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Difficulty and Punishment
9 Plays5 days ago
Join Dave and Jake as they push through the burning to discuss accessibility, difficulty, punishment, challenge, our idealized experiences, and why we fight in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Hollow Knight: Silksong OST - Cogwork Core
Outro:
- Furi OST - What We Fight For
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Transcript
Introduction and Casual Banter
00:00:46
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. my name is Jake and I am joined by my co-host as always Dave. How's it going tonight Dave? It's going cold. It is a lot colder.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, lot colder out there. I had some hot chili for dinner to compensate. Take it out of the can before you microwave. That's good life advice, yeah.
00:01:10
Speaker
If you haven't learned it by now, let it come from me. Uh-huh, yeah. Microwaving metal is a bad time. It interferes with the ah i want to call I want to say it's Magnetron.
00:01:26
Speaker
that an Autobot? It sounds like there would be. um But there's a microwave parts. I'm trying to remember exactly what it's called. um But it's got a cool... They used to name everything very sci-fi-esque back in the day.
Microwave Mechanics and Magnetron Explanation
00:01:44
Speaker
It is a magnetron. Yeah. It's part of my magnetron. What does it do? The magnetron is in the microwave oven. It produces microwaves which reflect off the metal floor walls and ceiling and pass through the turntable and microwave safe cookware to the food.
00:02:02
Speaker
Microwaves are attracted to and absorbed by fat, sugar and water molecules in the food, causing them to move, produce friction and heat, which cooks the food.
Ethics and Sponsorship in Podcasting
00:02:12
Speaker
The technology was the driving force behind the invention and history of the microwave.
00:02:17
Speaker
Oh, sure. But 5G is an issue for you. Yep.
00:02:23
Speaker
But yeah, the everything else, all the other parts in a microwave are like pretty normally named. And then that was the ah the future tech name they used for the the the main thing. Oh man, if i if I could name something, I'm sure I would also waste it on something stupid. I'm like, this is going to be cool. And five years later, like this isn't that cool. ahha The magnetron held up though. i mean, it's it's pretty cool. And lot of people still have microwaves. So um sometimes you just get that breakthrough.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm glad it's stuck with. Yeah. But sometimes you don't get that breakthrough, and that's because things are hard. Life.
00:03:05
Speaker
Better Yeah. This episode is sponsored by... yeah and um We don't have any any sponsors. we have too much ethics, credibility, lack of rep, lack of audience penetration, stuff like that.
00:03:23
Speaker
So...
Game Difficulty: Ninja Gaiden and Beyond
00:03:24
Speaker
um but we probably could get ads on here actually if we wanted to let let it be known yeah at any time any time it's just because I don't want to we want to keep the Patreon price down for everybody exactly and um but back to the segue we missed um we play a fair number or number of difficult games there's one actually that
00:03:54
Speaker
came out recently. i don't know a whole lot about I'm not going to talk a lot about it, but like I attract platinum games a lot, right? Ever since revengeance and someone made the mistake of in their review saying that the new Ninja Gaiden game is the closest thing that we'll ever get to a revengeance spiritual successor.
00:04:15
Speaker
And I was like, oh okay. But a Ninja Gaiden is traditionally a very difficult game. And this new one, they gave you they get have a bunch of accessibility options.
00:04:28
Speaker
They have like auto dodge, I think. You can turn on auto dodge and just be like, pop off, you know look real cool. um And I didn't play the older Ninja Gaiden games, but they have they have an aura of being incredibly difficult.
Debate: Should Games Like Dark Souls Be Easier?
00:04:45
Speaker
ah That's my segue. So we're talking about difficulty in games.
00:04:50
Speaker
So... I mean, the first question is always going to come up is should there be an easy mode for Dark Souls? I feel like that's a great entry point to these ah conversations. Sure.
00:05:03
Speaker
Basically saying is the way that it was initially made and intended what it should stay as. Or should accessibility options be added in so that more people can experience that?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah. um And in some people's eyes, it kind of waters down. ah you're not really playing Dark Souls. You're playing like a modern version or like Baby Souls or something. Yeah. um Where do you land on that? Let's let's start there.
00:05:35
Speaker
I think it would be perfectly fine. to have accessibility. I would have no issues with accessibility options for any and all of the souls games.
00:05:47
Speaker
There you go. There's my hot take. Shit. Um, I agree with that as well. Um, for me personally, I want to play like normal mode on a given game and be like, yeah whatever this is, cool.
00:06:02
Speaker
And then if I need to change it to an easier thing or accessibility change, um I will. Yeah. But if they don't have it, it's not going to take much away from me because...
00:06:20
Speaker
I usually know what I'm interested in playing and what I'm willing to put up with in a game. Right. So I'm typically not surprised of like, Oh, holy shit. This is some bullshit. I can't get past here. I'm not willing to get past.
00:06:34
Speaker
Um,
00:06:36
Speaker
But again, that's for me personally. i don't give a shit what other people do. I want them to have fun. um I want more people to share in the love of the games that I've enjoyed, even if it is not the exact verbatim experience.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. um Because I don't think that is the whole thing at the core of it. Yeah.
Accessibility vs. Core Gameplay: Super Meat Boy
00:06:59
Speaker
And I mean, i can understand for some games where... accessibility might just, if the entire game is basically the challenge, right?
00:07:09
Speaker
I could kind of understand the presence of accessibility options basically undercutting the experience in some way. And by that, I mean, mean like, so here's an example, right? Like, um, super meat boy is pretty much entirely just jumps in platforming precision platforming. It's the entire freaking game.
00:07:32
Speaker
Technically, maybe there's some sort of plot with like a bandaid girl and the but boss you're trying to beat or something like that. Nobody cares.
00:07:43
Speaker
That's all just your fetus. Dr. Fetus. Thank you. I'm glad you actually know that. Yeah. It's solely from Binding of Isaac. Yeah. um But if you had some sort of accessibility option that actually just let people checkpoint in place or otherwise ignore the jumping and the platforming, there's really no there's like literally no game.
