What was so cool about Dark Souls shortcuts was that you actually used them over and over again.
In Dark Souls, you knew where every shortcut was, and you felt great knowing you would not have to back track through the level because you opened up a shortcut.
In No Rest for the Wicked, you barely if ever use them again because there is no punishment for death. You die and just keep moving forward.
In No Rest for the Wicked, you have beautifully crafted level design with shortcuts that are just wasted.
The developers have tried really hard to not use the Death Mechanic from Dark Souls, but the whole game is suffering because of it.
I see many games making this mistake now. They do all this cool level design with shortcuts, but then they never make you use the shortcuts because of fast travel and not having a proper death mechanic.
Agree, rather than having a time for enemies and resources to respawn, having them respawning after you rest or die would be better, and farming in this way wouldn’t make you just wait to get the resources you want.
I think that we should let them run with the fog of war respawn mechanic rather than just resorting to the “souls way.” They are trying to do something a little different which I find refreshing. I would like to see them explore more options of punishing the players resources rather than restoring to respawning enemies.
I think making you lose money in addition to durability would be an okay start. I have been going back and forth on XP because without quick respawns all that would be doing is hindering forward progress and not respecting the players time. Maybe having some sort of Cerim related debuff that stacks on death and then you remove a stack for each enemy killed could be interesting.
I agree that they should try new ways other than the “souls way”, and they did, and I think it’s bad, so I think they should make changes, and use the Early Access to tests these changes, making big changes in the game and have the players try them out. Unlike Dark Souls and Elden Ring, this game has a chance to change, the bad thing in those games are there cause they couldn’t change or try them out with a big audience.
But I have changed my about the way they should do it, having enemies and challenges reset when you rest at a bed would be better.
Also I don’t think they need to have add any punishment at all, having the enemies and bosses come back at full life is already enough punishment and don’t make me afraid of trying things just cause I might die.