Thread 724218516

>you can't lock onto the Lost Sinner without a torch, forcing you to one-hand
>if you wear Velstadt's helmet, the Fume Knight will skip straight to his second phase
>when you get Sif down, she'll limp pathetically towards you
>you have to kill the revival mage outside of the boss arena before killing Fool's Idol
>if you're skilled enough, you can two-shot the Pursurer with the ballista
>if you're skilled enough, you can slip past Garl and kill Maiden Astraea
>you should drain the poison in Mytha's room first
>you should raise the platforms in the Dragonrider's room first so he can't hit you off
>the Old Hero is blind
Elden Ring would never have neat environmental or lore-based gimmicks like this. All the bosses have the exact same strategy: memorize their moveset and use the boss's stat-based weaknesses/resistances if they have them (ex. fire damage, holy damage, etc). It's an objective downgrade in design. Even Nioh is better at this than post-DS2 Fromsoft games.

>>724218516 (OP)
Locking on is a complete trap in the earlier DS games, completely fucks up your movement.

>>724218516 (OP)
True
>>724218639
Also true

>>724218516 (OP)
Explain to me how burning a windmill to drain the poison makes any sense

>>724218516 (OP)
elden ring was lazy slop that's why

>>724218947
The windmill powers the mechanisms that are used to draw out poison from the depths, when it gets destroyed the flow of poison stops

>>724218516 (OP)
Careful. You can't just drop kino nukes like this in public areas. Elden shit eaters might get seizures. We wouldn't want that now, do we? That'd be such a shame.

>>724218947
its powering the poison distribution system
think of it as a pump. the windmill gets turned by wind, turns the cogs, when controls the pumps to run the poison wherever

>>724218516 (OP)
>Elden Ring would never have neat environmental or lore-based gimmicks like this
>he didn't use crystal darts against the Erdtree burial watchdog statues or the giant golems

>>724218516 (OP)
DSII is the only white-coded game in the franchise
DeS (PS3) is also great but it's hapa-coded

>>724218516 (OP)
The chariot boss in DS2 is one of my favorites.

>>724218516 (OP)
This is all true, but I still think elden ring is closer in spirit to ds2 compared to the rest of the series.
While it has less interesting environmental shit and little puzzles and details like this, it didn't pull a ds3 and get rid of it with nothing really in return. The boss movesets are genuinely complex and intricate with lots of ways to creatively play around them and punish the boss. The amount of shit you can stand under, low profile, jump over, strafe, or avoid with an offensive weapon art is insane, and you don't have to be a giga autist sweatlord speedrunner to figure it out either, you just gotta have balls and some persistence.
I think it's a lot of fun to learn a boss, exploit status effects, fuck around with my build with different ashes of war, talismans, flask setups, buffs, ect.
I would hope the next game they do bridges the gap between elden ring and ds2. I'd like more of the creativity of 2 with the complexity, variety, and skill ceiling of elden ring.

>>724218639
Controls in earlier DS games are quite shitty overall, I watched a lot of gameplay back in the day and new players that didn't used lock-on also sucked because they were missing their targets a lot and waste their stamina. Although for several boss battles in Demon Souls it's better not to use lock-on.

>>724218516 (OP)
While I much prefer DS3 to DS2, DS2 does have a lot more of those "lost soul arts", as it were.
Just about the only neat thing DS3 does with its bosses is that most of them have alternate death animations if you kill them with a riposte or by performing some other condition.

>>724219407
>beat chariot
>immediately bonfire ascetic for that cloranthy +2
>proceed to struggle for the next two hours to beat chariot ng+
SOVL

>>724219283
I love when some brown thirdworlder tells people what is white and what is not.

>>724219623
3nigger is mad lol

>>724218516 (OP)
Not the biggest DS2 guy but I do admit having stuff in the exploration portion of the map carry into the boss fight was neat. I think ER had a few things like the shackles for the twins, blasphemous claw for maliketh, patches being eligible for summon for radahn, raising the platforms to fight lake of rot dragonkin, etc. but I don't think it was ever as major of an advantage as the things you did in DS2

Also my memory might be failing me but I'm pretty sure you can light up the room of the lost sinner

>>724219474
Elden Ring is largely identical to Dark Souls 3, in mechanics and design. There is absolutely no way you played both 2 and 3 and concluded that Elden Ring is closer to the former, ER is a DIRECT EVOLUTION of 3.

