For most games, the real consequence of failure in a game is being forced to repeat what just happened. And getting caught in a Groundhog Day-esque situation that repeats once every few minutes suuuuucks.
It’s even worse when a failure causes your character to lose stuff. That’s even more time wasted, in that the time and effort taken to get the thing is gone.
Paint the rainbow on my proud carebear chest if you must. I just want a place to escape to for a little while, a place that doesn’t frustrate the shit out of me.
Exactly how I feel about the Souls games. How the fuck am I supposed to make any real progress when the only resource I have to do so is lost each time I die?
I have a full time job and a kid, I don’t have time to grind out a boss for hours. Can’t I just enjoy the world with an easy mode?
I agree with the person you were replying to, and I am glad that the Souls formula isn’t the norm (I’ve played all of them, and haven’t finished a one)…
But the Soulses get a pass from me personally, because their whole thing is about being present in the moment and overcoming what appear to be unbeatable odds. It’s the closest thing in modern gaming that gave me the feeling of being crushed by, and overcoming, the first Airship level in Mario 3.
That said, I’m not against accessibility option in a Souls game, so long as they’re optional.
Yup. Sometimes I like the Souls experience, and sometimes I just want a decent story and fun gameplay (e.g. Yakuza games). Give me all the options and I’ll decide based on the game.
Oh hey sugar_in_your_tea - I’m starting to recognize you from a couple of other comment threads in this community :)
I hope that’s a good thing :)
Haha yeah, I remember we disagreed on something, but now I can’t remember what. Can’t have been too fundamental, anyway – see you around!
Thats what the soul items are for. You eat those while standing in front of a bonfire about to level up. Because they are an item, you dont lose them when you die, so they are safe exp.
Especially boss souls. If you dont want the specific weapon that boss makes, you eat that shit when you need the level boost.
You can’t play Dark Souls without it being hard. There is no gameplay loop if you can just squash everyone in your path. I went out of my way to beat Souls 3 and Elden Ring without upgrading my character to make it more fun. If you want to just walk around then play something else.
I agree that the game falls apart without challenge, but the challenge will vary by player, especially those of different abilities. So while I wouldn’t use them (until I get older and slower maybe), I support the addition of optional accessibility options in Souls games. They aren’t a fun little experiment anymore - they’re a proven formula, and I believe it can survive tweaking.
I don’t even want an easy mode, per se, at the very least just a “medium” mode. Give the bosses like 5% less health, make them 5% slower, etc. Just take the edge off the difficulty so that it’s not so unbearable.
Exactly. I cannot stand how interested I am in soulsborne storylines because I’m simply not willing to put myself through playing that shit any longer.
The only soulsborne I’ve beaten is an “easy mode” modded Elden Ring. Nothing worse than watching a game LP on youtube because I really want to play it but don’t enjoy it. (Bloodborne, lookin at you)
I feel like souls games are the exception. The game is about the cycle of dying and reviving, and the progress you make isn’t in game, but in game knowledge. You might not like it, but it’s kind of the theme of the game.
And if you really want to experience those games, DKS1 has a really easy to perform soul dupe that will make you overpowered as hell in no time. Then you can enjoy the game. It’s cheating, sure, but so is asking for an easy mode in a game it’s not intender for, at least for me, and I’m totally okay with cheating when I don’t want to do the full experience. In single player games, ofc.
Except for Fallout 4. That survival mode turns it into a completely different fucking game.
Running around cause you need to get to a sleeping bag or dirty mattress after walking half a map, words can’t describe the feeling adequately.
Voluntarily drinking dirty water.
Actually using the cooking system.
Indeed. I want easy mode and cheats in my games. I am paying for them, let me play the way I want. Sometimes I play with normal difficulty, sometimes in story mode. And sometimes I just want to be immortal and have infinite money. I don’t know why basically no developer makes this available.
Local man discovers difficulty settings.
Pretty accurate to the story, now that I actually read it.
Easy Mode is for adults that just want to see the story.
