fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5974 ]

[ SECRET POST #5974 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5974 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Arto]

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[Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #854.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Man I fucking love difficulty settings. Sometimes I just want to run around in a cool world and not struggle. The fighting is secondary. And then other times I want to focus on strategy and a challenge. One of the best things in the evolution of gaming is difficulty levels.

Agreed!

And my disability gets in the way of playing a lot of games that are challenging and don’t have difficulty settings.

It really sucks, because I used to love the way games were challenging back in the 80s. I was an arcade fiend. And I would have loved Soulsbourne-type games if they’d been around then. But after being in an accident that permanently injured my arms, not only is it hard to play games like that now, but it’s very painful if I keep at it for too long. Especially when it’s tense like hard games are.

But the creators of games like Sekiro think that people who can’t play on their only difficulty level shouldn’t play it at all, and there’s hundreds of people that will put you down for even suggesting difficulty levels for them. For a lot of them, they feel like it would somehow take away from their accomplishment if someone was able to play it on an easier and more accessible level. That straight up makes no logical sense, as if an easy mode erases normal or hard modes in any other games. I know the other argument of “there’s so many other games to play, so play those if you can’t play these games as they are”. I could, and might already, but the gatekeeping will still never make sense to me.

I would have loved these modern hard games, just like I loved the old games from the 80s and early 90s that didn’t have difficulty levels. But I physically can’t play them anymore, and it’s not just the fault of my injuries. It’s also the stubborn gatekeepers. You can say what you want, but I’m still allowed to think that’s shitty.

As an aside, I like the way games are now too! There’s so much more variety and accessibility. Not to mention so much more Quality of Life changes.

But the creators of games like Sekiro think that people who can’t play on their only difficulty level shouldn’t play it at all, and there’s hundreds of people that will put you down for even suggesting difficulty levels for them. For a lot of them, they feel like it would somehow take away from their accomplishment if someone was able to play it on an easier and more accessible level.

I think game developers have every right to say that if they want. If their vision for the game is that it's supposed to be extremely challenging, then adding in modes that make it easier WOULD in fact ruin the way they want the game to be experienced.

It's like - I personally don't enjoy games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley because the way stuff is timegated ends up boring the heck out of me. But that's clearly a part of the way the games are designed, so I'm not going to whine about how they should take out the timegating because it's obvious that's the way the creators want them to be played. It just means those games aren't for me, and that's fine. The creators want those games to be games where you play them leisurely and take your time and they shouldn't change that just because I want to speedrun them.

I didn’t say they couldn’t, just that I will never not think it’s shitty to gatekeep.

And the “ruin the way they want the game experience to be” was directed at gamers who think their accomplishments will be rendered pointless if someone beats the game on a different mode, not creators. It’s illogical to think that just beating a game on easy mode makes hard mode irrelevant, that’s what I was talking about, and I feel like I made that pretty clear. It’s disingenuous to come in with “easy mode would ruin the experience for the creator who doesn’t want that”. Because that’s not what this was about. I never said they should be forced to do anything. The creators can do what they want, I never said they should be forced to do anything. I still have a right to disagree with and dislike their decisions. It still wouldn’t actually affect gamer’s experiences either way.

It's like - I personally don't enjoy games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley because the way stuff is timegated ends up boring the heck out of me. But that's clearly a part of the way the games are designed, so I'm not going to whine about how they should take out the timegating because it's obvious that's the way the creators want them to be played. It just means those games aren't for me, and that's fine. The creators want those games to be games where you play them leisurely and take your time and they shouldn't change that just because I want to speedrun them. This is a bad example. And shows that you don’t really get what ayrt us actually saying. They physicaly can’t play Sekiro because the creators locked people with certain disabilities out of being able to play it. You don’t play Animal Crossing because you don’t like it. But you can absolutely could if you want to.

It just means those games aren't for me, and that's fine.
Again. it’s because you simply don’t want to. But you could. They can’t. It’s not the same. And making this comparison the way you did seems a little ignorant. It comes from a place of privilege thats unknown to you.

That's going to be inevitable with certain types of games, though. For instance, if you have a part of a game that relies on you being able to react quickly to dodge a boss' attacks and then counterattack, in order to make it easier the creators would have to completely reprogram the boss' attack pattern. It's not just a matter of making a minor change like lowering the amount of the boss' HP or raising the player's HP if the issue is that the player physically isn't able to react quickly enough to perform the actions required by the game.

