Your Least Favorite Place in Gaming
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Thanks to Keeps for sponsoring this video! Head to keeps.com/daryltg to get 50% off your first order of hair loss treatment!
There are a lot of… places in gaming. A lot of spaces. But the one space that I think is so often thought about but rarely talked about is the space between the respawn point and the boss or even where you are currently stuck at. Today on Psych of Play, let’s dive into that gap and talk about how our minds handle when that space is small and when it is vast.
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▶Games Shown
Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018) - Rockstar Games
Hollow Knight (2017) - Team Cherry
Metroid Dread (2021) - Mercury Steam
NieR:Automata (2017) - PlatinumGames
Undertale (2015) - Toby Fox
Dark Souls (2011) - FromSoftware
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) - Nintendo
Ghost of Tsushima (2020) - Sucker Punch Productions
Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) - Square Enix
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (2021) - ILCA
Control (2019) - Remedy Entertainment
Persona 5 (2016) - Atlus, P Studio
BioShock (2007) - 2K Games
Firewatch (2016) - Campo Santo
Florence (2018) - Florence
Mario Golf: Super Rush (2021) - Nintendo
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021) - Eidos-Montréal
Deltarune Chapter 2 (2021) - Toby Fox
Metroid Prime (2002) - Nintendo
OMORI (2020) - OMOCAT, LLC
Pokemon Ruby (2001) - Game Freak
Gris (2018) - Nomada Studio
Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) - Guerilla Games
Magic: The Gathering Arena (2018) - Wizards of the Coast, Digital Games Studio
Resident Evil Village (2021) - Capcom
Control (2019) - Remedy Entertainment
Astral Chain (2019) - Platinum Games
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020) - Omega Force
Celeste (2018) - Matt Makes Games
Super Mario Bros (1985) - Nintendo
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019) - FromSoftware
Cyber Shadow (2020) - Aarne Hunziker
Elden Ring (2022) - FromSoftware Inc.
Dead Cells (2017) - Motion Twin
Hades (2020) - Supergiant Games
Monster Hunter Rise (2021) - Capcom
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (2015) - The Coalition
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD (2017) - Nintendo
Returnal (2021) - Housemarque
Dandara (2018) - Long Hat House
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006) - Nintendo
Super Mario Galaxy (2007) - Nintendo
Eastward (2021) - Pixpil
Ghostrunner (2020) - One More Level, 3D Realms, Slipgate Ironworks
Axiom Verge (2015) - Thomas Happ Games LLC
Shin Megami Tensei V (2021) - Atlus
Final Fantasy XIII (2009) - Square Enix
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011) - Nintendo
Super Metroid (1994) - Nintendo
Demon's Souls (2020) - FromSoftware
Undertale (2015) - Toby Fox
Super Meat Boy (2010) - Team Meat, Edmund McMillen
Dead Space (2008) - Visceral Games
Dark Souls 3 (2016) - FromSoftware
▶Other Media/Clips/Considerations:
• Playlist
▶Music Sources:
Shops - Persona PSP OST
08 - Your Vibe - R4 / Ridge Racer Type 4 / Direct Audio
Elegant Summer - Melty Blood Actress Again OST
Coasting - Transistor OST
Darkmoon Caverns - Diddy Kong Racing OST
Through The Trees - Shantae: Risky's Revenge OST
The Street Corner at Sunset - Wild ARMS 5 OST
Clock Tower - Dead Cells OST
Starjump - Celeste OST
Silence Before the Storm - Final Fantasy X OST
Birdman - Pilotwings 64 OST
A Rusted Scar - Wild ARMS 5 OST
Tension - Persona PSP OST
▶Research Articles Cited
(1) Brief diversions vastly improve focus, researchers find
www.sciencedai...
(2) How Do Work Breaks Help Your Brain? 5 Surprising Answers
www.psychology...
(3)On the need for attention-aware systems: Measuring effects of interruption on task performance, error rate, and affective state (106% MORE ANNOYED STUDY)
www.sciencedir...
(4) Recently published OHIO study reveals humans are impatient, even down to seconds
www.ohio.edu/n...
psycnet.apa.or...
discovery.dund...
#PsychofPlay
Okay. Enough time has passed. I feel like I need to clarify the checkout line thing from 2:44 lmao.
It seems I am the only one that's like this, but for whatever reason it has weirdly irked me for years when people do this to me. It's always felt like a passive aggressive "um you forgot to put the divider down asshole" which I realize is 100% my problem. I guess I just all at once feel embarrassed for forgetting to put it down and also feel like people are cleaning up my mess which makes me upset at *me*. I suppose in the past, I deflected those feelings and interpreted them as someone else being passive aggressive.
But you should know that I have since gotten over this, and nowadays I both use the divider in every line AND have absolutely no problem with other people using them if I forget. Thank you for reading and understanding. This is by far the strangest thing I've ever had to explain on the internet. 🤣
Redemption arc
lmao
I just had to delete a comment about the divider thing after seeing this comment. Hilarious.
No, no. You don’t need to feel embarrassed. You were 100% correct.
I did the same thing
As a bard once wrote, "The space between the tears we cry is the laughter that keeps us coming back for more."
Dave Matthews
That’s incredibly wholesome
For which? More laughter despite the tears, or more tears, ultimately, because of the laughter?
@@thegreenmage6956 A surprisingly philosophical question.
Honestly proud to know that's Dave Matthew's Band
The biggest time saving tip I can give for Dark Souls is to always send the elevator back up/down after you use it when you know you're going for a boss fight. It quite literally cuts the wait time in half because now you only need to wait for one trip rather than wait for the elevator to come to you and then wait again for it to go back. Just step on big button on the floor and leave before it starts moving again.
I always wondered as to why after repeating certain points over and over again I started getting worse at the parts I've been doing for a long time so it was really interesting hearing that the reason why this might be is because your mind starts treating it like something unimportant like us walking or what we wear.
Honestly same, until researching this video I had no idea that could be it. By far my favorite thing I learned from making this.
Yeah I always have this issue with rogue likes where I do my best run on my first try and gradually get worse, super interesting
It’s really something that I feel our society subconsciously tries to silence. The best take I hear all the time is “work hard, party hard,” but that’s not as useful as “working hard? take breaks.” When it comes to gaming, it’s not different: after 20-30 fruitless attempts, you’re working.
Same. Ive noticed the effect before but this is the first time ive heard any explanation for it. Was pretty cool to learn about
Same thing with plateformers for me. I barely loose the first time I try, I can see the victory at hand, and then I proceed to become worse and worse at every following try.
