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    Is there life after DkS?

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    Post by Anonymous Proxy Thu Oct 11, 2012 3:36 pm

    I don't really know. I take a break here and there.

    I know for four months I played Dragon's Dogma, doing all the quests and completions. Once I pretty much 100%'d it, I went right back to Dark Souls.

    I will never be able to play The Witcher 2 sadly. Not until they patch in Inverse of Axis. I can not play without inverted X and Y axis. -.- It's why I never got to enjoy Kingdoms of Amalur or Fable 2.
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    Post by vatar5 Thu Oct 11, 2012 4:22 pm

    Oh my gawd,Fable 2&3 were awesome too o/
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    Post by sparkly-twinkly-lizard Thu Oct 11, 2012 4:26 pm

    yes! suikoden! i've only played 3 to 5 myself but i really enjoyed them!

    also fable two was more fun than fable 3 imo... both are good but 2 is better...
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    Post by SlakeMoth Thu Oct 11, 2012 6:06 pm

    My problem is that I prefer games where I make the decisions about what I do and where I go next which means that The Elder Scrolls games are perfect for me. And let's not forget Fallout 3. One of the greatest games ever in my opinion.
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    Post by IV_Mark_VI Thu Oct 11, 2012 6:10 pm

    Fallout 3 I couldn't complete. It was interesting and fun, but because I just can't min/max grab the best item kind of player (as long as it's intended, and not some kind of run to a part of the map you shouldn't be because you know you can swipe an item there) I found the difficulty non-existent.

    Fights had no danger, and it completely deflated the game for me. Too bad, because it was a blast at first.
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    Post by RANT Thu Oct 11, 2012 6:50 pm

    sparkly-twinkly-lizard wrote:yes! suikoden! i've only played 3 to 5 myself but i really enjoyed them!

    also fable two was more fun than fable 3 imo... both are good but 2 is better...

    damn you just missed out on the best out of all of them(the second one). the third one was so *** boring, i was so disappointed but it got better after about thalfway through the game.
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    Post by Siegfried. Fri Oct 12, 2012 12:44 am

    SlakeMoth wrote:My problem is that I prefer games where I make the decisions about what I do and where I go next which means that The Elder Scrolls games are perfect for me. And let's not forget Fallout 3. One of the greatest games ever in my opinion.

    You do, in The Witcher 2. It's just that you don't always know you're making decisions; two runs of the game can be very, very different in outcome and events. It's just that the plot is more focused to provide a more driving sense of purpose.

    Take Skyrim, for instance. It begins with a mad run from a dragon. You have a choice in following either the Nord or the Imperial, but that doesn't technically change anything in the game -- you get a different quest marker for finding a different faction, but it doesn't inherently alter what happens or what possibilities.

    In comparison, The Witcher 2 begins with a prologue flashback which is then followed by a jail break. The way you play during the flashback and the decisions you make can severely alter the way in which you escape from jail, including who you encounter and who you talk to. It can be the difference between sneaking out quietly and springing a noble whose life you saved, who then ensures the whole place goes up in smoke. You might chance upon a foreign emissary, who is visiting for political purposes, and you might meet a character you discouraged from placing his faith in a magical trinket in battle. And if you're not clever with your approach to stealth, you might have to kill that same character afterwards.

    That's just the prologue and how it interacts with the jail break -- the game isn't even in Chapter 1 at that stage, and your choices have already influenced which characters live or die, who you interact with, who has a debt to you and so on and so forth. The difference is that you don't always know when you're making choices, and most games make this exceedingly obvious. But this way feels much more organic, as games like Skyrim make you the centre of that game's universe. The Witcher 2, much like Dark Souls, provides the effective illusion of being one cog in the plot amongst many.

    The decisions reach points where you can decide which side of a siege to be on, or whether to kill a king who is under your power. And given that The Witcher examines the political ramifications of its events, it's a pretty big deal because it alters how events unfold towards the end of the game and what happens to other characters.

    In short, The Witcher 2 has plenty of the traditional WRPG elements -- it just hides them under the illusion of linearity. And what this does is it provides the feeling of a story-driven experience while still providing the options and freedom on a WRPG. It's just that this freedom comes with responsibility and highly significant outcomes.
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    Post by edgie_za Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:00 am

    I think Skyrim is a relaxed RPG, where if you don't mind running around, looting caves, mines, towers, etc, and with the odd battle in between, you can get alot out of it.

