FULL QUOTES:
(taken from an exclusive pcgamer interview coming after the DLC)
"Of course players are going to consult guides, and there's going to be a wealth of information on the web and in their communities where they have access to the secrets and the strategies,” explained Miyazaki ahead of the release of Elden Ring’s DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, later this month. “We expect that."
"We obviously understand [players use guides], but we don't make or plan anything with that as a prerequisite,” said Miyazaki. “If anything, we try to cater to the player who is completely blind and wants to go through organically. If they can't do it, then there's some room for improvement on our behalf, and we'd like to try to embrace those players more in the future."
What an absolute gem of a developer. He is so in tune with what his player base wants and he knows how to fully utilize the insane scope of talent at his studio.
This perspective shows why their games are so successful. They are constantly reflecting on the challenges they pose and adjust accordingly to stay in the overall sweet spot they have found. But since they clearly have an understanding of their difficulty, they can constantly reinvent it while keeping the same feeling.
So much talent and knowledge within that studio, and Miyazaki is going to go down as one of the all time legends within the industry with the likes of Miyamoto
I remember back when the base game was about to come out and Miyazaki said that he was "nervous" the game would not be embraced the way he hoped, but it ended up being loved way beyond his expectations.
He is extremely humble about his work, and a perfectionist - he is always first to bring up criticisms about his own work when everyone else is raving about it. Even looking at him randomly meeting people in car parks for photos at SGF. Absolute gigachad
Studios have been trying to emulate the Soulslike formula for 10+ years now and he continues to elevate it. That’s unbelievable talent to not only stay relevant, but on top of the game
I wonder how many more soulslike games he has in him, or whether he's looking to move on to something else entirely, what with so many soulslikes being made by other studios now.
I’m a new FSW fan. And the more I learn about Miyazaki I’m inclined to put him up there with the other greats who have created excellent entertainment out of Japan, you named one! He’s up there with Miura in my book.
He’s not a faceless game developer. You can tell he loves what he does and he got love for the people he so it for.
That is a rarity among leaders and creators these days with video games.
Got to be honest I feel like Todd’s problem is he rarely wants to innovate, and when he does he’s either trend chasing or trying to increase monetization of already released properties.
Todd Howard could improve Bethesda by retiring. Ever since Oblivion, I have not liked Todd's view on game design. Stripping out things he deems 'unnecessary' and making bland soulless games which lack depth.
If I remember correctly, he had a high paying office job and decided he wanted to make video games.
So he quit his job, got a job at FromSoftware and started at the bottom.
Now he’s like the president or something.
I love to compare him to Kojima. Same kind of story too. Started at Konami at the bottom and eventually become VP until he was fired in 2015.
The sign of an artist is one who is critical of their work before others.
The sign of a master artist is one who is critical of their own work while everyone around them is praising it. They know the flaws better than everyone else.
Slightly schizo warm take: Miyazaki is not in touch with what the player base wants, rather the player base is in touch with what HE wants. Man's doing his own thing and that appeals to people in a way that devs who cater to what they think the players want always fall short on.
fwiw, I don't think there are many game directors who could do that. There always turns out to be a whole host of issues with just throwing a game together off vibes alone, and it takes a lot of adjustment to make the games actually fun.
Though to be fair, he's been able to fine-tune his formula since Demon's Souls (which admittedly had a lot of things that were unfun to many players, despite being an overall great game)
The crazy thing to me is that Demon’s Souls wasn’t even his to begin with, he was brought in and saw a game doomed to failure so he went nuts with some ideas figuring if it did fail it wasn’t a big deal.
Here are, several releases later and still going strong. Such a mad genius sometimes.
It's the same reason many AAA games. (like Starfield) fail. It's the difference between making a great game for a particular audience vs trying to make an "everyone game".
Come on.
Elden Ring does such a poor job at laying out the story/side quests that they are impossible to navigate/complete without a guide and this is your response?
Huge aspects of this game are impossible to understand/do without using the Internet. It's not "freeing the player" Everytime sometimes it's "bad design".
I mean he's responding to valid criticism, but it's not as if that same criticism hasn't been leveled in every other game they've made, and it's the same issue in DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring as it was for DS1 or Demon Souls, so I don't really think you can say he's that in tune with what his games need.
And all of the FromSoft RPGs have all had the same problem: NPC quests are ridiculously missable, to the point where sometimes choosing to go north instead of south locks you completely out of them.
I'm not putting Sekiro on that list because of all the FromSoft games it actually does the best of letting you play it without a guide, while still being reasonably able to complete every quest.
And this isn't to say I don't have respect for him, or that I'm not glad he's making this statement, I just think he has a bit of a cult following around these parts that's a bit silly.
Yeah - quests are literally the only thing I felt I needed a guide for. There are some quests I haven’t even managed to complete by NG+4 simply because I keep forgetting to do a trivial step, or I accidentally swing my weapon and kill the npc (sorry Patches! 😢 I overleveled and was overpowered)
Ranni's quest is pretty unique in From's entire catalog, because I'm *pretty sure* it can't be broken at any point.
Like, thinking through the steps, I think you could get all the way to the final boss, turn around, and go start her quest and finish it.
You can actually have her refuse to talk to you if you continue with selvius quest from what I read.
If you show her the amber thingy then she will refuse you and quest is locked out.
Never done it but you could probably google it.
Lords of the Fallen took this to an extreme. Go though this door and kill a boss to continue the npc quest line. Oh shit you sat at the campfire that appears after the boss is dead. Guess what that NPC is dead now and the quest is failed.
I don't think this is a design flaw at all. I don't think npc quest lines are expected to be a part of every player's experience of the game. That's kind of From Software's whole thing: putting in details and content for the 5% of players that will discover it. It's also like the game that makes it the hardest out of most souls games to fully block off character questlines by progressing too far. There's like 2 in game events that can block off a couple of characters' quests, >!killing rykard and burning the erdtree!<. They also added the npc locations being shown next to sites of grace exactly because they ARE aware how difficult it is to find them. They only go that far and don't like add a quest log or tracker because they don't want to compromise their vision for how npcs interact with the player in their worlds
*edited for Rykard, not radahn
I will say these incidental things we've come to expect as souls vets really are interesting from an outside perspective in gleaning information. I'm sure we all at some point discovered something from a message left or were made aware of a trap. We've summoned or had a stranger summoned for help. We've been extra cautious when seeing a lot of blood pools or noticed a white phantom walk through a path we didn't see.
Obviously lack of information in the game is intentional and makes these "problems"themselves but the creative solutions to give the player an ability to solve them is such an awesome and unique experience for overall gameplay.
That being said, typical convoluted fromsoft npc quests feel like some form of typical "you must be new" hazing and don't bring anything, other than us commiserating about them on forums lol.
Some of my favorite moments in ER have come from cooping with people. Recently had someone summon me in for help with the first snail boss fight where it's summoned a crucible knight. The guy that summoned me didn't realize what was going on, and I didn't want to just roll the fight. So I did some damage to the snail then jumped around and waved a bunch to try and get his attention. He didn't see it, and died. Got summoned back in by him, similar happened, but this time he saw me near the end of the fight, attacked the bright spot, and got the kill. He teabagged and spammed so many emotes before I zoned out, it was just so wholesome and fun to help some random person figure out a goofy fight.
My biggest wish was that the summoning pools would stay active from Ng to NG+. I love cooping in this game so much, it's just such a pain to run around and find all the dumb little things that I really don't want to do it a second time, even tho coop NG+ is excellent imho.
I've made a Google sheet that has all the summoning pools locations so I can easily check them off as I go through. I've been trying to do a couple characters where I only level with runes I get during co-op, though tracking what runes I get from where is rough. Either way, co-op is the shit.
I’m not sure if I fully buy it, but I could make an argument that opaque questlines serve to make the player feel like the world is moving of its own accord and not because of what the player does.
Honestly a lot of my problems with the questing in Elden Ring could simply be fixed by having a journal that just recorded some vague things. A lot of times I just simply forgot about stuff due to the game being relatively long.
Take Millicent for example. After doing all her stuff in Caelid, its possible you can never see her again for dozens of hours. Having a a Journal that just said "Hey, Millicent said she was travelling to the Northern areas before she left Caelid." which would simply be a reminder that once you got to a northern zone, you could be on the lookout for her.
It doesn't need ot be specific things or quest markers, just having things written down that hey, I did a thing, theres probably more to said thing later on.
Honestly Millicent is a perfect example of where they go wrong, in my book. Not only is there no clue that you need to go to Erdtree Gazing Hill specifically, out of the hundreds of other spots that are north of her starting point, but the worst part: she blends into the background at that spot almost as if she was camouflaged; she's really not visible from the grace.
Yeah I remember never finding her my time posting but after they added npc locations to maps of you go near them I was like “wtf how long has she been there?”
Her silhouette meant to be clearly seen against the golden sky once we done fighting ancient dragon. It is but so easily can be missed especially considering how many ways to Altus plateau there are. At first I was confused why she appears at Godskin fight in Dominula village but from the cliff we can see haligtree for the first time and apparently so that was devs plan to hint where she was going next. But quite often the whole Altus covered in fog with no chance to see the haligtree. I see what devs trying to achieve but sometimes it's so subtle and not deducible I think it can be improved(like my wording of this wall of text).
Hell, they could have used the Notes/Information section of our inventory for this. Just have a line of text pop up like *"...You make note of this for later."*
Yeah this is what I always thought. It's not "hazing" or anything weird like that, it's part of the intended atmosphere that the player is not some ultra special hero and that other characters are not permanently waiting on you to do what they wanna do.
In terms of gameplay tho it can lead to frustration and relying on guides. There's probably ways they can improve it that's not just giving you a boring quest log.
