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I miss the longsword 1h thrust too, but I think the Sun Sword has a 1h thrust (in exchange for losing the 2h thrust), although that's kind of a pain to get. (Apparently its easy to be summoned at the ruin sentinels, but people are really REALLY bad at that boss.) Also, I think the most disappointing weapon is the Moonlight Greatsword. 1-handed it's merely "okay", but 2-handed the moveset is atrocious. What other wizard weapons would someone suggest? I might switch to Blue Flame (maybe even two!), but that's only available near endgame.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:37
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Positronic Spleen posted:I miss the longsword 1h thrust too, but I think the Sun Sword has a 1h thrust (in exchange for losing the 2h thrust), although that's kind of a pain to get. (Apparently its easy to be summoned at the ruin sentinels, but people are really REALLY bad at that boss.) What? The Moonlight Greatsword is fantastic 1-handed, pair it up with a staff and you can terrorize people at all ranges. The key is to be unpredictable with its special attack, as the windup for it just looks like another attack. The Blue Flame is dogshit compared to the Moonlight Greatsword.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:48
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Positronic Spleen posted:I miss the longsword 1h thrust too, but I think the Sun Sword has a 1h thrust (in exchange for losing the 2h thrust), although that's kind of a pain to get. (Apparently its easy to be summoned at the ruin sentinels, but people are really REALLY bad at that boss.) Hey, screw you too buddy  Most other bosses don't smash 70% of your health the moment you gently caress up, then leave you with virtually no safe opportunities to heal up. At least not the ones I've fought so far.Anyway that's not very sunbro of you :P
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Jun 30, 2014 14:03
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Most bosses totally do that much damage. But then, I've never died to Ruin Sentinels while Lost Sinner has killed me at least once on every run I've done so what do I know. Come to think of it, I also died to Last Giant and both Dragonrider encounters a few times. Vendrick went down in one try and Ancient Dragon took two. 
Manatee Cannon fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 14:09
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:My #1 disappointment with Dark Souls 2 is actually that they apparently took very little or no effort to clear up the game mechanics, and the UI remains as obtuse as before with only marginal improvements. I think one single factor makes it significantly worse: the adaptability stat. Without consulting a wiki you'd NEVER have a clue that raising adaptability makes your rolling better, and that's actually a huge deal because without it your entire playstyle changes dramatically. Polo-Rican fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 14:30
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Positronic Spleen posted:I miss the longsword 1h thrust too, but I think the Sun Sword has a 1h thrust (in exchange for losing the 2h thrust), although that's kind of a pain to get. (Apparently its easy to be summoned at the ruin sentinels, but people are really REALLY bad at that boss.)
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Jun 30, 2014 17:01
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Best battlemage weapon: Magic infused Claymore with *** Magic Weapon. 
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Jun 30, 2014 17:06
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omeg posted:Best battlemage weapon: Magic infused Claymore with *** Magic Weapon. Crystal Magic Weapon looks dumb though, making Dark Weapon/Flame Weapon the superior choices. Don't use flame weapon anymore it sucks now.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:17
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Cryohazard posted:The Blue Flame is dogshit compared to the Moonlight Greatsword. Nope. They're both good weapons, but comparing them is retarded since they're completely different weapon classes, and so have different uses. Hyper Crab Tank posted:My #1 disappointment with Dark Souls 2 is actually that they apparently took very little or no effort to clear up the game mechanics, and the UI remains as obtuse as before with only marginal improvements. I don't know about anyone else, but I hate when a game tries to hide its mechanics from me, especially if that game also expects me to do some amount of min-maxing to get past difficult obstacles. I thoroughly dislike having to read a third source for information about how to play the drat game correctly, y'know? Funny enough, two of my favorite games/franchises suffer from this in spades (Dark Souls and Dota), which I suppose goes to show that a game can be very, very good despite these failings, but that doesn't mean I like how obtuse they're being. Except you don't need to ever consult a wiki. You do not need to understand the specifics of the mechanics to beat the game. On my first playthrough of Dark Souls I asked a few questions in the PC thread and steam group chat when I first started, but otherwise did everything by myself and I did fine. Neither game expects you to do any sort of min/maxing. In fact doing so can trivialize parts of the game since it's not balanced around you being as powerful as possible (this is especially true of Demon's and Dark 2). The UI is fine. It has a ton of poo poo but it's not cluttered, and the tooltips give a good basic explanation of what everything does. RabidWeasel posted:Dark Souls 2 is actually worse in that respect in many ways since they took a bunch of systems that were fairly well balanced and worked (after some patching) and hosed around with them for no good reason. The best example of this is how stat scaling on weapons went from being somewhat obscure but understandable to being almost impossible to predict with just the information the game gives you - it's very possible to have 2 weapons, one with a higher damage scaling value than the other, but with the lower-scaling weapon actually gaining more damage from its scaling, because there are a ton of hidden factors that weigh in on how much damage scaling actually happens. Once again this gets into min/max stuff that the average player isn't going to a give a poo poo about. RBA Starblade posted:Crystal Magic Weapon looks dumb though, making Flame weapon is fine.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:31
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quote:Flame weapon is fine. Post-patch it increased the damage on my BKGS by about 40 on my old character. It was doing something like 310 a hit without, 350 with. It wasn't really worth keeping around. How does GMW compare to Dark Weapon? Maybe I should change my dark claymore to magic.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:32
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RBA Starblade posted:Post-patch it increased the damage on my BKGS by about 40 on my old character. It was doing something like 310 a hit without, 350 with. It wasn't really worth keeping around. How does GMW compare to Dark Weapon? Maybe I should change my dark claymore to magic. That's still an extra 40 points of damage for a non-stat-costing spell. For PVE that's nothing special but every little bit counts for PVP. DW is better damage-wise, GMW looks cooler imo. IIRC GMW has a 20% boost to magic compared to DW's 30% to dark.
