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Souls games should just do away with stat allocation. It's always pointless because either you gently caress yourself over with it or you already know what direction your character is going in. Just pick a class at the beginning and use souls to level it up in a predefined way. Maybe give an option to switch classes at the cost of some levels/souls whenever you want. Sekiro had the right idea.
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Feb 27, 2021 07:00
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Morpheus posted:Souls games should just do away with stat allocation. It's always pointless because either you gently caress yourself over with it or you already know what direction your character is going in. Just pick a class at the beginning and use souls to level it up in a predefined way. Maybe give an option to switch classes at the cost of some levels/souls whenever you want. That doesn't really help a whole lot when you take into account the specific ways builds can deviate, or the weirdo weapons that open up later on. Like, just take the ways sorcery builds can open up (mostly because I usually play them). Perfectly valid approaches--although some of the games disagree about that--are: -Magical glass cannon (high Int and Attunement, low most everything else) -Hex user (high Attunement, relatively balanced Int and Faith) -'Trickster' assassin (relatively low Int just to unlock the weirder spells, high Attunement, some points in Strength and Dexterity to allow for melee weapons) -Magic Weapon warrior (low-ish Attunement, high Int, decent Strength and Dex with different balances depending on your weapon of choice) -Boss weapon showoff (who the gently caress knows, it all depends on what weapon you've picked and every game has at least a few serious options) All of those are completely legitimate ways to build out a sorceror, and given the Souls games are very much inspired by classic RPGs where they want to give all those options, you wouldn't want to rule any out. Souls games really want you to have the build freedom to make something specific they wouldn't necessarily think of, and the consequence of that is that it's also got the build freedom to accidentally gently caress up your poo poo. THey'd do better to just introduce a freely-executable respec option. Which I believe did exist in Dark Souls 2, but no others because in the Soulsborne series, DS2 is where subtly good ideas went to die.
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Feb 27, 2021 07:30
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Those builds are very arbitrary though. There's no reason hexers go high attune and balanced int/wis except that their spells have high attunement costs and scale with int and wis. You could get the same effect by just making sorcery and hexes scale the same with the same attunement costs, then add items that scale up hex or sorcery damage. That way you switch up the spells you use based on the staff you're carrying or whatever other items. I mean you could just make everything, both health and all forms of damage, scale off level and give items that lower health but increase damage to emulate glass cannons. Etc. I generally don't like respecs because they undermine the whole point of specs in the first place. They're specializations, what's the point of specializing if you can just switch at will? You're just giving me a scuffed generalist. I can see it in a team game where you might need to fill holes, but in a singleplayer game I think it's best to have locked specs (with limited/inconvenient respecs if desired) or do away with specs entirely and let gear dictate what I can do best. Switching gear feels much more natural.
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Feb 27, 2021 07:45
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You could just...not use a respec option if it bothers you. Especially in a singleplayer game, what difference does it make if someone else uses it?
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Feb 27, 2021 07:47
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The game should reformat your PC/console if you try and start a new game too. You committed to those stats, now live with them, forever.
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Feb 27, 2021 07:57
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Triarii posted:I know two guys who tried Bloodborne as their first soulsborne game. One of them didn't realize that you have to equip your weapon, and went hours trying to punch everything to death. The other put 100% of his echoes into the arcane stat, and then quit the game after like 10 hours because he couldn't kill anything and was dying in one hit. 
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Feb 27, 2021 08:06
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That's like saying permadeath is pointless because you can always just ignore the load button in any game and start from the beginning when you die. Adding permanence to a decision adds weight to that decision. You put a level of thought into a permanent respec that you wouldn't otherwise and that adds to the experience. Building a character spec is part of the enjoyment of games that have them and I've spent many hours theorycrafting specs in games over the years. That's what you get if you do hard specs. There are consequences to that system so I understand people not wanting them, but if you're not locking in the specs the impact of having specs is undermined to the point where I'm not sure why you'd still have them. You could instead just not have specs. For example lets take Dark Souls. The main thing separating dex builds, quality builds, and strength builds are which weapons you are best with. Right? They're separate specs to make you choose between them. It's to make it so your character is a "dex character" or a "strength character". It adds variety, it adds identity, and it adds a feeling of ownership. If you can just switch around between them you no longer get that separation. Your character is just a whatever character, a generalist. Whatever you happen to be at the moment is what you happen to be. But say you want the player to be free, you want to give people the freedom to do all sorts of things with the one character. Okay, sure, no problem. But then why keep the specs? The specs are just a remnant from the previous system you're abandoning. If you're going to let me switch between strength weapons and dex weapons then just remove the middle man and let the switching of the weapons itself be the thing that switches my ability to use the weapons. You see? I'm not saying you need to lock people into specs or else it's dumb, I'm saying why lock people in to specs if you don't want them to be locked into them? What is the purpose of the soft lock? Forcing me to consume an item and fiddle with my loving stat points all over again just so a can switch weapons is dumb when you could have just let me switch weapons.
