Submitted 6 months ago by simple@piefed.social to games@lemmy.world
In this thread: people complaining who are apparently bad at game mechanics and can’t or won’t learn to improve.
Just beat :::Widow::: second attempt.
The run back has you start on one screen, traverse two screens, and done. I got as high as 12 Mississippi counting during it.
If you’re not able to commit to learning new strategies and using game mechanics to adapt to a game’s difficulty, and experience it as the developers intended, maybe it’s not for you. You can always watch a lore video or let’s play by other gamers to get the story if that’s the goal. This is Dark Souls 2 all over again, and I will personally say as someone who initially hated it, then gave it another chance; When you persist and triumph through grit, the game leaves a lasting impression and sense of accomplishment that you cheat yourself out of with a difficulty slider. That’s my favorite game in the series now, which is a deeply unpopular opinion, unsurprisingly.
Yeah I think as long as the devs are forward about it no problem. I have plenty of ‘hard things’ in my day to day life and I’m not looking for more of that in a videogame. Give me a Stardew or Factorio everytime - I want to relax and design things. Different games are for different people and that’s a good thing. Any game made to satisfy everyone will almost certainly satisfy no one.
Absolutely, it’s important to know what you like and want. Hell, lots of people work off vibes and go through phases where certain game types stimulate them, then fall off of those. Like MMOs and online FPS used to be my main thing, now I stick to single player story driven games. I’m not about to go loudly pout about how Stellaris doesn’t work for me and should be changed to appeal specifically to my wants, too busy with other games (and life).
I personally think Outer Wilds should give you the whole lore as an audiobook, not everyone wants to go hunting for clues and reading a bunch of old conversations between dead people in order to figure out what’s going on…
as an outer wilds fanatic, i think that would be a great option!
I mean, an audio book of Outer Wilds would be dope.
In my opinion, the game is not particularly difficult. That is, if you’ve played through the original Hollow Knight. Which most people haven’t. In fact, it looks to me like a lot of people jumping on the hype don’t have too much experience with metroidvanias and soulslikes.
It’s a sequel, so intended to be played after the original. Why do we care what people who haven’t played the first game think?
It’s difficult for me and I like it. I played Hollow Knight but didn’t finish it because it was too frustrating late game. Silksong to me is not frustrating because difficulty is mainly in figuring out how to pass the challenge, not doing reflexes which I don’t have. Most of the things I heard people complain about are solved by not rushing around with failing strategy but by thinking what the game recently suggested you to do for this particular encounter.
I actually think bringing in Hollow Knight experience aka “I already know everything” might be the reason why some people are frustrated. Like I heard a person who claimed to get all the achievements in HK complain that the second phase of one boss is terrible because they spent a hundred tries to dodge all the projectiles while you can just stand at the corner of the arena where non of them will hit you and use the tools this game gives you to win the fight.
Sigh this shit again, if it’s the creators decision to have a game with finely tuned hard difficulty, so be it, that’s the creators creative decision and it should be respected
“death of the author” suggests some of the author’s intent is lost when a work is consumed by the audience.
Go a degree I guess as the audiences own experiences will determine there own interpretation of the work, but in this situation I don’t think someone’s own experiences is going to impact too much the fact that silksong is hard as nails at points
Then it’s not the developer’s fault anymore that the game is hard.
It exists by itself.
I can accept stupid decisions. I don’t have to respect them.
No you don’t, so you can either mod the game or not play the game right?
Respect is a weird word. It seems to have 2 nearly opposite meanings (kind of like literally):
So the first one implies that respect must be earned. The second implies that everyone must be respected by default (their due regard), thus respect is unearned.
Don’t like it, don’t buy it. I’m happy for team cherry and their success. It’s not for me but I don’t resent them that it isn’t. This nothing burger discussion is yet another nothing burger designed to drive clicks and traffic off of the work of people who ACTUALLY create something of worth. Modern parasitism at its best.
Very well said
The game screams passion and devs spend seven years making it the way they like it. It is also a dirt cheap.
Critisism is fair and everybody has right for opininion. My opinion is that people who are bitching about the boss runs can shove it up to theirs.
