Can games be TOO hard? - Shadow of the Erdtree 

I think after people get used to the Scadutree Fragment system, the reception towards the DLC will warm up and it'll overall beat the "too hard" allegations. Because once you're past Scadutree level 1, the progression of difficulty is comparable to the rest of the game.

The point of the fixed difficulty is that it allows you to be able to beat something difficult. In most games with difficulty sliders I end up choosing the easy option because it allows me to do so but in Eldin Ring since I can't do that I was actually able to beat the game at the intended difficulty. Adding and easy mode makes the game less accessible because most people including my self would not have the willpower to access the game. You used the quote "a game for everybody is a game for nobody" and that holds true here. Having the opportunity to play a difficult game without the option of playing it on easy mode is a feature in itself that a few games at least need to have. I would be sad If I was not given the chance to challenge myself anymore. The channel Ratatoskr made a video on this view of the difficulty discussion which was really good.

It really depends. If you have no issue using summons , the game difficulty is just about right. If you like to solo bosses, a classic FSW staple of gitting gud, well you have a point. The game is now designed for summons, not solo. It’s to the point where going in solo is considered the new challenge run. That’s concerning.

My 2nd playthrough I made a point to get more scadutree fragments and had like 5 or 6 before doing the first two bosses, then like 15 before doing the rest and I beat all bosses in 1 or 2 attempts. It was insanely easy compared to my first playthrough

I really don't get how people beat the base game and think the DLC is too hard. It's really not that much harder than the base game.

The scadutree fragment system would have been better had they not implemented getting the fragments the way they did. Having no extras, putting them on field bosses or enemies that don't particularly stand out from the regular shadow dudes, and doing this on a huge, vertical, confusing map where most other things you pick up are just crafting materials or smithing stones really killed any enthusiasm I had to look for them.

Fromsoftware generally, and Miyazaki in particular has a specific design ethos which goes beyond just making hard but fair games, the design of mechanics and how they are integrated is often done in such a way that players are expected to figure things out through careful thought and consideration rather than being directly guided through the systems. This lends itself poorly to many traditional means of tutorialization and their preference towards diegetic mechanics directly opposes modes. However, with such items as the bell demon and Kuro's charm and the traditional souls/runes increasing effects there is a clear precedent for using in game items to affect the difficulty of the game. Therefore adding items for this explicit purpose could be a means of offering difficulty management without altering the core game. For Elden Ring, cursed talismans which cannot be removed without breaking them or with the assistance of an NPC which do things like halve the rune cost for levels, reduce enemy mob aggression, or increase the timing of enemy boss recovery windows could all be ways to offset the challenge for players without enough skill or time to engage with the game at the intended level. This would also allow players who grow comfortable with their level of ability with the game to peel away some or all of those items to engage with the game on the same design space as everyone else. For 99.9% of players I think that would be enough, for the few who are unable to offset their own inability with just that, I have always been a proponent of game mods being made for the direct purpose of helping the disabled players and for new gamers. This places the use of these tool out of reach for the average player who would use them to remove themselves from the designed experience while having them exist for those who already have a reason to go looking for them.

This is all good discussions, but the truth (at least to me), is much simpler than that, if the bosses don`t have Stamina, or don`t even allow you to drink a freaking flask, or summon, always focusing the player with hyper aggression and no openings to do damage, it`s a bad design and people have all the right to complain, they paid $40 for this and the DLC bosses are just bad in comparison to the main game bosses, not because it`s "hard", this is just a word people come up with, but because is cheaply designed with hyper aggression, how many people dying 2 seconds after entering the boss room because they tried to use a summon and got one tapped by the boss? Very few bosses in the main game are like this, while in the DLC, ALL bosses are like that, there is a clear difference. Use a shield build with Mohg`s staff, you are going to breeze through the whole DLC, it`s not hard, but it`s definitely not as fun as the main game, like people said it, it`s too difficult to be fun, and they are correct, I`m funneled to play a different style that I don`t like, just because it allows me take more than 2 hits. Anyone who says otherwise it`s delusional, even the dude "Let me solo her" was having issues with Mesmerr, you can`t see the bosses attacks because of so much clutter and camera issues, while the boss leaps across the freaking arena all the time, and what does this boss have? hyper aggression and unblockable fire damage.

