"I am half serious" I see, I see....

to clear it up, it's just a PS1 game

studio ghibli did all the art for it and animated the OP and stuff

ignore that

if MAL weren't broken for the past week or so, i'd be able to make the 1998 list pretty much right now

Your friend needs to be tougher if some loser online sending him a message causes him to stop playing a game. Why buy a game like Dark Souls to only play co op anyways? There's no challenge.

if "challenge" is the ONLY reason to play dark souls, you must not like the game that much

maybe you're interested in the story or the lore, maybe you enjoy the gameplay but you get frustrate way too easily, or maybe you just like teamwork—if the developers gave a fuck about how you played the game, they wouldn't have allowed you to co-op the entire game

i also have a friend who's getting the game on switch, and he's only doing so to co-op it with me so i can basically fight all the bosses for him, because he's fucking terrible at games and he knows it, but he still wants to play it with somebody who doesn't suck so he can at least know what the game is all about

and invasions are the kind of thing that would probably cause him to give up, he's already apprehensive over the lack of a pause feature, so i'm hoping he's able to keep it together too

Quote from: Verbatim on June 06, 2018, 08:42:45 PM

Quote from: challengerX on June 06, 2018, 08:37:25 PM

I'll never understand how you can take pleasure from ruining somebody's game.

but you do

I'm not having this argument again lmao invading someone does not ruin their game. You can just be hollow if you don't want to be invaded. Or if you know you can take everybody on and you're a high enough level offer humanity at the bonfire. It's a simple system, and while it's not great it's pretty good.

what do you mean "it's not great" it's flawless maybe you just need to get good

---

<- Previous update: ...Consider giving up, skeleton.

---

Recap:
- Explored the rest of the Catacombs
- Found Gravelord Nito in the Tomb of the Giants

Current missions:
- Kill Nito
- Explore the Great Hollow
- Explore the Demon Ruins
- Find and kill the Witch of Izalith

---

I think we're about due for another one of these, huh? Let me just take a second to refresh you guys on where we're at.

The last time I updated (back in August), I found the secret passageway to Gravelord Nito's chamber in the Tomb of the Giants. No boss fight commenced shortly thereafter, because Nito was hiding inside of his coffin, and apparently, I can't hurt him when he's in there. The only thing I could do in this room is join his covenant, which I had no intention of doing.

Instead, on a complete whim, I went back down to that one room where I killed Pinwheel, I found myself another way into the Tomb that I had previously missed. It's a pretty large area with a lot of shit going on, but it's extremely dark and I got my asshole torn apart by a bunch of skeletonized gorillas or some shit before I could find a bonfire.

One of the first things I did to help navigate myself through this place was switch my Pyromancy Flame for my other magic wand of choice: the Oolacile Ivory Catalyst that I got from that nice lady in the Darkroot Basin. I know using magic is more or less frowned upon, but not to worry—I did not intend to use any offensive spells; just cute gimmicks and utility spells. I have just enough attunement slots for all the things I wanted to use: Cast Light, Hidden Body, and Aural Decoy, and just enough Intelligence invested to use them.

Cast Light is pretty indispensable, and my favorite spell to use in dark areas where it's hard as fuck to see shit. It surprisingly helps a lot more than you'd perhaps expect it to, and it makes me feel like I'm using a Wand-Lighting Charm, which makes the Harry Potter fan in me feel all giddy inside. One little trick I like to perform before leaving the bonfire is set up a light and immediately re-sit at the bonfire to instantly replenish the spell, effectively giving me 4 uses rather than the standard 3. I'm sure nobody has ever thought to do anything like this but me, an intellectual.

Hidden Body is cool, because it makes it so some of the more dimwitted enemies can't tell where you are for a brief period of time. And in the Tomb of the Giants, there are a lot of dimwitted enemies. In particular, the bonewheel skeletons that everyone seems to hate so much? Works like a charm on them, and I'm pretty happy that I came up with that solution on my own. I never really had too many issues with the bonewheel guys anyway—I carry a greatshield, after all, so their attacks glance pretty easily off of it. It only sucks when they gang up on you, but with Hidden Body, I don't even need to worry about that shit.

Aural Decoy is what I meant by "cute gimmick." The moment I bought this thing near the beginning of the playthrough, I could tell that it was probably one of those spells that everyone thinks is completely pointless, but I thought to myself, "I'm gonna find a use for you." And I did—it's actually a pretty good pinch tool for those situations where you'd like an enemy to move his ass out of the way without having to fight it, but again, it only works on stupid enemies. I haven't used it very much, but it's still a satisfying trick to pull off whenever I do.

As for the Tomb of the Giants itself, I'm afraid I don't remember every detail of it, since I cleared it so many months ago, so I'll just go over the biggest events.

So, I'm sure everyone remembers that prick who pushes you off the cliff, right? The one who asks you if you're a cleric, tells you about a "treasure" at the bottom of the cliff, and then asks you to take a peek?

