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

[Reinhardt]

empty swamp of emptiness is so exciting

 

[Hell Swarm]

Of course you'd revisit a hard early game enemy. Anyone would, to exact revenge or just see what sort of cool shit he drops.

Is it hard to revisit? No. Actually yes because Elden Rings maps so fucking huge I'm not going to remember where a generic knight on a horse dropping an item I don't know he has is after 120 hours of playing Elden Ring. Are you going to pretend you never forgot where generic knight number 5 is in a world this fucking big? By the time I beat Elden beast I'd forgotten limgrave even existed and wanted the damn game over.

By the end of the game you can buy every upgrade material. I have several weapons I found in the DLC that I've barely used yet fully upgraded, which I might come back to. As for "The map doesn't tell you what the red blobs are", it is very easy to observe that mines you've discovered correspond to the map icons. It doesn't have to tell you, basic human pattern recognition takes care of it.

If you find the bellbarings and often part of the DLC prep was to go and pick them all up. And we're not talking end game here because by end game your build is basically fixed unless you respect and most people don't respec unless they run into a road block because they like how they're playing and can change their weapon affinity easier than respecing and changing weapons/styles.

The red blobs barely stand out and people aren't running around the world with the map open to discover the connection. I didn't realize until my 2nd play through and I was checking where I got the upgrades.

 

[abija]

Second off you are yet again assuming that people, especially when the game launched(because that is the frame of reference I used), were just beating the two most difficult starting bosses and that they had the catalyst to even cast said spells to begin with. On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.
Hence my point that the average player who is not playing with a wiki open would not exactly be incentivized to go into a faith build.

It just happens that I played exactly like you describe is not possible. And you come with the most inane takes about how that's not how people play.

Neither of those are difficult btw and killing the dragon on the mount as intended is a fun experience. But hey, maybe stop and level up a bit in Limgrave, find out how the game works. What do you think is more likely for the quitenessential noob you argue about, to push through stormveil or to explore Limgrave?

You are 2 people arguing the exact shit and piling up. The goal post was moved because you started from "used too many buffs to kill boss fast and broken whatever" and moved to "it's unlikely for people to play faith". From dumb to dumber but hey... you're both special cases.

And talking about inane takes here comes HellSwarm:

The most common Elden Ring build was dex/arcane because bleed is an obvious source of high damage and the samurai is basically a knight class which was previously the most popular class to pick for newbies. Human fighter is the generic RPG character of choice and we're seeing the same choice made in Elden ring.

Wtf is this logic even? People start the game picking samurai as a knight/human fighter replacement when the actual knight option is listed first?

Yes knight is an extremely popular choice and paladin is a very common way to build them. But apparently, faith is an unlikely choice for this game for normal people.

You have to remember Elden ring is not an RPG, it's an action game with RPG elements. This isn't final fantasy where obvious menu options say "buff your weapon for a higher attack". Every item has a wall of text attached to it no one should care about and it's often risky to check items when you first time them and it interrupts the gameplay.

Or, the obvious alternative, you are a retard.

 

[Ravielsk]

You are 2 people arguing the exact shit and piling up. The goal post was moved because you started from "used too many buffs to kill boss fast and broken whatever" and moved to "it's unlikely for people to play faith". From dumb to dumber but hey... you're both special cases.

Nothing was moved anywhere. The argument was simply expanded. Its "you are stacking too many buffs to brake buffs and we know this because due to how the game is made it is highly unlikely anyone would naturally make this sort of character anyway". Its called making an argument and presenting supporting evidence. Me agreeing and providing evidence of my own does not move shit.

It just happens that I played exactly like you describe is not possible. And you come with the most inane takes about how that's not how people play.

For one I never typed "impossible" or any variation of the meaning. I argued that it is UNLIKELY as in NOT PROBABLE that a normal player would arrive naturally at such a build. So please start responding to what I wrote and not what you wish I wrote.

But hey, maybe stop and level up a bit in Limgrave, find out how the game works. What do you think is more likely for the quitenessential noob you argue about, to push through stormveil or to explore Limgrave?

