Parry mechanics feels a bit off

It occurred to me many times where i feel that i've landed a successful parry but i get damaged instead.

Below is a short video that i've uploaded yesterday and you can see @ 0:16 that i fired my pistol right before his attack connect.

You're using a poor example though, Hunter NPC's often do not go by any of the rules set up in the world for everyone. Including, they sometimes 'decide' to not be affected by parries. That said, it is incredibly tough to tell if you timed that right from this video. Looks like it should be... but it's hard for me to judge without playing myself. You may have been a tad too late in this particular example.

Whoa whoa, why is there a Hunter in the Cathedral? :O

It's inconsistent but what are you gonna do. Just like how sometimes your weapon clearly should have hit and other times it's way off and yet you still get the hit.

That's souls for you.

@zevvion: dang, i wish i have captured the time where i parry his attacks so we could compare the two. Unless the hunter is using arcane attacks or firearms then I'm pretty sure you could parry anything else. I think that you mentioning that hunters don't follow the rules of the game is a proof enough to my suspicion.

@captain_felafel: Beating this guy will earn you a pretty valuable item in souls games. Google "convenant hunter of hunters"

@humanity: i have rarely used parry in souls games so i don't really know much about it but i thought that it will be in its best form in this game since it plays a huge part in it. I also noticed that the hit box is also bugged in this game as you have mentioned but i never thought that this is an issue with the first two souls games, it's just the last one that started it. Maybe FS have became too confident of their work.

@giant_gamer said:

So I'm guessing he just starts hanging out in the Cathedral later in the game, kind of like the Hunter who started hanging out at Father G's location after awhile?

@giant_gamer: Funny enough hit box detection quality has also been inconsistent across the games. Demon's had decent hitboxes. Dark Souls had arguably better hit boxes but lock-on was still terrible when fighting large bosses with thrusting weapons. Dark Souls 2 probably had the worst hitboxes of the bunch which was amplified by enemies having increased tracking on their attacks, literally following your roll as they chopped down. The fact that often they would hit the ground just beside you and you would still end up taking damage just made the combination of tracking and poor hit boxes a nightmare in some boss fights.

Bloodborne is a lateral move for From Software as they don't really introduce any new fixes to now established Soul game quirks, but they do introduce new systems that have issues of their own. After numerous experiments standing in front of enemies and trying parries I still don't have a grasp of when it will and when it won't work. The easiest example are those big guys with bricks that have a really slow wind-up. About 70% of the time my parry will work just fine - he lifts his hand with the brick, and I wait for him to start swinging down before I pull the trigger. Technically it always works when he's in the downward swing part of the attack. Except that 30% of the time when it doesn't and I don't know why. I assume it's jank, as these games always have jank in the gameplay mechanics.

All three games before Bloodborne were famous for having wonky backstabs and Bloodborne is no different. You miss the angle just a bit, you're too far, you're on a slope, it just won't work. This is really strange because it's the 4th game and it's still inconsistent. I was doing a lot of co-op for a boss where theres a lot of those giant pigs and you can easily sneak up on one. I did that section about 6 times in a row, always sneaking up on the hog, doing a charged hit so they get stunned and then plunging my fist shoulder deep into their butts. Yet twice it just didn't work for whatever reason. Who knows.

I honestly think they just don't have proper people on the team to iron these things out. I mean I certainly hope it's not negligence on their part, although Bloodborne being the 4th game in the series and still exhibiting lock-on issues, camera issues, backstab issues, hit box problems, NPC quest bugs.. literally all problems we've been seeing since Demon's Souls.. it is starting to seem like maybe they just don't care.

@captain_felafel: It's a part of Eileen the Crows quest who I'm guessing you didn't meet or you killed

No, you were too late on your gun to land the parry. Take a look at my video for the parry timing on his single Chikage slash. You'll want to look at 1:25 and 1:45. Keep volume down for yelling.

There is no issue with the gun parry window in the game. I've been playing the entire game with gun parries. At this point I've initiated hundreds of parries on various enemies. Why? I get 300 health back and a bullet for every parry. I don't lose anything for a successful parry. I rarely use my own bullets because when I'm at +2 Blood bullets I'll use my own blood to get +5 and the successful parry will refill my health.

If the gun parry was as inconsistent as you guys claim it to be then I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing.

@zacagawea: Actually I think she died to the Hunter in the spot where Father G used to be. xD;;

@humanity: Exactly, but now when you think about this game's problems and demon's problems you can't help but feel bad about it since the latter was a low budget project and went through hell to be released world wide not to mention that it was a completely new ip.

Also with bloodborne there's an issue that i think is new to the series, now the game register arcane/magic damage even if you are staying behind cover which was infuriating in the frenzy area at the end of the game.

My hopes are that they listen to fans feedback this time because with the game's punishing mechanics, they really have to play it fare.

@golguin: yelling in this intense battle is justified.

The problem might not be the parry not triggering but instead the parry window varies sometimes.

Where some of us have problems with it.

@captain_felafel: lol, you were watching the fight?!

You can check the grand cathedral once you unlock the fifth headstone to make sure if you can move on with the quest or not.

@golguin: Maybe it's the weapon then. I've used the pistol the entire game. I don't doubt that you've pulled off hundreds of successful parries, but they've been weirdly erratic for me. If the timing is down to a millisecond difference, then I guess it's just too hardcore for me. I look for the wind-up, the release and then fire - maybe I'm too old for these games but that is the most that I'm able to do.

