What do you mean by accessibility in this case? Color blind modes? Changing controls? The game already has built in difficulty controls, they're just within the game.

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The more accessibility the better is my opinion. Put a "beat the game" button on the start menu for all I care. I don't have to pick that option if I don't want to but it's there for the people that want it.

Shiiiiit, even add "play in reverse" too.

I think they probably don’t have a problem with accessibility options, more like a problem with something detracting from the vision of the game.

I’ll try an analogy but bare with me as It’s past my bedtime; imagine you go to a restaurant that serves only sushi and ask why they don’t have cooked beef in the sushi instead of raw fish because you’re allergic to fish and you love beef. It’s not unreasonable to say to that person, perhaps a sushi bar isn’t for you!

I hope that makes some kind of sense? Like I said it’s very late here and I’m probably not great at analogies at the best of times!

Difficulty is not accessibility options

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Well said, I agree.

Not every person needs to beat every game. Some games fundamentally are made to be difficult and not be completed by every person. If you have physical problems that compromise your fingers for instance, game designers aren't obligated to make their game beatable by you if they want their game to require split second reactions.

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Skill can be improved by yourself if you practice.

A blind person can not improve their sight.

A deaf person cant improve their hearing.

Someone that is colorblind cant stop being colorblind.

Someone with one hand cant grow a second hand.

Because nobody owes you beating a video game. It's an entertainment product and art. Someone's vision doesn't have to be beatable by every person on earth.

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I just feel accessibility options should be tied to console rather than game, going through 3-4 pages of random stuff I'll never use when starting a new game is a minor inconvenience.

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No, because their disabilities does not mean they are bad at the game.

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You are getting confused with the purpose of “accessibility options”

You being bad at the game and deciding not to get better at it is your own fault.

From software games are not meant to be completed by all people. I think NO difficulty options in this is good thing. Im not super good at games and once tried WHOLE DAY to beat dancer of bureal valley. It was so cool when i finally did that! So my vote in this is NO DIFFICULTY OPTIONS.

Everyone cant do everything, its just the way it is :]

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Like I said, its your choice not to get better at the game. No one elses.

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If games are proponents of ableism for not having difficulty options, then chess is ableist for requiring intelligence and a strategic mind.

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There it is. People aren't against accessibility. Even people that don't need those features sometimes use them.

Now difficulty is another issue. Devs not creating a slew of difficulty levels is not the same as requesting color blind mode.

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I do, yes. But me, i prefer the challenge is same for everyone in from software games.

Cool story, but accessibility options does not care how many Fromsoftware games you have finished

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Why is it such a massive problem that you can't beat the game?

Hey, truth hurts doesnt it?

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I understand your point too, but i stand by my words! There are other easier games to play

Anyways happy new year pal!

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So If they are easy, than there is no reason to lower the difficulty.

And you still don't know what accessibility options are.

Fromsoft fans start frothing at the mouth anytime someone says anything that could possibly be considered criticism of Fromsoft games

Apparently so, cause you were struggling this entire thread.

There's a difference between accessibility and difficulty.

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Why not just watch a video on YouTube at that point then?

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But it's asking a lot more that than your typical accessibility setting. I appreciate difficulty choices but I don't expect devs to do it every time.

And if part of a creator's vision for a game is that it's brutally difficult, then i can understand them not even wanting to put in an easy mode even if it's technically feasible. At some point you're asking a sports car to be a pickup truck. There are more games out there than can be played in a lifetime; if one isn't for you, play another one.

Difficulties are never well designed, and the majority of games with an easy/normal/hard difficulty scheme are too easy. I want them to spend the time to make the game well designed and very specifically balanced. In the case of souls games, I want the game to be hard, that's why I like that the devs tend to make fights hard, then, when testers say it's hard enough, they make it harder.

There's literally already ways of making the game easier in the souls games, especially elden ring which has the most difficulty modifiers of any souls game ever.

But why? What reason do you have that everyone else's experience has to be the same as yours?

You need to elaborate on what you mean by accessibility. Cuz if we’re talking about souls games we need to differentiate accessibility and difficulty, just for clarity yknow. Cuz they’re not really mutually inclusive

This entire post proves your point. Imagine complaining about a whole set of OPTIONAL options because it is against the designers vision. Like complaining that someone is wearing their glasses to view a painting because they should view it as their circumstances dictate.

