Rant about the new gameplay trailer

I haven't been here for a few days and when I found out about the new trailer and gamepley interview I immediately knew I will need to let off some steam.
So before I will read what everybody else wrote, I have to let the hate flow.
Here you have it guys.
These are my comments to the video that popped in my head as I was watching it.

They say they imrpoved the graphics and I admit that I'm happy to see the clothes of the character moving. Finally! However, the graphics themselves, while improved, seem to have less amount of details and just don't have that "feel" of previous Souls games. Frankly, it looks like something made by colaboration of BioWare and Behtesda.
Hopefully with less bugs and glitches.

They also said they want to make the game more realistic, so why does the character hides his shield in thin air and has no sheath for his sword?

The damage received seems sometimes very low and sometimes very high. I worry for balancing issues.

Characters movement seem VERY sluggish. I really don't like how it ignores stairs and slides on the floor while walking. Character movement was always well made in Souls games, why make it worse?

The fighting seems slower than in DkS, which would be a shame and a big letdown, especially after the first trailer, which seemed to have a faster paced combat. I really dislike the movesets shown in the trailers. The character moves smoothly and elegantly, but it seems like the character is not fighting, but just swinging at air. Especially that axe, you can't swing an axe like this and expect to kill something, other than yourself.

The lack of numbers upon hit is a bit of a dissapointment. I really like to know how much damage I do. On the brighter note, there's chance that it can be just turned off, instead of it being completely removed.

The HP and Stamina bars got me a bit worried. I would really hate if they had locked lenght. Meaning that none of them would get bigger with leveling up, but the amount that gets depleted gets reduced. That would be really lame imo.

I hate the new Soul aquisition and Lock On. They have bright blue colours that are quite distrubing to the surroundings and the atmosphere. I see no reason to change those. White, or transparent lock on works perfectly and Soul aquisition was never an issue, so why change that?

Love the turtloid enemy that fell on the lplayer when he tried to backstab it. Finally an enemy unexploitable by bs.
Axe throwing dwarf with his perfect headshot, or should I say headsplit deserves a medal.

I really like the idea with the torch. Finally, I won't have the feeling that my character has glowing pants.

After descending the ladder, the player got attacked by some weak mobs, but after getting killed and returning to the same location, the player didn't get attacked again. This could mean that mobs no longer respawn under some circumstances, or don't respawn at all.

In some of the screenshots, you could see Elite Knight and Knight set, with Estoc, Parrying Dagger and Target Shield. While I would love to see a lot of new equipment, I'm also glad to have the good old stuff from DkS.

The new fall animation looks ridiculous and the fall speed is very slow, especially for a guy with full armor.

Love the locations and the chariot and skeleton dragon were fantastic.

Drop Stone of Healing...
I smell trouble from this thing.
It can be an item connected to the Bonfire, just like Estus Flask is, which would explain the number of uses. However, it could also be an item like Divine Blessing. I would be happy if those got completely removed, but I can live with that. What worries me the most is that it could mean that they returned to Grass system from DeS. That would suck big time imo.

I really like how the character uses the bow and the damage, but the effect on arrows hit looks ridiculous.

Most of the things I complain about are things that worked just fine in DkS, so I don't want them changed. Dark Souls should be better, not worse, nor different.

A few of my friends defended the game by saying that it's not complete yet. While this is true, I have not seen a better version of the game, so I asume this to be the final product quality, which I am severely dissatisfied with.


Well that's all I have to say about Dark Souls II for now.
It's the usual Sentiel route of hating on changes made to the series I like, because the changes that were made to my favourite series so far NEVER improved them for me and always lead me to abbandon the series completley.
I lost FF, DMC, RE and more of games I loved, so I automatically hate on every and all changes and want the series.

You should not fix something that is not broken, nor enhance something working to the utmost satisfactory.

i completely agree i did not like the blue flame that flared when receiving souls i liked it better when it appeared that i drained the life when the transparent mist flows to you from the enemies. the lock on icon i don't care too much about. The move set with the weapons i think look decent though he didn't swing the axe back and forth in the same motion over and over it may just be THAT axe but i liked it. the sword on the other hand was a little odd yes. and the Great sword was crazy he did a two hand down chop like it was a lighter katana and it threw me off O_O


EDIT** going back and watching again the sword wasn't as bad as i thought but it does appear that he holds it to far from his body when he walks i understand the axe with the weight being on the opposite end making it awkward to carry straight but idk

Combat is slower? The attacks themselves are far faster, movement is more fluid.. It's much better in my opinion.