    If you looking for a lengthy challenge in terms of combat and combat techniques, you not going to get it in Skyrim, and the satisfaction fo beatign a boss in Skyrim is not as prominent as one in Dark Souls. Remember the first time you killed the two bell gargoyles? i felt like I could take on the world, and even more so when I did it WITHOUT any summons, that is until I realised that was only the first real boss battle, back to earth for you!

    What drew me to Oblivion (and hence Skyrim) was the myriad of things you could do, from quests, to guilds, to hoarding, to learning every spell and ingredient and recipe. Lets be honest there are times you just want to sit back and lull through a game. That is why Dark Souls for me is so amazing, in that if I need a challenge, Darks Souls has it, no matter what your SL level, it will challenge you.

    Fallout 3 was another of those games which I loved and ended up getting the successor, New Vegas. However both games fell into the same trap of enemies not really leveling up with you, nor posing a risk to life and limb even when you a good 20-30 levels above them. Dark Sousl is such that even the hollows in the undead burg can give you a nasty death if you nto careful, even at SL30 or 70 or 120!
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    Post by SlakeMoth Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:28 pm

    Thanks for that Siegfried, I may well give The Witcher another shot and I agree with edgie_za, Skyrim is a relaxing game. Perfect for when you need a bit of relief from the tension of Dark Souls.
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    Post by Siegfried. Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:33 pm

    Mind you, I don't want to illegitimise anyone's opinion. I can't tell you what your experiences with a certain game were, of course, but any game is subject to interpretation. If you've already put down the cash on the game, revisiting it with a different set of expectations and a different understanding might bring you some fun times, though.
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    Post by callipygias Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:43 pm

    I've only been gaming about 14 months now, so I haven't heard of much of what you all are talking about, but I think I'll try Witcher, since it's being discussed a lot. Gotta find SOMETHING to give me another break, for God's sake. I've gotten a lot of enjoyment from Dragon's Dogma, and I may go back to it here and there since I've grown kind of attached to my character and pawn.

    I'd love to do Borderlands 2 but it's a shooter, right? Can't stand shooters (though I think I'll like Vanquish if I can get the hang of it).
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    Post by IV_Mark_VI Fri Oct 12, 2012 1:45 pm

    Borderlands 2 is fun with friends. Yeah, it's a shooter and if that's not your cup of tea, well... it's hours and hours of shooting.

    But it's not like Call of Duty online where your opponents are leaping off buildings shooting sniper rifles in mid air and getting headshots. Your opponents are pretty dumb and easily hit. I'm having a blast with it.
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    Post by Back Lot Basher Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:24 pm

    This franchise has become the new bar, the game(s) that all others have to measure up to. I've put so many hours in that it's difficult to play for long stretches anymore, but I still pop it in for a new build or challenge run once in a while. It's a game that makes you think as much as it makes you react, and that's a rare thing in gaming today. Every game developer in the world (at least the ones who design melee games) should play through this and pay close attention at how well done the combat is.

    Remember the first time you played Demons Souls? How easy it would have been to quit as you tried to get across the bridge in 1-2 for the fifteenth time? Why did you keep playing? Because the combat was just so much fun, and the world was so immersive.

    The Souls series has the potential to become one of the best of all time, if it isn't already. I have friends who refuse to play this simply because they've heard about the brutal difficulty. Yet I know if they tried, they'd be hooked.

    To answer the age-old question, if you could only have one game to play for the rest of your life...well, I think most of us would agree on that one.
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    Post by Razielthemanslayer Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:40 pm

    Is it strange I can actually switch to games like pokemon, kid icarus uprising, metal gear and skyim after playing dark souls, yes, most games pale in comparison, but after getting kicked around so much you need a rest xD
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    Post by IV_Mark_VI Fri Oct 12, 2012 3:51 pm

    @Back Lot Basher: I think people have to remember that this game appeals to people of like mindset. That we love this game, doesn't mean it's the new direction for gaming. Quite the contrary; trends in the gaming industry point the other way.

    The Wii has completely outsold both the PS3 and the XBox 360 in North America and in Japan.

    As hardware gets stronger, game development costs increase, making profit margins smaller and entry into this market more difficult.

    This game is awesome, for us. Hopefully our small segment of the market can support games like this to keep companies dumping the huge amount of capital into making them.
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    Post by Siegfried. Fri Oct 12, 2012 4:18 pm

    Actually, I think Dark Souls is something of a snapshot into the future. Remember, raw sales aren't the bottom line -- profit is. A game that can sell one million copies on a budget of twenty million dollars is a bigger success, from a profit point of view, than a game that sells the same amount but costs twice as much to make. Dark Souls is a AAA game, and that means it wasn't cheap to make -- but I somehow doubt it required the budget of Skyrim to produce, either.

