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

[Sunri]

hard game booo

 

[Vic]

how do you manage to explore an absolutely boring and empty world for 100+ hours while being dragged along by the promise of some souls or item for a build you can't use?

I don't know. I didn't play Starfield.

Now fuck off and go derail another thread because you're jealous we're enjoying a game unlike the trash you play.

you seem upset

 

[Silverfish]

I just want to know what body type you selected for your elden gay character.

A. All the default B's are painfully, offensively ugly.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Didn't want to pollute the main thread with personal blog shit, but i figure since this is the first major boss i'm going to copy paste what i wrote in my thread:

Alright, i guess i was the real savage lion after all:



First off, from a design point of view i gotta say this is one of the coolest bosses FromSoft ever did. I just love the aesthetic and concept of it. The whole fight is a great spectacle and the music is pretty good too.

That said, smacking him with the winged syche didn't do a whole lot of damage, so i decided to go medieval on his ass. I cycled through couple of damage types and it seems fire did the most damage, which in hindsight isn't surprising. Notice that i still haven't used any Scadutree Blessings yet and i already outpaced the boss in damage. Didn't even give him a chance to go to the ice or wind phases. The lighting phase is definitely the worst and took me a while to figure it out. If you want to press damage (as in, to stagger him or get a bleed proc like i did), there is indeed an element of RNG as you can't always time to roll away from the static charge or his attacks at the same time (but then that's what perfume bottles are for). If you play it safe and have no need to put pressure on him, it's not that bad honestly just don't engage when you see the static in the ground. He'll default to that spinning move where you can just pelt him away from a distance with spells if you are so inclined. The ice and wind phases were easer for me than the lighting one, but milage may vary.

I can see why people raged but for me it felt like any other FromSoft boss. Seemingly impossible at first, but then not a huge deal after all.

Opinion from the usual suspects?

 

[Child of Malkav]

Lyric Suite
The divine lion and Midra were the only 2 bosses I liked. Also did them without shield or other cheese. They're pretty fun and the bullshit kept to a relative minimum.
Anyway, no one (at least I didn't) contested your ability to adapt to bullshit. If you have high tolerance for it then yeah sure whatever, have fun I guess.
IDK what's this supposed to prove. There will be challenge runs and speedruns done at level 1 and all the others but that only shows someone's ability and patience to tolerate the cheap stuff shown on screen.

 

[Hell Swarm]

The divine lion and Midra were the only 2 bosses I liked. Also did them without shield or other cheese. They're pretty fun and the bullshit kept to a relative minimum.

The Lion is one getting a lot of complaints from it's phase changes and weird animations.

There will be challenge runs and speedruns done at level 1 and all the others but that only shows someone's ability and patience to tolerate the cheap stuff shown on screen.

He didn't do any of that though. He stacked a bunch of buffs and killed it with a meta weapon to the point where it never even entered 2 of it's phases. The storm phase and the ice phase come after lightning (orders random). So he didn't have patience or tolerance, he looked up all the buffs on a wiki, stacked them with a meta weapon and went "I'm so good at this game!" when he's doing so much damage the bosses barely react.

 

[Suicidal]

Commander Gaius is such a terrible boss.

His charge is very very hard to dodge and deals 50% of my health in damage. But it also has a lingering hitbox meaning if I dodge wrong I can get hit twice in 1 passthrough, killing me instantly.

He can also randomly decide to use it from point blank range and it has a very fast windup leaving you no time to dodge properly.

Just died from full health to that when he was at 15% because he decided to charge right after another attack while I was standing in melee.

Fuck this guy. What where they thinking? It's basically an RNG fight.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Hell Swarm Well I liked this boss and Midra.
The music, especially. The other two phases, ice and wind I found them to be way easier than lightning.
Yeah, I was referring to speedrunners. The thing is, with bosses in ER you kinda gravitate naturally to high damage instruments. If the bosses are so good I wonder why people do that.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Commander Gaius is such a terrible boss.

