Why are you skeptical about this game?

[Kernist]

I noticed a lot of people have very negative opinion about this game. I wonder where does it come from?

I played all Dark Souls games and Elden Ring, so I have some ideas why people have mixed feelings on this. I guess it's mainly:
1. Shift from traditional souls-like SP experience.
2. Game being designed purely around multiplayer.
3. Fear that this form will become a new norm.
4. Pretty high price for basically an asset flip.

I didn't expect however such a strong pushback. What was it for you? I think this idea can work personally. Lets have a real conversation, without "this gonna suck, it's Fortnite and not souls-like" and without "cry more haters, everyone loves the idea and the rest is insignificant".

[Advent]

Originally posted by Inquisitor:

ReusedAssetware at its finest. The Sheep will eat it up day 1 anyway.
I'll buy this game by buying DS5(DS4 was Elden Ring) which will reuse literally ALL the new things from this one except will have the only pleasurable content for a non-ADHDzoomers - PVP.

[TankTheta]

Originally posted by Kernist:

I noticed a lot of people have very negative opinion about this game. I wonder where does it come from?

I played all Dark Souls games and Elden Ring, so I have some ideas why people have mixed feelings on this. I guess it's mainly:
1. Shift from traditional souls-like SP experience.
2. Game being designed purely around multiplayer.
3. Fear that this form will become a new norm.
4. Pretty high price for basically an asset flip.

I didn't expect however such a strong pushback. What was it for you? I think this idea can work personally. Lets have a real conversation, without "this gonna suck, it's Fortnite and not souls-like" and without "cry more haters, everyone loves the idea and the rest is insignificant".

I'd be okay with the shift if something was given in return.
But this genuinely seems like the lowest effort From Soft game I've ever seen from them. It's not just a high price, it's that it's an extremely lazy work from a developer known for putting in serious effort even with games that are badly put together. Like Elden Ring itself.

This will be the new norm, btw. Because Elden Ring is. And they were rewarded for all of Elden Ring's flaws. If this doesn't flop, they're going to dumb down the mechanics. They're going to lean into lower effort maps. They're going to dive further.

I don't care about the multiplayer aspect, (I rather enjoy MHWorld for example), but can we at least talk about why this game is worse than just slapping Seemless Coop on Elden Ring?
For like 40 dollars no less?

[Shoah Kahn]

1. No two-player co-op (?)
2. Kernal level anti-cheats (for a co-op game?)
3. No character customisation (⚠)
4. No dynamic difficulty scaling adjustment according to player count
5. No drop-in / out co-op (see point 4.)

Other than those concerns, the game looks promising.

[Sunami]

PvP invasions (slow to connect, 1v3, aoe fest, bad spawns) were so ♥♥♥♥ in vanilla Elden Ring (even worse after DLC weapons/spells).
Normal re-runs NG++ also ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, because commute times being horrible for replayability.

I ended up co-oping instead, hard carrying on the icky bosses like letmesoloher lol

This game seems like that but more interesting and varied.

[Rusty_V4]

Originally posted by Kernist:

can we at least talk about why this game is worse than just slapping Seemless Coop on Elden Ring?
For like 40 dollars no less?

Also worth noting, seamless co-op is implementing an insane horde-arena mode with randomized enemies and bosses, with insanely good rewards:
https://youtu.be/LcPxjy4IkEo?si=zcZIwNPLMXwYaPL6

[V]

