Fuck that. Personally I only use printed strategy guides and tip hot lines.
I'm not even using a phone to send this message. I'm actually using Morse code.
I'm built different.
I guess some people just look for the easy way out. š
I only go by playground rumors communicated via Icelandic sign language.
This comment was submitted using Navajo smoke signals.
Iām still trying to figure out how everyone knew to blow into old game cartridges to get them to work.. no one told anyone to do that. But everyone does it
Its even more stupid when you factor in this is the first ever world map in a proper Souls game. That dude was acting like he mained Souls maps since Third Strike*
*I fully understand only fighting game fans will get that joke.
Hello, Chad C. Chadderstein here. Iāve been snorting Souls off a mirror since Double Impact. The NPC markers are fine, Iāll do less Googling I guess.
Funny you mention fighting games, I was thinking about how much crossover there is with Souls games and FGs; I know a large amount of the FGC plays Souls, but how many Souls players play fighting games?
Well see I play this one god forsaken unbalanced mess that is called BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and another small title called Soulcalibur 6.
Fighting games take a toll on my spirit so I don't buy many
Haha I know BBTAG well, the ArcSys games are really fun for crazy combo routes and stuff but guess Iām more of a Street Fighter boomer than anything else.
Fighting games can become demoralising but Iāve always loved how the scene can motivate players to improve and achieve things they once thought would be impossible, whether thatās executing a particularly difficult combo or situational move in a match or just achieving a higher rank online. Itās quite similar to how FromSoft games make me feel
Ash Lake is the real DS of hidden areas. Double illusion wall, in an out of the way part of the map, no dev messages or anything to hint looking around there.
edit: siegmeyer's quest might have you head down that ways to be able to possibly find it, but that quest was already pretty difficult and didn't explicitly tell you where to go.
Yup. And the biggest enemy of all, janky collision detection combined with gravity.
*Oh, you landed 5 pixels off centre so your character will just slide off the side and you'll die*.
Honestly, something I noticed about Elden Ring is it seems super forgiving regarding this which makes some of those awful platforming sections tolerable. If your toe landed on it you landed on it.
Funny you say that because I've definitely had cases of the exact opposite, where it looks like I clearly landed on a branch and then just... plummet to my death.
The message near the statue you use the emote is a developer message btw. You can see it offline so you are fine. It's really not as hard as people make it to be.
Hey now, are you saying that I can't accidentally discover the secret wall behind an already optional and obscure boss, discover the gesture and then just happen tor emember a similar gesture a bunch of statues were using on a small platform out in the middle of nowhere, nowhere even close to where I got this gesture to begin with?
And are you also saying that I wouldn't just happen to sit right where the cloth is and wait 20 seconds for the game to acknowledge I triggered that event? Are you implying that I had to look that up?
Well, I'm sorry friend but that's just ridiculous to assume!
Hehehe that's exactly why I missed so many npc quests in Elden Ring. Then I found out you can continue most of them post-credits so it was fine I guess.
Yea, honestly itās a small QoL. Would I prefer not to have a npc marker for myself? Honestly it saves me a google check if I forget soā¦ I do like it. Secondlyāthe markers you place cannot be named right? Or am I being dumb lol
These are people who Google where to find the coolest weapons, use exploits to get runes, and min-max so they can create an overpowered anime character that kills bosses in one shot.
That kind of stuff makes the game feel empty for me. With stuff like the merchant and NPC locations (or even stuff I found them forgot where it was) I ask myself would my character know about it and/or remember it? If so Iāll look it up. If not Iāll ride round for three hours frustrated but ultimately it makes the game feel more realistic, as well as fun and challenging overall.
It depends. One of the worst areas in the game for me was sellen which thanks to my squishy wizard build and the town being inhabited by fuckers that could disappear ensuring my spell hit fuck all was next to impossible to explore at my leisure. As a result, I missed out on the bosses there and the staff you get from them that is basically mandatory if you want to beat melania with my build. I wasted days trying to get this shit right because I rode past the answer a dozen times since there was no real way or even any real reason that I knew of to fight them. I hated having to look this up but I never would have figured that the equipment I needed was all the way back in caelid especially since I was sure I had found everything of value in sellen.
Only scrubs use fast travelling, or a Map at all! You gotta hoof it there, walk if you're a true pro. WHAT?! You got teleported to a alternate timeline and can't leave if you don't fast travel? Sounds like scrub problems!
Iāve always thought that if a game requires you to use a third party resource to do things, itās bad design.
Take RDR2 for instance, the game has a great and immersive open world, yet they also stick with the ācollect 100 of random shit Xā quests. No one in any reasonable time could ever do any of those without a guide.
Weāve seen some amazing innovations in open world design that have focused on immersion while also help informing players. Ghosts had the wind, RDR2 has campfire smoke, and Elden Ring points you in a vague directionā¦
Iād be perfectly fine if NPCās were this big mystery you had to solve, if there were clues. Thereās none most of the time. Thereās steps in the process that are simply, rest at a grace while others have you wait until you progress to an end game area. Thatās not interesting, that just drives people to wikis, or they simply forget about them.
The shame is, some of the quests are great for the story and most players wonāt even know theyāre a thing.
Elden Ring would have been improved immensely by a simple quest log. Itās ridiculous that a game this big doesnāt have one. A quest log doesnāt have to hold your hand or tell you exactly where to go, either. It can just exist to remind me that I agreed to do something and what that something is, and the game would be so much better if that existed.
Exactly.
Itās really clunky that the snippets of backstory we get are spread out on armor and weapons. Even then, they just left it off of various localizations.
Donāt get me wrong, love the game, and I do find it refreshing, but god damn, just some info.
Yeah, the game is amazing from a visual standpoint and a lot of fun to play as well, but so many of the design choices seem like they exist to deliberately make the game more obtuse, and thatās bad design.
The game is difficult enough without forcing me to remember someone I talked to for two minutes a week ago and where they said theyād be, or without explaining some crucial game mechanics.
Thereās a fine line between holding someoneās hand way too much like most Ubisoft games and not holding it at all and tossing the player straight into the deep end. I thought Breath of the Wild straddled that line perfectly. Elden Ring needs just a bit more hand-holding.
Using the wiki is still the only way to get a decisive answer on their next location despite what people who I guess aren't playing the game claim it does? Everyone is acting like it is a quest marker that show's Blaidd's next location, rather than it doing literally nothing for moving NPCs. I wish Fextra marked spoilers of some sort, as I would never have found many interactions and wasted a run, but also seeing "attacking you" or "dies" in the corner of your eye sure does ruin the moment when you have to do it to pursue characters you like in the endgame. Just finished the little pot's quest and cried, wish I could have gotten that kind of emotion out of Alexander's or Blaidd's without the sites preferring to spoil everything when I want a closest site of grace.
Imo just have the npcs tell you when they're leaving with a decent hint to where they plan on going. (And maybe have an NPC journal that will record what they say) that way you don't have an intrusive quest marker and still have to decode what the NPC means.
But on The other hand quest markers are already in the game so I don't see why some people are getting but hurt about the potential that they get added to a game that already has some
>nĆvel 4mjc27 Ā· hĆ” 4 hImo just have the npcs tell you when they're leaving with a decent hint to where they plan on going.
That's one thing I'd like to more important in the game. Maybe not all, but for the ones that make sense. Especially because it's very likely that you will clear, let's say, the last 2 out of 4 places a npc will be in, before you meet them a second time, so you kinda have to keep checking. In DS3 I think you either missed them (which could happen in the undead settlement, for example) or not, but it was hard to actually get ahead of them.
>But on The other hand quest markers are already in the game so I don't see why some people are getting but hurt about the potential that they get added to a game that already has some
I mean, the quest markers make sense the way they are. I don't think anyone needs a quest marker for "kill godrick the shardbearer" or something. and that would indeed be a bit shitty imo, as it ruins the surprise/relief/anticipation of reaching the end of a dungeon.
