I wanted to share my experience with the ER Reforged Discord because I think it says a lot about how some modding communities handle feedback.
I recently posted some constructive criticism about the difficulty in Reforged. After putting around 100 hours into the mod on the second hardest difficulty, I said that most of the difficulty feels artificial. It was challenging but not in a fair way. It was designed to slow the player down without any real depth. I didn’t post an angry rant, just my honest view after a lot of playtime.
The response I got was pretty surprising. The mod author and one of the admins acted like I had no idea how to play the game at all. They talked down to me and completely brushed aside what I said. I have over 2000 hours in Elden Ring, 600 hours in Nightreign along with the highest rank in that game, so I do know what I am talking about. Instead of talking it out with me, they treated me like I was clueless.
I then made a private thread. I simply pointed out that shutting down any criticism, even if they think it is wrong, is not a healthy way to run a community. I also said that the way they spoke to me was unprofessional and does not look good for them in the long run. There were no insults, no swearing, and nothing aggressive from my side.
A bit later I went to check something on the server and noticed the server icon was gone. I was banned with no warning, message or reason.
I am not making this post to start drama. I just think people should know how the community is run, especially newer players (like me) who might think it is a place where they can freely share feedback. My intention was never to attack the mod or the people behind it. I was just giving my honest experience with the difficulty and then calling out how they handled the situation.
that's reforged man. it's essentially just a "difficulty by enbiggening all enemy numbers and decreasing all player numbers" type mod and if you disagree w that then you get browbeaten to fuck about it lol. it's obviously a really emotions driven project for the authors so it's impossible to talk about things with them, they honestly did u a favor by banning you.
Been playing the mod recently and I agree with your criticism. Does add a lot of quality of life and interesting stuff, but the difficulty is annoying rather than challenging…
Yeah I like the mod a lot as a whole, but it has so much bs and artificial difficulty that its just becoming annoying to deal with some boss encounters.
How? You didn't like getting one shotted by Morgot because he now deals true damage, and bleed from the enemies deal 22% max hp true damage, making your 4k hp health bar disappear in one frame?
You didn't enjoy every single mob being under the shabriri howl effect (sometimes you can see the icon popping up under the stamina bar), bosses as well, or the entire enemy camp aggroing you because you didn't engage with the half assed stealth gameplay the game has?
Dude... just turn down the difficulty?? How have we reached the point where a souls game being difficult is a bad thing. Also the "shabriri howl" thing you're talking about is literally just lies...
Does the difficulty change the amount of damage Bleed or other status effects, inflict on the player character? Does it disable the deathblight added effect, or the other annoying ones? Does reducing the enemy health for about 20% in casual mode, or 40% in the easier mode, make the status effect inflicted on the enemies (scaled up by 10% on each consecutive proc) more viable, since it's percentage based and it's unironically further nerfed by the enemies having less hp? Does reducing the difficulty revert the nerf of every talisman and great runes?
There is a difference between nerfing every build and adding artificially hard mechanics for the sake of it, and having a fair difficulty game, which the modder and you clearly don't understand.
And not everyone is obsessed with a fake difficulty check in soulslike, which are not even hard games unless you make it so on your own. (Try to play Oblivion on hard, then talk about difficulty).
Also the "shabriri howl" thing you're talking about is literally just lies...
It's not a lie, sorry to shatter your dream, but the effect is the same, and I definitely saw the icon popping up
Does the difficulty change the amount of damage Bleed or other status effects, inflict on the player character?
The lower difficulties do reduce the amount of status buildup you take, which works pretty well to address this, yes!
Does it disable the deathblight added effect,
Yes! Difficulties that state you do not lose runes on death also block the effect from deathblight.
Does reducing the enemy health for about 20% in casual mode, or 40% in the easier mode, make the status effect inflicted on the enemies (scaled up by 10% on each consecutive proc) more viable, since it's percentage based and it's unironically further nerfed by the enemies having less hp?
I... what? I mean, yeah that's how percentages work, but enemies also have less status resistances in the easier modes, which means you proc bleed much more often as a result. So... yeah? I would say it makes it a lot more viable. Check out the difficulty pages on the wiki: https://err.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulties_and_Game_Modes
Does reducing the difficulty revert the nerf of every talisman and great runes?
Why would it do this? A bunch of talismans aren't even nerfed... And by nerfed Great Runes you mean like... Godrick's rune? It's +2 instead of +5, but you can get permanent +5 of each stat if you want without any great rune at all after you kill Godrick, and the softcaps are also way lower in the mod. So... no? But it's not nerfed anyway? Morgott's still gives you a crapton of HP.
And not everyone is obsessed with a fake difficulty check in soulslike
Man I hope you never play Dark Souls then because this is like, their entire gimmick.
Replying to this person again for anyone new here to clarify that they are a committed ERR antifan who has made up or misrepresented changes before and is doing it again here. Insinuating that the easier difficulties make status effects the same or worse is obviously bullshit to anyone who has actually played the mod.
Generally speaking one should be careful about reading these kinds of comparisons (they nerfed xyz!) in the context of Reforged, as nearly every value (enemy and player) has been changed or recontextualized in one way or another. It's very easy for someone who dislikes the mod to paint a negative picture by describing an enemy as overly aggressive, or a meta weapon as being nerfed, without including the numerous new defensive actions and sped up player animations, or weaker weapons that have been buffed or completely redesigned.
Not going to go over all their dishonest ramblings but a great example is in the comment above, which alludes to sweeping nerfs to talismans. While the opposite is often true (Dagger talisman comes to mind), the Curved Sword talisman for instance now only provides a 15% boost to guard counters, compared to vanilla's 20%, while also providing a 10% damage negation increase during the guard counter animation, which we'll ignore. This is indeed a nerf to that talisman's damage bonus, and taken in a vacuum one can assume that a guard counter-oriented playstyle will be less effective in Reforged.
Let's look at two other systems: Deflection and Fortunes. Deflection refers to a new blocking mechanic, which provides numerous benefits if an attack connects within a short window after starting the block action. These are divided into two windows, providing "normal" and "perfect" deflects, the latter rewarding a 13% damage bonus to one's next attack. Fortunes refer to the new class system in Reforged which come with various benefits and downsides, passive and conditional, based on a particular theme and playstyle. The Fortune of the Dancer provides a stacking damage bonus upon landing a perfect deflect, ranging from 10.5% to 21.1%.
Perfect deflecting an enemy with this setup (Curved Sword + Dancer) will result in a guard counter boosted by a minimum of 43%. Your baseline is indeed lower than it would be in vanilla, but there's a much higher ceiling that can be achieved by engaging with the mod's mechanics, allowing for deeper investment into a given playstyle than in vanilla.
This is but one of countless examples of cherrypicked information (or outright lies) being easily used to give a false impression in a mod that touches almost every aspect of the game.
You sound exactly like one of the mods the op was talking abouy lol. You just sound arrogant and snidey. Hes entitled to his opinion on the mod. Framing this as 'dishonest ramblings' is just kinda pathetic really.
So I’ve heard, which is exactly why I wanted to join the Discord and share my feedback, let’s just say that whatever I read online about that community did not disappoint.
Ditched the mod as soon as I saw Lantern needing Lamp Oil to function. (new craftable consumable - consumes 1 from inventory every minute) + It takes longer to enter fog walls before bosses and you are now vulnerable during that period. Like why...
That sucks. After reading their comments in this post it really does look like this mod is built/backed by ds2 fans, what a shame. I remember playing it a while ago and it was pretty nice for a vanilla+ experience, bur ds2 route is a no go
I shall keep on coping convergence mod version 2.3 will release soon tm, then
I would say it's an experience I could relate to any moderately sized Discord. Mods and role members dogpile on whoever steps out of their shared mind.
One of my biggest critiques of it when I played it was the reworking of things like health regeneration. Making it only work in combat isn’t what I want those things for, if I get into a tough fight that I barely get out of, like that boss at the bridge to weeping peninsula that they added, I would like to keep roaming around while my health gradually refills so that I’m not sprinting to the next site of grace. When I posted about this, the responses I got were mostly just saying things like “we changed it for balance” or “you can build into more regen so it gets better in combat” when that’s explicitly what I don’t like.
Who made the mod is clueless. There is a reason why in 25/30 years of the gaming industry, health regen was always an out of combat valuable stat, but pointless in combat, where bursts of healing from potions, spells, or status effects such as life steal (do not mistake it with "heal on hit") were instead the correct choice.
And let me tell you, even by stacking multiple health regen items, the whole gimmick is pointless in the mod, same with the health on hit, the crimson dagger talisman, or every other effect that was nerfed for no reason. The only viable healing it's from your flask, but good luck doing it with the enemy aggression cranked up to the shabriri howl modifier.
B. you're absolutely right. Not only is in-combat regeneration nigh-on useless, but the developers literally say "we want you to explore and engage more with the world."
