Dark souls is utter crap as a game.

[Dr.Panties]

This thread makes me wonder what people see in difficulty.

For me, things are either fun or they're hard. What satisfaction do you get out of frustration?

Because for some people if a game is too easy to win it is not satisfying enough.

One of multiple purposes of a game (video or not) is to challenge the players. Overcoming challenges is satisfying, in work and in recreation. Challenging games should not be forgotten, although it may be fine for some people to ignore.

Breezing through an easy game is boring to me, and boredom is the worst emotion to feel while playing a video game.

This is probably just my chronic laziness kicking in, then. Having to exert any effort to do anything (especially if it's non-essential) is guaranteed to make me frustrated and annoyed.

Your posts are both non-essential and inane, and I wish your chronic laziness had kicked in prior to your fingers touching the keyboard.

I mean, for the love of Satan's ejaculating nipples:

"For me, things are either fun or they're hard."

This statement is just obscene, and is causing me both frustration and annoyance. It denotes total disregard for the concept of competitiveness, as applied both to oneself and to others, and the enjoyment that can be derived therein- you know, one of the major facets of any fucking game design. And don't even get me started on the notion of deriving satisfaction through overcoming challenges with skill and/or intellect. Or taking pleasure in just developing and/or refining one's skills, or activating an entirely new lateral interpretive framework to solve a seemingly impossible puzzle. You know, opening up that mind to different strains of logic, new exciting possibilities and/or perspectives.
Stimulation versus stagnation.

Sure, there are games that exist purely for the ride, and those that exist to challenge, and those that converge somewhere along this spectrum. And they all have their merits. But your above statement is just...nothing.

It denotes a conscious deficiency. It's a highway, a straight line through the pretty desert of the banal, with the car locked on autopilot just below the speed limit. And Satan help us if a sharp corner comes up, because we'll crash and never drive another car, because further sharp corners might be encountered.

 

[repeating integers]

This thread makes me wonder what people see in difficulty.

For me, things are either fun or they're hard. What satisfaction do you get out of frustration?

Because for some people if a game is too easy to win it is not satisfying enough.

One of multiple purposes of a game (video or not) is to challenge the players. Overcoming challenges is satisfying, in work and in recreation. Challenging games should not be forgotten, although it may be fine for some people to ignore.

Breezing through an easy game is boring to me, and boredom is the worst emotion to feel while playing a video game.

This is probably just my chronic laziness kicking in, then. Having to exert any effort to do anything (especially if it's non-essential) is guaranteed to make me frustrated and annoyed.

Your posts are both non-essential and inane, and I wish your chronic laziness had kicked in prior to your fingers touching the keyboard.

I mean, for the love of Satan's ejaculating nipples:

"For me, things are either fun or they're hard."

This statement is just obscene, and is causing me both frustration and annoyance. It denotes total disregard for the concept of competitiveness, as applied both to oneself and to others, and the enjoyment that can be derived therein- you know, one of the major facets of any fucking game design. And don't even get me started on the notion of deriving satisfaction through overcoming challenges with skill and/or intellect. Or taking pleasure in just developing and/or refining one's skills, or activating an entirely new lateral interpretive framework to solve a seemingly impossible puzzle. You know, opening up that mind to different strains of logic, new exciting possibilities and/or perspectives.
Stimulation versus stagnation.

Sure, there are games that exist purely for the ride, and those that exist to challenge, and those that converge somewhere along this spectrum. And they all have their merits. But your above statement is just...nothing.

It denotes a conscious deficiency. It's a highway, a straight line through the pretty desert of the banal, with the car locked on autopilot just below the speed limit. And Satan help us if a sharp corner comes up, because we'll crash and never drive another car, because further sharp corners might be encountered.

Looking back, I do believe that was me in a vaguely depressed state - those posts were probably me attempting to subtly insult myself. Woo, teenagerdom is just wonderful.

Pay those posts no heed. They're bullshit, I do freely admit.

