but most wont be able to articulate why. For a time I was one of those players but after a great deal of self examination I was able to come up with an explanation. That said from my point of view an easy mode removes the risk of failure that is an important tool that the developer has put in to give a genuine sense of accomplishment.

A: Okay? That's nice and all, but I don't see what it has to do with adding an easy mode. We are not reinventing the game, just changing it slightly. Also, B: adding an easy mode does not remove risk of failure. We are not talking about making the player invincible, we are just talking about making them less easily killable.

Incorrect on both counts. Im going to reply to the second point first since its the easier one and leads into a nice segway for the other pont. Easy modes, since the days of the NES (maybe before but thats before my time), have always been designed in such a way that players know they can succeed. An easy mode creates a chain reaction of events. A player that knows they can succeed will never experience failure or the pressure that coming close to failure brings.

Really? Damn. All devs must be doing easy mode wrong then. I think in a couple games I played, I died once or twice on easy! Can devs do nothing right?

Without the chance to fail a player will not feel they accomplished something.

Because everyone feels accomplishment the same way you do, obviously.

The easy mode addition you mention also neglects the fact that there already is an easy mode in the game, its just not a menu choice. Any player can use the upgrading and leveling system to overpower bosses but it still requires them to have some aptitude with the games mechanics such as blocking, dodging, and hitting things.

So, it shouldn't matter if it is made formal then, should it? I mean, if it is already in the game, what does it matter if it is turned into a menu choice?

Dark souls is known for its unforgiving difficulty. The game tells you to prepare to die, giving good advice in a seemingly threatening manner. Ask anyone what they think of dark souls and Im pretty sure the majority of what you'll hear is "its really hard". That said it was designed to be a niche game but when you change a game to target people outside your core audience you are reinventing it.

So, any change to increase playability results in reinventing the game? Gotcha.

In Dark souls case adding an easy mode to bring in new players is a reinvention of the franchise and history has shown that it will hurt sales, cause the core fanbase to leave, leave new players with a mediocre experience, and ultimately kill the franchise.

Hyperbole, much?

Please take a step away from the computer for a few minutes and do something fun before you read on. Talk to your girlfriend/boyfriend, grab a bite to eat, play with your pets, talk with a friend. Just do something. I ask because you are starting to sound quite passive aggressive and I dont appreciate that in what is supposed to be an intelligent discussion.

Now to start, you misunderstand how I am defining failure in regards to dark souls. Dying in dark souls is not failure. Dying in any game really isnt failure as I see it. Failure is givng up. Putting the controller down and never picking it up again. Putting that game away on a shelf where its forgotten or traded in/sold. Giving up, making a concious decision that you arent going to keep trying, that is failure. Its how Ive always defined failure in regards to dark souls and many other games

Going back to the upgrading system and how it is the easy mode. This revolves around the games secrets. I mentioned before that secrets are, by definition, inaccessible. People love secrets but you know what else they love? Sharing secrets. New players wont realize how much easier the game gets till they heavily experiment with the upgrading system. At first they might just be like "oh cool this sword just does a bit more damage" or "Hey I take slightly less damage since I upgraded this armor". That first upgrade is a hint toward the easy mode and the player has to use that sense of discovery (that other goal of the game) to fully unlock the secret of upgrading. Yep, its a secret easy mode that one must use the sense of discovery to find. Sounds pretty awesome to me but to answer your question, a menu option is far different from the upgrading system. It doesnt have the same weight of discovery to it which is what the games going for

Now to reiterate what I said before you obviously missed my point, going against the established elements of the franchise in an effort to attract people outside of your core audience is reinventing a franchise. They could do a lot with what they have like add new covenants (like a duelist covenant) and it wouldnt be reinventing the franchise. Going against the unforgiving difficulty does equal reinventing

 

[Nomanslander]

So I've only played a bit of Dark Souls, but can someone explain to me logically how an easy mode would ruin the game for people who won't play on easy mode?

