Another daft question.

Yes I know but I'm a simple soul. I've been playing Dark Souls on PS3 but with all the talk of not being able to recover your saves if your console goes down unless you belong to PlayStation Plus and have saved them online, I've been considering getting the XBox version because at least then I'll be able to transfer them to a new console if necessary.

My question (at last) is do you have to have a Gold Membership in order to play Dark Souls online? I currently only have a Silver membership.

Incidentally, I don't think Sony are playing fair here. Why should I have to pay extra money to join something I don't want to, it's almost blackmail and I see no reason why saves and any downloaded games you've paid for can't be transferred toa U.S.B. or something similar.

I feel the same way Slake, I refuse to spend money on PS+ when there isn't really anything offered that I want aside from online storage. However you can transfer saves to jump drives. I've seen it done a couple of times. A friend of mine had to restore factory defaults on his system before having to send it in to get something repaired, and he just took all his save data, put it on 3 or 4 jump drives, sent it, got it back like new, and restored it all.

And you don't really need to transfer downloaded games that way. Once you've bought them the PSN system remembers that you have indefinitely. When I had my original PS3 I had purchased a few games, then after it was destroyed (long story) I didn't buy another one for a good year and a half, and when I eventually did I was able to just redownload them all off the store for free.

Slake, I think you do need gold to play online for Xbox. Do you have a slim PS3 or an older model? Dark Souls doesn't allow save transfers to external media (it's on a game by game basis) but if you have a newer PS3 and had to replace it you could switch hard drives as long as the model is the same I think. There's also a backup the entire PS3 option but I'm not sure exactly if it would work between different PS3 models or not.

skarekrow13 wrote:Dark Souls doesn't allow save transfers to external media

Whoa, really? That's pretty weak. I guess I stand corrected.

Just take your hard drive out and put it in your new one. I've had to do this -_-

[quote="PlasticandRage"]

skarekrow13 wrote:Dark Souls doesn't allow save transfers to external media

The reason for this is so people don't modify their saves. hence why ps3 has quite abit fewer cheated characters.

[quote="Conrack"]

PlasticandRage wrote:

skarekrow13 wrote:Dark Souls doesn't allow save transfers to external media

The reason for this is so people don't modify their saves. hence why ps3 has quite abit fewer cheated characters.

I guess that's a fair trade off, but it still makes things difficult for people who genuinely don't want to cheat and need to back up their save files. I can honestly say that after the nearly 1000 hours I've put into this game I'd probably cry if I lost my builds

Cry? I'd crawl into the nearest corner, curl up into a ball, and would begin sobbing uncontrollably! Then after pulling myself together, and a suitable period of mourning, I'd start over again, such is the hold that this game has on me.

I lost my original Demon's souls characters after my old ps3 went bellly up, 400+ hours gone like that, it sucked but I played with the hand I was dealt, and now have almost double that with better characters. the pain hurts for awhile but then you just move on and get stronger because you have knowledge now you didn't have then.

SlakeMoth wrote:Yes I know but I'm a simple soul. I've been playing Dark Souls on PS3 but with all the talk of not being able to recover your saves if your console goes down unless you belong to PlayStation Plus and have saved them online, I've been considering getting the XBox version because at least then I'll be able to transfer them to a new console if necessary.

My question (at last) is do you have to have a Gold Membership in order to play Dark Souls online? I currently only have a Silver membership.

Incidentally, I don't think Sony are playing fair here. Why should I have to pay extra money to join something I don't want to, it's almost blackmail and I see no reason why saves and any downloaded games you've paid for can't be transferred toa U.S.B. or something similar.

Slake bother I have a 14 day Gold card that came with my copy of Halo 4 and I will give it to you (edit: the Gold Card) if you just want to consider trying gold I really do like Xbox live so its my suggestion.

The only advice I could give you my friend is if you are attending school or somthing and cant afford the Xb-live I would suggest sticking with PS3. Gold is woth it in opinion.

wait a minute…you don't want to pay for a PSN+ membership, but you do want to pay for XBox Gold or whatever they're calling it?

stick with the PS3, get a PSN+ account, backup your saves, enjoy the most active Dark Souls community, and as a plus enjoy some free gaming content as well. all with fewer advertisements to interrupt your fun.

man…i just realized how fanboyish i sound. some one punch me in the mouth.

Yet again the forum comes up with the goods, I don't know what I'd do without you, I wish I could give you all a +1. Thank you GkMrBane for your kind offer. At the moment though I'm only considering getting Gold, so I wont take you up on it just yet. The reason I am considering it at all is because my PS3 is the original 'fat boy' model and, although I look after my consoles, there is always that thought in the back of my mind that tonight maybe the night that it dies on me and if this happens I doubt that I would rush out and buy another (funds are a bit depleted at the moment). I'd still want to play Dark Souls though, so the XBox version and a Gold account are a 'no brainer' as far as I'm concerned. Also 12 months Gold membership is a lot cheaper than Playstation Plus. Phew! I didn't set out to write a novel, sorry folks.

Nybbles wrote:wait a minute…you don't want to pay for a PSN+ membership, but you do want to pay for XBox Gold or whatever they're calling it?

stick with the PS3, get a PSN+ account, backup your saves, enjoy the most active Dark Souls community, and as a plus enjoy some free gaming content as well. all with fewer advertisements to interrupt your fun.

man…i just realized how fanboyish i sound. some one punch me in the mouth.