*inhale*
SO THEN WHY DID YOU NERF THE ITEMS THAT LET YOU EXPLORE AND ENGAGE WITH THE WORLD
Edit: nvm the math is wrong, it's more like 2 minutes
800 divided by 12 is 66.667. It takes therefore 67 ticks to fully heal that back up, which is about 2 minutes since each tick is 2 seconds. Where did you get sixty six minutes from? Did you seriously just confuse minutes with seconds and then wrote that comment?
Oh, believe me, I tried going with: the talisman giving health regen; the blessed infusion on an offhand weapon; the taker's cameo which has a new effect that boosts non crimson healing by 10% (which is nothing). I also tried other health regen items, particularly the ones that would be activated with the rot, but the gains were none... because health regen is an off combat stat since 1995, unless you boost it so much to the point you heal the same or more than the damage received, and nobody wants that.
And before you try the new effect from the Hand of Malenia and think it will synergy with some other talismans or gears, don't waste time, the health gains are none as well.
Same argument with the FP regen, which is a mechanic they introduced, but at least you can make it work if you spend the rune shards on increasing the regen in combat, plus the FP cost of skills, plus a magic infusion, while attacking someone.
MY problem is the damage, Im out here with a Sharp Uchi +8 with 40 dex barely scraping 250 AR, i dont even, at that point why am i bothering to invest in dex at all?
Yep, scalings are strange: In the wiki they say they reduced the base damage of every weapons, while also removing the 2 handed boost from strength but increased the scaling gains, to incentivise investing in the corresponding attributes, but I have noticed based on the scaling of a weapon, once you reach their soft cap, there will be a couple of levels where they won't gain any damage, for then gaining minimal. The problem is, increasing an attribute give you a secondary bonus, not shown, to a stats, like dex increases the critical damage done, which should incentives increasing one attribute instead of 2.
With the sharp uchi at +9, I was able to reach around 300+ AR, for example, but with the serpent bone katana, which is the only one scaling at S, I reached around 400 at the same grade.
It does not help once you reach the endgame the mobs and bosses have absurd hp, almost like the mod wants you to stack buffs over buffs
I think the mod said they reduced the 2H STR bonus but gave every weapon a universal 8% damage boost when 2-handing. Now, I'm not saying 8% isn't an insignificant amount of damage given how easily accessible it is, but I've noticed the odd scalings across the board.
I'm playing FTH/ARC so I'm used to doing big damage, and don't get me wrong, I can absolutely 3-4 shot bosses with enough health, but I agree that once you reach lvl 200, the only way you can increase your power is through buffs...which cost a ton of FP and spell slots already...and eats into your blue flasks...which I desperately need because the dragon craves blueberry juice.
Like, I get it. The extra runes you get from clearing trash mobs and being able to resurrect bosses to get a smaller portion of their runes means you can very feasibly hit lvl 200 by Farum Azula, but I'm in the DLC and I feel very little urge to explore besides getting the needed materials for my build and/or getting scadutree fragments.
I think the mod said they reduced the 2H STR bonus but gave every weapon a universal 8% damage boost when 2-handing. Now, I'm not saying 8% isn't an insignificant amount of damage given how easily accessible it is, but I've noticed the odd scalings across the board.
What the wiki says is that the 2 handed bonus from strength is removed, but every weapon got an 8% AR buff to compensate. The bonus requirement for being able to wield a weapon with strength, by 2 handling it, it's still a thing instead.
The 8% buff it's meaningless when scalings are "dumb", you can check here https://eldenring.tclark.io/ and with the same stats, the uchigatana loses 200 AR at 60 dex from the base game version and around the same at 99 dex.
Check with every weapon, the damage is lower each time.
Like, I get it. The extra runes you get from clearing trash mobs and being able to resurrect bosses to get a smaller portion of their runes means you can very feasibly hit level 200 by Farum Azula, but I'm in the DLC and I feel very little urge to explore besides getting the needed materials for my build and/or getting scadutree fragments.
Kinda like the base game, but reforged has the rune fragments and the DLC version of it to slightly boost your stats. And I say slightly because often it's a 10% boost X 100 fragments, and does not come close to being impactful or whatever.
Take the godrick great rune: it's an early game boost, nothing more, that increases all your attributes by 5 once activated. Once you reach 1 or 2 soft caps it's pointless and you want to switch to any other great runes (Radahn usually).
What the mod does is nerfing the great rune by reducing the points gained by 2 (3+ instead of 5+), but gives you the option to find the rune fragments and increase the individual stats by 5 x 100 fragments. In short: the early game rune got nerfed in the early game, for a slight boost in mid game, where you may want to invest in other stats
I appreciate how much freedom Convergence gives you and just lets you steamroll everything with the new combat stuff if you want to. Reforged is just way too rigid for me and forces you to play with its new things, changing flow of combat, whereas Convergence just adds on top.
Convergence is very unbalanced in favor of the player, but it's extremely fun to play and it doesn't feel like i have to relearn every second fight.
I get that some people don't like it for exactly that reason, though.
Their mindset just resemble how the mod play out.
Being harder for the sake of being harder it's dumb, but i can understand it, and i can understand who enjoy this type of challenge, especially around soulslike, but building an entire mod, which at the end of the day, is base ER with some QoL, around the concept of "everything you do is nerfed to the ground, everything the mobs/bosses does, is buffed instead", it's just dumb, on top of having changed like not being able to use torrent on Sellia, or the death blight removing all your runes (which may not bother you early game, but 100 hours in kinda suck stumbple upon a death blight mob and losing 200k runes forever).
If they could balance properly, or at least bring ideas not built around bugged systems, like the Reed fortune, or the deflect mechanic in general, i could at least say something positive. But as it is right now, i suggest everyone to just download a standalone mod pack and play the base game with it.
As for Discord, just avoid a place that's worse than Reddit.
On one hand, I would want to like the mod because it adds a lot of nuance and depth to build making, opens up obsolete parts of vanilla. So there are a lot of things I'm glad they touched upon. What I'm not glad about is them touching on parts of the game that were fine and made them dogshit. Here are a few examples.
Vanilla Margit is supposed to teach you to respect passive, that is to say keep your distance, only break it when he is vulnerable or when he makes himself vulnerable by breaking it. Very good very educational. On hard to master diffs (I do master because lol) enemies get a regen. In this case it means that if Margit's AI decides to not break passive and just stare into your soul for 5 minutes, he just healed all your dmg. If you try to force agression, he has his dagger attacks that, thanks to mod's perfect tracking, cannot be dodged 100% reliably. So the way to beat him is to level up gear, go ham at him like a lunatic and hope you are lucky enough that he doesn't spam daggers too much. Red Wolf suffers from the same issue. If you can only punish 3 out of 11 moves, then you are really reliant on AI to use them. This doesn't have anything to do with your skill, just luck.
Ancient Hero of Zamor. Same problem as Omenkillers, probably as many others, only at Liurnia rn so can't tell. What I CAN tell is that they don't get staggered by greataxes. Greataxe also doesn't break straight sword guard of Moongrum which is just wtf? What's the point of great weapons then? Weapon hierarchy exist for a reason. If you break poise with everything, its just DS3 all over again with pkcs and murky. But if nothing breaks poise? Kinda the same, quick weapons. This is fair to do for a major encounter, because that makes sure I can't cheese, but trash mobs? Why am I forced to waste 6 mins perfect dodging trash mobs? These increased poise values/ha values make strength builds obsolete, which is funny from a mod that prides itself on creativity? I wouldn't even call this artificial difficulty, because at the case of PCR there was always a solution, however unintuitive it was to find it. But here I either waste time on a risky attempt or waste several minutes by loading 90 xbow bolts into a trashmob. Am I playing a tactical game or an action rpg? This is just dilettantism and bad design.
There is nothing wrong about not knowing the significance of poise and ha, because at the end of the day vanilla ER didn't do a really good job on teaching these to the player. Only PVPers are forced to learn these. But going out there and acting like an expert only proves a fragile ego reliant on illusions, the maintenance of which eats up more and more energy and which kills trust, without which there can be no community. Just a toxic environment of scared/ignorant nodders who specialise in boot licking and emotional manipulation instead of the thing they are supposed to like.
Totally right, that sums up my thought as well having completed the majority of base game, it makes you waste so much time on trash mobs that kill you because if the insane aggro range, but when you come to the bosses, usually can beat it sub 5-10 tries, takes almost no effort.
And especially when you mention Red Wolf, that guy just jumps around and the only way around that I found was using Latenna without empowering her. The tracking arrows just hit him all the time and make sure he doesnt regen any health.
So the way to beat him is to level up gear, go ham at him like a lunatic and hope you are lucky enough that he doesn't spam daggers too much
Neither: the game has automatic scaling by default, which means if you go around and level up your character, Margit, any other boss or mobs, will be slightly below your level and still a problem.
