[Talbain]

[wourme]

Last night I was exploring the new areas, and I got invaded by a guy I just couldn't seem to damage at all though I hit him repeatedly with my +10 Claymore (with lots of scaling and several physical attack rings). I eventually decided just to run away and make him have to chase me. After maybe 30 seconds of this, I ended up cornered on a platform by a chasm. He came at me with one of those spinning power attacks and went right off the edge when I dodged. That was entertaining.

I like the new content so far. I've beaten one boss. I have no idea how many there are or how long the area goes on. The puzzle sword is a fun idea, but I haven't tried using it much yet.

[diplo]

[Talbain]

[mauve]

[Oh God Spiders No]

I was watching a lore video the other day on youtube and the poster tangentially mentioned that a lot of people are disappointed by the idea that the game doesn't have a special "True" ending wherein you truly lift the curse and save the world forever.

For some reason I was really dismayed to hear that people are playing this game, apparently enjoying it, and then so completely missing the entire conceit of the series.
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[Rud31]

DLC is fun times will give them my money for the next two also.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[mauve]

so uh if you remember the japanese guy who somehow managed to complete his broken sword hollow playthrough on ds1, he's upping videos daily of his completely blind ds2 playthrough from release. and he is incredibly, bafflingly bad at it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/fujimaro1020/videos http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/44990893
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twit

[diplo]

[Tokyo Rude]

I had a real fun time doing that fight three times with friends. Out of the X bosses in the DLC that was the one i had the best time with.

[Iacus]

Re: level design and Dark 2 being "worse":

I don't find that a "wheel spokes" world structure is inherently worse than the "up & down" structure in Dark 1, just different. Dark 1's progression is certainly more elegant, but when you think about it, Dark 2's structure also ties with its worldbuilding in meaningful ways. I've always said that it makes sense for the locations in Dark 2 to look more prosaic and utilitarian than the ones you end up visiting in Dark 1. After all, Lordran is the land of the gods. By the same principle, Drangleic, being a land that's accessed through a vortex at the bottom of a precipice, and whose dwellers repeatedly report memory loss, also informs its weird connections between areas.

From the maps we can deduce that Drangleic is a more sprawling zone than Lordran. The dreamlike connections between areas might suggest the adventurer outright forgetting the uneventful parts of their journey, going from one place to the next.

Also, the mechanical improvements count for something. I agree with most that, in a general sense, the level design in Demon's is the best in the series, but this doesn't extend to its encounter design, as evidenced by the perma-wearing of the thief's ring (because why wouldn't you be wearing it at all times in PvE?). I do miss some Demon's style levels in Dark 2. I think the Painted World has some of the best quelities of Demon's levels without any of its shortcomings, and benefitting from the refined mechanics in Dark. In that sense, the memories of giants feel like a missed oportunity.

Also, there is some cleverness at the micro level in certain areas such as the forest of giants or the bastille which wrap and connect in interesting ways and make exploration and discovery more interesting. The biggest problem I see in Dark 2 is the unispired monster design. Not due to incompetence but perhaps lack of time to flesh them out properly. You can tell some encounters are tied to the dumbed-down light mechanic (like how the Last Sinner extinguishes the torches before you fight her, suggesting that the encounter would have taken place in pitch darkness). Other areas still have some of those ideas working fairly well. In no man's wharf the big limby monsters are afraid of fire, and the varangian warriors throw flammable oil that explodes on contact if you get hit while wielding a torch. this creates an interesting risk/reward scenario using the torch that goes beyond lit/unlit. It's a shame this kind of environmental ideas weren't developed further.

[diplo]

Can you expand on what you mean by dreamlike connections? I don't know what that's relating to.

[misadventurous]

[mauve]

midroll is still there in the sense that equip weight is approached more gradually. you DO have shorter rolls. you DO have slower stamina gain. when i think back to how my playthrough of dark souls and demons' souls went("find the weight breakpoint, wear whatever equipment lets me stay just under it"), it's definitely an improvement and gives the character more of a personal touch. midroll was funny but to me it was always "there is absolutely no point at staying at this weight level" regardless of game. for something that's such an integral part of your character, that is a bad thing.

i avidly pvp and i actually don't see any reason why they couldn't just keep the kick, honestly. the guard break animation is really goofy.

also conclusion from doing black murakumo no-death runs: murakumo is a shitty weapon to base a run around just from stat requirements being troublesome to get to (have to clear at least four bosses before you even have the possibility of putting it on, and that's if you raise nothing else) and just consuming too much stamina for its so-so range. fun weapon though, just about have a clear finished.

[diplo]

Yeah. The link between the Earthen Peak and Iron Keep is the only one that comes to mind as "dreamlike," but for as far as I can tell it's just nonsense and doesn't play up anything that's present and persistent enough in the rest of the game to be more than just nonsense. And it's not simply thematically clashing -- you go up an elevator, but the elevator extends past the peak, which means that the Iron Keep is in a volcanic zone in the sky, and you get to it by an elevator that has an external cloaking mechanism.

