Elden Ring

[BeepBoo]

It absolutely was. You're just choosing to try to assume it wasn't. My man talking about balance issues being new in a From Software game do you even know what pre nerf butterfly shield did in Dark Souls 1? LOL.

Your whole post comes off as a salt mine because you don't remember game mechanics from years ago but if you really think Elden Ring is some far away design philosophy from Souls then I question if you even played them. Or you just like the sound of your own hyperbole so much you can't help but keep spamming it.

Stop attempting to invalidate my experiences in all these games like I don't know wtf I'm talking about. I do.

Point blank, in past games, I could go pure strength builds and be just fine in terms of effectiveness and have little to no issues on bosses. Again, even if something cheesy made it EASIER or one shot stuff, that's besides the point. I could STILL manage to kill any and every boss in the game with my glass cannon strength builds within a few attempts. I can no longer do that, and I know the reasons why.

So... what is your point exactly? That I should have to change my build style and desires to evolve with the game? Fuck that noise.

If I could do it in EVERY PAST GAME, it should be viable and not a complete pain in the ass in this one. As it stands, playing that way and that style in this game makes it artificially harder for... absolutely no rhyme or reason.

[Tech614]

Melee isn't as strong because bosses have less downtime between attacks post bloodborne/sekiro. So you never really get time to chain attack with a big weapon. The ranged aspect of magic is stronger than ever because of this and you can even combine that with torrent

If anything outside of a few outliers, Elden Ring has way less aggro bosses in DS3/Bloodborne so not really. Elden Ring makes heavy use of delay animations on attacks like Sekiro or Orphan of Kos did, that's not really aggressive bosses though and there are still plenty of windows to attack almost anything and a ton of attacks that can simply be avoided just by jumping leading directly into a jumping attack. Maliketh is the only thing close to a typical bloodborne boss in Elden Ring if I'm being completely honest.

Again magic is more mindless but this has always been the case. Playing from range will naturally always be easier then having to learn punish windows in melee. This is true in every single Dark Souls game and Demon's Souls. This didn't magically(pun intended) become a thing with Elden Ring and someone spouting hyperbole that it did tells me they either never tried magic in those games, never played those games or have a bad memory.

[Jastall]

Again, the discrepancy between "powerful" melee builds and "just fine" melee builds in the past wasn't as big as it is now. Now it seems like there's only a few strong melee builds that all revolve around some cheese or status effects like bleed/frost. Normal large whack and roll builds are utter trash tier, whereas before they were the status quo experience.


It absolutely doesn't. I've harped on this before, so I won't go through the whole rant, but from boss design, to boss attack tracking, to input delay (which people now speculate is related to input scanning to alter enemy behavior), to dodge being on key up, to big weapon animations being slowed way down and also not being properly rewarding on the damage front for how risky they are... especially versus other cheesy things like bleed or frost... normal melee builds are just pathetic and only get more pathetic the bigger and clunkier your weapon.

I never had any issue being a 2h colossal sword user before, and my first play-through was hell, to the point where I gave up and started using fucking stupid mimic tear and/or sleazy co-op.

The enemies, and bosses in particular, really do seem designed with countering melee in mind, at least most of them are. Most hardly even react to the player using magic, some will dodge spells like Pebble but they're nowhere as reactive as they are when the player is in melee with them where they're use their full arsenal of moves.

I've heard nightmares of fighting Ulcerated Tree Spirit in close quarters. I got to the one in the Mountaintop of the Giants catacomb. ezgame oneshot by just staying at range and bombarding it, and I'm not even using the patented OP shit like 0 FP cost physic+laser beam. But being in melee with this guy looks like an exercise in complete frustration and camera nightmares. Thanks but no thanks, I'll fight big mobs the hard way when From learns to implement a less shit camera.

Same for Morgott. He's a well designed boss with highly varied attacks and timers, going from slow to fast in an instant. A fairly hard learning experience for melee... or stay at range and all he'll do is throw super telegraphed spears and sometimes close in half-heartedly.

Again, it's not necessarily the balance that I'm throwing into question. Some builds being more powerful than others in an RPG is hardly breaking news. But the combat AI and design seems laser focused on dunking melee players with a variety of fuck-yous like double Crucibles, while ranged attacks are hardly punished at all except by the fastest enemies. With bows sucking completely and utterly (why even have them in the game if you're so determined on making them useless in most situations, From?) that means magic is the default easy mode, but it doesn't feel that satisfying which is why I went more battlemage type even if it's clearly a lot less efficient. But at least it means that when I'm done fighting the controls and camera, I can switch to safer casting.

