NPC Design In FromSoft Is Shit

Worst part of any game from FromSoft, I swear.
>Cannot find most of them without wiki
>They give you 3 lines of vague dialogue
>Vague dialogue is not lore, Mitsubushi-san
>Disappears on you
>Reappears with quantum mechanic levels of logic
>More vague dialogue
>No actual options to interact or dialogue trees
>Find some tiny gemstone of unknown value triggers their second Houdini impression
>Resolution always the same, bro goes on quest, find him mad, put him down
>Threadbare after Solaire
>Literally no NPC quest is resolvable naturally without wiki or enormous good luck
Miyazaki finally added NPC locations in some patch in Elden Ring, probably due to outcry at this shit. In the cold light of day, in a vast open world, he finally has to admit this schtick is fucking shit.

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>>Literally no NPC quest is resolvable naturally without wiki or enormous good luck
Lmao, nice bait post

I quite literally solved 90% of npc quest by accident on pure exploration. Even steps you missed can still be ignored. Patches, Rya, D, Neph, Roderika, Blaidd, Iji, Rogier, and more can be ignored and their quest will still still progress as you get to new zone.
Only character I end up ignoring was Sellen eater, and that is only because I'm not doing any magic

*and dung eater

YES, I do think I should experience all the game offers to me in my first (and only) playthrough. Missable stuff just fricken sucks!

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you are not supposed to do most quests on first playthrough
you are supposed to do one or two, share how you did it on the internet after beating the game, then do other quests on new playthrough after reading how to do it

Post npc icons patch I could see this being possible.
Before absolutely no way.

a world where you can miss stuff just feels more alive, it's exciting to know there could be a whole hidden area somewhere nearby

seethe and cope
dilate while you're at it

I haver never seen a whole quest through naturally, so I refuse to believe you two have. There is no indication of what comes next, At least fucking give me a clue. How should I know that Solaire is in the deepest underground areas when he is seeking a fucking SUN!?

>lazily hiding content is ackshually intentional obscure lore building
the cope

Exactly my problem user, its wiki dependent for From to finish their games.

you dont see icons for npcs new location until you find them, so they are only truly useful for merchants.

>can be ignored

surprise surprise that the only people defending this shit quest design are people who dont give a shit about quests or story in those games and rely on vaatividya to explain shit. Youre only goal oriented and care about killing bosses and getting items.

It was okay until Elden Ring. The open world just magnified their awful quest design more. Maybe they'll eventually learn that every action breaking a quest somewhere without the player knowing it isn't good.

Iosefka and Yurt are the best designed quest lines in Souls. Everything else is utter garbage.

>a world where you can miss stuff just feels more alive

absolute cope of Fromdrone. The world feels more dead than undead burg, its completely unbelievable , immersive and doesnt represent its lore well, its just a place for you to kill monsters. Its not "alive" in ANY sense of the word and npc interactions are far from natural or believable. Play more games, son.

>give ranni the treasure of nokron
>instantly locked out of selvius' quest
very cool

He was bullshitting hard but you're also exaggerating a shitton. The world has plenty of life, that's not really up for debate, it does a good job making enemies interact with the world. You can see the wildlife eating, like the crabs, you can see them sleeping, playing, and hunting. The nobles traverse the landscape in groups accompanied by a knight or soldier, moving cargo, riding their horses, defending themselves from hostile wifldlife, mining in the tunnels. They do their own daily activities. That's done really well actually.

>The nobles traverse the landscape in groups accompanied by a knight or soldier,

Literally all act like as if theyre zombies from dark souls, knights seemingly sane but all always hostile with no words to offer. Skyrim has more life in any randomly generated bandit, they may have actual conversations that can be overheard, they have actual routines, they are say something to you when they see you.

But even fromfags dont know whether these soldier gone mad, or theyre monsters, or reanimated corpses or intelligent humans. The game treats their ai exactly the same.

