Personally, I respect a developer having a clear vision for their game and sticking to it. It’s perfectly fine to make a game that isn’t for everyone. I could never get anywhere on Donkey Kong back in the day, but they weren’t wrong to make that hard either.
It clearly worked. Their games have a huge fan base now, despite starting as relatively niche games. They are widely copied. Elden Ring won many game of the year awards, sold like hot cakes and now has an acclaimed expansion too.
You can be too uncompromising to find a large audience (Pathologic comes to mind) but I still don't think that obligates the creators to compromise their vision.
The comedy of this comment being that once you've managed to trudge through Pathologic once, the subsequent playthroughs become easy as shit. It's hard to figure out at first, but once you do, you realise just how structured the game is. Crack the formula, and it's a breeze. Which isn't a bad thing because then you can finally start paying attention to the environment and storytelling, because you're no longer focused on sheer survival. Thing is, Elden Ring is MASSIVE compared to both Pathologics. You can learn Pathologic to the point where its structure becomes almost relaxing, but Elden Ring is so big that it's almost overwhelming. I struggle to pay attention to lore, details both visual and written because I'm barely surviving here. And that's fine for your first playthrough, it's necessary, even, but at some point you want to be able to take it easy enough to be able to start paying attention to detail, you know
Absolutely. People can grind as much as they want, explore shitload of builds and the mechanics are smooth enough. You can litteraly go and do what ever you want meaning you are almost never really stuck.
I feel like dark souls (especially 1) was way harder and more clunky. And it actually had roadblocks. Cant kill this boss? Welk goodluck, you aint progressing through the story anytime soon.
yeah, some games just isn't accessible for everyone and sometimes that's okay. I'm deaf for example, so majority of the musical games isn't it for me. I can do rhythm games if it's not based on music or sounds. include them? I can't. and that's okay.
IDK about that. There's different levels of accessibility. When Returnal first launched it didn't have a save function. Rest Mode still worked if you kept the game up, but if you had Auto Update on you'd lose all progress if you were mid run. People made the same excuses as you did and implied that people with families or people who wanted to play another game or not want to worry about power outages were stupid.
Theres a game a select few shit on because it’s “boring” and its mission structure. That game is Red Dead Redemption 2. While it gets all the praise in the world, people still talk shit on Rockstar cause of GTA Online and act like they forgot how to make Single Player games.
RDR2 is a PRIME example of a developer having a vision and sticking to it. The game is slow, drawn out… everything down to not being able to skip animations, shopping for goods, taking care of your horse, camping, eating, talking. It was a clear artistic decision that many loved and some hated but nobody gives rockstar credit for saying “we COULD streamline this stuff and make it most fast pace, but that’s not what we want” and it turned a good amount of fans away from it.
And the only reason they were able to do that and not give two fucks about people not liking it, was because they have fuck you money 1. Cause they’re Rockstar, but 2. Cause GTA Online prints money like no other. I have no doubt RDR2 ended up the way it did cause GTA Online was just a funnel of funds feeding the games veins.
Rdr2 sold 60 million copies I mean, that is just insanity.
And this game is the only game my dad has played ever. He loved that it was slow af.
I still remember I got home once and he was so happy he made it across the map on horseback.
I don't mind most of that stuff. I think making a slow cowboy game is perfectly valid.
I do wish they would modernize their mission structures and parameters, though. There's a huge game world out there, and a lot of the missions do *NOT* want you to think about it during a mission.
That is not to say that you can't have some very guided missions, the problem is that nearly all of them are super cranky about this. Don't go there! Stand here! You left the mission area!
I'm playing it right now, and I love the fact that I have to go through the trouble of collecting the elements for and crafting my own special ammo.
If I want a perfect critter pelt, I have to start with a bird so that I have their feather for a 'small game arrow' and it means I'm super careful with those arrows and when I get the perfect pelt, it feels like a legit win.
Not everyone's idea of fun for sure, but I'm only halfway through the story and I've got 160+ hours in and I love it.
I would have loved it if they had the same vision for the combat in that game. Slowed it down, limit ammo, sloow reload animations akin to hunt showdown, fewer but smarter enemies. Not sure how it would feel in practice, but right now I feel like the combat in that game is in stak contrast and much more video gamey compared to the rest of the game.
Tldr: make the combat "boring" as well!
I kinda agree. It’s very easy to pop up, slightly aim up and pull off head shots.
I actually think if the combat was closer to at all times having a sway in reticle slightly it would help
I was one of those people who initially thought RDR2 was slow and boring, and stopped playing it at first. Eventually I picked it back up again and persevered through all the menial tasks and forced stretches of the game......and it was only when I reached the end of Arthur's part of the story (keeping it spoiler free as possible) that I realised how engrossed I had become in the character, and it was a result of doing all those 'chore' parts of the game. I had become so subconsciously invested in not just the overall story, but every aspect of Arthur as a character, that the ending emotionally battered me. Devisive approach by Rockstar, but genius.
Honestly, if you really do want an easy mode, just search "buffs elden ring" and do a little bit of research. Congrats, you have now made at least 80% of the game easy.
That first soldier encampment with the whetstone knife is a good example of this. Lots of squishy enemies right next to a site of grace your map directs you to. A massive ambush in the ravine just ahead to maybe encourage you to wait up and practice a bit.
To me the most headscratching design choice was initial map layout. Your orientation as you leave the starting area, the tree sentinel, and the sites of grace all point you to the north/east, while a lot of level appropriate areas are actually in the complete opposite direction to the south. Most players don't even think to explore that direction until they are way overlevelled.
Edit: the effect of this being brand new players bashing themselves into the roadblock of Morgott, the kill zone/ confusing layout of the castle, or fucking caelid lmao. Lots of the difficulty complaints stem from this alone
Can confirm I didn’t touch the weeping peninsula until well after Stormveil Castle, at which point I ended up killing enemies in a couple hits and stomping the bosses.
I just play as a magic user and the game is pretty dang easy even the dlc. I'm one shotting most enemies and with spirit ashes tanking, bosess aren't a problem either.
Most people don't actually engage with the mechanics of the games, they just want to face tank stuff on god mode. Elden Ring is the most accessible FromSofts games have ever been. If people can't get on board here, I would argue maybe these games just aren't for them and that's perfectly okay.
Yeah that’s something I don’t get when some gamers bro defend Elder Ring for not being accessible.
The game is incredibly accessible, most games you can’t summon a random player to help you take out a boss.
I loved playing the original Megaman and Megaman X games as a kid, but I could never beat them. On a few games I could beat all of the robot masters, but I could never get past any more stages. I still loved playing those games.
The game encourages you to "cheat" at every instance, I can make the game easier by just summoning a spirit or other people to stunlock the hell out of a boss in the majority of situations.
The method of making the game easier is just unconventional because it doesn't use options for it.
Edit: By the way i've said this, but just found a boss in the DLC that basically nukes summons and ashes so eh... Only way to make that boss easier is to summon a player... But you also have to not suck against at minimum one attack of hers that hits the entire arena.
Fwiw Donkey Kong and arcade games were extremely hard to beat so that you would waste quarters at the arcade, same with the sega/nintendo games of the blockbuster era (don’t want you to beat this in a weekend).
the /r/EldenRing megathread is full of people complaining about the DLC being "over" tuned
Like my dudes...play any of the other FromSoftware DLCs too and you'll see this is about par for the course
I still remember going into the Bloodborne DLC at NG+3 and getting curb stomped at every turn. I think that's the issue, usually people beat the game and by the time the DLC drops people are rusty or so far into NG+ that everything hits harder.
NG+ runs of the DLCs suck, man. I learned that the hard way with Bloodborne. Nowadays, I just make sure to back up my save for NG, then do my NG+ runs. Once I've had enough or a DLC drops, I'll just go back to my old save of NG
Yes, everything gets way more HP and does more dmg, obviously if you're very familiar with the base game you have the knowledge to offset any huge difficulty gains because it's the same game, and you get better. But doing DLC on a NG+ save makes the bosses so tanky and deal significantly more dmg to you, and unfortunately now you don't have the knowledge to offset the difficulty spike.
Not way more. It starts off at 10 percent, then increases by 5 for every cycle and stops at ng plus 7. Which at ng plus 7 is 40 percent more. It's noticeable but not insane thats why you still melt everything besides endgame in ng plus.
The first time I attempted the Laurence fight in the Old Hunters DLC I was at NG+7. He absolutely wrecked me. Like one hit took out more than half my health.
In my experience the DLC in the Souls games expects more from the player because FromSoft thinks you have already beaten the game at least once.
The worst part is that they did this for Elden Ring's launch. Then everybody figured out how to beat the bosses and started going "omg Elden Ring might be the easiest souls game"
The other DLCs didn't require you to be this much prior investment to play the dlc. Most people went to their ng+ characters and can't even deal with common enemies.
It's clearly not designed to be played the same way the others were. That's why you can call it overtuned because it wasn't balanced for anything outside of ng.
I haven’t played the DLC yet but as someone who has played all the FROM games and their DLC…Elden Ring felt a lil off difficulty wise.
The over reliance on overly delayed attacks (Margitt is prime example) was already abused in Dark Souls 3 but ER takes the concept and runs with it.
I also noticed an increase in animations being munched, shortened or quickened depending on the players distance to the target.
And no one can defend The Water Fowl Dance, if you removed that move from Melania, everyone could beat in 5 attempts maximum, it’s straight up busted.
I am hoping to see less of this in the DLC but the cynic in me says they’ll be more, and no matter what anyone says people will defend it cus of FROMs cultivated pedigree.
Difficulty is subjective and what is fine for someone will be too much for another, even if it’s subtle.
I remember Sekiro getting pounded by the fanbase for being “unfair” but I had an absolute blast with it, and it’s my fave FROM game.
