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[IzzyReggie]

Things like that just accumulate. If you think it is great you haven't seen a good game yet.

Please, name some good games for me. Your standards make me think TrapThem is going to be one of the few.

I'd do a point-by-point analysis of your post but that's sloppy+dum so I'm just going to say: allowing for mistakes is not poor design. Demanding a player to be 100% able in the mechanics of the game just alienates potential players needlessly. That's a weird criticism "oh I can make a mistake and still win BAD GAME DESIGN"

edit: I just realized that several of the bosses are intended (or at least, I believe they were intended) to be beaten "cheaply". Don't know how far you are, but Ceaseless Discharge is meant to be lead off of a cliff instead of directly fought and Ornstein and Smough usually need some fancy maneuvering around pillars to separate them from eachother. Allowing/encouraging players to exploit knowledge of game mechanics to make fights easier != bad game design in my mind(although CD doesn't quite count as it is specifically scripted to be beaten that way)
Also, Sif becomes much easier if you stay under his legs, too close for his attacks to hit. It makes sense, and it allows a clever player to fight the boss on EZ mode.

And I think the bit you're referring to with the "keeper in the ghost-mansion" is GOOD design. It encourages exploration. Why do you need indication that there is a guy? You should  be looking around and finding out the MYSTERIES of the ghost-mansion. You should find him naturally w/o an NPC telling you "seek the guy with the key to progress to level 5!". If you DON'T find him naturally, then you just explore more (the idea behind the game) and then you find him! Naturally! through exploring! Which the game wants you to do! The game design has lead to the intent of the game being fulfilled!

PS: what is stopping you from using a pen and paper to make notes? It is literally the same thing only one is much easier to look at considering the inability to pause (the easier thing is the pen and paper)

[HöllenKobold]

I'm not sure why the keeper is an issue either. It's on the main path. And there's no alternate paths when you reach the seal. It's only logical to trace back your steps. And even then, the game is rather forgiving because it doesn't respawn enemies.

on the other hand

I agree that the bosses are pretty lackluster for the most part, in part because of the solutions. There isn't much in the variety of spatial control, or in using the depth the combat provides, considering most of the time you can't parry, two-handed strong strikes and poise are most encouraged.

A problem with the game in general is that challenge vanishes through experience. While I understand that's a viable facet for such an exploration-based game, bosses themselves are still locked fights that aren't deeply involved with the exploration process. This hurts replayability as one of the alluring aspects of the game is beaten down through experience rather than being transformed into something else interesting as in the case of learning the environment/stats and etc to better develop a character/sequence break.

But meep, tension is an important part of the game experience so maintaining a sense of difficulty is still important.

[SundownKid]

It doesn't "hurt replayability" - playing it through once is a big challenge, and if you can defeat a boss cheaply, it's usually either due to luck or desperation. Once you get skilled at it, the game lets you do all kinds of tricks to speed you up, making the game more exciting for people who have already played it. So, rather than being the same slow plod on a second playthrough like most RPGs, it actually becomes more fun playing a second time, not less, making you feel heroic by knowing how to fight the bosses effectively.

[Ben_Hurr]

I'm forced to agree with J-Snake on some points.

People talk about Dark Souls and Demon's Souls like they are the great messiah of videogaming, but they're pretty bad in as many areas as they are good.

For me, the only real step up they have over other recent games is
a. they dont forcefeed you MGS length exposition every 10 minutes
b. you have incredible control over your combos
c. they don't hold your hand like you're a retarded toddler with a safety helmet

I can appreciate how the level of challenge is greater here than a variety of other titles lately, but it seems that 'challenge' here means tons of repeating sections you've long gotten bored of, bosses and enemies that kill you over and over with few opportunities to learn their weaknesses, and almost as much time-wasting filler as every other modern title.

I'm not sure that's the type of 'challenge' I'm looking for.

[Glyph]

I literally felt the same way when the game first came out: frustrated. 'This is dumb. This kills me all the time and is unfair.'

But then I got really good at the game, and nothing in PvE can kill me save my own stupidity/laziness. So maybe my opinion's a little biased and I don't remember how bad it was the first time I played it. But it was worth the struggle, that much I can say with assurance. (P.S: Fatrolling sucks and will get you killed more often than the defense boost is worth, which was my big hangup the first time I played.)

