A Beginner's Guide to Dark Souls - 7 Steps to Sucking Less
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
You're going to give me a nosebleed trying to explain this to you.Thanatos2k said:
Okay. First item: The game provides a PRECISE VISUAL method of keeping track of vit/stam during the game. And the game provides a PRECISE NUMERICAL method of upgrading those stats. This does not mesh well, because the game has trained the user to view vit/stam usage based on VISUAL cues rather than NUMERICAL cues, and the game is OPAQUE with regards to how NUMERICAL cues translate into the VISUAL cues that the player is accustomed to. Okay? Okay. Good. Now hold that in your mind, and hold it separate from what I'm about to say.
Second item: The game provides an IMPRECISE VISUAL method of keeping track of how weapons scale with stats. This is IMPORTANT to the average player because it will INFORM how they choose to upgrade weapons or which weapons they use. Since the letter grade scaling system is so OPAQUE there is no way for a new user to know whether scaling will ultimately matter to them and may thus base decisions on INCOMPLETE knowledge of the system, artificially increasing the games DIFFICULTY.
Now, third item: Consistency.
It is GOOD that both the VISUAL and NUMERICAL are PRECISE because that means that they are internally CONSISTENT. It is BAD that the VISUAL system is TRANSPARENT while the NUMERICAL system is OPAQUE because it becomes UNCLEAR how one affects the other and it is internally INCONSISTENT.
It is BAD that scaling is IMPRECISE and OPAQUE because it is listed among a number of stats that are very PRECISE and TRANSPARENT such as damage, making the stat screen internally INCONSISTENT.
So to sum up, inconsistency is bad, opacity is bad, consistency is good, transparency is good. The complaints do not contradict each other because they prize the same aspects.
No they aren't, deliberate action does not require excessively precise controls - it doesn't require precise controls at all, just responsive ones - another game problem. In fact the complaints are largely unrelated. I could go into the same thing as above, but it already took too long and I have a feeling it won't matter anyway.
I'm not using a keyboard, I was drawing an analogous comparison. If you owned a keyboard that required exceptionally precise inputs or it would just output "get bent" or nothing when you hit a key, it wouldn't be a good keyboard for ensuring the owner always made the correct input, it would just be a terrible, hard to use product. Making a game require incredibly precise input does not somehow make sure the player "really really means it", it just makes it harder to input simple commands.
And my framerate from blighttown onward begs to differ on the accusation of inferiority.
SIGH.
CONSISTENCY = GOOD. When a character model wields a MASSIVE HAMMER with relative ease, and then performs a weighty and INELEGANT attack with a weapon less than a fifth its size despite MEETING all skill requirements, the game demonstrates VISUAL INCONSISTENCY in how the character model relates to its own environment, producing an impression of ARBITRARY and POORLY thought out gameplay mechanics. INCONSISTENCY = BAD. CONSISTENCY is not a MADE UP expectation, it is a HALLMARK of a WELL MADE game.
Also, you may not have said anything, but I can still hear your eyes rolling so hard right now. You gotta watch out for muscle strain.
Maybe I just don't understand the problem. I am able to see the bar, see the number on the stats screen, and do a mental division of the amount of bar to the amount it says on the screen. Thus when something raises stamina by 10% of what I currently have, I can imagine the bar becoming 10% bigger as well. Are others unable to do this?EvilRoy said:
And this is only something a power user would care about. Someone who wants to eke out every attack power they can. These people can look it up online. Normal players see the higher number when they pick up a weapon and equip it. Normal players don't make "builds." They increase the stats they think help them, and the weapons tell you which stats help and by which grade. If you want to know more than that, look it up. Is this some kind of pride issue? A "I beat the game without looking anything up!" personal problem?
The controls are extremely responsive. If you aren't doing something, press a button and it'll happen. If you *are* doing something there may be a delay. Some things may let you interrupt your actions. Some things are faster or slower than others. This is not unresponsive controls, this is part of the battle system and part of the core game balancing.
You can claim not to like it, like the other guy who prefers Bayonetta where he can cancel out of anything anytime and spaz all over the place. But don't claim it's a flaw. It's a different way of developing an action game and there are a great many people who prefer it this way.
