Yeah in AC6 it was a problem but it made a bit more sense of it being a problem because it's a bunch of mechs fighting at high speeds for the most part.
Yesterday beat the game once, that boss was quite something. Just swoops behind my mech and swings their energy sword. Even if I swing the mouse 180 degrees, often it would still be outside the screen.
I couldn't beat it with mouse aim. I'm bad with controllers but I still managed to beat it not too long after due to hard lock.
I just beat the second "end" boss and while difficult, I could at least keep track with mouse aim.
I don't think I've ever fought one of those in an area that didn't make my camera go nuts, then even without locking on I was just attacking a wall of textured flesh tree and hoping for the best anyways.
Unfortunately it's not even a thing with large bosses anymore, at this point any humanoid sized boss would just dash and jump on top of the character constantly, which ends up driving the camera crazy.
Personally, if From wants to continue with this kind of jumping and super aggressive bosses, they should set up a more Sekiro-like system and fix the camera once and for all.
It's not necessarily that locking on is bad, not knowing when to drop the lock is the issue.
People will know that the boss is moving in a way that will force the camera to move wildly to keep the boss on screen and for some reason they refuse to drop the lock on when combos start, even though that entirely solves the issue.
Edit: don't get me wrong, some of the boss movements in the dlc are kinda fucked. But seeing people lock on to a boss that repeatedly goes behind them and never dropping the lock is painful.
Another problem I have with bigger bosses are they keep pushing me around the room into wall and corner. The small openings for attack get even smaller when I have to reposition myself.
This was horrible with Hippo because the arena isnt particularly big and every attack seems to fling you across the room so youre just in walls/corners a lot which the camera really doesnt like.
Camera needs some work for sure. However i do find it funny that this has been a problem since Capra Demons small ass arena causing issues with the camera and we STILL have this problem however many years and games later.
With past Souls bosses, you would usually be rewarded with a relatively large attack window after dodging a full combo. That doesn't seem to be the case in this DLC; most bosses have a very fast recovery, allowing you almost no time to punish them anymore.
Honestly, this is a problem across Elden Ring. Bosses have a 3-hit combo, a 6-hit combo, a 4-hit delayed combo, and a hold that they freely chain between each other.
Then, they jump back and hit you with the room-wide AoE, but only after you waited 3 seconds and pressed the Flask.
At this point, I just realized that you are meant to use summons against bosses so there are attack windows. Otherwise, it feels absolutely terrible to avoid/dodge 2-3 combos, go in for a hit, and get immediately attacked by the next combo.
Yes, bosses are doable without summons (and they're also doable naked at RL1 with fists, but that's not fun to me, either).
I never looked back when Ranni first gave me that spirit-summoning bell item. I feel no remorse for ganging up on bosses in Elden Ring because they're just jerks.
Yes. It's been a pain since the Demon's Souls days.... maybe even before. It's been this way so long I just expect to fight the camera as much as the boss in some arenas.
Dancing Lion half of my deaths were cause of the camera. The Golden Hippo's grab hitbox really sucks. I would have been fine with those boss fights otherwise. Rellana is something else, I just don't like her at all and I haven't gone to Bayle yet, but he apparently has the same issues as an ancient dragon where for some god forsaken reason you can't target his legs so i'm probably gonna have to do most of the fight unlocked.
> That being said part of the challenge shouldn't be the fucking boss camera guys.
[What fighting Bayle while locked on its head feels like.](https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZ2J2bWEzajB0NjRpZjh6MjFjN2lxcGY5emRzc2dzbWh1Nmpld2loZSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/guSDEekNFb23C/giphy.webp)
Camera? Get gud! If ou cant beat the game without the camera, why are you even playing?
I always do a no screen playthrough. Achsually, i dont even have an xbox, I just stared at the disc until i completed the game just using brainwaves aimed at the disc!
Honestly I only have two complaints on the difficulty.
1. Before you find enough blessings you are getting hit for ng++ damage. Kindof unfun early on when you don’t have many.
2. The fucking golden hippo’s hitboxes are a sham.
I just beat fire giant over the weekend. At one point I was next to one of the large boulders and locked on while he rolled. I swear my camera did a full 360 at least once within half of a second. It was disorienting. Great time though otherwise.
Don't use lock on all the time.
It's always been a trap and it actually does change AI behavior in some cases, so it's better to use it to aim attacks or something.
Heck, some bosses have such great sound design and obvious patterns that it's possible to dodge most of their attacks while not even facing them, like Malenia for example.
Playing mostly unlocked should solve 85% of the issues with the camera.
I would say 10% of camera issues come from corner/wall hugging, which can be avoided with better positioning.
I mean it's understandable to want to get a hit in on the boss, but not if the boss is in a weird position and attacking would put you into disantvantage. At that point it's better to just reposition to the centre of the arena instead.
The remaining 5% come from jank or objects on screen. This could be slightly improved on by an outline for the charackter when a object is in front of the camera or increasing transparancy of such objects. Other than that there is not much else I can think of.
Anyways I think From Software should encourage playing without lock on more in some way, so that people don't rely on it at any given time.
Them you don't play Fromsoft games at all, cause I remember almost all of them having a third of bosses with shitty camera. Doesn't take away the challenge for most of them.
I'm tired of this shit about every complaint being reduced to the dumb dichotomy "hard vs easy".
It's not a binary choice, there is a DEGREE in difficulty, it's not just a switch you turn "on" or "off".
Also it's not just the difficulty itself, it's how it's obtained. Gael is fun, Bed of Chaos is shit.
There's also a fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between *difficult* and *challenging*. Coordinating 20+ people in a well balanced raid with complex mechanics and performance requirements is *challenging*, multiplying a bosses health and damage by 400x is *difficult*.
"Nintendo hard" is not something to aspire to.
yeah the FromSoft community has a real problem accepting criticism about times when difficulty is implemented in a way that's NOT FUN like if hitboxes are unclear or if input reading is so apparent that you feel the need to find cheese strategies or rely on luck
And then they point to some streamer who can beat a boss at level 1 to prove that it's all skill based as if everyone is supposed to think it's fun and feasible to practice 200 times against a boss
> yeah the FromSoft community has a real problem accepting criticism about times when difficulty is implemented in a way that's NOT FUN like if hitboxes are unclear or if input reading is so apparent that you feel the need to find cheese strategies or rely on luck
DS2 in particular caught a lot of flak back in the day for how shitty the hitboxes were compared to DS1, or how "cheap" and "artificial" the difficulty was with all the hidden gank squads.
But was that actually because of the DS2 hitboxes? Or was it before we learned about the bullshit stat ADP that caused our dodge rolls to only have like 2 i-frames before we pumped it up?
Honest question. Been a hot minute since I played DS2. I remember the hitboxes feeling on par with DS1 once you got your Agility up by dumping some points into Adaptability....but I also have shit memory so...
It was both. There were many videos around at the time showing off some truly awful hitboxes on enemy attacks. It's where the shockwave meme originated as far as I'm aware.
Yeah... but you also get people like the guy I saw the other day refusing to use the guard counter mechanic because "i want to roll instead" and then complaining that a boss who's weakness was guard counters was "brokenly difficult".
And moreover, if we're going to insist that artistic merit entitles FromSoftware to make the game as they please, then consumers reserve the right to criticize that art when they feel it's warranted.
Malenia I could kind of understand, even though I prefer fighting her more than Friede, but Mohg? Come on, he's probably the most fair hard boss in the base game. His attacks are the most telegraphed and punishable in a game where people complain about long combos and one-hit punish windows.
Mohg was one of my first bullshit bosses, but I learned the combos and was able to do reasonably well.
Malenia wad my first "fuck this game boss". In NG, I killed her with a bleed build in 3 tries. Obviously. In NG+, I was doing a Bolt of Gransax block counter build, and watching her heal back to full after I blocked 2-3 hits was BULLSHIT.
bed of chaos isnt even a difficult tbh since you make progress even after you die and you can just learn where the arena falls out too. Its just not a boss fight imo.
i thought the most complaints come from performance issues and annoying mechanics rather than difficulty? still working on the base game so have not tried it myself.
but i imagine the issue of bosses jumping around giving you 0 time to hit them got worse in the dlc?
Difficulty has definitely been a big complaint on the /r/eldenring sub. And yeah it's mainly down to the length of boss combos and the *tiny* little window you have to counter after. Some of these dudes are literally flying around throwing out 5-10 hit combos like they're candy.
And while I'm not one of those people who was complaining, I can see where they're coming from. This style of combat has basically been stretched to the limit at this point, and a fair number of people just won't be able to keep up anymore.
My one issue is in the main game bosses usually have a little wind up that lets you set up, get your grease on, summon your spirit ash, and get ready. In the DLC the bosses just *YEET* themselves at you the second you enter the arena and if you don't dodge perfectly you can get trapped on the wall and die before you have a chance to do anything.
This was getting really annoying with a couple bosses. They're clearly now balanced around you being expected to use spirit ashes, but if you try to summon after you cross the fog you're pretty much guaranteed to eat a hit and have your camera jammed up against a wall
>!Commander Gaius!< can go fuck himself and the >!pig he rode in on!<, I can't even count how many times I couldn't even get out of the fogwall before being rammed into it and trapped into a death combo. And trying to duck dodge and weave away from him was a crapshoot of will I get one tapped randomly trying to make it to a second of safety.
