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The combat system isn't designed for fighting multiple high threat enemies though. In DS1, Bloodborne & (mostly) in DS3 mob encounters were built with low health/poise enemies you could control with wide swings and AoEs whereas DS2's love of throwing hordes of knight-type enemies just forces ultra-conservative hit & run kiting tactics in a lot of encounters rather than the tight, rewarding melee combat the series built its name on. You can certainly 'solve' many of DS2's harder encounters by cheesing them with poison arrows or playing with a spear & greatshield, but it is nowhere near as fun or rewarding as clearing a tough but fair melee encounter.
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Jul 1, 2018 21:43
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I mean, I basically just fight the iron keep knights all in a row directly in melee every time so I don't really agree that it forces ultra-conservative hit & run kiting tactics or arrow cheese. That's the encounter everyone always complains about, anyways.
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Jul 1, 2018 21:58
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ds1 alone forces like in over half the areas to either fight big guys with hit and run tactics or use ranged options. but apparently this is a crime against god if ds2 does it.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:00
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it is absolutely possible to fight multiple tough enemies without resorting to cheese, ranged attack spam or greatshield turtling. you just gotta watch your spacing and whiff punish. anyway, here's a thermite-hot take for you all: one-on-one fights in ds1 were cool for much of the game but I eventually felt like I "solved" them and wasn't terribly engaged fighting end-game humanoids that were probably supposed to be difficult (eg. darkwraiths, the final black knight gauntlet before gwynn). all of my favourite level sequences in ds1 involve dealing with multiple threats at once: lower burg, catacombs, oolacile and so on. it's a good thing that ds2 pits you against groups of enemies imo
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Jul 1, 2018 22:03
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Iretep posted:ds1 alone forces like in over half the areas to either fight big guys with hit and run tactics or use ranged options. but apparently this is a crime against god if ds2 does it. DS1's group fights are overwhelmingly against low poise you can control with straight sword swings, encounters like the Iron Keep courtyard, the Pudge gank cave in Harvest Valley or the entirety of the Shrine of Amana are practically non-existent DS2's melee pacing is actually really good and imo the best in the series once you've got good agility, but the encounter designers' fixation on making the game ultra-punishing to play up to the franchise's reputation really drags it down
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Jul 1, 2018 22:08
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multijoe posted:DS1's group fights are overwhelmingly against low poise you can control with straight sword swings, encounters like the Iron Keep courtyard, the Pudge gank cave in Harvest Valley or the entirety of the Shrine of Amana are practically non-existent Yeah I'm replaying ds2 again and the combat is so frustrating in the early game. Most fights end up me kiting groups of enemies around slowly whittling down their health. Anyways here's the video that inspired me to make a new character in ds2. Hopefully I can get a decent bit of invasions in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJFxaotgEI
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Jul 1, 2018 22:11
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Oh also I forgot to mention, can you not buff lightning infused weapons with pine resin? It won't let me buff my lightning longsword nor my lightning dragonslayer axe. I was able to buff my dark infused roaring halberd on my hexer build though.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:14
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One Hundred Monkeys posted:it is absolutely possible to fight multiple tough enemies without resorting to cheese, ranged attack spam or greatshield turtling. you just gotta watch your spacing and whiff punish. Backing away and punishing whiffs is boring as heck though, that's my point. DS2 Gargoyles is a horrible fight because you have basically no choice but to try and survive constantly overlapping attacks in a combat system that doesn't really give you any over options than 'wait for an opening' And I'm by no means saying DS1 had perfect combat, it absolutely is too easy pre-DLC once you've got to grips with the system, but later games demonstrated you can increase difficulty without limiting player options so drastically. DS3 and Bloodborne were both far tougher than DS1 but managed to still encourage and reward aggressive play at the same time.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:17
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I respec'd to a mage on my last character and it felt pretty badass to line up a crystal/soul spear and hit 2-3 gargoyles. Giant numbers on my screen, watching multiple boss health bars diminish. Ruin Sentinels too; because I hate those spinning top fuckholes. The DS2 mobs however felt like their goal was to just use their vulgarly awkward hitboxes to get in my way so the enemies I was running away from could catch up and chainstun me dead. Which they did constantly when I was tired of fighting and just making a beeline for the next bonfire.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:26