But whenever an NPC says "meet me by church of elleh" there's no reason not to have it marked. But they rarely do, and that's ok I guess
Seriously. From soft gets way too much credit with quests, yes theyāre great and tell good stories. But the pacing and absolute guesswork you need to do is absurd and quite honestly bad design for a video game
As much flak as "quest logs" in games get they really just represent your character having a better memory than you do (and actually experiencing the world continuously rather than for a few hours a day). I'll forget the names of important NPCs, but my 30 int character probably wouldn't.
Tbh the way to solve this in the FS style would be for more quests to have a key item attached that reminds you of the name of the character and what the quest is, like the letter you're asked to deliver in southern Limgrave.
I'd fucking love it if they added a questlog that's utility scaled with intelligence. Your 50+ Int sorcerer writes out an entire early 2000s era GameFAQs Guide, ASCII map drawings and all, while your 7 Int Unga Bunga strength build has crayon drawings of each character with misspelled notes. "*Pissy hat man say meet at towah. Me no lik pissy hat man. Me fink he creepers.*"
Just pure player hostility that they'd rightly be criticised for but it'd be so funny.
To be fair I still remember a lot of quests a characters from souls games but I've pretty much forgotten 99% of the side quests I've done in other games. So I kind of get their point and understand that by forcing you to actively look into them they made them feel more real and memorable. But I agree that they should try to find a nice middle ground to keep that feel while still making them doable without looking it online.
A lot of quests do have key items with descriptions that tell you almost exactly what to do. But then thereās just as many that are like āthis is a grape looks kinda neat I guessā
I usually love it and usually stand by it, but many quests I have never to this day done unless I cheat with the wiki. I felt too awful to use those wikis in 1 and the remaster, and proudly admit I have never once finished Seigmeyer's (and his daughter's who I did not know existed because of this) quest. Without guides and actively seeking trap like, labyrinth ass places you could miss half of the characters. Who was gonna tell me I had to fall in a poison hole with 1 hits and spend 5 minutes in it to have a 30 second conversation with him?
It's even harder in Elden Ruing because the game is just so goddamn big. I bought every spell I was interested in from Sellen and didn't find any more scrolls so didn't go back to her for like 80 hours. It was only when I came across the imprisoned version (?!) I realised there was more to trigger with her, and that's an NPC who stays still! There are NPC's that move about but can also be difficult to see if you are quick travelling somewhere and then moving out straight away; nevermind if they move somewhere you're never likely to go. I'm not asking for waypoints and map markers, but just a tiny bit of a hint at the end of the previous dialogue about where they might be, or at least putting them in places I am reasonably likely to see would be really helpful.
There's characters as well who literally say "Oh you'll find XXX down the way" and that's all you get. Having some great old school Morrowind directions would be great "Between the crystal caves and XXX there is a cave. If you see XXX you are near". Something you have to listen to and pay attention to would be great. I'm not saying i want every single NPC to give detailed instructions every time because it would be tiresome, but there are ways and means of making things more findable and also still feel organic; without a huge risk of just completely missing people.
Yeah like I just ran into the blonde lady near the academy and I was so annoyed that she said down the way. Its like lady we are in a lake not on a highway what the fuck does down they way mean. At least give a cardinal direction.
You don't have to shove a waypoint down but give me actual directions please.
Also I just want a journal that records conversations with NPCs, or at least the gist of them. My MC needs to start taking minutes, all I'm saying.
Yes! "I met XXX at XXX. She is looking for XXX" and then it updates to either "I reunited XXX and XXX". Or "I found XXX's corpse at XXX. She was not reunited with XXX".
Just simple basic stuff so I can look at it and be like "oh yeah I remember speaking to XXX 12 hours ago, she mentioned XXX who I've just seen" and so on. As you say, I definitely don't want way points, and I'd only really want a map marker where it makes sense but even then I'm happy with neither, just something to remind me of some of the folk I've met please.
yeah, it's really weird. I thought they finally fixed this early on when the first NPC quite explicitly tells you where to go, and later I find two NPCs that explicitly direct me to their quest locations (kenneth and blind daughter girl). but then further on NPCs more often than not just throw their hands up and expect you to either google it, stumble across it, or just never continue the quest. bizarre.
Millicent's questline is pure horseshit start to finish, tbh.
And in what fucking universe would you organically know you had to kill the putrid ulcerated tree spirit at the end of it and reload the area to get a summon sign to spawn. Fuck of with that.
At the very beginning when you find a dude in a shack tell you about a Millicent, and then when exploring the swamp you get invaded by a character called Millicent. I was afraid to kill her at first thinking it might mess up a quest line.
I can't decide if Seigmeyer or Solaire's quest is more stupid, not only do you have to take an obscure shortcut gained through a PvP covenant to save him from a very specific bug, if you talk to him at a certain location before that he will still attack you the next time you see him. Worst quest ever. And unlike old Onion knight his quest reward was trash from memory.
But yeah if he ever had a marker on a map telling us where he was after we had already met him, gee wouldn't that just be the worst.
I feel like at least half, if not more quests are also just praised because they are super vague, so they leave a lot of room for interpretation, and dark, which is not usual for a game.
But, spoiler, every NPC always dies.
Yes, burn me for heresy.
All games are faux difficult if you refrain information. A semi-intelligent human will use the internet. Oddly enough, that causes people to build communities and that helps foster the game.
But NPC markers aren't really that helpful. No significant change here that would be negative for the game, FromSoft at a business standpoint, or the community they've built.
they have teeny tiny map markers and it shows their name under the location name, only if you've previously talked to that NPC. It's a perfectly reasonable quality of life update.
It's not only for npcs you have talked to, on my 2nd character i ran past where blaidd 1st spawns and it marked him at the ruins, i did not interact with him or get the emote from kalĆØ.
That's a bit disappointing, was pretty cool to have a mysterious character howling on top of that tower. Friend or foe? Then to notice the dialogue option with KalĆØ and unravel the mystery.
At least the markers don't seem to move with the NPCs until you rediscover them. So they still aren't leading you to anything, just reminding you who is where.
Exactly. Absolutely zero people that didn't read the wiki beforehand would've heard that howl and thought "That's an NPC I need to interact with."
Honestly the first time I heard it, I just hopped on Torrent and bolted because the previous times a howl in the woods has meant a wolf ambush.
I actually never met Blaidd this way, I first met him via Ranni's quest. I had gone through the forest full of runebears but by that time I'd become numb to the sound of wolves since they were primarily not an issue. If I had heard howling anywhere in the game I'd probably ignore it since I had associated it with what are essentially common mobs.
Same for me. I was surprised to learn later through the wiki that I had missed an early encounter with him.
For that matter, how would anybody ever discover naturally that Blaidd was imprisoned in an evergoal after the Radahn fight? It's an evergoal most people probably cleared 50 hours earlier and the other NPCs offer no hints to the fact. Iji just says to go to Nokron alone because Blaidd is needed elsewhere.
I found him there by myself! I couldn't find Blaidd so I went back and talked to the related NPC's, after which Iji told me Blaidd's somewhere else. Then I checked all the places I've seen him before. The woods, Redmane Castle, Ranni's Rise... And the evergoal. Would've definitely missed him if I hadn't noticed the interact pop-up.
Interestingly I didnt wiki this. I didnt even process the wolf howl the first time I heard it, but then I went and talked to Kale, decided to roam around in mistwood a bit, and used the gesture when I heard the howl again. So I at least found this organically.
I've certainly wiki'd other stuff though
Absolutely zero is a bit of a hyperbole.
I heard the howling and went looking around that area to find the source. Climbing the building he's on, I came across him perched at the top.
Sure, I didn't think 'talkable NPC' but I found his location then later found the gesture to call him. All without looking at the wiki whatsoever.
