Some Fromsoft fans sound like fucking cult members I swear to god. Like somehow adjusting the difficulty of the game takes away from the purity of the experience or some shit or take away from the satisfaction of progression. Ohh no it'll break the delicate balance oh god.
Buddy, I just wanna vibe with the atmosphere and the scenery sometimes instead of studying the blade or whatever the fuck. It's a video game, relax.
Celeste has an assist mode, which uh I simply did not use Idk. I tortured myself with its twitch platforming and felt I overcame it, but I don't even think assist players are losing out on much.
One of the other things Gamers™ need to accept is that the designer's word is not necessarily law. As far back as the Game Genie, people will use whatever they can to experience a game and that's fine honestly. People also want different things from games. It's like the author is dead.
Me playing Workers and Resources, which allows you to just turn mechanics on and off mid-game (not all of them): No, I must plan my construction site's logistics perfectly! (also why would I give a shit about how other people play the game?)
(also, why do these hard game lovers not like the same hard games I like :( )
That's cool.
Under communism, all video games will be required to include an option to launch Gamers in to the sun
This whole thing is a nothingburger with the right cheat codes, but because modern gamingTM can't have cheat codes for some reason, we're stuck with these pointless arguments. It's simple:
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Make the game as hard or easy as you want.
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Add a million cheat codes that gamers can use to customize how they want their personal game experience to be.
The main difference between god mode cheat code and a no-death option is that there's an understanding that if you enter in cheat codes, the game might go off the rails with sequence breaking or even softlocking, which can be overcome be inputting even more cheat codes like level warping.
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I really wish more games had higher difficulty options, but that doesn't mean I want everyone to suffer the way I do. Accessibility is good!
People here will probably disagree with me but hear me out.
Easy mode is not Accessibility. It is a shitty way to carter for accessibility, the only thing the devs do is change some numbers in the code and voiala the game now has accessibility?
The best example that I can think of good accessibility is with Nier Replicant and Nier Automata. In Replicant you have options to play with only one hand and customize the controls to your liking and in Automata on easy mode you can equip chips with different abilities like auto aim, auto dodge, auto attack, auto shoot and they take up space so you can't equip every chip + DMG UP/Heal/HP Up etc. So people can customize their experience and make the game do things that they can't or don't want to do while playing and focus only on what they find rewarding.
Another point: I don't think that every game is for everyone and the artist shouldn't bend his vision to accommodate to the audience. If Myazaki doesn't think there should be an easy mode in her games fine, but what her games should have is a proper accessibility mode. To compare with cinema: movies shouldn't be dumbed down to a wider audience understand it, but all movies need subtitles and descriptive audio.
I've been cooking this take and Im gunna say it:
THE NEXT FROMSOFT SOULS GAME SHOULD HAVE AN EASY MODE
Argument: several Castlevania games had difficulty options. The NES ones did not, but Bloodlines on the MD had two characters sort of represent different difficulties, and you could increase your starting lives. Nobody says Bloodlines is easy.
Castlevania Chronicles on the Playstation has literal difficulty selection, actually a littany of options and modes. Nobody says Chronicles is easy.
Dork Soles is as close as you can get to 3D Castlevania. There's a throughline between fighting axe knights in Castlevania 1 and fighting silver knights in Dark Souls 1. Dork Soles doesn't have the platforming focus because that shit's unplayable, but the games have a very similar spirit. So put Easy or an Assist mode in Dork Soles IV.
This position is unassailable and any attempt to disagree will prove nothing other than that you are a nerd and a g*mer
