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

[Hell Swarm]

It seems FromSoft has more faith in the average player than you do. You want to compel people to go through a forced progression, where as FromSoft just says: here's the game, do whatever the hell you want. Wanna ruin it for yourself? Be my guest who cares.

Not true any more. Every souls games after Demon's souls has fail safes built in to stop you ruining your game. And even Demon's souls won't let you kill the maiden.

Given that summons have been there from the very beginning, and seeing nobody had an issue with this system despite the fact it has been present in every modern FromSoft game from Demon Souls to Elden Ring with the exception of Sekiro (even Bloodborne from what i understand had them, though i think they were NPC summons?), i'd say you are a little late with this complaint since shit has been proven to work just fine for years.

That's where your wrong bucko! Right from the start many were complaining about newbies using summons to beat bosses they couldn't do themselves. It was considered bad form and looked down upon greatly. It wasn't until Solaire fanboys started to wank over how great they are where it became a big problem and a bunch of reddits started trying to make themselves e famous for doing it.

I'll also remind you Demon's souls was a limited release game. The amount of summons you would find was very small due to low player count/server and it required you to open yourself up to both tendency mechanics while making some bosses harder like the blind hero. There was a risk/reward to summoning coop partners and they were almost always summoned at the start of the level not right at the boss fog door because you popped a humanity opening up PvP for all of 10 seconds before you walked in the fog gate. Dark souls eased off on this a little by dropping world tendencies and making bonfires closer to bosses but still had server issues where it could be difficult to find summon signs and fans modded shit so they could summon with their friends. Which was never the intended use of the mechanic and clearly breaks PvP to heavily favour the gank squads which eventually killed Dark souls multiplayer.

I recall you never played Demon's souls, but I can tell you Elden rings' coop looks nothing like Demon's souls did. There is always someone online to carry you, the players are using way more powerful builds and they don't have to get you through the level safely or risk you facing an even harder game world. All the risk is completely gone now and that's not in the spirit of souls games. It's dumbed down for normalfags like yourself.

If FromSoft ever decides to dumb down their games for the sake of making things easier for normies, i'd be first in line to ditch this company for good.

They already did. Spirit ashes is arguably one of those ways and there's plenty of examples of difficulty being shifted away from. Maybe you didn't see all the bonfires in day souls 3. That's dumbing down.

For someone starting with Elden ring this is an obviously stupid decision that only artificially inflates the difficulty. For a long time player this is just how its always been and the new player just needs to "git gud".

It's always been a complaint after demon's souls. The camera has been broken since day 1 and From have no interest in fixing it. And you have fanboys like LS defending everything they do because fixing problem things is just not what From want to do. The fanbase is rapid because most of them have built their identity around le hardcore gamer and dark souls validates them in ways no sane person could even comprehend.

 

[smaug]

The Co-op summoning mechanic of dark souls is easily my favorite for how simple and fun it is.

I wish they had some optional dungeons which were designed around co-op difficulty explicitly.

 

[Silverfish]

Except instead of going 1-3 through 8-3 you handed the controller to someone over the internet who never speaks to you and beats all those levels for you. Now how the fuck are you supposed to do 8-4?

By summoning someone else.

 

[Skinwalker]

It's always been a complaint after demon's souls. The camera has been broken since day 1 and From have no interest in fixing it. And you have fanboys like LS defending everything they do because fixing problem things is just not what From want to do. The fanbase is rapid because most of them have built their identity around le hardcore gamer and dark souls validates them in ways no sane person could even comprehend.

Except the camera is fine and there's no need to do a ridiculous zoom-out to fit the entire giant into the frame. Why the fuck would you even want to do that? There are occasional moments when the camera locks on to the wrong part of the giant or has a freak-out while trying to track a fast-moving target, but those are rare.

Literally had next to zero problems fighting trolls and giants in Elden Ring. Maybe you're just a butthurt scrub, lol.

