"Dark Souls II Director Confirms Its High Difficulty"

Sorry for all the new threads but so much new info! Yuss!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123231-Dark-Souls-II-Director-Confirms-Its-High-Difficulty

This is truly good news, Dark Souls was very hard at the beginning, now I find it more of an easy kind of game. I hope there will be more secret areas, more difficulty through replays even greater than before, also I hope there will be better items to be made through more play throughs, maybe even some new enemies through more play throughs. A secret area unlocked in the second play through. PvP needs some improvement to fix lag issues, also PvP needs tweaks to ensure players can level up and still do PvP more often in some covenants... No Doubt it will be fixed to balance and use well if Dark Souls sticks to what has worked well in the past. I am looking forward to similar game play, but with new weapons, new items, new armour, etc. I don't think there is much reason to change the controls of the game, but if anything controls is changed then please allow a choice between old and new but do not compromise the old as it is a winner IMO!! The story lines are good in dark souls, the element of secrecy and guessing adds a whole massive amount of depth to the game, please do not turn the game into a long narrative with NPCs, a couple of sentences is just perfect as the secrets need to be discovered in game, or online in wiki if people must

SirPatrick wrote:This is truly good news, Dark Souls was very hard at the beginning, now I find it more of an easy kind of game. I hope there will be more secret areas, more difficulty through replays even greater than before, also I hope there will be better items to be made through more play throughs, maybe even some new enemies through more play throughs. A secret area unlocked in the second play through. PvP needs some improvement to fix lag issues, also PvP needs tweaks to ensure players can level up and still do PvP more often in some covenants... No Doubt it will be fixed to balance and use well if Dark Souls sticks to what has worked well in the past. I am looking forward to similar game play, but with new weapons, new items, new armour, etc. I don't think there is much reason to change the controls of the game, but if anything controls is changed then please allow a choice between old and new but do not compromise the old as it is a winner IMO!! The story lines are good in dark souls, the element of secrecy and guessing adds a whole massive amount of depth to the game, please do not turn the game into a long narrative with NPCs, a couple of sentences is just perfect as the secrets need to be discovered in game, or online in wiki if people must

that just about covers everything

In an interview with IGN, the director stated that the main focus wasn't on making tons of new features. They're main focus was on looking at all of the things that made Dark Souls and Demon's Souls so popular and unique, and expanding/improving those elements. To me, this is very good, and a sign of a good designer. Good designers are able to identify what really works and the real reasons why it did work in the first place. Bad designers are obsessed with "featurism", the need to just add more on top of more to make something better, instead of iterating on what works and fixing that which doesn't.

So far, my confidence that this game is in good hands is being confirmed.

I feel a bit more at ease now after reading that article.

Thank you for sharing, I appreciate it.

SirPatrick wrote: also PvP needs tweaks to ensure players can level up and still do PvP more often in some covenant

umm? How are they going to do that? The sl caps are ultimately our choice, not froms, so short of entirely removing all sl restrictions, its not something they can really do.

Forum Pirate wrote:

SirPatrick wrote: also PvP needs tweaks to ensure players can level up and still do PvP more often in some covenant

umm? How are they going to do that? The sl caps are ultimately our choice, not froms, so short of entirely removing all sl restrictions, its not something they can really do.

You could cap your character's online 'persona' at 120 but keep leveling? So I'd be level 500 but if I put a sign down or invade I'll show up with the same stats I had when I was sl 120.

DE5PA1R wrote:

Forum Pirate wrote:

SirPatrick wrote: also PvP needs tweaks to ensure players can level up and still do PvP more often in some covenant

umm? How are they going to do that? The sl caps are ultimately our choice, not froms, so short of entirely removing all sl restrictions, its not something they can really do.

You could cap your character's online 'persona' at 120 but keep leveling? So I'd be level 500 but if I put a sign down or invade I'll show up with the same stats I had when I was sl 120.

I may be wrong, but my take on this comment was that hopefully the servers, or gameplay covenant options (or both) would allow people to GO to SL 500 and still be able to find a fight with SL500 folks somewhere, rather than struggle with the previous system which was spotty at any SL at best.

@ despair, who's to say 120 will be the meta sl cap? Am I just saving extra copies of my build at whatever sl? Your suggestion sounds like the type of thing best left to something like an arena character creator. Main game, if you level you should stay that way. Its risk/reward like everything else. By letting players "revert" even just to invade/summon, you undermine part of the risk.

@presbeeblebrox I don't know where you are, but I get fights up to sl 150+ in many places. The PW/moon pit/kiln/township/burg/forest all get constant action at most any sl, and everywhere past sens gets action at 40+. Know why you don't see any sl 500's? There aren't any. It takes to damn long to get there, and even when you do there's no one to fight because no one goes that high. It has nothing to do with connectivity and everything to do with nobody bothering to get that high.

^ yes thats right; a +1 for you sir!

@presbeeblebrox I don't know where you are, but I get fights up to sl 150+ in many places. The PW/moon pit/kiln/township/burg/forest all get constant action at most any sl, and everywhere past sens gets action at 40+. Know why you don't see any sl 500's? There aren't any. It takes to damn long to get there, and even when you do there's no one to fight because no one goes that high. It has nothing to do with connectivity and everything to do with nobody bothering to get that high.[/quote]

tl;dr