Dark Souls 1 vs. Dark Souls 2, and why the sequel is better

[Obscura]

Yeah I think it does buffer inputs if your character is stunned or already doing other attacks. The solution is not to button mash like a scrub and actually press what you want to do. It's not God of War.

I'm not talking about just the buffer while doing other actions (which was kept in DkS 2); I'm talking about it just delaying buttons that are pressed when nothing else is going on by absurd amounts of time, or even reversing the order of two button presses (which is something that can only happen if the input code is royally fucked up).

DkS 1's controls are fucking awful. Period.

So your issue is you wanted to carry the heaviest gear at all times and still dance about like an acrobat? The importance of Equip Load was that you had to choose your gear carefully and according to your playstyle. I thought you didn't want to stand around and tank/block hits because that's not a good action game? Well, go for lighter equipment then..

Staying under 25% (which is a necessity if you don't want to be driven insane by how long it takes to walk around the world) involves putting a billion points into endurance even with light armor. My DkS 1 character had endurance maxed and still had to wear Havel's ring despite only wearing the crimson robes for armor, just because my damage stat was strength and all of those weapons already put you over 25% without just going "herp de derp, everything in endurance!"

Totally subjective and congrats, you're the first person i've seen to claim this.

It's not subjective in the least. Dark Souls 1 is endless hallways with shield-using melee enemies (or rats that run away from you unless you decide to ignore them, thus forcing you to hunt down and kill a bunch of passive enemies; christ, The Depths are awful).

Relying on backstabs is your choice - you don't have to play like that. I say this from a PvE perspective because imo they are/should be predominantly single player experiences. PvP is just an added bonus.

Having to avoid the most effective tactics available in PvE because they look and feel stupid isn't fun and points to bad design. A good game will let you use the most effective tactics you have in any situation without being retarded.

'Enforced.' Lol, I've never been cursed by a frog. Git gud.
and 6,000 souls can be obtained in no time at all.

The ghosts in drop transient curses often enough, and there's enough of them scattered around New Londo as pickups to mean you'd rarely have to buy more of them, if at all.

The fact that you never were cursed doesn't mean that curse isn't a retarded and awful mechanic. Likewise, ghosts dropping transient curses is based on RNG luck; I know people claim it happens, but in my run, I never had a ghost drop one.

*ahem* "lool casul game wtf is diz shit you should have to earn your powerups"

Yeah man, mindless grinding is how you make a game not "casual". The Final Fantasy series sure is hradcoar!

Maybe this is a PC issue but stop dressing up your opinions as fact. DS1 looks great.
Fine, the PC master race can complain about how such and such isn't optimised but to call it baboon-ass ugly is moronic.

Sorry, but there's a reason why games prior to Quake (read: prior to the advent of "realistic" shadows in the environment to provide contrast) used textures with multiple dominant colors to provide contrast. Having "modern" style "detailed with little contrast" textures with completely flat lighting in every location is a total fucking eye abortion. That's not debatable; it's From doing stupid shit that developers knew better than to do 15 years before Dark Souls.

Get gud. Also you placed the Lordvessel without him, that's what pisses him off, not just falling down.

It's still fucking retarded design that the game says "oh, you did this one random thing with no real indication that you shouldn't? WE LOCK YOU OUT OF THE WHOLE STORY NOW LULZ".

It's still your choice to exploit that AI. Don't blame your tunnel vision on the game.

See what I said above about how "good games don't make me limit my tactics".

Christ, define worthless boss.
-Pinwheel is a pushover, yes.
- Bed of Chaos is a bizarre kind of puzzle boss experience and very annoying
The others, man wtf are you talking about.

Hey, I'm not the person here who first used that term.

That said: Seath is fucking awful, since all you do is get behind him and slash.
Centipede Demon literally doesn't work. If he jumps on you, just take it and heal; then he's stuck and literally won't attack anymore, but you can still slash him to death.
Four Kings is a "mash RB!" damage race.
Iron Golem literally can't hit you if you just get under him.
Ceaseless Discharge is a retarded gimmick boss.

EDIT:

The interaction with Frampt doesn't lock you out of the story. It is PART of the story. It is also worth noting it has no impact on the story ending but just removes frampt as a vendor for the rest of the game. So its an inaccurate assessment.

