Agreed, what would you want to change it to anyway? The two attacks with your right hand being R1 and R2 and the two left ones being L1 and L2 are awful intuitive if different from many other games.
The only feature of the controls I find irritating is that run is in a right-thumb position, meaning you can't use your right thumb to both control the camera and run at the same time. I've learned to compensate for this by contorting my hand into a claw-like shape when I want to do this, allowing me to use my thumb for camera, index for run, and middle for R1/R2. It's awkward and a little uncomfortable, but it works. I'm not sure there's a better position for it, though, even if run could be rebound, because putting it on the shoulder buttons (where it would be most comfortable) would involve displacing either the attack or block/parry buttons, which seems suboptimal.
No, there is no way to rebind. It's ok to be inconsistent. Walking through it mechanically would be boring as hell. Just focus on the "oh I wish I'd known this" like with hitting x to get stats or the process of sorting gear or whatever you think is important.
Sounds like you have discovered the xbox claw, a time honored tactic of speed runners everywhere. Personally, I just use it conventionally and adapt my play style to the gaps.
Thanks, google image search. But yes, if you look at speedrunning videos, sometimes the camera control while doing other things seems insanely quick. If they don't talk about it outright, there's at least a decent chance they are doing this. Obviously, it has downsides and I'm not convinced it's as decisively advantageous as in first person shooters.
I kind of figured it was a fairly common practice, given that I've seen what you describe in watching various videos. I sort of had the PSP claw in mind when I started using it, though it seems far less awkward than that. I don't use is it all the time, but shift back and forth based on what I'm doing, mostly using it for quickly navigating corridors where I need to be aware of certain spaces because of enemies or environmental hazards.
God, that looks like an ergonomic nightmare! I went ahead and created a new character to run through the very early part of the game to sanity check my guide. Man, it's so much easier now that I know what I'm doing!
Does anyone know how to do basic video editing? I have a video demonstrating the very basic combat stuff, but I'd like to add some text overlays to highlight various points.
Fuck dogs, fuck assassins, and extra double special fuck the Capra Demon. On the bright side, I now have my gargoyle tail axe up to +5 and am going off to explore what lies beyond Messr. Andre, because fuck the Capra Demon.
Halberd didn't drop. Should I not be going off in that direction? I encountered the giant demon stuck in the ground when I first found Andre and he seemed tough, but also like I could just run around him. Is what lies beyond way above my level (i.e. ~23)?
My very recent experience with poison resist it's that it's completely fucking useless. How fucking useless it is is painfully obvious to anyone that switches from full chain mail to a full shadow set and sees, literally, zero difference. Fuck Blighttown. It's shitty design that exposes all the worst flaws of the game's combat and graphics systems. It's shit.
Poison resist works fine if you are committed to island hopping. But in no way is it indicative of the flaws you claim it is. Blight Town is a hard, unfriendly level, but it is also a really well-designed one. When it becomes easy for you, you have solved a number of fundamental problems in the game. It's like a more accessible 5-2 in Demon's Souls. This too shall pass.
Blighttown sucks in the exact same way that every new area I've encountered thus far sucks: new, previously unforseen tactical challenges combined with new environmental hazards. Poison is the least of them; basically you just suffer through that and occasionally swig an Estus flask. The only time you'll ever really cure it with a purple moss is on the way to the boss; other than that it's just an annoying constant slow drain on your health that you put up with. I'm in Sen's Fortress right now, and I wish I was back in Blighttown. Once you've been through Blighttown a few times it - like every other area in Dark Souls - is cake*. * Cake studded with poison candies that you can pick out as long as you're paying close attention. God help you if it's late at night and you're rummaging around in the fridge for a slice of cake.
I don't see where I argued this not to be the fucking case? What I'm looking for is a way to switch the 1 and 2 functions around because to my mind it makes far, far more sense (to the way I hold a controller, the triggers are easier to hit frequently then the shoulder buttons). Frankly I'm surprised I'm alone in this. And Jeff, I've played the game on consoles plenty last year.
Huh, no idea why it bothers you then. That sucks, though! Maybe there's some driver-level hacking you can do to reverse the two?
Maybe, I think I just need to get used to it again. I was just kinda hoping that the PC version might be able fix the problem.
