In the latest Waypoint stream of Bloodborne they’ve started using summons for bosses. They can play the game however they want but summons completely trivialize the game and the learning process of boss fights. For me, as a viewer, it then trivializes the entire point of watching the stream which is seeing somebody improve as they progress through the game.
With summons you don’t learn how to avoid the boss attacks and just attack it while it’s distracted on the summon for the majority of it’s health pool. You can see how much improvement was made from the first and last Gehrman boss fight because summons weren’t being used. With summons you don’t start actually fighting the boss until it’s already nearly dead and can then just cheese through it with the large number of blood vials you have.
They put co-op in these games for a reason. It’s fun. It’s for fun. They wouldn’t have put it in any of these games if they didn’t intend for people to use it.
The whole point of the Bloodbourne streams is that the people who are playing get to play it their way. They say this on stream over and over again. If you don’t like the way they’re playing it, then you should absolutely watch a different stream. Demanding that someone play a game the “right” way is just stupid gatekeeping bullshit.
I watch LobosJR whose entire streaming is pretty much based around Soulsborne challenge runs. What makes the streams engaging is seeing someone struggle and eventually overcoming that challenge. It’s what makes it entertaining for me to watch and just because it’s free content doesn’t mean I can’t voice what I don’t like about it. They can ignore that feedback if they want.
A lot of people in this thread are being quite rude. Come on be better than that.
What’s rude is demanding that someone else play a game your way, or else. There’s nothing remotely “respectful” about anything in your post, and frankly I’m a little surprised a mod hasn’t flushed your thread down the toilet yet.
I think there’s an interesting conversation here on how people approach SoulsBorne games, and how summons affect the game vs going it solo. But we can’t have it if we’re going to yell at each other.
No it’s not rude to say why I don’t find something enjoyable to watch. It’s rude to then think that they have to adjust their play to suit that but I clearly said they could play however they want. This thread is however full of people being rude in response to that when they could just disagree or, if they can’t do that with a degree of civility, not post at all.
I expect people on the Waypoint forums to know better. Disagreement with media is not the same as demanding changes. If you don’t agree. Move on. I’ve said what I wanted to say and I’m not going to post in this thread anymore. If they want to ignore that then that’s fine.
You’re operating on an assumption that the base game of Bloodborne is perfect, and that using the tools implemented via the expansion undermines the purity of that vanilla experience.
I love the aesthetics, the world design, and the creative ideas behind the trick weapons, but boy howdy I actually Do Not Like a lot of the combat and boss fights because it’s straining against the very limited and shallow combat system of Dark Souls, and you’re fighting the boss just as much as you’re fighting the engine’s bad input priority and herky-jerky frame pacing issues.
Some of them embody the worst of Souls boss design in being screen-consuming monstrosities that have overzealous tracking and obnoxious input reading. I genuinely believe they’re the weakest parts of the game.
Vinny from Vinesauce is also playing through the game right now, and is using the Old Hunters summons as well. Even though I had to play the base game without it, I’m actually envious of people playing through as the game is now, with an extremely useful tool that helps mitigate one of the most frustrating parts of what is an otherwise very good game.
Trying to define what is the “right way” to play through this game is putting its design on a massive pedestal and overlooking that sometimes, From Software can just get stuff wrong.
Great post but I disagree on something fundamental which is that I believe challenge and struggle shapes your experience of the whole rather than being separate from it. That was seen in the Metro 2033 101 as well where Austin/Rob commented that the apocalyptic world did not match the experience they had playing on easy. The story telling of the world was of a desperate, sad apocalypse but the gameplay experience on easy was a god amongst mortals. It did not reflect the struggle and bleakness of the world. I found failure was an integral part of my first Soulsborne experience and it was something that I couldn’t recapture on sequels and why I’m critical of the lack of difficulty options such as being able to set the game on to NG+1 for first playthrough.
if the feature is in the game, the designers meant for players to use it. Summoning is literally an intended interaction. Bloodborne has themes of loneliness, sure, but it’s even written into the lore that hunters used to hunt together.
While there is room for interesting and positive discussion on the topic of differing playstyles in games, the original post seems more focused towards prescriptive negativity, in addition to being too hostile to the site itself. Adding to that, many replies were equally hostile to any sort of productive discussion. A reminder to all that when you see a topic that you think is badly phrased or might require action, it is counter-productive to jump in and start being hostile in response. Please use the flag tool, it is there for a reason.
As a result, the moderation team has decided to lock this thread.
