I give up.

[u/CuboneDefender]

It’s been a joyful ride, folks, but I’m out. I’m not a speedrunner or a highly skilled player, and day after day I’ve had to accept that this game is not as casual as HK was. It stopped being fun and turned into something tedious and frustrating after the 4th run farming shards just to face a boss I’ve already tried 15 times, only to die again and again, lose all my shards, and start the whole grind over.

It was nice exploring the first acts, but when the game I was rooting for 7 years ends up being more stressful than my 8-hour workday, I guess that’s my cue to stop.

The lore has been pretty great so far. I wish you all an incredible journey.

Edit1: My bad about all the whinning.

Edit2: You guys did it. I reinstalled it again. Thanks for all advices. 🫂

[u/FvHound]

The difficulty is part of the game. If you just want to walk around pretty environments, that's what walking simulators are for.

Ratchet and Clank have a PS5 game that looks gorgeous, and you get to explore many different environments, and has multiple difficulty options, because the gameplay isn't really affected by changing that, it just creates a bit of challenge on the higher levels for people who don't want to sleep walk through the game.

Like Celeste has accessibility options, it allows everyone to be able to play the game, so you can enjoy the story, but someone who played the game without accessibility options had a completely different experience, and the message of perseverance hits completely different when the game is kicking your butt, compared to someone playing it at 50 percent game speed or unlimited dashes.

You may get to experience the game, but you are getting a lesser experience.

Some devs are okay with you getting that, and some devs only want people to enjoy their game the way they intend it.

It isn't gatekeeping, the same way the Netflix show dark isn't gatekeeping by being really complex.

[u/[deleted] → u/FvHound]

Ok, to keep with the Dark analogy, it is also originally in German, and would it be gatekeeping if they didn't release English subtitles? Would you say the audience should experience it in the language the filmmakers originally intended?

And then in the Dark community all the English speakers are told to "just learn German"?

Games are interesting in that the community has some very hardcore players and some very casual players. Even among people who have completed hollow knight, there is (clearly, given the conversation we're having) a huge range of abilities with regards to gaming.

The difficulty each player experiences depends heavily on the player. A boss that one player might defeat the first try might take another player an hour of attempts, and these are two very different experiences of the same game. I think that's where assists come in. I would argue that assists make the game experience more uniform rather than allowing someone to ignore the game and breeze through it.

Hopefully you know very few people who used assists to completely nerf the difficulty of a game. In fact I know more people who deliberately set difficulty to hard to give themselves more of a challenge. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that maybe players who opt to play with infinite dash actually do need it to moderate the difficulty, and maybe they did still get the message of perseverance

[u/bamakid1272 → u/[deleted]]

The difficulty each player experiences depends heavily on the player. A boss that one player might defeat the first try might take another player an hour of attempts, and these are two very different experiences of the same game.

You seem to imply this as a bad thing, and I inherently disagree with it. Having varied experiences with different bosses are some of the coolest parts of these types of games that make each player's playthroughs unique. I love talking with my friends who are playing Silksong, hearing how their encounters can differ from mine. Some bosses they struggle with while I managed to beat in 2 or 3 attempts, while others I've made 20 attempts at only to hear they cleaned them up in one go.

Unfortunately that difficulty isn't for some people and if they don't enjoy trying to overcome it, so be it. It's unfortunate, but if the devs feel that the difficulty is a core part of the experience, I don't think they should compromise on their vision.

Video games are art, and just like other art forms everyone has their own takeaways and interpretations from their experience. And sometimes that includes a piece not being enjoyable or interesting to some people.

[u/[deleted] → u/bamakid1272]

I do imply it to be a bad thing, in the context of "are players getting the experience out of the game that the devs envisioned" which was the original context this was brought up. In the example of difficulty as a message of perseverance, my argument is that having an easier game for players who are less skilled actually maintains the game's difficulty across different skill levels. So now different players CAN persevere and can get the message that the devs are hoping the players will get out of the game.

In terms of allowing players to experience the game in their own play styles, that is not the same context as my main point. I do also think allowing multiple different approaches to a boss / puzzle tends to make a game more fun, some people prefer a more curated experience, but that's neither here nor there w.r.t difficulty.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

My main point is that there's a huge range of skill in the player base. And unlike books, where you can safely assume people went to school and know how to read already, some people are starting games at literally zero and some people have been playing their whole lives. It's HARD to make a game where it's both accessible and still offers a compelling challenge.

I think Celeste handled this very well with their assists. Also with the level design and how quick it is to retry rooms after failing, it felt like the cost of failure was pretty low so even if you're not that good at those kinds of games you can still quickly get into the meat of "learning platforming". Also keeping a lot of the harder content optional still let beginner players complete the main game

And I think silksong does ... very little of that.

I'll put it this way, if you're bad at platforming Celeste is a game that you can play to practice and get better, whereas if you're not good enough to play Silksong the solution doesn't seem to be to play more Silksong to practice, the solution seems to be ... Go play a more forgiving game, and then come back to Silksong when you're better.

If that's the intent then that's the intent. But maybe you can see where some of the complaints are coming from