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

[Silva]

Ive read there's a lot of Bloodborne stuff here. I saw a screenshot with a body armor and hat straight out of a Yharnam hunter. Is that true? Which attire is that?

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Delayed attacks

Not a problem in itself, but it becomes one when it's being aggravated by other lazy design choices (long combos, tracking, animation cancelling, underhanded input reading, exagerated hitboxes and range, etc.)
After applying these factors, the delayed attacks are nothing more than an irritating stupid gotcha
Still they could be relatively tolerable, if From used them sparsely

super fast combos

The problem here is the disparity between the speed and agility of PC and the enemy bosses
The PC is still figthing by the DeS principles of being "grounded" and "methodical", somewhat (BB changed that dynamic of course)
Meanwhile the late game bosses might as well have came out of Ninja Gaiden 2, as even in their basic combos they are spazzing out almost as hard as Ryu during an UT

"tracking" (whatever that means)

It means that before you deem From's fighting game design to be excellent, you should at least familirize yourself with the basic concepts of fighting game design
Essentially it's the degree to which a character can automatically "adjust" himself and "guide" an attack towards a moving target
It's a property that should be applied to select attacks with restrain, which From doesn't seem to possess

Really when you figure all these elements together, along the others I mentioned in the parentheses of my first line, what you have are the hallmarks of those quarter munching arcade final bosses
Sure, they were hard as nails, but they were also complete bullshit devoid any elegant mechanical design
Which is ironic, given that the design quality of the storytelling aspects weaved into these boss battles are the strongest they've ever beem - From has mastered that "fable"/narrative side, but degenerated into the worst qualities of the game side

My guess is that 90% people instead of learning how to play the game ended up brute forcing their way through bosses using cheese. You can't do this in the DLC because stats have been maxed. Elden Ring was a bit like this too towards the end.

And that is also a BIG problem
Perhaps even more so than the previous issues

I mean, like it's DS predecessors, ER is sold as an RPG
It has a fairly robust character building system, hundreds of equipment pieces and dozens of magical abilities, all pooling up to millions of possible character builds
Plus there is no official text, both in-game and out-game (From's own marketing), that discourage experimentation and diversity of playstyles (in fact it always the other way around)
All of this creates the expectation that these options, at least the majority of them, are viable enough to allow the player to reach the credits screen

So, for most of the campgain the player can go about the various challenges however he choses
Everything in the mechanics support that and the sandbox open-world format further reinforces it - "Getting your ass kicked? No worries, go do something else, clear some trash dungeons, farm a bit, explore that other area. Then come back after 30 levels, give or take, and rofl stomp everything in your path."
But then, by the very final strecth of the campgain - and now the greater part of the DLC - the game turns around and says "Liking your current build? Well fuck you, you were actually meant to play like X the whole time."

Either way you look at it, this is a serious problem

 

[processdaemon]

Finished the game and (final fight spoilers) I'm really disappointed with the ending, both the boss fight and the story behind it. I hated that a bunch of the attacks in phase 2 are illusions since it feels cheap to me, Miquella's snuggle attack is one of the stupidest looking things I've ever seen in a FromSoft game and I still don't understand why they went down the route of having him go after Radahn when the base game seemed to be setting up him trying to fully kill or resurrect Godwyn (which I suspect would have gone horribly wrong given that we know that Godwyn's soul is dead, but watching it go horribly wrong and seeing what monstrosity we'd have to fight as a result would have been more interesting than what we got).

What's most confusing to me is that it's not like FromSoft has totally lost their touch; Bayle, Senessax, Midra and Metyr were all varying levels of good to great and had either cool quests or interesting lore surrounding them, so they're still capable of designing fun bosses, they just completely fumbled the final fight and surrounding story. It's a pity because there's a lot to recommend in this DLC, from the optional boss fights to more likeable NPCs to art design that is fantastic at times, but the very last stretch put such a bitter taste in my mouth that now I'd only recommend it to someone with the caveat that they should try to think as little about the overarching plot as possible (and fully upgrade a good shield for the final fight).

 

[Raghar]

Why is Elden Ring in JRPG area when it was written by Martin?

 

[Hell Swarm]

Ive read there's a lot of Bloodborne stuff here. I saw a screenshot with a body armor and hat straight out of a Yharnam hunter. Is that true? Which attire is that?

There's a lot of Bloodborne stuff in the game and it even uses the same names. It's a really cheaply made DLC.