If he goes away before telling you anything (and Kaathe goes away with him), and you don't find Ash Lake, you have no idea what's going on at all for the entire second half of the game beyond "well, there's this option to 'offer lord souls to the Lordvessel', I guess that's what I should do". There's individual areas you can learn the backstory of, but the overall story of "wtf are these lordsouls, and why should I care?" is entirely gone.

[Bananamatic]

if you get behind seath he'll pretty much one shot you with his tail

[Obscura]

That's not what I've seen; whenever I got next to his tail, he just kept trying to curse in front of him, and tried to slowly rotate to face me.

My former roommate, who loved the game and played the shit out of it (for the record: of the close to 500 hours of Dark Souls 1 on my Steam account, only about 60 were played by me; the rest was all by my roommate), reports the exact same experience.

[Bananamatic]

that's only his side tails, get next to the big one and he'll smash you with it

ceaseless discharge is actually a pretty cool boss

[CMoon]

Hope we can all play nice here. Game mechanics / design discussion >>> ad hominem attacks

That's not what I've seen; whenever I got next to his tail, he just kept trying to curse in front of him, and tried to slowly rotate to face me.

My former roommate, who loved the game and played the shit out of it (for the record: of the close to 500 hours of Dark Souls 1 on my Steam account, only about 60 were played by me; the rest was all by my roommate), reports the exact same experience.

Killed several times by Seath going for the tail cut. If he didn't do this, you got lucky.

Also noting the 60 hours. I know this sounds crazy since so many games are exhausted in 10 hours, but I have probably put somewhere near 1000 hours into DS1 and about 110 hours into DS2 and will probably return to it on the ps4 once the weapon degradation bug is patched. Despite the bad taste in your mouth, it might be worth going back, trying some new builds, low level runs, etc.

Centipede Demon literally doesn't work. If he jumps on you, just take it and heal; then he's stuck and literally won't attack anymore, but you can still slash him to death.
Four Kings is a "mash RB!" damage race.
Iron Golem literally can't hit you if you just get under him.
Ceaseless Discharge is a retarded gimmick boss.

Centipede demon isn't my favorite boss, but I've never had the experience you describe. Reminds me of the memory leak problem with bloodborne. Check out some videos; centipede does not normally 'get stuck and do nothing', but is instead extremely aggressive.

Four Kings is a fantastic fight if you don't go in with MASSIVE armor and poise. Then the game becomes a damage race (extreme stamina management!) before the next king shows up. Nito can be cheesed the same way (havel's/wolf ring/etc.) and that option is there for people who want an easy win, but that doesn't mean that is all those bosses have to offer. Please try these bosses again under conditions where you can't get hit!

Iron Golem has a potentially instant death grab when you stand underneath him. Again, it sounds like you were very lucky not to see this since he can throw you right off the bridge.

Ceaseless Discharge is a story boss, and not the best, but try fighting him legitimately (I'm a coward and cheese him!)

The interaction with Frampt doesn't lock you out of the story. It is PART of the story. It is also worth noting it has no impact on the story ending but just removes frampt as a vendor for the rest of the game. So its an inaccurate assessment.

If he goes away before telling you anything (and Kaathe goes away with him), and you don't find Ash Lake, you have no idea what's going on at all for the entire second half of the game beyond "well, there's this option to 'offer lord souls to the Lordvessel', I guess that's what I should do". There's individual areas you can learn the backstory of, but the overall story of "wtf are these lordsouls, and why should I care?" is entirely gone.

Actually virtually all the souls games (and maybe bloodborne too) are pretty much identical in this regard of not telling you lore. During one playthrough you learn certain information, then in another you discover something new. When Dark Souls first came out, we had no idea about Ash Lake. Most players will never discover Kaathe, Gwyndolin or purchase the DLC. All of these are essential for understanding the 'story', but DS does its best to hide it from you.

[qmish]

Why can't you love both, dammit

[Bananamatic]

I had the stuck boss issue with looking glass knight, he attacked me once and then just stood there for the rest of the fight regardless of what I did

maybe I should get SOTFS, I wanted to try out the DLC at least and it's somehow cheaper than the season pass

[Obscura]

Also noting the 60 hours. I know this sounds crazy since so many games are exhausted in 10 hours, but I have probably put somewhere near 1000 hours into DS1 and about 110 hours into DS2 and will probably return to it on the ps4 once the weapon degradation bug is patched. Despite the bad taste in your mouth, it might be worth going back, trying some new builds, low level runs, etc.

