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

[Hell Swarm]

I enjoy that another poster can come in and we can engage in a conversation and actually discuss the game for once. Shows the difference between the good posters and bad ones.

I have personally always felt like 'perfect balance' was imperfect. I like that some options are better than others so players can pick their own difficulty. If we look at Elden Ring PvP for an example if my friend wants to fight me but isn't as experienced I can pick the short sword. Obviously as the best Elden Ring player in the world (I'm not a fag so I don't speedrun) I would dominate him, so I can use a worse weapon and he can use a better than average and we'll have closer fights than perfect balance would allow. There are perks like this to imbalanced and you can build a system out of it that would be rewarding for lore trannies and players if From weren't creatively bankrupt

Every weapon class has a broken/rust weapon. Shorter range, less damage and basically the short sword to the long sword.
If used normally they are a handicap but there are forges (like in the DLC) where you take one of these weapons and upon completing the dungeon you reforge it.
Rusty scythe because Doomslayer the faggot killer. Top tier weapon in it's class.

Everyone wins and From have to do jack shit to make it happen. The mechanics already exist in the DLC. The broken weapons are easy to make since it's just cutting the end off the weapon. Will From do it? Never. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle of piss.

Which I find kinda interesting. A longbow with a shortbow moveset, it would have been OP if its damage wasn't nerfed compared to Long Bow.

I recalled that after I wrote it but the same argument applies but now you have short bows being replaced by the black bow. There's never a reason to forfeit range and damage unless you really like fighting on torrent, which I don't think is real.

 

[Silverfish]

Did the DLC add the extra ending or is it scholar exclusive?

So far as I'm aware, it's Scholar exclusive. In fairness, I've never played the PS3 / 360 version of Scholar, that incorporated the dlc's, but not the additional content and remixed enemies, so it's possible the alternate ending is available there.

As for the PC's motivation, you can't just say "well I'm role-playing as a coward who would rather sit in a hovel and wank for the rest of his days." That's not how it works.

Fair enough, but at that point you may as well just say "your motivation is that it's a video game".

We're basically just arguing again how shit is ER compared to imaginary version of ER. Absolutely shit game because it could have been better.

It's not that it could have been better, it's that it's not on par with anything it takes inspiration from.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Fair enough, but at that point you may as well just say "your motivation is that it's a video game".

And then you play as a video game player so your motivation is to sit in a hovel and masturbate to the end of your days!

 

[abija]

"there's no point ever imagining how anything could ever be better because the reality is that this is what we have and if you think it could be improved then you must conclude that it's shit and unfixable."

So you're telling me you've never been to a restaurant, had an average meal, and then had a conversation with the people you were with about how there was too much sauce and the fries were undercooked?

Criticism is how we understand things better. And while FROM isn't likely to listen to some random people on a random forum, I'm sure there are game designers here who follow these sorts of conversations and will make better balance decisions as a result, which will lead to better games. And besides, FROM probably isn't reading, but Elden Ring is moddable, so anyone can take this conversation and improve the game.

I honestly don't understand your take. Why are you even bothering to post in a thread about Elden Ring if you don't believe criticism of the game has any value? I never said the game was shit, in fact I've said many times I enjoy it quite a bit. I just wish it was designed a little better and gave examples of things I believed were bad about its balance and design. Why do you have a problem with that?

FROM software fanboys really are braindead hollows...

Let me elaborate.
The game has a large variety of weapons/items/spells/etc. Those are loosely balanced, to be kind. All of this had a development cost.
When you start asking for perfect balance, I think huge cuts in variety. In your example of whip vs sword, I'm thinking whips are gone or transformed into retextured katanas.
What you actually meant was keep volume and variety the same, just balance every weapon/item/spell/playstyle/encounter. Make it so each and everyone of them has a clear and unique (but balanced) purpose. You just aren't considering the cost at all. I call that utopic.

Ofc everyone wants things to be better but you need to have some realistic expectations. Or at least start your arguments with something like "in a perfect world".
In reality, being so anal about balance removes variety, depth and ultimately fun from games. Something has to give and usually doesn't end with the devs getting funds for 10 more years to make it perfect.
That complaint about the shortsword in a game of this size is not criticism, is nitpicking.

 

[Silverfish]

Ah, we've reached the "it's unrealistic to want all weapons to viable, if niche" portion of the discussion.

 

[Cohesion]

Balance pass hardly requires time - it's more about math and skill/knowledge. Creating items takes much more time than balancing.

Though I wouldn't want sawyer/mmo-like autistic near perfect balance (<5% difference where everything is almost equal).

 

[abija]

Ah, we've reached the "it's unrealistic to want all weapons to viable, if niche" portion of the discussion.