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multijoe posted:Backing away and punishing whiffs is boring as heck though, that's my point. DS2 Gargoyles is a horrible fight because you have basically no choice but to try and survive constantly overlapping attacks in a combat system that doesn't really give you any over options than 'wait for an opening' Idk if we just have different thresholds for what constitutes an unacceptable slowdown, but I generally don't feel like I need to play super conservatively or sit around waiting for the perfect opening when playing ds2. you can merc individual gargoyles very quickly with blunt damage, for example, and they have space-opening moves like the big dive attack that lets you separate them. there are certainly some encounters that make you sit around playing mother-may-I with monsters until their attacks line up just right (the double cyclops fight in things betwixt comes to mind, if you go for them early in the game), but for the most part I feel like I have room to go on the offensive.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:36
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multijoe posted:DS1's group fights are overwhelmingly against low poise you can control with straight sword swings, encounters like the Iron Keep courtyard, the Pudge gank cave in Harvest Valley or the entirety of the Shrine of Amana are practically non-existent do i really have to list every time ds1 threw multiple high poise enemies at you at the same time? like i said, almost over half the areas do this at some point. actually ill just list them all since you seem to think these enemies are either low poise or dont excist. anor londo with giant guards and silver knights blight town with the fat people. 4 different locations even archives with those crystal golems snakemen in everywhere they appear but they are barely high poise i guess tomb of the giants with a room that has literally 10 of them in a cramped room lost izalith with chaos eaters in siegfrieds quest. actually the area before it too has millions of tauros demons and capra demons you have to fight at the same time. great hollow with mushroom dads painted world of ariamis with the crow people new londo ruins with darkwraiths darkroot garden with stone knights royal woods with those stone knight axe guys and i guess thats about it.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:49
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I agree that DS1 does this as well & that generally it's not actually a big deal, but on the other hand I also feel that there are 2 or 3 spots in scholar where the game just throws a million copy pasted guys at you in big square empty rooms and it feels EXTREMELY bad, mostly the pre-smelter room in iron keep and the room in the mines outside earthen keep where theres like 5 copy pasted quake 2 sickle guys. It's better than base DS 2 though, which also had room with nine exploding guys and shrine, probably a few others too I'm not remembering.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:53
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The other big offender is the room right outside ruin sentinels where you open the door and 9 knights run out at you but I find that one delightful.
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Jul 1, 2018 23:03
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Iretep posted:do i really have to list every time ds1 threw multiple high poise enemies at you at the same time? like i said, almost over half the areas do this at some point. actually ill just list them all since you seem to think these enemies are either low poise or dont excist. Most of these are very easy to fight one on one, like what the hell are you even doing in mushroom dads are ganging up on you? There's a few stinkers, like the giants outside of Ornstein & Smough's room, that one skeleton gank room in Tomb of Giants and Demon Ruins . Two of those three are easily skippable and the other is the worst area in the game everyone agrees is an unfinished mess. DS2, on the other hand does that poo poo constantly, on the core progression path and in most of the zones of the game.
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Jul 1, 2018 23:06
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multijoe posted:Most of these are very easy to fight one on one, like what the hell are you even doing in mushroom dads are ganging up on you? There's a few stinkers, like the giants outside of Ornstein & Smough's room, that one skeleton gank room in Tomb of Giants and Demon Ruins . Two of those three are easily skippable and the other is the worst area in the game everyone agrees is an unfinished mess. what does it matter if they are easy to fight solo. the point is ds1 is compleatly willing to make you fight big guys in groups constantly. its not some holy design choice it avoids. also from memory most of the gank big guy fights in 2 are avoidable about as much as they are in 1.
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Jul 1, 2018 23:16
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Playing Remastered back to back with DS2 and I'm struggling to think of anything significantly more unfair or difficult than DS1 other than maybe some bullshit parts of No Man's Wharf. Shrine of Amana sucks but it's not hard except for the first time you go through and you're trying to grab all the items. Even then, it's entirely possible to pull everyone one by one and methodically clear it if that's your jam.