[Blademasterbobo]

two things:

1) what the fuck are you going on about a ghost mansion for, wtf is the ghost mansion

2) jsnake said god of war 3 has better combat than dark souls so take his bs with a grain of salt

[Blademasterbobo]

oh ok that makes sense, i hated that area so i just used a map  

ghosts suck

[HöllenKobold]

the dumb thing about the ghost mansion is the ghosts themselves

dark souls is great at being absolutely terrible about group combat and crowding
i'm glad they acknowledged it, then did it in the worst way anyway

It doesn't "hurt replayability" - playing it through once is a big challenge, and if you can defeat a boss cheaply, it's usually either due to luck or desperation.

but some people play for challenge, and that's lost the moment you beat the game
you know all the tricks the game gives you, there's no surprise or emergence from the situations

and honestly, acquiring the tools or mindsets to clear something shouldn't cheapen it
it can be easier, but it should still be something that requires *thought*

[Ben_Hurr]

dark souls is great at being absolutely terrible about group combat and crowding
i'm glad they acknowledged it, then did it in the worst way anyway

Its because it wants you to proceed at the speed of a snail and twink everything with 100 arrows

because thats totally an interesting way to play right

[Blademasterbobo]

the problem with a game that has a boss where you fight it in a way that is different from normal enemies is that the boss is going to be that much easier the second time through. you cannot fix this without adding new content to successive playthroughs. all you can do is punish people more for mistakes (if there's ng+ or whatever.) which is what ds does with both the bosses and the enemies. ng+ is still fucking hard.

once you beat a game once, why would you replay it for exactly the same reasons you played it the first time, anyways? why go in expecting the same experience? that's absurd. nobody does that. even if it's not changed by the game itself, your brainmeats are going to change the experience in some way - whether it's to change your priorities on the second playthrough (eg speedruns) or to make the game intolerably boring, you're not really going to ever be playing the same game again.

edit: fyi, there are some crowd weapons, like the halberd things / scythes.

[Ben_Hurr]

Yeah, NG+ is completely identical to NG except for obscenely boosted enemy stats, its completely worthless to play if you were expecting something new or the challenges to change. 

[IzzyReggie]

how to deal with ghosts:

0)eat a transient curse
1) sprint straight down a hallway, ignore all ghosts
2) turn around, all the ghosts will be in the hallway, following you
3) run into group of ghosts, use the cool running spin move of the black knight sword
4) collect souls+transient curses+ghost daggers

you can also use steps 2+3 on those fat things in Izalith (unless they start breathing fire and then u die, nerd)

[Belimoth]

could you elaborate on this?

You have only yourself to blame.

[J-Snake]

Things like that just accumulate. If you think it is great you haven't seen a good game yet.

Please, name some good games for me. Your standards make me think TrapThem is going to be one of the few.

The main reason why I got into developing games is that every game I played had either not interesting enough gameplay-mechanics or they were technically flawed. However I can bring up a detailed understanding of what is good and what is bad, assuming a common specification a game tries to achieve. TrapThem is a different game but I can make some comparisons. I design a rule-set with the notion to fully exploit it in mind. These are the atoms, so to speak. Every atom has a unique purpose. And in combination they can provide a big pool of variety despite of belonging to a simple rule-set. In case of TrapThem it means the rules are clean and simple, you will quickly know how it works. But the pool of various actions/techniques and concepts you will discover, work out and master on your way is huge.

Now regarding dark souls it is clearly closer to a game than something called skyrim. And kudos for this attitude. But I think the physical combat can be significantly more and better implemented. It doesn't provide a big pool of variations you have to master. It is too one-sided and flawed in physical combat. For example most won't deny to perform accidental kicks and for what reason do you use backstepping? Those are examples of unused or flawed atoms.

But like I said, the game still stands out to me compared to other rpg games and they try to bring patterns to fights. However I am not calling God of War 3 that interesting but it has cleaner concepts behind it when it comes to combat.

[Glyph]

For example most won't deny to perform accidental kicks and for what reason do you use backstepping? Those are examples of unused or flawed atoms.

Not posting a rebuttal, just clarification:
Kicks are like smashes in Smash Bros, so I guess if you aren't well-versed in that you could have some mistakes there. Isn't this sort of a controller issue, though, and not a conceptual one?
Backstepping is used frequently in PvP, because it can evade faster than a roll, keeps your facing when unlocked, and can be chained into unique moves with certain weapons. For example, Uchigatana's backstep+r1 allows you to evade then run forward and stab.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.

[J-Snake]

It is not a controller issue. It is an issue of low framerate + no-go button layout. The time-window is not clean and can vary up to 1/30 seconds or more from the start of inputting the command. The result is a not so clean time-window, unclean enough to accidentaly miss the right thing from time to time.

I have only looked into single-player since that is what the game natively offers. So
It can be that some things can get more interesting with another player, haven't looked into that. But I assume it is also designed for the single player so there should be no excuse on that part.

[s0]

A problem with the game in general is that challenge vanishes through experience.

u just described every singleplayer gam ever made yo

[Blademasterbobo]

god i hate jsnake

[HöllenKobold]

A problem with the game in general is that challenge vanishes through experience.

u just described every singleplayer gam ever made yo

well yeah, most of them are terrible in that aspect

but i guess the dynamic i want would be against the tenets that make souls so strong in level design (also it's in the mp anyway, just badly implemented)

rip game design

[Ben_Hurr]

I'm not sure how you would make the challenge just continually escalate forever, kummerspeck?