Still reading impaired? He's talking about all being equally powerful, not just viable.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Excuse me, Lore master vaati here. The reason why you can't ride torrent in the ass woods is because he's scared of frenzy. It's the only thing that can harm ghosts like him.

Also From Software :

Doesn't look very fucking scared to me now does he!?

 

[Ravielsk]

The undeniable fact is that people have done it throughout history and it is the basis of many great stories.

Oh, yes absolutely. In general this is 100% true. Seeking power is the scaffolding for great stories.

The problem is that in Elden Ring that scaffolding is the all there is to the story. Great stories do not explain every single pedantic detail but they also do not leave the reader/viewer/player in the dark about the basics of the world and the goals characters pursue in them. To give an example imagine that in DS1 all info on Gwyn was reduced to calling him lord Gwyn. Or Kaathe instead of explaining how you have been lied to simply said "embrace the darkness within you". Or if it the town in the DLC was never identified as Oolacil and Artorias was never defined as one of Gwyn's head knights.

You could keep literary everything else the same but making those omission would completely change how the events of the game would be understood by the player. The events could be the same but if Artorias was never defined as a former head knight of Gwyn's army encountering him in the DLC would have no impact beyond the mechanical challenge of the fight. The Dark Lord ending could be literary the same cutscene but without Kaathe spilling the beans prior people could easily conclude that its not about embracing the age of men/dark but simply an act of selfish refusal to save the world and humanities(as a metaphysical concept) role in all of it would most likely be completely lost. And if Gwyn was never defined as the head deity not only would surpassing him be much less of a carrot on a stick but also it would completely strip down the emotional impact of his boss fight as without knowing who he was in life(besides a highly positioned individual) you cannot really feel bad or sad about anything that transpires in the boss arena.
Imagine that and much much more. Would DS1 with these changes the same story or even a good story? I would say no.

Unfortunately that is exactly what happens in elden ring. We are given the most barebones scaffolding and then not much else. Hell, you have two endings that straight up do not even bother telling you what you just did besides "le bad thing". The topic of those who live in death is never actually developed despite it clearly being a major looming crisis. The very nature of Marika, the head deity of this pantheon, is basically completely absent from the game and you do not even get to know what purpose do the Erdtrees serve besides dispensing tears.
There is simply too much missing for the events of the game to have any real weight because the player is left in the dark on so many topics that for all intends and purposes the game may just as well be a boss rush sim.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm not sure why anybody gives a shit about "balance" in a single player game.

Whips have their uses and are quite good against humanoids and normal enemies. Anything on the lower poise range can be obliterated with whips with zero effort. Also Juno Hoslow was just about the hardest NPC invader i fought in the base game if you ignore those guys in front of the giant jar. I don't know how good they are in PvP but i can see some niche use since they can't be parried and the range is pretty good.

Here's an example of what you can do with them:



Also humanoids:




They don't seem that useless to me.

The parrying dagger is specifically intended to be a try hard tool. Read the description:

"A knife with curved handguards. Designed to parry, turning foes' attacks against them.

For master of combat who anticipate every enemy strike and counter accordingly, this weapon is all they need."

It's a flavor weapon for "masters" who are so good they don't need anything other than this.

Short sword being useless is relative. If you are running an Astrologer that is focusing exclusively on intelligence it's nice to have. The heavy attack does a surprising amount of poise damage for a weapon this light which means it's not a bad weapon even if you just happen to be stuck with it because you haven't raised your stats yet. This applies to gear with low stat requirements in general. The argument that the player can just raise their stats very easily is irrelevant since some may just chose not to do so you need to have something they can use.

Lastly, gear that is liable to become obsolete has a place as well. Why use a small shield or even the buckler when golden parry is just better, since you can put it on a medium shield? Well, for starters, you need to get your hands on golden parry first before anything else becomes obsolete, and that can take a LONG time.

 

[Hell Swarm]

The best bit of Lyric's post is when he posts a video and it has 30 views in 3 weeks. My JOKE video had 100 views in an hour and it was on bitchute not youtube lol.

 

[Silverfish]

That's because all you did was stack view buffs.

 

[Hell Swarm]

That's because all you did was stack view buffs.

Aw fuck you're onto me! I view buffed and used a schizophrenic website full of conspiracy retardation to overpower Radahn.

In other news Lobosjr beat Radahn today in his NG+7 no fragments SL1 run. Took him 20ish hours of grinding him.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I enjoy that another poster can come in and we can engage in a conversation and actually discuss the game for once. Shows the difference between the good posters and bad ones.

