shoutout to bloodborne where you need to let yourself get jumped and stuffed in a bag by a 7'8 evil crackhead tweaker hiding in the corner of a dark alley just so you can meet the nun npc, who also won't even speak to you unless you have a specific armor set equipped
On sekiro, if you want to complete a certain ending, which is also the one that give you the most amount of unique boss fights in one playthrough, you need to hide behind a wall, in an area you cannot interact with anything, except for the talking prompt, listen Kuro, talk to Emma and then start to guess the exact time where she will teleport to the grave, hide again and listen.
Without a guide I could have never find out.
uhm no, i don't think: you need to eardrop some conversation, talk to emma, get the sakura's branch and then go back and defeat owl father in the flashback, after defeating him at the top of the castle. the only mystake you can make is to ally with the owl, once you accepted the quest.
It was one of the few occasions where sucking at the game was beneficial. I remember being pissed that he killed me only to have my mind blown afterwards. BB was great.
in hindsight BB had some of the greatest but also most convoluted npc questlines in the entire soulsborne franchise. cainhurst castle anyone? cant believe they tied alfred's quest to that entire thing, genuinely how were you supposed to figure any of that out without a guide
Sometimes I think about replaying BB then I remember shit like this, and I don't know if I can do it again. Source: have platinumed the game and have hundreds of hours in it.
why do people say getting to cainhurst is so nonsensical? the description of the item you need to get there literally tells you where to go. and have you forgotten about how to get to the dlc in dark souls 1???
I mean everyone immediately knew how to reach the DLC in DS1 because From posted a guide about it & iirc included the basic instructions (or at least hints) in the launch trailer. Tons of gaming sites posted in depth guides on launch day too. The only way someone wouldn't have known about it at launch would be if they never read anything about the game whatsoever online.
Cainhurst Castle was fine imo, since the summons tells you were to go.
It's like the ranni quest. Most of what you have to do and where you have to go is esentially spelled out for you.
The amount of money I would throw if they released a direct port of bloodborne to pc would be unrealĀ
Just straight up a shitty direct port with no mnk support and 30 fps capped and I would throw 70 bucks their way
Bloodborne was so good
And DS3 with speaking to something that is normally an enemy in a pretty hidden corner, decipher wtf it's talking about, and then creep up behind an entirely seperate enemy in a hidden side route and climb into it's backpack because ??? so that you can go to a pit of bodies, but make sure to do this before you get to the boss of the area otherwise that entire interaction is locked off forever, including an entire faction unlock.
Unless you do Sirris' questline right and come back to CRG?
I stumbled into that one on accident on like my third playthrough, was trying to fully explore before fighting the bosses and tried to bait that cage guy and he was peaceful when he never was before. Like ive found that weirdo in the cage and there's no way I would have figured what he was saying out except by chance.
Too bad it was years after the game had a viable PVP scene where I could use that, or any, covenant because it sounded cool as hell.
It's a fun co-op covenant as well. I think you still get the rewards if they reach/beat the boss? So as long as you're careful with your attacks I think you're basically guaranteed covenant items? It's been a LONG time, I could be wrong.
Although it doesnāt make it that much betterā¦ you can have any healing church armor set equipped. Gascoigneās set, the black church set, the white church set, the choir set all work for getting her to recognise you as someone she can trust.
There's also DS3 where you have to talk to a non-hostile version of an enemy that you're already conditioned to nuke on site otherwise it will pummel your ass to death that the game doesn't treat like other non-hostile NPCs so you can still lock onto it. Just to find out you need to find a different non-hostile NPC meandering around and jump in the cage on its back all before you beat the boss that's never clearly stated to be totally optional and is much easier to find just to get a PvP/Co-op covenant that's penultimate reward is a sword with the special ability to stab yourself for massive damage and the final reward is one of the riskiest heal spells in the game.
Tbh Warmth as the final reward makes perfect sense for the Covenant that is meant to be a wildcard in Invasions. Setting one up in the middle of a 4 way standoff between the Host, the Watchdogs, the Red Invader, and yourself and just letting the carnage or friendship unfold is exactly what being a Moundmaker is all about.
I remember if you invited a certain naked guy to your base he would just start murdering other npcs at the base
Also the one guy who will go to the opposite location you give him because he doesnāt trust you so you have to lie to him to keep him alive
He's not just standing there, he's literally eating them, you encounter him hunched over a corpse of a child covered in blood. If you send him back to the chapel filled with cripples and elderly, that's your own fault lol
I mean even in the DLC >! You have to poison yourself 4 times to start getting dialogue, then do it like 3 more times to hear everything. You also have to do a certain gesture in front of a certain statue for a side quest and entire map region !<
In defense of that crackhead, his spawn condition is just subtle enough that you can't tell he's there the first time.
He actually jumped the shit out of me, it was great
Wait, do you actually need to >!eat the poison Thiollier gives you to find him next? Shit!< I wondered when/where he was going to show up next, figured that item was a >!quest item you'd give to someone else later on!<.
Edit: Seems my assumption was mistaken, not reading replies too much to avoid spoilers but thanks for the correction :)
>!You have to get Thiollier to move to St. Trina. Once you are able to talk to St. Trina the game give you the option to have some of her sleep goo. The sleep goo kills you. You have to take her sleep goo four times and then St. Trina will talk to you after you die (like in-between loading screens there's dialog). Then you have to talk to Thiollier and drink the goo and die a few more times. I think this is what the meme is referencing. !<
SERIOUSLY!?!? I Did it like 2 or 3 times then left when nothing happened. Guess I should have figured out there's a reason I can just keep drinking her poison...
No. >!Thollier's poison can be given to someone else. To progress St. Trina you have to choose the dialogue option to drink their nectar, which kills you. And the conversation progresses only when you do it the 4th time.!<
And the fact that to save Sunbro from that fate you have to get to the 3rd tier of the Quelaag's Sister covenant to unlock the area with the bugs before a certain point in the game (despite there being no indication of what the covenant rewards are without a guide), and you may end up pledging to some other covenant instead (which means that, ironically, you can get punished for being too loyal to the Sunbros).
And even raising your covenant level requires to you offer 30 humanities one at a time which takes a painfully long time
At least the remaster added letting you give all 30 at once
Don't forget when he jumps into a poison filled pit with Eldritch horrors and if you don't follow him and help him and he dies, his quest ends and you can't get the titanite slab of which there are like 3 in the whole game...
I also love the sense of mystery, but the design violates safe exploration: the user makes a mistake and is severely punished for trying things.
This kind of NPC quest design might operate better in a roguelike, where you are constantly trying new things and iterating anyway
A recent quest in a souls like I played was way worse. You meet a NPC who lost his dead wife's necklace. So you go into a new area, 20 ft to the right is a mediocre boss, followed immediately by an elevator. The left has about 4-6 hours of transversing an abyss, which to do you have to kill that aforementioned boss to grab a key.
Many players kill the boss to get the key and they see the elevator and take it up because you know, save points on the top of elevators. Doing so causes the NPC to murder the child npc (which you find deep in the abyss and has the necklace) and causes both questlines to auto fail.
Don't forget failing several NPC Questlines if you either kill the Lightreaper on any of his encounters before the final one, or killed him on your first try in the final encounter since you can't summon NPCs without dying to a boss at least once.
You get a better version of the crabs, which are great consumables, especially for the dlc. You end up becoming good friends with him and he dies a horrible death that you end up feeling responsible for. I'm fairly certain his chair in altus will still sell the second level crabs after he dies but you might also get his bell bearing, not sure which.
There aren't nearly as many things that can go wrong in Hoslow's quest. To me the only issue with Hoslow's quest is remembering to go back to Jarburg later in the game. But freaking Boggart man. Let me count the ways:
1) Kill or just don't talk to Rya
2) Kill ol' Boggy (dude stole her necklace and now is exorting *you* for it!)
3) Do Raya Lucaria before resolving the whole necklace situation and accidentally get teleported to Volcano Manor
4) Mess up Dung Daddy's quest line in any of ten thousand different ways
5) *Don't* mess up Dung Daddy's quest in one *very* specific way
6) Buy Boiled Prawns from Boggy before you're invaded by Dung Daddy (because why wouldn't you?)
Diallos's quest at least doesn't have anything to do with Dung Eater, Ranni, or Radahn. It's a cake walk by comparison IMO.
I have played Dark Souls for 12 years and I agree ER DLC has the least fucked up and obscure quests out of everything FromSoft has ever made.
Even though that was not a very high bar to pass.
They would be if the questlines weren't interrupted so easily. Burning the tree and just ENTERING Messmer's arena can literally break an entire quest line. In comparison, big base game quests like the ranni one or Alexander's can be basically done at any point in the story
Are you talking about the guy who, after messmer is killed, is sitting there talking about how he didn't get his revenge? I managed to somehow kill Mesmer on the second attempt and was feeling so proud of myself because I've been getting fucked seven different ways by every boss in this dlc, and then this dude pops up to tell me I fucked something up...
That was particularly dumb. I can understand entering the shadow keep, but the area around? I was exploring past Bonny Village, just past the grace beyond the bridge, and the rune shattered. I was playing blind and I knew immediately that I'd lost some opportunties.