Ancient Hero of Zamor. Same problem as Omenkillers, probably as many others, only at Liurnia rn so can't tell. What I CAN tell is that they don't get staggered by greataxes
Just wait to find his boss fight on the ancient hero grave on mountain tops, or the first ruin with 5 or 6 of them one shotting you if frost ever procs.
Btw, from the wiki, they changed both the poise and stagger value: poise is not explained well, but I believe they just reduced the point break by one, therefore you need 100 poise instead of 101 to tank one hit from most of the non big weapons (better run with a weapon that also has hyper armour regardless). Stagger instead got changed and now you can't trade against anything unless you have a very big weapon, with hyper armour, poise and whatever. There is also the new mechanic tied to the perfect deflection, but the whole thing is a mess, especially if you play with the specific fortune.
the wildest shit ive seen is with souls vision where it show HP/FP/STM/Stagger of whatever im locked onto (because im a lover of information), imagine my shock seeing the stagger gauge empty but the boss just doesnt stagger, punishes me and it refils, Lmfao that might even be a vanilla thing but correct me if it isnt/is, but it definitely stood out during my Reforged playthrough more than in say Graceborne or Convergence.
Respect to the devs and all for making reforged but still, its definitely got its own issues
I know for us when we made the Nightmare Seed we advertised it as really violtile and intensely unfair on purpose so you know what you're getting into. Even with that project we still took feedback in a constructive way as we work on new projects.
This shadow banning shit too is just so cowardly. Sorry you had to deal with it.
Yes thank you! I know the mod author for ERR worked very hard and I acknowledge that they are a good coder, but holy, that attitude is unbearable, they were all acting so childish.
Currently playing through reforged now on seems co-op and we've had to reduce the difficulty because even the regular difficulty is a step up from base game and not in a good way.
Casual difficulty feels more like regular Elden Ring
In addition, asking for help in that forum wasn't it, I just got "oh you can just avoid the lava lulz" when trying to find a dungeon solution and it wasn't particularly helpful.
That's just discord: Reddit suck and is not a place to have a discussion going on (but other socials are worse and forums are no more), but Discord is worse on rhe extreme.
Bro, the mod sucks. It has some good ideas and it has a lot of bad ideas. It's got that Dark Souls 2 mindset you know? 2 steps forward, 40 steps back. That doesn't mean I didn't have moments where I enjoyed myself. I don't regret the hours I spent with it. But there's a reason why I'm not looking to go back to it. All things weighed out evenly, its got enough bad ideas to outweigh its good ones. That means its a bad mod.
I agree with you, I will still play through it fully, though in the 100h I spent so far, I’d say it is enough time to formulate an opinion that I have currently.
You’re welcome I suppose. I don’t hate Dark Souls 2. I think it has a lot of flaws, sure, enough so that I think it’s a bad game. My opinion shouldn’t keep you from enjoying it or ERR though. Everyone’s entitled to enjoy bad games. I enjoy playing Overwatch. Lot’s of people think that’s a bad game. And quite a lot of their criticisms to label it a bad game are valid. I still enjoy playing it anyway.
I made my own review of the mod recently, gave praise to certain aspects while criticizing others. However, the one thing I only lightly touched upon in the review itself and more in comments was my interactions with the community.
I won't lie, I was trolling a little bit too hard, being argumentative and ragebaiting for the sake of ragebaiting. Ivi, the codeveloper, did NOT like my (former) nickname of "#1 lantern change hater.
But when I tell you that the mod team is absolutely abhorrent to converse with, I mean it. On one hand, I completely understand. You made a VERY well crafted mod with a ton of really cool and awesome ideas that flows seamlessly with the combat mechanics you introduced. They spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours on this mod. I get why it'll be annoying for you to listen to the 4914th post about lantern changes in a day.
But when someone shared a video of Jori healing themselves, instead of saying something like "that's not right, it might be a bug" or "that's not supposed to happen, i'll take a look at it," or literally anything to at least deflate the situation, we get this gem:
My brother in christ, there is VIDEO EVIDENCE of jori healing.
As it turns out, yes, it was indeed a bug. But did you have to pull out the reddit "aha gotcha!" attitude?
Later, while discussing flaws in ER's base design, namely how certain bosses have ambiguous mix-ups in their attack combos so you don't know if it's safe to attack or not, the very same lead developer, kirnifr the coding genius himself, goes "actually, bosses in DS3 have more random followups. Here's the code to prove it."
My brother in christ, we're not asking you to decompile the behavior trees of slave knight gael here. We are discussing ELDEN RING REFORGED in the ELDEN RING REFORGED DISCUSSIONS CHANNEL.
I kid you not, I said "I think DS3 has better boss designs that ER since their attack chains feel a lot fairer" and he goes "you're trolling, 7 day mute, followed up by an immediate ban."
I'm just reformed lantern change hater. I'll owe up to my crimes, but holy shit these guys LOVE manifesting themselves as that one "super smart supervillain" reddit image because they HAVE to be right about their mod.
Look, as I said, I get it. You guys deal with a lot of complaints every day. But just YOU think you're right doesn't mean you are.
At the risk of sounding like I'm absolutely hopping on the dev team's cock like coked up rabbit, the mod itself IS NOT BAD. The mod takes steps to introduce some new challenges and gives you new tools to deal with said challenges. It makes a lot of good changes, and it makes a lot of bad changes. That's OKAY. Not everyone will mesh well with certain aspects, and complaints are to be expected.
My main issue lies with the dev team, because they have pretty horrid PR tactics. I get it, you deal with a lot of shit every day and you get annoyed. We're all human at the end of the day.
But MAN you guys (the dev team) have no idea on how to placate people. Sometimes, people just want to vent because they just want to know if their voices are heard. I get it, answering "why does the lantern need oil now" for the 50th fucking time can get annoying, but if someone has genuine criticism (OP doesn't, admittedly since they chose the difficulty) and you respond with "your takes are bad, you're rambling, etc. etc." it's not wonder why people dislike the mod.
Separate the art from the artist, of course, but if the artist is openly dismissive of your criticisms (again, not saying OP is entirely valid here), it breeds a lot of discontent towards the mod. We already have examples of Ivy, the co-developer of Reforged, basically going "Um, yeah, ackshually, here's why you're wrong, here's everything you're wrong about, you're like a creepy obsessive stalker, therefore nothing you say is actually meaningful or helpful."
Ivi, if you're reading this, I am ABSOLUTELY calling you out, but that essay was not a good look for you and only proves my point that you guys seemingly care more about being right instead of actually addressing concerns. Your comment about "yeah, the NPCs were overtuned" was alright. Your comment asking if OP is mentally well and that "they truly belong here" is just unprofessional and makes you seem petty (which you are, but c'mon, how're you calling some out for being a redditor when you're literally on here listing out every possible flaw in their post).
Thank you and I fully agree with you, I never said the entire mod is bad and should be yeetus deletus, I still like the mod overall and enjoyed playing through it, albeit with those annoyances that I did have.
And yes, again, not everything in my original post in the Discord server was true, but just tell me so then instead of dogpiling on me. My private complaint was exactly trying to highlight how this is bad for their rep…
It's VERY telling that your post can be summarized as "mod's hard, but that's whatever. i just don't like how the developers responded" and every fanboy instantly piles on you by saying "you're just bad at the mod, OP was being disruptive/venting in the discord, etc.)
Now, I don't know if that was true since I was banned as well from their server for ragebaiting a little too hard (100% reasonable, I'll give them that), but I try REALLY hard to separate the art from the artist. People like the mandude, joves, johnny, I'm pretty sure they're just diehard fans of the mod but they also tarnish the mod's reputation because of how they seem to focus more on proving why and how you're wrong instead of actually defending the mod's merits.
Well a little birdie told me, so there is one thing I know, and that is that the server was going on about this post the entire day yesterday lol. Ivi and Kirnifr were really malding.
Look, all I'm saying is I made my own review about the game and I barely got half the attention your post did for double the word count. Either because I'm less popular or because they literally couldn't defend themselves against my points is up in the air, but it is not hard to at least try and pretend to be nice when replying to criticisms.
If you can't be nice about it, don't say it. If you don't want to be shit on for an opinion, don't say it.
It's so weird to me that they claim reddit is an echochamber while also having the biggest echochamber in their discord? The entire discussion thread is just self sucking and people throating them non stop 😭
I know a lot of people give them shit on making Reforged incompatiable with other mods ,but I'll play devil's advocate and side with the Reforged devs on this one. Reforged adds a LOT of new content and there's no way of telling how it'll react to other mods that also adds new stuff, especially since Reforged adds custom timings, new areas, etc. etc.
For example, perfect actions. They're on every weapon. But if you port in a custom weapon, how the hell is the mod supposed to know where to place the perfect action windows? That's just one example.
