I think it's more a case of extreme fanboyism than shrlling. A shill would try to be less enthusiastic in most of the cases.
There are some things it seems nobody touches upon that I hope they fix;
- Invisibles walls near terrain ledges that can cause you to fall off if you are not aware of them.
- Weapon clipping, in dark souls it was simply horribly inconsistent. Sometimes attacks went through walls, sometimes they don't. It's extremely frustrating when you have walked into the next room, thinking that you are safe, just to see you die from a spear that goes straight through the wall. On the flip side, because you are used to geting away with swinging attacks in corridors or near corners, sometimes your weapon stops dead in the track leaving you completely open. Generally, it's almost impossible to tell when it will go through and when it will not. Either weapons should always clip through walls, or they should never do it. Consistency in gameplay is important.
The weapon clipping, while awful, was consistent.
Player Character + Phantoms (includes AI-controlled phantoms, player-controlled ones in coop or pvp, and you)
Weapons do not bounce off walls as long as you're not too close to said walls when you hit them. If you're closer than you should, the weapon will bounce off. With practice you start figuring out when you will able to swing and when you won't, as it's a specific distance.
Tip: Jumping attacks never bounce off walls and go through them cleanly, probably due to an oversight.
Enemies (every enemy that isn't a phantom or hollowed NPC)
Their weapons never bounce off and go through solid objects cleanly, every time. Especially annoying with long reach enemies like spear-wielding Silver Knights.
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I agree that it's fanboyism on Vaati's side, and not him being "hired" by Namco. The actual marketing ploy was just inviting the major Youtubers to play the first part of the game, as they knew they would generate content that hyped people and eased their doubts. I really, really doubt they "bought" their opinion in any way, and it isn't even necessary: the game is looking up to be (at least) fairly good, they're all quite passionate about the Souls series and were already excited for playing the game, so them being thankful over being invited erodes away any sort of minor negative comments they could make at least for a while.
It's not that bad, and while I won't take their opinions as gospel, I listen to the gameplay changes they mention and I like most of them, with a couple of exceptions. I'd rather do away with voice chat, but if it's just for coop and while wearing the specific ring, it won't damage the "loose connections with other players" theme as much as I thought. The supposedly limited enemy respawns is incredibly worrying, however, and it's something major, but a gut feeling tells me there's a bit of misinformation going around. I really doubt they're retarded enough to make normal enemies stop respawning at all after a certain number of kills.
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As for Vaati's videos, I enjoy several of them, and I don't usually have any problem with his lore videos, mostly because they have neat editing. I don't care too much for their actual content, though, because it's stuff that was figured out or theorized long ago, he just formats it. It's rather annoying hearing people act as if he somehow "discovered" everything himself.
For example, his "The Lore of Dark Souls 2" video (which already had a really...ambitious name) was posted in January, and most of the info there (if not all of it) was already posted in
this thread (shameless self promotion, by the way
). That thread is not nearly as organized as the video because it is older (from October, several months before Vaati's video), by that time I didn't even know if the game was a sequel or a prequel (many would swear to me that it was said that it would be a prequel) and we didn't even have much footage of the Network Test, only those leaked pastebins with the descriptions and dialogues. Vaati, 3 months later, just lists the information that was most likely to be true, and formats it into a well edited video. I don't mind, though, as he never claimed to have discovered anything.
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P.S.: The main reason I linked his video was because he mentions some more stuff about the estus flask, I don't know if it's 100% accurate but he says that reinforcing the estus gives you more charges, and that an action similar to kindling is what makes it heal more on a certain area. This change, if true, is really interesting...