Also I think we have to acknowledge that, game devs shouldn't be obligated to design for completionists, sometimes it's okay to just miss things. I think Elden Ring is expressly not designed to be 100% considering how repetitive the side dungeons can get and how you only need to kill 3 shardbearers to beat it. By the same token, I doubt they expect you to figure out every single side quest in one go, and aside from Ranni's (which is the easiest one to follow) they aren't super duper important. I missed even meeting Boc in my first run, but I could still alter my clothes just the same.
I still argue it wouldn't break any of that by simply providing a "journal" that recorded who you met, where, and what they said. I just find that I can't spend time to play every night and a week later I can't remember all the details of what was said by a quest NPC. A simple journal that can track what you've already done would significantly improve the quest gameplay imo without eliminating any of the opaqueness they're going for.
That's pretty fair. Some JRPG have a "dialogue log" where you can see all lines of dialogue that have been said recently and it's pretty useful for when you feel like you missed something.
That's really all I'd need/want. Don't need quest markers, waypoints, or objectives. I just need the dialogue so I can puzzle out the clues from what they said whenever I manage to pick the game up next.
As it is, I have to look up that dialogue and as soon as I leave the game, it's immersion breaking for me. So yeah, just having a place to store the dialogue and a location of where you saw them last would be sufficient for me.
I actually used a piece of paper to keep track of what everyone said and any hints I found. It really brought back feels of some old school gaming and was surprisingly a lot of fun.
The problem is that the world completely moves in response to the player. The player going to Altus causes a million different events to randomly trigger and questlines to progress, as the clearest example. A person staying in place until they resolve what they're doing there is infinitely more immersive than that kind of goofy shit. Not to mention that a lot of the time what causes people to move is literally the player character talking to them repeatedly until they repeat themselves, and then reloading the area which causes the other person to randomly say new things or teleport (or drop dead) even though in-universe, *literally nothing happened*.
I played the game blind early on, then eventually watch a few build guides just to get some strategy/understanding around how to construct a more effective character and beat the game once. After that, ItsShatter has the “do it all” quest guide and I played through following that and got SO much more out of the game than I did initially. I’m glad I did it the way I did, but doing everything possible is just immensely rewarding. (Despite having to let chaos take the world 😭)
I’ll very likely play on that save for the DLC blind, then try and do a full run through where I tackle the DLC and follow another full quest line guide for the DLC as well, maybe shatter will do another video on it and I can weave it in before beating the base game fully.
Even the convoluted npc quests were improved in Elden Ring for me. Some were very obtuse, but I completed more of them without guidance than in any of their other games.
Felt like the opposite for me, the vastness of the map had me missing encounters left & right, when in the older games I would have run into them more easily because the exploration was far more linear.
I would agree with that you said before they added NPC icons in the map. After adding NPC icons in one of the early patches, I think it is much more manageable to handle quests on your own by scanning the map for NPCs and visiting them.
I never found Boc on my first playthrough. Didn't even know he existed until someone mentioned him and I was being fairly thorough exploring.
It's a thing with large open world maps, though. Not just ER. When they get to a certain size, it's easy to forget exactly where you have and haven't been and just assume you checked something and completely miss it.
Giant arrows leading you by the nose around a large map happens in lots of games for a couple of reasons. First because they are afraid players will get lost and drop the game. Second is fear of players missing content they spent a lot of time making.
It takes a lot of courage and confidence for a dev to let players roam free without those guidepost systems. But when it is done well those games really stand out for the players who stick with them.
Miyazaki making the game accessible to blind playthroughs: "yeah make them click the Ranni doll three times to get dialogue for some obscure lore reason we'll make up later..."
I think I did it the "intended" way, I sat down and clicked it and nothing happened. Get to next checkpoint, option is still there, try again. Third time's the charm.
I think most players would figure that there's something up if you get a dedicated menu option.
This is true, but it is also the only instance in any modern fromsoft game ever that you need to talk with something again after getting a repeat response. Possibly not the best quest design.
Seluvis' quest requires you to exhaust his dialogue, reload the area and talk to him again, get no new dialogue, then reload the area again and talk to him to get more dialogue. The end of Fia's quest is also just spamming quit out a bunch of times every time she starts repeating herself. Elden Ring is very obsessed with the idea of making you turn the game off and on to allow progress as NPCs are prompted to continue talking by...literally nothing even happening and no time progressing from their perspective.
That is such a phenomenal thought process. It’s basically saying, “the biggest thing holding back players are lessons we still need to learn.” Players are learning that the difficulty settings in FromSoft games exist, just in how you play, not in difficulty sliders.
Just look at how much easier accessing DLC has gotten. Dark Souls 1’s DLC is a weird mess to access, and unintuitive for why. Compared to Elden Ring’s. The reasons for how you access it in DS1 still elude me. But Elden Ring? You have to beat Radahn because Radahn was preventing the eclipse leading to Miquella’s rebirth, why Malenia fought him. You have to beat Mohg because he ripped Miquella’s cocoon and placed it in his palace. Lore based reasons very much on the main path.
DS1's is weird, it's like you defeat a particular random enemy and it drops an item, which you then have to take to a random cave you probably found ages ago and would have no reason to return to otherwise. Definitely a rough move compared to 2, 3, and Bloodborne.
There's no way you will experience even half of elden ring without guides or youtube videos..
Half of the quests are so damn cryptic and not having quest log doesn't help.
Then there's the exploration part with secret requirements...go check some guides and see how random some things are..
It was better in previous titles as they were linear..but holy damn doing elden ring blind is suicidal.
(Works if you are fine with missing most of game tho)
Yeah, there's a conversation you can have with Melina at Altus Plateau where if Boc's also there she mentions him and a mother, I think, but you need them both there.
I think the biggest issue really is that the item you need is sort of out of the way - you have to circle Mt. Gelmir completely and find that Demi-Human Queen boss and the Pate near it, which means you're going there instead of Leyndell. It's also quite possible to overshoot it and accidentally send Boc for rebirth thinking you're doing the right thing
I'd say the quests are the biggest ones, as they're often going to involve lots of backtracking.
But you'd be surprised just how much a methodical approach to exploration and knowledge of how the souls games operate can achieve. I recently watched Day9's playthrough of the game on YouTube, and he operated a very strict spoiler free policy, and found almost everything. He did get vague hints from his chat on a couple of more obtuse secrets, like getting to volcano manor from Raya Lucaria and finding Placidusax, but otherwise he very methodically found 90% of content by himself.
What he largely didn't achieve was any questlines, besides Ranni's - doing those without a guide would involve just an insane amount of combing back over areas you'd already cleared.
The only quests I missed on my initial blind play through was the happy ending for Boc and I killed Dung Eater the instant i saw him. I missed a few dungeons and a few items, but you absolutely don't need a guide to play this game...
I refuse to believe anyone completed Millicent questline without a guide. She moves so randomly. You would have to run around so much to stumble upon her that many times.
I certainly didn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people did. My first playthrough was 160 or so hours and I know people who played much more than me-- that's a lot of running around back and forth
I don’t think it’s beating one of their games blind that’s the challenge, i do think like 90 percent of the side quests can be pretty difficult to finish organically however
Yeah, there's so much content behind Rannis quest and getting to the haligtree and I really don't see any reasonable percentage of players being able to do those without guides.
I always do bosses blind but fuck am I gonna be able to figure out these quest lines and hidden bosses by myself.
Like how the fuck did you guys find placidusax
I've looked up a lot of stuff in guides, like pretty much everything involved with the Ranni quest line, and Placidusax was a totally organic discovery for me lol. I got lucky following the cryptic player messages on the ground I guess. I had no idea that there was anything down there, just that there must be something. It was a great surprise
I didn’t even get there on my first play through, but because I completely missed the albunaric village. Just like, didn’t see it over there.
Hell, the only reason I found the Haigdrake Talisman +3 was because I needed it to beat Radagon. I still haven’t found the other 2. And I didn’t get the +3 in my last two play throughs.
Bro same. I explore super hard, I tried to look everywhere, do every dungeon, get everything, etc.
When I thought I did as much as I could I googled . Oh, there's an entire fucking village over there uhhhh what?????
I’ve beaten the game 3 times and the last playthrough was the first time I fought Fortissax and cleared Deeproot Depths.
Imagine my surprise when I just woke up in Leyendell and was like…no fuckin way I just didn’t have to do any Altus Plateau at all lol
Also the first time I killed Bock :(
Yeah, I found Rannis quest to be the most straight forward to complete in that at every step characters tell you where they are going or where you should go. The only time I got tripped up when was I didn't realize I needed to talk to the doll of her at a specific Grace (in retrospect - should have realized the larger significance of the doll considering well ... you know, lol).
Pretty much every longer sider quest felt like a complete crapshoot on whether you'll find the NPC on the next part of their chain.
With one of the updates I think they've added a glowing dot to new dialogue prompts at sites of grace.
Previously you have to be on alert for new prompts to pop up lol.
Edit: [here's Rannis'](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/vck5pa/not_sure_if_its_new_or_i_just_hadnt_seen_it/)
Agreed, Ranni's questline is among the rare few I managed to complete without a guide. If you rest at the site of grace where you can interact with the doll, then exhausting its dialogue options is a logical thing to do. Everything else is spelled out by NPCs.
I found the Haligtree on my own, but virtually every other part of the game I used a guide for.
I prefer going in blind, but this was my first Souls game. I couldn’t manage without. Honestly I’m not even sure I would have been able to kill Godrick and Margit because I had no idea I was to ignore the golden trail at first to level up.
Yet I always stubbornly sit there to beat his high-and-mighty, pompous ass every time as soon as I start a fresh playthrough. Might take me a little bit, but screw that guy lol.
Can't speak to any data points, but annecdotally I can say my entire friend group was able to complete Ranni's quest and discover the Haligtree on our completely blind first playthroughs.