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Feb 27, 2021 08:18
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Phigs posted:I generally don't like respecs because they undermine the whole point of specs in the first place. They're specializations, what's the point of specializing if you can just switch at will? You're just giving me a scuffed generalist. I can see it in a team game where you might need to fill holes, but in a singleplayer game I think it's best to have locked specs (with limited/inconvenient respecs if desired) or do away with specs entirely and let gear dictate what I can do best. Switching gear feels much more natural. Respecs can be a weirdly difficult thing to approach, because I agree that they shouldn't be too easy or else it's completely transient and might as well not have an extra layer of difficulty at all... but at the same time, you want to make sure that someone who genuinely needs a respec can get one, so posing a challenge for someone with a non-busted build is off the table. Again, DS2 solved this without anyone giving it due credit. There's an item you can get that allows you to respec; there's a total of eleven in the game (although three are from DLC areas), none of them especially hard to get or hidden away. Far enough through that you'll have enough experience with your build to know if you hosed it, but not so difficult to get that it's too hard to grab with a build you've hosed. EDIT: But honestly, given the Souls games were born of and found success through rejecting modern 'streamlined' game design and efforts to make games easier, and succeeded through proving there's still a market for games where a big draw is difficulty, it's a little ironic and debatably unwelcome to the series' central direction to be suggesting ways to streamline the game and avoid feelbad mistakes. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 08:30 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 08:19
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There are hundreds of games that have permadeath as a toggle you flip on or off when you start a new game. Does this also invalidate the mechanic? I don't understand why including a respec option requires a fundamental change to design. Dark Souls 2 has respecs but is designed with the same assumption that players will stick with thier build. Its not like Dragon's Dogma which clearly expects you to bounce from class to class and experiment. Its the same leveling and build mechanics as DS1 and 3, with like one extra dumb stat.
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Feb 27, 2021 08:47
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RareAcumen posted:The game should reformat your PC/console if you try and start a new game too. You committed to those stats, now live with them, forever. Kojima wanted to sell a metal gear game where you got one (1) snake and if he died you had to buy a new game.
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Feb 27, 2021 08:53
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I loved Control, but I absolutely gave up on it right near the end and didn't do the last couple optional bosses for a couple months until Remedy patched in an accessibility menu. This isn't the first time it's happened to me with one of their games, I think they're bad at making challenging encounters.
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Feb 27, 2021 09:08
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Respecs are good because for first time players "choosing" a spec is made on incomplete or even no information. Reducing the cost of trying out builds also encourages experimenting with them so that players can find ones they like better. Also DS got popular because it's Action Wizardry, so it's dungeon crawler with less of the bullshit.
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Feb 27, 2021 09:15
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Souls games aren't even hard, and I'm struggling to describe it. They are deliberate? It's like driving a car. Nobody's saying driving a car is hard, but there's a learning curve and you absolutely get owned if you fail. *honk honk* GIT GUD rear end in a top hat!
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Feb 27, 2021 09:17
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Vic posted:*honk honk* GIT GUD rear end in a top hat!
