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NONLINEARITY BEING USED TO TEMPER HIGH DIFFICULTY
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LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
LockeZ
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ClosePlaying Dark Souls 3 and contrasting it to Dark Souls 1, it occured to me that the difficulty in DS3 was far more frustrating because of how linear the game is. In Dark Souls 1, unless you're nearly at the end of the game, you almost always have five or six different places you could potentially go at the moment. When you run into something exceptionally difficult, this means you have the option to go back and take a different route instead. You'll end up doing almost everything eventually - a big part of the game is exploring every nook and cranny - but every dungeon has multiple exits and many of them have multiple entrances, so you have a lot of control over what order you do everything in (without having complete control).
In Dark Souls 3, you usually only have one place you can go. The level design is still really good and you still feel like you're exploring within each dungeon. But 90% of the time, you only do one dungeon at a time, and that dungeon only has one entrance and one exit. If there's a boss, you can't do anything else until you beat it, except maybe look around for treasures you missed. If there's a tough set of enemies in your way, you can't do anything else until you beat them, except maybe look around for treasures you missed. Almost every single challenge blocks the entire rest of the game behind it.
I get exhausted a lot faster in Dark Souls 3. I suppose I was "taking the game at my own pace" in Dark Souls 1. The linearity translates into exhaustion for me, somehow. I don't know how common this phenomenon is for players, though.
Although the game is meant to be very difficult, and the nonlinearity technically makes it easier (because you can wait to do the things you keep failing at until your character is stronger), I don't feel like the nonlinearity interferes with the my sense of satisfaction and victory when I win. In fact, I think it actually increases it, because when I give up on a boss and come back later, I've built it up in my mind to be a gigantic challenge, so it's much more satisfying to win.
I dunno if I really have a question, but I want to hear other people talk about this. I'm wondering if people have used this in interesting ways, or if there's anyone who sees a major upside to this type of linearity in the context of a difficult game about overcoming challenges.
In Dark Souls 3, you usually only have one place you can go. The level design is still really good and you still feel like you're exploring within each dungeon. But 90% of the time, you only do one dungeon at a time, and that dungeon only has one entrance and one exit. If there's a boss, you can't do anything else until you beat it, except maybe look around for treasures you missed. If there's a tough set of enemies in your way, you can't do anything else until you beat them, except maybe look around for treasures you missed. Almost every single challenge blocks the entire rest of the game behind it.
I get exhausted a lot faster in Dark Souls 3. I suppose I was "taking the game at my own pace" in Dark Souls 1. The linearity translates into exhaustion for me, somehow. I don't know how common this phenomenon is for players, though.
Although the game is meant to be very difficult, and the nonlinearity technically makes it easier (because you can wait to do the things you keep failing at until your character is stronger), I don't feel like the nonlinearity interferes with the my sense of satisfaction and victory when I win. In fact, I think it actually increases it, because when I give up on a boss and come back later, I've built it up in my mind to be a gigantic challenge, so it's much more satisfying to win.
I dunno if I really have a question, but I want to hear other people talk about this. I'm wondering if people have used this in interesting ways, or if there's anyone who sees a major upside to this type of linearity in the context of a difficult game about overcoming challenges.
Absolutely right. With most games, if I run into a spot that is frustratingly hard, I stop what I'm doing and do something else. If I can do that something else in-game, then there's no reason for me to stop playing the game. On other hand, if I have no choice but to face this monster, right this second, then I will put the game down and play another game, or read a book, or do some gam mak. When this happens, the possibility that I will pick the game back up extremely slim. I almost never do. It's not because I don't want to; it's because I've lost interest and really just feel like playing another game. If you've bought the game, you're the one who's really out of luck, on that count, but what if this happens with MMORPGs?
I was an avid Drakensang Online player for awhile. The gameplay was great. The game was fun. Sure it was a Warcraft ripoff, but it was a free Warcraft ripoff, and it was really good about rewarding players. Currency that you had to actually buy was also a relatively common enemy drop. True, what you could buy with it was really expensive, but if you saved up what you collected, then there was no reason you couldn't use the pay features for free. Even now, I'll give the game a glowing review, even though I ran into a balance problem that ultimately made me lose interest.