My biggest complaint is the sheer lack of rewards when I finish a fight. Give me any currency.
I have spent so much of this game broke, unable to buy the things I need to advance any side plots.
I’m currently stuck on the fight for the Music in the top left of the citadel. The double boss at the end is brutal. But because no enemy in that fight drops monster parts, I have to quit to grinding it to go grind more materials to build equipment, despite having slain 20+ enemies each run.
I’m about 10 hours into silksong and it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong. But the majority of the boss fights seem… cheap?
Like, their difficulty doesn’t come from their various attacks, or their environment. Instead, it usually comes from the fact that they do double damage, or the fact that they spam the same two attacks over and over way too quickly, or the fact that they can do the same add summon three times in a row and make what was a controllable situation practically impossible
Now, I’ve 112% the OG hollow knight and beaten true radiance, so I’m not against difficult boss fights. In fact I relish the feeling of learning their moves and patterns after every single death
But when the moves are “ram into wall. Then ram into wall again” it becomes incredibly annoying
Some of the boss fights felt amazing once you start learning their attack patterns, but then others were just… lacking. The savage fly one comes to mind. It wasn’t particularly a difficult boss itself. But when it summoned ads, it became a fight around rng. It wasn’t a fun fight at all. Felt like the devs realised it was too easy and chucked in ads then left it there.
Separately, why on earth the boss doesn’t receive damage for slamming down on the spiky enemy when its spikes are deployed… Missed opportunity!
I disagree about the fly that they just wanted to make you die more. The boss itself is super easy, it has two attacks which are not only easily dodged but also leave a lot of opportunities to attack and move around.
So in essence the boss itself is a bag with silk to heal or use magic attacks while the real problem you face is using those resources to control the minions it summons. So yeah if you go with the strategy to kill the boss fast you will suffer but if you act as a hunter to control the fight you will win.
Just my take on this boss after 100+ tries, and do consider it a good and interesting boss fight.
Or you can just rely on luck and brute force.
The Beastfly in the Chapel isn’t too bad, since you can leverage its slam to take out any ads, however there is another arena where you fight it again and it spawns flying ads who shoot projectiles which deal double damage AND the boss breaks the platforms you’re standing on.
Feels like bullshit fighting against it.
High difficulty is not good game design. Making a game more approachable through lower difficulty settings with additional checkpoints doesn’t make it worse for people who like a challenge. It just makes it enjoyable to more people.
Claiming it’s down to “artistic vision” just feels dishonest. You could claim Studio Ghibli movies should never be dubbed or subbed. You just have to learn Japanese to enjoy them, just don’t watch them if that’s not for you… but why? How is it a bad thing if more people can enjoy something?
Cup Head is a great example. It’s a fantastic game with an art style that younger kids love. But it’s too difficult for most kids, which doesn’t make the game better, it just locks them out from a game they’d otherwise love.
Following up on this, I think the studio ghibli is a good example of where community adding accessibility in the form of mods or cheats (or fan subs or dubs in the case of ghibli)
Yes, community mods that add accessibility options are great. But unfortunately they’re generally limited to certain platforms.
Cuphead is a throwback in every sense. Making it easy would just make it a throwaway game that is seen once and never again.
Is it not fair for the game developers’ artistic vision to not be accessible to all? Accessibility is nice, expands the potential audience, but if it compromises my artistic vision and I’m ok with giving up reach and money to preserve it, that doesn’t make my game bad or my vision invalid.
It would be ridiculous to call up the bar or the ama and complain to them that becoming a lawyer or a doctor is not accessible to all.
One last addition, adding control remapping, color options, and text to speech are true accessibility. Easy mode is fake accessibility
Easy mode is not fake accessibility. Celeste has the correct idea in allowing players adjust the difficulty for accessibility purposes. Not everyone has the same reaction speed, same cognitive abilities, same eyesight. There are people who can only use one hand and that automatically makes reacting to attacks many times harder, should they be excluded from being able to enjoy the game because they are not physically capable enough for the boss fights? And boss fights are probably 5% of the game anyway!
Why everything should be for everybody? And why artists should care about your opikion when they are creating what they want to create.
