What do you want the devs to focus on in the next game?

excuse me?

which part of 'thats a fair point' dont you understand? in my mind that means 'i agree with you'.

The regen buffs on weapons like in DeS and the variety of viable upgrade paths, I didn't like the upgrade types in Dark, felt like only 2 were any good.

You came across as sarcastic. Very sarcastic. specificly "sometimes its hard for me to differentiate between Dark Souls and reality!" looks like an intentionally exaggerated point to make it clear you ment your entire remark as sarcasm.

my bad.

Forum Pirate wrote:You came across as sarcastic. Very sarcastic. specificly "sometimes its hard for me to differentiate between Dark Souls and reality!" looks like an intentionally exaggerated point to make it clear you ment your entire remark as sarcasm.

my bad.

Hey no problem, I can see why you might have thought that mate but I wasnt being sarcastic, I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit with some self-deprecation to be honest. I do think flipping about in huge armour looks silly, but in the context of sorcerers, giant swords and dragons how can it look far fetched, so I do totally agree with you.

Souls games are first and foremost singleplayer games with multiplayer aspects to them. However, in a way, both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls blur the line between singleplayer and multiplayer experience, which is one of the great reasons why I so adore this 'series' of games. While the singleplayer aspect is clearly arguably the most prominent in these games, and the one From Software should pour much of their recourses during the development of their next Souls game, the multiplayer aspect also has a great role to play - which is to enhance the 'singleplayer' experience. This is where Souls games transcend beyond the typical singleplayer and multiplayer categories and their respectice meanings.

In Demon's Souls and Dark Souls the singleplayer and multiplayer morph into one single entity. Ideally at least, since this of course is not the case if the player happens to play offline. To these people especially, who play their games offline for various different reasons, From Software should contrive many more game world events than there currently are in either of the Souls games. Covenants for example could be made to affect the players play in a more meaningful and noticeable way.

Indeed I do recognice the demand for PVP. It should also get its fair share of attention during the development process, but firstly in a way that enhances the 'singleplayer' aspect of the game, namely invading. Any organized matches at large do not seem very viable to me when taking in consideration the very nature of these games with their interactive summoning and invading trough ie. soapstones. Although the Prepare To Die edition for PC may prove to solve this for the PC playerbase at least. However I do fear this might regrettably take much of the games atmosphere away. From Software should still seek to balance the PVP aspect of the game further.

There truly is no room whatsoever for more cutscenes or any other kind of cinematics in the next Souls title. Dark Souls is one of the only modern games in which the developers have understood to keep the amount of cutscenes and cinematics at the bare minimum. The game should take away the players control only in those very few instances where it truly needs to show the player something in a way that would be impossible to incorporate into gameplay. And even then cutscenes and cinematics should be avoided.

These 'epic' and massive bosses many of you are talking about are a bad idea, too. I have almost never encountered in any game a massive boss enemy that would still allow for some meaningful and personal confrontation between any given parties, which ideally would also lead to some form of character development. In most cases massive boss enemies just seem to be there to allow for these 'epic' (large, over the top) action scenes to take place. I could mention Team Ico's Shadow of the Colossus as one of the few exceptions. I certainly do not want to see the player character to be climbing these massive boss enemies and delivering death blows after some scripted cinematics have taken place. That does fit into Souls games as they now are and there is no need for them as the gameplay itself is very solid.

Backstabbing is one of the few gameplay mechanics that From Software could improve upon. The hit-box should be made much smaller than it now in Dark Souls. I would also suggest that any backstab attempts to enemies and players that at that very moment have shields on their back would result in less damage. This damage would vary depending on what weapon the backstabber is using and what shield the person being backstabbed happens to have on their backs. The shields durability could also lessen considerably as a result of an attempted backstab. This could possibly prevent some builds to be one shot killed by backstabs. Not every weapon should be able to be parried either.

Oh, and greetings to every one of you!

Back to the topic... Servers is the priority people.

@Relceroi

i like your tastes in games, MGS,ico+shadows of the colossus, and Souls are my arguably my favorite games. I agree that if they keep covenants that they should have deeper meaning, and not be primarily for pvp. Epicnamebro had a good idea, that your starting class belongs to a certain covenant and based on what starting class you pick you start in a different area of the game. Might need a much much larger game world to pull that off, but we can hope.