All difficult games should have an easy mode for accessibility.
Signed, a Dark Souls enjoyer.
For mechanically difficult games, definitely agree. Celeste is an example I usually bring up - it's a platformer that can get pretty tough at times, especially in the after-story optional levels. But it also has one of the most flexible and useful accessibility modes I've ever seen. It allows you to adjust basically every aspect of the game a player might struggle with (game speed, additional jumps, timed mechanics, you name it). And the game itself is very good as well.
It also has a different sort of difficulty. It's all in bite size chunks, and you can try again immediately. It never feels punishing in the way Souls games do.
Honestly... I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They're also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It's about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.
IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn't a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.
There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y'know, why From Soft haven't done it yet.
Accessibility isn't just a case of 'accessible to the handicapped', man.
That's a fair argument then, but... this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can "access" the thing.
If someone isn't willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that's a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like "Prepare to Die" is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They've done essentially everything but creating an explicit "easy mode" to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, that’s not inaccessible but it’s less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem can’t be solved for every player unfortunately. And they don’t need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldn’t ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying “I’d love to enjoy the art you’ve made, but I can’t. My disability/inability is stopping me” then I’d change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and you’re right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but can’t just because of difficulty.
I recently noticed the accessibility settings in Brotato, which are a great example of this. In addition to the normal difficulty setting, in accessibility they give you access to sliders for enemy health/damage/speed and some toggles for other visual and difficulty features.
The only option I use is being able to restart a wave after a death rather than losing the whole run, and it’s kept me occasionally playing the game and enjoying what the devs have created.
As a man who has never played Elden Ring and really knows nothing about it beyond it being the name of a game, the people getting all het up in these comments are very amusing. I think you guys proved her point.
I'm vegan btw
I use Arch
I have no idea what it is, please enlighten me in depth! Preferably in a closed setting where any bystanders cannot leave .
I will also need an explanation why Windows is bad and why I should care about online privacy.
I've heard that hackers use Linux, will that make my printer be susceptible to hack so China or CIA can see my bills that I print out every month?
I have nothing against prosthetizing vegans, because vegans make me think of food and I'm always hungry
I once made the mistake googling easy mode for Elden ring that someone gifted to me. Once I saw the gatekeeping on Reddit, I decided it's not a game for me and uninstalled. I'm sorry that I suck at video games
it gets much easier when you start treating it like a rhythm game where you get into dance offs with the enemies:)
and no need to interact with a game's community when it's shite, it's a single player game you can enjoy it however you want! (or don't, i'm not pressuring you, just don't want you to miss out on a good game because its fanbase is made of out assholes)
I don't want to redo the same thing a dozen times just to experience the story and world
fair
I bought Rain World recently, having heard a lot of good things about it, and I found it hard to get into because I didn't really see a point to what I was doing, whether I was doing it right, etc, so I put "how to enjoy Rain World" into my search engine of choice and found an article with some beginner tips, one of which being that the bleak, helpless feel is intentional and part of the experience. I respect it as an artistic decision, but my private and work lives are stressful enough as it is, which is probably partly why I was bouncing off the game, so I just got a refund, and I'm fine with that decision.
I loved every bit of Rain World! But I ended up quitting it mid play through when it became too hard. I found a way to gather stacks of berries to have enough reattempts for the hard parts, but then got lost where I was even supposed to go and gave up after ~25 hours playtime
I've never had vitriol spewed at me quite like when I argue in favor of easy mode for soulslike games. I'm at a point where I hate soulslike games, half because I don't want to spend ten hours on a boss that I can't beat, and half because I don't want to associate with soulsborne players
All of the Souls games kinda have an easy mode baked in. Ranged weapons/Sorceries generally provide an easier experience. Honestly though, I just find I don't really care if there is an easy mode or not. I enjoyed the challenge and if a difficulty slider was added, it would not have detracted from my experience in the slightest. I played through the games for the challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. If someone else doesn't enjoy the challenge, then that's okay. I'm not going to gatekeep them. We're all SunBro's at our core and I will always drop my Summon Sign for others in need to find
I haven't played Eldin Ring, but if it's story driven, I would 100% support an easy mode for those that want the story and not a time sink.
I love that Nine Sols includes the option, although I haven't personally used it.
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:
Related communities:
