Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I stand by Sunbreak/G-Rank being hard.... and think it panders to that level of audience that are seeking 'challenge' (somewhat similar to Souls community I guess).

I loved my time with Sunbreak, and agree at times it was/is gruelling - but that was part of the appeal for me. Good builds, grinding, practice can all look to mitigate the difficulty - but it is intentionally a difficult experience.

I'm certainly not a 'gate-keeper', and actually would consider myself quite pro-accessibility.... but I strongly believe that not every game can be for every player. For instance - by Dark Souls adding an arbitrary 'easy mode' it would actually alienate its entire core audience. Sometimes trying to appease everyone means that you actually dilute your wider impact.

This argument will go around in circles for as long as we are alive. I just personally don’t agree that difficulty should fall into the ‘not for everyone’ category.

A turn based RPG is not for everyone, and demanding the game be real time is an unrealistic ask, as that would make it a fundamentally different experience. Adjusting damage values or whatever, however, doesn’t change the actual core mechanical experience, I guess you may emotionally come away from the game in a different place as you haven’t had the game curbstomp you or whatever, but if that is the only value the experience gives you, and everything else is arbitrary, then that doesn’t seem like an experience worth having, to me.

But difficulty is not a flat line, what is hard to one person, is not hard to another. And vice versa. There is this - to me anyway - very strange mindset that somehow a game’s identity and purpose will become lost, if a player is allowed to tailor a game to their needs. I just don’t understand this.

I played Elden Ring on PC, and modded it to turn down the amount of damage bosses did per attack, but I still experienced those bosses mechanics otherwise in full. I still had to learn the bosses, and overcome the bosses. I just tuned it to my skill level. People can say I didn’t have the ‘true’ experience, but I experienced the mechanics in full, with slightly adjusted numbers, so I think their argument is silly, personally.

In terms of Rise specifically. Yeah, I dunno. Sunbreak was such an astronomical leap in difficulty over Rise, it basically became a different game, as it required a completely different toolset and set of disciplines to overcome than the base game did, fundamentally altering the experience. I didn’t experience this in World to Iceborne, so was not expecting it. If this is the way things will be tuned in future, I am now properly prepared to give these expansions a wide berth.

You literally have an entire genre of games dedicated to satisfying this need. Get over yourself.

Days without easy mode discourse: 0

People always say developers shouldn't have to sacrifice their artistic intent, and sure, I don't disagree with that, but I can't imagine there are many developers who actively want their game to be inaccessible to people. The point of good difficulty options isn't to make completing the game trivial, it's to allow people to adjust it to their own skill level, so a less skilled player playing on easy mode will have roughly the same experience as a more skilled player on the normal difficulty.

Anyway, I think I've said these things before and pretty much every point that can be made about this has already been made on this thread, so I'll just link to this GMTK video instead: https://youtu.be/NInNVEHj_G4?si=egtFbzQ3hXaye7Pb

Exactly this. This is where this argument always falls down for me, when people make assumptions that hard and easy are these flat, base, concepts that apply equally to everyone. They do not. The idea that somehow the artistic intent is lost if someone is able to tailor the difficulty more to them despite the mechanics being completely unchanged, is just such a surreal argument to me. It is why I love games like Control which offer rich, granular, options to really tailor it to your personal skill level. The idea that Souls games can’t do this is silly. It has also been disproven time and time again, both by Souls games that have just included these options and by those modders who have modded them in.

I just personally feel like games that make you learn how to play them should be allowed to exist without allowing for the player to adjust difficulty.

@Pizzamorg Yet you always find a way to complain about games in those genres.. like you acknowledge this genre exists, but then always say how the game isn't something you like because of how difficult it is, or how it felt like a waste of time. All I can say is maybe don't play the games if they clearly aren't for you?

Edit: And my issue isn't that you dislike these games. You can dislike what you like. The issue is that you constantly bring up how Devs shouldn't be making games like these, or at least it feels that way. It always comes across as a bit entitled generally? There's many different experiences out there, and some are just catered towards different people. This has the same energy as those who complain about Final Fantasy no longer being turn-based, when there's other turn-based RPGs out there.