 

[Bloodeyes]

More than two years and I'm still at it. This guy is a str/arc build for level 200:

 

[Cheesedragon117]

You can hardly call anything above RL 150+ a "build" since you have so many stat points for everything. The only thing you're building for that high up is the funky three-stat-scaling weapons and the Prince of Death's Staff, which only becomes the best sorcery staff at 80/80 INT/FTH.

Interesting use of poison, although I am a tad saddened to still see the dual Naginatas at such a high level, when you have so many options. It seems the Tarnished still do not tire of their obeisance to the Two Fingers -er, rather, the "meta". Whatever gets you the gank spank, I guess.

Also, I noticed you buff with Assassin's Gambit and Unseen Form one after the other. You know those are the same effect, right? They do the exact same thing, same duration, and overwrite each other, albeit the Ash of War also gives silent footsteps but at the cost of health.

 

[Bloodeyes]

You can hardly call anything above RL 150+ a "build" since you have so many stat points for everything. The only thing you're building for that high up is the funky three-stat-scaling weapons and the Prince of Death's Staff, which only becomes the best sorcery staff at 80/80 INT/FTH.

Interesting use of poison, although I am a tad saddened to still see the dual Naginatas at such a high level, when you have so many options. It seems the Tarnished still do not tire of their obeisance to the Two Fingers -er, rather, the "meta". Whatever gets you the gank spank, I guess.

Also, I noticed you buff with Assassin's Gambit and Unseen Form one after the other. You know those are the same effect, right? They do the exact same thing, same duration, and overwrite each other, albeit the Ash of War also gives silent footsteps but at the cost of health.

Wrong about the builds. An optimal 200 is terrifying. Its still a build, just a more complete build. If you know what you're doing none of those 200 level will be wasted. This one doesn't use many dual scaling weapons. It uses blood affinity weapons that scale well with str to maintain very high AR while doing scary amounts of bleed build up. He has many tools to make him versatile and adaptable while still being focused on hyper armor trading. Status, high damage and excellent tankiness make him win trades most every time. He's a brawler, and every one of his 200 levels supports that.

I've made a few of level 200 builds and none of them have used PoD staff yet. I've done str/int, quality, str/arc, str/fth. All brawling bonk builds. There are different approaches to building a 200 and more that you can do than just adding AR. Carian knight swords and blasphemous blade are very good at this level, but there's other approaches you can take. Rather than adding AR I add stamina and equip load because that helps me more than AR after a point.

As for the nagis, those guys had blues on and killed a red right as I was coming in. This isn't my first rodeo. I knew when I killed his phantom he was going to play passive until reinforcements arrived. After two years even the blues are often trained to go so there was a decent chance he could have turned that around and absolutely shit on me if he got a good one. I have a gargoyle's halberd for a chase down as well as nagis. I use that instead if I don't want to get blocked. IDGAF if gankers block me.

Assasins gambit and unseen form stack. As in one reduces lock on range and both together removes the ability to lock on at all. Its 30 seconds where you can fight without stars of ruin, swarm of flies, fallingstar beast jaw etc being spammed from off your screen, which every team of remotely competent gankers will do.

Edit: I got a bit triggered by you saying my magestic bullgoat is not a build. I've spent the better part of a week refining him and tweaking stats, equipment etc.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The Co-op summoning mechanic of dark souls is easily my favorite for how simple and fun it is.

I wish they had some optional dungeons which were designed around co-op difficulty explicitly.

They did in DS2. Each zone in the DLCs had an area designed specifically for co-op. People screetched about them because they tried to do them solo lmao.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It's always been a complaint after demon's souls. The camera has been broken since day 1 and From have no interest in fixing it. And you have fanboys like LS defending everything they do because fixing problem things is just not what From want to do. The fanbase is rapid because most of them have built their identity around le hardcore gamer and dark souls validates them in ways no sane person could even comprehend.

Except the camera is fine and there's no need to do a ridiculous zoom-out to fit the entire giant into the frame. Why the fuck would you even want to do that? There are occasional moments when the camera locks on to the wrong part of the giant or has a freak-out while trying to track a fast-moving target, but those are rare.

