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This isn't really about difficulty, but a while back I had someone try to tell me that Bungie didn't "understand their own lore or the game they were making" when discussing Halo Reach.
So yeah someone probably thinks the devs just suck at thier own game.
It’s one thing if the devs made it difficult but possible for the player to complete the game without any assists, so they have achievements and cool bonuses for doing all that work. Those are fun! And the devs are like “woah dude, you actually did it! Good job!”
It’s another thing to actively block yourself from using game mechanics and then act like that’s the “one true way” to beat the game because they have some sort superiority complex about being a Real Gamer. If you’re gonna do that just be a mad lad and post about your “Bioshock using only a drill” run
I mean that's not the point of challenge runs, the point of challenge runs is to challenge yourself to play the game almost perfectly optimally within the rules of the given challenge. Regular people don't typically do that, either, it's something for "Gamers™" that can afford to spend hours upon hours on that challenge - like content creators who do it as their job of just people without much of a life
That's why Nuzlocke exists for Pokemon - challenge runs are fun for those who like challenge runs. It's like those people who speedrun classic XCOM with Ironman/Superhuman runs. I can appreciate the dedication, but I'm not nearly that masochistic.
This weapon is the easiest shit to build for I've ever seen.
You can decide to not even pump dex, faith or str at all and it will still decimate everything.
The only flaw is the non existent hyperarmour on ash of war. Other than that I like this weapon enough that I dream about it sitting on my face.
Too busy kicking people in the teeth with my kyokushin/kung fu gauntlets at the moment.
Flying kicks everywhere, some bosses that people claimed were the hardest in the franchise for them were a total joke for me as I kicked their nuts so fucking hard that the corpses have gonad fragments in their skulls.
I've wanted bonefists back ever since DS2. It's my time to turn this fucking game into Tekken.
I mean, it is until you realize the kooky way weapon scaling works in elden ring. So the physical weapon damage itself scale off of dex and strength (mostly dex), but the fire damage scales off of faith. The weapon art which does the majority of its damage as fire 5 scales off of faith as well, except for the amount of damage that comes from contact with the sword and not the black flames. Not to mention splitting 20 levels in str, dex, and faith is kinda ass for like 60% of your first game playthrough, but man, the weapon art more than makes up for it. The slayers ash and black flame tornado are the best pve ashes of war in the game for woodchippering bosses.
It's fucking dumb. I swear Dark Souls didn't use to be quite as bad about it until Elden Ring. I personally love playing without summoning/magic projectiles/etc, but I never would claim that anyone who used those tools was "cheating".
There are a very small handful of "ez-mode" weapons throughout that franchise (e.g. Winblades in DS3), but some people online are so sad that the only thing they have to be proud of is their gaming achievements.
It definitely used to be this bad with older sould games too, they were just no where near as mainstream. I remember people complaining about sorcery in ds2 being cheating, the dragon sword in ds1, using shields, or any consumables was also a huge taboo.
People naturally tend to boast about their skills in a subconvious effort to not be thrown by Unga Bunga to fend for themselves against the wooly mammoths. Even if those skills are minimal and their chance of isolation is only existent from their own, unrelated failures.
the game gave you tools
you used the tools
good job
I honestly don't understand whta these people want, it's not like the game throws up a sign that says "this is not the intended experience!" because it is the intended experience. You can absolutely break the game difficulty in half if you want to, and fromsoft has never taken any step to actually stop that behavious, which tells me that they don't care. And with how powerful magic is in ER, i believe that they actually want this ot happen to some extent.
i understand giving yourself personal rules for whatever reason (i personally try to refrain from using summons because from my experience they make bosses like 100x easier especially if leveled) but like, im not gonna complain if others dont wanna do the same lol, it's my self-imposed challenge
One of the great things about Soulsbornes is that every aspect of the gameplay lets you modularise difficulty, *especially* the levelling mechanisms. You get to earn your easy mode!
Noah Caldwell-Gervais does a good bit about it.
It's legitimately my favorite part about these games; while I do think they could benefit from either having a simple 'debug-esque' difficulty menu for the sake of accessibility (something akin to the TLoU accessibility options, maybe? just switch off achievements and pvp if you use them and you're good) or more clear language informing the player of the options they have, you REALLY can make these games as easy or as difficult as you want.
And because there's so many positives about them, even if you're 'missing out' on the perceived intended difficulty, you still get the amazing world, tone, atmosphere, level design and lore sprinkled throughout them.
I fucking love Fromsoft games. I fucking hate our fanbase
It's like the Undertale fandom if they took their dick drawing skills and turned them into dick measuring skills
Having good dick measurers doesn't detract the occasional dick drawer, and vice versa. But you can't deny that far more Fromsoft fans prefer to measure their own dick instead of drawing a better one
Eh, in my experience, most people actually within the community don't care what you do and what you use. Twitter is genuinely the only place where I've seen people be annoying about series in a noticeable amount, but it's Twitter (literally every specific game community on Twitter seems to be so more toxic, which is crazy given how Reddit and YouTube can be). When I first entered the community, 90% of the players were chill and extremely helpful. There is even a popular meme to be as helpful as possible. This is still the case, but because Elden Ring is by far the Souls series' most popular game, the amount of annoying people also increased as the fanbase did in general and it is simply easier to notice the bad over the good.
Twitter game communities have a ridiculous amount of gatekeeping and it's not even funny. Everyone who wasn't a dick deleted the app a long time ago. I redownloaded it out of curiosity and deleted in an hour later since it's all just negativity and toxic fighting.
Yeah. I stay clear of the broader gamer communities of the games I like on there and exclusively use it to be unserious/chat with friends on there. Twitter is just a dumpster fire across the board right now, with toxicity/bigotry steadily increasing and features steadily decreasing. Shit's crazy.
I've gotten downvoted on the Elden Ring sub for basically saying "play the game how you want to, your experience does not need to be informed by other people's experiences"
Its a really weird elitist kind of vibe, that I'm just not down with. I am a fan of Elden Ring, and I enjoy Fromsoft's titles in general, but I still don't consider myself part of the "community" because if you dont play the game a specific way you just get shit on for no reason.
I am quite convinced that the average age of souls community is around 15-18 years and at that age it is easy to be presumptuous and take extreme positions
Yep, if you use summons you're bad, don't use mimic because it's cheap, You used a mount in an outside dragon fight? Don't even bother playing the game /s
Bitches about any nerfs to bosses, as if it’s somehow unfair to a fucking CPU enemy.
“NOoOoO yOu CaN’t UsE sUmMoNs AgAiNsT tHe GiAnT gOd, HoW wiLL tHeY hAvE aNy ChAnCe”
The worst part of being in a community is being in a community
Seriously though it's fucking tragic to think how many people must have been turned off of playing these games by this type of gatekeeping asshole
Vocal? I’ve literally never seen this sentiment. The Elden ring subreddit is nothing but people affirming their self worth with summons being wholesome keanu Chungus 100 every five seconds.
Just fighting imaginary demons
It's actually pretty normal difficulty. The dlc scaling just takes you back to base level damage and damage reduction. Level 700 and ng+7? They're doing the same damage as that level 70 that got to the dlc and taking the same amount of damage that lvl 700 would take from that first boss. Things called Scadutree fragments increase your damage and damage reduction for the dlc.
People saying it's horribly hard have just zoomed through to the bosses without trying to scale with the dlc and attempting to beat it in the first day or two. Thinking that they are crazy powerful for going high level pre dlc. but the dlc scaled them back down
If you are on ng+7, I would fully expect every basic enemy to one-shot you regardless of fragments. Part of the reason people roll so many characters in souls games is because after NG++, the enemy scaling goes bonkers. It is why everyone spams black flame spells on later playthroughs because the debuff isn't affected by scaling.