    Publishers and investors love games that have a wide positive margin between their production costs and their profit, and "underdog victories" like those of Demon's Souls in particular is something of a wet dream. One of the biggest issues with the game industry right now is the gap in understanding between publishers and developers, but as games become cheaper to make through advancing technology and the competition of the indie development scene, I think we'll begin to see a more diverse set of titles arrive.

    Since the end of the "golden age" in about 2004, we've had its mirror "dark age" where large publishers have been trying to bleed as much money out of developers and consumers as possible. Over the past couple of years, though, there's been explosive resistance to that development, such as the expansion of the indie development scene, the success of Kickstarter and Valve's continuous support for development talent on multiple levels. Large publishers like EA aren't necessarily doing too well, either; the cost of maintaining profit on that level is so high that you'd be surprised how little profit there is after all the money goes back into producing more games. Large publishers are in a situation where they're almost making near-shovelware by necessity -- if they don't guarantee themselves more sales, they'll lose the profit required to maintain their current position and pretty much implode.

    So we can trust large publishers to do their regular song and dance for a while longer, but gaming has expanded to such an extent beyond the traditional publishing model that game sales are more evenly distributed than they used to be. Remember, before digital sales and internet speeds that allowed such quick information exchange, you had to go to the store to buy a game. That store had limited shelf space, and had to order reputable stock that was known to make a financial return. So pretty much every game had some of its profit pass through the hands of a publisher.

    If you look at some of the biggest artistic successes of this generation, you'll find that not that many were published by a major publisher. Take both Dark Souls and The Witcher 2 -- in their native countries (Japan and Poland, respectively), both were published by the development studio themselves, picking up a major publisher only for the purposes of international release. Nintendo consistently releases excellent first-party games (comments about the exact nature of their "consistency" aside), and I think it's no coincidence that this comes from a company that is developer and publisher both. Then there's the massive array of independent titles and the increasing amount of Kickstarter projects.

    Gaming is changing, and hopefully for the better. I only hope that gamers continue to make alternative methods of game development and publishing profitable so we can continue to benefit from fun, unique and creative game experiences unsullied by the restrictions and the abusive policies of major publishing companies.
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    Post by Mr. Tart Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:07 pm

    Speaking of the Fable series, Fable: The lost chapters is actually my favorite game of all time. As for fable 2 and 3, they both have flaws. Fable 2 had its good point, but i don't feel like it's got real replay-value to it, but that's me. As for fable 3, i find it to having been better than fable 2, but, the replay-value of this game, horrible. I played it 3 times, then i got tired of it. I want to play it, but i can't, i just can't, i don't feel like it, i don't want to, yet i want to. It makes no sense!

    Edit: Not sayin' Fable: TLC did not have flaws!

    On-topic: Honestly, i think i could have lived without Dks, now, that doesn't mean i don't enjoy it, it's one of my favorite games. But whenever i get tired i still have Fable, Halo, RE6 and Skyrim. Of course there are more games that i could play, but that doesn't matter. I find it quite easy to move on to other games to be honest, what i hate though is the change of controls all the time, always gets me.

    Example: Playing Dks after having played RE6 = *tries to roll* *presses bloodstain instead* and i just end walking off the cliff looking at my controller.
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    Post by Gazman0169 Fri Oct 12, 2012 8:52 pm

    Well I returned back to Demon's Souls tonight, and I am well shocked at how easy it now all appears to be. It's the first time in well over a year, but I still managed to defeat the Vangard on the first time of trying, which was my first time ever, with a brand new character that I created especially to mark my return back to the lands of Boletaria. I then proceeded to waltz through 1-1 barely picking up a scratch along the way, and absolutely slaughtered the Phalanx. Nothing new there then! :roll:

    All in all it was a very good night, and it just helped to cement the opinion that I've always held that DS is still the best game in the Souls series, and probably the best vid-game ever. big grin

    Oh, and in case anyone's interested, going by all the white phantoms, user generated messages, and blood signs I saw, it is clear that the EU server is still very much alive and kicking.

