Do you prefer a bonfire being directly outside a boss room or do you enjoy going through a portion of the level to...

Do you prefer a bonfire being directly outside a boss room or do you enjoy going through a portion of the level to reach the fog gate?

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Literally anything is better then bonfire before boss.

Shortcuts or wrapping map design are best desu

why the hell wouldn't you want it outside the boss room?

Placing a bonfire immediately after the boss dies needs to stop. Half the time they're unnecessary as you come to a new bonfire at the begining of the next zone anyway.

It's so you can teleport back to the hub.

Because when you've beaten the boss you're out in the middle of fucking nowhere?

It's convenient and saves time if you have to keep retrying. How the fuck can you not agree?

if you have to keep trying, the run to the boss is practice you obviously still need.

Because my mother didn't raise no bitch.

I like a challenge as much as the next guy, but having to run through a part of an area over and over again is tedious, but since people on Sup Forums are gonna be masochists about it, I suppose the best compromise would be to have a bonfire that's conveniently close to the boss, but have it be hidden somehow or put it behind a door that requires souls to unlock or something.
Or do this .

I'd like a nice compromise.
Like, when I get close to a fog gate for a boss, it'd be nice if there was a shortcut I could find that leads back to an earlier bonfire.

That way it isn't just a random bonfire placed there to make it easier, but if the boss does end up giving you trouble, you don't have to run back 20 times through the level just to fight it again.

Because the point of beating a boss is unlocking their bonfire

>no option to unlock a shortcut at the boss entrance that connects the boss door and the original bonfire of the level

shit options desu senpai

>running past mooks somehow helps to learn the moveset, timings and range of the boss
epic my man, just epic

Because videogames are not designed for saving time. It would also save time if you could just warp to the last boss from the first bonfire. Do you suggest implementing that feature too since it saves time? I hope not.

"It saves time" is a bad arguement. "It's frustrating to fight the same unchallenging enemies over and over again" is at least a real arguement but "it takes less time" is not.

Go on then, what was your first Souls game? 2? Bloodborne?

it makes bosses less punishing, so less satisfactory, is predictable and gamey, generally lazy design
it's not masochism, it's wanting to have a rewarding experience.
plus that idea of yours is just lmao levels of idea guy

Objectively the worst bonfire placements are those sorta close to a boss but hidden with no clues to tell you that there is a hidden bonfire anywhere.

Fuck that Darkroot Garden bonfire.
The clues in Black Gulch and Catacombs were also kinda shit but at least it's something.

>Shortcuts or wrapping map design are best
This

The problem is if you don't give a bonfire soon after the boss players will just Homeward Bone in order to preserve souls and then will have to run the entire way to the boss room again which fucks with the pacing.

see
The bonfire you get after beating a boss in DaS was a reward of progress for beating something hard. No in DaSIII they do this but it's impact is lessened because there are times when there are two fires right next to each other.

>plus that idea of yours is just lmao levels of idea guy
I literally have no idea what this means. You need one or two more adjectives in that sentence.

I like shortcuts a lot.
Stonefang tunnel and Cathedral of the Deep are really good for this.

>you can hear the bonfire sound through the wall
>no clue
I loved that bonfire. I generally adore secret bonfires because they're so satisfying to find, plus it's ok if they're close to another one because it doesn't feel cheap

What was the point of the shortcuts in dark souls 2?
Half of them were completely obsolete by bonfires immediately after them and the other half saved so little time it wasn't worth it.

>hating exploration and finding really valuable rewards
Retards like you who can't play a game like this without a guide open are why video games never have secrets anymore.

>the door that you had to roll across the gap in lost bastille
jesus fuck that killed me more times than the actual boss on my first playthrough

It depends. If it's an "easy boss" I don't care if I have to go throguth a portion of the level...but for example I hated the location of the Smelter Demon's bonfire on Dark Souls 2. The boss was very hard for me, I had to do a lot of tries and for every try I had to run througt 20 iron Knights using katanas and large arrows.

I feel like the game may not have had bonfire warping from the start when they were originally designing certain maps. I mean they left in the torches you no longer need. Removing shortcuts would be even more time consuming.

