Dark Souls 3 and (Re)reaching Bosses

[shirkbot]

Having played Dark Souls 3 for about 20 hours now I've found myself thinking about how to design the path to boss fights. Which is the better system for difficult boss fights? Fighting your way to the boss every time, or having unimpeded access once you've made it there once?

Using Dark Souls 3 as the example, it's already a hard game. Each boss fight is a distinct challenge in its own right, and it feels like a needless additional challenge to make players fight their way back to the boss each time they die. It's hard to explain why this bothers me so much but I think it boils down to 2 things:

A) It becomes instantly repetitive, which really sucks the fun out of things and
B) It makes it harder to work out how to fight the boss itself because I have to concentrate on getting to the boss before the fight even begins. Admittedly, this may just be a problem with me.

Compare that with Hyper Light Drifter. If I die fighting a boss, I just respawn outside the boss room. I can immediately get back to fighting the boss and working out what to do. I don't have to worry about what's between me and the boss because there's nothing to worry about.

Personally, I think it's better to just let players fight the boss without having to fight their way to the boss more than once. They already earned their "ticket" to the fight, so I don't see much point in making them re-earn it when it risks creating boredom and frustration for no real benefit.

What do you think fellow Escapists? Am I just being a scrub who needs to get gud, or is there a legitimate design point to examine here?

TL;DR: Fighting your way to the boss every time vs. unimpeded access once you've made it there once?

 

[Saelune]

Eventually you just bolt through it. Not saying that's a good thing, but, its what Ive been doing as I currently finally play through DS1.

I don't know about 3, but Bloodborne made me realize what I hate about the Souls games, ie humanity/hallowing, among other things. I also miss getting health back if I quickly retaliate, and the ability to counter bosses.

I wish the Souls games were more about the individual challenge instead of piling on minor dickish annoyances tat quickly add up to a bad time.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think that it's fine to fight your way to the boss each time, but it's really nice when they put a bonfire nearby for the really difficult bosses. Like in Dark Souls 2 where you had bonfires right next to Fume Knight, or Sihn, or in Bloodborne with Maria or Orphan of Kos. Basically, if they know a player is going to probably be bashing their heads against a boss it's nice for them to put a bonfire right next to the boss room so that you can quickly try multiple times.

However, in the case of easier bosses it's also good to have a punishment for failing because then it makes even a weaker boss seem more threatening if in the players mind they have to beat the boss then and there or suffer an annoying setback. After all, a big part of the Dark Souls bosses isn't just the difficulty but the intimidation factor of the boss, and that intimidation increases if you know you have to run a long way to challenge that boss again should you die.

Then again, I'm of the mind that Dark Souls 3 has too many bonfires so...

 

[Aerosteam]

You'll soon realize that you can run past all the enemies and go straight to the boss without taking damage.

 

[Laser Priest]

The grind is kind of a part of Dark Souls, but I don't know, I feel like it's actually lessened in this game. There are a lot of bonfires throughout and often there are some very close to the boss, with only a few enemies between and very rarely any major encounters. And more often than not, if you would rather just get to the boss, sprinting past the enemies is easy. The only bosses I've fought so far that are not easy to sprint to are Yhorm and Sulyvhan.

 

[karkashan]

and Sulyvhan.

Really? There's a shortcut that leads to the Church of Yorshka bonfire almost right nearby, and you only have to dodge around 4 enemies on the way there.

praisegrima

 

[Fox12]

Using Dark Souls 3 as the example, it's already a hard game. Each boss fight is a distinct challenge in its own right, and it feels like a needless additional challenge to make players fight their way back to the boss each time they die.

Hoo, boy, they've actually cut down on this if anything. Go back and try playing Demon's Soul's. Or don't, actually.

But, between the two, I want to jump right into the boss fight. I don't want the busy work of running through a level again. Let me just run straight through it.

 

[loa]

Funny thing about hyperlight drifter, it actually traps you in areas with walls until you killed all enemies and can move on which is way more dickish than dark souls in which you can just run past pretty much everything with no problems.

