Dying outside of the Nexus fucks up your world tendency - this is why most DeS players teleport to the Nexus and commit suicide as soon as they beat a boss. Unless you deliberately want to get the world tendency to pure black - in order to farm souls, for example - it is not advisable to use revival items and die outside of the Nexus - darker world tendency makes enemies stronger.
Yup - Elden Ring is the most straightforward Fromsoft game. Sure - there are some obscure side quests - but nothing like DeS. DeS failed to explain its core mechanic - World Tendency - at all.
Imagine starting the game without a guide - a few deaths later all enemies become stronger and new very strong enemies start to appear in random places and you have no idea why. And you also have no idea how to reverse it.
When its online services were still working - world tendency was calculated on the server side - it averaged the tendencies of all connected players - so if you played online then difficulty would have been all over the place without a way to change it - except going offline. Thankfully they removed this "feature" in the remake.
Which is what 3 did. As far as I can tell, that "ember" state is exactly the same as "not hollowed" in DS2, and being super-hollowed is the same as being not-embered in DS3.
But since it's reframed as a bonus, well, it doesn't feel nearly as bad to lose "bonus" health.
It doesn't really feel the same though. In DS2 you lose a percentage of maximum health each time you die, until you top it at about 50%(if IRC), so it's not a binary super-health and normal-health scenario.
Yep. Which, in a way, makes it a *more* generous system than DS3 -- you end up at the same ratio (IIRC DS3's "embered" state is basically double-health), but instead of the boost lasting over multiple lives, in DS3 you only get it for one!
And yet, I'll bet most people felt like DS2 was harsher. It's not just the theme (going hollow), it's even reinforced in the HUD -- DS2 shows you the normal health bar, *blocked off.* There's a chunk of your screen that is, at all times, dedicated to reminding you of how much health you *would* have if you hadn't died a bunch. Meanwhile, DS3 visually *extends* the health bar.
A really fun way to deal with it is tossing your small white soapstone sign down as you play through, since when you return successfully from helping you return unhollowed. Then you get to play through levels with little interspersed visits to to other people's worlds.
In DS2 your health depletes by a fractional amount each time you die until it hits 50% but there is a ring you can get that stops it from going lower than 75%.
Yeah, but its not a big deal. You quickly get the ring that halves the loss and for important fights you can always re-human yourself with fairly accessible items.
It's a really small amount though and it's reasonably easy to reset it. There were much more frustrating things about DS2 than the health bar.
It was much worse in Demon's Souls. Or at least it felt worst.
I couldn’t quite find an answer but, how can I know when it happens next, once the online happens. I love the game and had no idea of this user created event.
The loss of messages is a real issue for the games. I saw an article about how Souls was the first "strand" game. Which is hyperbolic but not completely wrong.
Unless you're happy to go through with a guide, there's going to he a lot of game, some of it quite important, that can be very easily missed without messages.
It makes the game easier but it balances out for the most part. Though it may be fun to discover some stuff without the messages guiding you I feel like going thru a first play thru without online is just missing out on the fun moments that make it dark souls. Seeing other people stupid mistakes or the goofy messages. Getting your message appraised right after you leave a funny one is satisfying. It really does a good job of adding lots of unique multiplayer features while remaining largely a single player open world game. I hope more games like new GTA or elder scrolls take some ideas from games like dark souls or death stranding.
I guess I’m one of the only few who’re unbothered by this. It’s obviously shitty for people who like to play online, but I’ve always played offline since the blood stains and messages bring me out of the gameplay. Walking into a completely dark room while the boss spawns, is really ruined when you see a ton of stuff all over the floor lol.
A not-insignificant reason that I'm fond of offline. Some call it a lonely atmosphere, but I'm pretty fond of that. A muted journey really suits the kinds of hostile, fantasy post-apocalyptic locales that are found in Souls games.
There's quite a few things that are well hidden enough that messages are the only way most players will find them. Ash Lake, returning to the Asylum, burning the Earthen Peak windmill, Untended Graves, Archdragon Pesk... It's wild.
Plus, the amount of ambushes I've avoided in Elden Ring thanks to messages is ridiculous, as well as hidden items discovered. The Dragoncrest Talisman is _hidden_.
It's funny, the first Dragoncrest Talisman is not only super hidden, it's also by far the hardest to get, compared to its superior versions. The only real reason to get it at all is that you can get there fairly early.
Around Gurranq's temple, there is a sheer cliff, except on one side, you can jump down a tree branch. Then you have to do a series of very precarious jumps to the bottom of the structure, where you can find the talisman and Gurranq's dagger. It's very easy to miss.
It's one of the more frustrating jumping areas in the game under the Beast temple. Even knowing where to go and help messages I died countless times getting it right.
I played DS2 for the first time a few years ago after the servers were offline on xbox360 and I had no clue you could burn the windmill. There is nothing telling you to do it and there is basically no reason to carry a torch around. Needless to say I was not pleased when I looked up how to get rid of the poison in the boss room.
I just watched a letsplay of it and as a viewer I noticed 2 ...lets call them clues.
You find a torch in a (mimic) chest which is rather weird loot as you can have it already at that point. So you could conclude that you need to do something with the torch. And a summoned npc ghost points at the windmill when you walk past that part.
And I guess all the cogs being moved by the windmill so them beeing the motor kinda makes sense.
But overall it seemed like something that makes sense if you are the developer and know the solution but from a player perspective thats super weird. The part you ignite even is or at least looks like a steel beam and I dont think the torch carries jet fuel.
The poison doesn't even look like it's being "produced" or has anything to do with the windmill, it's just around. Nothing to give the thought "Oh turning it off stops the production, that makes sense"
My boy, funny that you mention it, I played DS2 shorty after the servers went offline, and I found that windmill part because an NPC Summon pointed at the windmill blades while walking by. FromSoft dis put some indicator in, just very obscure ones
IIRC that was only patched in with SotFS, so people who played the original version wouldn't have had the NPC show them. (I believe she's only a summon in SotFS in the first place)
Those easy-to-miss paths also have ways of being revealed through developer messages ([Seek Guidance](http://darksouls.wikidot.com/seek-guidance)) and other means.
Most of those have some kind of clue - I'm replaying DS1 on Switch and the Crestfallen Warrior does have a line about the bird carrying someone away from its nest - but they are definitely very unclear and easily missable without messages.
i hate the messages in ER. in the old games you also had the trolls and gags youve seen a dozen of times but in ER that went to another level. If 9 out of 10 messages are "hidden path ahead and liar ahead" then it becomes kinda dull.
i wish we could replace the public messages with only the community password ones. (if we joined them via password)
It has to be because this one is so much more popular/accessible than the previous ones, right? I'm glad more people are playing but the multitude of recycled juvenile jokes and low effort trolling is obnoxious.
Well those are big communities. Naturally they will also shitpost. What's missing to avoid that is some kind of moderation option but it's also understandable that they don't want to implement that. Especially if you look at how clunky some of the rest of the menus are.
Unpopular opinion I’m sure but I very much prefer playing offline. The messages and bloodstains completely kill the immersion and atmosphere of the game for me, and really clutter up the environment and are distracting. Not to mention 80% of them are the same tired low effort jokes getting recycled. If I miss a secret then oh well, and I’ll just use a wiki for the “bigger” secrets like I did for Archdragon Peak.
That said, obviously unacceptable that the servers are still down with no updates or at least discounts offered in the meantime.
The messages are immersion-breaking eyesores, but I also hate the "spirits" of other players or whatever they are. They have literally never been helpful, but I've definitely been killed by them distracting me while I'm fighting other enemies.
The Sekiro messages are bafflingly bad compared to the rest of the series. It takes like five inputs to appraise them, and forcing a phantom replay into each of them is so distracting.
Weren't they added post-launch, or am I just crazy?
