"Dark Souls is less difficult and more punishing" nearly snapped my neck I nodded so hard. This is such a tough point to explain to people but it's such a crucial thing of why the Souls games are what they are.
It's also interesting to think about within the series itself. I think DS3 ends up being more difficult and less punishing than DS1 -> you heal a lot faster, and bonfires are closer together, but actual enemy and boss design is more complex, especially once you get to Pontiff Sulyvan and beyond.
I feel that souslikes are either much harder or much easier for a given person in large part due to their demeanor and disposition. I'm a fairly calm, patient, and methodical person. As such, I've rarely encountered significant difficulty in Souls games (at least in the exploration phase). I still die sometimes, because of course you do everyone does. But I'm able to quickly analyze why I died and start constructing ideas for how I could avoid that situation. Contrast this to some people I've seen who are impatient and trying to rush and get so very frustrated all the time and practically end up destroying their controller. In my experience getting frustrated or angry only degrades my play, and I suspect it's the same for most other people. So my calmer demeanor where I don't get riled up often is a large advantage in that kind of game. All this typing now has me pondering how different kinds of games appeal to different people and I wonder how much of it is just down to how calm or excitable a given person is.
I love these rants. I binge watch them about once a month. Sean is such a wealth of knowledge and can talk the gaming talk so that it’s easy for us to understand.
I really resonate with what you are saying. I feel like fear in Dark Souls actually makes you care about the places you explore and you really feel like some kind of wandering knight. Conversely, it also makes rest areas feel way more rewarding and comforting.
This is exactly why soulsborne fans continue to play them even after so many years. Nothing else gives you quite the same sense of achievement after kicking your ass over and over again.
Hitting the nail on the head here. I think a lot of developers design for accessibility with easy difficulty in mind, and try to convey complexity on top with whacky/convoluted systems in order to satisfy gamers and non-gamers. I would actually recommend Dark Souls to non-gamers because its punishing feedback is so obvious and visceral, that it helps players who DON'T understand typical gaming ideas and teaches them how to play. The difficulty of the game becomes much more manageable to non-gamers because it presents its mechanics so clearly that the player can deduce why they are not succeeding and can make well-informed decisions about what they need to do to progress. The discovery/knowledge is delivered so well INSIDE of the game, that new players get to feel comfortable without outside knowledge and veteran players feel they can make deep choices without needing to research obscured knowledge about game mechanics which can destroy immersion (a trait which I believe is missing from most AAA games).
I think one of the issues that pops up if you give DS to non-gamers is not understanding the feedback. Players understanding why they failed is important, and it doesn't need to be a big popup to do so. Like Boss does a grab attack and you get hit. So you try dodging and still get grabbed, not understanding that perhaps dodging the wrong way is the problem. So instead you learn to read the boss grab move and just stay way out of range during it which works, but it could lead to enforcing bad habits for fights further down the line. The fact is as well that many people have god-awful problem solving skills and will run their head against a problem until it or them breaks.
@11:00 In Everquest's Scars of Velious expansion, there was a dungeon called Temple of Veeshan which was an extremely high level raid zone and was very challenging to work your way through - Could spend hours and hours with a full raid and not see all of it. Hidden deep within this dungeon was a small little inconspicuous castle sitting on a table that if you clicked it would take you to a hidden zone called the Plane of Mischief which was one of the most amazing, confusing zones ever designed in an MMO. I always loved the hidden stuff in games that rewards exploration, and I'm glad the souls games have revitalized that idea.
I know this is forever old, but this is something I used to try to stress to people about the game EverQuest. Everyone kept saying that EQ was the hardest MMO--and it wasn't. EQ wasn't hard. It was punishing. And what you said is the most succinct way I've ever heard to describe what exactly about EQ made it so engaging. By being heavily punishing, you were forced to be engaged with the world, you had to know where everything was, where every monster was, because monsters were inherently stronger than you. It's similar to why FF11 has a similar level of nostalgia for it. Literally just by making monsters stronger than players, you have an MMO where your players are naturally going to be engaged with the world.
that is why moddable gameplay and indie games are so important. when you are investing half of your fortune on a game, you want GUARANTEE that it will give you a profit. but when you are working on a mod like dota as a personal project, or a indie game because more for personal reasons than to make money, you have the freedom to try and experiment, to fill niches and throw ideas out there for other people to pick up and work on. a lot of those ideas eventually will become so refined and popular that they will get in the hand of big developers and publishers, making the mainstream scene of games change directions or just feel fresher.
