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

[cvv]

So, avoiding interacting with the bosses altogether. That's the problem with From bosses these days, they're designed to be cheesed. It's analogous to designing this super intricate level and then giving the player a flying carpet option to ignore it altogether.

Why is everyone exaggerating this subject so much? Summons aren't trivializing fights unless specifically built for it.

It's not an exaggeration, Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything. The only vanilla fight it didn't help with at all was Malenia, she ate all summons for lunch. Everything else ranged between kindda easy to trivial.

And I absolutely agree with Silva 's take, using the Mimic is a baffling, retarded way to beat bosses. There's little difference between that and summoning a twinked-up sunbro and letting him fight the boss for you.

I honestly can't wrap my brain around how people don't see that. Whenever a Youtuber says "you don't have to solo bosses and make the game unnecessarily difficult, just use summons" my head literally explodes. I mean what the actual fuck.

 

[mediocrepoet]

So, avoiding interacting with the bosses altogether. That's the problem with From bosses these days, they're designed to be cheesed. It's analogous to designing this super intricate level and then giving the player a flying carpet option to ignore it altogether.

Why is everyone exaggerating this subject so much? Summons aren't trivializing fights unless specifically built for it.

It's not an exaggeration, Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything. The only vanilla fight it didn't help with at all was Malenia, she ate all summons for lunch. Everything else ranged between kindda easy to trivial.

And I absolutely agree with Silva 's take, using the Mimic is a baffling, retarded way to beat bosses. There's little difference between that and summoning a twinked-up sunbro and letting him fight the boss for you.

I honestly can't wrap my brain around how people don't see that. Whenever a Youtuber says "you don't have to solo bosses and make the game unnecessarily difficult, just use summons" my head literally explodes. I mean what the actual fuck.

There was a video of mimic screwing over Malenia too, but it was a pretty specific setup IIRC and I'm not sure if it would still work since it was a lot closer to release.

Basically just set up a mimic with like one or two OP spells and no ability to do anything else except cast it. Mimic gets unlimited FP.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This isn't even the one I was thinking of, but

Anyway, just set it up with the proper OP shit. (Still from close to release, they nerfed a bunch of stuff including the tear since then.)

 

[Cryomancer]

Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything.

if it's in the game it's to be used.

If Hidetaka Miyazaki din't wanted me to use Mimic, he would't have putted it into the game.

This applies to sorcery, incantations, to eastus, summons, shields, torrent, moonligh greatsword, scarlet rot weapons, scarlet rot weapons in your mimic while you use unlimited mana kahemahema when the boss is distracted, etc. The greatest problem of soulsborn community is that people like to dictate how other people should play their game that they brought.

I like to play this way >


If someone gets their fun picking a broken sword, going SL1 naked, no summons, no torrent, no shield, is their problem.

This "unlimited kamehameha" is not working in the DLC, in fact I'm using much more my Moonlight Greatsword against bosses and melee spells like Adula moonblade instead of using long range spells and even switching from medium to light loadout in some bosses.

 

[cvv]

if it's in the game it's to be used.

I like to play this way >

Then you're doing exactly what Silva said - you're just cheesing stuff with a WIN button.

Yes it's FromSoft, yes their games are good... but maybe not everything is heavenly? Maybe some parts are retarded.

And if the choice is between "smash your head against a boss for hours or press WIN", then it's absolutely is a retarded design is what I'm trying to say.

 

[Cryomancer]

, then it's absolutely is a retarded design is what I'm trying to say.

TBH due the fact that I cheesed a lot of main game bosses, now in the DLC I had a really hard time against Mesmer for eg and died dozens of times against him. IDK how to cheese the bosses in the DLC. They are fast, unpredictable, have nasty combos, hit like a truck, I'm engaging much more them on melee and my Mimic is mostly only useful to give me a distraction to heal.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything.

if it's in the game it's to be used.

If Hidetaka Miyazaki din't wanted me to use Mimic, he would't have putted it into the game.

This applies to sorcery, incantations, to eastus, summons, shields, torrent, moonligh greatsword, scarlet rot weapons, scarlet rot weapons in your mimic while you use unlimited mana kahemahema when the boss is distracted, etc. The greatest problem of soulsborn community is that people like to dictate how other people should play their game that they brought.

I like to play this way >


If someone gets their fun picking a broken sword, going SL1 naked, no summons, no torrent, no shield, is their problem.

This "unlimited kamehameha" is not working in the DLC, in fact I'm using much more my Moonlight Greatsword against bosses and melee spells like Adula moonblade instead of using long range spells and even switching from medium to light loadout in some bosses.

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

 

[Cryomancer]

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

Nope. Is just that I chose to priorize game performance in Simple Screen Recorder and to not disable the "flickering" in nVidia.

My PC runs ER at around 45 FPS.