By the time you hit level 20 in Drakensang, you start running into bosses that you can't beat at any less than level 30. Now, most of these bosses are optional, but on the main story path, you start going into areas that you really need to be at level 30 to progress on. None of this is a problem. Except. If you grind the hardest enemies with the highest XP for hours at a time per day, it will still take you as much as 3 days to level up once. The XP curve is that fucking steep. I reached this area of the game, I played for two weeks, leveled up four times, and on the main story path, I was still facing enemies capable of killing me in four or five hits in rapid succession. One on one, I could take them, but the way combat is designed, you can't go through an area without being swarmed at least once.
So, up until level 20, the game was nicely balanced. Leveling up always took a long time, but you could at least finish quest after quest after quest and advance the story without having to grind. Come level 20, I spent 2 weeks accomplishing absolutely nothing. I wouldn't have spent that long on it if I hadn't liked the game so much. I actually lost patience a lot sooner than that. But that is essentially the problem I ran into. I was in a really hard area. I could have gone back, but enemies in earlier areas were so ridiculously easy and provided such little XP that it was a waste of time. Going back, it could have taken a week per level. So, I put the game down and never came back to it.
I was an avid Drakensang Online player for awhile. The gameplay was great. The game was fun. Sure it was a Warcraft ripoff, but it was a free Warcraft ripoff, and it was really good about rewarding players. Currency that you had to actually buy was also a relatively common enemy drop. True, what you could buy with it was really expensive, but if you saved up what you collected, then there was no reason you couldn't use the pay features for free. Even now, I'll give the game a glowing review, even though I ran into a balance problem that ultimately made me lose interest.
By the time you hit level 20 in Drakensang, you start running into bosses that you can't beat at any less than level 30. Now, most of these bosses are optional, but on the main story path, you start going into areas that you really need to be at level 30 to progress on. None of this is a problem. Except. If you grind the hardest enemies with the highest XP for hours at a time per day, it will still take you as much as 3 days to level up once. The XP curve is that fucking steep. I reached this area of the game, I played for two weeks, leveled up four times, and on the main story path, I was still facing enemies capable of killing me in four or five hits in rapid succession. One on one, I could take them, but the way combat is designed, you can't go through an area without being swarmed at least once.
So, up until level 20, the game was nicely balanced. Leveling up always took a long time, but you could at least finish quest after quest after quest and advance the story without having to grind. Come level 20, I spent 2 weeks accomplishing absolutely nothing. I wouldn't have spent that long on it if I hadn't liked the game so much. I actually lost patience a lot sooner than that. But that is essentially the problem I ran into. I was in a really hard area. I could have gone back, but enemies in earlier areas were so ridiculously easy and provided such little XP that it was a waste of time. Going back, it could have taken a week per level. So, I put the game down and never came back to it.
psy_wombats
13315
You see this a lot as a roguelike design element. It's especially effective when combined with risk reward. IE at the start of the game, new players can visit more forgiving locations to stock up on supplies, get used to the game, etc. Then there are dangerous locations available that also have much better gear, so advanced or confident players can skip right to the good stuff if they want. Plus it plays nicely with time-based scoring.
It does take a little more creativity to construct a narrative like this though.
It does take a little more creativity to construct a narrative like this though.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Oh yeah, I suppose one of the reasons Dark Souls can get away with that kind of "do stuff in any order" setup so flawlessly is that it has no narrative. You have one goal, which is explained at the beginning of the game, and from then on the entire game is "explore until you manage to get to the place where you can do your goal."
If I'm being cynical, I could say this is good reason not to have plot in difficult games. But of course you can totally still have a deep plot, it just limits what kind of plot you can have, and sometimes makes the story's pacing suck.
Regarding Drakensang Online, it sounds like the biggest problem wasn't that there was only one challenge you could do, but that there were zero challenges you could do. Grinding isn't really a challenge after all. If you were the right level and were still having trouble in an area, you probably could've done PVP or something instead, which is more analogous to what I was talking about.
Someone else mentioned to me that from the player's perspective, this type of nonlinearity is largely obsolete today due to the large number of free games out there. Instead of going and doing something else in the game, players can just go do something else in a different game. But of course from a developer's perspective, I'd prefer they keep playing and enjoying my game.
If I'm being cynical, I could say this is good reason not to have plot in difficult games. But of course you can totally still have a deep plot, it just limits what kind of plot you can have, and sometimes makes the story's pacing suck.
