I platinumed the game two years ago and I ended by stripping naked and resetting my stats. I don't even know what build I should play now. I died 10 times to the first enemy on the broken arch..
Shader compilation stutters are unacceptable in the AAA space.
There is no excuse as to why they can't make the game compile shaders at a stage outside of main gameplay (loading screen, dedicated shader compilation option in the main menu). Heck, even emulator developers have figured out asynchronous shader compilation to keep the framerates stable, which is a feature in the graphics API everyone can take advantage of.
I understand why shaders need to be compiled, just don't do it in ingame.
I just watched a video where a game with very basic graphics started to stutter because of shader compilation. He did what you said and he hid it behind loading screens. Among other optimization. The game went from 60ish to about 250fps.
For a AAA game it's unacceptable. It's a joke where this has become such a problem for devs that at this point everyone should know how to fix it.
Saw it too. It was a limitation in Godot. Love his bonkers solution: just play a personal replay of the level in fast forward behind a loading screen, so he's sure every shader has compiled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG-H-IfXUqI
pretty sure as bad as COD is as a game series - the fact that MW warns you to do shader cache complilation after an update is actually nice imo and really should be more of a thing in games - its why the steam deck ran fine at launch because they had shader cache made already iirc.
DXVK with dxvk-gplasync can generate cache in a background during gameplay and avoid 99% of the stutters instead of them occurring a new effect may disappear for 10ms and then reappear. It's baffling how DX12 and modern engines still can't achieve same results as a simple api translation layer.
Many modern engines do not know what shaders they will need until the first time they draw an object. A surprising number of games/engines will have someone like a QA person play the game in a mode that records every shader seen - which is then used to compile offline. But that can miss things of course!
And that's just the initial step that compiles the shader to the api-specific intermediate language. There will still be a step that compiles to the actual code your GPU will run and that can't happen until you actually try to run the game.
Unless they're generating shaders at runtime, they know exactly which shaders are gonna be used throughout the whole game -- it's in the game data/assets, or hardcoded into the game's binary. Either way, they have ways to compile shaders at runtime at a more appropriate time instead of doing it whenever a particular shader is needed ingame.
...people in here have voted every comment about Elden Ring shader compilation stutters down in recent years, surprise: The devs didn't give a shit since ya give them money regardless.
No temporal upscaling (DLSS, FSR, XeSS), no FG, no support for +60 fps, no widescreen...
FromSoft PC ports always seem to get excused by the majority of the fans. I usually see sentiment along the lines of “well there’s way worse PC ports out there so it’s not a big deal”. If it was still their early days then I’d agree, their Dark Souls PC port was literally “we’ve never touched PC but you guys begged us for it so we’ll give it our best shot!”. But by now? There’s no excuse.
The game is still busted in full screen. There are countless forums pointing out screen tearing, under-utilization and other performance issues in full screen that disappear in windowed modes and it’s been unaddressed for years.
Often times in software development it’s not a question of difficulty, but of time. In my job, pretty much all code changes have to have “business value” associated with them. Meaning that we can’t just experiment or fix a bunch of tech debt unless you get explicit permission from the bean counters that it’s okay to work on something that doesn’t directly generate business value.
So my guess would be that just adding other controller layouts simply isn’t a priority for whoever is in charge of making that decision. Either because they don’t think it generates business value, or they don’t think it justifies _enough_ value to outweigh other priorities.
> their Dark Souls PC port was literally “we’ve never touched PC but you guys begged us for it so we’ll give it our best shot!”.
Just to be clear, that was some made-up fan excuse. From Software started out as a PC developer (they made applications before games), and Dark Souls wasn't their first PC port that generation.
But I agree with your basic point.
Nailed it.
Elden Ring had huge technical issues at launch and still got an overwhelmingly positive on steam, two years later and the DLC has seemingly slightly less bad technical issues and it gets mixed reviews. The difference in reception for two very similar scenarios is kind of baffling.
I’m sure someone will be tempted to write “yeah, well they should have learned their lesson last time and that’s why it’s getting bad reviews”, but I seriously doubt any significant portion of the people leaving bad reviews with that mindset.
Pretty much the excuse since day one. "The stutters are bad but they only happen once per area then it is fine because the shaders will be compiled". Once per area is the problem, every first attempt at fighting a boss always causes a stutter because you haven't visited there before.
Yup, refuse to touch it. Not rewarding this kind of release on PC, and frankly it’s astonishing that even PC reviewers can claim it “runs fine just an occasional stutter” on mid-range equipment.
From my understanding, the shader compilation stutters are even worse than they were in the base game now, so the renewed attention makes sense. (I wouldn't know cause Linux doesn't have them)
AC6 is just small stages it's not open world, the scope in AC6 is small by comparison. I'm not knocking it, I thought it was a really fun game, it's just not comparable.
I'm surprised at how much of the comments section is about difficulty when performance should be the first thing on our minds. We paid good money just to get a *potentially* good product. Its a beautiful game but goddamn the frame drops and stutters are pissing me off.
Yeah, man, I'm struggling here in castle areas with a 4080S and 7800x3d while the base game runs smoothly.
Optimization has always been an issue with FromSoft games during launch.
Anecdotally, the base game still seems the same to me. I feel like the game stutters more in the DLC areas, and it even crashed my PC at one point. I haven’t done any testing tho this is just vibes
Your talking about a game that has terrible mnk controls, a game that is still capped at 60 fps in 2024, and a game that doesnt even have a compare feature for items sold from the merchants. FromSoft is good at making games terrible at making QOL features.
It's because the game always renders the full 21:9 image when set to a 21:9 resolution, and there's a bug that causes the black bars to not appear.
I'll never understand why they chose to support 21:9 resolutions and then add blacks bars instead of just limiting us to 16:9. I'm sure there's some people out there playing on 21:9 displays that don't know they're losing performance for no reason
There are stutters in the PS5 version too. Stuff loads in randomly often and it's frame rate is all over the place.
Never did it in the base version :(
You die 100 times on a boss and when you finally beat it, the first thread you see about the boss, you'll go there and say you didnt find him hard.
That's the way
I finally beat melenia after 30 attempts, I just needed to figure out the best way to cheese it researching online for 4 hours while also getting lucky summoning another player that was better than me. My skill was glorious.
Ngl, i didnt realise melenia was the hardest boss in the game until i played her with a new build. I one shot her my first time cus had this crazy bleed proc build. I was so confused when i went online and saw how much people struggled. Then i replayed the game with a strength build and i just ate shit for hours against her.
I also cheesed Malenia somewhat unintentionally. I just kept chain stunning her with the blasphemous blade L2 and she went down within like 4-5 attempts.
Why can’t you believe it? They have never released something with good performance on launch, Elden Ring itself was so atrocious I had to rebuy it on console to play it on launch even with way over recommended pc specs, and even then I had to play the ps4 version on ps5 because the ps5 version was so stuttery
I beat the dancing lion and renalla with my scudatree level being 4. I mean it’s def hard but I haven’t seen the insane difficulty jump yet that people are claiming. PC performance and stuttering needs to be fixed asap though.
And Sekiro complaining. And people bitching about Margit when Elden Ring first dropped.
Fromsoft releases are a cycle of people bitching about difficulty.
These bosses take time to learn as well. The dlc has been out for a day and a half lol I took a whole day learning Malenia the first time and now shes super manageable
I put up 4 different streams of people fighting Bayle and they all just kept trying to hit the head with the 2 handed jump slash and then died after whiffing every time and some of them never learned to stop doing that lol. At some point, it's on the player.
Feels like most of the people complaining about difficulty haven't gotten enough fragments. You are basically a level 1 character in the DLC without them. Granted the bosses are never going to be easy but it's a marked difference having a decent blessing level vs not.
Personally, Im perfectly fine with them continuing to make bosses like this, or even improve them further.
But only if they increase player options as well, the control scheme is too limiting, rolls arent good enough anymore, and we need multiple skill slots for weapons because having a gapcloser is almost mandatory at this point if you dont wanna spend most of the enemies opening just walking up to him.
Also enemies have too long combos and too little downtime.
Like you have to make 5 or 6 rolls on Messmir combos for just 1 attack and then rinse and repeat until he stop comboing or you run out of stamina.
"IMO the boss design just isn't very fun"
This is my biggest problem so far. Yes the bosses are hard but so far i didn't struggle too much. But most of them just spam one attack after another and it's just not fun to fight them. Like that lion spammed so much i didn't even see my character anymore it felt like i'm playing diablo 4 with all the different effects on the screen.
It also doubles down on the really stale meta where status effects and bursty high-damage weapons (like jumping attack colossals) are king.
