Discussion about overall balance design

Split damage bro.

WandererReece wrote:

Spurgun wrote:TL;DR : Soul level makes a huge difference when talking about balance. For example, elemental weapons can be ridiculously overpowered at low soul levels, but they just as underpowered at higher ones.

Actually, I think they are overpowered even at higher levels (Actually it depends how high we're talking)

At 120 ish they are still overpowered. They only require base stats for max damage.

They will out perform a +15 weapon with 40 str / dex and match a crystal weapon at 40 str / dex. (Chaos will out perform crystal at 10 humanity.)

The only thing thats more powerful is a normal / crystal weapon with minimum stats with a weapon buff at 30 int / fai or a +15 weapon at 90 some str / dex.

Yes, I do hate elementals with a passion.

Also, the RoFaP and the wolf ring are a little overpowered, but I don't think they are game breaking.

I know the RoF was overpowered, but look at it from From's point of view. If you can't see the enemy, then how can you target lock him?

+15 is stronger than most elementals, maybe even chaos because of split damages.

The Letter X wrote:+15 is stronger than most elementals, maybe even chaos because of split damages.

You still need about 40 str / dex to get the +15 weapon's max damage. You only need minimum stats to get the elemental's max damage.

What would you prefer? Would you spend almost 40 points for a superweapon or almost 20 (maybe less)?

I think most people would just spend 20 or less.

Also think about the level 50s out there. You could put almost all your points into weapon stats, or put them all into vit / end without penalty.

WandererReece wrote:

Spurgun wrote:TL;DR : Soul level makes a huge difference when talking about balance. For example, elemental weapons can be ridiculously overpowered at low soul levels, but they just as underpowered at higher ones.

Actually, I think they are overpowered even at higher levels (Actually it depends how high we're talking)

At 120 ish they are still overpowered. They only require base stats for max damage.

They will out perform a +15 weapon with 40 str / dex and match a crystal weapon at 40 str / dex. (Chaos will out perform crystal at 10 humanity.)

The only thing thats more powerful is a normal / crystal weapon with minimum stats with a weapon buff at 30 int / fai or a +15 weapon at 70 / 90 str / dex.

Yes, I do hate elementals with a passion.

Also, the RoFaP and the wolf ring are a little overpowered, but I don't think they are game breaking.

I know the RoF was overpowered, but look at it from From's point of view. If you can't see the enemy, then how can you target lock him?

They have as much AR (attack rating) but they don't do as much damage, because of split damage. Read this if you haven't heard of it before.
They might do more damage if the opponent is naked, but how often do you fight a naked opponent?
They used to be almost as powerful before the patch, but now it's more balanced.

I do agree with that the RoFaP and the wolf ring is overpowered. Simply because no ring should be the go-to ring for all builds. And as it is now, 90% off all builds use at least one of them ,and many of them use both (most of my builds use both, but i've been trying to switch RoFaP for cloranthy).

WandererReece wrote:

The Letter X wrote:+15 is stronger than most elementals, maybe even chaos because of split damages.

You still need about 40 str / dex to get the +15 weapon's max damage. You only need minimum stats to get the elemental's max damage.

What would you prefer? Would you spend almost 40 points for a superweapon or almost 20 (maybe less)?

I think most people would just spend 20 or less.

Also think about the level 50s out there. You could put almost all your points into weapon stats, or put them all into vit / end without penalty.

You only need to spend around 27 points on your primary stat if it's a single scaling weapon and you planned your build beforehand. On single-stat scaling weapons that means you'll spend around 25 extra points compared to an elemental build. Those 25 points do indeed matter at lower Soul Levels, but they will also mean less and less the higher SL you go to.

The only thing I was addressing was that elementals didn't provide the highest damage output.

DkS PvP is perfectly balanced right now. The only thing you can consider OP is dark magic but I think it's fair sorcery got OP spells. Faith has WoG and pyro has Great Combustion. Besides when you know how to dodge it it isn't a problem. The OP comparing the non lockon combat to MH I must admire you for your amazing non lockon skills. I don't think DkS was designed to be played without lockon, fighting without lockon gives me headaches actually. I have fought some guys that don't use lock on and it's just a show off tactic. It is only useful if you're facing 3vs1.

