Who else here hates """"artificial difficulty"""" what I mean by this are confusing games...

Who else here hates """"artificial difficulty"""" what I mean by this are confusing games, resulting in them being difficult. The problem that I have with games like Dark Souls 3 (the only Souls game I've played) is that the bosses themselves aren't that difficult, it's about finding out where the fuck to go and knowing what to build and how to level. It's not actual difficulty, it's just complete bullshit. I want games that are difficult but allow me to appreciate the difficulty instead of scrambling around like a madman.

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Git gud mate

>The problem that I have with games like Dark Souls 3 (the only Souls game I've played)

BAIT

i beat the game easily after doing research.

only problem i had with DS3 is that everything hits llike a goddamn truck compared to previous souls games.
fucking hollows in the staircase leading up to the homoprinces would literally take off more than half my health bar with one of their swings. thats more damage than the actual boss dealt

>getting hit

kill yourself animeposter

I feel you, OP. I remember when Nethack was popular. People used to (and still do) Gush about how it was "Skillful" and "rewarding" . All it was is dying over and over so you can learn the obscure mechanics. Note how beating the game is trivial today with all the information available to the public.

>fucking hollows
They've been hitting like trucks since DeS. Retard strength, man, fear it.

>hating anime on a site originally dedicated to anime
respect your heritage, nigga

theyve always hit hard but ive never had a problem with them before DS3. it probably doesnt help that their sword retains its hurtbox after their attack and follow through is over and their resheathing the weapon

Thats called exploring and playing an RPG, OP.

ok

I've never tried any of the DS games because I was afraid I would have rage issues with the difficulty, and I am only just playing Bloodborne for the first time right now. It is hard, but I feel like just knowing that it is considered so hard makes me not get so mad when I die. I always rightly blame myself for fucking up - never the game for being cheap - and that helps a lot.

Is Bloodborne easier than Dark Souls 1-3 or Demon's Souls?

Difficulty is comparable. I think it's probably the easiest to beat (with the hardest option all content), but it was my fourth Souls game and you kind of lose perspective once you 'git gud'. If you've played Bloodborne then you know what to expect generally from Souls.

you can play dark souls like bloodborne but you can't play bloodborne like you play dark souls.

what i mean by that is that its completely viable in dark souls to play a fast dex character that rolls everywhere and dodges everything.
youre pretty much forced to play that in bloodborne.

in dark souls it is also viable however to use a shield and block every attack and wait for an opening.

a lot of people who transitioned from dark souls to bloodborne struggled with it because of this

luckily ive never used a shield in my life so the transition was easy for me

there are still difficult areas in both games though, theyre difficult in their own special ways

once you "get" souls games though they stop being difficult for you, for example I struggled with DS1 the first time i played it but now I can beat it in under 2 hours and beat DS2 on release within a day or two, same for DS3 and Bloodborne.

>has to cheat to win

Your argument is the pure shit soulsvirgin comment. The only thing that you can get mad about is how weapons, stat scaling, armor weight works because no one explains those mechanics. But Dark Souls III is the most linear game in the franchise and the only thing they would need to make it easier is giving you fucking arrows, hell, even the developers decided to put more messages in the ground for dumb shits who can't even figure out how to tie their shoes.

onlyafro?

you could complain about rng arrow rain faggit
the rest is prohibited.

When you play something like MonHun G ranks or GE +99s where everything kills you if it looks at you funny, these games aren't hard.

Idk i mean i played one of them and it wasn't so much the "difficulty" as it just.. wasn't really all that fun. The combat is slow and shallow, the movement is heavy and it feels like i'm trying to drive a brick around.

what's wrong with putting in a difficulty setting?

They are discriminating against people who are bad at videogames. Some people just can't git gud no matter how much they practice. I don't hate those people just because they suck. They should be allowed to succeed if they grind and try their hardest, like everyone else.

>artificial difficulty

You're playing game. There is no difficulty that isn't artificial.