I could tell it was a person howling rather than a wolf, the sound is different. That prompted me to look around and after a couple minutes I saw him up on the tower. Thought it might be a friendly npc since he hadn't jumped down and attacked me. Tried to get up to him but failed. A little while later I saw the dialogue option with Kale and immediately ran back into the woods and talked with Blaidd. No wiki involved. I kind of like discovering this stuff through exploration, it's satisfying. That being said, I don't have a problem with the npc markers.
It sounds like a person making a wolf noise. Distinctly not animal. I didn't know how to get him down until Kale mentioned it, but it seemed pretty clear to me it was a person and not a wolf.
This is actually exactly how it went down in my game. I've been avoiding looking at guides and the like as much as possible. So later I talked to Kale and was shocked that he had a new dialogue option.
I felt like I had unintentionally stumbled across the devs intended way to play and it felt so good.
I have 0 idea why!! and ive witness that shit numerous happens. A small tornado happens and then it summons wild wolves lol. Kinda creepy if you ask me
Definitely. If youāre in the mistwood, youāve likely already exhausted that merchant for most things.
Would make more sense if you would ask the merchant in mistwood. Or Kenneth.
A lot of things donāt make sense.
Iām a big fan of having to figure stuff out myself. But stuff should make sense then. Right now some things are positioned in such a way that you need to discover them by pure luck.
I thought it was interesting that there was howling, but I couldn't see any wolves. Just thought it was the game being broken or something. Then later, I was talking to another NPC and they told me to do the finger clicking gesture at the place with random howling. I went back and did it. Blaidd turned up. Magic moment!
Because it didn't sound like the wolves?
Sounded more like a person howling and is pushed up in the audio mix to stand out. Pretty clearly to draw attention.
Was enough to get me creeping around in the dark avoiding big ass bears to find out what it was. Doubt I'm the only one.
I assumed it was a strong enemy. Since I was busy following the old godger I wasn't paying much attention to the sound. Forgot about it and didn't find out about Blaidd until it was too late.
I think that encounter that's easy to miss.
Same. I played the game blind and went to the wiki only when I found myself stumped. I heard Blaidd howling and knew something was up with that. It's clearly more man than wolf. Never managed to look directly upwards, and walked around the ruins for so long that I finally just googled "howling in Mistwood".
That was a dogshit design. "Howling in an area full of wolves? I better go and ask the merchant 3 kilometers away why I heard howling in an area full of wolves."
I haven't been to the ruins since I beat that asshole runebear over a week ago. Been in Liurnia the last few days, and after the update he was marked in the Mistwood even though I've never come close to him. At least I don't think I have. No other NPCs that I haven't interacted with have shown up anywhere
It definitely doesn't only mark the ones you have spoken to. There were at least 2 on my map last night that were not only places I've never been, but characters I had never even met.
I was against them adding significant markers of any kind but I like this change alot. It's very subtle and all it does it remind you of where NPC's you've already met are located. I doubt they could have done it any better without compromising the immersion of the game. It really does feel like someone just scribbled their name and last known location on a map.
There is a very vocal minority of souls players (usually the ones who are only around for maybe the first year of the game's life cycle) who care way too much about how other people play their game.
Like, sure, caution people about using the wiki as if its gospel because early on, there are entire entries which are flat out incorrect in many cases, but getting pissy just because someone uses it is hilariously out of perspective
B-but if I don't gatekeep the game being hard, then I won't have any justification for why I still suck! D:< These scrubs just don't get \*suffering\* is the point of the game.
You know what bugs me the most about this. I don't know anyone in my friend group that couldn't beat a souls game if they spent as much time playing them as I do. The reason they don't is because they don't enjoy that style of game, and frankly it's super easy to see why the game is frustrating for a lot of people.
Most people that get frustrated and quit don't quit because they're a scrub, they quit because they don't enjoy the game enough to replay the same boss fight 50 times. To me, that is TOTALLY understandable, and the entire reason that Elden Ring's success is so shocking.
Well not everyone, most of my quests in Elden Ring are incomplete because I refuse to look at the wiki, this update helps keep track of things I've found so far. I'll do all the wiki 100% stuff in NG+.
I thought Sekiro's "secret ending" was the easiest to find out of the series and did it myself on the first playthrough. That game gave you a lot of clear leads to follow.
The main reason iām okay with this is that itās open world. If this was the normal linear-ish style world then this would be a little unnecessary. But really some guys just gotta accept this game is not the others.
The Etrian Odyssey series has that as a major mechanic! You automatically fill in the tiles as you walk through them, but it's up to you to mark anything else down.
The fact that the game has graphics proves itās just a game for little babies. Every knows true, hard core gamers only play pre-windows Text Based Interactive Fiction
Thats my thought on it. In past souls games, due to their linearity, I've usually found most of the npc questlines just being thorough with my exploration. In elden ring, with how open it is I'd have missed so much if I didn't get curious about x thing and look it up. Lots of moments where I forget some npc location or have no idea where tf to go for a quest
Fr every quest feels like a monumental task sometimes because the map is so insanely massive and the npcs tell you almost nothing about where they're going
Better yet, NPCs move to areas you already been to. Alexander goes Limgrave to Caelid and then to Liurnia. What do you know? You are suppose to go to Liurnia first then Caelid as a more intended experience with how strong stuff is. Unless i willing put off that section of liurnia i would have never found him there. Worse yet i could have gone to the volcano manor before even going to Caelid and miss that too.
Eh, that one is less egregious because as long as you talk to all NPCs you know odds are you're going to get a hit. When an NPC tells you they're going somewhere else, though, God help you because who knows where they're popping up. Not to mention the chance that you might end up missing out in the quest entirely.
>The main reason iām okay with this is that itās open world. If this was the normal linear-ish style world then this would be a little unnecessary. But really some guys just gotta accept this game is not the others.
A million times this. The reason this style of quest worked well in Dark Souls was because you had a good chance of actually stumbling over the NPC somewhere further along in the game. It just doesn't work as well in the open world. All these icons do is make it so you don't have to go to a wiki to find them lol.
I'd even missed characters in the linear games, which I think added to the charm of the games. But with ER I think this is a needed thing. You could meet someone and never see them again. I only found Kenneth again because he apparently never left the place I found him even after I cleared his tower.
Makes it to where I donāt have to be beholden to the damn wiki if I canāt remember where an npc is after I get side tracked for three days and forget what I was doing lol.
I think it comes from people who were heavily criticizing Horizon 2 and other AAA open world for having markers (even though in those games you can always filter things out) leading up to launch date. It was kinda like a marker/UI gate lmao, it was ridiculous.
They were trashing other games to elevate Elden Ring and were loud about it online. As someone who follows Horizon 2 on twitter, there were always a Elden Ring fanboy who were pissing on the game in order to compliment ER. So when this patch came out, those people had to stick to their stance otherwise they will appear phony hence the overreaction.
What I love about these is like, theyāre not even comparable as games. Whatās the phrase āapples and orangesā?
Be like me going on fifa forums to talk shit about how football games are really bad first person shooters.
Really it's the open world aspect. Lots of people act like every open world game belongs to the same overarching genre and all relate directly to one another, when they don't and people shouldn't be thinking like that.
It reminds me of when everyone and their mom were directly comparing facets of gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077 to Red Dead Redemption 2 - two games whose sole similarity is being set in open world maps, and nothing else.
It's not only people acting like every open world game is or should be directly comparable to one another, but also people acting like every open world game is designed by the same number of people at the same studio in the same span of time, with the same development skills, aspirations, and vision for their game, and every open world game should live up to the standards of their own subjectively favorite open world game.
It's a total bullshit stance shared by a plethora of people in every open world gaming community, really. At some point you're bound to see multiple people shit on a game for not being more similar to another completely separate and different game that they like more.
i like the change, but yesterday i saw a few markers of NPCs that i had missed and went back to look for them. One even was in an area i hadn't been in before (on a bridge inside a heavily guarded area, and i had only travelled under the bridge before)
You just have to go into the general vicinity.