    "Umbasa!" cheers
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    Post by DamageCK Sat Oct 13, 2012 3:29 am

    Hahahaha. +1 for this line: "Excuse me for swearing, but I finally got around to buying Skyrim".
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    Post by Gazman0169 Sat Oct 13, 2012 2:02 pm

    Thanks for all the input y'all, shame most of the suggestions were for the Xbox. I wonder if my nearest and dearest will let me invest in one? Oh look there goes a piggy passed my 1st floor bedroom window! lol

    Yes, Virginia, there is life after Dark Souls. It called Demon's Souls! twisted

    I guess I won't be breaking free from the Souls series any time soon then! big grin
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    Post by edgie_za Tue Oct 16, 2012 4:42 am

    Siegfried. wrote:Mind you, I don't want to illegitimise anyone's opinion. I can't tell you what your experiences with a certain game were, of course, but any game is subject to interpretation. If you've already put down the cash on the game, revisiting it with a different set of expectations and a different understanding might bring you some fun times, though.

    Aggree Siegfried. I very seldom buy games without doing some research/opinion gathering, unless it is a sequel to a game i liked. I very seldom sell any of my games, as I am one of those gamers who likes to scratch out a game 3-6 months later, dust it off, and give it another run.big grin

    Mind u, I have games where i have only played the first level/20-minutes, and put it away, and yet to play them again... :roll:
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    Post by edgie_za Tue Oct 16, 2012 4:49 am

    IV_Mark_VI wrote:@Back Lot Basher: I think people have to remember that this game appeals to people of like mindset. That we love this game, doesn't mean it's the new direction for gaming. Quite the contrary; trends in the gaming industry point the other way.

    The Wii has completely outsold both the PS3 and the XBox 360 in North America and in Japan.

    As hardware gets stronger, game development costs increase, making profit margins smaller and entry into this market more difficult.

    This game is awesome, for us. Hopefully our small segment of the market can support games like this to keep companies dumping the huge amount of capital into making them.

    That is the challenge for the longevity of Dark Souls. That it's player base is not really growing as fast as say the Wii or Kinect player base, who are brining in players who would never have botherd with gaming. Dark Souls is catering to a player base that is aready there and is not really growing all that fast. And think about it, not everyone today has the time and energy to devote the kinds of hours needed to trully master a game like Dark Souls (if you can ever Master it in the first place)

    However, the game industry knows that it is hardcore gamers that devote the time to their games that they cannot ignore, as they (should) know that the hardcore or frequent gamers give the best input, and their opinions count alot more than a casual gamer.
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    Post by Siegfried. Tue Oct 16, 2012 5:21 am

    edgie_za wrote:and their opinions count alot more than a casual gamer.

    I disagree with this. Hardcore gamers are, almost by definition, heavily biased. And remember, it's hardcore gamers that have financially justified a lot of the flaws in the gaming industry today, from unsustainable game budgets to a lack of gameplay innovation in AAA titles.

    The great thing about casual gamers is that they don't think about games as much as they feel games. They don't really care about anything except for how well an overall experience comes together, so a casual gamer is the best indication of how intuitive and fun a game is.

    Remember, we all started out "casual", even if the concept of a casual gamer didn't necessarily exist when we started playing games. I remember that my first console was the original "brick" Gameboy, and I played games such as Donkey Kong and Link's Awakening on it. These games were simple and primitive, but they were also exceedingly well-designed. It says a lot about such games that, even as a small child with no gaming experience, I could understand them and play them with a minimum of prompting.

    Take Pac-man as an example. It's the prime, old-school "casual" game, and pretty much the basis of most casual games today in gameplay design principle. You don't need to be taught Pac-man, because the game inherently shows you what you have to do. For instance, as soon as you move, you consume some of the white dots and your score goes up. Alright, so you should consume more white dots to increase your score, right? But then there's the big dots, so we're inherently drawn to be curious. But the ghosts are coming towards us, and a game isn't a game without the prospect of failure, so let's just avoid them for now and grab that big white dot. And, oh, all the ghosts have turned blue and are avoiding us rather than coming towards us. So consuming a big dot is a defensive measure we can take against the ghosts.

    The game has no tutorial, because it doesn't need one. Anyone who plays it, casual or hardcore, will understand the game within seconds of manipulating the controls. And that is intensely elegant game design, because it expresses its mechanics in such a fundamental way.

    Casual gamers are extremely important, because they're free of many of the expectations and biases hardcore gamers have. Remember, a game being simple does not mean it's shallow. Many exceedingly simple games are also exceedingly deep. Take chess, for instance. You take one move per a turn, and if you end on an enemy's space during that move, you take their piece. There are six different types of pieces, each of which can move differently. You win if you checkmate the other player's king. And that's pretty much the entirety of chess, but it's a system with such versatility that players are free to apply themselves as they see fit.