Both are equally likely but that is entirely besides my point. My point is that a regular player, on their first playthrough will naturally miss a lot of content(unless he follows the wiki) and therefore its more likely than not that he will not pursue a faith build as that build has a harder time getting all its piece into place than any other build.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm pretty sure most people likely do check wikis for the specific stuff they want. If they start with the idea they want a faith build the first thing they will do is likely google which are the good faith weapons and spoil their locations for themselves. Your definition of the "normal" player is apparently some kind of bumbling fool who just randomly stumbles and fumbles around the game completely oblivious to how anything works. Most people are neither that clueless nor as are they as scrupolous as you believe about not having certain things "spoiled" for them, not if it's something they think they are going to need. Likely they will miss many things but the stuff they want they will get.

 

[Remain Nameless]

Faith has been a stat since Demon's Souls and two starting classes in ER begin with faith spells, but somehow you can't expect normal players to use it.
Arcane is a new stat in ER and no starting class begins with arcane spells or weapons with arcane scaling, but apparently it is the choice stat for normal players.

You people are really grasping at straws here.

 

[Seethe]

Outside of Dragon's Dogma, what action RPG has better combat? Pure action games and action games wearing RPG skins (Nioh) are better on that front of course, but nothing that's a full RPG comes to mind.

What kind of degenerate nonsense is this? Nioh 2 is far more of an RPG game than From shit. You only say this because Nioh also has a fantastic aggressive style combat system that needs to be mastered on top of the RPG elements, and maybe also because it's mission based, neither of these things invalidating or diminishing its status as an RPG. It has more RPG elements/mechanics, builds and modifiers you can toy around with and that's not even close. These are both combatfag games, so you cannot even argue that there's RPG mechanics outside of combat other than From's """"quests"""" (lmao)

I watched a Nioh speedrun where the guy used nothing but high stance axe heavy attacks to kill every enemy in the game.

That's because that weapon is the best weapon for speedrunning.

 

[Ravielsk]

Faith has been a stat since Demon's Souls and two starting classes in ER begin with faith spells, but somehow you can't expect normal players to use it.
Arcane is a new stat in ER and no starting class begins with arcane spells or weapons with arcane scaling, but apparently it is the choice stat for normal players.

You people are really grasping at straws here.

And it has been a fairly difficult spec to get into on your first playthrough since DS1.
In DS1 you had to do Solaires rather not so straightforward quest to get the lightning spell(the only good offensive spell for FAITH builds for the majority of the game).
In DS2 it was OK but as far as I remember the core offensive spells took a while to get(although I could be entirely wrong on that one)
DS3 Faith is just straight so garbage that not even memetubers could dress it up to even look viable.
Bloodborne does not have it, neither does Sekiro.

Demon's Souls is the only game where I would say its good without reservation but that is mostly because the level of healing it provides is kind of busted when you farm up enough grass to have infinite mana. God's Wrath is cool but I would never pick it over soul ray if I had to.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Neither of those are difficult btw and killing the dragon on the mount as intended is a fun experience. But hey, maybe stop and level up a bit in Limgrave, find out how the game works. What do you think is more likely for the quitenessential noob you argue about, to push through stormveil or to explore Limgrave?

Most people don't kill the dragons early because they're fucking boring to fight. They regularly toast you and you're sitting there hitting them on torrent over and over at best. They're obvious strong bosses people think you need to return to since they're so strong.

You are 2 people arguing the exact shit and piling up. The goal post was moved because you started from "used too many buffs to kill boss fast and broken whatever" and moved to "it's unlikely for people to play faith". From dumb to dumber but hey... you're both special cases.

These aren't contradictory statements. Most people don't stack buffs because they don't make faith builds. Arcane is more popular because it's advertised as a bleed proc and rivers of blood is handed to you on a plate towards the later half of the game. It's an obvious upgrade to the uchi when it's starting to fall off compared to later weapons. As have been pointed out even finding decent faith spells is difficult early game and late game faith sucks because of enemy immunity. Magic is every where and really strong so unless you specifically want to do a faith build you're unlikely to be pushed towards it.

This leads us to the simple facts of Elden ring : Most players pick Samurai or some form of magic based mage starting out. This is the same as picking Knight/mage in the previous souls games. It's pretty predictable.

Wtf is this logic even? People start the game picking samurai as a knight/human fighter replacement when the actual knight option is listed first?

Samurai has an uchi and that's cooler than a knight. Elden Ring doesn't have a knight class any way, the vagabond is the closest thing and it's nothing like the look of the dark souls knights which is what appealed to people. Samurai is the closest thing.

