Editorial Deep Dungeon: Exploring the Design of Dark Souls

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Dark Souls: Prepare to Die

Robert Boyd, designer of Cthulhu Saves the World, has put up a piece on Gamasutra exploring the design of Dark Souls.

3. It's difficult to truly mess up your stat progression

Dark Souls lets the player allocate their stats bonuses from level-ups however they wish. This gives the expert min-maxer a great deal of flexibility to create the ultimate Dark Souls destroying machine.

But what about the less experienced player who doesn't know what they're doing? No problem -- the design has taken that into account as well. There are several effective tools available to the player that have little to no reliance on stats, like elemental weapons, armor (armor increases weight but doesn't have specific stat requirements), and powerful fire magic called pyromancy, that the player can use to dig themselves out of the hole they've created with poor level-up choices.

All level-ups give a slight boost to the player's overall defense, so no matter what you choose, you're always getting slightly more resilient. And it's possible to max out all stats eventually -- so in the end, poor choices can be fixed with grinding.

So, stats don't matter much and will be maxed out anyway, how very streamlined.

 

[MicoSelva]

Unless there is some very convenient gridning spot in this game, I think I'd prefer starting over rather than killing the same monsters all over again (there is too much of this shit in Dark Souls anyway) to compensate for poor progression choices.

 

[Cynic]

There is a farming spot where you can basically auto level your bro very fast with very little effort. This didn't hamper the experience one bit. You can definitely gimp your character if you pick a certain class and then pump all your stat points into some other stat, however you can then chage direction with your character if you want. You can make a magic casting thief if you want, there are a huge number of viable builds. Certain stats are crucial for using certain weapons or learning certain spells.

 

[felipepepe]

Seems like the guy read the manual but never played the game, the resiliant bonus when you level up is irrelevant, and to "max out all stats" you'll need like 4-5 playthroughs with tons of farming...

Also, his rant about "not really being open-world" just screams "I wish it was level-scaled". Yes, a new player will get beaten to death if he doesn't follow the "standard path", but any experienced player can embrace the challenge and do the bosses in any order he wants.

Finally:

When you see an enemy with a shield, switch to the two-handed stance and then just go to town on them. The hand axe has a high stagger stat so, in no time, your assault will knock the enemy's shield out of the way, allowing you to defeat them easily.

KICK THEM, you retard!

 

[nihil]

Dark Souls would've been better without stats, really. Or at least with leveling through souls. It makes it possible to mess up the difficulty curve by grinding. (Some overpowered items does that, too.)

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Seems like the guy read the manual but never played the game, the resiliant bonus when you level up is irrelevant, and to "max out all stats" you'll need like 4-5 playthroughs with tons of farming...

Also, his rant about "not really being open-world" just screams "I wish it was level-scaled". Yes, a new player will get beaten to death if he doesn't follow the "standard path", but any experienced player can embrace the challenge and do the bosses in any order he wants.

Finally:

When you see an enemy with a shield, switch to the two-handed stance and then just go to town on them. The hand axe has a high stagger stat so, in no time, your assault will knock the enemy's shield out of the way, allowing you to defeat them easily.

KICK THEM, you retard!

I concur. The difficulty of the game is overrated, but the article seems like it was written about the beginning of the game alone. Also I think even 4-5 playthroughs to max all stats is very optimistic - in order to get to SL 700+ when you max your souls, you need a total in the billions (with levels coming every 8 million souls or so). I don't think any players go over 250-300 without glitching. Plus to be effective in PvP, you need to be so careful with your stats that the most hardcore players view half of the classes as broken from the beginning.

The armor requires quite a bit of thinking and balancing of tradeoffs between defense and mobility. Elemental weapons are fine, but they are far less effective on tougher enemies than scaled weapons with high stats and pyromancy is slow to cast and requires investing enough souls in your flame to get many levels.

Seriously, how does more difficult (but doable) alternate paths make a game linear? It wasn't sold as a sandbox.

Also, two handing with the handaxe and/or kicking will get you schooled on the vast majority of enemies outside of the undead burg.

 

[felipepepe]

Also I think even 4-5 playthroughs to max all stats is very optimistic - in order to get to SL 700+ when you max your souls, you need a total in the billions (with levels coming every 8 million souls or so). I don't think any players go over 250-300 without glitching.

I was thinking about that "soft cap", when leveling up wields dimishing results and honestly makes little difference...