You're not alone. Not being able to configure buttons is... stupid. I would like to have Block be LT instead of LB. No, it does fuck all either way. And the swamp isn't the shitty part, it's being hit by a single toxic blowgun dart that lasts for 3 minutes and cuts your healing flask in half. It's an automatic death with 130 poison resist or with 0 poison resist. Being hard and unfriendly isn't what makes it flawed. Graphically, it's an awful, complex, claustrophobic mess situated in a space that could actually hold a functional expansive design of the same aesthetic. It does no favors for the camera system (a core problem I had with Capra Demon fight, and one that I would think Japanese developers could have figured out by now since earlier iterations of DMC/NG). The devs paid no attention to what all the breakable objects would do to framerates (if it's not an issue on console, I would be impressed). The engine's hit detection limitations with clipping through rafters (by both yourself and the enemies) is absurd, and when it leads to death or a stumbled fall into the abyss, you no longer have a right to blame the player for the death, the fucking onus is on the designer of this glowing wooden green shit heap of a level. When it becomes easy is when it becomes tedious and boring, because then you're playing the game like a fucking MMO, "pulling mobs" one by one, or "aggroing" them from upper rafters so that they leap down to lower levels and crowd you (you gonna call placing a mob up higher a deliberate genius of level design?), or crawling slowly forward and waiting for the guy above to come down, or having to jump on a ladder to get the 3 idiots at the bottom of it to start coming up as they facehump each other with their AI. You're mixing and drinking your own batches of Kool Aid trying to defend Blighttown as anything but a literal blight on the greatest things that this game has done. By the way, entering Blighttown from The Depths by going down a huge cavern? Awesome. Fighting big dudes with clubs that will stagger you 10 feet back off of rafters (they never got me, though), also awesome. Everything after the Blighttown bonfire can Eat 10 Dark Bags of Dicks.
Toxin and poison are two different things. The toxic darts dude suck; keep your shield up and keep moving if you think they're around. Fortunately they die permanently. You definitely want to have at least a half dozen toxin curing items in your inventory. I never had to do any of that stuff, and at this point moving through Blighttown is easy for me. I'll cop to pulling the opening barbarian dudes because I only wanted to face one of them at a time but, uhh, that's a pretty tried and true tactic throughout this game. The descent to the second fire is a pain, but it's mostly a pain if you don't take the lessons the game has taught you to heart: move slowly, and keep an eye on your surroundings. And yes, exploit the terrain and the sensitivity limits of the AI. If you don't want to deploy the various tactical options the game has given you then that's your business, but don't complain when the game turns out to be much harder.
Actually, this is exactly where poison resist helps. When I'm in poison resist gear, it takes two darts to give me the toxic status rather than one. And those darts have to hit almost immediately one after another for me to get the status effect. After you kill the boss at the bottom of Blighttown, you can get a set of cloth armor that's even better resist. With that on, it takes 3 darts before I get the effect. I think that once the effect kicks in, poison resist doesn't help; toxic drains your life at the same rate regardless. But it's much easier for you to avoid getting the effect in the first place if you're properly kitted out.
So I couldn't actually go this way because at the end of the path is a big closed portcullis that I can't open yet. So instead I went into Lower Undead Burg. Capra Demon, lol. I thought I just finished a boss! Oh well, now I know what I'm doing next anyway ;).
Blighttown on console sucks; this is not debatable. From tried to do something which did not work on the platforms. The performance issues make travel through the area a slog; the greatest reason for caution is not game design, but rather the desire to ensure that the game doesn't turn into a slideshow during combat. I found myself making sure not to fight enemies in certain locations, taking hits in the process of drawing them away - simply to try and manage the framerate. Blighttown is good game design. But it doesn't work on the consoles. Now, on the PC version - assuming that the framerate is locked (I wouldn't know; I try not to touch GFWL) Blighttown can be appreciated. On the console, though, it definitely sucks, and design elements that should be interesting and challenging become simply annoying. Toxic darts aren't fun when you can't see them due to the skipped frames.
Blighttown still has slowdown issues on PC, but I don't know how they compare to the console versions. They're relatively infrequent, at least for me. Probably the best tip for Blighttown is to use the Spider Shield, which can block 100% of the effect of the toxic darts. It's one of my favorite areas of the game -- even when I did it the first time, and felt it was very unforgiving, I still believed it was fundamentally fair.
No no... that portcullis leads to Sen's Fortress, which opens after you've rung both bells. But that's the path from the bonfire. Go down the stairs to where Andre is, and there's yet another path that leads to a big room with an ugly looking lightning throwing guy. You can easily kill him with arrows (or crossbow bolts), although it takes awhile. Or you can just run past him. Either way, you end up entering a forest. The forest is the route I was talking about.
Yeah... just stand at range (where the floor slopes upward is a good spot) and shoot an arrow. When he throws his lightning, take a step to the right and fire another arrow. Then step to the left next time. It really is easy, if a bit tedious. He's equally easy to run past if you're so inclined. But if you try to engage him in melee, lord help you. Some people in this very forum have said that he has a "blind spot" where's he's missing a leg, and you can stand there, and... I dunno. I've never gotten it to work. But using a bow makes that fight easy. One other thing: he's not a boss. He's called a titanite demon, and you'll meet many more of him.
