Minor annoyances in the game?

Since the games been out for a week, I wanted to know if there was anything in the game that annoyed you (besides the load times). I honestly was not that annoyed by the load times, I don't die to often, unless I am at a boss, and when the games loading I just do push-ups or something. The thing that really gets me though is the game's camera, I know the past games had a wonky camera, but for some reason this one can really test my patience.

Losing your bloodstain (and therefore all your souls) when you log out. That fucking sucks. I lost 17k because I thought I would just resume it after dinner but nope. Never doing that again.

You can always farm blood echoes. It's better than losing a bunch of humanity like in dark souls

I hate the scrawny squdface buggers that drain away my Insite.

How fast the "slow poison" deals damage (makes me rather scared to find out about fast poison)

The frame rate drops when you summon people.

How little damage the guns do. These types of period weapons did fire 50caliber lead balls normally.

How much damage npc hunters do in comparison to how much damage you can deal to them.

That your ability to summon help is tired to a consumable resource.

The extreme lack to the variety of equipment.

The forced playstile by removing shields and guns only good for countering.

I wish there was a safe mode like Fable where you can't hit NPCs unless you disable it. Every time I speak with the doll to level up, I'm afraid I'd press the triggers by mistake and attack her.

@militantfreudian: Haha, me too. I always equip the pebble or the bell incase I accidentally molotov her.

Frenzy annoys me. The only status effect that can only be cured or results in a big loss of life. Of course there is a couple of heavy frenzy areas near the end.

@probablytuna said:

I actually went entered one of the areas in the final tombstone for the first time in about two or three days, and a blood stain that I left there was still there. Got 30k back. The odd thing is I definitely died a number of times between back then and today.

The lack of build variety, FPS drops when PVP/co-op, no red sign soapstone equivalent, the hunter enemies having fucking unlimited ammo and spamming their god damn gun, not being able to quick travel between lanterns (you have to go back to the hunter's dream and then pick a lantern. Why can't I just travel from the lantern I used in the world? It's just another shitty extra load time), sometimes rolling and getting stuck into walls, and having to farm for blood vials. I thought the Estus system in Dark Souls 1 was perfect, farming for healing items really just feels like a pointless, boring timesink, especially with these load times. I'm probably missing something else.

And not related to my game, but my DS4 analog stick is fucking up, when I point it in a very specific direction, my character will walk rather than run, and that has led to a lot of annoyances in this game. I'm not too fond of the idea of having to spend 60 bucks on a new controller to replace a controller I've hardly ever used. The launch DS4s just seem to have really shitty build quality.

@turambar: You're incredibly lucky then! I still don't understand if the whole "losing bloodstains forever if you log out" thing is intentional or a bug.

@fuzzy_dunlop: I'm 50/50 on the blood vials thing. On the one hand, I can see the logic of it - it means that there is an incentive to try and beat bosses in one go, instead of just throwing yourself at it over and over (I suppose this was partly the logic of reducing your HP pool in DS2), which is what I tended to do in Dark Souls. So I think it is a smart and effective way of driving certain behaviours in players.

On the other hand, I'm still pretty poor at the game and find myself having to throw myself at bosses again and again, so I'm finding it a bit rebarbative. It's definitely a bummer when you deplete your stockpile on a boss and have to go back to the mobs to grind out vials. In a weird way it makes individual play sessions feel weirdly MMO-ish, where you grind out some materials for your boss run.

My number one is having to go to Hunter's Dream to do just about anything, even absent load times. Changing runes, changing blood gems. Like, runes are basically rings, but you have to go to Hunter's dream to change them. If you want to use a different weapon for one particular situation or enemy, you're basically forced to go back to Hunter's Dream because without blood gems, your weapon is like half as effective as it could be.

Also I'd prefer if Blood Vials were just, 20 per spawn, here you go. And you should be able to restock at a lamp without going back to the Dream (see previous point).

Basically, all my gripes with the game are metagame things. The actual gameplay mechanics are amazing and my favorite of any FromSoft game.

Camera, camera, camera.

The game didn't click for me until I switched from the axe to the saw cleaver. I kind of wish they had made that your default weapon from the start, rather than giving you a choice. I can deal with the load times; they give me a chance to stretch and walk around. But the camera during boss fights has been atrocious.

