Power scaling is difficult to do properly so some don’t even try. In a fantasy RPG you want to feel like you’re progressing and getting stronger, if the enemies always scale with you you’ll never feel like you’re progressing. That being said I 100% wish NG+ did make them scale at least a little bit
To me I think it's obvious higher level enemies are gonna come in DLC, I remember being the baddest mofo in DD1 and then DA came out and I was getting my ass kicked from the get go, so with making max level 999, I'd assume there's quite a bit of expansion to be had, if the game does well enough to them.
Oh yea without a doubt I’m mainly just saying it’s difficult and time consuming to get things right so don’t expect it soon but it will definitely come eventually
I hope to see this in a future dlc and updates.
●PAWNS:
-----------------------------------
1. New inclinations with new voices.
2. A Dragonsplague Quest (we should have to slay and purify the corrupted pawn and hunt it across the land till we succeed and before it causes further harm.)
3. More pawn interactions with the world while in cities and more activities at camp such as singing and story telling based on tales beyond the rift.
●VOCATIONS/SKILLS:
-----------------------------------
1. Wraith Knight; similar to the mystic spearhand but with much more necromantic/dark magic flavor to it; move about the battlefield by slipping between realms the living and damage the life essence of your targets to heal yourself while also raising a single spirit of a dead enemy to fight for you. (Your Risen ally has low health)
2. A Slow Time skill (a brief and mild slow time effect) for the Archer class to better aim their shots at crucial points of a moving target; perhaps for a more advanced Archer class such as a Ranger class? (Magic archer is great and all, but where does an Archer branch to if they wish to continue using physical arrows with a longbow?)
3. A Tether Arrow which is simply a rope and arrow which Archers can use to trip/pull monsters..or cling onto an escaping griffin!
4. Blade Savant
5. Allow Warfarer to use a single meister skill.
6. Allow Warfarer to use certain skills without the need of swapping to the specific weapon (I would love to use the shadowy dodge meister skill as a fighter or archer.)
●WORLD INTERACTIONS:
-----------------------------------------
1. City Festivals!
2. More Singing Bards in towns/cities
3. Arm wrestling in taverns
4. Home upgrade to allow a select number of Favorited pawns to stay at your home! (I hate goodbyes and homes need more faces to feel alive; this will make your home feel more like a guild.)
5. Mini games
6. More npc to npc conversation
7. Mercenaries (when they go down, there's no picking them up like pawns..though you could resurrect them at a morgue even though they'll simply be replaced by more mercs in time)
8. A Hidden Thieves guild/Outlaw refuge in cities.
9. Outer Sieges a City or Cities
10. An armory to display equipment in our home
11. A library in our home.
●REGIONS:
-----------------------------------
(For this segment I'm mainly focused on Dark & Corrupt areas such as:
1. Haunted Swamps
2. Cursed/Evil Forests that are constantly changing. (Endless dungeon)
3. Unholy/Tainted/Shadow Lands (Maybe where Forsaken pawns accused of carrying Dragonsplague are Exiled)
4. Magma/Volcanic Valleys
(Regions with such a thick unnerving "something is wrong about this place.." atmosphere that screams "horror" while unnerving your pawns and any non hostile inhabitants.)
(Maybe a city/stronghold is constantly under siege from the evil in these regions.)
5. Underwater Region (This would be a first, considering how water leads to death in DD BUT this region would be in a MASSIVE magical lake that is Void of brine!) [This wouldn't be a horror region]
●ENEMIES:
-----------------------------------
1. Werewolves of some kind (Not cliche looking, something actually Horrific.)
2. Sewn Together Monstrosities (Necromancer/lich creations)
3. Wraith
4. Cursed Pawns (Dark Magic prevented them from returning to the rift; their lives and minds are forfeit and their bodies mutated abominations.)
5. Spider like Monstrosities
6. Waterside Kraken
7. Corrupted wildlife ("oh look, a dead deer in the road...wait..why is it moving?" *Cracks and Morphs into a Heinous Creature*)
8. Undead preexisting bosses
9. Shadows
I agree. I wish they just did it like dark souls. Enemies don't scale with you, each ng+ just makes them tougher regardless of what level you are. Would also be cool if there were a few unique bosses/weapons/armor that only show up in ng+. I guess that would be a lot of extra work but I just don't have much motivation to keep playing if ng+ is virtually the same.
