@Tarsier: I did think you were referring to me so I apologize but hey man, don't say I'm full of shit because I'm not insulting you. Also, yeah, I get defensive about that game. So what? I love it, and I have reason to do so. I bet you do that too for games you like. If people say the game has problems, I'm going to want to discuss about that. Other thing would be if the person said it was just his OPINION. I wouldn't reply to that but most people here want to talk facts, hey I will talk facts.

I think it is important to clear with definitions here. Life/Death as a mode is fine. Death as a fail state has to be treated a bit differently. Toggling between two states is a tried and true play mechanic that is certainly embraced in Dark Souls. However, being defeated and thrown back to a fire losing a bunch of time and work should have been handled a little differently than it was in Dark Souls.

I think it is important to clear with definitions here. Life/Death as a mode is fine. Death as a fail state has to be treated a bit differently. Toggling between two states is a tried and true play mechanic that is certainly embraced in Dark Souls. However, being defeated and thrown back to a fire losing a bunch of time and work should have been handled a little differently than it was in Dark Souls.

You lost time and souls. I would hardly call that no loss.

Done!

Nice, short survey duder, hope it's ok that all 7 of my words were filthy.

@Turambar said:

Now, the real question is, are you capable of changing your mindset on death as you transition between Dark Souls and traditional modern games? If you're not, and thus hate dying in Dark Souls, that's fine. But that onus is on you, not the game.

@Deusx said:

Death is a KEY feature in Dark Souls. You learn from it, you relish it, you face it, and you beat it.

Regardless of the fact that I'm beginning to believe that I officially suck at developing whatever kind of skill Dark Souls requires, and it makes me sad (and a bit teary >;( ) I still see a flaw in that game design. If the game takes you somewhere NEW every time you die (like the McPixel game for example), then that can be fun because while you're learning from your deaths, you're not forced to go through the same area fighting the same enemies in the same fashion which by the 5th time feels like a fucking rehearsal. But rather doing something new everytime which is a good alternative to progression.

As it stands, death means repetition in Dark Souls, exact replicas of the very.same.experience, and that shit can get on a man's nerves fast. Well, a normal human being, not you resilient emotionless cyborgs. :P Yes I'm talking to you DS veterans! (@JackOhara)

@Deusx said:

It even connects to the deep lore behind the game. There is a reason the first NPC you find is a Crestfallen, he gave up. He felt the same as you do. He then watches as you ring the first two bells and tries to be a hero. He fails, then you find him in New Londo, hollowed, because he went mad, he failed, he didn't learn. That is why you kill him, because you are better than him.

Screw you dude, now you've made me wanna return to the game just because of how awesome that sounds!

I think you clearly aren't willing to put what it takes to beat the challenge and punishment Dark Souls puts you through, as I said, in simpler games you learn NOTHING from death and you just breeze through the content, you really want that?

While I'm not fond of too much challenge in games, I do like to believe that I usually take on harder games that I'm used to and try to tame and master them. Among my accomplishments are Shadow of Chernobyl and Borderlands 2 after I had been playing the likes of COD and Halo for years, The Witcher 1 and 2 after I had been scared shitless of RPGs for a long time, and so forth.

However the DS challenge seems to be out of my league.

P.S. Deusx, for me this isn't about the game being flawed mechanically. The enemies and encountering them and fighting them is fine and dandy, polished enough, no complaints there. It's the process itself.

Most bosses I only had to study once or twice to know what it had to be done to beat them. The capra demon? That motherfucker fell the first time I faced him. The only boss I can give to you that is fucking unfair is bed of chaos. Other than that, they aren't that difficult.

Wtih 0 sarcasm I tell you, what a badass human being you must be! I'm thinking of converting to homosexuality, trying to convert you and becoming your boyfriend just so I can sleep at night knowing you're there, brah.

No homo.

