Elden Ring - It's complicated
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- What exactly counts as input reading may be debatable for some, and Elden Ring has a system that seems like it might straddle the line for some people or get off on a technicality for others. Figuring out exactly how it works requires some amount of conjecture, as while we can read the AI scripts, we don't have the decompiled exe or anything, so we're not 100% sure how they're run. Between technical analysis, educated guesses, and practical experiments, this is my understanding of how the system seems to work, and I hopefully didn't get anything too blatantly incorrect.
Song used: Korok Forest (Night) - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild OST 
Игры
I've seen some people asking what's the point of making the distinction between input reading and this kind of action reading, when both end up giving the enemy a similar advantage, and I think it can be insightful to see how they probably didn't set out to give enemies input reading but ended up with a system that behaves very similarly. The push to increase the speed of combat affects both the player and enemies, and sometimes it creates friction in design that can lead to certain problems. Having a faster heal animation prompts needing the enemies to react to it faster as well, and it ends up leaving some players dissatisfied with the pace.
One notable distinction between input reading and what's actually happening is the existence of the input queue. If you input a heal during the end of a roll animation, you'll immediately perform a heal when the roll animation is finished. If the AI were actually input reading, it could have the heal punish ready for you before the heal animation even starts.
Thanks for another great video! While on the subject of things that feel unfair, maybe at some point we can get a video (if you haven't done it already and I just missed it) about the ridiculous accuracy of ancestral follower archers?
Very educational, Miss Zullie
Every fromsoft game I've played, bosses attack when you heal. Genichiro and his arrows is a good example
This is nice information to know, but frame perfect data reading after an input is just comparing a small stone to a pebble, in that they're basically the same thing to us fleshy humans. Good work with the video as always tho!
I always thought the way ai reacts was 100% fair, which is why people hate it cuz usually the player character is just completely OP in most games so when the ai has a fair reaction its super obvious. I look at it as From saying "you gotta earn the heal". You gotta punish the ai by healing after manipulating their movements. Its like pvp, a player isnt just gonna let you heal you have to earn it and it helps the immersion when an ai does the same in my opinion. Amazing video
Aight I'm at a safe distance, the boss just finished a 10 second combo. Time to heal.
The boss : 2:48
Hmmm rare to be first on a verified comment
OH NO YOU DONT! *yeets*
Which godskin is getting the best head
The two goats come together at last.
How to beat Elden Ring without healing
The thing that kills me with the magic dodging is how it feels immaculate. You will not hit them with traditional spells which makes them seem almost useless. So we abuse the system and use night sorceries, rock sling and glintblade. Which really kills diversity for magic.
Edit: jesus when did this become so upvoted. I've gotten alot better at the game since then, understanding a bit better about timing and such. I still feel like some magic is really bad but could be better, but then you have stuff like crystal torrent that with the right setup can melt enemies with a million cuts. Thanks for all the upvotes though lmao
Don't forget comet azur, can't dodge if they are stunlocked into a oneshot
This is especially important for Malenia, since she's extremely passive on the 1st phase, and getting close to her is a death wish because of Waterfowl Dance.
I had an Intelligence Build on my first playthrough, but I used the AoW of Sword of Night & Flame or Moonveil instead of Sorceries, because you usually hit her with those.
Edit: Malenia, not Melania
Night comet + Staff of Loss all day every day.
@@BobertBobson It's even better than that, because often they dodge so much that they avoid it just to get into the beam again by themselves with another dodge
"Immaculate" really is the right word for this. They're dodging the very _possibility_ of being hit, the projectile never being relevant to their success.
i think being able to cancel the healing (maybe only during early animation) with a roll might be a good idea to keep the flow of the combat
So the enemies don't have input reading. The game just sets a flag the moment you take a punishable action, and the AI instantly reacts to that flag.
That's just input reading with an extra step.
yea, the "well it's not TECHNICALLY input reading" arguments always stink of shit. I'd get it if the AI didn't react to the animations frame one, but they do, so the outcome ends up being functionally identical: you press a button, the enemy instantly gets told exactly what you're doing and what attack to punish it with, and then it does exactly that. sure, it's not being told what BUTTON you press, but the outcome would be no different if that were the case.
honestly? i like the animation reading conceptually, they just implemented it in a terrible way that makes it indistinguishable from an actual input read. it would work way better if the flag was at a point where the enemy could reasonably see the flask in your hand or something. oh well.
"Your honour my client was merely reacting to the animation at an unreasonable speed, not the player's input." -Saul Godskin
Lmao
lmfao
Saul foreskin
Late to the party but this is fuckin funny as hell
😂
"Are they input reading? That's not what they're doing mechanically, but yes."
They reacting to players actions like players reacting to boss actions.
Jeez, what isn't "input reading"? In any game player input is just something that affects the game world, the same world that AI gets its data from.
@@superstar5042You react to Frame 1 of an animation blend that hasn't actually started the real animation yet? Congrats, you're reacting to information you don't even have yet
@@happy_bracket forreal. sometimes i hate the names people give shit
@@chrismanuel9768 there's not a single game in the world where AI reacts to animations. AI either reads flags (mentioned in the video) or object positions. Fun fact - you can fully compute trajectory of something in exactly 1 frame, so technically, AI always has all the information.
A great way to make these systems feel more natural is if the enemies build up their ability to read these actions. Instead of an enemy constantly insta dodging projectiles they should only have a chance to do it that increases every time the flag comes up. That way it feels less unforgiving, and more like the enemy is learning to punish a tactic you over use. Similar to how statuses become less effective on the same enemy the more you use them.
Pretty good idea. Casuals will still complain about it, though. People who whine about this stuff just never want to die and hate that the AI is on to their bullshit. They want some MMO raid boss BS where the enemy just stands and eats damage for three seconds, puts out one telegraphed attack, and doesn't react to them at all.
I also think it would help if not the entire animation would lead to this flagging, if it only happened if the flask is out for example it may feel a bit more fair.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 they should go play lord of the fallen then
That is a really clever idea. However, I feel it could punish players who rely on ranged magic, or healing. Those players have spent their points into those areas, but each subsequent use of the ability is less effective.
So kinda like a dice roll? Player drinks flask. On a roll of 1-12 "black fireball" on a roll of 13-20 "normal stuff"
Interesting... I think another part of the issue with the heal punish attacks is they can be well outside normal attack patterns. The Crucible Knight for instance does a crazy lunge attack that isn't just super fast, but reaches well beyond what most normal attacks from them do making it extremely hard to judge if you've gotten far enough away.
The halberd Crucible Knights are specially annoying about this, since they have much longer range than their sword counterpart, on top of the insanely long step they take towards you.
Old comment, I know, but Crucible Knight at Redmane was definitely my "ok , fuck this, the AI is cheating moment". Obviously this video sheds some light, but at the time when we were learning the ins and outs, it felt very cheap.
What I dislike the most about attacks like this one is that it is punishing the new players the most, it's basically frustrating towards the wrong audience, the amount of times a friend of mine new to the title has dealt with problems with these moves and the frustration it entails is waaay too much.
i think its fine. it teaches you that healing isnt always free, the bosses are gonna punish you for healing when you shouldnt. you have to find the right moment to heal. this is supposed to be a difficult game after all
@@vincentcircharo8259 This.
Most bosses can't heal but they're supposed to just leave you be like "oh you're healing, alright, short truce, tell me when you're done..." while we can use some of their long-as-fuck windups to smash them with a colossal weapon charged R2 ?
It'd be annoying if every single shitty Limgrave mob had supernatural reflexes obviously but for some very strong bosses that seems only normal. A lot of them are like demi-god creatures.
This mechanic taught me to always time my heals for when the boss/enemy was still in their attack animation. Enemy slowly walking, or standing there _menacingly_ = not safe.
Even then it's not always a guarantee since a lot of bosses can just cancel into a different attack and hit you anyway.
@@qu1253 I've never personally experienced that, I don't think. :P
@@KlericYT well, it's YOU who didn't experience this.
It doesn't mean others do not experience it as well.
@@qu1253 Oh dont you just LOVE Malenia canceling shit all over the place to then f u up with something even more random?
@@qu1253 I mean only Melania has that issue of canceling animations and deciding that she wants to do something else
The "animation reading" of bosses combined with insanely fast combos, delayed strikes, and gap closers often made me feel like I was a Dark Souls character trying to fight a Bloodborne player.
The best distinction I've heard is that you're a Dark Souls 2 character fighting a Sekiro boss.
@@paledrake I disagree because Sekiro bosses generally don’t have the weird unnatural feeling delays that Elden Ring bosses do
@@narwhaltitan8391 Owl father and Isshin : "Are you sure about that?"
@@ttchme9816 The delays always have consistent timing and with practice you can learn to react to them. In Elden Ring the delay times are randomized.
Sister freide moment
While this isn't "true" input reading, I think the AI being able to react to a given flag quite so early in a given animation with frame-perfect reaction time, and being able to do so quite reliably, makes it practically identical in most circumstances.
read the pinned comment
@@raptorxrise5386 I understand the game uses input queuing. I'm saying that if the AI can respond to a queued input quite so quickly, it's functionally indistinguishable from input reading, in spite of not meeting the technical definition.
@@raptorxrise5386 Ok, it's not input reading but it IS "first animation frame reading" which is equally dumb.
@@setsunaes even more so when their attacks have noticeably shorter animations
Instead of reading your controls they read your ingame actions wich in practice it makes basically no difference.
fighting enemies in this game in general either feels like you're fighting an NPC from a 2008 game, or you're fighting HAL-9000 in the form of a rot dog.
