Easier difficulty settings/assists

Again… how in hell does it affect you if there is a switch.

Or does the sheer existence of difficulty settings make you weak and you would drive the settings to zero. Are you too weak to use standard?

Or is it your self esteem that bases on how hard the games you play are?

1 Like

I still don’t understand how it affects you if someone else plays differently. You play how you want and let others play how they want.

It affects the appeal of the videogame, because the game is not just a sandbox with a selection of toys in it. The game is a curated experience which creates deliberate friction and provides a challenge to overcome. This is only possible by tuning content to the power of the character, not to the whimsy of a new player looking at a difficulty select screen which is devoid of all context before they’ve even attempted the challenge.

Given the easy and free option of avoiding all friction most players will choose not to engage with the game and will simply pass through it like a tourist on a sightseeing tour. This damages the game and strips it of all meaning. Nobody LIKES fighting in a poison swamp, but Fromsoft’s poison swamps are iconic moments in a universally praised experience which has people talking about them long after they are done with the area. The friction caused by those areas and the relief and satisfaction this creates when they are overcome is what makes that content iconic and gives it meaning, enough to prompt people to share their experiences and the emotions created by that struggle.

Should Fromsoft offer the option to remove the poison swamps on the title screen? It’s just an option right? It doesn’t affect you if someone else plays differently, you can choose to play in the poison swamp if you want to. But you won’t, and neither will the majority of players, and then that shared experience of struggle and triumph is gone and there is no community conversation to be had about how much you died to X or how you found an alternative way to Y.

Mahler’s comment about wanting easier options to be built inside the same shared experience is the approach favoured by Fromsoft games, this allows the game to maintain that shared friction and even prompts community interaction by allowing people to share different approaches and options to overcome each challenge. This is healthier for the game and healthier for the community which surrounds the game, because it ensures everybody is still playing the same game and experiencing the same obstacles and not just individually dossing about in their own frictionless sandboxes with cheats on. Importantly, the built in easier approaches to Souls games are almost always detours which require the player to go out of their way and do something specific in order to more easily overcome a certain part of the game.

These easier approaches include options like:

  • Buying arrows and slowly shooting off the Drake tail for a sword which gives a temporary power boost at the start of the game only

  • Buying early game consumables for a temporary power boost

  • Slowly killing difficult enemies with poison arrows while running away instead of fighting them

  • Building a heavily defensive character with a Greatshield to make the defensive part of the game easy and then slowly chipping enemies down

  • Sequence breaking to get a more powerful item which shouldn’t be available early

  • Summoning other players to help you

  • Sticking around in an early area to farm a currency which you can use to power up your character more before moving on

It is important to point out that all of these options are NOT the fastest and most direct path to progressing through the game. They are not the path of least resistance, they are optional detours. This is how you design innate difficulty options which do not damage the experience. By making sure these are detours and not the most direct path through the game you ensure that the game still encourages and rewards the player for directly engaging with its core mechanics instead of trying to bypass them. This keeps the game engaging for more accomplished players without putting up barriers to entry for less experienced players and as a result Fromsoft games are actually, despite the reputation, extremely accessible and have been completed by people with disabilities, using steering wheel and dance mat controllers, while blindfolded and so-on and so-forth.

If you do not adhere to that principle of the easier route being a longer detour, and instead allow the easy route to also be the fastest and most direct method of achieving your goals then you will encourage and reward players for deliberately ignoring your core mechanics in a way which ultimately destroys your game and that looks like this:

I think here we have the answer :kissing_heart:

If you are weak, this is OK, but do not force other people to something based on your weakness.
I personally tend to select hard settings because my ego does not allow me to chose easy. But this is something that only affects me and i do not want to force anyone to anything.

And…

Seeing the communities of the Soulslike genre… nothing about this seems healthy to me. This is on par with the LoL salt.

And Moon is not Fromsoft!
Ori had difficulty settings and this was good!

1 Like

Anonimo87 answered you perfectly. A difficulty option does not change the game. All you big men can play with your default settings and brag on social media about how powerful you are. And at the same time you can let whoever prefers to play in peace. And if there are only two of you left playing on difficult it will be because there weren’t as many people who thought like you. You can’t be so imposing. Surely you buy a big and expensive car…

If your thoughts on the topic don’t progress any further than that then it’s a waste of time discussing anything with you.

There will be always a kind of “combat” between neophytes of the Roguelike / soul-like genre and the hardcore gamerz who need incredible challenge and insane difficulty.

I am playing to Dead Cells, and I love their “assitance mode” in which you can adjust anything: % of damage of traps, enemies, enemies’ health, you can also adjust options and add more difficulties, choose the first weapon equipment you have, it’s just excellent and could be a great compromise here : to can ease or complicate more your next run!

The problem for me is when difficulty comes from “oneshot technic”. I encounter that trying to kill Echo Of Lilith in D4 which has a oneshot attack (whatever you have and do, she will kill you). When the only solution is to avoid a phase and to kill the boss as soon as possible, for me it’s a problem of gameplay.

The other problem is when you have to spend hundreds of hours to do tedious tasks to levelup a bit more.

The best mastership in term of difficulties is Returnal for me. This game was sooo difficult but also so rewarding. And the impression of skill improvement was really here!

2 Likes

I think the same about you

It is not anything like that, at all. That is a disingenuous argument. Do not conflate a physical requirements with skill requirements.

