Agreed, a lot of times I dunno if I should keep fighting or not because I have no idea if I'm fighting a boss at an intended level. I dunno if I should get gud, find some trick or actually just go somewhere else because I'm simply undergeared. This was especially noticeable in cealid wgere the difficulty abruptly jumps in different places.

It definitely lost a lot in balance 

This, I love that part of the job but when it's genuinely unplayable for a bunch of others I'm not against changing it.

I'd argue it's less they were difficult as shit in terms of combat (dark souls 1 specially really isn't anywhere near the top of difficult games even for it's time) but rather 'difficult' as in there's not a ton of handholding and allowed the player to fail by for example following the wrong path or kill a NPC outright. Sure you die a ton but difficulty is a lot more nuanced then just the amount of times you see your character dying, you die a lot in DS but the games tend to have generous checkpoints, main loss on death are expandable souls rather then a big focus on consequences after death outside maybe demon souls, a lot of broken ass builds and accessible options to make the games easier, simple to understand and use combat mechanics....

This I feel is also why the majority of discourse is looking at it wrong, not only does the difficulty go further then dying a ton and hard enemies, the series shifted it's focus to streamlining it's mechanics while making the actual enemies and combat difficult to compensate. ER has by far the most generous checkpoints in the whole franchise but also give their bosses the best AI and kits in the series and make sure they have sweeping attacks and AoE to not be completely cheesed by a summon. The previous souls games had a lot less direct difficulty then DS3 and especially ER

It isn't about the games being difficult but how they made it difficult, and on the expense of the skill issue crowd, this is a lot more subjective and how this is achieved differs per game. the tweet on the post is more about the latter since her main point is wanting a pause button.

So saying the main appeal of dark souls is "dying a lot" and "difficulty' is a too simplistic take on the matter, not to mention I'd argue stuff like level design and their RPG mechanics are an equally main hook. And the people using the games in dick measuring contests and only ever talking about how difficult they are effectively devalue the games

so elden ring is truly dark souls 2 2

Good luck reading that mid fight, especially if you play on controller

i'll die on the hill that while ff16 early quests are kinda poopy, the further you get in the game the better they get. You'll start getting new area's, a lot of lore, long quest chains... and they even start to get prerendered scenes on par with the main story

this, I'd definitely love to have more solo duties during MSQ don't get me wrong. But FATE's, roulettes etc.... exist for a reason to provide constant gameplay with rewards. I used that to powerlevel viper while doing MSQ and honestly have no idea how else you would get it from lv80 to 100 in a decent timeframe, and how you still would't know the rotation which isn't really that hard

iirc one vanu specifically mentions not having seen the laser beam in some time

These people do not understand discussion literally isn't about facts, you can't discuss facts. What you can discuss is how you feel about it and your personal takes but then these people will deem them incorrect if they don't align with their opinions which they see as facts

I agree, it's pretty dishonest to completely try to invalidate someone's opinion since it must just be frustration. You literally come to necro this thread just to tell people how wrong they are and when they attempt to explain themselves you dismiss them again. You are clearly here to win something rather then try understanding others.

You can't fathom people disagreeing with you, no they must simply be wrong if they don't share your viewpoint, which is as dishonest as you can get.

To me a boss being capable to delay their attack for upwards 6 seconds and then even cancel that delayed attack is of a much higher magnitude that any other souls game regularly had, feel free to disagree but these things are just not the same to me.

I also do not need to watch a 1:30 hours video, to me ER is more similar to souls games then it's not unlike sekiro who is more dissimilar. Like I said it literally copy pastes several mechanics and all the added mechanics are additions rather then stuff that fundamentally changes combat. Most of the things people mention being unique to ER also exists in previous games. Like avoiding via raw positioning.

Again you just assume I must be objectively incorrect and have not played these games while I just disagree, despite me playing all the games several times. This is extremely childish and dishonest man.

That's a rather aggressive response that isn't quite correct either considering at this point I have beaten elden ring and very souls game multiple times. The previous souls also had input reading back to ds1, I'd argue tho that the fact many people do not mention it in these games along with input reading is not about inconsistency, it's about how older games make them feel a lot more natural and less extreme to the point many don't particularly notice it or they even feel delayed

There's delayed attacks and there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6srWuCPsefs

delayed attacks of these magnitudes where not commonplace in every souls game, also I gladly call elden ring dark souls 4. Sure it has some differences but the core combat/level/gear/PvP/CoUp.... system is the same or very similar and several mechanics are literally copy pasted from the souls games.

"Maaaaaaaaybe if we were playing a FPS and every weapon took 100 bullets to kill a mook, except for one gun which kills mooks in a more reasonable way, then yes... I would agree there is a major problem. But I don't think that is ever an issue and certainly not what something like Elden Ring is doing."

This exists in elden ring a lot tho

This I get a lot with elden ring, people dismiss arguments about bad game balance extremely quickly whenever you bring it up. Just don't use it or use something else.

But what when I spend many resources upgrading a certain weapon only to find out it makes the game harder then expected or is apparently OP. Should I just stop and grind another one?

What about how there are nearly hundreds of spirit ashes yet some like mimic tear completely invalidates them. Yet I love the idea of a summon that is a copy of you. Should I just make sure I'm not too OP so my mimic isn't either?

What about certain options like parrying exists, I love parrying yet you get punished heavily for missing it. While you could just hit the enemy hard and gain simliar benefits. It's a playstyle I'd love but just makes the game needlessly hard as it pales in comparison to nearly every other option

"and if it doesn't work, try something else?"

What if it doesn't work due how the game is balanced?

There's perfect balance and then there's options just being horribly overshadowed.

As mentioned this game has a huge amount of summons but mimic tear and a few other completely invalidate most of them once obtained which I find a pretty glaring balance flaw.

Parrying exists in this game but there are so many moves with less risk and bigger rewards it's kinda ridiculous. 

WhileI agree it's worth mentioning the latest update actually decreased the animation lock from potions

don't forget she can cancel her stagger animation lmao

See my other comment 

I meant like the stuff we get in sekiro,  much faster movement, parry etc..

They did say they were gonna take more inspiration of sekiro, don't mind more difficulty if we finally got a decent power up too.

I love DS2, but frigid outskirts makes me want to put both of my feet in a fire ant nest

I mean I beat the game multiple times at this point, the point is that you can't learn it or that there aren't any safe windows, the point is that it feels forced and artificial. Like look at this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tlpp9w/input_reading_be_like/ 

shit's insane. and FYI this can be abused to cheese and trivialize bosses, so they don't even really increase the difficulty

The thing that gets me with people defending input reading in these games is that it doesn't make it just harder. You can also abuse the rigidness of it in your advantage

The problem is some attacks are still fast enough to get you, if you heal during a commit but the commit was short they can still immediately go into their punish and hit you. 

For an early game example, drinking during margits mellee knive attacks finisher is likely to get you punished as he can very quickly use his knive throw punish after.

Technically they are, but when the animation reading happens on frame 1 it effectively doesn't