[korijenkins]

Started running into the tedious duo boss fights. Duo gargoyles weren't so bad since the second one isn't active at first but the poison and heavy attack spam was still annoying. Duo Tree Sentinel was a nice bit of jousting I suppose, although they make the Draconic one that comes later look easy.

Duo Crucible Knights, tho? Man, fuck that fight. I ended up killing them by running around like a coward for 5 minutes easily, firing a few glintstone pebbles at them and then running ad nauseum. One was left and I could finally enjoy the fight, except I played super defensively since dying meant wasting 5+ more minutes poking the spear one to death again, and deciding to come back later meant running the basilisk+chariot oneshot gauntlet again and screw that.

Armor looks cool at least. But what an unfun, tedious fight. Seems it's the classic From Soft approach of "this enemy if fun to fight as a duel and clearly designed as such. But what if there were two??" Answer is, it's harder but higher difficulty does not equal higher quality.

A major issue with this game and a reason I view anyone giving it a straight up 10/10 as a total hack is the range in quality of the boss fights. Some are comically easy to the point of not being fun. Others are "hard" in that they cram in so much bullshit with windows to attack/pot that are miniscule and sometimes don't even happen, and a few really well-designed ones.

The boss fights are basically either easy jokes, stupid mechanics being spammed to prevent you from doing anything, duo fights that shouldn't exist because they end up becoming spamfests by the bosses, or well-designed fights. I enjoyed Astel, Elden Beast, Godrick, Malenia (to an extent). Absolutely hated every duo fight and and Maliketh.

A major issue with the fights as well is how easy they immediately become as soon as you give the dumb AI something else to focus on. Summon 5 shield skeletons, fight instantly over because you can just nuke without repercussion. It's a sign of a poor fight design imo.

[omeomorfismo]

I'm more talking about the relative power magic seems to have over melee. Even if it's not "as powerful" as the ultimate cheese builds in previous games, melee (specifically 2 handing chunky weapons) got WAY weaker, so magic feels incredibly ridiculous by comparison.


Yes, but melee wasn't always utter dogshit. It is now, so the fact that magic still gets to be faceroll while melee seems to be hardmode is kinda infuriating to someone like me who typically hates magic.

thats not something balanceable, ranged would be always superior, thats not something that could ever change...

[RobertoCarlos]

If anything outside of a few outliers, Elden Ring has way less aggro bosses in DS3/Bloodborne so not really. Elden Ring makes heavy use of delay animations on attacks like Sekiro or Orphan of Kos did, that's not really aggressive bosses though and there are still plenty of windows to attack almost anything and a ton of attacks that can simply be avoided just by jumping leading directly into a jumping attack. Maliketh is the only thing close to a typical bloodborne boss in Elden Ring if I'm being completely honest.

Again magic is more mindless but this has always been the case. Playing from range will naturally always be easier then having to learn punish windows in melee. This is true in every single Dark Souls game and Demon's Souls. This didn't magically(pun intended) become a thing with Elden Ring and someone spouting hyperbole that it did tells me they either never tried magic in those games, never played those games or have a bad memory.

You look at the cheese melee builds and 90% of them are weapon art/Ashes of war spam to stagger. It does feel like 100% melee isn't as viable as in the past and you need to work in some ranged or a summon into the build by design

[BeepBoo]

thats not something balanceable, ranged would be always superior, thats not something that could ever change...

It is. Make range damage do dogshit. Make it have no tracking so you have to aim, etc. But I digress. That's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in at least not feeling like heavy 2h melee is the worlds' largest liability.

Past souls games felt like you could beat any boss by just having reflexes and a proper main stat/scaling weapon combo because every boss had issues tracking and had ample room for punishing attacks of all varieties (not just jump/roll r1 spam). It didn't matter what you used. About the only thing that really sucked were sword and shield builds because shields did nothing to counter boss attacks. You'd get staggered immediately no matter what.

[Jastall]

A major issue with this game and a reason I view anyone giving it a straight up 10/10 as a total hack is the range in quality of the boss fights. Some are comically easy to the point of not being fun. Others are "hard" in that they cram in so much bullshit with windows to attack/pot that are miniscule and sometimes don't even happen, and a few really well-designed ones.

The boss fights are basically either easy jokes, stupid mechanics being spammed to prevent you from doing anything, duo fights that shouldn't exist because they end up becoming spamfests by the bosses, or well-designed fights. I enjoyed Astel, Elden Beast, Godrick, Malenia (to an extent). Absolutely hated every duo fight and and Maliketh.

