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This is one of those reasons why I wish there was an easy mode. There is great value in the games beyond just the system mastery.

urthor 5y ago
You can't appreciate it without system mastery though. How are you really paying attention to the work that was created if you don't learn its systems.
nyolfen 5y ago
this is like asking for a dumbed down version of classical literature; the difficulty is an intrinsic part of the experience
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  We translate novels, despite knowing that translation fundamentally damages the text in major ways. And it is rarely the case where the mechanics of reading a novel are intended to be difficult. Chaucer didn't write with the intention of confusing readers 700 years later. But because of the changing nature of language his writing has larger barriers today than in the past (modulo basic literacy).
  - nyolfen 5y ago
    translation is not the same thing as rewriting it with the 2000 most common words or whatever the literary equivalent of easy mode is. children routinely beat fromsoft games, they are not arbitrary, but it is normal for the game to beat you up before you figure out how to play. the entire tone of the game is set by this experience and you might as well just watch an LP if you want to skip it, but i have sincere contempt for people who want to reduce art to the lowest common denominator. if you don't respect the choices made in its creation why should respect be afforded to your whims?
kache_ 5y ago
The difficulty is part of the artform
- amalcon 5y ago
  The interesting thing about FromSoft games is that almost all of the difficulty is observation and timing. It's real difficulty, to be sure, but almost anybody (obviously without severe visual impairment) can learn observation and timing. It's not like a high APM or high precision thing, where you need good reflexes or dexterity with keyboard and mouse; it's mostly a matter of learning when to hit which button. The problem is that some people find it highly satisfying to learn when to hit which button, but some people find it boring. To the latter, this manifests as a level of difficulty so high that it almost prohibits playing the game. Which is fine -- not everyone needs to like every game -- but it's annoying to those people when others tell them that they should like it.
  - Geee 5y ago
    There isn't much opportunity for learning when you get to face the enemy for just a few seconds, get killed and then have to grind through loading screen and low level enemies to get another try. It's just awful game design.
- Filligree 5y ago
  For many people, this level of difficulty is just impossibility.
  - jcutrell 5y ago
    Which ultimately means the game becomes a step more towards exclusive, for better or worse. Probably for worse.
  - xipho 5y ago
    Streamers (e.g. MoonMoon's playthrough) are pointing out that if you go "everywhere" and do "everything", truly immersing yourself (as perhaps intended), and you don't rush from boss-to-boss that that "difficulty" is greatly reduced to non-existent. Yes, some very hard spots, but far less than one would assume from the outset based on quick overviews. There are also builds that greatly reduce difficulty making some "impossible" bosses trivial.
Zababa 5y ago
There was, Hoartfrost stomp, Sword of night and flame and Royal knight resolve, but they got patched. You can always downgrade or use cheat engine.
soared 5y ago
Elden ring doesn’t have an explicit easy mode, but you definitely can play it in easy mode. You can outlevel weak enemies, play with mage, and for bosses just summon in other players to kill them for you.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  "Just grind to level up" is, in my opinion, a way worse system than "go to the menu and select 'easy mode.'" The effect is roughly the same but takes hours of boring gameplay rather than five seconds of menuing. I'd be much more receptive to the "no easymode" argument if the games didn't have RPG elements at their very core.
  - farmerstan 5y ago
    I bought elden ring and I’m not used to open world games and have found I'm not a fan. I’ve been grinding and have made no progress and am about to give up.
    - theta_d 5y ago
      The problem isn't that it's open world, it's that there is zero guidance. There are no quests markers, no quest log, anything. The most you get is the ability to put markers on the map.
      - mpfundstein 5y ago
        so what precisely is the problem? if you listen to what noc s are saying, its quite hard actually to not know where to go. furthermore, there is not much dialogue. and its also not that you have 30 quests at the same time open. heck, snes game havent gotten quest logs either. just use a notepad?
  - dkersten 5y ago
    My experience with the game has been that I've been over-levelled for almost all bosses (and the ones I wasn't were all optional), just by exploring the world. The game is designed so that if you get stuck somewhere, you can go do something else and come back later. If you stubbornly hammer your head against the one challenge or focus purely on the critical path, then I feel the difficulty is self-inflicted. For example, some of the early bosses I've heard people complain about, Margit and Crucible Knight, I beat first try without much difficulty at all because I explored the starting areas thoroughly before reaching them and was naturally overpowered. I plan to actually play again when I'm done and purposely not level just so I can experience the challenge. Speaking of self-inflicted, I've also seen a ton of people (eg on Reddit and Youtube) complaining that they're being one-shotted by bosses with their high level characters, but when they share their stats, they pumped everything into a damage dealing stat and few (or often NONE!) into their health. Of course they're being one-shotted if they don't increase their health. Again, this difficulty seems completely self-inflicted. There are some truly hard bosses, for sure, but with a game as huge as Elden Ring and with as much value for money as Elden Ring is, I think people just have to make peace with the fact that unless you're dedicated to overcoming the challenges it presents, you may not see every bit of content the game has to offer. FROM Software certainly are ok with that.
