(07-19-2024, 11:42 AM)Andrew Anglin Wrote: I am not good at these games for the same reason I was never good at skateboarding - I lack some kind of fast-twitch genetics.At least in skateboarding though, a bunch of dudes are like "sick, bro" if you f*ck something up and get all scraped.
Anyway, I am obsessed with watching streams of souls games. Game streaming is my goto "background thing" while I'm working, as it is almost never distracting, but I can almost always look over at it when I'm thinking or smoking and something interesting will be happening.
Elden ring is very nice to watch, but overall, seemed less interesting than DS3. Like OP says, the boss fights always felt cheap. I do think there was innovation in exploration, but not at the level of Zelda 2, which I actually did play. Overall, though I'm sure it's very easy for you guys, it was just obviously a much more creative game than ER.
The DLC is actually getting really bad reviews.
See AlsoElden Ring: Best Faith Weapons Tier ListBest Talismans in Elden Ring, rankedElden Ring Arcane Build Guide[3.24]Fire Trap of Blasting Elementalist Build - Odealo's Crafty GuideBut you know what is good?
The CyberPunk DLC. That is a game I actually can play, and it is pretty tight now, in terms of the mechanics (though the mechanics are obviously nothing like the complexity of a FS game). I always said there was no such thing as an FPS RPG, and the closest anything would ever come was FO: New Vegas, but I think with the DLC, Cyberpunk added enough depth/variety to actually qualify. It's a shame about the political stuff, because I think CP 2 could actually be a legit fantastic game, as unlike DS games that have hit a wall, whatever genre "FPS RPG" deserves to be called is in fact on the up and up.
Also, speaking of games I can actually play, I think there is a similar thing with DOOM now, based on what I've seen of the new game. It looks like Eternal DLC. But it's going to be a money machine. DS is unique though because of the skill issue, but I don't think you can manage a scaling playerbase skill problem in single player games. There's a reason CSGO is still the most popular game in the world, and probably always will be: the skill ceiling is unlimited.
(It also doesn't run into the same smurfing type issues that the Battle Royale games face, where there is literally no way to integrate new players/players that simply won't ever reach a certain skill level because they don't play that much or have something wrong with their fast twitches like me.)
I don't understand very well your issue with fast twitching. Is it something like reaction time + your body reacting and sending the input is too slow to handle things you have to react quickly to? If that's what that is, then I understand, but I'll tell you that for the bosses in Elden Ring, I don't think it's as big of an issue as you might think, let me explain why.
Unique to Elden Ring, nobody can react to the fast moves the bosses make. It's not because it's humanely impossible, it's because the game has an artificial input delay for your dodge. The first time I played it, I could tell the rolling (critical mechanic) felt sluggish. It's because for some reason, in Elden Ring they coded it that your roll comes out when you let go the button, instead of when you press it. From the little testing I did on it, it seems to be because sprinting and rolling is on the same button (this isn't new to souls game, I don't know why it's only a problem with Elden Ring). You can see a lot of people online complain about input lag on rolls, that's what's happening.
I ended up figuring out some sort of technique where you hold down the roll button, the game gives you around .5 seconds where you're in stasis between having the button down and not sprinting, then you let go of the button getting your instant dodge like the old souls game, which makes some moves reactable, but this isn't something a player who isn't consciously evaluating everything about the game down to small levels would ever figure out. I mean, I figured this out when I realized that the roll comes out on button up, not button down, something that has to be done for the sprint to share the same input, after some thinking I tried it and yeah, it works as a technique but it's clumsy to use.
Anyway, the result of this makes it so it's not about fast reactions, but rather about raw pattern recognition. You have to send the input for the roll before the move even starts in many cases. How do you know to input a roll before the move comes out? Well, you've seen this boss attack pattern five times now, so you can get the timing down. It's garbage, it makes the fights super boring. They also couple it with finely designed bosses that will punish you if you panic and just spam rolls.
Oh yeah, the input delay also plays into this other thing they have the enemies do. They'll lift their sword up, then instead of bringing it down they just leave it up (looks really silly too). Then it'll come down after a delay, but it comes down so fast that it's not possible to dodge it because of the input delay, so again, you just need to have seen the move before then memorize the timing.
Elden Ring's exploration is really good in the initial stages of the game. It starts to suck because the game overstays its welcome, but it's pretty much perfect at the start. It's not a hard recipe to make exploration in games fun. Have me search around a little, introduce new enemies, items, skills, spells, weapons, cool new areas, hidden bosses, secrets, that sort of stuff, it'll be fun. The problem is after you're around 50% of the way through the game, you've already seen like 80% of the enemies, you have most weapons types, that sort of stuff, so the game just spams the same enemies at you and gives you meaningless/useless rewards, and they just copy/paste enemies and bosses everywhere. It's just a slog that makes you question why you're even bothering playing it. When I reached that point, I just ignored every piece of side content and went straight for every boss in quick succession.
In terms of making just a really solid and fun RPG, I don't think they ever topped Dark Souls 1. They've never been able to recapture the magic of that game. Bloodborne is good, but it's mostly about tight gameplay and fun bosses. Dark Souls 3 is okay, but again, it's all about tight gameplay and good bosses. I feel like I'm just playing slop when I play Elden Ring, really, like it's not well-crafted, it's just a big pot of a bunch of different things with little thought attributed to how everything meshes with everything else. Dark Souls 2 has some truly interesting ideas they explored, but it was made by the B-team and the game sucks to actually play (the most important part).