Regarding Drakensang Online, it sounds like the biggest problem wasn't that there was only one challenge you could do, but that there were zero challenges you could do. Grinding isn't really a challenge after all. If you were the right level and were still having trouble in an area, you probably could've done PVP or something instead, which is more analogous to what I was talking about.
Someone else mentioned to me that from the player's perspective, this type of nonlinearity is largely obsolete today due to the large number of free games out there. Instead of going and doing something else in the game, players can just go do something else in a different game. But of course from a developer's perspective, I'd prefer they keep playing and enjoying my game.
Crystalgate
694
author=LockeZ
Someone else mentioned to me that from the player's perspective, this type of nonlinearity is largely obsolete today due to the large number of free games out there. Instead of going and doing something else in the game, players can just go do something else in a different game. But of course from a developer's perspective, I'd prefer they keep playing and enjoying my game.
I don't think that's true. Sometimes a game does a better job of hooking me than the majority of others. If I were to abandon that game, the other game will probably be a downgrade. There's also the fact that if I was mentally invested in the former game, I would feel a loss if I abandon it, even if the replacement were to be equally engaging and fun.
welp welp i havent played dark souls yet but from what my friends say you absolutely can't say Dark Souls has "no narrative" (idk i might be saying bullshit here) rather it has a non textual or character driven one (?)
still yeah, I have nothing in particular against linearity (since when calling a game "linear" is a bad thing) but more open ended games, while more difficult to craft, offer several experiences you can't get on a linear game.
Makes me think of SaGa Frontier, except the enemies got stronger the more battles you fought so even if you come back later the enemies are stronger. But then again you'll have learnt more about the combat system, learnt new exciting abilities, have new equipment with special effects and might have the ideal setup for tackling that specific challenge.
In fact, more than once SaGa Frontier was called "the Dark Souls of turn based RPGs", and now I think I know why.
still yeah, I have nothing in particular against linearity (since when calling a game "linear" is a bad thing) but more open ended games, while more difficult to craft, offer several experiences you can't get on a linear game.
Makes me think of SaGa Frontier, except the enemies got stronger the more battles you fought so even if you come back later the enemies are stronger. But then again you'll have learnt more about the combat system, learnt new exciting abilities, have new equipment with special effects and might have the ideal setup for tackling that specific challenge.
In fact, more than once SaGa Frontier was called "the Dark Souls of turn based RPGs", and now I think I know why.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
SaGa Frontier absolutely does NOT use nonlinearity to temper its difficulty. As you said, it has enemies that scale in difficulty to match your level, which is almost the exact opposite. Plus, it has most of the same challenges in almost every zone, so if you try to leave to go do "something else" you'll actually just be doing the same thing with a different battle background most of the time. Plus, many of the places in the game are impossible to leave once you enter. And a huge amount of the nonlinearity is "choose dungeon A or dungeon B, and once you pick one you can never do the other."
It's also, uh, not a game where the player's main goal is to overcome challenges. Not really. There are a couple hard enemies in the game, but that's not what you're playing it for.
It's certainly a very nonlinear game, but it uses its nonlinearity for completely different purposes.
It's also, uh, not a game where the player's main goal is to overcome challenges. Not really. There are a couple hard enemies in the game, but that's not what you're playing it for.
It's certainly a very nonlinear game, but it uses its nonlinearity for completely different purposes.
author=JosephSeraph
welp welp i havent played dark souls yet but from what my friends say you absolutely can't say Dark Souls has "no narrative" (idk i might be saying bullshit here) rather it has a non textual or character driven one (?)
All games have some sort of narrative, and narrative doesn't have to be driven by text, but in how the game progresses and basically everything it clues you in visually. Even Pac-Man has a narrative in that regard.
More on-topic, I think you bring up a good point, LockeZ. Linearity does make things harder in the sense that it inherently limits what the player can do. Now I almost feel like I want to stay away from DS 3 xD
author=LockeZ
Someone else mentioned to me that from the player's perspective, this type of nonlinearity is largely obsolete today due to the large number of free games out there. Instead of going and doing something else in the game, players can just go do something else in a different game. But of course from a developer's perspective, I'd prefer they keep playing and enjoying my game.