ng12 5y ago
There really is, but I would also proffer that the difficulty is a little important because it makes you afraid of the world and makes your achievements meaningful. A tour of Lordran wouldn't be as enjoyable. That said, I think this is what Elden Ring was going for. There's a massive amount of content such that you can avoid fighting a tough boss until you're strong enough.
- ascar 5y ago
  You can actually progress until the main capital without killing a single enemy. Like 70% of the games world. I started as a Wretch and arrived completely under leveled and without gear at the first boss, which felt nearly impossible to beat so I just started adventuring. At some point you get blocked by a barrier that requires you to defeat two main bosses. I was actually a bit disappointed about that.
  - tyrantalope 5y ago
    If you're referring to Margit and the other boss after, you can skip those. I did by accident. There's a hidden path I won't spoil.
    - ascar 5y ago
      I was talking about skipping Margit (which is boss 1) and all bosses after. But at the capital after the Dectus lift you will get blocked. I don't wanna spoil too much, but that's basically as far as you can go without killing anything.
      - rigmarole 5y ago
        I took the lift at a too-early level and encountered no such obstacle. I wandered around a large part of that area and fought no bosses.
- dkersten 5y ago
  The difficulty certainly adds a level of tension and atmosphere that other games simply don't have. For the most part, outside of some specific bosses, the games aren't actually thaaat difficult, they're just uncompromising and they punish mistakes. I feel that the Dark Souls 1 marketing focusing on the difficulty so much was a detriment to the series really. Don't get me wrong, the games are definitely not easy, but most of the content can be experienced without too much challenge if you're methodical and take it slow.
chrsig 5y ago
I strongly feel the opposite. The difficulty is what makes you spend time with the game, and truly appreciate each bit of progress you make. Without the suffering, you can't truly appreciate what you find around the next corner.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first play. That'd be more difficult. You would suffer more. Would you appreciate it more? I suspect not. The sweet spot is when something is challenging for the particular player and they are able to overcome that challenge through growth. But because each player is different, it is not possible for a single tuning to hit that sweet spot for every possible person.
  - chrsig 5y ago
    > Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first play I don't think that's quite a good comparison -- because leveling up is literally a method to overcome the difficulty. Grind. Get Good. Kill some foes, run back to the bonfire. Kill them again, run back to the bonfire. Eventually killing them becomes trivial, as a combination of muscle memory and leveling up. Some might even call that practice. It's an unwillingness to invest time into practice that hinders people from enjoying more of it, not the inherent difficulty. And this goes for a great many things, sports, music, painting, programming, woodworking etc. It's also totally ok that people don't want to invest the time -- I'm not making a value judgement here. For a sports analogy: I don't want to invest time in practicing (or even learning about) basketball. As a result, I'm horrific at it. I'm quite fine with that. It does however mean that a decent chunk of popular culture is inaccessible to me.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      "Just grind" is, in my opinion, the argument that proves all of this gatekeeping is garbage. Grinding achieves the same thing as an easy mode except it takes hours of mindless low-engagement gameplay to complete. Grinding has widely been considered bad gameplay for more than two decades at this point. If the game didn't have RPG mechanics and there was no mechanism to just make the enemies deal a smaller percentage of your health pool or to make your attacks deal more damage then I'd be much more amenable to the "the game is flawlessly tuned according to the developer's vision and that should not be touched" but it obviously isn't since every single player will arrive at each encounter with different character and weapon stats.
dharmab 5y ago
There's a few places in Elden Ring where you can trivially and quickly farm and overlevel your character.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Isn't that worse than an easy mode? The outcome is the same but it takes hours rather than seconds and the locations where you can quickly farm levels are not obvious in game and require you to look up advice online.
  - kipchak 5y ago
