Apparently if you switch to offline, you can use a trainer to help yourself out. I have yet to get this game or try it, but I saw one that had a “damage multiplier” that would up your damage to enemies.
If one had a “damage received reducer”, one could in theory create their own difficulty slider and reduce their damage taken, increase the damage they give, and kind of find a way to make the game more manageable.
I might try this, though I still am waiting. I do not have time for this game right now.
Video games are absolutely art. But Elden Ring is also mass-market consumer media, and so it’s reasonable to discuss it in that context. Art isn’t immune to critique simply because it’s art.
I swear to og I’m not trying to be obtuse here, but I’d argue that summoning is engaging with the content; the summoning is part of the game. It’s part of your in game set of options, every bit as much as your sword or your spell. If I notice that King Cecil’s attacks are slow and short-range, so I back way the hell up and just shoot him with arrows until he dies, never dodging at all, I am still engaging. I don’t think a reasonable assessment of game’s difficulty can just arbitrarily dismiss elements of the player’s toolset that were explicitly put there by the developer. Super Mario Brothers would be much, much more difficult if you dismissed the availability of the fire flower, but no fair discussion of the game’s difficulty would do that even though a player using the fire flower is having a substantively different game experience than a player who is not.
And - again, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I find this really interesting and worth discussing - you can increase the number of hits you can absorb, or decrease the number of times you have to hit King Cecil. That’s what leveling up does; that’s what upgrading weapons and armor do. And in some cases, this is relevant to what the game is trying to accomplish - and in those cases, I will argue in favor of the developer’s intent.
For example, in the original Dark Souls, when you exit the tutorial area you find yourself in a small central hub from which you can travel, broadly speaking, in three directions. If you travel to the most physically near and visible location, you will encounter a graveyard full of skeletons. The skeletons are very very hard to kill. They will absorb eight to ten hits, and kill you in one or two. I’ve seen people use this online as an argument that DS is ridiculous, those skeletons. But the whole thing is, you’re not really supposed to be able to beat them right now. You’re supposed to hit that wall, realize you’re not ready, and try a different path (where you find far easier enemies and one of the best-designed levels in the history of games IMO). It’s a more elegant solution than a giant glowing red forcefield that says “you must be level 35 to pass,” but it has the same function.
Now later in the game, you will find yourself back at that hub. By now you’ve leveled up 30 or 40 times. You have new weapons and armor, and you’ve upgraded them. You go back to the graveyard, and now the skeletons die in one or two hits, and do scratch damage to you. You may not even be much better at the game, but now you can plow through that meat wall and access the content behind it. And that’s a satisfying and cool feeling - those guys were tough, I wonder what they were protecting.
If you had a simple slider that allowed you to kill those skeletons relatively easily, you remove their value as a signpost for the challenge posed by the area. You take away the feeling of progress when you come back later with your Big Sword of Skeleton Smashing. (This is one of many reasons I disliked Skyrim, where enemies that scale with you meant that I never felt a sense of growth or improvement relative to the game world).
It’s also art/media that I’m expected to actively participate in. Movies and music and such are largely passive. Video games involve the player as a part of the experience and so the player absolutely has a right to critique the experience and give their opinions on how it could be better.
Video games are also much more fluid. Games get patched all the time (including adding/tweaking difficulty) versus me yelling at a statue and expecting the artist to add another head on that horse.
Editor’s Note: I composed this in pieces over an extended period of time and realize that it’s rambly and maybe a little disjointed. Caveat lector.
The content is fighting King Cecil. If I summon you to do it for me, I am not fighting King Cecil. If I’m playing an archer and shoot him to death with my bow, I’m still fighting him in the way archers do. If I’m playing an actual summoning class, like the Necromancer from Diablo, I’m still fighting him in the way summoners do (I always found him boring, but that comes down to personal preference).
Interesting that you mention that, because I almost used this game as an example in my last post. Let’s compare two types of content which were purposefully included in classic games.
The original Super Mario Brothers doesn’t have a difficulty setting, but it does have the warp zones that let you skip entire sections of the game. If I warp from 1 to 4, can we say that I am engaging with zones 2 and 3? Certainly not.
Another classic, notoriously difficult game was Contra. I never did manage to beat it, but if I used the famous Konami Code (forever burned into the brains of the righteous) I could get much, much further. I could enjoy much more of the game. I still had to shoot down the same bad guys, dodge the same bullets, but I could play much more of the game because I had more lives to burn. Was I engaging with the content? Absolutely.
I would argue that summoning a friend to trivialize an encounter is the equivalent of using the Mario warp zone rather than using the Konami code. Both were purposeful inclusions, both let you skip content. I would also argue that summoning a friend to trivialize an encounter is explicitly against Miyazaki’s stated artistic intent for the game, which makes its inclusion kind of weird if we’re being honest.
