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It's part of the theme of the game, noble/lofty people being laid low by their baser nature.
Actually I have no idea.
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From Software Dark Souls 3
- Thread starter Makabb
- Start date
It's part of the theme of the game, noble/lofty people being laid low by their baser nature.
Actually I have no idea.
Perkel
Arcane
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- Mar 28, 2014
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Using estoc currently on my 3rd char and i must say that it is worse than both DS1 and DS2. It does have nice piercing special attack but it takes forever to do it. R2 attack on other hand doesn't have shield piercing like it used to.
In essence it became just a spear. Though it still has that front kick replacer and you still can stab from behind shield like spear.
edit:
what i also notice is that good change from DS2 aka holding weapons in both hands produced both R1/L1 being fast attack and R2/L2 being heavy attack, didn't make into DS3. Sure there are "double weapons" now but imo DS2 way of doing both hand weapons was better. Now usually L1 is block regardless of weapon and L2 is usually fast attack.
Need to test more weapon arts. So far they are mediacore to fun.
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I'm in the Farron Keep now and honestly I haven't noticed any changes yet. The soul packets are bigger ofc and they're called differently (Soul of a Proud Paladin etc.) and I think I've found one item in the Settlement I don't remember from NG but other than that it's pretty much the same. I thought mobs would hit much harder btw.
I think I have discovered a countermeasure against the R1 spam - enchant a shield with the Great Magic Shield spell. I have no idea what exactly it does but seems to me attacks drain stamina at MUCH slower rate. It probably ads a huge stability bonus, although it doesn't say that in the description and the stats on screen don't change. A guy with Dark Sword came swinging at me like mad but after 7 swings or so ran out of stamina and my own bar was still more than half full. The only problem is the spell doesn't last long and takes a long time to cast.
Immortal
Arcane
uhmm.. you're doing it wrong.. in pvp the estoc is absolutely insane. I feel bad using it.
It's so good that I can spam it on someone rolling past me and as soon as they lose their invuln frames I can interrupt them out of the roll and lock them down for at least 2 thrusts.
The estoc is just way too punishing. Don't even start on the parry.
Leechmonger
Arbiter
DeS/DS1 level design was immersive, save for some areas in late DS1 (Izalith). DS2 levels feel like they were thrown together by a shitty modder (the DLCs were good, though), it was like the worst parts of DS1 stretched out over a whole game with (low resolution) texture swaps. DS3's early levels are some of the best in the series and make later ones look worse by comparison. Your experience with the later levels will also be marred by the growing monotony of DS3 combat.
I went back to the Catacombs
I can assure you the estoc is great for PvE as well.
Poise in DS2 regenerated extremely slowly (30 seconds+) and was extremely low relative to weapons' poise damage values. More weapons had hyper-armor during attacks, but poise itself was shit.
I went back to the Catacombs
for the secret area, wow that was bad. More nostalgia pandering with little substance behind it. They even recycled a whole area from Catacombs, which you have theoretically just fucking played through. But your old enemies are all dead, isn't that sad? ;_; ;_; ;_; Don't mind the shitty level design.
I can assure you the estoc is great for PvE as well.
Poise in DS2 regenerated extremely slowly (30 seconds+) and was extremely low relative to weapons' poise damage values. More weapons had hyper-armor during attacks, but poise itself was shit.
Echo Mirage
Arcane
How are the spears?
I always wanted to try a pure spear based character in DS after the first run at least.
I always wanted to try a pure spear based character in DS after the first run at least.
toro
Arcane
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- Apr 14, 2009
- Messages
- 14,624
They are awesome. Good for PvE and PvP.
Murk
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2008
- Messages
- 13,459
cvv the shield spells typically increase resistance AND stability, so the stability is what you're probably noticing. Unrelated, but there was that 'magic shield' shield, that you could infuse with a faintstone to make it a magic magic shield, then cast strong magic shield on it to get a strong magic shielded magic magic shield.