00:08:02
Speaker
Right. And in that situation where it's like the entire game. Sure. Why not? Like, I don't really think the accessibility option matters that much because it's these it in this case, it's almost the equivalent of like those old ah cheat codes that we had for like Starcraft or Age of Empires or whatever.
00:08:19
Speaker
You'd have the one you could punch in that just instantly ended the level. Right. You just instantly win. There's no gameplay there. um That's the case, I think, where you can make an argument that like accessibility options don't really help out too much.
00:08:36
Speaker
And I know that people might apply. It's kind of a sliding scale. Maybe for some people, that's where Dark Souls falls, where they're like, OK, well, if you had closer revives or if you took half damage or something like that,
00:08:51
Speaker
then there really isn't like gameplay. But I don't think that's true. I think there's a lot in the item descriptions and the world building and the progress and the NPC quest, stuff like that. And so that's the reason I would say accessibility options are entirely justified um for a game like that.
00:09:08
Speaker
And it's perfectly fine to even just say, hey, this is not the intended experience. Tons of games do that, right? Like their normal mode description is saying, this is the version that we balanced against, yeah right?
00:09:20
Speaker
The game, play it the way it was intended to be played. Or the hard mode might say like, oh, if you're really familiar with shooters and you want a challenge, here you go.
00:09:30
Speaker
i don't i don't ah subscribe to the idea of like, there's a purity to having a very specific level of difficulty in a game.
00:09:41
Speaker
No, i I like more challenging games. if I'm looking to push myself on average, uh, more so just because I've played so many games. So certain things you get very used to where you're like, I know how to run, jump and shoot.
00:10:00
Speaker
Um, like I need more things stacked on top of it.
Challenging Games: Enjoyment and Accessibility
00:10:04
Speaker
Yeah. so it doesn't just feel like I've already done this before. I've already solved this basically. Um, but then I also love like a nice,
00:10:14
Speaker
chill out game. yeah Yeah. Shout out to mega bonk. Um, it is just like vampire survivors. I'm like, well, what if I did this? Could I optimize this?
00:10:25
Speaker
And I'm trying to do like slide tech jumps and things to make things more optimized to get a higher score at the end of the day. Right. Um, and also like I, on the, the other side coming at this from the other angle, if the game is not necessarily based around the challenge,
00:10:44
Speaker
than adding some hardcore mode or advanced difficulty or something like that. I don't think that necessarily adds anything to the game either. right like Who wants to play super hardcore Soma? right You're like, I don't. I literally don't care. like the The presence of any sort of failure condition did really nothing for me in this game. I was already engaged on the concepts you're playing around.
00:11:10
Speaker
um It's very story based. so the challenge doesn't matter so much. Why why would it be you know beneficial? No one's asking for that, right? No one's asking. They're like, I really played some of the man. i I wish there was a hardcore ultra kill mode, right? It's like, no, it's not necessary.
00:11:29
Speaker
I feel like a lot of times, like you were saying, they kind of balance against normal and then they will add other modes on top of that, which some of it does feel slider. You might have to kneecap some of the A.I. a little bit.
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah. um But yeah just growing up typically with your options for easy, medium guitar hero, easy, medium, hard. Yeah. um The other one expert.
00:11:56
Speaker
Mm hmm. It was nice to have those options because you're like, I feel comfortable at this level. I now want to push myself. I want to go like up the next thing in DDR.
00:12:07
Speaker
um So it is really cool to have that flexibility in games where you are going to go back. Yeah. ah Like you're saying with Soma, it's very single player story driven.
00:12:19
Speaker
and I don't know how you'd make it harder. You could have more enemies are going to chase you, but like it doesn't affect anything. Yeah, exactly. all Right.
00:12:32
Speaker
And that being said, like, I also want to acknowledge you mentioned like a single player component. um
FromSoft Games: Difficulty and Inclusion
00:12:39
Speaker
There are plenty of like games where if they prove themselves to be engaging,
00:12:43
Speaker
I'm interested in harder mode content for that. Right. um My brain immediately went to um some of the multiplayer games that we played. Right. Like we played ah Destiny.
00:12:53
Speaker
We did dungeons. We did raids. We did, you know, um sometimes even harder versions of those dungeons and rage raids like master level dungeons for artifact, artifice gear and stuff like that.
00:13:05
Speaker
And Yes, there was this payoff. We're doing it for some sort of drop at the end. But the game, it also set us up in such a place that we um got some level of enjoyment, or at least we're willing to, you know, engage in this content to ah to go through and do that.
00:13:23
Speaker
um But if we didn't enjoy the game at all, there would be no reason to have that harder mode, to have that that extra difficulty or that extra challenge. So I kind of come at this from the perspective of You should have your normal mode. You should have your intended gameplay and in Dark Souls. If there was like a difficulty slider for Dark Souls, this would be, you know, here is the game as we balanced it.
00:13:49
Speaker
And then here's your easier mode. Here's the here's masochist mode. Here is the place where you just really enjoy pay zero Lenny. Just default to this one, right? Like that's or Yimpha, right? Just default to this one.
00:14:04
Speaker
um But i I don't know. I am of the opinion, you know, having played, I've now played some games where I enjoyed it with um some of those accessibility settings turned on just so I could like go through the game at the pace that I enjoyed.
00:14:24
Speaker
um And I really don't think they hurt anything. oh um I don't, I don't disdain the person who's asking for the easy mode anymore, you know? Yeah. I'm kind of of the mindset again like I said before i think that options Let me rephrase. I'm fine with options being there.
