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Game Maker's Toolkit - Should Dark Souls have an Easy Mode? (Patreon)

Published:
2016-04-25 12:49:49
Imported:
2026-06

Content

It's the question that comes up every time FromSoftware releases a new action RPG - should Dark Souls come with an easy mode? To answer this question (sort of), we must first figure out why these games are so hard, and whether there are better ways to provide difficulty settings than a choice at the start of the game.

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Game Makers Toolkit - Should Dark Souls have an Easy Mode?

It's the question that comes up every time FromSoftware releases a new action RPG - should Dark Souls come with an easy mode? To answer this question (sort of), we must first figure out why these games are so hard, and whether there are better ways to provide difficulty settings than a choice at the start of the game.

Comments

Ben C

The other thing that bothers me in the Souls games, besides their difficulty, is the lack of explanation of basic mechanics. I really need to go back and revisit them but it often feels like you can't really play them without doing a fair amount of online research about how weapon degradation works, what being "hollowed" means, etc.

Pixel Poppers

Hey Mark, I think there are some good points here - for example, I certainly agree that allowing players to choose their difficulty in a more granular and diegetic way through gameplay is often better than simply picking between Easy, Medium, and Hard before even starting the game. But there's a lot I take issue with, and I feel like it mostly stems from a question of who Easy mode is for. You spoke of the satisfaction of overcoming tremendous odds by fully engaging with a game's systems. But "tremendous odds" varies a lot from player to player. Personally, I'm a fairly experienced gamer but I don't spend a lot of time with RTS games - so if I pick one up and get extraordinarily lucky and find that the first mission presents tremendous odds that I can just barely overcome by engaging fully, that mission is probably just a warm-up for a genre veteran. And it's probably much harder for someone unfamiliar with games in general, and completely impossible for someone less physically capable due to age, disability, etc. The Sunset Overdrive example is a solid instance of a game's design encouraging a particular experience, but I don't think it's a fair comparison - in that case, they're steering the player's play style: the choices the player makes in interacting with the game world. The effect is very different than encouraging a particular experience by enforcing a specific level of challenge. You cautioned against devaluing challenge, and I strongly agree. A proper challenge is perhaps the best experiences a skill-based game can offer. The problem is that what constitutes a proper challenge isn't the same for everyone. Enforcing a set challenge level does create the intended experience in a subset of the audience, but completely prevents other huge segments of the possible audience from having anything resembling that experience. If, say, my reactions are significantly slower than average due to any number of physical reasons, Dark Souls won't give me the intended experience of overcoming tremendous odds. It'll instead give me the experience of being completely shut out. You can't use game design to steer someone toward playing a game in a way they are not capable of playing. The partial solution of RELUCTANTLY making easier modes available (such as by hiding them, indicating that they are not the intended way the game should be played, making some content only available on harder modes, or mocking players by putting party hats on everything) is just plain rude. You wouldn't make fun of someone who uses the wheelchair ramp, or tell them the stairs are the REAL way to get into this building, would you? Then why do that for Easy mode? I get that if a game prominently displays an Easy mode when starting out, some number of players who would have more fun on Hard will instead pick Easy. But the problem isn't the availability of an Easy mode - it's that forcing players to choose a difficulty mode up front with no context is a broken system. Surely the solution isn't to protect the incremental enjoyment of those hypothetical players by sacrificing the enjoyment of the people who need Easy mode? At least not if you want to have a large, inclusive audience for your game. This is a topic I feel very strongly about, and I've written about it on my own blog. If you want to see more of my perspective, feel free to check out my post on this exact subject at <a href="http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/in-praise-of-easy-lowering-barrier-to.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/in-praise-of-easy-lowering-barrier-to.html</a> Either way, thanks as always for your valuable contributions to the discussion, and as always I look forward to your next video. -docprof

Game Maker's Toolkit (GMTK)

Hey, thanks for the comment - lots to chew on there and I'll give the article a read. The role of handicapped and disabled gamers is something I feel bad for not focusing on - and is something I hope to come back to one day.

Game Maker's Toolkit (GMTK)

God damn Pateeon's "enter = send comment" thing! I was going to say - that being said, a lack of explanation hasn't hurt Minecraft which is practically unplayable without reading outside the game. There's something to be said about encouraging players to share info and strategies, which seems a core part of DS (with the summons, and of course messages).

Ben C

That's definitely true and you could argue the consistent reasoning behind this in both games is the desire to instill a sense of challenge, exploration, and the joy of discovery. That being said it bothers me a lot less in the non-linear non-punishing endlessness of Minecraft. My only experience with Dark Souls was, I believe, in 2 where after trying and failing at a specific boss several times my gear was completely broken, my life bar increasingly small, and I was unable to find an alternate path. Starting over seemed my only option which is a lot more painful in DS than MC. Part of it is definitely my increasing desire to play games in small, less committed, chunks as my schedule grows ever busier. Might make an interesting subject for a video! Keep up the great work.

