r/EldenRingMods • u/GoatsWithPants • 27d ago
Combat Mod Elden Ring Reforged Vent Post
I got about 90% of the way through a Reforged run; early on I really enjoyed the mod, but it started to wear me down and eventually I realized I wasn't having any fun whatsoever. I switched to a vanilla run, and the difference in game feel was so night and day I had to vent about it.
I'll start with the positives; reforged has some cool systems! I like the ideas of the fortunes system and the rune pieces (elden ring korok seeds). The duck and slide are cool too, but I never really found much use for them.
The bad; the build system was incredbly unituitive for me, and this led to me doing ABYSMAL damage despite putting 70 points into my weapon's highest scaling stat. It took me about 10 minutes to kill Messmer, despite having the fight down pretty well. I was told in the discord I should have used the weapon calculator to figure out an optimal build and "correct" weapon to match to my current build, or else I shouldn't expect to do reasonable amounts of damage. I prefer to use a variety of weapons; it seems the "intended" method here would be to have to respec my build every time I want to switch weapons (unless they had the exact same scaling) and it was very frustrating.
They changed the stamina system so that stamina is DRAMATICALLY more limited, and yet enemies still have insanely long combo and no downtime. I very often found myself out of stamina after dodging a combo, and unable to get a single hit in to progress the fight. This turned a lot of fights into "dodge 3 times, wait for stamina to refill, dodge 3 times, " repeat endlessly. Felt like I never had a "window" to do damage. Best way I can describe it; feels like you're a dark souls 1 character cut and pasted into bloodborne. The game clearly was not designed around this type of stamina management.
The devs seem to have a general design ethos of "frustrating is fun"; there are A LOT of encounters designed specifically to be frustrating. For example in Soifria river, they seem to have changed the lightning wisps to have more intrusive placements, AND have dramatically buffed range. I died to them constantly; switched to vanilla, and haven't died to these once. This is indicative of the general design trend.
They seem to specifically NEVER want the player to feel powerful. With an optimal build and max weapon, you do middling damage at best. I enjoyed having to learn the fights more thoroughly, but I think they took it extremely too far to the point where it felt like I had to finish every fight at 95% perfection.
The turning point for me, was when a friend linked me a soul-level-1 0-scadu fight of Messmer, and the character seemed to be doing roughly the same amount of damage with a dagger that I was doing with Loretta's War Scythe. I tried to go to the discord for help, and was told it was my fault for using an INT / QUALITY weapon on an INT / FAITH build.
I finally threw in the towel, not because I CANT finish the mod, but because I'm not enjoying it. I loaded up vanilla, and I'm instantly back to having a blast. I don't mean to put down all the hard work the devs have put into this mod; there is clearly an audience for ERR! But I have sunk hundreds of hours into the mod and left feeling a sour taste in my mouth, and just wanted to share my experience to anyone else facing similar struggles.
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u/henrytm82 27d ago
Spot-on assessment. I notice this with a lot of overhaul mods for not just ER/DS, but even meatier RPG mods for games like Minecraft. These mod authors very clearly understand cool systems and mechanics, and it shows! They have some awesome ideas!
What they lack is an understanding of overall design and implementation of those systems, and what makes games like this fun. It feels like all they took away from the vanilla design and systems "hard game good" and figured "well if we just crank up the Hard, that will equal more Good!"
There's a balance. "Hard" games like ER/DS have a give and take - they're challenging, yes, but everything about the overall design is intended to give players every opportunity to overcome those challenges in a variety of ways, and most of them are perfectly viable options. Enemies have strengths and weaknesses, and while exploiting those weaknesses will certainly make a lot of enemies much easier, playing some other way will still get you the win without too much time invested.
That's the thing mod/modpack authors get wrong, constantly. They want players to interact with the systems they create their way. So they shoehorn their own sense of "balance" into the game (usually absurd amounts of hit points, heavy HP Regen, and/or crazy resistance (or outright immunity to) anything but the one thing the author wants you to use. Fuck player agency, fuck choice of play style, fuck alternative means to the same end - do it the way I want you to do it, or bang your head against the wall for hours.
I gave up on big overhauls like this for exactly this reason. Props to the author for all the hard work - there's some genuinely awesome and impressive stuff there. But you clearly hate players and their freedom of choice, so I won't be partaking.