@AhmadMetallic: That last part made me laugh hard. Seriously, you made your point. It's the process you don't enjoy and I think I'm being an asshole when saying maybe you're just not ready for the challenge. The game is just not for everyone. Maybe you're not bad at the game and it just affects certain sensibilities. For me, it hit the right spot between my dick and my butt. The sweet spot.

That said, I would suggest giving the game another chance after you've taken some time off of it. I know how tiresome it can be.

Wow. This thread shows that some people are too fucking stupid to play Dark Souls, and somehow it's the game's fault.

@MrKlorox said:

Wow. This thread shows that some people are too fucking stupid to play Dark Souls, and somehow it's the game's fault.

Trust me when the root of the problem is someone being stupid it is never their fault.

Edit:

Two things I will say after seeing some comments... Anyone who thinks Dark Souls is perfect of that death wasn't failure needs to wake up and smell the coffee. Death in Dark Souls can definitely be used as a learning mechanism and can make you a better player, but it doesn't mean you didn't fail. You died, you dropped a soul pile, you lost time, potentially you lost consumables like arrows or pine resin, you may have lost loot still on the ground, possibly humanity which is very important to not lose if at all possible, etc etc. So just like in the real world you can learn from failure in Dark Souls, but it doesn't mean you didn't fail. It just means your failure wasn't meaningless.

Also Blightown was the least of the buggy offenders. You could compensate for the terrible FPS by moving insanely slow, always keeping the shield up, using a spear or other thrusting weapon, and studying every jump for long periods before making it. But the parts of the game where off screen enemies whose characters aren't even loaded can attack you? Where the input lag made it take 2-3 seconds before you would use a healing item? PvP where someone could glitch themselves so they looked like they teleported around screen (that one was even around for Demon's Souls)? The crap PvP matching system that could put you in fights with people over double your soul level (I know a guy who was 20 and ended up fighting a dude who was 104)? Lock on camera jank that could leave you staring at a wall in the middle of melee? That stuff was not by design, and if it was, then the design was shit.

@Karkarov: Death is knowledge in Dark Souls, as well as it is failure, everyone knows that. It's that fear of death and failure what makes the game so grueling, tense, and evil. If you didn't learn anything while learning its not the game's fault. Yeah sure, you can lose time. But hey, you lose time fulfilling lesser and boring tasks in other video games. The sense of achievement you get in Dark Souls is like no other, or at least that's what I felt. You mention the Blighttown FPS issue and I completely agree. That sucked big time. The game isn't perfect but what is? What you said about healing isn't a good example though. That's like saying weapons are bad just because they are slow. The healing is slow because the devs wanted to. If you learn how long it takes to heal then you can strategize a good place to do it instead of drinking your sunny D mid fight. That would be too easy. The SL thing, hey man, I have a SL 1 that can beat a SL 200. It's not about your SL but your equipment. You can use a bunch of good weapons at level 1 and you can upgrade them to +15 very easily. The games design isn't shit man, games have bugs and you know it. Don't say a game is shit just because it has some bugs like EVERY OTHER FUCKING GAME.

I described Dark Souls as a "Spectacular unique immersive dark fantasy action-rpg". It somehow doesn't fit. Also, RPG is not a word.

@Deusx: He's not talking about the potion animation, he's talking about the occasional lag that will cause you to not drink the potion when you hit the button then all of a sudden a few seconds later you start to drink it, which almost invariably gets you killed. You sometimes get the same lag with weapon swings, too. If I remember correctly it has something to do with dropping your shield right before you hit the attack button and it got me killed many times.

@Deusx said:

@Karkarov: Death is knowledge in Dark Souls, as well as it is failure, everyone knows that. It's that fear of death and failure what makes the game so grueling, tense, and evil. If you didn't learn anything while learning its not the game's fault. Yeah sure, you can lose time. But hey, you lose time fulfilling lesser and boring tasks in other video games. The sense of achievement you get in Dark Souls is like no other, or at least that's what I felt. You mention the Blighttown FPS issue and I completely agree. That sucked big time. The game isn't perfect but what is? What you said about healing isn't a good example though. That's like saying weapons are bad just because they are slow. The healing is slow because the devs wanted to. If you learn how long it takes to heal then you can strategize a good place to do it instead of drinking your sunny D mid fight. That would be too easy. The SL thing, hey man, I have a SL 1 that can beat a SL 200. It's not about your SL but your equipment. You can use a bunch of good weapons at level 1 and you can upgrade them to +15 very easily. The games design isn't shit man, games have bugs and you know it. Don't say a game is shit just because it has some bugs like EVERY OTHER FUCKING GAME.

