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New previews for Dark Souls II

Not sure who made this but saw on reddit titled "invasion in a nutshell"
UyXQm3I.gif

I think that's Artorias peeking in the window on the right...
BTW, Just preordered myself. I wish I could be blindly optimistic about it, but buying a bad game is the very least of my worries. Dark Souls not being good anymore would be worse than buying 10 bad games, full price, in a row.
I do trust ENB though, but these changes feel like they're going too far.
 

E92 M3

Member
I think that's Artorias peeking in the window on the right...
BTW, Just preordered myself. I wish I could be blindly optimistic about it, but buying a bad game is the very least of my worries. Dark Souls not being good anymore would be worse than buying 10 bad games, full price, in a row.
I do trust ENB though, but these changes feel like they're going too far.

I know how you feel; really love the series as well. In terms of ENB, he is working on the guide, so there could be bias.
 

aFIGurANT

Member
I know how you feel; really love the series as well. In terms of ENB, he is working on the guide, so there could be bias.

Did he announce that on his twitter? His channel on youtube has been so dead since the whole copyright deal a while back. I miss his videos and really hope he's enjoying the hell out of the game. He has a good finger on the pulse of the series, probably the best out there in all honesty.
 
I know how you feel; really love the series as well. In terms of ENB, he is working on the guide, so there could be bias.

I don't think there's bias.
But I think, maybe he played it entirely offline... so he never got to see if this endless invasion thing was broken or not. What the soul vessel might mean to pvp, ect.
Maybe he enforced a rule with himself never to abuse the quick travel, and had no problem sticking to it. And maybe he's so good at the game, he never died 15 times on any section.
It's a single man's early impression I don't trust.
 

E92 M3

Member
Did he announce that on his twitter? His channel on youtube has been so dead since the whole copyright deal a while back. I miss his videos and really hope he's enjoying the hell out of the game. He has a good finger on the pulse of the series, probably the best out there in all honesty.

He did announce it on Twitter. Nonetheless I preordered the guide for collection purposes.
 
Almost pure excitement, but honestly there wasn't that much detailed information on game mechanics available, and people weren't expecting it to be mostly unchanged from Demon's Souls. I get the feeling the atmosphere would be a little more welcoming to the sequel if people weren't soured by the initial interviews making it sound like the game would be casualized.

Totally wrong. Not sure about on GAF but other boards were constantly whining about Bonfires and XBOX making the game casual. Actually, almost all the same complaints back then. Even the petty stuff like criticizing the music in the trailers and the bad players in the game footage.
 

Garcia

Member
Respeccing in general (I don't agree with any, but once is acceptable) just kills replayability. There has to be more incentives to replay than simply because you like the gameplay.

Impossible to know if there are some statistics gathered by FROM that break down all the percentages of people that play the game but never complete it, those who finish it and never touch it again, those who further venture into one NG+ session and those that go even further into the ++++ realm.

I'm just making assumptions here but I can imagine that respeccing will definitely appeal to the first 2 cases I propose which might be well above 50% of the entire userbase; that single mechanic by itself might very well push deserters into actually completing the game.
 

IlludiumQ36

Member
I don't think it's just to reduce farming.

FROM seemed to EXPECT people to farm in DS. Why else would Depths (rats and Humanity) and Crystal Cave (clams and Twinkling Titanite) be warpable destinations with the Lordvessel? There are no reasons whatsoever to revisit those locations otherwise.
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
FROM seemed to EXPECT people to farm in DS. Why else would Depths (rats and Humanity) and Crystal Cave (clams and Twinkling Titanite) be warpable destinations with the Lordvessel? There are no reasons whatsoever to revisit those locations otherwise.
The Depths wasn't warp-accessible until a while after launch, to be fair.
 

Soriku

Junior Member
FROM seemed to EXPECT people to farm in DS. Why else would Depths (rats and Humanity) and Crystal Cave (clams and Twinkling Titanite) be warpable destinations with the Lordvessel? There are no reasons whatsoever to revisit those locations otherwise.