>>724219582
The Abyss Watchers were pretty cool. A free-for-all gank. And technically being able to fight Dancer as your second boss was neat. But yeah that's as experimental as DS3 gets

>>724219715
I'm a Sekiroyasuke actually.

>>724219735
>I think ER had a few things like that
Obviously it does, so does DS3. It's pretty clear that those games are going in a direction further away from a level design/gimmick focused approach to the game though, it definitely feels different.

>Also my memory might be failing me but I'm pretty sure you can light up the room of the lost sinner
You can light the room up by lighting the two oil sections outside the fog gate if you got the key from the previous area (at least in sotfs, don't remember where it was in base game), but it doesn't entirely light it up. Not that you really need any gimmicks to fight Lost Sinner.

>>724218516 (OP)
>>you can't lock onto the Lost Sinner without a torch, forcing you to one-hand
You can if you're not a dumb nigger and lit the fires on either side of her room before entering.

>>724219792
It's all surface level stuff. ds3 bosses are far less complex and rolling is far too powerful, there's cool punishes and shit but there's way less player expression, freedom, and viable ways to engage the boss. In spirit elden ring is closer to 2, encouraging more styles of play, having superior build variety, and encouragement to fight bosses in ways that aren't reaction rolling.

>>724220110
Don't forget power stance

>>724218516 (OP)

weird way to tell us you can't beat a boss without cheese op

>>724219830
>The Abyss Watchers were pretty cool
Conceptually. The actual fight is incredibly underwhelming and easy. There should have been way more of them active at once at the very least.

>>724219283
with how ugly it is I would say "brown-coded" is more suited

>>724220293
Weird way to tell us you enable and encourage formulaic repetitive slop

the movesets of the bosses in DS1 and 2 are somehow limited because of limited performance of the platform
so you have to add these fancy gimmicks to make the fight less boring
especially in DS2 except the DLCs, most of the bosses move as if they are paralyzed

>>724220293
This is pretty good bait, but only because it's sadly the average opinion of fans.

>While it has less interesting environmental shit

-You can use crystal darts on the watchdogs and imps to make them fight each other.

-Lightning damage is boosted when it rains.

-Golden Order incantations prevent Those Who Live in Death from coming back once felled (like DS1's Divine weapons).

-The Nox use a spell to ride their ants, and if broken, the ants turn on their rider and you can watch them fight to the death.

-The demihumans gain red eyes at night and become more feral/harder to fight.

-Morgott and Mohg can be incapacitated if the player uses the very shackles that kept them imprisoned below the capital.

-Full scale wars can be witnessed between multiple factions in real time, makes the world way more believable.

-The world actually has a diverse fauna, and not every animal is an undead dog trying to eat your face.

-The addition of interesting status effects like sleep.

-The Godskin nobles can wake their buddies up if you make them fall asleep.

>The addition of jump attacks, shield counters, crouch attacks, dual weilding.

-The addition of unique weapons that shake things up like the perfumer bottles/Dryleaf martial arts, etc

-Armor can be altered.

>inb4 reddit spacing

>>724220418
repetitive like beating a boss by moving around him ?

>>724220519
I do think soulsborne series are more action-oriented after Bloodborne.

Does nobody actually know you can light up sinner's arena. Back in base ds2 you had to beat the belfry gargoyles to get the key but in scholar its on a random body i forget where

>>724220562
>-The addition of interesting status effects like sleep.
did anyone ever bother with sleep? most of the time it literally does nothing but a mini-stagger and the opportunity cost of it is so big it's pretty much never worth it
it's a useless gimmick if anything else

>>724218516 (OP)
Pulling levers before boss fights doesn't make said boss fights any interesting

>>724220621
It's found right after the Ruin Sentinels in Scholar. Kind of lame really. It felt like a reward for not being a little pussy and smashing some bellfag skulls in the original.

>>724220587
Yes. You do realize making it sound simplistic and shallow only proves my point, right?

>>724220519
>limited performance of the platform
Surely you are not implying that 7th gen consoles prevented them from making a dynamic action game

>>724220562
Anon, the only environmental or level focused thing you posted was lightning damage doing more damage when the target is in water and that's been a thing since at least DS2.