The lore would suggest that Raya Lucaria has actual civilization and people with thoughts and politics, its a place of learning or something. But you go there and its just madness and burgerking sorcerers that attack you on sight. Its like game dehumanizes all of them by giving them no words and making them wear masks. There couldve been pockets of people that are neutral or friendly, a whole hub, different factions, but its just burger town.

>Skyrim has more life in any randomly generated bandit, they may have actual conversations that can be overheard, they have actual routines, they are say something to you when they see you.
THIS

It is a dark day when I, a person critical towards Bethesda, can find more to praise from them than I can from FromSoft who made a couple of my top games ever.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences in intent between the two games and are blaming this on Fromsoft? No shit they attack you on sight. That's from fucking Berserk, they're trying to channel everything attacking Guts for no apparent reason, sorry they don't say 1,000,000,000 variations of "I'm gonna kill you asshole!!!" Learn to enjoy some silence and subtlety in your game for once. Probably asking too much because that would require you to have any fucking taste at all, you WRPG shit gobbler.

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>But even fromfags dont know whether these soldier gone mad, or theyre monsters, or reanimated corpses or intelligent humans.
They're old and insane because the death rune was broken and they can't die. They don't attack on sight like the other games though. They have a non-hostile period where they investigate the player at a distance, and stare for a bit. It's a conversation between you and that enemy. Do we have a problem, or will we go our separate ways? If you walk by them without locking on or drawing a weapon, most of the time those enemies will resume their activities and all they did was stare for a second.

Hell, some of the enemies surrender and put their hands up if they don't want trouble. It has happened a lot in my only playthrough so far. There's more going on than just attacking.

>That's from fucking Berserk
>it's from Miyazaki's childhood when he didn't understand shit
>it's to capture that "feeling"
some other vacuous nonsense that doesnt justify lazy and unintuitive crappy design. If that's what peoples impression is, if people dont know what's going on, if people feel like they need to watch a video, a guide, a wiki to understand what to do, or what's going on in the world then youve failed as developer, designer and storyteller.

I dont give a shit about what your 200iq design is. Its not a great experience and your world doesnt represent your lore well.

Berserk you know have standard fantasy inns where you walk in and there are people drinking and bards playing music, dont give me this shit. There is no "subtlety" in copy pasted catacombs, no environmental storytelling, there is just "stuff" for gameplay reasons.

Again Skyrim's repeated content has much more personal touch of developers, with stuff laid out with more care, and environmental story telling, there's a reason why things are there, maybe some adventurer lost his way and died there. There is very little if anything like that in ER.

Go play fucking Skyrim then since it's so much better you Bethesda drone. It's obvious you don't fucking stop and read item description or pay attention to anything in Elden Ring so you have a very biased view on its world because of it

>old and insane because the death rune was broken and they can't die.

fromdrones trying to explain lore when they have no clue themselves. That's not even true , people can totally die , and that's not what rune of death does fool. Go watch more vaatividya videos and deepthroat Fromsoft more.

You seem to have forgotten "Those That Live in Death" and that nonsense, or all the characters that do die, and what Tarnished are.

>It's a conversation between you and that enemy
holy cope

>berserk did it so it is an homage not just lazy
Cope: The Post

I am a big FromSoft fan and I totally agree here.

>fucking Skyrim then since it's so much better

it has more believable world and open world experience and a better RPG, more fleshed out stories and lore. So yeah if that's what i want ill go play Skyrim Again. Elden Ring is a disappointment in this area. Item descriptions offer very little and not enough. Skyrim you know has whole books and notes and letters, its not even comparable to souls shit. One book may contain more text than whole souls game.

Its not biased, its a fact and youre delusional fanboy.

Quest design, story telling, npc design is all dogshit, and even you cant figure shit out without a wiki, and somehow its game of the year material? No, ER is more hack and slash game than anything else.

>I quite literally solved 90% of npc quest
And I'm a green Cat.

They can die. From being killed. Completely different from the natural process of aging killing them, which isn't happening.

