Any FromSoftware NG+
3 years ago
Taiwan

Why NG+ speedrun is not a thing for Dark Souls II & III and Bloodborne? Dark Souls I has only 1, I need to see boss rekt after getting the most optimal stuff possible -

Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
3 years ago

Nobody wants to run it.

Jönköping, Sweden

Ask the communities in their forums

Wykett likes this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
3 years ago

I mean yeah, of course ^ that's good advice in a general sense, but about all I watch on twitch is Souls speedruns, so I feel qualified to answer the question. And the answer is simply nobody wants to run them. Even the few NG+ runs of DS1 that do exist are regarded as pointless "meme" categories so bereft of any actual skill needed from the runner that there's just no interest in seriously grinding them/competing. If you're SL713 or whatever against a boss for whom you're meant to be maybe SL120 (roughly the SL most ordinary playthroughs end at) you're just so blatantly overpowered it stops being fun.

Now of course, OP or anyone is perfectly free to disagree with that assessment. But it is why the existing runners of these games don't really do NG+ runs. OP is fully free to do their own, if interested.

Wykett likes this
Taiwan

Not having to agree or disagree, still could have like let's say a SL 100 ng+ category, so it needs to have different categories for different SL. Personally, I imagine that would be very entertaining because it won't have all the fillers to go take that item and that another one, etc. It's straight boss rush, but thanks for you answer

Netherlands

There are a few problems with NG+ in most of the Soulsborne games.

  1. It's inconsistency in stats. In regular new game there is a level playing field as every runner starts with the same class and stats. But in NG+ a runner could essentially have 99 of everything, everything maxed out and simply gain time just because of that compared to someone else who has a slightly different save file. Saves cannot be shared in Souls games so having no central save file that can be used for runs is kind of an issue.

  2. The timing method for NG+. As most Souls games (apart from DS2 who uses loadless realtime) use IGT as its timing method.. it is very tricky to use that for NG+ as NG+ would mean you can use an existing save for NG+ but existing saves already have an IGT value stored from its first NG. You'd have to be able to work around that somehow.

  3. It's simply not popular. Possibly due to abovementioned inconsistencies or other reasons. There's little to no demand for categories like that from runners. Hence you don't see them on the boards of most games.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Wykett likes this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
3 years ago

I think the few existing runs used cheat engine to give them, indeed, 99 in every stat, as well as a 00:00:00 IGT savefile. If not cheat engine then something similar.