Unpopular opinion: Future souls titles should stay clear of open world

[Skipper]

IMO Elden Ring's open world aspect is a very large paradox that kinda has more disadvantages than advantages. The fact you can technically explore the entire map, gather OP loot, overgear and overlevel yourself, then waltz into a MAIN BOSS area and essentially 5 shotting most of them, defeats one of the key aspects and factors that make a Souls game so much fun: becoming better and stronger, but not to the extent of becoming a one man army with 500 different OP weapon & spell combos that can break the game from start to finish (bleed builds for example). Don't get me wrong: I LIKE the open world and it was inevitable, that Souls games would eventually move over to a larger and open world area, but Elden Ring should serve as an experiment that proves that open world can't work with the Souls formula.

FYI: I played all Souls titles and Elden Ring is not only the easiest out of all of them, but also a generally easy game by itself, as a stand-alone. And no, this has nothing to do with being a veteran or whatever, I am not a pro player by any means and I am not going for the most broken OP weapons and combos possible to maximize damage to break the game, but rather playing however I currently feel like.

Since I expect this argument to pop up eventually, let me clear this up right now: No, simply crippling yourself to make the game harder artificially (picking the worst armor, playing only with your fists, not using summons etc.) is NOT the solution and is not a valid argument. The fact that the bosses don't get adapted stats whenever a summon is used just proves that summons themselves are a well known and acceptable method of beating them. If FromSoftware actually bothered to properely balance boss battles not to become a walk in the park, they would've worked more with adaptive stats and modifications (having a boss summon an additional enemy, having the boss focus the player, not the summon etc.).

[Montjoie Saint Denis ⚜]

The matter is good gamedesign is not needed to make money.

[GuRu Asaki]

Honestly, Souls Games can work Open World, but no one is gonna have the Guts to do it justice, nor have the guts to try to do it at all anymore, due to a Gaming Industry failure on the market today...

So chances are unless they just wanna keep milking bad Games that no one wants to buy? I think it's safe to say Souls Games will go back to being non-open world again...

If they even stick around at all, that is, oO

[MingQWERTY]

Messaggio originale di gh0stwizard:

Messaggio originale di Freak4Leeks:

you wanna be OP

You don't get the idea of topic starter. In ER an OP weapon makes you the OP. And this is not like it was in DS 1/2 where you become OP with literally any weapon through long and extensive training.

I'm sorry but there are so many ways to get OP early on and they take like less than 20 minutes or something. Black Knight weapons and great soul arrow for example. The "long and extensive training" you're referring to is the leveling required for those things and it's the same for some OP weapons and spells in ER.

[Seijana]

I have to say that Elden Ring's fun factor began its steep decline for me when it started moving away from the open world aspect.

[Jester]

Considering this is their first attempt at an Open world and has been the very best exploration the series has to offer. I say yes more open world, More improvement. People expecting the series to not improve is just plain silly at this point.

[Tiasmoon]

Messaggio originale di Ghost:

FYI: I played all Souls titles and Elden Ring is not only the easiest out of all of them, but also a generally easy game by itself, as a stand-alone. And no, this has nothing to do with being a veteran or whatever

It has everything to do with that. Calling Elden Ring a ''generally easy game by itself'' isnt true to reality for the vast majority of players.

You clearly have no idea what your own skill or experience level is in comparison to that of others.

[LordShoe]

question, if the opinion is unpopular, and the objective of making and selling games is to appeal to a wide range so that the sales numbers are high, why would they bow down to unpopular opinions?

[MingQWERTY]

Messaggio originale di gh0stwizard:

Messaggio originale di MarkQWERTY:

I'm sorry but there are so many ways to get OP early on and they take like less than 20 minutes or something. Black Knight weapons and great soul arrow for example. The "long and extensive training" you're referring to is the leveling required for those things and it's the same for some OP stuff in ER.

Black knight weapons are good for PvE, but in PvP vs skillful player they are useless if you have no skills at all. In ER all you need is zero skill and any OP weapon.

