[doktrin]

I've noticed a lot of fans of these games are defensive about them to the point of being weirdly hostile to anyone who dares express criticism.

Chill. You can explain the mechanics without turning everything into a weird "your fault n00b" blame game.

[Narishma]

I don't think it's valid criticism. If something repeatedly fails and you keep doing it, is it the fault of the game or of the player?

[doktrin]

He's describing a fundamental game mechanic, namely the way the series handles saves and respawns.

But by all means, keep the downvotes coming. It really just proves my point.

[msbarnett]

> He's describing a fundamental game mechanic, namely the way the series handles saves and respawns.

No, he's describing how a fundamental game mechanic (namely the way the series handles saves and respawns) was misunderstood by him to require him to "pointlessly repeat large chunks of levels" to get back to the area Boss, because he missed or misunderstood a separate fundamental game mechanic (exploration is rewarded with discovery of shortcuts that lead to you discovering that the world is heavily connected and you generally never spawn more than 30-45 seconds away from a Boss via the shortest path)

[doktrin]

> No, he's describing how a fundamental game mechanic (namely the way the series handles saves and respawns) was misunderstood by him to require him to "pointlessly repeat large chunks of levels" to get back to the area Boss, because he missed or misunderstood a separate fundamental game mechanic (exploration is rewarded with discovery of shortcuts that lead to you discovering that the world is heavily connected and you generally never spawn more than 30-45 seconds away from a Boss via the shortest path)

We're talking about a game that quite literally prides itself on not communicating this stuff explicitly to the player.

This isn't like they didn't read the instruction manual (lol), or failed to observe the tooltip (lol) : they just didn't play the game "enough", whatever that means.

As far as I'm concerned, if they then didn't sufficiently grok the ethos of the game that's not their fault. The fact that %Souls decides to be eccentrically weird, by industry standards, shifts the burden of responsibility back onto them and away from the player.

It's then supremely pompous for the fanbase to insist on always blaming the player for every criticism uttered, real or perceived. It's not everyone else's fault your cherished game is a bizarro outlier.

[anonbanker]

that's a whole lot of words to say "it's too hard for me, and I think it's unfair".

[doktrin]

lol, I was speaking in the abstract. I'm actually a huge fan of BB, and generally find the difficulty in NG to be on the easy side.