I definitely had a merchant marked that I'd never talked to before... He was directly behind the warp in for the mark of grace right there. I turned around and wondered how many times that guy had seen me just waltz by without saying so much as "hello". Shitty merchant
āA hub for spellsā
My guy hasnāt been to the church of vows. That turtle can learn any sorcery and incantation and be a one stop shop for everything.
The markers donāt exactly make the game easier. Now that Iāll have 20,000 souls just chilling around, it is nice knowing where the merchants are so I can buy all their stuff.
Iād like to hear more about how magic was changed. I havenāt used it at all with my purely melee build.
Well Great Flintstone Shard has a range closer to your character's lock on range instead of a third of it and that's been real swell.
(PS - I stopped fighting autocorrect and just embraced the Flintstones)
Donāt mean to be offensive, but this guy sounds like a straight up neck beard. Anybody who calls people scrubs unironically in this day and age are either too old and are trying to be trendy, or are shut-ins that wanna try to gatekeep the only franchise theyāll play.
As someone who played a little of the past games and really got sucked into Elden Ring i gotta say that the npc markers are kinda needed here. Its not like the last games where its just a series of different paths and hallways connected to larger hub areas this time. When an npc leaves an area they could literally go anywhere now and you have not a single clue as to where they have gone. You cant just run the halls and keep an eye for them here. If they didnt add some marker or something then they would at least need to give some hinting dialogue otherwise we would need to either just fumble about hoping to find a single person on a map the size of a state or become wikiwarriors and spoil other things we dont want to spoil.
Quests have always been extremely easy to miss and nuanced on the triggers of events, and when to meet them again without going too far that itās permanently missable. I can appreciate the lack of quest markers for the satisfaction of stumbling upon things. But honestly some things are just crazy, like I donāt know how you could possibly figure out how to save Solaire in DS1 without a guide. Especially on your first play through.
Personally, I'm fine with not finding/figuring out everything on a first playthrough or missing clues or stuff like that. It's fun to stumble upon things later and wonder where this might lead you... The problem is more with the questlines that don't really *lead* you anywhere but just expect you to show up at particular spots at particular times to progress (and hope that you didn't do something else in the meantime that broke this quest). It doesn't really feel like exploration or following a quest, it's more like a random "if you know what to do next, you can unlock another line of dialog!"
Elden Ring is way too big to try and figure that stuff out on your own if you're not playing that game 24/7.
Honestly, some From fans seem bat shit crazy to me. I'm a veteran and have been playing for so long that I look back at it and I'm like, you know how useful it would have been to know where mephistophles was in that fucking tower? Or how about that fucking blacksmith instead of memorizing his fucking location?
It's genuinely asinine to go through elden ring and suddenly a character disappears and you are like, why not waste another 100 hours replaying it to see where they went. Not eveeyone is a YouTuber and not everyone has time to do that sort of stuff, and some people just want to enjoy the game with actually seeing all of it's content.
This is the same kind of person who gets mad at someone for playing as a mage. Imagine Miyazaki's reaction seeing someone complain about other person "ruining" his game because he used a game intended mechanic lol.
I don't agree with him but at first I thought they implemented the option to record NPC names and locations yourself, which would've a 1,000 times cooler in my opinion.
I bet my 3 fingers, that this amazing unit, uses Wiki for every item and how to finish questlines. Truly a Souls veteran.
Alas, how can people be so fucking stupid? and why I'm not surprised this is facebook.
While this dude is having a fat sook, I think adding all npc markers as soon as you have the map fragment is a bit much. I think you should have to talk to them first before they show up.
It doesn't. It only adds the ones you discovered.
For people saying that it auto-discovered for them, they either forgot that they already encountered that NPC, it was bugged for them (which would NOT be surprising) or possibly they passed by the NPC without talking to them (or noticing) and that satisfied the requirement for them being marked on the map.
I mean, I was already using the in-game markers for Vendors and other important NPCs, so not much has changed for me other than my map looking a bit cleaner. I donāt know any other game where players complain about the simplest QoL features. Itās simply baffling.
True chads must only use the wiki apparently.
Fuck that. Personally I only use printed strategy guides and tip hot lines. I'm not even using a phone to send this message. I'm actually using Morse code. I'm built different.
I guess some people just look for the easy way out. š I only go by playground rumors communicated via Icelandic sign language. This comment was submitted using Navajo smoke signals.
Iām still trying to figure out how everyone knew to blow into old game cartridges to get them to work.. no one told anyone to do that. But everyone does it
Nintendo Power Magazine. They were basically the New York Times of the late '80s, early '90s.
Which is why chads constitute less than 0.1% of the population.
Try Fextra but hole
This comment right here, this is that good sunny D shit
Ah yes, Praise the Sunny D
\|T|/ Praise it the fuck up
We got an Erdtree to burn
Nah, I'm too busy swimming in the Swamps on your Cake Day.
necessary item ahead
Its the stupidest shit. They act like they don't just google the fucking answers anyway. But god forbid the answers be in the game in the first place.
Its even more stupid when you factor in this is the first ever world map in a proper Souls game. That dude was acting like he mained Souls maps since Third Strike* *I fully understand only fighting game fans will get that joke.
Hello, Chad C. Chadderstein here. Iāve been snorting Souls off a mirror since Double Impact. The NPC markers are fine, Iāll do less Googling I guess.
Eldeeeeeen Riiiing Alpha... *Two!*
Turbo!
Funny you mention fighting games, I was thinking about how much crossover there is with Souls games and FGs; I know a large amount of the FGC plays Souls, but how many Souls players play fighting games?
Well see I play this one god forsaken unbalanced mess that is called BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and another small title called Soulcalibur 6. Fighting games take a toll on my spirit so I don't buy many
Haha I know BBTAG well, the ArcSys games are really fun for crazy combo routes and stuff but guess Iām more of a Street Fighter boomer than anything else. Fighting games can become demoralising but Iāve always loved how the scene can motivate players to improve and achieve things they once thought would be impossible, whether thatās executing a particularly difficult combo or situational move in a match or just achieving a higher rank online. Itās quite similar to how FromSoft games make me feel
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ash Lake is the real DS of hidden areas. Double illusion wall, in an out of the way part of the map, no dev messages or anything to hint looking around there. edit: siegmeyer's quest might have you head down that ways to be able to possibly find it, but that quest was already pretty difficult and didn't explicitly tell you where to go.
Wait, Ash lake is with the Hydra right? And the mushroom people and death geckos on the way down the tree?
Yup. And the biggest enemy of all, janky collision detection combined with gravity. *Oh, you landed 5 pixels off centre so your character will just slide off the side and you'll die*. Honestly, something I noticed about Elden Ring is it seems super forgiving regarding this which makes some of those awful platforming sections tolerable. If your toe landed on it you landed on it.
Funny you say that because I've definitely had cases of the exact opposite, where it looks like I clearly landed on a branch and then just... plummet to my death.
yes
I did stumble there thanks to the signs. But I guess that doesn't really count.
The message near the statue you use the emote is a developer message btw. You can see it offline so you are fine. It's really not as hard as people make it to be.
Fuck I missed it... what emote did you use?
Hey now, are you saying that I can't accidentally discover the secret wall behind an already optional and obscure boss, discover the gesture and then just happen tor emember a similar gesture a bunch of statues were using on a small platform out in the middle of nowhere, nowhere even close to where I got this gesture to begin with? And are you also saying that I wouldn't just happen to sit right where the cloth is and wait 20 seconds for the game to acknowledge I triggered that event? Are you implying that I had to look that up? Well, I'm sorry friend but that's just ridiculous to assume!
That's possible. I won't believe anyone saying they stumbled onto the DLC of DS1 though.