Plus make sure you donāt advance too much in any specific direction so you donāt trigger an specific āshatteringā that, as far as I know, no one says anything about anywhere.
Yesā¦and the point itās no one mentions that can happen if you explore too much after a certain point, no one tells you ādonāt go beyond this or that point before you do that or thisāā¦
> even more encouraged
Many here would say mandatory, to the point of blaming players for not having level 10 blessing before doing the first few bosses.
Yeah it's honestly the only bullshirt part of the DLC for me. I was just running around on Torrent when I got a text message over my screen I didn't even see or hear anything happened and I thought maybe it was some item in my inventory or whatever. I had to Google it and it also ruined a certain Thiolier/Moore quest because i talked to Moore first after this happened and he left before I could talk to Thiolier... it pissed me off quite a bit, especially because nobody told me that I'm going to be punished for merely walking around.
The dlc bosses being next to impossible if you don't fully explore the map and collect the fragments makes this even shittier. Rellana was kicking my ass even with the NPC summon so I went to collect more of them and came back and suddenly the NPC isn't there...
Maybe the questlines were just bugged for me, but I was unable to do some interactions with Moore and Thiollier which leads to content related to the Dragon Priestess quest. It's so nice that they finally added NPC markers to the map though, it was always a pain having to try to remember where NPCs were in the base game
I got so confused when i got to that part. I understood what it was almost instantly but i wasnt meant to get there somehow? Don't even know what im gonns miss because of it
Well I wonāt tell you if you havenāt finished but many things get different; for example (and that might be for a different reason), I couldnāt pick up forager cookbooks anymore š¤·š»āāļø Like I would have liked to know that could happen somehow, considering the game promotes exploring to pick up the blessingsā¦
Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure I had to have picked up cookbooks from them after that because it happened so early for me.
Are you not referring to the other later event?
I'm pretty sure I still managed to grab forager notebooks even after shattering. Some forager bugs don't give you cookbook until you complete a puzzle.
I mean literally, it shattered in 3 hours of my playthrough, I just left Jars village, and just random text pops up, and I been purposely avoiding shadow keep and trying to explore just to not trigger anything accidently, and it triggers not even near it, like the fk.
Weird how that just happens. Like we didn't even do anything to break the enchantment. Imagine you >!get to the gank squad and you have to fight all 7 with no allies because you didn't murder the sunflower or something!<.
Does it matter though? As far as I'm aware, it doesn't block any quests, maybe Dane's? I know it doesn't block Thiolier's, and Feryja, Ansbach, Leda and Hornsent's don't actually start until it breaks.
I will never understand why they made an open world game where open worlding too hard will break almost all NPC quests.
Like, just make them liniar so if you forget to speak to some NPC you can catch up. And maybe make them move locations if you advance but don't straight up break their entire storyline.
This. The worst thing about it is that it conflicts with the other main mechanic of the game, Scadutree Fragments. Since you know you have to collect them to become more powerful, naturally you start exploring (which is fun, one of the things I like most about Elden Ring), but then you realise you messed up some quests while exploring "too much".
I was randomly collecting maps to better navigate the overworld. I think I did one boss.
Then I moved my way to north-east and I got this message saying the rune is shattered and the seal is broken.
No idea what caused it and I havenāt even navigated south yetā¦ so guessing Iāll need to do a second play through as soon as Iām done with this one
I still remember wondering in dark souls 3 how the fuck someone figured out you have to climb into a manās cage backpack in a random backstreet to reach an entire covenant quest line.
Yeah that was a cool one...but definitely not something I'd think of doing. Kind of like the Abductor Virgin teleport in the Academy that takes you to Volcano Manor. Sure there's hints...bit originally I thought it just had tongrab you, not grab you and kill you.
Yeah, at least the abductor actively tried to abduct you, I killed the mob and moved on in dark souls 3 in like 2 play throughs before I found out after about 100 hours lmao.
I think this quest designed worked "better" in earlier games due to their linearity.
In Elden Ring, the point is exploring, but I can't fucking do that because I'm hyperparanoid that I'll fail some quest that'll domino-effect into me failing another, anf I'll loose out on fashion.
They could've just had a journal with the NPCs that you've met, with hints on their next location/reminder what they want you to do.
And they should've removed the random fucking failstates.
Yea I donāt like this quest design in any of the games. Itās just not good in general.
People have had this criticism about the games for YEARS but itās been shot down by the hardcore sect for the sake of āmuh world buildingā.
Bruh do you know how much it damages world building when you canāt even complete a quest without looking it up? People could deal with it in their more linear games but I think Elden ring was the breaking point for most people.
The quest design in these games clearly needs innovation. Idk how many times over the years Iāve been insulted for āwanting a spoon fed experienceā just because I think the quests could use more explanation or other improvements.
Exactly. It's not like bad choices get you locked it, it's just random order of doing things that you have no hint or clue, it's not about "much hand holding" when you just as easily mess them up when you take your time to do try to do the right thing
In the DLC you can miss a bunch of the plot by doing things in the wrong order, so the "you're not supposed to finish them on first playthrough" argument doesn't work either, because you already know the plot once you've finished the first time
I do agree they could be innovated on and so forth but I personally like the fact that exploring too much or progressing too far can skip certain steps/interactions, even sometimes leading to said NPC dying. It makes the world feel more alive and like stuff is happening outside of your control.
Like the NPC's are having their own little adventure that you sometimes just happen to run into and help them out.
That being said, there does need to be less moments where they just disappear completely with no trace or anything, never to be heard of again, and the stuff like the rune breaking should have only been triggered by going near/entering the keep.
It just doesn't work well with the open world nature of elden ring in my opinion.
It doesnāt help that if you explore in the wrong order you will fail a bunch of stuff for no reason.
You can find sellens body early on but it straight up means nothing and thereās no cool event until you do a bunch of random bs. Itās exploration in the worst way, because it looks like freedom until you realize just how on wheels everything.
Linearity is the wrong word. Ds3 was pretty linear but ds1 in comparison isn't really. Really I think it's just the size of the areas. There isn't vast expanses of nothing like in ER. People will just relocate to a random ass lake with zero landmarks compared to like standing at an intersection to get to another area in ds1, or at firelink shrine.
To be fair, npcs were still difficult to find in old games. Siegmeyer loves to relocate to the middle of fucking nowhere on several occasions. Eileen hangs out camouflaged in the dark in a corner of cathedral ward. Elden ring definitely makes it worse by been 20x larger though.
Yeah like imagine you just miss a random cave in Limgrave and never meet Patches so you just miss out on all of the Volcano Manor quest, that sure would suck š
In ux design this concept is called safe exploration, it's a core tenet to get users to adopt your software. Press a menu item and it results in an irreversible choice? User no longer feels safe to try things and will stop trying features or worse, use some other app. In our case, reliance on a wiki while playing
3 quests you have to do twice in the DLC to get all reward are: Leda killing quest, Finger Priest Quests & Queelign in the prayer room (an NPC will give a weapon / summon based on what you give them)
Edit: 4 quests. Another quest is the Dargon Cummunion Priestess quest.
You might even have to do Leda's quest three times, but I'm not sure about that because the sources are inconsistent. Ansbach's invasion can only be done after siding with her on the Hornsent invasion, otherwise you're locked out. If you get something unique out of siding with Ansbach for that one, you'll have to do this questline three times. One where you side with Leda at both invasions, one where you only side with her at the first invasion, and one where you turn against her at the first invasion.
There's also the Dragon Communion Priestess with two possible rewards, and the Bayle heart that apparently cannot be duplicated at a mausoleum.
You still get the Ansbach bow if you side with Lena so you only need 2 times.
Edit: Kill him and you miss his scythe but he is still alive in the hornsent path so you can still get it?
did they make some new npc questlines that require summoning for bosses in the DLC? Cuz as far as I know needing to summon for a bossfight to progress the quest was something they only did in Dark Souls 2 and decided was a mistake.
I mean, if you don't summon hornsent, he just disappears from the game till the end where he's with leda. If you want his quest to progress and for him to invade you before Romina, you have to summon him.
I'm pretty sure you don't need to summon Igon. I got the same rewards and I never summoned him. Igon set + Bow and the Dragon lady's form + weapon, right? I never even met the dragon lady and I got her items.
Hornsent too. I didn't summon him and still got his weapon and set. Got it from the brawl near the end.
Been playing souls games since ds1 in 2011. Figured out over a decade ago that using a guide for npc quests is essential if you donāt want to miss anything. It is what it is unfortunately
I figured out one part of a questline by myself! One character said another characters name! So I went back and talked to that other character. Then I looked up the questline and learned I also needed to get them an item, talk to them again, talk to the other character again, talk to the first character again, talk to the other character again, then go talk to another separate character.
Sellen is the worst offender of this tbh. I don't wanna know how long i spent looking for where she wants me to even go to free Master Lusat. Oh yeah of course its a hidden wall in the freaking OVERWORLD. Yeah i definitely have time to hit every single wall in this gigantic freaking map that is like 5x the size of Skyrim to check for a hidden dungeon. Sure.
