Article: "An Easy Mode Has Never Ruined A Game"

[IG-64]

https://kotaku.com/an-easy-mode-has-never-ruined-a-game-1833757865

Should game difficulty be an accessibility issue? There has been some interesting talk about this topic over on Twitter but it's really hard to have proper discussions on that platform, so what do you guys think?

 

[Lynk Former]

Not all games should be easy, not all games should be hard, not all games need a story, not all games need a multiplayer mode, not all games need violence, not all games... well, you get the idea.

There are some fighting games that are brutally difficult to master, and others that are a hell of a lot more accessible. It's up to the developers to figure out what kind of game they're making.

I remember, I posted an article many years ago about the guided mode in New Super Mario Bros. Wii called "Super Guide: It killed your family and kicked your dog" back when the site was still called TwilightLynk.

In that article, I was for the Super Guide, however, in the greater context, I was for the Super Guide in that game and games like it. Am I an advocate of an easier mode for a game series like Dark Souls or for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice?

No, I'm not.

The reason is because the struggle is part of the game, without it, it takes away elements from the game that are important to its existence. It would be like taking one of those fighting games that is highly technical and allowing people to just button mash through to win and have the experience of winning.

Then there's a game like Pillars of Eternity that has its own kind of difficulty in the way that it handles its gameplay in a very oldskool manner. It's not my kind of game, at least, not usually, but I still own it and think it's awesome despite how difficult it is for me to get into it. I would not want Pillars of Eternity to change its gameplay style to suit me because I understand why Obsidian made the game the way they did.

 

[IG-64]

It's different when you look at it from the perspective of someone who is disabled. There are people with certain mobility or neurological disorders who are locked out of games without difficulty settings because they don't have the same coordination or reaction times as abled people, and something like a special controller will not always be useful in this situation.

The reason is because the struggle is part of the game, without it, it takes away elements from the game that are important to its existence.

Making the game accessible doesn't necessarily take away the struggle. An "easy mode" for someone who is disabled might be comparable to the "normal mode" for you. An easier mode might at least make it playable, hopefully, in a form somewhat comparable to an abled person's experience. It won't be 1:1 because there's no one-size-fits-all solution for accessibility but that's not the point.

As mentioned in the article, the developer's intended experience is already compromised for a disabled person because of their disability. A developer might prefer everyone hear the voice acting and music in their game for the full experience but not everyone has the ability to. They should still add subtitles so that people with hearing impairments can follow the story, even if it's not ideal. Why should gameplay be treated differently?

It would be like taking one of those fighting games that is highly technical and allowing people to just button mash through to win and have the experience of winning.

Competitive handicaps exist as a concept in fighting games. Fighting games actually allow for finer control of this because you can adjust values for health, damage, etc. without much additional effort on the part of the developer. If someone who is otherwise unable to play the game wants to go through and fiddle with these settings to find an experience that's enjoyable to them, what's the harm in letting them? Certain levels of play will always be out of reach but that's just reality. Allow someone to decide for themselves what is crucial to the experience, rather than locking them out completely.

I would not want Pillars of Eternity to change its gameplay style to suit me because I understand why Obsidian made the game the way they did.

But you wouldn't have to play it that way. The existence of an easier mode as an option would not in any way affect the standard mode of the game.

Of course developers shouldn't be forced to include these options, but I think they should be encouraged to include them as a standard in the exact same way subtitles and color blind modes should be encouraged.

 

[Kyuu]

tl;dr I agree with Lynk.

Now, for the long version:

For the past decade, I've been mostly engrossed in MMOs on the PC because my work is literally tied to the PC. And the greater part of that MMO gaming as been on Final Fantasy XIV. Now what has a damn MMO got to do with stand-alone titles?! A similar query to "should a game have easy mode?" came up on the reboot of FFXIV in which case, the actual question was "should the FFXIV endgame raid have easy mode?"

The community was split on this one, and as you can imagine, those who at that time had already cleared the endgame raid weren't keen about it. "ah the hours we put into it!" "if you can't clear it, you're not good enough!" while the rest of the community were pointing out that it wasn't the items or the glory or the titles for clearing raids that they were after- it was the story. A certain story arc was locked behind the sharpened primal claws of the dreadwyrm king Bahamut. As someone who had already cleared it, I could sympathize with them (the people who wanted to know the story). And personally, the very reason why I struggled to clear that content was because I wanted to know the story. For those who are curious, this is unlocked only by clearing up to a certain point of the Bahamut side quest (specifically, the Phoenix battle right before facing Bahamut):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOOFCltZuc


Everyone else had access only up to the part where Bahamut razes the land. The elven dude was an important figure in the storyline, and no one knew what actually happened to him unless they unlocked this.

