bladeward

Just my 2GP, but I LOVED the improve-by-doing flavor of DS1 and would support a variant of that in DS3. I think it really fit into a nice, fast-paced action that did not require you to micro-manage your skills or have your play broken by a leveling-page. The only real complaint came from my wife, and that was that nature magic just didn't level as fast as other options, which, in co-op play meant she was always playing catch up. I think this may have been primarily because nature magic improve as a result of healing? (and she loves being the healer). Just another perspective chiming in...

@WorstUsernamEver - Are there any transcripts of the closed-door demo? Can you point me to some links/resources? I am definitely curious and interested at this point.

@WorstUsernameEver - Thanks for the additional information and confirmation. I did get the sense that there would be co-op and I am excited about that. So, ultimately, I am really hoping that quality co-op will be a relatively high priority for the developers. I had skimmed a thread wherein someone had touted "flashiness" as what they wanted out of the game. That caused me to evaluate what I would most want out of the game and to attempt to express it. I want: "Stable, immersive, interruptible team co-op that encourages complementary character choices and rewards collaborative players"

My wife and I love multi-player games in which we can cooperate. The dungeon siege series is a Stirling example of games that got us addicted to this sort of play. This morning, over breakfast, we were reminiscing how we (in DS1) stumbled into a pack of high level skeletons and then spent two hours painstakingly luring, dodging and killing those skeletons. We gained a ton of experience, and a love for RPGs that let us play as husband and wife. Today i was looking for digital downloads of DS so as to recreate the experience on our new hardware (alas, no such thing), but did see that DS has been resurrected by Obsidian! If there is one thing I hope that DS3 does, it would be to match or improve the multiplayer co-op on the PC. While there are other enjoyable parts to DS (no transition screens, the skills you use are the skills that improve), my love of the series comes mostly from the way it enables us to escape into an alternate world together. Instead of pitting us against each other, or creating yet another self-centric experience, DS gave us team-focused gameplay. While MMOs like WoW, etc. do give a similar feel, they tend to not be "shelvable" and as such are not suitable. We are now the proud parents of a 1 year old daughter, and obsessive gaming binges are no longer an option. Multiplayer co-op in DS was something we could set aside and come back to later (without guild/friend pressure). DS is like an instanced world occupied only by my family/party...and I love it for this very reason. LAN-based co-op RPGs are few and far between. Even fewer are stable, playable ones. Please help DS3 make this illustrious list! Maybe DS3 will become one of those proud few games that is always pulled out at home or at the LAN party because it really, truly, is fun to play with other people. It is a stringent goal, but one worth trying for nonetheless. *Rally cry!*