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

[Strange Fellow]

Do you think it's reasonable to force players to farm 1% drop rates?

Yes, absolutely, when the consequence of not doing it is completely insignificant. No one was holding a gun to your head, and you should not have spent an hour of your finite time on earth on this.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Do you think it's reasonable to force players to farm 1% drop rates?

Yes, absolutely, when the consequence of not doing it is completely insignificant. No one was holding a gun to your head, and you should not have spent an hour of your finite time on earth on this.

Is this another "you're not supposed to actually see or engage with the game content" argument again? Because that's really stupid.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Do you think it's reasonable to force players to farm 1% drop rates?

Yes, absolutely, when the consequence of not doing it is completely insignificant. No one was holding a gun to your head, and you should not have spent an hour of your finite time on earth on this.

Is this another "you're not supposed to actually see or engage with the game content" argument again? Because that's really stupid.

The intention will have been that a few lucky players will get the weapon by playing naturally. Maybe you would have found it on a replay and it would have been a fun new thing to try. If not, you wouldn't have known the possibility even existed if you hadn't looked it up online. I recommend keeping the looking-up to a minimum and reserve it for after you've done everything you can and explored as thoroughly as you care to, just to see if there's anything major that you've missed, like hidden areas, bosses or NPCs. That's the most fun way to play the game.

 

[Odoryuk]

You cannot underestimate how vastly a random drop can change your playstyle, especially on your first playthrough. I got a Balder Side Sword naturally and only later learned that people farm for it. Such a good weapon.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Do you think it's reasonable to force players to farm 1% drop rates?

Yes, absolutely, when the consequence of not doing it is completely insignificant. No one was holding a gun to your head, and you should not have spent an hour of your finite time on earth on this.

Is this another "you're not supposed to actually see or engage with the game content" argument again? Because that's really stupid.

The intention will have been that a few lucky players will get the weapon by playing naturally. Maybe you would have found it on a replay and it would have been a fun new thing to try. If not, you wouldn't have known the possibility even existed if you hadn't looked it up online. I recommend keeping the looking-up to a minimum and reserve it for after you've done everything you can and explored as thoroughly as you care to, just to see if there's anything major that you've missed, like hidden areas, bosses or NPCs. That's the most fun way to play the game.

It's a 1% drop. There is no argument you can make about a drop so low that wouldn't be equally as valid as a 3% or 5% drop. But even so why should a player wanting to use an enemy's weapon be punished for it? I wanted to use the godrick soldier warpick on my first play through. It's right there at the start and something you could reasonably farm for without needing any sort of help. Except it's a 2% drop rare. So you can see multiple enemies using it, dropping it when dead but you can't pick it up. I guess your excuse is "it's an RPG, why should you be able to pick up a weapon an enemy used"? And Elden ring is so huge 99% of 'encounters' with cleanrot knights and the fire lizards are being skipped any way so a higher drop rate is hardly a problem.

You think it's a good idea to punish players wanting to use what they can see because... well it's an RPG. Why not waste the players time? Magma blade is a unique weapon with a cool weapon art and a nice moveset but why give the player the choice to play how they want when you can force a 2 hour grind because... Well that's just From's loot system and it's better than other games because... eh... because it just is.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I suppose they could make every enemy drop all their equipment. That would be an awful chore to sort through, though. I personally hope they keep making the experience as smooth as possible for normal people and let the autists grind if they want to. After all, most autists probably enjoy the grind. It must be a very small minority who hate the grind, don't feel it's worth the payoff, but do it anyway.

 

[cvv]

I suppose they could make every enemy drop all their equipment.

Or regular enemies don't drop anything and all the gear is a reward of some sorts - for minibosses, dungeons, nook-and-cranny exploration etc.

Because right now we have 1% drops on one side and vast empty spaces where 95% of shineys are stones, runes and cookbooks on the other. Seems a bit retarded tbh.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I suppose they could make every enemy drop all their equipment.

Or regular enemies don't drop anything and all the gear is a reward of some sorts - for minibosses, dungeons, nook-and-cranny exploration etc.

Because right now we have 1% drops on one side and vast empty spaces where 95% of shineys are stones, runes and cookbooks on the other. Seems a bit retarded tbh.

In the case of the Magma blade there are 6 Magma wyrms in the game. 2 drop weapons, 2 drop ancient dragon stones and 2 drop nothing but a dragon heart and souls. Including the one most likely to be encountered because it's on the way up Mt Gelmi and where Alexander's quest goes so a pretty common kill.

Instead of grinding 1% drops The unique magma blade with it's unique weapon art that's pretty cool to use could drop from it. Wouldn't that make it more rewarding to beat a field boss?

