ADP is good in theory, it was just poorly executed. Your stats SHOULD affect how your character controls in an RPG

spells are boring

Thats called Kingsfield and its well documented as vastly superior to soulsborne in combat

I've never gotten a straight answerer whether all encounters can be won by strafing right, or if the enemies and bosses all have magnetic tracking.

this, people complain a lot about the difficulty of this game but the amount of enemies you can strafe-walk into pits of off ledges is actually busted

The cast speed is faster with ADP though.
And your staff. You need a good staff. You get the best staff near the start of the game anyway.

no it isn't

In DS2, basic enemies are super magnetic but the larger enemies are easy to strafe. The most annoying DS2 enemy is like the basic shield and spear guy and the ones that do an immediate attack after finishing one to get ya. And I do mean immediate, no wind-up whatsoever. But those are all enemies in the first level that do that.
Bosses let your strafe pretty easily. Some are harder than others, like Burnt Ivory King jumps back and forth a lot so it's harder than Pursuer. Looking Glass Knight encourages a very unique strategy of holding your weapon in your left hand since his shield is on the right and his shield is a special shield that's actually just a fucking wall.

Casters need iframes more than any other class due to low HP. You need iframes in frantic action games like these where enemies do a bunch of damage. It'd be like playing monster hunter without blocking.

Casters need less adp than anyone because they're rolling away from enemies to keep distance and cast spells.

but they dont have low HP in das2. there's no stupid fucking mana to worry about here so you can just dump excess levels into health.

You can improve stamina, HP, weight load, Armor, Poise, resistances, but god forbid you get to improve rolling.

rolling away

still need iframes.
one shot by executioner chariot and his skeletons.

still need iframes.

No you dont. Why the fuck do you need iframes

then stop leveling useless shit like adp, str or dex as a caster and instead pump hp

but most weapons in monster hunter can't even block what the fuck are you even talking about?

All the good weapons can. If you want to win a fight SOLO, in MONSTER HUNTER, You need a block. For example, a Lance player succeeds while a Hunting Horn player fails. Why? Hunting Horn can't block. Without blocking you eat shit and die. You need defensive states like rolls, blocks, parries, etc. to win in hardcore action games.
The enemy attacks you. You'll risk getting hit without iframes. You should be rolling whenever the enemy attacks because you don't know if they will hit you or not.

The enemy attacks you. You'll risk getting hit without iframes.

That's a spacing and distance issue.

you did well

The main issue is balance, coming from DaS1 your character felt sluggish and gimped, you were forced to invest points just for your character to play normal. It's still a terrible idea because it makes the meta even more rollosloppy and braindead if you can double your iframes.

The enemy doesn't attack you if it doesn't think it can't, idiot. Enemies only attack if they think they'll land a hit. And they will, so you better press roll or block. Think like the enemy.

spacing

there is ZERO reason to not be hugging the enemy all the time.

So why are you close enough to get attacked if you're a mage? You should be rolling away and keeping distance all the time.

Because spells hit faster if I'm close by.

No it didn't. You move better in 2 than you do in 1 and have more control. Like omni sprinting and omni rolling. You're faster.

That made me chuckle

How fast your spells hit doesn't matter. You could just as well as cast two or more spells from a distance and hit them just as many times

I'm doing a run again and never touched ADP. It is a non issue

ds1 is so slow and sluggish it's unreal

ADP is good in theory

Why

comparing a forward roll to a side roll

retard

What does it say that people still discuss Dark Souls, DS2, Bloodborne, but nobody has anything to say about DS3?
Even DeS has more staying power

There's something inherently wrong with rolling straight into the enemy's attack and not taking damage. Most action games have a dodge button to actually evade the attack. Rollslop gives you a a temporary invincibility button on top of traditional defensive moves like block and parry.

Slower, less difficult gameplay is more fun.

That DS3 is not controversial?

Everything that can be said about DS3 has been said already. It is a boring, safe sequel without a distinct identity. It's not enough of an action game to be better than Bloodborne or Sekiro, and it's not enough of an RPG to be better than DeS, DS1, or Elden Ring. It's not enough of a dumpster fire to be better at that than DS2. It's not a bad game, it's just DS3.

post another shitty comparison webm. i know you have at least 10 already saved

How is it a shitty comparison?

Soul memory was unforgivable

It was a nothing burger that hardly prevented online play like it was predicted.
It was entirely asshurt by buildfags predicting that without an artificial meta level builds would die, where as Dark Souls II had probably one of the greater souls pvp experiences in its hay-day.

DS2 is the dumpster fire

lol

DS1 is so fucking bad holy shit

maybe if the character in DaS2 actually used omnirolling instead of just rolling straight forward and sliding off the the turtle knights character model

god damn ds1 is slop

That is omni rolling. You're stupid

webm that killed ds1 keks

discord really bumping their shitty bait thread over and over, huh?

dark souls 1 sisters... your response?

You can omni-roll in DS1
There's this mechanic where pressing the stick in locks you to 4 directions though. It's in DS2 but it doesn't do that part. It's a lot easier to just not press the stick in as it just cripples you.

This is the saddest cope yet

This is such a tired bait at this point

Any word on private servers going up for the PS3s that were shut down last year?

Pressing the stick in against those two gargoyles before the bell actually makes them way harder. One of the first tips we'd give out to those struggling was to not do that. Helps them out quite a bit in the long run.

DS3 is slop and only gets a pass because people can't admit they were wrong about DS2.

Your stats SHOULD affect how your character controls in an RPG.

which is what your gear loadout does

ds2 my beloved

You can beat the entire game without rolling a single time, I highly recommend it. Shields and sprinting are pretty good in this game. In fact I'm pretty sure with ADP they were trying to make people try different defensive options, and failed because everyone just wants to roll.

diamond armor full set

Ironically enough Elden Ring finally got people to try different (non-roll slop) options, but it took making shields completely broken and DS1/3 cucks are still seething to this day.

