"I got a 3 second video as a reward for beating this game on the hardest difficulty. It took me hundreds of hours and I hated myself the whole time. You can look up the video of the ending online, but I'll be DAMNED if someone else can watch it from having FUN while beating the game."
Personally I don't care about the rewards. If I'm playing a tough game or a higher difficulty it's more about the sense of accomplishment that comes from finally overcoming the challenge. That being said, some people don't get their dopamine from that sort of thing so I totally think more difficulty options is always a good thing.
I have never seen it framed as "it is an absolute disgrace that this game does not have a hard mode, and if you think otherwise you are an idiot and/or ableist (or whatever the opposite would be)" tbh. Which is pretty much what the easy mode advocates were saying about Sekiro the last time I followed that debate
This is a fair point. I have seen violent reactions to casual statements, but I have not seen hyperbolic calls for hard modes nearly as much as for easy modes, it`s true.
I've still not really seen issues in just including options for total overthrowing of difficulty. I've enjoyed some hard games that have prompted frustration from some Dark Souls players; eg, Furi, Tunic, . The options menu include capabilities for infinite stamina and invincibility, and I just ignored them.
Even though I can beat those games without those options, I consider them better for having them because each player plays differently. It is not a tremendous ask for the developer to decide on the best way to address playability concerns, even if they go for something extremely simple that removes challenge and lets them explore the world.
On topic: A new Spongebob-Souls game is out called "Another Crab's Treasure". It has positive reviews, and its own implementation of this (aside from being generally a bit easier) seems to be an options menu box which gives your crab a gun.
The thing is, games have a minimum difficulty to be somewhat generally enjoyable, and the game designers have often built their game around this. The fun is generally in the obstacles providing real resistance that can be overcome by optimizing your strategy. It means that these obstacles need to be mentally picked apart by the player to proceed. They are built like puzzles.
This design philosophy - anyone who plays these games can tell you - is deeply rewarding if you go through it, because it requires genuine improvement that you can notice and be proud of. Hence why there is often a limit to how much easier you can make games like these without losing that because you forget the obstacle before even realizing it was preventing you from doing something.
It's often not as easy as just tweaking numbers. And often these development teams don't have the time to rebalance a game for those lower difficulties, so they just don't.
Honestly, the first wojack could be quite mad too, because often making an easy game harder also misses the point, where the game is just more difficult, but doesn't actually provide you with that carefully crafted feeling of constant improvement. Instead some easy games can become downright frustrating because obstacles feel "cheap" or "lacking depth" now that you have to spend a lot more time on them.
But making an easy game harder by just tweaking the numbers is definitely easier on the development team, and gives existing players a chance to re-experience the game, which wouldn't happen the other way around. But it's almost certainly not a better option for new players wanting a harder difficulty.
At the end of the day though, often there are ways to get what you want. Either by cheating, modding, or otherwise using 'OP' usables in the game. Do whatever you want to make the game more enjoyable to yourself. But if you make it too easy on yourself you might come out on the other end wondering why other people enjoyed the game so much more than you did.
Yet another thing that's impossible to discuss without being strawmanned by both sides. I'm not a hardcore gamer and for the most part play on medium or just slightly above medium difficulty in most video games.
I don't think a dev should have to accommodate customers that they don't want to accommodate, and this goes beyond difficulty. Souls games don't need a difficulty choice in the same way that Firewatch doesn't. Gacha games don't need to improve the f2p experience because those are games for whales.
It's like asking for sex drugs and rock&roll in disney movies and pg 13 horror movies.
I agree in that it doesn't need to be required, but I think you're leaving money on the table and intentionally limiting who can experience the art you're trying to share with the world.
You don't HAVE to include more than the basic colorblind option and maybe some extra visual cues, but games that go farther and allow more people to enjoy their product are better products for it.
Souls games are great. I don't want to 'get gud' so I haven't bought one ever, and with no difficulty drop I probably never will. I don't have time for that. It's not a bad game because they don't have features to make it more accessible to me, but it COULD be a better game if they did.
intentionally limiting who can experience the art you’re trying to share with the world
Almost every musician, painter, or sculptor ever has done that. It is ok.
You don’t HAVE to include more than the basic colorblind option
I think most devs could include stuff like colorblind options or rebindable control schemes and such, and I definitely think they should
better products for it
Difficulty is not the same as colorblind mode. Colorblind mode is the same as creating closed captions for movies, difficulty is the same as changing the movie to fit another audience. Difficulty is part of the game.
it COULD be a better game if they did
It would be a different game, that they are not trying to make.
Different people have different skill levels, so will experience different levels of hardship. Someone who'd played every Dark Souls game ten times (which isn't that rare) would find Elden Ring much easier than someone who'd never played a soulslike before. If the difficultly could be scaled to normalise for that, then everyone would have a more consistent experience closer to the intended one. It's probably not remotely practical to achieve that in every case, though.
