Hahah I was just thinking this. I like fighting games with parrying/deflect like Street Fighter III, Last Blade, and so on so here's my thoughts...
Parrying in Dark Souls is risky for a big reward, you either land the hardest hitting attack you could possibly do (especially with that ring) or you whiff and get hit normally. It's a mechanic that works well for a PvE game, you memorize the enemy's attack pattern and are often strong enough to one shot-them. With human opponents though it becomes swingy and overshadows any other damage you can do.
Now in a fighting game like Last Blade, a parry is more about shifting the momentum, you negate their offense and now you have some frame advantage as your opponent is stunned for a split second so if you both attack your attack goes into its startup animation while they're still stunned so you're likely to hit first. It also helps that parrying is not the only way to deal big damage in Last Blade, while in Dark Souls a hornet ring riposte is the biggest damage you'll be doing most of the time.
My preference would be to have Dark Souls parrying be more about "momentum shifting" than "WIN/LOSE". So parrying would be made less swingy by...
A partial parry doesn't kill your stamina and it acts like a successful shield block
A successful parry stuns the opponent long enough to land a regular attack, significant damage but still not "you lost80% of your health" damage. But that's still possible with...
Successful parries also deal high stamina damage, so if they're reduced to 0 stamina by your parry they go into the "end me now" animation for the riposte.
If I were to go further into "not gonna happen but wouldn't it be cool if..." territory, "Clashing" would be really cool in Dark Souls, it's when two attack's hitboxes overlap on certain frames they repel one another. This would require an overhaul of the game mechanics but if Dark Souls had that it'd feel like "Bushido Souls"
