Now THAT'S a Dragon Fight!!!

[Dethenger]

[snip]

Yeah, Kalameet's not that bad. A sturdy boss fight, to be sure, but hardest of the DLC? Artorias wrecked my shit more than Kalameet ever did, and I cut off Kalameet's tail with a Bandit's Knife. I think he was probably the easiest of the DLC.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

So the Skyrim's, Dragon Age's, Dark Souls' of the gaming world need to majorly step up their game, you guys aren't even in the same league.

I'd still take most boss fights in Dark Souls over Dragon's Dogma's. They are incredibly well balanced between feeling frustration and the "once more into the breach" excitement, they can still do you over if you get cocky, and they have extremely imaginative designs. Dragon's dogma plays it VERY safe in the fantasy department, with each monster straight out of a first edition D&D manual.


That said, this is in no way knocking down Dragon's Dogma and its brilliant idea to allow us to scale the beasts. They are toying with a lot of really freaking good ideas, and are showing just how fun an "organic" fight can be. But at the end of the day, you'll eventually level up enough that you can take on the dragon and it'll feel like a breeze, even though the game is indeed great. And Kalameet will still be around to kick my ass no matter how many goes.

I so tired of Tolkien fantasy as well but Dragon's Dogma did make the beasts look and move really great and the way you'd imagine them looking and moving. The reason I couldn't care less for most RPGs is because they kept using the same setting over and over again.

I believe DLC dungeon for Dragon's Dogma is a challenge at any level from what I've read. Kalameet is DLC as well.

Here you go:

Oh I see, you're basing this on hearsay again. Well, let me clarify things a bit:

- Pyromancy in Dark Souls enables things like soul level 1 challenge runs and is not broken. It's likely they integrated it into sorcery in order to be more strict on the actual power level of people compared to their player level.
I don't get your idea that a game needs to strictly follow some arbitrary "RPG Standards" you chose yourself in order to not be considered "broken". What's up with that?

- Whether some stats will still be considered useless hasn't been decided yet. Resistance was a sub-par stat, yes. It didn't affect the game much however.

- They fixed the few overpowered items a long time ago in patch 1.05. There was never anything wrong with the Wolf Ring. The Darkwood Grain Ring was nerfed considerably.

- Elemental weapons were also nerfed in 1.05. In addition, DLC bosses have huge magic resistance and split damage weapons barely work against them. This includes elemental weapons. Straight +15 weapons are the way to go now.

- Dark Souls actually has a stealth system of sorts. If an enemy hears an arrow, he will go to where the arrow hit, and whether an enemy aggros you is based on both sight and sound. If a group is spread far enough apart, it's possible to pull enemies individually. If the enemies are together, you will never be able to pull only one.
Circling for a backstab is a trick you can pull that gives the game a bit more depth. It isn't easy to pull off if you're not used to it and you won't usually see people do it on their first playthrough. It's not a "broken mechanic" by any stretch.

Any other concerns?

Lol, most of those are factual changes in Dark Souls 2 from the beta. They will be there when Dark Souls 2 is released. I'm sure Dark Souls 2 will not have a broken unlimited inventory either.

Again, LMAO, how is the ONE thing that allows for level 1 runs NOT BROKEN? They aren't arbitrary standards. It's just broken not to have a stat investment for one kind of magic when all other kinds of magic need a stat. Now if all magic had no stat requirement, that's fine.

So it took paid DLC to fix certain things in Dark Souls? That's just bloody brilliant.

I never once hit an enemy with an arrow in Dark Souls that pulled more than that one enemy to me. You're delusional thinking Dark Souls has a stealth system. Another person posted Dark Souls has stealth due to the invisibility ring.

They fixed Resistance, that doesn't mean other stats won't be useless but at least Resistance won't be.

All you have to do is circle strafe around an enemy for a backstab. How is that adding depth or difficulty in any way? It makes the game have less depth and be easier.

 

[Church185]

I love Seath the Scaleless, and everything about progressing through the Duke's archives to get to him. This dragon betrayed his brethren due to jealousy over being born without the Scales of Immortality. He is rewarded with a massive library where he becomes a powerful magic user and drives himself insane with the knowledge contained within. His body becomes disfigured and crystalline, and he begins kidnapping maidens from Lordan so that he can experiment with his crystal magic. His fight is a little different than others that you have encountered up to this point in the game. He starts out impervious to damage, though that can be changed with methods I won't divulge here (for anyone playing through the game blind) and uses roomwide AOE abilities that can inflict you with curse. If your curse meter fills up, you instantly die regardless of how much health you had left and when you respawn your health is capped at half of it's previous maximum. Probably one of my favorite dragon's in video games.

