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I love it overall of course because dark souls at its worst is equal to 95% of games at their best, but my biggest beef with ds2 and claims of "copy-paste" (besides THE IRON KEEP ELEVATOR!!!!) is drangleic castle. it's almost entirely flat surfaces and textures inside and out. (lost bastille does this too but at least that's ostensibly a boring prison.) why is there a big honking room hanging on the side of the castle with literally nothing in it except a giant portrait of nashandra? I can accept that there's a room full of wall-mounted masks that shoot poison darts Just Because, but why is it otherwise entirely featureless and connected to nothing in particular? why is nashandra herself hanging out in what appears to be a throne room that's entirely exposed to the elements? obviously there's a certain suspension of disbelief in video game levels and I'm being a huge nerd etc. but if the level is clearly supposed to be a place where people once lived but doesn't even try to look it, it bothers the hell out of me
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Jun 22, 2020 21:07
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Because there was the question, I'm mostly talking about Scholar design, but some things (like the Heide encounter) are the same in both versions. The philosophy of "each enemy has their place" is true in both, there's nothing random about the design.
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Jun 22, 2020 21:11
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Moola posted:Man its been like 6 years since I touched the game, I can't give you exact coordinates... None of those places have copy-paste enemy placement. The pirate zone, for example, has enemies sitting at tables and patrolling with dogs, it's incredibly deliberate. You're comparing areas having large numbers of enemies with them just being copied and pasted, which is not the same thing.
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Jun 22, 2020 21:12
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I am playing DS2 for the first time, after a couple of runs through DS3 and a single one of DS1. Currently at the tower with the bullshit room where I just read itt that you’re supposed to lure a dodongo to climb down. I like the coop. Despawning enemies is a weird mechanic but gives people like my who suck at certain aspects of the game a chance. Not sure if it’s net good or not. Jumping is much better implemented than in DS1 or DS3. Actually feels like a jump can be aimed and timed and has a nice whoosh fx. I liked the slowly illuminating a level with torches mechanism in the Gutter. Many bosses are too easy, but Sinh is maybe the best boss fight in the entire series. Controversial opinion: All Souls games are actually good. 
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Jun 22, 2020 21:22
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axolotl farmer posted:Jumping is much better implemented than in DS1 or DS3. Actually feels like a jump can be aimed and timed and has a nice whoosh fx. oh gently caress I forgot about this ds2 let you bind jump to L3, why the gently caress did they remove that
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Jun 22, 2020 21:26
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World War Mammories posted:oh gently caress I forgot about this They didn't
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Jun 22, 2020 21:28
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Gotta say as loving awesome as it was to approach Drangelic castle ( felt straight out of Castlevania) the interior was pretty lifeless and boring.
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Jun 22, 2020 21:35
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feelix posted:They didn't oh, google tells me you're right and it is still in dark souls 3 seems I was remembering bloodborne, where it isn't, and I will remain mad on the internet about it Fargin Icehole posted:Gotta say as loving awesome as it was to approach Drangelic castle ( felt straight out of Castlevania) the interior was pretty lifeless and boring. yeah, the rain effects are pretty good, but then you get in there and it's so flat it's weird because I think a lot of stuff after it looks beautiful, like shrine of amana
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Jun 22, 2020 21:37
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Cross post but I was just reminded of this great screenshot I took not long after launch when this area was the de facto PvP arena 
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Jun 22, 2020 21:39
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Just like one of my Japanese animes
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Jun 22, 2020 21:42
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It's hard to hold that stuff against Bloodborne, since the games seem to have been in development in parallel but yeah there's a lot Bloodborne could have learned from DS2 I think Bloodborne's most egregious fault is the blood vial system, but that gets better with repeated playthroughs as you get more skilled and need to heal less My personal problem with DS2, the movement, gets worse with repeated playthroughs because the more you play a Souls game, the more of your run is going to involve sprinting through levels as fast as possible
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Jun 22, 2020 21:43
