It actually is just another open-world action game with crafting elements, they may have been rare once but now they’re a dime a dozen.

Just pirate anything Sony puts out. This shit makes it clear that it’s not worth giving them a single dollar. And if we’re being really honest, all their games are super generic and very mid, you can just ignore them as a developer completely and you won’t miss out on anything.

Their methodology also seems a little fucked, reads like this was a survey they offered to gamers. There’s likely a lot of self-selection bias to the responses.

That’s sorta the lede being buried here. This shows that people who would self-identify as gamers prefer single-player games. Gamers aren’t the target audience for AAA devs though, they want to make more money than God by targeting the entire population of Earth, and a lot of people who would not categorize themself as a gamer seem to prefer being able to play simple online games with their friends.

At this point, I’m mostly just impressed it hasn’t been taken to a farm upstate to play with Concord and Babylon’s Fall

It’s a shame that I’m a quivering pussy, because I think the combat against the replicants in FEAR fucking rules. The shooting feels awesome, slow-mo karate is awesome, the game feels awesome to play.

…and then the game goes quiet after the shooting stops, and it delivers some of the spookiest atmosphere I’ve experienced even after two decades of age. A single light fixture moves suddenly, showing the shadow of something just behind me, and I jump out of my skin and have to take a break from playing.

I think the record still goes to Amazon’s Crucible, which was cancelled before release after a closed-beta that nobody played.

Really, really hoping this game does well for the team. I’m also hoping it has a smooth launch, because this is a game I’ll be supporting day one.

This just seems still bad? I mean if you really love your Magnus, now you have two of them, but you’re gaining such a tiny amount of fire rate, and it’s still a semi-auto so the fire rate isn’t even necessarily worth that much.

The problem is that to argue this point, you have to start going through all of the facts like case conversion rates, the domestic abuse rates, the rates of racist attacks by law enforcement, and the membership overlap between law enforcement and white supremacist groups. Once you start bringing up that many numbers, the idiots get confused and their eyes roll out of their skull, whereas the centrists get too scared realizing that basically no cop is actually trying to keep the U.S. safe and try to shutdown the conversation.

Yeah, this sounds more like a win for handheld PCs than some sudden shift across gamers. The Steam Deck has done well enough to spawn a sea of copycats, it’s not surprising that it’s making a statistical impact now too.

The problem isn’t just his acquisition, it’s that he sucks. His passive is a worse adaptation that doesn’t even work if you want to use the real Adaptation. His AI companions have the same braindead AI that enemies have, making them worthless. His slam is basically a worse version of the ability you get rid of on Rhino.

I think the combo of Razor Gyre dealing slash and Fusion Strike technically being a strip is all he offers right now, and that’s not very much. He needs a full Pablo rework before he’ll start seeing play.

Then why did you throw him out?

This is a pretty great idea. Man, imagine how awesome it would be to roll extra Eximus on it! That would actually make me run the Sortie.

It’s pretty fun, but I wonder what will make me return to it after the clan event ends. I managed to naturally drop all the blueprints I needed, so now I’m just stacking up the Arcanes. Once I have everything, it feels pretty unlikely I’d return. The “overwhelming Eximus” at the top were nerfed, so it’s not a good Affinity farm. The mission itself is pretty long, so even if it gets added as an Omnia fissure, I’m probably not going to choose it for relic cracking. It feels like another Tyvar Pass, where even though I really like the gameplay, I’m just never going to come back after running it 150-200 times.

Spoken like someone who hasn’t touched the game.

The single biggest issue is that the high difficulty is the only thing that actually pushes you to explore the world. If you were able to just kill every boss right away, 50% of the Elden Ring’s content becomes immediately pointless busywork. It already is, but that busywork offers small, incremental rewards that allow you to last a little bit longer, or learn a little bit more about a boss’ moveset. The intended gameplay experience is to run into a brick wall, explore and discover new options and opportunities, and then returning to break the brick wall. For experienced players on their second or third playthrough, you can basically strip out the open world entirely after an initial 2-3 hours of running around to grab what you want.

I’d also like to point out that 90% of the difficulty of bosses has nothing to do with their health or how much damage they do. FromSoftware has really pushed the envelope on boss design and AI, to the point where many of the hardest bosses are difficult because of their moveset. You can especially see this in the DLC, where you’re able to collect Scadutree Fragments to increase your damage and health, but players still have difficulty with many bosses even after maxing them out. Dealing 3x more damage doesn’t mean anything if you can never get a hit in, and taking 3x less damage won’t save you from a fatal grab. You can make an argument for difficulty levels toning down boss AI and making them less aggressive, but I’ll make a different one.

If a player doesn’t want to engage in difficult boss fights, and doesn’t want to be forced to learn combat encounters, they probably don’t want to play Elden Ring. There’s a lot of people who didn’t actually want to play Elden Ring in that 20 million. Only about 27% ended up completing the game. FromSoftware is still making niche games for a niche audience, but now they’re known for their exceptionally high pedigree, which causes people to feel FOMO. It’s okay to not want to play Elden Ring, but no amount of handicap is going to change that feeling for players.

The difficulty is tied to the story and the gameplay though. A lot of things start to break down if the Tarnished is able to travel through the Lands Between unfettered. Should a successful developer who develops niche games for a niche audience be forced to capitulate to the demands of players outside of their niche just because they have a fear of missing out?

Yeah, it’s a bit of a let-down when you compare what’s on offer here with a previous Larian title like Divinity 2. That game lets you make full on campaigns.

At the very least, FromSoftware continues to prove that level scaling is not a requirement. I honestly think that without their influence, we would have seen a lot more adoption of the practice. It’s the kinda brain-dead idea that comes from an MBA who’s sole focus is reaching the widest audience possible .

Yeah, that’s fair. I guess I’m hopeful that things have changed after Microsoft bought them, but they probably still suck.