From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[UndetectedButthurt]

I'm about halfway through my SL1 playthrough and I just realized that by dicking around and dying a bunch of times with lots of souls I'm screwing my soul memory. Why the fuck didn't they make soul memory count only when you spend souls? Doesn't really prevent me from twinking and griefing noobs when I didn't spent most of the souls in my soul memory.

Because you'll still be paired up with others with equal soul memory.

Spending, not wasting souls will more accurately pair characters with similar progress. I can farm early locations and die every single time until I get a million in soul memory. What kind of accurate pairing is that?

 

[Kanedias]

I don't think Soul Memory is as strict as we think (though it still sucks). I had around 10 million soul memory and I connected with my friend who has around 4 million. Also Soul Memory stops mattering once you go past 12 million (12 million and up is all the same bracket).

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

In DS1 I haven't seen a single red invade me at over 100 hours of gameplay at SL1. Here, I get invaded by people with end game gear (I'm dicking around Iron Keep with ~1000000 soul memory). I'm not butthurt or anything, but this system of theirs doesn't seem to work at all.

 

[praetor]

yeah... instead of making it a more complex thing, taking into account souls spent (possibly even taking into account on what), soul level, time played, and making it more and more about SL the higher your SL (and be about only SL somewhere past 100), they implement this idiotic SM system. dear Satan

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Sounds like they might've went into this with good intentions but ended up spending a total of 1 minute on design/implementation. Oh and offtopic graphix whore - lava/fire effects have to be worst I've seen. That close up on lava when you die in Iron Keep looks like something out of Quake 1.

 

[Kanedias]

Now that you mention invasions, I did two playthroughs with my mage (I'm near the end of NG+ now) and I haven't had a single red invasion. I only got invaded by bell keepers when I did the Belfry areas. I guess the fact that the arena is vastly superior to invading makes all the reds stick to it or something.

Edit: My main character can't step out of Majula without being instantly attacked by hordes of blues.

 

[praetor]

Now that you mention invasions, I did two playthroughs with my mage (I'm near the end of NG+ now) and I haven't had a single red invasion. I only got invaded by bell keepers when I did the Belfry areas. I guess the fact that the arena is vastly superior to invading makes all the reds stick to it or something.

doesn't only the arena W/L ratio factor in the ranking? do invasions account for anything other than sin? the more they try to improve the invading logic from DeS, the more they fuck it up

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Oh yeah, DS1 blues were nowhere to be seen. Oh how the tables have turned. FROM put all of their PVP work on ratbros and bellboys but ended up making blues and reds completely retarded. GIMME DAT RED EYE ORB.

 

[Kanedias]

Invasions are supposed to count, but they don't stack with arena (so if you win 20 invasions and 30 arena matches, you don't rank up)

I think the lack of reds is due to these problems:

1) The invadee pool is as big as the playerbase itself (thanks to hollows being able to get invaded and invasions happening after the bosses are killed), while the invaders are more restricted due to the lack of a reusable Red Eye Orb. This spreads invaders too thin.
2) Since you can't heal in invasions and the matchmaking system prioritizes groups of players, you end up with extremely unfair battles, which are much harder to win than in Dark Souls 1. You really need some sort of spellcasting and a Heal spell. Basically, you need some sort of "invader build". This makes invasions really annoying for a lot of builds. Arena doesn't have this problem, sure, some builds are worse than others and beating a min maxed buff build with a sub-optimal build is hard, but it's nowhere near as hard as beating 3 people with melee only while they spam spells all over the place, and on top of this, you can't heal.
3) Arena is actually really fun, vastly improved over Dark Souls 1, and it's completely free for reds. Since arena is mandatory for invaders (in order to farm the orbs) I suspect many will do what I did - discover how much better arena is and simply keep doing arena and neglecting invasions.

I suspect it's mainly reason 1, though. In Dark Souls 1, the vast majority of people were hollows, and only a smaller group was human and thus eligible for invasions. It was also harder to stay human, which kept the invadee pool more restricted.

It's interesting that the change many people bitched about, the ability to invade hollows and people who have already beaten the boss had the opposite effect we thought it would have - it made invasions extremely rare.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

In DS1 I haven't seen a single red invade me at over 100 hours of gameplay at SL1. Here, I get invaded by people with end game gear (I'm dicking around Iron Keep with ~1000000 soul memory). I'm not butthurt or anything, but this system of theirs doesn't seem to work at all.

i dont know what platoform you played but on pc undead burg was full of twinking faggots. in undead parish on my sl1 run i got constant invasions with faggots equiped with end game shit.

I suspect it's mainly reason 1, though. In Dark Souls 1, the vast majority of people were hollows, and only a smaller group was human and thus eligible for invasions. It was also harder to stay human, which kept the invadee pool more restricted.

true.

in DS2 you have at least 5 working covenants full of players(Blues,Reds,Bells,Rats,Dragons) while in DS1 everyone where Dickwraiths or Sunbros cause the rest was either shit or did not work.

Also arena in BoB works great while arena in Oolacil in DS1 was fucking dead empty.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Spending, not wasting souls will more accurately pair characters with similar progress. I can farm early locations and die every single time until I get a million in soul memory. What kind of accurate pairing is that?

