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

[Hell Swarm]

The reduction as done from your final defense but the way individual defenses stack up is deceptive because its not purely additive.

Its right at 3:40 mark, he straight up tells you that due to how the game calculates damage reduction a numerical increase of 16 points can actually be more than 20 points. Hence giving people a misleading idea of what the negation values actually do for them.

There's nothing deceptive about a multiplicative system. It's perfectly clear and easy to understand as long as the game points it out. And since ER always shows the end result, it's quite obvious. There's no misleading idea unless you suck at basic math or you want to make a video longer than 10 mins.

In many cases the numbers are misleading or completely impossible to understand. What does Frost build up 45 actually mean? Don't use a wiki to answer that or information you got from a wiki. How is 46 build up, 56 build up and 108 build up different in ways you as a player can understand without outside sources? How can I know enemy poise breaks and what poise damage my weapon does without illusionary wall videos using cheat engine?

From games are not clear in the slightest and the game does nothing to help that. How often do you see X + X damage plus Y + Y damage and then you have to figure out if X + X being bigger is better than both combined because the game has resistances you have no way of viewing.

Even just going to the most basic stuff. Does ANY WHERE in game tell you the actual Scooby snack upgrade effects? The actual percentages you get not a vague bigger number is better? I don't think it does so any "accurate" info it does have is immediately wrong because it doesn't have scooby snacks included.

Does any one know which quest lines get broken by the rune breaking? I am really not enjoying some of these boss fights and getting the extra damage from scooby snacks would turn a few close calls into kills. I was intended to do all the NPC quests if I could but twin moon is a cunt and I want her dead. Got her close a few times but her phantom swords spaz out and then target you too fast to dodge if you're doing anything but standing idle. Rather than try and force a lucky win I was thinking of getting seriously upgraded and coming back with a 50% damage increase to close out the fight comfortably.

 

[Stoned Ape]

I think it would also be nice if I could figure out a way to see what types of buff stack without resorting to looking them up online, I can't find anything in game about it.

It would also be pretty good to have the hardness values of shields displayed somewhere.

 

[Anonona]

The argument doesn't stand because if you can win an entire game by spamming one attack it doesn't matter how many moves there are, they're all pointless. It's all just window dressing tricking you into wasting your time. Which was the same argument made about Elden Ring's armor system, which is just plain wrong. Typically even SL1 gimmick runs still exploit some clever combo of weapons, accessories, spells, and buffs, none of which are remotely required to win Nioh.

It completely stands, because you can do the same in ER, and in fact you can play very safely in ER too by just dodging and using a strong safe attack, but it doesn't means is the best nor more optimal way of doing things, less alone the most fun. You can defeat any boss by just dodging a few times and spaming R1, AoW or whatever, but when the combat shines is when you learn the boss and use all your tools, just like players like Ongbank do. Just because a speedrunner used a safe strategy in a speedrun doesn't even mean it was the best strategy. Same shit with any game, including Nioh.

Also I cannot agree with your statement considering that "options" are what really make a combat system. Just like in a fighting game a "turtle" player that defend himself all the time and just use safe pokes and the timer to win is valid and even some profesional players play like that, so too can single players games offer the option to play them like that, with a more safer, slower and passive playstyle. Having the option is a plus for a combat system and doesn't dismish its qualities. When players complain about some of ER's bosses for example, is the fact that sometimes it feels like the player is forced in a particular playstyle.

Only for the very skilled. Heavy axe spam is so easy anyone can do it.

Not really, depending on the weapon it may even be quite easy. R1 with a bleed weapon will work wonders for most of the game. Doesn't need to be R1, it can be jump attack spam or AoW spam. You can play Elden Ring like a brainless monkey and succeed, doesn't means the combat is brainless.

Say what you want about Elden Ring, it's probably bloated and too big, but it doesn't waste your time like that.

It also doesn't have a deep combat and RPG system you must learn progressively. ER is more simple and faster to understand. Also if NG+ were like DS2 and changed enemies and added new one new mechanics like Nioh, people would be saying the same about ER. And people will rightily say than you can beat a playthrough just focusing on the obligatory fights to go to the next difficulty faster, just as you can do only the mandatory missions on Nioh to go to the next difficulty level.

