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Easy Mode is for adults that just want to see the story.
I’m an adult and I like Hard Mode (or higher) because I play for the challenge. What could be more challenging than juggling a demanding work/home life and also trying to progress in a long game with only 2 hours a week to play on the hardest possible difficulty? At any moment a kid or pet could unplug the system and corrupt my save. It’s like everything has a hardcore mode.
For most games, the real consequence of failure in a game is being forced to repeat what just happened. And getting caught in a Groundhog Day-esque situation that repeats once every few minutes suuuuucks.
It’s even worse when a failure causes your character to lose stuff. That’s even more time wasted, in that the time and effort taken to get the thing is gone.
Paint the rainbow on my proud carebear chest if you must. I just want a place to escape to for a little while, a place that doesn’t frustrate the shit out of me.
Exactly how I feel about the Souls games. How the fuck am I supposed to make any real progress when the only resource I have to do so is lost each time I die?
I have a full time job and a kid, I don’t have time to grind out a boss for hours. Can’t I just enjoy the world with an easy mode?
I agree with the person you were replying to, and I am glad that the Souls formula isn’t the norm (I’ve played all of them, and haven’t finished a one)…
But the Soulses get a pass from me personally, because their whole thing is about being present in the moment and overcoming what appear to be unbeatable odds. It’s the closest thing in modern gaming that gave me the feeling of being crushed by, and overcoming, the first Airship level in Mario 3.
That said, I’m not against accessibility option in a Souls game, so long as they’re optional.
This is one of those threads where if you agree with the author, you’re a filthy casual, but if you actually want your hard game to be hard, you’re a sweaty loser than needs to touch grass.
Have your easy mode. Some of my favorite games even have a “Very Easy” mode. Just don’t corrupt games that are designed with a specific challenge in mind with nerfed nonsense.
I absolutely agree. Give the player the option between “story mode,” “normal” (intended experience), and “hard”, perhaps with an additional mode or two as well. I have never been mad at having too many difficulty settings.
I personally almost always play on the default difficulty since that’s probably what got the most testing, and play on a harder difficulty if I really like the game and want a challenge.
The issue is that mechanics for scaling difficulty need to designed into the game from the start, not tacked on at the end of a feature backlog. Making an easy game harder by upping enemy health and damage or nerfing RNGs is lame and often unbalanced. It should be the opposite - the game balance should be designed around the hard mode and than pared back for the easy mode.
The thing that really drives me nuts more than anything is nerfing complex control schemes to target console controls. The best example of this is Witcher 2 having an amazing and complex combat system which lent itself to a huge variety of play styles, enabled by complex controls with a high skill floor. And then Witcher 3 turned it into “spam dodge and counter” because all the richness of the control scheme was dumbed down to target consoles.
