https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4ggx1c/slug/d2hpak2 Thoughts on this comment?
Okay, From Software hasn't been very inconsistent with gameplay quality these past 5 games (can you believe we seriously got 5 souls games?). And by gameplay quality, I mean overall gameplay quality. Quality of the attacks and general enemy designs. We've obviously had ups and downs, like Lost Izalith, and Dark Souls 2.
Obviously the core game is more important than nonlinearity, but nonlinearity and interconnection is important if you ask me, both on the level of individual areas, and across the whole world. Having that type of interconnectivity on the level of individual areas makes it so there are a bunch of different ways to go through the area, so you get a different experience each time, and once you know the area well enough, you can strategize around how you'll cut through it to minimize risk and travel time. Good examples of this in Dark Souls 3 are the cathedral of the deep and most of the areas after it. Having it on a world level means the same thing, except on a larger scale. It means fitting the world together in your head to see the points of interconnection, and tracing routes across it that hit the fewest enemies, gross the highest number of souls, pick up the most items on the way, open the most shortcuts. Dark Souls lets me, right out of the gate, cut through new londo, kill ingward to grab the key to the seal, open the floodgates, pick up the red tearstone ring, ride the elevator up to dark root basin, kill Sif, go back and kill the 4 kings. Or I could follow that roundabout route to get to the gargoyles, or quelaag. I could even go down and kill pinwheel, grabbing the rite of kindling and a gravelord sword on the way. It's fun to think of different ways to get around the world the fastest way possible. Warping at bonfires, at least in the early game, kills this constraint. Having it be limited in the late game still requires you to go through areas and plan around where you warp. Verticality is a component of this because it allows levels to wrap on themselves.
I'm fine with the input buffering in the souls games. It's handy. Having a smaller window would be sensible to prevent accidental buffers, but most of the time you're fine if you don't mash.
Poise was not broken in dark souls 1. The equip burden system exists for a reason. You cannot get more poise unless you invest in endurance, or you pay the price in speed. If you had enough endurance to avoid slow roll, you likely grinded to get that much. Poise in Dark Souls 3 needs work, it's literally turned off for some reason.
The healing gems in dark souls 2 let you remove context from fight to fight much more easily. So it wasn't a matter of trying to push further on a limited total amount of health (your current bar plus all your flasks), it was about purely surviving each individual encounter, which is lame. Fair point about the bar increasing at a slower rate, though you can move while crushing gems
Fair points about the PvP though, it was pretty broken in dark souls
Obviously the core game is more important than nonlinearity, but nonlinearity and interconnection is important if you ask me, both on the level of individual areas, and across the whole world. Having that type of interconnectivity on the level of individual areas makes it so there are a bunch of different ways to go through the area, so you get a different experience each time, and once you know the area well enough, you can strategize around how you'll cut through it to minimize risk and travel time. Good examples of this in Dark Souls 3 are the cathedral of the deep and most of the areas after it. Having it on a world level means the same thing, except on a larger scale. It means fitting the world together in your head to see the points of interconnection, and tracing routes across it that hit the fewest enemies, gross the highest number of souls, pick up the most items on the way, open the most shortcuts. Dark Souls lets me, right out of the gate, cut through new londo, kill ingward to grab the key to the seal, open the floodgates, pick up the red tearstone ring, ride the elevator up to dark root basin, kill Sif, go back and kill the 4 kings. Or I could follow that roundabout route to get to the gargoyles, or quelaag. I could even go down and kill pinwheel, grabbing the rite of kindling and a gravelord sword on the way. It's fun to think of different ways to get around the world the fastest way possible. Warping at bonfires, at least in the early game, kills this constraint. Having it be limited in the late game still requires you to go through areas and plan around where you warp. Verticality is a component of this because it allows levels to wrap on themselves.
I'm fine with the input buffering in the souls games. It's handy. Having a smaller window would be sensible to prevent accidental buffers, but most of the time you're fine if you don't mash.
Poise was not broken in dark souls 1. The equip burden system exists for a reason. You cannot get more poise unless you invest in endurance, or you pay the price in speed. If you had enough endurance to avoid slow roll, you likely grinded to get that much. Poise in Dark Souls 3 needs work, it's literally turned off for some reason.
The healing gems in dark souls 2 let you remove context from fight to fight much more easily. So it wasn't a matter of trying to push further on a limited total amount of health (your current bar plus all your flasks), it was about purely surviving each individual encounter, which is lame. Fair point about the bar increasing at a slower rate, though you can move while crushing gems
Fair points about the PvP though, it was pretty broken in dark souls