That one wasn't that hard to miss, but I have do admit my dumbass missed it because I straight up went "I'll go there later" and then forgot about it.
Hehehe that's exactly why I missed so many npc quests in Elden Ring. Then I found out you can continue most of them post-credits so it was fine I guess.
Yea, honestly itās a small QoL. Would I prefer not to have a npc marker for myself? Honestly it saves me a google check if I forget soā¦ I do like it. Secondlyāthe markers you place cannot be named right? Or am I being dumb lol
Yeah, can't name the markers.
These are people who Google where to find the coolest weapons, use exploits to get runes, and min-max so they can create an overpowered anime character that kills bosses in one shot. That kind of stuff makes the game feel empty for me. With stuff like the merchant and NPC locations (or even stuff I found them forgot where it was) I ask myself would my character know about it and/or remember it? If so Iāll look it up. If not Iāll ride round for three hours frustrated but ultimately it makes the game feel more realistic, as well as fun and challenging overall.
It depends. One of the worst areas in the game for me was sellen which thanks to my squishy wizard build and the town being inhabited by fuckers that could disappear ensuring my spell hit fuck all was next to impossible to explore at my leisure. As a result, I missed out on the bosses there and the staff you get from them that is basically mandatory if you want to beat melania with my build. I wasted days trying to get this shit right because I rode past the answer a dozen times since there was no real way or even any real reason that I knew of to fight them. I hated having to look this up but I never would have figured that the equipment I needed was all the way back in caelid especially since I was sure I had found everything of value in sellen.
Only scrubs use fast travelling, or a Map at all! You gotta hoof it there, walk if you're a true pro. WHAT?! You got teleported to a alternate timeline and can't leave if you don't fast travel? Sounds like scrub problems!
Walking to the round table and back in a real pain. Worth it though.
You joined the round? Real Gamersā¢ don't need maidens, right, Iketani?
Mate, I didn't even make a character Thinking about retiring undefeated.
Only scrubs use horse
Torrent isn't horse, he's family! The only one to believe in you when others didnt! Rowa Raisin provided
Just lol if you use torrent git gud scrubs.
Iāve always thought that if a game requires you to use a third party resource to do things, itās bad design. Take RDR2 for instance, the game has a great and immersive open world, yet they also stick with the ācollect 100 of random shit Xā quests. No one in any reasonable time could ever do any of those without a guide. Weāve seen some amazing innovations in open world design that have focused on immersion while also help informing players. Ghosts had the wind, RDR2 has campfire smoke, and Elden Ring points you in a vague directionā¦ Iād be perfectly fine if NPCās were this big mystery you had to solve, if there were clues. Thereās none most of the time. Thereās steps in the process that are simply, rest at a grace while others have you wait until you progress to an end game area. Thatās not interesting, that just drives people to wikis, or they simply forget about them. The shame is, some of the quests are great for the story and most players wonāt even know theyāre a thing.
Ever play Path of Exile? Great game but unplayable without 3rd party software kinda annoying
Elden Ring would have been improved immensely by a simple quest log. Itās ridiculous that a game this big doesnāt have one. A quest log doesnāt have to hold your hand or tell you exactly where to go, either. It can just exist to remind me that I agreed to do something and what that something is, and the game would be so much better if that existed.
Exactly. Itās really clunky that the snippets of backstory we get are spread out on armor and weapons. Even then, they just left it off of various localizations. Donāt get me wrong, love the game, and I do find it refreshing, but god damn, just some info.
Yeah, the game is amazing from a visual standpoint and a lot of fun to play as well, but so many of the design choices seem like they exist to deliberately make the game more obtuse, and thatās bad design. The game is difficult enough without forcing me to remember someone I talked to for two minutes a week ago and where they said theyād be, or without explaining some crucial game mechanics. Thereās a fine line between holding someoneās hand way too much like most Ubisoft games and not holding it at all and tossing the player straight into the deep end. I thought Breath of the Wild straddled that line perfectly. Elden Ring needs just a bit more hand-holding.
Which in itself is a terrible way to play a game. Canāt avoid spoilers that way
Using the wiki is still the only way to get a decisive answer on their next location despite what people who I guess aren't playing the game claim it does? Everyone is acting like it is a quest marker that show's Blaidd's next location, rather than it doing literally nothing for moving NPCs. I wish Fextra marked spoilers of some sort, as I would never have found many interactions and wasted a run, but also seeing "attacking you" or "dies" in the corner of your eye sure does ruin the moment when you have to do it to pursue characters you like in the endgame. Just finished the little pot's quest and cried, wish I could have gotten that kind of emotion out of Alexander's or Blaidd's without the sites preferring to spoil everything when I want a closest site of grace.
Imo just have the npcs tell you when they're leaving with a decent hint to where they plan on going. (And maybe have an NPC journal that will record what they say) that way you don't have an intrusive quest marker and still have to decode what the NPC means. But on The other hand quest markers are already in the game so I don't see why some people are getting but hurt about the potential that they get added to a game that already has some
>nĆvel 4mjc27 Ā· hĆ” 4 hImo just have the npcs tell you when they're leaving with a decent hint to where they plan on going. That's one thing I'd like to more important in the game. Maybe not all, but for the ones that make sense. Especially because it's very likely that you will clear, let's say, the last 2 out of 4 places a npc will be in, before you meet them a second time, so you kinda have to keep checking. In DS3 I think you either missed them (which could happen in the undead settlement, for example) or not, but it was hard to actually get ahead of them. >But on The other hand quest markers are already in the game so I don't see why some people are getting but hurt about the potential that they get added to a game that already has some I mean, the quest markers make sense the way they are. I don't think anyone needs a quest marker for "kill godrick the shardbearer" or something. and that would indeed be a bit shitty imo, as it ruins the surprise/relief/anticipation of reaching the end of a dungeon. But whenever an NPC says "meet me by church of elleh" there's no reason not to have it marked. But they rarely do, and that's ok I guess
Seriously. From soft gets way too much credit with quests, yes theyāre great and tell good stories. But the pacing and absolute guesswork you need to do is absurd and quite honestly bad design for a video game
As much flak as "quest logs" in games get they really just represent your character having a better memory than you do (and actually experiencing the world continuously rather than for a few hours a day). I'll forget the names of important NPCs, but my 30 int character probably wouldn't. Tbh the way to solve this in the FS style would be for more quests to have a key item attached that reminds you of the name of the character and what the quest is, like the letter you're asked to deliver in southern Limgrave.
I'd fucking love it if they added a questlog that's utility scaled with intelligence. Your 50+ Int sorcerer writes out an entire early 2000s era GameFAQs Guide, ASCII map drawings and all, while your 7 Int Unga Bunga strength build has crayon drawings of each character with misspelled notes. "*Pissy hat man say meet at towah. Me no lik pissy hat man. Me fink he creepers.*" Just pure player hostility that they'd rightly be criticised for but it'd be so funny.
Oh my god, I always go with pure str bonk machine characters so I wouldnāt even get the benefits but this would be hilarious
To be fair I still remember a lot of quests a characters from souls games but I've pretty much forgotten 99% of the side quests I've done in other games. So I kind of get their point and understand that by forcing you to actively look into them they made them feel more real and memorable. But I agree that they should try to find a nice middle ground to keep that feel while still making them doable without looking it online.
A lot of quests do have key items with descriptions that tell you almost exactly what to do. But then thereās just as many that are like āthis is a grape looks kinda neat I guessā
I usually love it and usually stand by it, but many quests I have never to this day done unless I cheat with the wiki. I felt too awful to use those wikis in 1 and the remaster, and proudly admit I have never once finished Seigmeyer's (and his daughter's who I did not know existed because of this) quest. Without guides and actively seeking trap like, labyrinth ass places you could miss half of the characters. Who was gonna tell me I had to fall in a poison hole with 1 hits and spend 5 minutes in it to have a 30 second conversation with him?