Estocs always been good in pvp, it was one of the 'top tier' weapons in ds2 pvp for sure -- its retarded range, damage (decent counter and poise break), and speed are just too good. It's r2 was also a good 'control' attack with its wide slash, that other poke weapons typically lack (they have poor tracking; other than whip sword when first implemented [rip my precious]).
I uhhh don't like the attack animations (in general). They're a little too nonsensical to me. They look flashy and cool, but don't make as much "sense" IMO. Especially enemy attacks that randomly seem to have huge range. It reminds me of the knight character from battle arena toshinden, and how his sword would literally just stretch during attacks.
Actually, with the fucking roll + punish strats and constant 'pit of doom' edges of the arena... I think From may have just ripped that game off ;D
Hah, the last boss even has something that looks like the moonlight greatsword.
Estocs always been good in pvp, it was one of the 'top tier' weapons in ds2 pvp for sure -- its retarded range, damage (decent counter and poise break), and speed are just too good. It's r2 was also a good 'control' attack with its wide slash, that other poke weapons typically lack (they have poor tracking; other than whip sword when first implemented [rip my precious]).
I uhhh don't like the attack animations (in general). They're a little too nonsensical to me. They look flashy and cool, but don't make as much "sense" IMO. Especially enemy attacks that randomly seem to have huge range. It reminds me of the knight character from battle arena toshinden, and how his sword would literally just stretch during attacks.
Actually, with the fucking roll + punish strats and constant 'pit of doom' edges of the arena... I think From may have just ripped that game off ;D
Hah, the last boss even has something that looks like the moonlight greatsword.
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Cowboy Moment
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 4,407
General thoughts on DS3 and the direction of the series.
Major tldr, proceed at own caution.
Major tldr, proceed at own caution.
I'm not going to repeat my complaints about the combat system or talk about specific bosses or areas, but rather try to express why the game just feels unsatisfying to me. It'd be easy to blame that on the combat or the general linearity in progression, but I don't think that's the case.
The main reason this was difficult to put my finger on is that DS3 is an exceptionally well-made game, by far From's most polished release to date (not having played Bloodborne). Putting aside systemic issues, content quality is very high - level design and aesthetics are excellent, there's a great variety of enemies, bosses at the very minimum all look great and have cool movesets, game is very balanced both in terms of difficulty progression and stat allocation. The world. in spite of being linear to progress through, makes geographical sense, and you can consistently see landmarks from other areas at various points. There's no awful crap like Lost Izalith, no shitty copypaste bosses, no weird discontinuities ala DS2, no clearly broken mechanics. Clearly the game didn't suffer from any development problems (signs of which were very obvious in DS2 for example), and the team made exactly the game they wanted to make. Which, in a way, is even more disappointing, as what I find unsatisfying about it is likely by design, and not by mistake.
For the record, a lot of the tendencies I'll discuss below were already present in DS2, though to a lesser extent. In that way, I actually see DeS and DS1 as results of a particular design philosophy, which the subsequent games started to move away from.
One good word that nicely encapsulates what I dislike about DS3 is "streamlined". In DS1, New Londo, and endgame area, was right under the main hub, and immediately accessible. Ditto for Catacombs, and the graveyard on its own claimed the lives of many a newbie player. Nothing stops a player from wandering into Valley of Drakes from the Darkroot Basin and going into Blighttown from the other direction. The player also is not given any kind of specific goal, and left to wander aimlessly until they find something plot-critical. All of this was significantly toned down in DS2 (which gives you a lot of places to go, but they're all places you can handle, endgame is safely locked away until you're strong enough), and all but removed in DS3 - here, you follow a nice, straightforward path across the game, with a clear and unambiguous goal, with nary a hint of uncertainity or danger. All the obscurity and quirkiness of the early Souls games has at this point be scrubbed away in favor of producing an edgy-but-streamlined combat simulator.