Nah. See, I can't play first person games because I get intense motion sickness and migraines from them. So I just don't play those games. Sucks but that's how it is. I don't go and demand every first person game should have a third person view as well. Some games will be inaccessible to some people. Sure, it sucks. But that's just how it is.

DA
I'm like you in this. I actually was a very big fan of Doom and Heretic in my youth and now I can't play them or any other first POV game (Portal? Never played it and never will. Metro? Played 5 minutes and ad a migraine lasting for several hours).

But I think that difficulty setting is a little different here. Of course not every game can have different settings because the balancing require time and manpower and not every studio has them, but it's absolutely not impossible to find other accessibility tools to apply to your games, especially for AAA games or games that have a lot of manpower behind.
The discourse around the Souls game is mostly like "you can't have easy mode because you have to suffer to beat it" which for me personally is a little bit shitty because for people with disabilities and such even beating a game on easy is difficult sometimes. Difficulty is subjective, not objective. And people are not better or "true gamers" because they can beat a difficult game.
That's shitty and that's gatekeeping.

I've never seen anyone reacting strongly like that with stuff like first person games.

I mean, there are also games you can play in first or third person (like Skyrim/The Elder Scrolls/Fallout games) so that's not impossible to implement, either. The thing is, the above comments were about having physical limitations that keep you from playing certain games that are too difficult. And for those cases, it's mainly "well sucks but that's how it is".

Sure, the gatekeeping by gamer dudebros is annoying. But the fact is simply that some games will not be accessible for some people because of the way they're designed. There are tons of games out there, it's not the end of the world not being able to play the one game series that is notorious for being very, very hard (and frankly, has little else going for it other than the challenge of beating it- take that away and there's not much of an amazing game left imo).

And to be honest, the whole first person issue not getting strong reactions is mainly because the people who have this problem simply don't play those game, they don't demand those games be changed to suit them. So that's why this is kind of a non-issue that rarely comes up (though I have seen people get really dumb comments for playing Skyrim or Fallout in third person because they're not ~doing it right~).

+ Billions

The discourse around the Souls game is mostly like "you can't have easy mode because you have to suffer to beat it" which for me personally is a little bit shitty because for people with disabilities and such even beating a game on easy is difficult sometimes.

Being brutally hard is literally the entire selling point of the Souls games, though. People play them specifically for the challenge. So yes, in that case, making an easy mode WOULD be defeating the purpose of the games because the main focus of the game is the difficulty and that's why people buy them in the first place.

So yes, in that case, making an easy mode WOULD be defeating the purpose of the games because the main focus of the game is the difficulty and that's why people buy them in the first place.

Not true. The draw for them is the complex combat systems, the way you have to be wise in picking your battles, the interesting variety of bosses and enemies to fight, everything about Bloodborne’s world honestly, etc. It might be the hard difficulty for some people, but others are capable of appreciating more than just the surface difficulty that they can use for bragging rights. So it would not in any way objectively defeat the purpose of the games to make different difficulty levels that would include an easier and more accessible one.

See, you’re saying “people” when you should be saying “I”. You are a people, but your experience isn’t as universal as all that.

It's not necessarily trivial to design easy modes, especially for games that are really finely-honed in terms of level design and difficulty.

I get that, I really do. But I can still think it sucks that there isn’t a more accessible mode.

Sure! Just, the difficulty of implementing easy modes isn't entirely the fault of the gatekeepers (who, I agree, are shitheads).

You do have a point there!

SAME! I'm also very poor at action games (I don't have good coordination when using a controller, but my back is fucked up and I can't play much with mouse and keyboard nowadays lol), but I'm very strong at strategic turn based ones.

I usually play easy on the action/adventure ones (or normal if it's too easy) because I want to enjoy the flow and story and I don't particularly enjoy replaying the same scene. It breaks immersion for me.
On the strategic games I usually start with the hard setting and then when I beat the game I go up into lunatic or nightmare mode. I like the grinding and the repetitiveness of isometric strategic games, so yeah. I can repeat the same levels 10 times and still enjoy it.

Bonus: Having settings that you can change in mid game is the absolute best!
IDK, I just want to have a fun time. I don't get people whining about difficulty settings. More choice is better for everyone imho!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5974 ]

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