    A potential upside is that because it's tedious, you'll probably want to do it for only as long as necessary before trying again so the difficulty is somewhat adjusted to the player's need, and you don't actually change how enemies behave - the mechanics of the game are still the exact same, your numbers are just a bit bigger. When I imagine an easy mode I would figure making changes for how things work would be necessary, like having a boss' attacks be more predictable.
  - gretch 5y ago
    You don’t have to farm levels. You just go do something else that naturally results in levels or loot making your character stronger. Since all of the game is wonderfully designed, it’s never a situation where you run off and “kill 10 bats” that people might have in mind due to precedents set by e.g. world of Warcraft. Also, few ppl understand this, but community knowledge is actually a core part of the design philosophy. That’s why there’s player messages and blood stains built into the game. It’s not a dirty thing in this game to look stuff up or ask for help. There’s a huge community and comradary aspect to the game.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Elden Ring has this capability but none of the previous games did. Stuck on O&S? There is literally nowhere else to go except through them.
gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
There are plenty of easy modes available. It's not a settings option though, it's a play style. It really is a wonderfully well designed game.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Okay. And how am I supposed to find these play styles? Looking up walkthroughs that show you OP builds and where to find relevant items is surely more immersion breaking than changing a difficulty setting in a menu that makes enemies do 20% less damage and have 20% less health.
  - gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
    Farm normal enemies slowly, ignore bosses until you are over leveled - say by 20%, spend the time slowly exploring and methodically clearing out enemies instead, mount and run away or through packs of enemies, use summons and the NPC or human summons, play as a mage, try boss fights mounted where you are allowed.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      Isn't grinding just way worse? The same effect but at the expense of hours of boring gameplay? I'm already using summons regularly in these games. Invasions sure are a "fun" trade for being able to use human summons.
- kabdib 5y ago
  So far this appears to be a "choose your own difficulty" game. I've deliberately chosen to "git gud" at melee, since I've always sucked at melee. Could level to 99 and just blast through things, but where is the fun in that? Elden Ring has taught me calm and resolve in the face of overwhelming odds. Also, the value of a battle honestly fought. It's a great teacher, and an amazing game.
deergomoo 5y ago
I'm the same, I tried so hard to like Bloodborne because I was so enthralled by the universe and lore. But I just could not have fun playing it, or more specifically the fun I did have was swiftly undone by frustration. I can enjoy difficulty when I don't have to redo things I've already done; I'm fully on-board with something like a Super Meat Boy or a Hotline Miami, which are also games where death is expected and a core part of the loop, but when dying to a boss involves trekking back through 5-10 mins of low-level enemies I very quickly lose interest. Am I suggesting all games should account for my very specific tastes in difficulty in games? Absolutely not, but I sure wish that one did. I'm also not sure I buy the argument that the mere presence of an easier mode would somehow invalidate the enjoyment of those with more skill and patience.
- cgh 5y ago
  Try following a walkthrough on YouTube, eg the one from FightinCowboy. It’s almost an easy mode, since you enter the mid- and endgame much stronger.
- rewgs 5y ago
  The trekking back to bosses in games that aren’t Sekiro or Elden Ring is totally valid. But in terms of the overall difficulty, I think it’s more a case of something closer to user error than the game actually being ridiculously difficult. This is a common thing and it bums me out because the difficulty aspect of these games is severely overhyped, partially because people try them out without fully understanding the mechanics, and then are turned off from them. Same thing happened to me and I’m so thankful that someone set me straight. The number one thing is this: you cannot interrupt yourself once you begin an action. Neither can your enemy. An attack is a commitment of the entire animation associated with it. This one single thing affects everything else. Also: rolling! You are very briefly untouchable while rolling. Time your rolls and your attacks with intention, and the difficulty drops drastically. The game’s are still tough and unforgiving, but in a good way. Hope you end up revisiting and enjoying the games. I’m historically not a fan of “hard” games and these have quickly become my favorite, gameplay being just as big a reason as atmosphere and lore.
- djsavvy 5y ago
extrememacaroni 5y ago
