Sully907

Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

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Look, I understand GFWL has problems. But at least it's relatively functional and unobtrusive now, when it's working. Which for me is majority of the time.

Don't be stupid please, thank you.

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Look, I understand GFWL has problems. But at least it's relatively functional and unobtrusive now, when it's working. Which for me is majority of the time.

Don't be stupid please, thank you.

What? Even though they have improved it since the initial release, it's still known for being a terrible pain to install and use.

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Why would any developer still do that? ;( Aren't there a million alternatives that are better by now?

They probably want to do a quick and cheap copy paste from xbox live, that is what GFWL is made for it seems.

GFWL has never worked for me. Last time I attempted to log in was last week and it took 10minutes, and it managed to keep me logged in for 30minutes.

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What? Even though they have improved it since the initial release, it's still known for being a terrible pain to install and use.

I must be the luckiest godsdamned person alive because aside from a couple initial problems when it launched, I've never had any real problems with it.

"GFWL = No purchase" still boggles my mind, either way.

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I must be the luckiest godsdamned person alive because aside from a couple initial problems when it launched, I've never had any real problems with it.

"GFWL = No purchase" still boggles my mind, either way.

Does something like "always-online DRM = no purchase" also boggle your mind?

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I'm not of the no-purchase mindset, but I really prefer not to have gfwl. I've had patching issues with it several times, including one where I had to do a crazy workaround to install the patch manually so it wouldn't crash everything ever. Their support is pretty awful too, I forgot my PW, but there wasn't a "forgot pw?" option, I had the ticket open for a week and a half, finally figured out what my pw was and never heard from them about my issue.

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Does something like "always-online DRM = no purchase" also boggle your mind?

Is GFWL always-on DRM? I can understand, if not agree with, say, not purchasing Ubisoft games for the last couple years. But if you're incensed that GFWL is always-on DRM you had better not own a single Steam game before making that argument. (Apologies if that's not what you're implying and you're just gauging my insanity. It's depth and breadth may surprise you.)

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I must be the luckiest godsdamned person alive because aside from a couple initial problems when it launched, I've never had any real problems with it.

"GFWL = No purchase" still boggles my mind, either way.

I am kind of the same way, it has almost always worked for me. There are a couple of oddities that my friends have run into with controller issues for some unknown reason but it has always been rather stable for me. The only time that I have ever had an issue was with a second hand copy of Fallout 3 that I bought that I was promised, "The code had never been used," on. Even then the problem was that the code had clearly been used.

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Is GFWL always-on DRM? I can understand, if not agree with, say, not purchasing Ubisoft games for the last couple years. But if you're incensed that GFWL is always-on DRM you had better not own a single Steam game before making that argument. (Apologies if that's not what you're implying and you're just gauging my insanity. It's depth and breadth may surprise you.)

No, sorry for being unclear. I was not trying to equate them, but I wanted to find out what sort of thing would make you understand not wanting to buy a game. So, you understand not buying a game because of always-on DRM, but not because of requiring software that you expect will make playing it a hassle or, in the worst case, impossible?

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Like I said, my confusion absolutely comes from the fact that I've never had any real problems. It's not a realistic platform to work from, but my experience has been so relatively smooth that saying you won't buy something because of its integrated system bothers me a lot.

There are people out there who won't buy anything on Steam because they think of it a lot like people have thought of Origin since it's release. Spyware, basically the devil, what have you. That gets me even more than GFWL.

In the end it's just me being needlessly annoyed at something, because I just don't get how people are having these problems when my experience has been so smooth across four different computers.

Don't mind me, I get a bit crazy-posting late at night.

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If i had to make a wild guess, the reason they're going with GFW Live is probably that it gives them a lot of pre-baked tools for securing the MP, and puts the management and policing of it on Microsoft rather than themselves.

I also don't believe that GFW Live is actually any form of always-online DRM. I just asked a friend who has spent a lot of time with a few of the GFW Live games and was told that you can play them offline just fine. (Oh, nevermind, i didn't read Toblix's final post.)

