The PC Version of Dark Souls 2 is lazy as hell

[Chris Tian]

Hallo everyone,

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

I'm not a PC Master Race Graphics Nazi and if I cant crank up the settings until my GPU melts I will cry and scream and bite my desk, I really loved how DA2 looked. I just hate it if I am asked to press the grean A button in a PC Game for christ sake, but my issues are with the controls.

First of, why can I not map the buttons on my mouse how I want to? There are just some pre designed settings like "left click", "double left click" or "shift + left click" you can choose from and not the option to just click the button you want to use for whatever action, and none of those involve more mouse buttons than left, right and mouse wheel.
I mean really, how many PC Gamers have less than five mouse buttons in this day and age?

The thing that really made me scream and cry and bite my desk was the freaking double click.
In DS2 you can choose to map an action to "double left/right click" on your mouse, by default your heavy attacks are maped this way.
That sounds like a good idea right? Wrong, and here is why: Now your character will wait for a second whenever you click either mouse button in case you want to double click and will only execute his attack after the time window for the double click closed. In a game where precise timing and lightning quick reflexes are the key to victory that is unacceptable.
Did they even test the PC Version at all? Because I can hardly belive that nobody noticed that your character stands there like a dear in the headlights for a second until he decides to raise his shield.

There are a few design descisions in DS2 i don't understand. For example: Why are my weapons made from wet tissue paper now and get magically repaired when I reach a bonfire?
But this double click thing is by far the worst.

So, am I alone in this? Did anybody else notice that? And by far the most important question: Is there a mod/fix/fanpatch that fixes the mapping for the mouse buttons and this double-click-delay-issue?

 

[lacktheknack]

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

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

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

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

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

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

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

 

[Chris Tian]

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

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

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

I didn't expect a good port, I'm not THAT naive. Just not a worse one than last time.

The thing is, in a few weeks there will be mods that fix these problems and if someone can do this for free in their freetime you mean to tell me a professional video game studio couldn't spend a few houndred bucks to get someone to make that fix for them before the published it?
And if they really planned on doing fuck all for the PC port why do I have to wait longer for realese than the console versions?

 

[Chris Tian]

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

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

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

Thanks very much, did I mention I beat it with M+KB? Do I get a cookie or something now?

The thing is it doesn't "barely work" with M+KB because of some inherit difference between M+KB and controller, it doesn't work purely out of lazyness on the developers part.
Like I mentioned above someone will soon fix it for free, why was from software not capable of that and everybody thinks its okay because "its made for controlers"?

 

[lacktheknack]

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

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

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

I didn't expect a good port, I'm not THAT naive. Just not a worse one than last time.

The thing is, in a few weeks there will be mods that fix these problems and if someone can do this for free in their freetime you mean to tell me a professional video game studio couldn't spend a few houndred bucks to get someone to make that fix for them before the published it?
And if they really planned on doing fuck all for the PC port why do I have to wait longer for realese than the console versions?

Because porting to an unoptimized system with thousands of hardware variations sucks.

It's not something that can be done in a day. It takes weeks even for pros to do it right.

As for the control porting, I dunno. That doesn't mean the whole version is "terrible", though. To say it does only shows that your standards are too high to bother with.

 

[Chris Tian]

Because porting to an unoptimized system with thousands of hardware variations sucks.

It's not something that can be done in a day. It takes weeks even for pros to do it right.

No, just no. First of porting to PC is not that hard just because there are hardware variations, thats like saying its hard to make child seats for cars because there are thousand of different cars.
Even if it were, if non-professionals can do it for free, in there freetime and alone, the "but mooom its just so hard to port to pc"-excuse doesn't count for professional teams of specialists who get paid to do it.

As for the control porting, I dunno. That doesn't mean the whole version is "terrible", though. To say it does only shows that your standards are too high to bother with.

Okay you may be right here, maybe not the whole version is rubbish. They just didn't do anything more than they really had to, so it would work on PC's without too many bugs. They didn' even bother to change the "press green A button to do shit" pop ups in the toturial, I mean how many man-minutes would that have taken?

 

[shrekfan246]

I didn't expect a good port, I'm not THAT naive. Just not a worse one than last time.

Considering the fact that you can actually look through the inventory with the mouse this time around and the controls use something almost resembling a normal control scheme, I fail to see how it's somehow worse than Dark Souls, which had poor enough mouse implementation that that alone almost made it unplayable, to say nothing of the ridiculous keybindings which were in play.

Or, in other words, I think you're playing up the drama here for some reason or another. Which isn't to say that I would ever want to play the game on keyboard&mouse myself; The Souls games are just about the only things I'd ever recommend other people to never play without a gamepad, and I played both of the Darksiders games, DmC, Kingdoms of Amalur, etc. all on keyboard&mouse. But saying Dark Souls II is a worse port than Dark Souls is just... demonstrably wrong.