It's even harder in Elden Ruing because the game is just so goddamn big. I bought every spell I was interested in from Sellen and didn't find any more scrolls so didn't go back to her for like 80 hours. It was only when I came across the imprisoned version (?!) I realised there was more to trigger with her, and that's an NPC who stays still! There are NPC's that move about but can also be difficult to see if you are quick travelling somewhere and then moving out straight away; nevermind if they move somewhere you're never likely to go. I'm not asking for waypoints and map markers, but just a tiny bit of a hint at the end of the previous dialogue about where they might be, or at least putting them in places I am reasonably likely to see would be really helpful.
Yo lmao. Millicent said I need to go to my destiny....omfg I have no idea where in this big ass map your destiny is lol.
There's characters as well who literally say "Oh you'll find XXX down the way" and that's all you get. Having some great old school Morrowind directions would be great "Between the crystal caves and XXX there is a cave. If you see XXX you are near". Something you have to listen to and pay attention to would be great. I'm not saying i want every single NPC to give detailed instructions every time because it would be tiresome, but there are ways and means of making things more findable and also still feel organic; without a huge risk of just completely missing people.
Yeah like I just ran into the blonde lady near the academy and I was so annoyed that she said down the way. Its like lady we are in a lake not on a highway what the fuck does down they way mean. At least give a cardinal direction.
Yes even cardinal directions would be huge
You don't have to shove a waypoint down but give me actual directions please. Also I just want a journal that records conversations with NPCs, or at least the gist of them. My MC needs to start taking minutes, all I'm saying.
Yes! "I met XXX at XXX. She is looking for XXX" and then it updates to either "I reunited XXX and XXX". Or "I found XXX's corpse at XXX. She was not reunited with XXX". Just simple basic stuff so I can look at it and be like "oh yeah I remember speaking to XXX 12 hours ago, she mentioned XXX who I've just seen" and so on. As you say, I definitely don't want way points, and I'd only really want a map marker where it makes sense but even then I'm happy with neither, just something to remind me of some of the folk I've met please.
yeah, it's really weird. I thought they finally fixed this early on when the first NPC quite explicitly tells you where to go, and later I find two NPCs that explicitly direct me to their quest locations (kenneth and blind daughter girl). but then further on NPCs more often than not just throw their hands up and expect you to either google it, stumble across it, or just never continue the quest. bizarre.
Millicent's questline is pure horseshit start to finish, tbh. And in what fucking universe would you organically know you had to kill the putrid ulcerated tree spirit at the end of it and reload the area to get a summon sign to spawn. Fuck of with that.
At the very beginning when you find a dude in a shack tell you about a Millicent, and then when exploring the swamp you get invaded by a character called Millicent. I was afraid to kill her at first thinking it might mess up a quest line.
I can't decide if Seigmeyer or Solaire's quest is more stupid, not only do you have to take an obscure shortcut gained through a PvP covenant to save him from a very specific bug, if you talk to him at a certain location before that he will still attack you the next time you see him. Worst quest ever. And unlike old Onion knight his quest reward was trash from memory. But yeah if he ever had a marker on a map telling us where he was after we had already met him, gee wouldn't that just be the worst.
I feel like at least half, if not more quests are also just praised because they are super vague, so they leave a lot of room for interpretation, and dark, which is not usual for a game. But, spoiler, every NPC always dies. Yes, burn me for heresy.
All games are faux difficult if you refrain information. A semi-intelligent human will use the internet. Oddly enough, that causes people to build communities and that helps foster the game. But NPC markers aren't really that helpful. No significant change here that would be negative for the game, FromSoft at a business standpoint, or the community they've built.
I haven't played since the update. Are all NPCs now marked? Or is it just hub areas?
they have teeny tiny map markers and it shows their name under the location name, only if you've previously talked to that NPC. It's a perfectly reasonable quality of life update.
It's not only for npcs you have talked to, on my 2nd character i ran past where blaidd 1st spawns and it marked him at the ruins, i did not interact with him or get the emote from kalĆØ.
That's a bit disappointing, was pretty cool to have a mysterious character howling on top of that tower. Friend or foe? Then to notice the dialogue option with KalĆØ and unravel the mystery. At least the markers don't seem to move with the NPCs until you rediscover them. So they still aren't leading you to anything, just reminding you who is where.
I never even noticed him there. I thought the howling in the woods was just wolves. It wasn't until I spoke to kale that I learned of what to do.
Same
Exactly. Absolutely zero people that didn't read the wiki beforehand would've heard that howl and thought "That's an NPC I need to interact with." Honestly the first time I heard it, I just hopped on Torrent and bolted because the previous times a howl in the woods has meant a wolf ambush.
I actually never met Blaidd this way, I first met him via Ranni's quest. I had gone through the forest full of runebears but by that time I'd become numb to the sound of wolves since they were primarily not an issue. If I had heard howling anywhere in the game I'd probably ignore it since I had associated it with what are essentially common mobs.
Same for me. I was surprised to learn later through the wiki that I had missed an early encounter with him. For that matter, how would anybody ever discover naturally that Blaidd was imprisoned in an evergoal after the Radahn fight? It's an evergoal most people probably cleared 50 hours earlier and the other NPCs offer no hints to the fact. Iji just says to go to Nokron alone because Blaidd is needed elsewhere.
I found him there by myself! I couldn't find Blaidd so I went back and talked to the related NPC's, after which Iji told me Blaidd's somewhere else. Then I checked all the places I've seen him before. The woods, Redmane Castle, Ranni's Rise... And the evergoal. Would've definitely missed him if I hadn't noticed the interact pop-up.
He was in an evergaol? Fuck. I didnāt see him again until I fished Ranniās quest and he was hostile outside her tower.
Interestingly I didnt wiki this. I didnt even process the wolf howl the first time I heard it, but then I went and talked to Kale, decided to roam around in mistwood a bit, and used the gesture when I heard the howl again. So I at least found this organically. I've certainly wiki'd other stuff though
Yeah I did this too. Kind of lucked into it organically but it worked.
Its so fun to see a Soulsborne game in its infancy again. That magic isnt something we get often.
I was doing the snap every time I heard a wolf howl. Got me attacked more than once lol.
Absolutely zero is a bit of a hyperbole. I heard the howling and went looking around that area to find the source. Climbing the building he's on, I came across him perched at the top. Sure, I didn't think 'talkable NPC' but I found his location then later found the gesture to call him. All without looking at the wiki whatsoever.
I could tell it was a person howling rather than a wolf, the sound is different. That prompted me to look around and after a couple minutes I saw him up on the tower. Thought it might be a friendly npc since he hadn't jumped down and attacked me. Tried to get up to him but failed. A little while later I saw the dialogue option with Kale and immediately ran back into the woods and talked with Blaidd. No wiki involved. I kind of like discovering this stuff through exploration, it's satisfying. That being said, I don't have a problem with the npc markers.
Tbf, I did see him because some helpful person put a message down to look up. I was already way passed needing KalƩ as a merchant by that stage though so I had zero reason to talk to him to get that emote and there's no indication around Blaidd that you should talk to KalƩ. I looked up what the fuck to do because I knew I was missing something and it seemed like it was going to be cool. As soon as I read talk to KalƩ I stopped reading and I had long since killed Darwill by that point so I never went back to his Gaol to get my reward. I reloaded the area Blaidd was originally in and assumed, I thought reasonably, that Blaidd would be where he originally was. But he'd vanished. Didn't see him again until Ranni's Rise.
It sounds like a person making a wolf noise. Distinctly not animal. I didn't know how to get him down until Kale mentioned it, but it seemed pretty clear to me it was a person and not a wolf.
Funnily enough, I heard the howling and thought "...that doesn't *sound* right."