I've been a fromsoftware fan for a long, long time now. This certainly wasn't the game I was expecting to see from them. I play for the style of storytelling and the way the rich lore impacts the world, and as far as I can tell this is not that. HOWEVER, I also think people are wrongly assuming Nightreign is somehow "stealing" dev time from a new title or overwriting what fromsoftware does. At their core, they have a formula that works, and each title they do iterates on it. They take lessons they learned in previous titles and implement them in whatever they do next. Fromsoftware has expanded since Demon Souls. They're now big enough to play in the space. They can divide their efforts and make "more." That being said:
I am not skeptical of their reuse of assets. Bring it on. Keep reusing them. I love seeing pieces stand the tests of time and make it into new titles. More games should do this. It frees up time and energy to create more new things instead of worrying about whether or not Rock 343 has been given brand new polygons. $40 is a fair price for a totally different experience. I loved the Chalice Dungeons and bloodgem farming. I spent hundreds of hours in the "reused asset mines" looking for rare formations of the randomizer before the formula was figured out by the Tomb Prospectors. I always wanted from to add in something like that again and here it is. I don't find it bothersome that some enemies are exactly the same. They're not reinventing the wheel on this one. It's hard to understand how it feels different from base Elden Ring when it looks similar, but when you are the one playing it, they're definitely unique enough.

What I AM skeptical of is how they plan to bring their playerbase on board with something totally new. It doesn't seem that they're winning over the players. People are resistant to new things. I run into this issue every time I try to convince one of my non-souls friends to try a souls game. Often times, the players bemoan how "hard" it is when what they really mean is "different" and I'm seeing a lot of that here. Fromsoftware is in a bind with their fandom where every time they deliver more of their formula there's a loud crowd that starts booing and saying its "the same game again" and every time they try something new it's the same crowd throwing tomatoes and crying that they sold out and are making slop. I guess I'm less skeptical of fromsoftware and more skeptical of the gaming crowd.

I played the network test. It was a lot of fun. It brought me back to a time when my friends and I would lug consoles to each other's houses on the weekend to play the minigames included in other titles, but this time the minigame was polished up into a main title. Having played the network test and thoroughly enjoyed it, my skepticism falls more on whether or not they'll nail the map UI or add in necessary features to make the text more legible. [A little bigger, and increase the contrast. We're moving too fast to read all that.] I also wonder just how many map variations will be available, and if those variations will increase the chance of getting certain upgrade materials at the end to encourage running more often. The test included, to my experience, one common variation and one uncommon variation. I know they said it would not be live service, but I feel it would be a huge miss not to add new challenges over time, because the game has a lot of potential to be a long term thing.

At the end of the day, fromsoftware is among the few companies in AAA that keeps employees long enough to implement their skills learned on previous titles. I'm positively interested in whatever experiments they choose to take and excited to see what they take back to the next main title.

[Rusty_V4]

Originally posted by V:

people are wrongly assuming Nightreign is somehow "stealing" dev time from a new title

It's not a wrong assumption. Either this game is taking away resources from past and future projects, OR it's so cheaply made that the price point is just milking the IP name.

[TankTheta]

Originally posted by hey_buddy:

Originally posted by V:

people are wrongly assuming Nightreign is somehow "stealing" dev time from a new title

It's not a wrong assumption. Either this game is taking away resources from past and future projects, OR it's so cheaply made that the price point is just milking the IP name.

Well, we all know it's the latter. I mean this was made in like what, 8 months? Using almost no original assets, barely any changes to the core code aside locking off features and making items launch out, etc etc.

This game is REAL cheap. I'd doubt it's under the same boat as games like BB and Sekiro stealing dev time and effort from DS3 (which is one of the reasons the game ended up with significant sections of it becoming rather linear or incomplete conceptually)

[TankTheta]

Originally posted by V:

I've been a fromsoftware fan for a long, long time now. This certainly wasn't the game I was expecting to see from them. I play for the style of storytelling and the way the rich lore impacts the world, and as far as I can tell this is not that. HOWEVER, I also think people are wrongly assuming Nightreign is somehow "stealing" dev time from a new title or overwriting what fromsoftware does. At their core, they have a formula that works, and each title they do iterates on it. They take lessons they learned in previous titles and implement them in whatever they do next. Fromsoftware has expanded since Demon Souls. They're now big enough to play in the space. They can divide their efforts and make "more." That being said:
I am not skeptical of their reuse of assets. Bring it on. Keep reusing them. I love seeing pieces stand the tests of time and make it into new titles. More games should do this. It frees up time and energy to create more new things instead of worrying about whether or not Rock 343 has been given brand new polygons. $40 is a fair price for a totally different experience. I loved the Chalice Dungeons and bloodgem farming. I spent hundreds of hours in the "reused asset mines" looking for rare formations of the randomizer before the formula was figured out by the Tomb Prospectors. I always wanted from to add in something like that again and here it is. I don't find it bothersome that some enemies are exactly the same. They're not reinventing the wheel on this one. It's hard to understand how it feels different from base Elden Ring when it looks similar, but when you are the one playing it, they're definitely unique enough.

