This is no joke. I understand that this goes against the original intention of the game design, and personally, I quite like the current game situation with some challenging difficulty levels. However, a large number of players have given the game negative reviews because of this, putting the game in an awkward situation.
Rather than making a large number of modifications to the existing underlying game mechanisms to satisfy the general players in the market, why not create a separate casual mode? To reduce players’ sense of shame, instead of calling it a casual mode, it could be named something like a viewing mode or an experience mode.
In the experience mode, significantly enhance the linear action experience of the game, remove the game’s synthesis mechanism, randomly place health potions in treasure chests and wooden barrels, add route guidance in the screen UI, support fast teleportation at every teleportation point, set up automatic save points, automatically save before each boss and scene, automatically load the save after death, cancel the stat - adding mechanism, change to preset weapon drops, set up simple weapon upgrades, and remove all collection and store - related content, which will change as the progress advances.
And the current normal mode could be renamed the “norestforthewicked” mode, and improvements will be made while maintaining the current design goals.
The experience mode doesn’t need to have good balance. It only needs to allow casual players to experience a smooth and enjoyable five - to six - hour gameplay process.
I somewhat agree.
They say “but soul-like games does not have difficulty options”, but soul-like games also does not have farming resources for healing items. Or limited teleport system. Or real-world timers, or shop-refresh at real-world time, etc.
I’ve seen they have plans for a way to customize realms when they’re created to give people more choices. That way people who want challenge can have it without affecting those who want a more casual approach.
Souls games do have resource farming there’s plenty of craftable items in the games. In Elden ring there’s bombs, arrows, pots, bolstus’ all that have to be farmed to be used. The devs had said they are going to introduce farming into the game which will ease these pressure up for those who are too lazy to go on a 10 minute collection run as even now in the later game zones there are farms you can go visit and just steal their crops. I’ve had zero issue with food for the majority of the game.
I actually like the real world timers as well, I find this is great for promoting the idea of just, logging of and doing other things, knowing that you still have progression. Same with shops refreshing, you can log in once a day, grab new items if needed, log off. This is actually beneficial for casual players. If you’re
Limited teleport system runs hand in hand with the shortcuts they provide throughout the game, not just within the zones themselves, but between zones. You can very handily run around most of the map in no time once you fully unlock it
I think you can easily maintain both, you can make hardcore games that are casual friendly, you just have to do the onboarding correctly, from what the devs have said the biggest issue seems to be people not fully understanding the system and their interactions leading to terrible builds and then the players not being able to meet the challenges. Like putting puts into dex thinking it should make them faster, not realising their weapon scales with STR + Faith. So improving this experience should lead to it being more casual friendly, or more accurately, more casual on-ramp friendly.
Most people won’t touch experience mode, but when destroyed will vent their frustration on Forums and/or reviews. Hence a better option is when creating a realm, there is a challenge mode checkbox under prologue checkbox, which is the current and original artistic intent of the game. Leave the ambiguity out, some may misunderstood “norestforthewicked” mode as some intended way of playing.
In the “normal” realm (challenge mode unchecked)
Pushbacks are halved
Stamina regain faster
Enemy attack chains are halved
More drops per resource node
Focus potions refill focus
Daily bounties reset when you finish current set
Edge protection from falling over when in combat
More fallen embers drops
Insert all other suggestion in your paragraph
Yes this will make the character stupid OP.
The unfortunate reality is marketing this game as a “souls like” attracted some that hates resource gathering but likes to zoom through content and “graduate” from the game. Another unfortunate reality is this crowd also has a lot of opinions on what is a souls like, remember seikiro and Dark Souls 2 were “disqualified” by them for not being souls enough. Some have no imagination what so ever to deviate from the souls formula and cannot comprehend enjoyment from gradual and difficult progress.
The game needs a hold hands mode to get the reviews up so the studio have some extra time/money to expand on their artistic vision, in challenge mode.
That would be the fastest way to being ripped apart in steam reviews one could imagine. A “bait and switch” for difficulty would be an exceptionally dumb idea.
I’d like to add that most the negative reviews were not from lack of a more casual mode, but from broken aspects of the game that were hotfixed. Also, reading through the negative reviews of the past, lots of issues have already been covered, with more to come. The new class system is apparently making it less restrictive than stats and at the same time less confusing for some, so that should be good. This is a game in development. I thought people realized this for most early access games on Steam.
Either way, I’ve seen games with way more problems and still very unfinished get very good reviews, so it is very strange seeing nit-picking balance issues or UI issues on a game in development bring down a review like this. These reviews look more like feedback to an overall good game, not players asking for a casual mode.
However, they did add a hardcore mode, so I guess adding a noob mode shouldn’t be out of the question?