Neither of these options worked for me in Demon’s Souls. I would lay down the thingie that I needed to lay down to see if people came to help me, but no one came to my assistance. Maybe I waited too long after the game’s release. I wonder if the same thing will happen to me when I eventually get to Dark Souls.
I was able to beat the twins with the assistance of a guy who answered my sigil. He tore right through them, with me assisting a bit. Chatting with him at the end, he said that it was his first time through. Made me reevaluate the viability of my thief build, but it stands out as one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve ever had, and I absolutely loathe multiplayer anything.
Provided you get it on ps3 (no idea what console you have) I’d be willing to go through again, provided the servers are still up.
I’ll just leave this here.
The intent of the game isn’t that you’re supposed to look at a guide. In a weird way, the Souls games are built for a pre-internet FAQ era. The intent is that the game provide the information within itself, by use of the player messages. In the ideal playthrough, every secret will have a player-left hint suggesting what to do (“Attack!”, “Bonfire Ahead”, etc). Why player hints instead of just having developer hints? Well, I think it adds to the sense of discovery (knowing, even subconsciously, that not everybody has the exact same experience you did), and builds a little bit of sense of community. The games are so much about loneliness, that having that sense of even momentary camaraderie is effective. Plus, navigating the true and false messages is a bit of “hell is other people” fun.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t problems with the core design. World Tendency / Character Tendency in Demon’s Souls were much too oblique, and relied too much on game-external factors (online tendency), which promoted exploitation. But the intentional obscurity + specific, limited, multiplayer interaction is one of the core design concepts of the series.
For instance, if you “exploit” to team up with your friends using voice chat, etc, you’re kind of playing a different game than intended. Which is kind of too bad, it’s an interesting example of where infrastructure (and player expectations) force the designer’s hand instead of simply liberating them to use new features.
Hmm…I don’t recall really mentioning a tutorial in my post. Nope. Didn’t mention a tutorial. I mentioned clarification.
One such example, a lot of people don’t understand what resistance is. I’ve seen people leveling it despite it being pretty much useless. I’ve seen many topics online where people are wondering “wtf is resistance for?”.
Another is the weapon upgrade systems. In Demon’s souls it was even worse. I’m constantly seeing topics “Why would I use a +15 normal when +5 lightning has higher AR.” When really because of the stat scaling the +15 will ALWAYS be better anywhere past 20 in the stat that it scales with.
Speaking of scaling, I feel the a, b, c method of rating scaling is absolutely useless, because it’s not borderline. In each a, b, and c there are levels. One A scaling strength weapon scales more than another A scaling strength weapon. It’s convoluted, and honestly a little bothersome.
I feel their tutorials are well enough left alone, but there are mechanics that can use clarification or a little less convolution.
As that article notes, it isn’t just about tutorials, it’s about explanation in general. In some cases, there’s an inverse relationship between explanation and engagement. I was just trying to express that clarification might not be an unalloyed positive in this case.
That being said, I don’t disagree with you. There are a lot of obtuse systems that could probably be better explained without sacrificing much. But the Souls games are very much about exploring the game space, both physically and mechanically, so one has to be careful about changes that might sacrifice that exploratory element.
The changes in clarification I feel are needed is clarifying resistance. It adds physical defense, as well as fire and poison resistances. The thing is every other stat also raises physical defense, and the levels of poison resistance that resistance raises is almost negligible. 7 points of poison resistance for every 10 levels in the stat. I wouldn’t know about how negligible the poison resistance had I not gone to the wiki to read it.
It’s an almost entirely useless stat, and it’s not explained well enough. I feel they really need to get rid of the A, B, C scaling system. That or make each one a straight scale rather than hidden levels in each rank.
I wouldn’t want them to change anything about the world, or the discovery in finding hidden secrets like the miracle in ash lake. That was fun trying to figure out how to get to it, because you can clearly see it. That’s the discovery I like. I don’t like having to go to a website to figure out what poise breakpoints are, or how much poise I should shoot for to avoid being stunlocked. I don’t like having to go online to find out what poise damage a certain weapon does, or how much stability damage it does. A halberd or great scythe does 31 points of poise damage, but than a curved sword does the same amount. You’d think that since the halberd is larger it would do more poise damage than a wimpy curved sword. It’s stuff like that I feel needs to at least be explained a little in the game.
In some cases, I dont’ know if it’s an information so much as a design problem. Like, with resistance, it’s so useless that it’s basically always better to upgrade something else. So, it’s just a trap for the unwary, and should probably be removed entirely (this might sacrifice the 1% of times that there’s actually a meaningful choice to be made to put stats in to resistance. c’est la vie).