I guess my ablity to focus just keeps getting lower and lower until my muscular memory takes over and I can beat the obsctacle without even thinking about it.
EDIT : oh he just talks about that at the end of the video lol
For me personally, I've found there's a sweet spot. That usually comes in the form of a decently lengthy loading screen, plus a brief walk. I know, that sounds odd, but this sort of setup is always where I do my best improvement. The loading screen is the "take a breath and think" moment, while the walk back keeps you working at the controls in a lower stakes environment. Don't like a bunch of enemies in the way, though. Not for me.
I’d be happy as a pig in shit if it were a “retry” button with less than a second between retries if I so chose. Or I could choose 5 seconds, 5 minutes, or 5 days.
It takes a lot of faith in your boss design to do this though.
Finally someone else to share the pain of having read a love triangle romance manga and getting over invested in it just for it to hurt you by having a terrible ending. I never read ichigo but I very much relate to the thought "not a day goes by where I don't regret reading that manga." Good vid btw keep it up.
What's her name? Nisekoi? Bokuben?
@@Kastor774 I actually read Nisekoi. Wasn't too hurt by it, personally.
The one I actually relate this to more is Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Mainly because there's 300+ chapters of trying to make Tsuna actually be a confident person, and then the final chapter is almost literally re-hashing the first without any sort of payoff of whether or not he actually gets his girl.
@@Kastor774 Hey, at least BokuBen gave us the multiple endings! I think they were all pretty satisfying. The only Harem manga I don't regret finishing.
Worse than a terrible ending is when it drags on forever by pulling out improbable plot contrivances when it should have ended chapters ago.
Looking at you, DomeKano... ( è_é)
@@Biouke ik how it feels
i witnessed it go downhill every week when it was running
a fascinating coincidence is the fact that some old retro games actually countered this problem on both ends with Lives.
in Mega Man for example, as long as you have lives before a boss you start just a corridor away. the instant you don't, the gap becomes dramatically bigger.
it's giving you the continous flow and learning state by letting you tackle a boss multiple times, yet it's also giving you the needed gap to where it doesn't fade into monotonicity after enough tries
Bug Fables is one of the games that best manage this "gap" by making you choice whether you want to start the battle all over again or go back to your last checkpoint. And you can even change your loadout and then try again right away too, if you so feel inclined. So it's the player's choice if they want to jump right back into the action or take a few steps back to reflect on things before trying again. The catch is that this only happens during important fights, so if you die to a random encounter then it's back to the last save point, so it's not really coddling you, either. It's just quality of life.
YES! I have such a struggle with RPGs because there's an inevitable save point before the two minutes of dialogue before the boss fight. It's not an experiential walk back, it's not reflection time, it's just me mashing through menus. More RPGs need to do that Bug Fables thing and just give the option.
Heyyyyy someone else mentioned bug fables!
Almost sounds like Elden Ring with the Sites of Grace and the Stakes of Marika. Not quite but it has almost the same effect of giving you the choice to jump right back in or wait a bit to breathe and think.
@@xantishayde-walker4593 people hate Malenia but the fact her boss door is RIGHT next to the stake for me made me rage much less. The time I spent fighting her VASTLY outnumbered the time I spent getting to her.
This made me not feel too frustrated with each death knowing I could be back at it in a bit.
And I choose when I hit that "I need a break" moment not the game. I know when I need to quit the game doesn't
When you die in Mirror’s edge catalyst, it gives you a zen moment before respawning. It gives you a respawn right next to where you died. But it really helps your performance when you just breathe.
I have been playing though that. I don’t know it kind of makes me mad. Why do I have to wait 10 seconds to respawn 8 meters back
I would like to call this void of space between respawn and boss room “tension space”
You could actually define it as a liminal space
@@JohnnoNonno I think OPs makes more sense, not sure how that would be a liminal space
@@seamus4A the definition of liminal is relating to transitions or thresholds
16:50 This is true in some games where "the space in between" contains a difficult platforming challenge or similar. Now the boss has become two challenges
I have a much simpler expectation: the walk back must allow me to exercise the skills I need for that boss. It's lower pressure practice of parries, dodges, or whatever.
If there is a disconnect between the adds on the way and the boss's moveset, and thus it doesn't help me, then I hate it. Otherwise, I respect it.
I definitely experienced that fading in focus with repetition during Celeste. I reached the summit segment super late at night and was pushing through to try to finish since I was so very close, but there was one extended segment that absolutely stopped me. I was locked there for 30 minutes of continuous deaths over and over, until I eventually gave up because I knew I wasn't gonna make it. So I stopped, headed to bed, and then tried again in the morning. Did it first try. Later stuff killed me a bit, but I blazed through the entire rest of it with minimal issues. It just goes to show that sometimes a break really is all you need.
Another notable thing is how that gap is populated. Fromsoft has been getting better at this with their boss shortcuts, most notably in Bloodborne from my experience. Getting to Ornstein and Smough in DS1 is a pain in the ass both due to the sheer length of the gap but also because there's a non-negligible threat along that path, meaning you could be killed and lose the souls left in their room or just have to make the trek all over again. A huge pain in the ass for minimal benefit because you don't get a "break" during the traversal back, you have to fight your way there. And that can be valuable as well, for what its worth, as mentioned with roguelikes, but it's tedious when combined with the length of the trek there. Compare Bloodborne, where I found basically all of the treks to bosses once you found the areas core shortcut to be decently lengthy but rarely especially treacherous, and I would appreciate the short break for allowing my mind a bit of time to chill. It allowed me to think about and anticipate the boss I was about to face, without adding much in the way of extra stress to the experience of getting there.
To me the most frustrating part of dying and having to walk back is not the walk itself, unless it is absurd. To me, the most offensive part is when games basically laugh at you by chaining an extremely long death animation, followed by potentially the boss taunting you, then kicking you back to a loading screen, a respawn animation, etc. All that just so you can even put your hands back on the controller and even **start** making your way back.
Was the first study on the coins replicated in other countries? Or different age groups? I'm curious if participants would be more or less willing to wait depending on personality/experience/upbringing.
I immediately was reminded of "the marshmallow experiment" that tested children's ability to delay gratification, although a quick google search to refresh myself on the details is showing me some articles that say socioeconomic background has an impact on the outcome of the test? which makes me wonder if there is a similar effect in this coin study.
