10 ms·

I like CRPGs but they're so few and far between now. The last big studio releasing them was Bethesda and I really hate the systems used in the various Elder Scr

by jmyeet 5y ago

I like CRPGs but they're so few and far between now. The last big studio releasing them was Bethesda and I really hate the systems used in the various Elder Scrolls games. Specifically, I hate scaling content. The old style was that level was used to direct a player to or away from certain areas and to provide a broad direction. Too weak? Go somewhere else, get some levels and gear and come back. It's easy to understand. Somewhere along the line studios decided this wasn't enough freedom or it was simply too hard to get the levels right that they gave up and just made everything scale to your level. So really there's no point in gaining levels. In fact, it can actually hurt you if you level ineffectively. So this robs the player of the reward of progression and removes player agency. Breath of the Wild broke the mold (or returned to the old model depending on your POV) and gave you open world without scaling content. You can complete the game with 3 hearts and base gear if you really want to. The speed runs of BotW are amazing. Or if you want to play less sweaty you can take the scenic route. I'm honestly surprised there haven't been more copies of this wildly successful formula. I feel like Elden Ring is really the first to try (and succeed). That's how you have to look at it though: boss too hard? Go somewhere else, get stronger and come back. You're essentially choosing your level of difficulty. People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. They're asking for a content conveyor belt with no player agency, essentially. Game companies need to stop listening to these people. They're just wrong. This is a massive mistake game companies make: trying to market their games to people who don't like them at the expense of people who do.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
> People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. They're asking for a content conveyor belt with no player agency, essentially. Game companies need to stop listening to these people. They're just wrong. This is gatekeeping. Game developers at the AAA level should strive to make them as approachable and accessible as practical. An easy mode or other accessibility options don't necessarily have to dumb down the 'intended' way to play. They can supplement the core experience so that busy or differently abled consumers can enjoy it as well.
- emsy 5y ago
  There’s a video of a guy beating an Elden Ring boss with his chin. I find your comment frankly insulting towards, as you put it, “differently abled consumers”.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Olympic paraplegics jumping curbs are worthy of admiration for their efforts. Curb cuts are still a worthwhile innovation.
    - emsy 5y ago
      An easy mode is not a curb cut. Options for color blindness, visual cues for hearing impaired, dyslexia friendly fonts or remappable controls are.
      - paulryanrogers 5y ago
        There are far more impairments than color blindness, dyslexia, and motor control problems. While it's not possible to accommodate every single one perfectly. Easy modes are one of the simpler ways to help a broad cross section.
        emsy 5y ago
        Honest question: how can a game like Dark Souls (or Elden Ring which is already much easier and more approcheable) possibly convey the atmosphere of a dark, merciless world with an easy mode?
- marcusverus 5y ago
  I don't think it's gatekeeping. Videogames are art. It would be silly to say that every painting needs to be easy to appreciate, or that every movie needs to be easy to follow. It's equally silly to suggest that every game should be easy. Nobody ever made great art by striving to make it 'accessible'.
ravishi 5y ago
But doesn't BotW increase the difficulty of some mobs based on the player's progress? They sure don't scale all the enemies, but still scale some. Could it be called the perfect compromise?
alisonkisk 5y ago
nemo44x 5y ago
> Game companies need to stop listening to these people. They're just wrong. Or more specifically, ask them different questions. Asking players what they want to do and see is wrong. You don’t ask customers these things because they don’t really know. You ask them about the outcomes they want and you design your product/game to deliver that. This game works because it was designed this way. You want to feel immersed, that you’re risking things and choices have consequences; being surprised, and a sense of growth and accomplishment. It’s like the old quote: “No one goes to the store to buy a 1/4” drill. They go to buy 1/4” holes”.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  I've found that games that make you "risk things and choices have consequences" have me lose substantial progress upon death, resulting in emotional pain much like having lost multiple pages of writing and not being able to recover it. Additionally, repeatedly playing the same section upon death often makes me feel the game doesn't respect my time. IMO growth and accomplishment is not built around losing progress if you fail (much like learning to program doesn't involve throwing away your code whenever you hit a bug).
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    Not everything will be for everyone. There’s plenty of games that don’t respect the players ability to think and learn too. A lot of people love these games. I think it comes down to fairness though. If I’m walking around holding lots of progress in terms of items or something else I could lose then I’m making a conscious choice to see what’s in that strange cave that’s glowing… Poker isn’t fun if you aren’t risking something, right?
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      But the risk is artificial. It mostly boils down to “do I want to spend 5-10min running back to a save point and making my way back here?” It’s just a chore, not a real risk.
