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

[Multidirectional]

Most people here never owned a Dreamcast, if I had to guess..
Anyway, I'm happy to use a gamepad for any game that plays well with it. I don't need to damage my wrists by being a stubborn KB/M-only cuck. They already get enough work during my Starcraft II ladder sessions.

 

[Silverfish]

Most people here never owned a Dreamcast, if I had to guess..

Imagine never playing minigames with your memory card. That could never be me.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Its because of this retarded mindset that we have flight simulators filled with assits so you can play with a mouse when its the inferior peripheral, when compared to a proper joystick.
Playing RTS, Adventure Games, RPGs, FPS, and other similar games, with anything but a mb+kbd is retarded, but its just as retarded to make this peripherals work with every single type of game.

Then they should invent something like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or something.

QQ some more and get triggered.

 

[janior]

^that's one way to speedrun carpal tunnel I guess

 

[Shadowfang]

Child of Malkav that silly, gay joytstick, is still inferior to my thrstmaster 1.16000m joystick + rudder pedals, and would still need aids to be used properly in flight simulators.

QQ some more and get triggered.

But i do cry. I cry at the dumbing down of flight simulators. I cry myself to sleep, each night, thinking of the old past glories.

 

[Efe]

isn't vertical mouse exactly made to prevent carpal tunnel?
how would it be speedrunning?

 

[JarlFrank]

Gotten far enough into the game to get a feel for it and establish a mental map of the world so far. It's pretty great.

I enjoy the open world. I wouldn't say it's better than the Dark Souls approach of a tighter world where each area is basically a megadungeon interconnected with other dungeon-like areas, it's just different. But it allows for a more relaxed approach to playing as you don't have to get gud as much as you do in Dark Souls. When you get rekt, you can just go elsewhere. This is a great driver of exploration, and the easy fast travel allows for effortless backtracking and re-attempting. I've attempted and ran away from several challenges in Limgrave. By now I've beaten most of them, except for that fucking horseman at the beginning (seriously fuck that guy) and the dragon (fuck that one too). I still keep exploring the area and sometimes uncover new stuff I walked past on my first way through.

Found a couple of small dungeons and defeated the bosses there. I expected the dungeons to be a little larger than that, but as side content they're fine as they are. My favorite mini-dungeon yet were the Deathtouched Catacombs, the skeletons were a challenge to deal with and it wasn't as tiny as the others I found up to this point.

I love how there's no handholding. No markers beyond the sites of grace that appear as fast travel points on your map once you touch them, but you have to find them first. And you find them by looking at the landscape and following the golden light. No artificial extraneous markers at all. I'm really happy the devs kept that element of their previous games intact when they went for an open world. This sort of cryptic on-your-own exploration of a big world with zero handholding and lots of cool stuff to find is exactly what I want from an open world game.

At first I was worried the dungeons wouldn't be able to compete with the ones from DS and KF, but then I reached the Stormveil Castle and it's pretty much your average Dark Souls location. Good stuff. It got a little too tough for me so I went out and explored elsewhere again, making a mental note to return later.

I also encountered some sidequests, and realized FromSoft still haven't implemented a journal - so I opened up a .txt document and took my own notes. It's been a long time since a game made me do that. This is a good thing.

A game with this production value having this little handholding and this good of a public reception gives me hope that maybe, someday, open world games will be good again.

 

[Abu Antar]

Poor Jarl, not at his distaste for consoles, but for not having had the experience of braking one in a fit of rage.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'm glad you like it. That mothereffing Tree Sentinel was the bane of my existence for the longest period.
Wait until you fight Crucible Knights. There will be Arschloch, and Scheisse murmured for a long time.

Dragons, I learned to cheese, just stay below them, and hack at their feet. Dodge when you have to. You'll need the horse to close the gap when they fly away.

I didn't care much for the open world. I don't hate it, but I could certainly do without it. As you say, when you get to "legacy" dungeons, the game is at its peak.