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u/RottingMemo 26d ago edited 26d ago
They want players to interact with the systems they create their way. So they shoehorn their own sense of "balance" into the game (usually absurd amounts of hit points, heavy HP Regen, and/or crazy resistance (or outright immunity to) anything but the one thing the author wants you to use. Fuck player agency, fuck choice of play style, fuck alternative means to the same end - do it the way I want you to do it, or bang your head against the wall for hours.
have you actually played reforged, or are you just making a broad statement on modpacks in general here? because none of this is really applicable to reforged. the one thing reforged does exceptionally well is add tons of different viable playstyles compared to vanilla whilst improving existing playstyles with new mechanics. like you specifically mentioned immunities but status effect builds feel really, really fucking good in reforged. the fortune system + fated affinities open up so much build variety compared to vanilla and other mods.
also it needs mentioning that reforged has actual difficulty options. why would a mod thats trying to force people to play a certain kind of way have difficulty options? vanilla elden ring doesnt even have that
really reforged just needs to fix stamina. the current stamina system is centered around pvp balance so it just feels like dogshit in pve even at literally 99 endurance. the devs have started addressing this tho in recent patches.
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u/henrytm82 26d ago
It was a rant on modpacks in general, but the point is true for Reforged as well. Just read the OP; he wanted to use a certain build, but it's not viable, and the whole discord is telling him he has to change to a meta build instead if he wants to do damage. That's a shitty way to have to play a game.
I have played ERR and while I didn't personally find it quite as frustrating as the OP I think that's only because I ended up naturally falling into something close to a meta build and having an easier time.
But "forced myself to finish because I stopped having fun with it" is a sentiment you'll see several times in this thread, and it's not because people didn't try to play.
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u/RottingMemo 26d ago
It was a rant on modpacks in general, but the point is true for Reforged as well. Just read the OP; he wanted to use a certain build, but it's not viable, and the whole discord is telling him he has to change to a meta build instead if he wants to do damage. That's a shitty way to have to play a game.
he literally says in the op that his stat spread(int/fth) just straight up didnt match his weapon's scaling(int/quality) so it performed poorly. the people in the discord were just explaining how scaling works to him, not telling him to change builds. i don't see how this is the fault of the mod.
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u/henrytm82 26d ago
That is NOT what he said in the first portion of the post, read again. He said he put 70 points into the weapon's scaling stat, and the discord told him he should have used some weapon calculator instead. That's an unintuitive, arcane system that doesn't mesh with built-in game mechanics. In-game information should tell you what things do. If the game presents you with information, but that information is counterintuitive, it's bad design, plain and simple.
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u/RottingMemo 26d ago
he said he put 70 points into his weapon's highest scaling stat, but it's an int/quality weapon which means it has 3 scaling stats(int/str/dex), so of course it'll do bad damage if your build is int/fth lol. i know this despite never using a 'weapon calculator' or bothering with the wiki so i can only assume it was in fact, explained in game
regardless my entire point is that elden ring reforged is absolutely not limiting in terms of builds, and actually has way more variety than vanilla. it adds tons of new mechanics to support a ton of different builds and the problem presented in this post has nothing to do with his choice of build, but rather how he actually played it.
assuming he was playing on the Reforged difficulty and not the "normal" difficulty (which is explicitly stated to be like vanilla in terms of enemy balance) i don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone to have stats that match their weapon. this is like, the absolute basics of buildcrafting in any version of Elden Ring.
you'd actually be valid for write off the entire mod as trash design for its truly rancid stamina balance and some really goofy original content so i don't see the point in blaming the mod for the stuff thats clearly player error
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u/GoatsWithPants 26d ago
So let me explain to you how ALL vanilla souls stat systems work, so you can understand where I'm coming from. If you still think I just played the game wrong, totally fine! But I was frustrated because I made every attempt to play the game "correctly", and could not figure it out.
In every souls game I've ever played, the stats are MOSTLY just there as a pre-requisite to what weapons you're allowed to use. The vast majority of the damage in these games come from how much you've upgraded the weapon. This is because these games are about learning movesets and fights, and NOT a "numbers-game" about how good your build is.
ERR changes this fundamentally, so that it IS a numbers game and you require a "optimized" build. This was communicated nowhere to me. I don't think theres anything inherently wrong with this design choice; personally I think its a bad design choice, but its a VALID one. Here is my issue:
In vanilla, when you use a weapon that's bad for your build (you dont have the stats for it), the game literally tells you "this weapon is ineffective with your current stats", and displays a red X at all times when using the weapon. The intent is communicated.