Benchmark

 

[mediocrepoet]

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

Nope. Is just that I chose to priorize game performance in Simple Screen Recorder and to not disable the "flickering" in nVidia.

My PC runs ER at around 45 FPS.

Benchmark

That's good. I was worried you might get a seizure or something looking at that all the time.

 

[Reinhardt]

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

 

[Lyric Suite]

You defend anything From do no matter how badly it's designed.

But i'm not seeing the bad design. You can argue all you want that long combos or delayed attacks are bad design doesn't mean it's true. Not if it's possible to adapt and overcome (and it is).

I heard all those arguments for the base game and i didn't find a single case where it ended up being actually true.

There is only one bullshit attack in the entirety of Elden Ring and that is Malenia's Waterfowl. It's the ONLY one that is objectively unfair and retarded (the fact the only way to dodge it is to circle around an invisible hitbox pillar is indeed bad design). Everything else was fair game for me and in no way as bad as people made it out to be.

It's like people made up this imaginary threshold in their heads in terms of how difficut combat can be in a game which once crossed it automatically means the game is "badly" designed where as for me it just seems completely arbitrary and made up.

 

[Lyric Suite]

As always, someone is destroying every boss with ease

And didn't even take him a few days.

Every FromSoft game has to go through this retarded cycle of people screeching and moaning but in the end it turns out it wasn't as bad as they made it out to be. I mean fucking hell people were raging at the tutorial boss in Armored Core 6 like it was the next Malenia lmao.

 

[Child of Malkav]

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

Whatever, but these games are not played for their story but the gameplay, world, exploration etc.
Plus you can get summary of the story on YouTube and 37 hours long lore videos.

 

[Reinhardt]

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

Whatever, but these games are not played for their story but the gameplay, world, exploration etc.
Plus you can get summary of the story on YouTube and 37 hours long lore videos.

nah, your option is boring.

 

[Anonona]

Not if it's possible to adapt and overcome (and it is).

Without giving any opinion about ER itself, I find this take misguided. You can certainly adapt and learn the ins and outs of every game, even a bad one. Doesn't magically fix their flaws, the player just learned how to deal with them. Is like saying "I want to be the Guy" is fair because you can learn and adapt to all the traps after falling for them.

Also, for what I gather reading here, on Steam and other websites, I think many people are arguing that adapting to issues like overload of effects and lack of visual clarity, incredible strong tracking, camera issues and strong input readings and gotcha attacks that you must memorize while, at the same time, having a character with very limited mobility, unable to cancel animations and forced to play defensively due to things like stamina constraints and slow attacking animations in such a fast paced game isn't that fun nor satisfying, with the difficulty not being the problem in on itself. Many of these complainings also come from people who actually beat the whole DLC, so is not even a matter of not being able to adapt to the bosses, as they did othewise they couldn't have beaten the game.

Of course, there are still many that just complain about it being hard or not being able to stomp everything with their broken builds, that is true too, I won't negate it, probably the majority of complaints even.

I myself cannot comment as I'm still early on the DLC.

And didn't even take him a few days

I mean, that boss has been so far one of the easiest of the DLC to be honest. Is not like she is very far into the DLC, can easily be your first boss if you take a turn right. Also we are talking about Ongbank, he is not your run of the mill player, wouldn't be surprised if he has already "no-hit" every boss on the DLC. Is like using Donguri as an example of how easy is to combo in a new DMC, most people will take far longer to reach that point of mastery.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Not if it's possible to adapt and overcome (and it is).

Without giving any opinion about ER itself, I find this take misguided. You can certainly adapt and learn the ins and outs of every game, even a bad one. Doesn't magically fix their flaws, the player just learned how to deal with them.

Yeah but in my own experience with the game, i didn't see those "flaws" at all (general shit like "camera issues" don't count because people have been bitching about that since Demon Souls).

If you are struggling to learn a boss, it may "appear" that things are too confusing, or that are moving too fast for you to react. This perception however is entirely subjective. Once you understand what is happening with a given boss, all those "flaws" magically disappear. That has been my experience with the entirety of Elden Ring and if i may so most FromSoft games in general.

I cannot comment on the DLC specifically but i'm seeing the same exact arguments people used to critisize the base game and since i didn't agree with those criticisms, or didn't find them to be valid based on my own experience of the game, i am in doubt about the DLC as well.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Also we are talking about Ongbank, he is not your run of the mill player

Sure, but it shows FromSoft crossed no threshold if he took him a few days to do his usual stuff (i assume he did it butt naked at SL1).

Also, what is the run of the mill player, exactly?