Soulsborne games are pretty collaborative too and I'm not even talking about pve. You pretty much have to read the wiki of those games if you want to do any sidequest, it makes the replayability pretty high. Lore theories are pretty cool because there is some part of the story are left unexplained so we can imagine what we want. It works because the world building is very consistent. On a side note, Dark Souls 3 (and bloodborne to a lesser extends) boss fights musics are excellent. When you hear Anatoly Karpov coming, you know shit is going to hit the fan, and it will....until you've gotten good enough.
What he's saying makes a lot of sense. Resident Evil 4 for example. the village brings a chill to your spine when you have to go back through that area. Because the first wave of villagers is so brutal. You get this rush of adrenaline and hesitation.
duuude, i remember the chainsaw guys and the regenerators as if i played the game just yesterday. Especially the Regenerators since I was too young to understand how to kill them because I didn't know how to read big words yet.
I nominate Sean aka Day9 to speak for humanity at the galactic meeting of advanced species. He will orate for us and ask for help against the United Nations.
I have developed a kind of adult attention disorder... but the way Shaun lays out his thoughts makes me hang onto every word he says. And that is since 2011... What a journey
If you want to work on that, I'd suggest staying away from cheap/junk-food style content where you engage for literally seconds before moving on, such as Reddit, Twitter, etc.
Your mention of Diablo II made me curious. If you ever visited DII Off Topic forums, you probably know me. I was lead moderator using the handle "Freet". Just wondering if we know each other.
11:56 the fact that he didn’t name the doubly-hidden area (behind two false walls, you’d only find it naturally if you have a habit of mimic checking) I think proves his point better, because I don’t think he even knows that content exists
@@jaydenliberty9536 How else do you get there? The only other way I can think of is warping with the Lordvessel, but I don't think you can do that until after you've already visited that bonfire
I remember the first time I played Dota 2. I was expecting a multiplayer action fest, so it was extremely odd when it takes more time to recover the mana for a basic skill than the cooldown of an Ultimate skill in Overwatch. My second skill missed the target completely because of some ancient janky tank controls made my hero not turn instantly and I uninstalled the game. I kind of get the idea of super slow mana regeneration, but characters not turning instantly just feels like a bug or relic of the 90's. It's like limiting the game on 10 FPS on purpose.
Heh. I got the same feeling at the start, but coming from League I appreciate how it made positioning on ranged heroes actually important, because slow turn rates allow melee to run you down *without* a mobility skill.
The interesting thing about this is just how LITTLE the difficulty truly matters. I've played some souls likes that are SUBSTANTIALLY easier than Dark Souls and they achieve the same effect. We've seen this trend as well. More and more souls likes have reduced the punishing difficulty but remain as engaging. Examples: Darksiders 3. Jedi Fallen Order. Code Vein.
Yeah I kinda miss older game design. Like you where talking about blackholes, alot devs today seem to just go to a specific location and don't seem to experiment. Makes it feel like game industry was more creative in the past lol.
I feel like this is the same kind of design almost or reason why people love Escape from Tarkov, cause it forces you to pay attention and there are consequences.
At the end you contradicted yourself about 'the difficulty of gameplay' I think you meant due to the 'punishment for dying' as you stated half way through their is a big difference between a difficult game and a punishing game
DOTA isn't a ARPG, it's a RTS with the Strategy removed. And Dark Souls isn't a RPG, it's a *fighting* game. It's Tekken or Street Fighter with a maze in lieu of a ring.
The rant went an entirely different way that then title made me expect. This seems to be about the average gameplay loop and game design, rather than internet logic. Internal logic would be very hard to explain easily, but something along the lines of plot related needs to get the player spurred up to actually do the quest.
