Here's what would get me to actually play these games: Difficulty meters for several factors so you can tune down (or up) things like enemy speed, health, and damage
I am only qualified to speak on Elden Ring but I feel like its difficulty being where it is feels right.
The first thing I think of with that is things like the Tree Sentinel and Margit being the deterrents they are would not be as such if you could tune that down. You’d have to design it completely differently.
SoP, as much as I enjoy it, is my least favorite kind of difficulty scaling - in either direction - where they only change the numbers and I feel like something as. Deliberate as Elden Ring wouldn’t be satisfied with just doing that, when I can just come back with the power of god and anime on my side.
The core conceit of these games does interest me in the sort of "build whatever feels good and have fun fights" but the barrier to entry is way too high for my free time and patience
So you still have the vibe of "die and try again" but it can be less frustrating as you get boosts to your damage immediately rather than grinding it out
was the number of people I know who didn't make much use of wikis or youtube or whatever but did share knowledge on an ad-hoc basis through smaller communities
Something tells me that Miyazaki is a huge fan of and/or incredibly nostalgic for Tower of Druaga. A lot of Dark Souls's design choices are, like... a lot of it is Quarter Muncher hustle, but it's teaching you to get savvy to the grift instead of taking it all at face value?
yeah. a conversation i was having elsewhere keyed me in to the fact that the awful "git gud" culture was omnipresent around arcades in the US though, which was the line I needed to draw between point A to point B, I think
i've said it before but i think difficulty settings should come in a minimum of 3 different options: - How hard is it for you to die - How easy is it for your enemies to die - Challenge difficulty (depending on the game that could mean less aggro enemies, simpler boss attack patterns, more forgiving platforming, more abundant resources, etc)
ideally 3 would break out into more nuanced accessibility options but if you're just gonna do simple easy/medium/hard difficulties, that should be your minimum
like, in Ghost of Tsushima, i started out on easy and then had to bump it up to normal because fights were ending too fast for me to have fun playing around with all the combat tools the game gave me
I'm on my third character in Elden Ring and it's also my third completely, fundamentally different build and playstyle that I came up with by myself that makes me frequently go hehehehe
The fact that it’s actually possible to kill all bosses in the game without swinging a weapon once, by just summoning some buddies and then casting healing spells on them
anyway I've always felt a little uncomfortable with the "you're for it or against it" feel of Dark Souls Easy Mode conversations because it is complicated
99% of the time I think a thing that is optional cannot hurt a game but the concept of challenge has an inherent adversarial component that makes having to opt into it weird for some personality types, e.g. mine
Yep, someone managed to do a summon-only run using healing incantations to heal summons. (This was not particularly easy the further you get into the game)
The first thing I think of with that is things like the Tree Sentinel and Margit being the deterrents they are would not be as such if you could tune that down. You’d have to design it completely differently.
dog?
liar ahead- How hard is it for you to die
- How easy is it for your enemies to die
- Challenge difficulty (depending on the game that could mean less aggro enemies, simpler boss attack patterns, more forgiving platforming, more abundant resources, etc)
kill ingeniouslyhehehehe