That “arrow” is also visible in the world as a stream of light heading out from the grace site.
Well, this is handy–a mod to enable pausing:
You have to disable online mode, but that sounds like a side benefit to me. Maybe no more “try finger but hole” messages every 10 feet…
I think last night was likely my last dip into Elden Ring. It wasn’t the difficulty, it was just that the difficulty didn’t feel worth it for whatever laid beyond. I was fighting some named dude and predictably getting my butt kicked but getting closer when I just had that “Why?” moment. I wasn’t going to cheer when I finally beat him and I didn’t feel like beating him meant much to the world at large and I didn’t even assume he would drop anything I want (yay, a melee weapon for my pseudo-wizard). The only real reason to keep at it was if I found the combat mechanics themselves to be enjoyable. The feeling I had wasn’t rage or frustration, just “I could probably be better spending my time on something else”.
I could go on about minor details that Souls Fans would likely sneer at (“This isn’t a game about that, man…”) but that brings me back around to the game being pinned entirely to the combat. And if the combat isn’t doing it for you, you likely won’t find many other reasons to keep playing.
This isn’t to say it’s a bad game. It’s not. It’s well made, looks good, handles well, etc. If you’re in love with the Souls thing, I’m sure this game is solid gold. I can tell that there’s a quality game in there. I’m saying that, for people who never got into the Souls-combat thing but thought this more expansive world might offer a rewarding reason to dip in, it probably won’t.
It’s a shame, because I don’t know that there are any other games of this sort with such a deep fighting/customization system.
And while I’m inclined to say FromSoftware is foolishly excluding paying customers by sticking to the “no mercy” difficulty formula, you can’t argue with the sales figures.
I’m still considering it, but I really wish they’d release a “wimp” button that lowered the difficulty to what other games would call normal.
Doubtful. Miyazaki has a whole spiel about how he’s doing us a favor by letting us experience the thrill of triumph after you beat some boss after thirty tries.
If the game was easier, I’d probably chug through it just to see the sights and beat up more weird gaunt monsters with wings sticking out of their butts or whatever. But, if each step is going to take me a bunch of time and tries to complete, I need a better carrot than “Hey, look at that weird monster and that neat statue”. For fans, that’s the combat and I get that. Not doing it for me, though.
Yep, he’s given a number of interviews over the years to that effect. Here’s one for Elden Ring. Paywalled if you’ve already used up your freebie articles for the month.
I don’t mind dying to a boss thirty times as much as I mind falling off a roof thirty times(although I’d still rather not die thirty times to anything). Not to mention slogging through a bunch of enemies thirty times just to get back to the same place again.
See, when players say things like, “I died 35 times to the Dark Accountant,” I cringe inwardly. That sounds like the opposite of fun to me, and in the game I’m currently playing I’m likely to turn down the difficulty of a boss fight after only a few tries unless there’s something obvious and fixable I’m doing wrong.
Funnily enough, some of my most played games are roguelites, which are also all about dying repeatedly. But those games are about variance within a system. Souls-likes seem to be about learning and mastering very rigid ones.
I heard a rumor bosses do slow down after you fail a certain amount of time. Pure rumor, though.
It was actually first heard by me from Markiplier, who died many times to Tree Sentinel. He kept saying, “Has he slowed down or is it just me?”
I read on reddit a similar idea, though not confirmed.
Do bosses slow down their moves if you fail repeatedly?
Maybe there were people dying 30 times in Dark Souls. I think the largest number of times I died to a boss in Dark Souls was maybe 5 times, and that is using my strategy of basically just spamming attacks and dodges (not looking up enemy attack patterns on-line, for instance).
Five times is annoying, but not that annoying. Are Elden Ring bosses tougher? Don’t know.
I’m fully prepared to admit that I might just suck. Part of that is likely old man reflexes and part of that is inexperience but I’m only getting older and I’m not interested enough by the game to get experienced.
Despite some claims, the game does strike me as very twitchy. When Swordface the Swordinator is slashing at you three times in rapid succession, you better work that Dodge button at the right moments to not get deadified. And when combat discussion about the game talks about exploiting i-frames to hit the boss, you can’t make me believe that we’re not talking about twitchy game play.
Personally, the main reason I fight bosses in video games is because it moves the plot forward - I’m personally invested in the story, and I want to see what happens next. Is there any story in this game?
Not much explicit story. There’s an opening cinematic about the Elder Ring getting smashed and demi-gods getting kicked around and you’re trying to piece it back together but that’s it. Fans will tell you that you need to piece it all together from bits and bobs across the land; a statue plaque here and an item description there. I’m certainly not opposed to panning the stream for bits of lore that tie everything together but I really feel like there should be a main line you’re adding to. Having to read the laundry tags on my underwear for a mere hint as to what’s going on doesn’t strike me as great world building but, hey, it has a following.
The standard defense is that it doesn’t “hold your hand” as though the onus is on me to find reasons to be interested in the world. In my opinion, it’s the dev’s job to make me interested in their world and, if I’m not, that’s more on them than any failure on my part.
My understanding is that the games have story but not plot. The game design kind of slow-burn reveals the story to you over time.
In the case of Elden Ring, GRRM apparently wrote some extensive backstory for the world but had no say in how it would be implemented. Miyazaki took his writing and used it to inform his creative decisions. So there’s worldbuilding and discovery, but the plot itself is “go forth and whack monsters.”
I’m still considering it, but I really wish they’d release a “wimp” button that lowered the difficulty to what other games would call normal
The game has a very effective difficulty slider, but being Dark Souls they had to go and make it awesome - co-op.
It makes a really profound difference to how hard a level or a boss is if you do it with a summon (can be a specific friend IRL through passwords or just anyone who has their sign down). It’s a whole other human dimension to the game, just as being invaded by another player is.
No new player should really be banging their head against a brick wall boss imho, unless they really love that sort of challenge. Just summon, get past it, so you can further into the game, build up your character and experience.
There’s a nice element of chance to summoning - you never quite know who you will get. The guy in endgame armour, massive anime sword and a fancy hat might prove to be useless, and the guy in rags with a dagger might be an absolute monster who can carry you on his back whilst no-hitting the boss - ideally you get someone in between.
Co-op is not a difficulty slider. It’s a different game mode.
From a design philosophy perspective, I don’t see any difference whatsoever between “get a high-level friend to paste this boss for you” and “turn down the difficulty so that you can paste this boss for yourself.”
One of the videos above mentioned, paraphrasing: “I know some of my viewers don’t play the Soulsborne games because they are too difficult, but I promise that with persistence, all of you can beat this one.”
I didn’t think much about the comment at the time but later, I realized what I didn’t like about it: the implication that the entire reason for playing a game is to beat it. And conversely, that to win over someone that isn’t playing a difficult game, you just need to convince them that they can win.
But that’s just not why I play games. Finishing a game may be an inevitable result of playing through the plot, but it’s not an explicit goal of mine; if anything, it’s often the opposite of a goal, since I want to continue playing.
Combat, for me, is something akin to action scenes in a movie. It’s there to give things some variety; endless dialogue could get dull after a while, so you intersperse action or some other type of scene. Likewise, an RPG might intersperse combat with exploration, or talking with NPCs, or wandering around a city, or so on. The combat challenge isn’t really the point.
I don’t like the concept of “beating” games, period. Playing a game is a collaborative process between player and creator, not an antagonistic one.
No. Sorry.