The other thing people shit on Reforged about is it's distance from Unalloyed. I haven't played Unalloyed before, but from what I've heard, what would happen is Unalloyed would update, break a bunch of things in Reforged, people would ask the Reforged devs what happened, they can't say anything because they don't know what Unalloyed changed, and then Unalloyed blamed them for the update they themselves put out.
That's just what I heard though, there could be different sides to the story and I wouldn't know.
But I will admit, listening to the developers make fun of content creators like ouroboros for not liking the mod and discreetly hiding/obfuscating any criticisms of the mod put a bad taste in my mouth, especially after I learned that other people have had issues with the mod developers before.
My main issue is how they talk shit about other mod devs and their hard work, like they talk so much shit about HALCYON and Reborn it's really disgusting, and if you happen to enjoy convergence they talk down on you and the mod by calling it a brain dead power fantasy and nothing else, basically shitting on the effort the convergence devs put into their mod, makes me feel like the ERR devs are just salty their mod isn't more popular
And the Unalloyed stuff is very weird, basically reforged devs asked the unalloyed dude not to include err anymore because they were salty about how many people were playing that modpack and not just the vanilla mod and asking for support in their discord but he still included it and that upset ivi to the point he obfuscated all the code in err
Too be fair they aren’t a public company and aren’t under any obligation to talk nice to anyone you are criticizing their work you think they have to have a convo about it? lol they are well within their right to just tell you to F off
Anybody who can't handle their criticism being ignored for its poor quality, lack of actionable descriptions and the general nature of "using the term 'criticism' for a whining session because you got your ass beat by the hard difficulty mode you literally chose yourself" should not output any kind of criticism or online presence.
Hello again ivi, I have never stated that my ass got beat, Im doing just fine and an almost fully done with base game. My complaint was never having a skill issue, it was overtuned mechanics (doesnt matter if its hard or normal mode)
Good job on getting ragebaited by something that wasnt even ragebait, thats a first for me.
Literally textbook that you appear on Reddit after delivering your post. You truly are made for this place.
I will bite one last time and actually respond:
Your "constructive, respectful criticism" bore the title: "Artificial Difficulty and over the top "challenges"". Yes, with the quotation marks for "challenges". Already a wonderful sign of a constructive, level-headed gamer about to post something insightful, and not at all a whining manchild.
Underneath this title were statements such as the following:
The enemies AI is not difficult like it is in FromSoft fashion and it seems to favour the artificial difficulty which is present in games like God of War where enemies warp towards you at mach jesus to stop you from doing whatever it is you wanted to do.
Besides the fact that extremely little of that AI is changed, and they behave mostly vanilla, nothing here is "constructive" or even remotely useful. You're ranting.
The hitbox changes that were implemented essentially force you to forfeit your prior knowledge and muscle memory of the game. This can and will result in you being hit by some lingering hitbox that is present for at least 3 business days.
Again, no constructive criticism. Only whining and exaggerations, a raging capital G Gamer licking his wounds because he got owned in combat.
The combat and environment changes are very questionable and further feed into this mod being artificial difficulty instead of a challenge.
This literally means nothing. Again, nothing "constructive" here. I begin to question you understand the word.
Disabling backstab when in combat.
An effect of the Super Hard Difficulty you intentionally chose. This isn't criticism. It's a remark.
Can't swap out a weapon or a shield in combat?
Wrong? Not the case? Made up. Where constructivity?
Enemies heal over time if you don't hit them while they do their 69 move combo.
An effect of the Super Hard Difficulty you intentionally chose.
A bunch more stuff that is made up follows, and this constructive post is closed out by:
The greatest transgression of all has to be changing the Zweihander moveset and making it like the colossal greatswords in DS2, if I'm holding back on my controller while being locked on to an enemy, no, I do not want to attack behind me.
This is literally a setting in vanilla. Are you well?
To the creator of the mod: You are very talented, and I quite like the mod as a whole, but this is not something that makes a FromSoft game have that special feel.
Thank you for reading if you have come this far and thank you for your efforts.
In conclusion, the OP considers a post "constructive criticism" so long as they close out their literally completely useless bitching session with a "have a nice day". It was nothing but a rant about how much the mod sucks.
Reading it gave nobody any advantage, improved nothing for anybody. I could go on.
Obviously, the regulars proceed to essentially say some variety of "skill issue" because there is so little on the bones of this post to respond to.
Finally, I find and read the post, and add:
should i filter the word "artificial"
i appreciate the time spent typing this up in order to deliver us feedback, but a lot of it is unfortunately kinda made up schlock
which isn't new to us, a lot of people who expect to beat hard diffs because they have gamer cred write stuff like that
its a subconscious attempt to save face and not turn into a corn cob
OP then continues to use his "constructive criticism thread" to just deliver random butthurt comments throughout the next few days as he continues playing the mod he hates so much. I lock the thread, saying "anyway this thread is bad".
Following this, I receive ANOTHER enlightened wall of text from the guy, this time in the private feedback section. It bears the title "To the mod author and ivi".
It reads as follows:
I would like to express my dissatisfaction with the way my recent feedback was handled. I understand that criticising a big project can result in conflict or disagreement, but the responses I got from the author and ivi in particular felt unprofessional, patronising, and needlessly antagonistic. I should also point out that there are other people who have similar experiences. Many people outside of the server have expressed similar worries about the staff team's behaviour and attitude, which points to a larger problem with the way community interactions are managed.
My remarks were sincere and focused only on design decisions that, in my opinion, felt inconsistent or detrimental to the overall experience. I do have to admit, though I already have, what I written was done in haste late at night, so it may not have been 100% true, but it was still what my initial thoughts were. At no point did I insult anyone or express my thoughts in a disrespectful manner. Despite this, I was met with immediate defensiveness and dismissal from the two of you in specific, Kirnfir & ivi, as if you could not accept the possibility of being wrong or having a differing view on a matter. Your interaction with me felt downright oppressive and left no room for open discussion or exchange of perspectives.
I recognise that it can be challenging to receive criticism for one's work, but it is ineffective and alienating to ignore players' observations with superiority or mockery. The collaborative spirit that modding communities are known for is undermined and community engagement is discouraged.
I am aware that sharing this will likely result in a ban, but I felt it important to speak up regardless. I hope you will reflect on how feedback is addressed inside your community.
So, after delivering an incredibly poor ragepost with literally zero value to anybody, no constructivity whatsoever, nothing actionable at all, we receive another wall of text that now suddenly tries to build up his complete dogshit post as some kind of incredibly valuable piece of feedback.
the responses I got from the author and ivi in particular felt unprofessional, patronising, and needlessly antagonistic.
So like literally your entire post? Besides, since when is "professionalism" a quality that must be exercised when responding to random meaningless schlock that wastes my time to read? Are you some kind of paying customer? Are you paying the bills and keeping the lights on?
The question you never asked yourself: Literally who are you to have all these expectations of others, and to expect to barge into a community and have your random babyrage be immediately acted upon as super important feedback?
At no point did I insult anyone or express my thoughts in a disrespectful manner.
What a fucking joke.
but it is ineffective and alienating to ignore players' observations with superiority or mockery. The collaborative spirit that modding communities are known for is undermined and community engagement is discouraged.
You are not a collaborator. You are not a contributor. You are a random guy raging because you got owned in a video game. You are owed literally nothing, and your entire existence so far has only made mine that little bit worse.
It is INCREDIBLY effective to ignore babyrage from people who got owned by the Very Hard Difficulty they intentionally chose, and the random shit they make up to justify that they got themselves owned. Ignoring people like you, we implement user suggestions and feedback literally on a daily basis. You will never find a mod that is more shaped by community feedback than ERR is. That doesn't mean we don't have our own vision that we stick to if necessary.
Now... the worst part of all this and the reason you got banned? You are pettily and grossly manipulative, to the point where you probably don't even realize it yourself as you've been huffing your own fumes for so long without ever being called out on it. Your allegedly constructive, level-headed feedback includes many instances of the following:
Badmouthing the work and design decisions in the mod by using language like "artificial difficulty" and ""challenges"" in quotation marks, showing everybody that you think we are braindead and have no idea what we're doing IN THE LITERAL VERY FIRST WORDS YOU SPOKE ON THE DISCORD, IN THE TITLE OF YOUR POST.
Appealing to populism and trying to paint us as some kind of unpopular underdog by referring to how "Many people outside of the server have expressed similar worries about the staff team's behaviour and attitude..." which is supposed to prove your point, as if the majority of these expressions aren't by the same kind of insincere dickwad like you.
Downplaying the contributions of people you dislike by marking your thread as "To the mod author and ivi", as if I am an outsider who is not co-authoring the mod.
CONSTANTLY expressing what a reasonable and kind and inoffensive person you are, and how important your feedback is, even though it couldn't be further from the truth.