Finished the game and (final fight spoilers) I'm really disappointed with the ending, both the boss fight and the story behind it. I hated that a bunch of the attacks in phase 2 are illusions since it feels cheap to me, Miquella's snuggle attack is one of the stupidest looking things I've ever seen in a FromSoft game and I still don't understand why they went down the route of having him go after Radahn when the base game seemed to be setting up him trying to fully kill or resurrect Godwyn (which I suspect would have gone horribly wrong given that we know that Godwyn's soul is dead, but watching it go horribly wrong and seeing what monstrosity we'd have to fight as a result would have been more interesting than what we got).

What's most confusing to me is that it's not like FromSoft has totally lost their touch; Bayle, Senessax, Midra and Metyr were all varying levels of good to great and had either cool quests or interesting lore surrounding them, so they're still capable of designing fun bosses, they just completely fumbled the final fight and surrounding story. It's a pity because there's a lot to recommend in this DLC, from the optional boss fights to more likeable NPCs to art design that is fantastic at times, but the very last stretch put such a bitter taste in my mouth that now I'd only recommend it to someone with the caveat that they should try to think as little about the overarching plot as possible (and fully upgrade a good shield for the final fight).

Finished it myself just now after switching from an Ant shield to the Great Erdtree shield to stop the chip damage. The ending is absolutely fucking nothing. Even by From's standards this is insulting. It would have been more of an ending if someone walked into McDonalds and filmed the staff asking what you wanted to order. Complete bullshit.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The final boss has some bullshit moves I couldn't figure out how to dodge.

Nigger

His gravity AOE is random if you dodge it or not. I just ran away and hoped. I couldn't see any other way to do it. His Dragon ball attack spam was confusing and I didn't figure out a way either so I shielded and accepted the stamina loss.

Story spoilers

St Trinia being a different person to tranny boy was interesting but everything else fell flat for me. The game is so phoned in story wise and all the effort has gone on the NPCs. Which had a great pay off in the Leda fight being a big gang bang of phantoms. I thought that was neat.

Quelaag has nice tits - boss spoiler

I really liked the double bug lady as a boss. Probably my highlight of the game in general. Great design with fun fight attached. Really enjoyed her.

The floating islands can go fuck themselves like the little fucking kike map designer who thought they were a good idea. Trying to find the last few upgrades was hellish because the map doesn't show you how to get up or down cliffs and the map is about 4 tiers. If you need to be on tier 2 you're fucked with any graces on 3 or 4.

Finger but hole

The finger ruins were cool but under used. I loved the ocean fingers you see from the dragon location but the ones you explore are completely empty. Which is a shame. That quest line had merit.

 

[Ivan]

Navigators, unite. Any hints/help accessing these parts of the map?

Spoiler

 

[Crayll]

Just beat the final boss as well. Ended up finishing at 18 blessings, level 180. Personally I enjoyed it, but I'm autistic and enjoy fighting the same boss for 10 hours. I still think Isshin is the most difficult in terms of the player skill needed, but this was #2 easily.

Overall I loved the DLC, aside from complaints about the final boss there's no excuse for not enjoying this if you liked the base game. The level design is easily on par with the better parts of that (Stormveil, Leyndell, Shunning Grounds) and is consistently better with less filler and copypaste tedium. I thought all the bosses aside from the final one were very fair, and even the last boss doesn't have crazy attack patterns, there's just a lot of shit going on (and it's really hard to see what's happening).

Generally the story was well done. The NPCs were the highlight, unlike base ER it was easy to track where they were going and it made sense when they moved on, and because the DLC map is dense you encountered each again naturally instead of having to jump around a huge world for no reason trying to find them.

spoilers

The group fight in the shadow tower was a perfect culmination to everyone's arcs, actually got an emotional response out of me.

problems

Didn't like the ending. The idea of taking a character that was already built up, but not really seen, and letting you fight them at the peak of their power is good. Making that non-crazy Radahn is really strange. Godwyn would've made way more sense, especially considering there were already item descriptions in the base game that described how Miquella felt about Godwyn's death. I can't recall any prior indication of a dynamic between Miqeulla and Radahn. Very odd decision all around.

fags

For all the shitflinging that happened when the leaks came out, I didn't pick up much of a gay dynamic between Miquella and Radahn. Mohg's cutscene was more homo and now he's no longer a gay pedophile as we found out it was all due to Miquella's charm mind control.

Navigators, unite. Any hints/help accessing these parts of the map?

Spoiler

The entrance to that area is where it looks like it is. Try gesturing.

full answer

You get a gesture from Bonnie Village, use it in front of the Marika statue next to the grace before the boar man fight

 

[Lyre Mors]

Never ceases to amaze me. Huge game hasn't even been out for a week yet and people are already finishing it. I'm in full support of hardcore gaming, but goddamn guys. Don't forget to slow down and savor the meal!