Literally had next to zero problems fighting trolls and giants in Elden Ring. Maybe you're just a butthurt scrub, lol.

They are just grasping at straws at this point.

Summon mechanic doesn't affect your personal play who gives a crap if other people abuse them. It's their game, their problem.

Camera and lock on mechanic can be janky at the times but it's rarely an issue. You got enemies like the Ulcerated Tree Spirit which are intentionally designed to take advantage of the fact the camera can be confusing on large enemies as part of its "challenge". Ultimately, he isn't actually that hard to read once you figure him out. I'm not saying there aren't problems with large enemies that could recieve some attention. It's annoying for instance that sometimes you can't seem to hit them even though their size is gargantuan. And i already mentioned how truly janky it was to see dragons get stuck in the map or disappear after flying away too far etc. Yes, those are genuine problems but they don't define the entire combat system and don't apply to every single enemy.

Also notice that acording to this people, FromSoft games are simultanously getting easier and more popamole but also unreasonably harder. And they say this without being aware of the contradiction. So Elden Ring is both too obscure and hard to grasp but also too easy, because of summons (optional), or spirit ashes (also optional).

 

[Silverfish]

Moreover, they ignore a big part of the series' appeal, that being subsequent playthroughs. Yeah, you can (and should) abuse summons, spirit ashes, Moonveil, etc. on an initial run, but that doesn't preclude you from becoming a tryhard later on. The first time I played Dark Souls, I abused Frampt buying certain items for more than they cost from vendors to artificially inflate my soul level. The third time I played it, I stayed at soul level 1.

 

[processdaemon]

Moreover, they ignore a big part of the series' appeal, that being subsequent playthroughs. Yeah, you can (and should) abuse summons, spirit ashes, Moonveil, etc. on an initial run, but that doesn't preclude you from becoming a tryhard later on. The first time I played Dark Souls, I abused Frampt buying certain items for more than they cost from vendors to artificially inflate my soul level. The third time I played it, I stayed at soul level 1.

Yeah, I've never summoned other players in a FS game but I enjoyed playing around with spirit ashes on my first playthrough of ER, the meta summons are gamebreaking but a lot of the others are just fun to have around (like the jellyfish or the soldjars of fortune). My second run was summonless but I kind of missed them to be honest.

 

[Hell Swarm]

You got enemies like the Ulcerated Tree Spirit which are intentionally designed to take advantage of the fact the camera can be confusing on large enemies as part of its "challenge".

You seriously need to take a step back and consider what you're defending here. When your argument is "From know it's broken and it's an intended gameplay mechanic" you're fanboying so hard you're about to combine Soul of Cinder with Pikachu for your comic. This shit is not acceptable no matter what. If your camera shows nothing but a foot when you're fighting a boss you need to redesign your boss.

Yeah, I've never summoned other players in a FS game but I enjoyed playing around with spirit ashes on my first playthrough of ER, the meta summons are gamebreaking but a lot of the others are just fun to have around (like the jellyfish or the soldjars of fortune). My second run was summonless but I kind of missed them to be honest.

Summon ashes are great and it's an obviously intended mechanic. That's different to faggots from Reddit like Let me solo her who spent hours every night getting people through a boss and tried to get efamous for it. Player summoning should have been locked to NG+ and the boss AI needed a total rework to deal with multiple players.

 

[Lyric Suite]

This shit is not acceptable no matter what. If your camera shows nothing but a foot when you're fighting a boss you need to redesign your boss.

I don't understand what you expect them to do. It's a giant enemy of course up close all you gonna see is their crotch. This is particularly the case with the DS2 dragon you are showing which was supposed to be a super ancient dragon so they made him extra large for lore reasons.

As for the Elden Ring dragons, it's not actually true all you can do is go under their dicks and hit them in the shins. Their weak point is actually their snout which you can exploit to do a ton of damage to them:



Fortissax is obviously designed to be a dick on purpose, but his snout is still a viable target:

 

[Child of Malkav]

Sekiro zoomed out the camera when fighting large enemies.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It still zoomed back in during their attacks:



Sekiro has only a tiny fraction of the options you get in Souls that's likely why they were able to tune it more perfectly.