His charge is very very hard to dodge and deals 50% of my health in damage. But it also has a lingering hitbox meaning if I dodge wrong I can get hit twice in 1 passthrough, killing me instantly.

He can also randomly decide to use it from point blank range and it has a very fast windup leaving you no time to dodge properly.

Just died from full health to that when he was at 15% because he decided to charge right after another attack while I was standing in melee.

Fuck this guy. What where they thinking? It's basically an RNG fight.

I fought him right next to the gate where you enter and he got stuck on the opposite side of a wall there. I used blood boon ritual from Mohg's trident to bleed him through the wall. He also got a few hits in also through the wall. No regrets. Cheese bosses deserve cheese builds.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Fuck this guy. What where they thinking? It's basically an RNG fight.

He's supposed to be fought on Torrent but From don't communicate that. You double jump over his charge and clear both hitboxes.

@Hell Swarm Well I liked this boss and Midra.

He's one of my favourites. He's really interesting and I did RL1 just to fight him again without cheese (then cheesed him..)

 

[Suicidal]

He's supposed to be fought on Torrent but From don't communicate that. You double jump over his charge and clear both hitboxes.

I actually tried that a few times, and while it's possible to double jump his charge, sometimes you just get hit regardless and I find it's harder to dodge some of his other attacks on horseback as opposed to on foot.

 

[Ravielsk]

Commander Gaius is such a terrible boss.

His charge is very very hard to dodge and deals 50% of my health in damage. But it also has a lingering hitbox meaning if I dodge wrong I can get hit twice in 1 passthrough, killing me instantly.

He can also randomly decide to use it from point blank range and it has a very fast windup leaving you no time to dodge properly.

Just died from full health to that when he was at 15% because he decided to charge right after another attack while I was standing in melee.

Fuck this guy. What where they thinking? It's basically an RNG fight.

Worst part is that he is an optional boss guarding precisely nothing so beating him gives you basically nothing. I personally cheesed him with scarlet rot and never looked back.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Worst part is that he is an optional boss guarding precisely nothing so beating him gives you basically nothing.

He guards 4 or 5 scat tree blessings near the not lord vessel.

 

[Ravielsk]

Midra.

I concur Midra is one of the better bosses in the DLC. He is very well placed in the world, his level foreshadows him properly so you do not just blindly walk into him and unlike most other bosses his design goes half a step beyond "really fast dude who deals 2k damage on each swing".

That said I wonder how much of it is accidental because his gimmick of applying frenzy may be unintentionally gimped due to frenzy being balanced for PVP. Also he is pretty far into the game so by the time most face him they will have around 15+ blessings so that might mitigate a lot of what would otherwise by pure bullshit.

 

[Ravielsk]

He guards 4 or 5 scat tree blessings near the not lord vessel.

Which is basically nothing. Bosses like this should be used for optional areas or path to secret ending or you something of significance. A quasi-level up that could have been placed literary anywhere else does not really meet that definition in my book.

 

[Lyric Suite]

IDK what's this supposed to prove.

The point is that there isn't anything particularly terrible or shocking about the DLC, not when compared to the base game. I was expected something completely outlandish but so far it's just more of the same. Learn the boss until you come up on top.

He didn't do any of that though. He stacked a bunch of buffs and killed it with a meta weapon to the point where it never even entered 2 of it's phases.

The point of all my plays is precisely that i'm using all the resources a normal person would use. My aim is to demonstrate what can be done from the perspective of someone just playing the game normally (short of using summons etc). Even when i do supposed "try hard" stuff like fighting a boss at 1 HP or whatever i'm still trying to take advantage of something, for instance, that shield and talisman that gives you bonus damage if you are on low health:



In the case of the lion, i also had to test how far you could outpace him without relying on the Scadutree Blessings mechanic, so i intentionally stacked as much damage as i could pack (with a price of course, since i had so many sources of damage negation penalties i might as well have played with 1 HP) to see how that would take me. I also could have used stuff like the Bloodboil Aromatic and especially the Uplifting Aromatic for his elemental phase but when i saw how fast he was coming down i reasoned there was no need. A normal persorn would of course rely on those resources as well.