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Because disabled people dont need you belittling them by implying the problem is how hard the game is.

The goal of accessibility is to make the game as the designers designed it accessible, not to put some playdough version in front of someone and tell them its the real thing.

You dont give paralympic athletes nerf guns and plastic balls, its offensive to suggest we should do that for video games.

If you dont like the game dont play it, but stop hiding behind this weird "accessibility" take.

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Don't buy hard games that are specifically made to be mechanically difficult if it's not doable for you.

Do you think disabled people don't know they are disabled?

Incels who’s only real accomplishments in love are playing video games.

An easy mode would absolutely ruin certain video games like the ones fromsoft makes. They are made with a cohesive vision and the difficulty is part of that. That if you can’t accept that then play another game. It doesn’t make anyone “ableist”

The painter painted it to be viewed with regular vision though. That's how it's meant to be experienced, viewing their painting with poor vision is not the intended experience.

Just like beating a game that a game designer wants to be hard on an easy mode is not the intended experience.

And the best thing about accessibility options is you don't have to use them if you don't want/need to and get the exact same experience as before surprised pikachu face

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Well then the painting isn't for everyone is it. If you can't view it with normal vision you shouldn't bother trying.

Not everything is made to be for everyone. Musicians don't write a song and then make sure it has enough bass to be enjoyable for deaf people.

Hmm well that makes sense

I guess wouldn’t go ahead and call all souls fans ableist tho I doubt that that concept runs thru their minds (can’t say the same for some comments) since it’s mostly just telling people to git gud (maybe that’s the same thing? Lmk).

I guess I wouldn’t also pin the blame on souls games specifically since they are just one niche company but maybe just the fact that they inadvertently created a genre (souls like) to which other gaming company’s try to replicate the formula

Edit: no hate or nun just trying to make sense of it my own. Personally I quit sekiro after about 2 hours of playing and just moved on.

The entire idea is a dark unforgiving world and having difficult enemies is a part of that theme. Beyond that the encounters are carefully designed to challenge you and be easy enough to overcome as you grow in skill. The combat is everything in this game and was designed for a very specific experience. Combat and theme are what people love about these games. Changing the difficult would alter that aspect and thus the core experience of the game

But why do sushi restaurants offer for example vegan options?

To reach more customers and this would be the same with games. More accessibility options means more players can enjoy awesome games.

Am I missing something? it sounds so simple for me and wouldn't affect my experience so why is it bad.

If you're talking accessibility because of disability or similar, then playing on PC is the way to go. There are "easy mode" mods for most FromSoft games that are on PC.

FromSoft games follow a sort of "vision" of how the game experience is supposed to be. It's a large part of what makes them such great games, but that mindset comes with the downside of less "accessibility", I guess.

But since people are beating their games one handed, on dance pads and rock band drum kits, how hard can they really be :)

Look, you asked why. Some games aren't for everyone. I say the same thing about games designed for children not needing a prepare to die mode. FS games have an intended audience. That audience is more the "hard-core" crowd. I think, for example, there are very few people who would say colorblind options or hearing impared options are a bad thing within reason for most games. Difficulty is an entirely different issue. Especially when people have beaten these games with banana peels.

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Difficulty as a part of creative vision has nothing to do with accessibility options. Fromsoft will never include options that detract from their vision for their art, nor should they. As a finely crafted experience trumps a malleable one for the majority of the playerbase in the realm of gaming. All accessibility options that do not impede or detract from the creators vision should be encouraged and supported though.

Without discussing the topic at hand.

The above comment answers your question on why people "are against" accesibility options. You know peoples standpoint already otherwise you wouldn't have made this post in the first place. There seems to be no real reason to restart this extremely common topic again where everyone repeats what has been said in every thread before this.

A central part of the theme is an unforgiving world with beasts much stronger than man. That would absolutely change with an easy mode. It would become a power fantasy instead of dark almost horror fantasy.

Playing souls games is also optional. If you don’t want a carefully designed difficult experience then don’t play a game where that is the product

Why spend thousands of dollars and potentially hundreds of hours of development time rebalancing fights for the maybe 20 people that would now buy the game that otherwise wouldn't?

I'm not entirely sure I understand the argument here. Do you want every video game ever made to be so easy an infant can beat it? Are games not allowed to be difficult anymore?