I like dark souls better because the only reason you would fight your way to a boss is your own idea that you have to fight everything. Unless they like trap you in rooms with magical walls that disappear once you kill everything in dark souls 3 or something, haven't played that one yet.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Some places are more annoying for that than others, like getting from the bridge bonfire to the Cursed Tree boss in Resident Evil 4-ville is super annoying no matter which side you approach it from. The boss was easy but the path there was either A. Giant shooting arrows at you or B. going up a hill with Bible Bloke and her line of dickheads in the way. Harder to just run through unlike many other areas. Actually maybe Tree is hard with magic builds since its weakpoints are kinda small, dunno I haven't got there yet.

I've restarted on a new character and I am stunned by how free some areas are with magic. I've always done full melee builds but I wanted to check magic out, beat fuckin' Vordt first try when my swords only build took me ages. Then there was that fat guy in the square. 4 Heavy Soul Arrows from range, stunlocked and killed before he can get to me. It feels like cheating. It does more damage than your average sword, mana is cheap, it's ranged and I assume there would be Int scaling weapons so melee will be viable also. Less viable in PVP maybe? I'm remembering the time I ruined this Soul Arrow mage build guy with my Greatshield + sword build, his shit bounces off my shield for piss damage and I three hit him, top kek.

 

[Mathak]

Some places are more annoying for that than others, like getting from the bridge bonfire to the Cursed Tree boss in Resident Evil 4-ville is super annoying no matter which side you approach it from. The boss was easy but the path there was either A. Giant shooting arrows at you or B. going up a hill with Bible Bloke and her line of dickheads in the way. Harder to just run through unlike many other areas.

Spoiler

If you go say hi to the giant before the arrow-area he'll stop targetting you and just clear the way of enemies for you.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I've always used it as a gauge where if couldn't make it to the boss without rolling through the enemies then I'm probably not ready for the boss. Usually if I can make it to the boss unscathed then I can beat it in one or two tries

 

[Silence]

You can run to the boss easily, most bonfires have a pathway set up exactly for that.

Sometimes there are one or two enemies you need to dodge, but really nothing bad.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Using Dark Souls 3 as the example, it's already a hard game. Each boss fight is a distinct challenge in its own right, and it feels like a needless additional challenge to make players fight their way back to the boss each time they die.

Hoo, boy, they've actually cut down on this if anything. Go back and try playing Demon's Soul's. Or don't, actually.

Oh fuck you, now I'll need another month's worth of prescription drugs for my PTSD of Valley of Defilement. Seriously, fuck that place.

OT: I've finished the game, and I have to say I don't see this being an issue in Dark Souls III. Bonfires in the game are very plentiful (like seriously, at one point you literally have two bonfires like a straight 100 meter line apart), and even when there's not a bonfire right next to the boss arena, there's usually enough shortcuts so that the runup to a boss rarely takes more than a minute. In fact I'm actually more bothered by the seemingly unnecessary need to have a bonfire immediately after every boss. Why not just give the player a Homeward bone for every boss? That way you could increase the tension of the player being willing to push just a little bit further and risk losing a ton of souls, or give them a safe way back to level up.

 

[DementedSheep]

I'm up to Irithyll and I've yet to come across a boss with long run up. Most of them you can run right to. If anything this game has too many bonfires.

 

[Ronald Nand]

Like others I also hold the view that the runs are quite short, unless you insist on fighting every enemy between you and the boss its incredibly easy to run past and dodge roll them. Dark Souls 3 tones down a lot of the boss runs too, Demons Souls had the two bosses in Valley of Defilement, Penetrator and just about every boss had a difficult run to them in that game, Dark Souls had some pretty tough ones too like Pinwheel.

You might call this Stockholm Syndrome, but I think the run to the boss is part of Dark Souls, and frankly it'll be odd if I respawned right before the boss every time I died, it's just one of the quirks of the series in my opinion.

 

[Laser Priest]

and Sulyvhan.

Really? There's a shortcut that leads to the Church of Yorshka bonfire almost right nearby, and you only have to dodge around 4 enemies on the way there.

praisegrima

Maybe I just had bad luck, but I always had a hard time getting past those two pontiff knights just outside his fog door without getting hit or stopping to fight.

It's not a long distance to close, sure, but there are still some enemies there that I couldn't readily run past.