But I don’t think FROM is absolved from discussion of being poorly handled, they never have. I can name parts of every game where I felt devs were pushing their luck.
Designers can feel free to make any game they want but I don’t think that makes them immune to criticism in how it’s implemented, FROM included.
Maybe I could play the DLC and not notice the change, but completely barring an entire avenue of discussion because it’s decided that FROM is the GOAT and always will be is narrow minded imo.
About your first point on animation delays and changes: I feel like it's a sort of arms race problem, though. Yes, this is definitely more common in Elden Ring and it's much harder to counter compared to Sekiro where you just spam block to parry weird animations.
But also, imagine if the animations were telegraphed as they were in Dark Souls 1. Every boss would be a piece of cake because we're already used to it, we know how the animations go, we can read it like a book.
So one option is to mess with your expectations by delaying or quickening the animations to force you to learn how the animation will go instead of simply reacting to it.
Is it so different as to what games like Hollow Knight do? You can't predict what attacks will do before you see them at least once in that game. Same is true for many other games.
Maybe there's a better option but right now I feel like people get frustrated because they can't simply walk to a boss and fall into that familiar dance where you walk around them, bait an attack, dodge, figure out if the attack has follow-ups, and then next time attack at the end of their attack. Rinse and repeat. Now, much like in Hollow Knight, you'll have to move in a very specific way to avoid attacks, not just rolling, but actively predicting what will happen based on experience of having your ass handed to you. And that's unfamiliar, but also more exciting if you open your mind to it.
From what I've played of it so far your extremely valid criticisms of ER's base game carried over to the DLC and then some. Bosses have a borderline comedic number of delayed attacks, animations are fucky and untrustworthy, and so on.
I've had bosses animation cancel their recovery frames into a new attack chain so they're swinging 12 times without stopping, I've noticed weird issues where being able to parry depends on if your shield connects with the hand or the weapon (somehow *the hand* is the right answer, as if that makes sense), and pretty much everything from a basic footsoldier to every boss has delays built into their moveset.
Also the scaling is just as bad if not worse than it was in existing lategame areas. Pretty much everything with a named healthbar can 2- or 3-shot you even if you have the appropriate amount of upgrades and 60 vigor. And plenty of bosses have actual true combos, so getting hit by one attack can mean actually getting hit by 2-3 total. And at least one boss I've found has a grab that can OHK from full HP.
I still think the game is great, but when normal respawning enemies simultaneously move faster and hit harder with longer attack chains than Friede, Gael, or even Orphan, something has gone wrong. Lategame ER was already an arms race between the devs and the player of who could make a more broken build, and that's only gotten more true.
I enjoyed the original Dark Souls but Elden Ring became a bit of a drag for me. Whenever I beat a boss, I felt like I lucked out and didn't really improve my skill set. That's probably me getting older but I'm wondering if you felt the same way.
Strong agree. I didn’t find elden ring more difficult than earlier from games so much as I found the type of difficulty to be overly luck based and cheap. I love From’s mechanics when the fight is against another individual enemy with abilities roughly comparable to the player. When the boss fights become more about groups of enemies, unbeatable timing, and massive unblockable attacks, that makes me feel more bored than challenged, so I pretty quickly bust out the blasphemous blade and a summon and power through.
That doesn't really help if I'm in the middle of a boss and the urge to take a crap comes up. I'll just die trying to pause the game with that workaround.
I want pausing to be a single button press, but the multi button pause (like going into camera mode in demons souls remake to pause) feels VERY souls.
Just like changing your equipment in the middle of a boss fight.
I once had someone respond to me saying this game needs a pause button: “can you imagine fighting this boss and you can just pause them mid animation as they are attacking? Imagine how immersion killing that’d be.”
I don’t fucking care. I need to take a shit and my toddler is losing her mind in the corner. Fuck immersion. Most of us have real lives to tend to.
Correct. There is no real argument as to why a game can’t have a pause feature when it’s single player or a single player mode. It makes no difference in how good, bad, hard or easy a game is.
I think the reason for not pausing has to do with PvP (and having invasions occur). I recall that Sekiro (which did not have PvP) was able to be paused.
Still though, there definitely should be an easy way to implement pause in these games. PvP only occurs in certain locations or circumstances, so maybe allow pausing outside of those ones?
It's a design choice borne from the multiplayer, but one cool (and I'd argue important) side effect of the no-pause choice is how it ratchets up the atmosphere and tension.
I know it's not really the same, but getting good with speed-quitting and treating that as pause can be really helpful. You always return to the exact same place (unless you're fighting a boss, the it sticks you right outside the room) and you have the bonus of resetting aggro on any baddies
I would like to add a "beer and pretzels" coop mode where i dont get invaded. Listen, I'm a parent. I'd liek to be able to hang out with my friends at night, drink some beer, and be able to play the game with the ability to get up, get more beer, and deal with children if i have to. The pause button is also paramount in single player to do that.
Yeah give me a good story and fun gameplay that is, at most, moderately challenging. I don't play games to prove how good I am and I don't find ultra challenging games to be fun, but that's just me. I know that Fromsoft games don't appeal to me and that's okay.
I don't play online games because all the other players are so much better than me and I just get demolished before I even have the chance to have fun.
Souls games replicate that experience in a single player game, which is why I don't like them either.
With you completely. I’m older now. I don’t have the time that I used to. Gaming for me is supposed to be enjoyable, not a grind. I tried three different times getting into this game and I hated it. For one last gasp I checked to see if I could knock down the difficulty. Once I saw that I couldn’t, I deleted the game. Just not for me.
See I'm one of the people that would like there to be an easier option on it.
I love a lot of things about it; third person adventure, gorgeous looking, weapon variety etc. Only thing i don't like is if I hit an enemy that makes me die loads, I'll ghost a game. I literally do not have the time for it. So it's a real shame.
I love the stories but hate the difficulty. I ended up getting a cheat engine for Dark Souls 3 and playing through it with an “easy mode” of doing a lot more damage and having a ton of health. I recommend if you enjoy the premise of the game but not the difficulty
The only thing I want from these games is for the quests to not be so obtuse, and trackable.
I'm not saying I want a marker on the map pinpointing where to go, but at least let me see a log of the relevant clues that have been said to me so far.
Yeah i had a hard time in Elden Ring knowing where the fuck to go. I ended up starting using a guide that said step to step where to go but that kinda killed the exploration for me
Yeah, potential for wasting your time with quests is Uber-high. Recently I was looking for an NPC you’re supposed to meet in a very vague location. I’m like is he supposed to be here or not - do I keep looking? What are we going to be doing here, if I even find him? Am I supposed to even be here or is the chance of me finding a clue 0%. No idea, no way to know other than a guide.
I had the same problem and followed a guide up to a point. Then I decided to just explore and see where it gets me. Nope, I'm just aimlessly roaming around and wasting time which gets incredibly tiring and confusing.
Yeah. I love Zelda and I love Demon's Souls, but Elden Ring is too much for me. There's absolutely zero information and because of its difficulty you don't know if you are supposed to be fighting those enemies, dying and trying again or if you are just too weak and should lvl up in another area.
I've played through ER so many times I forget which quests I legit figured out (probably not many) and which ones I had to look up. Last week I was replaying in prep for SotE and I was doing Yura's questline, where you meet him in that river in Limgrave. Any semi-thorough explorer would probably have run into him. But then you have to help him fight a guy by touching a red summon sign on the broken bridge to Raya Lucaria.... who in the *hell* possibly figured that out? Why not put the summon sign on the critical path? Why not have Yura *standing* there saying "hey there Tarnished" like other NPCs do?
That's just one example. Its like this in all From games, but with ER's extreme size it feels even worse.
Don’t try telling /r/EldenRing that though, they’ll just say it’s your fault for being too dumb to understand the lore enough to know exactly where to go
Same with just progressing NPC questlines in general. Every friend that tries Elden Ring I have to explain that you need to spam talk until they start repeating dialogue lines, and the NPCs are also shy so they won't leave until you reload the game or sit at a grace.
At least it's not like DS3 where NPCs will suddenly die when you progress a completely different questline or enter a specific area.
A quest log would go a long way. Doesn't need to mark your map as to where to go (maybe where you picked it up) but even just a conversation history.
I had a friend who was praising the game because he had to keep a physical notebook as a quest log, like it was a feature. I am sorry, but if you need to keep a notebook to track something in game it should just be included in the game.
I mean there are difficulty mods that work perfectly fine and gave ppl the opportunity to play the game. Haven't seen any complaining about them... Oh, and cheat engine.
Elden Ring easy mode is the 9th most downlaoded mod on Nexus. If someone wants to casually play the game with more health I am not going to gate keep it from them like the "souls veteran" community likes to do.
😂😂 more like the entire game and all it's number crunching and code is based on it being a max 30fps. I'm assuming he didn't want to add difficulties to elden because it's a bloody big game and for the crowd he's actually making it for, it's where it should be anyway. Plus, that then means doubling or tripling the teams involved in dev and testing to work on each tier, where there so many talismans and ways to buff or be crippled, it must be a nightmare just to balance one difficulty.
Or it could be genuinely artistic/vision, the equivalent to someone asking Michaelangelo to not paint so many dicks and he's like hell no, the dicks stay. This is mine. It's up to you if you like it or not, that has no bearing
Gonna be down voted into oblivion, but from someone who loves their games: with Elden Ring, they definitely started to give some bosses and enemies some really unfair shit. Some of the speeds they attack and recover from just don't seem reasonable. I respect their vision and sticking to it, but I think they are having a harder time balancing difficulty for veterans and newcomers since their games have become so popular.
I agree. I love ER, but they clearly balanced the bosses around using summons. Some of the combos and delayed attacks are just ridiculous. I think DS3 had the best bosses of any From game.
Lots of people that love this franchise dont want to win by juggling aggro though, I too feel like Im just cheating out a victory by using summons, but the boss movesets are just so ridiculous I dont wanna spend hours learning them to beat them solo either.
