Opinion: Any boss that can one shot you is bad game design

[Krythic]

Edit: It seems I should offer a definition of "one shotting" here, because this appears to be a matter of contention. I define one-shotting as any attack that can outright kill a player with an average stat spread. Or in other words, 40 vigor as a baseline.

First off, this isn't me raging because I can't "git gud". Look at my achievements, I've tackled a good portion of bosses in the game. I'm near the end. I played Ds3 and beat it twice. I know how souls games work. I understand that you have to dance with your enemies and punish them.

So with this out of the way, I just wanted to say that any boss being able to one shot you is bad game design. There's really no intelligent way to argue against this, either. If you try, I'll laugh at you. It's not fun, it's not engaging. It's not even difficult, it's just overtly unfair. And I think that's the main problem with Souls games as a whole. There are too many bosses that can kill you instantly. I'm lvl 94 right now, wearing armor that negates 40% of physical damage, and I think around 20% in collective elemental resistances (I haven't looked that well tbh, but it's not a negligible amount.

I have 40 Vigor. Enemies can still one shot me. I might as well be running around naked because it doesn't matter what you have equipped in this game. Armor seems more like a "feel good" mechanic. Does it protect you? Allegedly. But because enemies deal a set amount of damage instead of set + percentile of max health, and that set number can clearly be within the thousands, 40% reduction, etc, doesn't matter. Bosses are designed to kill you instantly by doing such absurd levels of damage. The game is simply imbalanced in this regard.

I'm not asking for the game to be easier. I'm merely attempting to articulate that allowing bosses to one shot you is not good game design. What's worse is enemies that have no cooldown between attacks, and can just pulverize you six to seven times in less than a second. You miss a single dodge, or anything gets in the way, you're dead. Lmao, have fun taking five minutes to run back just to do it all over again.

And I know what a lot of you guys are going to ask: "How can you fix it?". Well, it's quite simple. Don't allow one-shot kill attacks. The damage for those attacks should be deferred to a percentile of max health. Massive attacks from huge bosses can deal 75% damage of max health + a modifier of straight damage. Reserve truly one shot damage attacks to massive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses, like giants, but make these attacks telegraphed and avoidable. Any attack combo that a boss does should not be allowed to outright kill you, unless you get hit with each and every component of the combo. If you get hit with every attack, that's you messing up, and you should be punished for it. A player dodging 5 out of 6 attacks shouldn't be instantly killed for failing to dodge the 6th one. They should be punished for it, sure. But not killed.

There we go. That's my rant.

[ɸ It That Dwells ɸ]

Elden Ring does not scale the same way that Dark Souls does. You are expected to have a lot more vigor this time around. 40 softcap is a trap. Go higher.

[Lenox]

引用自 Smithing Master Hewg：

引用自 Lenox：

Looks like the quote kind of got screwed up, so not sure if this was for me or him. But I like those incantations. They only require 10 Faith, which is all I have. Phew.

don't worry about it dude.

and yes, minimal amounts of faith will allow you to use certain incantations to a high degree of usefulness. the damage negation ones in particular are very good.

another cheap incantation is the "blood wrath" (or whatever its called) incantation which puts extra bleed on your weapon. so if you have a reduvia or a houndknight saber you can get some huge damage procs relatively easily.

i mean my character still only has about 13 points in faith, and the few incantations i can use based off of that are insanely helpful.

Interesting. I'll have to keep scanning vendors for those. I've pretty much ignored anything over 12, as that much Faith seems to be the next bunch of incantations.

[Infamous Geezer]

OP should play Titan Souls. You'll love it!

[suprpiwi]

oh it's just more casuals ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. got it lol

[BabyVox]

what do you expect when people are reaching absolutely astronomical levels...

[Exogenous]

Depends on the monster and the attack. But ya some giant ass monster putting all his strength in an attack he is telegraphing for days and you fail to dodge it you should just be chopped in half mate there is no way you should survive some of the attacks in the game XD

[NewYears1978]

I'm fighting Roundtable Knight Vyke and he just had two seperate moves that both were one shots. I have 30 vitality.

[Tariff Mike Hawk]

learn the move and how to dodge it

[Trezoitao38]

It is funny this thing in Elden Ring because I did a soul level 1 in DS3 months before the launch of ER. And, in DS3, with the right combination or rings and equipment, you can survive to almost everything using embers soul level 1. Only a few attacks, from Midir, that I remember, will kill you one shot.

In Elden Ring this is not possible anymore. A soul level 1 run here is the same as a not hit run. It is not a min max anymore.

[Trezoitao38]

引用自 Fen'Haral：

引用自 Krythic：

So refute it. This should be easy to do. Go respec right now with nothing but Vigor and jump into a maiden's belly and see what happens.

I'm still on my first playthrough and again, not going to waste my time proving something that anyone with actual game knowledge knows isn't real. but heres a video of an enemy that you're also going to complain can one shot you even though you're just not good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUO1ZxvzIWg

What you are talking about? 22:56 I see a one shot.

