Gee, Dart. You can't think of a 10/10 game? CDPR, Bethsoft and FromSoft fail to understand challenge or progression?
What game/developer does good progression, then?
It's a rare quality
It's more about the individual games than the developer - and the kind of scope you're aiming for.
In terms of meaningful challenge - lots of people do that well, but it's very hard to accomplish in an open world freeform CRPG like the ones we're talking about.
I'd say PB used to be very good at it, but have somewhat fallen from grace and gone a bit lazy about it.
But that's not really because they're "good" at it - it's because they opt for very simple formulas in terms of how weapons/armor and so on work. It's easy to balance weapons when they're really just DPS sticks.
It's the combination of sophisticated mechanics and meaningful challenge that I prefer - but I can't really say it's something I see from any of the established titles.
Usually, you have to turn to the modding scene for that to work on huge open world games. You can find very strong progression/challenge mods for Witcher 3 and Skyrim - for instance. CP2077 as well, in fact.
I will say that Elden Ring seems significantly better than their past games in terms of progression, though. It seems they've finally added proper stealth and even ranged stealth for instance.
Progression is also about offering a wide arsenal - and the past Souls games have been heavily focused on melee combat with some magic spells thrown in. Ranged/stealth combat has been very limited.
It's much easier to do one thing really well than it is to offer a dozen things equally well.
Also, even the melee combat seems mostly focused on relatively "heavy" and slow combat - even with smaller weapons. I don't think it's even possible to properly dual wield in most of the past Souls games?
Things like that is a gigantic misstep when it comes to offering a compelling power fantasy to people like me, who have a specific playstyle that we prefer.
As for meaningful challenge, that's obviously subjective. It seems Souls fans actually enjoy being killed by not knowing what they can't know until they've seen it.
I mean, as a designer - it's not exactly hard to kill the player by doing something to him that he couldn't see coming.
Obviously, that does promote a level of investment and caution - and, as such, you're generating tension for the player.
I think that's part of why it's popular for many who feel some kind of satisfaction from learning patterns that are designed to be learnable.
Then there's the checkpoint paradigm - which is another very, very easy and convenient way of creating tension - from a developer/designer perspective.
Essentially, all you have to do is NOT design a proper save-system and you can create tension for the player by not actually doing something
I think that's pretty cool.
But, as a player, I'm really not that impressed by that design.
There's just no indication at all that Starfield will be good. There's plenty of indication Elden Ring is good.
Definitely, Elden Ring does seem really good. That's not in dispute.
I'm just saying I don't see anything to justify a 10/10 score.
As for Starfield - that might very well end up being crap, who knows. But I would be surprised if it's not very good for someone like myself - as I tend to agree with most of Beth's design priorities - even if I wish they didn't make so many concessions for the mainstream audience.
Souls games are actually very unique in that way - as they've made a niche design into a mainstream design somehow.
The original Demon's Souls was a monumental failure in Japan, for instance. It was only because of a slow burn build of popularity in the west that it eventually got the recognition it ended up getting.
In fact, I would never have played that game if it wasn't for the massive praise from a certain segment of the western audience.
Also, I did enjoy it for quite a while and completed most of it. Sadly, I finally "figured out" the design tenets and decided I didn't agree with them - and that the reason I was having fun was really more about my own investment and not because of what the game was doing for me.
That kind of fun I can have without a game