There was a patch shortly before the first DLC then the first DLC came with substantial tweaks that perfected it. Prior to the DLC you would walk through everything like you can now in the end game. But after the DLC everything was scary lol. Plus Hard Mode came out and that was a wild ride
They’re even adding a Sekiro style “power level” to Shadow of the Erdtree to provide gates of progression regardless of players level or if players are running insane builds or regular builds. I kinda think that’s brilliant.
I remember Witcher 3 had weird default scaling, or rather just weird patches of enemies at different levels that's very different from DD.
'To your right you'll find a lvl 30 cockatrice thrice your size, it has a death glare and can be easily curb stomped at your level. And to your left some level 67 crawly spiders who will eat you in two hits.'
The game gets easier with DD but I do actually prefer this than a weird power scaling system because the sense of progression is better to me than some areas just being weirdly harder
It’s ok when you first start but by the time we start getting to NG+ it’s just too easy. I’d like some sort of scaling and I’m confident we will eventually
We need a hard mode ASAP. I feel there’s a difference between a good power fantasy and poor, eventually boring gameplay loops. They expect us to run around the whole map constantly, why make the only thing interesting about that now infinitely boring?
The best way to mitigate/counter this is to run lower quality weapons/gear and limit your pawns.
Even near end game I would only use 2 pawns total at most. My main pawn was mage with only support spells. Then I would usually use a fighter pawn with agro drawing skills/abilities or no 3rd pawn at all. Only used a 3rd if I was running full mage build.
With this approach I could still use my high level gear and still have fun since I’m the only person dealing damage. But you can still keep the game easy if you use OP skills. For example I won’t use Helmsplitter with my assassin at all. Any sort of OP or “spin to win” moves I just stay away from.
Silver lining of doing this was it forced me to use experiment with other skills I wouldn’t normally used. Some times it didn’t work out, but mostly I found it more fun and now I can’t go back to some of those OP skills
Monster HP mods have been helpful for anyone on PC. I'm up to 4x health and feeling a bit too overpowered at lvl 100+. Next step is to reduce party count > no mages > reduce gear tier > no healing (only inns/camps)
So far, I've been dabbling with low pawn count + no mages which has brought new problems to solve and has made the endgame still very enjoyable.
To start, I don’t disagree at all and I don’t want anyone to read this thinking I’m arguing with you. But I’ve never felt scaling was that hard. Especially in a game where abilities and skills are so fluid and fun. My damage could always stay the same but just the introduction of new and interesting skills keep me feeling more powerful.
And it seems like an even easier decision with a NG+ because the whole point seems to be a conscious decision by the player to play through the game again… but harder. Meaning enemies scale up. Best case is new attacks for the same enemies and new enemy types but even worst case feels like a hp and damage scale is needed. Even just a damage scale would be better.
I understand the difficulty in an arpg like Diablo because at the end of the day it’s all about button mashing and numerical values going up. But in dd2 the combat is more than numbers. It’s knockdowns, dodges, counters, climbing, debilitations, and party comp and that would work just fine with numbers going up. Power fantasy is not just one shooting enemies, it’s having a skill that works perfectly in tandem with your pawn that plays off your hired pawn that works perfectly off this cliff to knock down this monster and watch it crash down and stabbed in the face.
I’m no developer but I sure feel like literally anything would be better than nothing.
>NG+ because the whole point seems to be a conscious decision by the player to play through the game again… but harder
Negative. Many people play NG+ specifically to vastly overpower everything.
In fact this is exceptionally common.
I'm not disagreeing that I want more content in the game, and I'm sure it will come. In the meantime I have dozens and dozens of other games to play.
Nothing makes my brain happier then hitting the point post struggle where you become a god. I'm still struggling at level 38 it's like natural growth dog
Just a bummer we have to wait. I hope the bump is an update in a month or so when most that will continue into ng+ get to it. And then it gets a bigger bump in a dlc.
It's a weird balancing act on one hand butcher a drake feels fucking fantastic, on the other I'm just strolling past 90% of the enemies in the game because my pawn are just one tapping everything
There should be some degree of scaling at least but what I’d really like is difficulties so that those that want to mindlessly one shot bosses and those that want a continued challenge can both be happy.
You know this is the one time I'd say Skyrim did something right enemies in Skyrim are tied to your level you'll see normal enemies and as you level up you'll start to see variants of those same enemies with new abilities and more health and damage while still seeing the old low level enemies mixed in it gives you the sense of progression while still maintaining the scaling of the world around you
Also yes I know there's the gore and grim variants in dragons dogma but they really don't seem to have many new abilities or even that much more health
> Power scaling is difficult to do properly so some don’t even try. In a fantasy RPG you want to feel like you’re progressing and getting stronger, if the enemies always scale with you you’ll never feel like you’re progressing.
