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@“JoJoestar”#p60545 confusing the heck out of me thinking they are items
I thought the “but, hole” messages were my least favorite until I started running into the “cleverly” placed “Could this be a item?” messages nestled among nearly every pile of barrels/debris. Also disappointed by the lack of “Time for rolling” messages in said rooms!
I‘ve said it before and I’ll say it till I die……
This open world design is a case point for the scarlet rot area, if you think open world “field” design is lacking, the poison swamp is an excuse to make the overworld dangerous and contain epic stuff out in the open. Anyone remember the valley of defilement, stage two?? It was a huge flat space, poison water as far as the ps3 could render, with angry goblins guarding tiny islands containing epic treasure. It was an “open field” design just like elden ring has. That‘s the entire reason the Moonlight Greatsword was hidden there within a mass of slugs.
I think before y’all keep going on about this, quit exploring the glintstone lake or whatever and travel northeast to the scarlet rotted lands…. It‘s worth your while!…. But then again if you don’t have the goat yet then you've hardly began the game!
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The true Elden Ring beings here….
who knows where that age old statement is accurate in this game.
@“treefroggy”#p60556
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who knows where that age old statement is accurate in this game.
||Opening the door out the back of Stormveil Castle and revealing... a whole bunch more world in front of you. Perfect place, IMO. Even though I sort of ruined it by accidentally discovering the alternate route around the castle||
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@“JoJoestar”#p60512 constant rewards and cool items
yeah I agree that this is sort of deflating. Sometimes it's good when a wrong turn is a wrong turn. I guess it's not "good" game design though
In this open world, Demon‘s Souls experience comes in handy…. Imagine it’s the same as being able to skip from 1-1 to 5-1 or 3-1 or whatever you want at any time…. only instead of teleporting from the nexus… you‘re riding there. Sometimes you teleport! There’s a degree of self-induced progression that makes you think, I wish I had gone this or that way my first time…. That‘s a challenge that From Soft’s design just leaves up to the player, which I love. But I believe the veteran players are meant to journey to the lake of rot in Caelim as soon as they wish to. Minor spoiler for a little surprise early game you may have missed because it‘s a trap: >!In the lake where the first dragon comes through, in the ruins there is a trapped chest which will teleport you far across the map, directly into!< >!the heart of a glintstone mine, to become enslaved yourself. This greatly resembles the mines of Demon’s Souls, of course. Only, once you emerge, you find yourself!< >!at the shore of a lake of rot! This is signaling the demon‘s souls connection quite directly, as if to say, yes, you’ve arrived in hostile territory, but we encourage you to keep going and see what you may find! !< Also, quite similarly, >!that NPC in the nexus tells you where to find a teleporter!< that goes straight to >!the tail end of the caelim.!<
Perhaps think of this if you are bored with the green grass, easy pickups and enemy placement of the “first” two areas.
HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET there's a path you can take that completely skips Margit, the entirety of Stormveil, and goes straight ahead to another land, acquiring your first Great Rune elsewhere? BET
Just found an
up,
dog?
🐶
I have the exact location of the key to the glinstone university of might & magic marked on my map, and I‘ve already been to the front door, but you know what? I’m just gonna make a run of the entirety of Caelem right now, I'm ready.
Here's an analogy to the real world:
When you're a tourist, and visiting a new country, and you just got off the airplane, do you go around the airport saying "wow the local cuisine here sucks"?
The path immediately from / around / adjacent, nay, the entire region will be catering to tourists heavily, a disney world, if you will.
When you're traveling off the beaten path is where you'll find the epic thrift stores, mom n pop, family resturaunts, and dives. It's the same in this game. The initial critical path is for tourists.
@“yeso”#p60563 I think there are a lot of drops and a lot of nothings. I‘m finding dead ends everywhere full of annoying messages arguing that there is and there isn’t an item at the end of whatever path, and then “why is it always messages”.
