Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

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This is a community for discussion, news, and memes pertaining to the video game sub-genre "soulslike".

Given Lemmy's size, the definition of soulslike may be treated relatively loosely. While games like the numerous FromSoft titles, the recent Star Wars Jedi games, Lies of P, Nioh and similar games should be the focus, games that incorporate soulslike elements - like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous, for example - may also be discussed here.

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[BB] This enemy is so difficult!

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[Discussion] What's your stance on "looter" elements in soulslikes? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For lack of a better word, I mean these ARPG elements or looter shooter elements of loot dropping in numerous rarities with stats and random attributes to min-max and crafting and stuff like that. Khazan uses this and, as far as I know, Nioh does as well.

I'm a little torn on this. On the one hand, it opens up build variety and presents an incentive to play the game outside of story progression and bosses in the form of grinding out materials to build weapons and armour, tailored to your liking and playstyle. On the other hand, crafting oftentimes isn't really worthwhile since a random drop off an enemy could have better stats, making your time spent wasted, in a sense. It also breaks the flow of the game so often for me because I keep checking my gear upon another pickup. I have to actively stop myself from checking every single loot drop and just re-check my gear once I return to the hub.

What's your opinion? Do you like it when soulslikes bring in elements from other game genres or does it just get in the way of the game for you?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

It's not something I'm looking for but as long as the inventory management can be streamlined enough to not be too tedious I don't mind it.

But I'm definitely in favor of developers bringing in different influences and trying new ideas rather than just sticking to same formula all the time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

As long as they don't use it as an excuse to squeeze more money out of us I think they're fun mechanics. Prefer it when there's a wardrobe or upgrade system so I can keep the style I like, though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think the unpredictability of it would negatively impact balancing. Having to constantly use a new weapon would also pose problems to build making. This isn't that much of an issue in games like Borderlands, where the rpg mechanism (skills) has relatively minimal impact on the usability of a weapon. This is not the case in a stat based genre like souls.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think that's necessarily a problem. Switching to a new weapon mostly just replaces the mechanism of upgrading your weapon.

Instead of "in this area you should have a +M to +N weapon, which should deal +X to +Y damage", you just cut out the middle man and have "in this area, the weapon drops should deal +X to +Y damage" (where X and Y obviously depend on the weapon type).

Not that it should be flat damage based, but if you can decide what the right stats for a +7 axe should be and in which areas a +7 weapon is expected, then you just drop slight variations on the +7 axe without putting "+7" in the name.

It's been a while since I've played Borderlands or Nioh but from what I remember they played differently. In Borderlands, if a great shotgun dropped I might swap out an assault rifle I had that was starting to underperform. Because I didn't have a strong affinity to a particular weapon class. In Nioh 2, I focused on kusarigama and tonfa so if a great spear dropped I wouldn't bother equipping it because I hadn't unlocked any skills on the spear skill tree and it wouldn't scale with the stats I was leveling.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

That's a similar experience to my Khazan playthrough. I quite like playing with the spear, so I also started speccing into its skill tree. Whenever a dual wield or a greatsword drops, I just chug it into storage or salvage it because I probably won't bother regardless. Luckily, skill tree perks can be reset individually or all at once whenever and however often you like so keeping other weapons around isn't even a bad idea in case you want to mix things up

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Grinding for gear should be left for MMOs. It so annoying and tedious going through a bunch of randomly dropped gear that has a single number higher or lower. Non of that matters to how you play the game really. Gear should modify how you play and not just another number go up situation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

I don't mind as long as I am not forced to use it as extensively as some min-maxers do. Most of the time I just want to play and I don't want to lose too much time to calculate all the possible combinations for the perfect build or meta, I just want to have fun with the gameplay and story.

Of course I understand that for others min-maxing is part of the fun and that's absolutely good, but it's not too much for me and I am very pleased when a game offers me the chance to just go on with the story.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I hated nioh 2 because of it. I really couldn't stand the systems on top of systems on top of systems. I felt like I kept hitting a wall that demanded I retread previous missions just so the enemies wouldn't sponge up all my attacks. Then I'd have to consider spacing into a new weapon if a good one dropped, that I'd use for two missions tops, before it becomes invalid. New missions didn't feel too new either. I never played the original nioh so maybe that was better.