I actually did try going back to Dark Soul 1 a couple weeks ago with a different build (a Dex-based no-shield build using a Scimitar and a bow). I got to the Dragon Bridge past Taurus Demon before deciding "the combat system in this game is driving me nuts with the constant circling and aggroing enemies one at a time with the bow, why am I still playing this?" and abandoning it.

Centipede demon isn't my favorite boss, but I've never had the experience you describe. Reminds me of the memory leak problem with bloodborne. Check out some videos; centipede does not normally 'get stuck and do nothing', but is instead extremely aggressive.

I've seen other people report the same issue with Centipede. From what I've read, I think it's a case of how well the jump attack lands on you; if you actually end up "inside" of him and don't roll out, he'll just sit there.

Four Kings is a fantastic fight if you don't go in with MASSIVE armor and poise. Then the game becomes a damage race (extreme stamina management!) before the next king shows up. Nito can be cheesed the same way (havel's/wolf ring/etc.) and that option is there for people who want an easy win, but that doesn't mean that is all those bosses have to offer. Please try these bosses again under conditions where you can't get hit!

The Four Kings fight is going to be awful regardless because the "abyss" environment means you have literally no depth perception against them and so you can't really position yourself precisely. Almost everyone I've ever seen talk about the game did Four Kings the "damage race" way on at least their first character. I didn't know Nito could be cheesed like that; I actually thought he was one of the better bosses in the game, although I'd also imagine that one of those faith weapons that can permanently kill the Skeletons would really screw the fight up.

Ceaseless Discharge is a story boss, and not the best, but try fighting him legitimately (I'm a coward and cheese him!)

I guess the big problem I have with him is that the "gimmick" way (which appears to be the intended way, since it's something that From clearly added intentionally instead of just being a random glitchy thing) has no actual interesting action taking place; you just run to the door, and that's it. Compare the DkS 1 gimmick/puzzle bosses to the DkS 2 gimmick bosses; Executioner's Chariot is a gimmick, but it creates some cool moments (hiding in the niches from the chariot while the skeletons surround you from better angles, trying to run forward to take out the Necromancers and then trying to kill them fast before the next "pass" of the chariot), turning on the lights doesn't just end the Lost Sinner bossfight (his speed and fast recovery actually gave me some issues ever after turning the lights on), RRV is just awesomely fun with the Doom slaughtermap-style monster-herding/crowd control tactics, and Freja is silly but inoffensive. Mytha and Nashandra were both basically total failures, though.

Actually virtually all the souls games (and maybe bloodborne too) are pretty much identical in this regard of not telling you lore. During one playthrough you learn certain information, then in another you discover something new. When Dark Souls first came out, we had no idea about Ash Lake. Most players will never discover Kaathe, Gwyndolin or purchase the DLC. All of these are essential for understanding the 'story', but DS does its best to hide it from you.

Doesn't Frampt have dialogue that'll give you some idea of what's going on? That's what I was told when I mentioned my experience of "he disappears, and then I have no direction in the endgame other than the option to offer souls to the lordvessels" to some friends who are fans of the game.

[Bananamatic]

I actually did try going back to Dark Soul 1 a couple weeks ago with a different build (a Dex-based no-shield build using a Scimitar and a bow). I got to the Dragon Bridge past Taurus Demon before deciding "the combat system in this game is driving me nuts with the constant circling and aggroing enemies one at a time with the bow, why am I still playing this?" and abandoning it.

I never used a bow to pull enemies 1 at a time or backstabbed everything (especially not at the undead burg where everything is a pushover), the game gives you plenty of crowd control with melee if you position yourself correctly

didn't abuse shields either, just roll through the attack and then counter or hit them before they hit you, or just take advantage of having a longer weapon and let the enemies run into it

if you need to pull shitty hollows 1 at a time or circle backstab every single one, you kinda do need to git gud

[Ed Oscuro]

I will eventually get around to posting a good response to this thread, but that might have to wait until next week. I do want to point out that all my experience is on the ps3, and this might be enough to change one's attitude on the games since From was apologetic about their PC port of dark souls, where it now seems like DS2 was designed for the pc from the ground up.

