+Jim Sterling Well said, Jim. Another great video, like always!

I blame Chip, shut up chip!!

Jim sterling in soulstorm? That's awesome that jim fucking sterling son is gonna be in an oddworld game also a NEW oddworls game?!

I'd rather put other things in your mouth, Jim.

+Jim Sterling People having fun.... WHAT DO YOU THINK GAMES ARE!?! Seriously my kids love playing the same games dad was just playing. If there is an option to turn down the difficulty then that makes it more fun for them. If that gets some jerks panties in a twist... Fuck em.

What I don't get most about when people shit on Awakening for having casual mode, they blame it for creating it, forgetting FE12 did it first.....

+Dark Pixel Gaming Remember the people we are talking about are (accidentally in their own words) on the same level as babies, so they'd probably say something like "Ew girl cooties" when confronted with this story.

+Dark Pixel Gaming Cant speak for others, but I wouldnt want someone experiencing an inferior version of a game. When I was getting into FE people told me not to bother with the casual mode, and having played with it I can appreciate both modes. But the normal set up is better.

That's EXACTLY what I did with Saints Row IV (PC GotC)

Would have never had the courage to play Godhand on hard if I didn't start on easy

This! You can play games twice.. or even three times.

But it you played it on hard I assume you're now aware that there's little difference between easy and normal anyway, given that most players playing on normal will only ever pass into difficulty level 3 for brief periods, extremely infrequently

Difficulty scaling is an outdated form of prolonging a game's "content". Because most difficulty settings just scale up or down numbers in a game, it really doesn't make the game more or less difficult. Take dark souls. If everything was kept the same, but you were given more hp or enemies were made to do less damage, the game would have been criticized for being slow and boring. All of the risk would have been taken out of the game. Also, please point me to a game that actually does difficulty scaling well since I haven't played one yet (not trying to sound like an ass).

All your bells are multiplied by 0.1x, if a tarantula, a scorpion, or bees sting you, you die and your save file is deleted.

Coming to you four years later. DOOM Eternal and Animal Crossing for Switch released on the same day, and there is soooo much Isabelle and DOOM Slayer crossover art. :3

You're gay

I think that statement applies to most competitive scenes.

I agree, I think Street fighter 5 is doing just that. you can't loose on the easiest difficulty. Hi btw, I love your channle

+CreepsMcPasta I agree wholeheartedly. While the fighting game community as a whole has gotten better about it, there are still instances of elitists putting you down if you're new to fighting games. While they have taken steps in preventing such elitist behavior, its still a big problem.

I never heard of the "arcade era" argument. But I did hear about the simplification of fighting games. Which does irk me a little cause I don't want the identity of certain fighting games to change (Ex. Guilty Gear). Sidenote: Guilty gear does have a stylish Mode which allows auto combos and specials at the press of 2 buttons. But... the mode is also inferior to the technical mode cause the options of normals are locked and you have to do a predestined route for a combo. Making the characters not as good as they could be in technical mode (Which they were built around). Basically stylish is for the people who just want to press buttons with other people who want to press buttons. Buuuut you will ultimately lose against the technical player in the long run as he can do a lot more f'd up stuff. And trust me the f'd up the stuff is really the entertaining part of the game for regulars in the Guilty Gear community. (End of side note) A new guilty gear is coming and the creator said they were looking to simplify some stuff. I trust that they would do a good job with it and keep the identity of the Guilty Gear franchise that everybody loves.

+Dunoid Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, inB4 someone comments this first.

I can always be proud to say that i mastered the game with no death runs, rather than cry about the existance of the code

lol

Oscar Velazquez I think beating Contra without cheating makes you eligible for a Purple Heart.

+Dunoid He beat it without getting hit, which is something else. Konami Code doesn't matter when he doesn't lose even one life. And look, it's just 3 more words to make it all the more impressive.