And that's another issue, the extreme focus on combat, and a very narrow version of it, where you enter a large room (so your precious self can have enough space to spam roll), and just fight whatever enemies are in it, rinse and repeat, almost like a series of small arenas. As such, enemies are designed with a focus on being individually challenging, with fast and unpredictable movesets and high damage, and enemy design is almost completely disconnected from area design. This is in contrast to DeS and DS1, where enemies were often not so difficult in and out of themselves, but were an integral part of an area's challenge. Furthermore, while encounters in those games were often easier individually, bonfires (or shortcuts in the case of DeS) were much more sparse, making it more difficult to progress on luck or persistence alone. DS2 and DS3, on the other hand, positively shower the player with bonfires and shortcuts (some of which in DS3 are just straight-up superfluous and silly), which also lets them get away with their more extreme encounter design. It feels like the developers thought that the essence of their formula was this kind of high-lethality combat and streamlined the rest of their game in an attempt to refine this particular feature.
And this brings me to level design. In terms of aesthetics and layout, it's excellent, albeit somewhat formulaic - as if all the level designers adhered rather strictly to an explicit formula, likely a set of design guidelines from the top. So, they do have all the shortcuts and loops we've come to expect and enjoy, and are fun places to explore thoroughly, but lack variety overall. There's very nearly as much variety in DS2 DLCs alone as in the entirety of DS3, in my opinion.
The main issue here, though, is the previously mentioned disconnect between encounter and area design. Recall DS1 for a minute, think about the levels, and just how different they were from each other. Blighttown wasn't just a cool looking place with its own enemy types, it was a confusing structure with treacherous and narrow walkways, danger of falling to one's death at every corner, hidden snipers with toxic darts, and large distances between bonfires. Blighttown isn't challenging because it has enemies which would be difficult to fight in an arena, it's challenging as an environment. Sen's Fortress is challenging because it's a long gauntlet full of traps, not because snake-people are hard to kill (although snake-people can be hard to kill when placed on a narrow walkway amongst swinging blades). Tomb of the Giants isn't challenging because of skeletons, but because of the poor visibility and a layout that takes advantage of it. And so forth.
There is comparatively less of this in DS2 (though it does get props for Shrine of Amana, the foggy forest with invisible enemies, and some smaller touches), and almost none in DS3. DS1, although its combat is relatively easy and exploitable, still managed to maintain a feeling of danger by constantly putting the player outside of their comfort zone and introducing new elements in its level design on a regular basis. I do feel like this is the main reason why exploration in general worked so well in that game, and is yet unmatched by its sequels in this respect.
If you think I'm exaggerating or cherrypicking to support my argument, join me in a little experiment. One of the notable things about Souls games as they were introduced, was the ease of falling to one's death. In an era of handholdy corridor shooters, this stood out a lot, and if you watch someone completely new to the series play, chances are you'll see them die this way many a time. Level design in DeS and DS1 makes great use of this fact. Now, think back to your DS3 playthrough, and how many times you were ever in danger of falling to your death. Not so many, right? Even this kind of simple element was scaled back to make room for more convenient combat. You can also think about how many boss rooms there are in DS3 which are not huge, empty arenas with no additional features, while you're at it, and you may start to see my point.
Unfortunately, given the likely commercial success of DS3, I expect that we'll get to see more of this in future From games. Ironically, despite the continuing focus on punishing difficulty, the series is slowly being dumbed down for the mass market in its own peculiar way.
The main reason this was difficult to put my finger on is that DS3 is an exceptionally well-made game, by far From's most polished release to date (not having played Bloodborne). Putting aside systemic issues, content quality is very high - level design and aesthetics are excellent, there's a great variety of enemies, bosses at the very minimum all look great and have cool movesets, game is very balanced both in terms of difficulty progression and stat allocation. The world. in spite of being linear to progress through, makes geographical sense, and you can consistently see landmarks from other areas at various points. There's no awful crap like Lost Izalith, no shitty copypaste bosses, no weird discontinuities ala DS2, no clearly broken mechanics. Clearly the game didn't suffer from any development problems (signs of which were very obvious in DS2 for example), and the team made exactly the game they wanted to make. Which, in a way, is even more disappointing, as what I find unsatisfying about it is likely by design, and not by mistake.
