Better NG+: The only addition that I am really interested in happening

In current Dark Souls NG+ is something of a joke. Sure everything's health increases by 3x, but by the time you start it up you already have endgame gear that can make mincemeat of all early bosses with their 3x health, and later bosses still didn't really pose much of a threat.

The problem was that Dark Souls wasn't a game where you figured out how much damage you could deal while your enemy dealt damage, it was about learning enemies' movements and learning how to react. So although increasing enemy damage and health in NG+ made it so that it was possible to die, it really didn't give a different, more difficult experience.

Much more thought should go into NG+, by not only increasing enemy health, but also changing where enemies are in areas and adding more enemies and ambushes in general.

Boss fights shouldn't just be lengthened by more health, but should have active changes, perhaps by adding smaller enemies to spawn gradually, like undead warriors for the taurus demons, or changing something else, like making more gargoyles spawn for the gargoyle fight.

NG+ infinity isn't something you should lose track of, since you hardly notice 7% increase, this changing of the enemies and placement of them in the world should change with every +, and always making it harder.

For instance, an Anor londo esque area should start finding itself saturated with silver knights, and gargoyles should the player go far enough.

This stupid thread gives an idea of what I mean

It would seem possible, because Devil May Cry games have unique NG+ rounds where enemies change positions/weapons and boss level enemies are suddenly in hallways (DMC 1... demon dogs... shudder...).

Hopefully it is known to the developers that players like to go multiple rounds and add this in to the next game.

If it was a financial/budget thing that prevented this from happening, I don’t know about the rest of you but I would pay for a DLC that added a change up for NG+.

Hehe even the original Super Mario game changed the enemies on NG+ it’s a classic tradition.

In NG+ the bosses get an agro buff. I've seen this with Gwyndolin teleporting much faster than on normal play and I've noticed on some bosses their reaction time is less than on first playthrough. Still it's very little so I to would like to see an improvement when going over to NG+.

I put this in the wishlist

Sloth9230 wrote:I want more action, by that I mean I want more enemies not just a few semi-hard ones. I hate going through the beginning of Anor Londo, it's just so boring. If the Gargoyles respawned it would have been much better.

And I'd also like improved Enemy Ai. Even predetermined patterns would be better than everyone just standing around until I agro them.

Edit: This is something That I'm borrowing from fallout. I want random enemies to spawn in areas either over time or whenever I use a bonfire. I don't like that I can memorize the location of every enemy and figure out the quickest way to run through the area. Certain enemies would of course be predetermined and would therefore always spawn, or only spawn once like the boars, but I don't want run into the same enemies over and over again.

for that to work though, we'd also need far more variety in the kinds of enemies.

I think it could work.

Sloth9230 wrote:

I put this in the wishlist

Sloth9230 wrote:I want more action, by that I mean I want more enemies not just a few semi-hard ones. I hate going through the beginning of Anor Londo, it's just so boring. If the Gargoyles respawned it would have been much better.

And I'd also like improved Enemy Ai. Even predetermined patterns would be better than everyone just standing around until I agro them.

Edit: This is something That I'm borrowing from fallout. I want random enemies to spawn in areas either over time or whenever I use a bonfire. I don't like that I can memorize the location of every enemy and figure out the quickest way to run through the area. Certain enemies would of course be predetermined and would therefore always spawn, or only spawn once like the boars, but I don't want run into the same enemies over and over again.

for that to work though, we'd also need far more variety in the kinds of enemies.

I think it could work.

I don't know how I feel about enemies being constantly random, because one thing about dark souls is learning enemy placement, which helps with later short cuts and speed runs.

But should a speed run even be possible in a game that's supposed to be challenging? I would think that if you're doing a speed run it's because you don't find the game challenging anymore.

Changing the enemy placement would be cool, extra traps would be good too, not sure what you could do with bosses though :/

I always thought that I f you really wanted to have a decent challenge at ng+ you should just drop everything except base starting equipment, it was fun when I did it, though again it's just making everything take longer rather than actually be difficult..

Serious_Much wrote:Changing the enemy placement would be cool, extra traps would be good too, not sure what you could do with bosses though :/

I always thought that I f you really wanted to have a decent challenge at ng+ you should just drop everything except base starting equipment, it was fun when I did it, though again it's just making everything take longer rather than actually be difficult..

This is my point, NG+ should keep supplying a challenge, not force the player to set limitations upon themselves.

Ha, I guess the words check and mate would be appropriate there..