The worst thing about farming the Clean rot knights is they're in a rot swamp where you can't get off torrent without getting rotted. Who's going to stick around to fight enemies in the swamp? And Milicent is in the area and will water fowl you if you don't burst her down. It's so stupid.

After all, most autists probably enjoy the grind. It must be a very small minority who hate the grind, don't feel it's worth the payoff, but do it anyway.

Complete cope. Very few people enjoy grinding for item drops. I did it because I'm a fucking faggot and the lizard summon is a meme between me and my current coop partner so I was willing to suffer it. And the Cleanrot knights have a unique weapon art I wanted to mess around with since I'm forcing a lot of weapon arts this play through and keep changing up play styles. And now my grind isn't even finished because I need all the upgrade material too. Fucking great.

Edit : Guild wars already solved this problem and it would be very easy to adapt it to a Souls like game.

There are no unique grind only movesets. Every possible weapon and weapon art is able to be picked up from a location or by beating a boss. Nothing unique can be grinded except for cosmetics. Magma blade comes in 2 version, first is the red one we have now you get from beating a Magma wyrm. Second one is a spider leg and has some Queelag lore on it you grind from Chaos demons if you want it (drop rate should still be 5% or more minimum). Weapon arts can have different skins so a Halo scythe can have a weeb version where it fires a shuriken instead of just a ring. Exact same moveset, same hit boxes and damage. Only difference is cosmetic. Literally all these problems go away and everyone wins. You get more control of your characters look if you want it. From get more loot and more space to write stupid lore. Beating field bosses now has a purpose and is engaging so you know you will get some new equipment even if it's not something you can use. And last of all. No more fucking grinding for a weapon you may not even like when you get.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Very few people enjoy grinding for item drops.

I think Japanese players must enjoy it, RNG based drops and slot-machine chests are really common in their games. Maybe its something to do with their not really being able to gamble outside of pachinko and its a way to give addicts a dopamine hit?

 

[Silverfish]

I suppose they could make every enemy drop all their equipment. That would be an awful chore to sort through, though.

Click on an enemy, "I'll take this, but leave that". Yeah, what a chore.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Cheesedragon117 asked for me to record some gameplay footage to show my skills in Elden Ring. I killed this hidden boss using fists only to prove how good I am. This is what 10 years of Dark souls 1 combat expertise looks like!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Very few people enjoy grinding for item drops.

I think Japanese players must enjoy it, RNG based drops and slot-machine chests are really common in their games. Maybe its something to do with their not really being able to gamble outside of pachinko and its a way to give addicts a dopamine hit?

If there's one thing I've realized on my trip over here, it's that Japan is full of gambling addicts. You can't win money directly, but all these crane and gacha games are straight up gambling, and they offer prizes of anything from keychains to whole ass game consoles and other 300$+ prizes. They are everywhere in massive numbers, every mall has whole arcades full of these machines. Tons of it is aimed directly at kids so I'm not surprised they grow up enjoying this stuff and thinking it's normal in video games too.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The halo scythe isn't that good anyway. Any random weapon with Sacred Blade ashe is just as good.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Looool I beat Messmer 3rd try and Gaius second try. Hahahha these are le impossible supra hard artificial difficult bosses? OMG. You guys are just salty you picked a shit build.

 

[Bloodeyes]

I agree with Hell Swarm about the drop rates. I've probably spent a full week of my life farming the Aristocrat Headband for different characters. Its hell and I'm never doing it again.

I play on console so cheat engine isn't even available to me. I still have my ps4 though, so I've got an account on there that has characters with all the items and I just drop myself what I need for a build then revert my save. Most of my builds have 20 or so armaments, more than half of which would come from enemy drops. So this saves me days of grinding when I make a new build. I'd prefer not to do this and technically I don't have to, but I'll take just getting the weapons I want then actually getting to play the game over spending hours doing repetitive, boring shit.

 

[Lyric Suite]

You don't need the Aristocrat Headband on all characters. Those games were never designed to be able to do "everything" in one character or one playthrough (try to do that without wikis), that's an autism FromSoft shouldn't be compelled to cater to.

Grinding is a normal part of an RPG and FromSoft thought it added an extra element to the experience they are offering with their games, a kind of uncertainly that helped not make every single playthrough feel exactly the same every time, but compared to real grinding games it's a joke. You think grinding for an hour (if unlucky, i don't recall grinding for anything for more than 20 minutes in any FromSoft games) to get the Arisocrat Headband (an item you are never going to use anyway, much like the rest of the peasant sets) is bad? Try to grind a week on a sinlge weapon in Diablo or an MMO without which you cannot even progress the game.