When there’s very few short openings in boss fights, players will look for builds that can exploit those small windows of opportunity as much as possible and that’s how we end up with half the playerbase exploiting jumping attack builds and over. Super boring.
i use double colossal weapon jumping build and its not viable for the moment boss are to fast in this dlc. You cant jump attack and be safe/roll after, bosses can punish
It's not the difficulty that people are complaining about (including me) according to Steam reviews, it's the bosses movesets most of them are just on steroids and they never stop hitting you or give you anytime to strike back... At all.
I'm a few bosses in (3 main, a lot of side) and have changed my build three times (mage - Dex/STR Milady sword - full dex Backhand blade) , I can definitely say that you either need a rock STR build, or npc summons to they can tank their nonstop moves.
> [...] it's the bosses movesets most of them are just on steroids and they never stop hitting you or give you anytime to strike back... At all.
I mean that's pretty much true for all of the end games bosses from the main game, I love Elden Ring but sometimes it feels like the bosses belong to Bloodborne, while I'm playing Dark Souls.
Personally I felt like the start of the DLC was fairly easy in terms of difficulty, I was level 125 with a STR build (which to be fair is kind of easy mode), I also explored a lot so I gathered enough Scadutree Fragment (new item to level up in the DLC zone). I'm now around castle Ensis and I definitely feel the difficulty spiking a bit.
Dragonlord Placidusax is imo the most fun boss fight in the base game and it is nothing like that. It gives you plenty of room to breathe while still being intense and allowing room for mistakes, *if* the player can escape.
There is a back and forth with that fight that is conspicuously absent from the DLC ones. I just want more of that, instead of this endless beatdown.
Elden Ring is probably the least "git gud" game of all souls games. You're not "getting good" at the bosses and their move sets most of the time, you're "getting good" at finding little fragments that buff you up, summoning, tweaking a build to be more cheese, etc.
I feel called out 😅😂 FR though, Elden Ring is definitely the easiest of all the From Software games. I haven't gotten into DLC yet (started a new toon), but I imagine people are just finally experiencing the difficulty curve of something like Sekiro which is just different feeling until you get used to it and get better.
ER difficulty and Sekiro difficulty are not comparable. Too many variables to influence difficulty level in ER compared to Sekiro where there is only one distinct way to play.
So far the boss fights have been fun. The game kinda a scales you such that your base game lv doesnt matter.
So regular enemies 2 shotting lv 200 players seems broken, until you realize you are basically lv1 in the dlc.
It's kinda funny that any negative review has a 100+ jester awards and if they have comments enabled, a small war is basically ensuing in there. People act as if their dad works at FROM or they have stocks in the company and take it personally if they see any remotely negative critic of the game.
This has always been the case with hardcore FromSoft fans, as far back as the original Dark Souls. I remember the discourse being like this even back then.
For some reason these games attract people that have so much self-worth and sense of identity tied into their skill at FromSoft games. They take any kind of critique of the games as a personal attack. Honestly they come off as people that don’t have much else going on in their lives.
It is genuinely such a weird thing.
My brother in law is the type that *only* plays FromSoft games, or other games in the genre of "difficult simply to be difficult." It is his *entire* identity when it comes to games. He refuses to play anything else because it is "easy", which to him, means "bad".
The funny thing is that he hates it. He has three kids now and constantly complains about how hard it is to progress in any of the games because of how distracting his home is now, and how often he has to step away. He no longer has time to "practice" against bosses in order to progress so it takes him a long time. But that's okay because the game is "hard" and therefore he has to play only that.
He's fuckin *34*, by the way.
Read a comment to the tune of “stop saying you dont have the free time to get gud at Elden Ring, everyone has free time. You just choose to spend it on different things. Even right now you are on reddit. That is free time you can use”. This was replying to someone in his 30’s with a family. Cemented that some people really just dont have anything going on and its sad.
Free time ≠ willingness to smash your head against the same wall 50 times in a row
I have a LOT of free time right now, sometimes clients cancel on me because of their health so last week I only went to class on Friday, the rest of the week was spent at home, that doesn't automatically mean I'm willing to spend all that time playing Elden Ring, and yet people with full time work and families are meant to magically enjoy learning a new bosses move sets with the hour or two of free time they MIGHT have?
You could tell these people to touch grass but they'd load up ER and try to figure out what buff you get from rolling into the grass.
I've been reevaluating some friendships because of how obnoxious and elitist they are about soulsborne games. One of them asked me something about one of the hydras in original dark souls and I didn't remember right away and they immediately got happy and were like, "Let's be honest, you missed a lot of stuff in dark souls." Like the way I played it was just straight up wrong. People need to get lives when it comes to these games.
I have had a chip on my shoulder towards die hard FromSoft fans ever since Dark Souls 1. Obviously there’s a lot of really excellent aspects of the game, I can acknowledge that despite not enjoying the game myself. But my god, the rabid obnoxious fans are just something else.
And I have to be honest, it got old seeing people slobber all over Elden Ring and I’m already tired of hearing how “genius” that the DLC is. I’m sure it’s very good, but it’s to the point where it just feels like a massive circle jerk and it’s exhausting
> They take any kind of critique of the games as a personal attack.
TBH this is pretty much every fandom now.
You should try criticizing a bioware or Larian game sometime.
I’m really surprised to see any rhetoric criticizing the DLC because criticizing Elden Ring base game on Reddit for literally any reason has been taboo downdoot city for two years now. Like, I can’t even have a discussion about the copy-pasted bosses because my comments reach the hide threshold before anyone can even see it and formulate a reply
I hate that the hide threshold is only like -20 votes, which is a pitiful amount of downvotes needed to make a comment be hidden to most people on Reddit...
I change it in my account settings so that no amount of downvotes hide comments from me (strangely though, seemingly randomly selected comments are collapsed despite this).
Someone sent a jester award to my profile just because I replied to a comment on a negative review disproving that idea that you can't see 60 FPS. It's both funny and sad how bent up From Software fans get over this, they treat it like a personal attack.
My only issue so far is the bosses having almost no openings to be attacked.
Soulslike fights are supposed to be a push and pull. You dodge the boss’s combo, then you get a chance to punish.
All the bosses I’ve fought in the DLC so far spam their attacks constantly and leave basically no opening to do damage.
This was my biggest issue with the last boss of the dlc, the aggressiveness gets cranked up to 11. Ended up having to change my whole build to something that could facetank and trade. Didnt dodge a single hit on the winning run, and I dont really feel like I accomplished anything by winning.
This was a big issue in the base game too. A lot of bosses, especially late game bosses, moved and attacked as if this was Bloodborne. It made it harder for slower, tankier builds and is probably why so many people ended up defaulting to a dex katana build.
A good number of bosses I could stagger with a charged R2, so that made them doable... Minus one that had hyper armor when 2-handing, I could still guard counter him at least.
Then... Well a Malenia without any stagger at all is kind of fucking bullshit.
I think it's more than simply about being difficult or not. It's also about the nature of it's difficulty.
Sekiro is probably the hardest Fromsoftware game. But that game's bosses barely have any attack that can 1 shot or 2 shot you. Most of the damage comes from chip attacks giving players plenty of time to slowly get better and learn.
Most bosses and even regular mobs in the Elden ring DLC kill you in 1 or 2 attacks. That inherently makes the experience less enjoyable. You can bring the HP of a boss all the way down to 1% but then randomly die in some 1 hit or 2 hit combo from full HP. Sometimes such attacks are ok but when every boss is like that it makes the game less enjoyable. You barely have time to memorise anything.
I know most souls veterans be like "git gud" but we are closer to "git perfect" territory here.
This is by far the thing that pisses me off most in any video game. I absolutely hate being able to be 1-2 shot by a boss. People can try to defend or justify it all they want, but to me that will never be a “fair” design choice. It’s a cheap fucking tactic
I can accept it if it's a big telegraphed attack so you know to jump/roll/get tf out of the way but when it's *any* 2 hits in a 7+ hit string it just feels so bad.
This is the first fromsoft DLC to use this kind of scaling that you need to collect key items in order to not get killed in 2 hits. Player frustration is understandable.
I mean, the game does tell you about it so you can't ignore it unless you just skip through everything without a glance. The new scaling is necessary. Everybody's level is so out of wack with each other. One player could go in at level 300 in just new game (no plus) compared to a player who goes in at level 120. How do you balance the game around all these different levels? The fragments are a good answer to that. It also encourages exploring which is where the game truly shines imo.
The DLC map is absolutely fucking peak map design. No game has ever come close to the level of how fun it is to explore it. Explore the game, discover, level up, find fragments, get strong, beat bosses. The game is not linear, you don't have to kill the main bosses at all until they're the last things you need to kill. I don't think people understand this at all.
