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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Why do people get upset by OPTIONAL difficult assists?

danasider on 17 December 2018
DonFerrari said:

It isn't requesting that it please EVERY type of consumer. It is one implementation that would please a lot of customers though. You are being disingenuous because your argument didn't achieve the point you wanted.

No need to resort to Ad hominem.

Using the word "EVERY" may have been hyperbole, but the same idea I've been arguing remains. Changing a niche gameplay style to appease a broader audience is only good if the dev wants to do it and sees it as something that won't ruin the gameplay they designed.

If the dev doesn't (which, after 5 games in the multiple series that birthed a new genre of game, it hasn't), then gamers should move onto a game/genera they like instead of complaining about not being able to get through these games.



Qwark on 17 December 2018
DonFerrari said:
Qwark said:
There are relatively few people who have something against them. Although in my opinion that decision should always be up to the developers and there are a lot of people against the statement that all games must have difficulty assists. Games are not that hard and we learn trough failure that's part of what makes games enjoyable. Sure you could play a game like The last of us with ammo lying everywhere and being near invincible, but it would take a lot of the immersion of the cold hard unforgiving post apocalyptic world away. When difficulty is too low it can really break immersion and make games arguably worse because no situation feels really dangerous if you can one hit ko everything and you pretty much can not be killed.

You are supposed to believe that they survived the apocalypse. If you die 10 times per battle then the believability is very low.

How on earth do you die ten times in a single battle in The last of us outside of crushing difficulty. The game is very managable on hard if yu craft and search for ammo. For me it breaks immersion if recources are plentyful years after an apocalypse and mebeing a litteral bullet sponge. 



Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

DonFerrari on 17 December 2018
danasider said:
DonFerrari said:

It isn't requesting that it please EVERY type of consumer. It is one implementation that would please a lot of customers though. You are being disingenuous because your argument didn't achieve the point you wanted.

No need to resort to Ad hominem.

Using the word "EVERY" may have been hyperbole, but the same idea I've been arguing remains. Changing a niche gameplay style to appease a broader audience is only good if the dev wants to do it and sees it as something that won't ruin the gameplay they designed.

If the dev doesn't (which, after 5 games in the multiple series that birthed a new genre of game, it hasn't), then gamers should move onto a game/genera they like instead of complaining about not being able to get through these games.

It isn't ad hominem to say you are distorting replies because they deny your try of "no other medium this happen" and you recognize that by dropping it on your reply even if not saying it.

It doesn't change the gameplay style to have more stamina, damage dealt and less damage suffered on a EASIER mode. Made right that person would probably following similar rules and playstyle that you do but inside their own limitations.

Yes it's impossible that people are doing construtive criticism just because you don't want it to happen. And certainly everyone that were complain about how other games changed and don't met their needs aren't doing just the opposite and usually with holier-than-all attitude.

And sorry to tell you, but there are plenty of series that had 5 entries following a formula and had a big change, that is usually to prevent fatigue.

Qwark said:
DonFerrari said:

You are supposed to believe that they survived the apocalypse. If you die 10 times per battle then the believability is very low.

How on earth do you die ten times in a single battle in The last of us outside of crushing difficulty. The game is very managable on hard if yu craft and search for ammo. For me it breaks immersion if recources are plentyful years after an apocalypse and mebeing a litteral bullet sponge. 

I didn't say I or anyone dies 10 times per battle on Normal mode on TLOU. I said that if that was to happen it would break immersion much more. But yes you aren't supposed to find bullets lying around in anywhere anyway (not that most devs care about it), and certainly if you don't care or is worried about scarcity of your inventory you aren't feeling what the game is supposed to be. But what is considered scarce and how many times you die is changing for everyone.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

HoloDust on 18 December 2018
Hiku said:
HoloDust said:

1.) You suggest 50% enemy HP...that would be what I call wide scaling. Do that to Souls and I'd say at that point the whole feel of the game changes significantly. Souls is stamina managment game. It just might work with narrow scaling of stamina depletion rate: Novice - 0.8x; Adept - 1.0x; Expert - 1.2x. This would usually give you one more swing with the weapon as Novice or one less as Expert compared to Adept...but maybe even that is too wide of a range.

