Sekiro, Difficulty & the Importance of Perspective (Noclip) - Videos for the 97.4%

I mean, I know I'm repeating myself, but this is literally what Celeste did and it was fine. Celeste is a game with a main focus on difficulty, improving yourself, perseverance, and overcoming obstacles. The difficulty ties directly into the narrative of the game as the main character is struggling alongside the player. It's comparable to Souls in how it's both oppressive in difficulty but also encouraging you to improve. And yet Celeste implemented an Assist Mode that absolutely amounts to "official cheats or trainers for the game that just outright ignore the balance of the game", and it works just fine. Having it doesn't in any way detract from the game, all it does is it makes the game enjoyable by anyone who's interested, regardless of skill level, so you never have anyone feeling negativity about the game for being difficult. I'll also repeat that my opinion is that FromSoft would do well to add a Celeste-style Assist Mode to their games, but they're not obligated to. It just wouldn't hurt their games, it wouldn't hurt the narrative, it wouldn't hurt the gameplay. As long as it is optional, clearly described, and something you have to actively enable before starting the game. All it would do is allow more potential fans to enjoy the games, of which there are seemingly many considering the constant debate over whether they need easy modes and the fairly common negative opinions on the games for being difficult.

I honestly think that this conversation being framed as "Fromsoft games need an easy mode" has poisoned the well. You know what studio constantly produces inaccessible games? Nintendo. Nintendo's habit of throwing in mandatory waggle mechanics, which could easily be replaced with a simple button press, shuts out players who otherwise would be able to enjoy their titles. I absolutely believe the conversation about accessibility suffers from selfish pricks only bringing the topic up when it relates to games they personally find difficult. Most accessibility issues have nothing whatsoever to do with difficulty, but because of the dialogue surrounding them they've become almost synonymous.

I honestly don't think it would even be that hard to implement some form of assist mode in games that are purposefully hard like the Soulsborne series. You'd have to take some liberties with how punishing the game is, but you wouldn't need to change it dramatically enough to totally ruin the experience. Remember; assist modes aren't meant to be used by everybody, they are not what you should be gauging the games "artistic direction" on by their mere existence. The same thing applies to difficulty, 9/10 normal is the intended experience, judging the game on any other mode isn't the "artistic direction" intended, just an option. These are modifiers to the intended experience. For something like a Souls game, assists could be done a number of ways I think. We already have the summon system to ensure people who just struggle with walls of difficulty have a chance. But for motor impaired or those with slower reflexes an assist mode to increase the i-frames of rolls, or slightly increase parry windows, could ensure they get to play the game with almost all of the intended challenge intact. Slightly slowing down certain enemy move sets, or just limiting certain moves for people who really struggle with certain inputs is another option. There's really not much that can be done in the audio/visual realm as the games have generally well telegraphed attacks and traps as it stands. It's mostly just going to be timing related things that you could apply assists too. And the inputs in the Souls series are generally quite simple so that's not really a problem, that's a hardware thing that specialised gamepads work well for. Assist modes can come in a variety of forms, and developers really should strive to work out how they can include them in their games. Some games just aren't going to be really compatible with it, I can't for the life of me work out how you'd add reasonable assists to bullet hell type games without trivialising them or condescending the player. Whereas we have some decent examples of how actually complex games like DMC and some fighting games manage it via auto-combos or simplified inputs. But I don't see why it shouldn't be something a developer considers at the very least when designing their games. These are all meant to be options to tweak a game to your actual physical ability, not to tweak a game so you don't have to at least learn how to play it well. After all, there's only so many halfcoordinateds' or BrolyLegs' in the world. Not everybody with a disability can beast on able bodied people like they do.