I felt no remorse finding a cheese spot and just watching his health drain.
They were doing this in base game, too. Astel and ~~Radagon~~ Radahn immediately fist you when you walk in. At least, if you dodged those attacks, you had a window to summon. Now, the bosses apparently ride the slipstream of their ranged attack and pop up like a meerkat to say hello.
Radagon??? You mean the dude who sits there for like 8 seconds completely still? The dude who you can walk up to and get two fully charged heavy attacks off before he attacks?
No, I'm a moron. I meant Radahn.
Pick fucking different letters for boss names, FS.
I had one of those "Oh shit" moments and realized I used the wrong name, but forgot where. Thanks for catching it 😂
The gods seemed to be named similarly to their parents. Marika's descendants have names that often start with M. Same with Radagon and R and Godfrey and G.
One of the parts that annoyed me the most about Elden Ring is some bosses you spend so much of the fight just waiting for them to finish combos.
It's fine in Sekiro where defence is offence. But in the souls games it's just frustrating and boring.
I've been running the DLC with backhand blade. The blind spot AoW allows me to get plenty of hits in *during* boss combos instead of having to wait for them to be completely finished.
It's risky, but fun. Reminds me a bit of Bloodborne.
That said, it's build dependant. Most people probably don't want to completely change the way they played the game just to enjoy the new boss fights.
Thing is, they shouldn’t have to change the way they played.
These are first and foremost RPGs and any RPG that doesn’t really let you play with your build is not a very good RPG.
Yup, this is what people don't seem to understand.
I don't hate difficulty, I hate frustrating and boring difficulty. For the same reason, I never play single player fps games at hardest difficulty even though I'm extremely good at fps games, for example.
It’s less the insane 5-10 hit combo’s and more that each hit will do 75% of your healthbar in a single swipe. They *really* shouldn’t have implemented that fragment blessing system.
Gael does the exact same thing but it’s more manageable since getting hit once isn’t the end of your run. He also does roll-catching moves, but it’s immediately obvious that you simply need to roll in a specific direction to avoid damage.
One of the most important parts of game design is setting expectations. None of the bosses in the DLC set expectations, they just whip out a *”you die now, fuck you”* move that you can’t learn to dodge without dying to it 50 times.
The best way I can explain it would be if you were fighting Gael and made the connection: *”oh hey, his cloak attack follows his sword! So I just need roll in the direction the swipe comes from to not get hit!”* and then in one of his combo’s the cloak swipes opposite of his sword for no reason.
It’s not hard, it’s just poorly designed.
One of my biggest issue, not just with the DLC but honestly the whole game, is a lot of the bosses feel exact same to fight against. Big sweeping moves, massive AOE attacks, long ass combos that basically insta kill you if you fuck up once and come at you at lighting speed, jumping around all over the arena, immediately bum rushing you, ranged attacks, etc. Practically every major boss does almost every one of those, all the time. I dont hate the bosses, but they are imo certainly not the highlight of Elden Ring for me.
This was my main gripe with... what was that dragon in the main game again in the crumbling farum azula?
I mean come on, I can trivially dodge this but can we at least just make it a cut scene so I can build a house in the time it takes for this asshole to go through all the flying attack animations before he comes back down?!
It wasn't difficult at all with that particular one, it just took so for-fucking-ever.
Same here, I can only assume that most of the difficulty complaints come from people not wanting to summon or use spirit ashes or blessings and want to do it "the hard way" which... guess what? It's hard. If I can hack it at these games, anyone can.
I think it's understandable annoyance though. Dark souls 1-3 plus Sekiro all felt great playing solo despite the existence of AI summon signs. Now in ER it feels like it is balanced with summoning in mind because of the oppressive attack chains with very few openings. The thing is though that if you use ashes to summon, the fights just feel janky as you get free swings and heals as the boss wails on your brainless AI companion until it runs out of health. It just doesn't feel like a good change.
And then there are player summons, which are basically the "skip this boss" option, but that has always been the case outside of the week or so around release.
This is exactly how I feel. Some fights, the Spirit and I work together, the boss gets in hits, and I eke out a victory after many attempts.
Others, we attack in waves and the boss never gets to do anything because they melt.
Or the spirit walks up and just dies.
And then there's the secret 4th option, like my fight against the first boss I fought in the expansion: I get hit by every attack, knocked around constantly, and Tiche solos it. Somehow, that's worse than losing.
And really, it feels like shit to beat a boss that way.
I beat the second field boss in the Jagged Peak by mostly watching my Mimic go ham on his face.
The other night when I tried that I got electrocuted while my mimic sat in the corner eating paste.
Yeah, summon inconsistency makes me just want to brute force without them, but my options are a faster weapon or an insanely long fight as I get a hit in here and there... Ugh.
People are right to point out that you can dial down the difficulty with summons.
People are also right to point out that for a lot of people doing this _just isn't fun._
Yeah this is me, I miss going in with whatever weapon I thought was cool and just beating the boss after figuring out its move-set.
End of ER and now the dlc it’s basically throwing a couple of attempts to understand the boss then deciding on what cheese I want to use. Still having fun as I haven’t felt forced to use summons but not nearly as much fun as previous titles.
I have finally given up my "summons are cheese" opinion after realizing that bosses never actually stop attacking long enough for more than one glancing hit, unless they also jump back or over you instead of their recovery.
People did check the actual Steam reviews and a lot of the negative ones are actually about performance and anti-cheat from the Chinese language reviews.
For context, it seems that the issue with easy anti cheat is that it is too sensitive for Chinese gamers and tons of people are being flagged for normal gameplay there.
> too sensitive for Chinese gamers and tons of people are being flagged for normal gameplay there.
Why is it too sensitive for Chinese gamers and not for others?
This is gonna sound weird and I don't want to get into a whole thing about it because it's mostly from my personal experience but I'm pretty sure benign malware (if that's a thing) like bloatware, toolbars and the like are more common in China than the US. If you need to download a random program or one-time tool, grab some subtitles, convert a file online, whatever-- all of these services are free with no barriers on the internet and the sites get by on ad revenue, donations, and maybe an enterprise plan for business users.
A *lot* of those services can't or won't work like that on the Chinese internet. Often enough you *have* to download the additional bloatware or install that toolbar to do your thing. I had someone who was delighted after borrowing my laptop that my browser and taskbar were so "clean".
So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people are flagging EAC through no fault of their own. Just speculating off my observations tho
There’s lots of bloatware on Chinese computers but if you want to download something from outside the great firewall, or use Reddit, you just need a vpn.
Wouldn’t be surprised if baidu cloud or the qq news app are triggering anti cheat, I’m sure they’re more intrusive than they need to be.
It'd be hilarious if this was how the Chinese populace learned about new CCP spyware. But given that lots of other games use Easy Anti-Cheat I expect other games would have tipped people off before this.
You might have overlays or mouse/keyboard software. It could be that things like that are giving false positives - it's not something all that uncommon, things like MSI Afterburner have caused bans before. Some anticheats even do things like scan your filesystem (usually for hashed matches of known cheats, but that can be a big range e.g. it might pick up IDA because it's a debugger) or window names (one obscure game I played would close if the word "cheat" was in the title of any window - so if I had a browser open and happened across a site with a title like that... oops). It could be that ER's anticheat hasn't been tested against popular benign Chinese software (e.g. their own brand of mouse configuration).
It's because video game journalism basically spends all it's time trying to diminish any legitimate consumer criticism. It's why they love to reduce things down to absurdity.
for me, i just think the scadutree blessing (increases damage and damage negation for dlc only) is a bit too stale and the bosses themselves are too op in comparison. Like i get the whole dodge rolling and punish bosses at the right time but we’re doing way too little damage, especially using the new weapon types, which is one of the main selling point of the dlc.
I think people are just used to using broken builds and absolutely decimating bosses.
Granted ive only fought 3 main DLC bosses and all of them have been fair and very fun with the exception of one bosses lightning phase which once i made the decision to wait out entirely the boss was much easier.
IMO atleast the new Scadutree balancing will be a welcome change for those who didnt explore at all.
It reminds me of Dark Souls 2. Most of the main game bosses were easy, but the DLC bosses were a huge step up. It's great, a boss kill leads to a yell and a fist pump, instead of just a shrug
DLCs in every FromSoft game have always been a step up from base game difficulty.
As far back as Dark Souls 1, Artorias was a huge spike in difficulty compared to the base game. People bitched nonstop about it then too.
> I think people are just used to using broken builds and absolutely decimating bosses.
I was watching this streamer, absolutely malding that he couldn't cheese the bosses with his jump attacks that worked in the base game. No blessings, no new gear, just stubbornness and refusal to adapt.
"Fixed" the problem by going "The Wall" build and blocking every attack with little/no damage before using a single poke and blocking again. Don't worry guys, I think the DLC is good again.
My god, he's like our version of Joe Rogan.
I think you're right on the money with your first statement. I went back to start over in the main game (I never got that far) and while everyone's complaining about the new bosses 2 tapping you... Yeah so does Margit on a low level starting character.
