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Jul 13, 2022 22:52
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| # ? May 29, 2024 06:33 |
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Watching this playthrough gives me the same feeling I used to get when one of my friends would constantly try to convince me to play Magic: The Gathering -- which eventually lead to me learning to absolutely despise playing Magic: The Gathering.
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Jul 13, 2022 23:06
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I will say that I enjoy the fact that ER has regular estus style healing, and also got rid of weapon durability entirely, which I would argue the game never needed, it's not like it's Fire Emblem 7, which made me keep all the fancy stuff in the wagon and solve everything with iron weapons and first level spells and staves only. Wait, maybe that wasn't that good then either. (I agree with Nat regarding blood vials, however, I love that the parries can make an enemy vulnerable and also still have them ram your face. "I parry the boulder." "Noted, you even succeed, it doesn't care much though.")
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Jul 14, 2022 00:39
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Subjecting himself to grinding instead of exploring alternate locations just seems like a way to make the game unnecessarily unpleasant when Nat's other critiques of the game have been pretty salient, especially regarding blood vials. Does Nat have any armor that has better resistance against poison, and is there any other way to buff his resistance to it?
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Jul 14, 2022 01:07
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Again, problem of trying to be salient while playing a game and discussing with Tea. The idea I was trying to explain was that exploring another place is also contingent on having Blood Vials available. And that if I run out or die on the way then it's time and more importantly resources wasted as I lose the few blood vials I spent to get wherever.
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Jul 14, 2022 10:01
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One source of difficulty for you, I think, comes from how defensively you're playing. It means that every hit you end up taking has to be healed with a Blood Vial. More aggressive players will get a lot of their healing from the rally system, beating the HP out of their enemies' faces. Even if they take more hits, they often get that health right back, and when they die, they end up not having spent as many Blood Vials since they weren't hanging back and popping them after each hit. Being overly cautious in Bloodborne just gets you worn down and your resources depleted.
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Jul 14, 2022 10:35
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I 100% agree with Nat on the blood vials. This is the exact kind of situation where the system is just really stupid. You know you can beat the boss in a few more tries, and want to keep practicing, but for every three tries you have to stop building up muscle memory and learning moves and go for a pointless boring farming run. Yes, Nat could go "somewhere else", but he's obviously perfectly capable of beating BSB right here, right now, and he does not need more weapon upgrades, he does not need more resources, it's just a matter of trying a few more times and figuring out the third phase. And beating BSB unlocks the prime "go somewhere else" spot, so This exact thing happened to me, and it was especially unpleasant because I also happen to really hate BSB. It keeps jumping backwards out of my swings, its obfuscated shape tends to make me whiff [visceral] attacks even if I think I'm close enough, and it has a grab move that can basically instantly kill. Which also comes out rarely enough that you keep forgetting it exists. It's just a super unfun fight for me, the rhythm is always wait for it to do an attack you can punish -> hit once or twice -> have it disengage, now you wait again. Its flailing combos need to be waited out completely, its lunge attack is basically unpunishable because it just keeps running in circles afterwards, it's so frustrating. At least by now I know how to do it but it's never fun for me. And yeah, that pretty substantial runback with a 17/20 Blood Vial counter in the back of my mind telling me "you better win now or you have to do another farming run, tee hee" was just terrific. EclecticTastes posted:One source of difficulty for you, I think, comes from how defensively you're playing. It means that every hit you end up taking has to be healed with a Blood Vial. More aggressive players will get a lot of their healing from the rally system, beating the HP out of their enemies' faces. Even if they take more hits, they often get that health right back, and when they die, they end up not having spent as many Blood Vials since they weren't hanging back and popping them after each hit. Being overly cautious in Bloodborne just gets you worn down and your resources depleted. White Coke posted:Subjecting himself to grinding instead of exploring alternate locations just seems like a way to make the game unnecessarily unpleasant when Nat's other critiques of the game have been pretty salient, especially regarding blood vials.