 

[Chris Tian]

I didn't expect a good port, I'm not THAT naive. Just not a worse one than last time.

Considering the fact that you can actually look through the inventory with the mouse this time around and the controls use something almost resembling a normal control scheme, I fail to see how it's somehow worse than Dark Souls, which had poor enough mouse implementation that that alone almost made it unplayable, to say nothing of the ridiculous keybindings which were in play.

Or, in other words, I think you're playing up the drama here for some reason or another. Which isn't to say that I would ever want to play the game on keyboard&mouse myself; The Souls games are just about the only things I'd ever recommend other people to never play without a gamepad, and I played both of the Darksiders games, DmC, Kingdoms of Amalur, etc. all on keyboard&mouse. But saying Dark Souls II is a worse port than Dark Souls is just... demonstrably wrong.

I have to admit, I picked up DS1 relatively late. Maybe the issues you are talking about were fixed by then, because I really don't know what you are talking about when you say "act that you can actually look through the inventory with the mouse this time". I just had to install a fix to remap some buttons and make the mouse courser disapear during normal camrea controls with the mouse.

If thats the case then I apologize for "playing up the drama". Its just really annoying to see that stuff like this, which is basically just lazyness, gets treatet as totally acceptable and even expectet from devs.
You see in this thread that I get treated as the unreasonable one, for expecting the game to work properly with the main input device of my choosen system.
Since you all disagree with me I probably am the unreasonable one, I just think this is so easy to fix there is really no excuse not to, even if the percentage of player who prefer M+KB is pretty low.

 

[Bombiz]

I hate that double click shit. Like why would they think it would be a good idea to implement heavy attacks like that. They should at least put in decent remapping controls.

That said I still think the PC version us the definitive version and is a better port then the first one. The first one needed a day mod just to be playable. I'd say that makes the second one automatically better.

 

[shrekfan246]

I just had to install a fix

This is the sticking point.

In Dark Souls, it had to be heavily tweaked to even approach proper playability using the keyboard&mouse. Keybindings by default were all over the place, camera control with the mouse had terrible amounts of acceleration and controlled like a gamepad analog stick, and the aforementioned, by yourself, lack of even making the mouse cursor not be showing all the time in normal gameplay. The game didn't even allow you options to change the in-game resolution.

In Dark Souls II, you even admit that you've managed to beat the game using keyboard&mouse. None (or very few) of the problems which plagued the first game are present in II, with the exception of the control scheme still working on some arcane plane of existence to which us normal human beings have yet to ascend.

And by the inventory comment, I meant that in Dark Souls II, the inventory is actually designed in such a way as to complement mouse control, more or less. In Dark Souls, it was the exact same UI used for the console version, which was clunky and tedious to try navigating with the mouse.

Yes, the port of Dark Souls II is still far worse than it could have been. There are a lot of things in life which are worse than they could have been. And by that token people shouldn't praise From Software back and forth over it (though to be fair, I haven't seen that either. At best, people give a begrudging "Yeah, it works"). The reason it's accepted is because it's vastly improved in comparison to their past efforts, which shows that however slowly, they're still learning. You don't have to love something and believe it to be flawless to accept it. And accepting something which is still middling isn't going to result in a rapid slide downhill along a slippery slope into a bog of developers who believe they can get away with the laziest, minimal amount of effort they can put into something, especially so long as criticism exists. But criticism needs to be tempered by perspective; It does no good to resort to hyperbole and aimlessly call everything you don't like utter shite and accuse people of being lazy.

 

[lacktheknack]

Because porting to an unoptimized system with thousands of hardware variations sucks.

It's not something that can be done in a day. It takes weeks even for pros to do it right.

No, just no. First of porting to PC is not that hard just because there are hardware variations, thats like saying its hard to make child seats for cars because there are thousand of different cars.
Even if it were, if non-professionals can do it for free, in there freetime and alone, the "but mooom its just so hard to port to pc"-excuse doesn't count for professional teams of specialists who get paid to do it.

As for the control porting, I dunno. That doesn't mean the whole version is "terrible", though. To say it does only shows that your standards are too high to bother with.

Okay you may be right here, maybe not the whole version is rubbish. They just didn't do anything more than they really had to, so it would work on PC's without too many bugs. They didn' even bother to change the "press green A button to do shit" pop ups in the toturial, I mean how many man-minutes would that have taken?

That's fair. I'm annoyed by tutorials that ignore the currently selected input as well.

Also, yeah, the massive variations of hardware DO majorly effect porting. The carseat analogy isn't accurate. At all. A single change in a single constant somewhere (which I can tell you as a graduate of electronics and embedded systems that it is #$@*ing universal) can result in anything from amusing glitches to BSODs. This isn't something to be whipped up overnight. Non-professionals CAN'T and DON'T do free ports. I've never heard of such a thing. Examples, please?