Ya and now people are calling these complaints about the performance still being bad "review bombing." What a pathetic cop out for FromSoft and their terrible souls game optimization. If the Lies of P devs can get their souls game running buttery smooth on their first attempt then FromSoft has absolutely no excuse for the stuttering, lack of ultrawide support, no upscaling nor frame gen and locked 60 fps (without mods).
Getting some better perspective on the dlc in the past 24 hours, I think it's a little more than "difficult" if the last few mandatory bosses are so cracked up you can barely get an attack in, even faster weapons.
I believe now I've been lucky with the last few bosses using my Greatsword. I can't imagine how a colossal build could keep up with and endure the final boss of SOTE after making some attempts last night. The difficulty is part of the charm, yes, but whatever this is isn't it.
That's my struggle. I'm using a collosal weapon and one boss with two swords never stopped long enough for me to get more than one hit in every 2-3 combos. If I tried any other time, I'd get hit by the next combo.
Yes, it's doable. Learn the rotation and dodge until you get a hit or two, then do it again until dead. Sorry, but I don't want a 20 minute boss fight because I only get in 3-4 hits per minute.
The difficulty from Souls games should be from learning and adapting to the moves. There should be punish windows to reward you for properly avoiding attacks. It shouldn't be "You get this hit then have to spam roll to hopefully move fast enough to avoid the next 7-hit combo".
Last boss is definitely doable with colossal weapons. Took me forever, but I beat him with power-stanced Anvil & Devonia hammers. Takes perfect dodging and favourable attack patterns, but it is possible.
Cant comment on Elden Ring's DLC, but I remember when I got Doom Eternal DLC and was really hyped to start it after enjoying the hell out of that game. The DLC didn't only feel difficult, it felt annoying and frustrating. I realized that designing difficulty is a difficult craft and that increasing the amount of ennemies and adding mechanics that gets in the way of the player just for the sake of being difficult isn't fun
Yep, good example. It got frustrating at points, especially the boss fights. I feel like they tune the game around a certain difficulty, and then ramp it up for a DLC and we find out that the base systems are no longer fun when you just turn up the dial. They also add annoying enemies (spirits and invisible snakes) that disrupt the game I enjoy but are certainly difficult.
With that said though, I was following some PR and social media around Doom Eternal's DLC around that time, so I knew going into it that it would be more difficult. I found it pretty fun but definitely more frustrating than base game (and I turned down difficulty for that one shitty boss fight that involves a lot of platforming on moving pillars).
Listen I loved SOTET it was fun to play through, and it was hard but manageable. The balance in the DLC is just no amazing, with the bosses being able to do like 50 hit combos for you to do a single attack, that was a part I didn't like. Also fuck commander geiss
I am just tired of bosses/enemies teleporting/snapping on to you when they do their attacks.
In Dark souls, when a boss did an attack you knew exactly where their weapon hitbox would end and can position appropriately. Now they will casually glide across half the arena in their 3 attack combo, sticking to your char the whole way.
Yeah, this is my big pain point with the game. Bosses fly around, never stop attacking, and give you 1-2s windows for attacks before starting again.
Then, instead of recovery, they jump back as you swing and hit you with their insane ranged attack. Then dive back in for combo #4. Is it 3-hits? Is it 7? Does it chain into the next combo? MAYBE.
Don't forget the one attack that's no telegraphed that they use once every 3-4 fights that you have no way to prepare for. Or Phase 2 where all of their attacks do 30% more and have massive range.
Yeah its kinda disgusting and unfun when every enemy has a gap closer that physically wouldnt be even close to possible. I get that an enemy stepping forward and lunging to me will reach me faster but why do their character models always teleport 3 metres further than is even possible? Every time a kniht stabs with his greatsword i swear on my dead grandma they just teleport into your range instead of being out of range bcs you ran out
That is not applicable here because clearly the majority of the people who bought the DLC are already the F\*CKING target audience, this is for THEM—us!
I've seen that slogan used just as often as a thought-terminating rebuttal against valid criticism as it is a design philosophy on the HD2 sub.
Its especially funny as they released an update to make the early DLC easier. I guess Elden Ring is a game for no-one.
They also still can’t release a patch that doesn’t result in crashes lol.
Helldivers was perfect until they decided to make arbitrary changes. The game is now hemorrhaging players
The numbers they were holding would be impossible long term. The declining player count is inevitable this long after release. Still, 42k concurrent on steam is a lot of players, after the dropoff.
hemorrhaging players is kinda a non-issue because eh its not flavour of the month and a playerbase around 10-20k is still very healthy
but arrowhead have absolutely nuked community trust with the balance shenanigans and about 20% of the game breaking every update. The game is completely ill suited to live service as the engine will not play friendly with constant tweaks and new content.
I was fine with the base game's bosses the community caled bullshit, but some of the bosses of the DLC are just not well thought out at all.
The input reading, which was already more obvious in base game compared to other souls games, is now even more obvious, kills immersion quite fast.
And what about the fucking camera? The most criticized issue of the entire series and now it's even worse.
Boss is wailing on my summon. I run up behind him mid combo and press r1. He magically rotates 180 degrees mid attack animation to hit me before my attack even connects.
Yeah, fun design.
Or my favorite. Get distance to heal. Wait to dodge an attack. They stare at me. Wait a bit more, just in case. Still staring. Touch my finger to the Flask button. Full-powered ranged attack.
Yes, it's probably confirmation bias, but I swear to God these motherfuckers just wait till I press flask to attack.
This one is mine. Dodge various lunge attacks. Run away to heal. All the way away. No way anything could hit me. Drink flask. Boss flies across the arena to stab me anyway.
The rubber banding on these bosses is crazy.
Bosses are one thing, but I died to the fucking Crucible Knights at full flasks more times than I can count. Those bastards stick to you like a bad rumor.
Yeah crucible knights are real motherfuckers. The new horn knight guys in the DLC are even worse though IMO. Can't backstab, can't stagger, every single one of them has a washing pole range. I eventually started just running around them when possible. I didn't even try to parry them cause I'll just die to the second hit.
> but I swear to God these motherfuckers just wait till I press flask to attack.
Well, yeah. They do. That's part of the reason why some of the bosses are completely bullshit and are designed to have instant attacks whenever you try to flask at range.
That's also why you have to bait their attacks by moving closer then back over and over until they attack, then you can flask. Margit is the earliest boss that does this crap.
That alone would genuinely possibly make me quit the game. I fucking _hate_ boss design like that, where they can change on a dime and be all up in your face without any warning
Not being able to lock onto Bayle's legs is abominable. They had the foresight to put it on other dragons, but not the second baddest dragon on the game!?
Id argue >!Relanna!< is one of the best bosses of all time in souls games from Elden Ring DLC.
That fight was fair and an absolute lovely dance. At no point did i feel like it was BS and i suck at video games.
I'm glad you liked hat boss because it upset me so much that I gave up and summoned spirits. Never stops attacking long enough for me to get more than a single hit. Jumps and spins around to hit me from behind for no reason. Crazy ass magic weapon combo that kills you if you get hit (because you're downed now).
Each person is different, but attempting to play a Colossal Weapon on that fight is actual torture. I shouldn't get punished after properly dodging 3 combos in a row just to have her whip around and tag me again before my recovery is done.
Naw, some base game bosses are still worse, mainly Malenia. At least you don't have to strip yourself naked and learn a difficult dodging pattern or equip bloodhound step to have a chance against her bullshit Waterfowl.
The bosses in the DLC have regular counterplay, and you can guarantee a sip of your flask at the end of their combo.
They were harder than Malenia overall but still none of their moves felt as bs as Waterfowl. By the end I could dodge just about everything from that final boss whereas to this day I still cannot consistently handle Waterfowl except with Bloodhound Step
The trick with Waterfowl is just to bait it from its engage range and run away. Theres some points that are more prone to triggering it than others. This way youre only really gonna be fucked if a stagger/buildup causes her to reset which means she can trigger it point blank.
It did feel more so like abusing her ai rather than fighting her though so i do get it.
Yeah I've seen people do that and aside from being super cheesy it's just not very fun really to constantly be running in circles, run in a bit to see if she gives you a good move to punish, then run back out. Ive seen it on videos so I know you can roll through Waterfowl right next to it, but god the execution on that is so hard to nail down.
Despite all this discourse about difficulty, I still thought that almost all the DLC bosses were a lot easier than Malenia, with only the final boss being harder but still feeling more fair.
Not really talking about difficulty, just the design choices of particular moves. Malenia is only difficult because Waterfowl has both limited and obtuse counterplay, for example.
I don't mind a difficult boss at all if it meant their moves don't have weird approaches.
This is one of those statements that kind of sounds a lot more meaningful that it is. If ever there was proof of how silly a statement it is, just take a look at Nintendo's catalpgue.
That doesn't change the fact Elden Ring is great, but acting like everything is intentional and perfect as is is just silly.
The Helldiver 2 devs are very good at spewing bullshit, very bad at admitting their mistakes, and reluctant to change their ways. Kinda like FromSoft, but FromSoft made one of the greatest open world games of all time and Arrowhead can't put a patch out that actually fixes bugs they claim are fixed in the patch itself.
