games

One example is how the Souls mechanics of the corpse run/death stain doesn't really mean or improve anything in an open world. It makes sense in the more linear Souls games because you're usually progressing in a single stage linearly and there's a push-pull/risk-reward mechanic of how far into a new area you want to push before you retreat to a bonfire to heal and having to risk losing more souls father away into a new area harmonizes with that kind of level design. In Elden Ring, particularly in the overworld at least, you can just hop on Torrent and grab it easily. There's no tension.

The overworld is also cluttered with repeated dungeons and bosses and fixed item placement that makes exploring on a second playthrough basically useless, you might as well just use your memory or a guide to speed through to whatever item you want. If the items and bosses in those repeated dungeons were randomized there'd always be a reason to go down one, but how it is now it's great for most of the first playthrough but the open world closes up pretty tightly after you realize once cool-as-fuck bosses repeat again and again and it's more rewarding to look up what item you'd want to do a STR/INT build than hope you chance upon one in aimless exploration, especially when the bosses are generally so hard and rigid that experimentation is punished.

Honestly wish they'd drop the pvp entirely. It's a tiny fraction of the player base and they're unbelievably toxic even for souls gamers. The Seamless Coop mod dev got death threats because it removes the possibility of pvp invaders and thus reduces their potential victim pool

There are mods that do similar things (randomizers and overhauls) and I think you can trade items already (by dropping them on the ground).

I think they could fix Elden Ring with a few changes:

• Make items and bosses randomized or semi-randomized in the overworld dungeons
• Make maybe 6 more starting classes with more starting gift options
• Cut out most of the overworld boss repeats
• Make the bosses slightly easier and more diverse by making their AI and movesets less aggressive and attack-spammy, especially in regards to making them more vulnerable for longer periods of time after their more powerful attacks -Make respeccing possible earlier but maybe slightly more resource intensive to do
• Have regions scale to your player character level in some way so exploring is more enjoyable because right now it's basically you could go to a difficult area but you'll get curb stomped and mostly do it to grab later-game items and early-game regions are easy to miss so coming back to them makes them too easy

I really, really like the idea of Elden Ring being an open-world RPG that rewards build experimentation and problem solving, using whatever tools you have available to you like crafting items, talisman/magic/ash of war combos/spirit ashes, etc. etc. But I find in actuality the bosses serve as hard gates to player creativity and I always end up giving in to use mimics tear, spellsword-style build, etc.