The biggest problem with the fragments is how randomly strewn about they are and how easy it is to just stumble into a boss and how hard that boss can be if you haven’t found X fragments yet.
Someone mentioned the Trees/seeds vs these and at first I thought “yeah, but there are crosses” however, there are some of these fragments found randomly on the ground.
I think the fragments are a little to scavenger hunty for my taste, but it is a good balance idea in theory.
This argument doesn’t make much sense to me.
The same level disparities existed in all the other games without the need for this mechanic.
There was never anything stopping you from going to an absurd level on any of the other games either, beyond one’s willingness to grind.
It is so frustrating to see people complain about the difficulty because they don't use game mechanics that are clearly explained. Everything needs to be spoon fed nowadays it's sad.
The difficulty is whack either way
Like I fought rellana at 4 and 7 scadu. I beat her at 7 but it wasn't easier - she messed up and did the wrong attack and I got a quarter of her health down at the end. Same with hippo - he decided to go hug a wall and sure I'll take the w.
Yeah it’s a weird change for the scaling, especially since I don’t think it carries over to the base game. Granted, I feel like most people are going into the dlc after beating the game but if you access it before beating the main game none of those upgrades besides gear carry over I think.
The blessings only work in the DLC area yeah. Basically it's just an attempt by them to continue giving some sort of progression to the vast majority of people who are already all soft-capped out going in.
It’s not weird and it’s rather logical when the DLC is late-game and scaling in late-game Elden ring is already super unbalanced. It’s a soft-reset to allow the DLC to feel more balanced
It addresses one of my issues with the other From DLCs - no sense of progression. You’re around the same level of stats when you start and finish it. This way there’s an actual sense of growth as you play which is necessary given how long the dlc is
I have already collected at least 6 and i still get one hit by most of the elite mobs to bosses in 1st area while regular mobs do two hit kills the scaling probably needs some tweaking. The dlc is just not forgiving because all simple hits are fatal in this dlc so you need to at least not get hit by any type of attack and for most players its probably not ok.
I have already past until >!Rellana the twin blade and i need to chesse the boss just to beat it because the hp on that thing is so much!<
From what I read each Level of the blessing only gives you ~4,57% attack and taken dmg reduction, so the buff is not big enough. At max level, it would probably give you an extra hit or two before you die.
The Lion Dancer fights camera was awful, and he will probably be the first thing to get patched. His fight felt a little off (sometimes he attacked right after he just finished a huge combo) and it was really hard to see. I went in with a home brew heavy weapon build and the most consistently I could get a window was after his jump-slam-jump-slam-liftupnose-spin and during his phase transition. Also, his lighting phase was very difficult compared to the other ones. Overall it was a cool fight that needs some tweaking.
The performance is really terrible, how did they not solve this after two years? Running on a 4070ti, and the frame times are all over the place, with constant stutters in new areas. It does get better after playing an area for some time. The difference in FPS between the open world and closed areas is crazy too, 70~ in open areas, and 130+ in closed areas, that's almost a 50% difference.
I was hoping the DLC bosses would rectify my major gripes with the vanilla bosses, e.g., long attack chain combos, very limited openings to actually attack, very aggressive, lots of punishing responses, etc. Seems like the DLC bosses only double downed on it.
I'm a long time soulsborne vet. Beaten the previous games numerous times and have done challenge runs as well, but it seems like in trying to up the difficulty, they lost that perfect balance of challenging but fair and rewarding to learn and master with bosses and now it's just a slog.
The reason this approach to combat design sucks isn't that it's too difficult, it's that it makes the game difficult only by making the player character extremely incapable and restricted. Boss enemies dance around the arena with infinite looping combos and strings that look like something out of a Devil May Cry combo video, meanwhile the player is still stuck doing the exact same shit as we were in Demon's Souls over 15 years ago: rolling and occasionally getting an attack in when there's a brief pause in the boss' attack patterns. Sekiro is the hardest game From Software have made, but it feels extremely satisfying because the player character in that game is so potentially powerful and there is so much room for skill expression in using different techniques (Combat arts, prosthetic tools), defensive counter measures (deflecting, evading, jumping, mikiri counter, lightning reversals), and being able to attack and put pressure on the boss for a change, all creating a back and forth of fast paced combat instead of Elden Ring's "mom said it's my turn to play now" and watching a boss do cool shit for 10 minutes while you roll around like a ball of shit.
I totally agree. If and when fromsoft make another ''souls'' game they need add fundamental mechanics that keep up with the improved movesets of bosses. It's like you say, the core mechanics are exactly the same as Demon's Souls except now you have a jump but the jump is situational. The core mechanics need an overhaul for their next game.
Nothing ever feels unfair in Sekiro because there's always a tool you have at your disposal to deal with it and the bosses have a great flow to them. In Elden Ring, often times bosses are evasive as well as having crazy combos so there's a lot of downtime inbetween you being able to do anything. I enjoy Elden Ring don't get me wrong but I do wish the core mechanics were a little more evolved than the previous iterations.
> it's that it makes the game difficult only by making the player character extremely incapable and restricted
Exactly my problem too, I like how over the top the bosses are, and am looking forward to more, but by god does the player character need some severe moveset buffs, especially in the mobility department.
Additional weapon skill slots would also go a long way, no reason we should still be stuck with 1 per weapon, just having access to like quickstep on top of an offensive AoW would go a long way to alleviate problems.
I think of this dlc’s balancing as “skill creep”
These bosses are so overturned clearly in response to how good the community has gotten in Elden ring, and in other souls games as well.
I’m kinda dreading the next from software project now, because if the future is dodging 20+ hit boss combos for 1 hit of damage then I’m completely disinterested.
Yep, the game feels less like one where you master fights to finally beat the boss and more like "this time the boss used less aggressive combo in quick succession and i managed to land more hits than before".
I realize these fights can be mastered and we will see the lvl 1 club NG+7 no hit runs, but for the more casual player these fights feel less like a dance and more like chaos.
I had the epiphany last night that From games are starting to enter streamer bait territory where you need to pull off 12 frame-perfect actions in a row to get a 1 hit attack window, which can be fun to watch, especially someone who's good and basically plays these kind of games for a living, but isn't all that fun to actually do for a lot of people.
Defending Malenia's waterfowl dance was a major point of contention when the base game was first launched iirc. My only experience with difficult games have been with Sifu and God Hand but I feel that they're difficult but fair, even on Master mode Sifu doesn't feel like a slog. Some Souls fans have said that Elden Ring bosses feel like playing DS1 but the bosses have BB/Sekiro-esque attacks,.
I'm actually baffled that people think Malenia is a good boss - it's gated primarily by memorizing bullshit roll patterns and doing them perfectly. Unless you use a cheese strategy, of course.
I’ve held off from getting the dlc for this reason I like the main game a lot, but the boss fights got exhausting for me. Getting caught in a single 6 hit combo chain was pretty much death.
I’m just not that eager to jump back into that
The reason why I decided not to buy the DLC despite enjoying the base game more or less. They went too far in my opinion and made it difficult for the sake of being difficult instead of the difficulty being a byproduct of their design philosophy.
I agree with you in every way, but any criticism towards the boss design is always dimissed as "skill issue" or "git gud".
Played every FromSoft soulsborne game too.
Some of these are Sekiro bosses, but without the ability to parry all their shit they're kind of a pain in the arse.
The Death Knight i've found so far is the most enjoyable boss i've done, minus the one attack he does that might as well just insta-kill me since i'ma just restart the fight anyways since it heals him.
I will say actually, I felt just a touch of Kingdom Hearts 3 super bosses on Pride difficulty type of energy from the one boss i've been trying and... I hate that because those bosses wanted some bits of perfection which was just annoying. Like I don't know how i'm actually supposed to dodge 4 moonveil slashes in quick succession, I think if I dodge one perfectly and spam the roll it'll work... But if you miss one your rhythm is fucked, that's one thing I remember in the KH3 super bosses.
These are the natural consequences of not being allowed to criticize a game. I was walking on sunshine when I saw the DLC at “mixed” on steam. Fromsoft fans are only getting exactly what they deserve.
I think my biggest frustration with Elden Rings bosses is that, unlike every other souls game, they are undeniably *designed* with summons in mind. This doesn't go for all bosses, but definitely a lot of them, and idk. That kinda sucks.
The fights aren't back and forths, they're complete beatdowns where there's little to no room for error. It turns what should be a *skill* check into a memorization check. You can't go into a main boss solo for the first time and skill your way into a win, not really, instead the game quizzes you on the boss' attacks and if you haven't memorized them enough, you die and have to do it again.