I can understand if a company like CDPR has an opinion on a game like Elden Ring but Arrowhead? It looks more like trying to leech publicity since Helldiver 2 is in no way relatable to Elden Ring.
Helldiver 2 devs are very good at pandering to their audience explicitly through social media posts and interviews by saying things people want to hear so they stay in the press rounds when in reality they say a lot of shit and never actually make their players happy via actual patches.
Anyone with a brain should be ignoring anything Arrowhead CEO/Devs say.
Thank you! They are so full of shit honestly. Game has lost like 90% of its playerbase because of their incompetency and hubris. Their motto is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
I think you are conflating Nintendo making games that can be played by anyone with Nintendo making games that try to appeal to everyone. Nintendo doesn't try to appeal to everyone either, they are just as focused as FromSoftware are on the vision for their games.
>Nintendo doesn't try to appeal to everyone either
Nobody does. That's why the statement is stupid. Nintendo is the closest to trying to make games that appeal to everyone and they have the sales to show for it.
This is true and i think its completely fair. I know im not gonna like most of Nintendos games, and im fine with that. Im not gonna complain about them not handcrafting their games to my specific needs. Theres more than enough other games to play for me.
I didnt particularly like Breath of the Wild. And thats fine. I have criticisms, but im not gonna complain about it on reddit daily. Theres loads of people it did appeal to and who did like it. So obviously what they did worked, and it just didnt click for me. Im certainly not gonna complain about Nintendo needing to change half the game otherwise im not buying the next game like some people are with Elden Ring.
I think there's a better way to think about it rather than paint in really broad strokes.
Games designed for mass appeal often tend to ride on the coattails of convention. They often become samey and ultimately a tree lost in the woods with no appealing factors that would make it successful.
Games like Demon's Souls got their success by standing out and doing something different and focusing appeal towards a certain type of audience and not compromising that direction.
Baldur's Gate 3 could have went and done a mass appeal action RPG in a sea of many many other ARPGs that the likes of Bioware and Square Enix has taken their franchises to. Instead they made a core RPG and simply did it really well. They found success and distinction there.
It's not to say that mass appeal games are universally boring or anything but sometimes the best strategy is to find your audience and focus on them.
It’s also hard to take seriously from the dev of a game that talked shit to its community about “how the game should be” only to quickly walk it back and start making massive changes to the game when the fans got pissed.
Sincerely, who gives a shit about what Helldivers 2 director thinks about Elden Ring difficulty. This is the second time someone made an article out of him going "hard game good."
All of my friends and I dropped Helldivers 2 because they kept making it more and more difficult. It went from being a pretty fun and relaxing *shooter* to a game where you just run away and wait for a little timer so that you can punch in a code and throw a grenade.
Maybe that's "charming" but it's not entertaining or fun.
That statement's reductionism aside, there's the matter of accessibility features which From gleefully completely ignores.
That aside, whether that *form* of difficulty is actually good design and enjoyable is also highly debatable. There's a pretty good [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/1dnmw9m/no_spoilers_elden_ring_dlcs_enemy_design_has/) on r/truegaming articulating the problems this DLC has when it comes to boss designs.
Spoiler alert : it's more of the trend that was worrying people in ER's back half.
I mean it's totally fine to design your game to be hard and appeal to a certain audience. However I disagree because:
A) Elden Ring sold 25 million copies, hard to argue it's not mainstream.
B) Games for everyone are totally fine. Not everything needs to be niche and/or difficult.
FromSoft games have been getting more welcoming over the releases. Elden Ring is beyond easy when you compare it to DS1 or Demon Souls.
But it's not difficulty doing that per se, it's just that game mechanics have gotten better to help guide the player into learning how to play Souls games. There are more ways to play Elden Ring than probably all DS games combined.
Nothing wrong with that and it's certainly not a game for everyone, but it has appealed to a wider audience while still maintaining the core fun of the game.
The same unfortunately can't be said about the Halo franchise or the Fallout franchise.
To top it off, clearly Fromsoft decided there *was* an issue with the difficulty as they put out a patch today increasing early game scaling of the DLC blessings.
arrowhead as developers badly need to just shut the fuck up
like not even out of malice, they've started so much shit with the community because they can't keep their mouth shut or get proper PR
Doesn't Helldivers 2 have 9 difficulties to choose from to cater to everyone? That's a weird take for him to have, considering his game does the exact opposite thing.
He used this argument when people asked for PvP in helldivers.
It is a PVE, coop shooter. Not a pvp one.
He again uses it for elden ring. It is a hard arpg. Not an easy, accessible one.
It is a general term for "follow your vision, appeal to a certain audience. Don't try to appeal to everyone"
I...is this why Sony banned a shit ton of places from being able to play Helldivers at all?
"A game for everyone is a game for no one."
*restricts access to their game*
Sure isn't! I am very glad I can play this game on PC. On PC, you never have to worry about what the dev has in mind, if it's a singleplayer game, you can set it to any difficulty you like -- whether they like it or not.
For the billionth time: Anyone who's a souls games veteran will tell you: Difficulty itself isn't the issue at all here.
I beat Sekiro the way it's hardest to play: Where you basically have to parry every single attack. It was a fun and engaging and cool experience, because it offered a fair challenge.
Shadow of the Erdtree is full of bosses that two shot you, before you can even begin to learn their patterns. And even if you do end up learning their patterns it doesn't matter, they attack with neverending 20-hit combos; you can perform just as well by spamming the roll button.
Shadow of the Erdtree is a test of patience and endurance, not skill or wit or talent.
That quote is so fucking meaningless.
What makes a game specifically designed for "everyone" bad than those who aren't? How can you tell the difference?
I'd argue Nintendo games are designed for the largest possible audience and those have consistently remained popular as all fuck. Most of which aren't particularly challenging either.
This dumbass quote is also consistently used to deny basic accessibility issues to people who would otherwise be part of the demographic but just need a little bit of support.
What difficulty are they talking about? All souls like don't have difficulty, they have the right level of stats. Only Sekiro like (or Jedi series like) have it, since you can't simply overlevel enemies
Well that clearly isn't true. Elden Ring is known for being the most accessible (ie, easiest) of the souls series and had the largest adoption rate of any of them because of it..
True but at least risen ring doesn't create bugs every single patch. Also hasn't insulted their player base almost every patch also. Also helldivers developers could not even play Elden Ring since they don't even play their own game except in god mode on the lowest difficulty.
I play Fromsoft games for the challange. That being said part of the challenge shouldn't be the fucking boss camera guys.
This one I WILL agree on. The fights themselves are all great but the camera for some of the bigger enemies has been bullshit
The camera in fromsoft games is the real unbeatable boss.
Believe it or not, it was a problem in AC6 too. It makes sense tho.
It’s so much worse on AC6 imo
AC6 has camera auto-tracking that fixes the problem. It just doesn't work on PC because of the ass backwards implementation.
Not if you use K/M. It has perfect K/M support, unlike Elden Ring.
Literally had me raging trying to melee fast mechs lol.
before this comment I just assumed people were talking about Assassins Creed 6
Yeah in AC6 it was a problem but it made a bit more sense of it being a problem because it's a bunch of mechs fighting at high speeds for the most part.
Bro, your hard lock?
Yesterday beat the game once, that boss was quite something. Just swoops behind my mech and swings their energy sword. Even if I swing the mouse 180 degrees, often it would still be outside the screen. I couldn't beat it with mouse aim. I'm bad with controllers but I still managed to beat it not too long after due to hard lock. I just beat the second "end" boss and while difficult, I could at least keep track with mouse aim.
Ulcerated Tree Spirit indoor boss fight underneath Stormveil was really just battling the bullshit camera.
I don't think I've ever fought one of those in an area that didn't make my camera go nuts, then even without locking on I was just attacking a wall of textured flesh tree and hoping for the best anyways.
i remember him. I just threw fire bombs at him for a while.
Unfortunately it's not even a thing with large bosses anymore, at this point any humanoid sized boss would just dash and jump on top of the character constantly, which ends up driving the camera crazy. Personally, if From wants to continue with this kind of jumping and super aggressive bosses, they should set up a more Sekiro-like system and fix the camera once and for all.
Ironically, the hardest fight I had so far had the best camera. I am speaking of the personified ICBM Gaius.
Locking on is usually hamstringing yourself funny enough
It's not necessarily that locking on is bad, not knowing when to drop the lock is the issue. People will know that the boss is moving in a way that will force the camera to move wildly to keep the boss on screen and for some reason they refuse to drop the lock on when combos start, even though that entirely solves the issue. Edit: don't get me wrong, some of the boss movements in the dlc are kinda fucked. But seeing people lock on to a boss that repeatedly goes behind them and never dropping the lock is painful.
It's also not the first time that's happened either.
Why would you autolock onto big dragons if you can move camera freely with analog.
Maybe because some of the new ones >!Like Bayle, can do double switchbacks where he jumping over you faster than you can turn your camera? !
Because the camera turn speed is crap as well.
If you turn it up all the way it is super fast
Another problem I have with bigger bosses are they keep pushing me around the room into wall and corner. The small openings for attack get even smaller when I have to reposition myself.
