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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Difficulty vs Accessibility: A responsibility for the developers, not for the players.

NightlyPoe said:
Y'know, I never understood why people thought Contra was that hard of a game. Half the kids in my neighborhood could beat it without much problem, and we were all under 10.

With the Konami code, anyone can beat it but with the standard 3 lives and 3 (I think) continues, it's much harder to make it to the end.



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NightlyPoe said:
SvennoJ said:

If they were all over 50 you would have a point ;)It's well established by now that you slow down as you get older. As a kid waiting 10 minutes for a bus felt like an eternity, going 160kp on the highway didn't feel very fast at age 18, now at age 46, going 100 feels pretty fast already. Same for video games, they all seem to move faster nowadays. For example: https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-not-just-you-time-really-does-speed-up-as-you-get-older-researcher-argues

So this one difficulty for all is a fallacy. Reaction time goes down as you age as well as how fast you perceive things. There are differences between humans of the same age as well of course but this you can simply see happen as you age. I still hope to be able to enjoy many video games into my 80s while not being restricted to puzzle games or walking simulators. Timing windows, movement / combat speed should be variable.

The average age of gamers is going up (currently around 35) and a new market is opening up soon. The retiring gamer with a comfy pension and plenty time to play video games!

Umm... Pretty sure I'm better at games now despite my decline.

Better in different ways, experience and patience help a lot. I just know I'm not competitive anymore at online twitch shooters. My experience and patience still lets me keep up in racing games, which also translates to rpgs and games like dark souls. Patience is most of the battle in the souls games. On the other hand, I can't drive without TCS anymore since my finger dexterity is not the same anymore. That's an assist not taking away from the game, although there are those hardcore games that want all assists banned from online races.




Nautilus said:
SvennoJ said:

Come on, I love Dark souls, played it through twice until I didn't feel like doing Ornstein and Smoug yet again in NG++, but the game is anything but balanced. I restarted after getting stuck in my first play through, 20 hours in. I had leveled the wrong things not really knowing what did what since the game doesn't explain much of anything and faced an insurmountable amount of souls needed to get the stats up I actually needed to use better equipment. Failure on my part for not reading a wiki first, or failure of the devs for not explaining the game mechanics? (It was my first souls game)

It took me another bunch of hours in my second attempt to figure out you could actually jump! I had to look up how to get to the lower depths since the door (near the dragon) simply looked like a painted on door to me and it never occurred to me to actually try it. It simply looked like a wall texture. The fight with the 2 dogs was extremely cheap. Zone in, immediately get rushed, track back all the way again, repeat. Until you figure out the 'trick' or 'cheat' dash up to the stairs in the back where the path finding can't get to you and chuck bombs from a safe spot. Had trouble with a fight, you could summon online help which usually came from someone already in NG+ slaying the boss in 5 seconds, leaving you feeling completely robbed of the experience.

On my second playthrough I had read some online tips, got the skeleton key and retrieved an early op sword which completely changed the game. One hit kills at the start instead of 3 or more hits turned the early game into a cake walk. That's not balanced, it's borderline insulting.

My best memories of Dark Souls are when I had a 15 minute long fight with a tower knight, wearing each other down and using the pillars in the room to stay alive. One time I got lost in the lower depths. I jumped down and hit a bonfire then had no clue where to go. It took hours of careful exploring, slowly learning the layout and how to tackle the enemies there. Same at the castle when I fell down to the bottom. It was very rewarding, yet after that the game never reached that balance again. Magic quickly got me over powered and the only stumble blocks where the boss fights which were simply bullet sponges against magic.

DS2 was hard at the beginning again, yet since I knew the mechanics I became op there as well and the rest of the game became easy with a couple vertical cliffs thrown in. The largely uneven difficulty and needing to grind to overcome the spikes is what turned me off the series.

Now if you have a game with adjustable difficulty levels, you can enjoy the whole game at your ability level! Turn it up when you feel unchallenged, turn it down when you hit a roadblock. Ultimately a game should do this automatically like an AI director. Oblivion tried this but got it wrong, making it almost impossible to don the first story quest later on while having common bandits walk around in glass armor costing 100 times more as what they were trying to steal lol.

Imo the main problem is the focus on achievements, achieving things, trophies, scores, part left overs from the coin op days, part feeding the ego of gamers. Games aren't a test of skill, they can be challenging but they shouldn't be about passing a preset bar. A good dungeon master adjusts the experience to be challenging but not frustrating. A narrow escape instead of die try again. Reward doing better instead of punishing doing badly.

Ever since online became a thing everyone has to compare themselves to the world. Who cares if your 1st or 632724th on some ranking board. Instead focus on personal improvements, your own journey through a game instead of passing the test set by the developers.

Anyway it's just a shame that there is no way I can recommend one my favorite games, Dark Souls, to any of my non gamer or casual gamer friends. They might like the setting and atmosphere but they'll never even get out of the starter dungeon. I cherish Dark Souls for its ambience, level design and subtle story telling, the game play was meh to often frustrating to very easy, all over the place.