I think why a game like this works is because of our time of online. Everything is so easy to look up. On my first run, I basically went in bling. I missed a lot, because I checked a wiki after the fact. I went back to do as much content as I could, and to my (not) surprise, I had missed a lot of things.

There are kids at the school that I work at that know that I play games, and I told them that I played Elden Ring. A few of them actually bought the game, and then went on to play the DaS games, but they preferred the open world. Not surprising, though. That's what they have become used to.

 

[JarlFrank]

I think why a game like this works is because of our time of online. Everything is so easy to look up.

Nah I'm actually trying to go in as blindly as possible. I like the feeling of discovery, getting lost, having to find my bearings, etc. It brings back Morrowind memories.

 

[Abu Antar]

I think why a game like this works is because of our time of online. Everything is so easy to look up.

Nah I'm actually trying to go in as blindly as possible. I like the feeling of discovery, getting lost, having to find my bearings, etc. It brings back Morrowind memories.

For us yeah, I meant more for the general public.

 

[JarlFrank]

The repeated dungeons in Elden Ring would have been better if there was one of each and they were legacy dungeons: one mine, one cave, one catacomb and one Hero's Grave. Slap their best gimmicks together, make it one long dungeon, put a unique boss and the end and job's a good one.

Yeah, the smaller dungeons are the only thing so far that feel formulaic. Everything else manages to feel fresh and unique, but these dungeons are all structured the same to the point you can tell what it's gonna be like as soon as you step inside. It's especially noticeable with tombs because there's usually a locked door you have to find a switch for deeper in the tomb, and behind it is a boss. Every dungeon ends with a mini-boss fight. It's too predictable.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Both the so-called "legacy dungeons" and the underground areas are reminiscent of levels in earlier Souls games, unlike the mini-dungeons and the Open World:

• Castle Morne
• Stormveil Castle
• Ainsel River / Uhl Palace Ruins
• Raya Lucaria Academy
• Caria Manor
• Siofra River
• Nokron Eternal City
• Ainsel River / Nokstella
• The Shaded Castle
• Lake of Rot
• Volcano Manor
• Leyndell proper
• Deeproot Depths
• Subterranean Shunning-Grounds

Perhaps also Farum Azula, Moghwyn Palace, and the Haligtree / Elphael But even without those, these collectively constitute a large portion of Elden Ring's content.

 

[Caim]

The repeated dungeons in Elden Ring would have been better if there was one of each and they were legacy dungeons: one mine, one cave, one catacomb and one Hero's Grave. Slap their best gimmicks together, make it one long dungeon, put a unique boss and the end and job's a good one.

Yeah, the smaller dungeons are the only thing so far that feel formulaic. Everything else manages to feel fresh and unique, but these dungeons are all structured the same to the point you can tell what it's gonna be like as soon as you step inside. It's especially noticeable with tombs because there's usually a locked door you have to find a switch for deeper in the tomb, and behind it is a boss. Every dungeon ends with a mini-boss fight. It's too predictable.

There are a very small number of those with a genuinely interesting gimmick (you can count them on one hand), but for the rest it's mostly copypasta.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Its because of this retarded mindset that we have flight simulators filled with assits so you can play with a mouse when its the inferior peripheral, when compared to a proper joystick.
Playing RTS, Adventure Games, RPGs, FPS, and other similar games, with anything but a mb+kbd is retarded, but its just as retarded to make this peripherals work with every single type of game.

Then they should invent something like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or something.

QQ some more and get triggered.

