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Forums - Gaming - Dark Souls 2 needs to be harder, discussion

Slimebeast on 20 May 2013
yo_john117 said:
BasilZero said:

Here's me fighting the tutorial boss which surprisingly some people had issues with from what I heard.

I fricken messed up so much in this battle but I still managed to win XD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qxsmBJSDrRQ#t=453s

Edit: Was playing with the PS3 controller on the Steam/PC version - wasnt used to the controls since it was my first time playing.

That boss was so easy. It was actually one of the easiest boss battles I've ever encountered. 

I remember thinking that Dark Souls wasn't going to be so bad. It wasn't even so bad once I got out of the tutorial. I had a little bit of trouble between the Asylum Demon and Tartarus Demon (mostly because I didn't know that there is essentially only one path you can take if you don't want to get slaughtered right away). But then I got to the Tartarus Demon and got annihilated instantly. So I made my way back there again (I didn't see any 30 second shortcut either which is weird cause I always explore everywhere possible in games) and decided to be much more careful and promplty got utterly destroyed again. At this point I was rather agitated but I went at it again and attempted to kill him with bombs which was decently effective but then I ran out of bombs and he proceeded to kill me again. For my fourth go at him (I was getting really annoyed because I had to go through all of those mobs every time I died) I found the ladder that leads to the tower and I remember laughing a bit to myself because I though I would get away with climbing up that and throwing all my bombs and shooting him with all my arrows without him being able to attack back. Needless to say I was entirely wrong and he jumped up right away and destroyed my life again.

At that point I was raging so I took the disc out and threw it on the ground and went to watch some Netflix. A few days later I decided to give it another try. I figured I would just grind (which is something I despise BTW) and kill mobs to level up so I could have better defense and afford enough bombs to kill him. I spent the next 2 days (3 couple hour sessions) leveling my character up until I felt confident enough that I would beat him. I went back to the boss and proceeded chucking bombs at him and trying to avoid his attacks. That didn't work either because he drained my health before I could beat him and killed me again.

That was pretty much the breaking point for me. I took the game out of the tray and put it back in the case and went ahead and put it on craigslist.

And that pretty much sums up my experience with Dark Souls

That was a great story. Enjoyed reading about your experience.



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Slimebeast on 20 May 2013
SvennoJ said:
mtu9356 said:
SvennoJ said:
 

There are ways to integrate a retry option in the game. (First of all make it optional, locked out of classic mode)

I would put it in the game as a replenishable resource like the estus flask. It would work as a temporary restore point that you can only place out of combat near an earlier death. This restore point does not replenish magic, health or anything else, does not let you keep picked up items, it simply puts you back the way you were after another death. Then you can place it again if you haven't run out yet.

This way you can practive a fight or obstacle a few times without having to run back every time. It does not give you extra safety the first time, and it's resource based so you can't abuse it to force a way to the next bonfire.

When I look back on DS I remeber the awesome exploration the game offered and fun difficulty keeping me on my toes. However I also remember a few roadblocks that were made extra frustrating because of having to start from the bonfire over and over and over, with no sense of reward finally overcoming them.
Most games remove those roadblocks by making the whole game easier. I don't want that. However a system that helps alleviate unnecessary frustration when needed is very welcome.

Btw I hardly ever got the same people summoned at a bos fight. It also desperately needs dedicated servers as 2 out of 3 summons did not work. Co-op was a lot of standing around retrying summons while invaders kept showing up. Retry with the same people would have been very welcome.


That would in effect remove any risk you would feel when fighting a boss, knowing you could just start it again with no penalty.  You are in the minority if you feel no sense of accomplishment after defeating a boss.  Which ones did you beat, and which did you stop at?

The server issues were fixed via patch.  I usually have no problem resummoning the same person, especially if they drop the sign in the same spot.

The most frustrating parts of the game for me were:

Mini boss in undead Burg after the bridge with the dragon, charging bull or something. I had not figured out how to unlock the shortcut, frigging long trek back every time.

Capra Demon: Took 6 tries to successfully roll past the initial charge for the first time, every time dead in 2 seconds after fighting all the way back there over and over. Then it still took more tries to get rid of the dogs, and succesfully do the initial dodge again with 30% success rate, to finally sit on the stairs dropping bombs. No sense of accomplishment.

Sen's fortress: I had a lot of trouble judging distance to the swinging blades and had missed the hidden bonfire halfway up. Getting knocked of by the swinging blades on the upper level became extremely frustrating by having to start all the way from the blacksmith again and again and again.

Anar Londo, the archers knocking you off the ledge. My character wasn't that strong yet, so it took 10+ minutes everytime to get back there for another try to figure out how to get past that obstacle.

