RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

[Ziero]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

Let Demon's Souls be Demon's Souls, man. Lack of story and harsh gameplay is what its about.

Actually Demon's Souls has a fairly in depth story woven within it's harsh gameplay. But, much like the rest of the game, it isn't simply laid out for you and takes effort and skill to fully piece together the reality of the world you travel through. All the item descriptions and comments from NPCs and characters and even the names and appearances of the monsters themselves are pieces of the surprisingly deep story of the world in Demon's Souls.

But I personally suck at the game so I don't know wtf any of it means. But there's definitely a story under all that violence.

[Lmnop]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

Huh. I'm still thinking it's a pretty simplistic plot.

Remember that I actually enjoyed Demon's Souls and think they did a lot right. Keeping that in mind...

Let's say I'm somewhat new to the game. I made my character, I'm doing that first stage where you don't have anything to spend your souls on 'til you beat Phalanx. I have some troubles at first getting used to the game, but eventually those dredges are nothing to me. They're weak and easy.

I continue through the stage. I'm feeling pretty good about killing a counter-attack killing a blue-eyed knight when I walk down a staircase right into a huge pile of exploding barrels as that dude flings his firebomb into them. So I'm dead and I'm pissed because I didn't even see it coming.

Ok, I respawn at the beginning. These starting dredges are fucking easy. There's no difficulty in them, anymore. But I'm frustrated about dying to EXPLOSIONFACE so I don't care to stop and fight every single dredge. Now I'm charging through a stage, taking lots of damage because the very weak and not difficult at all, you motherfuckers dredges keep catching up (really, cornering me with critical mass) and smacking me.

Now I know, "it teaches you not to mess up" and "you're supposed to be patient" and all of that shit but you WILL mess up. Of course I'm gonna try to get that purple flame shield and the rest of that loot around the dragons. And I KNOW I'm gonna die 2 times trying. And when you do, they put you in a situation where you have to follow in your own footsteps with vast tedium until you catch up to the spot where you died and you FINALLY get to think "ok, don't explode this time". Did I really need an entire stage of trash mobs to "teach me a lesson" not to let my face explode?

--

tl;dr: Actively trying to frustrate the player in order to "teach them to be patient" when patience has nothing to do with why they failed to begin with is NOT difficulty. It's the developers picking on the players and exploiting their sense of hardcore-edness.

[DakAttack]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

No. It's pretty simplistic plot.

Remember that I actually enjoyed Demon's Souls and think they did a lot right. Keeping that in mind...

Let's say I'm somewhat new to the game. I made my character, I'm doing that first stage where you don't have anything to spend your souls on 'til you beat Phalanx. I have some troubles at first getting used to the game, but eventually those dredges are nothing to me. They're weak and easy.

I continue through the stage. I'm feeling pretty good about killing a counter-attack killing a blue-eyed knight when I walk down a staircase right into a huge pile of exploding barrels as that dude flings his firebomb into them. So I'm dead and I'm pissed because I didn't even see it coming.

Ok, I respawn at the beginning. These starting dredges are fucking easy. There's no difficulty in them, anymore. But I'm frustrated about dying to EXPLOSIONFACE so I don't care to stop and fight every single dredge. Now I'm charging through a stage, taking lots of damage because the very weak and not difficult at all, you motherfuckers dredges keep catching up (really, cornering me with critical mass) and smacking me.

Now I know, "it teaches you not to mess up" and "you're supposed to be patient" and all of that shit but you WILL mess up. Of course I'm gonna try to get that purple flame shield and the rest of that loot around the dragons. And I KNOW I'm gonna die 2 times trying. And when you do, they put you in a situation where you have to follow in your own footsteps with vast tedium until you catch up to the spot where you died and you FINALLY get to think "ok, don't explode this time". Did I really need an entire stage of trash mobs to "teach me a lesson" not to let my face explode?

--

tl;dr: Actively trying to frustrate the player in order to "teach them to be patient" when patience has nothing to do with why they failed to begin with is NOT difficulty. It's the developers picking on the players and exploiting their sense of hardcore-edness.

Maybe in Demon's Souls 2 there will be a button you can press that will hand everything to you on a silver platter.