 

[Sunri]

As always, someone is destroying every boss with ease

 

[cvv]

So, avoiding interacting with the bosses altogether. That's the problem with From bosses these days, they're designed to be cheesed. It's analogous to designing this super intricate level and then giving the player a flying carpet option to ignore it altogether.

Why is everyone exaggerating this subject so much? Summons aren't trivializing fights unless specifically built for it.

It's not an exaggeration, Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything. The only vanilla fight it didn't help with at all was Malenia, she ate all summons for lunch. Everything else ranged between kindda easy to trivial.

And I absolutely agree with Silva 's take, using the Mimic is a baffling, retarded way to beat bosses. There's little difference between that and summoning a twinked-up sunbro and letting him fight the boss for you.

I honestly can't wrap my brain around how people don't see that. Whenever a Youtuber says "you don't have to solo bosses and make the game unnecessarily difficult, just use summons" my head literally explodes. I mean what the actual fuck.

 

[mediocrepoet]

So, avoiding interacting with the bosses altogether. That's the problem with From bosses these days, they're designed to be cheesed. It's analogous to designing this super intricate level and then giving the player a flying carpet option to ignore it altogether.

Why is everyone exaggerating this subject so much? Summons aren't trivializing fights unless specifically built for it.

It's not an exaggeration, Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything. The only vanilla fight it didn't help with at all was Malenia, she ate all summons for lunch. Everything else ranged between kindda easy to trivial.

And I absolutely agree with Silva 's take, using the Mimic is a baffling, retarded way to beat bosses. There's little difference between that and summoning a twinked-up sunbro and letting him fight the boss for you.

I honestly can't wrap my brain around how people don't see that. Whenever a Youtuber says "you don't have to solo bosses and make the game unnecessarily difficult, just use summons" my head literally explodes. I mean what the actual fuck.

There was a video of mimic screwing over Malenia too, but it was a pretty specific setup IIRC and I'm not sure if it would still work since it was a lot closer to release.

Basically just set up a mimic with like one or two OP spells and no ability to do anything else except cast it. Mimic gets unlimited FP.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This isn't even the one I was thinking of, but

Anyway, just set it up with the proper OP shit. (Still from close to release, they nerfed a bunch of stuff including the tear since then.)

 

[Cryomancer]

Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything.

if it's in the game it's to be used.

If Hidetaka Miyazaki din't wanted me to use Mimic, he would't have putted it into the game.

This applies to sorcery, incantations, to eastus, summons, shields, torrent, moonligh greatsword, scarlet rot weapons, scarlet rot weapons in your mimic while you use unlimited mana kahemahema when the boss is distracted, etc. The greatest problem of soulsborn community is that people like to dictate how other people should play their game that they brought.

I like to play this way >


If someone gets their fun picking a broken sword, going SL1 naked, no summons, no torrent, no shield, is their problem.

This "unlimited kamehameha" is not working in the DLC, in fact I'm using much more my Moonlight Greatsword against bosses and melee spells like Adula moonblade instead of using long range spells and even switching from medium to light loadout in some bosses.

 

[cvv]

if it's in the game it's to be used.

I like to play this way >

Then you're doing exactly what Silva said - you're just cheesing stuff with a WIN button.

Yes it's FromSoft, yes their games are good... but maybe not everything is heavenly? Maybe some parts are retarded.

And if the choice is between "smash your head against a boss for hours or press WIN", then it's absolutely is a retarded design is what I'm trying to say.

 

[Cryomancer]

, then it's absolutely is a retarded design is what I'm trying to say.

TBH due the fact that I cheesed a lot of main game bosses, now in the DLC I had a really hard time against Mesmer for eg and died dozens of times against him. IDK how to cheese the bosses in the DLC. They are fast, unpredictable, have nasty combos, hit like a truck, I'm engaging much more them on melee and my Mimic is mostly only useful to give me a distraction to heal.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything.

if it's in the game it's to be used.

If Hidetaka Miyazaki din't wanted me to use Mimic, he would't have putted it into the game.

This applies to sorcery, incantations, to eastus, summons, shields, torrent, moonligh greatsword, scarlet rot weapons, scarlet rot weapons in your mimic while you use unlimited mana kahemahema when the boss is distracted, etc. The greatest problem of soulsborn community is that people like to dictate how other people should play their game that they brought.

I like to play this way >


If someone gets their fun picking a broken sword, going SL1 naked, no summons, no torrent, no shield, is their problem.

This "unlimited kamehameha" is not working in the DLC, in fact I'm using much more my Moonlight Greatsword against bosses and melee spells like Adula moonblade instead of using long range spells and even switching from medium to light loadout in some bosses.

