Is there such a thing as "too much"?

When it comes to games like dark souls, could there ever be a time where we have too much variety? Assuming that everything is neatly organized and hassle-free of course.

For instance, compare Dark souls weapon upgrade choices: 10 upgrades of
Normal path - Normal upgrade
Raw path - increased base damage/lower scaling
crystal path - improved damage/nonrepairable
Magic/enchanted path - increased int scaling
Divine/Occult path - increased faith scaling
Fire path - scale-less fire damage
Lightning path - scale-less lightning damage
Chaos path - fire damage that scales with humanity
Fatal path - increases critical damage


Vs the upgrade system I'd like to see for dark souls 2

Crushing path - increases strength scaling
Sharp path - increases dex scaling
Raw path - increases base weapon damage
Cutting path - increases/adds bleed build up
Rusted path/poison path - adds poison/bleed
Fire path - adds fire damage
lightning path - adds lightning damage
magic path - increases int scaling
Enchanted path - increases faith scaling
Divine path - increases damage against undead monsters and phantoms
Occult path - increases damage against living monsters and hosts
Hollow path - decreases stamina consumption per swing
Wrought-iron path - Raises weapon attack/scaling at the cost of extra weight and stamina consumption
Chaos path - Weapon scales with humanity
Crystal path - unrepairable

I think that upgrade systems are a bit too one dimensional in dark souls, and too vast in demon souls, but for the most part I agree.

I love the idea of upgrade paths having more aspects than just a change in what stat needs to be input to increase damage. Having seperate paths for both dex and str is too much imo, but the idea of path diversity like hollow/wrought iron and your improved divine/occult are aspects I totally agree on.

Well you know the saying: "variety is the spice of...death"?
Anyway if they balance all the upgrade paths to make them all at least comparable with each other in terms of situational use, so that all of them have at least an advantage over the others in some situations, I don't see why not.
The problem would be if that doesn't happen, and there would be no particular reason to use, for example a bleed-induncing blade on a bleed weak enemy since a lighting weapon will kill him just as fast.
That's why i want enemies and armors to be more binary in terms of weaknesses and strengths. In Dark Souls most armors have the same ratio of physical/lightning/magical/fire defense, in Dark souls 2 I want armors that sacrifice one damage type defense to get a better one at other type, so that this variety of weapon upgrades and damage types would also affect pvp. Same thing to different enemy types in pve.

"too much" imo, is when balance is overtly compromised (cawblade/akuma, ect)

As long as it doesn't get to that point, I'm fine with more, and more useful, upgrade paths (I'm looking at you raw)

I was about to say If I see Fatal branch I'll flip a table, because that was the most broken bullsh**

How about different armor upgrades? That would be overkill for me

Conrack wrote:I was about to say If I see Fatal branch I'll flip a table, because that was the most broken bullsh**

Agreed.

Also, mercury was...it had so much potential, so sad.

WaffleGuy wrote:How about different armor upgrades? That would be overkill for me

Wrought-Iron path - Raises all resistances, poise and weight
Hollow path - lowers all resistances, weight and noise-emitted from armor
Thorned path - enables armor of thorns trait
Anti-bleed path - increases bleed resistance
Anti-slash path - increases slash resistance
Anti-magic path - increases magic resistance
Anti-fire path - increases fire resistance
Anti-lightning path - increases lightning resistance
Anti-piercing path - increases pierce resistance
Anti-striking path - increases striking resistance

Animaaal wrote:

Conrack wrote:I was about to say If I see Fatal branch I'll flip a table, because that was the most broken bullsh**

Agreed.

Also, mercury was...it had so much potential, so sad.

OMGOMGOMGOMG I just saw what critical does!! I want it!!!!!!!

LunarFog wrote:

Animaaal wrote:

Conrack wrote:I was about to say If I see Fatal branch I'll flip a table, because that was the most broken bullsh**

Agreed.

Also, mercury was...it had so much potential, so sad.

OMGOMGOMGOMG I just saw what critical does!! I want it!!!!!!!

Lol. It could be pretty cool as long as your regualr attacks were nerfed into oblivion.

Also, I love the armor upgrade ideas. I also like the incorporation of DeS and DkS upgrade paths, very cool.

I dont think there is necessarily "too much". If there are things that are just not useful, then fine. Just as long as there are more things that are useful, and of course, not an upgrade "to rule them all".

I like variety.

I'd LOVE it if the fatal path lowered AR from 200 to something like 30, but raised the critical attacks from 140 to 400 or something. Then it'd separate the true assassins from the common peasants.

And that bit about variety is exactly why I started thinking of this. I was thinking of the upgrade paths and noticed that they could have been better. They have 2 different cases of 2 upgrade paths that do the same thing, and then unless it's for very specific cases, everyone always goes with normal.

I wanted a system where going normal would actually be a bad idea, unless you're consistently doing everything in dark souls all the time. Otherwise you should pick a specialty.

The thing I liked most about Demon's's upgrade path was that you could make certain weapons dex and str as well. I thought it added variety.

Also, I'm not much for assasin builds, but I've always loved the concept. The fatal path and and visibility manipulation Demon's had was great, and I'd love to see it brought back.

Also, is Demon's's gramatically correct in that context?

Demon's...'s.

Demon's'...I'm going to have to ask my english teacher tomorrow.

I'd rather not have upgrade paths that affect poise. I want to be able to judge from their armour whether or not I'm likely to stun them. I don't think that the 'hollow' path makes a lot of sense for armour either. Turning heavy plate into stealth armour

Im not really all for the crushing, sharp, and clearstone upgrade paths.. i think the regular titanite worked twice aswell as those you got the same outcome without the hassle of having to get a certain stone per upgrade the titanite was just a good efficient idea.. but i do think they need to bring back some more things like mercury, and bleed.

the occult thing doing more damage to hosts gives me a bit of a worry :shock: especially if its already scaling with faith.. i guess the divine kindof cancels it out but i dont know.. i think ur list is cool tthough

I believe its just Demons'


I really enjoy this kind of variety that we have. I simply hate when you don't have too many options and have to stick with what is better overall and stuff.

Of course, some people choose to only try the most pratical path and never look back, but not me.

More variety = better game

Poliwrath wrote:Im not really all for the crushing, sharp, and clearstone upgrade paths.. i think the regular titanite worked twice aswell as those you got the same outcome without the hassle of having to get a certain stone per upgrade the titanite was just a good efficient idea.. but i do think they need to bring back some more things like mercury, and bleed.

the occult thing doing more damage to hosts gives me a bit of a worry :shock: especially if its already scaling with faith.. i guess the divine kindof cancels it out but i dont know.. i think ur list is cool tthough

Granted, I didn't put THAT much thought into it(maybe I should and make a new thread about it), but what I had in mind is that the weapons specialize in exactly what they do, and have decreased stats/scaling in every other case.

Upgrade paths I'd like to see (granted haven't put a lot of thought into them).

-Bone Path

*Reduces the weight of the weapon, but also reduces damage.

-Poise Path (assuming poise is back)

*Increases poise a little, but also increases weight.

-Poison Path

*Obvious reasons, just something more efficient.

-Agility Path

*Increases swing speed at the cost of damage output.

-Faith Path

*I just want a "faith damage" type

-Stability Path

*Something that would let you block with your weapon more efficiently, again prolly at the cost of damage output.

These are just some ideas I'm throwing out there in addition to some of the great ideas mentioned. Also, there's prolly some huge drawbacks of these examples I'm not considering.