Problem is, aside from changing enemy placement or adding more mobs, it's difficult to add to the challenge. Ai will always be pretty bad, move set changes would do pretty much *** all and making bosses harder is even more difficult. You can't make a boss battle harder without making it pretty different, and then you could argue it's not ng+ as much as bonus content.

I think improved enemy AI, or like you said new attack patterns, would really go a long way towards that.

If all enemies behaved like Manus and Flamelurker then that would solve the problem, but it would still get boring to face the same kinds enemies over and over.

Serious_Much wrote:Ha, I guess the words check and mate would be appropriate there..

Problem is, aside from changing enemy placement or adding more mobs, it's difficult to add to the challenge. Ai will always be pretty bad, move set changes would do pretty much *** all and making bosses harder is even more difficult. You can't make a boss battle harder without making it pretty different, and then you could argue it's not ng+ as much as bonus content.

If you look at the thread I put at the bottom I put things that could be added to bosses in Dark Souls that I thought would make them more difficult without adding any new material or changing the actual boss.

Looked at it now, some ideas are great, using unique features of each boss to make it more difficult is great, super orny, invisible priscillas etc good ideas.

However, it falls down when you have to suggest regenerating hp and spawning enemies through the boss gate then it's changing the dimensions of the boss fight completely. I don't think that's the way to go.

Serious_Much wrote:Looked at it now, some ideas are great, using unique features of each boss to make it more difficult is great, super orny, invisible priscillas etc good ideas.

However, it falls down when you have to suggest regenerating hp and spawning enemies through the boss gate then it's changing the dimensions of the boss fight completely. I don't think that's the way to go.

Yes, I'm aware of silly things I put in awhile ago, but it more just is an example of things I think they could do for boss fights. Of course I couldn't think of a good change for all the Dark Souls boss fights, but like I said, they're examples of what I think should happen.

One additional wheel skeleton will accompany each boss in every ng+(+)?

Jokes aside, I don't see why they stop the difficulty increase at ng+7. They should just up the difficulty a percent or two (hp, damage, souls) for each ng after that point, since you also get better at the geme the more you play it. Ng+100 = 100% increase over ng+ would probably make some players take that journey. Casuals quit at ng+1/2 anyway, so it shouldn't matter.

Buggy Virus wrote:In current Dark Souls NG+ is something of a joke. Sure everything's health increases by 3x, but by the time you start it up you already have endgame gear that can make mincemeat of all early bosses with their 3x health, and later bosses still didn't really pose much of a threat.

The problem was that Dark Souls wasn't a game where you figured out how much damage you could deal while your enemy dealt damage, it was about learning enemies' movements and learning how to react. So although increasing enemy damage and health in NG+ made it so that it was possible to die, it really didn't give a different, more difficult experience.

Much more thought should go into NG+, by not only increasing enemy health, but also changing where enemies are in areas and adding more enemies and ambushes in general.

Boss fights shouldn't just be lengthened by more health, but should have active changes, perhaps by adding smaller enemies to spawn gradually, like undead warriors for the taurus demons, or changing something else, like making more gargoyles spawn for the gargoyle fight.

NG+ infinity isn't something you should lose track of, since you hardly notice 7% increase, this changing of the enemies and placement of them in the world should change with every +, and always making it harder.

For instance, an Anor londo esque area should start finding itself saturated with silver knights, and gargoyles should the player go far enough.

This stupid thread gives an idea of what I mean

I agree 100%.

ublug wrote:One additional wheel skeleton will accompany each boss in every ng+(+)?

Jokes aside, I don't see why they stop the difficulty increase at ng+7. They should just up the difficulty a percent or two (hp, damage, souls) for each ng after that point, since you also get better at the geme the more you play it. Ng+100 = 100% increase over ng+ would probably make some players take that journey. Casuals quit at ng+1/2 anyway, so it shouldn't matter.

I never went further than NG++ and half of NG+++ and I'm no casual sir !!!

ChizFreak wrote:I never went further than NG++ and half of NG+++ and I'm no casual sir !!!

Hehe, me neither, I always end up with testing something new with another build. It only proves the point of there being no reason (that I can think of) to stop the difficulty increase. I assume those who goes to ng+(infinity) do it for the challenge.

ublug wrote:

ChizFreak wrote:I never went further than NG++ and half of NG+++ and I'm no casual sir !!!

Hehe, me neither, I always end up with testing something new with another build. It only proves the point of there being no reason (that I can think of) to stop the difficulty increase. I assume those who goes to ng+(infinity) do it for the challenge.

