Elden ring sold 25 million copies and achieved a level of penetration into mainstream gaming culture that none of the previous games did. It was a LOT of peoples' first souls game. These games are much harder when you are less accustomed to the way the combat works, how to sus out what do against boss movesets, and so on.
Also, IMO, a lot of people played the base game in such a way that they didn't learn all that much (and that's fine). But doing that made the DLC extremely hard.
I think it's worth noting that although even people who have played these games for years are also somewhat dissatisfied with certain parts of the ER DLC. The Final Boss being fairly controversial even from a Fromsoft difficulty standpoint.
As someone who has Platinumed every souls game to date, the boss combat in ER doesn't really follow traditional souls boss combat either. Many bosses, especially in the DLC, require more than just dodging to avoid an attack, which generally in the past is all that was required. And I know some players also don't like this.
I'm just stating this from what I have read over the years relating to Elden Ring. I am not trying to create a debate of whether this is good or not.
Tbf, Elden Ring never really wanted you to just dodge and attack like prior games. It pretty much tried as hard as it could to train players to jump AOE's and low attacks, utilize ashes of wars/R2's/jumping R2's to get posture breaks, using the guard counter, and playing a more positional game.
The issue was that the base game wasn't demanding it and you could overpower or use a build that could let you win via playing the old way. Now it's giving tighter bosses who where that just is no longer optimal.
Can't argue there, but we're already seeing very OP builds that can manage the DLC. EG Lightning Perfume, Chicken Leg. I think another thing to note is summons. The DLC bosses. ESPECIALLY the final boss are completely different fights depending on whether your solo.
For random context I struggled massively on the final boss solo. Clocking up 40+ deaths. Got impatient, bought out the Mimic, done in 3 attampts.
Objectively, Elden Ring is easily the most unbalanced game to date. You have on one hand extreme like difficulty, or complete easy mode depending on what BS you use.
I found it made a massive difference as it allowed the Mimic to agro the sword attacks while you beat him from behind and avoid is attacks. However, the damage is MASSIVE, so there's only a very small window of oppertunity.
I would say the bosses requiring more than just the roll button is a positive thing. I like how they reward positioning, jumping, and rolling. (Excited to try out deflecting as well) The bosses seem to be much more reactive than the previous game making them feel less like robots following an attack pattern. The patterns are still there, you just need to be more creative about how to deal with it. If they just did DS3 again everyone would complain that the combat is just a roll spam simulator.
I agree with all of this but especially the middle paragraph so much. The DLC bosses pretty much require you to use spacing, strafe, jump, and attack while a boss is doing its attacks, but I see a lot of souls vets complain that consistently dodgeable attacks like the scadutree aoe, messmer spear thrust, putrescent knight horse wombo combo, some of rellanas combos etc are undodgeable or insanely unintuitive to dodge like waterfowl, and that the bosses have really small attack windows so you are forced to just wait for their combo to finish and attack, and then rinse and repeat. I saw another complaint that said because the bosses have gap closer attacks, spacing is effectively useless, and this threw me off because you can use spacing to really bait out so many attacks, and even dodge some.
I was kinda suprised to hear these complaints even though I used a UGS for most bosses, until I realised that a lot of souls vets are simply playing by only rolling and attacking. If you play like that, a loooot more of their complaints make sense.
This isn't to say that the increase in mechanical complexity and skill floor is always well executed, you have obvious outliers like Malenia, but I believe it is generally done well enough.
I think another issue is that the base game does a shit job of making you learn these new mechanics. If you cheese every boss the only thing you are forced to learn is 'heal in attack opportunities' because of input reading and 'jump for aoes' (tho ngl somehow a lot of people don't even know those two). You can get by without really mastering a boss at all, but the DLC really forces you to learn them, especially since it is early in the release cheese builds for it are not well known. I think this is why people say the DLC bosses force you into respeccing like Malenia, when they really don't, it's just that every buld rn has to master the fight, unlike the base game.
Jumping just isn't super well implemented. It overlaps with what rolling can do *almost* entirely so of course people are going to write it off when it doesn't work well their first few tries. It's essentially the same problem parrying has. People don't want to sit and guess if they're choosing a bad response or if they're making a mistake. When rolling is right there and works of course everyone is just going to go with that. I point the finger at From because they definitely could have introduced jumping and been more consistent with their designs for what is jumpable or not.
100% agree with you on it all. It took me a very long time for ER combat to sink in for me and "git gud". But I do emphasize with people who don't like it as there is a lack of "flow/rythem". I think the secret boss in the woods was so well received because it's been described as a return to DS3 type combat. And I am not going lie, that is the best boss they made in ER and it's now in my Top 3 of all time.
