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Dark Souls
- Thread starter patsu
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- tig:darksouls
I would love to see a sequel to this game with three major changes:
1. Gut the entire equipment system. It was horrible in both games.
2. If a boss isn't fun, don't make it a boss. So many of the bosses in both souls games are *awful*
3. If you die at a boss, you should have the option to retry from the boss itself at the expense of permenantly losing all of your souls (possibly even losing a soul level).
Those three changes alone would basically "fix" the series, from my perspective (although I know that not everyone has the same problems with it that I do).
1. Gut the entire equipment system. It was horrible in both games.
2. If a boss isn't fun, don't make it a boss. So many of the bosses in both souls games are *awful*
3. If you die at a boss, you should have the option to retry from the boss itself at the expense of permenantly losing all of your souls (possibly even losing a soul level).
Those three changes alone would basically "fix" the series, from my perspective (although I know that not everyone has the same problems with it that I do).
I would love to see a sequel to this game with three major changes:
1. Gut the entire equipment system. It was horrible in both games.
What specific problems do you have with the equipment system ? The relative powers of different weapon class, or the attribute scaling is not powerful enough, or something else ?
I love the weapon handling and move sets so far. Would be horrified if they gut it completely.
2. If a boss isn't fun, don't make it a boss. So many of the bosses in both souls games are *awful*
3. If you die at a boss, you should have the option to retry from the boss itself at the expense of permenantly losing all of your souls (possibly even losing a soul level).
Which boss is no fun ?
I think they don't have to keep a set formula for bosses. I don't mind odd boss(es) that behave differently. e.g., The Final Demon Ruins boss is persistent. Any damage you did previously is saved.
I'm specifically talking about the basically broken upgrade system.
I mean, it's the same broken awful style of upgrade system used in pretty much every JRPG desperate for another pointless grind to put in the game, but it's implemented particularly badly in the Souls games.
There are also probably too many weapons. Or at least they don't do a good job of handing out weapons in such a way that it is clearly a good idea to change from one to another if you are doing okay with one or a small set that you are currently using and are comfortable with.
The whole process of gathering equipment and figuring out what you "should" be using is just a mess.
As for bosses, they just aren't interesting. Dark Souls does a better job than Demon's Souls in this regard due to magic having been dramatically nerfed. But overall, there are two fundamental issues:
1) Very large bosses in games with limited mechanics just don't play well, and too many bosses in both games are simply too big. Enemies that are very large relative to the player remove positioning as a tactic (note, it is frequently an important strategy, but rarely plays an important tactical role), which dumbs down the fights a lot.
2) Massive over-reliance on 1-hit (or very rapid) kills and stunlocks. The negative side of this is further compounded by the fact that there aren't checkpoints at bosses.
3) The above is further compounded by the fact that it is frequently impossible to gather sufficient information about how to fight a boss until it has already killed you.
Basically, in the levels of the game, your individual skill and how you approach moving through the world and fighting pays off enormously. Then you get to the boss and all of that goes out of the window. There's something specific that you *should* be doing, and if you don't, you'll die. There's no way to know what that thing is, and the consequence of dying is a pointless corpse run.
In terms of just straight up bad bosses. Capra Demon is the worst. I don't know that I know anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's possible that it was a worse decision than the boss of 5-1 in the original Demon's Souls.
I find these things particularly frustrating because a lot of what makes the Souls games interesting is exploration. But so many silly things about the game conspire to make it such that the best way to play the game is with a guide firmly in hand.
I could go on for quite a long time about self-defeating design decisions in the Souls games. After Dark Souls night, our crew went on a 100-message thread about this stuff without really hitting the bottom (discussion is ongoing).
One of the most interesting comments was someone who was a big fan of the series who said, "I think much of what is in these games was'nt so much designed as it was that the developers just threw things and ultimately ended up with a product that mostly works." While I think that's a stronger statement than reality, I *do* strongly agree that "well just try it" syndrome is at play just based on things that the game would be better if they were removed.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate this sort of experimentation. I would call both games in this series "great, but with crippling flaws". What concerns me about the future of the series is that the developers did very little to address in a fundamental way the things that made Demon's Souls not fun in Dark Souls. They threw a few bones to the hardcore community, but for the most part, if you didn't like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls fixes absolutely nothing. That upsets me somewhat.
I mean, it's the same broken awful style of upgrade system used in pretty much every JRPG desperate for another pointless grind to put in the game, but it's implemented particularly badly in the Souls games.
There are also probably too many weapons. Or at least they don't do a good job of handing out weapons in such a way that it is clearly a good idea to change from one to another if you are doing okay with one or a small set that you are currently using and are comfortable with.
The whole process of gathering equipment and figuring out what you "should" be using is just a mess.
As for bosses, they just aren't interesting. Dark Souls does a better job than Demon's Souls in this regard due to magic having been dramatically nerfed. But overall, there are two fundamental issues:
1) Very large bosses in games with limited mechanics just don't play well, and too many bosses in both games are simply too big. Enemies that are very large relative to the player remove positioning as a tactic (note, it is frequently an important strategy, but rarely plays an important tactical role), which dumbs down the fights a lot.
2) Massive over-reliance on 1-hit (or very rapid) kills and stunlocks. The negative side of this is further compounded by the fact that there aren't checkpoints at bosses.
3) The above is further compounded by the fact that it is frequently impossible to gather sufficient information about how to fight a boss until it has already killed you.
Basically, in the levels of the game, your individual skill and how you approach moving through the world and fighting pays off enormously. Then you get to the boss and all of that goes out of the window. There's something specific that you *should* be doing, and if you don't, you'll die. There's no way to know what that thing is, and the consequence of dying is a pointless corpse run.
In terms of just straight up bad bosses. Capra Demon is the worst. I don't know that I know anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's possible that it was a worse decision than the boss of 5-1 in the original Demon's Souls.
I find these things particularly frustrating because a lot of what makes the Souls games interesting is exploration. But so many silly things about the game conspire to make it such that the best way to play the game is with a guide firmly in hand.
I could go on for quite a long time about self-defeating design decisions in the Souls games. After Dark Souls night, our crew went on a 100-message thread about this stuff without really hitting the bottom (discussion is ongoing).
One of the most interesting comments was someone who was a big fan of the series who said, "I think much of what is in these games was'nt so much designed as it was that the developers just threw things and ultimately ended up with a product that mostly works." While I think that's a stronger statement than reality, I *do* strongly agree that "well just try it" syndrome is at play just based on things that the game would be better if they were removed.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate this sort of experimentation. I would call both games in this series "great, but with crippling flaws". What concerns me about the future of the series is that the developers did very little to address in a fundamental way the things that made Demon's Souls not fun in Dark Souls. They threw a few bones to the hardcore community, but for the most part, if you didn't like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls fixes absolutely nothing. That upsets me somewhat.
I'm specifically talking about the basically broken upgrade system.
I mean, it's the same broken awful style of upgrade system used in pretty much every JRPG desperate for another pointless grind to put in the game, but it's implemented particularly badly in the Souls games.
There are also probably too many weapons. Or at least they don't do a good job of handing out weapons in such a way that it is clearly a good idea to change from one to another if you are doing okay with one or a small set that you are currently using and are comfortable with.
The whole process of gathering equipment and figuring out what you "should" be using is just a mess.