fendy3002 5y ago
Classic rpg enables you to steamroll next area / level by grinding exp and equipments. In MH they can't, I guess it'll be almost the same with Elden Ring and souls series. At least not without some strategy / correct build. Heck even in Armored Core you're toast if your mech doesn't have the correct specification with the area, it's even more brutal. I guess they're asking for the former, to able to grind and steamroll the level after, which can work in other game, but not this genre. Personally, I don't like level scaling system Skyrim use (and ff8), it force you to specific build or at least you'll need to know how to cheese it.
- whynaut 5y ago
  but it does work in Elden Ring? that’s GP’s entire point.
  - fendy3002 5y ago
    Well I just play Monster Hunter, not souls series and Elden Ring yet. Sorry if I'm mistaken Elden Ring by not able to.
oneoff786 5y ago
Divinity, baldurs gate, pathfinder (owl cat), and disco elysium have all been pretty solid. Breath of the wild actually does have some scaling. Enemies get stronger globally (colors change) as you kill more of them. But it’s subtle enough to not connect the dots. The important bit is that things scale linearly, not exponentially like in most rpg settings. A brand new link with a decent weapon can kill a black moblin without too much trouble if they’re skilled. It’s also completely disconnected but probably correlated with your power level. Level scaling does suck. Also in the other direction. I hate feeling too strong for content, especially main story content.
geoah 5y ago
IMO Not everyone has the skills, patience, time, or will to battle artificially hard games but should still be allowed to participate and enjoy the games. The ability for anyone to enjoy them is what makes computer games really great. --- I really enjoyed both Horizon games (Zero dawn and forbidden west) mainly due to their "story mode" difficulty. The game heavily depends on being able to finely aim using a controller, which I really really suck at and I honestly no longer have the time or patience to master the skill, or grind/cheese my way to better gear that makes up for my lack of skill. I started the first game on normal diff, and finished it on story mode most cause I enjoyed the story and various encounters. When the game was out on PC I replayed it on very hard and even tried ultra (was an epic fail) as my overall skills with a keyboard and mouse are much better and enjoy the experience more. I'm now going through the second game still switching between normal and easy mode whenever I can't be bothered with a 30 minute long fight (remember, I still suck) that I can't be bothered replaying. I really appreciated that the developers allowed me to play their game in a pace and time that I was able to.
- ericmay 5y ago
  > IMO Not everyone has the skills, patience, time, or will to battle artificially hard games but should still be allowed to participate and enjoy the games. The ability for anyone to enjoy them is what makes computer games really great. Yea, which is why we have mostly easy, mindless games with no depth and lots of loot boxes. Much more profitable when you focus on “accessibility” and appealing to as many people as possible (larger market). That’s why Apple gaming on iPhone is bigger than everything else. Whether by intention or accident I think “accessibility” has great branding and can be used as an excuse to focus on market share/size. “Oh we have to do this otherwise the game isn’t accessible.” Hard to stand up in the room and push back on that line. Personally (if you can’t tell already) I think it’s better that many games aren’t accessible. There needs to be “reward” for putting in time and effort. Growing up if a game was just hard it was… just hard. You either eventually beat it or you gave up and played something else. No big deal. I’d rather there be things that exclude people I think than to have everything be super easy. Take Skyrim versus Morrowind. As a kid I randomly stumbled across Morrowind in a local used game store. This was sort of pre-internet (or at least pre-internet in my house). So when I played Morrowind there were no guides. I had no idea what I was doing. Random fights were “hard” for me. But there was so much mystery. What is behind that locked door in the Mage’s Guild? I spent countless hours just exploring the world and discovering random stuff. It was fantastic. Skyrim comes out (maybe I could make the same argument about Oblivion). You run into someone, oh here is the exact location of the quest. Follow the marker. You show up. Boss fight is super easy. Ride your horse around. The conversations with NPCs has little depth. There’s no mystery. Now I admit some or much of this can be chalked up to nostalgia and misremembering either game. I still enjoyed Skyrim. But Morrowind was part of my life. Elden Ring gives me similar vibes and I’ve mostly been avoiding the Internet while playing it. There are boss fights that are just hard and I won’t progress in the game if I don’t beat them. Good. That’s a feature, not a bug. I am currently stuck on the Demonic Tree Sentinel as an astrologer. It’s frustrating. But what’s the point if I could just spend real money on a power-up or cheese the boss or just lower the difficulty level? As an industry I of course think that there should be games that are approachable to people of all skill levels and interest. I enjoy Pokemon and Mario Cart and World of Warcraft, and also Elden Ring. But I absolutely think that developers can and should be free to make games that are not approachable whatsoever. If it’s too hard that’s ok. There are other games and other things to do.
Forgeties79 5y ago
