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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:What makes me believe that the odditys in transitions were intentional was the short tunnel behind the shrine of winter changing the weather and time of day from a cloudy day to a rainy moonlit night, that takes it a step beyond what could be just a missed design error into intentional. This is exactly how I felt. I think they were trying to subtly demonstrate that the world doesn't fit together properly (in a way, it's like the weird sun/moon poo poo from DS1) but it wasn't dramatic or visually interesting enough. Elevators are boring transitions that remind players of bad game design of ages past. If you just walked around a corner after the Mytha fight and suddenly found yourself overlooking lava, it would've been better. "Space is distorted" being reflected in the level design must be intentional, though. Maybe half the NPCs make a remarks along the lines of "how did I get here, I can't remember."
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May 25, 2014 09:11
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I think I just got rat team invaded by someone who didn't understand I wasn't their friend  They just ran up to me when I waved and then turned and attacked the rats.
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May 25, 2014 09:12
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Did you stab them?
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May 25, 2014 09:22
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Gestalt Intellect posted:I think I just got rat team invaded by someone who didn't understand I wasn't their friend
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May 25, 2014 09:25
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Roctavian posted:"Space is distorted" being reflected in the level design must be intentional, though. Maybe half the NPCs make a remarks along the lines of "how did I get here, I can't remember." I really hate this explanation for the npc/world design, it just feels like a lazy half-hearted way to cover up whatever is going on in the world. Its like NANOMACHINES.
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May 25, 2014 09:26
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Drakes posted:I really hate this explanation for the npc/world design, it just feels like a lazy half-hearted way to cover up whatever is going on in the world. Except not because literally the whole loving game is about the entire world being screwy and lovely. :EDIT: Not to mention NPCs go out of their way to talk about how screwy time and space are. It's not a ham-fisted explanation that was crammed in at the last moment.
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May 25, 2014 09:27
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Roctavian posted:"Space is distorted" being reflected in the level design must be intentional, though. Maybe half the NPCs make a remarks along the lines of "how did I get here, I can't remember."
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May 25, 2014 09:28
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DOES SOMEONE HERE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH NANOMACHINES?
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May 25, 2014 09:30
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Is there a single place with the word 'valley' in the name in any game by From that isn't a poisonous hell hole?
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May 25, 2014 09:36
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dis astranagant posted:Is there a single place with the word 'valley' in the name in any game by From that isn't a poisonous hell hole?
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May 25, 2014 09:36
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Oh yeah, forgot about that one. FIred up Eternal Ring today and ran into "Disposal Valley", which is exactly the poisonous poo poo hole you might think.
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May 25, 2014 09:38
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SynthOrange posted:Did you stab them? I whacked them normally and waited and then did it again but they just didn't turn around!! Then the rats won.  Coordinated co-op runs are still the best part of Dark Souls. (I'm fairy potter)
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May 25, 2014 09:39
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Kaldaris posted:Except not because literally the whole loving game is about the entire world being screwy and lovely. It just feels like a lazy way to build up the world when everyones going crazy and no one is really certain, then half the NPCs have mild amnesia. You can say what you want and go with it, it just doesn't make for an interesting world to me I suppose.
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May 25, 2014 09:40
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Nahxela posted:Valley of Drakes? The skull-o-dragon barfs poison goop at you. Does that count?
