this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
973 points (97.6% liked)
Microblog Memes
5863 readers
3714 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a way... that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demon's Souls - Sekiro, but that doesn't change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don't need to make, or experience?
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole "participating in the zeitgeist" thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesn't have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit "putting your foolish ambitions to rest". If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without "learning the attack patterns of the monsters", and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? There's an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
If all you really wanted was to just... experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube let's play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
I'll also add, that stuff doesn't go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. It's what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lil' Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I don't think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didn't realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the "Dark Souls saved my life" people, who might've picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and "fragment the user base".
So, I was there, missing it. Though this doesn't apply to elden ring, as that came out after I changed my work life.
The conversation was not simply about the difficulty and moves. Like, most of the conversations happening around me were about the lore, what people thought was happening considering X, Y, and Z, etc. The time the difficulty, mechanics, etc., took the spotlight, was over in a week or so, and mostly relegated to people asking for help with one thing, or another, new found tactics, and speed run methods. So it, fairly rapidly, evened out. Even if you look at YT videos about those games, at least a similar amount are focused on the lore, as the mechanics, though those were initial chatter. They basically only came up in a a month or so as a broad statements of difficulty, or when some new trick was found, until it circulated. There was easily enough to have be an active part of those conversations. Much more than "Oh, you know my work schedule, don't have time".
That stuff doesn't go away online. However, in person, with the exception of hardcore fans, it definitely does fade away. Occasionally something will be brought up in a bout of nostalgia, or in comparison to something contemporary, but it does fade away.
You truly do not understand the ways in which I, and many others. enjoy things, if you think this is the same. This statement leads me to believe that many perspectives you do not hold are completely alien to you.
Your anecdotal experience is not worth more than mine either, and my suggestions do not force themselves upon you.
Well alright, I'm choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, I've put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.
In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you don't select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldn't really work.
And in the latter half of this comment (start at "But I also think games are art"), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasn't been added, and wouldn't be the same experience.
To add to that final point, the reason I don't want others to play an easy mode isn't because I'm a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know I'm a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would "break the game itself" in Miyazaki's words) and think that's all there was.
I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like it's frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone who's on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not "getting it". And it would be more of a loss for them than me. It's just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadn't had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?
90% calling you names? in the last 1/4 I brought up how it is weird to be bothered by the experience of others, when they don't affect you, then pushed for a reasoning of it, by laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was. I used the word weird twice, and it was in relationship to the behavior, not the person. My guy, you are way too sensitive, like you imagined something isn't there, if this is really how you viewed that comment.
There is more to scaling that just HP/Damage. It isn't that great of a challenge to add in more time for response, and reduce pattern complexity so you don't have memorize as much, or for as long. This is how many FPS games, Fighting games, and RTS games have done it for decades. No one bemoans Quake for having something other than nightmare, or Mortal Combat for having an easy option. Hell, in Sekiro, giving more time to respond for parries/blocks, and reducing the number needed, in order to execute the instant kill function, would have worked. There are many ways difficulty could be changed. Even if they did the dumb thing by reducing the HP of enemies, and increasing the damage you do, if normal is just as it was intended, how did it change your personal experience, since you wouldn't play the game?
It is possible to disagree, and have a discourse about it, with the creators. You don't have to accept artist/authorial intent as if it was the law of reality governing their product. I agree with him that people who enjoy those challenges will get more from a game than they would otherwise. However I think it is weird, maybe even self-centered in nature, to assume that everyone would get that increase in satisfaction, for the same reasons, as he does. He is free to say he doesn't want to do this, and people who play his games are free to disagree with him on the subject.
It appears we fundamentally disagree here.