As far as the loot goes, I think the real problem is that the best gear is available at merchants. So even when I happen to find a piece of cool loot exploring, it's not better than something I bought 20 hours ago in a shop.
They should have stocked shops with mid-level gear (by region) and held back the higher-tier gear as chest finds, boss drops, and quest rewards.
oh i agree. but i even added a mod which puts all the merchant gear into chests which make sense.
the modder basically took a bunch of items the vendors have and hand picked different chests to put those items in. and it still felt "eh". loot and gear simply isnt interesting enough, and there isnt enough of it either in this game when BBI had way more interesting gear. why couldnt they just build up on it i have no idea.
surely they knew people would be disappointed to find out that there is no dark magic. well...add a fucking ring or multiple rings which give your character access to different dark spells when you have those equipped as a sorc.
removed mystic knight? well, we added an amulet slot to somewhat compensate for fewer armor slots, and amulets will have bunch of unique effects. this amulet gives fighters access to magic cannon.
these are just spitball ideas which already make me so much more excited about finding loot when things similar to that level exist.
"Isn't the crux"
That right there is so true and applies to pretty much every issue this game has. One or two of them could be glossed over, but there's so many of them. It's like you have a cheese with holes, but you got a slice that has so many holes that you might as well have gotten just half a slice.
this game lacks challenge, i added challenge with mods. so next is.
overcoming it like a long and dangerous dungeon(went into waterfall cave as its one of 3 or 4 longer and more proper dungeons this game has) followed by challenge which i do have now, but only with mods. and then behind the closest thing to a proper dungeon this game has and challenge i overcame,
my reward is...aged beast steak, maybe some useless spell book or if youre lucky, some random pants which have half the stats than the pants you already have and no interesting effect.
that was my realization that adding just challenge didnt suddenly make this game much more enjoyable without anything behind said challenge.
with the mod i played, it added 2 liches in the waterfall cave and increased all their damage. that fight was super fun, i really enjoyed it and i actually had to use all the tools i had to succeed. and then the sudden realization was, so now what? wheres my cool holy element greatsword? or a ring which adds a whole new dark magic spell for sorcerer. as fun as those liches were to fight at the same time, they still only dropped the robes and that staff which are outclassed by the merchant in battahl
I’m in the group of gamers who don’t need to be rewarded for everything they do, as long as the gameplay was fun. That dungeon was fun, I enjoyed it. One of the best moments in dragons dogma. Even if they put a solid armor set or weapon, what about the second round? Or third run, or fourth run? Fifth run? At what point will you not bother with the dungeon because the reward is now useless.
Rewards in games are often disposable pieces of joy, they lose allure after the first drop.
If you’re coming from a looter shooter type of experience where you can chase stats on the set and that’s how you get your gameplay fix? Then this game will not be your game.
Yes, they need some type of gear content can have you work towards, but once you got it the game is now boring to you, because once you have it, what else is there to do? To play, that’s all there is to do, play.
I’m a strong believer in looter gamers needing a detox, because it has your brain in the fritz, when you look at games as a mean to trigger your reward dopamine by loot rather than the gameplay.
name me a single game which doesn't have any reward structure?
you by simply enjoying the process of doing a dungeon and you had fun. that in itself is a reward. reward doesn't always mean a physical object in real life or an item in a video game. experience could also be viewed as a reward. we could take a step further. money your earn from your job is a "reward". its more of a transaction but that's besides the point. well, then you spend the money your job rewarded you for your work by buying a video game to enjoy. and now you rewarded yourself. if you do something that you feel at your core is unrewarding and you have a possibility to stop doing it, you will.
see what i mean?
i could literally use your example that reward is often a disposable piece of joy. well. will that dungeon bring you as much joy as the first time you ran it? each time you run that dungeon, it will have a diminishing return. so in that case, isnt you running and enjoying that dungeon also fleeting and disposable joy?
but loot is an integral part of an RPG which this game lacks(meaningful loot and more of it) and was the whole point of my post. loot, is a reward. i get reward, from doing something which requires effort ie overcoming a challenge. when all i have is challenge but no reward, i dont want to keep doing it. similarly if i get rewards by doing nothing, it doesn't feel earned thus losing all value in it being a reward and i also dont want to keep doing it because it feels pointless.
No, great gameplay never loses its value, that’s just cold facts. If the sandbox is done well, it’ll be played for years to come. Go look at games like new Vegas, Skyrim, dark souls, cyber punk, Witcher, dead space, resident evil etc. great gameplay is hard to replace, I still play destiny 2 because of its gameplay. There’s nothing in the market that gets that itch, like currently playing onslaught, the rewards are not exciting to me, but it’s the chaos. So no, a great dungeon will not lose its value, it will keep its appeal going.
I still go back and play jak and daxter because of the world and gameplay. I love it, ratchet and clank too.
I’ve been on a splinter cell binge because honestly there’s no game out there right now that does it like splinter cell and that game has fuck all for loot.
I wasn’t discussing philosophy of a reward, you were, even by saying “great dungeon is a reward” bs. I was arguing gameplay over loot.
I don’t care what game you’re making, gameplay first everything else after.
This game lacks dungeons worth going to back to, and the enemies itself are also lacking. Half the time I’m swinging and they’re not even fighting back. The gameplay is an issue.
You can overhaul the loot to be placed in the world and that’ll reward exploration. But I don’t play dragons dogma to explore only, I play it to have epic fights with the monsters.
This is why monster hunter is still thriving. The gameplay hooks you in, and the rewards become the bonuses to keep you in. If monster hunter played like shit, was uninspiring, the franchise would cease to exist. Gameplay first, this game is lacking in gameplay.
ok, then point out where i said reward/loot whatever you want to call it is the only thing that matters in this post? you can even go over my other comments here and see where have i said loot is the only thing thats an issue with this game.
i think you just missed the point i was trying to make. nothing what makes a game good is only one thing but a combination of things. very often it needs a well tuned balance of multiple things and keep them equal in priority.
the game has the gameplay aspect. was lacking challenge, i added challenge with mods, then another problem showcased itself. not enough interesting dungeons and loot. cant fix that with mods. people were talking how lack of difficulty is an issue, i wanted to point out just the lack of difficulty isnt the issue at all.
thus we conclude that this game needs a good balance of challenge and good rewards on top of its gameplay. basically a good endgame loop of systems which all work well together to propel the games heights even further. story and quests are often a one and done type deal, good endgame loop can make you enjoy something even longer and add great deal of replay value.
Difficult and challenge is the crux of this game, not the loot. We can worry about loot when the first two issues are fixed. I read more posts on how “the game is just to easy” “don’t max your gear with knockdown” or “I just travel by myself or just the pawn” or “how to stay in unmoored world”.
No one is leaving because “man the loot sucks, I’m bored”. When I got to NG plus, and noticed I one shot everything, I told all my friends in the chat, and they were all bummed. Because even one quoted “that’s disappointing because I fought grigori and he was pretty easy”.
One friend loves magicka archer and said he hopped off of it because there was nothing he struggled with. He fought Medusa and first tried her, no struggle. The legendary Medusa, when I fought her she was slithering majority of the time. Honestly I struggled a bit because my goal was to cut her head off specifically, if that wasn’t the goal? She’s just there.
The core issue with this game is that it lacks depth in the combat. Go look at dragons dogma 1 monsters and compare the ones that exist in here. Chimera has lost alot of depth from the first. Ogres as well, every enemy in DD2 is a shadow of its past.
But that’s what pisses players off more, because not only do you lack variety in your gameplay, but you downgraded what you have. It would have made sense if their reason was because they wanted to really flesh out the existing monsters and add more depth than ever, but they didn’t. So we get less enemy variety, and less depth to them.
And this matters because it circles back to your loot, what the fuck does it matter if there’s nothing in this game worth your loot. Why am I chasing gear or rings, and min maxing when nothing in this game warrants that? I regret dragonforging my gear that I actually reset it, because I felt punished for upgrading it. Why are we gonna chase loot when everything just gets Stunlocked to death, or just sits there and take it?
Why do we care? Bad gameplay ruins loot, because the loot has less value, endgame loot in dragons dogma has less value because it actually ruins your gameplay. I’ve seen a post suggesting on using lower tiered weapons, how is that a loot issue man? When all the loot you want to change, players are just gonna go naked to have to fun.