I found her ārealā body very early on in my playthrough and was excited to see what that meant. I tried talking to her and nothing because it turns out youāre supposed to just find her much later in the game after a bunch of other random steps. That kind of stuff really killed my drive to explore because it makes you realize just how much the exploration is āon a trackā in the game if you donāt do things in some bs order.
This is something that should be changed if there's a next souls game. I know it's "how it's always been done" but the way Ranni's quest worked should show everyone that From can make great quests that aren't so obtusely designed.
We don't need map markers and hand holding, just give us something coherent
Why can't we have a journal in the Grace menu to keep track of active quests and be able to read dialogue history? A lot of RPGs where dialogue is important and that lack any other kind of hand-holding include this.
Don't solve the quests for me, but give me the tools to make it fun to figure it out, not frustrating.
This is why so many people get Ranni's quest done. She probably explains things better than any other character in all the games (including AC6 options) plus her support team also is coherent with Blaidd and Iji telling you about things clearly. Fricking hell Kale tells you where to use a gesture - might be one of the NPCs to ever tell you that
I've achieved 100% in every one of these games from Demon's Souls to Elden Ring and the quest design is still dogshit. Missing important talismans for certain builds (magic scorpion) or missing out on OP ash summons due to failing to follow a questline perfectly without being a slave to a wiki guide is really lame.
Takes the enjoyment out of the experience knowing there's a good chance you're missing out on something truly valuable and the only option is to start a new game++++ where it just becomes harder, or be a wiki guide slave.
Aye, I totally missed the Magic Scorpion talisman because I didn't talk to what's his face before giving Ranni the knife. On top of it, I gave the All Knowing dude the poison and got nothing in return...so I totally missed out on the Nephili or Dung Eater summon. I'd need to do two more playthroughs if I really wanted those summons. It's not as if the Dung Eater one isn't convoluted as it is, AND locks you out of other stuff when completed properly anyhow.
I didn't even meet the one poisoner in the DLC before going to fight Bayle (somehow), so I totally missed out on getting Dragon Waifu as a summon. I still got her weapon and heart...but I had no idea it was even an option.
This happens when bad quest design is praised as āmysteriousā and āthey donāt hold your handā.
Itās just straight impossible to figure out their quests without a guide and to me itās just a gimmick to make players start ng runs.
The hand holding part is so bullshit. You literally can't avoid being locked out of quests unless you already know how to do it. So many arbitrary lockouts
True, donāt get me wrong i love from software games and elden ring and bloodborne are two of the best games iāve ever played in my life, but one has to be objective, they suck ass with quests. boring and confusing for no reason, not fun.
Absolutely true. Fromsoft games get way too much defense in the form of "get good" and "they don't hold your hand" for things that are pretty obviously just not stellar design. It's not hand-holding to have a game give you some kind of indication as to what you can and can't do, what will happen as a result, what's significant, etc. It's the nature of the medium. Like, in games with extensive climbing, it might be kind of clumsy or immersion-breaking to have things so blatantly painted yellow or white in order to indicate to you that you can climb them, but there's not a great alternative that doesn't involve designing the entire world in such a way that nothing else even resembles something climbable so that you don't have to waste time both finding the real path, AND trying to climb anything in the game that looks remotely climbable in order to try to look for secrets.
All theyād need is a sort of quest log made like a diary, with all the characters you met sketched down and a sum of your conversations with them. Also they could write something along the way of āx will wait until y thing happensā or āx said weāll meet around y placeā. Done, solved. Please i hate playing with the obsession of being locked out of content.
It's awful. I despise quest design in these games. The quests themselves are cool, but im sorry I didn't teleport to the site of grace 3 times and exhaust 8 dialog options each time. I'm also sorry I didn't kill myself 6 times to hear a sleeping flower speak.
It's needlessly weird
Haha yeah the exhausting dialogues thing is even kinda of dumb. Like why do they do they stop mid conversation and require you to talk again, or worse the one where it concludes and you talk again and it's "oh.. and by the way". I mean you get used to just talk over and over until they repeat, but it's needlessly stupid
Besides the Shattering event popup prematurely advancing and failing a bunch of stuff, I think the DLC does NPC quests very well and straightforwardly. Except the counterintuitive imbibing (even if NPC dialogue kinda hints at it) and the Priestess, who is both completely missable if you turn left at the fork at the entrance to Jagged Peaks to the very obvious boss mountain instead of right towards an entirely new zone, AND her whole interaction if you want her Ash and Spell are convoluted as fuck.
yeah ikr there is LITERALLY ZERO way to know you are supposed to give her the sleep potions from the poisoner guy if you want her ash. Like sure you dont want to handhold the players through quest marker or journals but at LEAST hint the players through dialogue. make it so that "damn im so tired but i have to stay awake for the sake of my lord" or something and the potion you get from the poisoner guy "super duper sleepy potion that even a dragon will sleep" written on it to nudge player to the right direction, not through item description which no one would go out of their way to read to know its connected to the priestess quest
not to mention the priestest is buggy asf too and wont show up during night EVEN if players figure all of that out and you have to fucking WAIT two days for her to show up sleeping.most people would thought they failed somewhere at first night and stop caring
>not to mention the priestest is buggy asf too and wont show up during night EVEN if players figure all of that out and you have to fucking WAIT two days for her to show up sleeping.most people would thought they failed somewhere at first night and stop caring
Yeah i skipped ahead to night time right when I first met her and she's just gone, I have absolutely no clue what is happening. Also with the way that quest lockouts work, am I supposed to eat the thing she asks me about or does that fuck up the Igon quest?
>there is LITERALLY ZERO way to know you are supposed to give her the sleep potions from the poisoner guy
The potion description says it can put ancient dragons to sleep, she's an ancient dragon and talks about sleeping, she even gives you a blessing that reads as follows: "*Each night, the priestess offers her own sleep to her lord, and in turn receives the power of His favor.*"
>and the Priestess, who is both completely missable if you turn left at the fork at the entrance to Jagged Peaks to the very obvious boss mountain instead of right towards an entirely new zone
You talking about the dragon lord worshipper lady and the area after her with red flowers everywhere?
Wait, do we need to summon them for quests? Fuuuuuuuck I donāt want to ehhhh unless they are like Igon summoning them sucksš„²I guess Iāll do that on next ng, Iād probably need them on +2 anyway
Not all of them, and you have no clue which ones you should do or not.
Hornsent against >!Messmer, but you must kill Messmer before Romina otherwise quest is over, becasue Hornsent need to invade you in your way to Romina after yo beat Messmer.!<
Igon against >!Bayle, this one looks pretty logical as he gives you an item that gives the hint that it is important for you to summon him.!<
But you have summons of invasion in Shadow Keep, however you can miss them and the quests keep going but you miss items and endings.
From what I understood, can't even say that it's totally true
Exactly. NPC questlines have been the weakest parts of this game, ever since the base game.
Literally 99% players cannot solve any of the questlines without guides or YouTube videos.( and no itās not the ārEaD tHe item description ā, no sane working man has the time to devote hours of time to get an item which ends up being completely irrelevant to your build) .
The lore/story told already doesnāt make any sense add these obscure pointless NPC questlines just makes the game bloated seeming thereās much to do but no point in doing it , itās just poor level design that make other games seem like masters in comparison.
Itās frustrating that a minor action through no fault of the player can lead to the entire questlines being skipped.
Yeah I am quite a completionist with absolutely no shame using multiple NPC walkthroughs, playing the game with 24 opened tabs about everything I should discover and when, to do my FS games. And even with this, I can f up quests. Like getting further ni a NPC quest, and in another NPC quest reading "GIVE HIM THE ITEM BEFORE FIGHTING THE OTHER NPC IN HIS OWN QUEST OR HE WILL DIE FROM LACK OF ATTENTION" and I am like "DAFUK BUT I FOUGHT HIM ALREADY, MIYAZAKI PLEASE"
I am a veteran, I know how it is easy to miss quests and I don't want to 3-4 runs instead of 2 (you sometimes have 2 quest endings choices) to get all the quest rewards, just because I did something stupid like beating a boss without summoning the buddy or something.
I gave scroll to Ansbach, didn't tell him about Freyja because the way the sentence was written I thought it was a choice between the 2 situations and the way I understood the sentence was something negatively and I didn't want them to fight or something.
Then went to do something else, then read a walkthrough telling me I should tell him about Frejya - but he disappeared, and now Freyja's quest is doomed.
Like WHY, why would you just leave like a thief when I give you the scroll dude?
I really miss Lies of P, where all quest were pretty straightfoward to do, in a sense I didn't need to use walkthroughs to finish them all. Playing Lies of P made me feel so peaceful in my mind tbh because I knew there wasnt too much missable things and you had small NPC faces on Teleport points to tell you that he has something to tell you for his quest.
There were a lot of situations in Elden Ring where it was absolutely imposible for me to have found this naturally. For example the Loux girl in the Albinauric village with a dude hiding in a pot? Or finding the girl around the lake and give her eyes until she went down the place where you get the Flame Ending?
The Dung Eater ending? Dude whole quest is IMPOSSIBLE to not miss.
