The PC Version of Dark Souls 2 is lazy as hell

[RealRT]

You're telling me that a game designed for controllers, developed by people who have almost no experience in porting, has poor keyboard/mouse controls using fewer buttons than expected?

I have never been more utterly shocked in my entire life, and I've been electrocuted before! D:

Seriously. No one with any knowledge of its history bought Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2 with realizing that the keyboard/mouse controls would be terrible without modding. Play it with a controller then get back to us on how bad it is.

The fact that they had no prior experience justifies the port being bad how? It's not a magic excuse that makes it okay. Either learn from GOOD PC ports or outsource it to a team who knows what they are bloody doing. And people should really quit with "WELL, IT WAS DESIGNED TO PLAY WITH A CONTROLLER, SO EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE ON PC, YOU SHOULD PLAY IT WITH A CONTROLLER". It's never the game design, it's just the developers being lazy and putting no thought in control layouts. Which is jarring nowadays, when the layouts for such games are practically set in the stone.

 

[Chris Tian]

The fact that they had no prior experience justifies the port being bad how? It's not a magic excuse that makes it okay. Either learn from GOOD PC ports or outsource it to a team who knows what they are bloody doing. And people should really quit with "WELL, IT WAS DESIGNED TO PLAY WITH A CONTROLLER, SO EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE ON PC, YOU SHOULD PLAY IT WITH A CONTROLLER". It's never the game design, it's just the developers being lazy and putting no thought in control layouts. Which is jarring nowadays, when the layouts for such games are practically set in the stone.

Oh my god, thank you very much. I really started to think I'm bonkers for feeling this way.

 

[lacktheknack]

You're telling me that a game designed for controllers, developed by people who have almost no experience in porting, has poor keyboard/mouse controls using fewer buttons than expected?

I have never been more utterly shocked in my entire life, and I've been electrocuted before! D:

Seriously. No one with any knowledge of its history bought Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2 with realizing that the keyboard/mouse controls would be terrible without modding. Play it with a controller then get back to us on how bad it is.

The fact that they had no prior experience justifies the port being bad how? It's not a magic excuse that makes it okay. Either learn from GOOD PC ports or outsource it to a team who knows what they are bloody doing. And people should really quit with "WELL, IT WAS DESIGNED TO PLAY WITH A CONTROLLER, SO EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE ON PC, YOU SHOULD PLAY IT WITH A CONTROLLER". It's never the game design, it's just the developers being lazy and putting no thought in control layouts. Which is jarring nowadays, when the layouts for such games are practically set in the stone.

Yes, they should have handed it off to someone else, as you say.

However, they did not. Therefore, I wasn't expecting much, and neither should anyone else have. They more than delivered on what I was expecting.

Oh my god, thank you very much. I really started to think I'm bonkers for feeling this way.

Don't worry, you're only bonkers for thinking that porting to PC is a standard and simple job.

 

[Eve Charm]

No one forced you to buy it and if you read a review anywhere about the pc they would have mentioned gamepad, Hell even on the steam page it says gamepad recommended. They aren't triple A devs, they don't do much in pc ports but people Wanted an pc port and since neither Demon or Dark souls have huge followings it was enough of the player base Wanted this on pc no matter what.

Like the First one and like Elder scrolls, Get ready to do some mod hunting if you want a better game then what the team could give you.

Oh and ya, as for handing it off, What do you think they did with the first one, handed a running game off to the community to go wild with.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Well it's sure as shit better than the first. The K+M controls are still wonky as fuck, but it's easier to get into this time around. I've played the game for over 90 hours using only a mouse and keyboard and, while it hasn't been faultless, it has been pretty decent for the most part. In order to do some special moves like jump attacks and guard breaks, you need to use the keyboard mappings for light and heavy attacks and the jumping is really clunky. So it's not faultless, but it's better than the first games port. Really, it just requires a bit of patience, a bit of practice and it's all good. The UI, for one, is massively improved though, which was an essential fix.

I have nothing but respect for From Software for taking the time to make a PC port and trying to do it justice this time around, which I think, for the most part, they've done here. There are still some issues to solve, but they're taking it seriously which I appreciate. It would be nice if they get someone experienced with PC controls to be a part of the team for Dark Souls 3 though, and get a fully optimised port. I think they have it in them.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

The port was slightly better in terms of options (graphical mainly), but other than that the same old thing as it's predecessor. Funnily enough with DSFIX DS1 looks better in some places than DS2 without the lighting engine that was removed.

The mouse & keyboard settings either needed a truly makeover patch that removes the delay/latency from the double clicks or fully rebindable keys which we didn't get.