Ornstein and Smough: I wasn't strong enough yet to handle them with the  single player summon, he always died before I could take down 1 of them. So co-op with 2 people instead. Summoning didn't work right and it was a popular place for twink invaders. It took 20 tries or more just to get to the boss intact. The only time we made it was when we happened to summon a more powerful twink to take care of the invader, which also ruined the boss fight as that was now over in 20 seconds. No sense of accomplishment.

Bed of chaos: that should be self explanatory.


For me it would not remove the sense of risk if I can start a boss fight over, I still lose time and souls. It merely removes the added frustration of unwanted repetition.
And I would have resorted less often to co-op if it were easier to retry bosses, which would have ruined less boss fights where a ng+ twink came into my first play through to slay this big obstacle in 10 seconds.  (Better match making would solve that too ofcourse)

I agree with all of those except for the charging swine mini-boss which was fairly easy, but my list of most frustrating parts would be much much longer than yours. I spent 100 hours on my first playthrough, if not more. But I always felt a huge sense of accomplishment after having overcome each obstacle.

Dark Souls is just so wonderfully good.



mtu9356 on 20 May 2013
SvennoJ said:
mtu9356 said:
SvennoJ said:
 

There are ways to integrate a retry option in the game. (First of all make it optional, locked out of classic mode)

I would put it in the game as a replenishable resource like the estus flask. It would work as a temporary restore point that you can only place out of combat near an earlier death. This restore point does not replenish magic, health or anything else, does not let you keep picked up items, it simply puts you back the way you were after another death. Then you can place it again if you haven't run out yet.

This way you can practive a fight or obstacle a few times without having to run back every time. It does not give you extra safety the first time, and it's resource based so you can't abuse it to force a way to the next bonfire.

When I look back on DS I remeber the awesome exploration the game offered and fun difficulty keeping me on my toes. However I also remember a few roadblocks that were made extra frustrating because of having to start from the bonfire over and over and over, with no sense of reward finally overcoming them.
Most games remove those roadblocks by making the whole game easier. I don't want that. However a system that helps alleviate unnecessary frustration when needed is very welcome.

Btw I hardly ever got the same people summoned at a bos fight. It also desperately needs dedicated servers as 2 out of 3 summons did not work. Co-op was a lot of standing around retrying summons while invaders kept showing up. Retry with the same people would have been very welcome.


That would in effect remove any risk you would feel when fighting a boss, knowing you could just start it again with no penalty.  You are in the minority if you feel no sense of accomplishment after defeating a boss.  Which ones did you beat, and which did you stop at?

The server issues were fixed via patch.  I usually have no problem resummoning the same person, especially if they drop the sign in the same spot.

The most frustrating parts of the game for me were:

Mini boss in undead Burg after the bridge with the dragon, charging bull or something. I had not figured out how to unlock the shortcut, frigging long trek back every time.

Capra Demon: Took 6 tries to successfully roll past the initial charge for the first time, every time dead in 2 seconds after fighting all the way back there over and over. Then it still took more tries to get rid of the dogs, and succesfully do the initial dodge again with 30% success rate, to finally sit on the stairs dropping bombs. No sense of accomplishment.

Sen's fortress: I had a lot of trouble judging distance to the swinging blades and had missed the hidden bonfire halfway up. Getting knocked of by the swinging blades on the upper level became extremely frustrating by having to start all the way from the blacksmith again and again and again.

Anar Londo, the archers knocking you off the ledge. My character wasn't that strong yet, so it took 10+ minutes everytime to get back there for another try to figure out how to get past that obstacle.

Ornstein and Smough: I wasn't strong enough yet to handle them with the  single player summon, he always died before I could take down 1 of them. So co-op with 2 people instead. Summoning didn't work right and it was a popular place for twink invaders. It took 20 tries or more just to get to the boss intact. The only time we made it was when we happened to summon a more powerful twink to take care of the invader, which also ruined the boss fight as that was now over in 20 seconds. No sense of accomplishment.

Bed of chaos: that should be self explanatory.


For me it would not remove the sense of risk if I can start a boss fight over, I still lose time and souls. It merely removes the added frustration of unwanted repetition.
And I would have resorted less often to co-op if it were easier to retry bosses, which would have ruined less boss fights where a ng+ twink came into my first play through to slay this big obstacle in 10 seconds.  (Better match making would solve that too ofcourse)


Not everyone had as much trouble as you.  Guides/Vids are online to help you.  Summoning can really help, even if done before a boss like for the archer section (which shouldn't take more than 2 minute to run to from the bonfire).

