New Horizon Zero Dawn Update introduces "Story Difficulty'

[DonFerrari]

Wright said:

DonFerrari said:

The problem, from where I know, is that Souls (paraphrasing Hidetaka Miyazaki himself here) aren't "difficult for the sake of difficultness", but rather, the director envisioned a game on which the player would find satisfaction in overcoming hard obstacles. That's the whole point.

Every screen and enemy position has been carefully planned (at least on the original Demon's Souls and Dark Souls), it's path meticulously branched and generally giving the player a lost sense of direction so that they can feel and explore at their own pace. It's up to the player to realize that there are several areas they're not supposed to go in yet, largely because of the difficult spike. Nothing forbids the player to explore the cemetery right at the start of Dark Souls, next to Firelink Shrine, but any cautious player would suddenly realize it's better not to meddle there yet; however, the area is there for them if they want.

This whole sense of pervasiveness is made by fixing one specific point of challenge; something players must try to overcome. It's obviously not a game for everyone, but it's not made like that for any elitist sense or any other reason; it's because the whole games are designed with that vision in mind. Adding a difficult mode, let's say, that makes enemies deal 95% less of damage and the player have twice the HP would void the whole point, as the player can breeze even in parts the developer expects a more seasoned player to come later, thus screwing up most of the design. They could also implement a difficult that entirely rearranges enemy/item/equipment position, but why would them? It's not how they conceived the game at all, and that requires far more time and resources.

I don't really mind more difficulty modes, at all. The problem is that they're absolutely pointless in Souls games specifically; not for elitism, not for any bragging sense of challenge, but because every design decision poured into these games is thrown immediately out of the window in favor of a lesser experience. Yes, trust me, being able to breeze through Dark Souls would make it infinitely more boring, because the sense of progression would be entirely broken.

And still, there are invincibility or easy mods for Souls in PC, so there's that.

I appreciate your input Wright.

But you know that this isn't totally impossible to overcome right? The problem is really the level of the challenge, taking 20x less damage and having 2x the life, making it 40x harder to die is really a strech.

But having natural adapting difficult is possible.

Good games (like mario that doesn't even had any difficult choice mode when I played them) evolve the difficult along the game and you master while you play. Soul is basically made to screw you over and over. So allowing for adaptative difficult where it can keep the areas you aren't supposed to go at same original difficult, but the natural (but unkown at the first time) path easier enough for someone less skilled to have a similar challenge as someone good at the game (so fail several times, but possible to clear with some dedication) could be made and meet the idea of challenge while being acessible.

I have no interest in the game itself so I don't really bother with it or its difficult, as I have passed through my phase of wanting really challenging games when I had from 8 to 15y, that being in the 90's. Now I want to have challenge and fun (mostly fun). So I'll play crushing on UC and enjoy it for the most part (and cursing from time to time) and doing golden laps on GT, at the same time playing SFIV on easy to normal difficult. I just can't justify playing a hard game for the sake of being hard and rewarding anymore, I have too much games and too little time to dedicate so much for a game like Souls (but bought it to support the dev anyway)