As a Fire Emblem fan, I do agree that Casual Mode (well, the actual Casual mode, you're referring to Phoenix) is, at the very least, a necessary evil to get the game out of its hardcore-only audience (albeit an unnecessary one considering Fire Emblem has never been that hard), but I think you miss the point of resetting whenever a character dies. See, officially, Fire Emblem is a Strategy RPG, but from a different perspective it's a puzzle game, and the challenge of each puzzle is two things: 1) how can I complete this chapter? 2) how can I do so without anyone dying? That's not to say you can't go for that second objective on Casual mode, but there's zero incentive for it. On Classic, if someone dies, you have to weigh if the extra time spent resetting is worth saving them (and if you're going for an "Everybody Lives" run, then it's "yes" every time). On Casual? If you're late into a chapter and someone dies, you COULD do the "honorable" thing and reset... but you gain nothing from it. That unit is still alive whether you reset or not. So you may as well just finish, right? And that's how you take the series' form of challenge out. I mean, again, I don't despise Casual Mode, personally, but I do stand by my belief that anyone who picks Casual is robbing themselves of the proper experience (which might be necessary, mind you, but it is self-robbery nonetheless). It'd be like a setting on Zelda games where all of the puzzles just auto-solved themselves and you just had to fight the enemies. Could you play that setting, knowing what you know about Zelda, and honestly feel like you're getting the proper Zelda experience? Of course not, one of the most key ingredients is missing. Maybe it'd still be fun, but it'd be incomplete. It's no different with Fire Emblem. Now, again, maybe Classic is actually too much for some people. Maybe they find the general gameplay of Fire Emblem fun, but can't handle their units dying when they are killed. That is all well and good. But they're missing a piece of the experience, nonetheless. But as long as they keep Classic Mode around (and continue to balance the game around it), everything is cool. I mean, it's a single player game, and I don't care what setting other people play on as long as they find it fun. (Although people who play on Casual/Phoenix and, unironically, say the games suck for being too easy piss me off to no end.)

I've never played the Casual Mode myself, but it did allow my little sister, who absolutely sucks at strategy games, to have fun with and even beat the game. She did play Classic Mode eventually (I don't think she ever finished it), but without that easier entry level, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have played the game at all.

As someone who got into Fire Emblem with Awakening I loved the casual mode. Helped me get a grip for the games mechanics and rules so that when I beat it on casual, and hopped over to classic, I knew what I was doing. Having a "casual" or "easy" mode doesn't hurt a product at all. The only thing it does is make it more accessible to newer players and potential fans. I can say with complete confidence that I would have never fallen in love with the Fire Emblem franchise if it were not for Awakening's casual mode. As it allowed me to get used to the game and learn its rules before I took on a Classic campaign. And because of the knowledge and understanding I got in the game's casual mode, I did significantly better than I would have done if there wasn't a casual mode, and I was just thrown into Classic. The game's casual mode didn't just teach me about the game's mechanics, either. It also gave me a chance to enjoy and appreciate the game's story, and lore. The story and lore are what sold me on the franchise as a whole. Sure the gameplay is fun, but I'm a sucker for good story in games. And while Awakening is by no means a perfect story, it was a great one. Great enough that I started looking up other games in the franchise and wound up playing those, either with legit copies or through an emulator. Because of Fire Emblem Awakening, I got to play and appreciate Shadow Dragon, the Tellius series, Thracia 776, Genealogy of the Holy War, Binding Blade, The Blazing Sword, New Mystery of the Emblem, and Sacred Stones. Fire Emblem Awakening's casual mode has helped the series much more than it has hurt it, and I will gladly fight anyone who claims otherwise, because Casual Mode gave me a chance to fall in love with these games. And I'll be damned before I let some self-righteous elitist prick deny other people like me the chance to enjoy these games too.

Yep, a Casual Mode doesn't hurt anybody. If they removed perma death entirely, that would be an issue and I would complain about it, but since it's a choice, I don't get the outrage.

As someone who actually got into the fire emblem games through awakening, I thought classic mode was a bit much, so casual mode was great for me. Its not like the game gave me the best weapons straight off the bat or told me what was the best path to take, I still had to do the hard part myself of figuring out who to use, who gets married to who, where they go, and all the other technical shit. Plus, characters getting K.O'D was still a detriment as it really thinned out your numbers if you weren't careful. Can't say I'm too big a fan of fates phoenix mode though. That seems a bit too easy to me.

So, basically Piers Morgan?

This.

+FrankieSmileShow Excellent points. I usually prefer to play games on hard difficulty but sometimes the hard mode is designed for people who already played the game or are just poorly designed turning enemies fights into boring bullet sponges fights instead of being designed around mastering and understanding the game mechanics on a deeper level.

+welkukazama Yes, and sometimes an easy difficulty level can ruin a game's learning curve. An early opponent meant to teach the player about certain game mechanics could become easy enough that the player doesn't need to learn that mechanic to proceed anymore, which could paradoxically make later points in the game more difficult, if they were designed with the assumption that the player understands that mechanic.

+Doctor Butler Thanks, I'm an aspiring game dev and seeing this and FrankieSmileShow replaying to my comment really made this day great.