Also, two handing with the handaxe and/or kicking will get you schooled on the vast majority of enemies outside of the undead burg.

Well, that's part of the humbling expirience that is playing Dark Souls... by the time they're out of Undead Burg I doubt any first time player still thinks he is a glorious hero that can overpower foes with his mighty axe/boot.

More the reason to believe this reviewer never really played the game...

 

[Average Manatee]

There is a stat in the game made just for people who want to mess up. It's called resistance, and it does nothing. Honestly though it's hard to mess up the rest. Both magic and faith can give benefits to either strength or dexterity builds. You can't really go wrong, you just need to find the right item to work with your build. So I would say the solution to a weird build isn't grinding, but exploration. Maybe a half faith half magic caster would irreversibly suck? The two magic stats are really the only ones that don't combine at all. But that's all I can think of.

Needing uber-perfect stat allocation is just silly. 90% of your power is meeting the minimum requirements to wield your equipment or spells, scaling beyond that is just a bonus. There's a reason SL1 players can still kill things with their +15 weapons (they just can't take any hits without vitality/endurance). Optimized PvP builds aren't doing much that a similar non-optimized build can't accomplish almost as well, this is just PvPers taking every slim advantage they can.

Arguably you can say that you have a maxed-out character once you reach 40 in all stats, since the difference between 40 and 99 is just a few percent. Thats what, level 200ish? Not counting resistance of course because lol resistance.

Well, that's part of the humbling expirience that is playing Dark Souls... by the time they're out of Undead Burg I doubt any first time player still thinks he is a glorious hero that can overpower foes with his mighty axe/boot.

More the reason to believe this reviewer never really played the game...

I dunno, I went awhile in Demons Souls not knowing about kick and lunging attack.

 

[Niektory]

Seems like the guy read the manual but never played the game, the resiliant bonus when you level up is irrelevant

I just checked it for fun, and my 70 level naked character took 36% less damage from the same attacks than 5 level one.

 

[felipepepe]

Seems like the guy read the manual but never played the game, the resiliant bonus when you level up is irrelevant

I just checked it for fun, and my 70 level naked character took 36% less damage from the same attacks than 5 level one.

So, around 0.5% per level? More than I expected, but not something that will compensate for wrong choices, as the author implied...

 

[sser]

I'm pretty certain Dark Souls is bigger than Skyrim. And far more interesting and fun.

But it wasn't limited in any way. None of my buddies took the same path through the game. I did the ordinary path I think most people take (Demon on the bridge, dragon, goatdemon with the dogs); I had a friend skip through a bunch of stuff because he played a thief, so he branched into the forests and that tricky area with the wooden works hanging over the swamps; and another branched into the catacombs of all things.

 

[Zewp]

Dark Souls would've been better without stats, really. Or at least with leveling through souls. It makes it possible to mess up the difficulty curve by grinding. (Some overpowered items does that, too.)

Like everyone thinking they're the shit after getting the Drake Sword. They really should have either nerfed that weapon or removed it entirely.

 

[Grunker]

The more I play this game, the more I read about this game, the more I feel a complete lack of understanding for the Codex' love of it.

 

[nihil]

Dark Souls would've been better without stats, really. Or at least with leveling through souls. It makes it possible to mess up the difficulty curve by grinding. (Some overpowered items does that, too.)

Like everyone thinking they're the shit after getting the Drake Sword. They really should have either nerfed that weapon or removed it entirely.

I luckily didn't find it on my first play through, so the gargoyle battle was quite a challenge.

The more I play this game, the more I read about this game, the more I feel a complete lack of understanding for the Codex' love of it.

There are other threads that explain why it's good. Look for my posts.

 

[felipepepe]

Drake Sword has a boring moveset, I only used it once. Once you've beaten the game is more interesting to try weird weapons, or it becames too easy.

 

[Average Manatee]

Seems like the guy read the manual but never played the game, the resiliant bonus when you level up is irrelevant

I just checked it for fun, and my 70 level naked character took 36% less damage from the same attacks than 5 level one.

So, around 0.5% per level? More than I expected, but not something that will compensate for wrong choices, as the author implied...

It's not percent based. You'll have plenty of damage reduction to shrug off attacks from weak common enemies but bosses will still wreck your shit.

 

[JarlFrank]

"Dark Souls is not really open world because area X is harder than area Y and therefore you have to do area Y before area X, which means it is not really open world herpa derpa derp"

This is why we cannot have nice things.