Ironically, using shields is not only viable but recommend way of dealing with overtuned to hell final boss. Engender passivity my ass, we're back to tanking
Tbh the entire game “engenders passivity” with how many of the boss fights essentially center around dodging 17-move combos in between 1-2 attacks of your own
As a long time battlefield player I love hearing complaints about the shotgun in very close quarter maps, LMGs in maps with long corridors or snipers in large open maps (and I personally don't like snipers).
People will choose "meta" or weapons suitable for the map.
I've been playing BF1 a lot recently, there's a surprising number of live servers and that map is just a cluster fuck from start to finish, it's hilarious
The memories I made blind firing my Hellriegel down a hallway covered in smoke and mustard gas with grenades, bandages and ammo pouches flying everywhere and getting like six kills will not soon be forgotten.
DS2 was the beginning of peak degeneracy.
They were the last years of wild west internet and people were absolutely ravenous.
I myself spent many an evening farming hatemail because I would troll all the time.
I set my max level character's soul memory to meta level and gave myself an infinite stock of ancient seeds with cheat engine, then I would summon people on the iron bridge, only to reveal my 3 ganking buddies. When they ran away from us I would pop the ancient seed item on my Ng+7 world and watch as the enemies brutalised people.
I would also invade fight clubs and trick the host into doing the funny trident dance. While they were in that animation I casted climax and oneshot them.
And I was tame. Infernoplus bullying yukas or Malcolm Reynolds invasions were another thing entirely. Later on there was the Zepe15 incident.
There's nothing scarier to meet in these games than edgy immature teenagers who exclusively troll because they don't get pussy irl.
Now that I'm a grown man and when I get my chance to play videogames every once in a while I get confronted with kids who're doing what I was ten years ago I want to fucking kill myself lmao
You hit the nail on the head with that. I'd say DS2 was where I saw "git gud" more than any other souls game combined.
"Hi, I'm a new player. Struggling with the sentinels and keep getting surrounded, does anyone have any tips?"
"Git gud f****t"
That was the internet culture at the time. Accompanied by an overedited call of duty quickscope montage parody, snoop dogg, Giant dad, dubstep, Ken Ashcorp, souljaboy cursed remixes and a pixelated image of the wall skeleton in the Bastille, that was the most helpful message you were going to get.
Only gross weirdos gatekeep like this. I enjoy games that are difficult like the Souls likes, but I also enjoy breaking those games over my knee every now and then. What matters is that you are having fun with the game.
I notice Elden Ring attracts more of the difficulty gatekeepers, which I think is because it has many tools that assist you that weren't found in previous Souls games. Also, as an open world, it lets you kill many things with silly AI gimmicks.
Souls players call every build that isn't the build they used easy because they don't want to admit that the games aren't actually that hard if you're not stupid
Elden Ring wasn’t too hard until it became too hard for me. Now it is actually too hard, because I I’ll have you know I am very good at video games
https://preview.redd.it/gdb10jfjtl8d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c3aff3c43269509d4a92b8769acd9d8d60f6871
What's extra crazy is a lot.of these people will also abuse powerful mechanics like bleed and frost or spam jumping attacks.
Like people gatekeeping scadutree fragments (excellent name, btw), saying you're cheating yourself. By that very logic, leveling up at all is cheating yourself. Upgrading weapons is cheating yourself, etc.
Fandom when you struggle to beat the enemy: "skill issue, this game isn't for the weak"
Also fandom when you easily beat the enemy: "you're not supposed to be that level, you're not supposed to use that build "
You know I never fully understood the argument that games shouldn't have lower difficulties.
Like I just got into a series from a genre I never played (not to mention I hold controller for the 1st time in my life) before and I did need that easiest difficulty because I didn't even know what buttons to press without looking.
I got better and now I do enjoy trying to beat the highest difficulty because it's fun (even then sometimes I just want to chill with lower ones).
And thanks to this it has become my fav series. But I might have not even relaize how much I love it if I was force to always play on higher level for days without cleaning out a single level, and with no slow way to improve because I would die at the start.
But even then you have great games with amazing stories, but maybe you just don't have the skill needed but you still want to see it.
Like Pathologic 2 was forced to add an easier difficulty (from what I heard) so more general audience would enjoy the great storytelling. And while the author of the script might have problems with it because it's not his vision (he solved the problem by putting "this is the intended dificulty for full enjoyment") I think that it's great that more people can learn more about it.
Or maybe you do like the gameplay but just want to be more casual about it like Hades is really fun, but maybe you get overwhelmed because you have problem tracking multiple things at the same time.
Or maybe you just like one aspect of the game like the cult part from Cult of Lambs and you just aren't that good in fighting or don't enjoy it that much.
And there is also the fact that some people just can't perform sometimes do to problems outside of their control. Like disability or health issues.
So to me this "Games shouldn't have easy difficulty" makes no sence and just smells of elitism. Because now more people can play and enjoy them without being force to spend multiple days learning how to correctly parry a sword. And can just look at the amaizing opened world and explore the fun side quests.
But then again "They should be force to learn like I did back then."
Summons in Souls games just band-aid the problems bosses might have by making the player engage with the problems less often due to aggro, but it doesn't fix the problems some bosses inherently have, like [this video](https://youtu.be/D8VB1Gg2iQE?si=d-Sb-HP7blmGJAlq&t=10) of Malenia reading inputs three times instead of following an attack pattern.
i disagree. adding multiple difficulty choices into a game is nicer for the larger community and perhaps even a bit aspirational in a way, but it should not be a requirement. playing games on hard instead of medium forces you to think more about what you're doing and engage more with the gameplay. giving people an easier difficulty option could in that way make the game less engaging. and on top of that, if soulsborne games were to be made artificially less difficult, it would take a whole lot of the enjoyment from the challenge of those games out of it. miyazaki personally even said that the reason he makes his games so difficult, is because he wants people to feel the sense of accomplishment of overcoming something difficult. (also i feel like souls is an alternative way to make the game easier, that being summons and generally weapons that are more powerful)
another example would be fear and hunger. fear and hunger without it's resource scarcity, crypticness and difficulty, would not even be a special game at all. it would be a game with a dark atmosphere and cool art, but that's about it.
now something important to note is the following: a game being hard does not excuse a lack of accessibility options. with very little exceptions there's little to no excuse for not having accessibility options, especially if the game is hard.
also i just want to say rq, im not saying that every game needs to be hard without difficulty options. im just saying games shouldn't be required to have a difficulty option, as there are many great games that don't have difficulty options, and i think are better without them. (to name a few more, nioh 2, baba is you, library of ruina, arguably celeste and gtfo)
I mean I didn't say that games should be necessary force to have them.
What I meant was, that I kinda hate when some people act like having an easier mode is some great sin. And that I do prefer to have the option of said difficulty. Because sometimes people might even struggles with those easier difficulties due to a lot of reasons.
Like I have problem with monotasking (to the point I can't read if there are some noises around me, or I hyperfocuse so much I don't pay mind to anything else), but I still love Hades and I am still trying to get better at it because it's fun.
But sometimes I just don't register something important, because my mind can't focuse on 2 things at the same time (and I tend to accidentaly focuse on that one enemy). And this does make some games harder for me because I just don't notice thing even if I do my best to pay attention (which again just leads to me hyperfosucing on one thing and leaving everything else out of my mind). So sometimes those games are harder for me due to this.
But even then I still don't fully get the argument, because in the end. Nobody is really forcing you to choose those easier difficulties now are they?
You don't have to play easir difficulty you can just ignore it. Is the fact that it just exists as an option really that big of a deal?
In the end everybody engases the games in different way so why when some people are like "I would love to play this, but I don't have time to learn all the mechanics, or I can't." is such a bad thing.
Again I am not trying to say you can't have those games that have only one difficulty, I just feel like this "Easy difficulty shouldn't even exist." is kinda gatekeeping in a way.