 

[abija]

In many cases the numbers are misleading or completely impossible to understand. What does Frost build up 45 actually mean? Don't use a wiki to answer that or information you got from a wiki. How is 46 build up, 56 build up and 108 build up different in ways you as a player can understand without outside sources? How can I know enemy poise breaks and what poise damage my weapon does without illusionary wall videos using cheat engine?

Nice moving the goal post. Except it makes it even more retarded to pick the one stat that is clearly displayed to complain about?

Btw, I don't like bleed and never looked at items with it or read about mechanics. By what happens to my char from bleed attacks I'd say each hit ads that number to a hidden bar and when it reaches a treshold based on enemy resistance it triggers a blood loss. Is it close?

 

[Damned Registrations]

By what happens to my char from bleed attacks I'd say each hit ads that number to a hidden bar and when it reaches a treshold based on enemy resistance it triggers a blood loss. Is it close?

Kind of, except the threshold can channge during the fight, the bloodloss doesn't do the same thing every time, and the number added to the hidden bar is also varied based on which weapon and attack you use. The number is really only useful in context of comparing it to that number on the exact same weapon. If you want to compare say, scythes to daggers for speed of bleed buildup, or the damage inflicted, you need empirical tests or excel tables taken from the game code. Most of FS stats are like this; they give you enough info to know if raising a stat influences something, but leave out all the details required to actually optimize anything.

 

[Ravielsk]

In many cases the numbers are misleading or completely impossible to understand. What does Frost build up 45 actually mean? Don't use a wiki to answer that or information you got from a wiki. How is 46 build up, 56 build up and 108 build up different in ways you as a player can understand without outside sources? How can I know enemy poise breaks and what poise damage my weapon does without illusionary wall videos using cheat engine?

Nice moving the goal post. Except it makes it even more retarded to pick the one stat that is clearly displayed to complain about?

Btw, I don't like bleed and never looked at items with it or read about mechanics. By what happens to my char from bleed attacks I'd say each hit ads that number to a hidden bar and when it reaches a treshold based on enemy resistance it triggers a blood loss. Is it close?

Nobody is moving anything. You are talking to two different people and one of them brought up a different set of numbers to the first one.

To explain again, just like the video you totally watched, the deceptiveness comes from the player not being told what is happening in the background. Because when you equip two armor pieces with 20% damage reduction you expect the resulting reduction to be 40%. You the player are performing additions but the game calculates them as multiplications thus the number shown in the stat window looks lower than what you would logically expect it to be. Hence people assume they are getting diminishing returns from their armor because that is what the numbers are showing to them.
But do you know what adds up additively? Weight and Vigor. So players see their encumbrance and HP go up faster than their negation and logically conclude that armor values are secondary to weight and vigor values as those determine your roll speed and HP. Couple this with the quite bluntly stupid amounts of damage bosses deal and you can imagine why people concluded that armor does not do very much when in the early game it barely does anything.

 

[FugueLah]

Because when you equip two armor pieces with 20% damage reduction you expect the resulting reduction to be 40%.

It is 40%. Additive DR gives exponential effective HP. It is retarded to expect it to work in an additive way.

 

[Damned Registrations]

There's basically 3 reasonably intuitive ways a % based armour system could work:

Additive EHP modifiers. Adding say, 30 armour, raises your effective hp total when being hit by 30%. Adding another 30 armour increases the armour total to 60, so you've got 60% more effective HP, and so forth. WC3, DotA, and MHW all work like this. It's a little wonky when they don't make 1 armour = 1% EHP (WC3 did 1 armour = 6% EHP for example) but is otherwise very easy to understand at a glance, especially when the game throws in a tooltip to tell you what the final damage reduction will be.

Multiplicative damage modifiers. Souls games do this. Equipping two pieces that each make you take 80% damage from something multiply together and result in 64% damage taken. This gets wonky when you invert the numbers and multiplying 20 by 20 equals 36. Easy enough to understand with nice round numbers like that if you know what to look for, but to the random player taking 11.3 onto 47.4 and getting... whatever the fuck that would be, it's not something you'll necessarily recognize if you're used to other systems. Especially if you then run out and let something club you and that doesn't mesh with the numbers you get (Which it won't in a FS game because they added a bunch of dumb subtypes, hidden elemental damage and pseudo flat reduction with no info about the order of operations.)

