I just got to the part in the Berserk manga where Guts meets Schierke, or however that's actually translated into English... she's basically Beatrice.
The Dark Souls devs clearly had a major Berserk boner, and I can see why. I normally can't stand animu~ or anything related but I've read this far in like a month.
Artorias basically fights in a way very reminiscent of Guts, has a manky left arm, there's wheel skeletons in the Painted World and the Catacombs, Beatrice is basically adult Schierke.
I love the similarities. The Souls games and Berserk have a not-too-dissimilar vibe about them as well.
It's more than reminiscent! I just finished the volume and the time
where Guts first wears the berserker armor and it re-breaks his arm
you can tell that's where corrupted Arty's whole art style came from.
gt: Bobby2Socks | steam: Billy Boot-Snatcher
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
That LP is awesome so far. I don't want to post in there and spoil it, but it's glorious how he managed to explore literally every area he was not supposed to go. And he's good enough at the game that he might end up trying to go to the Catacombs first...
Really makes me wish I had gone in blind into my late play of Dark Souls but then again I don't think I would have fared as well as he is. Good thing Dark Souls II is almost here, looking forward going into it blind.
That's a great example of how these games are just head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of atmosphere. Artorias is a crippled, corrupted mess when you fight, and he's still far and away the toughest boss battle in the game. Who the fuck do you think you are if someone like that can fail?
A line that makes you have to work out an NPC's intent? In a video game? And you want it changed?
Eh? There's nothing wrong with trying to work out Alivia's intent. In fact, that should be required! The point is that they got it wrong. The correct answer is NO, not YES. That's all that needs to be changed. NO gets you the good response, YES gets you the bad response. If you just accept YES arbitrarily lets you join the forest hunter covenant and NO doesn't let you join the forest hunter covenant and you ignore everything alivia says, then it's fine how it is.
But surely we should want the choices to match up to the text? To make people have to properly decode what Alivia says? Currently they have that answer wrong.
I don't want the game to be so simplistic and boiled down that 'YES' is just the default 'make NPC happy' choice and 'NO' is the default 'make NPC unhappy' choice. I want more depth and nuance!
It is how it is played when you have access to a quality wiki.
Access to a wiki should never be required when playing a video game. I like to avoid wikis and outside influences/guide books etc as much as possible when playing video games. I want the pure unadulterated experience to experience things for the first time without bringing in outside knowledge that spoils it.
I also do not believe that this game was designed for you to be able to achieve everything, or even anything you really want to do, on a single playthrough. You've got NG+ if you want to keep your current character to redo your life and you've got multiple character slots and multiple NPC choices so you can correct yourself the first time or try different things.
I know we've disagreed a lot but I absolutely agree with you about this and think it's fine. I have no problem if joining one covenant means you can never join another, or answering 'no' means you can't join a covenant forever in that game play or if saving one NPC means you have to kill another and can't save them both. I think these are all examples of good game design, forcing the player to make a choice with a lasting consequence. A lot of people get irked when making a choice 'blocks off' certain content, but if none of your choices have any meaning, why make them in the first place?
We have the advantage of a wiki to look back on all this stuff nowadays from the lense of knowing what it all means, but if you played this game with no wiki at all and that cat asked you that question you'd crap yourself trying to work out the right way to answer an NPC that has just manipulated you into a position where you are forced to give away something. Because you've got no idea if pissing the cat off is a good idea or not, because you wouldn't know about the covenant.
My issue is not that players can fail to join the covenant - my issue is that when trying to work out which answer angers the cat or not it is a confusing mess, and once you do sit down and properly figure it out, the game goes with the wrong choice (apparently the dialog confused even the programmers!)
I actually conceptually don't have a problem at all with players being barred from covenants they didn't even know existed by angering NPC's they didn't know were important. The correct response is to tell players: don't anger NPC's when you don't know how important they are! The issue here, specifically, is that the text is such a garbled mess you end up angering an NPC even when you are specifically trying not to. In fact it seems like the more care you take in trying to divine the NPC's text and speech instead of blindly answering 'YES' like you do to every other NPC, the *more* likely you are to anger her!
I'm abandoning the 'does game design exist' argument because I think it's off topic and we may well agree anyway.
Is there a preferred order to tackle Kings/Nito/Seath/Witch or is it pretty much just go where I feel like going?
I'd recommend doing Seath and Witch after Nito and Kings, but you might want to do Seath earlier if you're using sorcery. Don't forget that you can also get to the DLC area once you pick up a certain item near the start of the Duke's Archives. At any rate, now that you have the Lordvessel you can skip around between all these areas at your leisure: you can warp to all the bonfires in the DLC and almost half of the bonfires elsewhere once you light them.
