/cog/ - Traditional & Video Gaming

>>199649
>Bloodborne
>lesser
Sorry to hear that you can't afford a PS4, senpai.

>>199651
I beat it but did not enjoy the combat changes or lack of build variety, didn't buy Old Hunters.

I liked my one real run, but I like playing the others repeatedly more.

Will there be DLC for this one and other possible upgrades. I got Scholar only to learn I cannot play with others now.

Despite avoiding all the story and location spoilers, I've felt free to read about game mechanics and such.

I'm worried about armor being literally worse than nothing. I don't even mean like Bloodborne, where it does little but costs nothing, so you can just wear whatever looks cool. It may literally do the least it's ever done in any Souls game (including Demon's Souls) while also costing the most.
*According to the numbers on the wiki, no set gives more than 35 physical defense. For comparison, physical defense seems to go up by 1 every other level and by 2 for every per point of Vitality. Armor isn't upgraded anymore, and doesn't seem to get scaling either.
*Poise is still a stat, but I've read numerous posts that it doesn't do anything. There's mentions of a stream where an NPC with tremendously heavy armor gets stunlocked by a one-handed short sword. Conversely, hyperarmor from weapons seems to work regardless of Poise.
*Equip load is more expensive than ever: it's 40+VIT, which is the same formula I had with Endurance, but Vitality only raises base defense, not stamina. Encumbrance also seems to be like II where a lower value means a further roll--and possibly affects invincibility because there's no Agility stat--so there's always an upside to less weight.

The selection of armor is pretty amazing in terms of variety and appearance. It would be extremely disappointing if you really have to basically cripple yourself to wear any of them.

>>199653
>Will there be DLC for this one
There's already a season pass. I think it was stated there's going to be two major DLCs releases, but don't quote me on that.

>and other possible upgrades.
Scholar of the First Sin mostly happened because II came out so late in the last console generation. It's pretty unlikely the same will happen with III.

So we're more Fashion Souls than ever now?

>>199658
armor was always the way of the coward anyway

>>199658
>So we're more Fashion Souls than ever now?
I'd be OK if it was like the Network Test, where armor didn't do anything but there was no equip load either. But there actually seems to be significant incentive to wear nothing at all. Basically I'm afraid it won't be Fashion Souls, it'll end up being Naked Souls.

>>199659
You probably think I'm just talking about Havel cosplayers, but even the starting clothes for the Thief and Assassin weigh about 15 while the Sorcerer's weigh 10. That translates to like 20-30% encumbrance if no one's going to be leveling up VIT.

>>199660
>Basically I'm afraid it won't be Fashion Souls, it'll end up being Naked Souls.
the current version of the game is lacking a massive balance patch that will be accompanying the worldwide release, along with a bunch of bugfixes and, oh yeah, MULTIPLAYER

I feel terrible for Japanese console players for a bunch of reasons.

I still haven't played a single game in the Souls series. It's one of those things I've been meaning to get around to but haven't. About how much time should I expect to invest in one of the games if I play one?

>>199663
>About how much time should I expect to invest in one of the games if I play one?
Obviously only as much as you want. But if you mean how long a game usually takes, without the DLC, Dark Souls I will probably be about 60 hours the first time and II will probably be about 70.

Hm, gf wants to meet up tonight.

But Dark Souls unlocks tonight

the hard choices in life

>>199736
Dark Souls only unlocks once in your life.

>>199737
I feel like I should be less sold by this point than I am

Ive only been able to play for like an hour so far, but it certainly starts fucking strong. And that animation quality is something else.

>>199654
Fuck me, this is all wrong.

The reason the numbers for the armor are so low is because armor doesn't add points to your defense anymore, although you'll take a penalty for wearing nothing. The way it works is defense (what Vitality and other stats raises) subtracts from an attack's damage, then armor reduces that final damage by a percentage (at most about 30%).

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4dsvfa/guide_how_defense_works_and_how_damage_is/

Equip load also doesn't affect stamina regeneration or invincibility, just roll distance, so feel free to get anywhere up to 70%.

https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/4drec1/confirmed_equip_load_has_no_effect_whatsoever_on/

>>199742
>Ive only been able to play for like an hour so far, but it certainly starts fucking strong.
God, does it. Anyone else get a Battle Axe? The two-handed strong attack when you use the buff is amazing.

1. This game is fucking gorgeous. Everything looks incredible.

2. I've beaten two bosses so far and both have been real as shit. Like a combination of the best aspects of Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne bosses.