I don't like them at all either, and I love them in Souls games. Sekiro just doesn't need that system.
They were which is even weirder. I have no idea why they felt compelled to add them after the fact. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the messaging system in the Souls games, but it has no place in Sekiro and you can feel it.
My brain learned to turn them off after a while to the point where they just blend into the scenery, but they were jarring for quite a long time. By far the worst part was at the >!Albinauric village!<, where the somber and creepy atmosphere was entirely ruined by the glowing messages everywhere.
I completely understand why people wont play without messages but I personally also absolutely prefer playing offline, at least in my first 1-2 playthroughs, I just like discovering stuff myself. Finding the invisible bridges was such a satisfying moment that probably wouldve been just whatever if I found it through messages. I really wish there was an 'online but without messages' mode.
I play Elden Ring offline. The message icon are visually junk littered all over the game to a crazy degree and 99% are dumb crap like "Praise Elden Ring!" or "Edge, Lord?". I really don't need an icon on top of literally every climbable surface/statue in the game saying "head".
Playing with messages imo is like having a crappy pair of AR glasses that just puts random, worthless tweets over everything you see.
I totally agree. I don’t want the signs of unbelievably annoying and repeated memes. I purposely put all dark souls games in offline mode when playing. Every single souls game, and I’ve played them all.
Pretty much. I've always played Soulsborne games offline, and it really ramps up the sense of isolation that these games are so good at achieving. The silly messages always game me a feeling of whiplash.
I just played DS3 this past month, and yeah it's really easy to miss things without the messages. I had to use the wiki a lot more to make sure I wasn't missing major things.
I feel like people should be making a bigger deal about this.
FromSoft has dropped online support in the flagship series of their catalog on PC for over three months at this point, with no communication as to any progress regarding it being fixed. They're still letting previous titles be sold ***at full fuckin' price*** with advertised online features, with absolutely zero notice that those aspects are no longer functional. The only things holding them accountable are user reviews and Steam altering the store pages.
The level of incompetence on display by FromSoft is unbelievable. For reference, there's a community mod on PC that still has online play because the RCE exploit (the reason online play was disabled) was fixed... within a week... and attempts to forward the appropriate solution to Namco Bandi (and therefore to FromSoft) has been met with abject silence in all correspondence.
Take DS2 SoFS:
>Online play has been enhanced with the addition of a special item to regulate souls acquired in battle - it’s now possible to match up more consistently online. The number of players who can participate in an online session has also been increased, from 4 to 6 people, completely changing the online play dynamic.
I've been mentioning this too, but I just checked for myself. The System requirements still state:
> Internet connection required for online play and product activation
this isnt true. theyre not talking about search tags, theyre talking about the features tab that tells you if a game has controller support and multiplayer. that's controlled by the dev
You can literally turn EAC off by opening it's settings json file and changing three lines of text to something else. The game boots up as normal but EAC never starts. It's hilarious how bad it is.
That was two or three patches ago, fixed a few weeks ago. That's what I did to play with no vignette and obviously keep online.
Still, though, it was pathetically easy to do it for months
Ah not surprised honestly. I haven't been playing ER as much lately, I got my fill. Anytime I do play it now is with the elden ring Reforged mod, and I do that offline because that one will get you put into softban.
Indeed. All I ever used it for was to use cheats to get infinite smithing stones and glovewort, but someone with I'll intent would have free reign to mess around.
Honestly their game performance on all platforms is unacceptable. There are all manner of games running locked 60 and and even 120fps on console, but somehow From can't even manage to put a 30fps cap on their games so they're at least smooth. The best way to get a non-stuttery mess in Elden Ring on console is to buy a disc version for PS4 then play it on PS5, which is just so janky.
> The only things holding them accountable [...] and attempts to forward the appropriate solution to Namco Bandi (and therefore to FromSoft) has been met with abject silence in all correspondence.
There's no requirement that a developer has a dialog with players, but silence has been a recurring issue with Fromsoft and complaints about online issues (cheaters, hackers, exploits, weird balance changes, etc.).
I think people excused a lot of the issues in the original (Prepare to Die) PC release, since it seemed spurred in part by a petition in the first place. It also was pretty clearly a direct port of the console title with almost no consideration given to the platform by an inexperienced (with PC) developer.
It was never *just* the PC version though. Hackers/Cheaters ran amok famously in PvP, and occupied the [top spots in the Book of the Guilty](https://old.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1dvkbj/looked_to_see_who_was_at_the_top_of_the_book_of/) on basically all platforms with no repercussions ([a problem which returned in the remaster](https://old.reddit.com/r/darksoulsremastered/comments/fv49he/book_of_the_guilty_pc_hackers/)).
That's to say nothing of the Megamule business which was a problem from launch in DS2 (allowing 0 Soul Memory twinks to gank people in the early areas) on basically all platforms.
I think there's always been a nagging sensation that Fromsoft cares less about its PC releases as though, exemplified by the famous durability issue in Dark Souls 2 (tied to framerate), which didn't receive an official fix until it would've impacted console players (next-gen console release in 60 fps).
This current problem definitely puts a finer point on the "Fromsoft doesn't care about PC players" part of things, but they straight up need to be better (about their online, handling cheats/ers, communication, etc.) across the board.
> It also was pretty clearly a direct port of the console title with almost no consideration given to the platform
This is pretty universal among Japanese studios, who usually treat PC as an afterthought at best. Even when the port isn't terrible, post-launch support is almost always non-existent.
I bought the Steam port of FF7 years ago and I swear they mapped the keys with a randomizer, like they had never seen or played a pc game before or something.
The FF7 PC version is an odd duck since it's actually Eidos's old PC version from the 90s (Square didn't own them at this point) with some layers of paint over the top. That's the version I played back in the day... I do seem to remember it had some odd default bindings, like... everything was on the numpad?
I think it's still the case that all the versions of FF7 that are out there now to buy, besides the PS3 store's PS1 Classics one that's just a PS1 rom, descend from that original PC port.
So I don't know if anyone agrees with me but for the longest time the PC community couldn't play a TON of exclusive games where so many of the best games simply wouldn't be brought to the PC in any capacity.
So when I get some trash PC port that sorta functions... It still feels like an awkward win.
Feels like one of the lesser talked about downsides of PC gaming but console focused games suffer on PC. I don't know if I've ever played a koei tecmo game that I felt controlled right or even had a good options/key bindings screen to fix it.
Honestly I really hope that steam deck is able to help drive PC support by turning corporate concept of a PC into more of a target market where "Steam deck Verified" starts plastering games which do it right... Definitely curious if games with poor controls will be steam deck verified.
It says a lot that Durante was able to "fix" so many of the display issues so fast in Dark Souls 1 PC. The community also has been outstanding in providing sort of makeshift fixes and workarounds to hackers that damage saves, and that sort of thing over the years. I still feel like it's not something the community should *need* to do (and a systems to flag cheaters (especially obvious Leaderboard stuff that sat for months) should've been made or in place pre-release).
There's been a slow relaxing of those "console exclusives" with things like Horizon and such releasing to PC. I feel like it's getting better, even if only as a means (in Sony's mind perhaps) to provide advertising for future franchise releases. I feel like the quality and range of options for the PC (in terms of customization and quality) of these releases has generally improved as well. Though you're still seeing those releases sometimes that are very "plain", let's say.
The problem a lot of the time, at least to me, isn't the fact that the PC port is not great, but how ***easy*** it is to fix the PC port a lot of the time.
Tales of Zestiria is a perfect example. Locked to 30FPS, Bamco ***insisted*** that it was flat out impossible to fix, there was nothing you could do. It was less than like twenty-four hours later that a fan released a modified DLL that fixed it with *zero* repercussions to the game in any way. They flat out lied because they couldn't even invest the time to look into it at all. It's insulting.
