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[Taruranto]

There is no resource management is Bloodborne. BB is Dark Souls only that every time you get stuck you spent 30 minutes farming vials in Central Yharnam's brige. If you want to call that "resource management", then it's piss poor resource management.

Telling people to "git gud" so they don't waste vials doesn't mean anything because people need to play the game to "git gud". Even if you fight a boss over and over without using vials at some point you'll want to attempt it using your vials and if you still don't succeeded you are back to Central Yharnam farming vials. Making the vials like the Estoc wouldn't change anything other than the fact that people wouldn't need to go back at Central Yharnam to farm low-level mobs every time they get stuck.

 

[Fancy Clown]

Yea it's pretty annoying tbh. It obviously gets moreanagable the better you get, and spending your spare blood echoes on vials also helps a lot, but it's still not a good system. I think BB is easily the best of the games, but the Souls games definitely have some quality of life improvements that are baffelingly absent here.

 

[Primethius]

The second one is a flaw but I don't agree with the first. Especially since I never farmed for Estus on the bridge past Father G. There's so many places that drop Vials, often leading up to the boss.

And later on in the game, you can buy them en masse since your so stacked on souls, especially if your doing chalice dungeons.

 

[Eldainorn]

That is also my main and only con in this game. I love Souls games but I just stopped playing this since I had to farm the vials. Anyway, I am thinking about going back to it soon, it is an awesome game despite this mishap.

 

[Kill3r7]

Farming vials was an issue initially when you could only store 99 of them. Now it is not that big deal, merely a minor annoyance. I completely agree about number 2.

 

[FrontalMonk]

I didn't love the blood vial system, and I think estus was a more elegant solution, but I definitely think the way they did death penalties in DeS and DaS2 was awful. DaS1 was much better about penalizing you for death but not too harshly. We've all had that moment where we lost a bunch of souls and that sucked but it wasn't like DaS2 where each subsequent run you made had you progessively less likely to progress just by virtue of not having enough life. I haven't played DaS3 so I don't know how they work it.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

This was a really controversial idea in the OT back when it came out, so bear with me, but you can just buy them. In fact you can buy a lot of them and put them in the box and if memory serves it'll automatically refill it from the box. I prefer it, but I always hated the Estus system when they introduced it.

And it's not really a grinding game despite how everyone tries to play it, so that's probably why it's not designed for you to be able to grind super easy.

 

[GametimeUK]

Farm Vials, save to cloud storage, lose all your Vials? Download the save and try again. That isna decent solution if you are the type to get your Vials in bulk.

 

[AR15mex]

I havent played blood borne but if you farm a lot or have a lot stored in your box or something, they automatically replenish to your hunter, again I havent played the game in long time... right now enjoying the witcher.

 

[LJ11]

I never felt I had to farm vials until the very end when I started to do Chalice Dungeons, if I would have stayed away from the Dungeons I don't feel it would have been an issue at all for me.

 

[Timeaisis]

Agreed. I love BB, but those two issues were oversights.

I wonder if #2 was a technical limitation or something.

 

[RoadHazard]

Once I was some way into the game I had enough that I never had to farm them again, so it only bothered me in the beginning, but yeah, I do prefer the Estus system.

 

[Ralemont]

Build diversity is the only real flaw I see in Bloodborne. Could definitely use more variety

Build diversity and most bosses being defeated through same-y tactics. I like bosses like the Witches because it feels like a unique encounter, instead of enemy #4253 that you defeat by baiting a swipe in the mid-range, dodging, punishing, dodging back out.

 

[Sushi Nao]

When there's a mechanic like this that I don't like

Spoiler

(just saying for academic purposes, I like it fine)

I like to look at why it would have been implemented by looking at what behaviour and response it forces from the player.

- awareness of resources. First big one. Makes you realize that souls aren't just for leveling, which increases the stakes for losing your souls, or spending souls on frivolous things.

- pacing. This is a huge one. If you're up against something that's killing you so many times you've drained all your vials, you probably need to chill out, go somewhere else, fight something new. Just as the skellies in DS1 was an indirect mechanism to teach you to go somewhere else if you're getting trashed, so too are limited vials.

- related to resource awareness, echoes earned online are essentially 'risk-free' - you don't lose anything when you die. All Souls games have mechanics that force players online - DS2's limited enemies and small soapstone curing hollowing, for example.