Additive damage resistance modifiers. 20% reduction and 20% reduction is 40% reduction. Very obvious what is going on here, and results in damage reduction getting exponentially better the more you have. Which can be fine depending on game balance or instituting a cap. Resistances in something like Diablo work like this.

 

[Stoned Ape]

The other slightly weird thing with ER armour is that when you get to decent heavy armour, like Crucible Knight's Set or Radahn's Lion Armour the next 'upgrades' after them do very little for damage mitigation (normally around 1-2% multiplicative DR), they just stack extra poise (which seems to do very little in the expansion) for a huge load of extra weight (like 2 to 10 kilos for just the chest armour).

 

[FugueLah]

The other slightly weird thing with ER armour is that when you get to decent heavy armour, like Crucible Knight's Set or Radahn's Lion Armour the next 'upgrades' after them do very little for damage mitigation (normally around 1-2% multiplicative DR), they just stack extra poise (which seems to do very little in the expansion) for a huge load of extra weight (like 2 to 10 kilos for just the chest armour).

It's not that weird when you consider that increases in weight capacity scales well all the way up to 99 endurance unlike other stats. It's almost as if if you don't arbitrarily handicap yourself to level 125 - 150, the number of viable build and gear setups goes up significantly.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Btw, I don't like bleed and never looked at items with it or read about mechanics. By what happens to my char from bleed attacks I'd say each hit ads that number to a hidden bar and when it reaches a treshold based on enemy resistance it triggers a blood loss. Is it close?

But that isn't how bleed works though. Because as simple as Hit enemy until bleed, bar resets but has higher resistance is.. that doesn't ring true from actual gameplay. I have repeatedly seen double bleed procs from the same or very close attacks. If it was a simple Beat this number, it resets and beat a higher number then you wouldn't occasionally see a double bleed proc completely melt an opponent's health bar. So something is more complex than even the simplest version of bleed. Which means there's no way to understand a core mechanic to the dex stat gameplay.

Ever had an enemy stagger with 4 hits then another one staggers on 5? No break in between, guard counter + R1s? I had that happen to be a few times yesterday. Bar shouldn't have reset but my hits impacted the enemy differently. I've seen the data from illusionary wall, I've played enough of these games to know how it works and yet it doesn't work. So WTF do you mean these numbers are all linear? They aren't.

The other slightly weird thing with ER armour is that when you get to decent heavy armour, like Crucible Knight's Set or Radahn's Lion Armour the next 'upgrades' after them do very little for damage mitigation (normally around 1-2% multiplicative DR), they just stack extra poise (which seems to do very little in the expansion) for a huge load of extra weight (like 2 to 10 kilos for just the chest armour).

It's not that weird when you consider that increases in weight capacity scales well all the way up to 99 endurance unlike other stats. It's almost as if if you don't arbitrarily handicap yourself to level 125 - 150, the number of viable build and gear setups goes up significantly.

No one is arbitrarily capping themselves at 125 SL. It's roughly where the game ends and if your build variety doesn't cut in until you beat Elden beast your game is fucking stupid (and this is going for the Nioh stuff I've read before. Don't gate keep shit behind NG+ you fucking queers). You don't need max stats to make a viable build in ER. I've got multiple RL1 builds using Radaghon's soreseal and a the next +stat helmets. I can go traditional roll and poke to weapon art spam. As much as I dislike AoW stuff it's pretty good for giving a variety of special moves and you can even equip different weapons to get some coverage. The biggest issue with them is that From still lack a way to interact between moves. Either enemies stagger and you can hit them again or they don't and there's little you can do to change that. From combos would break the game with how much damage they would do to players so we don't have them.

 

[Stoned Ape]

It's not that weird when you consider that increases in weight capacity scales well all the way up to 99 endurance unlike other stats. It's almost as if if you don't arbitrarily handicap yourself to level 125 - 150, the number of viable build and gear setups goes up significantly.