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Jun 30, 2014 17:36
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Genocyber posted:On my first playthrough of Dark Souls I asked a few questions in the PC thread and steam group chat when I first started, but otherwise did everything by myself and I did fine. So you did have to consult outside sources, then. It doesn't matter if you ask a wiki or another person, you shouldn't have to do that, even. The thing is, DS2 presents itself as a game that expects you to min/max because it shows you all these numbers, as if it expects you to care about all of them. If they had just decided to show e.g. non-numeric ratings, and cut most of the stats out, then maybe then you could make claims like that, but they didn't. Instead we get a game that shows you maybe 30% of the information you need to make the best decisions for gear, taunting you while not following through. It's a kind of bizarre, lovely midpoint where no-one is really satisfied. Genocyber posted:The UI is fine. It has a ton of poo poo but it's not cluttered, and the tooltips give a good basic explanation of what everything does. Though better than DS1, the UI remains pretty bad, especially on PC. They sure tried to make it more mouse-friendly than DS1, but it still isn't great and DS1 was an outright disaster so it's not like the bar was set very high. Heck, it's not even a good UI by console game standards. Walls of numbers, using bumpers to turn pages (but not always), tooltips that cover up the inventory (and the stats display!) while open despite usually not actually containing that much text... there's a lot they could've done better here. DS2 is a great game, but it's despite the user interface and despite its obtuseness, not helped by them.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:32
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For what it's worth "ask other people" is literally what the Souls games want you to do. Whether or not you agree with that intent or not is up to you, but the entire series was designed to make people discuss the game and talk about how they did things and how they succeeded so other players learn how to do it themselves. So yes, go ahead, use a wiki or ask some friends. It's what the devs want you to do.
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Jun 30, 2014 18:40
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Mighty Dicktron posted:For what it's worth "ask other people" is literally what the Souls games want you to do. Whether or not you agree with that intent or not is up to you, but the entire series was designed to make people discuss the game and talk about how they did things and how they succeeded so other players learn how to do it themselves. Yeah, DS is supposed to evoke the feeling of a bunch of kids on the playground telling each other how to get to the warp zone.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:28
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And how their uncle who works at From said you get a humanity when your message gets rated.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:42
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I'm probably just used to using faster weapons and mixing up the strong and fast attacks, the Moonlight's damage is fine. The 2H moveset really stings, though.Mr Dog posted:Hey, screw you too buddy neetengie posted:The Sunlight Sword can be received quickly if you grind the Covetous Demon or Double Dragon. Also the MLGS is a great sword, pure Magic damage is amazing, unless facing against magic resistant enemies.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:43
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Fister Roboto posted:Yeah, DS is supposed to evoke the feeling of a bunch of kids on the playground telling each other how to get to the warp zone. "But if you climb that tower, the crow from the intro takes you back to the tutorial, and there you can get a magic doll that you rub against that huge-rear end painting, and it warps you to a magic snow castle where you fight Seath's secret half-dragon daughter!!!" 
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Jun 30, 2014 19:45
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Literally nobody would be able to figure out how to get the pickaxe in this game if the wiki or the strategy guide did not exist.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:47
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:The thing is, DS2 presents itself as a game that expects you to min/max because it shows you all these numbers, as if it expects you to care about all of them.  than it is about what the game requires from you.