Summons are an easy mode, they provide the player with a way to make encounters easier. Leveling is also a way to make encounters easier in rpg/rpg-like games.

I think that maybe The argument you are looking for is,like the person that is wearing glasses maybe if you have a very specific disability you could get a controller to match said disability?

Edit: I think they are referred to as adaptive controllers. But that may just be a specific type.

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The sushi restaurant might want/need those vegan sales to help their bottom line and make sure they stay afloat. A company might feel not compromising their vision is worth losing a few sales to deliver what they want to make.

Nobody goes into a bakery that specializes in cake and then berates them when they won't make them a rack of ribs. They sell cake, if you want ribs, go somewhere else.

A very good example of this is people who are against Compass Pings being added to Dark and Darker. They could just not bind a ping button and never use them. The real issue is that they just don't want to lose the clear advantage they get from being on discord.

Miyazaki said that he does not design his games to be specifically difficult but he wants the player to experience the joy of overcoming a obstacle by learning from mistakes and finding solutions.

And easy mode in that case would definitely destroy the intended way of experiencing the game, because struggling is the concept of this game.

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There's such a broad range of physical disabilities, an easy that's manageable for one person might be completely impossible for someone else. You literally can't please everyone, and some companies want to deliver exactly what their vision is.

Having the player overcome challenges is a large part of what those games are about, and it's even baked in their atmosphere, design, and themes.

Since this is crucial to those games, I think the better question is how do you keep this vision intact while accommodating people who may not be physically capable of playing it. And I would 100% agree that FromSoftware could do a better job with accessibility options. But if your main concern is giving disabled people more access to play these games, I think you'd have more success tackling this from an input/controller perspective. If a disabled person could play on a controller or device they were comfortable with, the issue would be basically solved right there - especially since these games are not nearly as hard as the community makes them out to be, but maybe that's a separate discussion.

I’m beginning to think that physical disabilities might be the least of your problems.

Stay bitter, stay angry, have a nice life.

My partner is Blind. Video Games are one of our main pass-times together. They bring us joy.

Most games are obviously not accessible to my partner. The games that are- were either made for blind people, or have alternate options/difficulty settings that they can make work. Since we've met, I have spent countless hours describing, assisting, and practicing with them to give them access to games they could never play before.

The games she was able to play without me before we met? If the games were meant for sighted people, she got by with ones that had good sound maps, and options like- endless ammo, endless/infinte health, max health, max life cheats, etc. If meant for Blind people- holy shit she's so good that their username is permanently emblazoned in multiple online games/playerbases.

All that above is to say- my partner is a gamer. When given the tools to play on more even footing with others- a damn good one. She deserves a chance to play all the same games I love and kick my butt at them. I just know that if Splatoon had accessibility for her they'd be whooping me daily.

Giving my partner specific accessibility options for their needs would just present people who want a challenge with more likeminded players seeking similar things. The whole gaming community would benefit as a whole.

The philosophical point of "vision" or "intended experience" is lost on me when actual human beings are being excluded from everything including city design to video game designs and more.

Oh? Someone beat the Tryhard Game on a lower difficulty because of Disability? Gasp! Quick! Hide my life savings and gold plated toilet seat, because clearly they are coming to take all of my achievements from me alongside my life's work!!! /s

Has anyone considered that when you are playing life on hard mode (being Disabled) lowering the difficulty settings in a game means it just as hard for some Disabled folks to beat it, as it was for you when you played it on hard or average? They just actually stand a chance now. They still had to try.

Loose example using numbers for clarity: Disabled person using difficulty settings has difficulties that amounts to negative 5 ease of playability, while players who don't use the easier modes amount to Base 0. The Disabled player who needs/uses easy mode is now at Base 0 with everyone else, not +5.

The only thing I can ever hear when people argue against accessibility options in games is, "I want to feel special, and somehow including Disabled people won't let me do that anymore. So, instead of learning to cope, I demand and expect Disabled people to be left out in the cold even longer than they already have."

Yes that's correct. Hence the adaptive controller suggestion.

Because now this hypothetical sushi shop now has to worry about vegan/beef/whatever else options which dilutes how much attention they can put into the craft they originally intended to make.

FS don’t want to make easy to beat games. That might reduce their customer base. Thats fine. They’re optional to play and a wide market of easy to beat games already exists.

Do you know what the word "option" means?

How much drugs do you have to take to bring such an argument.