It's not the weight that's the issue, it's the fact that the DR doesn't really scale with investment past a certain point.

If the advantage to investing 99 vs 60 END is 1-2% DR and a chunk of poise (that doesn't seem to really do much) then I don't see how it is really worth it. If the 20-25kg chest pieces had a 3-4% advantage over the 15-16kg chest pieces I think it might be.

 

[FugueLah]

No one is arbitrarily capping themselves at 125 SL

A lot of people are. You are delusional if you don't think so.

Either enemies stagger and you can hit them again or they don't and there's little you can do to change that.

Your stats define the range of weapons you can viably use. Key word here is range. Weapon/ash swapping depending on the circumstance is core to the game. Far too often, people stick to a single weapon at all times and wonder why certain encounters are frustrating.

 

[FugueLah]

DR doesn't really scale with investment past a certain point.

That is by design. No different to how damage scaling drops off past 60 points. Regardless, your level is uncapped. Besides time, there is no opportunity cost to get 99 endurance vs 60.

 

[Hell Swarm]

A lot of people are. You are delusional if you don't think so.

Look, if you want to pretend PvPers are people you can. But I'm not going to buy into retardation like that. You may as well say you're a tranny or you enjoy CRPGs if you want to tell lies. It would be more believable.

 

[FugueLah]

A lot of people are. You are delusional if you don't think so.

Look, if you want to pretend PvPers are people you can. But I'm not going to buy into retardation like that. You may as well say you're a tranny or you enjoy CRPGs if you want to tell lies. It would be more believable.

Plenty of players cap their level because they feel they are cheating if they level too high, the same way they decide not to use ashes. Then they wonder why their cool MAD build that they want to use doesn't work all that well. Good thing Myazaki gave those guys Fire Knight Greatsword, so they can realize their pure faith melee dream.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Far too often, people stick to a single weapon at all times and wonder why certain encounters are frustrating.

More likely, they spent their upgrade materials on the first 4 weapons that seemed kinda cool, found out 3 of them are shit for some reason, and are now stuck with 1 unless they go grind to upgrade a new weapon that seemingly has a 75% chance of being shit.

 

[Stoned Ape]

DR doesn't really scale with investment past a certain point.

That is by design. No different to how damage scaling drops off past 60 points. Regardless, your level is uncapped. Besides time, there is no opportunity cost to get 99 endurance vs 60.

But there is the opportunity cost of having 99 END and wearing (extremely heavy armour sets with medium rolling) vs (fairly heavy armour with light rolling) and/or equipping additional weapons to quickly swap during combat.

I really don't think the tiny additional damage mitigation really stacks well against any of the other things you can do with the extra encumbrance weight.

 

[FugueLah]

DR doesn't really scale with investment past a certain point.

That is by design. No different to how damage scaling drops off past 60 points. Regardless, your level is uncapped. Besides time, there is no opportunity cost to get 99 endurance vs 60.

But there is the opportunity cost of having 99 END and wearing (extremely heavy armour sets with medium rolling) vs (fairly heavy armour with light rolling) and/or equipping additional weapons to quickly swap during combat.

I really don't think the tiny additional damage mitigation really stacks well against any of the other things you can do with the extra encumbrance weight.

The difference in DR from a medium armor 51 poise setup and maxed setup is around 5% at 20 scadu frags. That's 15%+ DR or 15% increased ehp, and not at all insignificant.

 

[Hell Swarm]

A lot of people are. You are delusional if you don't think so.

Look, if you want to pretend PvPers are people you can. But I'm not going to buy into retardation like that. You may as well say you're a tranny or you enjoy CRPGs if you want to tell lies. It would be more believable.

Plenty of players cap their level because they feel they are cheating if they level too high, the same way they decide not to use ashes. Then they wonder why their cool MAD build that they want to use doesn't work all that well. Good thing Myazaki gave those guys Fire Knight Greatsword, so they can realize their pure faith melee dream.

"People".

No one has got 2 shot by Radagon and thought "I'm too high leveled, better not level any more"

 

[FugueLah]

A lot of people are. You are delusional if you don't think so.