With Crystal Cave I thought they made it warpable because every other boss room with a boss that had a Lord Soul was warpable.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Yeah, you can warp to Nito's room too, even though it's useless. Covenant doesn't even work after you killed him.

Can you warp to Bed of Chaos? I forget. That'd be lol.
 

Hypron

Member
FROM seemed to EXPECT people to farm in DS. Why else would Depths (rats and Humanity) and Crystal Cave (clams and Twinkling Titanite) be warpable destinations with the Lordvessel? There are no reasons whatsoever to revisit those locations otherwise.

Huh? The game doesn't require any farming whatsoever to complete it. It even seems like FROM went out of their way to make sure the game could be completed without farming. I really don't think they expect the player to farm.

And you could warp to the Depths to meet a friend for coop.

Yeah, it's also got some hidden items so exploring it more than once can be useful if you didn't find all of them. And actually it's the closest warpable bonfire to the top of blighttown, which contains quite a lot of stuff.
 
FROM seemed to EXPECT people to farm in DS. Why else would Depths (rats and Humanity) and Crystal Cave (clams and Twinkling Titanite) be warpable destinations with the Lordvessel? There are no reasons whatsoever to revisit those locations otherwise.

I always put down my summon sign in Anor Londo to help people with O&S, then use the souls I earn to buy Twinkling Titanite from the Giant Blacksmith.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
You couldn't buy them pre-1.04 though, so farming the clams near Seath's made sense. I don't think you could actually even warp there pre-patch either though, come to think of it?
 
FROM seemed to EXPECT people to farm in DS. Why else would Depths (rats and Humanity) and Crystal Cave (clams and Twinkling Titanite) be warpable destinations with the Lordvessel? There are no reasons whatsoever to revisit those locations otherwise.

I agree with others. If you played Demon's, you'd know From went to great lengths to cut down the need to farm in Dark.
Hell, 100%-ing Dark Souls can basically be done with almost no farming whatsoever, from what I recall.
 

Joei

Member
I agree with others. If you played Demon's, you'd know From went to great lengths to cut down the need to farm in Dark.
Hell, 100%-ing Dark Souls can basically be done with almost no farming whatsoever, from what I recall.

I dunno, I did farm humanity in the Depths and wraiths I think for chunks. You don't HAVE to farm them to complete the game, just items, which makes me curious as to why the have the respawn limit.
 

Hypron

Member
I agree with others. If you played Demon's, you'd know From went to great lengths to cut down the need to farm in Dark.
Hell, 100%-ing Dark Souls can basically be done with almost no farming whatsoever, from what I recall.

There are a couple of things you need to farm to get 100%: Channelers to get a trident (unless you get really lucky), people as a Darkmoon servant or those bird-men in the painted world of Ariamis to get Souvenir of Reprisals (for the darkmoon blade miracle), those frogs in the depths to get eyes of the dead (for a couple of miracles from the gravelord servant covenant), and a couple of others I can't remember. But yeah none of that is required to just get through the game.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Impossible to know if there are some statistics gathered by FROM that break down all the percentages of people that play the game but never complete it, those who finish it and never touch it again, those who further venture into one NG+ session and those that go even further into the ++++ realm.

I'm just making assumptions here but I can imagine that respeccing will definitely appeal to the first 2 cases I propose which might be well above 50% of the entire userbase; that single mechanic by itself might very well push deserters into actually completing the game.

Infinite lives, checkpoints and regenerating health were also added for similar reasons, and look at where we are today. Upset that a series that opposed the status quo might slowly be falling in line.
 

F0rneus

Tears in the rain
I will admit that thew new Eurogamer preview put the fear of God into me. They might have completely ruined the game. The Videogamer video preview was also fairly scathing of it, in terms of mechanics. Hearing that it's very videogame-y, unlike the previous Souls games is well...soul-crushing. I really fear that FROM might have dropped the ball on this. But we'll see.
 

Visceir

Member
You don't HAVE to farm them to complete the game, just items, which makes me curious as to why the have the respawn limit.

