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[nynt9]

My brother just sent me this (normal brightness, zero brightness, normal with torch, zero with torch):

and his conclusion was the same as someone elses earlier, setting the default brightness via the slider to the recommended levels, after the adjustments, makes the game too bright: ie. when they adjusted the lightning, the didn't set a new zero point for the brightness slider, making the game look too bright on default settings.

Yeah, this looks a lot like the footage in the OP.

Spoiler

Can we sue OP for falsely advertising a downgrade now? /s

 

[Ingueferroque]

I remember when EDGE first had a blow-out article about DS2:

- Edge says they were shown a 10 minute playthrough of Dark Souls 2, and it is a huge step forward graphically. It looks on par with Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 in terms of “next-gen”-ness, or so they claim.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

Yeah, this looks a lot like the footage in the OP.

Spoiler

Can we sue OP for falsely advertising a downgrade now? /s

No, it dosn't.

 

[tehPete]

Think of it this way: Steam is the platform. The rest is just hardware.

PlayStation 3 to Steam is cross-platform. Steam to Steam isn't.

I see where you're coming from, but if Steam were the platform then - following that logic - any game released on Steam should work on any machine you can install Steam on? Anyways, we're getting away from the point

 

[soontroll]

Can someone with a capture device try the zero brightness thing please?

 

[epmode]

Yeah, this is obviously caused by a miscalibrated brightness setting. Lower it and the shadows will just reappear!

Brightness settings are also responsible for the massive geometry and texture differences in this thread.

 

[nbthedude]

Yeah, this looks a lot like the footage in the OP.

Spoiler

Can we sue OP for falsely advertising a downgrade now? /s

This is interesting. I wonder if From maybe responded to criticisms of the darkness being annoying/not fun by just bumping up the lighting?

Huh.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Yeah, this is obviously caused by a miscalibrated gamma setting. Lower gamma and the shadows will just reappear!

Did you read AT ALL what I wrote to you. No? All righty then.

It's not about if the assets were lessened before release or not, because obviously they were, you'd have to be blind not to see it. And it's a clear fact that the network test ran even worse than the retail version.

 

[Nohar]

It's not just the lightning. Textures are concerned too, when it's not whole elements which are withdrawn, affecting heavily the atmosphere.

Case in point:

And, once again, people here are angry because of the deception.

 

[Ahasverus]

This is interesting. I wonder if From maybe responded to criticisms of the darkness being annoying/not fun by just bumping up the lighting?

Huh.

What about the post above you?

 

[Metroid-Squadron]

nbthedude, another troll that couldn't be bothered to read the OP.

 

[nbthedude]

What about the post above you?

That we always knew the PC version would have better textures maybe? That's pretty much a given for ever PC release. I don't actually have the console version so I can't test the dude's theory. I just hypothesizing on what might have happened.

 

[Laughing Banana]

The goal is to get them to make it right. That would be apologizing in a press release, admitting their deception and then releasing the version of the game they spoke about somewhere and offer refunds to consumers who want it so they could get the other version they were originally thinking they were going to buy.

If they do that, I have no problem with securing a copy of the advertised version.

So I guess any less than that then you won't be ever getting Dark Souls 2 of whatever version then?

Speaking of, do you honestly believe they will ever, ever, do the bolded above? I mean, the first bolded is kind of improbable, but the 2nd bolded is I think a straight out impossibility.

Well, good to know that you stand true to your principle, at the very least.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

All this brightness zero deal is like going back to the Xbone sharpening filter.

"Look at all those crushed blacks! the game looks better!"

 

[nbthedude]

nbthedude, another troll that couldn't be bothered to read the OP.

What is the point of this kind of name calling?

 

[tehPete]

It's not just the lightning. Textures are concerned too, when it's not whole elements which are withdrawn, affecting heavily the atmosphere.

That... simply can't be the same area, surely?

 

[Nohar]

That... simply can't be the same area, surely?

Sadly, it really seems it is. I invite you to take a look at other comparisons screenshots from the same aera.

 

[hokagespit]

Pretty much this. Game is unplayable on ps3 imo

don't know what you are playing but its never became a slideshow for me. sometimes maybe the briefest periods of 18fps but nothing ever major and im about 75% through.

 

[Havel]

There are people blaming all this on brightness settings from an off screen picture?

Oh my.

 

[Krusenstern]

The brightness settings aren't the culprit here. The game is lacking effects. Nothing that can be corrected by simply lowering the brightness.

 

[JudgeN]

I understand the deception but I don't think the solution is saying "well the PC will have all the effects in" in the answer. I know people won't like this but the PC version isn't the only version that "matters" and is deserving of good effects.