- awareness of runes. If you want max souls, spec for it. This takes power away from other areas, though, so rune switching for necessary situations is key.

- maximize the need to exploit the Rally system. Another big one. Health vials are for when you're not getting that sweet sweet blood all up in your cuts.

These aren't "bad" design decisions. They're simply strong ones. Any strong design causes tension, that's the point.

 

[Gbraga]

There is no resource management is Bloodborne. BB is Dark Souls only that every time you get stuck you spent 30 minutes farming vials in Central Yharnam's brige. If you want to call that "resource management", then it's piss poor resource management.

I disagree. I also think the Estus system from Dark Souls 1 is by far the superior healing system in the series (not a fan of estus shards. Thank God for lifegems in 2), but there is a resource management aspect to the use of vials as a finite resource, and that aspect is rally. The system is in place to encourage the player to be aggressive. If you get hit, instead of backing up and healing, you want to get as much back through attacking the enemy as possible, so you don't have to waste as many (or any) vials as you would otherwise. If they were infinite and you could replenish them by sitting at a lamp, this part of the combat's pace balancing would be completely lost. Going back to safety and healing would always be a superior choice.

As I said, in the end I still think Dark Souls 1 had the best healing system, since it was at the same time more challenging to people doing well and more forgiving for people struggling, but I do think they were going for something unique with the vial/rally/lamp system, not just removing features for no reason.

 

[I am Error]

I agree on both points you made. I would really like to know why From Software designed it the way it is. They were most definitely aware of the fact that it's a drawback for the player compared to their previous titles.

 

[Ralemont]

Oh, would have also liked to be able to remap controls. Many of the bad camera concerns would have been alleviated if dodge was on a shoulder button, allowing you to move the camera and dodge at the same time. No, lock-on doesn't fix this, since lock-on has its own issues, particularly with large bosses.

 

[Crossing Eden]

But there is resource management. If you constantly waste vials and bullets you are playing it wrong and you'll struggle constantly and be forced to farm or grind. If you use them sensibly, and spend your remaining echoes (from after levelling/upgrades) on buying them, you won't have any issues.
The only annoyance here is self-inflicted.

The flaw in the "it's resource management" aspect is that not only is it not good resource management meant to make the player think, (again, REmake is free, play THAT to see some amazing resource management game design), is that for one, it only applies to two items specifically, compared to say remake when everything has to be taken into account as a resource with varying amounts of importance, like saving incendiary rounds for a boss, whereas in BB you can start to disregard certain types of items after a while as enemies get more aggressive and the starting items don't get more useful or viable in comparison. Secondly, they aren't a limited resource, it's as if that beginning area was seemingly designed specifically to give out unlimited bullets and vials. It's tedious to go through it again and again especially since the game has long loading screens.

 

[E-flux]

Oh, would have also liked to be able to remap controls. Many of the bad camera concerns would have been alleviated if dodge was on a shoulder button, allowing you to move the camera and dodge at the same time. No, lock-on doesn't fix this, since lock-on has its own issues, particularly with large bosses.

Shortly after BB came out Sony rolled a patch where you can now remap your buttons, doesn't change the actual command prompts but you can still change them around.

 

[Gbraga]

Oh, would have also liked to be able to remap controls. Many of the bad camera concerns would have been alleviated if dodge was on a shoulder button, allowing you to move the camera and dodge at the same time. No, lock-on doesn't fix this, since lock-on has its own issues, particularly with large bosses.

That would've been cool. I don't think I'd change anything, but every game should allow players to remap their controls. You can do it on a system level, but having to change back when playing something else can be a bit of a pain in the ass.

 

[Sushi Nao]

The flaw in the "it's resource management" aspect is that not only is it not good resource management meant to make the player think, (again, REmake is free, play THAT to see some amazing resource management game design), is that for one, it only applies to two items specifically, compared to say remake when everything has to be taken into account as a resource with varying amounts of importance, like saving incendiary rounds for a boss, whereas in BB you can start to disregard certain types of items after a while as enemies get more aggressive and the starting items don't get more useful or viable in comparison. Secondly, they aren't a limited resource, it's as if that beginning area was seemingly designed specifically to give out unlimited bullets and vials. It's tedious to go through it again and again especially since the game has long loading screens.