So first boss down and it felt no different from anything from the base game. Onward to the next i guess.

 

[Anonona]

The point is that there isn't anything particularly terrible or shocking about the DLC, not when compared to the base game. I was expected something completely outlandish but so far it's just more of the same. Learn the boss until you come up on top.

Ignoring the fact that most complains are about bosses not being fun, and the fact that is mostly about the some of the latter ones (Gaus and the final boss in particular), how does just bursting the boss so badly that it dies before it can even show all of its phases or use its "super" combo proves anything about the boss design itself?. You can burst every boss in the DLC just like the base game, is probably how many players are beating the bosses instead of learning the fights themselves. It doesn't remove the flaws and the questionable design choices.

Also, one of the complains was that the camera wasn't very good and you can see in the video how when it uses its breath attack the camera decides to look up it ass instead of getting far away to let the player see. Sure, we adapted to that and used other cues in the animation to dodge it, doesn't suddenly removes the issue.

A normal persorn would of course rely on those resources as well

I don't know, I somehow doubt most players will buff so much before every boss unless they had been stuck a while and decided to look up a wiki to trivialize the fight. They would probably just pick something that they find fun to use and stick with it instead of going straight for meta weapons and all kind of buffs.

 

[Child of Malkav]

The point is that there isn't anything particularly terrible or shocking about the DLC, not when compared to the base game. I was expected something completely outlandish but so far it's just more of the same. Learn the boss until you come up on top.

Wasn't really a question but even so IDK why I bothered. Same old same old.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The point is that there isn't anything particularly terrible or shocking about the DLC, not when compared to the base game. I was expected something completely outlandish but so far it's just more of the same. Learn the boss until you come up on top.

Ignoring the fact that most complains are about bosses not being fun, and the fact that is mostly about the some of the latter ones (Gaus and the final boss in particular), how does just bursting the boss so badly that it dies before it can even show all of its phases or use its "super" combo proves anything about the boss design itself?.

Well, how do you know the boss isn't INTENDED to be burst like that? It's not the first time FromSoft designed something you were specifically intended to take down as fast as possible. Artorias was like that. Indeed the most common tactic was to hit him hard enough to knock him out of his charge phase. Sometimes it's a puzzle you have to crack. In the base game there were bosses with "intentional" weaknesses. I just checked the wiki and sure enough this boss is weak to bleed and especially rot. This to me this implies the "correct" way to do the boss is to stick a DOT on him so you can damage him during the elemental phases where you are expected to do a lot of hit and running.

BTW i just read in the comments of the wiki there's another one lmao. I'll be sure go to do it the try hard way when i get to that one. In either case, for me every time a boss seems "unreasonable" it is usually because there's a trick in there somewhere. Also, the game gives you many, MANY tools and one of my main contentions when people used to screech about the base game is that in a lot of cases bosses are designed in a way to take into account of all the tools the player as at his disposal. That includes "bursting" as well, since FromSoft isn't so stupid as not to know the common tactics used by the average player (Margit/Morgott was also weak to "bursting" tactics, i'm going to assume by design).

In the main, i think the error is to assume the "legit" way is to gimp yourself as much as you can, everything else being "cheese". In my mind, i think what's going on with FromSoft is that they are designing their bosses with the "cheese" in mind instead. Or at the very least they are designing taking into account everything the player can do. If they didn't, given the amount of tools the player has, the game would be a cake walk.

Also, one of the complains was that the camera wasn't very good and you can see in the video how when it uses its breath attack the camera decides to look up it ass instead of getting far away to let the player see.