The realism bit? The character movement in general is far more life like- I'd rather have the improved movement than a sword sheath.. seriously :|

I'm gonna ignore your comments on graphics, everyone seems to be saying its cartoony or less dtailed whatever- it looks EXACTLY THE SAME the art style, darkness, atmosphere.. It's all the same as dark souls- gladly though this is an early preview, I expect improvement before the actual release.

I think personally the drop stones are estus equivalent- there's 20 of them and bonfires. I feel for the gameplay trailer they gave the character high stats and gave him fully boosted healing of the- hence why he had huge health and stamina bar, could wield loads of weapons, full armour

I think complaining about lock on and soul colours is just complaining just for the sake of it- you're going out of your way to find problems with it.

The lack of numbers is probably just because it's a demo- but frankly I don't care how much exact damage I do, I like removing it actually. Dark souls becomes too numbers based for many players, especially min/maxers in my opinion, every stat point too stressed upon- I persoanlly think it's more immersive to just have a health bar and take us away from the numbers game during gameplay.

I feel you on character movement, and the torch reminded me of the flashlight in Doom 3, but other than that I was pretty excited about the video...

The animations remind me more of the fluidity from Demon's Souls, and that's a case where I thought Demon's was better than Dark Generally.

In regards to the cartoony nature, yes I did notice it. However that's because a lot of the textures aren't fully implemented yet. When looking at the character do the gesture at the end it looked like they touched him up, but before that generally he has very slick and shiny body parts with little to no texture on them. That's however most likely because it is an alpha and it hasn't been fully fleshed out yet.

https://2img.net/h/i1213.photobucket.com/albums/cc475/TolvoArt/Dark%20Souls%202/7c98066b-54ee-4bb5-8080-265addd75cd6_zpsf723bccc.jpg

Serious_Much wrote:Combat is slower? The attacks themselves are far faster, movement is more fluid.. It's much better in my opinion.

Haven't said better/worse, but slower, which it obviously is.
Even the characters movement feel slower than in DkS.

Serious_Much wrote:The realism bit? The character movement in general is far more life like- I'd rather have the improved movement than a sword sheath.. seriously :|

Yes, sliding on the floor and ignoring stairs is very realistic.
The point in here was that ALL of these are present in both Souls games, but are missing in this video.

Serious_Much wrote:I'm gonna ignore your comments on graphics, everyone seems to be saying its cartoony or less dtailed whatever- it looks EXACTLY THE SAME the art style, darkness, atmosphere.. It's all the same as dark souls- gladly though this is an early preview, I expect improvement before the actual release.

How can you ignore something while still commenting on it?
Cartoony looks may be the result of the colours they used, but the style, design and graphics themselves are slightly different. They resemble Bethesda games and Dragon's Dogma imo.

Serious_Much wrote:I think complaining about lock on and soul colours is just complaining just for the sake of it- you're going out of your way to find problems with it.

Yes, as I said at the end of the OP.

Serious_Much wrote:The lack of numbers is probably just because it's a demo- but frankly I don't care how much exact damage I do, I like removing it actually. Dark souls becomes too numbers based for many players, especially min/maxers in my opinion, every stat point too stressed upon- I persoanlly think it's more immersive to just have a health bar and take us away from the numbers game during gameplay.

As I said, I don't care what it is. This is the best version of the game we saw and I will asume it is the final product quality until shown otherwise. Hoping that something I disliked will be fixed in the final version of the game has let me down...every time I can remember. Better not go down that road again.

After giving it some thought I think that lack of numbers can give some more atmosphere and depth to the PvE, but in PvP, I still want them there. It helps me gather usefull information about the game, it's mechanics and my opponent.

sure-magicians wrote:I feel you on character movement, and the torch reminded me of the flashlight in Doom 3, but other than that I was pretty excited about the video...

Oh, I'm very excited as well.
They can't ruin it enough for it to lose the status of the best RPG series currently available.

Two additions.

It seems to be an attack that uses both weapons at the same time when dual wielding which is sweet!

