Board 8 > Hot take: Elden Ring would be better without a leveling system.

(+) Yeah! (+)

What does the leveling system afford us?

1. Difficulty modulation; we can stay level 1 and unarmed and naked and kill all the bosses nohit 1hp at a time, or we can grind indefinitely if we run into a brick wall and one-shot every boss
2. Character customization; if we level up different stats we'll have different characters
3. A sense of progression; you are stronger at the end of the game than the beginning

What don't I like about the leveling system?

1. Changes feel extremely incremental. Like if my defense stats go from 84 to 85, that doesn't feel like a Big Deal. Very rarely does a levelup feel "fun."
2. Open world means you sometimes find an area you're over/underleveled for; I haven't played enough of the game for this to be a problem yet but everyone agrees that this happens because of course it does, and they just throw up their hands and say that's an attribute of open-world games with levelup systems.
3. The game doesn't tell you what level you're supposed to be. If you keep dying to a boss, should you go grind? You can kill the stuff around the boss so you're probably intended to be able to kill the boss. If you overlevel for the boss you're probably going to overlevel for the stuff around the boss. "If the boss is too hard go grind" doesn't address this.
4. Also grinding sucks. Like that's cliche but it bears repeating.

The solution imo is to make elements ridiculously important, Pokemon-style. Maybe your starting weapon is an ice spear, but the nearest boss is an ice guy. So you look around a little bit and find a fire hammer. Once you learn how to use the hammer, you've gone from doing 50% damage to 200% damage to the boss.

You gradually get "stronger" not because you can bonk bigger numbers out of the enemy, but because you gain the ability to answer every situation. But if you want to, you can kill the enemy 1HP at a time with the worst possible weapon.

Also this is an opportunity to flavor the elements. Maybe fire is the "anger" element so it has lots of big-damage weapons and armor that gives you strength boosts for taking damage. Maybe wind is about moving fast so you've got lots of daggers and spears but not so many broadswords or axes.

That's the version of ER I wanna play. You're always at level 1 but your character gets more versatile over the course of the game.

Brother, you control the leveling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRnyt-5F8Cs

you listed the primary reason for the leveling system at the very start of your post and then ignored it for the remainder

Difficulty modulation

Yes, a game with no leveling designed perfectly for your skill, ability, knowledge, and dedication would be amazing for you

but you are not the only player

there are players with greater amounts of those attributes that would become bored by your perfect game

there are players with smaller amounts of those attributes that would become discouraged by your perfect game

The (possible) problem with your solution is that it prevents players from developing a preferred playstyle. If the best strategy for every boss is "Find and use the correct weapon", then if the weapon in question is of a type that you don't like using (say, a massive sword with a long windup would annoy me, others might love that and hate using daggers that deal rapid chip damage), it's going to alienate people who like setting up a character a particular way.

Now, you might think "forcing people out of their comfort zone" is a good thing, but I expect it would get a lot of backlash from existing soulsborneringwhatever fans, who seem to be very keen on builds, especially if it was a From release and not just another third-party soulslike.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Brother, you control the leveling.

That's the thing, though, I shouldn't. Like if I go kill a boss and feel good about it, and then find out after the fact that I "should've" been at a lower level, I will retroactively feel worse about killing the boss. Having the option to go grind sucks. If I take it then I'm cheapening this boss and weakening all the other stuff balanced around the same power level. If I don't take it then I'm wondering if I'm underleveled or whatever. And when part of the appeal of the games is supposed to be the difficulty, it's important to know what the appropriate difficulty is.

Without leveling I wouldn't have even played the game.

NeatoAnAccount posted...

part of the appeal of the games is supposed to be the difficulty

not sure this is true

banananor posted...

you listed the primary reason for the leveling system at the very start of your post and then ignored it for the remainder

my proposed system offers even more difficulty modulation; you can multiply your damage by 4 just by swapping weapons. and it would be really easy to have little heart piece things for hp/mp/stamina if you want

BlackMageJawa posted...

The (possible) problem with your solution is that it prevents players from developing a preferred playstyle. If the best strategy for every boss is "Find and use the correct weapon", then if the weapon in question is of a type that you don't like using (say, a massive sword with a long windup would annoy me, others might love that and hate using daggers that deal rapid chip damage), it's going to alienate people who like setting up a character a particular way.

Now, you might think "forcing people out of their comfort zone" is a good thing, but I expect it would get a lot of backlash from existing soulsborneringwhatever fans, who seem to be very keen on builds, especially if it was a From release and not just another third-party soulslike.

I hear you, but you wouldn't be forced to swap weapons if you didn't want to. You're basically choosing whether you want to be loyal to your playstyle or whether you want to momentarily cheese the boss.

Which sounds very similar to "you don't have to level up" but this would really resolve the issue of what the "intended" experience is and it wouldn't force you to be OP until the rest of the game caught up. Modulating difficulty with temporary buffs and debuffs is better than modulating it with permanent character improvement.

The open world is large enough that you really shouldn't ever need to grind. If you're stuck on a boss just go somewhere else because there's probably an area you have not explored yet.

Sure some bosses are too easy when you're overleveled but there's over 200 bosses in this game so I think I prefer that they're not all crazy difficult.