I had to play with a controller and get used to it again, even though they boasted that mouse and keyboard support would be way better. So they can work on that for DS3 (if they make one).

 

[Chris Tian]

Don't worry, you're only bonkers for thinking that porting to PC is a standard and simple job.

I get that you are joking but you make a good point.
It is in fact the very definition of a standard job, since almost everbody in the industrie does it. Only very few games don't come out on pc and most of those are xbox/ps exclusives, so that has nothing to do with the complexety of the task.

They aren't triple A devs,

Oh well, could have fooled me, since they expected me to shell out the same amount of cash as for an average AAA title.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

The fact that they had no prior experience justifies the port being bad how? It's not a magic excuse that makes it okay. Either learn from GOOD PC ports or outsource it to a team who knows what they are bloody doing. And people should really quit with "WELL, IT WAS DESIGNED TO PLAY WITH A CONTROLLER, SO EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE ON PC, YOU SHOULD PLAY IT WITH A CONTROLLER". It's never the game design, it's just the developers being lazy and putting no thought in control layouts. Which is jarring nowadays, when the layouts for such games are practically set in the stone.

Oh my god, thank you very much. I really started to think I'm bonkers for feeling this way.

This..a thousand times this.

I've been spouting this to high heavens that they should`ve outsource it so someone that know how to do the port: Nixxes has been doing all the ports of Square Enix (US) and they've all been great! (Sleeping Dogs, Hitman Absolution, Deus Ex Human Revolution etc).

 

[Chris Tian]

I think they have it in them.

I think basically the same thing, it would totally have been possible for them to make a fully optimized port.

The difference is you are statisified that they improved over last time, and I'm a little mad that they didn't complete the job.


On a different subject: I know nobody plays DS for the story, but did it bother anyone else that they just reused the exact same story? My super bad ass spear warrior who slayed Lord Gwyn and relinked the fire feels a bit disapointed that his heroics matterd exactly f*ck all in the sequel.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think they have it in them.

I think basically the same thing, it would totally have been possible for them to make a fully optimized port.

The difference is you are statisified that they improved over last time, and I'm a little mad that they didn't complete the job.


On a different subject: I know nobody plays DS for the story, but did it bother anyone else that they just reused the exact same story? My super bad ass spear warrior who slayed Lord Gwyn and relinked the fire feels a bit disapointed that his heroics matterd exactly f*ck all in the sequel.

The first game pretty much flat out tells you that linking the bonfires is just a stopgap solution that fixes nothing. That's kind of the whole point of the game, the sheer hopelessness of it, everyone dies, everyone goes hollow, and the same thing is happening to the world around you. The only choice you have is whether to kill the age of fire right then and there or to extend it just a little bit.

That's actually kind of a cool thing about Dark Souls 2, is that either ending from the first game is cannon no matter what since neither ending actually changes the outcome of the first game. Most sequels with multiple endings end up picking a single ending and saying "this is the one that's cannon" and Dark Souls 2 never does that.

The fact that they had no prior experience justifies the port being bad how? It's not a magic excuse that makes it okay. Either learn from GOOD PC ports or outsource it to a team who knows what they are bloody doing. And people should really quit with "WELL, IT WAS DESIGNED TO PLAY WITH A CONTROLLER, SO EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE ON PC, YOU SHOULD PLAY IT WITH A CONTROLLER". It's never the game design, it's just the developers being lazy and putting no thought in control layouts. Which is jarring nowadays, when the layouts for such games are practically set in the stone.

Oh my god, thank you very much. I really started to think I'm bonkers for feeling this way.

This..a thousand times this.

I've been spouting this to high heavens that they should`ve outsource it so someone that know how to do the port: Nixxes has been doing all the ports of Square Enix (US) and they've all been great! (Sleeping Dogs, Hitman Absolution, Deus Ex Human Revolution etc).

Note the fact that Square Enix is a MASSIVE company with the money to afford to outsource the development of parts of their games to another company. Now notice that all the games you mentioned, while good games are considered by Square Enix to be commercial failures because of how much money they poured into making and marketing them versus what their sales figures were. Even the most successful of the bunch, Tomb Raider, which sold something like 5 million copies, was considered by Square Enix to be disappointing.

Now compare that to From Software, which is a TINY company in comparison to Square Enix, and which does not have the money to hire an outside company to come in and do their work for them. They have Dark Souls, which is a game series with niche appeal, and which gets ok sales numbers, but which is considered a huge success because they don't dump truckloads of money onto it to make it. It's made by a comparatively small dev team on a comparatively small budget. If they were to hire an outside company like Nixxes to do their PC port they probably wouldn't actually make any money off the PC port.