Have already given 30 humanity and quit the covenant.
AFAIK, you need to actually be in the covenant to open the covenant's shortcut when you reach it. IIRC, either quitting a covenant or joining another covenant reduces your level in the original covenant by half; for your sake I hope it's the latter.
Even though I'm super hyped for this game (and have to wait longer for it to come to PC), the change about being able to be invaded while undead I find quite annoying. I hated it in the first game, but you had a quasi-choice to not be invaded (but certain things required you being human and naturally I'd get invaded almost immediately when I was).
if you can be invaded while undead you need to be able to summon people while undead, in which case, what's the point of being human in the first place? Think that's a poor change if for nothing other than thematic reasons.
The point of being human is that like Demon's Souls before it, Dark Souls 2 caps your max health while undead. If anything, Dark Souls basically had no real incentives to be human. I get that some people don't care for the PvP(I think it's yet another danger that grips you into the game further but I get that not all do), so those people can play offline.
Also, being hollowed basically functions like being in the Way of White - bottom of the list for invasions. There's a ring now that reduces the health lost (I think it's a higher cap of minimum health), too. Slap that on, boost health, stay hollow, and you won't see many invasions. Way of Blue on top of it to gang up on enemies.
I love the IDEA of Invasions in DS1. The omnipresent threat of invaders is a great way (in my opinion) to ratchet up the tension. The problem was that the invaders were often so twinked out (or outright hackers) that it moved from tension to outright frustration (and not the fun kind).
It does seem like they've tried to address that in DS2, so I welcome hollow invasions... if their fixes help put you on even semi-even footing with your invaders.
+1
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Your argument was that as long as there existed a context in which a level worked flawlessly (your own anecdote of having personal experience reinforcing the game event) the level cannot be described as bad, as that would be trying to ascribe something variable as a constant. Thus no one should say the level design was poor, because it worked for you.
For anyone who isn't afraid of the dark (or who haven't thought of it the same way, or just don't think the fear they feel is very important, or x other reason) they're just randomly and enragingly unfair fights. For those people, calling it bad design is also true.
What you claim I am saying is contradicted by this statement. You cannot claim I am saying that nobody should say it is poor. I have quite clearly allowed an individual to view it as bad via exactly the same conditions and rules as my own example. ie backed up by reasoning, with the understanding that it is not a universal.
You are misunderstanding me entirely. I do not know how to fix it. I have tried really hard and I can't seem to explain in a way so that you understand. I am sorry. I don't know how else I can put it without repeating myself.
I think it's a bit facetious to say that I'm misunderstanding you, you know that when I claim that you claim that someone can't call something poor design as a constant I'm not talking about your subjective version of bad game design, but rather the absolutist version of "This is actually bad game design" and not "I think that for me this was bad game design".
Anyway, I don't think I have misunderstood you, you hold the post modernist position that all opinions are equally valid and thus the same game can be poorly designed and greatly designed at the same time. It just depends on who you ask.
I do think it's kind of ridiculous to tell people that something isn't poor game design because of this, but go ahead I suppose. It's the most roundabout defense of a game I've ever read.
It's not a defense. I hold the pyschologist position: I aim to explain human behavior. I don't even know what post modernist means. The reality of the world is that there are very few absolute constants. You will find barely any absolute constants in psychology. Certainly none for anything that relates to self reporting. The vast majority of constants got thrown out when they did the experiments and couldn't find any. Human beings are variable, especially when it comes to attitudes. Since "game design" is entirely structured around pleasing human beings, then game design must also be variable: it must acknowledge the variety of its source. Otherwise it isn't going to be accurate at all. This is the position I have started with.
If you think I'm defending the game, then you think I'm trying to win an argument. That I'm trying to tell someone they can't dislike it. This is not what I am doing, so you are misunderstanding me. If someone has consistently been trying to tell you what you are thinking and they are wrong, what else are you supposed to say?
What I'm trying to do is establish a better and clearer framework for discussion. The way these things are discussed now shuts down response and curtails thought. I'm trying to change the way people think about it.
Anyway, I think there isn't any reason to continue this. I have made my point. If you still think I'm doing something I am not I think I'll just leave it at this point.
My issue is not that players can fail to join the covenant - my issue is that when trying to work out which answer angers the cat or not it is a confusing mess, and once you do sit down and properly figure it out, the game goes with the wrong choice (apparently the dialog confused even the programmers!)