So if a boss is too easy just be happy and move on. It sounds like you're worrying about gamer cred or something. Would you feel the same way if you beat every boss in Zelda in 1 try or are you only getting upset about Elden Ring because of the difficulty reputation?

NeatoAnAccount posted...

I hear you, but you wouldn't be forced to swap weapons if you didn't want to.

You aren't forced to level if you don't want to.

ive put like 60 or 70 hours in since i bought it at the year end sale and i've not spent a single second grinding. if i am having a hard time with an area, i just leave and go somewhere else

it sounds like you're making up a problem for youself

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/3/8/AAZU_LAAEF5i.jpg

This is certainly a topic

I beat the Tree Sentinel without any grinding, not sure why leveling matter nods

i haven't played any fromsoft games but the points in the OP make sense to me. i'd definitely be disappointed if i found a boss only after i was overleveled for it and it was pushover and that meant i missed out on the chance to enjoy the fight at a fair difficulty level.

Dels posted...

i haven't played any fromsoft games but the points in the OP make sense to me.

Not to be rude but yes this is the only case where OP's points would make sense

Dels posted...

i haven't played any fromsoft games but the points in the OP make sense to me. i'd definitely be disappointed if i found a boss only after i was overleveled for it and it was pushover and that meant i missed out on the chance to enjoy the fight at a fair difficulty level.

Honestly the probability of this actually happening against the actual main bosses is extremely small. Maybe the mini bosses in the caves, sure, if you miss one, but the game definitely has a "route" to it to a certain extent

There's a reason why Elden Ring was the introduction to FromSoft games for many people. There was an influx of new fans who couldn't get into the previous games because they were "too difficult".

I have my own issues with Elden Ring but I wouldn't actually wish it to change since that would just block out all of those folks. Which is just rude.

Quit being a gatekeeper

This just sounds worse in every way.

NeatoAnAccount posted...

You gradually get "stronger" not because you can bonk bigger numbers out of the enemy, but because you gain the ability to answer every situation. But if you want to, you can kill the enemy 1HP at a time with the worst possible weapon.

Also this is an opportunity to flavor the elements. Maybe fire is the "anger" element so it has lots of big-damage weapons and armor that gives you strength boosts for taking damage. Maybe wind is about moving fast so you've got lots of daggers and spears but not so many broadswords or axes.

That's the version of ER I wanna play. You're always at level 1 but your character gets more versatile over the course of the game.

You want to play Mega Man, not Elden Ring.

You can swap to a suboptimal weapon if you want in Elden Ring :)

Sounds to me like OP wants to play Mega Man instead.

NeatoAnAccount posted...

my proposed system offers even more difficulty modulation; you can multiply your damage by 4 just by swapping weapons.

What if a player doesn't know where the 4x weapon is? What if they're so bad that they actually need an 8x weapon?

and it would be really easy to have little heart piece things for hp/mp/stamina if you want

You're slowly realizing you need to add a leveling system here. You'll have more epiphanies the more deeply you get into the weeds

So you don't like having areas you aren't appropriately leveled for and instead you want areas that you aren't appropriately geared for

Leveling up is fun.

Your idea is terrible. You turn encounters from sandboxes with thousands of viable solutions, into mindless one-solution-only "puzzles". The starkest example of this difference is DMC combat vs DmC combat. Pokemon combat isn't good.

Your 1st problem is fair. A good idea there would be to divide leveling and stats 10. So you would level up from 1-15 instead of 1-150. Strength would go from 1-6 instead of 1-60. A level would come as often as finding a golden seed or something.

But there already golden seeds for that rare and satisfying boost of power, same with finding items and such, so it's not like the game is missing that feeling. The frequent leveling is more designed to match the rhythm of going between bonfires.

Chained Echoes does a more limited leveling system and it's just fine.

Problems 2 and 3 are extremely good, actually. The game teaches in it's first boss fight that you decide your own difficulty, and you never need to grind. It's the thing that makes Elden Ring so much better than other open world RPGs and the linear Souls.

4 is not actually a problem because again, you never need to grind.

NeatoAnAccount posted...

Also this is an opportunity to flavor the elements.

Have you played this game lol

There's an element called Madness

NeatoAnAccount posted...

Like if I go kill a boss and feel good about it, and then find out after the fact that I "should've" been at a lower level, I will retroactively feel worse about killing the boss.

The game never tells you what level you should be at, which is something you specifically complained about. Now you know why.

This is a terrible topic.

I could be on board with stats going from 1-10 instead of 1-100 but you are just making a different game at that point.

Every other idea would at best make it a completely different game and at worst make it a way worse game

Dels posted...

i haven't played any fromsoft games but the points in the OP make sense to me. i'd definitely be disappointed if i found a boss only after i was overleveled for it and it was pushover and that meant i missed out on the chance to enjoy the fight at a fair difficulty level.

Yeah, it doesnt make sense. Elden ring has a hundred bosses. You arent supposed to fight all of them. Randomly stumbling on some that are harder or easier depending on the area is the entire point

NeatoAnAccount posted...

That's the version of ER I wanna play. You're always at level 1 but your character gets more versatile over the course of the game.

You can do this in Elden Ring though?