Not being able to teleport to other areas using lamps, forcing you to load up hunters dreams, just so you can load up another area.

Also needing 10 insight to buy anything at the insight vendor is pretty stupid.

I am nearing the end of the game with my second character. Going to do a bunch more Chalice dungeons and I have a solid idea for a third build, but... after that there is nothing left? There is so few stuff in the game, there is nothing left after this third character. Which doesn't hold true with the thread title, because that is a massive disappointment. I have finished DSII with 21(!) unique builds and I still get ideas for different ones. I honestly can't go further than 3 in this game. It is one of the reasons why I think this is a great game in its own right, but the weakest Souls game ever made.

This also. When I'm only Blood Vial farming, I will actually just let myself be killed because it is quicker to repopulate the world than going back to the lamp, Hunter's Dream and then back to the same lamp again.

@zevvion: I also kill myself when farming for this very same reason. In addition I completely agree about the build variety. The only other build I can think of is one using the arcane magics which are kind of limited compared to previous games. Now that I have some gems which turned my str weapons into skill based one I really don't feel the need to even make a str build to see what that would be like. There is no endurance management because you have no light vs. heavy armor trade-off so.. yah.. it's kinda basic in terms of builds. Completely agree that this was a lateral move for them and not an evolutionary step for the series. Even the guns are a step back in a way. When you think about it guns are basically kite shields that can't actually block.

Also hilarious that the one item I got that lets you teleport back to lanters makes you sacrifice all your echos for doing so.

Dying to a boss that you should of easily killed because of bad camera angles or getting caught on the geometry is very annoying. This has happened in way to many boss fights and the first 2 boss arenas are rotten with both of these problems.

The bloodstain. I've walked past it on several occasions and only later remembered when looking at my soul count that I didn't pick it up - so I had to run back and find it. It feels really hard to spot compared to previous games - I even had one point very early on where I was actively looking for it during the Cleric Beast fight and had to run back and forth across the area four or five times before I finally spotted it.

@zevvion@humanity Definitely agreed with both of you. Let me repopulate the area at lamps! Even if it's an optional button. I just farm my echoes and materials, then die and pick it back up because it saves having to head to the Dream and back. Seems like an odd change. (Although to your last point @humanity if you mean the Hunter's Mark that was the same in the other games. There's a consumable "Bold" version which doesn't take away your echoes. Much like the Darksign and Homeward Bones in Dark Souls.)

@humanity: I'm am finishing up with my arcane build and there is actually a good reason to do a Bloodtinge one for guns and the Chikage, but other than that, there is just nothing in here. It's really weird, but I'm already looking forward to Scholar of the First Sin, which is insane that I'm more excited about a re-release of a previous Souls game with changes than continuing to play the newest one.

@y2ken: I was specifically referencing the one you get for finishing Eileens questline. Good to know there is a better version out there although, for how specific her whole sequencing is and how super annoying fighting other hunters is in this game I was kind of hoping for something more.

The camera. A major annoyance.

I have issues where some times I hit the button to heal, and I just don't. Also the not being able to warp between lamps feels like a bad design choice. You should get an item that lets you do that at a certain point I think.

1. The camera

2. No way to compare what's in the shop to what I have equipped.

3. Not being able to fast travel between lamps.

4. Not binding at a lamp just by touching it. This has resulted in some quite lengthy corpse runs when I forget to go back to the Hunter's Dream first.

5. How the game auto-restocks vials and bullets on re-spawn, but not other consumables like Molotovs, even if you have some in storage.

The first two annoy me the most because they've been problems for the entire series, and by the fourth iteration I think we should fairly expected them to have been resolved by now.

Technically, you don't need to die or return to the Hunter's Dream to get enemies to re-spawn. They seem to be on a timer/proximity based system instead. I've definitely had instances of areas repopulating without me having to do anything, although it seems to take awhile or a fair distance for it to happen, so it might not be ideal for farming purposes.

The Hunter's Mark that teleports you at the cost of all blood echos is something you start the game with. You get the Hunter's Rune for completing Eileen's quest line, which is essentially a covenant on top being a stamina regen boost.