In succeeding expansions, Square Enix then introduced a Normal mode and a Savage mode for endgame content. The cool stuff were in Savage mode while the story and a few nice things were in Normal mode. People needed to finish Normal mode first before they could proceed with Savage mode. There are still many people doing Savage mode because it has cool things, including myself.

I can't deny that clearing endgame content lost a bit of its meaning because struggling to know the story was a part of why the Bahamut quests meant a lot to me (succeeding quests were Alexander and Omega, upcoming one is Eden). However, in this case, players were paying monthly subscription and it was understandably disappointing that such an interesting storyline locked them out due to their inability to play hardcore or to devote a lot of time to practicing. Other extra content such as PVP, crafting and gathering didn't have as much world-changing stories in them.

This case is of course different from let's say, picking up Dark Souls then complaining that it's too difficult xD

 

[Hawkeye]

My two cents varied as it depends on the game. I've play almost all of the Battlefield games, multiplayer is thankfully on a level playing field. But usually their perks locked away in the single player for multiplayer. That unlocked usually within the hard mode, I usually play the game through the first time with the easiest mode to enjoy the story. Then I will take my time to unlock the perks on hard..... even when it gets annoyingly hard as it can usually be done

 

[IG-64]

I wouldn't argue for any kind of easy setting for an online game because that would just be exploited. That said, I've never been a fan of the concept of locking content behind a hard mode. It's less of an issue now that you can just watch the thing on youtube but it's still just kind of a jerk move.

 

[Kyuu]

I wouldn't argue for any kind of easy setting for an online game because that would just be exploited. That said, I've never been a fan of the concept of locking content behind a hard mode. It's less of an issue now that you can just watch the thing on youtube but it's still just kind of a jerk move.

I think it was more like, the producer Yoshida didn't realize it was that "hard" for their target audience. Since their past MMO was FFXI which was mostly just Japanese players and a few hardcore international players, few people complained about things being too difficult. But with FFXIV being targeted towards an international audience, it was a wake-up call for them.

 

[Lynk Former]

It's different when you look at it from the perspective of someone who is disabled. There are people with certain mobility or neurological disorders who are locked out of games without difficulty settings because they don't have the same coordination or reaction times as abled people, and something like a special controller will not always be useful in this situation.

Making the game accessible doesn't necessarily take away the struggle. An "easy mode" for someone who is disabled might be comparable to the "normal mode" for you. An easier mode might at least make it playable, hopefully, in a form somewhat comparable to an abled person's experience. It won't be 1:1 because there's no one-size-fits-all solution for accessibility but that's not the point.

As mentioned in the article, the developer's intended experience is already compromised for a disabled person because of their disability. A developer might prefer everyone hear the voice acting and music in their game for the full experience but not everyone has the ability to. They should still add subtitles so that people with hearing impairments can follow the story, even if it's not ideal. Why should gameplay be treated differently?

Competitive handicaps exist as a concept in fighting games. Fighting games actually allow for finer control of this because you can adjust values for health, damage, etc. without much additional effort on the part of the developer. If someone who is otherwise unable to play the game wants to go through and fiddle with these settings to find an experience that's enjoyable to them, what's the harm in letting them? Certain levels of play will always be out of reach but that's just reality. Allow someone to decide for themselves what is crucial to the experience, rather than locking them out completely.

But you wouldn't have to play it that way. The existence of an easier mode as an option would not in any way affect the standard mode of the game.

Of course developers shouldn't be forced to include these options, but I think they should be encouraged to include them as a standard in the exact same way subtitles and color blind modes should be encouraged.

That's why you have excellent interfaces like this: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessibility

Just because someone has a disability doesn't mean they're not able to compete with the best of them, provided they have the proper tools to do so.

It's not the gameplay that needs to change (and yes, difficulty is part of gameplay and can be part of the story too), it's the method in which the game is controlled to suit the user that needs to change.

 

[IG-64]

As I mentioned in the part of my post that you that you quoted, "something like a special controller will not always be useful in this situation."

I have a friend who has a developmental disorder who loves the Zelda series and wants to play them himself, but cannot progress even though he can use the controller fine and can play other games that are less difficult or have difficulty settings.