Soulsborneseikiroring is just cat propaganda.
@@dodgyhodgyo4 I swear! I’ve nearly become a JoJo villain on multiple occasions because of these games
"What are you doing, Tarnished? It is time for walkies."
@@Stryfe52 its a dangerous and bizarre world out there
It's funny because HAL-9000 is canonically from 2000s or so.
Adding a somewhat randomised delay within human reaction time, so 150-250ms, between flag reading and heal punish might help
That would not work due to the games tolerances. It would be irrelevant due to the short flask chug in this game. And increasing that would cause more issues.
Effectively it would cause far more trouble then it would solve.
Sure, if they also increased the healing animation time by the amount it takes for a person to reach for a side pouch and chug 200mL of fluid, then put their flask away. So... how about adding another second to the healing flask animation? Since we're going off of realistic human action times, that is.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 imho das2 had the right idea in leaning more towards the slow, methodical aspects of dark souls combat. it just didn't have the best execution, like so much of that game.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 Who says the entire thing is supposed to be realistic? He's just pointing out that it's shitty to fight something that reacts frame 1 to whatever you're doing. Why such a salty answer?
@@ZeKnife King!
It was much better for PvP, in so many ways. Hell, even Soul Memory did many good things that people never really noticed or appreciated (before Agape ring, anyway)
Sadly, the "one-and-done" casuals had their way with the series and Fromsoft learned that they should just turn Dark Souls into Bloodborne but medieval. That's how DS3 and ER were born.
There are also some spells that activate on a delay, so you can see the enemy try to dodge the spell when you cast it but nothing happens, but completely ignore when the spell actually goes off and hits it.
Nuked malenia with floating fire orbs.
hence why rock sling is so good, the rocks spawn WELL before they actually fire, meaning any bastard with a dodging addiction just kind of stands there and eats 3 rocks to the face
@@ThatBeePersonlet me smoke malenia
it's just like how players try to read bosses' animations but they take 15 years to swing their weapon and still kill the player at the end of a roll
@@ThatBeePerson Not to mention 2 of the rocks had unlimited range I believe, not sure if that was ever patched.
For some perspective, average human reaction time is around 166 milliseconds
The AI, reacting within a single frame, has a reaction speed of 16 milliseconds
The fastest reaction ever documented is the Star Nosed Mole, who can determine if something is food or not in *8 milliseconds*
So the AI is 10 times faster than average human reaction speed, and up there with the fastest documented reaction speed
The ability for the AI to see a single frame of an animation, instantly know exactly what that animation is, and react to it with unerring accuracy at 10 times the speed of a normal human cannot reasonably be called anything other than artificial
No no no, it makes he game feel more harder and all souls games did this so it must not be an issue!
Seriously I can't see why people can't realize that it is objectively unfair to play against something that reacts faster than you can even THINK about , let alone actually start the process of reacting
@@redmoon383 I think a big part of the 'misunderstanding' (let alone dishonesty) lies in the word "unfair". 'Unfair' sounds like whining and it also implies there is a level of difficulty the game owes us. Unfairness is a moral idea, not technical idea and it's easy to say it is subjective. Rather than unfair I think we should say rigged or scammy. It is like a claw crane. It has unwritten, secret, unpredictable rules to make us loose when we wouldn't have if the rules were clear and consistant. It feels at times the game is rigged, which it is, sometimes in quite lazy ways. And this is why it was at times so unpleasant
@@AR-zd1hd not reading that
Plot twist, the ai is actually just a slow Star Nosed Mole.
@@redmoon383 it's not unfair, because there are ways around it
The word is unfun, because it is simply robotic execution and lacks the dynamic feeling of a real opponent, or a simulated opponent attempting to simulate reality
My biggest issue is the projectile read. It looks so awful when you accidentally mess up an arrow and the enemy dodges anyway or a few enemies dodge all together. Feels so artificial and takes you out of the game. I really hope they either fix this or don't repeat the mistake in future games
It also renders bows completely unusable against these enemies. Why even have the projectiles if they dodge infinitely?
I do agree upon how awful it looks and feels, but it has to be as it is or else games like these could be massively trivialized. There is no elegant solution. I do bow only runs, so I can confirm that even the dodging and anti-projectile scripting for the AI can be manipulated to work for you. Figuring all of that out is the fun part of it for me. Went from "Wow, Lion Guardian... they really programmed you to leap like this the second I shoot? Pretty smelly!" to being able to lock them in a pattern of getting hit by an arrow at the apex of their dodge jumps, over and over.
Another thing to keep in mind when thinking about how FromSoftware balances around projectiles: Never before have we had access to the amount of arrows and bolts that we do in Elden Ring. Let's look at just regular arrows. There are 32 types. Of these, 5 are infinitely purchasable and 23 are infinitely craftable at some point. It is possible to have 2,772 arrows on hand, with 2,277 of those being recraftable. All with varying damage and effects. Almost feels like cheating this time around, especially with Rotbone and Bloodbone.
lol, knowing from software,don't count on them to balance it on a update or the next game, they would do it even worse, maybe doing an ai who this time, can interrupt every action she do instantly to punish you or even predict your moves even before you actually did it in order to make every bosses really impossible to beat this time ,who knows with them.
@@SomeIdiota I was surprised Zullie didn't mention this but nowhere is this clearer than when using Magic Glintblade. The enemy dodges when you cast the spell, not when it fires, and because Magic Glintblade is delayed, it almost always hits because the enemies dodges way too early.
It both looks terrible from a AI perspective AND it's also hilarious how a small delay can absolutely break this mechanic.
@@SomeIdiota They could dodge the projectile *sometimes*. Or not at the start, and then consistently if you don't change the tactics at least for a while. This system makes fast spells very useless, and slow spells irreplaceable against tough enemies.
So it's not input reading, just a frame perfect reaction time. Nice
I feel that makes it feel more like fighting a real person. It's pretty easy to tell someone is building space for a heal, or a spell. And players are good at learning the patterns. So you can't just heal, or cast a long wind up spell. You need to make an opportunity. I like it.
@@theloyalwraiths8827 I would agree but the bosses can detect the heal the split second after you hit the button. There is no person alive or ever was that can be in a protracted melee fight and tell what move is coming next because their opponent twitched a couple of fingers after swinging their sword. The issue isn't the response, it's the instantaneous reaction before the character has even actually moved and the fact that they spit out the entire black flame orb spell in under 2 seconds while the player sits there for 3 seconds and stares at the ball before throwing it. My big issue has been the consistency in this game, literally every single enemy no matter how pathetic or low level they are, get moves and damage out of their weapons that no player could ever dream of even with the weapon maxed. Take the briar sword, the boss has entire combos of that thing being flung all over the place, what do we get? An EXTREMELY slow wind up to what amounts to a poke 5 feet away and then a tiny little slash at the end. Or how Loretta uses her halberd as a casting medium, no such choice for us, even if you are the most mage of all mages that has ever maged you still can't do it.
@@Konghammer1 Actualy an human can react even faster because he can anticipate when you take distance for healing, He understand what you are doing, AI not.
If the AI is too slow or at the same reaction time than human, then its too easy.
@@theloyalwraiths8827 this.
i saw someone else saying "if they had the same reaction to rolls the player would never be able to hit them" as if in pvp roll attacks weren't the hardest attacks to hit already EXACTLY because of that.
@@blu5t434 but they can't see it coming if you heal close, or right behind them, like the ai can.
2:48 Oh hi Mark (Zuckerberg)
I don't think anyone has any problem with the fact that the enemies react to player actions, it's really that they have no reaction time, it really feels like you're fighting bots that are programmed to react in a certain way when faced with certain situation, and well, that's exactly what they are.
This exactly. Have them react just a tiny bit slower and it will feel more natural more believable.
Agreed, if I go to chug and the Crucible knight goes to stab me after 150ms, the 90th percentile human reaction time. I wouldn’t rage anywhere near as hard.
@@MechAdv enemies also should clearly see you. Duo are spamming black orb even if you chugging flask behind pillar
Yeah. Champion Gundyr has a charge attack that responds to heals, but it has a decent startup he doesn't do it 100% of the time. Fromsoft has already done it right.
@@theformation3781 His attack also doesn't close the gap in three frames
I'd always suspected this was the case. No actual input reading, just one frame reactions
I don't mind heal punishes, but one frame reactions are a bit excessive. It's input reading with extra steps
@@punishedbnnuy so it is not instant but 1/60 of a second.
cool.
that is arguing semantics at this point.
@@punishedbnnuy my man, I do not give a fuck about the method. it is near instant stupid reactions that can be abused and are really laughable. like the inentionally missing by a mile yet the boss still dodges part.
let me put it in simpler terms it means nothing that you beat a guy to death with a hammer or by a 2X4, it will be the same outcome.
@@punishedbnnuy It's input reading in every conceivable way expect if you want to be autistically semantic. You're alone on this one.
@@punishedbnnuy That’s like calling a potato a starchy tuber. For all intents and purposes purposes they are the same thing.
@@punishedbnnuy and, from a human perspective, what is the difference between an instant input read and an action read that takes a single frame? a single frame makes no difference for human reaction times (0.2 seconds). it still has all the problems of feeling unnatural and unfair, while only being different from a technical programming perspective (something Zullie mentions in the video itself). this is probably a programming oversight or a game testing oversight, action reading probably intended to avoid the unfairness of input reading but ended up being, practically and from a player perspective, just as problematic (which is what op meant "It's input reading with extra steps". it's not actually input reading, but in practicality it's basically the same). but fine, i'll yell "unreasonably fast action reading" rather than "input reading" during my "gamer moments", i guess. would that satisfy you?