Gaming 'Training Wheels': Encouraging New Players
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah, and someone's like hey, i would like these options entirely valid I understand where you're coming from hmm I Currently do not believe that every game that is made should have an easy medium and hard or easy normal and hard mode um partially for what we were saying as far as depending on the game type but uh let's say night rain for example the latest in the elder ring series uh-huh yeah um they designed that game as is and for me i'm fine with that because they're like they're like hey this is what we advertise i'm like cool um
00:15:31
Speaker
It also would be kind of harder to balance with other players unless you were specifically doing lobby instances, which I guess you are. Yeah, it's because that game has elements of multiplayer persistence, right?
00:15:46
Speaker
So. if they really wanted to support different levels of difficulty, going back to the destiny example, you'd have to be like, Oh, if you play, if this, this game game run is on easy difficulty, then you can't get the rarest loot or whatever the artifacts or whatever, like you can customize your character with.
00:16:06
Speaker
Um, But you can still, you know, get basic gear or whatever. um That's literally how MMOs do it, right? It's like you you you have some chase rewards for the people that are playing at a higher difficulty, but ah you still let people play it at a lower difficulty and get something for it.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah. And that's fine. Like, who cares? Like, you could just cheat. I actually might amend my statement a little bit. Yeah. Because like let's say FromSoft comes out with another game in the next two years, which they're going to.
00:16:40
Speaker
and Normally, the case. Whatever that quote-unquote Bloodborne 2 thing is. Dark Souls 2, 3. And I'm not expecting them to have a difficulty slider.
00:16:52
Speaker
I'm not expecting them to have options. Sure. And I'm okay with that. Again, for me. yeah I think it is nicer to have...
Accessibility and Participation: The Bowling Analogy
00:17:02
Speaker
essentially like a training wheels option for newer people because i think a lot of people just see these commercials about games or hear about it from friends you're like oh my god it's flooding my youtube and reddit posts yeah and you kind of latch on to something a little bit where you're like, I know enough about this, but I've heard it's very difficult. I heard that like it's hard to get into.
00:17:26
Speaker
um So you kind of have that idea of, well, I'm not going to be able to do that. I don't do difficult games. This is a difficult game. Yeah. And sometimes you just really need to just get your toes in the water to be like,
00:17:41
Speaker
oh okay and then when you're ready you can put everything underwater and drown in um into the game if you're comfortable with that right but in the same way it's like i was never big into bowling it was always just a group activity And I sucked at bowling.
00:18:03
Speaker
So when they have the option for bumpers or like the the little ramp you can set your ball on, I'm like, lot set me up, dude. Let's go. yeah um And nobody shits on the person. Well, I mean, depending if you're in like... a competitive bowling yeah honestly like if we as soon as you start talking about bowling people it's gonna get way more toxic than the gaming community but i mean like if you're playing with friends for
Dark Souls History: Player Experience Customization
00:18:29
Speaker
example yes yeah you're there for fun right um and i i think it's important to note like even all the way back to dark souls blind
00:18:39
Speaker
there were in some ways accessibility options in the game. There were just like by accessibility options. It's just some things are easier than other things. Like we joke about you start the game, you go kill the merchant, you get the Uchi Katana.
00:18:54
Speaker
uka Uchi Katana is an excellent freaking weapon in Dark Souls. It's very fast. You're not, you know, committing to lengthy attack animations. It's got insane reach. It's got excellent damage. It's got like all of these properties.
00:19:09
Speaker
Compared to like somebody doing a challenge run or something like that, the Uchi Katana is easy mode for Dark Souls. Right. But if I'm a new player and I just install Dark Souls, I'm not going to know about that that existing.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So i'm just saying like these are games where they allow you to tailor your experience one way or the other. And going to like what you said as far as like How do you get people, you know, kind of into these games? Where do they start? Where do you recommend people start?
00:19:39
Speaker
lot of people started with Elden Ring because it gives you so many options to customize the difficulty of your experience. Are you using the spirit summons? What types of weapons are you using? Are you using magic?
00:19:52
Speaker
You know, how much do you farm up? How much do you level up before you beat a boss? Because you could just go all the way. and Like, you could just level up as much as you're willing to spend time for. Yeah. um It doesn't make the game worse. It really doesn't.
00:20:06
Speaker
No, it's just.
00:20:09
Speaker
I feel like for any type of game that's going to have experience given to like level. mean, obviously they start you out in like a pretty light, low key area. Nothing's super crazy unless you immediately go for the guy. The tree's the lesson, the tree sentinel. Yeah, yeah.
00:20:28
Speaker
The lesson. And you're not supposed to be able to fight all the bosses. Yeah. Or if you go over and you're like, oh, there's a giant dragon. Okay, I don't want to be here yet.
Runbacks in Games: Design and Punishment
00:20:37
Speaker
um But a lot of other stuff, like you could go around killing sheep and get XP if that's where your comfort level is. Or you can just keep hitting the guards near one of the early sites of grace. Yeah, Godric sites, yeah.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, and when you're comfortable, you can keep pushing that boundary further and further out as you progress through the game. Yeah, exactly. and um Now, I do want to mention, to introduce this, that, and you you brought this up a little bit by talking about um the idea of people gatekeeping a game originally.
00:21:13
Speaker
This is pretty well founded and just the roots of gaming. So here I have the four difficulty levels available for the original MS-DOS release of Wolfenstein three d old freaking game right and they reused um some of these in some of the more recent wolfenstein games um but the first one i'll start at the the hardest level difficulty right i am death incarnate very macho very doom guy whatever right
00:21:48
Speaker
ah The level below that is the actual default. So there's four and they put you like past the middle. The actual default is bring them on. Underneath that is don't hurt me.
00:22:00
Speaker
And then can I play daddy is the easiest. Yeah. And the one that I remember, I think this might have been for the first new Wolfenstein game. Can I play daddy literally has BJ Blazkowicz.
00:22:13
Speaker
Massifier with a pacifier and a little baby bonnet on. And it's funny, right? I'm going to acknowledge it is funny. But it's also definitely playing to that stereotype of like you're a child for needing to use this mode, right? It's, it's, it's patronizing you very aggressively even.