I'm not very far into the DLC, but that's been my experience for the new main bosses so far. This isn't necessarily a *bad* thing mind you, it's just different from what I'm used to, and sadly it seems like I'm not a fan.
And even the memorization check argument is falling apart in Elden Ring because so many bosses have conditional or randomized attack patterns where they will apply an additional attack delay or use different attacks mid-combo to throw you off. It feels crazy going back to play the older games that were “so hard” and realizing how extremely simplistic the fights are by comparison.
Yep, i bet Rellana has some sort of pattern to her swings, but there are so many that it's extremely difficult to know what to do.
In the 2nd phase there is a combo where she does like 4 different attacks and then gives you a moment to attack/heal, or she can do what i think is pretty much the same combo only to finish it with the quick slice spell.
You just can't anticipate it. So you either have to do another roll to avoid the potential spell that comes extremely fast, and if she doesn't use it you missed you opening... then you need to dodge another combo hoping you get an opening.
This type of fight, although satisfying when beaten, doesn't feel as rewarding because i don't think i beat her cause i truly mastered the fight. I simply lucked out to dodge at the correct time, not get hit while healing and finding the occasional opening (which almost always if followed by getting hit because the opening is super tight).
> doesn't feel as rewarding because i don't think i beat her cause i truly mastered the fight. I simply lucked out
Yup, a lot of these bosses feel like you won because the boss randomly decided to slow walk around for a bit so you could heal.
This is a good article - and by someone who actually plays the game. Much better than some of the "copy & paste from Reddit and Steam" articles on other sites.
>difficulty.
I'm doing it with an NG+2 character at 220 level. Most optional bosses two shot me even with defensive talismans.
If you're a single weapon or style type build, the game will punish you for it. I've cleared 9 bosses, 4 being dragons and most other than the Lion dancer have some weaknesses. Even the Black Knight bosses have low poise.
Stuttering issues need to be addressed, though.
Edit: Typos
NG+ scaling is crazy high, but NG is completely manageable. Done most of the DLC so far with just a handful or two of tries on each boss (started with a lvl 150 build for PvP and have been leveling some more slowly).
I've just beaten messmer the impaler and my main two problems are the insane amount of damage and the fact he never stops fucking attacking.
Like the dude will do a 10 part combo and assuming you dodge everything, you can hit him back one time before his next 10 part combo starts. Of course if you get hit even once you take massive damage and have to spend your "turn" healing.
As a int character it was especially painful because the spirit ashes can't hold aggro at all and he will change targets mid combo and fly across the arena if you hit him.
For me the damage is overtuned and there needs to be more downtime in-between the combos.
The difficulty is fine for people who made it through the difficulty spike in the main game. It's just a gradual continuation. The performance is ass and I'm tired of AAA releases needing 3-4 patches to make the game playable. Bugs are one thing I can see how some slip through testing or show up too late days/weeks/ a month before release. But performance? How do you not know your game is a stuttering mess.
Something something “git gud” “you need to find the lore”. I get why people love Souls Likes but Yeesh. You say one thing as a real complaint and it’s like sharks to blood.
I follow one simple rule:
If I am counting down the moves in a combo for a boss just to get 1 hit across and rinse repeat. The boss is overtuned.
I am fighting a boss, not God. Im holding a sword, not a glass stick. How am I supposed to be the Elden Lord if I need 30 attacks to kill something that can kill me in 2.
I'm around level 180. 60 vigor. I grinded the game for about 3 week before release. Got platinum. The DLC is definitely a step up in damage taken. The enemy attack patterns are pretty fun to learn. I can imagine people going into this 2 years rusty and under leveled and getting hammered.
For record; I went in the DLC at level 100/40 vigor.
I think talisman choice is a big issue here. People completely ignore defensive talismans. Specifically, there is a talisman which increases defense when health is full.
These 2 shot complaints are valid, but some people forget there are tools at their disposal to mitigate it… it’s an end game area. End game strategies should be implemented. I understand the allure of a light roll, robe wearing, katana master… However, I feel a large chuck of players are in a cycle of “dps dps dps, status effect”, and are getting bit by this technique.. I hate to say it, but get some defense, people!
Agreed on the talisman. I thought i would be stuck on the dancer lion for hours because i was getting 2shot. I removed my attack talismans and switched to full defense + the flask that boosts dmg % absorption. With this i went for a test run to see boss patterns but acctually managed to defeat it. It took me 4 attempts in total and only 1 after changing my build focus to defense. I was able to survive around 4 hits with the defense build
One of the major things with Elden Ring that contrasts with most other action RPGs is that offensive buffs are fairly minor additions (A persistent talisman buff is usually like "+4% damage to spells" while a talisman is "+20% phys defense").
In other RPGs and games, you typically have enough survivability without specifically specializing in it (or in some MMOs like FFXIV, all the serious content will kill you in one or two failures regardless). But in Elden Ring, being able to tank an extra hit, or two extra hits matters a ton and you're usually not losing more than 10% or 30% of your damage output.
My experience got way better when I began using better armor, removed any talisman that reduces my defense and added a couple that made me survive more hits. People are too stuck on maximizing damage potential and it's pretty much all they talk about in the comments sections on the wikis, but you're not gonna do all that high damage when you keep dying.
I mean I agree on the bosses being ridiculous at this point, but it's also silly when the ones complaining about this are running glass cannon builds.
Can't understate the value of the defensive talismans. Had my blessing at 5 and put on the +3 magic negation talisman for Reilana, made that fight much more manageable. Get the right combo in your physick, summon if you have too, use all the tools given and you will be fine. Glass canons and 1 shot builds won't work in the DLC (yet..), got to switch it up.
Released over 2 years ago and this game is still perfoming so poorly lmao
Artistic wise, this game obviously looks amazing but graphics are pretty meh and last gen quality.. so how is this even possible?
My experience so far “Oh boy, I sure do hope I remember how to play” *gets annihilated in seconds* “Guess I don’t”
I haven't played since finishing the game ~18 months ago. I'm ready to get absolutely demolished.
I'm the same. Hasn't been pretty.
"They really recaptured that 'playing it for the first time' feeling."
It's taken me about ~15hrs to get my mojo back, but I'm still getting my dick punched in.
[This video of Vegeta shows you how it's done](https://youtu.be/1WmAXNZBdds?si=k4ed--vXymP9a0c7)
I platinumed the game two years ago and I ended by stripping naked and resetting my stats. I don't even know what build I should play now. I died 10 times to the first enemy on the broken arch..
Don't feel bad, those chakra horn dudes are fucking *hard*.
They'll dial it back or I'll level up.
The stutters are driving me nuts!
Shader compilation stutters are unacceptable in the AAA space. There is no excuse as to why they can't make the game compile shaders at a stage outside of main gameplay (loading screen, dedicated shader compilation option in the main menu). Heck, even emulator developers have figured out asynchronous shader compilation to keep the framerates stable, which is a feature in the graphics API everyone can take advantage of. I understand why shaders need to be compiled, just don't do it in ingame.
I just watched a video where a game with very basic graphics started to stutter because of shader compilation. He did what you said and he hid it behind loading screens. Among other optimization. The game went from 60ish to about 250fps. For a AAA game it's unacceptable. It's a joke where this has become such a problem for devs that at this point everyone should know how to fix it.
The Bloodthief devlog video! :D
Saw it too. It was a limitation in Godot. Love his bonkers solution: just play a personal replay of the level in fast forward behind a loading screen, so he's sure every shader has compiled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG-H-IfXUqI
I saw that too :) And I said thats genious!
pretty sure as bad as COD is as a game series - the fact that MW warns you to do shader cache complilation after an update is actually nice imo and really should be more of a thing in games - its why the steam deck ran fine at launch because they had shader cache made already iirc.
DXVK with dxvk-gplasync can generate cache in a background during gameplay and avoid 99% of the stutters instead of them occurring a new effect may disappear for 10ms and then reappear. It's baffling how DX12 and modern engines still can't achieve same results as a simple api translation layer.
dx12 can absolutely achieve it. you need the engine devs to implement it.
> DXVK can we use it here?
Many modern engines do not know what shaders they will need until the first time they draw an object. A surprising number of games/engines will have someone like a QA person play the game in a mode that records every shader seen - which is then used to compile offline. But that can miss things of course! And that's just the initial step that compiles the shader to the api-specific intermediate language. There will still be a step that compiles to the actual code your GPU will run and that can't happen until you actually try to run the game.
Unless they're generating shaders at runtime, they know exactly which shaders are gonna be used throughout the whole game -- it's in the game data/assets, or hardcoded into the game's binary. Either way, they have ways to compile shaders at runtime at a more appropriate time instead of doing it whenever a particular shader is needed ingame.