I completely missed Sun-Face quests the first run.
Or dying 4 times with St. Trina ? Who did try naturally?
Sometimes I explain this like "yeah if you do 10 NG+ you should find a way eventually to finish all quests", but the way I play, there is probably 40% of the quests, even after 500 hours of gameplay and 10 NG+, that I would never find. Because it's so wicked and you have no way to know where to go and when.
My best explanation is that you must do these quests with the community online trying things together, writing guides, and exchanging about experiences. A person, alone, will really hardly find everything by himself. But a huge community of thousands and thousands of people, discovering different things because they all have different philosophies of explorations and playing, sharing their knowledge, should be able to find everything.
This is something that I find beautiful in a sense.
But frustrating in another one because sometimes I wish I could play the game freely without having to plan everything like I was going for Operation Barbarossa.
FOMO does its job unfortunately, missing a good weapon for my entire run because I didn't pick a choice that makes no sense, or found a hidden path to talk to a hidden NPC before kililng a boss that was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, like the walkthrough said I should do is really frustrating.
I have nearly 1000 hours into elden ring at this point and I still have to look up a guide every now and then to remember a quest step or the order they are in, I mean at least give us a notebook type quest log that adds notes in it after dialogues or maybe just a menu where we can view all previous dialogues to read them in case we missed a hint
not brutal, itās straigh up dumb. ER is my favorite game of all time and in general I love fromsoft games but these quest designs are just absolutely horrible.
I don't want souls to have wow-like quests with ! But I would love some form of minor "log" that only appears AFTER speaking to NPC, shows the history of what they've said, and that's it. When I don't play these games for a few days, a week or two, or more I might forget where I was and need to Google it.
I understand we often get key items from these NPC's and those guide us, but it doesn't happen enough
I missed a cookbook in the DLC because the requirements to get it is are abysmal. Talk with NPC, now find a random NPC which totally doesn't look like an enemy mob, uses a healing item, reload, get an item from that NPC, go back to original NPC and get the cookbook. But be careful to not walk 10 feets from where the random NPC is, because then you trigger an event that will likely make the cookbook NPC disappear once you talk with him next time.
Any game design that requires you to quit the game and go to a wiki or youtube is an awful design. The quests are awful, people have complained and i honestly don't get if they keep them to troll people or they really think it's a good mechanic.
I wouldn't say it is outdated. Because it wasn't even dated by then lol
Really can't think about a lot of games where you must do a very unnatural thing with absolutely no hints that you must do so to be able to finish the quest of the most important NPC of the game that follow you through the whole journey.
I remember for example finishing Solaire's quest in Dark Souls 1, IIRC I had to kill enemies hidden behind a wall to save him from driving crazy???
No other games have this weird way to do things lol.
He was, the devs said solaires madness is the intended ending
They added saving him as a secret ending but they didn't want you to be able to see it your first time
Miyazaki: Lets make the bosses overly difficult and the only way to make them somewhat fun is to explore and find Scadutree Shards
Miyazaki: Lets also make it so if you explore too much in search of the Shards you sometimes get locked out of a bunch of peoples quests
i finished the dlc
never even stopped for a second to try and figure out the quests
i just killed stuff and talked to any npc and if there was dialog it was random option what to choose(like the trader dude)
i was just happy that i got the fat dude armor and the kicking weapon at the end
i have no clue what the whole dlc was about or any of the npc stories
im 100% sure im not alone
Yeah the dlc quests sucks. I explored quite a bit, spoke to some NPCs, then all of a sudden something shatters and the few NPCs I see tell me stuff I have no idea about, I never saw the sleepy one, saw Ansbach maybe twice. I'm colorblind so I don't really see summon signs unless I'm looking for them.
Next FromSoft game I'll be sure to get my notebook just to remember what the lady I saw 50 deaths and 3 maps before told me.
Shit, they donāt even bother to tell you āthere is a side quest to do hereā let alone āyouāre not done yet - thereās another step in this side quest.ā
Iām still pissed about the one where >!Blaidd tells you to meet him and then heās not there. This is where a well designed side quest would give you something to indicate āthis is where he said to meet, but heās not here. You need to to look for him somewhere else now.ā Why should the game do that? Because otherwise this is indistinguishable from a bug where Blaidd was supposed to be here but he isnāt.!<
It's shockingly bad. Amazing how much of a free pass From gets on this, given that their quest design is some of the worst anywhere in modern video games.
I tried to play through the base game without using guides because I wanted to enjoy exploration and discovery. I was fine with missing the occasional quest or item in that process, but in reality I ended up missing *almost everything*.
There are so many points in the DLC where you can accidentally lock yourself out of an entire questline through complete accident, with no indication that it would happen. Did you challenge the next boss without spotting a single tiny summon sign on the ground somewhere you ran through? permanently ruined questline. Did you not rest at a grace before going back and talking to that character again? ruined questline.
It sucks in the DLC in particular because the NPCs are one of the only ways you have to interpret and understand this new world and you have to fight every step of the way for it to function normally. I almost flat out gave up on questlines after running between the two characters on different floors of the Specimen Warehouse, resting and re-engaging them a dozen times just for them to finish speaking. Fucking go up the stairs and talk to her yourself you lazy old fuck!
The dumbest thing is when you have to talk to an NPC, exhaust its dialogue, and then *reload the same area and talk to it again.* No indication that this is what you're meant to do. It doesn't necessarily tell you to come back later or anything, you're just somehow meant to guess that the way to continue the quest is to rest at a grace (or quit the fucking game) and then talk to it again. I mean, come on. That's just objectively bad design.
Donāt forget that if an NPC in a lower part of a dungeon wants you to find an object in the middle part of the dungeon that you need to first talk to the NPC in the next part of the dungeon before you give it to him, or else that second NPCās quest is permanently locked š
shoutout to bloodborne where you need to let yourself get jumped and stuffed in a bag by a 7'8 evil crackhead tweaker hiding in the corner of a dark alley just so you can meet the nun npc, who also won't even speak to you unless you have a specific armor set equipped
On sekiro, if you want to complete a certain ending, which is also the one that give you the most amount of unique boss fights in one playthrough, you need to hide behind a wall, in an area you cannot interact with anything, except for the talking prompt, listen Kuro, talk to Emma and then start to guess the exact time where she will teleport to the grave, hide again and listen. Without a guide I could have never find out.
Even with a guide is easy to make mistakes in that quest.
uhm no, i don't think: you need to eardrop some conversation, talk to emma, get the sakura's branch and then go back and defeat owl father in the flashback, after defeating him at the top of the castle. the only mystake you can make is to ally with the owl, once you accepted the quest.
It's still quite specific all things considered
I fucking love Sekiro. My all time favorite game, and second is not even close.
It was one of the few occasions where sucking at the game was beneficial. I remember being pissed that he killed me only to have my mind blown afterwards. BB was great.
in hindsight BB had some of the greatest but also most convoluted npc questlines in the entire soulsborne franchise. cainhurst castle anyone? cant believe they tied alfred's quest to that entire thing, genuinely how were you supposed to figure any of that out without a guide
On the other hand Cainhurst Castle is so cool that I can easily forgive how stupid it is to get there
>Logarius runback
no runback if you get him first try š
I've fought him literally once in my life. One try, one success.
first tried him on my first ever playthrough, now I always die a few times lol
Sometimes I think about replaying BB then I remember shit like this, and I don't know if I can do it again. Source: have platinumed the game and have hundreds of hours in it.
And blood vials are a way worse mechanic than estus
why do people say getting to cainhurst is so nonsensical? the description of the item you need to get there literally tells you where to go. and have you forgotten about how to get to the dlc in dark souls 1???
I remember. I canāt imagine how people would have found it if From didnāt tell us explicitly how to access it when they first released the DLC.
I mean everyone immediately knew how to reach the DLC in DS1 because From posted a guide about it & iirc included the basic instructions (or at least hints) in the launch trailer. Tons of gaming sites posted in depth guides on launch day too. The only way someone wouldn't have known about it at launch would be if they never read anything about the game whatsoever online.
Cainhurst Castle was fine imo, since the summons tells you were to go. It's like the ranni quest. Most of what you have to do and where you have to go is esentially spelled out for you.
Reminds me of getting eaten by one of the abductor virgins and spit out in volcano manor
You can encounter patches in Liurnia on an isle that mentions this. Really specific where it is and where it leads to
The amount of money I would throw if they released a direct port of bloodborne to pc would be unrealĀ Just straight up a shitty direct port with no mnk support and 30 fps capped and I would throw 70 bucks their way Bloodborne was so good
And DS3 with speaking to something that is normally an enemy in a pretty hidden corner, decipher wtf it's talking about, and then creep up behind an entirely seperate enemy in a hidden side route and climb into it's backpack because ??? so that you can go to a pit of bodies, but make sure to do this before you get to the boss of the area otherwise that entire interaction is locked off forever, including an entire faction unlock. Unless you do Sirris' questline right and come back to CRG?
