Oh and a second thing , which again is common in the genre. Animations that lock you in, its particularly noticeable on the Warwolf class where I quite often die because I perform a move and then cant do anything until its animation has finished, resulting in me getting hit whilst the animation is ongoing.
Lords of the Fallen
- Thread starter Tombstone
- Start date
That's pretty understandable given the genre if you think about it. If you get hit mid-animation, it means you miscalculated and made a mistake. You don't get to cancel out of animations in these games for free, if you could you'd literally have a get out of jail free card on you all the time. You attack at a wrong time or overextend, you get punished for it. It has always been like that, just a part of the mechanics.
Fighting games are the same for the most part, for example.
Yeah I get why the genre does it, its a false difficulty. Instead of simply improving AI or the inherit abilities of the mob, you make it so that if theres an animation going on the player cant do anything to break the animation. The player cant feint with a move and then reverse the move into another attack in the way that a real life swordsman can because they are locked into completing the entire original move animation first.
So I see why the games do it, its just something I'd prefer not to see (would rather that the AI is improved or that the mobs difficulty is down to clever use of heals and consumables by the mobs - but we arent quite at that level of gaming AI yet, mobs are still heavily scripted rather than intelligently adaptable)
Isnt spoiling my fun with the game though, got 11 characters on the go and have played 22 hours so far since it released on Friday morning
it would be kinda funny if they let you animation cancel but you paid the price in stamina for doing it. Basically use stamina to put inertia in to your weapon, then depending on the part of the swing you're at use a percentage of stamina to cancel. It would completely wreck button mashers though as they keep animation cancelling swings in to other swings. The enemy would be allowed to do the same though or it's not fair so it's just massively upped the difficulty of judging when it is and isn't safe to attack
Skyrim in VR basically allowed unlimited animation cancelling as huge 2h 20kg swords acted like lightsaber tracking the hand controller. You could have 10 x the DPS and also block mid stroke completely ruining any balance as the AI obeyed the original rules
Skyrim in VR basically allowed unlimited animation cancelling as huge 2h 20kg swords acted like lightsaber tracking the hand controller. You could have 10 x the DPS and also block mid stroke completely ruining any balance as the AI obeyed the original rules
Yeah I get why the genre does it, its a false difficulty. Instead of simply improving AI or the inherit abilities of the mob, you make it so that if theres an animation going on the player cant do anything to break the animation. The player cant feint with a move and then reverse the move into another attack in the way that a real life swordsman can because they are locked into completing the entire original move animation first.
So I see why the games do it, its just something I'd prefer not to see (would rather that the AI is improved or that the mobs difficulty is down to clever use of heals and consumables by the mobs - but we arent quite at that level of gaming AI yet, mobs are still heavily scripted rather than intelligently adaptable)
Isnt spoiling my fun with the game though, got 11 characters on the go and have played 22 hours so far since it released on Friday morning
Can't agree it's false difficulty. There are other things these games have that can very well be considered false difficulty and other stuff they could do better but locking you into animations isn't one of them.
There's no way it could work like you say in games that literally revolve around pattern reading and timing attacks. There has to be a cut-off point when it comes to what the player can do movement-wise.
Talking about real swordsmen, there's also a cut-off point in real life when it comes to feinting with weapons that are heavier than you think they are, especially if there was a scenario that'd put you against mindless monsters that just want to kill you but that's beside the point
It's mutually exclusive and would be like doing a move in a fighting game and always being able to cancel it midway because you see it's going to be blocked to not get punished for it. Concessions have to be made somewhere. You could argue it's something you wouldn't like to see but it's there to stay because it's mechanically way more sensible to have it this way.
Instead, you get most mixups via positioning and make the opponent think you'll attack, the same as you use positioning, pattern reading and moving around to bait attacks in souls and, for example, time your movement to circle the enemy and get a backstab.
Sekiro has one of the best combat systems ever that makes you feel like having an actual duel and is also one of the fairest challenges but it doesn't let you cancel stuff either because it'd break the rhythmic rock-paper-scissors nature of the game.