 

[St. Toxic]

For pvm and on the first playthrough, stats really don't matter. If you want to pvp or progress further, however, you might cripple yourself pretty badly just going for random selection. I don't know, maybe they should've made the characters more stat reliant even on the first playthrough. As you max a stat, the effect of it scales off until you basically get nothing from it, so I assume the idea was to branch out as much as possible anyway. If it wasn't for the all too frequent campfires, this set-up would've worked better. You'd constantly be losing your souls, unable to level up and equip whatever awesome equipment that you had found, and you'd be happy to get the bare minimum stats necessary to function rather than get bloated as most players do. As it is, even if you do die along the way, there's little stopping you from recovering your souls. Also, I miss the health penalty for losing your human form that they had in DeS, that shit was malicious. So you couldn't kill that boss at full hp? Well, now try half hp.

 

[Jasede]

Yes, that was glorious.

 

[felipepepe]

Well, there is curse, and for the first month or so it was VERY punishing, with no purging stones, you could only undo curses by using the rare ring or talking to the guy at New Londo Ruins... and it stacks. Sadly, people bitched so much they patched in the stones.

 

[Grunker]

There are other threads that explain why it's good. Look for my posts.

Those threads are not in line with my experience playing the game. Or rather, most of it is, but the ones that praise its RPG elements are not. Not at all, in fact.

I can see why some would like this game, but praising it from the viewpoint of RPG Codex merits seems strange to me.

Also: Fuck that port.

 

[felipepepe]

I can see why some would like this game, but praising it from the viewpoint of RPG Codex merits seems strange to me.

Why? Just because of the stats/player skill?

It's a challenging game, with no hand-holding, that keeps it's secrets well hidden, has a fantastics atmosphere & level design and allows for multiple playstyles. You may say it's closer to Devil May Cry than an actual RPG, but you can also see it as the best action game for an RPG fan.

 

[JarlFrank]

I started the game, with all the available fan patches to make it not play like utterly horrible shit, and it's pretty fun. Controls still feel rather clunky though, and

Also: Fuck that port.

pretty much this.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

From a C&C perspective, although its very limited in the choices you make, those choices it gives you are handled pretty well. Almost all of these choices will have to do with how you treat NPCs, so the consequences will not be earth-shaking, but they are proportional to the type of choice given. Pretty much any time you get a "yes or no" prompt", the game world has the potential to change as a result of your answer. So comparatively few choices, but very few fake choices. -

Off the top of my head, the kind of choices I am thinking about are fairly mild from the world perspective (unless, like me, you are kind of sentimental), but depending on how you are playing they can have a significant effect on your game:

Spoiler

- telling Laurentius you spoke with Quelana will cause him to go hollow while trying to find her, cutting off access to iron skin & flash sweat
- discovering & siding with Kaathe will remove Fraampt (and the ability to break down Titanite) and enable a covenant, while siding with Fraampt will remove Kaathe and the covenant options
- learning the truth about Petrus from Lautrec and telling Petrus will trigger his murder of Rhea unless you kill him first, removing the only vendor of powerful miracles. If you are a faith/miracle build this can remove a serious chunk of your potential capabilities
- attacking gwynevere will change Anor Londo fairly significantly, subjecting you to avenging invaders and causing the bonfire keeper to become hostile. If you killer her, that makes the bonfire inactive.
- Killing Lautrec will stop him from killing the Firekeeper (but you might not want to stop him)

What I really like about these choices is (1) that all of the consequences are plausible, but not telegraphed and (2) some consequences arise from inaction as well as action. This prompted me to actually consider how I interacted with the world with far more caution than I'm used to. This doesn't make it full RPG C&C, but I think what it does, it does well.

 

[St. Toxic]

Well, there is curse, and for the first month or so it was VERY punishing, with no purging stones, you could only undo curses by using the rare ring or talking to the guy at New Londo Ruins... and it stacks. Sadly, people bitched so much they patched in the stones.

Well hey, that sucks and all, but I never got cursed -- I don't check holes face first. It's one thing to expect penalties when you die, preferably ones that can be restored by, I don't know, killing a boss which is a big victory in itself. But to fuck up by not reacting quick enough after plunging down a hole, and then getting screwed by this thing -- I mean, curse seems pretty vicious. And I bet these guys were trying to stay off walkthroughs, like c'mon man do it live, and then this shit hits and ocrap do I restart the character or go on-line and find out what cures it. It probably messes with you a little.