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I mostly consider Dark Souls 2 the weakest of the Souls-likes by From because the level design was pretty weak, with a few notable standouts, and many bosses felt rather generic. There's a few highlights here and there, but mostly, it seemed to me that a lot of areas were mindlessly stuck together with some especially nonsensical lore tacked on top (even for Souls standards). I also noticed how little the game was actually doing with its NPCs; most had little quests, but barely any had vague, involved quest lines with changing locations and multiple endings, on the level of Solaire's quest or the hosed-up marriage in DS3. They were obscure and easy to mess up, but I love them. The fact that these were missing almost entirely from DS2, plus the patchwork environment and repetitive bosses, makes it evident that it was a troubled project. Not that it wasn't without the occasional gold nuggets. The DLC areas were all top-notch Souls areas, especially the poison temple. (Never mind the multiplayer zones...) Heide Tower looked fantastic. The insane monster zoo house was short, but sweet. They did some fantastic stuff with covenants. I will always love the original Shrine of Amana. Velstadt and the subsequent Vendrick reveal are incredible. And special credit goes to the Burnt Ivory King, which is definitely in my top 10 of coolest fuckin setpieces of the entire Souls series
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Jun 22, 2020 21:46
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I never sprint through the games, every play through I kill all the enemies and pick up every item even though I never use them lol Only exception was NG+2 on DS1 because I just wanted Sif dead and to get to the blacksmith as quick as possible for my platinum
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Jun 22, 2020 21:51
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Nuns with Guns posted:
Just to come back to this, I really do feel like the game puts a thumb on the scales for alot of NPC fights in the DLC and SotFS. Like Greatlance Maldron in Eulum Loyce can roll cancel out of his charges early in a way the player just can't, and when you beat him up he runs off with infinite Stamina to make you do the whole fight again and Jester Thomas has like a boss's worth of HP and seemingly infinite spell casts.
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Jun 22, 2020 22:17
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Ive just started playing ds3 and im up to cathedral of the deep/ farron keep and so far it has been insanely chill Even the missus commented on how much less swearing is required to play this one
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Jun 22, 2020 22:35
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King of Solomon posted:None of those places have copy-paste enemy placement. The pirate zone, for example, has enemies sitting at tables and patrolling with dogs, it's incredibly deliberate. You're comparing areas having large numbers of enemies with them just being copied and pasted, which is not the same thing. I can't argue with you about this because I'd have to go back and play DS2 to check if I'm misremembering things, and you ain't gonna trick me into doing that friend >: ( But seriously I have to agree with the guy that said even a bad souls game is better than most games, and that's where I stand really. Even though DS2 is my least favourite souls, there's still a lot of things it did or tried to do that I enjoyed immensely
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Jun 22, 2020 23:23
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I changed my mind on Cinders being easy. Everything has so much goddamn hp once you get past the beginning. I have a couple +5 weapons that I'm using against Abyss Watchers and each one does like 0.5% damage per hit. I'm playing significantly better against them than I did on my vanilla run (where they were trivial and died instantly) but 6 estus only goes so far in a half hour battle. Genuinely think this is harder than regular Gael or Friede. There are some things I like about the mod but the health totals on enemies is pushing me towards uninstalling it.
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Jun 22, 2020 23:30
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Vargs posted:I changed my mind on Cinders being easy. Everything has so much goddamn hp once you get past the beginning. I have a couple +5 weapons that I'm using against Abyss Watchers and each one does like 0.5% damage per hit. I'm playing significantly better against them than I did on my vanilla run (where they were trivial and died instantly) but 6 estus only goes so far in a half hour battle. Genuinely think this is harder than regular Gael or Friede. This is actually a recent change they made and its pissing me off too I'm at Lothric Castle and it's pissing me off now how each knight is a 5-10 minute fight
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Jun 22, 2020 23:34
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Moola posted:I can't argue with you about this because I'd have to go back and play DS2 to check if I'm misremembering things, and you ain't gonna trick me into doing that friend >: ( That's fine, I'm just pushing back against a very specific critique of the game that I don't think is valid. It's actually pretty reasonable to say that DS2 has too many multi-enemy encounters, I just think saying they copied and pasted enemies around willy nilly is generally not a valid critique, even in the absolute worst Souls levels (except the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith, those specific levels earn that criticism).