Maybe as a computer programmer I've become used to a single typo causing the entire program to cease functioning and thus are used to unforgiving mechanics. Personal preference, I'd say. If I press a button to jump and fly into a pit in Megaman I don't blame Megaman. If I press a button to quicksave when I meant to quickload I don't blame the game. If I try to execute a double dragon punch motion and end up doing quarter circles forward instead I don't blame Capcom.
Don't call it consistency when you are very clearly projecting your own expectations onto the game and getting mad when it doesn't meet them. You think all weapons should behave the same. They don't. Deal with it.
mavrik said:
1. If you're playing on PC I recommend downloading and using dsfix, From software had zero experience on porting to pc and it kind of shows. dsfix helps on the graphical department but you have to disable the anti-aliasing from the ingame options.
2. I don't remember if it was yahtzee but someone once said that gameplay controls are standardised for a reason, and should not be changed unless the game absolutely can't work with the standard layout or something very similar to it. To me at least, dark souls fits this category, they are different for a reason. This has the demerit of having additional learning curve, but once you master them, they feel more natural than the standard layout ever could for this game. This is for allowing several strategies, the standard weapon and shield, dual wielding, spells and sword, spells and shield, so on.
3. Won't defend this, it does sometimes do unspeakable things, also on few occasions it can get stuck on a wall when you are on tight railing causing you to fall.
4. The game teaches you to expect the worst and be very mindful of your surroundings, it has a lot of visual clues, and if you see a huge opponent clearly unwinding for a big attack, you want to back off (if you have room) so you know what it does, once you know, you can figure out how to deal with it once it comes out the next time. It's more about patience than trial and error. With very few exceptions like the capra demon. Also if you get better, you can eventually just dash past the grunts to the boss usually taking out only few that are really on the way.
5. You compare Dark souls to Bayonetta and DMC which are great games, but they are completely different. Dark Souls is designed to play like it does for a reason. While this can put of some people it works for others, I probably would not be tenth as much into it if it played like bayonetta or dmc because it would wreck the atmosphere. Also i really like how much variation the system allows. It's not needed to clear the game but it's there.
Menus again i can't and won't defend too much, once you get used to them they work alright but that takes time and they are really unfriendly for "uninitiated". They have (from software) confessed themselves too that they are difficult and unwieldy to use.
On the combat controls though, they are very good, but they do take some effort to learn. they allow for lots of customization, different kind of fighting styles, different approaches, archery feels really slow in the first person though... but there are very few actually similar games at least in the mainstream.
One of the really amusing things about listening to all the complaints about Dark Souls is that the idea of the Dark Souls "insufferably smug" asshole community is largely unfounded. In fact, I've very rarely found a game that was more friendly to interested new players, when approached in a reasonable format. Actually, I would venture that the only community I've found that is generally as welcoming of genuine new and (basic human) respectfully formed questions and criticisms is the EVE Online community: another community known for it's harsh curve, player cruelty and smug assholes. Wait, why are these supposedly nice communities so "awful" to people?
Why? Because of things like Shadow-Phoenix's incessant need to show up on every single Dark Souls thread and state "best tip is don't play this game." Seriously, go look at most of the recent Dark Souls threads. No information beyond "I played it and hated it."
Things like EvilRoy's incredible stretches of logic above, trying to find some really bizarre ways to make supposedly objective complaints about the game.
Specifically, it's about the driving need that a lot of people have, not to dislike the game because it's not their taste or style, but because they didn't like some aspect (difficulty usually in Dark Souls) and therefore it must be a bad game.
By any stretch of the imagination, Dark Souls is not a bad game. The PC port was most certainly a bad port, though it can mostly be fixed. Bed of Chaos is most certainly a badly designed boss. There are collision issues that make little sense, but the game itself is not highly regarded despite being a bad game. It is a very solidly built game with mostly working and consistent mechanics. It has a very optional but deep story system, very deep character customization (until all characters become god-characters in the high SL) and very responsive controls and weapon movesets.
It is generally a solid game. Whether it is well built is really not up for debate. Is it good? Well, that's an opinion, but it certainly can't be characterized as "bad."
However, a lot of people go out of their way to either pronounce the game bad, because they didn't like it, or try to find really odd ways to objectify it. EvilRoy's argument above about visual inconsistency is not only bizarre, but it's also pretty inaccurate, given that there is no "MASSIVE HAMMER" in the game that is any less unwieldy than any "MASSIVE SWORD." Weapon heft (with proper base stats) feel similarly across all of the medium, large, and ultra-large weapons. I know. I have every single one of them in the game on my 50 str/40 dex character and have moveset tested every one. The "relative ease" that he is suggesting just isn't there. All of the giant weapons are inelegant in combat.
