Linear or Open World?

[Dollmaker]

So been nearly half a year since ER released, whats your thoughts on it being an Open World game?

Would you prefer they make more Souls games like that, or go back to the more linear approach from previous games?

Personally i would prefer they go back to the Linear design, i found a lot of the Open World stuff repetitive, mainly the dungeons, and i think previous games were more fun to do multiple runs.

[John Titor]

Why not both?

[Dam Stark]

Go back, no question. This proved FROM can't fill a world this big with meaningful content. The meat and potatoes of the game, the levels and bosses, were a mixed bag which could have used more polish. It's spread to thin, go back to a solid linear design with meaningful content and greater boss variety.

[Senki]

Definitely linear. Open world doesn't add anything worthwhile to the genre, if anything it makes it worse with the copy paste enemies and time wasting sessions of traveling.

[Toad]

Linear, with a stronger focus on remixing NG+ similar to Dark Souls 2. I much prefer shorter but more replayable games, than longer single playthrough ones. Elden Ring is their most successful title to date though, and they've shown no interest in bringing back the feel of the older games, mechanics wise.

[Majrick]

Originally posted by John Titor:

Why not both?

Yes....Souls for achievement satisfaction,ER for entertainment break from the main game.

[Dollmaker]

Originally posted by Senki:

Definitely linear. Open world doesn't add anything worthwhile to the genre, if anything it makes it worse with the copy paste enemies and time wasting sessions of traveling.

Well Open World can work if done correctly, a good example in my opinion was Ghost of Tsushima, you really had a lot of stuff to do in that game, with several quests to do, you had the main quest which was the story, the secondary quests which were centered around main characters and lasted the entire game, and the mini quests which still had some interesting world building stuff.

ER was a bigger game but didnt had nearly as much to in the quest department.

[Anthreris]

Smaller open world. The smaller the world, the better the experience due to increased polish. An open world this size needs more "meaningful content" as Dam Stark mentioned.

Generally open worlds have more quests which create unique encounters, Elden Ring doesn't have this. If Fromsoft makes another open world game and doesn't make the world more interesting through more interactive questlines than they need to hold their cards close and do what they are good at.
A game like Skyrim (which has mediocre quests, I will admit) has a large quantity of quests that pertain to minor dungeons, something which Elden Ring's catacombs could have benefited from. In turn reducing the copy and paste.

Also I think it was a mistake to give us the Roundtable Hold so quickly. What if we had to collect our npc's into a single camp, until we had access to a village found in the world not loosely connected. Like Majula from Dark Souls 2, have the npc's we collect improve the village giving us an interconnected hub. Furthermore there could be a point in the story where we have to defend it or retake it kind of like Kenneth's Fort.

Massive open world only works if its an expansive open world with plenty of diversity in the content. If you can't offer this then refine the game by making it smaller with more unique content, if you halved each zone found in Elden Ring I think From wold start hitting close to the sweet spot.

Now here's a question for you. Should Elden Ring's dlc be an additional open world map and zones, or a couple linear dungeons?

[Spoob]

I really never want to see one of these games with an open world again, it's bloat for the sake of bloat and the souls formula just doesn't work in it. If they just scrapped the open world, connected the main areas with bigger and better legacy dungeons, and put more effort into making the bosses challenging but fair instead of just being incredibly obnoxious, it would've been a much better game. Ideally I'd just like a return to something like 2 where it was semi-linear in that you had a bunch of different ways you could go and you were rewarded no matter where you went first, but it also wasn't so open that it felt completely directionless.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

DS2 style for sure. We could see how uncreative DS3 landscapes felt.

BB was fantastic but...it had a lot of things going for it.

[Dam Stark]

Originally posted by Goatmeister:

I really never want to see one of these games with an open world again, it's bloat for the sake of bloat and the souls formula just doesn't work in it. If they just scrapped the open world, connected the main areas with bigger and better legacy dungeons, and put more effort into making the bosses challenging but fair instead of just being incredibly obnoxious, it would've been a much better game. Ideally I'd just like a return to something like 2 where it was semi-linear in that you had a bunch of different ways you could go and you were rewarded no matter where you went first, but it also wasn't so open that it felt completely directionless.

This

[BoxerDanc]

Maybe smaller open world, with stricter progression and region unlocking? That way you could have a tighter grip on difficulty control, because now you can just trivialize multiple areas and bosses. Certainly multiple fillers (copy-paste or double up bosses for example) also don't add to anything other than making some people bored and unwilling to continue. Quality not quantity just screams from every corner of the game. Not to mention players scattered all over humongous map but only being able to search for invasions in small areas.

[Orion Invictus]

Linear, unless they're willing to adapt their design and actually put in the work.

[hippo]

I like the open world with it's loose progression. Digesting lower level content like a whale feels good to an extent. I may just be a normie who will probably only have one playthrough though.

[JoeyJoeJoe]

Originally posted by Dollmaker:

So been nearly half a year since ER released, whats your thoughts on it being an Open World game?

Would you prefer they make more Souls games like that, or go back to the more linear approach from previous games?

Personally i would prefer they go back to the Linear design, i found a lot of the Open World stuff repetitive, mainly the dungeons, and i think previous games were more fun to do multiple runs.

I would like real coop, just like seamless coop

[SleepyEyez]

Smaller open world.

Due to this huge time-consuming open world, people don't replay the PvE content (NG+ or NG with a different character), which means fewer hosts for invasion. Instead, those who still stay in this game keep repeating the endgame content as invaders. This results in the unbalance of teams distribution that we are seeing now.