Dark Souls II: The Thread, AND the Game!

[Surrealistik]

THAT IS THE PROBLEM I HAVE HERE. I don't care about your stupid pvp. I don't care about dueling. I don't want to get killed in one shot from someone who lives, breathes, and sleeps this game and nothing else. I just want to fight the big monsters with a friend.

Your fellow players _are_ the big monsters.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I've been sitting on this for a bit, since it's not PC, but Monster Hunter. If you have 3DSes, you can play Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, although only locally. Monster Hunter 4 will have servers so you can use the internet to play with others.

I guess there's also Warframe. Warframe is a very different game, fast-paced, shooty, some swordfighting, but it's an action game with RPG elements and it's free on PC.

[Murmaider]

My issue is that I cannot play with my friends without being invaded. It is a binary function of retardation. Even with both of us in the way of the white, the covenant that is supposed to have the LOWEST invasion chance, we get invaded about once every 10 minutes. I had one instance where the invasion happened literally within seconds of going human to try and summon one another at the campfire nearest the boss. I was being attacked before I could even get out of the campfire menu.

THAT IS THE PROBLEM I HAVE HERE. I don't care about your stupid pvp. I don't care about dueling. I don't want to get killed in one shot from someone who lives, breathes, and sleeps this game and nothing else. I just want to fight the big monsters with a friend.

I'm not disagreeing with anything you write, but this game was clearly not meant to be played in cooperation with a friend.

I mean even if you don't get invaded all the time, the hoops you have to go through just to have a mediocre coop experiance seem not worth the effort.

I get, that this wasn't what they were going for, but why the hell not?

Don't get me wrong, I like playing Dark Souls alone, but what I'd love to play even more, was Dark Souls or Skyrim or any other good action RPG with one or two friends. But that's probably not going to happen so soon, as long people keep paying for MMOs.

[Morty]

I honestly can't recall many instances where I was invaded without sitting around and waiting to be invaded. Most of those cases happened on NG+, too.

[Hiro Protagonest]

But that's probably not going to happen so soon, as long people keep paying for MMOs.

*grumbles about modern MMORPGs being single-player RPGs with lag*

[Murmaider]

*grumbles about modern MMORPGs being single-player RPGs with lag*

Well, is there any MMORPG with a decent combat system? I tried TERA, but that one has American servers only, which resulted in horrible latency.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Recently Acquired Dark Souls on PC.
(Playing over Steam, but while GFWL is still a thing, I'm not sure if we're using my Steam Name (Thanatos5150) or my Gamertag (Saalaksin))

Been running towards the First Bell of Awakening (The up one), and wandered into a run-down part of the Undead City, filled with guard dogs and assassins and OH MY GOD IS THAT A DEMON?

Help?

[Murmaider]

You need a shield. Block his and the dogs first attack. Run and roll up the stairs and go right onto that ledge. Turn around and just block until the demon falls off. Now kill the two hounds and jump on the demon. Ez-Pz.

[Tome]

Been running towards the First Bell of Awakening (The up one), and wandered into a run-down part of the Undead City, filled with guard dogs and assassins and OH MY GOD IS THAT A DEMON?

Help?

Everyone hates the Capra Demon.

If it makes you feel better, he's not actually much of a threat without those blasted dogs of his.

[Rodin]

As someone who likes death penalties that aren't just a slap on the wrist, I disagree. There was also that ring that increased your soulform HP, and that is generally considered a no-brainer to equip.

Dark Souls 2 will have an in-between penalty, in that you lose like, 10% of your max HP each death, to a total of 50%, but you only get the penalty if you die while hollowed and it's reset if you turn human.

I don't mind death penalties - losing all your souls (potentially) is a quite good one, and it boots you back to a bonfire that might be some distance away.

However, I will always object to something that punishes you for dying by making that same section harder. Force me to re-load, do the section from scratch, whatever...don't make it that I spend the next several hours attemping it and dying because a section that I couldn't do at full health became utterly impossible at 50% health. The ring was just irritating because I felt compelled to equip it, even moreso than Havel's or FaP in the second game.

The new penalty doesn't sound terrible, except in cases like the Capra Demon where dying 50 times trying to get lucky will get old real fast with a stacking debuff on top of everything else.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I don't mind death penalties - losing all your souls (potentially) is a quite good one, and it boots you back to a bonfire that might be some distance away.