Cup head is great example. Everything in the game is meticiusly hand crafted. The big part why its so popular is the difficulty that forces you to focus on the aninations and sprites. The difficulty also is economical in game as labor intensive as cup head. Because every sprite was hand drawn devs could not just churn unlimited levels and the games lenght came from the difficulty. Making the game easy would ruin the pacing of the game.
Games are art form like any other. There are mainstream movies, plays, songs, paintings and games etc etc etc. that try to reach as large audience as they can. But there is also obscure art pieces that only small group of people can enjoy. And both ways are fine
I find it obnoxious when people bitch about desing choices that devs have consciously made. Its not like they have any obligations to make a game in one way or another.
Runbacks are shit and a lame attempt at artificially increasing difficulty. I’ll happily die on that hill. I love difficult games, but there is a fine line between frustration and difficult.
Elden Ring (at least all the bits I played through) and Sekiro absolutely nailed it. None of the run backs were particularly egregious, and it let me really focus on experimenting and learning to feel out the difficult fights. Celeste is another good example. I have dropped hours on some of the later levels trying to master them, but never once got frustrated.
Hollow Knight I never finished because I got stuck on a boss and the runback was just way too long and annoying. I loved everything else about the game and want to finish it eventually.
Unpopular opinion but I like boss runbacks.
To me it feels like “if you don’t survive the journey, you’re too weak for the boss itself” it brings me down and makes me calmer until I reach the boss.
I like them because I will think what I did wrong, not just going to do that wrong thing again until I get lucky with my wrong strategy.
I like them because it forces you to try to salvage a fight instead of just conceding after a bad start. The time spent getting to the boss is investment you don’t want to waste.
I think this is really just an issue of the tools and abilities not being inherently linked to the related bosses And weak to being exploited by them.
FYI quickhop attacking is faster than ground combos and you can weave in the trio dagger throws when you are dodging away from close attacks. Also your attack will negate enemy attacks weapon hitbox(but you still have to dodge bodily contact). The poison tool upgrade is overbalanced and makes a lot of fights a joke.
To be fair, From has like many games to learn from that while Cherry only has HK. I’ll never forget the sheer pain of the Frigid Outskirts.
At least that’s an optional area. Now, the run back from pre-SotFS No Man’s Wharf? That was a pain.
Don’t coddle whiners, make them git gud or get out.
Every game should have difficulty settings, the more, the better.
That goes for indi darlings too.
And all music should be under three minutes long. Every book should have page numbers. Photographers should have familiar subjects. Paintings should have a full explanation by the artist telling you exactly what they meant to communicate. /s
If the have isn’t for you, just move along. There are tons of games out there.
are you aware of the meaning of the word “setting” in this context?
Just in case I can explain:
It means you can switch something from one behaviour or effect to another, basically giving you a choice of how something should work.
So, adding a difficulty setting changes nothing about your experience of the game.
do you need more words to explain this simple thing?
I can try to use simple language and shorter sentences if you require it?
A tale as old as time, the more things change the more they stay the same.
I mean personally I don’t have any issues with an easy mode in games, casual play is nice when you come back home from work half dead. Silksong is advertised as a soulslike though. Feels a little counterintuitive to take away the aspects that define a soulslike, even if it makes the game accessible to a wider audience.
For me though, a lot of Souls games are about opening shortcuts and then running past anything left to get another go at the bosses.
You can’t reliably do that in 2 though with the sheer amount of ganking enemies.
I think it’s a great game for veterans who like challenges like myself.
But I have to call out team Cherry for their interviews: They said they wanted anyone to be able to pick up this as their first Hollow Knight game and just start playing… Sorry, but, bullshit. the difficulty ramp is too quick, double damage comes out to early and the boss fights get more challenging quickly. See the weaver for instance, a fight I’d place around the difficulty of Grimm, but there’s double damage and you probably only have 5 health.
Also they mentioned part of the game’s difficulty was due to Hornet’s competence and utility… Ghost is canonically a better fighter than Hornet, so by that logic they should have made the game easier (yes I’m being silly about this part).
Didn’t personally watch the interview in question (or forgot by now) so I don’t know what they meant, but it definitely feels like lore wise Silksong can stand as an independent game with what I’ve discovered so far.