As for Fire emblem, I can't imagine it, i've never played Fire Emblem. ;)

But let's go with your example. They do just what you suggested. Then, for various reasons, game (and genre) becomes very popular and goes mass market, attracting lot of audience outside of its core audience. Then the next game does not get designed around original idea from the past, but around easy mode, to attract even more audience (and thus sales), and "hard" mode is slapped afterwards for core fans. It's success, attracting even more mass market audience and then eventually the next game does not have anything resembling original mechanisms.

This is what has been happing in the industry for so long that most AAA games these days are being designed and balanced for easy mode (labeled as normal), and then you have artificially hardened other modes. It is completely silly to expect that any dev will balance game for 4-5 different diificulties and preserve the same experience - they just don't want to waste money on such thing when probably 90%+ of their audience will play it on mode that they initially designed the game for (or one bellow that), and they will keep designing it as easy (aka "normal") since people not finishing games is one of major concerns for every AAA publisher.

This is what happened to WRPGs as a genre, not only in difficulty, but in complexity as well, to the point that these days you have pseudo action-RPGs like Horizon and AC: Odyssey (or even to some extent Witcher 3, though that's borderline case between pseudo action-RPG and acton-RPG to be argued further) being labeled as RPGs. AC: Oddyssey is particularly shining example of game made to be easy and "accessible" and then artificially slapped with (after success of BotW) so called "exploration mode" that should make it harder and more interesting - which doesn't work at all, since, among other things, you still have that bird activating annoying popup about target location you can't disable everytime you are near your target. Witcher 3 suffers from similar problem, rellying on quest markers and not having properly done quest directions to play completely without markers.

As someone noticed, nobody asks for as easy mode in Zelda (it's already too easy IMO) - there is one vision to game and game offers you ways to make it easier for yourself, if you have problems with its difficulty. But that's ingame, not some artificiall slider in the options. Souls does that as well. Gothics do that as well. So many other great games do that. In my honest opinion, difficulty options are mostly just devs not having knowedge or will to make proper difficulty designs inside of the actual game and publishers wanting more sales.

2.) As I said, I'm not completely against it, if it's fairly narrow scaling (some of my all time favorites, like Fallout 1/2 have it) - that way core mechanisms and design of the game will not be affected, and people who want just slightly easier or harder difficulty can enjoy that. But go wild, like AAA devs do, and inevitably, the whole game design suffers. Then again, I find most AAA games to be quite mediocre anyway, to be polite, so who am I to say anything about it.

1.) That would be a wide scale, and it may very well affect the feel of the game significantly.
But if someone enjoys the game that way, and wouldn't enjoy it on Normal, then that option is fine.
That's not why I gave that example though. It was an example of how an Easy mode can be implemented without affecting the Normal or Hard modes, and not 'creeping into every design decision'.

I understand the hypotheticals behind how this can affect future games in the franchise negatively. Though when we have little to no inside knowledge of why these decisions are made, it's easy to speculate over the cause, and also easy to be mistaken. For example, there are games that have never had any options for an easier experience that have still gotten "simplified" in future iterations, to make it accessible to more people.
For example, Street Fighter 3 was notoriously difficult to play, mainly due to the parry system, while Street Fighter 4 was made to be more casual friendly. And then Street Fighter V continued on that path and became even easier to play than SF4.

Since Street Fighter never had different difficultly modes for the way you control your characters (aside from CPU levels, but that's besides the point), we know for a fact that that's not what caused SF4 and SF5 to be more casual friendly.
But if it had those modes, it would be easy for people to mistakenly identify those as the cause for SF4 being more casual friendly.

My point there is that developers/publishers can come to these conclusions without there being an Easy mode in the previous game, that inspired the direction of the sequel.
Meaning that even games that do have an Easy mode could get a more casual friendly sequel for reasons that had nothing to do with the difficulty modes of the previous games. That too is possible.