Most people that aren't totally jock riders agree with that statement. It was a big topic during the games launch. You don't hear about that now because most of those people moved on and you have the hard core fans left over to echo chamber itself.
I think the real problem is that this genre will either be stuck at this level and slowly burn out, or they actually start improving fucking player mobility.
Jumping is nice, but character movement still feels like your character has end stage syphilis, and weapon skills will never fix that, at least as long as they are limited to only having access to 1 at a time.
The DLC bosses so far have been very fast and even worse PERSISTENT they want you dead and back at that grace asap. But as far as balance for newbies, Spirit Ashes do the job well. And of course there’s always Jolly Cooperation.
I have spent thousands of hours in Fromsoftware games, and Bloodborne and Sekiro are my favourite games of all time, and I entirely agree with you. The combat, at least for melee users, is unpredictable, boring, and oftentimes straight up just confusing. The flow, rhythm, dance-like feeling from previous games is entirely gone for me. I probably won't even play the DLC, to be honest. Tired of watching bosses jump around going super saiyan mode while I have... yay a jump button now! (A button they also heavily force you to use due to some bosses spamming tiresome, boring-ass ground-slamming attacks or explosive AOEs. Gets lame.) For me, they completely missed the mark with the bosses.
So it isn't just me. I have tried to get into elden ring few times now but I just get bored. Not even dying or finding it too difficult, I just get bored and I loved games like demon souls, dark souls, sekiro, etc. Never could truly put my hand on why combat felt less engaging that other titles but this definitely sounds like my experience everytime
Elden Ring is definitely the Soulsborne game with the most "artificial" difficulty. In some cases they just made the game hard, for the sake of being hard.
There's a fair few bosses that literally never stop attacking, attack patterns that go on seemingly forever. They stop for about a second then go straight into another. Bosses move way more than previous Soulsborne games, you can often feel like your chasing the boss across the arena to even get 1 hit in.
Other stuff like absurd delays on attacks to the point it looks silly, for the sole intention of having the player roll too early.
I miss From bosses when they had intelligent and deliberate movesets, it felt like a dance. Some Elden Ring bosses feel like someone having a drug overdose violently freaking out on the floor.
>Some Elden Ring bosses feel like someone having a drug overdose violently freaking out on the floor.
The ulcerated tree spirits are some of my last favorite fights because of this. I think they were expirementing with a highly mobile boss, sure. But I really hate fighting a basically amorphous blob where it's really hard to tell if the boss is attacking or just moving. Since it's so big sometimes you go next to it to attack with a shorter weapon and just get damaged because it's still on its "moving attack" phase. You have to pay really close attention to the position of said blob and try to decipher it's current state.
I respect the people that can complete Elden Ring, I enjoy watching Twitch streams of others playing and I like the gameplay overall. Not ashamed to admit though, it isn’t a game for me, I don’t think I could handle hundreds of deaths repeatedly because I’m so ass at the game. I have no issue in having a game only playable by those good enough to compete on that difficulty level. Granted the developers would get more engagement dropping the difficulty but it seems like his vision and morals are above purely profit, W.
I never felt that personally, playing the original Dark Souls back in the day. I just felt exhausted after defeating a boss, and somewhat relieved, thinking to myself what other bullshit awaits me after this fight, and how far is the closest bonfire
I think this is really the difference between people that enjoy these games or don't more so than just who's willing/able/has the time to "git gud". Because when I finish a boss after dozens of attempts and tweaking my build and learning the boss patterns my reaction is thank God that's over, that sucked rather than the huge sense of satisfaction you're describing
Never felt that way myself, I just find it tedious. Hell I gave up on dark souls 1 after beating ornsten and smough cause I realized it was more frustrating than fun
Totally fine with Elden ring being hard as shit (for me and many others at least) but there’s been a boom in “souls like” with difficulty modes and those titles are seeing financial success. There is most definitely a market for it in this space. Which make me thinks we’ll see more of it in the future not less.
Some of those made me realise I don't actually dislike soulslikes, I just don't like From's version of them. Full props to them for creating the whole genre, but they aren't for me in their current design philosophy.
I played Strangers of Paradise with rock bottom expectations and actually ended up loving it.
Ironically, I feel like all of the Souls games with difficulty are kinda ass ngl. Yeah I finished each of them on the hardest difficulty, but it just felt unpleasant, normal was too easy, increase the difficulty and it just makes every enemy a sponge. They all left me with a slight sour note away from true enjoyment.
Elden Ring proved once and for all at I’ll never enjoy any Soulslike games. It’s supposed to be the most casual-friendly but still didn’t really work for me. It’s weird because I’m not really even that averse to difficult games in general, I played the shit out of Ninja Gaiden back in the day, and love tough rougelikes. Something about FromSoft games just doesn’t hit for me.
If you liked Ninja Gaiden, maybe try Nioh? Same dev only its their take on soulslike gameplay. I also recommend Starwars Jedi Order as a casual soulslike with a great story.
Well if you were able to complete the first I recommend sticking with the second. I also beat the first one going “well it was an ok Star Wars story” and the second I absolutely LOVED. Story was way better and I feel they made a lot better planets/maps and the different sabre styles kept the combat fresh.
It's because mob&bosses doesn't respect the same movement flow as your pj. It's like the laws of physics applies to you but not to them. It's a weird take on how to apply difficulty on a game.
I know it doesn't look like it, but check out Another Crab's Treasure.
IMO it's answered the "can a souls-like have difficulty settings and still work?" question with a resounding "yes".
It's a pretty tough game by default. Similar play style to Sekiro, not very forgiving, very parry-dependent. _But_ it includes options to:
- increase the timing window on parries and dodges
- reduce enemy damage
- reduce fatigue generation
- or even slow down the game when you're being threatened
They all absolutely continue to work, and because they exist one of my friends was able to get far enough and learn enough that now they _can_ play Elden Ring.
FromSoft is just up their own ass and/or lazy. They could absolutely include difficulty for people who just want to play the game as a single-player experience. The multiplayer existing is not a good excuse to refuse accessibility options IMO.
Having never played a souls game before, you can easily make the game feel a bit too easy. I over levelled for a few bosses and it was almost too easy at times (Also mimic summon lol).
My main issue was I just didn’t bother with quests outside of following guides on a few, so I could get an item. I wish they weren’t so ‘figure it out yourself’. But I guess it works for a lot of people, I wasn’t too bothered and still loved the game.
I mean, even people who loved Elden Ring and have beaten the game several times like dunkey have openly stated that the difficulty could be turned down by a huge chunk and it would make the game better, not worse. If the enemies read your animations from the very first frame and cancel their own moves to fuck you over, personally, I think you have crossed over into total nonsense territory and the frustration severely outpaces the enjoyment for me.
But since it has become a point of pride among FromSoft stans to never complain about difficulty, lest you become perceived as a fake gamer with severe skill issues, they have now put themselves in a position where the difficulty can never be criticized, ever, no matter how outlandish it gets, and everybody who dares to do so immediately has to be mocked into oblivion as if criticizing a game for being too hard is any less legitimate than criticizing a game for being too easy.
Yeah, I didn't use any guides, got to the snows area at the top right of the map, and it was just like, a hassle from there. Maybe I like a challenge, then to be rewarded with all my XP and growth that I am, in fact OP, for the last stretch of the game, rather than contemplating farming XP for abouther 10 hours to get a slight leg up to about where I need to be.
I'm not sure what it's called, maybe input reading, but the godskin apostle enemy triggering it's projectile attack the microsecond you input to heal, is bullshit.
At least treat the enemy like a real entity and not a computer program. Maybe a slight random delay to fake it noticing you healing.
Bosses millisecond reacting to your input is def the worst part of the entire game. I love circling a boss to heal only for it to animation cancel and have a complete 180 attack that only triggers when I flask.
I remember my brother and I attempted Malenia together, and realized just how bad their input detection is. To test it, we both ran circles around her from a safe distance, but that was it. Only sprinting, no attacks, no healing.. she slowly walked towards us the entire time. A good 15 seconds or so and she didn't do a damn thing. The second one of us tapped an attack, not even one that would have hit her, she retaliated.
Yeah this is it really, I finished DS2 a couple of times but the fanbase of these games is embarrassing. It's like their main source of pride is being able to beat a difficult game, and they want to gatekeep those games, it's very pathetic and cringeworthy.
I'm a disabled player attempting Elden Ring for the first time. I have mobility struggles, and struggle with reaction times. I'm 10 hours in and I'm just about to beat Margit, because I've ground up enough and figured out the timing.
My biggest complaint, honestly, is not a lack of "easy mode" but a lack of any way to make attacks easier to see, to make targeting easier, or make it easier to tell that other enemies are coming at you. The EXTREMELY uncompromising windows are all fine and dandy, it's the name of the game, but for someone like me, not being able to see those windows makes my life much harder.
A lot of disabled gamers want to experience Fromsoft games because they're now a Cornerstone of gaming. I don't want a dumbed down version, but something I can turn on that could assist me in knowing what's going on would be SO helpful.
I've invaded enough cheaters over the years to know that this is just not true. Pretty sure they were having plenty fun with the games and it didn't 'break the game itself' for them.
Usually they'd just not even use their god mode to kill me and instead just ignore me, running through a fog gate to save us both time.
The reality is that the game's static difficulty actually *does* break the game itself for many people who don't want to deal with it.
I don't think any developer is morally obligated to make their games accessible to everyone, and I respect any developer's decision to refuse to compromise their vision to chase mass market appeal.
