I’m a 50 year old father of three that plays primarily on PVE-C or ‘casual’ PVP servers when real life time allows.
I’m only vaguely aware of what Dark Souls is, only because my oldest kid has mentioned it.
I think your estimation of my playstyle is significantly off.
I am in no way asking to alienate casuals. I am in no way affecting FC’s ability to generate a fun product that people will buy or that will allow them to be bought by bigger companies and lining their pockets and continuing to make nice games.
So, like you say, stop it.
So maybe you and I are missing something. You seem to be implying that in order for casual players to have fun they must have absurdly powerful thralls (like the Berserker the OP posted). You seem to be thinking I’m saying that there should be no powerful thralls that we should all have to solo the bosses in the game and if you die too bad f*ck off you’re a newb git guud.
What I’m really saying is that thralls that powerful make the big bosses trivial and unchallenging, even for casual players like me. I’m un-casual enough to know where the good thralls live, it’s not like it’s some exploit or elite skill-based mechanic required to find or tame them.
I would rather have a system where:
a) all ‘high end’ thralls are balanced so there are no markedly superior ones. I’d like to use a Darfari Brute, as an example, but in this competitive (yes, even PVE servers are competitive to some extent…just like Monopoly or Mario Kart!) environment, and because of normal human game theory mechanisms, people don’t use them because there are better options. It’s not about being miserable or whatever insulting zing you threw in there, it’s about sensible, reasonable, balanced game design;
b) the most powerful high-end thralls are on par with how powerful players are, and the combination results in an engaging and challenging experience when fighting the high-end boss fights.
c) continued balancing and bug-fixing for long-standing issues related to weapon choices, thrall behavior, etc.
d) make all choices valid. If a choice is markedly and quantitatively better than all others, then it is a bad game design.
e) review risk-reward. harder critters should give bigger rewards. as it is there are many bosses and places that get little used or little attention because they have little reward for the challenge (ever see anyone killing the skeletons in Arena? nope…because they’re worthless!)