It's not the camera, it's because he moves around while he is spinning. Sometimes he moves away from you and you get a clear view of what is going on. In my case he decided to just move towards me which meant i had to rely on memory on when to roll.

Camera issues are also relative. If he backs you into a wall, it's hard to understand what is happening but it wasn't much better in Sekiro where the camera could never get that close yet if you were backed into a wall it became very hard to deal with the boss attacks, I.E., the Demon of Hatred. Only solution to that would be to make arenas with infinite running around with no boundaries but that would destroy all sense of immersion.

I don't know, I somehow doubt most players will buff so much before every boss unless they had been stuck a while and decided to look up a wiki to trivialize the fight. They would probably just pick something that they find fun to use and stick with it instead of going straight for meta weapons and all kind of buffs.

I don't know, you have a strange view of how people like to play this game. Just while i was doing this boss i've seen many, many people casting Flame, Grant Me Strength while walking in, more than a few while wielding Blasphemous Blade. I also have many hundreds of hours in the game playing co-op and EVERYBODY buffs before walking in a fight. I don't even understand who wouldn't.

This is unreasonable buffing:



I don't understand how casting a mere Golden Vow before a fight is supposed to be beyond the pale of any normal player.

Also, as i pointed out some of the buffs i used had a price attached to them. Sure i stacked all the damage i could to "burst" the boss but i had make absolutely sure i could do it without taking damage. I had 15% extra damage taken from Radagon's Soreseal , 30% from Howl of Shabriri and another 10% from the Scorpion Charm. I was a veritable glass cannon and that means the trade off to be able to "burst" him was not taking even a single hit.

 

[Hell Swarm]

he point of all my plays is precisely that i'm using all the resources a normal person would use. My aim is to demonstrate what can be done from the perspective of someone just playing the game normally (short of using summons etc).

A normal person doesn't stack buffs like this. Only an autist with a wiki does.

I don't know, I somehow doubt most players will buff so much before every boss unless they had been stuck a while and decided to look up a wiki to trivialize the fight. They would probably just pick something that they find fun to use and stick with it instead of going straight for meta weapons and all kind of buffs.

Completely correct. People will use a buff if it's built into their kit or they're doing a faith build but in general buffs just aren't used and no one is stacking them.

Well, how do you know the boss isn't INTENDED to be burst like that? It's not the first time FromSoft designed something you were specifically intended to take down as fast as possible. Artorias was like that.

Please for the love of fuck go back to your own thread and stay out of this one. I have never read such stupidity in all my years on an internet forum and I've read some amazingly stupid stuff. From do not spend hundreds of hours designing multiple boss phases for you to burst them down and never see them. Do you really think From were like "Okay so Lion goes lightning, then the player kills them and we'll animate the ice and wind effects they'll never see"? You're a fucking idiot if this is your argument for why stacking 10 buffs and bursting the boss down was intended gameplay. From let you decide how difficult you want the game to be and YOU always pick baby mode using wikis. Then you talk shit about how easy the games are when you're doing the wiki run every single time. And it's obvious because no natural play through stacks buffs like this. They require very specific builds and stat investments no normal player makes. They pump 1 damage stat, a secondary stat if they need it for a weapon and then the support HP/equip load/stamina stats.

I don't even understand who wouldn't.

Because you're autistic and refuse to listen to people who tell you you're wrong. You're too busy sucking your own dick to even learn the most basic of social interactions and understand you're completely wrong and an abnormal subhuman with a brain defect.

 

[Anonona]

Well, how do you know the boss isn't INTENDED to be burst like that?

Then he would have a DPS check like a fucking MMO that kills you if you take too long. An enemy having weaknesses doesn't mean that the boss was designed to be bursted to death. Sometimes a game allowing you to trivialize fights may be by accident or choice, as a way to modulate the difficulty, but rarely bosses are designed around this idea. In fact, I find the idea that an enemy moveset is meant not to be seen ludicrous.

