What are your thoughts on being able to warp between fires right away?

meh ill only use it if i need to get back to somewhere quickly thats the only time i use it in DkS

Looking at the positives it not only removes often tedious backtracking but also diverts players attention away from the repetitive enemy placement which most RPG's still in this day and age suffer from.

(Unless of course they've randomised enemy placement. Which is as likely as hell freezing over.)

pretty sure you can warp to any bonfire you've visited, and I don't think there's a limit on bonfire warps. it's very handy, imo - mixed with proper exploration, this should work well. 

also, I predict a LOT of bonfire invasions. heh.

not having warp, made for some tough decisions.  such as when you make it to anor londo.  leaving to upgrade your weapon or explore another area, without getting the lordvessel first meant you had to survive sens fortress again to get back.

this is purely one of those 'making the game more accessible' things.  its similar to skyrim in that its too easy to just warp anywhere and belittles the achievement of creating a huge world.  it cheapens the essence of the solitary journey.

anyway, I'm not going to complain, it is what it is.  Its an easy concession to the casual gamer, that should affect hardcore gamers much.  

now if they have towns filled with people, I might start complaining.  I remember battling my way through the maze of the depths lost and hopeless, thinking that if I could just make it through I would get to a town.  sure it was called blight town, but surely it was a town none the less.  I imagine my despair when I finally made it there...

SlothAlmighty wrote:not having warp, made for some tough decisions.  such as when you make it to anor londo.  leaving to upgrade your weapon or explore another area, without getting the lordvessel first meant you had to survive sens fortress again to get back.

this is purely one of those 'making the game more accessible' things.

Im on the same page. A good part of the rewarding experience was progress thru the unlocking of shortcuts like stated above. sens fortress was SO tough the first time. It took many attempts to finally get the elevator running, but once completed it was such a big relief and sense of achievement. Warping will render any stuff like that obsolete, so hopefully they can make up for in with another angle.

Guys its not like you will be able to warp to every bonfire right away, you will have to venture there first. 

It will be like starting with the lordvessel right away, you still need to go to the other areas first.

Didn't any of you get the cage key in Sen's?  What ordeal to get back to upgrade weapons?  

Let's see, the crossbow knight?  Or was it the trio of serpent guys?  Or was the elevator ride prone to causing motion sickness?  

Sorry, don't mean to sound like a jerk (but I think I might be succeeding).  But apart from a short stroll up some uninteresting stairs with Giants that I can just run right by without aggroing those are the only ordeals to backtrack to Andre.  Personally, by the time I finally got past those dang blades at the very top the serpent guys were a joke (I didn't immediately recognize that there was a small gap in the middle and ran right through a few times like the other close knit set  and had to start all over).  

So this great ordeal of backtracking and choices and "facing the environment" again that everyone is touting was already given a shortcut and accessibility enhancement.  I used to routinely run back and forth between Anor Londo and Andre with very little time commitment or challenge.  

Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk and I'm not looking to start an argument or appear angry/upset.  I'm just honestly confused by the doom and gloom surrounding this decision.  There's a couple areas which might truly be considered a challenge to leave in Dark Souls and there might be some validity to the backtracking argument.  For instance, if you don't have the lordvessel yet, getting out of the ToG can be a pain.  But not more than getting to the fire in the first place.  If you don't get to the fire, you're not stuck anywhere.  And the catacombs are much easier backwards usually because you know the layout, the necromancers should be dead, and there's actually a relatively straight shot if you know it.  The Great Hollow is another area where there's a challenge to leave.  I went there without the lordvessel and had to walk back up.  But it always felt to me like the ladders favored up more than down.  


So yeah, I concede there might be a little less anxiety if I could have just warped out of those two places, but honestly it wasn't much.

If people are too much of ******* to go get an item, they wont have the item. And I highly doubt anyone went BACK to sen's on their first blind playthrough, that place was HELL.

it was an example, geez guys, over analyze much?  I'm just pointing out that the game is about the journey and decision making.  


maybe they should just make a town with all the black smiths and vendors in one place so you can just warp there at anytime to upgrade your weapons.  they could even put a soul fountain there so you wouldn't have to farm for souls.  that would make upgrading weapons even more convenient.   

Dark Souls is all about convenience.

I think that's a bit of an exaggerated response Sloth.  My point was to demonstrate how the journey isn't likely to change as much as people are thinking. My guess is you will still have to agonize over getting to the next bonfire before you can warp there.  

If there's a path you left unexplored between fires, you will still have to journey there.  If there's any crevice you feel didn't get enough attention, you can't warp right to it.  Bonfires, unless there's a huge increase in numbers, only place you in a generic region. 

The "journey" everyone is expecting to be tarnished, is and has been primarily a forward journey.  There's always been shortcuts to going backwards.