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Jul 14, 2022 11:11
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I really don't think the lunge is parry fodder. You barely even have to dodge it, just take a step left and let it sail by. As for the poison, I don't think it's worth using an antidote in the heat of battle because it's likely to just get applied again immediately after. I usually just heal through it and only cleanse it if I've won.
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Jul 14, 2022 15:44
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tea make nat use the cum dungeon next
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Jul 14, 2022 19:22
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Nikumatic posted:tea make nat use the cum dungeon next If Tea guides Nat into the dungeons next this LP will end in a ragequit
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Jul 14, 2022 19:45
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Natural 20 posted:Again, problem of trying to be salient while playing a game and discussing with Tea. On the other hand exploring new areas lets you pick up the pre-placed drops which will include blood vials, but also upgrade materials, and maybe even new weapons and armor. On top of the echoes and items you'll get from enemies.
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Jul 14, 2022 20:33
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EclecticTastes posted:One source of difficulty for you, I think, comes from how defensively you're playing. It means that every hit you end up taking has to be healed with a Blood Vial. More aggressive players will get a lot of their healing from the rally system, beating the HP out of their enemies' faces. Even if they take more hits, they often get that health right back, and when they die, they end up not having spent as many Blood Vials since they weren't hanging back and popping them after each hit. Being overly cautious in Bloodborne just gets you worn down and your resources depleted. This post really encapsulates what most people either love or hate about From games. A lot of their games have a fairly specific playstyle that you either embrace or you suffer through. In the case of Sekiro and Bloodborne, you're going to have a much better time if you embrace the style they want you to embrace. And From's designers will absolutely punish you until you play the way they want you to play. It's like an abusive relationship, in game form.
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Jul 14, 2022 21:43
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Simply Simon posted:I 100% agree with Nat on the blood vials. This is the exact kind of situation where the system is just really stupid. You know you can beat the boss in a few more tries, and want to keep practicing, but for every three tries you have to stop building up muscle memory and learning moves and go for a pointless boring farming run. Yes, Nat could go "somewhere else", but he's obviously perfectly capable of beating BSB right here, right now, and he does not need more weapon upgrades, he does not need more resources, it's just a matter of trying a few more times and figuring out the third phase. Agreed. The blood vial system just seems so poorly thought out.
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Jul 14, 2022 22:29
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EclecticTastes posted:One source of difficulty for you, I think, comes from how defensively you're playing. It means that every hit you end up taking has to be healed with a Blood Vial. More aggressive players will get a lot of their healing from the rally system, beating the HP out of their enemies' faces. Even if they take more hits, they often get that health right back, and when they die, they end up not having spent as many Blood Vials since they weren't hanging back and popping them after each hit. Being overly cautious in Bloodborne just gets you worn down and your resources depleted. This is something that's going to come up a little later in the LP but I just want to note that this comment exists, I've read and understood it and I have opinions on it that I'll voice at a more appropriate time.
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Jul 15, 2022 00:26
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frPVWvz_WZk Art will be along shortly!
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Jul 16, 2022 00:07
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Hours of practice until you can effortlessly clown on scary bosses is how one becomes a hunter. Congrats! You can immediately see how your higher Skill (stat not proficiency) has an impact: not because the Cane deals a lot more damage - your viscerals do. Something I find really neat is how helpful Alfred is. Not only does he give you Fire Papers, which is exactly what BSB is weak to, he also comes along himself, and even shows you how awful using slow smashy weapons against BSB can be. What a legend.
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Jul 16, 2022 19:40
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Is it bad to use slow smashy weapons for bsb though? I beat him using the kirkhammer the first time i found him. This boss just didn't seem hard to me at all
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Jul 16, 2022 19:49
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Slaan posted:Is it bad to use slow smashy weapons for bsb though? I beat him using the kirkhammer the first time i found him. This boss just didn't seem hard to me at all
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Jul 16, 2022 20:09
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Absolutely. Bosses are weird in From games. You can clown on a hard boss but struggle on an easy one just because it feels better. BSB is easy to me but it took me forever to figure out the dog statue things in elden ring
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Jul 16, 2022 20:36
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They are also really dependent on your favorite approaches, the most famously hard ER boss was far easier for me than the second instance of a specific gatekeeper boss for that reason.