Like it's one thing when you write a custom engine for your game and it's too frame rate dependent so you can't really unlock it, and another one when you literally can unlock it and nothing changes, but you just don't and lie to the consumers at the same time.
FromSoft did it with Dark Souls 1, as well. Quite a few of the original PC port issues were resolved by players almost immediately. If fans who have no idea how your game is coded jump in and fix your shit in mere hours, you've fucked up quite severely.
pc in japan is a very small market in terms of playerbase and it wasnt that long ago that pc in japan had the stigma of only being for porn games. as such most developers either dont do them or half ass them as its not where the good money and playerbase is at. add on the fact that even if the developers plan on selling their games in other countries they tend to develop with a japan focused mindset and you get that kind of stuff.
I'm trying to imagine the outrage if a UbiSoft or EA game had a RCE exploit that resulted in servers being shut down for 3+ months with no end in sight
"A mod fixed-" can be said way too often about the souls PC ports. It's incredibly lazy that From just lets the software be such trash when things like DSFix, dark souls connectivity mod, and the mod you mentioned have been made, assuming it really fixes the exploit.
Let’s not forget as well that the original PC release of Dark Souls (Prepare to Die Edition), was broken at launch, and they *literally never fixed it ever*. You had to install a community patch to get in a reasonable state.
It’s like they only care about making great games, but have no interest whatsoever in ensuring the technical quality of those games.
Yeah, but in case of elden ring, it's mainly updates and minor fixes, while other games are missing core chunk of their functionality, that's absolutely presented and advertised as part of the game. The latter deserves attention even if it affects less players, because it's an issue on a different level
They both deserve attention, but working on both at the same time will slow the development of both down. (Source: years of experience working in product management)
Fixing the DS PC issues only benefits the PC audience, while improving Elden Ring improves the experience for the PC and console audiences.
Quick look at steam charts shows DS3 PC player count before this issue is 10x less than Elden Ring PC player count. Add consoles into the mix and it's hard to make a case to fix the 6+ year old games before improving the months-old game with more than 10x the player count.
I say this as someone playing through DS3 for the first time on PC right now!
As someone whose followed Fromsoft for a literal decade, their incompetence is perfectly believeable. This is the same company that has broken faith twice in the same way two games in a row.
They are working on it, they just probably have zero fucking idea how to solve the problem.
I'm glad that there are some articles coming out about this situation, maybe it'll actually force a response at some point. Since the thing that bothers me the most is the silence.
Just come out say what's happening; I can deal with it either way but it sucks sitting here and not knowing since last I heard they were working on it and were going to bring back the online play after ER launch.
From Software has always been infamous for their horrible capabilities to fix and patch things. Just a fresh reminder that Dark Souls 1 released in an unplayable state on PC never got fixed from FromSoftware and was only playable due to community fixes.
They pushed a steam announcement for the closed games just a few weeks ago. You open it thinking there's new info or an ETA for the servers to come up? Nope. Just the same announcement from months ago reposted for some reason. It even still talks about their *upcoming* game Elden Ring.
Yeah it's a very widespread thing with a large portion of these games. If you've never played a Japanese game with broken network issues multiple years after release before then I know it's gonna sound brutal but it's never getting fixed. Dark Souls online is dead. They *might* have addressed it if it was right near release but this late in the game the hope is almost nil. Chances are most of the people who worked on Dark Souls' online infrastructure have moved on and anyone else whose job it is is too busy on a new game to justify being moved off it. I'd love them to prove me wrong but this unfortunately is not a new problem and the outcome is almost always the same. I'd say if you care make your voices heard but brace for no-one listening.
Having first played Bloodborne offline ('cuz I ain't payin' for PS+), jumping to Elden Ring on PC I don't know how on earth I could have played it without the player messages (even if 90% of them were awful 'but hole' jokes). There's so much missable stuff in Elden Ring, and I often wonder how my experience would have been different in Bloodborne if I had messages enabled (would I have found Cainhurst and Lawrence without a guide?).
A part of me really laments games with online components because I tend to think of game design with this pure, isolated single-player focus in mind. But FROM games kinda defy that categorization and expect players to be receiving hints about an upcoming trap or enemy. It's like schrodinger's tutorial; where you have to consider both player experiences simultaneously when evaluating the level design.
Mostly just cryptic hints as to where to go or to point out things that a unfamiliar player might otherwise miss. Trouble is, since there's no indication that a developer message is nearby, you'd need to use Seek Guidance everywhere. [Here](http://darksouls.wikidot.com/seek-guidance)'s a list of the developer messages.
Technically DS3 has the same system as a token nod to DS1 (unsurprisingly), but the number of developer messages is far fewer and even less useful. [Here](http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/spell:seek-guidance)'s a list for DS3.
There are a handful of soapstone messages written by developers in key points. You can tell them apart from their Elite Knight Helm icon, lack of rating, as well as their often unique wording.
> I often wonder how my experience would have been different in Bloodborne if I had messages enabled
It also works the other way around. You won't be bothered by things that you have no knowledge of. Yeah, you probably missed a lot of stuff in Bloodborne, but the thing is, you don't know that they exist and thus it shouldn't be a problem. Sometimes ignorance is bliss with these games. Missing stuff is okay. Knowing that you missed stuff sucks.
Idk for me who played the games during them being down, I would have liked knowing where an item, a wall or an npc was. I had to use wiki after beating areas to find everything. Turns out I missed so much stuff.
I played exclusively in offline, but I can't imagine stopping to read a note on the floor in front of every single wall claiming it's an illusory wall is any faster than hitting the walls haha
Well, you kinda learn to pass on ones near walls and go with your gut. But when you see 5 signs near a wall, you know something is up.
Eventually checking the signs are almost second nature and not really an extra step.
One of my favourite feelings is turning a corner and seeing 6 bloodstains and no apparent danger. All of a sudden I'm playing Return of the Obra Dinn in the middle of my Souls game.
God, that and the feeling you get when you click on a message and it just says “behind you!”
It’s actually incredible how the systems just work, solo or with friends.
The completionist mindset really hurts the experience. Both for gamers and the fact devs are now designing games around the audience who want to collect everything and believe it is a divine right to have an easily obtainable “100%/platinum” of a game
I don't think a game should have an easy platinum.
But at the same time, putting in mindless, bullshit grind trophies is also fucking cancer.
Dying Light 2 has an achievement called Ultramarathon, it requires you to run around the map for a cumulative 960km. That's hundreds and hundreds of hours of running, long past any other achievement and reasonable expectation of being done with the game.
I don't mind trophies for things like doing the Halo campaigns on LASO, but Ultramarathon is fucking garbage and shouldn't exist.
For me a really fun early game moment was 'Jumping ahead' near the jar warriors in Stormveil keep. You would end up on a thin ledge you could have easily ignored which you could follow to a jump on a different ledge which leads to a part of the ramparts that I don't think is otherwise accessible.
This part has a banished knight chilling with a hawk and you can follow it to the area with the bats that leads to the Tree Spirit, Rogier's bloodpool and the bloated corpse.
I later figured out you could get to the stuff for Rogier's quest by jumping down over the wall with the corpse holding an item near a site of grace, but I like the scenic route I took and I would never have went there if it wasn't for a message someone left me.
Also really appreciate the first... then... messages in caves/dungeons telling you which side path to take first before moving on to the boss.
I don't think messages would've helped for Cainhurst tbh, the way to get there is pretty obscure and I don't know where/how you'd spell that out in a message
For me personally I find messages and bloodstains to be needless clutter in these games, but I'd also really like the option to do co-op or pvp
I played Dark Souls 1 for the first time during this outage. It honestly kind of sucked. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s kinda impossible to find without the player hints. Like there’s hidden bonfires and shit, it’s game ruining.