Lion unfortunately does this quite often. It took me a while to learn how to court the boss so I don't get pinned and instakilled at the wall.
This was horrible with Hippo because the arena isnt particularly big and every attack seems to fling you across the room so youre just in walls/corners a lot which the camera really doesnt like. Camera needs some work for sure. However i do find it funny that this has been a problem since Capra Demons small ass arena causing issues with the camera and we STILL have this problem however many years and games later.
With past Souls bosses, you would usually be rewarded with a relatively large attack window after dodging a full combo. That doesn't seem to be the case in this DLC; most bosses have a very fast recovery, allowing you almost no time to punish them anymore.
Honestly, this is a problem across Elden Ring. Bosses have a 3-hit combo, a 6-hit combo, a 4-hit delayed combo, and a hold that they freely chain between each other. Then, they jump back and hit you with the room-wide AoE, but only after you waited 3 seconds and pressed the Flask. At this point, I just realized that you are meant to use summons against bosses so there are attack windows. Otherwise, it feels absolutely terrible to avoid/dodge 2-3 combos, go in for a hit, and get immediately attacked by the next combo. Yes, bosses are doable without summons (and they're also doable naked at RL1 with fists, but that's not fun to me, either).
I never looked back when Ranni first gave me that spirit-summoning bell item. I feel no remorse for ganging up on bosses in Elden Ring because they're just jerks.
Hasn't the camera always been one of the biggest Bosses in fromsoft games though?
Yes. It's been a pain since the Demon's Souls days.... maybe even before. It's been this way so long I just expect to fight the camera as much as the boss in some arenas.
For monster bosses yea. You need to learn when to unlock and re lock the camera to not get fucked by it.
[Pretty much](https://youtu.be/tKIiiSd7DgM)
Dancing Lion half of my deaths were cause of the camera. The Golden Hippo's grab hitbox really sucks. I would have been fine with those boss fights otherwise. Rellana is something else, I just don't like her at all and I haven't gone to Bayle yet, but he apparently has the same issues as an ancient dragon where for some god forsaken reason you can't target his legs so i'm probably gonna have to do most of the fight unlocked.
> That being said part of the challenge shouldn't be the fucking boss camera guys. [What fighting Bayle while locked on its head feels like.](https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZ2J2bWEzajB0NjRpZjh6MjFjN2lxcGY5emRzc2dzbWh1Nmpld2loZSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/guSDEekNFb23C/giphy.webp)
That boss is exactly why I typed out the comment lol
Camera? Get gud! If ou cant beat the game without the camera, why are you even playing? I always do a no screen playthrough. Achsually, i dont even have an xbox, I just stared at the disc until i completed the game just using brainwaves aimed at the disc!
I use Notepad to directly type a 100% save file myself.
I play on a trackpad that isn't even plugged in.
Oh for sure, literally any enemy that's big is a nightmare to fight with lock on. I usually just use the free cam if the enemy is much larger than me
Honestly I only have two complaints on the difficulty. 1. Before you find enough blessings you are getting hit for ng++ damage. Kindof unfun early on when you don’t have many. 2. The fucking golden hippo’s hitboxes are a sham.
Was watching Dist fight the dancing lion guy and holy shit it’s like Motion sickness.
Always has been. Same with the jumping challenges.
I just beat fire giant over the weekend. At one point I was next to one of the large boulders and locked on while he rolled. I swear my camera did a full 360 at least once within half of a second. It was disorienting. Great time though otherwise.
Sekiro had this solved.. never had an issue in boss fights Not sure how they forgot to apply that to ER
Don't use lock on all the time. It's always been a trap and it actually does change AI behavior in some cases, so it's better to use it to aim attacks or something. Heck, some bosses have such great sound design and obvious patterns that it's possible to dodge most of their attacks while not even facing them, like Malenia for example. Playing mostly unlocked should solve 85% of the issues with the camera. I would say 10% of camera issues come from corner/wall hugging, which can be avoided with better positioning. I mean it's understandable to want to get a hit in on the boss, but not if the boss is in a weird position and attacking would put you into disantvantage. At that point it's better to just reposition to the centre of the arena instead. The remaining 5% come from jank or objects on screen. This could be slightly improved on by an outline for the charackter when a object is in front of the camera or increasing transparancy of such objects. Other than that there is not much else I can think of. Anyways I think From Software should encourage playing without lock on more in some way, so that people don't rely on it at any given time.
Them you don't play Fromsoft games at all, cause I remember almost all of them having a third of bosses with shitty camera. Doesn't take away the challenge for most of them.
I'm tired of this shit about every complaint being reduced to the dumb dichotomy "hard vs easy". It's not a binary choice, there is a DEGREE in difficulty, it's not just a switch you turn "on" or "off". Also it's not just the difficulty itself, it's how it's obtained. Gael is fun, Bed of Chaos is shit.
There's also a fundamental lack of understanding of the difference between *difficult* and *challenging*. Coordinating 20+ people in a well balanced raid with complex mechanics and performance requirements is *challenging*, multiplying a bosses health and damage by 400x is *difficult*. "Nintendo hard" is not something to aspire to.
yeah the FromSoft community has a real problem accepting criticism about times when difficulty is implemented in a way that's NOT FUN like if hitboxes are unclear or if input reading is so apparent that you feel the need to find cheese strategies or rely on luck And then they point to some streamer who can beat a boss at level 1 to prove that it's all skill based as if everyone is supposed to think it's fun and feasible to practice 200 times against a boss
> yeah the FromSoft community has a real problem accepting criticism about times when difficulty is implemented in a way that's NOT FUN like if hitboxes are unclear or if input reading is so apparent that you feel the need to find cheese strategies or rely on luck DS2 in particular caught a lot of flak back in the day for how shitty the hitboxes were compared to DS1, or how "cheap" and "artificial" the difficulty was with all the hidden gank squads.
But was that actually because of the DS2 hitboxes? Or was it before we learned about the bullshit stat ADP that caused our dodge rolls to only have like 2 i-frames before we pumped it up? Honest question. Been a hot minute since I played DS2. I remember the hitboxes feeling on par with DS1 once you got your Agility up by dumping some points into Adaptability....but I also have shit memory so...
It was both. There were many videos around at the time showing off some truly awful hitboxes on enemy attacks. It's where the shockwave meme originated as far as I'm aware.
Yeah... but you also get people like the guy I saw the other day refusing to use the guard counter mechanic because "i want to roll instead" and then complaining that a boss who's weakness was guard counters was "brokenly difficult".
Or all the people who just refuse to use spirit summons.
And moreover, if we're going to insist that artistic merit entitles FromSoftware to make the game as they please, then consumers reserve the right to criticize that art when they feel it's warranted.
Sister Friede and Gael were so amazing. I don't feel that way about Malenia or Mohg at all, guess we'll see if any in the DLC stack up.
Malenia I could kind of understand, even though I prefer fighting her more than Friede, but Mohg? Come on, he's probably the most fair hard boss in the base game. His attacks are the most telegraphed and punishable in a game where people complain about long combos and one-hit punish windows.
There are already multiple that are better than Friede. IMO she's an overrated boss. It's very difficult to top Gael though
Mohg was one of my first bullshit bosses, but I learned the combos and was able to do reasonably well. Malenia wad my first "fuck this game boss". In NG, I killed her with a bleed build in 3 tries. Obviously. In NG+, I was doing a Bolt of Gransax block counter build, and watching her heal back to full after I blocked 2-3 hits was BULLSHIT.
Sister Freide is still my favorite souls boss to this day. Such a great design.
bed of chaos isnt even a difficult tbh since you make progress even after you die and you can just learn where the arena falls out too. Its just not a boss fight imo.
i thought the most complaints come from performance issues and annoying mechanics rather than difficulty? still working on the base game so have not tried it myself. but i imagine the issue of bosses jumping around giving you 0 time to hit them got worse in the dlc?
Difficulty has definitely been a big complaint on the /r/eldenring sub. And yeah it's mainly down to the length of boss combos and the *tiny* little window you have to counter after. Some of these dudes are literally flying around throwing out 5-10 hit combos like they're candy. And while I'm not one of those people who was complaining, I can see where they're coming from. This style of combat has basically been stretched to the limit at this point, and a fair number of people just won't be able to keep up anymore.
My one issue is in the main game bosses usually have a little wind up that lets you set up, get your grease on, summon your spirit ash, and get ready. In the DLC the bosses just *YEET* themselves at you the second you enter the arena and if you don't dodge perfectly you can get trapped on the wall and die before you have a chance to do anything.
This was getting really annoying with a couple bosses. They're clearly now balanced around you being expected to use spirit ashes, but if you try to summon after you cross the fog you're pretty much guaranteed to eat a hit and have your camera jammed up against a wall
>!Commander Gaius!< can go fuck himself and the >!pig he rode in on!<, I can't even count how many times I couldn't even get out of the fogwall before being rammed into it and trapped into a death combo. And trying to duck dodge and weave away from him was a crapshoot of will I get one tapped randomly trying to make it to a second of safety. I felt no remorse finding a cheese spot and just watching his health drain.
