Why Souls games shouldn't have an easy or normal mode

[vivster]

estebxx said:

vivster said:

This seems to be the main argument against making things easier.

I never understood that. If that was true there wouldn't even be hard modes in games. Hard modes are designed to challenge players. I haven't yet seen a hard mode in a game that was not challenging. And all these games also included an easy mode that was so far from the hard mode as possible. So where does this fear come from? I mean hell, there are even games that patch in an even harder mode than was previously designed because people demanded it. Does that mean easier modes will become harder? Of course it doesn't.

What did people do in older times when there was no way to patch in challenges? They made their own challenges by placing artificial constraints on their gameplay. Why do gamers who like challenges need to be reliant on a game to make it challenging for them? Demanding for a game to be more challenging from the get go is just as selfish as demanding games to be easy. With the exception that less skilled gamers can't make games easier while skilled gamers can make every game as challenging as they want.

i will explain you why in the souls games is a little bit different:

the level design, its done to add a lot od difficulty without the need of enemies just the level itself, sens fortress in Dark Souls is a good example the place is filled with traps, in one moment you are being chased by a huge rock sliding down the path behind you (like indiana jones) then you see a door to youre left and you go there to avoid the rock, and when you enter the door you activate a trap that will shoot arrows at you and chances are that you will die, another example is an elevator that instantly kills you if you go to the third fool, or a bunch of narrow bridges that have giant axes swinging arround which you must avoid and time correctly or you are dead, i dont know how you would change this in an easy mode without changing the level desing (especially the bridge part).

i have no problem with an easy mode if they are able to make two level designs in order to acomodate two difficulties, but i doubt that they would put so much work fo that.

I'll open with the thing I edited in my last post which I think sums up the matter perfectly.

"Which is where your thread title fails.

You say: I don't want games to become less challenging.

Thread title and OP say: I don't want lesser skilled people to enjoy my games.

So your fear isn't that a game becomes more inclusive but that the devs fuck up the hard mode. Which is a completely different matter."

 

I think you have the wrong assumption here. No one is asking for a kiddie mode where you can't die ever. You seem to only know the two extremes between very hard and very easy. Believe me, even just making the health bar double as big an the potions double as effective goes a very long way. Then you could reduce the negative effects of dying. All this can be done with a push of a switch without affecting anything ingame. Yes, people will die due to mean traps and the way the game is designed. But if they're not completely brain dead they will only fall once for a trap. That's the charm of the game. I mean look at Minesweeper. It also has instant failure states that are not the players fault. Yet it's not described as a very difficult game. What makes it difficult is the timer.