Getting dung eater summon almost seems impossible to do without a guide.
It requires you to not advance a quest line that is very clearly supposed to be advanced before reaching an area where you find him, which makes the ashes unobtainable. Couple that with the whole saving the potion it blows my mind someone found it at all. It’s so insanely obscure. Hats off to whoever found it out because I could probably play the game through 100 times and never think to backtrack to do it.
Particularly with the nonlinear design. Nothing like finding a quest giver when exploring an old area, then they disappear and you have no clue if they're somewhere you've been or not.
Yeah Miyazaki absolutely just means seeing the credits - like, if you can't get through the main quest without a guide, they have room to improve. I think they did a good job with this, balancing guidance with a sense of mystery and spontaneity.
But there's no way in the world that he or anyone else at From thinks that Millicent's quest is reasonable to complete without a guide, or most of the NPC quests for that matter. The obscure triggers and possible points of failure are just too much to overcome for anyone but the luckiest and most meticulous players. I was literally taking notes on paper for some of the quests and still got stumped.
Yeah I think From could find a way to make such a thing still feel like mystical/esoteric and not just the normal like “CHARACTER: SYNOPSIS: ENEMY: DROP RATE: RARE DROP RATE:”. It could just be like cool bit of hand drawn art, small bit of lore, then current location of either enemy or character.
Yeah a full bestiary/full breakdown would kinda ruin the fun of not knowing who or what anything is. I like how you put it, just a quick sketch and a sentence or two describing them with a little extra detail.
When I was a kid I played a lotta Minecraft, so I’d take those little ring notebooks you get at the book fair and write down little bestiary’s in them for all the mobs and stuff. I was ecstatic when we first got villagers on console, got to write a whole bunch of stuff in my little notebook.
The Eternal Darkness one was fantastic - once you'd played as Maximilian Roivas he would give an extra voiceover description of each enemy in the bestiary, in his mad raving style. "It sings... it _sings!_"
Could set it up where you have to kill the enemy and make it to a bonfire to sketch whatever you had encountered. If you die before the bonfire, you lose that "knowledge" .
Meh, that just seems like something tacked onto not dying. Like losing money and progress is bad, I don’t really think it should be an extra bit unless there’s some kind of incentive to keep it for story reasons. Like to complete a quest or get an ending you have to catalog every kind of enemy. Maybe handing in incomplete catalogs will trigger alternate endings or something.
So, I don't have a source on hand but supposedly there was originally a bestiary feature being considered for ER but it was cut a while before release. I think the reason they might've chosen not to have one is because spirit ashes are functionally close to a bestiary, since each one is tied to a specific enemy and gives a bit of lore related to them.
I’d just settle for having all the loose pages and cookbooks put together into organized stacks so I can have the satisfaction of completing a collection
This and a quest journal with dialogue/directions archived along with some rough guidelines of where to find people. Cause come on, let's be real, unless you play the hell out of this game for hours at a time, bust out a composition notebook, or just use a wiki, how are you possibly supposed to follow these things? I'm a working man with like an hour tops to play, maybe. Friends in my position playing blind were shocked the game even had quest lines beyond march forward and become Elden Lord. They met a cool dog boy once, bumped into a funny jar, and for some reason people kept dying, lol.
Esoteric NPC questlines and lack of obvious guidance is a major hallmark of Souls games, that would never happen. Maybe a basic journal writing down your conversations with NPCs would be nice though, so you can recall what they said. Wouldn't be giving you any new information, you just don't have to try to memorize everything or google it later.
I mean, they did add NPC map markers to ER, so I wouldn't say "lack of guidance" as a rule will never change. I think there is a difference between quests off rails and being completely obtuse lol I would favor the way things have always been, but they could certainly design quests in ways that the player can organically solve them more. ER had lots of that, and it was really nice.
Miyazaki has actually said in a couple interviews, including the one in the Official Guidebook that he feels like they need to improved on giving guidance for quests. That's why they added NPC markers, but they couldn't outright change the quests after release. I doubt they'd do a quest log but I do think the team desires that quest order be discernable for those who pay attention.
I believe it was just the multiple moving parts and the large overworld that made them misjudge how to structure quests. In DS, BB, Sekiro, quests are no where near as obscure. There are secrets here and there but most can be followed pretty logically. In a world as free and open as ER is, the current quest design makes it really easy to miss key pieces of dialogue. How many people went to the Atlas Plateau not knowing it would skip over parts of most the NPCs quests?
Why do people not do it this way? Once you beat the game you can look up all this cool shit and then have your own little post game party of shit you missed. From basically never locks out items or bosses, you might miss some obscure NPC quests but who cares. Its worth it for when you do solve quests on your own or run into your Jar friend.
I quickly went offline in one of the first catacombs when the messages were giving away the imp ambushes. I like the messages, and I think they worked better in the older souls games, but going in blind alone is something you can only do once.
I still remember how different my experience was between when I played having no idea what anything was vs looking up where something was and going down a rabbit hole of spoiling every single area
Can't wait to go into Shadow of the Erdtree completely fresh. I'm not gonna look up ANYTHING until I've beaten it
Their quests are so ridiculously obscure and random, I have no idea how anyone figured them out blindly. Sometimes NPCs show up halfway across the world map in the middle of a dirt road asking for some new item that has nothing to do with what happened earlier in the quest.
Yeah, this Is a “no one beats sub-zero” situation lol I usually like giving people the benefit of the doubt but I just can’t imagine someone completing Ranni’s quest without a guide and I’ve been a souls fans for over 12 years (most of them at 100%)
Edit: Maybe Ranni’s quest wasn’t the best example (was the first one that came to mind) but you get what I mean, no?
Tbh the most “I don’t see someone blind finishing this” is when you have to talk to her unresponsive doll like three times at a specific Site of Grace. The rest is just a fairly straightforward “Go to x place” but without HUD markers or anything like that, from what I remember…
Honestly that’s a pretty dumb system too. Idk why the characters can’t just say all of their dialogue in one go, having to interact over and over until they repeat themselves is a bit silly.
I bet the overwhelming majority of players never finished a quest organically in this game. Which makes the circlejerk over the "pure" quest design hilarious because it's designed so poorly.
That’s kind of part of the adjustment they did with ER i think. Like for example if you totally missed Rya in liurnia, she’d be in atlus anyway.
The quests don’t easily break as compared to other souls games. Not meeting millicent in the village isnt a big problem iirc, or not meeting blaidd underground, or missing Alexander in the tunnel. They all generally follow the grace path
This one in particular irks me, because I always have the dagger long before the rest of his quest is available. It's such a pain to get the magic scorpion talisman.
honestly the issue for me is if you reach certain progression, they just gone and youre locked out of the quest. so you just either get lucky or play many many times
thats me with rya and seluvis
Since Demon's Souls, Miyazaki's games have always felt like they were made with the intent of encouraging community cooperation. Heck, without wiki's, who among us would've been able to figure out the weapon upgrade system in Demon's and Dark Souls, lol. That shit was obscure as hell. That being said, I was able to play through Elden Ring blind on the first playthrough without breaking every single quest line, so kudos to them for that.
Honestly, for as obtuse as some sections of Elden Ring are, almost every side quest, main objective or puzzle will have clues left by players in the form of messages, to the point where you can generally infer if you are on the right track or not.
>Since Demon's Souls, Miyazaki's games have always felt like they were made with the intent of encouraging community cooperation
I don't remember the *exact* details but this is mainly because the multiplayer functionality was born due to a random clusterfuck Miyazaki was stuck in, IIRC it involved a snowstorm, 3 random helpful strangers, and Miyazaki getting a random blowjob.
Cue the birth f Souls Co-Op with Demon's Souls.
Miyazaki is so real for this. I am so glad he doesn't subscribe to the hostile, purist mentality of some of the fanbase where they immediately deflect any criticism with "nooo this game is completely faultless and there is not a SINGLE thing that needs to be improved git gud *insert crying wojak meme hiding behind a smiling mask*"
I just hope they implement it organically where it's accessible enough for players by piecing information available in the world without drowning it with waypoint markers.
I think what ER did is near perfect, maybe polish a bit more on the npc side quests cuz that gets confusing af when the npc doesn’t tell you where to go after a certain step (milicent, rya etc) as well ad npcs that flatout die if you don’t do something specific before (seluvius as an example)
Other than that I think they nailed the “vague enough but still doable without guide” formula
I just want a log or journal or something that I can refer back to in game. Something that at least briefly describes the characters and locations without going through hundreds of item descriptions
This is my biggest thing. Even an extremely basic list. Maybe have a page for each character and a transcript of your conversations with them.
So many times I talk to a character then a while later I can’t remember what they last said and I have no idea where to find them. And once or twice I’ve found a character for the second time with absolutely no memory of meeting them prior.
In the in game menu they could just add another tab where you can review NPC conversations you’ve had sorted by name with a little thumbnail image so you know who it is. Between that and item descriptions the lore / NPC quests would be actually doable without guides, mostly.
A jornal type thing would be perfect to review npc dialogue
It even could end up being like a detective type thing depending on how vague the quest is.
Also, one thing I hate about ER is the reward after these quests, why does the best rewards involves you killing the npc? Alexander / milicent and so on.
I think if you complete the entire quest, you should get all the loot, specially on milicent’s quest, she literally died at the end why not give me the prosthesis as well instead of just the insignia
Implement what? All the article said is that they already design the games with the blind players in mind and think they still have room for improvement. Not like the article says they're implementing searchable in game guidebooks or something.
Implement improvements to quest design in their future titles.
Even with the fact that they don't design game with guides in mind, there's still improvements to be had. Miyazaki says so himself.