A major issue with the fights as well is how easy they immediately become as soon as you give the dumb AI something else to focus on. Summon 5 shield skeletons, fight instantly over because you can just nuke without repercussion. It's a sign of a poor fight design imo.

Yeah, I hear you. I enjoyed Godrick, Magritt/Morgott, Renalla ph2, Radahn, Godfrey (the spirit, haven't gotten to the man himself), some of the Evergaol duels before I figured out each and every single one of them came back as normal mobs, there's a bunch of good bosses here... but there's also a bunch of unfun shit like Revenants, cat statues and any and all gank/duo fights even if some are less bad than others. Mind this has been true of every From Soft games, even their best games RE boss design (IMO Sekiro and DS3) have had their shares of reuses and stinkers. Can't win them all when every game has so many bosses.

And indeed, as an addendum to what I said about ranged not being punished the AI also has a hard time dealing with several enemies. Well most of them, some foes are clearly smart enough to do so, for instance Crucible Knights have an attack when they start to swing at whatever's in front but actually do a 180 and smack you in the face while you're backstabbing. There's a tell so it's not bullshit which I like but still, most enemies are very exploitable due to their AI being specifically designed to handle dueling the player in melee.

I don't think it a crippling flaw or anything. But I do think it a flaw that in a game with so many possible builds, it some feel unaccounted for by the devs in terms of designing counters to them. They're super focused on making melee duels harder than ever but that's it. A big strength of Sekiro is that it basically had one build and the entire game is designed around it, allowing all enemies to be tailor made to your moveset. This IMO leads to far more satisfying fights, even if at the detriment of customizability. And of course when they do throw a boss that breaks the mold like Demon of Hatred, oh boy does it feel out of place.

[hellhamster]

LOL. Some dude just beat the game and all major bosses with only butt stomps.

[Sorrior]

I started a new character with the intent of going magic this time around... and are you fucking kidding me? This game is an entirely different experience with fucking OP assed magic. Margit? First try with basically no dodging and only FP potions. Godrick? Same shit. Open world clearing? Glintstone arc says every enemy or group of enemies is a joke.

What the fuck is wrong with fromsoft? Where is the balance?

Fun? Also magics traditionzlly op in many settings. If anything most games downplay it in the name of balance

[omeomorfismo]

It is. Make range damage do dogshit. Make it have no tracking so you have to aim, etc. But I digress. That's not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in at least not feeling like heavy 2h melee is the worlds' largest liability.

Past souls games felt like you could beat any boss by just having reflexes and a proper main stat/scaling weapon combo because every boss had issues tracking and had ample room for punishing attacks of all varieties (not just jump/roll r1 spam). It didn't matter what you used. About the only thing that really sucked were sword and shield builds because shields did nothing to counter boss attacks. You'd get staggered immediately no matter what.

Thats not balancing, thats just needing more time and hits to kill, the safeness of ranged remain exactly the same....or you are making ranged resources simply not enough, making then melee compelling....

[yasiru]

…

Or you just like the sound of your own hyperbole so much you can't help but keep spamming it.

Now that is some pot calling the kettle black stuff right there if I have ever seen some.

[Jastall]

Thats not balancing, thats just needing more time and hits to kill, the safeness of ranged remain exactly the same....or you are making ranged resources simply not enough, making then melee compelling....

I don't think nerfing range into the ground is a good idea, if anything bows need a buff as they've been useless as anything but baiting tools since DS1. But I do think the enemies should be designed around ranged combat about as much as around melee, given that it's a prominent build option. Most foes will, depending on capabilities, either block or try to strike you first if you bumrush them in melee. If you use magic those with shields usually block for all the good it does them, but most others just blindly march into your OP lazor of death. The enemies are designed around counterplaying melee but not magic, again save for the exceptions who are so aggressive they close the distance before you can cast. More enemies should try to dodge, use spell wards, that sorta thing.

There's no silver bullet here of course, actually implementing that sort of design takes time, effort and proper balancing so as not to revert the situation. But it just feels weird to have the game be so meticulously crafted around giving melee a proper challenge with many and varied attack patterns and ranged just ignores most of that.

[Fencers]

A well equally-balanced game is deeply uninteresting. Usually bad game design too.

Player desire does not have to be met by the gameplay expression at all.

[Tech614]

A well equally-balanced game is deeply uninteresting. Usually bad game design too.

Player desire does not have to be met by the gameplay expression at all.

Especially in a mostly single player game. "Balancing" a game often just means "removing fun", sometimes its necessary in MP games but in SP games you should just let it rock. I mean yea technically ER is "MP" but nobody is taking the MP competitive enough to warrant balance changes. And hell since the discussion is about ranged magic, ranged magic is mostly worthless in the pvp aspect of the game anyways.

