Helldivers 2 director weighs in on Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree's difficulty: 'A game for everyone is a game for no one'

This is such a terrible take. You can have difficulty accessibility options in difficult games (eg. Celeste, Furi) and it doesnt make the game worse. This is just gatekeeping bs

Accessibility is an extremely important topic and Elden Ring could absolutely be better in that aspect.

Difficulty, however, is unrelated to accessibility. Disabled people should be able to play difficult games -- that's what accessibility is about, letting people with disabilities experience the same content as everyone.
Honestly how is this gatekeeping? That word gets slinged around a lot and it using it here seems like it diminishes the real situations where the word is useful. So they're limiting access to the game from people who what? It's hard for everyone, they're not being selective about the difficulty somehow.
- Except some people have disabilities that prevent them from enjoying difficulty in a game. Some people just want the ambiance and story. Some people have reflexes that are not as sharp as they used to be. They should be able to also enjoy this art form as much as others
- they're gatekeeping the game story and experience, and ability to finish experiencing the game, from people who might be disabled or simply bad at games.
  
  by making the game more accessible they would allow more people to enjoy the whole game
  
  it's a pretty standard example of gatekeeping
- Honestly how is this gatekeeping?
  
  "Gatekeeping: the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something."
  
  The lack of difficulty sliders make the game inaccessible to people who have no ability or desire for the unforgiving experience, nor any ability/desire to "Git Gud Scrubs". It's intentionally left out to exclude those people. That makes it "gatekeeping" by the definition for the word.
  
  This is substantiated by the fact that a mode to make the game easier and a mode to make the game harder are in the top 10 downloaded mods for Elden Ring. If you leave out the loaders and modutils, those same mods are top-5. This is basically unheard of in most games.
  
  You can argue that you approve of this gatekeeping, but it's silly to die on the "it's not really gatekeeping" hill.
You mean like summoning NPCs and other players to your world to help you defeat the boss?

No one is gatekeeping anything just because you don't agree with the art the artist has created.
It has difficulty options. They're just not in a menu. If you want to play on hard mode, use fist weapons and never summon. If you want easy mode, be a mage carrying a great shield and summon every fight.
- Those are not difficulty settings and you know it. This argument is so fucking shit.
I feel like the main difference is that Elden Rings difficulty is innately linked to its game design. A similar game in a largely different genre is Underrail which is basically designed with CRPG fans who want to be kicked in the dick... repeatedly. Seriously Underrails combat is weirdly complex and frankly speaking even on easier difficulties is still a bitch.

I get that accessibility is a factor and all but theres only so much one can do thatll help without compromising the game design. I think the current situation is for the best, folks can mod the game to make it easier but there shouldnt be any official fuckery.

Also go play Underrail if you like Isometric CRPGs it hurts so good.
Thank you. People just ignore that difficulty settings literally means they can still have it fucking difficult as they want, or more so. Gamers are fucking ridiculous, I swear. Try to advocate for accessibility and they act like you're talking about murdering their mother.

I just beat one of the bosses that I've heard the most complaints about, and I did it on the 5th try using a non-dlc weapon. I went in fully prepared to throw a controller, but it really wasn't that bad. So far I'm really enjoying the DLC, and it's because it has been difficult yet rewarding.

It's mostly fine if you go for the skibidi tree fragments. There's a couple of bosses feel like they were designed out of spite though, specially the final one.
Was it >!Rellana!<? I've been avoiding spoilers so idk who's the most complained about, but I sat down and used a shield for the first time and parried her to death. It took 5 hours but it was fun lmao.
- Your spoiler tag doesn't work for me.
- Lol. No. It was the boss at the top of Shadow Keep.
They did roll out a nerf yesterday, but that's not to diminish your accomplishment!
- Yeah, I'm already past the curve so the nerf didn't do much to boost my power. I had already run some numbers when I was working out a build, and the difference in pre- and post- nerf was around 3%. The real secret to the DLC is to run around and explore. Getting fragments to boost yourself makes all of the fights much more tolerable. I was at 10 when I beat the aforementioned boss, and now I'm at 15, and it's getting pretty even with the base game. I think people just weren't expecting the fragments to be as important as they are.

