Ah, auto-correct…
That’s just me admitting defeat on the matter. The real reason I like options, as I said before, is that I don’t have the time or the patience to git gud at what I’m frustrated with in entertainment - there’s enough of that in real life. Frustrated is a long time after challenged, though, I don’t know what’s confusing about that.
Or, you know, not hitting a huge wall near the start and wasting whatever the game cost. On the other hand, Dark Souls sounds entirely like overrated masochism, so have at it.
I mean nearly all of its fans are terrible in how they praise how it’s the best thing ever for being so difficult, hardcore and obtuse, they couldn’t have driven me away from caring about it neither quicker nor as consistently if they tried. If they’d stop bringing the damn thing up in nearly every conversation, I’d have long forgotten about it.
Dark Souls it’s about overcoming its systems with the tools you are given. It’s not that hard overall, but you do hit walls and the game is about overcoming those walls through learning the systems through experimentation and trial and error. It’s what makes it special. If it was spelled out the process of mechanical epiphany would be broken and the game would lose its most unique characteristic.
But if you think it’s elitist masochism, go at it. It’s you who is losing on fantastic game (which just got an HD remaster). Not for everybody, that’s for sure, but nothing is.
To me, the difficulty of the game isn’t what made Dark Souls special; it was the way the emergent narrative was constructed. But the challenge was necessary for the sense of dread that the narrative needed! If there had been options, I probably would have picked a lower challenge (I am very bad at any kind of action gaming), but that would probably have deprived me of what has been one of my favourite gaming experiences ever.
Well this discussion started with Pathfinder and guess what a good DM and GM does… they fudge, the whole screen thing you know, the stuff you can’t see.
This just feels like there is some sort of requirement that if someone doesn’t play my way, it’s not the right way, so I don’t want to allow it. And I get on board with that. House Rules is a thing in several gaming setting, and they don’t usually exist to make thing easy. they exist to make the experience better, more fun. If someone can’t control where their mouse goes or from making things easier for themselves, I don’t see how that’s anyone’s fault. As for what is intended, well Pathfinder put those tweaks there. It’s intended. I think some games could easily open themselves up to larger audience that would enjoy most of their work if they provided some settings. It’s not a requirement, but it should always be a consideration.
You could also say difficulty means different things to different people, and it does, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough for the group that doesn’t want to adjust it. Why would this be sufficient for finishing. If you don’t finish a game, I don’t see how that’s a complete experience… or what the creators intended.
That’s a great post. I myself am losing patience for the massive games I used to absolutely love. I spent months on any one of the Ultima games, just getting lost in them, taking notes of conversations and interesting spots, and maybe even working my way through to completion someday. But whether it’s an aspect of growing up and having more limited time than funds, I just don’t approach games that way anymore. It would absolutely be unfair of me to expect developers to cater to my needs, and I’m really glad there are teams out there making the games they want to make. Obviously there was a big audience hungry for something like The Witcher 3, and I’m glad I played it even if it ultimately took me several years to work my way through. I’m also really glad the Dark Souls games got made, even though I have zero desire to play them myself. They scratch a certain itch that certain people have, and more power to them.
We’re in agreement. I don’t care if you change the rules. If you tweak the difficulty. If you GM your own gameplay. Have at it. Put the settings in and let players follow their hearts. Tom’s argument is that if you’re allowed to do such things then the designers have abandoned their post and put game balance in the players hands instead of taking ownership of their own vision. That’s nonsense. If you want their vision, choose a difficulty and play. They don’t usually hide the difficulty that represents their vision. If you later can’t resist the urge to exit the actual game and change the rules, don’t blame the designers for not ‘firewalling’ difficulty and balance any more than you would if you changed the rules on a boardgame mid-playthrough.
I’m very much on the side on diversity is great. Games have so many ways to engage with them, it’s impossible to cater to all of them. Mastery of mechanics is one way to engage with games, exploration is another. Demanding a shmup designed around mastery have an easy mode strikes me as asinine as demanding a walking simulator have a nightmare mode.