I finished ds1, ds3 and bloodborne. I don't get this i-frame on ds2 i level ADP and still cant dodge enemy attack, i dont mean jumping into enemy when he attack but jumping away when he start animation of attack and still on 80% times he catch me. Also stone blockade are fucking dumb, and there is shitty punish for dying, losing exp is fair i will farm it but dying and losin HP is just shit

How im suppose to play with 2h weapon and shield ? They want me to change weapon during fight to block?

It's the most popular Souls game. People actually play it instead of screeching autistically about it online

You can block with weapons too.

Woops wrong image.

k, so you're bad. Definition of skill issue

It's the dark souls cashgrab where the bar was set the lowest so it's the most popular one

ah ok gotcha

I just started playing DS2 for the first time the other day. Around 6 hours in. I think I prefer it to DS1 and really don't understand the complaints. It's harder, yes. Enemy placement has a few more gotcha moments, but that's just encouraging me to play it slower and more carefully. I seems that enemy AI is better - they're more likely to press you, gang up, and they only retreat when you're very far outside their original placement. R1 and Roll spam are really nerfed, which is a good thing IMO. You can't just blindly smash R1 to get through the game. Rolling suffering an additional stamina penalty for every sequential roll is a great idea. Bonfires seem well-spaced so far (No Mans Wharf was a little bit of a slog, but by no means impossible), runs back to bosses don't seem terrible.
I dunno. I don't get the hate. It seems like an evolution of DS1 - at least they were trying to do something different with the formula.

People are retarded, once the hate bandwagon started all the 100 or less IQ npcs who can't form their own opinion piled on as well.
It's the same reason that dark souls 1 is regarded as some sort of masterpiece when it's a good game at the very best; most people are just mindless parrots.
Hell same thing with elden ring, follow the herd; praise the uninspired slop.

PC or PS3?

Most of the DS2 hate was mostly because it wasn't a DS1 clone. It's also why DS3 got so much praise on release, and even still to this day, despite being mediocre slop.

I don't get the hate.

Some youtubers made 2 hour long videos about how the game is bad back in the day and that was it.
One of the main complaints being "ganks" after so many years is such fucking bullshit though. People just can't stop rushing through iron keep and triggering 20 alonne knights at once. They think the entire level not being as easily rushed as most levels in all souls games is bad design, it's asinine. They would rather die 20 times and waste an hour trying to rush to the boss than taking their time and just doing it in one try in 20 minutes. Red smelter is baby tier so no one should realistically die to him. I never did. In my first playthrough I did all iron keep in one swoop by just taking my time.

I seems that enemy AI is better

It kinda is? They have better mechanics backing them up, but they're kinda dumb at points. I've had more enemies run off cliffs to their doom than I have had in any other souls game combined.
I like basically everything in DS2 more than 1 except the bosses, and even then, Fume Knight is better than Artorias and Aava is better than Sif. Those bonus areas in the DLC suck too, though Frigid Outskirts is just a goofy gimmick area while the others are just bad.

make the same webm on a black knight instead of a literal retard enemy that randomly swings a big stick or screams

It was really funny how everyone resorted to shieldpoking when the DLC dropped, because FromSoft deliberately nerfed the base game "hyper offense" strategy of summoning spirit ashes and spamming L2.

All games use i-frames because a medieval combat simulator wouldn't be very fun.

shields were broken as fuck in DaS1. what is this revisionism

a medieval combat simulator wouldn't be very fun.

Speak for yourself. No one actually tried.

it took me hundreds of hours in these games to realize that blocking with a 2h weapon is really viable and much more realistic looking. you take more damage than blocking with a shield sure, but also less damage than if you got smacked while mistiming a roll while rollslopping

I also liked that monsters would stop respawning after you killed them 10ish times.

Perhaps that part would work better if enemies had a special death animation on the 10th kill.

Like their body turns into crystal and then shatters with a loud sound effect or something like that.

Super gay stat I'm glad it's gone. Being tied to the estus animation is fucking retarded

okay

what now

Honestly you should have some ADP by the mid game anyway. You get more souls in DS2 than you'll know what to do with.

Funny thing is DS2 is closer to DS1 in terms of it's slower and more grounded combat nature whereas DS3 is where the faster anime souls started partly due to the success of Bloodborne.

you can buy 99 soul gems and have infinite healing.

lifegems*

this feels like bullying a grandpa

PS4 Scholar playing on PS5. I have noticed some engine jank, like returning to an area with dead npcs results in them somewhat "spawning" in as dead and dropping 3ft to the ground.
Sure you can I guess. Is that really an issue? You can also not.

feels like bully a shit game

I need to get a new PS3 controller so I can play my original copy of ds2. I'm so sick and fucking tired of playing scholar. At this point I've gotten used to most of the changes but I know it's more of a bitch than it used to be. I'm pretty sure it's only in scholar that all those spiders get into your bonfire

no need to be so hateful, it was revolutionary and good for it's time even though it has aged like a demented old man

Sure you can I guess. Is that really an issue? You can also not.

It subverts the whole estus flask mechanic where you recover a specific number of flasks at a bonfire for the purpose of making it to the next bonfire using those flasks.

the weak should fear the strong. ds2 surpassed ds1 in every way.

Dark sovlful's deliberate combat set the tone for the slow burn that is that game. In contrast you see the beginning of the end for the series in the right. Swarms of enemies being thrown at you like this is a kings field game. Sad.

take a game

alter the skills

the alterations suck and never return

darken it, real dark, to the point that you have to use a torch

playtesters hate it

remove the darkness, make it real bright

don't fix any of the shit textures that you can now see

deliver janky as fuck enemies with the worst hitboxes the series has ever seen

the player hitbox is also fucked up

never fix this

somehow snoys are still trying to pretend it was good

It subverts

It gives less-talented or dedicated players the chance to play through the game. Again, you don't have to do it. DS games have always had "easy" modes based around particular items. DeS with the Cat's Ring and Cling Ring make the game a cakewalk for example. I think Lifegems were just the devs saying "if you wanna make it easy just farm enough souls for these and you'll never run out of heals".