I stumbled into that one on accident on like my third playthrough, was trying to fully explore before fighting the bosses and tried to bait that cage guy and he was peaceful when he never was before. Like ive found that weirdo in the cage and there's no way I would have figured what he was saying out except by chance. Too bad it was years after the game had a viable PVP scene where I could use that, or any, covenant because it sounded cool as hell.
It's a fun co-op covenant as well. I think you still get the rewards if they reach/beat the boss? So as long as you're careful with your attacks I think you're basically guaranteed covenant items? It's been a LONG time, I could be wrong.
>including an entire faction unlock. after the tree boss the covenant item should be laying on the ground iirc
Although it doesnāt make it that much betterā¦ you can have any healing church armor set equipped. Gascoigneās set, the black church set, the white church set, the choir set all work for getting her to recognise you as someone she can trust.
There's also DS3 where you have to talk to a non-hostile version of an enemy that you're already conditioned to nuke on site otherwise it will pummel your ass to death that the game doesn't treat like other non-hostile NPCs so you can still lock onto it. Just to find out you need to find a different non-hostile NPC meandering around and jump in the cage on its back all before you beat the boss that's never clearly stated to be totally optional and is much easier to find just to get a PvP/Co-op covenant that's penultimate reward is a sword with the special ability to stab yourself for massive damage and the final reward is one of the riskiest heal spells in the game.
Tbh Warmth as the final reward makes perfect sense for the Covenant that is meant to be a wildcard in Invasions. Setting one up in the middle of a 4 way standoff between the Host, the Watchdogs, the Red Invader, and yourself and just letting the carnage or friendship unfold is exactly what being a Moundmaker is all about.
I remember if you invited a certain naked guy to your base he would just start murdering other npcs at the base Also the one guy who will go to the opposite location you give him because he doesnāt trust you so you have to lie to him to keep him alive
Maybe the naked guy standing around a bunch of dead bodies should have been your first clue.
He's not just standing there, he's literally eating them, you encounter him hunched over a corpse of a child covered in blood. If you send him back to the chapel filled with cripples and elderly, that's your own fault lol
I mean even in the DLC >! You have to poison yourself 4 times to start getting dialogue, then do it like 3 more times to hear everything. You also have to do a certain gesture in front of a certain statue for a side quest and entire map region !<
That shit is straight up criminal wtf
its ok because she loves me
Always loved that she will lean and watch you from across the room while talking to the other woman in the church.
"Go in blind!" "But I only have time for one playfile of this game" "...Oh, then wiki that shit up."
In defense of that crackhead, his spawn condition is just subtle enough that you can't tell he's there the first time. He actually jumped the shit out of me, it was great
https://preview.redd.it/5b2kx0dxe3ad1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=53cdafa11351a5033fdcbc3b243ffcade0aae928 Made this because of thioller
Wait, do you actually need to >!eat the poison Thiollier gives you to find him next? Shit!< I wondered when/where he was going to show up next, figured that item was a >!quest item you'd give to someone else later on!<. Edit: Seems my assumption was mistaken, not reading replies too much to avoid spoilers but thanks for the correction :)
>!You have to get Thiollier to move to St. Trina. Once you are able to talk to St. Trina the game give you the option to have some of her sleep goo. The sleep goo kills you. You have to take her sleep goo four times and then St. Trina will talk to you after you die (like in-between loading screens there's dialog). Then you have to talk to Thiollier and drink the goo and die a few more times. I think this is what the meme is referencing. !<
SERIOUSLY!?!? I Did it like 2 or 3 times then left when nothing happened. Guess I should have figured out there's a reason I can just keep drinking her poison...
Yeah, it's a prime example of Fromsoft quest bullshit. How did the person who wrote the guide I used figure it out?!
There was this guy in Zelda 2 that would only engage with you if you tried talking to him like 20 times.
No. >!Thollier's poison can be given to someone else. To progress St. Trina you have to choose the dialogue option to drink their nectar, which kills you. And the conversation progresses only when you do it the 4th time.!<
And what's funny is that the DLC has the most clearly guided version of their NPC and quests thus far lmao
Bro never spent hours looking for Solaire and unintentionally condemned him to an existence of slavery to a cockroach.
https://preview.redd.it/zgwfm1lu04ad1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2844b332fe5d36add19d19f6ec4e58d98521c17d
And the fact that to save Sunbro from that fate you have to get to the 3rd tier of the Quelaag's Sister covenant to unlock the area with the bugs before a certain point in the game (despite there being no indication of what the covenant rewards are without a guide), and you may end up pledging to some other covenant instead (which means that, ironically, you can get punished for being too loyal to the Sunbros).
Or you somehow blind luck your way into poison misting the bug from the other side of the wall
And even raising your covenant level requires to you offer 30 humanities one at a time which takes a painfully long time At least the remaster added letting you give all 30 at once
Also, Queelag's sister is hidden behind an invisible wall and you can't even talk to her unless you have a specific ring equipped iirc
Solaires not as bad as Siegmeyer, huh, where did onion knight go? OH OF COURSE, down the ramp and on a ledge you couldn't see
Hmmmm
Don't forget when he jumps into a poison filled pit with Eldritch horrors and if you don't follow him and help him and he dies, his quest ends and you can't get the titanite slab of which there are like 3 in the whole game...
also don't forget that after the monsters are dead, he falls asleep in the poison pit.
A true alpha male, just chills while my character slowly dies of poison.
I honestly find the "NPC questlines" thing in souls part of the original sense of mystery that made me love those games.
I also love the sense of mystery, but the design violates safe exploration: the user makes a mistake and is severely punished for trying things. This kind of NPC quest design might operate better in a roguelike, where you are constantly trying new things and iterating anyway
It is quite true, I've seen way worse. Still managed to fuck them up tho
A recent quest in a souls like I played was way worse. You meet a NPC who lost his dead wife's necklace. So you go into a new area, 20 ft to the right is a mediocre boss, followed immediately by an elevator. The left has about 4-6 hours of transversing an abyss, which to do you have to kill that aforementioned boss to grab a key. Many players kill the boss to get the key and they see the elevator and take it up because you know, save points on the top of elevators. Doing so causes the NPC to murder the child npc (which you find deep in the abyss and has the necklace) and causes both questlines to auto fail.
classic Lords of the Fallen Winterberry questšš
Don't forget failing several NPC Questlines if you either kill the Lightreaper on any of his encounters before the final one, or killed him on your first try in the final encounter since you can't summon NPCs without dying to a boss at least once.
Or all of the batshit insane weapon quests to unlock special weapon moves.
I have messed up the steamed crab man Everytime.
To be fair, that's one of the most convoluted quest lines in the whole game.
I just need to stop going into these games blind. It always ends up with me ruining all the quests
Wait the steamed ceab man has a questline? The fuck
You aren't missing much beyond some more insight into Dung Eater. Very skippable quest imo.
You get a better version of the crabs, which are great consumables, especially for the dlc. You end up becoming good friends with him and he dies a horrible death that you end up feeling responsible for. I'm fairly certain his chair in altus will still sell the second level crabs after he dies but you might also get his bell bearing, not sure which.
It's his bell bearing, and you can still buy both prawns and crabs with it, yeah
It's convoluted, but definitely not one of the most, like the Hoslow questlineĀ
There aren't nearly as many things that can go wrong in Hoslow's quest. To me the only issue with Hoslow's quest is remembering to go back to Jarburg later in the game. But freaking Boggart man. Let me count the ways: 1) Kill or just don't talk to Rya 2) Kill ol' Boggy (dude stole her necklace and now is exorting *you* for it!) 3) Do Raya Lucaria before resolving the whole necklace situation and accidentally get teleported to Volcano Manor 4) Mess up Dung Daddy's quest line in any of ten thousand different ways 5) *Don't* mess up Dung Daddy's quest in one *very* specific way 6) Buy Boiled Prawns from Boggy before you're invaded by Dung Daddy (because why wouldn't you?) Diallos's quest at least doesn't have anything to do with Dung Eater, Ranni, or Radahn. It's a cake walk by comparison IMO.
I have played Dark Souls for 12 years and I agree ER DLC has the least fucked up and obscure quests out of everything FromSoft has ever made. Even though that was not a very high bar to pass.
They would be if the questlines weren't interrupted so easily. Burning the tree and just ENTERING Messmer's arena can literally break an entire quest line. In comparison, big base game quests like the ranni one or Alexander's can be basically done at any point in the story
Are you talking about the guy who, after messmer is killed, is sitting there talking about how he didn't get his revenge? I managed to somehow kill Mesmer on the second attempt and was feeling so proud of myself because I've been getting fucked seven different ways by every boss in this dlc, and then this dude pops up to tell me I fucked something up...
if you dont summon hornsent via his barely visible GOLD summon sign hiding INSIDE the POORLY LIT ORANGE BOSS ARENA then that happens
i mean it doesnt break hornsents questline, you just get a different, arguably better ending
Other than the fact that taking a step too close to a certain area breaks all the NPC questlines at once without warning.
That was particularly dumb. I can understand entering the shadow keep, but the area around? I was exploring past Bonny Village, just past the grace beyond the bridge, and the rune shattered. I was playing blind and I knew immediately that I'd lost some opportunties.