2 minor issues I have with your sidebar at 5:15. 1 - You're correct that FromSoft games are more punishing than difficult, but your followup about being careful is sort of misguided. The way to have fun in these games is to not be careful. It's not to wait for openings in the enemies vulnerable periods of their animations, it's to CREATE those openings yourself. Playing aggressively in the Souls series is, in my opinion, the "correct" way to play them. However for the sake of argument, that's how a newcomer will treat these games, playing very carefully and paying attention to the environment, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing when you're new. It does give you an appreciation for the genre like you explained. 2 - You mention that one mistake kills you in these games, but that's rarely the case. The dragon in Dark Souls can oneshot you, Mimics can oneshot you, you can get knocked off a cliff, you can get surrounded, but most deaths for novice/intermediate players will come from just being whittled down/running out of estus charges, or trying to heal when it's not safe to do so. Great video mate.
I don't think that aggressive is the "correct" way to play the souls games... in the sense that I don't believe it was the intended way to play the game. Most of the design of the souls games punishes hasty actions... the hasty actions tend to be most effective in the end... but that is only true once you KNOW the situation you are rushing in to and not so much during the first experience unless you happen to get lucky in your haste. I think an unintentional result of having obstacles behave more like rhythm games or puzzles... is that once you know the pattern or the answer... it is very satisfying to do it quickly... but I don't believe that was a planned experience. Conversely, Bloodborne often punishes passive play and so by design encourages aggressive play. The downside being that Bloodborne is less interesting for me to replay, because I didn't spend the first playthrough being careful cause it taught me to get the lead out so there is less contrast between that initial playthrough and the follow ups where I could be faster because I know where to go and what to do.
@@notednuance 100% agreed with that whole paragraph. I'd phrase it "Bloodborne rewards aggressive play" rather than punishing passive play, as seen from the rally system but I know what you mean. Agreed that the first playthrough encourages careful play and future runs will naturally result in you being more aggressive and knowing where you're going, but for example, when you've played Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne, when you get around to playing Sekiro you'll likely skip the careful phase and just play aggressively right off the bat. You won't know where all the traps and environmental hazards and ambushes are, so you'll still pay attention to your environment when exploring, but you're used to the controls from the previous games and the general systems, so you'll be more aggressive in combat and have a better time. Bloodborne is my personal favourite because it had this playstyle as the most encouraged way to play it straight away during the first playthrough, and it has the most replay value to me for the same reason. It'd be dangerously close to worship if I assumed that the devs intended for this exact series of events, so I'll just say it's a happy coincidence.
@@PaddyRoon7 Bloodborne for sure rewards aggressive play, but there are also lots of areas and moments that punish being passive. They even poke fun at it with the shield's description. BB is plenty good, I'm just less prone to replay that entry.
"Dark Souls is less difficult and more punishing" nearly snapped my neck I nodded so hard. This is such a tough point to explain to people but it's such a crucial thing of why the Souls games are what they are.
It's also interesting to think about within the series itself. I think DS3 ends up being more difficult and less punishing than DS1 -> you heal a lot faster, and bonfires are closer together, but actual enemy and boss design is more complex, especially once you get to Pontiff Sulyvan and beyond.
I feel that souslikes are either much harder or much easier for a given person in large part due to their demeanor and disposition. I'm a fairly calm, patient, and methodical person. As such, I've rarely encountered significant difficulty in Souls games (at least in the exploration phase). I still die sometimes, because of course you do everyone does. But I'm able to quickly analyze why I died and start constructing ideas for how I could avoid that situation.
Contrast this to some people I've seen who are impatient and trying to rush and get so very frustrated all the time and practically end up destroying their controller. In my experience getting frustrated or angry only degrades my play, and I suspect it's the same for most other people. So my calmer demeanor where I don't get riled up often is a large advantage in that kind of game.
All this typing now has me pondering how different kinds of games appeal to different people and I wonder how much of it is just down to how calm or excitable a given person is.
It's like a strict music teacher.
*misses beat*
"AGAIN!"