The games not for everyone.  That being said if you still have the game on PS3 I'd, or others on this site would, be willing to help you though the game.



yo_john117 on 20 May 2013
Slimebeast said:
yo_john117 said:

That boss was so easy. It was actually one of the easiest boss battles I've ever encountered. 

I remember thinking that Dark Souls wasn't going to be so bad. It wasn't even so bad once I got out of the tutorial. I had a little bit of trouble between the Asylum Demon and Tartarus Demon (mostly because I didn't know that there is essentially only one path you can take if you don't want to get slaughtered right away). But then I got to the Tartarus Demon and got annihilated instantly. So I made my way back there again (I didn't see any 30 second shortcut either which is weird cause I always explore everywhere possible in games) and decided to be much more careful and promplty got utterly destroyed again. At this point I was rather agitated but I went at it again and attempted to kill him with bombs which was decently effective but then I ran out of bombs and he proceeded to kill me again. For my fourth go at him (I was getting really annoyed because I had to go through all of those mobs every time I died) I found the ladder that leads to the tower and I remember laughing a bit to myself because I though I would get away with climbing up that and throwing all my bombs and shooting him with all my arrows without him being able to attack back. Needless to say I was entirely wrong and he jumped up right away and destroyed my life again.

At that point I was raging so I took the disc out and threw it on the ground and went to watch some Netflix. A few days later I decided to give it another try. I figured I would just grind (which is something I despise BTW) and kill mobs to level up so I could have better defense and afford enough bombs to kill him. I spent the next 2 days (3 couple hour sessions) leveling my character up until I felt confident enough that I would beat him. I went back to the boss and proceeded chucking bombs at him and trying to avoid his attacks. That didn't work either because he drained my health before I could beat him and killed me again.

That was pretty much the breaking point for me. I took the game out of the tray and put it back in the case and went ahead and put it on craigslist.

And that pretty much sums up my experience with Dark Souls

That was a great story. Enjoyed reading about your experience.

Lol glad you could get some enjoyment out of that. At the time I was simply livid with anger, however, now I can look back at it and get a good chuckle from that experience.

Sadly that probably wouldn't even make it to the top five angry experiences I've had with gaming. The worst is probably me throwing my controller against the wall and breaking Halo 3 in half and throwing it away. 



mtu9356 on 20 May 2013
yo_john117 said:
Slimebeast said:
yo_john117 said:

That boss was so easy. It was actually one of the easiest boss battles I've ever encountered. 

I remember thinking that Dark Souls wasn't going to be so bad. It wasn't even so bad once I got out of the tutorial. I had a little bit of trouble between the Asylum Demon and Tartarus Demon (mostly because I didn't know that there is essentially only one path you can take if you don't want to get slaughtered right away). But then I got to the Tartarus Demon and got annihilated instantly. So I made my way back there again (I didn't see any 30 second shortcut either which is weird cause I always explore everywhere possible in games) and decided to be much more careful and promplty got utterly destroyed again. At this point I was rather agitated but I went at it again and attempted to kill him with bombs which was decently effective but then I ran out of bombs and he proceeded to kill me again. For my fourth go at him (I was getting really annoyed because I had to go through all of those mobs every time I died) I found the ladder that leads to the tower and I remember laughing a bit to myself because I though I would get away with climbing up that and throwing all my bombs and shooting him with all my arrows without him being able to attack back. Needless to say I was entirely wrong and he jumped up right away and destroyed my life again.

At that point I was raging so I took the disc out and threw it on the ground and went to watch some Netflix. A few days later I decided to give it another try. I figured I would just grind (which is something I despise BTW) and kill mobs to level up so I could have better defense and afford enough bombs to kill him. I spent the next 2 days (3 couple hour sessions) leveling my character up until I felt confident enough that I would beat him. I went back to the boss and proceeded chucking bombs at him and trying to avoid his attacks. That didn't work either because he drained my health before I could beat him and killed me again.

That was pretty much the breaking point for me. I took the game out of the tray and put it back in the case and went ahead and put it on craigslist.

And that pretty much sums up my experience with Dark Souls

That was a great story. Enjoyed reading about your experience.

Lol glad you could get some enjoyment out of that. At the time I was simply livid with anger, however, now I can look back at it and get a good chuckle from that experience.

Sadly that probably wouldn't even make it to the top five angry experiences I've had with gaming. The worst is probably me throwing my controller against the wall and breaking Halo 3 in half and throwing it away. 

Guessing they'd be from playing online shooters?  COD multiplayer can be pretty frustrating which is why i avoid playing it.  I don't need the high blood pressure lol.



