Honestly, just more lenient timing would do wonders. Not everyone has the same reaction times.

I’m not arguing for making it a silly hack and slash or fundamentally changing the game. I know dying is a part of it, I played and enjoyed the same game everyone else did. I just think there’s ways to make that same game more accessible.

This topic comes up so often because there are people who enjoy the game but want difficulty options. I guess I just don’t understand how it would ruin the charm.

The first point is fair, you can’t reasonably expect any one game to be beatable by every single person. But the resistance from the devs seems more philosophical than pragmatic. Difficulty options are often requested, and to their credit it’s something the developers considered a lot more with Elden Ring, why they won’t just add some optional difficulty settings seems bizarre.

As for grinding, no, that’s not what I consider grinding. But you definitely can hit a wall in Elden Ring where you’ve done all the content you can find but still can’t progress anywhere. And running around the map is only interesting for so long. Go to youtube, there’s plenty of ‘best farming location’ videos. Elden Ring can be grindy if you just don’t meet their arbitrary skill level.

Cool story. I played and enjoyed Elden Ring. I don’t think it’s a crazy idea for the people who physically can’t play the game as it is to have the same experience I had.

These arguments always boil down to “it’s not for you” or “get good”. Adding a difficulty option to the game should not be this controversial. The fact the developers considered variable difficulty so much in the design of the game shows that it’s not meritless, but turn that same idea into an accessibility option in the settings and people just vehemently disagree for some reason.

There are people that wouldn’t be able to beat it even if they took advantage of all those things. It also means you get two different experiences depending on your abilities. One of them can be a well paced challenging game and the other is a grindy slog that always feels unfair.

No one says that. I played through Elden Ring, I died a lot, I loved it. I thought it was generally fair and rewarding. I still think it should have a difficulty option because that’s not going to be everybody’s experience and it wouldn’t affect mine or yours if it did have it as an option.

The problem with this idea is that it assumes everyone has the exact same capabilities. The game might be completely off the table for some players and I think that would be a real shame because it’s an excellent game.

It wouldn’t screw up the gameplay. It might make it less rewarding, but to who? The people who choose to play on an easier difficulty because of their abilities? Probably not.

yeah, no one says Doom is easy because it has an easy mode. You can still brag about beating it on nightmare difficulty.

That’s just nonsense, though. Nothing about how the game is made prevents modifying the difficulty. There are mods that make the game easier, there’s nothing inherent to any fromsoft game that prevents the addition of an easy mode.

It doesn’t matter how it’s “balanced” because it’s a purely subjective thing, everyone has different abilities and the difficulty can never be perfectly tuned around each individual.