@@FlyToTheRain yeah but also children are going to have a much worse ability to delay gratification than adults. So the marshmallow test doesnt surprise me but the coin test does. I feel like theres no way i wouldnt always click the big coin unless the difference in value was actually arbitrary or the time was super long but the way it was portrayed here makes me think neither are the case. Basically, unless ur super rich and the money means nothing why would you not wait a few extra minutes in total for more money? (Again assuming its not like $30 vs $31 or something)
0:18 What I’ve heard is that it gets passed from mother to son. So your grandpa is bald cause it ran his mom’s side, your dad isn’t bald cause it didn’t run on his mom’s side.
7:06 1st) I believe in duality. 2nd) The body prefers now, always, because the body has 0% certainty it will still be alive for the later reward. We, the soul or meat-AI, are what provides the body with probabilistic certainty, we can say to ourselves “nah we’re not gonna die in the 3 sec/min/day/year wait.” We experience the body’s desire as our own though, so it takes having certain perspectives to realize we can wait. That’s my take at least.
17:19 Dude, yes, always. That’s not normal is it?
For me, the walk back depends on my mental state in the moment; the first time, no props; after 20 deaths, “ugh I’ll come back and play this later.”
It definitely allows for heightened stakes. whenever youre in the boss and realize "oh god if i die now im going to have to redo the huge section prior" it really makes you on edge
18:27 - It was perfectly timed that when you said "complete disappearance from view" the dots disappeared for me exactly when you said "view". I had to rewind a couple times to see if they hadn't actually disappeared from screen at the moment because it was so perfect.
It is so weird to me that Furi, being a game that only has boss fights, doesn't have spaces between but also DOES because you could see each phase as a walk back to where you died last.
2:50 It offends me when the shopper in front DOESN'T place a "Next Customer" after their shopping. Its their responsibility or the cashier is gonna add my items to theirs, happens when I purposely don't put one BEFORE my shopping. Your shopping, your responsibility to place the sign after your shopping if you don't want the cashier to "overcharge" you by adding my items and causing a hold-up.
Maybe NES/SNES era platformers like Megaman had the correct idea by giving you a checkpoint before the boss that you'd go back to as long as you had lives, but once those were gone, it was all the way back to the beginning. A good mix of letting you practice and giving you time to process things (or just go to a completely different level altogether.)
The game I feel did this the best for me was Megaman X4. You have a limited amount of lives you can use against the boss from a checkpoint one room before them. Once you run out, you start at the beginning of the stage's second half. This gap not only provided a nice breather from the boss that simultaneously makes every boss attempt matter, but also challenges you to master the challenge that the gap section presents. You learn to do it faster, taking less damage, losing fewer lives and mastering your resources. Before you know it, you're blazing through the level with great speed and efficiency, and you've earned every resource that you can now use against the boss
I've noticed in Celeste that when I suck at a room for like 10+ tries, I often close my eyes and cover my face, take a deep breath, and let 10 seconds pass. All of a sudden, I perform *much* better. It's so weird!
This video really opened my mind! Not just in videogames, but this can actually explain why my 100% "focused" studying for a long period tends to not be productive, but when there are short breaks, I would be more focused
I think for me, it depends on the time in that space, and the difficulty of that space. If I have to traverse through a hard as balls area for 5 minutes just to get to a boss only to die. Ya, I'm getting mad. Honestly that long of an area for that long of a time sounds honest to god frustrating and might result in me dropping the game. If it's a 30-second chill space with only a couple enemies you know how to fight then I think that's good. It gives you time to breathe and think about your last run. Honestly, anything thing over 2 minutes would be too much but that's just me. If its a rouge-like it's a completely different story.
“Its probably just both but lets drag it out for 20 minutes anyway” You sir get me
I am generally team let me back in right away. Typically it's important to learn a boss's patterns to be able to succeed against it and sometimes this takes several attempts. Nothing is more frustrating to me than losing to a boss over and over because I have to spend 40 minutes getting back to it forgetting those patterns so I can die again and do the trek all over again.
All that said, it does kind of depend on the game as this bothers me less in some games than others for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.
I will say that while I recognize that breaks are necessary to keep yourself from burning out, I don't need a break every. single. time. I fail on a boss.
3:58 every deep analysis TH-cam video ever.
Also, 15:49 made me laugh way harder than it probably should have.
I've found, from playing Bloodborne recently, that there may be a lot of value in the different levels of granularity the gap can operate at. Coming off of Dark Souls, where Estus always gives you the heals needed for the challenge ahead, Bloodborne doesn't give you free Blood Vials, so you have to farm them up when hitting a brick wall, as though you went "Game Over" on a lives system. This results in a less frequent, but larger gap, whose length and frequency isn't as rigidly tied to the rhythm of a particular challenge.
For me, personally, working up to a point of "Game Over" would already have me malding on my minute-or-so way back to the main challenge. The first couple defeats will usually provide an appropriate amount of cooling down to be in fighting form again, but the time required increases as defeats pile up. Popping out to farm, or just taking a break from the game altogether is usually what ends up being a proper meditation to regain focus and incorporate lessons learned.
Similarly to the baseline gap, this secondary gap is also commonly responded to with knee-jerk reactions, although usually with a longer-held grudge about it. Another underrated, but necessary "evil", perhaps, because boy, do we ever lack the personal responsibility to take a break at an appropriate time.
Incredible video as always!
And a topic that isn’t nearly researched and delved into enough in gaming video essays.
I often decry the “long walk back” to a boss or challenge in games, but it is good to also consider the possible positives as you mention.
That being said, I wish Dark Souls respected my time more 😄
The purple circles literally disappeared _as_ you said the word "disappearance" for me which was kinda wild timing lol. I had to go back to make sure it was just the optical illusion cuz the timing was just too perfect
I feel like the question probably shouldn't be "should there be a gap" and instead be something closer to "how big of a gap should there be?" I feel like we can often agree that a one-hour slog through multiple difficult enemy hordes is just as overwhelming as an instant respawn in the boss fight is underwhelming. A lot of thought needs to go into maintaining the feel of a boss fight without driving away players in frustration.
As a former checkout clerk, I just need to say how important and beautiful those little dividers are! Everytime A customer slapped one of those puppies down, a small sigh of relief left mine lungs. Knowing I would no longer have to keep a small portion of my brain partitioned to remember where one customers groceries ended, and the next's began!
Thank you and GOOD DAY
I usually despise gaps because I want to immediately go against the bosses to prove to the game and myself that I'm capable of defeating them. So a faraway checkpoint is something that prevents me from my actual goal, as if the game is trying to hinder my progress. But if it was just a small walk I'd be ok with that. The real dealbreaker is when I have not just enemies along the way to fight, but stuff to collect again and again (especially if those are essential). That's when I just quit the game and start doing something else.
