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

[Hell Swarm]

That is explicitly a very bad thing. If a game is designed that way its no longer a game but a movie that pauses every few seconds. It defeats the whole purpose and goes directly against the mediums strengths and emphasizes its weakest points.

No, trimming fat is always appreciated. An eight hour game with only fun parts is always superior to a fifty hour game with a bunch of boring stuff in between the fun.

Going through corridors and watching cutscenes is not my definition of fun. Not even close.

Of course, there are lots of games in between, with level after level to explore and beat - and those are usually the best I guess.

All the best games are like that. 5 minutes of skippable cut scenes between an hour or 2 of gameplay is about the right balance. It's actually the same balance From games used to have where the boss cut scenes were paced similarly to other action games unless you got really stuck some where. It sounds weird but early From were so good at pacing games they managed to pace a toxic dart guy making you reach firelight just as you were about to die so you could find the bonfire was out. It takes a lot of skill to pace things that tightly and they did it because they knew it enhanced the experience in ways nothing else could. It's a classic moment in gaming and it must have taken ages to get it just right the way it does.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lol, my God how did FromSoft make feel sad for a plant:



This poor thing was trying so hard towards the end, why did i have to kill it.

Fourth main boss down, so far only the first (Dancing Lion) felt like it would be rage inducing. This guy didn't seem to have anything too unfair, and neither did the Putrescence thing. Rellana too wasn't too hard in her second phase, or at least i didn't feel her magic attacks were "bullshit" (even the one where she throws those magic arcs is easily to dodge once you get the timing).

I'm getting the feeling they blew their load with the Dancing Lion and there's not gonna be anything majorly rage inducing until Radahn.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That is explicitly a very bad thing. If a game is designed that way its no longer a game but a movie that pauses every few seconds. It defeats the whole purpose and goes directly against the mediums strengths and emphasizes its weakest points.

No, trimming fat is always appreciated. An eight hour game with only fun parts is always superior to a fifty hour game with a bunch of boring stuff in between the fun.

Going through corridors and watching cutscenes is not my definition of fun. Not even close.

Of course, there are lots of games in between, with level after level to explore and beat - and those are usually the best I guess.

I'm gonna say it since nobody will: Elden Ring's open world, as "empty" and uneventful that it may feel like, is vastly preferable to those mid 2000s "corridor" games where you literally can only move in one direction: forward. The overall map alone in the DLC is a masterclass in level design that reminds me of how the world was designed in DS1 (though it's not quite to that level and the individual areas of course are often just open landscapes).

Despite open world throwing a monkey wrench on what made Souls level design so great, there's still a lot of cleverness in how the areas are designed, you still need navigational skills to make sense of where you are at and where you are going, and you still have to deal with the complexity of choice, or where to go, when to backtrack etc. Corridor games are the most braindead thing imaginable.

 

[Stoned Ape]

I'm getting the feeling they blew their load with the Dancing Lion and there's not gonna be anything majorly rage inducing until Radahn.

There is one boss that I found far more annoying than Radahn. He is optional and just gives access to a small area with a bunch of ski-doo blessings when you kill him.

 

[Silverfish]

Going through corridors and watching cutscenes is not my definition of fun. Not even close.

Depends on what's in the corridors.

I'm gonna say it since nobody will: Elden Ring's open world, as "empty" and uneventful that it may feel like, is vastly preferable to those mid 2000s "corridor" games where you literally can only move in one direction: forward.

A five hour game that cuts out all the extraneous stuff and keeps to the fun bits will always be superior to a fifty hour game where you go hours in between the fun bits.

 

[Lyric Suite]

A five hour game that cuts out all the extraneous stuff and keeps to the fun bits will always be superior to a fifty hour game where you go hours in between the fun bits.

The "extranous stuff" is the shit that makes games great you mongoloid.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Go back to your containment thread. You're being retarded again Lyric. You might like being bored riding round a field but no one else does.

 

[Max Damage]

I don't know why I bothered returning to Elden Ring, level and encounter design is so dumbed down that it's hard to believe same company made Dark Souls. Generic crypts have same copypasted stone imps and traps, but do bigger dungeons spice it up in any meaningful way? No, here's copypasted ant cave, then copypasted stone man cave. Yesterday it was copypasted wizard area and copypasted mimic area (after area of copypasted spirit hunters that you already slained full cave worth). Add in a couple spastic overdesigned giant enemies somewhere in the middle, cap it off with a boss (mostly copypasted too), here's your adventure wrapped in stale Bethesda/Ubisoft open world treadmill. It's been a long while since I witnessed decline so steep and shocking, fuck Fromsoft.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Go back to your containment thread. You're being retarded again Lyric. You might like being bored riding round a field but no one else does.

