Elden Ring is a wake up call

#eldenring #shadowoftheerdtree #gaming
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Elden Ring and it's DLC Shadow of the Erdtree are a wake up call for the games industry. In this video I'll review Elden Ring's Success, where its been and what the future holds for the Lands Between.

On this channel, I discuss topics like RPGs, CRPGs, JRPGs, FFXIV, Baldur's Gate 3, Diablo 4, Path of Exile, Elden Ring, MMOs, World of Warcraft, and gaming industry news.

[LegendaryDrops]

I'm terrible at this game, but I love it.

[loto]

This isn't a conundrum. Elden ring was influenced by game developers and fans of gaming while most modern games now are influenced by shareholders

[MysteriousStranger]

Getting near 90% of its players back over a year later is incredibly difficult for others to do.

[thepainphantom]

I love how Miyazaki humbly said that he kinda suck at this game and is using all means available to beat the game. People can git gud, people can also cheesing. Whatever makes you happy, it's your game, you're the Lord!

[CobaltDegrees]

The thing I like about focusing the discussion on QoL design is that it's a _balancing act._
The stake of Marika being lifesavers from a long, arduous runback to where you died is nice, convenient, and appreciated. Compare that to the now infamous Ubisoft maps with fifteen billion quest, npc, and item markers that make you struggle to parse anything meaningful at all from it.
Like yeah, on paper, the map having all the information one could ever possibly need sounds like amazing quality of life design, but in practice, all it usually does is make said map unreadable under all the icons and, more importantly, drain the player of any sense of wonder and excitement they may have had in exploring the world you've given them.
I guess to have a more direct comparison: not only is Elden Ring's map gorgeously illustrated, it bakes in information about different points of interest like dark castles and lakes and cave entrances and of course the road steles that have the map fragments, all without overwhelming the player and feeling so at home in the world with its aesthetic and the amount of detail it has. I think the best decision they made was to give us the personalizing map markers that we can add, remove, and choose the pattern of. I usually play FromSoft games with a notebook beside me, and part of the fun of playing was drawing out the little symbols I'd used to mark my map and noting down what each symbol meant; 'this is an evergaol I need to get back to, ' 'this npc is currently here, ' 'investigate this teleporter later!'
FromSoft trusts that, if you're playing their game, it's because you *want* to engage with the world they've created and want to explore every cave and crevice it has to offer. I think that trust is a lot more important than a lot of those salty devs are giving it credit.

[juancarlosfernandezperez]

Remember: Demon's Souls was considered "doomed" before Miyazaki stepped up and remade it to his liking.
Perhaps that relates to what was mentioned here about allowing for failure.

[Lionfrog]

As college senior preparing to start work in games as a concept artist I can empathize a bit with people who make these games. The individual artists who make up those games are often top of their field and make some truly amazing work, it’s just that they are never given the time or resources to make the type of art most players want to experience. It’s the developer’s fault plain and simple. I know some people in the games industry and they work hard long hours on every project even the ones gamers disparage for low quality and I’d just let to remind everyone that the individuals are not the problem it’s the system. By supporting the artists that make your favorite games and not the corporations we can build a better industry.

[chrisheartman]

Also, knowing that Miyazaki believes in me as a player (and to a certain extent me as a person) almost makes me cry. It reminds me that there are people out there that do believe in me, and can do better.

[RoarinShots]

Vampire Survivors was a wake up call
Elden Ring was a wake up call
Helldivers 2 was a wake up call
Elden Ring is a wake up call again

Boys its been 3 years they ain't wakin up...

[BusinessSkrub]

A wake up call, but unfortunately, phone is ringing off the hook and nobody in the industry is answering

[gamerguywater]

10:20 the second you said magic i already knew what you were gonna say

[NightDocs]

I hope the games industry takes the same turn as the music industry. Most musical acts have no label or corporate overlord and are self funded by their own growth and success

[garrettwaters]

A key point is that both Fromsoft and Larian are not publicly traded companies and therefore have much less pressure from shareholders. The need to show growth quarter after quarter is wholly incompatible with the process of actually making good art.

[quintingreen]

It also was a process of about 18 years to get the formula down and bring it into the modern age of gaming as something that never sold out and kept the original formula that worked it flourished as a refreshing blast from the past kind of game that doesn’t feel like it’s in the same league as any modern game it feels timeless

[xiKeepItRealx]

When the brains/soul behind the game says hes not a good player and puts in tools for us the gamers to use and abuse to make the game 10x easier he understands us. He knows us.
In elden ring or any fromsoft game with time and patience the game does become more comfortable. The achievement of defeating bosses. But we as gamers like to push ourselves to challenge ourselves to better ourselves. To get any even more greater sense of achievement.
I do not shy away from using summons or cheeses if the boss is too difficult because its in the game for a reason...but 99% of the time i try to solo everything.
Im no done with the elden ring DLC cause of life and work but im currently playing through it on NG+3 and its fair in terms of difficulty. Im loving my time in DLC and honestly might even try to play through it with a different character

[Grebeny]

But they are right. Fenboyism is absurd and bad for everyone.

1. The game UI is absolute trash. Almost everything is like early pre alpha stage. Have you died from using keystone, ah, don't tell me, I know you did. Why is so hard for me to see discription of an equipment gear, and do you remember how back at release you were unable to see how many runes you take from runes if you don't go on a specific screen?

2. The performance was trash at release. The framerate was super unstable and that in my opinion is worst from being locked at low fps. I left the game behind for months before they patched all performance issues.

3. Quest design is bad, like need guide back. I literally missed quests in the first play because you need to talk with an NPC, teleport few times for the quest to update and talk again, WHY, WHY SO BROKEN? If that was any other AAA game, they would eat them alive for such a thing.

Just because a game is good, must never ban critisism. Banning critisism lead to games like world of warcraft where the diehard community didn't allowed anyone to tell a single word against it until the moment when even the most die hards had nothing to enjoy there.

[ukrjrxy]

It is all about gameplay. Elden Ring didn't amaze me with its storytelling (even if the story itself is really good), but the way it plays is something on another level. I'm not playing fantasy games, so I went into it without any great expectations, but the way it looks, how it fights... all of it is amazing to the point I'm doing my first run and I intentionally make a bad build, because I want to play with all of these cool weapons.
AAA industry simply forgot about the fact that games have to be fun in the first place, or they assumed, they can skip that step.

[JohnnyBMovie]

The only "quality of life" change I would make to Shadows of the Erdtree would be a farmable, or re-usable Larval Tear, cause I burned through like 4 of them sum-bitches during my first 5 hours, just wanting to use different weapons for a bit, 'cause they were rad.

[SupaSeph]

I kind of hate this way of talking about the video game industry. So much of the criticism is focused on developers who work long unfair hours and have almost no say in the things they are developing. Decisions are mostly made by a board of a select group of employees yet the thousands of developers who are aware of the exact issues mentioned and would fix them if it were up to them are being blamed for things they don't like either. You mention having "unyielding vision" for what a consumer wants in a video game, but ironically that in and of itself is the issue. The decision makers get tunnel visioned and developers have to do what they say because its the structure of the company. How do you expect a developer to put passion and love into a game when any ideas they do have get shut down, and they work long unpaid hours just to develop the content the publisher deems worthwhile. Its not as simple as bad game = bad developers

[Hoigwai]

If there are two things I would like in Elden Ring it would be a transmog system because of obvious personal fantasy about the build I'm playing the second would be a little more of a narrative thread that I could follow. I don't mean I'd have to follow it but it's there when I feel a lack of connection to why I'm doing this other than smashing enemies.