This is my perspective as someone who played and beat my first and only souls game Bloodborne solo... Back in 2015 I had a lot of free time as a kid. I was still in high school and I could afford spending hours upon hours on trying to beat a boss. I thought it was fun and I "took pride in beating this really hard game". I lived for the rush you got when you finally beat the boss. But now I'm 25 and the idea of spending more than an hour on a boss is something I can't do nor do I find it fun. I believe some of these bosses feels like smashing my head against a brick wall until it breaks. And loosing 3,4,5 hours of my only day off work to beat 1 boss doesn't sound like a great time. My opinion on on the difficultly of Elden Ring is that the game does not respect the player's time.

I recently put Lies of P aside, I got close to the end but found I just wasn't enjoying my time with the game. I didn't enjoy the combat enough to really want to push myself, and one particular lengthy run back to a boss had me call it quits. Sometimes difficulty can be fun. Other times it just wears on you. Sometimes it's not even difficulty, but simply allowing a player to engage with the parts of a game they care about. I beat the Final Fantasy 7 Remake late last year. I started out loving the combat, but by the end I simply had no interest in engaging with any of the games combat mechanics. So I set the game to easy to finish out the story, and I still felt satisfied by seeing the ending. At the same time Sekiro has one of my favorite combat systems ever put into a game. I loved throwing myself against those bosses and probably wouldn't have set it to easy or taken help if it was provided. It's all about whether the game is still enjoyable to the player. Honestly, Elden Ring's combat didn't click with me nearly as well, and as a result I found myself less interested in challenging the bosses and more interested in exploring the world instead. So in Elden Ring, I did end up using the provided help against some of the more troublesome bosses.

Heres a quick tip for any one struggling with the dlc. Focus on "physical damage negation" Use the Dragon Crest Great Shield Talisman (20%) Use the Opline Hardtear in the Physiks Flask. (10%) Eat Boiled crab (20%) And cast Golden Vow (10%) That's a total of 60% off the damage you would normally take. And this is NAKED. if you wear heavy armour, it can get up to 80%. And all this for 25 faith. And 1 talisman slot and 1 physics slot. Very very low investment for such a strong build. And if you don't want faith, just don't use Golden Vow.

i don't understand why people are saying they're gatekeeping the dlc. in dark souls 1 you had to kill ornstein and smough to access the dlc. in dark souls 2 to access the poison dlc you needed to kill the rotten, the fire dlc you had to kill the old iron king and the frozen dlc you had to wither bet all 4 lord soul bosses or get 1000000 soul memory. and in dark souls 3 to access the 2nd dlc you had to either beat friede or get to just before the final boss which required pretty much the entire game

Ah yes. Artist intent. That thing which is singular individualistic and audiences have objective access to. Never disagreeing.

Given that last boss i think miazaki has gone a bit too far into aiming for difficulty over fun. The visual dirrhea of that second phase took an already annoying but just learnable fight and added almost undogeable AOEs on top of everything else. Im not calling it an impossible fight, but i am calling it bull.

i think only movies are passive, you still have to engage with books. while I understand what you mean, video games are interactive - I think it is wrong to imply books and reading are unengaging. They're just a different form of engagement. I don't know. it was at around or just before 15min into the video you said "Unlike books and movies, the player has to be an active participant in the product" reading is an active participation, you can't change my mind on that. Movies, on the other hand, definitely the least engaging imo. There's levels to this, like an onion, and in this essay I will...... (Lovely video man, thanks for creating & sharing your thoughts)

I think it's not as much of a problem of core, hardcore souls audience, but rather the mass casual audience who just picked up ER coz it was popping off, people who got their builds from the internet and watched how to cheese X boss. Those are the people who gave negative reviews. Because on day one, when they started playing SotE, they were on their own.