Yeaaaah I doubt that is true. From my standpoint, players will quit a game to do something else either out of certain necessity (like health or sleep), or out of lack of engagement with what they are currently playing. Lack of engagement is a result of another problem with the game itself, regardless of linearity or nonlinearity. The fact that people can get enroped in games like the Witcher or Skyrim certainly means nonlinearity is viable.
thats why i left it overly explicit in the opening of the post i have never played dark souls also i have a habit of bringing SaGa Frontier with me wherever i go but still ah whatever have a good day --has nothing more to add to the discussion for hasn't really played an example of nonlinear gaming made to balance and guide difficulty--
**desperately holding back the intense want to talk about Frontier*
**desperately holding back the intense want to talk about Frontier*
The Mega Man and Mega Man X franchises spring to mind here: You start naked with eight (or six or two sets of four depending on the game) and you gotta choose one with little information. The stages can contain upgrades such as more life, a means of refilling lost life, new abilities or passives, and always a boss to punch and steal his weapon to add to your arsenal. Running out of lives takes you back to the stage select screen to try again from the start or you pick another level. Once you complete the eight / six / four+four stages you can advance to the final stage which is just a linear set of levels that you have to bang out in order so you can punch the bad guy in the face and roll credits.
It's a completely ass-backwards difficulty system for the most part. A lot of the upgrades are locked behind other upgrades, usually boss weapons. In Mega Man X 1 some stages become easier by clearing others, such as beating Ice Penguin will make the lava in Flame Mammoth's stage completely inert letting you bypass some challenges and giving access to an upgrade. The best upgrade in the game, the dash, is mandatory to get in the stage it's in but there's a 1/8 chance the player randomly picks the stage it's in and it expands the player's movement drastically. There's also the bit where each boss has a weakness to another boss' weapon in the form of a mix of taking massive damage from it or the boss AI being set to a specific state which trivializes the boss.
Generally a new player's approach is pick a stage at random, game over, and repeat a dozen times or so. Eventually they'll reach a boss and die there. Then eventually they'll reach one of the easier bosses (see the classic weak mega man boss archetypes), kill it, and finally start making progress. Now they have the weakness for at least one other boss and possible access to more upgrades. Repeat until it snowballs and the player beats the eight stages and advance to the final areas of the game. In the newer games (MMX+ and MM7) if they have trouble there they can revisit old stages and look for more upgrades or recovery consumables. Eventually you win the game because by trial and error you found out the final boss' weakness is usually the most inconvenient weapon to hit them with.
More related to Dark Souls is Demon's Souls did the same thing. You've got five worlds you need to beat (but one can't be completed until you complete another first, and you're stuck in one level in one world until you beat it). I personally liked that approach more than what they did in the DS games but for me it came down to a Mega Man like approach: Get nowhere until I find the good shit (hello 4-1 and 5-1!) and after that things move a lot more smoothly. For Demon Souls. Fuck Demon Souls.
It's a completely ass-backwards difficulty system for the most part. A lot of the upgrades are locked behind other upgrades, usually boss weapons. In Mega Man X 1 some stages become easier by clearing others, such as beating Ice Penguin will make the lava in Flame Mammoth's stage completely inert letting you bypass some challenges and giving access to an upgrade. The best upgrade in the game, the dash, is mandatory to get in the stage it's in but there's a 1/8 chance the player randomly picks the stage it's in and it expands the player's movement drastically. There's also the bit where each boss has a weakness to another boss' weapon in the form of a mix of taking massive damage from it or the boss AI being set to a specific state which trivializes the boss.
Generally a new player's approach is pick a stage at random, game over, and repeat a dozen times or so. Eventually they'll reach a boss and die there. Then eventually they'll reach one of the easier bosses (see the classic weak mega man boss archetypes), kill it, and finally start making progress. Now they have the weakness for at least one other boss and possible access to more upgrades. Repeat until it snowballs and the player beats the eight stages and advance to the final areas of the game. In the newer games (MMX+ and MM7) if they have trouble there they can revisit old stages and look for more upgrades or recovery consumables. Eventually you win the game because by trial and error you found out the final boss' weakness is usually the most inconvenient weapon to hit them with.
More related to Dark Souls is Demon's Souls did the same thing. You've got five worlds you need to beat (but one can't be completed until you complete another first, and you're stuck in one level in one world until you beat it). I personally liked that approach more than what they did in the DS games but for me it came down to a Mega Man like approach: Get nowhere until I find the good shit (hello 4-1 and 5-1!) and after that things move a lot more smoothly. For Demon Souls. Fuck Demon Souls.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Mega Man is a fantastic example of the idea I was talking about. Interesting that you seem to dislike it for all the exact same reasons I like it.