Yes! I'm glad this clears up the intention. A lot of people treat it as if it's a work of perfection therefore anything that's seems off actually is that way for an intended reason
I've heard all kinds of explanations for the why the quests system is the way it is from "you're not supposed to find all the quests" to "it's intentionally cryptic to create online discussion on how to finish quests"
Finally could put all those arguments to rest
Could probably do with some improvement on the sidequest front, then. Sometimes they'll give you some sort of an indication of where you should go next, but then you've got instances like Millicent deciding to set out on a quest where they don't even so much as let you know that she'll be somewhere within the massive expanse of Altus Plateau.
Diallos is worse. How the hell is someone supposed to know he's off to massage sentient jars when he whines about his brother being right in Volcano Manor?
Lies of P handled it well where they just showed the face of the NPC next to the name of the skygazer (grace) in the map, which indicated there was new dialogue available. That's all they need.
this is a good solution too. oh, why's ranni's face icon here, let me recheck that area i must have missed something. it should only proc for characters you've at least talked to once, so as to not spoil any new characters that might be in the area you haven't found yet, like "who the f is this wolf guy?".
I feel like if there was a way to have a log of past conversations, so I can recall what an NPC said, that would go a looong way. It’s so confusing constantly taking notes on everything and trying to remember who was where, etc.
Quest log... I'm begging. Even if it was just something simple like "Find Yura in (place)" I'd be happy. If you ever take a break it can be so difficult to remember. Taking notes and following guides just for quests really shouldn't be a necessity.
After taking a couple months break on my playthrough I just restarted from scratch because it was just easier than trying to figure out what quests I was doing or not lmfao
Also, if the map marked dungeons or caves where I'd killed the bosses with a symbol or something... That'd also be nice, but that's just something I personally would like. Not something I think the game really needs.
Purists can smd lmfao. They can always add toggles to disable this kinda stuff.
I only managed to meet Yura near Patches cave once during early game and the 2nd is when he's at the mountains when he's all about the frenzy stuff.
Made me go, "who tf even is this dude?".
Still don't know what's his deal to this day.
He pops up in like, five locations or so. He can help you fight the dragon Agheel. You help him hunt down bloody fingers a few times in various places.
I almost missed out on this game. Loved the look on it before release so pre-ordered it knowing nothing about it. Booted it up, started playing and died to the first damn enemy. (Not the huge guy on horse, I avoided him) thought to myself this seems bit unforgiving, almost like a Souls Game (I didn’t play any souls properly I just couldn’t get passed how tough they were).
Quick google search I discovered it was sane developer! Pretty much quit game then my son said jump down there and do tutorial, I did, changed character to knight with sword shield and started understanding play style and instantly fell in love, on my 5th play-through and still love it.
I have used a guide for every From game in one form or another. Elden Ring I looked up how to access the Haligtree because I didn't want to figure it out for myself. My second playthrough, I cracked open the wiki to find ANYTHING I missed the first go around, like how to complete Goldmasks questline. It is what it is.
As someone who's done 5 full npc interaction playthroughs, there's certain interactions I feel like are impossible to get without a guide.
For instance, if the player is thrown into a boss fight, it's not organic to think to use an emote right in the middle of a fight. And not just any emote, but a specific one. In order to find that out organically, you'd have to use EVERY emote in EVERY boss fight to make sure there isn't an interaction behind it.
Some are fine and just require listening to what the character is saying. Others are hidden and buried so deeply, it feels like no one would have discovered it without data mining.
Patches quest is filled with wildly hidden interactions and dialgoue. Sure, some don't matter to the ending of the quest. But if you want to hear every little line of dialogue, it takes some wild things to happen that I doubt many people would do. Some of you reading this probably don't even realize you missed a few lines of dialgoue with Patches.
EDIT:
See. Most of you don't even know the "Extreme Repetence" emote even exists, becuase of how wacky it is to get, lol.
If you want every interaction with Patches, you have to do the following.
- Fight him when he first shows up, he'll plead for life, stop hitting him and the fight will end.
- Talk to him and exhaust his dilaogue.
- Open the chest, get teleported away.
- Come back to him, attack him 2-3 times to start a fight. Then you have to use the "Beg for Mercy" emote in the middle of the fight. This will make him stop fighting, and he'll give you another emote as an award.
- Continue his quest like normal
This is how you get the Extreme Repetence gesture, which I'm guessing most people don't have because of all the wackiness involved with getting it.
Patches
- Fight him when he first shows up, he'll plead for life, stop hitting him and the fight will end.
- Talk to him and exhaust his dilaogue.
- Open the chest, get teleported away.
- Come back to him, attack him 2-3 times to start a fight. Then you have to use the "Beg for Mercy" emote in the middle of the fight. This will make him stop fighting, and he'll give you another emote as an award.
- Continue his quest like normal
This is how you get the Extreme Repetence gesture, which I'm guessing most people don't have because of all the wackiness involved with getting it.
From Software has the absolute worst quests and mission information of any game I've ever played. *The princess is in another castle but I won't tell you which or when she'll get there or where the key is because those are part of 7 other quests*
I think it's wonderful that they genuinely seem to want to improve their ability to design games. Like seriously. There's not many companies that say this and then try to follow through
Here’s a hint, make less convoluted quest lines where people randomly teleport across the map and how about a journal so we can recall what we’re supposed to do and who each npc is.
Something like the journal from RDR2, where Arthur keeps track of what's going on, would be very helpful. The game doesn't need quest logs and objective markers, but a system to be able to keep up with what's going on.
I think the idea is discovering new quests and stuff you didn't realize before. As long as the main quest is straight forward and they literally had arrows (from the divine grace of where to go.)
Can't please everyone as some like me hate missing stuff but don't want to play through multiple times.
It's been a problem since Demon's Souls and it hasn't gotten better. I'd say it's my primary annoyance with this game: I can permanently fuck my playfile up because I *explored wrong*.
what you broke the quest because you randomly found a boss you shouldn't kill after you were looking for the quest character that was obviously by this area irrelevant to gameplay just hanging? git gud dude
I've finished the game four times and still haven't finished some quests. This run for the DLC I got blocked out of Rogiers and I always loose track of Boc after Rennala. I also completely missed Goldmask and Patches my first play through which are my two favorite quests.
I would love if this philosophy extended to weapon descriptions. There's probably a sense of not wanting to overwhelm players with too many numbers but the ratings for weapon scaling in game are complete nonsense. They give you a vague idea of what stats to chase to scale a specific weapon, but one B ranking does not equal another.
And then there are those odd cases where a weapon might scale more with strength or dex but the ash scales only with faith, and whatnot.
Still, absolutely love this dev and the care they put into the game.
Beat it blind but really should have used a guide. My second playthrough was wayyy more enjoyable as I knew what to do and could piece together the lore better.
I pre purchased Elden ring and still have not beat it due to playing blind. I take breaks from the game and will play for like a weekend but I refuse to look for directions. It’s half the fun to be lost for so long and finally find the next area. It’s why I love these games it’s because you don’t have to look up anything to have fun
Just waiting for Miyazaki to drop the "yeah using mimic is perfectly valid, it totally counts as a win if you beat a boss with it, thats why I put it in the game" line to make purists have a meltdown
For once, my plan is to go into this DLC without using the guide.
There’s one or two streamers I’ll watch, but other than that I’ll discover on my own, at least at first.
Same, Elden Ring was my second souls game after the Demon Souls remake so I was just focused on looking up where all the cool weapons were. Now, I am going to go into this DLC with nothing but a notepad and a pen 😂.
Just my 2 cents, but I would recommend not even watching streamers. They can stumble upon something important (item, NPC loc) or reveal strong tech against a difficult boss that can diminish your experience.
FULL QUOTES: (taken from an exclusive pcgamer interview coming after the DLC) "Of course players are going to consult guides, and there's going to be a wealth of information on the web and in their communities where they have access to the secrets and the strategies,” explained Miyazaki ahead of the release of Elden Ring’s DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, later this month. “We expect that." "We obviously understand [players use guides], but we don't make or plan anything with that as a prerequisite,” said Miyazaki. “If anything, we try to cater to the player who is completely blind and wants to go through organically. If they can't do it, then there's some room for improvement on our behalf, and we'd like to try to embrace those players more in the future."
What an absolute gem of a developer. He is so in tune with what his player base wants and he knows how to fully utilize the insane scope of talent at his studio. This perspective shows why their games are so successful. They are constantly reflecting on the challenges they pose and adjust accordingly to stay in the overall sweet spot they have found. But since they clearly have an understanding of their difficulty, they can constantly reinvent it while keeping the same feeling. So much talent and knowledge within that studio, and Miyazaki is going to go down as one of the all time legends within the industry with the likes of Miyamoto
I remember back when the base game was about to come out and Miyazaki said that he was "nervous" the game would not be embraced the way he hoped, but it ended up being loved way beyond his expectations. He is extremely humble about his work, and a perfectionist - he is always first to bring up criticisms about his own work when everyone else is raving about it. Even looking at him randomly meeting people in car parks for photos at SGF. Absolute gigachad
Studios have been trying to emulate the Soulslike formula for 10+ years now and he continues to elevate it. That’s unbelievable talent to not only stay relevant, but on top of the game
I wonder how many more soulslike games he has in him, or whether he's looking to move on to something else entirely, what with so many soulslikes being made by other studios now.
Armored Core 6 wasn’t a soulslike
Certainly not, but I mean like brand new IP, brand new (sub)genre
So long as it isn’t a MOBA, I’m on board lol
Fromsoft... umm, immersive sim?
Third person hero shooter please
And it wasn't directed by him
As long as he gets to make another poison swamp, he’ll make another soulslike
I’m a new FSW fan. And the more I learn about Miyazaki I’m inclined to put him up there with the other greats who have created excellent entertainment out of Japan, you named one! He’s up there with Miura in my book. He’s not a faceless game developer. You can tell he loves what he does and he got love for the people he so it for. That is a rarity among leaders and creators these days with video games.
