THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE SECRET. PREPARE FOR ASSIMULATION!
The Shattered Elden Ring Thread: Tarnished Edition - (Shadow of the Erdtree p. 85)
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
- Start date
Yeah, I feel like they could have toned down the repeat repeat bossfight bossfight a bit. I don't like it when DS2 does it, I don't like it when Sekiro does it, and it's still not funny when Elden Ring does it. It's not as bad as GOW2018(I know that's a low bar but still) but it's still obnoxious. And for good measure, it's one of my least favorite bits of BOTW, despite how much I enjoyed the game otherwise.
Game Devs, can we legit move beyond "Same Boss as before but he's <Insert different color here> now and with more HP!" ? I know it's easy but nobody is impressed by this anymore.
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In DS2's defense. A dude in armor can be a completely different fight by adding magic or changing the weapon. Simply changing the moveset on the same basic character model is fine becuase it makes the fight different by the nature of how Souls works. Even in DS1 with the various Asylum Demons, each one adding a mechanic that made the way you fight them different. Now they didn't overuse them either so it's whatever.
The difference in ER is that the repeat fights are clearly copy/pasta with no thought to how each encounter would be different. And to be fair, in the side content like caves and catacombs and shit, I don't really mind that. But the game has 70+ unique boss models. You're telling me you couldn't come up with 13 to be exclusive to the main events? Is it that much of an ask?
See, I do this exact thing too...and then forbid myself from actually using the exploit lol. I just find it to have it in my knowledge bucket. Like take the quickenings from ffxii for example, with those you could 1shot bosses from like 20 hours into the game if you specced out your chars to unlock the lvl 3 ones asap, which I did just cause they seemed good. Once I realized how broken they were though I just stopped using em altogether, I felt they suck the fun out of a game. Also I played MMOs back in the day, mainly just ffxi, and yeah in that too I was an optimal DRG, but that's MMOs, if you're not optimal you are holding back your party and wasting people's times, so that's also a very competitive environment.
My thing is I try to fish for the goal of the game dev as I play, and then I try to play the game in the intended way and see how that feels, if it's not fun then I will shift it more to my style but in the from soft stuff it has been fun so far.
I fully get the concept of trying to just beat a game cause I'm a competitive fighting game player and I have found things that they were patched out of games just by myself playing normally, without being a tester or anything, but at the same time that's just fighting games. In something like this it's more of an experience and less of a competitive endeavor, so I just try to get the most juice out of the variety of experiences on offer and less just trying to optimize my build and beat everything in the most efficient way. Like for example I discovered that if you run circles around a dragon with your horse and shoot arrows at it it won't track you fast enough so you can get like a full blood loss to trigger on him, but after knowing that I promptly dismounted and fought him like a man for the rest of the battle, as is tradition. It's not like he was hard or anything, I only died once and that was cause I wanted to test how much fire my shield can block before breaking my guard, so no need to cheese.
Basically, I get my need to win and be optimal out of my system in fighting games, so stuff like Elden Ring is like a relaxing vacation where I take it easy on and just focus on role playing and having fun.
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MOARRRR MOARRRR MOARRRR!!!! BIGGER BIGGER BIGGER!!!!
…is pretty much what every AAA dev’s MO is now.
Fuck that. I'm not crippling myself because a game mechanic is too strong. I have no problem breaking a game if the game let's me break it (and it doesn't disable earning achievements).
That's valid. But also the OP playstyle isn't any less valid either. ER clearly wanted you to use summon spirits and build around either weapon arts or magic. So anything else is enforcing a challenge upon yourself. And if you find that fun, then go nuts, that's why the options are there. But the OP gamebreaking combinations are also just as valid.
I wasn't pushing for efficiency. I was playing in what I thought was most fun. Think about it this way, you said you play MMO's before so maybe you'll understand this. MMO's are really good at wasting the player's time, through grinds, and systems that force the player to do things on a daily basis they don't really enjoy but feel like they need to in order to stay on the up and up. This is wasting the players time, and not respecting the players time.
