Tbh dark souls 2 has extra hard difficulty setting

Just join the covenant at the tree in Majula

It increases enemy dmg by 50%

Reduces your dmg by 20%

Prevents summoning (but you can still be invaded)

Match the type of a game, sheesh.

Bethesda like open world? Gimmie difficulty levels - nothing will change with them except that people will be able to tailor the experience more.

Narrative and/or choice heavy game? Leave difficulty choice off to let the original vision of the author speak for itself - havimg parts too easy or hard due to watered down or pumped up difficulty can ruin the story.

Arcade/Dark Souls games? I...don't really see reasons for difficulty settings here except for harder than baselines ones? Like new game +. In these games, learning patterns and gettimg good is the game, there is no way around it.

All in all - not every game is for everyone, we have genres for a reason. Having difficulty tailored for arcades in open world exploration game makes no sense just as much as having watered down difficulty levels in narrative heavy games.

A lot of people in this thread don't seem to have gotten the subtle meme post in this image. Itagaki was the dude who made the Modern Ninja Gaiden titles and the Dead or Alive franchise. The dude was always a massive troll to both the media and players but was very dedicated to the vision he had for the games he wanted to make. He also had a very close friendship/rivalry with Katsuhiro Harada, the main dev for the Tekken franchise starting at Tekken 3 and recently cutting ties with Namco to found a new company that is, unfortunately, owned by SNK. Itagaki sadly passed away last year and a lot of old school devs mourned for his loss, but probably none harder than Harada given just how long they had been actual irl friends.

Souls ganes has easy modes. Usually there’s an OP build or archetype which makes the game much easier

Me, having beaten the game on the highest difficulty level, going back to play it on easy mode in the next playthrough: sometimes I just want to relax while I utterly massacre some bad guys.

Difficulty options aren't there to offer different experiences with a game, they're there to offer the same experience to players of different skill levels. People who are better at Dark Souls are playing it and its clones at a reduced difficulty compared to people who are worse at it.

As someone who's done Video game QA, working with Tomonobu Itagaki doesn't sound pleasant. Those campaign sprints are hard enough as is

I don't mind any of these approaches. Personally I'd want a single difficulty that is made challenging but with specific accessibility options. Like disable quick time events, loose lock on, and other things to make the interface more bearable if you have a physical or mental disability.

While I don't care if a game has an easy mode, a lot of the "easy mode is accessibility" arguments feel similar to the "AI art is accessibility" arguments. Unless you can't properly interface with the game, having low skill is not a disability or something needing accessibility support. If you practice you'll get better at it.

The "but I don't have much time" argument feels especially weird, like would you demand a cliff notes version of a book or TV show because you don't have the time otherwise? If you just want the story just find a playthrough online.

If a game has an easy mode, great, it appeals to a wider audience. If it doesn't, great, it's catering to a specific audience. A game's not worse for having an easy mode and a game's not inaccessible for asking you to practice its mechanics.