Could you be a little more specific? What exactly is not “like that”?

1 Like

I really don’t see why they can’t design the game at whatever difficulty their vision is then allow difficulty sliders. Personally, for me, the game is TOO easy contrary to what multiple seem to want which is to make it easier (yeah it was difficult at first as this was my first souls like game). I’d love a harder version.

Obviously I don’t know how they coded the game but presumably you could make a slider that reduces the enemy damage or increases the enemy hit points or whatever-many games do this.

Since we aren’t competing directly with each other, I don’t see the issue. The reality is there is a wide range of player skill, knowledge and problem solving. I don’t see why everyone can’t choose a slider for their own enjoyment-as long as the devs are able to make their default game experience without dumbing down mechanics. Perhaps new players will choose an easier difficulty as they are learning the game and will eventually progress to a harder difficulty as they ‘get good’ at their own pace. This prevents them from hitting a wall where they aren’t enjoying the game because ‘getting good’ when you’re at the starting area can be very demoralizing for players that aren’t that skilled or knowledgeable.

1 Like

Dif settings - worst idea ever.

Souls games are defined by the challenge they pose players. You are required to either rise to that challenge or play something else I suppose.

However, souls games do have built in difficulty settings. By upgrading your character, your gear and your weapons battles become easier. However, the absolute key to winning is learning the attack patterns of enemies and bosses alike, and after both upgrading and learning how to react to your enemies you will inevitably overcome the challenges souls games throw at you. The game gives you all the tools you need to succeed but in the end you still need to develop your skills against the different enemy types in the game. You, know what they say, practice makes perfect.

However, even after upgrading and doing bosses over and over, you may never beat some of Soulsdome’s toughest bosses. How many people are able to beat Malenia, Goddess of Rot on their own. Luckily, Fromsoft helped you out by giving you ashen summons. However, many players still probably couldn’t beat Malenia with the help of their trusty side-kick. Well, the good news is they gave you multiplayer co-op to make it even easier. It still might take you a few tries though to finally succeed. Luckily multiplayer is on its way! Let’s rejoice. Multiplayer makes most souls games a breeze. No slider required.

All you can do is ask. If the devs give you your difficulty settings, more power to you. But I suspect that the difficulty won’t be toned down because you’re finding it difficult because that was the whole point. The game is meant to be challenging. For better or worse, that challenge is the game’s defining feature. However, don’t worry, just summon some else into your game, and enjoy some jolly co-op, problem solved.

It gets much more complicated when you factor in multiplayer and the trading system they want to implement. At that point you would want to ensure characters were locked to their respective difficultlies, which fractures the player base.

If you let them cross-polinate, and all the same items/content are available across difficultly levels, then the economy gets skewed in favor of easy-mode characters.

Not saying they can’t, or shouldn’t, do this but rather that it’s more complicated than some people are making it out. Also remember that each separate difficultly level will require its own tuning.

yeah, exactly this. I am not against difficulty settings, as long as it does not influence or change the balancing for the “normal” setting.

But as soon as there is multiplayer it becomes a potential exploit.

Maybe you could add some sort of realm setting. So when creating a new realm u can set it to “easy mode”, but items can not leave this realm, or even characters are bound to this realm and can not enter other realms.

1 Like

This is not Dark Souls. And Moon is not Fromsoft. The devs are totally allowed to do whatever they want.
Since people always seem to repeat that a Soulslike is not allowed to be too easy and all… The most intonated thing that i understand from the devs is that they want to refresh the genres that inspired this game (genres… plural !!! ).

Can be fixed by difficulty dependent drop rates.

Sure. It all just takes time. Maybe they will do something like this, and maybe they won’t. Folks are free to advocate for whatever they want.

For my part, I like where the game is going right now. In don’t mind that I screwed up my build and, at 130hrs, have just started to learn phase 2 of the Echo Knight. I’m going to be happy when I finally beat him, and probably disappointed at his drops 30 seconds later!

I look forward to more content and multiplayer, and that’s what I would like to see Moon focus on: difficulty levels won’t get my vote anytime soon.

2 Likes

I don’t like difficulty sliders in multiplayer games. I want to play with all my friends in the same setting.

But what about a clearly visible God-Mode toggle like in Hades, that does nothing but strengthen your characters defense?

Sidenote
Personally i really don’t want the game to focus on multiplayer economy. It’s restrictive and there will always be a way to game it (even if that means buying things for real money online or using bots).
Give characters flags for SSF/Godmode if you want to provide people who care with the ego boost they want. Restrict and streamline PvP access (Highend PvP should mean you have access to the best items period, no matter how you got them).
But please don’t restrict and balance the game around multiplayer economy.

I agree with you. Then 1% of people of manage to do awesome tend to be abusive in language and feedback to others. Which, all games are not made for 1% who find exploits/crazy builds and cause everything to get nerfed to all hell as a result. It ruins the game play for everyone else.

I’m very sceptic towards this. It would be a living hell to balance, as this is an ARPG, and many players would want to play “efficiantly” when farming, you would have to balance drop rates etc, or else everyone would play it on the easiest difficulty. This is a tremendous amount of work. This would probably also hurt the game in terms of this balancing taking up allot of development resources. I see people here saying it will not affect the players who want a hard experience, but it very much will.