Truly difficult modern games/other things

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Soulsborne fanboy, and I'm wondering why there aren't any modern games that have "dark souls" difficulty, including Dark Souls. What I mean is that as much as Dark Souls is praised as "absolutely impossible and the most hardest game ever", it's easy when you figure it out. Once you get the formula down, and you separate your thinking from the "charge in heroically without thinking" mindset of many games, you've pretty much removed the game's difficulty. Not it's frustration, but it's difficulty. It can be frustrating, but it's winnable.

What I really want to see is a souls-like game/tactical-action rpg that is truly the old-school difficulty level with modern game design.

Imagine this: a triple-AAA souls-like that is, in theory, 20 to 30 hours in length, but in reality would be well over a hundred hours minimum. It would have no difficulty selection, and most people wouldn't be able to beat it. It would be so difficult that Let's Players wouldn't really be able to play it, because it would be an endless stream of them having to redo the same area so many times that it wouldn't really be watchable. The difficulty would be fair (a.k.a. not cheap and artificial like most of Dark Souls 2 or a lot of games at higher difficulty levels), but it wouldn't be anything less than borderline masochism to play. There wouldn't be any way to make the game easier (like magic and faith in Dark Souls, or the E.Z. gun and Patriot in MGS3), and even though it wouldn't be truly impossible, it would be so close to it that most players wouldn't see the difference.

Abother thing, why are MMORPGs turning into power-fantasy/mindless-murder simulators? I've tried getting into SW:TOR and WoW again for nostalgia, but they are easy now, much easier than I remember. They weren't this easy when I was younger. In the Black Talon flashpoint, if you try to go through it solo, it lowers the level of both the player and enemies, gives you an over powered Droid temporary companion, and gives you a passive health regeneration bonus that activates any time you are injured, so all you have to do is spam 1 and the game plays itself. In WoW, the starting areas are way easier than they used to be, when playing the same race/class combinations and playstyles from when I was a kid. It's boring.

Has anyone here played Spec Ops:The Line? If so, what were your thoughts after finishing it?

You're not going to see much in the way of actual difficulty in AAA games, because it's seen to not actually sell all that well. AAA games tend to be about the "experience" to many... not the gameplay, challenge, depth, or... you know, any of the important stuff. If the game is too hard, the player is not 100% guaranteed to get the full experience or story, and THAT means they might not buy the next 80 sequels. Cant have THAT, so it just isnt done anymore, with Dark Souls itself being one of the only remaining exceptions.

It's the same with MMOs. Difficulty too high? The player might not get to see everything. And AAA games as a whole teach players to EXPECT victory, so if they actually start losing too much.... well, that must mean the game is "unfair" or something, and they'll just leave in a huff. Even Everquest, once one of the most brutal of all MMOs (WoW being actually a simpler knockoff of it) has gotten dumbed all the way down. It isnt even close to what it used to be.

Hell, to be honest, Dark Souls itself isnt ACTUALLY all that difficult: It's only difficult in comparison to other AAA games. As you said, it's easy once figured out. It SEEMS like a challenge rather than actually being one. Hell, it doesnt even move very fast... even "frantic" combat in Souls games is actually pretty freaking slow. Yet, among AAA games, it really is as hard as it gets. Though, compared to games of actual difficulty (for example, any bullet-hell game), it's outright pathetic.

If you want a true challenge, you'll have to look elsewhere, and you'll have to be willing to drop any need for spectacular graphics that you might have.

I dont even bother with AAA games myself anymore, honestly (and good riddance, really). They're too easy, and thus, really boring (and usually very little replay value, if any). And I never cared about the graphics to begin with, so there's no appeal left as far as I'm concerned.

Not to mention the price. The sorts of games I do buy, I can get hundreds of hours of high challenge, replayability, and depth (and LOTS of content, usually) for less than $20. OR, I could buy the latest AAA game, and get 50% of it for a full $60, with the rest sold as DLC, and the whole thing might be like 10 hours long with little content. Just.... just no.

I love Dark Souls and Bloodborne for many reasons including their challenge, but I also think their difficulty is incredibly overstated. They're not really that difficult compared to the average game I grew up with in the 90s, where such difficulty was the norm. Back then you didn't have to look to niche games to find harder games; heavily marketed games like Super Mario Bros 2., Megaman, Contra, or Ecco the Dolphin had the same high level of difficulty and many never finished these games.

Games became much easier as the industry grew and began to attract wider audiences. I don't think this is necessarily completely a bad thing, as I'm pretty sure there had been market research done that showed that the majority of people didn't finish games. The lowering of difficulty was likely seen as a way to increase player engagement, particularly as games began to incorporate more story and cutscenes.

As for MMOs, I think WoW actually does a decent job at creating content that caters to players of varying skill. You have your levelling content, which is fairly easy, with various zones across expansions serving as harder areas where grouping up is almost mandatory. Raid content is spread into various tiers of difficulty ranging from a very casual difficulty to hardcore difficulty where you really need to devote time, energy and have absolutely solid teamwork and communication. For me this is more time than I'm willing to expend so I don't play anymore, but all this was still true at least at the start of the current expansion.

I did play Spec Ops: The Line and found its gameplay mediocre, with good visuals and an excellent story. I found it worth playing for its story and would recommend it to anyone looking for a shooter with a good single player campaign.

Souls games are in serious need of difficulty settings. I can understand the argument for having a single difficulty setting, one which isn't so easy as to negate the gameplay mechanics and which provides challenge without requiring grinding or luck. One ideal way to play the game. That said, once you're proficient at a Souls game they become trivial, outside of a few boss fights. You don't need to pay attention any more, and you're simply going through the motions. I think it's possible to add a level above this without making the game necessarily grindy or luck-based.

Based on the way the game creates it's challenge, they'd have to actually revamp/redo most enemy/boss attacks just to do this.

The game's difficulty style is almost exactly the same as the very first Castlevania: Where it's *purely* about knowing enemy attack patterns and then figuring out how to respond to them. Like in the first Castlevania, this is why the difficulty utterly falls apart once you've gotten the hang of this. There's no actual challenge in the game outside of this aspect. None whatsoever. Hell, both of them even move at a similar ponderous/deliberate speed.

The only other options for increasing difficulty outside of pattern redos in a game like this wouldnt REALLY be a difficulty increase. They could make things do more damage or have more HP, for instance. But that doesnt *actually* make the enemy harder... it just increases some numbers. Or they could have different levels get more enemies in various areas, but that's not likely to end well. It's more likely to generate genuinely unfair situations due to the way enemy patterns and player movement works. By now, this developer knows this.

From the ground up, Dark Souls was balanced with the idea that, in it's DEFAULT state, it'd be way too hard for many gamers (which is, sadly, absolutely true). They're not going to increase the difficulty of any already-released entry in the series, including Bloodborne.