The reason that Dark Souls (and EVE Online) players come off as smug isn't because we're a bunch of screaming assholes, any more than any other gaming community. Go play LoL or Dota if you want to find some really smug and obnoxious assholes in games. The reason is because the game IS challenging and unforgiving and that results in a much larger relative proportion of player complaints. Most of those complaints, when phrased in a way that begs some sort of answer or help, is answered in a way that can be, in fact, helpful. However, when players come in screaming that the game is "omg unfair, trial and error, unavoidable death" (almost none of which is actually true in Dark Souls), they are usually met with the same amount of dismissiveness with which they phrased their complaint.
That's not to say that there aren't smug assholes playing Dark Souls. There are smug assholes playing every game made. It's just that the number of smug responses are proportionate to the number of declarations of "omg bad game" and "this game sux," which is always higher in a harder game.
Why? Because of things like Shadow-Phoenix's incessant need to show up on every single Dark Souls thread and state "best tip is don't play this game." Seriously, go look at most of the recent Dark Souls threads. No information beyond "I played it and hated it."
Things like EvilRoy's incredible stretches of logic above, trying to find some really bizarre ways to make supposedly objective complaints about the game.
Specifically, it's about the driving need that a lot of people have, not to dislike the game because it's not their taste or style, but because they didn't like some aspect (difficulty usually in Dark Souls) and therefore it must be a bad game.
By any stretch of the imagination, Dark Souls is not a bad game. The PC port was most certainly a bad port, though it can mostly be fixed. Bed of Chaos is most certainly a badly designed boss. There are collision issues that make little sense, but the game itself is not highly regarded despite being a bad game. It is a very solidly built game with mostly working and consistent mechanics. It has a very optional but deep story system, very deep character customization (until all characters become god-characters in the high SL) and very responsive controls and weapon movesets.
It is generally a solid game. Whether it is well built is really not up for debate. Is it good? Well, that's an opinion, but it certainly can't be characterized as "bad."
However, a lot of people go out of their way to either pronounce the game bad, because they didn't like it, or try to find really odd ways to objectify it. EvilRoy's argument above about visual inconsistency is not only bizarre, but it's also pretty inaccurate, given that there is no "MASSIVE HAMMER" in the game that is any less unwieldy than any "MASSIVE SWORD." Weapon heft (with proper base stats) feel similarly across all of the medium, large, and ultra-large weapons. I know. I have every single one of them in the game on my 50 str/40 dex character and have moveset tested every one. The "relative ease" that he is suggesting just isn't there. All of the giant weapons are inelegant in combat.
The reason that Dark Souls (and EVE Online) players come off as smug isn't because we're a bunch of screaming assholes, any more than any other gaming community. Go play LoL or Dota if you want to find some really smug and obnoxious assholes in games. The reason is because the game IS challenging and unforgiving and that results in a much larger relative proportion of player complaints. Most of those complaints, when phrased in a way that begs some sort of answer or help, is answered in a way that can be, in fact, helpful. However, when players come in screaming that the game is "omg unfair, trial and error, unavoidable death" (almost none of which is actually true in Dark Souls), they are usually met with the same amount of dismissiveness with which they phrased their complaint.
That's not to say that there aren't smug assholes playing Dark Souls. There are smug assholes playing every game made. It's just that the number of smug responses are proportionate to the number of declarations of "omg bad game" and "this game sux," which is always higher in a harder game.
I've just started out, a couple of hours into the game. It's absolutely obvious that the UI/UX issues that EvilRoy and mavrik are describing are true. The UI is fully functional, but poorly designed - it's the sort of thing that after you've been immersed in it for a while you probably don't even see it any more, because you've trained yourself into it. I think this is where Thanatos2k is - he really can't see it due to immersion.
I don't suppose there's a SkyUI type patch out there for the PC version?
The control layout, though odd to start with, is okay - reminded me of Mirror's Edge with all the shoulder/trigger emphasis. The camera is occasionally dubious, but I've not had it get stuck on anything yet.
Knowing to go slow, ready to jump back and to look really closely around/ahead of you at all times is what allowed me to get into the game at all - without those clues I'd probably have given up after being pulped by the first boss for the ninth time while waving my broken sword-hilt at him vainly!