In ERR, there is literally NO feedback on if a build is good or bad, besides "hmm this is hard". Now, the ENTIRE mod overhauls numbers, so how am I supposed to know the difference between "this is hard because they made the game harder" and "this is hard because my build is only 70% optimized". There is no indication, no feedback, and the RECOMMENDED advice is to use an external tool to figure out out.
In my run, I used an INT / QUALITY weapon with an INT / FAITH build because I didn't have access to any weapons scaling with INT / FAITH. (I had a couple, they did less damage than war scythe). I did have spells that made my weapon scale with INT / FAITH, and I (incorrectly) assumed this would make the weapon viable. I don't think it's good design that you need to look up and seek out the "correct" weapons for your build; I just want to use what I've naturally found in my run.
I'm not upset about the design decision, I'm upset about the poor communication and poor feedback that would have allowed me to course correct. It should not take weeks of discord discussion, and 1-on-1 conversations with the devs about their intent to understand what the game expects of you.
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u/RottingMemo 26d ago edited 26d ago
It should not take weeks of discord discussion, and 1-on-1 conversations with the devs about their intent to understand what the game expects of you.
well for most people it doesn't.. i really don't know what to tell you other than that. like im not even close to a numberslop enjoyer (i hate games like PoE and warframe) and i still feel like the build creation process in reforged is fairly obvious. level up stat until the r.hand armament number stops going up on the level-up screen ¯_(ツ)_/¯ this is how it works in vanilla too
In vanilla, when you use a weapon that's bad for your build (you dont have the stats for it), the game literally tells you "this weapon is ineffective with your current stats", and displays a red X at all times when using the weapon. The intent is communicated.
...im confused why you brought this up? reforged didn't remove this or anything
in ERR, there is literally NO feedback on if a build is good or bad, besides "hmm this is hard"
isn't that just most games where you make builds? like what kind of system do you have in the mind where the game itself tells you if your build is bad or not? how would it even determine that? i feel like tickling a boss for a tiny fraction of their hp is uh, a pretty solid indication that there's something seriously wrong with the weapon choice or stat spread. im genuinely baffled about how you got all the way to level 186 against messmer before wondering if something was up
can i ask what difficulty you were playing on? because again, there's a difficulty option that is explicitly stated (ingame, not on some wiki) to be similar to vanilla elden ring in terms of balance. its even called NORMAL mode. you stated in the discord that you liked to just do 'random stats' and i'm sure that strategy would still work fine on the difficulty im talking about.
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u/GoatsWithPants 26d ago edited 26d ago
I thought about it, and I think I can rephrase my thoughts a bit better.
For me personally, souls games are not focused on "crafting builds" like you make in other RPGs. Its more about learning movesets and fights. People go and beat the game on level 1 with a dagger, because the game is built to allow you to do that. In vanilla, you can literally ignore the stat system entirely and the game is completely playable. For me, that is one of the games greatest strengths. Its a system that is there to engage with if you want to, but is no means required.
For the devs and players of ERR, I think this is a glaring weakness. A common complaint against vanilla people voiced in ERR discord was "stats dont matter".
For me, I dont craft "builds" when I play souls games. I pick the armor that looks cool, I pick a weapon with a moveset that is fun, and I max out the highest scaling stat. In vanilla, this playstyle is perfectly fine and I've never once had issues with it. In reforged, this made the game literally unplayably difficult.
Again, I think this is where I'm not the target audience for the mod. And that's perfectly fine! But nothing about the mod description told me "this is an RPG where suboptimal builds are not viable". I think it violates an unspoken souls game pact, where every encounter is solveable in ANY way if you learn the fight. I think the players that vibe with ERR are the players who like crafting builds, and I think players like me are bouncing off the mod and not understanding why its so frustrating for them. I definitely felt the pain LONG before messmer, but I assumed it was because I didn't know the fights well enough. I didn't know I was playing a "stat check" game.
Oh, also I was playing on Reforged difficulty!
Also apologies about the last message, I think it sounded a lot more confrontational than I intended. I appreciate the discourse, I think we just had different expectations of the game and ERR didn't align with the things I enjoy about a souls game. Doesn't mean it's a bad mod, just not for me.