00:22:36
Speaker
Um, and I do think it's a little bit, obviously not every game does this. It's very on the nose. But it is representative of some of that sentiment that exists in the gaming community, I think, where it's like, oh, you played it on easy mode. OK, well, I mean, you didn't really play the game, right?
00:22:54
Speaker
You didn't 100% it. You didn't do the under five hour speed run. Uh-huh. You didn't collect all of the... ah wanted posters or whatever catch all of the sea shanties i mean not really a gamer but um yeah it's weird because ah feel like a lot of games for a good portion of it are very much like hey i'm gonna go have my own experience with it mean you can obviously have multiplayers things like peak where there are achievements that you can get but yeah it's very much you do it for yourself um
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, like I've seen several different friends go on just to do like oh I want to go for this achievement But nobody shit talks anybody for being like you don't have this one Uh-huh because it's their own thing right right so you might share hey I'm excited because I got this and it gives me a cool cosmetic and I get to show it off and people are like oh That's pretty cool. Mm-hmm, but no one's like why don't you have this hat Jeremy, right?
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's um it's it's kind of funny. I agree with what you're saying. Like, I really don't care whether people have achievements for beating the game on easy difficulty or normal difficulty or whatever.
00:24:12
Speaker
I start getting interested once people have achievements for challenge difficulties, the speed run, five hour one you're talking about, which I think both Hollow Knight and Silksong had um or have.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Because they're specifically meant to be challenging above and beyond, but it's not like... Unless it's getting over it with Bennett Foddy or something like that, I really don't care about your normal mode clear. It doesn't matter whether it's normal mode or easy mode, right?
00:24:41
Speaker
um And I kind of think that... part of this comes from this sentiment of, you know, gamers needing to be hyper competitive and especially for older games. How else are you going to sell these alienware laptops, dude? Right. So, oh yeah, you have to have a keyboard that can, um, but has rapid fire mode, which is like literally banned and all these FPS games now, but like,
00:25:09
Speaker
it's It's based off this old idea that it's like if other people are playing the same game I'm playing and they're completing it and it's a lower difficulty, somehow they're damaging my ego. They're damaging my clear of the game, right? It's like it's kind of like just beating Bloodborne, for instance.
00:25:31
Speaker
um You're like, well, I know that you were able to defeat all of these bosses. That's kind of cool, right? Like, awesome. You beat Bloodborne. Great. Orphan of cost. Like, did you go for an cost? But like, um ah and I can understand that sentiment, but it's very, not it's not at all helpful to expand the hobby.
00:25:51
Speaker
And the fact that so many people play games now, is because they're not all like what was like pitfall you know like arcade game style difficulty or um crap what was the uh the one where you're a spaceship and you shoot asteroids and then a big face comes out and tries to eat you asteroid yeah that's a good guess invaders no no it's uh because he's like um run coward run run sinistar thank you wasn't gonna get there in a minute but like those games are just meant to be very difficult to eat quarters and we've developed past that and now there's other things we consider for games right does it have a good story does it have good gameplay loop
00:26:38
Speaker
difficulty is not a huge part of it technology has advanced we have more options for where we want to design games into yeah yeah certain games do not have challenging gameplay but they have a beautiful story to share and it's a great experience fuck yeah ah other things are meant to be or at least designed to be more challenging because you have more options for movement, more options for inputs. People have been playing games for a while.
00:27:11
Speaker
um So it's nice to have that extra layer of more mechanics, more other things, more a difficulty. Right. Yeah.
00:27:22
Speaker
No, I agree. um So with that all being said, that's it. That's the ground level, right?
Silksong's Challenge: Balancing Difficulty and Punishment
00:27:30
Speaker
A game recently came out that we might have had an episode on Hollow Knight Silksong.
00:27:36
Speaker
And we've already basically established that we would both be fine with accessibility options and Dark Souls. So I don't know. We might just agree on all the points I'm about to say here as well.
00:27:48
Speaker
But I want to i want to ah define terms, right? So difficulty is um how hard it is to clear something on its own, how difficult it is to achieve something, to use the same word in its own. how difficult it how Whether you can accomplish something, right?
00:28:09
Speaker
um And if it is it takes more effort to accomplish, then that's more difficult. punishment or punish something being punishing is every time that you fail, you suffer some setback.
00:28:26
Speaker
um And these aren't necessarily exactly the same thing, but a lot of people when they talk about games just lump all of that under difficulty.
00:28:36
Speaker
One of the things, the thing that had most from what I've seen online that most dominated the dialogue around Silksong was how punishing the game was.
00:28:49
Speaker
And we talked about it a little bit in our episode, but there were, there's so many other good things to talk about in that game that I don't think we focused on it too much.
00:28:59
Speaker
No. How do you rate the difficulty and the punishment of a game like Silksong? And then as a bonus after that, we can talk about it within like Dark Souls.
00:29:13
Speaker
Cause that's where our fan base all comes from. We're very big in the souls community. So I do think in general it is a more difficult game just because there's more and new stuff in it.
00:29:29
Speaker
Again, just that building upon the initial Hollow Knight model. um And just some of the bosses I think are more challenging.
00:29:40
Speaker
But I would say more so kind of through the community sentiment, it is much more punishing. um Mainly in like every time a boss hits you, you lose two pips of health.
00:29:55
Speaker
Right. Every single time. Which for context, it didn't really happen until the late game in Hollow Knight. you're like okay you're approaching the end and now the enemies are all going to do to health but you have a lot more masks of health to to soak that at that point yeah um but stuff like that stuff like bile water being run back of a an encounter um a lot of other run backs as well
00:30:28
Speaker
Do runbacks, do those are those categorized as difficulty for you? Or would you put them in the difficulty bucket or the punishment bucket?
00:30:36
Speaker
I would say more so the punishment bucket. and Okay. Because if you do fail a boss, you get set back to wherever that checkpoint was. And then you have to get your ass back to the boss fight.