Drangleic, overall, doesn't give me the impression of being sprawling. In fact, it feels very circumscribed and neat compared to Lordran. It's true that there are no inherent qualities to the basic design decisions exhibited by Dark Souls and its sequel, but I think that Dark Souls' treatment of those basic decisions are more interesting to experience and to talk about. Seemingly the best that can be said about the layout of Drangleic's world is that it is somehow relevant to the narrative, but I think that if there is relevance it's weakly enacted and doesn't contribute much to the actual experience of playing or supporting fun imaginative geographic relationships for the player.

Man. This DLC boss trio is definitely one of the worst bosses in the game. I suppose the argument is there that each of the characters represents a specialty and therefore something of the dynamic of, say, Ornstein and Smough. The problem is that you're still being chased down very aggressively by two characters, and the third long-range character can switch out of their long-range mode so quickly by the time you reach them that they've given up their finer distinction. Of course this was somehow not enough so the devs had to add some curse-spit statues and one curse-spit creature into the arena.

I tried to make a run for the boss room today with the two AI phantoms and they wouldn't follow once I made the drop into the last tunnel. Either that was a rare fuckup on the AI's part or the devs really do expect you to stick around and battle everything up to the boss here and designed those white phantoms with that in mind, never believing that any players would opt out.

Edit: This boss is so bad that I don't want to own DS2 anymore. Does anyone want me to send it to them for free?
Edit: Never mind. Selling this on Amazon for the BIG BUCK$$$.

[mauve]

yeah the pve in this game is pretty ugh. i thought i'd get used to it with time like i did to the previous games but, no, it's just broken and from doesn't care.

lost my last no-death character as i was running through the end of the dragon shrine, with the last shield giant on the right doing a shield bash to the air 15 feet to my right as i ran past, somehow hitting me and putting me into a five second stun animation(not a guard break!), causing everything to catch up to me and kill me in that time frame. ragequit.

all the 'giant' enemies in this game have completely broken hitboxes, it's ridiculous. i noticed this my first time playing even, on the greatsword knights in heide hitting the ground 15 feet away and somehow still doing damage to me. it's like they weren't even trying, neither demon's nor dark were anywhere near as bad about this. i kept playing because of the pvp being vastly improved over its predecessors, except even the multiplayer is a pain in the ass to do because of soul memory dominating every design decision.

the lethality in this game comes more from brokenness than it does from solid encounter design, and apparently they are so afraid of other players invading that they have to crush their ability to do so, making NG not have very many surprises in it.

oh yeah, that reminds me: i went back to the forest of fallen giants very late on, took my +10 black murakumo two-handed and wailed on one of those shield-and-spear hollow soldiers. blocked all four and still had the stamina to stab me. a human would be done for long before then. yet you can just do the stupid looking guard break animation that looks like it has no force to it, and it works. what the hell, seriously.
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twit

[a pair of gators]

[Oh God Spiders No]

Getting wet also washes off poison and flammable oil.
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[misadventurous]

cranking up your fire defense and soaking yourself in water from those pots/pools is how you're supposed to get the treasure out on the lava floes.

[Guillotine]

[Oh God Spiders No]

I don't understand why this isn't more low-level pvp.

Well, that's not true, I exactly understand why. People don't like to use consumables if they don't feel like there's a way to reliably replenish them if need be.

It's just that this is illogical, stupid behavior. When are you going to have "more" fun than right now? If you feel like invading just do it!

Still, this is pretty basic psychology. The devs should have introduced some obvious, easy grinding area or an early-ish vendor in order to discourage hoarding and under-use of invasion items.
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[Guillotine]

That is still soul level being unused mostly. And most people of course would rather play with the edge they know they can get.

[mauve]

there's a new weapon tier chart and as usual i don't really agree with katanas/santier's being ranked that high still but it's generally right. spears are straight up nuts right now. UGSes still garbage.

[Oh God Spiders No]

Is there any way to counter-grief Rat Covenant Tryhards in Door of Pharros?

Summoning into a room filled with coyotes and mastodons, waste-deep in water, only to be immediately assailed by thunderbolts and lightning spears for 90% of my health each is so frustrating because it seems there's really no way to fight back.

There's no real reason to hang out there and engage in these fights but it would be very satisfying to have some sort of trick to wipe the grin off the faces of these trolls.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

You can grind for red eye orbs in majula. Not very fun, but it's right there at the beginning.
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[mauve]

Well Designed And Enjoyable Videogame

i've never, ever seen them drop a red eye personally, and i'm pretty sure they'd just go extinct in a hurry.

for door of pharros just immediately go left into the cave so you can fight on somewhat less painful footing and go from there.
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twit

[Joachim]

[diplo]

What's nonsensical about Drangleic Castle > Shrine? Heide's Tower > No-Man's Wharf seems outside of the topic of bizarre transitions since the disparity is a misalignment of sea levels. Looks like a genuine screw-up to me, or if it's not it's not a very fanciful impossibility. With Majula > Heide's, do you mean that the distance between the two when seen from Majula is not consistent with how far you travel?