So actually "another crabs treasure" came across a pretty decent way of doing a soulslike friendly easy mode: they made it granular. Do you need more i frames while dodging? armor? parry window? do more or less damage? there are sliders for that in the accessibility options

I do want to preface this by saying I am someone who plays lots of souls games so this might be a bit biased but here we go. Shadow of The Erdtree reminds me a lot more of Old Hunters for Bloodborne when everyone was expecting the DS2 or DS3 DLCs in terms of steps up. Old Hunters is unique when compared to other FS DLC because other than SoTE it's the only DLC they made for their Dark Souls but something else type of game. Dark Souls and by extension Elden Ring involve a large number of open systems at the player's disposal and they can pick and choose what to integrate into a build. Then the DLCs add more content into the existing systems with more bosses, areas, and enemies but keeping that same open-ness. Bloodborne is more similar to Sekiro because it revolves around a smaller number of closed systems that depending on build the player will have better or worse affitinity with (Arcane w/ throwables and spells, Skill w/ reposte, Strength w/ overall DPS, and Bloodtinge w/ guns). There's other systems like rallying, breaking limbs, and gun parrying that are foundational to combat although some builds rely on them more than others for effectiveness. However, most of base game Bloodborne is pretty leniant with how you can engage with these systems. I'd say they can more or less be there if you can use them although if you are good at using them it can often give you a real edge in combat as intended. Old hunters ups the difficulty by not only making more tense encounters but also reigning in how much you can ignore the systems. Parrying can be pretty much ignored in the base game if you are a strength build but in the DLC some of the scariest enemies imagineable can be brought down by nothing but a pistol and a good visceral. And that's why I really like Old Hunters, because it's not only more of my favorite game but it allows me to use more of the fun systems in the base game without instantly killing my opponent. Shadow of The Erdtree brought back that same feeling for me that stepping into Old Hunters did where it focused on tightening the systems around the player and wanting them to engage with them more. In the base game I rarely summoned unless I was really stuck because no matter what summon I used I just couldn't fit them into my playstyle. By the end of the DLC I had gone from looking at my summons as a handicap I didn't need to a friend that had valiently fought alongside me on my journey. I also found myself using magic and buffing myself more and especially when I would get stuck on a boss I'd just leave and come back when I felt ready. And the fact that jumping is now incredibly helpful against certain bosses instead of feeling like a traversal mechanic was a great feeling, running from attacks was also a fun switch up. I honestly found the base game of Elden Ring to be kinda meh at times especially in the boss department and this DLC had a fantasic boss roster.

Miazaki showing people they don't want it to be as hard as they say

I hate hard games because I want to have fun and not get pissed off from getting killed a dozen times in the same place. Having said that, I'm still playing Lies of P as I write this because I want to get better and teach myself to not let the frustration get to me. If it's too much, I put it away until later after I've calmed down. I still have other games I can enjoy until I finally beat this game.

This dude decided to spit facts for 33 minutes🔥

games can feel too easy or too difficult for an individual player to enjoy, and that's fine. different people want to have different experiences.

Am I the only one thinking the dlc is pretty easy? Excluding the final boss, I haven't found a boss that my aggressive playstyle of outdamaging the boss and never dodging hasn't won. I'm even holding back my scadu level just so I don't beat them first try. Elden Ring has taught me so many bad habits, where instead of dodging, I jump attack again. Even when it doesn't work, I usually just keep doing that or dodge for a single second to heal. Half the time I just heal again I front of them. Which spirals me into heaing over and over until they don't hit me and I go back to being aggressive. I mean I got to Messmer with scadu level 3.