The reason why I think that Drop Stone of Healing is an consumable item unrelated to the Bonfire is because now, you can see all your hotlinked items and Attuned spells, or so it seems, by the smaller windows next to the main ones. And you can notice that the attuned spell has another, different one next to it, while the Stone has the identical item in the next window.
This means that it is either another version of the same item, the item can be split into more than one hotlink window, or hopefully, the icon for the second item is not finished yet and has been replaced by the Stone icon.

Completely agree with OP

What caugh my attention the most is the arrow effect
And the new soul absorbtion effect looks like DkS drops

I'm also a bit worried about the new artstyle, which is getting closer to Dragon's Dogma
And then there's that bridge scene, how will they allow us to "conquer" that thing?

I could think of a simple way, what if you get some sort of horn that when you blow into it it makes a noise that scares it away, or makes it friendly. What if there is an item that makes you invisible for a bit. What if there is a large siege weapon nearby you can use to kill the Wyvern which attacks the bridge. What about if walking slowly across causes it to not attack, or if you can run and hit it scaring it away. What if there is a Wyvern you can ride that takes you over there. Etc.

Sentiel wrote:

Serious_Much wrote:Combat is slower? The attacks themselves are far faster, movement is more fluid.. It's much better in my opinion.

Haven't said better/worse, but slower, which it obviously is.
Even the characters movement feel slower than in DkS.

Serious_Much wrote:The realism bit? The character movement in general is far more life like- I'd rather have the improved movement than a sword sheath.. seriously :|

Yes, sliding on the floor and ignoring stairs is very realistic.
The point in here was that ALL of these are present in both Souls games, but are missing in this video.

The character running is simply more realistic, if you look you go about as fast, perhaps a little slower- just the animation itself seems much slower than the actual difference in movement speed is.

However, the combat- the speed of swings and the roll- were both much faster and fluid than dark souls, thats more what i was getting at there.

2nd point- it's a demo, and obviously the sliding will probably not remain (unless of course there's a sliding on ice mechanic but doubtful), the ignoring stairs thing.. I don't think many games have very specific movements for stairs- especially RPGs, and really I'm not bothered about the as the character walks like an actual person moreso than he used to.. I dunno what you're on about with all are present though, the shield still disappeared and the stairs didn't have a different running animation..

I didn't quote it but you said about wanting the numbers for pvp for 'research' or something to that effect- see that's what I feel they should move away from. I feel so sad when I see people talk too much about this stat mix up, changing armours for max poise evem when they look like a bellend as a result.. PvP in souls is too focused on stats and getting the advantage with good builds.. I really hope they try and move the community away from it. It's a game not a maths exercise try have some fun with a lovable personal build rather than a factory made killing machine :|

All fun without math is pretending.

Hachouma wrote:And then there's that bridge scene, how will they allow us to "conquer" that thing?

Well there are MANY ways to do this.
Hide so they don't see you and proceed.
Lure them away.
Kill them.
Befriend them.
Find another route to the destination.
Show them a picture of Ornstein to scare them away.

In this particular case, I think that slowly wlaking and not rocking the bridge too much should be sufficient, or perhaps when the dragon sits on the bridge you have to do something, like move away, shoot the dragon, stay still etc. The devs might talk big, but they won't form any sort of largely diversive ways to overcome this and in the end your options will be severely limited.

Serious_Much wrote:The character running is simply more realistic, if you look you go about as fast, perhaps a little slower- just the animation itself seems much slower than the actual difference in movement speed is.

That's what I meant by the "sliding". When the actual movement speed of the character and the movement speed of the animation doesn't match.

Serious_Much wrote:However, the combat- the speed of swings and the roll- were both much faster and fluid than dark souls, thats more what i was getting at there.

Fluid? Yes. Thank god for that.
Faster? Nah. I see it slower. But hey, maybe it's the die hard Dex user speaking from me.

Serious_Much wrote:2nd point- it's a demo, and obviously the sliding will probably not remain (unless of course there's a sliding on ice mechanic but doubtful), the ignoring stairs thing.. I don't think many games have very specific movements for stairs- especially RPGs, and really I'm not bothered about the as the character walks like an actual person moreso than he used to.. I dunno what you're on about with all are present though, the shield still disappeared and the stairs didn't have a different running animation..

I'm not talking about animation when the character is walking on stairs like Uncharted has, but the character was mindful of the stairs and actually tried to step on them, instead of just burrowing his foot inside the staircase in both current Souls games, yet he just stands ankle deep in the stairs in the vid.