Now if I am exploring ER's world looking for the next cool thing and I the 50th fucking dragon dive bombs on me, is the game respecting my time? I'd argue no. It's padding itself because they made a huge map and didn't have enough ideas to fill it up with meaningful things.
Ergo, once I saw the writing on the game's wall, I stopped playing in a way that wasn't fun for me and knew would be a waste of time.
Some people will love that shit. I get it. For me though, I need a reason for all the fluff.
Now if there was a trophy that said I had to do all the caves in the game....I would 100% have done it because I am a piece of shit.
Fuck that. I'm not crippling myself because a game mechanic is too strong. I have no problem breaking a game if the game let's me break it (and it doesn't disable earning achievements).
That's valid. But also the OP playstyle isn't any less valid either. ER clearly wanted you to use summon spirits and build around either weapon arts or magic. So anything else is enforcing a challenge upon yourself. And if you find that fun, then go nuts, that's why the options are there. But the OP gamebreaking combinations are also just as valid.
I wasn't pushing for efficiency. I was playing in what I thought was most fun. Think about it this way, you said you play MMO's before so maybe you'll understand this. MMO's are really good at wasting the player's time, through grinds, and systems that force the player to do things on a daily basis they don't really enjoy but feel like they need to in order to stay on the up and up. This is wasting the players time, and not respecting the players time.
Now if I am exploring ER's world looking for the next cool thing and I the 50th fucking dragon dive bombs on me, is the game respecting my time? I'd argue no. It's padding itself because they made a huge map and didn't have enough ideas to fill it up with meaningful things.
Ergo, once I saw the writing on the game's wall, I stopped playing in a way that wasn't fun for me and knew would be a waste of time.
Some people will love that shit. I get it. For me though, I need a reason for all the fluff.
Now if there was a trophy that said I had to do all the caves in the game....I would 100% have done it because I am a piece of shit.
Yeah man, I just loved the grind in MMOs, some of my most fun times were just having a very synergistic party where everyone is pulling their weight and we're getting tons of exp in the smoothest way possible. It wasn't just busywork you get out of the way to get to the fun, it was part of the fun too. I genuinely don't see myself playing a game with that much busywork involved cause yeah like you said MMOs have tons of hours of playtime requirements.
Also yeah I barely use summons as well, I only call em if I get trapped in some BS ambush or something that I'm clearly underleveled for comes my way as a way of escaping. Though I do like the shiny jellyfish, just as a form of illumination, but basically the summons make enemies stop aggroing you and the time it takes them to start attacking the summon gives you 3 years to hit em, it's very easy to just kite something until the summon gets aggro and hit it form behind. Not that interesting after you've done it once or twice lol.
And hey for me the trophy of the caves is reading the lore in all those trinkets, also I found a turtle thing that regens your stamina which is pretty hype.
Normal one, I am wayyy too early to be finding +1 versions of this stuff haha.
AHHH Get out there and explore me then loser
! I dont think I ever found the normal one. But i did find the +1. I can't remember exactly. That's another thing about ER's size and sheer number of inventory clutter. I don't remember damn near any of it.
Sure I remember tree avatar and dragons because there are a fucking 100 of them. But outside of a couple key bosses, the rest of the game is a blurr of shit that happened. In the moment to moment gameplay it's all very nice. And don't like my complaints take away from this absolutely 7/10 game (which is still good btw) Elden Ring is a good game imo. However it's not a GREAT game and I don't think it ever had the potential to be great due to the focus on being a big ass map.
Think about Souls games. What do people remember the most about Dark Souls 1? The interconnectivity of the levels right? Nobody remembers blob sludge number 7 somewhere in a sewer, they remember emerging from blighttown and realizing that they know exactly where they are. All the Souls games are designed with a very tight philosphy in mind. Tight levels, unique bosses (Miyazaki games only), and the variety of weapons. ER only has one of those things, and the rest is just a blur once you've finished with it.