3. Katana are super legit in this game, but you better have that charged dash distance down tight or else you're going to eat shit.

4. From Soft know that many enemies could be rendered trivial one-on-one by sides trading until you get a backstab, and they've incorporated moves into their move set specifically designed to counter it. Jesus Christ.

Not that far into the game, but what I've found so far is that bosses tend to be usual Souls fare and not actually that difficult for veterans. But fuck me did they crank up the difficulty on the regular encounters. Like, enemies that would've been despawning mini-bosses in the previous games are regular enemies showing up in groups in this game.

Man the CE box is fucking big!

>>199756
It as stupid crazy as the Press Release edition? Nerd Cubed showed the ones he received, which he is sending back.

Cathedral os the Deep might just be my favorite area of any Souls game. It's just so well-designed in every aspect.

>>199765
It is great, but I got kind of burned on it when I failed to notice a major sidepath (because I assumed a ledge you drop down on was some place I'd already been to), then spent like an hour looking for a lever I couldn't reach.

This game is too hard. I say that as someone who can blaze through 1 in like 4-5 hours. There's just way too much shit in the lategame that instantly one-shots you if you don't get several frame-perfect dodge rolls in a row. And shields become pretty much useless due to how hard and constant the attacks are.

>>199771
I'm at the lava place and my problem is that some enemies randomly break out of stunlock and attack before I can reasonably be expected to respond. It leads to me suddenly getting hit without feeling like I did anything wrong.

And fuck that one NPC with the really huge sword (you'll know them when you see them). It's literally five different kinds of bullshit at once:
1. Every attack does at least 50% damage, some are one-hit kills.
2. Can't be parried.
3. Effectively can't be blocked.
4. Half their attacks are over/under attacks with hyper armor that track almost 180 degree.
5. So much health and defense that even a backstab with +6 weapons takes about a tenth of their health.

I'm glad that dumbass died running after another enemy who fell into lava, because fighting them was not fun at all.

>>199772

I'm pretty sure you can parry him. It's just really high stakes.

Plage is playing DS3 on stream https://www.twitch.tv/plagueofgripes

I fucking hate this game.

>>199785
yeah it's great

http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-ceremonial-band/?mode=primary
And know you know where they got their namnes.

>>199785

I know one Twitch person I hope to see rage at some point.

>>199795
Oh right, I forgot to say that this is mine and that I had to post it from my vita do to my phone making the image to big.
Amiibo for scale.
Huge indeed.

>>199797
I'd rather have prop replicas than statues. Anyone else thing that would look better in a glass case?

I fucking love this game.

>The Nameless King

Jesus Christ. This Guy's the real deal.

Waiting to see what the DLC will be this time

Haven't played the new game (although, I'm getting really tempted to do so), but I've been replaying the first game on Xbox One and Tomb of the Giants is such a pain. My most effective weapon requires two hands to hold, but I gotta use my left hand to pull out the nightlight.

>>199809
>My most effective weapon requires two hands to hold, but I gotta use my left hand to pull out the nightlight.
There's a hands-free light source in Lost Izalith. Or could you not do that now for some reason?

>>199810
It's alright. I forgot I can cast a light spell. Makes it so much easier to traverse the area.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/steamforged/dark-soulstm-the-board-game
DAMN IT! After the CE I may not have the money for this...

>>199815
How would one play such a thing?

>>199818 Like this?
//youtube.com/watch?v=4VOFIIA2-fs
But I'd take tookens over pen.

Beat the game, including all the optional bosses! What a ride.

How does this one's goal stack up to the ones of the past. Also how much lore on this trip through the new layer of this world. Above all is the layout as good as Dark Souls.

>>199822
>How does this one's goal stack up to the ones of the past

It's pretty much the same as Dark Souls 1's.

>Also how much lore on this trip through the new layer of this world.

A lot, but a lot of it has to do with 'what happened to all that Dark Souls shit after the Chonsen Undead linked the fire'. Almost everything from Dark Souls 2 that isn't Eleum Loyce was completely ignored.

>Above all is the layout as good as Dark Souls.

It doesn't have Dark Souls's great interlinking area design, and sadly I don't think we're ever going to get that again, but all the individual areas are very well-designed and loop back on themselves in satisfying ways. They also flow from one to the other in a more natural manner than Dark 2's.

>>199805
I really wish I hadn't gotten sidetracked at Lothric Castle and mistook him for a mandatory boss. The rest of the game felt too easy in comparison.