 

[Chris Tian]

Also, yeah, the massive variations of hardware DO majorly effect porting. The carseat analogy isn't accurate. At all. A single change in a single constant somewhere (which I can tell you as a graduate of electronics and embedded systems that it is #$@*ing universal) can result in anything from amusing glitches to BSODs. This isn't something to be whipped up overnight.

I don't want to say that porting is no work at all, its just nothing that could be described as a challange to a profesional developer team. A challange being something that puts ones abilities to a real test and forces one to the limits of ones capabilities.
With the carseat analogy I wanted to say that the game doesn't have to make the parts of my PC work together, they already do. The whole variety in hardware is sort of "beneath the surface" and doesn't affect the game as much as you want to make me belive.
I am obviously not a profesional game dev, but a coworker/friend of mine is part of a small new video game developer team, and if he says that porting is no big issue, how can it be one for big established studios with several games under their belt, and good ones at that? Of course there is the possibility that he is boasting or outright lying, but I will take his word over that of someone I don't know for now, no offense intended of course.

Non-professionals CAN'T and DON'T do free ports. I've never heard of such a thing. Examples, please?

For obvious legal reasons I can't give you a real example, put you can play any console game on a pc with emulators and pirated versions.
Thats maybe not the same as a proper port, but it could make console games run on my pc if I wanted to and that for free. I am not endorsing piracy here, just to be clear. I don't know how strict the rules here are for that.

 

[dyre]

Haven't played it yet, but the one thing I noticed that leaves me a little confused is why they still haven't changed the "press X to do this, press Y to do that" business. How hard can it be to detect if the user is using KB+M and then change the images to the relevant keyboard/mouse keys instead?

 

[StriderShinryu]

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

 

[lacktheknack]

Also, yeah, the massive variations of hardware DO majorly effect porting. The carseat analogy isn't accurate. At all. A single change in a single constant somewhere (which I can tell you as a graduate of electronics and embedded systems that it is #$@*ing universal) can result in anything from amusing glitches to BSODs. This isn't something to be whipped up overnight.

I don't want to say that porting is no work at all, its just nothing that could be described as a challange to a profesional developer team. A challange being something that puts ones abilities to a real test and forces one to the limits of ones capabilities.
With the carseat analogy I wanted to say that the game doesn't have to make the parts of my PC work together, they already do. The whole variety in hardware is sort of "beneath the surface" and doesn't affect the game as much as you want to make me belive.
I am obviously not a profesional game dev, but a coworker/friend of mine is part of a small new video game developer team, and if he says that porting is no big issue, how can it be one for big established studios with several games under their belt, and good ones at that? Of course there is the possibility that he is boasting or outright lying, but I will take his word over that of someone I don't know for now, no offense intended of course.

Non-professionals CAN'T and DON'T do free ports. I've never heard of such a thing. Examples, please?

For obvious legal reasons I can't give you a real example, put you can play any console game on a pc with emulators and pirated versions.
Thats maybe not the same as a proper port, but it could make console games run on my pc if I wanted to and that for free. I am not endorsing piracy here, just to be clear. I don't know how strict the rules here are for that.

He's porting from what to what, may I ask? And what's his role in it?

Also, if emulators are the grand freeware front of game ports, then they've done a pretty abysmal job of it. I've legally emulated a PS2 as an experiment, and I highly regret it. Emulators are highly annoying, require extremely overkill hardware (compared to the original console) and require tons of manipulation and driver experimentation for each game on the user's part. And then half the suckers still don't work. And the one's that do are... sub-optimal.

So as I said, non-professionals can't and don't do ports, certainly not up to professional team standards, so your original statement:

Even if it were, if non-professionals can do it for free, in there freetime and alone, the "but mooom its just so hard to port to pc"-excuse doesn't count for professional teams of specialists who get paid to do it.

...is ludicrous and silly.

With the carseat analogy I wanted to say that the game doesn't have to make the parts of my PC work together, they already do.

Ahahahahahahaha no. They sit there and do nothing. They only work together when the code tells them to.

Guess what has to be ported.

Guess what breaks when an input is adjusted.

That's right: The code.

The hardware is "beneath the surface", yes, but guess what? That's literally all the computer has to it. The game doesn't "interact heavily" with the hardware, it interacts ENTIRELY with the hardware. So yes, of course it's a big freaking deal.

 

[Chris Tian]

You don't have to love something and believe it to be flawless to accept it. And accepting something which is still middling isn't going to result in a rapid slide downhill along a slippery slope into a bog of developers who believe they can get away with the laziest, minimal amount of effort they can put into something, especially so long as criticism exists. But criticism needs to be tempered by perspective; It does no good to resort to hyperbole and aimlessly call everything you don't like utter shite and accuse people of being lazy.