[molliewoof]

If this isn’t game of the year/gen/decade then I’m anxious to see what could unseat it. Even with its flaws I’d call it a 10/10 without hesitation.

After 160 hours I’ve put it aside, and really look forward to the DLC. It can’t come too soon.

Agreed, there's just too much good for it not to be.

I'm going full addict with it at the moment

[ONCHEhap]

Yes, but melee wasn't always utter dogshit. It is now, so the fact that magic still gets to be faceroll while melee seems to be hardmode is kinda infuriating to someone like me who typically hates magic.

Magic was always supposed to be the easy mode while melee was always supposed to be kind of the standard difficulty. It's up to you to decide if you want to play the easy mode or not.

If you chose to use magic without limiting yourself, you don't really get to complain about the game being too easy, same as if you decide to play solo melee you don't really get to complain about the game being too hard.

The game is as easy or hard as you want it to be, you can't blame it for your own choices

As it stands, melee is really fun and well balanced, with the exception of fighting stuff like double watchdogs. But even most duo bosses are perfectly feasible as a melee character

[omeomorfismo]

I don't think nerfing range into the ground is a good idea, if anything bows need a buff as they've been useless as anything but baiting tools since DS1. But I do think the enemies should be designed around ranged combat about as much as around melee, given that it's a prominent build option. Most foes will, depending on capabilities, either block or try to strike you first if you bumrush them in melee. If you use magic those with shields usually block for all the good it does them, but most others just blindly march into your OP lazor of death. The enemies are designed around counterplaying melee but not magic, again save for the exceptions who are so aggressive they close the distance before you can cast. More enemies should try to dodge, use spell wards, that sorta thing.

There's no silver bullet here of course, actually implementing that sort of design takes time, effort and proper balancing so as not to revert the situation. But it just feels weird to have the game be so meticulously crafted around giving melee a proper challenge with many and varied attack patterns and ranged just ignores most of that.

the main problem is that designing against range is still designing against melee, until you want to implement that 1 or 2 stuffs that are so specific that become stale after the 3° boss...
thats just a not solvable problem...

[Fencers]

the main problem is that designing against range is still designing against melee, until you want to implement that 1 or 2 stuffs that are so specific that become stale after the 3° boss...
thats just a not solvable problem...

To add to what you are saying here;

There is a way to solve this by using symmetrical elements. Such as all player options or encounters having both a ranged and melee necessity. Many games do this already such as a game where an encounter has an airborne enemy only reached by the player's ranged option but is immune to ranged at X point requiring the player to engage in melee.

This is a pretty common design. Especially in design templates where the player has limited or no control over their character loadout or "build", so to speak. Limited linear game design.

Nothing wrong with limited linear gameplay- Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Last of Us, Horizon Forbidden West, Tomb Raider, Moster Hunter, and others use varying degrees of limited linear game design to great effect. Most MMORPGs in the Post-Warcraft style, "theme park MMOs", are strictly limited linear.

Again, a great tool to use in making games. Though it is merely a design and philosophical choice on behalf of the game creators. There are game design elements that go against this though- such as Path of Exile, Diablo 2, Black Desert, Cities Skylines, and Elden Ring. Genre doesn't even matter to the design model.

The design of Elden Ring is perfectly fine with allowing the player to beat the game at level 1 in 20 minutes as level 999 in a thousand hours. From Soft do not care if you ever use a summon, find the illusory walls, or run into a random lobster hiding in the mud to grab a butterfly.

From Software doesn't care a wit if a player totally 'solves' Elden Ring.

[BeepBoo]

Magic was always supposed to be the easy mode while melee was always supposed to be kind of the standard difficulty.

Sure. Then standard difficulty in this game is harder than it has been in other souls games and I dislike that. And it's harder for reasons I think are bad.

same as if you decide to play solo melee you don't really get to complain about the game being too hard.

Except I do for reasons stated above. I've not had as much trouble being a 2 hand colossal weapon user as I have in this game. Damage output sucks, windup sucks, trading sucks, bosses are heavily geared away from what a greatsword needs, etc.

As it stands, melee is really fun and well balanced, with the exception of fighting stuff like double watchdogs. But even most duo bosses are perfectly feasible as a melee character

You act like all melee offers the same experience. That's definitely not the case. My arcane bleed build friends have absolutely no problems. A few power stance colossal builds also actually get to do meaningful damage, even if they're just boring jump attack spamming.

Again. I don't really care what's successful or not. I care about the specific archetype I favor being as effective as it has always been, and due to a smattering of reasons, it's not.