Ever since FromSoftware redirected their King’s Field energy to the creation of Demon’s Souls, my gaming world was turned upside down. In creating the “Accessible Hardcore Game“, they reverted a market trend of making games too easy – a trend that ten years later is creeping back into the mainstream. The internet is abuzz with criticism of traditional gaming journalists and their apparent inability to explore difficult games, and developers seem to introduce “cruise mode” and helpful difficulty bypasses all the more often.
Demon’s Souls had little to no explanations, a take it or leave it attitude that punished your deaths and rewarded your success, a complex and one direction upgrade system, and possibly the most grindy trophy a game has ever had (ok, I know it’s not but damn, bladestone!). Then came Dark Souls, which introduced the “mid-level checkpoint” bonfire. Then Dark Souls 2, allowing teleportation across the whole world, skipping to NG+ with an item, and resets of your character stats. By went Bloodborne, doing away with NG+ new items and making upgrades and oaths on-the-fly. And last there’s Dark Souls 3, that features the easiest and simplest covenant mechanics in the series, and allows you to opt out of the most difficult bosses.
Of course, the series evolution is not once towards filthy casulness, but to keep the userbase on its toes FromSoftware, Bandai Namco and Sony will likely have to think outside the box and come up with some new tactics. In this article, I explore where I want the series to go based on what I have enjoyed of the game and of other RPGs.
The Next Souls: Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne 2
or a New IP?
TGS 2018 will mark the 10 year anniversary of the announcement of Demon’s Souls. Will there be a remaster? Is Fromsoftware working on Bloodborne 2? Is Dark Souls really “finished”? Or are they doing something completely different with those sneaky “Console, Dark Fantasy, Realistic” artist recruitment? Whatever the case, the formula is beginning to get stale and the fanservice of Dark Souls 3 and recycling of items, spells and equipment has given it all a sense of looping around that needs to be discarded for the next installment.
These are purposefully “out of the box” ideas – that many will think don’t quite belong within a Souls game. But it’s by thinking against the grain that the series has become the success it is now, so let’s encourage exploration of these concepts!
? Little to no “carry over” Items and References
Bloodborne was fantastic on this regard to highlight the absolute elation that discovery of items, gameplay mechanics and secrets brings out in the community. Sony kept its cards close to its chest, divulging tiny amounts of strategic data and preventing leaks quite successfully. This meant that on launch day, thousands of players went on “the hunt” for everything they didn’t know: which was everything!
The game has so many little secrets that lore enthusiast continue to find discussion room on the smallest of details, whilst those observant of gameplay find an obscure enemy not seen since the game’s previews. In contrast, the new life that Dark Souls had, with its “weird crab things” and “OMG my head is an egg, help!” are all but gone for Dark Souls 3, as we all know exactly what items are going to do, and how to praise the sun correctly. Yes, there’s lore and fun and new interesting mechanics, but the basic concepts of the game are by now so drilled into me that I don’t feel I have to stop and read what an item actually does, or do math on how upgrades work, or fool myself thinking Patches isn’t gonna kick me down somewhere.
I want new things, new mechanics and to do away with the familiarity and the extended previews that reveal most things about the game before it’s out. I want to see random anons within the community sharing on forums, social media and personal blogs that they have just found that an item obtained by completing an obscure sequence unlocks a special cutscene or interaction. I want to accidentally put the Darkmoon Seance Ring on and shock myself as a secret door opens nearby.
9️⃣ Less Teleporting, more Shortcutting
Whilst I understand the convenience of fast travel, it feels like it negates the beauty of shortcuts to an extent. In Dark Souls 3, there were some cases with bonfires in such close proximity to each other that it made little sense to even light one. It is true that people rush past mobs to get to bosses, making the shortcuts obsolete, but I’d like to see From introduce not a penalty for teleporting but a reward for NOT teleporting.
Imagine if not touching that bonfire increased your souls gained, or your luck, or your primary stat with a zone bonus for each zone you pass through. This could be balanced by having a minimum enemy defeat count for the buff to go into effect. It would reward explorers and role-players, without harming those who just want to get on with it, and perhaps create farming routes that maximize your chances to get those rare drops.