The "Ahh Kos, or some say Kosm" boss fight

@lawgamer: The camera, really, REALLY, shouldn't be an issue anymore, to the point where I think they're intentionally leaving it that way which would be insane. I mean otherwise, are they really that incompetent or so dense as to not know it's bad? When they had playtesters do the Cleric Beast fight and that camera was completely clipping outside the bridge, going nuts, what was their reaction to that? I can only assume it must have been like "ahh fuck, we already have this really intricate level layout, and the camera is what it is.." and then some intern probably lost it and started shouting "I kept telling everyone that bridge was too narrow I TOLD EVERYONE!!!"

@turambar: for whatever reason I never noticed the hunters mark in my inventory until I beat that part and got that rune, so I thought that was part of it. Funny thing about the faster stamina regen is that your stamina already regens really, really quickly. Blades of Mercy though.. so far, for PVE anyway.. kinda disappointing.

I left a note behind the pig monster in the sewers that says "reeks of evil eye" and no one has rated it. Also, I keep knocking on doors but no one wants to go to the chapel or clinic. They just tell me to fuck off into the night.

My friend died on a boss with 80k on him and signed off to try again later since he didn't know about that bug. He was very dismayed to find no bloodstain when he got back on, but he did end up beating the boss and just figured it was gone. About 15 minutes later he found his bloodstain, with 80k souls on it, in the next area of the game. An area he had never even been before.

The coop/pvp system they implemented is so much worse than the soapstones in previous games. Not sure if its just my luck, but when trying to help other people beat bosses it takes forever ringing that bell as opposed to everyone's soapstones being outside the boss door. Also the chalice dungeons sounded like the biggest coop section of the game but for me to join a friend i have to input some 10 character code, get into the dungeon, and then ring the bell to be summoned. The part advertised as coop is more of a hassle to do than the regular game. Also obviously the story is always sparse in these games, but there not being any unique weapons or boss souls makes this one have even less than normal.

That it's not going to have even half the life span Dark Souls had.

Oh, yeah. Not being able to repopulate enemies at lanterns, do stuff like repair your weapons, insert blood gems, etc at lanterns, or set one that's already activated as your spawn point without heading back to the dream is also really shitty on top of what I mentioned earlier. Lanterns/bonfires in this game are way worse than DaS 1 and 2. If these are deliberate design decisions, I can't say they're very good ones. They just add a small, unnecessary amount of tedium and wasted time. Don't get me wrong, I'm still loving the game a lot, but it does feel like a step back in a few small ways from the Souls games.

Load times (yes I know the OP mentioned that was obvious but they're bad). That, from what I'm hearing From is incapable of doing a good second half of a game. Not sure why that is. All the Demons Souls influences, which drag the game down.

The Axe is god damn amazing though.

Never really knowing what i'm supposed to do next. It's not as bad as dark souls but at certain points I have know idea where i'm supposed to go or what i'm supposed to do. Also some of the levels feel too "samey" and i get lost running round because all the buildings and paths look the same. It's better than the other games, I've gotten way farther than any of those. I kept losing interest in souls games because of the lack of purpose and direction, dying isn't so bad but when your not even sure your going the right way it kinda sucks more.

You just have to spin to win!

I actually think Demon's probably has the strongest second half out of all the Souls games, mostly because there is no second half. You complete each world, archstone by archstone, and you steadily make progress to the final boss. Everything since then has gotten a little too enigmatic for my tastes. I know Soul fans love all the ambiguous mystery in these games but I honestly think if they peeled back a layer or two of complete obscurity it would really help out. That door that suddenly opens up in Cathedral Ward after defeating a boss? I mean, sure you eventually notice it but why the run-around? All those events where you need to meet several seemingly unrelated conditions and then go to a very specific area are needlessly unclear.

Mainly I just wanted to agree that the camera and very often the lock-on are still terrible. Still. Four games-in and we're still struggling to see what the hell is happening when fighting large creature bosses. I just fought Paarl and it's amazing that the lock-on point is his head when I'm trying to slash his feet. It's a good thing I was severely over-leveled for that fight otherwise I would've been really upset.