[Lmnop]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

Maybe in Demon's Souls 2 there will be a button you can press that will hand everything to you on a silver platter.

You win and you're absolutely right. I can't believe I don't possess your logical prowess.

---------- Post added at 09:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:46 PM ----------

And while I'm here, I may as well talk about what I'd like to see in a sequel:

- A little more explanation of what's what. I seem to remember some common ambiguities in figuring out what a number is even referring to. But then, it's a From Software game, and it's pretty well expected. This is pretty low priority.

- Less power in magic attack weapons. I never got into Demon's Souls "end game" with unique weapons and such, but all the good ones seem to be defined as such because they do magic damage and thus, are very hard to defend against. But for PvE, first time through the game players (that's me), getting your weapon to deal magic damage is overwhelmingly good.

- As a Continuation from above, it's very easy to disdain strength and focus solely on a weapon that adds magic or faith (or whatever stat it was) to damage. In the D&D world, we call this Single Attribute Dependency (SAD). This means a Magic-based character is likely as strong in melee as a Strength-based character while being capable of magic to boot. Once again, I didn't beat the shit out of this game. So maybe this changes with unique weapons.

- The unique gear or "ultimate weapons" themselves piss me off. It's why I never got into the online Diablo 2 scene, either. Here's all these neat gear combinations I can come up with, but why bother when X uberset is better? Why bother going for this +7 scimitar deal when you can get that giant meatcleaver thing that everyone loves? I'd rather not be put in a position where if I don't have one of 3 different items, I'm obviously The Suck. Oh, and that greatsword that's awesome at reducing magic damage. Why do I only get this trait if I'm a greatsword character? Talk about pigeonholing my character concept.

- Keep shields useful in PvP. My impression is they become useless due to all the magic damage and stuff like The Blind. Also, make them a bit less awesome for PvE. Especially for first-time-through players, the game sometimes didn't feel possible w/out 'em.

- My biggest one. Add more spells and sooner into the game. I shouldn't have to have the game almost beat just to make my spellcaster feel like a spellcaster instead of just shooting glorified blue or red arrows at everything.

[Ziero]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

Huh. I'm still thinking it's a pretty simplistic plot.

Because chances are you missed 90% of it. Again, it's something that you actually have to look for.

Did I really need an entire stage of trash mobs to "teach me a lesson" not to let my face explode?

Long story short. Yes. Though each and every stage will eventually allow you to open up a shortcut through the stage once you get far enough. And then grant you checkpoints within the stage once you kill the sub-bosses.

tl;dr: Actively trying to frustrate the player in order to "teach them to be patient" when patience has nothing to do with why they failed to begin with is NOT difficulty. It's the developers picking on the players and exploiting their sense of hardcore-edness.

Except it is your fault you died. You weren't on the look out for traps or ambushes which lay in wait all over this game and you walked face first into one. That's the whole point of that ambush. "Cheap" shots like that are exactly the type of attacks you should be on the look out for, as this game literally has tons of monsters who just sit and wait and attack you from behind.

p.s. if you took your time and explored around a bit, you would have actually found a path that lets you sneak up on him btw.

- A little more explanation of what's what. I seem to remember some common ambiguities in figuring out what a number is even referring to. But then, it's a From Software game, and it's pretty well expected. This is pretty low priority.

I'll agree that it can be kind of confusing at first, but the stats are all pretty straight forward and easy to figure out once you start getting into it. Same with AC actually.

- Less power in magic attack weapons. I never got into Demon's Souls "end game" with unique weapons and such, but all the good ones seem to be defined as such because they do magic damage and thus, are very hard to defend against. But for PvE, first time through the game players (that's me), getting your weapon to deal magic damage is overwhelmingly good.

Actually each stat has it's own best weapon, and even magic weapons can be defended against. However the best defense against any weapon is good evasion.

- The unique gear or "ultimate weapons" themselves piss me off. It's why I never got into the online Diablo 2 scene, either. Here's all these neat gear combinations I can come up with, but why bother when X uberset is better? Why bother going for this +7 scimitar deal when you can get that giant meatcleaver thing that everyone loves? I'd rather not be put in a position where if I don't have one of 3 different items, I'm obviously The Suck.