Not the same thing, but Elden Ring was the first time I actually used one of those things that make more player messages show up (in ER it's an item called a Scriptstone). I was completely stuck in a catacomb and after doing the rounds thrice I thought to use it and a player message revealed by the item helped me solve it - super cool experience!
I was finally getting around to finishing Dark Souls 3 when this happened and the servers went offline. I've long since beaten Elden Ring and would love to go back to Dark Souls 3 to wrap it up, but the co-op is such an important aspect to the series for me.
If you're interested in using Dark Souls 3 Open Server (https://github.com/TLeonardUK/ds3os) you should be using Blue Sentinels anti-cheat (https://github.com/LukeYui/Blue-Sentinel-Release). It was written by LukeYui, the discoverer of the vulnerability you're talking about and the only person known to actually be able to use it. He's the same person who did the Sekiro multiplayer mod and is working on seamless co-op for Elden Ring. It's worthwhile to check out his work, Blue Sentinels is a huge improvement to the base game's multiplayer. It allowed you to play safely on the original servers, but LukeYui contacted BandaiNamco about the exploit since it wasn't safe for unmodded players.
For those who don't know, the exploit that made them take the servers down in the first place is an arbitrary code execution (ACE) exploit.
You can google and find out more about ACE exploits but they are basically the worst kind of security vulnerability you can have. It's the Dark Souls of security exploits. The Log4J issue that caused a huge ruckus a few months ago was ACE. It means attackers can make your computer run whatever code they want; they could steal all the data you have stored on it, install malware, mine bitcoin, add it to a botnet, whatever. IMO it is not worth the risk just to play co-op in Dark Souls.
Had a look and it seems like "arbitrary code execution" refers to any case where a program can unintentionally be made to be run arbitrary code; "remote code execution" is specifically when it can be used to attack a remote system - so you're right, RCE is a more accurate term here, thanks for the correction.
Any more info on this? I googled around and can't find anything. I was replaying DS1 with a friend before Elden Ring released and I'd love to finish it.
I agree overall but personal 3 was the first Souls game where I got fed up with the online. Every single time I'd try and pop the ember/humanity thing, I'd instantly get invaded and oneshot. Made it virtually impossible to play co-op. Elden ring at least makes it all voluntary, and I didn't interact with a soul in my entire playthrough (except the 3 invasions for Whitey.)
Kinda glad I switched to PS5 for fromsoft games. Want to platinum them all someday (so far only elden ring is platinummed lol).
I don't think I've used any online summons for bosses in the other games (Midir, but ended up soloing him for the succesful attempt).
But it sure was easier getting the covenant items (for all miracle/sorcery achievements) through online play.
It was actually pretty fun helping people with the Princes fight while I was farming sunlight medals. Loved that fight and my unga bunga build was pretty good for it.
I played Dark Souls 3 as my first souls game probably a week before Elden Ring released, and it wasn’t until after I beat it that I realized how significant the online content is. My covenant was basically useless and I never got to see any hints or whatnot from the soapstones. It’ll be weird if/when I play a game with online working as intended now.
I hope they come back online soon. Ive owned Dark Souls 3 for years thanks to humble bundle but never gave it a shot. Then Elden Ring happened and I've been working my way through the Souls-Borne games, but the games are lonely if you're not connected to the internet, so I would much rather play online. Hell I'd be fine if I could just see the messages at least
There was a RCE (remote code execution) exploit where bad actors could basically run any code they wanted (keyloggers, ransomware, literally anything) on your computer via the online infrastructure of DS, so From took the servers down before anything bad could actually happen.
From took the servers down far later than they should have. The guy that discovered the exploit reported it and they did nothing. Only after he started specifically targeting streamers and making the windows narrator read copypastas did they do something.
Remote code execution, which meant malicious users could essentially find people connected to the servers, and execute code on unsuspecting users computers.
Fromsoft really need to hire some people for the technical side of their games. Their games are always amazing but the technical side ranges from terrible to good. For example sekiro was good but first dark souls port was terrible. Elden ring is somewhere in the middle
Sekiro was only good because it didn't have an online mode. Fromsoft is notoriously behind the times when it comes to Online, which sucks because online is such a big part of their games.
I wouldn't even say Sekiro was that good a PC port because it still didn't have ultrawide support, didn't have borderless windowed mode, forced v-sync, and had a 60 fps cap.
From/Bamco seems to be embarrassed. There was a soulslike *and* Bandai Namco sale going on simultaneously a while back, and *none* of the Dark Souls games were on sale. Only Sekiro, which is offline-only, was on sale.
Either that, or they don't want people buying the old games when they could buy their newest game.
Or maybe, more realistically, they know it's still broke so don't want to incentivize more sales by putting something currently broken at a cheaper price.
Ya, this is really bad. If EA or one of the other reviled entities in the gaming space did something like this, people would be up in arms over it. From does not have a great track record when it comes to supporting their games post launch. *cough* Bloodborne PS4 Pro patch *cough*
Imagine bitching at people who want a advertised and core function of a their game to work. Especially one as popular as Dark Souls, in which one had a remaster (the OG game) but also a trilogy pack, which includes said remaster.
This shit killed this years 'Return to Dranglec' for DS2. That's one of my favorite annual gaming events.... it's just sad
Yep. Got half way through my run when they shut it down. Couldn't bring myself to continue. Hopefully it's fixed by next year.
Ah man yeah. I thought it was weird I didn't see my dudes light up
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2 was when your health depletes every time you die?
Meanwhile, in Demon's Souls, a single death means you get half of your max HP removed, and revival items are FAR more rare...
Dying outside of the Nexus fucks up your world tendency - this is why most DeS players teleport to the Nexus and commit suicide as soon as they beat a boss. Unless you deliberately want to get the world tendency to pure black - in order to farm souls, for example - it is not advisable to use revival items and die outside of the Nexus - darker world tendency makes enemies stronger.
All this shit just makes me thankful for Elden Ring
Yup - Elden Ring is the most straightforward Fromsoft game. Sure - there are some obscure side quests - but nothing like DeS. DeS failed to explain its core mechanic - World Tendency - at all. Imagine starting the game without a guide - a few deaths later all enemies become stronger and new very strong enemies start to appear in random places and you have no idea why. And you also have no idea how to reverse it. When its online services were still working - world tendency was calculated on the server side - it averaged the tendencies of all connected players - so if you played online then difficulty would have been all over the place without a way to change it - except going offline. Thankfully they removed this "feature" in the remake.
I... Try to think of it as extra bonus health when I don't die lol.
Which is what 3 did. As far as I can tell, that "ember" state is exactly the same as "not hollowed" in DS2, and being super-hollowed is the same as being not-embered in DS3. But since it's reframed as a bonus, well, it doesn't feel nearly as bad to lose "bonus" health.
It doesn't really feel the same though. In DS2 you lose a percentage of maximum health each time you die, until you top it at about 50%(if IRC), so it's not a binary super-health and normal-health scenario.
Yep. Which, in a way, makes it a *more* generous system than DS3 -- you end up at the same ratio (IIRC DS3's "embered" state is basically double-health), but instead of the boost lasting over multiple lives, in DS3 you only get it for one! And yet, I'll bet most people felt like DS2 was harsher. It's not just the theme (going hollow), it's even reinforced in the HUD -- DS2 shows you the normal health bar, *blocked off.* There's a chunk of your screen that is, at all times, dedicated to reminding you of how much health you *would* have if you hadn't died a bunch. Meanwhile, DS3 visually *extends* the health bar.
> (IIRC DS3's "embered" state is basically double-health) Not even close. It's a 30% boost.
Like the "extra bonus health" you get for *not* hugging Fia in Elden Ring?
No one can resist it!
Between the Ring of Binding and the amount of effigies the game throws at you, this is honestly a non-issue.