+GiRayne Im not entirely sure we disagree? Let me try to rephrase some of what I said, maybe my point got a bit lost in being a wall of text, I got a problem with rambling. I argue that there is a fallacy going on about how giving people more choices is inherently better than giving them fewer, that choices you do not take don't affect your own play and your own game. I think that is very incorrect! A choice always inherently makes some sort of statement about its options, which will always imply something about the game. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Lets go with the Dark Souls example here, its basically what everyone is thinking about when it comes to games that are difficult by design, lets talk about how an explicit easy mode option could inherently affect a game like this: If Dark Souls lets you choose an explicit difficulty level in a menu before you play, this makes a statement about how the game relates to difficulty. For instance, it might imply that if you find the game too hard, it was not really the game's intention, and you might have just picked the wrong difficulty option, you should consider going back and picking a more the appropriate difficulty level instead. If the same game has no difficulty options, then struggles are intentional, and indicate there must be something you are doing wrong in the game itself, that maybe there is something you need to learn, (or in the case of dark souls, maybe you have wandered into an area you definitely should not be yet!) The difficulty options add this little doubt in your mind that maybe you made some wrong choice before the game even started, while having no difficulty level implies the only wrong choice you could have possibly made was in the game itself. Everyone who plays those games for the first time hits a point of huge struggle where they consider quitting, and a large number of those people who eventually figured it out might have decided they just picked the wrong difficulty level instead, if given the option. On the other hand, an option in Dark Souls that would let people play the game without enemies, or made the player invincible? That would be very, very different. It wouldn't give people this dilemma at all. Such an extreme option is obviously an ACCESSIBILITY feature as opposed to some little difficulty tweak. It would be an option meant for players who simply aren't interested in a challenge at all, and simply want to explore the games' world. That said, it wouldn't be a slam-dunk inclusion either: you could argue the games' omnipresent danger and its exploration go hand in hand, and that giving players the option to explore the game with no threat at all would weaken the games' greater game design statement. But this becomes more about a games' design goals or artistic license than about the option causing a genuine "problem" with how well the game works, like the previous example did. Let's go with another example of choice not being "free", something a lot of people will probably vehemently disagree with me on: Skipping cutscenes. A lot of people think its a no-brainer that all games should give you the option to skip cutscenes, that it is a feature that should more or less be standard. They will argue, the people who want to watch the cutscenes will watch them, the people who don't will skip them. Give the people what they want! But having the option of skipping cutscenes isn't "free". The option being there inherently carries a message, that watching the game's cutscenes is in some way optional. That the game is still more or less "complete" without them. This doesn't mean story-heavy games should never let you skip cutscenes, it just means that its just not that simple. That its a decision that goes further than just being a feature to check in a list of things most games should do!

... POUNDING I-

lol

That hotdog autoplayed me straight into the kitchen for an easy mode lunch. gg

+Swarley Underhill Ayy Swarley! You watch a bit of Jim Fucking Sterling Son too? Nice!

Remnant Productions That's right! Thank god for Jim Fucking Sterling! ;)

Swarley Underhill Indeed :D

OOOOOH YEAH!!

I'M WILD YEAH!

YOU'RE NEVER READY FOR RANDY SON

+WhirlingWolves That was the best thing that happened to me today. Brilliant.

Hey Conrad! I hope you told Craig to fuck off today.

The Problem many people have, including me, is that if a Game like Dark Souls has an Easy Mode it will probably be more than just "Less Enemy Health and Damage". That means it will feature enemy rearrangement, loot replacement, stuff like that. Now that means they'll spend more time developing and balancing the "Easy Mode" and will have less time for the "Real" mode. If that ends up happening we'll have a Bloodborne Situation again, whereas there's so little content that you only need ~3 Playthroughs to try every build, use every weapon and so on. I'm fine if they just reduce enemy health and so on, but no more than that. After all, dying 12 times to a boss, having all your equipment broken and Flasks emptied, That is Dark Souls.

RobinDS2 It could also be argued that they already have plenty of experience in balancing the games for high difficulty, so it may not even require as much in terms of resources to achieve as prior titles. We can only make assumptions about how production resources are being allocated to specific features and modes, etc. We just don't know. But I would think by this point we could have a bit of confidence in the developer's track record, enough to give them some benefit of the doubt until we can see the result.

+RobinDS2 Why would anyone need to balance an easy game mode? They could do just as you said, increasing your damage done and decrease the damage received. And if the game is only good when hard, well then it sucks

Well, to make it easy maybe?! Also DS isn't just good because it's hard, but the difficulty is a big factor.

*P* *O* *U* *N* *D* *I* *N* *G* *I* *T*

Skipjack qhj

Old comment is old but yeah I get you. I've found that some games that have something of a difficulty curve can be hard to really get a feel for sometimes. Like getting a hang of the enemy patterns, timing and other things. Playing with invincibility helps me learn these things so that the game doesn't end up playing me all the time. I can play, get a handle of it and start enjoying it instead of - - - - - "Alright, let's see this level." * dead * "What? I barely started! Okay let's try that agai-" * dead * "Oh come on! Okay one more-" * dead * * game over * And then sure I might try again. I might try again repeatedly over the course of an entire day but when the try try again routine stops being an approach to a challenge and there is no fun to be found I want to quit and never touch it again.

