Elden Ring and The psychology of gains and losses
Have you ever accidentally left your phone in someone’s car? You know that feeling that you have left something valuable somewhere and that you need to go get back. This is how the Souls series of games incentives players to go back into the game after death.
Elding Ring takes FromSoftware’s familiar mechanics and features into a vast and detailed open-world experience. Let’s look at the core game play elements of difficult boss fights, open-world exploration and reward mechanics come together and what can be learned from it.
High-Risk, High-Reward Combat design
The more difficult something is to achieve, the more people like it. The core gameplay is built around a responsive 3rd person melee and ranged combat system, where every fight is a strategic dance of risk and reward, with all your Runes at stake.
Runes are this game’s currency and are with you at all times and into every fight. Die and you will drop all your Runes but you still have a chance of getting them back by going to the exact location where your character previously died and picking them up. This great incentivise for players to get back into the game after they die.
There are also The Sites of Lost Grace, which are checkpoints that allow players to rest and heal up or replenish their flasks (similar to the bonfires in previous games). You can find these checkpoints dotted all over the map as you explore this vast land.
The thrill of beating a hard enemy provides players with a strong intrinsic motivation along with the risk of losing or gaining currency and loot provides an extrinsic motivation to keep players engaged.
Open world Freedom and Exploration
Elden Ring’s focus emergent gameplay gives players the agency and freedom to play and explore is this vast world how they want to and is another significant intrinsic hook.
Unlike other games such as Assassins Creed and Farcry, Elden Ring lets players explore the world how they want to play without the game giving you a to-do list or map full of checkmarks.
There is always something on the horizon calling you to explore this vast environment. Similar to how Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild allows players to be the author of their own adventure and to build their own special moments.
The intrinsic value of overcoming Adversity
Elden Ring can be a very challenging game. Like the previous FromStofware games, this world is filled with powerful enemies and bosses that force players to think and adapt to survive.
While these battles can be challenging and frustrating at times, dying in the game is a part of the experience. Overcoming hard challenges and beating awesome bosses after hours of trying and strategizing gives players a great sense of satisfaction and confidence.
The more difficult the fight, the bigger the reward and feeling that you can defeat the enemies with the right strategy and gameplay. This is a big part of the experience.
UX/UI Design
While Elden Ring offers a lot of great and memorable gaming experiences, it is not without its imperfections. One of the downsides that can be found in Elden Ring's user experience design. The confusing menu and poor accessibility found in the game can sometimes be frustrating or confusing for veterans and new players alike. The small text makes some critical aspects of the game hard to understand, which makes it a bit frustrating from a gaming point of view.
However, it should be noted that the screen being clear during the game is a great game design that makes the screen more lovely and less cluttered and confusing. Unlike the Assassins Creed games, which have the games screen filled and crowded with icons, Elden Ring offers gamers a more open screen that allows them to thoroughly look around their surroundings, giving them a better chance to take the scenery and atmosphere in.
You can see from the picture on the right in black that there are better ways to do Men UI. Remnant: From The Ashes Menu have a great UI design and is ironically is a Soulslike game.
Conclusion
Elden Ring is an excellent open-world RPG game that offers players the chance to make their adventures and craft their own stories through brutal but highly rewarding boss fights. A game that has the right design and content to hook players for many hours as they challenged to be more strategic and resourceful as they experience this open world. If you are into the previous Souls games, then Elden Ring can be the next open-world game for you and there is a lot for other game developers to learn from. Thanks for reading.
Bonus
If Ubisoft developed Elden Ring
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/t7q55h/if_ubisoft_developed_elden_ring/