One of the things that cause immersion to spike for me is exactly the difficulty, or rather "this enemy just kicked my ass, WHAT do I need to do to beat it? what do I need to change, are there other areas I did not check, any clues I may have passed by" etc. If the game is too easy chances are I'll zone out and "play" it, in a very inert way just watching what happens. Not a Souls-like, but the game where I saw this at play the most is TeS Oblivion (not sure if it also works in Skyrim), as soon as I started playing it as a battlemage with the Tower sign (it takes away auto regen of magicka). Lots of content in Oblivion I felt was filler that I just went through out of inertia, but playing a battlemage with no magicka regen? Survival depends on the potions you craft and any other helpful items found along the way. Suddenly even the most boring dungeon became interesting and potentially helpful in the long run because it could contain helpful loot. Those ayleid ruins with the crystals that help a ton with magicka? Godsent rather than long and samey. Of course I eventually leveled up enough to become OP and the game ended up being a chain of filler stuff once more, but that was several tens of hours into the playthru. But those first tens of hours were an amazing experience, where I needed to carefully plan out and scour the world for items in order to hope to survive.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Do you start each of these games with SL1 runs? Likely not. This means that you are engaging with the game in an optional way that makes the game easier (leveling up). You do not have to do that. In what way is somebody engaging with the game in a different optional way that makes the game easier unacceptable? What it sounds like you want is for the game to sit near the top of an individual players' capabilities. What if making the game optionally easier achieves that for some people?
  - extrememacaroni 5y ago
    Watching a playthrough is the easiest optionalest option, also one that is doable from start to finish by the largest number of gamers. Such an extra-inclusive option, all games should feature it. "Watch the bots play". With your philosophy, you get games with pointless difficulty systems like Skyrim & co. Sliders that range from "enemies die in one hit" to "you'll spend half an hour hitting this boss before it dies because now it has hitpoints defined by your_level * 9999999999". None of the bosses in Souls games take half an hour to fight unless you do something exotic like SL1 runs, if you're not done with a boss in a couple of minutes chances are something's wrong with your build, because otherwise your skills are good, else you wouldn't survive for 2 minutes with a Souls boss.
bitlax 5y ago
tshaddox 5y ago
Honestly, just watch videos of people playing the game. If you find someone who doesn’t annoy you, this can be a great experience.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  When I was a kid, being invited over to watch your friend play a single player game was the peak of lameness. Streaming culture seems very odd to me unless there’s something noteworthy about the streamer.
  - skydhash 5y ago
    I would say it's like watching any show about sport in general. Sometimes, you root for the person to win. Other times, you can learn something new by watching the streamer. And it can just be entertaining as watching a reality show.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Quite the contrary, I would say. I watch videos of people playing video games when there is something special about the video game, but (for any of several reasons) I know I won’t be playing the video game myself any time soon.
mariusor 5y ago
For me "easy mode" was watching people playing on Twitch. It got me a "good" understanding of the story and let me enjoy the world, without the stress of having to actually play the game. :)
- ModernMech 5y ago
  See, this is why developers should just put in a god mod. Good ol IDDQD, then let your customer just have fun killing monsters rather than scaring them off to Twitch or YouTube to watch someone else have fun.
- pimeys 5y ago
  I've been totally sucked into the Twitch Elden Ring streams. BarbarousKing having his fourth playthrough already, and I'm still watching the first one. A magical game I'm going to try myself when it works well with Proton on Linux.
  - Polycryptus 5y ago
    I've heard that it works fairly well on Proton already. In fact, perhaps even better than it does on Windows in some regards as a result of Valve having implemented some mitigations for things the engine does incorrectly in Proton. (Thanks to a desire to have the game work properly on the Steam Deck) I haven't tried yet, though, as I'm playing my way through the Dark Souls series proper before giving Elden Ring a try.
    - alpaca128 5y ago
      Proton uses Vulkan to replace DirectX and Elden Ring's handling of DirectX isn't optimal, or something along those lines. The end result is the game running better on Linux because it coincidentally circumvents those issues.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Also really, just look up strategies. In all of these games nearly every boss can be cheesed in some way. Really, there's no shame in looking it up.
eldenringthrow 5y ago
ren_engineer 5y ago
easy mode is magic and using summons, you can literally beat any souls game without attacking a single enemy, but the challenge is 100% part of the entire game philosophy >“I do feel apologetic toward anyone who feels there’s just too much to overcome in my games,” Miyazaki told me. He held his head in his hands, then smiled. “I just want as many players as possible to experience the joy that comes from overcoming hardship.” >“I’ve never been a very skilled player,” Miyazaki told me recently, via Zoom. He was sitting in his office, a book-lined room in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. “I die a lot. So, in my work, I want to answer the question: If death is to be more than a mark of failure, how do I give it meaning? How do I make death enjoyable?” source - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/hidetaka-miyazaki-sees-death-as-a-feature-not-a-bug https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/hideta...