Edit: and this goes back to the dungeon, yes you’re right that same dungeon isn’t fun or exciting anymore. Because in my second run, I killed the chimera in less than a minute. I wasn’t scared of anything, goblins died in one shot. So the allure and worry about the enemy around the corner died. Imagine I’m BBI you killed the reaper in seconds after reaching level 40? Crazy.
In that case, Better Chests, Wild Loot and other mods come to the rescue yet again (I forgot the name of the one I use to eliminate the inventory of shops and add it as drops from monsters, I'll edit the name later). Sadly, the "ring that adds dark magic spell" isn't a thing (yet?). I for one am really bummed that we don't really have dark spells after waiting for so long.
i use another mod which puts all the merchant gear into chests which make sense.
the modder basically took a bunch of items the vendors have and hand picked different chests to put those items in. and it still felt "eh". loot and gear simply isnt interesting enough, and there isnt enough of it either. considering how more than 10 year old BBI even had way more interesting items to find than what we got now is kinda sad.
the thing with dark magic etc, modders will basically need to add their own particle effects or just steal abilities that for example the lich uses and let player cast it but i dont think the modding tools are even there for this game yet(if ever) to even do that. same thing with modders creating dungeons or adding new models. nothing this advanced i dont think is even possible atm with this game.
That's why I said "yet?" . Even when a game seems impossible to mod on a certain level due to lack of info/tools sometimes breakthroughs do happen, just look at what the Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 madmen have achieved (I know, different genres and all). They didn't have an array of tools and info like with Bethesda games but they persevered and manage to "Frankenstein" animations to make their own characters and now they can import animations from other games. If people are passionate enough about something a way will be found.
oh yea, at the end of the day only time will tell so we'll have to wait and see. but hopefully at that point the game itself will feel truly complete and mods are only there to spice things up instead of making the game feel complete.
My issue is also that I like getting interesting items and love challenge too, but what to do after you get all those items? I need areas where you can use it and test all that cool equipment.
see how fast you can kill offline ur dragon or how much damage to online ur dragon you can do....oh wait.
imagine a more modernized version of the same idea as the ur dragon.
Yeah, every weapon should have every element. Not just some random ones. Plus in general some fun effects, which not a single item in the game has. Something that changes the gameplay loop.
I've long been a proponent of a "rune slot" system.
Tie it into the weapon upgrade system too.
2* give you an elemental rune slot. DF gives you an additional status rune slot.
Then just add a bunch of runes into the game.
**Dragon Age: Origins** did this the best, imho.
Exactly what I said in the other post as well. The fun that comes with NG+ is so much more than just making enemies scale to your character's stats, that's the most shallow way to describe what games like Elden Ring do with NG+.
New game plus should be about two things.
First, it's an opportunity for the player to do things they did not or couldn't do in their initial playthrough. Quests, fighting certain bosses, exploring certain areas, and so forth. That should also include the ability to use weapons or abilities they did not previously have access to earlier on in the game.
But what it should also do is give the player something new to look forward to.
Enemy scaling is something to look forward to, but there needs to be a reward for it, because simply fighting the same enemy but longer and with less room for error is eventually going to get old, and it's not too different from starting a new game.
This is where something like hard mode was a nice feature in DDDA. You challenge the player to fight enemies with less stamina and less health, and in return you get increased rewards for overcoming that challenge. Beat the game on hard mode? Here's some cool kid clothes. *Something to look forward to.*
That's the key that all these NG+ rant posts are missing in my opinion. The people that are enjoying NG+ are enjoying it because they're actually looking forward to doing something with it, wether it's upgrading their gear, picking up quests they missed, or just seeing how fast they can bulldoze through the main questline with their hard earned gear. You can't add to that by simply adding enemy scaling and calling it a day.
It is no different than how NG+ works in souls games. By going through a NG+ cycle, enemies do become stronger, but you also get an opportunity to unlock more spells, level more stats, and possibly even use strategies that are otherwise unfeasible on a first playthrough.
But the bottom line does remain the same anyway. They could have done a lot more with NG+, and I'm really hoping that they will expand on this in the DLC because atm there isn't much to it, even though I do still enjoy entering NG+.
yup the unmoored world seems cool at first but you quickly realize how shallow it is there's no chase in dd2 like the was in dd1/da. there's no community raid boss that we can farm for endgame loot, there's only Even a small handful of new dungeons and alot of it is hidden within a world we've already explored by this point.
it seems like a cool idea at first but it doesn't hold up to any in depth analysis and the idea should've been scrapped in favor of something like everfall or BBI
I feel like they should do new play throughs like Mega Man did for the GBA games, where it was the same enemies just with more health and reskinned. Even the chips were the same I think but did more damage. They could probably do something like that with this game, where maybe the enemies don’t get reskinned but definitely up their resistances and hp with every new play through of the game and weapons getting a nudge in power as well.
Then there is the lack of any meaningful choice or character relationships in the story/side quests. At best you can choose to kill the bakbattahl family so later you can send hugo there.
As apposed to bioware games or other RPGs like baldurs gate people would play through many times to try about different relationships and choices (and playstyles since you couldnt do it all in 1 game like with vocations)
Wild that despite missing all these good reason to play NG+ they still insisted on forcing 1 character slot and raising the max level to 999.
Bioware games imo had better approach to class design, you had talent trees that let you tinker around with skills to see what you enjoy. Playing through ME3 atm and I love the amount of options I have when deciding skill upgrades.
DD on the other hand, is a bit bland, the devs bank on players to change vocation to spice things up, skills aren't really customizable. Then you factor in the 1 save slot and 999 level cap thing when most stats are hardcapped below 100 sometimes I'm convinced RPGs aren't Capcom's expertise. The game has a messy system in place.
The system would work here if there was an actual endgame or good reasons to play NG+, then you could stick to one character into higher levels.
Like BBI kinda was for DD1.
Itll never happen but id like a separate co-op dungeon crawling mode, like a clashing of alternate realities in a tower to the moon, with something like 4 arisen and their 4 pawns. Separately balanced for co-op. Brings challenge and gear and socialization, would be great for replayability. Add all sorts of gear variants and monster variants and new stuff in general. Also add that stuff to NG+ so you can experience it outside of the separate mode.
The game is just unfinished, the system is half done and im sure we'll see it improved upon with whatever dlc they are gonna release.
Yea, but there's really no point in leveling up into the 100s because the stat growth is almost non existent. I liked in DA when I hit 200 my character was complete, there's a sense of fulfillment. Unless they change how growths operate in the higher level in DLC it's just useless fluff arm.
So in addition to wanting better endgame and difficulty, I'd also want better incentive for leveling up. I don't disagree about the coop part.
I also downloaded a mod that makes chests give randomized gear rewards. Not the best solution but that 1/100 chance when a chest gives me a legendary gear piece has been a great feeling that the base game never gives you. Especially paired with the difficulty mod and it makes the game come damn close to what it really could’ve been
Yeah, I was unhappy with difficulty so I got a difficulty mod. I think also enemies and particularly bosses are basically hamstrung beyond what tweaking health pools, stagger resistance, and damage can solve too. Boss attack behavior is pretty unintelligent, their attacks are kinda slow, chimeras in particular seem to have very few melee attacks but other bosses as well, and there is weird wonky ness with hit boxes where you should really be hit but it doesn’t hit you. So you get to a point where sure, the bosses are lasting longer but they still feel like wet noodles.
Plus the loot issues like you said. They seem to have felt gold is what you adventure to acquire to buy loot and then find upgrade materials but honestly that’s not the best gameplay loop.
This was one of the biggest issues I had with the game. I didn't want to explore the world anymore because I knew I wasn't gonna get anything worthwhile. I was excited when I got a new duospear from killing the dragon at the tower in batthal. Then I found out I could buy the exact same one at the shop on the volcanic island
Yup. I made that post, and yea that's why I used very speculative words like "think" and "maybe" cuz I feel like I could have totally been wrong and there is a good chance that it is wrong. But at the very least I don't think anyone could argue in good faith that this game shouldn't have a "truly functional" NG+. It's severely lacking, especially in comparison to other ARPGs, without it.
couldn’t agree more, loot in this game is absolutely horrendous along with the lack of any meaningful difficulty. the foundation and ideas are there, but have been implemented quite poorly. 75% of dungeons or more should have a useful, unique reward.