Great video, I don't know why there's so many dislikes you made a lot of good points especially with tree fragments. I don't agree with difficulty option because the game gives enough tools to overcome most of it's challenge. The biggest problem with Elden Ring is the speed of the player character compared to the boss, the difference it's to much. Games like Bloodborne and Sekiro changed the player character movement to accommodate the speed of the new enemies and boss and it's great. Bloodborne with rally system encourage aggressive playstyle and Sekiro with parry mechanic makes you feel like you are in control of most fight. The player character in Elden Ring is stuck with DS3 movement in the game where enemies move at the speed of BB and Sekiro.

I’m stuck in Dragon Pit and it feels awful because it’s just rough, I’m trying to get through this and it just feels unfair because of how much I’ve put into it. I like the idea of a new level system and I’m trying to adjust but the gap in time between release and this makes it a little too hard.

I would love the dlc alot more if enemies didn't 2 shot me when starting out, simple dogs and soldiers destroying me because I didn't want to collect scooby doo snacks because I shouldn't need to, I was ready for more adventure, to explore and take in the beauty of the world, instead all I received was frustration from start till now, I have not beat it, stuck at Bayle and want him dead before I blow my own brains out. The bosses are way too flashy and fast, very few of them don't have 20 hit combo's like Romina I believe her name is, I liked her, loved her because she didn't have some flashy aoe move that covered the entire arena and even if I dodged I'd still get hit or had combo's so long and so fast that I have no time to think. Or Trina's knight which reminded me heavily of Kos from his sword, he wasn't bullshit and I enjoyed his fight. The Demi-human in the cave that fights like a skilled assassin and uses the force, liked his fight, or the Omen thing that had a cool clone gimmick, loved that one. but Messmer, Bayle, standard enemies, those fuck off walking burning men peppered around the map, all just...fucking stupid. TLDR delete Bayle from the game, worst boss I've ever had the displeasure of fighting in any game ever.

souls games are really hard to et into for me because of the difficulty, i just get turned off after smashing my head against a wall for 1hr . I feel like from an outsiders perspective to fromsoft games, shadow of the erdtree is kind of like having to relearn how to play the game for veteran players kinda getting that first experience of getting your ass kicked all over again . Feeling like a noob after haven sunk a bunch of hours into souls games is a good feeling for some but isnt for others.

FromSoft games are not my cup of tea. Put maybe 40 hrs into ER, but then got exhausted. I pretty much agree with everything you said in the vid. You may be great at From Software games, but you may need to play RTS games on easy or get stomped in competitive sports games. I will say this though, if you ignore game mechanics then bitch about them, you really really need to "gitgud" at video games.

The dlc final boss made me make a new player. Trying to beat him at NG+6 was too much for me.

I am hyped for the DLC! But first i need to complete the main story

The bosses in Elden Ring aren’t too hard. They’re poorly designed for the moveset of a Dark Souls game. Sekiro bosses in Dark Souls. Dodge roll, sprint and poke.. while the boss is back flipping, teleporting, cartwheeling. I’ve had fun with some of the DLC bosses. They’re not PURE a$$… but so many of them haven’t even gotten close to giving me that engaging back and forth flowstate of Bloodborne, and that feeling of “I wanna fight that boss again!” So many bosses just blazing all over the arena, and you’re spending half the time running after them with the slow af Dark Souls sprint speed.. And then when you do get close there’s a 40 year long attack combo you gotta dodge through.. me then FINALLY at the end of that you have a fraction of a micro second to poke the before it starts back all over again bouncing off the walls and swinging of the chandeliers.. ☠️. it’s just one sided, and it’s a drag. It’s not fun. I literally keep thinking how much more fun some of these bosses would be if we had a DMC move set FFS.. These are complaints I had with the base game also. They shouldn’t have made this game play like Dark Souls if they wanted To make bosses that are so quick and aggressive. They shoulda done like what they did with Bloodborne and modify the move set or add new play mechanics to match the boss design.. Dark Souls was ALWAYS a slow methodical game. The play mechanics are not suited for DMC style bosses..

