They mentioned making it easier to understand and get into, but emphasized that the bulk of the game would still be hard as nails. It's also been said that Dark Souls II will keep evolving the series and have some lateral changes instead of just iterating on everything, like Dark Souls compared to Demon's Souls.
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Something about Dark Souls II on GameTrailers, next week?
- Thread starter UrbanRats
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They mentioned making it easier to understand and get into, but emphasized that the bulk of the game would still be hard as nails. It's also been said that Dark Souls II will keep evolving the series and have some lateral changes instead of just iterating on everything, like Dark Souls compared to Demon's Souls.
ElfArmy177
Member
I'm praying so hard its good...
ElfArmy177
Member
an optional companion is ok with me, but look at the popularity of the multiplayer mod released on PC recently. People love coop, and god dark souls would be amazing with it. Make It optional and I'm ok with it
You can more or less do that with Dark Souls now.
We don't need an AI companion helping you fight and commenting and tossing you coins and so forth. As we learned, an AI companion destroys ambience in once ambient games.
Krusenstern
Banned
They should print something like this on the back of the box.
MoonLightWave
Member
They could always make Co-op harder.
AlimNassor
Banned
co-op is easy mode. Watching DSP a year ago barely get through the front door of blight-town before rage quitting, and now he's beating the game by having stupidly overpowered summons give him overpowered items and play the entire game for him.
He sits back and lets his co-op buddies play the game for him and then boasts about how the game was easy. The problem with co-op is it lets bad players never get any better, it just encourages them to have someone else do it for them. DSP isn't the first youtuber I've seen do it. many people irl I know pretty much refuse to play without someone doing everything for them.
He sits back and lets his co-op buddies play the game for him and then boasts about how the game was easy. The problem with co-op is it lets bad players never get any better, it just encourages them to have someone else do it for them. DSP isn't the first youtuber I've seen do it. many people irl I know pretty much refuse to play without someone doing everything for them.
tiny raptor
Member
That is very good to hear.
I sorta like co-op the way it is. My first way through I got help on some occasions and I also liked leaving my signs so I could farm up some souls/humanity. I remember really relying on the white phantoms for O&S and for the roof gargoyles (because I was still really green). But at no other time did I really need it. Regardless, this option help with some tough encounters that may be just out of your reach -- in fact, this is basically the difficulty setting. If the game's too hard, get help. there's your difficulty toggle. hear that, FS? that's the extent of it. no more.
Really? I don't think that's quite fair. Demon's Souls is my favorite game of the generation, and I am excited for some changes. Not radical changes, mind you. But I am excited to see what the natural evolution of this series will be. Change is scary, but change is good. Let em' have it. Worst case scenario? I replay Demon's Souls.
"natural evolution" makes me nervous with new knuckleheads at the helm of it, and who have already stated they wanted to dumb things down. And considering how successful this game is, "natural evolution" could mean "we should make it accessible to more players, naturally."
Dark Souls shouldn't ADAPT to players. Players adapt to IT. And become hardened fans. That's how you GOT HERE, FS. Don't FUCK IT UP.
I'm still taking their words as damage control.
They need to prove to me they're not going to make this game ''babbys first souls gaem''
Yah, I can certainly understand your nervousness. And from their comments so far, it's by no means unfounded. I've just chosen to be excited and positive until I see footage (or hear reports) proving otherwise.
Good question. I'd love to know this too.
Yeah, it's definitely more polished and accessible than the first 3. (Only 2 of which are available in English.) Little rough around the edges, but the level design is brilliant and you'll feel the similarities in art style and atmosphere right away.
I'd also recommend Shadow Tower Abyss, since there's now a translation patch if you're a brave enough soul to import a copy. Abyss contributed tremendously to the combat system of the Souls games.
I try not to assume the worst. From is such a wonderfully stodgy, traditional company that I don't even know if they're capable of making the kinds of sweeping changes that would significantly dumb down the game.
I hope the developers label you as insane and never listen to what you have to say
But seriously, play other games and leave this game design gem alone to the rest of us who can appreciate it. The last thing it needs is to be like any other action game.
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
I kind of disagree with this on account of sequence breaking. Of course there's no "right" path in the game but it's obvious there's a general progression through the world that From had in mind. The master key blows all that open, however, and throws PvP way off-balance. Unless you too pull off some well-researched world trickery to get the right items and upgrades ASAP then you're going to have an extremely hard time holding your own against the average invader.
