Current Events > Playing through elden ring and its cool but I have one complaint

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't think the godskin duo was "fun", but I also feel like my game's AI must have gotten completely dicked when I fought them because they were really easy. I did it on my first or second attempt and the big fatty would always stay away while I was 1-1'ing the tall dude. Based on how much anger people have for the boss I can only assume that wasn't supposed to happen.

BurmesePenguin posted...

I don't think the godskin duo was "fun", but I also feel like my game's AI must have gotten completely dicked when I fought them because they were really easy. I did it on my first or second attempt and the big fatty would always stay away while I was 1-1'ing the tall dude. Based on how much anger people have for the boss I can only assume that wasn't supposed to happen.

The Duo is where I finally gave up for a year. Just terrible padding boss design. If it was just kill them both once it would be fine, but having to kill them over and over again for the main health bar to go down was atrocious. Despite having Radahn's armor set and +10 Blasphemous sword, getting 3 shotted with high VIT amidst the madness they bring was just stupid and really hurt my overall experience.

A year later, I tried again, died 2 times, was about to give up and said eh one more, then managed to do it with relatively no problem. It really seems like the RNG of how they do their moves matter more than the actual skill you have. A real mark of shit design.

I havent played since a little bit since I got to the snowy area >_>. Probably been a year now.

The end game is just poorly balanced

Those Zamor guys at the beginning of the Mountaintops are tougher than literally anything else in the area going forward.

Random zombie enemies with torches can kill a fully armored high health character faster than early bosses can

99% of people would not be able to figure out how to dodge waterfowl on their own after they patched bloodhound step. And it instantly kills almost all builds

my big concern with elden ring is how often they go to the frame 1 response well.

basically there are some attacks that enemies are programmed to dodge or punish. godskin skinny has the fireball whenever you heal. the definitive video about it is here, and hey it's all of 3 minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbuGGnntRA

what i'm wondering is how prevalent it really is. i think the teleporting enemies use it in some capacity and i think they're probably the worst enemy, conceptually.

If you're not fighting field bosses on horseback what are you even doing. :D

also wow people just let torrent get hurt.

Final boss had a crappy 'Four Kings' hit box

i view the final boss as the four kings condensed into a single king and taken to its logical conclusion.

DocileOrangeCup posted...

A lot of the bosses are just straight up bad. Not even that it's difficult, it's just tedious and feels unfair. I'm on commander niall and he's like the 10th boss I've felt just isn't fun. It feels like they ran out of ideas for good boss design so they just started throwing a bunch of dumb stuff at you instead.

Im enjoying the exploration and visuals and all that, but man I'm rarely like "this boss was cool".

TC, have I got the video for you!

https://youtu.be/UfwXf7AisAs

Also, I don't know if it is this video, but the content creator explains that bosses are meant to be poise broken, and a large part of the issue is that there's no poise bar in ER, unlike Sekiro, so the player has no idea if the boss is close to being broken.

There's obviously other issues, like unavoidable damage, cheese animation canceling and player animation reading (FU you know who), but it's the lack of a poise bar that hurts the most.

Of fucking COURSE.

Another game I thought I liked is actually fucking shit and garbage for a huge list of reasons.

Because OF FUCKING COURSE it is.

BurmesePenguin posted...

I don't think the godskin duo was "fun", but I also feel like my game's AI must have gotten completely dicked when I fought them because they were really easy. I did it on my first or second attempt and the big fatty would always stay away while I was 1-1'ing the tall dude. Based on how much anger people have for the boss I can only assume that wasn't supposed to happen.

When did you fight them? They were nerfed a lot.

Shamino posted...

When did you fight them? They were nerfed a lot.

It was a few months ago, so that might be it.

WizardPowers posted...

Those Zamor guys at the beginning of the Mountaintops are tougher than literally anything else in the area going forward.

I might accept this if the player, if they explored and didn't just rush the game, knew their pattern well before getting there.

Gwynevere posted...

Elden Ring kind of misses the mark when it comes to what made Dark Souls bosses so fun. They had patterns that rewarded observation and patient play, with consistent openings you could learn. Elden Ring on the other hand has a few bosses that read inputs and will punish a heal on the first frame, as well as attack chains that can randomly continue for an additional attack when you thought you had an opening.

Boss design like that is cool and all, but the player character isn't really well equipped to handle it. ER still has the kind of commit to your attack and get punished if you whiff type gameplay, but with hyper aggressive bosses. Compare this to Bloodborne, where the bosses tend to bare down on you hard, but you have a very good dodge and the ability to gain back your health to compensate, as well as most weapons having very quick movesets with little downtime

I still love ER. They did a lot of things very right that the series needed but yeah the boss design feels way overtuned compared to your character

The bosses were made hyper aggressive because they expect the player to use ashes, which does well equip the player to handle it.

voldothegr8 posted...

The bosses were made hyper aggressive because they expect the player to use ashes, which does well equip the player to handle it.

That, and all bosses are still very much learnable and soloable and can even be reliably perfected if you practice enough.

voldothegr8 posted...