I’m aware that a selling point of this particular game is that you can wander off and level up, whereas you couldn’t do that before. I think time will tell whether this ameliorates the difficulty issues for non-Souls aficionados. I’m not currently willing to pay a premium to find out.
I’d wager two hamburgers that every single creature in Elden Ring, at least in internal documentation, has descriptors noting an range of levels for defeating it. An ideal system of scaling difficulties would let all players operate in that framework rather than having to go off and level, which itself might have unintended consequences. What if I’m having trouble with one specific boss, over-level, and trivialize a whole string of subsequent encounters as a result? Now what’s happened to artistic intent?
This is valid, but thoughtful design will still keep the challenging parts challenging. And remember, if I suck so badly at the game that I need to play on easy mode, those skeletons will still kick my ass. Easy mode shouldn’t be “god mode,” and if it begins to trend in that direction it’s up to me to decide whether I should increase it. Further, certain baddies could be coded so that they always scale at “normal” difficulty, ensuring that even an easy-mode player will bounce off of them at the appropriate moments.
Wrapping up: a notoriously difficult game I did purchase at release was Sifu. Like Elden Ring, one of its selling points was the challenge. Like Elden Ring, the idea of dying and (quite literally) rising again is a core part of its artistic concept. And like Elden Ring, it has no difficulty settings. But it’s a kung fu brawler and I couldn’t resist.
The game is really, really well done. The combat is fluid and varied and it feels excellent when everything pops just right. But good lord, it is super difficult. Like many other players, I never made it past the second stage. And you know what? Despite excellent sales figures for the game’s ‘original intent’ state, they’re gonna add difficulty modes in a future update, at which point I’ll go back and give it another shot.
And you know what else? Those same types of annoying “git gud” dorks were really angry to hear it.
Really? Christ. Maybe I should try DS1 again and ignore the skeletons, because I did not take that as a signpost.
I realize these games have a different design philosophy, but this seems deliberately obtuse to me. Skeletons are like the epitome of trash mobs. And skeletons in a graveyard, right in the starter area–that, to me is a flashing neon sign that says “Easy enemies here! It only gets harder from here on out!”
I’m curious, do you like Zelda Breath of the Wild? Because you can go to end game straight from the start and get clobbered there as well. There have been many games over the years that allow “access” to areas the player is not powerful enough to be in, and there is rarely explicit direction not to.
Yeah, I finished BotW and thought it was fantastic. It had excellent signposting. You can go to Hyrule Castle right away… but you don’t, because it looks scary, with the claws and magical energies and such. It’s obvious that you need to gain power before engaging. In DS1 though, the skeletons look weak, and in every other game are weak, and are in a nice sunlit area adjacent to the first hub area you encounter. But they aren’t weak, and easily two-shot a starting character.
I played for a bit just now and was reminded of exactly why I stopped playing earlier. Going down the steps into the graveyard, there are two skeletons. I’m not good enough in melee combat to take them out that way, but I have a fireball. I can usually take them out with the fireball, though not always because it sometimes misses. Anyway, I get 8 shots out of it and need, bare minimum 4 shots to take out the pair. There are another two skeletons just a little further down that work the same way (there’s also a giant skeleton off to the side that I’m ignoring).
Anyway, that’s all I can accomplish with my 8 fireballs before having to rest and refill. Which of course regens the skeletons. Am I stuck grinding these skeletons for hours until I can take out at least one set with melee? Are there another two skeletons just a little farther down that will require even more grinding? I don’t know, but I’m too bored to find out.
I went down to New Londo Ruins, but that looked really scary. There were a bunch of zombies that didn’t fight back, but a little farther in some ghost insta-kills me. So that is out unless there’s another path I’m missing.
No, but there are game design elements that tell you not to do so. Most games do not count on the enemies killing you to let you know that a certain direction is too hard.
You mention Breath of the Wild. Sure, you can go to the harder parts soon after starting, if you want to. But it also starts you off in a tutorial area, where the game is easier. It also tells you where to go when you leave that area. It tells you about the castle, saying you aren’t ready for it, and tells you about some really hard enemies you’ll need to level up to fight. It gives you the information you need.
And, then, if you do encounter something too hard, it’s rather obvious it’s too hard. It’s easy to tell that the enemy that does a lot of damage is not for you. My understanding with Souls games is that all of the battles are initially hard, and that would make it harder to tell that you’ve run into something bad rather than you just not being good enough yet. Heck, I know that, with the Skeletons, people assumed the game was just supposed to be that hard because the marketing was that the game is really hard. They didn’t have any easier encounters to compare it to. In BOTW, you definitely do.