8️⃣ Permanent or Hurtful Consequences
So, you accidentally smashed Blacksmith Andre on the face when putting your controller down? Hope you’re ready to beat the game without the smith! This actually painful mechanic has been toned down to NPCs politely asking you to stop it. Alongside this, you may swap covenants on the fly for easy jack of all trades covenanting! These convenience mechanics are not always bad, but I would like to see some real consequences and some more dedicated choices aligned with covenants.
Let’s have actual reputation rather than ranks, add our NPC replies and interactions to a reputation pool, and make each covenant give specific bonuses and detriments on a long and impactful scale of 100 tiers. Let’s divide covenants into groups of good, evil or neutral and bind the player to one choice per playthrough. Make angry NPCs send dark spirits against you if you have hurt them, or haunt your bonfires without letting you light them. Bring back the fear of what to reply to that incomprehensible “yes – no” question that was phrased in a triple negative.
7️⃣ Set Bonuses
Builds in the Souls series have become cookie-cuttered into a simple meta of Stats + Weapon Tier, with a decreasing importance of Armor. I would absolutely love to see Armor Sets becoming a thing, with bonuses that provide unique boosts. Nioh has experimented with this concept, but I think Souls needs to go all the way – right to the 300+ Sets that give Elder Scrolls Online its amazing flexibility.
Let us pick to mix and match 2 piece and 5 piece bonuses, give us level or stat requirements for the most unique ones, and handle twink builds out of the equation by simple application of itemization progression. Let Rings become Sets, and match the bonuses to covenants. In short, apply Special Effects as set bonuses rather than random pieces, and give us all more reason to go hunt down all the armors in the game.
6️⃣ Complex Crafting and Transmogrify
I was very sad to see Armor upgrades go, even though the simplified method of Bloodborne allowed for easy defense optimization. I would like to see a return to armor focus, with actual armor upgrade paths that lead to armor sets. Much like Monster Hunter World, let boss gear grant Set Bonuses that we can then tailor to our builds via upgrades, and allow us to go full mystique fashion by implementing the ability to change the appearance of in-game items and fool our PvP opponents.
Give us reasons to go to NG+++++++ or defeat 100 dungeons to obtain the fabled ember that will unlock the final tier of our sets, or provide a new upgrade path, add a gem slot, or grant a passive bonus. Make me ponder if I want to upgrade my Iron Set to Iron Set of Flame or Iron Set of Poison, because I’m not sure if I want the Flamelurker Bonus (+/- 25% Fire Damage) or the Sewer Centipide Bonus (+/- 25% Poison Rate)
5️⃣ Nemesis System & Elites
Diablo 3 has a really fun mechanic, where when someone on your friend list dies, they have a chance to generate an Elite monster in your world called “Killer of [Your Friend]“. This enemy appears out of nowhere, even when you’re fighting something else, and can be very challenging depending on your level and what you’re doing. If you defeat the monster, you get a present to send to your friend.
Souls games could benefit from such asynchronous implementations on bloodstains and echoes. Imagine if watching other players die had a chance to spawn an elite, powerful version of whatever killed them, and if you prevail you gave that person a short-term buff such as a health bonus, or granted them a set amount of souls or an upgrade material. Elites could also be randomly applied around the game, where regular enemies gain irregular capabilities but have a +50% chance to drop their rarest loot pool.
4️⃣ Environmental Effects & Magic
A deepening of the environmental mechanics to give extra strategic thinking to using magic and elemental weapons. Much like Divinity: Original Sin 2, let’s introduce deeper RPG mechanics such as a rain spell so that we can electrocute and stun an entire boss arena. Let us craft or buy our own traps, creating a “trickster” specialization of environmental magic.
This could deepen Magic usage by creating chain reactions of spells. Such a change could lead to the introduction of deeper status effects, making things like Frostbite lead to “Frozen” where enemy cannot move for a full 5 seconds, but incoming damage is reduced. Or add effects like “Warm“, where enemy will catch on fire and burn for +10% more damage.
3️⃣ Boss Rush Arena
Bloodborne tried to get here, but the Chalice Dungeons fell short due to a lack of variances and limited loot. If the next Souls game added Set Bonuses, creating the possibility for versatile and on the fly bonus-based builds, we could all enjoy endgame as we adventure through a Boss Rush to get some ultimate loot. This could be done solo and multiplayer, with cosmetic rewards, crafting rewards, and other progression items such as unlocking merchant discounts.
