WorstUsernameEver
Member
Eh Dark Souls definitely has its moments.
That's why I like it though.
His/her fault for not appraising the environment more carefully!
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Dark Souls PC trailer [Matchmaking, new bosses, enemies, NPCs, weapons, armor, areas]
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His/her fault for not appraising the environment more carefully!
The Xtortionist
Member
lol situational awareness
edit - walking around with low health too : /
Good thing those rock guys are right next to a bonfire.
Challenge is not the only thing making Dark Souls interesting (otherwise it would be a shit game) so you can find those other aspects interesting, while despising the difficulty level of the game.
I don't get the problem anyway, he's not forcing anyone to cheat their game.
What am i reading?
The Xtortionist
Member
I have a long-winded "Why Demon's/Dark Souls aren't as hard as people make them out to be" topic idea in my head but really don't feel like putting it into words. Bottom line is, if you play carefully, observe your surrounding, and read the wiki to gain a through understanding of the combat mechanics (especially backstabs), the game's not rough at all. You will still die, but not so frequently for the most part and the bonfires (checkpoints) and shortcuts are placed such that you'll rarely have to spend more than 1-3 minutes getting back to where you were. Anyone who feels they can be patient and take their time with a game should not be discouraged by the supposed "difficulty".
That's the keypoint, if you rage you lose.
Even if you die in a new zone, you can benefit from the knowledge you got to make the next run easier. It's just a matter of knowing the levels layout, the ennemy placement and how to take them out. Most of the time it's pretty straigthforward. You really only need to bear with it in the harder places like the swamp at the bottom of Blighttown, those archers in Anor Londo, Sen's Fortress and so on...
I'm pretty far from the level of the most hardcore guys here, I bailed out of Demon's Souls when I had to cross 5-1 but I manned up and plowed through Blighttown and almost all of the rest of the game. You guys can do it.
I think there has been talk of DLC being possible for this game right after it came out but for some reason I'd prefer a 40$ disk new release over a 15-20$ DLC... Hopefully we'll get news aroung christmas. Hopefully I'll be knee deep in NG+ by then!
Eh Dark Souls definitely has its moments.
That's why I like it though.
Lol where is this from?
Cloudius12
Member
The gif is a spoiler for anyone that hasn't played it. Just sayin.
Glass Rebel
Member
Reminds me of that 4chan pic of someone saying that "fun" is a term people throw around when they can't explain why a game is good :lol
the trailer in the OP spoils a hell of a lot more than that 2 second gif, just sayin.
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Anyway, Dark Souls is not that punishing, compared to a lot of other games (especially 8/16 bit era) i think the most annoying thing, is having to redo a long dungeon, with its slow and methodical pace, if you die at a Boss (though generally, there are works around this, such as bonefires and shortcuts).
That's the worst thing i can think of, yet there are some things that could be considered asshole-ish (
the dragon roasting you on the bridge, the archers in Anor Londo, a few spots in Sen's Fortress
Still, since Ninja Dog has been mentioned, the first time i played Ninja Gaiden(3d) i got so mad (at Alma) that i sold it the day after.
I later bought NGBlack, cause i had heard about the Ninja Dog mode, finished it in NDog mode, then proceeded to complete it at normal, and played NG2 and NG2sigma aswell.
This to say that a softer learning curve helped me get into the game, understanding its mechanics, while not bothering anybody else (ninja dog was not forced on you), so it's not necessarily a bad thing.
Lost Fragment
Obsessed with 4chan
I imagine if someone gets to that point in the game, they did so because they've already learned to assume that every shadow hides a big-ass monster that's waiting to smash their head in with a giant bolder.
Cloudius12
Member
I assume some pc players want to go in blind.
Lost Fragment
Obsessed with 4chan
If they're that completely anal about "spoilers" then they probably shouldn't be reading this thread.
A quote from Ian Bogost in Unit Operations:
"Videogames are thus subject to two equally strong forces opposing their use as tools for social commentary, social change, or other more "revolutionary" matters. On the one hand, the anthropological history of games has set the precedent for their separation from the material world. On the other hand, videogames inherit a mass-market entertainment culture whose primary purpose is the production of low-reflection, high-gloss entertainment.
Even earnest attempts by game critics and developers to overturn this received conception of videogames can be shown to reinforce rather than challenge the status quo. Raph Koster, Sony Online Entertainment Chief Creative Officer and lead designer of popular massively multiplayer online games Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, offered a recent such effort, a unique book of cartoon sketches and semi-aphoristic insights called A Theory of Fun for Game Design. The book's title already implies Koster's adoption of "fun" as a yardstick for games, but, in an attempt fraught with hazard, he tries to recuperate the term for broader purposes than the production of anonymous desire.
