Game News Dark Souls II Gets Release Date, Collector's Edition, and New Info

[Direwolf]

Are the controls any better than the shit that was in the first game?

 

[Random]

So many plebs in this topic. Ban Direwolf, Roguey, crawlkill, Metro, and godsend1989. Maybe St. Toxic too if you feel frisky.

 

[Azazel]

As usual, Namco gives Europe the bitching collectors edition for PC and leaves North America with a goddamn digital download only. It's like they think piracy doesn't fucking exist over there or something.

 

[St. Toxic]

So many plebs in this topic.

I genuinely liked DS; got day 1 collectors edition and shit. But it is essentially like a dumbed down Demon's Souls.

 

[Xi]

Looks good, although they're getting closer and closer to completely abandoning the art style of the original game (Demons' Souls, that is).

I noticed flashier effects, like the glowing eye trails, and the sword particle explosion on impact. Not sure how I feel about it at the moment. Also, the dude with the two swords looks like the Dread Pirate Roberts, straight out of the princess bride movie.

Still, the art direction seems in line with Dark Souls, and I'm ok with that. Graphically, this seems like the peak of this (old ass hardware) generation of graphics. While probably not as good as some titles overall, some of the effects are pretty nice (at least when viewed in slow motion). Demon's Souls is like a red headed step child at this point. /shrug

Hey guys just dropping by to tell you I'm not going to play this game

Not even convincing. 1/5


Edit: Most important are the RPG elements. How will stats affect things like attack speed, block speed, parry speed, etc? How will damage scale? How many variety weapons are there, and how many interesting unique weapons/armor/etc are there to find? How much build diversity will there be? What perks do the factions give the character this time? Also, how will the item upgrade system work? If these things have more depth, the game should be a real winner. Hopefully it maintains the immense world size of Dark Souls (much bigger than it seems at first).

This series really exemplifies the power of hand placed, planned content, and open world mechanics. Bethesda would do well to follow suit.

 

[subotaiy]

Looks more saturated than the first game, I dont really like that.

 

[Black]

Who knows, maybe this one will actually be playable.

 

[Misconnected]

Very much anticipating this, but no way it'll be a day 1 purchase. I realise DS2 is built for PC (allegedly) but oh my fucking god there's some shitty ports out there, and they're all waaay better than DSTSD (as it should've been called). No way in hell I'm taking it on faith that DS2 is playable out of the gate.

As usual, Namco gives Europe the bitching collectors edition for PC and leaves North America with a goddamn digital download only. It's like they think piracy doesn't fucking exist over there or something.

It's payback. You dicks are usually the reason everyone else can't have nice things :p

 

[Volrath]

I like how Dark Souls is a game which seperates the dumbfucks from the hardcore alpha males.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Seriously, I've played DS for something like 3-4 hours and still find it one of the more enjoyable games of recent years through all the retarded ott drama that surrounds it.

 

[Roguey]

That positive feedback loop sounds awful and that coupled with their obfuscation of mechanics means I'll never bother with this no matter how Josh-approved it is.

what is this even supposed to mean?

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

meanwhileInPoland said: ↑
Roguey said: ↑
That positive feedback loop sounds awful and that coupled with their obfuscation of mechanics means I'll never bother with this no matter how Josh-approved it is.
what is this even supposed to mean?
Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

git gud

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

what is so unclear about this mechanic?

 

[Misconnected]

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

It's not a loop. Dying has no effect in itself. Investing in your current "life" yields great rewards, but is costly and lost on death.

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

The core mechanics are not obfuscated. The extended mechanics are discovered and understood through experimentation while you explore, not from the get-go. This makes mastery a function of how hard you challenge yourself, not of whether you read a wiki (though a wiki might spoil it somewhat for you).

Basically, neither criticism applies to Dark Souls. Nor to Daemons Souls. And I don't see why they would apply to DS2.

If it's any consolation, I wholehearted agree with the criticisms you just raised, in games where they actually apply. And there are a lot of those.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

It's not a loop. Dying has no effect in itself. Investing in your current "life" yields great rewards, but is costly and lost on death.

It's not much different than games that remove all your sweet power-ups on death, but with the added benefit of not throwing you immediately back on the situation that killed you (so you can form a plan), and you get your sweet power-ups back if you can get to the spot where you died without dying again. If you can't even do that...well, you shouldn't be rewarded for sucking that hard, either.