I don't like that the lighting changed but if it is what it is then I can live with it but what is unacceptable is PS3 performance. They said several times that frame rate was going to be better and even after cutting all the lighting, its still terrible. That to me is the biggest problem here, the game is definitely playable but it shouldn't have been released in this state after people complained after playing Dark Souls. Making sure that the PC version looks the best isn't going to help console peeps this is were the majority of your sales are going to come from so we matter just as much as the PC people.

 

[epmode]

Did you read AT ALL what I wrote to you. No? All righty then.

The way to handle games with a torch/flashlight mechanic is not to lower the brightness on areas that are supposed to be dark. This is very easy to exploit provided the player doesn't mind his game looking like shit. The trick is for the developer to use some kind of black crush in the darkest areas. Increasing brightness and gamma won't help if the detail simply isn't there without light.

I first noticed this in Pandora Tomorrow's multiplayer. The spies vs mercs mode had a mechanic that allowed your eyes to adjust to the dark if you stood still for a while. Before that happened, it was literally impossible to see into the darkest areas without a flashlight.

I'll admit that I haven't seen enough of Dark Souls 2 to know if this is how it worked in the earlier videos but it seems likely that a game so focused on competitive multiplayer would take it into account.

So I guess it's possible that the brightness setting is miscalibrated, I just don't think it's very important.

edit: (to anyone else reading this, it's obvious that the assets changed considerably since the game was first revealed. I'm just talking about the apparent lighting downgrade that happened toward the end of development)

 

[Metroid-Squadron]

What is the point of this kind of name calling?

That people ignore trolls that just repeat the same debunked arguments to blame consumers and absolve Namco/From from any accountability.

 

[Stet]

You're all making a big deal out of nothing. This is all because people are viewing the game directly on their television. If you want an experience more like the demo footage, you obviously need to play it with a cellphone videotaping the screen and outputting to a different TV.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

You're all making a big deal out of nothing. This is all because people are viewing the game directly on their television. If you want an experience more like the demo footage, you obviously need to play it with a cellphone videotaping the screen and outputting to a different TV.

Wat? we have direct footage of the demo...

Is people out of reasonable defensive arguments?

 

[Stet]

Wat? we have direct footage of the demo...

Is people out of reasonable defensive arguments?

It was a joke about the images above.

 

[Krusenstern]

Wat? we have direct footage of the demo...

Is people out of reasonable defensive arguments?

I think he's just joking.

Edit: Beaten

 

[soontroll]

You're all making a big deal out of nothing. This is all because people are viewing the game directly on their television. If you want an experience more like the demo footage, you obviously need to play it with a cellphone videotaping the screen and outputting to a different TV.

You mean you don't do that normally?

Wat? we have direct footage of the demo...

Is people out of reasonable defensive arguments?

Sarcasm.

 

[Mogwai]

I'm beginning to regret that I got this game for PS3. The performance is so insanely poor. I don't know if it's the PS3's Vsync or not, but it feels like the game is running in slow motion most of the time.The frame rate sucks ass even in rooms with relatively low distance to environments and whatnot.

I tried to load Demon's Souls to see if that game was as bad. To my reassurance, it was a lot better than DS2. I didn't remember DeS performance to be this bad. If only DS2 looked much better to compensate for the low performance (those N64 animations are horrible).

60€ down the drain. I simply need to wait for this game to be launched on PC. The console version is unacceptable.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

It was a joke about the images above.

Sorry, is hard to know who is joking right now.

 

[tehPete]

Sadly, it really seems it is. I invite you to take a look at other comparisons screenshots from the same area.

That just crushed a little bit of my soul, although now I'm wondering how much of a difference it'd make to the lighting if every torch in each screenshot was lit to correspond with the preview screenshot it's against. It won't fix the shitty textures and wide empty spaces, but it's the fairest way to compare.

& another random thought; imagine if, as you lit more torches around the gameworld, the overall lighting got darker and closer to the preview builds... Can't have light without dark, and it'd be the type of fuzzy grey logic the series is known for

 

[SlasherJPC]

There are people blaming all this on brightness settings from an off screen picture?

Oh my.

Well I'm curious to see the lighting affects with the brightness setting to try and see if it matches to the level of darkness we had in prior footage but there is no magical way of getting all the other stuff missing back. Just to clarify here.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

You're all making a big deal out of nothing. This is all because people are viewing the game directly on their television. If you want an experience more like the demo footage, you obviously need to play it with a cellphone videotaping the screen and outputting to a different TV.

