And people say Dark Souls 2 has bad level design

And people say Dark Souls 2 has bad level design..

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you just nitpicking nigger

>A fucking bridge and transitional area that isn't part of any dungeon or level

Made me reply

>Literally two bonfires 10 feet from each other for no reason

bro stop nitpicking. thats some minor shit

Blood borne had that also but everyone likes to pretend that game is better.

It looks like shit. They literally drag and dropped the boss arena there and forgot to take out the bonfire. Simple as that, they made no effort to make it blend in in any sort on way. It's not minor if its extremely noticeable. It doesnt make the game bad, but breaks immersion and reminds you you're playing a game with how bad it looks.

It does.

DaS3 also has some pretty bad level design at times, but not as bad as DaS2.

>The fucking Salt Fort bonfire that spawns you with two archers shooting you in the face
>The connection of environments that makes no goddamn sense (elevator up to Dragon Aerie, elevator up to Iron Keep)
>Multiple shortcuts in the area where you fight those Skeleton Lords that are made useless with bonfires right after it

Fucking stupid shit.

But you are playing a game. Why don't we add a hunger system, and a fatigue system. How about hygiene? Surely the Ashen One works up quite a sweat in his daily life. Or how about enemies stay dead forever, or how about they don't swipe through your iframes when traversing fog walls?

Fuck out of here with this bullshit.

>the worst thing ds2 bros can say about ds3 is that there are two bonfires close to each other.

Really makes me think

You are a literal shit eater, defending this fucking trash to the end of the world

what a dumb and inaccurate analogy
read a book

I'm pretty sure level design is composed of more than whether or not bonfires are really close together occasionally, though.

SHIT SOULS 3
>the most linear of all the games, even compared to DeS and BB
>nostalgiafag reference pandering out the ass
>rehashed characters
>Lowest Boss count after DeS
>Half the bosses are gimmicks
>Boss weapons shit as usual, despite having 4 games to draw experience from
>weapons in general are 90% quality based
>these quality weapons are also usually the best weapons in their class
>some weapons have retarded stat requirements where they don't even scale with said stats, which also happens to be quality
>armor system a horrible imbalanced mess
>the heaviest armors are the heaviest they have ever been in the series, while offering basically no additional defense over medium/light sets
>poise implemented in such a stupid way that only Greatswords and Maces get the most bang for the buck
>Some UGSs, GAs, and Hammers weigh more than entire armor sets
>Equip load is now done by VIT, which for some reason gives LESS per level than fucking dark souls 2
>Souls required to level up not adjusted for splitting stats into two
>a majority of the small weapons sped up to bloodborne speed, but some of the larger weapons have been made SLOWER and consume MORE STAMINA
>rolls cost next to nothing with extremely fast recovery and many iframes
>magic is garbage
>faith is garbage
>FP system is weird
>Too many useless fucking stats
>WAs are mostly just special r2s or powerstance moves copypasted with an explosion or two at the end
>MLGS is the worst its ever been
>awful covenants
>covenants are stickers which can be changed on the go
>shitty rewards
>Dragon form the worst its ever been in both aesthetic and practical sense
>community now filled with normies who hold hands with their SL 800 Friends to get through the game
>invaders have the most disadvantage compared to all other games in the series
>First DLC was a 1.5 hour long disappointment with a rehashed arena
>Second DLC had no end despite being the very last dark souls thing we'll get for the forseeable future

BTFO

That's dumb but it's not an actual problem of the game, it's just an absurd rigidity in following the games own rules.

> every boss makes a bonfire
> every level has a bonfire at the start

it looks dumb as hell, but it doesn't really have an effect on gameplay. Removing one of them wouldn't make the game any more challenging or interesting. The actual problem is the abundance of bonfires inside levels, Farron Keep us ridiculous.
> Road of Sacrifices
> Halfway Fortress
> Cruxifivtion Woods
> Farron Keep
> Whatecer the one in the middle of swamp is called
> Perimimter something

that's not even including the 2 boss bonfires. They are all so close to eachother it feels like checkpoints in a regular game and not at all like the Respawn points thee series is known for. If it were Demon's Souls, Bloodborne or Dark Souls 1 you would have had to make do with Halfway Fortress bonfire for the entire thing.

This is true, and I like Ds3 less than 2. It's such a minute thing to get worked up over especially when Ds3 has actual flaws. Ds2 shitposters are the worst.

>And people say Dark Souls 2 has bad level design..

Because it did.

