Elden Ring Player Stats Prove How Easy It Actually Is
Elden Ring is being recognized as FromSoftware's most accessible title to date and for good reason. Players' stats show how successful the Tarnished have been in defeating the bosses of the Lands Between, with even the most difficult of the demigods seeing significant completion rates. But this begs the question as to whether these completion rates really mean Elden Ring is the easiest Soulsborne game or even an easy game overall.
Indeed, some of the data management for player achievements for Elden Ring can either be confusing or misleading. For instance, while some achievement-tracking sites may show that as many as 20% of players have reached the Elden Ring achievement (which means all achievements have been unlocked), usually this is because sites default to showing percentages of their own users, who are often more hardcore players. The reality is that only about 6% of Steam's total Elden Ring players have actually achieved this particular goal.
Nevertheless, the stats on Steamhunters and PSNProfiles suggest that many players who have progressed in Elden Ring have enjoyed slaying demigods with relative ease. Even FromSoftware's most difficult creations Radahn and Malenia have seen significant rates; most notably, Malenia has been beaten by over a quarter of the game's total players according to Steamhunters, while PSNProfiles shows the completion rate of Malenia - the hardest Elden Ring boss located deep in a difficult, late-game, optional area - is still around 22%. If somewhere around a quarter of all 12 million Elden Ring players have beaten what has been called FromSoftware's hardest boss to in any game to date, the odds seem a lot less formidable (especially considering that many players won't have gotten that far in the game yet, or won't have found Malenia in the first place). Difficult story boss Starscourge Radahn also has rates of about 50% completion both on Steam and PlayStation.
Ultimately, these figures are skewed by the fact that many players buy a game without starting it, move at a significantly slow pace (especially with a huge game like Elden Ring), or start playing a game without any intention of ever finishing it. A 50% completion rate for a boss is a very good indicator that a high percentage of players invested in actively playing the game are doing so consistently. For instance, while the first few story achievements in 2018's God of War on PSNProfiles show a completion rate of 64 to 88 percent, all other story achievements are in the range of 50%. Less than 50% of players have even beaten the final boss. By contrast, at least one Elden Ring ending has been achieved by about 25% of PlayStation players according to PSNProfiles, and at least one ending has been achieved by 44% of players according to Steamhunters.
Regardless of the stats, Elden Ring is still a hard game. There are certainly ways to make it a lot easier: Between Intelligence builds using Comet Azure against bosses and using Spirit Ashes in 1v1 fights, FromSoftware has given its fans many ways to "break" the game. But the Grafted Scion in the tutorial serves as a reminder of the difficulty that awaits those who play the game without looking at online tutorials that explain how to make the best character builds.
As FromSoftware's first open-world game, Elden Ring knows that giving players the ability to shape their journeys in whichever way they want is crucial to the experience. Thus, Elden Ring is simultaneously easy (for those who want to make it easy) and difficult (for those who enjoyed previous Soulslike experiences and tackle its toughest challenges). No way to play is truly right or wrong, but completion rates prove that even aside from attracting a huge audience, Elden Ring is also giving players the tools they need to complete its many challenges.
Source: Steamhunters, PSNProfiles (2)