In his attempt to preserve "fun" at the center of the experience of games, Koster musters loose principles from cognitive science; fun, he argues, is the sensation of "our brains feeling good." Koster opposes critiques of fun like Postman's, arguing that we "migrate" fun into contexts. In particular, the primary kind of fun that games produce comes from mystery of a task. In their representational form, what I call unit operations Koster calls "abstract models of reality." For Koster, fun is very nearly a pedagogical category, "the feedback the brain gives us when we are absorbing patterns for learning purposes."
[...]
Unfortunately, Koster's reliance on fun as a first principle for games forces him into a corner. On the one hand, he makes a convincing call for games that fulfill goals beyond mere entertainment. This call is especially constructive given Koster's relative celebrity in the game design community. On the other hand, he argues that the effect games produce in their players--all games, and all players--is "fun." This reliance on a single output for games contradicts his earlier, apparently reproachful observation that a singular expressive goal limits the medium. The reliance on fun poses a conceptual problem for Koster, who must retrofit the revolutionary potential of games to mate properly with the concept of fun that serves as his engine. [...] Koster is hard pressed to avoid the rhetoric of fun as the superficial conveyance of capital so often associated with the entertainment industry, the goal that Benjamin foresees and Postman critiques.
[...]
Koster's insistence on grouping meaningful responses of any kind under the rubric of "fun" is simply perverse."
Anyway, that's just how I tend to think of what happens when people believe that everything in a game has to be "fun."
"Fun" IS a very useless word when it comes to explaining why a game is good. It's probably as vague as praise can get, and saying that a game is fun is pretty much the same as saying that a game is good.
I can't blame people for seeing it as lazy. I do.
Dark Souls, obviously.
I may be autistic? I typically try to describe why things are good (or bad) versus simply calling them fun.
ooooBed of Chaos says hi
Not gonna go into semantics, since English is not my mother language, but i guess he's talking about the chase for the "fun", resulting in games being completely chained in the same schematics.
Personally, i think that mentality (Koster's) is only the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to why videogames are so basic and irrelevant as an artform, but i fear the discussion would go too far off topic.
It's a very specific use of the word fun, cause i would define "fun" the sensation i feel when i have to walk slowly with my shield up in the dungeons of Dark Souls.
As i would define fun watching a good, mindless horror film.
As i would define fun watching a comedy.
As i would define fun, playing Mario Party.
I would not define "fun" watching a gut wrenching, poignant drama or a depressing (though beautiful) documentary.
So though i wouldn't define everything that gives me pleasure (and watching something depressing can cause pleasure) fun, i would most definitely define Dark Souls as fun, overall, i don't think it strays that much from the tropes videogames are known for (if at all).
Its punishing nature is ultimately aimed at providing fun, in the end; so much so, that i think a game that sacrificed this chase of fun for some kind of social relevancy or artistic depth, would probably be labeled (rightfully so or not) as some boring pretentious crap, by the same people who may have enjoyed DkS very much.
That is to say, Dark Souls undoubtly chose a different way to entertain the player, but it hasn't strayed off of chasing "fun", for any kind of social relevancy or artistic depth.
Glass Rebel
Member
Yes, it's useless in the same way writing "Hamlet is exciting" in a literary paper would be. It's entirely subjective and pertains to specific situations that an individual experiences. I can see that. The same way though, terms like challenging, engaging or immersive might be used to describe something someone else might perceive as frustrating, pretentious etc. as we can see in this very thread. They're slightly more specific but still vague and extremely dependant on the player.
On the other hand I don't think we have to hold forum posts to such a high standard of writing. Gvaz explained his stance and I don't see why fun should be singled out as a word people shouldn't use when discussing games.
It's been shown that there is such a thing as thinking too much and that gut reactions (aka "fun") can lead to better consumer preferences than introspection, at least by people who aren't experts. See this paper, for example.
How does one define what consumer preferences are "better?" The idea that less thinking leads to better results is, while likely encouraging for people who take advantage of others (politicians, salespeople, etc.), that should be terrifying for consumers.
I don't think people should stop using the word fun either, but I do think they should do some thinking and be able to be descriptive about why they're having fun. I mean, we have Twitter now for short witticisms.
PetriP-TNT
Member
There's no Dark Souls OT still breathing that I know of so I'll use this thread to say :
Fuck Tomb Of Giants, Fuck Nito!
At least I found the bonefire near Patches, I missed it for longer than I'll care to admit
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The DkS OT is in Community Forum and it's very active
Read the paper to see: they used a bunch of taste experts' opinions.
