Would you prefer if games had a separate difficulty setting for boss fights?
I usually play games on “normal” difficulty these days, for a balanced challenge. However, I don’t particularly enjoy boss fights, or at least I don’t enjoy the extra challenge associated with them. Was thinking it would be nice if games had a separate setting so I could just set boss fights to “easy”, while not making the rest of the game less challenging as well.
This has a bad tendency to backfire badly. Really badly.
A lot of players like to do “save summing” (save often and reload if it doesn’t go well). With doing this, the game only moves forward when you are winning, so the game gets harder and harder since it thinks you are really “good” at the game. It ends up making players quit in frustration from the gaming being too hard and “unfair”.
This was a huge issue for (mostly PC) players of the original Max Paine, since people weren’t aware of this auto adjusting difficulty.
Resident Evil didn’t have this issue because of limited saves (and when you died, it would offer to load the save for you, so it could monitor your death count.)
I hate that. Nothing is more enraging than dying and having the loading screen say something like “hey, it looks like you suck, do you want to go back to normal difficulty?” No, no I don’t. Difficulty is part of the enjoyment fot me, having a feature that takes it out of my control would be a turnoff.
I really hate FromSoft for the utter lack of a difficulty slider in all of the Souls games.
I don’t have the time to grind their games to “git gud” like they want. Just let me enjoy the game instead of wanting to pull my hair out as I play.
I’ve essentially wasted $120 on Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring because I hear nothing but utter praise for them. Then I realized I didn’t have the time or patience to grind out those boss fights, so I get <10 hours of play time out of them before I have to stop.
If you’re on PC you could try looking for some mods to help alleviate the things you don’t like. But yes, it would be nice to have more options right out of the box.
Saying dark souls/elden ring is not easy enought is like saying schindlers list isnt funny enought. You are missing the point of the whole thing.
Besides. There are always ways to make something easier in from games. A spell, a item, some armor. And that is by design.
Best example is the taurus deamon in dsk1. You find an item before the boss room. Use the item and the thing is done in two seconds. Of course it is also posdible to brute force it with dodge skills.
I think the one thing people dont get about from games ist that they are as much detective games as they are action rpgs.
I feel like you’ve missed the point of the post. Not everyone likes that style of game or has time to put in being savaged by an overly difficult game. If the devs don’t want those people playing, that’s fine, but those people are still allowed to hate the games over it.
“no, you’re supposed to hate playing it. That’s what makes it fun” some people like to get choked, but if your try that shit on someone that hates it, expect a bad time…
Some people like getting choked, but if you don’t then maybe you shouldn’t do things where you might get choked. Maybe don’t go into Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and be like “bro, WTF you choked me out” when you get choked. Nobody is forcing you to play Fromsoft games. You want to play them and you know they’re hard. You’re putting yourself in that metaphorical chokehold and then complain when you get choked.
If that sounded stupid, then that’s because it is. Don’t be a child and expect the world to cater to your needs. Not everything is for you and if you don’t enjoy it then maybe you shouldn’t play. I don’t like Battle royales so I don’t play them. I don’t start up Warzone and then complain how I don’t enjoy it, because I understand when I’m not the demographic and I don’t expect the game to cater to my needs.
The problem is that, using this analogy, when someone who hates getting choked says they don’t want to try Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, a bunch of bjj fans come around telling them how awesome it is… And when the person says “that’s cool, but I just don’t like getting choked” they get told that’s the point of bjj, it’s awesome to get choked out…
Again, it’s fine if the devs want to make the game not have those options, but they also have to understand there are people that will not buy them or play them because of it. Fans of those games also need to understand that there will be people that hate those games only because of that reason. No amount of telling them “but that’s what makes it great though” is going to change their opinion.
Everytime someone says “I stay away from souls-like games because I just don’t like to play a game that is so difficult”, there will be someone replying either telling them off or trying to convince them they are wrong. We literally aren’t buying the game then complaining about it, we are explaining why we won’t buy those games.
You do realize that your “problem” is entirely irrelevant in the context of this thread? The comment first mentioning Souls games literally says they’ve bought the game and they want it to be easier. That is not an explanation why they wouldn’t buy the game, it’s a complaint that the game they’ve bought doesn’t cater to their needs. The problem you’ve described doesn’t exist here so there’s no problem with the analogy either.
The comment is the shittiest bad faith reply I’ve seen in a minute. Your caricaturized version of what the previous person said is not a good way to drive your point home.
Not all games are made for everyone. I’m not out here buying games that are relaxing/requiring little thought and complaining that they don’t require enough planning/patience/skill, I just play those games when I want something relaxing.
No one here is saying that you’re not allowed to like a game, what you can’t do is buy a game like this, that is notoriously advertised in this way (one of them has a godamn global death counter in it,)then complain that it is exactly what you knew it would be and expect people to sympathise.
If you are on PC you can download cheat engine and a table for the game. This will allow you to turn on invincibility if you just wish to explore at your leisure.
You could just do more research before buying a game at full price and being mad that the game isn’t for you. If you want a story those games aren’t for you. There’s more story in YouTube videos about the game than what’s actually upfront in the game. I understand being upset at a bad purchase but adding a difficulty slider is counter to the developers intent and thus not made for you.
Even the ones that have an easy mode need to make sure it’s not a too easy mode. Doom Eternal was horrible for that. In normal mode, you’d die in 3 to 4 hits, but in easy mode it took 10-12. So normal was too hard for many people (like myself, don’t have the time to “git gud”) and easy mode took all the challenge and fun out of it. And when I looked it up, it was a common complaint.
