From Software Elden Ring - From Software's new game with writing by GRRM

[Riddler]

Elden Ring has really improved my view of DS2 and DS3 in retrospect, at least they aren't open world

DS3 is probably still my least favourite Souls game, but Elden Ring is a serious contender.

I'll sum my own feelings like this : while I felt severely disappointed by the shitshow that was DS3 level and encounter design, wide open areas, infinite swamp work etc, I liked the bosses enough to do multiple pseudo speedruns (ie not competitive levels but really focusing on running from boss to boss not paying attention to anything else) of the game.

While, after the patch fixed arcane scaling in Elden Ring, a part of me was feeling "I'd like to try this" another part of me just can't even bear the thought of inflicting that game onto myself once more.

After the patch I loaded my game up, upgraded rivers of blood to +10, respecced to 70 arcane and went to test the weapon at Zamor ruins against those frostbite mobs. Came out massively underwhelmed and confirmed Moonveil is still much better, didn't touch it again.

It was just about the idea of having fun with other builds (and there's more than river of blood to an arcane setup, plus the fun rot spells etc). I mean, it's something I've done with all souls games. In the case of DS2, I ran the entire game once with pretty much any viable build or weapon setup you can imagine viable. Ultra greatswords, katanas, rapiers, sorcerer, dark magic, lightning spear spammer, I've done it all.

Elden Ring? eh, uh, no.

There are also the blood damage boosters which is like +30% damage, which isn't nothing.

 

[Olinser]

They should just let us big boys type whatever we want in our graffiti messages already

Try fingers,
But hole

Edit:

Spoiler

I left a few messages so far, all of them actually informative except that shit I typed above. That is my message with the most ratings. 80:20 positive rating too

I had a similar experience except one of my helpful messages was tied with my equally true, but arguably less helpful message: head ahead

Meanwhile, other helpful messages didn't get much traction and one actually got downranked, I think because the moron thought I was trolling when I was actually pointing out an often overlooked secret.

I've only left helpful messages, but most of them only get 1 or 2.

I've got 2 messages that are up to 40 positive and 15 positive ratings now, with only 1 negative. I've gotten a couple clutch message heals against some field bosses.

I don't even negative rate messages at this point - because negative ratings actually REWARD the idiot with the heal and make it more likely that the message will continue to appear, and people can't actually tell whether a message was rated positive/negative, it only displays total ratings.

 

[Bigg Boss]

The messaging system is the most autistic part of the series. They are so afraid to give us more than a handful of words to use because 8 year old Johnny can't handle being told to "Stop posting the fucking dog messages".

 

[Olinser]

The messaging system is the most autistic part of the series. They are so afraid to give us more than a handful of words to use because 8 year old Johnny can't handle being told to "Stop posting the fucking dog messages".

Right. Because what we REALLY need is to enable wall of texts by 12 year old edgelords that think 'try fingers but hole' is the pinnacle of genius.

 

[Olinser]

Heck there's plenty of space for the genuine trolls and connoisseurs to work with.

I literally laughed out loud when I beat Godrick and the first message I read after that was 'First off, well done! and then seek grass'.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Everyone's crazy about Moonveil while I'm having fun with Death's Poker and look like a pro(s)per caned gentleman.

 

[mediocrepoet]

A little cheaty but whatever, at least you get to play with the weapon you want from the get-go.

Cheating to get past a game's obvious problems doesn't make the game any better. In fact I would say this is an argument why the game might not be so good.

I don't know that most people see equipment progression as an obvious problem. It's more like part of the draw of the thing and one of the reasons Sekiro sucks.

Sekiro's gear was not a core part of the game. It was mostly supplementary and while it could have been better distributed the game did not exactly suffer too much because of it.

Elden ring on the other hand is all about the gear and so having potentially neat or interesting stuff hidden behind a 20+ hour wall is a serious problem. Especially when said piece is entirely incompatible with your current build and/or has a learning curve to it. This is actually a problem Bloodborne had with its DLC where it added a ton of neat weapons that nobody ended up using because after 30 hours of learning and upgrading the Kirk Hammer nobody was going to repeat the same process for a (albeit cooler) variant of a chainsaw.

