Do you think Sekiro should have a difficulty option?

This conversation feels familiar and I don't know that I need it again after all.

Someone already had the better idea of just treating it the way many games already do and locking your difficulty to whatever you pick at the start.

@sethmode: you litteraly said that having the option doesn't impact your life in any way. Then somebody proceeded to tell you how infact it does and you totally change your stance to it being a bad reason. That last part is fine, like you say it's your opinion you are entitled to it it's the part where you are telling somebody what does and doesn't affect them.

@frodobaggins: I said it has no impact because you still HAVE THE CHOICE to not turn down the difficulty. YOU are in control. YOU are the only one with the ability to impact whether multiple difficulties influences how you play the game. However, the people that want to turn down the difficulty are actually impacted directly by the game if there is no option. But either way, this isn't a debate I want to have again, because if we disagree on the rather simple idea that you have control over your actions, then we aren't going to see eye to eye on the topic.

I'm just glad FROM think it's a good idea not to.

@frodobaggins: I'm glad From does whatever they want to from a design standpoint. Doesn't mean they do it because they are worried about people being afraid of not being able to control themselves when it comes to a video game's difficulty level.

@sethmode: Tbf I never would've claimed or expected that they keep the difficulty as is so as not to tempt me, and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. That doesn't change the fact that an easy mode would hamper my enjoyment personally. Sure, I would have the choice of whether to turn the difficulty down and, in a game I find as demanding as this one, it's a temptation I just don't need (rightly or wrongly). Surely those that are put off by the difficulty HAVE THE CHOICE of whether to persevere or to play one of the myriad other games that are available?

It's ok that we disagree, I was never trying to convince anyone and I won't deny that it's a selfish position. I'm genuinely not trying to get anyone's back up but I anticipated it might not be a popular opinion. These are my honest thoughts and feelings on the question at hand and I offer them in good faith, try not to take it to heart.

@sethmode: never claimed it did

@someoneproud: And I wasn't upset or anything, just commenting on how that approach reads to me. Either way, it's not like I think that you're a bad person over your opinion about something like a video game difficulty option, despite what some other poster's might be claiming.

@frodobaggins: Whatever you say, duder. I don't even know what you're defensive about anymore.

@sethmode: not defensive. I do not like you claiming that something doesn't affect somebody's enjoyment of anything when they stand in from om you and tell you it does.

@frodobaggins: Literally the definition of defensive, but okay. I made my point, take it or leave it. I'm out.

@sethmode: thanks for the chat

As someone who loves souls games but is put off by the fact I can't over level and make it easier I say categorically no!

That's just not what From games are about.

The exploration of the worlds of Froms games are as immersive as they are because you HAVE to push hard to see new stuff

Getting stuck and having no choice but to explore your surroundings is how none of their games have maps, but you intuitively memorize everything.

If you remove the difficulty,you remove a BIG part of the magic of these games.

Yes, definitely. More options are always good.

And I don't see how something like an easier setting that just increases player health or other stat values (or removing the xp loss on death or something like that) would take away any significant amount of development time. I"m sure programming an easier AI would be a bigger lift, but that's a bigger step than is needed to have an easier setting.

I can buy the argument that difficulty is part of Sekiro's identity, but I don't buy the argument that all Fromsoftware games are (as many are claiming). To reiterate... it wasn't really until Bloodborne I was put off by the difficulty - all their older souls games were actually very accessible and accommodated players of all skills. Even Bloodborne and DS3 you could argue had an "easy" mode built right in, if you choose to summon.

I think From is in an (unfortunate?) position where they have built up this reputation and player expectation, so they have to keep escalating the difficulty whether they like it or not. Imagine the death threats they'll receive if they suddenly released a game that was easier than their previous one!

@goosemunch: i'd say Dark Souls 2 is easier than Dark Souls. Dark Souls 2 has a harder early game because there are a lot of encounters where you can end up in a 1v6 situation if you're not careful, but once you pass that difficulty hump, the game becomes a lot easier. There's no Smough & Ornstein type of boss that is notorious to be a breaking point for a lot of people as far as i know. The inclusion of spices & the DLC's balms also makes it easier to be able to use high tier spells eventhough you didn't spec into that direction all that much.