The adaptive controller is a great tool and something I would like to see more of, but it does not address the spectrum of disabled people who would need the gameplay adjustments.

 

[Lynk Former]

@IG-64 And that's the thing, with complex media like video games. It's difficult to make a game like Sekiro that has very specific reasons why the game is the way it is, to target a wide audience. If it targeted a wide audience, then the specific target demographic the game was originally trying to attract would not want the game at all and you risk not being able to sell the game at all because no one wants it.

So you have a problem. Do you make a game that you know a specific audience wants and will definitely buy. Or do you make a game that tries to attract everyone but has a much higher chance of attracting no one?

It's easy to say "we need games for these specific people" and while you use the Zelda example, let's use Street Fighter as an example. Should Street Fighter be changed to take out the complexity and technical aspects involved so it is more accessible to people with disabilities to compete with others?

Do we fundamentally change the way the game plays to allow it to be played by people who physically can't do the things required to play that game? What would happen to that Street Fighter game if those changes were made... how would the Street Fighter community react to those changes?

These are all rhetorical questions because we all know how the core audience of Street Fighter would react.

With Zelda, you could possibly make some changes to allow for variable difficulty, maybe like how Resident Evil 4 does it where it changes the difficulty in the background, but with Street Fighter... you would require major changes that would change the fundamental nature of the game for it to cater to people who aren't capable of playing it.

Like I said with my Super Guide comment in my initial post, there are ways of doing this in some games, to offer alternatives. For other games, no, not at all.

TL;DR

Not all games need to be easy, not all games need to be hard.

Some games are capable of having modifications made to them to cater to people who have disabilities because it fits within the scope of that particular game.

Other games shouldn't because it would change that game for the worse for everyone, even if it's just optional.

 

[IG-64]

Other games shouldn't because it would change that game for the worse for everyone, even if it's just optional.

I don't understand this view at all. Maybe from a standpoint that it requires developer hours to implement, but so do subtitles and people don't seem to be so against that. If it's optional, why not just ignore it?

I appreciate games that are difficult for difficult sake. I've been playing through my SNES Classic and did the 2x playthrough of Super Ghouls and Ghosts and am working on beating Contra 3. I understand why achieving something difficult is an enjoyable experience. But if someone else were to use cheats or save states to beat them, why would that matter to me in the slightest? That doesn't take away my achievement or my enjoyment of it.

Why is an optional difficulty setting so offensive to you (and the many others who are currently arguing over this article) if it means more people can play the game?

Bringing up the Street Fighter community is absurdity. No one who would want this option thinks they're going to go compete in tournaments. Why not do what Smash Bros does and offer handicap options for casual play? The existence of those settings doesn't affect the Smash Bros community or the competitive scene.

[Edit] And I just remembered that Super Ghouls and Ghosts, a famously difficult game, has difficulty settings. And an option to set the number of lives you have. In 1991.

 

[Lynk Former]

Firstly, you're assuming I have a personal stake in this @IG-64, to be blunt, I don't care either way. Make every game have an easy mode, make it play itself without much user input at all even, it doesn't matter to me, I can just as well play Dark Souls and die every five steps as I can play Life is Strange where there are no failure states.

I'm more playing devil's advocate here.

The reason why games like Dark Souls gained so much popularity is because it's catering to a niche that thrives on the idea that no one is given a choice as to the difficulty of the game. No one. It's the reason why that series got so popular in the first place, otherwise it would've just ended up being another in a long line of dungeon crawlers that no one would remember.

And that's the thing I'm trying to point out. Once you have established the core elements that attract a particular audience, if you screw with that, you're going to lose your core audience, the people who were attracted to your game in the first place.

 

[IG-64]

It's perhaps selling FromSoftware games a little short to claim that they would be otherwise unremarkable but for one extremely specific aspect. That not just the difficulty but the lack of choice on the difficulty is what made them popular at all. Accessibility settings would not change the default difficulty. Hide them in a menu, or something, if it's that important. There are also other elements to those games that are enjoyable. Writing, atmosphere, character and environment design to name a few. Maybe the "core" audience of Dark Souls would disagree, but I don't know that I believe in gatekeeping as a game mechanic.

 

[Lynk Former]

(I wrote this entirely on my phone, there are some strange words here and there)

The entire reason that game became popular is because of two words everyone saw over and over again.