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May 25, 2014 09:48
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Nahxela posted:I'm pretty sure that's because they're losing sense of themselves as they get progressively more hollow and not necessarily because the map is weird. That's kind of the point that's being made though - whether the map makes sense or not is irrelevant since you're just as insane and hollow as the rest of the NPCs are. Geography aside, I'm surprised people don't think DS2 locations evoke a sense of place. Honestly, despite all the trumpeting of DS1 being SO CONNECTED  I always thought it was an incredibly game-y conceit that hey, wouldn't you know it, all the Lord Souls ended up within walking distance of each other! As posted above, the whole of Lordran is supposed to be within those walls, so New Londo being that close to the "capital," let alone have kings of its own, seems really silly, moreso in the context of being built with huge main gates leading into some narrow lovely cliffside. Similarly, while Sen's makes sense in terms of being the test for those who would enter Anor Londo, there's no reason why the final gate for those seeking the gods is located in some backwater parish next to an overgrown basin. Basically, Dark Souls 1 makes a ton of strict geographical sense, but in terms of all of its elements happening to be in that tightly-woven place it just doesn't really add up at all.Compare this to DS2 where being able to trek over the whole island gives you a pretty good sense of how this was a really big civilization that just totally collapsed. The shaded woods are reclaiming once-populated roadways, Tseldora is sinking into the sands like Heide fell into the sea, Undead Purgatory is an isolated prison and the Bastille is supermax, the structures in the Forest fell to the Giants and it shows, and so on - Harvest Valley is, oddly enough, probably the last truly functioning settlement, and it's just a bunch of undead milling around for a bigger undead - a hilltop fiefdom trying to pass itself off as a mountain kingdom. While the scale is sometimes screwy, the scope of Drangleic is communicated superbly. A few days back someone described DS1's map as a web and DS2's as a wheel, and I think the metaphor works in that you really do feel like you're going on a journey to the absolute ends of the earth in DS2. Coming back to Majula was always really comforting, and the fact that you generally did it so briefly really drove in that your real duty was exploring the ruins of the island rather than sticking around where you felt safe. Whereas you eventually got very intimate with DS1's little tract of land, DS2 always makes you feel like you're intruding into an ancient, foreign place, instead of just hopping up- and downstairs from Firelink to ring the bell. Anyway, that's a whole lot of words to say I like DS2 even more than 1, I guess. Heavy Lobster fucked around with this message at 10:03 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 10:01
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Huzzah! posted:The skull-o-dragon barfs poison goop at you. Does that count? Heavy Lobster posted:That's kind of the point that's being made though - whether the map makes sense or not is irrelevant since you're just as insane and hollow as the rest of the NPCs are.
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May 25, 2014 10:13
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I may have become an invasion addict tonight... I need a few more levels so I can get my FTH or INT high enough for some basic utility spells though. Having no mid-range whatsoever is annoying. I also can't decide on weapons... Maces are too slow for their lack of reach, same with reinforced clubs... My +9 Greatsword is a lot of fun; the lack of speed is made up for by the reach of the damned thing. Slamming that down on someone's head is awesome. Are faster weapons usually better for pvp?
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May 25, 2014 10:15
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Magus42 posted:Are faster weapons usually better for pvp?
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May 25, 2014 10:17
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Heavy Lobster posted:That's kind of the point that's being made though - whether the map makes sense or not is irrelevant since you're just as insane and hollow as the rest of the NPCs are. I like the way you see it, and I wish I could see it the same way! It's certainly true that Lordran being such a tiny place was peculiar, but it was also more memorable for that peculiarity. Also, it was a very clever way to marry the fiction and the gameplay - they designed this insane little kingdom which seems to be a tight confederation of city states, and its improbability just happened to make it a perfect videogame environment - it's not something I minded at all, especially after the reveal that it all somehow existed on top of a giant tree which was just one among many. What does that mean for all the other lands that get mentioned? Who knows? It felt like you were the star of some ancient myth - Beowulf and Gilgamesh were not well-wrought tales, the former involved a days-long swimming competition which took place for petty reasons while the hero was supposed to be dealing with the ogre eating guards every night. Dark Souls took those contradictory awkward elements and applied them to its storytelling, both environmental and written, in a graceful (IMO) manner. Remember that Miyazaki said the game was inspired by his experiences reading Western fantasy fiction he couldn't fully translate. The dude even named a boss after Leo Ornstein, of all the loving references. It shows that the game has lots of well-understood literary inspiration. Meanwhile, Dark Souls 2 feels more like it wants to be Final Fantasy or something, where you spend short moments on an overworld between environments - it's a fine way to do things, but it's not the way this game chose to do it, and the concept of exploring an entire island or continent or whatever, while keeping the actual game world as a single explorable space? It's not a tension which sings. A Demon's style Nexus would have been a stronger choice, I think. But even if the style of traversal had clicked better, I don't think I'd find the world as interesting as Lordran. There were some choices made here which I thought were very boring - like Mytha, a pretty familiar collection of ancient and somewhat misogynistic tropes. And the Iron King - Dark Souls may have had a giant lava monster, but he didn't have the honor of being one of the game's most important bosses. Plus, Mister Discharge's singular and pathetic motivation was more interesting and unexpected than the Iron King's entire backstory. Space Hamlet fucked around with this message at 10:44 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 10:18