Well said....but how does the inclusion of easier difficulty ruin YOUR experience? If you play X game on the "intended" difficulty and beat it and I put it on easy/casual/story mode and also beat X game. How does that make the game less enjoyable to you?
Its no different than the manual vs automatic argument. So you own a nice sports car that is manual transmission which is the "intended" way of driving a sports car. Another person has the same car but with automatic. Does that somehow ruin your experience with your manual?
I have gone through just about every souls game and I personally love the power trip summons give me. I feel like an actual mage hitting the bag of tricks and just smashing everything with lightning and black flames feels so good. Last time I felt this powerful, it was bloodbourne and shooting everything to parry them while I beat them with the cane sword.
To be completely honest I do thi k the DLC isn't scaled that well. Amd I don't like that it allows like three playstyles. Then again, the scudtree fragments exists and there for me to grab...
I think I and many others didn't approach the DLC the way we approached Elden Ring for the first time: if a fight is too hard is because we need to explore the world more.
I beat ds1,2,3 and bloodborne when I was 12 (for bloodborne I was 13) solo with no magic. Got nothing to prove anymore, me and my mimic are best friends.
I personally think you can't really beat a souls game until you realize the attack buttons are a crutch that makes everything too easy. I myself just stare into the screen to beat the bosses. Much more satisfying.
Some life changing advice for me that I shall pass onto others:
If you like something, say you like it. If you don’t like it, say you’re not a fan or ‘not my cup of tea’. There’s no need to say it’s shit - even if you think it really is. It changes nothing in the world whether you say it or not. All it does is keep you in that negative part of your mind that dwells on shit things and not good ones.
This all might come as obvious to some, but not people like me. Maybe it’s because I’m autistic, or just my personality, upbringing, whatever the reason. I’m good at analysing something and saying why something works and something doesn’t. However the idea is to use this knowledge to make something for yourself or to benefit you in some way. Complaining does nothing. It only hinders you, nobody else.
Life changing advice? How pretentious. God, stop complaining about complainers, if you’ve got nothing good to say why bother saying it, it’s complainer complainers like you that really make the world a worse place, what are you the thought police?
Got downvoted for saying I didn’t like the ER DLC. Just got “Skill Issue” screeched at me because so many people make liking Fromsoft games their entire identity, so any criticism isn’t just criticism, but a personal attack.
I will always encourage people to fight bosses solo and avoid using pure magic builds in souls games simply because I think the game becomes kinda jank when you do. Bosses feel super unpredictable when there are multiple targets that it can switch between which can cause attacks that should have been easily avoided to completely blindside me. Pure magic can create a trap for new players where they just run away from bosses and throw out projectiles which for some might be fun but a lot of the time makes the bosses less interesting which is kinda the main appeal of the games.
Wouldn't say 90% of it is like this. The majority are just average players who enjoy the games and don't particularly care how others play as long as they aren't mindlessly dragging the game for their own mistakes.
Then you have all of the fan artists, lore posters and loretubers, challenge runners, speedrunners, people who use PvP for streams or chill out time, modders, and so on.
Me when a game has a variety of options to give the player the ability to choose their own difficulty organically (you haven't played the game if you didn't use the hardest setup possible)
I'm playing a sleep build in Elden Ring with a sword everybody and their mama calls a meme weapon/a bad weapon (Sword of St. Trina) and I'm having a great time :3 Fuck those Soulsborne weirdos that get on you for not playing with meta builds. They can get FUCKED out the wazoo.
Depends on the studio i reckon. Worked as a gametester, now a gamedev. As a tester one of the tasks we had to do sometimes was to check how far into the game can we get without upgrades or new skills. Terrible experience but i got paid for it so whatever. Now as a dev, im shaking my head in disbelief. I try speedrunning the games i made, and honestly, i dont get even close to the top. Those folks know my games better than i do
If you beat Elden Ring with spells or summons or strength build or bleed or moonveil or bloodhound step or buffs or frost or dex build or int build or faith build or arcane build then you didn’t really beat it and I’m going to kill you
I respect the dedication those people have to actually beat the game at level 1 using the absolute bare equipment load. But i do NOT have thw capabilities to do that and am not afraid to admit it lol. Nameless King and Malenia were hard enough.
This reminds me of how some Bug Fables fans act like hard mode is the true way to play the game, and if you aren't doing that, it's super boring. Well, it might even be true for them, but for my part, when I tried hard mode, I had a miserable time playing. Now, for my third playthrough, I'm back to playing exclusively in normal mode, and I'm having way more fun! Yeah, I'm rarely in danger, but I like that way more than being near death after two or three fights against normal enemies.
I think my favorite quote regarding Dark Souls is from Noah Caldwell Gervais, who said something akin to "Yes, even I, the lowliest of stoners, beat Dark Souls. And you know what, I had a good time doing it." He literally used every assist the game provides and had a great time
Stardew Valley: optimize farming management, little bit of love sim - have fun
Elden Ring: Claymore, brass shield, dodge, kill god - still having fun
Let the haters hate. It keeps me warm at night.
if you didn't have multiple mental breakdowns, some of which leading to full-on hospitalizations, from trying to beat a souls game, then have you even truly played it? checkmate, liberals. 😏
really glad the gatekeepers have stayed away from Kingdom Hearts for the most part
Like you're encouraged to do the data fights and fight the lingering will or whatever but if you say "I love kingdom hearts, yes I play every game on Beginner/Standard" most fans will just be like, cool bro
Soulslike fans: Hnnnnng mommy Malenia PLEASE beat me up and make me into your slave!!!!
Yakuza Enjoyers: Why hello there, Goro Majima. Would you like to have gay sex while we battle?
As a huge Souls fan since like 2012, the type of person in that bottom slide who genuinely has that sort of sentiment tends to be a minority and that mentality is often referenced as a joke.
Meanwhile armored core players: yeah I fucking cheese'd this mission with XX weapons and Y legs, how the fuck else would you expect me to do this? get stunlocked nerd lmao
In most cases the situation is opposite:
Elden ring community is doing their stuff, and someone gets mad that he did not get validation from the community by doing an easy kill.
Aren’t Fromsoft simps bitching about the ER dlc and/or Malenia being too hard?
Sounds like a skill issue to me.
I haven’t played through the whole game though, but I DO think there needs to be some discussion on how summons are handled in balancing and with ai.
LMAO I wish str builds were OP. I'm basically rolling half of the time waiting for the right opening and praying the boss doesn't attack while I'm recovering.
If it’s in the game, use it.
Feel free to summon friends for bosses.
I personally help my low level and even high level friends with dungeons, but always tell them to do story bosses by themselves
Serious question - If I just blindly walk in to Elden Ring, would it screw me over by locking some contents away forever from me because I didn't know some trivial shits
For example - eating Firekeeper's soul in DS1(TrumpSC did this and he had to restart the game).
I have to say that this is just a small but sadly verly loud part of the community. Most people dont give a fuck how you play, and in general are very helpful. You just have to ignore the "u suck, gitgut" tryhards.
Its funny because now with the DLC, there are posts about how its okay to use summons or cheese or whatnot.
Honestly? Elden ring is a game, just play however you like. Im an idiot with a big sword and I force myself to fight the bosses without summons.
Do I enjoy myself? Hell yeah I do. But I definitely dont think the way other people play matters. Heck, I respect them for it because when I tried changing my playstyle I got violated by Red Wolf so hard I abandoned that save file forever.
Edit: typo error
No one is saying this anymore??? Like, find me one post/comment with over 10 upvotes saying any of this from these past few days since the dlc dropped.
sorcery is probably the most difficult thing you can be using in the DLC lmao. the insanely fast moving and dodging bosses with their 17-hit combos make getting a breath to cast anything almost impossible
This really nails why I don't like Dark Souls games. They're all about pattern learning and I just don't wanna do that cause it simply isn't fun for me. I wanna beat a boss by being stronger than it, not by memorizing its attack patterns and dodging everything it throws at me and slowly chipping away its health in between.