The way they dodge projectiles i think also had an impact on how good Rock Sling was perceived to be, as enemies will dodge at the appearance of the projectiles, but not when they start moving. In most cases, this means the tracking for the spell doesn't start until after the dodge is over, almost guaranteeing a hit.
I stopped using Rock Sling after a playing with it for a day or so. The enemies just don't know what to do with this. Felt like cheating.
@@TheOldMan-75 yeah but the enemies cheat with about half the other spells, so overall I think it's fine to cheat a little yourself.
I wish all the spells worked properly instead of a big portion of them getting instadodged and the delayed ones breaking the enemy ai
Magic glintblade is the best example. It's so goofy when they dodge nothing
the carian glintstone spell that is delayed does the same thing, except you can cast it like 4 times in a row before the first projectile goes to do damage.
Watching an enemy AI dodge at the speed of light/bloodhound step perfectly at the timing of the spell beginning with no notion of fairness whatsoever, displacing themselves for meters upon meters, before getting smashed by the projectiles they can't see anyway killed a bit of my immersion but made me chuckle quite a bit during my mage playthrough.
Zullie, could you take a look at the "touched by grace" mechanic? The one that makes an enemy's eyes glow, and grants 5× runes upon killing it? I have a few questions.
- Can any enemy be touched by grace, or are some exempt?
- How does the game know where to put the glowing effect, as well as the glowing redness of feral demi-humans at night, or soldiers stricken with madness? Are they all related? Are the eyes of every character model marked?
- I know this effect can occur for things like Miranda flowers and basilisks, showing where their true eyes are. What other enemies have odd eye placements?
- Do bosses have "eyes"? In other words, is it possible to grant a boss the same effect? If so, would that mean that, at some point during development, bosses were also effected by this mechanic?
Fun fact, Crucible Knights and Black Knife Assassins can get the rune boost.
I have experienced this happening to a ghost archer in Ordina, Liturgical Town and since they were a ghost I could not hit the enemy.
This actually happened to me with the Erdtree Avatar in Deeproot Depths, the yellow glow being in the hollow of the tree. While it didn't have a proper boss health bar, it was still an enemy that doesn't respawn when killed, like Grafted Scions and Lion Guardians.
The eyes are definitely marked on each enemy's model - it wouldn't make sense for them to try to procedurally determine where a creature's eyes are. Interestingly the Miranda Sprouts' stamens are considered their "eyes"!
A few NPCs using enemy AIs and models can be affected by it as well, most notably Rya in snake form.
One thing that I've found helps when programming AI is to "blur" their information at multiple stages. For example, "do I need to dodge this projectile?" can be blurred by adding/subtracting a random number from the Angle check and the Timing (the magnitude of which is determined by the AI's "skill" level). For melee attacks to also blur the Distance, so the AI might dodge when they didn't need to or didn't dodge when they should have.
I feel like something similar would work for the heal punishes so they sometimes they react late enough that you can dodge the punish, or if it's a melee punisher they have a chance to misjudge the distance
This is an interesting solution that I hadn't thought of. Do you know of any games that use this sort of thing?
Such blurring, combined with a very slight delay on the reaction would definitely help make the AI feel more "human". If you're facing the camera and shooting projectiles, and there are 5 enemies behind you doing the fking macarena, that's just dumb design.
My game (in development) uses it for the AI, however I'm sure there are plenty of games that utilise techniques like it as well (presuming they want it to feel like you're fighting something smart)
@@PrismaticaDev gonna binge all your videos now lol
I have next to no experience in game dev but I would be extremely surprised if something like what you described isn't already implemented in the game. I've always assumed that enemy AI in games is made "dumber" (and therefore more human) by using random number generation.
Its genuinely so fast it may as well be input reading, if the animation frames start nearly as soon as you press the button, and they can react to like frame 1 or so of that animation, then its basically input reading with “extra steps”. Good information. I feel like them just slowing their reactions down even by a few frames could have a huge positive impact
Every fromsoft game I've played, bosses attack when you heal. Genichiro and his arrows is a good example
Fromsoft's other games have had input reading before as well.
@@FSVR54 The problem is the unnatural response speed in Elden Ring. Not only is the response seemingly instant, the attacks are usually far quicker than you can heal.
@@FSVR54 ive played them all, i still play the others. Theyre not nearly to this speed of reaction.
@@FSVR54 Sekiro is one of their most recent ones. Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro do the same, but Dark Souls 3 is not nearly as quick. Big difference. They’ve gotten more and more liberal with the use of this mechanic as games have gone on and people have hyped up the series’ difficulty.
"It's not input reading they just react to your telegraph before you telegraph, without error."
I am so glad you took the "even though it's not :insert thing: doesn't mean the crticism isn't valid." route instead of what a lot of people would have done and gone "See? You were wrong about one thing so you entire argument is invalid!"
I mean. A person would look stupid if they wemt "see its not imput reading. Just zero delay FRAME reading"
@@vVAstrAVv
Welcome to the internet. Intellectual consistency is treated with frivolity here.
It hardly makes a difference. The time between you pressing the button and the first frame of the animation is basically imperceptible so it may as well just be input reading
@@vVAstrAVv Yea they would look very stupid indeed. Imagine if the comment section was filled with people saying that, wouldn't that be silly.
@@vVAstrAVv Thing is I agree with you. Problem is people will defend FS to the death on just about everything when it comes to their games. Valid criticisms on bosses or mechanics are usually chalked up to the player either not being good at the game or just simple whining. People are already doing what I said in my comment in this comment section alone.
The problem is that the AI can react to a specific animation before it actually looks like anything. If the same visual information were given to another player, even if they could advance the fight a single frame at a time and execute exact timing on their responses, they still would probably react at least several frames later than the AI under any condition, because they don't know what animation they're looking at until well after the AI gets flag data.
I had the same thought, but I don't think it should be looked at from a PVP standpoint when you're fighting an ungodly monster (in this case) or any non-human NPC.
I don't want all NPCs to have humanlike limitations, I want the devs to take my human limitations in consideration. I think they've done it in this case.
@@Tata-Jooma If that was the case, unless it was reading your mind, the inhuman monster would punish any item and flask. The mana would get punished just as hard as a heal.
@@Tata-Jooma I should qualify: when I say "the problem," I mean, "the problem with what we think should happen intuitively vs how it feels in the game," and not, "the problem with gameplay mechanics as they function in game." Giving the AI limitations to make them feel more human would absolutely trivialize combat in many instances in situations that currently feel like right responsive combat. The crucible knights *have* to be able to make instant reads on your heals, otherwise having time to roll through their attacks would be all but guaranteed, no matter when you decide to heal. Which isn't how the game works, against difficult enemies like that you have to earn your heals just as much as you earn your ability to dodge their heavy attacks. You have to learn the tempo and get an extra step ahead, and fundamentally that IS the game.
The problem is that people want the AI to behave like a human, and AI behavior just isn't complex enough to do that. Hell even a lot of players never necessarily learn how change up their thinking for PvP, because it requires a different mindset than fighting the game AI. But currently AI just can't do that, and their movesets are always learnable enough that if they don't have some super human advantages they become fundamentally too simple to be a meaningful challenge. This of course is most applicable to enemy types that have gameplay that comes closest to duels or PvP combat. Trash mob swarms and giant brick shithouses that can launch into the sky and become meteors don't need hyper AI to be their intended challenge.
@@Pwnopolis Doing a combo/input chain isn't the same as reacting! Fighting game pros can consistently do a frame perfect combo. But it is impossible to react to a frame-1 move. Because, being 1-frame, the move is already out by the time anything appears on screen. (Discounting situational cues that might allow an opponent to *predict* movement!)
The very first example in the video (Crucible Knight) reacts on the same frame Zullie pulls out the flask!
Healing animation just had to raise the flag a few frames later into the animation and it would feel less like AI is cheating.
So basically it’s input reading with an extra step
Well yes, but actually no, because *technically* another player with keen vision could spot the animation starting, and react
its not input reading but its merging the moment of notice and the decision to attack. A player would see the frame, then decide to attack, resulting in two separate internal processes but the ai notices the frame and attacks as one process. Its just unlifelike and something that only a fake intelligence would do, reminding you youre fighting 1s and 0s and not an actual “living” boss
@@Cassius609 A good player would attack you even before you healed because he would anticipate it by you prior play/positioning. AI can't that's why it's programmed to react near instantly. It's also easily to outplay since it's gonna do the exact same thing every time unlike player.
@@Cassius609the ai reacts to the animation literally on its first frame before it even looks like anything
@@seven07707 yeah im not standing by what i said a year ago
tldr ER has input reading lol
this is actually a fascinating phenomenon. vsauce did a video that included a study involving this. The gist was if you had a button that turned on a lightbulb, if you reduce the wait time below a certain threshold, participants believed the light turned on before they pressed the button.
If I recall correctly, this has to do with the delay between our input and response recognition in our brain.
yeah, if a thing reacts faster than humans can process their own actions, it feels like quite-literally inhuman reaction speed
@@apteropith like all the cheaters in warzone
I believe it's called "sensory adaptation"
that's quite interesting. sometimes when I turn my head to look at a clock, I feel like the seconds hand looks immobile for longer than a second.