>>724220418
The people that put all the focus on boss fights, and how challenging they are while acting like the rest of the game is inconsequential are insufferable faggots.

>>724220110
DO YOU READ THE SHIT THAT COMES OUT OF YOUR MOUTH
LIKE "PUNISH". THIS IS TWITCH SKILL BABBY LANGUAGE, FOR CHILDREN WHO BELIEVE IN POWERING THROUGH EVERYTHING BY REACTION SPEED RATHER THAN INTELLIGENCE
DARK SOULS 2 ALLOWED YOU TO BE A COMPLETE LARD ASS AND WIN. THIS IS WHAT A GOOD GAME DOES. IT GIVES ROOM FOR BOTH THE TRYHARDS AND THE MORE TACTICAL PLAYERS
ELDEN RING IS A GREAT GAME BUT IT'S 100% GEARED TOWARDS THE TRYHARDS. THERE'S LITTLE TO NO ENVIRONMENTAL ADVENTURE STUFF TO BEATING A BOSS. JUST +STATX -STATY, AND TWITCH SKILL BABBY ARCADE. ABOUT THE ONLY COOL THING I COULD EVER FIND AS A CASUAL PLAYER WAS KILLING THOSE BIG FAT ROUND LATE GAME TRASH MOBS WITH HEALING SPELLS

>>724220746
I'll admit that the levers are the lowest form of gimmick, since it just adds another step. But the Dragonrider is especially cool, since the pits can serve as both a detriment (he knocks you off) or a benefit (you knock him off), so it lets the player weigh their options. Why are you only addressing one gimmick though?

>>724220756
elden ring and ds3 bosses are infinitely more interesting and engaging fights than ds2 which won't get redeemed by cute gimmicks.

>>724220562
None of this is an interesting environmental/lore gimmick except the Omen shackles, and even then that's pretty cheap. You're just describing basic game mechanics, retard

>>724220893
But why can we have both? Why can't we have a boss that A), has a complex moveset, and B) has a unique environmental gimmick that breaks the monotony? Oh wait, we do have that. It's called Nioh.

>>724220562
All of this just to end up with the player rolling through a 20x combo

>>724220562
>reddit spacing

>>724219283
dogshit2 is literally a brown turd

>>724220715
The point of gimmicks isn't that they should be the most viable way to play the game. The point of gimmicks is that they make the game world feel more believable and complex. The mere fact that all enemies have sleep animations is commendable. The same goes for the boosted lightning damage when it rains or the fact that throwing oil urns on enemies makes them more vulnerable to fire.

It's just neat little details.

>>724221019
You can smell this poster through the scren.

>>724218516 (OP)
yeah, but elden ring has bosses that are actually challenging. i replayed dark souls 2 a couple of years ago, i didnt die to a boss a single fucking time. what's the point of interesting design for bosses that are complete shit? it sounds like someone scrabbling for any praise they can find.

>>724220110
>DS2 PvP doesn't allow invaders or summons to heal with flasks. DS3 and ER do.
>DS2 allows players to be invaded at any time. DS3 and ER don't.
>DS2 doesn't feature level or weapon upgrade based online matchmaking. DS3 and ER do.
>DS2 doesn't use the FP system. DS3 and ER do.
>DS2's combat system includes full left handed movesets, mixed weapon class powerstancing, animation chains between different attack inputs, and different animation speeds for the same inputs depending on whether they're done from neutral or as part of an attack chain. None of this exists in DS3 or ER.
>DS2 restricts buffstacking. DS3 and ER don't.
>DS2 doesn't restrict infusing weapons that already carry an element, ranged weapons, or special weapons that use different upgrade materials. DS3 and ER do.
>DS2 doesn't provide animation invincibility for interacting with doors/levers/fog gates. DS3 and ER do.
>DS2 adds new enemies and items in NG+ and features a method to access NG+ contents without beating the game. DS3 and ER don't.
>DS2 roll iframes are tied to a stat and equip load affects roll distance. DS3 and ER don't feature this.
>DS2 durability is a major mechanic. DS3 gear has practically infinite durability and ER doesn't feature durability at all.
>DS2 torch is a special item that has to be lit from a fire. Torches in DS3 and ER are a weapon type.

