Would anyone else have liked a version of Elden Ring that was like Demon's Souls? Instead of an open world you instead teleport directly to the legacy dungeons in each region from roundtable hold?
They'd probably need to combine areas together to make each dungeon feel extra lengthy, like Morne Castle/Stormveil Castle, Carian Manor/Raya Lucaria, Subterranean Shunning Gounds/Leyndell... you get the gist. Maybe I'm just impatient, but my latest playthrough of the base game made me resent just how much fucking time it takes to get from point of interest to the next.
I'd prefer the layerd and maze-like level design of DS1 and Bloodborne, Worlds like in Demon Souls still have the problem I have with a a lot of locations in the Lands Between in that it feels too video gamey.
Some areas and placements are fine, I think generally bossess and such have a good reason to be in their arena, but the locations themselves feel like they lack the authenticity of being a once great locale turned too ruin. The best areas do avoid this, and provide neat sidepaths like moving across the rooftops in Stormveil, or how there's that drop down to the area that leads you to Godwyn's Corpse Surrogate.
I also do like the non-linearity, and some of the early fights like the Beast-man of Farum Azula boss who's probably a better tutorial boss than the Scion or the Erdtree sentinel. Some of the Catacombs like the Leyndell, Hero's grave, Giant's catacomb, and Azura side are nice so I'd like them to be saved. With them getting turned into another area underneath the Subterranean Shunning Grounds, that way you have this cool effect where the catacombs become more maze-like and dangerous as you get further and further towards the Frenzied Flame.
Culminating in you getting to the Moghwyn palace grounds where the final barrier to the Frenzied Flame is Mohg, since he already has a clone preventing people from getting to the Three Fingers in the base game and he and Morgott ran into the Formless Mother underneath the Shunning Grounds so putting the Mohgwyn dynasty there makes sense.
That and cut out the annoying parkour section, seriously it's just annoying especially since it also leads to the back entrance to the Namless Eternal City.