I love these rants. I binge watch them about once a month. Sean is such a wealth of knowledge and can talk the gaming talk so that it’s easy for us to understand.
This video is a perfect mix of game design philosophy and cat. Love it.
Want more cat
One thing you didnt mention: Especially these hidden areas and secrets actually ADD to the played time, as they make multiple playthroughs appealing.
I really resonate with what you are saying. I feel like fear in Dark Souls actually makes you care about the places you explore and you really feel like some kind of wandering knight. Conversely, it also makes rest areas feel way more rewarding and comforting.
This is how I felt playing Everquest back in the day.
This is exactly why soulsborne fans continue to play them even after so many years. Nothing else gives you quite the same sense of achievement after kicking your ass over and over again.
Hitting the nail on the head here. I think a lot of developers design for accessibility with easy difficulty in mind, and try to convey complexity on top with whacky/convoluted systems in order to satisfy gamers and non-gamers. I would actually recommend Dark Souls to non-gamers because its punishing feedback is so obvious and visceral, that it helps players who DON'T understand typical gaming ideas and teaches them how to play. The difficulty of the game becomes much more manageable to non-gamers because it presents its mechanics so clearly that the player can deduce why they are not succeeding and can make well-informed decisions about what they need to do to progress. The discovery/knowledge is delivered so well INSIDE of the game, that new players get to feel comfortable without outside knowledge and veteran players feel they can make deep choices without needing to research obscured knowledge about game mechanics which can destroy immersion (a trait which I believe is missing from most AAA games).
I think one of the issues that pops up if you give DS to non-gamers is not understanding the feedback. Players understanding why they failed is important, and it doesn't need to be a big popup to do so. Like Boss does a grab attack and you get hit. So you try dodging and still get grabbed, not understanding that perhaps dodging the wrong way is the problem. So instead you learn to read the boss grab move and just stay way out of range during it which works, but it could lead to enforcing bad habits for fights further down the line.
The fact is as well that many people have god-awful problem solving skills and will run their head against a problem until it or them breaks.
@11:00 In Everquest's Scars of Velious expansion, there was a dungeon called Temple of Veeshan which was an extremely high level raid zone and was very challenging to work your way through - Could spend hours and hours with a full raid and not see all of it. Hidden deep within this dungeon was a small little inconspicuous castle sitting on a table that if you clicked it would take you to a hidden zone called the Plane of Mischief which was one of the most amazing, confusing zones ever designed in an MMO. I always loved the hidden stuff in games that rewards exploration, and I'm glad the souls games have revitalized that idea.
9:56 "No, get outta here!" *cherished embrace*
I know this is forever old, but this is something I used to try to stress to people about the game EverQuest. Everyone kept saying that EQ was the hardest MMO--and it wasn't. EQ wasn't hard. It was punishing. And what you said is the most succinct way I've ever heard to describe what exactly about EQ made it so engaging. By being heavily punishing, you were forced to be engaged with the world, you had to know where everything was, where every monster was, because monsters were inherently stronger than you. It's similar to why FF11 has a similar level of nostalgia for it. Literally just by making monsters stronger than players, you have an MMO where your players are naturally going to be engaged with the world.
I love these videos of yours; I hope that these analysis style rants keep coming!
I love day9 rants. So many great insights and thoughts.
These are my favorite highlights from you, day9
You are just great. Thanks
Really great video. It’s a very interesting point of view and made me realize new things about the souls games. :)
You are describing Gothic2 for me. With a small difference: to be less punished, you press Ctrl S every 2 steps
5:22
Exactly my thoughts, and exactly what keeps me away from this games
that is why moddable gameplay and indie games are so important. when you are investing half of your fortune on a game, you want GUARANTEE that it will give you a profit. but when you are working on a mod like dota as a personal project, or a indie game because more for personal reasons than to make money, you have the freedom to try and experiment, to fill niches and throw ideas out there for other people to pick up and work on. a lot of those ideas eventually will become so refined and popular that they will get in the hand of big developers and publishers, making the mainstream scene of games change directions or just feel fresher.