It's alright man. You're in good company. Nerds of the world unite at soulswiki

If you do go with the Xbox some day? when you go through the process of making up your Gamer Tag and account you will be offered a one month free trail Gold membership.
You can do this 6 times on one console with six different accounts.
After that it`s 34.99 for 12 months or you can buy it month by month at 4.99 or every 3 months at 14.99.
Although may your PS3 live long and prosper.

SlakeMoth wrote:Yet again the forum comes up with the goods, I don't know what I'd do without you, I wish I could give you all a +1. Thank you GkMrBane for your kind offer. At the moment though I'm only considering getting Gold, so I wont take you up on it just yet. The reason I am considering it at all is because my PS3 is the original 'fat boy' model and, although I look after my consoles, there is always that thought in the back of my mind that tonight maybe the night that it dies on me and if this happens I doubt that I would rush out and buy another (funds are a bit depleted at the moment). I'd still want to play Dark Souls though, so the XBox version and a Gold account are a 'no brainer' as far as I'm concerned. Also 12 months Gold membership is a lot cheaper than Playstation Plus. Phew! I didn't set out to write a novel, sorry folks.

Nostalgiaing over my old fat boy now. ;-; Here's a tip you might find weird: Don't play effing Bioshock. I'm not kidding, I played Bioshock on my old machine (to be fair, it was fourish years old and second hand from my dad, who played 24/7) and it got the yellow light. So I got a new one, but Bioshock in to try to finish it, and guess what IT YELLOW LIT. AGAIN. A NEW MACHINE. I left the disc in and sent the whole thing back. I never did finish it.
Is yours the 60GB premium? Mine was. It could play PS2 games, it was that rare model that they forgot to remove it from. I was so devastated when it died.

/moan

My Phat PS3 got through Bioshock without a hiccup. When it finally went, I am thankful it went in it's sleep. I played Skyrim one night and shut it down normal and it never woke up

skarekrow13 wrote:My Phat PS3 got through Bioshock without a hiccup. When it finally went, I am thankful it went in it's sleep. I played Skyrim one night and shut it down normal and it never woke up

Hey Skyrim was the last thing mine saw too! Although I can't give Skyrim the credit. All that credit goes to me deciding the dogs fear of the vacuum cleaner was funny.

I think it's the 120 gig, to be honest I don't take much notice of stuff like that. It wont play PS2 games though but I don't mind because I've still got my nifty little slim PS2 for that.

We've got two XBox's in the house already which was the reason I was thinking of going Gold (my husband plays the other one) but thanks for the info anyway Bioraptor. As for Bioshock, I played that on 360 with no problem, so maybe it's cursed on PS3. I wonder what will happen with Bioshock Infinite? You may be transported to another dimension, so be careful.

I'm not sure how Sony's cloud works, since I don't have the Plus on mine. But I think Xbox has it's own issue with Cloud. If you're playing Dark Souls, and red ring, the game save never gets to "sync" with the console (since it died). Basically, each time I play, then shut down, it takes all the updated save data and syncs it with Cloud. The problem that occurs is, if you try to use another console to access your game save, even under the same profile, you get a message that it needs to sync with the original console, which is hard after it has died.

As far as I know, there's no way to resolve this. I wondered about transferring the licence, but never really got an answer as to whether this would work. The logical step would be to use a USB memory stick for your saves, since of all three options, it seems least likely to fail in the event of a console meltdown. Your only risk is that the USB drive goes bad. I've actually started another 2 characters, which I save to USB, in addition to the 10 that I have build up, which are saved on Cloud.

Does anyone have a link to the steps involved in backing up save data on the new slim PS3? I have a bunch of saves from my games on that console, and I wouldn't mind saving them.

Back Lot Basher wrote:I'm not sure how Sony's cloud works, since I don't have the Plus on mine. But I think Xbox has it's own issue with Cloud. If you're playing Dark Souls, and red ring, the game save never gets to "sync" with the console (since it died). Basically, each time I play, then shut down, it takes all the updated save data and syncs it with Cloud. The problem that occurs is, if you try to use another console to access your game save, even under the same profile, you get a message that it needs to sync with the original console, which is hard after it has died.

As far as I know, there's no way to resolve this. I wondered about transferring the licence, but never really got an answer as to whether this would work. The logical step would be to use a USB memory stick for your saves, since of all three options, it seems least likely to fail in the event of a console meltdown. Your only risk is that the USB drive goes bad. I've actually started another 2 characters, which I save to USB, in addition to the 10 that I have build up, which are saved on Cloud.

Does anyone have a link to the steps involved in backing up save data on the new slim PS3? I have a bunch of saves from my games on that console, and I wouldn't mind saving them.

I save my most important builds on a flash drive that I have hooked to my xbox. the game will still pull dlc from any other data storage devices hooked up so you dont have to worry about that.

GkMrBane wrote:
I save my most important builds on a flash drive that I have hooked to my xbox. the game will still pull dlc from any other data storage devices hooked up so you dont have to worry about that.

That's generally what I do. Once a week, I might copy saves from my current game to cloud, in case I have a problem. But Dark Souls won't let saves be copied, only transferred. That's a system I wish they could chance, since people are investing HUGE amounts of time into these games, so it would be nice to know you have a copy backed up somewhere.