5 Exciting Facts about Demon Souls

Lucas Barreto: A Demon Souls Remake was recently announced for PlayStation 5, Dark Souls fans can look forward to these exciting facts about the game.

[slayernz]

sorry but world tendency was not poorly implemented, it was a great feature and was disappointed it got removed from dark souls. it allowed special encounters based on the state, extra difficulty (and rewards) and trophies based on different tendencies

[RabbitFly]

World tendency was a Great concept, but yes it was terribly implemented. Mostly because it encouraged players to not engage with many of the games systems. Which f. Ex. Why we saw a majority of players play in Ghost form for their entire playthrough.

[slayernz]

theres always going to be people who cheese games and try to find the easiest ways around....for example summoning others in boss battles in dark souls, it allowed people to basically bypass boss battles by hiding in the corner and letting someone else beat the boss

Saying the majority of people play in ghost form is a big call, not sure where you got that stat from....For players like me who play games as they are meant to be enjoyed then i thought world tendency was great.

[RabbitFly]

Playing in ghost/soulform is not cheesing the game. But it makes the most sense because the reward does not outweigh the risk.

If you found it fun to play the game in another way then that is fine, that is your perogative. Some People like to play soulslikes with No armor and No hit builds too. Preferance is not what is being talked about here. What I am talking about is how there were systems that avtively worked against eacother and that is objectively not Great design.

World tendency was very particular and to maximize your access to content within the game it had to be Micro-managed. However if one played in soulform one would retain control. This is inherently bad design, not because it does not have the potential to be fun, but because the game avtively encourages you to not parricipate in aspects of the game.

Whether you parricipated despite said encouragement is irrelevant. And yes i am pretty sure most People would play in soulform once they understood world tendency and what one would potentially loose out on if they did not manage it. F. Ex. There is No limit on turning world tendency dark, but there are some very real constraints on turning it back. Sometimes turning it dark had its upsides, but if you were ro do that before you had exhausted the light tendency content you would be locked out.

So world tendency was a neat idea, but its existance within the game encourages People to not engage in some of the core pillars of the game, like invasions and coop.

The choice of restoring humanity is a balance between risk and reward that from software has been unsuccessfully trying to balance through out their Soulsborne games and it is a difficult balance to achieve. The problem with world tendency is that is a lot of risk with almost no reward.

[slayernz]

your argument seems to base around the fact that it can be hard to turn world tendency back in certain circumstances.....isnt this the whole point of gaming and choices/learning? you learn how to play game, explore how to reach certain areas, do certain quests.....not just have all content handed to you on a platter - and that sense of discovery and achievement is what made demons souls so good...

I recently finished divinity 2 and you can play through the whole game with a certain character (and early game choices) which lock you out of quests and trophies....is this bad design???? to me it encourages replay-ability,

[RabbitFly]

And you are still entirely missing the point.

Forcing you to make choices is often good. Giving consequence and all that. The problem I am describing is that the game heavily encourages you to make one choice over another. Which is to play in soulform because the the reward is greater and the risk is less. World Tendency therefore does not actually give you as a player a meaningful consequence to your choice. Not to mention that world tendency is not a choice at all. Had it only been linked to killing npcs then that would be one thing, but it is linked to dying in a game where you are supposed to die a lot.

The problem is that your argument only works with the lack of knowledge of how the system works. Yes World tendency is a neat idea. Having the world change based on how you play the game. Cool. However, once you are familiar with how it works. You would be much more likely to play in soulform because the risk/reward balance is not in your favor when you play in human form.

World tendency is a good concept, but it is badly implemented because it is objectively badly designed within the context of the games main pillars. It is a system that actively encourages you to avoid interacting with parts of the game that are considered core of the experience, much more so than world tendency might I add. That is not how one designs an effective system. You are free to enjoy that system, but it is objectively not doing what it was supposed to do because of these facts.

I am not talking about giving it to players on a silver platter and with that argument you are presenting a false dichotomy. I am simply looking at the systems and how they interact within the game. If we are, as you are now doing, going to assume that world tendency was implemented to give us as players consequences based on our actions it does so poorly because of how it interacts within the game. For one, you loose all control over world tendency when you play in online mode. Effectively making it a dynamic system that is based on a statistic. Which gives no consequence to your own actions within the game. Secondly. You can only gain white tendency by killing bosses and you can gain black tendency by dying to any mob and by killing npcs. In a game where you are supposed to die repeatedly to every mob. The godly skill of some players put aside. The game is heavily designed around it's death mechanic and if someone plays without dying they are loosing out on a big part of the experience.

However main argument I am making is that the choice of tendency is effectively based around whether you play in soul form or human form. And because there is seemingly a lot of risk and not a comparable reward to playing in human form. Most informed players would play in soulform whenever they could. And it is even worse that all of that only applies when if you play in offline mode. Heavily encouraging players to play in offline mode, when the games unique online mode is such a big part of the experience.

To reiterate. I am not saying black tendency could not be fun. Far from it, most people would choose to engage both the white tendency and the black tendency within the game. Because there are benefits to both. The problem is that while you are playing the game naturally black tendency is not really a positive. So once you are aware of the system you would only engage with it if you wanted to play a harder version of the game, were willing to give up on the rewards and/or had exhausted the white tendency. It is every players prerogative to engage with the system how they see fit. That is fine. But it is objectively terrible design because it does not encourage people to interact with it in a dynamic way, and it's existence actively encourages people to not interact with other more crucial systems within the game.

[iofhua2]

World tendency was a good idea but could be circumvented by playing in soul form. Maybe a slight rebalance is in order?

If you're in soul form maybe it could spawn grim reaper style enemies that hunt you down, which would discourage playing in soul form through the whole game. Also make dying in soul form impact world tendency to a lesser degree. Maybe when outside of the Nexus NPC's could not perceive you in soul form saying stuff like "Hello? Is someone there? I thought I heard a voice..."

[DarXyde]

I loved World Tendency.

Always played with pure black because it taught me to be a much better player with great rewards.

The downside to that however is the Tower of Latria with pure black tendency. Christ, that was unbearable.

[RabbitFly]

The problem was also that You lost out on a lot of content like quests and rewards that You would otherwise have been able to experience. And you always had the option to turn the tendency dark once you had done those things, but good luck turning it back after a certain point.