Understanding Dark Souls difficulty

[Something Amyss]

Look up information on the internet if you're really stuck.

This is what confuses me. I see complaints that an easy mode cheapens the experience or holds your hand, then I see people say "go look on the internet" and you specifically say with the right strategy, (X) is easy.

I don't get why it's okay to be spoonfed information from the internet if easy mode is bad. You're promoting assistance. You're promoting the secrets and tactics of the game be given away.

 

[Thatrocketeer]

Why some people climb mountains? It is a mix of a personal challenge, the joy of the sport itself and the knowledge that not everyone can do it. That's the Dark Souls experience.

And yet, you can get all those things even if someone is able to drive to the top from the other side.

I still don't get why it matters to anyone how someone else is playing the game.

It's cause the simple thought of accessibility to others will invalidate their status as "hardcore" gamers and they'd lose the ability to look down on "casuals" the moment the game gets an easy mode.

OP: First off, Dark Souls isn't hard. Its tedious, bland, and a little grindy, but its certainly not hard.

Some of you guys might want the tediousness of the game, and that's fine. But you might want to think that there are others that want to play the game without the tediousness it currently possesses, and the option of removing that tediousness is just that, an option, you don't have to take it, but there are certainly others that will. There's nothing wrong with that. Hell, it's more beneficial for the developers to do that since it'd make the game more accessible due to the current state of the market. It could increase the number of customers from just a small niche of circle-jerking fanboys to a lot more.

If they put in the OPTION to remove the difficulty, hell they could make easy mode perma-undead mode, and just remove it for story purposes when required to save for server issues.

Also, those 4 skills you have placed at the original post, every single person who plays fighting games and/or ARTSs a lot have those.

 

[lapan]

*currently stuck in Tomb of the Giants* I desperately need a mini map. That place is literal hell.

But yes, no game satisfies me more than conquering a huge milestone in Dark Souls.

You are at the single worst place to go before you get the warp feature. I don't wish actually having to climb out of there on anyone.

If you didnt use any bonfire in there yet you could always homeward bone out though.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Also to ryotknife:

The combat system is not based on block and a single attack. You can rely on block and a single attack, but you will be much more efficient if you adapt to the situation using:
- parries
- backstabbing
- magic
- dodges
- dual wielding
- Two-handing
- drop attacks
- long range
- buffs
- dung pies
- running attacks

There are many ways to solve any problem and fight (including summoning powerful allies and doing nothing) but the game won't punish you too much if you stick to your preferences - you can complete the game using your initial equipment set and at level 1. Or you can experiment and do things in a varied way.

parry is still a block, just a bit harder to use
backstabbing, dual wielding, two-handing, and running attacks are all still basic attacks.

even skyrims combat was more fun, and combat wasnt even a major part of that game. even the original megaman had a more interesting combat than dark souls.

farming red eye knights was about the funnest thing i did in demon souls.

You are massively over simplifying the combat. Even if you did have only basic attack and block I'd put it leagues over Skyrim's combat. Through the game I only used dodge, attack, backstab and blocking and found that was enough for my playstyle. One big thing you're missing is how much the game relies on positioning and timing. Whenever I was fighting a boss I wouldn't just be running up to them and spamming attack and block. I'd be consciously keeping myself out of their range, watching their attacks so I can decide when I'd be able to hit them without getting hit myself and timing my attacks and dodges so that I can get into a safe position while waiting for my next opportunity.

If anything I liked the simplicity of the combat, you had a limited amount of tools and you had to decide how to use them best to get through. Like the OP said you need to be constantly thinking each time you find a new enemy or situation. In Skyrim the only time I ever had to think was with stealth, and even then it wasn't much.

OT: I wouldn't necessarily want an easy mode, because I agree with most of the people here, the difficulty definitely was a huge part of the experience. I would have played a very different game without it. What I would have liked though was a bit less redundancy. There were bosses where I would spend almost an hour just running back and forth to them before I'd beat them. It's irritating when it takes you five minutes to get to a boss and end up dying in the first 30 seconds. And not the good kind of "I'm going to beat this" irritating, the "This is getting annoying, I'm going to do something else kind." What would be nice is a little more strategically placed bonfires to cut out repetitive situations like that.