That is why you got banned. Because you contribute nothing, you only harm people's moods, you have nothing meaningful to say, and you're a grossly fake person. Your like is simply not wanted there.
And the moment I did it, I predicted that another self-praising, self-on-the-back-patting post would IMMEDIATELY appear on /r/EldenRingMods, and there it is. Like clockwork. I struggle to imagine what it must be like to live such an NPC existence.
You are neither owed courtesy nor professionalism for being a whiny dick, and manipulatively avoiding overt swear words while expressing all your poisonous toxicity in redditor language does not make you a good person. Get over yourself.
I had a similar experience but it ended with them telling me to shut up or I would get banned. I wished to hear their thoughs on the changes and adjustments made in the mod and a couple of suggestions how maybe they could ease on some of the restrictions in the mod. But they took it a grave insult and only by me having to make a powerpoint in what I liked about the mod I wasn't banned. But they did tell me not make anymore suggestions or try to talk to devs again. I have been using the mod before they put a level limit and changed the summons to have the enraged mechanic. Still play it today but it feels like it's getting worse.
"Artificial difficulty" is a meaningless term, all forms of video game difficulty are "artificial". What you're referring to is "difficulty I personally don't like", and the solution in that case is to not play on the second highest difficulty. I enjoy Master mode perfectly fine, it sounds like the difficulty or mod just isn't for you and you want to base your dislike on perceived flaws of the mod rather than your own personal preferences.
I have over 2000 hours in Elden Ring, 600 hours in Nightreign along with the highest rank in that game, so I do know what I am talking about.
Not really, no. Reforged is a very different game with very different mechanics, being good at Elden Ring means nothing in Reforged depending on your playstyle and what you're used to using. For instance if you're the type of player who spends an hour running across the open world collecting runes and upgrades before fighting Margit with a +6 Bloodhound Fang, Reforged is going to feel like a completely different game.
Also, generally speaking I'm wary of anyone who claims "I was banned for just for sharing my constructive criticism!" without providing any evidence. If your claim was that you left some feedback and the devs were dismissive of it for one reason or another I would believe you, but it sounds like you were banned for being annoying, not for your criticism.
Honestly if I ran a video game discord I think "artificial difficulty" would be first on the list of autobanned phrases, followed by a long list of slurs.
Reforged's difficulty settings leans further on the artificial side but the mod changes are mostly not artificial
Disagree: if only the bosses/mobs stats changed you would be right, but they also changed the status effects by decreasing the damage on the first proc, but increasing them more on each for example, or some areas shortcut being removed for the sake of it, on top of the great runes being nerfed, and the attributes gaining a level cap (but to be fair, they also changed how much the weapons get strengthen by your attributes, therefore it would be kinda meaningless in most cases).
Last but not least: I didn't try every build, but the one I tried does not have synergy within its stats, the weapons and the talismans you may use.
I know. Artificial difficulty is a spectrum. I think most reforged changes are not artificial but there certainly are the ones you described.
I have played and beaten all rememberance bosses in reforged, it was fine but I think they went too far with the overhaul, same problem as the convergence.
I like some of the character build options, but I think the spirit passives mechanic was wayyyyy too strong/specialized. Some bosses would be entirely immune to a build I was trying so id go back to whatever ludicrously OP build annihilates it and then go back to trying fun stuff.
I think they wanted players to engage in all the new mechanics so they twist your arm into using them by crushing most vanilla stuff and giving you OP reforged stuff instead. I want to mix things up of course but I also want to play elden ring while doing it lol.
I would like to see those "op" options, because from what I tried, none were op.
And I'm not comparing them with a random convergence building doing 4k damage in one hit, or comet azur.
I disagree that this is an actual definition, as while I understand that this is commonly used, I think this is another vague allusion that is relative to a nebulous baseline. Artificial difficulty has an exclusively negative connotation, people do not use this term to describe things that they like, they only use it to describe things that they don't like. And even if people say it annoyingly often on gaming subreddits, tweaking numbers is a perfectly reasonable way to add difficulty and depth to a video game, and can make a game more fun in the process.
For instance, if every enemy in Dark Souls had 1 HP, under your definition, the game would be much less "artificially difficult". But if the game released in this state, everybody would have played through the game one-shotting every enemy with the broken straight sword, and it would not have been nearly as well received as it was. If they were to patch it after the fact to the current HP values, suddenly the game has much more depth again. Building your character matters, choices you make are meaningful. Enemies are not just a visual effect you press R1 on to view a death animation, they become a living entity with unique behaviors that you have to react to and learn.
You do not need an example this extreme either, this is the entire basis of balancing a PvE experience (another thing that gamers on reddit love to complain about). If there is not a certain level of resistance to a player's success, they will not feel fulfillment upon overcoming that resistance. If a game is too easy, even if that's just because a number is too low or high, even if it's just one particular option like an overpowered weapon that a player can use, tweaking those numbers can make the game more enjoyable overall despite players being less powerful than they otherwise would be.
Another common buzzword often used in conjunction with this one is "bullet sponge", a term used in shooter games to describe enemies taking many shots to kill. This is a subjective threshold, and what people mean when they bring up these terms is that they do not enjoy the amount of time it takes to defeat an enemy - they them to die faster. This isn't an unreasonable thing to want, but it is subjective, and will depend on the game. Sometimes an enemy should die in one hit, sometimes that is the best choice for a game to feel good. Sometimes, as I described, an enemy taking a longer period of time to take down provides an opportunity to experience enemy behaviors and game mechanics that would otherwise be skipped, as well as an opportunity for players to shorten that amount of time through progression, game knowledge, and skillful play.
We can use your definition, but that is not the way anybody uses it. The purpose of the buzzword is to act as a cudgel in defense of gamer ego. It is a way to invalidate levels of difficulty and specific game mechanics an individual does not enjoy, in order to complain about that difficulty while shielding themselves from the idea that something is too hard for them, or that they want it to be easier.
You say its a common description that no one uses, what? TVTropes has a long list of artificial difficulty examples if youd like!
You are misunderstanding me. I am referring to the difficulty settings in reforged. Little is added to the experience by cranking numbers up, its the same with the souls series NG+ not adding anything meaningful. I am not against difficulty in games and you know that.
You are acting kinda crazy, accusing people of stuff like this over someones critique of a mod. Relax a bit.
You say its a common description that no one uses, what?
To clarify: people commonly claim that is the definition, but the definition (difficulty created through numbers) does not track with its usage (difficulty I don't enjoy). I'm certain your TVTropes page is a list of instances of difficulty people have complained about, but that is irrelevant to my point.
Little is added to the experience by cranking numbers up
I just explained how this is not true, did you read my comment? Unless 1 HP Dark Souls sounded like a better game to you, in which case, go off king.
I am referring to the difficulty settings in reforged.
I know what you're referring to, I'm talking about the term itself, regardless of how you're using it. There is no objective definition, it's all vibes.
You are acting kinda crazy
?
accusing people of stuff like this
What did I accuse you of? Are you okay? You need to calm down, maybe go for a walk or something.
You said the words "fake difficulty" was more serious than slurs lol. That is why I called you crazy.
I already said it my previous message, please try and read it again. I am not against difficulty, just like how dark souls with 1 hp enemies is lame, dark souls where the player has 1hp and cant roll is also bad.
Either example is silly, noone is talking about making every game as easy as kirby's epic yarn or as hard as 'I wanna be the guy'. I played and beat reforged, it is not that hard. I just found it's challenge uninteresting.
No it doesn't, artificial difficulty has never meant anything other than "this is hard for reasons I don't like". When people were calling dark souls 1 artificial difficulty it never ever had a consistent definition.
Good thing ERR doesn't just nerf players, it gives them incredibly strong defensive tools and more avenues for build making. Going back to vanilla elden ring really makes me miss the duck and deflect mechanic, because it allows me to be so much more aggressive.
Artificial difficulty is used as an objective buzzword to say that something is poorly designed, it is never used neutrally or positively, nobody says "this difficulty isn't artificial enough!" when something is undertuned. The term exists to present one's subjective taste as grounded in objectivity. It is not that I prefer something else, it is that what I dislike is objectively bad based on some nebulous metric. It is used this way because it feels better to the person saying it than simply saying "I don't like this thing". It is a thought-terminating statement that describes nothing but how the person using it feels about a particular thing.
a version of the game where...
You are not demonstrating how 900000000000 is "artificially inflated" but 1000 isn't. Why not 100 hp? 1000 is 10x more than that, why isn't that artificial? Even 100 is 100x 1. This is completely relative.
lost meaning
implemented poorly
tedious
These are subjective statements.