I have talked with DeS veterans saying DeS is a game of skill and DkS doesn't need skills to win and that it's true. But that's what I love DkS combat more, cause I'm not too skillful when I'm dueling. I don't use roll bs nor parries but I play intelligenly when dueling and don't always rely on my weapon nor my magic. The game's most powerful PvP weapon are spears so you have to make your build suitable for fighting against them. A 0 poise Falchion only build will never ever win against a DSS build unless it lucky roll-chain bs. In DeS you can have any kind of build and if you're super skillful you can always win. That's because DeS combat is simpler. What I really love about DeS is the hyper armor of Str weapons. But other than that DkS combat is ways better.

Saturday-Saint wrote:

Jansports wrote:

Saturday-Saint wrote:

Jansports wrote:I actually think poise is a great mechanic.

Well that just about sums you up, doesn't it?

Does it? Is my opinion on the concept of a stat that reflects the hardiness of yourself and your armor so overwhelmingly prominent that it over shadows other aspects of my gaming persona?

Poise ideally presents the player with options, be fast and get stunned by a stiff wind. or be varying degrees of slower and be able to to withstand different hits to varying success.

I mean DWGR kinda spit on the concept of "trade off" and even now Wolf/FaP diminish the potential for meaningful trade offs when optimizing, but the concept of a measurable stat exclusive to armor that allows to to take more(or less) hits before being interupted is interesting design philosophy to me.

I mean we could always go back to Push Locking

Nothing wrong with pushlocking.

Poise on the other hand is ****. There's a lot more to PvP than making decisions when building your character.

True, but this is also a PVP RPG, so no. In Dark Souls, making choices about your character is just as important as everything else in PVP.

Every weapon you can hold, every spell you can cast, how and which path your weapons are upgraded, how much life and stamina you have, what your defences look like. And whether or not you can tank a greatsword swing to the face.

Pretty much everything you could identify as "Your character" is a decision you made in creation and evolution with that character. The number of choices you make is actually astonishing. Even if you choose to use elemental weapons, you choose which ones are really important to you and make sure you have the base stats to use them (16str 14dex here) But I tend to want to be able to hold a BSS because I'm comfortable with it, someone else might only need 10dex for a spear and the claymore, someone else might also want to be able to 1h the swei for 16 str isn't enough.

And we haven't even thought about spells or armor or scaling weapons. Just elemental weapons where you only need base stats involves a good amount of personalized decision making.

Dark Souls, like Demon Souls, is a game about choices. Every new game I fight the stray demon after capra, and I ask myself "Do I drop these souls into my pyro flame...or do I get the bellowing ring? Crest of Artorious? Level up my stats?" Sometimes it's a really easy decision, I got the thing on my mage, I bought the crest on my low level forest hunter, I used the souls to bu pyromancy and upgrade my flame on my level 1.

I Cannot agree that choices made in character creation should not be relevant while pvping. Because without those choices you'd have no stats, no weapons, no armor, no spells, no nothing.

And if I am accidently making a staw-man out of your statment and it's more you feel choices made in character creation shouldn't have such an impact on how pvp works. I would still not agree because I believe at it's core Souls games are games about choice, give and take with a character.

Spurgun wrote:They have as much AR (attack rating) but they don't do as much damage, because of split damage. Read this if you haven't heard of it before.

Of course I know about the split damage. Everyone who looks at an elemental weapons stats knows it has split damage. I'm not illiterate.

It may do less damage because of the split, but it still does a decent amount of damage.

Also, that wasn't really the point. I think we all know a uchigatana +15 with 14 str and 14 dex will do less damage then a lightning uchigatana +5 with 14 str and 14 dex.

WandererReece wrote:

Spurgun wrote:They have as much AR (attack rating) but they don't do as much damage, because of split damage. Read this if you haven't heard of it before.

Of course I know about the split damage. Everyone who looks at an elemental weapons stats knows it has split damage. I'm not illiterate.