@@MrFredd38 interestingly enough, that is referred to as the "stopped clock illusion", or chronostasis. It applies to more than just clocks, but still.
Genichiro did "input reading" very well. Just slow enough on his bow heal punish that you could deflect the arrow after your healing animation
plus you could attack cancel into guard in Sekiro, whereas you are molasses slow in Elden Ring
this
He still had that annoying thrust attack in his Way of Tomoe phase. And I never get to mikiri that because of his input reading.
@@malenia8098 I think you should check out the videos of people mikiri countering that till his posture breaks by repeatedly healing
@@nickfish2759 This one
I like that you point out it is not unreasonable for one to take issues with aspects of the game like this.
Dissecting and genuinely criticizing one's favorite game (or piece of media in general) is a healthy step for any fandom to prevent toxicity.
Yeah, as someone who feels a lot of the complaints about this game are based on weak logic. That just makes it a matter for debate, not insulting people. Which has been a common issue in the FromSoft community.
But it's literally a great mechanic that makes you think twice before healing
@@VV-iu9eo It makes you not want to heal at all
It's not toxic to say you're bad for trying to heal when the boss is not occupied
@@massgunner4152 No, it makes you want to look for specific windows where you can heal, instead of expecting zero punishment for healing right in front of a boss.
1:40 : the speed at which the character drinks his flask in DS2 if you dont up ADP
Reminds me of the Fume Knight on DS2 DLC where you can prevent him from going into his much more dangerous second phase by just spamming item usage. Most of the time he'll abandon the animation leading to his second phase to try to "punish" you for healing or using items.
When I played through the game and got to Melenia, one of the curious things I noticed was, that she dodges a fully charged Lightning Spear, but does not react to an immediate throw of a Lightning Spear (until she gets hit). I noticed that pattern on quite a few other dodgy enemies, which I found to be very peculiar
I assume that was intentional to give faith casters an offensive option that was fast, reliable and couldn't be avoided by the AI. Sorcery has night spells.
I noticed on Melenia that if I shot arrows she dodged everything deftly, but if I simply jumped away from her and shot an arrow in mid-air, she didn't give a crap and just took it.
as a lightning spear user this is good to know, and it kinda makes sense to me (since you're pausing with a lightning spear in your hand when you're charging it, it gives her time to notice and dodge it)
I also noticed that she (and others) will dodge immediately when I cast at a distance, getting hit by the spell by the time it actually reaches her. What a dumb system.
The frustrating part is that it completely contradicts any effort put into the AI to mimic an actually intelligent enemy reacting to the player's actions. A boss that react the instant the healing animation begins feels robotic and unfair as it reacts before it is even possible through the animation to tell that you are healing, and instantly respond with a punish. If this ability was extended to dodging regular attack animations, the player would never land a hit as the AI would dodge the instant the player started to swing. It's obvious that this isn't allowed as it would completely destroy the illusion that you were fighting an actual living thing. It stands out so much because it completely flies in the face of "artificial intelligence" and just becomes an "if/then" response.
Precisely. Whether it's actually input reading or not is a meaningless argument, as the result is the same: the AI is reacting in a manner that contradicts the established design philosophy of the game, and as such appears blatantly unfair in so doing
I didn't find the words to describe my problem with this game (I love it, but not as much as the other entries of "souls-likes"), but your last "if...then" sentence just resumes it perfectly. It just feels far too obvious that I'm fighting a machine and not something that pretends to think.
Okay casuals
@@Evarakeus 100% agreed
@@ocoolwow there are many well designed difficult fights that don't need to react to you healing like that such as nameless King which I believe is the gold standard for difficult fights
The spell dodging is incredibly frustrating as a caster. I basically have no choice but to use homing spells like Stars of Ruin so that dodging becomes ineffective. There are some bosses that I got into a kind of dodge-lock where they would just dodge over and over until I ran out of stamina to cast spells. Just ridiculous AI.
Glintstone stars, star shower, shard spiral are all good for enemies that dodge.
Ancient Death Rancor and Rancorcall also work well since they are slow moving homing spells
Magic Glintblade also works well cause they only dodge the startup animation and not when it actually fires. You can get three fully charged glintblades setup before the first one fires.
I found that Rock sling due to its delayed fire was very good for countering this since they'd have already burned their dodge by the time the startup had ended and the rocks actually fired which was part of why Rock sling carried me through most NPC invasions and boss fights for the majority of the early, mid, and beginning of late game during my caster playthrough after which I switched to Stars of Ruin. I didn't look up to do this either, it was all discovered organically.
Oh no, this RPG requires me to use more than one type of spell. The horror!
Fun tip: The Wraith Calling Bell can be used to make an enemy do their dodge animation upon the ring of the bell, however they don't attempt to dodge the actual projectile. This almost always guarantees they'll be hit by the attack at great distances since they won't try to dodge it and because of it's slow movement. This is also great for getting enemies away from you and making them dodge multiple times since you can spam the bell and have them dodge multiple times.
Its the same with the sorcery that summons 3 stones. they will dodge the summon when they raise from the ground but thats way to early so they will all hit.
Magic glintblade, pest threads, shard spiral all do this too. And then things like rock sling or throwing daggers are just too fast for them to dodge
This works with any spell that has a good amount of tracking and a slow enough projectile - the enemy will dodge when the animation starts, and then sit there and just take the projectile. You can entirely cheese the Malenia fight using the Envoy horn if you only use one bubble at a time.
The problem is it has a 0ms delay so it doesn’t feel like it’s reacting. Add a random 100-200ms delay and it’ll feel more natural.
Or wait until a player would've reacted, merely adding a random amount of ms can still feel unforgiving. They can react as fast as they want, but there should be a proper visual cue first.
Or don't heal when the boss is staring at you. There you outplayed it, it was so hard...
Thanks for confirming one of the main reasons I absolutely hate fighting some of the late game bosses. This type of action/animation reading is close enough to actual input reading that it reminded me of the higher difficulty bots in some fighting games.
And hey, if you like that type of gameplay that's fine, it's just that the slower, methodical combat is one of the main things I used to love about this franchise and every game since BB has been moving more and more towards this fast, twitchy, reactionary gameplay that, while extremely fun in it's own right, leads to these kind of design choices that just make me feel too old/slow for these games now.
I agree. Fights in Elden Ring don’t feel like dances the way they did in previous games. A fitting example of a boss that felt like a dance was the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. Really tricky boss, but there was always a way to react and counter to its moves, making it super satisfying to get right. I’ve never had that feeling with any of the bosses in elden ring. I rarely felt like I learned the correct reactions to certain attacks, but rather I happened to react fast enough/tanked enough damage to win a fight. It’s a pretty massive downside to the game for me.
It really does feel like the slow and considerate gameplay of Demon's and Dark Souls 1 were left behind when BloodBorne came out. This must be how Daggerfall and Morrowind fans feel.
@@halcionjoy7 As a Morrowind fan that low-key kinda hates Skyrim for it, yes. Very much yes.
@@hexahedronhead7516 The only boss I had that feeling ironically was with the Bloodhound boss at the beginning of Blaidds quest. He felt like a faster Artorias and I was, eventually, able to get into this dance with him. But then there's bosses like the Crucible Knights who I've fought dozens of time and still don't feel like I beat them by learning their patterns, I just got lucky with their AI for long enough to outlive them 😂
"It's not input reading, it's reading a game flag set by a keypress!"
And what does Zullie think input is? It's totally input reading.
Especially the psychic bullshit dodging when you're shooting in any direction at all is input reading. What else could it possibly be?
It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s input reading, we can all agree is absolutely unfair
Maybe just don’t heal while and enemy stares you down menacingly?
I might agree that this was unfair if you didn't heal so insanely fast.
@@Thumb_strawman
I think this just adds to a bigger problem with Elden Ring’s combat. It feels like the player is still in Dark Souls while the enemies / bosses are in Bloodborne/ Sekiro mode. They’re all so fast and snappy with reaction times while player animations struggle to keep up, especially by the endgame. Feels like it’s time for an update for the player character in terms of combat animations. Especially if future games continue with bigger and faster bosses.
This! If the speed & aggression, alongside the reaction, of Bloodborne, DS3 & Sekiro continue in later titles, with your character being unable to match their speed, I’m done with FromSoft. I can just tell that they’re not focused on the challenge being hard while still offering you a chance, and instead are making the challenge hard for the sake of being hard & nothing else! It ruins what otherwise is a good game; I don’t see Elden Ring winning GOTY due to it being such a mixed bag experience overall!
Elden ring style game with Sekiro style parry when? I whant that.
@@AlastorAltruistGaming you don't have to play Elden Ring like you played Dark Souls. DS3 was a dodge-rollfest. Not only Elden Ring introduced jumping as a new way to dodge, (even if I admit most jumpable attacks are plain unintuitive), it also provides a plethora of damage negation talismans, not to mention shields are more useful than ever.
And even if you don't like the RPG character building elements, you can simply choose to lightroll and/or Bloodhound's Step to dodge attacks.
I absolutely ADORED, as a fan of JRPG franchises like Xenoblade, that Elden Ring makes equipment, stat boosts and the fact pre-fight preparation (opposed to just dying over and over until you grasp the moveset) is much more important than in previous games. Couldn't have asked for anything more
@@AlastorAltruistGaming Elden Ring is gonna win purely because it was hyped and memed up like crazy and all the newcomers think THIS is the souls experience everybody was praising for years.