You don't lose all your souls. You only lose the ones you haven't used, and they can still be completely recovered if you don't die again. No level loss, no equipment loss. Slap on the wrist.

[TechnOkami]

I don't like MMO's. I enjoyed WoW because I could do a lot of the missions by myself with success and I could run around as a "werewolf" druid, but it was a huge money sink, and the only reason I did it was so I could get Diablo 3, which ended up being the train wreck it was. I don't have fond memories of MMO's, and I seriously doubt I'm going to pick another one up.

[Rodin]

You don't lose all your souls. You only lose the ones you haven't used, and they can still be completely recovered if you don't die again. No level loss, no equipment loss. Slap on the wrist.

Compared to every other game that is out today, it's downright draconian.

I'm happy to lose all the progress I just made and get kicked back to a pre-determined save point. That's been standard since I was a kid (at least, on any game long enough to require a save point, which did not also have manual saves).

That people actually want negative progress where not only do you go back to the save point, but the game punishes you further? Completely alien to me. Make the difficulty part of the actual gameplay, not some arbitrary punishment for playing the game.

[Thanatos 51-50]

You need a shield. Block his and the dogs first attack. Run and roll up the stairs and go right onto that ledge. Turn around and just block until the demon falls off. Now kill the two hounds and jump on the demon. Ez-Pz.

Oh: an equipment list is in order, then? Heater Shield and Fang Boar helmet, and a Catalyst (Soul Arrow) in my alternate left hand.
Otherwise, standard Wanderer starting kit. Scimitar upgraded to +3.

[NEO|Phyte]

That people actually want negative progress where not only do you go back to the save point, but the game punishes you further? Completely alien to me. Make the difficulty part of the actual gameplay, not some arbitrary punishment for playing the game.

So instead of the game becoming more difficult if you screw up (more common than you'd think, see games like XCom where losing a high-rank guy really hurts), having the baseline difficulty be that high is somehow better?

[iyaerP]

Your fellow players _are_ the big monsters.

I
DO NOT
WANT
TO FIGHT
OTHER PLAYERS

[Octopusapult]

Everyone hates the Capra Demon.

If it makes you feel better, he's not actually much of a threat without those blasted dogs of his.

Capra Demon isn't that bad. He's just misunderstood really. Watch some videos about how to dodge that first attack he does if you get caught up on it as rookie players generally do and after that it's a pretty normal mini-boss. Just keep those doges at bay.

Such Bleed. Wow.

I
DO NOT
WANT
TO FIGHT
OTHER PLAYERS

Then in DS2 you'll have to play offline. Invaders are a counterbalance to your co-op. You and your friend will dominate every monster you find. Chances are you alone can dominate every monster you find. So how is it fair to let you guys skip rope through the game that is advertised as insanely hard without something there to punish you?

The spoiler is for Snowbluff. No one else has to bother reading it unless you're into that sort of thing.

Spoiler

Show

I was pointing out what a helpful post would look like, and what displeased me about your post.


If you want to end discussion, you probably shouldn't be posting in a forum. An online forum is a place where people do nothing but discuss things. No game is perfect or immune to criticism, so people complaining about certain elements of the game is normal. Having a complaint about a game doesn't mean you hate it, either.

I know what a forum is, but you've misinterpreted literally every single post I've written. So to clarify for your apparent limitations I meant end the discussion with you. Specifically you. Just you and your whiny posts. Everyone else who has interesting things to say I'm still going to acknowledge from this point on. That's why I started the first dark souls thread. To talk about dark souls.

In other words, I'm going to ignore you and you're going to like it.

Sorry I didn't put it in blue text for you or make it any clearer but if you somehow get this message wrong I'm not going to bother explaining it to you. Ask your mom or a friend or something. My hands are washed of you.

[Hazzardevil]

It's honestly a case of don't go into a game and complain about what makes it what it is. I don't complain about Call of Duty being a skill-less reflex shooter where the people who eat, sleep and breathe it have got the best stuff, because that is exactly what it is designed as.
Neither do I complain about the hard-as-nails 2d platformers that the odd Indie-developer makes.
Short answer: Don't complain about a game being what is advertised. We should be complaining about the opposite.

Everyone hates the Capra Demon.

