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[AzyWng]

Phantoms? How do those work? (I don't play dungeon crawlers in general. Too many numbers and strats - I'm a dumb plan guy.)

[SeriousConcentrate]

In Dark Souls you can summon other players as 'phantoms'.

[Rolan7]

Edit:  Posting mad at something IRL, so I'm going to be hard on Dark Souls.  Which is a really good series.  0 offense meant to people who enjoy it, I'm literally jealous ):

That's one reason I got pretty upset with Dark Souls.  The phantom mechanics in 3 seemed really cool.  Sadly, based on 1, the game sucks and I hate it
I'd rather put my health bar in a cheese grater (AKA Mount&Blade multiplayer) than learn to love all those stupid gotchas.  Losing is fun, backtracking is not.
(I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, but half-serious.  I love some hardcore games, and this one just didn't win me over.  Probably because I'm just bad at third person camera and xbox controllers.)
Except...  Metal Gear Rising was awesome.  I died and got frustrated a *lot* but it was actually fun.  Personal preference I guess...  But also I think MGR explained *how* to win.  It was just up to you to execute the moves.  Dark Souls appears to be a wiki series.  Like Minecraft but with PVP and bad framerates.

Sorry, I'm just really upset that I can't enjoy the nifty series that so many cool people like ):  Slowbeef, with an infant daughter, is more hardcore than me.  Anyway, the point I was going to make:

I really liked the idea of being summoned into someone's game to help against monsters, against invaders... or whatever purple's deal was, just kill everyone I guess :?  I wish that could be in more games.  I really like co-op in general.
It'd need to be optional, though.  *Usually* when playing Borderlands I only wanted my buddies.  Often just to be alone.  Only once in a blue moon was I interested in joining up with randos.

Which Borderlands supported perfectly, which is nice.  Dark Souls...  Might have offline mode?  I know it can't freakin pause, which is actually *worse* in a game where people might invade in and gank you.  I'd probably be more okay with that, but I haven't seriously played MMOs since high school.  (So in a way, never seriously)

What I'm trying to say is that I wish the mechanics to aid or invade someone were in more games.  Games that I'm good at >:

(Most of what I know of Dark Souls 3 is from my ex never shutting up about it.  Based on that, it sounded so fun ;_;  And yet it's easier for me to hate, if that makes sense.)

[SeriousConcentrate]

Yeah, purple is 'mad spirit' and they can either help the host or kill them, whatever they feel like doing when they're summoned. Unless they invade, then their objective is to kill everyone (which again, can help the host if they decide to attack other invaders instead of the host). In DS3, you can choose to start in off-line mode in the options. I felt that was one of the only improvements over previous entries in the series.

And you kind of can pause in Dark Souls. Simply quit to the main menu. When you load your save, you'll be in the exact spot (more or less; some things, like if you quit while on an elevator, will put you nearby since the save mechanic doesn't know what to do with movable platforms) with the exact same progress (enemies don't respawn, etc.). This doesn't work on bosses, though. If you quit during a boss, you'll be put right back outside the fog, and the boss will have it's HP back, etc. That's fair enough though, since if you're going to fight a boss you ought to be prepared.

[MrRoboto75]

You avoid invasions by not being human/enkindled.  Invasions are supposed to be the downside to using co-op buddies to help you beat the game.

[SeriousConcentrate]

In theory, yes. In practice, four players can usually gank one player easily.

[MrRoboto75]

In theory, yes. In practice, four players can usually gank one player easily.

Because people complained about invaders too much.  Now its 3v1's and the lone invader has to suck penalties on top of that.

[SeriousConcentrate]

You're not telling me anything I don't know.

[AzyWng]

You're starting to make DS3 sound like some kind of purgatory that is only willingly entered by masochists and those who do not accept any definition of "defeat".

[MrRoboto75]

You're starting to make DS3 sound like some kind of purgatory that is only willingly entered by masochists and those who do not accept any definition of "defeat".

You either die a human or live long enough to see yourself become a hollow.

[Darkmere]

Yeah so, going along with Borderlands.

Unregulated Multiplayer

By the time I had enough of BL solo and wanted to play some multiplayer, every game I joined had nothing but hacked items in it. So people would be doing their 1-shot crawmeraxx shit with 10B shields. Over and over and over and over.

What's even the point then? No one was even picking up loot, coz why bother? Just cheat in something else. Which is fine and good if someone else wants to do that, but that was every. single. game. I joined.

When they said Torchlight 2 had open multi my immediate thought was, again, that the whole scene was going to be hacked items. I was right.

Grim Dawn? Yep. Same.

It's done quite a bit to (further) sour me on multiplayer in general, and hilariously multiplayer was one of the few things Diablo 3 got absolutely perfect.

[itisnotlogical]

Overly long introductions to an MMO

I have a hell of a time convincing people I know IRL to play an MMO with me. It usually goes like this:

"Are you done with the starting area?"
"I can't see you, are you on the right instance?"
"Guess you can't whisper until level 5"
"I'm in the starting town, are you done with the intro yet?"
"fuck the cutscene froze"
"God the voice acting is terrible"
"When do we see eachother?"

It feels like the first hour of any MMO is trying to convince you that it's just a single-player game, and only after you complete the intro does it grudgingly admit that yes, it's online and there are other people involved. Even MMOs that I've really enjoyed have unforgivably long and boring introductory sequences, where you're shuttled between single-player instances that have nothing to do with the actual flow of the game.

[AzyWng]

Rift's opening battles act as if you're the only player who exists and thus the only person who can do things.

I didn't make it past that point.

[Silverthrone]

Speaking of MMOs that tries to pretend that they are single player games, there is a trend that I rather dislike.

Making any given player character out as the main hero of the story, rather than a small part of a big whole.

An MMO experience will, quite necessarily, involve a lot of people, and taking part in that is the point of playing an MMO, surely? So, trying to portray every player character at the same time as the main hero, on which everything depends, will clash quite fiercely. That illusion will break down right quick, particularly if it only relies on the player not thinking about it at all.

Surely, it is a safer bet to make the player character simply one of many, part of the crowd? Particularly noteworthy players will no doubt stand out nonetheless, for their actions and their standing in the community. I would rather be a freshly baked adventurer, taking part in a great, big fantasy/sci-fi Volksturm much greater than I, than have the game portray me as personally responsible for every good deed in the land, while I am supposed to ignore that I am merely hero number 327 who have done that this afternoon alone. Player co-operation ought to be the goal, joining with some friends and doing something greater together.
I suppose it is more difficult to write fulfilling content where your contribution is still somewhat anonymous to the effort as a whole, than it is to simply write a hero portrait, but it would be better to at least attempt it. Not to mention, there are opportunities now for a lot more dynamic content, or player-made content, as what Eve Online has lived on for nearly one and a half decade now.

The Elder Scrolls Online tried to do both, in a way. Having a story centered on one character, while also having the player hero being just one amongst many heroes present at the same time in a strange time bubble. Silver star for effort, but still. A Dragon Break is high-grade plot spackle, and must be applied carefully and wisely. This was not either.

[itisnotlogical]

Some of the most fun I had in WoW was PVE instances, which are very easy to queue for and never take very long to put you in an instance with other people. It's really easy to actually interact with other people in that game, to this day I've not played an MMO that got the "multiplayer" part as down pat as WoW.

I wish STO was anywhere near that active. The most people I see queued for an instance is 4... when the smallest ones take at least 20. Except for zone chat it might as well be single player, since all the missions take place in private instances. It's always kind of freaky to go to Earth Starbase and actually see other players.