The overtuning of Sekiro btw made it harder to fight multiple opponents. The double monke fight stressed me out way more than anything in Elden Ring.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Sekiro zoomed out the camera when fighting large enemies.

I think Bed of Chaos does as well. But this is From, every time they fix a problem they revert it next game. So you end up with half broken shit every where.

Farming grass is annoying lets make Estus > Estus and some healing items > lol blood viles, time to farm again! > Estus and 10 different healing items to pop!

 

[Child of Malkav]

It still zoomed back in during their attacks:

Well they're still halfway there. Maybe in the game they'll figure out this alien technology.

 

[Skinwalker]

Am I the only one who has always played every souls game with the multiplayer turned off?

 

[Cryomancer]

Or ... You can KAHEHAMEHA him and end him in about 20 sec

Am I the only one who has always played every souls game with the multiplayer turned off?

I like invade and being invaded. I just tunned it down in DS3 cuz I din't liked PvP in DS3.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The multiplayer in DS1 was one of my favored things in the game. Not the way it worked as such, but how it was integraded into the world. I never saw anything like that before.

Over the years i got slightly jaded because i started to pay attention more to how it was done and to the meta. In that sense, DS1 still remains my favored multiplayer experience in this series just because i was new to the experience. The first time i got invaded i didn't even have a clue of what was happening.

BTW, in terms of integration of the multplayer experience with the world of the game, i really missed covenants in Elden Ring.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Covenants were broken since their inception and it's a fucking miracle From decided to give up on them instead of dragging them along.

 

[Skinwalker]

I loved joining the Cathedral of the Deep covenant from a dead corpse that's found after killing the covenant leader (Sulli) and right before killing the covenant deity (Aldritch). Both of which are mandatory bosses.

Makes perfect sense!

 

[Lutte]

I don't understand what you expect them to do. It's a giant enemy of course up close all you gonna see is their crotch

You need to play a deeper repertoire of action games so that you can have an informed opinion on how things can be designed.



Here's a proper camera system.

And here's how to not do it, in the game that probably had in fact the best camera of all From's games (to compare a smilarly sized boss, since there's no dragon to fight in DMC5)



I love From Software games (ER a lot less from the repetitive open world elements, still has its good sides tho) but... they have made no major mechanical improvements in years. The jank that was normal and excusable in their first attempts at making action games became less and less tolerable as the studio became more experienced and grew sizably. They are not the studio that could have gone bankrupt, rebooting a failed game bringing a new director during Demon's Souls. They are the studio making games that went above the 10 million copies sold bar multiple times.

This isn't a "the game is impossible for me" whine. I've done all of it.

Honestly, it feels like From is unable to improve. All they've done over the years is hasten the pace of combat in their Souls games and add a few gimmicks (trick weapons in bloodborne, weapon arts in DS3, ashes of war in elden ring), while continuing to basically just make the same game again and again with little addition to mechanical depth or improvement of implementation (camera, handling of input, engine still riddled with frame pacing issue, control mapping schemes so that maybe using more than one ability like the various spells doesn't depend on switching back and forth in a list? see also: how it's done on Dragon's Dogma etc)

If they also go full on making nothing but open sores games because open sores sell even better after making Elden Ring I'm losing interest.

 

[kites]

I’m choosing to be fabulously optimistic for their future, they didn’t evolve much since DS but holding their own and recently entering a new level of holy money/studio space/tech.. I don’t expect a sea-change with the ER dlc but there has to be something notable after.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

There is no jank. The combat system is pretty much perfect imo. The problem is they keep designing bosses and uber enemies that don't mesh with the combat. They feel like they were designed for a game with faster, more flashy combat. It's been a bad habit ever since DkS3. Bloodborne was the only game to do it right with this style of boss fight. And Sekiro to a lesser extent I guess.

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2 didn't have this problem at all.