Well, Im sorry that you had that experience, but thats simply not true.For example, I had neither the problems you just mentioned.Sure, I had more problems with some enemies than others, but other than that the experience was simply wonderful.

But that was exactly why I explicitly said it was critically aclaimed.Because the score average of the reviews given to the game is the closest thing we have to impartiality.Comparing personal experiences, in this case, is useless.Simply because one might find a determined experience horendous, while the other might think its the best thing ever.(Because opinions are like ass;Everyone has one)And before you say " Thats why it needs dificulty options!", I'll say that this exact problem goes back to the point I made in the thread.Its either financially impossible, due to having to rebalance the entire game, or its simply way too expensive.

The sentence in bold: And that's fine!Not every game is for everyone, and if one day one of your friends become more experienced with games, he will try it.Simple as that.

The fact that you didn't experienced it doesn't make it false.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari said:
Nautilus said:

Well, Im sorry that you had that experience, but thats simply not true.For example, I had neither the problems you just mentioned.Sure, I had more problems with some enemies than others, but other than that the experience was simply wonderful.

But that was exactly why I explicitly said it was critically aclaimed.Because the score average of the reviews given to the game is the closest thing we have to impartiality.Comparing personal experiences, in this case, is useless.Simply because one might find a determined experience horendous, while the other might think its the best thing ever.(Because opinions are like ass;Everyone has one)And before you say " Thats why it needs dificulty options!", I'll say that this exact problem goes back to the point I made in the thread.Its either financially impossible, due to having to rebalance the entire game, or its simply way too expensive.

The sentence in bold: And that's fine!Not every game is for everyone, and if one day one of your friends become more experienced with games, he will try it.Simple as that.

The fact that you didn't experienced it doesn't make it false.

The opposite is also true though.



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

Ka-pi96 said:
Nautilus said:

Well, Im sorry that you had that experience, but thats simply not true.For example, I had neither the problems you just mentioned.Sure, I had more problems with some enemies than others, but other than that the experience was simply wonderful.

But that was exactly why I explicitly said it was critically aclaimed.Because the score average of the reviews given to the game is the closest thing we have to impartiality.Comparing personal experiences, in this case, is useless.Simply because one might find a determined experience horendous, while the other might think its the best thing ever.(Because opinions are like ass;Everyone has one)And before you say " Thats why it needs dificulty options!", I'll say that this exact problem goes back to the point I made in the thread.Its either financially impossible, due to having to rebalance the entire game, or its simply way too expensive.

The sentence in bold: And that's fine!Not every game is for everyone, and if one day one of your friends become more experienced with games, he will try it.Simple as that.

I always find this line of thinking hilarious. "Let's not compare our personal experiences because they're useless, but let's compare other people's personal experiences because... reasons".

Reviews aren't impartial or objective. They're just opinions. And they certainly aren't worth any more than other people's opinions just because they're posted on a website or in a magazine. Actually, I'd argue they're worth less than your own personal opinions. I mean, if you're debating something then surely the opinions of the people actually involved in the debate are far more relevant than the opinions of some rando.

Why is it funny?Reviews have been a thing since forever.It's made from people that dedicate their times to seeing the quality of a product so we have more information about it and make an informed purchase.I don't see how funny that is.

If the discussion was about your own personal experience about difficulties and such then yeah, reviews would hold small weight compared to your own personal opinion.But thats the point: It's not about you.We are discussing about how difficult games should remain unchanged for their games, affecting everyone.In this context, the aggregate of "official" reviews are more important, because they better represent the overall public opinion of a game.Or are you saying that your opinion alone is more important than hundreds of one to the general public, and we should just ignore them because they are trash?

Otherwise I could easily say: "I am of the opinion that hard games are the best and no easy game should exist.There, my opinion is absolute.End of discussion".And, as you should have guessed, that's not how a discussion works.



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

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Nautilus said:
DonFerrari said:

The fact that you didn't experienced it doesn't make it false.

The opposite is also true though.

If he experienced then the game have it. Unless you are claiming he is lying.

Unless he said everyone experience it, then you not experiencing could invalidate his point.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

DonFerrari said:
Nautilus said:

The opposite is also true though.

If he experienced then the game have it. Unless you are claiming he is lying.

Unless he said everyone experience it, then you not experiencing could invalidate his point.

I'm not the only one that experienced it. When I was looking online for help it was common to read that magic was unbalanced in dark souls. Perhaps if you only use sword and shield the game might be very balanced, it wasn't for my play style. As a result I didn't enjoy any of the boss battles and pretty much always had to summon online help (in the form of a tank) to keep the boss busy (or kill it in a couple blows if it was online help from someone way ahead)

Dark souls 2 was better with the bosses, or I was more prepared this time and had more of a balanced player (or rather over powered by grinding early to stay ahead of the difficulty curve) Anyway the souls games were good because of the exploration and world building, combat only sporadically felt satisfying leaving it up to the player to figure out the sweet spot to be in on the not all that smooth difficulty curve. A responsibility of the player to play it 'right'



SvennoJ said:
DonFerrari said:

If he experienced then the game have it. Unless you are claiming he is lying.

