Elden Ring's developers know most players use guides, but still try to cater to those who go in blind: 'If they can't do it, then there's some room for improvement on our behalf'
Elden Ring's developers know most players use guides, but still try to cater to those who go in blind: 'If they can't do it, then there's some room for improvement on our behalf'
FromSoftware boss Hidetaka Miyazaki says reading guides is "perfectly valid," but doesn't want it to be a necessity.
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I'm starting a new character for the dlc and i have to say they did improve the quests compared to the launch version. They added a lot of markers on the map to make them easier to follow.
Isn’t the point of these games is that nothing is marked like that? Thats where the replay value and exploration of Fromsoft games shine compared to other developers.
Too many games have quest markers holding your hand the entire way like a guided tour. I see it as an unaddressed problem with open world games.
If everything is marked how can there be exploration or discovery?
It is marked after you find it.
right but the previous games were a lot smaller. It would take hundreds of hours to do everything in Elden Ring without a quest guide
I got the platinum in way below 100 hours.
It’s a very very padded game if you played the other ones. Lots of empty sandbox space between the good content.
My first playthrough (100%) was 120~ hours. Subsequent playthroughs (not 100%) were 30~ hours.
Once you realize that 95% of side dungeons are literally just the same filler content with useless summons and weapons, and that you really only need to do, like, 6 to get useful loot for your build, the game gets a lot shorter lol
Which is great tbh, I do the 6 side content dungeons to get my shit, farm the bird to get levels, and then roam aroundbdoing filler content to test my setup. Or be summoned by friends and skip all that.
Most side content dungeons and caves are really similar but distinct enough to be enough to do while waiting for a friend to upgrade their weapons, or to test out mettle against a single enemy (gaols).
It's a game with a lot of "content" but a very simple main path. I've done all possible paths with several characters, most of those in ng+2 and one in ng+4 I think. I asked a friend for help to get the end boss weapon to farm runes more efficiently with a new character to preapre for the dlc. The new weapons have me very hyped.
Oh yeah, for sure. I like it too.
I always find it funny when people react to Myazaki saying the game is supposed to be around 30 hours by going "UUUUHHHH??? My playthrough was like a billion hours????"
Like, yeah, if you do everything it'll take a while, but it's clearly not made with that in mind. It's really easy to just not do the whole thing and still have a decent length playthrough.
Honestly, "replay value" is negative for me. I don't want to do multiple runs for a 90 hour game. There are way too many other interesting games for me to spend that much time playing and replaying just one. I'd rather just use a guide to make sure I don't miss anything and do a single run.
It's gonna get exhausting then because there's a lot of repetitive content to get all the items. You don't even need to do all content to get all the achievements. A lot of items are unlocked I'm caves, but you don't need them all to get 100% and most of those won't fit your stat block so, it's gonna get exhausting to play the game that way.
You are playing a game of exploration and challenging encounters, not a checklist.
Except I'm not trying to 100% anything? I used a guide just to make sure and I didn't miss any quests or areas. I didn't read any spoilers or anything like that.
Sorry, I interpreted the "make sure I don't miss anything" as "any optional content", which with so much filler content is not the way to go. Using one not to miss areas and quests is great, I'm an avid wiki user anyway.
In any case, this game particularly does quite well in regard of when you start a questline or which parts you skipped. Both Alexander's and ranni's quests can be started in very different ways, either you stumble into them or some NPC tells you about it, and in both cases the conversations are different, although you can progress the same way. Besides some skippable parts. There's nothing that breaks quests Al's long as you don't kill NPCs, I sometimes do some questlines after beating the final boss
It still sucks imo. If you need a guide to find quests or figure out what you're supposed to do, that's bad game design.