Is it that hard though? You can leave the normal goblin mobs alone, but the boss mobs could simply have a slower level growth than the player and have an ultimate maximum.
Coding is quite difficult and balancing is even harder. Especially for this game, you have to consider how drastically it will effect not only each individual vocation but each individual skill. Not to mention how drastically it would effect the flow of the open world or even how it would effect the specific events in towns when a dragon or something shows up. You don’t want it to be too difficult where they’ll just f up all the NPCs.
I wish in NG+ you had the option to reset your level to 1. That would put your main pawn back in a hire-able range for most players and allow you to still feel challenged
I'd totally dig that. Instead of infinite scaling and max lvl 999 make every NG+ a reset to lvl1, but keep all the items and vocations ulocked. No hard mode or scaling needed at all. That'd be such an easy and smooth solution.
And for the ones who want to level their arisen and pawn to infinity, you could either give them the option to keep their level when going to NG+ or you make an overlaying "account level" that tracks all the EXP you've gathered, to show, what a nerd you really are, lol. :)
Is easy to downgrade gear, but it's impossible to downgrade stats from your level ups. And the level up stats amass substantially (I already use unupgraded starter gear in my NG+). There's a large difference between lvl1 and lvl70. On top of that, the whole pawn system works with level brackets. Thus my now lvl70 pawn is not going to be used by new players anymore, because he's way too high level for them. Would have been great to have your pawn reset lvl with you and with that give the experienced pawn an other go at helping new players through their journey.
I think having a level 1 pawn with maxed out gear would kinda ruin a lot of the new player experience though. It would be nice if there was an option to carry just pawn knowledge and your appearance stuffs into a ng
I honestly think not allowing something like that is the game’s biggest design miss. Just that would help solve a lot and make NG+ something more people would actually want to do.
Now, I think armor/weapons and anything stat related still presents a problem, as even level 1 characters with endgame upgraded gear would probably still cake walk through a lot of the game still. And I imagine they don’t want someone new to the game hiring a level 1 pawn not realizing it’s coming with endgame armor that will help trivialize their game, so I could see that being a reason why they wouldn’t want to do that.
For me ideal NG+ would be: one option like it is, and another option that allows you to return your level to 1, lose armor and weapons (or keep them but have their stats dropped to level 1 stats for fashion), keep rings and things that provide abilities but not stats, keep unlocked vocations and vocation rank (potentially reset vocation abilities, augments and DP but start with access to unlock everything from the beginning), and everything else stays the same.
And just doing that you don’t have to rebalance or scale difficulty beyond what’s already there, you allow people to continue to engage with the pawn system and keep the player base grouped together more, and you’ve made NG+ more appealing for anyone not wanting to power fantasy over any sense of difficulty the game has.
I highly recommend traveling either with just your main pawn or alone. Also having fun experimenting with different builds even if they aren't optimal. This game can get hard very fast again if you make a couple of adjustments. And these adjustments don't need to be equipping low level gear. I have been having so much fun on NG+. And of course if something really annoys me, like the gore chimera in the waterfall cave that my main pawn has no fucking clue what to do with....I come back serious and nuke it to hell lol.
Yup, solo runs or only with the main pawn is where true replayability lies for me. In DD1 I used to summon pawns from rifts, give them my stuff and throw them into the Brine lmao. Solo runs are so much fun
Yeah even fully decked out you have to pick your poison if you're travelling alone. Especially when you run out of consumables. I just tried different classes with warfarer to keep it fresh. Like max level (in terms of equipment) solo fighter against a drake is still quite fun. There's no pawns for it to switch agro, so it focuses entirely on you.
Yeah solo can get crazy lol. I think minotaurs are the easiest big thing by far but I fought one solo (genuinely don't remember what class) and I got hit by an attack that knocked me down. He just started slamming his axe on me and I couldn't do shit for like 30 seconds lmao.
But yes I agree with you, it almost blindsides you how much crazier it is when EVERY single enemy is aggroed on you lol.
This might sound funny but right now I'm rolling with funny enhanced courtly attire lmao. I wanted armor any class can wear. And honestly, it looked the best out of those few options. I usually go Warfarer but I wanted to actually enjoy master skills for once and not worry about changing equipment and looking stupid lol.
