Bjorn

Hawt

That's one of the very few games I have bought on the promise of what it might be. I had really given up on it already.

Drangleic is pretty intentionally supposed to be an entire country though, while Lordran was...a city-state? Or a kind of Mt. Olympus place? It was all condensed right there. Which doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, but made for some great design in some areas. I overall like the world design of DS1 better, but I can appreciate that they were trying to convey the sense of a much larger land in DS2. When you go through tunnels, I think it's meant to feel that you are actually traveling much further than you are (as evidenced by what you can see in the distance and the map). This is not the home of the gods. This is a land of men, with cities, villages, and forts. Babies were born and grew to be men who eventually died or hollowed. There is a sense humanity to the world of DS2 that I don't think is present in DS1. DS1 is much more alien. As a human, you are a trespasser in Lordran. An interloper. Drangleic may not have been your home, but it could have been. It is one of the things I've grown to like about DS2's world design compared to Lordran.

For those of you who struggled with beating the super bullshit optional boss we've been talking about, watch someone take it on like a champ. On the pilgrims of the dark, once you are done with it, you can have some fun by

They called a major overhaul to the game the New Game Enhancements (NGE). It completely re-did all character classes, skills, and how you level up. They deleted multiple classes completely and went with a more traditional "level" system for characters. Pre-NGE you leveled each skill independently and it was possible to mix and match a variety of classes/skills. There wasn't a traditional level cap, you had a fixed number of skills you could master, which allowed for a pretty neat level of character customization. It also unlocked the Jedi class for everyone. Pre-NGE it had taken a major investment in time to unlock the Jedi class and Jedis were very rare because of that. It was released along with a major expansion, but was unannounced and dropped on players without warning or discussion. Something like NGE might have been necessary to attract new players, I can't speak to that. But how they did it and how they handled the community were a complete disaster. UO must have drawn a ton of inspiration from the various MUDs that predated it, but I couldn't point to any specific influences.

Moment of self awareness time. In another thread, SWG came up. There is nothing Star Wars related that I enjoyed more than the pre-NGE version of that game. When the NGE destroyed my character (by completely removing its class from the game), and radically changed the game I loved, I bailed on it, and in many ways lost any particular affection for Star Wars. The new trilogy was proving to be disappointing, and the only thing about Star Wars I really cared about had been quite literally deleted from existence. I think there's an analogy there for the people who enjoyed and got into the EU stuff. At least it still exists, but now there is the unknown of whether there will be new things that will be as good, or will it be the EU equivalent of the NGE. So maybe an earlier me understands and sympathizes with those feelings better than I had realized.

A decade ago I probably could have spoken extensively about all the things going on around SWG and the NGE and how Sony handled it, but it seems like I've actually forgotten a lot that stuff. I just remember the good times, and the crushing disappointment when the game I had spent so much time in had ceased to be. It was like a thousand voi....sorry, I'll stop. You'd think with so many case studies on how not to manage/develop an MMO that more people would get it right eventually.

From Software: Masters of reverse psychology.

That's certainly possible. It was the easiest one to do for me. But the ones with the jars caused me several problems.

The jars do count, they are the only/best option for a couple of spots. But I *think* that you want to roll through the jars last and do any buffs first. My experience was that rolling through the jars, then buffing resulted in my death, while the reverse let me get the item (and sometimes still die, but I got the item at least). The water doesn't last very long either. You need to haul ass, and sometimes it's better to put the Silvercat ring on and make some long falls to get to the items as quickly as possible. Being soaked feels like it lasts 30 seconds, tops. Maybe as little as 15 or 20 once you've hit burning ground. As for the lockstones:

I'm with Sno on this one. Yes, I could criticize DS2. It ain't perfect. But I would rather play it than pretty much anything else released in the last year. Short version of my praise/criticism is that overall I think it is mechanically better, more diverse and balanced while having a less brilliant world. PvP and co-op are both much improved.

That sounds awesome! I loved finding out of the way places like that. I spent lord knows how much time just exploring. Particularly in the early days before vehicles and I was one of the few Master Rangers on our shard, which meant that I could actually get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time (hunting groups got tired of me literally running circles around asking them if they could go any faster up that hill). Being a Master Ranger was the best and worst gaming decision I ever made. Arguably one of the least useful classes ever in an MMO or RPG, and yet so gloriously rare that it was neat to be one. Plus I got to make baller tents that were great for impromptu dance parties. And then SOE decided that instead of fixing any of our broken skills, or actually making our useful skills on par with other classes, that they would just eliminate us from the world completely. I really can't think of another decision where a dev gave a bigger finger to a portion of their user base than by just hitting the DEL key on an entire class (plus a few other classes with it).

SWG was the last MMO I played, and the one that made me swear off of ever playing another one. Not because it was bad, I fucking loved SWG pre-alltheridiculouschangestheymade. I just decided I could never sink that kind of time into another game.

Just reading the name Freezepop got Super Sprøde stuck in my head. Which is not a bad thing. throw your undies on the stage.....shop at targhey...

They aren't licensing any music, it's all going to be in-house produced music according to the description.

Good news on the crowdsourcing front though, the most important game of this generation has been funded. Edit: A legendary post suited for a new page.