I want to agree with your comment in its entirety…but I do have a significant caveat that’s important to consider when building a game experience. It needs to be communicated. I am not talking about a hold your hand tutorial necessarily (though sometimes those are useful). I just need some indicator that I am about to get in trouble. You brought up BOTW, and that is actually where I think it is very poorly implemented in some ways. I spent so many hours in the beginning dying because I went in the “wrong direction.” There is almost no warning that you are going to get rocked, and travel in that game is incredibly slow until you unlock enough towers to jump around the world/have reliable horses and good climbing. I probably spent the first 5 to 8 hours of that game just bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out what was bad design vs. my poor decision making/inability to read cues. For a father of 2 it’s hard to commit the 2-3hr sit down a few days a week required to learn a game like that and pick up the subtleties (if any exist). I go one way: “hey some baddies by a big skull.” Bop em, no problem. I walk 2 min another direction: “hey the same baddies by a big skull.” One hit, I die, I’ve lost 20min of progress. Not everyone wants to deal with that headache. And I get it, not every game is designed for every person. But if you’re going to not scale up, you need to tell me when I am way out of my depth. And BOTW does a terrible job of that as it invites you to explore this open world.
elorant 5y ago
This is the main reason why I’ve stopped playing games the last ten years. Everything looks like a movie that you barely interact with. Great cinematics and graphics, but the gameplay is too damn easy. And it affects all genres even adventure games are too easy these days. I remember back in the days the first time I got my hands on Myst I really had to put my brain to work to understand what I had to do. And I liked it that way because the game was a challenge, not just entertainment.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  We are in an incredible era for art/innovative storytelling in gaming, it’s not all stale AAA COD clones. I highly encourage you to check out some of the best indie of the last decade. There are at least 5-10 incredible ones any given year.
  - elorant 5y ago
    Which titles would you suggest?
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Oooo where to begin? * Hades (really anything by Supergiant Games) is a masterpiece. Bastion is a must as well if you like the combat. * Celeste is the best platform I’ve played in the last decade. The soundtrack is also incredible. I’ve got the vinyl box set on my shelf next to me as I type this. * Not for Broadcast is a trip but may not be for you, just depends on your taste. It’s a “propaganda simulator” akin to Papers, Please and such. Check out the trailer you’ll understand it immediately. It’s wild haha * Outer Wilds was the most challenging and fulfilling game I’ve played in years. Beautiful score, powerful and rich story. Don’t look anything up about the story/puzzles. It’s hard, you really have to think, but it’s very much beatable. It’s kind of a crazy “Groundhog Day in space.” * Hollow Knight is a beautiful 2D metroidvania. Highly stylized, lots of awards. * Death’s Door is a recent isometric metroidvania I’ve been enjoying a lot. * Stardew Valley is a beautiful spiritual successor to Harvest Moon if that’s your jam. You can easily lose track of time playing it and the game’s lore/stories are surprisingly through. LOTS to uncover in a very relaxing, low stakes package. * Wildermyth is a charming D&D-like RPG. I got a nice 20-30hrs out of it and plan on doing more. Has a quirky humor about it. * Disco Elysium is…just play it. The list goes on. I can throw up more if you want haha. What do you typically enjoy?
mizzack 5y ago
> Breath of the Wild broke the mold Elden Ring does very little differently than what other Souls games have been doing for almost 15 years. The scale and openness are just a bit greater.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  To the point that I'm frankly stunned they keep getting so much praise for it. FromSoft appears to have one game design.
vcxy 5y ago
Morrowind has been one of my all time favorite games for 20 years. It's cool that you don't like it, I don't mind. But, I do not think it's fair to say that the scaling content in Morrowind removes player agency. Having parts of a game be inaccessible because of artificially stronger enemies is just weird to me, and I think would actually remove player agency in an elder scrolls game. There's no need to plan out your leveling in Morrowind. You feel you have to because you like to min-max I guess? But that misses the point of a game like this entirely. Which, again, is fine. To each their own. You don't prefer games preferentially focusing on atmosphere, world building, role playing, lore. Obviously you wouldn't say no to those things, but it sounds like they're less important (compared to combat mechanics, e.g.) for you than me. Similarly, the only MMO that is remotely enjoyable for me is elder scrolls online. It's not for an easy mode. WOW isn't hard. It's just annoying (to me, if that needs to be said).
- jmyeet 5y ago
  I didn't play Morrowind. I started to play Skyrim but once I realized I was dealing with a scaling system I went digging. You can level too fast in Bethesda games (eg [1]). I believe this was worse in Oblivion but it's still an issue. The problem is it forces me into decisions I don't want to make. I don't want to choose between levelling too fast and potentially making my experience playing the game worse (since enemies may get more relatively powerful). There is a world of difference betweenn monotonically increasing character power and character power that might decrease. That turned me off the entire game. [1]: https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/36050/are-there-any-disadvantages-to-leveling-too-fast-in-skyrim https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/36050/are-there-a...
- Bancakes 5y ago
  Morrowind becomes too easy an hour in - you make some 99dmg fire enchantments and kill everything in a few hits. I found I would rather kill 3x stronger enemies for 3x the reward. And even then, I was already stashing millions' worth in armor and weapons I could not possibly sell to a NPC.
  - singron 5y ago
