It’s not lying as much as it’s advertising. If they’re asking about your greatest weakness, tell them. Just don’t neglect to mention how you mitigate that weakness too, and are improving. Don’t let your answer end on “I’m a disorganized mess”, end it on “so in the last year, I’ve started building and using checklists and it’s been really effective”.

In the same way, be up front if they ask about the criteria you don’t meet. But consider your entire answer, again, you can say something like “I actually haven’t worked in that language before, but I’ve done lots of work in Python and Java, so I’m confident I can pick it up quickly as needed”. If they don’t ask, then it probably wasn’t really that important of a criteria to them, so you shouldn’t waste your interview time talking about it either.

Don’t volunteer all your worst traits, you only have an hour, so focus on describing your strengths as often as you can. Nobody expects to completely understand you as a person in one hour, they’re specifically asking you to come in and advertise yourself. Instead, read between the lines in the listing (I.E. Things mentioned in the job description or title are likely more important than something in a single bullet point. Look for repetition, or how much they talk about each requirement.). Figure out what the “customer” wants that you’re good at, and ensure you emphasize it, repeatedly. Define clear takeaways and make sure they know what you’re offering, and will actually remember it too.

And practice your answers to many questions. Come up with your best anecdotes for “a time you resolved a conflict with a coworker” and all that nonsense in advance, so that you can confidently segue into those stories that best emphasize your takeaways when asked. Do some research on the company to come up with a good answer to questions like “why do you want to work here?”. The answer doesn’t have to be your top priority, which is obviously “a paycheque”, but just append an unsaid “instead of somewhere else” and answer honestly, because people are good at detecting insincerity. You likely haven’t applied to every company on earth, so tell them why you chose them.

Lastly, like an advertiser, don’t be afraid to segue from other questions into your prepared answers. “Yeah, I’ve always loved X, that’s why I wanted to work here actually, I’d heard a bit about how you were getting involved with X, but with this interesting twist, and thought that sounded like something I’d really enjoy working on”. The interview questions are designed to get you talking about yourself, it’s not a survey where the strict questions are all that matter, and you can simply joke about it if the question comes up later.

Haha, dang it. Seems I got confused, turns out that was just a bedrock thing. Could’ve noticed that if I’d looked more closely at my own link 🙄

To add to this, Minecraft Java Bedrock used to ship their code with all the debug symbols included, making modding easy. Although these were recently removed, much to the displeasure of the modding community. Everyone should throw a vote at this feedback issue to request them back, btw:

https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360054740151-Re-add-debugging-symbols-to-the-releases-of-bedrock-edition

Yeah… to be fair, it does work, I personally don’t pay for iCloud, but the way they aggressively push it and auto-enable it in so many places leaves less-technical users stuck with an unusable computer without more storage, unless they’re savvy enough to know how to disable everything… which they aren’t.

It’s a frustrating practice, and MS is no better with the way they force OneDrive down your throat.

Perfect answer. For most people, no. I actually did make the jump to a 4k TV and sit close enough to it that I can visibly see the difference. About 8 feet from a 65" TV, still barely in the “Ultra HD Worth It” category.

It truly is ridiculously large for the space, everyone who visits us comments on it. My wife likes to joke when we watch Make Some Noise that the people are “life size”. If you don’t have a small living room and aren’t planning at least a 65" or larger TV, than it’s almost certainly not worthwhile.

Crazy to me that most AAA console games push 4k as the standard at the expense of 60FPS, given these realities.

Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.

I don’t think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).

But you’re right, I’d love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I don’t think they’re done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.

I also agree there’s some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Malenia’s waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge that’s impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more “reactionary” play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.

I’m not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but I’m also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but it’s far from a boring +1 iteration that doesn’t try anything.

Let’s clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiro’s main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend who’s very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, you’d only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.

So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?

To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?

I mean… quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was “very, very weird”. You claimed I was offended solely “because I had to see an option on the screen”. You claimed my reasoning was about “lesser gamers being able to play it”, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a “weird ideological axiom”, as if it’s the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that I’m deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.