And BoTW does have an easy mode: it’s just that it’s the mode you start on, and the path they direct you toward. You have to choose to make it harder. That tends to get better acceptance.
I’m trying really hard not to be a smart ass here but there are (if I remember) 3 possible paths out of the 1st bonfire. You tried 2 of them and were crushed. The third one is the correct one and you’ll know it’s the correct one because you’ll easily be able to kill the enemies. Yes, you can easily be overwhelmed by the weak enemies when they gang up on you, but if you take your time you can get through it pretty easily. If you want to run through and smash things hack-and-slash style you’ll struggle until you are a higher level. This is not unique to Souls games but these definitely punish risky behavior more directly than other games.
But nothing I described is different than 90% of the RPGs released in the last 20 years. Honestly beloved classics like Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Divinity are more punishing because when you die, that’s it, you lose all of your progress from your last save with no chance of recovery. Health and mana management were far more taxing in those games as well. If I recall you had to sleep or camp just to refresh spells. In Souls games at least you have the opportunity to recover everything, though it’s admittedly not been easy prior to ER.
I love RPGs and Baldurs, Torment, Divinity etc… all have stories and worlds that I’ve always wanted to get absorbed in but I found the gameplay too tedious so I was never able to gain any momentum before moving on in boredom. Witcher 3 is the same way, awesome world, great story, but tedious gameplay. Those games, as much as I wish they were, are not for me. I find them to be too difficult and boring as a result. Souls games are not for you because you find them to be too difficult and boring as a result.
ETA: This was in response to Dr. S post. Another post snuck in between.
ETA 2: Actually reading Big T post this applies to him too. I can’t wrap my head around this notion that games haven’t punished players for venturing into over leveled areas without big red lights outside that say “DONT GO HERE”. Souls does all of the things Big T is describing, tutorial area, easier path etc… Yes they are hard games but they are not as bamboozling as folks are making them out to be here. Every game is hard when you don’t spend the time to learn the mechanics. Madden and MLB The Show are hard games to learn how to play. Every year I try again thinking “This is gonna be the year!” then I give up because way too many buttons, plays to understand and complex mechanics. That doesn’t mean the game is too hard or poorly designed.
The whole exchange at this point is feeling Dis ingenuine.
My understanding with Souls games is that all of the battles are initially hard, and that would make it harder to tell that you’ve run into something bad rather than you just not being good enough yet.
Ok, but now we’re running smack into a major issue, which is that the first half of this sentence is just not true. I don’t deny that the marketing - probably to the series’ detriment - really oversells the difficulty, but the early combat encounters are not difficult. Indeed, what makes the games difficult is very seldom the actual combat, because there are always ways to subvert any fight. The most difficult part of all of Dark Souls 1, for me, was a basically non-combat sequence that no slider on earth would have helped, where my main opponent was gravity.
Let’s take @Dr.Strangelove for an example. Doc, if you ever want to try one more time, this time stand at the bonfire in Firelink shrine and look for an aqueduct. Travel toward it; you’ll go up a little hill and presently see steeper hill and staircase that lead up to a hole in the aqueduct. Here you will encounter about five of the game’s base enemies - the “hollows” that are the real trash mobs of Dark Souls. They are slow and die easily; you can usually just whack them with your weapon before they can get a swing in. They can still kill you if you try to fight them all at once, but… don’t. Go into the aqueduct and follow it in the only direction you can go, and you’ll end up in the actual first area of the game.
In that area, every single non-boss enemy dies in a few hits (with two exceptions - see below). The challenge comes in their placement, in puzzling out how to approach them so they can’t flank you, and in avoiding the little ambushes they set up.
But there are two enemies you might find that will slaughter you. Neither is on the critical path so you don’t ever have to fight either, but you certainly shouldn’t be fighting them now - they guard higher-end rewards that you don’t need yet.
And that’s Souls. Push forward until the resistance feels unreasonable, and then look for somewhere else to push. In the first game especially, there is ALWAYS somewhere else to push.
ETA: I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong with my quote tagging. It keeps coming out all messy.
Sounds so reasonable and yet, over and over (both here and across the internet) we hear people saying it took them 20 tries (or whatever large number of attempts) to defeat some boss.
Yeah, you can skip the bosses for a while but, sooner or later, I imagine you have to fight some.
Is ER (or other Souls games) actually easy(ish)? People are just crashing into bosses before they are sufficiently OP?
It’s not “easy” but it is WAY less punishing and if you want to spend the time cruising around the massive world to level your character you could easily walk into the boss fights over powered and over geared. No amount of health or gear will make them “easy” because they all require skill to beat though. This was virtually impossible in previous souls games.