Punishing retards with good players?

 

[80Maxwell08]

Also I just got my lizard staff to +10 then realized I had 3 staves of amana so I'm an idiot. Now I'm having one last hurrah with my lizard staff before I retire it.

i hate you so much

Dude just skip it and wait for the staff of amana or blue flame or black witches staff. It's only a stop gap for an end game weapon.
EDIT: This is odd. I just got the staff of amana to +10 and it's scaling is giving me less than the lizard staff which is only at an A. Not what I expected. Also praetor if you want I can just give you my lizard staff once you get near my soul memory. Granted I'm at 2.1 million so it would be a while but I can just not use this character until then.
EDIT2: Apparently the lizard staff gets to an S rank in scaling once it's high enough. Huh.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Spending, not wasting souls will more accurately pair characters with similar progress. I can farm early locations and die every single time until I get a million in soul memory. What kind of accurate pairing is that?

Punishing retards with good players?

i have no problem with wasted souls included in SM. the thrill of losing your precious soul has now deeper meaning

 

[Kanedias]

Staff of Amana has a hidden bonus if you're human.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Staff of Amana has a hidden bonus if you're human.

Oh thanks. Now it's higher but only by 18 damage.

 

[praetor]

Dude just skip it and wait for the staff of amana or blue flame or black witches staff. It's only a stop gap for an end game weapon.
EDIT: This is odd. I just got the staff of amana to +10 and it's scaling is giving me less than the lizard staff which is only at an A. Not what I expected. Also praetor if you want I can just give you my lizard staff once you get near my soul memory. Granted I'm at 2.1 million so it would be a while but I can just not use this character until then.
EDIT2: Apparently the lizard staff gets to an S rank in scaling once it's high enough. Huh.

can't give up now... i invested too much time in that shit (i'm at almost 700k SM, so maybe we can still pair up?)

 

[80Maxwell08]

Dude just skip it and wait for the staff of amana or blue flame or black witches staff. It's only a stop gap for an end game weapon.
EDIT: This is odd. I just got the staff of amana to +10 and it's scaling is giving me less than the lizard staff which is only at an A. Not what I expected. Also praetor if you want I can just give you my lizard staff once you get near my soul memory. Granted I'm at 2.1 million so it would be a while but I can just not use this character until then.
EDIT2: Apparently the lizard staff gets to an S rank in scaling once it's high enough. Huh.

can't give up now... i invested too much time in that shit (i'm at almost 700k SM, so maybe we can still pair up?)

I have no idea how the souls memory stuff works so if you figure it out then I'm up to give it to you.

 

[Kanedias]

I was getting some stuff done on my mage (killing Freja another time for another copy of Crystal Soul Spear, farming Simpleton Spices, etc) and I found something amazing. I was in Aldia's Keep and decided to go fully clothed into the acid since I already have more than two million souls, my armor obviously broke and...it actually changes the model. No, not only the texture, broken armor actually has a different model, for example my Throne Watcher chestpiece had the metal part all battered, it was really interesting to see. How many resources went into this? Apparently all equipment has an alternative model for when it breaks.

P.S.: I got a Berserker Blade! Didn't take that long, either, so I consider myself lucky.

 

[praetor]

^yup, noticed it when i first got to derper shrine and those motherfuckers broke my mad warrior chest piece, and i accidentally used one 2HR2 drakewing too many. neat, but i wish they spent those resources elswhere

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

In DS1 I haven't seen a single red invade me at over 100 hours of gameplay at SL1. Here, I get invaded by people with end game gear (I'm dicking around Iron Keep with ~1000000 soul memory). I'm not butthurt or anything, but this system of theirs doesn't seem to work at all.

i dont know what platoform you played but on pc undead burg was full of twinking faggots. in undead parish on my sl1 run i got constant invasions with faggots equiped with end game shit.

What I meant is that because of soul memory I get invaded by people of much higher levels. People power-stancing greatswords with ~1.5k health aren't anywhere near SL1.

 

[Kanedias]

Some minor trivia thing I found: http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/22ws2i/a_nice_bit_of_trivia_the_desire_to_live/

 

[Elwro]

I guess I'm late for the discussion, but I just went through Huntsman's Copse and it was a lot less dark than in the beta. The cavern is less fun when you know exactly where you're going even without a torch. Even the outdoor areas are lighter so it's not just the luminous butterflies.

 

[Volrath]

So I found the

Spoiler

two elite giants in black gulch

. Are these fuckers supposed to be this easy? 8 poison arrows each and they go down like that.

 

[felipepepe]

They are very hard.... in melee. But everyone can just enter that door behind then and go pewpew until they die.

This is the stuff that would make Dark Souls series really HARD if fixed... A LOT of the enemies can be aggro'ed one by one, ran by, or attacked from beyond their reach. Try playing DaS 1 with the ultra-agressive mod and you'll see a entirely new game. One where Havel can step outside of his tower.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Ok holy shit the lag is bad in invasions. I had like 3-4 fights where the invader hit random air about 20 feet away from me and killed me where I hit 5 consecutive times and none of them registered. You would think after 3 games they could fix it a bit.