FromSoft games are intended to be difficult. They are NOT meant for the average normie. A lot of the games we cherish in the Codex aren't meant for the average normie either. There's nothing wrong about a game that "excludes" the run of the mill player as a matter of principle. The run of the mill player usually couldn't cope with games with difficult level design like Deus EX or Thief. They couldn't cope with all the stuff they would have to learn to play a complex 4X strategy game or RPG. Many of the concessions FromSoft makes (like summons) aren't there to cater to the run of the mill player. They are intended for the inexperieced player, the assumption being the player would eventually learn to cope with the game on his own. Sekiro doesn't even bother with that.

In my opinion, the "run of the mill" player when it comes to FromSoft game is already intended to be fairly advanced in ability. The baseline player of games like this should be someone who has no problem coping with challenging combat, or complex level design etc. You cannot think of games like this in terms of what the average normie would do. Just because normies flocked to Elden Ring for some strange reason doesn't mean a lot of them had any business playing a game like this.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Spoilers in the above post. I don't know how to spoiler quotes.

there's just a lot of shit going on (and it's really hard to see what's happening).

100% true. The final boss will light your screen up like a fireball for a good 3 seconds straight and there's no way to see where some of the attacks will land. You basically have to hope you're not standing in a pool of get fucked the moment the screen clears. And the best bit? Has zero recovery animation. Long start up but no recovery. He can immediately go into a full combo when he's done. And I know this because part of my strategy was to rush that attack down and hope I had room to survive after my 2 hits.

boss

Didn't like the ending. The idea of taking a character that was already built up, but not really seen, and letting you fight them at the peak of their power is good. Making that non-crazy Radahn is really strange. Godwyn would've made way more sense, especially considering there were already item descriptions in the base game that described how Miquella felt about Godwyn's death. I can't recall any prior indication of a dynamic between Miqeulla and Radahn. Very odd decision all around.

It's community fanservice for one but it also makes sense that he turned to the person who beat and survived his sister. I was disappointed we never got to fight him directly. It would have been an interesting fight.

GAY

For all the shitflinging that happened when the leaks came out, I didn't pick up much of a gay dynamic between Miquella and Radahn. Mohg's cutscene was more homo and now he's no longer a gay pedophile as we found out it was all due to Miquella's charm mind control.

How did no one figure this out before? Oh wait I did.. The mind controlling tranny was mind controlling people!? NEVER!

Never ceases to amaze me. Huge game hasn't even been out for a week yet and people are already finishing it. I'm in full support of hardcore gaming, but goddamn guys. Don't forget to slow down and savor the meal!

From always patch their games heavily to dumb down the difficulty. The DLC took me 30-40 hours with the last 10 dedicated to the final boss or finding upgrade items knowing I wasn't strong enough. So probably 5 hours of serious grinding with 1 of those being "This is doable, I'm tired as fuck but I want him dead NOW!" and playing heavily fatigued and refusing to back down. I did have a soft coop partner where we'd talk on voice chat as we were playing so we'd find stuff and say "oi, go that way next" but never summoned each other or told each other how to beat bosses. But 30-40 feels about right. It'll be closer to 30 when the patches start rolling in.

It's not an exaggeration, Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything. The only vanilla fight it didn't help with at all was Malenia, she ate all summons for lunch. Everything else ranged between kindda easy to trivial.

Mimic doesn't trivialize anything in the DLC unless you build it with the I win buttons (which I don't). Mimics biggest issue is it has the most health and if you put a blessing of Marika on the hot bar then he has double that health. Which makes him the only option to surviving the DLC bosses bullshit and even then he's often dead by the time a fight ends.

My PC runs ER at around 45 FPS.

PC ran base game at 60 fps. Erd drops to 45 due to bad optermization.

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

Highly recommend playing this online without cheating. You really do need the player hunt messages for some stuff. There's things happen behind gestures you have no reason to try there.

Also, for what I gather reading here, on Steam and other websites, I think many people are arguing that adapting to issues like overload of effects and lack of visual clarity, incredible strong tracking, camera issues and strong input readings and gotcha attacks that you must memorize while, at the same time, having a character with very limited mobility, unable to cancel animations and forced to play defensively due to things like stamina constraints and slow attacking animations in such a fast paced game isn't that fun nor satisfying, with the difficulty not being the problem in on itself. Many of these complainings also come from people who actually beat the whole DLC, so is not even a matter of not being able to adapt to the bosses, as they did othewise they couldn't have beaten the game.

There are many attacks that fill your screen with effects and no clear visuals to dodge. You learn to dodge them but how you dodge doesn't make sense because you trial and error everything until it works. Some attacks I couldn't find a proper dodge for. There is strong tracking and it's designed for coop punishing where bosses will 180 and hit a guy running up behind them. It doesn't look dumb as the attacks are all big sweeps but it's clear. Again not Dark souls 2 bad but bad. All the other stuff you've described is fairly accurate. I can adapt, I can beat any boss using a melee only build and I have beaten the DLC and I've thought From needed to tone it way down for games now. From have lost the art of the puzzle boss and so you have 40-50 (or 200 in this case) bosses which all have to build upon their combat. Combat is buckling now and I play on instinct and muscle memory unlike the original Dark souls games where I learned bosses and felt like I was solving a puzzle to dodge their attacks not just rolling at the right time.

