let people have fun instead of turning entertainment into some kind of protestant self-flagellation session. you aren't building character by playing elden ring no matter how good you are or how much you fail and try again. its ok to have a power fantasy sometimes. i hate this 4 chan attitude that you have to suffer to play video games, like games are some kind of divine test of character and willpower and value as a human. i will always play easy mode, i will never play ironman permadeath modes no matter how many streamers scream about it into a camera, dark souls should have an easy mode, sekiro should have an auto-parry, elden ring should have objective markers instead of relying on meat gates killing you until you find where to go next (i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring), FPS games should have auto-aim since twiddling a stick is nothing like aiming a gun, titanfall should have had more smart pistols. being good at video games will never translate to another skill in my entire life unless i play an FPV drone sim. if i wanted to spend my time on something that would improve myself it would not be fucking video games. don't even get me started on multiplayer FPS games, i swear they are a psy-op to make men more toxic. competitive sports were invented by bronze age slavers to trick their peasants into training for war.
The video game Stormworks translated (over time and a community college course) into a job. Video games should not feel like jobs (MMO developers will not see the light of heaven).
That said, if you come at a co-operative tabletop RPG where everyone else is playing roleplay characters that are not min-maxed and you come with a net build that uses rules from a splat book from 1990 (I assume this thread is about RPGs generally and not cRPGs)
Yeah, trap builds as a game design "thing" basically shouldn't exist.
That said, I do have a soft spot for GURPS and Hero System et al. as well as tacticool games (and war games, which I prefer writing), but it's clear what you're getting into going in (if you give players the opportunity to build a bad army, how much are you going to stop them if those are the decisions you're supposed to be making)
Well GM engagement is supposed to be a big part of GURPS/HERO chargen, to make sure that nonfunctional or inappropriate characters dont happen unless part of the campaign tone is supposed to be having fun with that.
Yeah, I think that's generally the case (though not explicitly stated). Writing the basics of everyone's characters should be a group effort, with some amount of buy-in from each player for each character. The idea of 4 completely independently written characters coming on the same adventure is.... It feels archaic, like we're all playing weekly D&D with completely different people and everyone has different amounts of XP etc.
let people have fun instead of turning entertainment into some kind of protestant self-flagellation session.
counterpoint: let games be difficult without whining about how they are not 'accessible'. why should dark souls 'have' an easy mode? why should elden ring have objective markers? if you want to engage with the worldbuilding/actual non-gameplay parts of a Dark Souls or Elden Ring, watch a Let's Play or read the wiki.
just don't play the easy mode and you can still wank yourself off about ur l337 g4m3r skillz, and also neurodivergent people or just people with less time to dedicate to perfectly mastering the art of pressing the b/circle button to the exact timing of every bosses idiosyncratic attack sequences can enjoy the media in an interactive way unfiltered through obnoxious amateur youtuber meme narration. like in any other context yelling 'well just go read a book then' at someone asking about accessibility options in a piece of media would be considered blatantly ableist, idfk why its different for video games.
the problem with that is that dev time is limited and they're not going to put resources into the highest or lowest difficulty being a well designed good time because gamedev is happening under capitalism. that's how you get tedious damage sponges or a dexterity challenge so trivialized that the mechanical design is irrelevant.
hard on purpose games are serving a market segment and asking them to dilute the niche thing they're trying to make to cater to players who have a thousand alternatives is really weird to me. there are wheelchair accessible nature trails and we probably need more of them but no advocate would suggest building those at the direct expense of hiking trails challenging and interesting to able-bodied people, so why are people like this about games?
obviously capitalism ruins everything and i don't necessarily blame any individual developers for a systemic issue, but with a public funded ministry of arts there would be absolutely no excuse to not have a suite of accessibility options comparable to, for example, The Last of Us 2. imagine if someone invented a new all-terrain wheelchair (naughty dog's above average accessibility options in this metaphor) and hiking and trail running enthusiasts (gamers) harassed and ridiculed and gatekept anyone from using it on a particular trail (soulslikes). that's absolutely ableist and its ridiculous that i have to point this out on a leftist forum.
I support accessibility options so that disabled people can play difficult games, just make them options and have a clear default experience. Things like the skibidi fragment system from Shadow of the Erdtree and more obviously Sekiro's Demon Bell and Kuro's Charm or DS2's Covenant of Champions all show that it's no problem to implement a higher optional difficulty setting, so why not include a lower one as well?
FWIW I do also support accessibility options so that disabled gamers can enjoy games; Elden Ring definitely does lack in things like menu narration options & audio/visual cues, as I learnt from watching my dad play (he'd have to stand and walk close to the TV every time he leveled up and once completely missed the 'NPC has invaded your world' pop-up and walked right into them lol; although this is admittedly more of a 'he mounts his TV way too high and sits way too far from it' problem but still).