Take the capital of Lyndell alone. Very cool city right? Lots of neat shit to see in terms of the level. But what about the enemies? Well there are two Tree Avatars, three Tree Sentinels, and two big bosses in Mogh and Godfrey BOTH of which are recycles from previous areas. So in just that mid/late game area alone, the only thing unique OH wait there are three Tree Spirits serpents too, the only unique thing is the scenery.
Again it's fine, if you are enjoying yourself I don't want to take that away from anyone. But I am called Critical for a reason and I am very critical of games that I play because I know what I like and I know what turns me off, and I analyse games through that lens, which I think is something that a lot of people do whether they realize it or not tbh. I myself are just less forgiving of flaws in a game unless there is something else that the game is giving me that scratches a big joyuous itch in my gamer goopy brain.
Frankly I'm harsh on ER because the last 5 games from FromSoft have been 9's and 10/10 games, and I do not want them to continue this path of fucking mush because Ubisoft already exists, I don't need another one.
Explore…you?
Anyways, thinking about the size of the game and exploration factor, it’s clear they wanted to have something for everyone, as the games have proven to yield varying tastes over the years. So keeping that in mind, in order to keep things nice and tidy to avoid wasting peoples’ time like you mentioned, they would have to basically trim the world size waaaay back and put all the loot in a handful of shops. Left as-is with the huge map, it has to kinda be like that because you’d be tripping over loot every few feet in a smaller map, removing the sense of discovery. I know you’re not big on that but you know, mileage varies n all. They also can’t expect everyone to have the same tastes, so the player has to kind of be willing to accept the whole fruit cart, even though they may only like say, apples.
Now, if people would rather wiki where their favorites might be to save time that’s fine, but it’s also kinda unrealistic to expect any dev to have the time and resources for creating 100% unique loot caverns and world bosses for everything, no? Something has to give in the interest of satisfying all tastes, and we knew all along what we were in for regarding open world design. Still though, I’d struggle to name another ER size title in the last ten years that equals its level of detail and variety.
The last 3 Assassin's Creed games probably.
Not really. I mean you could cut sections of redundancy off the map without having to sacrifice anything. The Siofra River well is pointless and serves more as a tease to the city of Nokkron than anything else (I can't even remember if there is a boss there....one of the deer bosses I think). Imagine they get rid of that part of the map and yoy explore this whole surface world, only for Radan to blow a fucking hole in it and you find a whole new underworld city there! The impact would be even more grand without having that extra area for no reason. And you could do that in several other places throughout, just nip and tuck and edit down some of these places that really don't need to be there. AS a bonus, by doing so you could tighten up the bosses and enemy placements so that there is less repetitive stuff everywhere.
So why bloat your game with subpar shit? Before the game came out nobody said, "If this isn't the biggest fucking game ever made then it's literally a 0/10!" Nobody said that shit and I would be willing to be that if the "open world" part of the game was limited to Lymgrave, Caelid, and Lilurnia of the Lakes, and everything else was a traditional Dark Souls style level like Stormviel castle, Lyndell, Nokkron, and Farum Azula. If the game had just been that....still would have gotten 10/10's from everybody.
Normally ther's a couple that annoy me. Notably the Dragon Rider and then later at the top of the castle, right after you meet the queen, there's TWO DRAGON RIDERS! Except one has a Bow for half the fight.
And I still can't figure out what the hell happened there. If the Boss after the queen had been the Looking Glass Knight OR if the Dragon Riders had been acting as Royal Guards to the queen's chamber, I guess it would feel better, but instead it's just "Hey, remember this guy? Well, he's back with a friend" and it annoys me because it just feels phoned in somehow.
Admittedly that's a lot of DS2. But funnily enough, that's the same problem I have with Elden Ring and their reuse of bosses.
I dunno, I think if done sparingly you can have the repeat bosses be fun. Like the dual ape fight in Sekiro for example, that one was epic.