YOU DIED

It was the hook that got people interested enough to try it out. Then they discovered the lore and other things that they liked about the game.

But let's assume they did put an easy mode into Dark Souls. It would still be inaccessible to a lot of people because another major part about Dark Souls is exploration and the ability to create a mental map of where you have been. A lot of people can't do that very well which is why there are other people who can't seem to get into the game.

So what do you do? Do you simplify the map to cater to the expanded audience? But if you do that then you take away another of Dark Souls defining features that makes the came stand apart from all others.

It would be like what Nintendo did to Metroid over the last few games. Nintendo made each game more and more accessible to the point where in Metroid: Other M, you literally walked around in a big circle and there was ZERO exploration.

That game turned off the people who enjoyed Metroidvania's entirely.

As I keep saying, there are some game series that can easily fit in easier modes to make them more accessible, but there are others that can't without tearing the entire game down and driving away its fan base.

No one wants to make The Last Jedi of video games, even when they have good intentions.

 

[IG-64]

It would still be inaccessible to a lot of people because another major part about Dark Souls is exploration and the ability to create a mental map of where you have been. A lot of people can't do that very well which is why there are other people who can't seem to get into the game.

This is true and not something I would expect them to change. The request is simply to fudge some numbers like player health or timing windows to be more forgiving. It might be more possible for someone to look up where to go or buy a guide with a map than to execute a perfectly timed roll.

 

[Kyuu]

A part of the discussion to be considered would be: How would the user define easy mode?

Is it simply numbers? Is it different mechanics? There is a wide variety of disability, if that is what we are considering. How can easy mode cater to those who demand it without breaking the core system of the game AND without breaking the bank?

Another is: What is the developers' vision for the game?

As with my example, Yoshida wanted FFXIV to be more inclusive of people with varying timezones and capabilities so they added Normal mode. FFXI also had similar requests from their fanbase but it was either not profitable enough or its director thought it was fine as it was.

 

[IG-64]

Mostly numbers. Using Sekiro as an example: add to the number of times you can revive, reduce the penalty for reviving, reduce enemy stance meter, boost player stance meter, etc.
You could also widen timing windows or add more checkpoints, though those would probably take more effort to implement. It's not as if difficulty settings are a new concept for games.

 

[Lynk Former]

The problem with fudging numbers is that it throws off the balance of the entire game. A lot of games that have technical mechanics like Sekiro have their numbers set a certain way because the mechanics connect with other mechanics that can shift the balance of how the entire game functions.

For example, let's take a hypothetical game with a parry system. The timer on the parry needs to be set a certain way and the action needs to be taken within a certain time so that the game is able to balance parries with counter hits and dodges, etc.

If the parry system's numbers are changed to make parries easier, it'd end up negating all the other mechanics in the game that the developers are trying to get players to use to defeat certain enemies that require you to use different tactics.

So if parrying is the go to answer everything, what does everyone do? They parry through the entire game and ignore every other mechanic the game has to offer.

This kind of problem is common with A LOT of games out there, where one system is off balance and ends up negating other systems in the game.

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, do you know the best way to promote my accessibility in video games? Create a wider variety of video games that caters to individual groups. I mean, we already do that but there's always room for expansion.

Instead of making a game that targets as many people as possible, the better alternative is to have many different kinds of games that targets many different kinds of people.

Eep, need to go to work, will continue this train of thought in another post!

 

[igyman]

I'm with IG-64 on this one. Having a non-intrusive difficulty selection can only be a plus. The default difficulty in extreme examples like Dark Souls and Sekiro can still be as unforgiving as ever and cater to the main target audience, but allowing the player to select an easier, or harder difficulty does not hurt that audience or the game in the slightest.
Now, as Lynk mentioned, additional difficulty options require more work on game balancing, which is not easy, but that's about it.

From a purely personal standpoint, I play most my games (the ones that have a difficulty setting) on Normal/Medium difficulty. I don't much care for Easy, or Hard most of the time, but I don't mind that they exist as options. The games that I play that don't come with a difficulty setting are usually balanced for some equivalent of a Normal/Medium difficulty and usually come with a New Game+ mode, which is essentially the equivalent of Easy difficulty, but I do appreciate the existence of such a game mode.