My point was more along the lines of Sekiro doesn't have weapon or armour swaps, you're just that guy. Even God of War (PS2) had more variety for choosing how you wanted to fight. So, yes, gear isn't really part of Sekiro's formula, you just start with your entire kit (more or less, prosthetics excepted). However, gear, spells, etc. is a significant part of the Souls games and the feeling of progression. Your proposal is like suggesting a D&D game where everyone starts with holy avengers and staves of the magi, etc. The game could still be fun in a way, but you just kicked out a huge part of the draw for most people.

 

[Bigg Boss]

The messaging system is the most autistic part of the series. They are so afraid to give us more than a handful of words to use because 8 year old Johnny can't handle being told to "Stop posting the fucking dog messages".

Right. Because what we REALLY need is to enable wall of texts by 12 year old edgelords that think 'try fingers but hole' is the pinnacle of genius.

There should be toggle options to disable just messages in the first place.

 

[Wunderbar]

Heck there's plenty of space for the genuine trolls and connoisseurs to work with.

I literally laughed out loud when I beat Godrick and the first message I read after that was 'First off, well done! and then seek grass'.

my favorite so far was "didn't expect weak foe, therefore time for introspection" after a Mimic Tear fight.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Was curious so I did the jarburg/diallos quest line

Spoiler

Jesus Christ that was sad. Can't believe they gave us a nice friendly town of jar people playing with flowers and then killed them all off.

 

[Salvo]

Was curious so I did the jarburg/diallos quest line

Spoiler

Jesus Christ that was sad. Can't believe they gave us a nice friendly town of jar people playing with flowers and then killed them all off.

Can't ever have happy or even bittersweet endings because muh grimderp, it's honestly getting tiresome at this point

 

[Efe]

Is there a codex group sign?
I set one of mine as RPGCODEX, do it and maybe we can come across somewhere

 

[Salvo]

Is there a codex group sign?
I set one of mine as RPGCODEX, do it and maybe we can come across somewhere

3/4ths of the people telling you to git gud have barely left the starting area, you can check there

 

[Gearmos]

Is there any purpose in golden seeds other than upgrading your flask? I have four extra seeds, but my flask is already at max so they are kinda useless.

Being an open world they probably thought it would be difficult to find them all, and so they put a few more than necessary.

 

[Wunderbar]

Is there any purpose in golden seeds other than upgrading your flask? I have four extra seeds, but my flask is already at max so they are kinda useless.

Being an open world they probably thought it would be difficult to find them all, and so they put a few more than necessary.

yeah i get that, but in Sekiro useless upgrade mats (like prayer beads) were replaced with rare consumables (bundled jizo statues) on NG+. So I thought there would be a similar thing in ER - extra upgrade mats having some secondary function.

 

[Efe]

group sign is not summon sign salvo
it just makes people in shared group have circular blood splatter, text icon and summon sign.
it also does some some buff when you are in same zone as someone in a group

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Man I'm gonna have to respec again so I can use bows. I'm late game and I don't have hardly any long range attacks and it's getting me smoked. Best I got right now is kukris and a weak ass fire ball.

 

[NJClaw]

Was curious so I did the jarburg/diallos quest line

Spoiler

Jesus Christ that was sad. Can't believe they gave us a nice friendly town of jar people playing with flowers and then killed them all off.

Can't ever have happy or even bittersweet endings because muh grimderp, it's honestly getting tiresome at this point

What are you talking about?

Spoiler

Diallos finds his purpose and saves a village, finally redeeming his failures as a knight. Having inspired the jar-kid with his heroic sacrifice, he will live through him (both metaphorically and literally), as the kid proves when he recites the motto of House Hoslow.

That's the textbook definition of a bittersweet ending.

 

[RapineDel]

I went in wanting to like this game. Love Dark Souls and the rest

Is it a good game? For sure, it's better then most AAA games out there when it comes to open world, combat, overall content etc.

