Defining Accessibility (Properly)

carlucio wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:I never said always, I said frequently. Accessibility itself isn't necessarily bad, I also cited an example in saints row I can add need for speed and final fantasy and fire emblem and cod and plants VS zombies as further examples of good accessibility if you like.

In a series like the soul series or resident evil series however whose purpose was to be inaccessible, accessibility is bad. Its not a hostile atmosphere when there's an in game tool waiting for you to get frustrated and ask for help. The point is that they DON'T know what they need to succeed, they're expected to guess and approach everything except the most basic things as trial and error. To leave them unprepared, to flounder and slog and scrape for ever little victory so that each victory is immensely satisfying and each failure a learning opportunity.

There is a difference between earning a victory through hardship and struggle, and looking up a wiki to get clarification on something that may be annoyingly vague, which is what more than 90 percent of the Souls community does. Or perhaps it was some ENB video?

That's not bad at all, the community of Dark souls was built around people helping each other, the Wiki was just a intrument of that, if they start teaching new players ingame the community would be damaged.

Well, this is an entirely different issue, to be honest, but....

No, not really. Wikis don't build communities by themselves. Good games do. I honestly believe that the community would be just as strong. Comeon, people rally around their favorite games on forums all the time regardless of whether a wiki exists for it. Why? Because they just want to talk about it! While the wiki forums helped, the truth is that the game was so well done that the community just rallied around its awesomeness. And think about it: if the accessibility is done correctly, without alienating new or old customers, then that will only increase the consumer base, and thus the community.

And I'm not saying that was bad. I'm basically answering Forum Pirate's post, to tell him that we "hardcore" Souls survivors shouldn't flatter ourselves too much. If we really "slogged through" and "earned our way", then we wouldn't have ever asked for help or looked up the wiki. But most of us did look up the wiki, some of us quite frequently.

It just has a bit of an elitist tone to it, because it makes it seem like we are some special breed of warriors that others have to earn the respect of. No, we are all gamers with varying degrees of preset skills when we come to the game. Not everyone has the same set of skills.

I would prefer if players had no access to the wiki until they had finished the game, but I can't do that. I can advocate the "figure it out yourself or go away" policy the game itself maintains though. If they must cheapen their experience, I can't stop them, but (especially as its all on the internet in a week anyways) there is no reason to devalue it for the rest of us.

Once you've beaten the game legitly, go ahead and look everything up if thats what you want to do, because you already earned your success. You have experienced the true purpose of the dks pve so any further denial of such knowledge is dependant on how quickly you want to transition to a secondary purpose.

Help always cheapens victory by a proportional amount.

Forum Pirate wrote:I would prefer if players had no access to the wiki until they had finished the game, but I can't do that. I can advocate the "figure it out yourself or go away" policy the game itself maintains though. If they must cheapen their experience, I can't stop them, but (especially as its all on the internet in a week anyways) there is no reason to devalue it for the rest of us.

Once you've beaten the game legitly, go ahead and look everything up if thats what you want to do, because you already earned your success. You have experienced the true purpose of the dks pve so any further denial of such knowledge is dependant on how quickly you want to transition to a secondary purpose.

Help always cheapens victory by a proportional amount.

Interesting. So you beat both games without ever looking up the wikis?

Aside from that, you are now talking about how you prefer other people to play, which is more of a personal issue. How a person chooses to play a game, especially if it has no impact on your experience, has nothing to do with you.

Yes I did, demons twice, once offline one on, and dark once online. (no summons) I never look anything up before at least 1 playthrough of any game.

My point was that if they must cheapen their experience with help, the option is always there in the internet. Even without the wiki, Youtube and gamefaqs will give you step by steps for many games. Knowing this (as devs surely do) there is no reason to force help on people who don't want it when one of the main points of the game was its incredibly hostile and or complex and or exploratory nature like in many (now ruined imo) series like the examples I've been giving

Forum Pirate wrote:Yes I did, demons twice, once offline one on, and dark once online. (no summons) I never look anything up before at least 1 playthrough of any game.

My point was that if they must cheapen their experience with help, the option is always there in the internet. Even without the wiki, Youtube and gamefaqs will give you step by steps for many games. Knowing this (as devs surely do) there is no reason to force help on people who don't want it when one of the main points of the game was its incredibly hostile and or complex and or exploratory nature like in many (now ruined imo) series like the examples I've been giving

1. I'm impressed. Really, no sarcasm. Great job, man.
2. If you are so cool with people using online wikis for information, what difference does it make online vs in game?
3. Who said that help would be "forced" on you? That's not what accessibility would mean. It means making things more accessible for people that need it, not those who don't.

MasterofShadows wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:Yes I did, demons twice, once offline one on, and dark once online. (no summons) I never look anything up before at least 1 playthrough of any game.