I just don't understand what possesses anyone to play magic in these games before elden ring. 3 was decent but 1&2 I've never finished a magic run it's hot garbage. Faith is also bad.

What do you mean? it's all just circle strafing and hitting a single button

You had to attune the uses of your spells, animations were slow, spell tracking was not good

what now

honestly? I concede. pic unrelated

des

Easy mode

ds1

Easy mode, but it's a bit like pumping your body full of steroids and seeing how shredded you can get

ds2

There's a lot of spells, but casting still feels like shit

ds3

There's a lot of spells, but casting still, still feels like shit

There really is no reason other than the novelty. FAI is better in earlier games because it synergizes with the comparatively refined melee combat. The only glaring flaw of Elden Ring's magic system is spell cycling, but other than that it's just so much better.

Swarms of enemies being thrown at you

wow cool ds2 gameplay

my first playthrough for all souls games were with a shielded heavy load character

What it really reminds me of is how unit responsiveness in Medieval 2: Total War is tied to your general's skill. Seems really cool and flavorful until you realize it is an RTS game and you want your damn units to respond to the player's commands immediately.
Dark Souls 2 doesn't really benefit in any real way from adp being a stat.

Don't forget, making strength weaker to make you use power stance

retards get filtered and focus on rolling too much because they're too obsessed with using static builds
you're supposed to change your gear depending on the area/enemy and use the consumables often, it's insane that playing no-hit became the norm for this series so hard that it even changed the game design of the later games

Doubt. Switching to a more "effective" weapon is usually just net even because you've likely already invested into upgrade your main weapon. Running back and grinding for mats for a secondary weapon is definitely not the "intended" way to play.

I think ADP is fine, but mis-tuned. It should have more obviously or more effectively been tied to animation speeds in general. Decreasing Estus use speed by half a second is fine, but it takes too much investment to get there. And tying it to ATN felt needless as well, but DS2 has a number of Stats which double dip on effects (STR giving you HP for example).

No, i-frames is a much more modern way of dealing with it. Normally games would have used scrunched up player hitboxes on defensive postures to make it easier to dodge. Nobody likes taking 100% damage because their toes got clipped. Dark Souls has the problem that they just dragged some shapes in their 3D editor to represent hitboxes and combined with the 30Hz tick rate and input buffering it would have made dodging impossible without the player zipping around like a jumping spider. Their solution was to make the player invincible for a few frames which is a cheap and lazy way of avoiding the issue. And then DS went on to sell gorillions so now programmers more competent than Fromsoft's finest get ordered to duplicate their mistakes. Not to mention it helps that china is now doing souls clones and they only know how to copy.

All enemies have laser tracking as long as you're locked on. Make a hard left and every enemy, including the astroturfed DLC turds, fall apart.

I think it is fine, too. Like many things people whine about, it's fine and isn't a negative either. I just don't think there's any reason for it to exist. Like theoretically it makes you commit to a character who uses roll as their primary defensive option. But does it really? Really?

what's the point of having a stat that reduces estus speed when your entire game functions on input reading.

You get enough upgrade materials to upgrade multiple weapons pretty easily. Duel wielding even lets you combine different weapons together.

Thing isn't bad, it was just done badly

i wonder, is there an alternative to input reading to outsmart the player? DS2 was the first game i noticed this shit happening, but elden ring takes the cake for the amount of animation cancelling bullshit that happens when you use a consumable

Outsmart? It's the laziest type of AI to get the AI to move. That's why shitty games like souls and monster hunter have periods where the enemy is in your face constantly attacking after you do a certain input. Yet other times doesn't seem to notice you're there.

ADP

dogshit mechanic where you are FORCED to waste levels on a stat so you character doesn't move like a slug immersed in slime.

It shows Player Investment in overcoming obstacles. Let's say the game does input read Estus use. As a Player knowing that, and also knowing if I invest in ADP it means that I can consume Estus faster, it adjusts how I play in terms of spacing and timing.
ADP already reduces the time it takes to use Estus, it just doesn't really affect it till you've pretty much maxed it out.

Unless you wanted to play as a super heavy duty poise tank, in which case you can ignore it and invest in END STR VIT VIG.

Making vit was a mistake. Let me pump endurance and get it all like before.

so if it doesn't so anything what's the point

Investing 45 STR for Havel shield is cool but I prefer not getting hit with 20 ADP.

I agree re: VIT. It really is a dead stat and a bit of an annoyance to manage.

so if it doesn't so anything what's the point

Well ADP does do something. It governs i-frames in your roll, how fast you swap weapons, and how fast you raise your shield. I'm saying I wish it did more with animation speeds in general.

ADP does nothing to change how you move

that's called playing an RPG

Scholar

From what I understand Scholar improved the game a lot. I played DS2 on PS3 day 1 and did not like it.

Maybe if you're going pure mage, I went spellsword on a replay of DS1 and it was so much fun that it's now my default build.

ADP is good in theory,

No it wasn't. They should have brought back luck instead.

FORCED to waste levels on a stat

That would normally a huge problem in other Souls games but Emerald Herald demands only 1/3 as many souls for levelling up

Real talk, I've been thinking about replaying one of the early souls but I can't decide which one.
I can't remember shit about any of them.
Which one is really the best 1 2 or 3?
Do any have lewd mods now so it can be sexy horror instead of just horror? I'm willing to forgive a lot of bullshit if I can see some nice tits and ass on the screen while slaying baddies.
To be honest I'm more interested in the connected level design and exploration than the combat.