Perhaps such an arena could be represented as something like the Everfall in Dragon’s Dogma – an endgame adventure featuring tougher versions of familiar monsters.
2️⃣ Asynchronous World Events & Bosses
Demon’s Souls experimented with World Tendency and World Tendency Events from the server, but there was some conflict as players would become unable to manipulate their own tendency if online. I propose we could instead benefit from community progression towards a “meta boss” defeat.
Much like the Ur-Dragon in Dragon’s Dogma, let’s have a worldwide weekly counter for Soul of Cinder – each time it’s defeated it discounts a % from the “Meta” boss, and if the community shaves that healthbar clean we all get bonus items of a thematic nature.
1️⃣ Dungeon Master Mode
And finally, my real dream for Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and any Souls game of the future: The ability for players to create their own levels. Imagine if you could have created your own chalice dungeon, plotting what mobs with what skills would wander within, and giving rewards equal to the difficulty of the situation.
Imagine the community questline creations within such, and the lore explorations and expositions we could all enjoy!
Think of the wonderful events we could organize and enjoy, for months and years after game release, indulging in the great creativity the Souls Community has always enjoyed! It would certainly be an immense hook, and this change alone could keep me playing well beyond where I would have moved onto other games.
So that concludes my portion of brainstorming for From / Sony / Namco. It’s likely they’ll go ahead and do everything completely different than what I outline, but maybe there will be some inspiration to community ideas as above. What do you guys think? Share in the comments!
If you enjoyed this article, you’ll like to read the Things We Want in Bloodborne 2, Art Souls by PrimeraEspada91, or the incredibly insightful translation of the Titanite Slab by Skarekrow13.
75 responses to “10 Changes I Want for the Next Souls Game – Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne 2 or New IP”
1. Weapons had slots > specific slots per weapons. Some weapons have no slots. Mix-matching slots to best gems and thus making a build is a thing, but you can change them per boss on the fly.
2. Gems were somewhat random in properties > had to be farmed. Rare Gems broke the mold and had special and unusual effects on them, and have to be obtained from specific mobs. Gems also have negative effects, meaning you wanted to farm the right negative effect at it’s minimum %.
1 + 2 = Gem Slot System. Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things because it’s a tiny misunderstanding, but I don’t understand why that doesn’t sound true to you. I’ve seen games with gem slot systems that are way simpler than that as much as I’ve seen others with way more complex. Both use weapon slots that then get gems found by the user to change bonuses or properties on the weapon, with pluses and minuses to your choices.
Now, I understand that you think they should focus on “core areas”, but to me those core areas are doing just fine, or the games wouldn’t be popular. If I’m going to a restaurant because their main dish is awesome but I know their deserts suck, I don’t need them to fix the main dish – I need them to fix the deserts!
Thus, I don’t think the game would be worse off for expanding on things they have already tried, and haven’t perfected. To relate the list back to souls:
Nemesis = vagrants and black phantoms as consequence of world tendency
Consequence = Darkmoons / Sin / indictments, etc
Reputation = Character Tendency, Covenants
Complex crafting = Demon’s and Dark Souls
Armor Sets = Armor with Special Effects, Ring stacking
World Events = Server Tendency in Demon’s Souls, Bonfire health refreshes in dks3
Boss Rush = Bonfire Ascetic in dks2, Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne
Transmorg = Appearance Rings, Gender Bender Coffin
Elemental Effects = exploding barrels, destroying walls with bombs, electrifying floors with lightning attacks.
It was a “gem slot system” only in the sense that the things were called gems and they could be put into a weapon. That’s not enough to call it that, not in the way other games use such systems. They were an infusion system in practice, and the only part they had in common with real gem slot systems didn’t work out at all. But, generally speaking, gem slot systems don’t work out very well when alongside weapon upgrade systems anyways. They’d have to balance all weapons to not be OP when fully upgraded and max gemmed; maxing a weapon is just a matter of course during gameplay, but maxing gems requires farming, typically of the end-game kind. BB failed to do it, as you noticed. I’m honestly not sure if it’s even possible to balance those two systems to work together, since they’re at once redundant but also executed differently.