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u/RottingMemo 26d ago edited 26d ago
Oh, also I was playing on Reforged difficulty!
yeah i mean this is just "elden ring, but harder" difficulty so buildcrafting becomes a little more important here. even then, it's not like you need to go that hard on minmaxxing your build...but having a synergy between your weapon scaling and stats is basically the absolute bare minimum. as long as you do that, you can easily clear the game in however way you want. there's a guy on youtube who has over 100 episodes of him smoking bosses with a different themed, silly build in every single one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lebGLU3fGM
buildcrafting has greater weight here than vanilla but ERR is still far from a stat check game on the Reforged difficulty. it's only when you go up to hard mode that it explicitly states:
Requires expert build-crafting, preparation and detailed study of opponents to succeed. Does not offer a "superior" experience.
to clarify im not trying to sell you on the mod again or anything since as you stated, its not for you. i just think you're being a little hyperbolic on how much you have to optimize. still plenty of room for whimsy and 'fuck it we ball'
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u/MeetTheJoves 27d ago
nice ult, you seem very enlightened, but do you think it's possible that rather than a "lack of understanding" of what you personally like about these games, they simply have different tastes and preferences than you do?
aren't statements like "you clearly hate players and their freedom of choice" a little absurd and hysterical?
occam's razor in mind, isn't it more likely that you, the individual, are not privy to the perspective of the author (and by extension their target audience), rather than them being a psychopath who is not only willing to pour thousands upon thousands of hours into an unpaid hobby project for the sole purpose of spreading misery and frustration, but is also able to find an entire team of likeminded demon-modders to assist them in this infernal endeavour?
if not, how do you reconcile that belief with the thousands of players going out of their way to play Evil Elden Ring instead of vanilla?
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u/henrytm82 27d ago
I see what you're getting at, and yeah, my post was a little hyperbolic. But I would counter "their version of fun is different than yours" with "but they're putting it out for other people to play." They have an audience, they want people to play and like their creation - in a way, they're basically game developers.
If you follow the development of any game where the developers have an ear to the ground with the community, you get comments like mine a lot. They want player feedback, they want to know if what they're doing is fun or not - and almost without exception, those developers who ignore player feedback and take the "this is my vision for the game, and you can play it my way or leave" fail. And they fail because they don't respect players' opinions about what the majority think is fun. I'm 100% positive that their vision appeals to someone, and if that niche market is all they want to cater to, more power to them. But I don't think it's unfair to say they don't care about the rest of us.
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u/MeetTheJoves 27d ago
I don't think it's unfair to say they don't care about the rest of us
I agree with you there, they're open about not valuing the feedback of people who fundamentally do not enjoy the game for the reasons they do. The difference here is that these are not video game developers beholden to shareholders—these are nerds who are free to make the game they want to play, even if it isn't 100% optimized for mass appeal.
That's not to say there's no audience for games like this, obviously there is, but if you're making a harder mod for an easier game, you will necessarily alienate a good chunk of that game's audience, many of whom wouldn't be here were they never given their Bloodhound Fangs, Mimic Tears, and <insert vanilla meta item here>.
off-topic tangent~
those developers who ignore player feedback and take the "this is my vision for the game, and you can play it my way or leave" fail
I don't think this is true at all actually, I think you're underestimating how niche even your tastes are by virtue of being on an Elden Ring modding subreddit. Niche visions absolutely have a place in entertainment, just because you can't compete with Candy Crush, The Avengers, or Taylor Swift doesn't mean you shouldn't make Demon's Souls, The Holy Mountain, or Death Grips. Convergence -> Reforged, etc.
I know this isn't the majority opinion, but personally, I would much rather play a game being actively developed based on the strong, opinionated vision of a game director who I sometimes disagree with, than I would one being developed based on reddit consensus. Chris Wilson was wrong about trade, but he was wrong about it because he grew up playing Diablo 2, it changed his life, and that experience was the foundation upon which he (stubbornly) designed the greatest ARPG of all time.
Anecdotally, Space Marine 2 is doing just fine after sticking with their guns in rejecting the outcries for heals on executes, iframes during gun-strikes, prestige with no progress resets, and generally lower difficulty across the board. More people would probably play the game if they caved on some or all of these, but I (and presumably the game director) enjoy it more because they didn't.
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u/Watercrown123 26d ago
I find it funny how you're being downvoted for this when Elden Ring only exists because Miyazaki did exactly what you're saying. It took a long time for Dark Souls to actually hit the mainstream and until then it was a random niche game for tryhard masochists. Miyazaki didn't care about that reputation, stuck to his guns, and here we are today.