For the record, a lot of the tendencies I'll discuss below were already present in DS2, though to a lesser extent. In that way, I actually see DeS and DS1 as results of a particular design philosophy, which the subsequent games started to move away from.
One good word that nicely encapsulates what I dislike about DS3 is "streamlined". In DS1, New Londo, and endgame area, was right under the main hub, and immediately accessible. Ditto for Catacombs, and the graveyard on its own claimed the lives of many a newbie player. Nothing stops a player from wandering into Valley of Drakes from the Darkroot Basin and going into Blighttown from the other direction. The player also is not given any kind of specific goal, and left to wander aimlessly until they find something plot-critical. All of this was significantly toned down in DS2 (which gives you a lot of places to go, but they're all places you can handle, endgame is safely locked away until you're strong enough), and all but removed in DS3 - here, you follow a nice, straightforward path across the game, with a clear and unambiguous goal, with nary a hint of uncertainity or danger. All the obscurity and quirkiness of the early Souls games has at this point be scrubbed away in favor of producing an edgy-but-streamlined combat simulator.
And that's another issue, the extreme focus on combat, and a very narrow version of it, where you enter a large room (so your precious self can have enough space to spam roll), and just fight whatever enemies are in it, rinse and repeat, almost like a series of small arenas. As such, enemies are designed with a focus on being individually challenging, with fast and unpredictable movesets and high damage, and enemy design is almost completely disconnected from area design. This is in contrast to DeS and DS1, where enemies were often not so difficult in and out of themselves, but were an integral part of an area's challenge. Furthermore, while encounters in those games were often easier individually, bonfires (or shortcuts in the case of DeS) were much more sparse, making it more difficult to progress on luck or persistence alone. DS2 and DS3, on the other hand, positively shower the player with bonfires and shortcuts (some of which in DS3 are just straight-up superfluous and silly), which also lets them get away with their more extreme encounter design. It feels like the developers thought that the essence of their formula was this kind of high-lethality combat and streamlined the rest of their game in an attempt to refine this particular feature.
And this brings me to level design. In terms of aesthetics and layout, it's excellent, albeit somewhat formulaic - as if all the level designers adhered rather strictly to an explicit formula, likely a set of design guidelines from the top. So, they do have all the shortcuts and loops we've come to expect and enjoy, and are fun places to explore thoroughly, but lack variety overall. There's very nearly as much variety in DS2 DLCs alone as in the entirety of DS3, in my opinion.
The main issue here, though, is the previously mentioned disconnect between encounter and area design. Recall DS1 for a minute, think about the levels, and just how different they were from each other. Blighttown wasn't just a cool looking place with its own enemy types, it was a confusing structure with treacherous and narrow walkways, danger of falling to one's death at every corner, hidden snipers with toxic darts, and large distances between bonfires. Blighttown isn't challenging because it has enemies which would be difficult to fight in an arena, it's challenging as an environment. Sen's Fortress is challenging because it's a long gauntlet full of traps, not because snake-people are hard to kill (although snake-people can be hard to kill when placed on a narrow walkway amongst swinging blades). Tomb of the Giants isn't challenging because of skeletons, but because of the poor visibility and a layout that takes advantage of it. And so forth.
There is comparatively less of this in DS2 (though it does get props for Shrine of Amana, the foggy forest with invisible enemies, and some smaller touches), and almost none in DS3. DS1, although its combat is relatively easy and exploitable, still managed to maintain a feeling of danger by constantly putting the player outside of their comfort zone and introducing new elements in its level design on a regular basis. I do feel like this is the main reason why exploration in general worked so well in that game, and is yet unmatched by its sequels in this respect.
If you think I'm exaggerating or cherrypicking to support my argument, join me in a little experiment. One of the notable things about Souls games as they were introduced, was the ease of falling to one's death. In an era of handholdy corridor shooters, this stood out a lot, and if you watch someone completely new to the series play, chances are you'll see them die this way many a time. Level design in DeS and DS1 makes great use of this fact. Now, think back to your DS3 playthrough, and how many times you were ever in danger of falling to your death. Not so many, right? Even this kind of simple element was scaled back to make room for more convenient combat. You can also think about how many boss rooms there are in DS3 which are not huge, empty arenas with no additional features, while you're at it, and you may start to see my point.
