Top 5 changes to Dark Souls 2 from DkS I'd like to see

What are your top 5 changes you'd like to see to the game in Dark Souls 2?

After playing through the game on a couple of characters with an aim to creating some builds for learning PVP I have some suggestions for how I would like dark souls 2 to improve on dark souls. I will only talk about PVE personally but I'd like to hear other players top 5.

1) Give clues to getting to different places and on where to find certain things. EDIT: In retrospect although this would be good for new players it might take away from players who played DkS1 and understand the twisted logic of the series.

It would be nice to be able to play the game through without having to look everything up online or risk missing large parts of the game. Some annoying examples from dark souls are:
Painted World, the Drake sword (which shouldn't be available so early) and the bonfire in sens fortress being in a retarded place you have to run past to name but a few.
Another major one for me was embers. Trying to do certain zones with a +5 weap compared to a +10 or +15 is a massive difference and depends largely on which zones you explore first. Andre could for example say the last known whereabout (just the zone) of the embers so it would give players a chance to try and seek them out.
I suppose my main issue with the game is the difficulty difference between going in 'blind' and not looking up anything and googling everything. It's actually not too hard a game if you know where everything is but there are some leaps in understanding for new players on upgrading, finding certain keys and zones etc. It wouldn't hurt the game if there were some clues on certain things and more in game guidance. Whilst it feels cool stumbling across an illusiary wall or something there are parts of the game that 98% of players simply wouldn't stumble across if it weren't for looking online and I personally feel that an attentive player should be able to find most things in a game without looking online. I'm not saying they need to add endless dialogue or training or anything like that. I like the minimalism but just add better clues and don't have anything really important (like the bonfire in sens fortress) in too obscure places.

2) Interconnectness. The first zones of the game up until Sens Fortress are fantastically interconnected. Once you have done anor londo and get the lord vessel that interconnectedness is less relevant and the world loses a bit of it's charm. Not only that but once you get to anor londo and you realise you've upgraded a naff weapon and you can't defeat the bosses you have to go back all the way through Anor Londo and Sens by foot rather than having a route (a kind of iron cage cable car maybe) back to the Burg. For myself I wanted to do the whole game without summoning player characters to help but I had to give up on that in anor londo because there was no easy way back to upgrade my gear.
For dark souls 2 I would like them to have the whole world connected in the fantastic way the first zones were and to remove the warping and instead have everything link back to a main area. There was no real need for the warping in dark souls. Every level could have had a path back. Example: Lost Izalith was lowest level so could have had elevator all the way back to burg/firelink, Sens could have cable car back, even dukes/crystal cabe could have something like a magic portal back.

3) NG+. It's really boring. The difficulty is a bit higher but it's not as hard as the first playthrough as your gear is awesome and you know where everything is and if you were thorough on first playthrough there's not much to get. I haven't tried NG++ though I'm not that interested in playing through the exact same content 7 times.
They could add a new boss towards the end of each playthrough that drops some more unique equipment and change the move sets of enemies around a bit and placement of enemies to make them more challenging. I realise that this take extra development time but there are some zones like ash lake and hollow that most people wouldn't even find anyway that they spent time coding. If they made 7 new zones, one for each playthrough it would add incentive to play through more than once. I also understand that for PVP it would suck if you had to play through to NG+++++ just to get a certain ring so they should make the new items PVE focused only.

4) Max soul level. Have it max out at 100 or 125. Being able to max out all your stats makes playing through multiple times even duller as eventually your character ends up being a havel, fast rolling mage, cleric, pyromancer able to wield all weapons. Caring about where to put stat points and trying to base your character around a certain playstyle is what I find most enjoyable about RPGs. I don't want to play superman. I want those points to really matter so when I go for a weapon that requires 28 str I'm sacrificing something elsewhere not just a bit of time to level up some more stats. You may ask well what can you spend souls on once you hit max level. Well that is something they should look in to in DkS2. They should also allow you to retrain your stats in exchange for souls if they had a lower max soul level so if you misclicked or wanted to try a new build you could.

