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[s0]

[quantumpotato]

Looks pretty. I wish DS had a way to show health, estus etc without the cluttersome UI. Or if I could just have the health bar visible and nothing else, that would be sweet..

[s0]

bloodborne kinda has that

[Glyph]

Looks pretty. I wish DS had a way to show health, estus etc without the cluttersome UI. Or if I could just have the health bar visible and nothing else, that would be sweet..

ds3's auto-hide on was the best implementation in the series imo. everything hidden until you needed it (lost hp, stamina visible below 25% or something) or raised your shield (so you could check whenever too).

[s0]

confession: i hate auto-hide and don't use it in any souls gam. having things pop up constantly is distracting as heck imo. besides, this is a combat game. what's the point of hiding combat relevant stats only to have them show up again 10 seconds later.

i think me and quantumpotato have fundamentally different philosophies regarding UI tho (judging from his posts in the design forum), so i won't argue this further because it'd just devolve into an endless back and forth.

[Glyph]

imo the biggest gain from hiding UI was the big garish tiles in the bottom left showing pretty much all the stuff you already know. and only the item slot shows up if you try to swap your item, etc.

[Tumetsu]

Haha, internet peeps are already complaining that the dlc will have only two bosses -> disappointed and game is shit Nothing new in that though.

Vaati speculates that the boss with bowl is all father Lloyd. We will see  Any way the dlc looks really nice and the wolf battle looks quite fun!

[s0]

According to Miyazaki, the painted world of Ariandel is not the same Ariamis but "related" in some way. I mean with the PRISCILLA fight the connection is pretty obvious, but still, interesting...

Also who wants to bet it's going to be accessed through the mansion in Irithyll?

[Tumetsu]

Yeah, maybe we will meet the painter of both worlds in dlc?

My guess based on first trailer is that the access has something to do with Cathedral of the Deep since the environment with old man looked like the Cleansing Chapel. However, might be that it is just the place to get the "key" to the dlc and actual entry is somewhere else.

[s0]

the reason i think it's going to be the irithyll mansion is because there's a painting of a snowy building there. i didn't actually figure this out myself btw, someone in the youtube comments pointed it out.

smaybe ariamis was "transformed" into ariandel somehow, just like anor londo became irithyll. or maybe ariamis was destroyed along with the painting containing it and priscilla somehow "fled" into a different painting.

hopefully we'll find out more about yorshka as well.

[Tumetsu]

Now when you mention it I thought it was a picture of Ariamis when I saw it since rest of the paintings in the room seemed to be callbacks to previous games (Gwynewere, Drangleic Queen etc.)

I also don't think the woman in recent video is Priscilla but someone else sharing same motif but we will see. More info of Yorshka would be nice too. I wonder if they are any good explanation for these recurring character designs (woman with scythe/Priscilla, wolf/Sif) or will they feel just a random throwbacks to previous games.

[JWK5]

So I decided to run with a cleric/faith build in Dark Souls 3 only to realize the blessed gems are absolute garbage and lightning gems don't make an appearance until late in the game. Being able to heal allies and whatnot is fun, though.

It seems like with the Souls games either the faith builds are overkill or underwhelming for much of the game.

[s0]

linear progression is this game's biggest problem. aside from adversely affecting replayability, it makes certain builds really tedious early game. it was also a bit of an issue in bloodborne (arcane!!!), but it's much worse here due to greater build diversity and greater importance of builds, especially for magic based characters.

tbh in light of how past souls games handled things, it's kind of frustrating that i basically can't play my desired build for up to half of NG and have to wait until the game deigns to give me the gear and spells i need.

[JWK5]

In other news, the Astora Straight Sword brings me endless happiness. I almost swapped it out for the Barbed Straight Sword but it has been too good to me (and not so good to the 20-odd invaders I've annihilated with it). It is fast enough that you can spam players with heavy or long weapons and it is long enough that you can get the jump on dagger/fist weapon users and stun them before they can get their hits in. Boss-wise it has the right balance of damage and speed that you can get solid hit-and-run bursts in. I took out the Abyss Watchers in under a minute with it.

[SousaVilla]

So I decided to run with a cleric/faith build in Dark Souls 3 only to realize the blessed gems are absolute garbage and lightning gems don't make an appearance until late in the game. Being able to heal allies and whatnot is fun, though.

It seems like with the Souls games either the faith builds are overkill or underwhelming for much of the game.

I did a faith run some time ago, and I think the best thing to do is go for raw infusion and use the lightning blade miracle. I think the damage will be higher than with lightning gems.

Other than that you could do a faith/strenght build and use miracles as support spells (healing, second chance, buffs) until you get lightning blade later in the game. The good thing about this build is that you can get Eygon's hammer (50 str, 30 Faith) which has a very sweet weapon art.

[JWK5]

Right now the only two faith spells I really bother with are Med Heal and Tears of Denial. Tears of Denial in particular is awesome, especially for areas where you risk a death drop (since on death it will return you to 1 hit point) or boss fights where they have hard-to-avoid single heavy damage hits. It is also a nice way to survive a backstab.