Even so, don't play Dark Souls offline, you will miss out on so much. If you don't want people invading, just don't restore to a human state, there are still other important benefits to being online with that game. Though the thing is, invasions are neither as frequent or as damaging as you might expect, the game is good about matching you only to people of your level. There are also big benefits to playing in a human state, such as the co-op summons and a lot of one-scripted-chance NPC invaders/summons with special loot drops. (Basically, if you hit those environmental flags while undead, they're gone until the next playthrough.)

Edited by Sno

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This seems likely to me too, and there may be some infrastructure work they can carry over from the 360 version which could explain them choosing it over Steamworks. I bet they'll never publically discuss this though, they'll just ignore the seething internet rage.

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This seems likely to me too, and there may be some infrastructure work they can carry over from the 360 version which could explain them choosing it over Steamworks. I bet they'll never publically discuss this though, they'll just ignore the seething internet rage.

Who knows, there might have been help porting it over and a small money hat for using GFWL. I can't think of another FromSoftware game that came out on the PC, so if this is the first one I am sure that any help they could receive to make it functional could be a deciding factor.

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They've done a couple of PC games but yeah nothing regular. I'll be surprised if they're doing it inhouse. There was a PC port of Ninja Blade.

They actually released an interesting PC tool kit in 2000 for making your own King's Field campaigns. It even exports them as standalone applications, and the license even allows you to sell them (and people have). Pretty unique.

Not that King's Field is any good... you can download the PC version attached to the tool kit on this site if you want to see for yourself.

http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/

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I feel the need to blather on about how much I love this game. It pokes so many of my soft spots that it might well be my most favourite of all of the video games.

The world design is just a thing of beauty, constantly blowing me away with its unexpected scale and intricacy. It's particularly impressive how they give these very focused levels such an expansive feel. They'll put you in a ruined city which happens to be perched in some preposterously huge underground cavern below the layer upon layer of equally dramatic scenery you've just fought your way through. Coming out of the Great Hollow into the Ash Lake for the first time recently just knocked home how lavish this all is. I can't think of a game with such an expensive looking hidden area. The perennial problem of permanently blocked off entrances that destroys any sense of place in so many games for me never becomes a problem here, I constantly feel overindulged by what's available to me.

And it's not just the looks. The level design has so many moments. I'm particularly fond of the part early in Sen's Fortress,

the first bridge with the swinging blades. It makes sense to try to knock the enemy on the bridge down into the slimy pit with an arrow. You'll probably notice that he survives the fall, what you'll probably not expect is for him to path up to your platform via a concealed ladder and an unthreatening out of reach doorway. By this point you're likely making your way accros the horrible bridge, possibly still with another enemy throwing lighting at you, and so he comes up behind you. Welcome to Sen's Fortress, learn not to panic...

The RPG system in Dark Souls is precisely my cup of tea, and it's the first game to really do it for me. A lot of very popular RPGs totally fail, they're either nothing but a horribly transparent and crude reward scheme or have some glaring issue that dissolves any satisfaction. Dark Souls feels genuinely empowering, meaningful and sufficiently mysterious. Sometimes I'll make a character just on a gradual experiemental whim, sometimes I'll do an entire playthrough where I follow a recipe and see how much of the game I can skip only getting the stuff I need.

Then there's the multiplayer. Co-oping stages+bosses are just good dumb fun, I can spend an evening just doing a load of that. It's like PSO with stangers who vanish as soon as the fight's over with barely time to bow. Being invaded while on co-op is magic. Everybody moves from chilled out PvE mode to carefully protecting the host from whatever horrible buffed up NG+ nightmare character has arrived to ruin the party.

Finally, just the on-the-ground feel is so spot on. The weight of the character, the precision, the smoothness, the camera, the sound effects. Even though I may be waiting for some convoluted PvP encounter I can happily just muck around because it all just feels so good and so effortless. I for one am glad the PC version will be controller-based, and I'm mostly a PC person.

