Losing your GEO from dying twice

[krazbobeans]

I'm trying really hard to like this game. Most everything about it is so well done. Animation, graphics, music, atmosphere, characters, etc. But the gameplay is so frustrating it's beginning to ruin the otherwise awesome experience.

I really do not get why you need to ♥♥♥♥ the player out of all the GEO they collected when dying twice. It's frustrating enough to die accidently while frantically trying to get your soul back. You are forcing the player to go a place that is so hard it killed them... so of course they are likely going to die again. Am I the only one who would like this changed?

[Tat011]

Originally posted by Decapitator:

it doesn't help that shops are all spread far apart in this game, often without nearby transport hubs :-(

which ones? from what i can remember 9/10 shops are in dirtmouth and crossroads

Originally posted by Decapitator:

at least a lot of these other games have town portal. This doesn't!

it does, we have the stag, the dream gate, the trams and confesor jiji if you want to move the shade to you

[Halfshell]

The only thing this mechanic affects is the Lantern for 1900 geo. And thats only because you don't have other ways of making geo yet. The Lantern is not needed early either, just opens an alternate route. The game already provides hard currency that is not lost on death once you find the buyer. trinkets

[ShadowChellen]

Like everyone mention; if you are in early game then you should spend your geo on times such as charms, shards, keys (one the keys even helps you get the shade back by summoning to you in a safe area) and the lantern (which I suggest to get before going to the Crystal Mines )

Later in game; geo slowly becomes useless and will only be needed for three charms to make them slightly better (although they are overprice so yeah).

[TristanMike]

Ugh, I couldn't agree more with the sentiment of this thread. Honestly, this game gets a negative review from me simply because of the unecessary difficulty. It's a shame there isn't an "easy" mode or something for people who just want to enjoy the game without the punishing difficulty. A friend gifted me this for my birthday thinking it would be an enjoyable Metroidvainia and wanted me to try it out first. I'll be telling him to avoid it. Call me an old fogey, it's just that I seriously don't understand how fun = stupid difficulty.

[Halfshell]

I still don't think you understand what I'm saying honestly. By the time you need geo the game has given you more than enough geo to get everything from trinkets. Most of the things early on either cost nothing or are not needed (Lantern is only one). You can litererally never pick up geo and be totally fine. Just don't go selling all your trinkets and then dying twice and you're fine (avoid this by spending 900 on a key in Dirtmouth to unlock JiJi at the far right and only selling enough trinkets to get what you are buying).

TLDR: If you want to say the game is unecessarily difficult thats fine, but don't blame it on geo loss because geo loss doesn't even matter at all.

[Tat011]

Originally posted by TristanMike:

UCall me an old fogey, it's just that I seriously don't understand how fun = stupid difficulty.

no, it's fun=getting gud

[thorin.hannahs]

Originally posted by Decapitator:

Losing Geo is still a stupidly annoying game mechanic that's unnecessary. Even if all of the above is done properly, all it takes is 1 mistake and a poorly placed ghost spawn to rek everything. I know I can get lost geo in town from the NPC to the right behind the locked door, which costs 900 geo to open (this in itself takes ages to farm early game), but even this doesn't work if I lose a ghost as this NPC only respawns my most recent ghost.

I really can't understand why people defend this mechanic. There's a reason why modern RPGs don't have this mechanic any more where you have to pick up all your lost crap from your old corpse because a game is meant to be fun, not tedious.

There are plenty of other ways to make a game challenging and a mechanic like this is a lazy cheap way to bloat game time instead of adding more content.

Some people enjoy the "artificial difficulty" of consequences in games. There is also a reason why there are plenty of people that enjoy the difficulty and the commitment to the game that the mechanics require. Not every game should be a breeze or arcade style where you pick it up play it and then drop it. If you didn't lose your geo on shade death you would be wealthy all the time and it would lessn the lesson of hey "you shouldn't die, seriously".

TLDR: not every mechanic implemented in a game is for everyone. Just like not every book and movie isn't for everyone.

[Epic_Caesura]

Originally posted by Decapitator:

Call me an old fogey, it's just that I seriously don't understand how fun = stupid difficulty.

What you and several other people in this thread are stubbornly ignoring is that the geo is irrelevant. It's a completely trivial loss. The game gives you far more than you need by the time you need it.

You don't have to like it, and maybe this game isn't for you. But understand that you are complaining about something with almost negligible gameplay consequences. By the time you're even a few hours into the game, there are multiple ways to avoid losing your geo, and even if you do it doesn't matter.

The people complaining about this clearly haven't played the game very far, and are refusing to listen when people who have beaten the game tell them that their concerns are unfounded. At this point, I think some folks are just looking for a reason to dislike the game.

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by Epic_Caesura:

Originally posted by Decapitator:

Call me an old fogey, it's just that I seriously don't understand how fun = stupid difficulty.

I think some folks are just looking for a reason to dislike the game.

This. Its not like I agree with every design decision of this game, but geo loss is not one of them.