Because the Meat Cleaver is actually very easy to defend against seeing as it's slow, unwieldy and heavy. However different weapons work for different scenarios. My PvE stuff is much different from my PvP stuff, and my world 2 weapons are different from my world 4 weapons. The truly unbalanced weapons actually take literally 2-3 play throughs to obtain, giving them a good reason to be unbalanced. And fyi, the Cleaver isn't one of them.

- Keep shields useful in PvP. My impression is they become useless due to all the magic damage and stuff like The Blind. Also, make them a bit less awesome for PvE. Especially for first-time-through players, the game sometimes didn't feel possible w/out 'em.

Shields lose effectiveness in PvP not because of magic weapons, but because people will flank and backstab turtlers. In PvE most monsters aren't smart enough to do that, but many of them will just bash right through your shield regardless. I mean, you're not going to shield block skeletons or giant goblins, you need to dodge and counter to effectively fight those things.

I'm all for more balance in the game play, as is ranged attacks and magic make short work of most of the bosses, and that's kinda unfair to pure melees. But then again it's my fault for limiting myself to being a pure melee in the first place. With no actual set classes in this game, players are free to pick and choose how they wish to level up their characters and what skills and weapons they wish to use. It's a great feature, but it still favors magical attacks over pure melee skills. The simplest way to balance this out though is to feature special melee moves that you have to learn that would be similarly as strong as a magic attack or something. At least imo.

[DakAttack]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

If you played Demon's Souls without a guide of any sort I can see how things could be extremely unclear. It took me a few play-throughs before I fully understood everything and I was playing with the guide that came with the deluxe edition. Maybe it was just me, but I approached the guide like I approached the game - very cautiously. I took everything with a grain of salt.

I agree with you on your equipment points. I didn't mind that what you mostly found was somebody else's starting equipment, plus there were a few other unique sets. I didn't like how three sets stood out the most for their generous bonuses, because now everybody is wearing them. Brushwood for having the most defense and fire protection, Dark Silver for it's superb magic protection, and Gloom for its resistances. Ancient King's set was also popular due to light penalty to stamina regeneration for its defense. Shields weren't so bad. With large shields you had a few to choose from based on your play-style, but when it came to normal shields people usually went with Dark Silver for its 100% magic damage negation.

I don't see much of a problem with weapons. Few unique weapons scaled well so they were mostly trash. Sure, magic weapons could be a pain because armor generally doesn't offer much protection from it, but they don't exactly strike through shields. That's what Blind and Large Sword of Moonlight could do, but not exactly very well. Blind had an extremely short blade and, if I remember correctly, only did 50% of its damage. The Great Sword of Moonlight was just like any other large sword, slow and a stamina hog. In PvE large weapons were dangerous to wield because of how slow they are. In PvP they were ok, but mostly relied on a lucky hit or lag.

Generally, I would agree with you about SAD, but this game is different. You weren't meant to spread your points around, and even if you did it didn't mean you can beat somebody based on stats alone. You still had to fight it out. Plus, you weren't just handed a magic weapon. Ore for those weapons isn't easy to come by. Magic was powerful enough as it is, which I have a problem with.

How many different spells could you add to the game? They were already super powerful. One specific spell was usually enough to take down a boss. We didn't need anything else.

And shields are totally awesome and they're almost completely necessary to survive. It's the game. It's the harsh environment populated by demons that want to kill you and take your soul. You have to protect yourself.

[Lmnop]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

Including the double post, I promise this is my last huge post! No more!

First, thank you, Ziero, for humoring me.

Because chances are you missed 90% of it. Again, it's something that you actually have to look for.

That was me being nice about saying "I looked, I read about it. I checked it all out. I already forget it."

Long story short. Yes. Though each and every stage will eventually allow you to open up a shortcut through the stage once you get far enough. And then grant you checkpoints within the stage once you kill the sub-bosses.

You didn't address any of my points. Dredges are still pieces of shit and a waste of time. They teach me nothing and they don't make the game any more hardcore. Unless your definition of hardcore is "attempts to irritate the player for no apparent reason." In which case, yes, I love being a casual gamer because it means I'm not an idiot.

