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Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

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Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#101

Post by AllegedAlec »

Osmose wrote: post #86
AllegedAlec wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that sucks for those people. I don't think framing it as a moral failure on Fromsoft's side is right though. It's an artistic decision, not a 'haha, go fuck yourself you armless twats' one.

It's not one or the other. It's both an artistic decision to leave no remote possibility of altering the difficulty, and a moral one to exclude folks whose disabilities make the game vastly more difficult than it is for others. They're responsible for both.

> a moral one to exclude folks whose disabilities make the game vastly more difficult than it is for others.

I disagree with this premise. Why hold game makers to this standard and not any other business? We don't hold car makers morally responsible for not accomodating blind drivers, or florists for excluding people with allergies.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#102

Post by calsy »

wyager wrote: post #14

I bought ER the other day after hearing rave review and was super disappointed. I ended up returning it after a couple hours. * Visuals: Disappointing. Looked like a cheap free-to-play MMO. Cheap-looking textures, stock-looking characters, bad rigging (e.g. characters holding things in unnatural poses), etc. * Controls: Unpleasant. Controls felt very sluggish. If this is supposed to make the game more challenging or…

You realise that the hole is deep on purpose to give the impression that it's dangerous. That the dialogue is telling you to let go of your fear and jump down, which begins a tutorial that is completely optional.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#103

Post by nurbl »

I'd just like to add that one of the most important features of a souls game is the fairness of it. It's almost always your fault when you lose; for reacting too slow, for rushing in, for not keeping your eyes open, for forgetting to equip the right stuff. You are punished for not learning.

I think the games feel hard compared to "normal" games because they don't hold your hand. If you see that and adjust, they are not that hard. They do test your patience, and force you to deal with frustration. Most games try their hardest to avoid this.

As an old nethack player I really appreciate this. I think in some ways, Souls is what nethack might have been if it was developed today.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#104

Post by Accacin »

I love the 'overcoming challenging boss fights' thing these games have.

You go through so many emotions on a tough boss. Start pretty confident, go through stages of "this boss is so stupid" to "the controls are so bad" to "I can't do this".

Then you get to a stage where the first part goes cleaner, and you start to believe again. Get it down to 20%, choke, die. Then going through sweaty palms, trying to stop yourself being too aggresive. Running out of flask charges, etc.

Then there's the time where you know it's one last hit and you wait your moment. Attack and you see the boss dying animation. Often I can't believe I just done it and then the feeling you get is amazing. My hands are shaking for a good 20mins and you are just giggling to yourself.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#105

Post by gretch »

meheleventyone wrote: post #74
Talanes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think both Souls games and Street Fighter are very watchable for non-players. Both rely on a very strong link between animation and gameplay, which I find reads more intuitive than something like watching someone play a shooter I'm unfamiliar with.

I actually think the hit volume based damage in both makes this rather untrue. Both Souls games and SF have moves where damage happens completely incongruously to the animation. This is partly what makes both ‘hard’ because there is this piece of hidden knowledge that when you first encounter it seems really unfair because you get hit by attacks that look like they missed. It’s somewhat remedied in fighting games bec…

It’s not really “completely incongruous” though?

Big haymaker swings deal massive damage. Or a jab/stomp from a gargantuan creature. Small/quick attacks from small creatures deal small damage.

What’s the problem?

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#106

Post by Accacin »

vlunkr wrote: post #58
vsareto wrote: post #2

>I do feel apologetic toward anyone who feels there’s just too much to overcome in my games Psh, I ain't buying it. I think they found a niche and like sticking to it, and maybe like making folks salty. They make a ton of people happy with the difficulty, but nothing about these games are apologetic.

As other comments say, the difficulty has been oversold. I don't know what your experiences with these games are, but there are lots of forgiving aspects to them that wouldn't be there if they just wanted to make the hardest games on the market. Here's a few: - every death refills your main healing items, so you can't run out - you keep all the items you collect before you die - you can recover lost experience points…

Yeah, it's not the game that's difficult. It's having the ability to keep trying it and work it out that's difficult.

I think of it like going back in time. You walk into a boss, you die.

The game says, "Ok, what did you learn from that death"? "Oh, I shouldn't try to dodge backwards from that attack", "Ok, you're back where you started - try again".