For a while I missed some aspects of Demon's Souls but as I continue to play those feelings have evaporated for the most part. The first game very successfully created a smothering grim, etherealy bleak atmosphere. Dark Souls has some comic relief from NPCs and a number of the areas feel a lot more relaxed. It lost something to gain something. The undead berg feels too much like an easy ramping up area which detracts from the spirit of the game a little. I guess it's still a bit of a nightmare if you're new to things but the atmosphere is definitely lacking a little. Firelink could have been a more interesting hub too. There was no equivalently powerful touch, like those creepy monk boys in the Nexus. Anyway, those sorts of things seem frivalous at this point.

Right now I'm working on cloning a DEX/Faith build which looks fun. I had to join the Darkmoon covenant to get a buff miracle, which required me to win some invasions. This went a lot better than expected!

:tup:

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So i guess it is to be understood that the extra content for the PC version will be coming to the 360 and PS3 versions as DLC.

I am very happy about this news.

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Since I'd never be able to play this for even an hour, I decided to watch a playthrough on Youtube, since it seems like a fascinating and well-designed game. I'm watching this guy called Ghostrobo, who has a super-annoying commentary, but I still get to experience the game in a way. It's so awesome that such a hard-core and brutal game has become as mainstream as these games have. The character/monster design is great, especially some of the larger ones, like the stone guy without a leg and head, are great. The combat, as far as Youtube lets me experience it, feels really great, like the weapons, shields and armor have actual, physical weight that affect everything, from how the character moves and sounds, to how weapons and shields are held and swung and stabbed. The world design is really great, as well. I've always enjoyed the compact, nested type of environments where you get to see, either in big, beautiful vistas, or (even better) through cracks and small windos, where you've been and where you're going.

The messages placed throughout the game are really weird – are they constructed from some very limited set of tokens?

Also, boss battles sometimes seem to rely heavily on gaming the animation/physics system and attacking when the enemy is still finishing some slow attack move, or unable to navigate stairs or doorways. Seems a bit weird for a game with otherwise polished combat...

Also, the menus, with weird, programmer-like abbreviations like SoulsReq seem really out of place. Reckon that's a translation issue.

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Since I'd never be able to play this for even an hour, I decided to watch a playthrough on Youtube, since it seems like a fascinating and well-designed game. I'm watching this guy called Ghostrobo, who has a super-annoying commentary, but I still get to experience the game in a way. It's so awesome that such a hard-core and brutal game has become as mainstream as these games have. The character/monster design is great, especially some of the larger ones, like the stone guy without a leg and head, are great. The combat, as far as Youtube lets me experience it, feels really great, like the weapons, shields and armor have actual, physical weight that affect everything, from how the character moves and sounds, to how weapons and shields are held and swung and stabbed. The world design is really great, as well. I've always enjoyed the compact, nested type of environments where you get to see, either in big, beautiful vistas, or (even better) through cracks and small windos, where you've been and where you're going.

If you're looking forward to the PC port, i'd encourage keeping your expectations in check. From simply does not make PC games, and all indications are that Dark Souls is going to be a completely, completely straight port. No fancy control retuning, no graphics updates.

The messages placed throughout the game are really weird – are they constructed from some very limited set of tokens?

Exactly, yeah, your ability to communicate is pretty restricted. It probably allows the messages to be clearly translated across language barriers, but it's also just part of the tone for the game, player-to-player communication is very restricted. (During co-op and invasion, for example, there's no voice chat, only character emotes.)

Also, boss battles sometimes seem to rely heavily on gaming the animation/physics system and attacking when the enemy is still finishing some slow attack move, or unable to navigate stairs or doorways. Seems a bit weird for a game with otherwise polished combat...