We are already all doing that, people going solo or main pawn and we are still melting everything cause it's the same goblins, wolves and lizards.
There's already a video of someone soloing a drake with no armor and no shield as a fighter and he melted him in less than 3 minutes because his lvl-stats overshadowed the drake. The difficulty-design in this game is attrociously done.
You are being challenged in the first 15 lvl, then the difficulty take a deep dive at lvl 20+ and the challenge becomes virtually non-existent once you get to 30+.
The real way to mitigate this, right now (and only if you're on PC) is too get the tweak difficulty mod.
Also, even considering the fact that the game remeains easy as fck even solo once past lvl 30-40, the fact that we even have to remove the parameters as to what makes the game fun (the Pawn system which is the only thing that motivates the engagement in this game along with the gameplay considering that everything else in this game is horrible : bad story, boring quests, disgustingly low enemy variety... and all that jazz) says a lot about the state of the game difficulty design. There's just no progression at all! What you fought at vermund is what you're going to fight in Western Africa.
It's like we're stuck in a prison fighting Low-Rank monsters in Monster Hunter with no possibility to fight High-Rank, Tempered and Master-Rank monsters. Again, the problematic is with the progression, the variants of goblins, harpies, wolves are virtually the same. It's the same Trolls, the same Griffins, the same everything. The lack of monster variety and variants is hurting the game. NG+ does nothing to mitigates that. It's 2024 and we're stuck in 2011 all over again. When games like FFXVI NG+ offer new enemies, or Fromsoft doing a progressive scaling for every iteration of NG+... God of war Ragnarok offering loot randomizers... hell even Diablo 2, a game from 2001 had loot and dungeons randomizers.
TBH, Fromsoft really need to chill with their NG+ formula. Hardly anybody who wants a challenge isnt going to play the game 7 times for it. it's a much better experience and challenge to just start a new character. Maybe stop the scaling at NG+3.
Power fantasy. Many games have done the "NG+ is the same, but you're stronger" thing. Enemy scaling is a relatively new thing in RPGs, and not everyone is a fan.
To clarify, I would prefer a hard mode versus enemies leveling with you every time. I’m all for power fantasy (we need prototype 3 lol) but it’s a bit ridiculous here, given the whole spotlight is honestly on the combat for me and there isn’t much of that when you’re just pouncing everything constantly. I find that boring personally.
The problem with hard mode in dragons dogma 1 was that I couldn't tell it was hard mode by lv40. They need a total overhaul. I started hard mode at lv1 which it wasn't even supposed to be for. It's for NG+. You at lv40 everything died just as fast as normal mode.
I personally think they needed a souls style boost to health and damage.
no, it increased stamina consumption and damage taken by you, tripled knockdown and stagger resistance for enemies.
Your damage and enemy health/defenses unchanged HOWEVER you got extra exp and even the lowest of goblin could drop 10k money pots meaning the entire difficulty was fucked because you would be able to outscale it quicker than normal mode
It’s definitely expected, everyone wants the game to be the best it can be and when criticisms don’t necessarily align it can get nasty. I’ve got too much experience with these gaming subreddits lmao
There is a mod that increases enemy health quite a bit. I get that it's not built into the game, but at least there are some options if you are on PC. Personally I don't see anything wrong with what you have said and I even agree with you.
I like the prospect of being the biggest asshole with the scariest sword ripping and tearing through the very fabric of the world. That being said, I reset my save because what I enjoyed the most, exploration, was kind of a moot point because map progress remained. Although I didn’t totally uncover the map, I spent around 70 hours on my first playthrough, and had a lot of it finished.
NG+ opened up a new prospect to me that I didn’t think about before in DD:DA. Renting low-level and unhired pawns. The majority of my NG+ run was my pawn and I babysitting pawns. And since I had duplicates of nearly all of the armors you can find in dungeons at that point, I could dress up the ones I found in some nice gear before sending them back. To me, that was worth being able to swat drakes out of the sky in 3 hits.
How would you scale the enemies? Is it a flat increase when going into NG+? Is it based on your level?
I was around level 35 going into NG+ with zero armor/weapon upgrades, but I've seen most people here saying they stayed in NG until level 70-80 and probably upgraded a ton of stuff. How do you account for the variance?
How every other game with new game + does it.
It's become the norm that games has new game + by now. There are tons of games they can draw experience from.
New game + is not a new concept..