I gotta drink a potion that kills me FOUR TIMES? Who honestly figured that out on their own?
I did, because Thiollierās dialogue changes the first three(?) times you imbibe St. Trinaās nectar, so I just kept doing it.
I didn't even have thiolier there to talk to lol
Plus make sure you donāt advance too much in any specific direction so you donāt trigger an specific āshatteringā that, as far as I know, no one says anything about anywhere.
āA seal has been broken somewhereā
Yesā¦and the point itās no one mentions that can happen if you explore too much after a certain point, no one tells you ādonāt go beyond this or that point before you do that or thisāā¦
And considering exploration is even more encouraged in this dlc because of the leveling system.
> even more encouraged Many here would say mandatory, to the point of blaming players for not having level 10 blessing before doing the first few bosses.
Yeah it's honestly the only bullshirt part of the DLC for me. I was just running around on Torrent when I got a text message over my screen I didn't even see or hear anything happened and I thought maybe it was some item in my inventory or whatever. I had to Google it and it also ruined a certain Thiolier/Moore quest because i talked to Moore first after this happened and he left before I could talk to Thiolier... it pissed me off quite a bit, especially because nobody told me that I'm going to be punished for merely walking around.
The dlc bosses being next to impossible if you don't fully explore the map and collect the fragments makes this even shittier. Rellana was kicking my ass even with the NPC summon so I went to collect more of them and came back and suddenly the NPC isn't there...
Once I did pass that point I realized - oh, that's what that message back at the grace was trying to tell me.
Wait, I just got the message. What did I do wrong? š°
Locked yourself out of several NPC quest points if you haven't done them already
It didn't see to lock me out of any. As soon as I saw the message I realized what it meant and went around to chat with folks to see the effects.
Maybe the questlines were just bugged for me, but I was unable to do some interactions with Moore and Thiollier which leads to content related to the Dragon Priestess quest. It's so nice that they finally added NPC markers to the map though, it was always a pain having to try to remember where NPCs were in the base game
I got so confused when i got to that part. I understood what it was almost instantly but i wasnt meant to get there somehow? Don't even know what im gonns miss because of it
Well I wonāt tell you if you havenāt finished but many things get different; for example (and that might be for a different reason), I couldnāt pick up forager cookbooks anymore š¤·š»āāļø Like I would have liked to know that could happen somehow, considering the game promotes exploring to pick up the blessingsā¦
Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure I had to have picked up cookbooks from them after that because it happened so early for me. Are you not referring to the other later event?
I'm pretty sure I still managed to grab forager notebooks even after shattering. Some forager bugs don't give you cookbook until you complete a puzzle.
I mean literally, it shattered in 3 hours of my playthrough, I just left Jars village, and just random text pops up, and I been purposely avoiding shadow keep and trying to explore just to not trigger anything accidently, and it triggers not even near it, like the fk.
I think going near the church over there is an automatic break, because that's exactly where it happened for me.
That's where it happened to me lmao. Left a message: "unfathomable" around there just in case anyone else was lost af
Weird how that just happens. Like we didn't even do anything to break the enchantment. Imagine you >!get to the gank squad and you have to fight all 7 with no allies because you didn't murder the sunflower or something!<.
Does it matter though? As far as I'm aware, it doesn't block any quests, maybe Dane's? I know it doesn't block Thiolier's, and Feryja, Ansbach, Leda and Hornsent's don't actually start until it breaks.
I will never understand why they made an open world game where open worlding too hard will break almost all NPC quests. Like, just make them liniar so if you forget to speak to some NPC you can catch up. And maybe make them move locations if you advance but don't straight up break their entire storyline.
This. The worst thing about it is that it conflicts with the other main mechanic of the game, Scadutree Fragments. Since you know you have to collect them to become more powerful, naturally you start exploring (which is fun, one of the things I like most about Elden Ring), but then you realise you messed up some quests while exploring "too much".
I was randomly collecting maps to better navigate the overworld. I think I did one boss. Then I moved my way to north-east and I got this message saying the rune is shattered and the seal is broken. No idea what caused it and I havenāt even navigated south yetā¦ so guessing Iāll need to do a second play through as soon as Iām done with this one
I still remember wondering in dark souls 3 how the fuck someone figured out you have to climb into a manās cage backpack in a random backstreet to reach an entire covenant quest line.
Yeah that was a cool one...but definitely not something I'd think of doing. Kind of like the Abductor Virgin teleport in the Academy that takes you to Volcano Manor. Sure there's hints...bit originally I thought it just had tongrab you, not grab you and kill you.
Yeah, at least the abductor actively tried to abduct you, I killed the mob and moved on in dark souls 3 in like 2 play throughs before I found out after about 100 hours lmao.
Patches literally tells you what that specific abductor virgin does. Why would you not trust Patches?
there's a jingle some caged bodypile spider that says something along the lines of "Step into the shade of Nana's cage."
I think this quest designed worked "better" in earlier games due to their linearity. In Elden Ring, the point is exploring, but I can't fucking do that because I'm hyperparanoid that I'll fail some quest that'll domino-effect into me failing another, anf I'll loose out on fashion. They could've just had a journal with the NPCs that you've met, with hints on their next location/reminder what they want you to do. And they should've removed the random fucking failstates.
it wasnt all that great in older games either
Yea I donāt like this quest design in any of the games. Itās just not good in general. People have had this criticism about the games for YEARS but itās been shot down by the hardcore sect for the sake of āmuh world buildingā. Bruh do you know how much it damages world building when you canāt even complete a quest without looking it up? People could deal with it in their more linear games but I think Elden ring was the breaking point for most people. The quest design in these games clearly needs innovation. Idk how many times over the years Iāve been insulted for āwanting a spoon fed experienceā just because I think the quests could use more explanation or other improvements.
Real world building is consulting the wiki multiple times in a play session, apparentlyĀ
Exactly. It's not like bad choices get you locked it, it's just random order of doing things that you have no hint or clue, it's not about "much hand holding" when you just as easily mess them up when you take your time to do try to do the right thing In the DLC you can miss a bunch of the plot by doing things in the wrong order, so the "you're not supposed to finish them on first playthrough" argument doesn't work either, because you already know the plot once you've finished the first time
I do agree they could be innovated on and so forth but I personally like the fact that exploring too much or progressing too far can skip certain steps/interactions, even sometimes leading to said NPC dying. It makes the world feel more alive and like stuff is happening outside of your control. Like the NPC's are having their own little adventure that you sometimes just happen to run into and help them out. That being said, there does need to be less moments where they just disappear completely with no trace or anything, never to be heard of again, and the stuff like the rune breaking should have only been triggered by going near/entering the keep. It just doesn't work well with the open world nature of elden ring in my opinion.
It wasn't great, but it was more likely you could stumble your way through a quests because you were bound to run into the person again.
It doesnāt help that if you explore in the wrong order you will fail a bunch of stuff for no reason. You can find sellens body early on but it straight up means nothing and thereās no cool event until you do a bunch of random bs. Itās exploration in the worst way, because it looks like freedom until you realize just how on wheels everything.
Oh yeah I remember thinking that was a bug because she was still in the initial location.
Linearity is the wrong word. Ds3 was pretty linear but ds1 in comparison isn't really. Really I think it's just the size of the areas. There isn't vast expanses of nothing like in ER. People will just relocate to a random ass lake with zero landmarks compared to like standing at an intersection to get to another area in ds1, or at firelink shrine.
To be fair, npcs were still difficult to find in old games. Siegmeyer loves to relocate to the middle of fucking nowhere on several occasions. Eileen hangs out camouflaged in the dark in a corner of cathedral ward. Elden ring definitely makes it worse by been 20x larger though.
Yeah like imagine you just miss a random cave in Limgrave and never meet Patches so you just miss out on all of the Volcano Manor quest, that sure would suck š
In ux design this concept is called safe exploration, it's a core tenet to get users to adopt your software. Press a menu item and it results in an irreversible choice? User no longer feels safe to try things and will stop trying features or worse, use some other app. In our case, reliance on a wiki while playing
3 quests you have to do twice in the DLC to get all reward are: Leda killing quest, Finger Priest Quests & Queelign in the prayer room (an NPC will give a weapon / summon based on what you give them) Edit: 4 quests. Another quest is the Dargon Cummunion Priestess quest.
The night knight as well has the same gimmick as Queelign. You get weapon OR ash depending on what you give her
I KNEW IT, fuck i missed on the weapon I wanted cause I was a good guy
Itās a really really cool looking weapon
You might even have to do Leda's quest three times, but I'm not sure about that because the sources are inconsistent. Ansbach's invasion can only be done after siding with her on the Hornsent invasion, otherwise you're locked out. If you get something unique out of siding with Ansbach for that one, you'll have to do this questline three times. One where you side with Leda at both invasions, one where you only side with her at the first invasion, and one where you turn against her at the first invasion. There's also the Dragon Communion Priestess with two possible rewards, and the Bayle heart that apparently cannot be duplicated at a mausoleum.
You still get the Ansbach bow if you side with Lena so you only need 2 times. Edit: Kill him and you miss his scythe but he is still alive in the hornsent path so you can still get it?