/Edit - Alarien, did you even notice that EvilRoy *does* like the game? Saying "this part of it's execution could definitely be better" is not saying a game is crap.
I don't suppose there's a SkyUI type patch out there for the PC version?
The control layout, though odd to start with, is okay - reminded me of Mirror's Edge with all the shoulder/trigger emphasis. The camera is occasionally dubious, but I've not had it get stuck on anything yet.
Knowing to go slow, ready to jump back and to look really closely around/ahead of you at all times is what allowed me to get into the game at all - without those clues I'd probably have given up after being pulped by the first boss for the ninth time while waving my broken sword-hilt at him vainly!
/Edit - Alarien, did you even notice that EvilRoy *does* like the game? Saying "this part of it's execution could definitely be better" is not saying a game is crap.
I agree. There seem to be far more smug assholes who are proud of the fact that they DIDN'T play Demon's Souls or Dark Souls for all sorts of head shaking reasons than people who play and like it.Alarien said:
The worst of the worst are the people who played it all the way through but can't stop telling everyone how bad it is.
You forgot step 0: avoid the PC version.
This would have been a helpful guide when I started, though a bit misaimed for me. The game didn't stop being fun until after I'd already learned these lessons (or ignored them; I never regretted starting as a Wanderer, I beat the Taurus demon first try without the death-from above, and I only summoned one white phantom the entire game). Around Blighttown was when the death mechanic started to get seriously immersion-breaking, the exploration got annoying as hell, and the continuing lack of context for my own actions finally hit my frustration threshold, until finally I hit the point where none of that really matters...only for the Duke's Archives to smash my budding enlightenment back into the gutter.
Still, at least the fighting was always fun, and this is a pretty handy guide.
This would have been a helpful guide when I started, though a bit misaimed for me. The game didn't stop being fun until after I'd already learned these lessons (or ignored them; I never regretted starting as a Wanderer, I beat the Taurus demon first try without the death-from above, and I only summoned one white phantom the entire game). Around Blighttown was when the death mechanic started to get seriously immersion-breaking, the exploration got annoying as hell, and the continuing lack of context for my own actions finally hit my frustration threshold, until finally I hit the point where none of that really matters...only for the Duke's Archives to smash my budding enlightenment back into the gutter.
Still, at least the fighting was always fun, and this is a pretty handy guide.
Yes, I did. Of course, reading his post, I'm fairly certain he didn't. That's a lot of protesting. It's also complaining about a lot of things that are "objectively bad" but aren't even there in the first place.SpoonBlender said:
I will agree with you on some of the UI issues and I'd squeal for a SkyUI type patch.
I'm totally with him for the point 1, but the rest... not so much. Have to leave the final word on it to EvilRoy, but my read is "so fond of the game that the flaws really irritate".
Really? Most of the reputation for smugness I've personally seen comes from responses to legitimate complaints about the game. Like in this thread, when complaints about the UI and the control scheme are dismissed either semantically, or as nitpicking, or as evidence of some kind of inherent moral failure to appreciate the hard work required to master the game.Alarien said:
I don't really know if that "lolnub" permeates the community as a whole, but even if it doesn't, that doesn't stop the ones who do from being incredibly obnoxious and thus more memorable.
I have well over 100 hours clocked on the game. Its a good game. I like it. However, that does not somehow magically excuse the problems I have found with it. None of my complaints are objective, they're my opinion. To paraphrase an old quote: of course they are my opinion, I fucking wrote them - I do not need to say IMO after every sentence.Alarien said:
I am very happy for you that you've enjoyed the game, but I do not appreciate your passive aggressive derision of my opinions. If you have an issue with what I've said, I invite you to discuss them with me directly. Otherwise, lets not do this thing where we cough loudly and say "MAN that ALARIEN guy certainly does have an odd opinion of...", its demeaning to both of us and far from an actual conversation.
Others shouldn't need to do this, especially when it isn't readily apparent as to whether the conversion is linear or not. Which it isn't, also kind of a problem.Thanatos2k said:
No, this is a legitimate issue I found when playing the game for the first time. Being under the impression that the game tracks things that actually matter, I typically avoided weapons that provided a downgrade in any particular area beyond a certain amount. The opacity prevalent in the scaling area made it difficult to decide what weapons I should keep or toss because I had no idea how it translated to shit that matters.