Except it is your fault you died. You weren't on the look out for traps or ambushes which lay in wait all over this game and you walked face first into one. That's the whole point of that ambush. "Cheap" shots like that are exactly the type of attacks you should be on the look out for, as this game literally has tons of monsters who just sit and wait and attack you from behind.

p.s. if you took your time and explored around a bit, you would have actually found a path that lets you sneak up on him btw.

Incidentally, I jumped over the edge and did sneak up on him my first time. My brother, however, was not so lucky. And this is luck: nowhere in the game does it tell you that if you hold against a ledge for half a second, your character will auto-leap it sometimes, if you happen to be in a spot that allows it. "Explore" that: inconsistent world interaction rules.

Actually each stat has it's own best weapon, and even magic weapons can be defended against. However the best defense against any weapon is good evasion.

Bias towards evasion? Imbalanced game design... sorry, I'll get into that later.

Meat Cleaver

An example. I don't know the uniques well.

I'm all for more balance in the game play, as is ranged attacks and magic make short work of most of the bosses, and that's kinda unfair to pure melees. But then again it's my fault for limiting myself to being a pure melee in the first place. With no actual set classes in this game, players are free to pick and choose how they wish to level up their characters and what skills and weapons they wish to use. It's a great feature, but it still favors magical attacks over pure melee skills. The simplest way to balance this out though is to feature special melee moves that you have to learn that would be similarly as strong as a magic attack or something. At least imo.

Either I'm missing something, or I agree with every word in this.

---------- Post added at 10:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:09 PM ----------

The day for double posts! Thanks for discussing instead of knee-jerking, Dak.

The Shotel was 50% damage against shielding opponents and Blind was 100%, iirc. As for SAD, my problem isn't so much with a SAD melee/caster. My problem is that it makes focusing on STR seem comparatively useless. A STR-based BARBARIAN RAWR character does maybe 5-10% more damage if he's lucky, but has nothing else going for him. He's not casting Total Protection, he's not casting heal, and he's probably not using many ranged attacks.

The spells weren't exactly balanced. I know some of the cloud spells made for very cheesy PvE. Lots of stories of casting a spell and just running away or whatever and the big bad optional boss of doom just sits in the cloud and dies, eventually. That's poor. I really liked Demon's Prank, but it was frickin' hard to use. And I really liked the idea of a sneak-like character using some magic to get the sneak attack! I would've liked some light crowd control spells, earlier access to (weak) aoe damage, fun stuff like that. There's a lot one can do w/out being overpowered. See: dragon age.

[Neverslip]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

So... as I am new to Demon's Souls and you guys are basically endgamers at it, I have a few questions.

What happens immediately after you kill another player? I don't understand what the reward for PvP is....

Is there an order to progressing thru the worlds that is best?? Right now I've just simply unlocked the .2's of each of the worlds but don't know if I should try and get thru all of 1, then all of 2, then all of 3... and maybe the order doesn't matter.

If a friend has DS, is it easy (if you're both "living") to work together or is pairing up with people actually random??

Gah... I got work/phones and came back to thise and can't remember any more questions... /sigh. Well... just expect them at another date.

[DakAttack]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

I don't know what auto-leaping you're referring to. Occasionally, if you get to close, you'll throw yourself over, but that can happen anywhere. It made getting the colorless demon's soul in 1-1 a pain in the ass.

There's a bias towards evasion because, eventually, your shield becomes useless. Where you might have been able to block a hit from one of the lesser soul-eating demons, you're being thrown off balance and opened up for a follow-up. There aren't many bosses that you could block in the first place, so here evasion helps as well.

Restarting the level is the penalty for death. You can't say the game doesn't save, because it does save about every five seconds. You can take advantage of this by pulling the internet or shutting the PS3 off and returning the game alive again before the save mechanic kicks in. Other games have penalties for dying as well, like Resurrection Sickness, respawn timers, etc. Restarting the level really fits in well with the dark atmosphere.


Neverslip-

When you kill another player it depends on which side you're on. If somebody invades your game and you defeat them you'll receive all the souls they had when they invaded. Most people don't invade with souls. If you're invading and you kill a white phantom you get their souls, and if you kill the host the invasion ends and you return to life.