Assuming they are making these games the way they are out of a fear of the playerbase getting angry, is something that i have a hard time seeing. They've been making similar kind of games ever since the ps1 era and those were not exactly accessible or easy neither. If they were operating out of fear, they probably wouldn't dare to make a console exclusive neither.

People do realize that, in theory, if someone isn't as good at the game and turns down the difficulty, they should get an equivalent difficulty curve right? The game will, if the adjustments are done well, still be challenging, but for a different skill level.

Like, my brother and I just played DMC5. I am better at the game than him and played on normal while he played on easy. We both had roughly the SAME EXPERIENCE with bosses being hard, etc. The fact that people are advocating so hard AGAINST options is honestly mind-boggling to me.

@epidehl: somebody above mentioned that more options are always good and I do not agree with that. Not everything needs to be for everybody. Not every person should be catered for every time. I am glad there are hard games like this and the Souls games. I am glad there are even harder games that I have no chance of beating.

No, I like the idea of when you talk about the game with people you share the experience and relate to the difficulty people had with certain bosses and such. Its pretty simple to not just play it if difficult games is not your thing, everything doesn't have to be for everyone.

I think our opinions are closer to each other than it might seem. I very much also want From to make the game how they want. Any developer for that sake. I can just recognize in myself that I believe I am getting more out of these games by not having the difficulty option, which I assume is part of the reason that From didn't put in a difficulty option.

I am not trying to take it away from other people. If these games had difficulty options from the start because thats want From wanted, I would not ask to have that changed.

I have not played Sekiro yet, but my natural inclination to this question is NO. The difficulty is part and parcel of these games and overcoming that difficulty was the creator's vision for this type of game. They should not be expected to compromise that vision for the sake of inclusion. You are not entitled to experience everything on your own terms. Sometimes you have to give yourself up to the art in order to experience it, not have it changed to suit your tastes. It would be like asking a Michelin star chef to cook you a well done steak. A master chef should not be expected to make bad food just to be more pallatable to the masses.

This argument came back around when I watched the QL for Cuphead on Switch. I was against difficulty options then and still am. A developer should be allowed to make a hard game, not just a whatever game with a hard difficulty option. And also, these games aren't thathard anyway. Show a little perserverance.

Creator's vision doesn't work for me in cases like this. Games aren't things where having one option means you can't also have the other. It's NOT a chef who specializes in one thing being asked to cater to something more popular to the exclusion of his actual craft.

Like nobody is taking away the difficult game they want to make or the one that most people probably want to play, they are asking for an Additional option. Developers do this shit all the time where they preface certain modes with "The way it's meant to be played".

"Prepare to Die" is a fuckin difficulty preset that sounds like it was already designed anyway.

@efesell: I get you feel that adding in different difficulty options takes nothing away from another players experiance and that it doesn't affect another players experiance but myself and perhaps others feel that it can and/or does.

@frodobaggins: If you do not play on one of those difficulties you don't want then it literally takes nothing from you. You can make up something that it's taking from you but the former will never change.

And honestly if one's personal experience requires a you must be this tall to enter sign in the first place then frankly I don't care if that's taken away.

So long as the existing, extremely hard difficulty is still there, I fail to see how an easier difficulty setting takes anything away from anyone. You can still play on the hard setting, get the accomplishment of doing that, and probably even get an in-game trophy or achievement proving that you did it.

How are you in any way negatively impacted by someone else also getting to see all the content by playing an easier setting?

I've given Dark Souls and Bloodborne a chance, and I don't think I'll play another From game (unless it's Armored Core) unless they add difficulty options. My work involves banging my head against a wall all day until I come up with solutions to problems, and I sure don't want to do more of that once I get home. Replaying the same content over and over because I make a small mistake isn't fun for me. I think Celeste did difficulty very well. I still had to complete the rooms, but the punishment for failure could be much smaller if I wanted it to be.

