Elden Ring Will Be Easier Than Other Souls Games, But Has No Difficulty Options

It still going to be very difficult. They will not get rid of the difficulty aspect, this is what their games are known for and famous for.

I'm sure I'll play it, get frustrated, uninstall it, wait a day, re-install it, progress further, complain about difficulty, grind the game, finish the game, replay it deciding it's a classic.
Pretty much the process I go through for every From Software game.

That's the issue with these games, no accessibility.
If you want to have a reputation for a 'get good game', then lock achievements and trophies to the default difficulty, but offering no easy mode means many gamers won't give this the time of day.
Such a shame.

I really don't understand this from a business perspective.

Are you really going to sell less games cause you put easier difficulties in it and piss off the purists, or are you going to sell more because its available for everyone?

Personally, I'm not in the boat anymore of beating my head over a game to finish it. Games that come out 'hard' just because they've always been 'hard' is just straight up a foolish stance and they're instantly tossed in the 'not buying' pile.

Difficultly options should be standard in every game.

As I said on Pushsquare, we all have different skill levels and time commitments, and those should be respected.

I have neither time or patience for a souls like difficult game. Its a shame because I was interested in this one, mostly from a storytelling perspective. I guess Ill just watch a playthrough instead.

I've said it before, I'll say it again:
One day one of these companies is going to be smart enough to make one of these games, with atmosphere, lore, and incredible monster design...but just not the insane difficulty. The game will sell 5 million copies lol. This game look amazing and I'll probably try it out, but like a lot of people I don't have the time for these "die 40 times per boss encounter " games. Yea yea, save your "git gud" comments for someone else lmao

@blinx01
Totally agree when a game is to hard it takes longer play sessions to move forward.
An average difficulty mode would have been better, also they could lockout a special boss for those that complete the game on the intended hard difficulty mode. Or a special level as well.
I’m sure this overall limits their sales and being their biggest game ever you want it to reach a wider audience.

I guess From has a dilemma. They've built their reputation and market around their "tough as nails" image, and built a toxic fanbase that declares they'll lose all interest if it's not some life-affirming commitment required for everyone to be able to say they played it. If they ever make any change at all to broaden their market, they lose their core market. I can see why they can't take the risk of losing the "bird in hand" to get the 100,000 in the bush.

But yeah, I kind of just write off anything From at this point (which is funny where on the internet and especially in PS circles, Souls and Bloodborne are the only games that ever mattered.) Any game that makes me just try and fail the same thing over and over again until I can become perfect had better darned well pay me for my time. It's one thing when it's Platinum style and you can fail (and be mocked by the game for failing) and still see everything there is to see, inspired to get better by not seeing "plastic" trophies after every stage instead of gold ones. Not a game that literally locks you in the first level until you become a god of impeccable timing. And it's kind of a house of glass, as a lot of the souls games are less about actually getting gud, and more about staying up on social media to find out how everyone else is cheesing the fights, then cheese them the same way and declare yourself a god of impeccable timing, then beat your chest on the internet for being a superior player. It's the very worst of 90's design, deified.

@Arcnail

Very few action RPG series actually sell more than Fromsoft games do, so that's not necessarily true at all.
Dark Souls 1 sold over 10 million copies. How many action RPGs sell more than that? It's almost none.

@Dezzy I still wonder how many of those customers are repeat fans, or how many were just buying into the zeitgeist to see what it was all about and will not be returning. The whole brand really appeals to one very specific type of gamer.

@NEStalgia

The sales figures for each of their games are very very similar. Usually around 10 million over the course of 3 years. That suggests to me that it is mostly a consistent fanbase who've played all of them.
Also see how big some of the Soulsborne youtube channels are. Vaati has nearly 2 million subscribers, for a channel JUST about Souls stuff. I think that suggests it is mostly just a large community of people who buy all their games.

@Dezzy I didn't say they didn't do sales, I'm saying they are probably doing less by limited their market simply due to a static and unwanted difficulty level. Obviously there's no way to prove that, but logic would dictate as much.

@Arcnail

Yes but I'm suggesting the comparative sales numbers is a good way to test that, and it doesn't support that conclusion.
I think what's actually happened is that they have a much bigger audience than they otherwise would specifically BECAUSE they did such a good job of having this unique selling point of being brutally hard (but fair), and so they attracted a lot of people who weren't necessarily ARPG fans at all, but just loved a challenge (e.g maybe Megaman fans).
Now it may be true that they could add an easy mode at this point without actually losing any of those fans they already have, but it's definitely possible that once they start trying to go more mainstream, it will start affecting how they design the whole game, and will bleed into so many other aspects of it, that they actually would alienate those original fans, and end up selling less because of it. I can easily imagine that happening, because the difficulty in Dark Souls is so interwoven with how the games are set up.

@Dezzy The level of niche that their games occupy doesn't really sync with the immense popularity those numbers suggest though. I'm technically part of those numbers despite having such a negative view of the series. I've bought, literally, every From game except Demon's Souls Remastered. I've played through basically none of them. I bought Sekiro on launch day (biggest gaming mistake I've ever made. Even below buying Virtual Boy and the NES UForce controller.) I still question how much of their sales are loyal fans that love their games, and how much has been an experiment in curiosity that is due to wane. Some of us keep giving them and the fans the benefit of the doubt, trying, buying into it, and then remembering how awful the experience is and moving on. It's not unbelievable there's millions of other "me"'s out there.