BTW i just read in the comments of the wiki there's another one lmao. I'll be sure go to do it the try hard way when i get to that one

Why? It won't prove anything because doing it harder or easier doesn't change the fight design. Also I would recommend to just enjoy the DLC. I'm pretty sure you will find it great and is better to just play whoever you enjoy.

It's not the camera, it's because he moves around while he is spinning. Sometimes he moves away from you and you get a clear view of what is going on. In my case he decided to just move towards him which meant i had to rely on memory on when to roll.

Camera issues are also relative. If he backs you into a walk, it's hard to understand what is happening but it wasn't much better in Sekiro where the camera could never get that close yet if you were backed into a wall it became very hard to deal with the boss attacks, I.E., the Demon of Hatred. Only solution to that would be to make arenas with infinite running around with no boundaries but that would destroy all sense of immersion.

No offense, but anything of what you had said proves that it isn't the camera, at all. Just because other games also had bad cameras or sometimes, if you are lucky, it doesn't happen doesn't mean is fine. Also, yeah, fights being designed with rote memorization is a big criticism of ER, so you are just further proving critics points. And no, many games had faster, more chaotic combat systems yet managed to make the camera work much better. Bayonetta, God of War, DMC 5, etc. Not perfect, but not so consistently bad like ER can get with some fights. Things like making walls dissapear to let you see, zooming out, changing cameras angles, there are a lot of tools that ER doesn't use that often.

Without mentioning that fights can be designed in a way to avoid this issues if you know the camera system have such limitations. You can see examples of this in ER itself, with some bosses that move very fast but the camera follows perfectly, while in others it shit itself, specially big enemies.

You just need to see the video that was posted calling Lock-on a trap, encouraging to play without it to avoid issues with the camera and the advice of fellow codexers well versed in the game.

I don't know, you have a strange view of how people like to play this game. Just while i was doing this boss i've seen many, many people casting Flame, Grant Me Strength while walking in, more than a few while wielding Blasphemous Blade. I also have many hundreds of hours in the game playing co-op and EVERYTHING buffs before walking in a fight. I don't even understand who wouldn't.

I would actually argue the opposite. Most people I have seen or read online seem to just use at most a few buffs that are related to their build and at most an easy to access consumable. Is when they get fed up with a boss or just doesn't like a fight when they went "fuck it" and look up a build to kill them fast.

Then again, it my be just confirmation bias on my part.

Also, as i pointed out some of the buffs i used had a price attached to them. Sure i stacked all the damage i could to "burst" the boss but i had make absolutely sure i could do it without taking damage. I had 15% extra damage taken from Radagon's Soreseal , 30% from Howl of Shabriri and another 10% from the Scorpion Charm. I was a veritable glass cannon and that means the trade off to be able to "burst" him was not taking even a single hit.

And you really think that the average player will choose to play like that, without being able to take a hit? I mean, while in truth it is easier than doing little damage but being able to take 2-3 hits, I have a hard time believing most players will choose a risky play style. If anything, most will seek stronger defensive buffs instead of offensives.

 

[Lyric Suite]

he point of all my plays is precisely that i'm using all the resources a normal person would use. My aim is to demonstrate what can be done from the perspective of someone just playing the game normally (short of using summons etc).

A normal person doesn't stack buffs like this. Only an autist with a wiki does.

Only an illiterate wouldn't stack buffs. Anybody who picks up Golden Vow and reads it increases defences and attack power would instantly use it. Why wouldn't they?

Do you also think people just pick stats at random while leveling up? What is this honestly you guys are just grasping at straws so hard right now it's not even funny.

From do not spend hundreds of hours designing multiple boss phases for you to burst them down and never see them.