Dark Souls 1 by far because Fromsoft didn't nerf all the fun builds.

2

1 has the best setting and level design

If you're on PC seriously consider doing one of the overhaul mods. Some have had some serious work put into them.

DS1: Daughters of Ash, Prepare to Die Again, Age of Sunlight, The Scorched Contract,

DS3: Convergence, Ashes, Cinders

2 has the best lewd mods. 1 and 2 have the best exploration, most will tell you 1's is better (because it is) but 2's isn't bad at all. There's lots of secrets to be found in 2 and the areas tend to be pretty big.

1 is the best one and the only one that's truly good
2 is alright
3 is bad

No it's fucking not. It ties a stat to one of your core mechanics. It doesn't even lead to certain dedicated builds. It's like having a stat tied to your walking speed. It's retarded.

So does it just replace your character model? Because the female player in DS2 has man shoulders.

I played the game fatrolling without ever increasing it, stop being a whiny faggot. Rolling isnt a core mechanic

That's what stats do. HP is a core mechanic and you can level it.

Waaaaaah why can't I Ninja flip while wearing full Havels for free anymore??

It ties a stat to one of your core mechanics

Nigga that's every stat.

It makes the women already in game sexier. The emerald herald and the stone woman.

It's retarded because it does nothing but at the same time it's required in everything but full tank builds. Choosing between HP or your damage stat that also ties to your build scalings is reasonable. Choosing to level fucking iframes and estus chugging speed is not.
And makes this already slow game feel even slower in the beginning when full tank is not even an option.

It was not poorly executed because the game is built around using multiple playstyles besides rolling (like tank shield build etc.), unlike most of the later games.
Had rolling been only defensive option like it is in Bloodborne, which leans more towards action than rpg, you could have a valid complaints.
Also, even with minimal agility you can roll through all attacks, your timing needs simply to be more precise compared to a player who has high ADP.

It's not required. I put every point i had into endurance and vitality and did just fine.

I beat the game with only 15 points in ADP. Git gud

It has not nothing to do with "meta level builds".

If you just wanted to help other players kill a specific boss, you're fuckin hosed unless you permanently give up pa ring slot.

If you want to do anything fun with buyable consumables at all, you're hosed.

Playing through the game with a friend, but he died before you killed the boss? Haha, too bad bucko. Guess you're tens of thousands of souls above him now.

It's just such a pain in the ass to manage.

A single counter-example of a swarm of enemies who die in one hit in DS1 (which this player intentionally engineered to make much worse than it is by luring those 3 balder knights into the room) does not at all compare to the intentional design philosophy of spamming hordes of enemies all over the place in DS2 SOFS.

99% of swarms in ds2 are intentionally engineered or skill issues

Yeah. The 1% are have obvious gimmicks behind them, too. Brume Tower's swarms have lots of environmental punishes to weasel your way out.

it doesn't count cause you rushed through and brought those enemies from another part of the level

wow, like every example of getting swarmed by enemies in ds2 ever

this, once i get to 99 adp and meet weapon/spell requirements i hardly know what to do with the massive surplus of souls this game gives you. just dump them in vig/vit/end

DaS1 was the environment focused game, with majority of your deaths coming from sadistic devs putting enemies in spots where they could fuck you up by knocking you off a ledge, getting your attacks stuck on a wall etc. Thus consecutive playthroughs felt OK once you were expecting it and planned accordingly.

DaS3 is the follow up to Bloodborne, both started the modern rollslop meta that plagued ER. Enemies with 7+ attack combos and delays viciously mauling you while you spam dodge/roll button patiently waiting for your turn to attack. Personally I hate it but I can't deny its success (by far the best selling game topped only by ER which is basically the same thing on steroids)

But DaS2 is the special type of autism, its difficulty stems from punishing player's greed and impatience which leads to poor management of the most important resource in the game - stamina. With how insanely soft capped stamina is (+1 per point after reaching 20 endurance) it's a premium resource that forces players to be extremely conservative with their attacks. The game purposefully baits you into thinking you have window for one more attack after which it rams your ass with the huge delay on stamina bar regen.
Combined with the environmental hell of DaS1 being cranked up to 11 (locations like Iron Keep and the "feature" of being interrupted out of animations) DaS2 is probably the most tedious fromsoft game to replay.

DaS2 is probably the most tedious fromsoft game to replay.

Nah that's still Elden Ring.

t. did 4 playthroughs and hated most of them.

...why did you do that?

I love the Souls series, but I hated Elden Ring so much that I'm honestly not even following From anymore.

What if we took the content of one Souls game and stretched it out over a huge as fuck open world

What if we took the DS3 bosses, doubled their attack chains and made them all roll catch with delayed attacks

DS2 lets you build around the limitations of your character and make them strengths. You say stamina is this huge resource, which it is, but it's also the one souls game you can level Endurance up to 100 and basically have your stamina bar reaching across the screen. Playing light also regens stamina quicker than it does in DS1. Fist weapons and daggers are actually good too and consume virtually no stamina so you can mash with those weapon types without much penalty. DS2 is the most fun to play on repeat playthroughs.

I dont care about the shitty ADP argument. I dont care about the lore in DS2 or any other game in the series, i dont care if the world map makes sense.
The game's controls are just ass. The analogue stick has this fucked up design no other souls game has. Its the one thing that ruins this game.

The analogue stick has this fucked up design no other souls game has

what design?

Because the core game was fun, but running through the time wasting over world searching for items/spells you don't remember by heart was cancer.

Theres a webm that shows the jist of it, but i cant find it right now.
Theres also a youtube video that shows the differnce between DS2 and the other games, but i dont want to post a basedboy neckbeard to support my claim.