That is actually a good idea

Boom.

+ShehzaanA Abdulla Brilliant!

+ShehzaanA Abdulla Or call it the EXP Share if you're Pokemon.

+ShehzaanA Abdulla As long as it wasn't the whole game, that sounds fine.

And there's a way to use both amibo ships without actually buying the figures.

*IDDQD*

Yeah, if I recall they made an option for infinite lives/continues in DMC3's special edition because so many people complained about the difficulty of the game. I must admit that I had to enable this mode just to progress because of how difficult the first portion of the game is, and even with it on it was still difficult.

Don't forget IDKFA. :)

even super mario had an inbuild level where you could pop in collect whatever boosts you wanted and 3 lives i think it was. as good as an invincible mode since once you unlocked it you could go there a million times over

I'd love to set these Souls' series pussies up with Ghouls 'N' Ghosts sometime...

I second this notion. Think of the children!

+Lyle McDouchebag Hear, Hear.

RIP skill.

Not to be pretentious, but that's actually the plot of the game (DS1). I know the story is fed to the player in rather obscure ways, but yeah hahaha. There are (obviously) loads of undead people (just like you) there who are, mysteriously "the chosen one." But so far none of the other "chosen ones" have made it to the end, slowly losing their humanity and turning into a Hollow because they...Give Up. The world is unforgiving, brutally difficult, and up to this point, nobody has had the willpower to see this quest through to the end to Ignite the First Flame. Because they Gave Up. Kind of like you did. Hell, even if you do everything PERFECTLY, all but 3 of the Undead NPC's you encounter on your journeys will give up hope and lose sight of who they are and turn into another Hollow. I think the difficulty of the game ties into the story. I mean, how many games do we love to mock because everyone tells us about the "impossibly strong enemy ahead" and we tank its blows then use its shattered skull as a wine glass because it's so beneath us? How many games are we, the lone hero, able to fight entire armies single-handedly, AND WIN without a scratch. Dork Soles subverted the old tropes AND did it in a way that tied into its overall narrative.

+Lyle McDouchebag Yeah I've gotten to the 2/3rds mark in Dark Souls 3 times but I've still never finished the game. I really want to finish it, but I just don't have that kind of patience, those last few levels are just an absolute nightmare to get through, and not in the fun way that the earlier levels throw at you.

+Lyle McDouchebag What? Stop being selfish for 5 seconds and think about what you just wrote. Do you realise that Souls games tell their stories through gameplay and theme running through whole series is overcoming difficulty and giving up? Lovering diffuculty would destroy game's narrative. What's next? People wanting to remove violence from All silent on western front, becouse it is hard to read?

+ActionAbe1 Don't forget, anyone who uses the start menu should lose any and all items they currently posses. Can't have pansy asses ruinin' our games!

John Sullivan also no controller support unless its the steel battalion one.

+ActionAbe1 Guitar hero controller only!!!!

WHAT?! Deleting saves after what?! Forget that noise.

Games need to be so hard that nobody can enjoy them. THEN the *real* gamers will get the respect and appreciation and supermodel sex and parental hugs that they always needed! Er, I mean wanted! *...Deserved!!*

+Steppin Razor Hey, Spawn.

+Steppin Razor Pounding it

Pounding it

+Steppin Razor Is your username a Neuromancer reference?

+Steppin Razor That he does.

Gentacle

+Derek Westlund que the Tf2 intro music: "Tentelmen"

+Ogere Gentacled tentleman

+Derek Westlund Tenta-Gent

Gentactlemem

It's not just gamers, unfortunately. It's what the same-sex marriage "argument" is based on. Some people just can't handle the existence of things they don't personally want to use (and it boils their blood to see that other people have them). It's as though they're ill-adjusted to the fact that the world exists outside of them.

+Paul Scott (Dracula is Still a Threat) It's a good thing because soon enough they'll be microtransactions

+Paul Scott (Dracula is Still a Threat) Exactly.

+Paul Scott (Dracula is Still a Threat) Excellent point, did anyone ever cry about the existence of the Konami code? This just makes the availability of such options more obvious, rather than hidden behind a secret button combination.

blackice85 Then that was back when Konami was good #Fuckonami

TotalTenticle

TotalSquid or SquidBiscuit sounds better

+Paradise Decay CynicalSquid?