Obviously From can do what they want, but they are leaving money on the table by not being accessible to more players. I like the atmosphere of their games, but I don't buy them because I know I'll get frustrated and never finish them. There are way too many great games for me to waste money like that.

The thing is, large part of what made Dark Souls popular to begin with was its difficulty. It came when games were just getting easier and easier, made to be completed. And the difficulty caught on big time, without it the games wouldn't be near to as popular if you could just die a few times and pop the difficulty down to easy.

@atwa: I think the inscrutability and mythos surrounding how hard the games certainly built renown but it's more of a leap to accept that the idea of different modes would have lessened the popularity, so long as the main default setting is the one they design around.

I think if a game is gonna be frustratingly hard it should have good checkpoints. Making me replay parts over and over makes me want to play something else..

Also adding difficulty options but making it so that a play cannot change except for starting a new game has 0 effect on "tempting" the HARDCORE GAMERSZ to switch at a hard point. It really does seem like From game communities easily become toxic because the enjoyment some people get out of it is in that others cannot devote that much time to one game fixed at an artificially high difficulty and instead say "huh huh GiT gUd NoOb"

@ieee_gb: haven't seen any of that here at Giant bomb.

No because the difficulty of From games is part of their appeal. If you cheapen them by giving us difficulty options then you lose the sense of accomplishment you get after finally beating that boss after bashing your head against it for hours. Sekiro is the first game since Bloodborne where I actually cheered after beating a particularity challenging boss.

I haven't played it yet, but my answer is already no if the Soulsborne games are anything to go off of, with two caveats which I'll mention in the end. I like when games know what they want to be and are rid of difficulty selects. The Soulsborne games are really just about asking yourself if you have the patience to stick with it and I assume Sekiro is the same. Anyone can beat them given time, learning and understanding of how they work.

With that being said, the new game pluses I've always shied away from because as much as I want to go through them again, I've already experienced a good challenge, all I want to do after that is see the world and bosses again. It'd also be cool to eventually get to the point where everything is just a breeze, just as some kind of reward for devoting time in the game. It'd be cool to have a difficulty select only after finishing them. The challenge is part of the games' identity, and if you could choose to make it easier, you wouldn't be getting the optimal experience I think.

While there is more than just difficulty to like about the games, the challenge is definitely a huge draw and might be the glue that holds everything together if you will. That all said, taking into account disability if that should ever get in the way of things, then maybe. While I do think losing the way they make it challenging by putting in an easier mode would tarnish the experience some, not everyone sees games the same way so one could love it more or less no matter the difficulty.

I'm still bewildered that people think having the option for multiple difficulties somehow lessens the difficulty.

There's something to be said about viewing a difficulty option as a means of accessibility. Games are the only media where content is locked away behind your skill level. You can watch movies, TV or listen to music in it's entirity. Comedian Dara O'Brien compared to if a book closed itself at the end of a chapter and then asked if you understood it.

That said, as a design work, the difficulty is part of that. Shooters can abide by the 'this is how this is meant to be played' moniker of some difficulty settings but From's maintained a rigid 'as it is' approach. It does make a player's improvement and progression more rewarding but, what of those who are already at their limit?

I think we're also at a stage with Sekiro where the game's fresh. It's in its infancy and, as more tricks and builds get discovered, the obstruction the challenge might give, has a chance to ebb away.

I've yet to see a good example as to why Sekiro specifically shouldn't have difficulty options. The game already has the Demon Bell which increases difficulty which you can access within the first few hours of the game, and like all the Souls games has New Game + where the damage numbers are tweaked. I don't think it would be a herculean task to tweak the enemy damage in the other direction for an easy mode. I don't think anyone is asking for some giant overhaul of enemy positions, enemy moves, invincible frames, etc.

The one reason I keep seeing over and over is that it goes against the creators intent, which I suppose it does, but I don't understand why that's so important. People consume art in less than ideal ways all the time, people still listen to lower fidelity radio for music and stream movies and TV shows on just acceptable quality internet or on old TVs all the time. This has always been a part of games too, after all, I bet they didn't intend for people to sit under a bridge and spam a dragon's tail with hundreds of arrows to get a sword that was relatively overpowered for how far you were in the game in Dark Souls 1, but a ton of people did it anyway. They also probably didn't intend for people to beat the game without leveling up or using any weapons or armor, or with a guitar hero controller, but people did it anyway too.