Don’t try to gaslight me about this being insulting. I’ve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. You’re bringing baggage into this from other people you’ve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.

Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You can’t claim you didn’t associate the two when you chose to write “YOU” in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.

It’s also not at all ridiculous to assume the “What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?” at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, don’t try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely “laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was”, and that I’m being “sensitive”.

If you actually didn’t mean offence, then I’d encourage you in future to skip the “array of possibilities”, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.

That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you can’t just “double your health and damage” and get a good easy mode. That’s an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could “just scale everything down” in an hour or so, it’s become what I tend to assume people mean when they say “just add an easy mode”. You’re also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, I’d have no issue if you had played an easy mode. There’s lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldn’t have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldn’t have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you aren’t playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesn’t “segment the user base” or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking they’ve experienced everything From Soft intended.

The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of “moral responsibility” or are “stupid and losing business” for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And just… loading different things conditionally into a space isn’t always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternal’s Master Levels, and they’re a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Soft’s best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. That’s more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. I’ve already asserted that I don’t feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so I’ll come out and outright say that I don’t think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But that’s totally subjective, and you’re more than welcome to do that math differently.

If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I won’t go picket their office or anything, I’m not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope it’s good, and I really hope the people who finally “get” to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.

Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole “participating in the zeitgeist” thing.

A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesn’t have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit “putting your foolish ambitions to rest”. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without “learning the attack patterns of the monsters”, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? There’s an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:

We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there’s different difficulties, that’s going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. It’s been the same way for previous titles and it’s very much the same with Sekiro.

If all you really wanted was to just… experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube let’s play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.

I’ll also add, that stuff doesn’t go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. It’s what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lil’ Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.

I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I don’t think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didn’t realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the “Dark Souls saved my life” people, who might’ve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and “fragment the user base”.

Well alright, I’m choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, I’ve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.

In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you don’t select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldn’t really work.

And in the latter half of this comment (start at “But I also think games are art”), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasn’t been added, and wouldn’t be the same experience.

To add to that final point, the reason I don’t want others to play an easy mode isn’t because I’m a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know I’m a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would “break the game itself” in Miyazaki’s words) and think that’s all there was.

I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like it’s frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone who’s on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not “getting it”. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. It’s just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadn’t had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?

“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach,” he said.

“Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”

Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like you’re kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.

Fair enough, I do actually think we’re having a fundamental misunderstanding here. I get the impression that when you’re asking for accessibility, you’re looking for a perfect accessibility, where literally anyone can play the game.

When I say accessibility, I’m picturing more of a sliding scale, from completely inaccessible (a game that just crashes on boot or something) to perfect accessibility.

I think a game like Elden Ring is actually very accessible, despite it’s difficulty. I bring up examples like beating the game with oven mitts or voice control to say that it doesn’t require superhuman precision or reaction time. I assume that the majority of disabled players, using an adaptive controller or specialized rig that they’ve had years of practice with will be able to control their character with better precision or reaction time than the ridiculous twitch streamers who completed those challenges. Those players will still have to invest time to build game knowledge and experience to apply that to beating the game, but fundamentally, the game “can be accessed” by them.

I also have no illusions that “everyone can beat Elden Ring in 140 hours”, like you’ve implied that I do. And uh… yes? Games take different amounts of time to beat for different players, and that’s fine. If Elden Ring was your first ever video game, then uh… questionable decision, but the game would eventually teach you everything you need to know to beat it. I’m not exactly sure why this is a gotcha, honestly. If you take 1000+ hours to beat Elden Ring and love it, then power to you, I would never shame you for it or assert you had a worse experience than mine. Same way I feel about summons, or using multiplayer to beat bosses, or whatever else Souls weirdos can be elitist about.

If you look hard enough, you’ll always be able to find a disability that can’t play the game. That’s unfortunate, but I don’t think it’s a requirement that the game is playable by everyone. Books are written in languages I don’t speak, art is made about life experiences I can’t share, and that’s OK. A wealth of good games are coming out all the time, and I’m sure someone with dyspraxia can find games they can play and enjoy.