At no point did I say those things couldn’t be fun, and never did I say Fromsoft couldn’t make any given idea work. What I’ve been saying this whole time is that games are better when they focus their efforts towards a few areas rather than trying to generalize. If they’re just adding in different mechanics that have nothing to do with improving the game in its focus areas, that just weakens the core. The game is worse off for having such things.
That was a gem slot system, poorly implemented or not. I think my point stands.
I don’t disagree that From can polish several aspects that they are already good at, but I would like to see the things I mentioned adapted to the souls formula and applied because I think they would make the games better.
You can disagree that those things wouldn’t be fun, or that you rather other things are worked on, but the concept that ideas won’t match the game is assuming From can’t adapt those to the game or expand existing mechanics with them. For me, I think they can
>
If by randomized you mean “is the weapon infusions from previous games”, then sure. The secondary and tertiary effects, the ones that would normally be the randomized properties a ‘gem’ would have, were so irrelevant in gameplay that I’d hardly think they should count. Bloodgems were primary effect or bust, and if anything I think that should point out how a classic gem system would really work in a Souls game.
Again, I never said Souls was all that unique, barring a few innovations that originated in this series. Its tone, art direction, and general level of polish are also good, but you can’t exactly copyright those. What I’m actually saying is that Souls should focus on what does make it unique, because those are what distinguishes it from other games and puts it above the rest.
Yes def something like that for vagrant or nemesis. In a way demons souls had this idea with server world tendency : black tendency added phantoms
Dark souls three does the opposite and heals you on bonfires. Again many of these features are already being explored by the developers. I want to see them deepen the concepts.
Re: gems
Bloodborne weapons have gem slots. You equip gems with randomise properties per slot based on what those slots can carry. That’s a gem slot system.
Indeed it replaced infusions but that’s just the developers deciding to go to gem slots instead of their previous infusions.
To me, this is a prime example of From implementing mechanics we know from other games in their own way, and they unexpectedly working just fine within the souls context. You can choose to see them as something new and unique, but to me they are not and they would have been considered crazy had you suggested them in dks1.
I think it is all in how it is presented: you don’t need blaring horns and light changes or the screen shaking to warn you. Imagine turning a familiar corner and finding a nasty surprise like that. A bit like the first time you find red phantom versions of monsters in Demon’s Souls World Black Tendency but all the time. I know I’d sign for that!
I feel like nemeses battles defeat the lonely, nihilistic tone of Dark Souls. They’re just glorified superbosses without the online aspect.
Considering Soulsborne series borrows quite a few things from other videogames, I don’t see why it couldn’t. Nemeses would be great as long as it was within a SL range closeish to the player in order not to make it impossible. It’d be interesting if the player were on hollow/no online interactivity mode and had that little bit of nasty interaction thrown into their plans (but it should reward the player somehow.)
>
https://youtu.be/JuhTQwzizDI?t=67” rel=”nofollow
“nemeses”
Sorry but that reference was too perfect. Too bad youtube blacked it out. Mystery Men was a great and underrate comedy.
>
But Bloodborne didn’t do gem slots, not in the sense of them being what people mean when they say “gem slots”. BB’s gems were just a simplified version of the infusion system in previous games. That’d be like saying Dark Souls 3 did gem slots because its upgrade materials are called gems, and we both know that’s false.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with designing deliberately and purposely detailed aspects. I love that sort of thing, in fact. What I’m saying is that games are infinitely better when these added details are used to enhance a core aspect of the game rather than standing as their own, separate thing. i.e., not a sin/punishment mechanic for the sake of there being a sin/punishment mechanic, but having such a thing as part of a covenant because it better serves the multiplayer system. And if it wouldn’t directly improve a core aspect of the game like its multiplayer, then the game would probably be better off without it. Focused, rather than unfocused.
