[Update] Dark Souls 2: Seamless Co-op - Game balancing mechanics

Hi everyone

Development of the mod is back on track.

In this post I will be discussing the balancing mechanics of the mod.

Scaling

As discussed earlier in this post:

In order to somewhat preserve the game's challenge, I have implemented my own baseline scaling manager within Dark Souls II seamless co-op which will - by default - be set to 80% increased health per friendly player

This is, of course, adjustable by the session host so that the difficulty of enemies and bosses can be tweaked for the most enjoyable experience.

However, in that post I also mentioned that damage scaling would be implemented (with a default of 0%). I've decided against this in retrospect, as enemy damage scaling is a very rare setting for players to actually want. I have added a substitute mechanic which may make the game less of a cake-walk and help to preserve the challenge - as described below.

Curse Soul Fragments

If you're familiar with the "Rot Essence" mechanic in Elden Ring seamless co-op (or the "Crimson Blossom" for Dark Souls: Remastered) there is a penalty when a player dies.

The reasoning behind this is, as opposed to the normal game, enemies do not respawn when you die in a seamless co-op session. Instead, a debuff is applied to the player until the next time they rest at a bonfire - which in turn will respawn the enemies. This is option of course, but discourages players just hitting their head against enemies over and over until they win with no penalty.

In Dark Souls II seamless co-op, I have added a similar item acquired on death - Cursed Soul Fragments.

These items are slightly different to the mechanics in the other seamless co-op games. They are shared amongst the session, and everyone will be afflicted. They work in a similar way to Black World Tendancy in Demons' Souls.

There are a maximum of 5 carrier per player, and the penalty is calculated based on percentage saturation carried in the session. For example:

6 players, each with 5 fragments = 30/30 fragments = 100% saturation

2 players, each with 5 fragments = 10/10 fragments = 100% saturation

3 players, each with 2 fragments = 6/15 fragments = 40% saturation

The penalty is not applied to players directly, but instead the world becomes more hostile. Between 0 - 50% saturation, enemies will become gradually more alike to black phantoms. They will hit harder, and give more souls upon defeating them.

Between 50 - 100% saturation, your world will become more vulnerable to disasters - I will keep this a secret for now as I wouldn't want to completely spoil it.

For players who wish to play this mode without needing to get full stacks of Curse Fragments, there is also an alternative way to enable the more powerful enemies and disasters via an in-game item.

If people have suggestions or issues with this mechanic, I am still open to making tweaks. That being said, note that the Curse Fragment acquisition is entirely optional, but will be enabled by default to make the game less of a pushover given the advantages of playing cooperatively.

Thank you for your patience, and a huge thank you to all of my supporters <3

Take care

~ Yui