The PC Version of Dark Souls 2 is lazy as hell

[Vigormortis]

what areas might that be?

Well, notably, the control mechanics. As the topic of this thread entails.

Or, as one poster put it:

Spoiler

I just finished DS2 on PC and while I think its not as good as DS1 I had lots of fun. Its just that the PC Port is, like with DS1, a freaking disaster.

I have to agree. While I like both games and I've spent a lot of time in them and plan spending even more, I have to say the port is a disaster.

Did they even test the PC Version at all? Because I can hardly belive that nobody noticed that your character stands there like a dear in the headlights for a second until he decides to raise his shield.

No, I think it's obvious they didn't test it.
First of all, they locked almost everything to the framerate. This is a disaster on it's own. Anyone who has played the game on a console and then on the PC with 60 FPS will tell you that the PC version is much harder. Thanks to things being tied to the framerate and not to the system time, you literally have a 2 times smaller dodge and parry window than on consoles.
Adding to the smaller parry window the double click shit, parrying with the default settings is almost impossible. It's pure luck.

DaS1 port, while also being a disaster had at least a better button mapping options. You could map literally everything to the keyboard and emulate a consoler. That's impossible on DaS2 without mods.

There are a few design decisions in DS2 i don't understand. For example: Why are my weapons made from wet tissue paper now and get magically repaired when I reach a bonfire?

The low weapon durability was a good decision going wrong. Weapon durability was a non-issue in DaS1. It took you 1-20 souls to repair and was more annoying than anything else.
They tried to make weapon durability a important factor, but then they overdid it. They balanced the weapon durability so badly that it's just stupid. Hitting a corps will take away 4 times more durability points than hitting a living enemy and 2 times more than hitting a wall. Yup, you read it right. Hitting a dead body will damage your weapon 2 times more than hitting a brickwall.

Oh, remember the things tied in to the framerate? Well, it's here as well. So if you have a solid 60 FPS, your weapon will melt like butter in Iron Keep because the game takes into account the amount of frames your weapon is inside a dead body! Awesome, right?


Remember how Wipes were useless in DaS1? Hey, From fixed them. They are now great. Except that you need 4 of them in order to mover from one bonfire to another.

EDIT:
I don't see how "designed with controller in mind" is a excuse. It's not a excuse, it's bullshit.

Just the left side of the keyboard has over 47 keys plus shift, ctrl, alt and tab. That's 47*5 or 235 keys/key combination (just 2 keys combinations, adding 3 would drastically increase the number).
Now even the most basic mouse has 2 side buttons.

There is literally no excuse that From didn't allow to bind keys to all those buttons. It's literally inexcusable.
Dark Souls isn't some unique game with controlled deeper than any other game ever made. If a fucking MMO like WoW, with tons of different spells can have a playable control layout, there is no excuse that anyone game with less commands can't have good KB&M controls.
The bad KB&M control layout and inability to customize it is pure laziness on From's side. The fact that they didn't bother to change the tutorial signs based on your control scheme just proves it. The game already has memorized your controls, making it show the key binding is literally one line of code. The game only needs to read you the control layout, find the right key and show it on display rather than just displaying the 360 controller buttons.

This is some of the most basic things. If you buy a PC game, you expect a fucking PC game.

and this is the fault of Porting how? I don't see how porting a game changes it's fundamental design.

It doesn't change the "fundamental" design of the game. I didn't say that. But it does show a lack of attention to detail in some respects - or rather a lack of forethought on how the game might function on a different platform. Perhaps I should have changed my verbage to "game planning" instead of "game design".

The other thing is, if part of the core experience of the game is predicated on a number of game-mechanics and systems working in tandem, and one of those systems isn't functioning properly, the player will have their experience tainted.

This I completely 100% agree with. It's not gonna stop me from playing it without a controller though. it's funny tough cause I remember when the Original came out for PC and people where saying that the fans where elitist's for asking for the port let alone for it to be PLAYABLE. Ah how times have changed

Indeed. And more power to you, I say. Play to your hearts content. Honestly, I'm happy for the fans that they have the chance to play the games on their platform of choice.

And while I'll never lambast someone for liking the series - and I'd even support the fans if anyone did so - I can't really get behind this rational that, because the console version of the game was built around the use of a controller, From are excused from adding proper keyboard/mouse control on the PC build.