 

[lapan]

*currently stuck in Tomb of the Giants* I desperately need a mini map. That place is literal hell.

But yes, no game satisfies me more than conquering a huge milestone in Dark Souls.

You are at the single worst place to go before you get the warp feature. I don't wish actually having to climb out of there on anyone.

If you didnt use any bonfire in there yet you could always homeward bone out though.

I've got the Lordvessel, but I'm struggling hardcore to get to Nito, even with the skull lantern.

You can rush past most skeletons once you know their position. I wouldnt recommend actually fighting them though because against those skeletondogs even i have problems. One mistake against them usually ends up with me being dead :/

 

[Kimozabi]

I don't understand this argument. You don't have to fight all the enemies again. If you go through and learn where everything is, open all the door and shortcuts, and try to take out all the enemies that stay dead, you can just sprint past everything. That's what i do.

But that just means the lack of save point introduces meaningless backtracking. In any case, it becomes a waste of time. Instead, the game should just have a bonfire close to every boss. When you face a boss, you want to keep fighting it and learn the strategy to beating. Having to run/fight through the same bunch of enemies doesn't really add anything of value - especially if you loose health on the way because you don't want to spend more time than necessary getting back to the boss.

Other than this though, Dark Souls is an amazing game.

 

[lapan]

I don't understand this argument. You don't have to fight all the enemies again. If you go through and learn where everything is, open all the door and shortcuts, and try to take out all the enemies that stay dead, you can just sprint past everything. That's what i do.

But that just means the lack of save point introduces meaningless backtracking. In any case, it becomes a waste of time. Instead, the game should just have a bonfire close to every boss. When you face a boss, you want to keep fighting it and learn the strategy to beating. Having to run/fight through the same bunch of enemies doesn't really add anything of value - especially if you loose health on the way because you don't want to spend more time than necessary getting back to the boss.

Other than this though, Dark Souls is an amazing game.

More often than not you can simply rush past 90% of the enemies at the last bonfire from the boss. Often i would even recommend it.

 

[Windcaler]

Look up information on the internet if you're really stuck.

This is what confuses me. I see complaints that an easy mode cheapens the experience or holds your hand, then I see people say "go look on the internet" and you specifically say with the right strategy, (X) is easy.

I don't get why it's okay to be spoonfed information from the internet if easy mode is bad. You're promoting assistance. You're promoting the secrets and tactics of the game be given away.

From my perspective, I agree that an easy mode cheapens the experiences and acomplishments of the game but I also agree that there's nothing wrong with asking for help. The reason why I think its ok to ask for tips or look things up is it offers assistance in the form of knowledge but it still requires a person to rise to the challenge. In this way a mode isnt being added to the game where everyone is expected to beat it, instead each individual is better armed for the encounters. Knowledge is just another weapon in the players arsenal and they have to make use of it to win

 

[Casual Shinji]

Look up information on the internet if you're really stuck.

This is what confuses me. I see complaints that an easy mode cheapens the experience or holds your hand, then I see people say "go look on the internet" and you specifically say with the right strategy, (X) is easy.

I don't get why it's okay to be spoonfed information from the internet if easy mode is bad. You're promoting assistance. You're promoting the secrets and tactics of the game be given away.

Most of the information people look up online regarding the game is acquiring a special weapon or piece of armor; Something that requires you to offer up a Boss soul.

Apart from one Boss, there's no information that will make the game easier. You're still gonna have to muscle your way through the Bosses to get the souls that grant you stronger equipment. And even with the right strategy, which one might have looked up online, you still have to stay on your toes and keep a close eye on your enemy, yourself, and your surroundings.

The reason an easy mode would cheapen the experience is because the difficulty and the setting go hand in hand. You accept the difficulty and frustration because the setting is one of nihilism, hopelessness, and immeasurable odds. And this sensation that the setting is infused with only works because of the difficulty. By lowering the difficulty you would be lowering the believability and sincerity of the setting, because the difficulty is the main tool by which the setting communicates with you, since there's hardly any dialoge or exposition.

