Dark Souls director considering an Easy mode...

Dark Souls director considering an Easy mode, "really sad" about game's fearsome reputation.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/45510/dark-souls-director-considering-an-easy-mode-really-sad-about-games-fearsome-reputation/

Let's hope this is just a translation error.

To many game sequels have been 'adjusted for mass-appeal', and it seldom ends well. For the souls series in particaular, which gained its reputation and fan-base from punishing old-school difficulty, this can't end well either...

The difficulty and the frustration makes Dark Souls what it is!

I really hope it never goes through.

I grew up playing games such as Moonstone on the Commodore Amiga (yeah i'm old) and Dark Souls is a refreshing blast in the vein of such old school RPGs. Please don't give in to the demands of weak gamers! We don't want games to hold our hands!

Besides, i discovered that "easy mode" already exists.....it is the default setting when you create a new character after over 300 hours gameplay

Nooo! It should be made harder than it is, not easier.

Most gamed i complete in about a week. thats average interest when nothing more interesting arises. Dak souls i couldnt complete in a month. its this difficulty that makes the game take so long to play and so makes the game interesting.

Reading the comments on that article is quite telling. Many people claim
that DS isn't "fair". I have never found the game unfair. Challenging
yes, but unfair? Never.

The only times i have felt the overall experience of DS
to be "unfair" is in the multiplayer aspect; when the trolls exploit
the games glitches to wail on new players. Things like the bb glitch. If
anything will put a new player off the PvP aspect (which, let's face it,
is keeping this game alive for most of us vets these days), it's this.

Before talking about difficulty, maybe From should patch these issues to make a more even battlefield.

this is ********
the series were successful because of the difficulty, otherwise i don't think there would be a dark souls game and less people would care about it.
the first intention of the game was to make it a challenge, as well as give people the feeling of rewardness
the game isn't impossible, as lot of people made through it, you just have to think and choose a strategy, what i've noticed that most new gamers dont do (based on friends experiences)

"If the number of easy games is increasing nowadays, I guess it is
because difficulty is not related to interesting and worthwhile game
elements in many games among players."

cant believe i just read it...

So, I had an idea that would work for this.

I say, do easy mode, make it a thing, but restrict it.

When playing in easy mode, player cannot
1. Do any online interaction.
2. Cannot bring their characters to hard mode
3. Cannot earn specific achievements or something to that nature.

That way, player can experience the Souls game, get used to how it feels, then jump into hard mode with a little knowledge in order to try and get better at the game to face the real players. I think the restriction of online and the fact that that character they made can not be crossed over to hard mode would make people more interested and feel accomplished when they step up the difficulty. I mean, you start off with this fun game, and its not too hard, but its just fun. You beat it, and you want more, you feel your missing something. Well, just make a new character, and boom, a whole new world of the game appears. Other players, new items, maybe even new content. This would easily help ease players into the game, and then get them to stay if they like it. Either way, they walk away knowing about the game.

Foot, greet mouth.

If they want to make another boring RPG, go for it, my heart shall weep for a fun game again.

I always feared this, the whole "prepare to die" promotional is largely to blame. People who have not played the game or rented it and didn't get passed the first boss often bash it as being stupidly difficult, when its far from it. I think we all know that just a normal playthrough of dark souls is not THAT difficult, i can think of quite a few games this generation that were more difficult and less forgiving. I really hope they take a different approach to marketing rather then trying to convince consumers of how difficult it is.

This article plus the one where he talks about making the game appeal to more players means that the Souls series is done.

They see other companies making a lot more money putting in only 10% of the effort that From does. To make a hard, rewarding game is a TON of work. When I was taking game design classes, making an easy game was 100x easier than making a tough, but fair game.

Our only hope is that the way the next Souls game works is that they include an easy mode along with a normal or hard mode.

I'm upset about this but you can't lay all the blame at them. The average gamer is not very good at video games. They don't enjoy tough games.

EDIT: I think a REAL tutorial would have gone a long way in this game. It might have helped not turn people off. The average gamer needs a tutorial that literally holds their hand while teaching them every mechanic.

I'm so sad, that was a slap on my face.

Easy mode already exist, it is playing this game using dark wiki everytime and watching walktroughs on youtube, but all of it is optional, a new gamer can refuse all of it and have a awesome challenge, what they gonna do is remove that challenge option and make the game easy for everyone.


We should make a petition saying that we dont want easyer game, we may change his ming before is too late.

Dark souls has been called unplayable, this is a rumor, a very exagerated one. in my opinion games werent made to be easy. theres no fun in that. i think that when people who play easy games like... idk mario or something they feel like an untouchable god then they play dark souls, and get thier *** handed to them. the game isint unplayable, just a bit hard, and you need to keep playing to win. thats how all games should be, challenging. Challenging is how i would describe dark souls, because you need to try in order to accomplish something, if we could get the best gear in the game easily, it would'int be fun anymore! A true dark souls player would definitely vote NOT to make an easy mode. The people who would want an easy mode, is people who had to get rid of the game cause they died a few times, people who think its unplayable because of rumors, and little kids. Nuff' said.

ChaosServantSpectre wrote:So, I had an idea that would work for this.

I say, do easy mode, make it a thing, but restrict it.

When playing in easy mode, player cannot
1. Do any online interaction.
2. Cannot bring their characters to hard mode
3. Cannot earn specific achievements or something to that nature.

That way, player can experience the Souls game, get used to how it feels, then jump into hard mode with a little knowledge in order to try and get better at the game to face the real players. I think the restriction of online and the fact that that character they made can not be crossed over to hard mode would make people more interested and feel accomplished when they step up the difficulty. I mean, you start off with this fun game, and its not too hard, but its just fun. You beat it, and you want more, you feel your missing something. Well, just make a new character, and boom, a whole new world of the game appears. Other players, new items, maybe even new content. This would easily help ease players into the game, and then get them to stay if they like it. Either way, they walk away knowing about the game.

No, i want tards playing call of duty, not something made from from software.

Some of that Mario stuff isn't easy. Have you played Kaizo Mario?

I don't like levels of difficulty, i think it often breaks the game that the hardest modes are dumb, not hard.

How is Dark Souls hard again? You literally cannot lose Dark Souls, its impossible without getting rid of your copy

Unplayable? Do people block, because that made the game 100X easier for me when I started. Mario was harder than this and I recall people liked that game?

lol i said Mario as an example, i know its a good game...

It IS a good game no doubt, just saying I found the game overall harder than Dark Souls which provides you with some many options. I mean shields are overpowered in PvE because they are huge lifesavers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFGfWrJR5Ck

Miyazaki must have not been impressed with the marketing for the game in NA and Europe, then, because it revolved around "lol you gonna die so much". Stupid campaign there, that was never the point of playing either of the games, for me at least. They could easily have focused on lore, the combat system, etc. Instead, they rolled with a completely off-putting premise that probably turned many potential new players away from the game.

If they make some sort of "easy mode" to bring in a bigger audience, I think they could do it well. From has proven that they are capable of innovating new and interesting concepts that blend well in-game, so there is a chance they could make it a win-win. I think they should make it harder, though, not because it isn't already challenging, but so the "it's so easy!" :roll: crowd would get over themselves.

Easy mode: Some enemies lose certain moves. Balders don't parry, Berenike doesn't heal, Rat poison is weaker, Ornstein or Smough don't heal

Honestly, THIS easy mode is much better than simple decreased stats. Fact is, Dark Souls isn't the same when you have a choice of how hard it is. It's because we have no choice that makes it hard.