Dark Souls III: what to keep, bring back, leave out or change?

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Redryhno

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DementedSheep said:
Edit: oh and combat looks a lot faster (though not as fast as bloodborne) and magic is on a mana/estus system so no more farming multiple copies of spells and doubling up spells in attunement slots to get more casts. Hitting with magic weapons now also uses mana.
Eurgh...estus magic just sounds like it's just gonna be screwing magic builds more than normal, unless they seriously buff damages or introduce some kind of regenerating mechanic. Boss-wise, it was by far the strongest thing in the game most of the time. But normal mooks...you just ran out of spells before you got to the next pause point most of the time, especially with DS1. And you had to build almost EXCLUSIVELY for anything worthwhile there beyond it just being your ranged option.
 

DementedSheep

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Redryhno said:
DementedSheep said:
Edit: oh and combat looks a lot faster (though not as fast as bloodborne) and magic is on a mana/estus system so no more farming multiple copies of spells and doubling up spells in attunement slots to get more casts. Hitting with magic weapons now also uses mana.
Eurgh...estus magic just sounds like it's just gonna be screwing magic builds more than normal, unless they seriously buff damages or introduce some kind of regenerating mechanic. Boss-wise, it was by far the strongest thing in the game most of the time. But normal mooks...you just ran out of spells before you got to the next pause point most of the time, especially with DS1. And you had to build almost EXCLUSIVELY for anything worthwhile there beyond it just being your ranged option.
What I saw was network test so I don't know how it will change for release but it seems to be able to cast quite a few (depending on the spell) before needing to use the estus for mana. There were no mana regen items aside from that in the test but it's unknown if they will have some in the final game. You also cast a LOT faster. The impression the people I was watching test had was it that it would make pure mages more viable. With DS1/2 I almost never use magic versus regular enemies and end up stacking multiple copies of whatever spells I need for the boss. If you don't need to do that because it all from the same pool it is at least more flexible.

Another new thing seems to be expanded movesets with stances for weapons and the humanity system has been replaced. It looks similar, where you use "ember" you get a (significant) buff that you lose on death and I think you can't co op without it. You're no longer a zombie when you die this time. The overall impression seems to be DS1 + bloodborne.
 

DementedSheep

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Gundam GP01 said:
DementedSheep said:
KingsGambit said:
- Fuck Soul Memory. It's a stupid mechanic. Just let me play coop with whomever I want. I want to play with my friends, don't restrict me by this number/tiered system, name engraved ring, soapstone signs, time limits. F**K OFF! Just let me coop. I understand wanting to make it all lore friendly and in game, but it sucks. Just use steam matchmaking, no fucking restrictions. PvP is a different matter I don't want to get into.
Unless I'm mistaken Soul Memory only effects PVP, it is suppose to be so you don't get what happened in DS1 where people would do a low SL level play through and then gank new characters with their upgraded gear. Co-op was still based on SL.

I saw a thing on DS3 yesterday and looks like its much much easier to co op with specific people with a password system though I don't know exactly how it works.

Edit: oh and combat looks a lot faster (though not as fast as bloodborne) and magic is on a mana/estus system so no more farming multiple copies of spells and doubling up spells in attunement slots to get more casts. Hitting with magic weapons now also uses mana.
You're wrong. The white sign soapstones were still based on soul memory.
I might be, there seems to be a lot of conflicting info on that.
 
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DementedSheep said:
KingsGambit said:
- Fuck Soul Memory. It's a stupid mechanic. Just let me play coop with whomever I want. I want to play with my friends, don't restrict me by this number/tiered system, name engraved ring, soapstone signs, time limits. F**K OFF! Just let me coop. I understand wanting to make it all lore friendly and in game, but it sucks. Just use steam matchmaking, no fucking restrictions. PvP is a different matter I don't want to get into.
Unless I'm mistaken Soul Memory only effects PVP, it is suppose to be so you don't get what happened in DS1 where people would do a low SL level play through and then gank new characters with their upgraded gear. Co-op was still based on SL.