That's not an excuse as much as it is an indictment of From being haphazard or careless with the PC port of the game.

If something similar had happened with almost any other game series, most posters here would be up in arms about it.

All that said, in most regards Dark Souls 2 is a drastically improved PC port than it's predecessor. It's certainly not a "bad game", as some would put it, by any stretch.

 

[Chris Tian]

Really now... you complain about this port... I know what bad ports mean, there were plenty when the xbox360 and ps3 where still new (only Capcom somehow managed to make some decent ports for Resident Evil 5 and Devil May Cry 4). Dark Souls 1 WAS a bad port, but this? No way. It is decent. Keyboard and Mouse controls... now don't get me wrong I'm a huge fan of keyboard and mouse when they make sense: FPS, RTS and the like, but for Dark Souls a controller is more than adequate.

Like I said, I dont care that it works with a controller, I expect every game to work with the main input device of its platfrom, thats just industry standard.

Also let's say they screwed that one up, but everything else? Locked 60fps - that's great since everything is always smooth.

This game ran flawlessly on PC for me. Actually can't remember a single instance of it dropping from 60fps.

Except for how they tied EVERYTHING to the fps, even weapon degradation. So my weapon is more fragile now because my game runs smoother? That makes sense.

Nothing brings out the hypocrisy in this forum like Dark Souls!

The controls for some other game; or even one on a console; prove to be awkward, unresponsive and buggy? Posters around here say things like, "What a shit game! What a terrible port! What a bad developer! They're hacks of their trade! There's no excuse for this!"

The controls for the PC version of Dark Souls are awkward, unresponsive, and buggy? Fans come back with, "But ports are HAAARD! At least you got a port! We should be grateful! It's not their fault!"

Seeing as the unpaid, unfunded, modding community can usually patch the issues with these games; primarily in the control department; within a day or so of the release of the game, I fail to see how anyone can excuse From Software for not being able to do it themselves over the course of months.

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.

Shh! You're making sense. You're not supposed to be making sense on this forum. We only speak in nonsense and hyperbole.

Stop it before they crack out the torches and pitchforks!

Exactly my thoughts, I like you

 

[Vigormortis]

Exactly my thoughts, I like you

I mean, don't get me wrong. Like I've said before, even in this thread, I absolutely understand why people love the series. I even recognize, and will be the first to point out, certain areas of design behind each game that demonstrate the deft skill, brilliance, and creativity the team at From have in crafting the games. (notably art design. their artists are fantastic.)

But at least recognize the design faults when you see 'em, people. Ignoring them, blaming the players, and crafting long strings of excuses does nothing to help From Software improve future titles. And while my original post was probably more confrontational that it needed to be, I still stand by the point I was making.

On a final note:
To those that keep asserting that Souls, being a 3rd person ARPG, is "objectively" better played with a controller, I say, "Bullshit." I routinely play 3rd person games; from shooters to RPGs; with keyboard and mouse and have never had issue. I've never once thought, "Boy...this game would sure play a lot better with a controller!"

"Just use a controller" isn't an excuse for bad K&M controls. Not for a genre of game that can, and has, proven to function perfectly fine with a keyboard and mouse.

 

[Chris Tian]

Exactly my thoughts, I like you

I mean, don't get me wrong. Like I've said before, even in this thread, I absolutely understand why people love the series. I even recognize, and will be the first to point out, certain areas of design behind each game that demonstrate the deft skill, brilliance, and creativity the team at From have in crafting the games.

I love both DS overall too. I wouldn't have sunk houndreds of hours in them otherwise and I would be ALOT less annoyed by its flaws, just chalk it up as a game I dont like and call it a day. It's just short of having no major issues that really irk me, and I feel the ones it has would have been completely avoidable.

On a final note:
To those that keep asserting that Souls, being a 3rd person ARPG, is "objectively" better played with a controller, I say, "Bullshit." I routinely play 3rd person games; from shooters to RPGs; with keyboard and mouse and have never had issue. I've never once thought, "Boy...this game would sure play a lot better with a controller!"

"Just use a controller" isn't an excuse for bad K&M controls. Not for a genre of game that can, and has, proven to function perfectly fine with a keyboard and mouse.

Exactly.