@humanity: Ironically the trick to easily killing most enemies and bosses is to not use the lock on at all. You'll in general move much faster running or walking to the left instead of strafing with a lock on. Also it allows you to get into some "pocket" spots from rolling without lock on. This game is going to have one of those slow spirals where everyone is hot on it for the first month or two, then no one is even going to be talking about it. I missed the entire DSII hate when that game came out, but I played the hell out of it. Why was it so bad? It was basically just DS1 with more in it right? I typically don't even frequent forums on a series I love, but I had to with Bloodborne. I felt as though FROM dropped the ball hard and it's getting a free pass because of its fantastic visuals, combat, and because the Souls series is now finally becoming popular enough for major websites to give it a look. Everything is about $$$

The worst part about that door in the cathedral is that your wheelchair buddy back in the Hunter's Dream tells you to "Ascend to Oedon Chapel", which I thought meant I was supposed to go through that door and ascend that spire. I don't even know where I was intended to go at that point, I just ended up buying that 10k Key from the messengers to continue.

I also went back to do Paarl and he was a cakewalk without the lock-on at all. Most people will even tell you that fight is the worst use of the lock-on, since he' so fast and your camera will be all over the damn place when you try to get close to him.

I think a lot of the boss arenas were not designed well, be it due to bad geometry, bad camera angles, and of course the horrible lock on. I also think some of the boss designs are kind of bad, and what I mean by that is some of the bigger bosses that have intense detail make it hard to know when they are attacking. Vicar and Cel Queen are two that come to mind, both of which it's hard to know when some attacks are coming, due to fur or tentacles moving around like crazy after a swing, and it also makes dodging way harder. You dodge 95% of the attack, but as the boss recovers from the animation, one random tentacle that wasn't even used for the attack swings back into place and smacks you for 80% of your life, and also knocks your ass on the ground.

And good god, fighting those bosses again in Chalices is THE WORST. The chalice boss arenas DO NOT fit some of the things they put in there.

I'm also still god awful with the visceral attacks, I can't figure them out for the life of me. But I guess that's more on me then the game. Oh well, I'm almost done with NG+ so I don't really need to learn that skill anyway, it seems. Yay Cannon!

I beat the phalanx in demon souls, then quit. Played 2-3 hours of DS, quit. I beat DS2 and was well into a NG+ when I stopped playing. I was excited to beat bloodborne and jump back in. But it seems the variety is lacking. I'm with most people and thinking of buying the remaster of DS2 to try a different build and to see the DLC.

-Lack of weapon and armor variety

-Lack of build variety and customization

-Lack of covenants

-Crappy PvP

-Tying all health recovery to consumable items, which forces me to farm pretty much every time I find a boss.

-Lack of NPCs/vendors that will actually speak to you

Grinding, also the NPC stuff is very confusing. I just got to the Cainhurst convenant and now I need to grind to get all of the items it gave me, as well as grind to get 15 arcane to use those power up items. Ugh. Not to mention grinding for vials and bullets. Made Logarious such a slog. Makes me wish I could use the duping bug still.

The worst part is how going to lamps alone does not re spawn enemies. It's really so frustrating and makes it tough to want to pick up the game as much. Sucks because I couldn't put down the last 3 games.

Also yeah I have gotten caught on so much random geometry because the devs are obsessed with those tiny little gravestones sticking out of the ground in every inch of the game world, ugh. The camera on some bosses like Amygdala is kind of atrocious and really disorienting.

@thehuntsmen5434: people might go cold on it because apart from exploring some secrets there just isn't a huge build variety to be had. When I think of playing this game with another character I see myself basically using the same hunter outfit from the first area and using one of the str weapons to see what it's like to stagger enemies every 3 hits. Apart from that ehhh.. I mean, what else am I gonna change up? It's kind of silly to try and make an "arcane build" when magic items are introduced at about the midway point and it's mostly buffs. 25 arcane so I can do lightning AoE a few times? Ehh..