@@average-tree-lover-42069 I don't understand why they had to make the combat more complicated by introducing a combat jump as a second, situational dodge option. Next they're gonna implement mid and low blocking like this is a fucking fighting game franchise.
Through the whole serious that "input reading" problem was increased and increased. And in Elden Ring with its insane speeds its achieved its highest point. Where you start to consider it as fighting games input reading. Cause in no other previous games ive such a strong feeling about it. When single button transform boss into unstopable agro machine rushing to you through the whole planet!
@@renmcmanus I cant say for Bloodborne, but its defenetly faster than ds3. Cause the only way for them to make game "harder" to make boss incridible faster. That design could be seen on many bosses.
Or broken ai too actually.
@@renmcmanus How can you say this? Where are these categorically wrong takes coming from?
@@renmcmanus that just isn't the case though there's enemies in this game that are faster than BBs..
There’s some of this in Sekiro, Genichiro being one of them. Phase one he’ll perform a long draw on his bow which can be dodged while strafing. Phase two, he can be hilariously baited into making a jumping thrust attack, if spaced right, can be mikiri countered.
Having played ER and returned to Sekiro, I prefer the the latter’s handling of the system. Yes, you can still be punished but you can use it to your advantage in baiting attacks, as a proper shinobi
yeah it really feels like we're fighting sekiro enemies as a dark souls character. We just aren't fast enough for this to feel right
I was going to mention Sekiro, i think one of the main things that makes it work in Sekiro is that you have a lot more control of the fights than in ER, having to find the right time to heal in between the boss' attacks feels more natural in Sekiro because of how the combat works
You can also bait Isshin's jumping overheard spear slam in phases 2 and 3 with a well-timed gourd drink.
That jumping thrust attack as a response to a gourd use was a constant source of annoyance for me. Definitely forced me to learn to heal at a safe distance and timing. The other annoying time he does this is right after you resurrect.
It's common to see people use the flask to bait specific attacks from Gwyn in Dark Souls 1.
I was fighting Malenia p1. She was slowly walking side to side for 20 seconds while I was up in her face waiting for her to attack cuz I know she input reads (basically) and I didn't want to r1 and get rekt by waterfowl. Except she wouldn't do anything so I go "ok then" and r1 and she immediately responds with waterfowl...
While I can’t speak for all Malenia’s attacks, her waterfowl dance absolutely input reads. As she does each portion of the attack, with no input she will always move towards you, but on the final strikes when she leaps into the air, she will move in the direction you have the analog stick pressed. If you press the analog stick in one direction and then immediately dodge in the other, it will force her to move in the first direction. I suggest trying it out. As she does the final strikes of waterfowl dance, keep the stick moving one way and she’ll always move that way, or use something like bloodhound step that has a long animation and move the stick in circles as the animation plays out and you’ll see her movements become erratic as it tries to match the direction you are pressing.
I would definitely still consider this to be the ai cheating. Weather it reads the input or the first frame of an animation it's still reacting at basically the same time as the input was made. They could improve this by flagging a frame in the animation as "visible" or something, a frame that determines the moment your action is physically readable, and then continue the reaction as normal. It wouldn't change what we have now but by a fraction of a second. But it would make the world feel more realistic and less robotic. Maybe even program a series of frames as a "visible window" and allow certain enemies to react late and others to react quickly based on how smart the npc is supposed to be
That seems like such an obvious and simple solution to the issue.
Great idea!
While I understand how this might feel frustrating, I really don't get the "the AI is cheating" take. Isn't this the same as if the AI took slightly longer to react but the heal punish were slightly quicker? I don't get what "rule" the AI is breaking if they're just reading your animations.
@@the_mad_fool they're not breaking any rules. It's fine if they do it this way. We're just talking about how it feels to play the game and that you can have a game be hard without the npc reacting inhumanity fast. But when I say "the AI Is cheating" that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, it's just an opinion on how the ai works.
@@DoctorPhilGud Ah I see, that makes sense. "Cheating" means to me breaking the rules in some way, so I was confused.
I fully understand that its meant to encourage planned healing, instead of panic chugging, though this mixed with huge damage scaling late game as well as input drops that happens often enough does not help to make this seems cheap. There are countless times where i died after queing up a input, only to have the game drop it.
Whatcha talking about, I panic chug all the time!
Yes I know the enemies still kill me because I panic chugged but what do you expect? I learn from it?
Nah, I figured out i was doing it wrong when I played Dark Souls 2, and so I learned to panic chug the right way, the fast way; before I was waiting for the full animation and wasting time…
Now I proudly accept my fate knowing that when I die this time, I was properly panic chugging to my death 😉👌
xD :P
@@GreenTheem memes aside there are legit people who believe this
This check for projectile spawns is also why certain spells are very easy to land in PvE, because the projectile is spawned far before it begins moving towards the enemy. Because they dodge when the projectile spawns, they won't react at all when the projectile actually starts moving towards them.
I forget the name of the spell, but the Carian one that spawns little swords that shoot to a target after a couple seconds is great. You can spam it a bunch and lock an enemy down while they ineffectually dodge all over the place, and then eat the entire barrage without a thought to defense.
@@TripleB87 and this is why the system is bad
Once the trigger for an action is figured out like this, it's abused too easily and it's atificiality clashes with the proposed reality of the world
@@TripleB87 It was so frustrating that this became one of my main methods of dealing with a lot of enemies on my mage. It felt like firing off other spells was blatantly pointless due to the "instadodge" so many strong enemies have built in, but cheesily stacking the delayed shot and having it fire off all at once was *way* too effective as a result...
This is in essence input reading, done to the most basic degree. Arguing whether or not the term input reading refer to the actual method used is semantics and has never been the question.
@@thegk-verse4216 why do you keep glurglesnorfing
So its not input reading, but animation reading at the first frame, aka basically input reading. what did i just watch..
The obnoxious thing is the fact that sometimes I have to do a legit stare down between some particular bosses for 20+ seconds only for them to just hit me while I either heal or just jump. The AI is just sometimes bizzare. I once battled Mohg and one time we both had a staring contest that lasted 15-20 sec approx, I was waiting for him to do anything because I wanted to heal. But the damned thing killed me at the moment I pulled the flask.
Yeah, one of the biggest issues I have with this system is that it makes it to where you can never punish bosses for their inactivity, but they can still punish you for yours. You can't react to their downtime by sneaking in a heal or a spell or a lunging attack because they'll just react instantly, and it forces the fight into this awkward staredown where you aren't allowed to do anything because the boss is also not doing anything.
yes, you can never take initiative in a fight, because the moment you do something, they do something quicker
@@BaronSterling i felt this way fighting Commander Niall particularly. I found that my best counterattack was after i dodge his forward dash thing (which, sidenote, you can literally dodge by just strafing to the left. felt cheesy) so the fight kind of devolved into me waiting for that attack every time. And most times, I'd have to prompt him to do something
@@itsRhodi That's interesting, I never had an issue with Commander Niall doing heal punishes, I didn't even know he was one of the bosses who did that. My issue with him was always the non-stop string of massive AoE attacks he would do once I got rid of his knight minions. Guess I have another reason to hate that boss now lol
just throw a knife then? they'll react to that, take the initiative, be agressive, and the boss won't act like an idiot just waiting for you while you will be(mostly) in control of the fight.
The thing with Godskin Apostle is that he will almost always throw a fireball after dodging backwards, and people recognize his backstep as a safe moment to heal.
My problem with elden ring is that many bosses just stay at a distance, walking, waiting for you to move and then punish you for it
Throwing daggers say hi.
Will literally force the enemy to approach like 90% of the time
@@zsDUGGZ throwing knives will also keep their posture meter up and allow stance breaks more easily
@@zsDUGGZ that's my go-to strategy since I discovered it during my second play through against malenia. I always had them ready to last-hit enemies.
Unfortunately, forcing their AI to attack doesn't help when you need to heal. Luckily all godskin have pillars and malenia/crucibles don't read your input that much
Oh no, they're using my playstyle against me.
@@xxscrublordxxx5652 With the exception that in PvP you can't read the exact frame that the estus animation starts. I like enemies using my playstyle, the problem is that they don't
Some bosses are far too aggressive with their dodges and can be used to much exploitative, yet hilarious effect. A perfect example is getting The Night's Calvary to "dodge" off of a cliff and instantly kill them.
01:58 you can see this pretty good when using Rock Sling on Enemies like the Lion-Thing with Knives on its elbows. The Moment you swing your staff the enemy will dodge, but the stones will hit it anyway because of the delay of the attack.
Yeah there’s plenty of comparisons to other souls games that show that ER definitely has input reading.
A great example of the enemies responding to the generation of projectiles is the Rock Sling spell. Most enemies will dodge when the rocks are formed, and then get hit by them when they are thrown a few moments later.
Excellent as always, Zullie!
Twitter. Didn't get noti
While I don't have a problem with this in theory, its implementation in Elden Ring leaves a lot to be desired, especially after Sekiro. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Sekiro had a system similar to this, mainly for heal punishing. But there was a key difference. It wasn't a punishment for healing; it was an invitation back into the battle. The best example I can think of for this is Sword Saint Iishin. If you back away and heal in the second/third phase of the fight, Iishin will perform a jumping attack with his spear. But if you're quick enough, you can deflect it and get right back into the fight. For all of the heal punishes in Elden Ring, not one that I can think of follows a similar behavior, correct me if I'm wrong, however. Granted, there are major differences in combat between Sekiro and Elden Ring, but that doesn't mean heal punishes can't be designed around getting the player back into the fight.
