I'll also admit my knowledge of Pandaria is secondhand from talking to old guildies. My job prematurely ended my raid career in Cata, and I haven't had the time or desire to return.
Fury of the Sunwell came out in March 2008, with Wrath of the Lich King coming out in October 2008. that's nearly 5-6 months of being able to do Sunwell. I'm sorry if I'm not registering this as "at the end of an expansion"
But BC also had a lot of content gated by key-mechanics which acted as nothing but tedious blockades to newer players, and actively hurt some guilds from progressing based on a participation limit.
For an expansion that lasted the better part of two years? Yeah, kinda. And IIRC M'uru got nerfed after a few months too.
The heroic keys were annoying, and I'm glad they removed them later on. But they were also easily gained by doing regular questlines and dungeon runs you really should have been doing anyway, and were a tremendous step up from vanilla attunements.
Fucking hell, the vanilla attunements. brb stabbing myself
The point of this Wow talk though was difficulty, and the fact that even though difficulty of the game was increased (like in Cata and MoP) people still complained about it not being difficult because it offered people an easier-mode.
The elitism of difficulty is different from the reality of difficulty.
More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
I didn't read the whole "difficulty and intended experience" discussion but I just want to add that Touhou does have a story and an atmosphere and it's enjoyed just as much for the characters and setting as it is for the challenge side. That's why there's Easy mode: so people who don't want to dodge bullets can still tour the game. The real experience is Normal or above, so there are a lot of extras behind the skill wall, for people who actually want to engage the game on its own level (Normal or above). If you want those extras, you either have to ask other people for them, or you have to earn them with skill, but none of them are absolutely essential. Like, for example, unlocking and defeating Flandre Scarlet. No one *wants* this to be easy. It's supposed to be an achievement.
And there is my two cents about Touhou as a "competitive" game. I feel that it applies to 2D shooters in general.
I wanted to be challenged by Dark Souls, so I chose to abstain from using the Ring of Sacrifice, use light armor, and don't use magic. These are all things that I decided were best suited to what I wanted out of the game. Just because using magic is there doesn't mean I'd want to use it, because I have determined that the challenge level of the choices I have made is what I like best. And the varying options with builds and their relatively clear difference in difficulty allowed me to easily determine when I wasn't satisfied with a difficulty level and when I was. But at no point was the presence of an easy option a detriment to the harder options, because the easy option fit in with the emotional experience the game wanted to provide. And the harder options were made clear to those who would want to use them. Everyone wins.
i just want to note that, while this is a valid perspective, it doesn't really suit *my* preferred approach to playing video games. i do not, under this set up, "win".
Which is completely fine, no game is obligated to cater to my specific idiosyncratic preferences.
i like to be immersed in a game world, imposing constraints on myself breaks that immersion. Dying because i'm bad at the game doesn't in the same way, it just makes me try again. Self-imposed constraints are something i might do after clearing the game if i still want an extra challenge from it, but generally speaking that's very much not my style of play (i'm more inclined to do it if the game incentivizes it in some way, e.g. providing better rewards for faster clears).
i realize this doesn't address your complaint about different difficulty settings, and, well, i won't argue with it, it's a fair point and i don't have an answer besides that devs should ideally put a bit more thought into difficulty changes than just changing some variables and calling it a day.
Well, that's why I think it's important to focus on providing options that feel natural. Dark Souls does a good job at this and I'm feeling lazy today so I'll just leave it at "you would have to play it to understand."
Because a lot of difficulty settings feel unnatural too. Games like Mass Effect feel weightless when the player isn't challenged even a little, but they feel too trial and error when they're too hard.
And it's kinda frustrating in ME2's case because it actually does provide ample room for players to establish their comfort levels, with stuff like heavy weapons essentially being a way to skip boss fights, or the fact that the player always has the option to go back to their older, less effective weapons. Both of those feel pretty natural, but the difficulty settings less so.
And he's doing literally everything wrong. I don't think I've ever seen anyone die to Amorbis. You can push the fucker between phases with a single shot from a homing shotgun that the game tells you he's weak to, he drops health like goddamn candy every time you look at him funny, and most of his attacks do less damage than you would recover just by staying in the safe zones even if you never bothered to dodge anything. You can literally win by standing still and firing charged light beam until it's time to bomb him. It's like...holy shit. This is legendary-grade fail.
Like, I can just hear the other poor goon on the video practically biting his tongue so he doesn't get banned from the forum for saying something.
That would be hilarious. I seriously did not know it was possible to die to that boss.