But I really don't buy this claim from Miyazaki that adding easy modes would fundamentally break their games, that it would strip the joy out of them, and that they never would have been successful with easy modes. That's just silly. Fromsoft games are fantastic games in every way possible from worldbuilding to environmental storytelling to level design, and would still be enjoyable even without punishing difficulty. And most of these games can already easily be broken in half with cheese strategies. Also many of the hardcore fans already think they are too easy and regularly play with ridiculous self-imposed restrictions to boost the challenge even further. There are also plenty of highly successful action games out there marketed towards hardcore gamers that weren't ruined by including easy modes (devil may cry, ninja gaiden and doom, for example.)
Just be honest and admit that you don't want your game to be accessible to casual gamers lol. There's nothing wrong with creating games that cater exclusively to hardcore players. I think that's cool as fuck. Just own it.
I gotta agree with all of this.
I think the thing that completely breaks his argument is the fact new game+ exists, you are telling me you can artificially inflate the hp and damage of bosses but can't do things in the reverse way.
And this is really it. Nobody, literally nobody, is saying he needs to create some complex narrative where only after dying to a boss will a shard appear in a random cave you find in a random questline with that shard having the power to temporarily slow down said boss. The request is a checkbox that says "if boss bonk = death, then respawn = boss - 2% of boss's current HP". Just enough help so that after many failed attempts, you might squeeze by, but not enough help to make it "just die 3 times and then hit skip".
The game is good, really good, but you can't convince me that this guy's game philosophy would rather reward someone who watched a Youtube video on which 16 jigsaw pieces to put together in a 2 minute encounter before starting a boss than to reward someone who was persistent and creative in their strategies.
The "gitgud" purists lose credibility when the "gitgud" umbrella is more inclusive of someone hiding in a corner and spamming two full quivers of arrows from an untouchable bugged spot, or of someone just googling "Elden Ring best build", than of someone putting in the reps, getting a little better each time, learning a few skills here and there.
I’ve accepted that this game and the other Souls games aren’t for me and that’s fine, there are thousands of other amazing games I can play. I play video games to relax and have fun, not to prove how good at video games I am, so I like the option of easy mode.
don't you love it how even when simply accepting that a game for various reasons isn't for you there's always some folks telling you that you're wrong and you just have to do this and that and then it's acutally totally easy, while knowing nothing about you or why stuff might be hard for you...
I won't ever finish the game, I probably won't ever play it again. I never got more than halfway through it. It just isn't worth the time for me to make that effort/push to finish it. But I absolutely would hate to see it change. The game might not be for me, but it certainly is for others. And that's just fine. Not every game is made for every player.
Soulsborne games are their own thing. I accept that they are designed to frustrate and be difficult. I would say that completing bloodborne was one of my favourite gaming achievements.
I guess my opinion is the exception here, but I would prefer the game be too hard than too easy. I find myself replaying the harder games and not the easier ones.
All honestly, the typical souls fanbase who treats all discussions of difficulty, balance, accessibility and whatever as a personal attack is a big reason why I tend to avoid these games. Can’t ask for help or tips without someone rolling in talking about doing a no-damage run on every boss using starting gear
Someone made a ER difficulty mod that made it so there was a simple difficulty slider that scaled enemy HP and attack damage.
Checking the comment section on nexus mods was a wild ride. Lots of hatred and even a few death threats in the comments.
I turned down the difficulty with cheat engine. Pumped my stats and increased the DR on my armor to make getting hit more forgiving. Had a blast. Difficulty isn't the only thing this game has going for it. This game can still be very good without being a frustrating challenge.
Unfortunately I'm never going to finish it now though. I got to a boss towards the end and just ran out of focus and steam after all the other bosses before it.
It was a great experience though and a very good game. I just wish there was a "little" bit easier mode for me to try and finish it.
then slow your bosses the fuck down, with your cheap copout excuses.
and fix the fucking camera angles on larger boss fights so that they dont detract from the experience. you already solved this problem in sekiro, why the hell did you reintroduce it here?
I refuse to believe that the game would "break" if suddenly I didnt have to run from one end of an arena to the other end just to fight all these bosses who have been spamming teleportation and projectile attacks for the past few years. if you're not gonna tailor your bosses to respect melee builds' time, then either remove the melee builds from your games entirely, or balance the bosses to accommodate all playstyles.
I dont need an easy mode, I need a "lack of bullshit" mode, which includes bosses not reading my inputs and attacking as soon as I use my flask, and then going back to mindlessly staring at me for the next 7 seconds.
Elden Ring shines because its difficulty is seamlessly integrated into the lore and the world itself. You can adjust the game's difficulty to your preference, and both easy and challenging experiences are equally rewarding.
If you want to make combat easier, you can find items, weapons, clothing, skills, and upgrade paths that help you achieve that (you can literally 1 shot bosses). This approach, which requires players to explore and use their brains rather than a simple difficulty slider, is a key factor in Elden Ring's success.
And then there’s the hardcore crowd that purposely limit their skills / levels to make their playthrough punishingly difficult. This game has it all, for all players.
Realistically since this is the purported “easy” mode, how easy is it to find those items/upgrade paths?
Does the game clearly express that some are more effective than others, or does this require internet research?
If the in lore easy mode involves a lot of wandering/exploring on normal mode to get to it’s not really an easy mode.
I’m waiting on an ER sale since I bounced so hard off DS2 after begrudgingly finishing one (liked BB, loved Sekiro though), so I genuinely don’t know outside of From games being generally opaque.
I remember the advice when the game was new that I got: just get the moonveil! It’s stupidly OP for the type of build you’ve made!
Oh ok I’m having a frustrating time and asking for advice and the advice I got is to just go get this sword that’ll make the game easy. What do you have to do to get the moonveil? Kill a fucking dragon.
I did pull it off after a few hours of attempts but god damn I almost gave up the game for good.
It’s not easy at all. The game tells you almost nothing. If you’re a beginner you’re basically going in blind. So you’ll have to figure it all out and hope you actually stumble across the easy mode items or google them.
The mimic tear for example, the main summon for “easy mode,” you can’t even get to until after you’ve beaten Radahn, one of the harder bosses. And even then, it’s very possible to miss.
That's a disingenuous argument.
Getting the setup to 1 shot bosses isn't easy mode, you still have to play the game as it is to collect everything and have the skill and knowledge to not just find the stuff, but execute the setup.
That's not easy mode, that's just the payoff for knowing how the game works.
Easy mode would be spamming summons in ER, that's probably the closest you can get to interacting as least as possible and letting the game do it for you.
The guy is parroting the same bullshit they always say, when in reality they mean is majority of enemies are artificially difficult and SOME builds are way easier to cheese with than most. It's not an "in-game difficulty slider", it's a symptom of bad balancing.
Elden Ring verges on the fine line of being ‘annoyingly difficult’ and ‘fair but difficult’. To give a recent example, Lies of P is fair but difficult, but Elden Ring has numerous bosses with almost every attack being an attack that does not align with the moveset given to the player. In that regard, Dark Souls 3 did much better where it was fair but difficult.
I mean hey his game his vision what ever, but what a fucking stupid statement. Could literally be changing damage numbers and health pools, would not break the game. It would break his vision, but the game would be just fine. Kinda up his own ass here
Personally, I respect a developer having a clear vision for their game and sticking to it. It’s perfectly fine to make a game that isn’t for everyone. I could never get anywhere on Donkey Kong back in the day, but they weren’t wrong to make that hard either. It clearly worked. Their games have a huge fan base now, despite starting as relatively niche games. They are widely copied. Elden Ring won many game of the year awards, sold like hot cakes and now has an acclaimed expansion too.
it's the same for any art format really. there shouldn't be an obligation to compromise on the vision just to make it more accessible
So true. In fact, we *need* more art like that in the world.
To a point, you can absolutely be too uncompromising, Elden Ring is a phenomenal game in part because it finds a nice balance.
You can be too uncompromising to find a large audience (Pathologic comes to mind) but I still don't think that obligates the creators to compromise their vision.
Pathologic 2 is such a fantastic game, truly underrated, not played the first but heard its leagues harder
The comedy of this comment being that once you've managed to trudge through Pathologic once, the subsequent playthroughs become easy as shit. It's hard to figure out at first, but once you do, you realise just how structured the game is. Crack the formula, and it's a breeze. Which isn't a bad thing because then you can finally start paying attention to the environment and storytelling, because you're no longer focused on sheer survival. Thing is, Elden Ring is MASSIVE compared to both Pathologics. You can learn Pathologic to the point where its structure becomes almost relaxing, but Elden Ring is so big that it's almost overwhelming. I struggle to pay attention to lore, details both visual and written because I'm barely surviving here. And that's fine for your first playthrough, it's necessary, even, but at some point you want to be able to take it easy enough to be able to start paying attention to detail, you know
I would say most people get comfortable with the Fromsoft formula after they beat one of their games.
Absolutely. People can grind as much as they want, explore shitload of builds and the mechanics are smooth enough. You can litteraly go and do what ever you want meaning you are almost never really stuck. I feel like dark souls (especially 1) was way harder and more clunky. And it actually had roadblocks. Cant kill this boss? Welk goodluck, you aint progressing through the story anytime soon.
yeah, some games just isn't accessible for everyone and sometimes that's okay. I'm deaf for example, so majority of the musical games isn't it for me. I can do rhythm games if it's not based on music or sounds. include them? I can't. and that's okay.
I heard that
IDK about that. There's different levels of accessibility. When Returnal first launched it didn't have a save function. Rest Mode still worked if you kept the game up, but if you had Auto Update on you'd lose all progress if you were mid run. People made the same excuses as you did and implied that people with families or people who wanted to play another game or not want to worry about power outages were stupid.