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Jul 1, 2018 23:32
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Iretep posted:what does it matter if they are easy to fight solo. the point is ds1 is compleatly willing to make you fight big guys in groups constantly. its not some holy design choice it avoids. also from memory most of the gank big guy fights in 2 are avoidable about as much as they are in 1. In nearly all the examples you listed you'd have to go out of your way to make them a group fight. Like sure, you could aggro all the crystal golems in the Archives garden if you really want to, but they're all wandering the garden individually and spaced fairly widely apart so if you end up fighting three at once that's on you. Compare to DS2, which leans heavily on scripting enemies to group aggro and constantly places these encounters on the core path. On the main path alone there's: Ancient Knights at Heide Pudge dudes at Harvest Valley Iron Keep Courtyard Mastodon Knights at Drangleic Castle Animated Statues at Drangleic Castle Shrine of Anama Drangleic Knights at Undead Crypt Giant squads in the Memories that's discounting optional fights like the Belfry Gargoyles, the double Giant fight in Black Gulch and most of the DLC content which does this constantly
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Jul 1, 2018 23:37
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multijoe posted:In nearly all the examples you listed you'd have to go out of your way to make them a group fight. Like sure, you could aggro all the crystal golems in the Archives garden if you really want to, but they're all wandering the garden individually and spaced fairly widely apart so if you end up fighting three at once that's on you. Drangleic Knights at the Undead Crypt? You mean all two of them? Truly an insurmountable feat. And the Old Knights at Heide's? You mean the ones that have their AI scripted to stick to their own zones and generously allow you to fight them 1v1 in honor duels? And the fact that you listed the giant squads from the memories (fights in which you can literally stand back and let the enemies wipe each other out) leads me to think that you are either arguing in bad faith or are somehow worse at Dark Souls than I am.
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Jul 1, 2018 23:49
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shut upppppppppp
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Jul 1, 2018 23:53
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DrNutt posted:Drangleic Knights at the Undead Crypt? You mean all two of them? Truly an insurmountable feat. And the Old Knights at Heide's? You mean the ones that have their AI scripted to stick to their own zones and generously allow you to fight them 1v1 in honor duels? And the fact that you listed the giant squads from the memories (fights in which you can literally stand back and let the enemies wipe each other out) leads me to think that you are either arguing in bad faith or are somehow worse at Dark Souls than I am. That's two knights and a Dragonrider. And the Old Knights can be cheesed by abusing their tether ranges yes, but that such tactics are neccessary is my point.
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Jul 1, 2018 23:56
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Having just finished SotFS and currently working on the DLCs (just finished Sunken King), I agree that there are a ton of mandatory group fights with high-poise enemies where such a thing was rare in Dark Souls. The main change is the group aggro mechanic which was not used that much in Dark Souls 1. Getting chased by a horde is a common unavoidable occurrence in Dark Souls 2. I don't mind it that much but it does mean a lot of kiting.
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Jul 2, 2018 00:04
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Volte posted:Having just finished SotFS and currently working on the DLCs (just finished Sunken King), I agree that there are a ton of mandatory group fights with high-poise enemies where such a thing was rare in Dark Souls. The main change is the group aggro mechanic which was not used that much in Dark Souls 1. Getting chased by a horde is a common unavoidable occurrence in Dark Souls 2. I don't mind it that much but it does mean a lot of kiting.
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Jul 2, 2018 00:09
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I just want to chime in with the fact that I have a lot less trouble with the Old Knight gangbang in Heide's than with the single lance Heide Knight right behind it.
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Jul 2, 2018 00:17
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multijoe posted:That's two knights and a Dragonrider. And the Old Knights can be cheesed by abusing their tether ranges yes, but that such tactics are neccessary is my point. Oh yeah, a Dragonrider, possibly the biggest chump "boss" character in the game. You have an NPC summon right there that makes that encounter piss easy, even if you forget about the bell ringer guy and have a billion mages attacking you. And then as long as you can kill the Dragonrider he doesn't respawn. And it's hardly "abusing" the tethers of the Old Knights, they are pretty much explicitly designed to encourage you to fight them one on one.
