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.
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.