Also I don't think I've found a single piece of armor yet as an item out in the open, everything I have is dropped by an enemy or bought from a merchant.
For the most part I like the open world stuff, but the environment definitely felt more exciting in the first couple hours before I realized I can just sprint my horse past everything in the overworld I don't want to deal with. I guess this happens in every open world game.
Also I hate what they've done with smithing stones, the mines where you find them are the most boring, repetitive parts of the game and until you find them your weapon is going to be underleveled because they're extremely rare everywhere else. Plus you need so many to upgrade your weapon that even finding 1x smithing stone under a rock somewhere is a nothing prize.
Had to get that off my chest!! but, otherwise this game owns. I think it's the most beautiful soulsborne yet. I think the jump has been very tastefully incorporated into the game. Every boss has an attack or two that you can punish by jumping over it. Jumping heavy attack is a foolproof approach option against most enemies in the game. Just a very light drizzle of sekirosity on my soulsborne combat and I appreciate it.
s/o to the ic forum user who left a bloodstain inside the gate at stormveil castle, you're the first creditor I've seen on xbox!
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@“treefroggy”#p60543 the early game being too easy
It's not 100% a matter of difficulty, at least on my part! Game could be fucking impossible and still give you constant rewards for every bit of progress. It's something more related to how the perceived mysteriousness of the world works, and how believable and independent from the player's presence feels. Constant rewards make the game (any game, really) feel like it's too catered and tailored for some entity (you) to be there and find and interact with that stuff.
Older From titles have always excelled at making you feel like your presence is absolutely inconsecuential to those worlds, a mere accident no one, not even the in-game characters, care about. That makes the world feel incredibly more fleshed out to me, like a real and authentic place that could exist. The way Elden Ring is rewarding my time and effort as a player feels a bit "too gamey" so far but hey, I was already wrong about this being "just Dark Souls 4", so I'm completely open to be proven wrong again! lol
@“yeso”#p60563 I didn‘t intend to be dismissive of your criticisims re open world design, sorry if it came out that way, it’s true that the game is working well enough for me in that regard but this is clearly the Souls game more attuned to conventional mainstream game design imho, which is what I was trying to point at. Really explains all the wide critical acclaim and extreme universal consensus, if there was ever going to be a FromSoft game with a 97 on metacritic it was clearly this one.
The game is holding its ground though. There are concessions but at the same time the essence is still there, I don't think anything too important was sacrificed, and there is plenty of areas in which the game works and advances the formula, so overall I'm pretty happy. Plus, the elitist nerds (us), will get the benefit of telling other people that the other games were cooler, if this ends up being regarded as "the best Souls game ever" lmao
@“JoJoestar”#p60581 no I was agreeing with you - the “deflating” feeling was my description of what you observed about the game over-rewarding the player. I think you're correct
@“thebryanjzx90”#p60568 yes it‘s true not every off the beaten path part of the level geometry has a reward, and it’s probably down to subjective experience I feel that the game is a little overbearing in that regard. But to me, the game creates an expectation of “stuff” being “over there” that it satisfies too often for the level geometry to feel organic or incidental, like a real place.
At least in my view that's a problem when combined with crafting + associated upgrade mechanics because it creates a lingering sense that you need to pick up stuff when you see it and seek it out when you don't, because if not you're going to have to farm materials to make whatever consumable or upgrade whatever weapom
I feel two ways about whether this game is actually more attuned to more mainstream game design in a negative way. It‘s open world with collectible tchotchkes and crafting so yeah it has absolutely stepped into the vast realm of stuff that has that. At the same time FromSoft design is now just mainstream game design to some degree. Post DS1 their games have only sold more and gotten better review scores as the audience for them widens and understands them. I don’t think it‘s fair to point to review scores, these game have been scoring 90+ on review sites since Dark Souls 2. Elden Ring is at a weird point of tension to me because it’s trying to have it all, and I think it's doing okay at it so far but I also feel the familiar open world fatigue that I always feel with the genre.