If anything, DSfix by Durante makes (made?) me more bullish on DS1 than DS2. I've yet to play DS2 though, but stuff like not being able to play at 60Hz makes me sad

I did read some report about FPS issues with Steam (post-GFWL) and DSfix versions after 1.9, or something, but I've not played since the update yet.

[Obscura]

I've yet to play DS2 though, but stuff like not being able to play at 60Hz makes me sad

...What? DS2 runs at 60FPS on PC (and on XB1 and PS4, apparently) without any mods at all.

[Bananamatic]

the funny part is that the dks2 port which was "made for PC" has more 60 fps issues than the user patched dks1 port where you only fall through a ladder sometimes

[Obscura]

Given that the SotFS console versions have those same "problems" with regards to weapon degradation and enemy attack speed, I'm pretty sure that's how From intended it to play.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hitting dead bodies does more durability damage - that's as intended. But the framerate-induced differences obviously aren't. (More info on that here.)

[Obscura]

It shows that framerate changes things within the game engine (which I've never debated). It doesn't show whether the 30 FPS or the 60 FPS versions of this are what From intended. Given that these things (which they knew about, given how much people have talked about them for the last year) were in the PS4 and XB1 updated re-releases, I think it's clear that the 60 FPS version is "how it's supposed to work" and the PS3/X360 versions are the "bugged" ones.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm not sure we're actually talking about the same thing here. You have to execute some pretty complicated mental gymnastics to believe that.
http://kotaku.com/long-ignored-dark-sou ... 1698512244

“Fixed issue whereby weapon durability was decreased drastically when used on enemy corpses, friendly characters, etc.”

and

“The fix will be issued for PS4, Steam and Xbox One, and will be apparent for people running the game at 60fps as the durability decrease rate is linked to the frame rate,” said the company. “We are still working on the exact release date for the patch, which will also fix additional issues not just durability, and will follow up with the date as soon as possible.”

By your reasoning, they "changed" the 60Hz behavior but will leave the "buggy" 30Hz console ports as is. Even if there were a good reason to believe this (there isn't), it's a distinction that doesn't matter and which Namco / From themselves have denied. Of course, at launch there were yet other dfferences (speed, riposte damage - note that sometimes ripostes at 60Hz kill an enemy, but not at 30Hz; in DkS1 also one-shot ripostes seem rare when dealing with the heavier enemies, so there's an argument from the series tradition against the increased damage). The important point is nobody intentionally publishes a game with differences in durability and speed across framerates.

I'm not sorry to say that I think weapons breaking in 23 normal hits doesn't pass the laugh test, and From / Namco agree, along with pretty much the entire community..

[Obscura]

I'm not claiming that their engine isn't kinda crappy in that it can't handle differing framerates. The only question is "which one is the intended one".

The fact that durability, riposties, Alone Knight Captain attacks, etc. weren't changed in the PS4/XB1 versions on release indicates that the 60FPS version was the way it was intended to work, and it's just another thing that was screwed up on the PS3/X360 versions. It's really clear that the PC actually was the lead platform -- just look at how much the graphics were compromised late in development just to get it slightly playable on the consoles at the time (and it still has massive framerate issues on the PS3/X360, even after the last-minute changes).

Just because they plan on changing it doesn't mean they didn't intend for it to work that way in the first place -- see all 9 million balance patches. Low durability made perfect sense with the new repair mechanics -- unlike DkS 1, you can't screw yourself over by not buying a weapon repair box, but you actually have to think about weapon durability over the course of normal play now and possibly actually have backup weapons. It's obvious that this is what they wanted with the new durability system, and "free full repair on bonfire rest" should have made this clear to absolutely everyone. Basically, people whined, they gave in. That simple.

EDIT: Not to mention that for the previous year, From claiming that weapons breaking in just a few hits was "working as intended". They only changed their tune recently when the backlash intensified thanks to that stupid Kotaku article.

[Ed Oscuro]

The only question is "which one is the intended one".

Maybe you didn't catch my edits.