+Zadamanim TotalBisquid

+Paradise Decay That, or "Cynical Squid"

+Fist-of-doom you bring up a valid point no one did get pissed off that were made in the games back in the day. I could have made Claude speed invincible If I wanted to. Cheat codes use to be everywhere some games still have them but it frown upon using in games now because you won't be rewarded for using any of them. These easy modes are for someone who had problems getting into gaming. When I play lego rock band with my family I put my mother instrument set to very easy so she can enjoy it with me and the rest of the family. She is disable person who falls down every now and then and she has no feeling in her feet. She not the best player and she never get good at games but people like her can't sit around and have idle clicker game be the only source of enjoyment.

Because they are turning games into cow clickers so they are more accessible.

Cow Clickers? I feel like you made that term up, I have no clue what that means.

Your on the internet. Google it :)

16Nexis Burden of proof is on the one making the argument. Nice try.

+0utc4st1985 Also, let's not forget about consoles and "Game Genie".

+0utc4st1985 I miss those.

+Alevamltd Action Replay DS. Good times. Did you know that the Leonidas purchasable in the in-game store in Bakugan DS is superior to the one obtained via story? I always used my AR (when it worked) to buy another Leonidas, to replace the story one with a stat-superior one.

It´s called "console commands"

I wonder how some of these twitter commenters feel or those Dark Soul "raging fans" mentioned in the video feel to know that at the very very very very least... ONE person on this planet might've played a Dark Souls game on the PC and used Cheat Engine or one or those Cheating Trainers or whatever to play the game. I wonder how much they will rage to the point a few veins pop.

+Tabula Rasa Gaming (TRG) Fucking spot on!

+Tabula Rasa Gaming (TRG) very true, I agree entirely.

I really don't care if there's an "easy mode" in any game, but I do think achievements and online access should be removed. How good you are at a game is a skill like any other. For instance I'm good at Bloodborne and I'll admit, the idea that someone could say they've beaten the game and is just as good as me, having only played the easiest mode, is mildly infuriating. Now this is a bit of a faulty analogy. Walking isn't a skill for somebody to be proud of. That's why these people don't get angry at wheelchair ramps. They're not equivalent. Diligence and practice and effort to become good at something is something to be proud of.

Callmesir_ How is your opinion on having "easy mode" achievements additionally to the other ones?

Callmesir_ You're missing the point of the analogy. It refers to accessibility. Pride or skill has nothing to do with it. And obviously, anyone who says they're just as good as you at Bloodborne having played on an easier difficulty is an idiot. I agree with you about achievements or online access. The point of accessibility is to be able to play the game that you bought, not to brag to your friends about how good you are. I think one of my favorite examples of a good easy mode was Timesplitters 2, which actually simplified the level design significantly, but made sure you missed out on a lot of content that you would've seen on Normal or Hard. The idea is to reward people who can play on the harder difficulty, not block those who can't from playing at all.

+solblackguy Yeah, all the hard core gamers from back then probably seemed easy mode to gamers who have grown up in the achievement age where most games don't have cheats,

+Thanotos Omega I did actually comment regarding this and I feel like cheat codes are okay. They aren't just default options and the implication of a "cheat code" is such that you wouldn't be expecting a challenge nor balance in a game with it enabled. My concern is that if you play a game on 'invincible mode', just because it's expressly an option when you start up the game the first time, the gamer in question may be expecting balance and may actually get bored by the game because there's no proper compulsion to avoid damage at all. It's not easing them into it in a super accessible way like how Bayonetta's easy modes did-- lending you automatic mode, vastly increased damage, and regenerating health. It's literally just taking away every ounce of necessary player agency. Now sometimes people find that fun. I found that fun, a long time ago, but I also knew it was a cheat code and didn't represent the intended gaming experience... but what if people do start to think the game's boring just because of this option being what it is? Common game design philosophy says that a problem is never the player's fault. The designer's the one that screwed up. If that happens, the developers made a bad call or implemented it badly. I'm okay with there being particularly easy modes-- even Phoenix Mode, now. Buuut... the difference is, your actions in Phoenix mode actually sort of matter in a way. In this game, you could probably put down the controller and win stages. That's what I'm worried about. What if it makes the average under-read gamer have less fun on average?

I'll give 'em about 20 minutes before they toss the controller out the window. The reason why a good number of us cheated back then wasn't because we sucked at games, it was because the difficulty in a good number of the older games were less unforgiving and challenging and more outright trolling and stupidly over-the-top. If you had to play Dark Souls 2 SOTFS with no changes to the game except limiting you to three lives and an extra one for each boss you beat, you'd probably end up reaching for the cheats as well or just quitting.