 

[Misconnected]

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

It's not a loop. Dying has no effect in itself. Investing in your current "life" yields great rewards, but is costly and lost on death.

It's not much different than games that remove all your sweet power-ups on death, but with the added benefit of not throwing you immediately back on the situation that killed you (so you can form a plan), and you get your sweet power-ups back if you can get to the spot where you died without dying again. If you can't even do that...well, you shouldn't be rewarded for sucking that hard, either.

It's very different. Performance buffs are persistent. Death doesn't strip you of them. Buffing your life ups both risk and reward, and does go away on death, but doesn't affect performance.

Basically life-buffing is a grind-oriented system, while the persistent buffs are a progress oriented system. There's no death loop, or even a tax beyond a few minutes of re-playing time.

 

[Grotesque]

Dark Souls is a hard game because its a hard game. And you all can go fuck yourself splitting the hair in 4 about why that is.

 

[Karellen]

That positive feedback loop sounds awful and that coupled with their obfuscation of mechanics means I'll never bother with this no matter how Josh-approved it is.

what is this even supposed to mean?

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

That's a shallow and uninformed interpretation, though. Yeah, having your maximum health decrease gradually upon death would be a kind of vicious circle, but only when considered in isolation. There are multiple concurrent elements of feedback in Dark Souls, and no doubt also in Dark Souls II, some of which will make the game steadily easier through perseverance and experience. Not only would you get better at playing the game through learning enemy patterns and such, but assuming the game works like the first game, you also get to keep all the equipment that you found before you died, and equipment can be upgraded, which isn't lost upon death. Also, it has been speculated by people in the Souls society that purchaseable consumables (for health and buffs) will play a greater role in DSII, which would give a new way to better one's odds by preparing in advance.

The intended purpose of the health decrease is obviously to make being in Human form, as opposed to the Hollow form, more important in the game. In the first Dark Souls, being in Human form was irrelevant aside of the online aspect, which was clearly in conflict with the fiction of the game and was rightly considered a step down from Demon's Souls both narratively and mechanically. This change is a desirable addition to the basic risk/reward formula of Dark Souls, and in terms of feedback, it also partially offsets what would otherwise be a steady gain in power. For that matter, it will also make it undesirable to keep banging your head against the same rock wall, which disincentivises some degenerate forms of gameplay. Of course, implementation will make all the difference (how much health do you lose per death, how low can you get before it stops, how easy it is to get your Humanity back), but on paper, it reads like good design.

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

That's only true if you're trying to build a competitive multiplayer build, though, which is something the game wasn't really designed for anyway. In terms of playing the game normally in single player, it's exceedingly difficult to make a truly gimped build by accident. That's because character stats are secondary in importance to the equipment you have, and as a result, the major choices about stats are about qualifying for equipment and spells, which are completely transparent in the game. The only game element that really suffers in a major way from lack of in-game explanation are poise and shield stability (which are awkwardly implemented anyway), but as far as single player goes, you'll learn what you need to know just by playing the game. I can understand why you'd be distrustful of a game where you can't see all the numbers, since the world is full of RPGs with game mechanics that allow you to screw yourself over. Dark Souls is an action game, though, and the system is designed for experimentation, so the criticism doesn't entirely apply.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Misconnected meanwhileInPoland you're correct in that a lot of mechanics are very transparent, but the game does obfuscate some important ones nevertheless. Most notably, both poise and equip load could have used a more detailed explanation of the different cutoff points. I don't think it takes anything from the sense of discovery in the game to have a tooltip tell you what equip load percentages your speed changes at.

 

[Declinator]

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

That's a shallow and uninformed interpretation, though. Yeah, having your maximum health decrease gradually upon death would be a kind of vicious circle, but only when considered in isolation. There are multiple concurrent elements of feedback in Dark Souls, and no doubt also in Dark Souls II, some of which will make the game steadily easier through perseverance and experience. Not only would you get better at playing the game through learning enemy patterns and such, but assuming the game works like the first game, you also get to keep all the equipment that you found before you died, and equipment can be upgraded, which isn't lost upon death. Also, it has been speculated by people in the Souls society that purchaseable consumables (for health and buffs) will play a greater role in DSII, which would give a new way to better one's odds by preparing in advance.