It could maybe work in the way Dan proposes by imposing a heavy stamina penalty or something.
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That would make quite a lot of sense actually yeah, stamina usage for having to adjust your body rapidly, I'd be up for that.
I describe it as a false difficulty because its a mechanic forced onto the player in order to make a fight more difficult, in my definitions, real difficulty is improved AI, mobs using consumables and heals and mobs not having to follow a script anything which mechanicly restricts the player is a false difficulty imposed to counterbalance the lack of the aforementioned AI/Consumable/adaptations, how often do we see guides where it says X always swings her sword three times, then is open to a hit and then she will do an aerial attack, now imagine how much better that would be if X reacted to the fight and your attacks and didnt always swing the sword 3 times, pause and then do an aerial attack. What about if sometimes she swung her sword 1 time and then did an aerial attack, or swung it twice, didnt pause, immediately did an aerial attack and then swung the sword a 3rd time - that would be real difficulty. Sadly, as I say, we arent yet at the point of adaptive AI, so instead the bosses have these scripted set move patterns, which once learned, can be beaten by a player almost every time, with any class. Take the first boss in this, Pieta, once I learned her patterns I was able to beat her first time with every class. I'd like to see the challenge of adaptive, unpredictable AI but we arent yet there.....but we will be at some point in the future, once AI develops more, we'll get mobs in games which can think , move and react like a human and that unpredictability will make for some truly challenging fights.
Or in summary, I'm still waiting on that time in gaming where I get my Jurassic Park - "Clever Girl" moment, where I can acknowledge that the enemy mob has out-thought me
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Soldato
Was saying to my friend the other day, AI that can adapt to you will definitely up the ante, the thing to remember though is that boss fights are generally you being on the back foot in terms of health/damage, so learning the moves and being able to take advantage of the gaps is what kind of makes them possible, would probably have to scale down boss damage and hp if they were too smart.
You got a glimpse of that in ER already when some bosses could cancel combos midstring and respond with a different move with you having no ability to tell. In Sekiro, for example, they also can but it's more sensible because you can react.
Needless to say, it wasn't too well received for obvious reasons, some of which I already pointed out.
Adaptable AI in the way you describe makes sense only when you can react to the AI performing those branching moves, and that makes it nothing else than additional patterns to read. If you can't react to them - there you have your false difficulty. Enemy doing things that you can't do anything about except guess and hope for the best.
Just like bosses reading your inputs in ER to punish you for healing which is a way better example of false difficulty than not being able to cancel your attacks because you still have control of when you attack and the mistake's on you. Unfortunately, every game imposes rules by which you play to keep things simpler and it's not going to change anytime soon.
EDIT: And no, that wouldn't be "real" difficulty. It would be pure guesswork and a great example of false difficulty.
The only way you can have consistent difficulty in such games is relying on reactable patterns to test one's reflexes, pattern reading and decision making under stress. If your enemies can switch those patterns on the fly in unpredictable and unreactable ways, you're just guessing and either being lucky or dying for it. This maybe makes it more realistic but is also completely nonsensical for these games.
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not sure I'd like to play a souls like with every mob having terminator AI 
How would you even be able to balance it with the different abilities us humans have? maybe it keeps a consistent difficulty to take you down to a sliver of health just before the next bonfire?
How would you even be able to balance it with the different abilities us humans have? maybe it keeps a consistent difficulty to take you down to a sliver of health just before the next bonfire?
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The way I see it, with the unpredictability and better AI, is that it would make it more like fighting against other humans - who arent scripted like current enemies - but without the annoyance of having to deal with the idiocy of other humans personalitiesnot sure I'd like to play a souls like with every mob having terminator AI
How would you even be able to balance it with the different abilities us humans have? maybe it keeps a consistent difficulty to take you down to a sliver of health just before the next bonfire?
Soldato
I really like how they make the drops relate to the actual gear the enemies have, I can't really remember many other games that do this unless it's generic "enemy was using an AK47 so the drop is an AK47".