    The last ten years or so haven't just been dark for developers in terms of fiscal pressure -- they've been dark in terms of progressive game design, too. Since we had a period where games were directed directly towards a growing base of hardcore gamers, game developers moved their design towards the biases and tastes of that group. With an exploding base of casual gamers now, though, developers are free to work at a variety of budget levels to suit different needs while also taking drastically different approaches to game design.
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    Post by edgie_za Tue Oct 16, 2012 5:45 am

    Siegfried. wrote:Actually, I think Dark Souls is something of a snapshot into the future. Remember, raw sales aren't the bottom line -- profit is. A game that can sell one million copies on a budget of twenty million dollars is a bigger success, from a profit point of view, than a game that sells the same amount but costs twice as much to make. Dark Souls is a AAA game, and that means it wasn't cheap to make -- but I somehow doubt it required the budget of Skyrim to produce, either.

    Publishers and investors love games that have a wide positive margin between their production costs and their profit, and "underdog victories" like those of Demon's Souls in particular is something of a wet dream. One of the biggest issues with the game industry right now is the gap in understanding between publishers and developers, but as games become cheaper to make through advancing technology and the competition of the indie development scene, I think we'll begin to see a more diverse set of titles arrive.

    Since the end of the "golden age" in about 2004, we've had its mirror "dark age" where large publishers have been trying to bleed as much money out of developers and consumers as possible. Over the past couple of years, though, there's been explosive resistance to that development, such as the expansion of the indie development scene, the success of Kickstarter and Valve's continuous support for development talent on multiple levels. Large publishers like EA aren't necessarily doing too well, either; the cost of maintaining profit on that level is so high that you'd be surprised how little profit there is after all the money goes back into producing more games. Large publishers are in a situation where they're almost making near-shovelware by necessity -- if they don't guarantee themselves more sales, they'll lose the profit required to maintain their current position and pretty much implode.

    So we can trust large publishers to do their regular song and dance for a while longer, but gaming has expanded to such an extent beyond the traditional publishing model that game sales are more evenly distributed than they used to be. Remember, before digital sales and internet speeds that allowed such quick information exchange, you had to go to the store to buy a game. That store had limited shelf space, and had to order reputable stock that was known to make a financial return. So pretty much every game had some of its profit pass through the hands of a publisher.

    If you look at some of the biggest artistic successes of this generation, you'll find that not that many were published by a major publisher. Take both Dark Souls and The Witcher 2 -- in their native countries (Japan and Poland, respectively), both were published by the development studio themselves, picking up a major publisher only for the purposes of international release. Nintendo consistently releases excellent first-party games (comments about the exact nature of their "consistency" aside), and I think it's no coincidence that this comes from a company that is developer and publisher both. Then there's the massive array of independent titles and the increasing amount of Kickstarter projects.

    Gaming is changing, and hopefully for the better. I only hope that gamers continue to make alternative methods of game development and publishing profitable so we can continue to benefit from fun, unique and creative game experiences unsullied by the restrictions and the abusive policies of major publishing companies.

    I am not so sure about the industry going in a new direction/changing as games like Skyrim tend to be made to attract as many existing gamers as possible and to introduce new players as well. Also, games like Dark Souls is bound to scare away gamers who find any difficulty in a game too taxing or demanding of time and effort. To churn out a game a 10 year old can play (and will appeal to) costs alot less to make than a game like dark souls (where every aspect of the game has to work perfectly) and will bring in more money.
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    Post by Siegfried. Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:18 am

    A lot of casual games are actually very challenging and punishing, but they're designed to be played in an "instanced" fashion -- you see how well you can do in fifteen minutes, or see whether you can beat your previous score, and then stop playing.

    As for ten year olds? I remember Ocarina of Time coming out when I was eight years old, and I loved it. It's still considered one of the best games ever. Many, many games designed for children are excellent specifically because of their broadness and intuitiveness. Dark Souls is brilliant, of course, but it's very much the exception; games with this level of complexity seldom have the depth of a well-constructed, well-considered simple equivalent. Simplicity is one of the pillars of "emergent gameplay" -- that is, gameplay that evolves as the player takes actions.

    The thing is that playing a certain kind of game doesn't make you smarter. But designing a good game that can be played by anyone is a mark of genius.

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