@mauve: Funny how the game was visibly designed by people who'd played hours and hours of PvP in Dark Souls and then made a game that seems to discourage the practice even more even while aiming to put it more at the forefront. Same thing for the efforts made towards providing incentives for consecutive playthroughs (some of that, though, has to do with the integrity of the core game).

[mauve]

i tried the low level pvp build, i stand corrected about how bad the situation is at that point

From fucking hates invaders.

- Even with two prisoner +drop rate items equipped, I only got 3 red eyes from exterminating all pigs. that's 1 in 12 kills. thanks this is really practical.
- Arena at 50k SM has a population of nobody. good luck getting red eyes!
- The arena seems to love pitting you against chars that are clearly higher SM than you. insert loud groaning when i, at 150k SM, was matched up against some asshole in full velstadt's gear, gmb, lightning enchanted greatsword. great. this is totally winnable.
- you will spend way, way, way more time in the arena than invading, because you will lose more often due to the matchmaking taking longer to find you an opponent and generally being harder to win at.
- Conversely, because you need to be fairly optimized to do even remotely well in the arena, you will be WAY overpowered for any invasion. you can't play casually to get red eyes, yet most of the people you invade won't know what hit them.
- fuck tanimura

don't anyone ever tell me low level pvp is due to laziness on the players' part, holy shit it is actually way worse than i was expecting
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twit

[Oh God Spiders No]

I didn't realize it was that bad either. I just remember being struck by the desire to invade around Skeleton Lords in my first playthrough and noted that I had a seeming abundance of red eye orbs. I guess I assumed they were more plentiful and easier to get than they actually are.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

Does GMB block shockwave?
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[mauve]

[misadventurous]

like i said, i got consistently good pvp in ng using the red soapstone. it wasnt until i moved to ng+ that all the gankers & tryhards came streaming out of the woodwork. dragon remnants are also great if you want 1v1 action, but you can't get it until the end of the damn game! in dks1 you could join the dragons first thing if you wanted to, and now that it's an actually functional covenant you gotta wait for it. what the hell :(

which reminds me: i wish there was a cool ash lake type super secret place in this one.

[mauve]

Yeah, if you want consensual pvp there's all the stuff in the world. I'm actually very happy with how the game plays when the fights are remotely fair and soul memory doesn't decide to make you face level700 Dark Havelman XP, which is mostly why it's incredibly aggravating that it does like to do that. Game mechanics are the best they're ever been but it's now an absurd chore to actually play.

I'm just kinda rubbed the wrong way by how one of the series' hallmarks, the invasions, is downplayed so heavily in NG. I mean, I knew it was, but damn I didn't know it was this bad.

And I'll be honest, in ds1/demon's, more than twinked invaders I was annoyed by twinked coop partners. made a new char like a week or two ago in ds1 and there were like 8 coop signs at the parish before the gargoyles. Every single one had late game equips. Of course. stubbornly refuse to coop in that, so I actually think this system is much better for coop overall.
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twit

[Oh God Spiders No]

It seems like the Blue Sentinels as a group are the best at PvP. I can usually crush red and grey invaders, but the blues get me every time.
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[mauve]

That's because Blues invade a wider range, able to invade opponents weaker than themselves. Reds and greys only invade those stronger than they are. See this page, specifically the item ranges section.

blues tend to be kinda greedy too because the covenant ranks up off invasion wins, unlike reds.
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twit

[UtilityFrog]

So I'm playing through the DLC (on PS3), guessing I'm fairly close to the end (have access to 2 bosses but haven't beat either of them yet). Died against the Priestess boss and the game says that it can't save my game and will exit to the title screen. I try to load my save again and receive a message that loading failed.

I decide to exit the game and reboot my PS3. Now I can't even reach the title screen. The game says that it can't load the save data and gives me the option to create new save data, which will overwrite the existing data.

Looked around the net and didn't find anything helpful.

Sigh. I'm not even angry. Just, deflated. It'll be awhile before I touch this game again. The thing has always felt really flaky to me. Like, it's always thrashing the hd, and every now and then after booking up my PS3 after playing it i have to do the HD recovery thing. And I did a playthrough of Demons Souls over the last week with absolutely no problems.

[a pair of gators]

tbh i had a lot of fun doing low level PVP in the rat covenant, especially in the grave of saints. i imagine bell covenant is similar? haven't done that one much.

i get the impression that those are meant as the low level PVP options? it's trivial to get invasions in either covenant as soon as you access their areas, and at least in ratking i don't remember getting gank squads getting pulled into my game constantly like the ds1 Fightin' Forest

[diplo]

Before giving up for good, I tried another one of the bosses. It's a Nashandra who summons crowds of skeletons and Velstadt clones.

lol

Yeah, I'm done. A bunch of people are saying that the DLC gives them more hope than ever about further efforts from the team, but all that it's done for me is made me sure to avoid any future Souls projects by them, DLC or otherwise. Worth noting also that the only enemy you come across in the immediate area leading up to that boss fight is a knight that's "hard" because it doesn't react to any of your hits.

[Talbain]

[Bingle]

They aren't compensated for that in any other aspect like the Berenike Knights.

Though my problem with them was that they were solo encounters in distressingly empty hallways in addition to being the only encounters at all in that segment.
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