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[s0]

i am curious to know dark souls 3 holds up with repeated playthroughs for you btw. im currently on my third. i took a long break because i got sick of the game after the 2nd. dks1 took me like 15 playthroughs to get burned out on.

[Tumetsu]

I recommend to beat Dancer first and venture into Lothric Castle in the beginning of the game. Obviously knights overpower you easily but it was interesting to see the place without eclipse.

Also, kinda funny to have inventory full of chunks but no titanite shards to upgrade my +2 cheese knife.

[JWK5]

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

In the first Dark Souls new Londo Ruins comes to mind, or the graveyard near the Firelink Shrine. Early on they have a pretty high difficulty (especially for newbies) but there is something exciting about suicide-running through them in order to snatch up equipment and items that would normally take some lengthy playtime to acquire. It wouldn't hurt anything to go into an area that you are far under-leveled for other than taking a few deaths to make that fairly obvious. Thematically, they've stated the area in the DLC is pretty much its own thing outside the main narrative of DS3 so I don't think it'd break anything by making it open early (other than rewarding adventurous players with awesome gear early).

i am curious to know dark souls 3 holds up with repeated playthroughs for you btw. im currently on my third. i took a long break because i got sick of the game after the 2nd. dks1 took me like 15 playthroughs to get burned out on.

I've actually got several characters going so technically I've played through major chunks of the game several times over. It's overly linear nature makes it less entertaining to play through than Dark Souls 1-2 or Demon's Souls. I really liked how those games gave you many paths to take right at the outset, each with varying degrees of risk and reward (and difficulty). It made each playthrough more excited by giving you the chance to tackle things in an order you didn't before.

Demon's Souls especially did it great by having so many things change in NG+, it's really a bummer that the only thing that really changes in DS3's NG+ is that the enemies have more health and deal more damage and there are some +1 to +3 ring variants. There is something seriously off with the way the stats works with the equipment this time around too, only the extremes seem to be all that viable, if you run the middle everything feels a lot more unbalanced (like the aforementioned Hawkwood fight).

I think in terms of starting the game I like Demon's Souls the best, it really gives you tons of options when it comes to where to go and what to do and gives you a lot more room to be adventurous before gating you. In terms of level layouts, I like the first Dark Souls the best as it had the best mix of verticality and sensible (and useful) shortcuts that actually offered tactical advantages as well. Setting-wise, I like how Dark Souls 2 had a lot of variety and seemed to switch things up just before they started to feel stagnant (and being able to level up the bonfire and up the challenge at will was great). Where I like Dark Souls 3 is in its overall cohesiveness, much like Bloodborne I think they did a great job at just making everything feel like a place that could have been lived in and has a story to tell. All the games are great, I just think Dark Souls 2 gave me the right amount of viable options and risk and reward. Leveling up the bonfires also gave a lot more life to the multiplayer.

I will post back my definitive thoughts of DS3's NG+ once I make that run.

[s0]

Demon's Souls especially did it great by having so many things change in NG+,

uhm.. ng+ in demons souls only buffs enemies. dks2 is the one that adds enemies and stuff in ng+ (not always for the better).

what added replayability to DeS was the world tendency mechanic, but they kinda sabotaged that by making it possible (albeit a little tedious) to get all world tendencies in NG.

[s0]

In the first Dark Souls new Londo Ruins comes to mind, or the graveyard near the Firelink Shrine. Early on they have a pretty high difficulty (especially for newbies) but there is something exciting about suicide-running through them in order to snatch up equipment and items that would normally take some lengthy playtime to acquire.

i agree, but a lot of people complained about those too

i mean, in the end inserting DLC where it fits rather than forcefully squeezing it into the beginning of the game is still better from a thematic and pacing standpoint. makes it something that actually extends/completes the game rather than just a tacked on content pack. i mean, that's pretty much how good expansions used to work before piecemeal dlc became the norm.

[JWK5]

I get that, as with most things, there will be others that prefer the opposite and that is fine, I am just that that I (and many others) don't really care for that method of DLC insertion, at least when it comes to the Souls series where it offers things like NG+ which effectively might put some players in a position where they have to re-play everything just to get to the DLC (which is especially obnoxious given how much time has passed in waiting for the DLC). Anyways, it is a preference but I understand it is not everyone's.

Demon's Souls especially did it great by having so many things change in NG+,

uhm.. ng+ in demons souls only buffs enemies. dks2 is the one that adds enemies and stuff in ng+ (not always for the better).

what added replayability to DeS was the world tendency mechanic, but they kinda sabotaged that by making it possible (albeit a little tedious) to get all world tendencies in NG.

In reference to Demon's Souls I was more meaning the black phantoms and other little changes here and there.

