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A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

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Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#21

Post by simias »

zainny wrote: post #18

What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes, mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon their customer base and continue to sell a broken product? I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good…

The consensus seems to be that the game is hardly playable without a controller (by the way, steam has a big warning about that on the game's page in the store).

Some people make do with the mousefix mod (the default mouse targeting behaviour is beyond silly). It's quite a bad port indeed, but it's a good game so I guess it's better than nothing...

If you do a lot of gaming on PC buying a controller can be a pretty good investment anyway, it makes sense for a lot of games.

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#22

Post by quanticle »

mekpro wrote: post #14

I found that most of the fun in this game can be easily destroyed by FAQs and Youtube. I myself get very frustrated by Sen Fortress's Bonfire that i can't resist the urge to get an answer from wiki. After read this, I find myself regretted because i had missed the crucial experience of this game. Explore or dead ! I wish I could forget everything about this game so that I can innocently play it from the start again.

This is why I play randomized rougelikes, like Nethack, or more recently, Torchlight. You can't make spoilers for a game that randomizes its levels.

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#23

Post by simias »

roarroar wrote: post #3

Dark Souls is a bigger, less polished version of Demon's Souls. It has a problem with hidden information that can only be discovered through trial-and-error. Demon's Souls was like this too, but the scope was small enough that it didn't cause big problems. Not sure what there is to praise about the character builds. In both games there's an easy and obvious way to get a bulletproof character: plow everything you have…

I agree, I love both games but it's casual nethack as far as I'm concerned: it's very difficult to enjoy the games without a minimal amount of spoilers.

I went blind for my first run in both games, and while I could finish demon's souls with a minimal amount of grinding I hit a wall in DaS because some upgrade paths are simply dead ends. Leveling up resistance, for instance. Certain weapon's upgrade paths. And you have no way of knowing that before you get destroyed in the next dungeon because "hey, occult weapons are useless! Tough luck".

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#24

Post by vacri »

zainny wrote: post #18

What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes, mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon their customer base and continue to sell a broken product? I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good…

I bought a controller especially for that game and never looked back. This being said, I completed the game right up to just before the final boss fight on kb + mouse... but with the controller, the game is really incredible.

The port is shitty without the third-party fixes, but they also specifically said "we're not PC people, this will be a shitty port". They didn't launch the PC version with a lot of fanfare - and their customer base is on the consoles, not the PCs.

One of the weird things about the port is that the mouse movement is locked - it doesn't matter how quickly you move your mouse or how far, only how long you move it for. You move a set amount given a set length of time. Took me a while to figure it out.

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#25

Post by vacri »

roarroar wrote: post #16
octaveguin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diablo 2 was arguably terribly designed similarly - character builds required external information to progress to the harder difficulties. Not to mention what I'm sure the designers weren't intending at first - repeat farming over and over of the same content. In the end, this became what made it such a huge hit. The fact that you had to study character builds made a sort of meta game. Minecraft is another example wh…

It reeks of autism. You know it's bad because it forces you out of the game to look at some web page. It's basically showing total contempt for the aesthetics and fantasy of the game in favor of the endless cataloging and retrieval of pointless information.

This is just not true. You can play the game fine without the wiki, and I did so on my first playthrough... with a kb+mouse. You just can't min/max without the wiki.

And if you want to PvP, then sure, you need to min/max... but if you're PvPing, you're going to be going to a wiki anyway.

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#26

Post by vacri »

roarroar wrote: post #13
autarch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not though. At least for me, I find that there's a balance between giving and receiving damage in the boss fights. While having higher vitality (more HP) lets you survive longer, unless you can also dish out a lot of damage the fights can become incredibly difficult. Basically, the question is how many times you can hit the boss by taking advantage of their timing versus how many times you screw up trying…

A Fire Uchigatna+6 or +7 makes Four Kings easy if you have 20 estus flasks and plenty of vitality. Since this weapon doesn't scale with stats you barely have to alter your build to use it. I'm not saying it's the only viable build, nor the only fun one. I'm saying that the builds aren't exactly a work of genius, which is I suppose unavoidable when on your first run there are basically zero clues as to what's to come.…

This is basically how everyone who really loves the game plays it anyway

No, it's not - NG+ is much easier than NG, because you start decked with all your previous equipment. People who really love the game do NG runs staying at level 1.

I've put in lots of hours, and NG+ is dull because you already have anything and can go anywhere. The challenge is gone.

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#27

Post by jswanson »

zainny wrote: post #18

What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes, mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon their customer base and continue to sell a broken product? I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good…

I love Dark Souls, and constantly recommend it to friends.

And if they say 'Yeah, I picked that up on Steam!' I get really sad.

It feels like a game that is pretty exquisitely tuned, and that tuning is towards playing on a console with a controller. I'd even go so far as to say on a PS3 and a really nice TV.

Like how some people can't stand playing an FPS on consoles, only in reverse.

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#28

Post by frd2 »

simias wrote: post #21
zainny wrote: post #18

What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes, mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon their customer base and continue to sell a broken product? I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good…

The consensus seems to be that the game is hardly playable without a controller (by the way, steam has a big warning about that on the game's page in the store). Some people make do with the mousefix mod (the default mouse targeting behaviour is beyond silly). It's quite a bad port indeed, but it's a good game so I guess it's better than nothing... If you do a lot of gaming on PC buying a controller can be a pretty g…

Played the whole game with just the keyboard. It is perfectly doable - just requires a little bit of time to get used to. Since then it's my favourite game of the last 5 years, a real gem... what I didn't like was the lack of proper information on the screen what buttons do what ( in the inventory and so on ).

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#29

Post by zwdr »

zainny wrote: post #18

What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes, mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon their customer base and continue to sell a broken product? I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good…

FROM Software didnt intend to port Dark Souls originally, and when they did it after demand from the playerbase it was their first port. Lets hope they learnt something from it.

And making the port actually playable takes three libs, thats not /that/ much: DSfix for a better screen resolution and general candy DSMfix for better mouse controls DSCfix to instantly play with Windows-Live-Friends

Re: A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

#30

Post by workbench »

zainny wrote: post #18

What really annoys me about Dark Souls is the shitty PC port. They're still selling tons of copies of the game for PC because of all the silly hype around it, and yet the game is virtually unplayable - even with all the mouse fixes, mods, etc. Why is it acceptable for game developers to completely abandon their customer base and continue to sell a broken product? I picked up the game during a Steam sale, spent a good…

For fuck sake, think yourselves lucky you got it at all.

Fucking entitled PC Gamers, why bother with them when you lose so many sales to piracy anyway and nothing is ever fucking good enough.

Every time Dark souls is mentioned one of you cretins has to creep out of the woodwork and complain about "muh bad port" after you all petitioned for months just to get it.

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