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

[Nathir]

I think that the problem is not that bosses are impossible

Yes because you're one of those people who can go through the games naked swinging salami.

Most people aren't like that tho. Just watch your regular, non-specialized tuber or streamer, the game is hilariously over their heads.

Traditional roll-down menu difficulty options may be boring and uncool but they work. We all have different natural levels of talent, coordination, skill. For some people no amount of training and grind will bring them close to solo bosses like Maliketh, Mogh, Melania, duo Foreskins or the final trio. Or there are people like me - I could solo them eventually but I'd need many hours of grind to do that. Just like I did finally beat Isshin but only after 6 hours of tries, after which there is no feeling of triumph and accomplishment anymore, only annoyance, weariness and the "great, it's done, now get this stupid fucking game as far away from me as possible" feeling.

This is NOT a great solution to difficulty. There are a couple of reflexive disagrees and NOs to my previous comment but nobody provided any actual counterarguments.

Watching random streamers for the past week, I think ER is actually one of the easier games for normies. Even ignoring the spirit ashes, I've seen people just run at bossess, failing to dodge most attacks and just brute force them in such a way. I might be wrong but imo the player is doing a lot more damage in ER, when compared to other games. And you get a ton of estus flasks. It's easy to just use a bleed/frost weapon and swing away at most bosses. Get hit > heal and keep swinging.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

I read a lot of difficulty talk as less compliants about actual difficulty (very easy to build for a nuke WA, drop an ash and melt everything) and more a desire for a return to how these games used to be. Not happening, they'd be mad to do so given the runaway success of ER. The most DS1/2 like game I've played recently was Hellpoint. Nails the same type of exploration, combat and encounters are simple but well judged ala DS1.

I see that Mattewmatosis video has been posted already. Haven't played DeS yet (it's on the list) but the talk about a gradual shift away from problem solving rings true to me. The guy says it while hating DS2 though, can't take him at face value.

N.B. if you need a cheap laugh look at the state of the steam forums for ER. Been a while since I've seen such an open trash fire of an 'official' game board.

 

[Wunderbar]

The guy says it while hating DS2 though, can't take him at face value.

well he said that he still considers DS2 a good game, just worse than DeS or DS1. And his critique video wasn't entirely wrong.

 

[Lutte]

Nathir
Yeah, there wasn't that many bosses that took me a lot of retries in my blind NG. Some of the bosses I complain about isn't because I spent time on them but because they were just shit designs. Fire Giant took me at most 5 tries (I didn't count, but it wasn't a lot) but I absolutely despise this kind of fight in From games and find it extremely anti fun (chase a constantly rolling over 10 kilometers giant, wack at ankles while you mostly can't see shit).
After the first few encounters, I didn't die to the putrid tree spirits, but I still got an aneurysm every time I met one and felt "ah, here we go again" while the thing keeps flailing like an autistic kid having a tantrum and you fight to even see what is going on.
I never had an issue with some of the bosses people call hard here, Maliketh took me two tries (both on my first run, and on NG+, he's very punishing if you do something wrong but he's not one of the unreadable enemies), same for Mohg.

Malenia, though. I bonked my head on this for an hour, dropped it, then went to catacombs to get upgrade materials for mimic and cheese it. I skipped the vast majority of open world content in the latter half of the game, she is the only reason I have a +10 spirit ash.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

The guy says it while hating DS2 though, can't take him at face value.

well he said that he still considers DS2 a good game, just worse than DeS or DS1. And his critique video wasn't entirely wrong.

True, but I found the stuff about fighting multiples etc openly absurd when playing DS2 the first time round even before the drama blew up after that hbomberguy video. Seems like it was a sore point for him even years later, mention of DS2 is largely conspicous by its absence in the Demons Souls video posted above. Only brings it up a few times when it's an important transition point for the series relative to what he's talking about.

 

[Lutte]

True, but I found the stuff about fighting multiples etc openly absurd when playing DS2 the first time round even before the drama blew up after that hbomberguy video.

The criticism is unfortunately a little more valid after SOTFS came out. The original DS2 was well balanced in my opinion and it didn't feel bad running around with Guts style ultra greatswords, ie the slower weapons of the game. SOTFS came out with the "more is better" philosophy and added a ton of crap everywhere and did things like having Iron Keep mobs have telepathic aggro and imho it turned a fine game into a trash fire.

I have been deeply unwilling to play STR builds since SOTFS/DS3 and now ER.

 

[d1r]

After playing it some, I have to say Elden Ring is a continuation of From Software moving in the wrong direction, imho. They seem to be caught in this trap, where instead of improving the combat for its own sake, or adding elements their games were always weak in (story, dialogue, peaceful exploration, etc), they are stuck in an infinite loop, racing against players who just play looking for challenge.

This video + newest comments were a fun time yesterday

Really nice video.

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodbourne were passion projects.

The rest of the games were a thing because Bandai wanted them to be a thing.