If you’re able to give references and use the phrase “something like”, I don’t think that’s the same as thinking “out of the box” or going “against the grain” like the article purports to do. If the idea you have compares closely enough to something from another source that you can use it as an actual comparison to get your idea across, well, then it’s more like conforming. Now, I’ve never accused Souls of being 100% unique (I’ve said many times before that Demon’s Souls was a by-the-book dark fantasy/ dungeon crawler barring two or three distinctions), but Souls already has a very stable foundation. It doesn’t need to expand its base to give room for further growth, because it already has room for further growth and improvement. Covenants in Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne were abysmal, to the point that the added “covenants” in BB didn’t even bother pretending they were, and DaS3 has two of the same covenant twice. Chalice Dungeons in Bloodborne were an incomplete idea that more-or-less failed out of the gate when they could have (and should have) succeeded. The weapon infusion system in Dark Souls 3 was so bad that it took a whole year and then some to unbalance in the complete opposite direction (now we’re all just specialist builds instead of hybrid builds), whereas Bloodborne’s infusion-ish system straight-up broke the game if you took the time to max it. The one thing neither game failed at was the PvE, so I think we can call that one good and move on to the actual problems.
Long rant short, the point I’m trying to make is maybe Fromsoft should focus on fixing the ideas they’ve already tried to implement before they think about adding new problems to the series. Sure, some of those things you mentioned could be awesome if implemented well (specifically, if they were used to improve what the series already does well), but a quantity of game elements is no substitute for quality of elements. You could have the best PvP system in the history of gaming, but if the infusion system strongly favors one or two builds, then the various ways you’re able to pair up players won’t matter one whit to gameplay variety.
^When thinking about stealth in Souls one specific area for some reason comes to mind, probably because of the way I had played it in times past, that being when you first enter Lothric Castle up the ladder post-Dancer. That’s when you start to face off against the super-buffed Lothric knights with their little cleric minions making them even more buffed. I approached that section in a sort of Thief-lite manner, not wanting to draw their attention at all, first hiding by where the elevator shortcut is, run past as the knight gets up to patrol, then hide in the corner up the stairs where the second cleric dude is as two more Lothric knights patrol right by. When they get by I run past (where there is a third cleric but who cares about him). Sort of trivialized when you see the bonfire appear in the room immediately after, but still. The idea being, I was using “stealth” by staying out of these relatively tough enemies’ aggro vision, and trying not to make the kind of noise that would get their attention.
Some scenario like this, but expanded, inside an actual, elaborate castle level (castle areas in Souls have always lacked, to me, a certain… uh, castley-ness to them, somehow – whether Drangleic, Cainhurst or Lothric – all of them are good levels for varying reasons but they feel more or less like set paths instead of, well, giant castles with many floors and underground cells to explore and everything – when I think castles, or at least video game/fantasy castles, I think of something large, elaborate and labyrinthine) filled with shadowy corners where you’d do your hiding and rough-going, Lothric Knight-esque enemy guards to take down should you fight them and offer different, potentially interesting ways to get through or take them down. I guess this would, sort of, be like that circle of jailers in Irithyll Dungeon but not as poorly designed as that (you either just ran for your life past them, spam-attacked them to death, or hid in one spot, aggroed them one. At. A. Time. And killed the, how many? Like a dozen? So you could walk around and into the cells without trouble. No, I don’t want to just have a bunch of enemies piled together in one spot in an open room, give it some dynamic dammit). A level like, ah, going back to Thief, in the first game, The Dark Project/Gold, I forget the level’s name but it was some mansion that had this bizarre geometry with floor traps and everything laid down, some kind Alice in Wonderland aesthetic, things are topsy-turvy, there’s an overgrown garden inside the castle and a secret area that’s a giant replica of a living room, with cabinets and chairs, tables you need to throw ropes up towards to climb up and down them, a sink you can swim in, and lots of space to cover in just that one room. Then you go outside and there’s a miniaturized display of some architecture sitting around by a lake. Just a super-cool level overall. And of course guards to hide from/blackjack in the back of the head when opportunity struck.
@ermhaneon
I had thought about mentioning adding stealth mechanics, it would certainly be fun. Someone on video had commented that stat checks for special interactions would increase replayability, similar to what traditional RPGs do. I think overall from has the action element down, and should add some more depth and unexpected mechanics to the next title to keep us all on edge
No I don’t think the article is saying that things need to be like other games. It’s simply giving references, and many times specifying “something like”. You are assuming these would become unimportant mechanics, I think they would greatly enhance gameplay.
I have noticed from doing great stuff with ideas they lifted from other games. Once upon a time, people would have called me crazy if I asked for gem slots in souls. Now that Bloodborne did it, it’s well duh!