This thread has gone massively to shit since you showed up maybe you should sit this one out, figgit.

Level design, even in its most padded or diluted form, will always be superior to zero level design, which is the defining characteristic of a "corridor" game. The smallest Elden Ring cave is more interesting than the entirety of any of those dumbed down retardations. The second a game forces you to think of where you are and what's around you, even for the briefest of moments, it's already better than a game where you are basically on autopilot the whole time, barely even registering the enviorments around you because you know there's nothing there. It's basically like a theme park ride, a slideshow of pretty pictures you aren't paying attention to because it's just background decoration.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I don't know why I bothered returning to Elden Ring, level and encounter design is so dumbed down that it's hard to believe same company made Dark Souls. Generic crypts have same copypasted stone imps and traps, but do bigger dungeons spice it up in any meaningful way? No, here's copypasted ant cave, then copypasted stone man cave. Yesterday it was copypasted wizard area and copypasted mimic area (after area of copypasted spirit hunters that you already slained full cave worth). Add in a couple spastic overdesigned giant enemies somewhere in the middle, cap it off with a boss (mostly copypasted too), here's your adventure wrapped in stale Bethesda/Ubisoft open world treadmill. It's been a long while since I witnessed decline so steep and shocking, fuck Fromsoft.

If that's how you feel you might as well skip the open world bits, and look up what you've missed after going through the legacy dungeon of each area. I can't imagine those won't be worth your while if you like the Souls games, even if the rest isn't.

 

[Lyric Suite]

5 minutes of skippable cut scenes between an hour or 2 of gameplay is about the right balance.

Games are better the less cutscenes they have.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I don't know why I bothered returning to Elden Ring, level and encounter design is so dumbed down that it's hard to believe same company made Dark Souls. Generic crypts have same copypasted stone imps and traps, but do bigger dungeons spice it up in any meaningful way? No, here's copypasted ant cave, then copypasted stone man cave. Yesterday it was copypasted wizard area and copypasted mimic area (after area of copypasted spirit hunters that you already slained full cave worth). Add in a couple spastic overdesigned giant enemies somewhere in the middle, cap it off with a boss (mostly copypasted too), here's your adventure wrapped in stale Bethesda/Ubisoft open world treadmill. It's been a long while since I witnessed decline so steep and shocking, fuck Fromsoft.

Would you feel the same way if the assets were always different but the structure remained unchanged?

 

[Max Damage]

Nope, the design is lazy at its core, even combat feels brainless and boring because you barely have to care about who you fight. Enemies have more moves than ever before, but most of time there's no group synergy that you have to solve, the environments also don't allow for any creative ambushes or threat from distance, you just mash out your usual attacks and move on. Pretty sure even macro bot could finish this game, you even get flask refills after wiping each individual group. Elden Ring is like caricature of DS3.

 

[Silverfish]

The "extranous stuff" is the shit that makes games great you mongoloid.

Riding around on a horse to get from point A to point B doesn't make any game great. Unless it's a horse racing game.

maybe you should sit this one out, figgit.

Pretty sure Swarm can handle being called a faggot. No need to reddit it up.

 

[Hell Swarm]

This thread has gone massively to shit since you showed up maybe you should sit this one out, figgit.

Feel free to leave it and don't come back then. You had to get a containment thread because no one wanted you posting your play through here lol.

It's basically like a theme park ride, a slideshow of pretty pictures you aren't paying attention to because it's just background decoration.

You just described the majority of elden ring.

Pretty sure Swarm can handle being called a faggot. No need to reddit it up.

Being called a faggot by him means you're doing something right.

It's sad I've just started Nioh and immediately saw how much better it is than From's slop. Enemies in Nioh will attack you when you rush them. It's not safe to immediately jump on an enemy and start swinging like you can to every enemy in From games. You have to pay attention to their stance and weapon to know if it's risky or not.. While Elden ring every enemy that isn't a poise abusing damage sponge will let you run up and stun lock them with zero risk

 

[Spike]

Lyric brings up good points about Elden Ring but the execution just isn't there. In vanilla especially it just drags ooooon and oooooooon and on.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The "extranous stuff" is the shit that makes games great you mongoloid.

Riding around on a horse to get from point A to point B doesn't make any game great. Unless it's a horse racing game.