 

[David Retske]

They game has a deep and interesting story arc, but you have to explore, talk, listen, and discover the details. This game is closer to reality in the sense that if you are thrust into an unknown land this is how you would feel; no one would pop up suddenly with all the answers, tell you where to go, what would face, and how to do everything. In this land you do not where to go, whether you actually have to face certain areas, or if you have to do anything at all. You are not a "chosen one" or "destined to be..." you are another person and if you are skilled enough to can be the one to complete the quest. Other people (the NPCs) have the same chance as your character, but are either unsuccessful (thus the reason you find warrior souls on corpses), choose to become merchants, or simply give up.

As for the gameplay:
Sorry, I know this is exactly what you don;t want to hear, but the fun is in the challenge. It is the same reason that you prize the cheap crappy stuffed animal that you get from the fair, you played a game that was stacked against you and you won. Beating a Halo game is ho-hum, because everyone in the world will beat it in roughly the same amount of time and have the same experience. With Dark Souls you may take 80 hours to beat every boss and get every possible item, while your friend beats it in 20 hours, but skips all the extra content. In many cases the game will not be beat. The game is all about timing and skill. Check YouTube, there are a bunch of videos of people beating the entire game with a level one character as well as videos of people beating the game in an hour or less (I saw a 30 minute speed run and it blew my mind.) This game treats you as an adult gamer and doesn't hold your hand with any step by step tutorials.

Bottom line:
This reply to your post was for me, not to convince you.
This game is not your cup of tea and that is fine. I love this game as do many others. At first Demon's Souls annoyed me, I hated it, but I hated giving up more. I told myself I will beat the first boss before I call it total crap. Halfway to getting to him (or should I say them) I was hooked. This game provided me with a deep storyline, with just enough vagueness to allow my imagination to work, as well as a feeling of accomplishment for completing the challenge.

I understand and enjoy games that feed me the experience and storyline as well, this is not one of those games. If you want one, pick any other game in the world, this game is for us crazy people that like little story and hardcore challenges.

 

[Mikejames]

What satisfaction do you get out of frustration?

I think it depends on what makes it hard. Games that force you to think about different ways to go about it to beat it I like, as they provide a challenge. Like Portals advanced maps.

Games that just chuck on another 1000HP to the boss and double their strength to make it "harder" are not fun as they are just a grind, as you normally just do the same thing but with a lot more hiding to get health back and so on.

Difficulty levels should test your ability more than your patience to be enjoyable.

Well put. Sometimes finally grinding away at a time-sink boss just leaves me jaded depending on the context and how many times I've had to repeat and fail the process. Now mastering a deceptive puzzle? There's some smug satisfaction potential there.

 

[DoomBlackDragon]

My biggest problem with the game is the controls. I bot the game for the pc as I have nerve damage in most of my body. I can not hold a controller to save my life. Which is why I am a pc player. Only for them to take a full year to give me one of the crappiest console ports I have ever seen. Even worse is my zombie controls as if the devs where wasted on derp sauce.

People actually like the clunky controls? The like how bad your character handles. Sorry but I rather give Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing a higher score then this game.

I feel the devs took a full year jerking off dreaming of how much money they can scam off the pc gamers.

 

[aguspal]

My biggest problem with the game is the controls. I bot the game for the pc as I have nerve damage in most of my body. I can not hold a controller to save my life. Which is why I am a pc player. Only for them to take a full year to give me one of the crappiest console ports I have ever seen. Even worse is my zombie controls as if the devs where wasted on derp sauce.

People actually like the clunky controls? The like how bad your character handles. Sorry but I rather give Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing a higher score then this game.

I feel the devs took a full year jerking off dreaming of how much money they can scam off the pc gamers.

That is apretty good point right here.

Sure, the "solution" to a crappy port that SHOULD have good M&K controls in the first place is to simply use a controller... But what happends if you dont like use controllers? Well I guess you are a bit screwed, not your fault since it is a PC port... Really thats pretty shitty.


And the whole "BUT FANS ASKED FOR THEM AND THEY DIDNT REALLY WANTED TO DO IT BECAUSE OF THIS VERY SAME THING OMFGFGMOFGMFOG" its not an excuse, they should have not tried then.