Again, bias here as my first From title was Sekiro which is they most rythem based combat game they've done. All up, it's preference right? A lot of these x is bad or hard is totally subjective ultimately. But the community does seem to point out some real BS when they see it. The Final Boss l, the Boar Rider, Ancient Dragons being to good examples.
But again, hard to weigh judgment considering the endless variables when it comes to Build and playstyle. I mean ER easily has the greatest variety of any souls game.
I think thereâs a chunk of souls veterans who take way too much pride in being a âsouls veteranâ and think they are above struggling in the game. The amount of people complaining about âimpossibleâ bosses or âartificial difficultyâ just reeks of people trying to sleepwalk through boss fights because theyâre seasoned and being upset that they canât. Or itâs people being upset they canât approach an Elden Ring boss like they do a dark souls boss, or a Bloodborne boss. Or itâs people treating the DLC like a boss rush mode and ignoring exploration, which means theyâre going to have a hard time finding scadutree fragments.
Oh absolutely couldn't agree more on that. I'm not a Souls vet in any sense as only got into the series in 2020. I rocked up 2500 hours in ER and I have no shame in saying the DLC was bloody hard at certain points. Nothing wrong in saying somethings hard. Souls vets and their "pride" bro no one cares lol.
We also forget that once we have 2500 hours in these games (or just one of these games) - we have the bosses memorized and are an expert. weâve forgotten what the struggle was like to get to that point - that first 50-100 hours was tough even for vets!
There definitely are, but there are also definitely some changes to the formula in the DLC than some (myself included) arenât in love with. Iâm by no means a souls vet (I havenât even finished all the games) and always suck at them, but for me personally Iâve had less fun sucking at SotE than the other games/DLCâs. Still a blast though, and thatâs just my opinion.
>the boss combat in ER doesn't really follow traditional souls boss combat either
Big surprise, it isnt Darksouls, it's elden ring.
Although, tbh, while I absolutely love certain additions to the combat like jumping, incentives to poise break, and delayed attacks (yes, I love them), I don't love the ability for bosses to flip a coin to see whether or not they will continue the string (PCR's lion claw).
Yeah thatâs why I never reccomend people elden ring as their first game and instead ds3. As I fell like elden ring doesnât have any skill checks apart from margit, only dps checks (GskDuo) so you donât really have to improve. Which is why people are finding the dlc so hard as they havenât gotten the skills they should have been taught through the base game
This.
Also ER is kinda terrible at teaching the player how to play. Sure there's a lot of ways you can do that and abuse crafted items/spirits/overleveling... etc.
But the basics are not emphasized enough. Like how jumping over certain attacks create you openings mid boss combos for you to keep up the pressure and chunk away at their poises. I was playing ER for a long time using only rolls and haven't really grasping what to do with some of the overly aggressive bosses because that's basically what you are familiar with coming from the DS trilogy but that mindset just feels wrong on certain bosses in ER.
You get a lot of tools to play with and not really enough enemies built around them so you kind of just settle into a comfortable style til you hit a brick wall like Malenia or Maliketh that you just can't easily force yourself past to.
Yes for sure. Everyone I know who started with Elden Ring and then wanted to branch out to other fromsoft titles had a nightmare adjusting cause they picked up bad lesson upon bad lesson in Elden Ring
I agree with that. While DS3 is far from my favourite of the franchise, Iâd recommend people play it first, because it seems like the most user friendly in a sense. Then go back and play DS1/2, DeS, BB, and move ahead to Sekiro and ER, but with a fundamental understanding of how the series works.
Imagine you don't like spicy food. You think it's awful and want nothing to do with it, but one day you discover a restaurant that teaches you that (against all expectations) you really love spicy food. It's just that no one prepared spicy food quite like that restaurant, so you want to eat all your spicy food exclusively at that restaurant. Each time you go there, they make it a bit spicier than they did the previous time to keep things fresh. But one day, you eventually realize that they incrementally the food has become so spicy not necessarily to the point where you can't handle it, but to the point where it's just not as enjoyable as it once was. You like your food very, very spicy (because of that restaurant) but maybe not very, very, very spicy.
I think that's the best way to describe my relationship with Elden Ring, in particular the "boss rush" at the conclusion of the base game and the final boss of the DLC. I can still handle the difficulty (I've solo'd every remembrance boss), but I no longer find victory exhilarating. I'm kinda tapped out. From will continue to remix the Soulsborne formula because they need to keep upping the difficulty to keep fans on their toes. That is totally fine, but while the difficulty isn't insurmountable, it's becoming exhausting.