I don't think anyone actually knows how exactly the respawn limit works or if there even is one, so people could be freaking out over nothing. But Dark Souls2 does have consumable healing items, items that regenerate magic charges and items you can burn at bonfires and such, so there will definitely be more of a reason to farm items in DS2.

What do you mean by that?

It's hard to explain but I imagine it could feel more like it's "by the numbers", if you traverse a level and can kinda tell "ok, this is the arena where I fight x guys" rahter than having the world be cohersive and make you forget all about it then the game could be seen as "very videogame-y"
 

Jobbs

Banned
Oy. Been avoiding info on the game but I heard about fast travel and respecs.

This makes me nervous, bros. Nervous as hell. I have a really hard time understanding how either of these things won't be brutal blows to this game and keep it from being remembered as an improvement over the original. They're telling me there's no incentive to ever make a second character; You only need one forever. This doesn't feel right to me. I want to make important decisions and live with them. That's part of how the experience feels like it should be.

Likewise, it's hard to explain how fast travel won't damage the game badly. "Just don't use it" Isn't a good answer. Dark Souls wasn't Skyrim where you could run in a straight line for 15 minutes to get somewhere; It was a delicately designed interconnected world, full of subtlety, nuance, and shortcuts. If they put in fast travel from the start of the game, it structurally shifts the way the game must be played and designed. Why would the world be thoughtfully designed in terms of return paths and shortcuts if you can just warp passed it all? It wouldn't. So there's no thrill of discovering the unity of the world, no intimacy. They want it to be WOW where the world doesn't feel like a place anymore, because you just warp instantly anywhere any time you need to be somewhere. There's no commitment.

I don't know if MMOs are necessarily a perfect example, but think about WOW in the early days. If you want to go somewhere, you had to go there. You had to make it to the dungeon entrance. The battleground was an actual place that you had to go to. And while it wasn't always 100% convenient or instant getting people together, the world ahd meaning. A place felt like a place. All of the instant travel they patched in over time eventually turned the world into this incredibly meaningless place, bereft of weight or seriousness or any sense of geography or commitment. At some point, to gain convenience you need to give up a lot of other stuff.

We can debate the merits of that in an MMO, but Dark Souls should have been the one game where *not* everything is sacrifice in order to make it convenient. Dark Souls was our one game, man.

oh, and finally. re:15 respawns on enemies... I don't care so much about this one, honestly, I don't think it usually makes a difference. Are you saying each enemy in the world respawns 15 times *total*? Or 15 times within the same time frame, and eventually the respawns recharge?
 

BearPawB

Banned
I am not concerned at all. There is plenty of reason to NOT fast travel in these games (hidden treasure along the way). And because you now level up at one lady, getting back there is important. I don't think it is going to matter in the slightest.
 

Jobbs

Banned
I've chatted with people (people who didn't really care for Dark Souls) who basically say -- If you don't want to respec, then don't respec. If you don't want to fast travel, then don't fast travel. And it's hard to ever explain to these types of people why decisions having meaning, and traveling being a commitment, and everything *mattering* contributed to the experience.

And this is just some kind of divide we have. I try to explain why I love Dark Souls, and there'll always be people who just don't get it. We aren't speaking the same language. And that's fine. I am 100% okay with you not understanding why Dark Souls is good.

The problem is that people who don't "get it" have a billion games to play that cater to their interests. We had about one. Dark Souls. And now it's really sounding like the sequel, in trying to be all things to all people, is going to destroy or at least damage the franchise. I think Dark Souls 2, due to these changes, despite perhaps being well liked at first due to some of the more immediate upgrades, in the long term it will be remembered less fondly and won't be played as widely for as long.

I know the game isn't out yet and these proclamations could be premature, but, man. Universal fast travel from the start and respecs. It's just really, really hard to explain to me how this won't badly damage the franchise.
 

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
I am not concerned at all. There is plenty of reason to NOT fast travel in these games (hidden treasure along the way). And because you now level up at one lady, getting back there is important. I don't think it is going to matter in the slightest.