Those gaps of time between boss battles, those long walks, the loading times, I don't think they should exceed 5 seconds, but they should definitely take longer than half a second.
MegaMan, basically, got it right. At least the boss room part. Mostly. God, that game is hard without emulation.
I think if a boss is truly glorified, and you must feel a sense of reward for facing it, it should be taken in before the initial encounter. The checkpoint shouldn't be a punishment for losing. The momentum from the buildup beforehand needs to be maintained for a good boss fight to feel rewarding.
On the other hand, if a battle is meant to be a difficult learning experience, an optional challenge or a lesson from your mentor before receiving an amazing skill or upgrade, then I can understand checkpoints taking a little longer, maybe the mentor gives you a lecture each time you fail instead of sending you back immedietely.
From what I gather from games like Jump King or Getting Over It, you often learn best from repetitive tasks when you receive feedback for your mistakes, even if it's needless or chastising. A loading screen or a long walk before a battle feels more like a copout than an actual punishment. It feels cheap, at least compared to the alternatives.
One more thing. I like the idea of training dummies. Not necessarily actual training dummies, but enemies that condition or prepare you for a bigger battle. Maybe the boss has variations of these attacks, mixes them up, makes it much harder, but you've been given the learning toons to understand and best this boss. This is why I practice in the tutorial of Witcher 3 a lot. I got the muscle memory out of the way quickly, so when I needed to learn in a real fight, I didn't have to say "These controls are hard". Something to consider. Flow state can bite you in the ass as much as it helps you. Part of patience is learning to let go of flow in order to adopt a new perspective, and it can be a godsend and much easier than struggling to maintain focus, easier to take the long road instead of fighting a coursing river. Easier to dodge a boss for 10 minutes to learn it's patterns, than to flail about and suffer the walk of shame for 10 minutes.
I completely agree with you.
If I may say, my favourite fight in Hollow Knight is prolly Nightmare King Grim due to several reasons:
- boss attacks;
- pacing;
- music.
And it's also worth mentioning that if I die in that battle, I don't really suffer any drawbacks like having to kill my soul before I enter the battle. I respawn next to the dormant boss, and I just need to enter his mind with a single click of a button after which I travel like 5 seconds or so before the actual fight begins. Btw, I died a lot of times from him, but I never felt frustrated.
Speaking of HW, I really appreciated how some monsters prepared me for the bosses. There were these brute giants, which had a similar attack to the False Knight, and so the game prepared me to deal with some bosses without directly telling me what to do. It was a "show, don't tell" learning experience, which I liked a lot.
"Shouldn't exceed 5sec but should definitely be longer than half a second"
So you reckon there's a sweet spot of 4.5sec after you lose to a boss, whereby if you're not back in the action in the next 1-4 sec the entire experience is compromised? I don't understand that assertion. 🤔
Doesn't it depend much more on further context? Like what the game/challenge/reward is?
I'm not much of a gamer. Yet this was really interesting to me. Maybe it applies to things like taking a Driver's license exam multiple times, or taking the Bar Exam to become a lawyer, or getting in the wrong line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. It can drive you crazy if you don't change your headspace. It's also explains why I smoked for 30 years. In real-life frustrating situations, going out to have a smoke was really calming, and made it easier to get back into a groove.
"It depends" is such a great answer for so many situations
As someone who plays a lot of pvp games I think the frustration is really metered by the end screen, all the things you have to go through to put yourself back into a game. The queue and the loading, the warmup period. It let's you come down. If it's too short there's no come down from a psychological high place, so you bring that into subsequent games. But having the come down let's you get back to normal and be fresh for the next one.
I had a really interesting (to me, lol) personal experience with this game design concept!
I made a "Metroidvania" on Mega Man Maker, but people complained that it was too hard because there weren't save points right before most of the bosses, so I made an "easy mode" that does just that. But others said it was less fulfilling because of them. It makes sense that different players just had different values and levels of patience.
The Hollow Knight soul sanctum is the definition of true pain. I could not even put into words how frustrating the walk from the bench to soul master is.
Nioh and its sequel/prequel (Nioh 2's events happen both before and after the events of Nioh) handle the walk of shame in a rather interesting way: As one goes through the main missions, they will find various doors and whatnot that can be opened from one side that serve as a shortcut to cut past many of the enemies and allow them to more quickly return to the areas they were having trouble with. In particular, Nioh 2's first mission has a shortcut right after its second checkpoint that once opened, cuts about half of the level's environment out of what's needed to get to the boss from said shrine. This allows the player to skip past ten human enemies, including 2/3rds of the archer enemies, as well as both of the most armored humans in the level.
Though as far as walking back to the boss for each attempt, there's quite often a shrine right before the boss with many cases having only a handful of meager enemies or enemies that are easy to kite past between the final shrine and the boss, with at least one notable case where the last shrine was directly outside the boss arena.
The bit about focus actually sounds like it can be a negative just as often about a positive.
If the boss will only take a relatively small number of tries before we beat it, then the walk to give us a break and reset our focus could be beneficial.
But if it takes more tries, then the walk becomes monotonous to the point we lose focus and suddenly it's giving us trouble, pulling us away from the boss and the learning we need to be doing there.
I've definitely had tough platforming challenges before where an earlier part suddenly starts giving me trouble again, and by the time I get back to the "actual" challenge, I'm even worse than the last time I made it
I don’t usually comment on two-year old videos, but your discussion on the vigilance decrement made something click for me that I’ve been wondering about for years: I never understood the phenomenon where, after some initial good runs against a boss, my later attempts actually get worse if I keep attempting it.
It seems counterintuitive to how learning and attaining mastery are supposed to work, and for a while I wondered if it was something about my temperament that made repeated tries detrimental. Over time I have naturally begun taking breaks if a sequence was making me frustrated because my ability to focus and perform well takes a nosedive in that state. Now I know there’s a psychological phenomenon at play, which is kind of a relief. It’s not just me lol.
I witnessed the power of taking breaks in real time today: I’m playing Hollow Knight and had bounced off the Gruz Mother several times (much as she bounces around the arena). I took a break to explore other areas, then when I booted the game up tonight I beat her second try.
Thanks for this video!
I had the same experience in Animal well this week. I was beating my head against an optional post game platforming challenge when all my progress just started regressing. I couldn't do it until the following day.
If you're early in the game just walking around can also help with getting the controls automated so you can focus on when to do something rather than how to input it.
I recently replaced Hollow Knight. Even though it was a couple of years ago that I beat it, I've watched a bazillion let's plays and speed runs since. I know where everything is, so I thought I could just go from a to b. But nope, all that knowledge wasn't enough, I needed the exploring to work up the muscle memory to actually execute it.