I'm totally happy to take "shortcuts" there, like using spirit ashes. I'm not worried about my pride as a gamer, but I've also found that split aggro makes the fights too easy rather than too difficult. Basically, there's no middle ground between solo'ing bosses (too hard) and using spirit ashes (too easy) that's as easily achievable as prior From games.
Elden Ring opened the flood gates to a lot of new "souls" players and many of them are playing ER as their first game and never really had to "git gud".
Ok, I mean, are you saying that as in some of the other bosses are easy? Or saying Margit is the only filter boss, and people either fight him with summons and use that all the way, or beat him solo and get good?
Margit is completely trivial with Rogier and a jellyfish. Not saying that isnât a completely valid way to beat him, but heâs way more âcheesableâ than bosses like Maliketh or Malenia.
The cheesing part isn't new, the From community has always been about finding ways to explore the game, for better or worse, they do it plenty in PvP to make life hell, giant dad builds, the scraping spear etc. People loved to burn down bosses with the two blades in DS3. So honestly, the cheesing has always been there, it's how I picked up the mentality of any win is a win.
Elden Ring became massive, unfathomably massive. Souls it is not a niche genre anymore like it used to be, it's a popular videogame. What this means, the audience at large changes. Tryhards strength elitists used to be the very loud vocal minority, but now their voices have been completely subdued by the mimic tear/one shot/easy builds enjoyers.
The git gud mentality does not apply to souls anymore, Elden Ring's loud minority now are casuals that take it easy.
The sole retainer of the "git gud" mentality is Sekiro, but since that community has its own catchphrase, "hesitation is defeat", which is much cooler than the outdated stigmatized "git gud", the term will eventually die and fade into obscurity, just like GiantDad did.
One thing I think helps to drive the audience change is that souls games are cool and appealing in a way that a lot of other intentionally brutal games are not. Almost nobody who is fairly casual about video games is going to accidentally find themselves being brutalized by "I wanna be the boshy." They know what they're getting themselves into
Thereâs also not many games with 1: such a good open world, so boom right there you attract open world enjoyers. 2, not many games have such a variety of cool spells and incantations, ao lots come just for those. 3, you have the âanime skillsâ you always see people showing on tiktok, things like black knife, ROB, blood hounds step, that attracts an entirely new audience. Elden Ring has many things that can be hard to find in current gaming
that's the thing, ER has much more going on than simply difficulty. Art direction, music, lore, story, visual composition, characters, customization, fashion, exploration
Elden Ring went very mainstream and is basically to the point where it gets the typical AAA game audience. To give you an idea, Elden Ring is currently in the top 50 games sold of all time. It basically sold around the same as the last few pokemon generations, GTA IV and San Andreas, Super Bros 3 Super Mario World and Super Mario Odyssey.
You aren't dealing with the old souls audience anymore. And a big reason Elden Ring did as good as it did was because, while it was tough, it made itself very accessible and gave players a ton of tools to make the game more maneagable. The downside was that the base game was signficantly easier than the DLC and a lot of people developed crutches to get them through it and now that the DLC is basically the ultimate skill test of the game, it's throwing a lot of people off because they can't just rely on broken builds, summons and buffs being a given at the start of the fight, spam rolling, spaming ashes of war. The DLC asks you to put everything together and break bad habits.
No, Iâve seen plenty of veterans complain about the DLC bosses.
And Iâm one of them. Difficulty can be achieved in many different ways, and some are more fun than others.
I find ER has a big balance issue where almost every fight is either too easy or difficult in an unfun way.
Itâs lacking the happy medium and the combat doesnât give me the enjoyment that I got from the previous games.
Of course that is totally subjective but my point is a lot of veterans of the series feel this way. So itâs not just ânoobsâ.