It's not great though, and it may be From's worst "Souls" title.

The open world is incredibly repetitive, the game feels pretty good in the first large area up to the first castle but after that things somewhat fall apart.

The areas are just too opened, spammed with heaps of the same areas and useless junk to collect (Dark Souls has the junk part covered but the world is much more interesting to explore so or feels better).

The areas feel identical with a different coat of paint. The bosses start to feel lazy pretty quickly with the gimmicky stuff like fighting the same boss that does a different type of damage or here's two random bosses thrown together.

I hate how they did upgrades as well, it's incredibly casual. Instead of exploration rewarding things like golden seeds or the chalice that ups your estus dose per flask, these upgrades are either on a liners path or are always in the exact some locations (churches).

The game seems to only reward people who want to experiment with different builds, most dungeon rewards are random weapons, great if you want to mix it up, pointless if you don't give a toss about builds.

The main area levels are great like the castle and the one in the middle of the water area but it's a slog to do them if you try and explore the world to find all the mini dungeons. The mini dungeons are also mostly rubbish, there's a handful of designs and they all feel like copy and pasted of each other.

My fear with the game doing so well is this will be the format going forward, the only people who think the open world is stellar are people who only have Far Cry and Assassin's Creed to compare it to. Chronicles of Myrtana has a MUCH better world.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

It's not great though, and it may be From's worst "Souls" title.

Don't be delusional. Dark Souls 3 will forever be their worst game. It was inferior to Dark Souls 2 in nearly every way imaginable and it just felt lazy as fuck.

 

[Salvo]

Was curious so I did the jarburg/diallos quest line

Spoiler

Jesus Christ that was sad. Can't believe they gave us a nice friendly town of jar people playing with flowers and then killed them all off.

Can't ever have happy or even bittersweet endings because muh grimderp, it's honestly getting tiresome at this point

What are you talking about?

Spoiler

Diallos finds his purpose and saves a village, finally redeeming his failures as a knight. Having inspired the jar-kid with his heroic sacrifice, he will live through him (both metaphorically and literally), as the kid proves when he recites the motto of House Hoslow.

That's the textbook definition of a bittersweet ending.

try Ranni now
or Millicent
or Yura
or Thops
or D
or Rogier


only ones I could see living "happily" were Kenneth Haight/Nepheli... it makes one reluctant to even form an emotional attachment to NPCs since you know everyone is going to die horribly
inb4 storyfag

 

[Yosharian]

You'll probably get banned but at this rate the cheaters pool will just be a bunch of normal players wanting above 60FPS in their game.

If you use Uberhalit's FPS Unlocker you will not get banned because it stops EAC from starting. You can't go online though.

 

[Terenty]

The game seems to only reward people who want to experiment with different builds, most dungeon rewards are random weapons, great if you want to mix it up, pointless if you don't give a toss about builds.

Yeah, the way loot works here is shit tbh. It has always been like that in souls games, where you just take a weapon and upgrade the shit out of it for the rest of the game, but I never thought of souls games as traditional RPGs so it didn't bother me.

Here, though, with it's freedom of open world it gets closer to classic RPGs like Might and Magic, Gothics, Baldur's Gates etc and those games had much cooler loot tbh.

You just can't find a cool weapon +5 like Baldur's Gate, for example, and switch to it right away. No you have to grind and respec your whole build just to wield it and there's no guarantee it will turn out better.

Just crap system imho

 

[cvv]

So I think I've finally discovered all areas in the game.

Wasn't too psyched about Mountaintops and Snowfield, not terrible, not great, but Crumbling Azula and Heligtree are fantastic.

As for the complaints about reusing mobs, I get it more now. I'm still not bothered by it too much but I get it. I don't think there's a single new enemy in the entire Mountaintops/Snowfield/Heligtree area.

P.S. Just realized I still haven't found OG Mogh so apparently I haven't found all the areas. Jesus christ on a bike, I'm almost at 140 hours now. This game was beyond ridiculously huge 40 hours ago. I'm not complaining, I just...don't have words anymore. I can't even.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is there a codex group sign?