Dark Souls has ruined the RPG for me...

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

What NPC? Pretty much everyone says playing a mage is much tougher in Dark Souls (vs Demon) at least until you get the good spells.

I did a quick Google search (I don't go to reddit, that site is so horrible) and here's the 2nd search result where 84% say it's not overpowered:
http://soulswiki.forumsrpg.com/t9387-is-the-sorcerer-overpowered

Rickert of Vinheim. I don't know how it was in Demon's Souls, but just because it's "harder" to play doesn't mean it's weak. A sorcerer in general just needs a bit more careful play since you need to find/rescue the NPCs who sell spells and some items contribute to sorcery damage. When set up well, it's one of the most damaging things in the game - and it's ranged, too.

Maybe you should read that thread, and not look at the 16 people who say the starting sorcerer class is not op (because they're right, but that's not relevant to what we're talking about here).

I did skim through the thread. One of the people that actually posted something rather lengthy said that for a 1st-time player, sorcery is tough to start out with. Also, most people aren't going to know that NPC is there to up their spells.

Dark Souls does not have a high amount of player agency, the focus is on dungeon crawling. What do you spend most of your time doing in Dark Souls? Dungeon crawling.

False.

There's tons of player agency. The fact that you can leave messages that effect other player's game worlds represents player agency. You leave that message in their world and if they find it helpful your game world changes with you receiving Humanity. The fact that killing certain NPCs bear different results on the game world is an example of high player agency. Like I've been saying this whole time, you did not pay any attention to what's going on in Dark Souls. The item Humanity is the item in that game that pretty much leads to all of the world changing events, thus its pretty much the player agency tool of the game alongside paths taken and NPCs trusted.

There is not tons of player agency in Dark Souls. The fact that you lead off with the message mechanic says everything. It's just a minor little thing that is cool and unique but it mainly adds to atmosphere than anything else. The point of killing NPCs is usually to get things earlier than you can. Humanity is mainly to be human to summon players to help or to get summoned yourself. Most players will stay hollow to not get invaded. All you Dark Souls fanboys make so much out of these rather minor mechanics that you're just speaking hyperbole, you make them out to be way more than they are.

There's far more dungeon crawling than player agency.

Mass Effect's "roleplaying" is paper thin and can only be done in its dialogue. Everything else you do in Mass Effect outside of that doesn't build character. In Dark Souls you can roleplay through action instead of relying solely on dialigue. Bioware games besides DA:O leaves the deciding factor of the game's ending off until the end. You could play a bad guy the whole time in Knight's of the Old Republic 1&2, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect, and still get the good ending. The roleplaying in Bioware games are pretty limited. You play a blank slate character and have polarizing decisions pelted at you to choose from until the end and then choose which ending you want. The role play isn't strong. Mass Effect is also known for ripping out the majority of its RPG mechanics in its second game and people were disappointing. You're also forgetting that what makes Mass Effect an RPG is that it holds the RPG tenants I mentioned earlier. Same with Dark Souls. Both hold the tenants.

You completely mold your Shepard into a unique character in Mass Effect. You can even create your own character arcs. You create Shepard's character development yourself. Your own character that is perceived by others is conveyed mainly through what you say. Dialog is very important. Mass Effect gives you plenty of important decisions to make so you can role-play through actions as well; since when is shooting someone in the back not an action?

Dark Souls holds all the tenants of a tabletop RPG therefore it is a RPG video game. Its not that hard to comprehend.

Tabletop RPGs have non-combat skills...

In a live-action RPG you do need statistic if your playing a tabletop RPG. If you're just roleplaying with no character sheets such as in forums for example then you don't need them. But in D&D, you do. That's how the game is played. And Video game RPGs follow the tenants carried in tabletop RPG mechanics.

And I trust you're aware that I cannot take you saying that you don't play RPGs because most of them suck seriously. You're the same person who started a thread about Kingdom of Amalur and full on admitted you haven't played many RPGs outside of KoA.

If you think WRPGs suck, go play the Icewind Dale franchise, the Baldur's Gate franchise, Planescape: Torment and the Neverwinter Nights franchise. They are all licensed D&D video games that work off of official D&D rulesets and are regarded as some of the greatest WRPGs of all time.

