Comment on The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini

• Thorry@feddit.org ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1, just like the video did. The things you are talking about are in act 2. I’m glad to see it gets better in act 2, however I’m not as far into that yet. Most people running into these issues will quit before beating act 1 most likely, so it’s kind of a moot point.

  I simply can’t believe those damage numbers. I was talking about the nail upgrade in the town. Is there some other upgrade I’m not aware of? All the low level enemies seem to take the same number of hits. In Hollow Knight the upgrades to the nail were very noticeable. The nail upgrade in Silksong felt like it did nothing at all. Bosses might have gone from 16 hits to 12 hits per phase, which is still a whole lot of hits. Especially as windows for damage are brief and far in between and bosses have 4 phases typically.

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  • simple@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You misunderstand. I was limiting what I said to act 1

    Fair. Act 1 is fairly tough but one can still go through the mist to skip last judge at least which is where most struggle.

    The damage values are real and I'm also talking about the town upgrade, you can see the wiki to confirm ( https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Needle )

    It goes from 5 dmg --> 9 dmg --> 13 dmg. It felt noticeable when I got it, enemies that took 5 hits take 3.

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    • Thorry@feddit.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I haven’t done a whole lot with the crests as I found the starter crest to be very versatile and I got used to the moveset. I have played around with the Beast crest which is really fun, allowing you to just go ham on enemies. However I found against bosses the Beast crest doesn’t work at all, as the damage taken is too large for the lifesteal to overcome. Unless you are dodging and weaving, which defeats the purpose of the Beast crest a bit.

      The patches that have been release will probably help a lot of people with the bosses as, if I understood correctly, they’ve decreased the contact damage. This will help a lot with the feeling if boss fights being unfair due to hits taken are often compounded by subsequent contact damage. On many occasions I’ve gone from 4 health, doing OK to dead in less than one sec. This can feel very unfair. Especially after going through a long and annoying run back and then 2 easy phases, just to get to the hard part and die right away.

      It feels like if one were to simply be able to practice the hard part, bosses would be defeated much faster. The runbacks (which often include shortcuts it must be said) combined with long easier phases contribute to a feeling of unfair difficulty. It also makes things take up more time than needed, leaving people to feel like the game is wasting their time. Or difficulty for the sake of being difficult. As the video stated, difficulty is a tool that most be wielded carefully.

      When doing for example a SL1 run in a Souls game, the player must play at a high level without many or even any mistakes. Boss fights will take longer and the stakes go up. The difference is, one chooses to do these challenges. Often only after already mastering a game. For many people Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end, without being able to properly swim.

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      • tmyakal@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end

        I think it feels less like a standalone game and more like high-end Hollow Knight DLC. The gameplay expects that you’ve already completely beaten and mastered the hardest parts of Hollow Knight, and expects you to pick up from there.

        Maybe that would be fine if I’d been grinding the Godhome continuously for the past seven years. But I think most people haven’t been doing that.

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    • Phelpssan@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Fair. Act 1 is fairly tough but one can still go through the mist to skip last judge at least which is where most struggle.

      Though that’s quite well hidden and very few people will find that without some Google help. I’d also argue that it’s probably harder to go through Sinner’s Road and Mist than fighting Last Judge, though YMMV.

      It goes from 5 dmg --> 9 dmg --> 13 dmg.

      That didn’t match my experience, I did a lot of tests after getting the first upgrade and it definitely didn’t cut down the hits by that much.

      So I was looking into that and according to tests made by a redditor there’s some kind of “damage reduction” stat in place that negates some of that buff. Their page is a work-in-progress but they’re documenting the exact damage and # of hits to kill each enemy with each upgrade.

      raiderking.com/hollow-knight-silksong-all-enemy-h…

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