Breaking Brad: Breaking Brad: Demon's Souls: Part 02

I was lucky and only got invaded 3 times my whole play through on this. But, every time is was a joke. Always some guy that's level a million with every weapon upgraded and your still level 20. Invasions seem to be more balanced in Dark Souls. The 6 times I've been invaded I've won 4 of the fights. This guy was probably watching the stream and cast the acid spell just to be a A-hole. Just play offline. You're going to get spammed by idiots otherwise.

Wow, invader did some business!

"Er actually, I thought this was another place... you don't wanna be here!"

The Archstone that Brad called out for being the Dragonborn...I can't tell what would be more interesting, a game with such scope that the entirety of Skyrim is just 1/6th of it....or Skyrim that played like Demon Soul's.

EDIT - I love Vinny sending Brad to where he died in his QL. I thought it was on purpose at first given how insistent he was...

Not at all.

@dmfdude: Yeah. It was a little off-putting how much of a baby Brad was being about it. It's called "Breaking Brad." Do you expect it to be a stroll in the park? That's the game.

They're not "about" that, but certainly there are a lot of ways to cheese in these games, and most people (at least that I have seen) will agree that there's no shame in that because of how difficult the game can be, especially if your character build is a bad match-up for a particular boss.

lmfao, Vinny is such a troll in these runs. I'd absolutely hate playing with him.

I also have a feeling that whoever did that was watching the stream and thought he'd be a wise guy.

I thought it was weird that the invader had a shield and halberd because that's all I saw when I played Dark Souls. They were no match for my dex-heavy shield and rapier.

I really hate people who take advantage of low level players like that. Using poison and a scraping spear with ridiculous health regen, come on. You could see he was just playing the waiting game too; poison the enemy so they're constantly dying, break their equipment so they can't do anything to your constantly regenerating health, then sit it out until they bite the dust. What a colossal ass.

I don't think having people watch your stream and then invade you with the explicit intent of "trolling" is part of the game.

@anothersomebody: Don't hate the playa'. :P

Jesus Christ. Now you're telling the developers they're doing it wrong? Many items and many weapons have been rebalanced in patches, for both the Souls games. Demon's Souls as it exists now is the game they want it to be, I'm confident in that much. If you don't want to play they game they want it to be, you play an unpatched version 1.0, offline, and can take advantage of any unpatched glitch you like free from the tyranny of PVP. (Or better yet don't play?) I'm not saying that's bad, but you seem to be saying the "final" game is.

Unless the player posted in the chat or the comments, it's not right to assume that's what is happening. There has been a tremendous resurgence of Demon Souls online play in the last few months (look up "Soulsgiving"). People are around for summoning and invasion every day. GG Ramone had poor magic defence, low levels, and was equipped with world #-1 gear (spear, shield, and poison), that requires 2-3 and 3-1 NPC unlocks. Not exactly overpowered deep cuts.

Brad used the phrase "codified in the game design", which highlights Brad doesn't like to think-around what the developer's intentions are, which is why he gets stuck so often in so many games. That battle was one that he most certainly could win, as his skill improves. That is codified in the game design.

If you recall much of the Persona 4 ER, Vinny is very much the same. :)

But the Metal Gear Revengance DEMO QL is the cake... it's a demo, and Brad wanted to save his power meter for later... in the demo....

And you know this how? You know that invasions and other online play is going on every hour of every day in that area. Why assume it's someone specifically watching the stream? I'd actually doubt that. Not everyone in the world watches GiantBomb streams and online play continues when they are not streaming.

Either way, yes, it's part of the game. Not sure how you can dispute it. It's not a hack. It's how the game was designed to work.

Invasion in Souls games sucks. There's literally nothing fun or interesting about it.

Edit: Well, I guess it's an interesting mechanic, but I've never found it fun.

Who was the jerk that invaded Brad on level 2-1? Same shit happened when he was playing Rust on UPF the other week. Not cool.

Find them. Ban them!

Wow I didnt expect my throwaway comment to create such a back and forth.

Really though, that armor wrecking gear is trolly bullshit, by design or not. Just because a person may have the option to behave like an utter penis, doesn't necessarily mean they should.