DKS2 had a sort of variable NG+ in that you could NG+ any area of the game without actually starting the game over. This meant you could basically scale your challenge and instead of just getting stuck playing the game over and over to get a difference in an area and to get different items with the boss souls you could up the bonfire and run them again. Another added benefit is that it cut down on soul-farming since upping the bonfire means you can fight the area boss again and get a larger sum of souls in a shorter time. It was a great way to variably keep the game moving in a direction you like (especially since it gave you incentive to replay areas you like without having to slog through areas you didn't again).

Co-op also became a lot funner when you pushed the bonfire up to 5+ and you didn't have to wait until you've replayed the game 5 times to get there. I think in terms of co-op it was a huge benefit and you can really feel its absence in DKS3. I (personally) think it is a great setup and I wish they'd have put it in DKS3.

[Alevice]

afaik, no diff bphantom spawn on ng+. i think you are still confusing it with wordl thendecy

[JWK5]

afaik, no diff bphantom spawn on ng+. i think you are still confusing it with wordl thendecy

Could be, I've not played it in a good while. Either way, it is disappointed DKS3 doesn't do much but up the stats a little in NG+ and doesn't let you up the NG+ of areas individually.

[Raptor85]

i hated the bonfire levels thing in 2, about the only feature from 2 i actually enjoyed though was the improved jumping and ladder controls, which they kept in 3, lol. If anything though i miss the gravelord covenant from dks1, which unfortunately seemed pretty underused in all but the ps3 version (i had ps3 and pc and you NEVER saw it in pc).  It only works in ng+ and beyond but it was basicly like "pure black" in demons or ng+ in dks2 with the extra enemy spawns in the area for all players ng+ and beyond so long as a gravelord covenant member is challenging that area, and the only way to get rid of the extra spawns was to challenge him in a duel and take him down by finding his sign and pulling him in (which moves with him in whatever area he's currently in). It was REALLY fun and oh SHIT was it a lot harder, especially those damned BP chain prisoners in the city dungeon, or all the extra BP silver knights patroling in anor londo.  AS the game got older unfortunately it became more and more rare to see.

[JWK5]

i hated the bonfire levels thing in 2

I am not sure why, if you never level up a bonfire then there is literally no difference from any other Souls game.

If you beat DKS2 you still have the NG+ option (in which case all bonfires are given +1), the only other way the individual bonfires get a + is if you choose to manually do it yourself via item usage. Even in terms of summoning, you are only summoned from one bonfire to another so you'd never even really know if the person summoning you upped their bonfire manually or via a NG+, there is no difference.

The only peole bonfire upping affected were the people actually choosing to do so, everyone else can safely ignore it with no adverse effects whatsoever (my first run through DKS2 I didn't up any of the bonfires manually because I didn't exactly understand how it all worked, it wasn't until NG+ that I realized what was up with it).

I think that is what made the feature so awesome, it could be taken or left and not adversely affect the game either way (while potentially providing a better play experience either way).



On another note, I liked that a lot of DKS2 bosses dropped alternate items or souls in NG+ and that a lot of the areas had new things pop in NG+ (for example, the butterfly shield that appears in the chest above the merchant in the town in NG++ or thereabouts).

[Raptor85]

it felt like an afterthought like many things in dks2, a tacked on feature to help the problems caused by enemies stopping spawning, and combined with the soul memory made people hyper-level even when not trying to, making summons and pvp all but impossible.  It killed the "common" soul levels in other "souls" games that let people easily match for co-op and pvp in certain areas, and didn't really fix until you hit the "cap" of 1.5m and could suddenly see a bunch of people again.

They "kinda" fixed this after a few patches (though it required wearing a ring and everyone kinda being on the same page which is dumb) but it was still mostly broken, you NEVER saw invasions in dks2 outside of the lava bridge, and most people there were invading near max level. if soul memory wasn't a thing and bosses didn't reset it would have been cool but with everything else it just made it even harder to find good invasions in dks2.

Not that ng+ mattered much in 2, it was so much easier than the other souls games and even at max ng+ all the bosses die super fast since. (unless you get trapped inside a wall....freaking smelter demon)

[s0]

I thought bonfire ascetics were a good idea in theory. They were basically an attempt to bring back world tendency but fix its flaws. The problem was, I never used them other than to grind for things. The mechanic in general is grindy. There's no real tradeoff other than enemies getting slightly stronger, which, you know, doesn't really matter when you've already beaten the boss. They also lack the one thing that made world tendency cool: mystery.