If exploration of game space and systems isn't the kind of things you enjoy, there are other games for you.
Some of us love tht kind of stuff; leave those games to us.

>(the only Souls game I've played)

Stopped right there.

Some experiences can't much be designed with difficulty levels in mind.

The "it" of DS game is that point of resistance where you stumble until you can overcome. By definition it demands to be attainable before it can be taken out. Difficulty levels are not compatible with this.

Come on man, DS3 is linear as hell compared to the others. There's like one branching path that I can remember that would actually cause confusion. I hope you're joking.

>You're playing game. There is no difficulty that isn't artificial.

This user understands. If you want "real" difficulty go get in a fight in real life. "Artificial Difficulty" is just a newer way of saying "I think the game is being cheap," even though whenever you die in these games it is 100% your fault and your fault only

...

>once you "get" souls games though they stop being difficult for you, for example I struggled with DS1 the first time i played it but now I can beat it in under 2 hours and beat DS2 on release within a day or two, same for DS3 and Bloodborne.

I don't know that this is a pertinent way of framing things. Don't think so anyway. A non-insignificant part of the difficulty comes from the exploration (again of "game space" as both levels and systems). Once you've mastered those, of course replaying the game offers much less opposition.

OP, I think you're looking for a game like Ninja Gaiden. Linear and no RPG stats to level, but hard as nails.

>By definition it demands to be *unattainable*

My bad.

You can still experience "it" by just not turning the difficulty down. All they need to do is give a lot of incentive to only play on normal and above, and to not allow you to change difficulty after you start a character (except to go higher), and 90% of people would not cave in to the pressure and lower the difficulty.

Only those who would otherwise drop the game because it's so hard would do it.

it amazes me that guy is still at it and trying to do that challenge run. Pretty crazy watching him though, he's got like the entire first half down to a weird muscle memory science.

>it's about finding out where the fuck to go
>in the most linear Souls game

>You can still experience "it" by just not turning the difficulty down.

Yes but but people who do won't. Basically they're demanding to not play the game - they want the option to turn off the focal point of the playing itself. By which point they might as well go play another game altogether.

fpbp
if you beat it when you learned how to beat it, it wasn't artificial difficulty, it was gitting gud. Now shut up and git gud.

Then what's the fucking point? They're online games anyway, you can't have people in different environments like that.

There's already an easy mode. Summon phantoms, use magic, and cheese enemies.

That would imply wanting to play the game.

>>it's about finding out where the fuck to go and knowing what to build and how to level. It's not actual difficulty

That's literally what fucking difficulty is you fucking clod.

they could just make multiplayer temporarily change the difficulty to normal or hard until the other person disconnects

Wait, so there's people out there want to experience the game but they don't want to deal with all the gameplay?

While the Souls games aren't really hard since any game where you can grind and become invincible isn't hard, they're advertised as hard games. You can't advertise a game as hard if you can play it on easy. It's the whole point of the games to make you feel like you're playing a hard game.

And now you know why let's plays have become so popular.

could you give a specific example? Only I can think of are some poorly designed bosses like the big skeleton. Don't think any of the level design is artificial difficulty though

I thought let's plays were for games you specifically couldn't get a hold of? Like, you didn't own the right console or something.

That reminds me of that one article asking for a "movie mode" in games, where you could simply watch a game. Or the option to skip a boss after you've lost to it once.

JUST WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE THEN.

well here you go faggot
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvFQJa1XAXzyJzqqz6xxZXyPTLLGvJywC

For me, Let's Plays are for watching people play games I've already beaten.

You'll notice I didn't use the word "hard" myself. I was much more circumspect. I don't find the games particularly hard myself.

But I do think those moments when you die/come to a stop, have to re-evaluate and think and reroute one way or the other to finally overcome *are* the focal point of the gameplay.

People who want an easy mode don't want to be stopped. Ergo they're not interested in what the game offers.