So, from my perspective, From can transform all of these ideas with their unique twist, and the game would be better for it. There’s nothing bad in designing deliberately and purposefully detailed aspects.
>
That is a good idea, it worked wonders for labyrinth co-op.
I hope that won’t be the only way to do it though. I like to avoid sploiters as much as possible.
OH SHIIII I make a cameo in the video! Sweet!
Anyway I’ve had a number of ideas myself about what a hypothetical next “Souls-like” should be but my brain is in a fuzz right now so I’ll try and elaborate later.
Well, maybe one thing:
I had pondered some sort of stealth element. I don’t necessarily want a game to go all-out stealth, but do something with all those deep shadows besides giving the games a spooky aesthetic/atmosphere. Something like, I dunno, the Thief games (first two anyway, the ones I played), where you can hide in the shadows out of sight from certain enemies. The kinds of enemies where shit would hit the fan if you were discovered. Enemies you might not yet be prepared to take on yet. Throw in a few sections like that along with the utility spells a la Hidden Body. I don’t have this idea really developed in my head that well but again just something I’m throwing out there.
Just as I started up watching Fextra’s video here, another channel I subscribe to also put something out similar, but for a hypothetical Bloodborne 2 specifically. This is an interesting one too, worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi8ioQZR554
>
I mean as in you could invade from the shrine and just hit a random guy anywhere in the world. Instead of loitering in a specific spot getting or not getting an invasion. The whole world can’t possibly dry out but an area can.
They’ve done a good job marking hotspots though. Just remembered that embered people are shown when you travel through the bonfire. But still, not knowing what area you will end up in is also fun!
>
DS3 Covenants were awful. I’m not sure what you mean by worldwide invasions, as that seems to be the norm in Souls games.
>
Sure, all that stuff did have the potential to be awesome, and I would like to see them done better. That I agree with.
What I don’t agree with is I don’t want to see Vagrants become Nemesis… es… whatever the plural of that is. Vagrants were nifty and I liked the little buggers, but they didn’t add anything to the game beyond being one more tiny detail in an ocean of details. They didn’t have any significance to the story or gameplay, it was just “oh that’s cool” and move on. If they did have significance to story/gameplay, if they actually added something to the game itself rather than being an extraneous detail, then the game would be better for it. If they don’t, then it wouldn’t.
I don’t want to see sin/darkmoons become a mirror of some other system from some other game, just because it was done well in those games. If that’s what I really wanted, I’d go play those games instead because they already exist and they did them better. Rather, I wanted Darkmoons to work out as a covenant, as an integral part of Souls’ unique system for multiplayer interaction, and for sin to be the mechanic by which they interact with other players. Not because they were a punishment system, but for the same reasons that I wanted Gravelord Servants to work out, or Path of the Dragon, or even Chaos Servants. Also, for the same reason I wanted there to be a Seath/Sorcery covenant, which didn’t exist. Not because those concepts on their own were cool, but because they further enhanced and fleshed out what the game was already good at, making it a better game.
The way you describe it, it doesn’t sound like any of those mechanics would be secondary or complementary, but more like tertiary. If they’re things added in for their own sake, because they might/would be cool, IMO that’s bad game design. You can’t have a “game” composed of standalone mechanics. If you think a mechanic is strong enough to stand on its own under its own merit, then it’s the kind of mechanic that should be the focus of its own game. As I said before, games that try to appeal to everyone end up being bad at everything (or second best at everything, in the best of cases). Games that focus on doing a few things well, and then flesh out those few things with complementary mechanics and whatnot to make those few things even better, are the superior games that go down in history and keep selling for a decade or more.
It’s a matter of focus, not a matter of appeal. “X Would be awesome” isn’t the question to ask, it’s “would make X awesome.” Vagrants as Nemesii, because the idea of a Nemesis can be executed well, not awesome. Gravelords being fleshed out by allowing them to generate Nemesis-like creatures, thus further complementing the gameplay and story behind an underloved covenant? Much awesome.
It’s just that the article as written made it feel like you were saying Souls should do what other games did, only now you’re saying it should do its own thing or do it it’s own way. These are two very different things, done in two different ways, with two different results.