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I thought Dark Souls 1 actually did a better job of communicating the distance you travel. There are a lot of huge elevators and major transitions between areas, whereas in Dark Souls 2 you just go through a little tunnel or whatever and suddenly the environment is totally different. Basically DS1 had way bigger area transitions but the fact that you could see the connected world meant it was harder to suspension-of-disbelief the size of the world into being bigger than it actually is. While DS2 has really short and awkward area transitions but they do want to imply you traveled a great distance. They're both flawed but whichever one bothers you less will probably be what you prefer. My problem with DS2's style is that the backgrounds are really boring as a result, so it doesn't feel like there's anything more to the world than the tiny part you're seeing. The more detailed environments in DS1 made it feel like you were just seeing a fraction of the world, and you weren't welcome there (you get into a single building in Anor Londo by going up a buttress and through a broken window, but there's many more buildings stretching into the horizon that you never enter). Drakes posted:It just feels like a lazy way to build up the world when everyones going crazy and no one is really certain, then half the NPCs have mild amnesia. You can say what you want and go with it, it just doesn't make for an interesting world to me I suppose. I interpreted everyone not knowing how they came to drangleic as being a result of the curse (related to the intro). It looks like people with the curse don't really know how they end up in drangleic at all, it just sort of happens and they aren't even aware of losing their memories. I still thought it was supposed to be a coherent and real place that was supposed to make sense.
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May 25, 2014 10:43
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Space Hamlet posted:I like the way you see it, and I wish I could see it the same way! It's certainly true that Lordran being such a tiny place was peculiar, but it was also more memorable for that peculiarity. Also, it was a very clever way to marry the fiction and the gameplay - they designed this insane little kingdom which seems to be a tight confederation of city states, and its improbability just happened to make it a perfect videogame environment - it's not something I minded at all, especially after the reveal that it all somehow existed on top of a giant tree which was just one among many. What does that mean for all the other lands that get mentioned? Who knows? It felt like you were the star of some ancient myth - Beowulf and Gilgamesh were not well-wrought tales, the former involved a days-long swimming competition which took place for petty reasons while the hero was supposed to be dealing with the ogre eating guards every night. Dark Souls took those contradictory awkward elements and applied them to its storytelling, both environmental and written, in a graceful (IMO) manner. Remember that Miyazaki said the game was inspired by his experiences reading Western fantasy fiction he couldn't fully translate. The dude even named a boss after Leo Ornstein, of all the loving references. It shows that the game has lots of well-imagined literary inspiration. This is a really articulate way of putting it, and I can agree with you on the mythic hero thing - straight from the intro, DS1 makes it apparent that there are real gods walking amongst you, and that you're going to be dealing with them and everything that comes with them - DS1 is living the legend and triumphing over undeath in the way the Lord Souls bearers did once, too, and it accomplishes that mythic scale while still being consistently crushing and sad. DS2, even with its not-balrog and mirror knight and giant wars, is a comparatively lower-key sort of game - my girlfriend pointed out that she hadn't noticed anything in DS2 quite as iconic as the Ornstein and Smough fight, and I think she's right, but that it's also intentional. Whereas DS1 starts with the ancient dragons collapsing under the might of the gods, DS2 starts with you falling into another world where you really should never be, and the game reflects it: Drangleic has no right to see someone link the flame again, but it keeps happening, and it keeps suffering as a result. Honestly, I think that the game is Dark Souls 2 rather than, I dunno, Dreary Souls or something is both a good and a bad thing. It's bad in that people go in expecting more DS1 and get a game with a totally different worldbuilding philosophy, but it's great in that Drangleic would never make sense without Lordran. Drangleic is the logical conclusion of the fire linking cycle hinted at throughout DS1 - a horrible place full of broken people muttering platitudes to themselves while repeating the same actions for all milennia because it's just how it's always been. DS1's characters suffered crushing lows, but could also really succeed (Solaire's good ending), because the game set up that sort of triumph over adversity. DS2, on the other hand, shows how fleeting those triumphs really are in whatever world Lordran/Drangleic exists in, and as a result everyone never really goes higher than a baseline of anxiety and utter hopelessness - like the firekeeper, and like Lautrec before her, says, the undead are just moths to the flame; like Grandahl says, embracing Dark is the only respite for those that are cursed, with the First Flame being the decoy of hope that only leads to more disappointment. I think I'm rambling at this point, but hopefully that conveyed my stance on it more fully. DS1 is fantastic all around, but I feel like trying to recapture it in 2 wouldn't have done it justice, but taking everything it presented to its logical conclusion really worked.