[s0]

i only like faith in demons souls because it's the easy babby build (blessed weapon + adjudicators shield = basically infinite health).

i never saw the point of playing a healer/buffer type character in a souls gam. as i see it, co-op players should either GIT GUD or just let me do the fighting for them if they arent. it would make more sense if the games actually scaled with player count. but as is, co-op is more of a "cheat"/easy mode to begin with and there's no real incentive to work together. one competent player can basically solo the game while the others stand back and do nothing. this even holds true for invasions.

[JWK5]

i never saw the point of playing a healer/buffer type character in a souls gam. as i see it, co-op players should either GIT GUD or just let me do the fighting for them if they arent. it would make more sense if the games actually scaled with player count. but as is, co-op is more of a "cheat"/easy mode to begin with and there's no real incentive to work together. one competent player can basically solo the game while the others stand back and do nothing. this even holds true for invasions.

I've not really had that experience. I mean once or twice you get someone who is an ass but most of the time the players are very cooperative. Are you sure it isn't more a result of how you are communicating?

While I am running my faith build, regardless if I am the one summoned or summoning I stay close to my allies and provide either a constant shield barrier (to intercept incoming enemy strikes) or distraction (by attacking an enemy after an ally has attacked them to redirect the enemy's attention to me) and then healing the group when necessary.

Almost always when someone is brought into the group the first thing that happens is everyone does a round of emoting (bowing, etc.) and during that period I will immediately cast Med Heal to show everyone that I have that skill. During the run to the boss I will do the "Call Over" emote that has the character actually yell "Hey!" and then run up and cast Med Heal on the allies. I do that so that they are able to recognize the "Hey!" to mean I am about to heal everyone. Usually if someone wants me to heal them (instead of using a flask) they just run a few short circles around me and I know that is my cue (and I yell "Hey!" to get the other ally ready for it).

When I shield wall an ally, after a skirmish or two with a few flunky enemies they will catch on that what I am doing is providing them open opportunities on to nail the enemy on the recoil. When I see the enemy aggro an ally I immediately attack them and draw their attention away, after a few skirmishes most players catch on and we tag back and forth taking down the enemy. Even poorly skilled players will be able to dive in the thick of battle fairly safely this way.

The point of co-op, for me at least (in this game or just about any), is that unorthodox form of silent communication and cooperation (which I greatly prefer over just using a mic). I rarely ever encounter players just hanging back and doing nothing because I actively work to give them a chance to get their hits in and survive each encounter. For me that is very rewarding, it is like helping people with tutorials on TIGS for example, it is building a connection with people in a unique way. It works really well in the Dark Souls 3 because often my wife is playing too, so when we summon in strangers I am the shield and she is providing guerilla-style hit-and-run support or raining down fireballs on outskirt enemies (she is currently running a pyromancer). It is pretty much like that with most cooperative games we play (CoD:Bo3, Overwatch, etc.), we pick an ally and we try to bolster them.

The main trick to it all is you can't run with the expectation that your ally should cater to you, even if you summon them, instead you have to demonstrate to them what you can do and build a brief language with them and then basically work as an extension of their character. Sure, it doesn't give you the spotlight of a solo run but it does create an amazing play experience especially for the ally you're assisting (we get blown up with messages of "You guys are awesome!" and a lot of people dropping embers and whatnot for us hoping we'll assist them some more).

Some players want to "GIT GUD", some players just want an enjoyable experience and find it in the co-op. Sometimes people hang back because they are intimidated a bit, they don't want to risk fucking up the battle for everyone, you've got to help them get comfortable in the mix and support them. After a while they'll have worked up the nerve to carry their weight for the group.



tl;dr: I think maybe you're looking at co-op from a bad angle.

[JWK5]

Finally got around to beating Dark Souls 3, all I have left before going into NG+ is the Nameless King in Archdragon Peak. I will wait until after the DLC to go into NG+ since From as per usual is using the most obnoxious method of DLC insertion (shoving it in there somewhere mid to end game). I liked how DLC/added content was done in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen where right at the beginning of the game was path (a boat ride) that could take you to the DLC so regardless of your progress you could jump in even if you were starting over and wanted to suicide-run it.

Overall I really liked Dark Souls 3 (still not as much as Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 2) but fuck Hawkwood in the Abyss Watcher's mausoleum (the fight for the twinkling dragon head stone), that fight was bullshit. Basically, if you do not have high stamina or maxed out damage for this fight you will be screwed over endlessly because as soon as his life drops below half and your stamina gasses out he heals almost instantly with some sped up estus animation. It happens so fast that he would literally be healed and through his estus animation within the time frame it took my character to step forward.

I at least had the benefit of having decent stamina and a maxed out Wolnir's Holy Sword so I finally got lucky and caught him when he decided to do a long combo instead instead of healing right away. My wife wasn't so lucky, her character was a mage and she could not cast her spells fast enough to hit him before he heals. I ended up beating the fight for her getting lucky with a backswing with the Moonlight Greatsword. The whole fight feels unbalanced as shit, it wasn't fun or challenging it was just frustrating. If he didn't heal at turbo speed it would have been much better, as it stands it feels like they didn't test the fight well (at least not with a decent range of builds).

[s0]

well since the dlc is usually late game content, if they just inserted it right at the beginning a ton of ppl would complain that its unfair because theyre underleveled. bloodborne actually had that problem somewhat. you got access fairly early but needed to level up a lot to be anything close to a balanced level.

besides it's more *thematic* the way theyre doing it