Perhaps it's time to bring out the big gun I've been holding back. 

 To reiterate, I'm assuming it will be a choice to warp still.

 Big gun: I'll explain it if anyone wants to but.....has anyone but me realized how much HARDER the game will be for people who warp frequently?

I bet a million dollars that there will still be the "unwarpable" bonfires like in Duke's Prison and the Asylum.

As a matter of fact, I bet there will be even more of them.

Honestly, I think people are exaggerating the effect this would have on the game. Seriously, the decision making was more bothersome thanI think people are exaggerating the effect this has on the game. Never did I feel any sense of real importance to my traveling decision, those were reserved for when I had a good bloodstain around. Most of those situations  ended with me being bored because of the treck.

That is to say I support complete warping. I believe we should only be able to warp to the important bonfires, not the mid-level ones, as the ability to warp to those does ruin a level.

skarekrow13 wrote:Perhaps it's time to bring out the big gun I've been holding back. 

 To reiterate, I'm assuming it will be a choice to warp still.

 Big gun: I'll explain it if anyone wants to but.....has anyone but me realized how much HARDER the game will be for people who warp frequently?

Valid point, it could be harder in terms of combat inexperience, but your still fighting the same amount of enemies in the end, maybe just not the same ones over and over again.

More difficult as far as level grinding is concerned: that usually just entails spamming a hotspot, which will actually be easier to get to now.. Maybe they will remove exploitable areas like DeS 4-2/4-3 or DkS Darkroot garden as a result..

That's exactly where I was going.  


My first playthrough had a ton of farming.  Even with excessive exploration.  Every time I needed more arrows, or wanted the BB box, or a level, or that new piece of equipment, etc. I would often go farm a little.  But in most cases, I already had a good starting pool of souls because of my excessive exploration.  Players warping all the time won't have that little bank of souls to rely on at all times.  Even with hotspots I was always glad to be traveling and collecting souls.  The end result will likely be being underleveled for many areas.  I was probably a little overleveled in all areas myself and new foes still caused me fits.  Imagine having to learn O&S completely fresh but being unable to stay in the battle long enough to learn anything?  Or not having farmed enough items to upgrade equipment properly.  Will all bosses seem like a Kalameet endurance battle with disheartening little chips of damage from your best attempt?

skarekrow13 wrote:has anyone but me realized how much HARDER the game will be for people who warp frequently?

My guess is you will still have to agonize over getting to the next bonfire before you can warp there. 

. . . .those bonfires are gonna seem mighty far away if you havent learnt to fight. . .

I imagine they will balance immediate warping with traps n deterents; Their objective is to trim down on redundant elements, not make the game any easier. It's gonna be a much different style of play, so hopefully they've got it figured out so they can spend as much time as possible making the actual game superb.

I just feel if I was directing the game and dumping a bunch of time and resources into an expanded environment creation team as well as a new graphics engine that is aimed to greatly improve environmental graphics and lighting, I'd be saying "i want you to appreciate the extra hard work weve done, so your gonna travel on foot, and your gonna like it."

Warping does not deter discovery as you have to discover an area before you can warp to it. Saying walking is funner or more rewarding is arbitrary as Dark Souls was more linear than open. And Dark Souls is VERTICALLY open no less. The entirety of the explorable world feels more like a big massive dungeon to me, every area is on top of the next quite literally. Now if Dark Souls 2 actually has a horizontal open world (where traveling actually feels like traveling) then it'll be the content between walks will change the usefulness or necessity. Will I get new surprises and secrets each time? new challenges? Enemies? Drops? If not, then fast-travel please. Dark Souls doesn't even reward for extensive exploration when there seldom is legitimate exploration that doesn't turn out to be a minor detour to a linear progression on a vertical map. They really need to beef up the horizontal mapping and exploration. Locations like ash lake were just boring to trek through for their purpose.

I should have said warping cuts apart fluidity of the world while exploring. Like oblivion games; its such an amazing world design, but one cant truly appreciate its scale with frequent quicktraveling, you miss all the pretty scenery in-between. But Im just being souls sequel paranoid

its just when i think although i dont mind warping now (after seeing every square inch of lordran), im sure i would have felt it cheapened the experience when i first started DkS.

And about horizontal mapping, the devs did state they are placing a large emphasis on depth dynamics while dungeon crawling, so exploration will be more vertical in that sense, which i love bc it reminds me of stonefang tunnel, which i also love.

It will certainly make for a lot of different strategies in playthroughs, speedruns, etc.

A story-altered and ever-changing world would make traveling a so much greater experience. Say you travel through a castle area, later the area is ruined, now it's a new area with new accessibles. Similiar to shooting down kalameet and activating his boss fight. (although this a minor-scale example.)