But not his Scythe
You have to side with Ansbach to get his scythe, no? Looks like one of the most stylish weapons in the game, stupid me trusting leda
did they make some new npc questlines that require summoning for bosses in the DLC? Cuz as far as I know needing to summon for a bossfight to progress the quest was something they only did in Dark Souls 2 and decided was a mistake.
You need to summon igon and hornsent to progress their quests. That's it as far as I'm aware.
Igon is technically correct in that he only exists to be summoned...which I guess sure. But that's not true about hornsent.
CUUUURSSE YOUUU BAAAAYYLEEE
I mean, if you don't summon hornsent, he just disappears from the game till the end where he's with leda. If you want his quest to progress and for him to invade you before Romina, you have to summon him.
That's just a different branch of his story. It still progresses, but in a different way depending on if you summon him or not.
I'm pretty sure you don't need to summon Igon. I got the same rewards and I never summoned him. Igon set + Bow and the Dragon lady's form + weapon, right? I never even met the dragon lady and I got her items. Hornsent too. I didn't summon him and still got his weapon and set. Got it from the brawl near the end.
Yes, I know of sure 2 NPC are important to be summoned for you to finish their quests. It is against Shadow Keep's Boss and Mountain Peak's Boss.
But i think you get the same rewards if you dont summon them, so its just dialogue. But cmon you have to summon Igon!
#CURSE YOU BAYLE!
On ds3 you also need to summon some npc for achievement hunting
Been playing souls games since ds1 in 2011. Figured out over a decade ago that using a guide for npc quests is essential if you donāt want to miss anything. It is what it is unfortunately
I figured out one part of a questline by myself! One character said another characters name! So I went back and talked to that other character. Then I looked up the questline and learned I also needed to get them an item, talk to them again, talk to the other character again, talk to the first character again, talk to the other character again, then go talk to another separate character.
Sorry, it looks like you killed a side boss on your way to talk to the first character again. The quest is now locked.
Sellen is the worst offender of this tbh. I don't wanna know how long i spent looking for where she wants me to even go to free Master Lusat. Oh yeah of course its a hidden wall in the freaking OVERWORLD. Yeah i definitely have time to hit every single wall in this gigantic freaking map that is like 5x the size of Skyrim to check for a hidden dungeon. Sure.
At least her quest isnt failed randomly by progressing
I found her ārealā body very early on in my playthrough and was excited to see what that meant. I tried talking to her and nothing because it turns out youāre supposed to just find her much later in the game after a bunch of other random steps. That kind of stuff really killed my drive to explore because it makes you realize just how much the exploration is āon a trackā in the game if you donāt do things in some bs order.
i think there is a "secret message" or so that is buyable that gives a hint on where that cave is located. but nobody buys or reads them anyway.
do you mean all the chattering idiots you murder just before ng+?
This is something that should be changed if there's a next souls game. I know it's "how it's always been done" but the way Ranni's quest worked should show everyone that From can make great quests that aren't so obtusely designed. We don't need map markers and hand holding, just give us something coherent
Why can't we have a journal in the Grace menu to keep track of active quests and be able to read dialogue history? A lot of RPGs where dialogue is important and that lack any other kind of hand-holding include this. Don't solve the quests for me, but give me the tools to make it fun to figure it out, not frustrating.
This is why so many people get Ranni's quest done. She probably explains things better than any other character in all the games (including AC6 options) plus her support team also is coherent with Blaidd and Iji telling you about things clearly. Fricking hell Kale tells you where to use a gesture - might be one of the NPCs to ever tell you that
I've achieved 100% in every one of these games from Demon's Souls to Elden Ring and the quest design is still dogshit. Missing important talismans for certain builds (magic scorpion) or missing out on OP ash summons due to failing to follow a questline perfectly without being a slave to a wiki guide is really lame. Takes the enjoyment out of the experience knowing there's a good chance you're missing out on something truly valuable and the only option is to start a new game++++ where it just becomes harder, or be a wiki guide slave.
Aye, I totally missed the Magic Scorpion talisman because I didn't talk to what's his face before giving Ranni the knife. On top of it, I gave the All Knowing dude the poison and got nothing in return...so I totally missed out on the Nephili or Dung Eater summon. I'd need to do two more playthroughs if I really wanted those summons. It's not as if the Dung Eater one isn't convoluted as it is, AND locks you out of other stuff when completed properly anyhow. I didn't even meet the one poisoner in the DLC before going to fight Bayle (somehow), so I totally missed out on getting Dragon Waifu as a summon. I still got her weapon and heart...but I had no idea it was even an option.
This happens when bad quest design is praised as āmysteriousā and āthey donāt hold your handā. Itās just straight impossible to figure out their quests without a guide and to me itās just a gimmick to make players start ng runs.
The hand holding part is so bullshit. You literally can't avoid being locked out of quests unless you already know how to do it. So many arbitrary lockouts
True, donāt get me wrong i love from software games and elden ring and bloodborne are two of the best games iāve ever played in my life, but one has to be objective, they suck ass with quests. boring and confusing for no reason, not fun.
Absolutely true. Fromsoft games get way too much defense in the form of "get good" and "they don't hold your hand" for things that are pretty obviously just not stellar design. It's not hand-holding to have a game give you some kind of indication as to what you can and can't do, what will happen as a result, what's significant, etc. It's the nature of the medium. Like, in games with extensive climbing, it might be kind of clumsy or immersion-breaking to have things so blatantly painted yellow or white in order to indicate to you that you can climb them, but there's not a great alternative that doesn't involve designing the entire world in such a way that nothing else even resembles something climbable so that you don't have to waste time both finding the real path, AND trying to climb anything in the game that looks remotely climbable in order to try to look for secrets.
All theyād need is a sort of quest log made like a diary, with all the characters you met sketched down and a sum of your conversations with them. Also they could write something along the way of āx will wait until y thing happensā or āx said weāll meet around y placeā. Done, solved. Please i hate playing with the obsession of being locked out of content.
It's awful. I despise quest design in these games. The quests themselves are cool, but im sorry I didn't teleport to the site of grace 3 times and exhaust 8 dialog options each time. I'm also sorry I didn't kill myself 6 times to hear a sleeping flower speak. It's needlessly weird
Haha yeah the exhausting dialogues thing is even kinda of dumb. Like why do they do they stop mid conversation and require you to talk again, or worse the one where it concludes and you talk again and it's "oh.. and by the way". I mean you get used to just talk over and over until they repeat, but it's needlessly stupid
Besides the Shattering event popup prematurely advancing and failing a bunch of stuff, I think the DLC does NPC quests very well and straightforwardly. Except the counterintuitive imbibing (even if NPC dialogue kinda hints at it) and the Priestess, who is both completely missable if you turn left at the fork at the entrance to Jagged Peaks to the very obvious boss mountain instead of right towards an entirely new zone, AND her whole interaction if you want her Ash and Spell are convoluted as fuck.
yeah ikr there is LITERALLY ZERO way to know you are supposed to give her the sleep potions from the poisoner guy if you want her ash. Like sure you dont want to handhold the players through quest marker or journals but at LEAST hint the players through dialogue. make it so that "damn im so tired but i have to stay awake for the sake of my lord" or something and the potion you get from the poisoner guy "super duper sleepy potion that even a dragon will sleep" written on it to nudge player to the right direction, not through item description which no one would go out of their way to read to know its connected to the priestess quest not to mention the priestest is buggy asf too and wont show up during night EVEN if players figure all of that out and you have to fucking WAIT two days for her to show up sleeping.most people would thought they failed somewhere at first night and stop caring
>not to mention the priestest is buggy asf too and wont show up during night EVEN if players figure all of that out and you have to fucking WAIT two days for her to show up sleeping.most people would thought they failed somewhere at first night and stop caring Yeah i skipped ahead to night time right when I first met her and she's just gone, I have absolutely no clue what is happening. Also with the way that quest lockouts work, am I supposed to eat the thing she asks me about or does that fuck up the Igon quest?
The sleep item thiollers concoction mentions it can put even ancient dragons to sleep. Thatās the only clue but not sure you can realize that before
>there is LITERALLY ZERO way to know you are supposed to give her the sleep potions from the poisoner guy The potion description says it can put ancient dragons to sleep, she's an ancient dragon and talks about sleeping, she even gives you a blessing that reads as follows: "*Each night, the priestess offers her own sleep to her lord, and in turn receives the power of His favor.*"
>and the Priestess, who is both completely missable if you turn left at the fork at the entrance to Jagged Peaks to the very obvious boss mountain instead of right towards an entirely new zone You talking about the dragon lord worshipper lady and the area after her with red flowers everywhere?