Unfortunately, given the likely commercial success of DS3, I expect that we'll get to see more of this in future From games. Ironically, despite the continuing focus on punishing difficulty, the series is slowly being dumbed down for the mass market in its own peculiar way.
Hm I planned to do some Watchdogs PvP in the Crucifixion Woods area but I had two weird runs in short time now. So a Watchdog invades and apparently chameleons and waits. I'm running around looking for him but he's nowhere to be found. CW is a pretty open area, there isn't many hiding spots.
And then after like 5 minutes, while I'm running under a ledge, he drops down on me with a plunging attack. I eventually killed him (sporting an armor, shield and a sword hides nicely the fact imma pull a staff and blast you with a soul spear the moment you start healing
) but is this a new way of trolling now? Because half hour after that the same thing happened again, with a different dude. This time I haven't found him at all and after 10 minutes of running around I had to alt-tab and and close the game from the Winz. Pretty retarded way of trolling tbh.
And then after like 5 minutes, while I'm running under a ledge, he drops down on me with a plunging attack. I eventually killed him (sporting an armor, shield and a sword hides nicely the fact imma pull a staff and blast you with a soul spear the moment you start healing
) but is this a new way of trolling now? Because half hour after that the same thing happened again, with a different dude. This time I haven't found him at all and after 10 minutes of running around I had to alt-tab and and close the game from the Winz. Pretty retarded way of trolling tbh.
toro
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2009
- Messages
- 14,624
In case you didn't know, you can teleport back to your world with the black seperation crystal
He was invaded not the other way around.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,072
You mean best way.
Personally when i invade as red phantom i usually just observe from hiding then i come out in worst possible time plunging, coming out of corner with attack, firing longbow special arrow etc.
I think longest time when i stalked someone was like 30 minutes where i didn't even start a fight. Feels good seeing people panicking and trying to watch every corner.
I love that now you usually invade group of people so i feels a lot better to tactically prepare for fight and use every means necessary to win a fight with group of people instead of one poor dude.
Yesterday i had amazing match. I was phantom for some dude and we got invaded by one dude. Dude was godlike using environment and when things got heated up he usually run away to regroup in some other point of map. In the end we all got killed by that dude
edit:
knives and other tools got serious buff. They still do not so great damage but their usefulness is wayy above what was in DS1 or DS2. Especially new bomb is awesome for people pursuing you.
Knives are godlike now. You can throwthem like chaingun and you can throw them from all positions (like after a roll etc)
They also got scaling compared to previous games so damage will rise with stats a bit.
Pretty sweet to have constantly dude on edge regardless if he is far or close to you.
TheHeroOfTime
Arcane
Just completed the game, at least my first playthrough. Extremely well game and polished in every aspect, is the best of the series IMO (Bloodborne included, and i've playing this shit since Demon's souls). The negative things for are:
1) Maybe Too many fanservice.
2) In terms of visuals is very similar with Bloodborne.
3) NO DARKWRAITH FACTION FFS FROM YOU HAD ONE JOB.
Personal ranking: Dark souls 3 > Demon's souls > Bloodborne > Dark souls 2 > Dark souls.
The pics are in Spanish, sorry.
1) Maybe Too many fanservice.
2) In terms of visuals is very similar with Bloodborne.
3) NO DARKWRAITH FACTION FFS FROM YOU HAD ONE JOB.
Personal ranking: Dark souls 3 > Demon's souls > Bloodborne > Dark souls 2 > Dark souls.
The pics are in Spanish, sorry.
Afaik it only shows if they take damage - from any source, including monsters and enviroment - or if you lock on to them.