I have the opposite issue, so yes. I don’t particularly enjoy having to constantly pay attention to every enemy, but I enjoy learning a boss fight for an hour or two. I’ve also played a few games where dealing with random enemies felt harder than dealing with bosses due to sheer numbers, and it would help with that too.
So I don’t think it’s really a design problem. If you know exactly what you want your game’s experience to be, then don’t add it. But I’d argue for most games it isn’t integral to the experience how the difficulty of normal mobs vs bosses compares, and people have different preferences for it.
To me this seems like solving the wrong problem. Ever since Souls, too many games get obsessed about making their boss encounters challenging but making the main level gameplay just tedious filler. AC6 missions often feel like that. Imho the correct action is to refine the gameplay and figure out your core loop, instead of having massive difficulty spikes.
This is the gameplay equivalent of the “Whisper and Explosion” problem.
I did this with Ghosts of Tsushima. I played on hard mode but when I dueled against other samurai I often dropped to easy mode after getting destroyed fifteen or twenty times
Oh for sure. If we’re talking accessibility then yeah, it’s a different ball game entirely. Accessibility for everything is hard. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, just saying it’s hard.
That is a question where the answer is very complex. You’d have to break down different game design philosophies, think them through, and then apply them to specific games.
In general, I have two gut reactions:
If players are desiring to change the difficulty of the bosses compared to the rest of the game, the devs have to ask if there is a failure of design on their part. An example of this would be Dues Ex Human Revolution, which was an immersive sim that supported many different character builds, except the boss fights which were entirely based on combat. This created a frustrating and unfair situation to players not making a combat built character. The solution was that the boss fights were completely redesigned in the Director’s Cut release to support alternate builds. This is one example, but naturally there are many more. If a game has a “that boss”, the devs should look at it and examine if there is a problem with the design. Is a battle too comparatively difficult? Too tedious? Only suitable for certain builds (in games with builds)? Is the battle too much of a departure from standard gameplay in the rest of the game?
A popular game is going to get mods. If there is a strong desire in the player base, the mod is going to happen regardless of dev stubbornness, so devs may as well just give the people what they want. If a game is praised but has outcry for boss difficulty sliders, either put it in officially or incorporate it into the sequel.
Totally depends on the game. Some games, like Ratchet and Clank Size Matters, yes for the final boss. Games like Brok The InvestiGator, no because I found the combat easy on the hardest difficulty.
I agree. I honestly hate boss battles. I love playing video games on hard mode, but for some reason boss battles have never filled my soul with joy or given me a sense of satisfaction when I’m done. They just irritate me. I definitely have games where I’m on the hardest difficulty for normal game play and then right before every boss battle I’m going into settings changing the difficulty to story mode so I can knock them down in 5 hits and move on with the game.
I think my preference would be to have the game offer to reduce the difficulty temporarily after failing or offer other forms of support to make the boss encounter easier. If I selected Hard then I probably want the challenge of Hard, but if this difficulty spike is too much, then smoothing it out could be acceptable.
This is also ideally in addition to a way to adjust the difficulty mid-game as needed, of course.
I’m playing Jedi: Survivor on story mode right now and this is exactly how I feel. It’s a shame because even on story mode, boss fights in Fallen Order were still a little challenging.
In certain circumstances, I agree. I am currently playing The Outer Worlds RPG. In the game there is a companion quest which culminates in fighting a “Mantinqueen”- a giant monster space bug. There is a ton of build up to it. The monster had previously killed the companion’s entire mercenary group. The lair was spooky and atmospheric.
Problem was, mantiqueens were creatures I’d already fought in the open world. I could demolish one is about a minute with my upgraded weapons. This made the boss fight underwhelming.
I wouldn’t want the solution to be just tacking on more healthpoints, but there are other options to make the boss creature more interesting to fight and the game took none of them.
Yeah I was going to say… in many cases bosses seem to be easier than the normal fights. The bosses sort of focus on being a novel gimmick with easily telegraphed attacks, which often ends up being easier than normal fights in some games.
Around 2010, I remember this game studio sharing a innovative technique of game design where as people failed a boss battle, the game would slowly make the battle easier.
Some companies ran with it. Nintendo gives you extra help if you die multiple times in a level. Where some studios do it more behind the scenes. For example - giving you a bit more ammo. Or slowing the boss down a little more. I can’t remember the game, but they have a feature where a boss can’t one-shot you. And they give you more of that buff the more you die, so it “feels fair”.
Making the boss easier after I die to it would frustrate the hell out of me unless it was optional. I want it to be a challenge, not just something I can beat if I die enough times.
You’d have to die a few times to it too even notice it getting easier. Almost nobody wants to grind out a boss 20 times in order to beat it. And if properly done, the variables changed are so small each time, that it’s not noticeable.
It’s a system to help everyone enjoy the game without quitting out of frustration. Because the majority of people, in general, quit after a bit too much resistance.
There’s a quick drop off of enjoyment when a player feels the game is too difficult.
Sure, I’m generally in favour of more options when feasible. Hell, if someone wants to skip 90% of a single player game, more power to them. Hell, any non-competitive online game too, though I doubt many publishers would consider not charging extra for it…
Yeah, also a way to skip certain missions in older GTA games. I usually play games on easy because I have a low tolerance for frustration. Hence, I tend to avoid souls-likes, etc, although I would love to play them.
I think there is a wide difference between soulslikes and GTA. The most obvious being that soulslikes are understood to be difficult, while GTA difficulty spikes are almost random and tend to be a result of poor design.
In something like GTA there shouldn’t be a need to skip story critical missions, because those mission should be ironed out. The really frustrating missions either need to be reworked or pushed into optional side missions.
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