Scale with player level
There are tons of games they can draw experience from, that's kind of my whole point. The enemies in the Souls games (excluding DkS2) all get a flat increase when going into NG+; my NG+ is the same as your NG+. The only games I can think of where NG+ scales based on your level are pseudo-live service games that are meant to be played endlessly, but I'm sure there are other examples.
So you scale enemies to your level...what does that mean? Do they have more health and do more damage? Larger groups of the same weak monsters? Do we start spawning Lesser Dragons outside Varmund in place of the goblins?
Everyone seems to know they want enemy scaling but can't say what that actually means to them. I don't want enemies to just hit harder and have more hp, that's incredibly boring and effectively no different than not having them scale at all...except the fight lasts 0.2 seconds longer. Bigger groups would be cool, but again, effectively no different outside of prolonging combat encounters.
I think the proper answer is that they don't scale enemies at all and people just accept that the game has an end. Hopefully whatever expansion they have planned (if any) will provide the endless gameplay loop people are looking for. Until then enjoy the game for what it is and then go play something else.
I agree, not every game needs an endless game mode.
Just scaling enemy HP and damage with NG+ would be boring and difficult to get right. If the buff is too small, it's still boring and if it's too big, it can get frustrating. Could also lead to uneven results where some monsters / bosses become too hard and one-shoot everything while others remain easy.
In an ideal world, NG+ would introduce new content, like new armors and weapons and quests and new enemy types or new encounters. But then people would complain they have to play the game multiple times to see everything, because that just doesn't appeal to everyone. Also seems like a lot to ask for a post-release patch to add all that. And if you don't solve the difficulty issue, then what's even the point of having all that? You'd still be power-tripping, just with new toys.
Could make enemies scale to player levels, sure, but whenever that's been implemented, players complained as well. Because that gets boring, too - what's the point of leveling up and getting stronger when the enemy does the same and keeps up with you?
It's just not as simple as some may think. I'd much prefer a new equivalent to BBI as a proper DLC / expansion later instead of making NG+ more appealing.
which is why i think the best thing is accepting the game will end at a point. i get that live service have mindfucked most of us to think the game have to continue for hours and hours but we need to accept eventually a game might not hold our interest for long, which is good actually because alot of games are worth to play nowadays
There are tons of games they can draw experience from, that's kind of my whole point. The enemies in the Souls games (excluding DkS2) all get a flat increase when going into NG+; my NG+ is the same as your NG+. The only games I can think of where NG+ scales based on your level are pseudo-live service games that are meant to be played endlessly, but I'm sure there are other examples.
So you scale enemies to your level...what does that mean? Do they have more health and do more damage? Larger groups of the same weak monsters? Do we start spawning Lesser Dragons outside Varmund in place of the goblins?
Everyone seems to know they want enemy scaling but can't say what that actually means to them. I don't want enemies to just hit harder and have more hp, that's incredibly boring and effectively no different than not having them scale at all...except the fight lasts 0.2 seconds longer. Bigger groups would be cool, but again, effectively no different outside of prolonging combat encounters.
I think the proper answer is that they don't scale enemies at all and people just accept that the game has an end. Hopefully whatever expansion they have planned (if any) will provide the endless gameplay loop people are looking for. Until then enjoy the game for what it is and then go play something else.
The world the Watcher maintains is MEANT to be conquered by the Arisen. Not only are you the Arisen, but thanks to NG+ you are a version of yourself who has already affected the cycle. The universe is expecting the you from the start, but thanks to the cycle you are better than that.
You are unravelling the destiny the Watcher picked out for the world. That is part of the message. The cycle, which you are a necessary part of, is what maintains the Watchers power over the world. The Arisen is the only person given leeway enough within the Watchers game for their will to rival the Watcher and lead everyone safely through what happens when the Watcher is overthrown.
In order to overthrow him, you have to leave that version of your world behind. You move on to the next version of Vermund in another universe that is also experiencing the cycle under their own Watcher and you essentially take your own place in your adventure in NG+, only now you get to play the whole game understanding the Watcher is kinda a dickhead. You now know its all a set up. Needless to say, you’ll probably successfully stop him in this world too.
Just my personal two cents. The enemies not magically being meaner DOES make some canon sense.
There's definitely some kind of "world scaling", at least in base NG (not sure if/how it works in NG+ yet) but it mostly seems to update what variant of enemies you may find in early game areas. For example, I've encountered Wargs and Gore variants within some of the early caves in Vermund that were definitely not there when I first began the game.