I saw a thing on DS3 yesterday and looks like its much much easier to co op with specific people with a password system though I don't know exactly how it works.

Edit: oh and combat looks a lot faster (though not as fast as bloodborne) and magic is on a mana/estus system so no more farming multiple copies of spells and doubling up spells in attunement slots to get more casts. Hitting with magic weapons now also uses mana.
While I was playing it I was on wikis and google so frequently and this was one of the many things I was reading up on. More exact numbers are out there, but my understanding was that, specifically in NG, soul memory placed player characters into "tiers" of a sort. Red/White soapstone marks would only be visible to a range of players close to the same SM (eg. 3 below to 4 above, something like that). The name engraved ring expanded the range, but also restricted soapstone marks to players who chose the same deity (easier to find specific player, harder to find random).

It does affect coop but it's different IIRC in NG+ and beyond. In NG+ there were only 2 tiers I believe, players above and players below 15m.

I realise that it was an effort to fix the problem from the first game, and if it succeeded then that's well and good. But I still thought it was a terrible system. I couldn't find any coop action in NG, or NG+. I'm sure I could figure it out if I had a friend with voice comms and the ring, but it is still a terrible system. I appreciate trying to keep it all in-game and lore friendly, but form should NOT come before function. There should simply be an online menu/interface to search for lobbies, PvE or PvP with no restrictions. Players can flag themselves as open for one or the other and set their own restrictions (eg. SL, SM, whatever). There should be a friends list, or just use steam matchmaking and be done with it.

A good coop game lets me start it, invite/join a friend and get on with it. DS2 has me messing around with inventory items, stats, rings leaving disappearing marks that may never be seen by another person and nebulous limits. It is horrible, unfit for purpose and makes things 20x harder than they need to be. A lobby system, a matchmaking system, a private game system, any of those would be preferable. A password for a private lobby could be a massive step in the right direction, so fingers crossed.
 

Evonisia

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Jun 24, 2013
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Oh I have a cosmetic one: keep the nightmare fog walls from Bloodborne.

I despise the cheap looking texture they use for fog in Dark Souls 1 and 2, where it looks less like fog and more like grey cardboard leaking paint. I know it seems like a nitpick (because it is), but given how many boss fights there are in these games you do encounter it a bunch. Especially in Dark Souls II's training area.

On a related note, make it so you always know you're going in to a boss fight. Just entering a room and having a boss fight happen always felt like a cheap shot to me, made all the more frustrating by the fact that later attempts will always have that safe wall of fog asking you if you're sure you want to get stamped on this time.
 

Chaos Isaac

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1st: If making a Covenant of helping players, just keep it as the Sunbroes, and let them be rewarded for both repelling invaders, and helping kill a boss. (Or surviving a allotted summon time.)

2nd: Revert the armor system to Dark Souls 1 style. Having different weight roll speeds and stamina usage clear and different helped add to the feel of the game. Light mages who didn't wear much were different then med armor dex guys who could roll okay but liked to bleed dudes out.

3rd: Fuck the adaptability stat thing. Having to put points in a stat to make your roll worth a damn was just bad, same thing with interacting with objects.

4th: Again, be like Dark Souls 1 and have interesting NPCs. Dark Souls 2 was mostly devoid of interesting characters I could care about. There was no sad boss relative who I could care about (Qualana's sister). Hex Ornstein had nothing explaining him or anything about him in the game. There was no charmingly creepy and helpful Solaire. (And the girl from DKS 2 just fucking disappears for no reason. At least Iron Tarkus had a corpse.)

5th: More sensible Covenants and locations. Seriously, this no name joker being the leader of the Dragon Covenant when there is a fucking ancient dragon in the game? Are you kidding me? Not even that, he's protected by fucking Covenant member NPCs!? More-so then that, we had to grab a item to give to said unimportant joker who has no affiliation for them? C'mon.

6th: Don't fucking lie to us about DLC. Moreso, don't fucking hold the rest of the campaign in DLC without at least telling us. And don't hold the best damned levels and story telling environments in the DLC.