I just don't think difficulty in terms of gameplay is an accessibility thing. Like, the OP I was replying to said:
elden ring should have objective markers instead of relying on meat gates killing you until you find where to go next (i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring),
Is this an accessibility issue? The average player is not expected to beat the Tree Sentinel or even throw themselves at it continually upon walking out of the Stranded Graveyard on their first playthrough of the game. The game specifically points you towards the Church of Elleh beyond them (the very first NPC you encounter right outside the Stranded Graveyard explains how sites of grace work & point the way) and uses the sentinel to tell you it isn't impossible to go around or go elsewhere before coming back to a difficult boss/enemy. The site of grace right there points directly towards the church. You've already been taught in the tutorial about sneaking past enemies. You can literally go out of your way to avoid the Tree Sentinel and encounter no other enemies (except maybe one bat, from what I recall) by going west and approaching the church from the side/behind.
Oh I agree, I kind of have to assume that they were being hyperbolic as a bit. You can definitely make it to the church without aggroing anyone, you don't even need to sneak, just don't run right at him. That said, I did almost give up on Dark Souls 1 when I was told I could go up or down, didn't see the way up to Undead Burg, and went into the Catacombs so I do have some sympathy lol.
This is a pretty bad take and I hope you reevaluate your position on people "whining" about their inability to enjoy some games because developers don't consider them at all. I'm so sorry you have you hear people complain about their disabilities and how it makes it hard for them to enjoy some video games. Really tho, this is fucked and I hope you think about it.
you aren't building character by playing elden ring no matter how good you are or how much you fail and try again.
A certain type of person needs to keep perpetuating this myth because video games are the only things they spend their time on and they need to convince themselves that they aren't just wasting that time.
i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring)
The point of the Tree Sentinel is to set the tone of the game. In most RPGs the world is built for you and more or less caters to your success. The tree sentinel is there to tell you that the lands between are not like that and losing vigilance for a few seconds will kill you.
Also I recommend crouching and hooking as far around it as possible. If you are running past the tree sentinel or trying to fight it, you've already died.
In terms of exploration, combat, and character variety, Elden Ring may be the best to ever do it. It's an incredibly fun and engaging game once you learn how it treats fights as a dance and not a DPS exchange. And of course I use all the tools it offers because I'm not a masochist and have a day job.
It is also crippled by asinine quest design, with invisible gates that trip permanent changes that may make quests impossible to complete. It's frustrating because some quests will put markers on your map, and others will be like "Ah, I'm looking for Glup Shitto, keep an eye out for me" and you see them again 20 hours later and they give you a reward for a quest you didn't realize you'd done.
The story is also pretty mid, and it's hard to even understand what the story is sometimes. Who are these people I'm fighting? Why are they fighting me? What the fuck is an Elden Lord anyways? Why do I want to be one? It's a world of rich lore snippets that, if you're lucky, sometimes piece together if you bother to read item descriptions and have the right items.
I would even argue that Elden Ring already possesses an "easy mode", it's just not a literal stat increase to you and a stat decrease to all enemies. Spirit Ashes and multiplayer co-op are optional features to make the game easier, and you can also add status effects to your build without much effort which are pretty busted in Elden Ring at least. In previous games, access to these statuses were considerably more limited; now, you can make over half the weapons in the game into artery-eviscerating WMDs.
I have personally mellowed out on the whole "Souls games SHOULD be really hard!" thing because I've listened to the critique of others on it and I think they're correct. The bizarre crusade against video game journalists that gamers do really gets on my nerve. Some of those journalists are right - some games should be more accessible. But Elden Ring... literally is more accessible than its predecessors? If you want it to be, it can be the easiest game that Miyazaki has made. The open world means that you can much more easily get good weaponry if you explore rather than fight bosses immediately, you can find spots to overlevel (cough Greyoll cough), the crafting system means you can apply statuses to enemies and buffs to yourself, etc. You can't even be invaded online anymore unless you summon somebody, and even then, if you immediately start the boss then the invader is forced out of the world.
Compare this to Dark Souls 1, where you'd get oneshotted by Dark Bead users every 30 minutes if you played online, and if you decided to head down to the Catacombs first and found your way to the Tomb of the Giants at level 20, you were just fucked because you couldn't warp until halfway through the game.