It doesn't have long loading anymore, really... also, how far in the game are you? If you can do the

Spoiler

pig run in Mergo's Loft

with a couple of booster runes, why would you ever just farm straight up vials

 

[Gin-Shiio]

Agreed on all counts. The farming was a chore, and only took away from the enjoyment of playing the game.

 

[Gbraga]

It doesn't have long loading anymore, really... also, how far in the game are you? If you can do the

Spoiler

pig run in Mergo's Loft

with a couple of booster runes, why would you ever just farm straight up vials

It kind of does >_>

It's much better than it was at first, but it's still long as hell.

Forget framerate and resolution, loading times are straight up the biggest improvement of playing Souls on PC.

 

[Nose Master]

You're not wrong, both of those things sucked. I'll add that chalice dungeons were a complete waste of time to implement, too. If you're gonna go procedurally generated, make more than 15 rooms ffs.

 

[Ralemont]

Shortly after BB came out Sony rolled a patch where you can now remap your buttons, doesn't change the actual command prompts but you can still change them around.

Yeah I know, but this isn't a solution for anyone who plays more than one game at a time. I'm constantly playing MP games with my friends, so remapping just for Bloodborne would have created more problems than it solved.

 

[BadWolf]

Being forced to stop and just grind for items/bullets is dumb and really ruins the pacing.

It's my only big complaint with the game, and probably why I haven't done another playthrough yet.

 

[ColonialHawk]

I agree on both points you made. I would really like to know why From Software designed it the way it is. They were most definitely aware of the fact that it's a drawback for the player compared to their previous titles.

I think it stems from Miyazaki wanting the player to be aggressive. There's no shields, your character's speed, and counter-attacks/parries return health to you. All very aggressive gameplay elements. Attacks returning health to you always felt (at least to me) like the game's main source of healing with vials as a secondary.
But yeah OP's not wrong.

 

[Crossing Eden]

It doesn't have long loading anymore, really... also, how far in the game are you? If you can do the

Spoiler

pig run in Mergo's Loft

with a couple of booster runes, why would you ever just farm straight up vials

I bought the game at release and played it for 100 hours. I stopped when I realized that the chalice dungeons were repetitive as hell and had bosses that should've been in the main game along with rewards being reskins of items in the main game.

 

[TimeEffect]

Check to see if you have blood vials in the hub world inventory. If you collect any after reaching the limit, they stock up.

That said, yes, it's an incredibly annoying thing in the game. Estus system was miles better and this was a major hindrance to my enjoyment

 

[NathanDiego]

Agree with everything.

 

[ced]

Both of those points are valid, but I imagine they did it to differentiate the game from the Souls series.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

Agreed. I loved Bloodborne, and it was my first "souls" experience and my only true platinum (others are just things like Telltale games that give them away).

But I probably like DS3 a bit more due to not having to farm health items, the matchmaking actually working easily making it easy to get/give help on bosses etc.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

The biggest design flaw is fixing to be a lack of 60fps patch on PS4 Pro.

 

[Curufinwe]

Why not? The implication is that there should be an infinite supply, but how does that fit into the context of the game?

It doesn't.

 

[ShadowSoldier89]

this seems like quite the necro, but reading it I dont understand problem #1

Whenever you die and respawn it pulls any blood vials from storage to try and refill your current inventory. I beat the game prepatch to hold more, but my coffer was always at 99.

#2 I agree with though. If I wanted to farm old yarnham for blood echoes I didnt like all the warping back

 

[Ralemont]

Why not? The implication is that there should be an infinite supply, but how does that fit into the context of the game?

Health bars don't fit into the context of the game, either, but we have them because it makes the gameplay better.

this seems like quite the necro, but reading it I dont understand problem #1

Whenever you die and respawn it pulls any blood vials from storage to try and refill your current inventory.

Until you get stuck at a boss and run out, sure.

 

[BRocknRolla]

Ok so just a quick rant.

1.

I'm currently trying to beat the blood starved beast in a chalice dungeon. It's hard but fun, what shits me is this. In Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, and I'm pretty sure Dark Souls 3.
When you die, you respawn with your health vials full. Because having to farm for estus would be fucking annoying as shit.
Yet in bloodborne, you do have to farm for Health.....fucking why?