urthor 5y ago

You can't appreciate it without system mastery though. How are you really paying attention to the work that was created if you don't learn its systems.

nyolfen 5y ago

this is like asking for a dumbed down version of classical literature; the difficulty is an intrinsic part of the experience

UncleMeat 5y ago
We translate novels, despite knowing that translation fundamentally damages the text in major ways. And it is rarely the case where the mechanics of reading a novel are intended to be difficult. Chaucer didn't write with the intention of confusing readers 700 years later. But because of the changing nature of language his writing has larger barriers today than in the past (modulo basic literacy).
- nyolfen 5y ago
  translation is not the same thing as rewriting it with the 2000 most common words or whatever the literary equivalent of easy mode is. children routinely beat fromsoft games, they are not arbitrary, but it is normal for the game to beat you up before you figure out how to play. the entire tone of the game is set by this experience and you might as well just watch an LP if you want to skip it, but i have sincere contempt for people who want to reduce art to the lowest common denominator. if you don't respect the choices made in its creation why should respect be afforded to your whims?

kache_ 5y ago

The difficulty is part of the artform

amalcon 5y ago
The interesting thing about FromSoft games is that almost all of the difficulty is observation and timing. It's real difficulty, to be sure, but almost anybody (obviously without severe visual impairment) can learn observation and timing. It's not like a high APM or high precision thing, where you need good reflexes or dexterity with keyboard and mouse; it's mostly a matter of learning when to hit which button. The problem is that some people find it highly satisfying to learn when to hit which button, but some people find it boring. To the latter, this manifests as a level of difficulty so high that it almost prohibits playing the game. Which is fine -- not everyone needs to like every game -- but it's annoying to those people when others tell them that they should like it.
- Geee 5y ago
  There isn't much opportunity for learning when you get to face the enemy for just a few seconds, get killed and then have to grind through loading screen and low level enemies to get another try. It's just awful game design.
Filligree 5y ago
For many people, this level of difficulty is just impossibility.
- jcutrell 5y ago
  Which ultimately means the game becomes a step more towards exclusive, for better or worse. Probably for worse.
- xipho 5y ago
  Streamers (e.g. MoonMoon's playthrough) are pointing out that if you go "everywhere" and do "everything", truly immersing yourself (as perhaps intended), and you don't rush from boss-to-boss that that "difficulty" is greatly reduced to non-existent. Yes, some very hard spots, but far less than one would assume from the outset based on quick overviews. There are also builds that greatly reduce difficulty making some "impossible" bosses trivial.

Zababa 5y ago

There was, Hoartfrost stomp, Sword of night and flame and Royal knight resolve, but they got patched. You can always downgrade or use cheat engine.

soared 5y ago

Elden ring doesn’t have an explicit easy mode, but you definitely can play it in easy mode. You can outlevel weak enemies, play with mage, and for bosses just summon in other players to kill them for you.

UncleMeat 5y ago
"Just grind to level up" is, in my opinion, a way worse system than "go to the menu and select 'easy mode.'" The effect is roughly the same but takes hours of boring gameplay rather than five seconds of menuing. I'd be much more receptive to the "no easymode" argument if the games didn't have RPG elements at their very core.
- farmerstan 5y ago
  I bought elden ring and I’m not used to open world games and have found I'm not a fan. I’ve been grinding and have made no progress and am about to give up.
  - theta_d 5y ago
    The problem isn't that it's open world, it's that there is zero guidance. There are no quests markers, no quest log, anything. The most you get is the ability to put markers on the map.
    - mpfundstein 5y ago
      so what precisely is the problem? if you listen to what noc s are saying, its quite hard actually to not know where to go. furthermore, there is not much dialogue. and its also not that you have 30 quests at the same time open. heck, snes game havent gotten quest logs either. just use a notepad?
- dkersten 5y ago
  My experience with the game has been that I've been over-levelled for almost all bosses (and the ones I wasn't were all optional), just by exploring the world. The game is designed so that if you get stuck somewhere, you can go do something else and come back later. If you stubbornly hammer your head against the one challenge or focus purely on the critical path, then I feel the difficulty is self-inflicted. For example, some of the early bosses I've heard people complain about, Margit and Crucible Knight, I beat first try without much difficulty at all because I explored the starting areas thoroughly before reaching them and was naturally overpowered. I plan to actually play again when I'm done and purposely not level just so I can experience the challenge. Speaking of self-inflicted, I've also seen a ton of people (eg on Reddit and Youtube) complaining that they're being one-shotted by bosses with their high level characters, but when they share their stats, they pumped everything into a damage dealing stat and few (or often NONE!) into their health. Of course they're being one-shotted if they don't increase their health. Again, this difficulty seems completely self-inflicted. There are some truly hard bosses, for sure, but with a game as huge as Elden Ring and with as much value for money as Elden Ring is, I think people just have to make peace with the fact that unless you're dedicated to overcoming the challenges it presents, you may not see every bit of content the game has to offer. FROM Software certainly are ok with that.