 

[zinho73]

Why some people climb mountains? It is a mix of a personal challenge, the joy of the sport itself and the knowledge that not everyone can do it. That's the Dark Souls experience.

And yet, you can get all those things even if someone is able to drive to the top from the other side.

I still don't get why it matters to anyone how someone else is playing the game.

Well, I can only redirect you to my reply to the same question a few posts above. you might not agree with the reasons, but they are there.

 

[zinho73]

Look up information on the internet if you're really stuck.

This is what confuses me. I see complaints that an easy mode cheapens the experience or holds your hand, then I see people say "go look on the internet" and you specifically say with the right strategy, (X) is easy.

I don't get why it's okay to be spoonfed information from the internet if easy mode is bad. You're promoting assistance. You're promoting the secrets and tactics of the game be given away.

From my perspective, I agree that an easy mode cheapens the experiences and acomplishments of the game but I also agree that there's nothing wrong with asking for help. The reason why I think its ok to ask for tips or look things up is it offers assistance in the form of knowledge but it still requires a person to rise to the challenge. In this way a mode isnt being added to the game where everyone is expected to beat it, instead each individual is better armed for the encounters. Knowledge is just another weapon in the players arsenal and they have to make use of it to win

Very well explained. Dark Souls manages to achieve a sense of community that few games have. It is way more interesting to help each other to beat the odds.

You may argue that you prefer to beat the odds alone in an easier setting and that's fine, but there's no denying that what Dark Souls provide is different and fans are willing to preserve that difference as the easy button can be found in practically every other game around.

 

[zinho73]

*currently stuck in Tomb of the Giants* I desperately need a mini map. That place is literal hell.

But yes, no game satisfies me more than conquering a huge milestone in Dark Souls.

You are at the single worst place to go before you get the warp feature. I don't wish actually having to climb out of there on anyone.

If you didnt use any bonfire in there yet you could always homeward bone out though.

I've got the Lordvessel, but I'm struggling hardcore to get to Nito, even with the skull lantern.

You can rush past most skeletons once you know their position. I wouldnt recommend actually fighting them though because against those skeletondogs even i have problems. One mistake against them usually ends up with me being dead :/

Get the light miracle or the maggot.

 

[Burst6]

But that just means the lack of save point introduces meaningless backtracking. In any case, it becomes a waste of time. Instead, the game should just have a bonfire close to every boss. When you face a boss, you want to keep fighting it and learn the strategy to beating. Having to run/fight through the same bunch of enemies doesn't really add anything of value - especially if you loose health on the way because you don't want to spend more time than necessary getting back to the boss.

Other than this though, Dark Souls is an amazing game.

It's not meaningless. It's supposed to be a punishment for dying that has a trick to alleviate most of it. An aspect of the game is dying and being punished for it. It's not really much of a punishment if you appear right at the entrance of the boss.

This is what confuses me. I see complaints that an easy mode cheapens the experience or holds your hand, then I see people say "go look on the internet" and you specifically say with the right strategy, (X) is easy.

I don't get why it's okay to be spoonfed information from the internet if easy mode is bad. You're promoting assistance. You're promoting the secrets and tactics of the game be given away.

Making the mechanics of this game easy will make the secrets useless because you don't need them. There's no need for that shortcut if you finish that level in one go. If you just tell the secrets it's still an obstacle. It will be much easier but it will still pose a challenge and the battles will still be exciting.

Besides the game justifies giving away secrets and tactics. There's the whole floor message mechanic and some of these secrets are impossible without the combined information of a player base. There's a whole hidden level that can only be accessed by going to another hidden level and getting an item from it. Combined with how massively scattered the story is i think FROM wants people to look things up. There's a guy on youtube who made several videos explaining the lore of the world and i didn't know a good half of it even after 3 playthroughs.

 

[zinho73]

It's cause the simple thought of accessibility to others will invalidate their status as "hardcore" gamers and they'd lose the ability to look down on "casuals" the moment the game gets an easy mode.