Sin has really taken a back seat in DS3. I think I’ve visited Velka once during my 1000+ hour trek. Would be good if it was expanded on. Covenants as well. I haven’t got even one of them. There’s just no incentive for me. Sure if I’m a completionist, but I’m not.
How about worldide invasions? I would appreciate random spots to invade. Keep local invasions in by letting you invade locally if you travel there, but when at the shrine it’s just random to whomever is out on adventure. Cause I don’t know what level or whatever I need to be to invade a certain area and I am also reluctant to make a build specifically to an area.
And yeah, fix blue sentinels somehow please. I want to come help but I really can’t wait for that to happen for ages!
I disagree very much, vagrants were awesome and I’d like to see the mechanic expanded.
I liked sin and would like to see it better, same with dark moons
Chalice dungeons were a missed opportunity
Souls doesn’t need to do better on what is already excellent it needs to bring the complementing mechanics up to snuff
>
I get all that, but none of those are things Souls did well. They’re just things they’ve done, and then kinda swept under the rug when it didn’t work out.
Plus rep to Fexelea! The point of the article was to spark discussion about the next Souls ish type game From makes or could make. I think that has indeed occurred here
Cas
I’d like climbing.
What I don’t like, my biggest gripe with this game, is the damned chase. I loathe chasing people around. It’s mostly all about spacing and because of that everyone keep backpedaling so I am forced to move into their zone of control so they can punish me for it. It is damned annoying and no fun! You should move slower backwards. Problem solved. Supposedly a new – vulnerability – problem will of course arise from this. So it’s a poor solution, supposedly.
One guy wrote, somewhere on the net, that the one chasing is likely the worse player. And people talk about this. How “This is Dark Souls, don’t you dare attack!” I mean, this passive stuff sucks the life out of the pvp!
Changes should be made to how to move the character in some way, so that it is not beneficial to keep backing up.
To clarify
If From makes Dark Souls 4 and all they do is add some new weapons and set in a new level, I’ll hype, buy and enjoy it! These suggestions are simply out of the box because From made itself by breaking down barriers and established concepts.
In that regard, I feel some important points are being missed:
1. Just because ideas are referencing other games, it doesn’t mean From couldn’t make their own application of such ideas. It doesn’t have to be implemented exactly like other games.
2. Many of the things mentioned are or have been in the games already, in one form or another, directly or indirectly
Examples:
Nemesis – Vagrants
Set Bonuses – Armors with special Effects
Consequences – Sin & Darkmoons
Transmorg – Appearance Rings, gender bender coffin
Boss “Rush” – NG+ immediate boss reset via a bonfire, Chalice Dungeons
The point of the ideas highlighted is to bring into light a “These are things other games have done that were fun” – but it would be up to FromSoftware to find a unique way to implement them in their game.
I want to see how From would approach something like the Everfall. With time being distorted it would be easy to create a bunch of fogged rooms that make you step into a world boss.
yes you are right. reinforcing what you do well is probably a better stance than trying to branch out on what others excel at.
@bobthehollow I initially wrote “witcher-like” open worlds but corrected afterwards because I realized what I would like to see in souls is more flexibility regarding environment interaction, like in creed where you can climb lots of stuff. In souls, what really irks me is this stupid gravel that is in your way and forces you to go around the entire world. While is perfectly understand the value of this restriction for mechanistic purposes, I think they could eventually keep the structure of the world while implementing more climbing ability.
This is actually what I would like to see a game like souls focus entirely: their trade is realistic (with a very small r but still) movement and weighty action.
Why do they not develop a system of movement taking into account you load and physical abilities to let you access more or less easily certains parts after climbing:
a strong and dexterous character with low weight armor and weapon would then be a great climber, move fast and jump far, climbing up down ladders, wines, rocky walls etc….while a heavy tank would not be able to climb the usual dark souls gravel…and maybe mages could use levitation help to achieve similar level of ease of movement.
the souls franchise seem to evolve from a very rigid to an ever faster paced and fluid movement…it is more than time to free us from the curse of the gravel blocking your way to force you to discover the shortcut etc and whiel retaining the idea, adapting it to a character allowed to actually climb more freely and explore more vertically things without necessarily having to rely on the only option : the freaking ladder.
from what I gather, monster hunter world will already have made a step in this direction.
Log in to leave a Comment