What I AM skeptical of is how they plan to bring their playerbase on board with something totally new. It doesn't seem that they're winning over the players. People are resistant to new things. I run into this issue every time I try to convince one of my non-souls friends to try a souls game. Often times, the players bemoan how "hard" it is when what they really mean is "different" and I'm seeing a lot of that here. Fromsoftware is in a bind with their fandom where every time they deliver more of their formula there's a loud crowd that starts booing and saying its "the same game again" and every time they try something new it's the same crowd throwing tomatoes and crying that they sold out and are making slop. I guess I'm less skeptical of fromsoftware and more skeptical of the gaming crowd.

I played the network test. It was a lot of fun. It brought me back to a time when my friends and I would lug consoles to each other's houses on the weekend to play the minigames included in other titles, but this time the minigame was polished up into a main title. Having played the network test and thoroughly enjoyed it, my skepticism falls more on whether or not they'll nail the map UI or add in necessary features to make the text more legible. [A little bigger, and increase the contrast. We're moving too fast to read all that.] I also wonder just how many map variations will be available, and if those variations will increase the chance of getting certain upgrade materials at the end to encourage running more often. The test included, to my experience, one common variation and one uncommon variation. I know they said it would not be live service, but I feel it would be a huge miss not to add new challenges over time, because the game has a lot of potential to be a long term thing.

At the end of the day, fromsoftware is among the few companies in AAA that keeps employees long enough to implement their skills learned on previous titles. I'm positively interested in whatever experiments they choose to take and excited to see what they take back to the next main title.

Most of this is a TL;DR.

But I would like to address a few specific points.

"or overwriting what fromsoftware does. At their core, they have a formula that works, and each title they do iterates on it. They take lessons they learned in previous titles and implement them in whatever they do next. Fromsoftware has expanded since Demon Souls."

You ever consider that bad lessons can and have been learnt? I do. I think infact that's why Elden Ring has been such a flawed game. It took lessons from Sekiro and DS3 that it really shouldn't have and degraded the quality of encounters. Elden Ring is a very superficial game. A game that's built on scale rather than quality and variety with it's encounter design. Bloodborne was better about this, so was DS3. There's no flow to encounters anymore.

"I love seeing pieces stand the tests of time and make it into new titles. More games should do this. It frees up time and energy to create more new things instead of worrying about whether or not Rock 343 has been given brand new polygons."

What. What the ♥♥♥♥ is this? You're just being a drone genuinely if you think this is how we should treat development.
Do you ever want a new boss ever again, or do you want things recycled and fed back to you over and over till it becomes mindnumbing?
It's fine to tweak things and within the same IP do some reuse, but you're literally defending the same bosses being reused over and over again just because it makes development easier. When it was already one of the bigger issues that unique bosses got duplicated and slapped around just to increase the boss count superficially. And now you're arguing that iconic bosses should be pulled from the grave just to do the same here?

Man. Come on. Think about the end result of that. This is what KILLED megaman.

"$40 is a fair price for a totally different experience. They're not reinventing the wheel on this one."

It's not a totally different experience. Infact, it's a dumbed down version of ER. With a few QoL featues and a weapon art bolted into the characters.
That's the biggest issue. It's a version of ER that's been twisted and scrapped from a dead DLC that should of been put into the original game instead. This isn't even like MHR or any of the Monster Hunter B team games where things are much more wild. (btw, less budget lmao), this is just them taking us for a ride making the cheapest game possible and trend chasing.

Can we not defend such blatantly low effort?

