Fatigued Souls (Part 1)

Bonking exists in Dark Souls 3 and Demon’s Souls at the very least, but I don’t remember it being an issue in Bloodborne.

I do think it varies from game to game though. It is much more aggressive in Demon’s Souls than in any of the other games (i.e. hitting walls, shields and just about everything that is solid in the conventional sense has a high chance of bonking if you don’t hit an enemy).

It’s an issue in all souls games. Dark Souls 2 in particular, penalizes you pretty hard on weapon durability, with wall/environment strikes.

worth clicking through

https://ship-garbage-pile.tumblr.com/post/153219251059/dakkpasserida-i-found-a-tts-voice-that-was

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reminds me how i realized that secrets are discoverable by action button, not hitting walls with your weapon 50 hours into the game

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That’s another strange distortion of previous mechanics. All the illusory walls are associated with pharros lockstone mechanisms but in addition tho that there are all the secret walls activated with the action button…

i think that is simultaneously a callback to King’s Field (which handled secret doors in that manner) and an acknowledgement of what Raziel was saying. It would be sort of shitty if you still had to check walls with your weapons in a game where durability wears down faster.

lead designer of dark souls 2 was naotoshi zin, creator of King’s Field series.

Granted, I don’t play souls games for many hundreds of hours like some of you guys but I only had my weapon break like, twice in DS2. And that’s playing the PC version with the 60fps glitch, so they wear down twice as fast as intended!

It depends a lot on the weapons you use. I rarely encounter durability being an issue unless i’m playing with something fragile, like a large club or old whip. Bonfires are frequent enough that most weapons won’t have a chance to break unless you’re smacking them against walls or corpses.

Some weapons hit the ground whenever they strike, and that ends up really reducing their durability. My uchigatana broke frequently enough that I had to carry a back-up weapon at all times.

At 60fps in dark souls 2, Whips break in 1 - 8 strikes, depending on situation.

Yeah, ground and wall strikes are torturous.

I wonder if there is an even larger multiplier for hitting “skinny” objects, such as support beams or statues. As my whip would sometimes break in one hit, on such objects.

I have also heard that extra/wasted swings on an dead/collapsing enemy are also extra damaging for durability. But it has been so long, I can’t remember if that is true.

so like a week ago i decided to not play any dark souls games for an indeterminate amount of time. while i’ve always liked the sense of place and the world design in these games, there’s something about pvp (mostly invasions) that ended up having me pretty hooked for the longest time, especially in 3. the combination of total unfair chaos, totally ad hoc tactical planning, attempts to communicate with allies and enemies with a subtext of confrontation, super tense bursts of action where one mistake is death and a pretty high skill ceiling that i will never fucking ever reach made me realize it’s something i could spend many many many hours with, and you know i want to do other things in life.

this is my boy, “big scronch”:

i like sorta roleplaying a little in dark souls so he’s a cheerful little fellow that likes to give away embers and smoke weed with hosts and always ends up being chased by cops (angry blue people) and never learns. fortunately he’s quite sturdy and always has some kind of poise weapon at hand so he can take a few hits and fend off his pursuers with his big pointy mace.

one thing i love that i wish happened more often is invading a world with another invader already present. when communication is good you can make up plans and ambushes on the fly and it’s great and besides i kinda feel the need to rescue fellow invaders and give them some weed and beer and random junk from my inventory.

plus since nobody really plays for the covenant rewards, the rules can change at any time. one of my favorite invasions was one where the host was trying to build some kind of ad hoc fight club in the crucifixion woods (black metal riff) so me and the other dark spirit teamed up against two farron watchdogs (one of the “area protector” covenants). we won, but the host was still sitting in the water so more watchdogs kept coming in, immediately attacking us. it was a huge blood bath that continued until i had to leave for dinner with some people from work, and it felt like just coming out of an extremely illegal activity.

this was big scronch’s last victim. it was someone i had invaded twice before this and they kept disconnecting when their summoned friend died, so this time i just camped out with the sneaky ring and shot “legit jesus” off a cliff. rip legit jesus :frowning:

if anyone in here has gotten as obsessed with dark souls pvp as i have i’d love to hear their stories.

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i love this. this is my favorite thing about Souls multiplayer and i always have the most fun with other players who are doing this kind of thing

Fuck duels, be a weird goober 4ever
(i love how many NPC phantoms are in the spirit of this, the devs get it)

I’m joining the Mound Makers with one of my characters and i will report back with any fun stories. Purple phantoms are such a great idea, i wish i got invaded by them more (or saw their signs!)

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i played dark souls 2 pvp for a good few hundred hours. arena, invasions, blues, whatever i did it all. it kinda took the place of fighting games for me as i was falling out of those and rather underwhelmed with the generation of fgs available at the time, and honestly dark souls 2 hit all the right fighting game notes for me. (ds1 absolutely positively did not)

i actually don’t really like the super chaotic invasions very much; they can be fun but i’d always had the most fun with just having two players going cat and mouse with each other. now which is which was up for debate pretty much always.

the most memorable invasion i had was, um… i know i’ve regaled this one here before but why not, it’s funny

so the foggy foresty area that links up to the upper area with all the lion dudes was one of my primary invasion haunts because the geometry there was fun. fair bit of verticality and being able to take shortcuts/weird paths all around the area. i invaded, but couldn’t find the host, even after like ten minutes of searching the entire area.

after standing around for a minute or so and thinking about it i realized he was chameleoning as one of the big urns near Sir Disembodied Head, unmoving, and then i knew exactly what it was i had to do.

i took a flying leap off the cliff above where he was sitting and landed directly on his head with my gyrm’s great axe.

he was ABSOLUTELY not expecting that, because the next thing i saw was him trying to use a talisman to cast a spell and just getting the “i’m confused how do i cast spell” animation. which was enough time for him to get hacked up the rest of the way.

i will never top that

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I got tired of being hassled by others pretty quickly in these games to the point of just standing around waiting to be murdered and getting invasions over with

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every time i’ve gotten invaded my reaction has been pretty squarely “this dude does not know what he is in for”

i had a character that was going for the no-deaths ring in ds2 that got invaded

i won with a leaping greatshield bash

too fun

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That sucks

My only two real soulspvp moments were in Demon’s, which I played a lot more than any of the others.

Of course: there is trolling the walkways of Latria with the Stormruler, which is always hilarious.

Then there was this (3:10):

RIP swkotor2

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Here are two Dark Souls 2 pvp videos I made not long after it released on PC:

I believe that I’ve survived two invasions total in my time with the Souls games, maybe three tops. I like staying connected as it adds enough flavor to the experience, but like I can recall only one time where I wasn’t the markedly weaker in terms of damage/defense. That one time the invasion took forever as the guy kept wanting me to approach him as there were enemies over there, and I stood my ground with my giant club where there were no enemies left. As I could stand around a corner his attempts to snipe me rarely worked and I outstruck him dramatically, so he would run away to where the enemies were and heal and then wait a few more minutes before doing something.

So yeah, that’s PvP in Souls games to me: either being beaten down by people dramatically more powerful than me or taking 15 or so minutes to win a fairer fight. I’ve never quite seen the point.

Well one time in Demon’s the guy decided I was so weak that he lost interest in fighting me and ran through the level killing all the enemies. That was at least interesting.

The other time I’m sure I won was in 3-2 in Demon’s where I stood behind something and watched him run by me, so I hit him in the back. He then rolled off a ledge to his death.

I also recall someone trying to destroy my equipment, so I ran and jumped to my death.

The one time I got to be the boss in 3-3 the person died on the staircase.

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