I think the main issue is NPC quests, they are complete nonsense and fail automatically based on arbitrary triggers.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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I have 300 hours in the game and I've only seen the default ending 🫠
Yeah, this bummed me out in the game, a bit. Not like I was not expecting it though.
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Most players use guides to play that game?
Is that common these days?
It doesn't seem very fun.
FromSoft sort of brought it upon themselves with their design philosophy to be fair, going back at least as far as Dark Souls. Selling a DLC and having it locked behind a convoluted puzzle you wouldn't figure out without a guide was certainly a choice, for example.
Case in point: I played dark souls for 30 minutes and then gave up.
Did not seem worth it.
I like the idea of Soulslikes. I want to like playing them (some of them, I do: Hellpoint, The Surge, the Jedi games). But I can't bring myself to slog through it just to say I did. It's not fun or worth it to me.
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But that’s literally the point of these games compared to everything else that’s out there.
Where else do I get cryptic puzzles and unforgiving exploration without a map full of markers?
But that’s literally the point of these games compared to everything else that’s out there.
I don't think that's entirely true. There are lots of people who play them mostly for the challenge of learning and beating the (mostly) well designed bosses.
Where else do I get cryptic puzzles and unforgiving exploration without a map full of markers?
Outer Wilds? Subnautica?
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Where else do I get cryptic puzzles and unforgiving exploration without a map full of markers?
Lunacid
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It is very fun if you want to be sure that you aren't missing anything the game has to offer. You never know when a game may put something very obscure in a very limited timeframe.
In the case of elden ring or from software games in general NPC's are usually so cryptic that solving the puzzles/quests would take you a lot of trial and error which isnt very fun for me.
It is very fun if you want to be sure that you aren't missing anything the game has to offer.
You've hit upon the crux of the issue, in my opinion. FromSoftware games in general are built on exploration and discovery, finding crazy cool stuff in some dark corner of the game is a big part of the experience. However, for discovery to be properly rewarding you have to allow for the possibility that the player will just miss the stuff you've hidden. Indeed, in a blind playthrough of Dark Souls you're likely to stumble upon a bunch of different secrets and still miss 50% or more of them.
That's gonna be excruciating if you insist on "100% completing" the game. It kind of goes back to older days of gaming when there was no internet and no guides, and you just played the game and were happy when you saw the credits, and had no idea you even missed anything. I feel like modern games with their map markers for everything and completion percentages visible have kind of changed the way many people approach games.
Not to say there's anything wrong with using a guide, play the game how you like. And there is definitely an argument that if you bought the whole game, you'd like to experience the whole game.
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There are some things you just can't do without a guide/wiki. For example the achievements of "collect every weapon/ring".
Also, the NPC quests are just undoable. There are basically no hints as to how to do them, and there are many ways to permanently lose the quest. Doing correctly a NPC quest going blind as an average player consists of plain luck.
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It isn't. Having to look up everything about a game to know how to play doesn't make a fun game. I quit games with convoluted solutions. I'm not a Dark Souls player for that reason.
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I think most people have used guides, but I wonder how much guide people use. Take me for instance, I play blind as much as possible, but I look up a guide to see if there are any weapons that I can miss in a playthrough.
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I typically play the FromSoft games without a guide the first time through, then look up what I missed for subsequent playthroughs.
You don't really need to follow a "build" guide because it's not really that kind of game. There are a lot of weapons to choose from, and some choices in rings, but it's not like Path of Exile where you have a ton of interconnected, semi permanent changes.
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Eh, if you want specific endings you need a guide or you can spend hundreds of hours finding and talking to each npc after each boss fight. I don’t have that kind of time and I don’t like getting locked out of things because I only talked to the creepy dead looking guy five times instead of six.
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I can get it for one or two really hard puzzles in a game, but elden ring at least had no need for a guide at all
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This is absolutely my biggest complaint with Elden ring. You either use a guide or play the game 100 times trying to figure everything out. There are times where the dude literally tells you he's going to be in a specific area and then he literally isn't anywhere close to where he says he's gonna be. It's my first souls game and it was pretty frustrating for me.
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Haven't played Elden Ring, but I hate when games establish some way to play in the tutorial and when you watch some guides they first tell you to ignore what the game taught you.
Star Wars Squadrons was such an offender. Star Craft kind of is because singleplayer balancing is different from multiplayer. Can't think of more now but I have a feeling like that's the case with many games.
So, great that Elden Ring wants to tackle that. Ideally a game should teach you the ideal way to play.
Arguably the first Dark Souls is one of these. Most of the classes push you towards shields as the cornerstone of defense. The studio felt like this overemphasis on shields was such a mistake they took 2 whole games (Bloodborne and Sekiro) in an almost entirely shield-free direction to teach players there were other ways.
Pyromancy (and magic in general) were also undervalued in DS1 initially due to how the game presents them. People eventually figured out that Pyro is so OP you don't even need to use leveling with it to have an easy time.