At this point I'm not claiming anything, I'm just trying to get you to understand my complaints, why they aren't contradictory, and why I feel they are valid issues for a person to have - something that you originally seemed to take issue with but now apparently don't?
And you shouldn't blame Megaman or Capcom, because those are well instituted control systems. Needing to quickly tap a button twice instead of once from a holding position for a very finicky movement is not what I consider well instituted, particularly when this can lead to death and loss of progress at a moments notice.
Is the expectation that weapons that look similar behave similarly so bizarre? Am I really so foolish for believing my increasing strength should translate into smoother more elegant usage with larger weapons, when the game makes it very clear that not meeting stat requirements makes you swing a weapon like an idiot, or weighing too much makes you roll like a grounded trout? Is asking that visual dissonance be addressed the same as asking that all weapons should behave the same?
Point eight: you can entirely skip the Taurus demon by taking the master key at character generation, dodging around havel, going through the door, up to the left and to the blacksmiths. This is also the quickest way to beef up items (you need 1000 souls to start with, 800 for titanite, 200 for enchantment to +1).
Interesting, so if I go to mavrik's post.
1) UI complaint, no explanation, just "ugly and worst"
2) Unintuitive controls (no further explanation)
3) dying due to camera or lock on silliness
4) slog through the same opponents over and over
5) deal with character responsiveness (90 year old grandpa) comment
Is that an example of legitimate complaints that are being dismissed semantically? I'd say that those are, for the most part, declarations of "this sucks" without much real explanation and display either a lack of game knowledge, or a general dismissiveness of the game or of learning anything about it. However, I'll respond to it as well as I think I can:
1) I'm not going argue whether the UI is ugly or not. It actually can reasonably seen as "ugly." I don't necessarily think so, but I also agree it's not particularly sleek and, due to the lack of scaling, is a bit more obtrusive than necessary. Worst? Worst is a pretty large declaration. I am sure we can find more than a few that are far worse.
2) Unintuitive controls: I'll even give this a half hearted +1. Mostly because the controller control scheme is a bit weird at first. Lock on on the rstick button (actually works well on the 360 controller, pretty ass on the PS controller)? R1 and R2 bumper/trigger for attack? A button is a generic "interact" and jump/sprint tied to the same? Yeah, sure it's not overly intuitive. It's also not a hard interface. But, hey, sure, I can see the argument, compared to a lot of other games.
3) Dying due to camera/lock on: Yep, it happens. There's no excuse for it, and I can give it a big thumbs up. Nothing like locking on to an enemy who leaps to their death and drags you with it. Really kinda crappy. Thankfully, it's fairly rare, but there nonetheless.
4) Slog through same opponents (after death): Why? There's actually very few places where the distance between bonfires and and/or bosses is ever particularly far. In fact, the base game's bonfires are really reasonably close and, when it comes right down to it you can run past almost EVERY enemy in the game to get to the next checkpoint. The only 2 places in the entire game that actually feel like a challenge to work past all the enemies, for me, are the Duke's Archives and Oolacile Township (DLC). Maybe Sen's, if I really stretch it. Slogging can either be bypassed entirely or you can use it to help practice, and, with few exceptions, the practice is actually generally a good idea in NG.
5) Character non-responsivness: this is just not the case. I have never had the character actually NOT respond. The movesets of the game are not the movesets of DMC or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, or Bayonetta. This isn't Street Fighter IV where you can "Cancel" out of a move to dodge or block, much of the time. It's basically a commitment to attack. Only attack when you know it's a good idea. The character will move/attack/block/roll on queue. I have never had it happen otherwise, however, they will not "chain" moves together before the game is scripted to allow them to do so. That's not a flaw, it's a base part of the design.
I don't really see that many of the other responses to these were much different. In fact, the arguments themselves were just as dismissive and/or semantics, which goes to my point that the responses are generally proportionate to the question or complaint.