Why do I have to go back to Central Yarnham every time to just grab 20 blood and 20 quicksilver bullets. It's such a pain in the ass. It makes everything so fucking tedious. I mean, they got slammed in reviews for load times and this just makes that worse.

Two thoughts on this:

1.) I probably farmed for blood vials... twice? I guess experiences will vary depending on how good you are at the game, and how willing you are to spam your way through your health vials, but honestly, I encountered this irritation so few times that it never bothered me.

Now, is it a better solution than estus flasks? That I don't know, but it does add another consideration when it comes to fighting enemies and bosses. (And generally, not a bad one I think.)

2.) I realized this is regard to bullets late in the game as I kept running out; whenever you level, take whatever is left over and buy bullets and blood vials. That carryover usually ends up getting lost anyway, even it's its only a couple thousand at the most, but if you clear it out by buying those two supplies every time, you'll soon realize you have a crazy surplus that you'll never run out of. In a matter of a couple hours playing, I went from scrounging for bullets to swimming in them.

2.
If you want me to farm blood at least let me reset the level without.

Warping to Hunters Dream
Warping back to where I just was.

Why can I not, just sit at the lamp like you can sit down at the bonfire in Dark Souls and reset the current world?

Won't argue with you on that one. It would be much better if there were only one load, or if you could load directly into another area rather than always having to return to the Hunter's Dream. It seems like a rather obvious improvement, especially given that it was in DS II, which makes me wonder if it was a symptom of the engine they created, and therefore had to do it that way. Regardless, it isn't good, particularly when the load times aren't great.

 

[ShadowSoldier89]

Until you get stuck at a boss and run out, sure.

119 blood vials on one boss seems like a lot, but still, just dump some echoes into stocking up

isnt the cap on vials in storage now 999 too, thatd be super easy to have 300+ sitting in there

 

[ultron87]

Having it be really easy to buy the stuff is what made it a bad design. If they wanted the player to be constantly scraping by with minimal resources, focusing on campaign long resource management (instead of just per run), and not being able to try a boss over and over again without gathering items they shouldn't have made the vials super cheap to buy.

If they wanted the player to have all the resources needed and be able to try stuff over and over they should just go with Dark Souls style Estus.

The way BB implemented in a middle ground makes it an annoyance. You aren't really making interesting choices or changing the way you play. You just need to remember to take the extra time each time you go back to level to run over to the fountain and spend your remaining blood on vials. If you don't do that you'll end up running out and get annoyed. So it's just a boring extra step you have to do every time you port back to the Dream.

 

[Gbraga]

The biggest design flaw is fixing to be a lack of 60fps patch on PS4 Pro.

A console design flaw? Because if DS3 is any indication, that engine is not light on the CPU.

 

[Gojeran]

Love bloodborne and I 100% agree with both points and it's my biggest issue with the game as well. Buying them, being easy to farm, and I always had enough personally are not good reasons to have a stupid fucking mechanic when a much better one (estus) already god damn exists. I started farming echoes with the moon runes and buying huge amount of them to basically make it like an estus system, look I always have 20 when I die. Fact of the matter is I shouldn't have to do that it's tedious as fuck and yes the load times and having to warp back to the hunters dream to re farm is always mind blowingly stupid. But god dammit do I love that stupid fucking game.

 

[Primethius]

I agree on both points you made. I would really like to know why From Software designed it the way it is. They were most definitely aware of the fact that it's a drawback for the player compared to their previous titles.

I think vials/herbs > Estus any day.

The latter made late game difficulty much easier then it should with how it was implemented and pretty much allowed you to run past enemies straight to the boss since they would recharge.

I find the vials/herbs to be a much better, scalable implementation.

Early game, when you are starved for them, there's plenty of routes to farm them up leading up to the boss. The same applies for late game but now you can buy a large quantity of them.

Its resource management that has a smaller impact on bosses versus general exploration. It's general exploration where the system really shines, as you explore a new area, have run out of vials and hope for a drop so you can continue onto the next lantern.

I think it promotes smarter play, smarree resource management and adds a level of tension to the general exploration that isn't present with Estus Flasks (atleast similar to the DS1 system).