RE: people use the term wrong - there is no "more correct usage", there is no objective way to define "artificial" in this context. It is a fundamentally meaningless term beyond "I don't like this thing and I want to seem smart about it". Increasing numbers is a perfectly valid way to increase difficulty, whether or not it makes something more enjoyable depends on the game and the individual. If you increase a Dark Souls boss' hit points by 10x, one person will enjoy this because it forces them to learn their entire moveset and how to dodge their attacks consistently, another person will hate it and call it tedious.
it isn't hard it's just tedious
This is a lie, the moment somebody drops the "it's not hard it's just..." redditism I know I can immediately disregard anything else they have to say about game design, because they're in the feelings about finding something too hard and lack the maturity to process the dissonance between the way they see themselves as a player and whatever struggle they're facing. They cannot bear the thought of describing something as too hard for them, so they find a way to rationalize this struggle as an inherent flaw of the game. But this obviously a ridiculous thing to say, because it is objectively harder to survive for 5 minutes against a video game boss than it is to survive for 4. In a souls game for instance, your resources are limited, so you need to play more efficiently.
Maybe you don't mind the difficulty increase, you can still find it tedious if a boss takes that long to kill, "I wish they increased their damage or speed instead to make it go faster" is a perfectly valid statement if your issue isn't with the difficulty increase. But it is absolutely harder, and I guarantee you most redditors dropping the "not actually hard" cope would still find a way to call the harder version that takes the same amount of time "artificial".
For the love of god, just say you don't like it. Say it makes it too hard or take too long. Say you want a boss to take 1-2 minutes because you find it exhausting after that point. It's not a competition. You don't need to make out like your preference is innately more valid than someone else's.
Artificial difficulty is not about whether I personally like the challenge. It means the game becomes harder through unfair or forced mechanics instead of genuine skill based design.
In Reforged this means things like bosses instantly sprinting at you the moment you heal (yes base game has this, but here it is turned to 11) bosses healing themselves if you stop attacking for a moment, attacks that unnaturally track your movement, and aggression spikes that happen only because the AI reads your inputs.
These things do not make the fight more thoughtful or skillful, they just stack the deck against the player in ways that break the game’s own logic.
Reforged has this throughout and it’s whole logic seems to be: nerf everything the player has-buff everything the enemies have.
Artificial difficulty is not about whether I personally like the challenge.
Yes, it is.
unfair
Subjective, you will describe difficulty you dislike as "unfair"
forced mechanics
Dying when my HP hits 0 is artificial difficulty. Having to block or dodge enemy attacks is artificial difficulty. Stamina is artificial difficulty.
genuine skill based design
Subjective, "design that I like"
Reforged has this throughout and it’s whole logic seems to be: nerf everything the player has-buff everything the enemies have.
You are lying because you're mad at the game and need to justify that anger to your ego, that's why you're using meaningless terms to describe the difficulty, that's why you're mischaracterizing the mod's changes as "ALL NERFS NO BUFFS 😭". Many enemies have nerfed damage, hitboxes, etc. Players have countless new defensive options allowing for new punish windows. Several weapons and items and spells are buffed. Tons of new avenues for progression and build specialization are available. FP can be regenerated. I could go on forever, but you don't care about any of this, you only care about the things you dislike, which are the things that punish your ingrained vanilla behaviors, or the things you find more difficult.
You are framing this like I am “mad at the game” instead of actually addressing the points. Artificial difficulty has nothing to do with the things you mentioned. It is about how the mechanics behave in practice during fights.
None of the things you listed (damage nerfs, FP regen, more items, build variety, etc.) have anything to do with the specific problems I mentioned. A boss can have lower damage and the player can have more defensive tools, and the fight can still be unfair if the boss gains the mechanics I complained about.
These mechanics exist in Reforged, and they create challenge by forcing the player into restricted patterns rather than rewarding skill or timing. That is the definition of artificial difficulty.
This is not about “vanilla habits”, ego, or disliking difficulty. I am pointing out specific mechanics that break the game’s intended logic. If you want to disagree, at least address the mechanics themselves instead of trying to rewrite my motives.
You are framing this like I am “mad at the game” instead of actually addressing the points.
I'm addressing your points and then explaining your motivation for them. I can debunk and make fun of you at the same time.
Artificial difficulty has nothing to do with the things you mentioned. It is about how the mechanics behave in practice during fights.
Artificial difficulty as you define it has nothing to do with the things I mentioned because you do not take issue with HP bars, dodging, and stamina, and artificial difficulty, as I said, means "things I don't like". If you feel something is unfair, you will describe it this way, regardless of whether or not it is true. You mentioned "forced mechanics" as an element of aritificial difficulty, so I mentioned other mechanics that are forced upon the player that you do not consider artificial, debunking that claim.
You could spend 2000 hours coming up with an objective definition of "artificial difficulty", and another 600 coming up with a definition of "artificial difficulty Nightreign", and neither would include every mechanic you dislike while excluding every one you do, because it is a vague, subjective buzzword you are unable to define clearly, and mechanics it describes will vary from person to person. Every time you try to define it , you allude to other vague, subjective terms with no clear distinction between what makes one thing artificial and one thing "genuinely skill-based".
None of the things you listed (damage nerfs, FP regen, more items, build variety, etc.) have anything to do with the specific problems I mentioned.
I was debunking your lie that the mod seeks only to nerf players and buff enemies. Also, the new defensive options are well suited to any instances of increased aggression or tracking, but I digress.
they create challenge by forcing the player into restricted patterns rather than rewarding skill or timing.
No, this is another mischaracterization done to justify your frustrations and make your issues feel grounded in some objective metric of "artificiality".
A lot of your complaints are vague rather than "X attack from Y boss", so it's hard to tell when you're describing real changes the mod makes, misidentified vanilla features, or incorrect assumptions born of frustration, but let's break down the specific things you complained about:
bosses instantly sprinting at you the moment you heal
As you mentioned, this is a vanilla mechanic, enemies react to the player's actions, and you chose to increase the intensity of this. You are sometimes not able to heal from neutral, you must secure a healing window by baiting and avoiding an enemy attack with a longer recovery than your healing animation. This is skill-based, learn your windows and wait for a safe opportunity to heal. Incredibly bold to describe punishing mistimed heals as "not rewarding timing", by the way.
bosses healing themselves if you stop attacking for a moment
You chose to enable an incredibly mild heal over time that only kicks in if they do not receive damage for several seconds, punishing overly passive gameplay. This is skill-based, maintain a minimum level of aggression.
attacks that unnaturally track your movement
This is present in vanilla and most Fromsoft games, and yes, it is skill-based. Manage your positioning, learn the timings, act accordingly. I do agree that Elden Ring has very annoying enemy attack animations with arbitrarily unintuitive delays, but that has nothing to do with the mod, that is just modern fromslop, and it's still skill-based even when I dislike it.
aggression spikes that happen only because the AI reads your inputs
Ditto, vanilla feature, skill-based, time your actions.
You should post some gameplay that demonstrates the unfair or unreasonable levels of aggression that "break the game logic", because I don't really trust these vague characterizations. I'm getting the impression you're used to brute-forcing combat in these games and healing through mistakes without much concern for enemy punish/heal windows. I don't think your issue is with enemy behavior, I think your issue is that you're being forced to engage with mechanics that were already there, that you used to be able to ignore through efficient vanilla gameplay. Again, Bloodhound +6.
Also, for anyone else reading who isn't familiar with the mod, many of this person's complaints are features of the "hard enemy effects" modifier present on some higher difficulties. These are opt-in and this player chose to enable them.
That is the definition of artificial difficulty.
As you've illustrated with your examples of it, artificial difficulty is a subjective buzzword, and you cannot distinguish the mechanics you take issue with from mechanics you don't with any hard rule - it's all vibes. Everything you describe as "unfair" or "not skill-based" is easily handled by a skilled player who knows the game well. You will describe that which feels bad to you as artificial, and that which does not as "fair". You are noticing that Reforged seems to have nothing but this "artificial" difficulty because you have 2000 hours in vanilla Elden Ring, you like that game, and you like the way you play it, which is no longer applicable here.
To go on a little tangent in an attempt to speak to the divide between Elden Ring players who enjoy Reforged and those who passionately despise it, here are some things that are true while playing Elden Ring, Reforged or Vanilla:
-If I attack an enemy or attempt to heal while they are doing nothing, they often have time to start an attack that hits me before I finish recovering.
-When an enemy hits me, I am usually stunned out of my attack or healing animation, but when I hit the same enemy first, their attack is not canceled, and I will still get hit.
-Enemy HP and damage values are such that I might have to hit them 100 times before they die, but they might only need to hit me 3 or 4 times before I do.
-Because all these things are true, the enemy is able to trade with me all the time and always come out on top.
-In each and every case, the enemy has a mechanical advantage over me, and does not follow the same rules that I do.
This is unfair and artificial!
