Maybe you haven’t been convinced by a good enough argument. Maybe you just don’t want to admit you are wrong. Or maybe the chaos is the objective, but what are you knowingly on the wrong side of?

In my case: I don’t think any games are obliged to offer an easy mode. If developers want to tailor a specific experience, they don’t have to dilute it with easier or harder modes that aren’t actually interesting and/or anything more than poorly done numbers adjustments. BUT I also know that for the people that need and want them, it helps a LOT. But I can’t really accept making the game worse so that some people get to play it. They wouldn’t actually be playing the same game after all…

  • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    It goes deeper than just simple engineering though. It affects tone and overarching game design. It is multiple extra dimensions that have to be considered across every aspect of the entire game. If it is done poorly, you get paper dolls on easy mode and damage sponges on hard and nothing of merit to compensate for these facts. The difficulty of the game goes from being genuine to artificial.

    • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
      31·
      3 days ago

      That’s why you design for accessibility, and don’t try to cram it in at the last moment. It’s not actually difficult, it just requires engineering discipline.

      There are also plenty of Dark Souls clones for people like you who demand nothing but punishment.

      • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        3 days ago

        I don’t need a game to be hard, I need it to be consistent and well thought-out. Animal Well for example is a rather easy game, but because it only has one difficulty, the developer was able to keep a very tight focus on the world and puzzle design. Everything is layered there, because they don’t have to be containerized and sliced into pieces to account for adjustable difficulty settings.

        • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
          31·
          3 days ago

          Or they could have thought it out even better and included difficulty settings.

          They have every right to ignore accessibility, but it will always limit their audience.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      1·
      3 days ago

      “artificial difficulty” is poorly defined. Most parts of a video game are artificial. You get 100 health and 5 healing potions? Well those numbers were just made up, and could easily have been 50 and 1, or 200 and 10. The boss takes 5 hits to defeat, or 10, or 3?

      I think people say “artificial difficulty” when they mean “I don’t like this”, but that’s not very useful for a discussion without digging deeper.