(Almost?) everybody is pretty clear that From / Namco ignored the issue for a year. They've finally caught it, so your making an argument now about intention is not very charitable to their intentions, at the very least. Credit where credit's due for finally fixing it. Or did you think that they should have "fixed" it the other way around, speeding up movement, adding easier riposte one-shots, and throwing durability down the tank? I'm afraid as long as you have this position there is no way most people will acknowledge it as sensible.

[Obscura]

Define "ignored". They've commented on the PC weapond durability multiple times. It's not like they just now caught it.

Unless you think that they're dumb enough that they didn't watch the 60 vs. 30 FPS videos that proliferated after the game's initial release. I guarantee that they knew about the differences, though. I mean, it's not just durability; certain enemies behave entirely differently. There's no way you wouldn't catch it.

(And yes, they should have fixed it the other way around on the PS3/X360 versions if they were going to touch anything at all. Riposte one-shots are fine, since parry has startup frames in this game -> can't do it on reaction like in Dark Souls 1. Notably, faster movement and the "super-fast" Alone Knight Captains aren't being changed, which I think makes this all even clearer.)

[Ed Oscuro]

I noticed your edit just now - that's the important stuff and hopefully my explanation will convince you.

EDIT: Not to mention that for the previous year, From claiming that weapons breaking in just a few hits was "working as intended". They only changed their tune recently when the backlash intensified thanks to that stupid Kotaku article.

I read that support ticket response from Namco too. The customer was asking why hitting corpses did more damage than hits on a normal enemy. That's more reasonably spun as a different issue. However, that explanation ignores the history of the issue.

http://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/31 ... mco_forum/

It seems to be intended now, which is odd because it's incredibly unlikely that it wasn't a bug before. Before SotFS, the durability drain effect was called twice instead of once at 60 FPS:

http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comm ... ff/cq26mz5
[...]

"Blaming" Kotaku does no justice to the huge numbers of players online who were up in arms about this bug from day one. From / Namco have been fiddling with this for a while now, only now are they confident of a final fix.

Short form of history:
At release, 60Hz players have weapons break more quickly, movement is faster, get significantly more riposte damage.
At the release of SotFS, most of those issues appear fixed, but durability still decreases twice as quickly for hits on corpses and NPCs. How this happened is unlikely to be intended.
In April 2015, From / Namco announce they're hoping to fix the last reported remnants of the framerate anomalies.

There's really nothing hard to understand about this - piss-poor development practices allowing implicit assumptions about framerate lead to multiple unintended failures that didn't get fully patched out for a year.

(And yes, they should have fixed it the other way around on the PS3/X360 versions if they were going to touch anything at all. [...])

lol dis guy
eh slags off DkS1 as too slow but then wants to spend more time at the blacksmith and grinding souls for repair powder
and doesn't afraid of anything

[Obscura]

The thing that I'm finding strange about that link is the number of people reporting that durability goes down much faster in PC SotFS vs. PC Vanilla DkS2, with both at 60FPS (note, I played vanilla, not SotFS). It almost sounds as though there's another issue in SotFS's "upgraded" engine.

EDIT: There's no need to grind for repair powder. Just have more than one weapon, and switch when durability gets low. Easy, given how much Titanite you get in this game. Again, every aspect of this game leads me to belive that weapons are supposed to break easily, and you're supposed to have backups.

[Ed Oscuro]

It almost sounds as though there's another issue in SotFS's "upgraded" engine.

It's easy to have a cascade of failures from unstated assumptions in the core logic, as it's typically easier to pick away at the special case failures than try and overhaul the core (or, at least, important / entrenched code, as in a circular dependency) entirely to get rid of those assumptions.

As far as your other evidence of intention goes, again, it's much easier to assume that they straight-up fouled; either they couldn't change it in time, or hoped the community would patch it, or their much-vaunted QC is actually a myth in the gameplay realm as much as it obviously is in the programming. Service reps and PR flaks' job is wholly centered around denying the obvious, but that's definitely not serious evidence of intention. Instead I take the basic fact of a difference where it was never promoted before the releases as proof of failure to realize the intention: That is never done intentionally in the modern era of multiplat releases where any bug fix / behavior tweak is either hyped up in a "special version" or "pre-order DLC," or added well after initial release in yet another special release, or "Director's Cut;" or "gameplay tweaks or balancing" (still Namco / From aren't adopting that language; they call it an issue). It's well known worldwide by serious companies that unannounced "gameplay differences" between different platforms all intended to get the same game are not fondly received.