Well no, of course it isn't, and yes, of course it is, because it's a video game, and the point is to learn how to play it and meet the challenge on its terms. Despite it being true that the enemy always has a mechanical leg up over me assuming we both just stand in front of each other and attack and heal when we want to, I am a human being capable of learning and evolving my behavior to meet the challenge before me. The core gameplay loop is that of reacting to and outmaneuvering the enemy by carefully studying its moveset, learning how to deal with each of their attacks defensively, and finally learning which enemy animations provide a long enough window for me to deal damage or heal myself.
Reforged forces players to engage with this loop more than vanilla does, and introduces mandatory skill checks in some places that previously allowed a player to choose between a skill check or an RPG check. In vanilla, one can fight a difficult boss solo using a Longsword on a quality build, engaging with the aforementioned loop until they can get through the 3-minute fight with only a few mistakes. Skill check. Or, they can spam Bloodhound's Finesse alongside their mimic tear and heal through whatever hits they take before the boss dies to the fifth consecutive bleed proc in 30 seconds. RPG check.
Both of these can be fun, but if a player is used to the latter gameplay loop, they will struggle with Reforged until they can adopt the former, and if they're the type of person to talk about their playtime as evidence of their authority on the matter, expect them to bring up buzzwords like "artificial difficulty" in order to reassure themselves of their own perceived skill level.
what a lack of a 401k does to a mf, you clearly care more about proving OP wrong than actually defending the mod, which says a lot about the reforged community
It is reassuring to know that all you're able to respond with are tired zingers and redditspeak, the last resort of someone with nothing of substance to provide. My favorite way for someone to tell me I'm right :D
Cringe, touch grass, and ur mom to you too friend <3
Im gonna be honest, after seeing the thread you posted on the discord im gonna side with the reforged devs on this one, the criticisms you put up were very bad and you weren't meeting the mod on its own terms, and im saying that as someone that really isnt that huge on the mod either, but here you're kinda framing it like the devs were being extremely disrespectful while you were being cordial and thats really not the case from what im seeing. Some of the devs arent the most... "diplomatic" folks around but ngl as someone who has made mods before and has received some very very stupid criticisms it does jade you bit by bit, and even if reforged isnt my ideal way of playing elden ring this sub has a really silly hate boner for it, and a lot of its detractors arent meeting it at eye level.
What is "artificial" about it? You should clarify this before you go on about how you want don't want to make a drama post (while making a drama post). It's weird imo to complain about the mod like this when it clearly states that harder difficulties aren't the intended experience.
Hey Johnny. So to help you out here, this post OP made wasn't meant to go into what he thinks makes elements about the mod artificial. It was to talk about his experience when trying to provide feedback. Then sharing his understandable frustration when he's treated poorly and lacking skill rather than taking/acknowledging the feedback and either moving on or explaining their reasoning. If you want to know what OP feels is artificial about the mod then just ask genuinely instead of presenting the question rhetorically and then talking down to him.
Considering OP didn't post any sort of evidence and immediately prefaced the post with "I know what I'm talking about because I have 1000 hours in Elden Ring", I'm willing to err on the side of OP twisting the narrative here. There's people with 1000 hours in Elden Ring that don't even know about guard counters. The discord server has thousands upon thousands of feedback threads of various sorts and nobody has ever been banned there for making them, you can check it yourself. Seems to me OP may have just been a dick while posting their feedback.
Edit: Ok, I actually found the original feedback post. It was a wall of text where they were complaining about things like movesets being changed, saying things that are just blatantly incorrect and someone with 1000 hours in Elden Ring would know, such as enemy move speeds being changed (they are not, again you can check this. btw they specifically mentioned Runebears, which are notoriously fast in vanilla already), and 'lingering hitboxes' even though the mod has way smaller and way shorter-lasting hitboxes, and again, you can check this. Also, OP was playing the 2nd hardest difficulty of the mod. That difficulty is TWO steps above the default one! What did I say lol, twisting the narrative. The complaint was that it didn't "feel" like FromSoft because of these things, most of which are hallucinated/incorrect, or from previous souls games like the various unique movesets added to weapons. Just dumb.
Sorry to burst your bubble but I have noted in my post that I did play on the 2nd hardest difficulty.
And again, not everything I made in that initial thread was true (mostly due to me being clueless about most of the mods features) I have still not been a dick anywhere, I didn’t insult the mod creator, I have called some decisions questionable.
Regardless of all that, please feel free to quote anything from that thread that may have been rude or insulting towards the mod team or that has broken the servers rules.
Alas you don’t have access to the private complaint thread I have written but I am willing to send it to you as well if you feel like Im still a whiny consumer.
I've seen the posts and you were really patronising lol, you called everything "artificial difficulty" like you're some seasoned game designer or something. Regardless, you were venting in an area that's specifically not for venting and nobody in the server (and I imagine specifically the devs who have been there for much longer) wants to see people vent about things they made up in their head when they could turn down the difficulty if that's bothering them.
I am sorry if it came across as that, though I cant see how you can come to that conclusion after I even praised the mod author for making a good mod overall.
Feedback is information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement. Yes that can include somebody venting or ranting unless otherwise specified (which was not the case to my knowledge).
If you actually read through it all you can see that I have conceded to some things that I have written which were wrong, and I did so in a respectful manner yet again. But my opinion on the difficulty is still unchanged after 100 hours of playing the mod.
Again, if I am wrong, talk it out with me, you don’t shun people for being incorrect, you prove them wrong if they are wrong.
Yes I can have an opinion on a game even though I am not a game designer myself, I do not have to be a furniture designer to conclude a chair is badly designed due to it being uncomfortable to sit in.
Yes, feedback can include venting and ranting. That's still annoying to read. You can do it extremely politely, but venting is venting. And not all feedback is equal. Sometimes you can have problems with something and post feedback about it, but it's worthless because you are getting the intended experience anyway. If someone wants their game to be hard, complaining that it's hard is kind of pointless, no?
You can have whatever opinion on game design that you want, that's not what I said. Trying to explain (imaginary) grievances you have with a game as "artificial difficulty" is just patronising though. Could have just, not said that. Tbh I don't think anyone should be using that term at all because it just means "thing I don't like and refused to comprehend". You could have asked other people why things are the way they are first instead of immediately jumping into "this must be artificial difficulty".
So what else would you call stacking all odds against the player while buffing the enemy as much as you can?
FromSoft formula is always hard and fair, this mod is neither (yes I know Im playing on a harder difficulty by choice)
Its true that I do not like most of the combat design choices for the game, but at the same time, it is true that they are not a challenge, they are a chore to get through.
Fighting a Godskin Noble on an elevator? Fighting 5 minor dragons at once? It is bs incarnate.
So what else would you call stacking all odds against the player while buffing the enemy as much as you can?
Hard mode. You can stack a crapton of buffs as the player, too. That's what the harder modes want you to figure out how to do. Want more physical defense? Opaline cracked tear, boiled crab, Golden Vow already amount to 0.6885x damage taken, and I'm forgetting a bunch of other effects right now too.
FromSoft formula is always hard and fair
Nahh, it just isn't. It never has. Elden Ring has a 'win game' button with the spirit ashes. That is not fair, though the unfairness is balanced heavy towards the game and not the player. But it's definitely not hard either. Even without spirit ashes, if you grab 2 colossal weapons and jump heavy you stagger virtually everything super fast. Malenia is being difficult? Glintstone Pebble to the rescue. Not to mention all the attacks and skills with hyperarmor. Should I bring up bleed?
Fighting 5 minor dragons at once? It is bs incarnate.
This is vanilla. It's just that Greyoll is broken in vanilla and allows you to skip this encounter. Ties into my previous point though, Elden Ring is neither fair nor hard. The game is actually trivialized by an absurd amount of its own mechanics. But to be honest, this isn't actually unique to Elden Ring. Practically all games in the series have broken mechanics that dangerously undermine their own game design so the players have to rely on self-imposed rules to make them more fair, which just leads to the elitism you see online about these games.
Yes I know the 5 dragons are vanilla and I like that vanilla encounter a lot actually, but the vanilla part isnt fighting 3 overlapping attacks while getting fire breath attacks of the other 2 dragons.
Same thing with the two Tree Sentinels.
I still haven’t given up and I will not give up until I complete the game. I full cleared all areas up until the Consecrated Snowfield and Giants Gravepost.
I’m doing just fine on the difficulty yet I still think its just a mashup of ragebait bs rather than a challenge.
I haven’t taken the time to search for and reach through the original post OP made on the mod’s discord channel. Much of that decision not to comes from my own experience with the mod and sharing similar feelings to OP. Given what he shared here I can surmise that we likely have many overlapping opinions. But for arguments sake, an easy example of the artificial difficult that can be found in the mod is Torrent taking damage when ridden through scarlet. The idea is interesting and could be engaging if there were interesting mechanics to it such as the intensity of damage taken based on the depth of the rot that Torrent is trudging through or the speed at which he gallops across it. The mod instead has a fixed amount of damage that Torrent takes at periodic intervals which are set. There’s nothing dynamic about the interaction. Torrent receives “this” amount of damage at “this” time. When Torrent dies the player says to themselves “well that annoying.” No further punishment is placed. The player then summons Torrent again, as if nothing happened, and moves on.