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Jul 16, 2022 20:58
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Simply Simon posted:If Tea guides Nat into the dungeons next this LP will end in a ragequit I laughed so much at this when I read it by the way.
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Jul 18, 2022 13:00
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Natural 20 posted:I laughed so much at this when I read it by the way. anyway now I hope you immediately try to push through all the way to Pthumeru 3
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Jul 18, 2022 14:06
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Jul 18, 2022 23:28
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Nat20's Tuesday Essay (on a Wednesday) 3. Bloodborne and World of Warcraft - How I stopped caring and embraced the grind. I hate grinding. I think it's dumb tedious work that games put in when they've run out of ideas and want to pad length. Most grinding games just don't work on me, Diablo bores me in a couple of hours, I couldn't get through more than a few minutes of Borderlands and do not get me started on Roguelikes because we will be here all day. Bloodborne necessitates grinding through its Blood Vial system. As a new player you need Blood vials to progress and if you run out then your progress grinds to a halt. Back when we first fought Blood Starved Beast in Episode 16 you can hear my frustration at the tail end of the episode. Tea and I actually had a much longer discussion over what was going on that got cut because it was long, boring and better written than spoken. After my third attempt on that fight I know for sure that on the fourth attempt the boss is almost certainly dead, I've figured out the trick to beating it, but I'm out of vials so I can't try any more. The more eagle eyed among you might also realise that I went into the third attempt on only 10 vials. I contend that there's a good chance I would have actually won on that third attempt if I'd had full resources going in. To put simply, I was tremendously frustrated with the game after recording Episode 16. I was honestly considering whether I should end the LP because of how angry I was. I just didn't feel like the game wanted me to have fun. I started thinking to myself about a post I might put together about why I was quitting and I kept coming down to a single idea. Bloodborne reminds me of Vanilla World of Warcraft. Those among you who've followed us for a while will know that I've played World of Warcraft from its inception. For better or worse across 15 years I've seen the game evolve and change, aping gaming trends of the time and also just evolving the way that it thinks about games in general. The original, or Vanilla, World of Warcraft had a death system where you lost durability if you died and had to run back to your corpse before you could play again. It had a system of permanent loss of consumables if you died to something whilst you had them. It had enemies that weren't too threatening alone but because absolutely deadly in small groups. Level up points, or talents are very expensive to move around and as a hunter I would consume ammunition fighting enemies that I would have to go back to town to replenish. Every single part of its tertiary loop (so the long term systems you're engaging with, as opposed to primary loop which is the immediate next 10 seconds of gameplay you'll be doing) is just eerily similar to Bloodborne's. But over time we saw Blizzard move away from these systems. Talent changes became free, consumables became very very cheap and lasted through death, you'd respawn in front of, or very near bosses when you died. Hunters got unlimited ammo and yeah, you still lose durability but that's largely so that the economy is kept in check rather than a punishment for the player. This has led to a more streamlined game. Bosses can be much harder than they used to be because players simply get more uptime on them than they used to and everyone thought it was a better system. Right? World of Warcraft Classic launched in 2019 after fan outcry for a return to the old style of MMOs. And weirdly enough I was one of the people who returned and enjoyed the hell out of playing it. But how does that square with my hatred of grinding? It doesn't really. I love raiding (raiding is a concept where a large group of players gather at a specific time and place to take on strong bosses in the game, usually we'd arrange for Sunday 7pm UK as our raid time) in WoW, I love raiding in Vanilla more than anything. Organising 40 lemmings into a group and having them play through and enjoy the game is rewarding for me. I like managing them, ensuring they get their fair share of loot and seeing how happy we are when we progress through the game. So I would just take 20 minutes a day to grind up gold for my raid consumables and they would help make the raid more interesting for myself and also make it go smoother for everyone involved. (To be fair, it helps that the grinding process was *really* interesting and involves a hunter soloing a max level 5 man dungeon, but I still did that upwards of like 400 times across the lifetime of that game) As I thought about this comparison I realised that this comparison was my solution. See I love LPing. I love getting to chat with my best friend about a game we're playing, I love seeing your comments on what we do. I love editing silly videos and discovering new games and skills. So how is the LP any different from my raid night? It's a Sunday activity that takes a set amount of time and is a regular activity. It's just not. It's the same. So what's 20 minutes per day farming Blood Vials to make my raid night smoother? Nothing that I haven't done hundreds of times before. You'll see Tea get worried in the next few episodes about my decision to just grind out resources. But it's not something to worry about. It's just what I've always done and it has done wonders to make this game better for me.