The intended experience is to overcome seemingly insurmountable situations. That can be through brute force (just dodging, attacking) or through deduction (there is a item which kills a boss in 4 hits).
It is about catharsis.
You don't need to have the best reflexes, you need to be involved in the game/world. And that seems to be the problem with people, they don't want that.
It is not about the experience, it is about finishing it. Else I can't explain what "I don't have time for that means"
Like saying I don't have time to read animal farm so I just read the cliffnotes. It is completely absurd because you take time for that other wise you would be missing out on nuance.
Not everything has to be for anybody. But saying "makes this more for people who didn't like it in the first place" is just entitled and rude.
There is so much that is already like everything else with little that makes them stand out. So why take something that is special and make it more generic?
I think you're reading things into my comment that I intentionally didn't put in it. I'm just making the point that games already don't get to control the amount of hardship the player experiences because some players start out better than others, and some improve faster than others. If a game has a fixed difficulty level, there'll always be people who find it easier than the developers intended, and people who'd still be unable to finish it with thousands of hours of practice (and plenty of people will play for ten or twenty hours before deciding they don't have time to find out if they'd eventually get good enough). On the other hand, if a game's got several modes, then there's a good chance a player will pick a difficulty level that's too easy or hard for them, so it could make the problem worse, but, critically, it wouldn't be what introduced it in the first place.
Regarding your point about Animal Farm, it's a bit more like deciding not to read an encrypted copy of the book. It might be a trivial Caesar cipher that could be easily broken, and you could be reading about some animals being more equal than others in a few seconds, or it could be modern AES that can't be broken before the heat death of the universe, or it could be anything in between. If you don't quickly make enough progress to see that you're actually going to get to read it, then you've no way to know whether it's seemingly insurmountable or literally insurmountable.
If someone's saying they don't have time to get good at Dark Souls, they're agreeing with you that not everything has to be for everyone, and they've decided that Dark Souls isn't for them. They don't have to be happy about that, though, especially if they've had to pay for the game to find out.
It's not a bad game because they don't have features to make it more accessible to me, but it COULD be a better game if they did.
They already have this feature. With the exception of Sekiro, you can summon a partner to help you defeat any challenge as long as you're outside the tutorial area.
That, or you can just find enemies you're comfortable with defeating repeatedly and use them to level up until the game is easy enough for you. Or you can look up good weapons and where to find them. Or items that may help in certain situations, or weaknesses the boss/enemy you're struggling against has...
I highly doubt that making an easier difficulty will net a higher cash flow. Maybe short term but the souls games sell as they do because they are known for their difficulty. If you take that away they lose their marketing gimmick.
They'd get immediate sales from me I can tell you that much. And I personally know several people who would buy the games if they had difficulty settings.
If the hard mode merely makes everything into a bullet sponge with huge HP bar, no thanks. I'm perfectly fine with some games just being easier and others just being harder. Or having multiple well thought out difficulty options, but only if they are actually well thought out.
Agree on the bullet sponge thing, god I hate that. Helldivers 2 does it best, IMO. Not deadlier or more resilient enemies, just more of them and deadlier types.
When games go too far with this, it can encourage exploit or cheese strategies, or at least strict adherence to a meta build. This can actually mean resorting to a solution with less skill needed, since the game has already been effectively solved. A still-challenging situation that doesn't demand perfection can be reasonably done with unoptimized preparation and adaptation.
While accessibility always is nice, games are a kind of art, and art is not always for everyone.
Some games are made to be hard and even impossible to beat (Tetris till recently), so asking them for an easy mode is not unlike asking Rolex for a 10$ series, which would ultimately tarnish the brand's name.
I feel like you've missed the point, which is only to point out how it is somehow not controversial to suggest a game needs a hard mode while the opposite will get you angry responses.
I think that stems from the developer's intent. Making a hard game easier waters down the journey the creators intended, but making an easy game harder only adds to the experience. Like, the 2D Mario games are generally really easy, but there's still lots of value in those games. But then there's the bonus stages which are generally really difficult, and that adds even more value to the journey.
Then on the other hand you have From Software's games, where the creator has said many times that the experimentation, adaptation, and the subsequent deep sense of accomplishment cultivated by the difficulty is a key part of the experience he wants his players to have. (There's also the sense of community that comes with helping others with advice or cooperative gameplay) Relieving the player of the difficulty with an "easy mode" only serves to water down that experience.
You're presenting the two options as similar when I'm not entirely sure they are. You've explored making an easy game harder and a hard game easier, but let's look at the other two results from your presented options: making an easy game easier and a hard game harder.
Making a hard game harder is often met with praise because the people who beat or otherwise enjoy the hard game already want and expect a challenge out of the game, so giving them more of that is almost what they expect already.