It may be due to the Soul series not hand holding the player in all departments. I believe Shifty also don't like this aspect of the game.
They patched the game to make equipment upgrade easier. The Anor Londo merchant sell Twinkling Titanites and Large Shards now. So it should be easy to experiment with weapon upgrades. If you're doing ok with the current set of weapons, then there is no need to change them. I think specific weapon choice is more interesting in PvP. You'll need to level up enough to play with more advanced weapons anyway. The weapon modifiers (Fire, Lightning, Crystal, Occult, Divine) make more differences in general. You can apply them to all regular weapons.
You don't need to grind if you play co-op. I played Dark Souls solo throughout. When I tried co-op, I realize that they do speed up the game quite a bit because:
* You gain a lot more souls if you help people kill their bosses. You can use these souls to upgrade your stats or equipments.
* You also sidestep your own "How to kill a boss" issue below. You lose nothing if you die trying to kill other folks' bosses
Because the game doesn't hand hold you, it offers the co-op mechanism to you to feel the world in a risk free manner. Unfortunately, they didn't tell anyone. ^_^
As for bosses, they just aren't interesting. Dark Souls does a better job than Demon's Souls in this regard due to magic having been dramatically nerfed. But overall, there are two fundamental issues:
1) Very large bosses in games with limited mechanics just don't play well, and too many bosses in both games are simply too big. Enemies that are very large relative to the player remove positioning as a tactic (note, it is frequently an important strategy, but rarely plays an important tactical role), which dumbs down the fights a lot.
2) Massive over-reliance on 1-hit (or very rapid) kills and stunlocks. The negative side of this is further compounded by the fact that there aren't checkpoints at bosses.
3) The above is further compounded by the fact that it is frequently impossible to gather sufficient information about how to fight a boss until it has already killed you.
Basically, in the levels of the game, your individual skill and how you approach moving through the world and fighting pays off enormously. Then you get to the boss and all of that goes out of the window. There's something specific that you *should* be doing, and if you don't, you'll die. There's no way to know what that thing is, and the consequence of dying is a pointless corpse run.
In terms of just straight up bad bosses. Capra Demon is the worst. I don't know that I know anyone who thought it was a good idea. It's possible that it was a worse decision than the boss of 5-1 in the original Demon's Souls.
I find these things particularly frustrating because a lot of what makes the Souls games interesting is exploration. But so many silly things about the game conspire to make it such that the best way to play the game is with a guide firmly in hand.
I could go on for quite a long time about self-defeating design decisions in the Souls games. After Dark Souls night, our crew went on a 100-message thread about this stuff without really hitting the bottom (discussion is ongoing).
One of the most interesting comments was someone who was a big fan of the series who said, "I think much of what is in these games was'nt so much designed as it was that the developers just threw things and ultimately ended up with a product that mostly works." While I think that's a stronger statement than reality, I *do* strongly agree that "well just try it" syndrome is at play just based on things that the game would be better if they were removed.
I agree Capra is tough !
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate this sort of experimentation. I would call both games in this series "great, but with crippling flaws". What concerns me about the future of the series is that the developers did very little to address in a fundamental way the things that made Demon's Souls not fun in Dark Souls. They threw a few bones to the hardcore community, but for the most part, if you didn't like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls fixes absolutely nothing. That upsets me somewhat.
The Estus Flash and Bon Fire mechanism improved Demon's Souls moon grass mechanism (You can run out of moon grass if you hit a tough spot). But yeah, the game is meant for old school RPGers.
I think there's a difference between "lack of handholding" and "deliberately obtuse" that the Souls games are so far on the other side of that they probably can't see back.
I've heard plenty of people make excuses for the gear system in these games, but I've heard very few people willing to argue that it is actually *good* or *fun*. "The patch makes it less of a chore" is very much indicative of the "make incremental improvements without doing much significant to address the core problems" approach that they took from the previous game to this one.
And yes, I agree that the bonfire/flask system is a strict improvement over grass, although for a different reason. The problem with grass was the bizarre imbalances it could cause. The biggest problem wasn't running out (a couple quick clears of the 1-3 gauntlet yields tons of the stuff) but rather that the player could end up with such a huge amount that some bosses (Armor Spider says hi) could be cheated simply by eating enough grass.
I'd also say that being a blue phantom in co-op is no less of a grind than anything else in the game. You do gain souls for success, but you gain no progress. And there's no guarantee that being a third wheel while a much more experience player slaughters a boss is going to translate to you being able to survive. The amount of information you're likely to glean from just watching a YouTube video is quite a bit greater.
This is actually another one of those examples of self-defeating design in the games. Much of the game screams that it's a game about exploration and discovery. But underlying it all is all of this repetition and grind that simply gets in the way of itself. I don't think From even really know what they wanted the game to be. They just had a bunch of ideas and put them in. A lot of it works, but much of it could have worked better with a really good editor and a clear vision about what the underlying "point" of the game was.
Edit: To clarify the above... I think it's a great sign when games like this happen as they provide a great platform to learn what works and what doesn't and deliver something truly spectacular. A big part of the reason that the Souls games frustrate me is that From clearly did *not* learn much from Demon's Souls and instead just made more of the same the second time around. The really hard core players will point to all of the little things that changed, but those changes do not represent a real evolution in the concept that Demon's Souls started. Instead it's just a small step forward. It just seems like such a waste when I look at the body of criticism that exists around these games and how many simple, rational ideas have been proposed to prevent so many people from just throwing down the controller in frustration... and then see that From just ignored it all to pander to the most hardcore fans of the first game they could find.
I've heard plenty of people make excuses for the gear system in these games, but I've heard very few people willing to argue that it is actually *good* or *fun*. "The patch makes it less of a chore" is very much indicative of the "make incremental improvements without doing much significant to address the core problems" approach that they took from the previous game to this one.
And yes, I agree that the bonfire/flask system is a strict improvement over grass, although for a different reason. The problem with grass was the bizarre imbalances it could cause. The biggest problem wasn't running out (a couple quick clears of the 1-3 gauntlet yields tons of the stuff) but rather that the player could end up with such a huge amount that some bosses (Armor Spider says hi) could be cheated simply by eating enough grass.
I'd also say that being a blue phantom in co-op is no less of a grind than anything else in the game. You do gain souls for success, but you gain no progress. And there's no guarantee that being a third wheel while a much more experience player slaughters a boss is going to translate to you being able to survive. The amount of information you're likely to glean from just watching a YouTube video is quite a bit greater.
This is actually another one of those examples of self-defeating design in the games. Much of the game screams that it's a game about exploration and discovery. But underlying it all is all of this repetition and grind that simply gets in the way of itself. I don't think From even really know what they wanted the game to be. They just had a bunch of ideas and put them in. A lot of it works, but much of it could have worked better with a really good editor and a clear vision about what the underlying "point" of the game was.
Edit: To clarify the above... I think it's a great sign when games like this happen as they provide a great platform to learn what works and what doesn't and deliver something truly spectacular. A big part of the reason that the Souls games frustrate me is that From clearly did *not* learn much from Demon's Souls and instead just made more of the same the second time around. The really hard core players will point to all of the little things that changed, but those changes do not represent a real evolution in the concept that Demon's Souls started. Instead it's just a small step forward. It just seems like such a waste when I look at the body of criticism that exists around these games and how many simple, rational ideas have been proposed to prevent so many people from just throwing down the controller in frustration... and then see that From just ignored it all to pander to the most hardcore fans of the first game they could find.