My point was that if they must cheapen their experience with help, the option is always there in the internet. Even without the wiki, Youtube and gamefaqs will give you step by steps for many games. Knowing this (as devs surely do) there is no reason to force help on people who don't want it when one of the main points of the game was its incredibly hostile and or complex and or exploratory nature like in many (now ruined imo) series like the examples I've been giving

1. I'm impressed. Really, no sarcasm. Great job, man.
2. If you are so cool with people using online wikis for information, what difference does it make online vs in game?
3. Who said that help would be "forced" on you? That's not what accessibility would mean. It means making things more accessible for people that need it, not those who don't.

The important distinction is whether the increased accessibility comes in the form of a tiny additional feature, or is incorporated into the core philosophy from the ground up.

I wouldn't have a problem with an NPC that you can talk to who more or less gives you a hint of where you should go next. It's an entirely different matter, however, to have a quest journal, map, and compass.

I didn't say wikis build comunities, i said the wikies are instruments of it, Dark wiki was made by player who wanted to help other players who needed to be helped, some think they shouldn't need help,that they all should be able to complete and understand the game by themselves, but i believe that the need of help is a core element of the series and if you try to remove the final experience would be severily damaged, i believe that without the comunity Dark souls would be just a good game, we made it great.

Most players that i know who stopped playing Dark souls did it because they were dying to a point that the game was not fun anymore, those are helpless no matter how good the tutorials, helpless not because they are retarded, but because their tolerance to frustration is minimal and that is one of the most important requisits to play Dark souls, i died over 20 in Crystal cave for the frist time and didn't even care, i was laughing about it, it' impossible to make a great game for us and for them, our concept of fun is dramaticaly different, you can make a ok game, maybe a good game, but a great game i bet you can't.

carlucio wrote:I didn't say wikis build comunities, i said the wikies are instruments of it, Dark wiki was made by player who wanted to help other players who needed to be helped, some think they shouldn't need help,that they all should be able to complete and understand the game by themselves, but i believe that the need of help is a core element of the series and if you try to remove the final experience would be severily damaged, i believe that without the comunity Dark souls would be just a good game, we made it great.

Most players that i know who stopped playing Dark souls did it because they were dying to a point that the game was not fun anymore, those are helpless no matter how good the tutorials, helpless not because they are retarded, but because their tolerance to frustration is minimal and that is one of the most important requisits to play Dark souls, i died over 20 in Crystal cave for the frist time and didn't even care, i was laughing about it, it' impossible to make a great game for us and for them, our concept of fun is dramaticaly different, you can make a ok game, maybe a good game, but a great game i bet you can't.

Agreed. That's an important thing for people to realize. For people who are averse to losing repeatedly (whether due to slow reflexes, ignorance, or whatever), there is no way to include them in the fan base without softening things up for them. In doing so, that alienates the fans who want the game to be a serious challenge. You can't always have your cake and eat it too. That is the fine line that FromSoft is attempting to walk (likely with the urging of Namco).

There are games much harder than Dark Souls that have their own die-hard fan communities. Games nowhere near as good.

Wikis didn't build them. The fact that they love the game did.

Thanks.

Thats a tough distinction. Without an entirely skippable tutorial (which costs money) I know of no way to separate the two, even just leaving more detailed messages in the tutorial area (the only 'solution' i wouldn't mind much) in no way garuntees the player will know what it is or bother with it, or even notice it (dedicated gamers miss some really obvious stuff at times so I can only imagine the things less dedicated gamers miss.)

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:Yes I did, demons twice, once offline one on, and dark once online. (no summons) I never look anything up before at least 1 playthrough of any game.

My point was that if they must cheapen their experience with help, the option is always there in the internet. Even without the wiki, Youtube and gamefaqs will give you step by steps for many games. Knowing this (as devs surely do) there is no reason to force help on people who don't want it when one of the main points of the game was its incredibly hostile and or complex and or exploratory nature like in many (now ruined imo) series like the examples I've been giving

1. I'm impressed. Really, no sarcasm. Great job, man.
2. If you are so cool with people using online wikis for information, what difference does it make online vs in game?
3. Who said that help would be "forced" on you? That's not what accessibility would mean. It means making things more accessible for people that need it, not those who don't.

The important distinction is whether the increased accessibility comes in the form of a tiny additional feature, or is incorporated into the core philosophy from the ground up.

I wouldn't have a problem with an NPC that you can talk to who more or less gives you a hint of where you should go next. It's an entirely different matter, however, to have a quest journal, map, and compass.

Dark souls has it, the first npc of firelink tells you to ring 2 bell, but you woudn't believe how many times people asked me about "what to do know", Shibuya even is working on some kind of "hints book" to help the player remember what he already learned.