As for JRPGs I find you statement about hating turn based combat laughable because all tabletop RPGs and even live roleplay combat takes place in turns.

Live-action RPGs and tabletop RPGs are 2 completely different mediums.

I don't play many video game RPGs because so many of them suck, the combat system sucks along with the story and characters. JRPGs and their crappy turn-based combat and WRPGs with their crappy real-time combat; if the games didn't focus on combat so much then I could deal with the lackluster combat but more of your time is spent fighting in RPGs for some reason. I didn't say ALL RPGs suck, I said most, I never said there aren't any good ones. Also, I'm so fucking tried of Tolkien fantasy so you pointing out games that are literally video game versions of DnD does not help. I want new worlds, races, classes, etc. from my RPGs, not playing slightly different versions of your standard fighters, rogues, and mages. If I want DnD, I'll play Pathfinder (since DnD 4.0 sucks).

There's nothing wrong with turn-based combat when done properly. One of the biggest things about turn-based combat is having positioning be extremely important like DnD. For example, XCOM is basically DnD's exact combat system but tailored for gun combat and it's great. However, JRPGs are just your party members on one side and the enemy on the other just trading attacks, it's not strategic at all and it's just boring. FFXII proves that the FF turn-based battle systems are devoid of strategy; FFXII under-the-hood is just FFX's combat system but with gambits. If a few if-then-else statements (gambits) can make a game play itself, it's not strategic. You can't program XCOM (or say Chess) to play itself with a few if-then-else statements, but you can program any FF game (except Tactics) to play itself with a few if-then-else statements. Most JRPG turn-based combat systems just keep you in menus for literally no reason. Xenosaga II actually had a pretty interesting turn-based combat system (it needed some work) but the fans hated it for being too slow (turn-based combat is supposed to be fucking slow because you are supposed to have to stop and think) and then Xenosaga III went back to boring ass repetitive turn-based combat. Resonance of Fate has a good turned-based system (it needs work as well as there's really only 2 strategies but player positioning is at least important) and Valkyria Chronicles has a good system as well.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Oh it's also very doable without that NPC if you (gasp) use your weapon once in a while. I don't even know what you're trying to say, really. You said sorcery isn't viable. It absolutely is, beyond all doubt. I'm just informing you of this.

With all the enemies, it's kinda hard to imagine being able to fully go through dungeons finding all the loot and secrets and such as a mage just using magic (or at least using magic for the majority of enemies). It just seems to me you need to block and attack especially your first time through. I was a Dex/Faith build and it didn't seem like had got that many spells to use, I do realize Miracles are probably the least offensive of the three magics though.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

snip

Yeah I think it's time for me to bow out of this conversation. I've already proven my point and instead of arguing my points directly you seem more interested in telling people what you didn't like about Dark Souls' RPG implementations rather than posting an argument about how its not an RPG.

I'd say that you should actually play some more RPG both Western and Japanese before just saying "most RPGs suck" and trying to define what an RPG is.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yeah I think it's time for me to bow out of this conversation. I've already proven my point and instead of arguing my points directly you seem more interested in telling people what you didn't like about Dark Souls' RPG implementations rather than posting an argument about how its not an RPG.

I'd say that you should actually play some more RPG both Western and Japanese before just saying "most RPGs suck" and trying to define what an RPG is.

LMAO, whatever the thing I do most in a game better be good, most RPGs in general have you fighting more than anything, and for the most part their battle systems suck so why should I play them? It's not like their stories even end up being that good even the ones known story like Xenosaga that I slogged through (all 3 of them). It's hard finding JRPGs I can actually play as I won't play ones with random battles, they seem to have finally given up with random battles but last gen was still full of JRPGs with random battles and this gen has had very few console JRPGs. And I just explained point-by-point why most JRPGs turn-based battle systems suck as they aren't about positioning and you can program them to play themselves with a few if-then-else statements, I'm not interested in playing a game that I can program to play itself. I tried the demo for Ni No Kuni and it was fucking horrible. Lastly, I'll play more WRPGs when they stop with the fucking generic Tolkien fantasy that's been done to death (WRPGs are really like shooters using the same setting over and over again; all you got last gen was WWII shooters, all you get this gen are modern military shooters), I played Mass Effect because it wasn't fucking Tolkien fantasy, it was new worlds, new races, new classes.