@giant_gamer said:

Yeah! It was confusing as hell!! I walked into that area and all of a sudden I'm getting attacked by a Hunter, which is really confusing since... I already beat Father G. So I think I've been invaded, since I have NO idea how invasions work in this game. We go at it, back and forth, for a couple minutes, but dude is slowly whittling me down. Suddenly a second Hunter appears out of nowhere and starts attacking this dude. At this point I'm beyond confused. "Did I just get invaded and then... invaded again? And the second invader is helping me defeat the first invader?" But this gave me an opportunity to attack the first Hunter, and together the two of us took him out, but not before he did Eileen in.

Grabbed her gear and have been using it ever since. I had NO idea what was going on that entire time, and I actually still don't have a great idea of how any of that is supposed to go. xD

@humanity: Nice work. My exact thoughts about the game's mechanics to a geometric T.

@historyinrust: It's still a great game and probably one of the best games to own on PS4 to this date, but they're reaching a critical point where making "another Souls game" is not going to be enough.

It is enough. It will always be enough. There is not enough here to be a proper Souls game though. That is where the problem is at.

@zevvion: That is obviously a matter of opinion but personally I really doubt that it will be enough, and definitely won't "always be enough." To the hardcore fans that play these games 3-4 times in a row with several characters, maybe it will always be enough to have that fix. To the people that enjoy the series but usually give each game one good go and then maybe tool around in NG+ for a bit, it will definitely not be enough to just get more of the same again. We have already reached this point where Dark Souls 2 was already not enough for some. Ironically in light of Bloodborne people have now suddenly started looking a lot more favorably back on it.

Of course this is all coming from my perspective of a more casual Souls fan. I played all the games and enjoyed them. That said I am definitely not like yourself or Golguin. I did not beat every boss on my first try and I am not going to complete the game 3-4 more times with different builds on varying levels of NG+ for the extra challenge. So for people like myself that enjoy the experience enough to beat it once, I can already tell you there was a significant amount of Souls fatigue setting in when playing Bloodborne.

If anything they should really work on ironing out those bugs that have been mentioned above in the thread. If their next game runs 60FPS and doesn't have a horrible camera and weird jank like enemies hitting you through walls or whatever then that will be enough to get me really interested again. I'll obviously keep playing regardless since it's still a vastly unique experience, but time will tell for how long.

Parry mechanics are spot on, it's the mindset that changes from enemy to enemy. A lot of the early enemies can be parried on reaction, after seeing that they are going for a swing. Later on in the game, you will fight hunters (like the one in the video) and, eventually, other players. Their parry windows are tight, and their moves are fast. This is where the mindset changes from "I'm going to wait for this guy to wind up for an attack, then shoot him", to "I'm going to shoot right now, because I'm pretty sure he is going to attack me in the next split second".

TL;DR: parrying changes from reactionary to predictive based on what, or who, you are fighting.

That happened to me as well! I was running back to Central Yharnam from Oedon Chapel because I wanted to farm some souls when suddenly a hunter came out of nowhere and started chasing me. Like you, I also thought I was being invaded so I bolted back up the stairs when another hunter also appeared and started attacking the first hunter. I was so scared of losing my souls at that point that I noped the fuck back to the Oedon Chapel lamp. Then I noticed that the Cemetery lamp was greyed out and couldn't be activated so I went back there again and this time just watched both hunters duke it out. Eventually the second hunter died (I couldn't target her, so I knew something was up) and I managed to kill the other one. I then realised that the hunter that died was probably the NPC you find halfway through Central Yharnam and I was pretty bummed that I didn't step in to help, but she drops are Hunter mark that let me buy some sweet items (including the Blade of Mercy for 40k souls, totally worth it).

If I have to think to Parry, then I've missed my opportunity.

@zevvion: Yeah, bloodborne is just a weird souls game. When you think about it, unlike souls games it doesn't require strategy. Just time your gunfire, then follow it up with an armed attack.. now repeat!

It is still great and i'm starting with a new character right now but it still can't match any of the souls games and if it did it would be more than enough.

@doctordonkey: Thanks, this explains a lot. I don't know why they went with this direction because there is no clear indication for the parry window making gamers like me really confused.

@captain_felafel: This is one of the things i like about souls games. They just throw things at you making your mind race for the best outcome. While knowing that whatever happens can't be undone, unless you start all over ^.^

I cheesed Eileen's Prey so bad. Led him back to the door while he had the katana out and he killed himself walking back and standing at his initial position. I'm not exactly proud but I got fed up with trying to beat him legit, lol.

I guess these games have to go in the same category as RTS games for me. I like playing them for a bit, but I'm just not good/patient enough to progress. I've been stuck on the 2nd boss for days and I just feel done with the game. The camera and lockon stuff is bad. The parry stuff doesn't work half the time. I seem to just randomly lose lock on. I just died to the boss again because I went to throw a molotov and my guy just threw it no where near the boss(even though I was locked on to him).

I leveled up some and I know that I can take this boss with a couple more tries, the problem is that I just don't care. Situations like this make me glad I have Gamefly.

I agree with you that the original video's parry was too slow, but isn't your video at 1:16 a perfect example of executing a successful parry while still taking damage from an attack?

Well I wouldn't call taking damage during the gun parry as a very successful parry. You can get away with that kind of timing on attacks that don't knock you down, but bigger enemies will come away with a free hit on that kind of timing. You'll get knocked down and the enemy will be back up by the time you get on your feet.

That timing was late, but yes it is possible to take a hit and gun parry the enemy. Ideally you want your timing to be spot on so that you don't take a hit.