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I think there's a difference between "lack of handholding" and "deliberately obtuse" that the Souls games are so far on the other side of that they probably can't see back.
I've heard plenty of people make excuses for the gear system in these games, but I've heard very few people willing to argue that it is actually *good* or *fun*. "The patch makes it less of a chore" is very much indicative of the "make incremental improvements without doing much significant to address the core problems" approach that they took from the previous game to this one.
I didn't find upgrading an equipment that tough after the patch. It's very easy to upgrade random weapons once I found the Giant merchant. The only limitation is the slab. There is only 1 per element (Fire, Lightning, Divine, ...) for the entire game. So I have to decide what "perfect" weapon to make.
It is harder when the player is trying to ring the 2 bells. Then again, you have the Drake Sword and Elite Knight armor to help you. Once I found those 2, I pretty much didn't upgrade anything until I hit the lords.
The problems I had with the weapons are the stats scaling. They increase slowly (Not worthwhile !). The unique weapons are also not that powerful. The elemental weapons are more lethal. The moment you acquire an Ember, your attack power would jump. You get the Ember not by upgrading weapons, but by exploring new areas.
The basic combat and the varied weapon move set is fun. The weapon upgrading process is just like leveling up stats for me. It's more to figure out what works best during PvP or against a specific boss. It's those encounters that make the game fun.
And yes, I agree that the bonfire/flask system is a strict improvement over grass, although for a different reason. The problem with grass was the bizarre imbalances it could cause. The biggest problem wasn't running out (a couple quick clears of the 1-3 gauntlet yields tons of the stuff) but rather that the player could end up with such a huge amount that some bosses (Armor Spider says hi) could be cheated simply by eating enough grass.
Yes, Estus Flask prevents you from running out of heal potion, and also caps your max. # of heal attempts. Armor Spider can be cheated without eating grass at all. Most of the bosses in Demon's Souls can be cheesed using ranged weapon to help weak players. I didn't take a single hit.
I'd also say that being a blue phantom in co-op is no less of a grind than anything else in the game. You do gain souls for success, but you gain no progress. And there's no guarantee that being a third wheel while a much more experience player slaughters a boss is going to translate to you being able to survive. The amount of information you're likely to glean from just watching a YouTube video is quite a bit greater.
It helps in 2 ways:
* You do gain progress because you acquire the tricks and techniques to beat the boss. And you gain souls to upgrade. You also know how much damage you can cause a boss to gauge your own chance.
* You can summon Blue Phantoms to help you beat the boss. Watching YouTube definitely helps but it doesn't improve you ^_^ and you won't know your relative damage level against that boss. It's someone else's game and character.
This is actually another one of those examples of self-defeating design in the games. Much of the game screams that it's a game about exploration and discovery. But underlying it all is all of this repetition and grind that simply gets in the way of itself. I don't think From even really know what they wanted the game to be. They just had a bunch of ideas and put them in. A lot of it works, but much of it could have worked better with a really good editor and a clear vision about what the underlying "point" of the game was.
It is a game about exploration and discovery. But it is also about your skillset. You pick your own approach. I'm not sure about self-defeating. They are just different routes for you to choose.
I see the repetition as part of the discovery process about my approaches and my own limits. I don't see how they are a problem. If the game is played without repeating the level at all, it would be a boring game, with no challenge. If the player prefers to tackle a boss in one go, it's best to summon 2 Blue Phantoms to join in the fight.
How would you change the game ?
I think you're ignoring the underlying point of what I'm trying to say, here. Clearly you enjoy the game and you have managed to enjoy it in such a way that the flaws in it haven't affected you as much as they have many others.
My point is that your experience is not typical.
I generally find that the most ardent supporters of the Souls game as they exist today tend to be people who dramatically overstate the difficulty of the games. They're not "hard", but they frequently put you in situations where you die because you simply lack sufficient information to make good decisions.
Yes, there are bits and pieces of difficulty, but compared to something like Ninja Gaiden Black, the moment-to-moment combat in Demon's Souls is actually pretty easy. Proponents of the series love to tout that every death you experience in Souls games is your own fault... but it's not true, particularly with bosses.
This is what I consider to be the fundamental flaw of the game. At the point that I have cleared a level, I can go up against a boss that I have zero chance of killing due to having no reasonable way of knowing where the random 1-shot attack is going to come from, and as a result I have to go and reclear a bunch of stuff that is not particularly interesting or difficult, it is just a chore. The argument that replaying the level makes the game more interesting is completely bogus. Forcing players to repeat content they are already proficient at to die on content that they are not is not "difficult", it is work. Removing it makes the game *less* boring, not more.
It is fine to have consequence for failure. However, the consequence for failure in Souls is to remove from the player the opportunity to succeed. That is broken design.
I have a theory that if one or more of the following apply to someone, they are more likely to be a big supperter of the series:
a) Died at bosses very little for whatever reason
b) Died less against bosses than during levels
c) Have a very high tolerance for repetition
In these cases, I think the issues with the boss design become less glaring. Everyone I know that died little in levels but frequently on bosses (and thus spent much time running through levels to bang their head againt the boss repeatedly) threw down the controller in frustration.
Also, to respond specifically about Armor Spider. This is not about how hard core you are or how well you know the boss mechanics and I have no idea why you brought it up. My point was that you don't *have* to use any particular tactics to beat it because of the presense of unlimited grass and the fact that most of its attacks are relatively weak.
The fact that Armor Spider is so easy to cheese in fact probably makes it pretty obvious why almost all of the other bosses can kill in 1 or 2 hits with most attacks. If they didn't, every boss in the game would become a simple war of attrition. Instead, they become wars of range cheese, which is also not fun.
I mentioned a few posts up the three biggest things that I would change about the game:
1. Reduce the number of weapons and dramatically simplify the upgrade system. I would also have UI in the game that describes the strategic purpose of each weapon: what type of character builds and playstyles it's good for and what types of enemies it is string or weak against.
2. Dying on a boss would provide 2 options:
a) Drop souls and return to last bonfire (what it does today)
b) Restart immediately at the boss, but permenantly lose all held souls.
This, I believe is the most important. 1 is a problem that can be avoided via a FAQ (although I still believe that it is a problem that alienates players). And 3 is still not great, but would be more tolerable with this change.
3. I would remove about half of the bosses from the game and probably consider a redesign of many of the remaining bosses to demand more of player skill. Almost every boss in both games has a very simple set of easily exploitable behaviors, which makes them not very interesting to fight as soon as you know the trick. Much of this is a consequence of the bosses being too physically large. Physically large bosses must, for balance purposes, be very slow. That makes them predictable and boring and forces much of their difficulty to be based on knowledge of mechanics, not on execution of the combat system. Both games do great at forcing you to be good at the combat during the actual levels and then ignore everything about it as soon as you reach a boss.
I also wouldn't mind trading a bit of fidelity for better framerate.
Outside of those three things, I have very few significant complaints about the game. The level design is some of the best in any game *ever*. The mix of tension and release between easier and more difficult enemies is expertly laid out. Traps in the level are almost always avoidable my simply moving slowly and paying attention. The core action of attack, block, backstep, roll and parry works basically perfectly.
It's just a few baffling decisions that conspire to drive a lot of players straight away from the game.
