twintail said:
Choice isnt really decided by what you want (just as ppl who do want the choice. Its ultimately decided by how the game is concieved and made and I think compromised is a pretty subjective quality here. Would you somehow enjoy the series less if they had always had an option to make the game more managable way in certain ways (not easy), but you played on the original difficulty? There is no denying that Souls is one of those games about overcoming adversity. But does providing something easier take that away? Someone could easily have the same gratification of overcoming the odds with something easier. You still have the same gratification from playing it the way you feel it should be played. No one loses here. Of course it depends entirely on how the dev does this. Making everything killable in 1 hit is obviously not the way to go about it. Maybe packs of creatures just have 1 less creature and thats all that changes. Yeah, maybe easir for you, but not nessecarily the same for someone else. But I'm just playing devils advocate here. I think offering players something that can help get them into the experience is a good idea whether it's a difficulty or class or something. However I equally don't care whether it were to happen or not. If From believes in the way the current Souls experience works then of course I support that. Devs should make the games they want to make. |
Everything is subjective. No point bringing up the obvious. It doesn't make my argument any weaker.
And yes, it would bother me. The option being available is the issue. Here's an example. What if Horizon to have Aloy dress in a sexy bunny outfit? And when you wore it, NPCs would make pervy comments about how sexy she looks, and she would blush and act embarassed.
Would that bother me, even though it's just an option and I personally don't have to ever use it? Obviously. It shouldn't be an option at all.
And you're immensely oversimplifying what the difficulty in dark souls communicates. It's more than just the game being difficult. It's difficult in very specific an nuanced ways, and you have to familiarize yourself with those mechanics in a very specific way to get through the game, and interacting with those mechanics communicates something that cannot be communicated with different mechanics.
This is exactly why I brought up the Shakespeare comparison. People don't enjoy shakespeare because his work is difficult to read. They like it because his words are poetic and have subtext, and simplifying or changing the the language in any way fundementally changes his plays for the worse.
This is the point I'm making with difficulty in all games, let alone dark souls. It's not just "easy" and "hard." Making the game easier fundementally changes the mechanics. It fundementally changes the "subtext" of interactivity in a way that is detrimental to the game's quality. You are losing something, and that something isn't just "the struggle." It's not about gratification at all. It's about what's being conveyed.
If you're playing dark souls purely because you want gratification, play something else. There are plenty of game that will make you feel good after beating them that are easier than dark souls. Dark Souls isn't good because it's hard. It's good because of how its hard, and you can't keep that while making the game easier.
Devs can do whatever they want, but again, this is why we have games criticism. This isn't about whether devs have creative freedom. It's about developers making good game design choices. Adding an easy mode to a game like Dark Souls is a poor game design choice, whether From believes in it or not. Anything that can possibly cause a situation where a player is not being lead to the best play scenario is poor game design, and that includes unecessary options.
