I agree with the points put forward about this issue, but my personal biggest gripe with Elden Ring are the reused bosses. Yes, the way spirit ashes scale is a large issue in Elden Ring, but I wouldn't consider it as it's greatest issue.
Usually this would be a big issue for me but for some reason it didn't bother me as much. Unfortunately it's a criticism that FromSoft faces way to much. At least in Elden Ring they "kind of" had lore reasons for it. Not really though...
Elden Ring isn't actually a difficult game. When you look at it mechanically through a skill/difficulty framework (DKART is the best) you find that it's actually not that mechanically demanding at all...but it has other design elements that make it seem like is, because the reputation is that FromSoft games are "hard," even if they're more punishing than difficult. Elden Ring's biggest issue, by far, is its atrociously bad visual communication. Not only does it fail to convey information to the player that they can actually use, it intentionally misleads players into doing something the game says is right according to its feedback, and then punish them severely for doing so. For example the game will frequently use wildly different pacing for different parts of enemy attack animations to try to throw off the player's timing, but the problem is that this visual feedback of attack animations is all information the player has to make decisions, and it's being used to mislead them and force them to do the wrong thing. To make things worse, this issue combines with another design issue in a way that exacerbates both issues. A big one is the aggressive attack tracking, which has the negative effect of compressing both time and spacial dynamics, and therefor gameplay potential. A degree of tracking is fine, but tracking so aggressive that it blatantly defies the rules of form-fits-function (one of the most core principals in game design)is not. I've seen a normal human soldier perform a jump attack, and then during the middle of the jump, magically rotate 180 degrees in the air in order to hit me because the tracking is so aggressive. And this combines with the poor feedback in a negative way. Elden Ring likes to use very long attack wind-ups, but then the attack itself is often very fast, and precisely tracks your location. So in effect, all that time that the enemy is preparing an attack, and all the space around you is effectively irrelevant because it gets compressed down to the exact moment of the attack itself in which you need to act, and the precise location you're standing. What should be a nuanced timing and spacial challenge is reduced to just being a reflex reaction. FromSoft could learn a lot from Monster Hunter's combat design. And then there's stuff like the camera and general jank, but people are well aware of those.
I agree with the points put forward about this issue, but my personal biggest gripe with Elden Ring are the reused bosses. Yes, the way spirit ashes scale is a large issue in Elden Ring, but I wouldn't consider it as it's greatest issue.
Usually this would be a big issue for me but for some reason it didn't bother me as much. Unfortunately it's a criticism that FromSoft faces way to much. At least in Elden Ring they "kind of" had lore reasons for it. Not really though...
Elden Ring isn't actually a difficult game. When you look at it mechanically through a skill/difficulty framework (DKART is the best) you find that it's actually not that mechanically demanding at all...but it has other design elements that make it seem like is, because the reputation is that FromSoft games are "hard," even if they're more punishing than difficult.
Elden Ring's biggest issue, by far, is its atrociously bad visual communication. Not only does it fail to convey information to the player that they can actually use, it intentionally misleads players into doing something the game says is right according to its feedback, and then punish them severely for doing so. For example the game will frequently use wildly different pacing for different parts of enemy attack animations to try to throw off the player's timing, but the problem is that this visual feedback of attack animations is all information the player has to make decisions, and it's being used to mislead them and force them to do the wrong thing.
To make things worse, this issue combines with another design issue in a way that exacerbates both issues. A big one is the aggressive attack tracking, which has the negative effect of compressing both time and spacial dynamics, and therefor gameplay potential. A degree of tracking is fine, but tracking so aggressive that it blatantly defies the rules of form-fits-function (one of the most core principals in game design)is not. I've seen a normal human soldier perform a jump attack, and then during the middle of the jump, magically rotate 180 degrees in the air in order to hit me because the tracking is so aggressive.
And this combines with the poor feedback in a negative way. Elden Ring likes to use very long attack wind-ups, but then the attack itself is often very fast, and precisely tracks your location. So in effect, all that time that the enemy is preparing an attack, and all the space around you is effectively irrelevant because it gets compressed down to the exact moment of the attack itself in which you need to act, and the precise location you're standing. What should be a nuanced timing and spacial challenge is reduced to just being a reflex reaction. FromSoft could learn a lot from Monster Hunter's combat design.
And then there's stuff like the camera and general jank, but people are well aware of those.
100% agree
It feels so simple but so difficult to fix at the same time.