meyade

Hey, I almost tl;dr that one but I'm glad I didn't ^^ Answer this: would you ask for every riddle to be answereable by anyone? would you ask for every sport to have limitations so everyone could play just the same? The nature of games (not videogames but games) is a harsh one, they're a way to test that, on a real situation, we would be faster, stroger or smarter. That's what gives you a feeling of acomplishment. That it was hard. That you actually though you wouldn't be able to beat it at some point. (that leaving aside that if you take your time to learn DS it's easy to finish at least one time). People are waaaay too rude about it with the whole "git gud" attitude true, but neglecting our nature wont make it go away. The same way I would help someone in a weelchair or with some sort of disability without a second thought, I like to be able to face a challenge I'm "able" to face. I want to be able to go climb a mountain. I want to be able to face and solve a mind puzzle or a riddle that has yet to be solved. you have a really good point there, but I think you're missing the subject at hand. We're talking Dark Souls here. Gamesare a natural way of testing ourselves without danger. That's why animals can play hide and seek, catch or tugs of war. We've made that into a way of entertainment. But that's exactly why the gaming industry is far too soft. How many games can you name that are not multiplayer based and still have some sort of real challenge? That you can say "fuck even with a guide I might not finish this" If we make every game for everyone to be able to finish, then we start making them for everyone to understand, and all the artistic value goes down the sink. W end up with todays AAA industry. Completelly focused on delivering bland experiences with "amazing grafics" filled with boxed tutorials, cliches and oh my god so much exposition. I understand the need to never lose focus and that games that are accessible are a total need as everyone has a right to play, But I for one need challenge. It's no wonder why there's a "git gud" attitude. This feeling of accomplishment was stolen. Games are no longer about the game. You give the example of not being a RTS master. I am neither, I'm the worst when it comes to large strategies but that's ok. I don't need to feel like a master at every sport to enjoy sportery, why would I need to feel like I can compete at any game genre? Still I enjoyed your post it got me thinking a lot, hope to hear back from you!

Pixel Poppers

Hey, thanks for responding. I'm quite happy to elaborate here (with apologies to Mark for the threadjack). I would definitely not ask for every game to be equally masterable by every single human being. That would result in us having exactly zero games. Every game has a limited audience and it's totally legit for the creator of a game to decide what audience to target. My position is that inclusiveness and accessibility should be the _default_ assumption - limiting your audience should be a conscious decision and you should be aware of and okay with the tradeoff you are making. It's like choosing whether to serve vegan or gluten-free options at a dinner party. And it's especially important for games that are expensive to make, so you don't cut yourself off from possible return on investment. For example, you mention riddles. If you're making a game based on tricky riddles, then it does seem a bit pointless to make all of the riddles so obvious that they won't stump anybody - if you've done that, it's not the game you set out to make. But it probably _is_ a good idea to translate the game into multiple languages so you aren't blocking off the huge potential audience that doesn't speak your native tongue. This broadens your audience without damaging the core experience. Taking this back to Dark Souls, it's probably not worthwhile to make a version of Dark Souls that is playable by people who are blind and deaf. This would require an incredible amount of effort and create something nearly unrecognizable - you'd basically just be making a totally different game. So it makes sense to decide to limit your audience in that way - but what about making a version of Dark Souls that's playable by people with hand injuries or deformities? You could probably do that just by making the controls remappable and wouldn't lose anything core to Dark Souls. That seems worthwhile. And what about making a version that's playable by people with slow reflexes? You could probably go a long way here pretty easily by doing something like adding a mode that doubles the player's health. The question is - if you do that, are you messing with the core of the Dark Souls experience? My argument is that you aren't, because this is analogous to translating the riddle game - you aren't destroying the experience; you're making it available to another part of the audience. Assuming we agree that the core of Dark Souls is something like "overcoming very difficult reflex-based challenges through learning", a specific challenge will only be "very difficult" to a section of the audience, not the entire audience. To some it may be easy and to others it may be impossible. By providing multiple versions of the challenge, we increase the potential audience that can find their own "very difficult" experience to overcome. Since doing this is comparatively easy and can drastically increase the game's audience, my argument is that it's a good idea and should be done unless there's a good reason not to. So far, the only reason I've really heard suggested is that it could result in players who would have a better time on Hard playing on Easy instead, which strikes me as a solvable problem (especially via optional in-game difficulty adjustments) and an insufficient counterargument. After all, those players still have the ability to play on Hard instead if they notice the game is too easy to be fun, whereas without Easy mode the locked-out players have no equivalent choice. You indicate you want to face and overcome difficult challenges - so do I! I definitely don't want to take that away from you. What I want is to bring that experience to _more_ people. I would never argue that we should remove Hard mode - just that we should also add Easy mode. I hope that answers your question. To go a bit further, my speculation is that the real reason there is no Easy mode in Dark Souls is because Dark Souls trades on its reputation as a brutally difficult franchise. That's what makes it stand out. (This isn't because it has nothing else special, but because the other things that make it special are substantially less obvious and easy to understand and convey.) If you increase the game's accesibility - even without removing the brutally difficult mode - it would lose that reputation and fade into the background noise of all the other action RPGs out there. Given that, it's not at all clear to me that it's actually in the developer's interest to broaden the audience for the franchise. They might lose more sales than they'd gain. If true, then that does quality as a good reason to limit their audience, if a frustrating one - it's not actually tied to the core of the game, but to the core of the marketing. If you're curious, I've written a bit more about why I think there is such resistance to the idea of adding Easy mode to traditionally hardcore franchises here: <a href="http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2010/01/status-and-signals-why-hardcore-gamers.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2010/01/status-and-signals-why-hardcore-gamers.html</a> (Though I didn't discuss the marketing aspect, which in hindsight feels like a significant omission.) -docprof