Regarding difficulty, Hollow Knight isn’t the only game that could have prepared you for Silksong I think.
I think what it helps a lot with is familiarity and mindset. The overall game loop is very similar.
That said, I think it’s wise to give HK a try before buying Silksong. It’s a cheaper game, worth playing through if you’re into these kinds of experiences and if you don’t enjoy it, chances are Silksong will not be much fun for you either.
I think its fine for a player new to the series but you’ve got to the type of person that is willing to learn and willing to die over and over. For people who play these kinds of games its not insane to expect them to pick it up.
I dont think there is any conversation to be had about an easy mode or boss runbacks. Any time this small dev team spends on an easy mode is time wasted IMO.
If its to hard you can play another game. I see this the same as people demanding a complex movie be changed to be easier to understand. Its just a dumb complaint and im sick of seeing these people flood every comment section of every slightly challenging game.
I’m ok with there being a conversation on this topic, even if the arguments devolve to ‘waaah’ vs. ‘git gud’.
Ultimately though, I agree that a small dev team shouldn’t have to focus on a game-mode outside their vision - and any such demand for an easy-mode or other additions can and should be left up to mod makers.
It’s a single-player game, so in the end how the individual user wants to play is how they should be able to play.
The difference between “I don’t like this” and “this is bad” is too often overlooked
is nobody going to define what “runbacks” are?
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That does sound annoying and I hate when I even have to sit through a cutscene on each retry of a boss…
I’m guessing it’s something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
Exactly. Lots of bosses don’t have convenient save points nearby, so you’re forced to walk back from the save point every time. And many of the treks are either long or just outright annoying (cheesy enemies, obstacle courses, etc.)
Hot take here, but I don’t mind them. Exactly because they take focus. They tell me when it’s time for a break. If I’m not up for the runback, then I’m not up for aother attempt at the boss.
Unskippable cut scenes should be dragged into the street and shot.
Along with unpausable cutscenes. My kid will cry exactly during your 10 minute cutscene, and I want to know the story.
I'm guessing it's something like when you lose to a boss you have to travel a senselessly difficult and long way back to the boss to try again?
That's exactly it. The runbacks aren't too long in this game despite all the complaints, but some of them are tricky and can get annoying if you keep dying 10 seconds into a fight.
Most runbacks aren’t too bad, but fuck the Bilewater one. That shit was too hard and annoying. I had less trouble with the First Sinner than that boss.
I mean, there are some really bad runbacks, but yeah most of them are fine.
Some of these mother fuckers never dealt with nosk and it shows.
There have been several boss fights so far where I die to the path to the boss more than the boss itself and it takes way longer to get to the boss than actually beating it.
So it's basically the standard platformer formula going back three or more decades?
Silksong sparks debate about git gud and scrub
Why are these side scrollers premium price?? Seems like such a cash grab. That’s why franchises are going backwards into side scrollers, easy money, i avoid them
The game is 20 bucks. How the hell is that a premium price?
I spent 3 hours stuck on one boss fight.
In most games, finally beating it would have me saying “thank fuck its over”.
In silksong, I’m saying “fuck yeah that was a good boss”. It’s a very different feeling, and one that I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying in quite some time.
That said.
I think both hollow knight and silksong should have easy modes. It would be fine. It doesn’t hurt me any that someone else can have an easier time. People need to remember that video games are entertainment, and the sweaty “hardcore gamers” can fuck off with their usual judgemental elitism.
This is exactly it. I think the game is a goddamn masterpiece. The most infuriating fights feel like huge accomplishments, not just relief. Phenomenal game all around, but that difficulty curve isn’t for everyone. I can say the same about any Soulsborne game, love them to death but it’s definitely too much for some folks. Difficulty options are a good thing, if a compromise has to be made just have it disable achievements or w/e.
Did these people forget how ball-smackingly hard Hollow Knight was???
I was all-in on Hollow Knight. Beat it multiple times, including Path of Pain and the Nightmare King. But I’m struggling with Silksong.