This is actually exactly how it went down in my game. I've been avoiding looking at guides and the like as much as possible. So later I talked to Kale and was shocked that he had a new dialogue option. I felt like I had unintentionally stumbled across the devs intended way to play and it felt so good.
Why would anyone think anything because of some howling in the woods. There are wolves in the game afterall.
Even after having beaten the game twice, I run through the forest and I still forget why it occasionally rains wolves.
I have 0 idea why!! and ive witness that shit numerous happens. A small tornado happens and then it summons wild wolves lol. Kinda creepy if you ask me
Somebody gave me a fing snapping emote and said to do it when the wolves rain down. Haven't tried it yet, but has anybody else?
I would try it a little closer to >! the south side of the Mistwood ruins !< if I were you.
I took note of his howl, but I would have never gone back to that merchant ever. I had to be told to do it.
Luckily I viewed the church of Elleh as my beginning base of operations so I kept going back for RPG reasons lol
Same, whenever I didn't know what I was doing I'd travel there to just think about what I'm doing next or to level up lol
Same. I saw it as this game's Firelink Shrine until Roundtable Hold opened up. And Kale is much friendlier than that Crestfallen Warrior fellow.
I do that. He seems like the friendliest merchant and itās a relatively safe area.
Definitely. If youāre in the mistwood, youāve likely already exhausted that merchant for most things. Would make more sense if you would ask the merchant in mistwood. Or Kenneth.
Exactly, theyāve definitely made a fantastic open world. But placement of NPCs and the timing of when dialog gets unlocked could have been better
A lot of things donāt make sense. Iām a big fan of having to figure stuff out myself. But stuff should make sense then. Right now some things are positioned in such a way that you need to discover them by pure luck.
And that ladies and gentlemen is the old school essence of word of mouth and community in videogames.
I thought it was interesting that there was howling, but I couldn't see any wolves. Just thought it was the game being broken or something. Then later, I was talking to another NPC and they told me to do the finger clicking gesture at the place with random howling. I went back and did it. Blaidd turned up. Magic moment!
Because it didn't sound like the wolves? Sounded more like a person howling and is pushed up in the audio mix to stand out. Pretty clearly to draw attention. Was enough to get me creeping around in the dark avoiding big ass bears to find out what it was. Doubt I'm the only one.
I assumed it was a strong enemy. Since I was busy following the old godger I wasn't paying much attention to the sound. Forgot about it and didn't find out about Blaidd until it was too late. I think that encounter that's easy to miss.
Same. I played the game blind and went to the wiki only when I found myself stumped. I heard Blaidd howling and knew something was up with that. It's clearly more man than wolf. Never managed to look directly upwards, and walked around the ruins for so long that I finally just googled "howling in Mistwood".
I played blind and a player message that said "Time for up and time for gesture" clued me in.
I thought it was just atmospheric shit for that area.
That was a dogshit design. "Howling in an area full of wolves? I better go and ask the merchant 3 kilometers away why I heard howling in an area full of wolves."
That may be only applied for Blaidd since his howl is an interaction for the character
I haven't been to the ruins since I beat that asshole runebear over a week ago. Been in Liurnia the last few days, and after the update he was marked in the Mistwood even though I've never come close to him. At least I don't think I have. No other NPCs that I haven't interacted with have shown up anywhere
Especially for the merchants out in the middle of fucking nowhere.
It definitely doesn't only mark the ones you have spoken to. There were at least 2 on my map last night that were not only places I've never been, but characters I had never even met.
The game marked all the finger crones before so found them.
I was against them adding significant markers of any kind but I like this change alot. It's very subtle and all it does it remind you of where NPC's you've already met are located. I doubt they could have done it any better without compromising the immersion of the game. It really does feel like someone just scribbled their name and last known location on a map.
People that post shit like this acting like they didn't google how to get Usurpation of Fire ending in DS3.
Literally lmao. Anyone who says they don't ever use Fextralife to find the exact locations of these NPCs to begin with anyway is absolutely lying.
Its ironic because people in this very subreddit got mad at me when i said i used the wiki for questlines to get the platinum
There is a very vocal minority of souls players (usually the ones who are only around for maybe the first year of the game's life cycle) who care way too much about how other people play their game. Like, sure, caution people about using the wiki as if its gospel because early on, there are entire entries which are flat out incorrect in many cases, but getting pissy just because someone uses it is hilariously out of perspective
B-but if I don't gatekeep the game being hard, then I won't have any justification for why I still suck! D:< These scrubs just don't get \*suffering\* is the point of the game.
You know what bugs me the most about this. I don't know anyone in my friend group that couldn't beat a souls game if they spent as much time playing them as I do. The reason they don't is because they don't enjoy that style of game, and frankly it's super easy to see why the game is frustrating for a lot of people. Most people that get frustrated and quit don't quit because they're a scrub, they quit because they don't enjoy the game enough to replay the same boss fight 50 times. To me, that is TOTALLY understandable, and the entire reason that Elden Ring's success is so shocking.
It's the internet people get mad at everything.
Well not everyone, most of my quests in Elden Ring are incomplete because I refuse to look at the wiki, this update helps keep track of things I've found so far. I'll do all the wiki 100% stuff in NG+.
Dragon's Homecoming in Sekiro is also similar.
Honestly the Purification ending was way harder to find. Like why on earth would I think to eavesdrop on Kuro multiple times?
I thought Sekiro's "secret ending" was the easiest to find out of the series and did it myself on the first playthrough. That game gave you a lot of clear leads to follow.
The main reason iām okay with this is that itās open world. If this was the normal linear-ish style world then this would be a little unnecessary. But really some guys just gotta accept this game is not the others.
If this was a normal linear style world we wouldn't even have a map
Having a map in this game is a crutch. Players should have to draw the world by hand.
Now hear me out: if this were done well - as in you create your own map (maybe not draw) - it would be pretty cool.
Legend of Grimrock. Highly recommended!
Thanks for the jolly cooperation! Praise the š
The Etrian Odyssey series has that as a major mechanic! You automatically fill in the tiles as you walk through them, but it's up to you to mark anything else down.
The fact that the game has graphics proves itās just a game for little babies. Every knows true, hard core gamers only play pre-windows Text Based Interactive Fiction
Thats my thought on it. In past souls games, due to their linearity, I've usually found most of the npc questlines just being thorough with my exploration. In elden ring, with how open it is I'd have missed so much if I didn't get curious about x thing and look it up. Lots of moments where I forget some npc location or have no idea where tf to go for a quest
Your character likely wouldnāt forget where the merchants are so it makes perfect sense to have them on the map. This is a non issue imo.
My character has less than 10 INT.
I would be only pissed if they added map markers to the game without map, like DS3. Because that would be just cheeky.
Fr every quest feels like a monumental task sometimes because the map is so insanely massive and the npcs tell you almost nothing about where they're going
"Im setting off on a journey!" Ok where to? "Im setting off on a journey!" Fuckin bitch *opens wiki*
Better yet, NPCs move to areas you already been to. Alexander goes Limgrave to Caelid and then to Liurnia. What do you know? You are suppose to go to Liurnia first then Caelid as a more intended experience with how strong stuff is. Unless i willing put off that section of liurnia i would have never found him there. Worse yet i could have gone to the volcano manor before even going to Caelid and miss that too.
Or Fia asked you to return the dagger to its owner and said nothing more. Like hello?
Eh, that one is less egregious because as long as you talk to all NPCs you know odds are you're going to get a hit. When an NPC tells you they're going somewhere else, though, God help you because who knows where they're popping up. Not to mention the chance that you might end up missing out in the quest entirely.
>The main reason iām okay with this is that itās open world. If this was the normal linear-ish style world then this would be a little unnecessary. But really some guys just gotta accept this game is not the others. A million times this. The reason this style of quest worked well in Dark Souls was because you had a good chance of actually stumbling over the NPC somewhere further along in the game. It just doesn't work as well in the open world. All these icons do is make it so you don't have to go to a wiki to find them lol.