I appreciate that you like having a game with all of these random things to mess around with when you're PvPing at soul level 125. I would say that you might consider that the enormous majority of players will *never do that*. Many of them never will because getting to that point is so stupidly frustrating. As a game that relies so heavily on community, this is a net loss.
Even if you've sank enough hours in to the game that the things that are a pain about the game no longer matter to you, it is in your interest for those things not to exist.
One last note: I don't *want* to summon a bunch of helpers to kill bosses. I want *my skill* to matter. However, because of the way the system of punishment in this game is designed, it *discourages* me from approaching bosses in ways that are interesting and encourages the strategies that are least risky. I view that as a bad thing. It appears that you do not.
My point is that your experience is not typical.
I generally find that the most ardent supporters of the Souls game as they exist today tend to be people who dramatically overstate the difficulty of the games. They're not "hard", but they frequently put you in situations where you die because you simply lack sufficient information to make good decisions.
Yes, there are bits and pieces of difficulty, but compared to something like Ninja Gaiden Black, the moment-to-moment combat in Demon's Souls is actually pretty easy. Proponents of the series love to tout that every death you experience in Souls games is your own fault... but it's not true, particularly with bosses.
This is what I consider to be the fundamental flaw of the game. At the point that I have cleared a level, I can go up against a boss that I have zero chance of killing due to having no reasonable way of knowing where the random 1-shot attack is going to come from, and as a result I have to go and reclear a bunch of stuff that is not particularly interesting or difficult, it is just a chore. The argument that replaying the level makes the game more interesting is completely bogus. Forcing players to repeat content they are already proficient at to die on content that they are not is not "difficult", it is work. Removing it makes the game *less* boring, not more.
It is fine to have consequence for failure. However, the consequence for failure in Souls is to remove from the player the opportunity to succeed. That is broken design.
I have a theory that if one or more of the following apply to someone, they are more likely to be a big supperter of the series:
a) Died at bosses very little for whatever reason
b) Died less against bosses than during levels
c) Have a very high tolerance for repetition
In these cases, I think the issues with the boss design become less glaring. Everyone I know that died little in levels but frequently on bosses (and thus spent much time running through levels to bang their head againt the boss repeatedly) threw down the controller in frustration.
Also, to respond specifically about Armor Spider. This is not about how hard core you are or how well you know the boss mechanics and I have no idea why you brought it up. My point was that you don't *have* to use any particular tactics to beat it because of the presense of unlimited grass and the fact that most of its attacks are relatively weak.
The fact that Armor Spider is so easy to cheese in fact probably makes it pretty obvious why almost all of the other bosses can kill in 1 or 2 hits with most attacks. If they didn't, every boss in the game would become a simple war of attrition. Instead, they become wars of range cheese, which is also not fun.
I mentioned a few posts up the three biggest things that I would change about the game:
1. Reduce the number of weapons and dramatically simplify the upgrade system. I would also have UI in the game that describes the strategic purpose of each weapon: what type of character builds and playstyles it's good for and what types of enemies it is string or weak against.
2. Dying on a boss would provide 2 options:
a) Drop souls and return to last bonfire (what it does today)
b) Restart immediately at the boss, but permenantly lose all held souls.
This, I believe is the most important. 1 is a problem that can be avoided via a FAQ (although I still believe that it is a problem that alienates players). And 3 is still not great, but would be more tolerable with this change.
3. I would remove about half of the bosses from the game and probably consider a redesign of many of the remaining bosses to demand more of player skill. Almost every boss in both games has a very simple set of easily exploitable behaviors, which makes them not very interesting to fight as soon as you know the trick. Much of this is a consequence of the bosses being too physically large. Physically large bosses must, for balance purposes, be very slow. That makes them predictable and boring and forces much of their difficulty to be based on knowledge of mechanics, not on execution of the combat system. Both games do great at forcing you to be good at the combat during the actual levels and then ignore everything about it as soon as you reach a boss.
I also wouldn't mind trading a bit of fidelity for better framerate.
Outside of those three things, I have very few significant complaints about the game. The level design is some of the best in any game *ever*. The mix of tension and release between easier and more difficult enemies is expertly laid out. Traps in the level are almost always avoidable my simply moving slowly and paying attention. The core action of attack, block, backstep, roll and parry works basically perfectly.
It's just a few baffling decisions that conspire to drive a lot of players straight away from the game.
I appreciate that you like having a game with all of these random things to mess around with when you're PvPing at soul level 125. I would say that you might consider that the enormous majority of players will *never do that*. Many of them never will because getting to that point is so stupidly frustrating. As a game that relies so heavily on community, this is a net loss.
Even if you've sank enough hours in to the game that the things that are a pain about the game no longer matter to you, it is in your interest for those things not to exist.
One last note: I don't *want* to summon a bunch of helpers to kill bosses. I want *my skill* to matter. However, because of the way the system of punishment in this game is designed, it *discourages* me from approaching bosses in ways that are interesting and encourages the strategies that are least risky. I view that as a bad thing. It appears that you do not.
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I think you're ignoring the underlying point of what I'm trying to say, here. Clearly you enjoy the game and you have managed to enjoy it in such a way that the flaws in it haven't affected you as much as they have many others.
My point is that your experience is not typical.
Compared to who ? The general public or Dark Soul's target audience ?
I generally find that the most ardent supporters of the Souls game as they exist today tend to be people who dramatically overstate the difficulty of the games. They're not "hard", but they frequently put you in situations where you die because you simply lack sufficient information to make good decisions.
Yes, there are bits and pieces of difficulty, but compared to something like Ninja Gaiden Black, the moment-to-moment combat in Demon's Souls is actually pretty easy. Proponents of the series love to tout that every death you experience in Souls games is your own fault... but it's not true, particularly with bosses.
This is what I consider to be the fundamental flaw of the game. At the point that I have cleared a level, I can go up against a boss that I have zero chance of killing due to having no reasonable way of knowing where the random 1-shot attack is going to come from, and as a result I have to go and reclear a bunch of stuff that is not particularly interesting or difficult, it is just a chore. The argument that replaying the level makes the game more interesting is completely bogus. Forcing players to repeat content they are already proficient at to die on content that they are not is not "difficult", it is work. Removing it makes the game *less* boring, not more.
Hmm... if you know you don't have sufficient info, why would you go and fight the boss unprepared ? The game simply change the formula by putting you in charge of your own judgement. If you think you're ready, go for it. If not, you can summon Blue Phantom, or you can do a dry run by being a Blue Phantom yourself. If you prefer to think a little bit, very often you can also find ways to cheese your enemy too. That's why I never claim Demon's Souls or Dark Souls is a hard game, except for particular boss fights.
If all the levels can be cleared at one go, then it usually means I'm over-leveled in Dark Souls.
When the player feels that he's making all the judgment calls, then he may also feel more responsible for his death.
It is fine to have consequence for failure. However, the consequence for failure in Souls is to remove from the player the opportunity to succeed. That is broken design.
Demon's Souls halves your health when you die. Yes, it is harsh and broken by today's gaming standard. But if enough gamers liked Demon's Souls enough to warrant a second game, it may mean the pendulum have swung to far to the easy side for these people.
Will the developers keep the same formula ? Not always. Dark Souls restore your full health, restock your heal potion and spell budget automagically.
But without Demon's Souls broken, harsh penalty for death, it may not gain the attention it enjoys today.