Ah apologies. I didn't really take PvP into consideration. But yes, I agree with you. You can get things such as the Bloodhound step extremely early on and just dominate other players

[Big Moustache]

Open world without a world. just Monsters and old ruins. Got 2 stones piled on top of eachother? That's a normal church. A couple broken pillars is a palace ruins. But the mausoleums breakdancing and jumping high, with a huge building on top of them? That building is invulnerable for any damage, not a single crack in the stoneworks. Inside every box and chandelier is in good condition and nothing lies on the floor from all the breakdancing. Every souls game i ask myself: wtf am i saving? Best burn the miserable rest of the world and good riddance.

I remember old games like Legacy of Kain series, the world in the same state as a souls game. But it still had a human stronghold to discover, the world still had something to fight for in all the bleak misery. What are we fighting for now? Who would benefit from a new elden lord?

[YosemiteBear]

no ty

[OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle]

Whether or not you should be able to target stuff that's really strong right off the bat I think is a judgment call. Now, if they weren't trying to develop in favor of that - then yeah, they shouldn't have done it this way. But otherwise they are apparently making that choice for a reason, maybe 'player freedom,' and that's generally okay with me.

What annoys me more I think are the many glaring misses on item balancing and the sheer amount of trash loot. Some items that are way too strong will probably stay that way, and others that you want to like but suck will stay like that as well. And that is basically caused by simply having too many items to juggle. Amplified by the fact that now you have to balance AoWs in many combinations, too. It's never going to be 'tight,' and that's problematic.

This is especially glaring with summon ashes - why are there still useless crap-tier summons in late game areas? Because they gave themselves too many areas to fill and ran out of ideas to put there. Don't get me started on the handful of catacombs that reward you with nothing besides the 6th iteration of oh-this-boss-again and an ash that 95% of players will immediately know is too bad to use.

If they want to stay open world, fine. I also think it's generally a mistake, as it loosens the experience and works against their original concept. But fine, that's their call.

However, if they do it again they need to be more purposeful when designing that open world. I genuinely believe that this would have been a much stronger title if they had edited out 1/3 of it. There's too much repetition, too many stretches of several hundred empty meters full of only wandering trash mobs, too many totally superfluous areas that are only 'neat' for 5 seconds.

[WillD]

Messaggio originale di Koros Antavo:

I think the open world is a way to provide the player more options in progressing, as well as summons / ashes. It is dificult to balance the player / enemy damage outputs this way.

Being under-leveled is fine, as there are plenty of ways to have fun and raise your level. Being over-leveled has no current solution. One of the proposed ways to solve this is to tie cosmic events to the enemy scaling. For instance, when you defeat Radahn, the stars resume their movement. Make enemies that have connection to the stars, like Raya Lucarian mages, more powerful due to this. Or as you keep collecting great runes, you consolidate order upon yourself, tieing it to you more and more. As your strength grows, the aspects of the runes you have collected grow stronger as well.

Not that any of this will be implemented, but this kind of balancing can be done in an open world, and in more sophisticated ways than the typical rpg level scaling.

or the bosses that are considered "main" bosses even optional ones put a scaling feature on them so you can be stronger but not so overleveled that you one shot them

[warmy bear]

This isn't a Souls title, even internally From are done with Dark Souls

[Naewyng]

Messaggio originale di Warmy Bear:

This isn't a Souls title, even internally From are done with Dark Souls

This is ds4, internally referred to as elden souls, a pigeon confirmed this for me.

[The Black Baron]

Messaggio originale di Freak4Leeks:

Messaggio originale di Ghostbut:

Elden Ring should serve as an experiment that proves that open world can't work with the Souls formula.

i disagree ELDEN RING has it's issues due to open world but balancing isn't one of them, it gives you freedom, which is what soulsborne is about, freedom to do what you desire, you wanna be OP well you can do it from the start, you wanna level 1 every boss, you can do that as well.

It can work if they actually made a world that felt allive with actual content in it not an empty area with post it notes that don't really add anything to the world building besides exist for one of the endings. With the combat mechanics and the death system it would work in an open world better if they didn't just make another dark souls. AKA this time actually flesh out features and ideas instead of implementing them half way and running out of time. Like they did with every souls game.