 

[StriderShinryu]

And this is the sort of perspective that causes people to be bothered by hardcore PC gamers. Given all of the positive strides made by From in the port of DS2, and given that the game has in general been well received (if not considered as good as Demons Souls or Dark Souls 1), the PC version of DS2 gets called out as being a lazy and terrible port.. because the MKB controls aren't considered up to snuff.

I know, as long as your version works fine there is no problem right?

DS2 gets called out because it is a bad port compared to most other Games out there. Even if it is better than the release version of DS1, now DS1 has none of these issues so why is it okay for DS2 to have them?
Just because they sold me an unacceptable product before its in no way ok for them to sell me a "only somewhat acceptable" product now, especially if the first product was fixed.

But isn't the reverse true as well? You say that as long as my version works then there is no problem, except it's not just me who has no problem with it. In fact, your degree of complaint about the MKB controls are the first I've heard. At worst I've heard that the MKB controls are usable if not the optimal way to play the game. At best I've heard that they are perfectly fine compared to other third person action games on the platform.

So, basically, because you (and presumably a small minority of others) find the at release MKB controls to be completely unacceptable (which didn't even stop you from playing the game anyway) the entire port of the game is lazy and should be taken to task for how poor it is? I could understand if you were, say, part of a small subset of DS2 players who literally could not play the game due to a simply fixed technical issue that required someone other than From to fix it. You're not. You just don't like the way the controls work.

 

[RealRT]

Yes, they should have handed it off to someone else, as you say.

However, they did not. Therefore, I wasn't expecting much, and neither should anyone else have. They more than delivered on what I was expecting.

Don't worry, you're only bonkers for thinking that porting to PC is a standard and simple job.

Again, this not being a surprise doesn't mean it's a good or even passable thing.

 

[Chris Tian]

The first game pretty much flat out tells you that linking the bonfires is just a stopgap solution that fixes nothing. That's kind of the whole point of the game, the sheer hopelessness of it, everyone dies, everyone goes hollow, and the same thing is happening to the world around you. The only choice you have is whether to kill the age of fire right then and there or to extend it just a little bit.

That's actually kind of a cool thing about Dark Souls 2, is that either ending from the first game is cannon no matter what since neither ending actually changes the outcome of the first game. Most sequels with multiple endings end up picking a single ending and saying "this is the one that's cannon" and Dark Souls 2 never does that.

I never said it doesn't make sense or the storys between 1 and 2 don't match up.
I'm not even really bothered by the whole story-cycle-thing, hence why it doesn't deserve its seperate thread for me. I just would have liked it a little bit more if I wouldn't have to do the exact same thing for the exact same reasons as in DS1. For me its a little like having peperoni pizza two nights in a row, a different topping on my second pizza would have been nice, but pizza is still good.

Note the fact that Square Enix is a MASSIVE company with the money to afford to outsource the development of parts of their games to another company. Now notice that all the games you mentioned, while good games are considered by Square Enix to be commercial failures because of how much money they poured into making and marketing them versus what their sales figures were. Even the most successful of the bunch, Tomb Raider, which sold something like 5 million copies, was considered by Square Enix to be disappointing.

Now compare that to From Software, which is a TINY company in comparison to Square Enix, and which does not have the money to hire an outside company to come in and do their work for them. They have Dark Souls, which is a game series with niche appeal, and which gets ok sales numbers, but which is considered a huge success because they don't dump truckloads of money onto it to make it. It's made by a comparatively small dev team on a comparatively small budget. If they were to hire an outside company like Nixxes to do their PC port they probably wouldn't actually make any money off the PC port.

You are probably right about the massive difference in recourses between the two mentioned companies. I have to admit I have no clue what it costs to outsource your pc port.

The thing is they probably only needed to hire one or too guys who know a little bit about optimzing for PC graphics and M+KB controls. They did the lionsshare of the work, the game is portet and is somewhat playable with M+KB. There are only a few issues that are easily fixed. We saw that with DS1 and the fanmade patches that fixed its controls issues. It seems that they couldn't be bothered with the easiest but still important last step.

Its a little bit like they build a whole car but in the end couldn't be bothered to screw on the wheels. Or screwd them on but didn't inflate them properly

 

[Chris Tian]

But isn't the reverse true as well? You say that as long as my version works then there is no problem, except it's not just me who has no problem with it. In fact, your degree of complaint about the MKB controls are the first I've heard. At worst I've heard that the MKB controls are usable if not the optimal way to play the game. At best I've heard that they are perfectly fine compared to other third person action games on the platform.

