Dark Souls 4 Community Wishlist: What Fans Actually Want From a Sequel

What Do Fans Actually Want From Dark Souls 4?

I spent the better part of a week reading through r/darksouls4, r/fromsoftware, and a handful of Souls-focused Discord servers. The goal was simple. Figure out what the community actually wants from a hypothetical Dark Souls 4. Not what gaming journalists speculate. Not what I personally think would be cool. What real fans, the people with thousands of hours across the trilogy, keep asking for over and over again.

The answers honestly surprised me. Some were completely predictable. Others genuinely made me rethink what I thought I knew about why people love these games so much.

Combat: Faster Than DS3, But Not Sekiro Fast

The most common request by a significant margin: keep the Souls combat weight and feel, but make it slightly faster than DS3. Nobody is asking for Sekiro's deflection only system where parrying is the entire game. Nobody wants Elden Ring's jump attack meta to carry over either. What keeps coming up again and again is Dark Souls 3's pace with a few specific tweaks.

People want power stancing back as a permanent feature. Dark Souls 2 introduced it back in 2014, dual wielding any two weapons of the same type for unique movesets, and Elden Ring brought it back to universal praise. The fact that Dark Souls 3 removed it entirely is still a sore spot in the community and probably always will be.

Omnidirectional rolling while locked on is another repeated request. Dark Souls 1 had four directional rolling when locked on, which got more people killed than any boss ever did. DS3 finally fixed this and nobody wants to go back. But a surprising number of commenters actually want the DS1 mid roll to return as a distinct option. Slightly slower animation, slightly more iframes. A genuine risk reward choice rather than "just stay under 70 percent equip load and you are fine."

One recurring complaint about Elden Ring that keeps popping up: input queuing feels worse than in Dark Souls 3. In DS3 you could buffer a roll during an attack recovery animation and it would come out the exact frame recovery ended. In Elden Ring the buffer window feels inconsistent. Sometimes your input gets eaten entirely. Sometimes it fires late and you take a hit you clearly dodged. If Dark Souls 4 ever happens, it needs DS3's level of input precision and responsiveness. That part is not negotiable.

World Design: One Request, Completely Unanimous

Interconnected level design. Please, for the love of everything. No more teleporting from the very start of the game.

I found exactly one opinion across all the threads and servers I read that absolutely everyone agreed on. Dark Souls 1's world map is the gold standard and nothing FromSoftware has made since has matched it. Firelink Shrine connecting to Undead Burg, which connects to Undead Parish, which connects right back to Firelink through that unforgettable elevator shortcut. That loop is burned into people's memories more vividly than any boss fight.

Dark Souls 2 was a hub and spoke design where areas radiated out from Majula in straight lines with no connections between them. Dark Souls 3 was more interconnected than DS2 but still relied heavily on bonfire warping from the very beginning of the game. Elden Ring solved the problem differently. Fast travel everywhere, but the world was so unimaginably huge that it genuinely needed it.

What people want for Dark Souls 4 is a smaller, denser, more carefully constructed world. Not a hundred hour open world with copy pasted catacombs. Not linear corridors that funnel you forward. A tightly wound knot of interconnected areas where every discovered shortcut feels like a genuine revelation. The Undead Burg to Darkroot Basin to Valley of Drakes to Blighttown to New Londo Ruins and back to Firelink Shrine loop from DS1 is more satisfying than any horse ride across Limgrave. People remember it more vividly a full decade later. That is not nostalgia talking. That is good design.

PvP: Fix the Netcode or Just Do Not Bother

Dark Souls PvP has always been a beautiful, broken, glorious mess. The lagstabs of Dark Souls 1 where you would get backstabbed from the front. The hex spamming havelmonsters of Dark Souls 2 that were basically unkillable. The straight sword R1 spam of Dark Souls 3. Elden Ring's PvP was honestly better at launch than any of them, and I will die on that hill, but it still had phantom range issues and an inconsistent invasion system.

If Dark Souls 4 includes multiplayer at all, the community has three demands that come up constantly.

Better netcode than what we have now. Souls PvP is inherently chaotic and unpredictable and that is part of the charm. But getting backstabbed from the complete opposite side of the arena is not charm. It is just broken, and it has been broken since 2011.

Better invasion matchmaking that actually makes sense. Nobody wants to invade a dedicated gank squad of three overleveled phantoms when they are just trying to progress through an area. And nobody wants to get invaded by a twink with endgame gear and maxed out estus in the starting area. Elden Ring's system of only allowing invasions on players who are actively co-oping was controversial. Some people want solo invasions back. Some people absolutely do not. The community is genuinely split right down the middle on this one.

Covenants with actual meaning and consequences. Dark Souls 1's covenant system was the best in the series because each covenant fundamentally changed how you interacted with the world and other players. Forest Hunters defended a specific area of the map. Darkwraiths invaded other worlds for humanity. Gravelord Servants infected other players' worlds with powerful black phantom enemies. Later games diluted this concept until covenants were basically just multiplayer queue categories with different colors. Bring back real faction identity with real consequences for your choices.

Bosses: Less Delayed Attacks, More Distinct Phase Transitions

A surprisingly nuanced complaint about Elden Ring bosses keeps surfacing: the delayed attacks have gotten out of hand.

Miyazaki has become increasingly fond of bosses that wind up for three full seconds and then swing in two frames. Margit does it constantly. Godrick does it. Almost every major remembrance boss does some version of it. It stops feeling like "learn the timing" and starts feeling like "guess when the animation will arbitrarily complete."

The community is not asking for easier bosses. That is not what is happening here. They are asking for bosses whose attacks are telegraphed in ways that actual humans can read, like Artorias from Dark Souls 1, like Gael from Dark Souls 3, like the best fights in the series where you could react rather than memorize a rhythm through brute force repetition.

More distinct and meaningful phase transitions is another common wish. Ludwig going from flailing beast to sword master precision in Bloodborne is the model. Godfrey ripping Serosh off his shoulder and becoming a primal wrestler in Elden Ring is the model. Less of "boss glows red and does slightly more damage," more of "boss fundamentally changes how you have to approach the entire fight from this point forward."

Story: No More Gwyn References, Please

Please. I am begging. No more Gwyn. No more linking the fire. No more chosen undead prophecy.

Dark Souls 3 already exhausted the callbacks to the point of self parody. Anor Londo returning was a genuine gut punch the first time you saw it ruined and abandoned. By the fifth reference to the Age of Fire, all the emotional weight was completely gone.

What fans want from a Dark Souls 4 story is something that moves forward into genuinely new territory. The Age of Dark, properly explored for once. The Painted World, built from the blood of the Dark Soul by the Painter Girl. Something that acknowledges the old lore without being creatively handcuffed to it.

One comment on r/darksouls4 put it better than I ever could: "I don't want to fight another Artorias fan club member. I don't want to find another dead blacksmith's ember. I want FromSoftware to show me something I've never seen before, set in a world that happens to share a name with the one I love."

Honestly, same.