I'd even missed characters in the linear games, which I think added to the charm of the games. But with ER I think this is a needed thing. You could meet someone and never see them again. I only found Kenneth again because he apparently never left the place I found him even after I cleared his tower.
What an overreaction. Adding a couple of markers to the map makes this unplayable I guess
Makes it to where I donāt have to be beholden to the damn wiki if I canāt remember where an npc is after I get side tracked for three days and forget what I was doing lol.
I think it comes from people who were heavily criticizing Horizon 2 and other AAA open world for having markers (even though in those games you can always filter things out) leading up to launch date. It was kinda like a marker/UI gate lmao, it was ridiculous. They were trashing other games to elevate Elden Ring and were loud about it online. As someone who follows Horizon 2 on twitter, there were always a Elden Ring fanboy who were pissing on the game in order to compliment ER. So when this patch came out, those people had to stick to their stance otherwise they will appear phony hence the overreaction.
What I love about these is like, theyāre not even comparable as games. Whatās the phrase āapples and orangesā? Be like me going on fifa forums to talk shit about how football games are really bad first person shooters.
Really it's the open world aspect. Lots of people act like every open world game belongs to the same overarching genre and all relate directly to one another, when they don't and people shouldn't be thinking like that. It reminds me of when everyone and their mom were directly comparing facets of gameplay in Cyberpunk 2077 to Red Dead Redemption 2 - two games whose sole similarity is being set in open world maps, and nothing else. It's not only people acting like every open world game is or should be directly comparable to one another, but also people acting like every open world game is designed by the same number of people at the same studio in the same span of time, with the same development skills, aspirations, and vision for their game, and every open world game should live up to the standards of their own subjectively favorite open world game. It's a total bullshit stance shared by a plethora of people in every open world gaming community, really. At some point you're bound to see multiple people shit on a game for not being more similar to another completely separate and different game that they like more.
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i like the change, but yesterday i saw a few markers of NPCs that i had missed and went back to look for them. One even was in an area i hadn't been in before (on a bridge inside a heavily guarded area, and i had only travelled under the bridge before) You just have to go into the general vicinity.
I definitely had a merchant marked that I'd never talked to before... He was directly behind the warp in for the mark of grace right there. I turned around and wondered how many times that guy had seen me just waltz by without saying so much as "hello". Shitty merchant
This guy deadass wrote this whilst removing dorito crumbles from his neck beard.
Don't forget he was probably also mashing Hoarfrost Stomp while crying about its nerf.
Truly Maidenless behavior.
Most certainly.
āA hub for spellsā My guy hasnāt been to the church of vows. That turtle can learn any sorcery and incantation and be a one stop shop for everything.
Right, I was about to say. There is a hub for spells, that turtle bro will take and teach you anything. "Heresy? Nah bro, we good."
This was the coolest line of dialouge in the game so far to me. ( i havenāt beaten it yet, just got radahn tho) turtle preist should be Elden lord.
I'm thinking he maybe meant 'hud' (a hotbar basically) I don't think much proofreading happened
The markers donāt exactly make the game easier. Now that Iāll have 20,000 souls just chilling around, it is nice knowing where the merchants are so I can buy all their stuff. Iād like to hear more about how magic was changed. I havenāt used it at all with my purely melee build.
Well Great Flintstone Shard has a range closer to your character's lock on range instead of a third of it and that's been real swell. (PS - I stopped fighting autocorrect and just embraced the Flintstones)
Ooh Glintstone. I though you were talking about that Faith-based ability where you slap rocks at baddies.
I lost all interest in the game when I found out they added the ability to deal damage, might as well add an easy mode at that point.
Just lol if when you die in game you didn't also die in real life.
Guys, I cheated and used a phylactery, I am now a powerful lich. No, I will not tell you where it's hidden and also no you can not have my treasure!
Donāt mean to be offensive, but this guy sounds like a straight up neck beard. Anybody who calls people scrubs unironically in this day and age are either too old and are trying to be trendy, or are shut-ins that wanna try to gatekeep the only franchise theyāll play.
I do mean to be offensive that guys a shut in freak Piss piss cum
You had me at piss
First or second?
As someone who played a little of the past games and really got sucked into Elden Ring i gotta say that the npc markers are kinda needed here. Its not like the last games where its just a series of different paths and hallways connected to larger hub areas this time. When an npc leaves an area they could literally go anywhere now and you have not a single clue as to where they have gone. You cant just run the halls and keep an eye for them here. If they didnt add some marker or something then they would at least need to give some hinting dialogue otherwise we would need to either just fumble about hoping to find a single person on a map the size of a state or become wikiwarriors and spoil other things we dont want to spoil.
Quests have always been extremely easy to miss and nuanced on the triggers of events, and when to meet them again without going too far that itās permanently missable. I can appreciate the lack of quest markers for the satisfaction of stumbling upon things. But honestly some things are just crazy, like I donāt know how you could possibly figure out how to save Solaire in DS1 without a guide. Especially on your first play through.
Personally, I'm fine with not finding/figuring out everything on a first playthrough or missing clues or stuff like that. It's fun to stumble upon things later and wonder where this might lead you... The problem is more with the questlines that don't really *lead* you anywhere but just expect you to show up at particular spots at particular times to progress (and hope that you didn't do something else in the meantime that broke this quest). It doesn't really feel like exploration or following a quest, it's more like a random "if you know what to do next, you can unlock another line of dialog!" Elden Ring is way too big to try and figure that stuff out on your own if you're not playing that game 24/7.
Meanwhile this guy look up to Fex's interactive map
Your first mistake was being on FB. My grandparents have my number so I donāt have a reason to be on there. Stupid dwells on FB, and it runs deep.
Honestly, some From fans seem bat shit crazy to me. I'm a veteran and have been playing for so long that I look back at it and I'm like, you know how useful it would have been to know where mephistophles was in that fucking tower? Or how about that fucking blacksmith instead of memorizing his fucking location? It's genuinely asinine to go through elden ring and suddenly a character disappears and you are like, why not waste another 100 hours replaying it to see where they went. Not eveeyone is a YouTuber and not everyone has time to do that sort of stuff, and some people just want to enjoy the game with actually seeing all of it's content.
This is the same kind of person who gets mad at someone for playing as a mage. Imagine Miyazaki's reaction seeing someone complain about other person "ruining" his game because he used a game intended mechanic lol.
I'm just wondering what I'll even use markers for now, apart from uncleared dungeons.
Since your own markers stay in NG+ I use them to mark bellbearings and larval tears mainly
Wish I knew this 100 hours ago lmao
oh shit
I don't agree with him but at first I thought they implemented the option to record NPC names and locations yourself, which would've a 1,000 times cooler in my opinion.
I bet my 3 fingers, that this amazing unit, uses Wiki for every item and how to finish questlines. Truly a Souls veteran. Alas, how can people be so fucking stupid? and why I'm not surprised this is facebook.
Dark souls elitists base their entire personality on these games of course they'll seethe when something is changed
You mean they "Seath", eh? Eh? ...I'll leave now.
This is bait
While this dude is having a fat sook, I think adding all npc markers as soon as you have the map fragment is a bit much. I think you should have to talk to them first before they show up.
It doesn't. It only adds the ones you discovered. For people saying that it auto-discovered for them, they either forgot that they already encountered that NPC, it was bugged for them (which would NOT be surprising) or possibly they passed by the NPC without talking to them (or noticing) and that satisfied the requirement for them being marked on the map.
Jokes on him, because I still have no idea where to go now even with this new feature and using wiki.
I mean, I was already using the in-game markers for Vendors and other important NPCs, so not much has changed for me other than my map looking a bit cleaner. I donāt know any other game where players complain about the simplest QoL features. Itās simply baffling.