This is not even how Elden Ring works (Hell Swamp even admited the map is too complex for him) and it's not the point we were discussing.

Corridor games don't cut "extranous" things, they cut actual complexity and substance.

Even the most barren of Elden Ring's open areas has more interesting design than a game where you are constantly going forward with your surroundings barely registering in your mind.

There's nothing worse in a game than being set on a rail, and not just in terms of the space you are allowed to navigate. Modern games are incredibly lockstep when it comes to the mechanics. I noticed that when i played Styx a few months ago, a game which wasn't completely devoid of qualities but compared to Thief, and even just leaving aside the quality in level design, art etc, the game felt incredibly constrained by the mechanics.

Elden Ring for me doesn't compare to the Ubisoft formula because the game is too old school in the way it operates. The typical Ubisoft game doesn't allow you to get lost in the map, doesn't allow you miss out on content, or to do things "outside" the intended way. You are coerced into playing the game the way the designers intended, and you are constantly bombarded with feedback that reinforce the mechancs. Trackers, UI element that remind you to do this or that task and so forth. To me playing modern nu-games feel like hitting a series of checkboxes in a spreadsheet. There's really no "game" there. It's that theme park effect. Your enviorments are not a "real" place, they are just phony decoration, and you are not allowed to step over the fence, you must stick to the path designated for the ride.

The reason i'm playing devil's advocate for Elden Ring here is that your arguments are simply bad and miss the mark. Open world may have stretched the Souls formula beyond its breaking point, their resources having to be spread so thin they had to sacrifice quality for the sake of quantiy, to rely on repetition and variation of the same basic setup because this is how open world gamers operate both by virtue of their own nature as well as by necessity. But... it's still better than Ubisoft slop, and not by a small margin either.

Lastly, understand that shitting on Elden Ring or FromSoft doesn't make you "cool". It's not bad ass, doesn't make you "2 deep 4 u", especially when you are forced to rely on sophistry, strawmen, gaslighting, and simple lying. You just end up looking like a retard for making bad arguments and you end up making people reconsider whether they had been too harsh on the game afterall. I know i did lmao.

 

[Silverfish]

Hell Swamp

Corridor games don't cut "extranous" things, they cut actual complexity and substance.

Okay, but Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, 3D Shinobi and old-school God of War are more complex than Elden Ring despite being straight shots to the finish line.

Elden Ring for me doesn't compare to the Ubisoft formula

I agree. Item crafting is actually useful in Far Cry.

Lastly, understand that shitting on Elden Ring or FromSoft doesn't make you "cool".

If I was worried about being considered cool on the Codex, why would I have ever admitted to playing most games on consoles and having a soft spot for Halo, Skyrim and Fallout 4? No, I'm just a fan of previous Souls games who found Elden Ring disappointing by comparison.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Okay, but Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, 3D Shinobi and old-school God of War are more complex than Elden Ring despite being straight shots to the finish line.

God of War lmao.

There's complexity and then there's complexity. I wasn't particularly impressed by Nioh for instance. Didn't think the way the enemies moved or attacked was anywhere near as clever as anything found in FromSoft games. You can argue the "complexity" lies in the skill system and the ability to string up "combos" and the like. To me that just lies within the category of skill expression, not necessarily complexity. You can do a bit of that in FromSoft games too, just look at Ongbal. Personally, i don't find it all that interesting.

FromSoft games for me don't belong to the same category as those action games anyway. If it was related to that tradition i problably wouldn't have liked Dark Souls when i originally played it. There's something in Souls that feels more "real", more grounded if you will. Don't forget that Souls was an evolution of King's Field, and there's still some of the lifeblood of the latter even in Elden Ring.

My background is PC gaming. The things i like are strategy, sims, and if i play action games, i still prefer them to have an element of "concreteness" as well, like Doom with its interactive level design, which makes the enviorments feel "real" (unlike, say, nu-Doom, where the "theme park ride" factor predominates).

I like concrectness, "realness", the feeling i'm interacting with something that is actually substantiative. If i'm playing a racing game, it has to be a real sim. I cannot play arcade racing games or even simcades. It doesn't matter how much "skill" they may require. Speed doesn't matter to me, action doesn't matter to me, only reality matters.

And that's why i responded so positively to Dark Souls. Even Sekiro didn't change that dynamic for me (even when it comes to the level design, more basic that it was compared to Souls). That's why for me the only point of reference for Elden Ring is past FromSoft games, unless there's a company out there that follows similar design principles i'm unaware of.