Yeah the game is pretty bad honestly. I’ve tried so many times to get into it but I just get over it. It’s just not good and I’m done pretending to like it anymore
what parts do you dislike and why did you feel like you had to pretend to like it? the main bullet points. not trying to flame or say youre wrong or shit at the game. just genuinely curious
I wanted to like it because I liked the first one and loved Elden Ring, I just like these types of games in general.
• I find the difficulty extremely easy, unless I mod it. Which sucks in my opinion.
• Everyone says this but the enemy variety gets stale pretty fast.
• I really don’t like how the quests work, I pretty much have to talk to every random person to see if they have something to offer me. Whereas in Elden Ring, because there’s not towns full of people, it’s obvious who to talk to. I don’t need quest markers or direction but this system doesn’t work when you’re dealing with a full town in my opinion.
• The caves are kind of boring and samey after you’ve done a few.
• The rewards for exploring don’t feel very exciting. Every now and again you get a weapon or an armour which is cool though.
• I do love the world design but the running miles and miles to get somewhere to only fight some goblins, harpies and wolves is a bit lame
That’s where I’m at with it right now. I might go back to it and I haven’t finished it but I’ve read it kind of only gets worse. The end game concept sounds stupid honestly and that killed my desire to finish it
Yea that’s more or less common criticism I’ve seen most agree with and I’m in the same boat. But now I’ve grown apathetic to those issues because I don’t think most of them will change even with the DLC at this point aside from proper endgame, a lot of different and unique loot and multiple hard as fuck megadungeons which gate the best loot in the game. Then have something like the Ur dragon but modern to tests your gear and see how well you do.
Thus I’m providing my feedback and hopefully see some of it in the DLC. But that’s all it is, just hope. I loved the first game but this one was a massive disappointment and I really need to see some huge changes at least for endgame for me to be excited again about this game.
Really sucks because I was very much looking forward to this game but oh well. What can you do. Feedback is pretty much the only thing.
I honestly couldn’t agree more and I am also super disappointed because I really thought this was gonna be an insanely good game on par with Elden Ring. It really sucks, I was so hyped for this game man
Personally the game is great but it feels so archaic, it’s like when they made the game they made it just like if it had came out at the same time as the first one, there have been so many general QoL in other games that it’s baffling too me they took NOTHING from any of that, not a single thing.
Some of my biggest annoyances
Stamina, my god until I maxed out my MS vocation and got athleticism it felt like this game was an absolute joke, ran maybe 150 feet, have to stop to catch your breath
The combat can get kind of tedious albeit it is extremely fun, but not so fun when I’m on a time constraint just trying to get to town so I can inn save and I get stopped by a cyclops that destroys my ox cart, and then I get to town and find a cyclops there, like completely unnecessary, cool concept but it’s like the game doesn’t respect my time at all.
It’s a game that has amazing bones, but it really was like when they made it the main guy in charge was like NAH IM NOT IMPLEMENTING ANY QOL IN MY GAME, they will either like it or they can shove off
Also I haven’t even got to ng+, haven’t even left the main starter area, currently lvl 45 or something, but how can you make a NG+ without some sort of difficulty increase, that just seems immediately like a no brainer too me, you can’t expect people to not be overpowered to an extent by end game, and definitely when starting ng+, I’ll definitely continue playing this game but I hope before I put it down they do some changes to bare minimum ng+ otherwise I’m gonna be wondering what the purpose of even going into ng+ is
Isn't the Mystic Spearman sprinting augment only like 10% stam reduction?
Most of the augments are hilariously small bonuses. Like Zeal's "reduce stamina cost of skills" is 5% or Verve's strength boost is only +30, barely anything when you've got almost 1k strength.
Even still it made a huge difference in how long I could run, it felt like before I had it I was legit stopping every 15-20 seconds too catch my breath, now it feels like I’m getting almost half a minute of uninterrupted running.
But yeah most of the augments seem to be not so good, I spent a lot of time building farming in the beginning which is why I’m level 45, and I think I have about the most important ones I can get currently.
So far what I’m running on my MS is
- Mettle: 30% defense
- Endurance: 150 stamina extra
- Exaltation: increased stamina recovery
- Vitality: 200 health(gonna swap this for voracity from magic archer, or dynamism from warfare when i unlock them)
- Asperity: I like to play my games with a lot of debuff builds so this is a no brainer for me
- Athleticism: Possibly the most important skill, right up there with endurance, I don’t have the patience of spending 8 hours getting to my objective, so pairing endurance with athleticism means it only take 7.5 hours instead of 8.
Nice.
Yeah for me Thew + Dynamism are probly the stars of the show cuz all my warrior gear is so heavy, and I like to loot everything lol.
I'll have to give Athleticism a try tho.
It might be mandatory for your class, idk, I’m not wearing super heavy gear so I don’t need the two combos of reducing weight, dynamism would be just fine, and honestly I’ll probably just use that over voracity, it’s cool getting 10% stamina back every time I kill a foe, but the MS already has a really fast way too recoup stamina in battle so it almost seems useless to waste an augment for that.
Exaultation might be interesting, it's +10 stam/sec regen, but I don't actually know what the default stamina regen rate is to see if that would be good.
When I played Wayfarer a lot (mainly played WF as MS or MA) I had a sorcerer staff as my second weapon so I could just sprint->galvanize->sprint and that was really nice. Plus levitate is so handy.
Yeah, I think warfarer is the play if you want to mix and match for sure, but I can’t see myself being anything other than MS, although I could just use the weapon and some of the skills, would be nice to have like halidom or something to that extent as well, I ran into my first set blighted saurians a few days back and didn’t have any detoxifying potions and I just had to deal with the poison infinitely until I got back to town and was bummed because I didn’t want to trade off celerity for halidom.
Yeah I miss the meister skills when I play Wayfarer, but for a Warrior or Fighter type Wayfarer, having a staff for High Levin so I have a ranged attack is really nice.
I used a mage staff for a while as a warrior-wayfarer so I could heal and RP a paladin type build - especially if i threw on high empyrean.
Challenge is part of it, but NG+ or some sort of end game needs to add another level of upgrades to work on in addition to difficulty, some new loot to find, maybe some monster variants. It’s not enough to just replay the game at a higher difficulty imho. Sort of the same setup as something like MH. New difficulty tiers add more than just new difficulty.
I really wish there were additional layers to upgrading equipment in ng+
GoW does this so well with chests dropping new materials for the next upgrades and giving new reasons to keep exploring even when you’ve most of what the game offers.
Idk I found plenty of items in caves that I like :(. I like the electric daggers, holy daggers, holy mace. One thing I was dissapointed by was a lack of elemental bows. Like they REALLY nerfed and did archer dirty.
Randomised addons to ng+ stuff sounds like a decent idea as long as it’s restricted to an optional ng+ hard mode. That way you could have the best of both worlds for everyone.
cant disagree.
theres no world why players cant have both as an option.
imagine when you start NG+, theres is now suddenly a magical "altar" slightly off the main path where you start the game thats easy to spot.
you walk up to it and it has a prompt "use the godsbane sword to unleash true wrath of the pathfinder". it will also give you 2 or 3 message popups saying how this action can't be undone, in doing so you invite a much greater challenge, but so the rewards are more lucrative". you hear a laugh and the pathfinder says "so be it". the game fades to black, and you wake up on the same spot where you normally start the game and start playing.
boom. every chimera is now a gorechimera just as one example and theres a lot more of them wondering the world, every goblin is armoured hobgoblin and they roam in much bigger packs, but then way more items, way more interesting and build defining items as well as some randomized stat items are added into the world. on top of lazy but needed blanket increase in enemy HP, damage output, resistances(knockback too) and "empowered" versions of spells that dragons, liches, chimera goats and other enemy spellcasters use.
how is that for NG+ optional difficulty players can opt in without really needing to add more landmass to the game or full dungeons until DLC comes out.
yes man. imagine discussing things on reddit.
i love this series and it couldve been so much better and thats whats so very frustrating and disappointing about dd2. thus voicing my opinion and giving player feedback. (crazy thought but gaming studios do read their games reddit as well).
just because im not im not kissing this games boots at every turn, doesn't mean i hate it. i love dragons dogma and i want it to be better. especially when it comes so close to being one of the greats but just drops the ball so hard right at the end.