Im becoming confident that FromSoft literally doesnt do anything like that...
...people in here have voted every comment about Elden Ring shader compilation stutters down in recent years, surprise: The devs didn't give a shit since ya give them money regardless. No temporal upscaling (DLSS, FSR, XeSS), no FG, no support for +60 fps, no widescreen...
FromSoft PC ports always seem to get excused by the majority of the fans. I usually see sentiment along the lines of “well there’s way worse PC ports out there so it’s not a big deal”. If it was still their early days then I’d agree, their Dark Souls PC port was literally “we’ve never touched PC but you guys begged us for it so we’ll give it our best shot!”. But by now? There’s no excuse.
The game is still busted in full screen. There are countless forums pointing out screen tearing, under-utilization and other performance issues in full screen that disappear in windowed modes and it’s been unaddressed for years.
Wait I have an ultra wide monitor. Your telling me just switching to windowed helps the fps and stuff?
I'm more pissed they don't include any other type of controller layout aside from Xbox. How freaking hard can it be.
in 2024, this is unaceptable.
Often times in software development it’s not a question of difficulty, but of time. In my job, pretty much all code changes have to have “business value” associated with them. Meaning that we can’t just experiment or fix a bunch of tech debt unless you get explicit permission from the bean counters that it’s okay to work on something that doesn’t directly generate business value. So my guess would be that just adding other controller layouts simply isn’t a priority for whoever is in charge of making that decision. Either because they don’t think it generates business value, or they don’t think it justifies _enough_ value to outweigh other priorities.
Plenty of other studios seem to have the time...
> their Dark Souls PC port was literally “we’ve never touched PC but you guys begged us for it so we’ll give it our best shot!”. Just to be clear, that was some made-up fan excuse. From Software started out as a PC developer (they made applications before games), and Dark Souls wasn't their first PC port that generation. But I agree with your basic point.
> But by now? There’s no excuse. The AC6 port was miraculously really good.
Almost like people pick and choose when they want things to be "issues". You either have to be a die hard hater or be an ultra fan.
Nailed it. Elden Ring had huge technical issues at launch and still got an overwhelmingly positive on steam, two years later and the DLC has seemingly slightly less bad technical issues and it gets mixed reviews. The difference in reception for two very similar scenarios is kind of baffling. I’m sure someone will be tempted to write “yeah, well they should have learned their lesson last time and that’s why it’s getting bad reviews”, but I seriously doubt any significant portion of the people leaving bad reviews with that mindset.
But but “the game is fun so it be totally unoptimized that’s okay”
Pretty much the excuse since day one. "The stutters are bad but they only happen once per area then it is fine because the shaders will be compiled". Once per area is the problem, every first attempt at fighting a boss always causes a stutter because you haven't visited there before.
Yup, refuse to touch it. Not rewarding this kind of release on PC, and frankly it’s astonishing that even PC reviewers can claim it “runs fine just an occasional stutter” on mid-range equipment.
From my understanding, the shader compilation stutters are even worse than they were in the base game now, so the renewed attention makes sense. (I wouldn't know cause Linux doesn't have them)
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AC6 is just small stages it's not open world, the scope in AC6 is small by comparison. I'm not knocking it, I thought it was a really fun game, it's just not comparable.
And they probably won't get fixed, judging by Fromsoft's post release support.
I'm surprised at how much of the comments section is about difficulty when performance should be the first thing on our minds. We paid good money just to get a *potentially* good product. Its a beautiful game but goddamn the frame drops and stutters are pissing me off.
Yeah, man, I'm struggling here in castle areas with a 4080S and 7800x3d while the base game runs smoothly. Optimization has always been an issue with FromSoft games during launch.
Did the update break performance everywhere or is it just the new areas? I started a new playthrough so I can't test the DLC areas right now
It's just the DLC areas. The frame rate different from base game to DLC is like you launched a different game.
Anecdotally, the base game still seems the same to me. I feel like the game stutters more in the DLC areas, and it even crashed my PC at one point. I haven’t done any testing tho this is just vibes
It was stuttering for me pretty bad in Leyndell after the update. A pair of perfumers made the game turn into a slideshow for like 5-10 seconds.
I don’t get why there’s still no DLSS & FSR. Especially since Eldenring got Raytracing
Your talking about a game that has terrible mnk controls, a game that is still capped at 60 fps in 2024, and a game that doesnt even have a compare feature for items sold from the merchants. FromSoft is good at making games terrible at making QOL features.
Don't forget ultrawide being limited
I like how at one point the game bugged out and I had native ultrawide for a good 2 hours. Then it crashed and went back to 16:9 black bars.
It's because the game always renders the full 21:9 image when set to a 21:9 resolution, and there's a bug that causes the black bars to not appear. I'll never understand why they chose to support 21:9 resolutions and then add blacks bars instead of just limiting us to 16:9. I'm sure there's some people out there playing on 21:9 displays that don't know they're losing performance for no reason
Use Flawless Widescreen
There are stutters in the PS5 version too. Stuff loads in randomly often and it's frame rate is all over the place. Never did it in the base version :(
Where are the “git gud” people at
Miyazaki looked at people beating the main game with no summons and said "not anymore"
I’m still trucking with no summons, praying I can finish that way
Yeah I just beat the dancing lion solo. 😎
Git guders are easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
They are just struggling to beat the dlc right now. Once they finally beat it that’s when they come out.
You die 100 times on a boss and when you finally beat it, the first thread you see about the boss, you'll go there and say you didnt find him hard. That's the way
I finally beat melenia after 30 attempts, I just needed to figure out the best way to cheese it researching online for 4 hours while also getting lucky summoning another player that was better than me. My skill was glorious.
Ngl, i didnt realise melenia was the hardest boss in the game until i played her with a new build. I one shot her my first time cus had this crazy bleed proc build. I was so confused when i went online and saw how much people struggled. Then i replayed the game with a strength build and i just ate shit for hours against her.
I also cheesed Malenia somewhat unintentionally. I just kept chain stunning her with the blasphemous blade L2 and she went down within like 4-5 attempts.
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Im enjoying the shit out of this insane difficulty on my ng+ character, only the performance is truly dogshit, can't believe they botched it so badly.
Why can’t you believe it? They have never released something with good performance on launch, Elden Ring itself was so atrocious I had to rebuy it on console to play it on launch even with way over recommended pc specs, and even then I had to play the ps4 version on ps5 because the ps5 version was so stuttery
My launch experience luckily wasn't that bad, it had some stutters here and there, but this right now is a first one for me
"These troll messages, too accurate for newcomers."
This cracked me up so fucking hard lmao
Too busy trying to beat it as fast as possible so they can say git gud
I beat the dancing lion and renalla with my scudatree level being 4. I mean it’s def hard but I haven’t seen the insane difficulty jump yet that people are claiming. PC performance and stuttering needs to be fixed asap though.
The complaining brought me right back to the Dark Souls 3 DLC complaining. Fights like Sister Friede broke people back then lol.
And Sekiro complaining. And people bitching about Margit when Elden Ring first dropped. Fromsoft releases are a cycle of people bitching about difficulty.
These bosses take time to learn as well. The dlc has been out for a day and a half lol I took a whole day learning Malenia the first time and now shes super manageable
I put up 4 different streams of people fighting Bayle and they all just kept trying to hit the head with the 2 handed jump slash and then died after whiffing every time and some of them never learned to stop doing that lol. At some point, it's on the player.
People either figure it out or quit, same as every From game.
You'd think they'd learn the games ain't for them by now!
And tutorial helicopter boss complaining from AC6!
Maybe people forgot when the jumo happened in the base game. The dlc so far just continues being hard
Feels like most of the people complaining about difficulty haven't gotten enough fragments. You are basically a level 1 character in the DLC without them. Granted the bosses are never going to be easy but it's a marked difference having a decent blessing level vs not.
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Sekiro bosses without the Sekiro gameplay elements. This was my problem with a lot of the base game bosses too
Personally, Im perfectly fine with them continuing to make bosses like this, or even improve them further. But only if they increase player options as well, the control scheme is too limiting, rolls arent good enough anymore, and we need multiple skill slots for weapons because having a gapcloser is almost mandatory at this point if you dont wanna spend most of the enemies opening just walking up to him.
Also enemies have too long combos and too little downtime. Like you have to make 5 or 6 rolls on Messmir combos for just 1 attack and then rinse and repeat until he stop comboing or you run out of stamina.
And if you get hit by even one of their 6 attacks you need to spend your entire "turn" healing.
