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

[mediocrepoet]

Stop shitting your pants and git gud at debating.

You would describe your posts as debating? Wow. Sure, you win all the internets. Good job. Move along.

To everyone else, I apologize for my earlier inaccurate PSA.

PSA: Arguing with Porky is like changing a baby's diaper. Sometimes you have to do it, otherwise it hollers and whines until you pay attention to it, but you both come out smelling like shit.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

At the end of the day, it really boils down to handcrafted world vs emergent gameplay. I like handcrafted more, and the games I like (Elden Ring, Morrowind, New Vegas, etc) blow BOTW out of the water on that front. BOTW certainly has great emergent gameplay, but it has little to no varied handcrafted content.

You are completely wrong. BotW has a TON of handcrafted content. And Morrowind does not. All of Morrowind's Points of Interests in the world are copy-pasted and slightly changed to make them "different". Once you have seen one of any type of point of interest (vampire cave, fort, daedra shrine, etc), you've seen them all, because they will just differ slightly in layout and that's it. And giant soul-less settlements that feel like cemeteries because there is no life in them at all, just cardboard wiki NPCs standing or pacing around like automatons.

Meanwhile in BotW, you have tons of unique NPCs and points of interest and stuff to find in the world, which you probably just didn't find because it doesn't seem you know what real exploration is. Did you find the flying dragons that fill the sky and drop those gems or whatever and only appear at certain times of day? Did you find the Gorak playing on a golf course at the bottom of a canyon? Did you find the shrines cleverly hidden underground or on tops of mountains? Did you find the sand desert monster (giant fish)? The isolated island with its own story? Finding the best weapon in the game requires you to explore an enchanted forest. Or to find the best shield, going into a ruined castle. You can find a town to rebuild. Only someone with a totally messed up agenda would even attempt to claim that BotW doesn't have great exploration or tons of unique stuff to find.

You would describe your posts as debating?

Another phrase to describe them would be making you butthurt with extreme prejudice.

PSA: Arguing with Porky is like changing a baby's diaper. Sometimes you have to do it, otherwise it hollers and whines until you pay attention to it, but you both come out smelling like shit.

You've clearly drawn a connection between attempting to argue with me and shit. But I think you have yet to grasp the true nature of this connection. You see, my simple-minded friend, arguing with me exposes your shitty logic to the world, and makes you have to smell it.

 

[Sunri]

Playing Zelda makes you a pedophile.

 

[NJClaw]

 

[Vibalist]

It's funny how divisive this game is, with some calling it a masterpiece and others saying it's absolute garbage.
The funny thing is, I think both camps are right. I think Elden Ring is actually the first game I've played that is both a 10/10 and a big fat 0/10 at the same time.

 

[Kjaska]

Game of the Decade? What?

Maybe if WW3 breaks out and all civilization lies in ruins by the end of this year.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Game of the Decade? What?

Maybe if WW3 breaks out and all civilization lies in ruins by the end of this year.

Well, the way things have been going over the past several years...

Anyway, more like game of the century, am I right?

 

[Child of Malkav]

Game of the Decade? What?

Delirium. Nothing more.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Ok, Porky 1, Fire Giant 0. Took a while to take this motherfucker down, definitely one of the toughest fights in all From Software games, for all the dumbest reasons:.

Well, this commentary should get entertaining soon.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Finished my 2nd playthrough. As my 1st one was focussed around STR/FAI, I wanted to delve into Sorcery this time.

What a bunch of horse shit that was. Just keep distance and nuke. I eventually started using summons and rushing to the end, to get it over with. Very few things felt earned and worthwhile.

I enjoyed learning the Sorcery mechanics, but I doubt I'll ever touch it again on future chars. Melee + Support incantations felt much better to me.

Taking a break now. But looking forward to a future 3rd playthrough -- I've made a bunch of rules for myself to make it as challenging as possible. And I've saved the chad Frenzied Flame ending for last.

Guess I've run out of excuses to avoid ELEX 2...

 

[Cyberarmy]

Guess I've run out of excuses to avoid ELEX 2...

The Chronicles of Myrtana

 

[nimateb]

Killed 3 runeholders, dont feel like playing anymore. This game lacks the focus of the ds series and the mini dungeons sucks, whenever i reach one i google it to see if its worth to go inside. Time to reinstall new vegas because of that thread in the rpg forum

Ok so i plodded on.