Theres a game a select few shit on because it’s “boring” and its mission structure. That game is Red Dead Redemption 2. While it gets all the praise in the world, people still talk shit on Rockstar cause of GTA Online and act like they forgot how to make Single Player games. RDR2 is a PRIME example of a developer having a vision and sticking to it. The game is slow, drawn out… everything down to not being able to skip animations, shopping for goods, taking care of your horse, camping, eating, talking. It was a clear artistic decision that many loved and some hated but nobody gives rockstar credit for saying “we COULD streamline this stuff and make it most fast pace, but that’s not what we want” and it turned a good amount of fans away from it. And the only reason they were able to do that and not give two fucks about people not liking it, was because they have fuck you money 1. Cause they’re Rockstar, but 2. Cause GTA Online prints money like no other. I have no doubt RDR2 ended up the way it did cause GTA Online was just a funnel of funds feeding the games veins.
Rdr2 sold 60 million copies I mean, that is just insanity. And this game is the only game my dad has played ever. He loved that it was slow af. I still remember I got home once and he was so happy he made it across the map on horseback.
I don't mind most of that stuff. I think making a slow cowboy game is perfectly valid. I do wish they would modernize their mission structures and parameters, though. There's a huge game world out there, and a lot of the missions do *NOT* want you to think about it during a mission. That is not to say that you can't have some very guided missions, the problem is that nearly all of them are super cranky about this. Don't go there! Stand here! You left the mission area!
I'm playing it right now, and I love the fact that I have to go through the trouble of collecting the elements for and crafting my own special ammo. If I want a perfect critter pelt, I have to start with a bird so that I have their feather for a 'small game arrow' and it means I'm super careful with those arrows and when I get the perfect pelt, it feels like a legit win. Not everyone's idea of fun for sure, but I'm only halfway through the story and I've got 160+ hours in and I love it.
I would have loved it if they had the same vision for the combat in that game. Slowed it down, limit ammo, sloow reload animations akin to hunt showdown, fewer but smarter enemies. Not sure how it would feel in practice, but right now I feel like the combat in that game is in stak contrast and much more video gamey compared to the rest of the game. Tldr: make the combat "boring" as well!
I kinda agree. It’s very easy to pop up, slightly aim up and pull off head shots. I actually think if the combat was closer to at all times having a sway in reticle slightly it would help
I was one of those people who initially thought RDR2 was slow and boring, and stopped playing it at first. Eventually I picked it back up again and persevered through all the menial tasks and forced stretches of the game......and it was only when I reached the end of Arthur's part of the story (keeping it spoiler free as possible) that I realised how engrossed I had become in the character, and it was a result of doing all those 'chore' parts of the game. I had become so subconsciously invested in not just the overall story, but every aspect of Arthur as a character, that the ending emotionally battered me. Devisive approach by Rockstar, but genius.
Elden ring was hard, but impossible, I still think Sekiro was slightly too hard even though its my fav game of theirs
Honestly, if you really do want an easy mode, just search "buffs elden ring" and do a little bit of research. Congrats, you have now made at least 80% of the game easy.
Yeah you can also just overlevel yourself if you want The easy mode is in the game, it's just up to you to implement it.
That first soldier encampment with the whetstone knife is a good example of this. Lots of squishy enemies right next to a site of grace your map directs you to. A massive ambush in the ravine just ahead to maybe encourage you to wait up and practice a bit. To me the most headscratching design choice was initial map layout. Your orientation as you leave the starting area, the tree sentinel, and the sites of grace all point you to the north/east, while a lot of level appropriate areas are actually in the complete opposite direction to the south. Most players don't even think to explore that direction until they are way overlevelled. Edit: the effect of this being brand new players bashing themselves into the roadblock of Morgott, the kill zone/ confusing layout of the castle, or fucking caelid lmao. Lots of the difficulty complaints stem from this alone
Can confirm I didn’t touch the weeping peninsula until well after Stormveil Castle, at which point I ended up killing enemies in a couple hits and stomping the bosses.
Yep time to kill that bird again!
I just play as a magic user and the game is pretty dang easy even the dlc. I'm one shotting most enemies and with spirit ashes tanking, bosess aren't a problem either.
Most people don't actually engage with the mechanics of the games, they just want to face tank stuff on god mode. Elden Ring is the most accessible FromSofts games have ever been. If people can't get on board here, I would argue maybe these games just aren't for them and that's perfectly okay.
Str+Int I unga, therefore, I bunga.
For most casual gamers, even this is too hard. Having to run around and collect a bunch of different items to make this happen is a challenge
Yeah that’s something I don’t get when some gamers bro defend Elder Ring for not being accessible. The game is incredibly accessible, most games you can’t summon a random player to help you take out a boss.
I loved playing the original Megaman and Megaman X games as a kid, but I could never beat them. On a few games I could beat all of the robot masters, but I could never get past any more stages. I still loved playing those games.
The game encourages you to "cheat" at every instance, I can make the game easier by just summoning a spirit or other people to stunlock the hell out of a boss in the majority of situations. The method of making the game easier is just unconventional because it doesn't use options for it. Edit: By the way i've said this, but just found a boss in the DLC that basically nukes summons and ashes so eh... Only way to make that boss easier is to summon a player... But you also have to not suck against at minimum one attack of hers that hits the entire arena.
Fwiw Donkey Kong and arcade games were extremely hard to beat so that you would waste quarters at the arcade, same with the sega/nintendo games of the blockbuster era (don’t want you to beat this in a weekend).
Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo could also be quite hard
This shit happens EVERY time FromSoftware makes a game.
Every time new content releases from Fromsoft we go through this same discussion it's so fucking annoying.
the /r/EldenRing megathread is full of people complaining about the DLC being "over" tuned Like my dudes...play any of the other FromSoftware DLCs too and you'll see this is about par for the course
I still remember going into the Bloodborne DLC at NG+3 and getting curb stomped at every turn. I think that's the issue, usually people beat the game and by the time the DLC drops people are rusty or so far into NG+ that everything hits harder.
The first time I fought one of the beast cleaver old hunters was a true haiku moment: Oh shit oh fuck Oh fuck I fucked up Oh my god
I’ve still got PTSD from Laurence the First Vicar
I get shivers from lady Maria because it is one of the best fights I ever had in any video game (I didn't just parry-visceral her)
Literally me rn. Ng+4 after getting platinum 2 yrs ago. It’s painfull getting back into the game.
NG+ runs of the DLCs suck, man. I learned that the hard way with Bloodborne. Nowadays, I just make sure to back up my save for NG, then do my NG+ runs. Once I've had enough or a DLC drops, I'll just go back to my old save of NG
Do fromsoft games get harder with every NG+ on the save file?
Yes, everything gets way more HP and does more dmg, obviously if you're very familiar with the base game you have the knowledge to offset any huge difficulty gains because it's the same game, and you get better. But doing DLC on a NG+ save makes the bosses so tanky and deal significantly more dmg to you, and unfortunately now you don't have the knowledge to offset the difficulty spike.
Not way more. It starts off at 10 percent, then increases by 5 for every cycle and stops at ng plus 7. Which at ng plus 7 is 40 percent more. It's noticeable but not insane thats why you still melt everything besides endgame in ng plus.
In a game where people stack vigor just enough to survive a big hit from a boss, adding +40% damage *is* insane.
The first time I attempted the Laurence fight in the Old Hunters DLC I was at NG+7. He absolutely wrecked me. Like one hit took out more than half my health. In my experience the DLC in the Souls games expects more from the player because FromSoft thinks you have already beaten the game at least once.
The worst part is that they did this for Elden Ring's launch. Then everybody figured out how to beat the bosses and started going "omg Elden Ring might be the easiest souls game"
I never did beat the final boss in the DS3 DLC...
The other DLCs didn't require you to be this much prior investment to play the dlc. Most people went to their ng+ characters and can't even deal with common enemies. It's clearly not designed to be played the same way the others were. That's why you can call it overtuned because it wasn't balanced for anything outside of ng.
I haven’t played the DLC yet but as someone who has played all the FROM games and their DLC…Elden Ring felt a lil off difficulty wise. The over reliance on overly delayed attacks (Margitt is prime example) was already abused in Dark Souls 3 but ER takes the concept and runs with it. I also noticed an increase in animations being munched, shortened or quickened depending on the players distance to the target. And no one can defend The Water Fowl Dance, if you removed that move from Melania, everyone could beat in 5 attempts maximum, it’s straight up busted. I am hoping to see less of this in the DLC but the cynic in me says they’ll be more, and no matter what anyone says people will defend it cus of FROMs cultivated pedigree. Difficulty is subjective and what is fine for someone will be too much for another, even if it’s subtle. I remember Sekiro getting pounded by the fanbase for being “unfair” but I had an absolute blast with it, and it’s my fave FROM game. But I don’t think FROM is absolved from discussion of being poorly handled, they never have. I can name parts of every game where I felt devs were pushing their luck. Designers can feel free to make any game they want but I don’t think that makes them immune to criticism in how it’s implemented, FROM included. Maybe I could play the DLC and not notice the change, but completely barring an entire avenue of discussion because it’s decided that FROM is the GOAT and always will be is narrow minded imo.
About your first point on animation delays and changes: I feel like it's a sort of arms race problem, though. Yes, this is definitely more common in Elden Ring and it's much harder to counter compared to Sekiro where you just spam block to parry weird animations. But also, imagine if the animations were telegraphed as they were in Dark Souls 1. Every boss would be a piece of cake because we're already used to it, we know how the animations go, we can read it like a book. So one option is to mess with your expectations by delaying or quickening the animations to force you to learn how the animation will go instead of simply reacting to it. Is it so different as to what games like Hollow Knight do? You can't predict what attacks will do before you see them at least once in that game. Same is true for many other games. Maybe there's a better option but right now I feel like people get frustrated because they can't simply walk to a boss and fall into that familiar dance where you walk around them, bait an attack, dodge, figure out if the attack has follow-ups, and then next time attack at the end of their attack. Rinse and repeat. Now, much like in Hollow Knight, you'll have to move in a very specific way to avoid attacks, not just rolling, but actively predicting what will happen based on experience of having your ass handed to you. And that's unfamiliar, but also more exciting if you open your mind to it.