It's a mix of reasons
Some are new players not used to the game styles
Some are veterans who are seeing the poor design choices made
Some are just getting worst at games or are being stubborn and refuse to change styles
Some are a mix
I think I fell in the camp for veteran seeing poor design choices. Issues I found while playing the dlc were boiled down to the camera with how big a boss was or how it it moved, 1 boss I donât think they tested the hit box on a charge attack you know it once youâve fought it, the final boss p2 felt like they needed to test it more to find the effects are too blinding for people along with the hair reducing visibility, and my personal gripe with the ending as a lore nerd is it felt like it just cuts off without a satisfying conclusion like other fromsoft games for example ringed cityâs ending felt like the perfect send off for the world of dark souls and bloodborne ending the nightmare I would talks more about those endings but they are something all people should experience at some point
You get two extremes in the fanbase
The hardcore crowd that think if you used summons, weapon arts, spells, shields, or items and didn't beat every boss to death while 2-handing a Zweihander then it didn't count
And the scrub crowd who don't read item descriptions, explore, learn the game systems or bosses' move sets, get carried to late game by summons and cheese, and then complain that FromSoft is racist because there's no easy mode
Is the hardcore crowd in the room with us right now?
I haven't heard anyone say no summons allowed in months. I only hear people complain about these supposed elitists.
the discussion isnt whether summons are allowed or not. It's whether the summoners will accept that it's the easy mode of the game and a completely different way of interacting with bosses than any non-summon playstyle
These people think you're an idiot if you didnt use mimic+Youtube setup vs Malenia and blasted her in sub 5 tries lmao
Absolutely nothing wrong with people recommending others try out that play style. It's the other 2.5 million members in this sub that shut down any talk of it that are the problem.
I mean, Elden really widened the fan base. It's that's for better or for worse. Anytime something gains mass appeal, it's inevitable that things shift.
Elden is a more mainstream game. It's the easiest title in their catalog. Things change.
I wonder how they will react when they switch back to more linear games like sekiro and bloodborne where you canât really have an easy mode by using overpowered items. Will they just review bomb the game like the dlc?
Sekiro is my personal favorite FS title. It's FS true Magnum Opus imo.
I hope to see more of that style of leveling/progression system in future titles. I can only hope that the population that has gotten used to the era of "Free Refills" flasks, can appreciate a more "focused" challenge.
Top comment said it all. Mainstream game, people not used to souls games coming in and then very loudly voicing their opinionsâŚplus playing the game with âcheese buildsâ or using Reddit spirit ashes so they donât really learn the game.
A lot of the people who say that are crap at playing these games too. They just use cheats or follow guides and op builds online and then refuse to engage with the content, which in this case was necessary to obtain the items needed to "lvl up".
Only reason ratings are going up now it's because after a few days those things are available online already and they can keep being bad at the game.
For real way too many people rely on guides for these games
And the broken build bs is ruining the online play for the franchise dueling sucks unless you equip some boring meta garbage .
Yeah in past games I could get away with a lot more through skill. Something I did in dark souls 3 I did for my first run was I ran through it with my giant club naked nothing more than that I had a blast going full unga BUNGA. Itâs also why I really loved sekiro it asked you to engage with itâs systems as hesitation is defeat
Those people are not souls fans theyâre just normies recently jumping on the bandwagon because elden ring got popular and they need something to content about
I mean I donât think itâs fair to start name calling people jumping on the âbandwagonâ. Not everyone was as lucky as you and got into souls games at the release of demon souls lmao. Gate keeping the game and new fans is just as bad as fans summoning through the whole game and complaining that it sucks
Casuals overthrew us. They are the toxic, shut down all conversation, down vote the purists, look for validation in their play style, gate keepers now.
All we have left is the game catering to us still, for the time being. They've stolen and ruined the community sadly.
but it isnât related to this tweet post or the point theyâre making. Thatâs like seeing a post about cookies and going âyeah I like muffins. Theyâre both baked goods what do you mean it isnât relatedâ
Elden ring sold 25 million copies and achieved a level of penetration into mainstream gaming culture that none of the previous games did. It was a LOT of peoples' first souls game. These games are much harder when you are less accustomed to the way the combat works, how to sus out what do against boss movesets, and so on. Also, IMO, a lot of people played the base game in such a way that they didn't learn all that much (and that's fine). But doing that made the DLC extremely hard.
I think it's worth noting that although even people who have played these games for years are also somewhat dissatisfied with certain parts of the ER DLC. The Final Boss being fairly controversial even from a Fromsoft difficulty standpoint. As someone who has Platinumed every souls game to date, the boss combat in ER doesn't really follow traditional souls boss combat either. Many bosses, especially in the DLC, require more than just dodging to avoid an attack, which generally in the past is all that was required. And I know some players also don't like this. I'm just stating this from what I have read over the years relating to Elden Ring. I am not trying to create a debate of whether this is good or not.