 

[SweetShark]

The tag line for the game is "PREPARE TO DIE". Did you think that this was applicable to everyone other than yourself?
Dark Souls is one of the most brutually difficult games ever made. It's not 2012-Difficult, it's Old-School-1980-Difficult.

Nope, this game isn't difficult at all.................after playing THIS game!!!!

I will just leave this picture. The ones that played the game, they know what I am talking about....

 

[Atmos Duality]

I wondered what smelled like nerd rage and rot...
Thread Necromancy. And what topic to resurrect: This tired, inflammatory topic.

 

[sanquin]

1: Is the game truly difficult? No. But it is challenging. Very challenging at some points. If you run in and die and die again until you don't die one time, guess what? It's because you learned how to fight that enemy, consciously or subconsciously. Actually having to learn how to fight an enemy = Challenge. (or in some cases, difficulty)

2: No story to speak of? Just because the story isn't obvious and literally thrown into your face like in Skyrim or other such games, doesn't mean it isn't there. Little npc's to have a worthwhile conversation with is part of that. Guess what? This world doesn't care about you. You're not seen as some magical hero and no one is blurting out their personal history just because you talked to them like in Skyrim.

3: The controls aren't hard. They're different so take some getting used to. But once you do, they work perfectly for the game. They might not work in other games, but in this one they fit.

OP's complaints are typical of a current-gen gamer, imo. People like him haven't actually played the oldschool games from the 80's and 90's where games were a lot more challenging/difficult than dark souls and where NOTHING AT ALL was told to you. Not even to the extend that dark souls tells you things. Heck, DS has a tutorial. Back in those days, as I recall, plenty of games didn't even have that. They just threw you right in. Even RPG's, yes.

 

[gm@n]

I loved most everything about Dark Souls: the atnosphere, sounds, combat, graphics, are amazing but what I hated was the save mechanic and the lack of any explanation with regards to humanity and some other crucial mechanics. Look, the combat is suppossed to be difficult and precise and I appreciate that, but there is nothing more annoying than starting all the way back from where you came because you don't know the one trick to beat a boss and not knowing the shortcut AND EVERY enemy respawning; that is not difficulty, thats padding. The amount of backtracking was horrendous as well. BUT I see why people like it, and honestly its a downright gorgeous game...if they could just flesh out some explanations and not be so godd*** vauge it would be a lot better. I wanted to love Dark Souls so bad, but I just couldn't, but its me more than anything. Although they defenitley need to explain some mechanics better.

 

[TheLycanKing144]

I wouldn't call it "crap" but I did think it was very overrated (along with it's predecessor Demon's Souls, though I did find that one to be a little better).

It's essentially just a dungeon crawler with little depth to it, it's also not as challenging as people make it out to be either. All you have to do is just learn the enemies movements, once you do you can easily just dodge their attacks and hit them, combat is essentially just a "hit and run" experience that you repeat over and over with every enemy you come across.

I did however enjoy the multiplayer aspect to it, I liked the unique way they implemented it where you can invade other players games and leave messages to help out others, that was one of the best online experiences I have ever had. Overall I would give the game a 4/5.

 

[sanquin]

--snip--

That's part of the atmosphere though. The vagueness that is. The game is supposed to be very unforgiving and no hand-holding whatsoever outside of the basic character control you learn in the tutorial area. How do you find out where to go? Listen to the npc's + trial and error. Enemies too strong for you? Well, better try another area first. You're rewarded for exploring everything and thus finding shortcuts and secrets. You're punished (by having to re-do larger area's) for tunnel-visioning towards the next boss. Granted, humanity could have been explained better. I had to wikipedia it to find out what it does. But mostly the clues are there. It's just that in modern games there's so much hand-holding and blinking arrows and way points that our brains aren't used to dealing with games that don't do such things any more.

As for the backtracking. At some points it's a bit much, yes. But overall it's really not that bad. If you want to see terrible backtracking, go play Dragon's Dogma. There you don't backtrack once or twice, but have to go to the same area over and over again at times.