Dark Souls II official thread of telling us your journey through Drangleic

[kabamarutr]

Soriku said:

kabamarutr said:

Soriku said:

kabamarutr said:
The game lets you start with a single Estus flask. That's off-putting, no doubt about it, but it also provides with life gems every now and then (a nice touch from Demon's). Life is cut in half, gradually, but a restoration ring is found very early in the game. Add some AI problems, early powerful weapons and a quite lower difficulty and you have the whole "difficulty picture".

What's really making the game hard is the enemy vanishing after a ten or so kills. That means there is a finite amount of souls to collect from each area. Which in turn means that if you die often (and lose souls) you will not regain them easily. Grinding and farming is very limited. In the long run that will prove really sore for the gamer.

Disagree entirely. You definitely don't need close to the number of souls from killing all (or most) enemies 10 times to get through an area. That's just overkill unless you keep losing a large number of souls and suddenly need to level up/upgrade equipment, which really shouldn't happen unless you just never go back to the bonfire and then Majula for whatever strange reason.

I'm at lvl 60, have a Falchion +6. and have only had three enemies disappear on me. I haven't been having too hard of a time.

You can also make souls back in other ways. PvP, sell at stuff at Gavlan, use the items that give you souls, use a bonfire ascetic to bring all enemies back (they're harder, but they give you more souls too). You can also get a Covetous Silver Serpent Ring which gives you 20% more souls by buying 10k souls worth of stuff from the Traveling Merchant (old lady), then talking to her.

You've obviously did not understand what I said at all. The number of souls in each area is finite. After 10 or so kills opponents disappear rendering farming impossible. There's nothing to argue about that.

Umm...did you read my post? I literally addressed what you just said about enemies disappearing after being killed 10 times in my second sentence. Yes, souls in areas can potentially be finite...and? How is that really making the game hard, when you can get through areas without killing most enemies 10 times? You have more than enough opportunities to get souls to level up or upgrade your equipment before enemies start disappearing.

In the long run, this doesn't matter. Let's assume you're at the end of the game, at a high level, but still want to level up more. You kill all the enemies in an area. There are still potentially other areas you can farm at. If not, use a bonfire ascetic (which you can buy later in the game) to respawn all enemies. They're harder, but drop more souls and more rare items. Or you can do PvP, which is how I got most of my souls in Dark Souls 1 (some people would drop 700K+ souls). Or you can help people with bosses, or hell, just go to NG+. All enemies are back, and they drop more souls. You can also use the ring I mentioned to speed up the process. Plus I heard there's an easy way to get souls later in the game anyway.

In terms of leveling up or upgrading equipment, this is no issue due to the sheer number of souls you'll get just by clearing one area. And there are many areas you can go at a time. I can only see a problem with farming specific equipment, but even then, just use a bonfire ascetic.

What you say is valid, but let us focus on some key points so you can see my argument here.

All these things you say, was in the previous game as well. They are de-facto ways of acquiring souls. PvP was there, New Game+ was  there, heck, even the Covetous Serpent Ring was there. What wasn't there, is the merchant who buys junk for souls (the sacrilege, here), but there  was some complicated trading done with Kingseeker Frampt. Even the Bonfire Ascetic is some sort of reiteration of the Black World Tendency in Demon's.

What was really there never before, is the enemy respawn limit. 

Let me make an example. Suppose an area has 20 enemies worthing 30souls each. If those respawn approximately 10 times, then the maximum souls that can be acquired in that area is 30X20X10=6000.  They are not infinite as before.

Now, if someone plays carelessly and loses a couple of thousand, he can never get those back. In addition, should one want to return to that are for farming, he'll find way less profit than in any other Souls game.

It's not necessary to need to farm only at the end of a game. Let's give another example. A player cannot beat the Belfry Gargoyles, so he or she needs to raise the character's souls level. What better to do than go to that glorious farmland, named Heides Tower of Flame and beat those slow giants a million times over? That's no longer an option. Those giants will be gone. Permanently.

All in all, a key aspect to the game (farming, that is) is seriously limited. Players cannot level up by farming before progressing into new areas, leaving them somewhat underpowered to face the challenges. Let me repeat here, that all the other options you've mentioned still exist, as they did in earlier games. so the quota is we're minus one option in levelling up and gaining an edge.