I do agree that I think it's a dedicated fanbase that just buys all the games, but I do wonder if they have 10 million actual devoted fans, or just a lot of curious window shoppers.

The argument from the "fans" that the game can't have an easy mode without being ruined is just silly. Flight Sim added floats and skis to 747's so you can land anywhere. It doesn't make it any easier to land at JFK in a blizzard on full sim mode. But those toxic fans they harbor....they'd truly revolt if they allowed filthy casuals to play the game.

I don't know how Capcom has managed to add accessibility to MH without a revolt among the faithful. It's miraculous though.

@blinx01 Very weird you feel like you have the authority tell artists how their work is supposed to be enjoyed.

It is their call and their call alone. Want something easier? Plenty of other games out there.

This is the equivalent to walking up to DaVinci and telling him he needs to use different colors on the Mona Lisa because you didn't like the colors used and couldn't enjoy it.

@InterceptorAlpha
Do you know what accessibility actually means for games?
It could be something as simple as allowing lower skilled gamers to play the game. It could be something like allowing a disabled gamer to play the game.
This isn't some static painting on a wall. This is interactive media.

The perceived difficulty of souls-like games is nothing more than a clever disguise for a massive grind. Where in other games you rotate between spawn points, souls games rely on the player's character dying to reset the enemies, and start the rotation anew.

So, the design idea is to find ways to kill the character as often as possible. To achieve this, the games don't tell you a lot about the rules or what you have to watch out for. They even go as far as using surprises to e.g. kick the character of a ledge - at least the first time you encounter the situation - which is not difficult, but simply a lack of knowledge. The whole system artificially prolongs what would otherwise be very short games.

The enemies always behave the same way, and it's only a matter of repeatedly studying and reacting accordingly. Building muscle memory. I don't think this is difficult. It's just like learning the text of a new song or the notes, while you generally already can play the instrument. Difficult, for me, would be, if the enemies changed patterns and tactics. That would require some investment in AIs, though.

@Arcnail especially because making the game "easier" could be as simple as adding a difficulty where you do a little more damage, enemies do a little less, and there are more bonfires. That alone would make the game more accessible while certainly not actually making it "easy", per se.

@blinx01 This is a interactive medium that artists have a vision of. If their vision is a specific way then that is it.

Don't act as though you're entitled to play something. You're not. And the developers has no obligation to appeal to an audience they have no interest in.

@Richnj I couldn't have said it better.

@InterceptorAlpha That’s like the equivalent of telling someone with poor vision they can’t wear their glasses in an art museum. The difficulty level doesn’t change the artistic vision of a game, only the accessibility to the player.

@NEStalgia

Yeah it's definitely not 10 million hardcore fans. It's more like 6 million hardcore fans (the number of copies they usually sell in the first year or so), and then another 4 million normies.

My objections to adding easier difficulty though are
1) I don't know if it would make any more people play it, for the reasons I've mentioned.
2) It's not that easy to do with these games because difficulty is so interwoven with the game design. Something like a simple damage multiplier really wouldn't suit these games very well (which is what most easy modes are)
3) I worry that the series would lose it's dedicated hard-core fanbase if it became more mainstream. We would lose something that's quite unique in the games industry. Something like Vaati Vidya having 2 million subscribers is way more impressive than you see for something like Zelda, for example. Zelda which has sold more than Fromsoft in recent history, yet has a tiny fraction of the devoted audience. I think there's a reason for that. The love of shared difficulty is part of it.

@Dezzy There first souls was unique. After all the clones the only thing unique about From games is the art direction, and for Dark, map design (tough even that's Sakamoto/Igarashi, and not unique to From). And that's something that would benefit from a broader audience. Tough as nails combat games are done ad nauseum now, and the save point system that was unique is even in EA games now. They were pioneers, but they're a one trick pony now and behind their own standard. Their art however is gorgeous and utterly unique.

Difficulty isn't that interwoven. The save system is most of the difficulty, and yeah, the damage you take is most of the rest. It's not a complicated game. It's not even close to monster hunter (which came first) on terms of complexity of combat and raw skill development. Souls has nothing like a gun lance, insect glaive, or charge blade for intricate combat and fighter level skill. It's literally a game of "don't get hit.". It's not "hard" it's cheap. Like Castlevania 1. Damage reduction as easy mode won't break the design. It'll just reveal the cheapness of the gimmick more visibly. The world, not the combat, is the reason to enjoy a From game. And the darned cheapness prevents many from doing so.

Unfortunately you're right and their market is based 100% on a tribal gatekeeping culture like "true" Pokemon fans, and anything that breaks their gatekeeping will lose their business. It's sad, really.

@NEStalgia

Yeah but Fromsoft games sell a hell of a lot more than Metroid and Castlevania do, which was the point I was making earlier. So they've done a lot better with difficulty being the main selling point, and have less need to change that.

I don't agree that the difficulty is that simple, although it does change massively between their different games, so it's a bit hard to generalize about all of them. Dark Souls 1 though, is probably the clearest example difficulty infusing the level design. You have metal boulders rolling down stairs to crush you, swinging guillotines to knock you off thin walkways, greatbow archers shooting arrows that knock you off the edge of a cathedral, gaps that you have to jump across the reach new area. The list is almost endless. If they were going to make an easy mode for that game, it would be so much more complicated than just a simple damage multiplier.

My worry is that if they did add an easy mode, it would influence their future game design, so they'd deliberately stop including those kinds of environmental difficulties, and everything would just become HP counts and damage amounts, which would be a big loss for the series.