I wouldn't regard myself as Elden Ring Fan #1. I do have a list of problems with the game, and that list was added to with the DLC; I think I was in the minority that found the DLC to be kinda disappointing if anything. But I do think that From Software is genuinely iterating towards better games over time, including in accessibility.
here are my aggressive video game thoughts:
let people have fun instead of turning entertainment into some kind of protestant self-flagellation session. you aren't building character by playing elden ring no matter how good you are or how much you fail and try again. its ok to have a power fantasy sometimes. i hate this 4 chan attitude that you have to suffer to play video games, like games are some kind of divine test of character and willpower and value as a human. i will always play easy mode, i will never play ironman permadeath modes no matter how many streamers scream about it into a camera, dark souls should have an easy mode, sekiro should have an auto-parry, elden ring should have objective markers instead of relying on meat gates killing you until you find where to go next (i have never found the maiden i gave up after getting killed by that horse knight guy on the way to the tree right after that first camp every fucking time, fuck elden ring), FPS games should have auto-aim since twiddling a stick is nothing like aiming a gun, titanfall should have had more smart pistols. being good at video games will never translate to another skill in my entire life unless i play an FPV drone sim. if i wanted to spend my time on something that would improve myself it would not be fucking video games. don't even get me started on multiplayer FPS games, i swear they are a psy-op to make men more toxic. competitive sports were invented by bronze age slavers to trick their peasants into training for war.
The video game Stormworks translated (over time and a community college course) into a job. Video games should not feel like jobs (MMO developers will not see the light of heaven).
That said, if you come at a co-operative tabletop RPG where everyone else is playing roleplay characters that are not min-maxed and you come with a net build that uses rules from a splat book from 1990 (I assume this thread is about RPGs generally and not cRPGs)
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Yeah, trap builds as a game design "thing" basically shouldn't exist.
That said, I do have a soft spot for GURPS and Hero System et al. as well as tacticool games (and war games, which I prefer writing), but it's clear what you're getting into going in (if you give players the opportunity to build a bad army, how much are you going to stop them if those are the decisions you're supposed to be making)
Well GM engagement is supposed to be a big part of GURPS/HERO chargen, to make sure that nonfunctional or inappropriate characters dont happen unless part of the campaign tone is supposed to be having fun with that.
Yeah, I think that's generally the case (though not explicitly stated). Writing the basics of everyone's characters should be a group effort, with some amount of buy-in from each player for each character. The idea of 4 completely independently written characters coming on the same adventure is.... It feels archaic, like we're all playing weekly D&D with completely different people and everyone has different amounts of XP etc.
I think there are limits, though. If you don't want to interact with the mechanics of the game at all, maybe just watch a lets play?
counterpoint: let games be difficult without whining about how they are not 'accessible'. why should dark souls 'have' an easy mode? why should elden ring have objective markers? if you want to engage with the worldbuilding/actual non-gameplay parts of a Dark Souls or Elden Ring, watch a Let's Play or read the wiki.
just don't play the easy mode and you can still wank yourself off about ur l337 g4m3r skillz, and also neurodivergent people or just people with less time to dedicate to perfectly mastering the art of pressing the b/circle button to the exact timing of every bosses idiosyncratic attack sequences can enjoy the media in an interactive way unfiltered through obnoxious amateur youtuber meme narration. like in any other context yelling 'well just go read a book then' at someone asking about accessibility options in a piece of media would be considered blatantly ableist, idfk why its different for video games.
the problem with that is that dev time is limited and they're not going to put resources into the highest or lowest difficulty being a well designed good time because gamedev is happening under capitalism. that's how you get tedious damage sponges or a dexterity challenge so trivialized that the mechanical design is irrelevant.
hard on purpose games are serving a market segment and asking them to dilute the niche thing they're trying to make to cater to players who have a thousand alternatives is really weird to me. there are wheelchair accessible nature trails and we probably need more of them but no advocate would suggest building those at the direct expense of hiking trails challenging and interesting to able-bodied people, so why are people like this about games?
obviously capitalism ruins everything and i don't necessarily blame any individual developers for a systemic issue, but with a public funded ministry of arts there would be absolutely no excuse to not have a suite of accessibility options comparable to, for example, The Last of Us 2. imagine if someone invented a new all-terrain wheelchair (naughty dog's above average accessibility options in this metaphor) and hiking and trail running enthusiasts (gamers) harassed and ridiculed and gatekept anyone from using it on a particular trail (soulslikes). that's absolutely ableist and its ridiculous that i have to point this out on a leftist forum.
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Example: Nobody will argue that Hades and Hades 2 are easy games. They have an easy mode.
I've never turned it on, because I play these games for the challenge of pushing my Heat/Fear as high as I can.
My partner has it turned on 100% of the time, because they play these games for the story. So to speak.
The game is better for it for both of us.
I support accessibility options so that disabled people can play difficult games, just make them options and have a clear default experience. Things like the skibidi fragment system from Shadow of the Erdtree and more obviously Sekiro's Demon Bell and Kuro's Charm or DS2's Covenant of Champions all show that it's no problem to implement a higher optional difficulty setting, so why not include a lower one as well?
