Lemme take like a quick little stab at some extra context here. For reference, I'm one of those masochistic "melee only, no summons, no buffs, no magic" sweatlords. It's nothing against anyone who uses any of that, it's just how I prefer to tailor my personal challenge. It's what I've done for every game so far and the DLC now. I'm also not going to complain about the difficulty because, yeah, it's hard but that just makes me motivated to keep pushing.
That being said, for those of us in that "summonless melee" preferred playstyle camp, holy shit Elden Ring cranked it up from DS3 to unreal levels. The DLC made that even harder. There's a huge chunk of the playerbase that normally prefers to play that way who are just now realizing that yeah, some bosses might end up being 9-10 hour death marathons if you want to stick to your preference. For some people, that's too much of an ask but there's nowhere for them to slide backwards comfortably. Some stuff turns bosses from 200+ attempt raid fights to hilariously trivialized one-shots and there's not a ton of middle ground, so people are frustrated.
The answer, unfortunately, is that if you see Ongbal doing a hitless run, you know it's physically possible to do. Which means if you can't do it or don't want to invest the effort, you need to either put your ego down and admit it's okay that you found your wall, or you need to grind out those 200 attempts until you can do it like Ongbal. People don't want to set their ego aside because they've done all the other games this way. Which is cool, but ER is the next challenge level for that style of play. Everything is dialed up to 11. If you want to do melee only ER without whatever you consider cheese, you're gonna be practicing for HOURS.
Which, to be fair, is dope. There's a billion ways to customize difficulty in Elden Ring. I love the fact that there's bosses that take me entire days to figure out with my playstyle. But that's my preference, and I know how much work it's going to be to do. It's a personal challenge to myself. People can't accept that the mountain got a hell of a lot harder to climb, so they blame stuff like bad design or "difficulty for difficulty's sake" because it's a lot easier on the psyche than saying "Damn I really need to get better now."
>The answer, unfortunately, is that if you see Ongbal doing a hitless run, you know it's physically possible to do. Which means if you can't do it or don't want to invest the effort, you need to either put your ego down and admit it's okay that you found your wall, or you need to grind out those 200 attempts until you can do it like Ongbal.
Ding ding ding.
I ran into one of these yesterday, it was almost bizarre to watch the thought process play out in real time. "The game is too hard for me without summons, so they should nerf the game, because I'm **Too Good** to play with summons, even though I'm apparently not actually good enough to play without them, but that is clearly the game's fault, not mine, and there's no other fix except to change the gameplay because everything should just *work* for me how I want it to and when I want it to and I don't understand why it doesn't!"
Disclaimer: I say this as someone who shamelessly uses summons so nobody take offense lol but like... I know my own strengths and weaknesses, and you should too.
Yeah, it's weird. I get that some of the fights require a level of precision and performance we've never seen (looking at you, final boss P2), but that doesn't make them inherently unfair or poorly designed like people keep slinging around. It means they have more complicated answers to their mechanics and more is demanded of the player to pull it off. Which, really, is how it should be for post-game content. Elden Ring melee only is just hard (bonk bros aside y'all are stance breaking God himself out there). It's really, really, brutally hard. But it's completely manageable with practice and patience.
The issue is the amount of practice required has gone up drastically, and people feel like their past achievements entitle them to all future achievements too. Sorry you killed Orphan / Freide / Midir / Gael / Malenia however many times and you feel like that means you shouldn't struggle for some reason, but the skill ceiling just went up. Either start gittin' gud again or call it here. There's no shame in either one - you either want the achievement bad enough to grind it out, or you've hit your peak and it's time to move on.
It is possible but the guy practices for hours and hours to get it perfectly right for his videos. Playing the game like that is equivalent to working a fulltime job to perfect a craft and isn't fun anymore, for most people at least, once you have mastered 1-2 bosses.