You're correct, people can be influenced and manipulated to believe anything. It's not just an idea though, as the study shows. It's what fancier writers than me would call the "human condition".
Going by gut reactions is not really a problem when it comes to games, though. Where it does become a problem is in politics, etc.
@Cyrano: Well, i remember from my Forbidden Siren days, loving the game, but hating its challenge.
I remember that doing a level the first time was amazing, scary, engaging yadda yadda.. at the 3rd or 4th time, it was just a mechanical and methodical act, deprived of any atmosphere, and very dull (thus, only a frustrating experience).
To a degree, i think Dark Souls can have the same effect, when you have to go through Tomb of the Giants for the Xth time, just for another shot at the boss; what was a cool, mysterious dungeon, becomes a "wire framed"scheme to remember, with a pattern of methodical actions to repeat mindlessly, just to get on with the good part (namely, the part you haven't seen already).
Different players will feel very different about it, but i can understand such point of view (having experienced it with Forbidden Siren).
@wutwutwut: Unless i'm reading that wrong, they are implying that bad decisions come from not enough analysis, or rather, analysis with faulty parameters.
They take in good consideration the experts' opinion, but said experts are not alien beings, they are humans with a deeper capacity of analysis(due to a deeper knowledge on the subject), correct? So in the end the best possible choice is done with the deepest array of knowledge at your disposal and a thoughtful use of it for your analysis.
I remember that doing a level the first time was amazing, scary, engaging yadda yadda.. at the 3rd or 4th time, it was just a mechanical and methodical act, deprived of any atmosphere, and very dull (thus, only a frustrating experience).
To a degree, i think Dark Souls can have the same effect, when you have to go through Tomb of the Giants for the Xth time, just for another shot at the boss; what was a cool, mysterious dungeon, becomes a "wire framed"scheme to remember, with a pattern of methodical actions to repeat mindlessly, just to get on with the good part (namely, the part you haven't seen already).
Different players will feel very different about it, but i can understand such point of view (having experienced it with Forbidden Siren).
@wutwutwut: Unless i'm reading that wrong, they are implying that bad decisions come from not enough analysis, or rather, analysis with faulty parameters.
They take in good consideration the experts' opinion, but said experts are not alien beings, they are humans with a deeper capacity of analysis(due to a deeper knowledge on the subject), correct? So in the end the best possible choice is done with the deepest array of knowledge at your disposal and a thoughtful use of it for your analysis.
I think what's rather interesting is that the decisions were not really a) hard decisions and b) were not really decisions that required much thinking on. In other words, they were not decisions whose thought had real consequences. A decision about which jam tastes better is kind of a poor metric to use against a decision such as "Which college will I go to?" The scope and importance of the questions are hugely different.
Also, what's interesting about Franklin's decision process is that he did it over a number of days, and continued until he could no longer think about any other pros or cons. These examiners asked questions which could be quickly evaluated, not ones which required much rumination. I think that this is the primary problem I see with this analysis. It would be interesting to see more analysis on long-term decisions (such as, "Should I have a baby right now, or wait?" "When do I want to get married?" "Do I want to get married?" "Can I afford to get married?") I think these questions are ones that require considerably more thought than jam, and that the scenario is simply not one that anyone would give much thought to, other than food experts (whose job it is to give them a great deal of thought).
This is just my critique though.
Sure, but patterns are something that are important in videogames, and even more important in design. Architecture is almost entirely about patterns, and without them we simply wouldn't have many of the modern marvels that dot our landscape today. If there's something that gives me chills in Dark Souls, it's about how considered the architecture and design of the game is, and going through it multiple times really leaves a new impression on me as I re-explore the paths to my deaths.
Right, though that brings us to another fallacy, which is that people think they're experts when they're actually notUrbanRats said:
I know I'm not an expert at judging video games, so I try to go by my gut reaction rather than reason things out.
edit: as an example, when I made my top 10 list last year I wrote it down without thinking about it and never edited it, except (I think) to add a game I played afterwards and thought deserved to be on the list.
Right, and "which game is better" is surely closer in consequences to "which jam tastes better" than "which college will I go to".
For most people. I can see your argument though. Still, it's not as though this isn't true for other media, despite the level of reverence for these media being considerably different. This likely says something about the cultural value of videogames (real or perceived) in everyday life. It's a bit depressing that videogames are currently the biggest entertainment industry economically, yet culturally they are still largely seen as void.
Anyway, I thank you all for the discussion, and wish you a good night/morning... ugh. Gotta get over this insomnia.