Serious_Much wrote:I didn't quote it but you said about wanting the numbers for pvp for 'research' or something to that effect- see that's what I feel they should move away from. I feel so sad when I see people talk too much about this stat mix up, changing armours for max poise evem when they look like a bellend as a result.. PvP in souls is too focused on stats and getting the advantage with good builds.. I really hope they try and move the community away from it. It's a game not a maths exercise try have some fun with a lovable personal build rather than a factory made killing machine :|

Removing the numbers won't solve that, it will only make it harder to do, but people will still do it. You can look at any other comeptetive game for an example. Min/Maxing and focusing on numbers is everywhere and it's only up to you if you get cought up in it, or no.
I think the current state is good. If people were so much into it, you would only see Fast Rolling Havel Torso, Large Club wielding bs fishers. But then you got guys like me, who poke you for pathetic damage with Rapier, guys that just wanna make sushi out of you with a katana and more.
I get your point, I really do, but I don't think this will solve the problem.

I wasn't talking about research, but gathering relevant information. For example, you can meet an enemy resistant to slash attacks, like Stonefang Miners in DeS. If you can't see the number, how will you know that your attack does little damage? They might as well just have a huge HP pool and you won't be able to tell the difference.
Same to PvP. How will I know if my opponent is just resistant to my attack instead of having huge HP bar? Ok, in PvP I can learn and memorize each and every piece of equipment and calculate it, but this way is so much faster and easier to understand.

[quote="Sentiel"]

Hachouma wrote:How will I know if my opponent is just resistant to my attack instead of having huge HP bar? Ok, in PvP I can learn and memorize each and every piece of equipment and calculate it, but this way is so much faster and easier to understand.

I'm with you on this point. You can say it is more immerive, but I disagree and say that it harms gameplay by making you try all your weapons on the same things over and over again to discover which weapon works best in which scenario. This is good for testing find details and can be fun then, but not for figuring out the basics.

I realized trying to argue here would be too rough on both sides, and since the topic is called "Rant" I'll just say have hope until the game is released.

Not sure if this has been pointed out, but they were at 25% 5 months ago. I would've been impressed by 1 level a 3 enemies.

A lot of these concerns (enemy balance, walking, minor graphical details) will be smoothed out way before launch.

I'm thinking the healing stone might be a multiplayer-oriented item. Like, white phantoms can't bring in ANY healing items and may rely on the host to hand these out. Would be a good way to balance out a more coop-friendly game. I imagine they want to keep an air of mystery about the Estus Flask, or they just haven't animated it yet.

Djem wrote:I realized trying to argue here would be too rough on both sides, and since the topic is called "Rant" I'll just say have hope until the game is released.

Smart.
You get a +1 for that.
And yes, it is the reason why I named the topic 'rant'. It's just me letting off some steam.

DE5PA1R wrote:Not sure if this has been pointed out, but they were at 25% 5 months ago. I would've been impressed by 1 level a 3 enemies.

A lot of these concerns (enemy balance, walking, minor graphical details) will be smoothed out way before launch.

I'm thinking the healing stone might be a multiplayer-oriented item. Like, white phantoms can't bring in ANY healing items and may rely on the host to hand these out. Would be a good way to balance out a more coop-friendly game. I imagine they want to keep an air of mystery about the Estus Flask, or they just haven't animated it yet.

I hope they will be smoothed, but unless I have a guarantee, I won't rely on it.

I would prefer if the phantoms and invaders couldn't heal with consumables. If they want to heal, they should use spells.
I can't recall where and when, but I read that originally, in Dark Souls, Estus Flasks weren't meant to heal host's phantoms, but only host and phantoms would have to rely on using Miracles to heal. I like this idea and it will add some difficulty to co-op as well.
Let's face it. What boss can handle a three man ganksquad? None.
This would balance it out. Bossfight would still be easier with phantoms, but still hard enough that you can't make a cakewalk out of it.

I would be most happy, if phantoms, of any kind, could heal ONLY through spells. No consumables would heal them, except for something extremely rare, like Divine Blessings, provided there would be no way in hell to dupe them. If we can't guarantee that, I say remove it and let them be on spells alone.
As I said, co-op would get harder and when I hear Dark Souls and harder together I hear heavenly bells ring. Of course, invaders would have it tough, but hey, they can always hide behind mobs and traps like they can do now, so no big deal there.
...
And it would actually make sense to have healing magic. I mean c'mon, who of you ever seriously used Heal, or Great Heal?