Soulsborne games are pretty collaborative too and I'm not even talking about pve. You pretty much have to read the wiki of those games if you want to do any sidequest, it makes the replayability pretty high. Lore theories are pretty cool because there is some part of the story are left unexplained so we can imagine what we want. It works because the world building is very consistent.
On a side note, Dark Souls 3 (and bloodborne to a lesser extends) boss fights musics are excellent. When you hear Anatoly Karpov coming, you know shit is going to hit the fan, and it will....until you've gotten good enough.
What he's saying makes a lot of sense. Resident Evil 4 for example. the village brings a chill to your spine when you have to go back through that area. Because the first wave of villagers is so brutal. You get this rush of adrenaline and hesitation.
duuude, i remember the chainsaw guys and the regenerators as if i played the game just yesterday. Especially the Regenerators since I was too young to understand how to kill them because I didn't know how to read big words yet.
Long time watcher, glad you're still uploading golden nuggets. Play dota with me please day9!
I nominate Sean aka Day9 to speak for humanity at the galactic meeting of advanced species. He will orate for us and ask for help against the United Nations.
Came for the rant, stayed for the cat
the cat only appeared late of the video you big silly liar
You would appreciate Fiction Writing Self-Taught, by Hoffman, Arthur Sullivant.
Someone was Despirate for scritches.
I have developed a kind of adult attention disorder... but the way Shaun lays out his thoughts makes me hang onto every word he says. And that is since 2011... What a journey
If you want to work on that, I'd suggest staying away from cheap/junk-food style content where you engage for literally seconds before moving on, such as Reddit, Twitter, etc.
Your mention of Diablo II made me curious. If you ever visited DII Off Topic forums, you probably know me. I was lead moderator using the handle "Freet". Just wondering if we know each other.
Hmmm yes, game design gold
11:56 the fact that he didn’t name the doubly-hidden area (behind two false walls, you’d only find it naturally if you have a habit of mimic checking) I think proves his point better, because I don’t think he even knows that content exists
He did mention Ash Lake, which is at the bottom of that area. I certainly didn't know it existed on my first couple of plays, though :V
@@MattStodola there is another way to get to Ash Lake that doesn’t involve going through there, though. Hence why it’s still possible
@@jaydenliberty9536 How else do you get there? The only other way I can think of is warping with the Lordvessel, but I don't think you can do that until after you've already visited that bonfire
I too enjoy more hours of content per piece of “asset”.
Got it crystal clear...
I remember the first time I played Dota 2. I was expecting a multiplayer action fest, so it was extremely odd when it takes more time to recover the mana for a basic skill than the cooldown of an Ultimate skill in Overwatch. My second skill missed the target completely because of some ancient janky tank controls made my hero not turn instantly and I uninstalled the game.
I kind of get the idea of super slow mana regeneration, but characters not turning instantly just feels like a bug or relic of the 90's. It's like limiting the game on 10 FPS on purpose.
Heh. I got the same feeling at the start, but coming from League I appreciate how it made positioning on ranged heroes actually important, because slow turn rates allow melee to run you down *without* a mobility skill.
Would like to see your take Day9 on battle royale internal logic of say pubg vs apex vs fortnight. PUBG is certainly on the dark souls side.
The interesting thing about this is just how LITTLE the difficulty truly matters.
I've played some souls likes that are SUBSTANTIALLY easier than Dark Souls and they achieve the same effect. We've seen this trend as well. More and more souls likes have reduced the punishing difficulty but remain as engaging.
Examples: Darksiders 3. Jedi Fallen Order. Code Vein.
Yeah I kinda miss older game design. Like you where talking about blackholes, alot devs today seem to just go to a specific location and don't seem to experiment. Makes it feel like game industry was more creative in the past lol.
Watching this with some lo-fi stuff in the backround, which fits really well.
I feel like this is the same kind of design almost or reason why people love Escape from Tarkov, cause it forces you to pay attention and there are consequences.