5) Multiplayer. Doing multiplayer in a zone is good fun but trivialises the content somewhat. It would be nice if bosses were buffed when attempting them with multiple people so you would still get to do them and they would probably be slightly easier as they can't attack you both at once but they'd have double the amount of life and hit harder too. This one might be contraversial but the one time I did call on human aid for a boss it made it far too easy. Some optional online only bosses that require multiple people would also be great fun and and optional PVP boss would be awesome where you are pitted against higher SL characters for reward. I said I wouldn't talk about PVP as I'm still a noob but I do feel the different ways of doing PVP (apart from red stone summon) are a little convoluted and confusing to get in to.

I would like to see them add deicated servers like how it was in demon's souls but also make it a global. like say its easyer 2 connect with players in ur area but still be able 2 connect 2 some1 across the world

shadowzninjaz wrote:I would like to see them add deicated servers like how it was in demon's souls but also make it a global. like say its easyer 2 connect with players in ur area but still be able 2 connect 2 some1 across the world

Actually, im not too sure about dedicated servers. Im happy with being able to play with players from the U.K and japan and other places around the world. If it was dedicated servers and i was only able to play with players from N.A then there would only be like 1/3 the players and we wouldent be able to play together here as one on the forums. (a large portion of us is either N.A or U.K)

1) Improved story

2) More boss variety, more interesting bosses

3) More weapon variety and types, bring back status ailment upgrades

4) More magic, development of magic system

5) Make every boss drop a soul used for weapons or magic

TurkeySoul wrote:1) Give clues to getting to different places and on where to find certain things.

I'll admit having hints about where the diffrent levels are located would be nice. From put that one dude in Firelink to do that, but his hints were just misleading if you never played the game before. It was also a little hard to figure out where to go at first, even without talking to the dude.

However, I don't think there should be hints about item locations. I think having to find the stuff is part of the fun, but they could leave hints about the existence of some items.

4) Max soul level.

One of the reasons why I like this game is how the character level system works. You reach max level when all your stats are maxed out. I've played many games that had the max level set somewhere below that level, and I didn't like it. It's just anoying when you can't level up your character further even though all your stats or abilities are not at max level.

They should also allow you to retrain your stats in exchange for souls if they had a lower max soul level so if you misclicked or wanted to try a new build you could.

I've also played 2 games that did this, and I don't like it. It makes the game easier. If you didn't like how you made your character, then you can just rebuild it without having to take time rebuilding it. The price was always small compaired with the time it let you save. It's also not like real life. In real life you can't forget something to instantly learn something else. I know, you're thinking, "This is a fantasy game," and you're right, but it also has some realism in it that I love.

3) NG+. It's really boring.

That's true. It would be nice if they could change it up a little, but that would take more time and resources. Even if they did it people probably still won't play the game more then twice with the same character.

From did add gravelording to try to make NG+ more interesting. The red phantom enemies don't appear until NG+. However the covenent doesn't work efficiently, and it's just not enough.

5) Multiplayer.

The bosses already get a boost to health and defense during multiplayer, but it's definately not enough. The PvP could be simplified a little. They hid the most important PvP covenent in the game. I didn't know it was there untill I happened to find it on the internet by chance. They could at least make a character give you a little hint that it exist.

Also, I want a talisman that halves miracle castings!

They do. The cracked red orbs hint at the wraith, as does the abyss ring and the live darkwraiths. The darkmoons are mentioned in the book of the guilty and seance ring. You have to do alvenas area and she's just sitting there.

^ The Darkmoons are a little hidden, but not as much as the Darkwraiths, and I wouldn't consider the Forest Hunters hidden.

The only way to not be able to join the Darkmoons is to kill Gwyndolin, but you'll find the covenent before then. I also wouldn't call this an important PvP covenent.

The way to not be able to join Darkwraiths is to give the Lordvessal to Frampt. That can be done before finding the 4 kings, and the game tells you to give it to him.

The Cracked Red Eye does hint at the Darkwraith's existence, but it's not enough to know how to find it without the internet. Arty's Ring does hint at it, but it could be mistaken for the 4 Kings by a new player. I even thought that's what it meant before reading your post.

They shouldn't tell you. One doesn't just walk up to a gang of persecuted assassins. The game doesn't tell you too, frampt does. Nothing requires you to listen. You don't have to listen to anyone else to advance, except that first dialogue with the undead swordsman in the firelink.