Rellana is overhyped in her difficulty, sure she was hard but 4 attempts doesn’t make it too hard

Thought your video was great, I am not amazing. Most of the DLC bosses take me somewhere between 30 and 70 attempts but if I’m struggling too much I explore I get some fragments I level up a bit and each new level helps me overcome. I think that is most peoples issue. They want to brute force it, I do too, but I know my limits so I will play by the rules.

I played Draks souls 1 10 years ago (2014), I used a normal sword and a shield to beat the game, some bosses were hard but still fair, the real problem was going all the way to the boss room because those bonfire were really that far form thoes bosses. Then I played bloodborne in 2015 and the dlc in 2016, using blades of mercy, those defield bosses were hard because a lot of them can one shot you because you have the half of your HP, also Orphan of kos was very aggresive, but even with that i keep saying those bosses are fair because hunter moves very quickly. Laurence and defield watchdog took me 2 hours and 30 minuto to defeat them. bloodborne has some problems with latterns being very far away from some bosses Then Dark souls 3 happened, I felt some enemies should be in bloodborne because how fast some of them are and the ashes one is slower than the hunter. Nameless king is hard because his delay attacks and frieren is hard because she has 3 phases. I played with a normal built so the fairness was reaching the limits. Nameless king took me 2 hours to defeat him. I played sekiro in 2022, getting used to the mechanic was hard at the beggining but at the end the game becomes so great to play, even when saint isshin took me 2 hours and 30 minutes to defeat him, i really enjoy the fight, even the next day i played against isshin again because like a said that fight (a lot of fights in sekiro) is really fun. Now it is the trun of elden ring, 2/3 of the game is great (Mountaintops of the Giants shouldn't exit), exploring feels great, at the dlc being small but more dense makes it better than the base game, but the base game and dlc is made of using OP builds (like armoc core 6) or using mimics, if you are using normal builds like i did in dark souls 1, bloodborne and dark souls 3, you are going to suffer, but the worst bosses are more over tunned than the bosses from bloodborne and dark souls 3, when tarnished moves and attacks slower than the ashes one and hunter, I wacthed a video where the final boss in the elden ring dlc spent 13 seconds attacking, and even with all those Scadutree Fragments he deals small damage. I spent almost 6 hours defeating malenia, 2 hous defating the dancing lion (have few Scadutree Fragments), 3.5 hours defeating rellena ( Scadutree Fragments), 2.5 hours defeating messmer (i have like level 8 in Scadutree Fragments), but somehow i was still suing my build and part of me was sasying get gut, the dlc final boss happened, spending two hour in him but second phase was the moment I said enough I changed my build and used a shield build, and yeah i defeated him in 3 tries (trying to get used to that build), and the I felt angry and didn't enjoy that battle (to be fair i didn't enjoy most of the elden ring bosses) . I don't kwon if fromsoftware is trying to make bosses for those "NO HIT RUN" guys like it is showed in 16:13 but malenia with that waterflow dance and dlc 2nd phase final boss showed the limits of the character moveset.

You can and will die on that hill about difficulty options in FS games. They have and will always make a deliberate choice not to have them. Thats their artistic direction and the idea to "get as many people to enjoy the game" is foolish as you pointed out in the video. Dealing with stamina consumption and limited resources is the MO the genre they created. Tweaking the numbers for a more accessible mode goes agaisnt their direction. I do agree that SOTE was too hard and its why they change the numbers for the fragments. I don't think it was a backpedal. I think it was a mistake, especially considering they nerfed lot of builds prior to the DLC.

Only boss that hard is the final 1 but theirs way to tank him so I honestly think it was great DLC just players maybe forgot how challenging the journey is cause base game wasn’t easier either

Watching a boss do 15 flipping anime spins while you watch and wait for your turn to attack him once or twice doesn’t exactly sound fun to me. You can make a game challenging without having to make the game about pressing circle at the right time.