I could go on but surely I have made my point.

>>724221053
elden ring artificially inflates game time

>>724220946
You pedantic nigger, OP used examples such as
>>when you get Sif down, she'll limp pathetically towards you
>>the Old Hero is blind
I merely provided the Elden Ring equivalents of what he posted

>>724220854
Caps lock is cruise control for cool

>>724220946
how bad faith this post it. You can smell the Elden ring derangement syndrom

>>724221119
is*

>>724221029
>The mere fact that all enemies have sleep animations is commendable
Yeah too bad they forgot they were making a dlc to a video game

>>724221108
First of all, I AM OP, so I'm pretty fucking sure I know what the topic of the thread is. And the topic of the thread is boss design. You didn't list anything unique to any specific boss except for the Omen brothers. You just listed general game mechanics like lightning damage being boosted in water. Which is cool and all, but it's not what anyone is talking about

>>724220864
They are all the same trash
All the shit Op described is garbage detatched from the actual fight and a low form of gimmick desperately trying to add depth and variety where the gameplay design failed
Dark Souls 2 boss roster is boring and made of overlapping and samey bosses that don't push the player nor focus on any kind of positional strategy and overall combat tactics, so B team felt the need to add this crap.

But even then those fights OP described are dudes doing slow basic swings. It's not actually unique like hitting Greatwood weakspots, using a crossbow to drop the King of Storms, charging the Stormruler against a giant, giant butterflies firing lasers or a giant skeleton Lord dropping deadly gas and summoning minions.

If you have to go through a checklist of shit you do outside of boss arena to claim a boss is unique, then maybe said boss is not actually unique.

Look at Loyce King or whatever he is called. He is only memorable for a shitty gank fight but nothing about him is unique. It's a dude with a sword and NPC summons. Now compare it with Nameless King fought in a Storm as it uses wind attacks from range and lightning strikes, and you see it has an actual identity.

Dark Souls 2 has the least inventive and soulful bosses and is the least engaging and interesting Souls game.

>>724220946
>I define what qualifies as an interesting environmental/lore gimmick!!!!
Sit down, Timmy.

>>724221053
I'm among the ds2 haters of the thread but ds2 bosses can be very challenging if you don't cheese them.

>>724218516 (OP)
I said this before and il say it again: 3 got better polish and overall sloppier then anything they've put out even er and its game modes
2 is most flawed and incomplete and somewhat soulful
also 3 is very spiteful to its core founding fanbase

>>724221108
That's not what you did. You quoted this from the OP,
>While it has less interesting environmental shit
And then replied to that quote while specifically leaving the second part about the lore details out. At the very least you're at fault for quoting the wrong part.

>>724221224
No they can't
Dark Souls 2 bosses are a downgrade from Artorias of the Abyss
Nothing about them is unique or mechanically throws off and surprises any player except the size of their hitboxes

>>724221119
>>724221219
Learn reading comprehension, mongoloids

>>724221213
Ds2 has one of the coolest bosses in the series

>>724221012
I agree

>>724221314
Abyss Watcher is a downgrade from Artorias, a fucking washed up dorkwraith nodiffs the entire squad

>>724221384
Which western MMO raid boss is this?

>>724221414
No it isn't. Abyss Watcher is actually an impressive mechanical upgrade from Lady Maria, with fire after-effects that are actually balanced and with proper hitboxes.
Loopine showed the two and explained how much Dark Souls 3 improved over Bloodborne

>>724221426
What? Not gonna post a clip for darklurker?

>>724220715
No but its very cool addition to the game

>>724221426
>er tard yaps his mouth about westie mmo bosses
the jokes write themselves

>>724221213
The problem is that you reduce a boss down to nothing but a moveset. A boss is more than just a moveset. Even those dorks who jerk themselves off over "muh spectacle" have more of a soul than you, because they at least recognize that a boss is worth more than the sum of its parts. Feeling bad over having to finish off Sif when she's limping and struggling to raise her sword is an infinitely more memorable and stimulating experience than fighting Anime Sword Nigger #517, even though it makes the fight easier. Mastering the Fume Knight's second phase by practicing with the Velstadt helmet was an infinitely more rewarding experience than bashing my head against a wall until I mastered Mr. Delayed Attack Ninja. You clearly hate video-games and play them only for clout