From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Invictus]

Sounds like durante is going to be doing some tweaks and mods for DS2...funny how there was no mention of tesselation or ambient oclusion (although I am sure there is some)
I think the old lighting model would be too difficult to implement at least at start but I have seen some videos where they tweaked the gamma, and some contrast tweals make the game look almost as good as the CES version lighting sans the shadow effects
My best hope is that the old lighting is there somewhere...

 

[Kanedias]

Today I did a lot of PvP but I had to stop due to the netcode. I can take delay, a lagspike, or whatever, but some of the stuff I witness is completely insane. What Bethesda is to bugs, From Soft is to netcode.

Let me tell some of these...events. All of this is from the arena.

1) I spawn, buff, and notice the enemy didn't come out of his spawn room. I run towards it, and when I'm about to arrive I see him slowly walking out. As I think about how cocky he is, he runs like the Flash towards my own spawn, traversing all the arena map in about one second tops. Then the lag apparently subsides, because we ran at each other (again) and proceeded to have a normal fight without any major issues. Really silly.

2) I'm fighting another player, the fight was completely normal, and then I roll backstab him. I try a wake up hit and r1 when he's standing up, but he takes no damage. After he stands up, he runs towards the wooden tower in the middle, and I know he will try to heal so I give chase. He makes it to the top of the tower, and then he dies. He just randomly takes damage and dies just before healing. I was very confused, and then I realized it was that r1 from before.

3) I'm fighting a guy with a Defender's Greatsword, he hits me once with an R1 and he stunlocks me for 4 hits thanks to the lag (normally you can roll away after the second hit). Then I backstab him, because I knew he was probably out of stamina after that spam. When the backstab animation starts, I get the defeat message. About halfway through the animation, my character suddenly dies.

 

[praetor]

^yup... i don't have any hard numbers, but from experience alone, this is by far the worst Souls netcode. i mean, when it works it works beautifully, better than the others, but when it doesn't it's a total trainwreck. not even games in the 90ies with 14k modems had such shitty netcode. yesterday i was trying to co-op the sentinels and smelter skelter with my str/fth. i was getting constant summons, an average of one every 1-2 minutes. in 2 (maybe even more) hours, only 2 succeeded (both at SD). you do the math. "shitty", "abysmal", "terrible" doesn't even begin to describe it. i thought of double dipping, but after this fiasco, i'm gonna get the PC version from TPB sales, and the next game i'm gonna get for cheap. fuck you From

edit:

Sounds like durante is going to be doing some tweaks and mods for DS2...funny how there was no mention of tesselation or ambient oclusion (although I am sure there is some)
I think the old lighting model would be too difficult to implement at least at start but I have seen some videos where they tweaked the gamma, and some contrast tweals make the game look almost as good as the CES version lighting sans the shadow effects
My best hope is that the old lighting is there somewhere...

on the 2nd page:

Antialiasing and Ambient Occlusion
The former of these settings enables the game’s built-in post-processing anti-aliasing, which appears to be the high quality version of FXAA3. The latter turns the ambient occlusion effect on or off. Both of these settings, and some higher-quality alternatives, will be discussed in more detail in our upcoming Dark Souls 2 tweak guide.

and you can pretty much forget the old lighting model

 

[DragoFireheart]

^yup... i don't have any hard numbers, but from experience alone, this is by far the worst Souls netcode. i mean, when it works it works beautifully, better than the others, but when it doesn't it's a total trainwreck. not even games in the 90ies with 14k modems had such shitty netcode. yesterday i was trying to co-op the sentinels and smelter skelter with my str/fth. i was getting constant summons, an average of one every 1-2 minutes. in 2 (maybe even more) hours, only 2 succeeded (both at SD). you do the math. "shitty", "abysmal", "terrible" doesn't even begin to describe it. i thought of double dipping, but after this fiasco, i'm gonna get the PC version from TPB sales, and the next game i'm gonna get for cheap. fuck you From

Yeah the Netcode is even worse than Dark Souls 1. It's been getting worse since Demon's Souls.

When it works, PvP and Co-Op is loads of fun. But I can not tell you how many teleport backstabs I saw last night. I wonder if From hired from Obsidian programmers to build the net code?

Can mods fix this?

