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Comment by Levitz | Hacker News Reader

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product not catering to everybody. Even moreso when we are talking about a work of art.

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Sure. And there is similarly nothing wrong with a product adding options to cater to a wider audience. I don't think many of the people asking for easy mode think that Miyazaki is a bad person. But I've certainly been called some pretty nasty things for suggesting an easy mode. What I'd like is for people to be able to express their preference without being attacked for being perceived as scrubs.

There is no game with multiple difficulty options where hard mode is as well designed as in fromsoft games. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that adding easy modes significantly detracts from the experience of hard mode options. You can argue all you want about how in theory it shouldn't affect hard mode experience, but that goes against everything we see happening in practice.

So for the people who likes hardmode, you are extremely greedy when you want to remove the only game offering the hardmode those people want, you can just go and play any of all the other easy mode games while they have no other options. You are a part of the majority who is catered to in almost every game going to the minority asking them why they don't cater to you as well, of course they get angry.

Very well put. And the feeling of accomplishment of conquering a boss is shared by _everyone_ who plays this game. Beating Radahn or Malenia in ER or The Nameless King in DS3 or O&S in DS1 was always a magnificent feeling and one that everyone else in the community knew and appreciated when found in one another. It would cheapen it so much if I knew you could just turn a slider down and really diminish the community experience.

Agreed, go play something else if you want an easy game. This ain’t it.

Yep, and that is miyazaki's feelings as well.

"We don't want to include a difficulty selection because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment," Miyazaki said. "So we want everyone … to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player."

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

It makes some sense, the constant in the world is the bosses, so you have to change yourself in some way to beat them. If you suck at souls games, like I do, that means a lot of studying to finally win. But then I'm content that I've beaten the same thing everyone has.

Quotes from https://www.gamespot.com/articles/heres-why-dark-souls-blood...

> There is no game with multiple difficulty options where hard mode is as well designed as in fromsoft games.

I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look at the patches put into the various games to see places where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good kind of hard.

And Soulsbourne games do have multiple difficulty options. NG+ exists. SL1 exists.

> I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look at the patches put into the various games to see places where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good kind of hard.

The fact that they patch the experience of their hardmode helps my case, not yours. It shows that they care deeply about the experience of their hardmode players, since everyone is forced to play it they have to care about it. While other developers just say "if you find it too hard just play on easy", fromsoft has to actually fix their games when they mess it up.

> NG+ exists

NG+ isn't a higher difficulty, its just continuing the game with yoru current character. The monsters have higher stats than the first run, but so do you since your character is higher level.

> SL1 exists

Deliberately choosing to not use certain options in the game makes every game harder, yes, but that isn't a part of difficulty options and the game isn't designed around SL1 runs.

I'm not asking that the game be designed around easy mode either.

But games with difficulty modes always are. It happens naturally, developers and testers are just doing their job after all, to them it is easier to always test things on the easiest difficulty setting so that setting is what gets most development time. Solo developers might be able to work around this, but in a large team this will always happen. High level of polish comes when everyone is forced to run through the content, since then everyone will provide feedback and solutions to problems will be found. If a part is too hard or too tedious people will complain and the part will be made easier or changed, this wont happen if you enable developers or testers to run easier modes.

I’m always surprised to read things like, “please change the difficulty so I can appreciate the art.” The difficulty is the art - you can’t just carve it out. It couldn’t be done even if Miyazaki wanted to do it. You’d lose the essence of the art because so much hangs on the challenge: the failure, the success, the relationship of the player with the game.

Instead, the real solutions to the mechanical challenges that Soulsbornes throw at you are sprinkled throughout this thread.

On the other hand, Celeste is an example of a brutally difficult game with much lauded accessibility options. It’s not the same as “easy mode”, but the results are similar.

> There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product not catering to everybody

certainly agree

> Even moreso when we are talking about a work of art.

why does art get special consideration?

>why does art get special consideration?

because art is a way of personal expression and its function, ideally is to elicit growth in the people who engage with it. On the other hand I don't need a Dark Souls can opener.

you attribute to art things which you don't define ("personal expression") and a function that cannot be measured and which you probably can't even define ("... growth in the people who engage with it").

'growth'? in what?

what is 'engage with it' mean?

What if I disagree, does that mean I have a different and valid opinion, or that I'm mentally stunted and unable to 'grow'?

I could go on. Your justification is the kind of unchallengeable nebulosity that artist types come up with to justify stuff, and if I don't get it, I'm wrong.

I'm not anti-art by any means, but I do wonder at the ability of 'art' as a topic to inhibit critical thinking, or making up one's own mind.

IMO anyway.

Not really sure where the confusion comes from. Personal expression in art is translating feelings, ideas or concepts you have into a work of art. If other people understand you through your work of art, you've done a good job as an artist.

Growth can come in many forms. Learning something about the artist, learning something about yourself while studying art, learning how to distinguish good critique from bad critique, how form and function of art work together, and so on.

There's nothing nebulous here. It's ironic that you go on a rant about 'art types' and demand critical thinking but then in some passive aggressive tone deserve that people serve you definitions on a platter.

And sure you can disagree, nothing I said implies you can't, I didn't call anyone mentally stunted so I don't know where that comes from.

This is a respectable attempt at an answer (bar para 3 anyway) and exactly what I so rarely get. I just get shut down because "it's art" and you don't question it. It's art so it's beautiful, it's art so it's valuable. The angry grunt from people or the silent downvotes here is the usual, so I appreciate this answer, or an attempt at thereof

I don't agree with what you say but I do appreciate your trying. Not enough karma to upvote you so a simple thanks must suffice. I wish we had a chance to talk in person on this.

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