• Hazzard@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Honestly… I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They’re also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It’s about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.

    IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn’t a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.

    There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y’know, why From Soft haven’t done it yet.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Accessibility isn’t just a case of ‘accessible to the handicapped’, man.

      • Hazzard@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        7 hours ago

        That’s a fair argument then, but… this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can “access” the thing.

        If someone isn’t willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that’s a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.

        Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like “Prepare to Die” is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They’ve done essentially everything but creating an explicit “easy mode” to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.

        • CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          3 hours ago

          Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.

          Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, that’s not inaccessible but it’s less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.

          That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem can’t be solved for every player unfortunately. And they don’t need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.

          The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldn’t ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying “I’d love to enjoy the art you’ve made, but I can’t. My disability/inability is stopping me” then I’d change my approach.

          I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and you’re right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but can’t just because of difficulty.

    • YodaDaCoda@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      9
      ·
      7 hours ago

      I wanna play a game with story interspersed with fun action combat… not keen on dying a million tonnes until I learn the timings for each enemy in order to be able to defeat them and get the next bit of story. Soulslike games aren’t accessible to me.

      • Hazzard@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        7 hours ago

        I mean, Souls is accessible to you, it sounds like it just isn’t for you. There are tons of games that I wish were made in a way that I’d enjoy more, features I’ve disliked, etc. But in almost all of those cases, someone loves those features the way they are, as is.

        Like, for example, I don’t love JRPG combat. I would love to play and enjoy Persona 5, but eh, I’m just not interested in investing in those systems to play that game. But that game is beloved, as is. I would never go petition Atlus to make Persona 6 into a Soulslike so that I “could” play it.

        And that’s great, there are a ridiculous amount of great games coming out every year, far more than I or basically anyone but full-time streamers have the time to play. So just… go play what you like?

        Trying to make games that are “for” everyone is how we end up with soulless bland titles like Ubisoft keeps pumping out. Good games have to take risks, and make interesting decisions that alienate some and engage others.

        • BroBot9000@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          6 hours ago

          Exactly!!!

          Not every game is made for you!

          Don’t like the gameplay or the challenge, you are welcome to switch to something else.

          Why do people expect everything to cater to their preferences?

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        6 hours ago

        In addition to the other comment, you can easily choose to make the game easy. The developers just ask that you pay attention. You can go explore and increase your level and improve your equipment to trivialize almost everything. If you choose the right gear, most bosses are very easy. You just want the victory handed to you, which is fine but that’s not the game they made. It’s totally OK to not like the game, but don’t pretend that’s the same thing as accessibility. You’re perfectly capable of completing the games. You just don’t want to. That’s cool. Go play any modern AAA that coddles you.