Obviously, I know how that sounds, if a game can be made accessible to more players, and has the budget, it should be. I wholeheartedly agree. That’s why I’ve advocated for better support for captions and flashing visual cues and audio indicators. I would love the next Elden Ring to be a better experience for the visually impaired or hard of hearing.

But I also think that games are art, and that the careful crafting and balancing of souls games are a part of that art. And they’re designed from the ground up with that difficulty in mind. Honestly, I think it’s a fundamental part of what Souls offers, and an easy mode wouldn’t be the same experience. To quote Miyazaki:

“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach,” he said.

“Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”

As a piece of art, if an easy difficulty was added, lots of people would play it. But I’ve already articulated why I don’t think a simple scaling difficulty would work, and why I think it’s important the base game is difficult. The only way to do it properly would be a bespoke and balanced lower difficulty. But the artists that made the game have no passion for that, and bluntly, I don’t feel it would be worth their time and talent because it would just… be like a lot of other games you could go play instead, rather than the unique experience that Souls is.

And unfortunately, this does fundamentally exclude some people. Elden Ring takes tons of measures to minimize the excluded crowd, but it won’t ever be zero, without fundamentally changing what Souls is. That’s a shame, but ultimately, I really think Souls should exist, and is important art all the same. Do a quick google search for “Dark Souls saved my life” and you’ll see just how powerful a piece of art it can be.

My real point here is, just because a small sliver of people can’t play it, or because people don’t want to invest the time or effort to experience it, Souls has the right to exist, and From Software should be allowed to make the game they want to make, even if it’s for a niche crowd. They don’t have to offer an option that they feel compromises the experience, regardless of whether or not we agree.

Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a game’s experience. For example, it’s hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when you’re spreading your play out so much that it’s hard to remember who characters are. It’s also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like you’ve covered it well.

Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides what’s locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.

I also still don’t think it’s an accessibility constraint. I’d totally understand why you don’t want to commit to a 150hr experience when you’re playing less than 3hrs a week, you’d be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back I’d still be much better at it than when I first sat down.

Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. You’re also starting each attempt “fresh”, in that you aren’t already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldn’t beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. It’s a technique I’ve used repeatedly.

All that to say, I don’t think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I don’t think it’s exclusive to Souls, I’d also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldn’t sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, I’d recommend a game that’s better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And that’s not that odd, I also wouldn’t recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.

My honest take on your story, is that I’m really glad Souls didn’t have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. It’s the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you would’ve even came back to replay a game you’d already “beaten”.

In other comments, I’ve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, I’m not sure he would’ve ever learned that about himself, because he would’ve played it on easy. He might’ve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but it’s only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that it’s his favourite game and franchise ever made.

Accessibility is literally how this thread started. I also disagree that the game requires a high degree of precision. Dark Souls originally came out with only 8-directional rolling, which you could do on a D-Pad, Fight Stick, or any other accessible controller. There’s no FPS-style aiming or anything, and again, you can find challenge runs of people beating the game while wearing oven mitts and other such shenanigans. The series main difficulty is in making the right decisions with the committed attack animations, end lag, and stagger mechanics, not quick reactions or precise inputs, although I’ll absolutely grant that the combat has become faster over time. Not that you can’t conquer the game with good buildcraft anyway, check out an “all hit run” for ways to beat Elden Ring while literally not dodging any attacks.

Ignoring that that experience just isn’t fun for a lot of people, you’re using your own experience of your own ability.

Sure, but skills and muscle memory are skills and muscle memory. Unless you’re referring to learning disabilities, people improve at things with practice, and time spent practicing the combat will make you better at the combat.

… It doesn’t detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.

I’ve also replied to that in this thread. But I’ll also add that something like a quick save is very different from adding a new scaled difficulty option, and Souls already implements a wealth of options to make the game easier. Adding another option in that same vein is a separate conversation from adding an Easy Mode.

P.S. I don’t mean to be snarky by linking my own comments. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t constantly be re-reading every comment I’ve made on this thread before replying, but I am getting a bit fatigued after debating this all day with Lemmy, and don’t feel a need to re-hash the same arguments here.