Asus ROG Chakram has it. I bought this mouse because it has swappable switches. The little stick serves no purpose and it's absurd to think you can actually use it as a joystick while moving the mouse. The only use i got out of it is if use it as a keypad. On the desktop for instance i have volume up and down in the x axis, and show desktop/pause on the y-axis. On games, i usually bind it to weapons or special tools or stuff like that. It's ok for me because i have thick fingers so i can't use those "MMO" keypad kind of mouses as i keep pressing more than one button at the same time so this little stick actually works in giving four extra buttons basically that are out of the way and isolated from the two that are already on the side. But other than that it's a stupid gimmick.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Replayed ds1/2/3 and currently ER with 2-handers and I can now safely say that sword/board is in fact hardmode, not the other way around. Stamina management? How quaint when you could just be Destroying everything in your path. Fun though

 

[Bloodeyes]

Almost two years on and I'm still playing this more than any other game wtf. I made a new level 60 last week. I've always been a strength guy but it turns out dexterity is pretty good.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Now Elden Ring is the greatest game of all time. So we all can rest in peace and close the rpgcodex forums. End of debate.

 

[Caim]

That's coming from the website that's been in hot waters for gaming Twitch, by embedding its streams on its main website so whenever you're looking up where to find some sword or spell in Elden Ring or how to beat a boss you're giving them a view.

 

[Vorark]

Late to the party, but finally beat this behemoth of a game. Despite enjoying it very much, it's another victim of the "From Software curse": a strong first half followed by a middling to disappointing latter one.

Limgrave and Caelid were all interesting to explore, underground zones included. They worked really well in tandem due to the radically different visuals, so you do not feel the inherent repetitiveness of the open world. It also helped that Caelid had new, tougher enemies to encounter. Liurna faltered a bit with vast extensions of nothingness yet it was somewhat redeemed by the small Bloodborne-esque village (could very well have been turned into a legacy dungeon), the Academy and that one hidden passage.

By the time I arrived at the Plateau, the open world had gotten stale and I was ready to wrap the playthrough. If it all ended at the Capital, with optional hidden teleports to Haligtree and Mohgwyn Palace (too short of a level), it would've been a much tighter game; Volcano Manor and Mountaintops could've been axed without much of a loss, maybe Farum Azula too.

I also found boss fight quality to dip during the second half, with too much emphasis on speed, huge combos, AOEs and a billion gfx going on the screen. Maliketh was the turning point since most of the time I couldn't even follow the movements of that skooma-addled cat. I ended up resorting to the mimic crutches for most bosses afterwards since I cannot into twitchy gameplay. Didn't help its AI played better than myself.

Hopefully the DLC will be more focused on legacy dungeons than open world shenanigans because Stormveil Castle, Royal Academy, Haligtree/Elphael, the Capital (including that devious sewer maze) and the underground zones were a blast to explore and some of the best content From has created.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

If it all ended at the Capital,

This is very double really, they could have easily shoved the last third of the game into a DLC and nobody would have noticed a thing. Maybe the mountaintop/Farum Azula/Ash capital should have been super sekrit areas? As is it kinda works like a bag of chips, at some point you are done with them but you just keep eating instead of saving some for later; with chips most people have the sense to blame themselves, with vidya not so much.
Then again, free DLC .
Guess it's mostly a luxury problem in the end.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I like the idea of having only legacy dungeons after the Capital.

Best case scenario is that the DLC would be like that, but i'm 100% certain they'll open that one with another open world area.

 

[Child of Malkav]

It'll probably be 1 or 2 areas with the same structure of content like in the base game: each area with its legacy dungeon, caves, mines, catacombs etc each with its bosses plus some roaming and/or night time boss fights, new NPCs with their quests etc.

 

[Caim]

Keep the mountain as part of some alternate ending (have the snake CONSUME THE VERY GODS), make the Mountaintop something similar in cooperation with the Three Fingers questline, and access the tree directly from the elevator.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It'll probably be 1 or 2 areas with the same structure of content like in the base game: each area with its legacy dungeon, caves, mines, catacombs etc each with its bosses plus some roaming and/or night time boss fights, new NPCs with their quests etc.

I hope it's a desert area or something exotic to the extreme.

I don't want to see snow ever again if it's possible.

That's one way to deal with yet another open world area in a game that has too many already: make it thematically unique at the very least.