Elden Ring is finally real

[Falselogic]

Neat video on the world design of Elden Ring from Game Maker's Toolkit. There are some spoilers in there for bosses and endgame so don't click if you haven't completed the game or want to maintain the mystery.

I don't know if I agree with some of his points about design decisions. From has been doing this long enough that I think that the nonscaling enemies is intentional.

Other's thoughts?

 

[Sarcasmorator]

The nonscaling enemies seem entirely intentional to me, both because you are meant to leave cleared areas behind (aside from quest progression in places like Caelid, which has a tougher area in the north) and because you are meant to be able to come back and wallop something that gave you trouble later on, if you want. The scaling seems to be reserved for NG+ and multiplayer (for bosses).

 

[Issun]

Why would anyone want a From game to have scaling enemies? What kind of brainworms makes you want that?

 

[estragon]

I absolutely would not want scaling enemies in Elden Ring.

I don't want it so much that I don't even play NG+ runs on any of these games. Completely unappealing to me.

 

[lincolnic]

I mean, of course it's intentional? A major gameplay decision like that doesn't get made by accident. (I have not watched the video so I may be missing some context here.)

 

[Issun]

Just watched the enemy balancing portion of the video and yeah, balancing issues are going to be endemic to introducing the Souls formula into an open world game. There is no perfect solution because the two styles are inevitably going to uncomfortably rub up against each other. You literally couldn't make an open world game that was faithful to the Souls formula without having some serious balancing issues.

 

[Oathbreaker]

It's definitely still rock solid Souls formula; it progresses basically identically to any other Souls game and I'd argue this still fits with the world design, especially if you aren't getting extra powered up by exploring every little thing on the map. Being able to wander into Caelid ahead of time isn't very different from Master Key-ing your way to Blight Town (and thus the second half of the game) early, for instance. It took the vertical world design of Dark Souls and made it mostly horizontal for the bulk of world exploration. The balance implications are what happens with any competent open world game, the player will inevitably far outpace the game's efforts to keep up whether it has scaling or not. Even in Oblivion where enemy scaling was so aggressive that most people hated it, planning things out still meant the game couldn't keep up, and it still had its own ways to circumvent loot scaling to get very powerful things early; if anything this kind of scaling is what creates the real problem, because it meant the fairly wide breadth of progress Elder Scrolls games are designed for would actively make the game harder with no regard to the chosen difficulty. Rare is the person that wants the complete 1:1 scaling option you have to opt into with difficulty options in the Assassin's Creed games because it means you can't feel most of your progress for a very long time. By a wide margin I hear way more people always talking about how they want to feel powerful after they've earned their high level/build/etc, and if the game has areas that will kick your ass if you find them early, so be it. Breath of the Wild is interestingly the weirdest game that the video brings up because you can largely avoid its scaling by avoiding killing enemies, which has an interesting synergy with the way the STRICT weapon durability incentivizes you to avoid fighting as much as you normally might; at the same time when its enemies do finally get scaled up to their next stage the difference in their bulk and strength is far more significant than in say, Ghost of Tsushima where they have visibly better armor and so take an extra hit in a straight fight.

I'm honestly not sure why the person in the video would insinuate this wasn't a good thing. From Soft has tons of experience balancing games without active scaling mid-playthrough. It's far safer for them to stick to that and mess with enemy design and world structure than it is to crank enemy power up to match the player at all times (which I cannot stress enough, always sounds incredibly unpopular as a design choice).

 

[Sarcasmorator]

One of the more satisfying things in ER for me was going back to a dungeon or field boss that gave me trouble after I gained more levels and just cutting through it like nothing. Specifically the Rotten Crystalians.

 

[Adrenaline]

I agree with the point of the video that the open world design and lack of scaling in Elden Ring make it a fundamentally different experience from previous Souls games which had a more linear and controlled progression. I disagree with the assumption that that's bad.

 

[Behemoth]

I agree with the point of the video that the open world design and lack of scaling in Elden Ring make it a fundamentally different experience from previous Souls games which had a more linear and controlled progression. I disagree with the assumption that that's bad.

I would argue it's good actually. (I also haven't watched the video, so maybe I'm missing some nuance).

 

[Patrick]

I think Mark misses that the game does prevent you from overleveling, as long as you focus on one area at a time. You can complete every cave and wandering boss in Limgrave and still be in the general power band for Godrick. He gets caught up in the idea that you can skip past regions and do things out of order, and that shaded his view of the difficulty curve. His comparisons to Oblivion and BOTW were definitely off base.

I’d like to see another video where he breaks down the legacy dungeons. I feel like that would play to his strengths more.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Unscaled enemies are the best, because it is equally fun to a) totally thrash a boss that you're overleved for and b) beat a really difficult boss by the skin of your teeth when you have no business being there. And the general open-world design of Elden Ring makes it possible for the player to choose which type of experience they want to have most of the time, which is pretty swell.