You can progress through the stages however you like, but some stages may have a piece of equipment you want or some ore you might need. After 1-1, I would usually head to 4-1 to retrieve the long compound bow for taking down the dragon in 1-2, then to 2-1 for some easy ore to upgrade it a little bit.

If you and your friend are both living you wont be able to pair up. One of you will have to be dead, and you'll both need to be around the same level. Just have to dead player drop his soul sign and it should appear near the living player shortly. It's not random, anybody you see is everybody that's dropped their soul signs.

[Lmnop]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

I don't know what auto-leaping you're referring to. Occasionally, if you get to close, you'll throw yourself over, but that can happen anywhere. It made getting the colorless demon's soul in 1-1 a pain in the ass.

I take it you got your Thief's Ring by rolling off the stairs at a sufficiently high point (a silly trick -- if that were the only way to get down there, I'd be pissed since at that point, just put a jump button in your game!). If you simply press against the wall for a moment, your character runs at it and then hops over. You'll land behind what's-his-name in the gold, grab your thief's ring, and then drop off the ledge to kill some dredges (or firebomb them from above, etc). You'll notice that if you try to hop the ledge at multiple other points in the game, it simply won't let you. This keeps you from getting to ... what's her name? Esmeralda? The executioner's area. You should be able to get there (you can make larger drops elsewhere in the game, and climb over short walls just as tall) but it simply won't. So a precedent is set, and a player who's already tested trying to climb over walls isn't going to think it's possible near the Thief Ring either.

Anyway, I still feel that killing worthless dredges over and over again did nothing to teach me, and it was asinine punishment.

And I feel the pressure to point out, once again, that there's a good reason I post in every thread where Demon's Souls comes up: it's a damn good game! But since they have you guys convinced that you're HARDCORE if you enjoy redundant and frustrating game design, it breaks any desire to truly improve their game.

Anyway, you guys can continue to defend how much you love every ounce of it. I'm still waiting for a price drop to buy it and complain about my 30 hour/week addiction.

----

Also, for a game where you die as much as you do, the whole phantom vs body mechanic was horribly imbalanced. Unless you're on game+ and a real pro (as I know a lot of you guys are and I am not), you're gonna spend 80%+ of the game as a phantom. And that means wearing that fucking Cling Ring unless you're a good ranged combatant. Being a phantom shouldn't penalize melee so heavily.

[Tickmeoff]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

I walk down a staircase right into a huge pile of exploding barrels as that dude flings his firebomb into them. So I'm dead and I'm pissed because I didn't even see it coming.

You blindly walked into a trap. You deserved to die and your punishment is repeating all the shit you went through to get that far. Next time you get there you (hopefully) wont be a dumbass and walk into the same trap.

I don't see a problem here.

A little more explanation of what's what.

I can agree with this. I didn't understand things like added parameters and the like until I read about them online, so a little more explanation about the finer aspects of equipment would have been nice.

Less power in magic attack weapons. I never got into Demon's Souls "end game" with unique weapons and such, but all the good ones seem to be defined as such because they do magic damage and thus

Weapons with magic attack power attached are significantly weaker than weapons that only deal a single type of damage*, so you're wrong here. If you find one early on they will be pretty good, but late game (and especially for multiplayer) they are pretty much ass. The only exceptions are Blueblood Sword and Meat Cleaver as they can still be enchanted for even more damage.

This means a Magic-based character is likely as strong in melee as a Strength-based character while being capable of magic to boot.

Again, wrong. Magic-based weapons are significantly weaker than strength or dexterity based weapons.

* Explanation:

Let's say you have two weapons with 300 attack power.

Weapon 1 has 300 physical attack power.

Weapon 2 has 150 physical and 150 magical attack power.

When you swing weapon 1 at a target with 100 physical defense, you will deal (300-100) physical damage for a total of 200 damage.

When you swing weapon 2 at a target with 100 physical and magic defense, you will deal (150-100) physical and (150-100) magical damage for a total of 100 damage.

This obviously isn't the case all the time as some enemies will have certain weaknesses, but overall having a weapon that can't be enchanted and has to pass two different defense checks is a disadvantage.