If it makes you feel better, he's not actually much of a threat without those blasted dogs of his.

I really didn't find him that hard, but I think I was a bit over-leveled when I fought him.
I believe I just booked it to the stairs, killed the dogs with stabs from a halberd and just jump-stabbed/falling plunged it to death.
On my first try.

[McDouggal]

Yeah because crying about a hard game that you know is hard and using blue text to be a jerk is helpful.

I know, sarcasm in normal black text and absolutely nothing to do with the thread topic. How will you ever survive?

If you hate Dark Souls so much, don't play it. End of discussion.

Octupus, we aren't crying about the game being hard. We are crying about the completely unbalanced early levels in terms of PvP. It's not fun to just get one shot after you've spent an entire minute landing shot after shot on him and barely getting him to half health. It's especially not fun when this happens and you've been carefully moving forward for the last half hour but haven't reached a progression point (I.E. bonfire near the merchant, the kickdown ladder after Taurus demon) because the game is hard and unforgiving just in PvE. I haven't played a game in ages where once you level up more than five times the low level mooks are actually a threat if you don't royally <redacted> up. It is intenesly frustrating to have to repeat an entire section WHEN YOU DIDN'T MAKE A MISTAKE THAT CAUSED IT TO NEED TO BE REPEATED, especially in a game as unforgiving of mistakes as Dark Souls.

[TechnOkami]

I just stay hollow until I want to summon peeps.

[thracian]

Then in DS2 you'll have to play offline. Invaders are a counterbalance to your co-op. You and your friend will dominate every monster you find. Chances are you alone can dominate every monster you find. So how is it fair to let you guys skip rope through the game that is advertised as insanely hard without something there to punish you?

Is this turning into some sort of debate over the supremacy of designer intent vs. player's desired playstyle? Because I'll always fall on the side of player's playstyle on that one.

[Snowbluff]

I know what a forum is, but you've misinterpreted literally every single post I've written. So to clarify for your apparent limitations I meant end the discussion with you. Specifically you. Just you and your whiny posts. Everyone else who has interesting things to say I'm still going to acknowledge from this point on. That's why I started the first dark souls thread. To talk about dark souls.

In other words, I'm going to ignore you and you're going to like it.

Sorry I didn't put it in blue text for you or make it any clearer but if you somehow get this message wrong I'm not going to bother explaining it to you. Ask your mom or a friend or something. My hands are washed of you.

For posterity. This is what happens when don't recognize the faults in something you're a fan of. Honestly, I expected him to ignore me, but I think it was worth a shot to try and tell him about being more open-minded.

I just stay hollow until I want to summon peeps.

Is this turning into some sort of debate over the supremacy of designer intent vs. player's desired playstyle? Because I'll always fall on the side of player's playstyle on that one.

The premise is that you can get invaded at any level of being hollow. TechnOkami's strategy won't work in DkS2, as far as I can tell. I use this strategy a lot unless I am looking for trouble. According to Jade (who is citing Vaatividya), we have a ring for avoiding invasions in DkS2, which is fine for me.

As for a formal argument, random invasions absolutely suck for most people. I don't even have that bad of a record for fighting off red phantoms, but these things still bother me:

1) PvP specific builds. Playing your heavy rolling build against a fast roller is usually a death sentence. Having to build for PvP every time limits the playstyles for PvE.

2) Twink gear. Fire weapons and magic will probably scale from Dex and Int, from what I can tell. DkS2 is working to fix this overall.

3) Laaaaaag. It really sucks getting backstabbed when you can't tell what the guy was doing.

Personally, I might join a blue covenant or actually engage in more PvP. I'm not totally opposed to it, I just think people shouldn't have to participate if they don't want to. Playing the devil's advocate, squishing people is pretty fun for dickwraiths. Having a smaller pool to wreck from isn't ideal.

[Rodin]

So instead of the game becoming more difficult if you screw up (more common than you'd think, see games like XCom where losing a high-rank guy really hurts), having the baseline difficulty be that high is somehow better?

Yup - it's what I'm there for.

If a game like that is balanced right, doing it at full health will be "difficult but fair", an ideal that Dark Souls largely holds to. There's a couple of downright cheap sections (looking at you, Anor Londo window ledge), but mostly I never feel like the game is cheating me.

