Earnest question, how is this actually legally viable?

Obviously the decompilation is open source, but those are usually distributed without assets, in some kind of builder that requires a copy of the game. And clearly the original game isn’t open source, or else this decompilation wouldn’t need to exist.

So… has the game been released free to the public without the source code? Has Lego or the original developer blessed this project? Or is the game just… in legal limbo or something where they feel comfortable taking the risk?

Same, I didn’t realize the directory I was deleting had a symlink to some root directory, at least until my mouse stopped working…

If you look into the Hebrew a little more, the word we translate here as “God” is “Elohim”, which is better translated as something like “spiritual beings”. This word is also used for angels, demons, etc.

In fact, the phrase “Lord of Lords” is actually “Elohim of Elohim”, making it a statement that he’s the greatest spiritual being, which is a lot more distinct from “King of Kings” than we usually notice when he’s referred to as “King of kings and Lord of lords”.

Elohim is even used once to refer to the “ghost” of Samuel, when Saul seeks out a medium to ask him for advice in 1 Samuel 28.

Oh, I mean the “fight” the person I’m replying to is suggesting, that dictionaries should be prescriptive (state how English should be, in this case arguing that “literal” shouldn’t be a valid word to use when you’re not being literal in the traditional sense), versus being descriptive (what dictionaries currently are, describing the language as it’s used without any assertions about how it “should” be).

Dictionaries have been adamantly descriptive since their inception, so they’re not at all doing what glitchdx is suggesting (thus literal having a secondary definition as an intensifier), and I’m arguing for the status quo.

Eh, kinda how the dictionary needs to work. It’s meant to be used to understand the language, so the dictionary can’t hold strong opinions and argue against how it’s used and remain useful.

I.E. Let’s say English is my second language, and I read something like “OMG I would literally kill myself.” And I go look up “literally” I’m a dictionary. If the very common antonym usage of it isn’t listed as a second definition, I’ll totally misunderstand.

So as much as we may not love that a word is flipping to mean its opposite, it is what it is and it’s not the role of the dictionary to take up that fight.

It’s a cheaper option, to allow your uber to “carpool”, I.E. Your uber can pick up other passengers heading in the same direction to be more efficient, thus justifying your discount.

You can see why it’d be a jerk move to then get mad at the other passengers, who had no idea who they’d be pooling with, and how insane it would be to use it on the way to your wedding.

Haha, I think they should have made that option 0%, to further the paradox

I’m not certain, I think it’s an infinite loop.

I.E. If the answer is 25%, you have a 50% chance, if the answer is 50%, you have a 25% chance, if the answer is 25%, you have a 50% chance…

This is my main thought. Once the immediate threat of Trump is past, the country will return to the global standard of “elect whoever wasn’t running things when everything got worse”. I hope the liberals see that writing on the wall and put electoral reform in place so that the smaller parties stand a chance and aren’t all killed by the usual “strategic voting” nonsense.

I really think it’s Canada’s best shot at not electing a Conservative majority when the party seems to be at peak crazy. I’d really rather not count on them returning to the center over the next 4 years when global politics is more divided than I’ve ever seen.

At this point I think it’s just fun. So much of the conversation around Elon is deadly serious, doom and gloom, and this is just… lighthearted mocking about something that doesn’t matter. It’s a refreshing change.

And it does seem to matter to him, so undermining that image he works hard to curate is an added bonus. And hell, if Path of Exile is what makes someone realize what a pathetic lying moron he can be, then that’s fantastic as well, even if it’s an odd thing to have that epiphany for.

Yeah, HDR is one of my main hangups as well. Very interested in moving my living room gaming PC over (the only place I deal with Windows), but I need a lot of things to just work with little to no hassle, and also no hit to performance. I didn’t build a very expensive PC for a compromised experience, as much as Windows is regularly a massive PITA.

Haha, dang it. Seems I got confused, turns out that was just a bedrock thing. Could’ve noticed that if I’d looked more closely at my own link 🙄

To add to this, Minecraft Java Bedrock used to ship their code with all the debug symbols included, making modding easy. Although these were recently removed, much to the displeasure of the modding community. Everyone should throw a vote at this feedback issue to request them back, btw:

https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360054740151-Re-add-debugging-symbols-to-the-releases-of-bedrock-edition

Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.

I don’t think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).

But you’re right, I’d love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I don’t think they’re done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.

I also agree there’s some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Malenia’s waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge that’s impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more “reactionary” play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.

I’m not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but I’m also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but it’s far from a boring +1 iteration that doesn’t try anything.

Let’s clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiro’s main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend who’s very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, you’d only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.

So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?

To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?

I mean… quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was “very, very weird”. You claimed I was offended solely “because I had to see an option on the screen”. You claimed my reasoning was about “lesser gamers being able to play it”, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a “weird ideological axiom”, as if it’s the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that I’m deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.

Don’t try to gaslight me about this being insulting. I’ve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. You’re bringing baggage into this from other people you’ve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.

Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You can’t claim you didn’t associate the two when you chose to write “YOU” in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.

It’s also not at all ridiculous to assume the “What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?” at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, don’t try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely “laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was”, and that I’m being “sensitive”.

If you actually didn’t mean offence, then I’d encourage you in future to skip the “array of possibilities”, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.

That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you can’t just “double your health and damage” and get a good easy mode. That’s an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could “just scale everything down” in an hour or so, it’s become what I tend to assume people mean when they say “just add an easy mode”. You’re also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, I’d have no issue if you had played an easy mode. There’s lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldn’t have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldn’t have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you aren’t playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesn’t “segment the user base” or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking they’ve experienced everything From Soft intended.