 

[cvv]

N.B. if you need a cheap laugh look at the state of the steam forums for ER. Been a while since I've seen such an open trash fire of an 'official' game board.

You mean all the "gaem crashes, full of bugs!1!" type of comments? That's p. much a Steam forum standard for all games these days.

 

[Nathir]

Nathir
Yeah, there wasn't that many bosses that took me a lot of retries in my blind NG. Some of the bosses I complain about isn't because I spent time on them but because they were just shit designs. Fire Giant took me at most 5 tries (I didn't count, but it wasn't a lot) but I absolutely despise this kind of fight in From games and find it extremely anti fun (chase a constantly rolling over 10 kilometers giant, wack at ankles while you mostly can't see shit).
After the first few encounters, I didn't die to the putrid tree spirits, but I still got an aneurysm every time I met one and felt "ah, here we go again" while the thing keeps flailing like an autistic kid having a tantrum and you fight to even see what is going on.
I never had an issue with some of the bosses people call hard here, Maliketh took me two tries (both on my first run, and on NG+, he's very punishing if you do something wrong but he's not one of the unreadable enemies), same for Mohg.

Malenia, though. I bonked my head on this for an hour, dropped it, then went to catacombs to get upgrade materials for mimic and cheese it. I skipped the vast majority of open world content in the latter half of the game, she is the only reason I have a +10 spirit ash.

Oh, I agree. I was just trying to say that normies, who don't care about encounter design and have no qualms about using anything available to them, have a lot of ways to cheese or brute force the bosses in this game. For your average normie it's imo an easier game than Dark Souls 2 and 3.

 

[Sunri]

I'm fully against adding difficulty levels to souls games they were always fun to discuss because we are experiencing the same struggle and overcame the same challenges and this game can't be that hard even two normies that don't play this kind of game at my work are halfway through already.

 

[cvv]

I'm fully against adding difficulty levels to souls games they were always fun to discuss because we are experiencing the same struggle and overcame the same challenges and this game can't be that hard even two normies that don't play this kind of game at my work are halfway through already.

Don't forget all this time I'm not talking about beating these games but soloing them. Every FS game except for Sekiro is trivially easy if you're using all the tools in your disposal, including sunbro summons. Simply going through these games has never been the issue.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

N.B. if you need a cheap laugh look at the state of the steam forums for ER. Been a while since I've seen such an open trash fire of an 'official' game board.

You mean all the "gaem crashes, full of bugs!1!" type of comments? That's p. much a Steam forum standard for all games these days.

Nah more the quantity of good old fashioned low I.Q. flamewars

 

[Nathir]

I'm fully against adding difficulty levels to souls games they were always fun to discuss because we are experiencing the same struggle and overcame the same challenges and this game can't be that hard even two normies that don't play this kind of game at my work are halfway through already.

Don't forget all this time I'm not talking about beating these games but soloing them. Every FS game except for Sekiro is trivially easy if you're using all the tools in your disposal, including sunbro summons. Simply going through these games has never been the issue.

Using rivers of blood + moonveil and jumping at bosses is incredibly easy, and is "soloing". Sorry, I don't even know what your original point even was. You want bosses to have less hp/damage/bullshit attacks so you can have an easier time 1v1ing them using the slowest 2-hander available, without using jump attacks???

 

[Lutte]

N.B. if you need a cheap laugh look at the state of the steam forums for ER. Been a while since I've seen such an open trash fire of an 'official' game board.

You mean all the "gaem crashes, full of bugs!1!" type of comments? That's p. much a Steam forum standard for all games these days.

Nah more the quantity of good old fashioned low I.Q. flamewars

I looked it up and one of the first thread I saw is some guy complaining that katanas suck because they are "too slow". Low IQ doesn't even begin to describe those forums, I lost brain cells merely in the process of clicking to open the thread.

 

[LabRat]

-About half the quests still require external guides to finish. Even if you saw you could talk to Ranni as a doll, did you really ask to talk more than twice when all you got was '...' in response both times?

I don't know about the Ranni doll, but I talked to the EVER-BRILLIANT GOLDMASK 30+ times in each location thinking I was going to discover something incredible.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I feel like a broken record repeating this, but in principle, the difficulty problem is easy to solve. Make the game easier, but punish careless play more harshly. Individual enemies or encounters don't need to be difficult, they just need to eat limited resources if you handle them suboptimally. The traditional dungeon-crawler approach, in essence. From a LARP perspective it makes sense too, if I'm an adventurer entering an unknown and dangerous area, I'm going to be very careful and deliberate in my approach. I've seen some people who are otherwise really bad at action games finish DS1 simply by being careful in this way. I don't think they even knew what an i-frame was at the time.

Of course, the problem with that is that the current fanbase will howl with rage at such a difficulty curve. They're fine with bashing their heads against an overtuned boss for many hours, but ask them to actually plan their approach to an encounter, and they'll be screaming about artificial difficulty after the first 5 minutes. See the official Elden Ring reddit threads on the Siofra archers for a case in point.