Adding an easier mode (which changes nothing in your experience or the "vision" of the game studio) is the same thing as walking into a bakery and wanting meat???

Your analogy would be more like buying a racing game and then complaining you can't fly to mars in said game.

Well I suppose the vegan option/accessible game would be a different item on the menu, which would be an entirely different game. Those games do exist but if you want to play this specific game or eat this specific piece of sushi it’s going have no easy mode and/or be made of fish…

…man I’m confusing myself.

The point is that you don't have to press that button if you don't want to

There are people that have no physical issues, but just aren't very good at games that end up grinding for dozens of hours to make it through. Some people bash their head against bosses they find hard for hundreds of attempts before they get it. Some people try a boss a few times, decide it's impossible, and then summon someone to beat it for them. Souls games have many routes towards success that don't boil down to "reduce boss damage to 50%".

You're only thinking of disabilities as physical handicaps, and you're only thinking of difficulty as a desirable gameplay element.

A person with a cognitive disorder may not be able to enjoy Dark Souls as is, but if you give them the option to make the game slower, then they can experience struggling against Sif.

It's honestly gross as fuck seeing everyone be like "Nah the game has to be experienced in one specific way which happens to be the way I did it, and if people can't do that then too bad. Why would it matter TO YOU if people alter THEIR experience?

If you’re talking about accessibility settings (eg colourblind display settings, subtitles or alternate button inputs), then fine, I agree they should be as all-inclusive as possible. But you’re trying to railroad or force the creator into changing their artistic vision for the end product. They want it hard to beat. Its entirely optional to play it, if easy to beat games are more your speed, Kirby or whatever already exists.

I don’t turn up where you work, knock the dicks out of your mouth and demand you do it differently.

An easier mode does change the intended experience. If the intended experience is supposed to be oppressive, difficult, grinding difficulty, making it so it's now a power fantasy is not the intended experience.

This.

Color correcting the game so that people who are certain degrees of colorblind have the same access to information is an accessibility option. Nerfing Quelaag because someone is butthurt they can't beat her is not.

I know this is a separating issue amongst devs as well. Some don't want to add it as they think it will take a lot of devtine to add, while some go wild in their options and state it only takes a day or so. Personally, I'm all for it. Even with the dreaded Souls games. Yes, a cinematic difficulty would change the experience, but at least I would get to view the entire game environment as created by the devs.

Dark and darker is supposed to be a somewhat hardcore approximation of dungeons and dragons with pvp. Adding a ping system doesn't make sense in the context of the game, discussing where enemies are is a fundamental part of the game. I think it should have proximity chat, but you should always have to say "enemies coming from the west" not just boop I pushed a button and now there's a marker that makes no in game sense why it exists.

Good on you for standing by your partner and finding ways to accommodate what is undoubtedly a challenging lifestyle. Unfortunately That 0 equilibrium person as you call it is exclusively what Fromsoft painstakingly centers their design decisions around. Sadly most media cannot be tailor made for any one person even if that ideal sounds enticing on paper.

As an example there are locations in Souls games where altering statistics or even player damage would be meaningless because the predicament requires balancing on a narrow ledge while enemies fire massive arrows at you. Being blind in this location would make it absolutely impossible to beat no matter what crutches were granted to the player. Multiply this single instance with many more moments like this and an easier mode cannot alleviate the core design principles without overhauling the game itself.

That investment would be 100× more significant than any kind of accessibility feature a dev team could implement. FromSoftware put everything into meticulously crafting an experience that caters to the mantra "difficult but fair" in order to grant as many players possible the euphoria of overcoming a challenging obstacle. Sadly not all gamers play from that 0 equilibrium and in many cases cannot remotely be adequately accommodated.

But the devs want you to fight malenia and think "this is so fucking hard", then when you talk about it with someone else who has done the fight, you both experienced the same thing. Walking in on cinematic difficulty, killing malenia in 3 hits, you've undermined the experience. I've seen multiple people say they regret using overpowered stuff/summons that beat the fight for them, because they didn't get the experience as it was intended.

The devs didn't design the environment to just exist and be seen, they designed it to go along with "very difficult boss".

Gatekeeping. It's really as simple as that. Many FromSoftware fans are equally scornful of people using mods to reduce the difficulty in offline mode.

Nope, another difficult just another difficult. If you want play classic mode, if you want experience world welcome.