I have personally always felt like 'perfect balance' was imperfect. I like that some options are better than others so players can pick their own difficulty.

If you want a difficulty selector that doesn't completely compromise a significant number of items, why not just have an actual difficulty selector?

I know the idea of "adding difficulty selectors" to souls is controversial, because every hack fraud journalist who can't complete the game has claimed that not having a difficulty selector is racist or something.

But the reality is, Dark Souls (and elden ring) already have a difficulty selector. Instead of being a menu option, you instead have to find the correct series of items or spells that will immediately trivialise the game, usually through degenerate cheese like standing in a doorway and killing a boss with magic while they try to attack you but can't due to their size. Every game in the series can be made significantly easier, but not in a compelling or fun way, usually it just boils down to doing the right thing or knowing when a specific ambush is coming and avoiding it or finding ways to completely break the AI. That's not strategic or fun gameplay, it's just breaking the game as a cheap way of "beating the difficulty". FROM should instead focus on fixing all these loopholes, provide balanced weapon choices, and then if they want to let people choose difficulty, add some modifiers or mutators or whatever that players can enable on a new playthrough to restrict themselves in some way. Then, everyone is happy and nobody has a compromised playthrough.

I know retards like to whine about "the intended experience!!!!!!" but their argument is stupid and can be safely ignored. Ever played DS1 with DSFix? Congrats, you've undermined "the intended experience!!!!!". When the intended experience is bad you fix it. Adding difficulty options wouldn't compromise this vision, especially if one difficulty is labelled as the "intended" one.

The parrying dagger is specifically intended to be a try hard tool. Read the description:

"A knife with curved handguards. Designed to parry, turning foes' attacks against them.

For master of combat who anticipate every enemy strike and counter accordingly, this weapon is all they need."

It's a flavor weapon for "masters" who are so good they don't need anything other than this.

The fact that you posted this shows you don't understand my argument.

It being a "tryhard weapon for masters" doesn't change the fact that it's objectively and provably useless compared to virtually any other dagger with the same ash, so no sane player will ever use it, so it only ever wastes inventory space.

Being a "tryhard weapon" is a stupid reason to release it in an unbalanced state.

Please stop posting.

 

[abija]

If you want a difficulty selector that doesn't completely compromise a significant number of items, why not just have an actual difficulty selector?

I know the idea of "adding difficulty selectors" to souls is controversial, because every hack fraud journalist who can't complete the game has claimed that not having a difficulty selector is racist or something.

You don't seem to grasp the amount of work needed for what you want. Orders of magnitude more than what From is doing. And all that for minimal benefits.

There's not some mad science behind what they do to achieve some sort of insane balance. They just implement what they think is cool and try to fit them into some loosely defined boundries. They'll try to adjust whatever outliers show up. Balance is done by ensuring only a fraction of tools you can get in game are needed to finish it. When someone has a cool idea it's not mourning month at the office because whole game needs to be rebalanced, they'll throw it in there.

Then you argue they should work even more to add difficulty selectors. I mean why not, there's no difference between utopic and slightly more utopic.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

"REEEE it's too much work!"

FROM defenders really are stupid....

No, it's not too much work. Balancing is one of the quickest and easiest parts of game development.

 

[Silverfish]

Then you argue they should work even more to add difficulty selectors.

Bro, the people who make games like this,

can implement difficulty sliders. If you wanted to go this route, at least play up the fact that we're on the Codex and say "What, you want From to use difficulty settings, like a Bioware game?" and then use the image.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It being a "tryhard weapon for masters" doesn't change the fact that it's objectively and provably useless compared to virtually any other dagger with the same ash, so no sane player will ever use it, so it only ever wastes inventory space.

Mmmmh, no, as far as i remember, the parry ash of war is the same as that of any small shield, meaning it has more frames but not as fast a start up as the parrying dagger. So it's not exactly the same thing.

Parrying dagger is clearly a gimmick weapon for people who like that sort of thing (i would assume parrying scimitars occupy the same place). It's also a carry over from the older games which has a relatively secondary place in this game. A lot of the weapons from the older Souls games that have been ported directly into this game have a kind of "foreign" feeling to them. Enemies rarely use them in the Lands Between and most of them can only be found on those wondering merchants. They put those weapons in the game because why wouldn't they, the assets are there, but they are also something you are meant to take as being a thing of the past.

Notice that if we are talking about "provably useless" (nothing in this game is truly useless, it's all a matter of what the player does with it), every parrying tool other than a medium shield with golden parry or carian retalation is useless by that logic. So why are those things in the game? Because they are low level options before you can get your hands on those more powerful alternatives you can only find much later in the game, which is a... very RPG thing to do.