Look, if you want to pretend PvPers are people you can. But I'm not going to buy into retardation like that. You may as well say you're a tranny or you enjoy CRPGs if you want to tell lies. It would be more believable.

Plenty of players cap their level because they feel they are cheating if they level too high, the same way they decide not to use ashes. Then they wonder why their cool MAD build that they want to use doesn't work all that well. Good thing Myazaki gave those guys Fire Knight Greatsword, so they can realize their pure faith melee dream.

"People".

No one has got 2 shot by Radagon and thought "I'm too high leveled, better not level any more"

Therein lies one of my main gripes with the game. Not going 40-60 vigor asap is a bit of noob trap.

 

[Stoned Ape]

But there is the opportunity cost of having 99 END and wearing (extremely heavy armour sets with medium rolling) vs (fairly heavy armour with light rolling) and/or equipping additional weapons to quickly swap during combat.

I really don't think the tiny additional damage mitigation really stacks well against any of the other things you can do with the extra encumbrance weight.

The difference in DR from a medium armor 51 poise setup and maxed setup is around 5% at 20 scadu frags. That's 15%+ DR or 15% increased ehp, and not at all insignificant.

That would be true if I were talking about a 51 poise setup, but I wasn't. I specifically mentioned a 71 poise armour set (crucible knight). The DR difference vs full Verdigris is around 2% total DR (after both having Dragoncrest Greatshield and 20 Scudd blessings) for light roll with full talismans and load for weapons (at least enough for buckler + antspur).

 

[FugueLah]

But there is the opportunity cost of having 99 END and wearing (extremely heavy armour sets with medium rolling) vs (fairly heavy armour with light rolling) and/or equipping additional weapons to quickly swap during combat.

I really don't think the tiny additional damage mitigation really stacks well against any of the other things you can do with the extra encumbrance weight.

The difference in DR from a medium armor 51 poise setup and maxed setup is around 5% at 20 scadu frags. That's 15%+ DR or 15% increased ehp, and not at all insignificant.

That would be true if I were talking about a 51 poise setup, but I wasn't. I specifically mentioned a 71 poise armour set (crucible knight). The DR difference vs full Verdigris is around 2% total DR (after both having Dragoncrest Greatshield and 20 Scudd blessings) for light roll with full talismans and load for weapons (at least enough for buckler + antspur).

You are already close to high end armor already, so I don't understand your point. Even still, 2% difference at that DR is 7.5% EHP. The gigafat amor still sees use and if DR scaled too well at the high end they would be the only armors to ever be used.

 

[Stoned Ape]

You are already close to high end armor already, so I don't understand your point. Even still, 2% difference at that DR is 7.5% EHP. The gigafat amor still sees use and if DR scaled too well at the high end they would be the only armors to ever be used.

My point all along was that very high-end fat-boy armour isn't really worth upgrading to once you get to Crucible (or Tree Sentinel+Erdtree Talisman+2 if you really want) as the gains really don't outweigh the load you have to carry and the extra poise you gain really doesn't make much difference to most of the things you fight in the DLC.

I think it would be generally better if the heaviest armours had a few % more DR, possibly at the expense of making boiled crab or blackflame protection a few % worse (like 17.5%/32.5% instead of 20%/35%).

 

[cvv]

So I've been playing SotE for about 15 hours now and you know what I think FromSoft have done?

I think they've fucked up the encounter design.

Never in my life have I seen open world that's so empty, boring and bland - mob-wise - as SotE. I swear there are huge swaths of land where you find like two enemies in many, many minutes. And sometimes it's a non-respawning giant or a dragon so when you kill them the level is COMPLETELY empty for miles in all directions. The only living things are just rabbits and deer.

And even in the legacy dungeons there's barely any challenge in the encounter design. There is barely anyone able - or even trying - to stop you. The only actual challenge in the game are the bosses, which are amazing. But in between the bosses you're just running through an empty land and carving through occasional - mostly trash - mobs in the legacy dungeons.

I mean, at least the vistas are fucking jawdropping. Otherwise SotE is a bit of a disappointment.