I have a theory that if one or more of the following apply to someone, they are more likely to be a big supperter of the series:
a) Died at bosses very little for whatever reason
b) Died less against bosses than during levels
c) Have a very high tolerance for repetition
In these cases, I think the issues with the boss design become less glaring. Everyone I know that died little in levels but frequently on bosses (and thus spent much time running through levels to bang their head againt the boss repeatedly) threw down the controller in frustration.
... or they figured out that they should use Blue Phantoms.
Also, to respond specifically about Armor Spider. This is not about how hard core you are or how well you know the boss mechanics and I have no idea why you brought it up. My point was that you don't *have* to use any particular tactics to beat it because of the presense of unlimited grass and the fact that most of its attacks are relatively weak.
The fact that Armor Spider is so easy to cheese in fact probably makes it pretty obvious why almost all of the other bosses can kill in 1 or 2 hits with most attacks. If they didn't, every boss in the game would become a simple war of attrition. Instead, they become wars of range cheese, which is also not fun.
The damage a boss deals is relative to your level. If you attempt a boss when you're too low level, then yes, it may kill you in one hit. If the boss takes little damage from you, then you may be over-leveled. The cheesing mechanism (ranged attack) is a backdoor for players to advance quickly.
I brought up the cheesing mechanism because you seem to have a lot of trouble with the bosses. There are only a handful of difficult bosses in Dark Souls (Capra, Ornstein + Smough, and may be Quelagg). In Demon's Souls, _all_ the bosses can be cheesed. You don't need to go for "unlimited" grass (There is a cap right ?).
I mentioned a few posts up the three biggest things that I would change about the game:
1. Reduce the number of weapons and dramatically simplify the upgrade system. I would also have UI in the game that describes the strategic purpose of each weapon: what type of character builds and playstyles it's good for and what types of enemies it is string or weak against.
I don't see how reducing the number of weapons help.
There is no character build in the Souls series. A magician can melee as well as a barbarian. It's the player's skills that count (e.g., parry timing). As for play style, the key factors are weight vs speed, ranged vs melee. You can tell already by looking at the weapon attributes. As for what types of enemies it's strong or weak against, it's more efficient to do it via user messages in the map. If a boss is weak against Fire, you can use any Fire weapon.
2. Dying on a boss would provide 2 options:
a) Drop souls and return to last bonfire (what it does today)
b) Restart immediately at the boss, but permenantly lose all held souls.
This, I believe is the most important. 1 is a problem that can be avoided via a FAQ (although I still believe that it is a problem that alienates players). And 3 is still not great, but would be more tolerable with this change.
b) is essentially no penalty because I'll just make sure I don't carry a lot of souls before the boss encounter. Today, you can wear the Ring of Sacrifice to restart immediately at the boss _without_ losing any souls.
3. I would remove about half of the bosses from the game and probably consider a redesign of many of the remaining bosses to demand more of player skill. Almost every boss in both games has a very simple set of easily exploitable behaviors, which makes them not very interesting to fight as soon as you know the trick. Much of this is a consequence of the bosses being too physically large. Physically large bosses must, for balance purposes, be very slow. That makes them predictable and boring and forces much of their difficulty to be based on knowledge of mechanics, not on execution of the combat system. Both games do great at forcing you to be good at the combat during the actual levels and then ignore everything about it as soon as you reach a boss.
The only one hit kill boss is the Dragon God in Demon's Souls. Other than that, all the bosses deal their damage relative to your stats and equipment attributes.
Based on what you mentioned so far, I'm not sure how it's better. By insisting on no one-hit kills (ever ?), you want bosses that deal little damage even when your character is low level ? And you want them to be unpredictable instead of telegraphed ? Plus you want them to be small ? I'm afraid that boss would be the Mosquitoes in Blighttown.
Did you die a lot from the bosses ? You mentioned above that big supporters of the game die less at boss fights. If you think the boss fights are boring and easy, then where is the problem ?
Compared to who ? The general public or Dark Soul's target audience ?
Compared to the number of people on average who paid money for a product. I think that your experience is almost exactly typical of most of the more vocal defenders of what a lot of people see as flaws in the series.
Hmm... if you know you don't have sufficient info, why would you go and fight the boss unprepared ? The game simply change the formula by putting you in charge of your own judgement. If you think you're ready, go for it. If not, you can summon Blue Phantom, or you can do a dry run by being a Blue Phantom yourself. If you prefer to think a little bit, very often you can also find ways to cheese your enemy too. That's why I never claim Demon's Souls or Dark Souls is a hard game, except for particular boss fights.
I've touched on this a few times, but maybe I wasn't clear. Allow me to take another stab.
There's a push and pull here. I have no problem with a boss demanding a bit of trial and error. What is a problem is that every time you die, you have to run back through a bunch of crap that you already completed and you drop all of your souls in the process.
In Dark Souls, this isn't *as* bad because the distance from checkpoint to boss is shorter, making it easier to spend your souls more frequently, but it's still not particularly wonderful.
If the punishment for death is going to be something really irritating (which it is), then it should be reasonable for a player to avoid almost any deaths. Bosses break this contract badly. Summoning co-op partners is not a solution. Not only is this mechanic not available to all players, it removes a lot of individual player skill as a factor. You may be fine with that, I find that to be a crutch fix in line with difficulty sliders, not an actual solution to the underlying problem.
Demon's Souls halves your health when you die. Yes, it is harsh and broken by today's gaming standard. But if enough gamers liked Demon's Souls enough to warrant a second game, it may mean the pendulum have swung to far to the easy side for these people.
Will the developers keep the same formula ? Not always. Dark Souls restore your full health, restock your heal potion and spell budget automagically.
But without Demon's Souls broken, harsh penalty for death, it may not gain the attention it enjoys today.
I disagree. This is another thing I hear big supporters of the game say a lot. Outside of those people (and reviewers who are pandering), most of the word of mouth I hear about the Souls games is "rent, don't buy, you'll probably give up anyway."
I think the core Souls community has a very distorted view of what a huge segment of people who played the game and never completed it really feel about it.
The word of mouth about these games would have been *better* if they were more fun to play. In fact, with a less harsh death penalty, the developers could have afforded to make the levels even harder than they were without it being a huge burden on the player.
... or they figured out that they should use Blue Phantoms.
As I said, it's great that this is the option, but it doesn't work for everyone and some might not want the only reason for their success to be the actions of another player.
The damage a boss deals is relative to your level. If you attempt a boss when you're too low level, then yes, it may kill you in one hit. If the boss takes little damage from you, then you may be over-leveled. The cheesing mechanism (ranged attack) is a backdoor for players to advance quickly.
I brought up the cheesing mechanism because you seem to have a lot of trouble with the bosses. There are only a handful of difficult bosses in Dark Souls (Capra, Ornstein + Smough, and may be Quelagg). In Demon's Souls, _all_ the bosses can be cheesed. You don't need to go for "unlimited" grass (There is a cap right ?).
I stopped having trouble with the bosses when I just looked up videos of them before walking in and started cheesing them all. However, this doesn't make the bosses *good*, it just mhakes them *less irritating*.
Many of the bosses in the souls games have skill-based strategies for fighting them, but the player is encouraged *not* to fight the bosses that way. Would you say that the penalty for death did not discourage you the way it did me? That could explain some of our difference in opinion.
