Gaming

I think there’s really cool conversations we should be having about how we can make attack animations more readable to a visually impaired player without compromising on difficulty, for example.

Good post, I agree with you and the above poster.

This brings to mind the parry system in Metroid Dread. Enemies flashed yellow before a parryable attack signalling you should hit the button at that moment. It's possible and it works.

So then why don't all games do this? Because Metroid Dread was designed from the beginning to support this system. In Souls games, parrying is not just a matter of timing on attacks, but if the attack can even be parried at all given the specific attack (not all can)/player stats/equipped items, 3D positioning of hitboxes for both the attack and the player's defensive parry, as well as variable parry windows based on the specific shield or weapon equipped. Now take into account that Souls enemies often have multiple attacks each and this becomes a very significant amount of developer work. Not to mention that given all these factors, timing a button press to a parry flash may not always result in 100% success rate. Imagine how frustrating a system like this would be if even when you did everything "right", the physical placement of hitboxes only resulted in an 80% success rate on any given parry. Would players not find this frustrating? The point I'm trying to make is how complex this system would actually be and how much work it would take to implement.

However, it may still interfere with the artistic vision of the developers.

I'm going to be honest here, I did not end up caring for Metroid Dread much. For a number of reasons I won't go into here, but partly because of this parry system. Parry windows were clearly telegraphed, did huge amounts of damage often resulting in one hit kills AND they guaranteed to drop health/ammo pickups. With the risk/reward system practically non-existent you were so highly incentivized to use them that it made combat feel much more defensive. Rather than attack enemies, it was often more beneficial to approach them, bait out an attack, and punish.

Now I do take some responsibility for my actions here. It was my choice to begin playing the game this way. But I do also think there's something to be said for design elements that train or at least encourage players to engage with them in certain ways. Difficulty options are not just game design decisions but also attempts to understand how individual players may engage with those decisions. Expecting developers to have the ability or even foresight to anticipate all these different interactions is an extremely high, if not unreasonable barrier.

But in the end, I simply say that Dread was not a game to my liking. I know there are a lot of people who absolutely love it. Just not a game for me.