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

[Halfling Rodeo]

Zelda's lock-on cam has problems, but the button interface which is what I'm talking about is more logical. R3 sucks.

Holding L2 to stay locked on is more annoying than pushing R3. And it takes away a shoulder button you've already conceded is important. Especially in games that use analog triggers so how hard you press them impacts your actions.

I bet you would find even more use then from running backwards and sideways without a target.

No? It would be annoying to block the arrows in Sen's fortress if I moved sidewards while blocking. It sounds like you're convinced Zelda is better than Souls and people pointing out how Zelda is janky as all fuck are being ignored because it doesn't fit your idea.

Ducking, jumping some times melee and weapon swapping are all on the face buttons. I don't know what to tell you if you have a problem with moving your thumb around a controller. Maybe try the Steam deck with it's 4 additional buttons on the grips? (Which I would like to see implemented on controllers but only as programmable buttons not default config ones)

 

[jaekl]

The lockon button being shitty is a "feature" as I've come to realize since they have refused to fix how it whips the camera around away from where you want to look for so long. I can't even imagine a scenario where I would want to recenter the camera where the character is facing, all it does is disorient you and possibly get you killed. With this in mind, I'm sure we can all agree that improvements to the camera, controls or lockon are forbidden in the world of dark souls and there's no point even trying to help these stubborn Japanese fucks fix it.

 

[Ezekiel]

Zelda's lock-on cam has problems, but the button interface which is what I'm talking about is more logical. R3 sucks.

Holding L2 to stay locked on is more annoying than pushing R3.

It's better because it means you will never be LOCKED INTO the targeting system (like the feeling of being tied down by a sticky cover system in a third-person shooter) and you don't have to think binary and will never suddenly turn around and expose your back because your thumb came down by accident or because you were trying to figure out which threat to deal with. Having you hold it mentally reinforces the action you are taking.

And it takes away a shoulder button you've already conceded is important.

You gain three more functions: L1 + forward + attack (thrust or long thrust if you are already only a thrust-only weapon), L1 + right + attack, L1 + left + attack. Worth it. Some good Souls makes of that available trigger, a parry system so effective and simple that it feels like an exploit.

Especially in games that use analog triggers so how hard you press them impacts your actions.

In those games L1 can be used. I prefer L1 anyway, but some controllers have slim L1 and R1 buttons.

No? It would be annoying to block the arrows in Sen's fortress if I moved sidewards while blocking. It sounds like you're convinced Zelda is better than Souls and people pointing out how Zelda is janky as all fuck are being ignored because it doesn't fit your idea.

Ducking, jumping some times melee and weapon swapping are all on the face buttons. I don't know what to tell you if you have a problem with moving your thumb around a controller. Maybe try the Steam deck with it's 4 additional buttons on the grips? (Which I would like to see implemented on controllers but only as programmable buttons not default config ones)

There is no use in blaming me. The shift in game design proves that I'm right. Games had "fixed" cameras and used mainly the face buttons well into the time of two-stick controllers, shooters had lock-on systems and face button to shoot even in the PS2/Gamecube generation and games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas still used the face buttons for throttle/break and shoot. Now every AAA game is either in first-person or third-person with limited field of view and actions have been moved to the shoulders accordingly. God of War reboot, once a series with "fixed" cams, had to assign the attacks to the shoulders because you're already switching back and forth between Circle and camera so much in order to dodge, constantly battling the field of view, having only enough time to move the camera to the most convenient position you can until a second later the enemy leaves the field of view again. Resident Evil moved Shoot to the shoulders as soon as you gained the ability to walk and shoot with the over-the-shoulder cam.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

It's better because it means you will never be LOCKED INTO the targeting system (like the feeling of being tied down by a sticky cover system in a third-person shooter) and you don't have to think binary and will never suddenly turn around and expose your back because your thumb came down by accident or because you were trying to figure out which threat to deal with. Having you hold it mentally reinforces the action you are taking.

I want to be locked into the targeting system without having to use another button held down. I don't like holding ZL while I'm trying to press face buttons which is what Zelda does.

I'm not going to dignify your stupidity by quoting it. I'm aware God of war reboot copied how Souls games work.. because Souls games have become the template for action adventure games while Zelda has zero influence outside of open worlds being blander than ever.

 

[Ezekiel]

God of War didn't copy Souls, it copied games like The Last of Us, whose system traces back to Gears of War and (before that) Kill Switch. God of War just forced a third-person shooter system into a melee action game. If it copied Souls, you would be able to rotate the camera around Kratos and there would be a lock-on system. FromSoftware most likely looked at Zelda when they designed their targeting system for Demon's Souls.

 

[Ezekiel]

Realized the quote chain in post 14,878 was messed up for three hours. Fixed.

Some good Souls makes of that available trigger, a parry system so effective and simple that it feels like an exploit.