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May 25, 2014 10:47
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I think there's only so much lore and fun per souls universe. Here's hoping instead of Darksouls 3 we get "Devils Souls" or something.
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May 25, 2014 10:55
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Sunlight spear made Velstadt really easy. I imagine it'll be like that for every boss?
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May 25, 2014 10:57
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Jose posted:Sunlight spear made Velstadt really easy. I imagine it'll be like that for every boss?
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May 25, 2014 10:57
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Heavy Lobster posted:This is a really articulate way of putting it, and I can agree with you on the mythic hero thing - straight from the intro, DS1 makes it apparent that there are real gods walking amongst you, and that you're going to be dealing with them and everything that comes with them - DS1 is living the legend and triumphing over undeath in the way the Lord Souls bearers did once, too, and it accomplishes that mythic scale while still being consistently crushing and sad. I think I basically agree with you here- DS2 very much wants to be a companion piece to DS1, an extrapolation, rather than a successor like Dark was to Demon's, at least in terms of the fiction. It's occurred to me in the past that the Ancient Dragon is essentially a symbol of this - try as you might, you can never perfectly recreate something that grandiose. Aldia, having explicitly created so many of the game's enemies, can be read as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the game's developers. I wonder how much of the game's fiction could be stretched to fit into that analogy. You probably are being fairer on the game than I am, judging it by its goals rather than by the bar set by its predecessor. Still though, I stand by my stance that I tremendously prefer the first one!
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May 25, 2014 11:00
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Welp, just ran into my second confirmed hacker (which considering I've put 72 hours into the game so far, doesn't seem like a terrible ratio). I warp to Tseldora to start on that area, really looking forward to it. My first time through it. (yeah, those 72 hours are spread over about 9 gimmick characters, and none of them have gotten as far as Tseldora until now!) Thirty seconds later, dude invades me. Now whenever I get invaded, my first action is always to swap my PVE Tower Shield for my PVP Magic Rebel's Greatshield. Dude runs over with glowy crystal balls around his head. Inwardly, I smirk. Mage invaders best invaders. HCS fires, no damage. Casts Sunlight Spear, I take it on the chin, minimal damage. Dude doesn't know what the gently caress. He rolls around a bit poking at me with a lightning-infused spear of some sort while I try and bait him into my claymore strikes. I'm taking minor chip damage. He tries some *more* HCS and SS shots at me. I don't even bother to dodge. I'd have done Mock if I could have gotten away with it. Seriously, dude; learn from what your eyes are telling you! So he's basically got no tricks without his spells and I swat him down. Think nothing of it, move on a bit. Glance at my souls - I have over 400,000. Started the session with 600 in total. loving hackers! I should have realised at the time that he was hacking, as my SM is still under 1 million, and he was hurling both Homing Crystal Soul Mass and Sunlight Spear. But I guess he could have spiced them like buggery. Obviously didn't, though! So that's the first time I've had to restore my save file from backup. Fortunately I obsessively take a backup every time I finish a session, and I run SoulSaver into the bargain, so all it's cost me is about 10 minutes of gaming. I find it weird that the guy's obviously hacked his SM down so he can invade, but he wasn't making himself invincible. From what I've heard in this thread, isn't the SM hack actually harder to do than the infinite health cheat? Not that I'm complaining, I just found it a little odd. Has kind of ruined my enjoyment of the new area, though. I hate having to break flow because of hackers. :/ ninjaiguana fucked around with this message at 11:33 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 11:27
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I've gotten kind of addicted to Iron Keep bridge fight clubs and man it's no fun when someone decides to kill the host while they're watching 
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May 25, 2014 11:31
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 I hid in the blacksmith's workshop as the torch. He came in, smashed everything BUT me, ran out, disconnected later.  Oh god, just had the worst bell run. The guy did nothing but cast acid fog at me, breaking all my gear. 
Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 11:43 on May 25, 2014 |
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May 25, 2014 11:32
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Space Hamlet posted:I think I basically agree with you here- DS2 very much wants to be a companion piece to DS1, an extrapolation, rather than a successor like Dark was to Demon's, at least in terms of the fiction. It's occurred to me in the past that the Ancient Dragon is essentially a symbol of this - try as you might, you can never perfectly recreate something that grandiose. Aldia, having explicitly created so many of the game's enemies, can be read as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the game's developers. I wonder how much of the game's fiction could be stretched to fit into that analogy. Honestly, I understand where you're coming from in preferring DS1, and I'm glad that you're even-handed about it - a lot of people toss out "atmosphere" as a buzzword rather than a well-fleshed out stance or blow stuff like the Shaded Woods paths out of proportion (seriously, it's literally the ghost playground, there of /all/ places in Drangleic the landscape is allowed to make no sense) without really getting into game design chat, so it's good to really discuss both games rather than "DS2 is bad" being the foregone conclusion. On my end, I think the menu theme for DS2 captures everything I love about the game tonally - it's just so full of that surreal despair that being a slowly hollowing undead is supposed to feel like. Every time you boot up the game you're reminded that the Dark Souls universe is in this endless downward spiral that you're only perpetuating by coming back again and again to play it even more because of the need to prove yourself by besting another Souls game and getting to know it inside and out. If DS1 is about the destruction of false idols, DS2 is about how arrogance (see the Giants plot) is what makes idols false to begin with, and the two games feed back into each other endlessly. Basically, I'm glad that even though a lot of people don't like DS2 as much as 1 - or even as much as Demon's Souls - there are people who definitely feel like the two go together and play off each other, because looking at the two intertextually makes any discussion about them way more interesting to me than looking at them individually ever has.
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May 25, 2014 11:44
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Soul Geyser is even more ridiculous than Sunlight spear on bosses and I don't even have the staff of wisdom yet
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May 25, 2014 11:44
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There's no reason to stay at SL 150 right? because I swear I saw people saying that SL 150 is the level for pvp, which doesn't make sense considering the matchmaking is based on Soul Memory. or is it just the minimum, recommended level for pvp?
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May 25, 2014 11:51
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there's no reason at all. you're just gimping yourself/wasting souls.
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May 25, 2014 12:01
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Fat Care-Bear posted:There's no reason to stay at SL 150 right? because I swear I saw people saying that SL 150 is the level for pvp, which doesn't make sense considering the matchmaking is based on Soul Memory. It's the artificial level cap for 'appropriately balanced metagame PvP'. So unless you give a poo poo what random PvP tryhards on the internet at large think of you, there's no reason to cap yourself at SL 150.
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May 25, 2014 12:03
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To any of you wretches out there who have 100+ sin, try going super hollow and check if the dark pyromancy flame gets any noticeable boosts. I've read some conflicting sources and I've not had good enough internet to try, but if it works it could make a funny build.
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May 25, 2014 12:30
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The worst submarine posted:To any of you wretches out there who have 100+ sin, try going super hollow and check if the dark pyromancy flame gets any noticeable boosts. I've read some conflicting sources and I've not had good enough internet to try, but if it works it could make a funny build. It doesn't do anything, the Dark Flame still sucks.
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May 25, 2014 12:34
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Kaldaris posted:Except not because literally the whole loving game is about the entire world being screwy and lovely. I don't even think it's time and space being convoluted anymore I think Dark Souls 2 takes place is in a memory like the ones of the dead giants. A fraying memory succumbing to a dreamlike logic as it comes undone. The poisonous lowlands steeped in volcanic gasses leaking from below and that are being pumped into a snake lady's bath chamber where you then take an elevator to the constantly erupting summit.
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May 25, 2014 12:41
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loving chairs.  Also, bell invasions are quite fun. Are invasions as bluebros as frequent as for example bell invasions?
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May 25, 2014 12:47
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Blue Sentinels basically get no action until like NG+ because it's very difficult for new characters to rack up enough Sin to mark them targets for Sentinels.
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May 25, 2014 12:56
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And as for rescuing Way of Blue followers, basically forget it. There's basically no advantage to being in that covenant so no one stays in it.
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May 25, 2014 12:59
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I only wish more people were in the way of the blue so I could get some brotherhood of blood points from killing blues.
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May 25, 2014 13:02
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