ng12 5y ago

There really is, but I would also proffer that the difficulty is a little important because it makes you afraid of the world and makes your achievements meaningful. A tour of Lordran wouldn't be as enjoyable. That said, I think this is what Elden Ring was going for. There's a massive amount of content such that you can avoid fighting a tough boss until you're strong enough.

ascar 5y ago
You can actually progress until the main capital without killing a single enemy. Like 70% of the games world. I started as a Wretch and arrived completely under leveled and without gear at the first boss, which felt nearly impossible to beat so I just started adventuring. At some point you get blocked by a barrier that requires you to defeat two main bosses. I was actually a bit disappointed about that.
- tyrantalope 5y ago
  If you're referring to Margit and the other boss after, you can skip those. I did by accident. There's a hidden path I won't spoil.
  - ascar 5y ago
    I was talking about skipping Margit (which is boss 1) and all bosses after. But at the capital after the Dectus lift you will get blocked. I don't wanna spoil too much, but that's basically as far as you can go without killing anything.
    - rigmarole 5y ago
      I took the lift at a too-early level and encountered no such obstacle. I wandered around a large part of that area and fought no bosses.
dkersten 5y ago
The difficulty certainly adds a level of tension and atmosphere that other games simply don't have. For the most part, outside of some specific bosses, the games aren't actually thaaat difficult, they're just uncompromising and they punish mistakes. I feel that the Dark Souls 1 marketing focusing on the difficulty so much was a detriment to the series really. Don't get me wrong, the games are definitely not easy, but most of the content can be experienced without too much challenge if you're methodical and take it slow.

chrsig 5y ago

I strongly feel the opposite. The difficulty is what makes you spend time with the game, and truly appreciate each bit of progress you make. Without the suffering, you can't truly appreciate what you find around the next corner.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first play. That'd be more difficult. You would suffer more. Would you appreciate it more? I suspect not. The sweet spot is when something is challenging for the particular player and they are able to overcome that challenge through growth. But because each player is different, it is not possible for a single tuning to hit that sweet spot for every possible person.
- chrsig 5y ago
  > Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first play I don't think that's quite a good comparison -- because leveling up is literally a method to overcome the difficulty. Grind. Get Good. Kill some foes, run back to the bonfire. Kill them again, run back to the bonfire. Eventually killing them becomes trivial, as a combination of muscle memory and leveling up. Some might even call that practice. It's an unwillingness to invest time into practice that hinders people from enjoying more of it, not the inherent difficulty. And this goes for a great many things, sports, music, painting, programming, woodworking etc. It's also totally ok that people don't want to invest the time -- I'm not making a value judgement here. For a sports analogy: I don't want to invest time in practicing (or even learning about) basketball. As a result, I'm horrific at it. I'm quite fine with that. It does however mean that a decent chunk of popular culture is inaccessible to me.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    "Just grind" is, in my opinion, the argument that proves all of this gatekeeping is garbage. Grinding achieves the same thing as an easy mode except it takes hours of mindless low-engagement gameplay to complete. Grinding has widely been considered bad gameplay for more than two decades at this point. If the game didn't have RPG mechanics and there was no mechanism to just make the enemies deal a smaller percentage of your health pool or to make your attacks deal more damage then I'd be much more amenable to the "the game is flawlessly tuned according to the developer's vision and that should not be touched" but it obviously isn't since every single player will arrive at each encounter with different character and weapon stats.