NTA but it's basically locked to 8 directions so there are "deadzones" in-between. It's not really an issue and I didn't even notice it despite starting DaS2 only a month after DaS1. It's really one of those nothingburgers people bring up to shit on the game.

absolutely fucking massive deadzones

That second example literally proves the point.

That's not being "out of position", or rushing through an area without dealing with the threats.

You walk into a hallway, and without warning 5 very tanky red phantoms spawn and immediately aggro on you, with nowhere to retreat to to spread them out.

It's bullshit for the sake of bullshit.

I beat the game and dlcs without leveling ADP

I stopped listening to Anon Babble's criticism of DS2 seriously when they claimed the very first area in Forest of the Fallen Giants was a gank squad. When I played through I aggro'd each enemy one by one and easily dealt with them, but apparently Anon Babble are shitters who just run into the middle of an area without surveying the surroundings and get raped.

run into the middle of an area without surveying the surroundings

I genuinely feel the enemy placement in DS2 was an exact response to this kind of DS1 playthrough. I'm not saying they got it dead right, but it definitely stops you just running through areas.

it's not required, just walk away instead of spamming rolls retard

Main issue with adp and agility in general was that it was impossible to tell what effect it's having on your rolls without looking it up. No other stat has this issue because you can see numerical increases
I think it was a mistake cutting the different rolling animations, they should apply different animations depending on how many i-frames the roll has, so you start fat rolling with super low adp but you do flip rolls at super high adp
Also adp accidentally made vit worse because the main reason you increase equip load is to have better rolls with heavy equipment, but if you want better rolls adp is a far better investment

Your stats SHOULD affect how your character controls in an RPG.

Absolutely, but the baseline shouldn't feel like absolute fucking dogshit.

baseline roll is good and you get to make it even better

Good

baseline roll is utter shit so adp is a mandatory stat

Retarded and bad

Mana instead of spell charges was an objective improvement, weapon arts are fun, it has the best bosses in the series. That's it.

nah it's dumbed down modern shit

the DS1 fight actually works

the DS2 fight is badly designed and not a single enemy is dead by the end of the webm

Shield and spear guys are hard countered by shield breaker attacks. Just do one of those and then enjoy the free crit.

The problem is that shield also needs adp because of the block delay.

I think of a lot of the system mechanics are bad (phantom poise system, bad shields, rolling way too strong, magic made way more boring and repetitive)
But the actual bosses and levels are fucking fantastic, swamp mania aside
Weapon arts are also cool and possibly justification enough for the shitty changes to magic

and levels are fucking fantastic, swamp mania aside

How could you say that with a straight face when 70% of the game takes place in the swamp?

Also adp accidentally made vit worse because the main reason you increase equip load is to have better rolls with heavy equipment, but if you want better rolls adp is a far better investment

In DS1 your roll is 11 i-frames regardless of equip load, the only thing that changes at the 25% and 50% equip load points in the speed and distance of the roll. In DS2 i-frames are determined by AGL, while roll speed and distance decrease linearly from 0% equip load to 70% equip load. In addition to that, equip load affects your stamina regeneration. DS2 is the only one of the trilogy where there is value in running an equip load other than just below the medium or fat roll threshold.

The main thing that devalues VIT in DS2 isn't the existence of ADP but the fact that physical resistances from armour are pretty bad and light armours give you all the elemental resistance you need.

Your stats SHOULD affect how your character controls in an RPG.

Yes, and Vitality changes how your character controls. Adaptability changes an invisible value with no clear indication of what it's doing.

Oh I did not know what
I just assumed equip load + agility were combined to calculate the roll strength rather than them effecting two different things

Just because an area looks like a swamp doesn't mean it can't be fun and well designed
Except Farron keep, that area sucks

Weapon arts are also cool

Weapon arts were a terrible mistake.

Yeah, this is the critical flaw about ADP that I never see people discuss in-depth. Every other Souls game uses a breakpoint system. Each breakpoint is indicated by a different animation that can be perceived visually: light roll, medium roll, heavy roll - each with a fixed number of i-frames. While weight breakpoints still exist in DS2, they don't affect your roll's i-frames, only its distance. Agility governs i-frame breakpoints, but these are completely nonsensical and not perceptible to the player.

88 agility = 9-iframes

92 agility = 10 i-frames

96 agility = 11 i-frames

Oh, so every 4 agility is 1 additional frame of invincibility. Wrong, because the next breakpoint is 99 agility. So it's 3 agility from now on? Also wrong, because the next breakpoint is 105 agility. And on top of all of this, there is literally no way to learn any of this in-game.

It's an absolutely insane decision: going from a three-tiered system where the player can clearly discern their i-frames based on visual feedback from the game itself... to going to a six*-tiered system with absolutely no feedback except messy guessies. The system was designed to be as pointlessly obtuse as possible. And, worse, at the end of the day it adds absolutely nothing to the game - except giving retards like everyone in this thread, including me, something to argue about.

tl;dr agility obfuscates critical information from the player for no benefit whatsoever
* - There are actually MORE agility and i-frame breakpoints, but it isn't worth going into detail on why.

What is the "correct" amount of agility / i-frames?

Well what is it, agl or adp, you mention both and i'm confused.

DS1 is special cus most defensive options in that game were busted as fuck.
Classic strat? Just light roll through everything, hell you could rock the darkwood grain ring to ninja flip through everything.
Shields? Even medium shields are decent, but if you really wanted to you could roll through the game easily with most greatshields, even the Eagle Greatshield which has very low stat requirements.
Too lazy to do the previous two? Just wear full Havel's/Giant's set. You could even upgrade armor in that game for insane poise and defense to the point where it was an easy way to deal with the Four Kings.

The first ever playthrough I did of ER was with greatshields, and initially I beat Margit with a greatshield only because guard-counters are my favorite mechanic From has added so far. Also guard counters with greatshields are stupid with how much stance damage they do.