Similarly with the halberd / curved sword poise thing. I don’t know for sure how balanced all the various weapons are, but that seems more like a balance thing than an information thing. The thing about the weapons though is that trying out new weapons to see how they work (i.e. animation-wise) and what kind of damage they can do is a big exploration point for me in terms of exploring the combat system. So while there’s definitely some streamlining that can be done there, I’d still want them to keep the puzzle-solving experience of testing different weapons for different situations, and maybe stumbling on something you wouldn’t have used otherwise.
Counterpoint: hiding Ash Lake itself. I guess if they want to hide one of the neatest areas behind a hidden platforming section, that’s their prerogative.
The environment puzzles were very good though.
So just to follow up on this, it turns out that it’s a different Tomohiro Shibuya.
The Shibuya directing DS2 was the director (and later producer) for From’s ‘Another Century’s Episode’ series.
I think it bodes well for our beloved series that the hero can’t even make it through half the trailer without dying… twice…
For me 95% of the difficulty is because of confusing game mechanics, almost zero in game info and lack of feedback. Also it’s setup so that it’s not easy to experiment to actually figure out stuff on your own. You need to play many hours to get enough upgrade material to test out different weapons for instance. Most stats and items are relatively worthless but you don’t know that. Once you figure out what few weapons are good, and to dump stats into END/VIT almost exclusively the game isn’t that tough anymore. The whole design is basically a confusing hostile trap working against the player. Let’s give them 300 options but only make 10 good.
That just takes me to Gamespot’s news page, which has nothing about Dark Souls 2 on it currently. That’s so bizarre.
Hidetaka Miyazaki will NOT be producing or directing Dark Souls 2. He will only be the supervisor on the project.
It was a company decision,” clarifies Namco Bandai producer Takeshi Miyazoe. “Miyazaki worked on Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, but for the IP to evolve and provide a new experience within the Dark Souls world the new wind from directors Shibuya and Tanimura is key to providing players with [a] brand new Dark Souls experience. In order to maintain the expectations and satisfaction and the rewards that players experience, this was the right time to bring in the new characteristics and taste[s of the directors] for this series to continue on evolving.”
I don’t know how much “new experience” I want, over just wanting more of the same experience… This move always scares me just a little bit, mainly because oft times it is just a bad move.
Anyone else read the print feature in Edge? The web republishes don’t have the sidebars, and there’s some interesting information in those.
One thing that piqued my interest was the interview with one of the two new directors, Tomohiro Shibuya (here: http://www.edge-online.com/features/dark-souls-ii-co-director-tomohiro-shibuya-on-accessibility-and-taking-control-of-the-series/), where Shibuya talks about how he’s coming from an action-game background (Another Century) and that he wants to add to or change up combat in some way in Dark Souls 2.
I see concept art in the mag where the “hero” (as he’s cast in the concept art look: http://www.edge-online.com/features/dark-souls-ii-revealing-a-new-world-through-concept-art/) is holding two swords … maybe we’ll have “proper” dual wielding? I’m thinking something along the lines of your movesets actually changing when you equip two weapons at once.
One thing that has me a little worried is the talk of easing in new players. That’s fine and all but not if the approach is to force players through an opening sequence by limiting choices. In one sidebar, Shibuya talks about limiting options for a period time in the beginning (but not really calling it a tutorial) and then opening up the full range of options for that “Dark Souls experience.” Part of the appeal for me was the whole, “Here’s the game, here are the basic controls, have at it.”
Shibuya also mentions that he hopes to avoid framerate issues. In the feature’s introduction, Edge mentions that Dark Souls 2 was running on a high-end laptop with visuals on par to what we’ve already seen with Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313.
Yeah, I am a bit worried too. I am worried that these new ambitious designers will decide to shake up the series too much and lose something that made the series as unique as it is right now. It’s probably fine to give more explanation about how covenants work or to have a bit of a tutorial but when he says he wants to make the story more direct and less subtle, I can’t help but think that this will destroy the series’ atmosphere.
Also it looks like the game won’t come out in 2013 and that makes me sad too. :(
So I maybe I missed it, but is the real Demon’s/Dark Souls guy working on something proper to keep the series going in case Dark Souls 2 gets wrecked by the new guys?
Miyazaki is working on something completely new. No one knows what it is. When Edge pressed him, he just said that he’s exploring something “warmer” than the Souls games.
As for Dark Souls 2, I just don’t want any long, drawn-out, scripted sequences. That’s kind of the impression I get from reading the Edge feature – that Shibuya and Tanimura want to have this opening sequence of events that are fairly linear to ease players into understanding how the game works. That just seems like the antithesis of the Souls games to me. I found Demon’s Souls so refreshing in 2009 because it didn’t do that.