[oneoff786]

I wish elden ring was smaller. I thought the open world concept was very poorly executed. I didn’t know where to go at first so I explored pretty much the entire open world unable to do much other than run past everything. The remainder of the game was just teleporting around so the open world was irrelevant. The bosses were good. The legacy dungeons were good. But the open world was largely a one time early game tax to find flak upgrades. I felt frustrated that I was not clearly shown where level appropriate content was. I don’t mind the option of seeking inappropriate content, but it should have been more transparent.

I spent the game picking up herbs. Never used any.

I picked up loads of weapons, but couldn’t use any them effectively without respeccing or farming weapon upgrades.

I found very few of the mini dungeons organically and had to look up where to find them but they tended to be pretty dull and reuse the same bosses. The quests were equally inscrutable without a guide. Finding bosses that are just way too strong for you sucks.

Leyndell and onward aren’t really open world. They’re mostly just linear areas, which I liked more but I also suspected was mostly due to budget and scope cuts. I would have gladly traded the vast open world and mini dungeons for a few more well designed legacy dungeons and bosses.

I played with no summons and beat malenia with two whips and no skills for reference if it matters

[the_doctah]

I completely agree about the open world. The complete lack of breadcrumbs or anything to help you understand where to go made it a much worse experience for me, especially as my first souls game. The game even tells you to follow the Guidance of Grace, which leads you directly to Stormveil Castle, which you will be underleveled for.

I tried playing blind and ended up in Caelid (~lvl 60 area) instead of Weeping Peninsula. That's when I noped out and spent the rest of the game with my head buried in the wiki. I couldn't imagine trying to play these games without a wiki.

Everything else I enjoyed for the most part. The controls and hitboxes are a little janky, the platforming sections are total garbage (shoehorned into an old engine that never had it), but the open world execution was by far the worst aspect for me. At some point FromSoftware has to start catering to players new to the genre instead of forcing people to struggle and calling it part of the experience. With 12 mil in early sales I guarantee a bunch of players struggled with these aspects of the early game and dropped it altogether.

[meowzero]

I think the cryptic nature of Soulsborne games don't work in Open World. Like some of the side quests are near-impossible to complete without a wiki (unless you get very lucky). For instance, some NPCs are like, "I'll see you around." And you have to find them at some random place in the world if you want to continue their quest.

In a more closed world like Dark Souls, I think the no-handholding of side quest can work. But in an open world, I would've liked a bit more hand holding.

[godelski]

The first guy you meet outside the cave tells you to follow the guidance of grace. The graces around the main storyline literally point to the next grace or way to go. If you follow the road you'll get there.

I did get lost in the beginning because this is my first souls game and the only other game I've really played in the last 10 years is botw. But I've always have a good sense of where to go. The times I don't I explore and find something that leads me down a side quest. There's definitely lots of breadcrumbs imo. I mean if you're lost just look at the map and go towards a castle.

I think what could be better is to be able to revisit people and talk to them about quest lines. Or have a log. Other than that I'm having the complete opposite experience of you and I'm sure I've died 500+ times in my 50 hrs.

[the_doctah]

> The first guy you meet outside the cave tells you to follow the guidance of grace. The graces around the main storyline literally point to the next grace or way to go. If you follow the road you'll get there.

That's kind of my point though, because, at the beginning of the game, going straight to Stormveil Castle is not the optimal path. The optimal path is to go through East Limgrave and then Weeping Peninsula to get some levels and some gear. Guidance of Grace leads you away from that. Pretty unintuitive for the very first waypoints of the game.

[agentwiggles]

I agree with some of the critique here, but the lesson I took from the experience of following those first graces was "oh, I guess I'm going to need to be stronger to fight this guy, guess I'll go wander around and level up" - which I think is _exactly_ the lesson that the designers intended.

[godelski]

That's exactly what I did and I've been having a ton of fun. "Okay, I'm not ready for this person yet, but there's all these other things around me, let's go explore that and I should be leveled up and just better at the game/controls by the time I come back." This means absolutely no grinding. The game also taught me to not fight everyone and to focus on skills rather than runes. The game is unfair, so you have to be unfair back.

[oneoff786]

This is what I did too. And my point is that it took me throughout the entirety of Caelid and liurnia which was stupid as shit. Because the rate of progression was extremely slow, especially when you’re just running past things, and the only area that’s particularly appropriate up front is castle Morne which is not advertised.

I don’t think the game is unfair. It’s boss design is great. It’s the pacing that’s shit. Margit was an awesome fight.

[brnaftr361]

I unironically paid zero attention to Varre and accidentally tromped through and completed Weeping Peninsula without any instruction whatsoever. It just felt right. Very intuitive.

[oneoff786]

I found a lot of sidequest breadcrumbs. Then that was it and I never found the next breadcrumb again because they teleported to an unmarked location I had been to before and had no reason to go to; standing still and saying nothing.

[arkaic]

Sounds like you would love the Dark Souls games. They're Elden Ring without open world, and all legacy dungeons.

[oneoff786]

I liked the first one. Sekiro was their best imo.

But elden ring’s design philosophy seemed to start with “what if we did dark souls but all doors and passages were open from the start?”

The answer is unsurprisingly that many players track awkward paths of hitting things too soon and too late.

If you’re going to have such significant character progression, linear games just make more sense. Breath of the wild gets away from it because link barely gets any stronger over the course of the game. Just a bit tankier.

Fighting bosses in elden ring and finding they’re drastically undertuned really ruins the point of playing a soulslike…

[rajup]

Having played some of the soulsborne games before I much prefer being able to go away and explore something else if I hit a hard boss or area. It keeps the game much more enjoyable and not feel as "grindy". You do have a point about hitting some things earlier or later than you should, but usually under-leveled players are not going to make much progress in the tougher areas anyway...