Arguably the first Dark Souls is one of these. Most of the classes push you towards shields as the cornerstone of defense. The studio felt like this overemphasis on shields was such a mistake they took 2 whole games (Bloodborne and Sekiro) in an almost entirely shield-free direction to teach players there were other ways.
That's more the studio changing design philosophy rather than the game giving poor hints, I would argue. Shields are very viable through all of DS1.
Elden Ring's tutorial consists of a single little cave that merely tells you all the basics of the game (how to move, your basic attack buttons, dodging, blocking, parrying, backstabs, sneaking, posture breaking and guard breaks) and then gives you an emote to perform as if to say "have fun" on your way out. The best part, to me coming from previous From games, is that you can skip it. It's just off to the right from where you start the game proper and if you don't want that emote, you can just go off to play the game. All the other games have a forced tutorial section (you can still sprint through it though).
The game is amazing. It was easily GOTY for me when I got it and I dumped around 300 hours into it. That said, there are a lot of players out there that really deserve to enjoy it, but it’s insanely tough and not ideal for some people, especially if you’re someone that plays mostly for the story. So I appreciate that the ER devs are thinking about this to some degree.
I feel like aside from full-on accessibility settings for those who need them (which absolutely should be implemented and the FromSoft devs don't get a pass on this), they could do something as simple as a 2% speed, health, & damage nerf to all their enemies and it could be enough for most newcomers that have paid for the game, but didn't get anything out of it. Like me. There are probably a huge amount of people that bought the game because of glowing "this is GOTY" reviews and couldn't get past even Margit.
There’s old guys like me too that don’t have the reflexes the younger gens do lmao. I had to get help from other players on a few occasions.
Honestly, summoning is the accessibility to get through hard areas in FromSoft games (not saying it's good accessibility, mind you). Summons that won't die in one hit basically trivialize most single-enemy boss fight since their AI spazzes out because it's not meant to fight 2 opponents at once.
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I'm starting a new character for the dlc and i have to say they did improve the quests compared to the launch version. They added a lot of markers on the map to make them easier to follow.
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Don't blame them after the obscure parts of Dark Souls in the console era where people had no idea how to catch a ride with the Giant Crow back to the undead asylum, and trade items via Snuggly at the bird's nest. Just one of many examples.
Tbf both of those are completely optional. But to continue tbf, the lord souls are damn near impossible to find if you don't have the golden fog gate locations memorized / didn't find them before the lordvessel in the first place.
Still my favorite soulslike tho lol
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Many players would say he failed on that with some of the NPC side quests already. The only one I thought was weird to follow using just what the game tells me was Millicent's, and specifically the final part of the quest. You have to kill a thing in a specific location that isn't really obvious, and then you have to reload the area again for a summon sign to appear (which even when you know where it is can be hard to see where it is). If not for that (or if there was some kind of fucking clue in the room or dialogue from the previous segment) I wouldn't have needed to use the wiki or a guide for any of them. As far as his games go, ER is the best in this regard, IMO.
FromSoft... how the fuck am I supposed to know that I'm supposed to go to a single random point of grace and pick a dialogue option to talk to a doll... not once... but MULTIPLE TIMES in a row while nothing happens before the quest finally progresses.
Seriously it's the bizarrely obscure stuff like this, or expecting that after every single boss I'll just randomly wander the entire world and talk to everyone just in case they moved or have something new to say. Drives me up the wall. I like that FromSoft is okay with you missing content so they shut up and get out of the way but some of these quests are cryptic as hell.
Shockingly great attitude for a game studio at a time when so many games are shipped buggy as hell and unfinished
Disclaimer: I did read it.
Is it just most players of these games that use guides or like all games? If it’s all games, I find that fascinating.
I absolutely hate needing to look anything up, and I get super upset with myself when I don’t think of the convoluted solution or discover the hidden quest on my own. I shouldn’t, sure, but always have. Since getting stuck in the vine forest in illusions of Gaia on SNES (think of the korok forest in breath of the wild, or the woods to Canada in the South Park games -wrong turn reset), and needing my older sister, who didn’t game, to navigate it for me, I’ve always wanted to solve it myself.
I mean I look stuff up if I really get stuck, or if I’m not sure the game has “missable” stuff (which I absolutely hate, because I’m not gunna play a game through again in most cases to make different choices; too many games I haven’t played for that to be desirable), but I hate doing it and don’t internally understand why you’d want to, I suppose.
Like I’m not judging anyone who does, those guides totally exist for a reason.. I just have never understood the print guide or super detailed walkthrough thing, because it’s the opposite of how I like games. I always wondered who they were made for.
I think it chases a different goal. Guideless chases the experience and struggle, guided chases the power fantasy and complete victory/domination over all challenges. Both are valid I think, but I'm a very strict guideless type of player in all games.
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