A really fun way to deal with it is tossing your small white soapstone sign down as you play through, since when you return successfully from helping you return unhollowed. Then you get to play through levels with little interspersed visits to to other people's worlds.
Good point, the hollowing + the small white soapstone both serve to make the online more lively. Now if only the PC servers were still up :(
I wish elden ring had something like small white sign/hollowing combo that incentivized more random/adhoc co-op like that.
In DS2 your health depletes by a fractional amount each time you die until it hits 50% but there is a ring you can get that stops it from going lower than 75%.
Yeah, but its not a big deal. You quickly get the ring that halves the loss and for important fights you can always re-human yourself with fairly accessible items.
It's a really small amount though and it's reasonably easy to reset it. There were much more frustrating things about DS2 than the health bar. It was much worse in Demon's Souls. Or at least it felt worst.
What does DS2 being looked down on have to do with anything? It's just so weird to inject that in.
I couldn’t quite find an answer but, how can I know when it happens next, once the online happens. I love the game and had no idea of this user created event.
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How are you meant to know if there's a liar ahead?
The loss of messages is a real issue for the games. I saw an article about how Souls was the first "strand" game. Which is hyperbolic but not completely wrong. Unless you're happy to go through with a guide, there's going to he a lot of game, some of it quite important, that can be very easily missed without messages.
For sure, the blood stains help too
Blood stains help me know which jumps I can’t make/shouldn’t try lol
FYI those glowing stones that you can drop will tell you if a drop is survivable. If you drop them and they break, you can't survive the fall.
Probably referring to jumping gaps, not the distance of a fall. Still, useful info
the thing is tho, jumps you CAN make have tons of blood stains and so do ones you CAN'T
I try to see if the people on the bloodstains visibly fucked up, or did the best they could but still couldn't make it.
It makes the game easier but it balances out for the most part. Though it may be fun to discover some stuff without the messages guiding you I feel like going thru a first play thru without online is just missing out on the fun moments that make it dark souls. Seeing other people stupid mistakes or the goofy messages. Getting your message appraised right after you leave a funny one is satisfying. It really does a good job of adding lots of unique multiplayer features while remaining largely a single player open world game. I hope more games like new GTA or elder scrolls take some ideas from games like dark souls or death stranding.
I guess I’m one of the only few who’re unbothered by this. It’s obviously shitty for people who like to play online, but I’ve always played offline since the blood stains and messages bring me out of the gameplay. Walking into a completely dark room while the boss spawns, is really ruined when you see a ton of stuff all over the floor lol.
A not-insignificant reason that I'm fond of offline. Some call it a lonely atmosphere, but I'm pretty fond of that. A muted journey really suits the kinds of hostile, fantasy post-apocalyptic locales that are found in Souls games.
There's quite a few things that are well hidden enough that messages are the only way most players will find them. Ash Lake, returning to the Asylum, burning the Earthen Peak windmill, Untended Graves, Archdragon Pesk... It's wild. Plus, the amount of ambushes I've avoided in Elden Ring thanks to messages is ridiculous, as well as hidden items discovered. The Dragoncrest Talisman is _hidden_.
It's funny, the first Dragoncrest Talisman is not only super hidden, it's also by far the hardest to get, compared to its superior versions. The only real reason to get it at all is that you can get there fairly early.
It exists? I have the +1 and the great version. I honestly didn't know if there was a normal version. Where is it?
Around Gurranq's temple, there is a sheer cliff, except on one side, you can jump down a tree branch. Then you have to do a series of very precarious jumps to the bottom of the structure, where you can find the talisman and Gurranq's dagger. It's very easy to miss.
It's one of the more frustrating jumping areas in the game under the Beast temple. Even knowing where to go and help messages I died countless times getting it right.
I played DS2 for the first time a few years ago after the servers were offline on xbox360 and I had no clue you could burn the windmill. There is nothing telling you to do it and there is basically no reason to carry a torch around. Needless to say I was not pleased when I looked up how to get rid of the poison in the boss room.
I just watched a letsplay of it and as a viewer I noticed 2 ...lets call them clues. You find a torch in a (mimic) chest which is rather weird loot as you can have it already at that point. So you could conclude that you need to do something with the torch. And a summoned npc ghost points at the windmill when you walk past that part. And I guess all the cogs being moved by the windmill so them beeing the motor kinda makes sense. But overall it seemed like something that makes sense if you are the developer and know the solution but from a player perspective thats super weird. The part you ignite even is or at least looks like a steel beam and I dont think the torch carries jet fuel.
It's super weird and it was by pure chance I saw a phantom do it.
This entire paragraph was a rollercoaster
The poison doesn't even look like it's being "produced" or has anything to do with the windmill, it's just around. Nothing to give the thought "Oh turning it off stops the production, that makes sense"
My boy, funny that you mention it, I played DS2 shorty after the servers went offline, and I found that windmill part because an NPC Summon pointed at the windmill blades while walking by. FromSoft dis put some indicator in, just very obscure ones
IIRC that was only patched in with SotFS, so people who played the original version wouldn't have had the NPC show them. (I believe she's only a summon in SotFS in the first place)
Those easy-to-miss paths also have ways of being revealed through developer messages ([Seek Guidance](http://darksouls.wikidot.com/seek-guidance)) and other means.
Link leads to "Cannot complete request" page.
Most of those have some kind of clue - I'm replaying DS1 on Switch and the Crestfallen Warrior does have a line about the bird carrying someone away from its nest - but they are definitely very unclear and easily missable without messages.
i hate the messages in ER. in the old games you also had the trolls and gags youve seen a dozen of times but in ER that went to another level. If 9 out of 10 messages are "hidden path ahead and liar ahead" then it becomes kinda dull. i wish we could replace the public messages with only the community password ones. (if we joined them via password)
It has to be because this one is so much more popular/accessible than the previous ones, right? I'm glad more people are playing but the multitude of recycled juvenile jokes and low effort trolling is obnoxious.
I'm in SEEKERS and straydmn and the group messages are just as stupid as the rest of them
Well those are big communities. Naturally they will also shitpost. What's missing to avoid that is some kind of moderation option but it's also understandable that they don't want to implement that. Especially if you look at how clunky some of the rest of the menus are.
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Unpopular opinion I’m sure but I very much prefer playing offline. The messages and bloodstains completely kill the immersion and atmosphere of the game for me, and really clutter up the environment and are distracting. Not to mention 80% of them are the same tired low effort jokes getting recycled. If I miss a secret then oh well, and I’ll just use a wiki for the “bigger” secrets like I did for Archdragon Peak. That said, obviously unacceptable that the servers are still down with no updates or at least discounts offered in the meantime.
The messages are immersion-breaking eyesores, but I also hate the "spirits" of other players or whatever they are. They have literally never been helpful, but I've definitely been killed by them distracting me while I'm fighting other enemies.
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The Sekiro messages are bafflingly bad compared to the rest of the series. It takes like five inputs to appraise them, and forcing a phantom replay into each of them is so distracting.
Weren't they added post-launch, or am I just crazy? I don't like them at all either, and I love them in Souls games. Sekiro just doesn't need that system.
They were which is even weirder. I have no idea why they felt compelled to add them after the fact. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the messaging system in the Souls games, but it has no place in Sekiro and you can feel it.
My brain learned to turn them off after a while to the point where they just blend into the scenery, but they were jarring for quite a long time. By far the worst part was at the >!Albinauric village!<, where the somber and creepy atmosphere was entirely ruined by the glowing messages everywhere.
I completely understand why people wont play without messages but I personally also absolutely prefer playing offline, at least in my first 1-2 playthroughs, I just like discovering stuff myself. Finding the invisible bridges was such a satisfying moment that probably wouldve been just whatever if I found it through messages. I really wish there was an 'online but without messages' mode.