And while there's nothing bad with that I'm rather tired of the homogenization of the game market and would rather the games that still have their own identity keep it.

What if the player has bought the game and wants to beat it themselves, but they are terrible at videogames and they just can't do it in a reasonable number of retries (even after grinding)? They cannot enjoy the game

this is true.

Then that game just isn't for that person. Games don't have to pander to every single gamer. It'd be impossible to do anyway. Most games try to do it anyway and end up shit. The Souls games made it pretty clear from the beginning that they're only targeted at a certain group of players.

they are not advertised as hard. That's a terrible way to advertise a product. People talking about how hard they were is what kept me away from the series until just recently, because I thought for sure I would get immature-game-rage and break some shit.

They are *known* as hard games.

>Prepare to Die

I can't handle difficult games anymore. I just want easy comfy games. If I die a bunch of have to reload saves a lot I get bored and go do something else.

>they are not advertised as hard.

That's true for Demon's Souls. It was a normal game and was advertised as such until people started saying it's hard. So From jumped on the bandwagon and started advertising Dark Souls as a hard game. They understood that people liked dying in the game and having trouble against bosses, so they advertised the game like that.

Why would you buy a game advertised as being hard if you know you're bad at video games? Why should the devs have to cater to your stupidity?

I think you're misinterpreting, I'm saying those people that want difficulty levels don't want to play the game. I'm not saying I'm one of them.

>What if the player has bought the game and wants to beat it themselves, but they are terrible at videogames and they just can't do it in a reasonable number of retries (even after grinding)? They cannot enjoy the game

They bought the wrong game?

Its funny. Just because you bought a book by Kant doesn't imply entitlement to understanding nor enjoying it. Same goes for any music, or movies

But games. For some reasons games don't have a right to target for a very specific audience.

BB > 1 > 3 > 2
No one care about DeS.

> From jumped on the bandwagon and started advertising Dark Souls as a hard game.

Correction: Namco jumped on the bandwagon. Bloodborne wasn't advertised like that at all.

Some Dark Souls trailers were just montages of people being killed, Bloodbornes trailers showed off the combat, world and enemies.

alright yeah you got me there, sorry I'm retarded. I ignored all the Dark Souls games and I only just got Bloodborne because it was on flash sale and I wasn't sure if it was as hard

You're right. Namco fucked up a lot of things when they marketed the Souls games.

True difficulty doesn't come from finding out the strategy, it comes from applying that strategy. If applying the strategy is easy as fuck, but finding the strategy is the hard part, then it's pure artificial difficulty. Fucking retards, I bet none of you ever actually played hard games.

>all turn-based RPG games have pure artificial difficulty

Yeah, no. Both finding and applying the strategy can be counted towards normal difficulty. The only artificial difficulty I can imagine is if the game is cheating by doing something you can't do anything about.

Are you actuay defending the use of a guide to beat a game?

Regardless, there is no difficulty that isn't artificial in a game. And you disregarding the effort it takes to devise a particular strategy or tactic, or just to finding the right way to do a thing or go somewhere in favor of execution is just a matter of personal preference.

There are other games that cater to that preference. Go play those instead.

You're a fucking retard.

Leave and never come back.

If you have a PS3 you should pick up Demon's Souls for cheap and see how you feel about it.

It's similar to Bloodborne in the sense that it's overall gameplay and world building is somewhat unique from the staple Dark Souls trilogy.

Dark Souls 1 is worth a shot if you remotely found Bloodborne entertaining.

I'll agree with your point that finding out where the fuck to go is a shitty part of the soulsbourne series.

You just don't like exploration then. You have to accept that some people like running around looking for where to go instead of running along halls with an arrow over their heads.

>DSIII
>'this dude was buried here but he left to there'
>'this other dude is here'
>'now you gotta find this nigga'

If you get lost, you might have a problem

That's far from being what "artificial difficulty" actually is, retard.

A new experience being difficult to you because you don't know it yet isn't it being "difficult", it's it being "new" to you.