I got to the mountaintop, hit an enemy with my large club and did les than 200 damage. So i guess i have to do some of those mediocre dungeons? The asset reuse makes the game feel like a grind.

Anyways, i wanted to finish so i started using the mimic tear. It makes the game a lot easier but i feel my shitty build made everything worse, the large club is slow and doesnt hit very hard one handed so you end up trading.

The elden beast boss made me feel like im fighting an ancient dragon x ray in ash lake, i think from needs to change up some of the designs. I gotta say though, there was something very unnerving about the aesthetics of the fight, i cant put my finger on it. For that alone the boss was cool.

So the game was a 7.5/10 in the end, i rushed through the late game content but i think ill replay it when dlc comes out. I hated that not enough areas were like siofra river in the sense that they made me go like 'wtf is this place, what happened here?', stuff like that motivates me to explore. The combat system has a lot of bullshit but my build was really bad so maybe that was on me

 

[dacencora]

You are completely wrong. BotW has a TON of handcrafted content. And Morrowind does not. All of Morrowind's Points of Interests in the world are copy-pasted and slightly changed to make them "different". Once you have seen one of any type of point of interest (vampire cave, fort, daedra shrine, etc), you've seen them all, because they will just differ slightly in layout and that's it. And giant soul-less settlements that feel like cemeteries because there is no life in them at all, just cardboard wiki NPCs standing or pacing around like automatons.

Meanwhile in BotW, you have tons of unique NPCs and points of interest and stuff to find in the world, which you probably just didn't find because it doesn't seem you know what real exploration is. Did you find the flying dragons that fill the sky and drop those gems or whatever and only appear at certain times of day? Did you find the Gorak playing on a golf course at the bottom of a canyon? Did you find the shrines cleverly hidden underground or on tops of mountains? Did you find the sand desert monster (giant fish)? The isolated island with its own story? Finding the best weapon in the game requires you to explore an enchanted forest. Or to find the best shield, going into a ruined castle. You can find a town to rebuild. Only someone with a totally messed up agenda would even attempt to claim that BotW doesn't have great exploration or tons of unique stuff to find.

BOTW has very little in the way of unique content that was left there by the developer. I’m not sure why you’re trying to argue otherwise, it’s literally the point of the game. They wanted it to be as “wild” as possible. The “fun” in BOTW comes from finding a group of enemies and using the boulder nearby to crush them, or any number of fun/interesting ways to deal with them. In other words, much of the fun in exploring BOTW is based solely on the creativity of the player. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with approach, but it definitely makes it feel more empty than something like Morrowind, that has ancient ruins you can go search, and there are boss fights in those ancient ruins, etc. In BOTW, you have 4 ruins to explore and finding them is not organic at all, it’s heavily cutscene based. The one counter to what I’m saying is Hyrule Castle, and again is why I love that part. If BOTW had less cutscenes tied to the ruins, and/or had more places like Hyrule Castle, I would have liked it much more. The 4 big maze structures were kind of cool, but ultimately empty, and devoid of anything remotely interesting.

Also lol at asking if I found the Master Sword. Yeah man, I found all that shit. The 4 dragons were fairly interesting, but they represent almost all of the interesting content you can find organically. Totally messed up agenda? A strange accusation. Truthfully, I wish I could have liked BOTW as much as you clearly did. It represents a massive disappointment for me. Not only did it lack the elements of traditional 3D Zeldas, it also lacked the elements that I like in open-world games. Also most open-world games that I like are RPGs, and BOTW is not one at all.

Anyways, this has clearly gone off topic, and ultimately it’s so silly to say that BOTW’s open world is superior to Elden Ring’s. Also an interesting accusation to say that either Morrowind or Elden Ring has copy-pasted caves/dungeons given that the shrines in BOTW are LITERALLY copy-paste with absolutely no variety in aesthetic or reward. There’s also nothing to find or explore in the shrines. Outside of the shrines and the cutscene-heavy Divine Beasts, BOTW doesn’t have caves or dungeons to explore.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

This game would've been better if it weren't open-world. The open-world aspects mainly bloat the game and make it inelegant. The most satisfying parts of earlier Souls games were densely and thoughtfully designed, and every time they forgo this, what's left is a janky action game with sparse role-playing. Souls games need untold and unseen things scattered between what players can access to allow a sense of depth that is partially filled out by the player's imagination but the memes about interconnected everything and the presumption of deep intended lore existing behind every npc line/item description that have increasingly become reality encroach on this.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

BOTW has very little in the way of unique content that was left there by the developer.