>not using the Dragonslayer Armour bonfire for Prince Lothric
>inb4 needing to use the bonfire for Prince Lothric

Why is bonfire placement so fucked in every game but the first? I preferred what Demon's Souls did over how Dark Souls II & III did it. The levels themselves in 3 are fine, aside from maybe the first couple where there's very limited choice on which direction to go, which is unlike the previous games.

>pretend

Dark Souls 2 had this too. In the castle. They could have put a ladder instead or something.

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Nioh have evenly placed, balanced bonfires/shrines

Dark Souls 2 had a bonfire that was in a pit that was just low enough you couldnt get out of, somebody got the webm of this?

>bonfire placement in two
>that one shortcut in Huntsman's copse which lets you skip basically nothing
>there's no need for the shortcut anyway because there's a bonfire right after it.

You sound like a literal miserylord, like everyone yelling 'you'd eat SHIT on a PLATE if it was from -insert game developer-'
Your perfect flawless game will never exist, if it ever did

I know the one, in the lava castle place right? Yeah, they did that to make you have to climb the ladder and go through the PvP zone. They should've just put a fucking fence there or something, that pit did look retarded.

>Sup Forums loves open world shit
>Sup Forums suddenly becomes autistic when it comes to level design in Souls games
Pick one, hypocrites

People say that but what they often mean is that Ds2 had bad world design. The individual level design wasn't stellar but it wasn't horrible.
also the world design was only bad because Ds1's was so good

>will never exist, if it ever did
your poor english teacher

I tried skipping the boss bonfires once

>Beat boss
>No health, no bonfire
>Move ahead to the next bonfire
>Can't light it
>INVADED BY DARK SPIRIT
>My dramatic, climactic victory over the boss ruined by a fuckhead without even trying

I'll take the bonfires, thanks.

>nostalgia

I think youre just mad ds3 is a direct sequel to ds1 and that ds2 is a shitty spinoff.

>implying im gonna read all that pasta you call an argument

...

I miss the days of just having the archstone be after a boss

The shortcut was made so you could backtrack to the hex trainer, guess they later stuck a more convenient bonfire by him and left the shortcut in. Makes some sense.

Shaded Woods definitely doesn't, there's two within 30 seconds of each other for no reason at all.

Maybe. I have many, many problems with DS2, and probably the least of them was the level design. Thinking back on various points of the game makes me utterly, utterly disinterested in playing again, and shit level design is certainly part of that.

In all, it's not difficult to see why people see it as a bastard child spinoff

Knew what me meant though, at least my capitalization

I miss how simple the levels of DeS were
>three areas with a boss at the end and a fourth endboss at the end of the level
>levels are linear and separated, but you can go in which ever one you want
>no extra bonfires, just an archstone after each boss

Mad, disappointed, whatever you feel like calling it. I don't like that Ds3 adopted NONE of the good things about Ds2. I don't like that it wallowed in the story of Ds1 while providing very little satisfying closure to open ends AND created new open ends that no one cares about.
I don't like that it took the speed of Bloodborne and applied it to a series that previously had been far more diverse in the build variety.
I also don't like how most of the bosses suck, how few bosses there are, and how of those few, nearly half are gimmicks.

it was blocked off as an incentive to fight smelter demon since you get a bonfire half way through the level for beating him. otherwise you could just run through it all

a lot of the strange bonfire placements actually have a purpose for being there, like fast travelling to NPCs for their questlines

The shortcut design in the grand archives felt pretty awkward.

>Elevator that takes you to right after the crystal sage bridge
>Ladder to the top floor you can kick down
>Can reach the top floor using the elevator and ladder in about 30 seconds
>Another elevator that goes directly to the top floor 20 seconds away from the ladder you just kicked down
>Another elevator right before Lothric

PS4 remaster/port, with either new levels in the now fixed broken arch-stone, or even a all of the Dark Souls levels and bosses , when?

>the bosses suck

Which bosses from ds2 do you like? I feel like vordt is better than most of the bosses in ds2. I can only think of 2 gimmick bosses the dragon and the giant. What other gimmicks are you on about?

I actually thought that was a cool design choice, because it encouraged you to go through the PvP area. You can grab the immediate relief and rest at the bonfire, but by doing so you're signing up for a potentially very challenging area

>tfw you enjoyed DaS 2 and 3 despite its flaws and realize Sup Forums's hivemind is one big bukake party, everyone is full of shit but tries to put an even bigger shit on someone else

I like both as well. Its just that ds2 bros like to shit on everyone else and we need to put them in their place .

