Next dark souls

Thought I saw a thread on this but search is nerfed.

Nex DKS. Maybe an NPC that lets you purchase a MERCENARY FOR HIRE ( by name and they should bring back "reputation " like DS, which could be a criteria to base your hire decision ). Friends could then be summoned/hired. ( different color phantoms than existing ) COST, of course, should be in the upper 5 figure soul range ( make it expensive? )

They should just let you summon your friends in the next game, I think they should keep the current system but allow you to bring up your friends list in game and send a summon request provided you're in the same area etc etc(same rules for normal summons). I don't think there should be a cost attached, you shouldn't have to choose between levelling up/upgrading and playing with your friends

Why not? It' s about making choices the whole game, anyways.

Random mimic spawns.
Easier way to summon your friends so you don't spend 10 minutes looking for their sign.
Harder boss fights.
Bring back the ambience of Demon Souls.
Possibly more non-respawning enemies.
Cut down on friendly NPCs.
Random events. Like a small group of hollows moving towards Firelink Shrine, running across an injured crestfallen warrior, or fight a hollowed Astorian Knight like you how you had to fight Oscar when you traveled back the Undead Asylum. There should be designated areas for these events though so you don't have to be fighting a harder version of a hydra and all of a sudden a group of hollows attack.
Have something like the black knights in the game, but have them wander around an area rather than just have them stand in one single place.
Also have the vagrants become a little less rare to find and have them drop more than just a couple of souls and 2 humanity.

OrnsteinFanBoy wrote:They should just let you summon your friends in the next game, I think they should keep the current system but allow you to bring up your friends list in game and send a summon request provided you're in the same area etc etc(same rules for normal summons). I don't think there should be a cost attached, you shouldn't have to choose between levelling up/upgrading and playing with your friends

Gankers would love that :evil:

I'd like them to fix the way enemies will just stand there and let you kill them from range without moving. I'll admit, I use it a lot, but I always feel a little dirty doing it .

it would be good to see a difficulty level that scales if you co-op with a friend. Co-op with a pal is one of the best things about DS but it can be a bit too easy if youre just tearing it up, scaling the difficulty could add a whole new dynamic where you have to strategize a bit more and pick off enemies instead of just steamrolling in.

The fixed positions in single player should stay though. . .maybe throw in a few surprises here and there just to keep you on your toes, quite like the roaming knights idea too.

improved AI for non-respawning baddies so they react and adjust to your tactics in at least a limited fashion, non-respawning baddies should also have a path that they wander so you don't exactly know when you will run into them. perhaps even a new type of baddie that actively hunts/stalks you once you enter a new zone.

remove enemy leashing so that once they spot you they will follow you without turning around to wander back to their original spawn points. unless you are using a thief/fog style ring and they legitimately lose track of you.

choose your covenant at character creation, which would affect where you start your play through and where you might consider the central hub of the world. assuming it would be similar to the open world concept of Dark Souls. of course i would still want to leave the option to switch/abandon covenants as you locate/unlock them.

better incentives for joining and sticking with a covenant and better covenant interaction for co-op and pvp. such as covenants being actively at war, or can trade with each other, or whatever.

more varied upgrade paths for weapons, similar to Demon's Souls but with the straight forward nature of Dark Souls. i understand the need for mercury, fatal, sharp, crushing and quality weapons but do we really need both magic and enchanted or divine and occult? there should be more that separates the upgrade paths, for example, occult should provide hit point leaching or something.

bring back character tendency but forget about world tendency, have NPC interactions be affected by your character tendency, such as dialogue or gifts.

only have one bonfire/archstone per zone, with a shortcut that you can open up to make for a more direct path to the boss arena after you have cleared the zone.

more things like the painted world and tower of latria. i love the claustrophobia and suspense of latria and the cold desolation of the painted world. more atmosphere and suspense please.

a special storage chest that is tied to your account not to your character so that anything you put into it can be accessed by any other toon you have saved on that account. but put it in an area where it can't be reached early in the game to prevent low level/noob griefing.

harder optional mini bosses that adjust their difficulty to the number of players in a co-op. add some minions or different attacks or just make them plain tougher.

Blasfemy! People talking about the new DS. I still want to play this one a looooot more

SillentShadow wrote:Blasfemy! People talking about the new DS. I still want to play this one a looooot more

i hear yah, but i still play demon's souls even though dark souls is around. i would also rather see a new game over more DLC or a new patch even. besides who wouldn't want the option of three great games to play instead of just two?

Odinbear wrote:Thought I saw a thread on this but search is nerfed.

Nex DKS. Maybe an NPC that lets you purchase a MERCENARY FOR HIRE ( by name and they should bring back "reputation " like DS, which could be a criteria to base your hire decision ). Friends could then be summoned/hired. ( different color phantoms than existing ) COST, of course, should be in the upper 5 figure soul range ( make it expensive? )

so like guild wars you mean?

eduardolee wrote:

OrnsteinFanBoy wrote:They should just let you summon your friends in the next game, I think they should keep the current system but allow you to bring up your friends list in game and send a summon request provided you're in the same area etc etc(same rules for normal summons). I don't think there should be a cost attached, you shouldn't have to choose between levelling up/upgrading and playing with your friends

Gankers would love that :evil:

But so would most of the people that play the game too. Gankers are going to be around whatever system is in place, it's just a reality of online gaming in general that some people aren't going to play nice. I don't think putting a system in place to allow people to play with their friends more easily should be put on hold because of a minority of players that might abuse it

The biggest and most important change would be dedicated servers.

Another fun thing would be an even larger death penalty. Chance of loosing levels, maybe dropping equipment? This way, PVP would be a lot more fun.

A larger world of course.