I don’t think the game’s too hard but I also don’t think the bosses are particularly fun to fight. With how complex and fast they’re making enemies now and not really changing how the player controls it’s making fights take much longer. Not because it’s any harder to press the B button but because you spend most of the fight now dodging bosses endless combo extenders waiting for the opportunity to get a single hit in and then dodge for another 30 seconds. I feel like this game would have really benefitted from bloodbornes quickstep and rally systems

I genuinely think these games would not have the rep for difficulty if dodge was on button-down instead of up. That slight lack of responsiveness kills your a lot until you train yourself to compensate for it by pre-empting attacks (which means you have to learn the full moveset of the boss).
- Yeah I agree the control scheme contributes to the difficulty quite a bit. Between the dodging as you described and the lack of animation cancelling leading to "queueing" actions, you definitely need to be deliberate about what you're doing.

Ironic considering the rapidly dropping playerbase of Helldivers 2 due to Arrowheads questionable balancing changes lately.

Is it ironic and not just the most normal thing in the world that people don't play a game forever?
For me, it was their lack of attention to the bugs and crashes and pushing other unfinished and paywalled content.

When they patch things “should” work as described and still don’t.

The base game lures in newcomers by being the easiest one of the bunch; then the DLC kicks it up to Dark Souls 2+Ringed City difficulty and those newcomers are getting a taste of what the real game is and can't handle it lol

I got into these games because of their difficulty. When DS1 came out, the trend was that most games would hold you hand and just give you free victories so you get your dopamine fix. The base game got a little boring because most of the bosses are just regular mobs at the end of a cave with a boss health bar. I actually like getting to the end of a small side dungeon and having a challenging fight and not just a copy of the random little dudes I've been one shotting as I walk to the boss room.

Am I weird in thinking that once you get to the Mountaintops of Giants it becomes harder than any other Souls base game?
- I can see that, on the other hand you really don’t have to fight any mob in the mountaintops ir snowfield. Haligtree and Elohael are for sure harder than almost anything else From had done.
- You're not alone. I recall getting sniped from every direction at some points, with very tough 1:1 battles and boss battles that just kinda "happen" out in the open.

With this crap again. I hope they don't start crying when people leave their multiplayer game because it's not very enjoyable to most players, just sweaty nerds who kick you for not using the meta build

They have PvP, but it's a game that works perfectly well single player, and you absolutely don't have to engage with other players to get the meat of the game.
- I'm referencing Helldivers II with my comment.

Among Us did pretty good as a game for nobody.

It's almost like making a game fully accessible to most people will mean more people will play it... Hmm... 🤔🤔🤔

Elden Ring doesn’t even feel like a game for everyone who liked Dark Souls. They completely lost the plot on what a fun challenge is.

I think some people are just frustrated that the majority of the new cool weapons/ashes are locked behind difficult content. If you are too rusty to clear the initial difficulty wall, you'd be restricted to very little stuff after buying the $50 dlc.

That being said, a castle skip already exists so you can go collect the Smithscript series and Anvil Hammer - without killing a thing - as long as you explore hard enough!

They aren't, 90% of the content is accessible without a single boss harder than Mogh.
- Mogh is like, one of the hardest bosses. I had more trouble with him than the final few bosses of the story, Godfrey and Radagon and their subsequent phases.
- Point being they beat Mohg ages ago and now rusty to play DLC.
  
  Mohg is insanely weak to bloodflame too, I had much more problem with Blackgaol and Rellana early bosses then I did with Mohg while speedrunning a new chara into DLC map.

Fuck people with disabilities and other problems. They don't deserve to have fun.

Dark Souls was beaten with voice input alone. I saw someone working on doing that with Elden Ring just the other day. This isn't a disability issue. People just don't like difficult games, and that is very much a skill issue.
- "a few people did it this way so there's no excuse!!!"
  
  Fuck you.
Then mod it and play it. If you think you don't deserve to have fun then do something about it.

The difference between FromSoft's and Arrowhead's difficulty is that

first one is fair to players,

second one is about cranking up rng and changing rules constantly with the nerfs. Bonus Boss figts are on Discord against community managers, when you try to report a bug in game