Holy fuck.

Artificial difficulty would be a Bethesda game for perfect example. On Easy, you have more HP and deal more damage than enemies, but on Hard, you have less HP and deal less damage than enemies - which will easily one shot you, with little ways to circumvent being hit aside from exploiting the AI.

Something being obscure isn't "hurr artifical difficulty". It's it being obscure and requiring you to figure it the fuck out through experiementing and playing the damn game, and stop expecting everything to be fucking explained to you the minute you enter the game.

You fucks are so used to everything being done for you, that the second the game lets go of your hand - or never does to begin with - you lose your shit.

The game isn't hard, but you knowing how to properly use your brain may appear so.

It's supposed to give you a sense of adventure. The fuck is wrong with you honestly?

I've observed this with most of my friends when I watched them play it. They have this entitled attitude when it comes to games. They basically expect the game to bend over backwards and make them feel awesome. As soon as they realize they have to actually do shit to beat the game, they get tired of it because they have a thousand other games that let them do exactly that. Most of them played until they died twice or three times to a boss and simply dropped the game because why bother when they can play easier games.

Why would anyone get butthurt over that? I legitimately feel bad for these kind of people.

Dark Souls can provide you with such a wonderful experience, the sense of progression and adventure that game has is pure joy.

I'm a polar opposite. I almost cannot play most modern games because of all the streamlining and handholding.

How old are you? Because I feel like that plays a big role in it.

I'm from a time when I could buy like one or two games every month or so and almost every game was too hard for me. But I put in a lot of time and kept playing them until I beat them because 1.) I didn't have much of a choice and 2.) I expected games to be hard because games were usually hard.

Now if I had grown up with modern games, I don't know if I'd have the same attitude.

Dark souls 3 sucks dick because it takes both the "dude mobs lmao" shit of its predecessor and the hard hitting but more sparse enemies of Bloodborne and mashes them together.

The PvE is an absolutely miserable experience.

I have this character deficiency where I tend to take failure in games personally. If I die more than a few times to a boss I'll probably spend the rest of the day in bed with a bottle of rum. Pls no bully.

>It's about finding out where the fuck to go
Holy shit the level progression is literally the most linear shit in all of Soulsborne. How the fuck do you get lost?

Not old. I was 15 when I played through Dark Souls for the first time.
I get bored with most games very very quickly. But when the world feels big, and you get that rush of dopamine every time you overcome a challenge that's when I get hooked. And that's exactly what Dark Souls provides.

OP, that's not "artificial difficulty". Artificial difficulty is when you have to employ the same mechanics you've been using for the entire game, but for some reason, they're just harder to pull off.

That means you fight the same enemies, but they have more HP.

Or if you have to hit the button at just the right time, the window of opportunity to hit the button becomes shorter.

Or if you have to dodge rocks falling from the ceiling, they start dropping faster and faster.

That's "artificial difficulty". What you are describing is "game mechanics". The best games do exactly what you described, but in ways that encourages the player to keep trying until they find that "sweet spot", or that doesn't start punishing you until you start progressing in the encounter.

One time I borrowed Demon's Souls to a friend, he found the game too hard, so he looked up the duplicate glitch to become level 300+ to beat the game. He was literally invincible. The worst thing about it is that he didn't even have the decency to grind normally. He had to cheat.

>grind

That's about the time I turn off the game anyway desu. Demon's Souls, though probably my favorite in the series, is pretty flawed in that playing while fatrolling is suicide. I did two runthroughs, one with the giant dragon sword that you get from pure white tendency in the fire world which caused me to fatroll, the other with a quality mace. The mace did less damage, but the mobility made for a much, much easier Allant fight.

Kill yourself.

He would bitch at an actual difficult game then and call it unfair after getting his ass handed down to him.

Bamco was a mistake.

>You fucks are so used to everything being done for you, that the second the game lets go of your hand - or never does to begin with - you lose your shit.
>The game isn't hard, but you knowing how to properly use your brain may appear so.
Fucking this. I guess that the DaS marketing team knew who they were selling the game to.