I think the darkwraiths and moons are meant to be secret.. I mean the wraiths are very easy to miss, and the moons need a specific ring to find them.. and it's easy to miss even the area where they are.

Hunters are very easy to find though..

Easies to hardest has to be:

WoW-chaos-princess guard-forest-sunbros- moons-gravelords-wraiths-dragon bros

Forum Pirate wrote:They shouldn't tell you. One doesn't just walk up to a gang of persecuted assassins. The game doesn't tell you too, frampt does. Nothing requires you to listen. You don't have to listen to anyone else to advance, except that first dialogue with the undead swordsman in the firelink.

You misunderstand. I'm not saying the game should guide me by the hand. I'm just saying they shouldn't make the most important cov impossible to find. I'm also saying we didn't find the Darkwraiths completely by ourselves like you did.

Who says the wraiths are the most important cov?

I think that's a bit of an overstep.

^ Fine, they're 2nd or 3rd most important.

To me, the three most important covs are Darkwraith, Warrior of Sunlight, and Forest Hunter.

4) Max soul level.

One of the reasons why I like this game is how the character level system works. You reach max level when all your stats are maxed out. I've played many games that had the max level set somewhere below that level, and I didn't like it. It's just anoying when you can't level up your character further even though all your stats or abilities are not at max level.

They should also allow you to retrain your stats in exchange for souls if they had a lower max soul level so if you misclicked or wanted to try a new build you could.

I've also played 2 games that did this, and I don't like it. It makes the game easier. If you didn't like how you made your character, then you can just rebuild it without having to take time rebuilding it. The price was always small compaired with the time it let you save. It's also not like real life. In real life you can't forget something to instantly learn something else. I know, you're thinking, "This is a fantasy game," and you're right, but it also has some realism in it that I love.

You're kind of contradicting yourself here.

Currently you can spend points however you want and if you screw them up then it doesn't matter because you can always just add more points. Eventually you end up with a pro of all trades who can ninja flip in heavy armor.

I would personally like it if you had to think about how the points were spent. You can only do this by limiting how many points you can spend.

Currently you have to think about this during NG until you can get to farming areas but after that and especially in NG+ etc you can just farm up levels however you like.

I'm a bit of a geek and I enjoy working out the best setups within set limits. If you can just max out everything it takes away any tactical aspect of where to put points.

It also means that for PVP there isn't a set SL where you will meet same SL people. For PVP if the max SL was 125 (or whatever the community prefferred) then there would be a large amount of people to meet and SL's would be even.

TurkeySoul wrote:You're kind of contradicting yourself here.

How?

To be fair it's not a direct contradiction though you are saying that it's 'annoying' to not be able to level up stats that you may need but that respeccing somehow makes the game easier.

It's very similar in what it achieves. In current system if you have 25 str and want 28 and you're level 125 then you just gain 3 more levels to level 128 and pay souls for it.

In a respeccing game you would pay souls to take away 3 soul levels from another stat and add them to strength.

I admit that respeccing stats is less 'realistic' because you don't unlearn things but is it less realistic than ninja flipping with a great sword and heavy armor whilst shooting fireballs out your bum?

I think what not being able to max out stats means is that you can either go for a light nimble char or a flat out mage char or a beefy warrior char or some hybrid.

When you can max out stats then eventually at high SL every character becomes the same. I say that is annoying in my opinion.

TurkeySoul wrote:To be fair it's not a direct contradiction though you are saying that it's 'annoying' to not be able to level up stats that you may need but that respeccing somehow makes the game easier.

They're both true.

It's very similar in what it achieves. In current system if you have 25 str and want 28 and you're level 125 then you just gain 3 more levels to level 128 and pay souls for it.



In a respeccing game you would pay souls to take away 3 soul levels from another stat and add them to strength.

That's the problem. In the Dark Souls system you must level up and can't drasticly change your character. It's meant to be hard, and part of the difficulty is living with any leveling mistakes. The only way to "fix" them is to level up. The price of leveling up is constantly increasing.

In your system we don't have to live with those mistakes. We can pay a price to completely rebuild our character without wasting a lot of time rebuilding it. Don't like your dex / fai? Then pay a small price to make it a str / int at the same level. I'm certain most people would think the price of respecing is small compared to leveling up more.