+TheXenomorph agree completely. Games back then were rage inducing. No saves in 3/4 of the games, password features that required you to be a linguist and the limiting of lives made playing older levels in games like ninja gaiden an absolute misery. I played the games emulated, used save states, and destroyed those early titles, while still feeling accomplished by the way. Why not have both? An extremely difficult mode and an easy one, that way all parties are compensated

Big Head mode was always fun. I remember a code that change the dialogue in boss fights. It turned a chase sequence into a game of marco polo with the Green Goblin.

Hmm... "It's optional".... that argument seems familiar somehow, but I can't recall where I heard it...

+Digital Intent I think it was pretty clearly described that Iron Bull was doing the pounding in his DA3 video.

+Witchfynder_Finder Yep totally agree. When Street Fighter V came out I literally read comments from people saying they were happy with the lack of features as it will keep the casual scrubs away from the game? Like WTF?

+Witchfynder_Finder Not if doing so changes the nature of the reason you'd been a fan of it.

#HuckFigitalDomicide

+Cringle Berg #ThankGodForJim #FuckDigitalHomicide

And fuck konami :p

#DuckHigitalFomicedi

+Cringle Berg Apparently you know, what's he talking about ? What happened to him ? Could you please enlighten me, and I'll thank God for you too (don't tell Jim) !

+GR You mean you need help getting the ring to Mordor? Loser.

And the first words that will usher in the new age of infinity are "Pounding it...".

+JMobster9 One of my favorite series is Ys, and the game int it can be quite difficult in normal for a first time player. I think I've got crushed at least 30 times against the first boss of Ys Origin, on normal. ... I ended up redoing my game in Very Easy. Now, I play most of them in Hard/Very Hard or even Nightmare mode. :) Having modes like that is a great thing when you want to immerse yourself in a story.

+Sundaydish1 The Age of Empires 2 pimpmobile ! You were missing out. There were some fun cheats out there, that were borderline mods. Obviously people got bored at the office.

+Sundaydish1 Work must be interesting for you if you get man gravy on your work boots ;)

Andy Finendale No it's my own gravy, I have to kick one out before I head home.

+Jonthan Kent I did not know that the US version was considered easy mode compared to the Japanese version. :p

I like reactions.

+nicklong27 I once saw some prick using glasses because his eyes didn't work properly. Stupid arsehole. So, I gouged my own eyes out because if every wanker can see, why should I even bother?

+Forrest Kaysen That tickled me more than i thought it would hehehe

+TrevorSpace Animation He just called a bunch of uptight elitists babies.

+Leinad44 That's what they love and hate: options.

+TekRantGaming What did happen? I'm out of the loop.

kotaku.com/angered-game-developer-sues-game-critic-jim-sterling-fo-1765484317

+TekRantGaming ah, the north korea of gaming returns

+Drkwatch for 10 million dollars, too.

+TekRantGaming Well, I guess looking forward to that "Digital Sue-cide"-titled jimquisition episode.

+willsham45 yeah, back then you had to know the code and know how to properly put in a convoluted and tricky button combination or give your character a stupid name or unlock the cheats after playing the game, this is just an option lol

+James Dore That wasn't much of an issue though since most gamer kid's in those days had at least one friend in school who read Nintendo Power or equivalent and people actually talked to each other, face to face and shared tips (the school yard Internets of the 80's/90's). The cheat codes still exist but now it's your credit card number. Bonus: You even had trolling assholes who lies about jumping the Mario flag pole, secret made up levels or super convoluted Tomb Raider nude codes etc.

Emperor Katarn ahhh those were the days. yeah all the microtransaction bullshit needs to stop.

+Emperor Katarn but you actually could jump the Mario flag pole. It's how you got a 3up. Except in the first one where it just broke your game.

true4evre pics or it didn't happen

My man. You got the right idea. I wanna be able to let my cousins play this and not write off a fun game cause they don't have gaming experience.

+Noir Proxy you mean just like we all did growing up WITHOUT invincibility mode babying us? when games were all 10x harder and had no tutorials? you learn lessons as a kid from trying and failing. if you get carried to everything for free, you turn into a spoiled idiot. they aren't helping kids feel bad ass. they're helping them turn into lazy pieces of shit who don't think they need to earn anything.

+PowerBeard Children have enough opportunities in life to try and fail in a caveat of different ways. Let them have a little fun blowing shit up in an arwing instead of trying to teach them life lessons from a sci fi airplane game with a talking fox as the main character. (By the way, we also had cheat codes "Back in the day")

asher13ish they're going to be learning from the game either way... if one way teaches life lessons, then so does the other. its not going to somehow stop affecting the kid because its easier. also, star fox never had cheats. only some secrets that had to be found or earned.

Please tell me more about how Starfox made you into the man you are today. For the record, I used a Game Shark on Star Fox 64. I also earned every medal in order to unlock the little bazooka guys in multiplayer without it. I had fun with both modes of play.