The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of “moral responsibility” or are “stupid and losing business” for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And just… loading different things conditionally into a space isn’t always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternal’s Master Levels, and they’re a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Soft’s best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. That’s more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. I’ve already asserted that I don’t feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so I’ll come out and outright say that I don’t think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But that’s totally subjective, and you’re more than welcome to do that math differently.

If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I won’t go picket their office or anything, I’m not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope it’s good, and I really hope the people who finally “get” to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.

Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole “participating in the zeitgeist” thing.

A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesn’t have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit “putting your foolish ambitions to rest”. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without “learning the attack patterns of the monsters”, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? There’s an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:

We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there’s different difficulties, that’s going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. It’s been the same way for previous titles and it’s very much the same with Sekiro.

If all you really wanted was to just… experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube let’s play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.

I’ll also add, that stuff doesn’t go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. It’s what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lil’ Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.

I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I don’t think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didn’t realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the “Dark Souls saved my life” people, who might’ve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and “fragment the user base”.

Well alright, I’m choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, I’ve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.

In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you don’t select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldn’t really work.

And in the latter half of this comment (start at “But I also think games are art”), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasn’t been added, and wouldn’t be the same experience.

To add to that final point, the reason I don’t want others to play an easy mode isn’t because I’m a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know I’m a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would “break the game itself” in Miyazaki’s words) and think that’s all there was.

I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like it’s frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone who’s on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not “getting it”. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. It’s just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadn’t had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?

“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach,” he said.

“Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”

Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like you’re kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.

Fair enough, I do actually think we’re having a fundamental misunderstanding here. I get the impression that when you’re asking for accessibility, you’re looking for a perfect accessibility, where literally anyone can play the game.

When I say accessibility, I’m picturing more of a sliding scale, from completely inaccessible (a game that just crashes on boot or something) to perfect accessibility.

I think a game like Elden Ring is actually very accessible, despite it’s difficulty. I bring up examples like beating the game with oven mitts or voice control to say that it doesn’t require superhuman precision or reaction time. I assume that the majority of disabled players, using an adaptive controller or specialized rig that they’ve had years of practice with will be able to control their character with better precision or reaction time than the ridiculous twitch streamers who completed those challenges. Those players will still have to invest time to build game knowledge and experience to apply that to beating the game, but fundamentally, the game “can be accessed” by them.

I also have no illusions that “everyone can beat Elden Ring in 140 hours”, like you’ve implied that I do. And uh… yes? Games take different amounts of time to beat for different players, and that’s fine. If Elden Ring was your first ever video game, then uh… questionable decision, but the game would eventually teach you everything you need to know to beat it. I’m not exactly sure why this is a gotcha, honestly. If you take 1000+ hours to beat Elden Ring and love it, then power to you, I would never shame you for it or assert you had a worse experience than mine. Same way I feel about summons, or using multiplayer to beat bosses, or whatever else Souls weirdos can be elitist about.

If you look hard enough, you’ll always be able to find a disability that can’t play the game. That’s unfortunate, but I don’t think it’s a requirement that the game is playable by everyone. Books are written in languages I don’t speak, art is made about life experiences I can’t share, and that’s OK. A wealth of good games are coming out all the time, and I’m sure someone with dyspraxia can find games they can play and enjoy.

Obviously, I know how that sounds, if a game can be made accessible to more players, and has the budget, it should be. I wholeheartedly agree. That’s why I’ve advocated for better support for captions and flashing visual cues and audio indicators. I would love the next Elden Ring to be a better experience for the visually impaired or hard of hearing.

But I also think that games are art, and that the careful crafting and balancing of souls games are a part of that art. And they’re designed from the ground up with that difficulty in mind. Honestly, I think it’s a fundamental part of what Souls offers, and an easy mode wouldn’t be the same experience. To quote Miyazaki:

“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach,” he said.

“Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”

As a piece of art, if an easy difficulty was added, lots of people would play it. But I’ve already articulated why I don’t think a simple scaling difficulty would work, and why I think it’s important the base game is difficult. The only way to do it properly would be a bespoke and balanced lower difficulty. But the artists that made the game have no passion for that, and bluntly, I don’t feel it would be worth their time and talent because it would just… be like a lot of other games you could go play instead, rather than the unique experience that Souls is.

And unfortunately, this does fundamentally exclude some people. Elden Ring takes tons of measures to minimize the excluded crowd, but it won’t ever be zero, without fundamentally changing what Souls is. That’s a shame, but ultimately, I really think Souls should exist, and is important art all the same. Do a quick google search for “Dark Souls saved my life” and you’ll see just how powerful a piece of art it can be.

My real point here is, just because a small sliver of people can’t play it, or because people don’t want to invest the time or effort to experience it, Souls has the right to exist, and From Software should be allowed to make the game they want to make, even if it’s for a niche crowd. They don’t have to offer an option that they feel compromises the experience, regardless of whether or not we agree.

Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a game’s experience. For example, it’s hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when you’re spreading your play out so much that it’s hard to remember who characters are. It’s also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like you’ve covered it well.

Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides what’s locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.

I also still don’t think it’s an accessibility constraint. I’d totally understand why you don’t want to commit to a 150hr experience when you’re playing less than 3hrs a week, you’d be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back I’d still be much better at it than when I first sat down.

Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. You’re also starting each attempt “fresh”, in that you aren’t already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldn’t beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. It’s a technique I’ve used repeatedly.

All that to say, I don’t think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I don’t think it’s exclusive to Souls, I’d also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldn’t sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, I’d recommend a game that’s better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And that’s not that odd, I also wouldn’t recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.

My honest take on your story, is that I’m really glad Souls didn’t have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. It’s the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you would’ve even came back to replay a game you’d already “beaten”.

In other comments, I’ve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, I’m not sure he would’ve ever learned that about himself, because he would’ve played it on easy. He might’ve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but it’s only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that it’s his favourite game and franchise ever made.