 

[CyberAkuma]

There's curently a lot of 3rd party applications that can override the games controls and map different keystrokes to mouse. I think using double- and single-click as a way of controlling your character just smells disaster.

Just to clearify things, using a mouse and keyboard control in ITSELF is a disaster for agame that has been obviously designed with a controller in mind, but if I *HAD* to use mouse+keyboard I would use noe of those fancy 5-10 button mouses and rather than binding important commands to single/double click I would bind them to multiple mouse buttons instead.

If playing 3rd person games with mouse and keyboard is that important to you that you are willing ot overlook a controller you might be better off investing a little extra dough on a good multi-button mouse controller or perhaps a gamer pad such as these [http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/gaming-keypads] in order to compensate for the lack of mouse buttons.

Use the PCs strength of being customizable to solve your problem.

And yes Dark Souls 2 is a lazy game all together.
I spent over 50 hours into the game and compared to the first one it is incredibly lazy and uninspired.

Good luck and cheers.

 

[Drizzitdude]

Congrats OP, you may be the only person in the entire world who would even attempt to play a Dark Souls game with a mouse and keyboard. Seriously I would not be mad if you had made an "Am I The Only One..." thread because you may in fact be the only one.

Dark Souls 2 barely works with a mouse and keyboard because it's not meant to be played with a mouse and keyboard. It's like playing an RTS with a controller, it might work but it'll play like ass, and you should really have known this going in.

Having said that the PC port for Dark Souls 2 is head and shoulders above the original in terms of its out of the box playability. From Software learned a lot from last time and it totally shows. They still may not have it perfect but it's a huge improvement.

This entirely, I cannot fathom trying to play it with the keyboard, everyone says to never try it, it says on the games page that a controller is recommended but the truth of the matter is it is basically required.

 

[Chris Tian]

There's curently a lot of 3rd party applications that can override the games controls and map different keystrokes to mouse. I think using double- and single-click as a way of controlling your character just smells disaster.

Just to clearify things, using a mouse and keyboard control in ITSELF is a disaster for agame that has been obviously designed with a controller in mind, but if I *HAD* to use mouse+keyboard I would use noe of those fancy 5-10 button mouses and rather than binding important commands to single/double click I would bind them to multiple mouse buttons instead.

If playing 3rd person games with mouse and keyboard is that important to you that you are willing ot overlook a controller you might be better off investing a little extra dough on a good multi-button mouse controller or perhaps a gamer pad such as these [http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-keyboards-keypads/gaming-keypads] in order to compensate for the lack of mouse buttons.

Use the PCs strength of being customizable to solve your problem.

And yes Dark Souls 2 is a lazy game all together.
I spent over 50 hours into the game and compared to the first one it is incredibly lazy and uninspired.

Good luck and cheers.

I REALLY don't wont to get into another pointless argument about how impossible it is to play DS with KB+M, in which everybody ignores that it is a proven fact that it can work fine.

I have a multi-button mouse, thats just rather useless if the game doesn't let you map jack shit to any other mouse butten then left, right and mouse wheel

 

[Carnagath]

Ah. So we're expected to buy an input device that's NOT the default input device for our gaming platform, just because the developer was too lazy, stupid, or incompetent to create proper support for the default input device?

Makes sense. The OP is clearly being irrational.

I see posts like this all the time and I don't get it. Ok, I'll give you the fact that gamepad prompts should not appear on a PC game unless you have a gamepad plugged in. The fact that they do is complete bullshit and it really baffles me, because they actually did do things on the port this time around that require WAAAAAAAY more work than that. It's inexplicable that this exists.

Apart from that, the kb+m controls work as well as can be expected. They are worse than gamepad controls due to the way the game is designed, because DS2 is not a "true" 3rd person action game. As you know, it uses the lock-on feature, which you need to do in the vast majority of the game. In lock on mode, using an 8-directional input WILL be less accurate and feel worse than using analog input. It doesn't work any other way. If the game was like Witcher 2 or something, where you can use full mouse turning on your character during combat, kb+m would feel very similar, but it isn't.