Leveling up at the home base means the fast travel make even less sense. Why bother making you waste the time when you can warp back from any bonfire anyway? What's the point in not letting you level up at the bonfire when you can use any bonfire in the game to see a few loading screens and level up, getting right back to where you were? That's completely unnecessary tedium.
 

Jarsonot

Member
Leveling up at the home base means the fast travel make even less sense. Why bother making you waste the time when you can warp back from any bonfire anyway? What's the point in not letting you level up at the bonfire when you can use any bonfire in the game to see a few loading screens and level up, getting right back to where you were? That's completely unnecessary tedium.

'Til you can't warp no more. =)

Still think they're going to rip that carpet out from under us. It'd be cool if there was someone going around putting OUT your fires, you'd notice eventually that your warp list is getting smaller and smaller... And maybe you could go back and relight them? Then you'd have warping along WITH the necessary retreading of levels ala DkS 1.

Team BenefitOfTheDoubt
 

F0rneus

Tears in the rain
What do you mean by that?

The guy couldn't find the exact words to put it, but basically he said that Demon's and Dark Souls never had anything that felt like a typical videogame. The atmosphere overtook everything. They just felt like something he experienced, not just played. But DSII immediately feels gamey. To him it felt like another videogame.
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
The guy couldn't find the exact words to put it, but basically he said that Demon's and Dark Souls never had anything that felt like a typical videogame. The atmosphere overtook everything. They just felt like something he experienced, not just played. But DSII immediately feels gamey. To him it felt like another videogame.

We should also take in consideration this is a 3rd game on the souls series. The same magic and excitement eventually will wear off. I believe it will be a great game still despite some issues.
 

Ill Saint

Member
Co-op with a friend, voice chat, warping, re-spec... on paper, it it seems that concessions have definitely been made to appeal to a wider range of gamers and the vocal crowd who have been asking for their implementation. Seeing these features listed, it's understandable why people think the series is riding down the slippery slope to mainstream mass appeal. Yet, I do believe From will balance all these features well, and that they have carefully considered how to implement them while maintaining the integrity of the series. Impressions from community members who have played the game have been extremely positive, and I'm excited as heck to delve into the game and discover it for myself rather than pre-judge based on speculation.
 
I've chatted with people (people who didn't really care for Dark Souls) who basically say -- If you don't want to respec, then don't respec. If you don't want to fast travel, then don't fast travel. And it's hard to ever explain to these types of people why decisions having meaning, and traveling being a commitment, and everything *mattering* contributed to the experience.

And this is just some kind of divide we have. I try to explain why I love Dark Souls, and there'll always be people who just don't get it. We aren't speaking the same language. And that's fine. I am 100% okay with you not understanding why Dark Souls is good.

The problem is that people who don't "get it" have a billion games to play that cater to their interests. We had about one. Dark Souls. And now it's really sounding like the sequel, in trying to be all things to all people, is going to destroy or at least damage the franchise. I think Dark Souls 2, due to these changes, despite perhaps being well liked at first due to some of the more immediate upgrades, in the long term it will be remembered less fondly and won't be played as widely for as long.

I know the game isn't out yet and these proclamations could be premature, but, man. Universal fast travel from the start and respecs. It's just really, really hard to explain to me how this won't badly damage the franchise.

I remember the same things being said when Dark Souls was coming out and we were all used to how Demon's Souls worked..
 

RangerBAD

Member
We should also take in consideration this is a 3rd game on the souls series. The same magic and excitement eventually will wear off. I believe it will be a great game still despite some issues.

I agree with that. We can't really expect it to be fresh feeling in some areas. It's not our first rodeo. Of course, I want the game to feel balanced, but nothing has really discouraged me about the game.
 

Jobbs

Banned
I remember the same things being said when Dark Souls was coming out and we were all used to how Demon's Souls worked..

I have tried, and I simply can't figure out where the comparison could possibly be. What was done to Dark Souls that could compare to DS2 having respecs and universal fast travel.
 
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