[Ponyeater]

Originally posted by TankTheta:

Originally posted by V:

I've been a fromsoftware fan for a long, long time now. This certainly wasn't the game I was expecting to see from them. I play for the style of storytelling and the way the rich lore impacts the world, and as far as I can tell this is not that. HOWEVER, I also think people are wrongly assuming Nightreign is somehow "stealing" dev time from a new title or overwriting what fromsoftware does. At their core, they have a formula that works, and each title they do iterates on it. They take lessons they learned in previous titles and implement them in whatever they do next. Fromsoftware has expanded since Demon Souls. They're now big enough to play in the space. They can divide their efforts and make "more." That being said:
I am not skeptical of their reuse of assets. Bring it on. Keep reusing them. I love seeing pieces stand the tests of time and make it into new titles. More games should do this. It frees up time and energy to create more new things instead of worrying about whether or not Rock 343 has been given brand new polygons. $40 is a fair price for a totally different experience. I loved the Chalice Dungeons and bloodgem farming. I spent hundreds of hours in the "reused asset mines" looking for rare formations of the randomizer before the formula was figured out by the Tomb Prospectors. I always wanted from to add in something like that again and here it is. I don't find it bothersome that some enemies are exactly the same. They're not reinventing the wheel on this one. It's hard to understand how it feels different from base Elden Ring when it looks similar, but when you are the one playing it, they're definitely unique enough.

What I AM skeptical of is how they plan to bring their playerbase on board with something totally new. It doesn't seem that they're winning over the players. People are resistant to new things. I run into this issue every time I try to convince one of my non-souls friends to try a souls game. Often times, the players bemoan how "hard" it is when what they really mean is "different" and I'm seeing a lot of that here. Fromsoftware is in a bind with their fandom where every time they deliver more of their formula there's a loud crowd that starts booing and saying its "the same game again" and every time they try something new it's the same crowd throwing tomatoes and crying that they sold out and are making slop. I guess I'm less skeptical of fromsoftware and more skeptical of the gaming crowd.

I played the network test. It was a lot of fun. It brought me back to a time when my friends and I would lug consoles to each other's houses on the weekend to play the minigames included in other titles, but this time the minigame was polished up into a main title. Having played the network test and thoroughly enjoyed it, my skepticism falls more on whether or not they'll nail the map UI or add in necessary features to make the text more legible. [A little bigger, and increase the contrast. We're moving too fast to read all that.] I also wonder just how many map variations will be available, and if those variations will increase the chance of getting certain upgrade materials at the end to encourage running more often. The test included, to my experience, one common variation and one uncommon variation. I know they said it would not be live service, but I feel it would be a huge miss not to add new challenges over time, because the game has a lot of potential to be a long term thing.

At the end of the day, fromsoftware is among the few companies in AAA that keeps employees long enough to implement their skills learned on previous titles. I'm positively interested in whatever experiments they choose to take and excited to see what they take back to the next main title.

Most of this is a TL;DR.

But I would like to address a few specific points.

"or overwriting what fromsoftware does. At their core, they have a formula that works, and each title they do iterates on it. They take lessons they learned in previous titles and implement them in whatever they do next. Fromsoftware has expanded since Demon Souls."

You ever consider that bad lessons can and have been learnt? I do. I think infact that's why Elden Ring has been such a flawed game. It took lessons from Sekiro and DS3 that it really shouldn't have and degraded the quality of encounters. Elden Ring is a very superficial game. A game that's built on scale rather than quality and variety with it's encounter design. Bloodborne was better about this, so was DS3. There's no flow to encounters anymore.

"I love seeing pieces stand the tests of time and make it into new titles. More games should do this. It frees up time and energy to create more new things instead of worrying about whether or not Rock 343 has been given brand new polygons."

What. What the ♥♥♥♥ is this? You're just being a drone genuinely if you think this is how we should treat development.
Do you ever want a new boss ever again, or do you want things recycled and fed back to you over and over till it becomes mindnumbing?
It's fine to tweak things and within the same IP do some reuse, but you're literally defending the same bosses being reused over and over again just because it makes development easier. When it was already one of the bigger issues that unique bosses got duplicated and slapped around just to increase the boss count superficially. And now you're arguing that iconic bosses should be pulled from the grave just to do the same here?