To put it as simply as I can, the unforgiving nature of the game is part of the experience. It's intertwined with the overall experience with the game, and changing it would change the game.

Now, I used to the word "unforgiving" instead of the word "difficult" for a reason. Dark Souls by itself isn't really a difficult game in the traditional sense of the words, and what I mean by traditional sense I mean in the manner other games tend to ramp up difficulty: increasing enemy health, decreasing attack power, adding more enemies.

Dark Souls isn't any more difficult in those respects than Devil May Cry or even God of War would be on a Normal to above average difficulty setting. What Dark Souls IS is unforgiving, and it allows very little room for making mistakes.

How does it do this? Well...

-giving the player no sense of direction of where to start or go.
-dieing takes away all your souls, and if you're unable to gain them back, you lose them forever.
-long distances between check points where a player can replenish their straights or use up souls, plus: no knowledge of where to find any undiscovered checkpoints.
-new enemies always have different behaviors and combat styles.
-you can easily stumble upon enemies that aren't meant for your level even in the beginnings that can kill you instantly.

also

-heading in the wrong direction can lead you to an advance level of the game not meant to be crossed if you're still low in level.

You see. These aren't exactly game mechanics or attributes that can be easily tweaked to make the game easier (like decreasing enemy health, or decreasing attack power). These are the core aspects of the gameplay, and to change them would totally change the game to begin with.

It would be like cheat codes, or using gamer guides to look up maps that aren't found in game. To change these aspects would be game defining.

 

[BreakfastMan]

I honestly have no idea why (and it seems ridiculous to me to think that way), but whatever.

It affects tension, atmosphere, sense of accomplishment, sense of community, and things like that. The impact of an easy mode on those things is noticeable in other titles, but pretty negligible. But in Dark Souls? Definitely not negligible. You may be just as scared of Nito even if you know the game was designed to gaurantee that you will beat him. But I wouldn't be. I really wouldn't be.

So, what you are basically saying is that easy mode would not be good for you. That is fine, I guess, but that is not really a good argument as to why it should not be in the game to begin with.

You can just say "Sense of accomplishment? Pfff, who cares" but that is the whole point of this game.

I already explained that some people get a sense of accomplishment from things other than challenge. I don't think I need to repeat myself here...

Here is the problem: likely does not mean it will (and I don't even think it is likely). Adding an easy mode does not directly lead to dumbing down the the game, but you are acting like it is. And, it is especially unlikely it would happen in this case. Those who want to play the game don't want it dumbed down, they just want the enemies to hit for less damage. That. Is. It. That does NOT necessitate a dumbing down of the core experience. If From can design the game so that the difficulty scales up (via NG+), they can design it so that it can go down too.

It will not directly lead to dumbing down the game, but dumbing down the game is the obvious thing to do when you have already decided to pursue an audience outside your niche.

No, no it really isn't. If the new audience doesn't want the game to be dumbed down... Why dumb it down?

It will also be necessary to make the easy version of Dark Souls into something somebody would want to play.

And more generalizations based on your own tastes, which I already explained are not universal.

You're telling me I should just accept that it won't happen because it doesn't have to in the most technical sense of the word. But it's obvious to anyone who is paying attention that it most likely will because that's what happens in almost all cases for reasons that are very easy to understand and empathize with. You seem to want to keep that discussion focused on the ideal and not what is likely to happen in reality.

What is likely to happen in real life is not what you have outlined. Think about it: both From and Namco Bandai are in the business of making niche JRPGs. They know where the money comes from and they know their audience; that is why they are still in business after all these years. They are not going to radically shift and become EA all of a sudden. They have a niche that they satisfy, and they will continue to pursue that niche, since they have little to no competition.

I already explained why scaling HP or damage UP and scaling them DOWN do not have the same effect on the game. You are not taking into account what those numbers mean in the context of the mechanics they effect (or don't). You are reducing the difficulty to a linear equation where reducing the enemy damage to 75% reduces the difficulty to 75%. Dark Souls does not work that way. By adding easy mode, you are creating a tier that plays fundamentally different from the normal game and NG+ for most players. Breaking that threshold of difficulty means the player can beat an enemy without knowing how to beat it the 'proper' way or coming up with a creative way of their own.