+Grae “seven” Hall Thank God for Jim Sterling.

I agree with the idea, but not every game can have optional difficulties. Online games cannot, because there needs to be a balanced baseline between all players, especially if the has any PvP elements involved. Everyone needs to have an equal opportunity to get the same stuff; letting players go to 'easy mode' would really make things unbalanced, unless you only had the difficulty effect the world and not the player. But even then that would case issues. Easy mode players would probably be isolated by the community when it comes to raids and alike, or players would exploit easy mode for the loot. It works with single player games, or PvE only games, because only one person is effected by the change in difficulty, trying to implement it on a larger scale would cause issues.

+Devon Fehr That would be too expensive considering the number of people using it. Not worth it.

+Devon Fehr This also divides the player base which I don't think would be ideal for any online game.

+Devon Fehr Which would mean the entire game needs to be rebalanced on that setting, things like - enemy AI and placement, the entire stat tree, environmental hazards, whether the player has summons or not and how easy/hard it should be if they do/don't etc. That's not even mentioning the amount of more skilled players who would exploit an easy mode server, getting the best gear at the lowest level and then invading the opening areas. It's easy to say just do it and separate them but the time and cost involved in doing so for an unknown number of sales, it's a lot of effort. For a game with no difficulty modes in mind throughout its development, there is more than just increase/decrease numbers that would need to be done.

+Alex Olinkiewicz (olinkalex) I do exactly the same thing, I start on the easiest setting to enjoy the world/story, then if I enjoy the game I'll do other playthroughs with higher difficulty settings or hunt achievements etc.

+Alex Olinkiewicz (olinkalex) This. There's also another factor I find: Time. If I was to 'git gud' at a hard game it's going to take bloody hours! Time I'd rather spend enjoying the better parts of the game, or other games for that matter. I've just started playing RPG's on lower difficulties just so I can actually beat them before they begin to outstay their welcome or before real life gets in the way

I would play dark souls if it had a easy mode that way I could get better then play the normal mode when I get good

+Alex Olinkiewicz (olinkalex) nothing wrong with liking the narratives of a game. First thing I do with *any* game is mod it and/or make it easier and play with the customization options. In fact, I won't buy a game anymore if I don't have the ability to tweek it to my liking. As far as I'm concerned, Dragon Age is a dating sim with stellar clothing/character customization.. and anyone who gets pissed because I get home from work and enjoy dying my armor green more than fighting monsters can get stuffed.

+Alex Olinkiewicz (olinkalex) I've become a similar way over the years. Part of it is time, not just to play games but to play all the other great games coming out. I cant afford to spend an extra 10 -20 hours playing a game super hard when I've got a backlog twenty games deep. For my money my favorite way of doing difficulty is when its determined through gameplay. Best example being mark of the ninja which has different paths and play styles that can be used to change the difficulty on a wim.

+Tony Dạnza There is something called a movie for occasions like that.

+Artaneius or there is something called video games.

it's also nice to have the option of those invincibility modes, even just to fuck around with from time to time. :)

I very much agree. Besides, nobody forces us to choose the easy mode. :)

I can be very good at some games, but I almost never play FPS or survival games coz I suck so hard at them... An easier mode would be nice, y'know so I have a chance to get better and maybe enjoy them? So I can't agree more on the matter...

now if only nintendo gave a fuck about people with online friends...

+Irfan Fakhrianto I mean what's funniest is that Nintendo has always (More recently to be a bit more clear) has been much more towards kid and families and all that stuff... So why are you pissed that a fun FAMILY game has a way so that people bad at the game can play

But RO2's changes weren't optional, whereas the Invincibility mode of SFZ is...

T

Drew Gold I am not defending the realy stupid comenters, but there are many games that follow the trend of the game becoming progresively easier to play, to the point that it diminishes the value of the game. I am not saying that will always happen, but that is certainly a possiblity and those that are vocal about beeing afraid that their favourie franchise is going to become so easy from the ground up, also have their point. It is never black/white right? We all know it is all about shade's of grey. And we also know publishers and devs want to work less and gain more. So there is a possiblity that the game in the next iteration will be based around the easy mode and only then an artificial dificulty will be added by giving all enemies 300% HP and ultra high accuracy. Instead of making them actually more threatening by implementing better AI, situational awarness, new abilities, quicker reactions etc.

+SoltyII I do think we need to be careful, because their is a problem of some games going the opposite direction, Mario is a great example, alot of mario games these days are not very hard BUT don't offer any means of playing a more difficult game-mode, if an easy mode is implemented into a game thats fine, but maybe consider also implementing a "hard" mode for people who do want that challenge, I am not ok with the idea of the next dark souls game coming out and being super easy with no option to up the difficulty

+SoltyII Then turn it off. It exists as an option, not a feature. This invalidates any argument that can be made. Also, the original RO had more content but actually felt more simplified then two, then again both games are not very high in my reccomendation list.