There's a million of other gear in FromSoft games that you can chose from which requires no grinding to get. Some, they opten to make a little more rare because that's a thing to do in RPGs but none of it is required to progress the game. It's not a big deal.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

I really enjoy From's loot system. I farmed 2 rare drops for 2 hours today. It was such a fun time standing on an elevator for 20 seconds, killing a mob and then warping back to the bonfire. A 1% drop rate item made me have SO MUCH FUN. I didn't find it at all annoying, disrespectful to the players time or a way to pad out game length for people wanting to try specific weapons.

Did I mention I found 7 swords, 3 chest pieces, 4 gauntlets and 5 pairs of legs when I was looking for a single Halo scythe? Fucking fantastic. This is what I play games for. To grind for an hour to get a different weapon art.

please understand, they didn't have any opportunity to give this to you via exploring. they had a "white mushroom flesh" quota, you see.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I really enjoy From's loot system. I farmed 2 rare drops for 2 hours today. It was such a fun time standing on an elevator for 20 seconds, killing a mob and then warping back to the bonfire. A 1% drop rate item made me have SO MUCH FUN. I didn't find it at all annoying, disrespectful to the players time or a way to pad out game length for people wanting to try specific weapons.

Did I mention I found 7 swords, 3 chest pieces, 4 gauntlets and 5 pairs of legs when I was looking for a single Halo scythe? Fucking fantastic. This is what I play games for. To grind for an hour to get a different weapon art.

please understand, they didn't have any opportunity to give this to you via exploring. they had a "white mushroom flesh" quota, you see.

Of course! It enhances the player experience to have the most basic loot system possible where you're forced to pick up everything (and used to have a carry weight limit). It's PLAYER EXPERIENCE to say "That sword is cool, I wish I could use it" and then.. not be able to unless you tediously kill the same enemy again and again. Think how excited people are to finally get the weapon!!

Can you imagine a game world where merchants sold more than arrows and crafting material? Imagine how cool it would be for different merchants to find rare and exotic weapons as you advance the game. How much more rewarding finding a merchant would be if they held something other than mushrooms, bolts and 1 set of armour already well below your stats.

At this point I'm almost ready to become a youtube essayist and listing all the ways Elden ring fails within the bounds of it's own genre and fails within the Souls series it's self. Be like 5 hours long pointing out how woefully outdated the series is without touching on the major problems.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I really enjoy From's loot system. I farmed 2 rare drops for 2 hours today. It was such a fun time standing on an elevator for 20 seconds, killing a mob and then warping back to the bonfire. A 1% drop rate item made me have SO MUCH FUN. I didn't find it at all annoying, disrespectful to the players time or a way to pad out game length for people wanting to try specific weapons.

Did I mention I found 7 swords, 3 chest pieces, 4 gauntlets and 5 pairs of legs when I was looking for a single Halo scythe? Fucking fantastic. This is what I play games for. To grind for an hour to get a different weapon art.

please understand, they didn't have any opportunity to give this to you via exploring. they had a "white mushroom flesh" quota, you see.

More and more i'm convinced you guys are just mongoloids.

Would you lay the same criticism to Dark Souls? Because that had random drops too, but no "mushrooms".

There's of course a simple solution to the issue and it's the reason why FromSoft's implementation of randomized loot is among the best: you don't have to engage in it. There's a billion of other gear you can use. "But muh Halo Syche". Fuck the Halo Syche.

Out of all FromSoft games, the only one i would argue had a bad implementation of randomized gear was Dark Souls 2, purely because there was stuff you had ONE chance to get for NG cycle. One. But even in that game, it was still fine because you didn't need any of that. Your experience of the game wasn't altered irreparably just because you didn't get that piece of armor you weren't going to wear anyway. Like i said, "completism" is a form of autism those games never actively supported. Imagine for instance figuring out all the bird nest recipes on your own without a wiki. That shit was for you to discover across multiple playthroughs and multiple characters over the years.

Lastly, you have shit like Patches' Emporium as a last resot:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PatchesEmporium/

 

[Utgard-Loki]

yes i would actually, you dumbass. getting lucky with dark knight or farming balder drops in ds1 was fucking horseshit.

 

[Hell Swarm]

There's of course a simple solution to the issue and it's the reason why FromSoft's implementation of randomized loot is among the best: you don't have to engage in it. There's a billion of other gear you can use. "But muh Halo Syche". Fuck the Halo Syche.

"It's among the best to have to farm a weapon in a poison swamp or wait until you reach end game to get it". Brilliant Lyric, you never fail to post the dumbest shit.