And the only way they can think of fixing it is to delay the enemies' attacks, which they've been ABUSING since Bloodborne.

 

[Ezekiel]

Wasted my money. The time when I loved FromSoftware's games is over. If you go back far enough in my post history of my different accounts, you will find so much praise and enthusiasm. Now what they think is challenge is going against what is intuitive, punishing you for dodging when you think you're supposed to. Becomes too much about twitch reflexes, which isn't what drew me to their games. At least I will always have the first three Souls.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Malenia not being an ER boss originally makes sense and is in tune with stuff I was discussing before in this thread or in another FS one, can't remember. Malenia is envisioned conceptually as the "final boss" of Elden Ring in the sense you get a sense of closure when you're done with her, coupled of course with the fact that she was one of the postergirls for the marketing campaign. There's some messy parts in the lore and the fact that they cut the entire chaos flame questlines (with Kale being a key player) kinda killed the game thematically speaking.

Combat took a hit in the sense that it relies way too much in ashes of war and stuff of the sort. They are leaning too much into ARPG mechanics instead of more traditional rpg ones.

Also, did you knew that in DS2 your lock on range is influenced by the lighting of the area you're in?

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Malenia not being an ER boss originally makes sense and is in tune with stuff I was discussing before in this thread or in another FS one, can't remember. Malenia is envisioned conceptually as the "final boss" of Elden Ring in the sense you get a sense of closure when you're done with her, coupled of course with the fact that she was one of the postergirls for the marketing campaign. There's some messy parts in the lore and the fact that they cut the entire chaos flame questlines (with Kale being a key player) kinda killed the game thematically speaking.

Combat took a hit in the sense that it relies way too much in ashes of war and stuff of the sort. They are leaning too much into ARPG mechanics instead of more traditional rpg ones.

Also, did you knew that in DS2 your lock on range is influenced by the lighting of the area you're in?

From constantly recycle so it doesn't specifically need to have been a Sekiro boss to have content from it.

That happens in dark souls 1 as well.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Wouldn't Souls multiplayer make more sense in a science fiction setting, where the adventure is played in an infinite number of parallel universes, with some technobabble reason for them intersecting?

That's literally just a personal preference on your part. You prefer some BS sciencey explanation instead of, the gods are dying and reality itself is unraveling. Meh.

Even worse, he's preferring the "BS sciencey explanation" about parallel universes that has just been utilized by Bethesda Softworks for Starfield.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Wouldn't Souls multiplayer make more sense in a science fiction setting, where the adventure is played in an infinite number of parallel universes, with some technobabble reason for them intersecting?

That's literally just a personal preference on your part. You prefer some BS sciencey explanation instead of, the gods are dying and reality itself is unraveling. Meh.

Even worse, he's preferring the "BS sciencey explanation" about parallel universes that has just been utilized by Bethesda Softworks for Starfield.

Weird way to find Emil's Codex account.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Also, did you knew that in DS2 your lock on range is influenced by the lighting of the area you're in?

It also depends on what weapon/spell you use and what enemy your target, and does this in some of their other games as well (I think ER is one of them.) I hate it. Makes a ton of spells a waste of time, makes archery suddenly pointless in places it should be great, makes combat with a lot of bosses/enemies infuriating as your lockon will randomly break while you're trying to attack them. Just make the lockon range the same range as your weapon, ffs. Whoever thought souls gameplay should involve trying to fucking noscope a god damned ninja with a projectile that takes a full second to fire and another to travel 20 feet deserves a kick in the nuts.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Whoever thought souls gameplay should involve trying to fucking noscope a god damned ninja with a projectile that takes a full second to fire and another to travel 20 feet deserves a kick in the nuts.

Sorry sweetie, there's no sniping in souls at all. Almost every enemy reacts to being shot at and dodges to the side after the tutorial areas. If they don't they probably have a shield and you're doing 5 damage with a maxed out weapon.

 

[Cheesedragon117]

Still haven't bought it, still think about it sometimes.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Armor

Fashion Souls sucks. All so bland. Miss the sex-specific designs in Demon's Souls, how Fluted, Leather, Black Leather, Plated all had different designs for the women, who seemed to have slightly different shoulders if I remember correctly. Why are there so many long, heavy-looking rags in modern Souls? Rags! Tiny heads still pisses me off too. Proportions are completely fucked. Your faces are best... not seen.

Another thing to note is how fucked the progression is. There are four armor sets who share the rank of third highest physical defense in the game. This is how you get them:

- Banished Knight (pieces drom from very early game enemies that are a bit tough at that point)
- Tree Sentinel (found as a reward in a tricky midgame dungeon)
- General Radahn Set (bought after defeating a boss towards the midgame for 36k, just over half of what you get for beating that boss)
- Veteran Set (bought after defeating a lategame boss for 18k, a fifth of what said boss drops)

The most powerful set can only be gotten after beating an enemy you encounter during a quest, and the second most powerful requires grinding a tough enemy in the midgame.

