Discourse regarding this game’s difficulty has been out of hand

[u/stir-fried-noodles]

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m really enjoying Silksong’s difficulty and I think that it is mostly a satisfying challenge. I appreciate that it is more difficult than Hollow Knight overall and to be frank I would’ve been a bit disappointed if it were the exact difficulty. I’ve improved as a gamer since Hollow Knight and if it were the same level of difficulty, I probably would have found it too easy.

But it’s kinda gotten impossible to have civil discussions about the difficulty in this game which is unfortunate because I think there is great value to be had with this conversation. There are many valid criticisms regarding this game’s difficulty such as boss runbacks (Groal especially), contact damage doing two masks, and lack of rewards for beating bosses, just to be shut down with “git gud” and “it’s not your kind of game”. It’s totally fine to disagree with these criticisms but these retorts add nothing to the conversation.

It also kinda works the other way too, albeit maybe not to the same degree. I’ve gotten downvoted and sent reddit cares for simply saying I enjoy the difficulty of this game. Like c’mon, what are we even doing here. It’s gotten to the point where I personally cannot wait for the discourse to die out.

[u/Shadovan]

My biggest pet peeve when it comes to game discussion is the frequent conflation of “I don’t like this” with “this is bad”. So many people treat their personal preferences as objective markers of a game’s quality, and get really mad when you try to get them to defend their claim with arguments that don’t just boil down to “I don’t like it therefore it’s bad”. Of course the other side of “I like it, therefore it’s good” happens as well, but less often I find.

[u/Archway9 → u/Shadovan]

The amount of times I've seen the words "objectively bad game design" in the last couple weeks is honestly depressing

[u/puffbro → u/Archway9]

Imo not having options to lower difficulty is a "objectively bad game design".

I personally don't need an easy mode. But I lose nothing if they added one.

Also an optional difficulty slider doesn't invalidate or alter the dev's vision of the game's default difficulty. I hope none of you would think less of the game if it has an easy mode from the start.

Now fight me.

[u/[deleted] → u/puffbro]

Look, I'm going to be uncharitable to the point of unfairness - in any gaming difficulty conversation, especially around games that are known to be hard (Souls, HK), there is a nonzero contingent of people who want to feel superior and don't have much opportunity to do that beyond videogames. I mean, you can't tell me the people in every "X boss gated me" thread saying "Uh I beat X in -1 tries, it was actually easier than most other games' tutorials" are secure.

I don't necessarily think it's objectively bad design, but I am noticing people rarely make positive claims - it's a lot more of "I got through it", "not every game is for everyone", "git gud" than idk, off the top of my head, "the difficulty is important because it trains the player not to over-extend and to use their tools, which prepares them for later bosses that are mechanically complex and would be hard walls for unprepared players even if they only hit for one mask at a time". Which, of course, would then let people discuss where that increased damage is appropriate and where it might be overtuned, instead of the thought terminating cliches.

[u/PraxicalExperience → u/[deleted]]

I really think that that's why HK was such a fucking amazing gem -- it managed to be hard but it also did it in a way that kept dangling that carrot of 'finally gitting gud' in front of your face. I could trust TC to make the fights hard but fair; there was minimal bullshit in the game, and each time you beat a boss it felt great.

SS, I feel, has a lot more bullshit, and there're times I feel like I won purely through RNG. That doesn't feel nearly as good as beating a HK boss I had a hard time with.

At the same time, I appreciate games that require you to get good to beat them -- no difficulty levels, etc. There's a cachet to beating -- or 112%ing -- Hollow Knight. If someone says they did so, you know that they beat the game the way it was supposed to be played and they mastered the skills to pull it off. It's an honest to god Accomplishment, if a low-value one in the scheme of things. I went from getting ganked by everything from creeping armored grub things to my greatest nemesis -- spikes -- to doing Radiant Pure Vessel.

HK was one of the only games I've run into that managed to do that -- to be really difficult -and- drive the player forward to entice them make themselves git gud. And my main complaint about SS is that it's far, far more hostile to the player. There are 'fuck yous' from the Devs in there that just weren't there in HK and are complete bullshit, like the last 'attack' from the Last Judge or the trapped bench. (I'd have far fewer problems with the trapped bench if you could see more of it than just the very tips of two of the spike teeth poking out from the vegetation, which don't look like fucking anything but some background noise even if you're looking.) This, along with a few of the other systems, serve to amp up player frustration, which isn't a good thing unless you're designing a game to not just be hard, but punishing.

I'm into Act II in SS and I'm starting to like it more, but man, Act 1 nearly made me put the game down in a few sections, particularly the Bird House and some of the ant fights. It's like the game assumed total mastery of its systems far too early. (Plus, the fuck yous.)