Thorn sorceries scale off faith and arcane. There are 3 staffs that use faith as a modifier and 1 of them is dropped from a unique enemy in volcano manor with 11% drop rate and the other is a specific type of fire monk with a 2% drop rate. The final one is a fixed drop but has vastly higher stat requirements to the point where using a mixed staff is pointless as you would already have the stats to use a normal intelligence based one.

We could question why From thinks putting faith buiilds spells on an item they can't really use and then requiring 3 stats to make them remotely effect is is a good idea. But then we have to question what From actually think is a good idea. Elden ring being as shallow as a puddle has multiple faith types with unique casting weapons to improve the damage. Instead of fleshing these out and giving you unique builds they're more or less the same 3 spells and often the unique equipment clashes with the build.

Lets take a look at a Madness build. Something new and unique to Elden ring so you would expect it to be reasonably fleshed out since it's got it's own ending.

Base game has one weapon that does Madness. Vyke's spear has an E scaling on strength, this is basically as bad as scaling can get.. But wait! The scared seal also scales off Str, Dex, Int and Faith.. So your madness build gets a near useless buff from strength. But your spells require faith and the only decent scaling is off of Faith so why the fuck does the only weapon option in the base game clash with your primary damage stat? But wait the DLC gave us the frenzy perfume bottle so throwing magic dust is... oh that's dex too. Because faith wouldn't make any sense.

Actually I was joking. The vast majority of the game is immune to madness and every boss is. So your awesome new status and magic type is completely worthless compared to using the basic fire magic which is easier to get, uses all of the same buffs but has better spells and can be built around using almost any weapon with the right ashes of war. But hey.. Madness ending right? This is how bad From's design is. They create a specific ending for a build and give it 5 items and 5(6) spells. It has a built in balancing mechanic of self damage if you abuse it and it's seal is hidden behind a NPC quest line and multiple obscure invasions.. But it's just utterly worthless.

 

[Odoryuk]

Imagine for instance figuring out all the bird nest recipes on your own without a wiki. That shit was for you to discover across multiple playthroughs and multiple characters over the years.

I'm 100% sure most of the initial players learned that trading existed in DS1 through guides, and this also made people aware of all possible drops. It's way out of the way in DS1 compared to DeS and many DS1 players didn't play DeS.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Imagine for instance figuring out all the bird nest recipes on your own without a wiki. That shit was for you to discover across multiple playthroughs and multiple characters over the years.

I'm 100% sure most of the initial players learned that trading existed in DS1 through guides, and this also made people aware of all possible drops. It's way out of the way in DS1 compared to DeS and many DS1 players didn't play DeS.

It's funny how everyone says 'From wants you to learn on your own and doesn't hand hold' when Demon's souls came with a near complete guide book. I haven't checked it in years but I think it went through the arch stones except the end game of the first one to hide the False king reveal. Most Demon's souls players probably knew about trading even though it was out of the way there too. The problem is who the hell would quit to reload the trade? It's so stupid and something even primitive 8 bit RPGs had long solved.

 

[MasPingon]

I agree with Hell Swarm about the drop rates. I've probably spent a full week of my life farming the Aristocrat Headband for different characters. Its hell and I'm never doing it again.

It's so fucking sad. You guys playing Elden Ring like some kind of Diablo/looting grindfest? I would have never thought of that. I thought some of you are just intellectually disabled, but it seems there is more serious background of your condition. Damn, if I knew it before I wouldn't even get mad reading some comments. Can we somehow help you guys?

 

[Lyric Suite]

yes i would actually, you dumbass. getting lucky with dark knight or farming balder drops in ds1 was fucking horseshit.

It's a valid mechanic common to a lot of RPGs. In some of them, it's the ONLY mechanic they have, namely Diablo clones, MMOs and the like.

Personally, i like it in Souls (where as i absolutely hate it where it is mandatory), because it adds a level of variation to the game and you don't have to do it if you don't want. I always quit Diablo clones once i get to the end game because the grinding becomes absurd. It's a very minor thing in Dark Souls compared to that.

In Elden Ring, the only time where i was annoyed by the farming mechanic is when i got stuck with not having enough Smithing Stones [3]. That was an error on their part placing the Bell Bearing a bit too far out of the way compared to the rest, but it wasn't a game ending predictament. Oh, i also wanted a Glintstone Catalyst on my SL1 Wretched a bit earlier so i grinded the mages near where you first meet Sellen. That took a bit, but on the plus side i got the whole aristocrat shit in the process too since i basically just genocided the caravan over and over.

Literaly the only two instances where i ended up grinding against my will. Well, in the case of the Smithing Stones it was against my will.