Dark Souls 2 was pretty terrible at this, with one of the worst offenders being the Monstary Set (low drop chance that appears on a specific phantom that appears only once, so have fun with ascetics and hope for the best.

Elden Ring can be pretty terrible as well: if you want something like the Celebrant's Rib-Rake (a spear with underwhelming damage that as a special effect gives you 10 runes ber hit you land) you're looking at a base drop rate of 0.5%. Reminder that your drop rate starts at 100% of the base rate plus 1 per level of Arcane, plus 50 for the fowl foot and plus 75 for the ring (which you won't get until you head for the Snowfield).

So have fun!

You're missing the point. The drop rate is so low so that

1. Your inventory doesn't get spammed with unwanted weapons like in previous games.
2. You are rewarded with a novel (but often useless) weapon as payment for target farming certain enemies, or just randomly as an interesting occurrence. I like the extra sense of discovery and accomplishment it adds. I get more excited in the Colosseum when I see a Grossmesser or a Noble's Slender Sword than any of the terrible boss weapons or "Legendary" weapons, because I know that player had to spend some real time and a bit of effort to make that weapon a part of their build.

The DS2 example, though? I can't defend that. Rare gear drops from nonrespawners that are potentially permanently missable if you run out of Bonfire Ascetics? That's just sadism, and not the good kind.

Wouldn't Souls multiplayer make more sense in a science fiction setting, where the adventure is played in an infinite number of parallel universes, with some technobabble reason for them intersecting?

That's literally just a personal preference on your part. You prefer some BS sciencey explanation instead of, the gods are dying and reality itself is unraveling. Meh.

Even worse, he's preferring the "BS sciencey explanation" about parallel universes that has just been utilized by Bethesda Softworks for Starfield.

No, it's even worse than that, because that copout excuse has been used is every piece of fiction ever for the past 10 years. Starfield isn't even a notable or particularly egregious example.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

I wanted to do a play through of Elden Ring with the mounted guys big ass sword. After 30 minutes of farming them and not getting one I said fuck it and didn't do a play through at all. You can make loot less common but actual rarity needs to fuck off. If you can't farm it within 20 minutes there's a problem. Your game isn't made better by wasting more time doing something you don't want to do on loop for the reward you want.

 

[Ezekiel]

Would like to see more realistic behavior. If I've already killed three of the wolves, why is the last one still attacking?

Don't know what that guy was talking about. Lock-on visibility is poor because the cam looks down more at the ground the closer to the enemy you are.

Need to check what file I need to edit to remove the smeary chromatic aberration.

 

[Alrik]

Still haven't bought it, still think about it sometimes.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Armor

Fashion Souls sucks. All so bland. Miss the sex-specific designs in Demon's Souls, how Fluted, Leather, Black Leather, Plated all had different designs for the women, who seemed to have slightly different shoulders if I remember correctly. Why are there so many long, heavy-looking rags in modern Souls? Rags! Tiny heads still pisses me off too. Proportions are completely fucked. Your faces are best... not seen.

Another thing to note is how fucked the progression is. There are four armor sets who share the rank of third highest physical defense in the game. This is how you get them:

- Banished Knight (pieces drom from very early game enemies that are a bit tough at that point)
- Tree Sentinel (found as a reward in a tricky midgame dungeon)
- General Radahn Set (bought after defeating a boss towards the midgame for 36k, just over half of what you get for beating that boss)
- Veteran Set (bought after defeating a lategame boss for 18k, a fifth of what said boss drops)

The most powerful set can only be gotten after beating an enemy you encounter during a quest, and the second most powerful requires grinding a tough enemy in the midgame.

Dark Souls 2 was pretty terrible at this, with one of the worst offenders being the Monstary Set (low drop chance that appears on a specific phantom that appears only once, so have fun with ascetics and hope for the best.

Elden Ring can be pretty terrible as well: if you want something like the Celebrant's Rib-Rake (a spear with underwhelming damage that as a special effect gives you 10 runes ber hit you land) you're looking at a base drop rate of 0.5%. Reminder that your drop rate starts at 100% of the base rate plus 1 per level of Arcane, plus 50 for the fowl foot and plus 75 for the ring (which you won't get until you head for the Snowfield).

So have fun!

You're missing the point. The drop rate is so low so that

1. Your inventory doesn't get spammed with unwanted weapons like in previous games.
2. You are rewarded with a novel (but often useless) weapon as payment for target farming certain enemies, or just randomly as an interesting occurrence. I like the extra sense of discovery and accomplishment it adds. I get more excited in the Colosseum when I see a Grossmesser or a Noble's Slender Sword than any of the terrible boss weapons or "Legendary" weapons, because I know that player had to spend some real time and a bit of effort to make that weapon a part of their build.