Guard counters are stupid. Why does R2 after blocking do more damage and stance damage, regardless of what shield I am using, against all enemies, with no visual indication that the enemy has become more vulnerable in any way?

I think weapon arts which were based around, dare I say, "realistic maneuvers" were better than the anime bullshit. It's why the bog standard Longsword weapon art rocks.

Except Farron keep, that area sucks

I don't get the hate for Farron. It's just a swamp.

ADP gives you points in Agility, which is yet another layer of obfuscation. Agility is the stat that actually increases your i-frames and flask animation's speed, but I think ADP has some other minor effects since it's basically repurposed Resistance. It's easier to remember when actually looking at the level up screen, I can't recall it off the top of my head.

ADP and ATN affect AGL. ADP is multiplied by 0.75 and ATN is multiplied by 0.25, then these two figures are added together. The result is your AGL, which effects your i-frames etc.

Agility is the stat that changes your iframes and animation speeds, but the primary way to increase agility is by putting soul levels into adaptability. Attunement levels can also increase agility but by a lesser amount than adp does. It's an additional layer of obfuscation to the unclear way the stat works.

It was just a better system for weapons that had some sort of special attack, the smelter sword or moonlight great sword breaking apart from using their special attacks is just weird
I will grant you that stylistically a lot of the animation look dumb
For me it's all the waiting around, you have to wade through poison to get to the dry land and then wait til your poison/poison build up clears
I know you can just eat moss but eating still takes time and stock piling enough of it also takes time

A stat like ADP/AGI could still have a place in a game without i-frames by give you faster, further dodges.

Every single "open field" area in Souls games sucks because the games are fundamentally about resource management. When you take away linear / semi-linear structure, resource management collapses. Let's say you cleared out 50% of a linear level; if you want to reset your healing resources, you need to backtrack to the bonfire and rest, resetting your progress. If you clear out 50% of Farron Swamp and want to reset... no big deal, just rest at the bonfire in the middle of the swamp and don't go to the half you already cleared. There's no tension. It's boring.

Some areas try to offset this by eroding your resources, which depending on the structure of the area can just be an annoyance. Lower Blighttown poisons you and assaults you with endless mosquitoes while slowing you. Darkroot Forest spams you with forest hunters if you're human, but is otherwise one of the worst, most boring areas in the game. Upper Farron Swamp does... nothing. Lower Farron Swamp poisons you and slows your movement, but the real reason it's despised is because it makes this process of fully clearing it much more annoying through obstructed lines of sight. There's too many FUCKING trees.

tl;dr it takes the worst form of Souls game area and makes it even more of a complete fucking slog to explore

second best wukong-like in my opinion

Weight breakpoints don't affect roll i-frames in DS1, the only thing that changes is the animation, so you get 11 i-frames regardless of whether it's a light, mid, or fat roll. DS2 doesn't use a breakpoint system for most of its weight range. Instead there's a smooth linear change in roll distance from 0% equip load to 70% equip load, at which point there is a break into fat roll. Then there are also some additional breakpoints after 70% that make the fat roll fatter.

The fact of the matter is, no Dark Souls game tells you about i-frames at all. Fromsoft expects you to intuit the existence of i-frames just on the vibes, and it was because of the vibes that people for years believed that DS1 had 9 i-frames for fat roll, 11 for mid roll, 13 for light roll, 15 for ninja flip. Only recently did people actually look at the DS1 frame data and realize that it's 11 i-frames on all three basic roll types, with ninja flip having 13.

Basically in both DS1 and DS2 your equip load doesn't change your i-frames at all. The difference is that in DS1 the i-frames are fixed, while in DS2 they are linked to AGL, and in both games you're never told they even exist. Personally I consider the fact that the game's mechanics are not explained to be a flaw in every single Dark Souls game. As far as I'm concerned all three of them are unplayable without looking up the mechanics online.

My feeling was that Farron Swamp was designed around the idea of being invaded, and that being the challenge. I know I used to invade the shit out of that place at SL25 and poison all the newbs before they got enough moss.

Oh, you're right. Every time I've played DS3 in the past few years, I haven't been invaded in Farron Swamp so I completely forgot that it's the Darkroot Forest analogue. Unfortunately, that means it suffers the same fate of being boring as fuck if you're not human / embered. Fuck the tree guys, by the way.

People may hate frigid outskirts, but trying to get through that shithole of an area definitely exemplifies the spirit of attrition design.

All they had to do is have different dodge animations depending on ADP stat.

The main thing that devalues VIT in DS2 isn't the existence of ADP but the fact that physical resistances from armour are pretty bad and light armours give you all the elemental resistance you need.

Adding on to this, the way passive poise is implemented also makes heavy armor almost worthless.

So not only is physical resistance bad in heavy armor, but you also stagger extremely easily from even basic enemies, making it so heavy armor has a lot of downsides, with almost no upsides compared to light armor.

Huh, I was working off of incorrect information about DS1. I hate how as time goes on, misinformation becomes harder to identify instead of easier. Annoying.

Games don't need to tell me about iframes. If i press the dodge button in a game, i expect to be invulnerable from the microsecond i press the button to the frame the animation is over. It's that simple. Anything else is bad.

I remember playing through DS2 blind and I ignored ADP because it seemed to be that useless stat, just like LUCK in DS1.

I remember DS2's launch on this board was a fucking disaster because, of course, no one knew how ADP / agility worked. Everyone was complaining about "shock waves" because there was no visual indication of your roll having shit i-frames. People who started as Bandit got absolutely fucking raped.

That's why I always start these games Sword & Shield. Blocking always works. Never fails.

The thing about shields is that they'd be way too overpowered without weapon durability.

yeah man I can agree with that but also fuck dark souls 2 for not executing it properly.