Wouldn't they? I got the distinct feeling the boss was meant to be a race. Out damage him before he gets too out of hand. All the "design" of the boss went into his moveset anyway, the elemental attacks were easy to add to me it just felt like FromSoft was begging you to kill him before he got to use them all. Why would you tarry anyway. Any normal player would try to get as much damage as possible early on precisely to shorten the elemental phases as much as possible.

Again, looking at the perspective of a "normal" player here. Try hards of course would prefer to gimp themselves to "show off" during the elemental phases but i was intentionaly trying not to think in those terms.

Because you're autistic and refuse to listen to people who tell you you're wrong. You're too busy sucking your own dick to even learn the most basic of social interactions and understand you're completely wrong and an abnormal subhuman with a brain defect.

I think it is you who needs to take a look at what you are saying. Normal people don't use buffs now? Since when? Don't they use gear? Consumables? Healing? What is it about buffs that makes them different exactly?

 

[Lyric Suite]

I would actually argue the opposite. Most people I have seen or read online seem to just use at most a few buffs that are related to their build and at most an easy to access consumable.

Ok well, i used two buffs, Golden Vow and Howl of Shabriri, the last one coming at a 30% damage penalty. Most people would have probably opted for Flame, Grant Me Strengh instead. Also, one of the reasons i was able to pack so much damage was Lion's Claw, which is not easy to time. That said, i also have zero Scadutree upgrades, which puts me behind what most people could actually do if they put their mind to it.

BTW, i just checked how Ongbal did it and he pretty much resorted to the same tactic:

 

[Anonona]

Wouldn't they? I got the distinct feeling the boss was meant to be a race. Out damage him before he gets too out of hand. All the "design" of the boss went into his moveset anyway, the elemental attacks were easy to add to me it just felt like FromSoft was begging you to kill him before he got to use them all. Why would you tarry anyway. Any normal player would try to get as much damage as possible early on precisely to shorten the elemental phases as much as possible.

Again, looking at the perspective of a "normal" player here. Try hards of course would prefer to gimp themselves to "show off" during the elemental phases but i was intentionaly trying not to think in those terms.

No, I don't even know how you came to such a conclusion, is baffling. I have played games that had actual "DPS checks" mechanics designed to see if the players can optimize their damage high enough. This isn't one of them because otherwise all fights in the game could pretty much be considered that. You can skip whole phases of almost all bosses, up to the final boss of the DLC, but not in my wildest dream would I think "oh, I was meant to skip the whole phase". You can do it, is the most optimal thing to do, but I'm sure that the enemy move set was not designed with this idea in mind.

It isn't even that crazy of a fight, just 3 rotating phases that give special effects to its attacks and each with a single new move, plus a combo where it changes phases in quick succession. Is a fun fight, and one of the easier ones once you get used to its weird tells and cameras issues.

You are also assuming most player know how to build and exploit the game system to its fullest without a wiki, create decent builds, or where to even find a lot of those buffs. Without mentioning that perhaps they prefer not to use some of the most powerful stuff like bleed because they wanted to build something different.

Really, this game is the most popular souls game, is mainstream. People that haven't touched a decent ARPG in their lives have this as their first experience. I think you are overestimating the average skill of the playerbase in general.

That said, i also have zero Scadutree upgrades, which puts me behind what most people could actually do if they put their mind to it.

Not by much, I was like Scadutree level 2-3 I think when I fought it and you did like triple the damage I did. It was pre patch, mind you, so maybe now it is different, but I'm pretty sure that boss is meant to be fought pretty much at low or zero level Scadutree blessing.

 

[abija]

You are also assuming most player know how to build and exploit the game system to its fullest without a wiki, create decent builds, or where to even find a lot of those buffs. Without mentioning that perhaps they prefer not to use some of the most powerful stuff like bleed because they wanted to build something different.

You forget those players would use summons and more often than not have high dps/low surv builds. Also the game didn't set traps with the straightforward builds. You pick up a nice big weapon or some big juicy spells, you're doing damage.

All the difficulty complains come from "ethical tryhards".