The input buffer in Elden Ring is the worst I've ever experienced

[Skittles]

Was looking at some FGC takes on ER and they really encapsulated my biggest problem with ER. Phew boy, the input buffer in this game is the worst in any game I've ever played. I'm really confused on how this made it past playtesting. The queue length for actions in this game is just absurd. You can do an input for a double roll, get hit, recover, and the second roll will still come out. Then there's the problem of double using recovery items. I've NEVER had such a problem with the input buffer in a souls games before, ER takes it to an absurd level to the point it ruins a lot of moment to moment decision making. There also seems to be some input lag problems, and when that's combined with the longest input buffer in series history. You end up with a very clunky system. Has anyone done hard testing in regards to this? I'm so curious on how it stacks up to other games in the series.

 

[Lokoline]

Yep, it's terrible.

 

[Yerffej]

It took a solid ten minutes for more to get used to. I even double checked my tv setting to make sure it was set on Game.

 

[Cenauru]

I also have an FGC friend (I don't play FG's though) who's complained about the same thing many times now. Weirdly enough, I haven't realty felt it. Wonder if it's a difference at how we're mashing?

 

[TheSpaceBetween]

Ugh, not happy to hear about this. I'm currently still working on Horizon FW and it's pretty bad here too :(

 

[TronLight]

It's terrible especially while platforming.

 

[Tambini]

It definitley seems more extreme than souls games

 

[Gero]

When i said the game has really bad input lag everyone told me here to check my TV lol. Its so clunky and delayed

 

[Birds of Paradise]

I have the bad tendency to mash buttons and it does really punish that lol

 

[DeliciousSunnyD!]

Me personally? I love it. It's very punishing and it forces you to be pretty cerebral and deliberate with your inputs.

With how much power there is apparently available in this game (I haven't been following any meta trends/looking up anything beyond furthering NPC quests of those I've encountered), I think it's fair.

But I also love some of the games a lot of people consider unwieldy. Things like Rockstar's games from GTA IV on and Killzone 2.

 

[En-ou]

I'm on PC with Xbox wired controller. No issues for me. Plays as responsive as any Souls game. Also, I'm not a masher. Every button press of mine is for a reason.

 

[7thFloor]

It's pretty awful yeah

 

[Alpheus]

I feel it's really bad on the horse so it was probably done to make the horse work. Its a shame it's worse than DS2's because I could work with DS2's buffering.

 

[Duxxy3]

Even worse on series x because, for whatever reason, the controller eats a whole bunch of face button inputs.

 

[benj]

yeah, it rocks

 

[Thordinson]

Me personally? I love it. It's very punishing and it forces you to be pretty cerebral and deliberate with your inputs.

Click to shrink...

Eh...I don't think it's good if a player is pressing a button to roll twice and the second one comes out after the player gets hit. It would be better if the hit eats the input.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Yep, been this way since Demon's Souls and I think it's terrible how it has never improved.

For what it's worth worth it was less of a problem in the slower paced ones but something as fast as Bloodborne and DSIII is where it really rears it's ugly head

 

[jokkir]

Yuuuup. My biggest problem especially when fighting bigger enemies. The amount of times I do something I didn't want to do after getting up is way too much. Wanna roll out of the way sinceto heal? Nah, you're gonna attack the air.

And it stays several seconds too however long the time is to recover.

Horrible

 

[HStallion]

I also have an FGC friend (I don't play FG's though) who's complained about the same thing many times now. Weirdly enough, I haven't realty felt it. Wonder if it's a difference at how we're mashing?

Click to shrink...

It's not anything new to the Souls games so if you've played several you're probably just used to it. Doesn't really bother me all that much considering how deliberate the games tend to be.

 

[Zeliard]

Feels absolutely no different to me than any previous Souls games. Are people comparing it to their own expectations or to previous games in the series? Because input buffering has always been a thing.

I replayed the entirety of Bloodborne just a few months ago and the input translation to Elden Ring on PC feels just fine.

 

[CharlesAznable]

Glad I'm not the only one who's noticed this. It's absurdly long.

 

[AIan]

I think it's fine. Pressing a different button will cancel it. Then again I used to play FFXIV that had a similar system in place (skill queuing, which felt very necessary) so the complaints fall flat for me.

 

[OrigamiPirate]

I had always thought that this was an intentional design decision to require players to unlearn spamming buttons until they see a move come out, and to be more purposeful with specific button presses.
I grew up in 90s arcades playing Capcom fighters so I definitely tend to spam buttons particularly when I'm on the ground and trying to get something to come out upon wake-up… But in the context of the Elden Ring/souls, I quite like it.