One bonfire at the start of the area.
One bonfire that spawns when you kill the boss.

Shortcuts between them.

That's all you need.

Zen's fortress top level bonfire is the worst placed bonfire in the entire souls series

>Here just randomly go to a broken edge of the platform to fall into an invisible bonfire while secure death bombs rain on you after climbing the entire fortress

So Demon's Souls?

I like shortcuts to the boss fight. Running through enemies to reach them is pointless and annoying.

Throne of Want should have had a bonfire directly outside the boss fog though. Having to wait 5 minutes for a door to open before running through nothing for 5 minutes was retarded.

dude just git gud! lmao!

i can appreciate when a bonfire is placed right before a difficult boss like the nameless king, to make repeat attempts a little less agonizing. otherwise, i think a shortcut looping back to the beginning of the area right before the boss works best.

on a side note, fuck bosses with long walks full of enemies between them and their closest bonfires. at best it's obnoxious like O&S or champion gundyr, and at worst you get sir fucking alonne, whose closest bonfire is past multiple rooms full of enemies you have to kill to get past. that fucking trek made me not even bother to fight him

Bloodborne's like that too. Except for Mergo's loft for some reason.

holy shit FUCK that iron keep. I had to try it so many times the iron knights stopped spawning. Rest of the game was fine

As long as you can run relatively unmolested back to the boss it's fine

Bonfire right in front of the boss just completely removes any consequences of losing so there's no tension at all

If the path is way too long or has a part which is like "wait 10 minutes for the moving platform to come over lol" it can fuck right off

I despise bonfires right at the boss
Sen's leading into Anor Londo was brilliant, it has 0 enemies on your way but is fucking spooky

Depends.

If it's a relatively easy boss I want the bonfire away from the fog gate. That way the level serves as more of a challenge than the actual boss itself.

If it's a normal or hard boss I want the bonfire to be away from the fog gate, but if the player is smart you can find one or two shortcuts that reduce the walk time significantly. That way people who run straight to the boss are punished with the walk back, but those who explore and aren't stupid are rewarded with the ability to retry bosses faster.

For end-game or climactic bosses I like the bonfire to be right outside or around the corner. That way you know it's the last big challenge and nothing stands in the way of you and a tough fight. It also gets frustrating when a tough boss requires an also tough walk to them, which just pads out the time massively. A good example of this is in DS3 with the Nameless King. The bonfire was right around the corner, so all you had left was to deal with that tough fight. A bad example is something like Gwyn. Gwyn is a bit tough if you don't just parry spam him. Add on an annoying trek through the area with all the black knights and the drama/mystique of the area wears off really quickly.

In general I prefer one or two shortcuts to reward a player for exploring. That way if you're good at the game you can just rush for the boss, but if you're slower/not very good the game is easier by discovering new paths.

>hurdur exploration is artificial difficulty

A) Re-using a bonfire after getting a shortcut to boss is good level design.

B) Making a bonfire just for the boss fight is bad level design.

A) promotes other options (Parish's bonfire is a great comparison and also a 'hub'.) if the player wants to do something else but keep playing the game.

B) promotes trying the boss over and over again

Of course player can go do something else but one doesn't have a load screen to warp and so me of the games didn't have a warp.

Me too. When they stopped spawning I felt good and at the same time I felt like shit, like the game was telling me "ok you dumb fuck, maybe if the game is a bit easier you can keep playing".

you nailed every single thing t b h, nice taste ily user

I found Bloodborne was a little inconsistent with its checkpoints as it got later in the game, some frustratingly close to others, which was made even more irritating by the 'from the get-go warping.

It literally doesn't matter so long as the game lets me make a beeline straight to the boss room.

You can't really explore while those bombs fall on you

Not only the explosion itself will almost kill you, but the fire afterwards staggers you

If you hug the wall? Pretty sure you can't hear it walking by.

NO, exploration and hidden secrets with very subtle clues are completely okay. But not for bonfires. The reward for exploration should be something cool, the reward shouldn't be to make the game less tedious. Or inversely, the punishment for not exploring every nook shouldn't be to make the game more tedious.

there's a obvious gap in the fence, all it took was a spin of the camera
also I'm p sure you can spot it before being bombarded, but I might be wrong

You can hear it while checking out the attention drawing shiny door you've never seen before.