Anyway, everyone here will be relieved to know that I beat the Godskin Duo. That sleep pot trick worked great! Which is nice, because I had to beat 3.5 of those fuckers before the fight was over.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

hahah yeah they do keep comin' don't they

 

[estragon]

I really wish that fight was a set number of respawns and not an arbitrary amount of health. I didn't struggle with it on either of my two runthroughs (not a boast, struggled with a lot of bosses but never that one, probably because I did the big optional area first both times), but I just think the way it's set up feels unsatisfying.

 

[zonetrope]

I like having the ability to overlevel myself a bit and gain a numerical edge. I'm pretty ok at these games but by no means a skilled action game player, and without that built-in difficulty slider, Sekiro is completely goddamn impossible for me.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Yeah I'm not particularly good at them either, my consistent strategy was being about 10 levels higher than the guide I was following recommended.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I've made it to the final battle and MAN is the endgame of Elden Ring a slog. Ever since the Fire Giant, it seems like I haven't gone more than an hour between difficult boss fights: the Fire Giant, the Godskin Duo, Malekith, Godfrey and now Radagon/Elden Beast. I get that they wanted things to end with a bang, but I'm getting pretty burned out on all this grinding. I spent an hour and a half working on the fight last night and managed to beat Radagon about four times, but I wasn't able to parlay any of those attempts into victories. I actually respecced my character to gain back a few points I had wasted on Int/Faith (all I do is hit things with a huge sword, so those aren't really important to me) and I grabbed a talisman from the starting area to reduce holy damage, too. It's definitely starting to look like I could win soon, but I'm pretty tired of this procession of ever-more-difficult bosses with not a lot in between them.

 

[estragon]

The placeholder feeling colosseums are going to be turned into multiplayer areas in a free update:

 

[Issun]

Carbot's Elden Ring series has been great but this one is amazing.

 

[Ludendorkk]

Neat video on the world design of Elden Ring from Game Maker's Toolkit. There are some spoilers in there for bosses and endgame so don't click if you haven't completed the game or want to maintain the mystery.

I don't know if I agree with some of his points about design decisions. From has been doing this long enough that I think that the nonscaling enemies is intentional.

Other's thoughts?

It wouldn't be a Game Maker's Toolkit without one left-field unsupportable design complaint

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Carbot's Elden Ring series has been great but this one is amazing.

This was exactly my experience

 

[spines]

i am playing the game. i finished stormveil castle (ish, there's a couple things i will probably go back to check on again later unless i forget) right after, like, one catacombs dungeon (the one north of the starting cave). it wasn't even really about the lights pointing, just the whole process of entering that first gate area and then deciding i could push a little further and explore a little more each time, till i finally found my way through enough of it to tag team the boss with the npc. margit in particular was a good chance to kind of figure out what was going on with the starting tools i had, since i picked prophet and haven't really dabbled in spellcasting type stuff in these games in a looooooong time. catch flame is really cool, a quick hit akin to melee attacks, but the real winner has been the dark fireball i was able to buy more recently that's really blown through a lot of minibosses i've encountered.

i've found a couple other people teaching the other kind of magic, but i really want to check out this fist thing i traded for after defeating the boss...so i'm committing my levels to that for a while, then i'll probably switch to some of the longevity-type stats for more hp/fp and stamina/equip burden. and i've finished a couple more catacombs, although i don't really get what these rewards do and the gargoyle guys and bosses have been a bit on the annoying side considering the rewards. haha. but i mean, i'll probably keep doing stuff that i find to do...since as much as the bosses have annoyingly convoluted attack sequences, the kind of thing that makes me miss sekiro's clashing mechanics (especially since there's stuff in this game i haven't figured out how to dodge at all, just get luckier about the boss not using them much), just knowing that i could wander in any direction and almost certainly find something new to do has made the game really easy to keep playing in my main session so far. like, that'll probably change eventually, but just knowing that finding one way forward isn't make or break really does make it easier to deal with some of the frustrating difficulty and ridiculous parts

 

[ShakeWell]

I've been exclusively playing this using the Seamless Co-op mod, which I think is good, because I'm not totally certain I would have hung on playing it alone. But running around with three or four other people and just kinda running around and doing whatever is pretty fun.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Black Flame is an excellent spell for sure. It was my bread and butter for pretty much the entirety of my Faith playthrough.

A lot of the rewards whose uses aren't readily apparent (gear, magic) are for crafting. Crafting items can actually be really powerful if you give them a shot, too!

