Re: Elden Ring Nightreign

On Sat, 31 May 2025 19:13:36 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com>
wrote:

[...]

One Star.  I'd call this a strong recommend against this, and should've
listened to the low score.  I could see someone who likes fast paced, no
time to stop or think and very very hard ER type combat enjoying this.
There's obviously people who do, but so far I'm not one of them.

The shrinking circle idea came from battle royale games like PUBG.

In multiplayer BR games it makes a lot of sense, because as players
kill each other off and the popluation of the session decreases...
there needs to be a way to force the remaining players to stay close
enough to each other to fight.  Without the circle of death always
closing in, a single round would go on indefinitely, people would just
quit from boredom eventually when there's only a few people left on a
huge map and 20 mins go by without even seeing another player.  It
also prevents someone from just camping a highly defensible position
and never moving again... which again would just result in each round
becoming inordinately long.

The circle of death thing has become increasingly popular in some
"extraction shooters", such as COD Warzone DMZ mode (Call of Duty
isn't a one trick pony as it used to be, there are different modes now
which change gameplay substantially).  And extraction shooters are
somewhat of a spin off from the battle royale genre.

And I haven't played this game, but my hunch is that's why they added
the circle of death to this game -- as far as I can tell it's designed
to be played as a co-op multiplayer game, so the circle is an extra
element of tension and a way to control the timing/duration of a
gaming session...which doesn't matter at all for single player games,
since only one person's schedule matters with regard to time
management, and they can save and resume at any time... 

But, the timing/duration of a single session matters in droves in a
multiplayer game, because even if one player is okay with a single
round taking one hour, other players may not be.  If sessions are too
long and people are quitting before the round is finished, it can
screw up the dynamics of the gameplay as designed.

Mack from WAB rated it very highly, but with the caveat that it is not
balanced enough yet for single player gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkdgvCmTRtU