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Did Souls "no reload" spoiled other games for you?

McPlusle

Savant
Joined
May 11, 2017
Messages
319
Nothing says "I started playing video games yesterday" like comparing everything to Dark Souls.
 

the_shadow

Arcane
Joined
Dec 30, 2011
Messages
1,179
LOL, Dark Souls used to be really popular on the Codex, what's with the sudden reversal? Anyway, I rage-quit Dark Souls due to difficulty (and the PC-Xbox controller being a bit dodgy), but still think it's a pretty good game if you're skilled enough. I'm going to stick to turn-based or real time with pause... getting to old.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,925
This system is literally nothing but artificially extending the length of your game. Same thing that early arcade and arcade-like games did because they were short as fuck when you actually memorized every piece of bullshit the game would throw at you.
:deadhorse:

Why put a mundane item slightly off the main path when you can put it behind a 10 second climb on a ladder that leads nowhere and you have to go back up the same fucking ladder again? Why put the checkpoint in front of the boss room when you can put it further back and place some annoying as fuck enemies on the way? Why does a spell that says that it prevents fall damage doesn't actually prevent fall damage if you fall from too big of a height? Fuck you, that's why.
 
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Eyestabber

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
LOL, Dark Souls used to be really popular on the Codex, what's with the sudden reversal?

There is no reversal. Dark Souls was praised within the context of "modern games" and "action RPGs". A very "niche praise" if you will. The game brought stellar level design (that got dumbed down with every new interaction) and an actually functional combat system that manages to deliver a tasteful blend of action and RPG with a very high skill ceiling. That's all. Back in 2011 Dark Souls was a breath of fresh air. Fast forward a couple of years and you have a bunch of tards who started gaming with the Xbox spouting nonsense because they are ignorant of the context in which DS was first praised.

And let me tell you something else: I'm sick and tired of this stupid "Dark Souls made death actually mater guise!" meme. It's fucking bullshit. Old games punished the player by chopping one of his fingers. Dark Souls only bitchslaps the player a bit and then lets him proceed like nothing really happened. "But you lose your soooooouls". So fucking what? Enemies respawn. You can farm more souls any time you like and there are TONS of YT videos showing near effortless soul farming spots (Hellkite dragon says "hi"). Dark souls will never ever put you in a "game over" situation that forces you to restart.

Older games had long term resource management which means you can stack a bunch of smaller mistakes until you end up with an unwinnable savefile. In DS you only have short term punishment. It doesn't matter how many times you got killed clearing Anor Londo, once you kill Pikachu/Snorlax all is forgiven. Death only has short term consequences. The original DS had a little exception in the sense that you could botch your build and get stuck with a gimped character (which doesn't make the game unwinnable in any way). But then DS2 solved that problem by adding...respecs. :M

You want a modern game that actually punishes death? Try Dungeon of the Endless. That games punishes not just death, but pretty much every single bad decision you make. Unlike Dark Souls, there is no "clean slate at every checkpoint" in Dungeon of the Endless. Good luck with that. :positive:
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
And let me tell you something else: I'm sick and tired of this stupid "Dark Souls made death actually mater guise!" meme. It's fucking bullshit. Old games punished the player by chopping one of his fingers. Dark Souls only bitchslaps the player a bit and then lets him proceed like nothing really happened. "But you lose your soooooouls". So fucking what? Enemies respawn. You can farm more souls any time you like and there are TONS of YT videos showing near effortless soul farming spots (Hellkite dragon says "hi"). Dark souls will never ever put you in a "game over" situation that forces you to restart.

Older games had long term resource management which means you can stack a bunch of smaller mistakes until you end up with an unwinnable savefile. In DS you only have short term punishment. It doesn't matter how many times you got killed clearing Anor Londo, once you kill Pikachu/Snorlax all is forgiven. Death only has short term consequences.

:hmmm:

Why would a game which expected lenght is around 40 hours put the player in a spiral of death that forces him to restart? That's the kind of thing that goes well with faster games like FTL or Into the Breach. Not even the likes of King of Dragon Pass accomodates such a feature well, as its designer proved by changing in the newer versions.

Now please cite to me ye olde pixel games that had such a combination of great features as Dark Souls have, including everything you said yourself, and the environmental storytelling, the non-expositive/deductive lore, the innovative single-multiplayer aspect, etc. please.
 

Eyestabber

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
4,733
Location
HUEland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Why would a game which expected lenght is around 40 hours put the player in a spiral of death that forces him to restart? That's the kind of thing that goes well with faster games like FTL or Into the Breach. Not even the likes of King of Dragon Pass accomodates such a feature well, as its designer proved by changing in the newer versions.

X-Com and JA have campaigns that can last WAY over 40 hours and you can easily reach the point of no return once you make enough mistakes in those games. Other examples were provided ITT (but you ignored them).

Now please cite to me ye olde pixel games that had such a combination of great features as Dark Souls have, including everything you said yourself, and the environmental storytelling, the non-expositive/deductive lore, the innovative single-multiplayer aspect, etc. please.