But @VoidofLight you are arguing against something I am not asking for. I'm not asking for every game to have a God mode, I still want to learn the mechanics and overcome the challenges. But what might be a manageable challenge to you might be a brutal difficulty wall someone else could not overcome.

You know what I did in Elden Ring? I turned the damage down by 10%. That was the difference for me in the game being impossible, and being something I could enjoy. I didn't circumvent any mechanics or alter any artistic intent, I simply tuned the game to my skill level. Saying that game is "not for me" based just on the fact that it doesn't have difficulty opportunities is profoundly asinine, as every other aspect to that game I absolutely loved. The build crafting, the combat, the bosses.

The only barrier to me was some arbitrary numbers on a page file somewhere that said bosses have to do x damage per attack and the player has no say in that. If you can't see the difference between that, and something like the turn based argument above - something which is fundamentally unique mechanically - then you clearly just don't want to listen to the other side, because there is no reasonable argument you can make otherwise.

Also yeah, that is one of my unpopular opinions for this thread too, I think it sucks that Final Fantasy betrayed its original audience to go in a real time direction. It feels like turn based games are going extinct (at least outside of the indie space). We have so many action games, we don't need more of them. We need more games to do the Yakuza thing and go in the opposite direction.

I'm personally glad that Turn-Based is dying. There's some cases where it can be fun, like in Shin Megami Tensei with the press-turn system, but for the most part its generally just archaic. I don't enjoy watching the characters stand there in place. I feel like Turn-Based games still have a place, and there should be more RPGs that are turn-based.. but Final Fantasy made the right move by getting out of that space.

I personally dislike games like Dragon Quest, but I don't think Dragon Quest should move to action-based combat. There's a reason why people like that series.. even if I feel like its god awful and stale.

Yeah the bigger problem with FF 16 at least for me was not the action combat, it was that they removed almost all of the RPG and party base elements as well. Like it removed so much of what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy it feels like a different franchise entirely. (also Stranger of Paradise had way better real time combat in a FF game than 16 did, I dunno if that is an unpopular opinion).

@VoidofLight re Turn-based, I would have 100% agreed with you until last week... but BG3 has me converted!

Back to the main topic though - I tend to look at 'difficulty' and challenging games through the lens of what the auteur/developers intended.
Miyazaki (FromSoftware) is a good example of an auteur with a vision for his games - and in his case, he wants to aggressively challenge players.
I actually feel a degree of comfort playing games that do not have 'difficulty modes' (irrespective of games being 'hard' or 'easy'). Without the paralysing choice of a difficulty mode, I am confident I'm playing the game the way that the devs intended me to do so.

Regarding turn based vs. action, I think it's nice that both happened. Square Enix structured their lineup such that there's stuff for both audiences. What I dislike is when something disappears completely like 2D Zelda and traditional 3D Zelda, it's sad how if you want return to traditional 3D Zelda style of gameplay you're better off having a PS5 than a Switch.

I know there's all that speculation that the "Z R 2023" tease means Zelda Remake/Remaster 2023 with WWHD/TPHD being shadow dropped at the Game Awards but those have been rumoured for Switch for many years now so it's best to stay skeptical. I feel if they're going to shadow drop anything at the Game Awards, it'll be Prime 2+3 to prepare people for Prime 4.

Turn-based is definitely not dying out, it's just not quite as universal as it used to be. 2/5 of 'best RPG' category is turn-based including the probable GotY. We have multiple turn-based Mario games out/coming out, speaking of Monster Hunter there is Stories 2 There is obviously Pokemon. Square Enix still makes turn-based games even if FF isn't. And of course plenty of good indies.

I don't think I realized you can lower the attack % of enemies in elden ring. I gave up on that game early on as I wasn't enjoying it.

For turn based, I still enjoy it alot. Even moreso when there's Inputs to generate more damage like paper mario or more recently, sea of stars.