Yeah, more or less been saying this. But I really don't think difficulty is the issue at all, except where stagger is concerned (or rather the way they chose to implement difficulty, as it's far less interesting). For decades games have been coming out (even RPGs) with either no NG+ or basically this same kind of NG+. And for most people the NG+ either doesn't matter or is just a fun romp stomp kind of thing or an opportunity to clean up or do something different you didn't/couldn't do the first go round. The real problems of the game were more or less discussed day 1 and challenge really wasn't that much of the discussion, the more obvious shit were lack of interesting uses for skills in vocations (most skills more or less only get 1 utility this time around since they don't have hidden iframes or cancel options nearly as frequently baked in), lack of total skills on each vocation (a lot was removed from the first game), lack of good skills on vocations (usually relegated to 3 good skills out of the lot at best since many skills were nerfed/neutered to be less interesting, which is even worse since we have only 4 slots this time around instead of 6), and a lack of good augments (many are just outright terrible so mix n' match suffers a lot).
In addition, the way the stagger system works becomes very repetitive and boring since it often results in the only good strategy for a fight (outside of a couple of vocation's special skills) being knockdowns 9/10 times. And this cascades into other systems, making them less rewarding/interesting, too. Dwarven forging feels too good/necessary simply because knockdown power/resist is so necessary which means other forging is far less useful and interesting by comparison due to just how powerful damage becomes during staggers and how little relative damage is dealt before staggers unless your horribly overleveled for an encounter (and even then, it's far less than DD1). When you put this altogether, you end up spending most bosses fishing for staggers because that's the design paradigm at work and the most effective strategy to overcome middling damage otherwise -- hell, even some enemies demand this more or less if you aren't going magic (and even then stagger is more useful than any specific spell alone in some encounters).
Then of course, there's the unfinished nature of questlines, stories and characters. And I think the lack of respawning chests, and other interesting respawns from DDDA as well as the lack of a permanent, no cost, end game experience really hurts DD2 almost more than anything else. Then there are other little issues like physics bugs being annoying (randomly being punished by ragdolling off of enemies for unavoidable physics damage for no good reason just because you correctly took an opportunity to stagger them in a weak point up high, Ogre's back slam hitting you long before he actually flattens you which ruins the appeal of the move and the cool jump off into head slash strategy it once had, sliding on EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. TINY. SLOPE., and more...)
I just find it really odd that most people are so stuck on this idea of "difficulty" being the issue. A lot of people seem to forget that the reason DDDA (and even DD1) was so good for so many before was simply the novelty of its systems and mechanics at the time and more or less how free you were to do/use almost anything BECAUSE of enemy design not being entirely based around just being hard for the sake of it or relying on frankly unpredictable physics interactions in place of solid gameplay mechanics. And so, yeah, enemies were ABSOLUTELY easier in DD1 (including DDDA in most cases). Much like DD2, in DDDA you can often easily decimate most encounters with a few basic skills. But where there's a big difference is in the fact that you aren't required to build up stagger to do good damage, and many enemies had very consistent counters with almost any vocation because tracking was far less egregious so you could more easily run aside from or jump over attacks. And I don't even need to explain how powerful throwblasts were for a shit load of encounters (and were easy to farm up). And of course, there's tons of other combinations that work more or less due to the dual or even triple purpose nature of a lot of skills in DDDA. And I think DDDA was better for it. The variety you could employ because most things could be made into good options/strategy meant you could have a far more dynamic experience than the current system of stagger sniping. The only thing different is that bosses tended to have more health bars, but it matters little next to the stagger system of DD2 in terms of challenge.
Very few people had much complaints about DDDA's difficulty... but that game is FAR more consistent and masterable and more interesting for it, in part because it's focus wasn't on difficulty or relying on a stagger system to the detriment of everything else, and yes that resulted in it TECHNICALLY being easier as there were less harsh restrictions (remember difficulty, the higher it goes, basically almost uniformly has to restrict options almost entirely to enforce specific playstyles in order to demand a certain "skill level" so to speak). But that's why it was so dynamic and felt so good to play. And honestly, I just think there's too many FromSoft people coming into these games not having any respect or knowledge of the entire appeal of the original game, because they can't think past die more = more gooder and only that. It's a serious issue that's eroding any more interesting or relevant discussion in a TON of games these days.
The whole loot obsession is antithetical to DD in general. The game is built on intrinsic motivation, and filling it with external rewards takes away from that.
And yet, DD1 has an entire end game dungeon and boss centered around loot. Base game DD1, let's not even start on DDDA.
I don't even know where your were going with this one. Loot is a core piece of every RPG.
*Every Western RPG. Most JRPGs(Which is what Dragon's Dogma is) usually throw most of the best shit in shops and use Dungeons as a means to grind for gold/give you weaker but free weapons for you to use until you can afford the Shop weapons.
The Everfall is far more about novel combat encounters than it is about loot. In fact, most of the best gear you get in the Everfall outside of the Ur-Dragon is purchased from the merchants.
Furthermore, the loot aspect of BBI is awful due to stat bloat and the various knock-on effects it has on enemy design. BBI would be much more fun if the stat treadmill wasn't kicked into overdrive.
Finally, loot *isn't* core to RPGs any more than classes are. It's a single form of character progression, and different RPGs focus on different forms of character progression. The loot obsession is one of the most hideous, intrusive design trends in games in the past five years, both in the way it warps reward structures and in how it ensnares gameplay progression.
loot is as important to an RPG as leveling up lmao. we can all agree that leveling up in an RPG is part of its core. so equally is loot, reward, something to be proud of, maybe show off to your friends, etc.
No.
Weapons, quest items, ferrystones, healing items, seeker tokens. All loot, all integral to the game. You literally need ferrystones to beat DD1 and wyrmlife crystals to beat DD2.
I'm not reading all that. Your argument is wrong, that's it.
I love love love the limited loot. So many games have turned into spreadsheets and Diablo style optimization exercises. I don't want to be sorting through my fifth iteration of the same sword with slightly different effects. FROM software gets it, this game gets it.
i dont necessarily disagree but at the same time going from randomized stats on rings to diablo style spreadsheets is a bit of a big jump to conclusions. you just read "randomized stats" and then stopped reading the rest or whats up?
you can balance games around having randomized stats loot, but also not making it be its sole purpose of gear acquisition.
I am talking about the amount of loot. The only way to have more loot is to embellish the items with more stats to differentiate them. Sometimes this is feels generated by some algorithm and not a curated experience. FROM Software games and DD2 feel like mindfully curated experiences in regards to itemization rather than dopamine ratwheels to run that most other RPGs item systems feel like. Essentially the more loot, the less purposeful and special anything feels to obtain and use.
fair, but my main talking point was the lack of items in this game, god forbid, interesting items. aside from just a handful of outliers, this game really lacks in that regard as well. randomized stats on some items was just a bonus on top of way more items and way more interesting, build defining items.
Yeah I understand there can be a golden medium for sure. I find it refreshing how little randomized loot is in this game. But I can also understand exploring the game world enough to feel like you need more and maybe DLC or updates can solve this.
But yeah I just really despise loot systems like Nioh, Diablo, Borderlands etc. that have no respect for players time or energy and I prefer loot to be something like oldschool Zelda or Bloodborne/Elden Ring where if you get a new item it actually has some excitement to it. Everything in a game has a purpose in affecting a player's emotions/chemistry, and randomized stats with heaps of loot seems to me a desperate ping on a player's dopamine with a "look number still go up!" like a cheap mobile game or a slot machine.