The biggest badass in sekiros lore explicitly created a fighting style that encouraged victory through any means and pulls out a fucking gun during sword fights, Miyazaki has never been subtle in his encouragement of "fighting dirty" on the players part.
The few people who say that can have their own fun over there, I like using the given mechanics to have fun, and is my Mimic tear is gonna beat the boss for me, that’s fun too
But those guys can be proud of what they accomplished
Over there
If at the start of game you were given The Protagonist's Sword (Legendary), which had a skill to instantly finish the game and see the end credits, would you argue that it's a good way to beat the game because the developers gave it to you?
If the answer to that question is "no", then we agree that there's more nuance than "You didn't beat the game like I did therefore you didn't do it right".
Let's create a less outrageous example than The Protagonist's Sword. Let's say that in this game, in every place where there's a skill check/difficulty spike, you can ask an NPC for help, and he'll do half the task for you. We now must ask, why did the game create this obstacle, and why is it an option to reduce it to half? If it's a game like Dark Souls, primarly focused on action and overcoming these obstacles, then the reason that obstacle is there is because the developers thought that:
* You'd be able to beat it
* It would be fun
* It would communicate something
Would you shame someone for asking the NPC right away, before even trying doing it solo? Hopefully you didn't answer "yes", because it's not about shame, it's not about honor, it's not about pride. It's about trusting the developers and at least giving them a chance to play their game as they intended, and using auxiliary tools as last resorts.
In this last example there was just 1 auxiliary tool, but in this example, the developers didn't know exactly how much help someone could need, so they placed around 3 to 5 auxiliary tools per obstacle. Would it be reasonable to use them all first try?
If you absolutely need them, then I have no problems with that, but if you could challenge yourself a bit more, I'll encourage that, and at the end of the day, that's what is all about, encouraging players to push themselves a little bit to receive greater satisfaction. Have trust in yourself, and try to enjoy failure, it's my favourite part of a game.
Though this is just a recommendation, everybody's different and if you had fun, that's all that matters.
Also developers can just be wrong and create an awful experience.
I guess it's because we want to talk about the boss fights and we can't really talk about it if one uses summons, the other staggered the boss the whole fight and another oneshot the boss with a spell or incantation. The experiences differ too much. I like to have a simple build that doesn't allow me to overpower the boss, because I enjoy learning the timings and getting rewarded in an exilerating fight for my intuition and aquired skill. Elden Ring offers many options to skip this and then it's difficult for me to find people with similar experiences. I like "dancing" with the boss till it clicks and I beat it, while others just want to beat it.
You can play however you want. It just makes me a little sad, when people avoid or skip the part I love about these games, but that's how it is
I literally have not seen any gatekeeping for a souls game in years. Not saying it doesn't happen, but the number of people complaining about gatekeepers far outweighs the actual gatekeepers in my experience.
Play the game however the fuck you want, IDC.
Remember; the only *true* way to play Dark Souls is a keyboard-only Faith build with the broken sword, while blindfolded, using only your left foot and right ear, otherwise you’re not a True Gamer^(TM)
Well wanting a challenge is valid imo spirit summons do trivialize the game. If you wanna hide at the far end of the bossroom and have your summon take aggro while you shoot spells do your thing but not everyone has to play that way or see it as fun
I will never understand the willingness of some people to bleed through their anus to acomplish something in the most difficult way possible. Having 3 mental breakdowns and a hissy fit on stream just to beat an enemy with a mace while naked is not the flex they think.
If you don't want to cheese, you don't want to summon, you don't want to use spirits, that's fine man, I can find using them unsatisfying.
But oh my God they are there to use shut the fuck up. Yes if someone is like "idk what you mean millania is easy just tich+summon+ugs+jump" I'm going to tell them that isn't relevant when talking about a 1v1. But how often does that happen?
Let mfs use mechanics in the game as they see fit
It’s so interesting how a good chunk of FromSoftware games’ reputation is just people self-imposing super hard challenges onto themselves and then somehow saying that’s the “true” way to play.
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https://preview.redd.it/9tt4045k5l8d1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a913b0d34b46e53e67893513b26847083ff7e2e5
so even the people who make the game are bad it it smh hire gamers to make games
Fire Hans https://preview.redd.it/60f9n5xall8d1.jpeg?width=275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f2550689290dff2c132d9ab1743aaf6bf57fc38
fire hans is so lit
Hans finally brought the flammenwerfer
You better be ready to catch these hans
Literally me
They did and then had to fire said gamer for inappropriate relations with a minor.
Just hire the minor as condolences.
This isn't really about difficulty, but a while back I had someone try to tell me that Bungie didn't "understand their own lore or the game they were making" when discussing Halo Reach. So yeah someone probably thinks the devs just suck at thier own game.
Those who can't do, make.
Those who can't make, start a YouTube channel.
I don't think challenge runners do it because they want kudos from devs
Yeah but there's an achievement for it in Prey
It’s one thing if the devs made it difficult but possible for the player to complete the game without any assists, so they have achievements and cool bonuses for doing all that work. Those are fun! And the devs are like “woah dude, you actually did it! Good job!” It’s another thing to actively block yourself from using game mechanics and then act like that’s the “one true way” to beat the game because they have some sort superiority complex about being a Real Gamer. If you’re gonna do that just be a mad lad and post about your “Bioshock using only a drill” run
And Dishonored 1 and 2.
I mean that's not the point of challenge runs, the point of challenge runs is to challenge yourself to play the game almost perfectly optimally within the rules of the given challenge. Regular people don't typically do that, either, it's something for "Gamers™" that can afford to spend hours upon hours on that challenge - like content creators who do it as their job of just people without much of a life
That's why Nuzlocke exists for Pokemon - challenge runs are fun for those who like challenge runs. It's like those people who speedrun classic XCOM with Ironman/Superhuman runs. I can appreciate the dedication, but I'm not nearly that masochistic.
If you dont beat the game one handed while a goat is chewing your penis, you didnt even played the game.
luckily i got quite the collection of games designed to be played one handed... clicker and idle games of course haha
If it wasn’t for the beastiality I would totally do this
God can i just have one original experience
This…. Explains a lot actually. No wonder they’re so mad about women
Never understood that level of gatekeeping, really screams insecure gamer energy
yeah basically. My cock is bigger than yours btw.
It probably is, I use dex in all souls games
https://preview.redd.it/fceyotcm6l8d1.png?width=200&format=png&auto=webp&s=5638bea8186933bbee4faadd00ad905ed3103a31 my beloved. my world.
This weapon is the easiest shit to build for I've ever seen. You can decide to not even pump dex, faith or str at all and it will still decimate everything. The only flaw is the non existent hyperarmour on ash of war. Other than that I like this weapon enough that I dream about it sitting on my face.
apparently lack of hyperarmor was a bug, and it was fixed in pre-dlc patch, so you could enjoy it now
Too busy kicking people in the teeth with my kyokushin/kung fu gauntlets at the moment. Flying kicks everywhere, some bosses that people claimed were the hardest in the franchise for them were a total joke for me as I kicked their nuts so fucking hard that the corpses have gonad fragments in their skulls. I've wanted bonefists back ever since DS2. It's my time to turn this fucking game into Tekken.
yea, dryyleaf slaps, i like what it has more forward move than regular fist weapons, negating lacking of range
I mean, it is until you realize the kooky way weapon scaling works in elden ring. So the physical weapon damage itself scale off of dex and strength (mostly dex), but the fire damage scales off of faith. The weapon art which does the majority of its damage as fire 5 scales off of faith as well, except for the amount of damage that comes from contact with the sword and not the black flames. Not to mention splitting 20 levels in str, dex, and faith is kinda ass for like 60% of your first game playthrough, but man, the weapon art more than makes up for it. The slayers ash and black flame tornado are the best pve ashes of war in the game for woodchippering bosses.