In this regard the games feel challenging but very fair. You can fight that boss for two hours straight and you haven't lost anything (other than possibly the souls you dropped). Any death you have is your fault, and you can't blame the game because you lost an item and now you are playing with another weapon or anything like that.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#107

Post by sisu »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #36
AmericanChopper wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "difficulty" stems from the game developers anticipating how you will approach situations based on earlier situations, and adding new caveats to the rules. This assessment seems very strange to me. Their games are hard because you need to be rather competent in their demanding mechanics to progress, and you need to learn every encounter perfectly to get past it. That’s why so many reviewers trashed Sekiro, beca…

It's in part this process of learning new encounters I'm talking about. In the beginning of Dark Souls, you can kill every enemy pretty much the same way. Then gradually you need to use more mechanics to get forward. Very little of it is actually mechanically demanding. What's demanded of you is that you observe and correctly assess the situation, that you recognize that what you are doing isn't working, and the solu…

> You have people playing these games with voice commands[1] and DDR mats[2] and whatever. If that isn't evidence this isn't a test of dexterity, I don't know what will.

I thought it's precisely the opposite: people find these kind of challenges meaningful because it is a test of dexterity that is particularly difficult to perform with such controllers.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#108

Post by Xelbair »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #21
marginalia_nu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the probably biggest mistake from other studios that try to replicate FromSoft's success is to try to make the games as difficult and punishing as possible. That really isn't the point. The secret sauce is arguably that FromSoft makes puzzle games disguised as action games. Everything is a mystery, from the lore to the game play. They are rewarding to play because it is rewarding to solve puzzles. The "diffic…

> The "difficulty" stems from the game developers anticipating how you will approach situations based on earlier situations, and adding new caveats to the rules. This assessment seems very strange to me. Their games are hard because you need to be rather competent in their demanding mechanics to progress, and you need to learn every encounter perfectly to get past it. That’s why so many reviewers trashed Sekiro, beca…

Did you really play those games? Because what you say sounds like a second hand opinion.

You do need to pay attention to bosses patterns, but overall mechanics aren't demanding.. and most importantly - they are reused. You have a dodge with huge amount of iframes, you can block a lot of attacks(especially in newer games) etc. There is no need for perfection. And you can always grind for more endurance and vitality in souls games.

Take a step back, observe the enemy, gauge the distance.. and adapt. but don't panic.

Sekiro was hard yes, but it was fair. It was more of a rhythm game to be honest, than an action one, and they added stealth as an 'equalizing' mechanic for open world content. And honestly it has a lot of tidbits that i bet most people didn't notice(Ogre being afraid of fire for one, bull being scared by firecrackers etc) that also help you greatly.

Some fights in Sekiro were really hard, but satisfying to finish - Isshin comes to the mind, and the Demon of Hatred. If some boss seemed unfair, or harsh, its because you didn't adapt to it properly - they gave you prosthetics that counter a lot of them(umbrella for block and counter, spear to pull out centipede from dead monkey, firecrackers etc). That game just punished trying to brute force it.

Also judging by how game reviewers play games(DOOM footage comes to mind).. it would be akin to listening to fresh junior JS dev opinion on state of linux codebase.

Furthermore there is a fair chance that the game just isn't made for those people. Not every product needs to work for everyone, or you'll just end up with mediocre sludge of similar games.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#109

Post by knolan »

Aissen wrote: post #80

What people seem to miss IMHO, is that this is "difficulty" thing is a time trade-off deeply ingrained in this type of game design. The frustration as you learn the rules of the game and try to improve this particular set of dexterity brings exhilarating satisfaction once you overcome the previously deemed impossible obstacles. But this also means that you need to have the time to plunge into this type of long-form c…

I think this is the point for me. I really love the concept of these games. The world building and lore is incredible but I don’t have the time to invest to make any progress. Instead any playtime is confusing and frustrating and then I have to stop before I’ve time to make and progress to counter those feelings.

A game like Jedi Fallen Order is a Souls like game and I make some headway with it before eventually throwing in the towel and switching to easy mode once I couldn’t defeat a particularly difficult boss.

Another issue is performance. These games have always been choppy and that doesn’t help.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#110

Post by nikanj »

nurbl wrote: post #103

I'd just like to add that one of the most important features of a souls game is the fairness of it. It's almost always your fault when you lose; for reacting too slow, for rushing in, for not keeping your eyes open, for forgetting to equip the right stuff. You are punished for not learning. I think the games feel hard compared to "normal" games because they don't hold your hand. If you see that and adjust, they are n…

And there's zero enemy scaling, and no level cap. If you want, you can go grind yourself to an absolute unit, then come mop the floor with the boss
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