Aeolus451 said:
Actually, you can hit any npc and they'll disappear regardless if you kill them or not. Some of 'em you might want to kill for their loot or at certain points in the game. It's like that in all of 'em. I don't know about bloodborne though but it's probably like that too. In dark souls 2, it was better to have humanity than without.
You must like to horde everything in a game. I purposely try to use items and materials for anything. For example, I would grind for rare materials and good items to use in fights against other players. I would create and fully upgrade many weapons. Alot of that was just for experimentation.
I highly disagree with the last bolded part. I explore every nook & cranny regardless of the game. I also experiment to no end in any game. I actually prefer if a game lets me customize my character and experiment with everything. The way I can save a game doesn't affect any of that with me. If a game autosaves though, I put more thought into my choices as I know I can't take back a choice or a mistake. I guess you just take that a few steps further and be too conservative in the way you play.
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The souls games are different though, the lack of manual saving is compensated by the game design. You don't lose anything on death but a few souls which you can easily get again. You always reset to a save place and can quit anytime you want. Exploring was fine in the Souls games, at most you can lose a few Souls, can't get stuck of lost. It made the world feel less dangerous in a way, just run around, scout ahead, die, then tackle it for real or grab a few things and go somewhere else first. There was only one point that tactic had negative side effects when it took half my health bar away but that wasn't hard to reverse either.
Compare that for example with the witcher 2. I fell into some underground passage, it autosaved, I could not get out, was way too low level to go forward. If it didn't have manual saves I would have had to start over after repeatedly dieing in there. Those kind of games do turn me off exploration if there are no manual saves.
It does make me conservative. In DS/DS2 I had a ton of humity left, bombs and what not at the end. I simply played as hollow (also have yet to start Bloodborne) as there is nothing to lose that way. I also played as a pure caster, all 3 types, since you get all your 'ammo' back on death, don't have to worry about sword maintanance or arrows etc. It became a very easy game after a steep learning curve.
Anyway I played Everquest for 4 years. The Souls games are extremely unforgiving compared to that. Sure, the idea that a simple mistake can set you back for days, de level you or even cost you all your gear did heighten the adrenaline. It wasn't the main atrraction to the game though. It did help force people to work together well, and even go out of their way to help you recover as one day they might need the same help. While in WoW many people just went off by themselves and mainly ignored other players.
I'm not looking for that adrenaline rush anymore. I just want to unwind and relax, hence no more mmorpg for me. Let me save when I want or do it like Souls where death has no consequence. Nothing worse than coming back to a game after a few weeks, die because you forgot the controls and be penalized because it saved.
One more example, my most memorable dungeon crawl from FF12 was stumbling into an area far beyond my level. Thanks to manual saves I kept going trying to work my way through, which was very rewarding. I had to reload a few times as I could hardly keep up with the respawn rate and there was a mini boss in the way I needed a few attempts to find the right strategy. Without manual saves it would have booted me back to town or something and I would have gone somewhere else. (Not sure if I could have found it again, as to this day I have no idea where it actually was lol)