Sentiel wrote:I haven't been here for a few days and when I found out about the new trailer and gamepley interview I immediately knew I will need to let off some steam.
So before I will read what everybody else wrote, I have to let the hate flow.
Here you have it guys.
These are my comments to the video that popped in my head as I was watching it.

They say they imrpoved the graphics and I admit that I'm happy to see the clothes of the character moving. Finally! However, the graphics themselves, while improved, seem to have less amount of details and just don't have that "feel" of previous Souls games. Frankly, it looks like something made by colaboration of BioWare and Behtesda.
Hopefully with less bugs and glitches.

They also said they want to make the game more realistic, so why does the character hides his shield in thin air and has no sheath for his sword?

The damage received seems sometimes very low and sometimes very high. I worry for balancing issues.

Characters movement seem VERY sluggish. I really don't like how it ignores stairs and slides on the floor while walking. Character movement was always well made in Souls games, why make it worse?

The fighting seems slower than in DkS, which would be a shame and a big letdown, especially after the first trailer, which seemed to have a faster paced combat. I really dislike the movesets shown in the trailers. The character moves smoothly and elegantly, but it seems like the character is not fighting, but just swinging at air. Especially that axe, you can't swing an axe like this and expect to kill something, other than yourself.

The lack of numbers upon hit is a bit of a dissapointment. I really like to know how much damage I do. On the brighter note, there's chance that it can be just turned off, instead of it being completely removed.

The HP and Stamina bars got me a bit worried. I would really hate if they had locked lenght. Meaning that none of them would get bigger with leveling up, but the amount that gets depleted gets reduced. That would be really lame imo.

I hate the new Soul aquisition and Lock On. They have bright blue colours that are quite distrubing to the surroundings and the atmosphere. I see no reason to change those. White, or transparent lock on works perfectly and Soul aquisition was never an issue, so why change that?

Love the turtloid enemy that fell on the lplayer when he tried to backstab it. Finally an enemy unexploitable by bs.
Axe throwing dwarf with his perfect headshot, or should I say headsplit deserves a medal.

I really like the idea with the torch. Finally, I won't have the feeling that my character has glowing pants.

After descending the ladder, the player got attacked by some weak mobs, but after getting killed and returning to the same location, the player didn't get attacked again. This could mean that mobs no longer respawn under some circumstances, or don't respawn at all.

In some of the screenshots, you could see Elite Knight and Knight set, with Estoc, Parrying Dagger and Target Shield. While I would love to see a lot of new equipment, I'm also glad to have the good old stuff from DkS.

The new fall animation looks ridiculous and the fall speed is very slow, especially for a guy with full armor.

Love the locations and the chariot and skeleton dragon were fantastic.

Drop Stone of Healing...
I smell trouble from this thing.
It can be an item connected to the Bonfire, just like Estus Flask is, which would explain the number of uses. However, it could also be an item like Divine Blessing. I would be happy if those got completely removed, but I can live with that. What worries me the most is that it could mean that they returned to Grass system from DeS. That would suck big time imo.

I really like how the character uses the bow and the damage, but the effect on arrows hit looks ridiculous.

Most of the things I complain about are things that worked just fine in DkS, so I don't want them changed. Dark Souls should be better, not worse, nor different.

A few of my friends defended the game by saying that it's not complete yet. While this is true, I have not seen a better version of the game, so I asume this to be the final product quality, which I am severely dissatisfied with.


Well that's all I have to say about Dark Souls II for now.
It's the usual Sentiel route of hating on changes made to the series I like, because the changes that were made to my favourite series so far NEVER improved them for me and always lead me to abbandon the series completley.
I lost FF, DMC, RE and more of games I loved, so I automatically hate on every and all changes and want the series.

You should not fix something that is not broken, nor enhance something working to the utmost satisfactory.

1. The graphics lack detail because the game is unfinished. It will definitely look better than that by release.

2. I too am disappointed by the lack of sheaths for weapons. Some weapons had those in DkS, but I had hoped all swords had those in DkS2. Oh well, just a minor detail.

3. The movement looks like that, because again, the game is very unfinished. In other words, surely not all animation is 100% complete.

4. The axe moveset has gone back to Demon's Souls, this is great. In Dark Souls PvP nearly no one used axes or maces because of the lame moveset that prevents combos.