Yeah, and Celeste is very specifically about overcoming difficulty, and yet the added Assist Mode did no harm to the game's vision. All I want is for From Soft games to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, because I'm a big fan of them, and I hate seeing how much negativity there is towards them due to their infamous difficulty. If there was an Assist Mode, the complaints would go away, and those interested enough would get to enjoy the game and perhaps even learn that the difficulty isn't even as bad as it's made out to be, and therefore go on to play the game normally. On your hypothetical ideas for implementation, I think those are pretty good. I think the Dark Souls series already did a lot to allow the player to tweak their own difficulty in-universe, but something more obvious like a covenant could make sense. I mean, Sekiro already has a very unsubtle Hard mode - there's a mechanic that makes the enemies tougher, and simply displays the kanji for 'difficult' under your healthbar, so in theory they could just put in an opposite bell. The problem with that for me though is that if you integrate it into the game, then all the arguments about it going against the artists intention of difficulty, and how it's difficult to tell which mode is the 'right' one, become relevant. In the case of an Assist Mode I think it actually should stick out as different from in-game ways to tweak difficulty like using summons and shields, because it specifically would not be the intended way to play the game. Using shields, summons, heavy armor etc. So it should only be accessible from the main menu, per save file, and it should clearly advertise that it's not the intended way to play. Something I also just thought about is that if we think of the experience of overcoming challenge as the artists goal with games like Celeste and Dark Souls, then having a too low skill level is actually a lot worse than just not being able to experience the art. It's not like a blind person not being able to see a painting, it's more like seeing a completely different message than what was intended. If you don't have the skill or perseverance to beat games that are intended to make you feel first oppressed and then elated when you overcome the challenge, then you only get to feel the oppression. If you can't beat Celeste, the narrative straight up transforms into a story about a girl suffering from anxiety wanting to improve, being told "You can do this!", and then failing anyway and giving up because it was too difficult. That's not a nice story to be told, and it's not only not the intended narrative, it's practically the exact opposite. And that does seem to be a lot of people's experience with the Souls games, they never get to feel that improvement and progression, they just get frustrated and give up. An Assist Mode obviously wouldn't give them the intended experience of overcoming impossible odds, but it would save them from experiencing the opposite.

Assist modes are about literal accessibility, making it playable for disabled people or people that lack skill. I keep mentioning the latter because there is no way to to distinguish between the two. People that are against assist modes are essentially (intentionally or not) advocating ableism.

Throughout the two threads I've been reading over regarding this topic, I'm not sure I've seen anyone actually outright against the concept of assist modes. People are against the idea of developers being obligated to include these functions - and that's fair, and a pretty far throw from being ableism. If someone were making posts insisting that disabled people should not play games at all, I'd understand this. But so far the discourse has primarily been placed around not restricting the developers vision.

Nobody obligates devs to include subtitles or colorblind modes but seldom anyone would consider those features to go against the dev's vision even though sound and color might play a critical role in those games. The debate isn't about obligating devs to do anything. Why would making what is essentially cheats for disabled people ever be inappropriate? You don't know the circumstance of every single disabled player, a game might actually be genuinely impossible for someone to complete without a Celeste-style assist mode. What does anyone personally stand to lose from it when assist modes are clearly defined as not being the way to play normally? Everybody gains from encouraging devs to make celeste-style assist modes. Normal players remain unaware the assist-mode exists if they don't look for it and get to enjoy the game as intended and disabled people get to be able to enjoy the game at all despite their condition. It's a win-win.

There are all good points and I guess I am just being elitist and biased against the difficulty after seeing way too many people complain about these games, and it doesn't really harm the game if it exist. However, I still believe this isn't a thing that should be demanded from devs when they can barely wrap up their games most of the time. Not all games can adapt the Celeste assist mode 1:1 and even if it could, there still need to be some adjustments all around to make sure nothing go wrong while using such options. It is a good bonus for those who need it, but I don't think it would be a point to complain about when the game doesn't have it.

Look at is this way: a game isn't meant to be played with having an illness or being disabled. So by definition giving those people tools to compensate for their life circumstances actually allows them to experience the game closer to the original dev vision. Again, regular players don't lose anything from it since celeste-style assist modes are hidden in the options and usually accompanied by a warning. This is a false dichotomy, there is never going to be a situation where having to include what is essentially basic cheats is ever going to affect the development of a game. Even just someone as simple as invincibility can go a long way for disabled players. However, devs are always free to make assist modes more in-depth if they have the resources to do so.