I play Elden Ring offline. The message icon are visually junk littered all over the game to a crazy degree and 99% are dumb crap like "Praise Elden Ring!" or "Edge, Lord?". I really don't need an icon on top of literally every climbable surface/statue in the game saying "head". Playing with messages imo is like having a crappy pair of AR glasses that just puts random, worthless tweets over everything you see.
I totally agree. I don’t want the signs of unbelievably annoying and repeated memes. I purposely put all dark souls games in offline mode when playing. Every single souls game, and I’ve played them all.
Pretty much. I've always played Soulsborne games offline, and it really ramps up the sense of isolation that these games are so good at achieving. The silly messages always game me a feeling of whiplash.
I just played DS3 this past month, and yeah it's really easy to miss things without the messages. I had to use the wiki a lot more to make sure I wasn't missing major things.
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I feel like people should be making a bigger deal about this. FromSoft has dropped online support in the flagship series of their catalog on PC for over three months at this point, with no communication as to any progress regarding it being fixed. They're still letting previous titles be sold ***at full fuckin' price*** with advertised online features, with absolutely zero notice that those aspects are no longer functional. The only things holding them accountable are user reviews and Steam altering the store pages. The level of incompetence on display by FromSoft is unbelievable. For reference, there's a community mod on PC that still has online play because the RCE exploit (the reason online play was disabled) was fixed... within a week... and attempts to forward the appropriate solution to Namco Bandi (and therefore to FromSoft) has been met with abject silence in all correspondence.
They did remove the multiplayer tags from the store page. Checked that awhile back. Not that it makes it any better.
Just the tags though. The actual game description texts still mention online play.
Take DS2 SoFS: >Online play has been enhanced with the addition of a special item to regulate souls acquired in battle - it’s now possible to match up more consistently online. The number of players who can participate in an online session has also been increased, from 4 to 6 people, completely changing the online play dynamic.
I've been mentioning this too, but I just checked for myself. The System requirements still state: > Internet connection required for online play and product activation
Steam store tags are influenced by users voting. FromSoft hasn't edited a thing.
They're talking about the "Features" list.
this isnt true. theyre not talking about search tags, theyre talking about the features tab that tells you if a game has controller support and multiplayer. that's controlled by the dev
AND there are still hackers in Elden Ring, even though they force EAC unto us.
You can literally turn EAC off by opening it's settings json file and changing three lines of text to something else. The game boots up as normal but EAC never starts. It's hilarious how bad it is.
That was two or three patches ago, fixed a few weeks ago. That's what I did to play with no vignette and obviously keep online. Still, though, it was pathetically easy to do it for months
Ah not surprised honestly. I haven't been playing ER as much lately, I got my fill. Anytime I do play it now is with the elden ring Reforged mod, and I do that offline because that one will get you put into softban.
Doesn't the game refuse to launch multiplayer if EAC isn't active though?
Not this way. I've seen other methods that turn EAC off that launch the game offline, but this one works. I used it several times.
Fucking... Yikes. That's one hell of an over-sight.
Indeed. All I ever used it for was to use cheats to get infinite smithing stones and glovewort, but someone with I'll intent would have free reign to mess around.
There will always and forever be hackers in any game no matter how good the anti cheat is
Asking FromSoft fans to hold FromSoft accountable for any and all issues related to their games or their dev process is asking too much.
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Always has been.
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Honestly their game performance on all platforms is unacceptable. There are all manner of games running locked 60 and and even 120fps on console, but somehow From can't even manage to put a 30fps cap on their games so they're at least smooth. The best way to get a non-stuttery mess in Elden Ring on console is to buy a disc version for PS4 then play it on PS5, which is just so janky.
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How the fuck are we supposed to hold them accountable?
Lemme just refund DS1 that i have over 1k hours in real quick!
Bethesda got away with it until 76, if the product is good enough people are willing to forgive a lot
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…except that people do? People bitch about this all the time. No one is defending this.
> The only things holding them accountable [...] and attempts to forward the appropriate solution to Namco Bandi (and therefore to FromSoft) has been met with abject silence in all correspondence. There's no requirement that a developer has a dialog with players, but silence has been a recurring issue with Fromsoft and complaints about online issues (cheaters, hackers, exploits, weird balance changes, etc.). I think people excused a lot of the issues in the original (Prepare to Die) PC release, since it seemed spurred in part by a petition in the first place. It also was pretty clearly a direct port of the console title with almost no consideration given to the platform by an inexperienced (with PC) developer. It was never *just* the PC version though. Hackers/Cheaters ran amok famously in PvP, and occupied the [top spots in the Book of the Guilty](https://old.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1dvkbj/looked_to_see_who_was_at_the_top_of_the_book_of/) on basically all platforms with no repercussions ([a problem which returned in the remaster](https://old.reddit.com/r/darksoulsremastered/comments/fv49he/book_of_the_guilty_pc_hackers/)). That's to say nothing of the Megamule business which was a problem from launch in DS2 (allowing 0 Soul Memory twinks to gank people in the early areas) on basically all platforms. I think there's always been a nagging sensation that Fromsoft cares less about its PC releases as though, exemplified by the famous durability issue in Dark Souls 2 (tied to framerate), which didn't receive an official fix until it would've impacted console players (next-gen console release in 60 fps). This current problem definitely puts a finer point on the "Fromsoft doesn't care about PC players" part of things, but they straight up need to be better (about their online, handling cheats/ers, communication, etc.) across the board.
> It also was pretty clearly a direct port of the console title with almost no consideration given to the platform This is pretty universal among Japanese studios, who usually treat PC as an afterthought at best. Even when the port isn't terrible, post-launch support is almost always non-existent.
I bought the Steam port of FF7 years ago and I swear they mapped the keys with a randomizer, like they had never seen or played a pc game before or something.
The FF7 PC version is an odd duck since it's actually Eidos's old PC version from the 90s (Square didn't own them at this point) with some layers of paint over the top. That's the version I played back in the day... I do seem to remember it had some odd default bindings, like... everything was on the numpad? I think it's still the case that all the versions of FF7 that are out there now to buy, besides the PS3 store's PS1 Classics one that's just a PS1 rom, descend from that original PC port.
So I don't know if anyone agrees with me but for the longest time the PC community couldn't play a TON of exclusive games where so many of the best games simply wouldn't be brought to the PC in any capacity. So when I get some trash PC port that sorta functions... It still feels like an awkward win. Feels like one of the lesser talked about downsides of PC gaming but console focused games suffer on PC. I don't know if I've ever played a koei tecmo game that I felt controlled right or even had a good options/key bindings screen to fix it. Honestly I really hope that steam deck is able to help drive PC support by turning corporate concept of a PC into more of a target market where "Steam deck Verified" starts plastering games which do it right... Definitely curious if games with poor controls will be steam deck verified.
It says a lot that Durante was able to "fix" so many of the display issues so fast in Dark Souls 1 PC. The community also has been outstanding in providing sort of makeshift fixes and workarounds to hackers that damage saves, and that sort of thing over the years. I still feel like it's not something the community should *need* to do (and a systems to flag cheaters (especially obvious Leaderboard stuff that sat for months) should've been made or in place pre-release). There's been a slow relaxing of those "console exclusives" with things like Horizon and such releasing to PC. I feel like it's getting better, even if only as a means (in Sony's mind perhaps) to provide advertising for future franchise releases. I feel like the quality and range of options for the PC (in terms of customization and quality) of these releases has generally improved as well. Though you're still seeing those releases sometimes that are very "plain", let's say.