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Jul 20, 2022 12:17
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Tea still hasn't understood the difference between a parry (you shoot something with the gun during their attack window, making them stagger and ready for a visceral) and causing the stagger by other means (limb breaks, dealing enough damage in a short amount of time), which might set them up for a visc or not. You were able to visc the Giant after dealing enough damage in a short amount of time to it, and he has another mechanic you used to kill it: it has a pustule on one leg that causes massive damage if you pop it. You cannot parry it with your gun. I don't like Undead Giant. It is much more of a Dark Souls boss than it is a Bloodborne boss - in other words (for Nat and others with no comparison), as Nat himself found out, you wait until it has finished a combo, then you attack. Do not try to combo it, don't try to weave in and out of its attacks, and you can't even dodge through the first attack of its combo, get behind it like that and have the other attacks whiff as you wail on it (that kind of works for BSB and works wonders for Cleric Beast, for example). Undead Giant can turn on a dime, extend its combos by a LOT, and has a kick as well as the slam in the second phase to punish you being close to it for longer. The only consistent way to fight it is indeed to wait, get a hit or at max two in, and back the gently caress off again. The only wrinkle is that you can pop the pimple whenever you want, ideally at the end - as Nat did - because it trigger the phase transition if that hasn't happened already. So, Nat actually did it perfectly. Kudos! Natural 20 posted:Nat20's Tuesday Essay (on a Wednesday) But the beginning of your journey to arrive at your conclusion is very valid - imo dealing with the system requires a mindset change for most players, unless you start with the "correct" one (to not get frustrated, that is). For me, figuring out that you can always go somewhere else, that the game is much less linear than it appears to be (as Tea said, Old Yharnam is optional), was the breakthrough, just mentally. Vials running out? Just go dungeon diving for a bit. Usually, taking a break on a boss is not a bad idea anyway. However, I know plenty of players, like a buddy of mine, who cannot deal with a boss left unbeaten and who hate going into multiple directions at once - this argument won't appeal to them, so they'll have to find another solution to deal with the issue that is the limited consumable. EDIT: was writing this while watching the video. You keep complaining about not being able to follow up a successful parry, framing it as the game not working correctly. Now, phasing through the fatty? Bullshit. I grant you that. But at least two of the times you tried to visc the watchers, you parry from far away - they're staggered - you stroll over - they are no longer staggered as you reach them. You have at most a second to visc them after a parry. Every enemy remains staggered for the same amount of time, that's consistent - it's up to you to get to them in time. That's the tradeoff for the parry being long-range. In Dark Souls, you parry with a shield in melee range, you'll always be close enough for a riposte/visceral. In BB, you often have to dash towards the enemy to visc in time. And if they knock you down with the attack you parry at the same time, tough poo poo - you won't get up in time, that's just how it is. Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jul 20, 2022 |
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Jul 20, 2022 15:25
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I wonder how Nat would feel using two-handed weapons. No need to worry about parrying if you can’t hold your gun.
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Jul 20, 2022 22:19
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Natural 20 posted:
Now you've reached the point where I generally stop playing and try find a way to break the single player game code to cheat in the item(s) that are creating the sense of tedium to collect. Granted, that doesn't happen often, but if the game has demonstrated that it has elements I enjoy, but has introduced one system that left as-is, will ultimately lead to my inability to continue to have fun with my purchase -- then as far as I'm concerned, that system is going to get bypassed before I continue. And if I can't do that within the rules of the game itself, then I'll do it in the system memory while the executable is running.