It may do less damage because of the split, but it still does a decent amount of damage.

Also, that wasn't really the point. I think we all know a uchigatana +15 with 14 str and 14 dex will do less damage then a lightning uchigatana +5 with 14 str and 14 dex.

Of course it will. We just have to deal with the fact that elementals are better for low SL PvP while they can provide someone with more vitality, endurance, intelligence, attunement, or faith in higher SL PvP.

Spurgun wrote:They might do more damage if the opponent is naked, but how often do you fight a naked opponent?

Off topic: I've fought plenty of naked people. Most of them were dragons, but some were simply naked. If you see a naked person, then run! Trust me, naked people are the most dangerous. They don't wear armor because they don't need it. (It's not because they're glitching.)

Slarg232 wrote:True, but this is also a PVP RPG, so no. In Dark Souls, making choices about your character is just as important as everything else in PVP.

It really isn't. Unless you're doing some kind of roleplaying/cosPvP thing (which is nice, but also wholly irrelevant to PvP balance), character customization matters only insofar as it affects how you play the game. It has no intrinsic value, except to spergoloids who need to be so speshul snoflake. So when a mechanic leads to more build decisions, but also retards the gameplay, it's not a good thing.

Besides, it's not like poise is the only way they could make armor matter.

Desenrascano wrote:I have to admit, I am really surprised by the responses in this thread. It seems this community is really good.


Any other community and this thread would have been inundated with "learn 2 play noob lol" and stuff. So, good to know that people here are nice. Especially since I've got a few thousand PvP battles worth of experience under my belt in both this and Demon Souls.

Had to give you a +1 for stating the obvious.

Saturday-Saint wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:True, but this is also a PVP RPG, so no. In Dark Souls, making choices about your character is just as important as everything else in PVP.

It really isn't. Unless you're doing some kind of roleplaying/cosPvP thing (which is nice, but also wholly irrelevant to PvP balance), character customization matters only insofar as it affects how you play the game. It has no intrinsic value, except to spergoloids who need to be so speshul snoflake. So when a mechanic leads to more build decisions, but also retards the gameplay, it's not a good thing.

Besides, it's not like poise is the only way they could make armor matter.

I see, so there is no difference between 40 Int and 40 Faith? What about +5 Pyro Glove? What about 40 Dex vs 40 STR.

Weither you beleive it or not, you are playing a role in the game, even in PVP. Unless you want to tell me that those above values all lead to the same thing.



Being a "Speshul Snoflak" for the purpose of "Originality" is going Faith while using a standard Glass Cannon Sorc build, only swapping out Soul Spears for Lightning Ones. But there is a huge difference in the Role of a agile guy using a knife to backstab and a dude in heavy armor waiting for you to try something.

WyrmHero wrote:DkS PvP is perfectly balanced right now.

Lol no it isn't. It's only balanced insofar as you can build your character however you like. E.g. starting as a Knight doesn't force you to be a heavy armor melee build, starting as a Cleric doesn't force you to use miracles, etc.

The PvP meta-game however is far from balanced and if you think otherwise you probably haven't played many competitive PvP games. And this is not a dig at Dark Souls or you, the game was just designed around PvE..

I have talked with DeS veterans saying DeS is a game of skill and DkS doesn't need skills to win and that it's true.

I'm not gonna argue whether or not this statement is true, but it pretty much says it all. If you think a game doesn't require skill to win, it's hardly balanced.

Fossil wrote:

WyrmHero wrote:DkS PvP is perfectly balanced right now.

Lol no it isn't. It's only balanced insofar as you can build your character however you like. E.g. starting as a Knight doesn't force you to be a heavy armor melee build, starting as a Cleric doesn't force you to use miracles, etc.

The PvP meta-game however is far from balanced and if you think otherwise you probably haven't played many competitive PvP games. And this is not a dig at Dark Souls or you, the game was just designed around PvE..

I have talked with DeS veterans saying DeS is a game of skill and DkS doesn't need skills to win and that it's true.

