One of the comments sums it up in a different way -
UnrealJess19 hours ago
As an aspiring game designer myself, I like to draw a parallel with educating a child when talking about it: Good parents will warn their child about the dangers ahead and walk alongside them to help them up should they fall, but will still let them fall so they acquire experience and strength of character to move forward. Bad parents will spoon-feed everything to their child and never let them experience anything other than what's "right" or "good for you" and in the end they'll have risen a witless twat that's not ready for adult life, let alone the world, at all.
That's From Soft in relation to other devs: They fill their worlds with things for us to find and offer only the most basic form of guidance so that the player will learn to explore on their own, to feel the satisfaction of finding the next hidden secret whatever it may be, to grow stronger from failure and even misery - not by giving us stats or bonuses in the game itself, but by training us, as players, to adapt to the world and circumstances they created. FromSoft's players will, in turn, know that there's something more ahead, and not only in terms of treasures or rewards mind you, and will keep coming back for it, not because they are afraid of not getting their money's worth in fun, but because they learned to create their own fun with the tools they were given and this, THIS is something truly special.
Other devs are just too afraid that their community won't come back for their next release because the current one didn't spoon-fed them enough "fun" that they will want more. They don't teach their players anything - instead they cultivate their gluttony and greed by guiding them to the next map marker because this sort of "fun" can be quantified and is "obviously" the better kind and that is what will give 'em the big bucks the next time another generic-ass game is put on the market by them.
Now, I'm not saying other games are just bad. I'm having probably as much fun with H:FW as I'm having with ER, just a different kind, and they both have things to learn from - good AND bad. Elden Ring, for instance, still has many of the really bullshit (bullshit and bad being actually different things, mind) design choices that Miyazaki loves to put in his games. It's really that most of the newer FromSoft players have never dealt with this sort of design before and , because of that - because they weren't prepared for this, they think it's inherently bad.
Now, to address other game developers talking smack about the design choices in Elden Ring, I have a really simple statement / question to make: if these design choices are, indeed, so wrong, outdated and inaccessible, why are Miyazaki's games some of the most successful games we've seen since Dark Souls? (The original release of Demon's Souls wasn't as successful as some people seem to think, unfortunately.)
Just some food for thought.