[Lenox]

引用自 Trezoitao38：

引用自 Fen'Haral：

I'm still on my first playthrough and again, not going to waste my time proving something that anyone with actual game knowledge knows isn't real. but heres a video of an enemy that you're also going to complain can one shot you even though you're just not good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUO1ZxvzIWg

What you are talking about? 22:56 I see a one shot.

They were not at 100% health. And having more health would have probably survived that.

引用自 NewYears1978：

I'm fighting Roundtable Knight Vyke and he just had two seperate moves that both were one shots. I have 30 vitality.

What armor? And 30 seems low.

[Netsa]

引用自 Smithing Master Hewg：

引用自 Netsa：

And when did you fight Radahn?
Again, my Endurance is not high, it can't be "fixed" that easily.

then i suppose its time for a respec. hope you got larvas.

Or, option C: Keep leveling until Radahn doesn't matter. Basically how everything in this game goes anyway.

[Trezoitao38]

引用自 Boatzndhoez：

Reading people like this ''Fen'Haral'' guy shows why Miyazaki went with this poorly put together action game format. You can point out that bosses have absurd damage isn't good design combined with the steroids and speed they've gotten. It won't matter. People like him rather nitpick and say git gud and the like, instead of even acknowledging that the damage is way too high.

At first I liked the idea of joining NG+ after doing everything at a slow pace. But being killed in either 1 or 2 blows by bosses makes the game tedious and unfun. Hell I have less problems with the bosses than getting ganged up by a few input reading non stop attacking dogs.

I can survive that, but the spastic nature of every enemy you have to fight, with very high damage that either YOU do or the enemy does isn't fun. It isn't fun because you're not engaged in a fight. You're too busy trying to dodge 4-5 hit spastic combos so you can do your own 4-5 spastic combo or whatever.

I think the only way we could have a more ''balanced'' game is to have a lv150 build at the start of the game and go through the game that way. You can still get destroyed, but atleast you get 3 shot instead of 1-2 shot. It sucks to have to consider doing this to actually enjoy the game.

I can see how people new to souls game love the experience too much to want to complain about it. But people who have played this from demon souls onwards can clearly tell they've gone truly overboard. They just either are fine with it, or don't care. As long as people like Fen'Haral get to be smug and anal on the internet. Or people who just love the masochistic part of it, or take too much pride in beating a ''hard'' video game are around...

Well the numbers speak for themselves, people who want the game to be more balanced and receive less nails through their balls are clearly the minority, or far less outspoken in fear of getting to deal with morons.

I don't believe in Miyazaki anymore. Not because he sucks or anything like that. But the fact that he just won't learn from past mistakes and repeats them or makes them worse every game. While there are improvements, there should have been far more improvements after such a long time. Simply too many people forgive him because ''he make da good gam git gud finger my but hole miyazaki''

Minority actually really beat this game. I recently did and the achievement from final is onlu 0,7%. Last but one boss 1,6% only. Most people didnt finished this game, they didnt know how difficult is the last areas and bosses.

Fire Giant kill me too many times one shot with that rolling.

[Trezoitao38]

引用自 Casval Zem Daikun：

引用自 Heinrich von Pinkenstråle：

the idea are use shield or roll away... thats simple....

That's still ♥♥♥♥ design.
Again, by this logic, everything could be a one-shot and it'd still be fine by virtue of "just dodge".

Your HP bar is your mistake allowance. When you're not allowed to make mistakes, it defeats the point of even having it.

Exactly. R-Type for example dont have a HP bar.

[Trezoitao38]

引用自 Draconic Creature：

引用自 Red Phantom：

You don't have to make a single mistake to be "one shot" by that attack though, you have to make multiple. It's really a three attack combo and you can eat one or even two of them without dying. If you block it with a shield it's basically a non-issue. Granted, if you're rolling the margin for error is extremely small, and again, it is by far one of the least fun and cheapest boss moves in any Souls game. But it's not the "guaranteed insta-gib" that people in this thread are making it out to be.

I'm assuming you mean block it with something like an enhanced greatshield, because there is absolutely no way at all you can block the entire attack with a light or medium shield, even with barricade applied.

In other words, if that's the only way to not get absolutely obliterated by the attack, the attack is hideously unbalanced as it basically means that anyone who doesn't use a greatshield is at a very high chance of dying, lest they get RIDICULOUSLY lucky with their rolls and manage to get behind them, or just somehow managed to avoid enough as to survive, albeit missing most of their health.

You have less stamina now. 155 if you invest 50 points in endurance. In DS1, for example, you reach 160 stamina investing only 40 points.

Using a shield, even greatshield, is not reliable. Because some enemies will damage your posture even if the shield and the stamina absorbs the attack. Yes, this happens for a few attacks.