FWIW I do also support accessibility options so that disabled gamers can enjoy games; Elden Ring definitely does lack in things like menu narration options & audio/visual cues, as I learnt from watching my dad play (he'd have to stand and walk close to the TV every time he leveled up and once completely missed the 'NPC has invaded your world' pop-up and walked right into them lol; although this is admittedly more of a 'he mounts his TV way too high and sits way too far from it' problem but still).
I just don't think difficulty in terms of gameplay is an accessibility thing. Like, the OP I was replying to said:
Is this an accessibility issue? The average player is not expected to beat the Tree Sentinel or even throw themselves at it continually upon walking out of the Stranded Graveyard on their first playthrough of the game. The game specifically points you towards the Church of Elleh beyond them (the very first NPC you encounter right outside the Stranded Graveyard explains how sites of grace work & point the way) and uses the sentinel to tell you it isn't impossible to go around or go elsewhere before coming back to a difficult boss/enemy. The site of grace right there points directly towards the church. You've already been taught in the tutorial about sneaking past enemies. You can literally go out of your way to avoid the Tree Sentinel and encounter no other enemies (except maybe one bat, from what I recall) by going west and approaching the church from the side/behind.
Oh I agree, I kind of have to assume that they were being hyperbolic as a bit. You can definitely make it to the church without aggroing anyone, you don't even need to sneak, just don't run right at him. That said, I did almost give up on Dark Souls 1 when I was told I could go up or down, didn't see the way up to Undead Burg, and went into the Catacombs so I do have some sympathy lol.
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This is a pretty bad take and I hope you reevaluate your position on people "whining" about their inability to enjoy some games because developers don't consider them at all. I'm so sorry you have you hear people complain about their disabilities and how it makes it hard for them to enjoy some video games. Really tho, this is fucked and I hope you think about it.
A certain type of person needs to keep perpetuating this myth because video games are the only things they spend their time on and they need to convince themselves that they aren't just wasting that time.
The point of the Tree Sentinel is to set the tone of the game. In most RPGs the world is built for you and more or less caters to your success. The tree sentinel is there to tell you that the lands between are not like that and losing vigilance for a few seconds will kill you.
Also I recommend crouching and hooking as far around it as possible. If you are running past the tree sentinel or trying to fight it, you've already died.
In terms of exploration, combat, and character variety, Elden Ring may be the best to ever do it. It's an incredibly fun and engaging game once you learn how it treats fights as a dance and not a DPS exchange. And of course I use all the tools it offers because I'm not a masochist and have a day job.
It is also crippled by asinine quest design, with invisible gates that trip permanent changes that may make quests impossible to complete. It's frustrating because some quests will put markers on your map, and others will be like "Ah, I'm looking for Glup Shitto, keep an eye out for me" and you see them again 20 hours later and they give you a reward for a quest you didn't realize you'd done.
The story is also pretty mid, and it's hard to even understand what the story is sometimes. Who are these people I'm fighting? Why are they fighting me? What the fuck is an Elden Lord anyways? Why do I want to be one? It's a world of rich lore snippets that, if you're lucky, sometimes piece together if you bother to read item descriptions and have the right items.
I'd you're on steam I recommend using shift-tab to keep a journal of quests and people
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I would even argue that Elden Ring already possesses an "easy mode", it's just not a literal stat increase to you and a stat decrease to all enemies. Spirit Ashes and multiplayer co-op are optional features to make the game easier, and you can also add status effects to your build without much effort which are pretty busted in Elden Ring at least. In previous games, access to these statuses were considerably more limited; now, you can make over half the weapons in the game into artery-eviscerating WMDs.
I have personally mellowed out on the whole "Souls games SHOULD be really hard!" thing because I've listened to the critique of others on it and I think they're correct. The bizarre crusade against video game journalists that gamers do really gets on my nerve. Some of those journalists are right - some games should be more accessible. But Elden Ring... literally is more accessible than its predecessors? If you want it to be, it can be the easiest game that Miyazaki has made. The open world means that you can much more easily get good weaponry if you explore rather than fight bosses immediately, you can find spots to overlevel (cough Greyoll cough), the crafting system means you can apply statuses to enemies and buffs to yourself, etc. You can't even be invaded online anymore unless you summon somebody, and even then, if you immediately start the boss then the invader is forced out of the world.
Compare this to Dark Souls 1, where you'd get oneshotted by Dark Bead users every 30 minutes if you played online, and if you decided to head down to the Catacombs first and found your way to the Tomb of the Giants at level 20, you were just fucked because you couldn't warp until halfway through the game.
I wouldn't regard myself as Elden Ring Fan #1. I do have a list of problems with the game, and that list was added to with the DLC; I think I was in the minority that found the DLC to be kinda disappointing if anything. But I do think that From Software is genuinely iterating towards better games over time, including in accessibility.
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Players looking up guides is what turns games into Protestantism. You're taking a creative medium and churning it into mechanical drudgery.
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