Masochism

Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like you're kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.

Fair enough, I do actually think we're having a fundamental misunderstanding here. I get the impression that when you're asking for accessibility, you're looking for a perfect accessibility, where literally anyone can play the game.

When I say accessibility, I'm picturing more of a sliding scale, from completely inaccessible (a game that just crashes on boot or something) to perfect accessibility.

I think a game like Elden Ring is actually very accessible, despite it's difficulty. I bring up examples like beating the game with oven mitts or voice control to say that it doesn't require superhuman precision or reaction time. I assume that the majority of disabled players, using an adaptive controller or specialized rig that they've had years of practice with will be able to control their character with better precision or reaction time than the ridiculous twitch streamers who completed those challenges. Those players will still have to invest time to build game knowledge and experience to apply that to beating the game, but fundamentally, the game "can be accessed" by them.

I also have no illusions that "everyone can beat Elden Ring in 140 hours", like you've implied that I do. And uh... yes? Games take different amounts of time to beat for different players, and that's fine. If Elden Ring was your first ever video game, then uh... questionable decision, but the game would eventually teach you everything you need to know to beat it. I'm not exactly sure why this is a gotcha, honestly. If you take 1000+ hours to beat Elden Ring and love it, then power to you, I would never shame you for it or assert you had a worse experience than mine. Same way I feel about summons, or using multiplayer to beat bosses, or whatever else Souls weirdos can be elitist about.

If you look hard enough, you'll always be able to find a disability that can't play the game. That's unfortunate, but I don't think it's a requirement that the game is playable by everyone. Books are written in languages I don't speak, art is made about life experiences I can't share, and that's OK. A wealth of good games are coming out all the time, and I'm sure someone with dyspraxia can find games they can play and enjoy.

Obviously, I know how that sounds, if a game can be made accessible to more players, and has the budget, it should be. I wholeheartedly agree. That's why I've advocated for better support for captions and flashing visual cues and audio indicators. I would love the next Elden Ring to be a better experience for the visually impaired or hard of hearing.

But I also think that games are art, and that the careful crafting and balancing of souls games are a part of that art. And they're designed from the ground up with that difficulty in mind. Honestly, I think it's a fundamental part of what Souls offers, and an easy mode wouldn't be the same experience. To quote Miyazaki:

"If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn't the right approach," he said.

"Had we taken that approach, I don't think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself."

As a piece of art, if an easy difficulty was added, lots of people would play it. But I've already articulated why I don't think a simple scaling difficulty would work, and why I think it's important the base game is difficult. The only way to do it properly would be a bespoke and balanced lower difficulty. But the artists that made the game have no passion for that, and bluntly, I don't feel it would be worth their time and talent because it would just.. be like a lot of other games you could go play instead, rather than the unique experience that Souls is.

And unfortunately, this does fundamentally exclude some people. Elden Ring takes tons of measures to minimize the excluded crowd, but it won't ever be zero, without fundamentally changing what Souls is. That's a shame, but ultimately, I really think Souls should exist, and is important art all the same. Do a quick google search for "Dark Souls saved my life" and you'll see just how powerful a piece of art it can be.

My real point here is, just because a small sliver of people can't play it, or because people don't want to invest the time or effort to experience it, Souls has the right to exist, and From Software should be allowed to make the game they want to make, even if it's for a niche crowd. They don't have to offer an option that they feel compromises the experience, regardless of whether or not we agree.

Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.

I don't think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).

But you're right, I'd love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I don't think they're done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.

I also agree there's some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Malenia's waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge that's impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more "reactionary" play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.

I'm not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but I'm also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but it's far from a boring +1 iteration that doesn't try anything.

Let's clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiro's main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend who's very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, you'd only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.

So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?

To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?

I mean... quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was "very, very weird". You claimed I was offended solely "because I had to see an option on the screen". You claimed my reasoning was about "lesser gamers being able to play it", clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a "weird ideological axiom", as if it's the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that I'm deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.

Don't try to gaslight me about this being insulting. I've never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. You're bringing baggage into this from other people you've argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.

Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You can't claim you didn't associate the two when you chose to write "YOU" in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.

It's also not at all ridiculous to assume the "What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?" at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, don't try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely "laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was", and that I'm being "sensitive".

If you actually didn't mean offence, then I'd encourage you in future to skip the "array of possibilities", especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.

That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you can't just "double your health and damage" and get a good easy mode. That's an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could "just scale everything down" in an hour or so, it's become what I tend to assume people mean when they say "just add an easy mode". You're also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, I'd have no issue if you had played an easy mode. There's lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldn't have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldn't have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you aren't playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesn't "segment the user base" or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking they've experienced everything From Soft intended.

The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of "moral responsibility" or are "stupid and losing business" for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And just... loading different things conditionally into a space isn't always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternal's Master Levels, and they're a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Soft's best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. That's more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. I've already asserted that I don't feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so I'll come out and outright say that I don't think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But that's totally subjective, and you're more than welcome to do that math differently.

If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I won't go picket their office or anything, I'm not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope it's good, and I really hope the people who finally "get" to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.