I went back and started up Hollow Knight again just to sanity-check myself, and, yes, it’s definitely an easier game. Many fewer enemies can hit for 2 health; there’s more variety in paths in the early game, so if you hit a wall in one direction you can try another; and you get access to upgrades that actually feel impactful relatively early instead of skills that use up my magic pool that I can’t spare because I need them because I’m always one hit away from dying.
My pet theory is that Silksong is actually just exactly what they originally pitched: DLC for players that have mastered the highest skill points in Hollow Knight. And maybe that would be fine if I were coming straight into it off of the back of Godhome. But it’s been years since I was playing those areas, and my skills have atrophied. It’s okay for a DLC to expect mastery from the start, but a standalone game should have more of a curve.
Yes.
I think time has made people look at Hollow Knight through rose tinted glasses. When I picked up the game in 2018, I got to the Soulmaster and gave up entirely because of its runback, it was just too annoying.
I ended up finishing the game a few years later and absolutely loving it, but runbacks are to this day my main criticism of the game, and I know a lot of people agree about that.
For this reason I hoped that they’d make things better in Silksong, but at least now I know what to expect so it doesn’t annoy me as much as it used to.
HK can be trivialized pretty early on by stacking charms and upgrades. Silksong spaces out meaningful upgrades in a way that really forces you to learn the ins and outs of the game before you can start buildcrafting.
FWIW, all the final bosses are easier than HK’s true final boss. The difficulty scaling starts with a rough curve but evens out over time.
I imagine a non-insignificant portion of Silksong players never played HK and just jumped on the hype bandwagon. Which makes sense considering it was built up like it would literally pay off your mortgage and reunite you with your high school sweetheart.
I'm loving it, and the runbacks and difficulty just feel like standard metroidvania to me. Yeah, it takes time and caution, but that's just the genre.
Since when do metroidvanias not have save points right outside boss rooms? That’s been the standard since symphony of the night at least…
They haven’t really been a thing in either Metroid or Castlevania for a long time, interestingly.
Doesn’t metroid only have save rooms?
This is to be expected. Silksong gained so much hype that now you have a bunch of people trying it who are finding out it’s not their thing.
I know people these days are used to early access garbage being shoved out the door as a full release, and are ready to rush to the comments to explain why the game is wrong, but I promise you this is not one of those cases.
So far, every run back I’ve experienced in silksong has a purpose. If it’s not something you enjoy, I recommend not playing the game. But don’t be in that overlap of the Venn Diagram between people who are enjoying the game and people who are complaining they aren’t enjoying the game. Either stop playing, or finish it and then we can talk about its design.
Kids crying because a game is not a walkthrough? Maybe they should play something more suitable for their age group.
Not AGAIN. We have this debate monthly since the last decade. I don’t particularly like the way hollow knight handles saves, not the difficulty itself. It’s time consuming, not inherently hard…
We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It’s a bizarre form of tribalism.
I haven't played Silksong yet, in part because truthfully, Hollow Knight was alright but not my favorite Metroidvania. The one thing I really disliked about the original was the runbacks. I remember getting stuck on one platforming section, and I could easily get to the halfway point where I kept dying to retrieve my money, but then drop it again because there was no turning back from this halfway point, had to keep trying to finish it. I wanted to just explore a different part of the map and come back to this section later, but sunk cost fallacy forced me to keep bashing my skull against it.
Which then felt like this mechanic conflicted with the exploration I expect from a Metroidvania. That's the real problem IMO.
lmorchard@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
There are mods and cheats for this game already—and they even run on Linux. I turn 50 next month: though I’m still playing, I don’t have as much time for gaming as I used to and my reflexes aren’t what they were. I haven’t entirely removed the challenge with mods, but I feel no shame in tweaking this game to go easier on me and chew up less of my time as punishment for failure. I wish they had these as accessibility options built-in, but I’m fine with hacking it.
Anybody telling me I should “git gud” can pound sand: I’m already good at a bunch of things that get me a paycheck. I play games so I can relax and be terrible at something for fun.
Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
I think this game is not for you then.Harfd games are hard so that you can feelproufd of yourself after completing something hardet than you though you could. You may not complete the story but if you “git gud” you may actually enjoy it more.
Some games are not meant to be relaxing. Why would you even play a hard game if you want something easy?
I’m very provoced by this. Sorry.