Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about

So I'm looking at some things Dark Souls II, particularly the way enemies stop respawning after you kill them 15 times and how Bonfire Ascetics work, and... I can't help but think that this is a really clumsy and counter-intuitive way of doing what the world tendency system from Demon's Souls had already accomplished - rewarding the player with items for going into the game's equivalent of hard mode. I've always found that system interesting, but it's not perfect either, so I was wondering how it could've been made better, and this is the result.

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Before we begin, a little explanation on how world tendencies work in Demon's Souls. Each of the game's stages has its own tendency rating, which ranges from black to white, and changes depending on certain things the player does. More specifically, dying in human form moves the tendency towards black, while defeating bosses moves it towards white. Doing either of those things enough times will result in the player reaching either pure black or pure white tendency (which I will henceforth refer to as PBT and PWT, respectively).

The color of a given stage's tendency influences how strong enemies are in that stage - if it's white, they're easy, if it's black, they're hard - as well as item drop rates, with rare drops being more common in black and less in white.

There are a few problems with this setup, however, which is why I propose the following.

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1. Swap the tendencies around
What Demon's Souls tries to do with the tendency system is punish players who play poorly, and reward those who play well, but the way it goes about doing that is strange. If black tendency is supposed to be a punishment, then why is it that drop rates are increased? Likewise, players who have proven themselves against bosses should be getting more challenges, not less! So basically, make it so that bad play leads to white tendency, while good leads to black. This way, those who haven't gotten the hang of the game yet will be able to progress but with diminished rewards, while those who have will be challenged appropriately.

2. Make the requirements to change tendencies broader
"Dying while in human form" and "defeating bosses" both sound too specific. The former can be easily circumvented by commiting suicide in the Nexus, which has no tendency, while the latter relies on a finite "resource" (bosses) to work. In addition, this makes it annoying to change tendencies willingly. The solution is simple: make the requirements less specific, like "taking a lot of damage or dying at all" and "defeating enemies and bosses without taking much damage".

3. Dying in PBT and killing a boss in PWT should instantly put you back in neutral tendency
The player should want to be in PBT for the increased drops, but since the rewards are high, the risks should be proportional. Like this, dying in PBT would mean that a player would have to work to get back there (not unlike trying to get a boss again after dying to it). As for PWT, if a player who was doing poorly enough to get there managed to defeat a boss, they've probably earned some of the game's respect (for now, anyway). But again, bosses are finite, so this easy way out wouldn't work forever.

4. Add two new rings, each related to one of the tendency colors
For the sake of simplicity, let's call these the PB Ring and PW Ring for now. Wearing one of those rings would instantly make any area that you went into be the pure version of the ring's assigned tendency. The PB Ring would clearly be key for farming purposes, so acquiring it should be difficult - it might involve killing X amount of enemies in PBT, or something like that. At the same time, the PW Ring could cheapen the entire game, so while it would be avaible early on in the game, it would also break should the player try to take it off (like the Ring of Favor and Protection in Dark Souls).

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The end! I think these would be some interesting changes to the tendency system, but of course, those still aren't perfect. For example, I'm not sure if having the PB Ring be a ring is the best idea; you could say that the PW Ring taking up a ring slot is another downside to it, one which an item with the PB Ring's effect shouldn't logically have. Maybe it could be a covenant's effect?

...well, either way, thanks for reading!

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By the way, yes, I know that there are ways to change your tendency other than the ones I listed, but it should be obvious why I chose to not mention them. And yes, I know that tendency-specific events exist, but they weren't really relevant to what I was talking about here.