This isn't Sekiro this is a bunch of Deities fighting a lowly nobody. Working as intended.
Champion Gundyr has a pretty bullshit input read on healing, going as far as to break combo to go after you. It's my biggest gripe with an otherwise incredible fight.
It felt helpful to me, when he attacked while I healed, so I could parry him. But if you're using a slower item like a pellet, you better be somewhere he can't hit you.
@@SM-nz9ff Stop defending bad design. Both are still Fromsoft games, and one does it a lot better than the other. Not even fighting games have enemies that react to a frame 1 start up for a counter.
@@AceAviations2 So very true. I haven't gotten to that fight yet myself, but I've watched a lot of players fight him and the ones that fight him melee without parrying get heal punished so hard. They'll be mid-heal and he'll do that stupid kick right in the middle of it. Lady Maria in Bloodborne does a bit of that, but she's so aggressive anyway that it doesn't really matter. That and Bloodborne makes it a bit easier since we can just go beat some of our health back out of whatever we're fighting.
It’s small things like this that keep the game from being the masterpiece everyone says it is to me. It just feels so artificially difficult and unbalanced compared to previous entries, which just makes it feel more like a chore than fun to me. It’s simultaneously the easiest and most unfair Soulsborne game to date based on how you choose to approach the game. I just much prefer the tighter focus and proper balancing of the other games
@@sxtxrnxd This was basically my experience as well. There's definitely a lot of potential here and plenty of good moments spread throughout, but the artificial difficulty just really bogs it all down for me. A much less frustration aspect for me is the fact that game is also just too big and expansive to have the same level of rapid replayability as the other games. Hopefully they can make some tweaks over time to fix some of the pain points, or at the very least make the next game more in line with the rest
Same feeling here, I always come back to this game to try new builds and characters but always leave as if something is missing.
Stuff like delay on rolls, input reading and queuing, enemy feints, infinite stamina attacks, among other things just steal a lot of the fun for me.
All these things would be resolved with simple tweaks, here's hoping more people would raise these issues instead of just constant praise and we could have an even better game.
This. I didn't have as much trouble with the game as most of the rest of the series in terms of difficulty even playing without Ashes (though I did Mimic Tear cheese Melina, fuck getting her health down 30% every fight just to get one single shot at learning to dodge Waterfowl Dance), but I just didn't have fun with it. The series' unofficial motto has been "tough but fair" and I just didn't feel the "fair" part when bosses could do stuff like this.
@@masterplusmargarita Yeah. It really felt like the inverse of the usual "tough but fair" by instead being easy but unfair. Which just puts it in this really unsatisfying place compared to the rest of the series and ends up leaving a bit of a bad taste in your mouth
Yeah these small bs that keeps happening is what made me feels done with the game after i beat it, didn't even bother going to NG+.
Every bossfight and special encounters feels like a tedious chore that i have to do instead of feeling exhilaration. Like, beating them is just "glad that's over with" instead of dopamine. I've beaten and replayed all Dark Souls + Sekiro so i know From games.
This would be really cool if the flag wasn't at the *start* of the animation, but rather at "a specific frame the developer chose that's a certain delay after the flask's model appears"
Or an interval of frames, and then the exact frame is chosen at random from that interval. Plenty of ways for making it feel less cheap and artificial :(
Vaati has pointed out that the night versions of spells are intentionally programmed to not trigger dodging. Also, bosses will react to the player's flask animation even if they aren't targeting the player, causing some hilarious heal punishes directed towards friendly ashes/summons. This may even be used strategically to force openings in their defenses.
So not input reading, just the milliseconds after the input where the frames start! Astronomical difference!
Zulie, the skinny godskin literally input reads and throws a fireball every time you heal. They're not shy about using input reading lol.
a great way to counter this would be to let us cancel heals with the right dodge/block timing, imo, it would feel more "fair" then. you could even do it on purpose to lure out those punishes.
That's pretty interesting. I like it.
"Does Elden Ring read your inputs?" No, except kind of.
it doesn't read them. it just responds immediately the next frame.
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 so it's input reading
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 "i didnt stab that man officer, i simply thrusted my knife into him"
@@cmragg7649 lol, that's my point.
@@flybasilisk7834 i was swinging my knife and it happened to hit him 20-30 times. it's not my fault.
The problem is compounded by the AI's much reduced (and sometimes even lack of) backswing frames allowing them to react much faster or sooner than you might otherwise assume based on previous From games. This adjustment has caused most of the difficulty spikes regarding boss fights and has dragged some of them out to be longer than they need to be simply because there's so little downtime between one full action and the next.
*Whines in Kamehameha one shot*
The ones I hate are the attacks that the bosses hold until you roll and release them as soon as your roll ends
yeah, its called a delayed attack and it's really prevalent in boss fights like margit
@@wizzotizzoAre they actually able to hold those attacks for a certain period of time and release when they feel like it (much like the held running attacks). Because if so, in a game that is 90% about timing your dodges that is inexcusable bullshit
@@Yorikoification sorta, some releases depend on distance to the player afaik
@@Yorikoification iirc margit's really dramatic overhead staff slam is the only one that actually waits for you to do something. the attacks' op describe are often actually just slow attacks that are timed to punish panic rolls. margit's slam however is programmed to stay wound up until you attack, guard, heal, or enough time passes.
@@samanthabrewster1314 "punish panic rolls" It's not panic rolling, it's called having reflexes and him being able to hold his attack in a souls game is unfair
In addition to bosses dodging regardless of where you fire your projectile, they also usually dodge far too early for any slow projectiles like rock sling, or a well aimed loretta's mastery.
Not that this is very useful in most cases but it helped me out during a few randomising playthroughs getting stuck with staffs and not much FP.
Exactly this, my roommate has defeated many bosses with his "sit far away and rock sling them" technique because they don't bother dodging when there's real danger. Unlike my melee playing butt who gets stomped because I'm bad at the game (usually dodging either too early or too late) way more fun than most games I've beaten though
For a borderline comedic version of this, try beating Malenia with the Envoy's Horn. She'll dodge the second you input, then stand around until the bubble smacks her upside the head.
Another complaint I have is that some attack combinations suffer from what I like to call the 'pontiff sulyvahn' effect, where if you try to dodge roll the initial attack, the follow up attack is timed for roll catching.
Also, it seems like every other boss has some kind of AOE slam shockwave attack. It's not enough that you have to dodge a weapon, you also have to watch out for their super duper ultra scream or stomp or weapon slamdown shockwave attacks.
FromSoft was taking too many lessons from DS3, but they applied the WRONG lessons here in Elden. They were taking too many examples from Pontiff Sulyvahn instead of taking examples from DS3 in general!
@@AlastorAltruistGaming It's funny how they learn the opposite yet same lesson from Elden ring that they do from ds3. That being, don't make your bosses cheap. In ds3, they feel cheap to kill (curse rotted greatwood & Wolnir). in Elden ring, they feel cheap to die to (every boss besides the Godfrey fight before reaching Morgott).
@@pete8420 this exactly! I would’ve expected better of FromSoft since they created stellar masterpieces, and then to see THIS incredibly-terrible load of shit just makes me bitter & disappointed. Y’wonder why I much prefer Ragnarök, Stray & the previous Souls entries over Elden Ring.
> It seems like every other boss has an AOE slam/ shockwave attack.
Commander Niall is a good example of this. He has not one, but THREE main AoEs with one being a lightning slam from his metal peg leg, the second is a jump attack, the other a frost AoE with his spear. Not helped by how woefully undersized his arena is for the frost AoEs especially.
This is the single biggest issue for me, I genuinely don't understand how I'm supposed to do it. It's starting to feel like every boss is just a "do you have x vigor?" Check instead of a skill check. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just playing the game wrong as a whole, but I feel like that shouldn't be an issue.
On Morgott especially, after he uses his sword rain thing, he sweeps with his sword, and then his hammer, and then fails around a bit more, and I ALWAYS got hit by that second hammer hit. It's not even possible to straight up run away from him because before he does the move, he does a HUGE leap to be right in front of you, every single time.
The input reading problem could have been solved by implementing a "recognition" or "hesitation" delay, an action/animation the enemy takes (and it doesn't need to do anything, just take up time so other actions can't be had) where the enemy is "deciding" to commit on an action. If it's unfavorable to act, then they enemy won't. A few random variables where it makes mistakes (or gets lucky) and it'll feel more natural.
As it stand now it really is input reading, it just has extra steps.
Edit: You can even change the randomness variable to make some enemies feel "smarter" when fighting. Like say, Melina.
Yeah all they would've had to do is give it a random chance instead of allowing it to happen every single time even before the animation even begins. Elden ring just feels like the very definition of "they weren't ready to handle the scope of the project"
The Ai will interrupt and cancel certain moves and actions to counterattack or spoil your openings is insane.
I wouldn't mind input reading if I can actually doge the attack if I timed it right, I can against isshin and champion gundyr but I can't against the godskins or hoarah loux because thier attacks come up faster than the healing animation which is quite aggravating tbh
For the Godskin Apostles I just carian retaliation the fireball
I found it quite easy to lure them into comitting to another animation then healing. I feel it flows nicely honestly.
