Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Expansion Announced

[Qazimod]

7 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

Tbh those just don’t really work for me. Not enough info. I was much happier just making a note on my phone, and I also used the PS4 screenshot feature a lot.

 

I think I did all three. I have a sieve memory so I need all of the prompting I can get.

[Kryptonian]

35 minutes ago, Benny said:

Tell me you've not been to Caelid without telling me you've not been to Caelid.

[NecroMorrius]

1 hour ago, K said:

If summoning ignored player level, you'd get godlike players being summoned to low-level bosses and one-shotting them. Which might be fun, but probably goes against From's design philosophy and would be quite anticlimactic. You'd also probably get very weak players summoning or being summoned, and getting killed immediately. You can imagine how that could be used for griefing.

 

You could maybe optionally turn it off as a kind of accessibility option, but it would be quite hard to manage given that it would affect other people's games and not just your own.

Err, this happens to me all the time. It takes me forever to summon someone, and then the first person who joins successfully kills the boss in seconds. Happened with Mohg last night, I barely got to damage him. 
 

The game just needs a menu where people can tick all the bosses to queue for and be matched with people around their level/weapon level. 

[Benny]

That would instantly be a detriment to the atmosphere of the game in my opinion. Everything that you functionally interact with is done through items to draw you into the world rather than abstract anything. When you wish to summon to a boss you put down a mark next to that boss, so that using that items feels like something you do to cross into parallel realms. No tickboxes, thanks.

[Uncle Nasty]

2 hours ago, Stigweard said:

 

Yes it is. This glitch was right next to that spot too. A minutes worth of work for 115k runes and they blocked it off. The gits.

 

I didn't even know about that spot - I know the bird and sleeping Albinaurics, didn't realise there was another spot. Bird and Albinaurics still work post patch today!

 

 

 

[Number 28]

1 hour ago, Benny said:

Tell me you've not been to Caelid without telling me you've not been to Caelid.

I mean, Caelid lets you use Torrent. It's 'sprint past everything' country. 🐐

[NecroMorrius]

2 hours ago, Benny said:

That would instantly be a detriment to the atmosphere of the game in my opinion. Everything that you functionally interact with is done through items to draw you into the world rather than abstract anything. When you wish to summon to a boss you put down a mark next to that boss, so that using that items feels like something you do to cross into parallel realms. No tickboxes, thanks.

I love this From apologist idea that dismissing the same prompt saying “failed to summon” tens to hundreds of times is a more captivating and engrossing experience than activating the same exact rune on the floor but having it work first time. Bearing in mind summons can teleport to any boss gate with minimal effort now, and bearing in mind there’s already an item which teleports summons to an invaded player regardless of location. Why not make the exact same ring which flags you as available to be summoned to boss gates when a player activates a rune outside it? Hell, make a ring for each boss or zone if you don’t want checkboxes (why not?) These are easy problems to solve if you really don’t want a menu, in a game already chock full of menus including a specific menu for multiplayer systems and items this time around.

 

Now I’m picturing a more verbose rune error message set. Sorry, the ancient runes had a NAT type mismatch, please rune again. Sorry, the TTL on that particular rune’s RTT wasn’t arcane enough, please rerune. Sorry, your rune expired in transit, please turn your rune off and back on again. At least it’d be funny.

 

Someone’s actually working on a mod to remove the matchmaking limitations, connection issues and summon sign system as we speak, interestingly enough. Enemy scaling, fast travel voting, death debuff penalty to reduce battles of attrition, boss balancing and lockouts, spectator mode, all working. 

 

 

It’s dangerous to assume everything From does is a calculated decision for the betterment of the end product, you’ve only got to look at their technical woes game after game to realise they have limitations and blind spots. 

[Benny]

Whenever I see a phrase like "From apologist" now it's an instant disengagement from me I'm afraid. It's insulting to anyone's intelligence to assume there is a bad faith agenda behind a design discussion and just ruins the discourse.

[K]

Yeah, I don't think the summoning is the way it is out of some kind of failed attempt to make something super-efficient and slick. It's part of the texture of the world; it's deliberate friction. I don't think the system would be anywhere near as interesting as it is with a lobby system and a boss browser.

[ChewMagma]

26 minutes ago, Benny said:

Whenever I see a phrase like "From apologist" now it's an instant disengagement from me I'm afraid. It's insulting to anyone's intelligence to assume there is a bad faith agenda behind a design discussion and just ruins the discourse.

 

Absolutely, you'd think we were discussing war crimes rather than the multiplayer options in a video game the way some people go on.

[Alask]

Stick me in the, “I’d love a more customisable summon option.” A permanent marker pen you could drop outside a boss door that lets you always be summoned to that boss at whatever your stats and equipment at the time you dropped the summon sign would be great.

 

I’m not even sure how it works currently, if I use the blanket summon item is it possible to be summoned to any area I tapped the summon thing or just the ones that match the zone I’m in?