7th: I don't mind the super 4 big bad gimmick we have. It's fun, but don't make them stupid re-hashed essentialy remakes/mind controlled by the old big bads, it just diminishes things.

8th: No enemies on top of bonfires pls, and while we're here, if we don't have a safe bonfire going to a npc or merchant who does something no one else can, you've kind of fucked up.

9th: If you have to do call back gear, do the characters who are neat, or kind of matter that adds to the lore. The black knight stuff, onionbro and havel gear just stood out as odd and misplaced amongst everything.

10th: Guarantee drops from enemies who only have one life. If I find all the secret dudes and hit them hard enough to drop them, and don't get their super limited drops, that's just aggravating.

11th: Better punching weapons pls. Better punching backstab/riposte animations please.

12th: This is something from Bloodborne, but criticals on bosses that are badass. Being able to stop a monolith and throw it down with a crit takes some skill and is very rewarding.

13th: More NPC invaders with a story, like Kirk. Also, more npc invaders who play tricks on players, like guy in frozen place who follows you in a box. And, well, more NPC invaders who are kind of special, like say in a area, you'll get invaded by the bosses 'guardians', kind of like the belltower, but not as frickin' assinine.

14th: A covenant less PVP gladiatorial arena, that changes a bit. (Like water flows in to slow movement, or poison fog fills in to damage both players, or another fog that negates all healing items.) This would be amazing, and let players just duke it out without needing items, and make it a special location of it's own. Even if there are PVP covenants, keep these here anyways as places where they can gather and have sweet combat at will.

15th: No forced invasion/summon area's. They're just pointless if you play offline, and more then likely annoying if you're playing online. And if you have to do them, which actually is fine, don't make them story forced where you have to go through them. Let players know what they are stepping into, and let them have a actual reward instead of just.. beating no body rat mans.

16th: Improved magic system. Power spells and built in aiming were good idea's, and did not need to be scrapped. More so, don't nerf this shit into the dirt, and get rid of the dual stat/uses lower deal that hexes had. More so, have a few special items/spells that let mages/swordsages to do close up combat properly. Actually, this is one place where you could have dual stats/use lower to make sure they're not a bit much.

17th: No soul memory. Maybe some kind of scaling system for the invaded/summoning player.

18th: It's own story and lore. Of course, it's in the Dark Souls continuity, but let's have it be able to stand on it's own merits unlike Dark Souls 2. So, let things add onto the lore, like more natural progressions of the covenants, kingdoms and aspects like Chaos and the Abyss.

There's more but kinda tired and yeah.
 

DementedSheep

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Chaos Isaac said:
8th: No enemies on top of bonfires pls, and while we're here, if we don't have a safe bonfire going to a npc or merchant who does something no one else can, you've kind of fucked up.
At the very least they shouldn't be putting an important NPC in a room full of AOE enemies with a bonfire that spawns you right there (Straid).

Chaos Isaac said:
10th: Guarantee drops from enemies who only have one life. If I find all the secret dudes and hit them hard enough to drop them, and don't get their super limited drops, that's just aggravating.
Oh hell yes, they put an entire armour set and weapon as a rare drop on a hidden phantom that only appears once in NG+ and above AND is linked to bonfire that has a boss attached so you have to kill it every time you use an ascetic if you try to farm it (I collected most of the armour and weapons in the game but there is no way I'm bothering with that shit).
 

not_you

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Mar 16, 2011
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Add in opt-in multiplayer again!

PLEASE don't make invasions always-on... That was (admittedly) the number 1 reason why I never bought DS2...
 

mrdude2010

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I liked Estus better in DS1. I liked weapon degradation better in DS1. It was a lot easier to spend souls than it was to have them degrade at the drop of a hat, and finding a style you're comfortable with is key in the From Software game. I hated enemies disappearing if you killed them enough times. If you were in a spot with both a tough boss and a tough approach (Tomb of the Giants without the Light spell in DS1 comes to mind), you would waste a huge amount of souls, and grinding was an integral part of getting strong enough to face the next challenge for new players. Other than that, I don't have any particularly strong opinions.
 