And even more, these discrepancies are appearing across gamers on the same platform, in a game with online elements. Nobody in their right mind would have intended some players to have to spend more worries on durability while another could run around with relative abandon, when the two can meet up at any time.

[Obscura]

Reading through that thread, SotFS apparently has some lines of code in it to give it the faster weapon degradation regardless of framerate (it checks for framerate, and if it's below a certain amount, applies the durability penalty twice). In other words, the Vanilla DkS 2 degradation experience is what's intended.

(What I suspect is happening in SotFS is that there's framerates where it'll trigger the "double penalty for low FPS", but are still high enough for the weapon to show as being "inside" the object for several frames, which would explain the issues people are having with crazy-fast degradation in SotFS compared to vanilla PC.)

EDIT: As far as PvP goes, the invader *never* has to worry about durability anyways.

[Blinge]

Don't know why I'm coming back to this thread, some sort of forum masochism I suppose.

Staying under 25% (which is a necessity if you don't want to be driven insane by how long it takes to walk around the world) involves putting a billion points into endurance even with light armor. My DkS 1 character had endurance maxed and still had to wear Havel's ring despite only wearing the crimson robes for armor, just because my damage stat was strength and all of those weapons already put you over 25% without just going "herp de derp, everything in endurance!"

Endurance maxed? This statement doesn't add up at all. how many points were actually in your endurance because I refuse to believe it was MAXED.
what weapons are you even talking about, the massive ones? Yeah, no shit they weigh a lot. The crimson robe set only weighs 9.7 ffs!

The no depth perception during Four Kings is part of the challenge of the boss.
It seems like if you know a good strategy for beating a boss its 'useless joke,' and if you had any difficulty whatsoever the boss is 'bullshit.'
done some serious minmaxing in your opinions haven't you?

Just look at the poll results mate.

[Obscura]

what weapons are you even talking about, the massive ones?

I.e., literally every single strength weapon.

It seems like if you know a good strategy for beating a boss its 'useless joke,' and if you had any difficulty whatsoever the boss is 'bullshit.'

Thanks for pointing out that you haven't actually read my posts at all. (Hint: there's bosses I've praised in my last few posts for giving me difficulties without having any stupid design. From both games, in fact.)

[Ed Oscuro]

EDIT: As far as PvP goes, the invader *never* has to worry about durability anyways.

Now you're not even trying to pretend you're interested in understanding the argument. An invader might hit a 60fps player with almost nothing left in stock, or they might hit a 30fps player with everything at max durability. I know you must know this. You can pointlessly say (and, given your responses in this thread, I'm sure you would have tried) "but they might not be as you describe!" We're talking about the averages. Y'know, the things that intentional game design has to be concerned with.

"I like it" is no excuse for unintentional gameplay design and the resulting breaks and fuckery in everybody's expectations and game experience. If you like playing the game with everything broken, and without the ability to be certain your experiences will be comparable to those of other players, and if you want to imply there is a silent majority that agrees with you, why don't you scour the Internet for somebody to mod it to your liking? Once From is done with the code fixes, you won't even have to worry about unintentional FPS rate changes altering the behavior of your difficulty patch. It's almost as if you could design in changes intentionally now!

This whole argument is just one moss-slick tile away from arguing whether or not the memory leak bug in Bloodborne was bad because it was there from launch. It's clearly a bone for casuls or a gameplay tweak meant to accommodate red-eyed marathoners. Surely they intended to do it, and only because of those damn redditors is From fixing it. Nevermind that From has only pretended to make PC support - and 60Hz support by extension - a first-class experience, as compared with their actions in quickly patching on a sole platform as with the PS4-exclusive title where no doubt the extra carrot of running afoul of Sony quality policies.

Surely this is exactly the sort of thing they would have caught in the mandatory testing sessions that everybody does for memory leaks. It's a trivial error to detect - as it was caught in slightly over a week of release, if not earlier. Surely we should give no credence to the apparent argument against making shitty, obnoxious changes to gameplay based on technical alterations or the platform lotto, instead of creating gameplay mechanics that help preserve suspension of belief by having an in-world explanation, instead of 100000 lines of text by stalwart From defenders on Reddit and internet forums.