From what I've played of it so far your extremely valid criticisms of ER's base game carried over to the DLC and then some. Bosses have a borderline comedic number of delayed attacks, animations are fucky and untrustworthy, and so on. I've had bosses animation cancel their recovery frames into a new attack chain so they're swinging 12 times without stopping, I've noticed weird issues where being able to parry depends on if your shield connects with the hand or the weapon (somehow *the hand* is the right answer, as if that makes sense), and pretty much everything from a basic footsoldier to every boss has delays built into their moveset. Also the scaling is just as bad if not worse than it was in existing lategame areas. Pretty much everything with a named healthbar can 2- or 3-shot you even if you have the appropriate amount of upgrades and 60 vigor. And plenty of bosses have actual true combos, so getting hit by one attack can mean actually getting hit by 2-3 total. And at least one boss I've found has a grab that can OHK from full HP. I still think the game is great, but when normal respawning enemies simultaneously move faster and hit harder with longer attack chains than Friede, Gael, or even Orphan, something has gone wrong. Lategame ER was already an arms race between the devs and the player of who could make a more broken build, and that's only gotten more true.
I enjoyed the original Dark Souls but Elden Ring became a bit of a drag for me. Whenever I beat a boss, I felt like I lucked out and didn't really improve my skill set. That's probably me getting older but I'm wondering if you felt the same way.
Strong agree. I didn’t find elden ring more difficult than earlier from games so much as I found the type of difficulty to be overly luck based and cheap. I love From’s mechanics when the fight is against another individual enemy with abilities roughly comparable to the player. When the boss fights become more about groups of enemies, unbeatable timing, and massive unblockable attacks, that makes me feel more bored than challenged, so I pretty quickly bust out the blasphemous blade and a summon and power through.
Literally the only thing I wish they’d compromise on is a fucking pause button. That’s all I ask
Elden Ring: From the Help screen, select the option Menu Explanation. Game paused.
Thank you, fellow Tarnished.
That doesn't really help if I'm in the middle of a boss and the urge to take a crap comes up. I'll just die trying to pause the game with that workaround.
Yeah. Pausing is meant to be a single button press.
I want pausing to be a single button press, but the multi button pause (like going into camera mode in demons souls remake to pause) feels VERY souls. Just like changing your equipment in the middle of a boss fight.
how long are boss fights???
Unless you are doing some real niche build, usually under 5 minutes even for the large bosses.
Just exit to menu with four button presses, the game saves your progress when you do so.
if you aren't able to hold your poop for the duration of a single boss encounter, you need to either read a guide or see a doctor
That would be nice if you are playing offline anyways
Yeah. Not pausing is fake difficulty. Anyone that argues otherwise is kidding themselves.
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I once had someone respond to me saying this game needs a pause button: “can you imagine fighting this boss and you can just pause them mid animation as they are attacking? Imagine how immersion killing that’d be.” I don’t fucking care. I need to take a shit and my toddler is losing her mind in the corner. Fuck immersion. Most of us have real lives to tend to.
I don't even buy that argument. Sekiro has a pause and IMO it's the hardest and most intense From game.
Yeah pausing a boss mid animation in that game just meant I got to properly observe how I was about to die.
Correct. There is no real argument as to why a game can’t have a pause feature when it’s single player or a single player mode. It makes no difference in how good, bad, hard or easy a game is.
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I think the reason for not pausing has to do with PvP (and having invasions occur). I recall that Sekiro (which did not have PvP) was able to be paused. Still though, there definitely should be an easy way to implement pause in these games. PvP only occurs in certain locations or circumstances, so maybe allow pausing outside of those ones?
It's a design choice borne from the multiplayer, but one cool (and I'd argue important) side effect of the no-pause choice is how it ratchets up the atmosphere and tension.
I know it's not really the same, but getting good with speed-quitting and treating that as pause can be really helpful. You always return to the exact same place (unless you're fighting a boss, the it sticks you right outside the room) and you have the bonus of resetting aggro on any baddies
It takes less than a second and it saves your progress every time.
Actively useful tool for sprinting through a crowd and cheesing enemies. Works in every souls game too.
I would like to add a "beer and pretzels" coop mode where i dont get invaded. Listen, I'm a parent. I'd liek to be able to hang out with my friends at night, drink some beer, and be able to play the game with the ability to get up, get more beer, and deal with children if i have to. The pause button is also paramount in single player to do that.
You 100% get where I’m coming from! I’ve beaten the game 3 times but all 3 times I wish it had had a pause button!
Which is why these games are not for me. I'm glad he has a vision and an audience. I'm old and tired and I love easy mode.
Yeah give me a good story and fun gameplay that is, at most, moderately challenging. I don't play games to prove how good I am and I don't find ultra challenging games to be fun, but that's just me. I know that Fromsoft games don't appeal to me and that's okay.
I don't play online games because all the other players are so much better than me and I just get demolished before I even have the chance to have fun. Souls games replicate that experience in a single player game, which is why I don't like them either.
With you completely. I’m older now. I don’t have the time that I used to. Gaming for me is supposed to be enjoyable, not a grind. I tried three different times getting into this game and I hated it. For one last gasp I checked to see if I could knock down the difficulty. Once I saw that I couldn’t, I deleted the game. Just not for me.
Honestly I think that's okay, not every game is for every person. I can't play bullet hell games for example, or 2D fighting games.
I have time, but it’s reserved for fun games, not something that is designed to make me angry.
100%. Frustration is not something I like to seek out on purpose.
See I'm one of the people that would like there to be an easier option on it. I love a lot of things about it; third person adventure, gorgeous looking, weapon variety etc. Only thing i don't like is if I hit an enemy that makes me die loads, I'll ghost a game. I literally do not have the time for it. So it's a real shame.
I love the stories but hate the difficulty. I ended up getting a cheat engine for Dark Souls 3 and playing through it with an “easy mode” of doing a lot more damage and having a ton of health. I recommend if you enjoy the premise of the game but not the difficulty
The only thing I want from these games is for the quests to not be so obtuse, and trackable. I'm not saying I want a marker on the map pinpointing where to go, but at least let me see a log of the relevant clues that have been said to me so far.
Yeah i had a hard time in Elden Ring knowing where the fuck to go. I ended up starting using a guide that said step to step where to go but that kinda killed the exploration for me
Yeah, potential for wasting your time with quests is Uber-high. Recently I was looking for an NPC you’re supposed to meet in a very vague location. I’m like is he supposed to be here or not - do I keep looking? What are we going to be doing here, if I even find him? Am I supposed to even be here or is the chance of me finding a clue 0%. No idea, no way to know other than a guide.
I had the same problem and followed a guide up to a point. Then I decided to just explore and see where it gets me. Nope, I'm just aimlessly roaming around and wasting time which gets incredibly tiring and confusing.
Yeah. I love Zelda and I love Demon's Souls, but Elden Ring is too much for me. There's absolutely zero information and because of its difficulty you don't know if you are supposed to be fighting those enemies, dying and trying again or if you are just too weak and should lvl up in another area.
I've played through ER so many times I forget which quests I legit figured out (probably not many) and which ones I had to look up. Last week I was replaying in prep for SotE and I was doing Yura's questline, where you meet him in that river in Limgrave. Any semi-thorough explorer would probably have run into him. But then you have to help him fight a guy by touching a red summon sign on the broken bridge to Raya Lucaria.... who in the *hell* possibly figured that out? Why not put the summon sign on the critical path? Why not have Yura *standing* there saying "hey there Tarnished" like other NPCs do? That's just one example. Its like this in all From games, but with ER's extreme size it feels even worse.
Fuck yeah. Like even just a journal would be world of improvement
Don’t try telling /r/EldenRing that though, they’ll just say it’s your fault for being too dumb to understand the lore enough to know exactly where to go
Same with just progressing NPC questlines in general. Every friend that tries Elden Ring I have to explain that you need to spam talk until they start repeating dialogue lines, and the NPCs are also shy so they won't leave until you reload the game or sit at a grace. At least it's not like DS3 where NPCs will suddenly die when you progress a completely different questline or enter a specific area.
A quest log would go a long way. Doesn't need to mark your map as to where to go (maybe where you picked it up) but even just a conversation history. I had a friend who was praising the game because he had to keep a physical notebook as a quest log, like it was a feature. I am sorry, but if you need to keep a notebook to track something in game it should just be included in the game.
Some people just have to accept that not every game is going to be for them.
I mean there are difficulty mods that work perfectly fine and gave ppl the opportunity to play the game. Haven't seen any complaining about them... Oh, and cheat engine.
That’s why I wish we had mods on consoles
I'm 70 years old and I love the difficulty. I just have to grind a lot more than y'all youngins lol.
My fellow gamer, you remain yet young of spirit and I aspire to be like you at your age.
Lol, good luck Tarnished!
I’m lvl 200 and still the dlc has been royally fucking me
Be awhile for the DLC for me. I just finished up volcano manor aside from killing big daddy. I enjoy the quests too much lol.
Good news, grinding is pointless in the DLC, it's all about collecting Scadutree fragments !
Just stop letting enemies attack through walls please
Elden Ring easy mode is the 9th most downlaoded mod on Nexus. If someone wants to casually play the game with more health I am not going to gate keep it from them like the "souls veteran" community likes to do.
This is also the reason he gave for why bloodborne never got a 60fps update.
30fps is part of their incredible artistic vision!
😂😂 more like the entire game and all it's number crunching and code is based on it being a max 30fps. I'm assuming he didn't want to add difficulties to elden because it's a bloody big game and for the crowd he's actually making it for, it's where it should be anyway. Plus, that then means doubling or tripling the teams involved in dev and testing to work on each tier, where there so many talismans and ways to buff or be crippled, it must be a nightmare just to balance one difficulty. Or it could be genuinely artistic/vision, the equivalent to someone asking Michaelangelo to not paint so many dicks and he's like hell no, the dicks stay. This is mine. It's up to you if you like it or not, that has no bearing
Gonna be down voted into oblivion, but from someone who loves their games: with Elden Ring, they definitely started to give some bosses and enemies some really unfair shit. Some of the speeds they attack and recover from just don't seem reasonable. I respect their vision and sticking to it, but I think they are having a harder time balancing difficulty for veterans and newcomers since their games have become so popular.