Well, countering when the enemy is vulnerable, obviously yes. The other thing less so, this sounds like the person you're watching might not be very good, or is missing some crucial element to the battles. Regardless, trying to game the game is pretty much accepted as part of how you play, using the bow to pull enemies away from a group so you can gradually take them down one at a time, for example.

Risk management and all that, slow and cautious play.

The combat is very nuanced though, every weapon in the game has a different move set, and most are viable through to the end game if you take the time to upgrade them. (There's multiple upgrade paths on most weapons too.)

Also, the menus, with weird, programmer-like abbreviations like SoulsReq seem really out of place. Reckon that's a translation issue.

There were a lot of issues with the localization, my understanding is that From handled it in-house. (There were some misspellings and mistranslations and some other issues that they've actually tried to address in the patches.)

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Yeah, I'm not going to play it ever, which is why I'm spoiling everything on Youtube. It definitely seems like the guy's not doing combat properly. He's managed to progress to the blacksmith, but every major conflict has been handled through glitching or just running for dear life.

I can't even imagine playing a game where you invest half an hour or more of time in intense combat and resource management, and then you make one little mistake and all is lost. I can feel my soul rage-quitting just thinking about it.

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I think it takes a certain mindset, because playing that game, i don't feel like i've achieved nothing when i die.

What i've gained is knowledge of the area, and a better idea of how to tackle it. (So, i guess, a tolerance for trial and error gameplay is prerequisite.)

I mean, and you can still do corpse runs to get your souls and humanities back, and you never lose items when you die. (So you can totally do a suicide run for a loot chest.)

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Also, boss battles sometimes seem to rely heavily on gaming the animation/physics system and attacking when the enemy is still finishing some slow attack move, or unable to navigate stairs or doorways. Seems a bit weird for a game with otherwise polished combat...

If you think taking advantage of recovery animations is "gaming the animation system", you must not play very many action games. Waiting for the right time to attack and punishing your opponent when they overextend themselves is literally the foundation of good melee combat in pretty much every game that features it. Taking advantage of pathfinding mishaps is definitely possible sometimes, although it's by no means the only way to deal with those enemies.

There were a lot of issues with the localization, my understanding is that From handled it in-house. (There were some misspellings and mistranslations and some other issues that they've actually tried to address in the patches.)

From handled the voice acting themselves, which is why it's oddly precise and has that sort of poetic quality to it, but also features some hilarious turns of phrase. Namco Bandai did the menus and text, which is why it's the worst translation I've seen in a AAA game in a decade.

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If you think taking advantage of recovery animations is "gaming the animation system", you must not play very many action games. Waiting for the right time to attack and punishing your opponent when they overextend themselves is literally the foundation of good melee combat in pretty much every game that features it. Taking advantage of pathfinding mishaps is definitely possible sometimes, although it's by no means the only way to deal with those enemies.

I'm not King of action games or anything, and obviously mêléè combat would include a lot of timing attacks and so on. This isn't what I'm referring to, rather some more extreme cases where particular attack/movement animations last for so long, it's almost like they couldn't come up with a proper "weakness". To clarify, an enemy exposed by being stunned by something, or overreaching and having to recover etc. is not what I'm referring to, but rather just slow, drawn out regular movements that look unnatural in combat. I know it's not uncommon in action games, but the regular combat animations are so good in Dark Souls, I guess they just stick out a bit more.

From handled the voice acting themselves, which is why it's oddly precise and has that sort of poetic quality to it, but also features some hilarious turns of phrase. Namco Bandai did the menus and text, which is why it's the worst translation I've seen in a AAA game in a decade.

I love the dialogue. The weirdness and creepiness of the environment is only amplified by the weird and creepy characters you encounter. The dialogue is definitely Japanesy, with strange phrasing and long, drawn out laughs.

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An LP semi-blind run that has commentators with good voices, 'blix.

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Thanks! I've already invested a couple of hours in this first one, though. I'll probably see how it turns out, but I'll definitely keep this as a backup. Or maybe I'll watch both in parallel.

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