Casuals vs Hardcores (warning: long-ish) · 1:38am Last Sunday
Haven't played a whole lot of Shadow of the Erdtree this evening, because honestly, the raging discourse between the casual and hardcore camps of the Elden Ring playerbase has been far more entertaining over the past 24 hours.
So how to keep this succinct?
Over the past day, the Steam score of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree has dipped from a 'Mostly Positive' score of 73% down to a decidedly "Mixed" score of 60%.
Earlier today I would have bet money that it would dip down into the 50's, but it has since inched back up to 62% as of this writing.
Negative reviews on Steam either reference PC technical issues (such as stuttering or frame drops), or frustrating boss mechanics, which I vented a bit about last night.
But alas, these user scores are far and away from the 9/10 and 10/10 scores that gaming journalist sites couldn't stop gushing about a few days before release, and in the wake of the falling player reviews on Steam, fierce debate has been raging on both Steam and the Elden Ring subreddit.
Casuals and semi-casuals feel that the boss battles of Erdtree are overtuned and cross into unfair territory too frequently. Hardcore players maintain that Souls game DLCs have always been considerably harder than their base games.
I think both sides have their fair points; the casual side, where Elden Ring is their first Souls game (raises hand) have had over two years to get good at the game, and now the DLC is kicking their asses again just like it was in the beginning, perhaps memories they aren't fond of.
Unlike the hardcores, who are either speeding through the DLC, or are relishing in the fact that the elite enemies and boss fights are beating them to a pulp into next Tuesday. Sadly, the hardcore debate devolves into "git gud" all too frequently. It would be simply poetic if every time that "git gud" was said or posted, a hardcore Souls player got their PC or console set on fire.
Personally, I think the answer lies somewhere in-between. The Golden Hippopotamus boss last night was the only fight to really piss me off; other than that, I haven't really been having a whole lot of trouble, other than exploration becoming a bit of a chore; it's not really as simple as going from A to B with the verticality of this new map. But I do understand where the casuals are coming from: most boss fights in the base game had me going, "hell yeah, what's next?" when I finally beat them. Defeating Malenia for the first time was one of my biggest dopamine hits of 2023.
But for the three bosses I've fought so far? Two of them have made me go: "well, thank fuck that's over. Is the rest of this expansion going to be worse?"
So far, yeah, it has been, strictly in terms of boss battles. And long before I made the decision to dive into Elden Ring in December 2022, I had long considered the hardcore Souls crowd to be some of the most insufferable, toxic twat-waffles online, perhaps second only to those worthless sweatlords in League of Legends.
But I do think the undeniable fact is this:
Elden Ring is the best-selling, most accessible Souls game thus far; over 25 million people have played it, and the gateway into this DLC is after a boss that 60% of players, the majority of players, have not found, fought, or beaten.
So Fromsoft, if you made Elden Ring your most approachable Souls game yet, then you make your DLC cater largely to your hardcore crowd, it's not terribly surprising that there would be some backlash after a middle finger like this to the casual audience that you have attracted.
PC casuals with a little bit of know-how have it easy; mods. Once they're updated, we can tweak and fine-tune our experience to our liking. I honestly feel sorry for the console players who have been blind-sided.
So what do you all think?
To FromSoft's credit: they straight-up warned players about them needing to kill that specific boss to get into the DLC prior the game's release. They don't normally do that.
Still, it doesn't help that many of the players went into the DLC with NG+ builds, since the DLC's scaling meant that they were walking into a nightmare boss run.
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NG+ scaling can be tricky.
For me, NG+1 was mostly easier because I had upgraded gear AND getting duplicates the second time around.
I just wish they would let us select which scaling we want.
Idk man I'm having absolute blast with this one I frigen love how convoluted the map is with so many little corners to crawl into and find things. Will it get old the second play through? Oh it absolutely will.
I have been playing coop all day in every place posable and we have found so much stuff before even going across the big bridge. Only gripe so far is I wish they used the layers feature on the map there's graces next to each other on vastly different levels. And there are so many bosses so far that I have run into that have been fair. So far the only real problems have been the hippo and the 2 castle bosses.
Only gripe I have with the bosses so far is the sheer amount of grab attacks they do like good god quit chewing on me. I found the hippo thing in the world and god daym I was in its mouth more than on the ground.
I don't believe that 60% metric at all. You forget there's people that fired up the game for 5 min and never touched it afterwords. Look at all the games that have "do a simple starter thing" achievement that only 70% of players have done.
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I believe that 60% metric came from From themselves.
And I think the universe is pranking me somehow.
I beat Messmer this morning.
On my second. Fucking. Try.
My panic rolls were perfectly timed, that's the only reason I got lucky.
Yeah, locking the DLC behind one of the base games 3 superbosses is definitely the biggest roadblock they ever made before. At least they were honest about that from the beginning. Plus, I feel the 40$ price tag alone would scare off a decent chunk of the more casual crowd.