Now, souls-like games have been mentioned quite a bit here and, again, from a personal standpoint, I really wish those did come with a difficulty setting. I tried DS2 and DS3 - I really enjoyed the atmosphere, visuals, music, lore and the combat mechanics, but I didn't get very far playing fair and square and in the end I had to cheat my way through to experience the story. Something I don't enjoy doing, but I am simply not masochistic enough for those games. Failing that much just becomes frustrating for me, rather than fun and I play games to have fun.

 

[BongoBob]

I am 1000% for games to have difficulty settings. I don't understand how this has become such a hotly contested thing, other than some very loud people just wanting to gatekeep their e-peens. Since the majority of this discourse seems to have surrounded whether or not FromSoftware should implement easier difficulty levels in their games, I'll focus on that.

I enjoyed bashing my head against the first Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne until I finished them. I got a great sense of accomplishment getting that Platinum trophy in Bloodborne. It is my favorite of the Soulsbourne games by far, and one of my favorite games of all time. That being said: I wouldn't give a single flying fuck if they patched in an easy mode. It does not affect me, my enjoyment of the game, or my sense of pride at my accomplishments in that game in any way whatsoever. All it would do, would potentially allow more people to get further into it, and discover the things about the game that I love so much (the cryptic story, lore, and aesthetic) which is a net good thing.

When I was in high school, I would play most games on the hardest difficulty possible, because I took pride in that, but even worse I subconsciously made that a part of my identity. I played games on the hardest difficulty, because dammit I was just that good, and I was going to make sure the world knew about it.

I'm no longer 15 anymore. I'm almost 30, and now have such limited time to play games, that pretty much any single player game I play I almost always immediately set to the lowest or just shy of lowest difficulty because I no longer care that much about that. I have severely less time now than I did then, and now I just care about having fun while playing.

 

[Lynk Former]

It's not about e-peens, it's not about gate-keeping, it's not about any of the things people seem to think it's about.

What it is about is changing the fundamental things about a specific game series that make that series special in the first place, the things that have attracted their particular audience to that game.

For example, how do you make Metroid more accessible? You take away the backtracking, make it easy to navigate and focus more on story sequences with easier combat mechanics to fit a more simple control scheme... which is how you got Metroid: Other M.

Now, while it is the most easily accessible game of the series, it is also the most hated among the people who play a Metroid game because they're fans of the Metroidvania genre. In order to facilitate the accessible features, the things that drew that audience to the game were sacrificed.

And as I said before, with Dark Souls, you can't just fudge a few numbers, cut down enemy health and damage numbers and bump up player health and damage numbers and it'll magically become an accessible game. To make it more accessible, you'd have to change a lot more about the game such as the way they environment is laid out so that people can easily map the level design in their head, or even provide a map for them to view to see where they are going.

Furthermore, you would need to change the multiplayer and messaging systems in the game to work with this easier mode since the map would have to be fundamentally different and advice given over the messages you'd leave would have to be restricted to the easy version of the game. You would also need to restrict the invasions so that people from the normal game can't invade an easy mode game, etc.

In fact, when you get right down to it, when you end up changing all the mechanics, simplifying the map and doing all the things you need to do to make the game much easier to play, you may as well just make it a separate game in the first place.

So in the end, there is a solution to this problem that everyone is overlooking.

Instead of trying to make a game more accessible to a wider audience, why not make a larger variety of different game series that cater to specific audiences?

I mean think about it. I simply cannot get into Dwarf Fortress... so should Dwarf Fortress change to cater to my needs despite the fact that I'm not good enough to play it? No, it shouldn't despite the fact that I'd love to be able to play it meaningfully.

Should Pillars of Eternity change the way it was made so that it's more modern and accessible and abandon the oldskool style Obsidian was going for?

I'm not a big fan of Fortnite and Apex Legends and don't think those games are for me in the slightest. Should I demand that those games change to cater to a wider audience that includes me? No, those games are fine with the audience they are aimed toward.

Since the last major Metroid game (Other M) was aimed at a wider audience, I am no longer a fan of the series. I still love all the games that came before it, but Other M threw me off and I'm kinda over the series now. It'd be nice for things to go back to the way they were, but if theoretically, Metroid Prime 4 comes out and it's aimed at that same "accessibly minded" crowd and is nothing like what a Metroidvania should be, then that's fine. Nintendo is clearly aiming for an audience that I am not a part of and I hope the people who enjoy Prime 4 have a good time with it... but I won't buy it because it's not made for me.