I’m an adult and I like Hard Mode (or higher) because I play for the challenge. What could be more challenging than juggling a demanding work/home life and also trying to progress in a long game with only 2 hours a week to play on the hardest possible difficulty? At any moment a kid or pet could unplug the system and corrupt my save. It’s like everything has a hardcore mode.
Yeah, the last of us is an example of a game with a moderately compelling story.
But it’s also a game that does a really good job of offering brutal difficulty in a way that’s fair, engaging, and makes success all (OK, mostly) about you. There aren’t really cheap fails. If you approach encounters intelligently and execute your actions, you will succeed. If you don’t, you get punished. The mostly is because resources are scarce and there’s some RNG to drops, so if you’re too low, some harder encounters can vary in difficulty based on the ammo that you get.
If that’s not what you want, that’s fine. But I read books and watch TV for stories. I play games for mechanics. Is it nice when a game like Horizon makes a character like Aloy really compelling by having her have to present advanced tech to primitive tribalist cultures? Sure. But if the mechanics weren’t good, writing couldn’t even sort of mitigate that for me.
Have kids, can relate. There are plenty of games I just don’t play because I don’t have the time, so I totally understand easy mode. That being said, if I literally just want the story, there are plenty of let’s plays I can watch and skip around in, so I generally play on normal and sometimes hard and just get through fewer games.
Flashbacks to when my daughter had just started walking and pressed the button on my Xbox while I was playing Assassin’s Creed 2, corrupting my save file at 90% completion.
I was like “no no no no!!! Ahhh…awwwwwww….”
Poor thing got so confused, I had to tell her it was alright but explain to her not to do that.
Couldn’t really get mad at them, they literally didn’t know they shouldn’t do that thing yet, lol, but damn did I have to start all over!
“At any moment, I could be shot in the face! I LIVE HARDCORRRRRRE!”
This is one of those threads where if you agree with the author, you’re a filthy casual, but if you actually want your hard game to be hard, you’re a sweaty loser than needs to touch grass.
Have your easy mode. Some of my favorite games even have a “Very Easy” mode. Just don’t corrupt games that are designed with a specific challenge in mind with nerfed nonsense.
I absolutely agree. Give the player the option between “story mode,” “normal” (intended experience), and “hard”, perhaps with an additional mode or two as well. I have never been mad at having too many difficulty settings.
I personally almost always play on the default difficulty since that’s probably what got the most testing, and play on a harder difficulty if I really like the game and want a challenge.
The issue is that mechanics for scaling difficulty need to designed into the game from the start, not tacked on at the end of a feature backlog. Making an easy game harder by upping enemy health and damage or nerfing RNGs is lame and often unbalanced. It should be the opposite - the game balance should be designed around the hard mode and than pared back for the easy mode.
The thing that really drives me nuts more than anything is nerfing complex control schemes to target console controls. The best example of this is Witcher 2 having an amazing and complex combat system which lent itself to a huge variety of play styles, enabled by complex controls with a high skill floor. And then Witcher 3 turned it into “spam dodge and counter” because all the richness of the control scheme was dumbed down to target consoles.
Exactly.
For example, shortening delays in boss movements is a fantastic way to distinguish “easy” from “hard.” That doesn’t feel as cheap as increasing health and damage output, but as you said, it needs to be considered from the start.
“story”, “intended balance”, “hard”, “no reloading hard”, “custom because you like hard except for that one bit of bullshit”
To me that’s the perfect balance of settings.
custom
Oh, I absolutely love how Mount and Blade: Warband does it, though the “AI smart” setting doesn’t work properly.
And don’t make “hard” excessively hard. Nothing kills my interest in a game faster than having to turn the difficulty down partway through because the stupid giant turtle mechs are nigh impossible without spending 20 hours farming parts to upgrade your weapons, and then having to turn the difficulty down even more because the FUCKING BULWARK MELEE PIT IS LEGITIMATELY IMPOSSIBLE ON HARD MODE. I’ve never understood why people thrown their controllers at their TV until I tried that shit for two hours straight. The developers of Horizon Forbidden West could come to my house and tell me that they playtested it on hard mode and I wouldn’t believe them. The hunting grounds stealth challenges are quite literally mathematically impossible in hard mode unless you have end-game gear.