I don't see how reducing the number of weapons help.
There is no character build in the Souls series. A magician can melee as well as a barbarian. It's the player's skills that count (e.g., parry timing). As for play style, the key factors are weight vs speed, ranged vs melee. You can tell already by looking at the weapon attributes. As for what types of enemies it's strong or weak against, it's more efficient to do it via user messages in the map. If a boss is weak against Fire, you can use any Fire weapon.
There are many very similar weapons in the game that differ only by a smalla mount of weight. Removing things that are very similar to each other makes the game easier to understand.
As far as character builds, of course there are. There are entire pages dedicated to different builds and playstyles. I would actually argue that the game would be greatly improved by having some set of pre-set "classes" that you could choose to use on a first playthrough, which would dovetail nicely with tying in-game weapon descriptions to.
I would say though that of the things I mentioned, this is the one that I feel *least* strongly about. It is an "ease of learning" issue more than a "quality of design" issue.
b) is essentially no penalty because I'll just make sure I don't carry a lot of souls before the boss encounter. Today, you can wear the Ring of Sacrifice to restart immediately at the boss _without_ losing any souls.
You're talking about a rare ring that breaks after one use. That is not the same as "having a core mechanic where you can retry a boss." Also, it wasn't always trivial to "not carry a lot of souls before the boss" in Demon's Souls. Many levels had no reasonable way to *spend* your souls without returning to the nexus and having to reclear nearly the entire level (5-1, for example).
As I mentioned before though, that problem is mitigated somewhat in Dark Souls. The trek back is the bigger frustration.
The only one hit kill boss is the Dragon God in Demon's Souls. Other than that, all the bosses deal their damage relative to your stats and equipment attributes.
Based on what you mentioned so far, I'm not sure how it's better. By insisting on no one-hit kills (ever ?), you want bosses that deal little damage even when your character is low level ? And you want them to be unpredictable instead of telegraphed ? Plus you want them to be small ? I'm afraid that boss would be the Mosquitoes in Blighttown.
Did you die a lot from the bosses ? You mentioned above that big supporters of the game die less at boss fights. If you think the boss fights are boring and easy, then where is the problem ?
I 1-shot almost every boss once I started looking up cheese strategies in advance. But it's not *fun*. Not even remotely.
There don't have to be no 1-hit kills. What I'm saying is that the combination of the overly-punative penalty for death creates a situation where if boss attacks aren't extremely heavily telegraphed, it makes the boss cheap and not fun. By having harder to avoid attacks that come out more frequently but do less damage, you can make a much more dynamic boss fights.
And, yes, both games have a couple bosses that aren't huge (Fools Idol, Penetrator, chick from Painted World, and so on). And there are a bunch of mini-bosses that are smaller. But they are a huge minority. Large bosses should be the ones that are few and far between. But it is the opposite.
I feel like there is a disconnect where I am trying to touch on things that I believe are common issues with the game, and many of the responses that you're making are in references to small exceptions. My argument is not that every encounter or every thing is a particular way, but that in a general sense the game operates in some way. Both games (especially taken together) are simply too big and have too much content for there not to be exceptions. It's one of the great strengths of the series.
My point isn't that the everything and every boss in these games is bad. It's clearly not. In fact, although I used Armor Spider as an example of cheatable bosses, I think it's one of the best bosses in Demon's Souls. Penetrator is also an excellent boss. But for each of those there's a whole handful of Adjudicators, Phalanxes, Dragon Gods and Taurus Demons.
Edit: I wasn't happy with some of the wording. Upon reread some of it seemed too confrontational when what I'm really trying to do here is bridge the experience/perception gap that we seem to have. I think some of this is that I have not been entirely clear in some of my criticisms. I hope the updated wording is more neutral in tone.
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I want to add a few other things because on reflection, I feel like there may be a few meta-points to our opinions that could be coloring the discussion. Some of these may not apply, but they're things that I've noticed across many discussions about the series.
I'm not saying that you should retroactively not enjoy these games. I think the fact that there are such polarized opinions about this series is a good sign for the industry at large. I think having games that are extremely ambitious (and in the case of souls, possibly *too* ambitious, but just by a bit) is also a good thing. These are *good* games. Sometimes they're *great*. For me personally, there are things that are frustrating about them that push right up against the value of the enjoyment I get from the good parts. If the underlying game were simply bad, I would simply ignore it. But I *want* this series to be the best it possibly can. I think the Souls games represent something of a genre in and of themselves, and I want to see more stuff like this, but I have a wish list of what I'd want, and I personally know quite a few people who have come up with a very similar list. I find that interesting.
I also find myself concerned that this is a series with a lot of great ideas that seems to quickly be pushing itself in to this ghettos of "these games should only be for us", where "us" is the small core community of huge fans. A lot of supporters of the series (not anyone in this thread, but in other places) meanwhile run around telling everyone else how they must suck at games or be ADHD because they don't like some small number of things about the game. I believe that it's bad for the industry to deliberately limit the audience for a game based on simply not including simple options that would dramatically improve quality of life for players.
What I would like to see happen is the developer working with *both* sides of the community to understand what can be tweaked so that both groups can have a good experience. And part of what makes that so difficult to figure out is that because the game tries to be so many things at once, it isn't always clear what it actually *is*.
I also feel that the big supporters of this game assume experience upon the people who found it frustrating that simply isn't accurate. I know many people who gave up on Souls who beat NGB on Master Ninja, who completed SMB or I Wanna Be The Guy, or who beat Battletoads *without save states*. The issue is not dedication or skill. It is something else. There is a particular way that these games can be played where you are likely to have a much easier time... and yet you get a lot of freedom where you can be moderately successful with other playstyles just up until a point when things just break. The game actually teaches *bad* lessons, and then punishes the player for learning the wrong thing. I believe that this is a big part of the disconnect between people who really enjoyed it and people who simply appreciate it.
Ultimately though, I don't think that From cares that much about people outside of the hard core of the community. They're perfectly happy to essentially lie about what the game is, support only their most hardcore fans, and basically cheat everyone else out of their money by claiming that the game is something that it's not. That's why I did not buy Dark Souls (although I played a decent chunk of it) and probably won't pay upfront for any subsequent entires in the series unless something changes. But I still appreciate the fact that it exists, and I would like to see it move forward.
I'm not saying that you should retroactively not enjoy these games. I think the fact that there are such polarized opinions about this series is a good sign for the industry at large. I think having games that are extremely ambitious (and in the case of souls, possibly *too* ambitious, but just by a bit) is also a good thing. These are *good* games. Sometimes they're *great*. For me personally, there are things that are frustrating about them that push right up against the value of the enjoyment I get from the good parts. If the underlying game were simply bad, I would simply ignore it. But I *want* this series to be the best it possibly can. I think the Souls games represent something of a genre in and of themselves, and I want to see more stuff like this, but I have a wish list of what I'd want, and I personally know quite a few people who have come up with a very similar list. I find that interesting.
I also find myself concerned that this is a series with a lot of great ideas that seems to quickly be pushing itself in to this ghettos of "these games should only be for us", where "us" is the small core community of huge fans. A lot of supporters of the series (not anyone in this thread, but in other places) meanwhile run around telling everyone else how they must suck at games or be ADHD because they don't like some small number of things about the game. I believe that it's bad for the industry to deliberately limit the audience for a game based on simply not including simple options that would dramatically improve quality of life for players.