[Boksha]

Originally posted by Decapitator:

I hated this mechanic so much I didn't play for 10 months. I'm also not much of a fan of how much back tracking I have to do if I die... especially not after playing Ori and the Blind Forest and being able to save wherever I want!

Losing Geo is still a stupidly annoying game mechanic that's unnecessary. Even if all of the above is done properly, all it takes is 1 mistake and a poorly placed ghost spawn to rek everything.

The thing with Ori is it needed that save-everywhere mechanic, because the controls were sloppy and the game is absolutely riddled with stupid instant-deaths that can only be avoided through trial and error. This is not the case with Hollow Knight, since there is no instant death in this game and the controls are pretty damn tight. It really does NOT just take one mistake to lose everything. In fact, according to Steam I've played this game for 122 hours and I've never, literally never lost my geo. Not. Freaking. Once.

This isn't about "gitting gud" either. I've died like a billion times in this game, but retrieving your shade should be pretty easy as long as you don't take any risks. Since it'll likely be floating where you want to continue exploring, it doesn't really cost any extra time either.

The only exception I can think of is a single room where it's possible for your shade to be out of reach for the point of the game you're in, but I'd consider that a bug.

Originally posted by Decapitator:

There are plenty of other ways to make a game challenging and a mechanic like this is a lazy cheap way to bloat game time instead of adding more content.

If this was about making the game longer, it's a terribly inefficient way of doing so. Again: not even once. In 122 hours.

[Scorpix]

Each game has it own death mechanism. This one copy pattern from Souls games to put some punish for failure. Although if you have learned how to play it is very easy to recover your geo. During my 2nd playthrough i died few times and always recovered geo. I

This is not a lazy way to increase difficulty because it requires to put obstacles in proper places so returning to place where you have died wont be almost impossible. You can recover your health and really you will get a lot geo from artifacts and grubs, so you will buy everything you will want.

The lazy way to increase difficulty is puting more enemies on the way of player or putting more traps and obstacles, because why not.

[Tat011]

Originally posted by Boksha:

I've played this game for 122 hours and I've never, literally never lost my geo. Not. Freaking. Once.

same here

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by Scorpix:

This one copy pattern from Souls games to put some punish for failure.

I disagree. While both have "lose money on death" in Dark Souls you are far more likely to slide off the terrain, and souls = better gear, consumables and directly used for stats whereas geo is needed for only a few key charms, charmslots and ~8000 for pure nail. Trinkets cover all that easily.

TLDR geo does not do as much as souls do and the loss is irrelvant compared to Dark Souls.

Edit: Also @ Boska, Tat011: The geo loss is so meaningless I usually didn't bother to collect my shade. I made the mistake of selling all my trinkets endgame to see if it did anything and started having to collect my shade cuz I had ~20k geo -_-

[Decapitator]

Originally posted by Epic_Caesura:

Originally posted by Decapitator:

Call me an old fogey, it's just that I seriously don't understand how fun = stupid difficulty.

What you and several other people in this thread are stubbornly ignoring is that the geo is irrelevant. It's a completely trivial loss. The game gives you far more than you need by the time you need it.

You don't have to like it, and maybe this game isn't for you. But understand that you are complaining about something with almost negligible gameplay consequences. By the time you're even a few hours into the game, there are multiple ways to avoid losing your geo, and even if you do it doesn't matter.

The people complaining about this clearly haven't played the game very far, and are refusing to listen when people who have beaten the game tell them that their concerns are unfounded. At this point, I think some folks are just looking for a reason to dislike the game.

Once I'm at this point, fine, but until I get there this is a pain in the ass

[Decapitator]

Originally posted by thorin.hannahs:

Originally posted by Decapitator:

Losing Geo is still a stupidly annoying game mechanic that's unnecessary. Even if all of the above is done properly, all it takes is 1 mistake and a poorly placed ghost spawn to rek everything. I know I can get lost geo in town from the NPC to the right behind the locked door, which costs 900 geo to open (this in itself takes ages to farm early game), but even this doesn't work if I lose a ghost as this NPC only respawns my most recent ghost.

I really can't understand why people defend this mechanic. There's a reason why modern RPGs don't have this mechanic any more where you have to pick up all your lost crap from your old corpse because a game is meant to be fun, not tedious.

There are plenty of other ways to make a game challenging and a mechanic like this is a lazy cheap way to bloat game time instead of adding more content.

Some people enjoy the "artificial difficulty" of consequences in games. There is also a reason why there are plenty of people that enjoy the difficulty and the commitment to the game that the mechanics require. Not every game should be a breeze or arcade style where you pick it up play it and then drop it. If you didn't lose your geo on shade death you would be wealthy all the time and it would lessn the lesson of hey "you shouldn't die, seriously".

TLDR: not every mechanic implemented in a game is for everyone. Just like not every book and movie isn't for everyone.

Agree that games shouldn't always be a breeze, but they shouldn't be annoying for the sake of being annoying either. There are plenty of other ways to commit to a game like making progress and farming.

From what others are saying mid-late game I would always be wealthy anyway, but at the start, I have to work hard to get Geo to buy things. Feeling wealthy would either be cheap trinkets or much larger geo drops and I certainly don't see either.