onion2k 5y ago
People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. I don't think that's fair. You can beat Eldern Ring by working through it and grinding up levels, but that takes a significant time investment. Most people who have a life that includes more than gaming (kids, business, partner, other hobbies, etc) don't have that time available. I want to get through a game without repeating content much because I want to spend my time feeling like I'm getting further, not feeling like I'm working. I play games for fun. I don't particularly want to be challenged. The days when I could boast to my friends about being better at a game than them are long over. Gaming isn't a competition for me; 'winning' at a computer game is essentially a worthless skill. I'd rather put my energy into improving the work I do to make money than making a little guy on a screen more powerful. I don't think that requires an easy mode, but it does need thought from the devs. Some games do this really well - I never felt like playing GTA:V or Witcher 3 was grinding despite there being no difficulty level option. Every time I played I saw new things and got a bit further. I gave up on Souls games a long time ago because many times I played I didn't get anywhere - I just failed to progress over and over again. Maybe I just suck and should 'get good', but until that happens I'll just play other games.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  > Most people who have a life that includes more than gaming (kids, business, partner, other hobbies, etc) don't have that time available What's the goal here? Is it to complete the game or to enjoy the experience? If it's the former, are you really enjoying the game? If not, why are you playing it? If I'm playing a game I like and it takes me 100 hours to finish it instead of 50 then I consider that a win. Not all character progression is created equally. Spending 40 hours grinding honey badgers would be one thing (ie overly grindy). But in Elden Ring you're talking about optional areas ie additional content. > I just failed to progress over and over again. Maybe I just suck and should 'get good', In BotW you could make gold to improve your armor, you could get different armor sets, you could get stronger weapons (eg particularly Lynel weapons), etc. I'm less familiar with the analogs in Elden Ring but they're there. You can totally go and do some optional area, level up and and come back and cheese the content if that's how you want to play. Elden Ring isn't forcing you to "get good".
- 5y ago
fleabitdev 5y ago
Careful difficulty tuning is essential for fun gameplay. If an open-world game provides traditional exponential power and difficulty curves, and the game fails to guide you to the right content at the right time, you'll end up facing challenges which are too easy or too hard to be fun. Hollow Knight navigated this problem quite skillfully, but even in that game, I ended up effortlessly skimming through a few areas because I happened to leave them too late. What a waste of hours of content! I'd like to see more open-world games experiment with a flat power curve: simply throw away the idea that the player character's numerical power should increase as the game goes on. If Super Mario World had increased the player's jump height or hit points based on the number of levels completed, it would have made the game much worse - so why do we tolerate the same thing from Castlevania and Final Fantasy? Players might miss the (artificial) feeling of mastery, but I don't think it's worth the cost. Finding better ways to achieve that same feeling would be an interesting design challenge!
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  Zelda: OoT and MM did a great job of this. It was mostly about getting new equipment not necessarily stronger equipment. Aside from health (and doubling the magic bar in OoT) there’s no real upgrading in them, grinding isn’t even an option.
rdedev 5y ago
On the other hand scaling lets me still enjoy fights even when I'm leveled up. A lot of times when the game takes you to one of the starting regions, one shotting the enemies there just felt boring. It would be much better if the enemies levelled up just a bit so that the fight is still engaging but not easy. A better approach than level scaling would be making those enemies change their move set or tactics later on. That said I get your points about harder enimies being scaled down to the players level. This could be fixed with a smarter scaling system and i guess a lot of games today do it
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  > A better approach than level scaling would be making those enemies change their move set or tactics later on It would be pretty neat, and it’s also incredibly time consuming/costly to essentially double or triple your combat balancing workload.
mysterydip 5y ago
If a game has an easy mode and you never select it, how is that at your expense?
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  “It upsets me that this pizza shop offers plain cheese pizzas” essentially.
UncleMeat 5y ago
> People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. In the original Dark Souls, the giants in Lost Izalith respawned on bonfires. This was frustrating and dumb and was changed with a patch. But I bought the xbox version and didn't get the patch. I stopped in Lost Izalith in large part because killing those giants over and over was tedious and frustrating as all get out. Would it have been wrong of me to say "I would have had more fun if that area had been easier and I'd been able to challenge myself with the bosses?" Or imagine an extreme example. Dark Souls gives you hard modes on repeat attempts. So clearly there is a difficulty scaling. Imagine if instead everything was balanced on the first attempt like it is on the 10th. Or imagine if people were forced to complete a SL1 playthrough because level ups were removed? Would somebody then be wrong in asking for an easy mode that was equivalent to the game that was released in real life?