[oneoff786]

A larger problem is that the whole level system to all of these games is just kind of bad. It would be more fun if you just were appropriately leveled for each encounter and that was that. And each weapon were useable without needing to dedicate resources to it.

I prefer feeling confident that I’m at a good state to fight something and if I’m losing it’s just a skill issue to practice.

Farming in all souls games doesn’t actually net you that much, but it still feels like the easiest path forward at times. Elden ring is particularly weird with its scaling. Vigor gives much larger buffs to hp than people expect. Damage stats do much less.

[temp3738868585]

A key feature of the leveling system is that it allows somewhat for player controlled difficulty levels.

There is a wide range of skill levels of players, and what is "appropriately leveled" for one player might be trivial or impossibly hard for others.

Players level to the point where they can beat the bosses that they get stuck on.

[oneoff786]

In theory maybe. In practice not really. Leveling up does not make a huge difference. Leveling up weapons does. Leveling up flasks does too. The amount of time you need to spend to level up is a terrible trade off.

If you’re not good at the game, you can trivialize most encounters with the summons, or use multiplayer which adds a ton of luck to the outcome.

Actually farming runes is almost a trap for anything last stormveil.

[jerf]

I think leveling systems are arguably the biggest mistake in gaming right now. By that, I specifically mean things that just power you up or down based on a single number (give or take a few numbers), which you can go up basically by just playing the game for longer. It gives the entire game a natural skew towards becoming easier over time, which, being backwards, then requires a large number of gyrations to overcome.

I don't think the solution is just to rip them out and then proceed forward. And there are still other bad designs, of course; a sibling comment cites Oblivion. (Although I would call that an example of one of the "gyrations" I refer to; having a leveling system but then trying to remove it by somehow mathematically cancelling it is just weird. Quite distinct from not starting with one in the first place.)

I would cite something like Bayonetta as a good example of what I mean, though by no means the only possibility. Especially as "RPGs" continue to move more and more in the direction of straight-up-action-game combat anyhow. You open up some weapons. You can double your health and the other resource (forget what it's called), and I'm not even sure I love that, but you can. But fights are not about whether you're level 34 and they're level 63. Difficult fights are difficult because they are difficult.

In some sense the biggest mistake in my mind is that it gives designers such an easy answer; just slap a leveling system on it. More thought would be nice.

I could also cite something like Slay the Spire. No "levels" in sight, but your character certainly becomes more powerful over time, and your play gets better. Skill acquisition, clever combinations of abilities and features, etc. So much better than just a number that goes up.

[oneoff786]

Borderlands 3 does this thing where enemies are scaled to your local client level. So like if I’m level 30 playing with a level 20 friend and he finds a level 22 enemy, for me it’ll be level 32.

Which certainly seems another step removed from logic.

[sandworm101]

>> It would be more fun if you just were appropriately leveled for each encounter

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. That leveling system meant you never ran into anything beyond your level. But it also mean that in the late game you were constantly hounded by insanely powerful creatures randomly out on the road.

[vkou]

Worse yet, if your character build scaled poorly, end-game became a horrible slog. If it scaled well, end-game became a walk in the park.

Unfortunately, mods that de-leveled the open world were not very good. You had no idea if you were walking into an area you outleveled, or were outleveled by, and many early quests took you to incredibly high-level areas.

[thot_experiment]

You're looking for a completely different experience than soulsborne games seek to provide my guy. The effort makes the experience meaningful. It's just like WoW was meaningfully better before the abundance of fast travel options later added to the game, or the nerfs to leveling and item acquisition. It's not everyone's cup of tea but it's a strong, flavorful and relatively unadulterated cup of tea and we stan that.

I don't even like soulsborne games that much but I recognize the beauty and purity of the experience they provide. I'd rather be playing quake 3, but it's the same thing in a certain conceptual way.

[oneoff786]

The defining feature of souls likes is undoubtedly their fluid combat. Not the shitty numbers behind them. You could. Have just as good of an experience getting x level ups after beating a boss and that’s it.

Farming souls is stupid.

[godelski]

One thing that changed my view is to just stop caring about runes. Unless it's a significant amount, close to a level up, they aren't important. The other thing is to use your items. It's easy to hoard in a game like this but you shouldn't.

[oneoff786]

Yes. They don’t matter. In part because the game is very stingy with them. In another part because of you actually need a level up you’re going to get what you need much faster going to a nice farming spot and starting from scratch. In third part because they’re nothing compared to the value of weapon upgrades and flask upgrades.

The game is also just unintuitive when it comes to defensive stats. Putting lots of points into endurance to wear the biggest armor is nothing compared to boosting vigor. Armor mostly sucks tbh.

[cma]

> I felt frustrated that I was not clearly shown where level appropriate content was.

The map indicates the main path with glowy little directional markers all along it. Usually areas around the appropriate section of the main path are level appropriate, but there is much more to explore.

[oneoff786]

Yeah I’m gonna hard disagree there. The lines, and even the first NPC you meet, immediately lead you to storm veil castle which is a total trap. Margit is a very strong first boss, with unblockable chip damage and some fairly long and difficult to dodge combos. Heck he’s probably one of the hardest fights mechanically. The slow swings of the final boss are so much easier to avoid. If you follow the lines you will not get any flask upgrades either. And if you don’t go that way initially you could easily find yourself discovering another “main path” instead first.

Imo it was really just the one time tax of getting your flasks and weapon upgrades. The initial scaling of things was just… really bad. Weapon upgrades are too good for something that’s so uncontrolled game progression wise. Flasks get way too powerful very quickly, filling up more than your entire health bar with just one of many many charges. Health starts too low but then scales up stupidly fast.