I've still not really found anything straight up better than this stupid pin head helm, which I got from the pin-head enemies, but I'm kind of loving it anyway. It's really heavy but I'm rolling a lot of strength, vita, endurance so I can equip it and stay in the medium bracket still.
I've still not really found anything straight up better than this stupid pin head helm, which I got from the pin-head enemies, but I'm kind of loving it anyway. It's really heavy but I'm rolling a lot of strength, vita, endurance so I can equip it and stay in the medium bracket still.
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Associate
I really want to play this on K&M but I'm find it slower if i have to hit V to run and then F to jump, plus when I want to use the light having to bring the little pinky back to CRTL feels a little stretch
So tonight i shall be using a controller
So tonight i shall be using a controller
Soldato
This kind of game I find much better on controller.
FPS and strategy and stuff, KB+M is best for me.
FPS and strategy and stuff, KB+M is best for me.
I set the jump to be a thumb button on my mouse, makes jumping with a K&M easyI really want to play this on K&M but I'm find it slower if i have to hit V to run and then F to jump, plus when I want to use the light having to bring the little pinky back to CRTL feels a little stretch
So tonight i shall be using a controller
- The issue also is checkpoints, they are a mess. Since the dark soul days there are always checkpoints outside / near boss rooms, then once you killed the boss you have a checkpoint in that area. They tried to combat these with seeds however they disappear once you use it another area and secondly you run out of seeds. I feel they purposely done this to make the game longer but at a sacrifice of just being tedious.
- Elden Ring checkpoints are perfect and you can teleport to anyone of them once found, unfortunately in lords of the fallen you can only teleport to the recent seed that has been placed.
- Bosses are ok, but some are just utter garbage i have always felt it should be 1v1 and if you lose fair game and learning the dodges. Unfortunately some bosses have NPC's that constantly spawn to me that's a massive no no, 3 bosses from what i have encountered have this mechanic and it gets tedious after a while.
- Map/ Level design, this is one thing well sort of missing. Having been building my own L4D2 Map one thing you learn is that there should be a clear path for the player to know where to go but enough checkpoints so the player is not tired out, but not too much to constraint them. Dark Souls 3 does this perfectly unfortunately in lords of fallen you go back to area's you have been confused what to do, the journal is as good as chocolate teapot. For example i had to find the bell tower area i spent hours teleporting to different area's and the door was pretty much hidden by the checkpoint. Level detail is amazing but ruined by trying to be like elden ring, the difference with elden ring is that the Map was amazing you can see where you have been, area's undiscovered and checkpoints where a many and not limited by seeds.
- Unfortunately the camera lock is pretty bad, but then all dark souls had this issue. Along with silly mario bro's platform jumping Doom Eternal done this and it gets annoying fast, especially when NPC's are shooting at the same time.
I'm still very much enjoying it, even with 11 characters on the go, there's only one thing left now thats still bothering me (I've gotten over the other issues now) , is the target lock is cack. As it so often is in these games, its just dump. Can be stood on a platform, target is right in front of me, click to lock on and it locks onto something 60m away in a different direction instead of whats right in front of me. I've died A LOT because of the lock on. Aside from that issue though, having a blast with the game, played 39 hours now so far according to Steam, which given that it released 4 days ago is pretty good
Ive played a few hours and while this games visual design is great i am not enjoying it. Take the first boss pieta as an example, she has a very limited moveset thats easy to read however her animations feel very rigid and awkward. The attacks feel like they have no weight to them, the lack of impact with weak visual feedback and lacklustre audio queues doesnt help, I also feel locked into the attack animations a lot and the time which i dont in other souls games. The launching 4 metres forward on a light attack is definately an annoyance especially near ledges and the dark sousl 1 jump mechanic is infuriating when theres platforming sections.
Ive played a lot of all of the souls games/sekiro and something about this game just feels off.
Ive played a lot of all of the souls games/sekiro and something about this game just feels off.