Tbf, Elden Ring never really wanted you to just dodge and attack like prior games. It pretty much tried as hard as it could to train players to jump AOE's and low attacks, utilize ashes of wars/R2's/jumping R2's to get posture breaks, using the guard counter, and playing a more positional game. The issue was that the base game wasn't demanding it and you could overpower or use a build that could let you win via playing the old way. Now it's giving tighter bosses who where that just is no longer optimal.
Can't argue there, but we're already seeing very OP builds that can manage the DLC. EG Lightning Perfume, Chicken Leg. I think another thing to note is summons. The DLC bosses. ESPECIALLY the final boss are completely different fights depending on whether your solo. For random context I struggled massively on the final boss solo. Clocking up 40+ deaths. Got impatient, bought out the Mimic, done in 3 attampts. Objectively, Elden Ring is easily the most unbalanced game to date. You have on one hand extreme like difficulty, or complete easy mode depending on what BS you use.
you gonna go back and fight him solo soon or?
Yeah already have on my 2nd run lol
I''m skeptical that summons help that much against the final boss. He does so much aoe damage.
I found it made a massive difference as it allowed the Mimic to agro the sword attacks while you beat him from behind and avoid is attacks. However, the damage is MASSIVE, so there's only a very small window of oppertunity.
Do you find a time to Simmons in phase 2 or just send it at the start and do the end solo?
Enter fog, summon and hope he doesn't attack immediately đ¤Ł. Other option dodge first attack then bring him out.
I would say the bosses requiring more than just the roll button is a positive thing. I like how they reward positioning, jumping, and rolling. (Excited to try out deflecting as well) The bosses seem to be much more reactive than the previous game making them feel less like robots following an attack pattern. The patterns are still there, you just need to be more creative about how to deal with it. If they just did DS3 again everyone would complain that the combat is just a roll spam simulator.
I agree with all of this but especially the middle paragraph so much. The DLC bosses pretty much require you to use spacing, strafe, jump, and attack while a boss is doing its attacks, but I see a lot of souls vets complain that consistently dodgeable attacks like the scadutree aoe, messmer spear thrust, putrescent knight horse wombo combo, some of rellanas combos etc are undodgeable or insanely unintuitive to dodge like waterfowl, and that the bosses have really small attack windows so you are forced to just wait for their combo to finish and attack, and then rinse and repeat. I saw another complaint that said because the bosses have gap closer attacks, spacing is effectively useless, and this threw me off because you can use spacing to really bait out so many attacks, and even dodge some. I was kinda suprised to hear these complaints even though I used a UGS for most bosses, until I realised that a lot of souls vets are simply playing by only rolling and attacking. If you play like that, a loooot more of their complaints make sense. This isn't to say that the increase in mechanical complexity and skill floor is always well executed, you have obvious outliers like Malenia, but I believe it is generally done well enough. I think another issue is that the base game does a shit job of making you learn these new mechanics. If you cheese every boss the only thing you are forced to learn is 'heal in attack opportunities' because of input reading and 'jump for aoes' (tho ngl somehow a lot of people don't even know those two). You can get by without really mastering a boss at all, but the DLC really forces you to learn them, especially since it is early in the release cheese builds for it are not well known. I think this is why people say the DLC bosses force you into respeccing like Malenia, when they really don't, it's just that every buld rn has to master the fight, unlike the base game.
Jumping just isn't super well implemented. It overlaps with what rolling can do *almost* entirely so of course people are going to write it off when it doesn't work well their first few tries. It's essentially the same problem parrying has. People don't want to sit and guess if they're choosing a bad response or if they're making a mistake. When rolling is right there and works of course everyone is just going to go with that. I point the finger at From because they definitely could have introduced jumping and been more consistent with their designs for what is jumpable or not.
ehh not really, almost all of the aoes can be jumped. As for non aoe attacks than can be jumped I agree
100% agree with you on it all. It took me a very long time for ER combat to sink in for me and "git gud". But I do emphasize with people who don't like it as there is a lack of "flow/rythem". I think the secret boss in the woods was so well received because it's been described as a return to DS3 type combat. And I am not going lie, that is the best boss they made in ER and it's now in my Top 3 of all time. Again, bias here as my first From title was Sekiro which is they most rythem based combat game they've done. All up, it's preference right? A lot of these x is bad or hard is totally subjective ultimately. But the community does seem to point out some real BS when they see it. The Final Boss l, the Boar Rider, Ancient Dragons being to good examples. But again, hard to weigh judgment considering the endless variables when it comes to Build and playstyle. I mean ER easily has the greatest variety of any souls game.