I do agree - but I'm 100% fine if devs disagree, because they're the ones outputting the artwork. This is ultimately the mindset that I think has sparked the debate. What devs think is extremely relevant when they're making art, and, when you get down to it, disabled people will always have the tools to experience game content as they wish. Cheats and trainers will never go away, and while they may not stand-in for true accessibility modes, they present a moral sort of back-up. I guess when it comes down to it, some people just aren't going to agree with this. Some people are always going to see games as mass entertainment first and foremost, and I'm personally unable to sway that mindset. But just as books aren't written primarily in braille, and movies don't have subs baked-in, games shouldn't be obligated to have their mechanics compromised for the inherent reason of accessibility. Just remember, that what a game says with it's mechanics is just as important as the artistry of the rest of the game. That's what is being impacted when gameplay is made easier. Most of the time, this message can stay in-tact when gameplay is made easier. Sometimes, that message cannot stay in-tact when making the gameplay easier. It is up to the devs to decide what route to go down when designing their game.

a game isn't meant to be played this way so the dev just didn't implement feature for it to be played this way, I don't see this is a problem to complain about.Having ways to make the game easier and to be experienced differently is alright but it isn't a necessity for devs to consider. You can't just add something like invincibility into a game without considering every situation the game has. Let's say there is a path blocked off with very strong enemy that blocks off the path until you get some specific item later on. Now if the player has cheats and just get pass this area, there is a possiblity they would've missed a chunk of the game by accident. Not all game can adapt cheats like Celeste's assist mode for many different reasons and there needs to be extra effort to test out these scenarios. Not many devs can afford the extra resource spent on developing a feature only for people out of their original target audience.

Factually untrue though. The vast majority of console games can't be modded and most of them don't include cheats nowadays. Modding a console is also not something the majority of players are willing to try. Nobody wants to obligate anyone to do anything, it's baffling that the debate is still being framed in such a way. So, given the option you would rather that a sick or crippled person not be able to play a game at all rather than be able to experience the game in the incorrect way? I know this is not what you think but I imagine that a Dark Souls fan that got injured would still like to play the game if he was given the tools to do so even if it changed the experience. I don't think we have the right to decide how much value people give to video games. I think that's something really easy to say when you're not sick or crippled and unable to play most games. I know that I wouldn't have been alive today if I wasn't able to play video games, I shudder to think of what I would do if I lost some motor control, developed some kind of illness of the nervous system or lost a limb in the future. I think people are aren't arguing in good faith when it comes to how much effort it takes to implement basic cheats and to fix edge cases associated with them. I don't think anyone could point me to any real life example where a dev did not implement cheat-like accessibility features because it would take too much development time. Even @angrytoadnoises mentions cheat tools like cheatengine as being a potential solution for disabled people (ignoring that consoles don't have access to such tools in any easy manner). See: You can't tell me with a straight face that for the vast majority of games, hastily throwing in toggle-able invincibility in a basic assist mode would be an unfeasible burden for all those poor game devs out there? Or as I flippantly mentioned above "you would rather that a sick or crippled person not be able to play a game at all rather than be able to experience the game in the incorrect way?"

There are more and more software and hardware that helps the players with disabilities, and I am all for devs providing support that allow these third-party and community aids to work, such as allowing for button mappings and all that. However, it isn't really a probelm for the average dev to tackle. Given the option the enjoy the game in alternative way for these players, I have no problem with it. But if they're already going for an experience different from the original scope, there is also a lot other ways for these people to experience and enjoy the game. For example, they can watch someone's stream of a playthrough of the game and partake in the chat with the streamer. It is also "enjoying the game" in a different way not unlike the assist mode where the game basically plays itself for them. It might not be possible to find cases where dev doesn't implement cheats due to cost reason, but it can't be denied that a half assed invincibility toggle could've broken the game in an unintended way without the proper testing. Edge cases might be few and far between, but you still need to examine the whole game before you can identify these edge cases and these take development time.

Just saying, assist modes don't have to be outright cheat codes. It's actually a bit insulting that people think that assist mode should simply equate to something as watered down as a cheat code list. Limiting movement to a set path(Mario Kart), flashing timing ques, larger menus, reading menu's, audio subtitles (HL2 had this). One of my favorites is QTE modes because QTE's are fucking stupid and should go away. There are all things that can work as an assist mode, and virtually no one without these limiting issues would use them because they don't need them. They aren't outright cheats and would massively help At the same time, certain games will find issues implementing them. Dark Souls would have a huge issue limiting movement to a path, it would be virtually impossible to do so. You can also combine keys, such as Steams input menu allows. Hold button for block, release for attack, or double click to attack. Very simple to implement.