Spoiler: he looks pretty cool too

 

[Storm Dragon]

Okay, that was a lot of words.

The Kalameet fight, as with all fights in Dark Souls, is very much a fight where you have to "be there" to fully experience. Keep in mind that the video you see is likely the result of dozens of failed tries. There is a certain insecurity to each fight as one wrong move will put you one step closer to defeat. The player gets hit 3 times in the Kalameet fight, and I can tell you what the glowing aura that activates on the 3rd hit means - it means he'll be dead in one more hit.

I can assure you that while the fights may not be "epic" to watch and may not have flashy animations that signal the various stages, the psychological dread and pressure you feel as you get the boss closer and closer to death more than makes up for the feel of an empty but kickass kill sequence. During my first run through that game I almost instinctively panicked and started swinging wildly as the bosses' deaths were a few hits away, something which killed me more than it helped me finish the fight. Bosses in Dark Souls are much like raid bosses in World of Warcraft - seemingly unbreakable walls that you must plow through with your bare fists. Repeated attempts steel you and give the fight a much more personal feel - you learn the boss's name, his attacks, his patterns, his weaknesses. He stops being just another corpse in your wake and becomes a worthy adversary that will keep you up at night trying to defeat. It's a feeling like no other that I haven't seen replicated in many games, who usually shy away from making the boss something you can't easily defeat on your first try.

I must say, that doesn't seem very appealing to me. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, and yeah, lots of video game bosses these days are too easy. But from the way you describe them here and that video, the bosses of Dark Souls seem to test your endurance more than anything else, and that just doesn't sound like my idea of fun. You compare these fights to "seemingly unbreakable walls that you must plow through with your bare fists", when my preferred approach would be to find some other way around the wall. I can understand how you and many others can enjoy the game, but it just doesn't seem like my cup of tea.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

DD has a great combat system. It's too bad that the rest of the game is so generic and muddy (colour-wise) though. Otherwise it would have been my favourite game of the year.

I *think* Dark Arisen corrects the muddiness and some of the rpg features. Not sure what you mean about generic, but it's a great game for sure.

To me, the most generic thing about DD is the character designs, and how they're all from fantasy rule book 101. Like I said in the post above, they could all have come from a first edition D&D rulebook. Your goblin; your bigger orc; your zombie; a griffon; a Chimera, et all. Fun to play, no doubt, and very fun to fight, but far from original in their design.

The Cockatrice is from D&D?? I've never seen one of those before. But sure, the "Evil Eye" is totally a Beholder.
I think they didn't do too much in the area of creature creation because they wanted to focus on combat, which is an area that too many rpgs fall flat in. Sure you get options, spells, characters, big open worlds, but I think the combat separates this from many other games like it. Given what you've said, it says alot about DD that it's as good even with the same D&D type enemies.

I even like the pawns...but I haven't had a crack at Dark Arisen yet. I've heard the pawns get owned in the update.

 

[major_chaos]

- Pyromancy in Dark Souls enables things like soul level 1 challenge runs and is not broken.

Pyromancy was broken because it was one of several things that trolls used to one shot noobs in the parish. Your actual power level needs to actully have something to do with your soul level for the horrible PvP to even pretend its anything more than a ganker's wet dream.

Circling for a backstab is a trick you can pull that gives the game a bit more depth. It isn't easy to pull off if you're not used to it and you won't usually see people do it on their first playthrough.

I...you... what? It literally took me significantly longer to learn to fight even the most worthless zombie face to face without losing half my health than it took for me to be able to consistently backstab everything.

OT: ya know I have had DDA on my shelf since shortly after it came out, maybe this thread will finally get me to play it. I could certainly use something to hold me over till X: rebirth comes out on friday.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Oh I'm pretty sure it will still have an unrestricted inventory. Because it's one of the things that was a welcome change from Demon's Souls and they're not likely to bring it back. By the way, we have yet to see all of the items in the game, and the beta features neither of the upgrade paths. The only sure things you can take from the beta as far as your ideas are concerned are the changes to Resistance, the changes to pyromancy and the fact that the stat descriptions say they increase various elemental damage.