My guy, input reading is DESIGNED to punish careless play. You expect to fuck up and get away with it that simply? Look for actual windows to heal instead of just backing up and pressing the health refill button.
but you can? if you're too close the godskins will hit you, if not you can dodge, and... i can't remember hoarah loux, but godfrey's punish stomp literally doesn't work, just spam the roll and you'll get the heal off.
@@shreksmeatballs9435 Nah it's artificial difficulty.
It's like playing timed chess with a computer that can hit the timer instantly after making its move. You have to move your hand and hit the button, the computer doesn't.
When Malenia kept doing her long range stabbing attack to kill me when I healed, I realized my problem with this isn't input reading, it's the fact that a lot of attacks come out faster than reasonable. I could start drinking my flask and she could start her attack *after* the animation started and she could still complete it before I could. In a game that's all about action and reaction, it feels unfair when you can start an animation from neutral and be punished by a response that is physically impossible to avoid because even with a wind-up warning, it is a shorter animation than your drinking one.
pretty sure you're not supposed to heal from neutral, that's the entire point of heal punishes.
@@iota-09 Then you do what ? Stare at the boss until they decide to do something ?
@@DM-Oz Yes that is the fun and engaging gameplay FS dickriders expect now. It's about waiting for your turn to do anything.
@@iota-09 that's the best time to heal since combos are so random and are position dependent in this game.
I always have to get space to use my healing.
@@DM-Oz throw a knife, attack, do anything or run to the other side of the arena/find cover to heal, you gotta create your window to heal, not just get it for free.
To me the worst example of this is the Carian Knight in Raya Lucaria. If you attempt any parriable attack, he will instantly parry every time. Never fails!
I'm entirely convinced that's just some parry god who's consciousness was ported into the AI of Moongrum and is stuck gatekeeping Rennala for the rest of eternity.
@@glomorailey106 Well as an AI he's able to get information and know what type of attack you're doing. I believe (bad memory might be messing me up here) if you bring flails or other weapons that can't be parried he does not try to parry them, which means he is also aware of what weapon you're using, he also won't attempt to parry Jump Attacks since those aren't parriable.
Well it's an AI, it will never fail at timing, it's a machine. So please game devs, don't give AI the ability to parry, that's unfair
@@Yorikoification I remember in DS2 and DS1 certain enemies can parry. However they'll go into a parry stance first. Which if you can recognise means you get time for a free heal or a ranged attack.
@@alephkasai9384 Oh yeah, don't you love when games are inconsistent? Cause ya won't know that it's a "parry stance" until you hit em, get parried and probably instakilled as you encounter em on low level
Input reading with extra steps
I think that the near-instant reaction coupled with the fact that bosses deal SOOO much damage in Elden Ring is the real cause of frustration for me. Most of the time, even if I am plenty far enough away to get a full heal off, the enemies are so fast and hit so hard that they have already attacked twice by the time I am out of the drink animation and while the first attack missed, they closed the distance and the second attack took off just as much health as I healed in the first place. That feels reeeeally bad, and you get caught in a heal loop that just continues till you run out of sunny d. That's the part that I don't enjoy about Elden Ring.
The damage is the reason I couldn’t play the game the way I played the F out of the rest of from games. It’s not enjoyable for me to feel like an ant the whole way through the play through.
Only heal when the bosses are in recovery, input reading may be an annoying mechanic but the solution is so goddamn simple
@King I don't even know what this means? Whenever you have an attack opening, use it to heal instead of attacking, that's pretty much it.
Yeah this is so bullshit. Honestly this is the very reason why I didnt have super fun with Elden Ring. Tha player is so extremely slow while bosses are hyper fast AND can do 20 hit combos...What game designer even came up with this?
@@yab3146 completely agree. idk why everyone is complaining so much. I never really had a problem with the combat system besides fallingstar beast and elden beast's elden stars. everything else felt pretty fair. if a boss is punishing me for healing my first thought is "wow i severely underestimated this boss, forgot i have to force an opening first" not "omg enemies are too good at combat!!"
I’m just glad to see that someone agrees with me on this issue. The amount of times I’ve seen people simply dismiss this problem with a “git gud” is mind boggling
Git gud works when it's a readable system with proper momentum. Struggling with a boss? Just learn what attacks you can counter and get better at dodging the ones you can't. It doesn't mesh very well when the boss stands there like an idiot for ten seconds and still counters your move with frame-perfect accuracy. That just leaves players confused on what is and isn't an opening.
The real big problem are the 200 attacks animations that only allows you to sneak one or two attacks
@@SIGNOR-G that's literally just a git gud problem though. That's the enemy being proactive and you being appropriately reacting.
The problem with input reading is that neither side are doing anything but just waiting for the other to do something and due to player fragility, and limited resource the players is forced to act first.
@@johnnyd.1004 And then you force boss counter a fast move to create opening. Not really confusing.
@@HellecticMojo considering the input reading is so reliable, why not triggering it on purpose to turn the tides in your favor? the godskin heal reading for example is great to get heals safely and reliably as you can do it without issues if you do it at the right distance, even safer against godfrey, whilst in the ase of other enemies, throwing knives can be great to make the enemy react in a way that's favorable to you... also i hate the idea of "the enemy standing there doing nothing for 10 secs" as margit is often used as the example for that and the one attack people always point to is actually giving you the largest punish window against a boss in the whole game, as he hits down his stave only when you are within a certain angle of vision of him, trigger it, side step, and attack to your heart's content.
The ones they can't see/react to are the moon version of the spells. They say something in the description about being for stealth or can't be seen I think. They are a little weaker but lack of reactions can make them useful
Yeah, Night Spells are "invisible". It's how I fought Malenia as an Astrologer. She reacts to the hit, but not the casting.
there's also silly stuff with how NPCs will dodge delayed spells like glintblades as soon as you cast them but make no attempt to dodge them once they actually launch
@@Vher_ I gotta say that's pretty relatable actually, as it's pretty much the AI version of panic rolling
Or you can just use fallingstar beast jaw and hit them even when they dodge lol for more damage less mp and just trash 90% of spells :c
Lightning Spear when uncharged also appears to not be flagged
Best option is to give the player the ability to heal cancel via dodge if you are going to do this. Anytime the AI reacts with less then 100 or 250 ms it is going to feel like input reading and basically is. Most physics engines run at 60 hz meaning AI could react in about 16 ms if they really wanted to make the game impossible.
The projectile dodging is my favorite, since if you use something like the Marionette Archers that just vomit out a constant stream of arrows, certain bosses will dodge so often that you functionally can't hit them with anything. My favorite is the Radagon wolf boss, because it will literally dodge halfway across the room when it detects the projectile spawning, and because they spawn so often it just ZOOOOOMS
Ah this makes a lot of sense, also explains how Gravity Rocks is so reliable, as it reacts to the startup rather than the projectile itself.
I think that's one of the reasons why it was always interpreted as input reading. My main beef with it is unless you get a hard knockdown on a boss it makes some spells totally useless.
Ah i see you are a conessour of the gravity rocks as well
Same with Flame of the Redmanes. The flame is so wide and slow-moving that the AI dodging at the animation start usually just means they dodge into the flame.
Except the gravity rock spell goes too far the other way...you can literally spam it on many bosses and the fight will be over in seconds.
@@CosmicIceCream Except for the mana cost and the fact some bosses are way too aggressive to let you constantly get off the long wind up
"It's not input reading, it's reacting to a flag set by a keypress"
-- that is, um, input. And the AI is reading it. That's input reading.
That's what it is. It can't possibly be anything else.
I really wouldnt care about this if there werent the other frustrating points, like the commonly mentioned here lack of cooldown/longer recovery times for most enemies in this game, which combines with the standard high poise of enemies, really limit your windows to attack or heal. This is something i have noticed as well, but it doesnt really annoy me much, unlike another thing that i havent seen mentioned much.
This thing that really bugs me, and which i want testing to see for sure and im not just going crazy, is the slightly slower healing in ER compared to DS3. While its functionally the same animation and such; it feels like the animation is slightly slower (like ~200ms), there is a longer animation link or a forced delay after most actions, or that the heal itself procs later in the animation compared to previous. Its not a massive difference, but it is just enough of a slow that most of the times that in DS3 you would have gotten a heal off, and maybe a roll, you get hit and die in ER.
Lack of CD and wombo combos every time are more of a issue.
its said that the reason dodging and healing feel slow like that is that the input only triggers on release of the button rather than the initial press. it's another gimmick with the game meant to screw with perception and goes a long way in making everything annoying instead of reaction based. thats why going back to 3 feels practically immaculate. you can test it too it feels shitty in elden ring
@@tyhjyys that’s definitely not the case, because dodge and run are mapped to the same button in both games. if you dodged on initial press in ds3, you would always dodge before running. which doesn’t happen. the game needs time to tell if you’re holding the button down to run or just fast pressing to dodge
you can avoid things with jump attacks and positioning, you also have roll attacks.
@@colbychampagne4867 search for elden ring dodge delay on youtube and youll find a full course meal of videos on it. even side by side comparisons between ER and 3.
Ahh i see i see... So it's input reading.
Sometimes I feel like I can't do anything because the enemy will just do something that moves more quickly than any action I can take. I developed certain strategies, including using the homeward grace prompt, to get bosses to do something so that I have an opening. It seems to help, but maybe it's just placebo.
I miss Bloodborne :(
@@SyntaxDaemon Yeah, here's hoping we get a decent PC version someday.
Every fromsoft game I've played, bosses attack when you heal. Genichiro and his arrows is a good example
@@ultimortalmoth7212 Sony declines your offer.