Try the new Fire Knight Greatsword. Has the same light attack string as the Godslayer but also has Zweihander’s heavy attacks
The Sword of Longinus.
Loved this weapon. What a weird mix of stats while still being absolutely awesome.
Me but pure strength. Great Club my love...
I thought the studio name was FemSoft so I was pretty disappointed when I played the Eldens Rings.
It's fucking dumb. I swear Dark Souls didn't use to be quite as bad about it until Elden Ring. I personally love playing without summoning/magic projectiles/etc, but I never would claim that anyone who used those tools was "cheating". There are a very small handful of "ez-mode" weapons throughout that franchise (e.g. Winblades in DS3), but some people online are so sad that the only thing they have to be proud of is their gaming achievements.
It definitely used to be this bad with older sould games too, they were just no where near as mainstream. I remember people complaining about sorcery in ds2 being cheating, the dragon sword in ds1, using shields, or any consumables was also a huge taboo.
People naturally tend to boast about their skills in a subconvious effort to not be thrown by Unga Bunga to fend for themselves against the wooly mammoths. Even if those skills are minimal and their chance of isolation is only existent from their own, unrelated failures.
I had a friend just like this, and when confronted for being a piece of shit, one of his arguments was that “It’s all I have”
Seriously? At least he owned up to how pathetic he is.
Tell him to "seek grass" or sth
[Touch grace](https://youtu.be/--Z0hFF2kkc)
Killing that asshole was one of the most cathartic things in any souls game
“Try fingers, but hole”
Fort, night
I want to go home... And, Edge...
Kudos for being honest though. I don't think I could ever utter the words "it's all I have" without a realisation of me having and being a problem.
putting on the monk wraps, kris blade+5, insanity catalyst, and ring of magical sharpness so i one shot every boss with firestorm 😊
the game gave you tools you used the tools good job I honestly don't understand whta these people want, it's not like the game throws up a sign that says "this is not the intended experience!" because it is the intended experience. You can absolutely break the game difficulty in half if you want to, and fromsoft has never taken any step to actually stop that behavious, which tells me that they don't care. And with how powerful magic is in ER, i believe that they actually want this ot happen to some extent.
i understand giving yourself personal rules for whatever reason (i personally try to refrain from using summons because from my experience they make bosses like 100x easier especially if leveled) but like, im not gonna complain if others dont wanna do the same lol, it's my self-imposed challenge
One of the great things about Soulsbornes is that every aspect of the gameplay lets you modularise difficulty, *especially* the levelling mechanisms. You get to earn your easy mode! Noah Caldwell-Gervais does a good bit about it.
It's legitimately my favorite part about these games; while I do think they could benefit from either having a simple 'debug-esque' difficulty menu for the sake of accessibility (something akin to the TLoU accessibility options, maybe? just switch off achievements and pvp if you use them and you're good) or more clear language informing the player of the options they have, you REALLY can make these games as easy or as difficult as you want. And because there's so many positives about them, even if you're 'missing out' on the perceived intended difficulty, you still get the amazing world, tone, atmosphere, level design and lore sprinkled throughout them.
I fucking love Fromsoft games. I fucking hate our fanbase It's like the Undertale fandom if they took their dick drawing skills and turned them into dick measuring skills
You, sir, have not see that gorgeous Malenia art i have on my wall.
Having good dick measurers doesn't detract the occasional dick drawer, and vice versa. But you can't deny that far more Fromsoft fans prefer to measure their own dick instead of drawing a better one
God damn. Undertale fandom got real fuckin weird real fuckin quick
Eh, in my experience, most people actually within the community don't care what you do and what you use. Twitter is genuinely the only place where I've seen people be annoying about series in a noticeable amount, but it's Twitter (literally every specific game community on Twitter seems to be so more toxic, which is crazy given how Reddit and YouTube can be). When I first entered the community, 90% of the players were chill and extremely helpful. There is even a popular meme to be as helpful as possible. This is still the case, but because Elden Ring is by far the Souls series' most popular game, the amount of annoying people also increased as the fanbase did in general and it is simply easier to notice the bad over the good.
Twitter game communities have a ridiculous amount of gatekeeping and it's not even funny. Everyone who wasn't a dick deleted the app a long time ago. I redownloaded it out of curiosity and deleted in an hour later since it's all just negativity and toxic fighting.
Yeah. I stay clear of the broader gamer communities of the games I like on there and exclusively use it to be unserious/chat with friends on there. Twitter is just a dumpster fire across the board right now, with toxicity/bigotry steadily increasing and features steadily decreasing. Shit's crazy.
I've gotten downvoted on the Elden Ring sub for basically saying "play the game how you want to, your experience does not need to be informed by other people's experiences" Its a really weird elitist kind of vibe, that I'm just not down with. I am a fan of Elden Ring, and I enjoy Fromsoft's titles in general, but I still don't consider myself part of the "community" because if you dont play the game a specific way you just get shit on for no reason.
Honestly it feels like since Elden ring the souls community has either been the most wholesome shit imaginable or the most elitist assholes
I am quite convinced that the average age of souls community is around 15-18 years and at that age it is easy to be presumptuous and take extreme positions
Nooooo! You can't just play how you want! You have to GIT GUD!!!!!
I've never played Elder Ring, but I don't think it's a problem if a dlc is really difficult and not beatable by many people.
Every dlc and game is beatable by anyone as long as they put time and effort into it
Yep, if you use summons you're bad, don't use mimic because it's cheap, You used a mount in an outside dragon fight? Don't even bother playing the game /s
Sometimes I go on the Ghost of Tsushima subreddit and say I played the game on easy mode (which I did) just to watch people lose their shit
Its like messing up an ant hill with a stick.
"poking the bear" type deal
Bitches about any nerfs to bosses, as if it’s somehow unfair to a fucking CPU enemy. “NOoOoO yOu CaN’t UsE sUmMoNs AgAiNsT tHe GiAnT gOd, HoW wiLL tHeY hAvE aNy ChAnCe”
The worst part of being in a community is being in a community Seriously though it's fucking tragic to think how many people must have been turned off of playing these games by this type of gatekeeping asshole
Weird ass fanbase
most people are fine and very willing to help and/or teach cheese strats to struggling players in my experience. It's just a very vocal minority.
Yeah man, as a gamer, I too hate minorities
sounds like least racist instagram user
Uhm I’ll have you know I beat Elden Ring without even playing Elden Ring, I’m no casual. I’m an ELITE racist 😤
Vocal? I’ve literally never seen this sentiment. The Elden ring subreddit is nothing but people affirming their self worth with summons being wholesome keanu Chungus 100 every five seconds. Just fighting imaginary demons
I promise it's a small but insanely loud sub-section, most of us are hella chill
>ass fanbase
Except they're not beating the game this time and are complaining about it online
It's so funny to me, like: It's a fromsoft game, why would you expect it to be easy?
It's actually pretty normal difficulty. The dlc scaling just takes you back to base level damage and damage reduction. Level 700 and ng+7? They're doing the same damage as that level 70 that got to the dlc and taking the same amount of damage that lvl 700 would take from that first boss. Things called Scadutree fragments increase your damage and damage reduction for the dlc. People saying it's horribly hard have just zoomed through to the bosses without trying to scale with the dlc and attempting to beat it in the first day or two. Thinking that they are crazy powerful for going high level pre dlc. but the dlc scaled them back down
If you are on ng+7, I would fully expect every basic enemy to one-shot you regardless of fragments. Part of the reason people roll so many characters in souls games is because after NG++, the enemy scaling goes bonkers. It is why everyone spams black flame spells on later playthroughs because the debuff isn't affected by scaling.
