How would you improve Dark Souls?

[yaydod]

I totally agree that an in game pause where you can't do anything would be nice.

The major thing to fix id say is the collision bugs, I am not too far in the game bu ti already saw a mettric fuckton of swords going through walls, fire and arrows too. It just seems like some walls are none existent for enemies weaponry but mine will bounce right of, yeah fun stuff.

Oh, one last thing, please fix animation bugs, PLEASE, you know when all the player + monster animations "stop" and you still take damage -_-" yay.

 

[lapan]

snip

I didn't say "A story", I said more story. Something more tangible than the ramblings of random mentally insane people I talk to. There are a lot of ways to tell a good story in games without clumping a bunch of exposition on you. How about a codex, or bestiary? Finding journal pages, history snippets? You can implement all sorts of ideas into the game that doesn't necessarily mean it's spoonfeeding you.

That's pretty much how it already is. You find parts of the plot on every item that drops.

I suggested some sort of spell that made a staff just as good as a shield, block-wise. Just an idea. From where I'm standing, it's pretty hard to know what the game will throw at me and if it's worth to risk it and go full magic knowing full well I'm gonna suffer if I run out of spells. So far, spellcasting isn't worth it unless you know what the game will throw at you - and I DON'T.

Huh, i only heard others call it overpowered before, never heard anyone calling it not worth it. I personally play without magic or enchanted weapons for additional challenge and because i prefer the playstyle.

And 4 was a suggestion to improve the game's tooltips on the basic systems that need to be explained in-game such as what stats do and stuff, but I gave up because of the massive amounts of "WARGLE SPOONFEEDING HANDHOLDING DUMBING DOWN WAAAAAAAH" that would surely produce. I mean even these mild suggestions attracted some similar outcries, I imagine if the game made you go outside and take out the trash some people will still cry out that it's part of the game's charm and how it's too hardcore to ever change.

While i'm not opposed to additional tooltips, most things are self-explanatory. If you level up a stat it shows you what will get improved by it. I never had any problems figuring that out.

 

[Kroxile]

If you need a game to hold you by the dick, don't play games.

Dark Souls doesn't NEED tutorials, saves, maps, or anything else that just coddles your head and coos "It's ok baby, you can totally suck ass, we'll beat the game for you."

It's not even entirely DIFFICULT, just challenging with a real sense of reward, victory, and accomplishment. When it reads "VICTORY ACHIEVED" at the end of every boss fight, it's a great feeling that is hard to find in today's regenerating health, casual difficulty market.

To change that overall tone of imminent death, exploration and experimentation would simply bring a gold nugget of a game into the shit hole that is the mainstream triple-A scene.

Everything I have ever thought of gaming today is summed up quite nicely right here.

 

[lapan]

snip

No, no you don't. Sure some items have some interesting flavor text on them, but if you're telling me you can piece together the entire story by just reading the item descriptions, well... I'd have to call you out on that.

What you can't read on the items you get told by the npcs if you regulary talk to them.

You can see what stats do, just not everything they're used for. I didn't see dex increasing casting speed anywhere, nor did I know that katana is going to have such a huge dex requirement. If the game just told me "some weapons are tailored for a high dexterity" somewhere before that, we wouldn't have this problem. I also needed to read the wiki to see the tresholds for weight allowance. Things like that should be in the game, really.

It is. if you look at an item you have the option to show additional details (with the x button if you use the xbox-controller). That's where it shows you stats requirement and even the rate with which it scales with stats.

You can figure out the weight treshholds by the speed of your roll and equiping/deequiping around a bit.

 

[Kalikin]

To me, Dark Souls is just about perfect - I'd probably say it's my favourite game to date, with its brilliantly depressing dark fantasy atmosphere. There are just a few things I'd like to see changed (if the devs decide to make another game that plays virtually identical):

Squad-based enemy AI. Seriously, the game would be so much more tense if you weren't able to just lure one enemy over to you at a time, and if those enemies worked together to try take you down. Hopefully that would also fix problems with snake men attacking through each other...