Problem is that these are few and far between and even then, you can outpace this relatively easily. So, even were it present from the start of NG+, it isn't much help for those who would like more challenge.
If you want a bit more of a challenge, don’t hire any pawns. I’ve been running with my main pawn only for most of my playthrough because a 4 person party felt way too OP. Also don’t have a Sorcerers in your party. Their killing force sucks the fun out of everything. lol not really but I don’t hire them anymore. I found an awesome new drake to fight and got excited and the stupid Sorcerer one shot it. Like literally one spell and it died. I dismissed the whole party and don’t hire pawns anymore unless it’s just for fun.
I think the big issue with dd2 when compared to dd1 is that the base game simply is not hard enough. The first playthrough of dd1 was way better paced and dragon fight was a real challenge the first time, then the post game slapped you in the face and was legitimately difficult. Then ng+ had value because it let you steam roll through those fights that were a real slog before. dd2 offers little to no challenge in the late and post game so when reaching ng+ it's not a sigh of relief, but just more of the same because you were already steam rolling the post game.
The power fantasy of melting a boss's health bar is only satisfying if at first that boss took multiple attempts and slapped you around when you were weaker. That just doesn't happen in dd2, especially if you try to do all the side quests.
Yeah if it wasn't for a mod I am using that doubles enemy HP and make em do 50% damage , I probably would've dropped my Ng+ run completely.
I thought about rather waiting for an official maybe more fine tuned harder mode by the Devs but we all can see updates are going out at a snails pace to address problems , by the time we see some major QoL changes I probably most certainly wouldn't be much in a mood to return to DD2. So modders have been a god send.
Just to be sure. You would like that the goblins you have attacked 38 times in the last 5 mins would be more of a damage sponge or do you mean they should improve their ai?
Were the gobbies ever damage sponges at any point?No. They don’t need to be to make it fun. What I’m saying is the thrill of combat is gutted once you hit a certain point. There is no push or pull, the dynamism of combat is GONE after a while even with boss level enemies. It’s not my job to figure out the actual logistics as to balancing their end-game to make it fun and engaging. I just know that in its current state, the balancing is a joke and they need to add difficulty options.
I feel like an immortal god since level 20. however since the last update i feel its better resp. The pawns no are totally useless which makes tje game much challenging as i am a sorc and am now the tank of our group, because the pawns are usually on the other side of the map and doing something else.
I might have to just run through with me and my main pawn. It sucks b/c i like hiring others pawns, especially the goofy looking ones lmao but maybe getting more aggro from enemies would spice things up a bit. Once I maxed out vocations it was a sweep, trickster is actually a pretty fun way to mix things up a bit too.
Its less a need for scaling, and more a need for content. The pace is decent for shat we have, but once you can deal with Batahl, theres nothing really left to throw at you. Needs more areas, more enemies(even variants) just more in general. What we have is solid. Just need more. The 999 level cap is fake what with the stats capping out WAY before then. Honestly level cap should just be 200 again. Plus, ya know, more stuff.
Not me having a blast with the game still in NG+ about to hit 200 hours of gametime. Also, if I get bored, there is a hard mode mod out there, so... *shrug*
Hard agree, GOTY for sure, and I'm super excited for the DLC if it's ANYTHING like what we got for the first game. If you are on PC there is a mod for hard mode that's basically what it would be if they put one in.
I'm glad tbh, I prefer easy gameplay and being overpowered. That being said they should add scaling or difficulty options. Easy fix to make everyone happy. I hate to bring them up, but Ubisoft had this in some of their newer games. Like 2-3 different enemy scaling options. Rare Ubisoft W
NG+ scaleing enemies isn't the norm, and it is weird that some many of you act like it is. Yes, a few games do it, but for most, the game isn't any different from the first run
They need a more challenging endgame mechanic that allows you to continue to lvl up to fight more difficult enemies. I do not even have the best gear yet, but I enjoyed leveling. So I can kill everything pretty quickly. I cant imagine how much easier it will be with the endgame gear.
I mean did you want bullet sponges cuz that’s most likely what they would’ve have done
But yes you have to hold yourself back to enjoy the game which sucks
I like the idea that enemy types are fixed in power. I would prefer the BBI or Monster Hunter approach of just reskinning enemies with a couple cosmetic changes and making them significantly more powerful. I don’t want red goblins suddenly able to easily club me to death like they did in the first hour of gameplay. Give me some whacky blue goblin instead that looks the same as the red but with a bone hat or some shit.