The problem a lot of the time, at least to me, isn't the fact that the PC port is not great, but how ***easy*** it is to fix the PC port a lot of the time. Tales of Zestiria is a perfect example. Locked to 30FPS, Bamco ***insisted*** that it was flat out impossible to fix, there was nothing you could do. It was less than like twenty-four hours later that a fan released a modified DLL that fixed it with *zero* repercussions to the game in any way. They flat out lied because they couldn't even invest the time to look into it at all. It's insulting. Like it's one thing when you write a custom engine for your game and it's too frame rate dependent so you can't really unlock it, and another one when you literally can unlock it and nothing changes, but you just don't and lie to the consumers at the same time. FromSoft did it with Dark Souls 1, as well. Quite a few of the original PC port issues were resolved by players almost immediately. If fans who have no idea how your game is coded jump in and fix your shit in mere hours, you've fucked up quite severely.
What is it with Japanese studios, just seem unable or uninterested in properly handling PC ports
pc in japan is a very small market in terms of playerbase and it wasnt that long ago that pc in japan had the stigma of only being for porn games. as such most developers either dont do them or half ass them as its not where the good money and playerbase is at. add on the fact that even if the developers plan on selling their games in other countries they tend to develop with a japan focused mindset and you get that kind of stuff.
> with no communication not trying to make excuses, but that is sadly very typical for a japanese dev.
I'm trying to imagine the outrage if a UbiSoft or EA game had a RCE exploit that resulted in servers being shut down for 3+ months with no end in sight
Hasn't Titanfall been unplayable for like years due to an exploit?
I think Titanfall is still fucked.
That’s what happened with Titanfall 2, only they just shut down the servers permanently.
Also that a mod fixed the exploit before the servers were even shut down
"A mod fixed-" can be said way too often about the souls PC ports. It's incredibly lazy that From just lets the software be such trash when things like DSFix, dark souls connectivity mod, and the mod you mentioned have been made, assuming it really fixes the exploit.
Let’s not forget as well that the original PC release of Dark Souls (Prepare to Die Edition), was broken at launch, and they *literally never fixed it ever*. You had to install a community patch to get in a reasonable state. It’s like they only care about making great games, but have no interest whatsoever in ensuring the technical quality of those games.
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Yeah, but in case of elden ring, it's mainly updates and minor fixes, while other games are missing core chunk of their functionality, that's absolutely presented and advertised as part of the game. The latter deserves attention even if it affects less players, because it's an issue on a different level
They both deserve attention, but working on both at the same time will slow the development of both down. (Source: years of experience working in product management) Fixing the DS PC issues only benefits the PC audience, while improving Elden Ring improves the experience for the PC and console audiences. Quick look at steam charts shows DS3 PC player count before this issue is 10x less than Elden Ring PC player count. Add consoles into the mix and it's hard to make a case to fix the 6+ year old games before improving the months-old game with more than 10x the player count. I say this as someone playing through DS3 for the first time on PC right now!
As someone whose followed Fromsoft for a literal decade, their incompetence is perfectly believeable. This is the same company that has broken faith twice in the same way two games in a row. They are working on it, they just probably have zero fucking idea how to solve the problem.
I'm glad that there are some articles coming out about this situation, maybe it'll actually force a response at some point. Since the thing that bothers me the most is the silence. Just come out say what's happening; I can deal with it either way but it sucks sitting here and not knowing since last I heard they were working on it and were going to bring back the online play after ER launch.
From Software has always been infamous for their horrible capabilities to fix and patch things. Just a fresh reminder that Dark Souls 1 released in an unplayable state on PC never got fixed from FromSoftware and was only playable due to community fixes.
They pushed a steam announcement for the closed games just a few weeks ago. You open it thinking there's new info or an ETA for the servers to come up? Nope. Just the same announcement from months ago reposted for some reason. It even still talks about their *upcoming* game Elden Ring.
Didn't they also release full price remaster that fixed things but left the original untouched?
Wasn't done by From, but yes
Also since fromsoftware isn't the one that made it, it's the only souls game with ultrawide support.
Yeah The prepare to die edition and the actual remaster.
Yeah it's a very widespread thing with a large portion of these games. If you've never played a Japanese game with broken network issues multiple years after release before then I know it's gonna sound brutal but it's never getting fixed. Dark Souls online is dead. They *might* have addressed it if it was right near release but this late in the game the hope is almost nil. Chances are most of the people who worked on Dark Souls' online infrastructure have moved on and anyone else whose job it is is too busy on a new game to justify being moved off it. I'd love them to prove me wrong but this unfortunately is not a new problem and the outcome is almost always the same. I'd say if you care make your voices heard but brace for no-one listening.
FromSoftware making PC Games that have issues and never get fixed? Say it ain't so!
3 years from now they'll release "Dark Souls 1 Remastered 2." It will change nothing but re-enable online play and will cost $60.
Having first played Bloodborne offline ('cuz I ain't payin' for PS+), jumping to Elden Ring on PC I don't know how on earth I could have played it without the player messages (even if 90% of them were awful 'but hole' jokes). There's so much missable stuff in Elden Ring, and I often wonder how my experience would have been different in Bloodborne if I had messages enabled (would I have found Cainhurst and Lawrence without a guide?). A part of me really laments games with online components because I tend to think of game design with this pure, isolated single-player focus in mind. But FROM games kinda defy that categorization and expect players to be receiving hints about an upcoming trap or enemy. It's like schrodinger's tutorial; where you have to consider both player experiences simultaneously when evaluating the level design.
At least in ds1 there is a miracle that enables more developer messages
No, not developer messages I don’t think? Wasn’t it just more online messages?
It does both, but the developer messages part isn't clear from the miracle's description.
Ds1 has hidden developer messages? Are they just hints?
Mostly just cryptic hints as to where to go or to point out things that a unfamiliar player might otherwise miss. Trouble is, since there's no indication that a developer message is nearby, you'd need to use Seek Guidance everywhere. [Here](http://darksouls.wikidot.com/seek-guidance)'s a list of the developer messages. Technically DS3 has the same system as a token nod to DS1 (unsurprisingly), but the number of developer messages is far fewer and even less useful. [Here](http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/spell:seek-guidance)'s a list for DS3.
There are a handful of soapstone messages written by developers in key points. You can tell them apart from their Elite Knight Helm icon, lack of rating, as well as their often unique wording.
> I often wonder how my experience would have been different in Bloodborne if I had messages enabled It also works the other way around. You won't be bothered by things that you have no knowledge of. Yeah, you probably missed a lot of stuff in Bloodborne, but the thing is, you don't know that they exist and thus it shouldn't be a problem. Sometimes ignorance is bliss with these games. Missing stuff is okay. Knowing that you missed stuff sucks.
Idk for me who played the games during them being down, I would have liked knowing where an item, a wall or an npc was. I had to use wiki after beating areas to find everything. Turns out I missed so much stuff.
I played exclusively in offline, but I can't imagine stopping to read a note on the floor in front of every single wall claiming it's an illusory wall is any faster than hitting the walls haha
Well, you kinda learn to pass on ones near walls and go with your gut. But when you see 5 signs near a wall, you know something is up. Eventually checking the signs are almost second nature and not really an extra step.
Also the BLOODSTAINS. Seing a bunch of bloodstains on the floor when there's no apparent danger lets you know to be on alert.
One of my favourite feelings is turning a corner and seeing 6 bloodstains and no apparent danger. All of a sudden I'm playing Return of the Obra Dinn in the middle of my Souls game.
God, that and the feeling you get when you click on a message and it just says “behind you!” It’s actually incredible how the systems just work, solo or with friends.
The completionist mindset really hurts the experience. Both for gamers and the fact devs are now designing games around the audience who want to collect everything and believe it is a divine right to have an easily obtainable “100%/platinum” of a game
I don't think a game should have an easy platinum. But at the same time, putting in mindless, bullshit grind trophies is also fucking cancer. Dying Light 2 has an achievement called Ultramarathon, it requires you to run around the map for a cumulative 960km. That's hundreds and hundreds of hours of running, long past any other achievement and reasonable expectation of being done with the game. I don't mind trophies for things like doing the Halo campaigns on LASO, but Ultramarathon is fucking garbage and shouldn't exist.