Again, these issues are easily fixed by unpaid non-profesionals, so there is absolutely no excuse for them to exist in a product made by paid profesionals. The only way they got in there is lazyness and if someone took my money and gave me a product that has major flaws caused by lazyness its total okay for me to call said someone out for his lazyness.

The whole point if the DS2 port is better or worse than the DS1 port doesn't factor in there.

Haven't played it yet, but the one thing I noticed that leaves me a little confused is why they still haven't changed the "press X to do this, press Y to do that" business. How hard can it be to detect if the user is using KB+M and then change the images to the relevant keyboard/mouse keys instead?

They couldn't even be bothered to change them to the default M+KB settings, I mean how long could that have taken? Maybe 20 minutes?

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

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

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

 

[Chris Tian]

snip

I get the feeling we are misunderstanding each other, so I will try a different approach.

Porting a game is a complex task and I couldn't do it. I assume you could neither from what I have read so far. I don't deny that.

A trained and experienced profesional, who gets paid to do that, could do that without a problem if he puts his mind to it.

That is my basic point. So excusing a bad port with "Porting is really hard" is not an option if a trained, experienced and paid profesional did it.

To my friend: They develop a Multyplayer FPS with the goal of publishing it across platforms, he is lead programmer and/or designer, I am not 100% sure if he is lead on both. Like i said they are small and this is their first project, but they scored a major investor a few weeks back so things are looking pretty good for them.

To the emulators: A friend of mine played the Final Fantasy games and the Metal Gear games on PC without any major problems that could just as easily occour with a bought version. So I stand by my statement that unpaid non-profesionals can make console games work on Pc, I never said its perfect or anything, but it still makes my point that it can't be that hard then.

 

[lacktheknack]

snip

I get the feeling we are misunderstanding each other, so I will try a different approach.

Porting a game is a complex task and I couldn't do it. I assume you could neither from what I have read so far. I don't deny that.

A trained and experienced profesional, who gets paid to do that, could do that without a problem if he puts his mind to it.

That is my basic point. So excusing a bad port with "Porting is really hard" is not an option if a trained, experienced and paid profesional did it.

To my friend: They develop a Multyplayer FPS with the goal of publishing it across platforms, he is lead programmer and/or designer, I am not 100% sure if he is lead on both. Like i said they are small and this is their first project, but they scored a major investor a few weeks back so things are looking pretty good for them.

To the emulators: A friend of mine played the Final Fantasy games and the Metal Gear games on PC without any major problems that could just as easily occour with a bought version. So I stand by my statement that unpaid non-profesionals can make console games work on Pc, I never said its perfect or anything, but it still makes my point that it can't be that hard then.

Emphasis mine.

One of the first things that I said was that you can't expect good porting from From Software because they AREN'T experienced, and you should have known that. On the whole, the port is much better than I thought it would be, given that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_developed_by_From_Software

Count the PC ports. Does this look like an experienced pro team to you?

I don't trust your friend's judgement on AAA porting if he's not even finished his first project.

Also, the fact that emulators work doesn't mean much. I mean, the Dark Souls 2 port works, doesn't it? I also got a Final Fantasy game working, but the setup (not even the legal loopholes, I mean the driver setup) required on my end was so ludicrous that it wasn't even worth it. That's a terrible porting job, don't you think?

 

[Chris Tian]

One of the first things that I said was that you can't expect good porting from From Software because they AREN'T experienced, and you should have known that. On the whole, the port is much better than I thought it would be, given that.

They are trained, experienced and profesional software developers, my point remains the same. If they didn't feel up to the task they should have outsourced it. Don't take my money and expect a "nice try", just because you are s*ittier at your job than you should be.

You say they did the best they could, and are statisfied with that. Thats okay.

But it is in now way an acceptable excuse in a profesional way. I don't know where you work but if may performance would be considerably below industrie standards and I would say to my boss "well i did the best I could and its a little better than last time" I would still get fired.

I don't trust your friend's judgement on AAA porting if he's not even finished his first project.

Well, I trust his alot more than yours, no offense intended.

Also, the fact that emulators work doesn't mean much. I mean, the Dark Souls 2 port works, doesn't it? I also got a Final Fantasy game working, but the setup (not even the legal loopholes, I mean the driver setup) required on my end was so ludicrous that it wasn't even worth it. That's a terrible porting job, don't you think?

It does say alot. Its not about if they work perfectly or whatever. Its says something about the level of difficulty involved in making a console game work on pc.

If non-profesionals can do that, it can not be such an insurmountable task.

And for some reason you want to make me belive that porting a game to pc is a tough challenge, even for profesionals, and thats just not true.

I mean they did it, it is portet, the major issues that are still there could have easily been fixed, if they would have put just a little more work into it then the absolute bare minimum to make it somewhat playable.