As the Elden Ring DLC beats the snot out of players, Hidetaka Miyazaki says toning difficulty down would "break the game itself"
As the Elden Ring DLC beats the snot out of players, Hidetaka Miyazaki says toning difficulty down would "break the game itself"
Elden Ring's director speaks on what makes the action RPG satisfying to play.
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Not being able to grab a wooden club and beat god to death with it isn't the game being difficult, but you listen to some folks and you might get the idea its what they expect.
Use summons, get your magic going (or hell, full sorcerer) and you won't see any major filters. Might need to do fights a couple times but thats hardly a big deal.
The problem is that the controls for anything other than the fighting are rather clunky. It's not something specific to ER, but rather gamepad based games, for some reason. I've the same issue with Horizon Zero Dawn. In both games I play pretty much with the weapons, the healing and that's about it because fuck all that shit about cycling through options in the middle of a fight.
You can long-press d-pad down to reset the inventory belt to the first item, same thing with the spells on d-pad up
I wish long press would just show us a choice wheel, right thumbstick to pick my choice, done. Free the left and right foe other stuff.
I don't know, that's too many inputs which is a trap that I feel console games easily fall for nowadays. Having to long press is already kind of annoying, adding another input layer with a wheel would make it worse imo
You sound like everyone who has ever seen me menu spells in a KH speedrun. You sound like someone who turns weapons off in ULTRAKILL. Neither of these are explicitly bad things, but the system in place (a scrollable selection menu in real-time) can be utilized at the same level of efficiency as a spell wheel; you just need to exercise your memory when you set up and when you use your belt items.
There's a lot of titles that allow you to pause and utilize your menu. Dragon's Dogma 2, for instance, allows you to pause at 0 HP and still use healing items, so long as you haven't finished your dying animation or been knocked flat.
Dark Souls and similar games make a deliberate choice in keeping the game in real time when you menu, and there's a lot of truly functional items you can keep on your belt to help those weapons: status items can help you finish applying a status when an enemy leaps back, the physick, stamina regeneration, many extremely powerful effects that they want a small execution and collection barrier on. Alone in the Dark (5) had a real-time menu like this too far before it was popular, and people complained bitterly about it, so I get where the complaint comes from.
Without dramatically reducing your available options or developing a completely different system of menus, the controls can't really be less "clunky". If horizon's wheel and DaS's menu aren't for you, you may just not like how action RPGs control. If it's about needing time for the menu, these specific titles may not really be up your alley. There's a TON of games that operate the way you're expecting, and at this point the community and developer alike are committed to sustaining this experience that provides friction. Friction is basically how you talk, from a design standpoint, about the difficulty of the game and why it's present and what it does functionally.
If you don't understand how friction and fun are related, the game was unironically not made for you, and misunderstanding that or not being eloquent enough to explain that has led to the "git gud" divide. The menus are meant to provide friction. The combat animations and the period you must wait before acting again provide friction. Being a relatively heavy RPG, you can overcome friction multiple ways, either through developed personal skill or overleveling or picking tools that the boss isn't equipped to handle or statuses it's weak to.
TL;DR of course the menus are clunky dude they're based on a decades-long tradition of interfaces that provide gameplay fun. The fun is there for a grand majority of people, if you're not having fun with the ball-crusher, nobody is making you use it.
I do appreciate your point of view. I just disagree about the "it's been like this for ages and we're used to it and it's part of the difficulty". Good UI should cause no friction.
I do agree a paused menu with quaffing health potions mid-strike is bullshit. But if things are gonna be real time (not even slow down while in menu wheel like many others) then there is no reason to stick with ancient traditions. It would be simple enough to have an item wheel instead.
As it is yeah, I do play with a handicap. It's fine, I've beaten other games with similar issues (from my POV). I'm just super annoyed about subpar UX in software. I've seen too many in my career and too many people enduring bullshit UI... so it really rustles my jimmies when I see the same problems in games. You know, software that's supposed to provide fun.
It's really not an ER specific pet peeve of mine; I've endured shitty UI/UX for the last 37 years and so I'm a bit grumpy about it, is all.