A recent one I saw had pretty good options for this - Pathfinder: wrath of the righteous. Had so many different knobs to tweak to get the difficulty just right.
Agreed. I’ve been playing through Forsaken Remastered and that game doesn’t fuck around. Figured I’d run through it on easy for my first run and work my way up the difficulty settings. Easy is for beginners.
I don’t have time to play on the hardest settings anymore. Plus I’m old and I’m just not as good as I was 20+ years ago. My son laughed at me once when he saw I was on easy, that was 10 years ago, he’s still grounded. 😂
Eh, easy mode is for those who need or want to use it. Ditto for hard or impossible modes. Adult, teenager, troglodyte, don’t really matter what ya are
Yeah, I felt the same way reading this. It frames the easy mode option as this revelation that everyone should try because they are too proud not to. In reality, it’s the tale of one person’s experience who found a way to make their hobby more enjoyable for them
I’m 38 and easy modes are made for people like me. I usually dont have the time, attention or patience required by some games to even have a fighting chance in game progression (looking at you FromSoft) I don’t regularly use easy mode as it does make many games trivially easy but sometimes it’s just enough where I can enjoy the story, explore a beautiful and imaginative world and see it through to the end without the bullshit. I usually have no desire to be a hard-core veteran of a game’s mechanics but I still want to play the game. If people don’t like it, we’ll, I’m still 38 and dont give a shit what others think anymore. Just take my $60 and entertain me.
Easy mode is for younger adults and kids too. Age isn’t really relevant tbh. I never played games on hard or even normal when I was a kid. Like you said it’s more about how much time do you have to invest
I’m older than you and have beaten all the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring.
I grew up playing actually hard games like Bionic Commando and Ninja Gaiden on the NES.
This article’s premise is BS. Easy mode is for people of any age who have not gotten gud.
Years ago, I may have felt the same and I probably did but my life is not compatible with “getting gud” at every game that comes my way or that i even want to play. I grew up with the same systems as you as I know full well they used to be much harder and the challenge was the whole point. Not anymore so much with a lot of games.
I have chosen 1 game to fully invest myself into and that’s BG3. I’m on my tactician run, just as I did with DoS 1 & 2 and I’m enjoying it because I’m willing to do so with that masterpiece of a gaming experience. But I also play other games when I can’t and I just want it to be fun. Hard, easy and everything in-between, I just wanna zone out, forget about my day and watch an interactive story unfold before me.
Edit:typo
This article’s premise is BS. Easy mode is for people of any age who have not gotten gud.
I don’t disagree with you, but a lot of people, when presented with new game mechanics, don’t have the time to spend “getting gud”.
I know that if I were to start playing, for instance, Hollow Knight today, rather than at its release (cleared Pantheon of Hollownest), I’d likely have to put it down or install a nail damage increase mod – I have kids now; no time to grind at bosses to learn the patterns.
I haven’t read the article yet, but easy mode is actually for me.
I like gaming, but almost all my gaming time is compressed into a few months of the year. Even then, it’s not uncommon to have to have a week or longer hiatus between sessions. And when I do sit down to play, I’m lucky if I get the time to have a 1 - 2 hour session. With my situation, games that are long or difficult or that have overly complicated control/button schemes are not a good fit for me.
One game that really stood out for me in terms of being really well designed in this respect was Hades. I thought it did an excellent job of making itself accessible to more casual audiences, while still providing lots of options for dialing up the punishment if that’s your cup of tea. I definitely wish more development teams would put as much effort into making other genres and franchises friendly to more casual players, and I think it’s definitely an achievable goal to do without compromising the experience for more dedicated/advanced players – at least for certain types of games.
Nice. Seasonal worker? I dream of taking off a huge chunk of time rather than a few days here and there
In a manner of speaking, yes and that’s a factor. Really it’s just that general life slows down a bit for me for a few months around the end and beginning of the year, and then goes full throttle from spring right on up to the holidays.
Plus, when it’s warmer and days are longer, I prefer to be outside doing something/anything when I have spare time, rather than just sitting and staring at a screen like I do all day at my official job.
That sounds very healthy.