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Jul 2, 2018 00:34
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DrNutt posted:You have an NPC summon right there that makes that encounter piss easy Ah, I think that might explain our different experiences with the game
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Jul 2, 2018 00:38
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multijoe posted:Ah, I think that might explain our different experiences with the game Honestly though it's pretty easy to solo once Dragonrider is gone. I've done it like seven times in a row trying to kill Vendrick (pretty embarrassing, I know, but I keep making dumb mistakes and he hits like a truck). I don't think there's any shame in summoning NPCs for tough encounters, and the fact that there are so many more in DS2 than DS1 tells me that it was probably a consideration for some of the boss/encounter designs. Doubly so for SotFS since they added a bunch of goofy NPCs that emote at you and poo poo.  Sellsword Luet
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Jul 2, 2018 00:44
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I always just run past that encounter since it's bullshit.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:11
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You can always pull them a few at a time? With a bow? That thing the game gives you in the same room as the first crafter in Majula? Even if you don't use many of them the game still throws a bunch of tools at you to deal with a number of problems.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:25
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lambskin posted:I always just run past that encounter since it's bullshit. This is also a perfectly acceptable way to deal with that encounter I guess. I don't think there was anything that great in the 4 chests before Velstadt anyway.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:43
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NGDBSS posted:You can always pull them a few at a time? With a bow? That thing the game gives you in the same room as the first crafter in Majula? Even if you don't use many of them the game still throws a bunch of tools at you to deal with a number of problems. I got a Dragonrider bow this playthrough and it's loving nuts to have a bow that deals damage nearly at the rate of my melee weapons. This thing just kicks all kinds of rear end. Especially if you make sure to stock up on poison arrows.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:44
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Just got to heide tower. Little bit of a shock to see them all just hanging around. Also gently caress the pike knight. At a sliver of health he spins, kills me an I wave bye to 5k souls early.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:13
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For_Great_Justice posted:Just got to heide tower. Little bit of a shock to see them all just hanging around. Also gently caress the pike knight. At a sliver of health he spins, kills me an I wave bye to 5k souls early. Protip if you're doing Heide's early. Tough it out and kill Ornstein first, because once you kill Dragonrider, all the Heide Knights go aggro and make getting anywhere a pain in the rear end. Once they aggro, the run to Dragonrider is still much easier than the run to Ornstein. Unless you don't really give a gently caress about getting to the Blue Cathedral I guess.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:26
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I really want to like the PvP in this game but drat is it hard to get good at it when most people in the arena haven't stopped playing ds2 since it came out and live in different continents.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:27
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lambskin posted:I really want to like the PvP in this game but drat is it hard to get good at it when most people in the arena haven't stopped playing ds2 since it came out and live in different continents. I kinda wish I could go back in time and play immediately post release DS2 because it was my first Dark Souls that I played through to completion and my experience with the PVP and even the coop stuff was incredibly rare and timid. Knowing what I know now I'd love to play with a big healthy multiplayer community. That said there must still be just a ton of people picking up the game and getting stuck in the starter areas, because it's really easy to summon and be summoned at Cardinal Tower, but by the time I got to Drangleic Castle I stopped seeing summon signs pretty much at all. I did get an actual human bell bro at Belfry Sol which was a loving trip though. Dude did not know how to deal with me powestancing a Heide's sword and a scimitar though, just chewed him up with the L1 attacks.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:33
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darksouls 2 is the best souls game because it has the small soap stone and makes it really easy to play through with a friend. dont @ me.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:33
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Roobanguy posted:darksouls 2 is the best souls game because it has the small soap stone and makes it really easy to play through with a friend. The small soap stone is great but sometimes I get like halfway through the area and feel like Peter Parker in Infinity War. "Im not ready to goooooooo"
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Jul 2, 2018 02:38
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Matt Lindland posted:I agree that DS1 does this as well & that generally it's not actually a big deal, but on the other hand I also feel that there are 2 or 3 spots in scholar where the game just throws a million copy pasted guys at you in big square empty rooms and it feels EXTREMELY bad, mostly the pre-smelter room in iron keep and the room in the mines outside earthen keep where theres like 5 copy pasted quake 2 sickle guys. It's better than base DS 2 though, which also had room with nine exploding guys and shrine, probably a few others too I'm not remembering. Exactly what I was saying in the last page. I don't mind fighting mobs but some locations it looks like straight up lazy level design. Somebody just put the wrong number in the code. Also I don't understand why DS2 fans get so defensive when people point out it's flaws. I certainly don't think it's garbage like some Souls have think but it does have flaws like all souls games. DS2 just gets more hate because of the original graphical downgrade and no Miyazaki.
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Jul 2, 2018 17:55
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One of the big differences that makes DS2 feel different is also the fact that enemies have bigger aggro radiuses, longer leashes, and faster movement speeds, so often you can just pop your head into a room and run back out and then you'll have three enemies running out to meet you.
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Jul 2, 2018 18:18
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Jesus Christ I've been stuck on Vendrick enough times that the 2 knights have stopped spawning. What the gently caress. This guy is not this hard but I am seemingly incapable of strafing to the right and poking him to death.
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Jul 2, 2018 20:46
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 why won't you drop a lizard staff  bang:
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Jul 2, 2018 21:21
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