Ramshackin
1462
I'm running into exactly what you described, except it's making the game too easy.
Say you have five different things to do at level 2, and five more to do at level 8, etc. The first thing you do at level 2 is well balanced and challenging, but the next four become increasingly too easy.
Say you have five different things to do at level 2, and five more to do at level 8, etc. The first thing you do at level 2 is well balanced and challenging, but the next four become increasingly too easy.
The linearity of Dark Souls 3 you talk about reminds me of old 8bit games using stages/levels. Where you had to beat certain enemies and bosses to continue playing and couldn't do anything else.
You just kept practicing until you beat that part. In DS3 you still need to practice beating each boss. And the treasures you may have missed are like the secret bonus power-up in those older games.
The difference here being that you can save your progress and don't have to repeat everything from scratch.
The same reaction happens, where you don't feel like trying again right after you lose. Maybe tomorrow I'll give it another shot. Or you try to beat that difficult bit a few times and grow tired and try it later since you can't do anything else in the game.
It's a mind game. I feel trapped when this happens, because I was enjoying the game and now I'm forced to overcome this challend whether I want to or not to continue playing.
It's much worse and even more difficult if I have no option to make my character stronger through some sort of grind. But this stands to logic.
You just kept practicing until you beat that part. In DS3 you still need to practice beating each boss. And the treasures you may have missed are like the secret bonus power-up in those older games.
The difference here being that you can save your progress and don't have to repeat everything from scratch.
The same reaction happens, where you don't feel like trying again right after you lose. Maybe tomorrow I'll give it another shot. Or you try to beat that difficult bit a few times and grow tired and try it later since you can't do anything else in the game.
It's a mind game. I feel trapped when this happens, because I was enjoying the game and now I'm forced to overcome this challend whether I want to or not to continue playing.
It's much worse and even more difficult if I have no option to make my character stronger through some sort of grind. But this stands to logic.
I feel like Dark Souls 3 is much easier than DS1 or DS2, though. Is that just me?
(I never beat Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2. With Dark Souls, I managed to beat Ornstein & Smough, somehow, but my will to continue was ground to dust by Seath the Scaleless. With Dark Souls 2 I think that my will to continue petered out after beating the Mirror Knight and finding out that I wasn't actually anywhere near the end of the game, apparently. In Dark Souls 3, I genuinely feel like I am going to beat the game without hitting a wall. I just beat the Deacons of the Deep, though, so it might be I just haven't encountered the boss or bosses that is going to break my will yet. But in general so far it has seemed markedly easier than one or two.)
(I never beat Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2. With Dark Souls, I managed to beat Ornstein & Smough, somehow, but my will to continue was ground to dust by Seath the Scaleless. With Dark Souls 2 I think that my will to continue petered out after beating the Mirror Knight and finding out that I wasn't actually anywhere near the end of the game, apparently. In Dark Souls 3, I genuinely feel like I am going to beat the game without hitting a wall. I just beat the Deacons of the Deep, though, so it might be I just haven't encountered the boss or bosses that is going to break my will yet. But in general so far it has seemed markedly easier than one or two.)
I think the biggest problem I have with MM/MMX's stage select is the lack of guidance and forward curve. Demon's Souls alleviates the curve with the multiple worlds and multiple stages in each so there's the means of making further levels in each world harder than earlier ones (in practice this didn't exactly work out). There's more room for player growth instead of fishing for the first step that causes the difficulty to crash and snowball. Otherwise they can cruise along until the endgame and hit that difficulty wall.
For reference, I'm drawing on my experience playing MMX with a buddy 8 months ago where he had never played any of the X games and I hadn't touched them for over ten years. We beat it in a single night but the start of the game was the most frustrating because naked X isn't going to beat Launch Octopus or Sting Chameleon. Eventually we selected and beat the usual crew (Flame Mammoth, Ice Penguin, Boomer Kuwhatever) and I remembered where the Armor was and we cruised all the way to Sigma 1. It's an ancient game and I can understand how it worked back then between a difficulty curve for children, content that could fit on a SNES cart, lack of Internet, etc. . I wish MM and so wasn't so steeped in idiotic traditions*. The 4+4 and variants, or Shovel Knight's 2+3+3 are a decent step forward. Polar/Propeller/Tinker Knight's stages are harder than King/Specter Knight's stages and are appropriately later in the game. Or Demon's Souls if it didn't have a scatterbrained curve and could effectively communicate with the player.