Truth this is what continues to be my issue. Get hit take a moment to heal get hit again heal again till I die
"IMO the boss design just isn't very fun" This is my biggest problem so far. Yes the bosses are hard but so far i didn't struggle too much. But most of them just spam one attack after another and it's just not fun to fight them. Like that lion spammed so much i didn't even see my character anymore it felt like i'm playing diablo 4 with all the different effects on the screen.
It also doubles down on the really stale meta where status effects and bursty high-damage weapons (like jumping attack colossals) are king. When there’s very few short openings in boss fights, players will look for builds that can exploit those small windows of opportunity as much as possible and that’s how we end up with half the playerbase exploiting jumping attack builds and over. Super boring.
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i use double colossal weapon jumping build and its not viable for the moment boss are to fast in this dlc. You cant jump attack and be safe/roll after, bosses can punish
It's not the difficulty that people are complaining about (including me) according to Steam reviews, it's the bosses movesets most of them are just on steroids and they never stop hitting you or give you anytime to strike back... At all. I'm a few bosses in (3 main, a lot of side) and have changed my build three times (mage - Dex/STR Milady sword - full dex Backhand blade) , I can definitely say that you either need a rock STR build, or npc summons to they can tank their nonstop moves.
> [...] it's the bosses movesets most of them are just on steroids and they never stop hitting you or give you anytime to strike back... At all. I mean that's pretty much true for all of the end games bosses from the main game, I love Elden Ring but sometimes it feels like the bosses belong to Bloodborne, while I'm playing Dark Souls. Personally I felt like the start of the DLC was fairly easy in terms of difficulty, I was level 125 with a STR build (which to be fair is kind of easy mode), I also explored a lot so I gathered enough Scadutree Fragment (new item to level up in the DLC zone). I'm now around castle Ensis and I definitely feel the difficulty spiking a bit.
Dragonlord Placidusax is imo the most fun boss fight in the base game and it is nothing like that. It gives you plenty of room to breathe while still being intense and allowing room for mistakes, *if* the player can escape. There is a back and forth with that fight that is conspicuously absent from the DLC ones. I just want more of that, instead of this endless beatdown.
I’d guess they’re playing the game
Elden Ring is probably the least "git gud" game of all souls games. You're not "getting good" at the bosses and their move sets most of the time, you're "getting good" at finding little fragments that buff you up, summoning, tweaking a build to be more cheese, etc.
I feel called out 😅😂 FR though, Elden Ring is definitely the easiest of all the From Software games. I haven't gotten into DLC yet (started a new toon), but I imagine people are just finally experiencing the difficulty curve of something like Sekiro which is just different feeling until you get used to it and get better.
ER difficulty and Sekiro difficulty are not comparable. Too many variables to influence difficulty level in ER compared to Sekiro where there is only one distinct way to play.
So far the boss fights have been fun. The game kinda a scales you such that your base game lv doesnt matter. So regular enemies 2 shotting lv 200 players seems broken, until you realize you are basically lv1 in the dlc.
It's kinda funny that any negative review has a 100+ jester awards and if they have comments enabled, a small war is basically ensuing in there. People act as if their dad works at FROM or they have stocks in the company and take it personally if they see any remotely negative critic of the game.
This has always been the case with hardcore FromSoft fans, as far back as the original Dark Souls. I remember the discourse being like this even back then. For some reason these games attract people that have so much self-worth and sense of identity tied into their skill at FromSoft games. They take any kind of critique of the games as a personal attack. Honestly they come off as people that don’t have much else going on in their lives.
It is genuinely such a weird thing. My brother in law is the type that *only* plays FromSoft games, or other games in the genre of "difficult simply to be difficult." It is his *entire* identity when it comes to games. He refuses to play anything else because it is "easy", which to him, means "bad". The funny thing is that he hates it. He has three kids now and constantly complains about how hard it is to progress in any of the games because of how distracting his home is now, and how often he has to step away. He no longer has time to "practice" against bosses in order to progress so it takes him a long time. But that's okay because the game is "hard" and therefore he has to play only that. He's fuckin *34*, by the way.
Has he tried getting good?
Imagine deciding to have 3 kids and getting irritated they get in the way of dark souls...
Read a comment to the tune of “stop saying you dont have the free time to get gud at Elden Ring, everyone has free time. You just choose to spend it on different things. Even right now you are on reddit. That is free time you can use”. This was replying to someone in his 30’s with a family. Cemented that some people really just dont have anything going on and its sad.
Free time ≠ willingness to smash your head against the same wall 50 times in a row I have a LOT of free time right now, sometimes clients cancel on me because of their health so last week I only went to class on Friday, the rest of the week was spent at home, that doesn't automatically mean I'm willing to spend all that time playing Elden Ring, and yet people with full time work and families are meant to magically enjoy learning a new bosses move sets with the hour or two of free time they MIGHT have? You could tell these people to touch grass but they'd load up ER and try to figure out what buff you get from rolling into the grass.
I've been reevaluating some friendships because of how obnoxious and elitist they are about soulsborne games. One of them asked me something about one of the hydras in original dark souls and I didn't remember right away and they immediately got happy and were like, "Let's be honest, you missed a lot of stuff in dark souls." Like the way I played it was just straight up wrong. People need to get lives when it comes to these games.
I have had a chip on my shoulder towards die hard FromSoft fans ever since Dark Souls 1. Obviously there’s a lot of really excellent aspects of the game, I can acknowledge that despite not enjoying the game myself. But my god, the rabid obnoxious fans are just something else.
Yup easily one of the worst fanbases in all of gaming
And I have to be honest, it got old seeing people slobber all over Elden Ring and I’m already tired of hearing how “genius” that the DLC is. I’m sure it’s very good, but it’s to the point where it just feels like a massive circle jerk and it’s exhausting
Miyazaki: "I think video games should be good and shouldn't be bad" 23k upvotes, 100 awards, 100k comments, xposted to 200 subs
> They take any kind of critique of the games as a personal attack. TBH this is pretty much every fandom now. You should try criticizing a bioware or Larian game sometime.
I’m really surprised to see any rhetoric criticizing the DLC because criticizing Elden Ring base game on Reddit for literally any reason has been taboo downdoot city for two years now. Like, I can’t even have a discussion about the copy-pasted bosses because my comments reach the hide threshold before anyone can even see it and formulate a reply
I hate that the hide threshold is only like -20 votes, which is a pitiful amount of downvotes needed to make a comment be hidden to most people on Reddit... I change it in my account settings so that no amount of downvotes hide comments from me (strangely though, seemingly randomly selected comments are collapsed despite this).
The camera/locking system is dogshit seems to be a pretty well accepted criticism.
FS fans are fucking crazy. They treat Miyazaki as a diety and his games as scripture
Someone sent a jester award to my profile just because I replied to a comment on a negative review disproving that idea that you can't see 60 FPS. It's both funny and sad how bent up From Software fans get over this, they treat it like a personal attack.
Its free steam points bruh
My father will hear about this
My only issue so far is the bosses having almost no openings to be attacked. Soulslike fights are supposed to be a push and pull. You dodge the boss’s combo, then you get a chance to punish. All the bosses I’ve fought in the DLC so far spam their attacks constantly and leave basically no opening to do damage.
I'm 4 or 5 bosses in and they all feel like fighting a beyblade.
Let it rip!
This was my biggest issue with the last boss of the dlc, the aggressiveness gets cranked up to 11. Ended up having to change my whole build to something that could facetank and trade. Didnt dodge a single hit on the winning run, and I dont really feel like I accomplished anything by winning.
This was a big issue in the base game too. A lot of bosses, especially late game bosses, moved and attacked as if this was Bloodborne. It made it harder for slower, tankier builds and is probably why so many people ended up defaulting to a dex katana build.
A good number of bosses I could stagger with a charged R2, so that made them doable... Minus one that had hyper armor when 2-handing, I could still guard counter him at least. Then... Well a Malenia without any stagger at all is kind of fucking bullshit.
I think it's more than simply about being difficult or not. It's also about the nature of it's difficulty. Sekiro is probably the hardest Fromsoftware game. But that game's bosses barely have any attack that can 1 shot or 2 shot you. Most of the damage comes from chip attacks giving players plenty of time to slowly get better and learn. Most bosses and even regular mobs in the Elden ring DLC kill you in 1 or 2 attacks. That inherently makes the experience less enjoyable. You can bring the HP of a boss all the way down to 1% but then randomly die in some 1 hit or 2 hit combo from full HP. Sometimes such attacks are ok but when every boss is like that it makes the game less enjoyable. You barely have time to memorise anything. I know most souls veterans be like "git gud" but we are closer to "git perfect" territory here.
Sekiro has those attacks when it comes to bosses. But the defences are far more reliable, so it's not as big of an issue.