Spells like Light Weapon add a significant amount of magic damage (200 to 300 depending on magic stat) to a weapon, but weapons with magic damage on them cannot be enchanted (there are only 3 weapons that break this rule). Thus, if you cast Light Weapon on weapon 1 you would have a weapon with 300 physical and 2-300 magical attack power, making it significantly stronger than weapon 2.

The two main exceptions are Meat Cleaver and Blueblood Sword and they are both very powerful weapons because of this, but they aren't without drawbacks. Meat Cleaver requires a very specific stat build that doesn't give you much flexibility in terms of other weaponry you could use and the Blueblood Sword has huge required stats (18 in all 4 relevant stats) and it's damage is based on your Luck stat so you end up having to spread your other stats really thin to make it work.

The unique gear or "ultimate weapons" themselves piss me off. It's why I never got into the online Diablo 2 scene, either. Here's all these neat gear combinations I can come up with, but why bother when X uberset is better? Why bother going for this +7 scimitar deal when you can get that giant meatcleaver thing that everyone loves? I'd rather not be put in a position where if I don't have one of 3 different items, I'm obviously The Suck. Oh, and that greatsword that's awesome at reducing magic damage. Why do I only get this trait if I'm a greatsword character? Talk about pigeonholing my character concept.

You're making it more and more obvious that you hardly played the game at all. In general the most effective weapons are the ones upgraded to +5 that gain additional damage based on a specific stat (ie Crushing +5 weapon for a character with high strength). There are a few exceptions like the Meat Cleaver, Keel Smasher, Blueblood Sword and a couple others that are quite good, but +5 weapons are just as effective.

I don't really understand what you mean about the scimitar +7. Are you suggesting weapons that aren't fully upgraded or aren't upgraded to get the most out of your stats should be just as good as any other weapon in the game? What would be the point of doing all the work to fully upgrade a weapon then?

Keep shields useful in PvP. My impression is they become useless due to all the magic damage and stuff like The Blind. Also, make them a bit less awesome for PvE. Especially for first-time-through players, the game sometimes didn't feel possible w/out 'em.

Semi-agree here. Have you tried a Purple Flame Shield or Knight's Shield +10 in PvP? As long as you don't play super turtle mode they're quite effective. If you want to block magic there is a shield that blocks 100% physical and magical damage that is pretty easy to obtain and upgrade. As far as PvE goes shields might be a bit too good, or it's just a little too easy to obtain high end shields like the Purple Flame Shield.

By the way, there are only two weapons that ignore shields: Blind and Large Sword of Moonlight. Blind is a very shitty weapon that requires significant investment into dexterity to use properly, and Large Sword of Moonlight is actually a very good weapon but requires high Faith to wield. It's also fucking huge and looks very distinct so if you see someone using it that's a pretty big clue to mix up your strategy a bit instead of relying on your shield.

My biggest one. Add more spells and sooner into the game.

I could see them adding some different utility spells (like spells that root or slow enemies or stuff like that) but I think the progression of damage dealing spells is fine. The starting ones are very potent and the boss souls that can be made into more powerful spells are easily obtained.

Also, for a game where you die as much as you do, the whole phantom vs body mechanic was horribly imbalanced. Unless you're on game+ and a real pro (as I know a lot of you guys are and I am not), you're gonna spend 80%+ of the game as a phantom. And that means wearing that fucking Cling Ring unless you're a good ranged combatant. Being a phantom shouldn't penalize melee so heavily.

Actually, unless I really want to just get invaded for some pvp I generally suicide my body in the Nexus every time I get it back. There is scarcely a reason to wear something other than the Cling Ring and you do more damage in soul form anyway.

I pretty much play melee builds only too. The extra damage you deal in soul form is enough to offset the lost HP. This is personal preference though. I know a lot of people refuse to play without their body and the ability to summon blues for help.

[Lmnop]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

You blindly walked into a trap. You deserved to die and your punishment is repeating all the shit you went through to get that far. Next time you get there you (hopefully) wont be a dumbass and walk into the same trap.

I'll "learn" by fighting the same idiot trash mobs for 20 more minutes. No, that's not intelligent. It frustrates me so that next time I come to an area where I should proceed with caution, I'm frustrated at the game and I'm more likely to blindly rush in. This doesn't make me less of a gamer, somehow. It means I'm the kind of person who gets irritated when they see blatant attempts by developers to extend gameplay.