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Jun 30, 2014 19:55
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Defender's Greatsword (+5 Lightning) is cool as hell if you are doing a Faith build. Also the game is much easier the minute you can get your faith high enough to throw lightning
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Jun 30, 2014 20:07
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Paracelsus posted:It's designed to re-create the feeling of reading a D&D manual written in a language you don't speak, so a bunch of obtuse numbers is successful implementation of design goals. This is not to everyone's taste, but that's okay. As a practical matter, you don't need to know much besides blue numbers good/red numbers bad, upgrade your weapons at the blacksmith, and git gud at dodging. The expectation of min/maxing is more about your inner It is my expectation to be able to look at item requirements and protection stats when they are in the item chest, or even the inventory tab I'm finally adjusting to the fact I'm not overlooking a button or toggle to get it to show me like the last game, it's just equip screen or nothing.Fister Roboto posted:Yeah, DS is supposed to evoke the feeling of a bunch of kids on the playground telling each other how to get to the warp zone. My current namesake knows all about those goddamned warpzones.... When nobody else had even heard of the game  I don't think you can't beat the game without one of the secret "appears if you shoot it" warps, by the ceiling in a scrolling shooter  EDIT: vvv Yeah. Unless I'm missing something at least, the only stat you can't work out the full implications or "X amount gets you this" of on your own is Agility. Or "X amount for Y extra casts" stuff. Though I have yet to find any Hexes so I don't know if anything in game spells out or implies the whole "Uses the LOWEST of either Faith or Int" thing for you. Though I shall remain butthurt over shift in when you are allowed to canned animation riposte, that's not a UI situation. I've heard various comments along the lines of "Poise is useless a dagger can stun you in one hit", I'm expecting this to be exaggeration. But how much is this really a thing, and how much is it a case of PvE vs PvP mechanics? On a lighter note, holy gently caress you can pitch firebomb like a champ now. Section Z fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 20:20
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Section Z posted:It is my expectation to be able to look at item requirements and protection stats when they are in the item chest, or even the inventory tab
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Jun 30, 2014 21:32
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After discovering art of Reppuken (Holy Water Urn), Geese Howard cosplay is now too easy to stomp people with. (Bait out attack - throw holy water - Run in, stunlock to death) Guess it's time to move on to Belfry Sol and other high level areas; or I could cosplay another fighting game character.
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Jun 30, 2014 22:28
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Polo-Rican posted:I think one single factor makes it significantly worse: the adaptability stat. Without consulting a wiki you'd NEVER have a clue that raising adaptability makes your rolling better, and that's actually a huge deal because without it your entire playstyle changes dramatically. Adaptability is just mechanically pretty poor idea overall, even ignoring information clarity (which I mean yeah, it's not exactly gotten across to the player well what ADP does, but I don't play Souls games because they have such great transparency about their mechanics!). If there were ever a compelling reason to stop leveling, it would be at least kind of interesting because some builds might have to gouge it and deal with a weaker roll in exchange for higher damage stats or whatever. As it is, though, there's just no reason why everyone shouldn't bump ADP to 20 as soon as possible (and this is really soon too, since 8-17 levels in ADP at the start of the game cost almost nothing and don't leave you significantly disadvantaged on any other stat while greatly improving your survivability). If it affected Poise to a meaningful extent as well it might feel a little less vestigial, but even then it would still need to be rebalanced pretty heavily to avoid being what it is now, which is trivial to max out the useful effects of and basically useful for everyone. Why even give the player the choice of doing without it?