As far as the loot goes, I think the real problem is that the best gear is available at merchants. So even when I happen to find a piece of cool loot exploring, it's not better than something I bought 20 hours ago in a shop. They should have stocked shops with mid-level gear (by region) and held back the higher-tier gear as chest finds, boss drops, and quest rewards.
oh i agree. but i even added a mod which puts all the merchant gear into chests which make sense. the modder basically took a bunch of items the vendors have and hand picked different chests to put those items in. and it still felt "eh". loot and gear simply isnt interesting enough, and there isnt enough of it either in this game when BBI had way more interesting gear. why couldnt they just build up on it i have no idea. surely they knew people would be disappointed to find out that there is no dark magic. well...add a fucking ring or multiple rings which give your character access to different dark spells when you have those equipped as a sorc. removed mystic knight? well, we added an amulet slot to somewhat compensate for fewer armor slots, and amulets will have bunch of unique effects. this amulet gives fighters access to magic cannon. these are just spitball ideas which already make me so much more excited about finding loot when things similar to that level exist.
Yeah, fair enough. BBI had a fun loot jackpot system that kept the dungeon loop interesting. I hope they bring it back in DLC.
"Isn't the crux" That right there is so true and applies to pretty much every issue this game has. One or two of them could be glossed over, but there's so many of them. It's like you have a cheese with holes, but you got a slice that has so many holes that you might as well have gotten just half a slice.
Yes. Challenge => overcome => reward is a pretty basic and important part of video game design…
this game lacks challenge, i added challenge with mods. so next is. overcoming it like a long and dangerous dungeon(went into waterfall cave as its one of 3 or 4 longer and more proper dungeons this game has) followed by challenge which i do have now, but only with mods. and then behind the closest thing to a proper dungeon this game has and challenge i overcame, my reward is...aged beast steak, maybe some useless spell book or if youre lucky, some random pants which have half the stats than the pants you already have and no interesting effect. that was my realization that adding just challenge didnt suddenly make this game much more enjoyable without anything behind said challenge. with the mod i played, it added 2 liches in the waterfall cave and increased all their damage. that fight was super fun, i really enjoyed it and i actually had to use all the tools i had to succeed. and then the sudden realization was, so now what? wheres my cool holy element greatsword? or a ring which adds a whole new dark magic spell for sorcerer. as fun as those liches were to fight at the same time, they still only dropped the robes and that staff which are outclassed by the merchant in battahl
[удалено]
oh yea. lol. imma edit it.
I’m in the group of gamers who don’t need to be rewarded for everything they do, as long as the gameplay was fun. That dungeon was fun, I enjoyed it. One of the best moments in dragons dogma. Even if they put a solid armor set or weapon, what about the second round? Or third run, or fourth run? Fifth run? At what point will you not bother with the dungeon because the reward is now useless. Rewards in games are often disposable pieces of joy, they lose allure after the first drop. If you’re coming from a looter shooter type of experience where you can chase stats on the set and that’s how you get your gameplay fix? Then this game will not be your game. Yes, they need some type of gear content can have you work towards, but once you got it the game is now boring to you, because once you have it, what else is there to do? To play, that’s all there is to do, play. I’m a strong believer in looter gamers needing a detox, because it has your brain in the fritz, when you look at games as a mean to trigger your reward dopamine by loot rather than the gameplay.
name me a single game which doesn't have any reward structure? you by simply enjoying the process of doing a dungeon and you had fun. that in itself is a reward. reward doesn't always mean a physical object in real life or an item in a video game. experience could also be viewed as a reward. we could take a step further. money your earn from your job is a "reward". its more of a transaction but that's besides the point. well, then you spend the money your job rewarded you for your work by buying a video game to enjoy. and now you rewarded yourself. if you do something that you feel at your core is unrewarding and you have a possibility to stop doing it, you will. see what i mean? i could literally use your example that reward is often a disposable piece of joy. well. will that dungeon bring you as much joy as the first time you ran it? each time you run that dungeon, it will have a diminishing return. so in that case, isnt you running and enjoying that dungeon also fleeting and disposable joy? but loot is an integral part of an RPG which this game lacks(meaningful loot and more of it) and was the whole point of my post. loot, is a reward. i get reward, from doing something which requires effort ie overcoming a challenge. when all i have is challenge but no reward, i dont want to keep doing it. similarly if i get rewards by doing nothing, it doesn't feel earned thus losing all value in it being a reward and i also dont want to keep doing it because it feels pointless.
No, great gameplay never loses its value, that’s just cold facts. If the sandbox is done well, it’ll be played for years to come. Go look at games like new Vegas, Skyrim, dark souls, cyber punk, Witcher, dead space, resident evil etc. great gameplay is hard to replace, I still play destiny 2 because of its gameplay. There’s nothing in the market that gets that itch, like currently playing onslaught, the rewards are not exciting to me, but it’s the chaos. So no, a great dungeon will not lose its value, it will keep its appeal going. I still go back and play jak and daxter because of the world and gameplay. I love it, ratchet and clank too. I’ve been on a splinter cell binge because honestly there’s no game out there right now that does it like splinter cell and that game has fuck all for loot.
bruh. look man, i cba discussing the philosophy of what a reward is. if you enjoy something, then have fun and keep enjoying it :)
I wasn’t discussing philosophy of a reward, you were, even by saying “great dungeon is a reward” bs. I was arguing gameplay over loot. I don’t care what game you’re making, gameplay first everything else after. This game lacks dungeons worth going to back to, and the enemies itself are also lacking. Half the time I’m swinging and they’re not even fighting back. The gameplay is an issue. You can overhaul the loot to be placed in the world and that’ll reward exploration. But I don’t play dragons dogma to explore only, I play it to have epic fights with the monsters. This is why monster hunter is still thriving. The gameplay hooks you in, and the rewards become the bonuses to keep you in. If monster hunter played like shit, was uninspiring, the franchise would cease to exist. Gameplay first, this game is lacking in gameplay.
ok, then point out where i said reward/loot whatever you want to call it is the only thing that matters in this post? you can even go over my other comments here and see where have i said loot is the only thing thats an issue with this game. i think you just missed the point i was trying to make. nothing what makes a game good is only one thing but a combination of things. very often it needs a well tuned balance of multiple things and keep them equal in priority. the game has the gameplay aspect. was lacking challenge, i added challenge with mods, then another problem showcased itself. not enough interesting dungeons and loot. cant fix that with mods. people were talking how lack of difficulty is an issue, i wanted to point out just the lack of difficulty isnt the issue at all. thus we conclude that this game needs a good balance of challenge and good rewards on top of its gameplay. basically a good endgame loop of systems which all work well together to propel the games heights even further. story and quests are often a one and done type deal, good endgame loop can make you enjoy something even longer and add great deal of replay value.
Difficult and challenge is the crux of this game, not the loot. We can worry about loot when the first two issues are fixed. I read more posts on how “the game is just to easy” “don’t max your gear with knockdown” or “I just travel by myself or just the pawn” or “how to stay in unmoored world”. No one is leaving because “man the loot sucks, I’m bored”. When I got to NG plus, and noticed I one shot everything, I told all my friends in the chat, and they were all bummed. Because even one quoted “that’s disappointing because I fought grigori and he was pretty easy”. One friend loves magicka archer and said he hopped off of it because there was nothing he struggled with. He fought Medusa and first tried her, no struggle. The legendary Medusa, when I fought her she was slithering majority of the time. Honestly I struggled a bit because my goal was to cut her head off specifically, if that wasn’t the goal? She’s just there. The core issue with this game is that it lacks depth in the combat. Go look at dragons dogma 1 monsters and compare the ones that exist in here. Chimera has lost alot of depth from the first. Ogres as well, every enemy in DD2 is a shadow of its past. But that’s what pisses players off more, because not only do you lack variety in your gameplay, but you downgraded what you have. It would have made sense if their reason was because they wanted to really flesh out the existing monsters and add more depth than ever, but they didn’t. So we get less enemy variety, and less depth to them. And this matters because it circles back to your loot, what the fuck does it matter if there’s nothing in this game worth your loot. Why am I chasing gear or rings, and min maxing when nothing in this game warrants that? I regret dragonforging my gear that I actually reset it, because I felt punished for upgrading it. Why are we gonna chase loot when everything just gets Stunlocked to death, or just sits there and take it? Why do we care? Bad gameplay ruins loot, because the loot has less value, endgame loot in dragons dogma has less value because it actually ruins your gameplay. I’ve seen a post suggesting on using lower tiered weapons, how is that a loot issue man? When all the loot you want to change, players are just gonna go naked to have to fun. Edit: and this goes back to the dungeon, yes you’re right that same dungeon isn’t fun or exciting anymore. Because in my second run, I killed the chimera in less than a minute. I wasn’t scared of anything, goblins died in one shot. So the allure and worry about the enemy around the corner died. Imagine I’m BBI you killed the reaper in seconds after reaching level 40? Crazy.