Why isn't all that information in the Kickstarter if they are willing to publicly talk about it in an IGN article? I'd call it dishonest if they weren't giving interviews about it, but that's the kind of information that ought to be in your KS description somewhere. Particularly if you're going to give what is clearly a line of pure bullshit for why there isn't PC development. Just say, "Sony owns the rights and we are partnering with them on this project assuming that we can prove that there is enough fan interest to make another one." There is nothing wrong with that, and I support hybrid/multiple funding options for projects. But you have to be honest about it to your backers.

I am super disappointed at my search for Dark Souls Flowcharts. Figured there had to be a few funny ones out there. What do you need the fire resist for? If it's to reach some difficult loot, some suggestions were made not too long ago in this thread, probably spoilered.

Woot! I never played either NOLF, so this is really exciting. WTF? Did you see their answer as to why they aren't doing PC? Did either of those games ever go to non-Sony hardware? Could publishing rights be tied up with Sony, but they don't want to come out and say that? Because if they did, then people would be asking, quite rightly, why the fuck Sony isn't ponying up the money for a game they have the publishing rights to. I usually don't speak negatively about Kickstarters, but something feels off about this one.

No, just the unique cutscene for making the augmentation facility and the tech reports on each of the augments, but nothing really story related. You should have plenty of material by mid-game to do some experimentation with both though. They really compliment each other more than picking one over the other. Just make sure you're collecting Meld on all missions, which on Normal shouldn't be too hard. And I think going with a Normal playthrough first is actually a good idea. All the new stuff takes a bit to figure out what you like and don't like, and trying to do that with fewer resources in Classic would probably be detrimental, to me.

I feel a little gross using it, to be honest. I was just floored by how effective it is. I do really, really like the moveset though. It kind of blows when a weapon as unique as this feels so unbalanced. I guess I could always just take it raw or infuse it and see if that makes it feel less grossly OP. Or I might just respec towards the Stone Blade and farm a few of them. I'm at the point of the game where materials are plentiful. As long as I'm specced to Mundane though, I'll probably mess around for a bit with other Mundane weapons, try out a dual dagger build, the ladle and the work hook.

I'd vote for making the run to Ash Lake. It's not that far from the bonfire you can warp to, and it is well worth it. It's actually one of my favorite areas in the game in terms of atmosphere.

I was going to come in and post this morning about durability as well. Interesting observation about poise break killing it, that's not something I've paid attention too. Halberds seem to degrade faster than something like the club/mace, and I've wondered if it is because Halberds have 2 hitboxes, one for the blade and one for the haft (hitting with the blade does full damage, haft does partial damage). If degradation is hitting both at the same time, and there is some extra degradation that comes from poise break, that would explain it. If you want to see nutty degradation though, pull out a twinblade. I decided to try them out last night, as the move set seems more appropriate to Donatello than a Halberd, and I have several varieties of them now. I had a Stone Twinblade +10 and a non-upgraded Dragonrider Twinblade. Each have 120 durability, and they melt like butter on a hot day. In the Lost Bastille, I made a quick run from the Servants Quarters to Straid, killing 2 of the big guys and 10 of the little explodey guys. The Stone blade lost 99 durability in that run! The Dragonrider one lost about 80 durability. I could just watch durability plummet during a combo, losing between 4 and 12 durability per kill. There didn't seem to be any consistency. If you wanted to be a dedicated Twinblade user, you would have to keep at least 4 upgraded ones in your inventory. Which is just dumb. Unless you use Santier's Spear, the most unique weapon in the game. I had never messed with this thing. I know it gets equal amounts of praise/hate in a lot of forums. Now I know why. Once you break the stone head off it, this thing is murder incarnate. It starts with 500 durability and this statue head stuck on the end. If you fully degrade it, the head breaks off, it gains a new moveset and it gets infinite durability. The 2-handed moveset is mostly the twinblade, but it gets the halberd dashing triple spin as well. It is the single most powerful weapon I've used, and it isn't even at full power yet. It's only downside is relatively low damage, but that can be improved by going with a Mundane build. So I respecced with my lowest stat at 17. Mundane enchants scale based on how high your lowest stat is. The base damage is halved, then they get scaling damage of 50 plus 6/level through the first 20 points (3 per level through 30 points). And I only had enough Twinkling Titanite to get it to +2. On paper, that's only a 279AR right now, but the Twinblade spins just hit so fast and often you stunlock everything without a shield to death in one combo. It has enough range that it can stunlock and kill whole groups of enemies. Even most "big" enemies only took 2 combos to take down. It kind of renders other Twinblades pointless. Infinite durability and higher poise damage completely make up for the higher damage you can get with a build tailored to one of the other blades. I practically sprinted through the Shrine of Amana and the Undead Crypt, only slowing down to pick up loot. Some other thoughts on this fight:

Nope, that's the Giant Souls only purpose I know of and you'll get more in NG+. Though it might be worth saving a couple so you don't have to hunt them all down in NG+. Actually, it might be worth saving all of them. That would let you I think the only things you lose are keys and Fragrant Branches of Yore. So if there are any statues you didn't de-petrify, go knock those out.

If you're sure you don't want the corresponding items/spell, munch away. As was just said within the last page or so though, don't munch on the ones specifically named Giant Souls. Save those.