This conversation is getting really fucking boring. The tryhards will never accept their defective human beings and look at ways to ruin the game and think everyone else is wrong/dumb for not doing it. Soo

What is your favourite main game boss?
Favourite DLC boss?
What was your most used weapon for the base game and did you switch for the DLC?

 

[Anonona]

What is your favourite main game boss?

Probably Godfrey. Fun, well designed, many opportunities to use jump to dodge, amazing second phase. Wish he was the actual final boss even though I do like Radagon (fuck Elden Beast though)

Favourite DLC boss?

Messmer easily. Best one of the DLC, felt like actual care was put into its design to allow for a lot of openings yet was still an exhilarating fight, including its second phase. Has some flaws but I think the fight is the best one of the DLC easily.

What was your most used weapon for the base game and did you switch for the DLC?

Probably my most used weapon type was straight swords, I like the classics and Square Off is great, really strong and looks both cool and down to earth. Changed it for the Backhanded Blades, maybe my favourite new weapon type in the DLC. Great moveset with a lot of moves that either move you foward or let you keep your running momentum, the new AoW Blind Spot is really strong and fun, letting you find new openings to punish the bosses and do decent damage, and it has good stats and damage (at least lighting infused with a pure DEX build as I used them). Only flaw is that some attack like the jumping attack and strong attack felt like the recovery times were a bit longer than expected compared to other weapons. Also wished there were more than 3 and that more of them were swords instead of Chakrams.

 

[abija]

Elden Ring doesn't have a knight class any way, the vagabond is the closest thing and it's nothing like the look of the dark souls knights which is what appealed to people. Samurai is the closest thing.

Are you doubling down on retard? DeS, DS1, DS3 and ER have a similarly looking knight class. Even the description in ER is "A knight exiled from their homeland to wander. A solid, armor-clad origin.".
Is that your "normal player"? Someone who comes looking for a knight, looks at that list of classes and chooses samurai as the closest thing?

 

[Anonona]

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Rest are between 4-9%, with bandit being the less popular (4%)

 

[Hell Swarm]

Elden Ring doesn't have a knight class any way, the vagabond is the closest thing and it's nothing like the look of the dark souls knights which is what appealed to people. Samurai is the closest thing.

Are you doubling down on retard? DeS, DS1, DS3 and ER have a similarly looking knight class. Even the description in ER is "A knight exiled from their homeland to wander. A solid, armor-clad origin.".
Is that your "normal player"? Someone who comes looking for a knight, looks at that list of classes and chooses samurai as the closest thing?

The vagabond looks nothing like Dark souls knights.

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Thank you.

 

[Silverfish]

On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.

During my first run, I ran around Limgrave, beat Margit and made it to Roundtable before finding the summoning bell.

By the mentally disabled dumbfuck you've made up.

Or by anyone with long term memory. Faith has been incredibly inconsistent throughout the series. It offered little beyond pvp / co-op utility in DS, was objectively the best offensive attribute in DS2 and was nerfed into the ground in DS3, only worth raising to meet pyromancy requirements. It was entirely reasonable to ignore faith unless you knew ahead of time how good certain incantations are.

 

[Odoryuk]

O, Flame!
Surge, O Flame!
Whirl, O Flame!
Flame, Protect Me
Flame, You're Kinda Fine
Give Me a Kiss, O Flame!
I Want You So Bad, O Flame!
Oh, Yes, Flame, Yes, Right There
Flame, Cleanse Me

 

[Hell Swarm]

On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.

During my first run, I ran around Limgrave, beat Margit and made it to Roundtable before finding the summoning bell.

By the mentally disabled dumbfuck you've made up.

Or by anyone with long term memory. Faith has been incredibly inconsistent throughout the series. It offered little beyond pvp / co-op utility in DS, was objectively the best offensive attribute in DS2 and was nerfed into the ground in DS3, only worth raising to meet pyromancy requirements. It was entirely reasonable to ignore faith unless you knew ahead of time how good certain incantations are.

This is also the first game that really pushes for a second stat for weapons. So you saw a lot of Str/Int builds and Dex/arc. Faith doesn't have a buddy stat and when half the bosses are holy resistant you're discouraged from it.