What I would like to see happen is the developer working with *both* sides of the community to understand what can be tweaked so that both groups can have a good experience. And part of what makes that so difficult to figure out is that because the game tries to be so many things at once, it isn't always clear what it actually *is*.
I also feel that the big supporters of this game assume experience upon the people who found it frustrating that simply isn't accurate. I know many people who gave up on Souls who beat NGB on Master Ninja, who completed SMB or I Wanna Be The Guy, or who beat Battletoads *without save states*. The issue is not dedication or skill. It is something else. There is a particular way that these games can be played where you are likely to have a much easier time... and yet you get a lot of freedom where you can be moderately successful with other playstyles just up until a point when things just break. The game actually teaches *bad* lessons, and then punishes the player for learning the wrong thing. I believe that this is a big part of the disconnect between people who really enjoyed it and people who simply appreciate it.
Ultimately though, I don't think that From cares that much about people outside of the hard core of the community. They're perfectly happy to essentially lie about what the game is, support only their most hardcore fans, and basically cheat everyone else out of their money by claiming that the game is something that it's not. That's why I did not buy Dark Souls (although I played a decent chunk of it) and probably won't pay upfront for any subsequent entires in the series unless something changes. But I still appreciate the fact that it exists, and I would like to see it move forward.
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specwarGP2
Regular
There don't have to be no 1-hit kills. What I'm saying is that the combination of the overly-punative penalty for death creates a situation where if boss attacks aren't extremely heavily telegraphed, it makes the boss cheap and not fun. By having harder to avoid attacks that come out more frequently but do less damage, you can make a much more dynamic boss fights.
I disagree with it being overly punative. You have options. You can summon phantoms. If you choose to go solo, and you get stuck in a loop of dying and losing souls to the boss that's really your own fault because you can always homeward bone back after grabbing your bloodstain. Furthermore, there are no level restrictions to fighting a boss. You can easily go to multiple parts of the game and gain better equipement to defeat bosses very easily.
I've got my issues with the game, but the boss fights arent one of them.
I'm not going to try to convince you that you shouldn't like the bosses if you did. I didn't, and most of the people I know who gave up on the game did so *because* of the bosses.
I don't get this "blame the player" mentality that the defenders of these mechanics are so stuck on. It's not the player's fault that a frustrating mechanic frustrates them. There's no legitimate reason for bosses in this game to work the way they do. It's archaic design that does nothing but force repetition for the sake of repetition. You can say it's tolerable if you want, and that's a valid opinion and you are not alone in holding it. My opinion that it is *not* tolerable is also valid and shared by many people.
What is silly is the fact that a simple option choice on death could have pleased both groups. I've never heard a single legitimate argument for why having the option to retry bosses without trekking all the way back through the level represents "good design" or "fun". Instead it's just this weak defense of, "But the game would be too easy." Which is a bogus argument. If the only reason your game is hard is because it's time-consuming to do anything, your game isn't hard, it's a waste of time. If *you* want to be forced to run through the level every time you want to attempt a boss, well, then the option is there. That does not represent a legitimate reason to force *every player* to do it.
And again. I'm not saying these things because I think the game is bad. I make these arguments because I think that these are great games that intentionally block a *lot* of people from playing them simply because of a few mechanical decisions that suck the fun out of the game for a ton of people. These games are not super difficult overall (they are much easier than stuff like NGB or SMB, for example). They simply stack all of this frustration on top of the good bits in the middle, which is a horrible shame.
I don't get this "blame the player" mentality that the defenders of these mechanics are so stuck on. It's not the player's fault that a frustrating mechanic frustrates them. There's no legitimate reason for bosses in this game to work the way they do. It's archaic design that does nothing but force repetition for the sake of repetition. You can say it's tolerable if you want, and that's a valid opinion and you are not alone in holding it. My opinion that it is *not* tolerable is also valid and shared by many people.
What is silly is the fact that a simple option choice on death could have pleased both groups. I've never heard a single legitimate argument for why having the option to retry bosses without trekking all the way back through the level represents "good design" or "fun". Instead it's just this weak defense of, "But the game would be too easy." Which is a bogus argument. If the only reason your game is hard is because it's time-consuming to do anything, your game isn't hard, it's a waste of time. If *you* want to be forced to run through the level every time you want to attempt a boss, well, then the option is there. That does not represent a legitimate reason to force *every player* to do it.
And again. I'm not saying these things because I think the game is bad. I make these arguments because I think that these are great games that intentionally block a *lot* of people from playing them simply because of a few mechanical decisions that suck the fun out of the game for a ton of people. These games are not super difficult overall (they are much easier than stuff like NGB or SMB, for example). They simply stack all of this frustration on top of the good bits in the middle, which is a horrible shame.
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specwarGP2
Regular
I don't get this "blame the player" mentality that the defenders of these mechanics are so stuck on. It's not the player's fault that a frustrating mechanic frustrates them.
The game doesnt force you into a frustrating mechanic. That's a choice you made. If you summon phantoms you will surely beat the boss on the first try.
There's no legitimate reason for bosses in this game to work the way they do.
But the entire game works like that. If you die for whatever reason you always go back to the last bonfire you rested at. Why should bosses be any different?
The game doesnt force you into a frustrating mechanic. That's a choice you made. If you summon phantoms you will surely beat the boss on the first try.
You can't always get a phantom to come, and even if you can, there's no guarantee that they're going to be useful.
And even then, if the point of this game is to be difficult, why make a self-defeating design decision to force players to cheapen the difficulty of the game?
I'm not arguing that there's a "workaround". I'm saying that the workaround is bad.
I get that you're a "blame the player" type when it comes to these games. I get that you don't think that anyone has a right to an opinion about these games that's different than yours. You're wrong. Stop telling me that I can't have an opinion about something that I see as a huge flaw. I already explained why I don't think Blue Phantoms represent a good solution. Telling me that they're the solution a second time doesn't change anything.
But the entire game works like that. If you die for whatever reason you always go back to the last bonfire you rested at. Why should bosses be any different?
Tons of games have checkpoints for bosses but not in levels. Bosses are basically levels in and of themselves many times. Bosses operate significantly differently than the rest of the game. The vast majority of the encounters within the levels in both games are largely predicated on your own skill. Enemy behavior isn't radically different and so if you're reasonably patient, not dying is pretty reasonable.
Bosses, however, are largely made up of a bunch of mechanics that you cannot predict until they have already killed you. To do the bosses blind requires non-trivial trial and error.
The challange involved in beating a boss is completely different from the challange involved in making it through a level. Thus forcing a player to replay a level does *nothing* to prepare them for beating the boss. It's nothing but a punishment designed to piss the player off. That's silly.
I've now completed Demon's Souls, btw. I think the fun peaked around 3-2. (at which point I had 4-2+, 5-2+ and 1-4 to go). 4-2 was interesting, 5-2 was dumb, 1-4 desperately needed a shortcut to the final boss (gave up quickly and killed him with poison), and endgame was lame.
Overall I'd still say the game is really good, but far from a masterpiece.
I have a friend who's working on Dark Souls right now. When he either finishes it or gives up, we're going to swap games and give them another crack, so we'll see whether my opinion of Dark Souls changes at all having now entirely completed Demon's Souls.