Yeah I don't agree about the difficulty. Miyazaki and the devs at From Software are not stupid, they know about difficulty settings, if they didn't chose to put them in there is because it went against their vision of the game. It's about the designed experience, and is up to the developer. They give you a lot of options to go through the main game, you can coop you can gather items, buffs, cheese enemies, you can level up to 500. And if it all fails that game may not be for you. Also you can always ask for help.

I’m not that great of a souls player but I’ve still played them all except for Sekiro and DS2. I’m at the last boss. It’s not that hard.

Mohg isn't a very hard boss tbh, very fun tho

make a video about gta 6 and what it means in the gaming comunity

He said "i had to use whatever aid given to me" means he didnt play it. There is no aid lmao guy is full of shi

Sekiro is peak

Bro saw the complaints about the diablo video being too late and decided to go for a current topic lmao. This debate is as old as time and I agree with you, really. I still think Celeste or Crosscode are games that actually perfect the matter of difficulty: Sliders and options. There's no 'easy mode' in these games, but there is a buffet of options for you to tweak to make the game more enjoyable for yourself. Or harder, in the case of crosscode! I think a game like Elden Ring would 100% benefit from this. A couple of sliders for enemy damage, enemy health, or enemy aggressiveness would go so far in making the experience more enjoyable and approachable for everyone. You wanna play the game as is? Go for it! You think bosses are damage sponges and it annoys you? Decrease their health to 75%! You think they're too aggressive and don't let you think? Add a 1 or 2 seconds delay to their actions! Anyways, great video :D

The bosses are just not fun

See souls games arent hard, nijagaiden on the hardest difficulty is actually hard 😂

People got dumber. Fromsoft told us how to scale enemies difficulty but diddnt

It's completely natural to want as many people as possible to enjoy a game you like but adding easy options would simply not work for that. Your friends would probably play the game, yes, but it would likely be rather boring to them and even if it wasn't, you wouldn't get across the one thing you wanted them to experience, which is the feeling that makes those games so special for you. The whole easy mode discussion is obsolete, because it stems from the faulty assumption that everyone must be able to like something these days. That's just not how the world works. You like some things and don't like others. That being said, Shadow of the Erdtree does go a bit overboard in the other direction. There usually are difficulty corrections in Souls games (kindling, buffs, consumables, etc.) but the encounter should be designed around NOT having them. This DLC pretty much expects you to apply the difficulty corrections, which works but is worse than other entries before that would leave those as optional for people that want to lower the challenge.

I dislike the ideology of "I attack for 60 seconds and then you get a 1 sec window to attack 1 MAYBE 2 times before it repeats" The Elden Ring bosses have. It's not "too hard" its boring and not fun

... the cycle repeats. git gud scrub...

The only fight that was really hard , if you got the fragments was the last boss... And there are builds and strategies that trivialize it... Look for options. People need to stop whining, and find games they enjoy rather than demanding games change for them.

There is an easy mode in Elden Ring. It’s called Pay attention to the tutorials and do some critical thinking. All the stats have meaning and can seriously break the game. I started a lvl 1 play through and have beat Godrick and Rennala at lvl 1 wretch with no upgrades on weapons and did not use summons. I’ve never played any other souls game. I beat the game once and then did a level one play through knowing all the knowledge from beating the game the first time. Bleed is a good stat. Every stat has its purpose even a level one can beat a God. You will die that’s part of the game coming back strong stronger with the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t is what makes this game good. It doesn’t matter how you play but you can’t set unrealistic goals that you can’t match. The summons are for people that don’t want to put more effort into the game and that’s fine. But seriously there’s no difficulty meter because you all are making as difficult as you want it to be. And I’m saying that first hand 😂 never having played this genre and didn’t understand the mechanics. Now knowing every mechanic and who is weak to what really makes it BROKEN. With no levels or upgrades I was able to beat the first 3 main bosses and some extras like tree avatars and Bols Carian Knight. In this game difficulty is knowledge and perspective.

Shadow is not that hard if you open your eyes and adapt. The whiners need to cry less and play more.