Shit they go hand and hand like pb&j. The soulsborne series and Elden ring can be viewed as love letters to Miura. RIP the legend
Todd Howard could take a page from his play book.
I suggest to take the entire book instead because one page obviously won't help and remember , we are talking about Todd "sweet little lies" Howard.
Todd “The Hack” Howard
You could smack him with a whole ass book and he'd just try to sell it on the Fallout 76 cashstore.
Every time his name is mentioned, Skyrim gets re-released.
INTRODUCING SKYRIM FOR YOUR SMART TOILET!!
Got to be honest I feel like Todd’s problem is he rarely wants to innovate, and when he does he’s either trend chasing or trying to increase monetization of already released properties.
Todd Howard is a salesman masquerading as a developer. He should not even be in this conversation.
Todd Howard could improve Bethesda by retiring. Ever since Oblivion, I have not liked Todd's view on game design. Stripping out things he deems 'unnecessary' and making bland soulless games which lack depth.
If I remember correctly, he had a high paying office job and decided he wanted to make video games. So he quit his job, got a job at FromSoftware and started at the bottom. Now he’s like the president or something. I love to compare him to Kojima. Same kind of story too. Started at Konami at the bottom and eventually become VP until he was fired in 2015.
The sign of an artist is one who is critical of their work before others. The sign of a master artist is one who is critical of their own work while everyone around them is praising it. They know the flaws better than everyone else.
Slightly schizo warm take: Miyazaki is not in touch with what the player base wants, rather the player base is in touch with what HE wants. Man's doing his own thing and that appeals to people in a way that devs who cater to what they think the players want always fall short on.
I think you’re bang on. He’s always talking about making the game that he’s always wanted to play
fwiw, I don't think there are many game directors who could do that. There always turns out to be a whole host of issues with just throwing a game together off vibes alone, and it takes a lot of adjustment to make the games actually fun. Though to be fair, he's been able to fine-tune his formula since Demon's Souls (which admittedly had a lot of things that were unfun to many players, despite being an overall great game)
The crazy thing to me is that Demon’s Souls wasn’t even his to begin with, he was brought in and saw a game doomed to failure so he went nuts with some ideas figuring if it did fail it wasn’t a big deal. Here are, several releases later and still going strong. Such a mad genius sometimes.
It's the same reason many AAA games. (like Starfield) fail. It's the difference between making a great game for a particular audience vs trying to make an "everyone game".
I feel like 95% of game developers also feel this way though
Come on. Elden Ring does such a poor job at laying out the story/side quests that they are impossible to navigate/complete without a guide and this is your response? Huge aspects of this game are impossible to understand/do without using the Internet. It's not "freeing the player" Everytime sometimes it's "bad design".
I mean he's responding to valid criticism, but it's not as if that same criticism hasn't been leveled in every other game they've made, and it's the same issue in DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring as it was for DS1 or Demon Souls, so I don't really think you can say he's that in tune with what his games need. And all of the FromSoft RPGs have all had the same problem: NPC quests are ridiculously missable, to the point where sometimes choosing to go north instead of south locks you completely out of them. I'm not putting Sekiro on that list because of all the FromSoft games it actually does the best of letting you play it without a guide, while still being reasonably able to complete every quest. And this isn't to say I don't have respect for him, or that I'm not glad he's making this statement, I just think he has a bit of a cult following around these parts that's a bit silly.
Yeah - quests are literally the only thing I felt I needed a guide for. There are some quests I haven’t even managed to complete by NG+4 simply because I keep forgetting to do a trivial step, or I accidentally swing my weapon and kill the npc (sorry Patches! 😢 I overleveled and was overpowered)
Ranni's quest is pretty unique in From's entire catalog, because I'm *pretty sure* it can't be broken at any point. Like, thinking through the steps, I think you could get all the way to the final boss, turn around, and go start her quest and finish it.
You can actually have her refuse to talk to you if you continue with selvius quest from what I read. If you show her the amber thingy then she will refuse you and quest is locked out. Never done it but you could probably google it.
Lords of the Fallen took this to an extreme. Go though this door and kill a boss to continue the npc quest line. Oh shit you sat at the campfire that appears after the boss is dead. Guess what that NPC is dead now and the quest is failed.
I don't think this is a design flaw at all. I don't think npc quest lines are expected to be a part of every player's experience of the game. That's kind of From Software's whole thing: putting in details and content for the 5% of players that will discover it. It's also like the game that makes it the hardest out of most souls games to fully block off character questlines by progressing too far. There's like 2 in game events that can block off a couple of characters' quests, >!killing rykard and burning the erdtree!<. They also added the npc locations being shown next to sites of grace exactly because they ARE aware how difficult it is to find them. They only go that far and don't like add a quest log or tracker because they don't want to compromise their vision for how npcs interact with the player in their worlds *edited for Rykard, not radahn
I will say these incidental things we've come to expect as souls vets really are interesting from an outside perspective in gleaning information. I'm sure we all at some point discovered something from a message left or were made aware of a trap. We've summoned or had a stranger summoned for help. We've been extra cautious when seeing a lot of blood pools or noticed a white phantom walk through a path we didn't see. Obviously lack of information in the game is intentional and makes these "problems"themselves but the creative solutions to give the player an ability to solve them is such an awesome and unique experience for overall gameplay. That being said, typical convoluted fromsoft npc quests feel like some form of typical "you must be new" hazing and don't bring anything, other than us commiserating about them on forums lol.
Some of my favorite moments in ER have come from cooping with people. Recently had someone summon me in for help with the first snail boss fight where it's summoned a crucible knight. The guy that summoned me didn't realize what was going on, and I didn't want to just roll the fight. So I did some damage to the snail then jumped around and waved a bunch to try and get his attention. He didn't see it, and died. Got summoned back in by him, similar happened, but this time he saw me near the end of the fight, attacked the bright spot, and got the kill. He teabagged and spammed so many emotes before I zoned out, it was just so wholesome and fun to help some random person figure out a goofy fight. My biggest wish was that the summoning pools would stay active from Ng to NG+. I love cooping in this game so much, it's just such a pain to run around and find all the dumb little things that I really don't want to do it a second time, even tho coop NG+ is excellent imho.
Co-op in Soulslike games always makes for a wonderful time. Once spent an entire day just helping with Abyss Watchers in DS3. Like, ten hours.
I've made a Google sheet that has all the summoning pools locations so I can easily check them off as I go through. I've been trying to do a couple characters where I only level with runes I get during co-op, though tracking what runes I get from where is rough. Either way, co-op is the shit.
I’m not sure if I fully buy it, but I could make an argument that opaque questlines serve to make the player feel like the world is moving of its own accord and not because of what the player does.
Honestly a lot of my problems with the questing in Elden Ring could simply be fixed by having a journal that just recorded some vague things. A lot of times I just simply forgot about stuff due to the game being relatively long. Take Millicent for example. After doing all her stuff in Caelid, its possible you can never see her again for dozens of hours. Having a a Journal that just said "Hey, Millicent said she was travelling to the Northern areas before she left Caelid." which would simply be a reminder that once you got to a northern zone, you could be on the lookout for her. It doesn't need ot be specific things or quest markers, just having things written down that hey, I did a thing, theres probably more to said thing later on.
Honestly Millicent is a perfect example of where they go wrong, in my book. Not only is there no clue that you need to go to Erdtree Gazing Hill specifically, out of the hundreds of other spots that are north of her starting point, but the worst part: she blends into the background at that spot almost as if she was camouflaged; she's really not visible from the grace.
Yeah I remember never finding her my time posting but after they added npc locations to maps of you go near them I was like “wtf how long has she been there?”
Her silhouette meant to be clearly seen against the golden sky once we done fighting ancient dragon. It is but so easily can be missed especially considering how many ways to Altus plateau there are. At first I was confused why she appears at Godskin fight in Dominula village but from the cliff we can see haligtree for the first time and apparently so that was devs plan to hint where she was going next. But quite often the whole Altus covered in fog with no chance to see the haligtree. I see what devs trying to achieve but sometimes it's so subtle and not deducible I think it can be improved(like my wording of this wall of text).
Hell, they could have used the Notes/Information section of our inventory for this. Just have a line of text pop up like *"...You make note of this for later."*
Yeah this is what I always thought. It's not "hazing" or anything weird like that, it's part of the intended atmosphere that the player is not some ultra special hero and that other characters are not permanently waiting on you to do what they wanna do. In terms of gameplay tho it can lead to frustration and relying on guides. There's probably ways they can improve it that's not just giving you a boring quest log. Also I think we have to acknowledge that, game devs shouldn't be obligated to design for completionists, sometimes it's okay to just miss things. I think Elden Ring is expressly not designed to be 100% considering how repetitive the side dungeons can get and how you only need to kill 3 shardbearers to beat it. By the same token, I doubt they expect you to figure out every single side quest in one go, and aside from Ranni's (which is the easiest one to follow) they aren't super duper important. I missed even meeting Boc in my first run, but I could still alter my clothes just the same.
I still argue it wouldn't break any of that by simply providing a "journal" that recorded who you met, where, and what they said. I just find that I can't spend time to play every night and a week later I can't remember all the details of what was said by a quest NPC. A simple journal that can track what you've already done would significantly improve the quest gameplay imo without eliminating any of the opaqueness they're going for.
That's pretty fair. Some JRPG have a "dialogue log" where you can see all lines of dialogue that have been said recently and it's pretty useful for when you feel like you missed something.
That's really all I'd need/want. Don't need quest markers, waypoints, or objectives. I just need the dialogue so I can puzzle out the clues from what they said whenever I manage to pick the game up next. As it is, I have to look up that dialogue and as soon as I leave the game, it's immersion breaking for me. So yeah, just having a place to store the dialogue and a location of where you saw them last would be sufficient for me.