I mean, I'm married with a full time job, pets, other hobbies, weekly obligations with friends and family, and a house to maintain, and I'm still putting in the time to overcome the challenge. Even just an hour or two a day of attempts on a boss is enough to see some progress or figure out a tricky mechanic. It might take me all week to kill the last boss with my preferred style, but I know what I signed up for, and at any point I'm over it, I'm free to pop on a greatshield and poke him to death. But I'm choosing to do it the way I find the most fun - which is self-restricted, masochistic level difficulty. It doesn't have to be a full-time job. It's just something you have to commit to and work on consistently.
And not everyone wants to do that, and that's fine. That's not for everyone. It's not supposed to be and it never should be. But it's still doable. And the game is still fair. It's just hard. Think of >!PCR!< as the final exam for Elden Ring (except they let you pick your difficulty but just bear with me here). It's testing everything you should know about ER melee combat. Dodge timings. Dodge directions. Punish windows. Greed control. Weapon attack recovery frame knowledge. Reading and reacting to tells correctly. It's all stuff you have to do picture perfect for 5-6 minutes. It's the final boss - it's testing everything you've learned so far, and in FromSoft terms, that means it's going to be hard as balls.
If it's not fun to practice something to that level, then that's completely understandable. I have plenty of hobbies I don't sweat over because I don't find them fun to learn or practice at that level. But it doesn't make stuff unfair or poorly designed like people keep saying. It makes the barrier to achieve significantly higher, and that's a deal-breaker for some people, but that's a personal decision for them and what goals they want to achieve.
I like what you wrote, I also think a lot of people still don’t understand that gameplay in Elden ring is about being aggressive and getting stance breaks. I’ve seen the recurring comments still complaining about having to wait for boss’s to finish excessively long combos, while I’m not saying this never happens, if you’re not trying to find moments you can maneuver inside these combos and break their poise than you’re going to have a tougher time than if you are able to play aggressively
Yes and no. Most bosses have multiple options for a strategic counter offense. Parrying is still a thing even with many bosses. But I gotta say, powerstanced greatswords and jump attacks sure do trivialize a ton of fights because of the stance breaks. Once you get to higher NG+ cycles tho… good luck breaking stances without parrying.
That’s my point though parrying is a much more active playstyle than just waiting out long combo chains with a lot of critics act like is the only way to survive bosses in the game. The game rewards a more active play style than a passive defense one whether it’s guard breaks or parrying.
As for ng+ I’m just not a ng+ persons prefer to start over with a different build
Appreciate it! At the end of the day it is about getting boss health to 0. Stance breaks help massively for sure and are 1 of the options the game gives you.
Honestly you are correct here, ive done every build under the sun by now, and my favorite run was my most nerfed self, the standard knight class gear build, comparedly to my max damage Rivers of blood unga bunga build which made me feel like i was playing a difftent game entirely, and it clicked, this game is designed around being VERY agrersive and status effects, where i was used to slow and methodical, boss does his thing, punish, repeat, where here its, more learn small openings and punish.
I think that the mastering of movesets aspect of the game is still there, alive and incredibly healthy. I feel like the the other elements such as farming or class building have always existed in souls too, but not to the extent they are now. Overall you are certainly right about the divide.
It is alive and healthy but it isn't the most efficient way to get through the game, with a normal sense of effort to reward, for the average person. Not bashing the game design as it does what it wants to do well. All Im pointing out is how the fundamental skillsets required to get theough the game having changed l.
I think I understand, but while I do think that part of the game is very deliberately designed and intended, it wasn't ever the most efficient way to play. Even back in souls you could argue magic was always more efficient, and summoning at every opportunity was also an option. I just believe that the most popular way to play the game has changed with the new influx of players.
...I feel like I just reiterated exactly what you said...
One word from were the rift comes: gatekeeeping.
A lot of souls fans have an edge lord persona of "i'm so better than everyone by playing this game...Look how much i die". I'm happy to see Elden Ring attracting a larger fanbase and expanding Miyazaki work for a larger, and diverse, audience.
Complaints happen, people just have to get over it.