Another thing I think would be nice is if armor mattered more, because right now it seems like it doesn't (particularly in PvP). Whatever marginal protection/poise a decent armor set may offer is offset by a crippling reduction in movement that practically necessitates saving one of your two precious ring slots for a particular ring. Surely there's a happier medium between armor being weightless and what we have now.
That's more a matter of fine tuning, but secrets are meant not to be found immediately, that's why a secret Covenant should be hard to find casually.
They aren't "knuckleheads" and they have not stated that they "wanted to dumb things down". I think you are going way overboard on the negativity here.
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
Sadly nothing in a game will be hard to find anymore on account of the Internet. I don't think there's anything they could sneak into a game that wouldn't be widely known a month after release.
Misterinenja
Member
Cryptic shit all over my face please. It's fun to figure things out together slowly. That's the communal aspect of the Souls games.
That's why they put the Wiki address back of the box FFS.
That's why they put the Wiki address back of the box FFS.
If the pendant was a real thing.. just do one of those "win the game 3 times only using knifes and dying 4 times at the final boss" things
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Anyway, i think you people are over dramatizing this, Dark Souls is great, but it's neither perfectly fine tuned, nor it's the shining ace of punishing gaming, despite its overblown reputation as the unforgivable, cryptic, sadistic game.
I think if you're going to go in this with the microscope searching differences and things that are worse, you'll just gonna ruin it for yourselves, instead of enjoying what may be better from the predecessor.
Think of it this way, if Demon's Souls and Dark Souls had two different directors (because again, the whole rest of the team is still the same, here) how would you have taken the changes? I think the changes in DkSII will be comparable to that.
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
Agreed. The game is fantastic and a much-needed paradigm change as far as games go but the praise goes overboard sometimes. It's not overrated (hate that word) but it's not perfect either and in some aspects it isn't even particularly well-executed. There's plenty of room for tweaks and improvement that won't turn it into Skyrim.
I think no matter the changes, people are going to explode with complaints about it not being hard enough and it selling out to mountain dewritoes crowd.
I do remember how many people were whining about estus flasks and bonfires being checkpoints and etc in early Dark Souls days though. Now no one cares. The new game will be difficult and easy to different players. If you played enough Dark Souls, the game won't be that difficult and it won't be like your first experience with Dark Souls no matter how badly you want it to be, just like if you played enough of Demon's Souls then Dark Souls wasn't as hard as new players were making it out to be. Still, people will complain I guess.
Though in the end I'm biased since most of my interest lies in PvP now so I'm more interested in what they'll do with that aspect of the game. I could not care less about an easy mode.
I do remember how many people were whining about estus flasks and bonfires being checkpoints and etc in early Dark Souls days though. Now no one cares. The new game will be difficult and easy to different players. If you played enough Dark Souls, the game won't be that difficult and it won't be like your first experience with Dark Souls no matter how badly you want it to be, just like if you played enough of Demon's Souls then Dark Souls wasn't as hard as new players were making it out to be. Still, people will complain I guess.
Though in the end I'm biased since most of my interest lies in PvP now so I'm more interested in what they'll do with that aspect of the game. I could not care less about an easy mode.
PvP is the only thing an easy mode could ruin, though.
Misterinenja
Member
Why even play Dark Souls with an easy mode? You just run through stages and that's it?
If there's no reason to improve your skills to overcome obstacles what's left of the game?
Can't handle that? Go play something else.
If there's no reason to improve your skills to overcome obstacles what's left of the game?
Can't handle that? Go play something else.
Not at all. There's nothing about PvP that would be ruined by an easy mode. Does it matter if the enemies had 15% less HP when you ran by them to pick up that tranquil walk of peace treasure? Does it matter your sword was upgraded with a real titanite slab vs. probably more than half the current pvp population that got their's via muling or some save glitch or etc?
Anyway I'm hoping they speed up the game a bit and change a fair number of game mechanics. I find Dark Souls PvP pretty boring compared to Demon's.
There's plenty of good stuff in the Souls games, beside the difficulty, otherwise they'd be shit.
Combat is fun (not only because it's demanding), the world is mysterious and beautiful, there's character building etc etc.
The most important question here is: Why do you care if someone in their home plays it in easy mode?
In theory, getting access to better gear more easily than the competition could unbalance the multiplayer game, as you point out i don't know how crucial that is in the long run, though.
A newbie that has to play in easy mode to get through the game, wouldn't be able to get the better of a seasoned player, no matter the gear.