>BBfag says BB has the best level design

The bonfire you get after beating Smelter was a worse placement than the one in the pit imo, its far too close to the first bonfire. The one in the pit should have had a ladder to kick down after you make it around for the first time and that should have been the last bonfire before the boss. That's the thing I really didn't like about Dark Souls II & III, that the bonfires were so close to the bosses. Demon's Souls did it right imo, long levels with no checkpoints, just shortcuts. Proper resource management and good level design would have to have been both implemented by the developer and utilized by the player for success, Demon's Souls fails in that department because of all the grass you can carry at once, all they'd have to do is replace the grass with Estus, giving the player more or less depending on the length of the level.

>fast travelling to NPCs for their questlines
Part of what the first game did really well was having the player being able to traverse the easily and through memory without having to use the, in my opinion immersion breaking, fast travel which makes you feel a disconnect between the player and the world but I guess that's more of a preference thing.

Ds2 bosses I like:
looking glass knight, demon of song, smelter demon, Vendrick, Velstadt, Sinh, Ivory King, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne, lost sinner (pre nerf), giant lord, and executioner chariot (I know it's a gimmick, I don't have a problem with them when they are few and far between)

Gimmick bosses in Ds3: Wolnir, Ancient Wyvern, Deacons of the Deep, Yhorm, Crystal Sage.
Vordt is a trash boss, as is Oceiros, Champions gravetender/greatwolf, and Aldritch.

>A-team actually produces shit.

We all agree that DS1 / DS2 are good, and BB / DS3 is shit?

wonder why the Ds2 faggots shit on everyone else... what could it be...

To be fair, Deacons of the Deep is a better Prowling Magnus and the Congregration.

Look I'm not calling the prowling magus a good fight but there were 3 different enemy types in that fight and the order you got rid of them was what gave the fight the little bit of depth it had. The deacons are just a gank fight, every mob behaves the same until the pope shows up, and then every mob but the two big ones behave the same while the 2 big ones attempt to heal the pope so poorly that the best option is always to spam the pope to death. the gimmick doesn't add anything interesting to the fight.

>HOLY SHIT
>IS THAT STAIIRRSS?? LEADING TO MORE STAIRS IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION?
>JUST FUCKING WAIT TILL THOSE DS3 FAGS ON Sup Forums HEAR ABOUT THIS

>You have a shit taste

Good boss fight

BB

Gehrman, The First Hunter
Ludwig, the Holy Blade
Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower
Laurence, the First Vicar (Amazing soundtrack)
Father Gascoigne
Vicar Amelia
Orphan of Kos
Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen
Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos
Mergo's Wet Nurse
Watch Dog of the Old Lords
Rom, the Vacuous Spider
Darkbeast Paarl
Living Failures
Moon Presence
Micolash, Host of the Nightmare
Martyr Logarius

DS3

Slave Knight Gael
Abyss Watchers
Soul of Cinder
Lothric, Younger Prince
Gundyr
Sister Friede
Nameless King
Dragonslayer Armour
Darkeater Midir
Pontiff Sulyvahn
Demon Prince
Dancer of the Boreal Valley
Yhorm the Giant

DS1

Chaos Witch Quelaag
Crossbreed Priscilla
Dark Sun Gwyndolin
Gaping Dragon
Great Grey Wolf Sif
Gwyn Lord of Cinder
Ornstein and Smough
Artorias the Abysswalker
Black Dragon Kalameet
Manus, Father of the Abyss

DES

King Allant
Penetrator
Old King Allant
Storm King
Tower Knight
Old Monk
Flamelurker
Fool's Idol
Phalanx
Maiden Astraea

DS2

Sir Alonne

>DS2 to be the worst in the series, the level and world design to be horrible also, boss designs and battles to be boring for the most part.

they were designed differently since there was no fast travel until halfway into the game
that forced them to place the bonfires more deliberately since players would have no option but to walk from place to place

>Rom
>Micolash
>Wet nurse
>Yhorm
>gaping dragon
>storm king
>phalanx
okay calm down there buddy, those are pretty objectively shit fights

Oh boy, here come the DS2 babbies with their "DS2 is better than DS3"-bullshit.

>Chaos Witch Quelaag
this was not a fun boss

see

What about Das2

>That bonfire is in a pit! How am I supposed to get out? uhg idiot devs

I feel like people just don't remember DS2. If you go back and play it today you'd realize that it's beyond garbage.

objectively incorrect

I literally didnt really remember it.