by jmyeet 5y ago

paulryanrogers 5y ago

> People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. They're asking for a content conveyor belt with no player agency, essentially. Game companies need to stop listening to these people. They're just wrong. This is gatekeeping. Game developers at the AAA level should strive to make them as approachable and accessible as practical. An easy mode or other accessibility options don't necessarily have to dumb down the 'intended' way to play. They can supplement the core experience so that busy or differently abled consumers can enjoy it as well.

emsy 5y ago
There’s a video of a guy beating an Elden Ring boss with his chin. I find your comment frankly insulting towards, as you put it, “differently abled consumers”.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Olympic paraplegics jumping curbs are worthy of admiration for their efforts. Curb cuts are still a worthwhile innovation.
  - emsy 5y ago
    An easy mode is not a curb cut. Options for color blindness, visual cues for hearing impaired, dyslexia friendly fonts or remappable controls are.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      There are far more impairments than color blindness, dyslexia, and motor control problems. While it's not possible to accommodate every single one perfectly. Easy modes are one of the simpler ways to help a broad cross section.
      - emsy 5y ago
        Honest question: how can a game like Dark Souls (or Elden Ring which is already much easier and more approcheable) possibly convey the atmosphere of a dark, merciless world with an easy mode?
marcusverus 5y ago
I don't think it's gatekeeping. Videogames are art. It would be silly to say that every painting needs to be easy to appreciate, or that every movie needs to be easy to follow. It's equally silly to suggest that every game should be easy. Nobody ever made great art by striving to make it 'accessible'.

ravishi 5y ago

But doesn't BotW increase the difficulty of some mobs based on the player's progress? They sure don't scale all the enemies, but still scale some. Could it be called the perfect compromise?

alisonkisk 5y ago

nemo44x 5y ago

> Game companies need to stop listening to these people. They're just wrong. Or more specifically, ask them different questions. Asking players what they want to do and see is wrong. You don’t ask customers these things because they don’t really know. You ask them about the outcomes they want and you design your product/game to deliver that. This game works because it was designed this way. You want to feel immersed, that you’re risking things and choices have consequences; being surprised, and a sense of growth and accomplishment. It’s like the old quote: “No one goes to the store to buy a 1/4” drill. They go to buy 1/4” holes”.

nyanpasu64 5y ago
I've found that games that make you "risk things and choices have consequences" have me lose substantial progress upon death, resulting in emotional pain much like having lost multiple pages of writing and not being able to recover it. Additionally, repeatedly playing the same section upon death often makes me feel the game doesn't respect my time. IMO growth and accomplishment is not built around losing progress if you fail (much like learning to program doesn't involve throwing away your code whenever you hit a bug).
- nemo44x 5y ago
  Not everything will be for everyone. There’s plenty of games that don’t respect the players ability to think and learn too. A lot of people love these games. I think it comes down to fairness though. If I’m walking around holding lots of progress in terms of items or something else I could lose then I’m making a conscious choice to see what’s in that strange cave that’s glowing… Poker isn’t fun if you aren’t risking something, right?
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    But the risk is artificial. It mostly boils down to “do I want to spend 5-10min running back to a save point and making my way back here?” It’s just a chore, not a real risk.

fendy3002 5y ago

Classic rpg enables you to steamroll next area / level by grinding exp and equipments. In MH they can't, I guess it'll be almost the same with Elden Ring and souls series. At least not without some strategy / correct build. Heck even in Armored Core you're toast if your mech doesn't have the correct specification with the area, it's even more brutal. I guess they're asking for the former, to able to grind and steamroll the level after, which can work in other game, but not this genre. Personally, I don't like level scaling system Skyrim use (and ff8), it force you to specific build or at least you'll need to know how to cheese it.

whynaut 5y ago
but it does work in Elden Ring? that’s GP’s entire point.
- fendy3002 5y ago
  Well I just play Monster Hunter, not souls series and Elden Ring yet. Sorry if I'm mistaken Elden Ring by not able to.