baddude1337

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Jun 9, 2010
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Bring back the Elite Knight Armour! It's by far my favourite piece of armour in any of the games. Seeing as it was in 2 also I'm hopeful it's in 3.
 

joest01

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Apr 15, 2009
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keep: dual wielding, faster combat, upgrade system

lose: cutscenes and attempts at "storytelling" especially opening cutscene. I was ready to turn my disc in when I started up DkS2 for the first time

undecided: bonfire ascetics. I liked the ability to farm certain bosses but I think I'd prefer reintroducing player and world tendency.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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Jan 12, 2010
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I only have one complaint really that applies to DkS2, the ripostes are just awful in every way shape and form. A riposte should feel like I broke through someones defenses and got a really nasty hit on them for taking advantage of the opening. They should not feel like I'm squashing a bug. The fall down to preform riposte made it impossible to chain ripostes, while at the same time made ripostes feel really unsatisfying. Please give me back the DkS1 riposte.

Well I have another complaint, riposte and back stab invincibility frames need to last longer than they did in DkS2, like they did in DkS1, so I can actually respond to an enemy that closed the distance just as the animation finished. I detest getting blind sided because I managed a critical.

Edit: Also the Heide's Knights were a really pitiful replacement for the Black Knights, if I'm meeting a rare enemy that's going to give me a big reward... That enemy had better be pretty formidable.
 

DementedSheep

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I figured I should post one of these for anyone who hasn't seen anything from the network test and is curious.

Guy who's playing got disconnected at one point and has a terrible sense of direction so it repeats a bit. The boss fight is at 1:18:00 and he dose some PVP after that.

Oh and you can switch between the targeting system in DS1 and the targeting system in DS2 in the options.

 

Wasted

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Have it like Bloodborne where you can choose to play online or offline from the main menu; or like in DSI were we need to use an item ingame to engage in the COOP/PVP mechanics. We should ultimately decide when we want to engage these features, but when we are not playing online...

ALLOW US TO FREAKING PAUSE THE GAME!

This is easily one of the dumbest and most backwards design choices I have seen in a game. For such a highly rated series, the fact that it gets away not implementing a pause feature is baffling.
 

StreamerDarkly

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Evonisia said:
Oh I have a cosmetic one: keep the nightmare fog walls from Bloodborne.

I despise the cheap looking texture they use for fog in Dark Souls 1 and 2, where it looks less like fog and more like grey cardboard leaking paint. I know it seems like a nitpick (because it is), but given how many boss fights there are in these games you do encounter it a bunch. Especially in Dark Souls II's training area.

On a related note, make it so you always know you're going in to a boss fight. Just entering a room and having a boss fight happen always felt like a cheap shot to me, made all the more frustrating by the fact that later attempts will always have that safe wall of fog asking you if you're sure you want to get stamped on this time.
Pretty sure it was only Bloodborne that doesn't have the fog gate the first time you fight a boss. If you fail the first attempt then the fog gate will be there for every subsequent attempt. Not only that, but after the first attempt the boss reacts to your presence faster when entering the room, which changes the opening of the fight. This is a small point but it's one I really didn't like in certain fights (e.g. Shadows, Ebrietas, Gehrman). On the other hand, when the fog gate is there it at least prevents other enemies from sneaking into the boss fight to mess you up. This can happen with One Reborn, for example.

Of course, DS2 is guilty of putting fog gates in some of the area transitions where there isn't actually a boss. This always seemed strange to me.

I vote for the consistent approach - the fog gate should always be there, but only for boss rooms. Also give the player i-frames while traversing the fog gate instead of allowing them to be interrupted like in DS2.
 

BytByte

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Wasted said:
Have it like Bloodborne where you can choose to play online or offline from the main menu; or like in DSI us to use an item ingame to engage in the COOP/PVP mechanics. We should ultimately decide when we want to engage these features, but when we are not playing online...

ALLOW US TO FREAKING PAUSE THE GAME!