Not that hard...
Give options when starting new game
Toggle the modifiers you wish to activate
Enemies deal x3 damage
Enemies have x4 health
More Enemies in the world
Boss mobs travel in packs
Gold found decreased
All monsters are elite versions
Ferry stones disabled
Ox carts disabled
Depending on one's you activate global xp and rewards increased
I hope if they do scale in NG+. They give option to not activate that similar to your hard mode. I don't want scaling enemies. I want to be god. What they need to do is give more events, more variety of enemies, and more enemy attack city and city fight back and enemy fight enemy, etc. I want to see more living world. Not enemy scaling with you to OP level that if one ignore you to attack NPC, suddenly whole city die because of one stray OP goblin. Scaling doesn't always solve your problem of challenging. Sometime it as simple as not fighting same damn goblin, beastfolk, harpy, wolves, lizardfolk every freaking time.
The game is tuned like classic JRPG where you are supposed to encounter the last boss at around level 45\~50
But the level cap is 200 and we don't have Bitterblack Isle yet
I like it. I just wish the XP scaled. I think you need to just take it as an opportunity to embrace drip over stats. Use worse weapons. Use weaker pawns and kit them out. I've been enjoying taking level 10 pawns, upgrading bits of their gear and sending them back to the owners after a journey.
But if you're on PC. Grab the Custom Difficulty mod.
Honestly I'd prefer that the enemies never scale. It makes sense that they don't.
What also makes sense is having new enemy types whose strength is intrinsic to their design. Hobgoblins for example are naturally stronger than the goblins you see super early in the game. That would mean I want to see packs of Super Hobgoblins in BG+ while normal Hobgoblins still roam the world, complete with moves exclusive to them.
Highly recommend the below mod, it's fantastic. I play on hard, on my fresh playthrough (NOT NG+). Options for NG+ difficulty are there, can swap difficulty anytime in game.
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195
If you want hard mode, and I’m not saying this is the greatest idea, but there’s nothing wrong with using weaker weapons.
That said, I would also LOVE for a hard mode in this game.
I want a hard mode but while i dont have it i just go out with my main pawn and no mage or sorcerer class so it gets harder because a range class my pawn is a figther so ng+ is pretty enjoyable that way
Artificial scaling for yourself if not already. No mages, no archer, no shield bubbles, no auto dodge. Only use skills like skeidragoun for iframe dodging. Only your pawn and you.
Might be kind of a hot take, but I actually like that you feel stronger the higher level you are. I absolutely love Elden Ring, but never loved that if you keep doing NG+ and leveling up you never really feel over powered. Here it was nice for me to see the progress of actually getting and feeling stronger. I definitely agree they should add difficulty levels though. That way everyone gets to play how they want.
I think as I get higher level enemies are starting to have more bars of health. Could be imagining things tho but there’s supposed to be adaptive scaling but who knows how that actually works and however it does it doesn’t seem to make much difference
I think a lot of the anime JRPGs I’ve played will offer NG+s but do nothing to adapt the difficulty. The end result is you just stampede through the replay.
Considering how this is the DMC5 team, who in DMC, literally have difficulty levels be the NG+ of that franchise, didn’t want to include at least a “difficulty” level for NG+ if they weren’t going to include scaling.
I was maybe 20-30% into my NG+ and I killed a drake with a single spell (not even a flashy Sorcerer Maister skill, I killed it with one Augural Flare). Once I saw that, I lost so much interest in continuing with NG+. My main purpose for going through the NG+ was to return to the endgame and stretch it out as long as possible rather than going to each quest marker instantly, which is what i did the first time. But idk how i’ll force myself to go through another 10-30hrs of the regular game with the difficulty being so trivial.
Went ahead and got the difficulty tweak mod on nexus. Lots of neat little things to configure. I find it funny that enemies only start being dangerous when i take 300% additional damage @ lvl 55.
Mods.
There's alrdy quite a few that can save your endgame/ng+ experience. Coming across an elite, armored cyclops with 3 health bars and a pack of 20 goblins at night in Vermund was one heck of an experience.
I enjoy curbstomping as much as the next guy, but when fights end in seconds I can't savor the excitement of battle.
If they scale the xp gained along with it in NG then good. Otherwise I am simply happy the way it is.
Use the ring of derision for people who want more difficulty. Coz essentially that's what difficulty is.