dharmab 5y ago

There's a few places in Elden Ring where you can trivially and quickly farm and overlevel your character.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Isn't that worse than an easy mode? The outcome is the same but it takes hours rather than seconds and the locations where you can quickly farm levels are not obvious in game and require you to look up advice online.
- kipchak 5y ago
  A potential upside is that because it's tedious, you'll probably want to do it for only as long as necessary before trying again so the difficulty is somewhat adjusted to the player's need, and you don't actually change how enemies behave - the mechanics of the game are still the exact same, your numbers are just a bit bigger. When I imagine an easy mode I would figure making changes for how things work would be necessary, like having a boss' attacks be more predictable.
- gretch 5y ago
  You don’t have to farm levels. You just go do something else that naturally results in levels or loot making your character stronger. Since all of the game is wonderfully designed, it’s never a situation where you run off and “kill 10 bats” that people might have in mind due to precedents set by e.g. world of Warcraft. Also, few ppl understand this, but community knowledge is actually a core part of the design philosophy. That’s why there’s player messages and blood stains built into the game. It’s not a dirty thing in this game to look stuff up or ask for help. There’s a huge community and comradary aspect to the game.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Elden Ring has this capability but none of the previous games did. Stuck on O&S? There is literally nowhere else to go except through them.

gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago

There are plenty of easy modes available. It's not a settings option though, it's a play style. It really is a wonderfully well designed game.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Okay. And how am I supposed to find these play styles? Looking up walkthroughs that show you OP builds and where to find relevant items is surely more immersion breaking than changing a difficulty setting in a menu that makes enemies do 20% less damage and have 20% less health.
- gghhzzgghhzz 5y ago
  Farm normal enemies slowly, ignore bosses until you are over leveled - say by 20%, spend the time slowly exploring and methodically clearing out enemies instead, mount and run away or through packs of enemies, use summons and the NPC or human summons, play as a mage, try boss fights mounted where you are allowed.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    Isn't grinding just way worse? The same effect but at the expense of hours of boring gameplay? I'm already using summons regularly in these games. Invasions sure are a "fun" trade for being able to use human summons.
kabdib 5y ago
So far this appears to be a "choose your own difficulty" game. I've deliberately chosen to "git gud" at melee, since I've always sucked at melee. Could level to 99 and just blast through things, but where is the fun in that? Elden Ring has taught me calm and resolve in the face of overwhelming odds. Also, the value of a battle honestly fought. It's a great teacher, and an amazing game.

deergomoo 5y ago

I'm the same, I tried so hard to like Bloodborne because I was so enthralled by the universe and lore. But I just could not have fun playing it, or more specifically the fun I did have was swiftly undone by frustration. I can enjoy difficulty when I don't have to redo things I've already done; I'm fully on-board with something like a Super Meat Boy or a Hotline Miami, which are also games where death is expected and a core part of the loop, but when dying to a boss involves trekking back through 5-10 mins of low-level enemies I very quickly lose interest. Am I suggesting all games should account for my very specific tastes in difficulty in games? Absolutely not, but I sure wish that one did. I'm also not sure I buy the argument that the mere presence of an easier mode would somehow invalidate the enjoyment of those with more skill and patience.

cgh 5y ago
Try following a walkthrough on YouTube, eg the one from FightinCowboy. It’s almost an easy mode, since you enter the mid- and endgame much stronger.
rewgs 5y ago
The trekking back to bosses in games that aren’t Sekiro or Elden Ring is totally valid. But in terms of the overall difficulty, I think it’s more a case of something closer to user error than the game actually being ridiculously difficult. This is a common thing and it bums me out because the difficulty aspect of these games is severely overhyped, partially because people try them out without fully understanding the mechanics, and then are turned off from them. Same thing happened to me and I’m so thankful that someone set me straight. The number one thing is this: you cannot interrupt yourself once you begin an action. Neither can your enemy. An attack is a commitment of the entire animation associated with it. This one single thing affects everything else. Also: rolling! You are very briefly untouchable while rolling. Time your rolls and your attacks with intention, and the difficulty drops drastically. The game’s are still tough and unforgiving, but in a good way. Hope you end up revisiting and enjoying the games. I’m historically not a fan of “hard” games and these have quickly become my favorite, gameplay being just as big a reason as atmosphere and lore.
djsavvy 5y ago

extrememacaroni 5y ago

One of the things that cause immersion to spike for me is exactly the difficulty, or rather "this enemy just kicked my ass, WHAT do I need to do to beat it? what do I need to change, are there other areas I did not check, any clues I may have passed by" etc. If the game is too easy chances are I'll zone out and "play" it, in a very inert way just watching what happens. Not a Souls-like, but the game where I saw this at play the most is TeS Oblivion (not sure if it also works in Skyrim), as soon as I started playing it as a battlemage with the Tower sign (it takes away auto regen of magicka). Lots of content in Oblivion I felt was filler that I just went through out of inertia, but playing a battlemage with no magicka regen? Survival depends on the potions you craft and any other helpful items found along the way. Suddenly even the most boring dungeon became interesting and potentially helpful in the long run because it could contain helpful loot. Those ayleid ruins with the crystals that help a ton with magicka? Godsent rather than long and samey. Of course I eventually leveled up enough to become OP and the game ended up being a chain of filler stuff once more, but that was several tens of hours into the playthru. But those first tens of hours were an amazing experience, where I needed to carefully plan out and scour the world for items in order to hope to survive.

