I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that at its heart Souls were meant to be niche games that have somehow crossed the gap over to the mainstream while refusing to accommodate to the demands of mainstream audiences (although along the way they have indeed implemented a lot of qol stuff that in some senses have detracted from them, like teleporting).
You'll never see a fan of flight or city sims complaining about the game being too complex because that's what the people wanting to play those games is signing in for. Opacity in Souls is a property of the experience, not a flaw, they are games that are trying to sell the idea of mystery, esoterism and a world that exists independent to the presence of the player, it makes sense they don't explain properly because that's what a truly alien and strange world would do.
But they became popular, and people who are not into these things and to whom I feel the games have no desire to appeal to ended up trying them, and since this is the internet in 2020 they say they are bad or poorly made instead of not my thing or I don't like them, which is what would be ideal.
It's actually funny because take something else deliberately complex or alienating like Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud or La Mulana and the buzz surrounding those games is a lot more positive, because those are niche games that are enjoyed by their respective audiences and ignored by the rest.
This all sounds extremely gatekeepy and I wish it wouldn't be taken that way. All I'm trying to say is that you need to know what you are getting into with certain things, and it makes no sense to ask for almonds from a peach tree, because a peach tree gives peaches.
@yeso#12200 Regarding my last message (posted it without refreshing the page and seeing other replies): the thing is, they are not about difficulty, the Souls games go for something completely different to kaizo mario, super meat boy and I wanna be the guy types of things.
Souls play with the idea of alienating the player in order to make them feel a certain set of things, intimidation, tension, fear, curiosity, fascination and the difficulty is really just a literary and stylistic device to try to provoke those responses. La Mulana does a similar thing, but from the perspective of unraveling the mystery of an ancient civilization, and in both cases difficulty is just the vehicle, not the goal at all. And in the end, focusing the whole conversation in that is just looking at the finger instead of the moon it is pointing at.
@JoJoestar#12206 @JoJoestar#12206 Hard to avoid how this all seemed to grow out of control alongside the whole Gamergate fiasco. Even 6 years later, we are still needing to ward against the ghosts of that, seemingly feeling the need to have to apologize for seeming gatekeepy, when really, I think the underlying message of what we‘ve all been saying is more or less “I sure wish I liked Dark Souls" or ”I sure wish more people could enjoy Dark Souls." It’s really hard, at least for me, to forget that the gatekeeping that you‘re taking care to explicitly not identify yourself with is a product of an elitist, hypermasculine, uh, basically straight up cryptofascist element that made a real and concentrated bid to subsume videogames within itself. I think they failed, but, I don’t think they've given up.
I guess I am always going to be a bit of a dreamer because my real line on this is that I wish _Dark Souls_ had way more things that made it challenging and even player-hostile that were more interesting than relying on having various entities within it that can kill you in 1-2 hits and require 10-15 hits from you to kill rather than enemies that can kill you in 4-6 hits and you can kill them in 2-4. Unfortunately the series has only moved further from that since _Dark Souls_ and the environments are less hostile and easy to get lost in which is what I think is the more interesting aspect of the player-hostility in _Dark Souls._
I suppose my point would be that the souls games difficulty in a "player playing a videogame sense" a core part of the experience for better or worse. These are games that kill the player very often, sort of taunt them with big on screen text, and compound the difficulty with a lower-health dead state. Yes, the challenge can be mitigated through game provided items and mechanics, or by videogame technical knowhow. But it's reasonable that players are alienated by this experience. Agree that there are much more demanding games out there (dwarf fortress, complex flight sims etc) but the difficulty in these games is not of the "player playing a videogame" action game sense. Just speaking for myself here of course but kind of confused how/why some seem to deflect or diminish what seems to me to be a fairly forthright attempt by the developers to make "difficult" videogames.
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@JoJoestar#12206 it makes no sense to ask for almonds from a peach tree
lol just today I was expressing this same concept but said "that's like ordering a big mac at pizza hut," might have to steal your analogy
@yeso#12209 @Gaagaagiins#12208 I do agree that the application of difficulty of these games permeates everything and can act as a sort of barrier separating the player from everything else. It's the danger of frustration, when you get annoyed by any reason you sever your engagement with the experience drastically, and that disconnects the player to everything else the game could have had to offer.
I do think a fair amount of the most vitriolic and hateful comments I have seen directed at these games come from a place of wanting to be part of it, wanting to join the party and the constant celebration most of us the fans have, because I think it's fair to admit, Souls' fans can't just shut the fuck up with the damn thing (and I'm the living example of that with all these replies lol). That's something makes people both attracted to the games and angered when they realize they don't like them.
Edit: this whole conversation is like an almond pizza in a peach burger, who the hell asked for that.
I'll put it this way. Lots of people can drive cars, comparatively few can perform repairs, tuneups, etc on their own car. The fact that some people can do this and it is possible to do it, does not make auto repair less than “difficult”
@Syzygy#12222 I don‘t think you’re being purposefully obstinate. You‘re clearly expressing a reasoned opinion in good faith. If you’ll forgive my saying so: expressing that souls games are not “difficult” is not the same as explaining a “simple fact” (nor for that matter is my saying that they are difficult = stating a fact), just two differing subjective opinions
i fear this may warrant a Souls Thread a la the final fantasy and dragon quest ones, yet I also fear it may be too late as there’s been some good discussion already. hm.