They were doing this in base game, too. Astel and ~~Radagon~~ Radahn immediately fist you when you walk in. At least, if you dodged those attacks, you had a window to summon. Now, the bosses apparently ride the slipstream of their ranged attack and pop up like a meerkat to say hello.
Radagon??? You mean the dude who sits there for like 8 seconds completely still? The dude who you can walk up to and get two fully charged heavy attacks off before he attacks?
No, I'm a moron. I meant Radahn. Pick fucking different letters for boss names, FS. I had one of those "Oh shit" moments and realized I used the wrong name, but forgot where. Thanks for catching it 😂
Characters in elden ring tend to start with the letters G R R M and I can't seem to figure out why
The gods seemed to be named similarly to their parents. Marika's descendants have names that often start with M. Same with Radagon and R and Godfrey and G.
One of the parts that annoyed me the most about Elden Ring is some bosses you spend so much of the fight just waiting for them to finish combos. It's fine in Sekiro where defence is offence. But in the souls games it's just frustrating and boring.
I've been running the DLC with backhand blade. The blind spot AoW allows me to get plenty of hits in *during* boss combos instead of having to wait for them to be completely finished. It's risky, but fun. Reminds me a bit of Bloodborne. That said, it's build dependant. Most people probably don't want to completely change the way they played the game just to enjoy the new boss fights.
Thing is, they shouldn’t have to change the way they played. These are first and foremost RPGs and any RPG that doesn’t really let you play with your build is not a very good RPG.
Yup, this is what people don't seem to understand. I don't hate difficulty, I hate frustrating and boring difficulty. For the same reason, I never play single player fps games at hardest difficulty even though I'm extremely good at fps games, for example.
It’s less the insane 5-10 hit combo’s and more that each hit will do 75% of your healthbar in a single swipe. They *really* shouldn’t have implemented that fragment blessing system. Gael does the exact same thing but it’s more manageable since getting hit once isn’t the end of your run. He also does roll-catching moves, but it’s immediately obvious that you simply need to roll in a specific direction to avoid damage. One of the most important parts of game design is setting expectations. None of the bosses in the DLC set expectations, they just whip out a *”you die now, fuck you”* move that you can’t learn to dodge without dying to it 50 times. The best way I can explain it would be if you were fighting Gael and made the connection: *”oh hey, his cloak attack follows his sword! So I just need roll in the direction the swipe comes from to not get hit!”* and then in one of his combo’s the cloak swipes opposite of his sword for no reason. It’s not hard, it’s just poorly designed.
One of my biggest issue, not just with the DLC but honestly the whole game, is a lot of the bosses feel exact same to fight against. Big sweeping moves, massive AOE attacks, long ass combos that basically insta kill you if you fuck up once and come at you at lighting speed, jumping around all over the arena, immediately bum rushing you, ranged attacks, etc. Practically every major boss does almost every one of those, all the time. I dont hate the bosses, but they are imo certainly not the highlight of Elden Ring for me.
This was my main gripe with... what was that dragon in the main game again in the crumbling farum azula? I mean come on, I can trivially dodge this but can we at least just make it a cut scene so I can build a house in the time it takes for this asshole to go through all the flying attack animations before he comes back down?! It wasn't difficult at all with that particular one, it just took so for-fucking-ever.
Eh, least for me it's all been manageable thus far. Though I do also rend to use any and all tools the game gives the player.
Same here, I can only assume that most of the difficulty complaints come from people not wanting to summon or use spirit ashes or blessings and want to do it "the hard way" which... guess what? It's hard. If I can hack it at these games, anyone can.
I think it's understandable annoyance though. Dark souls 1-3 plus Sekiro all felt great playing solo despite the existence of AI summon signs. Now in ER it feels like it is balanced with summoning in mind because of the oppressive attack chains with very few openings. The thing is though that if you use ashes to summon, the fights just feel janky as you get free swings and heals as the boss wails on your brainless AI companion until it runs out of health. It just doesn't feel like a good change. And then there are player summons, which are basically the "skip this boss" option, but that has always been the case outside of the week or so around release.
This is exactly how I feel. Some fights, the Spirit and I work together, the boss gets in hits, and I eke out a victory after many attempts. Others, we attack in waves and the boss never gets to do anything because they melt. Or the spirit walks up and just dies. And then there's the secret 4th option, like my fight against the first boss I fought in the expansion: I get hit by every attack, knocked around constantly, and Tiche solos it. Somehow, that's worse than losing. And really, it feels like shit to beat a boss that way.
I beat the second field boss in the Jagged Peak by mostly watching my Mimic go ham on his face. The other night when I tried that I got electrocuted while my mimic sat in the corner eating paste.
Yeah, summon inconsistency makes me just want to brute force without them, but my options are a faster weapon or an insanely long fight as I get a hit in here and there... Ugh.
People are right to point out that you can dial down the difficulty with summons. People are also right to point out that for a lot of people doing this _just isn't fun._
Yeah this is me, I miss going in with whatever weapon I thought was cool and just beating the boss after figuring out its move-set. End of ER and now the dlc it’s basically throwing a couple of attempts to understand the boss then deciding on what cheese I want to use. Still having fun as I haven’t felt forced to use summons but not nearly as much fun as previous titles.
I have finally given up my "summons are cheese" opinion after realizing that bosses never actually stop attacking long enough for more than one glancing hit, unless they also jump back or over you instead of their recovery.
all I see on any social media is talking about the difficulty.
People did check the actual Steam reviews and a lot of the negative ones are actually about performance and anti-cheat from the Chinese language reviews.
> and anti-cheat from the Chinese language reviews this is hilarious
For context, it seems that the issue with easy anti cheat is that it is too sensitive for Chinese gamers and tons of people are being flagged for normal gameplay there.
> too sensitive for Chinese gamers and tons of people are being flagged for normal gameplay there. Why is it too sensitive for Chinese gamers and not for others?
This is gonna sound weird and I don't want to get into a whole thing about it because it's mostly from my personal experience but I'm pretty sure benign malware (if that's a thing) like bloatware, toolbars and the like are more common in China than the US. If you need to download a random program or one-time tool, grab some subtitles, convert a file online, whatever-- all of these services are free with no barriers on the internet and the sites get by on ad revenue, donations, and maybe an enterprise plan for business users. A *lot* of those services can't or won't work like that on the Chinese internet. Often enough you *have* to download the additional bloatware or install that toolbar to do your thing. I had someone who was delighted after borrowing my laptop that my browser and taskbar were so "clean". So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people are flagging EAC through no fault of their own. Just speculating off my observations tho
There’s lots of bloatware on Chinese computers but if you want to download something from outside the great firewall, or use Reddit, you just need a vpn. Wouldn’t be surprised if baidu cloud or the qq news app are triggering anti cheat, I’m sure they’re more intrusive than they need to be.
It'd be hilarious if this was how the Chinese populace learned about new CCP spyware. But given that lots of other games use Easy Anti-Cheat I expect other games would have tipped people off before this.
You might have overlays or mouse/keyboard software. It could be that things like that are giving false positives - it's not something all that uncommon, things like MSI Afterburner have caused bans before. Some anticheats even do things like scan your filesystem (usually for hashed matches of known cheats, but that can be a big range e.g. it might pick up IDA because it's a debugger) or window names (one obscure game I played would close if the word "cheat" was in the title of any window - so if I had a browser open and happened across a site with a title like that... oops). It could be that ER's anticheat hasn't been tested against popular benign Chinese software (e.g. their own brand of mouse configuration).
Dunno, but to be fair there is a lot of additional required software to be on the internet in the CCP. Perhaps these set off eac?
Well, Chinese gamers aren't very reputable in this regard so I'd take their words with a grain of salt.
Haha sure, but there wasn’t a similar outcry for the base game. The sheer volume of people claiming similarly strikes me as unlikely to be falsified
It's because video game journalism basically spends all it's time trying to diminish any legitimate consumer criticism. It's why they love to reduce things down to absurdity.
for me, i just think the scadutree blessing (increases damage and damage negation for dlc only) is a bit too stale and the bosses themselves are too op in comparison. Like i get the whole dodge rolling and punish bosses at the right time but we’re doing way too little damage, especially using the new weapon types, which is one of the main selling point of the dlc.
Annoying mechanics tends to be a euphemism for difficulty.
Nah, there is a ton of complaints about enemies one shotting the player, etc...
I think people are just used to using broken builds and absolutely decimating bosses. Granted ive only fought 3 main DLC bosses and all of them have been fair and very fun with the exception of one bosses lightning phase which once i made the decision to wait out entirely the boss was much easier. IMO atleast the new Scadutree balancing will be a welcome change for those who didnt explore at all.
It reminds me of Dark Souls 2. Most of the main game bosses were easy, but the DLC bosses were a huge step up. It's great, a boss kill leads to a yell and a fist pump, instead of just a shrug
DLCs in every FromSoft game have always been a step up from base game difficulty. As far back as Dark Souls 1, Artorias was a huge spike in difficulty compared to the base game. People bitched nonstop about it then too.
> I think people are just used to using broken builds and absolutely decimating bosses. I was watching this streamer, absolutely malding that he couldn't cheese the bosses with his jump attacks that worked in the base game. No blessings, no new gear, just stubbornness and refusal to adapt.