No...

Is this like a mantra for you now, where the more you repeat it, the more you hope it becomes true? I just gave a bunch of examples in the previous post that show this is demonstrably not true.

I’m not sure why you’re trying to argue otherwise, it’s literally the point of the game. They wanted it to be as “wild” as possible. The “fun” in BOTW comes from finding a group of enemies and using the boulder nearby to crush them, or any number of fun/interesting ways to deal with them. In other words, much of the fun in exploring BOTW is based solely on the creativity of the player.

The fact that BotW gives the player a lot of tools to create emergent gameplay in no way excludes it from having a ton of cool stuff to find in the world. A game can have both you know, and the fact that BotW does is one of the reasons why it's so good.

I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with approach, but it definitely makes it feel more empty than something like Morrowind, that has ancient ruins you can go search, and there are boss fights in those ancient ruins, etc. In BOTW, you have 4 ruins to explore and finding them is not organic at all, it’s heavily cutscene based. The one counter to what I’m saying is Hyrule Castle, and again is why I love that part. If BOTW had less cutscenes tied to the ruins, and/or had more places like Hyrule Castle, I would have liked it much more. The 4 big maze structures were kind of cool, but ultimately empty, and devoid of anything remotely interesting.

Again, you have a very narrow definition of what exploration is. Ruins, dungeons, loot, etc. There are a million games out there that have a ton of this. BotW has exploration in the true sense of the word, there is unique and wondrous stuff to find behind every corner of the game. Including tons of environmental story-telling and piecing together bits and pieces of the world and story that happened in the previous 100 years. Which is WAY more interesting than slogging through samey copy-pasta Morrowind dungeons.

Also an interesting accusation to say that either Morrowind or Elden Ring has copy-pasted caves/dungeons given that the shrines in BOTW are LITERALLY copy-paste with absolutely no variety in aesthetic or reward.

They are not though. They look similar in terms of aesthetics, but each one presents some puzzle to the player, and the puzzles are entirely different for most of them. And all puzzles were interesting, some positively brilliant. Compared to "run through some small dungeon, kill a few enemies, grab loot" of Morrowind, where the dungeon had the same aesthetics and enemies and gameplay as another 40 dungeons of its type.

 

[dacencora]

Meh

 

[NJClaw]

Does anyone remember who made a long post about how fighting the misbegotten & crucible duo at SL1 broke his will to live and proved the game was terribly designed? I'm sure I saw it some time ago, but I can't find it.

 

[Vibalist]

Does anyone else feel like Ashes of War are the only thing that matters on a weapon? I was watching a video today where a guy was ranking rare weapons in ER, and I noticed that he didn't spend a single second talking about the weapons' actual stats, only the Ash of War attached to them. It kind of confirmed a feeling I've had for a while: If weapons don't have some crazy AoE attached to them, damage output kind of doesn't matter, you aren't gonna use it. Which is kind of a shame, as it reduces all weapons to being about one thing.

This also brings me to another point, which is that weapon costumization in general feels bare bones. Many rare weapons come with a specific Ash of War that can't be removed, and I kind of dislike that design decision. Why not just let players attach whatever skill to their weapons they want to? Let us go nuts with the customization instead of reigning us in. Oh, and bring back armor upgrades please.

 

[Kjaska]

Does anyone remember who made a long post about how fighting the misbegotten & crucible duo at SL1 broke his will to live and proved the game was terribly designed? I'm sure I saw it some time ago, but I can't find it.

I think it was toro

 

[Haplo]

Does anyone else feel like Ashes of War are the only thing that matters on a weapon? I was watching a video today where a guy was ranking rare weapons in ER, and I noticed that he didn't spend a single second talking about the weapons' actual stats, only the Ash of War attached to them. It kind of confirmed a feeling I've had for a while: If weapons don't have some crazy AoE attached to them, damage output kind of doesn't matter, you aren't gonna use it. Which is kind of a shame, as it reduces all weapons to being about one thing.