Depends. Quantity of content perhaps is roughly similar, but the way it's presented and the thoughtfulness behind it are vastly different. It's what's led to memes like this and critiques like the three or so different times Luke Stephens has examined AC Valhalla, trying to like it. I know you posted the one he did about ER a few pages back but he even made comparisons like how player difficulty scaling in-game in ER is favorable to selecting it from a menu like in The Witcher or AC games. Also pointing out what FROM did with their take on an open world was something nobody else has done before, at least to some extent. I'd say the same thing about RDR2, which he also revisited to much different results than the latest AC game. Just reading some of the comments is enough to realize a large number of people enjoy things about these games that others may just find boring.
Yeah it would’ve been cool as hell if that was the first time we saw the underworld stuff. Agree it should’ve been trimmed or at least locked out until that event.
I have a feeling you’d probably call a game like RDR2 bloated too, but at the same time we all know you are basically not a fan of huge games with incidental details. That game also has odd repeated content with various bandit/gang camps and stranger encounters like the dude who seems to keep getting bit by a snake, or escaping from jail, etc. But these things aren’t enough to take away from the overall greater impression of the game, as people like Strange Man and Real Pixels are still dissecting its details nearly four years later. We can only presume it will be the same way with ER.
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I dont feel like comparing RDR2 to ER just because of the open world aspects is fair due to the nature in how that world is presented. Much in the same way as MH games not being comparable to DS games. Because in RDR2 every event is clearly described to the player, there is story and motivation for specific tasks given to you as a player at any given time. Whereas in ER the agency is entirely on the player and there isn't clear direction on where to go or what you should be doing to progress.
It makes the interaction with the world different despite the size. Like I loved AC Odyssey and that is a giant map too, but there are clear roadmaps on what section of the map you should be doing and what activities you should undertake while you are there.
I wonder if ER would have felt different if there was a clearer progression path for you. Like maybe you have to do Lymgrave, then you can do Stormviel castle as a dungeon Souls experience to get to Lilurnia, or you could do Siofra as a dungeon to get yourself to Caelid. Giving you basically both open world freedom but also some eventual progression paths to work towards at a given time. Part of what bothers me about the open world of ER is that it's a lot of guess work to find things and it gets confusing when you are finding at lot of the same type of thing. More than once I stumble into a mine and can't remember if it's a mine I've already done or not. At least if there was narative story that told me to go back to a place I already did, then I would have the guidance of the story quest to know that I have something to deal with while there.
I mean, there's literally giant map arrows/light beacons that will guide you Stormveil/Liurnia/Altus*/Leyndell/beyond to the hyper linear bit.
*Altus is a weird break, because nothing tells you where the lift pieces are (Fort Haight and Fort Farroth, nor do the arrows guide you to the Ravine mine up, nevermind the other couple of more secretive routes).
Apparently the questlines are riddled with translation errors, so who knows how clear or unclear they were.
It does suffer a ton from oper-world disjointedness. Where quest objectives are literally in different countries from other steps. Other then Haight's (barely patched into functioning in the game) quest, often needing you to visit every area of the game in a given quest,
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Yeah I think it would’ve been helpful to have something like a quest log or something that recorded what you’ve done, similar to what’s in GoW 2018. Beastiaries are always awesome too, and it would be cool if there was an ability you could acquire that made extracting details about whatever you’re fighting, or maybe also something like scrolls that already had it.
I get wanting more direction especially considering many gamers now are adults with much less free time, but at the same time it seems like the lack of it is what boosted popularity overall; or that it’s kinda what many people expect and crave knowing FROM. So if they still also like open world stuff then that's what wound up being a winning formula.
The grace sites were a bit of a compromise with how they kinda guide to the next main encounter, but eventually you get so many that it winds up confusing. Also who the fuck would be able to just blast through everything in NG anyways. The game has markers that can be placed for different points of interest, but of course you also have to keep track of those yourself too.
Ultimately I’m kinda glad they tried this type of thing at least once, because it feels like a culmination of the previous games and a last hurrah smorgasbord of sorts personally. I mean, I’ve already internally accepted that it probably won’t happen but I’d love to see a Bloodborne sequel even if it’s more a spiritual variety. But definitely not another open world.