We have to agree to disagree then. It is not a confusing mess and the game has the correct choice. That is my position and I've explained why fairly well I think, including why I reject your literal grammatical interpretation. I don't think we are going anywhere here. :P
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Your argument was that as long as there existed a context in which a level worked flawlessly (your own anecdote of having personal experience reinforcing the game event) the level cannot be described as bad, as that would be trying to ascribe something variable as a constant. Thus no one should say the level design was poor, because it worked for you.
For anyone who isn't afraid of the dark (or who haven't thought of it the same way, or just don't think the fear they feel is very important, or x other reason) they're just randomly and enragingly unfair fights. For those people, calling it bad design is also true.
What you claim I am saying is contradicted by this statement. You cannot claim I am saying that nobody should say it is poor. I have quite clearly allowed an individual to view it as bad via exactly the same conditions and rules as my own example. ie backed up by reasoning, with the understanding that it is not a universal.
You are misunderstanding me entirely. I do not know how to fix it. I have tried really hard and I can't seem to explain in a way so that you understand. I am sorry. I don't know how else I can put it without repeating myself.
I think it's a bit facetious to say that I'm misunderstanding you, you know that when I claim that you claim that someone can't call something poor design as a constant I'm not talking about your subjective version of bad game design, but rather the absolutist version of "This is actually bad game design" and not "I think that for me this was bad game design".
Anyway, I don't think I have misunderstood you, you hold the post modernist position that all opinions are equally valid and thus the same game can be poorly designed and greatly designed at the same time. It just depends on who you ask.
I do think it's kind of ridiculous to tell people that something isn't poor game design because of this, but go ahead I suppose. It's the most roundabout defense of a game I've ever read.
It's not a defense. I hold the pyschologist position: I aim to explain human behavior. I don't even know what post modernist means.
If you think I'm defending the game, then you think I'm trying to win an argument. That I'm trying to tell someone they can't dislike it. This is not what I am doing, so you are misunderstanding me. If someone has consistently been trying to tell you what you are thinking and they are wrong, what else are you supposed to say?
What I'm trying to do is establish a better and clearer framework for discussion. The way these things are discussed now shuts down response and attempts to curtail thought.
So all you aimed to say at the start was actually "Why is it bad game design?"? I have never claimed you're telling anyone they can't dislike anything. When someone is defending anything they are trying to put forth legitimate arguments in favor of the work, they are not automatically more interested in appearing right than being right so please don't imply I'm accusing you of trying to win arguments.
I'm not sure which part of "It's not bad game design, I thought it was great!" isn't defending the game design or how saying that game design is all relative is explaining human behaviour. It's also weird that you're actually just trying to open up and widen the framework for discussion while simultaneously telling people that their viewpoints are gibberish to you and that your viewpoints will forever be gibberish for them.
I'm similarly confused as to how adding a bell curve to the discussion of what good and bad game design is clarifies anything.
But I'm open to just dropping it, we're clearly off-topic and should spend our words hyping DS2 instead.
Also, being hollowed basically functions like being in the Way of White - bottom of the list for invasions. There's a ring now that reduces the health lost (I think it's a higher cap of minimum health), too. Slap that on, boost health, stay hollow, and you won't see many invasions. Way of Blue on top of it to gang up on enemies.
The Cling Ring does that in Demon's Souls.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited February 2014
I'm gonna Way of the Blue and go human form as much as I can. Gonna wait in defensible places for my victims.
Speaking of blue, time for more Vergil!
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I think invasions would be better if both participants could see the other through walls at all times. Waiting games are boring. Although I guess there would still be lots of waiting games, just less surprise in the ambushes at the traps or wherever the defender can camp out.
God, I hate the box art for Dark Souls in the US. I'm glad there are people out there making sick custom covers for these games. I mean, seriously, they couldn't even get the guy holding his gear in the proper hands? Just awful. Not sure what prompted this, but man it's bad.
I wouldn't put it past From to make a spell that did it, though.
If there is one complaint that might be leveled at their lovely company, it is that they don't really seem to get game balance.
I don't think it would make anything better if you could see eachother through a wall. It would just never end. You wouldn't move and they wouldn't move. You need to be able to peek, check, peek until someone screws up or takes enough damage.
What drives me insane is how bad people are at this. If we're running S&O and we get invaded, don't fucking let him bait you into the room with the titanite demon! Just move one. Cover your ass while you get to the white smog and start the boss fight. That will send the invader home.It is infuriating watching people get destroyed after waiting 15 min to get summoned to help someone.
I wish I had a physical copy of Demon's Souls and the little hard cover art book thing that came with it. I've got my Dark Souls one sitting on my bookcase all alone.
