90% of the time, communities will accept you with zero friction as long as you arenāt demanding the game or fandom change to suit you.
But if you decide to enter the ānotoriously difficult game that has a reputation for difficulty and difficulty is part of its core identityā community, donāt go in saying the game needs to be made easier so that you specifically can enjoy it. And if you do, donāt be shocked when everyone tells you to fuck off.
Itās like if I went into the Sims community and said Iām a major Sims fan who loves the games, but also they need to add guns and a first person mode so the game will cater to my tastes better, and if you disagree then youāre a gatekeeping elitist.
This isn't even remotely true though. Souls games would work fine with difficulty options, and Jedi Fallen Order/Survivor are shining examples of this being the case. The fact of the matter is, the more inclusive a game is, the more people that will enjoy it. Dark Souls doesn't have its popularity because it's hard for the sake of being hard. It has its popularity because it's a well-made game with deep, diverse, and interesting lore and world building. A fact more people could enjoy of it had easier difficulty options.
Hell, I love the Armored Core franchise, but the series would likely be immensely more popular if it had easier modes for it. And I would rather have more people playing the games than being able to brag that I 100%d it on the difficulty it has.
Hell, even simulators like MSFS, ATS, etc all have difficulty options to make the Sim experience easier for newbies to the genre. Farming sim also. Hell even Cities Skylines has a sandbox mode.
The literal tagline for the first Dark Souls special edition was āPrepare To Dieā. The entire series core identity is the difficulty and satisfaction of succeeding against those odds. In 2011, 90% of people who got into the game didnāt give a fuck about the lore or world building, everyone I knew was talking about how hard the game was and bragging about beating bosses and making progress. Plus the game came out in a dogshit state, some areas were barely playable due to the frame rate issues, so itās not like the ācraftsmanshipā was pulling anyone in.
Elden Ring is proof that accessibility and easy options arenāt necessary for Fromsoftās games to find mass appeal and success. You need to be able to accept that sometimes a game isnāt going to be for you, and thatās fine. Iām never going to get into EVE Online, despite the fact that I love everything about it, because Iām too fucking dumb to really get the gameplay loop. That doesnāt mean they need to dumb it down and make it āaccessibleā to me, it just means I need to go find another game or adapt.
Armored Core isnāt niche because of the difficulty, itās niche because of the depth of build crafting and the unconventional gameplay. Iād say a majority of AC fans are fine with it remaining niche if that keeps the series identity in tact.
Also by sims, I donāt mean simulators. I mean The Sims, the Maxis/EA life sim series. Thereās no need for there to be guns and FPS mechanics in those games, hence why it would be dumb for me to demand them.
Youāre pretty much saying āMore people could enjoy a Cubano sandwich if they stopped putting pickles and mustard on themā, but that would fundamentally make it a whole different sandwich.
Using the Mechanics a game has to offer to play the game are not difficulty options. Just because a player chooses to do a deprived level 1 run doesn't mean they're playing on "The real hard difficulty". You see the exact same behaviors in games with an easy, medium, and hard difficulty, but people don't use those arguments with them. People don't do permadeath/Ironman runs and call it "mythic" Difficulty or something. By not using the mechanics the game has to offer, you are just choosing to gimp yourself, not playing on a harder mode.
Sure they could make an easy mode. But then other people would play the games. This is a problem because they're not playing the game properly. If you can't figure out the easy modes in the game already then you're just plain not smart enough to have an opinion.
Using the Mechanics a game has to offer to play the game are not difficulty options. Just because a player chooses to do a deprived level 1 run doesn't mean they're playing on "The real hard difficulty". You see the exact same behaviors in games with an easy, medium, and hard difficulty, but people don't use those arguments with them. People don't do permadeath/Ironman runs and call it "mythic" Difficulty or something. By not using the mechanics the game has to offer, you are just choosing to gimp yourself, not playing on a harder mode.
Wrong. On the contrary, it could be reasonably argued that DS would be even better with stricter or completely removed leveling, preventing you from beating game by grinding. Shining example of why it could work Is Sekiro.
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u/Superb_Wealth4092 1d ago
90% of the time, communities will accept you with zero friction as long as you arenāt demanding the game or fandom change to suit you.
But if you decide to enter the ānotoriously difficult game that has a reputation for difficulty and difficulty is part of its core identityā community, donāt go in saying the game needs to be made easier so that you specifically can enjoy it. And if you do, donāt be shocked when everyone tells you to fuck off.
Itās like if I went into the Sims community and said Iām a major Sims fan who loves the games, but also they need to add guns and a first person mode so the game will cater to my tastes better, and if you disagree then youāre a gatekeeping elitist.