I don't expect every game to be accessible to me because every game isn't accessible to me. I have a very difficult time playing some games, maybe because they're too hard in terms of difficulty, maybe they're too hard because I don't understand the mechanics, maybe they're too hard because I can't grasp the nuances of the story.

But those games do cater to many people who are not me who are huge fans of those series and like them just the way they are.

And again, this isn't just about "adding an easy mode" this is about accessibility and how it affects the way a game is made and functions. For some series, this isn't a big deal, you can bump up and down a few numbers and people can have a pretty similar experience just with less health taken off per hit on easy mode.

In other cases, if you start messing around with numbers, you can end up breaking the mechanics of an entire game or worse. In the case of Dark Souls, where part of the story is meant to convey how brutally difficult life is for the poor bastards that inhabit that world, making things accessible takes away one of the key elements that is used to tell its story.

After all, video games aren't movies, over the many decades they have existed, developers have learned to tell a story via the players actions as well as other methods unique to this interactive medium.

Also, as I said, if it wasn't for the fact that Dark Souls is brutally difficult for most people, it wouldn't have marked its place on the map in the first place. Both Dark Souls and Demon's Souls before it would have been mostly ignored and we wouldn't have gotten its sequels, Bloodborne or Sekiro. Hell, for the most part Demon's Souls was ignored by a lot of people and it wasn't until Dark Souls and a stroke of luck that Dark Souls popularity took off.

If it wasn't for that, we'd never know about the cryptic story, lore and aesthetics that we would miss out on. But since FromSoftware has built its latest popularity on those kinds of brutally hard games, they're continuing that trend because they know who their primary audience is and are making games to target that audience who want more of those kinds of games.

I'm also no longer a teenager and am in my mid-30s, I care about having fun in games more than anything else too... and to that end, I also understand that people don't want their fun taken away either.

I keep saying it and I'll say it again: For some games, adding accessibility options such as easier modes works and would be beneficial to attract a larger audience, for others it does not and would only serve to unravel what makes that game special.

 

[IG-64]

And as I said before, with Dark Souls, you can't just fudge a few numbers, cut down enemy health and damage numbers and bump up player health and damage numbers and it'll magically become an accessible game.

This is just one of those fundamental things we disagree about. You're clearly a fan of the series so I don't think I'll change your mind on this. You've also willfully ignored many of my arguments as you continue to repeat things I have already responded to so I don't see the point in continuing this. Have fun.

 

[Lynk Former]

This is just one of those fundamental things we disagree about. You're clearly a fan of the series so I don't think I'll change your mind on this. You've also willfully ignored many of my arguments as you continue to repeat things I have already responded to so I don't see the point in continuing this. Have fun.

I'm not that big a fan of the series... I've played them, but I'm TERRIBLE at the Souls series games.

And @IG-64, I'm not only talking to you, I'm replying to other people as well. Don't take this so personally.

I have read your arguments and may have missed a few because I've been reading these forums throughout the day.

A lot of what you suggest in terms of ideas that games can use already exists in many games. For example, a variable difficulty setting exists in games going as far back as Resident Evil 4.

Most games have a difficulty setting and some games don't. All I'm saying out of all this is that not all games should have a difficulty selection because it may not fit for certain types of games. Some games should be brutally hard because it is the experience the developers are trying to convey in their game.

As for more accessibility options, I agree their should be more, but as I keep saying, not all games will be able to fit well with them. It's not just a simple case of adding subtitles and colour blind options (which is thankfully much easier to do these days).

I believe that the real way to solve this problem is to make it easier for people to make games so that there's more of a variety out there to choose from. More games means you're able to cater to a wider range of people. No matter their ability.

 

[BongoBob]

So since it’s always been one way, another way shouldn’t be tried? Mario struck it big 2D, so they never should have gone 3D right? FromSoftware already hit it big. And now instead of people not playing their game because they don’t know anything about it, they know a lot about it and want to experience these crazy things they’ve heard about it, but turn it on and get instantly smacked around for an hour and give up. If there was a difficulty selection that scaled enemy health/damage taken and player health/damage received, that person might stick it out long enough to “git gud”. Implying that wanting easier fights also means needing to revamp the world to be less confusing/obtuse and needing to make everything more hand holding seems pretty patronizing to me.

I never played Metroid Other M, but I don’t think was made that way to be more accessible to more people, and more that another studio wanted to try something different in the Metroid universe, and it turns out it was just bad.

 

[Lynk Former]

But that's the thing Bob, they are doing different things with Sekiro, they've also made very different games in their past including the Armored Core series and Metal Wolf Chaos.