Yeah but in my own experience with the game, i didn't see those "flaws" at all (general shit like "camera issues" don't count because people have been bitching about that since Demon Souls).

"It's not a flaw because From don't fix it" this is why you're retarded.

Sure, but it shows FromSoft crossed no threshold if he took him a few days to do his usual stuff (i assume he did it butt naked at SL1).

No, From have always had broken stuff in their games you can exploit to 1 shot bosses or burst them down with a kame hame ha. Being able to do very specific things to beat a boss doesn't mean there isn't a problem with the boss. It's like saying a broken bridge is fine because Aeroplanes exist. I'm not going to fly over a broken bridge, I want to walk over the bridge and see what's on the other side by my own power.

 

[abija]

It's not an exaggeration, Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything. The only vanilla fight it didn't help with at all was Malenia, she ate all summons for lunch. Everything else ranged between kindda easy to trivial.

"Summons" doesn't imply "mimic with high dps character or breaking stagger/debuff application mechanics". That was the whole point.
Most summons are balanced and help just a bit, mostly in giving you some breathing room. Mimic isn't even obviously good, to imply everyone would auto chose it.

 

[cvv]

Mimic isn't even obviously good, to imply everyone would auto chose it.

The first time you try it you immediately understand using anything else would be nerfing yourself.

 

[abija]

Only if you kept trolling for imba tactics online. The lvl 1 mimic at the point you get it is collateral dmg (or at least it was in the intial game, no idea what they changed since then).

 

[Hell Swarm]

Mimic isn't even obviously good, to imply everyone would auto chose it.

The first time you try it you immediately understand using anything else would be nerfing yourself.

Even with the nerf he's still by far the best because he's the most survivable. Without equipping anything on your tool bar he will out tank basically every other enemy because he has invader (i.e. boss) AI and he can be adapted with a shield or suitable damage type. Him using HP to spawn is also a huge upside where you don't need to spec in extra FP to summon like you do Tiche or others.

 

[unseeingeye]

Never ceases to amaze me. Huge game hasn't even been out for a week yet and people are already finishing it. I'm in full support of hardcore gaming, but goddamn guys. Don't forget to slow down and savor the meal!

I feel the same way, though I understand people enjoy the games at different levels for their own reasons. My wife has a friend who finished it on her second day of playing, and another who was stuck on the final boss at the same time. Meanwhile I'd stupidly started new game plus after finishing the game not long after it released, so I had to go through a bunch of content to get to where I could start it. I just ran to grip the two medallions to hit the lift and start the festival to fight Radahn and rushed through Varre's quest to teleport to Mohg, which only took a few hours.

I made it to the expansion area sometime early Saturday morning, and so far I've only finished as much of the first area as I could find. I beat the Dancing Lion and then Rellana, and through exploration managed to reach a few new areas but immediately left for when I am ready to explore them with appropriate attention. I don't play more than 4 or 5 hours a day on average (if I even play at all) so I am certainly going to be behind most people who play more often. But I spend so much more time on exploration and considering the implications of the many artfully placed objects that evoke environmental narratives, pouring over the minutiae of item descriptions and the designs of the many strange denizens and weird environs they inhabit. Encountering the many figures depicted across the horizontal panels in stone relief adorning the massive double doors to Belurat Tower was a marvel I pondered while gazing on it for several minutes before progressing, only to find the interior further decorated in architectural splendor. I spend some time in every area once reasonably cleared of enemies in order to take in the details uninterrupted, where I assume many players consider the area only insofar as it is a means of reaching the next boss fight or new weapon.

 

[cvv]

Never ceases to amaze me. Huge game hasn't even been out for a week yet and people are already finishing it. I'm in full support of hardcore gaming, but goddamn guys. Don't forget to slow down and savor the meal!

My wife has a friend who finished it on her second day of playing

Huh, I guess girls can be no-lifer neckbeards too.

Btw the only way to finish a game like that in two days is to skip 70% of the content and just rush the bosses, ish.

 

[processdaemon]

I used Greatshield Soldiers as much or more than Mimic in the DLC. They have lower survivability so will only get you about 2/3 through most fights (although you can mitigate that with buffs) and don't do any damage really but they are far better at drawing aggro and give you a little breathing room around what I consider the hardest parts of each fight (usually the start and the phase transitions). They were excellent for the Metyr fight because she doesn't aggro immediately so you can buff them uninterrupted, but a bit useless for the final boss (although tbh Mimic wasn't great for that either, mine died about a third in on the run I won).