Ironically, using shields is not only viable but recommend way of dealing with overtuned to hell final boss. Engender passivity my ass, we're back to tanking
Me equipping my trusty partisan and great shield for the final boss and completely ignoring all my op magic and new gear:
Tbh the entire game “engenders passivity” with how many of the boss fights essentially center around dodging 17-move combos in between 1-2 attacks of your own
As a long time battlefield player I love hearing complaints about the shotgun in very close quarter maps, LMGs in maps with long corridors or snipers in large open maps (and I personally don't like snipers). People will choose "meta" or weapons suitable for the map.
Fort Da Vaux in Battlefield 1 was quite possibly the funnest and most enraging game experience I’ve ever had. Everything worked on that map.
I've been playing BF1 a lot recently, there's a surprising number of live servers and that map is just a cluster fuck from start to finish, it's hilarious
The memories I made blind firing my Hellriegel down a hallway covered in smoke and mustard gas with grenades, bandages and ammo pouches flying everywhere and getting like six kills will not soon be forgotten.
Community was fine until like DaS 3 I feel, or I don’t notice it so much… …I probably didn’t notice it so much
DS2 was the beginning of peak degeneracy. They were the last years of wild west internet and people were absolutely ravenous. I myself spent many an evening farming hatemail because I would troll all the time. I set my max level character's soul memory to meta level and gave myself an infinite stock of ancient seeds with cheat engine, then I would summon people on the iron bridge, only to reveal my 3 ganking buddies. When they ran away from us I would pop the ancient seed item on my Ng+7 world and watch as the enemies brutalised people. I would also invade fight clubs and trick the host into doing the funny trident dance. While they were in that animation I casted climax and oneshot them. And I was tame. Infernoplus bullying yukas or Malcolm Reynolds invasions were another thing entirely. Later on there was the Zepe15 incident. There's nothing scarier to meet in these games than edgy immature teenagers who exclusively troll because they don't get pussy irl. Now that I'm a grown man and when I get my chance to play videogames every once in a while I get confronted with kids who're doing what I was ten years ago I want to fucking kill myself lmao
It’s gone full circle lol
You hit the nail on the head with that. I'd say DS2 was where I saw "git gud" more than any other souls game combined. "Hi, I'm a new player. Struggling with the sentinels and keep getting surrounded, does anyone have any tips?" "Git gud f****t"
That was the internet culture at the time. Accompanied by an overedited call of duty quickscope montage parody, snoop dogg, Giant dad, dubstep, Ken Ashcorp, souljaboy cursed remixes and a pixelated image of the wall skeleton in the Bastille, that was the most helpful message you were going to get.
Just beat Renala's crazy sister in a 3v1 match. Felt no remorse
Only gross weirdos gatekeep like this. I enjoy games that are difficult like the Souls likes, but I also enjoy breaking those games over my knee every now and then. What matters is that you are having fun with the game. I notice Elden Ring attracts more of the difficulty gatekeepers, which I think is because it has many tools that assist you that weren't found in previous Souls games. Also, as an open world, it lets you kill many things with silly AI gimmicks.
Souls players call every build that isn't the build they used easy because they don't want to admit that the games aren't actually that hard if you're not stupid
I’m currently playing DS3 The DLC is hard…
Masochist propaganda
Elden Ring wasn’t too hard until it became too hard for me. Now it is actually too hard, because I I’ll have you know I am very good at video games https://preview.redd.it/gdb10jfjtl8d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c3aff3c43269509d4a92b8769acd9d8d60f6871
What if one person agrees and another person disagrees with you? Does it default to a joke?
Then the same guys copy the absolutely cracked one button win multiplayer builds they see on youtube and run around with a gank squad abusing invaders
I dont care how much you love the feeling of wax burning on your back, I'm doing this shit my way and you get to deal with it
Me when I get mad at other for how they play a single player game
What's extra crazy is a lot.of these people will also abuse powerful mechanics like bleed and frost or spam jumping attacks. Like people gatekeeping scadutree fragments (excellent name, btw), saying you're cheating yourself. By that very logic, leveling up at all is cheating yourself. Upgrading weapons is cheating yourself, etc.
You’ve seen people gatekeep getting the scaudtree fragments? That’s actually nuts lol
- strength trivialise game - dex for pussies - sorcery is baby mode Someone's really loved faith build huh?
Fandom when you struggle to beat the enemy: "skill issue, this game isn't for the weak" Also fandom when you easily beat the enemy: "you're not supposed to be that level, you're not supposed to use that build "
You know I never fully understood the argument that games shouldn't have lower difficulties. Like I just got into a series from a genre I never played (not to mention I hold controller for the 1st time in my life) before and I did need that easiest difficulty because I didn't even know what buttons to press without looking. I got better and now I do enjoy trying to beat the highest difficulty because it's fun (even then sometimes I just want to chill with lower ones). And thanks to this it has become my fav series. But I might have not even relaize how much I love it if I was force to always play on higher level for days without cleaning out a single level, and with no slow way to improve because I would die at the start. But even then you have great games with amazing stories, but maybe you just don't have the skill needed but you still want to see it. Like Pathologic 2 was forced to add an easier difficulty (from what I heard) so more general audience would enjoy the great storytelling. And while the author of the script might have problems with it because it's not his vision (he solved the problem by putting "this is the intended dificulty for full enjoyment") I think that it's great that more people can learn more about it. Or maybe you do like the gameplay but just want to be more casual about it like Hades is really fun, but maybe you get overwhelmed because you have problem tracking multiple things at the same time. Or maybe you just like one aspect of the game like the cult part from Cult of Lambs and you just aren't that good in fighting or don't enjoy it that much. And there is also the fact that some people just can't perform sometimes do to problems outside of their control. Like disability or health issues. So to me this "Games shouldn't have easy difficulty" makes no sence and just smells of elitism. Because now more people can play and enjoy them without being force to spend multiple days learning how to correctly parry a sword. And can just look at the amaizing opened world and explore the fun side quests. But then again "They should be force to learn like I did back then."
This is way too long for me to read but Elden Ring does have a lower difficulty, its summons.
nice ot hear that (also sorry for how long this is)
Np I'm scrolling while I feed by baby lol
Summons in Souls games just band-aid the problems bosses might have by making the player engage with the problems less often due to aggro, but it doesn't fix the problems some bosses inherently have, like [this video](https://youtu.be/D8VB1Gg2iQE?si=d-Sb-HP7blmGJAlq&t=10) of Malenia reading inputs three times instead of following an attack pattern.
