Bandai Namco along with FromSoftware have as of recent given the Elden Ring expansion Nightreign a small update, however, the community response is… to put it mildly, a whole mood. The hotfix 1.03.3 is now in effect and is practically a maintenance patch. One of the most important things it does is to add the Salvation’s Standard-Bearers Balancers as a target in the Deep of Night mode. Furthermore, some bug fixes are also included. The developers even went as far as thanking the players for their ‘enduring patience,’ which could be seen as a bit too pointed, wouldn’t you agree? It feels like they are conscious that the players were waiting for something important.
What then, is this update all about? Truth be told, there is very little to say on the matter. It is nothing more than a hotfix. It is like changing the air filter of your car when all you wanted was a new paint job. The patch notes have been posted in the tweet but the gist is of one new boss type in the Deep of Night roguelike mode and some bugs have been fixed. For players at the Nightreign endgame, it is a nice twist to have the Balancers showing up in Deep of Night. It not only changes the runs but also makes them more enjoyable. But for the rest? It is just a little thing.
And the players? They are very loud about their real wishes. Going through the reactions is like having opened a suggestion box that has already been set on fire. The most pervasive demand which could be heard all over the web is none other than cross-play among consoles. Players such as ShadowStrider13 and anizee55 are quite vocal on this and even suggest that the lack of crossplay is the reason they have not bought the game. ‘Please for faster queue,’ begs SpeeshlezzTV. Quick matchmaking is a big factor for a multiplayer-centric mode like Deep of Night—more playtime and less waiting due to quick matchmaking. So many players are still baffled by the persistence of this feature’s unavailability.
And talking about players waiting for more content to be released, ‘We need more content 🥹 This game has a lot of potentials,’ cries jay_flume. BlakeH818 is even more straightforward: ‘Still no new weapons /:’. It is clear that even though the players appreciate the bug fixes, they still have a great desire for new equipment, new places, new stuff to discover. MetalMonkeyThe7 is literally begging for a higher drop rate for ‘shifting earths,’ which is probably a super-rare crafting material. The struggle is very real, dear gamers.
What is worse, the bug fixes have led to very heartbreaking stories from the players’ side. A user named DarkHeartsKing called the entire saga tragic. He went through a bug that made his new boss relics and skins vanish from his save. He thought that he was the only one affected, as it was rare thus he deleted his 300-hour save and restarted the game. ‘I thought this glitch was just me,’ he recounts. Ouch! That’s a terrible one. When Vincent Green (ExaltedLotus) heard this he couldn’t help but ask with a question that was basically ‘Why did you delete it?!’ which is a very logical query. But still, one cannot help but feel sympathy for the person. Another player’s story was very similar and he got a Balancer relic, a duplicate of which Patchy_The_Dog is asking the devs to erase. Such inventory-breaking glitches can really drive collectors mad.
Furthermore, performance problems are one of the things that the hotfix is addressing. Blake (JustBlakeV) is there raising the alarm for the ‘5090 systems’ which are having performance issues with Elden Ring—this could either be a next-gen thing or a mistake in typing, but the point is some people are still having trouble with the frame and stability issues. On the flip side, there are the quality of life requests. Jett Piper wants to be allowed to stay on Depth 5 in Deep of Night once he gets there, rather than being pushed back after a bad run or crash. ‘It is really frustrating just to have to grind back up,’ he complains. Preach.
Others have simply had it with the game. ‘I leave this game. Lot of things with no sense at all,’ was how David Berral Zurera put it bluntly. On the other hand, there are those who still manage to see the silver lining in the cloud and are thankful for the little victories. ‘Salvation’s target just got serious,’ comments blockxs. And the Strafe Esports account gives a very cautious ‘appreciate the fixes.’
The gratitude and the irritation are the two sides of the same coin as far as live service games go, especially on platforms like PlayStation and Xbox.
