You probably just need to learn timing of attacks then. It eventually becomes more reaction based once you start to get a feel for when damage frames are going to begin.
There are many attacks are so fast that they're pretty much physically impossible to parry on reaction. For example, Father Gascoigne's first hit on his light 3 hit combo has about 15 frames of warmup. Your parry has 9 frames of warmup, plus at least one extra frame for the hit to be detected by the game. In 5 frames, one sixth of a second, you must see the attack, distinguish it from the rest of his moveset, and press the parry button. And that's a best case scenario. Good luck.
You don't want to adjust cool-downs for mid-range. It will damage the flow of the game. And I'm not sure you are understanding my proposed design. By making mid-range parries have a slower start-up (which is pretty much equivalent to BB) and slower shots, you remove the ability to parry quick attacks. This makes mid-range less advantageous. However, you don't have to play cat & mouse, making battles twice as long due to losing parrying ability. You can choose to use close-range weapons which can parry anything but you raise the risk/reward.
Here's the basic reason why I'm very wary of making parrying at range an option at all: basically, it dilutes the idea of parrying. A parrying option that's too slow to react to many attacks makes parrying less of a factor, period, because you simply can't use it in as many contexts. This is why I think the only way a ranged parry method has any chance of working is to make it fast on warmup, just as fast as the hypothetical "pocket pistol," but much slower on cooldown. And even then, I may find some serious flaws with this idea if I think it through enough. I'll get back to you on this one if you can't poke holes in it yourself.
Long range attacks would be for punishing large enemies and crumpling them if timed right. They would not be redundant. You could make short & mid-range lose parries (the game already has no parryable enemies) on these enemies, making gun choice more emphasized.
I said enemies, not bosses.
You said large enemies, which I interpreted as bosses (using shots on the Cleric Beast's head or the cannon on the heads of Amygdala or Ebrietas came to mind for examples of needing a ranged weapon for crumples). This is still a different idea entirely from parrying. I'm not sure why long ranged weapons would be necessary against large enemies even in theory, could you explain?
It is a very forgiving system. Large parrying windows, multiple ranges, and a lot of possible attacks to counter. It makes parrying systems in other action games look impossible.
I've already explained why I think it's both highly unforgiving in critical ways, and too forgiving in others. I think that Metal Gear Rising is an example of a game that's far more forgiving with a similar parrying idea; it doesn't even punish you for parrying extremely early, it just rewards you for timing it right and only punishes for being late. This is similar to your lockup idea, and it works in MGR because that game is focused intensely on parrying. I think it would be a bad fit for Bloodborne for reasons I've already explained.
It's my personal preference to mess around with this play style, it's not mandated or even efficient. I'm also running 170 physical protection as opposed to close to 300. Which could be called foolish.
Give it a shot. It is far more challenging, especially using difficult to handle weapons like the cane or BoM. It's certainly not efficient or safe.
I love minimalist play in action games, but I think it can be taken too far. When a game balances all of its options well and demands that you use them all skillfully, I think that's great design. I think you would enjoy
this.
That's not true. You can trade up close or at mid-range.
I think you must've misunderstood me there, because I can't make any sense of this reply. Could you explain in more detail?
It isn't and your theory that you could trigger these trades often, making parrying less of a risk isn't right either. Try to chain trades in any fight and capture it. It just won't happen. Trading is much rarer then a proper parry or miss. It's basically a just input. And it isn't better nor worse then a partial trade system. To me partial trades don't make much sense as the only result and you could also combine the two, it's just a change in animation. Or you could go further having true trades cancel as well as advantage to quicker strikes. That would require 60fps.
Here's the video you requested. 9 reaction parry trades (7 fully legitimate, I'll explain in a minute) in a single 2 minute 22 second session against Father Gascoigne's first form, some of them consecutive even. This is my friend actively trying to parry every attack possible on reaction (the two trades on attacks coming out of rolls starting at 0:16 are predictions he couldn't stop himself from making, this video actually required some discipline from him because the game conditions you to twitch parry and pray, and that roll attack is an attack that's so fast it's impossible to actually read). Notice how the dragging upward strike is the only attack he's able to cleanly parry; that's because it's the only attack during this form that has enough warmup to consistently parry on reaction with the warmup parries have. There are definitely mistakes in there too, but I think it illustrates my point. If you need explanations of any of the events in the video, just ask.
You're correct that trades need close to frame perfect timing, but parrying in general has similar timing windows. By giving parrying a significant warmup period, you squeeze the potential timing for a successful parry into a very small window for many attacks, making trading much more likely. The issues with aspects of hit consequences occurring with inconsistent timing push it further into being common. It has been my experience that trading happens rather often, much more often than feels fair, and to restate I think that ultimately trading is just a bad concept in general.
I may be misunderstanding you, but I don't see how trades and partial parries could be combined, they're very different ideas with very different consequences. I don't know what you mean with "Or you could go further having true trades cancel as well as advantage to quicker strikes."
I believe most of your ideas make a game you want to play but the only way to play it. Many people want to play the game how they like and options are never bad. I like having the ability to do what some would call silly, nerfing a bunch of options. I also like being able to abuse parrying or not use it at all. I see a lot of people doing higher NG runs just buffing weapons with abusable items, chain parrying, and whacking with silly long range weapons. Is that a way I enjoy playing? No, but I don't have to. You want to remove these people's play-style and not make compromises to different designs. Every action game that is great always have great options. I believe BB to be a great game because it satisfies this idea. I wouldn't buy into your narrow definition of how to play the game, constraining the design, since it hurts replay-ability for me personally. There are always ways to design a combat system that everyone will enjoy.
Very interesting. I appreciate you making your ideals clear, discourse on this level about games is very enjoyable and educational. Like I said earlier in this post, I love minimalist play, and you clearly have passion for it as well. I think that's great. I also think that "options are never bad" is a very dangerous mindset. You yourself stop just short of calling several options broken in that quote, and I actually agree with your judgments there; your dislike for them is totally justified. Were most offensive projectile spells in the Souls games interesting? I don't think so, and I think you'd agree. Were they overpowered? Certainly. Did they match the fundamental spirit of the game? I don't think so at all. The Souls games and Bloodborne are crazy mishmashes of mechanics that support their fundamental ideals and ones that don't, but Bloodborne was a serious attempt to cut away a ton of the superfluous options from the Souls formula. I admire that greatly, and I'm very sad that it has so many flaws in the end that keep it from being that perfectly polished expression of the ideals of Souls
Replayability is the only real argument you make for badly designed options being a good thing, and I'd encourage you to really think about that and figure out whether it's truly worth it. Endless replayability is achieved through great design, not sheer volume of options or content (the Chalice Dungeons are an example of this being proven I believe, and I'm very happy to see the broad dislike for them on this forum). Making a great game, just like any great piece of art, is also accepting that it can't be all things to all people; you need a particular vision to design something that stands up to scrutiny at all, let alone something that lasts for long periods of time (something like Minecraft may appear to be an exception to this, but Minecraft is much more a host for countless activites including the game of basebuilding and survival commonly called "Minecraft," there are many other examples of "games" like this I'm sure).
I know that's a lot to take in, and you may not agree with parts or even most of it, but I think any further discussion between us should focus specifically on the mechanics, both actual and hypothetical, of Bloodborne, rather than delving into broad game philosophy like this. I enjoy talking about these things a great deal (maybe even too much), and I think there's a lot that can be learned by discussing it, but it will almost certainly infect the more fact-based parts of our discussion and make argument much more difficult. I felt that an expression of ideals like the one you gave deserved one in turn, and I hope that what I've said helps you understand my perspective a bit better.