When you strip 50% of the base HP off in a difficulty like that, you just broke the game. And if you balance around only having 50% HP, the game just became too easy.

Losing a high-ranker in X-Com isn't that big a deal, incidentally. I always make sure I have a "second squad" that is well leveled and trained so that I can take losing multiple members of my first team. You only really get in trouble if you lose multiple entire squads, but that's basically a Game Over in Ironman mode.

---------

Getting back to the PvP, the thing I wish they would do most in the new game is remove AI immunity from Invaders. It levels the playing field a bit (no more having to deal with a Black Knight at the same time as an Invader) and leads to really interesting opportunities. Having an invader come in and then running into that room with 3 Silver Knights in it strikes me as a ripe opportunity for general hilarity.

[iyaerP]

Octupus, we aren't crying about the game being hard. We are crying about the completely unbalanced early levels in terms of PvP. It's not fun to just get one shot after you've spent an entire minute landing shot after shot on him and barely getting him to half health. It's especially not fun when this happens and you've been carefully moving forward for the last half hour but haven't reached a progression point (I.E. bonfire near the merchant, the kickdown ladder after Taurus demon) because the game is hard and unforgiving just in PvE. I haven't played a game in ages where once you level up more than five times the low level mooks are actually a threat if you don't royally <redacted> up. It is intenesly frustrating to have to repeat an entire section WHEN YOU DIDN'T MAKE A MISTAKE THAT CAUSED IT TO NEED TO BE REPEATED, especially in a game as unforgiving of mistakes as Dark Souls.

THIS! I don't mind that pvp happens. I play plenty of games where PvP is a good, balanced, and fun mechanism. I mind it in this game because pvp ganking causes me to lose a LOT of time and effort in the PvE part of the game. And you can say "just play the game hollow" till you're blue in the face, but unless you have mastered the game the point where pvp gankers are not a threat, and until you have the lordvassel, you pretty much HAVE to go human to kindle bonfires to have enough estus to get to the next bonfire, etc.

[BRC]

Dark Souls is a game that constantly asks the player to balance Risk vs Reward

Do I RISK trying to attack again for the REWARD of getting an extra hit in, or do I bring my shield back up to block.

As it exists now, PvP leaves the player with no way to judge Risk vs Reward.

Unhallowing already has Risk vs Reward built in: You are more powerful, but the consequences for death are higher.

The game is already masterfully built in many places. The addition of a single enemy in the wrong place could lead to death. PvP adds an unnecessary risk.

Plus, PvP is always done at the initiative of the Aggressor. You have no reason to invade another player unless you're confident that you can stomp them into dust. It totally wrecks the Risk vs Reward curve.

The Risk of dying because a Dark Spirit showed up is almost never worth the Reward of getting a few stat boosts and being able to summon help (Except on boss fights).

[Tiki Snakes]

Yeah. The simple fact of the matter is, griefing is essentially a core element of the game's concept.
It's a vital part of the creator's vision for the game.

Conversely, it is also true that if this doesn't appeal to you, you really should consider simply not playing it because it's going nowhere.

[iyaerP]

The problem is that someone who isn't a sociopath needs to smack the lead dev in the back of the head and go "WTF man?"

[Surrealistik]

THIS! I don't mind that pvp happens. I play plenty of games where PvP is a good, balanced, and fun mechanism. I mind it in this game because pvp ganking causes me to lose a LOT of time and effort in the PvE part of the game. And you can say "just play the game hollow" till you're blue in the face, but unless you have mastered the game the point where pvp gankers are not a threat, and until you have the lordvassel, you pretty much HAVE to go human to kindle bonfires to have enough estus to get to the next bonfire, etc.

Which is exactly why I recommended that invasion matchmaking factor in items and equipment.

Once you balance/account for gear there is no righteous excuse to whine about PvP.

[Morty]

Once again, I'm surprised by the amount of trouble people seem to have with PvP. Maybe it's just my playing on the PC and connection issues that kept me from being invaded too often.

[iyaerP]

Once again, I'm surprised by the amount of trouble people seem to have with PvP. Maybe it's just my playing on the PC and connection issues that kept me from being invaded too often.

I have honestly just been alt-F4ing whenever I see the invasion fog pop up or get the announcement unless I have already summoned the friend that I play with. It just isn't worth the hassle.