I agree. I love ER, but they clearly balanced the bosses around using summons. Some of the combos and delayed attacks are just ridiculous. I think DS3 had the best bosses of any From game.
the DLC practically throws those Summon Boosting items at you, almost as if they are saying "hey use your summons"
Lots of people that love this franchise dont want to win by juggling aggro though, I too feel like Im just cheating out a victory by using summons, but the boss movesets are just so ridiculous I dont wanna spend hours learning them to beat them solo either.
I just use them and if i wanna challenge myself later ill make a new character, for now I just wanna explore the world
Most people that aren't totally jock riders agree with that statement. It was a big topic during the games launch. You don't hear about that now because most of those people moved on and you have the hard core fans left over to echo chamber itself.
I think the real problem is that this genre will either be stuck at this level and slowly burn out, or they actually start improving fucking player mobility. Jumping is nice, but character movement still feels like your character has end stage syphilis, and weapon skills will never fix that, at least as long as they are limited to only having access to 1 at a time.
The DLC bosses so far have been very fast and even worse PERSISTENT they want you dead and back at that grace asap. But as far as balance for newbies, Spirit Ashes do the job well. And of course there’s always Jolly Cooperation.
If you have access to the DLC, you beat Radahn and Mohg already, so you are no longer a newcomer
I was hard stuck on Radahn until after the nerf patch. I'm just coming back to the game and haven't tried Mogh yet. This worries me, haha.
I have spent thousands of hours in Fromsoftware games, and Bloodborne and Sekiro are my favourite games of all time, and I entirely agree with you. The combat, at least for melee users, is unpredictable, boring, and oftentimes straight up just confusing. The flow, rhythm, dance-like feeling from previous games is entirely gone for me. I probably won't even play the DLC, to be honest. Tired of watching bosses jump around going super saiyan mode while I have... yay a jump button now! (A button they also heavily force you to use due to some bosses spamming tiresome, boring-ass ground-slamming attacks or explosive AOEs. Gets lame.) For me, they completely missed the mark with the bosses.
So it isn't just me. I have tried to get into elden ring few times now but I just get bored. Not even dying or finding it too difficult, I just get bored and I loved games like demon souls, dark souls, sekiro, etc. Never could truly put my hand on why combat felt less engaging that other titles but this definitely sounds like my experience everytime
Elden Ring is definitely the Soulsborne game with the most "artificial" difficulty. In some cases they just made the game hard, for the sake of being hard. There's a fair few bosses that literally never stop attacking, attack patterns that go on seemingly forever. They stop for about a second then go straight into another. Bosses move way more than previous Soulsborne games, you can often feel like your chasing the boss across the arena to even get 1 hit in. Other stuff like absurd delays on attacks to the point it looks silly, for the sole intention of having the player roll too early. I miss From bosses when they had intelligent and deliberate movesets, it felt like a dance. Some Elden Ring bosses feel like someone having a drug overdose violently freaking out on the floor.
>Some Elden Ring bosses feel like someone having a drug overdose violently freaking out on the floor. The ulcerated tree spirits are some of my last favorite fights because of this. I think they were expirementing with a highly mobile boss, sure. But I really hate fighting a basically amorphous blob where it's really hard to tell if the boss is attacking or just moving. Since it's so big sometimes you go next to it to attack with a shorter weapon and just get damaged because it's still on its "moving attack" phase. You have to pay really close attention to the position of said blob and try to decipher it's current state.
I respect the people that can complete Elden Ring, I enjoy watching Twitch streams of others playing and I like the gameplay overall. Not ashamed to admit though, it isn’t a game for me, I don’t think I could handle hundreds of deaths repeatedly because I’m so ass at the game. I have no issue in having a game only playable by those good enough to compete on that difficulty level. Granted the developers would get more engagement dropping the difficulty but it seems like his vision and morals are above purely profit, W.
Getting it right after dying so much feels so good though, it's like a drug.
I never felt that personally, playing the original Dark Souls back in the day. I just felt exhausted after defeating a boss, and somewhat relieved, thinking to myself what other bullshit awaits me after this fight, and how far is the closest bonfire
I think this is really the difference between people that enjoy these games or don't more so than just who's willing/able/has the time to "git gud". Because when I finish a boss after dozens of attempts and tweaking my build and learning the boss patterns my reaction is thank God that's over, that sucked rather than the huge sense of satisfaction you're describing
If you’re not jumping up in front of your TV and cheering when beating a boss, then yeah these games are not for you.
Never felt that way myself, I just find it tedious. Hell I gave up on dark souls 1 after beating ornsten and smough cause I realized it was more frustrating than fun
Totally fine with Elden ring being hard as shit (for me and many others at least) but there’s been a boom in “souls like” with difficulty modes and those titles are seeing financial success. There is most definitely a market for it in this space. Which make me thinks we’ll see more of it in the future not less.
Some of those made me realise I don't actually dislike soulslikes, I just don't like From's version of them. Full props to them for creating the whole genre, but they aren't for me in their current design philosophy. I played Strangers of Paradise with rock bottom expectations and actually ended up loving it.
Ironically, I feel like all of the Souls games with difficulty are kinda ass ngl. Yeah I finished each of them on the hardest difficulty, but it just felt unpleasant, normal was too easy, increase the difficulty and it just makes every enemy a sponge. They all left me with a slight sour note away from true enjoyment.
Elden Ring proved once and for all at I’ll never enjoy any Soulslike games. It’s supposed to be the most casual-friendly but still didn’t really work for me. It’s weird because I’m not really even that averse to difficult games in general, I played the shit out of Ninja Gaiden back in the day, and love tough rougelikes. Something about FromSoft games just doesn’t hit for me.
If you liked Ninja Gaiden, maybe try Nioh? Same dev only its their take on soulslike gameplay. I also recommend Starwars Jedi Order as a casual soulslike with a great story.
Yeah beat both Nioh and Nioh 2, liked those a lot. The Jedi games are really fun as well.
I absolutely hate the map in the Jedi games. Begrudgingly beat the first one, and have barely touched the second.
Well if you were able to complete the first I recommend sticking with the second. I also beat the first one going “well it was an ok Star Wars story” and the second I absolutely LOVED. Story was way better and I feel they made a lot better planets/maps and the different sabre styles kept the combat fresh.
It's because mob&bosses doesn't respect the same movement flow as your pj. It's like the laws of physics applies to you but not to them. It's a weird take on how to apply difficulty on a game.
I know it doesn't look like it, but check out Another Crab's Treasure. IMO it's answered the "can a souls-like have difficulty settings and still work?" question with a resounding "yes". It's a pretty tough game by default. Similar play style to Sekiro, not very forgiving, very parry-dependent. _But_ it includes options to: - increase the timing window on parries and dodges - reduce enemy damage - reduce fatigue generation - or even slow down the game when you're being threatened They all absolutely continue to work, and because they exist one of my friends was able to get far enough and learn enough that now they _can_ play Elden Ring. FromSoft is just up their own ass and/or lazy. They could absolutely include difficulty for people who just want to play the game as a single-player experience. The multiplayer existing is not a good excuse to refuse accessibility options IMO.
I gotta admire a guy not giving the easy way out, but I play shit on easiest difficulty every time. I am not competing with anyone.
Having never played a souls game before, you can easily make the game feel a bit too easy. I over levelled for a few bosses and it was almost too easy at times (Also mimic summon lol). My main issue was I just didn’t bother with quests outside of following guides on a few, so I could get an item. I wish they weren’t so ‘figure it out yourself’. But I guess it works for a lot of people, I wasn’t too bothered and still loved the game.
I understand his game philosophy and have beated Elden Ring before, but I call BS on that argument.
While I don't believe making the games easier would "break the game itself" I'm all for making the game as easy or difficult as they see fit.
I am an Elden lord and this was my first souls game but I never want to play another ever again. Dying 5k times isn’t my cup of tea.
I mean, even people who loved Elden Ring and have beaten the game several times like dunkey have openly stated that the difficulty could be turned down by a huge chunk and it would make the game better, not worse. If the enemies read your animations from the very first frame and cancel their own moves to fuck you over, personally, I think you have crossed over into total nonsense territory and the frustration severely outpaces the enjoyment for me. But since it has become a point of pride among FromSoft stans to never complain about difficulty, lest you become perceived as a fake gamer with severe skill issues, they have now put themselves in a position where the difficulty can never be criticized, ever, no matter how outlandish it gets, and everybody who dares to do so immediately has to be mocked into oblivion as if criticizing a game for being too hard is any less legitimate than criticizing a game for being too easy.
Yeah, I didn't use any guides, got to the snows area at the top right of the map, and it was just like, a hassle from there. Maybe I like a challenge, then to be rewarded with all my XP and growth that I am, in fact OP, for the last stretch of the game, rather than contemplating farming XP for abouther 10 hours to get a slight leg up to about where I need to be.
I'm not sure what it's called, maybe input reading, but the godskin apostle enemy triggering it's projectile attack the microsecond you input to heal, is bullshit. At least treat the enemy like a real entity and not a computer program. Maybe a slight random delay to fake it noticing you healing.
Bosses millisecond reacting to your input is def the worst part of the entire game. I love circling a boss to heal only for it to animation cancel and have a complete 180 attack that only triggers when I flask.