oneoff786 5y ago

Divinity, baldurs gate, pathfinder (owl cat), and disco elysium have all been pretty solid. Breath of the wild actually does have some scaling. Enemies get stronger globally (colors change) as you kill more of them. But it’s subtle enough to not connect the dots. The important bit is that things scale linearly, not exponentially like in most rpg settings. A brand new link with a decent weapon can kill a black moblin without too much trouble if they’re skilled. It’s also completely disconnected but probably correlated with your power level. Level scaling does suck. Also in the other direction. I hate feeling too strong for content, especially main story content.

geoah 5y ago

IMO Not everyone has the skills, patience, time, or will to battle artificially hard games but should still be allowed to participate and enjoy the games. The ability for anyone to enjoy them is what makes computer games really great. --- I really enjoyed both Horizon games (Zero dawn and forbidden west) mainly due to their "story mode" difficulty. The game heavily depends on being able to finely aim using a controller, which I really really suck at and I honestly no longer have the time or patience to master the skill, or grind/cheese my way to better gear that makes up for my lack of skill. I started the first game on normal diff, and finished it on story mode most cause I enjoyed the story and various encounters. When the game was out on PC I replayed it on very hard and even tried ultra (was an epic fail) as my overall skills with a keyboard and mouse are much better and enjoy the experience more. I'm now going through the second game still switching between normal and easy mode whenever I can't be bothered with a 30 minute long fight (remember, I still suck) that I can't be bothered replaying. I really appreciated that the developers allowed me to play their game in a pace and time that I was able to.

ericmay 5y ago
> IMO Not everyone has the skills, patience, time, or will to battle artificially hard games but should still be allowed to participate and enjoy the games. The ability for anyone to enjoy them is what makes computer games really great. Yea, which is why we have mostly easy, mindless games with no depth and lots of loot boxes. Much more profitable when you focus on “accessibility” and appealing to as many people as possible (larger market). That’s why Apple gaming on iPhone is bigger than everything else. Whether by intention or accident I think “accessibility” has great branding and can be used as an excuse to focus on market share/size. “Oh we have to do this otherwise the game isn’t accessible.” Hard to stand up in the room and push back on that line. Personally (if you can’t tell already) I think it’s better that many games aren’t accessible. There needs to be “reward” for putting in time and effort. Growing up if a game was just hard it was… just hard. You either eventually beat it or you gave up and played something else. No big deal. I’d rather there be things that exclude people I think than to have everything be super easy. Take Skyrim versus Morrowind. As a kid I randomly stumbled across Morrowind in a local used game store. This was sort of pre-internet (or at least pre-internet in my house). So when I played Morrowind there were no guides. I had no idea what I was doing. Random fights were “hard” for me. But there was so much mystery. What is behind that locked door in the Mage’s Guild? I spent countless hours just exploring the world and discovering random stuff. It was fantastic. Skyrim comes out (maybe I could make the same argument about Oblivion). You run into someone, oh here is the exact location of the quest. Follow the marker. You show up. Boss fight is super easy. Ride your horse around. The conversations with NPCs has little depth. There’s no mystery. Now I admit some or much of this can be chalked up to nostalgia and misremembering either game. I still enjoyed Skyrim. But Morrowind was part of my life. Elden Ring gives me similar vibes and I’ve mostly been avoiding the Internet while playing it. There are boss fights that are just hard and I won’t progress in the game if I don’t beat them. Good. That’s a feature, not a bug. I am currently stuck on the Demonic Tree Sentinel as an astrologer. It’s frustrating. But what’s the point if I could just spend real money on a power-up or cheese the boss or just lower the difficulty level? As an industry I of course think that there should be games that are approachable to people of all skill levels and interest. I enjoy Pokemon and Mario Cart and World of Warcraft, and also Elden Ring. But I absolutely think that developers can and should be free to make games that are not approachable whatsoever. If it’s too hard that’s ok. There are other games and other things to do.

Forgeties79 5y ago

I want to agree with your comment in its entirety…but I do have a significant caveat that’s important to consider when building a game experience. It needs to be communicated. I am not talking about a hold your hand tutorial necessarily (though sometimes those are useful). I just need some indicator that I am about to get in trouble. You brought up BOTW, and that is actually where I think it is very poorly implemented in some ways. I spent so many hours in the beginning dying because I went in the “wrong direction.” There is almost no warning that you are going to get rocked, and travel in that game is incredibly slow until you unlock enough towers to jump around the world/have reliable horses and good climbing. I probably spent the first 5 to 8 hours of that game just bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out what was bad design vs. my poor decision making/inability to read cues. For a father of 2 it’s hard to commit the 2-3hr sit down a few days a week required to learn a game like that and pick up the subtleties (if any exist). I go one way: “hey some baddies by a big skull.” Bop em, no problem. I walk 2 min another direction: “hey the same baddies by a big skull.” One hit, I die, I’ve lost 20min of progress. Not everyone wants to deal with that headache. And I get it, not every game is designed for every person. But if you’re going to not scale up, you need to tell me when I am way out of my depth. And BOTW does a terrible job of that as it invites you to explore this open world.