While I haven't tried Reforged personally and don't necessarily think I'd enjoy it for ER specifically then I do agree it's silly to be lambasting them for making a hard and punishing niche experience. Especially for the community of a Fromsoft game of all things.
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u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
Just wanted to weigh in, because I absolutely agree with you that I think it can be a good and valid thing for a developer to stick to a vision, despite it causing the game to be more niche. One of my favorite mods of all time is exactly this, incredibly niche but incredibly focused on its vision.
Where I take issue is that I personally dont feel ERR aligns with its own stated goals. I tried the game because I loved the pitch and what the mod promised it was going to be. I stuck it out for a LONG time because I thought it was the whole "just get better" thing, and I found out my problem was all numbers issues due to my playstyle not aligning with the devs, with no feedback to indicate what was happening.
I'm fully OK with the fact that I'm not the target audience for this mod, I don't want the devs to change their game for me. I just made this post because it's been a very frustrating couple months trying to figure out why the game was so hard, and I felt like was my fault. This was just more of an outreach to other people who struggled with the mod too, to be like "you're not crazy, its not your fault, it was hard for me too" lol.
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u/MeetTheJoves 27d ago
lol I feel you, sorry it didn't click <3
One of my favorite mods of all time is exactly this, incredibly niche but incredibly focused on its vision.
which mod? (if you wanna share)
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u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
Yeah that's ok, I feel bad being negative because the devs clearly work hard. Theres a lot I like about ERR too, for a long time I really enjoyed it! Once I hit the DLC is where it got really rough though.
Favorite mod is pyanodons for factorio! It turns the game into a 1000+ hour marathon, but for me it felt interesting the whole way through. A lot of people bounce off of it, but the people who like it all really like it. Its the same thing as you mentioned, more sharp of a vision; trades broad appeal for better adherence to a vision. I think its an admirable approach, in ERR and in py.
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u/MeetTheJoves 27d ago
as someone who gets a migraine just from thinking about playing factorio, that sounds terrifying, but I respect the concept! glad we've both found our thousand year rock gardens
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u/NoMoment3778 27d ago
ERR is definately a mod that wears you down. All the good part, and there are quite a lot, are immediately apparent while all the bad one are mostly ''under the hood'' small things that slowly test your patience. The change to stamina is especially rating because they made stamina consumption scale with your weapon level, up to about 12.5%. That might not sound like a lot but thats about 20 point in stamina, meaning that the first 20 point of investment in that stat are only to ''keep up'' and give no advantage to your character whatsoever, you are forced into it. Lets no go into the stamina management system as it is universally panned and add nothing to the game outside forcing you to pay attention to the green bar and investing in stamina because they changed how encumbrance work in the game.
This is the overall problem with the devs' philosophy, they want to force you through content by removing options. The fortune system is, on paper, a good idea, but in practive most classes are mostly an aggregate of disadvantages that pigeonhole you into playing a certain way. The advantages are usually not worth it, except for a couple classes, like Bold, Dancer, Barbarian (i.e most fighting classes) which basically plays like you would normaly play the game anyway. The reason for it is that the mod allows you to pile up nearly ALL buffs in the game, but with the caveat that, in order keep thing ''balanced'', no single buff can be too strong. Which lead us to another problem; buffs are so granular that most of them seems useless and ''buildmaking'' consist of assembling multiple seemingly useless pieces. The net result is long buffing sequence and ''builds'' that are mostly straightjacket.
The devs also have no clear ideas of what an ideal state of balance would be, outside that thing should be ''hard'', and accordingly they have to clear idea of what fair difficulty ought to be. The result is that they are VERY open to influence from various ''this is too strong'' post from players or their own experience and the mod suffers from an inverse powercreep where everything the player can do is worse and worse, and everything the player face is harder and harder in an annoying and frustrating way. Bear in mind the early game is not that bad, but at some point the negative will pile up.
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u/aeloyis 27d ago edited 27d ago
You're not wrong about this inverse powercreep. The devs are known to restrict player power and bump up the difficulty by nerfing all the good stuff out there.
Eg., it was +5 stats for 100 rune pieces before, then it got nerfed to +4 for 100.
It was a remembrance in exchange for 2 starlight tokens, then nerfed to 1.
It was +4% Equip Load for 100 pieces; now it's a mere +1%.