00:30:48
Speaker
Which sometimes, not that bad, might be next door. Right. Other times, you're like... Hey, remember this? You just feel like this long hallway of poison and bullshit. Uh-huh. Yeah.
00:30:59
Speaker
This again.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, I agree for the record. I absolutely agree. I think the boss fights have been more difficult in general, but I'm fine with difficult boss fights.
00:31:13
Speaker
It feels like I'm wasting my time when I'm running back afterwards, because here's here's the place. The thing I don't like in games as much is when there's like a foregone conclusion or I'm revisiting something that has I've already cleared. Right. I've already shown that I can accomplish this.
00:31:32
Speaker
um I'm not going to put any spoiler disclaimers, so there's no spoilers for physical song. There's a particular boss that will knock you out as part of their death animation.
00:31:43
Speaker
If you're just standing there emoting on them, you know, like dabbing ah um during their death animation or whatever, which obviously I was. um That's not difficult. It has nothing to do with difficult. It is 100% punishment because I had to go back and then fight the boss again.
00:32:01
Speaker
Did that make me a slightly better player? Sure, probably. you know like i understood that the the fight at that point. um But at the same time, every single time that I was doing that traversal on the run back, maybe it made me a little bit better at platforming. You could make the argument, I think.
00:32:19
Speaker
But I didn't feel like I was accomplishing something every time. um I found that was actually just it felt like the game was wasting my time to just be completely blunt about It just feels like the game's wasting your time.
00:32:33
Speaker
And it's not interesting either. Right. Whereas fighting the boss, even if I was struggling, was interesting because I was either failing or improving at the various mechanics that were going on in the boss fight.
00:32:49
Speaker
That's my take. I get where you're coming from. Yeah. ah My question for you would be, how does it feel for you? Like, let's say anytime you clear an area and then touch a bench, all the enemies are going respawn.
00:33:04
Speaker
Sure. So you going back through that area is technically you revisiting content you've already done. That's very true. Um... I guess that really doesn't bother me and i'm probably conditioned for this because of literally Dark Souls, right?
00:33:21
Speaker
The two ways that enemies respawn in Dark Souls is you either rest at a bonfire or you die, ah which respawns you at a bonfire, right? um Generally. And I'm just used to that, right? So for me, the enemies being part of, the enemies are part of the terrain, right? They're part of the level to me.
00:33:41
Speaker
It's all part of the same, whether it's like an explosive barrel that rolls down a ramp when you get close or an enemy has a shield and a sword and they're trying to trying to kill you.
00:33:52
Speaker
Those are just obstacles that are just part of the level to me in the same way you would expect Goombas to be in the same position in like a Mario game. But it is a good observation because that's just because of how I've been conditioned in the games that I've played that I see it like that.
00:34:08
Speaker
Because using that the burning barrel rolling down as an example, where could that be from? In Dark Souls one on the way to the.
00:34:19
Speaker
I don't remember. Is it like Smelter Demon or something?
00:34:24
Speaker
No, it's one on the bridge. Cap... No, not Capra. Capra? Oh, yeah. Capra's further in. Yeah. What is that guy? He's not that important. Plunging attack. But yeah, basically when you fight that guy on the bridge, you do have to run through ah series of people throwing firebombs, some skeletons trying to like jump gank you, other skeletons trying to jump gank you, um a skeleton that's rolling a burning barrel downstairs. And every single time you have to go back through that.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah. Taurus demon, by the way. Taurus. That makes sense. Yeah. Again, I don't know how I forgot, but it's it's been like 20 years. it's so It's a long time since Dark Souls came out. So like for me...
00:35:09
Speaker
I guess my brain kind of accepts all of that again due to the conditioning from playing Dark Souls and other games like that. Yeah, where it's all just kind of part of it.
00:35:21
Speaker
It's not just, hey, do you have to only beat the boss? It's like you have to get there first and beat the boss. Yeah, I feel like in Silksong in general, obviously The game's out to hurt you to a degree. Yeah.
00:35:41
Speaker
In the way, shape, and form of you not realizing that something is an enemy. You not realizing that something is trapped. Right. It causes to A trapped bench is the worst thing you could possibly do psychologically. It's dirty.
00:35:56
Speaker
But funny at the same time. um Because I know everyone's going to have that same shared experience where they're like, yeah mother fuck. Yeah.
00:36:05
Speaker
But yeah, like it really does kind of make you actively vigilant.
00:36:12
Speaker
For right or wrong. h um But like going through Hunter's March, I'm like, oh, this is the guy who has a trap here and I can just jump over the pad that triggers it and run past them.
00:36:26
Speaker
Right. Even so, I ran into it several times. Yeah, I don't know what it is psychologically. I keep running into it even when I'm thinking of something else at the time. I entered entered the zone where I just cannot remember the run back while I'm doing the run back. Your hands are on autopilot. You're thinking of other things ahead.
00:36:44
Speaker
yeah exactly. I get that. um But yeah, like for me, I just I take it all as that's what it is. i think certain parts do suck. I hated bile water as a whole.
00:36:57
Speaker
yeah I hated doing the run back for it. ah But it also felt good when I overcame that challenge. Sure. Yeah. And do you think to interject with a question, do you think overcoming the challenge felt better because of the number of times you had to do the run back or because the run back was part of it?
00:37:17
Speaker
I think part of it is tied to that where I knew I never had to go through that again. It's basically breaking free of a car. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely relief.
00:37:29
Speaker
Um, cause I think more so is like the challenge of the boss encounter itself. Right. Um, yeah, the level thing, I'm just, it's just so ingrained in me where I'm like,
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, the checkpoint isn't always outside of the door. um Right. Certain games have added that. And I'm like, oh, this is a nice little thing. and when When did we start doing this? Mm hmm. But because I grew up on the other thing, it doesn't phase me in the same way.
00:38:00
Speaker
That's fair. Because that's how it's been for so long. You know, right. I think the and I agree. I agree with what you're saying. i have a little bit less tolerance for runbacks now, I think, um because I'm just old and lazy.