But why does it have to be FromSoftware who makes an accessible souls-like game? Why can't it be someone else? The folks at FromSoftware made Sekiro, a game that they wanted to make exactly the way they wanted to make it. It's just like how Glen Schofield got the chance to make exactly the kind of game he wanted to make with his team and we got Dead Space.

As I keep trying to say, it's not that I don't want there to be easy games or want people to be able to experience games that they can play, all I'm saying is that it would be better if another developer created another series of the same type that did have those elements that make it more accessible. Just like how Dead Space created an alternative to Resident Evil.

Someone else made a Resident Evil game that was open to a different range of people than what Resident Evil could attract. That's what I want more of, that's what will ultimately allow more people to play games.

And for the bit about needing to change the world, yes, for a game like Metroid, you got a hell of a lot of people who complained that it was too much like a maze and that they couldn't complete it. So what did Nintendo do? They added elements to the later games that held the players hand. In Metroid Fusion, they added a character that told you exactly where to go and what to do. They tried their best to keep the complex map but in their play tests they found that the expanded audience they were targeting weren't able to handle a Metroidvania style game...

Which is where Metroid: Other M comes in... it was made to be accessible and everything Nintendo did focused on trying to make it that way. It was a Wii game and Nintendo was purposefully pushing their games to be open to all. So much so that they ordered the game to use the Wii remote on its side like a NES controller. These facts are all documented in interviews and you can read them online.

 

[BongoBob]

I think we just have fundamentally different ideas of what an "Easy Mode" is. You seem dead set on them having to fundamentally change their game design for an "Easy Mode", whereas I'm of the mindset that an "Easy Mode" is just tweaked values. In that scenario, I'm completely of the mindset of the article, that an Easy Mode wouldn't hurt anyone except for people whose pride is foolishly attached to saying they are able to complete a hard game that others aren't good enough to (which like I said before, they'd still be able to say because they could play it on the normal difficulty).

And you're right, it doesn't have to be a FromSoftware game to do so. It can be another studio that emulates the things that makes those games great, and that would be good as well. But I'm speaking from a place of passion, which is why I continue to use that as an example. Bloodbourne is one of my top games of all time. Having multiple people tried their hand at a game you personally enjoy and are passionate about and bounce off of it within an hour because they can't beat the first boss sucks. If there was a way to tweak those numbers to make it a little bit more forgiving, they could break through that first boss, and be encouraged to continue with it, getting better along the way.

No matter what, I will continue to be of the mindset that my vision of an "Easy Mode" in any game would only be a net positive thing.

 

[Lynk Former]

What I find very strange about this entire thing is that people are talking about this issue as if it has never been discussed at all... it's very strange. These kinds of debates have been happening about various games series for decades.

Okay, I'm going to summarise my stance on this and highlight the points I'm trying to make here:

1. I am not against easy modes and accessibility options in games. In fact, as I said in my very first post, I support them and always have.
   I have repeated this over and over and I will say it again... Some games are able to have an easy mode implemented in them as well as more accessible features, other games won't be able to add these features because it won't actually make the game easier or more accessible.
   
   
2. If a developer doesn't want to add these options in their games, I don't believe they should be forced to do so. It's up to the developer what kind of game they want to make and what kind of experience the player should have.
   And I strongly believe in this point, whether it's a publisher like EA who interferes with the development of a game to add in things that are inappropriate to the scope of the game, or whether it's people complaining that the game does suit them and should change to cater to them, whether it's an issue of style, mechanics or accessibility.
   
   
3. Some games are capable of having easier/accessibility features, others are not without compromising what makes that game special.
   Earlier I mentioned Metroid and how it is difficult to make that series easy without tearing out what makes it special. Metroid: Zero Mission does have an easy mode and do you know difference it made to the difficulty of the game? No difference. The enemies and bosses hit half as hard and Samus was able to kill them faster, but the game was still difficult. Why? Because it was still a maze to explore and people find that difficult. That is why, with the next Metroid game that came out of Japan, Other M, they got rid of the maze and made it a straight line. This tore the Metroidvania aspect out of the game in the name of accessibility and ended up alienating the fan base who then walked away from the series. I reiterate again... Some games can be made easier and have accessibility modes built into them easily, others cannot without compromising what makes the game special. An "easy mode" in any game is not always a net positive thing. It's never that simple.