E3

notbov is right about Bewitched tho

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like on a real base level when they rerelease an RPG with fewer random battles itā€™s like ā€œOK, phew, I actually want to play it again nowā€

thatā€™s a quality of life improvement

Estus instead of herbs (especially once the player loses the initial herb drops) is a good example of a design change thatā€™s also quality-of-life.

Different checkpoint placement was probably done as quality-of-life but I was happiest with its implementation in Demonā€™s anyway: if the level content is too long for a checkpoint, add a meaningful, interesting shortcut.

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fewer random battles is a balance change, not qol
estus instead of herbs is a mechanical change, not qol

qol is like, if a game hid your durability in a menu and then made it accessible on the HUD via a patch

In the case of dark souls to dark souls 2 QoL improvements were stuff like using multiple items at once instead of hitting the use item button repeatedly, bumped up frame rate at least on PC, and a more stable online experience. Also being more competitively sound according to mauve.

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that seems slightly pedantic given that you could make the fewer random battles also more difficult to counterbalance the change (I thought this was implied but fair enough) and herb farming is a pain compared to not herb farming?

like, call them convenience changes or what, but they can absolutely be only that

Iā€™m not at work anymore and my urge to shitpost argue is gone so Iā€™m just going to roll over on this one. Unless later I think of something clever for Hypothetical Old Person to say.

But yes Ted Turner can die in a fire for many reasons, colorizing old video media probably the least of them.

Iā€™m 100% behind you on Bewitched and now Iā€™m thinking about turning the thread into a debate over Ginger or Mary Anne from Gilliganā€™s Island (even though the answer is the Professor, obviously).

Iā€™d say itā€™s both; itā€™s a major design change that would go through design but could have been motivated/informed by repetitive player loops, which is where most quality-of-life fixes are applied.

I didnā€™t know there was actual gameplay footage of Crackdown 3 out there. E3 has just been exhausting to keep up with this year I must be getting too old for this.

the joke here is that Iā€™m on your side and really donā€™t care that SotC is getting re-updooted again

Yeah I knew all along so it was a double inside joke. :pound: it

until 360 emulation comes along, I donā€™t have any way to play mgs 2 or 3 anymore unless I go to the pain in the ass trouble of getting a real ps3 controller and figuring out how to get the pressure sensitive buttons to work in pcsx2 properly which last time I tried I killed every usb port in my computer until I used a windows restore point for the only time in my life and which I usually have turned off but decided to switch on for some reason the week before

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hm, did you follow that?

it probably loads a modified USB driver or something which yeah is the kind of thing that only windows would ever act like is remotely acceptable for a userspace app in the first place, and is a huge pain to revert if you donā€™t know way too much about windows. that said the scptoolkit ā€œstackā€ is way more durable than any of the DS3-on-windows solutions that preceded it.

but yeah I remember thinking a few years ago how unusually finicky MGS2/3 are about emulation, theyā€™re some of the only games I ever gave up trying to play with keyboard controls and they need the analog face buttons besides. theyā€™re actually some of the only games I havenā€™t deleted off of my PS3 either for the same reason.

(thereā€™s probably a PCSX2 hack implemented as a cheat code that will let you map ā€œrelease button pressure so you donā€™t kill a guy you held upā€ to something else, but Iā€™m just guessing here).

also probably one of those games where thereā€™s been a lot of unofficial compat work done if youā€™re willng to just find an iso of the PC release:

doesnā€™t help with 3 though

Off the top of my head (and keep in mind I havenā€™t played Demonsā€™ in a while)

  • Making the weapon improvements orthogonal (+x use one resource, damage type/scaling infusions use another, you can mix and match at will) which makes them more easy to understand and plan for
  • Getting rid of content locked under systems outside the playerā€™s direct control (world tendency)
  • The ability to respec your character introduced in Dark 2. Makes for easier learning of the stats and experimenting less daunting for beginners. Allows more options and fast testing of builds for the advanced player
  • The removal of inventory load
  • Storage box usable from the get-go
  • The quick belt in the start menu in Dark 3, where you can put items you want quick access to but donā€™t necessarily want to have to cycle through during combat
  • Automatic refill from storage of your consumables when you rest in a bonfire from Dark 3. An extension of the estus concept to your other tools
  • Being able to drop or consume several of a stackable item at once
  • More ring slots (remember that Demonā€™s were perennially taken by cling ring + thiefā€™s ring?)
  • More weapon slots
  • Changing covenants at will from Dark 3. One could argue this change intrudes in the flavor and atmosphere but it is pretty convenient

On their own, they are small UX stuff, but these are games where people spend from 60 to hundreds of hours. It makes a difference

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I was using scptoolkit. It was a while back, just before any of these things had official dualshock 4 support I think.

No, I donā€™t think you can put bonfires in Demonā€™s. Itā€™s not really an open world so checkpoints donā€™t make sense. It would mean reestructuring the game too fundamentally, and thatā€™s not something I want in a remake of an old game.

Perhaps you could replace the main healing mechanism with something estus-like, but estus are fundamentally linked to bonfires so I donā€™t know how one would go about that.

yeah, I think the grass in demonā€™s is also much less bad than the health pots in bloodborne (which are still a near-inexplicable regression, even if itā€™s rarely painful until youā€™re fighting the late optional bosses), just because the levels are so long and it has the other dungeon crawl-y stuff like the carry weight limit; it lets you do runs that arenā€™t perfectly balanced with one another if you want to, and thatā€™s OK (in part because there are plenty of ways to die other than running out of heals).

Thanks, this is helpful to me.

these changes all sound find to me except weapon upgrades. I kinda like how convoluted and stupid the weapon upgrades are in DeS even if im glad later games simplified them (DkS1 has the best balance of mystery and convenience imo)

Also the ring balance is lopsided toward thiefs/cling but thereā€™s supposed to be a trade off and adding more slots would just upend that. Not like thereā€™s that many other worthwhile rings in the game in the first place, though