This was exactly my thoughts as well. EFT is the Dark Souls of shooters.
man, just 4 seconds shy of the god number
At the end you contradicted yourself about 'the difficulty of gameplay' I think you meant due to the 'punishment for dying' as you stated half way through their is a big difference between a difficult game and a punishing game
Games work on internal logic. Cats don't.
It's funny that you say DS is a Rhythm game. I've been saying that for years.
DOTA isn't a ARPG, it's a RTS with the Strategy removed. And Dark Souls isn't a RPG, it's a *fighting* game. It's Tekken or Street Fighter with a maze in lieu of a ring.
The rant went an entirely different way that then title made me expect. This seems to be about the average gameplay loop and game design, rather than internet logic. Internal logic would be very hard to explain easily, but something along the lines of plot related needs to get the player spurred up to actually do the quest.
dodaass
YO! Bro
I think what you are trying to describe is verisimilitude.
Verisimilitude is consistency in the game world. This is more about consistency of game mechanics.
@@siosilvar Game mechanics sit within the game world.
Such much internet video
2 minor issues I have with your sidebar at 5:15.
1 - You're correct that FromSoft games are more punishing than difficult, but your followup about being careful is sort of misguided. The way to have fun in these games is to not be careful. It's not to wait for openings in the enemies vulnerable periods of their animations, it's to CREATE those openings yourself. Playing aggressively in the Souls series is, in my opinion, the "correct" way to play them. However for the sake of argument, that's how a newcomer will treat these games, playing very carefully and paying attention to the environment, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing when you're new. It does give you an appreciation for the genre like you explained.
2 - You mention that one mistake kills you in these games, but that's rarely the case. The dragon in Dark Souls can oneshot you, Mimics can oneshot you, you can get knocked off a cliff, you can get surrounded, but most deaths for novice/intermediate players will come from just being whittled down/running out of estus charges, or trying to heal when it's not safe to do so.
Great video mate.
I don't think that aggressive is the "correct" way to play the souls games... in the sense that I don't believe it was the intended way to play the game. Most of the design of the souls games punishes hasty actions... the hasty actions tend to be most effective in the end... but that is only true once you KNOW the situation you are rushing in to and not so much during the first experience unless you happen to get lucky in your haste. I think an unintentional result of having obstacles behave more like rhythm games or puzzles... is that once you know the pattern or the answer... it is very satisfying to do it quickly... but I don't believe that was a planned experience. Conversely, Bloodborne often punishes passive play and so by design encourages aggressive play. The downside being that Bloodborne is less interesting for me to replay, because I didn't spend the first playthrough being careful cause it taught me to get the lead out so there is less contrast between that initial playthrough and the follow ups where I could be faster because I know where to go and what to do.
@@notednuance 100% agreed with that whole paragraph. I'd phrase it "Bloodborne rewards aggressive play" rather than punishing passive play, as seen from the rally system but I know what you mean.
Agreed that the first playthrough encourages careful play and future runs will naturally result in you being more aggressive and knowing where you're going, but for example, when you've played Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne, when you get around to playing Sekiro you'll likely skip the careful phase and just play aggressively right off the bat. You won't know where all the traps and environmental hazards and ambushes are, so you'll still pay attention to your environment when exploring, but you're used to the controls from the previous games and the general systems, so you'll be more aggressive in combat and have a better time. Bloodborne is my personal favourite because it had this playstyle as the most encouraged way to play it straight away during the first playthrough, and it has the most replay value to me for the same reason.
It'd be dangerously close to worship if I assumed that the devs intended for this exact series of events, so I'll just say it's a happy coincidence.
@@PaddyRoon7 Bloodborne for sure rewards aggressive play, but there are also lots of areas and moments that punish being passive. They even poke fun at it with the shield's description. BB is plenty good, I'm just less prone to replay that entry.
Wow I was just watching old hearthstone vids man has he aged
I agree that Stockholm Syndrome is a good game design philosophy.
Was this a rant or a lecture? I feel like those are two different things
But are they really?
I think Day9 should speak to either Jordan Peterson or Lex Fridman on the nature of punishment, meaning and fulfilment
Man, D9 looked really old in the thumbnail all a sudden.
Holy shit you got old fast mate.