I'm agog, just agog

The most ironic bit is that actually From's port is not that bad compared with many console ports from years before. I don't have to think back many years for the absolutely abysmal, worst-ever port of Ninja Blade which they heaved off onto Iceberg Interactive. So, small steps, but clearly From is doing better now that they're back on one console exclusively. Which is a shame, since there sales are enough to warrant a realistic porting effort like most everybody else does.

[Obscura]

Now you're not even trying to pretend you're interested in understanding the argument.

True to an extent -- PvP of the "invasion" sort (as opposed to the "summon someone through a red-sign/dragon eye" sort, which will naturally have both players with max durability) is pretty much screwed up anyways between Soul Memory + Agape Ring + invasions against hollowed player who has 75% HP and one less ring slot and enemies hunting him with no summons. Why would anyone take that seriously or care about trying to balance that unbalanceable mess? It's not "real" PvP; it's just random ganking for lulz.

"I like it" is no excuse for unintentional gameplay design and the resulting breaks and fuckery in everybody's expectations and game experience. If you like playing the game with everything broken, and without the ability to be certain your experiences will be comparable to those of other players, and if you want to imply there is a silent majority that agrees with you, why don't you scour the Internet for somebody to mod it to your liking? Once From is done with the code fixes, you won't even have to worry about unintentional FPS rate changes altering the behavior of your difficulty patch. It's almost as if you could design in changes intentionally now!

If it weren't for "unintentional gameplay", the entire 2D fighting game genre wouldn't be what it is today; combos and blockstrings literally wouldn't exist. And let's not forget MvC 2, lol. If it weren't for "unintentional gameplay", Starcraft wouldn't have been the phenomenon it was. Puzzle Fighter? Entirely dependant on a glitch at high-level play, and that glitch made the game vastly better. The entire Devil May Cry series was spawned from a glitch in the engine they were trying to build what was going to be Resident Evil 4 in.

"Intentional" design isn't some inherently great thing. Bugs and exploits and weird unintentional limitations create better games sometimes. And I'm still not convinced that weapons breaking fast wasn't intentional, although, yes, they should have coded the engine so that it happened at any framerate.

Nevermind that From has only pretended to make PC support - and 60Hz support by extension - a first-class experience, as compared with their actions in quickly patching on a sole platform as with the PS4-exclusive title where no doubt the extra carrot of running afoul of Sony quality policies.

If you think that From cares about SotFS on any platform when Bloodborne is fresh, you're a fool.

Surely this is exactly the sort of thing they would have caught in the mandatory testing sessions that everybody does for memory leaks.

As someone who works in the software industry, I can tell you that no one tests for memory leaks until the customer reports an issue.

It's a trivial error to detect - as it was caught in slightly over a week of release, if not earlier.

It's only trivial to detect if you don't turn your PS4 off. From's testers probably turned their PS4s off at the end of the workday.

Surely we should give no credence to the apparent argument against making shitty, obnoxious changes to gameplay based on technical alterations or the platform lotto, instead of creating gameplay mechanics that help preserve suspension of belief by having an in-world explanation, instead of 100000 lines of text by stalwart From defenders on Reddit and internet forums.

I've already said multiple times that ideally it would work the same across platforms; my only argument is that it's more likely that the consoles are what got screwed up, not the PC. Bloodborne's issues do a great job at showing that console games aren't always airtight and perfect.

So, small steps, but clearly From is doing better now that they're back on one console exclusively.

Uh, did you already forget about the Bloodborne issues you just linked?

[Ed Oscuro]

So we're on the same page, you're saying that you think From intended gameplay to change based on whether the player was playing at 30 or 60Hz?

I have no problem if you like the changes, but your attempts to justify them as being "intentional" is just a crappy ad-hoc argument which does no justice to the developer or anybody else, and should look alien to you when applied in another context, which is all I've tried to do. I am not aware of any case, outside of an unintentional bug or easter egg, where somebody has intentionally altered game behavior radically so that playing at a different frame rate renders radical changes. In an era where people ask for universal multiplat multiplayer, nobody in their right minds would do this. The movement speed issue in DkS2 is really not far changed from the Quake III framerate bugs.

So, small steps, but clearly From is doing better now that they're back on one console exclusively.

Uh, did you already forget about the Bloodborne issues you just linked?

