That sounds like a good deal!

Right, so this kind of thing showcases a gross misunderstanding for what difficulty actually is in video games and why difficulty modes can actually be a problem.

Your understandable issue is that you've learned that difficulty is something as inconsequential to a gaming experience as something like resolution, largely because it's been treated as such by so many games and you've been conditioned because of that. You think it's about ego. It isn't. That's where the disconnect lies, because difficulty is not a badge of honor. With Dark Souls for example, not only do I not think it should be made easier, but I don't think it should be made harder either. Not on the first play through.

What you fail to understand is that in an interactive media like a video game, difficulty is fundemental to the way a player experiences a world. As integral as dialog, setting, color pallet, and story. Changing any one of these things fundementally impacts the way a player experiences the world, and that's my problem with difficulty modes in certain games.

You've probably heard of the very pretentious term "ludonarrative dissonance." If you haven't, it's meant to describe a disconnect a player can feel when what is being experienced mechanically conflicts with the story being told. The problem with lowering the difficulty in a game like Dark Souls is that it creates disonance where there was none, which makes for an objectively inferior experience.

Difficulty is as integral part of the story in video games as shot composition is in movies. Again, games are an interactive media. What sets them apart from every other media is that players have presence. You're aren't a voyeur looking at someone else's experience - you're experiencing something yourself. Because of that, video games have the unique ability to comminicate adversity in a way that literally no other form of media can.

When you are saying you want to play a game on easy because you don't have the time or because maybe the game demands a higher skill level than you currently possess or worst of all because you just want to experience the story, what you're essentially doing is robbing that game of its ability to communicate a fundementally and exclusively unique aspect of video games. In which case, again, watch a let's play.

You may think this is an elitist attitude, and hell maybe it is, but on the contrary what you're asking for is coming from an extremely entitled attitude. You're asking for a game to compromise itself to conform to your schedule. A common rebuttle is a player should be able to sculpt their own experience, but the truth is you absolutely shouldn't.

You shouldn't be given free reign to do anything that compromises the core experience on the first playthrough. In the same way that you shouldn't be able to adjust difficulty in a game like Dark Souls, you also shouldn't be able to play as a giant pink dildo the entire game, or play with all of the dialog changed to cave speak so that it's easier to understand.

In the same way that Shakespeare shouldn't be simplified in language because a core aspect of his work is how he uses language to communicate things that simply could not be communicated with more simple writing, neither too should Dark Souls. If that makes you angry, you're being entitled. Art demands a giving artist and a giving audience. Miyazaki put in the work to craft a compelling and complex experience that demands reciprocated work from his audience.

If you don't want to put in that work to experience his games, that's perfectly fine. Here's the thing though, you don't need to play the game. With Shakespeare, you don't need to experience his writing. It's not incumbant upon anyone to allow for everyone to comfortably experience their work. There's no shame in playing something easier or reading something simpler. Not everything is made for everyone, and not everything needs to be experienced by everyone. If you don't have the time to play something like Dark Souls, there's no shame in putting it off until later. There are plenty of shorter, compelling games. There are plenty of easier, compelling games. (Hyper Light Drifter is an excellent alternative, for example)

Play something else until you're ready to experience Dark Souls, or any other game of this ilk. Or don't, in which case don't play this. But complaining that you don't get to because games should be compromised to cater to you is incredebly entitled. This attidude of "I, the paying customer, deserve to be able to experience anything I want at my own pace and leisure! It's my devine right as a consumer!" is entitled. You shouldn't, and games like Dark Souls are better off for that.

Thanks for the though at response.

But there seems to be a difference between what I communicated and what you understood. First, I don't really fell compeled to play DS, I don't have the time or wish to play this type of vg anymore. Played a lot of frustrating and hard games decades back. Now to dedicate a lot of time and effort into improving in a game it demands that I really appreciate the game, and I haven't found that when I tried DS for like 2 or 3h.

I'm not even demand a easy breeze through experience in DS.

If you look at some of my previous answer I was talking about a "needle" on the experience that would tailor the diffult to your ability in a way that someone that is pretty skillfull and dedicated fells the challenge, but someone that is neither fell similar challenge and reward when clearing the challenges (but challenges that he may overcome).

About shakespeare, sorry but we have had several "rewritings", plays and movies on its work that brought it to a language that someone not as cult as expected could understand. And although there are words that are perfect to sumarize a concept or feeling and maybe you'll lose a little when simplifying you can still make it comprehensible and simpler by using more words form a more common vocabulary. And of course you aren't demanded to experience the "lessened" form. Although I find it very hard that you or most are reading Shakespeare the way it was written in the original. Because vocabulary changed and ortography as well. So it probably have gone through some adaptation, same as the translations that it received to other languages (and the best ones comes from great writers that are translating the feeling instead of the pure words - as a regular translator would do).

Anyway I'm not even demanding that DS devs make it easier or anything like that. What I'm saying is that they could do that without really making the game any less to the ones that already play it, and that demanding that the devs don't ever do that is the elitistic part. If the dev decides to keep the way they are, they are free for it, and the sales will keep around what they are on the dedicated userbase.

I think Dark Souls is one of the few games where the constants are as important as the variables. The linearity of the difficulty actually makes the game a lot better, because once you finally get past the learning curve you feel this huge sense of attachement to the game, but you also feel like you've passed a milestone in a community of gamers who've gone through the same thing. It's like a rite of passage.

I mean, I still do.

Even if a developer believes in an idea, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Sakamoto believed in using an inferior controller layout for Other M for example. Cases like these are why we critique games in the first place.

I haven't played a Dark Souls game so I can't speak on it. I have played and beaten some of the most challenging games from the NES era to the 7th gen, though. I've ever played a few " broken" games. What the developer intended and what we get aren't always one in the same.

I can appreciate a hard game like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Ori, or Super Meat Boy if the controls are so tight, every death is my fault. I despise games that are just poorly made and death are the result of unfair AI, sloppy design, or broken gameplay. Sometimes, in a game I love, I replay them on harder difficulties. I even bought Dragon's Dogma DA for the harder content. I'm personally not looking for an easy way out. I just want to enjoy my $60 purchase.

Nothing worse than buying a game and only seeing 5% of it.

Personally never bothered me how others experience a game. I remember Game Sharks being used by a friend to blow through old RPGs with no grinding or leveling because all they wanted was the story. I could argue that is "wrong" but it didn't prevent me from playing it how I wanted.

I like Demons' Souls and all its successors because I enjoy that style of challenge. If the developers don't want levels of difficulty that is fine, but it is also fine if they do. I beat Horizon on normal with maybe one or two deaths (both my fault) and was fine with it. The harder and easier modes introduced later are fine, and I'll likely go back someday and play it on hard because I enjoy that.

And from some friends telling there are several bugs on DS and other games from the dev that will make the game even harder due to those deaths that aren't your fault. But for some that is even better because it will challenge you more.

Players shouldn't have the choice to play a compromized version of a game created by the devs. I'm not a "more options are always better" guy, so that won't work with me. Players don't need an an easier difficulty. They need an easier game, or to get better at the one they're currently playing. At least in cases like DS where the difficulty is an integral part of the experience. I hold no sympathy. Like I said, no one needs to play every game, and no game needs to make itself playable to every person.

And it totally is the same thing. At least, it addresses the same core problem, that being that a developer shouldn't get a pass on any choice they make in a game just because they personally believe it's the right choice.