 

[Invictus]

Yeah as I said praetor, saying "oh and yeah you can turn on and off ambient occlusion" does not count; we can see the difference clearly on the side by side opening scene PS3 PC comparision how the clothes and fingers have a more well rounded shadowy look but no mention of its strength or application to gameworld besides charcater models...you knwo geeky shit we PC lovers hype

Its like meeting a drunk angry joe and him talking about megamandas' titties and while you are expecting a good story of how he motorboats and all the good shit a straight male videogamer can fantasises about those babies he just says they are fine but no more....we wants information homey!

Oh and all that connectivity angst; I had perfect PVP the first 2 weeks and then simply not during the week, so I played a bit at night with no problems or over the weekend. My guess is that they didn't have enough servers for the demand, you guys should try only the local option and see how it goes I am sure on PC ot will be much easier so I am cool

 

[DragoFireheart]

My guess is that they didn't have enough servers for the demand, you guys should try only the local option and see how it goes

My setting IS unrestricted and it's been after that I've noticed more bad net code...

 

[praetor]

i am in restricted mode, so in theory i only match-up with people from my area (i.e. europe). that is, i would match up if i could even get a fucking connection. and, as i said before, the connection is still P2P like in DaS1, those "dedicated server" are pure marketing bullshit and are there only for matchmaking purposes, messages, bloodstains, information, statistics etc.. menial shit that can be done on ancient, cheap hardware

 

[DragoFireheart]

i am in restricted mode, so in theory i only match-up with people from my area (i.e. europe).

I found the issue.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Disregarding the fact that Europe has infinitely superior internet compared to the kwa with their download limits and draconian monopolies.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Disregarding the fact that Europe has infinitely superior internet compared to the kwa with their download limits and draconian monopolies.

I was being a smart ass.

 

[Volrath]

No, you were being a dumbass.

 

[DragoFireheart]

No, you were being a dumbass.

nu u r wut r u dur olololololol

Disregarding the fact that Europe has infinitely superior internet compared to the kwa with their download limits and draconian monopolies.

Odd, I haven't seen that in the U.S. Canada has download limits though.

 

[Invictus]

Are the black armor items any good? Has anybody bothered to try them or see how they scale?

 

[Kanedias]

Transgressor Shield has very high dark defense. I was told Quartz Longsword was decent. I think the rest are awful, but I didn't really test them throughly or anything.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Are the black armor items any good? Has anybody bothered to try them or see how they scale?

Like Kanedias said, the Transgressor Shield has high dark magic defense.

The Quartz Longsword is ass: it doesn't have the thrust attack. Rest are garbage.

 

[Gozma]

Does DaS2 have super cheap (build-wise) PvE offense comparable to elemental weapons and pyromancy in DaS1? Actually, better question - does it have cheap offense that I will find without spoilers? I kinda want to play a slug greatshield build with a big health bar for a first run so I can bait out everything's animations one by one to learn them without having to spamdie trying to roll and parry.

 

[praetor]

pyro is still here (although it's a bit slower without significant investment in cast speed stats and/or gear), and there are some ridiculous pyromancies (although they've been nerfed a bit with the latest patch). magic is still OP but now it's OP only in the late-game (it's also pretty boring). but miracles and hexes are insane from the get go. and now split-damage weapons can be buffed and they're significantly better (when buffed. they're only slightly worse unbuffed) than pure melee weapons (even when buffed)

 

[Kanedias]

I'm starting to think this game has some sort of prediction system which is the cause of the weird lag issues.

This can't be just P2P, as I understand it, because many of my attacks clearly whiff in my screen, yet they end up damaging the enemy. I'm not very well informed about this, but Dark Souls 1 had a P2P system, and to lagstab, I had to actually reach the back of the enemy in my screen. Sure, in his screen he may have rolled away, but in mine I had the backstab....it's not this way in this game.

Many times I have hit backstabs that very clearly miss in my screen, yet produce the hitting sound and teleport me to the enemy's back. For example, yesterday I was fighting a very laggy person, and he teleported away just after I had initiated the backstab attempt punch: the punch had not landed yet, and he had teleported an impressive distance, but it connected with the air and teleported me to him.