 

[Ralemont]

119 blood vials on one boss seems like a lot, but still, just dump some echoes into stocking up

isnt the cap on vials in storage now 999 too, thatd be super easy to have 300+ sitting in there

It's not really a lot. Let's assume you use ~10 vials per failed attempt; that's ~10 tries before you have to start farming. In all likelihood you're using more than 10 per failed attempt though, likely closer to your full 20. Dumping echoes isn't a great solution because you lose them on dying, so by the time you need to start farming vials, you'll have 0 echoes, so you'll be farming echoes instead, which is still farming.

If they increased the limit then that's cool (wiki says it's 600 in storage), because I played when it was 99 and it was a hassle. But a high storage cap essentially fixes the issue, since it's very easy to build up vials during the game when you aren't suck on a boss. At that point though, I don't see why you don't just make them infinite since it's functionally identical to everyone except those having a reeeally hard time, and those people aren't being benefitted by the decision, either.

 

[horkrux]

Nr. 1 is defeated by 2 if you find a nice spot. And regarding 2: You simply use a Bold Hunter's Mark.

It's still a useless mechanic, since you don't even have different tiers of healing items like in Demon's Souls (which would have warranted limited uses), but sticking to this makes it pretty much a non-issue.

I bought the game at release and played it for 100 hours. I stopped when I realized that the chalice dungeons were repetitive as hell and had bosses that should've been in the main game along with rewards being reskins of items in the main game.

'Reskins'? The weapons you find in chalice dungeons have different gem slots. The rewards are awesome gems in the later dungeons.

 

[Weltall Zero]

yea it's one of the worst a design decision ever, while i'm loving the game, it's my first souls game. this really hurts the game and takes a lot of fun out of it. instead of being a 9.5 it goes to 8.5, if it fixed the issues you talked about, and framespacing/framerate it would been a 10.

edit: just found out there is a vial box in hunter's dream, and i'm at the end of the game.

Did "I agree" really merit bumping a six month old thread? -_-

 

[SkylineRKR]

Its a very bad decision and its a throwback to Demon's Souls. But in BB, those vials only drop at a few places.

In the beginning you rather not waste echoes on Vials and then lose again. During the endgame, when you're build is done, then its easy to farm 100k souls within a minute and buy 600 or w/e the cap is right now. But even then it still annoyed me when I found out I was depleted and had to return first.

lol thread is old af.

 

[Horsemama1956]

Think they just wanted this to be a definite branch of DS and not have it play exactly the same as to not alienate fans of Froms main franchise who don't want a PS4.

 

[Taruranto]

I think vials/herbs > Estus any day.

The latter made late game difficulty much easier then it should with how it was implemented and pretty much allowed you to run past enemies straight to the boss since they would recharge.

I find the vials/herbs to be a much better, scalable implementation.

Early game, when you are starved for them, there's plenty of routes to farm them up leading up to the boss. The same applies for late game but now you can buy a large quantity of them.

Its resource management that has a smaller impact on bosses versus general exploration. It's general exploration where the system really shines, as you explore a new area, have run out of vials and hope for a drop so you can continue onto the next lantern.

I think it promotes smarter play, smarree resource management and adds a level of tension to the general exploration that isn't present with Estus Flasks (atleast similar to the DS1 system).

You can apply the same thing to estus, there is "resource management" between each bonfire.

Seriously, the only different between the two systems is that you don't need to spend 30 minutes running Central Yharnam over and over. Getting max Blood Vials is not hard, it's just painfully tedious. They are not Resident Evil herbs. They are an item you get killing the first enemies in the game over and over and you can stock indefinitely.

 

[Moon Presence]

You gain health back in Bloodborne for attacking, in the Souls games this doesn't happen. That answers your first point. Besides, vials are pretty much everywhere. The quicksilver bullets were more hard to come by, I farmed them 5 or 6 times during the whole game.

 

[Crossing Eden]

'Reskins'? The weapons you find in chalice dungeons have different gem slots. The rewards are awesome gems in the later dungeons.

Different gem slots wow so great and totes worth a shit ton of repetition! /s Those dungeons are definitely not worth it and the budget used on them most definitely could've gone to the main game.

You can apply the same thing to estus, there is "resource management" between each bonfire.

Seriously, the only different between the two systems is that you don't need to spend 30 minutes running Central Yharnam over and over. Getting max Blood Vials is not hard, it's just painfully tedious. They are not Resident Evil herbs. They are an item you get killing the first enemies in the game over and over.

Exactly.