I really wish there were an “adult difficulty” setting to pick instead of ‘easy’. I don’t have hours to waste on hordes of “difficult” enemies that just slows progress and pads the playtime. Nor do I want a walking simulator where the boss just falls over with no need for anything beyond the most basic game mechanics. Give me an option to experience the story with an interesting challenge without wasting my time, dammit!
I’ve been playing god of war Ragnarok on the second lowest difficulty setting. If it was any more difficult, I’d be frustrated and not having fun. Sometimes I want to enjoy the story and not die a dozen times in the same spot
I got tired of playing the first game. I didn’t go back until I learned I could cheat. I just wanted to rush through the combat and get the story.
Dude, same.
As someone that has played all the games more for the combat than the story I was really disappointed by the newer ones.
The combat felt so much clunkier and the movement in game was so heavy…?
The whole time I’m just trying to get through it and the story just feels like a rehashed version of the last one.
I’m glad other people liked it so much but I hated all the changes to the gameplay and just couldn’t get into it.
Old people can’t learn like younger people, that’s why old pro gamers retire at 24, the stars who perform at their prime are 16-17 year olds.
I have two kids and I only play on easy mode when I’m playing with them. Otherwise I prefer to be challenged.
Yup. Sometimes they like to watch me play on “hard” (e.g. I played through Zelda: Skyward Sword on Hero mode). That said, there are limited options for a real “hard” mode on family-friendly games (Zelda: SS just doubles enemy damage and removes hearts from drops until mid-game).
Bought GTA V 10 years ago with a newborn on the way. Two more kids later and I’ve still never finished it because I’ve hit my video game skill cap. I just want to finish the story.
Please bring back cheat codes.
Please bring back cheat codes.
They exist behind paywalls nowadays.
Perhaps the real irony is that only PC still lets you cheat for free in single player games nowadays, but you have to download a trainer (which might have dubious origin), or just learn how to use CheatEngine and look up for ready tables for games
Huh, never thought of finding tables other people made, I just used cheat engine with a process of elimination every single time.
Like this?
Huh go figure. Maybe this is my year after all!
Edit: Why is the invincibility cheat only for 5 minutes?
yeah they “cheats” they put in are dogshit compared to a simple trainer.
Removed by mod
Sometimes the difficulty will improve enemy tactics, boost numbers or make the player less of a tank, and genuinely add challenge.
But, if the game has a good storyline I like to play on “normal” for the first playthrough as I feel higher difficulty ruins the pacing. Then if I enjoy the game I’ll go back and replay on higher difficulty for the challenge.
This was always the way when a new Halo game came out, they have long stated that they are “meant to be played on Heroic” but me and a buddy would rip through in coop on Normal and then bump up the difficulty.
I finally got around to Titanfall 2 and Normal feels a bit easy, but it also feels like I’m playing a robot mecha movie instead of grinding through tactical battles, which is awesome. Definitely going to revisit this one on Hard though.
boost numbers or make the player less of a tank
That’s “increasing damage and health.” Very few games actually improve tactics to an interesting degree, and that’s really what I’m hoping for when it comes to “hard” mode.
Halo
I 100% agree. I usually played through once on normal, than went to Heroic or Legendary depending on how I felt the original playthrough went. Knowing the maps helps a ton on harder difficulties, and enemy AI also improved a bit, so harder difficulties in Halo felt great to play.
However, a ton of “hard” modes are just nerfs to the player and buffs to the AI, but other than that, little actual changes to AI.
That’s “increasing damage and health.”
It varies. I agree far too many games just make the enemies bullet sponges, which I hate.
Increasing numbers though ramps up challenge in a more fun way, I would rather take on a classic “double boss” than one bullet sponge boss. You have to keep track of multiple enemies and change your tactics. It’s cheap difficulty but much better than just multiplying health.
I would really like to see more games handle difficulty like Halo for sure.
Also sometimes the player needs to be nerfed for balance. Titanfall 2 for example, in normal I can switch my loadout in combat, blasting rockets as Brute and switch to Ion to fire its laser once the core is charged, totally ruining the whole concept of loadouts. Also when the player has a Halo-style shield and enemies just have regular health… Nerf me already, the game shouldn’t feel like you’re steamrolling enemies on Normal. 1v4 Titans should at least feel like a challenge, not a cakewalk.
