A forum for discussing and organizing recreational softball and baseball games and leagues in the greater Halifax area.
Hollow Knight: Silksong devs address difficulty concerns: “You have choices”
-
The high points of the game are very good. The low points ruin it, in my opinion. I get that frustration might be fun for some people, but I find it discouraging and I don't feel like Silksong *wants* me to be successful. It feels like it wants me to feel frustrated and angry, and that's not an experience I want to have. I doubt I'll finish the game, which sucks, because I loved Hollow Knight, and I love the parts of Silksong that aren't just making me mad.
-
Seriously. I love Hollow Knight and what I have played from Silksong thus far, but this elitist "game must be ultra hard and exclude people that can't do it" shit is and always has been a garbage take as far as I am concerned. Having some sort of option to allow people that aren't that good or have accessibility issues enjoy the game seems like a fine thing. Having those be **optional** should in no way prevent people that like the hard default settings from enjoying the game. Maybe have those options disable getting achievements/trophies if it prevents these elitists from enjoying the game knowing that their "lessers" are also able to enjoy the game.
-
Silksong makes me want to cry sad tears of defeat. It's so melancholy and difficult sometimes. Yeah, there's the whole 'get good' argument, but there's a lot of arguably unnecessary tedium involved that starts to feel like difficulty just for the sake of being difficult and nothing else. That's definitely been a bit of a detractor for me, as well as a lot of others it seems.
-
Once I switched from my steam deck to a platform where I got more than five frames and switched wireless controller surrounded by two separate wireless routers It became one of if not my favorite game but while I was playing with an unknown handicap I saw a bunch of unavoidable flaws that were not the fault of the player at least on the bell beast, there are instances that are impossible to escape like entirely impossible, you can avoid them and I did eventually beat it even with the handicap but the game definitely has flaws that the difficulty accentuates but the later upgrades and tools definitely eliminates most of them.>there are instances that are impossible to escape like entirely impossible I expect to see the 100% no hit speedrun hit the internet by the end of the month
-
Nine Sols did this perfectly. It's another very hard metroidvania, but it has some options you can enable if you want to that adjust the difficulty in a variety of very tangible ways. I wish that was standard.Nine Sols is great, and I agree completely that they did a good job of adding those options. I didn't end up using them, but I bet it let a lot of people enjoy the game that could have hit a wall in Hollow Knight or people that just couldn't grasp the parrying mechanic.
-
I'll repeat a comment I posted on another article. It has been 14 years since Dark Souls and yet, the holy words still stand. Git gud.Everyone heard Hornet say git gud. If you say you didn't, you either didn't play HK or you're a liar. Silksong is the git gud game. It is the Bloodborne 2 we never got.
-
Seriously. I love Hollow Knight and what I have played from Silksong thus far, but this elitist "game must be ultra hard and exclude people that can't do it" shit is and always has been a garbage take as far as I am concerned. Having some sort of option to allow people that aren't that good or have accessibility issues enjoy the game seems like a fine thing. Having those be **optional** should in no way prevent people that like the hard default settings from enjoying the game. Maybe have those options disable getting achievements/trophies if it prevents these elitists from enjoying the game knowing that their "lessers" are also able to enjoy the game.And the idea that every game should be for everyone is the reason why Elden Ring is... kind of a bad game. Great open world, beautiful scenery... bad boss design, which yes — that is the game. Like, think about this in the real world setting. Think about how this hyopthetical would play out, person becomes disabled and has to sit in a wheelchair. Everyone agrees 'it's not fair that they can't walk, no one should walk because this person can't'. Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me, I'm sorry if there are people who can't beat these games — but damn, at some point you have to recognize life isn't fair and just enjoy the shit you do enjoy. If being good at a video game isn't important to you, *ok* that's your prerogative. Do not play the hard video game. But this constant whining about difficulty settings and nerfs is just obnoxious.
-
Everyone heard Hornet say git gud. If you say you didn't, you either didn't play HK or you're a liar. Silksong is the git gud game. It is the Bloodborne 2 we never got.
-
Nine Sols is great, and I agree completely that they did a good job of adding those options. I didn't end up using them, but I bet it let a lot of people enjoy the game that could have hit a wall in Hollow Knight or people that just couldn't grasp the parrying mechanic.
-
I have been pleading with my husband to do exactly this. But no, he will continue to bash his face off enemies until they die by some kind of miracle. He has 5 masks, does not use red tools (but uses the poison polyp in his one blue slot), does not pogo or hit enemies above him, not use running attacks, or heal in the air. Just straight on hit with nail while face tanking and ground heal. I am DREADING him somehow reaching Bilewater. I absolutely KNOW he is not the only person playing like this, and suspish this is the main source of the difficulty discourse...
