Dark Souls II - Prepare to Die, Again

[robdood]

Well, I bought a club and made it a +2. Halfway through no man's wharf (tedious level) it broke without warning. Nice.

There's a red bar beneath your left/right slots - shows the weapon durability.

[Lovelyman]

Those black dickhead spider things are shit too. Sometimes they run away when you swing the torch, sometimes they don't.

[Ferine]

And i just got to Shaded Woods last night. Im honestly convinced now the game was rushed to market after seeing that place. Im not even a designer, but i spent enough time making a map in Cryengine to take one look at shaded woods and think "why is there just one ground texture? Why didnt they cover it up with grass or rock props?" It looks so, so bad. Its unfinished, theres no way any professional level designer wouldve been happy with that. And its a shame because if theyd just made it look more like an actual wood, you know, maybe some falling leaves, a bit of grass here and there, some branches/bushes/twigs, fuckin anything, it wouldve improved it tenfold. Even the invisible, unlockable phantoms didnt bother me that much, i kinda enjoyed the challenge, but the whole time i just couldnt get over how terribad the whole area looked.

I haven't gotten there yet, so I can't speak to it specifically, but whenever I've noticed unsightly texture tiling it's in an area that would most likely have been shrouded in shadow using the preview lighting model; looking at the roof of a large room in Earthen Peak honestly reminded me of the original Tomb Raider.

Having played the PS3 Network Test version and then going through Huntsman's Copse on retail yesterday, the effect of the change in brightness, both visually and in how your approach the environment, is very obvious. It's a real shame they felt the need to ditch the preview version's lighting as it made exploring with a torch such an interesting risk-reward dynamic, whereas now we're left with artificially brightened areas littered with superfluous sconces.

Anyway, does anyone else using a DS4 on PC find that the title screen makes the controller mapping go funny? At first I though it simply wasn't working, but after a bit of prodding I found that Start was suddenly mapped to R2, X to Square, etc. It's not a huge issue as I can just plug the controller back in once my character's loaded and it works fine, I'm just not sure what's causing it.

[Lovelyman]

It's terrible design. Your weapons can break in the middle of a fight not far from when they were fine. You have to equip three or four weapons in case that happens, and then you're always over 50% encumbrance.

Some really bad design decisions were made to make the system 'different' to dark souls.

[Lovelyman]

Also, you can get hit by a fire arrow, it explodes, knocking you down. As you're getting up, your health just decides to deplete a bit more and you die!

[Mystacon]

It's terrible design. Your weapons can break in the middle of a fight not far from when they were fine. You have to equip three or four weapons in case that happens, and then you're always over 50% encumbrance.

Some really bad design decisions were made to make the system 'different' to dark souls.

I have now been playing this game for over 150 hours and have never had this even close to happening once.

Edit: In fact, the only time I could see this happening would be if you're getting hit by or walking through acid which breaks your stuff super quick...

[Bojangle]

Also, you can get hit by a fire arrow, it explodes, knocking you down. As you're getting up, your health just decides to deplete a bit more and you die!

That's because the fire from the fire arrow burns you, causing damage.

[robdood]

And, it explodes because he'd been previously hit by the jars of oil the Viking guys throw. This also sets you on fire which continues to damage you for a short period.

There does seem to be a bug with the weapon durability though.

[Bojangle]

Yeah, I've noticed the weapon durability being off whilst playing on PC. Something definitely up there, but I've never had it be so bad that I've needed to have several weapons equipped as back up.

[robdood]

Edit: In fact, the only time I could see this happening would be if you're getting hit by or walking through acid which breaks your stuff super quick...

I'm pretty sure that corrosive stuff only affects armour and rings, too - it leaves weapons unaffected, somehow!

[charley farley]

...to me it feels a lot more like they made the game for people who enjoy making many builds and zipping through the game once they know what they're doing...

Totally this. The game has so clearly been designed with this at the forefront.

I still stand by some of my criticisms, but I'm finding my second run through a lot more enjoyable. The combat, though still not without problems feels more responsive and tighter at 60fps.

[mechamonkey]

Can't argue with that, I agree to an extent. Ultimately it only really affects the first playthrough though, imo.. Which is a massive shame, but to me it feels a lot more like they made the game for people who enjoy making many builds and zipping through the game once they know what they're doing (which is how I ended up playing DkS1!)

You know, after moaning about this a bit previously, I think the reason I've ended up triple dipping and kept going back is exactly what you're said there Dood without me realising it, spot on.

I'm never one to add to the console wars 'fun' but feck me, the PC version plays so very much nicer, so smooth so shiney. The 360 is second best with much faster loads and summon availability with the dog turd PS3 disc version way behind.

Also just finished the Bastille (PC) and haven't had anything break at all yet and I've basically only used my mace (now +4) the whole way. I am mindful not to prang the walls though.

[Mentazm]

Dear Moz,

Hard games aren't for everyone, how about playing something else?

Love

Dark Souls 2 thread

RLLMUK

It's not hard though, other than a few bosses and a couple of enemies. Dota is WAY harder.

[robdood]

You know, after moaning about this a bit previously, I think the reason I've ended up triple dipping and kept going back is exactly what you're said there Dood without me realising it, spot on.

I'm never one to add to the console wars 'fun' but feck me, the PC version plays so very much nicer, so smooth so shiney. The 360 is second best with much faster loads and summon availability with the dog turd PS3 disc version way behind.

Also just finished the Bastille (PC) and haven't had anything break at all yet and I've basically only used my mace (now +4) the whole way. I am mindful not to prang the walls though.

I tested hitting walls yesterday, makes no difference to durability.

