Elden Ring (FromSoftware)

[Khaldun]

It's pretty damn great. It exactly that "if I'm just not able to hack it with one boss, I can go off and do something else" that for me at least saves it from what I didn't like much about the other Souls games. Plus it just feels like the secrets in the landscape and such are more discoverable, more intuitive, than in the other Souls games, where you just pretty much HAD to read a walkthrough to find the strategy that made it possible to get from point A to point B at some junctures.

[Zetor]

Yea, it's pretty good. There seems to be a lot more variance in gameplay and combat options (mounted combat in particular feels super fluid and responsive) than the previous souls games, it's definitely the best one when it comes to exploring and finding cool shit randomly in the world... which is absolutely massive, by the way. I'm also curious about what exactly did GRRM do for the game -- just the setting and background, or ingame texts / dialogue as well?

I'm even willing to forgive From's understanding of the mythical concepts of the 'mouse' and the 'keyboard' that seems to have regressed compared to DS3 (and hey, it's perfectly playable... with the right autohotkey scripts ).

[Rasix]

I've beaten two bosses. That's two more than I thought I'd manage.

Too be fair, the Rennala fight isn't difficult for a mage. You're resistant to most of the damage in the fight, although there are some parts in phase 2 that'll get you if you're not on your toes. It's just long and the runback is less than ideal.

I've yet to hit a brick wall. There always seems to be something else I can do if my squishy ass keeps getting one shot by certain content. I don't see anything else being a better experience this year, and that's a huge surprise for someone that hasn't really gotten into a Souls game since OG Demon's Souls. I never really got that far in that either. This is just such an unexpected success for me. 

[Khaldun]

Mounted combat is incredibly fluid and I am loving it. The first time I tried it, I just had to--I'd jumped down some of those cliff ledges to a place where a bunch of bats dropped down and there was lightning striking suddenly and there really wasn't a way to jump off the little plateau and live, so I mounted up and I was like "whoa, you can actually fight effectively on horseback and it's actually better against these kinds of mobs". I wasn't actually expecting that. I just did the lake dragon while riding Torrent and it was great.

[Rasix]

Somehow I ended up sequence breaking a fight I was stuck on. Didn't do anything logical to bypass it, just fucked off and did some exploring. I advanced the map, but that was something the Roundtable hold said I could do. Come back and the fight is cleared like I won. Bonkers.

To be specific:

[Jeff Kelly]

Elden Ring showed me that I’m burned out on Souls Bosses. It’s a lot of „more of the same“ and the usual dance of long combo sequences, bad camera, wonky dodge roll inputs and bosses that try to punish every missed input and every heal attempt are just annoying me right now.

My initial reaction at the moment is just „why is there yet another boss?“ and the open world is the only thing keeping me playing right now.

[01101010]

Man all i am doing is out exploring the map. I am not even concerned with the main story quests yet, but getting there. Way too much to see and places to ride off and check out while being terrorized by the crazy ass mobs in this game.

[Jeff Kelly]

Stormveil Castle is huge.

I‘ve played 30 hours and I haven’t even been to Godrick yet.

[Tale]

I'm also curious about what exactly did GRRM do for the game -- just the setting and background, or ingame texts / dialogue as well?

I read a quote the other day where they said he was involved early on (setting and background only).

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I'm a long ways into the castle and it feels like it has a lot more to it.

I rode into Caelid and it felt like a significant increase in challenge level.

I think there's a very small number of mini-bosses and the Tree Sentinel left in Lingrave for me to fight.

I don't know whether to dump points to building FP to summon some of the better spirit ashes I've gotten a hold of in terms of the long haul of the game.

I fucking hate imps in catacombs.

[Cyrrex]

In the early game, I have found many occasions when I was having trouble where summoning the fucking Jellyfish was the solution.  It has proven to be the better option in nearly every boss fight so far, me being a full melee character.  That said, I just got two new ones I have yet to try out, not even sure I have the FP for them.

[Zetor]

My experience with ashes as a ranged character:

[Jeff Kelly]

Fuck horse back fighting.

I miss every second strike, my horse constantly dies and the sudden camera movements make me nauseous

[Trippy]

Hoarfrost Stomp got nerfed.

https://www.bandainamcoent.com/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-v1-03

[Jeff Kelly]

Moon veil as well and Sword of Night and Flame

[Rasix]

I don't see any changes to Moonveil listed. I suppose that could be in the "other" category. Biggest change for speed running was probably the Sword of Night and Flame in combination with a weapon art only working for that weapon. With that, a large amount of bosses could be one shot.

Mimic ashes were nerfed. That's fine. They didn't seem much worse from what I used last night. However, I mostly just used them because of how damn tanky they were, not the damage.

That big ball o' snakes guy is a roadblock I still need to get past. May be easier with the 10 extra vigor and few more flask charges I have now.

[Trippy]

People are saying Moonveil got nerfed in PvP, at least.

Distortion2, among others, was using Hoarfrost Stomp for his Any% speed runs.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBaHYWh_265k73PxkgaNkrA

[Rasix]

I know the All Rememberance runs were using that skill specifically for Godskin Noble since you could just completely lock it in place. The any % runs just aren't that interesting to me; I haven't spent a lot of time watching them. Partially because I don't want the end spoiled, and they're done so fast that you have to duck out really early.

edit: From apparently removed some roots in Caelid to disable certain skips.   

[Typhon]

I'm co-oping with a friend last night, we get the invader! notice, then BOTH of our screens go black, then YOU DIED! (looks like we're underwater), goes to reloading screen and YOU DIED! (underwater), repeat infinitely.

I read on internet someone talking about invaders doing something to brick your save and that certainly is the case for BOTH of us.  Not sure if it's an actual hack or just a weird bug, but the end result is the same, these characters are no longer playable.