I simply explained to you how to classify a game with simple as fuck rules like whatever you do the most is what the game's genre is. Isn't a game called an FPS when you mainly shoot enemies from a 1st-person perspective? Isn't a game called a platformer when you do more platforming than anything else? You dungeon crawl much more than anything in Dark Souls thus it's a dungeon crawler, I never said it doesn't have RPG elements, they just aren't the core of the game. How hard is that concept to grasp? But no, you come back with that Dark Souls is totally an RPG because you can write shit on the ground, seriously?!?! And you say Mass Effect's role-playing has no actions and it's just lame dialog; what a character says is extremely important to how they are perceived by others and there's a bunch of actions to decide as well (Can you shoot a beloved teammate in the back that you've grown to love in Dark Souls? Hell no).

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Bed of Chaos is symptomatic of how Dark Souls creates difficulty, as opposed to being a problem in and of itself. The game was designed in part around borderline forced failure and learning via repetition. Because they kind of cleverly wove this into the game's melancholy oppressiveness, it tends to get a pass, but it can be a supremely aggravating mechanic when it's on full display. Like, say, the first appearance of the Capra Demon, or the fucking Bed of Chaos.

I always thought it silly that people were (to borrow your word) rankled by this. Death in Dark Souls isn't the same "fail state" you find in virtually every other video game. Rather, death is almost an exploration mechanic for learning about enemies and environments. It's almost like a choose your own adventure book with exactly one correct path - and several hundred comically painful wrong ones. If a person can't accept From "moving the goalposts" in such a way that death is no longer a very big deal, I guess he/she might find the game aggravating. I didn't. To me, it was like one giant puzzle game.

Does bring up an interesting point, though: how exactly do we create difficulty in games? The AI typically isn't up to the task. Multiplying hit points is both cheesy and frequently destructive to design and balance. Making the gameplay highly demanding in terms of reflexes and/or finger dexterity generally throws up a sweet barrier for entry, but anything becomes second nature if you stick at it long enough (and demanding games usually just attract fewer players).

Maybe this is another reason why multiplayer is so prevalent these days.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I always thought it silly that people were (to borrow your word) rankled by this. Death in Dark Souls isn't the same "fail state" you find in virtually every other video game. Rather, death is almost an exploration mechanic for learning about enemies and environments. It's almost like a choose your own adventure book with exactly one correct path - and several hundred comically painful wrong ones. If a person can't accept From "moving the goalposts" in such a way that death is no longer a very big deal, I guess he/she might find the game aggravating. I didn't. To me, it was like one giant puzzle game.

Does bring up an interesting point, though: how exactly do we create difficulty in games? The AI typically isn't up to the task. Multiplying hit points is both cheesy and frequently destructive to design and balance. Making the gameplay highly demanding in terms of reflexes and/or finger dexterity generally throws up a sweet barrier for entry, but anything becomes second nature if you stick at it long enough (and demanding games usually just attract fewer players).

Maybe this is another reason why multiplayer is so prevalent these days.

It's most definitely a fail state. Dumping all your souls and having to repeat content can be agonizing. Given most (PC games, anyway) games allow for save/reload this is extremely atypical as harsh death penalties go. It's not at Roguelike level, but it's getting there.

As for difficulty...AI can get it done, you just need a game simple enough where the AI can present a challenge. Failure induced repetition is...IMO...exactly the WRONG way to go about it.

You are correct about MP.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

It's most definitely a fail state. Dumping all your souls and having to repeat content can be agonizing.

I always thought the "ah ha" moment for any DS player was when you realized losing souls wasn't that big of a deal. It seems like a gigantic penalty when it happens, but it's really not. You can farm back anything you lose, which sort goes hand in hand with the "repeating content" bit - without respawns, you can't regain what you've lost.

Given most (PC games, anyway) games allow for save/reload this is extremely atypical as harsh death penalties go. It's not at Roguelike level, but it's getting there.

I'm someone who hates quicksave/load in games, so I'm probably not the target audience for most of this stuff. I also love a good roguelike.

As for difficulty...AI can get it done, you just need a game simple enough where the AI can present a challenge. Failure induced repetition is...IMO...exactly the WRONG way to go about it.

Eh, I think tacking loads of health onto enemies is far, far worse. Much rather have to contend with trial and error.