Once again you're not paying attention, or selectively reading. Maybe. I really can't tell, though it's not in my best interest to care.

A bit part of the nature of this discussion is the Principle of Charity. I'd like to find the reasoning behind whatever you're saying, but that doesn't mean I can take sloppy ad-hoc arguments as logical, or that to be nice to you I should fail to apply the principle to From or the fans, whose statements and opinions you seem to disregard when convenient. Set your mind at ease; nobody cares that you or don't like some particular way of playing; whether it's the result of "intentional" decisions doesn't come into it because there is a lot more at stake. Likewise part of the source of my beef with your belief about From; you're basically saying that they have no care for the obvious, painfully extended year-long backlash over the failure to provide a consistent gameplay experience across framerates (!!), nevermind that this is an issue long identified by game developers as one that should be fixed. There's a difference between hapless coding and outright intentional perversity. At the same time as all this, you keep misinterpreting what I write in strange ways.

Ninja Blade has the worst port, and From never has been taken to task for it. I guess Kotaku didn't speak loudly enough to get it fixed. Hooray?
DkS2 has a better port, done in-house, but with some selective fuckery and a year-long turn-around for fixing a major issue. This is still better than some games which don't get ports or don't ever get fixed.
Bloodborne has no ports so we really can't tell, but they've fixed the bugs with a quick turn-around. It's designed for one frame rate so maybe some of the same issues apply - who knows? They just don't apply here, so even if From's solution is "Sony is now the sugar daddy" it's still a solution as far as players are concerned.

I'm not claiming there's an improvement between DkS2 and Bloodborne in frame rate handling; but I am claiming that they are at least better positioned to provide timely action on customer issues. I have no problem if you want to characterize this as a step back in some way - it really doesn't matter to the point I'm making, once again. Your pot shots at Bloodborne (even if well deserved in another context) showing "console games aren't always alright and perfect" have literally nothing to do with this discussion.

[Obscura]

So we're on the same page, you're saying that you think From intended gameplay to change based on whether the player was playing at 30 or 60Hz?

No, I am not saying that.

I am saying that From probably intended the game to always play like it currently does at 60Hz, and changed their minds on weapon degradation recently. Evidence from the reddit shows that the things they did to try to make it play more similarly between framerates in SotFS (and again, I have only played Vanilla DkS2, not SotFS, so I can't say whether I prefer how SotFS plays) probably had the opposite effect, because the way they tried to fix it was kinda dumb. Now we know they're patching something with regards to weapon durability, although we don't know whether we're getting 30Hz vanilla durability or if they're just fixing the stupid stuff they broke in SotFS.

Ninja Blade has the worst port, and From never has been taken to task for it. I guess Kotaku didn't speak loudly enough to get it fixed. Hooray?

Probably because Ninja Blade isn't popular enough for people to care.

[Ed Oscuro]

So we're on the same page, you're saying that you think From intended gameplay to change based on whether the player was playing at 30 or 60Hz?

No, I am not saying that.

I am saying that From probably intended the game to always play like it currently does at 60Hz, and changed their minds on weapon degradation recently.

As I said before, basically you have to ignore the entire history of the game's changes for this to make sense, and the fact that at launch only one system, the "we really care about this one, I guess" broken PC port one allowed 60Hz; the PS4 and Xbox One ports you like to talk about didn't come along until November. Your argument is "I think I can imagine a way in which somehow From intended things to happen one way, but they didn't, but then bugs happened and I like it." Does a painter who releases their portrait to a client after dramatically overpainting features from when they started really "intend" the portrait to look like it did in the underpainted version, when somebody pulls out a knife and scrapes away? In no way can you really make the argument that is the face of the game From "intended" to reveal to the public. You do seem to agree with me that From doesn't always patch things immediately, so that leg of your argument never was on firm ground.

Probably because Ninja Blade isn't popular enough for people to care.

You said this why? Half of this seems to be "I LIKE IT," the other half seems to be "EVERYBODY ELSE IS AN ASSHOLE."

Your reactions to things changes dramatically depending on whether you like something or not. Bugs get fixed that erases some unintentional gameplay that you profess to like = CURSE THE LOT
Bugs don't get fixed when you don't care = TOUGH LUCK CHUMP

My heart overflows with succor and tender feelings for your miseries, truly.