@grumblevolcano I don't think they'll abandon traditional 2d and 3d. At least I hope they don't. It would be alienating alot of their fan base.

It isn't a feature in the base game, they modded their PC copy (I'm not making a judgement BTW, just pointing it out).

Turn-based combat and action combat can both be good or bad, depending on the mechanics. I will admit that SMT and Bravely Default sort of ruined lazier turn-based systems for me, but something like Dragon Quest is still more fun than crappy action JRPG combat in series like Tales of... and Star Ocean.

@Pizzamorg I do think the easiness of base Rise trained the player to play more... sloppily? Sunbreak punishes you for spamming wirebug attacks and flying around like a hopped-up Spider-Man, so I could definitely see you needing to shift your tactics a bit. Which tbh is something I liked about games like MH4U: the same strategy that worked against one monster would get you killed by another. You had to learn their movement patterns intimately to come out on top.

Great Cave Offensive in Smash is a fun stage, you guys are just mean.

@NeonPizza
To be fair, the game was quite literally not designed with 200cc in mind. On the Wii U 200cc was only added as part of an update when the DLC was released. IIRC the original trailer when they showed it off it was pushed alongside the F-Zero track being added. And the first gameplay, I believe, was shown in the Treehouse live at that year's E3

So yes, the speed in the 200cc mode doesn't feel like it was designed with the MK8 stages in mind. But that's because it wasn't. It was literally thrown in there as a way to sell the DLC. The game wasn't designed with it in mind. The Amiibo and LABO integrations are kinda the same in that way

With that said.... even as the dude with the Super Mario Kart avatar I agree with you on Mario Kart being a bit stale these days. Of course, I still think Mario Kart 8 is great and the DLC has been good. But if tomorrow they announced new hardware and said the killer app was Mario Kart 9? eh, I'm not going to be jumping for joy at the sight of new Mario Kart. We're at the point now where better hardware isn't going to open up new doors for Mario Kart. 8 is the peak I feel....

I do agree that 8 is tough to beat in terms of track design but in terms of actual content, not so much. 8 was so focused on track design that they forgot to make a complete game, to the point that they gave me a free copy of the not even a year old at the time Wind Waker HD just for buying it near launch to make up for that (yes I know the real reason was because they badly wanted the game to improve Wii U sales, shush).

I'm not sure what 9 will be like, but if I'm excited, its because they've likely been working on it forever, so that won't be an issue a second time.

I have no real hope for 9. Chances are that Nintendo is going to pull what they pulled with Mario Sports, Switch Sports, Animal Crossing, and other "multiplayer titles" on switch, by limiting how much content you'll get to access on launch. They'll probably start the game off with a limited character roster and cart set, along with about half a game's worth of courses. Then they'll probably trickle "new" courses, "new" characters, and "new" carts, with most of those being stuff from the previous games. People will enjoy it because its Nintendo, where as a lot of previous Mario Kart fans will feel horrible because the game is a complete downgrade from the previous entries in every way.

Dry Dry Desert is NOT a bad track in Mario Kart 8.
Yes, the theming could be better, but there are quite a lot of positives overlooked about it, I see so many people rate it in their bottom 5 tracks in MK8 when that is WAY too harsh.

For example…
1 - It is by far the most open-feeling track in Mario Kart 8, which makes it stand out
2 - The music absolutely SLAPS
3 - The shortcuts are insane in this one. Getting a gold mushroom and cutting the huge off-road near the end is a feeling you can’t match.
4 - Yes, the layout is a bit lacking but people forget that it has variety of a narrow space (that circle sinkhole thing), the water/oasis part, etc

Snipers in video games should kill you in at least max one headshot one body, or just two shots. And honestly, I really hate this opinion myself despite having it but like, they’re are few games I’ve played where just peaking my head out is just dead, and it doesn’t help how common they are in some of these games. Am I being very specific? Yes, but it’s a opinion I despise but just have lol.