> Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first play

I don't think that's quite a good comparison -- because leveling up is literally a method to overcome the difficulty. Grind. Get Good. Kill some foes, run back to the bonfire. Kill them again, run back to the bonfire.

Eventually killing them becomes trivial, as a combination of muscle memory and leveling up.

Some might even call that practice.

It's an unwillingness to invest time into practice that hinders people from enjoying more of it, not the inherent difficulty. And this goes for a great many things, sports, music, painting, programming, woodworking etc.

It's also totally ok that people don't want to invest the time -- I'm not making a value judgement here.

For a sports analogy: I don't want to invest time in practicing (or even learning about) basketball. As a result, I'm horrific at it. I'm quite fine with that. It does however mean that a decent chunk of popular culture is inaccessible to me.

"Just grind" is, in my opinion, the argument that proves all of this gatekeeping is garbage. Grinding achieves the same thing as an easy mode except it takes hours of mindless low-engagement gameplay to complete. Grinding has widely been considered bad gameplay for more than two decades at this point.

If the game didn't have RPG mechanics and there was no mechanism to just make the enemies deal a smaller percentage of your health pool or to make your attacks deal more damage then I'd be much more amenable to the "the game is flawlessly tuned according to the developer's vision and that should not be touched" but it obviously isn't since every single player will arrive at each encounter with different character and weapon stats.

There is another point by people like me - I really would love to experience this game, but I don't have life to waste in yet another largely meaningless grinding. I have 2 kids to raise, wife to attend, work to work, real hobbies like sports to do. I've definitely grown out of putting insane hours of my life into gaming, and not going back, ever.

This one-fits-all-or-goodbye approach means I'll miss this game, forever. And just as you say - only damage/defense stats would need to be tuned a bit and I could approach it. Why would that hurt anybody wanting to play it on harder level is beyond me...

It’s disappointing to read takes like this because you’re talking yourself out of what is a really special gaming experience - unique, in fact.

When you use the word “grind”, it connotes that you feel the game is extracting an unreasonable price from you in order to allow you to progress: making you play the “bad parts” in order to see the “good parts”. Lesser games are certainly guilty of this! But that’s not at all what these games do. People don’t put “insane hours” into these games because of the grind - they do it because they love it.

All one can ask is that you forget what you think you know, and take another look. There’s something really special here.

I’ve got kids too man, I don’t have time for bullshit, but Miyazaki’s given us something really special here. I’m just thankful that in the few hours left to me each week, I can sit down and play something like this.

> People don’t put “insane hours” into these games because of the grind - they do it because they love it.

But I was just told to grind to level up to make the game easier. That isn't putting in insane hours for fun. That is saying "if you want to beat O&S, go spend a bunch of hours killing knights in Anor Londo for hours."

I didn’t tell you that. The whole point of my comment was that you should take another look at what you’re calling “grind”, because there’s more to it.

Look, you complained about gatekeeping, and about the community. This is a bona fide attempt from someone in the community to ask you to set aside your preconceptions and take another look at what the game is trying to say.

If it doesn’t gel with you, well then maybe it really just isn’t for you - and that’s fine. Not every game is for every person. But changing a bunch of difficulty sliders isn’t going to fix that.

You didn't tell me that, but this is what another person up thread said to me

> I don't think that's quite a good comparison -- because leveling up is literally a method to overcome the difficulty. Grind. Get Good. Kill some foes, run back to the bonfire. Kill them again, run back to the bonfire.

I don't know how that can be interpreted any other way than "do a repetitive and boring thing until your stats are higher."

I've played all three Dark Souls games as well as Bloodbourne to completion. I switched from xbox to PC for DS1 because I had the original unpatched disk and got frustrated in Lost Izalith. I'm very confident that I would have had more fun if it took me four attempts to beat O&S rather than 20.

It’s possible they’re just not for you, then. But why don’t you give Elden Ring a chance, if you haven’t already - changes have been made and maybe it will appeal. It’s a pretty amazing experience.

I guess just the last thing I would say is that one thing that ER tries to communicate to you early on is that, if something is frustrating you, don’t keep banging your head against a wall. Heed that advice: go away, explore, learn, come back later. With a new perspective it will look different.

I love a lot of grindy games. What I always tell people is it’s all about whether you enjoy the core combat loop or not. The swinging and ducking and dodging and shooting and running around. If the moment to moment action isn’t fun for you the game can’t be even if it offers “goals” that you feel like you want to see.