The Pull of Dark Souls II

[sageoftruth]

Someone needs to make a youtube playthrough where the enemies are dubbed to talk like that.

 

[Church185]

The Old Ironguards also have a very high degree of tracking in their vertical attacks so your best real bet is ducking in after they pull off their Left Swing or Vertical Chop. Watch out for the Right Swing, it's a four hit horizontal combo usually.

I usually just bait, roll, poke them to death. If you have any kind of ranged attack when fighting they are laughably easy to kill.

 

[Clovus]

I think the dialogue here makes me glad that enemies are mostly silent in the Souls games ...

 

[sageoftruth]

I admit I never understood why people complain about enemy tracking in Dark Souls 2, as turning 180° around quickly, for example, is just a matter of switching your leading foot to the other leg, by shifting your heels position, rest of the body will follow, which include swing already in motion.

Shifting your foot is like one of the most basic part of martial art training, unless your in a discipline that focus on grappling, in which case the most basic training is learning to fall.

Yeah. I remember using this all the time in the first Dark Souls. When I got invaded, I'd stand with my back facing wherever the invader was coming, but I'd rotate the camera so I could still see him. When he moved in for a backstab, I'd simply attack and because the camera was facing behind me, that's where I'd end up striking.

 

[tangoprime]

Coming soon to Dark Souls 3: mid-boss turncoat invasion mode (brought to you by CCP).

This brought a happy tear to my eye, remembering how my corp used to do almost exactly this to people running incursions, thanks to formerly *fun criminal flagging mechanics and people fielding a fleet full of pimped out shinies relying on 3 or more random people from local flying not-terribly-expensive logistics ships. Mid fight, their guardians would **magically disappear and they'd be massacred by smart NPCs. The good old days.

*fun for the people who knew how it worked, and thanks to CCP's "whatever goes, if not we'll hotfix it" attitude, they ruled in our favor that it wasn't an exploit, but changed the mechanics later. I think their reasoning was creating a sandbox where anything goes with a "trust nobody" premise, and then introducing something that made crazy money but required relying on random other players. We solved this riddle with wanton destruction.

**Magically as in we had a plant in their group that was flagged to our shooters, who waited at the gate, and as soon as their guardians linked up to provide capacitor cycles to each other and start repping people, the whole group was flagged to our shooters for assisting "the criminal" who immediately disengaged and warped off just as we landed and the shooting started. This was one of the earlier methods, until we figured out that we could just look for people with really expensive ships looking for a fleet to run incursions with in local chat, invite them to the group (who were actually all fit for fighting at point-blank range), have our guardians link up, ask them to start assisting the guardians with ECCM cycles or whatever, then just insta-fry them as they were flagged to us. Trust nobody, pubbies. Expensive lesson.

...okay, I'm finished reminiscing. But this does remind me of things that Dark Souls III will probably allow, lol.

 

[otakon17]

I admit I never understood why people complain about enemy tracking in Dark Souls 2, as turning 180° around quickly, for example, is just a matter of switching your leading foot to the other leg, by shifting your heels position, rest of the body will follow, which include swing already in motion.

Shifting your foot is like one of the most basic part of martial art training, unless your in a discipline that focus on grappling, in which case the most basic training is learning to fall.

No, they literally LITERALLY turn in place like on a top, their arms still raised for 30 seconds at a time to track you.

 

[Mahorfeus]

That Heide Knight has some insane, Matrix-style lightning reflexes. I wish I were kidding. The only enemy I hate more is the Archdrake Cleric.

One thing Dark Souls II does encourage is dodging reactively rather than proactively. In the first game you could dodge while the enemy is telegraphing their attack and your invincibility frames would carry you through it. I've found that that strategy just gets your face caved in this time around.

 

[Darmy647]

Circle Strafing still DOES work for the most part. You have to literally SHOVE you're body against them and strafe, ive noticed it somehow borks the A.I into allowing you to strafe them easily.

 

[Ohlookit'sMatty]

That third panel is a thing of beauty

-M

 

[The Deadpool]

Yeah, the tracking in this game is pretty amazing... It makes things interesting. The attacks are still telegraphed, but the dodge windows are much shorter...

 

[Darth_Payn]

The Middle two panels were hilarious, but what was the meaning of the sword with the magnet on it?

 

[iniudan]

I admit I never understood why people complain about enemy tracking in Dark Souls 2, as turning 180° around quickly, for example, is just a matter of switching your leading foot to the other leg, by shifting your heels position, rest of the body will follow, which include swing already in motion.

Shifting your foot is like one of the most basic part of martial art training, unless your in a discipline that focus on grappling, in which case the most basic training is learning to fall.