One might argue that lock-mode has no use on the PC. It is there to facilitate targeting on consoles where rapid movement and targeting accuracy are mutually exclusive. Fair enough, it would be great to see the feature reworked for PC versions, but I can't help that feel that would be a massive challenge, because the entire combat system is centered around it. Simply removing it would make the game unplayable, and the cries of "WTF I SWEAR I BLOCKED THAT" would flood every forum ever. Can you expect a dev to completely rework the combat system of a game to fit kb+m? I think it would be a bit unreasonable. Just be aware of that and use a gamepad for this series of games, or skip them entirely...

 

[Chris Tian]

In lock on mode, using an 8-directional input WILL be less accurate and feel worse than using analog input.

Well I don't think so and have never noticed that so far, thats probably why the complaints about the controls have absolutely nothing to do with the analog sticks or how accurate movement in lock on mode is.

 

[Diaconu Cristian]

To OP:

PC doesn't necessary mean only KB/M, this is why I don't get you?! Flexibility is one of PCs most important features, not just pure power. If you think PC is only the tower + monitor + KB/M + Speakers than you aren't really enjoying your PC at it's fullest. For me there is the tower + monitor + TV + KB/M + xbox controller + 2 sets of speakers in 2 different rooms. I never viewed KB/M to be THE way to play on a PC! Ever! Because when I started gaming in the 90s you already had controllers, joysticks, wheels and of course KB/M to choose from. I would never play a competitive multiplayer FPS with a controller, but I would also never play Street Fighter with a mouse/keyboard.

Also what is this you say weapon degradation and other stuff about the game being harder on PC than consoles? I think DS2 is waaay easier than 1 and while weapons degrades faster it's hardly that bad (don't own the game for PS3 so I don't really know if it's really degrading harder). I played the entire game 3 times by the way so this was hardly an issue.

 

[Chris Tian]

To OP:

PC doesn't necessary mean only KB/M, this is why I don't get you?!

I'm not saying PC means only KB/M, I'm saying its industry standard for every game to work with the main input device of the platform its on.

Also what is this you say weapon degradation and other stuff about the game being harder on PC than consoles? I think DS2 is waaay easier than 1 and while weapons degrades faster it's hardly that bad (don't own the game for PS3 so I don't really know if it's really degrading harder). I played the entire game 3 times by the way so this was hardly an issue.

Ähm what now? How does it matter if DS1 was harder?

People were talking about how everything is tied to the fps on pc and that weapons degrade twice as fast when playing on 60fps and how that is a sign of bad porting. Just to mention it, hit boxes, invincibility frames and all that jazz are tied to the fps too, essentially you have less time to hit or evade shit.

 

[Diaconu Cristian]

It seems you are very convinced that this is a bad port and no arguments will change your mind. I don't think there is an industry standard that says gaming should be done on KB/M on PC, this is why I mentioned flexibility.
Also the controls on KB/M do work but they also suck. And only the controls sucking does not mean the "port is lazy as hell", this is why people are defending it.
You should try some other games launched on the PC when the xbox360 was still young. Then you would know what terrible ports are... oh God the first ports... you had bad graphics that demanded unrealistic amounts of power with barely any options to choose from. You needed very expensive HW to be able to tolerate the game and then you had PC based games that looked much better and needed much less expensive HW. I remember all of the sudden needing dual core just to play any multiplatform game, but Half Life 2 ran flawlessly on a single core and looked better than all the ports maxxed. Now that the PS4 and Xbone are basically PCs we can hopefully forget about these issues.

For the second point I really don't see anything wrong with 60fps other than it being smooth. The less time to hit and evade stuff is funny and it's why I mentioned DS1: the enemies here are much easier to predict and there is plenty of time to evade or hit them(with very few exceptions). If indeed what you say is true it also means that if you posses better reflexes you can master the game better (since it allows faster input from the player if input is somehow different between 60fps to 30fps). Then again having the game a bit harder on one platform is hardly an issue to me (also while discussing about DS2 with a friend who plays it on PS3 we came to the conclusion that I can see the invisible guys in the forest much better than him so there might be advantages as well).

 

[Chris Tian]

I don't think there is an industry standard that says gaming should be done on KB/M on PC, this is why I mentioned flexibility.

Its industry standard because almost every game on pc does it, thats what standard means.

And only the controls sucking does not mean the "port is lazy as hell", this is why people are defending it.

There is more wrong with it than just the controls, just google around a bit or read this thread again. Soley that they didn't change the button promts tells me that FROM put only the absolute bare minimum of work into the port, I would call that lazy. The only other explanation for the bad port would be incompetence, take your pick.