I'm not gonna argue whether or not this statement is true, but it pretty much says it all. If you think a game doesn't require skill to win, it's hardly balanced.

Nahhh, I haven't played much DkS PvP.....lol.

I meant games besides Dark Souls.

I thought so. Some games really don't need skills, and by this I mean how good are your reflexes, aiming or awesome movements. For example I have very bad reflexes at FPSs, yet I can manage because I can outsmart the enemy in some ways. Same as DkS, I don't know how to roll bs nor parry, yet I can win most of my duels due to strategies and knowledge of weapon movesets.

At the current stage of the game (meaning, it's very likely that a lot of OP stuff exists that just hasn't been discovered yet), Dark Souls PvP pretty well balanced for what it is. A game that allows you to customize things to the degree that Dark Souls does introduces too many variables for developers to realistically control. Dark Souls is not a legitimate competitive game, and Dark Souls 2 won't be either. This isn't to say that there aren't things the developers can improve on (poise is a good idea, but it's just not implemented as well as it could be, for example), or that every time you get killed it's never ever your fault, but anyone that takes the PvP in this game too seriously is doing it wrong.

PvP in Dark Souls 2 should be pretty cool. I'm confident that the devs have learned from a lot of the mistakes they've made. But it's still gonna be pretty stupid, and not to be taken that seriously. Even fighting games where you only have 30 different characters with no degree of customization are very, very difficult to balance well.

Saturday-Saint wrote:

Slarg232 wrote:True, but this is also a PVP RPG, so no. In Dark Souls, making choices about your character is just as important as everything else in PVP.

It really isn't. Unless you're doing some kind of roleplaying/cosPvP thing (which is nice, but also wholly irrelevant to PvP balance), character customization matters only insofar as it affects how you play the game. It has no intrinsic value, except to spergoloids who need to be so speshul snoflake. So when a mechanic leads to more build decisions, but also retards the gameplay, it's not a good thing.

Besides, it's not like poise is the only way they could make armor matter.

But poise doesn't retard the gameplay. Different weapons (and even attacks within those weapons) do different amounts of poise damage, heavier armors have poise, higher poise values allow to you not be interupted when swinging or casting at the cost of slowing you down (Typically, as I said RoFaP and Wolf's put a little strain on the system where choices are meaningful)

I don't see how being fast and dodging Or being slow and not getting your Greataxe swing stopped dead in it's tracks my a rapier poke is retarded gameplay, to me it just looks like that metal box Dr. Fatroll is wearing is doing it's job.

Slarg232 wrote:I see, so there is no difference between 40 Int and 40 Faith? What about +5 Pyro Glove? What about 40 Dex vs 40 STR.

I repeat:

Saturday-Saint wrote:character customization matters only insofar as it affects how you play the game

My point is that customization matters because of how it affects the gameplay, not because it has some inherent value. Because poise negatively affects gameplay, there is no value gained from it adding to customization.

To give another example, Resistance. It's a bit different, since Resistance is just useless instead of detrimental to the game, but just bear with me for a moment. Resistance is a useless stat. If you disagree, just pretend that you don't for the sake of example. Anyways, it's useless. But! It adds customization to the game. You can dump points into it. What if somebody made an elemental Res-gouge build? Instead of 80 vitality, they have 80 resistance. That's more customization. But nobody does that, because it would be a garbage build, so the fact that that customization is there is meaningless.

Now, poise actually DOES affect the game, so it actually DOES add real choices, similar to how choosing whether to make a STR, DEX, FAI, whatever build is a real choice. The RES example was just to illustrate my point that customization has no inherent value to gameplay.

So here's the deal with poise and customization. If you remove poise, you remove customization. And not the RES **** that adds meaningless choices, but actual real choices, because there's a serious trade off to increasing poise, but also serious benefits. But here's just the thing: no matter what a given player chooses, the game is worse off for offering them that choice.