UncleMeat 5y ago
Do you start each of these games with SL1 runs? Likely not. This means that you are engaging with the game in an optional way that makes the game easier (leveling up). You do not have to do that. In what way is somebody engaging with the game in a different optional way that makes the game easier unacceptable? What it sounds like you want is for the game to sit near the top of an individual players' capabilities. What if making the game optionally easier achieves that for some people?
- extrememacaroni 5y ago
  Watching a playthrough is the easiest optionalest option, also one that is doable from start to finish by the largest number of gamers. Such an extra-inclusive option, all games should feature it. "Watch the bots play". With your philosophy, you get games with pointless difficulty systems like Skyrim & co. Sliders that range from "enemies die in one hit" to "you'll spend half an hour hitting this boss before it dies because now it has hitpoints defined by your_level * 9999999999". None of the bosses in Souls games take half an hour to fight unless you do something exotic like SL1 runs, if you're not done with a boss in a couple of minutes chances are something's wrong with your build, because otherwise your skills are good, else you wouldn't survive for 2 minutes with a Souls boss.

bitlax 5y ago

tshaddox 5y ago

Honestly, just watch videos of people playing the game. If you find someone who doesn’t annoy you, this can be a great experience.

oneoff786 5y ago
When I was a kid, being invited over to watch your friend play a single player game was the peak of lameness. Streaming culture seems very odd to me unless there’s something noteworthy about the streamer.
- skydhash 5y ago
  I would say it's like watching any show about sport in general. Sometimes, you root for the person to win. Other times, you can learn something new by watching the streamer. And it can just be entertaining as watching a reality show.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Quite the contrary, I would say. I watch videos of people playing video games when there is something special about the video game, but (for any of several reasons) I know I won’t be playing the video game myself any time soon.

mariusor 5y ago

For me "easy mode" was watching people playing on Twitch. It got me a "good" understanding of the story and let me enjoy the world, without the stress of having to actually play the game. :)

ModernMech 5y ago
See, this is why developers should just put in a god mod. Good ol IDDQD, then let your customer just have fun killing monsters rather than scaring them off to Twitch or YouTube to watch someone else have fun.
pimeys 5y ago
I've been totally sucked into the Twitch Elden Ring streams. BarbarousKing having his fourth playthrough already, and I'm still watching the first one. A magical game I'm going to try myself when it works well with Proton on Linux.
- Polycryptus 5y ago
  I've heard that it works fairly well on Proton already. In fact, perhaps even better than it does on Windows in some regards as a result of Valve having implemented some mitigations for things the engine does incorrectly in Proton. (Thanks to a desire to have the game work properly on the Steam Deck) I haven't tried yet, though, as I'm playing my way through the Dark Souls series proper before giving Elden Ring a try.
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    Proton uses Vulkan to replace DirectX and Elden Ring's handling of DirectX isn't optimal, or something along those lines. The end result is the game running better on Linux because it coincidentally circumvents those issues.
gambiting 5y ago
Also really, just look up strategies. In all of these games nearly every boss can be cheesed in some way. Really, there's no shame in looking it up.

eldenringthrow 5y ago

ren_engineer 5y ago

easy mode is magic and using summons, you can literally beat any souls game without attacking a single enemy, but the challenge is 100% part of the entire game philosophy >“I do feel apologetic toward anyone who feels there’s just too much to overcome in my games,” Miyazaki told me. He held his head in his hands, then smiled. “I just want as many players as possible to experience the joy that comes from overcoming hardship.” >“I’ve never been a very skilled player,” Miyazaki told me recently, via Zoom. He was sitting in his office, a book-lined room in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. “I die a lot. So, in my work, I want to answer the question: If death is to be more than a mark of failure, how do I give it meaning? How do I make death enjoyable?” source - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/hidetaka-miyazaki-sees-death-as-a-feature-not-a-bug https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/hideta...