Punishment for not exploring should exactly be making the game more tedious tho????
Finding shinies gets boring, finding shortcuts and occasionally bonfires is exactly what makes the level design great and exploration rewarding.

FPBP

Boss runs are tedious

Pretty sure the door is only shiny if you walk right up to it.

You really believe that? Imo good level design would appeal to multiple types of players ranging from the player that doesn't explore unless the game forces it to the player who autistically has to hit every wall.

I still remember my first time there, the pacing is completely fucked if you don't find that bonfire.

No, I just played it recently the door is noticably glowy at a distance

I don't mind running through a portion of the level first. It's fun to find faster and faster methods of getting through them. Demon's Souls was great for this but 4-2 can go fuck itself. 2-2 was well designed though.

Nioh has some very well placed "bonfires" that compliment the level design and also give you enemies to build up your super on so I prefer that.

How do people NOT find the darkroot bonfire? Were you playing offline? that wall always is littered with messages

Boss runs suck fucking balls.
After 5 attempts I already feel fatigued because the time I spend running back gives me the illusion I've been doing this for ages.

Jesus, I thought the meme about dark souls fans being tryhards was just that, a meme, but instead is true.

>having to redo a portion of the level which gives you nothing to fight the boss again is great because I have to show how hardcore I am by doing tedious and repetitive actions

dark souls does appeal to a bunch of different audiences, but it shouldn't appeal to all of them
making your game require a certain skillset that may alienate certain groups is a risk all good developers take

also lmao the fuck dude, the door is the most attention drawing thing in the level, and it makes you examine it and read the text which gives you time to hear the bonfire sound

Fuck that one bonfire thats right at the beginning of the library part of DaS3, the one that's literally so close to the previous bonfire from beating the Dragonslayer armor that you can literally see it from there, it's completely useless and reminds me of why DaS1 was superior

You all know exactly the bonfire I'm talking about and I bet you felt the same way when you saw it

t. the CoD generation.

>After 5 attempts
so 20-40 minutes is ages to you?

Hmmm, maybe it depends on graphics settings?
Here's a screenshot from a Youtube video, don't see any glow.

thats the point though, the souls games arent hard in terms of gameplay challenge, its mental, its meant to break you down, you become impatient and make more mistakes, continuing the downward spiral into playing a better game

I'm one of the people who find it but I always disable messages on my first run cause they kinda kill the fun.

>having to redo a portion of a level after dying
that's literally what all games do, tho? It's called punishing deaths?
If every game was like SOMA where they literally respawn you at the same fucking place, most games would suck cock

t. the meme generation

bruv we're talking about the door on the right...
the wall on the left looks slightly out of place and produces a sound
not the most obvious thing but hinted enough

t. frogposter on his day off.

>convenient and saves time

casul

Most actual action games make you redo the boss fight only.
Also is no really punishment if you respawn and just have to run back to the boss while dodging enemies like you can do in pretty much every instance of the game, or even if you have to fight them they clearly aren't a problem since you already beat them before.

So if your idea of punishment is forcing the player to get bored then sure go ahead.

>b-but I have fun because I only play these games and I play them to show off how hardcore I am

My bad then

it feels like it

It's literally only there to keep your bonfire menu clean and organized. Stop being such an over dramatic queen. Your attitude is everything wrong with the Dark Souls fanbase.

What are you talking about? Bloodborne works with shortcuts, there's is rarely any lamps next to bosses if you didn't unlock the shortcut previously

it's only a matter of how much the game makes you repeat
some games let you continue mid boss fight, some drop you at the start, roguelikes remove all progress

it's not about showing off because nobody watches me play these games, I do it alone for my own satisfaction

dark souls works best when it makes you walk around and when bonfire placement is varied. if every bonfire was far from the boss it would also get repetitive, this is why it's different for every boss.
world integrity and the feeling that those bonfires aren't crafted specifically for you, but existed there long before your character showed up is a very important thing for those games.
I understand if that means nothing for you, but try to understand that these games are made for people who are into that stuff

Eh, so the clue is bonfire sound for a few seconds while you're doing something else. I guess we are going to keep disagreeing then, I don't think this is nearly enough for something so essential as this bonfire.