People find ways to break games all the time, whether to make it easier or far harder, but I don't think any game is so precious that doing so ruins the game, especially when the original version is completely unaffected.

@panfoot: I agree with what you've said. I just want to say that despite voting "No" I also think the "it goes against the creators intent" idea is bad. Having said that though, I am of the opinion that From shouldn't feel like they *have* to put difficulty options in when they're designing the game, if they don't want to. Does that make sense?

I guess my opinion hovers in this space between me thinking the devs shouldn't be required to do something, but also feeling like it always sounds shitty when consumers take it upon themselves to speak for the intent of the dev. And, as I said, I think the idea that having options being bad because you'll be tempted, is really weird.

@sethmode: I agree that it absolutely is their prerogative for what they want to do with their game, and there are definitely a lot of cases where sometimes what people want is just too much work for not enough of a gain(First thing that comes to mind for example, adding bot match training modes to something like Fortnite or Battlegrounds, it would be great for people to practice but it would be a ton of work that may be for a minority of players).

You can definitely strike a good balance, I think a good example of this is a polarizing series that I really love, Dead Rising. The first Dead Rising has the hard time limit stuff and some very clunky boss fights which can be very off-putting and the game just asks you to deal with it or not bother progressing the story. Dead Rising 2 started to loosen up a little, being a little more forgiving, but it didn't lose what made people love it in the first place. Dead Rising 2: Off the Record really nailed it in that regard, it was identical to 2 in most ways, but added in that sandbox mode where you can just mess around and not worry about the weird quirks of the story mode. Then 3 came around and started to lose what made the first 2 so good at the expensive a of being more accessible. It got worse with 4, which just lost it completely and didn't seem to please new fans or old. They really nailed it in the middle their but then went to far the other way and screwed it all up for everyone. I can definitely see the fear of losing what makes a certain series great.

Though I also have to say, as much as I see the intent of how the game should be played as malleable...I still actually am one of those people who plays it as close to ideal as I can. I always play horror games in the dark with the lights off, always pick the default difficulty on a first play through, never touch pre-order items(unless it's purely cosmetic, but nothing like getting a weapon early or anything like that).

I might feel better about the creator's vision crowd if I didn't see half of the same people railing against easy modes go on to cheese every boss fight they have trouble with.

There was a thread like this about Cuphead. In it, I posted responses from a bunch of developers about their thoughts on including easier modes, compromise, and artistic intent. Everything below are those posts:

So I was going to ask a rhetorical question about how game devs actually feel about this but then decided to just go ahead and ask them. I reached out to as many developers as I could through their email or twitter with these questions:

Email:

Has the inclusion of easier modes affected the design of a game’s intended base difficulty?

Has the inclusion of easier modes/options made you (as a studio collective) feel as if your artistic intent of the experience had to be changed?

Twitter:

Do you feel like the inclusion of easy modes/options affects the design of a game's intended experience at base difficulty?

Feel like it would affect your artistic intent to include accessibility (for difficulty) options? Thanks!

So far I have gotten responses from The Game Bakers (Furi), Team Meat (Super Meat Boy), and Bombservice (Momadora series).

Emeric Thoa (Lead Designer Furi) via Email:

1) The Promenade mode in Furi doesn't affect the game's intended difficulty. It's actually a shorter mode more than an easier mode (but shorter means easier in this case). It's a different experience.

2) The promenade mode does affect the intended experience. For some of the team it's a necessary tradeoff, but they'd have prefered having only one difficulty. Some other think they had different content in the game: gameplay challenge but also story and world building. They wanted to offer a way to appreciate the second without being blocked by the gameplay. The design that we kept for the promenade mode is not much a tradeoff, as it's a different experience, and you can't really unlock everything with the promenade mode.

cheers

Emeric

Team Meat (Super Meat Boy) via Twitter

-Team Meat: Depends on the game. There won't be an "easy mode" of Super Meat Boy...only a harder mode...and that's the dark world.

