The issue is that the ARPG aspects completely take over the Souls like elements as you progress through the game, which in turn makes the game lose it’s identity.
The end state should still have that visceral combat, rather than achieving a focus-neutral state where we spin-to-win mashing 1 button. There are Meta runes due to focus being a shared resource, so people default to the most cost effective one. Then we are allowed to spam it through focus-neutrality. Runes have no cooldown, can stagger and lack some mechanical distinctions. These elements coming together creates the issue.
In Wicked combat evolves in a sense that it overrides the core gameplay loop, rather than adding to it. Or providing more options for players to deal with certain mechanics.
I think the ideal end state is one where we are incentivized to play reactively. Like using runes to counter certain mechanics from bosses. We are given tools to deal with certain mechanics but it has an opportunity cost as we only have 2-4 rune slots. Becoming stronger means being able to punish more effectively during opportune moments and being able to counter enemy mechanics to an extent.
OK “BowUser”, tell me what your Bow build looks like. Does it perhaps involve infinitely spamming Cone shot from the other end of the screen with Gain Focus on Damage Dealt? And if it doesn’t, why doesn’t it?
This is what these soulslikers are obsessed with.
They base their self esteem on the failures of others. So if others can just play however they want, they loose their mind.
Think of it as a religion:
You are not allowed to X because I believe Y.
That’s a lot of words to say your “Build” is roleplay where you sometimes pretend you’re being clever by not firing Cone Shot (You’re not).
You have characters in Cloth and Leather but there is no reason to do this because Blink ignores character weight and Cone shot ignores stamina bars so by wearing anything other than Plate you are gimping your mitigation for zero benefit.
You mentioned the melee weapons you have equipped but there was no point mentioning that because it doesn’t matter. Your mainhand weapon is a stick which you use to slot Focus/HP recovery on damage and a rune into. If you ever swing that dagger you are wasting your time.
You mentioned the names of different bows but there was no point in doing so, as they are identical sticks which you slot Cone Shot into with the only difference being the stats they scale with (All of which deal the same damage for equal investment and have no other impact on gameplay).
The “Long animation” of Cone Shot is about as long as any regular attack from a large melee weapon except it works from the other end of the screen, killing EK with it takes approximately 20 seconds on a minmax’d build with each shot taking around a quarter of his lifebar for the phase. You can tell yourself that you’re “making a build” when you describe all of these inferior options that you use just to be able to say you’re using them, but if you had any self awareness you’d realise that the objective best way to play that weapon is extremely simple and extremely limited.
I don’t care how you play, your roleplaying doesn’t affect me. I care how the game encourages me to play and how the puzzle of combat is one-dimensional and instantly solved.
If this were a puzzle game and I complained that the solution to the puzzle is immediately obvious and involves no thought whatsoever would you be here telling me that I should Solve the puzzle in my own way? Should I be trying to “find my ownplaystyle”? Will you tell me that nobody is stopping me from making the puzzle harder by blindfolding myself?
It’s fine to roleplay. No one can tell others how to play. The issue arises when developers balance the game around the edge cases, like the ones we have now, so that you’re forced to use those combos rather than the flavor you want.
The suggestion that you’re in a position to “talk down to me” was funny so thank you for that. You are outright admitting that the game can not offer a challenge or even an interesting puzzle in its current state and that you are effectively playing it as a toybox where you mince about with different toys without caring about the most effective way to use them. Forgive me for wanting an engaging, curated single player challenge with finely tuned mechanics which isn’t just a sandbox with a list of different attacks for me to press.
If your standards are so low that you aren’t interested in the relative balance of player options then what is the point of arguing against improving them? Surely however the game ends up you won’t care because “how you want to play is entirely up to you”.
It is called a metaphor.
You can utilize such linguistic tools if you oppose complete fools that cannot not grasp any advice.
@
I think you are right. And since he will not be able to resist to write some other bs below this post, i suggest we leave him his “last words” and further ignore him.
First of all, I don’t like soulslike games since I don’t play them. So don’t put me in the same boat as them. If you read my post you would come to the conclusion that I want a mixture of both; I’m in the middle. So take your own advice and don’t be ignorant when you falsely call me ignorant and self-centered.
Secondly.
This is not the same:
Combat was promised to be visceral (soulslike), therefore it should not lose it’s its identity through the ARPG elements overriding it.
The looting aspect is ARPG like, if this would lose it’s identity to the soulslike elements.
Both systems are designed from a different perspective.
@TeoH I already have the disingenuous hypocritical individual on mute.
They don’t want to have a discussion, they are either being extremely disingenuous and pretending to want to have a discussion whilst ignoring every argument presented. Or they are 100% ignorant to the problem which is kind of funny given how they just keep digging. Especially with how little they say with that many words. I do believe it is both though, a twitter user disguised as a forum member.
They also keep responding to me when I already made it clear to them
Edit: they also seem to think they are winning the discussion, hilarious.
This really is the wrong place for hostilities. Passion is good but lets direct it toward finding common ground.
… Back to topic:
What you are writing sounds good to me at the core. Unironically.
If steamrolling the game is an option, it should definitely be slower than it currently is …
The more time is needed, the more you can mess up / get messed up. And are truly engaging withe game.
As long as players are in a defensive/reactive position from time to time, the game can be in a good place.
Otherwise the game simply not visceral enough. And yes, I care. Even people who play for maximum efficiency should not be able to completely trivialize the game. And yes, beating a game feels less of an accomplishment, when others breeze through it with a binary affix + rune combination.
The extend of that is what is up for discussion.
It should feel like an accomplishment to get there. If you do it through a good strategic, play style, good mechanics, a good build or through good teamwork or a combination.
But imo it should be possible in all cases.
Make the mechanical approach the fastest and everyone is happy - right?
There are multiple solutions btw, not just negative affixes. The most simple one is, to associate damage boosting affixes with actions that either are defensive in nature (blocking/parrying) or circumstances that put you in a defensive position (low health/stamina/armor/outnumbered).
true. i don’t expect a dagger or a bow to stagger more and faster than my greatsword, but hey, they got 15 ko on EK while i rarely even get one with 140 damage without any buff lmao … i don’t know how they are gonna balance this out, but until it is, i do not expect pvp to come out, and if it does, people who play the game like a soul will suffer against people who built their character to be magic machine guns XD …
Yeah I think souls combat is abit too ridgid for the a “looter” arpg style system, there’s no deep skill tree, meaning there’s no interesting synergies or interesting builds, just like in eldenring you don’t really “build” your playstyle you just kind of choose it based on weapons and equipment available. If there’s bows you can play as an archer, but can’t build a screen clearing ricochet arrow character.
Alot of this games mechanics at odds with itself, like looters tend to focus on equipment for invenory management, resources are gained passively in the back ground. Also they let you teleport back to your single infinite stash chest. This game wants you to have limited fast travel to town, then walk to your house and then sort resources into multiple limited storage chests. Just doesn’t seem well thought out.
