if enjoying a challenge makes me elitists then so be it, i in no way think that i am a better gamer for doing so, but if thats what you think of it then go ahead.

to youre second argument, i am worried that they will dumb down stuff like the level desing (hidden traps for example, like the floor falling apart, or narrow bridges with traps that could make you fall etc) , i doubt they would change the level design to accomodate two difficulties, but if they can do it then so be it, that is my worry, that they could affect the hard difficutly by having an easy difficulty.

Ugh, casuals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMU41taZJLw

The souls games are in essence a very well implemented puzzle. They require thought and planning and execution.

Making an easy or normal mode would be the same as if a rubick's cube had an easy mode, or driving on the highway had an easy mode.

The easy mode is just running blindly and dying, and then restarting.
The hard mode is anticipating what's around the corner and staying alive.

EDIT: I see someone talking about the dragon on the bridge. (also I believe you're talking about demon's souls because in dark souls you respawn right there)

Well, had you been paying attention to
A) the way up to the bridge, you see both dragons on a perch among smoldering corpses
B) when reaching the bridge, hearing loud flapping sounds and seeing the dragon fly over to the bridge

You might have had a good chance at realizing that the dragon follows where you go, and you have enough time to sprint the bridge after it returns to the perch.

The point is, In a souls game, your environment is important. It's not just pretty impotent scenery like in most games. If you see a fire torched room, chances are, you'll probably deal with some fire thing. If you see a lot of dead bodies, there might be something there. On top of which, you have all these messages from players who actually already died, usually telling you what to do, or seeing ghosts in their final moments.

Easy mode: messages from other players, ghosts, no soul loss from dying
Normal mode: messages from players, ghosts
Hard mode: no messages or ghosts, xp loss, level restart on death

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.

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.

The game doesn't have sold that much to create such a mass of blind fanboys.

These are too hard for me. I'm serious, I can't enjoy platformers because they are too difficult.

The point of the game is too keep you on you're toes, to constantly look for traps. I understand people can't enjoy that, but I do enjoy it. It's like some people enjoy horror movies and others not.

But the point is, I do not try to change Super Meat Boy or Donkey Kong, because I don't like them. I just don't play them. So far nobody has really said how to even make an easy mode. As you described, there are insta-death-traps. How does an easy mode works for them? If you just keep them, but make the enemies simpler to beat, the traps will be even more frustrating, as the difference is bigger. Remove the traps for easy mode? The game will feel different. Monkey Island 2 had an easy mode, but there were just riddles missing. The easy mode was cutting out part of the game. The same would probably happen to Souls. And really, who would play a Souls game, if it had such an easy mode, but doesn't already now.

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.

Exactly. just leave the hard modes available from start and no one would complain.

Have you played Astro Boy: The Omega factor? Truly an overlooked classic. Made by Treasure, and possibly their best work. On its normal difficulty it's challenging. On it's hard difficulty, it's brutal. On its easy difficulty it's a walk in the park.

The cool thing is that when I got it, I was about 19, and my little brother was about five. I beat the game, and I loved it, so I gave it to him to check out. I played on normal, and then hard. He played on easy. I enjoyed the challenge and the old school nostalgia, he enjoyed the colorful characters and simply destroying roomful of enemies.

Point is there isn't one way to enjoy a game. It's not "if you don't enjoy a challenge you can't play dark souls". Maybe other people can potentially enjoy the game in another way, with a few small tweaks that would take next to no development time. And if so, why not? More people have more fun, and they get more money to make sequels. Win-win-win.

How about this?

Hard mode: No hints

Normal Mode: Signs/hints that alert what is coming (Danger: Arrows ahead)

Easy Mode: Alert what is coming and hint to overcome it (Danger: Arrows ahead. Avoid Left door)