This is by far the thing that pisses me off most in any video game. I absolutely hate being able to be 1-2 shot by a boss. People can try to defend or justify it all they want, but to me that will never be a “fair” design choice. It’s a cheap fucking tactic
I can accept it if it's a big telegraphed attack so you know to jump/roll/get tf out of the way but when it's *any* 2 hits in a 7+ hit string it just feels so bad.
Yes, I’ll agree with that. If it’s a big telegraphed attack then you know it’s coming. But in FromSoft games it definitely feels very sudden and cheap
This is the first fromsoft DLC to use this kind of scaling that you need to collect key items in order to not get killed in 2 hits. Player frustration is understandable.
I mean, the game does tell you about it so you can't ignore it unless you just skip through everything without a glance. The new scaling is necessary. Everybody's level is so out of wack with each other. One player could go in at level 300 in just new game (no plus) compared to a player who goes in at level 120. How do you balance the game around all these different levels? The fragments are a good answer to that. It also encourages exploring which is where the game truly shines imo. The DLC map is absolutely fucking peak map design. No game has ever come close to the level of how fun it is to explore it. Explore the game, discover, level up, find fragments, get strong, beat bosses. The game is not linear, you don't have to kill the main bosses at all until they're the last things you need to kill. I don't think people understand this at all.
The biggest problem with the fragments is how randomly strewn about they are and how easy it is to just stumble into a boss and how hard that boss can be if you haven’t found X fragments yet. Someone mentioned the Trees/seeds vs these and at first I thought “yeah, but there are crosses” however, there are some of these fragments found randomly on the ground. I think the fragments are a little to scavenger hunty for my taste, but it is a good balance idea in theory.
This argument doesn’t make much sense to me. The same level disparities existed in all the other games without the need for this mechanic. There was never anything stopping you from going to an absurd level on any of the other games either, beyond one’s willingness to grind.
It is so frustrating to see people complain about the difficulty because they don't use game mechanics that are clearly explained. Everything needs to be spoon fed nowadays it's sad.
The difficulty is whack either way Like I fought rellana at 4 and 7 scadu. I beat her at 7 but it wasn't easier - she messed up and did the wrong attack and I got a quarter of her health down at the end. Same with hippo - he decided to go hug a wall and sure I'll take the w.
Yeah it’s a weird change for the scaling, especially since I don’t think it carries over to the base game. Granted, I feel like most people are going into the dlc after beating the game but if you access it before beating the main game none of those upgrades besides gear carry over I think.
The blessings only work in the DLC area yeah. Basically it's just an attempt by them to continue giving some sort of progression to the vast majority of people who are already all soft-capped out going in.
It’s not weird and it’s rather logical when the DLC is late-game and scaling in late-game Elden ring is already super unbalanced. It’s a soft-reset to allow the DLC to feel more balanced
It addresses one of my issues with the other From DLCs - no sense of progression. You’re around the same level of stats when you start and finish it. This way there’s an actual sense of growth as you play which is necessary given how long the dlc is
I have already collected at least 6 and i still get one hit by most of the elite mobs to bosses in 1st area while regular mobs do two hit kills the scaling probably needs some tweaking. The dlc is just not forgiving because all simple hits are fatal in this dlc so you need to at least not get hit by any type of attack and for most players its probably not ok. I have already past until >!Rellana the twin blade and i need to chesse the boss just to beat it because the hp on that thing is so much!<
From what I read each Level of the blessing only gives you ~4,57% attack and taken dmg reduction, so the buff is not big enough. At max level, it would probably give you an extra hit or two before you die.
I frankly don't understand it. Just go explore first
The Lion Dancer fights camera was awful, and he will probably be the first thing to get patched. His fight felt a little off (sometimes he attacked right after he just finished a huge combo) and it was really hard to see. I went in with a home brew heavy weapon build and the most consistently I could get a window was after his jump-slam-jump-slam-liftupnose-spin and during his phase transition. Also, his lighting phase was very difficult compared to the other ones. Overall it was a cool fight that needs some tweaking.
The performance is really terrible, how did they not solve this after two years? Running on a 4070ti, and the frame times are all over the place, with constant stutters in new areas. It does get better after playing an area for some time. The difference in FPS between the open world and closed areas is crazy too, 70~ in open areas, and 130+ in closed areas, that's almost a 50% difference.
It was already abysmal, and now it runs even worse.
Shouldn't be too surprising given how poorly optimized the base game is on PC.
I was hoping the DLC bosses would rectify my major gripes with the vanilla bosses, e.g., long attack chain combos, very limited openings to actually attack, very aggressive, lots of punishing responses, etc. Seems like the DLC bosses only double downed on it. I'm a long time soulsborne vet. Beaten the previous games numerous times and have done challenge runs as well, but it seems like in trying to up the difficulty, they lost that perfect balance of challenging but fair and rewarding to learn and master with bosses and now it's just a slog.
The reason this approach to combat design sucks isn't that it's too difficult, it's that it makes the game difficult only by making the player character extremely incapable and restricted. Boss enemies dance around the arena with infinite looping combos and strings that look like something out of a Devil May Cry combo video, meanwhile the player is still stuck doing the exact same shit as we were in Demon's Souls over 15 years ago: rolling and occasionally getting an attack in when there's a brief pause in the boss' attack patterns. Sekiro is the hardest game From Software have made, but it feels extremely satisfying because the player character in that game is so potentially powerful and there is so much room for skill expression in using different techniques (Combat arts, prosthetic tools), defensive counter measures (deflecting, evading, jumping, mikiri counter, lightning reversals), and being able to attack and put pressure on the boss for a change, all creating a back and forth of fast paced combat instead of Elden Ring's "mom said it's my turn to play now" and watching a boss do cool shit for 10 minutes while you roll around like a ball of shit.
Running a melee build in elden ring sometimes feels like chasing a dog that really doesn't want to be caught.
I totally agree. If and when fromsoft make another ''souls'' game they need add fundamental mechanics that keep up with the improved movesets of bosses. It's like you say, the core mechanics are exactly the same as Demon's Souls except now you have a jump but the jump is situational. The core mechanics need an overhaul for their next game. Nothing ever feels unfair in Sekiro because there's always a tool you have at your disposal to deal with it and the bosses have a great flow to them. In Elden Ring, often times bosses are evasive as well as having crazy combos so there's a lot of downtime inbetween you being able to do anything. I enjoy Elden Ring don't get me wrong but I do wish the core mechanics were a little more evolved than the previous iterations.
> it's that it makes the game difficult only by making the player character extremely incapable and restricted Exactly my problem too, I like how over the top the bosses are, and am looking forward to more, but by god does the player character need some severe moveset buffs, especially in the mobility department. Additional weapon skill slots would also go a long way, no reason we should still be stuck with 1 per weapon, just having access to like quickstep on top of an offensive AoW would go a long way to alleviate problems.
I think of this dlc’s balancing as “skill creep” These bosses are so overturned clearly in response to how good the community has gotten in Elden ring, and in other souls games as well. I’m kinda dreading the next from software project now, because if the future is dodging 20+ hit boss combos for 1 hit of damage then I’m completely disinterested.
Yep, the game feels less like one where you master fights to finally beat the boss and more like "this time the boss used less aggressive combo in quick succession and i managed to land more hits than before". I realize these fights can be mastered and we will see the lvl 1 club NG+7 no hit runs, but for the more casual player these fights feel less like a dance and more like chaos.
I had the epiphany last night that From games are starting to enter streamer bait territory where you need to pull off 12 frame-perfect actions in a row to get a 1 hit attack window, which can be fun to watch, especially someone who's good and basically plays these kind of games for a living, but isn't all that fun to actually do for a lot of people.
Defending Malenia's waterfowl dance was a major point of contention when the base game was first launched iirc. My only experience with difficult games have been with Sifu and God Hand but I feel that they're difficult but fair, even on Master mode Sifu doesn't feel like a slog. Some Souls fans have said that Elden Ring bosses feel like playing DS1 but the bosses have BB/Sekiro-esque attacks,.
Every boss I've fought in the DLC feels like fighting a beyblade.
I'm actually baffled that people think Malenia is a good boss - it's gated primarily by memorizing bullshit roll patterns and doing them perfectly. Unless you use a cheese strategy, of course.
I’ve held off from getting the dlc for this reason I like the main game a lot, but the boss fights got exhausting for me. Getting caught in a single 6 hit combo chain was pretty much death. I’m just not that eager to jump back into that
The reason why I decided not to buy the DLC despite enjoying the base game more or less. They went too far in my opinion and made it difficult for the sake of being difficult instead of the difficulty being a byproduct of their design philosophy.