For the second point I really don't see anything wrong with 60fps other than it being smooth. The less time to hit and evade stuff is funny and it's why I mentioned DS1: the enemies here are much easier to predict and there is plenty of time to evade or hit them(with very few exceptions). If indeed what you say is true it also means that if you posses better reflexes you can master the game better (since it allows faster input from the player if input is somehow different between 60fps to 30fps). Then again having the game a bit harder on one platform is hardly an issue to me (also while discussing about DS2 with a friend who plays it on PS3 we came to the conclusion that I can see the invisible guys in the forest much better than him so there might be advantages as well).

I dont care about the fps issue at all, but its funny how you excuse it. That the fps influence such things as: weapon degradation, hit boxes and invincibility frames is clearly an error and does not work as intended, even you can't deny that. Still you make up excuses like "it is not all that bad" as if you fear FROM's feelings might get hurt if they read this thread.

I dont get why you even make up this excuses, its totally okay if you like DS2, but my complaints are perfectly valid and reasonable too. The game has no feelings it does not need you to defend it.

 

[Diaconu Cristian]

I'm not defending the game I'm just trying to point out what a truly "lazy as hell port" is for me, and this is not it. You clearly expected much more than me I don't know what you would have said about GTA4 or Splinter Cell Double Agent... Hell my opinion is that DS1 is worst than this (I have an AMD GPU so I still have slowdowns in Blighttown while DS2 is always silky smooth).

 

[Vigormortis]

snip

But you see...that's still rationalizing poorly implemented keyboard and mouse controls.

I understand what you're trying to get at, I really do, and would likely agree if it weren't for having played 3rd person games that utilize lock-on systems with a keyboard and mouse without issue. With proper adjustment to the movement system (i.e. adjusted for digital directional input instead of analog) I never really had any issues.

And besides, the same issue had popped up in the first Dark Souls on PC, and the modding community was able to patch in a fix. So an absence of a similar "adjustment" in Dark Souls 2 is baffling, if frustrating.

Can you expect a dev to completely rework the combat system of a game to fit kb+m? I think it would be a bit unreasonable.

I wouldn't expect them to completely rework the core of the combat system. That would be unreasonable. (though there's an argument to be made about forethought into how the system would function on differing platforms)

However, expecting at least some effort in making even a few minor adjustments to capitalize on the native input method isn't unreasonable. And this is where From dropped the ball; even ignoring the blatant disregard for UI prompt adjustments.

Just be aware of that and use a gamepad for this series of games, or skip them entirely...

I am aware of all of that. And that's why I'm levying a complaint about it. It's a valid criticism.

As I'd stated in another post, expecting users to have to purchase an ancillary input device just to be able to play the game on their native platform is ridiculous bordering on inexcusable. I wouldn't expect someone to have to buy an Xbox360 controller to play a game on their Playstation3, why should From expect me to do the same for my PC?

-edit-
That said, I'm not entirely convinced the port is "lazy as hell". I agree with the OP, and several other posters, that there are a myriad of issues with the PC build of the game. However, I don't think those issues utterly ruin the entire experience. There is still a fun game to be had past those issues.

 

[Chris Tian]

-edit-
That said, I'm not entirely convinced the port is "lazy as hell". I agree with the OP, and several other posters, that there are a myriad of issues with the PC build of the game. However, I don't think those issues utterly ruin the entire experience. There is still a fun game to be had past those issues.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying DS2 is lazy as hell, and I never said that the port ruins the game completely. Its just the work they put into the port seems to be just under the absolute bare minimum they had to, thats what annoys me, flaws and errors that ddidn't have to be if they just had put a tiny bit of effort into it.

 

[Vigormortis]

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying DS2 is lazy as hell, and I never said that the port ruins the game completely. Its just the work they put into the port seems to be just under the absolute bare minimum they had to, thats what annoys me, flaws and errors that ddidn't have to be if they just had put a tiny bit of effort into it.

I wasn't really implying you'd thought the entire experience was ruined. Certainly not after reading some of your responses, as well as the few exchanges you and I had.

What I meant was, some seem to be under the impression that criticizing the controls; or the PC port in general; is implying that the game is ruined in it's entirety. I was just asserting that I didn't feel this way.