Be Excellent To Each Other

I'd've only got that if the developers gave me £32.98. That's ten quid more than I paid for it.

Really getting pissed off with New Londo now. Found a jagged ghost blade early on, which helps, but trying to fight things that spend most of their time buried in walls or half-submerged in the floor while trying not to fall off ledges and drown is really irritating.

That's why I went for the cursed+lng range route.

Try strong magic.

I've hit a real wall in New Londo. Fighting the ghosts on catwalks and the like when they have an annoying tendency to just move backwards into solid rock where they can hit you but you can't hit them is massively frustrating. I'm just dying over and over again for stupid reasons, mainly down to trying to hit things that are half buried in the floor. And I have to keep re-doing the early bits of course, like the annoying drawing out of the group of ghosts in the first tower. I'll get past it, but it's a real tedious low point in a so-far excellent game.

Some shortcuts:

once you have got round to the first fog door (that is once you get to he walkway where ghosts attack from below) there's a ladder you can kick down. After that you can reach he bottom of the ladder by jumping off the plain rigt near the start and skip out a fair section. Obviously once you've drained the water, you can jump straight down anyway.

Some weapons are capable of ignoring walls, such as spears. I think haberdashery may too, I don't remember having any problems attacking ghosts in walls.

That's your problem sewn up there, Craster.

Ooh, that'll be helpful indeed.



Good point. I'm not taking into account the combat advantages of a properly natty outfit.

The Four Kings are bumheads.

Second attempt for me. Try summoning help... and strong magic.

Got fed up, and went and tied up some loose ends - the titanite demons downstairs in Sens and the stray demon in the Asylum. Which was nice.

He's a bugger. Loved killing him.

This game is SUCH a chore at times. Went down to Darkroot Garden and got my head sucked off by a plant I couldn't see due to shit camera angles.

Went back, got my stuff, was killed by the magic knight who casts his stupid spell which used to slow me down a little, but now completely immobilises me. My character just stood there swaying until the knight chopped him to death. In the past it didn't have half as bad an effect, yet I am carrying significantly less than I used to, and have higher stats. What the fuck is that all about?

I may just jack it in now. Bored of seeing the same bits over and over again, where any bad guy kills you with one hit. Yes, you have to be careful, but being careful of the same enemies, in the same boring corridor, over and over again is just dull.

Poof.

Another one for Dimrill's army!

On that note I'm really excited it's been officially announced on PC now! Yay!

I'm also amused that it's going to use GFWL. Oh the calamity! (GFWL is fine by me).

I was just about to post about the PC version too, having seen it mentioned on FB.

Here's a vid anyway -

Ah... ahhhhhhhh

ALL NEW CONTENT! WHAT THE CUNTING CUNTY CUNT CUNT IS THAT ALL ABOUT! DID YOU SEE THAT BOSS? THEY BETTER RELEASE THAT SHIT AS DLC OR IM GOING TO WRITE A VERY UPSET POST. ON HERE. IN CAPITALS. COULD SOMEONE TELL FROM SOFTWARE ABOUT IT IF I DO IT? THATD BE GREAT. DON'T MAKE ME UPSET FROM SOFTWARE. IM ALREADY GETTING UPSET. DON'T MAKE ME MORE UPSET THEN. PC FANNY'S WON'T LOVE YOU LIKE ME. I GOT MOVES BABY. AND IM CLEAN. ISH. BUT DIRTY. OH YEAH. BUT NOT SO DIRTY THAT IT'S A TURN OFF. JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF DIRTY.

A friend writes:

Ian, it's because you cheated on them with Team Ico.

Somewhat connected: Demon's Souls server shutdown. Not only EA are cunts.

I'm stuck on Ornstein and Smough. I keep taking two buddies with me, but Solaire of Astora just keeps wailing on the wrong one and dying, and the human buddies I recruit to help seem to be as bad at it as I am.

I'm thinking my tank build isn't really suitable

Sooo... They should leave the (probably very expensive) servers on forever?

Sooo... They should turn the (probably very expensive) servers off immediately?

Three years is hardly "immediately".
If it stopped the game from working I'd say you had a point, but it won't.

Three years is hardly "forever".

They've spent more on the servers than they've made from the game - what more do you want them to do?

Keep them fucking running longer than 36 paltry months.

3 years is a long time in the lifecycle of a game, though.

I'm with Mali and Grim... on this. It's not the bullshit like Fifa or Madden where online multiplayer is a massive part of the game. Plus it's incredibly expensive keeping servers running for just a handful of users. I'm sure they will have reviewed the playing numbers before deciding to pull the plug.

Plus they're only being turned off in America - no word from Europe so far.

Not if it's well-designed, it isn't. I see no reason why the server horsepower required couldn't scale with player count, and hence if there's a handful of players then there's only a handful of small servers left.

Aparently we're heading for Venus, and still we stand tall.

I'm with Dimrill and the Doc on this, just to even the sides a bit.

So what's the cutoff for you people who support portions of the game you've paid for being forever knacked? Was EA's MMA 18 month supported with an online pass run too short or just right for you?

If I were making the call, I'd monitor the usuage of the services provided, and when they dropped below a level which meant they cost more to run than the loss of any goodwill caused by switching them off (or swithing them off and sending each user a T-shirt or something), I'd push the button. The alternative is a subscription model, which would cover the costs of running and maintaining the servers, but that has its own set of problems. To put a figure on it, 3 years sounds about right.

As a basic matter of pride you'd think they'd keep the games fully functional for longer than 3 years. I doubt it really costs very much, and if you're already running racks of servers for current games, where the harm in keeping a few processes going to continue support of the old ones?

Just seems mean and penny pinching to turn them off if your business is otherwise healthy.

Can't argue with those facts

As we all know though, the online aspect isn't really a major part of Demon's Souls...

It's a nice addition, but losing it is hardly cutting off access to a major component of the game.

But it's still cutting off a portion of the game.

Think of it like a digital foreskin.

That's hardly going to settle the debate.

MEGALOLZ.

You tell me, chap. Somewhere between 3 years and forever - where would you draw the line?

I agree with you re: MMA, but I don't think this is comparable.

I'd say previous generation. Cash strapped Atari managed to keep Test Drive Unlimited's server online from near 360 launch to until it was superceeded by near enough the same game again last year.

Demon's Souls was superseded by near enough the same game last year too.

You people deserve EA.

It's called 'choosing your battles'. This one doesn't seem particularly worthwhile.

So, I'm still stuck on Ornstein and Smough...

Which one are you trying to beat first? I found I could only really beat Smough first, using his size to get in between me and Ornstein. When Ornstein absorbs Smough's power, I think it was then a case of playing it safe around the crumbled pillars and picking my hits.