Thanks, and to @Cubsfan as well. I did find my way past the aqueduct and played in the new area for a bit. I found the second bonfire.
Ironically, it’s almost too easy for the time being. I go out, kill 8 or so mobs, and then have enough souls to level up. Which resets the mobs… but the next level only needs slightly more souls, so I kill 10 this time instead of 8. I dunno if I’m expected to grind here a bit until I’m forced to go further out.
I still think it’s bad design. I actually found that path earlier (I had forgotten), but retreated because of some asshole mob that was throwing firebombs at me. So when I first tried that path it seemed like the wrong way, and the cemetery was the easier path forward. That wasn’t true, and what I needed to do was just run up the stairs and take out the firebomber first, but none of that was very clear.
I don’t need handholding every step of the way, but it sure seems like the game is being intentionally deceptive. And the meta as well–if the same is so famously difficult, then when I encounter a difficult enemy, my first assumption is going to be that this is just how the game works, and not that there is some super-easy alternate path.
Maybe I’ll keep plugging away occasionally, but the mechanics of the game still aren’t working for me. Plus, it doesn’t help that it’s all so dreary and there’s nothing to do except combat.
People probably do what I do. I encounter an enemy, not even a boss, just a tougher enemy, and I get killed. Now I have to go back to the same place to at least get my XP back, and I may as well have another go at this guy because I don’t want to admit defeat after just one encounter and I’m a bit annoyed. Then I get killed again. I go back over and over again trying to beat this one enemy and it starts becoming a matter of pride or revenge or something. This is how I end up dying 20 times to a tough opponent.
Here’s the thing though. When I’m getting slaughtered for the 20th time, I may be frustrated, but it is a joyous frustration, this is fun, I enjoy it. I often laugh out loud ruefully when getting slaughtered for the umpteenth* time. If you don’t genuinely enjoy the process of building yourself up for the bigger fights, then a difficulty slider probably won’t help.
Something may have been lost here. Although you can summon real life players to help with bosses you can also summon Non Player Characters to help. These guys are fully part of the single player experience and no different from using the other tools available to a single player.
*A curious number, as James Acaster has pointed out, it’s definitely a big number but it’s also in the teens…
just a small hint here: suicide run the graveyard and just pick up everything you see. There a Zweihander weapon there that you might need to level a bit of strength/dexterity to wield, but it’ll trivialize the early game. (You can stunlock some bosses with its r2 attack)
I love building myself up for tough fights. Indeed, I am a bit of a completionist so I tend to be OP when I roll into the boss fights (that’s not my goal, just a consequence of trying to explore and find all of the things). Indeed, that is what attracts me to ER so much. Lots to explore.
But, getting beat for the umpteenth time does not make me laugh in joy. The first few times I die…fine…happens…no biggie. The 20th time when I am an inch away from beating the enemy and then die again does not make be laugh with joy.
To me, it is like those stupid puzzle games we got as kids where you had to get the BBs to all settle in various spots but, as you tilted the puzzle to maneuver one BB another would inevitably fall out. Eventually it becomes not fun (I know some had a trick/gimmick which made it easy to solve…many did not).
But, maybe some people will happily spend hours tilting the BBs until they manage it.
The most frustrating time I’ve had gaming lately has been playing A Plague Tale: Innocence. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it but it is a very story driven game that uses mainly stealth mechanics and relatively simple puzzles to progress. There was one part that I found very difficult. I had to take cover from archers behind a moving wagon while taking out 6 - 7 enemies who come running at me. My only weapon is a slingshot. A headshot insta-kills the enemy and there’s auto-aim. It should be relatively easy but I struggled through it for hours.
I eventually got on to reddit and found a whole bunch of other people who were having the same issue along with some tips. I followed the tips (which were basically working around an issue with the auto-aim not working properly) and got through it the next attempt. What made it so frustrating was that there was nothing I could do to improve my chances other than “git gud”. I couldn’t improve my character’s stats or weapons or anything. I couldn’t go away to play some side missions and then come back. That was frustrating.
In that example I felt like I was fighting the game where as in ER I feel like I’m fighting the NPCs, and tough as they may be, we all follow the same rules. Also in ER I know I can grind for a bit to improve. I don’t necessarily have to improve my skills, just my character’s stats. There are also additional game mechanics I can learn and weapons I can find.
I used to run scared from anything on a horse in ER, now I’ve learned some horse tricks and I enjoy the mounted fighting (e.g., you can hold the strong attack button and do instant damage as soon as you contact the enemy, sometimes more than once in a pass). I banged my head for ages against this one guy, then I found a great sword and it’s special attack and next thing I know I’m launching this enemy, that I struggled with before, up into the sky and felling him with a couple of hits. That was joyous.