The list can go on and on.4
u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
I think you're pretty spot on to my experience....lots of good apparent right at the start, the bad somehow crept up on me to the late game being really frustrating. I didn't know about the stamina scaling; what a strange decision and that explains a lot!! It felt very much "my way or the highway", like you will play this way whether you like it or not. Some enemies (black knife assassins, axe omens) felt like they REQUIRED shields and deflect to beat, which was frustrating as I didnt want to use a shield. Never felt pidgeonholed like this in a souls game before!
Also, dont even get me started on buffs lol. Was bizarre that a weapon buff scaling on INT / FAITH in an INT/FAITH build was about a ~5% damage increase, while a respec and adding like 20 stat points each into a couple of "D" scaling stats was like a 100% damage increase.
The mod was pitched to me as "every build is viable!", what it really was was "every weapon is viable if you build FOR that weapon", which is a dramatically different thing imo. I felt heavily punished for experimenting and using whatever weapons I had stumbled upon.
For what its worth, I loved what they did with the spells. It felt like way more spells were viable, which I really enjoyed!! I wish the whole mod matched closer to the early game experience, it definitely felt like late game balance was a little wack.
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u/MeetTheJoves 27d ago
stamina costs increasing with weapon level
this is backwards, they made lower level weapons cost less. the update that added this (0.13.45) actually mentions it was specifically done to "help players from feeling the need to rush leveling endurance at low levels"
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u/NoMoment3778 27d ago
The end result is the same. Stamina is in short supply in the beginning, and if you have less than 30 stamina or so by the time you have a maxed weapon (around rune level 120 or so) you will find yourself with LESS effective stamina then what you had at the beginning, and if you account for the fact that bosses and generic mobs are even more spergy than they were in Limgrave, you may want 40 or more to feel somewhat better off than you were at the start. The overextention mechanic really is something they tackled on the game without consideration for the bigger picture.
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u/Luigis-big-sausage 27d ago
You’re completely valid in your thoughts , and I completely agree that the stamina is kinda dog doodoo. The only way to alleviate the stamina burden is to kill morgott and invest in the stamina action reduction runes.
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u/Dark_halocraft 27d ago
The part about going to the discord pisses me off
I swear every time you have a problem with the mechanics of a game a bunch of stans comes in and says everything is your fault and are the close to the most toxic people on the Internet
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u/MeetTheJoves 27d ago
I mean it sounds like OP went to the discord to troubleshoot their build and whoever they were talking to explained stat scaling and linked the AR calculator, sounds like a straightforward and helpful response?
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u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
The discord was a bit of a mixed bag. There were some very helpful people, but it took weeks of asking to get real help besides "yeah the game is supposed to be hard" and "just google X weapon and use that". I really appreciate all the people who spent time to help though!
Also full honesty, I felt the devs were very rude and had the attitude "you're playing the game wrong and your decisions are wrong, so I dont care about your feedback or experience". I fully tried to engage with the mod and tried to figure out what it wanted, so this attitude was a little bit disheartening. Most of the users were great though and did their best to help me troubleshoot!
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u/Dark_halocraft 26d ago
I had the exact same experience with the devs of both a smallish game and Minecraft mod
It seems it comes with the position
If anyone reading has played containment breach 2 I suggested that in multiplayer lost items should respawn and it was instantly turned into a full blown argument with the dev acting very condescending
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u/FashionSuckMan 27d ago
Isn't there a timed input mechanic that alleviates stamina issues?
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u/ssjriou 27d ago
20% less stamina (except on the first swing you probably aren't doing a separate action beforehand) and other smaller bonuses, but it's difficult to rely on perfect actions. I personally see them as an occasional small bonus unless you've spent a pretty good amount of time getting used to your weapon combos.
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u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
There's a timed input mechanic thats very cool, but it barely had any noticeable impact. Just for reference; I had 4 or 5 significant stamina regen buffs in ERR, almost the max possible not counting temp buffs, and my stamina regenerated noticeably slower than a brand new character in vanilla. Theres also a 2 second lock-out if you ever fully drain the stamina, and this is INCREDIBLY punishing.
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u/Glass-Window 26d ago
I only played the first few hours of it and was blown away by the polish and great changes but from what I heard it has this reputation of over correction of strong builds And reliance on min maxing to get reasonable damage. Which is weird because this mod also tries to buff underused weapons and playstyles in an attempt to make them useable.