To me there‘s a clear distinction between “difficult” and “punishing,” and the reason I haven’t had any luck enjoying Soulsborne is the latter. It‘s not that any one challenge is overwhelmingly hard–some of my favorite games demand more of the player’s reflexes and finger agility, like the DMC and Ninja Gaiden games–but I tend to learn through failure, and the cost for failure in Soulsborne is so great that frustration always becomes the dominant emotion of the experience. I agree that the games have many other commendable traits worth discussing, but my issue is that the punishment heavily detracts and distracts from those things.
Re: my example of a boss killing you with its first attack, then its second--that's an extreme example, but my point is that some amount of trial and error (resulting in death) is inevitable, at least for me but I suspect most players, Meanwhile the cost of error is needlessly inflated, in a way that is so contrary to the norm (a little less so now that Souls is such a thing) that it's clearly a fundamental point the games are trying to make. Punishment isn't all there is to these games, but it is a core tenet, and also what sets Sekiro apart imo.
Re: Sekiro having more tools, I was only talking about in-combat options--Wolf has a versatile base move set, plus various combat arts, plus multiple prosthetic tools, plus acrobatic options like jumping off enemies and walls, plus he can sprint for free. I've never found level grinding in Soulsborne to save me much time/trouble, but I also don't think that's a fun or interesting way to overcome a challenge in an action game. Maybe my error is in treating these like action games? I'll be honest, I don't even know what "Poise" is.
Co-op is a nice crutch that *sort* of stands in for an Easy Mode (that requires you to have friends who are good at the game or luck with randos), but even that is unnecessarily gated behind consumable items and sometimes other prerequisites, like the designers wanted to discourage you from using it, which is a weird thing to do unless being hard is the point.
:Edit: Wait, IS co-op gated behind consumable items, or that an annoyance unique to Nioh 1? Now I can't remember. Either way though.
“Is Dark Souls a difficult video game?” is obviously a pretty interesting question, considering the years of discussion it has spawned. “Is Dark Souls too difficult a video game?” is perhaps even more interesting, since it raises issues like accessibility, gatekeeping, etc that have already been discussed by others at length. For what it‘s worth I think it is impossible to divorce the challenge of the Soulsborne games from what they are, now, in 2020. This discussion has been central to the very idea of the series going all the way back to Demon’s Souls. Ironically, I don't think that the series would have become so popular and mainstream if not for its gatekeeping difficulty.
On the question: Are they difficult? I do not find them difficult anymore, but that's after literally hundreds of hours of practice. So I think maybe this is the wrong question, although damned if I know what the right one is. I can now play through DS II, for instance, pretty much without dying from start to finish. I think I could probably speedrun Bloodborne if I was so inclined (I am not). Does this mean they are "easy?" I don't think so, since my first playthroughs of these games took me hundreds of deaths, iterating with each one until I could play them in my sleep. I now literally play them as relaxation games with the sound turned off and a podcast on. I'm not going to say that because they're easy for me now, that they are _easy_. I am also not some great gamer because they are easy for me now, since it took me the aforementioned hundreds of hours of work and practice for them to become easy.
Now, on the question of "should they be easier?" I think this question is impossible to answer. Partially because it is subjective, but partially because I do not think, as I said earlier, that these games could exist without their perceived difficulty. Games, like movies and books and everything else, do not exist in a vacuum. They are cultural objects and exist in a cultural context. Video games have gotten "easier" over the generations - because they don't need to take your quarters any more, because they don't need to be padded out for length, because they are more mainstream and seeking a broader audience, because hardware makes them more precise and approachable - for all these reasons and more. That broad cultural phenomenon has made a space for "difficult" games to exist for the very fact that they are difficult. These games are for weirdos. As others have mentioned, this genre of sorts is very broad and includes all kinds of games from flight sims, to massively difficult platformers, bullet hells, and Soulslikes. These games exist to scratch the itch of weirdos who want to be miserable (like me!) and cannot be severed from the very fact that they are difficult. So if you remove the difficulty from the Soulsborne games, are they Soulsborne games anymore? I don't think so. They just become generic 3rd person hack and slash action games - and those are great! - but they aren't Soulsborne games.
@Gaagaagiins#12235 I was about to compare dark souls to ulysses last night but decided to go to sleep instead. dodged a bullet there good lord
@Syzygy#12225 I understand and agree with what you're saying about the difficulty being surmountable by game-provided tools, player cleverness, exploiting soft spots in ai scripting etc apart from playing the game strictly the way the surface level game design instructs. Good point that for a "difficult" game it gives players a lot of leeway
@CidNight#12260 Speaking as someone who likes and has beaten all the souls games, I can attest that at least for me (not especially good at game skills, not inclined to prod around for exploits, limited interest in reading wikis) they were all hard for me to get through. But I think the games are more successful than not conveying a united front of game-texture- difficulty-struggle with the entropic/exhausted themes+atmosphere.
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@CidNight#12260 if you remove the difficulty from the Soulsborne games, are they Soulsborne games anymore? I don’t think so
@yeso#12262 I agree totally. I was focusing exclusively on the role of “difficulty” in giving Soulsborne games their texture and their identity, but of course these games have a lot more going for them than just being difficult.