-
>there are instances that are impossible to escape like entirely impossible I expect to see the 100% no hit speedrun hit the internet by the end of the monthThat's entirely possible, that's who I said "you can avoid them" if you don't get in the far corner you never get in those situations but if you do you can get chain hit all the way to zero hp. You would have to be clairvoyant to see them coming which of course you can be by replaying the level so a hitless run is entirely possible but that doesn't make my it fair or good game play.
-
Every time I read about players bitching about difficulty, I wonder why they're so persistent. There's plenty of games out there to play instead. I tried dark souls and realized that kinda game isn't for me. Neither is getting over it, or anything like that. I just want to lean back and relax, and I don't want to mess with tight timings and stuff like that. I just play puzzle games because of that, and I thoroughly enjoy it. Why do they feel the need of forcing themselves through an experience they don't enjoy? FOMO? Bragging rights? I really don't get it.Too much of Silksong's difficulty is just numbers. Shitty peon enemies hit for two health because fuck you. Touching a boss *while it's stunned* hits for two health because fuck you. And then there's the whole shard system, which straight-up doesn't need to exist since it just makes you never engage with tools. Until you use them to nuke a boss in its final phase, of course, because the alternative is playing RNG roulette against the boss's 3 adds (that each hit for two damage, naturally). It's a great game, but it definitely isn't a perfect game. They need to remove shards, tweak (lower) the power of tools, and adjust outgoing damage (ideally through armor-like upgrades you earn). Oh, and crests were not the right call. We all just use the Reaper (unless we're further exploiting tools with that other crest).
-
Silksong makes me want to cry sad tears of defeat. It's so melancholy and difficult sometimes. Yeah, there's the whole 'get good' argument, but there's a lot of arguably unnecessary tedium involved that starts to feel like difficulty just for the sake of being difficult and nothing else. That's definitely been a bit of a detractor for me, as well as a lot of others it seems.The clip I watched the character was going through some Lion King game esque jumping sequence and I immediately knew the game wasn't for me.
-
Your basically not even out of the tutorial yet in the grand scheme of things. Shards didn't become a problem for me for example till well past the half way point.I personally have 100% completion and only fell below half my available shards a couple of times. I probably still have most of my shard consumables to restore them when you get low if I had to guess. I used the fire tool a fair bit late game, and the boomerang early game for a couple of fights, but presumably since I was using a crest with only one tool slot I consumed shards slower than the average joe.
-
I think twitch drives this a lot. Streamers getting annoyed with the game they’re playing tend to do better on their vods and bring in more people. As a result, people become more and more tolerant to games that are just annoying. Like I understand that some people enjoy the gameplay of soulslikes, but who enjoys run backs?... I do? They're like the most basic manifestation of mastery over a particular section meaningfully impacting my experience. Not only does getting good at a run back let me focus on learning the boss more, but it also increases my general mobility throughout the map as a whole and drastically improves how cool it feels to replay the game and just blow through previously challenging sections.
-
Some things in the game definitely piss me off. But I avoid ranting about it because then the game would only be about the bad parts. It can still be a lot of fun if you take it slowly. Big tip for boss fights: turn off the music and it becomes 10x easier. For me the music is way too overdramatic and distracting during a boss fight.
-
Too much of Silksong's difficulty is just numbers. Shitty peon enemies hit for two health because fuck you. Touching a boss *while it's stunned* hits for two health because fuck you. And then there's the whole shard system, which straight-up doesn't need to exist since it just makes you never engage with tools. Until you use them to nuke a boss in its final phase, of course, because the alternative is playing RNG roulette against the boss's 3 adds (that each hit for two damage, naturally). It's a great game, but it definitely isn't a perfect game. They need to remove shards, tweak (lower) the power of tools, and adjust outgoing damage (ideally through armor-like upgrades you earn). Oh, and crests were not the right call. We all just use the Reaper (unless we're further exploiting tools with that other crest).Shards are my biggest problem with the game atm. They upped the difficulty significantly, and added this system of tools to compensate, and then punish you for engaging with said tools. Boy I tell you there's nothing I love more than grinding up to the maximum Shard capacity, getting my ass fucked by a boss times in a row, and then having to grind for another half an hour to build up my shards again
-
Sucks to be anyone who didn't realize how prohibitively difficult it would be until after the refund period
-
I'll repeat a comment I posted on another article. It has been 14 years since Dark Souls and yet, the holy words still stand. Git gud.It's been 14 years since Dark Souls and yet the holy rebuke still stands: I have a fucking job