Posted: May 31, 2016 4:04 pm
SafeAsMilk wrote:Animavore wrote:SafeAsMilk wrote:Do you really think that the world, the lore, the system, the design is so unimportant that DS is worthless without the level of challenge that you prefer?
But the challenge is built into the world. It's into the sneaky enemy placement and traps. Even if you buffed players and debuffed enemies people would still be getting owned by traps and pitfalls. It's challenging by design. So we don't think those elements are unimportant; on the contrary they are necessary.
But there are other things you can change besides damage amount, as you yourself pointed out with NG+. If they change those things to make the game more challenging, wouldn't changing them in the opposite direction make it less challenging? You're right about insta-death traps, though only on the first time you play. After that, it's the frustration of having to play an area over and over again because you didn't do it perfectly last time. I can understand why that's something that's appealing to you, and also why some folks just want to be able to play through the game. I don't see justification for the point that reducing that element of frustration ruins the whole game, and I don't see how reducing the challenge in an optional way is the same as making the game not challenging at all.
Is it really as easy as just going the opposite way than NG+ though? Serious question, I'm not a programmer or game designer, but From Software themselves, in an interview I can't find, said that its difficulty is written into its DNA and making it easier isn't as simple as people think.
I don't know if that's nonsense or not. And even if it was, I don't like the to tell artists how to do their job. If the makers of Souls think that making it easier goes against their artistic vision I can't argue against that when their vision is realised so well. Might be a different story if it had a cheap difficulty borne out of bad design and broken mechanics.