This is easily one of the dumbest and most backwards design choices I have seen in a game. For such a highly rated series, the fact that it gets away not implementing a pause feature is baffling.
Pausing the game invariably makes the world comlpetely harmless anytime you want. If you mean just a flat out pause where monsters and you can't do anything (like nothing, no armor changes or using items), that'd be cool, but if the whole start menu is at your disposal, that would go against the Soul's design philosophy.
 

StreamerDarkly

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CandideWolf said:
Pausing the game invariably makes the world comlpetely harmless anytime you want. If you mean just a flat out pause where monsters and you can't do anything (like nothing, no armor changes or using items), that'd be cool, but if the whole start menu is at your disposal, that would go against the Soul's design philosophy.
Clearly not what he was asking for. No one would expect to be able to operate the menu to gain an advantage while the game is paused.

As for "going against the Souls design philoshophy", I see this trotted out time and time again where it doesn't belong. I mean, the Souls games have always let you quit out of the game to gain various advantages (resetting enemy positions, spawning in favorable places just prior to fall death, etc.). Being able to pause isn't even close to the egregious violation of "Souls philosophy" that quit-outs are.
 

bartholen_v1legacy

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Jan 24, 2009
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StreamerDarkly said:
CandideWolf said:
Pausing the game invariably makes the world comlpetely harmless anytime you want. If you mean just a flat out pause where monsters and you can't do anything (like nothing, no armor changes or using items), that'd be cool, but if the whole start menu is at your disposal, that would go against the Soul's design philosophy.
Clearly not what he was asking for. No one would expect to be able to operate the menu to gain an advantage while the game is paused.

As for "going against the Souls design philoshophy", I see this trotted out time and time again where it doesn't belong. I mean, the Souls games have always let you quit out of the game to gain various advantages (resetting enemy positions, spawning in favorable places just prior to fall death, etc.). Being able to pause isn't even close to the egregious violation of "Souls philosophy" that quit-outs are.
I'd be in favor of a separate pause menu button, one that lets you change the settings and quit the game, and that's it. Keep the equipment and item menus in real time, and we're good.

Also, fix the fucking amount of Souls given by enemies in different areas. DS2 has this completely ass backwards: the order of the Greatsouls is quite clearly supposed to be 1. Lost Sinner 2. Old Iron King 3. Duke's Dear Freja and 4. Rotten. But the area where you get the most souls in the entire game aside from Dragon Shrine is Iron Keep, and that's not even halfway through the game. In DS1 it was well balanced, because each of the Lord soul areas housed different enemies and you were given total freedom to do them in any order. In DS2 the enemies in what are supposed to be the final areas of the game (again, aside from Dragon Shrine) drop a pathetic pittance of souls in comparison to Iron Keep. Brightstone Cove is such a joke in this regard it's basically not even worth the hassle on new game+ and you can just use bonfire ascetic and kill the Rotten twice.
 

Evonisia

Your sinner, in secret
Jun 24, 2013
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StreamerDarkly said:
Evonisia said:
Pretty sure it was only Bloodborne that doesn't have the fog gate the first time you fight a boss. If you fail the first attempt then the fog gate will be there for every subsequent attempt. Not only that, but after the first attempt the boss reacts to your presence faster when entering the room, which changes the opening of the fight. This is a small point but it's one I really didn't like in certain fights (e.g. Shadows, Ebrietas, Gehrman). On the other hand, when the fog gate is there it at least prevents other enemies from sneaking into the boss fight to mess you up. This can happen with One Reborn, for example.

Of course, DS2 is guilty of putting fog gates in some of the area transitions where there isn't actually a boss. This always seemed strange to me.

I vote for the consistent approach - the fog gate should always be there, but only for boss rooms. Also give the player i-frames while traversing the fog gate instead of allowing them to be interrupted like in DS2.
Oops. I just realised how badly I worded my post. Thanks for pointing that out. But yes, essentially make the visual of the fog wall like Bloodborne's with the system of Dark Souls 1, then. Dark Souls II had quite a few unnecessary ones, and Bloodborne pulled that horrible "first boss fight is a surprise" trick on near enough every single boss.