:nocountryforshitposters:

You want me to cite a game that did everything DS did, except in the 80s? Before the technology behind Dark Souls even existed? Are you fucking retarded? What's next, "cite me an old game that has Witcher 3 levels of facial animations"? Nigga please...
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
X-Com and JA have campaigns that can last WAY over 40 hours and you can easily reach the point of no return once you make enough mistakes in those games. Other examples were provided ITT (but you ignored them)
And? So you think a feature is automatically positive and desirable just because a good game in the past had it? What's next, praising PS:T combat?

You want me to cite a game that did everything DS did, except in the 80s? Before the technology behind Dark Souls even existed? Are you fucking retarded? What's next, "cite me an old game that has Witcher 3 levels of facial animations"? Nigga please...
Environmental storytelling and non-expositive/deductive lore don't need any technology. Nor does a good combat system. Tell me a combat system as good as DS in an rpg. And no, don't cite Gothic please.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,869
The difficulty in Souls games is vastly overrated, but this is simply because the majority of the game's core audience (i.e. younger players) had only been exposed to extreme, degenerate levels of hand-holding in videogames, so much so that the defining feature of the medium - challenge, and the overcoming of challenge - was nearly completely forgotten by 'mainstream' games at the time.

I agree that dying in Souls only has short-term consequences and that it's possible to grind and eventually trivialize everything to a point, but you can still be killed by regular enemies in the level if you're not paying attention, no matter how much time you spend. It was the first time these newer players were exposed to a system that didn't simply take time as a substitute for skill - it might seem tautological to older players, but a game that requires you to actually learn through trial and error and overcome challenges is a rare thing these days.

So, from a utilitarian, Stuart Mill-esque perspective, the net result of the Souls series is good, because it revitalized the mainstream of the medium with a crucial aspect I'd even call it axiomatic - that had been forgotten: the necessity to overcome challenges through skill, coupled with a reasonable tradeoff between risk and reward (even if that risk is, on final analysis, almost nonexistent due to respawning enemies, checkpoints and potential endless repetition).

It's absurd to even think that this notion needed to be revitalized, but such are the times we live in. There are people everywhere who try to justify the existence of games as art, as narrative, as whatever else outside of the realm of gameplay. I define games simply by one aspect: challenge, and the careful balancing act between dedication and payoff.

The fact that people found again that you could feel exhilarated and ecstatic about beating a boss, or reaching the end of a tough level by the skin of your teeth, is great. It's a feeling that never gets old and that many games of my childhood gave me. It's something that 'modern' games have largely robbed their audience of - tilting exclusively on the side of reward, showering players with nothing but positive reinforcement for the most banal, menial tasks - therefore rendering their existence futile.

On the topic of saving/reloading: the issue of savescumming has existed for me for as long as games have allowed me to save whenever I want. The earliest notable example I can think of is Doom, where I realized that it was much more rewarding to go through the levels without dying and without previous equipment instead of saving/reloading every time you die.

However, Doom was a very well-designed game that supported that style of play explicitly - Romero has said all levels were explicitly designed to support a pistol start. Not all games can strike that careful balance, and most of them opt out of even trying.

I generally think choice is a good thing, but I'm not against limitations on saving. I usually prefer to play on the hardest difficulty level and only use one save slot with minimal backtracking (if a non-critical PC dies during a fight in a RPG I won't reload but will instead try to play the fight out, etc.)

I'm actually a fan of the original Wizardry style of saving, even if it was abusable (I didn't abuse it at the time). But that's just me. I'm more motivated to think scenarios through and optimize my style if there are real opportunity costs to failing.

Other people just want to relax, and that's fine too. That's why I think choices are good. But choices should never supplant the grueling work that goes into actually designing games to be challenging without being unfair. Unfortunately, most 'game designers' today are not engineers and do not think problems through - game design is a very top-down affair, just like many other fields of human creativity. The band-aid 'solution' to this problem is input from the players, which often makes matters worse.
 
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Mikeal

Arcane
Joined
Dec 19, 2016
Messages
3,446
Location
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
I was thinking about writing valid answer, but than I remember we're talking about Soul Fags here so I decide to save my time, and just posted this picture.

dda.png
 

Silva

Arcane
Joined
Jul 17, 2005
Messages
4,778
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Hmmm thinking again, there are cases where death spirals are good on lengthy games. That's true for games that are m open and allow for a great variety of approaches. JA and Xcom are good examples. Eyestabber is right.

Great Deceiver , I don't know, I think the presence of save/reload is itself a sign of poor design no matter what. I believe in the future we will find better alternatives and never go back to it again. Notice though that I don't mean the alternative is necessarily permadeath here, but simply forcing players to accept that all choices are final.
 

Master

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 19, 2016
Messages
1,160
X-Com and JA have campaigns that can last WAY over 40 hours and you can easily reach the point of no return once you make enough mistakes in those games. Other examples were provided ITT (but you ignored them)
And? So you think a feature is automatically positive and desirable just because a good game in the past had it? What's next, praising PS:T combat?

You want me to cite a game that did everything DS did, except in the 80s? Before the technology behind Dark Souls even existed? Are you fucking retarded? What's next, "cite me an old game that has Witcher 3 levels of facial animations"? Nigga please...
Environmental storytelling and non-expositive/deductive lore don't need any technology. Nor does a good combat system. Tell me a combat system as good as DS in an rpg. And no, don't cite Gothic please.
Thief did non expositive deductive lore before DS and did it better.
 

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