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

 

[Cryomancer]

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

Nope. Is just that I chose to priorize game performance in Simple Screen Recorder and to not disable the "flickering" in nVidia.

My PC runs ER at around 45 FPS.

Benchmark

 

[mediocrepoet]

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

Nope. Is just that I chose to priorize game performance in Simple Screen Recorder and to not disable the "flickering" in nVidia.

My PC runs ER at around 45 FPS.

Benchmark

That's good. I was worried you might get a seizure or something looking at that all the time.

 

[Reinhardt]

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

 

[Lyric Suite]

You defend anything From do no matter how badly it's designed.

But i'm not seeing the bad design. You can argue all you want that long combos or delayed attacks are bad design doesn't mean it's true. Not if it's possible to adapt and overcome (and it is).

I heard all those arguments for the base game and i didn't find a single case where it ended up being actually true.

There is only one bullshit attack in the entirety of Elden Ring and that is Malenia's Waterfowl. It's the ONLY one that is objectively unfair and retarded (the fact the only way to dodge it is to circle around an invisible hitbox pillar is indeed bad design). Everything else was fair game for me and in no way as bad as people made it out to be.

It's like people made up this imaginary threshold in their heads in terms of how difficut combat can be in a game which once crossed it automatically means the game is "badly" designed where as for me it just seems completely arbitrary and made up.

 

[Lyric Suite]

As always, someone is destroying every boss with ease

And didn't even take him a few days.

Every FromSoft game has to go through this retarded cycle of people screeching and moaning but in the end it turns out it wasn't as bad as they made it out to be. I mean fucking hell people were raging at the tutorial boss in Armored Core 6 like it was the next Malenia lmao.

 

[Child of Malkav]

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

Whatever, but these games are not played for their story but the gameplay, world, exploration etc.
Plus you can get summary of the story on YouTube and 37 hours long lore videos.

 

[Reinhardt]

will probably pirate it sometime in the future and play with cheat engine just for the story.

Whatever, but these games are not played for their story but the gameplay, world, exploration etc.
Plus you can get summary of the story on YouTube and 37 hours long lore videos.

nah, your option is boring.

 

[Anonona]

Not if it's possible to adapt and overcome (and it is).

Without giving any opinion about ER itself, I find this take misguided. You can certainly adapt and learn the ins and outs of every game, even a bad one. Doesn't magically fix their flaws, the player just learned how to deal with them. Is like saying "I want to be the Guy" is fair because you can learn and adapt to all the traps after falling for them.

Also, for what I gather reading here, on Steam and other websites, I think many people are arguing that adapting to issues like overload of effects and lack of visual clarity, incredible strong tracking, camera issues and strong input readings and gotcha attacks that you must memorize while, at the same time, having a character with very limited mobility, unable to cancel animations and forced to play defensively due to things like stamina constraints and slow attacking animations in such a fast paced game isn't that fun nor satisfying, with the difficulty not being the problem in on itself. Many of these complainings also come from people who actually beat the whole DLC, so is not even a matter of not being able to adapt to the bosses, as they did othewise they couldn't have beaten the game.

Of course, there are still many that just complain about it being hard or not being able to stomp everything with their broken builds, that is true too, I won't negate it, probably the majority of complaints even.

I myself cannot comment as I'm still early on the DLC.

And didn't even take him a few days

I mean, that boss has been so far one of the easiest of the DLC to be honest. Is not like she is very far into the DLC, can easily be your first boss if you take a turn right. Also we are talking about Ongbank, he is not your run of the mill player, wouldn't be surprised if he has already "no-hit" every boss on the DLC. Is like using Donguri as an example of how easy is to combo in a new DMC, most people will take far longer to reach that point of mastery.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Not if it's possible to adapt and overcome (and it is).

Without giving any opinion about ER itself, I find this take misguided. You can certainly adapt and learn the ins and outs of every game, even a bad one. Doesn't magically fix their flaws, the player just learned how to deal with them.

Yeah but in my own experience with the game, i didn't see those "flaws" at all (general shit like "camera issues" don't count because people have been bitching about that since Demon Souls).

If you are struggling to learn a boss, it may "appear" that things are too confusing, or that are moving too fast for you to react. This perception however is entirely subjective. Once you understand what is happening with a given boss, all those "flaws" magically disappear. That has been my experience with the entirety of Elden Ring and if i may so most FromSoft games in general.

I cannot comment on the DLC specifically but i'm seeing the same exact arguments people used to critisize the base game and since i didn't agree with those criticisms, or didn't find them to be valid based on my own experience of the game, i am in doubt about the DLC as well.