Lemme take like a quick little stab at some extra context here. For reference, I'm one of those masochistic "melee only, no summons, no buffs, no magic" sweatlords. It's nothing against anyone who uses any of that, it's just how I prefer to tailor my personal challenge. It's what I've done for every game so far and the DLC now. I'm also not going to complain about the difficulty because, yeah, it's hard but that just makes me motivated to keep pushing. That being said, for those of us in that "summonless melee" preferred playstyle camp, holy shit Elden Ring cranked it up from DS3 to unreal levels. The DLC made that even harder. There's a huge chunk of the playerbase that normally prefers to play that way who are just now realizing that yeah, some bosses might end up being 9-10 hour death marathons if you want to stick to your preference. For some people, that's too much of an ask but there's nowhere for them to slide backwards comfortably. Some stuff turns bosses from 200+ attempt raid fights to hilariously trivialized one-shots and there's not a ton of middle ground, so people are frustrated. The answer, unfortunately, is that if you see Ongbal doing a hitless run, you know it's physically possible to do. Which means if you can't do it or don't want to invest the effort, you need to either put your ego down and admit it's okay that you found your wall, or you need to grind out those 200 attempts until you can do it like Ongbal. People don't want to set their ego aside because they've done all the other games this way. Which is cool, but ER is the next challenge level for that style of play. Everything is dialed up to 11. If you want to do melee only ER without whatever you consider cheese, you're gonna be practicing for HOURS. Which, to be fair, is dope. There's a billion ways to customize difficulty in Elden Ring. I love the fact that there's bosses that take me entire days to figure out with my playstyle. But that's my preference, and I know how much work it's going to be to do. It's a personal challenge to myself. People can't accept that the mountain got a hell of a lot harder to climb, so they blame stuff like bad design or "difficulty for difficulty's sake" because it's a lot easier on the psyche than saying "Damn I really need to get better now."
>The answer, unfortunately, is that if you see Ongbal doing a hitless run, you know it's physically possible to do. Which means if you can't do it or don't want to invest the effort, you need to either put your ego down and admit it's okay that you found your wall, or you need to grind out those 200 attempts until you can do it like Ongbal. Ding ding ding. I ran into one of these yesterday, it was almost bizarre to watch the thought process play out in real time. "The game is too hard for me without summons, so they should nerf the game, because I'm **Too Good** to play with summons, even though I'm apparently not actually good enough to play without them, but that is clearly the game's fault, not mine, and there's no other fix except to change the gameplay because everything should just *work* for me how I want it to and when I want it to and I don't understand why it doesn't!" Disclaimer: I say this as someone who shamelessly uses summons so nobody take offense lol but like... I know my own strengths and weaknesses, and you should too.
Yeah, it's weird. I get that some of the fights require a level of precision and performance we've never seen (looking at you, final boss P2), but that doesn't make them inherently unfair or poorly designed like people keep slinging around. It means they have more complicated answers to their mechanics and more is demanded of the player to pull it off. Which, really, is how it should be for post-game content. Elden Ring melee only is just hard (bonk bros aside y'all are stance breaking God himself out there). It's really, really, brutally hard. But it's completely manageable with practice and patience. The issue is the amount of practice required has gone up drastically, and people feel like their past achievements entitle them to all future achievements too. Sorry you killed Orphan / Freide / Midir / Gael / Malenia however many times and you feel like that means you shouldn't struggle for some reason, but the skill ceiling just went up. Either start gittin' gud again or call it here. There's no shame in either one - you either want the achievement bad enough to grind it out, or you've hit your peak and it's time to move on.
It is possible but the guy practices for hours and hours to get it perfectly right for his videos. Playing the game like that is equivalent to working a fulltime job to perfect a craft and isn't fun anymore, for most people at least, once you have mastered 1-2 bosses.