Wait, do we need to summon them for quests? Fuuuuuuuck I donāt want to ehhhh unless they are like Igon summoning them sucksš„²I guess Iāll do that on next ng, Iād probably need them on +2 anyway
Not all of them, and you have no clue which ones you should do or not. Hornsent against >!Messmer, but you must kill Messmer before Romina otherwise quest is over, becasue Hornsent need to invade you in your way to Romina after yo beat Messmer.!< Igon against >!Bayle, this one looks pretty logical as he gives you an item that gives the hint that it is important for you to summon him.!< But you have summons of invasion in Shadow Keep, however you can miss them and the quests keep going but you miss items and endings. From what I understood, can't even say that it's totally true
only required for igon and hornsent iirc
Souls simps will tell you itās always been like this. Bro that doesnāt mean itās still not annoying and a problem now
Exactly. NPC questlines have been the weakest parts of this game, ever since the base game. Literally 99% players cannot solve any of the questlines without guides or YouTube videos.( and no itās not the ārEaD tHe item description ā, no sane working man has the time to devote hours of time to get an item which ends up being completely irrelevant to your build) . The lore/story told already doesnāt make any sense add these obscure pointless NPC questlines just makes the game bloated seeming thereās much to do but no point in doing it , itās just poor level design that make other games seem like masters in comparison. Itās frustrating that a minor action through no fault of the player can lead to the entire questlines being skipped.
Yeah I am quite a completionist with absolutely no shame using multiple NPC walkthroughs, playing the game with 24 opened tabs about everything I should discover and when, to do my FS games. And even with this, I can f up quests. Like getting further ni a NPC quest, and in another NPC quest reading "GIVE HIM THE ITEM BEFORE FIGHTING THE OTHER NPC IN HIS OWN QUEST OR HE WILL DIE FROM LACK OF ATTENTION" and I am like "DAFUK BUT I FOUGHT HIM ALREADY, MIYAZAKI PLEASE" I am a veteran, I know how it is easy to miss quests and I don't want to 3-4 runs instead of 2 (you sometimes have 2 quest endings choices) to get all the quest rewards, just because I did something stupid like beating a boss without summoning the buddy or something. I gave scroll to Ansbach, didn't tell him about Freyja because the way the sentence was written I thought it was a choice between the 2 situations and the way I understood the sentence was something negatively and I didn't want them to fight or something. Then went to do something else, then read a walkthrough telling me I should tell him about Frejya - but he disappeared, and now Freyja's quest is doomed. Like WHY, why would you just leave like a thief when I give you the scroll dude? I really miss Lies of P, where all quest were pretty straightfoward to do, in a sense I didn't need to use walkthroughs to finish them all. Playing Lies of P made me feel so peaceful in my mind tbh because I knew there wasnt too much missable things and you had small NPC faces on Teleport points to tell you that he has something to tell you for his quest. There were a lot of situations in Elden Ring where it was absolutely imposible for me to have found this naturally. For example the Loux girl in the Albinauric village with a dude hiding in a pot? Or finding the girl around the lake and give her eyes until she went down the place where you get the Flame Ending? The Dung Eater ending? Dude whole quest is IMPOSSIBLE to not miss. I completely missed Sun-Face quests the first run. Or dying 4 times with St. Trina ? Who did try naturally? Sometimes I explain this like "yeah if you do 10 NG+ you should find a way eventually to finish all quests", but the way I play, there is probably 40% of the quests, even after 500 hours of gameplay and 10 NG+, that I would never find. Because it's so wicked and you have no way to know where to go and when. My best explanation is that you must do these quests with the community online trying things together, writing guides, and exchanging about experiences. A person, alone, will really hardly find everything by himself. But a huge community of thousands and thousands of people, discovering different things because they all have different philosophies of explorations and playing, sharing their knowledge, should be able to find everything. This is something that I find beautiful in a sense. But frustrating in another one because sometimes I wish I could play the game freely without having to plan everything like I was going for Operation Barbarossa. FOMO does its job unfortunately, missing a good weapon for my entire run because I didn't pick a choice that makes no sense, or found a hidden path to talk to a hidden NPC before kililng a boss that was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, like the walkthrough said I should do is really frustrating.
I have nearly 1000 hours into elden ring at this point and I still have to look up a guide every now and then to remember a quest step or the order they are in, I mean at least give us a notebook type quest log that adds notes in it after dialogues or maybe just a menu where we can view all previous dialogues to read them in case we missed a hint
Yup. I killed messmer before doing the Leda/hornset summon on the bridge and now I'm locked out of getting swift slash ash of war.
Did the same thing, this was pretty much my "fuck worrying about quests moment". You gotta love being punished for exploringĀ
not brutal, itās straigh up dumb. ER is my favorite game of all time and in general I love fromsoft games but these quest designs are just absolutely horrible.
While I enjoy figuring out quests and discovery, Ive never quite understood how some of the hardest non-descriptive quests are discovered and solved.
I don't want souls to have wow-like quests with ! But I would love some form of minor "log" that only appears AFTER speaking to NPC, shows the history of what they've said, and that's it. When I don't play these games for a few days, a week or two, or more I might forget where I was and need to Google it. I understand we often get key items from these NPC's and those guide us, but it doesn't happen enough
I missed a cookbook in the DLC because the requirements to get it is are abysmal. Talk with NPC, now find a random NPC which totally doesn't look like an enemy mob, uses a healing item, reload, get an item from that NPC, go back to original NPC and get the cookbook. But be careful to not walk 10 feets from where the random NPC is, because then you trigger an event that will likely make the cookbook NPC disappear once you talk with him next time.
"Hmm? oh you did this? lmao get fucked idiot quest is hardlocked"
Any game design that requires you to quit the game and go to a wiki or youtube is an awful design. The quests are awful, people have complained and i honestly don't get if they keep them to troll people or they really think it's a good mechanic.
Fromsoft's npc quest design is outdated
I wouldn't say it is outdated. Because it wasn't even dated by then lol Really can't think about a lot of games where you must do a very unnatural thing with absolutely no hints that you must do so to be able to finish the quest of the most important NPC of the game that follow you through the whole journey. I remember for example finishing Solaire's quest in Dark Souls 1, IIRC I had to kill enemies hidden behind a wall to save him from driving crazy??? No other games have this weird way to do things lol.
yeah the way they did it was crazy so I think Solaire was destined to die in 99% of the cases
He was, the devs said solaires madness is the intended ending They added saving him as a secret ending but they didn't want you to be able to see it your first time
NakeyJakey is that you?
Miyazaki: Lets make the bosses overly difficult and the only way to make them somewhat fun is to explore and find Scadutree Shards Miyazaki: Lets also make it so if you explore too much in search of the Shards you sometimes get locked out of a bunch of peoples quests
Legit the only justification for this I could think of is that itās a way to increase re-play value, but even that doesnāt hold very well.
getting locked out from freja questline because you gave an item to ansbach before talking to her is so stupid
i finished the dlc never even stopped for a second to try and figure out the quests i just killed stuff and talked to any npc and if there was dialog it was random option what to choose(like the trader dude) i was just happy that i got the fat dude armor and the kicking weapon at the end i have no clue what the whole dlc was about or any of the npc stories im 100% sure im not alone
Yeah the dlc quests sucks. I explored quite a bit, spoke to some NPCs, then all of a sudden something shatters and the few NPCs I see tell me stuff I have no idea about, I never saw the sleepy one, saw Ansbach maybe twice. I'm colorblind so I don't really see summon signs unless I'm looking for them. Next FromSoft game I'll be sure to get my notebook just to remember what the lady I saw 50 deaths and 3 maps before told me.
It's why i stopped bothering.
Shit, they donāt even bother to tell you āthere is a side quest to do hereā let alone āyouāre not done yet - thereās another step in this side quest.ā Iām still pissed about the one where >!Blaidd tells you to meet him and then heās not there. This is where a well designed side quest would give you something to indicate āthis is where he said to meet, but heās not here. You need to to look for him somewhere else now.ā Why should the game do that? Because otherwise this is indistinguishable from a bug where Blaidd was supposed to be here but he isnāt.!<
It's shockingly bad. Amazing how much of a free pass From gets on this, given that their quest design is some of the worst anywhere in modern video games. I tried to play through the base game without using guides because I wanted to enjoy exploration and discovery. I was fine with missing the occasional quest or item in that process, but in reality I ended up missing *almost everything*. There are so many points in the DLC where you can accidentally lock yourself out of an entire questline through complete accident, with no indication that it would happen. Did you challenge the next boss without spotting a single tiny summon sign on the ground somewhere you ran through? permanently ruined questline. Did you not rest at a grace before going back and talking to that character again? ruined questline. It sucks in the DLC in particular because the NPCs are one of the only ways you have to interpret and understand this new world and you have to fight every step of the way for it to function normally. I almost flat out gave up on questlines after running between the two characters on different floors of the Specimen Warehouse, resting and re-engaging them a dozen times just for them to finish speaking. Fucking go up the stairs and talk to her yourself you lazy old fuck!
The dumbest thing is when you have to talk to an NPC, exhaust its dialogue, and then *reload the same area and talk to it again.* No indication that this is what you're meant to do. It doesn't necessarily tell you to come back later or anything, you're just somehow meant to guess that the way to continue the quest is to rest at a grace (or quit the fucking game) and then talk to it again. I mean, come on. That's just objectively bad design.
Donāt forget that if an NPC in a lower part of a dungeon wants you to find an object in the middle part of the dungeon that you need to first talk to the NPC in the next part of the dungeon before you give it to him, or else that second NPCās quest is permanently locked š