Elden Ring is the latest game by Dark Souls developer FromSoftware and the biggest it's ever attempted. While it has released closed network tests for its previous titles in order to test out their multiplayer capabilities and gain fan feedback, the one for Elden Ring was essential for what turned out to be a much different type of game than it were used to. One perhaps surprising change was that one of the bosses were found to be too difficult, so its difficulty is being tweaked.
In an interview with GamerBraves, Elden Ring producer Yasuhiro Kitao talked about all the things he learned from the network test. One of the biggest adjustments FromSoftware made was to the HUD, which the test revealed as too simple and basic to convey much information to players. They were happy to use player feedback to improve the experience.
But one change shows that FromSoftware doesn’t want to kill players, at least all the time. As part of the network test Kitao realized that they had to rebalance Margit the Fell Omen, the big boss from the beta. It was too tough for players to defeat, especially considering that he was one of the first bosses that players will face. ‘We didn’t want to set out to make bosses harder for the sake of it’, Kitao told GamerBraves, which is why he was rebalanced. It will be interesting to see how players rank the boss among the greats of FromSoftware titles after the changes.
The magic in the game had to be tweaked as well, as it was shown to be too overpowered. In an open-world title, long range weaponry that's too powerful for enemies to compete against is a no-no, especially for a series as known for its challenge as FromSoftware's Souls games. There will still be plenty of more closed and dangerous locations to find around the world, such as the Souls' games infamous poison swamps, which are returning.
Elden Ring presented some new challenges for the developer, which found that turning a Souls game into an open-world title was the hardest part of development, according to the creator. Making sure that players wouldn't get bored with nothing to do while retaining its signature challenge was truly difficult, so the developers struggled to find a good balance for the game.
Elden Ring releases February 25, 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: GamerBraves