Just an FYI - if you have a char you really, really, really don't want to lose, play offline (setting in system) until they get this sorted.

[Trippy]

Possible workaround:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tgl6o8/some_pos_host_bricked_my_save_into_a_deathloop/

[Typhon]

Thanks Trippy, was trying to get this to work last night, wasn't having luck.  I wasn't doing the alt-f4 thing though, will give that a try and report back.

I'll never understand what it is that motivates people to do this shit (still finding it kind of hard to believe that FROM didn't think of whatever it is people are doing.  I'm also still not convinced that it isn't just a bug)

[Trippy]

FROM knows they have a hacker issue in PvP in their games and is why some of their other games' servers have been down. That's why they added Easy Anti-Cheat to Elden Ring. I'm not sure they realized corrupting saves was possible via PvP until now but I've also seen reports of this exact same problem with people not doing PvP so there's something funky with their save system in general.

[Typhon]

I can't get it to work, map never loads.  I do kind of get an interface, but death always quickly follows.  Bummer.

[Trippy]

Hopefully this is something they can fix relatively quickly.

Edit: there's a small patch today but I can't find anything that describes what's in it.

[Khaldun]

It does sometimes have the issue that other open-world games have about synchronizing the main questline/plot with players going off and doing whatever the fuck they feel like. I took down Godfrey and then rested and at first I thought the dude in the graveyard was a dangerous new mob that had spawned there now that the boss was gone and it was three hits in before I realized it was the gatekeeper guy, which is one hit too late when it comes to permanent hostility. Then I came out the back and gave grape lady her grape and I realized the game really wanted to think I hadn't been back there already, but of course I had in exploring things. Then I said oh I should go see the Roundtable or whatevs and it was basically as normal, and then I thought oh maybe I need to go see White Mask guy at the starting grace and yeah that's it.

I don't think this shit is that hard to do if you're going to let players do their own thing, but it goes against their design take so I get it.

[schild]

I wandered through the entire game doing random shit at like level 20. I'm level 70 something now, 100 hours in and I just took at a right turn at Lunaria.

Anything that can break is optional. Anything that can't break is storyline.

This game is as close to flawless as an open world game is gonna get for a while. I really hope Bethsoft delays their bullshit.

Edit: That said, irt Starfield

[Trippy]

Hopefully this is something they can fix relatively quickly.

Edit: there's a small patch today but I can't find anything that describes what's in it.

The patch today supposedly fixes the teleport death loop bug:

https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-1032

Fixed a bug in multiplayer that allowed players to teleport others to incorrect map coordinates

[Soulflame]

That seems to address the cause, not the effect.

[Trippy]

Bummer.

[Jeff Kelly]

I wish From Software would invest into a few good AI programmers instead of just blatantly cheating by input reading to dodge or punish attacks/heals. Feels exceptionally cheap. It’s also really aggravating that bosses can animation cancel out of attacks and combos.

It’s sort of ridiculous when a boss animation cancels out of a combo into a different combo the moment you press a button.

It makes actually learning boss patterns that much harder and it is still very easily cheese-able and actually encourages you to trick the boss AI into doing stupid ass stuff instead of actually trying to learn the boss.

It’s also why delayed attacks and spells are so overpowered, like rock sling, because the input reading AI reacts to the start of your spell casting animation and not the actual projectiles.

[Zetor]

Yeah, the delayed spells are insanely OP. Rock Sling hard countered almost all of the NPC invaders and humanoid evergaol bosses for me by itself (the only exceptions were the white mask assassins since the cast time is a bit too long and they close distance too fast, but that's why Adula's Moonblade exists), and

[Jeff Kelly]

It’s also buggy as hell.

Some bosses can animation cancel out of combos due to input read, execute a completely different combo and then revert back to the initial attack sequence and finish that as well.

So you can have cases where a boss does a sequence that would end in a high damage attack, then they cancel out of it when you press e.g. heal to do a different high damage attack sequence. When that finishes they simply continue their original combo right where they left off.

This can lead to ridiculous effects like a boss doing two aoe attacks right after another after your stamina bar is already depleted.

This can’t be intentional but it’s most likely a side effect of their input read mechanic.

On the other hand exploiting that by e.g using delayed attacks can effectively stun lock even late game optional bosses. you can use ranged combat ash summons to make bosses dodge roll themselves to death and you can make enemies dodge roll right into your shots or fall off ledges.

a few examples

edit: this also affects slow attacks on melee weapons which is why strength builds and great weapons are so bad if you don’t want to spam jump attack because jump attack is the only attack the AI doesn’t know how to deal with.

edit2: the mechanic is currently so broken that some bosses can cancel out of backstabs and stagger animations as well

[Trippy]

PC (Steam) patching seems a bit wonky. If the latest patch is causing crashes try verifying the game files.

[Trippy]

a few examples

That's hilarious. I especially like the bow/crossbow aiming thing. I'm still on my first play through (having finally finished Forbidden West last weekend) and am doing sword & board mainly right now (Confessor) so as a fast attacking 1h melee character I don't really notice the AI reacting to the start of inputs rather than the actually animations. I do notice the heal reaction stuff but your character brings the flask up so quickly it looks like they are reacting to the flask being used rather than the inventory action button(s) being triggered.

The annoying part of the AI for me right now as a melee character is the "airborne" attacks that auto track your movements. Lots of minibosses have jump attacks which go up high enough to freak out the camera and they will change their trajectory in the air if you move so you basically need to rely on I-frames or dodge rolling "through" them (while they are in the air) so you end up behind them after they land. This isn't new to Elden Ring but it seems more common in this game.

[schild]

PC (Steam) patching seems a bit wonky. If the latest patch is causing crashes try verifying the game files.

i've had to uninstall and reinstall every time it gets patched.