The intended purpose of the health decrease is obviously to make being in Human form, as opposed to the Hollow form, more important in the game. In the first Dark Souls, being in Human form was irrelevant aside of the online aspect, which was clearly in conflict with the fiction of the game and was rightly considered a step down from Demon's Souls both narratively and mechanically. This change is a desirable addition to the basic risk/reward formula of Dark Souls, and in terms of feedback, it also partially offsets what would otherwise be a steady gain in power. For that matter, it will also make it undesirable to keep banging your head against the same rock wall, which disincentivises some degenerate forms of gameplay. Of course, implementation will make all the difference (how much health do you lose per death, how low can you get before it stops, how easy it is to get your Humanity back), but on paper, it reads like good design.

I was in human form maybe only a few times during the whole of Dark Souls. But even though it's much more important in Demon's Souls the same applied there too. Only once I forgot that I was in human form and completed a hefty chunk of the game in that form. Usually I just killed myself after bosses to get back into the proper form.

The 1/2 hp penalty seemed bad at first but it's not that bad really. And wasn't the penalty going to be capped at 1/2 hp in DaS2 also? Wouldn't be a shock if they planted that 3/4 hp ring in that game too.

The first time I played Demons's Souls I was actually under the impression that any level I gained would also be lost when I die so I basically tried playing it as a lvl 1 dude figuring it was pointless to level up.

I wasn't very succesful.

I think that sort of a system would be just too much and I have to say that it was relieving to hear that the only thing death caused was that I lost half of my hp.

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

That's only true if you're trying to build a competitive multiplayer build, though, which is something the game wasn't really designed for anyway. In terms of playing the game normally in single player, it's exceedingly difficult to make a truly gimped build by accident. That's because character stats are secondary in importance to the equipment you have, and as a result, the major choices about stats are about qualifying for equipment and spells, which are completely transparent in the game. The only game element that really suffers in a major way from lack of in-game explanation are poise and shield stability (which are awkwardly implemented anyway), but as far as single player goes, you'll learn what you need to know just by playing the game. I can understand why you'd be distrustful of a game where you can't see all the numbers, since the world is full of RPGs with game mechanics that allow you to screw yourself over. Dark Souls is an action game, though, and the system is designed for experimentation, so the criticism doesn't entirely apply.

I thought the explanation button explained the basic attributes well enough. In fact I didn't really find anything too obfuscated while playing. Maybe something like the 25%/50% equip load thing would have caused some annoyance if I hadn't already known about it before starting. And of course poise as you said.

 

[tuluse]

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

I don't think it gets progressively worse. It's just two states.

 

[cherry blossom]

Dying continuously puts you in a progressively worse position = bad positive feedback loop. If someone is doing poorly, making the game harder for them isn't going to make them play better.

Obfuscation of mechanics = needing to read a wiki on the internet to understand what's going on under the hood so you can make informed character building choices. Challenge through guesswork is dumb. I get the impression this is a series made by dummies who managed to nail real-time action combat but not much else.

This ain't your Sawyerist piece of conformist gaming.

 

[DefJam101]

I played through both Demons and Dark Souls multiple times without ever reading the wiki or asking anyone questions and I had no problems. Some people just have unhealthy min/max obsessions.

 

[Athelas]

Yes, stats like these are totally intuitive:

Intelligence governs the Sorcery Power. It also controls the player's attack power for weapons that scale with Intelligence.

• Sorceries require a minimum intelligence level to cast.(You can acquire without the required stats and even attune the spell, but attempting to cast will leave your character scratching their head, literally.)

NOTE: This stat does NOT increase Pyromancy spells, Pyromancy Power only increases with the level of the Pyromancy Flame. Intelligence only increases the fire damage from punch attacks with the pyromancy glove.

Hey guys, intelligence increases magic damage, except for fire magic BECAUSE OF REASONS. But wait, intelligence can increase fire damage if you punch someone with fire! Look how hardcore we are!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Sounds like something you'd figure out with five minutes of playing around with pyromancy.

 

[praetor]

I genuinely liked DS; got day 1 collectors edition and shit. But it is essentially like a dumbed down Demon's Souls.

and prey tell, what is exactly "dumbed down" in DkS compared to DeS? except for the health loss when hollowed/soul form (that literally means nothing once you, as young people say it nowadays, "git gud") and bonfires, everything else is pretty much harder/better (enemies, bosses, better upgrade system)