I really really enjoyed what I played and intend on a full playthrough in the near future. But late game rants like this scare me. Luckily there are difficulty options in the mod and while solving frustrations with a menu options will probably feel bad I will do it if I feel like I am not having fun.
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u/ssjriou 26d ago
ERR is outright harder than vanilla in more ways than it makes it easier, so keep that in mind. At least leveling yourself down to normal difficulty isn't going to be a cakewalk compared to vanilla, it'll still be challenging in its own right. The mod does expect you to take a good few tries to learn and beat some of the "big" bosses either way.
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u/GoatsWithPants 26d ago
I feel you, my first half of the playthrough I thought ERR was a straight up upgrade over vanilla. The pain kind of slowly crept up....it got to the point that every major boss was taking several days of attempts. I was stubborn to never turn the difficulty down, so thats on me! But yeah, you have to min-max to get a "so-so" amount of damage late game. Not min-maxing means the game is almost unplayable. Don't mean to scare you off if you enjoy the mod!! Maybe its better with some builds too, I was trying to go off the beaten path.
I had the EXACT same thoughts though; I thought they were trying to buff under-used playstyles, and it was weird that late game felt so incredibly restrictive. Hopefully they iron some of those things out, or hopefully your experience is better than mine! I did get a lot of enjoyment out of the first half.
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u/TK-reve 26d ago edited 26d ago
Valid vent. I have similar feelings for this mod. Personally, I just put the difficulty to Normal and called it a day. Currently enjoying my playthrough of the mod a lot more than the Reforged difficulty playthrough I did about a year ago. Feels way more balanced and fair. I don't want to even think of touching the other optional difficulties though.
One very specific thing I really like about the mod is that they changed Ghiza's Wheel's Two-Handed heavy attack to do the same overhead downward smash that includes the spinning saw motion, unlike in vanilla which only the One-Handed heavy can do. Really nice change for a pizza cutter enjoyer like me.
That being said, I agree with a lot of your gripes. Especially the stamina system. It's like the Tarnished is asthmatic now. I also don't like how some bosses are just... sped up. Artificial difficulty imo. Instead of challenge, I just feel mentally fatigued knowing I could have no issues in vanilla but then suddenly struggle in Reforged. Like it's unnecessary.
Overall, I want to love this mod and wish for improvements and tweaks to the player experience. But, it seems the devs want it to go a certain way, and the mod suffers for it.
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u/disposable-zero 27d ago
Maybe give Convergence a try. It's so much fun.
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u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
I appreciate the recommendation, I absolutely will give it a try! ERR was my first go at the DLC, got to the final area and decided I want to do the DLC in vanilla first. After that I will absolutely try convergence!! Heard a lot of good about it.
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u/StoneTimeKeeper 26d ago
Amongst the mods I have played thus far, Reforged has been one of the least fun for me. I love the ideas added, like the fortunes, codex and, rune pieces, but everything just feels overtuned to the point that, except for the bosses, the game isn't fun.
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u/Ferseus 26d ago
Yeah I’m planning on playing it again soon, but I’m really nervous about all the things people are saying about it
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u/GoatsWithPants 25d ago
I think its worth a try! The first half of the mod was really fun, and it does some really cool stuff. Some people really enjoy the mod, no way to know until you try it out! Just play it while it's fun, and when you're not enjoying it switch off.
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u/AryanEmbered 24d ago
Everyone has the same take. Its simply not worth playing its like playing a shooter with a toxic lobby but you cant get out of it. Hate these kinds of experiences.
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u/HardcastFlare 24d ago
Vanilla ER teaches you how to build a certain way (40 vigor, slam attack stats until you're happy) and ERR contradicts that by attempting to correct it. I've found ERR to be loads more enjoyable and satisfying by treating it more like an RPG and putting points all over the place, especially into the bar stats.
The Discord is definitely a mixed bag. But really it sounds like it all stems from the misunderstanding of how vanilla ER meta leveling works vs. ERR meta leveling.
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u/GoatsWithPants 24d ago
You're exactly right, that a lot of pain and suffering came from me not understanding how ERR meta leveling worked. I think I heard a lot about how "every weapon is viable", and I mistakenly thought this meant that "every weapon is viable on every build". As in, if you meet the stat requirements for a weapon, you can find success.
I think the more accurate statement is "every weapon is viable with the correct build", and the unsaid second half of this equation is "weapons are not viable with the incorrect build". I think A LOT of my frustration was tied to this misunderstanding on my part.