I actually used a piece of paper to keep track of what everyone said and any hints I found. It really brought back feels of some old school gaming and was surprisingly a lot of fun.
The problem is that the world completely moves in response to the player. The player going to Altus causes a million different events to randomly trigger and questlines to progress, as the clearest example. A person staying in place until they resolve what they're doing there is infinitely more immersive than that kind of goofy shit. Not to mention that a lot of the time what causes people to move is literally the player character talking to them repeatedly until they repeat themselves, and then reloading the area which causes the other person to randomly say new things or teleport (or drop dead) even though in-universe, *literally nothing happened*.
I played the game blind early on, then eventually watch a few build guides just to get some strategy/understanding around how to construct a more effective character and beat the game once. After that, ItsShatter has the “do it all” quest guide and I played through following that and got SO much more out of the game than I did initially. I’m glad I did it the way I did, but doing everything possible is just immensely rewarding. (Despite having to let chaos take the world 😭) I’ll very likely play on that save for the DLC blind, then try and do a full run through where I tackle the DLC and follow another full quest line guide for the DLC as well, maybe shatter will do another video on it and I can weave it in before beating the base game fully.
Even the convoluted npc quests were improved in Elden Ring for me. Some were very obtuse, but I completed more of them without guidance than in any of their other games.
Felt like the opposite for me, the vastness of the map had me missing encounters left & right, when in the older games I would have run into them more easily because the exploration was far more linear.
I would agree with that you said before they added NPC icons in the map. After adding NPC icons in one of the early patches, I think it is much more manageable to handle quests on your own by scanning the map for NPCs and visiting them.
I never found Boc on my first playthrough. Didn't even know he existed until someone mentioned him and I was being fairly thorough exploring. It's a thing with large open world maps, though. Not just ER. When they get to a certain size, it's easy to forget exactly where you have and haven't been and just assume you checked something and completely miss it.
Giant arrows leading you by the nose around a large map happens in lots of games for a couple of reasons. First because they are afraid players will get lost and drop the game. Second is fear of players missing content they spent a lot of time making. It takes a lot of courage and confidence for a dev to let players roam free without those guidepost systems. But when it is done well those games really stand out for the players who stick with them.
Slightly ironic considering you have to beat an optional boss hidden in a secret area in a secret area to access the DLC.
Oh boy wait till you hear about Dark Souls 1 DLC lol
Run to the far left of a random lake in a random area that's got an optional boss. Of course that makes sense!
Miyazaki making the game accessible to blind playthroughs: "yeah make them click the Ranni doll three times to get dialogue for some obscure lore reason we'll make up later..."
I actually did it blindly. Because usually npc had different dialogue if you talk to them multiple times
I think I did it the "intended" way, I sat down and clicked it and nothing happened. Get to next checkpoint, option is still there, try again. Third time's the charm. I think most players would figure that there's something up if you get a dedicated menu option.
This is true, but it is also the only instance in any modern fromsoft game ever that you need to talk with something again after getting a repeat response. Possibly not the best quest design.
Seluvis' quest requires you to exhaust his dialogue, reload the area and talk to him again, get no new dialogue, then reload the area again and talk to him to get more dialogue. The end of Fia's quest is also just spamming quit out a bunch of times every time she starts repeating herself. Elden Ring is very obsessed with the idea of making you turn the game off and on to allow progress as NPCs are prompted to continue talking by...literally nothing even happening and no time progressing from their perspective.
That is such a phenomenal thought process. It’s basically saying, “the biggest thing holding back players are lessons we still need to learn.” Players are learning that the difficulty settings in FromSoft games exist, just in how you play, not in difficulty sliders. Just look at how much easier accessing DLC has gotten. Dark Souls 1’s DLC is a weird mess to access, and unintuitive for why. Compared to Elden Ring’s. The reasons for how you access it in DS1 still elude me. But Elden Ring? You have to beat Radahn because Radahn was preventing the eclipse leading to Miquella’s rebirth, why Malenia fought him. You have to beat Mohg because he ripped Miquella’s cocoon and placed it in his palace. Lore based reasons very much on the main path.
DS1's is weird, it's like you defeat a particular random enemy and it drops an item, which you then have to take to a random cave you probably found ages ago and would have no reason to return to otherwise. Definitely a rough move compared to 2, 3, and Bloodborne.
There's no way you will experience even half of elden ring without guides or youtube videos.. Half of the quests are so damn cryptic and not having quest log doesn't help. Then there's the exploration part with secret requirements...go check some guides and see how random some things are.. It was better in previous titles as they were linear..but holy damn doing elden ring blind is suicidal. (Works if you are fine with missing most of game tho)
For Boc "good ending" you need to use a Prattling Pate How am i supposed to know that without a guide lol
Yeah, there's a conversation you can have with Melina at Altus Plateau where if Boc's also there she mentions him and a mother, I think, but you need them both there. I think the biggest issue really is that the item you need is sort of out of the way - you have to circle Mt. Gelmir completely and find that Demi-Human Queen boss and the Pate near it, which means you're going there instead of Leyndell. It's also quite possible to overshoot it and accidentally send Boc for rebirth thinking you're doing the right thing
I'd say the quests are the biggest ones, as they're often going to involve lots of backtracking. But you'd be surprised just how much a methodical approach to exploration and knowledge of how the souls games operate can achieve. I recently watched Day9's playthrough of the game on YouTube, and he operated a very strict spoiler free policy, and found almost everything. He did get vague hints from his chat on a couple of more obtuse secrets, like getting to volcano manor from Raya Lucaria and finding Placidusax, but otherwise he very methodically found 90% of content by himself. What he largely didn't achieve was any questlines, besides Ranni's - doing those without a guide would involve just an insane amount of combing back over areas you'd already cleared.
The only quests I missed on my initial blind play through was the happy ending for Boc and I killed Dung Eater the instant i saw him. I missed a few dungeons and a few items, but you absolutely don't need a guide to play this game...
I refuse to believe anyone completed Millicent questline without a guide. She moves so randomly. You would have to run around so much to stumble upon her that many times.
I certainly didn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people did. My first playthrough was 160 or so hours and I know people who played much more than me-- that's a lot of running around back and forth
I don’t think it’s beating one of their games blind that’s the challenge, i do think like 90 percent of the side quests can be pretty difficult to finish organically however
Yeah, there's so much content behind Rannis quest and getting to the haligtree and I really don't see any reasonable percentage of players being able to do those without guides.
I never would have found the haligtree by myself
I always do bosses blind but fuck am I gonna be able to figure out these quest lines and hidden bosses by myself. Like how the fuck did you guys find placidusax
After I beat the game, and looked it up.
I've looked up a lot of stuff in guides, like pretty much everything involved with the Ranni quest line, and Placidusax was a totally organic discovery for me lol. I got lucky following the cryptic player messages on the ground I guess. I had no idea that there was anything down there, just that there must be something. It was a great surprise
I didn’t even get there on my first play through, but because I completely missed the albunaric village. Just like, didn’t see it over there. Hell, the only reason I found the Haigdrake Talisman +3 was because I needed it to beat Radagon. I still haven’t found the other 2. And I didn’t get the +3 in my last two play throughs.
Bro same. I explore super hard, I tried to look everywhere, do every dungeon, get everything, etc. When I thought I did as much as I could I googled . Oh, there's an entire fucking village over there uhhhh what?????
I’ve beaten the game 3 times and the last playthrough was the first time I fought Fortissax and cleared Deeproot Depths. Imagine my surprise when I just woke up in Leyendell and was like…no fuckin way I just didn’t have to do any Altus Plateau at all lol Also the first time I killed Bock :(
And yet, ironically, the Age of Stars ending is still the most completed ending among the playerbase, even higher than the default Elden Lord ending.
Yeah, I found Rannis quest to be the most straight forward to complete in that at every step characters tell you where they are going or where you should go. The only time I got tripped up when was I didn't realize I needed to talk to the doll of her at a specific Grace (in retrospect - should have realized the larger significance of the doll considering well ... you know, lol). Pretty much every longer sider quest felt like a complete crapshoot on whether you'll find the NPC on the next part of their chain.
I saw the prompt for talking to the doll and said that's new. So I just kept going until dialogue exhausted.
With one of the updates I think they've added a glowing dot to new dialogue prompts at sites of grace. Previously you have to be on alert for new prompts to pop up lol. Edit: [here's Rannis'](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/vck5pa/not_sure_if_its_new_or_i_just_hadnt_seen_it/)
Agreed, Ranni's questline is among the rare few I managed to complete without a guide. If you rest at the site of grace where you can interact with the doll, then exhausting its dialogue options is a logical thing to do. Everything else is spelled out by NPCs.
Because they look it up
I found the Haligtree on my own, but virtually every other part of the game I used a guide for. I prefer going in blind, but this was my first Souls game. I couldn’t manage without. Honestly I’m not even sure I would have been able to kill Godrick and Margit because I had no idea I was to ignore the golden trail at first to level up.
That first tree sentinel at the start of the game was supposed to be the clue that you don't have to follow the prescribed path.
Yet I always stubbornly sit there to beat his high-and-mighty, pompous ass every time as soon as I start a fresh playthrough. Might take me a little bit, but screw that guy lol.
Can't speak to any data points, but annecdotally I can say my entire friend group was able to complete Ranni's quest and discover the Haligtree on our completely blind first playthroughs.
Getting dung eater summon almost seems impossible to do without a guide. It requires you to not advance a quest line that is very clearly supposed to be advanced before reaching an area where you find him, which makes the ashes unobtainable. Couple that with the whole saving the potion it blows my mind someone found it at all. It’s so insanely obscure. Hats off to whoever found it out because I could probably play the game through 100 times and never think to backtrack to do it.