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Feb 27, 2021 09:23
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Crowetron posted:There are hundreds of games that have permadeath as a toggle you flip on or off when you start a new game. Does this also invalidate the mechanic? How many games have respecs as a toggle you flip on or off when you start a new game? And I'm not even saying specs should be done away with. I'm saying if you're going to undermine them so that people can't lock themselves into a bad spec then a different mechanic is going to be more suitable. Whether that be classes that have no variation for people to gently caress up, or doing away with stats so people can't gently caress em up. As much as I dislike meta-progression in roguelikes it doesn't completely undermine the purpose of permadeath, it just undermines part of it. The point of permadeath is you always start at the beginning. With metaprogression you lose the feeling that every run is from the same starting point and only your skill and knowledge allow you to progress further with each attempt. But there are other things permadeath brings to the table. Death is still very meaningful and you do still start from the beginning, your beginning is just boosted in power a bit. I don't like it personally, but it has a purpose. Permadeath with metaprogression is different from permadeath is different from no permadeath. Respecs mean you're locked into a spec until you decide you're not, so you never were. To help drive the point home being freely able to assign and take away stat points would be better than respecs. Why only let the player add stats, but not take them away unless they take all of them away by pressing another button? I put 41 points into END instead of 40 so now I gotta press the respec button and put back 25 points into END instead of just taking the one point out because why? Because of a vestigial system that got unimaginatively hacked apart because its most fundamental feature was no longer desired. Just put +- next to each stat and give me a pool to draw and be done. Make it only doable at bonfires so I'm not tempted/forced to respec between every different mob and done if you don't want to lock people into specs. Hard-to-get or limited respecs are a bit of a different matter because they are a compromise solution. The post I was replying to said: Cleretic posted:THey'd do better to just introduce a freely-executable respec option. DS2 was not a great implementation though. There was more than 1-2 so they felt like more than a way to undo your mistakes, but they were limited so they didn't feel like something you should use to just change up your character. Soul memory additionally made it so that you might as well just reroll a character past a certain point. I used them a couple times but they always felt weird to use. Like I was using up a precious, limited resource but I also didn't care because my character was kinda throwaway anyway. They also weren't well explained in the typical DS fashion. Diablo 2 (eventually) did it better with 1 free respec from every difficulty, and then respecs you could create an unlimited amount of times but took some work to get. Phigs has a new favorite as of 09:29 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 09:26
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Vic posted:Souls games aren't even hard, and I'm struggling to describe it. They are deliberate? I think that's generally, it, yeah. There's a lot of ways that games can be hard, and the Soulsborne games are particularly focused on being harsh; while they aren't asking you to do anything overly complex, failing is sudden, painful, and immediate, and even if you build for as much BEEF as possible, you'll not be able to just shrug off a mistake. It was developed in response to a gaming environment where failure was becoming less and less of an actual factor in game design, which kinda helps explain that; regenerating health was becoming a standard, and you had games like Oblivion where you could essentially design your way into being invincible. Specifically the Souls games came about from a desire to make failure hurt. They weren't even necessarily innovators in that field. Atlus picked up publishing Demon's Souls in North America specifically because it perfectly meshed with their own approach to difficulty in the Shin Megami Tensei games. But it's a big deal that they worked to re-implement that into the action-focused genres that were most moving away from it. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 09:38 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 09:36
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Vic posted:Souls games aren't even hard, and I'm struggling to describe it. They are deliberate? It's a pretty consistent formula if you really think over every encounter you get into. They can only obscure your vision as you go into a room and have multiple enemies in your blindspot that you had no idea about so many times before you start noticing that it keeps happening over and over again. And yeah, driving a car's a good example. It's not hard really, but you do have to constantly pay attention since everyone else is a psychopath and trying to kill as many bicyclers people trying to merge onto the highway off the road as they can get away with.
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Feb 27, 2021 09:37
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RareAcumen posted:It's a pretty consistent formula if you really think over every encounter you get into. They can only obscure your vision as you go into a room and have multiple enemies in your blindspot that you had no idea about so many times before you start noticing that it keeps happening over and over again. then next room you do it again, find only empty space behind the pillar and a 9 foot tall dude with an axe taps you on the shoulder from behind, oh well, swings and roundabouts
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Feb 27, 2021 09:52
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My Lovely Horse posted:although, feels good getting savvy enough to walk into a dark room with pillars, think "I see what's going on here", and jump round the pillar to go "ah-HA!" at a guy who's now very surprised and trying to look like the halberd he's holding is neither his nor for cleaving your skull in Discworld Souls
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Feb 27, 2021 09:57
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Vic posted:Discworld Souls I would unironically be down for this though.
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Feb 27, 2021 10:04
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You thought you were afraid of that chest being a mimic, you're gonna beg to have mimics back
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Feb 27, 2021 10:08
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Did they ever do a bonfire mimic?