I've had an idea though, I need to analyse my footage (fucking nerdtastic), to check it out fully, but it may even be related to something daft like hitting an enemy after they've died. I've only had the durability weirdness happen with halberd class weapons (I know others have said different but..) so that's something else to eliminate.

[mechamonkey]

Could be right Dood, I'm careful to not spam attacks (too used to watching endurance) I always roll through breakables rather than smashing them with a weapon too.

[stefcha]

Well I'm enjoying this immensely, even though I've seen near bugger all of it. I like that it's not as hard (although I'm only at the start) and that the environments are quite compact. Ventured briefly into FoFG to get a soapstone but didn't even reach Pate before finding the small one, at which point I went back to Heide's and Cathedral to have some jolly co-op on the bosses there. Much bowing. Many souls. Death when I tried one myself, because I hadn't noticed I'd not pulled a switch and fell straight off the edge of the bloody arena via a gap that hadn't been there on any of my co-opping. Loss of many souls when I just decided to steamroller myself back through to the fog gate and made a misjudgment.

Anyhoo, all these small soapstone drops (smooth stones is it?) are they only useful to be swapped out in Things Betwixt or can I do anything else with them?

[Curtis]

but it may even be related to something daft like hitting an enemy after they've died.

I already confirmed that hitting a dead body (Hollow Soldiers) takes 8-9 off your durability.

I know this because its the quickest way to break Santier's Spear, revealing its 'true' version.

[ChewMagma]

Is Anor Londo really that much bigger than Iron Keep though? It certainly gives the impression that it is bigger, but there is a lot of empty space and rooms with one knight in that you never really need to enter.

The level design philosophy has obviously changed - pack the content into a tighter area - but I'm not sure that is necessarily a negative thing.

I don't know - I absolutely love this game, it is all I have played or basically thought about since it was released and it is a shame to see people not enjoying it as much as I have. If I'm not playing it, I'm watching other people play it. I loved Dark Souls 1 for different reasons. The development team made some brave changes with DaS 2, not all of which panned out imo, but there are many things it does better and ultimately I can see myself putting more hours into DaS2 than DaS1 (I probably already have).

I would not have wanted them to just regurgitate DaS1 that is for sure.

[NecroMorrius]

It's not hard though, other than a few bosses and a couple of enemies. Dota makes me WAY harder.

Fixed!

There is absolutely a problem with weapon durability, I've seen it over and over during some sessions and not present st all in others. Weapons which last hundreds of hits without any durability issues suddenly start losing 2-10% durability per hit attacking a bog standard enemy. It's not wall hitting or body hitting, it's a weird bug.

Incidentally to get through those equipment killing puddles just unequip everything and you can stand in them as long as you like!

[Bojangle]

Fixed!

[Dark Soldier]

I've never had a weapon break in over 200 hours of playing this. If the warning pops up, I switch weapon or repair. But then I keep a constant eye on stats, durability etc, because that's what they're there for.

[charley farley]

I've never had a weapon break in over 200 hours of playing this. If the warning pops up, I switch weapon or repair. But then I keep a constant eye on stats, durability etc, because that's what they're there for.

I keep an eye on the durability bars too, but that doesn't actually stop them degrading ridiculously quickly when the bug is playing up. When I was deliberately testing it out I had the 'weapon at risk' warning come up on the first hit of a combo and 'weapon broke' on the second hit.

[NecroMorrius]

It's a bug. It can go from 100% to 0% in about five hits depending on how durable it is.

E.g. I played for five hours on PS3 and didn't see one item break. Ran the exact same class and strategy on the PC version and broke five weapons between the first two bonfires. Then I reloaded and haven't seen the problem since.

[robdood]

I already confirmed that hitting a dead body (Hollow Soldiers) takes 8-9 off your durability.

I know this because its the quickest way to break Santier's Spear, revealing its 'true' version.

Ha, that's probably it then. I do have a tendency of tagging on additional hits with the slower weapons.

[Dark Soldier]

Then I'm damn happy I've not experienced the bug.

[daveodeth]

Christ you can tell the rough spots on pc, when you enter a room and you can't see the floor for blood stains be very afraid.

[ah]

I think being able to teleport between bonfires from the start really hurts the sense of scale (and of place more generally), because a large part of the first game's greatness was in the way you had to learn and interrogate the world in order to make progress - and fast travel diminishes the need for that. DS2 might have an amazingly intricate and interesting landscape much as its predecessor did, but the player will only ever find that out if they deliberately ignore the teleport tool they've been given which almost always allows them (at least for as much as I've played so far) to jump within a couple of hundred yards of the place they want to be - no experimenting with routes or shortcuts required, no long runs back and forth across the world to backtrack to stock up on resources, etc. When I ran out of repair powder I didn't have to weigh up whether or not to go back and find more, I just used fast travel to quickly nip back and stock up - to know that I'll never be in danger of arriving somewhere unprepared, like when I got stuck at the bottom of blight town with no repair box and one broken weapon, reduces the stakes for each decision the player makes. Basically it removes some of the interesting decisions the first games demanded of players and also lets them bypass the whole process of repetition which was what helped them learn the environment and come to understand the logic of the world, and the game would be a lot more fun if that mechanic was withheld in the same manner as in Dark Souls the first, even if everything else was the same.

[Dark Soldier]

6:50 onwards

[robdood]

Couple of mods for PC players:

Hide mouse cursor:

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/28/?

And for Horribleman, save backups!

http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/26/?

[wretcherd]

At Alistarr, i agree that it definitely loses something with the fast travel, similar to how the more recent GTA games have too detailed a minimap and a coloured line showing you where to go so you never have to learn your way around.