So how do we know when an Easy mode has spawned a sequel that is overall easier? I don't know if there is any way to know that unless they tell us.
But that's why I asked if you could give me examples of how an Easy mode in a game has negatively impacted the Normal/Hard modes in the very same game.
Because that could perhaps be possible to identify, in the same way we can determine that the combo-assists in Tekken do not affect the way people play the game normally, by simply ignoring that option.

I don't think that would be wide scaling - depending on your build, you can have more stamina right from the start, which will essentially give you in very early game what I proposed. You use stamina for most of the things, running, figthing, blocking, dodging, so I consider Souls a stamina managment game for the most part and if anything, this is what could give slightly easier or harder feel to the game right off the bat - maybe 20% is too much, I don't know, maybe 10% is more than sufficient. Anyway, that was just suggestion, I'm actually glad that there's no such thing in game, cause there's really no need for it.

As for examples - I'm not sure if you're being serious at this point or not, cause I'm not sure I want to draw conclusion that you're believing that one game with easy mode can change things over night or that anyone implies that. But gather all the whining, "that and that % of players are not finishing games" stats, games being 'too complex", "too hard", "not accessible" over a period of time, and add publishers desire for more sales on top of that and you got whole genres that have been transformed to catter to mass market sensibilities. It's never one thing, and it's never over night, it's usually combination of iflux of new out-of-genre audience and publishers' desire to get more sales. This is the very thing that happened to C/W/RPGs, from once niche genre, that got slightly more exposure in late 90s/early 00s and then going AAA mainstream and creatively downhill ever since, recovering somewhat only in last few years with influx of games from smaller studios.

I have no intention of going deep into this, cause it's topic on its own, but if you are old as I am and been there to witness some genres being born, thriving for long time with dedicated audience and then diluted to the point of being shadows of their former selves when AAA publishers got their hands on them, there's this very unsettling feeling when people start asking for game that is actually opposite of everything that AAA is pushing and is sort of a big middle finger to them to get an easy mode. Cause that is how the slippery slope starts.

Lucklily, there are at least some devs that don't listen to that and flat out refuse to add it and explained in interviews why their games have only one difficulty. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/from-software-on-why-dark-souls-bloodborne-and-sek/1100-6459827/

I've seen some people already asking for easier difficulty mode in Sekiro, and given that Miyazaki said that it's "probably even more challenging than previous From games" maybe those people should stay away from it and play something else instead.



deltazero on 18 December 2018

Speaking from 1st hand experience, its an elitism/experience thing.


Most of the times optional difficulty selects do not bother me, for example playing DMC3 back in the day and being told to try an easier mode for dying meant I could just ignore it, but it meant plenty of people who would have never gotten past the first boss could enjoy the game with me and went on to play more games in the franchaise as well as replay the game at a higher difficulty.

Now on the other hand, a more recent experience with this is fire emblem awakening. I lent the game to a work collegaue and while FE is known for making hard decisions which could cost you units you have built up and learnt their backstories/grown attached to. He chose to play on the easiest mode where there is no permadeath and when I found out and questioned why he mentioned I prefer being able to "one shot everything without stress"

Now, while I didn't say anything afterwards I had two problems.

1. My elitism/ego or whatever was agitated since they were enjoying the game without effort or something stupid like that

2. I couldn't share the experience of that game since gameplay wise we were now playing two different games. The game he was now playing could have been found elsewhere and in a way had lost what made the fire emblem series special in the first place.
Changes in difficulty if done incorrectly can completely take away from the vision the developer had if done incorrectly. Fire Emblem turns from a turn based strategy to a turn based hack and slash.

Imagine if the Dark Knight (my favourite film) had a optional version you could watch which told a completely different story for example. I think this is the gripe people have with Dark Souls, the difficulty is the core of the game, making enemies easier to kill will change Dark Souls to a dynasty warriors game if done incorrectly

I will admit, both these reasons are fairly stupid and that I still would agree that optional difficulties would be best but they do have to be done right, games are an art in a way and the art can be lost if certain aspects are removed.

tl;dr I'm okay with optional difficulty, but apart from elitism, if difficulty is not done right it can take away from what made the game the game in the first place



DonFerrari on 18 December 2018
deltazero said:

Speaking from 1st hand experience, its an elitism/experience thing.