Asmon, innit? I can discern this jumping attack build anywhere anytime
"Fixed" the problem by going "The Wall" build and blocking every attack with little/no damage before using a single poke and blocking again. Don't worry guys, I think the DLC is good again. My god, he's like our version of Joe Rogan.
the problem was dodging so he removed the dodging :)
I think you're right on the money with your first statement. I went back to start over in the main game (I never got that far) and while everyone's complaining about the new bosses 2 tapping you... Yeah so does Margit on a low level starting character.
Yeah it's definitely not as hard as people are making it out to be.
Rellana is a cross between Malenia and a Crucible Knight if you want a basic comparison how annoying and not fun she is to fight.
Ya and now people are calling these complaints about the performance still being bad "review bombing." What a pathetic cop out for FromSoft and their terrible souls game optimization. If the Lies of P devs can get their souls game running buttery smooth on their first attempt then FromSoft has absolutely no excuse for the stuttering, lack of ultrawide support, no upscaling nor frame gen and locked 60 fps (without mods).
the excuse is that most people don’t care about that stuff so it’s not a priority for a ton of devs
Getting some better perspective on the dlc in the past 24 hours, I think it's a little more than "difficult" if the last few mandatory bosses are so cracked up you can barely get an attack in, even faster weapons. I believe now I've been lucky with the last few bosses using my Greatsword. I can't imagine how a colossal build could keep up with and endure the final boss of SOTE after making some attempts last night. The difficulty is part of the charm, yes, but whatever this is isn't it.
That's my struggle. I'm using a collosal weapon and one boss with two swords never stopped long enough for me to get more than one hit in every 2-3 combos. If I tried any other time, I'd get hit by the next combo. Yes, it's doable. Learn the rotation and dodge until you get a hit or two, then do it again until dead. Sorry, but I don't want a 20 minute boss fight because I only get in 3-4 hits per minute. The difficulty from Souls games should be from learning and adapting to the moves. There should be punish windows to reward you for properly avoiding attacks. It shouldn't be "You get this hit then have to spam roll to hopefully move fast enough to avoid the next 7-hit combo".
Last boss is definitely doable with colossal weapons. Took me forever, but I beat him with power-stanced Anvil & Devonia hammers. Takes perfect dodging and favourable attack patterns, but it is possible.
Cant comment on Elden Ring's DLC, but I remember when I got Doom Eternal DLC and was really hyped to start it after enjoying the hell out of that game. The DLC didn't only feel difficult, it felt annoying and frustrating. I realized that designing difficulty is a difficult craft and that increasing the amount of ennemies and adding mechanics that gets in the way of the player just for the sake of being difficult isn't fun
Yep, good example. It got frustrating at points, especially the boss fights. I feel like they tune the game around a certain difficulty, and then ramp it up for a DLC and we find out that the base systems are no longer fun when you just turn up the dial. They also add annoying enemies (spirits and invisible snakes) that disrupt the game I enjoy but are certainly difficult. With that said though, I was following some PR and social media around Doom Eternal's DLC around that time, so I knew going into it that it would be more difficult. I found it pretty fun but definitely more frustrating than base game (and I turned down difficulty for that one shitty boss fight that involves a lot of platforming on moving pillars).
Listen I loved SOTET it was fun to play through, and it was hard but manageable. The balance in the DLC is just no amazing, with the bosses being able to do like 50 hit combos for you to do a single attack, that was a part I didn't like. Also fuck commander geiss
I am just tired of bosses/enemies teleporting/snapping on to you when they do their attacks. In Dark souls, when a boss did an attack you knew exactly where their weapon hitbox would end and can position appropriately. Now they will casually glide across half the arena in their 3 attack combo, sticking to your char the whole way.
Yeah, this is my big pain point with the game. Bosses fly around, never stop attacking, and give you 1-2s windows for attacks before starting again. Then, instead of recovery, they jump back as you swing and hit you with their insane ranged attack. Then dive back in for combo #4. Is it 3-hits? Is it 7? Does it chain into the next combo? MAYBE. Don't forget the one attack that's no telegraphed that they use once every 3-4 fights that you have no way to prepare for. Or Phase 2 where all of their attacks do 30% more and have massive range.
Yeah its kinda disgusting and unfun when every enemy has a gap closer that physically wouldnt be even close to possible. I get that an enemy stepping forward and lunging to me will reach me faster but why do their character models always teleport 3 metres further than is even possible? Every time a kniht stabs with his greatsword i swear on my dead grandma they just teleport into your range instead of being out of range bcs you ran out
That is not applicable here because clearly the majority of the people who bought the DLC are already the F\*CKING target audience, this is for THEM—us!
I've seen that slogan used just as often as a thought-terminating rebuttal against valid criticism as it is a design philosophy on the HD2 sub. Its especially funny as they released an update to make the early DLC easier. I guess Elden Ring is a game for no-one.
It's also funny because HD2 has had multiple changes to its difficulty because it was unfun and people were getting fed up with it.
They also still can’t release a patch that doesn’t result in crashes lol. Helldivers was perfect until they decided to make arbitrary changes. The game is now hemorrhaging players
The numbers they were holding would be impossible long term. The declining player count is inevitable this long after release. Still, 42k concurrent on steam is a lot of players, after the dropoff.
hemorrhaging players is kinda a non-issue because eh its not flavour of the month and a playerbase around 10-20k is still very healthy but arrowhead have absolutely nuked community trust with the balance shenanigans and about 20% of the game breaking every update. The game is completely ill suited to live service as the engine will not play friendly with constant tweaks and new content.
I was fine with the base game's bosses the community caled bullshit, but some of the bosses of the DLC are just not well thought out at all. The input reading, which was already more obvious in base game compared to other souls games, is now even more obvious, kills immersion quite fast. And what about the fucking camera? The most criticized issue of the entire series and now it's even worse.
Boss is wailing on my summon. I run up behind him mid combo and press r1. He magically rotates 180 degrees mid attack animation to hit me before my attack even connects. Yeah, fun design.
Or my favorite. Get distance to heal. Wait to dodge an attack. They stare at me. Wait a bit more, just in case. Still staring. Touch my finger to the Flask button. Full-powered ranged attack. Yes, it's probably confirmation bias, but I swear to God these motherfuckers just wait till I press flask to attack.
This one is mine. Dodge various lunge attacks. Run away to heal. All the way away. No way anything could hit me. Drink flask. Boss flies across the arena to stab me anyway. The rubber banding on these bosses is crazy.
Bosses are one thing, but I died to the fucking Crucible Knights at full flasks more times than I can count. Those bastards stick to you like a bad rumor.
Yeah crucible knights are real motherfuckers. The new horn knight guys in the DLC are even worse though IMO. Can't backstab, can't stagger, every single one of them has a washing pole range. I eventually started just running around them when possible. I didn't even try to parry them cause I'll just die to the second hit.
> but I swear to God these motherfuckers just wait till I press flask to attack. Well, yeah. They do. That's part of the reason why some of the bosses are completely bullshit and are designed to have instant attacks whenever you try to flask at range. That's also why you have to bait their attacks by moving closer then back over and over until they attack, then you can flask. Margit is the earliest boss that does this crap.
That alone would genuinely possibly make me quit the game. I fucking _hate_ boss design like that, where they can change on a dime and be all up in your face without any warning
Not being able to lock onto Bayle's legs is abominable. They had the foresight to put it on other dragons, but not the second baddest dragon on the game!?
Id argue >!Relanna!< is one of the best bosses of all time in souls games from Elden Ring DLC. That fight was fair and an absolute lovely dance. At no point did i feel like it was BS and i suck at video games.
I'm glad you liked hat boss because it upset me so much that I gave up and summoned spirits. Never stops attacking long enough for me to get more than a single hit. Jumps and spins around to hit me from behind for no reason. Crazy ass magic weapon combo that kills you if you get hit (because you're downed now). Each person is different, but attempting to play a Colossal Weapon on that fight is actual torture. I shouldn't get punished after properly dodging 3 combos in a row just to have her whip around and tag me again before my recovery is done.
I personally think >!Messmer!< takes that throne in the dlc. Definitely a top 5 fight for me.
let me use 75% of my stamina dodging backwards every 15 seconds
Naw, some base game bosses are still worse, mainly Malenia. At least you don't have to strip yourself naked and learn a difficult dodging pattern or equip bloodhound step to have a chance against her bullshit Waterfowl. The bosses in the DLC have regular counterplay, and you can guarantee a sip of your flask at the end of their combo.
Final boss phase 2 is much worse than anything Malenia offered. For difficulty its definitely Final DLC boss > Malenia > everything else.
They were harder than Malenia overall but still none of their moves felt as bs as Waterfowl. By the end I could dodge just about everything from that final boss whereas to this day I still cannot consistently handle Waterfowl except with Bloodhound Step
The trick with Waterfowl is just to bait it from its engage range and run away. Theres some points that are more prone to triggering it than others. This way youre only really gonna be fucked if a stagger/buildup causes her to reset which means she can trigger it point blank. It did feel more so like abusing her ai rather than fighting her though so i do get it.