Casual

Don't add to reach more customers if the customers they have are enough

Brings back memories of 2010s' "We want the Call of Duty audience" where all FPS series were dumbed down for the Cawadoody players

Answer my question and I'll answer yours

I have cerebral palsy. i beat Elden Ring multiple times in NG+ with literally one hand and a ps4 controller. i have also played against other players in the game and won.

if you have eyes to see and five working fingers, you can learn to play video games just as well as someone who does not have a disability. Might take you some time, took me years, but you'll eventually learn, and come up ways to make it even easier for yourself.

Came here to post exactly that.

God of War Ragnarok has been universally praised for its accessibility options, none of which are the difficulty settings.

Accessibility <> difficulty modes.

P.S. The "this must be due to some -ism" argument is pathetic and tired. You're less likely to have any real engagement when resorting to playing that card.

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Then again, I never got past the first area, so I missed most of all those environments they created. Same with Bloodborne where I couldn't get across that bridge. Both games and all that hard work gone to waste on me. I know the game is supposed to be difficult, and if I had 100 hours per game I would, but I don't. I want to see what they created, and not via a youtube video.

That's weird, if you had spent time exploring elden ring, you would've found alternate routes to at least 3 other zones that don't require you to beat any bosses. Very visually varied zones too.

Also, if you have time to beat 5 20 hour games you have time to beat 1 100 hour game, you just don't want to.

Counterpoint: Given that disabled folks are a small minority and the degree to which they are disabled can and does vary wildly is it reasonable to expect that significant time and money is poured into every effort to accommodate them across all mediums?

Should the base experience and feeling of achievement be tainted for the majority to cater for the minority?

For clarity: I'm not railing against the idea of accessibility options to assist disabled folks. The more the merrier imo. I'm arguing that there are certain core "features" of certain games, one of which is difficulty, that should not be sacrificed at the alter of accessibility...because the two concepts are not mutually inclusive.

Oh they absolutely are. But are they not allowed to have difficulty options?

But why? Why deny me to move straight to Melania if I want to? I don't need artschool diploma to go see the Mona Lisa. Would I appreciate it more? Sure. But if I buy a ticket to the Louvre, I can go straight to ML and enjoy it the wsy I want... Why is it so difficult to allow ppl to enjoy a game and all it has to offer the way THEY want ito?

Well, you can make a game so easy that it takes effort to lose if you want, that's your prerogative. But I guarantee you'll get bored. At that point you may as well just watch a series or movie when challenge gets removed.

Short answer yes, i just wonder what fulfillment one gains from that.

When you dramatically reduce the difficulty of dark souls it no longer becomes an impressive feat "I beat dark souls!!!" Yeah but you dramatically handicapped the stats of all the enemies in the process, so what? Everyone has now beat dark souls. It's not impressive any more.

I dunno to me it just seems demanding every game have a much easier mode is not unlike demanding every book have a version made designed for people who can't read very well. Accessibility isn't even the correct term, it's just a nicer way of saying "water this down for people who cant"

>When you dramatically reduce the difficulty of dark souls it no longer becomes an impressive feat "I beat dark souls!!!" Yeah but you dramatically handicapped the stats of all the enemies in the process, so what? Everyone has now beat dark souls. It's not impressive any more.

Holy shit what kind of sad life one must have to list beating a single player game as a life achievement. I guarantee you that nobody irl gives a shit that you beat dark souls.

Who gives a fuck if other people beat it on easy mode? Let em enjoy the spectacular world and one of the greatest lore ever. The more the merrier.

>But I guarantee you'll get bored

I guarantee you have 0 idea what you're talking about. I play most story based games nowadays on easy, compared to my younger days of often on hard and have just the same enjoyment. Interactivity is the key word. What do you think devs put easy difficulty in games for?

>"water this down for people who cant"

What's the problem with that? Nobody forces you to switch from hard to easy. Again this seems like an issue with not understanding what the word "option" means, so here's a little help:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/option#:~:text=option%20implies%20a%20power%20to%20choose%20that%20is%20specifically%20granted%20or%20guaranteed.&text=alternative%20implies%20a%20need%20to%20choose%20one%20and%20reject%20another%20possibility.&text=preference%20suggests%20a%20choice%20guided%20by%20one's%20judgment%20or%20predilections.

Op jumped ship unsurprisingly.

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