Exactly, my point is that the design of Sekiro is so fundamentally unforgiving that giving you a stats advantage wouldn’t make the final fights substantially easier, and letting you get there without properly learning from the content beforehand would be like trying to teach a child factorials before you’ve ensured they properly understand addition and multiplication.

In this very thread, there’s a comment from a person playing Sekiro with a mod to scale the game down substantially who’s still finding the game prohibitively difficult. That problem is only going to get worse as they get further, and there’s good reason the devs haven’t implemented a naive difficulty scaling like this.

Sure, lots of games offer high difficulties, but often, those aren’t nearly as good as a game that’s tailored from the ground up to make that experience good in the way Souls is. Scaling Health and Damage makes things hard, but frequently just turns enemies tanky and slow to kill, or forces you to play the game super cautiously. That’s fine, and an easy to add option for diehard players, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what a game designer can accomplish when creating a bespoke experience. That’s what Souls is, and what has made it such a smashing success.

Also, I don’t think it’s just a biased worldview here. What you’re suggesting is just subtracting mechanical depth and mastery from the experience. It’s not like an easy mode would add anything to the game, it would only take my favourite things about it, and move you out of the carefully designed, bespoke experience into a crude imitation of it.

Your agency is taken away here for good reason, so that you don’t make the experience worse for yourself. If From Soft didn’t believe in the experience they’ve crafted, they would’ve added a simple scaling difficulty like you’re suggesting years ago, but the artists who make these games have consistently decided to resist the pressure and make the game they want to make.

Apologies in advance for the essay lol, Souls is one of my favourite franchises, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these games.

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.

I don’t think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond just… basic understanding of how to control a 3D character. They even tutorialize that, actually. Everyone starts somewhere, I personally got thrashed immediately after the tutorial in Dark Souls 1, and it took me hours to beat the first proper boss, with many deaths to regular enemies. Like any good video game, Souls teaches you the skills you need progressively, and gets gradually harder and asks more of the player over time. It’s not like just starting Guitar Hero on the highest difficulty, the game is balanced for anyone.

Time is also an accessibility factor.

I don’t actually think these games require an excessive time investment. Howlongtobeat puts Dark Souls Remastered’s Main Story at 30 hours. Even if you’re somehow spending 4x that time, that still only puts it at 120 hours, which isn’t unreasonable, lots of games have runtimes around that length.

I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasn’t seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons you’re learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.

The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to.

A key part of developing anything for millions of people is that you have to learn what feedback to take and how to implement it properly. From Soft absolutely has listened to their community. First of all, there’s a vocal community that doesn’t want difficulties, which is what this whole post is joking about. I’d argue From Soft have done a phenomenal job of listening to their audience, and catering to the niche of people that want a tough, unyielding experience is how they’ve slowly built themselves into the multi-GotY juggernaut they are now.

But second of all, they’ve put a ton of effort into introducing ways to make the game easier. In Sekiro, if you’re hard stuck on a boss, tough luck, that game is mostly linear, and has key story moments that leave you no alternatives but to “git gud”. In Elden Ring, you can go elsewhere to learn the game more against a different boss, level up, and come back. In most cases, you don’t even need to come back. You can also explore different builds, respec your character, try a different weapon or spell or summon, summon a friend in multiplayer, go find more equipment, anything.

And personally, I really preferred Sekiro, it’s my favourite game they’ve ever made. I got stuck for hours on every key boss, and that game absolutely wiped the floor with me. It has barely any buildcraft, you truly do just have to “git gud”. And the purity of that experience really speaks to me and what I want out of a game. There’s no “questioning if I’m doing it wrong”, I just need to get in there and learn the required skills head on.

Ultimately, I’m really just tired of being villainized (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself, when basically everything else on the market is pursuing the widest audience possible, with aggressive hints telling you how to do puzzles before you can even think, and several difficulty options that make things incredibly easy, at the cost of the harder difficulties usually being poorly balanced and uneven. I’m not going around saying every Mario game needs to be a Kaizo, with no way to tone it down, but it feels like many are coming to my favourite games and telling me they’re bad for being what I love.

