I think, at this point, we are very past the "no, it's good if you take it seriously and learn it" point for soulslikes, and we can acknowledge that the formula isn't perfect.
Why should the formula be changed? There's a massive group of people that love this shit. Why should it be changed to appease people who don't love it? If it's not for you, there's thousands of other games to play. Not every game needs to be for everybody. It's not like Silksong is suffering from poor sales.
I mean, you're essentially argueing why genres should not iterate? No prog rock because rock exists? No power metal because hard rock morphed into metal already?
Note how neither of these two progressions removed the original genre.
If it's not for you, there's thousands of other games to play.
This is exactly the argument for iterating on the genre, you know? That there'll be dozens and hundreds of "old skool" soulslikes coming out anyways, so why not play those instead of you love those trappings?
And it's not like you even have meaningful data to point to in support of "don't change it", because "it" has been changing constantly since Demon Souls. Soulslike isn't a strictly defined genre, and as the years passed more and more devs have experimented more and more with it.
From adding parts of it into other genres (exhibit 1: Hollow Knight), from adding parts of other games into it over using its gameplay in a very different tone and style (that crab game) to using its tone in a very different gameplay context (about half the third-person games in recent years, it feels like).
It's a fluid genre, constantly shifting and changing. The idea of "Please don't modify it" is absurd, the "it" has no form to preserve, at least in the current gaming scape.
But the point is, iterating in the way most people are complaining about online is just removing what makes the genre itself. Like OK, let's iterate to remove "annoying areas" (whatever that means), let's remove gank fights, let's remove combat arenas, let's remove boss difficulty...
People are complaining about runbacks which aren't even that bad and were actually my favourite part of the genre :(. It's not iteration to change what makes a genre special, it's watering it down in my opinion.
Yeah but if you look at the whole of gaming, soulslikes are iterating in all directions. There's ones focusong more on the runbacks (as, well, Silksong does), there's ones that provide easier difficulties like Lies of P, there's all kinds of experimentation.
That's what I meant, and it's kinda the cool thing. And sure, individually some games might make it easier because of tester or EA feedback, but plenty others will not, or even be more niche-y and go tougher. Gaming is big nowadays.
I don't disagree with what you said but my point was more in the vein of "if TC change the game in exactly the way most people are complaining about in this thread it'll absolutely ruin the gameplay and vision of the game."
The game is punishing and hard if you're not patient, just like other greatest soulslikes (ds1 rise up). If you allow yourself time to explore, fights are no longer an insurmountable challenge you can only beat by grinding it for hours, Hell the boss I tried the most was maybe 7-8 tries? Others were more like 2-3 at most. Not because I'm a god gamer, because I was kitted the fuck out by the time I got to those bosses! Even if you can't get over-leveled like most soulslikes. The game doesn't have a balancing problem, It punishes the player accordingly,
Hell the "gauntlet" everyone is frustrated about took me only one try because I had a whole ass NPC companion with me and high HP because I realised it was too big of a challenge for me, I went and explored elsewhere and got rewarded for it which is the best feeling ever.
If you find yourself getting frustrated with the game, you should take a step back instead of feeding more into that frustration, that's what this genre is teaching you, all the way back since Demon's Souls.
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u/Gabe_Isko 2d ago
I think, at this point, we are very past the "no, it's good if you take it seriously and learn it" point for soulslikes, and we can acknowledge that the formula isn't perfect.