-Me: Care to elaborate. There's quite the debate about artistic intent on dev side, in my community. If game is designed with easy/hard from get go, would you compromise intended difficulty design for sake of better designed easy mode?

TM: It's a cost to benefit ratio thing. Making an easier Meat Boy means remaking hundreds of levels. That doesn't make sense for Meat Boy because Meat Boy is a platformer that's meant to be hard...so it doesn't fit the design to make it easy, it fits the design to make it hard which is why there's a dark world. Other games, it's up to them. If they feel it makes sense to do an easy mode, more power to them. If they do it and they feel it's compromising their vision...then they shouldn't be doing it..I don't know why anyone would do that if they felt that way so it sorta feels like a a complete non-issue to me. TLDR; Make the game you want.

Bombservice (Momodora) via Twitter

Not really. I include it because I know some people would like options like that to enjoy a game

Just gonna leave this here. Hoping for more responses, soon. Emeric's answer to the second email question seems to be just what a lot of us figured here, parts of the team feel "there's different content in the game," than just gameplay, such as "story and world building," even though experiencing the game for just that isn't the intended experience. And on the other side, some parts of the team felt that the promenade mode was a tradeoff that they necessarily didn't want because they did want just the one intended mode.

So even from the developers' perspective, there's debates about this, which goes to show there's no one right answer.

I've gotten a few more responses from developers. This time from Deconstructeam (Gods Will Be Watching), Spearhead Games (Stories: Path of Destinies), and Frozenbyte (Trine series)

Deconstructeam (Gods Will Be Watching) twitter:

The experience changes based on difficulty, yeah. But I'm always up for accessibility. It means letting people engage with your creation that otherwise wouldn't because of a challenge barrier. And it depends on the Game, ofc.

Spearhead Games (Stories: Path of Destinies) e-mail:

As we are in a crunch, we will not able much time to share our thoughts regarding these topics.

In a very direct way, our answers would be:

• YES
• YES

Games need to be accessible, and not all the studio can afford to develop a game with several difficulty levels.

From there, it is all about compromises.

Frozenbyte (Trine series):

I believe we tend to stick to our plans.

For example the Trine series stayed going for a direction that's also friendly for players with less experience, and with Has-Been Heroes I guess we kind of went for the opposite direction. So based on this, the answers would be mostly no. Also Trine's easier modes (and also the harder ones) are kind of extra, so they didn't effect the normal gameplay that much.

I'll also note however, that some design directions are picked early on, so I guess you could say that they effect the whole project. This sounds a lot, but it's important to remember that artist's job is to also fit their style to the medium and maybe even to a specific setting.

I hope this helped, but if you'd need more information please tell what community is in question and is there a specific position or worker you'd want input from. We are currently very busy, but this might help to get an answer as I know who to forward your questions to. It might also be helpful to get an example of what kind of things you have discussed already.

Again, different answer coming from different developers. It's a personal subject and seems dependent on the type of game. Deconstructeam says it depends on the game but lets more people experience the game. Spearhead believes the whole game is affected because of an easier mode's design considerations, and that their artistic intent had to be changed (I've asked a follow up question asking for some elaboration). Use of the word compromise is key in their response. Frozenbyte focuses their design on the intended experience and treats the accessibility modes/options as extra that doesn't affect their intended experience. Important to note is how they view their job as an artist: the skill their job requires is producing a product that fits their vision while also making it accessible to others. They seem to see their craft as a service to others. Which is an interesting take because of their previous statement of sticking to their intended vision first and foremost. This shows that it's not inconceivable to be able to maintain the vision while also making it properly accessible where necessary (whether it be by way of tacked on modes or adjusting the base mode/experience, while maintaining the vision of course).

So there you have it (so far). Some teams have a division within their team about this topic. Some believe it only changes the intended experience within the tacked on mode, while others believe it can affect even the tacked on mode. Some see it from a business point of view as a compromise. And some see it as their job as an artist to provide their vision in a way that is accessible to as many as possible, while maintaining that vision.

