As I said, Derelict (Main dev of this game) is a big Dark Souls player. And many people that know him have mentioned how part of his way of playing those are transfered into the game like the whole skipping progression mockery.
And again, the parelelisms I brough between the both are:
1. The tediousness to get something done and how even when you know how to do it, the experience more often than not can be more frustrating than fun for the average player.
2. The phylosophy of preventing cheating at all or severely mocking you to do so to the point of invalidating any potential non-sandbox gameplay using them. Forcing you into either 100% sandbox or grind to death. And honestly I suspect he doesnt have removed the sandbox elements cause that would axe 75%+ of his income and perma damage his reputation as a developer but that doesnt prevent him to show you how much he despises you to do so.
3. Both the fact that the main dev is a souls player, you see the experience his game delivers and how is not the first case Ive dealt with in which a dev is fan of said hard games and their developed ones suffer from an annoying game loop.
And 4. How the latter point applies both inside the game with the restrictions and forced tediousness it has and outside the game with the hostily and mockery both the dev and hardcore follower base seem to have. The only difference is the way they say it. In soulslikes they say "git gud", in BotN they say "the game is still on alpha and people seem to be dumb enough to forget that alpha games are prone to changes and nothing is yet set in stone so big changes need to happen and things like save wipes are necesary". Which.... Frankly neither are worth shit. They're basically a synonimous to say "F U and deal with it or stop playing".
Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying, but most of your grievances with Dark Souls seem to be aimed at the
community, not the game itself.
First of all, in Dark Souls, the difficulty—while undoubtedly frustrating to some (especially more casual) players—is an intentional part of the game design; that is to say, Dark Souls is about overcoming overwhelming odds; and this is why enemies are designed to be so difficult (and, for instance, why they’re so tall—they’re meant to make the player feel small, inadequate). In contrast, Breeders of the Nephelym has no reason to multiply the grind every update. Should we believe that DH has a similar philosophy about how BotN is supposed to embody the true struggle involved in maintaining a breeding farm? Unlikely.
Second, Dark Souls actually has several tools to lessen its difficulty built into the game mechanics. A lot of builds are simply more forgiving than others—heavy armour and tower shields, for instance, are much friendlier to newer or casual players than running around naked with a buckler and parrying everything. Even further on the easy-mode side of the spectrum are magic builds, which give players more and safer options for dealing with the threats they encounter. Finally, there are summons, which drastically lower the difficulty of boss encounters. Note that the game itself does not judge players for using these tools in any way, shape, or form; it’s the players of Dark Souls who have a reputation for establishing a hierarchy of the various builds according to “prestige”, calling noobs those players who use safer builds and telling them to “git gud”, and likewise mocking players who use summons, etc.
I want to stress also that growth potential in Dark Souls—how much faster one can progress by being familiar with its mechanics—is far, far greater than that in Breeders of the Nephelym.
All in all, I think that even overlooking other aspects of the games such as levels of polish; how much more engaging and well-crafter the actual gameplay loop of Dark Souls is compared to BotN; how much more attention is put into the world-building and story, etc.; there’s a clear difference fundamentally between what Dark Souls presents and what games such as Breeders of the Nephelym, which like to pretend they’re just “old-school hard”, have to offer.