Beating it the proper way and figuring out your own way are two entirely different things: having one means you cannot have the other. So which is it?

I already explained why scaling HP or damage UP and scaling them DOWN do not have the same effect on the game. You are not taking into account what those numbers mean in the context of the mechanics they effect (or don't). You are reducing the difficulty to a linear equation where reducing the enemy damage to 75% reduces the difficulty to 75%. Dark Souls does not work that way. By adding easy mode, you are creating a tier that plays fundamentally different from the normal game and NG+ for most players. Breaking that threshold of difficulty means the player can beat an enemy without knowing how to beat it the 'proper' way or coming up with a creative way of their own. That's the primary thing you change by lowering enemy damage or HP- now a player can beat an opponent without really knowing how. But the whole game is designed around learning how to win. What you just effectively cut out of the game is the part the whole game was designed around.

Makes me wonder how people could beat it in the first place without coming up with a way of their own...

But, making an easy mode does not mean that playing on easy mode no longer require strategic thinking. Seriously.

Not every game needs to be the same. Not every game needs the same options. Let us have the one friggin' game for chrissake. Let the people who don't care about the things I care about play EVERY SINGLE OTHER AAA TITLE and just leave me with Souls.

People who want to play Souls on easy do not want to take your game away, and adding an easy mode will no more dumb it down than adding an easy mode to Persona dumbed that series down.

 

[TrevHead]

I played Devil May Cry 1 and 2 recently. DMC 1 is the harder and better thought out game compared to DMC 2 that has easier enemies that can be killed by just button mashing. In the former I found it rewarding to try out new combos and to mix up my playstyle, in DMC 2 I just button mashed away putting very little effort into exploring any depth its combat system had to offer.

You know what DMC 1 also had? An easy mode. Same with DMC 3, a game many love and revere as the hardest, most satisfying games of all time. Funny, that...

Imo you're cluching at straws mate, DMC is a VERY different game from Souls, and the fact DMC does have an easy mode has no real bearing on the point i'm making in my above post, since if I played DMC 1 easy mode I would have button mashed more often.

EDIT DMC 1 was also a product of the PS2 era where not every game was built to hold your hand like in this generation. Also one could also argue that a big reason why DMC 2 was such a crappy game was due to making the game easier for a wider casual demographic. (I can't say for sure if that is the case but it looks that way when I played it recently)

 

[BreakfastMan]

Now to start, you misunderstand how I am defining failure in regards to dark souls. Dying in dark souls is not failure. Dying in any game really isnt failure as I see it. Failure is givng up. Putting the controller down and never picking it up again. Putting that game away on a shelf where its forgotten or traded in/sold. Giving up, making a concious decision that you arent going to keep trying, that is failure. Its how Ive always defined failure in regards to dark souls and many other games

But giving the game an easy mode does not remove the possibility of that kind of failure. Hell, making the game really hard does not add the possibility of that kind of failure either.

And I fail to see how making someone so fed up with your game that they don't want to play it ever again is good game design. You want to encourage the player to press on, not give up.

Now to reiterate what I said before you obviously missed my point, going against the established elements of the franchise in an effort to attract people outside of your core audience is reinventing a franchise. They could do a lot with what they have like add new covenants (like a duelist covenant) and it wouldnt be reinventing the franchise. Going against the unforgiving difficulty does equal reinventing

But this isn't going against established elements of the franchise anymore than giving XCOM (a series where difficulty is also considered an integral part) an easy mode is going against established elements of that franchise. It just opens up the game to more players. Many XCOM players consider easy a practice mode for people who are not very good at those games to play before jumping into normal/classic/impossible. Why would an easy difficulty in Souls be any different?

 

[Windcaler]

But giving the game an easy mode does not remove the possibility of that kind of failure. Hell, making the game really hard does not add the possibility of that kind of failure either.