Unless he said everyone experience it, then you not experiencing could invalidate his point.

I'm not the only one that experienced it. When I was looking online for help it was common to read that magic was unbalanced in dark souls. Perhaps if you only use sword and shield the game might be very balanced, it wasn't for my play style. As a result I didn't enjoy any of the boss battles and pretty much always had to summon online help (in the form of a tank) to keep the boss busy (or kill it in a couple blows if it was online help from someone way ahead)

Dark souls 2 was better with the bosses, or I was more prepared this time and had more of a balanced player (or rather over powered by grinding early to stay ahead of the difficulty curve) Anyway the souls games were good because of the exploration and world building, combat only sporadically felt satisfying leaving it up to the player to figure out the sweet spot to be in on the not all that smooth difficulty curve. A responsibility of the player to play it 'right'

When you hear "balanced", you need to think "in what sense"?

Magic is unbalanced in DS because you can eat bosses without taking any risk.



DonFerrari said:
Nautilus said:

The opposite is also true though.

If he experienced then the game have it. Unless you are claiming he is lying.

Unless he said everyone experience it, then you not experiencing could invalidate his point.

So you are saying that Im lying?*sigh*

That's some weak argument dude.Instead of using real arguments, you use "But his opinion is different!" approach, so to say.This is a discussion, not to check if you individually are ok with that.And you haven't presented one single evidence to back your claim.

Simply put, if he dosen't like it, the game isn't for him, and he has no right to request an easier/harder game.Simple as that.



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1

Ka-pi96 said:
Nautilus said:

Why is it funny?Reviews have been a thing since forever.It's made from people that dedicate their times to seeing the quality of a product so we have more information about it and make an informed purchase.I don't see how funny that is.

If the discussion was about your own personal experience about difficulties and such then yeah, reviews would hold small weight compared to your own personal opinion.But thats the point: It's not about you.We are discussing about how difficult games should remain unchanged for their games, affecting everyone.In this context, the aggregate of "official" reviews are more important, because they better represent the overall public opinion of a game.Or are you saying that your opinion alone is more important than hundreds of one to the general public, and we should just ignore them because they are trash?

Otherwise I could easily say: "I am of the opinion that hard games are the best and no easy game should exist.There, my opinion is absolute.End of discussion".And, as you should have guessed, that's not how a discussion works.

It's always funny when people try to use review scores to "prove" something. I mean, you're the one that said opinions are like assholes. Well a bunch of assholes are just as bad (probably worse in actuality) than a single asshole. Of course their weight is subjective to, so if some people want to hold them up as the holy grail then they're welcome to (they should also expect to be mocked for that though. Pretty sure there was a thread a little while ago about somebody that based all their purchasing decisions on review scores, needless to say they got mocked a bit for that.), but to me they're worth absolutely fuck all. The opinion of any random user on this site would be worth more to me than every single reviewer put together.

Besides, the whole review score angle is kind of moot anyway considering you can like something and still want more options in it, it doesn't have to be one or the other. That's even the whole point of DLC. People like something but still want more options. The lack of those options in the first place doesn't make them dislike the game (usually at least, some people do get pissed, and often rightly so, when stuff that is released later that they think could've been in the base game), and their addition later also doesn't make them dislike the game (again, usually at least. Pay to win stuff and predatory DLC practices are good ways to get people to stop liking a game).

And thats the thing: Reviews are held up in high esteem.Otherwise they wouldn't be discussed in the first place, or people wouldn't get mad at them.Why?Because people(in general) base some of their purchase decisions on them.Why? Well, nobody wants to buy something they don't like, and end up throwing their hard earned money away. Isn't it obvious? I don't understand how you can't grasp that, especially since you are not a new member.

Of course that you end up favoring someone or some other channel more, either because they explain things better or simply because their tastes align better to your own(and thus you can be more precise on whether you will like that game or not) but overall, yeah reviews are taken seriously(outside of those awful reviews, in which the reviewer clearly dosen't know what he is speaking about), and outside of extreme cases on which people base sorely on one metric to see if they will like a game, people use them to inform themselves and make a decision.Never saw anyone being mocked for that.

And finally, you touched the exact point on why your arguments are weak or flawed: You are not presenting any of them.No evidence.You are just actually presenting your own opinion, as clearly shown in your first paragraph(People being mocked because they use reviews to help them better purchase games lol).You think that all games should have more "options" because it would make more gamers buy them, and yet difficult games are selling more and more.

And what's that about DLC?That doesn't even make sense in the context of the discussion.... of course people would want more of a game they like.What does that have anything to do with difficulty?

Edit: Forgot to mention that Dark Souls even kind of have an easy mode: That being the ability to let someone join your game and help you, which makes things super easy.I mean, even if the word "options" is used in the wrong way in this discussion, Dark Souls, or most hard games usually have plenty of "options" for players having difficulties to beat those odds.

Personally I hate the multiplayer, it breaks the game in my opinion, but I respect the developer option to leave it there.



My (locked) thread about how difficulty should be a decision for the developers, not the gamers.

https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=241866&page=1