And that’s what many people (myself included) have done — but honestly, it wouldn’t take anything away from anyone nor detract from the game, and certainly wouldn’t be difficult to implement if they just put some very basic skill settings in there to make their games more accessible.
It’s what I do, and it fuckin sucks. I’m deeply interested in Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro/Elden Ring/Remnant as stories, but the fact that I would need to spend hundreds of hours getting good at the game (assuming I even can expend that mental effort in the few hours I have to play video games after getting home from work) keeps me from playing them. Wouldn’t cost these companies anything to put in “I have a fuckin life” settings.
Remnant pisses me off the most, because it has “difficulty” settings, and it’s still impossible for me to play solo on the easiest one. No adult, no matter their skill level, should have to open a game up to online multiplayer so that someone else can come beat a boss for them in the easiest available difficulty, and yet I’ve had to do that with virtually every one. Waste of $30.
Yup — I’ve been gaming since the Coleco Telstar. It’s not that I can’t “git gud”, it’s that I have a life and responsibilities outside videogames. When you work full time, have volunteer responsibilities, and a wife and children at home you don’t have hours a day to “git gud” — you’re lucky if you have hours a week to sit down and enjoy a game in peace.
And I can’t do that with FromSoftware’s games, because they make them inaccessible to people like me. I know they’re laughing all the way to the bank — but they could be laughing even harder if they didn’t limit their (admittedly already huge) market.
But From apparently doesn’t want people like me as a customer — and so I’m not. Their loss — I’d likely play some of their games if they made them so I could kick back and enjoy them, but I admittedly already have a bit of a backlog due to limited playing hours so my gaming life is just fine without them.
(If anyone has an hour, ask me sometime how much I hated Bloodbourne with the passion of 10 000 dying suns).
Ironically this is why I have thousands of hours in just a few games. Sometimes I’ll get a bunch of time to play a game. Am I gonna spend that 12 hours fighting fucking Gorefist over and over and over and over and over again, before opening my game up to the internet, and having some random come beat him like I’m 9 years old handing the controller to my big brother? Hell no, I’m gonna continue my mission of landing a Kerbal on every rock in the kerbolar system. It may be just as repetitive, but the difference is a) I’m good at it, and b) I’m constantly working towards a goal in the game rather than bashing my head against a wall until my brains fall out.
Bloodborne was also frustrating. I played through most of it with my cousin who’s extremely good at FS games, so he was able to basically walk me through the entire thing, right up to the Orphan of Kos. He wanted me to beat it. After all the time I had spent playing, all the enemies I learned how to parry with the gun, all the reflexes I trained, I couldn’t take more than 10% of its health. Never beat it. Cousin got a new job. Never played Bloodborne again.
And that’s what many people (myself included) have done — but honestly, it wouldn’t take anything away from anyone nor detract from the game, and certainly wouldn’t be difficult to implement if they just put some very basic skill settings in there to make their games more accessible.
It’s what I do, and it fuckin sucks. I’m deeply interested in Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro/Elden Ring/Remnant as stories, but the fact that I would need to spend hundreds of hours getting good at the game (assuming I even can expend that mental effort in the few hours I have to play video games after getting home from work) keeps me from playing them. Wouldn’t cost these companies anything to put in “I have a fuckin life” settings.
Remnant pisses me off the most, because it has “difficulty” settings, and it’s still impossible for me to play solo on the easiest one. No adult, no matter their skill level, should have to open a game up to online multiplayer so that someone else can come beat a boss for them in the easiest available difficulty, and yet I’ve had to do that with virtually every one. Waste of $30.
Yup — I’ve been gaming since the Coleco Telstar. It’s not that I can’t “git gud”, it’s that I have a life and responsibilities outside videogames. When you work full time, have volunteer responsibilities, and a wife and children at home you don’t have hours a day to “git gud” — you’re lucky if you have hours a week to sit down and enjoy a game in peace.
And I can’t do that with FromSoftware’s games, because they make them inaccessible to people like me. I know they’re laughing all the way to the bank — but they could be laughing even harder if they didn’t limit their (admittedly already huge) market.
But From apparently doesn’t want people like me as a customer — and so I’m not. Their loss — I’d likely play some of their games if they made them so I could kick back and enjoy them, but I admittedly already have a bit of a backlog due to limited playing hours so my gaming life is just fine without them.
(If anyone has an hour, ask me sometime how much I hated Bloodbourne with the passion of 10 000 dying suns).
Ironically this is why I have thousands of hours in just a few games. Sometimes I’ll get a bunch of time to play a game. Am I gonna spend that 12 hours fighting fucking Gorefist over and over and over and over and over again, before opening my game up to the internet, and having some random come beat him like I’m 9 years old handing the controller to my big brother? Hell no, I’m gonna continue my mission of landing a Kerbal on every rock in the kerbolar system. It may be just as repetitive, but the difference is a) I’m good at it, and b) I’m constantly working towards a goal in the game rather than bashing my head against a wall until my brains fall out.
Bloodborne was also frustrating. I played through most of it with my cousin who’s extremely good at FS games, so he was able to basically walk me through the entire thing, right up to the Orphan of Kos. He wanted me to beat it. After all the time I had spent playing, all the enemies I learned how to parry with the gun, all the reflexes I trained, I couldn’t take more than 10% of its health. Never beat it. Cousin got a new job. Never played Bloodborne again.