I 100% agree and the idea to put a bonfire after EVERY boss is fucking retarded and I don't know how miyazaki agreed to that.

>into a better game
>wanting to be a cuck
>wanting to be a masochist cuck who plays assfaggots or overwatch and blames his teammates

I have a game for you to play. It is just a loading screen forever, apparently that is what you want.

Christ you are a fucking retard.

well now that bloodborne has been patched you can unfortunately no longer play that game.

That shit is virtually unnoticeable depending on your sound level
I got lucky because there were messages there my first playthrough but if you were playing it blind offline I guarantee the vast majority of people would miss it

Here you go. Here's your GOTY

youtube.com/watch?v=uBBDMqZKagY

It doesn't impact anything negatively. Stop being an unbelievable crybaby.

>Demon's Souls
>5-2
>have to slog through a literal mile of poison swamp, dickass mosquitos, spear chuckers and giant depraved ones
>lots of lights in the distance indicating item pickups that you can get if you have huge balls
>including the motherfucking moonlight greatsword
>if you actually take the time to circle the entire swamp, you can open a shortcut that pretty much takes you directly to the boss

agreed

not essential, just time saving
legit saves only a minute
a minute is a decent punishment for not exploring desu
I played offline blind and I found it
same with returning to the asylum, those things aren't impossible, just require a healthy dose of autism

This is best souls level design
Prove me wrong

Remove the right entrance to the boss room and you're perfect

I can't remember a boss room with multiple entrances

fixed

i agree, but it'd get shit if every level is like that
also left path can't be linear, requires branching paths or even another bonfire shortcut to be perf

Directly outside. Repeating levels does not work in Souls games because there is no incentive to actually play the levels instead of rushing oast everything, unlike the old school games it's trying to emulate. Bonfires that force you to ride elevators are the most retarded thing and do not belong in the games though. Nothing but a waste of time.

I respect your opinion but you're fucking wrong fucker

>unlike the old school games it's trying to emulate
yeah, because if those old school games allowed you to continue where you left off, they'd all only be 20 minutes long

and all the better for it

Yes, and? They forced you to go through the levels consistently to fight the boss. You couldn't just rush past everything easily, it simply isn't an option. It is an option in Souls games though which makes repeating levels an optional waste of time.

DaSIII wasn't supposed yo have static bonfires, originally. The coiled sword woulkd play a far larger role, kinda like the firelink bonfire. IIRC you would only get a limited number of bonfires that you could activate, introducing some micromanagement in the bonfire system itself.

And they made it even worse with scholar. Where you can aggro 10 fuckers by walking through one door.

You're right, I was overdesigning it. And having only one entrance makes it more epic (even though the second entrance could be used as an ambush one, like the jump in the asylum demon)

That's a nice addition. It would make the shortcut not boring, and also give hints about it, instead of just letting you miss it right at the end

It's just a sketch, of course it wouldn't be linear, or so straight. It's just meant to visualize the flow of the player.
Also, the point of this, is to not have a bonfire every 5 meters, but reuse them instead, by redirecting the player to it, after the boss.
That's what level design is all about

DaS3's bonfires were a fucking crime against humanity.

...

Shortcuts are nice, but we all know it doesn't matter because everyone runs through the level directly to the boss fog after dying once, no matter how far away the bonfire actually is.

???
So you can only open the shortcut AFTER defeating the boss? What's the point, then?
Also, why would you want to go into the enemies path after defeating the boss? The player would want to rest at the bonfire, instead
And why did you remove the windows, and enemies in the shortcut?

That's because there's no one closely guarding the fog to stop you. And that promotes a poor experience.
Look at . Three small enemies are guarding it, so you could not just run past them. And if you skip every enemy, and stop to fight those three, the ones you left behind will have found you once you're done fighting.

it legitimately did, it makes them feel much less special, which they felt like in 1