duskbloods

1. Controls

The controls in my opinion need a rework. The mapping to enact an alliance is generally awkward, and the mapping to heal is even worse. Bloodborne has it on a face button, so I don't know why they picked a button that requires you to either stop moving or perform some extremely awkward claw JUST to heal. Bizarre.

2. Lock-On

The lock-on is bad. Fromsoft games have a long history of spotty lock-ons, but with the kin and all the jumping the lock-on struggles more in this title than it has in any prior title, especially in the final battle. The game also still has the issue where you'll be next to an enemy wanting to attack it and the lock-on chooses the enemy 50ft away to lock-on to. They really need to have some priority option in settings to adjust how lock-on works.

I NEVER want to lock-on to Kin. EVER. I will simply fight them unlocked, so allow me a choice so my lock-on isn't being borked by them all the time.

3. Input Delay.

I don't know what's going on with the inputs but there's like 250ms of delay on any input. Please sort this for the full release. Coming off of any other game it feels terrible.

4. Virtue

Some of the Virtue priority is hard to pin down. It feels like PvE can only really be applied if the others aren't PvEing, as losing the 1st/2nd place in kills or collecting is brutal and can completely ruin your match, making dedicating any time to either a massive gamble. It seems like Sword Virtue, Repulsion Virtue and Flame Virtue are the only consistently buildable forms of Virtue. Pledge is kinda spotty without an alliance. I get Fromsoft didn't want players to all just cluster together and fight immediately so they made it so Sword Virtue only counts in Ritual sites... but surely this extremely convoluted system isn't the answer to that?

I just feel like the Virtue system is needlessly convoluted. Not hard to understand... just bloated. It's convoluted because it feels as if they went out of their way to make it more of a pain in the arse to track than it needed to be.

5. Kin in my opinion are kinda pointless. It honestly feels like this system only exists to give worse players an easier time. The solution is to just allow a modifier playlist without Kin; there's one without alliances, so why not Kin, too? It also feels like specific Kin are way better than others, so in the full game most Kin simply won't ever be used. Again, this entire system feels like a crutch for bad players.

6. Alliance system is fine, but the input to actually get into one could be less awkward to input as Kin will continue to attack you until the alliance is formed. I do wonder how this system will work in future though, because similar to Kin... it seems partly to be a system to allow worse players to leech off of better players in terms of pledge and sword virtue; as there is no actual reward for doing an alliance if you're the one collecting it all. The incentive needs to adjusted in my opinion.

7. The trespasser fights are... bad. But they're bad for a number of reasons.

The first is that Souls boss fights are typically at their worst when the boss has multiple targets. Ie; when you summon phantoms. This is because the bosses in this series are almost universally designed to be fought 1 on 1, and it appears as if this game has added nothing really to change that. Meaning there's no real need to learn the boss... as why bother? It'll aggro onto someone else after one attack on you anyway. Why is there no way to not request help? As in, you fight the boss on your own and gain more Virtue.

The argument could be because they're "balanced" (as in, HP wise) for multiple players... but then isn't that sacrificing one of Fromsoft's biggest strengths in favour of something really arbitrarily designed for no reason?

Ths second is they're just not very interesting. Or at least the ones in the Test weren't. The average trespasser fight for me involved people just spamming it down.

8. PvP.

PvP, unfortunately, plays more like a cross between Bloodborne and Dark Souls III's PvP. Which means it is VERY spammy. Specials replenish way too fast. Jump is way too abusable. Running attacks are ridiculous. Being stunlocked after a single hit is dumb (where's toggle escaping?). And almost every fight when you invite the kins too just results in a mash fest with little actual grace.

I don't really know how to solve this without just redesigning it. As you can adjust balancing all you want, but the problem is the core foundation itself is just bad here.

9. Phase Length.

Phases IMO end way too quickly. I don't know what else to say other than that. I know matches can't go on forever... but with the sheer amount of stuff to do in a match... I feel like making phases so short is kinda flawed. Clearly the choice should've been if you want less time make each phase more straightforward instead of convoluted? Time is of the essence but the feeling of *being* rushed (and not necessarily rushing to get ahead) is not something that blends well with the souls formula.

10. Bloodsworn

I know the full game is going to have customisation, but I really hope each Bloodsworn gets multiple weapons. I feel like in the test at least it would feel VERY easy to get bored of what we were offered. Part of me doesn't really get the limited loadouts at all, when the souls franchise has traditionally always been about very varied builds people make. It seems like making them fixed in any way kinda undermines creativity. You could make the argument of balance I guess... but the game isn't balanced even right now in the test even remotely.

This is an issue that didn't need fixing and regardless of what the final result is... I do not understand the design of making preset characters over player created builds which is a staple of your series.