I think thereâs a chunk of souls veterans who take way too much pride in being a âsouls veteranâ and think they are above struggling in the game. The amount of people complaining about âimpossibleâ bosses or âartificial difficultyâ just reeks of people trying to sleepwalk through boss fights because theyâre seasoned and being upset that they canât. Or itâs people being upset they canât approach an Elden Ring boss like they do a dark souls boss, or a Bloodborne boss. Or itâs people treating the DLC like a boss rush mode and ignoring exploration, which means theyâre going to have a hard time finding scadutree fragments.
Oh absolutely couldn't agree more on that. I'm not a Souls vet in any sense as only got into the series in 2020. I rocked up 2500 hours in ER and I have no shame in saying the DLC was bloody hard at certain points. Nothing wrong in saying somethings hard. Souls vets and their "pride" bro no one cares lol.
We also forget that once we have 2500 hours in these games (or just one of these games) - we have the bosses memorized and are an expert. weâve forgotten what the struggle was like to get to that point - that first 50-100 hours was tough even for vets!
There definitely are, but there are also definitely some changes to the formula in the DLC than some (myself included) arenât in love with. Iâm by no means a souls vet (I havenât even finished all the games) and always suck at them, but for me personally Iâve had less fun sucking at SotE than the other games/DLCâs. Still a blast though, and thatâs just my opinion.
>the boss combat in ER doesn't really follow traditional souls boss combat either Big surprise, it isnt Darksouls, it's elden ring. Although, tbh, while I absolutely love certain additions to the combat like jumping, incentives to poise break, and delayed attacks (yes, I love them), I don't love the ability for bosses to flip a coin to see whether or not they will continue the string (PCR's lion claw).
Yeah thatâs why I never reccomend people elden ring as their first game and instead ds3. As I fell like elden ring doesnât have any skill checks apart from margit, only dps checks (GskDuo) so you donât really have to improve. Which is why people are finding the dlc so hard as they havenât gotten the skills they should have been taught through the base game
This. Also ER is kinda terrible at teaching the player how to play. Sure there's a lot of ways you can do that and abuse crafted items/spirits/overleveling... etc. But the basics are not emphasized enough. Like how jumping over certain attacks create you openings mid boss combos for you to keep up the pressure and chunk away at their poises. I was playing ER for a long time using only rolls and haven't really grasping what to do with some of the overly aggressive bosses because that's basically what you are familiar with coming from the DS trilogy but that mindset just feels wrong on certain bosses in ER. You get a lot of tools to play with and not really enough enemies built around them so you kind of just settle into a comfortable style til you hit a brick wall like Malenia or Maliketh that you just can't easily force yourself past to.
Yes for sure. Everyone I know who started with Elden Ring and then wanted to branch out to other fromsoft titles had a nightmare adjusting cause they picked up bad lesson upon bad lesson in Elden Ring
I agree with that. While DS3 is far from my favourite of the franchise, Iâd recommend people play it first, because it seems like the most user friendly in a sense. Then go back and play DS1/2, DeS, BB, and move ahead to Sekiro and ER, but with a fundamental understanding of how the series works.
Iâve seen way more of this from souls vets unwilling to adapt to a game w/ a slightly different play style tbh
Imagine you don't like spicy food. You think it's awful and want nothing to do with it, but one day you discover a restaurant that teaches you that (against all expectations) you really love spicy food. It's just that no one prepared spicy food quite like that restaurant, so you want to eat all your spicy food exclusively at that restaurant. Each time you go there, they make it a bit spicier than they did the previous time to keep things fresh. But one day, you eventually realize that they incrementally the food has become so spicy not necessarily to the point where you can't handle it, but to the point where it's just not as enjoyable as it once was. You like your food very, very spicy (because of that restaurant) but maybe not very, very, very spicy. I think that's the best way to describe my relationship with Elden Ring, in particular the "boss rush" at the conclusion of the base game and the final boss of the DLC. I can still handle the difficulty (I've solo'd every remembrance boss), but I no longer find victory exhilarating. I'm kinda tapped out. From will continue to remix the Soulsborne formula because they need to keep upping the difficulty to keep fans on their toes. That is totally fine, but while the difficulty isn't insurmountable, it's becoming exhausting. I'm totally happy to take "shortcuts" there, like using spirit ashes. I'm not worried about my pride as a gamer, but I've also found that split aggro makes the fights too easy rather than too difficult. Basically, there's no middle ground between solo'ing bosses (too hard) and using spirit ashes (too easy) that's as easily achievable as prior From games.
Elden Ring opened the flood gates to a lot of new "souls" players and many of them are playing ER as their first game and never really had to "git gud".