The reason why being able to choose between a Great Machete and a Katana is really cool while being able to choose between 31 and 53 poise is not is because one of them leads to more varied gameplay (Great Machete vs. Katana, both have wildly different tools available to them, rely on different skills, reward different playstyles and mentalities, etc.) while one of them leads to less varied gameplay (31 poise vs. 53 poise, both of them restrict options for their opponent because of how they affect risk/reward pay-offs without opening up new avenues of play, the only difference is that they are relevant in different match-ups).

As a last example, let's say that FROM said, "Hey, let's add throws to the game." Cool! We all want throws, right!? (Just pretend you do) So FROM adds them in, but they do a really bad job with it. How they work is you get close to your opponent and hit R2 and you both get locked into an animation where you throw the guy, similar to backstabs/ripostes. This goes through shields. Also lag compensation works the same way as backstabs, so if you walk up to a guy and throw him, then he rolls away, he gets sucked across his screen into your throw. And they don't scale with weapon damage, but instead scale with Resistance. Awesome, now RES is useful! Just like how they made armor useful with poise, they're making RES useful with throws. And the damage scales like, say, you do ~800 damage at 10 Resistance, and ~1300 damage at 40 Resistance. So you don't NEED to pump RES, but it is useful. A real choice, actual customization! So, what was accomplished with this change?

-Gave a way to get through turtles more easily (+1 point!)
-Made Resistance useful (+1 points!)
-Turned the entire game about walking up to people and throwing them for half their health. (-10000000 points)

This is basically what poise looks like to me. It adds a few really minor, mostly irrelevant benefits that the game could easily live without, then warps the game's strategy into a hollow phantom of what it could have been.

Also, re: people who say Dark Souls takes no skill. Find somebody with 0 experience in the game, have them participate in a tournament, and see if they can win. If they do, and the tournament had other experienced participants and a reasonable format, I submit to you that Dark Souls PvP takes no skill.

And on a final note, I just noticed that the MLP emoticons are all re-skinned Twilights. The ***?

I'm just going to say that I'm with Jansports.

BTW, poise does open up new avenues of play. In dks, poise is the only reason tanks are real. Thats an entire build archtype opened up by poise (never mind the huge number of ways to play a tank). There were no tanks in des, the closest it had to tanking was the hyper armor trading strategy.

WandererReece wrote:

Spurgun wrote:They might do more damage if the opponent is naked, but how often do you fight a naked opponent?

Off topic: I've fought plenty of naked people. Most of them were dragons, but some were simply naked. If you see a naked person, then run! Trust me, naked people are the most dangerous. They don't wear armor because they don't need it. (It's not because they're glitching.)

All of my builds are dragons, so my enemies are the ones who should be running away

WandererReece wrote:

Spurgun wrote:They have as much AR (attack rating) but they don't do as much damage, because of split damage. Read this if you haven't heard of it before.

Of course I know about the split damage. Everyone who looks at an elemental weapons stats knows it has split damage. I'm not illiterate.

It may do less damage because of the split, but it still does a decent amount of damage.

Also, that wasn't really the point. I think we all know a uchigatana +15 with 14 str and 14 dex will do less damage then a lightning uchigatana +5 with 14 str and 14 dex.

I posted that link because of this statement.

WandererReece wrote:

They will out perform a +15 weapon with 40 str / dex and match a crystal weapon at 40 str / dex. (Chaos will out perform crystal at 10 humanity.)

That is completely wrong. 15+ would outperform elementals easily even without 40 dex/str, and crystal just owns them.
Befor the patch, elemetals were stronger than now, but even then they were weaker than 15+.

But Elemetals aren't the only options at low levels. The GLGS, OGS and the GLS are good at low levels because they have little to no scaling but high base damage.

And yeah i don't want them to remove poise either, but they should take another look at it. IMO it isn't really working as it should now (wolf ring is a big part of that).

Didn't read the 4 pages before posting -confession bear

Fog ring was interesting concept, but some weapons just come too hard to use against opponent who cannot be locked on...I mean try to get decent results using the rapier unlocked.
Also people only used the Fog ring to backstab the s*it out of others so yeah, I don't really miss it.
If the Fog ring would half the lock on range it would still be very useful without being overpowered.