I do think you are overthinking it a little and worrying too much about the Souls experience vs what some people who could potentially derive some form of enjoyment from the series that you and I might not be able to grok actually want. Dodge iframes, parry windows, poise, stamina, stagger, status effects, all of these are mathematical variables inside the game that can be easily controlled on the fly with global difficulty modifiers. More iframes to dodges makes one able to avoid attacks with less precision on their read and timing. Longer recovery times between enemy patterns can allow for greedy hits that would otherwise get punished which also means more damage on the enemy, less time it is alive and less time for you to make mistakes. Less stamina drain from attacks combined with more forgiving regen can make it easier to simply stand with your guard up and endure. Less incoming damage and more poise means that you can make more favorable trades of blows. Flasks with more shots and more healing mean that you can make more mistakes or trades between fires. All of these things add up to allow for more mistakes, less precision, less grind, less risk for more reward, less mastery. They can make the difference between dying 20+ times between bonfires and dying 3 times, which for some people takes the game from unplayable frustration to fun dark fantasy romp.

As you said yourself, you can use the systems to deal disgusting amounts of damage, or become disgustingly tanky and laugh in the face of your enemies, as a friend of mine did after getting real tired of some of Elden Ring’s shit, but it requires mastery of the systems and the patience to achieve it. I know all the ways to make it easier. Some people don’t want to deal with that noise. A difficulty modifier that allows them to mess with the numbers on the fly achieves the same effect in a way that is more in line with the amount of effort they are willing to invest in the game. And an “I really don’t want to deal with this shit” godmode toggle covers the edge cases that maybe mathematics alone is not able to overcome. It’s anathema to the game’s design and intended way of engaging with it, yes, but literally just let people have fun in wrong and bad ways, in a singleplayer game it’s not hurting anything other than their own experience. They may not want Souls but they might be on board with something Souls can made into via easy to implement difficulty options.

I don’t think that any game should be designed from the ground-up with the notion that it can be played in any way you wish. If all weapons and skills are equally viable then there are no decisions to make and nothing ultimately matters. Power fantasies where you can do anything and be anyone and use whatever you wish are a bad design paradigm that leads to shallow and empty games. Absolutely agreed on this one. Ideally, games should have a clear idea of who they are aimed at and be built around delivering that experience rather than being an identity-less one size fits all product that is made to maximize mass appeal. Hell, most of the games I enjoy are niche products. I also completely agree with you that multiplayer games should be approached in good faith and that you should be expected to learn the basic systems of the game and hone them. If I am playing Helldivers and I am matched with someone who repeatedly shows that they are unwilling to engage with the game and respect its fundamentals, then I want to kick them from my squad. Especially if we are playing on the higher difficulties and they are complaining about game balance being supposedly bad rather than putting in the effort to learn the fundamentals and improve their gameplay before tackling harder difficulties.

I also don’t think any developer should be expected to carefully tailor and curate every difficulty setting to the point that they are essentially making several different games either. That is indeed unreasonable. Keep it to easily tweaked variables and cheat code equivalents and if that isn’t enough, then, yes, people should just find a different game to play. Make it clear what is the setting for the “proper” experience and be transparent about the scope and limitations of adjusting the difficulty. Ideally, every game should offer a demo that allows you to see what you are getting into and if the available scope of experience customization is enough to cover your needs.

What I believe is that how individuals choose to engage with singleplayer games is entirely up to them and I respect the fact that they might look for different types of experiences than I do. If these individuals can be provided with more choices to tweak their experience to their liking, that require low development effort and are put in after the game is designed around its intended gameplay loop and experience, then just do it and let them have their fun in peace however wrong it might be. Let people give themselves 99 flasks that heal them to full and and reduce the damage they take while increasing their own and boosting their stamina regen and even godmode themselves and play Ruined Medieval Dark Fantasy Walking Simulator instead of Elden Ring, idgaf, it’s their money and their time. Hopefully they will one day think “maybe I should try the actual intended experience” and play the real Souls but if they don’t want to that’s also fine.

In conclusion my stance on difficulty in singleplayer games is:

• make games with a clear intention and intended difficulty and experience
• give the people a big difficulty tab in the settings menu where they can tweak various easy to expose parameters to their liking as well as godmode/infinite consumables/whatever buttons that do what cheat codes used to in old games. You do not have to completely redesign the game from the ground up for easy mode and no one should seriously expect this from any developer, just offer a bunch of tweaks that may be cumulatively effective in making the game more approachable to some people who are put off by the default difficulty
• clearly point out what are the intended parameters and what kind of experience the game is meant to convey while making it clear that tweaking the values will detract from how the game as art is meant to be engaged with
• let people tweak the values to have their incomprehensible terrible fun if they so desire, idk maybe someone really likes sightseeing around the maps in Elden Ring for whatever reason, I think I remember a twitter post by someone who just really liked the world and wanted to walk around and vibe so it might just work for some folks and if it’s low hanging fruit development wise why not do it

I will go even further and state that all video games are fun

I am a Souls fan and I agree with most of everything you say. I am also the type who plays games on the hard difficulty settings and installs mods to make it even harder. I like being challenged and forced to learn and adapt and find new ways to use the mechanics provided by the game in order to succeed. When I was younger and had more spare time I did SL1 challenge runs in the Souls games, in DS3 I got some 3/4 through all the bosses before I got a job and just didn’t have the time and energy to perfect boss patterns anymore. It was very fun, my favorite bit was fighting the dope pope and changing gear during his phase switch. I found short rolls more favorable in his 1st phase as they landed me in perfect position for a punish after baiting his jumping lunge combo and long rolls more reliable during the 2nd to not get caught by the double.