And I fail to see how making someone so fed up with your game that they don't want to play it ever again is good game design. You want to encourage the player to press on, not give up.

Incorrect. I mentioned before the definition of an easy mode as its been defined since the early days of the NES. A difficulty level where the player knows they can succeed (and on that note in hindsight I really shouldnt have called the upgrading system "easy mode"). Like it or not thats what an easy mode has been for nearly 30 years and if current games are any indication it will remain that way for a long time.

You miss the point about the need for the chance to fail. The chance of failure is not so people stop playing and never pick the game up again. Its there so those that dont fail can feel a genuine sense of accomplishment from their game. That IS good game design. You have to remember, this isnt Skyrim. Dark souls doesnt care if you get frustrated because it wants you to feel that pressure to succeed and press on of your own volition so you can feel like you accomplished something.

But this isn't going against established elements of the franchise anymore than giving XCOM (a series where difficulty is also considered an integral part) an easy mode is going against established elements of that franchise. It just opens up the game to more players. Many XCOM players consider easy a practice mode for people who are not very good at those games to play before jumping into normal/classic/impossible. Why would an easy difficulty in Souls be any different?

Thats where youre mistaken. XCOM: enemy unknown (1993) (also my favorite game of all time) is not designed around hardcore unforgiving difficulty its designed around hardcore tactical strategy and running an international defense agency. The difficulty is high but it is not intregal to the design of the game nor is it an artistic method used to further the artistic goals of the game. To be fair XCOM started with several difficulty modes so it hasnt set the same precedent as the souls series

The expectations and precedent in regards to difficulty is completely different. Dark souls, like kings field before it, set a precedent of an extremely hard but fair game. The easy mode would move it away from what its known for and start the same chain reaction we've seen in history whenever a franchise reinvented itself

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

So, what you are basically saying is that easy mode would not be good for you. That is fine, I guess, but that is not really a good argument as to why it should not be in the game to begin with.

LOL yea I don't think you and I are going to reach an understanding here. What's good for other people who aren't me is a good argument but what's good for me isn't.

I already explained that some people get a sense of accomplishment from things other than challenge. I don't think I need to repeat myself here...

I don't understand what this means. Different strokes, I get that. But that doesn't tell me why Dark Souls should or shouldn't be any particular way.

No, no it really isn't. If the new audience doesn't want the game to be dumbed down... Why dumb it down?

Because the changes to the core gameplay introduced in the easy mode make it tempting to make the easy mode good. And it's a pervasive tactic used by AAA devs to boost sales.

And more generalizations based on your own tastes, which I already explained are not universal.

You can't just say "that's your opinion man" and act like the question of whether or not the game would be good isn't even worth examining. Sure, it's a matter of opinion, but a very relevant one and you don't seem to want to give me reasons to reconsider my own.

What is likely to happen in real life is not what you have outlined. Think about it: both From and Namco Bandai are in the business of making niche JRPGs.

Which is why Dark Souls doesn't have an easy mode.

They know where the money comes from and they know their audience; that is why they are still in business after all these years. They are not going to radically shift and become EA all of a sudden. They have a niche that they satisfy, and they will continue to pursue that niche, since they have little to no competition.

Then there is absolutely no reason to implement an easy mode.

Beating it the proper way and figuring out your own way are two entirely different things: having one means you cannot have the other. So which is it?

It's both. Not sure what you're going for here. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. The majority of encounters in Dark Souls have more than one way to win.

Makes me wonder how people could beat it in the first place without coming up with a way of their own...

I don't know what this means.

But, making an easy mode does not mean that playing on easy mode no longer require strategic thinking. Seriously.

No, but it does make the game's mechanics irrelevant, making it's core design focus simply evaporate.

People who want to play Souls on easy do not want to take your game away, and adding an easy mode will no more dumb it down than adding an easy mode to Persona dumbed that series down.