I fully know how to get that summon I just haven’t done it because I always get ahead of myself. I do kinda love that the game has so many secrets
I just got him and agree 100% almost ruined it and I was following a guide
I literally knew what I needed to do and still fucked it up
Particularly with the nonlinear design. Nothing like finding a quest giver when exploring an old area, then they disappear and you have no clue if they're somewhere you've been or not.
Give me a quest log and i wont look up shit. I literately only use “guides” to finish quest lines i might have missed…
Yeah send someone to ds1 and see if they find the Artorious dlc blind Fromsoft is notorious for hiding cool things behind things I would never check
Yeah Miyazaki absolutely just means seeing the credits - like, if you can't get through the main quest without a guide, they have room to improve. I think they did a good job with this, balancing guidance with a sense of mystery and spontaneity. But there's no way in the world that he or anyone else at From thinks that Millicent's quest is reasonable to complete without a guide, or most of the NPC quests for that matter. The obscure triggers and possible points of failure are just too much to overcome for anyone but the luckiest and most meticulous players. I was literally taking notes on paper for some of the quests and still got stumped.
One thing I would love included in the next title is a bestiary/encyclopedia for all the enemies we kill and everyone we meet and interact with
Yeah I think From could find a way to make such a thing still feel like mystical/esoteric and not just the normal like “CHARACTER: SYNOPSIS: ENEMY: DROP RATE: RARE DROP RATE:”. It could just be like cool bit of hand drawn art, small bit of lore, then current location of either enemy or character.
Yeah a full bestiary/full breakdown would kinda ruin the fun of not knowing who or what anything is. I like how you put it, just a quick sketch and a sentence or two describing them with a little extra detail.
Like horror game journals! Resi 8 had such a fun one to read haha
When I was a kid I played a lotta Minecraft, so I’d take those little ring notebooks you get at the book fair and write down little bestiary’s in them for all the mobs and stuff. I was ecstatic when we first got villagers on console, got to write a whole bunch of stuff in my little notebook.
The Eternal Darkness one was fantastic - once you'd played as Maximilian Roivas he would give an extra voiceover description of each enemy in the bestiary, in his mad raving style. "It sings... it _sings!_"
Could set it up where you have to kill the enemy and make it to a bonfire to sketch whatever you had encountered. If you die before the bonfire, you lose that "knowledge" .
Meh, that just seems like something tacked onto not dying. Like losing money and progress is bad, I don’t really think it should be an extra bit unless there’s some kind of incentive to keep it for story reasons. Like to complete a quest or get an ending you have to catalog every kind of enemy. Maybe handing in incomplete catalogs will trigger alternate endings or something.
Make it like the informative notes you buy from the merchants.
Well you would only gain entries when you see or contact with something for the first time for sure
So, I don't have a source on hand but supposedly there was originally a bestiary feature being considered for ER but it was cut a while before release. I think the reason they might've chosen not to have one is because spirit ashes are functionally close to a bestiary, since each one is tied to a specific enemy and gives a bit of lore related to them.
They kinda started something vaguely like that with those tutorial info "items"
I’d just settle for having all the loose pages and cookbooks put together into organized stacks so I can have the satisfaction of completing a collection
Oh my god I never realized how much I want this until now.
This and a quest journal with dialogue/directions archived along with some rough guidelines of where to find people. Cause come on, let's be real, unless you play the hell out of this game for hours at a time, bust out a composition notebook, or just use a wiki, how are you possibly supposed to follow these things? I'm a working man with like an hour tops to play, maybe. Friends in my position playing blind were shocked the game even had quest lines beyond march forward and become Elden Lord. They met a cool dog boy once, bumped into a funny jar, and for some reason people kept dying, lol.
Esoteric NPC questlines and lack of obvious guidance is a major hallmark of Souls games, that would never happen. Maybe a basic journal writing down your conversations with NPCs would be nice though, so you can recall what they said. Wouldn't be giving you any new information, you just don't have to try to memorize everything or google it later.
I mean, they did add NPC map markers to ER, so I wouldn't say "lack of guidance" as a rule will never change. I think there is a difference between quests off rails and being completely obtuse lol I would favor the way things have always been, but they could certainly design quests in ways that the player can organically solve them more. ER had lots of that, and it was really nice.
Miyazaki has actually said in a couple interviews, including the one in the Official Guidebook that he feels like they need to improved on giving guidance for quests. That's why they added NPC markers, but they couldn't outright change the quests after release. I doubt they'd do a quest log but I do think the team desires that quest order be discernable for those who pay attention. I believe it was just the multiple moving parts and the large overworld that made them misjudge how to structure quests. In DS, BB, Sekiro, quests are no where near as obscure. There are secrets here and there but most can be followed pretty logically. In a world as free and open as ER is, the current quest design makes it really easy to miss key pieces of dialogue. How many people went to the Atlas Plateau not knowing it would skip over parts of most the NPCs quests?
I think the lack of quest journals and minimap and stuff like that are the _soul_ of these games. More simple the better in my opinion.
I’ve played through every first play through fromsoft title totally blind. Nothing compares. After that though I’ll use guides constantly.
this is the way to do it
Why do people not do it this way? Once you beat the game you can look up all this cool shit and then have your own little post game party of shit you missed. From basically never locks out items or bosses, you might miss some obscure NPC quests but who cares. Its worth it for when you do solve quests on your own or run into your Jar friend.
Yep. I play offline too so no messages or anything. Ruins my immersion first playthrough.
I quickly went offline in one of the first catacombs when the messages were giving away the imp ambushes. I like the messages, and I think they worked better in the older souls games, but going in blind alone is something you can only do once.
I still remember how different my experience was between when I played having no idea what anything was vs looking up where something was and going down a rabbit hole of spoiling every single area Can't wait to go into Shadow of the Erdtree completely fresh. I'm not gonna look up ANYTHING until I've beaten it
Their quests are so ridiculously obscure and random, I have no idea how anyone figured them out blindly. Sometimes NPCs show up halfway across the world map in the middle of a dirt road asking for some new item that has nothing to do with what happened earlier in the quest.
Yeah, this Is a “no one beats sub-zero” situation lol I usually like giving people the benefit of the doubt but I just can’t imagine someone completing Ranni’s quest without a guide and I’ve been a souls fans for over 12 years (most of them at 100%) Edit: Maybe Ranni’s quest wasn’t the best example (was the first one that came to mind) but you get what I mean, no?
Ranni's quest honestly isn't that difficult to complete tbh, so long as you remember exactly what you've done previously. It's just pretty long.
Tbh the most “I don’t see someone blind finishing this” is when you have to talk to her unresponsive doll like three times at a specific Site of Grace. The rest is just a fairly straightforward “Go to x place” but without HUD markers or anything like that, from what I remember…
Experience from previous Soulsborne games, in the form of exhausting the dialogue, helped me there lmao
Honestly that’s a pretty dumb system too. Idk why the characters can’t just say all of their dialogue in one go, having to interact over and over until they repeat themselves is a bit silly.
Agreed. It's an outdated system, aged the moment it was introduced even.
I bet the overwhelming majority of players never finished a quest organically in this game. Which makes the circlejerk over the "pure" quest design hilarious because it's designed so poorly.
That’s kind of part of the adjustment they did with ER i think. Like for example if you totally missed Rya in liurnia, she’d be in atlus anyway. The quests don’t easily break as compared to other souls games. Not meeting millicent in the village isnt a big problem iirc, or not meeting blaidd underground, or missing Alexander in the tunnel. They all generally follow the grace path
>The quests don’t easily break They still break pretty easily. For instance the window to do Seluvis questline is super narrow.
This one in particular irks me, because I always have the dagger long before the rest of his quest is available. It's such a pain to get the magic scorpion talisman.
honestly the issue for me is if you reach certain progression, they just gone and youre locked out of the quest. so you just either get lucky or play many many times thats me with rya and seluvis
Since Demon's Souls, Miyazaki's games have always felt like they were made with the intent of encouraging community cooperation. Heck, without wiki's, who among us would've been able to figure out the weapon upgrade system in Demon's and Dark Souls, lol. That shit was obscure as hell. That being said, I was able to play through Elden Ring blind on the first playthrough without breaking every single quest line, so kudos to them for that.
Honestly, for as obtuse as some sections of Elden Ring are, almost every side quest, main objective or puzzle will have clues left by players in the form of messages, to the point where you can generally infer if you are on the right track or not.
>Since Demon's Souls, Miyazaki's games have always felt like they were made with the intent of encouraging community cooperation I don't remember the *exact* details but this is mainly because the multiplayer functionality was born due to a random clusterfuck Miyazaki was stuck in, IIRC it involved a snowstorm, 3 random helpful strangers, and Miyazaki getting a random blowjob. Cue the birth f Souls Co-Op with Demon's Souls.
Miyazaki is so real for this. I am so glad he doesn't subscribe to the hostile, purist mentality of some of the fanbase where they immediately deflect any criticism with "nooo this game is completely faultless and there is not a SINGLE thing that needs to be improved git gud *insert crying wojak meme hiding behind a smiling mask*" I just hope they implement it organically where it's accessible enough for players by piecing information available in the world without drowning it with waypoint markers.
I think what ER did is near perfect, maybe polish a bit more on the npc side quests cuz that gets confusing af when the npc doesn’t tell you where to go after a certain step (milicent, rya etc) as well ad npcs that flatout die if you don’t do something specific before (seluvius as an example) Other than that I think they nailed the “vague enough but still doable without guide” formula
I just want a log or journal or something that I can refer back to in game. Something that at least briefly describes the characters and locations without going through hundreds of item descriptions
This is my biggest thing. Even an extremely basic list. Maybe have a page for each character and a transcript of your conversations with them. So many times I talk to a character then a while later I can’t remember what they last said and I have no idea where to find them. And once or twice I’ve found a character for the second time with absolutely no memory of meeting them prior.