It's not the "one" thing that allows for level 1 runs. It's one of the things that makes them viable challenge runs and not impossible tedium-fests. Thus giving the game replayability. And depth. With me so far?
Second, it may not have a stat investment, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an investment. In order to make it more powerful, you use the same currency stats use. Why is this broken, again? You keep using that word, but I'm really not sure it means what you think it means.

The update was free. The DLC just had the content. The PC version has no DLC, it comes packed with it. There have been a few more updates since.

I take it you've never used the spells Hidden Body, Hush or the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring. Yet you're calling me delusional while having little clue what these are and how they work. Surely you must know what you're talking about.
As for pulling more than one enemy: it's true that it happens a lot more often in the DLC than in the vanilla game. But why does it have to be a bad thing, again? Most of the time the location where you fight and the traps in your way will give you enough of a headache, and pulling enemies one by one is a tried and tested strategy.

All you're doing is circling around an enemy, lowering your shield thus exposing yourself, and hitting attack at the right moment. If you're off by a few degrees, you whiff. THAT is how it adds depth.

The unlimited inventory was obviously a design flaw in the game as why do you have "stash" to put things if you can carry everything?

If you have your pyromancy flame leveled up, you're not really level 1 are? Technically you are but... What's the point of these level 1 runs. It just sounds like you'll have good damage with your fire magic and one hit will drop you because of your health. Level up Int only, use sorcery, and it will be the same damn thing.

Dark Souls does not have a stealth mechanic.

I'm talking about circle strafing around an enemy while locked-on with your shield up and backstabbing. That's how dumb the AI is.

I must say, that doesn't seem very appealing to me. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, and yeah, lots of video game bosses these days are too easy. But from the way you describe them here and that video, the bosses of Dark Souls seem to test your endurance more than anything else, and that just doesn't sound like my idea of fun. You compare these fights to "seemingly unbreakable walls that you must plow through with your bare fists", when my preferred approach would be to find some other way around the wall. I can understand how you and many others can enjoy the game, but it just doesn't seem like my cup of tea.

But I understand if you play games more for recreation and less for competition. Just, y'know, if you ever get the idea to try it out: the walls are in fact very breakable.

Wow, he wasn't even talking about competitive gaming. Secondly, Dark Souls PvP is horrible because of lag and the how imbalanced the game is. You can't have a good competitive game of any kind if it isn't balanced.

Pyromancy was broken because it was one of several things that trolls used to one shot noobs in the parish.

Was it really necessary to fuel the guy's crappy arguments with an out of context correction that he'll now take as The Word and use it as the basis for everything I have to say regarding pyromancy and his stupid arbitrary standards for how RPGs "should be"? I hope you're happy.

You have no clue on how to balance a game. It doesn't even have anything to do with RPGs (it's not some standard, just common sense), it applies to any game. There has to be a give and take to everything. Pyromancy is all give with no take.

 

[infinity_turtles]

If you have your pyromancy flame leveled up, you're not really level 1 are? Technically you are but... What's the point of these level 1 runs. It just sounds like you'll have good damage with your fire magic and one hit will drop you because of your health.

No, you'll have "okay-ish" damage versus things that aren't fire resistant. Limited attunement slots also mean that you'll need to manage casts. Pyromancy is actually a pretty big investment that for most players on a non-SL1 run requires farming to both manage equipment, stats, and pyromancy. There are a couple buffs/debuffs it gets access too that are useful without the big investment, but aside from that it's little more than a glorified bow for most characters.(Unless you're keeping SL down for PvP, really need to manage your weight, or want those buffs you get more out of investing in a bow with the amount of souls it takes to buy the useful pyromancies and nab some attunement slots)

Level up Int only, use sorcery, and it will be the same damn thing.

Nope. Not even close. Sorcery is powerful. It scales crazy well. Pyromancy falls off way quicker. Also there are more bosses and enemies resistant to fire.

 

[Cybylt]

Honestly I have nothing to really contribute to this discussion other than Grigori is probably the best dragon in video games to date.

Just look at that smug bastard, he's fully aware of it.

snip

The glowy bit on Kalameet IS his eye. But yeah pretty spot on. Kalameet's built up as the biggest badass of the entire race of big badass immortal dragons, but he's smaller and thinner than the baby one you find at Ash Lake.