Here's the thing about that guy—I knew exactly what he was about to do, and I wouldn't have let him do it if the game didn't give the event trigger such a deceptively wide area of effect. I get the impression that being kicked down here was nothing but a good thing, though, so it wasn't really a big deal. Even so, as soon as I got back up there, I wanted so much to just kill the guy, just on principle, but I ultimately decided against it. Since the game has permadeath in terms of the NPCs, I'd rather not do something I might completely regret later.

It was in the pit where I discovered that one maiden—the one from WAY back—the one who entered the Catacombs with an entourage of Way of White dudes. Those dudes went hollow, so I pretty much had to put them out of their misery. She gave me a spell I don't remember the name of because I'll probably never use it, but it was still a cool little game moment I guess. Kinda weird for the game to suddenly pull a damsel in distress out of nowhere, but I'll take it. That's probably the best way to use that trope, really—a random thing that happens on the side, rather than having it be the main quest. I don't know if that was an intentional subversion, but it works for me.

This area has some fucked up looking enemies, too. I saw what looked like a bunch of totem poles made up of skeleton parts and dirt? Weird shit. They're not even difficult, but they're very slow and freaky looking.

A couple of hidden bonfires later, I eventually came upon what appeared to be the critical path to Nito's boss door, so the next section is pretty foggy for me and I don't remember much. All I can say for sure is that the trek to Nito is one of the longer and more tedious boss runs in the game, and I wasn't having a great time with that, especially since I don't particularly enjoy the strategy of just running past every enemy I see. I try to fight everything, mostly for the souls, but I eventually decided I was wasting too much time with that and just ran past everything. Feels kinda stupid, and it's one of my least favorite aspects of the game. It's kinda fucking lame.

At least the scenery in this section of the game is beautiful, though. I linked that one screenshot earlier with the big trees and the green foggy atmosphere.

The room just before Nito is insane, because it's a big cramped-up cave that's swarming not only with Pinwheel guys, which are just regular enemies now I guess, but also these baby skeletons that gang up on you like anklebiters, and I believe they can poison you, too. And they all respawn. During my boss runs, these guys were just nuisances more than anything. Avoiding all their magic blasts can be tricky when you're trying to reach the fight as soon as humanly possible, and since you're forced to take fall damage going into Nito's lair anyway, it's definitely a section that keeps you on your toes. I actually like this part, and I didn't mind running past anything here, because they can still blast you if you're not paying good enough attention.

And then I made it to Nito. For whatever reason, he wants to fight me now, even though I was 100% ready and available to fight him several hours ago back when I found the hidden passage to him, but oh well.

My first attempt, like with most of my attempts, wasn't really much of an "attempt" at all. I only had two helpings of Estus left, so I knew I wasn't gonna stand a chance, so I took the opportunity I had to just feel him out and get a sense for how he fights.

Turns out, he's a big lumbering idiot who lets his minions do most of the work for him. His legion of lesser skeletons ganged up on me and set me packing in less than thirty seconds—the last thing I spotted was Nito performing an attack that caused a lot of collateral damage to his own army.

That all happened last year. After that first attempt, I had intended to take a momentary break from the game—maybe a week or so—but "a week" wound up turning into nine months. WHOOPS.

I'm back now, though, and I'm excited to show you what I've been able to accomplish in the past couple of days.


Just a few more left now, my friends:


The Demon Firesage is probably right around the corner, and the Centipede Demon sounds like something that would be lurking down in the Great Hollow, if I were to guess. All the rest sound like endgame material, except for the Stray Demon, which I'm not too sure about.

good mechanic

i thought you were looking for a TV

Quote from: Verbatim on June 05, 2018, 01:39:44 PM

reddit is awesome

Yeah there's a nice variety sometimes, it's a good place to lose a couple of hours when I don't wanna sink too deeply into TVtropes.  Not sure why some people dislike it, but hey like it matters.

people just don't like the community/culture (and neither do i, really)

that's all they base their opinion on though which is dumb

really good website

lame as fuck

Chally I can’t watch cause I’m out and about, did he get even a single kill on you?

they didn't record it for whatever reason, but no he didn't

though, deci claims he gave up after he got killed five straight times

which is still pretty pathetic

You could've saved yourself some time if you had just clarified that by "refuting" (properly disproving a statement) you actually meant "disliking".

but i didn't

the actual contents of the statements can't be refuted, but there's an implicit assertion that what you've had to say wasn't irrelevant to the conversation i was having, and that is the notion that i've refuted

Refuting would be to fully prove to someone that you do or don't randomly gain humanity when you die, when all you did was again talk about why you don't like the mechanic and why you think it's dumb game design - something that is pretty irrelevant to what I said.

okay, here's what you're doing right now

you don't waltz into a conversation about politics and randomly bring up something stupid like sports, getting me to say something like, "yeah, but we're not talking about sports, guy, we're talking about politics," and then respond with, "um, but excuse me, i'm talking about sports, politics are irrelevant to what i'm talking about"

that's exactly what you're doing

I didn't even try to argue that it's a good mechanic at as we've already been through that months ago.

regardless, that's all i'm trying to talk about right now

i'm not sure why you'd waste your time trying to correct misconceptions about the lore when i ultimately don't care, and since it's not going to change how i feel or think about any of this, i don't know what you're trying to accomplish

let's be honest, you're not really an expert on as this is your first blind playthrough and you actively avoid the entire multiplayer portion of the game).