This also brings me to another point, which is that weapon costumization in general feels bare bones. Many rare weapons come with a specific Ash of War that can't be removed, and I kind of dislike that design decision. Why not just let players attach whatever skill to their weapons they want to? Let us go nuts with the customization instead of reigning us in. Oh, and bring back armor upgrades please.

Well I played a little with the Ruins Greatsword with its uber Waves of Destruction.
But 90% of the time I was using "regular" arms (Greatsword, then powerstanced Greatsword & Troll's Golden Sword, finally Watchdog's Greatsword).
Being able to safely annihilate whole enemy groups is sometimes useful and fun for a while, but for my workhorse I always preferred the regular weapons, with customizable damage and Weapon Arts. I frequently switched damage types depending on enemies I have faced. Mostly used Cold and Fire. Sometimes Sacred or Heavy. On some bosses a combo of Cold & Blood even.
Bloodhound Step often gave me confidence and mobility. But I also played a bit with other generic Arts: Hoarfrost Stomp, Waves of Destruction, Flame of the Redmanes, Sacred Blade, Chilling Mist or finally Lion's Claw.

Those weapons with broken unique Weapon Arts usually miss out on this very cool and helpful customization.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Finally ran into the Godskin Duo in Crumbling Fumbling Afazul. Wow, I cannot imagine anyone designing this fight without doing heavy cocaine at the same time. I am trying to do it straight up with melee and no cheese, but it's really not designed for that.

The obvious rule of fighting multiple enemies is to keep moving and re-positioning yourself so that you are fighting only one of them at any given time. That's how I did the Crucible Duo fight and the Valiant Gargoyle duo fights. But in this fight, the space you fight in is small, and the enemy range is insanely high, on top of which they both have ranged attacks, and really long attack combos where you can't just quickly do an exchange and move on.

If they kept the pillars in the room, at least you could use those to screen them, but of course their second phase destroys the pillars. And killing one is not enough since he just respawns until the entire bar is down.

Haven't seen anyone online take them down straight up without some summons or other cheese. Guess I will try a few more times and then also resort to some cheese. Really stupid fight.

 

[NJClaw]

Haven't seen anyone online take them down straight up without some summons or other cheese. Guess I will try a few more times and then also resort to some cheese. Really stupid fight.

The noble (the fat one) is one of the easiest enemies to parry in the game. You just have to watch out for when he tries to out-belly you and for the two long combos where his sword gets surrounded by "white air". Without parrying, sleep, or bleed weapons, it can be a very long fight, but at least the soundtrack is good.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Trolololol... Summoned the NPC right outside the boss fight room, and killed the Godskin Duo on the first fucking try, with like 2-3 flasks. Between me and the NPC spamming attacks, we just stun-locked both those fucks to death in 3 minutes:



And some people here have the nerve to claim ER is a good game. The combat is so trash, the fucking designers put a summon right outside to make up for shit boss design.

I guess it is poetic justice though, me and the NPC did to Godskin duo exactly what they do to the player. Not so tough with two weapons up your ass at any given second, eh...

 

[mediocrepoet]

Finally ran into the Godskin Duo in Crumbling Fumbling Afazul. Wow, I cannot imagine anyone designing this fight without doing heavy cocaine at the same time. I am trying to do it straight up with melee and no cheese, but it's really not designed for that.

The obvious rule of fighting multiple enemies is to keep moving and re-positioning yourself so that you are fighting only one of them at any given time. That's how I did the Crucible Duo fight and the Valiant Gargoyle duo fights. But in this fight, the space you fight in is small, and the enemy range is insanely high, on top of which they both have ranged attacks, and really long attack combos where you can't just quickly do an exchange and move on.

If they kept the pillars in the room, at least you could use those to screen them, but of course their second phase destroys the pillars. And killing one is not enough since he just respawns until the entire bar is down.

Haven't seen anyone online take them down straight up without some summons or other cheese. Guess I will try a few more times and then also resort to some cheese. Really stupid fight.

This is funny, I literally recorded that fight earlier today, solo, no magic, no bleed, etc. I'll upload and post it later just to remind you how badly you suck at gaming, life, and probably everything else. Now quit whining.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Trolololol... Summoned the NPC right outside the boss fight room, and killed the Godskin Duo on the first fucking try, with like 2-3 flasks. Between me and the NPC spamming attacks, we just stun-locked both those fucks to death in 3 minutes:

What kind of loser brags about beating the fight with training wheels like a bitch?