Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
I know this comparison has already been done and is not that appropriate but it would be like asking for an easy mode for Dark Souls. Game is hard on purpose, because that's the way it's meant to be played. If your friend doesn't like that difficulty, it's simply not a game for them and they should simply watch a playthrough. They would still be able to experience the scenario, the pretty artstyle and all that kind of stuff without all the frustration there can be.
As I posted elsewhere, only 58% of players on Steam have beaten Hornet. I think the devs would love for more of their customers to see more of the game.
Those stats don't matter. It's the same for nearly every game on Steam. 57% of people finished the first world of Anarcute. That's something that can be done easily in less than an hour. Only 47% of people got to chapter 2 of VA-11 Hall-A. It's a freaking visual novel, it's not like it's hard to get there.
And is it really the same amazing game if you take away its difficulty? Sure, you still have the art, music and story. But what about the boss patterns? Do they matter if you can simply rush through because you have enough notches for a bajillion charms and 12 health points against False Knight? Wouldn't the players go through the game without even noticing the ennemies?
While I do understand your argument against an easy mode due to the game having a particular balance to it to retain tension and such, an option for an easy mode for people who bought the game but have difficulty being able to actually progress in it wouldn't compromise the existing normal mode. I've spent thousands of hours in the Dark Souls/Demon's Souls/Bloodborne series and I've seen the arguments against easy mode many times before, but a lot of the legitimate reasons against it in Soulsborne is due to the online component, which I agree with. However, Hollow Knight is an offline game.
Some people simply aren't good at sidescrolling games (I grew up with the 2D Metroids and Castlevanias on the DS, so I have had years to get good at them, while my friend grew up with racing games and shooters), or some people are older and do not have the reflexes they may have used to (like my father, who is also interested in Hollow Knight after expressing how much I liked it). Besides, watching a playthrough just isn't the same as playing it, with immersion being less of a factor, and the exploration adding a layer of personal investment, especially in a game so focused on exploration and the open world nature of it being a Metroidvania game where the player can go to places in different orders and experience things in a unique way that defines their experience and can be shared by players in discussion; and I do discuss every game I play with my dad and friends.
My friend and my father really never struggle with exploration, just really with combat and certain platforming challenges involving damage and trail-and-error aspects, which is why I suggested merely increasing player health (perhaps making every mask/health node take two hits to down instead of one hit, like a half-heart in Zelda) to add more room for error, or have players just spawn with extra blue masks. Just something to help people who are struggling, it doesn't have to turn the game into a cakewalk and it would still be necessary to learn boss patterns, but not as strictly.
That combined with how comparatively easy it would be for the devs to add it by creating a menu option, perhaps restricting players from getting certain achievements or just the achievement for beating the game. An option for an easier mode would not stop players from enjoying the game the way it already is, and a hard mode could even be added alongside easy mode to make everyone happy.
If a good player chooses to rush through the game on Easy mode instead of the default Normal mode, then that's their choice. But for a lesser-skilled player, an Easy mode should feel about the same level of challenge as Normal does for you. They'd be able to enjoy it just as you do, and then they may consider it an amazing game instead of a frustrating one.
Well said! If someone attempts a boss over and over and their reflexes just aren't enough for them to beat the boss on normal mode without frustrating themselves for an hour, but they come close almost every time after trying their hardest, if they can admit to themselves that they require an easy mode then I think it's a fair way of broadening the audience of people who can experience the game close to as intended in terms of the struggle and the feeling of satisfaction, which can diminish if a player is exceedingly frustrated.
- It's a metroidvania
- It has Easy, Normal and Hard modes
- Easy and Hard modes are just Normal with more or less health - little testing/dev time required
- It has a 96% overwhelmingly positive rating - few people criticizing its difficulty
Hollow Knight's default mode wouldn't change. Most people would still play exactly the same game on Normal. Some people, however, those that need it, might choose to go into the options menu and switch to Easy mode. That would be their choice, and not affect anyobody else at all.Also, Hollow Knight has sat at a consistent 92-93% rating. I seriously doubt that the 3-4% difference is completely due to people complaining about difficulty.
A modifier to make the game a bit easier wouldn't remove the combat from the game or even necessarially make it not challenging, just doable for a demographic of players that my friend and father fall into the category of. My friend has enjoyed the story and world and exploration and combat, just not when it gets more challenging toward the latter half of the game after getting the dream nail and challenging the Dream Warriors, for example. What I am referring to would be like a safety net of sorts to help along struggling players in order to retain the flow of the game and allow them to progress and see the late-game content. A player choosing to play on an easier difficulty is unlikely to dislike the game for being too easy after choosing that difficulty, as they brought it upon themselves to customize their experience that way. A player being able to finish the game in that was, in my eyes, is better than someone never being able to finish the game and being disappointed with the game or their own abilities and leaving a negative impact on them.
"The question then is balancing how "easy" the easy mode is with the number of people that would find that the easy mode makes the game playable vs. boring."
Let's theoretically consider that your suggestion above is implemented as an easy mode. Just exactly how many people would your suggestion of an easy mode appeal to? 1% of the current players of the game? 5%? How many people would be brought in by the addition of an easy mode? How many of those people would still be turned off because the easy mode isn't easy enough since they don't think the "boost" goes far enough? These questions make implementing a single "easy" mode more complicated than just making a mode that's "easier" than the alternative.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm fine with them adding in an easy mode, but I'm annoyed that people seem to think it's something that can just be whipped up immediately when honestly a lot of careful planning needs to be done to implement it fairly.
Momodora IV isn't like that at all. Here's a quote from a random review:
"Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight offers an open world design similar to that of the second entry, but with a significantly larger world map. In addition, the metroidvania elements are reduced, with only one significant upgrade that allows backtracking to previous areas. In fact, the world is quite open, allowing the player to freely move through multiple branching paths in any order with no single “correct” path of travel. Aside from a few key areas, most of the world is accessible with the player’s starting abilities, allowing for a tremendous range of freedom in exploration, and a metroidvania map is included to help the determine which areas remain to be explored."
Source: http://8bithorse.blogspot.jp/2016/03/momodora-reverie-under-moonlight.html
Well, you can read through them on the store page. Select "Recent" and "Negative".
"The Queen of an eastern Kingdom used her sorcery to attempt to mend the world of the living and the world of the dead. By doing so, several spirits from the underworld have invaded different parts of the living world. This is why Kaho, a priestess from the village of Lun, goes off on a journey to the east to find and seal the source of the problem."
Source: http://www.siliconera.com/2016/03/14/beloved-characters-worlds-chat-momodora-reverie-moonlight-developer-rdein/
Watching a playthrough of Momodora, you get a glimpse of the "big bad" fairly early in the game in the form of a boss fight and several NPCs talk about how the kingdom fell to ruin specifically because of her.
In Hollow Knight, you're thrown into the world and all you know is that the kingdom fell to ruin and that there's something stirring in the Black Egg Temple. There's literally only the opening cutscene to indicate that whatever's in the Black Egg is probably evil and barely any evidence to tie the Black Egg to the fall of Hallownest (considering no NPC can directly state what caused the kingdom's fall). For most of the game you don't even have any idea of what you'll do when you finally enter the Black Egg, just that you'll probably fight some boss and doing so will end the game. There's very few NPCs in the game that even state what exactly defeating the final boss of the game will do and how it will change the world. That's clearly much less of a driving story than what you get in Momodora.