I have the PS3 CE of Dark Souls but I didn't even know there was one for Demon's Souls. What pisses me off about that? I was literally the only pre-order for Demon's Souls at my local GameStop back when it came out.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
I wouldn't put it past From to make a spell that did it, though.
If there is one complaint that might be leveled at their lovely company, it is that they don't really seem to get game balance.
Yeah, their pvp balance is really naive. They don't really seem to think about pvp from a min max perspective.
They improved it a little from Demon Souls though, but I reckon it was mostly reaction. It'll be interesting to see how DS2 works out with a nerfed backstab though.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Now on the other hand, it would be a good idea for the invader to see the invade-y at all times.
I'd posit the reverse would make more sense. The person being invaded is more at home in his world than the invader.
Not like noob greifers need a single additional advantage, either. I'd be perfectly fine in a situation where invaders had like a 20% win rate overall.
No you're right, it would be bad. I still think the game needs something to discourage someone from camping however, it would be fitting if the aggression was forced on the invader since in DS1 neither side has anything to win by engaging if the invader is camping at enemies blocking the path.
Simple, if the invader hasn't killed the host in XX minutes he gets booted home.
It should absolutely be incumbent on the invader to get out there and force an engagement. If you weren't interested in taking the initiative and forcing the engagement, shouldn't have invaded!
I would like to see something where there was more point to invading with some more lasting consequences. Adding in some sort of Covenant vs Covenant 'rvr' would be a big task though so I'm not surprised if they don't do it.
Now on the other hand, it would be a good idea for the invader to see the invade-y at all times.
I'd posit the reverse would make more sense. The person being invaded is more at home in his world than the invader.
Not like noob greifers need a single additional advantage, either. I'd be perfectly fine in a situation where invaders had like a 20% win rate overall.
The whole point of the invasion mechanic is that it's a predator/prey relationship.
Predators know where there prey is - not the other way around.
This is treading back into silly goose territory, though. You don't like being invaded and that's fine - play offline. The end. I do like being invaded - it spices up the game a ton. And as it turns out, From sees it that way too. *shrug*
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It's more than reminiscent! I just finished the volume and the time
You talk clean and bomb hospitals, so I speak with the foulest mouth possible
Crippled AND corrupted.
Just imagine fighting against him in his prime.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
Really makes me wish I had gone in blind into my late play of Dark Souls but then again I don't think I would have fared as well as he is. Good thing Dark Souls II is almost here, looking forward going into it blind.
Yeah, normally he'd use his greatshield as well. Observe his arm, it just hangs limp:
Eh? There's nothing wrong with trying to work out Alivia's intent. In fact, that should be required! The point is that they got it wrong. The correct answer is NO, not YES. That's all that needs to be changed. NO gets you the good response, YES gets you the bad response. If you just accept YES arbitrarily lets you join the forest hunter covenant and NO doesn't let you join the forest hunter covenant and you ignore everything alivia says, then it's fine how it is.
But surely we should want the choices to match up to the text? To make people have to properly decode what Alivia says? Currently they have that answer wrong.
I don't want the game to be so simplistic and boiled down that 'YES' is just the default 'make NPC happy' choice and 'NO' is the default 'make NPC unhappy' choice. I want more depth and nuance!
Access to a wiki should never be required when playing a video game. I like to avoid wikis and outside influences/guide books etc as much as possible when playing video games. I want the pure unadulterated experience to experience things for the first time without bringing in outside knowledge that spoils it.
I know we've disagreed a lot but I absolutely agree with you about this and think it's fine. I have no problem if joining one covenant means you can never join another, or answering 'no' means you can't join a covenant forever in that game play or if saving one NPC means you have to kill another and can't save them both. I think these are all examples of good game design, forcing the player to make a choice with a lasting consequence. A lot of people get irked when making a choice 'blocks off' certain content, but if none of your choices have any meaning, why make them in the first place?
My issue is not that players can fail to join the covenant - my issue is that when trying to work out which answer angers the cat or not it is a confusing mess, and once you do sit down and properly figure it out, the game goes with the wrong choice (apparently the dialog confused even the programmers!)
I actually conceptually don't have a problem at all with players being barred from covenants they didn't even know existed by angering NPC's they didn't know were important. The correct response is to tell players: don't anger NPC's when you don't know how important they are! The issue here, specifically, is that the text is such a garbled mess you end up angering an NPC even when you are specifically trying not to. In fact it seems like the more care you take in trying to divine the NPC's text and speech instead of blindly answering 'YES' like you do to every other NPC, the *more* likely you are to anger her!