Yes, my brother is doing just like that. He is playing, then taking screenshots and then judging the screens.

And because some of you LOVE judging shit from low quality captures, here's another with a lot worse quality than the first.

JUST TO RE-ENFORCE: the point here isn't the actual screens, but the fact that the one who is actually playing the game RIGHT NOW doesn't think that the "darkness" is too far off from the Playstation Access video all things considered after reducing the brighness to zero.

 

[pa22word]

It was a joke about the images above.

Well, in a thread where we have that nbthebdude guy trying to blame PSaccess for not putting the inquisition on namco over the demo they gave them to post 6 weeks before the game came out, I'd say everyone's sarcasm detector flew out the window several hundred posts ago.

 

[nbthedude]

That people ignore trolls that just repeat the same debunked arguments to blame consumers and absolve Namco/From from any accountability.

I see. So since I disagree that the arguments against this as a clear case of deception has been "thoroughly debunked," I guess I should just call you a troll and tell everyone to ignore you.

That's a hell of a way to have a discussion. In fact, that's not a discussion. It seems all you want is a thread where people rage at Namco instead of discussing the topic.

 

[TyrantGuardian]

It's not just the lightning. Textures are concerned too, when it's not whole elements which are withdrawn, affecting heavily the atmosphere.

Case in point:


And, once again, people here are angry because of the deception.

How can anyone even begin to defend this? Retail looks like a friggin' alpha of the game.

 

[nbthedude]

Well, in a thread where we have that nbthebdude guy trying to blame PSaccess for not putting the inquisition on namco over the demo they gave them to post 6 weeks before the game came out, I'd say everyone's sarcasm detector flew out the window several hundred posts ago.

No, I don't think it requires an "inquisition" to ask what version of the game the footage is from and how far a long it is. Since most reputable gaming outlets do that all the time. Literally almost every time Giant Bomb has a guest on showing a game, one of their first questions if not their first is "So this is the ____ version?" and the next is "How close is this to retail?" These are reasonable questions. Standard questions.

Of course Playstation Access isn't a reputable gaming outlet and are instead just a marketing outlet, but that's beside the point. The point is that you do not know that Namco told them this was PS3 footage. They never say one way or the other in that video. All they said was this was footage of someone at Namco playing the game.

 

[lazer_bean]

FROM is not Naugthydog by a looooooong shot!

Those games are in a league of their own. We can't compare FROM, which is a small Japanese studio, to the best 1st party studio Sony has, and the biggest gaming franchise TakeTwo has. In fact, I don't doubt that Rockstar has an R&D group that is as strong as Naughty Dog's - if only they put as much effort into their pc ports which run like shit.

Of course From is far from having those studios' skill level. My point was that the problem is From/Namco not the old hardware

60€ down the drain. I simply need to wait for this game to be launched on PC. The console version is unacceptable.

I think you're part of the problem. What you're saying is: I bought the game full price but it runs so bad on my console that i'm going to stop playing it and wait until I can buy it again on another platform.

 

[nbthedude]

Of course From is far from having those studios' skill level. My point was that the problem is From/Namco not the old hardware


I think you're part of the problem. What you're saying is: I bought the game full price but it runs so bad on my console that i'm going to stop playing it and wait until I can buy it again on another platform.

His idea of "the problem": I want to play an awesome version of Dark Souls 2.

Your idea of "the problem": "Videogame justice."

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

Ok here's the thing:

The problem with setting the brightness to zero is that you're losing detail to artificially make the game dark. Basically you're limiting the colour range and losing detail by making certain parts of the image artificially dark. You can see how a great part of the wall is just simply black, unrelated to whatever light source is on the image.

In the demo the lighting has a natural gradient. Parts of the imagen closer to the light source are brighter, and the more far the zones are from the light the dark they are. But look how the wall is not just darker and dosn't have artificial missing detail.

The problem with lighting in the retail game is way more uniform and lacks things like AO. That's something you can't fix with brightness settings, since is just an artificial way to add dark to where the lighting was suposed to do. It might work to make the game like originally intended, regarding the torch mechanics, but is just a shitty/fake way to do it.

 

[Arthr2ShdsJcksn]

Well, in a thread where we have that nbthebdude guy trying to blame PSaccess for not putting the inquisition on namco over the demo they gave them to post 6 weeks before the game came out, I'd say everyone's sarcasm detector flew out the window several hundred posts ago.

I can't tell what is sarcasm or genuine at all in this thread. This whole topic seems joke-worthy, but it seems as if people really are mad. Hey, we should petition Bungie to explain why Halo 2 didn't look like the E3 Demo after this settles.