More emphasis on space restriction. I like how your weapons will bounce off walls, but there aren't really any situations that make you be aware of your weapon's attack type (which is clearly something they wanted). In the few areas where space IS an issue, you can still swing a claymore around just fine, and that shouldn't be the case. Also, enemies should be subject to the same rules you are. It's complete bullshit that the larger enemies' weapons just go through walls.

 

[lapan]

What you get told by the NPCs are barely scraps. Like I said, more story, not a story. When you first played the game, did you go to Blighttown for a good, consistent reason, or did you just pass through because it was in the way?

I don't see how a codex would be much different.

It is. if you look at an item you have the option to show additional details (with the x button if you use the xbox-controller). That's where it shows you stats requirement and even the rate with which it scales with stats.

You can figure out the weight treshholds by the speed of your roll and equiping/deequiping around a bit.

I was aware of that since I first posted here.

Well, it's the reason i didnt really feel it needed more explanation. when i first got an item which i couldn't wield, my first instinct was to look there anyways.

 

[Mental Cosmas]

I'd probably add a light buff on some of the heavier weapons. Also, i'd add a scraping spear expy (joking! joking!).

Honestly, apart from some backstab tweaking for PvP, a pause for offline play (I don't see any harm in it) I don't see myself changing much. All the game's elements are connected in such a way that changing one would have detrimental effects on others.

...Maaaaaybe a slight tweak of the Crestfallen warrior's first dialogue. I thought at first he meant through the catacombs when he said the bell was "below" in Blighttown (although the skeletons certainly convinced me to go to the above bell first!). He does better explain it if you keep talking to him though.

 

[fuzz]

Improve the internationally matchmaking, I have to wait about 12 minutes between invades in Anor Londo.

You can use the dried finger from the painted world to remove the cooldown timer for invasions, that should help a bit.

It seems like the game has gone over a lot of peoples heads. The story is there, whether you see it or not, and working it out was one of my favourite aspects of the game.

Assuming the game doesn't have one, a difficulty option. Saying your going to please an audience that likes hard games is good, forsaking the rest of gamers in general to please that audience is bad.

Really? Have you played it? The way you alter difficulty in dark souls is by summoning help. Can't beat the gargoyles? Then summon Solaire and Lautrec and try again. It works very well.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Get rid of the multiple servers and host it on just one like Demon's Souls did. In the first game you could easily hook up with friends by messaging where your soul sign was. I made the most friends while playing Demon's Souls because of this. In Dark Souls you need to be lucky enough to be on the same server.

 

[lapan]

Get rid of the multiple servers and host it on just one like Demon's Souls did. In the first game you could easily hook up with friends by messaging where your soul sign was. I made the most friends while playing Demon's Souls because of this. In Dark Souls you need to be lucky enough to be on the same server.

Demon Souls was region locked though, so it probably needed less servers because of it. I think it's a fair tradeoff since i wouldnt be able to play with my american friends elsewise.

You can generally connect with friends if they replace their sign a few times until you are in the same lobby.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Assuming the game doesn't have one, a difficulty option. Saying your going to please an audience that likes hard games is good, forsaking the rest of gamers in general to please that audience is bad.

Really? Have you played it? The way you alter difficulty in dark souls is by summoning help. Can't beat the gargoyles? Then summon Solaire and Lautrec and try again. It works very well.

Okay. It sounds like you completely don't understand my point at all, but sure.

 

[lapan]

Less grindy combat.

It's probably one of the least grindy RPGs i ever played as you dont have to level up at all. It's perfectly possible to beat it on SL1.

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

Less being made for consoles.

The hell does that even mean?

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

Less being made for consoles.

The hell does that even mean?

It means not being made for consoles and then appallingly ported to the PC, especially when your customers seemly can fix the issue very rapidly:

http://www.co-optimus.com/article/8840/dark-souls-pc-resolution-bugged-fixed-by-modders-in-minutes.html

It took that guy at least a week to setup everything, it wasn't a quick fix.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

There's a good reason why FROM didn't originally release Dark Souls for PC. Demon's Souls was made for the PS3, so the controls and mechanics work best on console. They only released it for PC due to fan requests.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Get rid of the multiple servers and host it on just one like Demon's Souls did. In the first game you could easily hook up with friends by messaging where your soul sign was. I made the most friends while playing Demon's Souls because of this. In Dark Souls you need to be lucky enough to be on the same server.

