How's Dark Souls II on PC doing at the moment?

[ninja666]

I remember buying it right after its release and abandoning it due to its numerous flaws. Are they fixed by now, or did the creators just went the EA way and released DLC instead of patching the game? I'm mainly talking about these issues:

1. Broken hit detection - you could get hit by a weapon when you weren't supposed to, and similarly you could miss an attack when the weapon hit the enemy point-blank.
2. Tracking - enemies spinning around as if they were standing on top of a record player, ensuring they never miss you and are always facing you.
3. Bugs and glitches connected to the game running at 60 FPS - faster weapon decay, faster enemies' and player's combat animations, less i-frames during dodges etc.

And why exacly am I asking this? I'm thinking of giving the game another shot with a more open-minded approach (specifically: not treating it like a sequel to Dark Souls, but rather as a generic fantasy action game), but don't know if the game's creators persisted in their bad design decisions or not.

 

[raeior]

I guess the answer to all your questions is: Still not fixed.

1.) Except for multiplayer where this stems mostly from lag I find hit detection better than in DS1 (I hate you Ceaseless Discharge!!!). There were some problems but it never seemed to me that hit detection was overly bad.

2.) Still there and I guess this is a design choice and not a bug. Not every enemy does it but for some enemies its pretty insane. For others like Vendrick you can just spend the entire fight behind the enemy and not get hit once.

3.) Never occured to me this was due to the game running at 60 fps but the weapon decay is pretty crazy especially with stuff like greatswords or other large weapons. This is also not fixed and probably never will be as it is quite some work to untie everything from fps and link it to the real passage of time.

Still I would recommend you to give it another try. I loved DS1 and I'm having a blast with DS2 too. It has it's problems but so did DS1 (especially on PC with mouse & keyboard).

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Pretty much what raeior said.

1. Hit detection isn't a problem at all in PvE, at least not from what I've noticed. There are a few enemies with some wonky hitboxes (Vendrick, the dogs in the gutter, etc), but for 99% of the PvE encounters the hit detection is great. How it works out for you in PvP completely depends on your internet connection and the connection of the person you're playing against. For me it's usually totally fine (though I don't do a lot of PvP so I may not be noticing the nuances that some people do), but I've seen videos online where it gets to an unplayable level for some people.

2. Still there and totally by design choice and working as intended. It never really bothered me because I felt like enemies were way too easy to back-stab in dark souls 1 and this helped prevent that a little. Seriously, circle-strafing ad-nauseam should not be the default to deal with any enemy encounter.

3. I think they fixed most of it but not the weapon decay. Bring a backup weapon or wear the bracing knuckle ring and it becomes a non-issue. There's only one area where the weapon decay bothered me and that's "no man's wharf." Pretty much every other area in the game has enough bonfires that you're always able to reset your durability before it becomes an issue, even without the bracing knuckle ring.

So yeah, I've greatly enjoyed and am still greatly enjoying the game. It's not perfect and has some problems, but I don't think it's particularly worse than the original Dark Souls. For every way that it's worse than the previous game there are also things that it does better and I think it's definitely worth playing.

 

[ninja666]

All right, I guess I'll pass on this game, then, since it looks like nothing that bothered me has been fixed. Thank you for replying.

 

[Mr Jack]

1. and similarly you could miss an attack when the weapon hit the enemy point-blank.

3. Bugs and glitches connected to the game running at 60 FPS - faster weapon decay, faster enemies' and player's combat animations, less i-frames during dodges etc.

1. I've often heard about dodgy hit detection, but never in this way. Do you have any examples that would help me understand what you mean?

3. Of the things you mention, only the durability bug is real. Enemy/player animations appear to be identical, and dodge invincibility timings are entirely frame rate independent. There is another bug, where if either party in pvp has a frame rate of less than ~40, ripostes and backstabs can do less damage. I'll dig up some videos if you like.

I think that if these concerns were enough to spoil your enjoyment of the game, they will still do so. I will say that the DLC's have very good enemy and level design, and the second one has two excellent boss fights.

 

[ninja666]

I've often heard about dodgy hit detection, but never in this way. Do you have any examples that would help me understand what you mean?

Here [http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/264t6s/the_actual_truth_about_hitboxes] - a reddit thread full of gifs and videos showing the not-so-good hit detection in DS2. Some of the situations are ridiculous.

EDIT: About the whole not-being-able-to-hit-enemies thing, I don't have any examples because it didn't happen near as often as enemies hitting you when they clearly missed. But yeah, it happens... sometimes...

Of the things you mention, only the durability bug is real. Enemy/player animations appear to be identical

In this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVrlwnYkRMI] you can see it's not only the durability, but enemy animations as well. Just skip to the part where he's recording in Iron Keep.

There is another bug, where if either party in pvp has a frame rate of less than ~40, ripostes and backstabs can do less damage. I'll dig up some videos if you like.

Please, do so. I'd really like to see that.

 

[Mr Jack]

snip

Yeah, DS2 definitely has some dodgy hit detection, but I can't say I've really experienced missing when I should have hit in PVE.

I remember seeing that video at the time, and being unconvinced that they were faster. Looking at it again, it looks like they might be faster at 60fps. I'll check myself when I get the chance.


Serious Reddit thread [http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/2c0phz/the_reason_behind_r], Joke PVP vid [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjsm5CPvhCk&list=PLRlXeLtCGeem7cXVFeYsNGXMYwriD-qIw&index=5]

 

[The Random Critic]

I'll just list my thoughts

The dodgy hit detection aren't really a problem in PVE, it isn't a problem in pve cause I dodge everything that aren't suppose to hit me. (those extra invincibility frame helps, also attunement imba) That begin said, the buggy hit detection is still there, I had everything that's been listed on that list happened to me at least once.

I can land BS just fine on most enemies. I actually think From stealth fix some of the tracking complaints. The problem isn't the aiming imo, the problem is the buggy hit detection made it so that even if you align perfect at your targets back you still can't land your damn backstab and just normal r1.
Edit: most of these apply to online play, but it does happen here and there when I am world master.

The game run amazingly smooth for the pc version, and my laptop isn't even that good. (Heck it's doesn't even heat similarly as the other games.) The PC optimization is damn impressive.

O and the PVE crowd isn't as big as I would like.

 

[Starbird]

I never noticed the hit detection thing. The weapon decay was obnoxious and I modded it out after my first playthrough via a trainer.

On the other hand, running it with an enb is downright gorgeous.