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[DJFloppyFish]

things that would be cool to see in the DLC:

• more Powder Kegs weaponry
• Powder Kegs as NPCs
• Byrgenwerth campus
• Opened trapdoor in Byrgenwerth?
• Appearance of Ludwig
• Appearance of Laurence
• New nightmare planes controlled by mentioned great ones
• Fire elemental weapon (a tonitrus equivalent)
• More Cainhurst stuff (surprised this game doesn't already have straight up fancy vampires)
• More NPC summons (Gascoigne in NG+ was so cool)
• Another right hand shooting weapon
• More otherworldly environments

I really hope this DLC isn't too heavy on the chalice dungeon stuff.

[FK in the Coffee]

Can someone please make a tacky college brochure for Byrgenwerth

That would make me so happy

[s0]

the career prospects for byrgenwerth graduates are terrible. almost everyone ends up as a creepy zombie blob. rip.

[BumblingSirOnion]

Tuition fees: 1 gallon of blood

[s0]

btw this is probably a stupid question, but is there a way to see which exact chalice is placed on a particular altar? i sometimes end up accidentally creating the same one twice when i return to them after a break because the dungeon name is the same for root and regular chalices.

[s0]

replaying dks1 after 2 months of bloodborne:

moment to moment gameplay and design of the individual areas and enemies is better in bborne.

most things related to progression (both character customization and world layout) is better in dks1

also dks1 looks like a ps2 game to me now. never noticed how angular a lot of the scenery is haha

[FK in the Coffee]

So I was playing BB today after an especially exhausting day at work and I noticed something

This is not a game you play to unwind

[Dragonmaw]

i stopped playing BB for a few weeks and came back today and

wow blood vials and regain are terrible mechanics for souls-style enemy and combat design, and even with the sped-up pace the blood vial problem drags bloodborne through the mud

regain is not an effective or rewarding mechanic given the pace and threat of bloodborne (it's all risk, no reward) and blood vials as grinding make repeated boss attempts nightmarishly frustrating. saying that limited blood vials is good bc it encourages regain or player caution is wrong; all it does is mean you'll do fine for a few levels until you bash your head against a difficult boss and get frustrated and angry.

i've never been this annoyed and mad at a souls game in the entire series and i've beaten each souls game like ten times apiece. this is such a terrible goddamn mechanic.

[s0]

regain is not an effective or rewarding mechanic given the pace and threat of bloodborne (it's all risk, no reward) and blood vials as grinding make repeated boss attempts nightmarishly frustrating. saying that limited blood vials is good bc it encourages regain or player caution is wrong; all it does is mean you'll do fine for a few levels until you bash your head against a difficult boss and get frustrated and angry.

then why can i use regain effectively and beat bosses without wasting all my vials? some bosses are even easier using it. for instance: i died 100 times to pthumerian descendent when i would just retreat and heal after every hit like in the other souls games. once i learned to punish his attacks instead i made short work of him.

sorry but this is bs

[Dragonmaw]

i too have beaten a few bosses by being extra aggressive and using regain (amelia and descendent, primarily). just because it's possible doesn't make it good. you can shove a square block into a circular hole if you do it right, but that doesn't mean the square block was meant to fit that hole.

what i'm saying is regain does not fit the pace of either the combat or the general structure of bloodborne. much as i love this game (and i do still consider it a very great game), regain is just so poorly balanced, so frustrating and unrewarding to use, that it pulls down what could honestly be the best action game i've played in a very long time. it's still too much of a souls game for what it wants vials and regain to mean to the player.

the large hits from enemies, the general difficulty in staggering, the insane risk, the dissonance of encouraging players to be cautious but aggressive at the same time, all just feels like bloodborne can't decide what kind of game it wants to be.

i know y'all will forever disagree with me on this but i'm not saying it's a bad game, just that this particular mechanic is poorly thought out and generally bad. every souls game has one of these, after all; bloodborne's just happens to be regain

[Dragonmaw]

i never got angry at a souls boss until bloodborne. i never got angry at the general structure of a souls game until bloodborne. bloodborne elevates a lot about the souls series, but replacing estus with regain and consumables is not one of those things.

[DJFloppyFish]

i LOVE regain, i think it adds a whole new layer to the combat mechanics, but its usefulness is definitely contextual. you cant reliably use it on enemies who hit hard and recover quickly. it's just the nature of how certain Souls enemies work, if you time your attacks poorly you'll need to focus on retreating. although you could rush in and hack it out for some regain, if you're new to a boss's pattern or there's no way to recover more HP than a vial use it can be better to hang back and heal without the threat of getting hit again. but then again that is regain's strength from a design standpoint. you have to use it wisely.

