In Republican Dad Mechanics, Austin C. Howe asserts that the bloodstain system in Dark Souls creates a perverse loop where the player will die to some combat encounter and then have to charge back into the same spot of danger to recover their souls, which is likely to just kill them again and cancel those souls forever. He claims this is bad design because it doesn’t reward the player from being diligent and careful, as the rest of the game’s mechanics suggest they should be.
Richard says: First of all, “bloodstain mechanic” is not a mechanic; it belongs in the system / rules category. Normally, I wouldn’t point out such a thing as other critics don’t share the DO system of game element categorization. However, in this article Austin fails to build a coherent argument about Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Bayonetta because he tries to compare a system to a mechanic.
“Thus, the game has given me something that should encourage me playing better, that is, the loss of my souls, but it’s also made those things the carrot on a stick that forces me into nonsensical loops of actions.”
The way Austin talks about the effects of dying and going back to collect the souls is vague and unhelpful. He casually argues that dying traditionally encourages players to play better. This is a rule-of-thumb game design phrase that has little substance. It’s more accurate to say that dying is the result of gameplay choices and their consequences. While it’s good to learn from one’s death, dying alone does not encourage players to play better.
Recovering lost souls by returning to the area you die is like a bonus second chance opportunity. Having this opportunity doesn’t force Austin to play a certain way. Repeatedly dying trying to recover lost souls is not nonsensical because the opportunity exists. Going after a bloodstain is only a foolish waste of time if players realize they cannot successfully retrieve what was lost and still attempt to do so. If players skip the opportunity, then their death and respawn is just like other games with traditional save point or checkpoint features. If the player attempts to recover lost souls, the player only stands to lose what he or she collects on the way back to the spot of death.
… for a game as ludically focused as the FromSoft games tend to be, I’m just gonna call it misguided design.
put in mechanics that encourages gamers to more consciously engage with the interactions at hand. But in these cases, we have system upon system built to encourage wild and often unrewarding risk-taking.
I find it odd that Austin shifts the blame of his failures from himself to the game. He described his experience with the bloodstain system as one that often ended in further death and frustration. Later he describes his game experience engaging with Bloodborne’s Rally (Regain health regenerating) system as being “wild” and “unrewarding.” The bottom line is that these games leave the door open for a wide range of applicable player skill and strategic approaches. There’s much more to playing than the simple decision of “do I return to where I died” and the result of “did I retrieve what was lost?” Because most of the outcome is determined by player skill, we cannot say that the game encourages the player to be wild and overly risky. The fact is, the bloodstain system and the Rally system are just rules; rules that should be factored into the players risk reward calculations. Though these systems may change the balance of player choices, the player is ultimately in control.
Talking about this bloodstain system is tricky because it’s a system that ties into level design, modes / features, and difficulty design. With all of that ground to cover, just talking about this one system alone caused Austin to overscope. Unfortunately, Austin seems a bit on tilt with the tone of this article, and he seems too wrapped up in making clever analogies to build an argument.
It would’ve been easy for them to look at player inputting those parries too early and say “git gud scrub” and walk away, but Platinum actually wants people to enjoy their videogames so they don’t do that. Instead, they offer a version of the parry that can be activated much earlier
Here Austin talks about the parry mechanics in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Bayonetta. These are mechanics, not systems. To make an apt comparison, Austin should have compared the parry in Dark Souls or Bloodborne with these games. Focusing on just mechanics would have probably resulted in a much tighter argument.
In the one opportunity Austin has to bring the conversation full circle after overreaching and over-scoping, he blames the fanbase in a particularly crude remark.
How would you implement those kinds of risk-mitigation mechanics in Dark Souls? Well . . . you don’t. Because the fanbase would never shut the f*** up about it.