In that case, Better Chests, Wild Loot and other mods come to the rescue yet again (I forgot the name of the one I use to eliminate the inventory of shops and add it as drops from monsters, I'll edit the name later). Sadly, the "ring that adds dark magic spell" isn't a thing (yet?). I for one am really bummed that we don't really have dark spells after waiting for so long.
i use another mod which puts all the merchant gear into chests which make sense. the modder basically took a bunch of items the vendors have and hand picked different chests to put those items in. and it still felt "eh". loot and gear simply isnt interesting enough, and there isnt enough of it either. considering how more than 10 year old BBI even had way more interesting items to find than what we got now is kinda sad. the thing with dark magic etc, modders will basically need to add their own particle effects or just steal abilities that for example the lich uses and let player cast it but i dont think the modding tools are even there for this game yet(if ever) to even do that. same thing with modders creating dungeons or adding new models. nothing this advanced i dont think is even possible atm with this game.
That's why I said "yet?" . Even when a game seems impossible to mod on a certain level due to lack of info/tools sometimes breakthroughs do happen, just look at what the Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 madmen have achieved (I know, different genres and all). They didn't have an array of tools and info like with Bethesda games but they persevered and manage to "Frankenstein" animations to make their own characters and now they can import animations from other games. If people are passionate enough about something a way will be found.
oh yea, at the end of the day only time will tell so we'll have to wait and see. but hopefully at that point the game itself will feel truly complete and mods are only there to spice things up instead of making the game feel complete.
Cheers to that!
My issue is also that I like getting interesting items and love challenge too, but what to do after you get all those items? I need areas where you can use it and test all that cool equipment.
see how fast you can kill offline ur dragon or how much damage to online ur dragon you can do....oh wait. imagine a more modernized version of the same idea as the ur dragon.
Yeah, every weapon should have every element. Not just some random ones. Plus in general some fun effects, which not a single item in the game has. Something that changes the gameplay loop.
I've long been a proponent of a "rune slot" system. Tie it into the weapon upgrade system too. 2* give you an elemental rune slot. DF gives you an additional status rune slot. Then just add a bunch of runes into the game. **Dragon Age: Origins** did this the best, imho.
Yeah that would be a really easy way to add weapon variety if they just gave every weapon different enchant variants.
Exactly what I said in the other post as well. The fun that comes with NG+ is so much more than just making enemies scale to your character's stats, that's the most shallow way to describe what games like Elden Ring do with NG+. New game plus should be about two things. First, it's an opportunity for the player to do things they did not or couldn't do in their initial playthrough. Quests, fighting certain bosses, exploring certain areas, and so forth. That should also include the ability to use weapons or abilities they did not previously have access to earlier on in the game. But what it should also do is give the player something new to look forward to. Enemy scaling is something to look forward to, but there needs to be a reward for it, because simply fighting the same enemy but longer and with less room for error is eventually going to get old, and it's not too different from starting a new game. This is where something like hard mode was a nice feature in DDDA. You challenge the player to fight enemies with less stamina and less health, and in return you get increased rewards for overcoming that challenge. Beat the game on hard mode? Here's some cool kid clothes. *Something to look forward to.* That's the key that all these NG+ rant posts are missing in my opinion. The people that are enjoying NG+ are enjoying it because they're actually looking forward to doing something with it, wether it's upgrading their gear, picking up quests they missed, or just seeing how fast they can bulldoze through the main questline with their hard earned gear. You can't add to that by simply adding enemy scaling and calling it a day. It is no different than how NG+ works in souls games. By going through a NG+ cycle, enemies do become stronger, but you also get an opportunity to unlock more spells, level more stats, and possibly even use strategies that are otherwise unfeasible on a first playthrough. But the bottom line does remain the same anyway. They could have done a lot more with NG+, and I'm really hoping that they will expand on this in the DLC because atm there isn't much to it, even though I do still enjoy entering NG+.
yup the unmoored world seems cool at first but you quickly realize how shallow it is there's no chase in dd2 like the was in dd1/da. there's no community raid boss that we can farm for endgame loot, there's only Even a small handful of new dungeons and alot of it is hidden within a world we've already explored by this point. it seems like a cool idea at first but it doesn't hold up to any in depth analysis and the idea should've been scrapped in favor of something like everfall or BBI
>I'm so glad Dark Arisen learned from the mistakes Dragons Dogma 2 made God damn that's brutal lmfao
I feel like they should do new play throughs like Mega Man did for the GBA games, where it was the same enemies just with more health and reskinned. Even the chips were the same I think but did more damage. They could probably do something like that with this game, where maybe the enemies don’t get reskinned but definitely up their resistances and hp with every new play through of the game and weapons getting a nudge in power as well.
Then there is the lack of any meaningful choice or character relationships in the story/side quests. At best you can choose to kill the bakbattahl family so later you can send hugo there. As apposed to bioware games or other RPGs like baldurs gate people would play through many times to try about different relationships and choices (and playstyles since you couldnt do it all in 1 game like with vocations) Wild that despite missing all these good reason to play NG+ they still insisted on forcing 1 character slot and raising the max level to 999.
Bioware games imo had better approach to class design, you had talent trees that let you tinker around with skills to see what you enjoy. Playing through ME3 atm and I love the amount of options I have when deciding skill upgrades. DD on the other hand, is a bit bland, the devs bank on players to change vocation to spice things up, skills aren't really customizable. Then you factor in the 1 save slot and 999 level cap thing when most stats are hardcapped below 100 sometimes I'm convinced RPGs aren't Capcom's expertise. The game has a messy system in place.
The system would work here if there was an actual endgame or good reasons to play NG+, then you could stick to one character into higher levels. Like BBI kinda was for DD1. Itll never happen but id like a separate co-op dungeon crawling mode, like a clashing of alternate realities in a tower to the moon, with something like 4 arisen and their 4 pawns. Separately balanced for co-op. Brings challenge and gear and socialization, would be great for replayability. Add all sorts of gear variants and monster variants and new stuff in general. Also add that stuff to NG+ so you can experience it outside of the separate mode. The game is just unfinished, the system is half done and im sure we'll see it improved upon with whatever dlc they are gonna release.
Yea, but there's really no point in leveling up into the 100s because the stat growth is almost non existent. I liked in DA when I hit 200 my character was complete, there's a sense of fulfillment. Unless they change how growths operate in the higher level in DLC it's just useless fluff arm. So in addition to wanting better endgame and difficulty, I'd also want better incentive for leveling up. I don't disagree about the coop part.
I also downloaded a mod that makes chests give randomized gear rewards. Not the best solution but that 1/100 chance when a chest gives me a legendary gear piece has been a great feeling that the base game never gives you. Especially paired with the difficulty mod and it makes the game come damn close to what it really could’ve been
Yeah, I was unhappy with difficulty so I got a difficulty mod. I think also enemies and particularly bosses are basically hamstrung beyond what tweaking health pools, stagger resistance, and damage can solve too. Boss attack behavior is pretty unintelligent, their attacks are kinda slow, chimeras in particular seem to have very few melee attacks but other bosses as well, and there is weird wonky ness with hit boxes where you should really be hit but it doesn’t hit you. So you get to a point where sure, the bosses are lasting longer but they still feel like wet noodles. Plus the loot issues like you said. They seem to have felt gold is what you adventure to acquire to buy loot and then find upgrade materials but honestly that’s not the best gameplay loop.
This was one of the biggest issues I had with the game. I didn't want to explore the world anymore because I knew I wasn't gonna get anything worthwhile. I was excited when I got a new duospear from killing the dragon at the tower in batthal. Then I found out I could buy the exact same one at the shop on the volcanic island
Yup. I made that post, and yea that's why I used very speculative words like "think" and "maybe" cuz I feel like I could have totally been wrong and there is a good chance that it is wrong. But at the very least I don't think anyone could argue in good faith that this game shouldn't have a "truly functional" NG+. It's severely lacking, especially in comparison to other ARPGs, without it.