@@plutus2559 Yeah, muscle memory is so key and there’s really no good replacement for executing on it yourself. Let’s Plays and streams can help you remember where things are but not how to reach them or complete a given sequence.
Hope you liked Animal Well! That one’s on my “to play” list.
@@caitlindemarismckenna3932 Animal well is up there right next to Hollow Knight as one of the best games I've played. I just love games that let me figure things out for myself.
@@plutus2559 That’s what I’ve been hearing about Animal Well, and I love that too. I saw it garner a comparison to Outer Wilds in how it lets you put the pieces together, so I’m excited to get to it.
7:12 "do you feel your shirt on your back?"
This sudden real-life push scared me to *death*
I've been playing over a thousand hours of Dark Souls, and I dislike the boss runbacks more and more every new run. It's not too bad when something is fresh, but when you just want to get back to "the good part" the longer runs just feel like a waste of time.
Interestingly enough some games like Code Vein makes runbacks feel less bad because there's vital resources you can only stock up on by killing enemies, so giving you a bunch of encounters is really just giving you a chance to stock up between attempts without having to take a farming break at some point... of course, every game didn't get the memo.
(Though Code Vein also has a system where your NPC ally can revive you on death, so it's more excusable to have longer walks back - you need to both make mistakes AND manage your revive resources poorly to be sent back to a checkpoint, the higher stakes are offset by you having more protection against failure)
I can get behind something like a 1-2 min elevator ride to cool your head and think. What I don't like is having to wade through enemies I already know I can beat because I already have. I would rather have time to cool off or figure out how to beat the boss than focus on beating enemies that I know shouldn't be a challenge or God forbid, potentially getting more annoyed because something I should be able to do is now tougher because I'm mad and enemies that wouldn't be a problem are now mini-bosses.
14:30 i really feel this bit. as annoying as the run ups can be, snapping right back into things can be a bit jarring, even on the side of getting back in to the action you tend to want a LITTLE bit of time to at least recognize you died. coming into doom eternal from doom 2016, the extra lives mechanic is really offputting. like, i get that the game is overall more challenging and they want to throw out some freebies to help in the real head meets wall moments i guess but... it just feels out of place. i got torn apart and died, i just want to try again, let me take the L and get better. in eternal's case you can just say not to pick up the lives or turn on armor mode or whatever it is but cmon, you expect me not to want to pick up collectibles? again, its a case by case basis of course but as much as some of dark souls' run ups irk me they didnt stop me from wanting more, ultimately. its almost in the same vein as "do you want to change the difficulty to easy?" prompts, dont patronize me, im trying here! doubly so when it IS unprompted. at least in the right-outside-the-fog bonfires in dark souls i know that that is where im operating from instead of it just being a snap point that i dont know about until its in use, or i can make the choice wether or not to change to easy when presented.
On Soul Calibur 3, there's this bonus stage where you have to defeat the three shopkeepers in a fight, in a limited time. They are weak, but incredibly fast, and keep running away. I went in with Zasalamel and tried tons of times, all night, until I finally gave up and went to sleep.
After a good night of sleep, I tried again first thing in the morning. And I **** you not, I actually managed to win the fight on my very first try!
Sometimes taking a break does make a difference.
The entire time I'm watching this I keep thinking something along the lines of "Okay yeah Dark Souls boss, but what about the walk back to revenge kill the enemy player in a FPS". I'm sure there's other examples too, that one just became prominent.
Damn Daryl, you've really gotten the hang of this whole youtube thing! Your charisma was through the roof in this video!
I think my favorite example of an in-between space is Hyrule Castle in BOTW. It is one of the few locations in the game where you are unable to fast travel to; and, with countless ways to approach how you "break into" the castle, there is always something new to offer to the experience. Likewise to the amount of approaches to enter the castle, there are also plenty of reasons to go to the location itself besides invoking the final boss of the game. With rare armor and loot, as well as powerful enemies, it becomes a great place to level up and help you prepare for the rest of the experiences within the game's massive world. With that in mind, the level the player is at in terms of preparedness for Hyrule Castle also varies each time they approach it; i.e. a new route into the castle is available once you have the ability to swim up waterfalls, which can only come after you visit the Zora domain and find the Zora armor set.
I have played BOTW for a couple hundred hours, and ironically enough, I have as of yet to enter the final boss fight. I have, however, entered the castle location countless times. Each time has been different depending on my current gear, goal, and overall mood when entering the location itself. Am I in the mood to explore cautiously and slowly make my way through the enemies? Or do I want to sprint in, guns blazing (so to speak) and dodge all of the enemies I can to find a specific item? The design of the castle itself is dynamic enough to make, you, as the player feel like a small part of the area around you. It is up to you to find a way into the castle, and if you die too many times, your last save file will return you to wherever you were before entering the vicinity.
For such a tedious location to enter, Hyrule Castle is one that I personally have found extremely enjoyable, despite every time I have explored it technically accounting for another run-through of the in-between space to the final boss. I know eventually I'll initiate the final fight and complete the story. I also know that with all of the time I have spent navigating my way through the castle, the cadence of the music will remain as chilling and encouraging as it has every other time I have entered the location.
Impatience is a sign of immaturity, patience is a sign of the wise.
5/5 for the gundam wing reference, I've been slowly rewatching it lol
if you step on the elevator button while getting off of it and heading into new londo then you won't have to use the lever to bring it back up when you die. this goes for a lot of souls boss runs with elevators.
LISTEN DARYL
Displaying the comments so much put this video on another level. Hearing your accounts while reading dozens of others' accounts makes a huge difference in my comprehension of the topic. Good job - do it more!
Another interesting thing to think about is "reload from last save" games that allow you to save anywhere a la Skyrim, Divinity 2, etc. that also have "auto save" points to serve as the game's built in checkpoints.
It makes the checkpoint / run optional. Want to have to run back through the whole dungeon? turn off auto save in Skyrim and manual save right at the front, there ya go. Want to just rely on the game's manual auto saves? It auto saves as you pass through load doors. Want to save right before engaging the boss? Absolutely. It's not QUITE the same as a checkpoint, since usually you don't have to re-collect things you've already collected with checkpoints, whereas reloading from last save, you have to do the zone in its entirety again if the save was too far back, but it's definitely an interesting thing to consider along the lines of this topic.
Within 5 minutes I subscribed. Love the voice, love the comedy, love the pace, and damn that sauce fucking hit. Can't wait to binge everything on your channel.
