this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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Accessibility isn't just a case of 'accessible to the handicapped', man.
That's a fair argument then, but... this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can "access" the thing.
If someone isn't willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that's a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like "Prepare to Die" is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They've done essentially everything but creating an explicit "easy mode" to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, that’s not inaccessible but it’s less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem can’t be solved for every player unfortunately. And they don’t need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldn’t ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying “I’d love to enjoy the art you’ve made, but I can’t. My disability/inability is stopping me” then I’d change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and you’re right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but can’t just because of difficulty.
Apologies in advance for the essay lol, Souls is one of my favourite franchises, and I've spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these games.
I don't think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond just... basic understanding of how to control a 3D character. They even tutorialize that, actually. Everyone starts somewhere, I personally got thrashed immediately after the tutorial in Dark Souls 1, and it took me hours to beat the first proper boss, with many deaths to regular enemies. Like any good video game, Souls teaches you the skills you need progressively, and gets gradually harder and asks more of the player over time. It's not like just starting Guitar Hero on the highest difficulty, the game is balanced for anyone.
I don't actually think these games require an excessive time investment. Howlongtobeat puts Dark Souls Remastered's Main Story at 30 hours. Even if you're somehow spending 4x that time, that still only puts it at 120 hours, which isn't unreasonable, lots of games have runtimes around that length.
I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasn't seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons you're learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.
A key part of developing anything for millions of people is that you have to learn what feedback to take and how to implement it properly. From Soft absolutely has listened to their community. First of all, there's a vocal community that doesn't want difficulties, which is what this whole post is joking about. I'd argue From Soft have done a phenomenal job of listening to their audience, and catering to the niche of people that want a tough, unyielding experience is how they've slowly built themselves into the multi-GotY juggernaut they are now.
But second of all, they've put a ton of effort into introducing ways to make the game easier. In Sekiro, if you're hard stuck on a boss, tough luck, that game is mostly linear, and has key story moments that leave you no alternatives but to "git gud". In Elden Ring, you can go elsewhere to learn the game more against a different boss, level up, and come back. In most cases, you don't even need to come back. You can also explore different builds, respec your character, try a different weapon or spell or summon, summon a friend in multiplayer, go find more equipment, anything.
And personally, I really preferred Sekiro, it's my favourite game they've ever made. I got stuck for hours on every key boss, and that game absolutely wiped the floor with me. It has barely any buildcraft, you truly do just have to "git gud". And the purity of that experience really speaks to me and what I want out of a game. There's no "questioning if I'm doing it wrong", I just need to get in there and learn the required skills head on.
Ultimately, I'm really just tired of being villainized (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself, when basically everything else on the market is pursuing the widest audience possible, with aggressive hints telling you how to do puzzles before you can even think, and several difficulty options that make things incredibly easy, at the cost of the harder difficulties usually being poorly balanced and uneven. I'm not going around saying every Mario game needs to be a Kaizo, with no way to tone it down, but it feels like many are coming to my favourite games and telling me they're bad for being what I love.
Especially when I feel like From Soft is hitting that balance you're talking about, and giving the player lots of options, but some people will seemingly just never be satisfied until they can choose "Easy" from the start screen. I don't feel like me or From Soft is being dismissive when there are an abundance of accommodations and options to make things easier, you just need to actually engage with the game to use them.
That's obviously not true. Try playing an FPS with a mouse and keyboard vs controller and you'll see understanding how to do something theoretically is less than half the battle. Say someone is missing arms so plays with their feet, it is far far more difficult to get a higher level of precision, and some people just won't be able to no matter the amount of practice. People have a peak of reaction time no matter the amount of practice, and its different for different people. People have a peak of ability to move with precision no matter the amount of practice(see dyspraxia). People have shakes that cannot be controlled no matter the amount of practice.
Ignoring that that experience just isn't fun for a lot of people, you're using your own experience of your own ability.
... It doesn't detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.
Accessibility is literally how this thread started. I also disagree that the game requires a high degree of precision. Dark Souls originally came out with only 8-directional rolling, which you could do on a D-Pad, Fight Stick, or any other accessible controller. There's no FPS-style aiming or anything, and again, you can find challenge runs of people beating the game while wearing oven mitts and other such shenanigans. The series main difficulty is in making the right decisions with the committed attack animations, end lag, and stagger mechanics, not quick reactions or precise inputs, although I'll absolutely grant that the combat has become faster over time. Not that you can't conquer the game with good buildcraft anyway, check out an "all hit run" for ways to beat Elden Ring while literally not dodging any attacks.
Sure, but skills and muscle memory are skills and muscle memory. Unless you're referring to learning disabilities, people improve at things with practice, and time spent practicing the combat will make you better at the combat.
I've also replied to that in this thread. But I'll also add that something like a quick save is very different from adding a new scaled difficulty option, and Souls already implements a wealth of options to make the game easier. Adding another option in that same vein is a separate conversation from adding an Easy Mode.
P.S. I don't mean to be snarky by linking my own comments. It's understandable that you wouldn't constantly be re-reading every comment I've made on this thread before replying, but I am getting a bit fatigued after debating this all day with Lemmy, and don't feel a need to re-hash the same arguments here.
What? Yea? Sorry maybe you mixed me up with someone else I didn't deny that.
Its not just a matter of precision in being able to input a control, its being able to reliably input a control quickly.
Again, someone being able to do something doesn't mean everyone can.
Yea this I wouldn't agree with, there definitely is a lot of quick inputs needed
Look into stuff like dysgraphia and dyspraxia, or even speech impediments. People can practice things repeatedly, but still because of muscle or neurological issues be unable to reliably perform certain actions. Obviously practice can improve, or it might not, or there might be a ceiling much lower than people without those issues- as well as improving much more slowly. What you seem to be misunderstanding is people aren't saying its impossible for anyone to play the game with differing levels of ability, they are saying it might not be viable- and they won't necessarily follow the same path of improvement that you did. This could make it way more frustrating or even impossible to finish the game.
I'm advocating either or/both, an easy mode would be an improvement. But I'll add more in the comment there.
Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like you're kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.