[phn]

I think Elden Ring (and the souls genre in general) IS designed with the assumption players have access to the internet to search for stuff if they want.

The game will still provide quite a challenge even if you know where you need to go and get weapons/items/etc. The bosses won't defeat themselves even if you know the overall strategy to use.

I think of it as kind of a self-regulated difficulty system, if you want to go in blind you are still free to do so.

[a96]

Elden Ring and Fallouts are IMO good examples of games that have done great in this environment. There are people wondering at the art and archaeology(!) and cultures and various descriptions and other lore bits scattered around the games while others are speedrunning and stat optimizing things. They're extracting enjoyment whether they're on their first playthrough or have thousands of hours invested in countless builds. Surely just about every technical detail has been discovered, debugged, and charted a long ago.

There are probably far simpler ones as well. People still talk about chess strategies and things like that all across the detail spectrum.

There is also the reality that most games produced just aren't worth that much of people's time. They may still be fun, but in a more limited capacity.