00:38:14
Speaker
But um the thing that's interesting to me is Hollow Knight and the Silksong were both very inspired by um Dark Souls, Demon Souls, the Souls games.
00:38:25
Speaker
Very obvious, right? It's the die, go get your retrieval. It's not a game over screen when you die type formula, bosses, things like that. I mean, lots of games have bosses. I'm not going to give Dark Souls that.
00:38:37
Speaker
um But the combination of some of these like Metroid, Zelda, Dark Souls, This is the Trinity that makes Hollow Knight, you know, a really excellent game, compliant combined with all of the effort Team Cherry put into, like, the soundscape and the atmosphere and everything like that. But it's really good.
00:38:55
Speaker
um But Hollow Knight 1 had all of that. Like, it had runbacks. Silksong has runbacks. Notably, and Dark Souls, you know, also had runbacks, like you mentioned, to the Taurus Demon.
00:39:09
Speaker
But FromSoft stopped doing that to a certain degree with Elden Ring, which is a game that came out well before Slugsong launched.
Elden Ring: Reducing Runbacks and Focus on Bosses
00:39:19
Speaker
So there was a divergent path here, right? it's they're Well, one, they're not just copying FromSoft, which is good, right?
00:39:26
Speaker
But it allows us to kind of critique these and be like, which of these do you prefer? because Elden Ring generally respawns you really freaking close to the boss.
00:39:38
Speaker
um There's ah like an ice dragon that exists in like it's on a a frozen lake. And that one is a little bit further away because you have to like run onto the lake to trigger the fight again. And it like appears out of the mist. It's really cool.
00:39:53
Speaker
But you're looking at like almost no effort, nothing like platforming. You're not dodging flaming barrels that Donkey Kong threw at you or anything like that. There's it's just you and then the boss again.
00:40:05
Speaker
And then the challenge can just be entirely loaded within the boss at that point. um Because there's no expectation that you're just like replaying content to get to that place.
00:40:17
Speaker
Silksong didn't take this approach. So which one is right? And the other one is clearly super wrong and unjustifiable.
00:40:29
Speaker
I feel like anything I'm going to cite all is always going to be like the like even going to Nito, even when you have like the close bonfire. Oh, it's so you don't have to run past like.
00:40:42
Speaker
Two skeleton towers, two giant skeletons, a whole bunch of pygmies, and you're likely to miss that bonfire, too, on that first attempt, right? Because it's like super dark in there.
00:40:54
Speaker
yeah it's like you have to do this stuff and you're dodging fireballs just to go down to the thing where you drop and take health damage anyway yep um yeah so i don't love that it's just something i had to put up with early on um like i said i'm still used to it just kind of ah that's what it is right um
00:41:19
Speaker
I do kind of like though in Elden Ring, for example, with like the Stakes of America, which are generally going to be closer, but using Hogwarts as an example.
00:41:30
Speaker
Okay. You're basically unlocking shortcut doors. So from that one site of grace, you can kind of just beeline it. It's like, hey, you've kind of completed this area here. You're talking about Raya Lucario, right? You're not actually talking about the the Harry Potter game.
00:41:47
Speaker
I don't know. Specifically in Raya Lucario, but it's fun to call it Hogwarts.
00:41:53
Speaker
But after you've kind of gone through, you can open these doors on the left so that you can just take that shortcut kind of straight to it. Yeah. And I like that design as far as rewarding you. Like, hey, you've done this. We're not going to make you do the whole thing again.
00:42:07
Speaker
So here's like a little, a little back door. I will tell you about, yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's fair. I agree with that. Um, um If it's not very obvious, my opinion in this is I don't care about runbacks at all.
00:42:22
Speaker
Drop me in the boss fight for all I care. We've come a long way since. I think i think we could you and I could probably agree that the line is in an unskippable cutscene that you have to see every time that you attempt a lot to buy game.
00:42:39
Speaker
There's no justification for that. There could be no eternal salvation for those game developers' souls. I'm sorry. Like, it's out of my hands. One, you're hurting the speedrunning community, all right? True. One.
00:42:53
Speaker
But they were also wouldn't lose the fight, though. so That's true. But, yeah, it's one of those things where if you've done it already and you're like, okay, I just want to try again. i just want to get back to that try.
00:43:09
Speaker
It's nice to have that, okay, here you go. using something like super meat boy as an example it's like you died you're like bam respawn try again yeah um ah so you don't really have to dwell on your fuck up or anything it's just like hey let's get you back in there yeah i mean you raise a good at and an interesting example though which is that um roguelikes are almost a hundred percent punishment like in that, that, that ratio, then that mix between like difficulty and punishment, I shouldn't say a hundred percent, but the punishment bar is insane. You lose your entire run when you die. Yeah.
00:43:52
Speaker
But I mean, obviously it's not like you restarted legend of Zelda Ocarina of time. Excuse me. Cause you died in the shadow temple or something like that. But, um,
00:44:04
Speaker
Still, your entire run is gone and you're just relying on meta progression to kind of keep
Roguelikes and Punishment in Game Design
00:44:09
Speaker
it going. And because of that, there's this almost ideological shift where it's just like you don't see losing a run as actually being the full punishment that it might be.
00:44:21
Speaker
It's just playing the game. Sometimes it sucks to lose a run, but it's expected that you're going to lose runs at a point. Yeah. Yeah. Um, And I wonder, that probably helps. That honestly probably helps people be more accepting of runbacks in general. Because if you think about it, Hades won.
00:44:41
Speaker
Anytime you didn't, you know, beat the final boss, it's a runback, right? It's like, it's a runback through a lot of content. And there's different things that are going to develop across that path. And one of the things that makes Hades an excellent freaking game is that's where the content is. It's all in the runback.
00:44:59
Speaker
For the most part. don't know if I'd be willing to call that a run back. But it is. Like from a from a content experience. They vary it up, right? You have different things that are happening in your roguelike run.