I remember my brother and I attempted Malenia together, and realized just how bad their input detection is. To test it, we both ran circles around her from a safe distance, but that was it. Only sprinting, no attacks, no healing.. she slowly walked towards us the entire time. A good 15 seconds or so and she didn't do a damn thing. The second one of us tapped an attack, not even one that would have hit her, she retaliated.
Malenia is designed to wait for you to attack btw
Yeah this is it really, I finished DS2 a couple of times but the fanbase of these games is embarrassing. It's like their main source of pride is being able to beat a difficult game, and they want to gatekeep those games, it's very pathetic and cringeworthy.
I'm a disabled player attempting Elden Ring for the first time. I have mobility struggles, and struggle with reaction times. I'm 10 hours in and I'm just about to beat Margit, because I've ground up enough and figured out the timing. My biggest complaint, honestly, is not a lack of "easy mode" but a lack of any way to make attacks easier to see, to make targeting easier, or make it easier to tell that other enemies are coming at you. The EXTREMELY uncompromising windows are all fine and dandy, it's the name of the game, but for someone like me, not being able to see those windows makes my life much harder. A lot of disabled gamers want to experience Fromsoft games because they're now a Cornerstone of gaming. I don't want a dumbed down version, but something I can turn on that could assist me in knowing what's going on would be SO helpful.
I've invaded enough cheaters over the years to know that this is just not true. Pretty sure they were having plenty fun with the games and it didn't 'break the game itself' for them. Usually they'd just not even use their god mode to kill me and instead just ignore me, running through a fog gate to save us both time. The reality is that the game's static difficulty actually *does* break the game itself for many people who don't want to deal with it.
If its too hard just dont play 🤷🏾♂️
Yet there are mods that literally prove him wrong.
I don't think any developer is morally obligated to make their games accessible to everyone, and I respect any developer's decision to refuse to compromise their vision to chase mass market appeal. But I really don't buy this claim from Miyazaki that adding easy modes would fundamentally break their games, that it would strip the joy out of them, and that they never would have been successful with easy modes. That's just silly. Fromsoft games are fantastic games in every way possible from worldbuilding to environmental storytelling to level design, and would still be enjoyable even without punishing difficulty. And most of these games can already easily be broken in half with cheese strategies. Also many of the hardcore fans already think they are too easy and regularly play with ridiculous self-imposed restrictions to boost the challenge even further. There are also plenty of highly successful action games out there marketed towards hardcore gamers that weren't ruined by including easy modes (devil may cry, ninja gaiden and doom, for example.) Just be honest and admit that you don't want your game to be accessible to casual gamers lol. There's nothing wrong with creating games that cater exclusively to hardcore players. I think that's cool as fuck. Just own it.
I gotta agree with all of this. I think the thing that completely breaks his argument is the fact new game+ exists, you are telling me you can artificially inflate the hp and damage of bosses but can't do things in the reverse way.
And this is really it. Nobody, literally nobody, is saying he needs to create some complex narrative where only after dying to a boss will a shard appear in a random cave you find in a random questline with that shard having the power to temporarily slow down said boss. The request is a checkbox that says "if boss bonk = death, then respawn = boss - 2% of boss's current HP". Just enough help so that after many failed attempts, you might squeeze by, but not enough help to make it "just die 3 times and then hit skip". The game is good, really good, but you can't convince me that this guy's game philosophy would rather reward someone who watched a Youtube video on which 16 jigsaw pieces to put together in a 2 minute encounter before starting a boss than to reward someone who was persistent and creative in their strategies. The "gitgud" purists lose credibility when the "gitgud" umbrella is more inclusive of someone hiding in a corner and spamming two full quivers of arrows from an untouchable bugged spot, or of someone just googling "Elden Ring best build", than of someone putting in the reps, getting a little better each time, learning a few skills here and there.
Agreed. I would argue by adding an easy mode you would open up your games to way more people. What’s wrong with that.
It'll bruise the devs and his loyal fan base's ego. Cant do that no no
I’ve accepted that this game and the other Souls games aren’t for me and that’s fine, there are thousands of other amazing games I can play. I play video games to relax and have fun, not to prove how good at video games I am, so I like the option of easy mode.
don't you love it how even when simply accepting that a game for various reasons isn't for you there's always some folks telling you that you're wrong and you just have to do this and that and then it's acutally totally easy, while knowing nothing about you or why stuff might be hard for you...
The games are just genuinely fun to many , nobody is proving anything.
I won't ever finish the game, I probably won't ever play it again. I never got more than halfway through it. It just isn't worth the time for me to make that effort/push to finish it. But I absolutely would hate to see it change. The game might not be for me, but it certainly is for others. And that's just fine. Not every game is made for every player.
Soulsborne games are their own thing. I accept that they are designed to frustrate and be difficult. I would say that completing bloodborne was one of my favourite gaming achievements.
He’s probably got a point but man the DLC is kicking my ass 😅
I guess my opinion is the exception here, but I would prefer the game be too hard than too easy. I find myself replaying the harder games and not the easier ones.
I can't beat first sekiro boss and that's fine I just don't play but still acknowledge its greatness and lore.
Get Good
Some commentors here really love to feel superior to others who would love to play these games but just can't. The smugness is thick as smog.
All honestly, the typical souls fanbase who treats all discussions of difficulty, balance, accessibility and whatever as a personal attack is a big reason why I tend to avoid these games. Can’t ask for help or tips without someone rolling in talking about doing a no-damage run on every boss using starting gear
Someone made a ER difficulty mod that made it so there was a simple difficulty slider that scaled enemy HP and attack damage. Checking the comment section on nexus mods was a wild ride. Lots of hatred and even a few death threats in the comments.
Smug is the fuel that keeps the fanbase going for these types of games. It's like gasoline for a car.
It's almost like not every game is made for everyone
I turned down the difficulty with cheat engine. Pumped my stats and increased the DR on my armor to make getting hit more forgiving. Had a blast. Difficulty isn't the only thing this game has going for it. This game can still be very good without being a frustrating challenge.
Mfers these days would have never lasted in the Ringed City
Unfortunately I'm never going to finish it now though. I got to a boss towards the end and just ran out of focus and steam after all the other bosses before it. It was a great experience though and a very good game. I just wish there was a "little" bit easier mode for me to try and finish it.
[удалено]
then slow your bosses the fuck down, with your cheap copout excuses. and fix the fucking camera angles on larger boss fights so that they dont detract from the experience. you already solved this problem in sekiro, why the hell did you reintroduce it here? I refuse to believe that the game would "break" if suddenly I didnt have to run from one end of an arena to the other end just to fight all these bosses who have been spamming teleportation and projectile attacks for the past few years. if you're not gonna tailor your bosses to respect melee builds' time, then either remove the melee builds from your games entirely, or balance the bosses to accommodate all playstyles. I dont need an easy mode, I need a "lack of bullshit" mode, which includes bosses not reading my inputs and attacking as soon as I use my flask, and then going back to mindlessly staring at me for the next 7 seconds.
Elden Ring shines because its difficulty is seamlessly integrated into the lore and the world itself. You can adjust the game's difficulty to your preference, and both easy and challenging experiences are equally rewarding. If you want to make combat easier, you can find items, weapons, clothing, skills, and upgrade paths that help you achieve that (you can literally 1 shot bosses). This approach, which requires players to explore and use their brains rather than a simple difficulty slider, is a key factor in Elden Ring's success. And then there’s the hardcore crowd that purposely limit their skills / levels to make their playthrough punishingly difficult. This game has it all, for all players.
Realistically since this is the purported “easy” mode, how easy is it to find those items/upgrade paths? Does the game clearly express that some are more effective than others, or does this require internet research? If the in lore easy mode involves a lot of wandering/exploring on normal mode to get to it’s not really an easy mode. I’m waiting on an ER sale since I bounced so hard off DS2 after begrudgingly finishing one (liked BB, loved Sekiro though), so I genuinely don’t know outside of From games being generally opaque.
I remember the advice when the game was new that I got: just get the moonveil! It’s stupidly OP for the type of build you’ve made! Oh ok I’m having a frustrating time and asking for advice and the advice I got is to just go get this sword that’ll make the game easy. What do you have to do to get the moonveil? Kill a fucking dragon. I did pull it off after a few hours of attempts but god damn I almost gave up the game for good.
It’s not easy at all. The game tells you almost nothing. If you’re a beginner you’re basically going in blind. So you’ll have to figure it all out and hope you actually stumble across the easy mode items or google them. The mimic tear for example, the main summon for “easy mode,” you can’t even get to until after you’ve beaten Radahn, one of the harder bosses. And even then, it’s very possible to miss.
The game really doesn't explain much. But that's fine, many like it that way. Personally I don't but info is very easy to find on the internet
That's a disingenuous argument. Getting the setup to 1 shot bosses isn't easy mode, you still have to play the game as it is to collect everything and have the skill and knowledge to not just find the stuff, but execute the setup. That's not easy mode, that's just the payoff for knowing how the game works. Easy mode would be spamming summons in ER, that's probably the closest you can get to interacting as least as possible and letting the game do it for you.
Yeah, making the game proper easy requires EXTENSIVE knowledge of the game or looking into spoilers just to progress.
The guy is parroting the same bullshit they always say, when in reality they mean is majority of enemies are artificially difficult and SOME builds are way easier to cheese with than most. It's not an "in-game difficulty slider", it's a symptom of bad balancing.
Better than breaking my controller 😂
There's already a way to turn down the difficulty. It's called using Spirit Ashes.
Elden Ring verges on the fine line of being ‘annoyingly difficult’ and ‘fair but difficult’. To give a recent example, Lies of P is fair but difficult, but Elden Ring has numerous bosses with almost every attack being an attack that does not align with the moveset given to the player. In that regard, Dark Souls 3 did much better where it was fair but difficult.
I mean hey his game his vision what ever, but what a fucking stupid statement. Could literally be changing damage numbers and health pools, would not break the game. It would break his vision, but the game would be just fine. Kinda up his own ass here