Actually I beat that titanite demon with only melee just the other day. I took a few attempts and got smacked down pretty hard while learning his moves and timing. After I got my axe to +3 or 4 I went back in and managed to kill him. Roll in on the axe swing, hit, roll, hit, and move away to recover/recharge stamina. After a few rounds of that, I was victorious. This is my first time through the game and I went in blind against him, so it is doable.
Darkroot Garden was much more to my liking than Lower Undead Burg. Took a few attempts at the Titanite Demon, since he's right downstairs from the bonfire, but couldn't ever finish him off. Got very close one time, but while I was wailing away between his legs (strategically!), trying to get in the last, killing blows, he discovered a new attack wherein he lifted me off the ground and I guess bit my head off. I don't know, I died instantly, and decided to skip him for now. But then the Garden! Nice, easy tree guys who only tried to eat me once, and I survived that, and some giant, lumbering assholes that I decided were best avoided. Wolf Ring! And then up to Moonlight Butterfly, who turned out to be the easiest boss yet—Heater Shield doesn't block magic for shit, but apparently rolling is godlike. I guess next I'll wander on down into the basin.
Uhh, not working = shitty level design. The game is good game design, the level is shit. It barely works on the PC as well, it beats right up against the limitations of the engine, and they packed the place full of shit that would have been terrible enough without those limitations.
Poison resist is useful for fighting enemies that poison you--as mentioned, it's great for taking on the damned blowdarts. It's useless at protecting you from the swamp, though. I count myself as fortunate that I've never really run into performance issues in Blighttown, on PC or PS3. Not that this helps anyone who is experiencing problems, of course. I rather like the Blighttown scaffolding descent. It's the worst place in the world, in the best possible way.
What I like about the blight town descent from the depth is that, just as you are once again beginning to feel that the designers are total evil bastards, you discover that the blowdart snipers don't respawn and it feels like actually this is their way of saying they want to be friends. Also, wait till you get to the bottom of Blight Town and realise that you don't have the rusted iron ring which would make the whole running around in poison sludge 20 time easier. Gah. Also realise that the alternative entrance to Blight Town is easily accesible via the valley of drakes and New Londo and is about 5 times easier. Bah! Anyway, I've managed to bash on through Blight Town, Sen's Fortress, Painted World and got through Anor Londo as far as the giant blacksmith. I guess I'm thoroughly hooked now on this sadistically beautiful game. The more I play it the more it feels like an old school, Greyhawk era, D&D campaign brought to life. Most of the monsters, the traps, the careful encounter design, the almost moralistic lure and punishment of greed and the alternately horrifying & melancholy atmosphere - they all reek of the D&D of my childhood before it became modern, more accessible and generally just more of a friendly jolly romp. I'm sure it can't be an accident that the more I adventure through the game the more of an asshole I feel. Why did I murder that butterfly and those innocent mushroom people? It's giving me those SOTC feelings at times.
Yeah, I like Blight Town. Having to be aware of what is going on all around me, above and below, after the tight, confined corridors of The Depths, was a really nice change-up. My only real issue is some lag in a few areas but, like the rest of the game, once you figure out how to navigate the area, and how to tease out its inhabitants to fight them more or less 1-1, it's much less fearsome.
Blight Town works fine on both my current xboxes and flawlessly on my 4890 on my PC. The only time I've experienced significant lag there is in multiplayer, but straight up frame drops have not been a significant part of it any of the huge number of times I've gone through it. I'm sympathetic to people that have problems, as I had some problems like that in Demon's Souls on the PS3 and it was a bit frustrating. I'm also a bit skeptical, because especially with the PC crowd there was that whole THE GAME LOOKS TERRIBLE phase in the minutes before dsfix came out that was wholly unwarranted, and it's hard to separate between legitimate mechanical problems and people who lost a frame here and there and are new to the game, and are blaming the former for problems derived primarily from the latter. Anyway, it's just something that you can either write long fuck rants on the internet about or ask about specific problems you have and then get over them. Or quit playing, that's fine too.
To be honest, for the first time ever I am tempted to donate some money to that DSFix guy. The improvement in quality you get from installing it is pretty stunning. I have no idea how some guy was able to build that in his spare time. But then I'm not a game dev.
You're an idiot. Dark Souls has some of the best level design in the industry. You just aren't used to having to think vertically because almost no level designers are good enough to pull it off; but once you get the layout of blighttown, it's pretty brilliant. Also, like I told you thirty fucking times in IRC, you can completely skip upper blighttown.