Strange, everybody here is telling me what an utter fool I am to even attempt to play it with M+KB. So allow me to slightly doubt your theory of me being the only one who has these issues.

You just don't like the way the controls work.

Thats just wrong because, its not that I dont like HOW they work, they DON'T work properly.
In the current state of DS2 a player who uses M+KB is not able to do a shoulder push or a jumping heavy attack or any other thing that is mapped to "click + something" where you have to press both at the exact same time.
The game itself clearly states that if I click for attack an press the "moving forward" button at the same time I should do a shoulder push. But that wont work due to the double-click-delay.

Seriously, you are trying to tell me that everything is okay with the pc port and I am overreacting, obviously without ever having tested the pc version, and that is precisely what i meant with: "I know, as long as your version works fine there is no problem right?"

 

[Vault101]

You're telling me that a game designed for controllers, developed by people who have almost no experience in porting, has poor keyboard/mouse controls using fewer buttons than expected?

I have never been more utterly shocked in my entire life, and I've been electrocuted before! D:

Seriously. No one with any knowledge of its history bought Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2 with realizing that the keyboard/mouse controls would be terrible without modding. Play it with a controller then get back to us on how bad it is.

the controllers themselves are ok for me with M/K (so far)

but its not even that though

they keep the fucking buttons on screen, so when it tells you how to do something its telling you how to do it with a metaphorical controller you don't have

 

[kortin]

I like how you're complaining about terrible keyboard and mouse controls for a third person ARPG. I bet you complain about terrible controller controls for RTS games. The DS2 port is objectively better than the DS1 port. Go buy a controller and stop complaining about shit you can control and choose not to. You play with the objectively worse controls and you're going to have an objectively worse experience. I game on the PC and even I have a controller laying around for games that are just better with a controller. You have no excuse.

 

[infohippie]

Mouse and keyboard are the standard control system on PCs. If you have additional control methods, like a gamepad or a joystick, then great! But if a port does a poor job of supporting the STANDARD CONTROL HARDWARE for a platform, it is a poor port. I wanted to get Dark Souls 2 on PC precisely because I don't like gamepads. Because the devs only provided half-arsed support for mouse and keyboard, I won't be getting it at all.

 

[Chris Tian]

I like how you're complaining about terrible keyboard and mouse controls for a third person ARPG. I bet you complain about terrible controller controls for RTS games. The DS2 port is objectively better than the DS1 port. Go buy a controller and stop complaining about shit you can control and choose not to. You play with the objectively worse controls and you're going to have an objectively worse experience. I game on the PC and even I have a controller laying around for games that are just better with a controller. You have no excuse.

I'm pretty sure you dont even get the basic concept of what I'm trying to say and talk about in this thread, but I will still try to explain to you why your post makes less than no sense.

I don't like controllers. I was promised a game that works with M+KB. I paid money on said game under the pretense that it works properly with M+KB. Said game does not work properly with M+KB. My money was taken under false pretenses.
Paying money for a product and then having to discover that it does not live up to its promises annoys me, which is not completely unreasonably.

What I really don't need is someone agressively telling me I would not have the mentioned control issues with a controller, I already know that.

Your post just shows me that you don't get what I have said in my OP and the subsequent thread and that you dont know what objective means.

 

[Chris Tian]

It is completely irrelevant whether or not the game works with the mouse and keyboard,

Thats just not true, if a company promises a game will work with M+KB its is in fact very relevant if it does or not, especially if said promise influenced the customers decision to buy.

the simple fact is every single third person ARPG will play better with a controller than a mouse and keyboard.Some games play a bit better in terms of mouse and keyboard than others with mouse and keyboard, some play a bit worse, but one simple fact is that a controller will always provide you a lesser experience.

That is, again, just not true. That statement only demonstrates that you don't know what the difference between "fact" and "opinion" is.

You can't even convey your opinion in a calm and civilised manner, but I'm the child? That makes me chuckle a bit.

Like I said, you clearly don't get what we are talking about here, not even a little bit. Since you struggle with the defenitions of the terms "fact" and "objective" as well I'm not really surprised.

 

[Eve Charm]

They aren't triple A devs,

Oh well, could have fooled me, since they expected me to shell out the same amount of cash as for an average AAA title.

Well was it a borderline reskin of a game that released a year ago that had about 1000 people working on it, cause thats how triple A works. The price you pay for a game sadly has no baring on what your gonna get for it. And if your willing to pay triple A price for a game that states in it's requirements "Additional Notes: Controller support: Microsoft Xbox 360® Controller for Windows® (or equivalent) recommended" and not shell out the extra money to pick up a game pad that's on you. Buyer beware if you try a not recommended or minimal control option.