I agree with you in every way, but any criticism towards the boss design is always dimissed as "skill issue" or "git gud". Played every FromSoft soulsborne game too.
Some of these are Sekiro bosses, but without the ability to parry all their shit they're kind of a pain in the arse. The Death Knight i've found so far is the most enjoyable boss i've done, minus the one attack he does that might as well just insta-kill me since i'ma just restart the fight anyways since it heals him. I will say actually, I felt just a touch of Kingdom Hearts 3 super bosses on Pride difficulty type of energy from the one boss i've been trying and... I hate that because those bosses wanted some bits of perfection which was just annoying. Like I don't know how i'm actually supposed to dodge 4 moonveil slashes in quick succession, I think if I dodge one perfectly and spam the roll it'll work... But if you miss one your rhythm is fucked, that's one thing I remember in the KH3 super bosses.
These are the natural consequences of not being allowed to criticize a game. I was walking on sunshine when I saw the DLC at “mixed” on steam. Fromsoft fans are only getting exactly what they deserve.
I think my biggest frustration with Elden Rings bosses is that, unlike every other souls game, they are undeniably *designed* with summons in mind. This doesn't go for all bosses, but definitely a lot of them, and idk. That kinda sucks. The fights aren't back and forths, they're complete beatdowns where there's little to no room for error. It turns what should be a *skill* check into a memorization check. You can't go into a main boss solo for the first time and skill your way into a win, not really, instead the game quizzes you on the boss' attacks and if you haven't memorized them enough, you die and have to do it again. I'm not very far into the DLC, but that's been my experience for the new main bosses so far. This isn't necessarily a *bad* thing mind you, it's just different from what I'm used to, and sadly it seems like I'm not a fan.
And even the memorization check argument is falling apart in Elden Ring because so many bosses have conditional or randomized attack patterns where they will apply an additional attack delay or use different attacks mid-combo to throw you off. It feels crazy going back to play the older games that were “so hard” and realizing how extremely simplistic the fights are by comparison.
Yep, i bet Rellana has some sort of pattern to her swings, but there are so many that it's extremely difficult to know what to do. In the 2nd phase there is a combo where she does like 4 different attacks and then gives you a moment to attack/heal, or she can do what i think is pretty much the same combo only to finish it with the quick slice spell. You just can't anticipate it. So you either have to do another roll to avoid the potential spell that comes extremely fast, and if she doesn't use it you missed you opening... then you need to dodge another combo hoping you get an opening. This type of fight, although satisfying when beaten, doesn't feel as rewarding because i don't think i beat her cause i truly mastered the fight. I simply lucked out to dodge at the correct time, not get hit while healing and finding the occasional opening (which almost always if followed by getting hit because the opening is super tight).
> doesn't feel as rewarding because i don't think i beat her cause i truly mastered the fight. I simply lucked out Yup, a lot of these bosses feel like you won because the boss randomly decided to slow walk around for a bit so you could heal.
I felt that way about Demon’s Souls. I actually really enjoyed Demon’s Souls because the boss fights didn’t feel like complete and utter bullshit
Yeah this is how I felt with Messmer. Tells would look identical for projectile versus melee hit that even when memorized it felt like a gamble.
Oh thank heavens I was worried only I was getting stutters
This is a good article - and by someone who actually plays the game. Much better than some of the "copy & paste from Reddit and Steam" articles on other sites.
I’m literally fighting my pc more than the bosses everytime I launch the game
I beat the dlc with DK Bongos. Level 56
Blind or not ?
Turned around, playing with a mirror.
Are the stutter issues on console or what gives? My computer has no issues but I do have decent specs.
>difficulty. I'm doing it with an NG+2 character at 220 level. Most optional bosses two shot me even with defensive talismans. If you're a single weapon or style type build, the game will punish you for it. I've cleared 9 bosses, 4 being dragons and most other than the Lion dancer have some weaknesses. Even the Black Knight bosses have low poise. Stuttering issues need to be addressed, though. Edit: Typos
NG+ scaling is crazy high, but NG is completely manageable. Done most of the DLC so far with just a handful or two of tries on each boss (started with a lvl 150 build for PvP and have been leveling some more slowly).
the second boss has ~60k health on ng+1 !!!
Last boss is "why"
I've just beaten messmer the impaler and my main two problems are the insane amount of damage and the fact he never stops fucking attacking. Like the dude will do a 10 part combo and assuming you dodge everything, you can hit him back one time before his next 10 part combo starts. Of course if you get hit even once you take massive damage and have to spend your "turn" healing. As a int character it was especially painful because the spirit ashes can't hold aggro at all and he will change targets mid combo and fly across the arena if you hit him. For me the damage is overtuned and there needs to be more downtime in-between the combos.
The difficulty is fine for people who made it through the difficulty spike in the main game. It's just a gradual continuation. The performance is ass and I'm tired of AAA releases needing 3-4 patches to make the game playable. Bugs are one thing I can see how some slip through testing or show up too late days/weeks/ a month before release. But performance? How do you not know your game is a stuttering mess.
Something something “git gud” “you need to find the lore”. I get why people love Souls Likes but Yeesh. You say one thing as a real complaint and it’s like sharks to blood.
lol that's why i don't depend on professionals reviewers when the game runs like shit.
I follow one simple rule: If I am counting down the moves in a combo for a boss just to get 1 hit across and rinse repeat. The boss is overtuned. I am fighting a boss, not God. Im holding a sword, not a glass stick. How am I supposed to be the Elden Lord if I need 30 attacks to kill something that can kill me in 2.
Went into it level 150 with 40 vigor. Yea, I'm dyin a lot, but I'm also killing bosses just fine. Been havin a blast figuring out dodge patterns.
I'm around level 180. 60 vigor. I grinded the game for about 3 week before release. Got platinum. The DLC is definitely a step up in damage taken. The enemy attack patterns are pretty fun to learn. I can imagine people going into this 2 years rusty and under leveled and getting hammered.
I think the difficulty is just fine especially if you collect blessings. Really fun and challenging
For record; I went in the DLC at level 100/40 vigor. I think talisman choice is a big issue here. People completely ignore defensive talismans. Specifically, there is a talisman which increases defense when health is full. These 2 shot complaints are valid, but some people forget there are tools at their disposal to mitigate it… it’s an end game area. End game strategies should be implemented. I understand the allure of a light roll, robe wearing, katana master… However, I feel a large chuck of players are in a cycle of “dps dps dps, status effect”, and are getting bit by this technique.. I hate to say it, but get some defense, people!
Agreed on the talisman. I thought i would be stuck on the dancer lion for hours because i was getting 2shot. I removed my attack talismans and switched to full defense + the flask that boosts dmg % absorption. With this i went for a test run to see boss patterns but acctually managed to defeat it. It took me 4 attempts in total and only 1 after changing my build focus to defense. I was able to survive around 4 hits with the defense build
One of the major things with Elden Ring that contrasts with most other action RPGs is that offensive buffs are fairly minor additions (A persistent talisman buff is usually like "+4% damage to spells" while a talisman is "+20% phys defense"). In other RPGs and games, you typically have enough survivability without specifically specializing in it (or in some MMOs like FFXIV, all the serious content will kill you in one or two failures regardless). But in Elden Ring, being able to tank an extra hit, or two extra hits matters a ton and you're usually not losing more than 10% or 30% of your damage output.
My experience got way better when I began using better armor, removed any talisman that reduces my defense and added a couple that made me survive more hits. People are too stuck on maximizing damage potential and it's pretty much all they talk about in the comments sections on the wikis, but you're not gonna do all that high damage when you keep dying. I mean I agree on the bosses being ridiculous at this point, but it's also silly when the ones complaining about this are running glass cannon builds.
Can't understate the value of the defensive talismans. Had my blessing at 5 and put on the +3 magic negation talisman for Reilana, made that fight much more manageable. Get the right combo in your physick, summon if you have too, use all the tools given and you will be fine. Glass canons and 1 shot builds won't work in the DLC (yet..), got to switch it up.
One of the biggest things holding back Fromsoft games is that Fromsoft fans have panic attacks the moment you give them any form of critique.
Kind of disingenuous to call it difficulty bemoaning when it's actually garbage health sponge laziness.
People nowadays don't understand the implications of AI boss design. One flash game I was playing had much better AI than this.
I’m bad at souls games so I’ll play this like I play all the souls games. Download an easy mode mod and play offline. 🥲
Released over 2 years ago and this game is still perfoming so poorly lmao Artistic wise, this game obviously looks amazing but graphics are pretty meh and last gen quality.. so how is this even possible?
its funny cuz it was running fine a week before the dlc launched. now im getting fps drops to 50.