The bosses were made hyper aggressive because they expect the player to use ashes, which does well equip the player to handle it.

Naw, it's because they made Sekiro and continued that boss design into a Dark Souls environment.

ellis123 posted...

That is still extrinsic motivation. It doesn't matter if you want it, the definition of the words doesn't change.

You didn't make an argument here so what do you expect me to do except call you a goof.

https://youtu.be/WDRfdfempJw

Also, regarding Malenia, the heal on hit even through shields feels like a glitch that they just ran with and kept in the game. If they wanted to discourage shields, they should have just given her a guard break move. Plus she can heal off dead summons if she's still aggroed on them before they despawn

Feels mega jank

Gwynevere posted...

Plus she can heal off dead summons if she's still aggroed on them before they despawn

I mean, the player could do the same with dead enemies before they ragdoll in Bloodborne.

BurmesePenguin posted...

I mean, the player could do the same with dead enemies before they ragdoll in Bloodborne.

Yeah, and you can get a couple extra hits on the 4 kings health bar if you keep attacking a dying King. It feels like some weird quirk in their programming that has managed to carry over to each game, unless its intentional, in which case...why?

I generally had fun with Elden Ring, but started having way more fun when I got the Mimic Tear and the ability to inflict Scarlet Rot on bosses.

Fire Giant was a much smoother experience when simply existing was costing him the majority of his HP. Kinda like FF13's superboss going down mrow reliably to Poison than trying to maintain DPS against his insane output

Imo game was 10/10 until I beat the capital and ended up in the snow at which point it stopped being worth playing. All the bosses from then on felt a lot less like Sekiro or older souls games where you could succeed through learning and made you run around in circles for long amounts of time waiting for them to reveal an opening, or like, land on the same planet as you.

The bosses that strike me as particularly badly designed are the ulcerated tree spirits that you find in some dungeons, which are very clearly way too big for the rooms that they got put in.

They're constantly clipping through walls, you can't see shit because they're too big for the camera to see all of at once when they get close to you, they have a weird moveset that, again, you can't see because the camera is bad, and some of them even have scarlet rot just to make the experience that much worse.

There are a couple of them in the overworld, and those are actually fun fights because you can ride around on Torrent and there's space for both of you to maneuver. The ones in the dungeons are just bad, though.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

The bosses that strike me as particularly badly designed are the ulcerated tree spirits that you find in some dungeons, which are very clearly way too big for the rooms that they got put in.

They're constantly clipping through walls, you can't see shit because they're too big for the camera to see all of at once when they get close to you, they have a weird moveset that, again, you can't see because the camera is bad, and some of them even have scarlet rot just to make the experience that much worse.

There are a couple of them in the overworld, and those are actually fun fights because you can ride around on Torrent and there's space for both of you to maneuver. The ones in the dungeons are just bad, though.

The souls series has always had a tenuous relationship with large bosses and the camera. The tree spirits are definitely among the most egregious though, it feels like a crap shoot on if a certain attack will clip you or not. Plus they're so big that an attack can still have an active hitbox on you at the end of your roll depending on how they're moving

I think Elden Ring would have benefitted massively from having the Bloodborne sidestep as a default dodge. Bloodhound step makes getting aggressive with the bosses feel really good, and without having to even things with summons

the trick with bosses like the ulcerated tree spirits or even enemies like the revenants or the dogs or the big lions or the bears or the giant hands -- endure.

so, so much of their threat is solved when they can't stagger you out of drinking a flask, or out of attacking. heal through that slap combo.

I remember in Bloodborne I thought the camera in the Vicar Amelia boss fight was the fucking worst thing in the history of anime and I was just flabbergasted they reused the arena in the DLC without fixing anything about it.

Also regarding the tree spirit, while there are so fucking many of them they become obnoxious by the end, I actually didn't really mind the camera beyond the first one below the tutorial area dungeon. That room is so insanely small that putting one of them in there is just baffling, but the rest of the rooms you can find them in I thought they were big enough, if only just.

Gwynevere posted...

It's so fuckin good. They struck actual gold somehow being able to go from Dark Souls 2 to Bloodborne, which I consider basically flawless. It's a masterpiece

Yeah, but I did the Chalice Dungeons, so Ill probably hear chimes and see red spiders in my nightmares.

PraetorXyn posted...

Yeah, but I did the Chalice Dungeons, so Ill probably hear chimes and see red spiders in my nightmares.

I also did them for the platinum, and the defiled chalice Amygdala might be a good candidate for that hardest boss fights topic

BurmesePenguin posted...

It was a few months ago, so that might be it.

They nerfed all the multibosses a while back to be less aggressive so they aren't bombarding you all at once.

Gwynevere posted...

I also did them for the platinum, and the defiled chalice Amygdala might be a good candidate for that hardest boss fights topic

I remember having a lot of trouble with one of the beast bosses in one of them. It wasnt a redo of Dark Beast Paarl, but one of the lesser ones you have to fight multiple times.

The hellhound in the FRC Defiled Chalice is another candidate, since the modifiers mean it can one shot you,

There's like 6 bosses that repeat over 4 times because of all the caves and dungeons.