[Talvalin]

I think matchmaking is restricted to the zone (map region) that you're in?

[PeteJ]

Had a nice little explore around Volcano Manor last night, quite a nice area. Seems smaller than the other dungeons though as I reached what I assume is the end boss fairly quickly. Died on first attempt then decided to call it quits for the night but it looks achievable. 

 

Question about the summon Tiche -

Spoiler

she's got a ranged attack with some red stuff. When it hits it seems to grey out part of the health bar of the enemy. Is the purpose to stop them healing to maximum or is it actually lowering the enemies stats so their maximum is lower?

 

[Uncle Nasty]

11 hours ago, K said:

 It's part of the texture of the world; it's deliberate friction.

 

Really well put. The excitement and relief of successfully summoning a human player would be drastically reduced if it was seamless every single time. Just the idea of summoning a person into your world is a magical act and should be subject to failure. It's meant to be ghostly and ethereal. It just wouldn't be as special or unique if the experience was predictable every time.

 

These games are designed to stress you out. It's not an accident that things don't always go your way. That doesn't mean things are "broken" (that fucking word) or not working as intended. The pressure and stress is meant to get on top of you and break you. That is the game.

[John0]

I see what you guys are saying about staying true to the philosophy of having everything be a part of the world/lore, and I don't disagree at all, but I think the multiplayer stuff has a lot of room for improvement. The main problem was that I've found that patch 1.03 was very unreliable for me in terms of summoning with a password and people not dropping from the session after a few minutes (seconds) in some case, and people just not being able to see my summon signs at all no matter what we tried.

 

The problem with having a sort of janky obtuse system is that when the actual networking side of things isn't working smoothly then the frustration is exacerbated. For example, there's no indication of why you can't see other people's summon signs.. is it because there actually isn't a boss to defeat in the area, or is it because it's just failed for a connection based reason? Do you have to activate a portal to get things to work or not? Never figured this one out.. seemed to work, and not work, both with and without. How big are the areas for each portal? Do they overlap? All of this stuff is not explained or obvious.

 

I get the advantages of making things a bit obtuse/awkward in single player, but that's always at the expense of just your free time and you can drop it and do something else whenever you want. But when you factor in the unreliability of the multiplayer stuff anyway it becomes too frustrating in my experience. Finding a 1 hour window where two or three of us were all free from other commitments was hard enough, so spending most of that figuring out why summoning isn't working isn't fun.

 

I'd absolutely LOVE a mode where you could just play through the whole thing with 1 or 2 other people without having to circumvent awkward systems. And I don't think I'd love it more if it didn't work half the time.

[Steven]

16 hours ago, Stigweard said:

 

Yes it is. This glitch was right next to that spot too. A minutes worth of work for 115k runes and they blocked it off. The gits.

 

Which version of the patch blocked it off?

[rgraves]

17 hours ago, K said:

If summoning ignored player level, you'd get godlike players being summoned to low-level bosses and one-shotting them. Which might be fun, but probably goes against From's design philosophy and would be quite anticlimactic. You'd also probably get very weak players summoning or being summoned, and getting killed immediately. You can imagine how that could be used for griefing.

 

You could maybe optionally turn it off as a kind of accessibility option, but it would be quite hard to manage given that it would affect other people's games and not just your own.

 

But that's already dealt with - if you use passwords to do co-op the system just levels the players out. They already have a system for that.

 

Alternatively, just put the player level on the info that comes up with the summon sign - I hit Y - see it's MAXXKILLARZZ2323 and he's level 123 - then I can make a decision if I want to summon him or not. *I* can decide if I want a player at my level, or if I'm just fed up and want to bring in somebody that's a far higher level to help me out. If it's a low-level player, then it's safe to assume they got themselves to that area for a reason I think.

[Qazimod]

The abstract summon system is fine. But then a menu system with optional tinkering would be fine too. Besides, I'm not sure if protecting the sanctity of your world-building is that important when it's one of the more videogamey features in From's dark fantasy action RPGs, and is generally recycled in the same way across each game.

 

And they could probably integrate the tinkering into the world as well, if they so desired. Maybe instead of a summoning finger it should be a Flask Finger of Wondrous Physick Summoning where you mix various ingredients to customise who you get matched with.  

[K]

20 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

And they could probably integrate the tinkering into the world as well, if they so desired. Maybe instead of a summoning finger it should be a Flask Finger of Wondrous Physick Summoning where you mix various ingredients to customise who you get matched with.  

 

They sort of did that with the covenants in the Souls games, but that is actually a pretty cool idea. 

[metallicfrodo]

18 hours ago, Stigweard said:

 

Yes it is. This glitch was right next to that spot too. A minutes worth of work for 115k runes and they blocked it off. The gits.

 

Have the completely blocked it off? I know they blocked off the point where you jumped up on the stone arch and across (in 1.04) but have they done another patch that stops you from jumping up the wall (which is pretty fiddly but doable) from closer to the grace point?