This whole time I thought I only got like 1/4 of the way through the game but when I played it again and saw where I was, turned out I was near the end.

Weird desu

>play Ds2
>It's good
>not as good as Ds1
>this will only cause incessant, neverending shitposting on Sup Forums
I saw the future the week Ds2 released

>Why is bonfire placement so fucked in every game but the first?

>bonfire in spider-chick room
>bonfire in front of Demon Ruins entrance, just steps away from the former
>yet another bonfire down in the ruins
>defeat Firesage for a bonfire that is also next to a shortcut to the first bonfire
>another fucking bonfire with Solaire after Centipede Demon

I think the worst thing about ds3 is there's no shortcuts where you hit a little snowball down a snowy hill and it turns into a big snowball that then plugs a gap in a broken bridge

>liking gimmick bosses
Sure thing, pal :^)

Well, the original did it the best. Unfortunately Demon Ruins was just a real shit zone, with a real shit boss. People say it went to shit after Anor Londo, but I think Demon Ruins is the only real bad part of the game, outside of Blighttown on consoles.

That's one unfinished area of a game, stupid to compare that to the entirety of other finished games

what caused the never ending shitposting is that from couldnt deliver on what they showed in the trailers, people dont like being lied to
and while i dont think ds2 is a terrible game, i think parts of it were actually quite good, its still not what they were advertising and many people wont be so forgiving for that reason

As if anything in DS2 was finished.

Hell, just look at King's Passage with its countless graphical issues and even placeholder textures from DS1 they forgot to replace.

Dark Souls 3 brought back what I had come to expect from Souls level design. The areas had a excellent sense of scale and use of vertical space. They felt like interconnected parts of an organic world, rather than the "video gamey" hallways we got with Dark Souls 2. I really appreciated that it took a page from Bloodborne, and divided every single bossfight into phases, with attacks and patterns that varied throughout. It made every boss feel unique and purposeful.

Ok, they're all unfinished games. Still doesn't make sense to compare the one area to an entire game

spider girl was a fire keeper and also a covenant leader so it would make sense that she would get her own bonfire
the one at the entrance to lavatown could have been a little further away, sure, but if youre not going to see quelaan then you wouldnt think to teleport to her bonfire, you would be looking for the closest one to izalith, and she is still technically in blight town

Ds3's world is too widespread to appreciate any interconnectivity it may have had. The various areas are all next to each other, except for Lothric castle. There are no shortcuts that take you to an entirely different area, I would hardly say it takes advantage of the vertical design the Ds1 pioneered.
Also fuck the idea that every boss fight should have multiple phases.

>Also fuck the idea that every boss fight should have multiple phases.

Yeah, I like it just fine in other games, but not Dark Souls for some reason. Maybe just because it's not what I've come to expect after DS1 and DS2. It's not a huge issue though, just a nitpick.

>fuck the idea that every boss fight should have multiple phases.
If I think of the bosses one after another, having multiple phases pretty much means you're shit out of luck trying to beat it in one try. But remember bosses are spread out, and you won't fight the same boss again until a new playthrough, I find it great for replays since I can easily forget a lot of a boss's moves

Yes, I like for boss fights to have phases. I think it helps build tension and makes the boss fight feel unique instead of it being all the same.

Which is fine, but when nearly EVERY boss has multiple phases, they stop feeling unique, yeah?

Another thing I rarely see people talk about is phase changes that don't really add anything to the fight. Take the Curse rotted Greatwood for example. What does falling down into the pit do for the fight, except look cool? The tree has an arm now, but the arena is functionally no different.
The Dancer of the Boreal Valley will set the church on fire with her attacks, but it's purely visual. Standing near the fire doesn't damage you OR the boss, and there's never any structural damage to the church as the fight progresses. It's all for show, no substance.

>I really appreciated that it took a page from Bloodborne, and divided every single bossfight into phases, with attacks and patterns that varied throughout. It made every boss feel unique and purposeful.

Yep totally.

Vendrick is a boring fight. Without a change in strategy, you are basically staring at the screen, unblinking, until you succeed at doing one thing enough times without a mistake. That is boring.

No one needs to pretend BB is better than DaS3

what the fuck happened

That's like saying every boss is hostile, the obvious choice is to kill them. They stop feeling unique

Not saying you're wrong, but get some better examples. Dancer pulling out two swords and doing faster attack strings is plenty of substance that you seemed to ignore for the sake of your thesis

>we never got a custom map maker for das
all i ever fucking wanted

I don't want to play your shitty maps.