elorant 5y ago

This is the main reason why I’ve stopped playing games the last ten years. Everything looks like a movie that you barely interact with. Great cinematics and graphics, but the gameplay is too damn easy. And it affects all genres even adventure games are too easy these days. I remember back in the days the first time I got my hands on Myst I really had to put my brain to work to understand what I had to do. And I liked it that way because the game was a challenge, not just entertainment.

Forgeties79 5y ago
We are in an incredible era for art/innovative storytelling in gaming, it’s not all stale AAA COD clones. I highly encourage you to check out some of the best indie of the last decade. There are at least 5-10 incredible ones any given year.
- elorant 5y ago
  Which titles would you suggest?
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    Oooo where to begin? * Hades (really anything by Supergiant Games) is a masterpiece. Bastion is a must as well if you like the combat. * Celeste is the best platform I’ve played in the last decade. The soundtrack is also incredible. I’ve got the vinyl box set on my shelf next to me as I type this. * Not for Broadcast is a trip but may not be for you, just depends on your taste. It’s a “propaganda simulator” akin to Papers, Please and such. Check out the trailer you’ll understand it immediately. It’s wild haha * Outer Wilds was the most challenging and fulfilling game I’ve played in years. Beautiful score, powerful and rich story. Don’t look anything up about the story/puzzles. It’s hard, you really have to think, but it’s very much beatable. It’s kind of a crazy “Groundhog Day in space.” * Hollow Knight is a beautiful 2D metroidvania. Highly stylized, lots of awards. * Death’s Door is a recent isometric metroidvania I’ve been enjoying a lot. * Stardew Valley is a beautiful spiritual successor to Harvest Moon if that’s your jam. You can easily lose track of time playing it and the game’s lore/stories are surprisingly through. LOTS to uncover in a very relaxing, low stakes package. * Wildermyth is a charming D&D-like RPG. I got a nice 20-30hrs out of it and plan on doing more. Has a quirky humor about it. * Disco Elysium is…just play it. The list goes on. I can throw up more if you want haha. What do you typically enjoy?

mizzack 5y ago

> Breath of the Wild broke the mold Elden Ring does very little differently than what other Souls games have been doing for almost 15 years. The scale and openness are just a bit greater.

UncleMeat 5y ago
To the point that I'm frankly stunned they keep getting so much praise for it. FromSoft appears to have one game design.

vcxy 5y ago

Morrowind has been one of my all time favorite games for 20 years. It's cool that you don't like it, I don't mind. But, I do not think it's fair to say that the scaling content in Morrowind removes player agency. Having parts of a game be inaccessible because of artificially stronger enemies is just weird to me, and I think would actually remove player agency in an elder scrolls game. There's no need to plan out your leveling in Morrowind. You feel you have to because you like to min-max I guess? But that misses the point of a game like this entirely. Which, again, is fine. To each their own. You don't prefer games preferentially focusing on atmosphere, world building, role playing, lore. Obviously you wouldn't say no to those things, but it sounds like they're less important (compared to combat mechanics, e.g.) for you than me. Similarly, the only MMO that is remotely enjoyable for me is elder scrolls online. It's not for an easy mode. WOW isn't hard. It's just annoying (to me, if that needs to be said).

jmyeet 5y ago
I didn't play Morrowind. I started to play Skyrim but once I realized I was dealing with a scaling system I went digging. You can level too fast in Bethesda games (eg [1]). I believe this was worse in Oblivion but it's still an issue. The problem is it forces me into decisions I don't want to make. I don't want to choose between levelling too fast and potentially making my experience playing the game worse (since enemies may get more relatively powerful). There is a world of difference betweenn monotonically increasing character power and character power that might decrease. That turned me off the entire game. [1]: https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/36050/are-there-any-disadvantages-to-leveling-too-fast-in-skyrim https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/36050/are-there-a...
Bancakes 5y ago
Morrowind becomes too easy an hour in - you make some 99dmg fire enchantments and kill everything in a few hits. I found I would rather kill 3x stronger enemies for 3x the reward. And even then, I was already stashing millions' worth in armor and weapons I could not possibly sell to a NPC.
- singron 5y ago

