Yeah, it’s kinda sad that people won’t just accept that some games require a certain level of skill to get really far. If a game can’t be won by everyone on whatever level they prefer to play games at (easy, hard) then the game is poorly balanced with highly overpowered elements. Whenever a game is truly difficult (as opposed to unbalanced), there will be lots of complainers that refuse to see the difficulty as lack of skill on the player instead of the developers. I would prefer a small following on a brilliant game than a huge mass of fans on a over simplified crowd pleaser. I’m glad the developers went that route too.
Another thing that occurred to me is that since the game was early access, and some of the players have been playing since the beginning, it has allowed the players that chose, to increase their skill as the game was developed. This could possibly have created a feedback loop where as the good players got better, the developers took note of this and realized that the game could still be a little harder and it would be alright. When people show videos like this, it makes you realize that if the developers wanted to put an additional level of difficulty, there would still be some people with the min maxing and decision making skills to win at it. But all the rest would simply cry foul. I remember playing a difficult game that was free recently, and fell into the same trap. I was playing along as the difficulty increased and eventually got to a level where it just seemed unbeatable. The skills I had used to get me this far had worked, but there was an additional level of mastery I hadn’t even touched. I started thinking, the game is free, it’s possible this level was never even tested. I tried again ever now and then and finally it just started dawning that some counter intuitive things actually worked and on I went, until another level stumped me. It did increase my confidence in the developers though, and I didn’t feel like the game was just poorly made. Trusting the developers can really help you overcome a very difficult game because when you believe there is an answer, you’ll look harder. Unfortunately, not all developers can be trusted to finely tune their games. This one is shaking out quite well in my opinion, however. I could do without the extreme gore and some of the questionable writing, but that is purely a subjective complaint, the mechanics are solid either way.