Edit: I should point out, when all is said and done, I dont like the invasion mechanics in the souls games in the first place. It's pretty much the one and only thing I'd change, given the choice...

@tehpickle: I think that is what would explain it. I love the invasion mechanic. To be clear, I do prefer invaders who are looking for a good fight. Not the ones that are purely there to mess your game up, like you said. But it happens way, way more often that I'm invaded by people who just want to fight.

It's easy to see. They invade, they seek you out, keep there distance and bow to you. Then I make a bow back, signaling: alright, let's do this. Often, if they invade while I'm in the middle of fighting AI, they just wait until I'm done. Then I heal up, point towards a place to fight, they follow me, we bow, we fight.

I just think it's fun. I actually started playing exclusively human in my entire last playthrough just because the online component is so awesome. PvP is just fun and it gives you humanity and souls if you win which is great. Not to mention, you sometimes get the invaders gear as drops. I'm actually not sure how that stuff works, but I don't think they lose their gear when that happens.

I get why people think that dude was a jerk because he used a weapon that causes equipment damage, but I fear that people will make an excuse for anything to be jerkish. 'You used a weapon damage that I can't block, jerk', 'You used ranged weapons exclusively jerk', 'You used a spell that made me unable to use magic, jerk', 'You inflicted poison, jerk', 'You stole my humanity, jerk'.

I don't know. It's a weapon that is part of the game. It's not overpowered. It can be countered. The problem is Brad was pretty new at the game. He didn't realize that weapon would break his stuff and he wasn't able to adapt his strategy once he realized that it did; which is logical because it was the heat of the moment. Otherwise, Brad shouldn't have chosen to let his stuff break.

Dear diary, today I watched Brad fist a dude to death.

Unfair invasions are a part of Demon's Souls, just like assholes are a part of real life. Of course you deal with it, but it's still pretty normal to call someone who just annoys people for the sake of it a piece of shit, because they are. If someone feels better about themselves because they can bully another human being (be it in a video game or in real life), they deserve all the bad things they get.

With how quickly he was getting his HP back he had to have that shield fully upgraded or really close. At plus 5 the regen is 8 per second and he also had to be using the regenerator's ring. His gear is way overleveled to be fighting new players. He's already played through a good chunk of the game just to be able to mess with low level players.

Unless the Souls series start implementing level requirements for certain gear or especially upgrades I'll continue to dislike and actively avoid invasions.

Oh my God...the part with the balls crushing Brad....can't breathe...

It changed my life.

Glad he found replacement Wizard robes, definitely improved spirits after that invasion.

There are few things in life I love more than the Vinny howl. 'Owwwwwwwwwwwww!!'

@curious_george: I looooooove Dark Souls but utterly hate the invasions. I understand the love but personally I cannot stand gearing myself up to play the game. Planning crap all out to a T. Fighting through all the crap just to get some idiot who knows waaaaay to much with a ridiculous build trounce me. I hate it with all my heart and to hear Dark Souls 2 is making this a constant thing sounds like they maybe are breaking the balance of the game. Sadly. Unless they bother to patch that I am playing that game online off. I am sorry.Its a shame because I love the whole written text and blood stain thing.

@zevvion: So here's the thing about this mechanic: I actually don't mind it. I don't actively engage with it when I play Souls games because I have NOT experienced the awesomeness that you're talking about and generally get invaded by people who block the only means of progress and fire arrows/magic/are specced hilariously for PVP (happy to hear Dark Souls 2 is handling that as best they can). Not saying that pleasant stuff doesn't happen, just saying it don't happen to ME. But that's not what this is about.

This is about a very minor tweak that would fundamentally change nothing, yet MASSIVELY curtail people from stream-trolling (not sure that's what this was, but AM sure that happens enough to raise some eyebrows) : don't allow invaders to select who they invade. Obviously keep the level limit the same, but have it act like a ranked match in a fighting game and have it pick someone entirely at random. The fact that you get to pick who you invade, but my roommate and I have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get into each others' games as Blue Phantoms seems ABSURD. However, as I don't invade, I'd actually be happy to hear arguments against this (and that isn't sarcasm...also if I'm entirely wrong about how it works, I'll stand corrected. I tried, but couldn't find anything about the step-by-step invasion mechanics)...this post turned out a LOT longer than I thought it would...