Grey-Ronin wrote:
However, how would you make these examples more accessible? Tell us directly that we need a holy weapon to kill skeletons? This would ruin the overall feel of these environments and is what I'm afraid of with the general talk of accessibility. I have so much experience with RPGs, D&D and am a Demon's and Dark Vet that of course I don't need any help with accessibility, but if they go too far with accessibility, with game mechanics, difficulty and lore, it will greatly diminishes some of the core reasons why I love this series.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping to conclusions about how DS 2 will be (we still don't know much) and am still very hopeful that it will be a fantastic game just like the previous two. I think a lot of people are getting very vocal about this topic is because there are plenty of games for casual players, but Dark Souls seems like the last bastion of hope for seriously dedicated players (don't want to say Hardcore, but you know what I mean). Us fans made the series financially viable so don't abandon us now From Software.

I agree completely, just mentioning accessibility goes against the spirit of the game, because it's supposed to be hostile. It's a game that is not for everyone and I'm perfectly fine with that.

In fact the game would become way more acessible if they add more languages support , at least 10 languages, those guys who asked me about the 2 bells would most apprecciate.

carlucio wrote:

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:Yes I did, demons twice, once offline one on, and dark once online. (no summons) I never look anything up before at least 1 playthrough of any game.

My point was that if they must cheapen their experience with help, the option is always there in the internet. Even without the wiki, Youtube and gamefaqs will give you step by steps for many games. Knowing this (as devs surely do) there is no reason to force help on people who don't want it when one of the main points of the game was its incredibly hostile and or complex and or exploratory nature like in many (now ruined imo) series like the examples I've been giving

1. I'm impressed. Really, no sarcasm. Great job, man.
2. If you are so cool with people using online wikis for information, what difference does it make online vs in game?
3. Who said that help would be "forced" on you? That's not what accessibility would mean. It means making things more accessible for people that need it, not those who don't.

The important distinction is whether the increased accessibility comes in the form of a tiny additional feature, or is incorporated into the core philosophy from the ground up.

I wouldn't have a problem with an NPC that you can talk to who more or less gives you a hint of where you should go next. It's an entirely different matter, however, to have a quest journal, map, and compass.

Dark souls has it, the first npc of firelink tells you to ring 2 bell, but you woudn't believe how many times people asked me about "what to do know", Shibuya even is working on some kind of "hints book" to help the player remember what he already learned.

LOL You know what that tells me? The problem isn't that Dark Souls is too hard or inaccessible. The problem is that too many average casual gamers are too slow witted to adapt.

No need to be insulting.

Forum Pirate wrote:Thanks.

Thats a tough distinction. Without an entirely skippable tutorial (which costs money) I know of no way to separate the two, even just leaving more detailed messages in the tutorial area (the only 'solution' i wouldn't mind much) in no way garuntees the player will know what it is or bother with it, or even notice it (dedicated gamers miss some really obvious stuff at times so I can only imagine the things less dedicated gamers miss.)

Anything costs money, sure. But if making your game accessible without alienating the old schoolers or the new schoolers is successful, it pays off.

And teaching the player that the game has clues that you have to pay attention for is different than just outright telling them what the clue is. If the player fails to build on that knowledge and develop their skills of observation further, then that's on the player. Its up to the player to develop that skill, and nobody else. The satisfaction comes from realizing that they are actually getting better and seeing stuff that they didn't see before, and putting it all together.

I'm like you. I thought it was awesome that you could miss so many things on a complete playthrough. I was cool with that.

carlucio wrote:

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:Yes I did, demons twice, once offline one on, and dark once online. (no summons) I never look anything up before at least 1 playthrough of any game.

My point was that if they must cheapen their experience with help, the option is always there in the internet. Even without the wiki, Youtube and gamefaqs will give you step by steps for many games. Knowing this (as devs surely do) there is no reason to force help on people who don't want it when one of the main points of the game was its incredibly hostile and or complex and or exploratory nature like in many (now ruined imo) series like the examples I've been giving

1. I'm impressed. Really, no sarcasm. Great job, man.
2. If you are so cool with people using online wikis for information, what difference does it make online vs in game?
3. Who said that help would be "forced" on you? That's not what accessibility would mean. It means making things more accessible for people that need it, not those who don't.

The important distinction is whether the increased accessibility comes in the form of a tiny additional feature, or is incorporated into the core philosophy from the ground up.

I wouldn't have a problem with an NPC that you can talk to who more or less gives you a hint of where you should go next. It's an entirely different matter, however, to have a quest journal, map, and compass.

Dark souls has it, the first npc of firelink tells you to ring 2 bell, but you woudn't believe how many times people asked me about "what to do know", Shibuya even is working on some kind of "hints book" to help the player remember what he already learned.