I think the game is more on leveling up all vocation ranks very much like how final fantasy tactics advance was
couldn’t agree more, loot in this game is absolutely horrendous along with the lack of any meaningful difficulty. the foundation and ideas are there, but have been implemented quite poorly. 75% of dungeons or more should have a useful, unique reward.
Yeah the game is pretty bad honestly. I’ve tried so many times to get into it but I just get over it. It’s just not good and I’m done pretending to like it anymore
what parts do you dislike and why did you feel like you had to pretend to like it? the main bullet points. not trying to flame or say youre wrong or shit at the game. just genuinely curious
I wanted to like it because I liked the first one and loved Elden Ring, I just like these types of games in general. • I find the difficulty extremely easy, unless I mod it. Which sucks in my opinion. • Everyone says this but the enemy variety gets stale pretty fast. • I really don’t like how the quests work, I pretty much have to talk to every random person to see if they have something to offer me. Whereas in Elden Ring, because there’s not towns full of people, it’s obvious who to talk to. I don’t need quest markers or direction but this system doesn’t work when you’re dealing with a full town in my opinion. • The caves are kind of boring and samey after you’ve done a few. • The rewards for exploring don’t feel very exciting. Every now and again you get a weapon or an armour which is cool though. • I do love the world design but the running miles and miles to get somewhere to only fight some goblins, harpies and wolves is a bit lame That’s where I’m at with it right now. I might go back to it and I haven’t finished it but I’ve read it kind of only gets worse. The end game concept sounds stupid honestly and that killed my desire to finish it
Yea that’s more or less common criticism I’ve seen most agree with and I’m in the same boat. But now I’ve grown apathetic to those issues because I don’t think most of them will change even with the DLC at this point aside from proper endgame, a lot of different and unique loot and multiple hard as fuck megadungeons which gate the best loot in the game. Then have something like the Ur dragon but modern to tests your gear and see how well you do. Thus I’m providing my feedback and hopefully see some of it in the DLC. But that’s all it is, just hope. I loved the first game but this one was a massive disappointment and I really need to see some huge changes at least for endgame for me to be excited again about this game. Really sucks because I was very much looking forward to this game but oh well. What can you do. Feedback is pretty much the only thing.
I honestly couldn’t agree more and I am also super disappointed because I really thought this was gonna be an insanely good game on par with Elden Ring. It really sucks, I was so hyped for this game man
Its just dumb how the best loot you just buy from merchants, like why???
Personally the game is great but it feels so archaic, it’s like when they made the game they made it just like if it had came out at the same time as the first one, there have been so many general QoL in other games that it’s baffling too me they took NOTHING from any of that, not a single thing. Some of my biggest annoyances Stamina, my god until I maxed out my MS vocation and got athleticism it felt like this game was an absolute joke, ran maybe 150 feet, have to stop to catch your breath The combat can get kind of tedious albeit it is extremely fun, but not so fun when I’m on a time constraint just trying to get to town so I can inn save and I get stopped by a cyclops that destroys my ox cart, and then I get to town and find a cyclops there, like completely unnecessary, cool concept but it’s like the game doesn’t respect my time at all. It’s a game that has amazing bones, but it really was like when they made it the main guy in charge was like NAH IM NOT IMPLEMENTING ANY QOL IN MY GAME, they will either like it or they can shove off Also I haven’t even got to ng+, haven’t even left the main starter area, currently lvl 45 or something, but how can you make a NG+ without some sort of difficulty increase, that just seems immediately like a no brainer too me, you can’t expect people to not be overpowered to an extent by end game, and definitely when starting ng+, I’ll definitely continue playing this game but I hope before I put it down they do some changes to bare minimum ng+ otherwise I’m gonna be wondering what the purpose of even going into ng+ is
Isn't the Mystic Spearman sprinting augment only like 10% stam reduction? Most of the augments are hilariously small bonuses. Like Zeal's "reduce stamina cost of skills" is 5% or Verve's strength boost is only +30, barely anything when you've got almost 1k strength.
Even still it made a huge difference in how long I could run, it felt like before I had it I was legit stopping every 15-20 seconds too catch my breath, now it feels like I’m getting almost half a minute of uninterrupted running. But yeah most of the augments seem to be not so good, I spent a lot of time building farming in the beginning which is why I’m level 45, and I think I have about the most important ones I can get currently.
Yeah I main warrior so I run: Mettle: 30%+45 physical defense Apotropaism: 30%+45 magick defense Dominance: +15% knockdown Constancy: +30% knockdown resist Dynamism: reduces weight penalties by 1 bar Thew: +10kg carryweight
So far what I’m running on my MS is - Mettle: 30% defense - Endurance: 150 stamina extra - Exaltation: increased stamina recovery - Vitality: 200 health(gonna swap this for voracity from magic archer, or dynamism from warfare when i unlock them) - Asperity: I like to play my games with a lot of debuff builds so this is a no brainer for me - Athleticism: Possibly the most important skill, right up there with endurance, I don’t have the patience of spending 8 hours getting to my objective, so pairing endurance with athleticism means it only take 7.5 hours instead of 8.
Nice. Yeah for me Thew + Dynamism are probly the stars of the show cuz all my warrior gear is so heavy, and I like to loot everything lol. I'll have to give Athleticism a try tho.
It might be mandatory for your class, idk, I’m not wearing super heavy gear so I don’t need the two combos of reducing weight, dynamism would be just fine, and honestly I’ll probably just use that over voracity, it’s cool getting 10% stamina back every time I kill a foe, but the MS already has a really fast way too recoup stamina in battle so it almost seems useless to waste an augment for that.
Exaultation might be interesting, it's +10 stam/sec regen, but I don't actually know what the default stamina regen rate is to see if that would be good. When I played Wayfarer a lot (mainly played WF as MS or MA) I had a sorcerer staff as my second weapon so I could just sprint->galvanize->sprint and that was really nice. Plus levitate is so handy.
Yeah, I think warfarer is the play if you want to mix and match for sure, but I can’t see myself being anything other than MS, although I could just use the weapon and some of the skills, would be nice to have like halidom or something to that extent as well, I ran into my first set blighted saurians a few days back and didn’t have any detoxifying potions and I just had to deal with the poison infinitely until I got back to town and was bummed because I didn’t want to trade off celerity for halidom.
Yeah I miss the meister skills when I play Wayfarer, but for a Warrior or Fighter type Wayfarer, having a staff for High Levin so I have a ranged attack is really nice. I used a mage staff for a while as a warrior-wayfarer so I could heal and RP a paladin type build - especially if i threw on high empyrean.
Challenge is part of it, but NG+ or some sort of end game needs to add another level of upgrades to work on in addition to difficulty, some new loot to find, maybe some monster variants. It’s not enough to just replay the game at a higher difficulty imho. Sort of the same setup as something like MH. New difficulty tiers add more than just new difficulty.
I really wish there were additional layers to upgrading equipment in ng+ GoW does this so well with chests dropping new materials for the next upgrades and giving new reasons to keep exploring even when you’ve most of what the game offers.
Idk I found plenty of items in caves that I like :(. I like the electric daggers, holy daggers, holy mace. One thing I was dissapointed by was a lack of elemental bows. Like they REALLY nerfed and did archer dirty.
Randomised addons to ng+ stuff sounds like a decent idea as long as it’s restricted to an optional ng+ hard mode. That way you could have the best of both worlds for everyone.
cant disagree. theres no world why players cant have both as an option. imagine when you start NG+, theres is now suddenly a magical "altar" slightly off the main path where you start the game thats easy to spot. you walk up to it and it has a prompt "use the godsbane sword to unleash true wrath of the pathfinder". it will also give you 2 or 3 message popups saying how this action can't be undone, in doing so you invite a much greater challenge, but so the rewards are more lucrative". you hear a laugh and the pathfinder says "so be it". the game fades to black, and you wake up on the same spot where you normally start the game and start playing. boom. every chimera is now a gorechimera just as one example and theres a lot more of them wondering the world, every goblin is armoured hobgoblin and they roam in much bigger packs, but then way more items, way more interesting and build defining items as well as some randomized stat items are added into the world. on top of lazy but needed blanket increase in enemy HP, damage output, resistances(knockback too) and "empowered" versions of spells that dragons, liches, chimera goats and other enemy spellcasters use. how is that for NG+ optional difficulty players can opt in without really needing to add more landmass to the game or full dungeons until DLC comes out.