[JWK5]

They "kinda" fixed this after a few patches (though it required wearing a ring and everyone kinda being on the same page which is dumb) but it was still mostly broken, you NEVER saw invasions in dks2 outside of the lava bridge, and most people there were invading near max level. if soul memory wasn't a thing and bosses didn't reset it would have been cool but with everything else it just made it even harder to find good invasions in dks2.

Yeah, invading was broken and unbalanced as shit in DKS2, it's a little better in DKS3 but not much (ridiculous rapid estus recoveries pretty much render it more frustrating than entertaining often making it too long and drawn out to be worthwhile unless you have a clear stat advantage over your opponent).

I always thought with multiplayer, both in the Souls games and in games like Borderlands or Destiny, they should give each equipment (weapons, armor, etc.) two damage/defense stat sets. One set is the standard set and should be used versus AI enemies, the other is a percentile set that is used versus human opponents.

In the percentile set, regardless of upgrades it would have a set percentage of damage or defense. So the Astora Straight Sword might do 5% HP damage or whatever the first hit, and so on. In this manner it doesn't matter the actual stat difference between the two adversaries so much because each of them would lose that 5% of their health bar if hit by the Astora Straight Sword (of course modified by the set percentile defenses and whatnot).

It would still allow you to level up and do greater damage to the AI enemies and bosses and whatnot, but in terms of multiplayer it would level the playing field and put more opponents on the field (since even players just starting out could go toe-to-toe with more seasoned players), giving it a feel more akin to a fighting game.

That with scaling the summoned allies' damage to the AI and summoned allies' defenses to match up with the summoner more would fix most of the unbalancing multiplayer faces in the Souls games.

I thought bonfire ascetics were a good idea in theory. They were basically an attempt to bring back world tendency but fix its flaws. The problem was, I never used them other than to grind for things. The mechanic in general is grindy. There's no real tradeoff other than enemies getting slightly stronger, which, you know, doesn't really matter when you've already beaten the boss. They also lack the one thing that made world tendency cool: mystery.

Though as you've stated you really didn't do much multiplayer (unless I am misunderstanding) so I can see why that'd be all you'd use them for.

I really did like world tendency, maybe rather than just upping the level of the bonfire they could have gone with light and dark bonfire tendencies where dark makes things harder but adds more rewards and light tones things down and changes things to give a little more player advantage and then you'd use the aesthetics (and perhaps an opposing item) to alter that tendency. Either way, having it re-trigger the bosses would still be good.

[Raptor85]

actually dks3 pvp is awesome, with the 6 players and fast invasion timers in most areas (all the other souls games have much longer minimum times between invasion unless you use an item to reset it) most pvp quickly turns into huge skirmishes.  The estus runs out fast, everyone really has the same amount of flasks and since the phantoms can use flasks as well it balanced one of the biggest flaws in the earlier games, the massive disadvantage of the invader when it comes to healing.  The way the armor works in 3 also means there's no real super-buffing of armor, it's mostly cosmetic, so pvp comes down entirely to combinations of weapons/items and the tactics involved with them. Easily the most balanced pvp in any souls game.

Bloodbourne is still a way better game overall but DKS3 definitely has the best multiplayer of the series.

[Tumetsu]

Yes, I really like multiplayer in DkS3 over other games. Estus healing is imo good addition since it adds extra layer of strategy in fights for both parties especially when using Lloyd's talisman (hunter talisman in dks3?) Though I can see it being annoying in specific situations.

[s0]

i think their rationale for invader disadvantage is this: random invasions are not meant to be fair pvp fights, the invaders are meant to be an additional obstacle, like a tough miniboss or something.

it should also be noted that previous souls games (or at least dks1 and demon's, invasions don't happen in dks2  ) were kind of skewed in the invader's favor, because the invader has the element of surprise and often gets to attack already weakened players mid level. for example in dks1, i don't think an inexperienced solo player has a realistic chance against a even a halfway competent invader, healing or no. fromsoft can't just cater to people like us who have sunk 100s of hours into each game in the series, they have to at least try and balance it out with bringing in new people.

finding the right balance between "attacker" and "defender" is an age old design problem in combat games.

[Tumetsu]

That is true and also reason why I think it was a good idea in DkS3 to favor invading coop worlds over solo players. Of course this made many invaders salty about perceived imbalance but I think it was a right choice because of reasons in your post.

[JWK5]

On that note, Salt and Sanctuary is fucking awesome. It's basically a Soulvania. I love that game.

[s0]

Btw, in case u guys havent heard this yet: Ashes of Ariandel will be accessed from the Cathedral of the Deep. I'm hyped for it ofc, but it does seem a lot like a painted world remix from the previews. We'll see.

[s0]

now i want some AotA-style dlc where we get to fight laurence haha

p cool how we actually got that