00:45:14
Speaker
But ultimately, the goal is to get there and beat the final boss. In theory. Yeah, but it's.
00:45:24
Speaker
It's a run. know what I mean Like the game is going through those three or four levels, beating the bosses and the enemies in the levels.
00:45:35
Speaker
Mm hmm. And then you're done. How fast did I do it? How much damage did I deal? What did I unlock passively for the mother base? Mm hmm. But each one is just an instance of going back in there. Yeah.
00:45:53
Speaker
I'm just saying, like, if your goal was to be to beat the final boss, the big bad evil guy, then... failing in that fight then causes you to do ah run back through the rest of the content of the game.
00:46:08
Speaker
It's just the game is tied. The game is tailored so that the run back is the gameplay. That is the content. That's where the roguelike decisions are being made. That's where RNG comes into play, stuff like that.
00:46:20
Speaker
um And that's the reason that that sort of run back is not at all. Bother bothersome to me compared to like, doing the same platforming over and over again that I've already shown that I could do successfully.
00:46:33
Speaker
Right. um
00:46:37
Speaker
And this is actually like, this is really important for roguelikes as well. Some of the ones that have struggled have been ones where the, i mean, keep calling it the run back. I know it's like not technically, but the gameplay loop starts slowly and the difficulty is very low.
00:46:53
Speaker
And then you spend too much time in that early game before you get back to the challenging or engaging content where the player might've been struggling before.
00:47:04
Speaker
um And this is like this is the difficulty spike problem that some games have where it's just like I beat boss one. Of course I was going to. I beat boss two. Of course i was going to Boss three is insanely difficult and I can't beat that one. Right.
00:47:20
Speaker
That would that would make people feel bad, I think. I mean, I can see that to a degree, but I also feel like each time you're going back with an entirely for the most part, entirely different set of tools like you might bring hades the same boons in Hades, but you're not going to have the exact same drops. You're not going to have the exact same encounters.
00:47:43
Speaker
You might not even face the same bosses, right? Yeah. um So it has that variety each time. ah So maybe you're going to find a better combination to help you with that third boss. Maybe you're going have better RNG and you're just like, oh, it wasn't me. It was the game.
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah. That's the reason it's better, right? What you're describing is if A is the start and d is the final boss, there's something different between A and D each time.
00:48:15
Speaker
And that's where the gameplay is engaging. Whereas the bio water run back. Yeah, exactly. one thing It's changing over time is my mental state. Exactly. Exactly that. um So, yeah, that's my that's my hot take. The people that are like the run back is fine are wrong.
00:48:36
Speaker
There you go It's, it's, it's not fine. You're just too used to being abused. So. like I mean, I'm not going to disagree with that. Life, life is, life is too short for the run back. There you Let's do this. your Your, your tagline for my hot take.
00:48:54
Speaker
Um, But yeah, also I'm never going to look back at a game and say, oh man, platforming through this one area. That's never going to be something I remember as far as run back is concerned.
00:49:09
Speaker
Yeah. um Whereas going up Mount Freya, yeah that's specifically designed to be platforming. You don't exactly have a boss at the top, but...
00:49:24
Speaker
But I mean, what's funny is I realize this is kind of undercut. This is an argument against what I'm saying, but you will remember Bile Water, right? Like that's the thing. You have that experience and the people who played Silksong will remember that specific level because of that that shared trauma.
00:49:40
Speaker
i I almost think you always need something that sucks in a game to be like, this is the group thing that we're all going to hate. yeah And then other things won't seem as bad.
00:49:53
Speaker
Where you're like, hey, I don't really like doing this four kings fight. But man, isn't so great not to walk through poison and have flies try and stab me and like people throw poop balls at me? Like, oh man.
00:50:06
Speaker
Actually, I like the i like the the kings fight. ah I think it's a pretty cool one. I think it's interesting. I think but the other part of it is i usually don't lose there by that point in the game because I'm doing it late enough.
00:50:20
Speaker
um So I can just appreciate the cool forced perspective things in the void. But um yeah, redoing it bunch would suck. um The other thing since we talked, I talked to friend of the show, special guest Ian
Nostalgia and Design in Dark Souls
00:50:35
Speaker
um about this topic earlier a week ago, and he specifically did mention the Dark Souls one option to just eat yourself off into the cemetery instead of going to Undead Burg like you should, because the game just lets you.
00:50:52
Speaker
Right. It's just like, oh, do you want to just die repeatedly thinking that it's the way forward and if I recall correctly that's literally what my wife did she was just like alright it looks like this is the way I've got to go and starts she got down into the catacombs got the bonfire there which now changes her respawn point into further danger and it's completely possible to just do that right like it's actually possible to make it all the way down to the golden wall
00:51:24
Speaker
blocking the way to Nito off the start of Dark Souls 1, which is insane game design. These are people that realistically, like, you should tell them to make new characters because it's going to be way better than trying to work their way past the um the pinwheel skeletons and things like that to make it back up.
00:51:49
Speaker
Yeah. Um, but people remember how much it sucks to try to do the cemetery when it's really early. Unless you're like running for the, uh, as white hander, which obviously, I mean, you should, you should do, but, um, it's fun.
00:52:08
Speaker
Anytime we start talking about dark souls, it just, it just comes a right back. It's like right thing. I forget who I was talking to recently, but I think I did mention is why hand her in a conversation with them. Like the last two weeks.
00:52:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They're like, oh, yeah? i was like, yeah, if you're going to go a quality build, you know, just slap that bad boy on, get your 40 strength, 40 dex. Do you want to enchant it or something? You can because it yeah doesn't have any damage type besides just physical innately.
00:52:37
Speaker
um If you charge it while on your torrent, you can just yeet somebody into space. Mm-hmm.
00:52:48
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I wonder, I know the original Dark Souls had, um it was a mod. There was like, there was there was two mods I still remember. One of them was, um it changed the Astus into Sunny D, which was great.