Making an easy game easier can be met with praise as much as it can be subject to criticism. The Pokemon series has long been critiqued for continually making every next installment easier and easier for the last several generations.
Obviously in your example of making a hard game easier there are people in favor of it but also people against it. The fact that we're having a discussion about this controversy is proof enough that many people want it, but dedicated fans are often against it.
And just like in your example, I don't think I've ever seen someone against allowing an easy game to have harder modes as long as it doesn't negatively impact those playing the easier modes.
The trend I'm seeing amongst these 4 outcomes is usually that allowing the option for a harder mode than the game already allows is often agreed upon by the wider gaming community, but asking for easier modes is often controversial. The trend I'm also seeing is that this remains true regardless of if the game was considered easy or hard in the first place.
Your original post seems to imply that players and fans for hard games are being obstinate and resistant to allowing the same concessions that players and fans for easy games do, when you could use the other two results I brought up to make players for easy games seem just as obstinate. "Us players of hard games are allowing for harder games to be made, why do you fans of easy games seem to be having such a controversy over if easy games should be made easier?" or something to that effect.
In my opinion, the controversy isn't whether hard games should be made easier, it's whether games fans enjoy should be made easier.
As far as my personal opinion on whether games such as any of the Soulsbourne titles should be made easier, I'm appreciative of the fact that they don't have difficulty sliders in much any regard. If I beat Dark Souls 3, there isn't a question about if I beat it on the easiest mode, anyone who's gone through the entire experience knows what I also went through. While I agree that most of the FromSoft games are sorely lacking in accessibility options (even more so their older titles), Difficulty is only one of many accessibility options. I would rather they add other accessibility options so that players who struggle with the games as is can have an easier time getting the intended experience than reduce the intended experience down to allow for the lowest common denominator.
As an aside, many of the Soulsbourne games already have something in the way of "easier modes" via alternate weapons, different combat systems, and different play styles. Playing almost any of them primarily using ranged combat reduces the difficulty in most every encounter in the game outside of boss battles. Boss battles often have their own gimmick that you can exploit to make them easier to fight. Often the level design, nearby items (and descriptions), or enemy positions are used as clues to make finding these exploits easier.
As an example, the Taurus Demon in DS1 can be killed fairly easily by baiting him to where the skeleton archers are above the fight, then using a plunging attack on him several times in a row. The intended experience is that you would go into the arena, you may run directly towards the other side, spawn the Taurus demon once you run about halfway through the arena, and notice you're being shot at from behind. You'll likely die, but in the next fight against him you can try to take out the archers via your own ranged weapons, but doing so shows a cleverly hidden ladder that leads up to the archers. The ladder isn't visible when entering the arena but the moment you turn around to look at the archers you can clearly see it next to the doorway you entered from. You can go up the ladder and easily dispatch the archers. I don't remember if every following fight you have to run halfway through the arena to spawn him again or if you have to run halfway through only the first time, but regardless an observant player will notice after taking down the archers that the drop back down the ladder will look very similar to the plunging attack the game teaches you in the tutorial boss fight. If you make the connection and perform that attack on the Taurus Demon it'll take out about 30% of his health depending on your class and weapon. Scramble around his legs (now that you're on the same floor as him) back towards the ladder, climb up, and repeat a few more times for an easy victory. Alternatively you can wait up where the archers were for a few seconds and the Taurus Demon will jump up and fight you there. You now have an alternate wider arena better suited to strafing around him instead of the narrow bridge he spawns in on.
Other games would do things like give a prompt to lower the difficulty, reduce the health of enemies in the background after repeated failures, or give you optional power ups after X defeats. All of these reinforce the mentality that "what you're doing is right, but you're lacking the skill to do it" when often in Soulsbourne games that's a harmful mentality to have as it'll lead you to keep repeating a tactic or playstyle that's demonstrably not working. In my opinion, that's the core of what fans of harder games like myself want to keep experiencing and why so many are against "easier modes" because it subverts the intended experience we enjoy: recognizing what's going wrong, correcting it to make things go right, and overcoming great challenges.
that's fair but it suggests that the games for which difficulty is a key feature are not the ones with grand storytelling/visuals/music/diegesis, in which case it makes perfect sense for souls likes to have easy modes
Or just let the developer decide what they think fits their game best? Not every product is for every person, and that's fine really. Trying to broaden appeal is good, but you don't want to spread resources so thin that you end up with a mess.
I kinda agree with you, tbh. Tho I'd apply that logic to more than just difficulty.
That said tho, I'd also be okay with the devs putting the most work into normal mode but also tossing in barely tested, unbalanced easy and hard modes with a "this is not the intended experience, use at your own peril" warning. I know no AAA dev would do that but I'd honestly be okay with it.
Easy mode is in overwhelming most of cases just a few numbers change.
I would say making game harder is much more difficult and resource consuming, but most of it is, like many other comment noted, just cranking up those same numbers up.