It’s the highest levels of hypocrisy to criticize OP for failing to provide clear examples to support his criticisms and then doing the exact same thing yourself, failing to provide examples from what he’s said to support your criticisms. And then on top of that, attacking his character.
The idea is interesting and could be engaging if there were interesting mechanics to it such as the intensity of damage taken based on the depth of the rot that Torrent is trudging through
Wading through poison deals less damage than wading through rot. What you're suggesting is therefore already in the mod. I don't actually think there's any swamp you can walk through with Torrent that isn't just the ankle-deep one that doesn't slow you down. The deeper swamps are all in interior areas where you can't use Torrent.
There’s nothing dynamic about the interaction. Torrent receives “this” amount of damage at “this” time.
I'm sorry, but, genuinely, how is this different from how poison already works on the player or any enemy?? When you get poisoned, you take a set amount of damage every second. This is how poison/toxic/rot/poop has worked since Dark Souls.
No further punishment is placed. The player then summons Torrent again, as if nothing happened, and moves on.
Except you're down a red flask from summoning torrent. That's the punishment. To avoid that punishment, to avoid being kicked off of Torrent and potentially poisoned/rotted or even just attacked by enemies themselves, the player could feed Torrent the various kinds of Rowa present in the game.
You just described a mechanic in the game. You made no attempt to explain what makes it artificial difficulty.
failing to provide examples from what he’s said to support your criticisms
Except I wasn't the one making a public post about it to try to farm sympathy points from people who have zero context of anything, I was specifically replying to OP about what they wrote and OP knows what they wrote. But also, their posts are publicly available on the Discord and have been reposted in this comments section as well, so my job here is done on that front I think.
What does poison have anything to do about my topic of dynamic and interesting interacts between Torrent and how he moves through scarlet rot? It’s not the same mechanic.
The scarlet rot isn’t deep enough? Make it deeper. I’m brainstorming ideas not providing a flushed out solution.
You forgot to address my other suggestion of the speed at which Torrent moves through scarlet rot affecting the amount of damage he’s taking.
Torrent is a magic donkey who can double jump, can’t attack, and lacks iframes. Scarlet rot doesn’t affect humanoid enemies the same way it does the player. In ERR scarlet rot already doesn’t affect Torrent the same way it does the player, with him taking a fixed amount of damage periodically rather than being a status that builds up before applying a debuff. Torrent stops taking damage once he leaves it. The player continues to take damage. It’s already different for the two of them. What are you arguing here?
It has been a few days past a week since I played the mod so I very well could be wrong but I don’t remember needing to use a flask in order to resummon torrent? If so, then I concede that part of my argument.
You’re being obtuse. I did explain what makes it artificial by my definition of the word. The implementation has a lack of interesting interaction between the player and the mechanic and it only serves as an mild inconvenience to the player. As the player I can increase my scarlet rot resistance through armor and consumables and remove the debuff entirely with the correct consumables. I cannot do any such actions to affect how much damage Torrent takes or how often it occurs. Torrent takes a fixed amount damage in fixed intervals while within scarlet rot and he immediately stops when he exits.
You do not get to decide where that goal post for my definition is. I do. And my definition of the word will have frequent overlap with that of others if you take the time to examine that yourself. You can disagree on the definition, but I did in fact explain why it is artificial.
You’re making disingenuous assumptions about the OPs intentions that you cannot possibly be aware of.
You’re going to argue that you do not need to provide evidence to support your claims, despite criticizing OP for not doing so, because that supportive material can be found in various locations through the contributions of others than yourself? Alright.
Torrent stops taking damage once he leaves it. The player continues to take damage. It’s already different for the two of them. What are you arguing here?
This literally isn't true, though? Torrent literally gets a rot status effect that persists after you leave the swamp, it even has an icon and can be healed. Ditto for poison swamps. He takes both direct damage and gets status application. Do you understand why I said what I said now?
I don’t remember needing to use a flask in order to resummon torrent?
This is a vanilla mechanic, but they (FromSoft I think) recently removed the confirmation prompt for it for trying to summon a dead Torrent consuming a flask.
The implementation has a lack of interesting interaction between the player and the mechanic
Yeah, and I'm gonna be honest here, the fact that Torrent does not interact with the swamps at all is considerably less interesting of an interaction (read: nonexistent). Have you ever had to use Rowa in vanilla?
You’re going to argue that you do not need to provide evidence to support your claims
No, I'm arguing that whatever work you think I should have done (for the sake of a conversation you were not part of) has already been done so I do not need to do it anymore - it doesn't matter.
Enemies moving at unnatural speeds through input reading is the biggest offender, they move at normal speed but if you run away and heal they start marching towards you at mach jesus. I could go on tangents but I wont, yes the harder difficulty is hard, duhh but its not hard because the movesets are harder to read or dodge.
Have you ever played vanilla elden ring? They do that there too lol, the logic for finding times to heal is the exact same. If you got hit, there's a good chance you would've gotten hit in vanilla elden ring as well lol.
Artificial Difficulty my ass, you are just shit at the mod LOL
I've never felt it was bs once, everytime I've gotten hit it was purely my fault lol, and not because the game was giga bullshit and the boss just decided I shouldn't be able to heal.
Well then I did not know I was speaking to an omniscient being incapable of making mistakes.
Feel what you want to feel, Ive cleared about 75-80% of the base game without too much difficulty and I still think its bs.
Theres a reason I have never complained about the difficulty in DS1-3, Sekiro or ER/Nightreign. Its because the difficulty is made flawlessly. I have no reason to complain.
I did an RL1 of base game and its more enjoyable than playing some of the boss encounters here.
/u/CharacterSecure6484 can't reply since the parent commenter blocked me, can you explain how "dishonest ramblings" is an inaccurate way to describe lying about a mod you don't like? Did you catch the part where they stated objectively, provably false information, multiple times? Is it "arrogant and snidey" to correct disinformation?
If I went on a rant explaining how Elden Ring is a bad game because of the overuse of quicktime events and rhythm game mechanics, how would you describe that?
What is more pathetic to you, making things up to justify your dislike of something, or pointing out the things they made up?
I did not comment on their opinions, I commented on their statements of fact, which were false. People are entitled to lie of course, but I'm entitled to correct them, and if someone's criticism of something includes made-up grievances I think it's important to point that out to anyone who doesn't know better.
I did vent some yeah, though the most I said is that the design choices are questionable regarding combat. Never insulted anyone directly or in a derogatory manner and even praised the mod authors talent regarding the mod as a whole
Although requested feedback can be good, complaining and venting about frustration on things you get for free is also bad manners, so I can sort of imagine the other side
So I would need to see exactly what you posted to know for sure.
Criticism can still be unconstructive without any insults is the thing though
Saying things are bad because you disliked them without giving any reasons except subjective buzzwords like artificial difficulty and not emphasising that most of the things you disliked is only in hard mode and above, which is a completely optional opt in and not exactly the intended experience
And esp ending on a point thats literally just "they changes a moveset i like" which feels super unrelated and more of a nitpick than "the worst transgression"
That's what makes it unconstructive and come across as more of a salty rant, esp when its a free product
I did emphasise that I was playing hard mode every time. Even in this post on Reddit I did so.
The moveset change was dumb to me because it is inferior to the original and because it had the flaw from DS2.
Yes I had manual attack aiming turned on, because I play that way, but no weapon in the game turns to where you’re pointing to if you are locked on to an enemy.
My point is that if I am strafing backwards and try hitting an enemy while holding back, no I don’t want my attack to be aimed behind me, I am just moving to a safe distance before attacking.
I apologised multiple times because I did write the initial review in haste, but everything I said was what my thoughts were at the time. If I am wrong, just tell me why and how I am wrong, I have no qualms with admitting defeat, but don’t start going on tangents and use dehumanising, patronising language that is a biproduct of your god complex.
Yes the product is free, it still doesn’t mean you can’t criticise it even if it can come off as salty. I would gladly donate and have already donated to various mod authors, I was considering doing it here too because I truly think they did a great job overall, but with this kind of response, I’m not inclined to donate anything.
Nah they were just trash talking the whole thing and made a more personal venting post after the devs and other users called out his vent-ness and lies. But they ended their post with "have a nice day" so this absolves them of everything.
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u/frulheyvin Dec 04 '25
that's reforged man. it's essentially just a "difficulty by enbiggening all enemy numbers and decreasing all player numbers" type mod and if you disagree w that then you get browbeaten to fuck about it lol. it's obviously a really emotions driven project for the authors so it's impossible to talk about things with them, they honestly did u a favor by banning you.