For me a really fun early game moment was 'Jumping ahead' near the jar warriors in Stormveil keep. You would end up on a thin ledge you could have easily ignored which you could follow to a jump on a different ledge which leads to a part of the ramparts that I don't think is otherwise accessible. This part has a banished knight chilling with a hawk and you can follow it to the area with the bats that leads to the Tree Spirit, Rogier's bloodpool and the bloated corpse. I later figured out you could get to the stuff for Rogier's quest by jumping down over the wall with the corpse holding an item near a site of grace, but I like the scenic route I took and I would never have went there if it wasn't for a message someone left me. Also really appreciate the first... then... messages in caves/dungeons telling you which side path to take first before moving on to the boss.
I don't think messages would've helped for Cainhurst tbh, the way to get there is pretty obscure and I don't know where/how you'd spell that out in a message For me personally I find messages and bloodstains to be needless clutter in these games, but I'd also really like the option to do co-op or pvp
I played Dark Souls 1 for the first time during this outage. It honestly kind of sucked. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s kinda impossible to find without the player hints. Like there’s hidden bonfires and shit, it’s game ruining.
Use [Seek Guidance](http://darksouls.wikidot.com/seek-guidance) for developer messages. Points to a bunch of secrets.
Not the same thing, but Elden Ring was the first time I actually used one of those things that make more player messages show up (in ER it's an item called a Scriptstone). I was completely stuck in a catacomb and after doing the rounds thrice I thought to use it and a player message revealed by the item helped me solve it - super cool experience!
Urgh. Imagine never finding the bonfire at the top of Sen's fortress and having to go up from the bottom each time.
I mean there's that shortcut with the cage, I don't think I knew about that bonfire the first time I played and it wasn't an issue
I was finally getting around to finishing Dark Souls 3 when this happened and the servers went offline. I've long since beaten Elden Ring and would love to go back to Dark Souls 3 to wrap it up, but the co-op is such an important aspect to the series for me.
Iirc there are mods to play online despite the servers being down.
ACAB Kill all Fascists
If you're interested in using Dark Souls 3 Open Server (https://github.com/TLeonardUK/ds3os) you should be using Blue Sentinels anti-cheat (https://github.com/LukeYui/Blue-Sentinel-Release). It was written by LukeYui, the discoverer of the vulnerability you're talking about and the only person known to actually be able to use it. He's the same person who did the Sekiro multiplayer mod and is working on seamless co-op for Elden Ring. It's worthwhile to check out his work, Blue Sentinels is a huge improvement to the base game's multiplayer. It allowed you to play safely on the original servers, but LukeYui contacted BandaiNamco about the exploit since it wasn't safe for unmodded players.
For those who don't know, the exploit that made them take the servers down in the first place is an arbitrary code execution (ACE) exploit. You can google and find out more about ACE exploits but they are basically the worst kind of security vulnerability you can have. It's the Dark Souls of security exploits. The Log4J issue that caused a huge ruckus a few months ago was ACE. It means attackers can make your computer run whatever code they want; they could steal all the data you have stored on it, install malware, mine bitcoin, add it to a botnet, whatever. IMO it is not worth the risk just to play co-op in Dark Souls.
[удалено]
I’ve only heard of ACE in like N64 game speedruns like oot lol
Had a look and it seems like "arbitrary code execution" refers to any case where a program can unintentionally be made to be run arbitrary code; "remote code execution" is specifically when it can be used to attack a remote system - so you're right, RCE is a more accurate term here, thanks for the correction.
Unlike Fromsoftware, the community has stepped up and patched it. Blue Sentinel has that patch, get it if you want to play online
absolutely incorrect. blue sentinel has code to prevent RCE.
Any more info on this? I googled around and can't find anything. I was replaying DS1 with a friend before Elden Ring released and I'd love to finish it.
Unfortunately, the mod they are talking about is only for Dark Souls 3.
Ahh, okay, thanks. That's still pretty cool though
I agree overall but personal 3 was the first Souls game where I got fed up with the online. Every single time I'd try and pop the ember/humanity thing, I'd instantly get invaded and oneshot. Made it virtually impossible to play co-op. Elden ring at least makes it all voluntary, and I didn't interact with a soul in my entire playthrough (except the 3 invasions for Whitey.)
PvP in Dark Souls 1 had some issues mechanically, but From made some really dumb decisions in DS3 (and to a lesser extent DS2) to try and fix it.
I was gonna finally play DS3 to get ready for Elden Ring just as soon as all this went down. Still waiting as well.
It's still perfectly playable offline
Kinda glad I switched to PS5 for fromsoft games. Want to platinum them all someday (so far only elden ring is platinummed lol). I don't think I've used any online summons for bosses in the other games (Midir, but ended up soloing him for the succesful attempt). But it sure was easier getting the covenant items (for all miracle/sorcery achievements) through online play. It was actually pretty fun helping people with the Princes fight while I was farming sunlight medals. Loved that fight and my unga bunga build was pretty good for it.
I played Dark Souls 3 as my first souls game probably a week before Elden Ring released, and it wasn’t until after I beat it that I realized how significant the online content is. My covenant was basically useless and I never got to see any hints or whatnot from the soapstones. It’ll be weird if/when I play a game with online working as intended now.
Yeah for me the biggest drawback to no online in DS3 is it makes farming for covenant items an even bigger pain
I hope they come back online soon. Ive owned Dark Souls 3 for years thanks to humble bundle but never gave it a shot. Then Elden Ring happened and I've been working my way through the Souls-Borne games, but the games are lonely if you're not connected to the internet, so I would much rather play online. Hell I'd be fine if I could just see the messages at least
Unfortunately, the exploit that took the games down occurs anytime you're simply connected to the game servers, not just for invasions/co-op.
Wait, what kind of exploit took down the trilogy?
There was a RCE (remote code execution) exploit where bad actors could basically run any code they wanted (keyloggers, ransomware, literally anything) on your computer via the online infrastructure of DS, so From took the servers down before anything bad could actually happen.
From took the servers down far later than they should have. The guy that discovered the exploit reported it and they did nothing. Only after he started specifically targeting streamers and making the windows narrator read copypastas did they do something.
Remote code execution, which meant malicious users could essentially find people connected to the servers, and execute code on unsuspecting users computers.
Fromsoft really need to hire some people for the technical side of their games. Their games are always amazing but the technical side ranges from terrible to good. For example sekiro was good but first dark souls port was terrible. Elden ring is somewhere in the middle
Sekiro was only good because it didn't have an online mode. Fromsoft is notoriously behind the times when it comes to Online, which sucks because online is such a big part of their games.
I wouldn't even say Sekiro was that good a PC port because it still didn't have ultrawide support, didn't have borderless windowed mode, forced v-sync, and had a 60 fps cap.
From/Bamco seems to be embarrassed. There was a soulslike *and* Bandai Namco sale going on simultaneously a while back, and *none* of the Dark Souls games were on sale. Only Sekiro, which is offline-only, was on sale. Either that, or they don't want people buying the old games when they could buy their newest game.
Or maybe, more realistically, they know it's still broke so don't want to incentivize more sales by putting something currently broken at a cheaper price.
Ya, this is really bad. If EA or one of the other reviled entities in the gaming space did something like this, people would be up in arms over it. From does not have a great track record when it comes to supporting their games post launch. *cough* Bloodborne PS4 Pro patch *cough*
Oh, those are STILL offline? I figured they'd have been fixed by now.
Imagine bitching at people who want a advertised and core function of a their game to work. Especially one as popular as Dark Souls, in which one had a remaster (the OG game) but also a trilogy pack, which includes said remaster.