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Jun 22, 2020 23:35
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the ring that gives you permanent stamina-less running in cinders makes the poison swamp a lot more entertaining. I just spend a few deaths sprinting round the place picking up absolutely every item I could find https://twitter.com/kerebrin/status/1275165881937559558?s=20
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Jun 22, 2020 23:41
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World War Mammories posted:I love it overall of course because dark souls at its worst is equal to 95% of games at their best, but my biggest beef with ds2 and claims of "copy-paste" (besides THE IRON KEEP ELEVATOR!!!!) is drangleic castle. it's almost entirely flat surfaces and textures inside and out. (lost bastille does this too but at least that's ostensibly a boring prison.) why is there a big honking room hanging on the side of the castle with literally nothing in it except a giant portrait of nashandra? I can accept that there's a room full of wall-mounted masks that shoot poison darts Just Because, but why is it otherwise entirely featureless and connected to nothing in particular? why is nashandra herself hanging out in what appears to be a throne room that's entirely exposed to the elements? obviously there's a certain suspension of disbelief in video game levels and I'm being a huge nerd etc. but if the level is clearly supposed to be a place where people once lived but doesn't even try to look it, it bothers the hell out of me I will defend a lot of things about DS2, but I 100% agree with this.
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Jun 23, 2020 01:56
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Someone posted it here but the room being empty except for a bigass portrait of Nashandra that curses you at a terrifying rate if you go near it, IMO, is some really powerful environmental storytelling.
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Jun 23, 2020 03:00
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Jose posted:the ring that gives you permanent stamina-less running in cinders makes the poison swamp a lot more entertaining. I just spend a few deaths sprinting round the place picking up absolutely every item I could find whoa
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Jun 23, 2020 04:21
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multijoe posted:Just to come back to this, I really do feel like the game puts a thumb on the scales for alot of NPC fights in the DLC and SotFS. Like Greatlance Maldron in Eulum Loyce can roll cancel out of his charges early in a way the player just can't, and when you beat him up he runs off with infinite Stamina to make you do the whole fight again and Jester Thomas has like a boss's worth of HP and seemingly infinite spell casts. I didn't notice the roll canceling with Maldron because I try to corner him and hit him as hard as possible before he runs off, but it wouldn't surprise me. I take him in good spirit because his AI behavior is funny but if you let him run away he does get annoying after a while. As far as I know, NPCs don't have silly player restrictions like stamina bars, but he's also the only NPC that's programmed to book it, so you'd never notice it otherwise. The casters all have infinite uses on their spells, too, iirc. Which is part of why Armorer Dennis is such a motherfucker in his first encounter. toasterwarrior posted:Someone posted it here but the room being empty except for a bigass portrait of Nashandra that curses you at a terrifying rate if you go near it, IMO, is some really powerful environmental storytelling. Nashandra's big portrait in an empty room feels deliberate to me, and I like it but there are a lot of places in DS2 where you can tell that the minimalism was a constraint of time and trying to rush out a mostly-finished game, which muddies the intent a lot and undermines what could be a really powerful moment.
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Jun 23, 2020 05:04
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First item of my randomizer run is the Symbol of Avarice. Gonna be a good run
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Jun 23, 2020 06:04
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iirc the reason ds2 npcs can cancel animations like that is because for player type enemies, there's no check to prevent them from doing an animation while one animation is already going, because it's made with the assumption that they're another player. and that means that whether they're allowed to start that new animation is checked on the other player's side, so it doesn't need to be checked on yours. but since player type enemies are not actually always players, npcs don't have a sanity check on whether they can start new animations so sometimes they do gonzo poo poo like canceling their knock down animation into an attack or canceling their jump attack midair into a roll, or more frequently cancel the 'deflect' animation after hitting your shield into another attack. it's really inconsistent and often just doesn't happen tho, I suppose due to their AI.
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Jun 23, 2020 06:05
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IronicDongz posted:iirc the reason ds2 npcs can cancel animations like that is because for player type enemies, there's no check to prevent them from doing an animation while one animation is already going, because it's made with the assumption that they're another player. and that means that whether they're allowed to start that new animation is checked on the other player's side, so it doesn't need to be checked on yours. Yeah, this is what I meant by bullshit invaders; they can literally cheat and do things that you can't do. I remember specifically, the invader at the bottom of the Gutter came in and just started running around at warp speed and spamming attacks/spells faster than I was allowed to do anything about. I legit thought I was invaded by a hacker at first. Apparently though if the post upthread is to be trusted, this was not intentional and got patched out? If so, that's wonderful. The real solution would have been to let players themselves do animation cancels (well, not to that level, but like the other games) to speed things up because goddamn your character's movements feel so spongy and off.