I admit that respeccing stats is less 'realistic' because you don't unlearn things but is it less realistic than ninja flipping with a great sword and heavy armor whilst shooting fireballs out your bum?

Have you played the game with patch 1.06? We can't do that anymore. The only people that can are hackers.

I think what not being able to max out stats means is that you can either go for a light nimble char or a flat out mage char or a beefy warrior char or some hybrid.

When you can max out stats then eventually at high SL every character becomes the same. I say that is annoying in my opinion.

max levels:

That's true, but most players don't have the patience for that. The cost to go from level 708 to level 709 is 6,581,555. The complete cost to go from level 1 to level 709 is 1,348,911,632. That's a lot of TLC in my opinion.

Max level brings up a very good question. Why are there diffrent max levels? Seriously, can someone show me the math?

With 99 endurance and havels ring + ring of favor and you can get 25% equip burden up to 65. That means full havels set and weaps and shield. With 99 Endu and havels ring and darkwood ring though you can still be ninja flipping with havels and Mask of mother.

I guess I would just like to have a set amount to allocate so as you're forced to make choices.

If you had a max level of 125 or 150 or so then people would consider their builds very carefully and you would know if you're PVPing that you're going to overwhelmingly face players that are the exact same SL as you.

I think that SL means you could do a more focused build.

If you end up grinding to SL 220 or something then you diminish the number of players you can play against. How are you supposed to know where the most PVP is at? You can look at forums etc but if you go too high SL wise then you can't backtrack.

I wouldn't even mind if you couldn't respec. Ignore respeccing for a second.

I would say a max soul level would mean:

1) High concentration of players at max soul level meaning more PVP

2) Focused builds at that soul level so characters could still do all aspects of the game but to excel at one they could have to specialise and sacrifice stats in others.

3) More challenge as difficulty get harder in NG+'s (if they actually made NG+ etc more exciting). You can't just outgrind the difficulty.

TurkeySoul wrote:With 99 endurance and havels ring + ring of favor and you can get 25% equip burden up to 65. That means full havels set and weaps and shield.

http://mmdks.com/1idu

True, but that requires a minimum soul level of 89. You would also have only 12.5, maybe 12.4, weight left. It's possible, but not very eficient.

The things these games need most is really simple, the ability to sheath your weapons. And then unsheath them with some kind of draw attack, or without if you needed to do it in a hurry. Of course certain weapons would benefit more than others, but it would still be a nice addition to the movesets.

WandererReece wrote:

TurkeySoul wrote:With 99 endurance and havels ring + ring of favor and you can get 25% equip burden up to 65. That means full havels set and weaps and shield.

http://mmdks.com/1idu

True, but that requires a minimum soul level of 89. You would also have only 12.5, maybe 12.4, weight left. It's possible, but not very eficient.

Yes and I'm saying if they had max soul level of 125 or something then you would still be able to max out endurance if you wanted but you would sacrifice a lot of stamina and str/dex/int/faith.

As it is you can max out everything at the same time which I find lame. Anyway I've already given my arguments for a max soul level in the post above if you read them through I'd like your thoughts.

TurkeySoul wrote:What are your top 5 changes you'd like to see to the game in Dark Souls 2?

1) Give clues to getting to different places and on where to find certain things. It would be nice to be able to play the game through without having to look everything up online or risk missing large parts of the game. Some annoying examples from dark souls are:
Painted World, the Drake sword (which shouldn't be available so early) and the bonfire in sens fortress

hmmm, not sure I agree with you on this.

On my first playthrough (no wiki), my mindset was 'right ok, its an adventure game, if you see a gap, go through it, if you hear or read something interesting, follow it up'. I got probably 90 -95% of the stuff available on the first playthrough, it took me well over 100 hours, but that was by far and away the best play through of any game Ive ever had.
Hard, yes, rewarding when your suspicions are confirmed, incredibly so!

I think the cool thing with DS is that often, you might have to just think 'fu(k it', and drop off a ledge if you think something is down there, sometimes youre gonna die, but who cares, you die a lot anyway, be bold, maybe sometimes youre gonna discover something cool that helps you, sometimes youre just gonna get a blade in the face, but thats why its such a slice of genius, it balances the risk and rewards beautifully.