Like, I knew it was mechanically possible if you literally did nothing and made no effort to survive or end the fight.
But I never expected an actual human being to die to him whilst supposedly attempting to win. I've seen four-year-old children barely old enough to read the scan data kill this boss with no issue.
Fuckin...I want to love you slowbeef, but goddamn, man.
Yeah, that's the most painful part. I've seen him rock harder games than this, and even harder parts of the same series. The same time he was cocking up Prime 2, he did a 1% run of Fusion.
I know he's got it in him, but he needs to calm the fuck down, watch his surroundings, and gauge what his weapons do, instead of using uncharged power beam on everything, freaking out every time he starts taking corrosion damage, and not noticing when the boss litters the entire arena with enough health to top him off.
I'm seriously afraid of what's going to happen when he hits Boost Guardian or Alpha Blogg.
Speaking of Prime, I just downloaded the save file for 15 green credits on Trilogy. So I'm restarting with that now that it's possible to unlock everything.
I have a love-hate relationship with the Wii U version's free-aim. It makes a lot of things very, very easy. But it also makes a lot of things -- mostly early ones when you have no excess energy tanks to fall back on -- pretty difficult. Hive Mecha suddenly becomes a bit sketchy when locking on to a bug isn't an insta-kill anymore.
Also I'm amused to see they took out almost all of the glitches that let you sequence break, but left in the one that lets you get the Sunchamber artifact early.
so, i was watching rockleesmile play SOMA and... i know exactly what the plot twist is going to be. the machine scans your brain, makes an exact virtual model of it, then subjects it to stimuli to come up with an ideal treatment for your brain injuries. but it makes an exact copy, it's you. the protagonist just signed up to get Roko's Basilisk-ed
So I've decided, since I don't like looking at unfilled circles I'm going to do all three difficulties on all three Prime games.
Nromal - initial 100% pickups & scans
Easy - Speedrun
Hypermode - low %. Nothing ridiculous like OOB'ing to skip main equips, just expansions.
The parts that terrify me the most for low % are Boost Guardian, Alpha Blogg, Emperor Ing, and Phaaze. Maybe the first megaboss in Corruption. But I've already seen videos of Boost and Phaaze at minimal HP.
So, a major part of Undertale is the ability to spare monsters through the aptly named Mercy button. However, if you kill every monster in the game, you fight a different final boss from normal, one whose attacks do damage for as long as they're hitting you. In other words, their attacks don't grant mercy invincibility.
Comments
And there is my two cents about Touhou as a "competitive" game. I feel that it applies to 2D shooters in general.
i just want to note that, while this is a valid perspective, it doesn't really suit *my* preferred approach to playing video games. i do not, under this set up, "win".
Which is completely fine, no game is obligated to cater to my specific idiosyncratic preferences.
i like to be immersed in a game world, imposing constraints on myself breaks that immersion. Dying because i'm bad at the game doesn't in the same way, it just makes me try again. Self-imposed constraints are something i might do after clearing the game if i still want an extra challenge from it, but generally speaking that's very much not my style of play (i'm more inclined to do it if the game incentivizes it in some way, e.g. providing better rewards for faster clears).
i realize this doesn't address your complaint about different difficulty settings, and, well, i won't argue with it, it's a fair point and i don't have an answer besides that devs should ideally put a bit more thought into difficulty changes than just changing some variables and calling it a day.
i tried to submit once but my connection is buggy, and then i couldn't see the page at all
hang on, i'll fix it
Because a lot of difficulty settings feel unnatural too. Games like Mass Effect feel weightless when the player isn't challenged even a little, but they feel too trial and error when they're too hard.
And it's kinda frustrating in ME2's case because it actually does provide ample room for players to establish their comfort levels, with stuff like heavy weapons essentially being a way to skip boss fights, or the fact that the player always has the option to go back to their older, less effective weapons. Both of those feel pretty natural, but the difficulty settings less so.
when i say 'this game is hard' i basically mean 'i am bad at this game'
I...I don't think I have it in me to do the Genocide route, you guys.
what have i done
And pet them! Beyond mortal comprehension.
THE HEROINE APPEARS.
everyone is dead
toriel
papyrus
undyne
muffet
mettaton
sans
asgore
flowey
all dead
save me
the machine scans your brain, makes an exact virtual model of it, then subjects it to stimuli to come up with an ideal treatment for your brain injuries. but it makes an exact copy, it's you. the protagonist just signed up to get Roko's Basilisk-ed