Demon Souls was region locked though, so it probably needed less servers because of it. I think it's a fair tradeoff since i wouldnt be able to play with my american friends elsewise.

You can generally connect with friends if they replace their sign a few times until you are in the same lobby.

Demon's Souls wasn't region locked, I got my copy from the States (I'm from Holland) and I could play online with practically anyone in the world.

 

[Kaland]

Get rid of the multiple servers and host it on just one like Demon's Souls did. In the first game you could easily hook up with friends by messaging where your soul sign was. I made the most friends while playing Demon's Souls because of this. In Dark Souls you need to be lucky enough to be on the same server.

Demon Souls was region locked though, so it probably needed less servers because of it. I think it's a fair tradeoff since i wouldnt be able to play with my american friends elsewise.

You can generally connect with friends if they replace their sign a few times until you are in the same lobby.

Demon's Souls wasn't region locked, I got my copy from the States (I'm from Holland) and I could play online with practically anyone in the world.

The game wasn't region locked, but each version had its own servers restricted by version, so there was (at least) one server for Japan, one for EU and one for NA(USA etc.) People with the EU one or JP edition could not play with people from the states, unless one of them imported the other version. I think that was what he meant. EU server was pretty empty and vacant a few months ago, so I was considering getting the NA edition, but I decided I wouldn't bother. We never know when they'll finally shut down the servers.

To answer the question, I would change the following about Dark Souls:
Bed of Chaos: Redesign the whole fight.
Multiplayer P2P system: Make it have dedicated servers similarly to how it was with Demon's Souls.
Regular patches: Keep patching glitches and buffing bad weapons to make them viable in PVP.
Covenant balancing: give some more sentiment to join WotW covenant, let you offer multiple covenant items at once.

I would've mentioned "Add more TP bonfire locations" as well, but with PtD edition for PC they already did that. It'll prolly be patched in for the consoles with the release of the DLC.

That's the things I can come up with at the moment. I really love the game though, so all except the multiplayer P2P are minor complaints for me.

 

[unoleian]

I have some ideas on how to improve the game and add things like saves and pausing.

1. Make saves available only before white fog before a boss. That way a person can't just stop at a bridge and save their every step.

Kind of confused by this. Not sure what this practice accomplishes besides wasting time. What good is saving every step if a death will just send you back to the bonfire and immediately overwrite that save anyway? Does someone dump the game to dashboard/Alt+F4 out right as they're about to bite it and risk corrupting their game? Sounds like a riskier practice to me than simply playing in the intended manner.

If someone wants to go through that much hassle to save themselves a few minutes of play, more power to them, I guess?

ed-- This also seems to miss that the game saves your state after every kill and item acquisition anyway, so even if you dump to DB, it's still going to resume probably at the last enemy you killed, not where you told the game to save.

There's no re-loads in Dark Souls. Not without gaming the system in ways that weren't intended.

 

[lapan]

Get rid of the multiple servers and host it on just one like Demon's Souls did. In the first game you could easily hook up with friends by messaging where your soul sign was. I made the most friends while playing Demon's Souls because of this. In Dark Souls you need to be lucky enough to be on the same server.

Demon Souls was region locked though, so it probably needed less servers because of it. I think it's a fair tradeoff since i wouldnt be able to play with my american friends elsewise.

You can generally connect with friends if they replace their sign a few times until you are in the same lobby.

Demon's Souls wasn't region locked, I got my copy from the States (I'm from Holland) and I could play online with practically anyone in the world.

http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/online

Regions and Interoperability

There is no region locking for online play based on the region your account or the console are in. However, the three versions, the Asian, the Atlus North American and the Namco Bandai European release of the game use different servers. You can only connect for online play with individuals using the same version of the game as you.

 

[Jak23]

I wouldn't, it's perfect as is. At least on consoles anyway, I haven't played PC version.