No, it's not

Most action games just give you full iframes for the whole rolling animation.
Samurai Warriors, Ocarina of Time, Max Payne.
Dark Souls arbitrarily makes 1/3 second of the animation iframe which is confusing.

Both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 have recovery frames tied to when the player touches the ground and iframes when he isn't touching the ground.
It's fully visualized.
The only random game is Dark Souls 2 because it's a piece of shit

iframes when he isn't touching the ground.

I don't see how leaping into the air could intuitively count as iframes while rolling itself isn't.

Doesn't agility increase roll distance?

No, just equip load.

I 100% disagree. I love making twinks and doing low SM runs.
It's actually more fun than SL1 runs.

still need iframes.

Levelling up Attunement also increase iframes at slower rate.
At 40 you get as many iframes as Dark Souls 1.

What does this actually entail?
I gotta confess I'm not really sure how soul memory works

just dont level ADP its not mandatory

dark souls 1 guys were mad they were dying when rolling through attacks without ADP then mad the bosses were too easy when they stacked ADP for light DS1 tier i-frames

What does this actually entail?

Nothing, he is a retarded Shart Souls 2 faggot
It's a SL 24 build but he can't use resonant spells or buy anything at all or upgrade all weapons he wants, basically a shitter SL self imposed lock

If Dark Souls 2 fed literal shit in his mouth he would love it and call it more fun than eating gourmet.

Soul Memory is a "counter" of how many souls you got by killing enemies, selling items, and using consunable souls. It only really affects where the game connects you to players that are in your soul memory range.
As you can see from that pic I have 30 000 soul memory, which is the lowest possible SM at which you can beat the game. This means you only have 30 000 souls to level up, upgrade weapons, etc.

In a way, it's like playing a game with limited resources.

Hello there, trollanon. Nice to see you again. Did you beat Ancient Dragon?

just dont level ADP its not mandatory

This is true, ADP is not mandatory because Dark Souls 2 gives you infinite healing items and all enemies are very basic.
Some bosses will 100% hit and have completely hitboxes but it doesn't matter than the combat is janky and poor because you can just power through it like Skyrim

Soul memory stops mattering much after 2 millions where everyone could basically invade/coop with each others so it's a nothingburger.

Ah I see
I didn't ask you retard

No argument

Please try and spin trash Dark Souls 2 design as genius elements.
It's always fun to see cultists get laughed at their face

its not mandatory because people made fun of dark souls 1 for looking goofy because you could roll through attacks so they changed dark souls 2 to be all about positioning and rolling away from attacks but added ADP so you could play dark souls 1 style if you wanted.

I don't need any arguments. It's not me who is making DS2 threads every day, claiming that I'm playing it for the first time and then spamming my .webm collection.

I fucking hate DS2's AI. Bloodborne, DS3, and Elden Ring have more refined AI that circles the player instead of simply stacking like this. DS1's AI is very simplistic, but most enemies and pretty slow and passive so you don't run into this issue as often.

its not mandatory because

Because you have 3 billion lifegems and enemies take soow swings

they changed dark souls 2 to be all about positioning and rolling away from attacks

No, they changed it to be a tab target MMO where giants hit 20 meters radius but it doesn't matter because you have infinite healing

My favourite part of Dark Souls 2 AI is when human NPCs have the player at range but aren't facing him, so they either do nothing or throw attacks at nothing because they work on the assumption that the targeting system-movement is like other Souls games and will redirect attacks, only to swing at nothing or roll-attack into nothing.

spamming .webm collection

Most self-aware ds2fag

if i run away from the boss for 20 mins i can regain all my life, the game is easy

retard argument

Not even the water hitbox is accurate

Run away

??

Lifegems were a massive mistake

lmao

Oh great, now he's replying to himself.

Dark Souls 2 is pure sovlfvl kino

He posts like 4 times in a row and then replies to himself
He must really like dark souls 2 to post about it so much

now he's replying to himself.

You can't selfbump by making 2 replies on a row, newfaggot

thats a flask, not a lifegem. retard

Spell charges were based fp is cringe

It works better in elden ring because you can get more flasks very quickly but in DS3 casters early game is rough, you all but have to spec into melee to get to the point you can reliably use magic

Skill issue

DS2 had the best online PVP despite soul memory, not because of it

That’s the point though — lifegems trivialize the punishment for mistakes. You don’t even have to manage your resources carefully, just kite and heal forever. It’s not an argument about "running for 20 minutes," it’s that the design UNDERMINES enemy aggression and encounter pacing. Estus being limited is what forces actual commitment and skill.

Dark Souls 2 has an absolutely dogshit PVP and is literally the main culprit behind Dark Souls PVP turning into an overglorified honoraburu dueling bullshit before Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring brought back vertical design, estus economy and PVPVE as central to invasions

Dark Souls 3

rollrollrollrollrollrollrollroll
the extra covenants like the mound makers were fun though i'll give you that, fuck you miyazaki for scrapping the concept after

Elden Ring

gankfests everywhere because muh 'bad red man'

yeah, surely a superior pvp scene

Yes, better combat, better movement, better level design, better game in general and better healing system that actually works make for a better pvp scene

soul memory being a hidden stat while ALSO having a total limit to enemies to kill (barring effigies or whatever to respawn the area) was absolute retardation. soul memory was dumb but could work, but it has to be shown and you should have a reasonable way to grind souls to get up to the soul memory level of your friends to be able to play together again.

False! You actually beat Mirror Knight by strafing to the left! Don't hit his giant bouncy shield!