Lastly, it's worth pointing out expecting "balance" from a game like this is just stupid. Aside for the fact perfect balance has never existed in any game i've ever played (some weapons or spells will always be better than others), balacing in Elden Ring is complicated by the fact it's not just a matter of fudging around with the stats. You also have the moveset to worry about and you can't exactly predict how a particular weapon plays out against a given boss let alone all of them.

As far as i'm concerned, this is all much ado about nothing. If you think some weapons are "useless", sell them and pretend they don't exist in the game. Done. Unbalanced weapons is the least of this game's problems and because this is an action RPG they aren't even remotely close to being as problematic as they would in a game like Diablo, or an MMO etc.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The best bit of Lyric's post is when he posts a video and it has 30 views in 3 weeks. My JOKE video had 100 views in an hour and it was on bitchute not youtube lol.

What are you a child?

 

[Lyric Suite]

But the reality is, Dark Souls (and elden ring) already have a difficulty selector. Instead of being a menu option, you instead have to find the correct series of items or spells that will immediately trivialise the game

That's an infinitely better alternative to the "menu option". The fact you can tailor the difficutly of the game as you see fit moment to moment is a much more preferrable alternative than just having some lazy blanket stat change that applies to everything in the game.

This is all the more true for a game like this, where much of the "difficutly" lies in mastering the combat, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the stats. If you suck, less health or damage to the boss may help but you are still going to die alot. If you are good, you may not even notice stats changes in the boss. When i did my Sekiro playthough, i turned on the Demon Bell at some point and never left it off and barely noticed a difference in the game. Why? Because more damage to the boss doesn't mean anything if you aren't getting hit, does it?

In order to do difficutly settings the "proper" way in a game like this, it would mean FromSoft have to redesign every boss for each difficulty option, changing movesets for every single enemy in the game across the entire thing. This would be such a colossal and time consuming effort and for what? Just let the player control how much damage output they have as they see fit what's the problem? It's not like everybody is going to struggle against each boss the same way, so a blanket stat change to the whole game may end up making some bosses too easy. A player may chose "medium" difficutly because he is struggling with a particular boss then discover he just unwittingly made some other bosses trivial who may have presented a more balanced challenge to him on the previous setting.

I think the way FromSoft allows you to control the difficutly is a pretty great system.

 

[abija]

Bro, the people who make games like this, can implement difficulty sliders. If you wanted to go this route, at least play up the fact that we're on the Codex and say "What, you want From to use difficulty settings, like a Bioware game?" and then use the ... image.

I'm not a clown like you, so no, I don't argue bullshit. You haven't even read his posts and try to jest around.

Difficulty sliders require a fair amount of work. You want to at least have less aggressive AI on lower difficulties and possibly remove abilities from more complex bosses.

But he is asking for perfection. So let the perfection show go on. You adjust how hard enemies hit, you need to adjust armors (since you want to keep same balance between roll and damage taken for example) and defensive items/spells. You adjust how much hp enemies have so you need to adjust weapons and offensive items/spells balance.
Everything done for each difficulty. Ain't that a hoot.

"REEEE it's too much work!"

FROM defenders really are stupid....

No, it's not too much work. Balancing is one of the quickest and easiest parts of game development.

It's way past too much work. It's an astronomical amount of work to get to the level you implied with your examples.

In case you forgot, you complained about whips being weaker than swords, less represented and having fewer ashes. You don't want stuff cut so what's the solution? You take the most represented weapon, bring all the others to same count, with actual meaningful items (not bullshit like shortsword or parrying dagger). Same for ashes of war which I suppose you want new unique ones that fit each type.

Did you even think it through? Didn't it start to seem insane at some point?

Balancing is one of the quickest and easiest parts of game development.

People thinking like you are the reason we see millions in assets literally thrown away by horrible designers and management.
And you double down on it with absurd expectations.

 

[Vic]

So is it good?

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

So is it good?

It's fine. Could be a lot better, could be a lot worse. Unfortunately FROM will never improve as a developer because the entire gaming landscape is filled with the sort of morons that post endlessly in this thread about how every flaw of the game is actually a positive.

 

[Strange Fellow]

For every game with a lot of options there's this one retard who complains about "broken" balance. Somehow it doesn't clue them in that no game has ever had the kind of balance they're after that isn't stripped down to the bare essentials and hardly lets the player choose anything at all.

 

[Odoryuk]

So is it good?

It's fine. Could be a lot better, could be a lot worse. Unfortunately FROM will never improve as a developer because the entire gaming landscape is filled with the sort of morons that post endlessly in this thread about how every flaw of the game is actually a positive.

Never change, FromSoftware-chan, I love you just the way you are