There's a lot a game designer can learn from FromSoftware, the makers of Dark and Demon souls.
They have some of the best level design out there,
they consistently create tightly tuned combat,
their enemy types encourage players to get the most depth they can out of that combat system,
and of course: They proved that difficult but fair is something the market still craves.
But we're not gonna talk about any of that.
Today, we're gonna talk about how Dark Souls II allows the player to set their own difficulty.
Because they do it in a way that's far better than most of the systems games use today.
The most common way to adjust difficulty in games today,
is still simply to have a menu option at the beginning of the game.
This is actually a terrible way to go about it.
Because who is gonna know what difficulty they want to play the game at,
before they've played the game?
The idea that before you've encountered the first enemy or jumped over the first pit
that you should be able to just intuit what easy, medium, and hard mean
in the context of the game you're sitting in front of is ludicrous!
Much less, the idea that you'll know which one you're going to enjoy the most.
This system is utterly outdated at this point.
The issues with this system are compounded by the fact that
in the absence of context, many players feel like they shouldn't play on easy.
Either because it's embarrassing, because come on, they're better players than that,
or simply because there's often the perception that that's not how the game was meant to be played.
Conversely, many players instantly steer away from hard difficulty,
because they don't feel like they have enough time,
or they just want to see the story,
or they don't expect they're good enough to play at that difficulty.
This leads to so many players getting a suboptimal game experience.
Choosing the easy setting when they would have enjoyed normal difficulty even more,
or choosing hard mode when they've really had nothing to prove
and would have had a way better time blazing through the game on easy.
With no other context, all we're left with is our
pre-existing biases to help us choose.
And we need more than that.
Another way we often see this dealt with is with contextual difficulty.
The type of difficulty where the game adjusts on-the-fly to how well or poorly you're playing.
Unfortunately this often leaves a bitter taste for players.
You know those games where you've died a few times in a row
and the game stops everything to ask you:
"Would you like me to switch this to easy for you?"
Or: "Hey, here's a golden Doodad of Invulnerability. Go get 'em, champ. 35th time's the charm!"
That NEVER feels good.
It just feels like the game is insulting you.
Heck, when some games do it they literally are insulting you.
This can also be done completely under the hood without explicitly telling the player
but if the player ever finds out about it the feeling is even worse.
And if you don't give the player any agency in it,
you run the risk as a designer of getting it wrong.
If you reduce the players difficulty, and they didn't want it to be a lower difficulty,
and you didn't tell them or give them a choice,
you have done them a great disservice.
Finally some games allow you to change the difficulty in the middle of play via an in-game menu.
This is actually one of the better choices available,
but interestingly players still don't seem to like to use it.
James once worked on a game where they tracked if the players changed their difficulty after dying a bunch of times in a row,
and while some certainly did, more ended up quitting entirely rather than reducing the difficulty.
Again, this may be the result of the notion that
lowering the difficulty is in some way a bad thing.
Or it may just be because the bar of frustration where players are willing to manually lower the difficulty
is actually higher than the bar at which they'd rather just not play the game anymore.
But either way, this system doesn't seem to be the perfect solution, either.
Dark Souls 2, though, does things a bit differently.
Now, many people play the Dark Souls series for the difficulty,
but for somebody like James, he likes the lore, and the world.
He doesn't want it to be Kirby's Epic Yarn or anything,
but he doesn't have a lot of free time in his life these days,
and he wants to be able to see everything without committing hundreds of hours.
He'd like the world to be just tough enough
that it fits the gloomy and depressing setting they've created,
but no more difficult than that.
Well, in Dark Souls 2, they've built into the mechanics
a number of ways for the player to set their own difficulty.
And because these are mechanics based, rather than menu based,
the player feels clever for using them,
rather than like they're playing the game wrong.
So how did FromSoftware do this?
Well, let's break it down piece by piece.
First: Ranged combat.
Most of the enemies in the game are specifically designed for Melee combat
and are intentionally given pathing constraints.
Or are left with pathing bugs.