No, they literally LITERALLY turn in place like on a top, their arms still raised for 30 seconds at a time to track you.

That called limited animation, for example when you yield a weapon 2 handed weapon left handed, you character doesn't actually put their left foot forward like they should.

If they had proper animation (which is a bit hard considering the number of unwieldy weapon for a human in the game) you would see some proper body movement with those turning on the spot, which are easily feasible in real life.

As for keeping weapon raised for 30 second in the air, that nothing for someone trained, it actually a pretty basic offensive stance in real life. It just that it might seem impossible in Dark Souls due to the exaggerated nature of most weapon. Now as for why player cannot hold a stance, I got no idea.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Welp, this launched my sides into orbit.

It's fun to know From fixed the whole circle strafe issue... but goddamn i'd be lying if I didn't say they didn't go overboard with certain enemies' tracking.
Especially these skanks late game...

Spoiler

MLG homing+tracking for 8 years soul arrow quickscopers. "Do you even Amana, you filthy melee casual?!"

They're like projectile Heide Knights by the dozens.

 

[Azure23]

I laughed. Hard. At the Magna-Sword in particular. Can't say I've played DSII, but my friends that have certainly complain about issues that could only be explained by the enemies having magnetized swords. And I can semi-relate with other games that I've played that have similar combat "issues". Yay!

The enemies are just way better at following your position and generelly their attacks track you better than in DS1. In DS1 you could circle strafe backstab pretty much any humanoid enemy because they were so slow to react. In DS2 you generally need to outplay the enemies if you want a backstab (like a roll bs through a horizontal attack). It makes the game much better in my opinion.

 

[Azure23]

So. Freaking. True. And hilarious, haha! While I like that the enemies can actually follow you rather than stand around while you backstab them, I think they went a bit overboard with it.

In all of the hours I have played Dark Souls 2, I am yet to kill one of those. I haven't even tried. With the exception of games such as GTA where I play like a sociopath, I never attack passive NPC's in games.

I kind of felt sorry for them, sitting there all weary looking.

Oh, don't worry, he's all Hollowed out and not an NPC. Plus, they drop some unique swords that come with lightning damage.

Actually only the first Heide knight drops a sword, the second drops a lance and the third drops a greatlance. Plus in ng+ they have a high chance to drop pieces of their armor, that sweet, sweet chestpiece. I usually pick bonfire ascetic as my gift so I can use it after killing the last giant and get the armor at the beginning.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Grey is such a casual.

Git good, scrub.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I laughed. Hard. At the Magna-Sword in particular. Can't say I've played DSII, but my friends that have certainly complain about issues that could only be explained by the enemies having magnetized swords. And I can semi-relate with other games that I've played that have similar combat "issues". Yay!

The enemies are just way better at following your position and generelly their attacks track you better than in DS1. In DS1 you could circle strafe backstab pretty much any humanoid enemy because they were so slow to react. In DS2 you generally need to outplay the enemies if you want a backstab (like a roll bs through a horizontal attack). It makes the game much better in my opinion.

Gotta agree here. The tracking just means you have to time your rolls better. Problems definitely arise at times though, especially with some enemies that have flat out broken-ass hitboxes (cough, Smelter Demon, cough)

Edited to quote the right person....

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I find that page so hilarious that my stomach started hurting.

I am not a fan of backstabbing myself, since I mostly play a facetank type build (heavy armor with a hugeton of poise and tower shield) so there is no need for me to backstab anyone. I just 2h my ultra greatsword and manmoded the majority of bosses in Dark Souls 1.

I haven't gotten far enough in DS2 to have anything to say about it other than you need to dodge a lot more than blocking it seems.

captcha: remain calm. Sound plan captcha!

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Snip

I think you meant to quote [user]Azure23[/user] but somehow ended up quoting me lol.

Also to add with your post, those Ogres [http://darksouls.wikia.com/wiki/Ogre] annoy the crap out of me with their broken hit boxes. I'll roll out of the way, but somehow they still catch me and chomp my HP to 0. Of course, they are a tad slow so throwing poisonous knives into them does the trick.

In fact, from Giants to annoying enemies- poisonous knives solves almost everything. Except bosses depending on whom you're fighting.

Fuck those Ogres. Of all the attacks in the game to have a broken hitbox, it had to be them and their one hit kill didn't it...

 

[uncanny474]

Which reminds me, I have yet to be invaded at all. 14hrs played and no invasion at all? I mean, I burned a human effigy once, but that was by accident in Things Betwixt, when I was trying to reverse my hollowing for the first time.

I've had the same problem. My friend (who played the hell out of the game on PS3), told me that, while you can get invaded while hollow, the invasion rates are drastically reduced. Also, there's no whole red eye orb (just the cracked ones).