this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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Did I miss the Elden Ring DLC discourse? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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From https://dudevsdawg.com/7

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 10 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

This is the first comic that expresses why I rage quit so many games with overly difficult boss fights ( if there's any delay measured in more than microseconds between retries ).

I played (and still do) the original one hit kill arcade bullshit. Hell, I beat Alladin on SNES. I'm not allergic to a challenge.

But, today, I have no time to repeat anything that isn't fun in a video game. I could be filling out tax forms with that time.

Edit: Rogue Legacy 2 is so good at this. It has deeply adjustable difficultly, short boss intros, and a fast forward function for when even the short intro is too long.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Bro, for real. I just want to practice phase two Radahn with my build, but it's such a slog just to get him there and then survive long enough to figure out the moveset.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If it's a slog to get to phase two, practice phase one more or change your build to do more damage.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"If you don't enjoy doing it over and over again, just do it over and over again a bunch more times"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yes.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I have been, doesn't mean I like it. It's been a big time investment on my part.

This isn't really the message of the comic, which is more about the direction of FromSoft's boss design, but it also kinda sucks to struggle and persevere with a fun, wacky build throughout the entire DLC only to be met with a brick wall at the very end because I'm not playing the right way. So I'm faced with the options to either change the build I've been loving to something cheesier/easier, put in even more time at the same boss going through the motions and slowly learning over the course of hours, or just quitting because I have other games to play and there's nothing after the boss anyways.

Ultimately, I understand that this is all to do with my own stubbornness/principles, but I still think it indicates a flaw in the 'balance' of the game where I could easily end the suffering by just parrying or poking with a big ass shield in hand, but quitting gets the same results, is faster, and somehow feels more rewarding. /rant

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

That’s what I did. Loved all of Elden Ring, it is at the top of my all time favorite games. Did not have the fun with and didn’t want to pour more time into Radahn and said fuck it. It felt bad at first but I’m sure the time and frustration I spared myself is well worth it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Took me 12h to kill the final DLC boss with a spellcaster build. It was truly brutal. Didn't help that the boss damage was glitched for one of the attacks and hit during roll iframes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

The fucking three hit left right cross

I wonder if they fixed it by now

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is a big reason I farmed hard in Elden Ring and have 356 hours. I spent a lot of that time leveling my health up so I can take more damage. Level 156 and my health bar is like half the width of my TV lmao.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but farming isn’t really playing a game though. A boss should be beatable in some clever, but challenging way at a reasonable level range.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

You can just do coop to safely farm boss fights without the risk of dropping the runes. Or...

You can get 150+ in <1hr if you grab a great bow and make a beeline for the Varre quest. There's a bird you can repeatedly bait into suiciding without moving more than 10 steps from the grace. Or if you turn 180⁰ there's a whole swarm of albinaurics that give you even more runes/min if you have good AoE damage. There are plenty of extremely easy options.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I beat the original Ducktales and Battletoads back in the day. But, back then I had the luxury of time. Ain't nobody got time for this shit!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Man, I recently introduced my kid to both the NES Battletoads and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

I beat that one Battletoads stage (you know the one) on the third try. And Mr Sandman on the fourth try (did not play against Mike).

I was super stoked. Third try! I'm old now. Apparently my time put into it as a kid stuck with me.

Doesn't really relate to anything in this thread, I just needed to brag to someone because my kid and couple of friends totally did not get it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are people going around playing like duck tales was hard now? You could just pogo jump through most of the game and be fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I was kinda thinking the same thing, but lots of people do consider it hard.

The remake still freaking amazes me. It's really good, and the voice actors (at least, the 80% from the original cast) did fantastic.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's lazy game design to make a fight "harder" by just adding increasingly long periods where all you can do is dodge.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago

The soulslike genre is simply bullet hell where you don't always get to see the bullets before they hit you, stuck inside a metroidvania.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Learn to parry

[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Delayed attacks as a form of increasing difficult are just extremely unfun. Yeah, you made the boss harder, you also made it extremely frustrating, congratz.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

That's my biggest problem with FromSoft games. They are not challenging, they're just slow HP sponges that can one-shot you. That is not challenging, it's just unfair, and frankly boring.

I think the game would be funner even with the simple tweak of making the animations faster. No fighter EVER wins IRL by telegraphing their attacks for three seconds.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Have you played their previous games? It's only an issue in Elden Ring.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Dark Souls also has slow enemies. Supposedly Sekiro is better in that regard, but meh.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Sekiro is much faster paced; it pays to be aggressive after all. The only time I felt like having to delay my reaction time was with the snake eyes with her weird grab iirc.

I didn't like elden ring much, combat felt more plodding and frustrating to me (and I plat "difficult" games: HK, sekiro, STS).

Coming from someone who shares your frustration with morgott or morgit or the 3 other copy-paste boss's stick that hovers in the air for 5 business days...

Play sekiro

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Slow and delayed is not the same thing, Dark Souls enemies won't wait 3 seconds mid attack to throw you off.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Vigor check missed

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

In Elden Ring you can often attack during the windup and then dodge. Creating a posture break during those delays can be quite a fun experience.

Plus you can do things like jumping attacks to dodge and duck a lot more of those spinning combos than you'd expect.

The ascetic with the hoops at the very start whiffs most of his chained attacks without you even having to dodge once you figure it out.

FromSoft games are fun to learn, and that frustration is often the appeal as the tricks are discovered.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

Meanwhile streamers are beating the dlc just throwing roundrocks.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wish cheat codes were still a thing. Sometimes I just need a little help getting past one part but don't have time to grind it out like I would have before.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You mean like mods that are easily accessible? God i wish.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Or trainers, equally ready to access. There's even tools like wemod that offer trainers for all your games at a convenient single click.