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Jul 20, 2022 22:32
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Jul 20, 2022 23:05
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I admire your dedication to try and parry literally everything, standing there gun cocked as a freight train descends upon you, but I also lol about it a lot
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Jul 20, 2022 23:49
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Nat is a true victorian gentleman in that way. He is a duelist that proceeds under formal dueling rules, but is willing and able to show his honor and skill through the ancient arts of parry, cut and thrust. Add in the fashionable cane, hat, three piece suit and cloak, he is assuredly a Hunter the Queen may be proud of 
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Jul 21, 2022 00:20
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I think a podium is for people to stand on while a dais is for presenting objects. But that might just be in my own head rather than a proper definition.
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Jul 21, 2022 00:42
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Tenebrais posted:I think a podium is for people to stand on while a dais is for presenting objects. But that might just be in my own head rather than a proper definition.
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Jul 21, 2022 00:54
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Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Jul 23, 2022 |
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Jul 22, 2022 22:58
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Natural 20 posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMnAqGwdqzc Good job Nat you got em. I feel dog boy is best exploited though his charge as long as you dodge it you can carve into his side fairly easily.
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Jul 23, 2022 02:11
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The amount of Blood Echoes you gain over time versus how much it costs to gain levels do not even the tiniest, remotest bit keep pace with one another unless you're an MLG Pro Gamer doing a low-level run. Like, a decent run between lanterns in the early game could get you three or four levels, while by the end of the game, a similar run will only get you one, if you're lucky. York is absolutely on the money that it's easier to branch out your build earlier in the game. By the end of the game, your build will be mostly fixed in place, and you'll be spending Blood Echoes more on upgrading gear and topping off consumables.
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Jul 23, 2022 10:45
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Here's a bit of a boss analysis. - you can break his limbs like most beast bosses'. The forelegs are obvious and it happened often, but you can also break the hind ones - they are much more durable tho - and the head, which happened at the end with the BMA'd gunshot - limb breaks stun the boss for a bit (not a stagger that can be visceral punished, so it doesn't play the you-parried-sound, TEA) and make further hits on the limb deal more damage - the boss always responds to a leg break with an AOE explosion, so punishing his stun is actually a bad idea, at least if you wildly combo your stam away - the phase transition is signified by the big explosion where it sucks sparks in. This doubles as its limb heal move, making the legs take less damage again, but open the boss up to being staggered again - trying to break the head is insanely risky, but if you find a good way to do it (e.g. by whipping it from far enough away that you can evade the bites), you can really rack up damage after it's broken. Maybe not the best tactic, but it exists - you cannot parry any move this boss does. It's simply too big I don't like Watchdog much in practice - it is a boss that forces you to be defensive, to avoid its constant tantrums, AOE explosions, and of course the charge, and that is not fun in BB's system - but it's definitely well thought out overall. Again, this is a boss that would be better in a Souls game.
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Jul 23, 2022 11:35
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Simply Simon posted:Here's a bit of a boss analysis. Whipping the boss to death has its own detailed strategy guide for speed running it
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Jul 23, 2022 13:55
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Bloodborne - 21 - Djura The Hunter
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Jul 25, 2022 22:46
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Well that fight ended far differently then I expected
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Jul 25, 2022 23:56
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| # ? May 29, 2024 06:33 |
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You keep blaming the game when many of your issues come down to your refusal to use a different weapon. The threaded cane has comparatively little reach when untransformed, and does next to no hitstun, and here you are, whiffing tons of attacks because you overestimate the length of the weapon, and getting hit back because enemies aren't taking enough hitstun. Seems like there might be a connection, there. The threaded cane's intended playstyle is "whack, sidestep, repeat" because it does nothing to prevent foes from smacking you around. If "aggressive" to you means "murder them before they get a hit in by mashing the attack button a bunch", you're going to want a heavier weapon, period.
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Jul 25, 2022 23:58
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