1) UI complaint, no explanation, just "ugly and worst"
2) Unintuitive controls (no further explanation)
3) dying due to camera or lock on silliness
4) slog through the same opponents over and over
5) deal with character responsiveness (90 year old grandpa) comment
Is that an example of legitimate complaints that are being dismissed semantically? I'd say that those are, for the most part, declarations of "this sucks" without much real explanation and display either a lack of game knowledge, or a general dismissiveness of the game or of learning anything about it. However, I'll respond to it as well as I think I can:
1) I'm not going argue whether the UI is ugly or not. It actually can reasonably seen as "ugly." I don't necessarily think so, but I also agree it's not particularly sleek and, due to the lack of scaling, is a bit more obtrusive than necessary. Worst? Worst is a pretty large declaration. I am sure we can find more than a few that are far worse.
2) Unintuitive controls: I'll even give this a half hearted +1. Mostly because the controller control scheme is a bit weird at first. Lock on on the rstick button (actually works well on the 360 controller, pretty ass on the PS controller)? R1 and R2 bumper/trigger for attack? A button is a generic "interact" and jump/sprint tied to the same? Yeah, sure it's not overly intuitive. It's also not a hard interface. But, hey, sure, I can see the argument, compared to a lot of other games.
3) Dying due to camera/lock on: Yep, it happens. There's no excuse for it, and I can give it a big thumbs up. Nothing like locking on to an enemy who leaps to their death and drags you with it. Really kinda crappy. Thankfully, it's fairly rare, but there nonetheless.
4) Slog through same opponents (after death): Why? There's actually very few places where the distance between bonfires and and/or bosses is ever particularly far. In fact, the base game's bonfires are really reasonably close and, when it comes right down to it you can run past almost EVERY enemy in the game to get to the next checkpoint. The only 2 places in the entire game that actually feel like a challenge to work past all the enemies, for me, are the Duke's Archives and Oolacile Township (DLC). Maybe Sen's, if I really stretch it. Slogging can either be bypassed entirely or you can use it to help practice, and, with few exceptions, the practice is actually generally a good idea in NG.
5) Character non-responsivness: this is just not the case. I have never had the character actually NOT respond. The movesets of the game are not the movesets of DMC or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, or Bayonetta. This isn't Street Fighter IV where you can "Cancel" out of a move to dodge or block, much of the time. It's basically a commitment to attack. Only attack when you know it's a good idea. The character will move/attack/block/roll on queue. I have never had it happen otherwise, however, they will not "chain" moves together before the game is scripted to allow them to do so. That's not a flaw, it's a base part of the design.
I don't really see that many of the other responses to these were much different. In fact, the arguments themselves were just as dismissive and/or semantics, which goes to my point that the responses are generally proportionate to the question or complaint.
Fine, let's have this conversation.EvilRoy said:
I don't even get your complaint about the UI. I get Mavrik's. He said it was ugly. Fine, I get that. But something about the opaque number system and the transparent visual representation in the UI? What? What stats are you talking about, because I'd like to understand that.
For example: endurance, there is a number. Up to 40 it increases your sta. The increase in the UI is proportional to the increase. Vitality is the same way. The "opaque" would only be that after 40 your sta does not increase, but your weight capacity does.
Weapon scaling? What is opaque about S, A, B, C, D, E scaling? It tells you that it scales. It does not say how many points, but if you take a weapon and equip it and then level up a relevant stat (which you can cancel) you can see exactly how much damage your output will change by for that weapon. You can test this across many weapons. It's not particularly intuitive, sure. But it isn't "opaque." You can also just switch out and test it on a few mobs around Firelink.
Also, exactly what weapons are you talking about for "MASSIVE?" So far, you've been completely non-specific. Havel's Dragon's Tooth? You did mention Smough's Hammer. (equally unwieldy) What are you comparing them to? Zweihander? If you actually give direct comparisons of ultra-large weapons, I'd like to load up and test the movesets. Hell, I can probably find a couple youtube videos comparing movesets so we can look at them side by side. I did speak completely to you on this, but you did not respond.
So, let's chat.
Okay, lets do this. I hope you'll forgive my fatigue here, but in addition to a full working day I'm on to explanation of my complaints number three or four. And with yet work to go tonight, I'm afraid I'll be typing quickly so don't mind the odd typo, and mention specifically if I word something in a way that you don't get. As much as I feel you deserve an earnest and respectful response for being good about this, its already going to be a late night.Alarien said:
My primary complaints with the UI has to do with very poor inventory organization both on character and in the upgrade screen, an irritating habit of the game of auto equipping consumables to quick-use, un-intuitive item storage that had very limited use, plus complaints on item comparisons ect., and the stat screen which I believe you are referring to specifically.