OP: First off, Dark Souls isn't hard. Its tedious, bland, and a little grindy, but its certainly not hard.

Some of you guys might want the tediousness of the game, and that's fine. But you might want to think that there are others that want to play the game without the tediousness it currently possesses, and the option of removing that tediousness is just that, an option, you don't have to take it, but there are certainly others that will. There's nothing wrong with that. Hell, it's more beneficial for the developers to do that since it'd make the game more accessible due to the current state of the market. It could increase the number of customers from just a small niche of circle-jerking fanboys to a lot more.

If they put in the OPTION to remove the difficulty, hell they could make easy mode perma-undead mode, and just remove it for story purposes when required to save for server issues.

Also, those 4 skills you have placed at the original post, every single person who plays fighting games and/or ARTSs a lot have those.

Well, if it isn't hard you don't need it to be easier, you want the game to play differently: more fast, with lots of save points, less backtracking and maybe a minimap. This is not making the game easier, this is making the game be something that it is not.

See, I don't think that people that are advocating an easy mode even know what they want from the game.

Dying less? It is a integral part to the setting, to the story and to the game mechanisms.
Enemies with less health? You would still need to learn to navigate the map, which is much more difficult than the battles.
Minimap? that would completely destroy the sense of dread and the amazing exploration.
Easier bosses? Man, most of them already have several easy ways to beat and you can always call for help if you are really stuck.
More information? This is not even related to difficulty and even most fans of the game think that the game might improve somehow in that respect.
Less backtracking? It is a design choice, that exists to train you, if you don't like it, this is not the kind of game for you.

People say that Dark Souls players are a selfish elite. But wanting to transform the game into a different thing because you want to, I don't know, use cool armor sets (because you really don't want to experience the sense of achievement that the game is all about), sounds to me something much more selfish and narrow minded.

I understand you wanting an easy mode in uncharted because the game is about the story, or in a sports game or in a fighting game. But when the point of the whole design is to overcome the difficulty, asking for an easy mode sounds silly.

The easy mode is already in the game, it is just not a button - it is in the gameplay mechanisms! This is fudging brilliant and yes, it can be improved, so I want From Soft putting all their focus in making this feature better and not transforming it in a mode, as every other game around.

 

[Mirroga]

Wouldn't that way of thinking apply to every game? And I mean the different difficulty based around the gameplay. It's always either timing or technique.

And IMO, the problem with today's difficulty is that it gives players too many chances. My say to that is, KEEP IT! And then give us your old-style difficulty as the hardest difficulty.

Let's not forget enticing the whole world to accept games as an actual acceptable media means that they have to cater to people with less motor skills. As for the hunger of the hardcore gamers, isn't that why games like Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy are made?

 

[zinho73]

Also, those 4 skills you have placed at the original post, every single person who plays fighting games and/or ARTSs a lot have those.

They might have, but if they do, they apply it in a totally different way and certainly not mixed together.

Fighting games might require patience, but it is for training not for exploration and planning. And they certainly do not need lateral thinking. Most of all, they require memorization and reflexes.

Real Time strategies requires mainly reflexes and planning and also a really good knowledge of the building trees, knowledge of the map, etc.

If you are approaching Dark Souls thinking the skill set is similar to this kind of games I'm not surprised that you want an easy mode.

 

[zinho73]

Making the mechanics of this game easy will make the secrets useless because you don't need them. There's no need for that shortcut if you finish that level in one go. If you just tell the secrets it's still an obstacle. It will be much easier but it will still pose a challenge and the battles will still be exciting.

Quoted for truth.

 

[lapan]

snip

I think you misquoted me, i wasn't the one wishing for a minimap.

 

[zinho73]

Reading some posts of this thread (and others) it just occurred to me that most people that are asking for an easy mode do no want an EASIER to play Dark Souls - they wan a FASTER way to play it, passing everything on the first try, without any backtracking and nothing of this nonsense of upgrading things, learning the timing of the combat and discovering secrets.

They want another game with a Dark Souls skin...