Anyone who played any beloved third-party NES game:
Oh, that's cute! 😏
Edit: Just so we're clear, I'm poking fun here, I like Demon/Dark Souls just fine.
but waay too many games get compared to them as though they're the first game with ball-retracting difficulty, lmao.
Unfortunately age has made complex mechanics involving reaction time well beyond me. Even games I used to be rather good at I am slowly losing my ability with, so the time to pick up such a series is long past.
Right, I'd never call it mindless by any stretch. Only restrictive to a point where its almost indistinguishable at times from something like a Tool-Assisted run because you truly can't do anything else and approach success. But again, that's my completely ill-informed opinion so its worth little.
As we spoke of earlier, they are more RPG than Action game. Which means the challenge level and the options are more diversified by your build rather than baked into the game itself. I'm a 1h sword and shield heavy armor guy by default so, as you said, something like Malenia completely crushed me and was highly difficult (mostly because of her heal on hit), wherein most bosses were just patience matches as I blocked my way through until an opening came. Something a mage or dex build would find the opposite of.
Which I think is the correct way for them to build their games. Most of the times all builds feel viable enough to beat the entire game with, sans a few that can't do early stuff due to lack of equipment. Some of them are overpowered for sure, but the bosses all feel doable by wildly different character types and playstyles with sufficient experience.
Its why Sekiro and to a lesser extent Bloodborne are so much less popular than Dark Souls/Elden Ring. They have limited playstyles that reward only one true type of fighter, so if it doesn't mesh with you then you just can't play it.
That's a broad question, so if you could narrow it down I'd be happy to give more useful thoughts rather than ramble aimlessly.
But I think really at the end of the day a lot of it comes down to "all games shouldn't be for everyone" and their difficulty level often reflects that. I've found certain games do scaling difficulty extremely well (Against the Storm is probably the best I've ever seen), and others that make me fucking hate the game ("Dynamic Difficulty" in Capcom games comes to mind).
Action games are hard to speak on as much because their "skill base" varies wildly across games, as does the intention. Like, I find DMC's focus on style to be incredibly unfun and ruins the game for me, but without it the game loses a considerable amount of difficulty or even reason to play.
That largely depends on your intention. High-score runs incentivise regular use of UTs (cinematic attacks) as time is scored and longer combo strings are rewarded. Outside of those, a number of players try to avoid them though. NG1 is entirely viable without them; NG2 makes this harder given the quantity of projectile-happy enemies. Given that I play for fun, I use them as necessary. Outside of infrequent moments of extreme pressure, the subset of "useful" moves is still respectable.
Thoughts on keeping combat cognitive/engaging (not just repeating the same actions on cue) while not being overly prescriptive (allowing players some freedom in playstyle) - in the context of an action RPG.
Many movesets are largely cosmetic - either because moves are similar in effect or because dominant strategies are present in their design. Varying contextual value of attacks/strings (ie. enemy state, stagger systems, position in relation to targets, exit position) is a good start. Used excessively, it can result in the same small subset problem and be pretty demanding on the player.
I like the idea of different kinds/layers of difficulty and/or player advantage. It grows the possibility space without directly influencing physical requirements (reaction time, precision etc) - fighting smart as a partial substitute for pure combat ability rather than numerical or RNG advantage (as is common in RPGs).
One of my big thoughts is finding a way to remove "attrition" from being a dominant part of the difficulty.
There exists no worse feeling than messing up a dodge or attack in the first 30 seconds and just letting yourself die because its not worth trying for the rest of the several minutes given you've already taken a hit/healed. Its one thing I think Bloodborne did really well, in that you can always recover from any hit for the most part with enough skill and aggression.
I don't have a perfect answer for how to solve the attrition issue, but I think its one that plagues the genre as a whole as the opposite (where healing/energy is showered upon you) often makes it far too easy at times if not limited.
As for movesets, I think its unironically something that requires the difficulty to be toned down to achieve the best results. Something I think the Musou genre does really well is that the game spends most of its time letting you feel powerful and you keep your moveset varied to just have fun doing wild shit.
Whereas most of the rest of the Action Genre makes you feel like a tiny ragdoll made of paper, especially on higher difficulties. Which creates a huge dissonance when your QTE and Cutscene attacks are fucking awesome and show you as an aggressive and skilled fighter, than in gameplay you are a running coward barely scraping by against fodder units.
Toning it down to allow for experimentation and the ability to find your own power fantasy I think is super important. And without a Scoring System which then punishes you for not constantly doing so (like DMC which makes more options almost feel like a downgrade at times). Letting the player define what is fun, whether its varied moves or tried n true, rather than cranking numbers around to force things to be "difficult."
I know that's a bit antithetical to what's trying to be accomplished, but I find that games that are difficult for the sake of being challenging usually come at a cost. Whereas games that are just that way because you are missing out on something and need to improve either knowledge or skill often feel much better to play. Dark Souls 1 vs 2 is a great example of the two different mindsets there, with 2 being absolutely way harder on purpose to the point where most people hate it.
Another idea is to move away from "in the moment" gameplay and offer a lot more "preparation." As in, being able to prepare for encounters by more specializing your gear to either your playstyle or what you expect to encounter as well as being able to effect the coming battle by committing tasks before it takes place.
Like, MGS5 let you run missions that would remove things like Cameras or Helmets from an area for a while. You could never accomplish all of the missions due to their time cost, so you had to pick what most effected your gameplay and then counter it before going in.