They may not want to take my game away, but they do seem to want to put an easy mode in it. You are listing games like X-COM and Persona, but I can only assume difficulty is not used in the same way in those games. I feel like I would have heard about that. We are talking about minor changes to accessibility vs. upsetting the core gameplay. I guess I'll just keep saying it, this is something particular to Dark Souls, not a general rule. It's not that adding easy mode necessarily leads to the Dark Side, it's that changing the CORE GAME-PLAY to account for the needs of an audience outside your base typically does. And that's what they would be introducing with the addition of an easy mode. You are not talking about making the Dark Souls experience easier, you are talking about creating a game mode where that core experience is not present. And then you're just leaning back like that has absolutely no implications for current fans of the series. I'm staring down at the bodies of all the sell-out franchises and you're telling me to jump. No thank you. Let FROM focus on the current model rather than introduce new ones.

You're also starting to take more shots at the core design of Dark Souls, which I think says buttloads about the difference in our perspectives.

I would say this topic is thoroughly exhausted. We're repeating ourselves. Since I'm throwing in the towel, it's only fair that I let you have the last word on this. I will only respond if something new gets brought up but I will read it.

 

[burningdragoon]

Easy mode as a general industry feature is definitely a very, very good thing. No one should ever deny that. But we have a couple games where being difficult and overcoming the difficulty is the whole point, why can't we keep them that way? Why can't we have at least one game that's like that? But really, there is something more important to all of this...

People seem to assume the only way to have an "easy mode" is to have a separate mode with scaled enemy stats. That's just sillya nice way of saying stupid and very narrow view of how games can be designed. Did you know that Demon's Souls, for example, absolutely has an easy mode? It's called playing the Royalty class.

Starting with a powerful spell and a ring that regenerates MP. Starting at a Lv1 so even though you're weaker, which is a nice balance to the powerful spell without much actual downside, you'll get the first several levels super quickly so you can shape you character pretty much however you want right away. It's almost like the designers were actually really good at their job.

 

[Lunar Templar]

may the gods help you if you ever play Super Meat Boy or They Bleed Pixels >.>

i played Demons Souls, not touched Dark Souls due to a lack of money and GFWL, however, I'm not big on making a Souls game 'easy' it's kinda defeating the whole point of the games.

as some one already said, your supposed to figure out how to MAKE the easier, not have it handed to you on a plater.

 

[nukethetuna]

1. It's a major part of the appeal of the game. Other games have hard modes that are frankly more time-consuming and difficult than Dark Souls is as a whole, but no one ever really brags about beating them. The fact that Dark Souls is synonymous with "difficult game" to people is what makes part of its challenge so appealing. When you win, you not only feel like you achieved something, you know that other people will recognize it as well.
Say what you want about "you shouldn't care what other people think" or "it shouldn't impact your experience if it's easier for others", but it does for many people. It's why people take pride in beating the game: because not everyone is willing to do it. It enhances the "Victory Achieved" you see after every win.

2. Even outside of the "reputation", it undermines the mechanics of the game. Dark Souls' PVE is meticulously designed to require foresight, strategy, and a grasp of the mechanics. Someone earlier in this thread complained about "delayed input", but the fact that weapons have weight, swing time, and that movements aren't nigh instantaneous, requires the player to pick weapons and gear that fit both their style and the situation, as well as to study their enemies and learn their patterns if they are struggling.
Reducing the damage enemies do just hides this meticulous balance and gameplay design effort behind ease and tedium. The very fact that the game is so difficult and required so much thought and strategy is what drew attention to its game play to begin with.

That said, there's no REAL reason that there shouldn't be an easy mode, but it wouldn't be the same game. If I bought a book that was outside of my reading level and stated its high requirements on the cover, I wouldn't demand they release a layman's version so I could appreciate it like everyone else; I'd either hunker down and try to understand it or put it down and forget about it.

 

[Zetona]

What I'd kind of like to see is a mode where you can take your NG+ character and start at the base difficulty with it, with all your items except for keys and stuff. It would be fun to tear through the game with Homing Crystal Soulmass and Crystal Soul Spear, absolutely destroying enemies that kicked your ass the first time around.