Increasing numbers though ramps up challenge in a more fun way, I would rather take on a classic “double boss” than one bullet sponge boss. You have to keep track of multiple enemies and change your tactics. It’s cheap difficulty but much better than just multiplying health.
Ah, makes sense. Going from 10 to 20 enemies isn’t a big change, but from one to two bosses is.
Do you have examples of games that do this well?
I find it’s more common as part of a difficulty curve in a game than as optional difficulty, for example Metroid Dread introduces a boss which is hard until you learn the pattern. Then the same enemy turns up as a miniboss, easy now that you know it. Then it starts to show up mixed in with common enemies, forcing you to watch out for them, and when it shows up as a pair it’s a challenging boss again as managing two is much harder than one.
Metroid Dread does a great job of making the difficulty track your character’s increased abilities throughout the game, and looks beautiful in 1440/60fps on Ryujinx by the way.
However for optional difficulty the best example is probably Hades which is a great example of good game design anyways. In the postgame optional difficulty “Pact of Punishment” you can tweak all manner of game characteristics. Extreme Measures allows some bosses to team up, and changes boss arenas and behaviours. Middle Management mixes up the minibosses totally, adding trash mobs to manage as well as lots of other effects. There’s also an option to add new attacks to almost all of the enemies.
Then you can also do the standards like make yourself weaker, enemies tougher, boost the numbers of regular enemies, remove your special abilites and even disable i-frames after being hit (!) Hades probably has some of the best post-game replay value out there.
Huh, I haven’t played either, so I’ll have to give them a shot.
Hades scared me off with the “rogue-like” label, which to me often means a lot of frustration and crazy difficulty spikes due to randomness. But if it’s a smooth gameplay experience, I’ll give it a shot. I have liked some others (Slay the Spire and FTL), but I generally like a more guided experience.
Hades is absolutely not a real roguelike, the only roguelike thing about it is that you make multiple runs through a semi-randomized dungeon, and that you can expect to die a lot.
However there is persistent progression and it’s rare that you get truly screwed by RNG.
The random part is what weapon mods you get each run, but they are balanced. Part of the fun is not falling into a favorite weapon rut, but running with what you are given. And even a full “winning” run is only about half an hour so if you die it’s not a big punishment.
Meanwhile the plot progresses despite your countless deaths, I won’t spoil how. It’s really a well done game and deserves the praise it gets, and you can get it on sale for like $10, I would go for it if you like beat em up type games at all.
Dread on the other hand appears to be love or hate it, people with weak platforming/traversal skills seem to absolutely hate specific sections where you have to avoid the indestructible EMMI robots with a mix of stealth and skill. I thought it was thrilling myself but YMMV
The rest of the game is a must play for any 2D Metroid fan, but definitely play on PC and not Switch as PC blows it away. With the FPS cap unlocked, I’ve rarely seen an action platformer flow so smoothly.
Crowd control is a completely distinct combat mechanic from single enemy combat. Introducing more complex combat mechanics to allow the player to deal with multiple enemies and mixed types of enemies is precisely the kind of difficulty scaling I want to see.
Sure. My point is just scaling the enemies is often uninteresting. Like if I’m already fighting a bunch of orcs, adding more isn’t likely to be more difficult, however, adding different kinds of orcs in the mix would make it more difficult (e.g. instead of just melee, add in ranged and mounted orcs). The variety of inputs is interesting, not the quantity.
Fighting two bosses simultaneously is interesting because they’ll have different movesets that combine in interesting ways, whereas fighting the same boss back to back isn’t interesting, it’s just a slog.
Then again, quantity can be interesting if it forces you to account for it in your build, it kind of depends on the game itself.
Relevant video from Razbuten about difficulty settings on games.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s weird because I wish people were more clear about difficulty because it clears up contradictions. At the same time, it gives me an easy reason to dismiss an opinion if it doesn’t house my perspective on the best way to appreciate the game.