Larger battles. Imagine a battlefield with 20 players, and only one winner.

I have a lot of ideas, but the only thing I really want... Dedicated servers.

Enemies who patrol, and who do not just stand around waiting for the player to turn up.

Character and World tendency events.

Enemies and Bosses who adapt to what the player does, and don't just sit around being picked off from afar.

More randomly generated enemies

Bosses who can't be cheesed (or easily parried)

Selective venders

Oh and a Ring of Fog that you cannot lock-on to.

Gazman0169 wrote:Enemies who patrol, and who do not just stand around waiting for the player to turn up.

Enemies and Bosses who adapt to what the player does, and don't just sit around being picked off from afar.

More randomly generated enemies

All of this. More variety in the mob behaviour would be great for keeping the PvE fresher for longer, atm the moment the mobs are challenging when you don't what's up ahead. After a couple of playthroughs most people can basically walk through most mobs and they're just a distraction from the lovely scenery before getting to the boss you're in the area to fight.

I think the boss behaviour is mostly great for solo-ing but for co op most bosses become a cake walk because they still fight as though there is only one opponent(I hope that makes sense). It would be amazing if the bosses used an adjusted moveset or just additional attacks when they were being co-oped. For example you co-op Nito and when he does his gravelord sword dance-esque attack it strikes at all the players instead of just one. It could just be simple adjustments like that really and it would keep everyone on their toes instead of someone casting spells while two players wail on the boss with greatswords.

Agree with the post about friend summoning. I'm actually finding it completely impossible to summon my friend lately. We spent nearly an hour trying to find one anothers' signs and nothing happened, in Dukes and in Londo. I found a ton of asian players and summoned them easily - but this friend lives in the next city, we're both sunbros and exactly the same level. So... what gives.

AnastaciaAstora wrote:Agree with the post about friend summoning. I'm actually finding it completely impossible to summon my friend lately. We spent nearly an hour trying to find one anothers' signs and nothing happened, in Dukes and in Londo. I found a ton of asian players and summoned them easily - but this friend lives in the next city, we're both sunbros and exactly the same level. So... what gives.

It can be pretty awkward trying to summon someone specific but it can be done, the main problem is that you might not be in the same lobby or someone else grabs your friends summon sign before you do. The best ways I've found to get around this are:

• Place your sign in a hidden spot where it's unlikely someone else will spot your sign. This should hopefully mean you don't get summoned by someone else before your friend finds you.
  
• Cancel and replace your sign every couple of minutes and you should cycle lobbys, so if you get your friend to wait in your pre-arranged spot your sign should pop up in front of him eventually
  

I've had a pretty decent rate of success by doing this, it can take a little while but it's the only method I know of at the moment.

Hope this helps and if anyone knows something more please chip in because I want to know your secrets

i don't know if i like the idea of having dedicated servers for Dark Souls, it has it's benefits sure, but it also has it's drawbacks as well. the first being that the servers can't stay online forever and they will eventually be shut down. the second is region locked coding which limits the number of possible players you can interact with.

they should stick with ptp, but improve the net coding and increase the number of players in each lobby. i say this because i recently upgraded to a higher bandwidth and it has vastly improved the latency in Dark Souls, to the point where it is really no different than being on the dedicated servers of Demon's Souls. it's still not perfect but i think ptp is the better option.

Not everybody can upgrade to higher BW. Thus the prob with P2P... Some may have 1mb DSL (rural Verizon) and some can have FIOS or Cable or a T1 (playing at work?), hopefully nobody is using a 56k modem anymo.

The Wandering Knight wrote:

Odinbear wrote:Thought I saw a thread on this but search is nerfed.

Nex DKS. Maybe an NPC that lets you purchase a MERCENARY FOR HIRE ( by name and they should bring back "reputation " like DS, which could be a criteria to base your hire decision ). Friends could then be summoned/hired. ( different color phantoms than existing ) COST, of course, should be in the upper 5 figure soul range ( make it expensive? )

so like guild wars you mean?

What is GUILD WARS?

That Manus strikes all players with one of his attacks, he's brutal on co-op

@Odinbear If someone has crappy bandwith going with dedicated servers is not going to help them, they will still have high ping to the server. In fact if the same two consoles connecting over a P2P network is quicker than over a server, the intermediate server connection increases latency. The only reason dedicated servers seem quicker is because you're only playing with people in your region rather with people overseas.

I think an option to region lock or a having an option to only connect to players with <100ms ping would be a good option

Odinbear wrote:Not everybody can upgrade to higher BW. Thus the prob with P2P... Some may have 1mb DSL (rural Verizon) and some can have FIOS or Cable or a T1 (playing at work?), hopefully nobody is using a 56k modem anymo.

perfectly understandable, and i wouldn't want to suggest that everyone should update their bw (i went from 25 to 50 myself, still not ultra high speeds). aside from that, the pool of fellow players is potentially much larger when using ptp plus you don't need to worry about your game having an expiry date when the powers that be shut down the server.

at the end of the day, i say keep ptp but improve the net coding and increase the lobby sizes and you won't even notice that it's not running on dedicated servers.

OrnsteinFanBoy wrote:I think an option to region lock or a having an option to only connect to players with <100ms ping would be a good option

also this

Odinbear wrote:

The Wandering Knight wrote:

Odinbear wrote:Thought I saw a thread on this but search is nerfed.

Nex DKS. Maybe an NPC that lets you purchase a MERCENARY FOR HIRE ( by name and they should bring back "reputation " like DS, which could be a criteria to base your hire decision ). Friends could then be summoned/hired. ( different color phantoms than existing ) COST, of course, should be in the upper 5 figure soul range ( make it expensive? )

so like guild wars you mean?

What is GUILD WARS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars_2