5. I'm sure you can see the damage numbers by turning it on in the options. Why wouldn't you? People like to compare damage of weapons, and they know it.

6. The HP and stamina bars are like that because it's an overleveled character for demonstration purposes.

7. The lock on sucks but maybe you can change the color. I really hope so it's glowing very bright. They should make it possible to turn it transparent.

8. The enemy didn't come back for demonstration purposes, why would they want to show the same fight against a hollowed undead soldier again.

9. I think the fall animation looks better otherwise, but you're right he falls way too slow that's unrealistic. Btw, the weight of things doesn't affect how fast it falls, everything falls the same speed.

10. Estus flasks are in the game Tanamura said so. Maybe the stones of healing are similar to the Divine Blessings, but obviously you won't be able to gather large amounts as in the gameplay, it was for demonstration purposes.

11. Dude the game is barely 50% complete (assuming, in december they said 30%). In any case, what on earth is the point for people to complain about a game in their alpha/beta stages? It will be improved a lot, you'll see.

Oh and are you frickin serious about the "balancing issues"? They used a very high level character in a low level area for demonstration purposes, developers always do this. As in the first Dark Souls gameplay they had full Dark Knight set and powerful Dark Knight weapons in the Burg...

I'm with you on the soul explosion for sure, especially with the emphasis on lighting that it looks like will be present in Dark Souls 2.

I mean, why do you need this huge blue supernova to telegraph to the player that they are absorbing souls if the rest of the game is so dark? It just creates this painful contrast, and I hope they change it.

As for the damage, we don't know what kind of stats the character being played was rocking, so it would probably be best to just reserve judgement there.

I didn't like how he was able to heal while moving, and I am hoping that those healing rocks or whatever they were called are similar to Humanity, in that they aren't the primary source of healing for the player. They did say that Estus Flasks were returning, so I will remain hopeful on that.

it's the first vid of it so im hopeful, when I saw the first vid of dark souls I though it looked and played like crap but then I got my hands on it and changed my mind right away.

edit; I love how dark it is but HATE that the enemies don't respawn.

@Frank_White

1, 3, 11.

Sentiel wrote:I have not seen a better version of the game, so I asume this to be the final product quality, which I am severely dissatisfied with.

I'd like to also add that if the game is so unfinished, they shouldn't reveal it just yet. All of the previous Souls games trailers and demo had none of the forementioned issues, so the only thing this argument points to is the irresponsibility of the current developers. Which makes me even more worried how will the game actually look...

2. I personally wanted the option to be able to sheath my weapon at will. Purely for role playing purposes. However, while the devs speak of adding realism, they remove weapon sheats. That's quite contradicting itself. :|

4. People didn't use axes because everyone would just roll bs them. Let me assure you that axes are very viable in Dark Souls, but they just aren't top tier for all those try hards that will just prefer to roll around with a huge stick instead and people focusing on doing the max possible damage with the least possible risk. Moveset wise, they are good. It's an axe, you can't expect to go fencing with it.

5. Irresponsible changes made by the devs...mostly for the sake of changes. If it is optional, I'm all for it and it's a great idea.
Nothing about it has been mentioned yet, so I prefer to take the stance for the worst case scenario. At least I won't be further dissapointed.

6. If that would be true then some of the damage received was very ipmressive for an overleveled character. :shock:

7. I hardly doubt they will let us fool around with lock on colour, but it would definitely be neat.

8. In that case their demonstration purposes has failed them. By removing the enemy for the demonstration, all they will create is doubt in the fans that notice this, just like me. I, for one, was very interested to see them fight the same enemy again and perhaps this time, stop doing crap and actually try to kill them effectivelly. The demonstration looked like it was played by a panicky teenage girl.

9. I was just nitpicking at the fall speed. Take a look at fall speed in DeS, it's like the character is partially made out of helium.
Anyhow, what I was pointing out was the lenghty animation that always included a 360° spin, which was slightly ridiculous.

10. The Stones are Grass type consumables, you can see that when they show another type of the said stone at the latter part of the demonstration, with the enemy breaking through a wall. The character had Drop Stone of Healing equipped for the most of the time, but at this scene, he had Drop Stone of Healing Glisten, which even had a different icon. I can't find a more suitable explanation than the Grass type consumables are back.

Yes, I am completely serious.
As far as I remember the first demo of Dark Souls was in Undead Parish and featured several characters to choose from. The whole level was mostly identical with the final product, apart from spawn location and Hellkite's position ont he bridge.