I do think the horse is a bit too powerful a tool. One of the self-imposed restrictions I made on myself when playing BOTW was that I would walk everywhere and not use a horse at all. And it was possible to do that, better even imo, because there was nowhere that was inaccessible to me because I chose to use feet to get there. I don't know if the same is true for ER but it feels like it isn't. It feels like the ability to zoom past the world is a little too tempting.
@“Syzygy”#p60587 well sure, player temperment is a part of it, but the game is dangling a lot of carrots, and there‘s also a general pressure to have effective gear and be prepared bc it’s a souls game that‘s commonly regarded as extra difficult. The open world design is further de-familiarizing because the usual rhythm is gone - that’s not a negative, but I think it does apply more pressure on the need to
collect and find good gear etc. Or probably more accurately the perceived + implicit need to engage with that stuff to survive and win the game
TBH I get the feeling that the open worldness is overstated, and it‘s more Souls design branching and interconnected channels, they’re just a lot wider. But that fact just kind of makes me more frustrated with the imposition of open world busywork stuff.
Anyway I'm like 3/10 on the 'gamer dismay' chart they show you at the doctor's office. I think the game is real impressive overall!
How it feels to be an archer:
https://youtu.be/dlaepaZ6-yo?t=30
I am looking for Alexander on Storm Hill and encountered a random fricking boss I've never seen or heard of before, I hate this game. lol (that's a joke because running into bosses randomly in weird corners of the map you thought you completely combed through is awesome)
look who I ran into
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/tTt1WsV.jpeg]
last, here's something sad... this fantastic view of the world from the tallest point in Limgrave was ruined by a glitch:
>![upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/8gjQ69o.jpeg]!<
That happen to anyone else?
@“yeso”#p60594 Completely agree, I saw a friend describing it as “a Souls game, only just at a colossal scale” and I feel like that‘s one of the most accurate descriptions of the experience I’ve read so far. Us throwing the open world terminology around has to do with the gravitational pull of the marketing machine pushing that notion, plus surface level aspects like the “kill all the dudes in the camp” and the gathering/crafting resembling mainstream trends and sensibilities. I have also seen a lot of people forcing comparisons with Breath of the Wild, but truth be told I feel like BotW was a stronger departure from its lineage than this game is.
I can imagine Miyazaki putting a lot of care during development into this game feeling like its own thing, the archetypical FromSoft experience, despite the apparent trend chasing angles (which are despite everything probably still there, I still think that + the prestige accumulated over the years are the reasons to the wide critical acclaim this game has been received by).
If anyone finds about a million group bloodstains in the Sellia Crystal Tunnel, that‘s me.
Mr Frog, did you clear this in your adventures around Caelid? I think I’m about to walk away from a pile of 27,790 runes I have dropped on the floor in the boss arena. The boss can have em! … [size=10]I'll find some more[/size] … [size=8]somewhere[/size]
I tried to wrap a clip of me and a co-op summon and the boss in a spoiler tag but either it always breaks out of the tag or imgur doesn't draw it correctly if it is originally hidden (tried both the ||redacted|| style as well as the >! details style)
So I guess instead, [here's a link to the imgur clip instead. If you want to see it, instead of revealing a spoiler click on here to view it in a new tab I suppose](https://imgur.com/a/Mc0wmu2).
edit: I went back in thinking I'd do a run and collect a couple of runes to at least feel ok about it, _and got immediately slaughtered_ by regular mobs.
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all my runes gone
@“rejj”#p60695 I did not clear the tunnel, but I did get >!kidnapped and taken there!< as stated above or in the other thread, and I'm going back soon since I ran out of crystal moss last night in the swamp!
Thank god there's a map marker system. It is so helpful keeping track of where bosses I still need to beat are, where NPCs are. But I find the SWORD and the CHEST icon to be redundant, so I now use the sword for other stuff. Also there should be a marker for contraptions that you aughta return to. For the walking masoleum I put both a dog icon and a fort icon :>