Are you really that surprised that some people can either overlook that part or forget about it while trying to play the game? I didn't forget it, but I've played games where I've forgotten important details because I was busy trying to figure out other things. Its not that unheard of.

ComaPrison wrote: LOL You know what that tells me? The problem isn't that Dark Souls is too hard or inaccessible. The problem is that too many average casual gamers are too slow witted to adapt.

You obviously have no idea how insecure such comments make you sound.

Tomhet wrote:

Grey-Ronin wrote:
However, how would you make these examples more accessible? Tell us directly that we need a holy weapon to kill skeletons? This would ruin the overall feel of these environments and is what I'm afraid of with the general talk of accessibility. I have so much experience with RPGs, D&D and am a Demon's and Dark Vet that of course I don't need any help with accessibility, but if they go too far with accessibility, with game mechanics, difficulty and lore, it will greatly diminishes some of the core reasons why I love this series.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping to conclusions about how DS 2 will be (we still don't know much) and am still very hopeful that it will be a fantastic game just like the previous two. I think a lot of people are getting very vocal about this topic is because there are plenty of games for casual players, but Dark Souls seems like the last bastion of hope for seriously dedicated players (don't want to say Hardcore, but you know what I mean). Us fans made the series financially viable so don't abandon us now From Software.

I agree completely, just mentioning accessibility goes against the spirit of the game, because it's supposed to be hostile. It's a game that is not for everyone and I'm perfectly fine with that.

The point is to build a game that feels hostile to the player, not a game that makes it feel like the developers themselves are hostile towards you.

MasterofShadows wrote:

ComaPrison wrote: LOL You know what that tells me? The problem isn't that Dark Souls is too hard or inaccessible. The problem is that too many average casual gamers are too slow witted to adapt.

You obviously have no idea how insecure such comments make you sound.

Or maybe I'm just not an apologist that thinks that everyone is equally capable of doing everything. Because you know, we're not. And to lower the bar so that everyone can reach it only ruins things for people who were plenty fine with where the bar was before.

You know what? If you love those casual gamers so much, maybe you should go join them and play whatever garbage it is that they're playing these days.

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

ComaPrison wrote: LOL You know what that tells me? The problem isn't that Dark Souls is too hard or inaccessible. The problem is that too many average casual gamers are too slow witted to adapt.

You obviously have no idea how insecure such comments make you sound.

Or maybe I'm just not an apologist that thinks that everyone is equally capable of doing everything. Because you know, we're not.

Outside of the fact that you totally missed what I was trying to tell you, you also show that you are obviously someone who only insists on picking and choosing what to read and respond to instead of actually making an honest attempt at understanding them. If you had actually read my posts in this thread, you'd see that one of my overall arguments about accessibility IS that people are not all the same. I've already said that at least 3 times. What I take issue with is your elitist snobbish attitude, and your insistence on insulting people, just for either 1) Being different, or 2) Not agreeing with you.

On with the civil (if slightly heated) discussion, i would also accept a big, flashing, neon green sign that reads "THERE ARE ALWAYS CLUES" in the tutorial area. Just in case the simple lack of knowledge wasn't clue enough for some people.

I'm only half joking. No game leaves you completely in the dark, but a big obvious reminder that it is true (for example as the games tagline) would serve the purpose of reminding less experienced, though dedicated gamers of that fact without actually teaching them anything. Then they're looking for them, and so they're wouldn't actually need to be more than there are now. (there are clues to everything in dks.)

MasterofShadows wrote:

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

ComaPrison wrote: LOL You know what that tells me? The problem isn't that Dark Souls is too hard or inaccessible. The problem is that too many average casual gamers are too slow witted to adapt.

You obviously have no idea how insecure such comments make you sound.

Or maybe I'm just not an apologist that thinks that everyone is equally capable of doing everything. Because you know, we're not.

one of my overall arguments about accessibility IS that people are not all the same. I've already said that at least 3 times.

If you really believed that, you wouldn't be cool with them going for a one-size fits all approach to DS2 design.

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

ComaPrison wrote:

MasterofShadows wrote:

ComaPrison wrote: LOL You know what that tells me? The problem isn't that Dark Souls is too hard or inaccessible. The problem is that too many average casual gamers are too slow witted to adapt.

You obviously have no idea how insecure such comments make you sound.

Or maybe I'm just not an apologist that thinks that everyone is equally capable of doing everything. Because you know, we're not.

one of my overall arguments about accessibility IS that people are not all the same. I've already said that at least 3 times.

If you really believed that, you wouldn't be cool with them going for a one-size fits all approach to DS2 design.

If that's the only thing that you got from my posts, then you're free to think what you want.