I'm abandoning the 'does game design exist' argument because I think it's off topic and we may well agree anyway.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
I'd recommend doing Seath and Witch after Nito and Kings, but you might want to do Seath earlier if you're using sorcery. Don't forget that you can also get to the DLC area once you pick up a certain item near the start of the Duke's Archives. At any rate, now that you have the Lordvessel you can skip around between all these areas at your leisure: you can warp to all the bonfires in the DLC and almost half of the bonfires elsewhere once you light them.
AFAIK, you need to actually be in the covenant to open the covenant's shortcut when you reach it. IIRC, either quitting a covenant or joining another covenant reduces your level in the original covenant by half; for your sake I hope it's the latter.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
It does seem like they've tried to address that in DS2, so I welcome hollow invasions... if their fixes help put you on even semi-even footing with your invaders.
It's not a defense. I hold the pyschologist position: I aim to explain human behavior. I don't even know what post modernist means. The reality of the world is that there are very few absolute constants. You will find barely any absolute constants in psychology. Certainly none for anything that relates to self reporting. The vast majority of constants got thrown out when they did the experiments and couldn't find any. Human beings are variable, especially when it comes to attitudes. Since "game design" is entirely structured around pleasing human beings, then game design must also be variable: it must acknowledge the variety of its source. Otherwise it isn't going to be accurate at all. This is the position I have started with.
If you think I'm defending the game, then you think I'm trying to win an argument. That I'm trying to tell someone they can't dislike it. This is not what I am doing, so you are misunderstanding me. If someone has consistently been trying to tell you what you are thinking and they are wrong, what else are you supposed to say?
What I'm trying to do is establish a better and clearer framework for discussion. The way these things are discussed now shuts down response and curtails thought. I'm trying to change the way people think about it.
Anyway, I think there isn't any reason to continue this. I have made my point. If you still think I'm doing something I am not I think I'll just leave it at this point.
We have to agree to disagree then. It is not a confusing mess and the game has the correct choice. That is my position and I've explained why fairly well I think, including why I reject your literal grammatical interpretation. I don't think we are going anywhere here. :P
So all you aimed to say at the start was actually "Why is it bad game design?"? I have never claimed you're telling anyone they can't dislike anything. When someone is defending anything they are trying to put forth legitimate arguments in favor of the work, they are not automatically more interested in appearing right than being right so please don't imply I'm accusing you of trying to win arguments.
I'm not sure which part of "It's not bad game design, I thought it was great!" isn't defending the game design or how saying that game design is all relative is explaining human behaviour. It's also weird that you're actually just trying to open up and widen the framework for discussion while simultaneously telling people that their viewpoints are gibberish to you and that your viewpoints will forever be gibberish for them.
I'm similarly confused as to how adding a bell curve to the discussion of what good and bad game design is clarifies anything.
But I'm open to just dropping it, we're clearly off-topic and should spend our words hyping DS2 instead.
I kind of missed that part from demon's souls, actually. Glad to see it return.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
Speaking of blue, time for more Vergil!
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
If there is one complaint that might be leveled at their lovely company, it is that they don't really seem to get game balance.
What drives me insane is how bad people are at this. If we're running S&O and we get invaded, don't fucking let him bait you into the room with the titanite demon! Just move one. Cover your ass while you get to the white smog and start the boss fight. That will send the invader home.It is infuriating watching people get destroyed after waiting 15 min to get summoned to help someone.
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
Yeah, their pvp balance is really naive. They don't really seem to think about pvp from a min max perspective.
They improved it a little from Demon Souls though, but I reckon it was mostly reaction. It'll be interesting to see how DS2 works out with a nerfed backstab though.
I'd posit the reverse would make more sense. The person being invaded is more at home in his world than the invader.
Not like noob greifers need a single additional advantage, either. I'd be perfectly fine in a situation where invaders had like a 20% win rate overall.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
It should absolutely be incumbent on the invader to get out there and force an engagement. If you weren't interested in taking the initiative and forcing the engagement, shouldn't have invaded!
I would like to see something where there was more point to invading with some more lasting consequences. Adding in some sort of Covenant vs Covenant 'rvr' would be a big task though so I'm not surprised if they don't do it.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
The whole point of the invasion mechanic is that it's a predator/prey relationship.
Predators know where there prey is - not the other way around.
This is treading back into silly goose territory, though. You don't like being invaded and that's fine - play offline. The end. I do like being invaded - it spices up the game a ton. And as it turns out, From sees it that way too. *shrug*