Ok, in all seriousness, I just want to put my two cents in and say that I think that this topic is a waste of time, and nobody owes anyone an explanation. If you were duped by the advertising, then learn from this and move on. I think that pressuring Namco and/or From to explain makes the GAF community seem childish. I hope those of you involved get what you're hoping for.

 

[TrueMenace]

If you guys follow A German Spy on YouTube who is doing a walkthrough of Dark Souls 2, you will understand what happened. First off, A German Spy (AGS) co-wrote the guide along with EpicNameBro (ENB) and said that at one point during a version of the de-bug build he played the game had better visuals, BUT the framerate was in the single digits most of the time. The next version they got (was the retail version) had downgraded visuals but a steady 30 fps.

So there you go.

Blame the old consoles, not the developers.

Edit:

Here is the video with a jump to where he talks about how the framerate was improved.

http://youtu.be/_tbLxKKCNQM?t=1h52s

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

If you guys follow A German Spy on YouTube who is doing a walkthrough of Dark Souls 2, you will understand what happened. First off, A German Spy (AGS) co-wrote the guide along with EpicNameBro (ENB) and said that at one point during a version of the de-bug build he played the game had better visuals, BUT the framerate was in the single digits most of the time. The next version they got (was the retail version) had downgraded visuals but a steady 30 fps.

So there you go.

Blame the old consoles, not the developers.

Or blame the developers/publishers for showing the old version until release.

 

[nbthedude]

If you guys follow A German Spy on YouTube who is doing a walkthrough of Dark Souls 2, you will understand what happened. First off, A German Spy (AGS) co-wrote the guide along with EpicNameBro (ENB) and said that at one point during a version of the de-bug build he played the game had better visuals, BUT the framerate was in the single digits most of the time. The next version they got (was the retail version) had downgraded visuals but a steady 30 fps.

So there you go.

Blame the old consoles, not the developers.

Link to the Youtube where he says this?

 

[Sid]

If you guys follow A German Spy on YouTube who is doing a walkthrough of Dark Souls 2, you will understand what happened. First off, A German Spy (AGS) co-wrote the guide along with EpicNameBro (ENB) and said that at one point during a version of the de-bug build he played the game had better visuals, BUT the framerate was in the single digits most of the time. The next version they got (was the retail version) had downgraded visuals but a steady 30 fps.

So there you go.

Blame the old consoles, not the developers.

I hope they'll bring the old version over to the PC.

 

[SlasherJPC]

Not from the same area as the build as I'm not that far but here is 4 screens. Direct capture.


Brightness at half:

Brightness at zero:

 

[TrueMenace]

Link to the Youtube where he says this?

http://youtu.be/_tbLxKKCNQM?t=1h52s

 

[nbthedude]

Or blame the developers/publishers for showing the old version until release.

I think you mean for not showing.

But in that case... how much 360 footage is there of Titanfall or Watchdogs?

This is again why it's important for the game media folks to make clear what version is being shown when they put up video.

But at it's worst, embargoes on Dark Souls 2 were up at 12:00PM EST in U.S, the very second the game went on sale. There were a ton of sites with footage up. Anyone could have spent 10 minutes watching Giant Bomb's quicklook or any of the literal hundreds of Twitch or Youtube streams of the specific version they were interested in before heading to the store.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

I think you mean for not showing.

But in that case... how much 360 footage is there of Titanfall or Watchdogs?

This is again why it's important for the game media folks to make clear what version is being shown when they put up video.

But at it's worst, embargoes on Dark Souls 2 were up at 12:00PM EST in U.S, the very second the game went on sale. There were a ton of sites with footage up. Anyone could have spent 10 minutes watching Giant Bomb's quicklook or any of the literal hundreds of Twitch or Youtube streams of the specific version they were interested in before heading to the store.

You seem to keep forgetting that the TGS demo was running on PS3....

 

[Metroid-Squadron]

I see. So since I disagree that the arguments against this as a clear case of deception has been "thoroughly debunked," I guess I should just call you a troll and tell everyone to ignore you.

That's a hell of a way to have a discussion. In fact, that's not a discussion. It seems all you want is a thread where people rage at Namco instead of discussing the topic.

Except that you're ignoring the facts and arguments that have already put forth before.

We know the PS Access footage is from the PS3 version because we've seen it running looking just like that on actual PS3s and running perfectly fine as dark10x has confirmed.

But of course, we all should've known about the downgrade since trailers and gameplay demos of previous Soul games have always looked completely different than the retail products.

Oh wait, no...