@teddie: It's just like the whole ring the two bells situation from DS1. The problem I have with not using lock-on is that I will often whiff or completely miss things right in front of me which sucks. I agree that it seems for the most part all the bosses are terrible to fight with lock-on and I've heard the roll has more invincibility frames than the dash. Man the whole thing is a mess really, they should have gotten this stuff sorted by now. Honestly they sort of already did sort it in DS2 where you could target legs and stuff - I've been told you can target body parts on "some" bosses in Bloodborne but I'm nearing the end and I've yet to experience this.

I just cannot imagine their thought process on having these long load times, but not letting you repopulate the world without going to the Hunters Dream, but having all the grinding in vials/bullets, souls for leveling up, as well as souls for buying new weapons/gear. Good lord is it annoying. Sooooo much load times. It doesn't even matter if the loads were 2 seconds, still slower than Dark Souls 1 & 2's respawning system.

@humanity: darkbeast paal has one on his head and chest. Still a bad lock on, but its there.

@humanity: Some of the larger bosses will have a head target and a body target (Paarl and Cleric Beast for example), but there's no leg targeting on any bosses so it's not great anyway (I just fought an optional boss with a head/body target, and it was so tall that if you were targeting the head and right in front of it, the camera just spazzes out and spins in circles, jumps up and down, etc.).

Maybe if the B-Team picks up Bloodborne like they did Dark Souls, we'll get a better playing game, at the cost of world/level design.

ever since demon's souls i've had a problem with the fact that the lock-on-target and centre-camera functions are controlled by the same button.

am i the only idiot who conjures up absolute chaos at the worst possible times because of this?

I was waiting for a dude to come around the corner, but my character had his back to the corner. So every time I tried to lock on before the enemy appeared, the camera would swing 180º around to the other direction.

@humanity: yes, this is my chief complaint. Having to go back to hunters dream to go to another area. 2 brutal load times instead of one.

My other issue is that only blood and bullets auto replenish from your stock. It's irritating to have to go back to hunters dream to get more Molotovs out of storage.

I recently lost nearly a million blood echoes due to my stain failing to show up anywhere near where I died, and after killing every single fucking monster in the area. My stain was nowhere to be found. I didn't log out or anything. >=o|

Having to go back to Hunter's Dream just to travel somewhere else has really tested my patience. Fuck those loading screens!

Lack of weapons and play styles. It doesn't matter what your character background is: it all plays out the same no matter what.

Inability to stock as much as I want and having to go back to Hunter's Dream to replenish my inventory.

PvP is straight up shitty. I hate how it's set up. After ringing the Sinister Bell, I run around in almost every zone where I know there is heavy traffic. Not a single fucking summon into my world or otherwise. I have been invaded only two times in 45+ hours. The first time I got stuck between a wall and tombstone. I couldn't move. My opponent was apologetic about it and didn't really want to win that way. I told him to do it since I couldn't do anything. The other time, I fast poisoned the poor fellow and chucked a Numbing Mist on him to keep him from healing.

Connecting to others is terrible. Small bell or that primary one don't make a difference anymore. I tried running around on a lower level alt and couldn't find anybody.

The world itself feels desolate and lacking in personality. I love the scenery, though!

Then there is that zone with all the snakes. I FUCKING HATE SNAKES!

I don't know if this is just me, but I've played a lot of souls games (Probably around 300-400 hours in each game). But I've never been so frustrated with the enemy tracking as I am with Bloodborne, never have I experienced enemies being better at defying both physics and gravity mid air to home in on your character mid swing. Enemies are able to turn 180 degrees mid swing and just stomp you in the face from impossible angles, which is ever more infuriating when they one shot you in higher tier chalice dungeons or other end game content.

Never have I felt that any of the souls games have been cheap and I can usually only blame myself for any of my misfortune, but in Bloodborne I get seriously frustrated some times. And this is due to the fact that it feels cheap when the game doesn't follow the same set of rules as you do. (I guess this could tie into the fact that enemy hunters have unlimited ammo and stamina as well, although this is easily handled while defying the laws of gravity is something completely different).

Am I crazy or has any of you guys felt this at times as well?

@finalcell: During my play of this game i noticed that the hit box is messed up (see the video below). Also i noticed that the animation of ai enemies have its share of bugs sometimes they skip animation frames and sometimes the animation itself doesn't feel logical enough.