I dont mind a walk back to a boss that i died to. However, when that walk back is FILLED with enemies that ive already dealt with before, then i find it more tedious than anything.
Fully agree with this. Being an achievement hunter on Xbox, and having done Mein Leben on Wolfenstein 2, the game has 4 un-skippable cutscenes that are amazing but a slog to sit through, 2 are in the very beginning of the game and are around 10 minutes each, the other 2 are I believe shorter and are at the midpoint of the game both before and after the Courthouse section. Having to rewatch those cutscenes on every attempt was so painful, since the achievement had no way to save, and you had to run through the entire game on the highest difficulty with one life, which in my successful run was 4 and a half hours long.
Great video! I was actually just talking about this with my partners yesterday, so it was cool to see it covered. There is one thing I think went without much mention here that I want to bring up: Anxiety. The walk back raises the stakes of failure significantly, its not just that they give a time for us to reflect on our mistakes they also make us (or some people with anxiety at least, namely me) fear failure that much more. You mentioned it briefly when saying that "it preserves the atmosphere" and I think its along similar lines but also slightly different, it doesn't just make me more intentional with the boss fights it makes me actively scared of them and afraid of failure. I get this "whats the point of going past all these enemies if im just going to die at the boss?" feeling, and its what keeps me from enjoying a lot of souls likes and is one of the big reasons games like hades and sekiro sit unfinished in my library. I LOVE Celeste and I think one of the main reasons is because of this. Its partially because of the fast respawn times like you said, but it doesn't just make it easier to do another attempt, it makes it easier to fail. and for someone like me, with such fear of failure, having the game actively encourage dying means the world. I think people often conflate this walk back with difficulty and I somewhat resent that, Celeste is the hardest game Ive ever played by quite a long shot (c sides and chapter nine at least, and ive played ds3, sekiro, hollowknight and plenty of other "hard" games), but its not nearly as *punishing* as those other games. It demands perfection but it doesn't hurt you for not having it, it just says "here: try again. You can do this" and I love it for that
just my thoughts, id be curious if anyone else has similar experiences
makes sense, i think sometimes it depends on how far and how bad the loss was too like if you barely lost but have to go really far back that's probably more frustrating than if you lost bad and realize "yea I might be missing something" during a relxed break. I think the worst is death loops, when you are saved into the situation you're losing at and can't go back, you maybe will eventually get out but not if you really needed something from outside that space. I never defeated one of the Spyro games as a kid because I got locked in a permanent boss fight, for instance.
I think for me I prefer short gaps because I can always add time myself outside the game. I can take moment to decompress myself if I need, check my phone, get a drink, etc. But then if I feel ready to just go go go against the boss I can.
When the walk backs are long and involved, I truly feel like it is enhancing the experience. For example, Seath being not in the achives and instead being in this underground crystal cave far away from his books, coddling the primordial crystal really is a PART of the seath fight. O&S feels a bit more random, just dodging past a giant dude who always seems to hit you every other try. Thematic walk backs are a boon to the game, especially on mechnically simple fights like seath, but bosses like O&S or Gael or any other fight where it is a 100% execution based skill matchup, give me a short runback. Gael is the best example of a nonproblematic but still *there* runback, no enemies but you get empty time where you can calm down.
I don’t want the gap but I need the gap to chill out. I get so fiercely determined that I won’t stop if I’m not given a gap.
This reminds me of undertale and deltarune. The gap between bosses are not too long, and the intros for each bosses are skipped/shortened after watching it beforehand
I think the monotony leading to decreased focus on the challenge at hand is something you missed in "The Two Ways You Lose In Games" because you said that doing badly on a boss after a first attempt that went comparatively and the surprise at that outcome had to do with an overestimation of our skill, but I almost always find it to be me losing focus and needing to actively think about the nuances of the challenge once more.
I think that the difference between a good walk back and a bad one is challenge. In something like a roguelike, where everything leading up to the boss has difficulty, then the walk back is part of the challenge of the boss. On the other hand, when the only things between the respawn point and the boss are a few easy enemies and a long walk, it gets annoying and repetitive.
The space between a boss is okay if the challenges presented have something to teach the player about the fight up ahead.
What's not good is the Blue Smelter Demon's super long gauntlet filled with hostile sunbros and drumstick-wielding golem dudes.
i think especially while i was learning the game still, a short but minorly stimulating walk was usually ideal. i offer a case study:
hornet in greenpath: the walk from the 2nd nearest bench (bc i was to noob mode to realize there was a stagway right there) was still not that long and had a few enemies to deal with and a few that could be avoided. it only took a minute, it was stimulating, and the point where i started being able to do it thoughtlessly was a nice barometer for me that i was finally getting the game down
soulmaster: only had to do it maybe a dozen times? but each attempt felt like torture bc the soul sanctum is not a cakewalk when youre still learning, especially if i died in phase 2
nightmare king: took less than 30 seconds to start him over and i definitely did it in fewer tries than hornet but i still got so damn tired of it. the complete lack of a break helped me learn the patterns but made me so sloppy at executing it that it still hurt every try. plus, i was already done with basically everything but the trial of the fool, so i couldn't even just do something else for a bit. which is my current mood w the radiance lol
This is what usually happens for me in Souls games:
1. Have kind of an idea what boss is coming up the first time, die
2. Get really excited for the 2nd and 3rd times because maybe I got close or found a strat I was confident in
3. If I don’t kill the boss within 4-5 times, I will usually hyper speed die like 10-20 times with various levels of failure. Maybe get REALLY close once or twice and a bunch of attempts where I shit the bed as soon as the fight starts
4. Stop all together if I’ve been gaming all day or play something else for a bit
5. Come back the next day or after a few hours and beat the boss after 4-5 times
i don’t mind the walk , it’s the enemies that get in ur way and drain ur hp that annoy me . u get 2 options : ur hp is low for boss battle so then u die, or u use a potion to restore ur hp to normal , but then the potion is probably wasted anyway cos u die even with full hp
This is why Renalla of the full moon gave me so much trouble. Not just the trek back but also all of phase 1. By the time I got to phase 2 I had lost a lot of focus and she killed me quickly.
As a cashier who answers phones while ringing folks out, sometimes while answering other customers questions and greeting yet another set, I can confirm that sometimes the annoyance gets up to like 106%. It's weird to think about, but I guess it does make sense: flow state in any form is kinda important, but kinda....fragile, I suppose? Excellent video!
btw in hollow knight you arent supposed to beat mantis lords right after mantis claw, after losing to them the first time quirrel appears at the entrance to the mantis village and tells you to go to city of tears, so as to prevent people from going into deepnest too early ;)
Its funny to see what parts in videos are most viewed and you see the general patience of people with longer videos.