You said that this is not a finished product yet, but you compare it to a demo from a much later development cycle for reference about balancing. :roll:

---

Cartod wrote:I didn't like how he was able to heal while moving, and I am hoping that those healing rocks or whatever they were called are similar to Humanity, in that they aren't the primary source of healing for the player. They did say that Estus Flasks were returning, so I will remain hopeful on that.

I thought of that at first too.
There's no Humanity counter on the screen, only some symbol, which I presume represents Covenant, or some sort of Character Tendency.
Thanks to that, the whole Humanity system may be absent from the game. The best option is that the devs returned to the DeS Human/Soul form idea. The worst is that they abbandoned this system completely.
Also, the character having two different types of those healing stones implies that they are normal consumables, like Grass was in DeS. Having several consumable types with addition to Estus Flasks would made the game pathetically easy, even if the stones don't heal instantly, but actually seem to work like a one use Mushroom.

---

RantFromRant wrote:it's the first vid of it so im hopeful, when I saw the first vid of dark souls I though it looked and played like crap but then I got my hands on it and changed my mind right away.

edit; I love how dark it is but HATE that the enemies don't respawn.

I never had any doubts about Dark Souls and completely looked forward to it from the first screenshot I laid my eyes upon.
For some reason, this is not the case, so I'm being extra skeptical about it.

We don't know for sure if the enemies will, or will not respawn. At first, I thought that they changed the bonfire system, so that it will replenish your healing items only when you use it and not upon your death. That way, you would return to the bonfire after death, but enemies won't respawn and you also won't get healing items. Upon using the bonfire again, you will receive healing items and enemies will respawn.

The devs said they want the game to be more accessible, but retain it's difficulty. This is the best way that came to mind to achieve this goal. Complete enemy respawn removal would make the game significantly easier, to the point of absurdity. Even I am certain that will not happen, because that would more, then less kill the whole spirit of the overcoming difficult challenges, as you could just kamikazenoobstyle everything.

---

I'd like to add a rant about the torch.
While initially I thought of it as a great idea, one quite annoying possibility came to mind. You see, I was always infuriated by the fact that Skull Lantern doesn't provide light when held in right hand. While we can argue that it is some sort of magical item etc, the fact remains that the torch seems quite normal. My point is, that I would like to have an option to use the torch in my right hand. Walking into a dark area full of enemies and sacrificing your shield, a form of defence for a light source is pure idiocy. If I get ambushed, the torch will do poorly when defending and I will die. On the other hand, if I use the torch in my right hand, I can defend against ambushes with my shield and still keep a light source. That way, I can lure enemies into an area with better light, to fight them, or at least have a chance to take out my sword and fight back without additional risk.

If by any chance this option will be absent, I will be once again forced to navigate through dark areas blinded, or will have to find alternative light source, like Sunlight Maggot, or Cast Light.

I only wish I could see it! I believe the footage has been withdrawn for copyright reasons. Any tips folks?

SlakeMoth wrote:I only wish I could see it! I believe the footage has been withdrawn for copyright reasons. Any tips folks?

Link to IGN

I don't understand copyright on the internet.
Once you put something on the net, it's everyone's to share.
Don't like it? Don't put it on the net.

Sentiel wrote:The HP and Stamina bars got me a bit worried. I would really hate if they had locked lenght. Meaning that none of them would get bigger with leveling up, but the amount that gets depleted gets reduced. That would be really lame imo.

Just wanted to point out that the bars are only the same length for the first part of the demo. For the dragon bridge and chariot sequences the hp bar was a bit longer than stamina bar, and both bars were also shorter than in the first sequence.

I feel I should mention this is also Alpha image, so don't expect things to be finished Sent. It's very common in the gaming industry so that a game can both receive hype and the developers can get an idea of how people are responding to their game. Such as if a feature gets a lot of backlash they can then adjust it to try and make people happier. The main point of this was probably to reveal to players the newer features and get them interested even though everything isn't perfectly finished since this is so early in development.

@ublug
Oh, I didin't notice that. Sweet. Thanks mate. Here's a +1 for you.

@Tolvo
So...if I keep b*tching enough the game will be perfect?


Do note that it's also common to keep the games in this state and release them anyway.
I don't doubt From, those guys rock, I'm just a lot skeptical about it, because I want the game to be more than perfect.