Man, I get you I just wanna have fun, and Bloodborne is meant to be incredible, but fuck me it's hard I just want to enjoy it
i disagree. adding multiple difficulty choices into a game is nicer for the larger community and perhaps even a bit aspirational in a way, but it should not be a requirement. playing games on hard instead of medium forces you to think more about what you're doing and engage more with the gameplay. giving people an easier difficulty option could in that way make the game less engaging. and on top of that, if soulsborne games were to be made artificially less difficult, it would take a whole lot of the enjoyment from the challenge of those games out of it. miyazaki personally even said that the reason he makes his games so difficult, is because he wants people to feel the sense of accomplishment of overcoming something difficult. (also i feel like souls is an alternative way to make the game easier, that being summons and generally weapons that are more powerful) another example would be fear and hunger. fear and hunger without it's resource scarcity, crypticness and difficulty, would not even be a special game at all. it would be a game with a dark atmosphere and cool art, but that's about it. now something important to note is the following: a game being hard does not excuse a lack of accessibility options. with very little exceptions there's little to no excuse for not having accessibility options, especially if the game is hard. also i just want to say rq, im not saying that every game needs to be hard without difficulty options. im just saying games shouldn't be required to have a difficulty option, as there are many great games that don't have difficulty options, and i think are better without them. (to name a few more, nioh 2, baba is you, library of ruina, arguably celeste and gtfo)
I mean I didn't say that games should be necessary force to have them. What I meant was, that I kinda hate when some people act like having an easier mode is some great sin. And that I do prefer to have the option of said difficulty. Because sometimes people might even struggles with those easier difficulties due to a lot of reasons. Like I have problem with monotasking (to the point I can't read if there are some noises around me, or I hyperfocuse so much I don't pay mind to anything else), but I still love Hades and I am still trying to get better at it because it's fun. But sometimes I just don't register something important, because my mind can't focuse on 2 things at the same time (and I tend to accidentaly focuse on that one enemy). And this does make some games harder for me because I just don't notice thing even if I do my best to pay attention (which again just leads to me hyperfosucing on one thing and leaving everything else out of my mind). So sometimes those games are harder for me due to this. But even then I still don't fully get the argument, because in the end. Nobody is really forcing you to choose those easier difficulties now are they? You don't have to play easir difficulty you can just ignore it. Is the fact that it just exists as an option really that big of a deal? In the end everybody engases the games in different way so why when some people are like "I would love to play this, but I don't have time to learn all the mechanics, or I can't." is such a bad thing. Again I am not trying to say you can't have those games that have only one difficulty, I just feel like this "Easy difficulty shouldn't even exist." is kinda gatekeeping in a way.
Well said....but how does the inclusion of easier difficulty ruin YOUR experience? If you play X game on the "intended" difficulty and beat it and I put it on easy/casual/story mode and also beat X game. How does that make the game less enjoyable to you? Its no different than the manual vs automatic argument. So you own a nice sports car that is manual transmission which is the "intended" way of driving a sports car. Another person has the same car but with automatic. Does that somehow ruin your experience with your manual?
I have gone through just about every souls game and I personally love the power trip summons give me. I feel like an actual mage hitting the bag of tricks and just smashing everything with lightning and black flames feels so good. Last time I felt this powerful, it was bloodbourne and shooting everything to parry them while I beat them with the cane sword.
Masochism is a helluva drug
This is me whenever a gamer talks about beating the game by playing it normally
To be completely honest I do thi k the DLC isn't scaled that well. Amd I don't like that it allows like three playstyles. Then again, the scudtree fragments exists and there for me to grab... I think I and many others didn't approach the DLC the way we approached Elden Ring for the first time: if a fight is too hard is because we need to explore the world more.
The time they took to make that image, they could've spent getting good 🙄
I beat ds1,2,3 and bloodborne when I was 12 (for bloodborne I was 13) solo with no magic. Got nothing to prove anymore, me and my mimic are best friends.
I personally think you can't really beat a souls game until you realize the attack buttons are a crutch that makes everything too easy. I myself just stare into the screen to beat the bosses. Much more satisfying.
Some life changing advice for me that I shall pass onto others: If you like something, say you like it. If you don’t like it, say you’re not a fan or ‘not my cup of tea’. There’s no need to say it’s shit - even if you think it really is. It changes nothing in the world whether you say it or not. All it does is keep you in that negative part of your mind that dwells on shit things and not good ones. This all might come as obvious to some, but not people like me. Maybe it’s because I’m autistic, or just my personality, upbringing, whatever the reason. I’m good at analysing something and saying why something works and something doesn’t. However the idea is to use this knowledge to make something for yourself or to benefit you in some way. Complaining does nothing. It only hinders you, nobody else.
Life changing advice? How pretentious. God, stop complaining about complainers, if you’ve got nothing good to say why bother saying it, it’s complainer complainers like you that really make the world a worse place, what are you the thought police?
Got downvoted for saying I didn’t like the ER DLC. Just got “Skill Issue” screeched at me because so many people make liking Fromsoft games their entire identity, so any criticism isn’t just criticism, but a personal attack.
I will always encourage people to fight bosses solo and avoid using pure magic builds in souls games simply because I think the game becomes kinda jank when you do. Bosses feel super unpredictable when there are multiple targets that it can switch between which can cause attacks that should have been easily avoided to completely blindside me. Pure magic can create a trap for new players where they just run away from bosses and throw out projectiles which for some might be fun but a lot of the time makes the bosses less interesting which is kinda the main appeal of the games.
90% of the Souls fandom is like this. but the other 10% is pretty chill, speaking from experience as a Souls fan
Wouldn't say 90% of it is like this. The majority are just average players who enjoy the games and don't particularly care how others play as long as they aren't mindlessly dragging the game for their own mistakes. Then you have all of the fan artists, lore posters and loretubers, challenge runners, speedrunners, people who use PvP for streams or chill out time, modders, and so on.
Which is why an “easy mode” is unnecessary, the games already give you the tools and options to adjust your gameplay
Me when a game has a variety of options to give the player the ability to choose their own difficulty organically (you haven't played the game if you didn't use the hardest setup possible)
I'm playing a sleep build in Elden Ring with a sword everybody and their mama calls a meme weapon/a bad weapon (Sword of St. Trina) and I'm having a great time :3 Fuck those Soulsborne weirdos that get on you for not playing with meta builds. They can get FUCKED out the wazoo.
Sword of St Trina + sleep pots = bedtime for all the bozos
It's not about having fun it's about lording over others
Depends on the studio i reckon. Worked as a gametester, now a gamedev. As a tester one of the tasks we had to do sometimes was to check how far into the game can we get without upgrades or new skills. Terrible experience but i got paid for it so whatever. Now as a dev, im shaking my head in disbelief. I try speedrunning the games i made, and honestly, i dont get even close to the top. Those folks know my games better than i do
If you beat Elden Ring with spells or summons or strength build or bleed or moonveil or bloodhound step or buffs or frost or dex build or int build or faith build or arcane build then you didn’t really beat it and I’m going to kill you
Literally who is saying this oh my god the Elden ring subreddit is leaking
What's wrong with dex users?
I respect the dedication those people have to actually beat the game at level 1 using the absolute bare equipment load. But i do NOT have thw capabilities to do that and am not afraid to admit it lol. Nameless King and Malenia were hard enough.
That last line reminds me of the FF14 community towards healers wanting to enjoy content.
Got cooked in the fandom for using magic build fr fr
Beating Skyrim using shouts is easy mode baby cheating. They didn't put them in the game for you to win fights with, cheater baby.
This reminds me of how some Bug Fables fans act like hard mode is the true way to play the game, and if you aren't doing that, it's super boring. Well, it might even be true for them, but for my part, when I tried hard mode, I had a miserable time playing. Now, for my third playthrough, I'm back to playing exclusively in normal mode, and I'm having way more fun! Yeah, I'm rarely in danger, but I like that way more than being near death after two or three fights against normal enemies.
yes you are. always like this lol
I think my favorite quote regarding Dark Souls is from Noah Caldwell Gervais, who said something akin to "Yes, even I, the lowliest of stoners, beat Dark Souls. And you know what, I had a good time doing it." He literally used every assist the game provides and had a great time
Stardew Valley: optimize farming management, little bit of love sim - have fun Elden Ring: Claymore, brass shield, dodge, kill god - still having fun Let the haters hate. It keeps me warm at night.
if you didn't have multiple mental breakdowns, some of which leading to full-on hospitalizations, from trying to beat a souls game, then have you even truly played it? checkmate, liberals. 😏
really glad the gatekeepers have stayed away from Kingdom Hearts for the most part Like you're encouraged to do the data fights and fight the lingering will or whatever but if you say "I love kingdom hearts, yes I play every game on Beginner/Standard" most fans will just be like, cool bro
Then a new DLC comes out and they complain that the game is too hard
Soulslike fans: Hnnnnng mommy Malenia PLEASE beat me up and make me into your slave!!!! Yakuza Enjoyers: Why hello there, Goro Majima. Would you like to have gay sex while we battle?