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Feb 27, 2021 10:21
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Cleretic posted:I think that's generally, it, yeah. There's a lot of ways that games can be hard, and the Soulsborne games are particularly focused on being harsh; while they aren't asking you to do anything overly complex, failing is sudden, painful, and immediate, and even if you build for as much BEEF as possible, you'll not be able to just shrug off a mistake. I find the trouble with that approach is when you also include sections where it's expected and intended for the player to fail. I mean sure, if I charge into a room without looking and get chunked in the back by a guy hiding in a corner, fair enough. But if I'm up against a boss with a ton of HP and one-hit-kill moves, then yeah it's probably guaranteed that I'll eat poo poo several times before I learn the timings and develop the muscle memory needed to get through. So if at those points the game still acts harsh and punishing (e.g. long boss runs, diminishing consumables), then at some point it stops feeling harsh but fair, and more like the game is just wasting my time on purpose  .
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Feb 27, 2021 10:29
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Tender Bender posted:Thanks for sharing Dark Souls thoughts, everyone! marshmallow creep posted:Bloodborne is infamous for being hard to invade in. I follow a few people who do invasions in the Soulsborne games, and they almost never do Bloodborne because it's so difficult.
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Feb 27, 2021 10:55
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The things I generally like about the Dark Souls series such as the foreboding atmosphere, minimalist storytelling, and challenging boss fights are typically counteracted in equal measure by the many things that annoy me, such as everyone trying to kill you every 10 feet. I'd really prefer a soulslike that just did away with the gotcha monster closets and dumb gauntlets altogether and staked everything on epic boss encounters. Or essentally, a darker Shadow of the Colossus.
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Feb 27, 2021 10:57
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exquisite tea posted:The things I generally like about the Dark Souls series such as the foreboding atmosphere, minimalist storytelling, and challenging boss fights are typically counteracted in equal measure by the many things that annoy me, such as everyone trying to kill you every 10 feet. I'd really prefer a soulslike that just did away with the gotcha monster closets and dumb gauntlets altogether and staked everything on epic boss encounters. Or essentally, a darker Shadow of the Colossus. There's an indie game called Titan Souls that's basically a love note combination of Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls, and it's nothing but a little game where you fight a bunch of puzzle boss monsters that die in a single hit, and the challenge is figuring out how to do that without dying. I had a blast with it, even if it is short as hell.
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Feb 27, 2021 11:59
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Respecs are good and cool because I'm not going to start a whole new game to try out a cool new late game weapon but I will spend some in game currency to try it out This is also a problem with things like Diablo 2. I'm not rolling up a whole new character because I got something that boosts a different skill set. That shits going right to the trash
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Feb 27, 2021 13:37
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Vic posted:Souls games aren't even hard, and I'm struggling to describe it. They are deliberate? Yup. The best description I have for how to approach Dark Souls is "guardedly confident" - expecting the worst shouldn't make you shy away from exploring, it should empower you because you're prepared for whatever trick the game is gonna pull next. So many players outright crawl through the game, shield held up 100% of the time, because they've become convinced that they're playing I Wanna Be the Guy and there's another apple waiting around every corner. Dark Souls really isn't that relentlessly antagonistic. The soul economy is partly to blame, I guess. Losing souls really isn't a big deal most of the time, but it's nearly impossible to convince the average player of that; it always feels bad. I also think eating boss souls is meant to help shore up big losses, but instead everyone packrats them because "what if I want their unique weapon??  " not realizing that the overwhelming majority are either garbage or niche options that you plan for ahead of time.
John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 18:10 on Feb 27, 2021 |
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Feb 27, 2021 18:08
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The real trick for dealing with them is to throw objects that are close to them while they’re still close to them. I think most people don’t realize things don’t have to make it all the way to Jesse before you can launch them. yo I started Control two nights ago and after shamefully dying twice at the first control point when you just have the Service Weapon, last night i played for a while and got to the hotline and stuff and this bit of advice essentially turned me into a murdergod, so thank you. The way launch targets enemies is pretty cool once you get the hang of it. I absolutely wrecked the first elevated hiss encounter (Tomassi?), like just completely took him apart. "One time....they even managed to lift a cup!"