Dodging really is a pain too, but mostly your dodge timing is/should be just a little later than you think, especially with all the delayed attack timings. Enemies really like to punish you for panic-rolling in this one. Not that I've figured out timing particularly well myself, but I also like to use shields and greatshields quite a bit, so ymmv (The guard counter is a pretty rad addition too, if you decide to mess with a shield).

And yeah, the option to just walk away and go somewhere else for a while is a game changer. It really emphasizes the exploration too, which I like. If it sucks, hit da bricks and see what's over there instead. The exploration is so great too, with surprisingly intricate world design, and it's almost always rewarding. I often wish I could play it for the first time again (although maybe with my third or fourth time's skills/difficulty...)

I've been exclusively playing this using the Seamless Co-op mod, which I think is good, because I'm not totally certain I would have hung on playing it alone. But running around with three or four other people and just kinda running around and doing whatever is pretty fun.

I've been wanting to try this out, myself. Co-op has always been my favorite way to play, so I do a lot of summons and helping out, but having a true always-on co-op mode sounds great. Maybe a little too easy, but great (and as someone who isn't in it for the difficulty, I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, just that I've had experiences where someone else has done too much for me instead of with me, if that makes sense).

 

[Sarcasmorator]

I should check out that coop stuff too. I haven't put the game in since I finished it.

Magic in the game is very good. Not every spell all the time, but super viable in general, if you want it to be. Hybrid too. I did not care for the bow/crossbow mechanics much (aside from occasionally sniping a nasty enemy from safety) so spells were my ranged backup most of the time.

 

[ShakeWell]

I've been wanting to try this out, myself. Co-op has always been my favorite way to play, so I do a lot of summons and helping out, but having a true always-on co-op mode sounds great. Maybe a little too easy, but great (and as someone who isn't in it for the difficulty, I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, just that I've had experiences where someone else has done too much for me instead of with me, if that makes sense).

I'm not going to say I haven't been drug over the finish line of some fights by my compatriots, but the game does scale enemies seemingly more than the normal summoning mechanic and if you die you get Rot, which debuffs you until you rest, which you obviously don't want to do if your buds are still in the middle of a fight.

 

[Yimothy]

I’ve started playing this. I played about two hours a little while ago after I bought it to check it was gonna run ok on my computer, then put it aside until I’d finished a few other things before starting over, so this time I didn’t get immediately killed by the big guy on the horse near the start or the dragon blowing up the camp on the lake. Probably overdoing the spoilers there, I guess. I’m gonna try to play the game unspoiled, so I haven’t read this thread, but after a few more hours playtime I’ll probably be spending more time on the wiki than playing the game.

I started off this time actually doing the tutorial area so I have some idea how to play (I’d already wasted my keepsake on my first button press at the start of the game, though), then took myself to the ruins outside the storm gate, where I practiced sneaking up on guys and cleared it out after a few deaths. I’m currently playing in hold-up-the-shield-and-wait-for-a-chance-to-attack style, which I think is one of the more boring ways to go about things. The last From game I played, Dark 2, I two handed a greatsword and dodged a lot which was more fun. Not having a lot of luck with dodge rolls in this one so far, though. Maybe I should try to get below medium encumbrance? Or just practice until I get it. Maybe this’ll be the game where I learn to parry.

After the ruins I went to the gate and killed a big guy who dropped 5000 runes, then went to a campsite and levelled up like five levels, then went to the gate I’d cleared of its boss and it had respawned, so I turned the other way, got killed by a guy on a horse (I am very bad at mounted combat at present) who was only there at night, found a dude I couldn’t see, saw several more of what I thought had been a miniboss but I guess is a regular enemy type, did a big jump on a horse, ran away, and wound up approaching the gate I’d previously turned back from from the other side. I went back and killed the big guy again but only got 1000 runes this time. Oh well.

Seems like a cool game, but I’m gonna have a hard time not ruining it for myself trying to explore every nook and cranny.

 

[Patrick]

You don't want to be at the highest encumbrance level. And light encumbrance is very hard to reach. Medium encumbrance lets you wear a fair amount of armor, and keeps you very mobile. Definitely aim for that.

And shields are a lot of fun in this game. Right after you block an attack, you can make a heavy attack in retaliation. It does extra damage (similar to a jump attack), and often staggers enemies. It's a simple mechanic, but it makes blocking a lot more interesting. You can get some shield specific arts of war too (or leave the shield with no art, which means you can use your weapon art with your shield out).

Have fun!

 

[lincolnic]

I already wasted my keepsake on my first button press at the start of the game

Don't worry about this, everything you can get there is replaceable.

 

[4-So]

I played the whole game in medium encumbrance, no shields (dual wielded for about 80% of it, two-handed for the rest), and almost never parried. Game is very much playable that way. But, yeah, dodge roll is king.