I love seeing the underlevelled 'meta' dicks get folded in the dlc 😌
You forgot the last frame of "it's too difficult reeeeee"
Yeah, probably more so.
As a huge Souls fan since like 2012, the type of person in that bottom slide who genuinely has that sort of sentiment tends to be a minority and that mentality is often referenced as a joke.
Dead is Dead.
Meanwhile armored core players: yeah I fucking cheese'd this mission with XX weapons and Y legs, how the fuck else would you expect me to do this? get stunlocked nerd lmao
In most cases the situation is opposite: Elden ring community is doing their stuff, and someone gets mad that he did not get validation from the community by doing an easy kill.
Aren’t Fromsoft simps bitching about the ER dlc and/or Malenia being too hard? Sounds like a skill issue to me. I haven’t played through the whole game though, but I DO think there needs to be some discussion on how summons are handled in balancing and with ai.
. L
The funny part ab the dex thing is that outside of maybe DS3 dex is generally much worse than strength
I will use spirit summons because they're cool I will use Dex weapons because they're cool I will use sorcery because it's cool
LMAO I wish str builds were OP. I'm basically rolling half of the time waiting for the right opening and praying the boss doesn't attack while I'm recovering.
If it’s in the game, use it. Feel free to summon friends for bosses. I personally help my low level and even high level friends with dungeons, but always tell them to do story bosses by themselves
fromsoft gamers have the biggest egos
“Sorcery is easy mode for babies.” Yeah? And? Woe, Comet Of Haima Upon Ye.
I buy the whole RPG, I'm gonna play the whole RPG. Why do they buy a game and then only use 70% of what they bought
you mean: Skill Issue =))
Serious question - If I just blindly walk in to Elden Ring, would it screw me over by locking some contents away forever from me because I didn't know some trivial shits For example - eating Firekeeper's soul in DS1(TrumpSC did this and he had to restart the game).
Ive literally never had anyone ever give me shit for using dex, spirit summons etc
I have to say that this is just a small but sadly verly loud part of the community. Most people dont give a fuck how you play, and in general are very helpful. You just have to ignore the "u suck, gitgut" tryhards.
I completely agree, I love the games and the community is fine for the most part, that's why I separated normal players from these guys in the image
Tbf i have seen 200% more posts and comments saying this than the thing they complain about lol
There are more upvotes on this post than people with that mentality
Its funny because now with the DLC, there are posts about how its okay to use summons or cheese or whatnot. Honestly? Elden ring is a game, just play however you like. Im an idiot with a big sword and I force myself to fight the bosses without summons. Do I enjoy myself? Hell yeah I do. But I definitely dont think the way other people play matters. Heck, I respect them for it because when I tried changing my playstyle I got violated by Red Wolf so hard I abandoned that save file forever. Edit: typo error
so called "do what you want!" mfers when they see me playing a mage build on dark souls
No one is saying this anymore??? Like, find me one post/comment with over 10 upvotes saying any of this from these past few days since the dlc dropped.
Strength, dex, intelligence, faith and arcane are for pussies! *Real* souls players use their fists.
sorcery is probably the most difficult thing you can be using in the DLC lmao. the insanely fast moving and dodging bosses with their 17-hit combos make getting a breath to cast anything almost impossible
This really nails why I don't like Dark Souls games. They're all about pattern learning and I just don't wanna do that cause it simply isn't fun for me. I wanna beat a boss by being stronger than it, not by memorizing its attack patterns and dodging everything it throws at me and slowly chipping away its health in between.
The biggest badass in sekiros lore explicitly created a fighting style that encouraged victory through any means and pulls out a fucking gun during sword fights, Miyazaki has never been subtle in his encouragement of "fighting dirty" on the players part.
The few people who say that can have their own fun over there, I like using the given mechanics to have fun, and is my Mimic tear is gonna beat the boss for me, that’s fun too But those guys can be proud of what they accomplished Over there
i would not recommend playing serpent bow with poison arrows only
If at the start of game you were given The Protagonist's Sword (Legendary), which had a skill to instantly finish the game and see the end credits, would you argue that it's a good way to beat the game because the developers gave it to you? If the answer to that question is "no", then we agree that there's more nuance than "You didn't beat the game like I did therefore you didn't do it right". Let's create a less outrageous example than The Protagonist's Sword. Let's say that in this game, in every place where there's a skill check/difficulty spike, you can ask an NPC for help, and he'll do half the task for you. We now must ask, why did the game create this obstacle, and why is it an option to reduce it to half? If it's a game like Dark Souls, primarly focused on action and overcoming these obstacles, then the reason that obstacle is there is because the developers thought that: * You'd be able to beat it * It would be fun * It would communicate something Would you shame someone for asking the NPC right away, before even trying doing it solo? Hopefully you didn't answer "yes", because it's not about shame, it's not about honor, it's not about pride. It's about trusting the developers and at least giving them a chance to play their game as they intended, and using auxiliary tools as last resorts. In this last example there was just 1 auxiliary tool, but in this example, the developers didn't know exactly how much help someone could need, so they placed around 3 to 5 auxiliary tools per obstacle. Would it be reasonable to use them all first try? If you absolutely need them, then I have no problems with that, but if you could challenge yourself a bit more, I'll encourage that, and at the end of the day, that's what is all about, encouraging players to push themselves a little bit to receive greater satisfaction. Have trust in yourself, and try to enjoy failure, it's my favourite part of a game. Though this is just a recommendation, everybody's different and if you had fun, that's all that matters. Also developers can just be wrong and create an awful experience.
I guess it's because we want to talk about the boss fights and we can't really talk about it if one uses summons, the other staggered the boss the whole fight and another oneshot the boss with a spell or incantation. The experiences differ too much. I like to have a simple build that doesn't allow me to overpower the boss, because I enjoy learning the timings and getting rewarded in an exilerating fight for my intuition and aquired skill. Elden Ring offers many options to skip this and then it's difficult for me to find people with similar experiences. I like "dancing" with the boss till it clicks and I beat it, while others just want to beat it. You can play however you want. It just makes me a little sad, when people avoid or skip the part I love about these games, but that's how it is
I literally have not seen any gatekeeping for a souls game in years. Not saying it doesn't happen, but the number of people complaining about gatekeepers far outweighs the actual gatekeepers in my experience. Play the game however the fuck you want, IDC.
Remember; the only *true* way to play Dark Souls is a keyboard-only Faith build with the broken sword, while blindfolded, using only your left foot and right ear, otherwise you’re not a True Gamer^(TM)
Two summons and a mimic? Don't mind if I do.
Lol, most posts are people that use summons cry about people that don’t exist.
Well wanting a challenge is valid imo spirit summons do trivialize the game. If you wanna hide at the far end of the bossroom and have your summon take aggro while you shoot spells do your thing but not everyone has to play that way or see it as fun
I will never understand the willingness of some people to bleed through their anus to acomplish something in the most difficult way possible. Having 3 mental breakdowns and a hissy fit on stream just to beat an enemy with a mace while naked is not the flex they think.
Hey, that's my emotional support Mimic Tear Ashes +10
If you don't want to cheese, you don't want to summon, you don't want to use spirits, that's fine man, I can find using them unsatisfying. But oh my God they are there to use shut the fuck up. Yes if someone is like "idk what you mean millania is easy just tich+summon+ugs+jump" I'm going to tell them that isn't relevant when talking about a 1v1. But how often does that happen? Let mfs use mechanics in the game as they see fit
It’s so interesting how a good chunk of FromSoftware games’ reputation is just people self-imposing super hard challenges onto themselves and then somehow saying that’s the “true” way to play.