However, my take on this particular subject is that I am a radical difficulty anarchist and people should be allowed to enjoy single player games in whatever ways they deem personally fun, even if it goes against the intended experience and core ideas of the game. If there was an option that allowed you to just iddqd your way through Fromsoft games or any other game where difficulty is part of the core game design, then I uncritically support their freedom to pick it and find fun in the game in their own way, even if it’s just vibing and taking in the scenery without engaging with the intended process. The only truly wrong way to play a single player game is if you are not having fun.

I have played other games where hardship is an intended part of the experience yet they provide difficulty settings that let you fuck all that noise and just brute-force your way through the game if you so desire. They have a description that explains you will not get the intended experience the game was meant to convey, but they empower you to disregard it and engage the game on your own terms. I don’t think the soulslike niche is in any way different or above such features and I fully support a god mode toggle that says “Hey, we worked hard to create a finely balanced gameplay loop that encourages learning from your mistakes and mastering the mechanics. We strongly believe you will get the most out of our game by giving it a chance and persevering, but if you truly do not care about that turn this on to enable chill vibes mode”.

Never been into jrpgs but I wish you all a very pleasant death to america

Missed all the fun being out for the evening. I just want to inform you that I am not even exaggerating for comedic purposes that much, here is a random video found by typing “mongol influence on russian culture” on google and clicking the video tab. It features bangers such as “It has been several hundred years in their genetic inheritance that authoritarianism is the only solution”.

https://youtu.be/5F45i0v_u6s?t=234

Damn. I haven’t heard this one in uni but I had a professor who was casually peddling Spengler and some other sus figures.

They literally think the Russian brainpan is incapable of comprehending democracy due to them assimilating Mongolo-Asiatic authoritarianism genes in the time they were under Mongol rule so probably, yeah.

coming soon to /r/landlords: As a Catholic landowner, how can I legally check that my tenants are not engaging in homosexual activities on my property?

it’s not just americans, I live outside the anglosphere and I have been informed by the feline skull measurers that my bicolor cat is genetically destined to be temperamental

This absolutely has to be a bit, I refuse to believe such a caricature of a person actually exists

Gonna keep it to things not already mentioned.

Big standalone fangame/total conversion:

• Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos, built off of Gothic 2. Was my GOTY when it came out, and I consider it better than anything the actual developers released since Gothic 2. I really dig the way it expands the original game’s systems, like apprenticeship. I have some complaints about it but it’s nothing major, and I overall greatly enjoyed my time with it, planning a new run when the big 2.0 update drops.

Mod packs:

• Morrowind Sharp, it’s like Viva New Vegas for Morrowind, I always use it as a base for my own setups, but it’s great as is for new players to get a patched, QoL enhanced and face-lifted vanilla-like experience.

Individual mods:

• Global Escalation for Squad - just a huge expansion-sized load of content
• Beautiful Cities of Morrowind, for bringing the game’s settlements closer to their concept art, implementing a lot of the new fan-made resources to make places more distinct and detailed while having a clear scope and keeping within vanilla-like territory
• Kenshi Kaizo, touches up and expands the existing content without bloating itself by filling the map with all sorts of new factions of varying quality and lore-adherence
• The Stardew Valley mod that adds a whole bunch of cat skins so I can have my irl cat in the game. And on the topic, SDV Expanded and Ridgeside Village when I just want more Stardew Valley stuff.

I knew a similar individual a a former workplace. Aside from flat earth stuff he believed that cancer is caused by bad generational karma, that any sexuality apart from straight is the result of childhood abuse, that females want to steal his vital essence via sex, that modern medicine is a scam and the best way to heal is through fasting and meditation, that the Bronze Age Collapse was caused by the fall of Atlantis, and a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t remember right now.

This reminds me of a particularly cursed enshittification dream I had where I was in a bar restroom and the soap dispenser was blocked unless you downloaded their app and created an account.

Western “I’m as left leaning as they come, but” types are making smug internet posts right fucking now about how cool and smart it is for the US to funnel arms into this conflict so that they can weaken Russia at little to no cost, while untrained 20 year olds are being sent to the slaughter.

My grandfather was at some point in his life detained and questioned by state security for, according to him, making “anticommunist political jokes” at work. He is a raging racist and antisemite (his first reaction to hearing my partner’s last name was a concerned “Is he a Jew?”) and most probably fucking deserved it.

Today I cooked for the first time after a couple months of ordering food. Feels really good. My partner also really enjoyed the food so that feels double extra good.

In my experience, the worst part is after the extraction itself, when the anesthetic wears off. Make sure your dentist gives you a prescription for a strong painkiller after you are done, like Ketoprofen. I had an extraction once that left me in severe pain several hours after and over the counter painkillers were poor at managing it.

I am from one of the former Eastern Bloc states. My parents, who were born in the 60s and experienced both literally said at a family meeting a few months ago that that they came to the conclusion that overthrowing the socialist governments in the East was a mistake and they had fallen for the mirage of cheap consumer goods while throwing away the achievements of their socialist governments that they had taken for granted. State provided employment and housing are major things they mentioned as definite positives from that era. And among other people their age or older, this is not in any way a rare perspective. If anything, the loudest victims of communism tend to be born 1990+.