@@FSVR54 True but the bosses are scummier in Elden Ring when it comes to flask punishing.
0:18 has meme potential. I cracked up at Zullie defiantly chugging with a look that could kill.
2:43 Why does Godskin Apostle look like a demonic Mark Zuckerberg
“Animation reading”
So… input reading, but from a distance
Incredible as usual. You truly are a witch with the magic used to discern these details.
I like how the frenzy snipe incantation lacks the "instadodge" flag, since it moves so damn fast. With ER's lockon range you can get it to travel for quite some time without the boss ever dodging lol
The fact that they can react at frame 1 of the animation rather than having even baseline human reaction speed is the killer. It de facto 'is' input reading, since the AI can react quicker than humanly possible. Elden Ring runs at 60fps, average human reaction time is around 273 milliseconds, so you'd need at least a 17 frame window where the AI can't even react for it to be "fair".
It isn't really unfair. I think it mainly boils down to the poor strategies people have when healing.
You're right.
Ignore the elden ring masochist fanboys who say "just time your heal better."
They are ignorant, arrogant, and condescending.
It is input reading, and that is bad.
@@Ab-he4vf This is cope. There is a difference between something being blatantly rigged and something feeling like an AI strategising against you.
If both outcomes are the same but one is noticeably transparent, the better option is the one that isn’t complete horseshit. “I am being input read” is worse than “these guys punish healing.” FromSoft did an oopsie, it’s not their first and won’t be the last.
@@loubloom1941 granted, some fights don't *have* good timing. Sure, Godskin Duo, hide behind a pillar, but others are in the open and the enemy has a move that you physically can't dodge fast enough because it's a faster hit box then your Animation to heal
@@Ab-he4vf in the past games there were times for healing, or a safe distance...the same tactics don't work here in ER. and if even veterans of the Souls have a hard time with this pseudo input-reading, then excuse me, who are you to say otherwise. are they all wrong and you're the only one in the right? oh well, sorry Mr.God.
The way Zullie talks about Elden Ring mechanics is so precise that makes the game looks like it was open source lol
2:00 i noticed that with the Rock Sling spell, the enemies would dodge when the symbol appeared, not when the rocks were slung.
Swarm of Flies has a similar problem where they'll dodge your initial cast and then ignore the slow projectile as it homes in on them.
Yeah, their dodges work best against basic projectiles like the various glintstone shard-type spells. I found Stars of Ruin to be very effective against Malenia and similar bosses.
makes ancient death rancor really useful as a spell vs enemies that dodge
Personally, making it so easy for players to encounter the Caelid Tower Godskin Apostle before the one in the flower village is something compounds this mistake extremely. The cramped space really added to the difficulty for me and I really don't see a reason people wouldn't end up at the tower first in like 75% of all playthroughs.
Watching RTGames play through really shows this off.
I somehow fought the windmill village one before the caelid one(just beat it last night actually)
As the above person mentioned, I fought the windmill village one before the Caelid Tower one. I honestly didn't mess with the great rune mechanic for a very long time. I got to Mohg early via Varre and fighting Mohg at level 78 with no maxed weapon or anything is what made me go looking for Divine Towers and messing with the great runes. Even then I didn't actually fight the Godskin Apostle down there until near the end of my first run, but I'd honestly forgotten about it and then remembered I wanted to platform down there. Anyway, the one in the village wasn't all that bad. The Noble is the type that I hate fighting because of all the rolling around it can do.
I feel like the solution to this is extremely simple. All the developers had to do is put at delay on the reaction by the NPC of about 12 frames (being generous because of how fast it picks up on the animation) to better mimic human reaction time, instead of it almost starting the counterattack as soon as your animation starts.
Literally all they had to do was to add a 250 millisecond delay to the reaction, so it actually looks like the enemy is reacting to what they're seeing rather than the button press.
That makes the "invisible" spells make so much more sense now! It's specifically the AI can't see them lol
I keep saying this game has the best and worst bosses From has ever made and the INSANE levels of input reading are part of why some of the boss fights are just more annoying than fun. Having tons of input reading suddenly adds a big trial and error element to it that can take a bunch of tries to get a full grasp of iike how far away or how close you have to be to heal or to cast a type of spell or to use an item or to throw something etc.
In most From bosses from the ds games there didn't feel like there was much trial and error. Yes i would die, a lot sometimes but it wasn't because some mechanic i was previously unaware of would guaranteed kill me, it was just that the bosses were hard.
That's something I'm picking up on a bit. Granted I've been away from Elden Ring for a couple of months now since I opted to return to Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. Ludwig took me numerous attempts and I died a lot, but he's difficult and I have issues dealing with the bosses that have that rather unpredictable tantrum phase (RIP me when I get to the Orphan of Kos). I had plenty of time to heal and he didn't heal punish. So far the only boss I'm really calling bullshit on is Laurence. I opted to kick off that boss fight before exploring the Research Hall and I can pretty easily get him to under 1/3rd health, but that final form with all the lava is giving me all kinds of fits no matter how I choose to attack. Even with the Bloody Crow it's a matter of knowing his attacks and when it's best to be offensive versus backing off. Laurence is the first boss where I really feel I have no time to work with anything in that last phase.
Comparing to where I am in Elden Ring and what I've fought (up to Liurnia, got sick of the stupid spell spamming mages in Raya Lucaria, so I'm exploring more of Liurnia), Elden Ring has more bullshit fights by far. Bloodborne gank fights with multiple hunters or the Shadow of Yharnam are tough but they're fun and aren't bad once you figure out what approach works for you. The gank fight in the Impaler's Catacombs with those stupid stone imps on top of the damn stone dog thing annoyed the absolute shit out of me. I went back there slightly overleveled and with the Skeletal Militiamen summon, because the stone imp AI was too stupid to interrupt their reanimation when they got taken down, so my militiamen would just stand back up and continue the fight. I was happy when I finally killed the boss, but it wasn't the elation of defeating a tough boss in DS3 or Bloodborne; it was the relief that the annoying thing is dead and I don't have to return to those catacombs again. That's not the same feeling and it's nowhere near as fun.
The other odd thing is that I have more trouble with the field/area bosses and such than I do with the main bosses. Margit took me ages but I was underleveled for it even when I did go off to level up a bit more, but Godrick the Grafted I did on the first attempt and it was almost easy, and I don't think I was overleveled for it.
Exactly. My issue is some bosses take MASSIVE advantage of input reading and playing as a caster build, you can go from "oh I'm a bit overleveled" to "what the fuck is this unfair bullshit" from fight to fight. Stuff like the Ancient Hero of Zamor is absolutely ridiculous to fight as a caster without knight sorceries because all his animations are so short/fast he'll dodge you repeatedly and then slap the shit out of you when you try to drink.
@@SolaScientia It's the bosses having Sekiro influence, when it comes to moveset and difficulty, but the player not getting anything but the jump.
@@watchfulwanderer6443 Yeah, I need to get into Sekiro properly. I've started it a number of times. In the main game I get to that first red-eyed chained ogre before I run into major problems with that. I then go back in the past to the Hirata Estate to get the flame vent and the axe and such, but I usually hit a wall there as well. It's mostly me really needing to get a handle on properly parrying enemies. I'm doing better this most recent attempt, but I screwed up with an area and I'm tempted to restart the game again. That and I'm away from the game for long enough that I lose the muscle memory for it. I've been more focused on finishing up my first run of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3.
@@SolaScientia Sekiro's parrying is difficult to get a handle on. Yeah, it's probably best to save it for when you can get into a good rhythm.
Sometimes i think the bosses change their attack direction in the last moment to roll cath the player
Wait, JC plays Elden Ring?
@@warguy5556 resurrected just to be slain again by miyazaki
They absolutely do. Honestly, very important design for a game with as cheap and forgiving rolls as this one. It would honestly feel pretty dumb if you could just spam rolls and never take damage.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 no, it sucks. Feels cheap.
@@monsieurdorgat6864 there’s a difference between not being able to spam rolls and not being able to roll at all.
The only unfair thing about it is that they're capable of reacting so early in the animation. If they could only react 10-20% of the way into the animation, it would be no different than a typical human's reaction time. Aside from that though I don't really see how it could possibly feel "artificial" since it's exactly what a human player would do if you facechugged them or shot a projectile at them.
I believe others have mentioned that the enemy does these regardless of if it could possibly see the player or not. Plus, that whole dodge even if the projectile isn't aimed at them feels "artificial".
It's more an issue when they dodge as soon as the projectile starts being cast
So its still looking for something, just not specifically the input itself
Still, if the result winds up being more or less the same as input reading, then its probably not a good alternative IMO
It kinda goes against the games combat, which is all about guessing and reacting to patterns, and having such hard set responses to things like this is weird
It feels like its a means of trying even out how busted the player can become by making recovery more difficult, but it winds up creating what feels like unintended strategies against certain enemies and it often becomes unsatisfying
a flag set by a keypress is input.
a thing the AI is reading.
it's input reading. that's what it is.
Good challenging enemy design: You take an action like drinking a flask; the enemy responds to your action; then you can respond to the enemies reaction, making the gameplay dynamic and responsive
Not so great enemy design:
You take an action like drinking a flask; the enemy responds to your action, and you can't do anything about it.
Yeah I don't mind having to reaction quickly to an attack but the black flame attack will hit you while you're still drinking the flask.
Not so great enemy design: they just let you heal freely.
Good challenging enemy design: You have to earn your heals by dodging attacks and giving up a punish opportunity.