Man. Come on. Think about the end result of that. This is what KILLED megaman.

"$40 is a fair price for a totally different experience. They're not reinventing the wheel on this one."

It's not a totally different experience. Infact, it's a dumbed down version of ER. With a few QoL featues and a weapon art bolted into the characters.
That's the biggest issue. It's a version of ER that's been twisted and scrapped from a dead DLC that should of been put into the original game instead. This isn't even like MHR or any of the Monster Hunter B team games where things are much more wild. (btw, less budget lmao), this is just them taking us for a ride making the cheapest game possible and trend chasing.

Can we not defend such blatantly low effort?

I want to add: They had the DS2 producer on and took a lot of lessons from Dark Souls II. Their philosophy with boss rehashes and gank bosses comes obviously from there. And the world being too expansive while also being stretched thin.

There's a mod out there that puts all the "Legacy" Dungeons in order to played without breaks and suddenly Elden Ring feels like a proper Souls game again. The open world was a very bad call, they did nothing meaningful with it - As most open world devs tend to do.

And with Nightreign the lack of original character development it will get even more streamlined and shallow. I am also skeptical of this game.

[TankTheta]

Originally posted by Ponyeater:

Originally posted by TankTheta:

Most of this is a TL;DR.

But I would like to address a few specific points.

"or overwriting what fromsoftware does. At their core, they have a formula that works, and each title they do iterates on it. They take lessons they learned in previous titles and implement them in whatever they do next. Fromsoftware has expanded since Demon Souls."

You ever consider that bad lessons can and have been learnt? I do. I think infact that's why Elden Ring has been such a flawed game. It took lessons from Sekiro and DS3 that it really shouldn't have and degraded the quality of encounters. Elden Ring is a very superficial game. A game that's built on scale rather than quality and variety with it's encounter design. Bloodborne was better about this, so was DS3. There's no flow to encounters anymore.

"I love seeing pieces stand the tests of time and make it into new titles. More games should do this. It frees up time and energy to create more new things instead of worrying about whether or not Rock 343 has been given brand new polygons."

What. What the ♥♥♥♥ is this? You're just being a drone genuinely if you think this is how we should treat development.
Do you ever want a new boss ever again, or do you want things recycled and fed back to you over and over till it becomes mindnumbing?
It's fine to tweak things and within the same IP do some reuse, but you're literally defending the same bosses being reused over and over again just because it makes development easier. When it was already one of the bigger issues that unique bosses got duplicated and slapped around just to increase the boss count superficially. And now you're arguing that iconic bosses should be pulled from the grave just to do the same here?

Man. Come on. Think about the end result of that. This is what KILLED megaman.

"$40 is a fair price for a totally different experience. They're not reinventing the wheel on this one."

It's not a totally different experience. Infact, it's a dumbed down version of ER. With a few QoL featues and a weapon art bolted into the characters.
That's the biggest issue. It's a version of ER that's been twisted and scrapped from a dead DLC that should of been put into the original game instead. This isn't even like MHR or any of the Monster Hunter B team games where things are much more wild. (btw, less budget lmao), this is just them taking us for a ride making the cheapest game possible and trend chasing.

Can we not defend such blatantly low effort?

I want to add: They had the DS2 producer on and took a lot of lessons from Dark Souls II. Their philosophy with boss rehashes and gank bosses comes obviously from there. And the world being too expansive while also being stretched thin.

There's a mod out there that puts all the "Legacy" Dungeons in order to played without breaks and suddenly Elden Ring feels like a proper Souls game again. The open world was a very bad call, they did nothing meaningful with it - As most open world devs tend to do.

And with Nightreign the lack of original character development it will get even more streamlined and shallow. I am also skeptical of this game.

Give me that mod, I wanna try it. The Openworld was a disaster for the development of ER, even if I think the biggest issue is their horrendous boss design mechanically speaking.