Lost Fragment
Obsessed with 4chan
Ah. Yeah, low-level PvP is pretty out of whack in Dark Souls, though this would be the case even without sequence breaks and the master key since the game is very accommodating for low-level runs, and If you know what you're doing, it's possible to get very powerful equipment in about 30 minutes just by taking the standard path through the game.
They could easily make low-level PvP better without changing the open, sequence break-friendly nature of the game. Like they could make an invisible "item level" value that increases in the background when you upgrade equipment and limit invasions to specific item levels in the early areas of new game, or they could just make it so upgrading weapons increases their stat requirements or something.
I'm sure there are better ways to do it since these are just things from the top of my head, but I'm gonna be upset if they make the game less friendly to sequence breaks. I think what Ponpo said about people bitching about inconsequential things is true, but the open, sequence break-friendly nature of the game is a big part of Dark Souls' appeal to me.
I care because the difficulty is 50% of what makes Souls what it is.
Reasons why Souls should not have an Easy Mode:
1. It turns the game from a thinking mans game to a hack 'n slash.
Why even bother with a shield? Just armor up and Two hand ALL THE THINGS!
2. It messes up the servers.
How would you separate easy servers and people who have balls servers? I don't want to fight someone who has super easy mode gear as I progress (slowly) to fight enemies who have actual bite to them. Nor do I want to Co-op with anyone who just one shots the boss.
3.Congratulations, you've accomplished nothing.
I've always said if I had to describe the Souls games' difficulty in one word it would be 'fair'. Enemies got down just as fast as you do and they flinch, have weaknesses, can be exploited, etc. It all comes down to playstyle, how smart you are evading attacks, gear and flask management. When you beat a boss or the entire game you have overcame something. You didn't just bash your way through a linear corridor. You overcame traps, deadly monsters 10x your size and find out a little more about yourself as a gamer which brings me to...
4. Getting rid of the difficulty you lose any incentive to go outside your comfort zone
Why bother with the bow, spells, shield when blindly slashing will do the trick. As you play through the game you will hit several walls in terms of bosses and areas. You have to figure your way past them through what you have at your disposal. Trouble with Anor Lando snipers? Try lighter armor to evade their arrows. What spells would be effective in defeating them? Will you try to fight them at a distance? Will you parry them? Knock them off the ledge? You have the means but you have to learn what works for you.
Watching most people struggle on youtube and bitch about the difficulty has taught me one thing. People are reluctant to learn. Whenever the game kills them they never learn and blame the game. Adding an easy mode doesn't fix this.
P.S. Apparently DSP went back to complete Dark Souls recently and is at the Tomb of the Giants.
I recently played it. Got instantly hooked and cleared it in 3-4 sittings. For some reason, I couldn't get into Shadow abyss as much.
Level design is the same than Dark Souls AKA one giant connected world.
Misterinenja
Member
Ornstein & Smough wouldn't be Ornstein & Smough if you wouldn't die, die and die over again. They would be nothing. That's stripping off all of the satisfaction of beating the impossible odds. They're just two boss monsters with life bars. This isn't any other game. There's no cutscene or story exposition to reward you for progressing forward. Only the feeling of victory.
I can say with absolute certainty that there would not have been four Dark Souls OT's on GAF in span of few weeks after release if people could just run through the game. It wouldn't be same in any way imaginable. There would not be any of that.
There's no point in discussing tactics, builds or anything if there's no even playground to base those discussions on. It loses all of its meaning.
It's designed to be a collective experience of frustrations, mysteries and challenges and overcoming them. That's the only fucking reason the games are what they are right now. Of course there are layers of story, characters and mechanics around that core of the game but they're just dressing in the end, even though integral part of the whole that makes the games so great.
The fundamental philosophy behind Souls games is learning through failure and it's clear as a day that that they are meant to humble you and force you to pay attention in order to succeed. How the hell does an easy mode not undermine all of that?
That's the reason these games give them feelings that other games today aren't able to.
This has been discussed to death but I still can't believe there are people who played through the game and don't fucking understand this.
I hope the developers label you as insane and never listen to what you have to say
If anything, From Software should have me playtest the game to ensure an optimal, casual-friendly experience.
Seriously though, I hope the next game is more challenging and I'd like them to nerf poise and make light armor useful again. Hell, nerf sheild stability and tone down the ring bonuses while they're at it.
Lost Fragment
Obsessed with 4chan
The good ring bonuses should all have a downside imo. "Doubles equip load, but halves magic damage" or something.