So im glad it's in the game, but i don't think it completely replaces healing. the need for vials is apparent, and i still don't fully understand the limitation placed on the number in your storage. i kinda think this conversation is a dead horse, but i don't agree that the storage limit incentivizes regain. i think knowing all you get is 20 reliable health refills is incentive enough.

that said, by the chalice dungeons, i stopped using vials on early attempts on bosses because i know id learn their movies better and have more vials for a legit attempt. it ultimately made me a better player and enjoy the game more, but i dont think that is a reasonable thing to ask of every player. if you want to grind out boss attempts, you should be able to. that's just classic souls to me. and if someone is already struggling very badly on a boss, i doubt they're just going to miraculously have the skill to effectively use regain either. like des and dsk2's health reduction business, i think punishing struggling players is more douchey than good design. and honestly, having to farm vials is a fate worse than reduced HP.

i haven't had to farm vials since my 1st character but i remember that pain. it actively kept me from wanting to play more.

[SousaVilla]

i never got angry at a souls boss until bloodborne. i never got angry at the general structure of a souls game until bloodborne. bloodborne elevates a lot about the souls series, but replacing estus with regain and consumables is not one of those things.

What? I'm not a very good player, I didn't even learned to play regain correctly, and bosses in bloodborne don't frustrate me more or less than bosses in any souls game before. What kind of weapon are you using and how much stamina do you have? I think that playing a slow strenght weapon with little stamina can really be annoying at times and make you regain even less health. A fast dex weapon with the habit of dodging into enemies, not away from them, allows you to peform large combos and still move away to safety. Learning enemies patterns and avoiding using vials on bosses until you learn their moveset helps too.

I don't disagree with everything you said, I think estus are actually better than vials, but you're making it look worse than it is. The new system just makes you more agressive and forces you to be more accurate with your dodging. Playing the game keeping old souls habits at first definitely made it harder to me. 

[s0]

estus is better yes, but vials are really not as terrible as u think.

what i'm saying is regain does not fit the pace of either the combat or the general structure of bloodborne. much as i love this game (and i do still consider it a very great game), regain is just so poorly balanced, so frustrating and unrewarding to use, that it pulls down what could honestly be the best action game i've played in a very long time. it's still too much of a souls game for what it wants vials and regain to mean to the player.

but how would regain have to be changed for it to be "good" according to your standard? its a mechanic that allows you to partially (and sometimes entirely) recover from hits by doubling down rather than retreating. how does it not fulfill this purpose?

ur probably thinking of it too much as a regen health mechanic when its more of a "defense through attack" mechanic. how it works is: enemies do lots of damage in bborne but you can soften the blow by using regain. the game IS balanced around it and it works. regain's only weakness is that it makes pvp worse because it relies on asymmetry between you and your enemy.

[Dragonmaw]

the biggest problem i found with regain is that it's fine for short fights or fights where you can stagger, but essentially useless for any fight where you have to play it careful (which is a lot of the fights)

the only real way i could see them balancing regain without an overhaul is by making enemies stagger you less often, tweaking the attack times on certain bosses, and perhaps decreasing damage. in a game where i can lose half my health in a single swipe of an uninterruptable enemy, regain doesn't really make much sense to me as a mechanic. also doesn't help that it heavily punishes slow weapons; the increased regain on hit is rendered null by the longer wind-up times and aforementioned stagger problems

if it were me, and i wanted to encourage more evasion and aggressive play, i'd probably make regain work on successful dodge as well as hit and never disappear until you take more damage. that way you can play a more careful game without losing the "faster is better" essence that bloodborne seems to want to capture.

also i'd make blood vials infinite, but probably reduce the base cap further and increase the effect of blood vial cap increase runes to compensate (right now very few effect or cap increasing runes feel worth it)

i don't necessarily have a problem with regain as a mechanic altogether, and it's fine for slow attrition battles like clearing levels before a boss, but for larger enemies and bosses it just doesn't feel right to me.

[s0]

i actually died to the taurus demon in dks1 because i tried to play it like it had regain

[Chris MacAdam]

DS1 is great. I have been playing it the past couple days. I haven't got very far. only a little past the Taurus demon. I plan to play more today and try to get a little further.
I like how the game doesn't exactly tell you what you have to do first. I spent a good time going other ways and ended up dying to enemies that felt way stronger than me though. I have been trying to play without looking anything up because I hear there is a lot of secrets to find and things to figure out.
But I would say it is one of the better games I have played in a while.

I wish I was able to play bborne, and my comp wont run ds2 I don't think until I upgrade my graphics card. So I have to stick with this one until then.

[Dragonmaw]

i actually died to the taurus demon in dks1 because i tried to play it like it had regain

that boss is so easy to beat without taking a single hit tho

[DJFloppyFish]

playing more SotFS. I'm not as cynical about it now and I'm really enjoying myself. I had a pretty intense fight with the ruin sentinels while I was still getting reacclimated to the combat. I only wish it didn't take so long to find the more interesting weapons. Although, there's something fun about the early game of Souls when you're constantly ditching equipment for something better you just found.

[s0]

there are rumors that dark souls 3 is going to be announced at e3 and that miyazaki's gonna direct it. i hope the series doesnt burn itself out with too many releases, but it turns out to be good i aint complainin.