FromSoft General (Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc)

Anything from chatting about your current playthroughs, hyping for the next annual Dark Souls and anything else under the sun

also who here bb?

 

It took me 2 hours today to figure out where I have to go next in Dark Souls 2 today...2 GOD DAMN HOURS Q_Q

pls kill me

 

Does DS1 still use GFWL? I couldn't play anymore because GFWL is shit.

 

Drop DaS2 and play some BB bro, objectively the superior game

 

If I had a PS4...

 

i tried playing dark souls 2 but i couldn't get through the tutorial

 

have about 260 hours in DS2 and DS2 SotFS combined and i'm definitely loving it. about 50 hours of that has been put into PvP.

 

On a second playthrough of DS1 I only just discovered that you can prevent Artorias from buffing himself

So many hours wasted trying to fight a triple buffed crazy knight

 

So on a second playthrough, basically with the purpose of getting me back into From games before retrying Bloodbourne and hopefully having money for DS3, made some opinions about DS1

- The base game is pretty fair. As long as you're following what the characters etc are saying and going to the right areas in order, it's a pretty tough but fair and relatively forgiving game. If you die, its your fault and the game is always offering you a new perspective to any new difficultly - bar a few exceptions.

- On PC, with decent FPS, Blighttown is actually alright and not an especially hard area. You find the Spider Shield very early in it and gear designed to alleviate poison damage, so the swamp and poison affects are easily handled. Toxic blowdarters, while annoying, are quite fair in the fact they don't respawn and on PC are a lot easier to spot/pin down their location. I think Blighttown's infamy is a console thing and the difficulty of it on PS3 is simply due to technical issues that the developed didn't sort out and take into balancing consideration.

- Anor Londo isn't actually that great a jump in difficulty as long as you notice a few things. First, to drop the Drake sword, which due to its meme status as the recommended weapon for newcomers, I think a lot of the perceived jump in difficulty of this area is due to newbies believing that the sword will still carry them, when it's this point its lack of scaling really hits hard. Additionally, the gift of the lighting spear in Sen's Fortress is also like this; works very well for that area and much of New Londo, but newbies not taking into account Ornstein's (and Smough's second form) high thunder resistance. I can imagine the normal circuit for most newcomers is Drake - T.Spear and they then wonder why these two previously great items aren't doing shit in the end of New Londo.

- O&S not too hard as long as you summon solaire (which I guess was the dev's intention; to be a co-op fight on/offline) and take into account their elemental strengths/weaknesses, which are pretty apparent from their movesets.

- Havel's Ring is disgusting OP and ruins the entire balance of the player's character. Although I'm not sure if it should be removed, it's pretty stupid that it literally allows you to go for a heavy armour/weapon run without actually committing any point to Endurance. This is made even worse by the Ring of Favour and Sacrifice, which I'd argue is even more grossly overpowered but at least, with it breaking on use and only two of them available in an entire playthrough, the 'sacrifice' being a permenant slot in your Ring equip and, therefore, a massive penalisation to your buff options. With Havel's though, the only sacrafice of taking it off is seeing that your entire character falls apart when you're not using Havel's as a crutch. The ability to wear/use heavy equipment while devoting the entire 30-40 point you'd be placing into Endurance into two other stat lines, likely str or dex, means you can have a tanky character dealing as much damage as a dedicated DPS character and I can't imagine that's what the developers intended. Next time I play Dark Souls, I'm actually going to restrain myself from picking up the ring, as I do feel it break the entire balance of the gameplay

- For some reason, the only non-dlc boss who took me more than five attempts was Gwyn. I still think it's pretty weird how, if you're not doing a playstyle which includes parrying, he's increadibly hard, while if you're experienced in parry/riposte he's basically cake. I'm interested in what the developers were thinking here. I also dislike the 'cannon' fan idea that he's hollowed by the time you encounter him as, not only does this ignore the entire plot point that only human can become undead, but it also ignores the more likely and more feeling-hitting interpretation. He's just too tired and resigned to burning until someone strong enough defeats and replaces him to care about dramatics and so just charges you on sight, which makes an really cool contrast between him and his son Gwyndolin who, between triggering his optional fight and actually dying, goes on about four different monologues and is relatively a much easier fight.

- There's only a few things I'd consider unneccissarily harsh; the first futile fight vs Seath, the undead beasts and the Anor Londo archers. With Seath, I think it would have been a lot easier for the dev's to signal to the play through some world building that he's created an immortality catalyst, so that the player has an idea that they likely will lose their souls to him (and can then spend the souls or equip a Ring of Sacrafice) until they figure out how to make him mortal. Additionally, I think they wasted the chance to actually allow the player to regain their souls through some unconventional means (Seath storing them somewhere after you're imprisioned or even maybe something like Bloodbourne's 'enemy running around with you souls' mechanic. I guess that would be a lot of extra programming, but as it stands its pretty stupid that its the one time in the game you're guarantied to die and lose souls without any warning/chance to counter the loss. The undead beasts are literally the hardest enemy imo opinion for a melee character and simply have an overloaded kit that can cost you your entire stamina to avoid whilst giving them basically unlimited stamina to combo you over and over, and their placement in the Tomb of the Giants near other enemies and other beasts seems a little bit of a sudden leap in difficulty, when for all extents and purposes they're more dangerous to a melee character than any actual miniboss I can think of atm. And, while I can see how the dev's intended the Anor Londo archer's to be dealt with (wall covering), the fact is their rate of fire and stagger amount is just rediculous and overly taxing on the player.