I also noticed many times where I try to swing, the enemy interrupts me with a swing of his own, yet my non-swing does damage to him. How is this possible if the game is just P2P? What if it has some sort of borked prediction system that causes all of this?

Any opinions?

 

[Hobo Elf]

What's the consensus on Curved Swords? Just the normal ones, not the Great variety.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Does DaS2 have super cheap (build-wise) PvE offense comparable to elemental weapons and pyromancy in DaS1? Actually, better question - does it have cheap offense that I will find without spoilers? I kinda want to play a slug greatshield build with a big health bar for a first run so I can bait out everything's animations one by one to learn them without having to spamdie trying to roll and parry.

There's a certain hex you can get that costs 500 souls per cast and with good stats/chime you can hit ~1000 on almost everything. It's def the new pyro since it makes PVE across all NG++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ trivial. Especially once you have a gajillion casts in ng+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.

 

[praetor]

I'm starting to think this game has some sort of prediction system which is the cause of the weird lag issues.

This can't be just P2P, as I understand it, because many of my attacks clearly whiff in my screen, yet they end up damaging the enemy. I'm not very well informed about this, but Dark Souls 1 had a P2P system, and to lagstab, I had to actually reach the back of the enemy in my screen. Sure, in his screen he may have rolled away, but in mine I had the backstab....it's not this way in this game.

Many times I have hit backstabs that very clearly miss in my screen, yet produce the hitting sound and teleport me to the enemy's back. For example, yesterday I was fighting a very laggy person, and he teleported away just after I had initiated the backstab attempt punch: the punch had not landed yet, and he had teleported an impressive distance, but it connected with the air and teleported me to him.

I also noticed many times where I try to swing, the enemy interrupts me with a swing of his own, yet my non-swing does damage to him. How is this possible if the game is just P2P? What if it has some sort of borked prediction system that causes all of this?

Any opinions?

as i have tried many times across many forums to explain, it's not relevant if it's P2P or server based, connections today are good enough for that to be of little relevance (and i don't see why what you described couldn't be P2P?). it's that From are absolutely shit-level when it comes to netcode. "clusterfuck" doesn't even begin to describe it, and it would actually be a compliment. they've had fucking years to get their act together or at least hire somebody who knows the difference between ports and ports, and not only do they not improve, somehow they actually managed to get worse

What's the consensus on Curved Swords? Just the normal ones, not the Great variety.

from what i've seen and used, they're shit. that spider thing is cute with the special R2, but as with all curved swords the damage is supershit and the durability even worse. they may be decent if you powerstance (the warped sword has that Flexile moveset when powerstanced), but powerstancing takes shitloads of stamina from what i could see. and if you want to powerstance, why not go with those large clubs and greataxes that give you the longsword animation? (yes, the game is so fucking retarded that it's somehow actually faster to swing 2 powerstanced huge weapons than one. wtf were they thinking?)

 

[Hobo Elf]

Meh. Realistically speaking curved swords were in some cases much deadlier than regular European long swords. I hate this "it's dexterity so its gotta do less damage by default" shit way of thinking we have.

 

[80Maxwell08]

So I'm doing a playthrough with a cleric who won't use bladed weapons. Any good weapons that fit that catagory? I'm using a regular +10 mace right now (debated infusing with lighting but I decided my lightning spears were good enough) and it's doing the job but I would like to upgrade if there's anything better.
EDIT: While I'm here does anyone know if the darklurker's attacks do physical damage on top of dark damage?

 

[praetor]

large/great/regular club? join the club! if by "bladed" you mean only swords, then i also recommend the dragonslayer crescent axe (lightning infused), mastodon halberd and gyrm axe (not great-)

 

[80Maxwell08]

large/great/regular club? join the club! if by "bladed" you mean only swords, then i also recommend the dragonslayer crescent axe (lightning infused), mastodon halberd and gyrm axe (not great-)

By bladed I basically mean what D&D clerics do. Also I just found out you can only get one large and great club. Want to guess what I just got rid of? I seem to have this unusual skill at selling off what I need or wasting a bunch of titanite on stuff I'll just throw away almost right after.
EDIT: Something I just learned is that the Darklurker is absurdly weak to lightning. A handful of great lightning spears and after she split it only took one sunlight spear.