Also, and I may be in the minority here, but Demon's Souls bosses were far better overall than Dark Souls which are largely slugfests. In Demon's every boss was more like a puzzle to be solved, and also it can kill you in two or three hits. Even the slugfest bosses of it (Phalanx, Old Hero, Flamelurker) had tricks to them like the Old Hero was blind and hunted you down by sound, so you could hide your footsteps by wearing the Thief's Ring making him go from this aggressive and agile monster into him blindly walking the hall, occasionally slicing between pillars.

Flamelurker didn't really have such tricks to him, sadly, other than the fact that if you pumped your flame resistance with certain gear you could halve his damage and effectively negate his AoE bursts.

 

[Storm Dragon]

One last thing: While not from a video game, I thought this picture was too awesome to not share it with you guys. I won't say anything more about it, because it really speaks for itself.

Spoiler: Ancalagon the Black, mightiest of all his kind ever to live in Middle Earth

Ancalagon the Black, mightiest of all his kind ever to live in Middle Earth

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

- The Bottomless Box is a follow-up from the stash in Demon's Souls and is very useful to unclutter your inventory.

- They're called challenge runs because they are challenge runs. If you can't understand the concept maybe you shouldn't pretend to know things.

- And yet the concept of being less visible and making less noise exists within the game and can be used to great effect. Go ahead, tell me how I'm wrong. Maybe give some examples too.

- You can't backstab if your shield's up. Are you sure you even played the game?

- Yes please make no effort to understand a damn thing I'm saying and attack my semantics instead. Secondly, as horrible as it is, the pvp scene is active even today. 2 years after launch.

The horrible pvp scene. That is very horrible. Because you say so. [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dark+souls+pvp&sm=3]

- Considering how many times I've proven you wrong in this thread, you have no freakin' right to utter those words.
The low-level ganking problem is a problem with the pvp system and how it fails to take into account weapon upgrades and pyromancy level. It takes 340,500 souls to fully upgrade all 21 levels of the Pyromancy Flame. That's 55 levels from soul level 1. And this is not counting the multiple spells you can get for it, the most powerful usually costing between 20.000 and 40.000 souls.

But of course you knew that because you are the game balancer and you like to document yourself before speaking out on game balance issues oh wait

- I never used the bottomless box and my inventory was just fine. When I faced Seath and got cursed, I merely scrolled threw my whole inventory to find the best curse resistant stuff, it was relatively simple as all the armor/clothes are arranged by set. It's pretty bad for a game to allow you to carry everything because you can constantly swap out stuff to be optimized for every encounter if you want. There is a reason every other RPG has an inventory limit, it's not just because it's tradition or something. Managing your resources from point A to point B should be part of the game, especially Dark Souls, which has that survival aspect to it that most games don't have. I'm very confident Dark Souls 2 will have an inventory limit.

- There's a difference between challenge runs and runs that are something you know you and everyone can do but nobody does just because it's so fucking tedious. Speed runs on Mirror's Edge are a great challenge to test your skill. Just limiting yourself to play through the game in a tedious fashion is just dumb to me. I'm sure Bayonetta can be beaten just using guns, that's not a test of skill, it's just limiting yourself for no reason whereas getting platinums on NSIC for every fight is fucking skill. Playing God Hard on Vanquish is no doubt hard but it's something I know I could do (besides for maybe the double bogeys at the end) but the fact that your abilities are so limited makes it not fun, you have to play so campy and it basically just devolves into whack-a-mole.

- The fact that the game requires items for stealth means it doesn't have stealth. Would Metal Gear Solid be considered a stealth game if the only way to use stealth was getting the stealth camouflage (invisibility cloak)? Hell no. Do you need items in Skyrim or Fallout for stealth? Nope.

- I can't believe I have to explain step-by-step. You can circle strafe an enemy with your shield up all the way to his back and backstab them, obviously lowering your shield before doing so. The enemy AI is that dumb. That adds depth and difficulty to the game how?

- Almost every online game is still active 2 years down the line. That doesn't prove that it's good, it just proves people play it.

- I don't care how many souls it cost (since you can get an unlimited amount). What matters is that your character is getting better without increasing your level. PvP is played at certain levels so you can build say a level 50 character that is more powerful than another level 50 character because pyromancy doesn't cost any stats. That will be changed for very obvious balance reasons in Dark Souls 2.

If you have your pyromancy flame leveled up, you're not really level 1 are? Technically you are but... What's the point of these level 1 runs. It just sounds like you'll have good damage with your fire magic and one hit will drop you because of your health.