00:53:02
Speaker
And the other one is it changed the model of the Zwei Hander to like make it cleaner and like sharper and cooler and stuff like that. But then they also just added the text in like the Dark Souls font. Basically, it was gothic looking font. Prepare to die.
00:53:17
Speaker
it it was just was just incredibly funny. It's edgy nerd stuff. But.
Silksong: Challenge, Reward, and Community
00:53:22
Speaker
um But yeah. that's That's pretty much difficulty.
00:53:28
Speaker
And I do think, I do think, for the people that are complaining about where Silksong ended up, as far as like punishment is concerned, they forget that they were literally just NPCs in Dark Souls that would sit in a corner in a little cubbyhole that was basically only sized to fit that one little NPC.
00:53:48
Speaker
And then if you walked in front of them, they would try to kick you off of a ledge. Yeah, that's not difficulty. That's just punishment. The game was like, do you not know about this? You'll probably die to it. The game was full of that stuff.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, i I never want to be the person who's like gatekeeping and saying get good. ah But I will say... Games like Silksong are obviously going to be challenging in both their difficulty and punishment.
00:54:23
Speaker
But because the game is out to... The game's not trying to help you out. Oh, no. Right? So when you overcome those things, it feels good. Yeah.
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah. yeah um And they also do everything in a way where you're interacting with the NPCs in different areas as you go. ah You're helping do side quests and basically like those little town areas your little hubs it feels like a nice i'm sure we said this in the episode a nice respite where it's like hey you don't have to deal with the chaos of everything out there trying to kill you um you can just chill here cash in your stuff buy an item yeah talk to a nice npc um
00:55:12
Speaker
I gotta stop ending my sentences with um. I've done that like five times. No, that's alright. The only downside to it is it makes it it takes me a little bit longer to realize that you finished the thought.
00:55:23
Speaker
But I've done the same thing. um but There you go. And I agree with i agree with what you're saying. um they help It helps pace out um the game to do that.
00:55:35
Speaker
And I think there are worse examples of needing to Or not needing to, but fighting the developers, right? Sometimes you're fighting the game and sometimes you're fighting the developers. And at times in Silicatown, it really does feel like you're fighting the development team.
00:55:51
Speaker
But that's way better than a lot of these other games I've played. And you're fighting the developers because the game doesn't work or because you get disconnected or all of these other issues.
00:56:01
Speaker
and The design of, hey, this world being brutal is at least intentional. So we can work with that. That's true.
00:56:13
Speaker
Also, like we said early on and like still stick with, it would be nice for more games to have...
Indie Games and Accessibility Innovation
00:56:23
Speaker
accessibility options and some sliders to make things easier for people to kind of get in the door. Yeah. um That said, i still don't think FromSoft is going to hop on that train.
00:56:36
Speaker
Probably not. Not for a bit. A lot of other games might not as well. I think you see it more so in the indie space where they're much more innovative for making things user friendly.
00:56:48
Speaker
um But I will say for something like Silksong where you know how it's being touted as ah difficult game, um if that's really not your jam,
00:57:02
Speaker
Don't play it. Watch it. Like watch somebody stream it. um But if you do want that time ah type of like tight platforming combat and challenge, if that is your jam, by all means, play it regardless of if it's standard or you want to mod things to make things easier.
00:57:24
Speaker
um It really doesn't matter. um Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to say. For a lot of these things that do not have these built-in accessibility options, Get a mod.
00:57:35
Speaker
Yeah. Like it was incredibly moddable. So many games have mods because people want features like that. So people will do it on the side and then host it for other people to just get and do themselves as well.
00:57:51
Speaker
So don't ever feel like you can't truly approach something because of a lack of skill or practice.
Modding: Enhancing Accessibility and Customization
00:58:01
Speaker
Um,
00:58:02
Speaker
just get in there modded or not easy mode or hard mode if it seems like something that's going to interest you don't try and like force yourself into playing a game because of the people are like it's so good uh-huh yeah unless it's expedition 33 or celeste or sola
00:58:23
Speaker
I was I thought you were going to say was really good, but I mean, I thought you were going to say it involve platforming. So it does. It has an incredible amount of accessibility options, though. Oh, OK.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah you can reduce the difficulty dramatically with accessibility options. This is the first I'm learning of this. So, yeah. um The only reason i thought you were going to say Celeste was because it was going to rhyme. like Unless it's Celeste. it was like there go um Expedition 33. Also really freaking good. And also has accessibility options.
00:58:56
Speaker
um Yeah. And if you are waiting to play... If you're concerned about the difficulty in Silksong. One of the top mods. Stakes America. It's exactly what I wanted in the game. It basically makes the game exactly what I want. Which is just...
00:59:13
Speaker
You failed. Spawn in the room right before you failed. Try again. Perfect. The game's long enough as it is. It doesn't need to be another 15 hours of backtracking.
00:59:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't judge Jake for that. Not much. Just a little bit. I judge you more for doing the the shield and rot spear. Oh, it's the open ring DLC. It's really good though. I'm never going to take that away from
Conclusion and Community Engagement
00:59:40
Speaker
you.
00:59:40
Speaker
It's really good. One of these did it pre patch. That is true. One of these days I'll finish my um ah Twin Blade run. It's currently in the DLC.
00:59:52
Speaker
um And that'll be that'll be my legitimate clear for that final boss. But Antspear Rapier. Everybody just jot that one down. Dark Souls 3. No, Elden Ring.
01:00:06
Speaker
Antspear. Good stuff.
01:00:09
Speaker
and he know You already had a really good eloquent final speech, so I'm just going to agree with Dave. There you go. there's my ah There's my final word. What he said. Yeah, yeah that. Thank you guys for listening to another episode of Soapstone Podcast.
01:00:26
Speaker
As always, if you guys have any thoughts, um feel free to send those in. Our socials are down in the description. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. The game might not be easy, but you are.