Most of the times optional difficulty selects do not bother me, for example playing DMC3 back in the day and being told to try an easier mode for dying meant I could just ignore it, but it meant plenty of people who would have never gotten past the first boss could enjoy the game with me and went on to play more games in the franchaise as well as replay the game at a higher difficulty.

Now on the other hand, a more recent experience with this is fire emblem awakening. I lent the game to a work collegaue and while FE is known for making hard decisions which could cost you units you have built up and learnt their backstories/grown attached to. He chose to play on the easiest mode where there is no permadeath and when I found out and questioned why he mentioned I prefer being able to "one shot everything without stress"

Now, while I didn't say anything afterwards I had two problems.

1. My elitism/ego or whatever was agitated since they were enjoying the game without effort or something stupid like that

2. I couldn't share the experience of that game since gameplay wise we were now playing two different games. The game he was now playing could have been found elsewhere and in a way had lost what made the fire emblem series special in the first place.
Changes in difficulty if done incorrectly can completely take away from the vision the developer had if done incorrectly. Fire Emblem turns from a turn based strategy to a turn based hack and slash.

Imagine if the Dark Knight (my favourite film) had a optional version you could watch which told a completely different story for example. I think this is the gripe people have with Dark Souls, the difficulty is the core of the game, making enemies easier to kill will change Dark Souls to a dynasty warriors game if done incorrectly

I will admit, both these reasons are fairly stupid and that I still would agree that optional difficulties would be best but they do have to be done right, games are an art in a way and the art can be lost if certain aspects are removed.

tl;dr I'm okay with optional difficulty, but apart from elitism, if difficulty is not done right it can take away from what made the game the game in the first place

That friend that played it on a different way if there was no such way he would drop the game very early and tell you he didn't like so you would have 0 conversation with him. The way he played at least you can talk about different experiences and common points, plus he may have liked the game enough to try it on a harder difficult.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

SvennoJ on 18 December 2018
deltazero said:

Speaking from 1st hand experience, its an elitism/experience thing.


Most of the times optional difficulty selects do not bother me, for example playing DMC3 back in the day and being told to try an easier mode for dying meant I could just ignore it, but it meant plenty of people who would have never gotten past the first boss could enjoy the game with me and went on to play more games in the franchaise as well as replay the game at a higher difficulty.

Now on the other hand, a more recent experience with this is fire emblem awakening. I lent the game to a work collegaue and while FE is known for making hard decisions which could cost you units you have built up and learnt their backstories/grown attached to. He chose to play on the easiest mode where there is no permadeath and when I found out and questioned why he mentioned I prefer being able to "one shot everything without stress"

Now, while I didn't say anything afterwards I had two problems.

1. My elitism/ego or whatever was agitated since they were enjoying the game without effort or something stupid like that

2. I couldn't share the experience of that game since gameplay wise we were now playing two different games. The game he was now playing could have been found elsewhere and in a way had lost what made the fire emblem series special in the first place.
Changes in difficulty if done incorrectly can completely take away from the vision the developer had if done incorrectly. Fire Emblem turns from a turn based strategy to a turn based hack and slash.

Imagine if the Dark Knight (my favourite film) had a optional version you could watch which told a completely different story for example. I think this is the gripe people have with Dark Souls, the difficulty is the core of the game, making enemies easier to kill will change Dark Souls to a dynasty warriors game if done incorrectly

I will admit, both these reasons are fairly stupid and that I still would agree that optional difficulties would be best but they do have to be done right, games are an art in a way and the art can be lost if certain aspects are removed.

tl;dr I'm okay with optional difficulty, but apart from elitism, if difficulty is not done right it can take away from what made the game the game in the first place

The irony is that Dark Knight is an alternate / modernized / fresh take on the Batman franchise tailored to the masses.