As long as there’s a healthy diversity in the marketplace, I’ve got no sympathies. Not everything has to be for you.
Also, ceding difficulty selection to the player is choice, and if that’s an informed choice the developers make, hey, go complain about the lack of directed narrative in Minecraft or something.
Where I have come around to Tom’s view somewhat though is that making people pick a difficulty without having them play the game first is pretty crummy. At least let people experience your baseline first.
I thought Tom was initially unhappy that you can tweak the game’s difficulty in Pathfinder after you play. So if they are doing that while they play, then… they have experienced the game first without tweaking it which is why I assume is they’re in there attempting to tweaking to a level they prefer.
This sounds like you are not agreeing with his view.
Tom rants about this all the time on the streams, so I might be conflating stuff he didn’t touch on in the Pathfinder thread.
One of the things he consistently complains about is being dumped into a difficulty screen with no context. Which is fair, as far as I’m concerned. Any game could be someone’s first.
I’ve only seen this, for the most part, from the Pathfinder discussion.
I’d be in favor of being able to adjust difficulty as you play. Personally I usually just do whatever normal is. If I had the option to tweak some settings, I might do that as a play, but probably not for difficulty changes so much as tedious crap… like turning off the runey system in Rune Factory. Someone might say that makes it easier, but it’s not a challenge I am getting rid of so much as a really unpleasant wth were they thinking system. I usually just do everything default myself, but i have no issues with people making games more fun, for them.
And again, someone’s cheat, someone’s challenge, could be someone else’s tedious slog… everyone is different thus the tweaking options are nice to have. I also think gamers with certain disabilities should not be locked out of entire genres because they can’t play perfectly… so what if their reflexes or ability to react is a little slower than most.
I agree with this, but: regardless of personal condition or skill, someone complaining that they can’t play a purely reflex-based game with literally zero content not tied to the reflex-based gameplay because they can’t do reflex-based things and should be able to play an altered version to get around that issue is like someone complaining that there’s porn in a porn movie and wanting an edited version without the porn.
You don’t have to have every game in a genre be able to accommodate more players in order to allow the genre to appeal and expand and just be more fun to more players. I don’t even know why you used the word complain. We’re talking about options. The only people really complaining at this point are those who don’t want to allow options, like flat out not allow it. The developers, in this case, provided them and who’s complaining, not the people who don’t want porn.
The number of games which actually contain zero content not tied to a reflex-based challenge is fucking miniscule. Like, Super Hexagon, sure. Probably a couple other games. But in general, most of the games you are thinking of right now? There’s more to them than that, and you are arbitrarily deciding what matters to people playing them. You don’t actually get to do that.
99% of shmups, especially those made for arcades? Rhythm games? (Is it gatekeeping to suggest that despite there being people who physically can’t play Dance Dance Revolution, Konami shouldn’t be expected to try to cater to that market with altered versions of the games?) I’d like to hear what you’re considering as “content” here that somehow applies to those games but not Super Hexagon.
I can’t speak to what someone might be playing those games for specifically other than pure challenge because by and large I don’t play them at all, but shmups are generally pretty clearly equipped with things like worlds, art, sound and graphical effects and not infrequently some amount of story. There’s certainly plenty of carnage. Rhythm games usually have a strong connection with music and might have fancy visual effects, story, etc.
But hell, even if a game really is all about challenge, the simple fact of the matter is that that’s a spectrum. What’s a satisfying challenge to me is not going to be a satisfying challenge for someone who can speedrun Dark Souls or 100% clear Coheed and Cambria on expert in Guitar Hero. And while it’s allowable for someone to cater to only the extreme end of that spectrum, it’s not somehow compromising the whole endeavour to offer the equivalent experience to other people.
Well whether Tom is right or wrong Pathfinder: Kingmaker (with its flexible difficulty settings?) is a bit of a current darling of RPGS. My thought about that game is that it is pretty hard on “normal” or “classic” or whatever the middle difficulty is.
I just died from a shark in AC:OY and am wondering what developer thought THAT was good. Though I thought it was pretty cool at the time lol.