+MovieMowDown exactly

+MovieMowDown I feel like enough lesbianism could. Obviously it would be better to have both. But how do you turn the tale of the pizza delivery girl showing up and the broke college girl having to pay her in other ways into a sweeping epic? That's not a rhetorical question btw, I really want to know/see it.

Was your life story really needed here? No one really cares. TLDR

+Farscryer0 I've finished Vagrant Story. Really hard game, hugely underrated, I feel accomplished. Do you care? And guess what? Sink or swim learning is already a real life thing. You don't need videogames to teach you that.

+Graham Kristensen This.

errr... i dunno. ds2 made maging pretty hard due to how stat intensive it made magic, at least in early game. and in pvp, magic is really easy ro punish for anyone who can roll halfway decent.

+Graham Kristensen Nah, it's called summoning.

+Graham Kristensen But what if someone doesn't want to be a mage? They want to be the warrior or any of the other classes available but still want it easy (because they're rookies and want to start off easy or just want a quick and easy experience). Does that mean they have to be forced to play as the mage simply because "that's the easiest"? That's not what makes a great game.

+Charjune no it just means they should get good. (^i know the saying is usually used in out of context ways but this time its fine^) But seriously people that say "playing mage makes the game easier" are just idiots, because if you're putting most of your stats into intelligence to boost the damage means you cant put as much in health or stamina, so that's a drawback for mage classes there's also the fact that magic uses are limited until next bonfire. Honestly the games are balanced its just the whiny bitches that complain about magic thinking its op when really they just cant counter it.

+Liber Khaos This is honestly really the best argument that can be made for optional difficulty adjustments. Everyone should able to enjoy video games the way anyone can enjoy film or music or art in general.

+Liber Khaos As a stubborn ass who hates walking away from an unconquered challenge I would fucking loathe that.

+D MAS Except nothing forces your stubborn ass to use that mode. I would understand the damn controversy if this invincibility trick was pushed on the game without even asking and you'd find out you beat the game only because it was "kind" to you but as it is, you're just being offended over my 5 years old kid having a chance to enjoy Star Fox. That makes no sense.

Liber Khaos Uh I was just saying how that taking the remote away from me when I lose a stage only makes me rage more.

+D MAS oh! Lol. I'm sorry! I got this all wrong. My bad ^_^'

+TehSalomon Heck yes. I have no idea if I'd ever been able to get into Doom back in 1993 if not for the cheat codes, and that was the start of my very long and beloved relationship with the first-person shooter genre.

+TehSalomon I do miss those

+CasaiAgicap but how dark souls multiplayer works you can have multiple diffculties unless you whan split the community

+Inazuma65 yes the good old fun days of cheat codes, these days if you use a glitch it's like you have committed murder or something lol

+Toshimi1043 ExtraVeganNoNut Brownies get so popular that bakery starts making more of them. Eventually your favorite brownies are of the shelf. Bakery is just making more money selling other kind. And you know what you dont like the tase of those new brownies, you go to competition but they also have ExtraVeganNoNut Brownies turns out everyone switched, its easy to make money that way. Is it possible? Answer yourself

+tturonek yeah, this is absolutely a two sided argument and both sides have valid arguments.

tturonek The original traditional brownies are in no danger of going off the shelf. They're still the classic, the default that the majority of customers consume. And every other bakery may also start adding vegan brownies to the menu, and some get the idea to add gluten free too, but they still have their classics. It's not a zero sum game, but because you worry about it, you still want to deny vegans and people with allergies or celiac disease a chance to enjoy brownies.

Ok we got a little to deep into food analogies ;) . The problem is that whatever sells will dominate the market. Including, even as optional, extremely inclusive easy modes will shift attention of major game studios that things can be done this way, attract more players with less effort (in extreme: why spend money to animate death sequences if there could not be any deaths, far cry primal with recycled map from far cry 4, assassin's creed, de-RPGised Fallout 4 they are all the outcome). Of course there still will be small developers clinging to extremes, difficult games, intelligent games, games with something more than just sales in mind. But major players in the industry will dictate new rules: simpler mechanics, inclusive difficulties, and more customers. It's not about me raging out that my favorite fame has a baby mode, it's about foresight what that easy mode can do to future games.

+tturonek the slippery slope is something you should stay away from in an argument because it can lead down to terrible places. What you're talking about right now is going from a to c but eventually you're going to go from a to z and nobody wants to see that.