You had me nodding in solemn agreement until this statement. If there is one thing I don't miss from DS1 is navigating narrow ledges and attempting to do precise jumps with the imprecise mess of a control scheme (iirc. roll and jump were bound to the same button, but you had to double tap it to execute one instead of the other or something ridiculous like that.) DS2+3 thankfully have much tighter controls and they could do with some optional, hard-to-reach secrets but given the choice between DS1 and DS3 I'd rather not have any jump & run elements in my roll playing game. I'd prefer more puzzles and creative use of environment - like the catacomb bridge. That was fucking genius level design. I actually panicked and dropped off the cliffs a couple times trying to find an alternative path, pursued by a horde of skeletons, because I was sure the bridge would collapse by itself. And then that other thing they did with it was just icing on top.
Leechmonger
Arbiter
Nailed it. I missed this fact in my analysis, but you're completely right. I attributed DS3's repetitiveness to its combat and restricted (viable) weapon pool, but perhaps the bigger culprit is the static context in which most fights take place. The only locations that present a different experience to the player are the cemetery before the cathedral and the swamp/Farron Keep. There are hardly any environmental hazards (including fear of falling) outside these areas so by the end many locations feel like palette swaps of each other. The combat system of course compounds the issue by making these fights even more similar to each other, despite enemies having visually different (but mechanically near-identical) attack patterns.
Replayability is another casualty of this design philosophy. In DS1 you would plan the order in which you tackled locations not just because of their bosses, but because of the challenges posed by the locations themselves. In DS3, even if the game gave the player more power to choose which location to tackle next, how much would it really matter? Not nearly as much as DS1.
I hated this design choice in DS2 and I hate it here. The double bonfire before Irithyll is a far cry from DeS's slog through the Valley of Defilement (admittedly an extreme example). This same attitude is reflected in the boss battles as well: bosses' second phase trigger so late that Estus can carry you to victory without learning their patterns or in some cases even seeing most of their attacks. In both cases success happened far before I felt I performed adequately, so it feels like I'm just putting the time in for an inevitable reward (grinding) rather than actively improving as a player.
I liked the treacherous environments where you have to pay attention to your surroundings so you don't get stuck on something or roll off a cliff, but the platformer type jumping puzzles or dropping down through lattices of beams and stuff is something I hate, especially when there are ones that look like they'll catch you but don't. It's basically trial and error and isn't overly fun, unlike say, puzzle type combat where maybe it's trial and error, but feels more active and you can recover from a mistake.
Cowboy Moment
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 4,407
made I'm not talking about platforming in the sense of having to jump from ledge to ledge or even traverse very narrow paths (although one instance of the Anor Londo cathedral isn't bad to have in a game imo), but about constantly having to think about the danger of falling to your death, especially in combat. Sen's Fortress with the lizardman on the first bridge is an extreme example, but if you also look at Blighttown or Tomb of the Giants, they don't really have a lot of narrow paths, but the paths are just narrow enough to force you to be very aware of your environment, when rolling for example. There was definitely a reduction of this kind of area design going from DS1 to DS2, and in DS3 there's basically no opportunity to ever roll off a ledge by accident, every path is wide and often cordoned off at the sides.
TheHeroOfTime
Arcane
Dark souls levels weren't extremely different between them in terms of geometric design (They often overused cliffs and narrow space battles). Furthermore, the were linear and plain levels very well connected between them thanks to their art direction. Only Blighttown, Tomb of giants and the Sen's fortress are truly remarkable in terms of complexity in their geometric design, but they weren't completely difficult or challenging as environments. I never remembered Blighttown as challenging, but if we can consider it challenging is because it's fucked framerate, those snipers who cause Toxic status instead of Poison and the poison dirt zone (Which returned in Dark souls 3). It is a complex place to explore, but the fire torches near each stairs tends to guide the player. On the other hand Sen's fortress is challenging because those Snake and Cobras pushing the player though the traps, not because the traps themselves, only the giants who throw giant balls are truly dangerous. Tomb of giants is a place hard to explore because the dark, which is a good environment element, but all gets apart when the player wears one of those skull lamps. Of all of this only the dark is a truly interesting mechanic that returned in Dark souls 2, but sadly never showed it's potential completely.
I don't know why but I felt like Indiana Jones in that part.
I don't know why but I felt like Indiana Jones in that part.
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