Look, Miyazaki, I know choosing your preferred diff. option from a roll-down menu is boring and uncool and gaijin...but it works. Unlike your big brain solution that devs wax ecstatic on conferences but that gives most players only two options IMPOSSIBRU and STORY MODE.

Or just add the Champions covenant from DS2 to every game. I don't recall a lot of complaints about that one, and imo the approach of "Join this thing if you want to get fucked in the ass" is very in-line with the Souls spirit. Personally, I started that game as deprived, immediately joined that covenant, and then got completely fucked. It was great.

 

[Silverfish]

ER's version of the Champions Covenant is Holy builds.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Interesting to listen to. Let it run in the background or something.

 

[Lutte]

ER's version of the Champions Covenant is Holy builds.

Holy is a pretty meh element for much of the game, but faith has some really good weapons. Blasphemous Blade, Maliketh, Godslayer Greatsword, Black Knife, you just need to accept to fall into heresy.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

I looked it up and one of the first thread I saw is some guy complaining that katanas suck because they are "too slow". Low IQ doesn't even begin to describe those forums, I lost brain cells merely in the process of clicking to open the thread.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1245620/discussions/0/3278065083969818872/
This one? Pretty sure it's just low effort shitposting. Seems effective tho' since the thread is 12 pages long

95% sure that guy was straight flaming 24/7 based on his posts in other threads. Sadly hammered now, inshallah he died gloriously for all of our sins

Hard to know if there's irony involved or not though given choice cuts like Stop Nefs Bosses for Casuals or POEPLE WHO T BAG DURING DUELS. Primo grade forum dogshit. Can't even tell clearly if the author of the 'Stop Nefs' thread was consistenly shitposting or simply an outright moron.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I looked it up and one of the first thread I saw is some guy complaining that katanas suck because they are "too slow". Low IQ doesn't even begin to describe those forums, I lost brain cells merely in the process of clicking to open the thread.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1245620/discussions/0/3278065083969818872/
This one? Pretty sure it's just low effort shitposting. Seems effective tho' since the thread is 12 pages long

95% sure that guy was straight flaming 24/7 based on his posts in other threads. Sadly hammered now, inshallah he died gloriously for all of our sins

Hard to know if there's irony involved or not though given choice cuts like Stop Nefs Bosses for Casuals or POEPLE WHO T BAG DURING DUELS. Primo grade forum dogshit. Can't even tell clearly if the author of the 'Stop Nefs' thread was consistenly shitposting or simply an outright moron.

I feel like he posted the perfect Codex reply: Nobody care wow

 

[Lutte]

Man, the weapon arts in this game

Someone finally found one that could be thrown on a colossal sword and used to do the same sort of bullying int/faith/arcane can do.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Someone at From really has a hard on for weapon arts. They're so many of them that can become OP with the right equipment or are already OP. But I guess they really wanted to go for a cinematic action feel when using these arts as most of them are spectacular which also goes with the overall design of spectacle offered by the bosses.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Someone at From really has a hard on for weapon arts. They're so many of them that can become OP with the right equipment or are already OP. But I guess they really wanted to go for a cinematic action feel when using these arts as most of them are spectacular which also goes with the overall design of spectacle offered by the bosses.

This is something I think that actually is declining the series due to either trivializing content or being what people think is the only/most viable way of progressing past a certain point due to the insane potential they have + moving away from more grounded combat to anime lazorzfest that started most noticeably in DS3's Ringed City expansion with stuff like the Frayed Blade.

I think some of the weapon arts are cool, especially the things that are special moves like a overhead slam or ground pound, etc. Even some of the magical effects for enchanted weapons can be appropriate and cool, like weapons that self buff or whatever, but I wish they'd leave most of the giant magic effects and aoes to proper casters and people who spec for it. As it is now, it's too much like DS1 pyromancy.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

I looked it up and one of the first thread I saw is some guy complaining that katanas suck because they are "too slow". Low IQ doesn't even begin to describe those forums, I lost brain cells merely in the process of clicking to open the thread.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1245620/discussions/0/3278065083969818872/
This one? Pretty sure it's just low effort shitposting. Seems effective tho' since the thread is 12 pages long

95% sure that guy was straight flaming 24/7 based on his posts in other threads. Sadly hammered now, inshallah he died gloriously for all of our sins

Hard to know if there's irony involved or not though given choice cuts like Stop Nefs Bosses for Casuals or POEPLE WHO T BAG DURING DUELS. Primo grade forum dogshit. Can't even tell clearly if the author of the 'Stop Nefs' thread was consistenly shitposting or simply an outright moron.

I feel like he posted the perfect Codex reply: Nobody care wow

You see he posts something like this and I think I'm watching a master a work but then I see this and realise it might not be a bit.