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[HöllenKobold]

it's not about solving the problem
it's about applying a bunch of bandages to it

[Blademasterbobo]

...maybe you should play a game that's actually trying to do that?

[J-Snake]

A good game gets easier with experience, but it still remains challenging.
That is not the problem I see with darksouls. The main problem is that I feel it has a too twitchy nature and the combat is too repetitive despite they try to add concepts. You can also exploit the borderline flaws of enemy-placement like it is encouraged. Also clumsy controls add artificial difficulty to the game. Especially the bow-aiming is a no-go. I don't understand why one would not add modern-warfare-like aiming-quality. The game shows how perfection is looking like.

[IzzyReggie]

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

Tetris

[SundownKid]

I don't think I've ever played a game that could escalate the challenge forever, besides resorting to cheap tactics like speeding it up past human reaction time. Pro Tetris players can beat the game even at incredible speeds, so Tetris doesn't count either.

Bow aiming does have issues in Dark Souls, but that's simply that the crosshair is a bit to the left of where the bow actually hits. It seems like a technical glitch rather than one that was added on purpose. The bow could definitely use some fixing, to make it more powerful and use less arrows so that it could be a viable weapon.

The enemy placement IS meant to be exploited, but I don't see how that kind of game design is worse than placing enemies in arenas where you have to fight them and not just knock them off cliffs. If anything, it makes the game less boring and rather atypical when you can bait enemies to various places and use terrain to your advantage.

[Belimoth]

I think it be cool if some of the enemies would travel/aggro in groups, but the AI this kind of behavior would require is more expensive than it's worth.

J-Snake's perspective comes from a very academic perspective that expects the player to be able to conceptualize the entire system in a discrete way and make choices based on that internal model. Ebert's opinion of games as not-art comes from the same place.

Modern gaming has grown beyond game theory; Dark Souls and games like it are meant to be journeyed through, not exhaustively experienced. The fuzzy mechanics and imbalance are reflective of this.

[Fallsburg]

Pro Tetris players can beat the game even at incredible speeds, so Tetris doesn't count either.

I think this is a lie.  I seem to recall some analysis of a perfect Tetris playing computer and there is a point where the speed gets too high for the controls to be fast enough to play perfectly.

[J-Snake]

J-Snake's perspective comes from a very academic perspective that expects the player to be able to conceptualize the entire system in a discrete way and make choices based on that internal model. Ebert's opinion of games as not-art comes from the same place.

Modern gaming has grown beyond game theory; Dark Souls and games like it are meant to be journeyed through, not exhaustively experienced. The fuzzy mechanics and imbalance are reflective of this.

You have a good view-point. However my ideal view on gameplay-mechanics doesn't have to contradict with exploration and journey, it is just there to sort out flaws. Dark Soul's intention is actually heavily based on adding concepts to the gameplay and not only a journey. Only the execution is the tricky hard part. I doubt using glitches and other flaws is intentionally encouraged. I know there can be subcultures actually praising that sort of attitude as a form of art, I am just not one of them.

[Blademasterbobo]

someone referring to jsnake as an academic, now i've seen everything

[IzzyReggie]

sometimes I read jsnake's posts in ullillillia's voice because they seem to come from a similar mindset (that I will never understand)

[HöllenKobold]

...maybe you should play a game that's actually trying to do that?

lol, i still like the game in the sum of its parts a lot more than other games

it's like i can still find flaws in a game i enjoy

i kinda wish they had the ability to implement the wandering black knights they wanted, but the dark souls ii interview suggests they're trying that again.

[Blademasterbobo]

im just saying it's not really a flaw that the game isnt infinitely long, it's a flaw with your expectations

[Ben_Hurr]

...maybe you should play a game that's actually trying to do that?

lol, i still like the game in the sum of its parts a lot more than other games

it's like i can still find flaws in a game i enjoy

i kinda wish they had the ability to implement the wandering black knights they wanted, but the dark souls ii interview suggests they're trying that again.

They wanted the Black Knights to actually wander the games world?  I would've liked that. 

[Belimoth]

Sounds like Bioshock.

[SundownKid]

They wanted the Black Knights to actually wander the games world?  I would've liked that.  

It's one of those ideas that sounds cool on paper but sucks in practice. If I was a newbie and got randomly ganged up on by one of these guys right when I was about to finish an area, I would call BS on the game for taking such a cheap shot, especially if it was a really difficult area. It makes a lot more sense for the player to have to sneak past or run away from them. Plus, invasions would be a little too similar to that concept.

It does remind me of the F.O.E. from Etrian Odyssey. Not that they are any less annoying than wandering black knights would be.

[SundownKid]

Having a RANDOM cheap shot is different than having difficult enemies that you can memorize and get past. Adding that to the threat of invasions would ruin the retro feel of the game, where you can get past the areas by learning all the tricks to defeat the enemies.

[Happy Shabby Games]

wandering tough dudes would be great, especially if it was some really exotic enemy with nice drops.

[Belimoth]

Wandering would also work in the opposite way: you could want to kill a Black Knight for a chance to get his sword, but you can't find where he is.

[zalzane]

you're stance just seems arbitrary to me. i really don't understand how you can think having a wandering enemy is a bad thing in a difficult game about fighting tough enemies

Wandering enemies is bad because it's a random element. Random elements are bad. The only reason big daddies worked out well in bioshock was because it's a relatively easy game and there's not much of a death penalty.

Take Pikachu and Snorlax for example. That's probably the worst boss fight in the game because of the huge random element thrown into the mix. All it takes is the correct positioning and correct RNG values for P+S to chain you, which is almost always an instant kill. This becomes a huge issue for newbies because some of the setups for the chain attacks are virtually unavoidable, such as being smashed by snorlax when you exit a roll dodging pikachu's spear. You could have a P+S attempt where you get big pikachu down to 25%, and the next attempt where you can't even damage snorlax before getting chained.

It's a pretty ridiculous fight and I think it's a good argument for leaving out absolutely any kind of RNG elements in the game.

On top of that, you'll have people who are constantly searching for black knights to grind (and probably failing), and people getting wrecked by them when a random one sneaks up on people when they arent looking behind themselves constantly. It just seems like it would be an extremely cheap way to kill the player, and probably wouldnt add anything to the game.

[Belimoth]

It worked in Bioshock because the wandering baddies don't actually aggro, the player still gets to pick the battlefield. I could see this working out if Dark Souls had some politics going on between Covenants and NPCs could be valid threats depending on your allegiances, but that would be a completely different game.

It's a pretty ridiculous fight and I think it's a good argument for leaving out absolutely any kind of RNG elements in the game.

That's not a random number generator spitting out bad luck, you got outmaneuvered.