>>514967607>You didn't talk about runbacks. Regardless. So your ability to skip new enemy spam. Wow. Great.Runbacks were obviously implied when i talked about vanilla's heavy mob spam near fog walls (usually where bosses are!), and it's not "skipping new enemy spam" when that enemy spam was previously in vanilla and is now removed or toned down so they can't hit you in a fog gate. Only exception to this is before smelter demon, which is at least an optional boss.
>I never said it did. It blocks where I was going. It blocks my progress.You talked about obstacles that block the "flow of progress that was intended in the base game," not "flow of progress that I personally want to take". Big distinction there. They only added 8 new statues, not "dozens," and they all give you good rewards and only block off access to chests with the exception of ruin sents, where branches are plentiful at this point and you wouldn't have to miss out and come back way later.
>re: heide knightsYeah i'm saying that your heidecanon isn't a valid point. There are still four heide knights chilling in non-heide areas like in vanilla. The new scholar-exclusive heide knights give players a way to farm the armor in NG, and this doesn't break the game's already-established heide knight lore in any way.
>blah blah blah original intended experience pedantryYou can infer from "ds2 (yes I meant to say scholar here) is the factual intended experience and vanilla is the underbaked rushed release version" that "release version" was in reference to vanilla, not "early in-development DS2 back when Shibuya was directing" because that is not a released game. The vanilla DS2 that we have is Tanimura's product, not Shibuya's. Tanimura's intended experience for DS2 is scholar, not vanilla. This is why scholar was made once Tanimura has the opportunity to do so. If Tanimura didn't have to rush vanilla out, there (most likely!) wouldn't be a need for scholar to exist and rebalance the level design so much.