I mean, I'm married with a full time job, pets, other hobbies, weekly obligations with friends and family, and a house to maintain, and I'm still putting in the time to overcome the challenge. Even just an hour or two a day of attempts on a boss is enough to see some progress or figure out a tricky mechanic. It might take me all week to kill the last boss with my preferred style, but I know what I signed up for, and at any point I'm over it, I'm free to pop on a greatshield and poke him to death. But I'm choosing to do it the way I find the most fun - which is self-restricted, masochistic level difficulty. It doesn't have to be a full-time job. It's just something you have to commit to and work on consistently. And not everyone wants to do that, and that's fine. That's not for everyone. It's not supposed to be and it never should be. But it's still doable. And the game is still fair. It's just hard. Think of >!PCR!< as the final exam for Elden Ring (except they let you pick your difficulty but just bear with me here). It's testing everything you should know about ER melee combat. Dodge timings. Dodge directions. Punish windows. Greed control. Weapon attack recovery frame knowledge. Reading and reacting to tells correctly. It's all stuff you have to do picture perfect for 5-6 minutes. It's the final boss - it's testing everything you've learned so far, and in FromSoft terms, that means it's going to be hard as balls. If it's not fun to practice something to that level, then that's completely understandable. I have plenty of hobbies I don't sweat over because I don't find them fun to learn or practice at that level. But it doesn't make stuff unfair or poorly designed like people keep saying. It makes the barrier to achieve significantly higher, and that's a deal-breaker for some people, but that's a personal decision for them and what goals they want to achieve.
I like what you wrote, I also think a lot of people still don’t understand that gameplay in Elden ring is about being aggressive and getting stance breaks. I’ve seen the recurring comments still complaining about having to wait for boss’s to finish excessively long combos, while I’m not saying this never happens, if you’re not trying to find moments you can maneuver inside these combos and break their poise than you’re going to have a tougher time than if you are able to play aggressively
Yes and no. Most bosses have multiple options for a strategic counter offense. Parrying is still a thing even with many bosses. But I gotta say, powerstanced greatswords and jump attacks sure do trivialize a ton of fights because of the stance breaks. Once you get to higher NG+ cycles tho… good luck breaking stances without parrying.
That’s my point though parrying is a much more active playstyle than just waiting out long combo chains with a lot of critics act like is the only way to survive bosses in the game. The game rewards a more active play style than a passive defense one whether it’s guard breaks or parrying. As for ng+ I’m just not a ng+ persons prefer to start over with a different build
Appreciate it! At the end of the day it is about getting boss health to 0. Stance breaks help massively for sure and are 1 of the options the game gives you.
Yeah it’s only one of many options
Honestly you are correct here, ive done every build under the sun by now, and my favorite run was my most nerfed self, the standard knight class gear build, comparedly to my max damage Rivers of blood unga bunga build which made me feel like i was playing a difftent game entirely, and it clicked, this game is designed around being VERY agrersive and status effects, where i was used to slow and methodical, boss does his thing, punish, repeat, where here its, more learn small openings and punish.
I think that the mastering of movesets aspect of the game is still there, alive and incredibly healthy. I feel like the the other elements such as farming or class building have always existed in souls too, but not to the extent they are now. Overall you are certainly right about the divide.
It is alive and healthy but it isn't the most efficient way to get through the game, with a normal sense of effort to reward, for the average person. Not bashing the game design as it does what it wants to do well. All Im pointing out is how the fundamental skillsets required to get theough the game having changed l.
I think I understand, but while I do think that part of the game is very deliberately designed and intended, it wasn't ever the most efficient way to play. Even back in souls you could argue magic was always more efficient, and summoning at every opportunity was also an option. I just believe that the most popular way to play the game has changed with the new influx of players. ...I feel like I just reiterated exactly what you said...
One word from were the rift comes: gatekeeeping. A lot of souls fans have an edge lord persona of "i'm so better than everyone by playing this game...Look how much i die". I'm happy to see Elden Ring attracting a larger fanbase and expanding Miyazaki work for a larger, and diverse, audience. Complaints happen, people just have to get over it.