 

[Lyric Suite]

You had to get a containment thread because no one wanted you posting your play through here lol.

It's because i decided to do an actual let's play. Not an extensive one like the one i did for Sekiro but big enough that would have been impossible to post in this thread without basically taking it over.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Lyrics back to his usual posting where he absolutely will never admit that Elden ring is a barren boring landscape. Yet the original God of Wars which is a non-shop beat 'em up is some how empty? I wonder what kind of mental illness you need to have when you're so desperate to defend a game you defend empty open worlds with minutes between enemies even trying to attack you and none of them being able to hit you. It's just fucking sad.

Elden ring's map isn't complex. It's poorly designed. Elden ring is about as complex as Assassin's creed 1 and didn't learn any lessons from the games it tries to poorly copy. BOTW works because the player has vertical movement options and skills able to make an empty open world into a play ground. Elden ring has.. well you can hit stuff and roll. You can't even damage terrain, it's just blocks to make only your weapon bounce and look pretty for autists who want to take screenshots for reddit.

 

[Odoryuk]

People who tricked themselves into thinking that Dark Souls 2 is the best thing since sliced bread now with all seriousness arguing that Elden Ring's open world bad

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yet the original God of Wars which is a non-shop beat 'em up is some how empty?

Who said anything about the game being empty? Do you see the phrase "God of Wars is empty" anywhere? Can you point where i said anything at all about God of Wars? I just laughted much like i laughted when you guys mentioned Halo. The idea of actually taking mainstream slop seriously is ludicrous to me.

This is why my apologia is actually gaining traction here btw. Because you guys are so shit at arguing and are so dishonest people are actually considering my points even though they'd actually like to hate on this game lmao (and there's legitimate reasons to hate it to be sure. If only you guys could actually make good arguments though).

Elden ring's map isn't complex.

You literally said the map was too complex and confusing. "Too much" were your exact words if i remember. A lot of normies rely on written routes because they have no clue where to go and aren't observant enough to find secrets and hidden things, or to even understand their whereabouts half the time.

You may find the planimetric sections "boring" but there's nothing simplistic about the overall structure of the map itself. It's not like the same people who designed all those complex legacy dungeons suddenly lost their know how when they set out to make the layout of the world map.

So yes, if we are making a comparison to a game where the level design has been stripped entirely and you are basically just pressing forward like a drone all the way through, Elden Ring clearly has the more involved and complex design.

Of course, it's not a credit to Elden Ring that it happens to be better than the absolute bottom of the barrel, which is what usually corridor games end up being, but i wasn't the one to bring that comparison up.

 

[Hell Swarm]

The idea of actually taking mainstream slop seriously is ludicrous to me.

Elden Ring is the text book definition of mainstream slop. It took an old style of game, made it the most mainstream genre and watered down it's content until it's literally slop. So.. why are you taking it seriously?

You literally said the map was too complex and confusing. "Too much" were your exact words if i remember. A lot of normies rely on written routes because they have no clue where to go and aren't observant enough to find secrets and hidden things, or to even understand their whereabouts half the time.

Poorly designed maps are poorly designed. They're not complex. There's no depth to them. There isn't even any height differences in them or hidden caves. It's just large elevators between two different locations or an entry way to a tunnel. The DLC doesn't even fix this because the way you access the different heights is simply going through a transition point. Even Far cry 3 does a better job.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Poorly designed maps are poorly designed. They're not complex. There's no depth to them. There isn't even any height differences in them or hidden caves. It's just large elevators between two different locations or an entry way to a tunnel. The DLC doesn't even fix this because the way you access the different heights is simply going through a transition point. Even Far cry 3 does a better job.

I assume this argument is based entirely on the fact you can't traverse things "vertically" like you can in BOTW. Which... isn't what verticality is. It's not the "act" of going up and down itself that defines vertical level design.

See, it's always some semantic bullshit with you guys. "You climbs walls in BOTW that means the game is more vertical than Elden Ring".

Verticality when talking about level design is precisely that of layering and stacking planimetric sections on top of each other, the result being that it becomes more "challenging" to plot out and memorize the layout, especially when you factor in descending or ascending alternatives constitute "branching" paths which is usually what confuses normies the most, normally even when the layout is purely horizontal, all the more so when you include a vertical dimension.

There are parts in the open map both in the original game as well as this DLC that if you were to condense the space of the horizontal sections it would sort of start looking like a nascent legacy dungeon.