H_Prestige
Banned
They want to make things "easier to understand". That's the definition of dumbing things down.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
This sort of thing hinders MMOs to a much greater extent. In all games, though, it promotes neurosis in Agoraphobic Gamers knowing OF it, but not going to the effort to KNOW it.
H_Prestige
Banned
Is your idea of easy mode simply lowering enemy HP and reducing damage? Because that's the only way the game can have a separate easy mode without affecting the game design. It would essentially be New Game "minus".
Why not have God Mode while we're at it? Doesn't get any easier than that. I mean, it's just an option.
Thing is, the difficulty in these games comes from a lot of things. It's not because a dredgling hits too hard. In fact he doesn't hit hard at all. But if you blindly attack while his shield is up, or foolishly jump into a group of them, you're going to get staggered and then slaughtered. It's also because of enemy placement, forcing you to be cautious and always have your shield up, and to strategize how you challenge a group of foes. It's the complete lack of guidance and the world being open. The combat is slow, methodical, and requires actual thinking. How many third person action games can you say that about? This game seems really hard because everything about its design is the complete antithesis of modern games, which is what people are now used to. This is old school game design with new school graphics. You can't change that fact without butchering the game design at a fundamental level. This is what easy mode whiners don't seem to understand. Simply adjusting HP and damage values wouldn't make the game any more palatable to the masses. They'd have to make Dark Souls II into a generic third person action game.
I want Mountain Dew replays of my deaths and online kills. Dorito's close ups of the visceral action when you do a critical hit that will decapitate enemies and leave a pool of blood in the area.
REAL TALK:
-More secret areas
-More types of weapons
-New Spells
-Tweak the backstabbing damage
-No P2P crap
-Some little dangerous platforming areas for kicks to change the pace
-The world be bigger than DS1 but no need to be extremely huge. Sometimes less its more.
-Better summoning system
-Make the covenant feels more useful than they are
-Give me more variety to the bosses without being gimmicky. (Demon's IMO was better on giving you boss variety)
-Please please please stable framerate. (This means if some places are gonna chug like Blighttown better scrap it)
-Cut the fat (Lost Izalith)
REAL TALK:
-More secret areas
-More types of weapons
-New Spells
-Tweak the backstabbing damage
-No P2P crap
-Some little dangerous platforming areas for kicks to change the pace
-The world be bigger than DS1 but no need to be extremely huge. Sometimes less its more.
-Better summoning system
-Make the covenant feels more useful than they are
-Give me more variety to the bosses without being gimmicky. (Demon's IMO was better on giving you boss variety)
-Please please please stable framerate. (This means if some places are gonna chug like Blighttown better scrap it)
-Cut the fat (Lost Izalith)
No it isn't? Being complex is different from being complicated. You can remove unnecessary barriers to learning something without compromising its depth.
H_Prestige
Banned
And what are these unnecessary barriers?
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Different for everyone. Therein lies the danger.
I wonder why you aren't calling for magic or summoning helpful phantoms to be banned during a person's first play through. Is all of this talk of being humbled and then intensely satisfied when you beat a boss after dying to it 50 times a product of Namco's "PREPARE TO DIE" marketing? I haven't felt humbled by anything save for finally beating Latria archstone, which was pure black, on my first Demon's Souls play. I guess I didn't 'truly' experience Dark Souls.
The downside is taking up a ring slot.
I'd agree with, "Doubles equip load, but halves poise." Man I really don't like Poise
Are the roll speed / equip load percentages explained anywhere in the game or manual? Because that's a crucial bit of information that I think a lot of beginners may miss, who will go on to complain that the controls are clunky when they're actually overburdened and don't realize it.
Explanations for each stat were poorly written, important game messages were overly vague, many item descriptions were completely wrong. (Function, not flavor text.)
If I recall, the explanation button also only worked on your main stat screen, but not for equipment.
H_Prestige
Banned
I'm far from the smartest gamer and even I figured that out. When you wear big heavy armor, you're going to move like a big, heavy knight. The percentage cutoffs don't need to be explained. That's dumbing things down.
How often were stats explained in older jrpgs?
Translation errors are a separate thing. They should be fixed avoided obviously.
The explanation button is the square button, right? That works with equipment.
I don't know, it just seems like some people don't want to consult an outside a wiki, but are essentially asking FROM to include a wiki in game.
Lost Fragment
Obsessed with 4chan
I know that's already a downside, but it's not enough. Giving rings more significant downsides will help avoid situations where there's no reason not to use a particular ring, like the DWGR used to be, and the FAP ring currently is.