Yeah, that's the big worry. The obvious streamlining.

Who. And I mean WHO asked for this? Take away all the autonomy from the player and replace it with... a bolted on weapon art or two?
Huh? Did people forget SEKIRO exists. That a limited moveset customization can be done with alot more nuance and detail?
I feel like I'm going utterly mad seeing the goldfish memory.

[Ponyeater]

Originally posted by TankTheta:

Originally posted by Ponyeater:

I want to add: They had the DS2 producer on and took a lot of lessons from Dark Souls II. Their philosophy with boss rehashes and gank bosses comes obviously from there. And the world being too expansive while also being stretched thin.

There's a mod out there that puts all the "Legacy" Dungeons in order to played without breaks and suddenly Elden Ring feels like a proper Souls game again. The open world was a very bad call, they did nothing meaningful with it - As most open world devs tend to do.

And with Nightreign the lack of original character development it will get even more streamlined and shallow. I am also skeptical of this game.

Give me that mod, I wanna try it. The Openworld was a disaster for the development of ER, even if I think the biggest issue is their horrendous boss design mechanically speaking.

Yeah, that's the big worry. The obvious streamlining.

Who. And I mean WHO asked for this? Take away all the autonomy from the player and replace it with... a bolted on weapon art or two?
Huh? Did people forget SEKIRO exists. That a limited moveset customization can be done with alot more nuance and detail?
I feel like I'm going utterly mad seeing the goldfish memory.

Fog Gate Randomizer Mod
Several ways to go about it. You can do the Fog Randomizer Mod as shown here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir1kPxRDv3s
https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/3295

Dungeon Crawler Mod
There is this mod, which puts all the open world content into the dungeons and allows you to teleport from one dungeon to the next. Available in two flavors:
-All dungeons, including mines, caves and so on
-Only Legacy Dungeons with the loot and encounters added purely to legacy dungeons
https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/6981


And to answer your question: Nobody really asked for this, but someone inside From Soft clearly wanted to go back to their King's Field roots and do something more simplified.

[TankTheta]

Originally posted by Ponyeater:

Originally posted by TankTheta:

Give me that mod, I wanna try it. The Openworld was a disaster for the development of ER, even if I think the biggest issue is their horrendous boss design mechanically speaking.

Yeah, that's the big worry. The obvious streamlining.

Who. And I mean WHO asked for this? Take away all the autonomy from the player and replace it with... a bolted on weapon art or two?
Huh? Did people forget SEKIRO exists. That a limited moveset customization can be done with alot more nuance and detail?
I feel like I'm going utterly mad seeing the goldfish memory.

Several ways to go about it. You can do the Fog Randomizer Mod as shown here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir1kPxRDv3s
https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/3295

There is this mod, which puts all the open world content into the dungeons and allows you to teleport from one dungeon to the next. Available in two flavors:
-All dungeons, including mines, caves and so on
-Only Legacy Dungeons with the loot and encounters added purely to legacy dungeons
https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/6981


And to answer your question: Nobody really asked for this, but someone inside From Soft clearly wanted to go back to their King's Field roots and do something more simplified.

Thanks.
Also yeah, I think the simplified route is definitely a test for something else too. See how much they can get away with.

[Dova Sos]

Tanktheta

Exactly exactly. Nobody even asked for this. What an arrogant cash grab of reused assets. Hope they burn hard and open chapter 11 so they learn a hard lesson and come with something better. Like talk of Bloodbourne 2 is often asked for by the fans

[TankTheta]

Originally posted by Dova Sos:

Tanktheta

Exactly exactly. Nobody even asked for this. What an arrogant cash grab of reused assets. Hope they burn hard and open chapter 11 so they learn a hard lesson and come with something better. Like talk of Bloodbourne 2 is often asked for by the fans

I wouldn't want them to hit chapter 11 (that's a one way trip to modern square enix lmao), but they should feel the sting of this one.
At least BB2 would be fun, especially if it hit PC somehow.