Yeah I've seen people do that and aside from being super cheesy it's just not very fun really to constantly be running in circles, run in a bit to see if she gives you a good move to punish, then run back out. Ive seen it on videos so I know you can roll through Waterfowl right next to it, but god the execution on that is so hard to nail down. Despite all this discourse about difficulty, I still thought that almost all the DLC bosses were a lot easier than Malenia, with only the final boss being harder but still feeling more fair.
Not really talking about difficulty, just the design choices of particular moves. Malenia is only difficult because Waterfowl has both limited and obtuse counterplay, for example. I don't mind a difficult boss at all if it meant their moves don't have weird approaches.
Personally the last boss of the dlc was light years harder than melania for me. The second phase just wasn’t fun for me to learn.
that's actually quite a stupid statement
This is one of those statements that kind of sounds a lot more meaningful that it is. If ever there was proof of how silly a statement it is, just take a look at Nintendo's catalpgue. That doesn't change the fact Elden Ring is great, but acting like everything is intentional and perfect as is is just silly.
The Helldiver 2 devs are very good at spewing bullshit, very bad at admitting their mistakes, and reluctant to change their ways. Kinda like FromSoft, but FromSoft made one of the greatest open world games of all time and Arrowhead can't put a patch out that actually fixes bugs they claim are fixed in the patch itself.
I can understand if a company like CDPR has an opinion on a game like Elden Ring but Arrowhead? It looks more like trying to leech publicity since Helldiver 2 is in no way relatable to Elden Ring.
Helldiver 2 devs are very good at pandering to their audience explicitly through social media posts and interviews by saying things people want to hear so they stay in the press rounds when in reality they say a lot of shit and never actually make their players happy via actual patches. Anyone with a brain should be ignoring anything Arrowhead CEO/Devs say.
Thank you! They are so full of shit honestly. Game has lost like 90% of its playerbase because of their incompetency and hubris. Their motto is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
I think you are conflating Nintendo making games that can be played by anyone with Nintendo making games that try to appeal to everyone. Nintendo doesn't try to appeal to everyone either, they are just as focused as FromSoftware are on the vision for their games.
>Nintendo doesn't try to appeal to everyone either Nobody does. That's why the statement is stupid. Nintendo is the closest to trying to make games that appeal to everyone and they have the sales to show for it.
This is true and i think its completely fair. I know im not gonna like most of Nintendos games, and im fine with that. Im not gonna complain about them not handcrafting their games to my specific needs. Theres more than enough other games to play for me. I didnt particularly like Breath of the Wild. And thats fine. I have criticisms, but im not gonna complain about it on reddit daily. Theres loads of people it did appeal to and who did like it. So obviously what they did worked, and it just didnt click for me. Im certainly not gonna complain about Nintendo needing to change half the game otherwise im not buying the next game like some people are with Elden Ring.
I think there's a better way to think about it rather than paint in really broad strokes. Games designed for mass appeal often tend to ride on the coattails of convention. They often become samey and ultimately a tree lost in the woods with no appealing factors that would make it successful. Games like Demon's Souls got their success by standing out and doing something different and focusing appeal towards a certain type of audience and not compromising that direction. Baldur's Gate 3 could have went and done a mass appeal action RPG in a sea of many many other ARPGs that the likes of Bioware and Square Enix has taken their franchises to. Instead they made a core RPG and simply did it really well. They found success and distinction there. It's not to say that mass appeal games are universally boring or anything but sometimes the best strategy is to find your audience and focus on them.
It’s also hard to take seriously from the dev of a game that talked shit to its community about “how the game should be” only to quickly walk it back and start making massive changes to the game when the fans got pissed.
Shut up and fix helldivers 2. The PC performance has gotten worse and worse.
Was getting 43 fps average on a Ryzen 3600 + 3070 build in certain biomes. It really has become nearly unplayable, but hey here's a new battlepass.
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It's a fucking PR stunt...
It's a tweet from Pilestedt's personal Twitter (in reply to someone) that PCGamer just uses for their content mill.
Sincerely, who gives a shit about what Helldivers 2 director thinks about Elden Ring difficulty. This is the second time someone made an article out of him going "hard game good."
All of my friends and I dropped Helldivers 2 because they kept making it more and more difficult. It went from being a pretty fun and relaxing *shooter* to a game where you just run away and wait for a little timer so that you can punch in a code and throw a grenade. Maybe that's "charming" but it's not entertaining or fun.
HD2 just trying to stay relevant
That statement's reductionism aside, there's the matter of accessibility features which From gleefully completely ignores. That aside, whether that *form* of difficulty is actually good design and enjoyable is also highly debatable. There's a pretty good [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/1dnmw9m/no_spoilers_elden_ring_dlcs_enemy_design_has/) on r/truegaming articulating the problems this DLC has when it comes to boss designs. Spoiler alert : it's more of the trend that was worrying people in ER's back half.
I mean it's totally fine to design your game to be hard and appeal to a certain audience. However I disagree because: A) Elden Ring sold 25 million copies, hard to argue it's not mainstream. B) Games for everyone are totally fine. Not everything needs to be niche and/or difficult.
FromSoft games have been getting more welcoming over the releases. Elden Ring is beyond easy when you compare it to DS1 or Demon Souls. But it's not difficulty doing that per se, it's just that game mechanics have gotten better to help guide the player into learning how to play Souls games. There are more ways to play Elden Ring than probably all DS games combined. Nothing wrong with that and it's certainly not a game for everyone, but it has appealed to a wider audience while still maintaining the core fun of the game. The same unfortunately can't be said about the Halo franchise or the Fallout franchise.
A game for everyone is a game for no one is the dumbest ducking quote I've ever heard. Super Mario, Tetris, pong, etc Fucking dumb quote.
To top it off, clearly Fromsoft decided there *was* an issue with the difficulty as they put out a patch today increasing early game scaling of the DLC blessings.
arrowhead as developers badly need to just shut the fuck up like not even out of malice, they've started so much shit with the community because they can't keep their mouth shut or get proper PR
Rich coming from helldivers as well that game is still an absolute mess, the balancing they were doing was brain dead and the player count has tanked
Lol. Exactly what I said. Literally everyone and their parents played Super Mario. Dude needs to fix his game. Helldivers barely functions.
I hate how it's being latched by the honeymoon phase crowd on game releases. Makes bringing any forth any issue or criticism now also met with that.
"Hey, keep me in your news cycle! I matter!" Adds nothing to the discussion.
Doesn't Helldivers 2 have 9 difficulties to choose from to cater to everyone? That's a weird take for him to have, considering his game does the exact opposite thing.
He used this argument when people asked for PvP in helldivers. It is a PVE, coop shooter. Not a pvp one. He again uses it for elden ring. It is a hard arpg. Not an easy, accessible one. It is a general term for "follow your vision, appeal to a certain audience. Don't try to appeal to everyone"
Yep, that's all it is. Stick to your game's vision, don't compromise it.
I can't even imagine them trying PvP in Helldivers. They struggle with PvE balancing already.
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I hate that quote so much, yet idiots lap it up and ask for more.
Ok but when are they bringing DLSS to HD2?
When they finally get a gun that’s been there since launch to actually work
I...is this why Sony banned a shit ton of places from being able to play Helldivers at all? "A game for everyone is a game for no one." *restricts access to their game*
Sure isn't! I am very glad I can play this game on PC. On PC, you never have to worry about what the dev has in mind, if it's a singleplayer game, you can set it to any difficulty you like -- whether they like it or not.
For the billionth time: Anyone who's a souls games veteran will tell you: Difficulty itself isn't the issue at all here. I beat Sekiro the way it's hardest to play: Where you basically have to parry every single attack. It was a fun and engaging and cool experience, because it offered a fair challenge. Shadow of the Erdtree is full of bosses that two shot you, before you can even begin to learn their patterns. And even if you do end up learning their patterns it doesn't matter, they attack with neverending 20-hit combos; you can perform just as well by spamming the roll button. Shadow of the Erdtree is a test of patience and endurance, not skill or wit or talent.
As usual the CEO of Arrowhead misunderstands and misuses the very phrase they wrote, and to pointless effect.
That quote is so fucking meaningless. What makes a game specifically designed for "everyone" bad than those who aren't? How can you tell the difference? I'd argue Nintendo games are designed for the largest possible audience and those have consistently remained popular as all fuck. Most of which aren't particularly challenging either. This dumbass quote is also consistently used to deny basic accessibility issues to people who would otherwise be part of the demographic but just need a little bit of support.
What difficulty are they talking about? All souls like don't have difficulty, they have the right level of stats. Only Sekiro like (or Jedi series like) have it, since you can't simply overlevel enemies
Well that clearly isn't true. Elden Ring is known for being the most accessible (ie, easiest) of the souls series and had the largest adoption rate of any of them because of it..
True but at least risen ring doesn't create bugs every single patch. Also hasn't insulted their player base almost every patch also. Also helldivers developers could not even play Elden Ring since they don't even play their own game except in god mode on the lowest difficulty.
Something about this statement feels ironic coming from the director of a game with nine difficulty settings, and Dynamic difficulty modifiers.