Not really, more that on my really high level certain bossfights are fun, and you get more spells. But it more becomes quickly cutting through enemies, and jolly co-operation and what not. But it certainly doesn't change or really give a more noticeable challenge, even if NG infinity is about a 4.5x the original health/damage. Simply, you stop getting hit at the end of NG, the only reason I die now is because I text while I play.

Though I have actually never reached NG+ yet (I'm pretty far into the game, it's just my lack of time that prevents me from going further and ending the son of a *** and I also created 7 characters and played them for a while... ooops), I already realized on the first playthrough, that most bosses lack in a very important aspect of videogame bosses.

Boss battle phases that is.

I believe, one reason why the Ornstein & Smough boss battle is that popular and hard for a lot of people, is because of the 2 phases.

That would be a cool feature to implement in NG+ or as a general feature of the DkS boss battles.

Just think about it. So many possibilities. So many surprises could be happening that might catch one off guard and really increase difficulty...

Think of like an Artorias battle, where you kill him in his 'corrupted' form and BAM he goes to his knees, leaning upon his sword, screaming. Suddenly instead of him just dying there. He falls down. The darkness surrounding him is slowly fading... You get to the door of the boss room to leave and suddenly the 'real' Artorias is standing behind you, guarding with his greatshield, real armor and what not. (I could imagine this being a cutscene)

THAT would have been so epic.

Sure, the lore would have been going another route with that approach. But do you see the potential behind this idea?
A lot of surprises in a NG+ (just like already mentioned extra mob spawns around the area) would greatly increase replay value AND difficulty.

To my mind, this is definately something, FROM should reconsider.

Alocas wrote:Though I have actually never reached NG+ yet (I'm pretty far into the game, it's just my lack of time that prevents me from going further and ending the son of a *** and I also created 7 characters and played them for a while... ooops), I already realized on the first playthrough, that most bosses lack in a very important aspect of videogame bosses.

Boss battle phases that is.

I believe, one reason why the Ornstein & Smough boss battle is that popular and hard for a lot of people, is because of the 2 phases.

That would be a cool feature to implement in NG+ or as a general feature of the DkS boss battles.

Just think about it. So many possibilities. So many surprises could be happening that might catch one off guard and really increase difficulty...

Think of like an Artorias battle, where you kill him in his 'corrupted' form and BAM he goes to his knees, leaning upon his sword, screaming. Suddenly instead of him just dying there. He falls down. The darkness surrounding him is slowly fading... You get to the door of the boss room to leave and suddenly the 'real' Artorias is standing behind you, guarding with his greatshield, real armor and what not. (I could imagine this being a cutscene)

THAT would have been so epic.

Sure, the lore would have been going another route with that approach. But do you see the potential behind this idea?
A lot of surprises in a NG+ (just like already mentioned extra mob spawns around the area) would greatly increase replay value AND difficulty.

To my mind, this is definately something, FROM should reconsider.

I think phase bosses are an interesting idea, and are both good and bad in ways.

By having bosses increase in difficulty throughout the fight it adds a sense of urgency and tension, being that the entire fight isn't rinse and repeat. Bosses like Sif suffered from this, as once you figured out his opening attacks, there wasn't much left to him, simply rinse and repeat, and kite and wait for his one specific attack which you knew how to beat.

I think a boss which is a good example of phases, and From did really well, is actually artorias. The fact that after taking a bit of damage he would explode and become more agressive and deal more damage was genius. I really noticed it as the first time I played him I was level 30 and wasn't using a shield, and his increased aggression and damage meant that more of his attacks 1 shot me, and each of his attacks required a different dodge so it kept me on my toes.

I think having boss fights work like this is really good, and integral for having more meaningful boss fights.

I support this thread.

I think its garbage that on a new game plus the weakest enemy could take a good chunk of my health using the best armor in the game the damage could be scaled down a little but make the enemies a little quicker or more hostile WITH more health. I know scaling down the damage appears to defeat the purpose of NG+ but its a tad ridiculous sometimes. DEVIL MAY CRY <- best example for a new game plus inspiration. the harder the difficulty the more the enemies changed whether it was a certain type obtaining a different move set ( DMC 3 the arrow shooting statues) or just making harder ones appear earlier in the game. also DMC 1 did great as well on easy after fighting the lava spider you walk down the hallway and its safe , on normal that lava spider bursts through the ceiling and chases you down that hallway spitting fire at you.

Demon's Souls had a better NG+ replay ability than Dark Souls. I played several NG+'s on DeS but on Dark i always start a new character or just pvp a bunch at the end game area