onion2k 5y ago

People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. I don't think that's fair. You can beat Eldern Ring by working through it and grinding up levels, but that takes a significant time investment. Most people who have a life that includes more than gaming (kids, business, partner, other hobbies, etc) don't have that time available. I want to get through a game without repeating content much because I want to spend my time feeling like I'm getting further, not feeling like I'm working. I play games for fun. I don't particularly want to be challenged. The days when I could boast to my friends about being better at a game than them are long over. Gaming isn't a competition for me; 'winning' at a computer game is essentially a worthless skill. I'd rather put my energy into improving the work I do to make money than making a little guy on a screen more powerful. I don't think that requires an easy mode, but it does need thought from the devs. Some games do this really well - I never felt like playing GTA:V or Witcher 3 was grinding despite there being no difficulty level option. Every time I played I saw new things and got a bit further. I gave up on Souls games a long time ago because many times I played I didn't get anywhere - I just failed to progress over and over again. Maybe I just suck and should 'get good', but until that happens I'll just play other games.

jmyeet 5y ago
> Most people who have a life that includes more than gaming (kids, business, partner, other hobbies, etc) don't have that time available What's the goal here? Is it to complete the game or to enjoy the experience? If it's the former, are you really enjoying the game? If not, why are you playing it? If I'm playing a game I like and it takes me 100 hours to finish it instead of 50 then I consider that a win. Not all character progression is created equally. Spending 40 hours grinding honey badgers would be one thing (ie overly grindy). But in Elden Ring you're talking about optional areas ie additional content. > I just failed to progress over and over again. Maybe I just suck and should 'get good', In BotW you could make gold to improve your armor, you could get different armor sets, you could get stronger weapons (eg particularly Lynel weapons), etc. I'm less familiar with the analogs in Elden Ring but they're there. You can totally go and do some optional area, level up and and come back and cheese the content if that's how you want to play. Elden Ring isn't forcing you to "get good".
5y ago

fleabitdev 5y ago

Careful difficulty tuning is essential for fun gameplay. If an open-world game provides traditional exponential power and difficulty curves, and the game fails to guide you to the right content at the right time, you'll end up facing challenges which are too easy or too hard to be fun. Hollow Knight navigated this problem quite skillfully, but even in that game, I ended up effortlessly skimming through a few areas because I happened to leave them too late. What a waste of hours of content! I'd like to see more open-world games experiment with a flat power curve: simply throw away the idea that the player character's numerical power should increase as the game goes on. If Super Mario World had increased the player's jump height or hit points based on the number of levels completed, it would have made the game much worse - so why do we tolerate the same thing from Castlevania and Final Fantasy? Players might miss the (artificial) feeling of mastery, but I don't think it's worth the cost. Finding better ways to achieve that same feeling would be an interesting design challenge!

Forgeties79 5y ago
Zelda: OoT and MM did a great job of this. It was mostly about getting new equipment not necessarily stronger equipment. Aside from health (and doubling the magic bar in OoT) there’s no real upgrading in them, grinding isn’t even an option.

rdedev 5y ago

On the other hand scaling lets me still enjoy fights even when I'm leveled up. A lot of times when the game takes you to one of the starting regions, one shotting the enemies there just felt boring. It would be much better if the enemies levelled up just a bit so that the fight is still engaging but not easy. A better approach than level scaling would be making those enemies change their move set or tactics later on. That said I get your points about harder enimies being scaled down to the players level. This could be fixed with a smarter scaling system and i guess a lot of games today do it

Forgeties79 5y ago
> A better approach than level scaling would be making those enemies change their move set or tactics later on It would be pretty neat, and it’s also incredibly time consuming/costly to essentially double or triple your combat balancing workload.

mysterydip 5y ago

If a game has an easy mode and you never select it, how is that at your expense?

Forgeties79 5y ago
“It upsets me that this pizza shop offers plain cheese pizzas” essentially.

UncleMeat 5y ago

> People who ask for an easy mode are missing the point entirely. In the original Dark Souls, the giants in Lost Izalith respawned on bonfires. This was frustrating and dumb and was changed with a patch. But I bought the xbox version and didn't get the patch. I stopped in Lost Izalith in large part because killing those giants over and over was tedious and frustrating as all get out. Would it have been wrong of me to say "I would have had more fun if that area had been easier and I'd been able to challenge myself with the bosses?" Or imagine an extreme example. Dark Souls gives you hard modes on repeat attempts. So clearly there is a difficulty scaling. Imagine if instead everything was balanced on the first attempt like it is on the 10th. Or imagine if people were forced to complete a SL1 playthrough because level ups were removed? Would somebody then be wrong in asking for an easy mode that was equivalent to the game that was released in real life?