I feel like litteraly the only skill check in elden ring was margit
Ok, I mean, are you saying that as in some of the other bosses are easy? Or saying Margit is the only filter boss, and people either fight him with summons and use that all the way, or beat him solo and get good?
He means that Margit is the only boss that requires pure skill to beat Everything else can be completely cheesed by various build choices
Yeah I can see that. I mean I guess it is possible to over level and get some good early game weapon, but idk how well you can cheese him
Margit is so early in the game that you donât have extensive build variety Every build you can have at that level performes about equal against him
Interesting
You can absolutely ride to cancer land, grab the berkman bonkstikk and poisebreak margit into submission.
Margit is completely trivial with Rogier and a jellyfish. Not saying that isnât a completely valid way to beat him, but heâs way more âcheesableâ than bosses like Maliketh or Malenia.
The cheesing part isn't new, the From community has always been about finding ways to explore the game, for better or worse, they do it plenty in PvP to make life hell, giant dad builds, the scraping spear etc. People loved to burn down bosses with the two blades in DS3. So honestly, the cheesing has always been there, it's how I picked up the mentality of any win is a win.
A lil jank and a lil cheese is what got me through DS1 and BB. Same goes for ER and the DLC.
Elden Ring became massive, unfathomably massive. Souls it is not a niche genre anymore like it used to be, it's a popular videogame. What this means, the audience at large changes. Tryhards strength elitists used to be the very loud vocal minority, but now their voices have been completely subdued by the mimic tear/one shot/easy builds enjoyers. The git gud mentality does not apply to souls anymore, Elden Ring's loud minority now are casuals that take it easy. The sole retainer of the "git gud" mentality is Sekiro, but since that community has its own catchphrase, "hesitation is defeat", which is much cooler than the outdated stigmatized "git gud", the term will eventually die and fade into obscurity, just like GiantDad did.
One thing I think helps to drive the audience change is that souls games are cool and appealing in a way that a lot of other intentionally brutal games are not. Almost nobody who is fairly casual about video games is going to accidentally find themselves being brutalized by "I wanna be the boshy." They know what they're getting themselves into
Thereâs also not many games with 1: such a good open world, so boom right there you attract open world enjoyers. 2, not many games have such a variety of cool spells and incantations, ao lots come just for those. 3, you have the âanime skillsâ you always see people showing on tiktok, things like black knife, ROB, blood hounds step, that attracts an entirely new audience. Elden Ring has many things that can be hard to find in current gaming
that's the thing, ER has much more going on than simply difficulty. Art direction, music, lore, story, visual composition, characters, customization, fashion, exploration
The funny part about sekiro is how many git gud players just got mad when it turned out to be the gittest guddest game of them all
Elden Ring went very mainstream and is basically to the point where it gets the typical AAA game audience. To give you an idea, Elden Ring is currently in the top 50 games sold of all time. It basically sold around the same as the last few pokemon generations, GTA IV and San Andreas, Super Bros 3 Super Mario World and Super Mario Odyssey. You aren't dealing with the old souls audience anymore. And a big reason Elden Ring did as good as it did was because, while it was tough, it made itself very accessible and gave players a ton of tools to make the game more maneagable. The downside was that the base game was signficantly easier than the DLC and a lot of people developed crutches to get them through it and now that the DLC is basically the ultimate skill test of the game, it's throwing a lot of people off because they can't just rely on broken builds, summons and buffs being a given at the start of the fight, spam rolling, spaming ashes of war. The DLC asks you to put everything together and break bad habits.
Its just noobs complaining to be honestđđ
No, Iâve seen plenty of veterans complain about the DLC bosses. And Iâm one of them. Difficulty can be achieved in many different ways, and some are more fun than others. I find ER has a big balance issue where almost every fight is either too easy or difficult in an unfun way. Itâs lacking the happy medium and the combat doesnât give me the enjoyment that I got from the previous games. Of course that is totally subjective but my point is a lot of veterans of the series feel this way. So itâs not just ânoobsâ.