>>199823
>and sadly I don't think we're ever going to get that again
Bloodborne had it, though.

>>199828

Bloodborne most definitely did not have it.

>>199829
It did, but just for Forest/Central Yharnam. Still an overall linear progression.

Once you hit a bonfire then you don't need to backtrack all the way through I guess. But liked DS1 that the nested paths you could open were sometimes even better shortcuts. And bonfires weren't that useful for travel.

That was the biggest addition to Dark Souls 1 the stacked interlocked design made this feel like centuries of shit built on top of shit.

>>199831

There's no interconnectivity between areas, though, and that's what we're talking about. There's nothing like looking down from Firelink Shrine and seeing Blighttown, or looping through Valley of the Drakes to get back up from there.

>>199833
>There's nothing like looking down from Firelink Shrine and seeing Blighttown
Just to be pedantic, but you can actually a majority of the areas from the bridge above Farron Keep, where the Stray Demon is. Doesn't change the fact that the world of DaS3 is a branching path rather than an interwoven net, but they did at least not do the impossible space thing DaS 2 did.

>>199834
>they did at least not do the impossible space thing DaS 2 did.
I'm not sure if that's entirely true. The view of Lothric Castle from Irithyll suggests the Catacombs of Carthus are a lot longer than what you travelled in-game (especially since you spend half of the path going either perpendicular or opposite to the direction Irithyll is in).

>>199835
DS2 broke mainly because someone coded the elevator incorrectly to the Fort so that it goes up to an underground sunken Fort. Other than that it's overall fine. Still miss that interconnected nature.

>>199836
There's more offenses like that. Like No-Man's Wharf being below sea level and multiple areas overlapping to the point that you could drop an item in one and pick it back up in another.

>>199839

Probably because it's built on Eleum Loyce, a place enchanted with cold magic shit.

The fucking input bug is still around and still game-breaking fucking garbage. I completely gave up on beating Nameless King until this shit is fucking fixed.

http://omgftw.github.io/DarkSouls3CensorCheck/

Despite coming back to an Mature rating, III still has the name censor from II. The checks are case-sensitive, which makes it even more pointless--"Dead Knight" still becomes "D*** K***ht"", but "Cunt" is fine now.

Unlike in II, there doesn't seem to be any way to get rid of it.

>>199928
What, why is "ead" censored?

>>199930
Short for eat a dick. Yeah, it's fucking ridiculous.

I'm so fucking close to 100%ing the achievements but all these fucking covenant-locked items and spells are fucking it up. This is going to take fucking FOREVER.

>>200049
Are you farming enemies or using the normal methods? I was able to get 10 Pale Tongues for the Obscuring Ring in about 20 minutes, though I had a Symbol of Avarice.

>>200050

I'm going to have to farm enemies. Sunlight Medals are easy enough, and I can do invasions for pale tongues and vertebra shackles - there are areas of the game where when you invade there's a pretty good chance of the host just dying on their own within seconds of your arrival. But I literally can't get any of the autosummon covenants to work for me.

>>200054

BUT all of that is going to have to wait until I beat Yhorm on this run so I can farm a Symbol of Avarice from the mimics by his bonfire, because the fucking thing refused to drop for me this character.

//youtube.com/watch?v=CFwQBGL6pIc

>>200054
Welcome to the "covenants don't work" club. If you're not being summoned every 15 seconds, there's a good chance you may never be summoned. Have fun killing the same small groups of mobs for hours as you attempt to get covenant items.

From what I understand, if you go past around SL75 and +6 reinforcement and you have trouble with covenants, your just SOL.

>>200071
Does New Game+ allow summons from regular? I know in some areas of DS2 were popular for PVP after I had a abusrdly high level as only learned about the cutoff until after I'd gone way past what was advised.

I'm fairly certain NG status has no affect on matchmaking. The only things that affect it are SL, highest weapon upgrade, and whether the are boss is dead or not (which affects the area specific covenants, for whatever stupid reason they did that).

Is it highest weapon upgrade owned, or highest weapon upgrade held?

Either way, I get what they're going for, but that's some dumb bullshit.

>>200076
Highest weapon upgraded on the file. So if you upgraded a weapon past +6 you will forever be slotted into the higher tiers on that character. Doesn't matter if you don't have it on you or you sell it or something.

There's some other stuff that can happen with attack power when invading and such, but I haven't bothered to look into it since I came to the conclusion that this game's PvP is garbage.

>>200076
>Is it highest weapon upgrade owned, or highest weapon upgrade held?
No one seems to have presented conclusive evidence as to which.