Overall, fantastic game. Other than a few examples, it's a great game that, other than a few examples, never seems unfair or harsh as long as you're actually reacting and learning from each death; if you die, it's almost certainly because you played wrong. Of course, this is just from someone whose only played melee champs, so I can't really talk about the experience for a sorcerer/pyromancer.

 

Been giving Dark Souls 2 another chance and just beat Duke's Dear Spider thing. I've got to ask; did anyone else here think Dark Soul 2 was a significant stepbackwards in quality, and how does Dark Souls 3 compare?

 

>ds3
>people actually disconnecting on invade
>3/4 invades are against co-op
>they actually attack you simultaneously 2vs1 and 3vs1

apparently mainstream success has made the community shite

 

fucking 6/7 invasions since i posted that what

 

>Invade at Catacombs
>Can see prey in the distance, with two summons in matching Yari Samurai kit
>Camouflage
>Barrel mode
>Wait for them to trigger army of skeletons by drawbridge
>The two summons run across, host separated
>He's running towards me
>Uncamouflage
>He loses his shit and rolls off the edge

Guess he couldn't handle me unbarrelling at him

 

They've definitely fucked up the multiplayer aspect of Dark Souls 3

I don't really give a fuck about the claims that DS3 should be played anyway you like. Dark Souls has always struck me as being about risk/reward, from elements like invading, weapons selections to even the combat; do I try to get a hit in or is it worth it? The whole point of Dark Souls, and its perceived challenge, is from how the game forces you to make incredibly game-affecting choices, from the middle of combat to how you handle questlines.

So being able to summon another player, even two, for the entire game? Bosses not scaling well to accomodate the fact that, with an extra source of damage and the ability to aggro-juggle and attack while its focusing everything on the other guy as he dodges - a point in the fight designed so that the boss CAN'T be damage without incredibly high risk? Being able to clear entire areas with 2x the damage output with no drawbacks? It's jokes. It isn't playing the game fair and I hardly think its playing the game at all. I've solo'd my way so far to the final Lord of Cinder and can't say there was ever point where I was required to summon.

I don't normally believe in the elitist sentiments of the Souls community. But I've been summoned for quite a few boss fights which just become cake when you have another person to tank aggro while you swipe from behind (essentially every boss). And, when I haven't instantly warped back to my world after seeing that the person who summoned me also has a mate, three people vs a boss just break the entire fight's dynamic. If you co-op your way through DS3 you simply cannot say you've played or beaten the game. With the lack of actual substantial drawbacks to constantly being a party of 2 or 3 players the game losses its edge. It's like playing a strategy game and modded it to have 5x increased funds per turn than the base game.

And invading is wrecked, in my opinion. It's literally not fun. I can tell what From wanted; to get money from the co-op crowd while maintaining the multiplayer's integrity but it just doesn't work. By default, you will invade someone whose embered. Most people who use embers outside of bossfights are people doing so so that they can co-op. Already, this is unfair on the invader. I'm limited to invading someone my own soul and weapon level, but how is it fair that all my invasions are then against two people on the same level as me? Skill can only go so far when poise is removed and you're just stun locked.

Plus, 2vs1 can never be called fair when the host by default has access to far more estus flasks once the invades goes through, and throwing Undead Hunter Charms, with their limited range, just leaves you very vulnerable to the 2nd/3rd person you're 'duelling'. In practise, the host can heal maybe upto 3x more than you can during an invade. You also have to whittle down the second guy's estus suppply, which is more or less equal to your own. And with the typical difficulty of trying to get a last hit in on someone rolling away to heal, this is made even more nearly impossible by the fact you still have 1-2 other persons trying to kill you as you do so.

So this just means that I, as an invader, have to sink to 'lows' that I wouldn't have used in previous souls game; using non-player enemy placements to my advantage, using Hunter Charms to try and wrestle back their advantage a little, using environmental props etc. And, sadly, all these elements can easily be countered by a non-scub host using Giant Seeds etc.

I don't mind the idea of a co-op Dark Souls. I mind the idea of it literally not having any drawbacks that counter balance the massive buff from it. I've seen a lot of articles by small to major media institutions about 'how to avoid being invaded while co-oping' and that 'invading is literally griefing'. This is so fucking dumb its unreasonable to someone who enjoyed the multiplayer aspects of the other SoulsBourne games and now find that they've paid for an experience that has hindered one of the main multiplayer aspects.

I think From likely didn't know that the additional co-op feature would be so popular, especially on PC. But when 70% of my invades are against two people, another 20% vs three or more (not including the co-ops who dare to actually disconnect when I'm winning the fucking fight vs both/all of them, its ridiculous that they haven't patched the game yet to counter this blatant blow to the whole risk/reward structural core to the entire game. I don't even know how I've managed to get 50 tongues so far, because the entire invasion mechanic thus far has just made me constantly feel frustrated and (often literally due to fighting 1vs3) fighting with my back to the wall.

TL;DR Co-op mechanics are to the detriment to Dark Souls 3

 

New trailer for the upcoming DLC (coming october 25th) with what appears to be changes to battles/invades/arena's.

 

After investing quite a bit of time into the DLC, I can tell that I really enjoyed it while it lasted. It sure was short, but the bosses were something different, Friede for example, who would expect a three stage boss fight? Thankfully, I had Hooch who helped me out with the bossfight! Also the new weapons and spells are loadsa fun.

 

Also, why are there still some people who are getting apeshit mad when they get invaded? Not that this is amusing to me, but it still fascinates me how much some people hate invaders. It is fun both invading or getting invaded on purpose!