 

[Fanuilos]

It's terrible with dismounting. Some of it's probably because I'm doing a 2-hand strength build so the post swing animation takes a while. There are times where my character will go into the crouching after finally dismounting.

 

[Duncan]

I always thought it was animation priority.

Like I swing my sword and then I mash the dodge button but the swing animation is still happening and then I get squished.

Like I thought that was just me not making the right decision at the right time. But if it's an actual problem and that's not supposed to happen then ok that sucks lol

 

[Finale Fireworker]

Absolutely doesn't feel any different than any other Souls game to me, so I'm not sure what to say.

 

[Nakenorm]

Yeah I thought it was a bit odd that no one mentioned it pre release. Was it the same in the beta? Must've missed it of people brought it up then already.

 

[Alpheus]

I think it's fine. Pressing a different button will cancel it. Then again I used to play FFXIV that had a similar system in place (skill queuing, which felt very necessary) so the complaints fall flat for me.

Click to shrink...

Given the time I've spent with prior FROM games (notably DS2 SotFS which had buffering same as the rest of the FROM games) and XIV, ER input buffering is definitely bad, at least so far in my experience, and I can slide cast on BLM and slide cast out of hardcast rezzes (that get the Rez off) and still avoid raid AoEs all day in XIV with no issue.

But again I'm only speaking for myself and of my own experiences.

 

[Deleted member 41651]

One of the reasons I had to opt out of the PS5 version. Sporadic framerates coupled with the delay made it nearly unplayable.

 

[Afro]

Nioh's combat is easily superior in many ways, but I love Elden so much.

 

[Saturday]

wait, this isn't just me? I'm proper shit at vidya but despite that I actually had moments of "huh, I thought I actually reacted to that on time" in multiple fights (at the very least for instance I've been feeling like using the weapon art for starscourge always seems to come out as a triple- first, follow-up, and then first skill again)

i mean its probably my mind playing tricks on me and most of this can be chalked up to terrible reflexes but now i don't know 100% lol

 

[Syntsui]

Feels absolutely no different to me than any previous Souls games. Are people comparing it to their own expectations or to previous games in the series? Because input buffering has always been a thing.

I replayed the entirety of Bloodborne just a few months ago and the input translation to Elden Ring on PC feels just fine.

Click to shrink...

That's because every single From Soft game has this problem. It's easy to mitigate but it really feels bad.

 

[Magnus]

This kind of shit drives me insane. One more reason why I probably won't end up loving this game. Is the input lag worse than Rockstar games?

 

[ErichWK]

I feel like this is how it's always been since Demon. The only time it bothers me is I fuck up changing my right hand weapon a bunch and that ends up fucking me over. Just gotta not spam and be more deliberate.

 

[MrCibb]

Feels the same as the other Souls games to me. It's not great but at this point I'm used to it.

 

[snausages]

It's worse and it's compounded I think by how much more technical some of the fights can be. The obvious one is get hit by an attack during the input for a dodge roll that was too late, then the input queue 'resolves' the roll input immediately as you recover into the 2nd staggered hit that was supposed to catch a mistimed/spammed roll. Thing is there's no way to prevent that input from resolving as far as I can see, unless you can cancel it with crouch or something, which is hardly acceptable

I feel it a lot as someone going from dualhanding/powerstancing weapons to bringing out a shield for particular mechanics (flurry spam) or casting. The input for doing that is triangle & l1/r1, but if you mistime it it resolves as just l1 or r1, with pretty terrible results if the weapon is a greatsword.

They've pumped up the boss encounter design to a really high level compared to past games, which is one thing. Not necessarily a problem, but its still laden with this bizarre legacy input queue stuff that feels demonstrably worse in this game than any of the others, and is particularly apparent if you go way into player expression possibilities and try to mess around with builds that aren't just a sword and shield and require swapping

Just wish the queue would throw away stale inputs faster

 

[Eidan]

Feels the same as every From game.

 

[Cenauru]

It's not anything new to the Souls games so if you've played several you're probably just used to it. Doesn't really bother me all that much considering how deliberate the games tend to be.

Click to shrink...

We've both played all the souls games so it's definitely not a case of him just not being used to it. We've been playing and streaming it in discord together and he'll get staggered or knocked down and sometimes the game just executes the queued action afterwards even though it was before being hit. It's only happened a few times to me though but it's really bad whenever it does happen.

 

[Deleted member 93841]

Yeah, I had a lot of problems with this, especially when I accidentally hit the attack button more than once. Not being able to cancel that second attack while the first attack hadn't even finished yet got me killed a number of times.