The fact that the sides
are gone once you reach them once makes this fight kinda fair. If you had to do all of the fight in one go it would be brutal and hard as hell but like that it´s not unfair at all
Rabbit Clock
Banned
People had trouble with Bed of Chaos? Never had trouble with it ever. I don't even get how you can die in that fight.
The sweeps and stabs it makes have no discernable pattern (not like you have time to watch), and they almost always lead to instant death, plus almost instanteous area of effect attacks. It's unfair, and annoying.
Lucky you.
There's a huge tree sweeping the ground and the ground COLLAPSES under your feet.
I beat Four Kings on my first try but I still can tell that it could be a problem for some.
offscreen monsters rarely sneak up on you - they tend to have limited visibility so they'll only see you if you can see them. So if you clear areas as you go, you don't need to worry too much about being caught unawares. Of course if you're going through a door or doorway you should be checking blind spots
Rabbit Clock
Banned
You just have to be fast to beat the Bed of Chaos but it's true that everyone has a fight they suck at.. Mine is Four Kings.
Either is fine with me - though if it is on Disc then I hope it has a different set of trophies so I can platinum it again - My 1 DaS Plat is a bit lonely next to my 3 DeS plats
Patterns as intended in my post are strictly gameplay and gamedesign patterns, of course, though it reflects on what each player can get out of a game.
One player can enjoy exploring the depths of the game design (and its patterns) while another may be in for the sole atmosphere and the more superficial layer of it, so when that layer fades, nothing is keeping its interest anymore.
Now Siren didn't have that deep of a gameplay, it was frustrating more because of its clunkyness (also i am not a skillful player in general
) but as soon as the illusion of "me being there" faded (through having to replay the same exact bit 5 or 6 times, in a very slow and methodical pace) the bones were exposed, and very little kept me engaged at that point.Again, it goes back to what i said to Lost Fragment: Dark Souls has more than the challenge to go for, and someone could easily be interested in the art, the game world, the feel of the gameplay (on a superficial level) but find no enjoyment in anything deeper than that.
Just as someone might enjoy the cinematography of a Tarkovskij film, but not wanting get into its deeper layers that much, different strokes for different folks.
Whether someone is an "expert" (a very loose term, that is) or not, is difficlt to determine, but through analysis, you can certainly part away badly designed games from greatly designed ones, with a reasonable accuracy.Right, though that brings us to another fallacy, which is that people think they're experts when they're actually not
I know I'm not an expert at judging video games, so I try to go by my gut reaction rather than reason things out.
edit: as an example, when I made my top 10 list last year I wrote it down without thinking about it and never edited it, except (I think) to add a game I played afterwards and thought deserved to be on the list.
Now in this instance, i think you're bound to follow the "gut feeling" since you can't force yourself to enjoy a game you find unenjoyable, though an analysis can show you those same elements under a different light AND you might find a new enjoyment, for that very reason.
That's the very definition of when you read stuff like "you're playing it wrong".
Although i think it's not wise to force yourself to play something you hate, just because it's objectively well designed; i also think that a new reading, can turn something into an enjoyable experience.
(i hated the Saint's Row series, until i looked it from another perspective, for example).
Auto_aim1
MeisaMcCaffrey
I'm kinda glad that you don't really have to fight them in that terrible swamp. I mean, considering it was running at 10 fps in that area, it was a nightmare to take them on.
Aaronology
Member
There are enough instances of this being untrue that it's not advice I would at all play by. The poison dart snipers in particular come to mind... Horribly designed enemy in one of the worst designed areas of any game I've ever played.offscreen monsters rarely sneak up on you - they tend to have limited visibility so they'll only see you if you can see them. So if you clear areas as you go, you don't need to worry too much about being caught unawares. Of course if you're going through a door or doorway you should be checking blind spots
brotkasten
Member
Is it confirmed that this port isn't locked at 30 fps?
No? Who told you that, /v/?
Eh Dark Souls definitely has its moments.
That's why I like it though.
This is the crap I'm talking about. Woops you have to start over! No thanks.
brotkasten
Member
Just a question. I don't want this to be a shitty port.
Prophet Steve
Member
Then he should have paid attention.
AcceptableGhost
Member
He was strolling around with low health and did not look around at all, why does he deserve to pass that scenario?
Are you going to edit the FOV to like 3000 so you don't have to turn the camera too? Is turning the camera to look around too much for people these days?
If you pay attention instead of being careless then you won't end up in those situations.
This. I actually think the original Castlevania is a harder game than the Souls titles. And the people who never played that don't tend to speak of that game in fear like the Souls series.
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