Weapons with magic attack power attached are significantly weaker than weapons that only deal a single type of damage*, so you're wrong here. If you find one early on they will be pretty good, but late game (and especially for multiplayer) they are pretty much ass. The only exceptions are Blueblood Sword and Meat Cleaver as they can still be enchanted for even more damage.

My experience was simply that things that have any amount of magic resistance are the exception. Your 100 defense/100 magic defense example is true, sure. But it seems like 90% of the time, you're looking at 100 defense/0 magic defense. Or at least 100/50. But this may change in the later stages of the game/later playthroughs. That reminds me...

You're making it more and more obvious that you hardly played the game at all.

I pointed out (multiple times) that I never got to the end stuff. I did the first 2-3 portions of all 5 worlds, and made about 7 different characters just to see how the game plays differently based on different starting stats/gear.

Obviously, I never played the game through multiple times. So thank you for the enlightening examples.

As for Scimitar +7, what I mean is that a game should never give you the option of upgrading 40 different weapons, and then obsolete them with about 5 different weapons. I'm not saying "how unfair! Scimitar +7 is better than Scimitar +6!" I'm saying "Scimitar +7 took a lot of work. Why is it so inferior to <named, special scimitar weapon>?"

That said, your points do make me feel that it's less of an issue than I feared.

Semi-agree here. Have you tried a Purple Flame Shield or Knight's Shield +10 in PvP?

I believe I actually learned from you that most people don't use shields unless it's purple flame. >.>

Good to know about how few weapons can overcome shields, though. Magic damage notwithstanding.

re: spells. I wouldn't mind the whole lot of them being taken back to the drawing board and rebalanced. It sucks how many spells don't have much purpose because there are better ones (and I don't just mean the obviously "next tier" spell).

Cling Ring

...requires you to give up another ring. I feel like a lot of the "archetype" definition stuff came through rings (thief's ring, fragrant ring, ok that's all I remember). And I read about the supposed increase in damage, but I was never able to prove I was doing more. Things left with a speck of health after 1 hit when corporeal were still left with a speck as a phantom.

Anyway, thanks for the info. I've already forgotten a lot.

...But I still think a Demon's Souls 2 could be twice as robust, twice as challenging, and half as retarded in its concepts of "teaching the player".

[Ziero]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

That was me being nice about saying "I looked, I read about it. I checked it all out. I already forget it."

Part of the fun of the story is exploring through the game world and piecing it together yourself. But even as is, for a dungeon crawlers, the story, and potential behind the story, is pretty deep.

You didn't address any of my points. Dredges are still pieces of shit and a waste of time. They teach me nothing and they don't make the game any more hardcore. Unless your definition of hardcore is "attempts to irritate the player for no apparent reason." In which case, yes, I love being a casual gamer because it means I'm not an idiot.

You made a stupid mistake, thus you get punished for it. Dealing with those "worthless dredges" is the punishment for rushing blindly into the one of many traps littering this game. If the monsters didn't respawn or you didn't have to start over from the beginning again, what punishment would there be for doing something you, by all accounts, shouldn't be doing?

Incidentally, I jumped over the edge and did sneak up on him my first time. My brother, however, was not so lucky. And this is luck: nowhere in the game does it tell you that if you hold against a ledge for half a second, your character will auto-leap it sometimes, if you happen to be in a spot that allows it. "Explore" that: inconsistent world interaction rules.

That "inconsistency" is just one of many tricks and secrets you should be looking for. Consider it a secret pathway, much like how in some areas you can bust barrels and crates to open up a door, or hit a wall to uncover a secret tunnel. Hell, in 2-2 you can literally circumvent the entire stage right at the start if you can drop down the right way. There are hidden paths, secrets and tricks all over the game world, and it's up to other people to lead you to these places via the in game message system. And if no one left a message before you, then why don't you leave one yourself to help any future travelers from missing the same secrets or falling for the same traps.

Bias towards evasion? Imbalanced game design... sorry, I'll get into that later.