The DS2 example, though? I can't defend that. Rare gear drops from nonrespawners that are potentially permanently missable if you run out of Bonfire Ascetics? That's just sadism, and not the good kind.

Wouldn't Souls multiplayer make more sense in a science fiction setting, where the adventure is played in an infinite number of parallel universes, with some technobabble reason for them intersecting?

That's literally just a personal preference on your part. You prefer some BS sciencey explanation instead of, the gods are dying and reality itself is unraveling. Meh.

Even worse, he's preferring the "BS sciencey explanation" about parallel universes that has just been utilized by Bethesda Softworks for Starfield.

No, it's even worse than that, because that copout excuse has been used is every piece of fiction ever for the past 10 years. Starfield isn't even a notable or particularly egregious example.

In regard to 1. it is easily fixed by designating one enemy as a guaranteed drop for the first kill and either keeping the drop rate low or preferably doing away with it altogether since the only reasons for multiples are powerstancing and hardswapping which are dumb concepts anyway. I don't think the benefits of 2. outweigh the tedium of farming a weapon you want after you know how to get it. You can't know whether a drop is designated or random when you stumble upon it anyway.

 

[Bendu]

"How was it back in 2009 farming for a pure bladestone?"

Spoiler

 

[Dadd]

"How was it back in 2009 farming for a pure bladestone?"

I never found one.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

"How was it back in 2009 farming for a pure bladestone?"

I never found one.

I'm with you brother. I spent hours trying and in the end..

 

[Silverfish]

Honestly, I don't think I've ever fully upgraded any weapon in Demon's Souls and just tried to lean on damage types / weaknesses to make up the difference.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I don't think you were ever intended to find everything in one playthrough. All the Souls were clearly designed to give you the sense there was always something new to discover with each playthrough FromSoft didn't count on there being a massive amount of autists who wanted to do everything and collect every useless piece of gear in one swoop.

There's some "rare" stuff in Elden Ring that's so obviously pointless it's clear you weren't meant to care if you got it or not and was there only to add a bit of random flavor. Souls is not Diablo you don't NEED to farm for gear to progress.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

There's some "rare" stuff in Elden Ring that's so obviously pointless it's clear you weren't meant to care if you got it or not and was there only to add a bit of random flavor. Souls is not Diablo you don't NEED to farm for gear to progress.

Yes and No. You don't need to farm specific gear but you may need to farm upgrade material. You can beat the game at SL1 with an unupgraded broken straight sword but that's such a fringe case. While you can easily end up needing to farm a few dark wraiths or souls to buy upgrade material if you miss some earlier. ER is especially bad with this kind of thing since there's so many flask upgrades but they're all over the map with nothing in between any of them worth doing before you have a decent sized flask.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Elden Boring

 

[Scyrito]

Late to the party on this one, but finally bit the bullet on ER during the Steam sale since it was -40% (coming in at 35 euro-shekels). Was a mixed bag to say the least, for context I'm one of those fags who loves the first Dark Souls and thinks DS3 was a considerable decline due to going more twitchy action route with constant rolling.

ER is like the Superbowl of roll-fests, everything is hyper-aggressive and has at minimum a 5 attack chain that you HAVE to dodge. Gets particularly tiresome at the late-game boss rush Malekith -> Godfrey/Horah Louis Theroux -> Radagon/Elden Beast. By the end I was just ready for the game to be over. Bosses having a devastating combo is totally fine, but when everyone has 3-4 different ones with "fuck you" delays and optional combo-extenders it loses its luster fast. Back in the olden days Manus was a great fight and his ape-shit combo is "fondly" remembered, that fight wouldn't have been better or more memorable if he had 3 other combos with some roll-catching delays (granted he has ONE delay but it's on a single downward smash, not at the end of a 7-hitter) and other fuckery.

On the other hand, I did have great fun exploring the Legacy dungeons. Fromsoft can still design great levels. Personal favorites were Stormveil Castle, Raya Lucaria and especially The Royal Capital.

The open world was whatever, didnt really add much to the game. Catacombs and mines were just copy-pastes made to house upgrade materials. Castles and Forts were pretty good, shorter spurts of a level are a decent addition to Fromsoft formula.

There seems to be a shitload of build variety, I just stuck with my Glintblade Phalanx ash (does good poise damage) on Knight's Greatsword. Think I'll wait a few weeks and start another playthrough to do more experimenting. Though I will probably just consider the game finished at the end of the Royal Capital to skip the low-effort endgame.

Though looking at some ER shit on the tubes and whatnot, it seems the "meta" is powerstancing Ultra Greatswords and spamming jump attacks. Which looks fucking retarded.

Overall a good game tbh, could have been great with some restraint from the devs and cutting some of the fat.