So in a more Action oriented game you could choose to blowup a warehouse to remove shields from the coming area or poison the food to thin their numbers or something like that more fitting to the game's theme. It shouldn't be easy to do these tasks and should always be limited so it doesn't become a game of just doing them everytime because why not, but having that as an option to either reduce the overall difficulty or simply counter the thing that counters you the hardest would offer a huge variability to the game.
I also rather liked Ghost of Tsushima's, and to a lesser extent Shadow of Mordor/War's, ability to specialize your playstyle to what feels most comfortable to you. Whether its an Archer, a Ninja or a Swordsman (with subsets in each) or simply capable of all three to weaker effect. While you can't play in it 100%, to prevent it becoming too easy, you can try to filter enemies towards your strong point to dominate them, or simply try to play all of them and work as a counter machine against whatever they throw at you. I think that's a great system instead of giving someone a set move pool and then demanding them use it to counter every situation.
While that does lean more into RPG levels, I think you could add it to more Action games with little loss. The old God of War games did it fine with the additional weapons that were pretty solid alternatives to the main blades and could offer completely different playstyles/counters.
I still ended up rambling a lot there so hopefully its still coherent enough, and maybe useful to your goals.
Agreed. Ideally we'll include two difficulty options (focusing on AI behaviour and spawn number/type as opposed to just damage multipliers), but with designed encounters balance is especially time consuming. My thinking is if the moment to moment gameplay remains mechanically satisfying (not mindless, good game feel, decent variety) then one has some leeway.
I think it's just a matter of internal consistency, and that both the Souls games and NG actually do well on this front.
Dark Souls is an inversion of the traditional power fantasy, and perseverance in the face of powerlessness is thematically prominent throughout the series. That the game loop mirrors the cycle of hollowing is a nice flourish.
In NG, Ryu is an untested heir to a clan tasked with a mission of utmost importance. There's a "secret" difficulty mode that leans into this, in which a support character provides continued assistance - because regardless of your failings the mission comes first. Gameplay wise, cowardice is not an option. Enemies actively punish prolonged blocking with lethal grapples, so it's aggression or death - and few games make you feel like more of a badass when you get it right.
Yeah, we're not going the scoring/combo-mad route and are instead treating movesets and weapon types, along with active abilities, as means of introducing meaningful alternatives - both to overcome contextual challenges and allow players to tailor their experience to some degree.
More than anything, I'm interested in ways of providing alternate avenues for the player to succeed - potentially easing mechanical difficulty beyond just a difficulty setting. The challenge is in designing something consistently available as to avoid difficulty spikes when it isn't applicable. Player knowledge as an advantage, in terms of obscure behaviours and enemy weaknesses, and battlefield control type abilities coupled with greater mobility seem the most viable to date.
This is something we thought about. Essentially treating stage challenges as combat puzzles, which the player could "solve" through secondary means. The problem again is balance. Designed encounters, in terms of enemy assortment and positioning generally provide more enjoyable and varied combat - which is a primary design goal. In practice, the two are quite hard to reconcile. We still intend to include this on a smaller scale - undermining area specific threats and constraints, easing certain difficulty factors and precluding some encounters, but it isn't prevalent enough to base a playthrough around unfortunately.
Definitely. Our progression is classless and skill based. All builds have access to the most basic of mechanics from each route. How you play influences what you can enhance, and ultimately how your "power grid" ends up looking.
It certainly is, thanks. Nuanced perspectives from someone mindful about mechanics and with a lot of gaming experience, but with different preferences, is never not useful. It's too easy to get locked into a single set of priorities/way of thinking when one is constantly iterating on a set design.
One idea I really liked and don't see in most other games is semi-non-linear progression with powerful specific items elsewhere like Gauntlet games used to offer.
So say the Chimera is way too hard for you at the moment, then you can move on and progress elsewhere at the expense of his rather great rewards until you eventually find the Scimitar which instantly cuts off one of his heads at the start of the battle, both reducing his health and removing an entire section of attacks. The Sword comes a bit later in a different world and isn't really easy to get even then, so its not a freebie but its an option.
This gives the players two distinct offerings to dealing with the difficulty. The skillful way to just kill him and get his loot/experience early on when you need it most, or the clever way where you just move on and return with a better chance.
You could even not make it so simple as just an instant attack, but something like a unique weapon that mechanically changes how you deal with it. Something like Demon's Souls Storm Ruler or DS3's giant slayer sword that lets you deal with the boss there in a completely different way, but actually putting it elsewhere instead of in the boss room and making the boss slightly more reasonable to kill without it.
I think Ghost of Tsushima might have done this one of the better ways I've seen. In that you could spend a lot of slow time using stealth to reduce the enemy numbers or you can just walk right into the room and hit the Stand Off button to play a risky game of proving your skill to instantly terrify a bunch of them out of wanting to fight.
And then once the combat begins you have all your different stances which provide both direct counters to certain enemies if you prefer, or simply an ability to adapt to what might be needed to deal with the encounter before you. Whether its playing defensively to angle for instant kills, running fast to get to the archers before dealing with the main group, or ruthless aggression to clear them out as fast as possible. And this is without getting into the options of what gear you put on to enhance which parts of your kit, thereby leaning into those particular moves over others.
It also offers what I think is the only "acceptable" difficulty level upgrade over normal gameplay. Which is the "swords work like real swords now" type, aka both the enemies and you become incredibly lethal. So while its harder, its also not just numerical but rewarding.