This generally means that playing a ranged character,
especially a spellcaster where there's little penalty for using your ranged shots,
lowers the overall difficulty of the game,
and makes it more reliant on patience and observation rather than reflexes.
Second: Character selection.
While it's often said that character selection is unimportant in Dark Souls 2
the main thing to note
is that there are several options which let you play a spellcaster from the outset
which makes the beginning of the game easier.
Third: The Ring of Life Protection.
Dark Souls is famous for how punishing its death mechanic is,
but there's an item that you can get fairly early in the game
that let's you swap the default penalty for a much less brutal one.
Normally, dying in a Souls game means
that you risk losing all the souls you'd collected up to that point,
and have to spend most of the game in the Hollow State
with a reduced health bar.
However, the Ring of Life Protection
allows you to keep all the souls you had when you died
and doesn't make you lose humanity or become hollow on death.
The only trade-off is that when you die it breaks,
and you have to spend 3,000 souls to fix it.
This is a clear mechanic swap that the player can opt into.
The designers are basically saying:
"Look, if you don't like our normal death penalty, feel free to use this one if you want."
James got to spend almost the entire game
in durable human form and just had to pop back to the blacksmith
to get his ring repaired when he died.
And losing 3,000 souls still hurts,
now that's about six enemies worth when you're a few hours into the game,
but it meant he never had the agony of losing a huge amount of progress
and his character had about 25% more health than most for the entire game.
If that's not difficulty adjustment, I don't know what is.
Fourth: You can bring a buddy to a boss fight.
Dark Souls allows you to recruit allies to help you take down the bosses.
And while the bosses are somewhat enhanced when you fight them with more than one person
they don't get three times stronger when you come at them with two pals.
So allies pretty much always give you an edge.
This makes fighting the bosses much easier, especially for a spellcaster
who's relying on others to tank for them.
But it doesn't feel like cheating.
It feels like triumphing together with your new anonymous online friends.
And that's a great feeling. And if you're not online,
the devs even put in NPC friends for you to summon
just to make sure you don't miss out.
Conversely the FromSoftware team created bonfire ascetic
and the company of champions for those who decided the game was too easy.
All of these design choices allow the player to use systems within the game
to adjust the difficulty in whatever direction they desire.
So, for those of you who want to see the world of Dark Souls II
and want to experience the game but not suffer through it,
or for those of you who just want to see how adjustable the game's difficulty is through mechanics alone,
here is a brief guide to Dark Souls II (sort of) easy mode.
Step: 1
Start as a sorcerer.
Step: 2
Get the binoculars as soon as possible.
They're in the first town and they let you magically snipe enemies
that are too far away to lock on to.
Step: 3
Crank up your strength and dexterity stats
until you can wield the flaming longsword found in the first zone.
Step: 4
Use a human effigy to allow you to summon other players to help you fight the first few bosses
Step: 5
Start raising your stats toward 20 intelligence and 20 faith.
Step: 6
If you're struggling with the dragonrider boss
you can actually snipe him down to one health from outside his boss chamber
before you even go in.
Step: 7
Once you're at 20 intelligence and 20 faith,
immediately go talk to Felkin the Outcast.
He'll give you a weapon and a full set of armor which you'll pretty much be able to
use for the rest of the game.
And finally, Step: 8
When you're talking to Felkin buy the Ring of Life Protection and the Dark Orb Spell.
Do all that and you're pretty much ready to take on the entire game.
Just remember that you're playing a magic user here.
You're not gonna be doing your fighting in melee range.
Your go-to strategy is pretty much to kite everything you can't snipe,
and look for spots where the enemy's pathing is bad.
Or, just find the places where distance triggers the mob to return to its original location
so you can shoot it in the back while it's walking away.
Honourable? No. Effective? Oh yes!
Also, you're gonna be focusing on Hexes as Dark Orb, your basic Hex spell,
has a high stagger which means it's very likely to stun enemies or interrupt their attacks
which will make your job even easier.
And remember: Always bring friends to a boss fight,
and always repair that ring.
Well, I hope that helps you think about difficulty differently
or at the very least I hope it helps you beat Dark Souls II.
Catch you next week!