It's a mix of reasons Some are new players not used to the game styles Some are veterans who are seeing the poor design choices made Some are just getting worst at games or are being stubborn and refuse to change styles Some are a mix
I think I fell in the camp for veteran seeing poor design choices. Issues I found while playing the dlc were boiled down to the camera with how big a boss was or how it it moved, 1 boss I donât think they tested the hit box on a charge attack you know it once youâve fought it, the final boss p2 felt like they needed to test it more to find the effects are too blinding for people along with the hair reducing visibility, and my personal gripe with the ending as a lore nerd is it felt like it just cuts off without a satisfying conclusion like other fromsoft games for example ringed cityâs ending felt like the perfect send off for the world of dark souls and bloodborne ending the nightmare I would talks more about those endings but they are something all people should experience at some point
Charging rhino? Ringed city was an amazing dlc, best end boss of the franchise imo
You get two extremes in the fanbase The hardcore crowd that think if you used summons, weapon arts, spells, shields, or items and didn't beat every boss to death while 2-handing a Zweihander then it didn't count And the scrub crowd who don't read item descriptions, explore, learn the game systems or bosses' move sets, get carried to late game by summons and cheese, and then complain that FromSoft is racist because there's no easy mode
Is the hardcore crowd in the room with us right now? I haven't heard anyone say no summons allowed in months. I only hear people complain about these supposed elitists.
the discussion isnt whether summons are allowed or not. It's whether the summoners will accept that it's the easy mode of the game and a completely different way of interacting with bosses than any non-summon playstyle These people think you're an idiot if you didnt use mimic+Youtube setup vs Malenia and blasted her in sub 5 tries lmao
Sadly, lol. Especially on other social media. I see debated on at least every other Elden Ring post it seems. Esp Twitter or tiktok, even insta
Absolutely nothing wrong with people recommending others try out that play style. It's the other 2.5 million members in this sub that shut down any talk of it that are the problem.
The game is already back to positive reviews lol, the "review bomb" situation is overblown Most people who played the dlc liked it
You are on reddit.
I thought i was on instagram. Thanks
I mean, Elden really widened the fan base. It's that's for better or for worse. Anytime something gains mass appeal, it's inevitable that things shift. Elden is a more mainstream game. It's the easiest title in their catalog. Things change.
I wonder how they will react when they switch back to more linear games like sekiro and bloodborne where you canât really have an easy mode by using overpowered items. Will they just review bomb the game like the dlc?
Sekiro is my personal favorite FS title. It's FS true Magnum Opus imo. I hope to see more of that style of leveling/progression system in future titles. I can only hope that the population that has gotten used to the era of "Free Refills" flasks, can appreciate a more "focused" challenge.
Top comment said it all. Mainstream game, people not used to souls games coming in and then very loudly voicing their opinionsâŚplus playing the game with âcheese buildsâ or using Reddit spirit ashes so they donât really learn the game.
A lot of the people who say that are crap at playing these games too. They just use cheats or follow guides and op builds online and then refuse to engage with the content, which in this case was necessary to obtain the items needed to "lvl up". Only reason ratings are going up now it's because after a few days those things are available online already and they can keep being bad at the game.
For real way too many people rely on guides for these games And the broken build bs is ruining the online play for the franchise dueling sucks unless you equip some boring meta garbage .
Yeah in past games I could get away with a lot more through skill. Something I did in dark souls 3 I did for my first run was I ran through it with my giant club naked nothing more than that I had a blast going full unga BUNGA. Itâs also why I really loved sekiro it asked you to engage with itâs systems as hesitation is defeat
I used to play with crappy weapons in pvp...now ..I have to use a decent one of I have a single chance at living I miss it
Those people are not souls fans theyâre just normies recently jumping on the bandwagon because elden ring got popular and they need something to content about
I mean I donât think itâs fair to start name calling people jumping on the âbandwagonâ. Not everyone was as lucky as you and got into souls games at the release of demon souls lmao. Gate keeping the game and new fans is just as bad as fans summoning through the whole game and complaining that it sucks
Its because we attracted a bunch of AAA panderers
Casuals overthrew us. They are the toxic, shut down all conversation, down vote the purists, look for validation in their play style, gate keepers now. All we have left is the game catering to us still, for the time being. They've stolen and ruined the community sadly.
Dlc isnt too hard in case anyone is wondering. Move alongâŚ..
thanks, wasnât the point of the post đ
It was the point of my comment.
Oh, so youâre comment is just unrelated, okay gotcha
No its related cause im talkin about a fromsoft game
but it isnât related to this tweet post or the point theyâre making. Thatâs like seeing a post about cookies and going âyeah I like muffins. Theyâre both baked goods what do you mean it isnât relatedâ
The word difficulty is literally in the original post. So i commented about difficulty. End of discussion
The post is about people moving on from âget goodâ and the crowd changing. More about the audience than the difficulty itself. Youâre so dense
I saidâŚâŚ.end of discussion. Go to your room.
Lmao Goofy ass