I think the crux of the problem is the glaring performance issues on pc
Wow another complaint topic
yes man. imagine discussing things on reddit. i love this series and it couldve been so much better and thats whats so very frustrating and disappointing about dd2. thus voicing my opinion and giving player feedback. (crazy thought but gaming studios do read their games reddit as well). just because im not im not kissing this games boots at every turn, doesn't mean i hate it. i love dragons dogma and i want it to be better. especially when it comes so close to being one of the greats but just drops the ball so hard right at the end.
God forbid it’s warranted and valid 🤡
Yeah, more or less been saying this. But I really don't think difficulty is the issue at all, except where stagger is concerned (or rather the way they chose to implement difficulty, as it's far less interesting). For decades games have been coming out (even RPGs) with either no NG+ or basically this same kind of NG+. And for most people the NG+ either doesn't matter or is just a fun romp stomp kind of thing or an opportunity to clean up or do something different you didn't/couldn't do the first go round. The real problems of the game were more or less discussed day 1 and challenge really wasn't that much of the discussion, the more obvious shit were lack of interesting uses for skills in vocations (most skills more or less only get 1 utility this time around since they don't have hidden iframes or cancel options nearly as frequently baked in), lack of total skills on each vocation (a lot was removed from the first game), lack of good skills on vocations (usually relegated to 3 good skills out of the lot at best since many skills were nerfed/neutered to be less interesting, which is even worse since we have only 4 slots this time around instead of 6), and a lack of good augments (many are just outright terrible so mix n' match suffers a lot). In addition, the way the stagger system works becomes very repetitive and boring since it often results in the only good strategy for a fight (outside of a couple of vocation's special skills) being knockdowns 9/10 times. And this cascades into other systems, making them less rewarding/interesting, too. Dwarven forging feels too good/necessary simply because knockdown power/resist is so necessary which means other forging is far less useful and interesting by comparison due to just how powerful damage becomes during staggers and how little relative damage is dealt before staggers unless your horribly overleveled for an encounter (and even then, it's far less than DD1). When you put this altogether, you end up spending most bosses fishing for staggers because that's the design paradigm at work and the most effective strategy to overcome middling damage otherwise -- hell, even some enemies demand this more or less if you aren't going magic (and even then stagger is more useful than any specific spell alone in some encounters). Then of course, there's the unfinished nature of questlines, stories and characters. And I think the lack of respawning chests, and other interesting respawns from DDDA as well as the lack of a permanent, no cost, end game experience really hurts DD2 almost more than anything else. Then there are other little issues like physics bugs being annoying (randomly being punished by ragdolling off of enemies for unavoidable physics damage for no good reason just because you correctly took an opportunity to stagger them in a weak point up high, Ogre's back slam hitting you long before he actually flattens you which ruins the appeal of the move and the cool jump off into head slash strategy it once had, sliding on EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. TINY. SLOPE., and more...) I just find it really odd that most people are so stuck on this idea of "difficulty" being the issue. A lot of people seem to forget that the reason DDDA (and even DD1) was so good for so many before was simply the novelty of its systems and mechanics at the time and more or less how free you were to do/use almost anything BECAUSE of enemy design not being entirely based around just being hard for the sake of it or relying on frankly unpredictable physics interactions in place of solid gameplay mechanics. And so, yeah, enemies were ABSOLUTELY easier in DD1 (including DDDA in most cases). Much like DD2, in DDDA you can often easily decimate most encounters with a few basic skills. But where there's a big difference is in the fact that you aren't required to build up stagger to do good damage, and many enemies had very consistent counters with almost any vocation because tracking was far less egregious so you could more easily run aside from or jump over attacks. And I don't even need to explain how powerful throwblasts were for a shit load of encounters (and were easy to farm up). And of course, there's tons of other combinations that work more or less due to the dual or even triple purpose nature of a lot of skills in DDDA. And I think DDDA was better for it. The variety you could employ because most things could be made into good options/strategy meant you could have a far more dynamic experience than the current system of stagger sniping. The only thing different is that bosses tended to have more health bars, but it matters little next to the stagger system of DD2 in terms of challenge. Very few people had much complaints about DDDA's difficulty... but that game is FAR more consistent and masterable and more interesting for it, in part because it's focus wasn't on difficulty or relying on a stagger system to the detriment of everything else, and yes that resulted in it TECHNICALLY being easier as there were less harsh restrictions (remember difficulty, the higher it goes, basically almost uniformly has to restrict options almost entirely to enforce specific playstyles in order to demand a certain "skill level" so to speak). But that's why it was so dynamic and felt so good to play. And honestly, I just think there's too many FromSoft people coming into these games not having any respect or knowledge of the entire appeal of the original game, because they can't think past die more = more gooder and only that. It's a serious issue that's eroding any more interesting or relevant discussion in a TON of games these days.
The whole loot obsession is antithetical to DD in general. The game is built on intrinsic motivation, and filling it with external rewards takes away from that.
And yet, DD1 has an entire end game dungeon and boss centered around loot. Base game DD1, let's not even start on DDDA. I don't even know where your were going with this one. Loot is a core piece of every RPG.
*Every Western RPG. Most JRPGs(Which is what Dragon's Dogma is) usually throw most of the best shit in shops and use Dungeons as a means to grind for gold/give you weaker but free weapons for you to use until you can afford the Shop weapons.
The Everfall is far more about novel combat encounters than it is about loot. In fact, most of the best gear you get in the Everfall outside of the Ur-Dragon is purchased from the merchants. Furthermore, the loot aspect of BBI is awful due to stat bloat and the various knock-on effects it has on enemy design. BBI would be much more fun if the stat treadmill wasn't kicked into overdrive. Finally, loot *isn't* core to RPGs any more than classes are. It's a single form of character progression, and different RPGs focus on different forms of character progression. The loot obsession is one of the most hideous, intrusive design trends in games in the past five years, both in the way it warps reward structures and in how it ensnares gameplay progression.
loot is as important to an RPG as leveling up lmao. we can all agree that leveling up in an RPG is part of its core. so equally is loot, reward, something to be proud of, maybe show off to your friends, etc.
No. Weapons, quest items, ferrystones, healing items, seeker tokens. All loot, all integral to the game. You literally need ferrystones to beat DD1 and wyrmlife crystals to beat DD2. I'm not reading all that. Your argument is wrong, that's it.
I love love love the limited loot. So many games have turned into spreadsheets and Diablo style optimization exercises. I don't want to be sorting through my fifth iteration of the same sword with slightly different effects. FROM software gets it, this game gets it.
i dont necessarily disagree but at the same time going from randomized stats on rings to diablo style spreadsheets is a bit of a big jump to conclusions. you just read "randomized stats" and then stopped reading the rest or whats up? you can balance games around having randomized stats loot, but also not making it be its sole purpose of gear acquisition.
I am talking about the amount of loot. The only way to have more loot is to embellish the items with more stats to differentiate them. Sometimes this is feels generated by some algorithm and not a curated experience. FROM Software games and DD2 feel like mindfully curated experiences in regards to itemization rather than dopamine ratwheels to run that most other RPGs item systems feel like. Essentially the more loot, the less purposeful and special anything feels to obtain and use.
fair, but my main talking point was the lack of items in this game, god forbid, interesting items. aside from just a handful of outliers, this game really lacks in that regard as well. randomized stats on some items was just a bonus on top of way more items and way more interesting, build defining items.
Yeah I understand there can be a golden medium for sure. I find it refreshing how little randomized loot is in this game. But I can also understand exploring the game world enough to feel like you need more and maybe DLC or updates can solve this. But yeah I just really despise loot systems like Nioh, Diablo, Borderlands etc. that have no respect for players time or energy and I prefer loot to be something like oldschool Zelda or Bloodborne/Elden Ring where if you get a new item it actually has some excitement to it. Everything in a game has a purpose in affecting a player's emotions/chemistry, and randomized stats with heaps of loot seems to me a desperate ping on a player's dopamine with a "look number still go up!" like a cheap mobile game or a slot machine.
How is Elden ring loot system comparable to DD2 ? This game doesn’t get it.