I like the concept of choosing you break. When something is hard and stressful. Taking a real break like going for a walk or coming back to it tomorrow is my preference. Coming back to it exactly where you left off is nice otherwise it would be like reading a book and having to start the book over if you didn’t get to the end of the chapter.
7:43 Your mistake here was in not sending the elevator back up once you hit the ground floor in expectation of dying to the boss again.
I also hate the walk back - especially when it happens so many times I start screwing up the walk back. If the boss room is right in front of me, I'd be tempted to fight it over and over again until I won - even if it ruins the fun of the game for me. By forcing me to walk back I have to make a cost/benefit analysis over how worthwhile it is to waste my time on a fight I know I can't yet win.
But it's not about delaying a reward or gratification, it's not about waiting per se, we were perfectly happy going through that path in the first place - it's the setback, the "oh god I have to go through all that all over again" part of it which is frustrating. It's the gaming equivalent of a program crashing on you when you last saved over an hour ago and having to redo your work.
It should also be pointed out that the low-focus part of the try-hard session is itself a break. At least in my experience, the skills magically return after you get to the point where failure means nothing and you don't really expect to win.
I completely agree with Team Cherry that the gap is part of the boss, especially because yeah you can improve boss mechanics to win... but if you're always showing up with half your Masks gone and no Soul? You can also master the gap and have a higher shot at that boss
I feel like a good midground might be to have a space, some amount of distance to travel, but with unusual absence of barriers such as hostile opponents or obstacles. Make it ominous.
The main things that bug me the most about the walk back to the boss are CUTSCENES that are unskippable and loading screens that take up too much time. Had those in FFX as well as Mario and Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, first campaign. In the DK campaign they let you skip cutscenes.
Damn, really hitting us with the poetic language at the end, good stuff 👍🏾
Also you looked fresh in that suit! And for what it's worth I thought your metaphors were quite humorous!
2:49
Dude. We don't want the cashier getting confused.
2:46 huh? where I am from this is something you say thank you for (because they saved you the trouble to place the divider yourself), certainly not something to feel irritated by
My personal taste: Checkpoint spacing from the probable threat that kills you (a boss fight, a major platforming hurdle etc) should be based on how many options there are for exploration. Take Super Metroid as an example of both sides of this. (Note that this is written based on someone's initial run of the game. If you're familiar with the more advanced tech, you can change the sequence of the game dramatically. But you're also probably not facing the walk-of-shame after dying to a boss that much, unless you're pushing your limits to pick up the speedrun or something.)
There's an early boss in Brinstar called Spore Spawn. If you're playing your first time, this boss is where you get Super Missiles, which will let you leave the large room that holds both the entrance and exit of Spore Spawn's arena. The save point closest to Spore Spawn is off that same large room, quite close to the entrance, but just far enough that you have to jump over the path that leads to Charge Beam, which increases your offensive capabilities. You're still quite limited in your options, so you're not being pushed too far back.
Compare that to Crocomire, a boss in Norfair. Here, the closest save point opens out directly to the room you drop down to fight the boss. You literally just drop off two ledges, open a door in the floor and you're in the boss fight. If you're here for the first time, you've probably dropped down into Norfair for High Jump boots, gone back to Brinstar to kill Kraid and get Varia Suit (another boss with a very convenient save point), come back down to Norfair and searched both directions so you get Ice Beam and Speed Booster, then gone all the way up to the top of Brinstar to get Power Bombs. You've probably done pretty much all the exploration you have access to at this point. So there's no real point in prompting you to look elsewhere, so...convenient save point.
Then there's Phantoon, the boss of the Wrecked Ship. The nearest convenient save point is either the top of Brinstar where you got Power Bombs or your ship in Crateria, both of which are quite a ways from Wrecked Ship in general, and Phantoon is pretty much as far as you can get from the entrance in that area. (There are save points in Wrecked Ship, but the power is off until you kill Phantoon, so you don't get to save or open most doors.) This is very much a required boss even for speedruns (well, in no major glitches anyway), and it's one of the most difficult fights, especially if you don't know what you're doing. So you're going to be making that long run back a time or two. This...is the kind of thing that frustrates me. This is the next boss in the basic sequence after Crocomire, and sure, Wave Beam and a couple of Missile Tanks and maybe even an Energy Tank or two that are accessible using Crocomire's Grapple Beam are nice, but you've likely snagged at least some of those on the way at this point, and it's a real long trek with very little on the way to suggest "maybe try exploring this way some more." The first run is great - the nerves from being so far from a usable save point just build on the extremely spooky vibe in Wrecked Ship that culminates in being attacked by the big bad ghost Phantoon in the depths of the ship. Which is perfect. But when you're doing your fifth slog all the way from your ship in Crateria to Phantoon, it really wears out its welcome.
As someone who does a lot of raiding in FF14, where the bosses are largely scripted dances taking 10-20 mins depending on difficulty, a lot of this seems to apply in an interesting way. If you are learning a mechanic 5 minutes into the fight, the first 5 mins become to the run back from the checkpoint. And like in that sloppy celeste example, its easy for focus to slip in the early parts and people begin to fail mechanics that were already learned. This is such a wide phenomenon that when playing with random people through party finder, people may list a party as practice for some mechanic, only for everyone to make mistakes on the previous hard mechanic, such as FoF prog groups for p3s can end up feeling more like adds phase prog groups. I feel like this video helps explain how that can happen, and I might push for my raid group to take mini breaks when mistakes start happening, as opposed to prevailing wisdom of immediately doing another attempt.
I think you missed a crucial point: Player Choice. If the player wants to work on the boss, and they are forced to wait for a 40 second long elevator, it's infuriating. In a linear game like Dark Souls this is horrible because you HAVE to get past the boss to progress. Whereas in an open world game like Breath of the Wild, you can simply go do something else, like find better gear and come back to it later.
It's not that I'm impatient, but like you said the trek back is a hindrance, not a break. Nobody likes when their intended choice is being taken away by being forced to wait. Waiting is the worst game mechanic.
I'm surprised to hear such a mixed response to a training mode in any rougelike, but I've also routinely held Crypt of the Necrodancer up as the format I wish more of the genre would try and emulate. You can practice bosses you've encountered, you are encouraged to take the game one zone at a time, and then for the committed there's a proper, old-school "okay but do it all in one go" test of endurance and what you've learned. My biggest beef in rougelikes is spending an hour to get back to where I was just to have the same thing kill me again before I even realize what's going on. I've gotten to Mom in Binding of Isaac twice, and each time I walked in the room and she immediately stepped on me, which is not a very helpful experience for learning what to do since my memory on the matter is so poor I could not even concretely tell you if she did so in a different way each time.