The "authorial intent" argument only ever gets brought up when people make the game easier or ask for it to be easier. So many people were upset at the "remove Mr. X" mod but everyone laughs and applauds harder mods like Dark Souls's "perma-gravelord mode". Nobody argued "that's against the author's intent" when somebody makes a mod to give you JoJo stands in Dark Souls 3.

Shoot, everyone knows the best way to play games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Skyrim is with mods and nobody gets upset on the developers behalf. Even in Sekiro I haven't seen anybody deriding others for using the framerate unlocker or field of view mods.

@efesell: It's less about creator's intent and more about identity.

Nobody wants a PG-13 cut of The Exorcist to make it more comfortable to get through.

My dad once told me about a restaurant where the owner is an asshole to his customers, and that's the draw. People literally go there for that reason. If you don't like that, you can go somewhere else. Not everything has to be for everyone.

@frostyryan: I'm tired of unrelated examples and Other Things Do This Therefore Games..

Most games are malleable. Most games can do both.

Maybe some of them could not and on that perhaps you could have a more specific to that game conversation but Sekiro is a game that 100% with very little effort or indeed alteration to how they already scale difficulty could accommodate people who want an easier difficulty.

More people enjoying a game is more important than some arbitrarily assigned Identity or barrier to entry.

@efesell: but the examples I named *could* "do both" as well. That doesn't mean they should.

The difficulty is where the enjoyment of Fromsoft's RPGs comes from. It's the whole reason people play them. Overcoming the odds and feeling accomplished is what the game IS. What's "arbitrary" about a piece of content's identity? Should abstract paintings have a more obvious version that everyone can plainly understand? A work of art's identity isn't arbitrary.

Video games are an interactive medium and I don't understand what's wrong with using the interactive aspect as a means to engross the player in the experience. Miyazaki said himself he doesn't make his games difficult for the sake of it. It's to pull the player into the worlds he builds.

It's just kind of their branding, but from everything i have heard about this game it seems to be a lot less rpg than the other games and more action oriented so a difficulty option would probably fit it better than any of their other games.

@frostyryan: How could those examples reasonably do both?

Miyazaki has said that his games are naturally difficult because his goal is to create an experience that rewards a player for overcoming tough odds. That IS why a lot of people enjoy them and a certain degree of challenge is obviously required to achieve this.

However.. there's a broad range to that I think. An easier mode is not just a request to make enemies deal no damage and you some invincible god. An 'easy' mode might present someone who can't, for whatever reason, deal with the baseline difficulty by providing their own more personalized challenges and triumphs to achieve.

Someone might find that an impossible fight for them on one difficulty becomes a tough fight on another, but one they can overcome and feel great about all the same. That accomplishment would still be there, still be just as valid, still feel just as good in the moment.

At least until they mention it to the rest of the From community.

@burncoat: Not saying I agree with the "authorial intent" argument, but to play devils advocate, if the intent is to make a challenging game that people will struggle their way through then making it more challenging won't change that intent. Making it less challenging however could.

@ares42: I just don't think that works in regards to Sekiro. They could make a mode that halves all damage you recieve and it would still be challenging to less skilled players.

Take the samurai before Genichiro Ben fought on the recent playdate for instance. The challenge to him is precisely parrying his two quick succession strikes. When you're able to do that, he gets so much poise damage that he's pretty easy. But the problem is the damage he does. If you miss that first parry, his other hit connects also and before you know it you're one hit from death. He hits harder than Genichiro does, but he's there to teach you "hey, get better at parrying". But the problem is people will die over and over to him quickly enough that they can't grasp it or decide to just cheese it with the poison knife. You could reduce his damage and less skilled players will have more time per run to get the hang of his attacks without resorting to cheese, and still learn his patterns and overcome him the way the author intended.

There are ways to keep the challenge in a game while still making it accessible.

@burncoat: You're pretty much making the point I originally made when I posted my opinion =) Others said it wouldn't be a problem, but I agree with you, it's tough for me to visualize how they would actually do it without completely and utterly neutering the fights.