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Jun 30, 2014 23:14
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Section Z posted:I've heard various comments along the lines of "Poise is useless a dagger can stun you in one hit", I'm expecting this to be exaggeration. But how much is this really a thing, and how much is it a case of PvE vs PvP mechanics? Edit: I think you can indirectly work out how Dark bonus works by raising your Int and Fth stats and noting that it only goes up when you increase the lower of the two.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:02
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I beat the game without really knowing anything about the mechanics other than what I knew from Dark Souls 1. I did all right. Rolling would probably have been easier if I knew about adaptability, but I was more of a tank anyway. The one thing I wish there had been something about was secret walls. I kept seeing signs for secret walls everywhere, and they all had really high ratings. I figured it was the new joke, like how some of the "try jumping" and "skeleton!" signs were rated really high. Every time I tried to hit them nothing happened! Turns out you have to press A 
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Jul 1, 2014 00:07
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Some of those messages were definitely false, I see them all the time. At least the walls take precedence over the messages so if you stand up against the wall when you hit A you'll know for sure whether the message is lying or not.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:09
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^^ They really messed up by making you attack the wall for the Pharros Lockstone secrets and pressing A for everything else. Paracelsus posted:I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think part of the issue is that poise only prevents you from getting stunned if you're actively doing something like attacking or rolling, but if you're just moving or standing still you'll get staggered. Well, you don't need to indirectly figure it out because you can figure it out directly when you move the help cursor over it, it tells you that it scales with the lower of the two.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:21
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cryptoclastic posted:I beat the game without really knowing anything about the mechanics other than what I knew from Dark Souls 1. I did all right. Rolling would probably have been easier if I knew about adaptability, but I was more of a tank anyway. The one thing I wish there had been something about was secret walls. I kept seeing signs for secret walls everywhere, and they all had really high ratings. I figured it was the new joke, like how some of the "try jumping" and "skeleton!" signs were rated really high. Every time I tried to hit them nothing happened! Turns out you have to press A There are some secret walls that open by attacking, while some secret walls you open by pressing A. It's baffling stupid like much of the other intentional design changes / choices.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:25
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Night Blade posted:There are some secret walls that open by attacking, while some secret walls you open by pressing A. No there aren't. All illusory walls are opened by pressing w/e the confirm button is. There are walls you can break open by attacking them, but they're visually distinct (i.e. the Pharros ones, that one in the Wharf).
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Jul 1, 2014 00:33
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As a few hundred hour DS1-er I didn't open the first couple Pharros doors I unlocked. I mashed A, rolled into them, said "huh..." and moved on. Durability issues taught me real quick not to attack anything I didn't think I needed to, and I still figured rolling would do the trick. Whoops.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:49
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Pharros Doors do not open with A.
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Jul 1, 2014 00:58
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teh_Broseph posted:As a few hundred hour DS1-er I didn't open the first couple Pharros doors I unlocked. I mashed A, rolled into them, said "huh..." and moved on. Durability issues taught me real quick not to attack anything I didn't think I needed to, and I still figured rolling would do the trick. Whoops. I was somewhat more obsessive, and unequipped a weapon so I could punch the Pharos wall with my bare hands. After pressing A (like it is in the new game  ) , and rolling (Like you could do in the old game ) did nothing.It's okay Broseph. We can be objectively bad at dark souls 2 due to our Dark Souls 1 expectations, together.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:09
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Genocyber posted:No there aren't. All illusory walls are opened by pressing w/e the confirm button is. There are walls you can break open by attacking them, but they're visually distinct (i.e. the Pharros ones, that one in the Wharf). How is the one in the Wharf distinct?
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Jul 1, 2014 01:15
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Night Blade posted:How is the one in the Wharf distinct? Because the part that breaks away is distinct from the surrounding wall.  See? Bricks, then just a smooth sheet of gray.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:23
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The different fake walls were one of the most annoying changes in DS2 for me. Not only was there no need to change it (which screws with everyone who played wither Demon's or Dark Souls 1) but it's way more intuitive to just hit them rather than press a button that you otherwise never ever use without a prompt. As a phantom you can't open them now either, which means it's a pain to show hosts anything cool (the most reliable way I've heard is dropping an item next to the wall). The destroyable wall in the Wharf is dumb too because its supposed distinction shows up elsewhere in the area, but with no secret. I'll need to check to confirm but I think the fake wall you open with a button has the same appearance too.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:28
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Your Computer posted:This is hilarious, and because of videos like this I'm much less bothered about being invaded because I imagine their end to be like this (dubstep and all). Somebody needs to make a mod that replaces all sounds in the game with various dubstep noises.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:33
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Gestalt Intellect posted:The different fake walls were one of the most annoying changes in DS2 for me. Not only was there no need to change it (which screws with everyone who played wither Demon's or Dark Souls 1) but it's way more intuitive to just hit them rather than press a button that you otherwise never ever use without a prompt. As a phantom you can't open them now either, which means it's a pain to show hosts anything cool (the most reliable way I've heard is dropping an item next to the wall). There's the obvious fake wall in the Copse for a reason, to teach you about how illusory walls now work. It's a change for the better.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:38
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Genocyber posted:Because the part that breaks away is distinct from the surrounding wall. There's also another one in the area which looks basically identical to that but is opened with a button press.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:43
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400 hours in and I just learned something new. You can deflect the Stone Axes that the Stone Gyrms throw at you with great hammers. Might be possible with other weapons but I haven't succeeded with any of them yet.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:45
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