There are plenty games that have improved by appealing to mass appeal, take the Witcher for example.

How much is the 'correct' way to play a game part of the vision? Same could be said about movies. Interstellar was intended to be watched on 70mm IMAX. Should I be upset that the majority of people didn't take the effort to view it in one of the select 70mm movie theaters?



deltazero on 18 December 2018
SvennoJ said:

The irony is that Dark Knight is an alternate / modernized / fresh take on the Batman franchise tailored to the masses.

There are plenty games that have improved by appealing to mass appeal, take the Witcher for example.

How much is the 'correct' way to play a game part of the vision? Same could be said about movies. Interstellar was intended to be watched on 70mm IMAX. Should I be upset that the majority of people didn't take the effort to view it in one of the select 70mm movie theaters?

 

First of all thank you to both you and the above poster for taking the time to read my wall of text and secondly, don't get me wrong even I disagree with my points.

If anything I was just trying to explain the irrationaility while still owning up to it being irrational

Another point however which I've thought of thanks to your response could be the fear that if enough people prefer it then the series you originally liked due to its difficulty might change direction.

I know the Fire Emblem and Pokemon community were in disarray because of this, Pokemon having the item Exp Share which was then made un-optional in future games. 

And kind of going off topic, while other media of Batman still exist that cater to the original fans, if its success had caused the series to shift to only the masses, the original lovers of the series would feel left out.

An irrational fear but its another big arguement I see in forums 



DonFerrari on 18 December 2018
deltazero said:
SvennoJ said:

The irony is that Dark Knight is an alternate / modernized / fresh take on the Batman franchise tailored to the masses.

There are plenty games that have improved by appealing to mass appeal, take the Witcher for example.

How much is the 'correct' way to play a game part of the vision? Same could be said about movies. Interstellar was intended to be watched on 70mm IMAX. Should I be upset that the majority of people didn't take the effort to view it in one of the select 70mm movie theaters?

 

First of all thank you to both you and the above poster for taking the time to read my wall of text and secondly, don't get me wrong even I disagree with my points.

If anything I was just trying to explain the irrationaility while still owning up to it being irrational

Another point however which I've thought of thanks to your response could be the fear that if enough people prefer it then the series you originally liked due to its difficulty might change direction.

I know the Fire Emblem and Pokemon community were in disarray because of this, Pokemon having the item Exp Share which was then made un-optional in future games. 

And kind of going off topic, while other media of Batman still exist that cater to the original fans, if its success had caused the series to shift to only the masses, the original lovers of the series would feel left out.

An irrational fear but its another big arguement I see in forums 

Don't worry, it was brought before that several fans fear the slippery slope of they adding an optional easier mode and that end up being the way the game is designed in the future. But as also pointed the change in direction and simplification of a game may occur even without the optional and in that way it's even worse because you totally lost the original.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

SvennoJ on 18 December 2018
deltazero said:

First of all thank you to both you and the above poster for taking the time to read my wall of text and secondly, don't get me wrong even I disagree with my points.

If anything I was just trying to explain the irrationaility while still owning up to it being irrational

Another point however which I've thought of thanks to your response could be the fear that if enough people prefer it then the series you originally liked due to its difficulty might change direction.

I know the Fire Emblem and Pokemon community were in disarray because of this, Pokemon having the item Exp Share which was then made un-optional in future games. 

And kind of going off topic, while other media of Batman still exist that cater to the original fans, if its success had caused the series to shift to only the masses, the original lovers of the series would feel left out.

An irrational fear but its another big arguement I see in forums 

It's not irrational at all. I feel pretty left out with JJ Abrams vision for Star Trek.

Then again I also feel kinda left out in the Souls games. I like to explore the world and see all the art created for the game. However I just can't bring myself to pour so much time into their games anymore. I skipped DS3, did buy Bloodborne yet never started it. If there was an optional mode that takes less time I would still get to experience the art, just as people can watch a movie on Netflix instead of investing the time to go see it in D-Max 3D Dolby Atmos for the full experience. I'll be skipping the next game from from software.