The dancer example wasn't really specific to phase changes, thats my b. She'll set things on fire the whole way through, it just doesn't add anything to the fight.
And yes, her phase change does make the fight different. But when every boss before has had the same thing happen, I start to expect the phase change. They're less effective when they don't surprise you. The 3rd stage of Friede was great because it tricked you into thinking you did it, then pulled the rug out with a visually impressive attack that also was dangerous. When a similar thing happened with the Demon Prince, it was less effective.

no one's making you

>implying you could resist
just imagine
one room
thousands of crates, pots, and barrels

Demon Prince got me pretty good, since I thought the first phase was hard enough to beat for me

It's because of the boss bonfire spawn rule.

The next bonfire is used for a whole fucking area which is pretty cool.

Also Cathedral of the Deep bonfire use and level design is god tier.

phases is always cool.

There were several instances in DaS2 where a level was just a 1+n corridors like Aldia's keep.
It unquestionably had some really bad level design.

Probably a cut game mechanic or some shit since there was talk about sacrificing for a bonfire.
Similarly to why every boss has 2 phases because of another cut mechanic.

There's a fair amount more to say about it but DaS2 shills can easily start a 400+ replies omitted thread with this shit.

Bonfire warping to every bonfire ruined the souls series. At least in DaS2 every location was connected by some kind of physical journey (Aside from the DLC and memories) regardless of how disjointed that was.
None of the transitions in DaS3 feel worth mentioning in any way because you just walk 5 feet and there's a bonfire and you never do it again.

You can activate a bonfire even if you get invaded.

In Deacons every enemy acts mostly the same (aside from one having a lunge attack and the blue ones being curse guys if you don't fight the boss fast enough) and is at the same height but with differing health values.
Vordt's ring also exists in this game which makes every single mob encounter pointless because of the billions of health you get from spinning weapons.
Congregation is just a mob boss but the composition is at least different, with enemies at varying heights and with different abilities.

>Every single boss has two phases based on health%
>That makes them unique

When you compare it to DaS2 where quite a few bosses had more varied ways of having the fight be unique as well as having health% based phase changes
it falls flat.

The world design in DaS3 ruins the organic nature any levels may have cultivated and the interconnectivity is limited to adjacent levels where the game only bothers to make 2 connections 3 times and there's no reason to ever use those passages other than to collect the otherwise inaccessible items inside them.

Bad example. What does Yhorm being on fire change about the fight? His fire AoE doesn't do damage, and all his attacks are the same. You still fight him the exact same way, with the gimmick sword.

Dark Souls 2's problem was 2 directors, troubled development, and the publisher selling chunks of the game as DLC

Here's how the Souls saga worked:
-Demon's Souls was a collab with Sony's 1st party studio JapanStudio, however a certain Sony lead didn't see the appeal of the game and thought it was a wasted effort, so even though it was pretty much a 1st party titles (technically 2nd party I guess?) Sony didn't publish it outside of Japan. Atlus and BandaiNamco picked it up due to it getting a cult following in the west.

-While developing DaS1 FromSoft knew it couldn't rely on Sony since their last game just got ditched outside japan, so they looked for another publisher out of desperation (even though Sony co-developed their last game) and a contract was sealed with BandaiNamco for 3 games published under them

-After DarkSouls1 came out, or even before then, the Sony lead (Shuhei yoshida) knew his dismissal of the franchise was a huge mistake and so offered to fully support FromSoft once more, this time without retarded publishing restrictions.

-DaS2 and Bloodborne were now in development. BandaiNamco's contract was already obsolete at this point, since FromSoft always had a better publisher to begin with (albeit stubborn) but now they are forced to shit out 2 more games because of the contract

-FromSoft finishes shitting out the other 2 half-hearted milked DarkSouls games, while the leads actually focus on the JapanStudio collab projects.

That's it. There's no reason for FromSoft to partner with BandaiNamco now that they know Sony won't act retarded like they did with Demon'sSouls. Sony not only publishes games internationally but also helps the studio itself developing the game, building the engine or offering sound recording studios, composers and orchestras (youtube.com/watch?v=5yncMReF8QA) and Sony doesn't force FromSoft into making sequel trash, they can create any IPs they wish

Unless FromSoft wants to make multiplats they have no reason to go back to Bandai when Sony is clearly the better right hand

Still Very Good, LUL

>Charge storm ruler
>use storm ruler
>repeat 3 more times
>"very good"

>It's a clever design
>Butthole face giant in DS2 was a load of crap