I wasn't referring to a baked in delay on healing items. I mean there were parts of the game where you could input the command to heal and 5+ seconds would go by before your character reacted to the command in any form at all. Then the baked in time cost of lifting the flask, drinking, and actually getting the heal would take place. So in the end your heal would take anywhere from 8 to 10 seconds to actually go off. Normally it would only be 3-4. And no, you can't beat a soul level 200 at level 1. What you are beating is an incompetent bad player who doesn't know what they are doing, and that has nothing to do with soul level.

filled it out :}

@WarlordPayne: Yeah, I just realized that.

@Karkarov said:

@Deusx said:

@Karkarov: Death is knowledge in Dark Souls, as well as it is failure, everyone knows that. It's that fear of death and failure what makes the game so grueling, tense, and evil. If you didn't learn anything while learning its not the game's fault. Yeah sure, you can lose time. But hey, you lose time fulfilling lesser and boring tasks in other video games. The sense of achievement you get in Dark Souls is like no other, or at least that's what I felt. You mention the Blighttown FPS issue and I completely agree. That sucked big time. The game isn't perfect but what is? What you said about healing isn't a good example though. That's like saying weapons are bad just because they are slow. The healing is slow because the devs wanted to. If you learn how long it takes to heal then you can strategize a good place to do it instead of drinking your sunny D mid fight. That would be too easy. The SL thing, hey man, I have a SL 1 that can beat a SL 200. It's not about your SL but your equipment. You can use a bunch of good weapons at level 1 and you can upgrade them to +15 very easily. The games design isn't shit man, games have bugs and you know it. Don't say a game is shit just because it has some bugs like EVERY OTHER FUCKING GAME.

I wasn't referring to a baked in delay on healing items. I mean there were parts of the game where you could input the command to heal and 5+ seconds would go by before your character reacted to the command in any form at all. Then the baked in time cost of lifting the flask, drinking, and actually getting the heal would take place. So in the end your heal would take anywhere from 8 to 10 seconds to actually go off. Normally it would only be 3-4. And no, you can't beat a soul level 200 at level 1. What you are beating is an incompetent bad player who doesn't know what they are doing, and that has nothing to do with soul level.

My bad, well that's a fucked up bug I've never experienced. Oh well, games have bugs. And yeah, you just said it, it has NOTHING to do with soul level. It has to do with how good you are at the game, so what difference does it make if you get to fight someone twice your level? There are some covenants that allow that but hey man, you have to go through it and face the challenge because that's what DaS wants you to do. As I said, the game isn't perfect. But at least for me, its very close. It hits the right spot. The art direction, the music, the story, the gameplay, the level design, the voice work. I can keep going. You can't say that about many games. At least I can't. That said, I get why so many people just don't like it.

@TekZero said:

I'll do it. Dark Souls is still my favorite game of 2012.

Agreed.

The seven descriptions are heavily biased toward the negative, rest of the survey is "okay." Genre badly needs an other subgroup or to simply be much more comprehensive. If you're going to ask for gender why not ask for race as well? Or ask for neither? Dark Souls is an equal opportunity employer.

Filled it out, good luck and keep us updated on the project.

I haven't clicked on the link... but there has been a lot of spam bots lately posting weird stuff. There was an identical thread to this except instead of Dark Souls it was about Halo Reach. Same spiel about a class project and needing to collect data. Different user too and also a very low post count.

....so ya... I'll not click on that link It think. Surprised so many people are taking this "survey."

It might be too late, but I did it as well.