[Benny]

I'm kind of baffled why people would be worried about not being able to farm Runes, let alone with an exploit. I got to level 160 (a bit higher than needed for endgame) by just playing and exploring alone. And even then I had maybe about 10 levels worth of Runes left in my inventory that I hadn't needed to use, and had bought nearly all keys and crafting items and armour I came across from merchants.

[metallicfrodo]

If it hadn't been for the rune farms (ball and then bird) I would have given up the game after about 15 hours. As it was because of those I spent 109 hours and beat the final boss.

 

Horses for courses really I suppose. I wasn't levelling up to my liking quickly enough, and for me being punished by losing runes was just not enjoyable. Once I was aware of the farms I found the game much more enjoyable, because I wasn't constantly worried about dying in the interesting areas, and didn't have to farm low level adds for hours.

[scottcr]

14 hours ago, K said:

Yeah, I don't think the summoning is the way it is out of some kind of failed attempt to make something super-efficient and slick. It's part of the texture of the world; it's deliberate friction. I don't think the system would be anywhere near as interesting as it is with a lobby system and a boss browser.

I agree with that - but most of the time I’ve no idea if it’s working or not. I don’t mind seeing signs that fail to materialise- that person has probably moved on. But just no signs at all… no idea. 
 

and then if you give up waiting and move into the boss - the ashes summons doesn’t work. Is that a bug? Seems like it.

[rgraves]

9 minutes ago, scottcr said:

and then if you give up waiting and move into the boss - the ashes summons doesn’t work. Is that a bug? Seems like it.

 

You need to retract your furled finger remedy - if you've got that out, you can't summon ashes I don't think.

[Minion]

15 hours ago, Moz said:

I love this From apologist idea that dismissing the same prompt saying “failed to summon” tens to hundreds of times is a more captivating and engrossing experience than activating the same exact rune on the floor but having it work first time. Bearing in mind summons can teleport to any boss gate with minimal effort now, and bearing in mind there’s already an item which teleports summons to an invaded player regardless of location. Why not make the exact same ring which flags you as available to be summoned to boss gates when a player activates a rune outside it? Hell, make a ring for each boss or zone if you don’t want checkboxes (why not?) These are easy problems to solve if you really don’t want a menu, in a game already chock full of menus including a specific menu for multiplayer systems and items this time around.

 

Now I’m picturing a more verbose rune error message set. Sorry, the ancient runes had a NAT type mismatch, please rune again. Sorry, the TTL on that particular rune’s RTT wasn’t arcane enough, please rerune. Sorry, your rune expired in transit, please turn your rune off and back on again. At least it’d be funny.

 

Someone’s actually working on a mod to remove the matchmaking limitations, connection issues and summon sign system as we speak, interestingly enough. Enemy scaling, fast travel voting, death debuff penalty to reduce battles of attrition, boss balancing and lockouts, spectator mode, all working. 

 

 

It’s dangerous to assume everything From does is a calculated decision for the betterment of the end product, you’ve only got to look at their technical woes game after game to realise they have limitations and blind spots. 

 

In that first video the host dies then gets respawned back in whilst the fight is still taking place by the summon, err no thanks!!

[Girth Certificate]

Nggggg. The 3 Rot Crystalians fight is a total bastard. All the ones up until that are easily to poise-break with spells but the putrid ones just shrug them off and then you get gang-banged and rotten-ed up. 

 

 

The only option I'd like is to put myself up for co-op for everything except PVP. I've no interest in ganking invaders or watching them hide behind baddies

 

[Minion]

2 minutes ago, Girth Certificate said:

Nggggg. The 3 Rot Crystalians fight is a total bastard. All the ones up until that are easily to poise-break with spells but the putrid ones just shrug them off and then you get gang-banged and rotten-ed up. 

 

 

The only option I'd like is to put myself up for co-op for everything except PVP. I've no interest in ganking invaders or watching them hide behind baddies

 

 

I hate those twats so much! Are you on PS? I will happily come and help you do it, I've got lunch from now till 1:30?

[Girth Certificate]

Cheers! I managed to beat them in the end. Dumped Lhutel the Headless for a squad of demi-humans who managed to keep them occupied long enough for me to crack the magic crystalian using a club. Still spent much of the fight rolling around like a madmen frantically healing and casting fire-clense-me.

[Stig]

2 hours ago, Steven said:

 

Which version of the patch blocked it off?

 

No idea sorry, my machine automatically downloaded it in the background one day. 

[Stig]

1 hour ago, metallicfrodo said:

 

Have the completely blocked it off? I know they blocked off the point where you jumped up on the stone arch and across (in 1.04) but have they done another patch that stops you from jumping up the wall (which is pretty fiddly but doable) from closer to the grace point?

 

It looks like they've made it impossible to get up there now. Maybe I'll have a look to see if there's another way.