Try reading Berserk.

You're a big faggot.

berserk fags are worse than jojo fags at this point

Nothing of what your typing happens. What the fuck are you talking about? And the NPCs just standing there is usual shitty pathfinding for FromSoft games. It happens in all of them.

It's not "pathfanding". They stop what they are doing when they notice you or have been disturbed, but if you notice (you don't) they don't always attack during this phase. That is DIFFERENT from the Souls games before it. Only in the dungeons do they resume their usual hostile behavior.

>They stop what they are doing when they notice you or have been disturbed,
That's applies to all Souls games.

It does, but they usually attack. In Elden Ring they actually won't for a while.because they are waiting to see if you are hostile.

>summon solaire to help with the two knights in front of O&S
>he just blindly runs around and let’s the knights kill him

It’s a remaster. Fix the fucking shit

The fact classic open-world games like Morrowind have a journal that works well with the quest design, while Elden Ring lacks this basic feature makes me realize that From should just be banned from making open-world games. They don't know how to do them right.

lmao cope, “just read the item description bro it’ll tell you why this catacomb is different from the other ten identical ones”

>I must have someone hold my hand on how to solve this quest wahhhh
git gud

youre giving Fromsoft too much credit, they are generic slow zombie type enemies copypasted throughout the game.

>thinks that 90% of people dont solve it through fextralife
stop lying

Skill issue

Can't talk about obtuse game design in the souls games though. 99% Of people on Yea Forums only got the lore through youtube videos and followed a guide for every quest, but they'll still reflexively insult you over it.

Agree there are some really stupid ones like
>Blaidd underground, Dialos at Jarburg
>Reload area multiple times to progress dialogue
But most of the time its fine. You naturally progress and explore without backtracking and can finish most quests.

>being alive is talking constantly
and i bet you'd want insomniac-level chattering filling all the silence
shut up

fromsoft should make a game for most of their audience, not for the few who dont even enjoy the process. If you think you are smarter by figuring out by jumping through unintuitive hoops , it means you are actually pretty stupid. A smart person is annoyed for retarded design in a GAME. Its frustrating for no reason because what you get out of it is really not that deep, undercooked and unfinished like ER is.

I did the Irida/Edgar quest naturally, unless you count Hyetta as being part of the same questline.

play witcher 3, play bethesda game, play any dragonage game, play any other open-world rpg, And that's putting the bar low.

They did that in Bloodborne and it felt more alive than any From game.

That quest is retarded, most people jumped down before talking to Edgar and killed the boss. Then you have to go back to him and he gives you quest to kill boss even though you killed him. Then you have to come back to him again (or restart game (retarded coding)) to turn in the quest, and only then you can continue it. Bad UX, bad design right there.
Why the fuck cant you climb back up from that grace that you jump down to? Stupidity.

I like that it's obscure, luck based and optional, feels like real life.

>read item description
ER has the worst item descriptions in the series. They are "Zanzibart… Forgive Me" copypasted, or singular sentences that don't say literally anything about the world.

>feels like real life.
ER does everything it can to remind you are just playing a video game. It's the definition of immersive breaking, nothing about the game is coherent.

I don't play a game to be "immersed".
Not all of real life is good.
Games shouldn't have drudgery but it would be immersive to have it.
Serendipity is a nice component of real life that also goes nicely in a video game.

No one should make games for people like you.

Well they do and they're super popular so.....

>I don't play a game to be "immersed".
That's where ER went wrong.

Youre in denial. ER isnt for you either, look there's a map and markers, and compass. This is the trajectory.

They picked a happy medium.
It's called balance.
Either extreme is bad.

I don't care too much about the vagueness of the quests. What I don't stand at this point is having to sit on the bonfire to reset the fucking world so NPCs can move around or change their dialogue. It feels stiff as fuck, it was fine for the first couple games, now it's just lazy.

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wouldn't they have to program them walking around otherwise?