Especially when I feel like From Soft is hitting that balance you’re talking about, and giving the player lots of options, but some people will seemingly just never be satisfied until they can choose “Easy” from the start screen. I don’t feel like me or From Soft is being dismissive when there are an abundance of accommodations and options to make things easier, you just need to actually engage with the game to use them.

This isn’t like implementing something that doesn’t exist or that fundamentally changes the gameplay. Scaling already exists.

Scaling sounds like it’d work, but in actuality, these games are designed with tough mechanics that you really have to learn before they make things more difficult. Take Sekiro for example. The endgame bosses will absolutely bully you. I’m not sure even 10x damage and health would help you get past the final boss if you don’t know what you’re doing.

While playing through the game, I got stopped in my tracks several times, stuck on a boss for hours while I learned how to parry, manage my stamina, deal with perilous attacks, etc. If I had been given a massive power boost, it would’ve only delayed my being forced to learn. And then, later, a much tougher boss would’ve stopped me in my tracks anyway, and I would be so behind on learning that it might turn into an impossible wall. Suddenly your “easy mode” has a much rougher difficulty spike than normal.

And the games are full of things that aren’t made easier by just… scaling. Like managing deathblight, areas like Lake of Rot, stuff like the awkward parkour and areas where you have to play around not falling off. That stuff would have to be reworked to accommodate a player who hasn’t learned proper positioning, or blocks, or just… the general tools of mastering the gameplay.

Slapping a basic scale on the game is a poorly thought out approach that would do more harm than good. To do “easy” right, you’d want a proper balanced game, with reworked timings and boss movesets, and frankly, I don’t think it’s worth the effort and extra development time and cost.

It has literally 0 impact on your experience and would allow others to enjoy the game as much as you do.

Two things here.

A) Adding an easy mode actually would make the game worse for me. When I’m stuck on a hard boss, grinding attempts for hours, that isn’t immediately fun. It builds to a worthwhile payoff, which is why I love these games. But when you’re in it, an easy mode makes you feel like an idiot, wasting your own time suffering when you could walk right past at any moment. Except that lowering the difficulty to bypass something feels terrible, and also, puts you in the position I described above. It robs you of the satisfaction of conquering it and replaces that with guilt and feeling like you couldn’t do it.

B) Someone cruising through on Easy wouldn’t “enjoy the game as much as I do”. Engaging with, and mastering these mechanics is a huge part of what makes these games enjoyable. Skipping that side of the game, jumping past the difficulty robs you of the satisfaction of beating it.

Also, I think many people would enjoy the experience Souls offers, if they’re willing to give it a shot. One of my best friends used to play every game on easy, “why struggle when I could move on and see more of the game?”. He got into Dark Souls 1, and had a hell of a time with it. But because there wasn’t an easy mode, he persevered, and found he loved the stiff challenge and the payoff of beating a boss that really challenged him, and in finding mastery in the mechanics. He’s now a diehard, who’s done SL1 runs of many of the games, and usually starts new games on Hard these days. In a world where DS1 offered an easy mode, he never would’ve tried the designers intended experience, and Souls would’ve been just another decent action adventure.

Souls is offering a rare experience, with tons of alternatives that do offer an easier time. Why not let it shine and highlight what it does better than anyone else?

I mean, Souls is accessible to you, it sounds like it just isn’t for you. There are tons of games that I wish were made in a way that I’d enjoy more, features I’ve disliked, etc. But in almost all of those cases, someone loves those features the way they are, as is.

Like, for example, I don’t love JRPG combat. I would love to play and enjoy Persona 5, but eh, I’m just not interested in investing in those systems to play that game. But that game is beloved, as is. I would never go petition Atlus to make Persona 6 into a Soulslike so that I “could” play it.

And that’s great, there are a ridiculous amount of great games coming out every year, far more than I or basically anyone but full-time streamers have the time to play. So just… go play what you like?

Trying to make games that are “for” everyone is how we end up with soulless bland titles like Ubisoft keeps pumping out. Good games have to take risks, and make interesting decisions that alienate some and engage others.

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.

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.