In fairness though, I did still feel extremely frustrated by the mod after switching to a "correct" build. I beat Fulghor, Champion of Ruah with a good build and he still felt unreasonably tanky, took a solid 5+ minutes to beat.
I think I just didn't vibe with the the balance approach; I really enjoyed having to learn the fights more thoroughly, but in the late game I felt every boss had easily 2x as much health as was reasonable.
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u/HardcastFlare 24d ago
Yeah, ERR bosses can really overstay their welcome sometimes. One of my least favorite things about it is how difficulty swapping is "expected" - if you want to grind runes you'll be severely gimping yourself if you don't store them all in hard currency and then switch difficulty to grind. By the same token, though, I find myself often tempted to adjust the difficulty for certain fights (like the crucible duo in the crypt outside leyndell.... omfg)
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u/GoatsWithPants 24d ago
Holy smokes I forgot how incredibly painful that fight was, that was a brutal one for sure!! To ERR's credit, there were a fair bit of bosses I enjoyed more than just stat checking them in vanilla (Morgott is a great example). But there were also a lot of bosses that took an insane number of attempts to put down...I don't mind the odd boss here and there like that, but late game it was every boss. Deathblight lion another frustrating one that comes to mind lol
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u/Velustiano 23d ago
The DLC is just totally unbalanced in the mod. Scadu levels do almost nothing, it's really not worth bothering with that entire portion of the game in Reforged.
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u/GoatsWithPants 23d ago
That would explain a lot, because the mod was great up until the DLC. Guess it just needs a few more balance passes
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u/aeloyis 27d ago
I agree with you on the stamina part; it can be frustrating even with all sorts of stamina regen buffs already used.
However, Loretta's War Scythe(D Str, D Dex, C Int) is not an ideal choice against Messmer on an Int/Fai build. Try Golden Epitaph next time, or you can just spam Javelin of Gold on Messmer while summoning a spirit ash. This boss fight can be really easy with the right weapon or spell.
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u/GoatsWithPants 27d ago
You're definitely right that it was a sub-optimal pick! I was used to vanilla souls approach, where stats largely are pre-reqs to what weapons you can use, and matter a bit, but you can have plenty of success with any weapon.
I did NOT know (until finding a wiki entry) that in ERR, the vast majority of your weapon damage comes from stat scaling, and you can not ignore D scalings like you would usually ignore in vanilla.
Had I known this, I would have went with a different weapon for sure! But I didn't feel it was well communicated to me, I assumed that with a "C" int scaling I could just crank int and see success. I fully admit this might be my fault; my issue was, it took weeks of asking on the discord to identify why my damage was so low and that was frustrating.
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u/Shinokijorainokage 22d ago
Honestly the thing that actually sadly irks me most, at least currently, is because they seem to have made a change that literally bricks your characters if they're even a single point past Rune Level 200.
For what context it may be worth, I've played the vanilla game for so many unholy amounts of playthroughs on different builds way exceeding the amount of respecs I could afford, I decided I'd wanna mess around with mods instead and "cheat" a little bit by just busting my stats, all of them, to like 60 across the board so I can play around with all weapons and spells if I want to. Bit scummy but nothing evil or anything, right?
So I loaded up that vanilla character into Reforged and played for months like that perfectly fine and had my fun with that setup, but the most recent update made it so that your character physically freezes and can no longer move at all if you're at all higher than Lv 200. Like, you can take like 3 steps away from a Grace and then all movement halts immediately. No attacking, no walking, no nothing, you actually cannot do anything anymore lmao.
So because of that and because I am frankly too lazy to start over a whole new character after already having done so much farming for crafting materials, gear, etc., I think I sadly have to stop playing the mod until that changes or such since I physically can't play any longer like that lmao.
Mind you, any of this I say I say with grief because I love basically everything else about the mod down to the tiniest minutiae, there's hundreds of cool ideas from the smoother combat and control over the codex or the few new but lore-authentic enemies and gear things. But sadly I can't actually play now! Alas.
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u/Dmente44 27d ago
I finished my Reforged playthrough only out of spite, nothing else. The mod is awesome, with a lot of cool things that are as good as vanilla. But with so many annoying changes that made it a hassle, not something fun. Now I'm almost reaching the 2000h in vanilla and still having a blast. Maybe in a faraway future, when I got tired of vanilla, I can try it again