* Yoku blocks
For Souls chat, I've always found the difficulty for them all over. I never beat DS1 either (I did half of the lord souls, lost my save in the Games for Windows to Steam switch, and did the other half but I'm going to put about as much effort From did into redoing Lost Izalith as they did making it. I won't fault anyone for not wanting to do 3/4ths of the lord vessel shit because it's garbage content). I did enjoy Sen's Fortress, barring the fire jar throwing giant, for it's viscousness without getting into asshole territory and I hope DS3 has a similar area. I'm only at the Cathedral for the Deep in DS3 and it hasn't been too hard so far and most roadblocks (Curse-rotted Greatwood, Outrider, Crystal Sage) were solved by mad hax 'n slash skillz than any level of finess, but that worked for the Gaping Dragon and Iron Golem in DS1 too so it's hardly unique.
I've still got hope though, unless Pyromancy ends up op as fuck again. The action queuing in DS3 is pretty aggravating too, I find myself doing actions I input far too long ago, like that too-late dodge roll input after getting hit (or worse, a queued attack). I'm still slowly plinking away at it so we'll see.
Really I just hope the dev crew stuck around for the whole game instead of fucking off near the end and realizing they had one day to do half the endgame and shitting something out.
e: My buddy did kill Sting Chameleon with the X Buster, fully upgraded but no sub tanks, and it was cathartic as hell for him because he spent like 20-30m at the start of the game trying to do it naked. I'll leave it to devs to decide if that's what they want out of their games because I can't say it's an invalid goal.
For reference, I'm drawing on my experience playing MMX with a buddy 8 months ago where he had never played any of the X games and I hadn't touched them for over ten years. We beat it in a single night but the start of the game was the most frustrating because naked X isn't going to beat Launch Octopus or Sting Chameleon. Eventually we selected and beat the usual crew (Flame Mammoth, Ice Penguin, Boomer Kuwhatever) and I remembered where the Armor was and we cruised all the way to Sigma 1. It's an ancient game and I can understand how it worked back then between a difficulty curve for children, content that could fit on a SNES cart, lack of Internet, etc. . I wish MM and so wasn't so steeped in idiotic traditions*. The 4+4 and variants, or Shovel Knight's 2+3+3 are a decent step forward. Polar/Propeller/Tinker Knight's stages are harder than King/Specter Knight's stages and are appropriately later in the game. Or Demon's Souls if it didn't have a scatterbrained curve and could effectively communicate with the player.
* Yoku blocks
For Souls chat, I've always found the difficulty for them all over. I never beat DS1 either (I did half of the lord souls, lost my save in the Games for Windows to Steam switch, and did the other half but I'm going to put about as much effort From did into redoing Lost Izalith as they did making it. I won't fault anyone for not wanting to do 3/4ths of the lord vessel shit because it's garbage content). I did enjoy Sen's Fortress, barring the fire jar throwing giant, for it's viscousness without getting into asshole territory and I hope DS3 has a similar area. I'm only at the Cathedral for the Deep in DS3 and it hasn't been too hard so far and most roadblocks (Curse-rotted Greatwood, Outrider, Crystal Sage) were solved by mad hax 'n slash skillz than any level of finess, but that worked for the Gaping Dragon and Iron Golem in DS1 too so it's hardly unique.
I've still got hope though, unless Pyromancy ends up op as fuck again. The action queuing in DS3 is pretty aggravating too, I find myself doing actions I input far too long ago, like that too-late dodge roll input after getting hit (or worse, a queued attack). I'm still slowly plinking away at it so we'll see.
Really I just hope the dev crew stuck around for the whole game instead of fucking off near the end and realizing they had one day to do half the endgame and shitting something out.
e: My buddy did kill Sting Chameleon with the X Buster, fully upgraded but no sub tanks, and it was cathartic as hell for him because he spent like 20-30m at the start of the game trying to do it naked. I'll leave it to devs to decide if that's what they want out of their games because I can't say it's an invalid goal.
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