Anybody who says "just strafe right" is shitposting. You can avoid attacks comfortably without dodging in DS2 but it requires you to respond to the individual attack with your movement, blindly circling is going to work on some abilities and then othertimes get you hit depending on what the boss does

Moving is good in DS2 because sprint startup is very fast while rolls are slow and cost a lot of stamina. The trick to making multiple defensive tools viable is not to make any of them too good, parry is too rewarding in every single action game

You can avoid attacks comfortably without dodging in DS2 but it requires you to respond to the individual attack with your movement, blindly circling is going to work on some abilities and then othertimes get you hit depending on what the boss does

Nah, strafing right sums about the abaolute majority of boss fights

Moving is good in DS2 because sprint startup is very fast while rolls are slow and cost a lot of stamina. The trick to making multiple defensive tools viable is not to make any of them too good

Rolling is too good in Dark Souls 2 because stamina was never a balancing factor, something retarded DS2fags never understood
I can spam rolls more comfortably in Dark Souls 2 because no enemy has ways to abuse the vulnerability window, which is historically how Souls games did dodging differently from any other action game, giving it committment and vulnerability

better combat, better movement, better level design

Strafing towards their weak side lets you ignore most of their moveset. They'll usually only have like 1 or 2 attacks that can hit you but the rest are free to punish. It's almost always strafing towards their off hand, your right, or if they have a two handed weapon they're cocking back, across their chest, you go left. They didn't really fix that until Elden Ring.

Imagine a FromSoftware rollslop without iframes and with Exanima physics
I'd be interested in that

I'm not playing this game with you retard, you are mediocre and you're posting average as fuck gameplay of easy fights which show nothing of value. Your movement is sub-optimal and your posts are sub-room temperature IQ, get a hobby

They'll usually only have like 1 or 2 attacks that can hit you but

In otherwords you're still responding to what they're doing and you're putting yourself in a position where you're going to have to roll a bunch of attacks. You're just pre-emptively moving in the hope that you can get away with avoiding something. When you get better you will be able to see the animation startup and then move in response to the animation to avoid everything instead of guessing

No argument

Lol I accept your concession

You are playing like shit

Yeah I'm spamming rolls because the game doesn't punish me

I-it's against easy enemies

I posted duo bosses failing to rollcatch me while I'm spamming Bandit 3 ADP rolls because dodge is not about how many iframes you have but how good the enemy design is

This is why shitters who spam complain about not getting attack windows in later games, because they are the exact opposite and balanced around more aggressive combat that punishes stalling the fight to roll every attack

In otherwords you're still responding to what they're doing

No, I'm strafing right and they miss because they have shit AI

You're just pre-emptively moving in the hope that you can get away with avoiding something.

But the reason you can avoid something is that they can straight up throw attacks that miss you, like The enemy design is just awful

so where's your webm of no-hit twin pursuers

See that would be nice, but unfortunately the games prior already established this trend. You can piss and moaning that people take a shit on your favorite dark souls game consistently but that doesn't change the fact that they left iframes in and poorly implemented them

bro just beat the whole game

I really like the idea of a hyper optimal defensive strategy.

The dark souls 3 pvp meta is shit but you don't play souls pvp for the meta

I've only gotten to Crystal Sage but let me tell you why DS3 sucks

MOM CAN WE HAVE GUNDYR!!

No, we have Gundyr at home

Gundyr at home:

Seeing every single location in base Dark Souls 2 and every single main boss until Throne Watcher and Throne Defender is not enough to face a single good enemy design

Grim

Implying Crystal Sage isn't a better boss than all of Dark Souls 2 roster

Shart Souls 2 fan is the anti-Elden Ring tranny shitposter

Literal blight on the community

Dark Souls 2 doesn't have good bosses
It's literally worse than Demon's Souls in that regard, because Flamelurker tears a new hole on all Dark Souls 2 bosses

But I'm not good and barely died on my first (and only) ds2 playthrough following that simple strategy. Very generous when i say 1 or 2 attacks would hit you only strafing to one side. I only remember having to read Sir Alone and Fume's anims and clapped them both second try. They're easy to read, especially after coming from Elden ring, you dont have to git gud for that or even turn your brain on for 99% of the game.

Yeah he missed the best boss of Dark Souls 2
Aldia

Shield at 3 ADP takes 7 days to raise, because ADP is a dogshit stat
Shield only is also very unviable against door knights and the Dragon Aeries sentinels that literally never stop attacking you. Armor is also worthless after mid game, so I would say shields are the least viable in Dark Souls 2

It was a nothing burger that hardly prevented online play like it was predicted.

It was fatal for invasions
Inb4 some cope about invasions not being the right way to play the game or something

It would be more accurate to say that it was fatal for traditional invasions. Every just did belfry PvP because you needed to farm cracked red eye orbs from the undead enemies in Huntsman's Copse otherwise, which ballooned your soul memory to absurd levels. DS2's matchmaking is fascinating, it doesn't even have fucking level restrictions, let alone weapon upgrade restrictions.

Fuck your dog shit take.

It was fatal for invasions

Soul memory (in addition to a lot of other factors) balances the fact that you can be invaded anywhere at any time even if you're hollowed and alone and the boss is dead. It is an incomplete system but I'll take it over narrow soul/weapon memory brackets and extremely conditional invasions.

farm cracked red eye orbs

Tichy Gren has an infinite stock in NG+ but players are allergic to moving to NG+ for whatever reason, even though NG+ is the real postgame in 2.

The conditional system works perfectly fine when there's something like humanity or embers to incentivize players to populate the multiplayer pool. I've actually been invading in DSR lately and it's as active as Elden Ring despite having a fraction of the players.

I'm still mad that they threw out the ember system for ER. Beating a major boss should activate your great rune, and having an active great rune should allow you to be invaded in dungeons (and only dungeons), with blues being summoned automatically unless disabled. (Solo invasions are too invader-favored in ER.) This would not only help populate multiplayer, but relieve co-op'ers who are justifiably pissed off that they're invaded the second they summon (because there's too many invaders and not enough co-op'ers). Thank god seamless exists.