I think highest upgrade on you (i.e. not in storage) is fair because that's everything you'll have afcess to once an invasion starts.

Four hours left on the kickstarter.

>>200097
It's weird how the Battle Tendency anime ended three years ago, yet that meme seems more prolific than ever. Not that I'm complaining.

//youtube.com/watch?v=t_b7dekpA7E

//youtube.com/watch?v=Wz5vnejEieA

Dark Souls dickery is at a all time high in DS3 apparently.

Wow, there are people still playing DS1 (for xbox at least). I've helped over 40 people with the Quelaag boss fight over the past few days. Also forest invasion fights still going on too. Neat.

>>200126
It became BC with the Xbox One recently, so that may be why.

>>200126
I actually just started DS1 for the first time, on PC.

First time playing a souls game, only about an hour in but so far it seems neat. Am I losing out on a lot by not using the online features?

>>200138
Yes and no. Online isn't necessary at all for your first playthrough, but most of the longevity of the games comes from dicking around in multiplayer.

>>200138

>First time playing a souls game, only about an hour in but so far it seems neat. Am I losing out on a lot by not using the online features?

Not really. Like what >>200139 said, for finding that extra humanity you farm the giant rats. I say this because having humanity (item) is like having extra healing item. Having humanity (in the counter on the top corner of your screen actually effects Item discovery. Having 26 humanity jumps the Item Discovery count to 210 instead of the base 100.

Also while in human form, you can find npc summons to help with the bosses, and npc invaders that will drop stuff when you defeat them. Famous examples are Kirk and Maneater Mildred who become a summon to fight Chaos Witch Quelaag.

>>200140
>having humanity (item) is like having extra healing item.
In the sense that you can both use the Humanity (item) to heal, then burn the resulting Humanity (counter) at a bonfire to increase how much it will fill the Estus Flash up.

>>200140
It's ten to get the max item discovery from humanity, not 26. The very first one gives you the largest amount of item discovery at +50. Every one after that is from +6-8.

Humanity also gives slight defense bonuses. It doesn't matter most of the time, but it becomes really noticable when you're at low level with 99 humanity. Which is why most invaders are almost impossible to beat, even when they're trying to stay fair.

>>200142
The stat I quoted was what I saw on my stat screen at the time of the post. I don't know what the cap is.
Just an example I forgot to say was that is was an example.
I was also going to mention the serpent ring, but forgot that too.

After finishing the main story in Dark Souls 2, I finally watched the critique video by Matthewmatosis.

//youtube.com/watch?v=UScsme8didI

I agree generally with his points, but if there's one defining problem with the game it would be the sense of unfairness. Despite the moves made to make it more accessible, Dark Souls 2 has more moments of annoyances than challenges.

Still enjoyed it overall, but I can understand why some view it as the weaker Souls game.

I'm playing the SOTFS version of Xbox One, so I'm not sure how bad the initial game was before the updates. I think the DLC levels rectified some of the problems in level design and difficulty, although, I'm not a fan of how paths to the optional bosses are tedious to traverse through like the ones for the Blue Smelter Demon in Iron Passage, and Lud and Zullen in Frigid Outskirts.
.

//youtube.com/watch?v=lTMrJW4wbd4

The suffering continues.

>>200187
Wrong thread

Slightly related, but going from Dark Souls to Bloodborne is like night and day. After playing slowly and carefully in Dark Souls, the fast-pace nature of Bloodborne took me a while to get use to again. Not helping that I'm diving straight to the DLC for my replay in months.

>>200188
.....I don't know. That Reboot game looks awfully Darksouls-y to me.

>>200188
Oops, my mistake.

When people compare the Souls games, how does Demon's Souls compare?

>>200197

A lot of people swear that it's still the best one. I'm not one of those people, but it's definitely pretty good. A lot of its problems are simply age and bring the first of its kind.

My personal rating would go Dark Souls = Dark Souls 3 > Demon's Souls > Bloodborne > Dark Souls 2.

>>200199
So much sticks in my head about Dark Souls 1. Dodging all those damn archers all the way up to the caste. The 2 on 1 fight and then that round 2 all leading to EPIC CHEST AHEAD.

>>200246
Eh, Bandai Namco whoring out the Dark Souls license like no tomorrow is no surprise, seeing how they're probably in full on panic mode over From ending the series.

More importantly, THIS: http://steamcommunity.com/app/211420/discussions/0/357287935551574016/