Using END as an example I'll go into my issues with levelling up. Speaking from my experience as a first time player, the END bar was great. Tick marks make it immediately visually obvious how much each attack or roll or block takes off the bar, so its easy to gauge on the fly how much I can afford for a given manure.
The issue I found with the level up screen was twofold, though they came in phases. The item you noted with capping the bar came as phase two, and since you noted the issue there I won't go into it.
The first phase was the simple, straightforward question of 'how many tick marks do I get per level I invest in END'. This was a large issue for me early on in the game thanks in dual parts to having very few souls to expend on levelling due to consistent death, and having little concept what individual stats are worth levelling up, as every stat appeared to uniformly increase the stats on the right with two single exceptions (HP/END). Simply levelling up once and looking closely at the stamina bar wasn't helpful as the increase was small enough I couldn't visually distinguish the improvement, but I lacked the ability to level in bulk to make the distinction more obvious. Additionally I had heard there are diminishing returns on levelling, but without a concept of the stat maximum this is a largely unhelpful and potentially misleading statement.
Simply having the health/stamina bars on screen when levelling and visually demonstrating the increase would have completely alleviated the issue, but the problem existed and I noted it along with my general UI complaints.
The matter in this case was that I found it inconsistent with the rest of the stat system. Certainly spending the souls and time to work through a guess and check to see was an option, however, two weapons - a spear that scales B and a short sword that scales C (I'm just guessing, no time to look it up) - can't be meaningfully compared side by side, making the scaling system difficult to use in weapon choice for a first time player. Surely a B is better than a C, but is it better by enough to justify changing weapons and accepting the different moveset and attack speed?
Perhaps the fact that scaling was expressed as a letter rather than a number, like all other weapon stats, should have been a solid indication that it was a non-critical aspect of the game, but at the time it seemed to indicate just the opposite.
My complaint here was a matter of visual clarity in how the character handles weapons of different weight classes, and how that breaks down as the game progresses.
At an early stage the game clearly demonstrates that being overburdened results in the famous and loved 'fat roll', and lacking required stats for wielding a weapon results in swinging the weapon as though it is made of solid lead. It proceeds to demonstrate that being less burdened translates to various improved speeds, and having the proper stats to use a weapon results in visually normal wielding of the weapon.
The problem with this is that when wielding weapons such as the Zweihander, or the black knight sword, we see the character having a bit of trouble throwing the blade around. My complaint here is that at one point or another the character becomes able to lift and attack with weapons with much higher minimum stats - Smough's Hammer being a particularly extreme example of this requiring STR of 50 (off the top of my head, correct if necessary). Visually, however, I found that it no longer makes sense for the character to wield the Zweihander as though it is very heavy (it is, I'm sure) when that same character can lift and attack with weapons requiring strength on the level of Smough's Hammer.
While I appreciate that the game must maintain balance, why can scaling not be translated into a visually coherent image? A slow moving heavy attack makes sense early on in the game, where presumably the character is only at the brink of lifting and striking with a given weapon, but later at the mentioned levels, why is that same character having so much difficulty striking with a weapon that must weigh less than half of another he was just holding? It seems arbitrary and silly to me, given the games earlier lessons that stats and burden weight definitely translate into obvious visual cues.
When you don't quote directly it isn't obvious to the other person, I would have ignored your post completely had I not noticed my name in happenstance.
I've been around enough on the internet to know when someone is stating an opinion like a fact, and your posts reek of it. When you say something like:EvilRoy said:
You are not saying "Well, this is my opinion of what a good game should be" you are screaming "THIS IS WHAT A GOOD GAME IS AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOU'RE WRONG."
So you didn't ACTUALLY have this problem, you're just supposing that some people were unable to do it. I see.
And yet it sounds like you were able to complete the game just fine. Again, sounds like you didn't actually have a problem, you were just too stubborn to look up a full explanation of the mechanics and do some projections.
It seems you didn't even encounter many of these so called issues yourself. Which is odd that you'd argue so vociferously about them.
If I jump into a pit in Megaman because I had to run halfway out over the ledge in order to make the jump and jumped slightly too soon I can lose all sorts of progression. And hell, the bosses in Megaman are "trial and error" too. Hmmm....I wonder if you call Megaman a poorly developed game?
Alarien already deconstructed this. Yes, your expectations were wrong. No need to take it out on the game.