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BloodyRain on 20 May 2013

Not sure if it needs to be even harder. It needs to attract more players to the franchise so the ridic diff might be a huge turn off for some. Difficulty levels would be good, maybe start at medium instead of easy though so players still get a challenge. For people like us who played demon/dark souls, then ya why not.I also had enough of those slow swamp area in demon and dark souls. They are just plain annoying and the frame rate dips so badly during those areas. I would love more humanoid bosses like smough, ornistein, and whats his name from the dlc.



yo_john117 on 20 May 2013
mtu9356 said:
yo_john117 said:
Slimebeast said:
yo_john117 said:

That boss was so easy. It was actually one of the easiest boss battles I've ever encountered. 

I remember thinking that Dark Souls wasn't going to be so bad. It wasn't even so bad once I got out of the tutorial. I had a little bit of trouble between the Asylum Demon and Tartarus Demon (mostly because I didn't know that there is essentially only one path you can take if you don't want to get slaughtered right away). But then I got to the Tartarus Demon and got annihilated instantly. So I made my way back there again (I didn't see any 30 second shortcut either which is weird cause I always explore everywhere possible in games) and decided to be much more careful and promplty got utterly destroyed again. At this point I was rather agitated but I went at it again and attempted to kill him with bombs which was decently effective but then I ran out of bombs and he proceeded to kill me again. For my fourth go at him (I was getting really annoyed because I had to go through all of those mobs every time I died) I found the ladder that leads to the tower and I remember laughing a bit to myself because I though I would get away with climbing up that and throwing all my bombs and shooting him with all my arrows without him being able to attack back. Needless to say I was entirely wrong and he jumped up right away and destroyed my life again.

At that point I was raging so I took the disc out and threw it on the ground and went to watch some Netflix. A few days later I decided to give it another try. I figured I would just grind (which is something I despise BTW) and kill mobs to level up so I could have better defense and afford enough bombs to kill him. I spent the next 2 days (3 couple hour sessions) leveling my character up until I felt confident enough that I would beat him. I went back to the boss and proceeded chucking bombs at him and trying to avoid his attacks. That didn't work either because he drained my health before I could beat him and killed me again.

That was pretty much the breaking point for me. I took the game out of the tray and put it back in the case and went ahead and put it on craigslist.

And that pretty much sums up my experience with Dark Souls

That was a great story. Enjoyed reading about your experience.

Lol glad you could get some enjoyment out of that. At the time I was simply livid with anger, however, now I can look back at it and get a good chuckle from that experience.

Sadly that probably wouldn't even make it to the top five angry experiences I've had with gaming. The worst is probably me throwing my controller against the wall and breaking Halo 3 in half and throwing it away. 

Guessing they'd be from playing online shooters?  COD multiplayer can be pretty frustrating which is why i avoid playing it.  I don't need the high blood pressure lol.

Yep lol. It's really difficult to get a good mindset for online gaming. I used to be absolutely terrible in that regard but over the years I've tried to change my mindset to having fun instead of doing better than most other people. 

I did have one non-online shooting angry experience of significance. I believe it was one of the NFS games; I broke a controller with that.



Wright on 20 May 2013

As a gamer which got 100% on Dark Souls ('xcept Artorias of the Abyss), I never found the game, ultimately, impossible. It was hard, at first. Then it was a matter of mastery. I think too many gamers give up very fast with this game. Once you get the hang of it, everything else is a "breeze".

I agree with your choice about NG+



SvennoJ on 20 May 2013
mtu9356 said:


Not everyone had as much trouble as you.  Guides/Vids are online to help you.  Summoning can really help, even if done before a boss like for the archer section (which shouldn't take more than 2 minute to run to from the bonfire).

The games not for everyone.  That being said if you still have the game on PS3 I'd, or others on this site would, be willing to help you though the game.

Everyone has different roadblocks, some less then others, depending on what kind of character you play. I'm merely trying to think of an alternative to having to resort to guides and vids online. I rather try it myself then read about it, and an optional retry / restore position option would encourage that.

Anyway thanks for the offer, but I completed the game, extra areas and completed ng+ and another bit before I got bored. I might have gone on playing but the thought of those damn blades in Sen's Fortress and Ornstein & Smough for a 3rd time stopped me.
I didn't bother with the platinum though. I didn't like involuntary pvp so I never used the invasion system myself. Gotto stay consistent.

@Slimebeast There were plenty more frustrating parts, that damn dragon in the depths for example. Falling down and getting cursed didn't help much. Although that served as a good distraction to fight back up to the bell tower before butting heads with that dragon again.

I still think it's one of the best games of this generation, despite all the unnecesary grievences. I hope DS2 will have less spite while keeping that which makes it special.