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Maybe unavoidable death is there by design. It may not be fair, but it creates a lot of tension, always keeping you on the edge of your seat trying to avoid it. The risk is always very real. And because the bosses are to a degree trail and error, you'll eventually get past them. For me Demon's Souls a lot of its appeal when I beat it. Knowing everything I needed to know makes it easy. The risk was gone when it became just a matter of repeating patterns.
It's like a good horror game, not having complete control makes it scarier.
I do think some the bosses could be better though. A lot of them can be defeated by simply staying on their sides. I do like boss battles though because they pose the greatest risk.
It's like a good horror game, not having complete control makes it scarier.
I do think some the bosses could be better though. A lot of them can be defeated by simply staying on their sides. I do like boss battles though because they pose the greatest risk.
Cornsnake: I don't disagree that this is one possible outcome.
Everyone has a line where "tension" becomes "stress" and "risk" becomes "punishment". It's sort of the challange/reward ratio (challange in this case being more generally anything that needs to be overcome, regardless of whether it's fair or reasonable or whatever).
I completely agree that there are people whose personal line falls in such a way that the things that I personally find to simply be frustrating about the Souls games are a source of tension that makes beating parts of the game more rewarding.
For me, that line is crossed regularly, at which point the game simply becomes frustrating. And the things in the game that cause it to cross that line I do not believe are necessary (particularly given that many of them could be remedied by simply providing options to the player, better in-game guidance, or tweaking bosses to be more a test of skill than rote tactics and cheap exploits).
The thing I challange is the notion that (in particular) providing an option to retry a boss without running through the level again would somehow "ruin the game." I tire quickly of people telling me that somehow I would have less fun with the game if the thing that most frustrated me were removed as a factor, as if somehow I don't know what my own opinion on the matter is.
If I could retry at bosses, I would be less motivated to exploit them, would take much bigger risks, and find it much more enjoyable to beat them. For example, it would almost certainly be more fun to fight False King at melee... but the smart money is on poison spam because otherwise you have to replay all of 1-4. It is impossible to convince me that being able to simply retry the boss directly would make that situation *worse* instead of better.
Everyone has a line where "tension" becomes "stress" and "risk" becomes "punishment". It's sort of the challange/reward ratio (challange in this case being more generally anything that needs to be overcome, regardless of whether it's fair or reasonable or whatever).
I completely agree that there are people whose personal line falls in such a way that the things that I personally find to simply be frustrating about the Souls games are a source of tension that makes beating parts of the game more rewarding.
For me, that line is crossed regularly, at which point the game simply becomes frustrating. And the things in the game that cause it to cross that line I do not believe are necessary (particularly given that many of them could be remedied by simply providing options to the player, better in-game guidance, or tweaking bosses to be more a test of skill than rote tactics and cheap exploits).
The thing I challange is the notion that (in particular) providing an option to retry a boss without running through the level again would somehow "ruin the game." I tire quickly of people telling me that somehow I would have less fun with the game if the thing that most frustrated me were removed as a factor, as if somehow I don't know what my own opinion on the matter is.
If I could retry at bosses, I would be less motivated to exploit them, would take much bigger risks, and find it much more enjoyable to beat them. For example, it would almost certainly be more fun to fight False King at melee... but the smart money is on poison spam because otherwise you have to replay all of 1-4. It is impossible to convince me that being able to simply retry the boss directly would make that situation *worse* instead of better.
Cornsnake: I don't disagree that this is one possible outcome.
Everyone has a line where "tension" becomes "stress" and "risk" becomes "punishment". It's sort of the challange/reward ratio (challange in this case being more generally anything that needs to be overcome, regardless of whether it's fair or reasonable or whatever).
I completely agree that there are people whose personal line falls in such a way that the things that I personally find to simply be frustrating about the Souls games are a source of tension that makes beating parts of the game more rewarding.
I've broken plenty controllers playing games and getting frustrated. But never on Demon's and Dark Souls. I guess I have just excepted that that's the way it sometimes does things. Killing me when it's no fault of my own.
For me, that line is crossed regularly, at which point the game simply becomes frustrating. And the things in the game that cause it to cross that line I do not believe are necessary (particularly given that many of them could be remedied by simply providing options to the player, better in-game guidance, or tweaking bosses to be more a test of skill than rote tactics and cheap exploits).
A good tutorial is something I find extremely lacking in both games. A lot of frustration early on could probably be avoided if the games would simply explain their mechanics.
The thing I challange is the notion that (in particular) providing an option to retry a boss without running through the level again would somehow "ruin the game." I tire quickly of people telling me that somehow I would have less fun with the game if the thing that most frustrated me were removed as a factor, as if somehow I don't know what my own opinion on the matter is.
If I could retry at bosses, I would be less motivated to exploit them, would take much bigger risks, and find it much more enjoyable to beat them. For example, it would almost certainly be more fun to fight False King at melee... but the smart money is on poison spam because otherwise you have to replay all of 1-4. It is impossible to convince me that being able to simply retry the boss directly would make that situation *worse* instead of better.
You could make the argument that more checkpoints would allow them to increase the difficulty in between them. Taking away some of the frustration of going through the whole level again, while keeping the difficulty. The trips back to bosses are already shorter in Dark Souls. But Dark Souls is also about resource management. The healing flasks and spells you don't spend going through the levels you'll have available during the boss fights. In that sense it forces you to master a level rather then simply getting through it.
You could make the argument that more checkpoints would allow them to increase the difficulty in between them. Taking away some of the frustration of going through the whole level again, while keeping the difficulty. The trips back to bosses are already shorter in Dark Souls. But Dark Souls is also about resource management. The healing flasks and spells you don't spend going through the levels you'll have available during the boss fights. In that sense it forces you to master a level rather then simply getting through it.
As to the first sentence, yes, exactly. Overall I don't think the Souls games are so much hard from an execution perspective... it's more just that it's easy to rush and make mistakes. The more frequently you checkpoint, the harder the game can be without causing players to be likely to give up. This is exactly the philosophy that "short levels, instant respawn" style brutal platformers like SMB and N+ are based upon.
I do actually really like the limited flasks mechanic in Dark Souls for a lot of reasons. However, let's be honest... in Dark Souls, most of the time there's nothing but a couple of peons between a bonfire and a boss, and many times they can even be skipped. I don't think getting to a boss with max flasks really represents any particular mastery of anything.
In this regard, Dark Souls is a *lot* better than Demon's Souls. But to some extent, it's also almost more frustrating because the fact that it's just a slog is even more obvious. Okay, it's not *actually* more frustrating, but it's ultimately still the same problem.
In terms of mechanics... I actually wouldn't design it as putting bonfires right next to the boss, but rather that there would be a virtual checkpoint whereby if you die on a boss and used it, you would permenantly lose any souls carried and respawn at the fog gate with however many flasks you had when you passed through it the first time (possibly with a max of 5, I'd say losing the bonus from a kindled bonfire would be fair).
specwarGP2
Regular
I get that you're a "blame the player" type when it comes to these games. I get that you don't think that anyone has a right to an opinion about these games that's different than yours. You're wrong. Stop telling me that I can't have an opinion about something that I see as a huge flaw. I already explained why I don't think Blue Phantoms represent a good solution. Telling me that they're the solution a second time doesn't change anything.
All I'll say about this is that the ability to summon phantoms is there for a reason. If you choose not to summon... well the game is going to be a lot more frustrating.
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