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Feb 27, 2021 18:36
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Rockman Reserve posted:yo I started Control two nights ago and after shamefully dying twice at the first control point when you just have the Service Weapon, last night i played for a while and got to the hotline and stuff and this bit of advice essentially turned me into a murdergod, so thank you. The way launch targets enemies is pretty cool once you get the hang of it. I absolutely wrecked the first elevated hiss encounter (Tomassi?), like just completely took him apart. The moment you realize how Launch targets stuff is great. I went from “ok, does heavy damage when I don’t have my gun ready, cool but like, what makes that different from a gun” to “Oh. oh OH poo poo  ” so goddamn fast, it ruled.
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Feb 27, 2021 18:52
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Rockman Reserve posted:yo I started Control two nights ago and after shamefully dying twice at the first control point when you just have the Service Weapon, last night i played for a while and got to the hotline and stuff and this bit of advice essentially turned me into a murdergod, so thank you. The way launch targets enemies is pretty cool once you get the hang of it. I absolutely wrecked the first elevated hiss encounter (Tomassi?), like just completely took him apart. I really like Control but when you get launch upgraded it really feels like the other powers just aren't nearly as good. The shield has utility as a "oh gently caress run away" mechanic to recover from near death, mind control was cool but felt meaningless, and I can't remember if there were any other powers.
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Feb 27, 2021 19:55
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Upgraded shield is great because your debris shield is used as a shotgun projectile... so it becomes a semidefensive throw. it works really well when up against big tanky enemies and you are up close and looking to either disengage or get in their face. the shield toss staggers the hell out of them.
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Feb 27, 2021 20:08
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pentyne posted:I really like Control but when you get launch upgraded it really feels like the other powers just aren't nearly as good. The shield has utility as a "oh gently caress run away" mechanic to recover from near death, mind control was cool but felt meaningless, and I can't remember if there were any other powers. Mind control is pretty helpful in the later encounters and in the expeditions, especially turning the healing orbs to your side. But I guess you could make a similar argument for most powers...
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Feb 27, 2021 20:10
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Launch is your #1 damage dealer but all the psychic powers are situationally useful. You should always be levitating for example since enemy accuracy goes way down whenever you're in the air.
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Feb 27, 2021 20:13
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pentyne posted:I really like Control but when you get launch upgraded it really feels like the other powers just aren't nearly as good. The shield has utility as a "oh gently caress run away" mechanic to recover from near death, mind control was cool but felt meaningless, and I can't remember if there were any other powers. Mind controlling a healball gives you constant health regeneration for a long time
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Feb 27, 2021 20:15
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pentyne posted:I really like Control but when you get launch upgraded it really feels like the other powers just aren't nearly as good. The shield has utility as a "oh gently caress run away" mechanic to recover from near death, mind control was cool but felt meaningless, and I can't remember if there were any other powers. Mind control is actually real good, but only if you fill out its upgrade tree. It's a shame that it feels so worthless early on, I ignored it in my first couple playthroughs until folks told me how good the upgrades are.
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Feb 27, 2021 20:15
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What's crazy about this thread to me, 1500 pages in, is just how many really popular and awesome games keep getting brought up repeatedly. Control, Witcher 3, Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, FInal Fantasy, Metal Gear, Resident Evil just get the ever loving Christ beat out of them but the more I look at it I realize that's because those games kick tremendous rear end so way more people play them since they're mostly very good and players just find time to nitpick poo poo. What I'm saying is that this thread has done a great job finding little things that drag games down.
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Feb 27, 2021 20:27
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The targeted slam is also good, especially since it's not limited to slamming into the ground. You can use it to crash into airborne enemies or to charge upwards to get to places you otherwise couldn't with your levitation height.
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Feb 27, 2021 20:28
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BiggerBoat posted:What's crazy about this thread to me, 1500 pages in, is just how many really popular and awesome games keep getting brought up repeatedly. Welcome to why I got the reputation I did in the sister thread - the opposite effect. Talking about all the cool poo poo in games no one else played :P More on topic: The PS2 version of Halflife is aptly named, because for me it literally has a halflife. Every time I try to play it, it's like I only get half as far. I once got close to the end but stopped at an annoying boss, then next time I stopped at On a Rail, then each time it feels worse to play than the last because the controls are a bit awkward. I might try the PC version on steam, see if it feels better to play. My enjoyment of it is actually decaying like a radioactive isotope over time
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Feb 27, 2021 20:32
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BiggerBoat posted:What's crazy about this thread to me, 1500 pages in, is just how many really popular and awesome games keep getting brought up repeatedly. when a game is nearly perfect, its flaws are more obvious
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Feb 27, 2021 20:47
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