No, you'll have "okay-ish" damage versus things that aren't fire resistant. Limited attunement slots also mean that you'll need to manage casts. Pyromancy is actually a pretty big investment that for most players on a non-SL1 run requires farming to both manage equipment, stats, and pyromancy. There are a couple buffs/debuffs it gets access too that are useful without the big investment, but aside from that it's little more than a glorified bow for most characters.(Unless you're keeping SL down for PvP, really need to manage your weight, or want those buffs you get more out of investing in a bow with the amount of souls it takes to buy the useful pyromancies and nab some attunement slots)

Level up Int only, use sorcery, and it will be the same damn thing.

Nope. Not even close. Sorcery is powerful. It scales crazy well. Pyromancy falls off way quicker. Also there are more bosses and enemies resistant to fire.

Ah, ok. Still you are kinda finding a loophole for those level 1 runs by being able to level pyromancy though. Everything else requires stat investment. Most good weapons require at least a certain stat to just use not even considering you need to level the stat to up your damage.

Also, and I may be in the minority here, but Demon's Souls bosses were far better overall than Dark Souls which are largely slugfests. In Demon's every boss was more like a puzzle to be solved, and also it can kill you in two or three hits. Even the slugfest bosses of it (Phalanx, Old Hero, Flamelurker) had tricks to them like the Old Hero was blind and hunted you down by sound, so you could hide your footsteps by wearing the Thief's Ring making him go from this aggressive and agile monster into him blindly walking the hall, occasionally slicing between pillars.

I was playing Dark Souls and my friend was playing Demon's Souls at the same time. He would talk about those boss battles in Demon's Souls that sounded awesome and I'd always say something along the lines of "I hope the Dark Souls' bosses get better because they are nothing but enemies with more HP really" and I never got a boss like that in Dark Souls. I really do want to fight those bosses in Demon's Souls but I really have no interest in playing through all the other parts of the game.

 

[ERaptor]

Never thought id say this, but i agree with Phoenix that the PVP in Dark Souls can be unbalanced, at least early on. Its absolutely possible to gather equip that just WRECKS Newbies without even upping one level. You just need to know where to get it. Its definetly better later tough, and high-level PVP Battles in Dark Souls can be really exciting and is entirely skillbased. The only real thing that allways bothered me was the fact that invaders do not get attacked by the Monsters of the World they stand in. It enabled a lot of really cheap kills.

Other than that:

I don't get your idea that a game needs to strictly follow some arbitrary "RPG Standards" you chose yourself in order to not be considered "broken". What's up with that?

I have to agree with that.

There is a reason every other RPG has an inventory limit, it's not just because it's tradition or something. Managing your resources from point A to point B should be part of the game, especially Dark Souls, which has that survival aspect to it that most games don't have. I'm very confident Dark Souls 2 will have an inventory limit.

This being an example. Firstly, not every RPG has inventory limits. And secondly, arguing that an inventory limit automatically goes along with "ressource management" is bullsh*t. Its absolutely possible to push the weightlimit in most RPG's to a point where your PC has 3 different armor sets and 6 different weapons with him at all times. Funny enough, in a lot of RPG's Potions and Scrolls do not have a weight at all, enabling you to just jug healt potions until the Enemy drops dead.

And if we're talking about abusing game mechanics to your advantage, did you know that you can easily cheese your way trough almost any fight in Dragon's Dogma, by standing on a ledge/ rock or abusing aggro range? Dragons can be easily kited by shooting them with arrows from afar, if done from a certain distance the Dragon will use maybe one breath attack (which wont hit you, because of the distance) and then loose interest and turn around.

What im trying to say is, if we apply your "X is broken because i can abuse it"-logic, i can think of almost no RPG that can not be cheated by a variety of means. IF you need to establish arbitary standards, please apply them to every game, and not just the ones you dont like.

An invetory limit in Dark Souls would've just been a tedium. You'd enter an area "Oh they're using poison?" and then you'd have to walk back all the way to your stash to change to your anti poison-gear and then come back. Thats not a challenge, and its not punishing your for your mistakes (Because you cant know what awaits you in an area before you enter it), so it wouldnt fit the feeling the game is going for. And there is still the matter of upgrading gear. A fully upgraded armor may not have the specific resistance, but has a lot better protection. And while its certainly cool that the giant Doomspider cant poison you, she wont have a problem chewing your arms and legs off because you decided to remove your armor in favor of a Robe. The fact that you can change gear on the run isnt "broken" at all, it just allows the Player to adapt his Playstyle.