@undeadpool: Actually, I've only invaded people a couple of times myself: I'm certainly not the authority to describe how it works in detail, so we share that. But when I used the Crack Red Eye orbs, I did not have a choice who to invade. I used the item, it said: 'Searching for world to invade' and then after a minute or so it said: 'Invading world as dark spirit' and I invaded someone random. I had no idea who he was. I never had a choice to invade who I wanted.

That said, I usually belong to the Warrior of Sunlight covenant. I believe that there are some covenants like maybe the Darkwraiths covenant (?) that can choose who they invade? Or something. I don't actually know.

I do know that Darkwraiths can invade without limit, Darkmoon Blades can invade people much lower than their level but only if they have sinned, Forrest Hunters can invade with someone else to co-op invade one guy but only if their are summoned in the forrest leading up to the grave of Artorias and so forth. I actually think all of that stuff sounds pretty cool. Like, if you are invaded you can indict the player who invaded you if they killed you, which allows the Darkmoon Blades to invade that person at a much higher level. Which is kinda cool. The story behind the Forrest Hunters is that they protect the grave of Artorias so they can invade people with 2 at a time, but exclusively in the part that leads up to Artorias' grave and instead of invading themselves, they are summoned there.

I don't know, I think those invasion ideas all sound pretty cool. I'm more of a helpful player myself though, so I prefer Warrior of Sunlight usually. Also, for Dark Souls II I'm probably going to go with that covenant that summons you into a player's world to help him if he is invaded. That sounds so rad. Someone invades your game and you think: 'fuck' and then the game summons another player to help you defeat the invader. I'd love to be that person.

@zevvion: I too like the notion of putting some "spin" on the invasion mechanic to keep it from getting stale and all the things they've described sound great. But as things like livestreaming become more and more prevalent, some measures may need to be taken to account for it (ESPECIALLY if there's no "safe zone" of being Hollow) as streams like this and Load Our Last Souls (as well as the Youtube streams) are AMAZING free advertising.

@undeadpool: Yeah, I'm not sure how that stuff will work in Dark Souls 2. There has to be a certain time between possible invasions right? I mean, if you can get invaded while either human or hollow, it could basically break progression if you keep getting invaded and killed. But I'm not sure how they'll implement that stuff. Maybe it's like invasions are possible once ever 30 minutes or something like that. Or maybe there are only certain area's where you can be invaded.

Either way, I'm probably fine with it. I like that part of the game and I'll probably enjoy being summoned into someone else's game to defeat the invader.

@zevvion: There's not only a countdown, but the whole "We're now not tracking soul level but the NUMBER of souls a player has collected" will stop the whole "I'm at level 25, but with level 100 equipment!" thing. Both of which sound like great additions.

@undeadpool: Really? I didn't know they added that to the system. That does sound good, although no doubt within a month or so people will be doing runs that ignores as many enemies as possible, acquiring good weapons and then being in a league of people who are basically a lot less progressed in their game.

But oh well, I kind of like how Dark Souls is exploitative.

That invader was such a dick. He couldn't even just be a dork and fight brad fair, he had to use a scraping spear, poison, and regenerate on top of that.

MY DIGNITY!

Best part about this whole stream was right at the end. First bell chime Vinny heard clearly brought back some horrible memory.

Brad is so annoying when he insists on not using a grindstone because he wants to save it when repairing items is literally the whole point of that item.

Funny thing about the invader is that he sucked.

i laughed, i cried. i loved. Bravo Brad

Brad kind of deserved that invader. He wanted to have a true Demon's Souls experience and he got it.

Ah man, that scraping spear loser is the worst! I've never fought one myself but those kind of sad little people who get off on just hurting other people's fun is just pathetic.

Brad did not watch out for the "giant shields."

Best version of broken Brad!

The screams of frustration in the Tower of Latria are any given player trying to navigate the level.