So I guess my point is that people should just take the 'see a gap, go investigate' route and throw caution to the wind. If i hadnt done that I would never have discovered the bonfire in sens. . .



DS isnt perfect, but im not sure i'd change this aspect of the game, fortune favours the brave and all that!

eminusx wrote:

TurkeySoul wrote:What are your top 5 changes you'd like to see to the game in Dark Souls 2?

1) Give clues to getting to different places and on where to find certain things. It would be nice to be able to play the game through without having to look everything up online or risk missing large parts of the game. Some annoying examples from dark souls are:
Painted World, the Drake sword (which shouldn't be available so early) and the bonfire in sens fortress

hmmm, not sure I agree with you on this.

On my first playthrough (no wiki), my mindset was 'right ok, its an adventure game, if you see a gap, go through it, if you hear or read something interesting, follow it up'. I got probably 90 -95% of the stuff available on the first playthrough, it took me well over 100 hours, but that was by far and away the best play through of any game Ive ever had.
Hard, yes, rewarding when your suspicions are confirmed, incredibly so!

I think the cool thing with DS is that often, you might have to just think 'fu(k it', and drop off a ledge if you think something is down there, sometimes youre gonna die, but who cares, you die a lot anyway, be bold, maybe sometimes youre gonna discover something cool that helps you, sometimes youre just gonna get a blade in the face, but thats why its such a slice of genius, it balances the risk and rewards beautifully.

So I guess my point is that people should just take the 'see a gap, go investigate' route and throw caution to the wind. If i hadnt done that I would never have discovered the bonfire in sens. . .



DS isnt perfect, but im not sure i'd change this aspect of the game, fortune favours the brave and all that!

I 100% see your point and I'm also in 2 minds about this. I'm basing it on my first playthrough. I did like all the hidden bits and pieces in the game and also spent about 100 hours on first play through (and I did look a few things up).

Finding gaps and holes etc was very enjoyable and I explored each zone thoroughly. I did think a few things could have been a bit more obvious though.

The bonfire in Sens was one. I'm glad you found it. Wish I had. I would have been fine with it being off a ledge where it was if it didn't have a guy throwing bombs at you so as you're running past and don't even notice the gap. I didn't even notice it the first couple of runs through and eventually looked online for where the bonfire was as I thought I'd searched every nook and cranny and couldn't imagine the whole place not having one.

The other bit was going back to Asylum being such an important part of the game which gives you probably your only titanite slab and the key to painted world. Even if you find the nest making you wait like a minute before anything happens means most players would completely miss this. I did find this, waited in nest for like 20 secs and got out cos nothing happened.

Having two illusiary walls to get to the hollow.. Every time I've done blighttown online there never seems to be anyone who has left a message of illusiary wall ahead and expecting 2 is not something an average player would try.

Not warning you that using a fire keepers soul would just give you souls. I don't remember the text being very obvious to hand it in to someone or you wouldn't get re-enforced flask. I read it and used it and then wondered why my flask wasn't re-enforced.

Not having a way back from anor londo without back tracking through sens was also mega annoying which is why I suggest blacksmith telling you which zones to look for embers in as the knights and boss are cakewalk with a strong weapon but are incredibly hard when you haven't upgraded properly (well on first playthorugh anyway, not now I can backstab properly).

I guess I think that items can be well hidden but whole zones should be a bit more obvious to find.

Having said all that I think I will try DkS2 without looking anything up and have a feeling I will find 90%+ of everything there is to find.

A lot of finding everything is knowing how the game 'thinks'. In DkS2 if I arrive in a dead end that seems like it shouldn't just be a dead end then I will hit walls. If an action does something I will wait a full minute for something to happen etc etc...

I just can't help but feel that I would have been able to do the full playthrough without internet help if I had known that and I imagine most players are in the same boat. A lot of things are just too obscure to find.

I only want two things:

1. Better PC version.

2. Better PC connections for online play.


Fix those two things and I don't care about any other "fixes." Honestly, when DkSII comes out, I'm going to enjoy running blind for once.

morte wrote:I only want two things:

1. Better PC version.

2. Better PC connections for online play.


Fix those two things and I don't care about any other "fixes." Honestly, when DkSII comes out, I'm going to enjoy running blind for once.

Selfish.