Why do people get upset by OPTIONAL difficult assists?

[DonFerrari]

danasider said:

SvennoJ said:

That's where I disagree with you, difficulty is a form of accessibility. The actual body is not changed by playing in 60fps on a hand-held? Why would it be changed with visible difficulty options? It's already in the game, master key + drake sword -> easy mode. The game can be played and enjoyed in many different ways. Actually the most disruptive thing in Dark Souls was summoning a co-op partner that practically one hit killed the boss I was struggling with. Was that the original vision? Anti climax.

Dark souls vision is that of figuring things out for yourself, An auto map would ruin it, quest markers would ruin it, qte prompts would ruin it, however extra health (or extra flasks), damage modifiers, speed modifiers will not ruin it. Nor would explaining how to jump for example. Going onto the web to find easy mode kinda ruins it as it's too easy to see spoilers. Dark souls already has a difficulty curve, all people ask is to have an option to lower the start point of the curve (which you can already do by accessing a wiki, it's in the game). Plus how would the game be ruined if you have an option to retry a boss fight right from where you entered instead of back to the last bonfire.

You're definitely entitled to your opinion, but I agree that this is a point we disagree on.

Dark Souls (and Bloodborne/Demon Souls) is about figuring things out for yourself, sure. But that is just a small part of it's allure. The exploration of everything from the world to the gameplay systems is put on the gamer instead of the game as a means of getting you into the mindset that you have to play with a critical mind. You have to worry about death around every corner unlike other action games that arm the player with loads of hp and god like powers.

The higher threshhold of difficulty is just as defining of the vision as the "figure it yourself out" style of game play. These things are used to ramp up the adrenaline and make the player really pay attention to the game's environments, enemy patterns, etc.

Prepare to Die is the series slogan for a reason. The developers want you to face challenges, dig deep, and overcome them, even knowing full well you are going to face failure a lot before finding that success. And the payoff is unlike anything in other games. It's not only adrenaline pumped ride, but the payoff is relief and pride. I'm not saying I don't enjoy other action games, but I have enjoyed them a lot less after Bloodborne, because I don't get that feeling when fighting a boss. In fact, there are a lot of games I don't even die in at all or only a few times so any sense of significance to how you play is diminished. And with games, how to get through content is more important than what the content is, because gameplay is the most important defining feature of the medium. So is the level of immersion, another thing which would be severely affected by the change of flow due to giving player's relief.

So yeah, that sense of dread/adrenaline/relief and that payoff would be ruined since the risk and impact of dying would be lessened. Options aren't a terrible thing...unless it goes against the integrity of the developer's design and vision. Handicaps in a game like Dark Souls is exactly that, because how to get through the game is way more important than getting through the content. If it were played with those "accessibility options" (though I'd argue that is a loose term for basically completely changing the gameplay in a case like this), the player wouldn't even be playing the same game. But that's just my opinion.

I'll tell you that the only thing I felt from Souls and Bloodborne was utter boredom from the choir repeat of the same level until memorizing route, movements and timing. About 0 enjoyment and pride after clearing the boses. Even Nioh felt similar. Now GoW I felt pleasure in retrying several times some of the boses and clearing half the game on level 1 on Gime Fod of War. But if masochism is a form of pleasure for some, who am I to judge?