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Jun 23, 2020 07:16
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Hi I just want to say I love Dark Souls and each of them deserve our love and unbending lifetime sacrifice
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Jun 23, 2020 12:14
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I saw a tooltip that said something about ascending spells in the Cinders mod I think. Can you actually do that, or is the only way to beef up spells still upgrading a staff and armor?
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Jun 23, 2020 13:02
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You can't upgrade or specialize in specific spells. Spells get special "ascended" effects when cast with a fully upgraded catalyst. Note, cinders adds a new tier of upgrades you access through primal titanite, which you get by completing special challenges. A fully upgraded catalyst means fully upgraded past the highest vanilla tier. I like cinders a lot, but the progression system in the recent versions is definitely a step down from vanilla. The lack of soft caps on damage stats and higher upgrade levels on gear waters scaling and upgrading gear down considerably, so you feel like you gain less out of each upgrade. You can end up getting much more experience in Cinders than in vanilla, but not enough more to make the level curve comparable. Gear upgrade progression is also less exciting, and much less organic at high levels. You find upgrade materials at a comparable rate, but once you hit the vanilla cap you're only at 60% of the original curve. Getting materials for the remaining upgrades involves finding ways to cheese target bosses and farm them for primal titanite, which is much less interesting than finding upgrades through exploration. I feel like these changes were made to allow for meaningful progression into NG+, but in practice they just make for an awkward, less satisfying curve in NG.
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Jun 23, 2020 13:34
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Hey, I like posting about Dark Souls here, and I’m happy it looks like the forums aren’t dead yet.
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Jun 26, 2020 06:16
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Anyone have strong opinions on Cinders vs Ascended or Champion's Ashes? I like Cinders a lot. Just wandering how the other two big overhaul mods are because it's not the easiest thing to replace Cinders e: got drunk last night and woke up to this 
Robo Reagan fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 26, 2020 07:17
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I can't tell which, if any, NPC quests I've broken while playing Cinders. I've not sequence broken anything deliberately but i have moved a few places earlier than expected and Yoel died after only getting 3 levels from him
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Jun 27, 2020 14:45
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I could swear there's a breakdown of which sequence breaks mess with which character. I rememver reading it, but now I can't find it
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Jun 27, 2020 16:55
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I'm getting owned by the deacons lol. I can handle the 2 extra adds just fine but i'm not doing anywhere near enough damage on the deacons themselves despite everything else dying easily enough
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Jun 27, 2020 17:21
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Jose posted:I'm getting owned by the deacons lol. I can handle the 2 extra adds just fine but i'm not doing anywhere near enough damage on the deacons themselves despite everything else dying easily enough You're using a giant sweeper right? Like an R2 halberd attack, or something. You could switch to something quick on the deacons.
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Jun 27, 2020 17:26
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I wasn't but I've got the stats to use the great scythe so I'll give that a go. I went to the cathedral before doing abyss watchers but i've beaten them now so I'll go to the catacombs for now
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Jun 27, 2020 18:05
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Jose posted:I can't tell which, if any, NPC quests I've broken while playing Cinders. I've not sequence broken anything deliberately but i have moved a few places earlier than expected and Yoel died after only getting 3 levels from him Yoel dies when you beat the Abyss Watchers in the normal game.
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Jun 27, 2020 18:51
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Maldron in the Brume Tower DLC is the only NPC invader I can think of that actually consistently gave me trouble over multiple playthroughs. The combination of AI, moveset and environment is just super nasty. I never found the prowlers very hard. They feel like about 1/4 of a real invader each and it's not hard to string them out so you're only fighting 2 or 3 at once.
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Jun 27, 2020 20:15
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Yesterday, I realized I had never done a pyromancer build, so I started one. Doing the fairly typical thing where you just focus on INT/FTH/VIG/END while rocking a solid raw weapon which I can buff, then eventually switch to chaos or dark infusion.
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Jun 28, 2020 18:12
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