 

[Anonona]

O, Flame!
Surge, O Flame!
Whirl, O Flame!
Flame, Protect Me
Flame, You're Kinda Fine
Give Me a Kiss, O Flame!
I Want You So Bad, O Flame!
Oh, Yes, Flame, Yes, Right There
Flame, Cleanse Me

I think I know now who they hired to name the fire spells

Spoiler

 

[Stoned Ape]

O, Flame!
Surge, O Flame!
Whirl, O Flame!
Flame, Protect Me
Flame, You're Kinda Fine
Give Me a Kiss, O Flame!
I Want You So Bad, O Flame!
Oh, Yes, Flame, Yes, Right There
Flame, Cleanse Me

I think I know now who they hired to name the fire spells

Spoiler

Seems legit.

 

[General Disarray]

Golden Vow is found right by the main path on the climb to Mt. Gelmir, basically impossible to miss. Howl of Shabriri is at the very conspicuous tower with a giant eyeball of fire at the frenzied flame village in Liurnia. Amost every physik tear is dropped by a miniboss in front of a Minor Erdtree (which are all literally illustrated at the in-game map).

Why are some people here acting like these are super obscure items that most "normal players" wouldn't know about? Besides, most "normal players" probably consult locations of items after or even by the end of the first playthrough, when they already have a general build in mind but don't want to scout the whole map and clear every minor dungeon again. You have a weird view of most of the playerbase if you think only a minority of tryhards do this.

When the game launched I completely skipped both items and it took me until I almost finished Liurnia to find Selene. The game is absolutely huge and without a guide it is absolutely a given that you will skip stacks of items. And here is the thing even if I found both of those buffs back in the first run I would never use them because I was doing a DEX build(Samurai starting class) that only later pivoted into INT. So these faith buffs would be completely useless to me.

Faith builds in general were not particularly great in the base game because it took them too long to get the basic bits and pieces of their kit. Hell the basic lightning spell is a drop from some wandering knight in a some corner of Liurnia. So there is very little incentive to focus on faith in the early game and even that requires either luck or wikis. Point being that for the vast majority of players anything faith related is most likely not going to be a part of their base kit because the very much discourages it early on.

Tell me about it...

I saw the prophet, and having read all the originally Dune books immediately picked that class and named him Muad'dib and went Faith / Dex. The winged anti heal meme weapon has been my main... Atleast I could use madness spells. Haven't played the game sense it launched, beat the Giant in the ice. Than got feed up with the teleporting gps open world take and went back to Outward. But the first 60 hours were very enjoyable as first played experience, the next 40 not so much.

 

[FugueLah]

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Rest are between 4-9%, with bandit being the less popular (4%)

People who vote on website polls are not representative of the overall population. 12% wretch is all you need to know to confirm this. Also, that website is Playstation centric, so I imagine the poll has a higher proportion of weebs. I have no doubt the most chosen starting class actually is vagabond.

 

[Anonona]

People who vote on website polls are not representative of the overall population. 12% wretch is all you need to know to confirm this. Also, that website is Playstation centric, so I imagine the poll has a higher proportion of weebs. I have no doubt the most chosen starting class actually is vagabond.

Maybe, there isn't a lot of data around, or at least that I could find.

Still, it is quite a sample. 10.470 is nothing to scoff at. Also I don't know about Playstation being a weeb centric console anymore. Maybe when it was the PS3 generation, but Sony had been very harsh censoring weeb games, changed their headquarters to America, Japan pretty much hates Sony now, and they focus mostly on western movie games and open world like nuGod of War, Last of Us, Horizon Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima (though this last one is a bit funny, western developed but japanese inspired) and the like. They have few japanese exclusives nowadays, it is very, very far from the weeb console it used to be. Now the Switch is the one with more JRPGs and other assortment of weeb games.

So until I find a more significant source of info, I'll think this is the closest we get to have a palpable and objective idea of what the most popular classes are.

ps: Ironically enough, I have just found a Famitsu survey of when the game released, so it was exclusively japanese players, 1000+ I think. And their most chosen class was Vagabond! 427 Vagabonds followed by 424 Samurai. Smaller sample and very specific population, but interesting nonetheless.

https://www.frontlinejp.net/2022/05/14/elden-ring-player-survey-results/

Mainly japanese Playstation players. Which doesn't surprise me because Playstation is very western friendly. Is more for westaboos than weebs nowadays.