>""""artificial difficulty""""
Trial and error isn't exactly "artificial difficulty", even if it is a cheap mechanic in a game.

Deliberately bad controls, bullet sponges/damage sponges, absurd time limits (Shinobi, MOTHERFSDURFSIUUSGFIUFSGURRRRREEEEEE), Time sings, RNG are artificial difficulty material. Trial and error is actually sensible, it sounds like you may have gone into this expecting something and getting something else.

Dark Souls had some camera issues that resulted in unfair/unavoidable damage, and it was done on purpose; that is artificial difficulty, and totally bogus.

Can you point out what these unavoidable damage moments were? Because I can't think of any beyond walking through the lava Izalith, other than that you can avoid all damage, including the first Seath fight, it requires a bullshit map breaking roll but it's still possible.
>And it was done on purpose
Source?

I've played all the Souls games, including Bloodborne, I'm actually playing as I type.
Speaking as a PvP nut, the main game usually just blurs past for me after my first playthrough because I want to get my character to 125/100/150 for the invasions or arenas.

At this point I've played enough that the games aren't very hard anymore.

I can say for sure that Dark Souls 1 was difficult for a lot of reasons, most of them were really good, some were real issues like the bad rolling or clipping into terrain.

Dark Souls 2 is the hardest playthrough, but often because of poor game design [rat bosses]. The DLC for 2, though, was the best Dark Souls has had for difficulty and fairness. It also had the best DLC

Dark Souls 3 is definitely the easiest, and even with all the verticality of the levels, they're even more linear than Dark Souls 2's. Not once can I remember using a shortcut I opened, because they were usually longer routes than the normal way forward. It's got good bosses, yeah, but so did 2, which is known to have bad ones. Beyond that, it starts you off with the best weapons to beat the game with, and loads you up with levels and gear. DS3 is a love letter to the series, and it's really fun, but it has a few too many flaws for my liking.

Bloodborne is the best PvE they've ever made. Good enough to keep playing it even though I do mostly PvP. Best story in my opinion too.

TL;DR BB>DS1>DS3 and DS2 was great for reasons unrelated to the other 3

>Bad rolling or clipping into terrain
Is this an actual issue for some people? I never had problems with rolling or terrain, with the exception of falling through the floor when sliding down a ladder using DSFix, which isn't the game's fault.

>It also had the best DLC, opinions and everything, but Artorias says hello

didn't read the thread, just need an excuse to post this. rollerino

I've been fighting ludwig the accursed for the past 2 hours now. I dont even care if it's artificial difficulty, I can honestly say that these past few hours have been fucking terrible. I'm at level 107, vitality 32, someone please just tell me that I'm underleveled so to give me the relief that I do something to make it better.

His dash fucking always kills me unless I don't get hit, the similarity of the start up of the 2 jumps has gotten me killed more times than I have fingers, his instant stomp-stomp-slash bullshit has killed me more than anything else, what the fuck am I supposed to be doing

woops, Best DLC was supposed to be tacked on Bloodborne. 2's was still great, all the series had great DLC.

Your overall level seems high rather than low, but your Vit isn't very high. Could be at 40 or even 50 easily.

Dodge whenever he jumps, if it's the short one then you're good, if it's the long one then wait until after two blood drips and dodge again. I've always found his dash easy to dodge, so I guess you're just not seeing the tell early enough.

I'm not sure which attack you mean by stomp-stomp-slash, but it could be the one he only does when you're right underneath him. Stay in front or to the side.

>"exploration is bad"
>"why is there no yellow arrow over my head leading to the next main quest?"

go play your batman arkham games

Always a Theif, with the Bandit Knife, pyromancy, a Chaos Servant, and a master key.

"I can't beat it so it's unfair"

Fuck off OP. You're just bad

>artificial difficulty
FUCK THIS GUY