i'm an expert on how things should work, regardless of how they actually do

let me put it to you this way, i'd rather play a game with bad lore if it means i don't have to subject myself to bad gameplay—i would never trade good gameplay for good lore, ever

And yeah, you are kinda wrong about the "spending". You burn the humanity at a bonfire to absorb it and reverse your hollowing. Just as you have to burn tobacco to inhale the released smoke, you have to use the special fires of the bonfire to consume humanities. Once you do, the humanity infuses you and you once again become a full human until the next time you die. When this happens, your humanity (which you can think of as a human soul) evaporates and disappears unless this happens in the presence of a Darkwraith invader who then absorbs it instead. It becomes more obvious when you actually join the covenant, get the explanation, read the descriptions of the gear and receive the special humanity draining "dark hand" item, so I can't really fault you too much for not knowing this.

zzzzzzzzzz

okay, so i was right about the handwavy magical nonsense, good

you can't say with a straight face that any of this makes sense or should be taken seriously, right? because i'm not gonna do that

tl;dr

"i'm not sure why you'd waste your time trying to correct misconceptions about the lore when i ultimately don't care, and since it's not going to change how i feel or think about any of this, i don't know what you're trying to accomplish" is the crux of the post

You didn't though.

i did, and i'll do it again

"Invaders can only invade you when you're human" is a completely neutral and factual statement akin to "trainers can't catch pokemon owned by another trainer". There's no refuting that.

i can point out its sheer irrelevancy, because it doesn't matter when invaders can and can't evade you—it doesn't make it any less of a cancerous and poorly designed mechanic that doesn't make any sense at all and is utterly toxic to the MP experience

because it can still happen

there's only a couple reasons why you'd want to "risk" getting invaded—if you want to be able to summon white phantoms, which i can only vaguely see the logic behind, and kindling bonfires, and again, i've already explained why this wasn't well thought out in detail

after kindling a bonfire, there is no risk of getting invaded if you're smart, because you can simply find your nearest ledge, jump off of it, and not only will the bonfire still be kindled, but you won't run the risk of getting invaded anymore and you'll even be able to recover all your souls and your humanity when you reach your bloodstain (assuming you weren't dumb enough to try this after already dying once)

having to do that workaround is fucking stupid, though, because it not only means that the developers obviously didn't think that players could just do that, it's also just kind of a ridiculous and unintuitive thing to do in a video game—jumping off a ledge to avoid invasions? if that was something i had to worry about in my playthrough, it would break my immersion every single time

it's such an unbelievably stupid mechanic, it gets dumber the more i ponder it, and that goes for EVERY ASPECT of dark souls MP

"They steal your humanity when they kill you" is exactly the same. While your soft humanity is retrievable from your bloodstain, you lose your "active" humanity that's making you non-hollow. This is what the invaders claim from your corpse.

sounds like convenient bullshit to me, because you see your character physically hand the humanity over to the bonfire, where it gets burned—you can hand-wave this by just saying it's a nonsense fantasy game with magic, so nothing about this has to make any sense, but considering how grounded the game is in terms of its physics and stuff, relative to other fantasy games, i'm gonna go out on a limb and say i'm perfectly justified in thinking what you just said is bullshit, and i'm not going back on what i said because it's not good enough

Your "refutation" of it just seems to be based on a misunderstanding of how the mechanic really works as there is no way for you to reclaim the "active" humanity when you're killed by an invader.

yes, because you "spent" it at the bonfire, there's no way to reclaim it

simply put, that means the invader shouldn't be able to claim it either—the only humanity he should be able to steal are the ones physically on your person—and if there isn't any, then he doesn't get any

saying "but it's in the lore" won't make this make any more sense

You can say you think the lore's dumb and not a sufficient justification for the invasion mechanic, but it's consistent and your personal dislike of it doesn't refute any part of what I said.

but it does, because it means it's silly to continually say "it's part of the lore, it's part of the lore, it's part of the lore," when it's failing to convince me for various reasons that it's a justified mechanic that isn't toxic (and borderline immoral), and that's what the discussion is about

i'm not interested in talking about how consistent the lore is, i'm only here to shit on a bad mechanic

you're welcome to challenge that notion if you think it's a good mechanic, but you're never going to convince me if all you have to say is "muh lore"

if dark souls tells me to kill my parents, and refusing violates the game's precious lore, i guess to you, i have no choice but to kill my parents right, and that would be a good and intelligent game mechanic because it's all in this consistent and beautifully constructed lore

what utter garbage

Quote from: Verbatim on June 02, 2018, 05:59:06 PM

Quote from: Dietrich Six on June 02, 2018, 05:52:24 PM

You lose any soft humanity when you die, Invaders gain humanity even if you have none. It's really just a fantastic system

it's a joke

if you have no humanity, invaders shouldn't get anything—that's how it should work

Invaders can only invade you when you are human. They steal your humanity when they kill you. This makes perfect sense and is why you can't be invaded when hollow. It's all part of the lore.

i addressed and soundly refuted every sentence of this post already