Dark Souls II - Editorials @ IGN, Joystiq
 

Two editorials have been penned expressing concern over changes to the formula of Dark Souls II. Let's start with IGN's 4 Reasons I'm Worried About Dark Souls 2:
…and Joystiq's The real danger in Dark Souls 2 is not 'accessibility':
More information.

Well, shit, I knew things were too good to be true. / sad

At last, someone mentioning the fact that Dark souls father Miyazaki is not at the command anymore on Dark Souls2.
Well, as journalist, go a step further : try to know WHY Miyazaki is not at the command on dark souls 2, that's the biggest piece of info about the game we could have to know what we can expect.

Yes. Isn't it often the case that the creator steps back when he doesn't like the direction something is taking? So he tries to appease everyone by assuring them he's still on board as advisor, while in reality he has little to say?

"This really concerns me. When we interviewed Miyazaki in 2011, he gave the impression that he wouldn't do another Souls game unless he knew it was breaking new ground once again."

As a journalist you're not gonna get your answer anyways. It's not like he's gonna say "well the game is pretty much shit imo". Only time will tell.

The role of a journalist is to get the information where he can get it, not only press releases. There are a bunch of people involved in the game, artists, programmers, commercials, and so on.
Never mind if he fails, as long as he tries.

What if they just want to add more clues? The game just doesn't tell you how to find anything. No hints in "quest" items descriptions. There's player notes left on the ground but almost nothing in the game world. Part of the player clue driven system is that they could be fake, misleading clues and it adds more unease again but then there's the wiki anyway which is where everyone will end up.

Players of the DLC area. How did you find out how to get there? I was gonna try to work it out myself and won the game before finding it.

Needing to quit/load the game for things to appear means you might have searched the right place, crossed it off your list, and can only find it the 2nd time around. There just is no way to find everything without other players telling you somehow. It's amazing that any players find this stuff to begin with but not everyone has the time or patience. Everyone missed content on their first playthrough but not everyone will play a second time.

So I'm not sure anyone would find a clue to a secret and rage at the game for making it too easy. They'd go "oh, a clue!" and be excited, right? The devs could throw in one or 2 fake clues to bring them in line with player clues too. In the end the games more accessible but the only difference to the player is they spend less time in the wiki and more in game finding the secrets.

That's what the optimist in me thinks, anyway. :)

I just hope it will be less fragmented concerning the online part. I haven't been able to play 1 single pvp in the arena unfortunately. And invasions are too hazardous.

I´ve spent a lot of time trying to figure it out on my own, but eventually caved in and checked it out on the internet.
The conditional spawning (of both golems) really fucked this up. They should´ve spawn the golems right away, that would put it on a similar level as getting to - still somewhat obscure, but not really reliant on accident.

Personally I hope the accessibility talk is mostly just about more in-depth tutorial - besides the access to DLC stuff and certain two other areas, I didn´t really mind the general level of "obscure-ness" of Dark Souls´ secrets.

Proper keyboard and mouse support would be nice.