 

[Hell Swarm]

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Rest are between 4-9%, with bandit being the less popular (4%)

People who vote on website polls are not representative of the overall population. 12% wretch is all you need to know to confirm this. Also, that website is Playstation centric, so I imagine the poll has a higher proportion of weebs. I have no doubt the most chosen starting class actually is vagabond.

Ps5 completely dominated Xbox this generation (and both didn't do well). So the average person Is on a PS5 or PC. You're just coping at this point.

 

[Anonona]

Old data related to the topic, may be different now, but it seems most of the playerbase is actually on console, specifically, Playstation which explain the big sample size of that poll. Also it means they may actually be most of the playerbase, which is kind of funny, didn't expect that to be honest.

https://www.dexerto.com/elden-ring/...n-ring-player-count-after-huge-sales-1775853/

"According to stats from Bandai Namco, Elden Ring’s notched up 13.4 million sales as of March 31, outperforming the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. Thanks to stats from GamesIndustry.biz we also know that out of all of the copies bought, 41% were on PlayStation, 29% were on Xbox, and 30% were on PC.

This means there are well over nine-million players who own Elden Ring on console, on top of at least four million who have PC versions. However, the game will likely see a surge in sales throughout the year, particularly over the holiday period, so there are plenty more copies to be sold."

I think it may be because Demon's Souls and Bloodborne were PS exclusives and kind of when the fanbase started, similar at how Final Fantasy was closely tied to Playstation for many years due the popularity of FF7-9, despite the saga being originally in Nintendo's consoles.

But is kind of old info, things may have changed. I'll look around more just in case and update this post.

ps: I think this one is more recent, from 2023. Similar conclusions. It also says that 11.4% of players platinum the game on Playstation versus the 7.7% that got all achivement in Steam, which does make sense considering that most of the playerbase seems to play on Playstation, presumedly. I may check out the sources later on to see if I can gleam anything myself.

https://levvvel.com/elden-ring-statistics/

"At 41%, most of the total Elden Ring sales were for the PS4 and PS5.​

(Source: GSD)

• 29% of the total Elden Ring sales were for PC.
• 30% of the total Elden Rings sales were for the Xbox.

When analyzing the Elden Ring sales by platform data, we can see from these statistics that the hype around Elden Ring was majorly tied to consoles. This is only natural, as PC sales were a bit lower due to performance issues such as lag and stuttering. Thankfully, the game has since been patched, and those issues are mostly resolved at the time of writing."

This would also explain why the playstation centric webpage has the biggest sample size. But I'll still look for even more recent data, though maybe we will have to wait a bit to get data about the effects on the playerbase after the DLC release.

The dominance of console players may also be tied to the fact that, since it became mainstream, more casual players that haven't played any other souls are joining in, and this is just a personal observation, so it may be totally wrong, but I think most casual players prefer console.

ps2: Ah, perhaps the closest we have regarding the current population distribution is that the DLC peaked at 730.000+ concurrent players on Steam, while supposedly, it sold 5M+ copies. If the data is right, we could assume most of the playerbase is on console still. What percentage, can't say, and is not hard data, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Crayll]

What is your favourite main game boss?

Radagon. Shame about Elden Beast.

Favourite DLC boss?

Midra. Great atmosphere, great buildup, great OST. Attack patterns are unique enough to be more interesting than a regular sword-guy, but still very readable.

What was your most used weapon for the base game and did you switch for the DLC?

Banished Knight's Halberd in the base game.
First DLC playthrough was with Milady, enjoyed it well enough. Second playthrough though was with the Ancient Meteoric Ore Greatsword and it's now my favorite From weapon. Best ultra-greatsword moveset (Zweihander with the horizontal swipe light attacks and thrust heavy), cool weapon art that has multiple uses, scales with Arcane instead of gayass INT.

 

[Raghar]

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Rest are between 4-9%, with bandit being the less popular (4%)

People who vote on website polls are not representative of the overall population. 12% wretch is all you need to know to confirm this. Also, that website is Playstation centric, so I imagine the poll has a higher proportion of weebs. I have no doubt the most chosen starting class actually is vagabond.

Katana has bleed and it has fast moves. It's kinda kickass for DEX characters. So basically Samurai has strong starting equipment that allows roam without danger in first areas.
Astrologer means they can play as mage.
And Vagabond means they can have decent sword and shield early.
Wretch is simply nearly as kickass as was Deprived in Dark Souls I.