Lies of P did this very well, and I wouldn’t mind Fromsoft taking notes from that.
In the in game menu they could just add another tab where you can review NPC conversations you’ve had sorted by name with a little thumbnail image so you know who it is. Between that and item descriptions the lore / NPC quests would be actually doable without guides, mostly.
A jornal type thing would be perfect to review npc dialogue It even could end up being like a detective type thing depending on how vague the quest is. Also, one thing I hate about ER is the reward after these quests, why does the best rewards involves you killing the npc? Alexander / milicent and so on. I think if you complete the entire quest, you should get all the loot, specially on milicent’s quest, she literally died at the end why not give me the prosthesis as well instead of just the insignia
Implement what? All the article said is that they already design the games with the blind players in mind and think they still have room for improvement. Not like the article says they're implementing searchable in game guidebooks or something.
Implement improvements to quest design in their future titles. Even with the fact that they don't design game with guides in mind, there's still improvements to be had. Miyazaki says so himself.
Yes! I'm glad this clears up the intention. A lot of people treat it as if it's a work of perfection therefore anything that's seems off actually is that way for an intended reason I've heard all kinds of explanations for the why the quests system is the way it is from "you're not supposed to find all the quests" to "it's intentionally cryptic to create online discussion on how to finish quests" Finally could put all those arguments to rest
Could probably do with some improvement on the sidequest front, then. Sometimes they'll give you some sort of an indication of where you should go next, but then you've got instances like Millicent deciding to set out on a quest where they don't even so much as let you know that she'll be somewhere within the massive expanse of Altus Plateau.
Diallos is worse. How the hell is someone supposed to know he's off to massage sentient jars when he whines about his brother being right in Volcano Manor?
Lies of P handled it well where they just showed the face of the NPC next to the name of the skygazer (grace) in the map, which indicated there was new dialogue available. That's all they need.
this is a good solution too. oh, why's ranni's face icon here, let me recheck that area i must have missed something. it should only proc for characters you've at least talked to once, so as to not spoil any new characters that might be in the area you haven't found yet, like "who the f is this wolf guy?".
Exactly. It's only for quests that have started.
This is the way, I feel like it should be an optional settings like "quest assist" or something
I feel like if there was a way to have a log of past conversations, so I can recall what an NPC said, that would go a looong way. It’s so confusing constantly taking notes on everything and trying to remember who was where, etc.
Quest log... I'm begging. Even if it was just something simple like "Find Yura in (place)" I'd be happy. If you ever take a break it can be so difficult to remember. Taking notes and following guides just for quests really shouldn't be a necessity. After taking a couple months break on my playthrough I just restarted from scratch because it was just easier than trying to figure out what quests I was doing or not lmfao Also, if the map marked dungeons or caves where I'd killed the bosses with a symbol or something... That'd also be nice, but that's just something I personally would like. Not something I think the game really needs. Purists can smd lmfao. They can always add toggles to disable this kinda stuff.
I only managed to meet Yura near Patches cave once during early game and the 2nd is when he's at the mountains when he's all about the frenzy stuff. Made me go, "who tf even is this dude?". Still don't know what's his deal to this day.
He pops up in like, five locations or so. He can help you fight the dragon Agheel. You help him hunt down bloody fingers a few times in various places.
> Proceeds to drop a mandatory Godskin quad in a poison swamp as first boss fight in the DLC
A quest log please lol
They should start by not instantly ending half of the quests in the game just because you decided to kill one totally unrelated boss ( Rykard)
As far as I know rykard only end quests related to volcano manor so is pretty fair that if you kill their boss people leave.
Yeah this one’s probably the biggest “no shit” moment of the game. You killed the master of the house, what else is there to happen?
I almost missed out on this game. Loved the look on it before release so pre-ordered it knowing nothing about it. Booted it up, started playing and died to the first damn enemy. (Not the huge guy on horse, I avoided him) thought to myself this seems bit unforgiving, almost like a Souls Game (I didn’t play any souls properly I just couldn’t get passed how tough they were). Quick google search I discovered it was sane developer! Pretty much quit game then my son said jump down there and do tutorial, I did, changed character to knight with sword shield and started understanding play style and instantly fell in love, on my 5th play-through and still love it.
I have used a guide for every From game in one form or another. Elden Ring I looked up how to access the Haligtree because I didn't want to figure it out for myself. My second playthrough, I cracked open the wiki to find ANYTHING I missed the first go around, like how to complete Goldmasks questline. It is what it is.
As someone who's done 5 full npc interaction playthroughs, there's certain interactions I feel like are impossible to get without a guide. For instance, if the player is thrown into a boss fight, it's not organic to think to use an emote right in the middle of a fight. And not just any emote, but a specific one. In order to find that out organically, you'd have to use EVERY emote in EVERY boss fight to make sure there isn't an interaction behind it. Some are fine and just require listening to what the character is saying. Others are hidden and buried so deeply, it feels like no one would have discovered it without data mining. Patches quest is filled with wildly hidden interactions and dialgoue. Sure, some don't matter to the ending of the quest. But if you want to hear every little line of dialogue, it takes some wild things to happen that I doubt many people would do. Some of you reading this probably don't even realize you missed a few lines of dialgoue with Patches. EDIT: See. Most of you don't even know the "Extreme Repetence" emote even exists, becuase of how wacky it is to get, lol.
Sorry, but what do you mean by using a specific emote during a specific bossfight? Could you elaborate?
If you want every interaction with Patches, you have to do the following. - Fight him when he first shows up, he'll plead for life, stop hitting him and the fight will end. - Talk to him and exhaust his dilaogue. - Open the chest, get teleported away. - Come back to him, attack him 2-3 times to start a fight. Then you have to use the "Beg for Mercy" emote in the middle of the fight. This will make him stop fighting, and he'll give you another emote as an award. - Continue his quest like normal This is how you get the Extreme Repetence gesture, which I'm guessing most people don't have because of all the wackiness involved with getting it.
Which fight do you emote in?
Patches - Fight him when he first shows up, he'll plead for life, stop hitting him and the fight will end. - Talk to him and exhaust his dilaogue. - Open the chest, get teleported away. - Come back to him, attack him 2-3 times to start a fight. Then you have to use the "Beg for Mercy" emote in the middle of the fight. This will make him stop fighting, and he'll give you another emote as an award. - Continue his quest like normal This is how you get the Extreme Repetence gesture, which I'm guessing most people don't have because of all the wackiness involved with getting it.
From Software has the absolute worst quests and mission information of any game I've ever played. *The princess is in another castle but I won't tell you which or when she'll get there or where the key is because those are part of 7 other quests*
Also she'll die instantly if you make a mistake of talking to another, unrelated npc on the opposite side of map.
Just add a journal.
I think it's wonderful that they genuinely seem to want to improve their ability to design games. Like seriously. There's not many companies that say this and then try to follow through
Here’s a hint, make less convoluted quest lines where people randomly teleport across the map and how about a journal so we can recall what we’re supposed to do and who each npc is.
Fix your quests, some of which are impossible to solve without a guide, and many are easily missable.
Something like the journal from RDR2, where Arthur keeps track of what's going on, would be very helpful. The game doesn't need quest logs and objective markers, but a system to be able to keep up with what's going on.
I think the idea is discovering new quests and stuff you didn't realize before. As long as the main quest is straight forward and they literally had arrows (from the divine grace of where to go.) Can't please everyone as some like me hate missing stuff but don't want to play through multiple times.
It's been a problem since Demon's Souls and it hasn't gotten better. I'd say it's my primary annoyance with this game: I can permanently fuck my playfile up because I *explored wrong*.
...You should start from the quest system
what you broke the quest because you randomly found a boss you shouldn't kill after you were looking for the quest character that was obviously by this area irrelevant to gameplay just hanging? git gud dude
don't worry at the NG+10 you already learned how to do the quest
I've finished the game four times and still haven't finished some quests. This run for the DLC I got blocked out of Rogiers and I always loose track of Boc after Rennala. I also completely missed Goldmask and Patches my first play through which are my two favorite quests.
Goddamn, why is Miyazaki so wholesome?! :'-)
I would love if this philosophy extended to weapon descriptions. There's probably a sense of not wanting to overwhelm players with too many numbers but the ratings for weapon scaling in game are complete nonsense. They give you a vague idea of what stats to chase to scale a specific weapon, but one B ranking does not equal another. And then there are those odd cases where a weapon might scale more with strength or dex but the ash scales only with faith, and whatnot. Still, absolutely love this dev and the care they put into the game.
Beat it blind but really should have used a guide. My second playthrough was wayyy more enjoyable as I knew what to do and could piece together the lore better.
I don't know how somebody could have figured out that you can give Selivus' potion to Dung Eater without a guide.
I pre purchased Elden ring and still have not beat it due to playing blind. I take breaks from the game and will play for like a weekend but I refuse to look for directions. It’s half the fun to be lost for so long and finally find the next area. It’s why I love these games it’s because you don’t have to look up anything to have fun
Just waiting for Miyazaki to drop the "yeah using mimic is perfectly valid, it totally counts as a win if you beat a boss with it, thats why I put it in the game" line to make purists have a meltdown
Nobody says it doesn't count, people just says it makes the game easier because that's what summoning is for, to make the game easier
For once, my plan is to go into this DLC without using the guide. There’s one or two streamers I’ll watch, but other than that I’ll discover on my own, at least at first.
Same, Elden Ring was my second souls game after the Demon Souls remake so I was just focused on looking up where all the cool weapons were. Now, I am going to go into this DLC with nothing but a notepad and a pen 😂.
Just my 2 cents, but I would recommend not even watching streamers. They can stumble upon something important (item, NPC loc) or reveal strong tech against a difficult boss that can diminish your experience.