For much of the game, simply blocking attacks will help you survive through your travels, but the biggest, strongest monsters will kill you regardless of how much armor you have. That giant dragon or massive colossus will crush you, your shield and your armor all in one swing, as it should be. That's what giants do. So yes, evasion is, and will always be, the best defense. Because the best defense is to not get hit in the first place.

The Shotel was 50% damage against shielding opponents and Blind was 100%, iirc. As for SAD, my problem isn't so much with a SAD melee/caster. My problem is that it makes focusing on STR seem comparatively useless. A STR-based BARBARIAN RAWR character does maybe 5-10% more damage if he's lucky, but has nothing else going for him. He's not casting Total Protection, he's not casting heal, and he's probably not using many ranged attacks.

A Str based melee character would also most likely have more End and Vit, allowing for much more endurance, HP and even carrying and equip capacity. They'd also get much better use from weapons that literally knock down or stun enemies while being able to more efficiently use the best shields and armor without completely giving up mobility. Even then, a melee class could still fit one or two spells into his arsenal to have at least some semblance of personal support. And while the Shotel was 50% damage through shields, it was physical damage and the weapons main feature, it was also very short range so it was mainly to be used for quick, light armor classes. And the Blind, as mentioned, required a very specific build to be used effectively.

Also, for a game where you die as much as you do, the whole phantom vs body mechanic was horribly imbalanced. Unless you're on game+ and a real pro (as I know a lot of you guys are and I am not), you're gonna spend 80%+ of the game as a phantom. And that means wearing that fucking Cling Ring unless you're a good ranged combatant. Being a phantom shouldn't penalize melee so heavily.

You gain a LOT of advantages from Spirit form. Increased damage and attack, silent movement making you harder to detect, protection from black phantom invaders and neutrality to affecting world and character tendency when you die. The reduced HP was a minor issue to being in soul form.

As for Scimitar +7, what I mean is that a game should never give you the option of upgrading 40 different weapons, and then obsolete them with about 5 different weapons. I'm not saying "how unfair! Scimitar +7 is better than Scimitar +6!" I'm saying "Scimitar +7 took a lot of work. Why is it so inferior to <named, special scimitar weapon>?"

With +7 weapons, that means all you are doing is making the base weapon stronger, with no specific stat path in mind. However you could have went down one of the specialized upgrade paths to help focus a weapon to match your personal stats. Though they weren't available for every weapon, if you were to make a Str based character, you could go down the Crushing weapon path and create a weapon that gets a massive bonus from your increased Str. Or if you had a Dex based character, go down the Sharp or even Quality paths to get weapons that grown in damage based on your personal Dex stat. My Crushing Claymore is most certainly not magic, but it can do a massive amount of damage, and even shield break people with low End, because my character focused a lot of his stat upgrades on Str.

The basic, simple, +7 upgrade path is just that, basic and simple. It gives you a high stat, very generic weapon. To see true power though, you must tailor craft a weapon that matches and compliments your specific stat build. It's not that there's 5 different weapon types that make the +7 look useless, it's that when you combine a specific Upgraded weapon with a specific stat specialization, you get incredible results. Because having a +5 crushing weapon will be useless to someone who's focused on int, but be destructive if they mainly focused on Str.

[Neverslip]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

Blueblood Sword and Lava Bow... mine!!!

I had quite a session on Sunday and killed many demons... got jacked by some invader... twice.

Is the only advantage to being alive, having full HP and the ability to call for blue souls?? If that's the case, I'm proly gonna stick with the form that has less paranoia involved. I don't like stressing ... and DS is already kinda nutty on that playing field.

[DakAttack]

Re: RUMORED Demon's Souls 2?

The basic upgrade path goes all the way to +10. That would be the best path for somebody who's putting all their points into something that can't be taken advantage of through the specialized upgrades.

Being alive frees up a slot for another ring, and it allows you to recruit and resurrect white phantoms which push the world tendency towards white. Bringing two souls with you to defeat the Tower Knight will move the world into pure white, allowing you to claim a colorless demon soul and retrieve items from the dragon's nest, and bringing two souls with you through both Armor Spider and Flamelurker will allow you to claim the Dragon Bone Smasher during 2-3.