Half of the genre feels like it just boils down to drop luck for me, but being able to at least step in and learn the patterns I'm dealing with helps offset that feeling a lot, and completely changes how I see the rest of the game (and consequently proper runs) for the better. Something about how I learn really makes the average rougelike impenetrable to me, which is why I've never taken the plunge into Dead Cells or Hades; ya boy still can't get past floor 3 of the Gungeon, and it's been years. I get there, something kills me, I barely understand what never mind how to deal with it, and to even have the chance to try again I need to _get there_ again, which will probably take me several runs in this game where half the time I get like six guns that are somehow worse than the one I started with. Being given a space to practice the "dance" and learn the nuances (Necrodancer also has a handful of practice rooms designed for this!!) changes the whole game for me from a frantic twitch-response nightmare where I have a grab bag of literally random tricks to an execution-based puzzle where I'm given extra tools each run to mix things up.
Practice rooms in rougelikes are rare and probably have a lot of room for improvement, but imo done right are absolutely an accessibility thing that can add tremendously to certain players' experience while being optional enough that players who aren't interested need not bother. If you don't feel like they're adding to your experience or think you don't need them, then you can just ignore the things and carry on like normal. To point: I haven't actually _used_ the practice rooms in Necrodancer that much, despite my praise! The per-floor structure limits my need for them, but if I'm struggling I can at least pop in and get some idea what I need to do, even if I'm left trying to do it with starting gear and am almost certainly doomed. I really just want a chance to _observe_ the little bastards if need be, and having it has made a tremendous difference to me. I then still need to go in and clear things out properly to advance the game at all, so ultimately you're just studying for a test instead of hopping blind into your final exam. Some people enjoy the latter, but they probably weren't insta-killed by Mom twice days apart.
Very fitting that the world of Elden Ring is known as “The Lands Between”
Yeah and now there are Marika statues that give you checkpoints.
I've definitely had points in games where I got so used to repeating the same thing and failing that I stopped noticing. There was a study awhile back that said if you're ever failing at something repeatedly, the best thing you can do is just stop. Come back to it 2 days later. Your mind will be refreshed. This has worked countless times for me across various games. I had to do this in Assassin's Creed, Starcraft 2, and for numerous raid bosses in Borderlands. That said, I still prefer having no wait time. With all due respect, if you want to wait, that is your choice as is my choice to want to be immediately back in the action. The difference is, only one of those choices hinders the other. If people want to be masochists and keep pushing forward with a brain that has literally turned itself off...let them.
i always think of the runback or walk of shame as a little break for you to think through everything that just happened.
i know this isnt common for other people, but im usually aware of my shirt. not my nose though, glasses are in the way so i just get to see the frames. as i get pissed off, and the run back lets me get further enraged by my mistakes or whatever, i start to get a bad case of tunnel vision. i don't see my glasses anymore, i don't feel my chair, all i see is the screen. i stop commentating, i stop laughing, my entire brain focuses on one goal and once i acheive it i usually shut down most of the way.
in this boss arena is a burnt-out husk, weeping at its victory.
I knew what you were doing as soon as I heard Relina shout "Herro!" Nice Gundam Wing joke.
How did this get recommended to me right after I alt+f4'd out of Elden Ring for this exact reason... Like 2 min walk with an elevator without a single enemy and only "obstacle" was kind of narrow walkway at one point. If there was enemies dodging them would at least keep me warm but nothing... Other is those bosses that only spawn at night, you need to spawn at the nearest grace (not the stake of marika) rest at the grace, pass time to night, leave the grace, rest AGAIN and only then do you get the boss to spawn again... For me these gaps take me right out of the zone and kill my immersion in the game, frustrate me to no end and often make me rage quit before I even get to properly learn the boss. When I can get right back to the boss dying doesn't annoy me nearly as much and I can focus on the challenge and take breaks on my own to internalize what I'm learning. I want to focus when I want to focus and take breaks when I need them. I don't want the game to force me to take breaks without actually taking a break walking back to the challenge.
I've only in the past year gotten into roguelikes (people deal with covid in different ways - I became a masochist apparently).
What I've learned from this exercise is that starting over with retained knowledge is optimal for me; the grind in rpg's that I'm so used to is just so infuriating to me now, it feels like time wasted because it's me collecting intangible numbers on a screen to make my stick hit harder. The roguelike genre rewards me for my own skill and ingenuity, which feels like a concrete reward for having tried and failed because I'm now better because my mental and physical reflexes are faster. I've always had issues with failure and suffer from perfectionism a lot; roguelikes have taught me the lesson of the long checkpoint - it's the journey and what you learn along the way that matters.
Also, as a veteran rpg player I know the unending torture of having saved in a dungeon beside a boss to realise they sorely outmatch you, you've limited resources so grinding will be difficult, and if the game in question doesn't have escape ropes you're screwed!
This video actually made me finish the last screen of celeste farewell after 19 hrs in that chapter
It is entirely dependent on if it's a fight to get back. If it's a casual jog then yeah sure thing, put me a distance out so I can reflect on the last attempt as I walk back. But if I have to fight my way back then I hate it because there is no reflection because I have to focus on not losing recourses like health or mana for the next attempt.
I know how you feel with regards to the difficulty completing Souls and Soulslike games. I love them, but I keep just getting distracted by other things, because they eat up so much of my focus and life when I allow myself to once more sink into my role as a Chosen Undead or Tarnished.
And that's why I love Marika's stakes in ER instead of respawning at bonfire
I’ve found trying again on a different day can make all the difference with a difficult boss battle.
The only time I really hate the space in between in souls games is when you are just before the boss after the big gauntlet of enemies and you get invaded by angry naked man with big stick that will one shot you
So, for me the difference between pro break and pro immediate respawn, is more down to the feeling the game is going for, than whether it's tactical or tactile. If a game wants to go for an action, power fantasy vibe, getting you straight back in the game makes you focus less on your deaths, they become forgettable compared to the amount of time spent winning. On the other hand, a game going for a feel of horror, or at least some sense of vulnerability on the players part, wants to punish death more heavily. The way I think about it, it's like the time you're walking back to the boss is time you're "dead", or at least "not currently winning". The longer you spend not on the way to the win, just timed out while you wait to get to try again, the weaker you'll remember feeling after you put the game down.