 

[Alpheus]

It's worse and it's compounded I think by how much more technical some of the fights can be. The obvious one is get hit by an attack during the input for a dodge roll that was too late, then the input queue 'resolves' the roll input immediately as you recover into the 2nd staggered hit that was supposed to catch a mistimed/spammed roll. Thing is there's no way to prevent that input from resolving as far as I can see, unless you can cancel it with crouch or something, which is hardly acceptable

I feel it a lot as someone going from dualhanding/powerstancing weapons to bringing out a shield for particular mechanics (flurry spam) or casting. The input for doing that is triangle & l1/r1, but if you mistime it it resolves as just l1 or r1, with pretty terrible results if the weapon is a greatsword.

They've pumped up the boss encounter design to a really high level compared to past games, which is one thing. Not necessarily a problem, but its still laden with this bizarre legacy input queue stuff that feels demonstrably worse in this game than any of the others, and is particularly apparent if you go way into player expression possibilities and try to mess around with builds that aren't just a sword and shield and require swapping

Just wish the queue would throw away stale inputs faster

Click to shrink...

Yea I could work around the buffering in DS2 and run builds where I swap stuff normally, I definitely can't do that with the same amount of success in ER which is a shame since there's so many, as you say, weapons and avenues of player expression to try, so feeling hamstrung due to this just feels awful

 

[Conkerkid11]

It sucks when it catches you off guard and your character unexpectedly rolls. I am pretty sure that you can cancel it if you spam a different action though. I don't think the queue of actions is set in stone. Things in the back of the queue can be overwritten.

The more annoying thing to me is that I swear my roll has more input delay when I'm in an intense boss fight. That and the fact that the roll is tied to the same button as sprint, so we'll never be able to have roll tied to the button being pressed down. It needs to be let up too.

I feel like it's even worse in this one than previous titles. I've also just had inputs eaten entirely. Rolling on occasion just doesn't happen, or happens really late. That one is potentially because rolling is fired on button release, not on button down.

Click to shrink...

Yuuup

 

[scare_crow]

Just feels like a Souls game to me 🤷‍♂️

 

[JasoNsider]

I feel like it's even worse in this one than previous titles. I've also just had inputs eaten entirely. Rolling on occasion just doesn't happen, or happens really late. That one is potentially because rolling is fired on button release, not on button down.
Personally I think the controls could have been a tiny bit better, but in general it's a great game.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Me personally? I love it. It's very punishing and it forces you to be pretty cerebral and deliberate with your inputs.

With how much power there is apparently available in this game (I haven't been following any meta trends/looking up anything beyond furthering NPC quests of those I've encountered), I think it's fair.

But I also love some of the games a lot of people consider unwieldy. Things like Rockstar's games from GTA IV on and Killzone 2.

Click to shrink...

I'm with you on this one

 

[super-famicom]

I have died from mistiming my jumps because of this lol

 

[Yossarian]

Feels absolutely no different to me than any previous Souls games.

Click to shrink...

Same. I'm not very clued up though.

 

[Ashler]

This used to be a problem for me when I got into Souls games and used to Panic spam buttons in several occasions. It drove me insane and felt very unfair.
Now its less of an issue as I very consciously avoid double pressing buttons during combat.

Also a tip for people that are having issues dodge rolling... Elden Ring's action for rolling is triggered when you release the button, not when you press it!

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Me personally? I love it. It's very punishing and it forces you to be pretty cerebral and deliberate with your inputs.

With how much power there is apparently available in this game (I haven't been following any meta trends/looking up anything beyond furthering NPC quests of those I've encountered), I think it's fair.

But I also love some of the games a lot of people consider unwieldy. Things like Rockstar's games from GTA IV on and Killzone 2.

Click to shrink...

I'll push back at this a bit and say in the case of Bloodborne it's a bit extreme. You shoot with the R2 button and that trigger is a particularly sensitive button so sometimes pushing it once can be interpreted as multiple pushes depending on how hard or softly you do it.

 

[EVA UNIT 01]

Ive felt it was the same as any other souls.
I'm actually playing through demons remake and BB together and it all feels the same and I'm kinda into it.
It smashed a lot of my mashing habits quick

 

[VeryBerryPunch]

I'd really like to know how the buffer works exactly because i've played every game in the series to completion, some several times, and can count on one hand the amount of times ive had the delayed input happen. And I have a habit of double or triple tapping evade when I think the window might be too tight.

I believe you all when you say it happens, I want to know how it all works.

I have had several instances of my inputs just not happening and my character just standing still in ER though, in and out of combat.
I'd also like to know what the hell is going on there.