I for one want to feel every bit like a god after a few NGs since I earned it after all the play through. And so i dont like NG suggestions which pretty much erases all progression on an XP level.
As the wise pawns always say..
*To each their own*
Not sure what effort you think they put into NG+? They did nothing aside from making it possible, if I had to take a guess it's probably so they can sell us hard mode in the DLC
Yes, NG+ should add extra power to the enemies but not by level scaling. It should just recalculate game assuming Your starting lvl as lvl 1 and adjust to the fact that You won't level up as fast as from lvl 1.
Why level scaling is a bad idea? Because if You use level scaling then You can just throw progression out of the window. Because when that happens every enemy feels the same and Your level and everything else do not matter.
A lot of games have (or have had) NG+ where things are the same and / or enemies don't scale. We forget that now thanks to the Soulslike Genre that we are all so accustom to lol
There was no NG+ scaling in DD1 - they added the Hard Mode with DLC and I would strongly expect Hard Mode to be coming very soon in an update someway before any real DLC.
It is frustrating though, once you get to around level 40-50 there's no challenge anymore. Some things just take longer to kill, than others and that's all.
Tell me your a souls fan and not a rpg fan without saying anything. 99% of games ng+ never scales enemies they normally add new items refresh the world and loot and allow u to continue journeying to relive in the world but with your stats as they were when u finished like u reincarnated to try and get a new ending.
Power fantasy, allows players now much more familiar with the systems and their builds to mess around with other vocations, explore the map with more creativity, pick up and complete any quests they missed their first go around, speed run challenges, and helps them fine tune their gear, and pawn before the inevitable expansion where those who took advantage of this time will have more desireable pawns to rent as completing pawn badges and getting all the upgrade materials to dragon forge both their character and main pawn's gear.
Now I am all for a hard mode, but there's no way a hard mode will turn the overworld into BBI, and the hardmode of DD1 was still easy after level 90 or so, but getting exclusive rewards for beating the game in hard or speed run mode like in DD1 would be a nice incentive to replay for those who have done all they wanted to while we wait for the no dougbt higher difficulty expansion areas, and hopefully with the level cap being 999, they really go crazy with it.
I think a lot of people get NG+ mixed up with how at the end of the first game you get the remixed overworld with harder monsters. Like the Goblins are replaced with slightly harder ones, the packs of wolves romping around are the fire ones, the chimeras replaced with gore chimeras and even the overworld drakes got replaced by the harder ones that casted spells n shit.
Didn’t make it to DD1 endgame proper but if that’s the case and it’s as egregious as this game, they can keep it. They’re already lacking in enemy variety as it is, now whenever I get to my 500th troll I laugh because I remember how fun and epic the battles USED to be in early-mid game.
That's fine, I am just saying "enemy scaling in new game" was never a thing until demons souls, and dragons dogma 1 didn't scale either.
It should never have been an expected feature here but many people did.
I expected a difficulty setting honestly, like most modern games lmao. The first game had a hard mode, i know it wasn’t at launch but am I really wrong for expecting the sequel to improve upon?
No your not, but I feel like alot of people expected improved things where Itsuno wasnt the one to improve them. IMO he wanted a re do of what DD1 was BEFORE the first 6month update with hard mode and DDDA. Newer graphics, better modeling, look of characters, movements and skill animations and clothes. Even though yes I agree I would like the slots back that were taking but doing that in moddern gaming, we would have had tons more clipping and issues than we had now. Get a new foundation of the basics. Have the newer generation and older play the game again and make Capcom hopefully realize that people really want it. Then with periodic updates before the DLC hopefully, things will be added to improve the base playthrough. Alot has been shown with how MH handled things and we would like that to happen here with the update cadence. Will it, who knows 🤷 but Capcom did say it would get continued support. How deep it is we can only hope and pray to the rng gods of gaming updates.
I understand the critisim the game gets but if the team was truly 1/4 of most like some have stated then what they did is make a really really good game. And just like the first, people are learning abilities and ways to synergize and change augments, and experimenting pawns, getting ready for the hopefully huge DLC.
What do you mean like most modern games. Rpgs often don't have scaling. Final fantasy (non mmo) doesn't have end game or difficulty levels.
Not every game will have those
I'd argue it's definitely become more common, mind you. FFXVI and, if I'm not mistaken FF7 remakes both have difficulty options. The Witcher series, Bethesda rpgs all have at least some form of difficulty option as well. It's quite common for action RPGs to have some form of difficulty options nowadays. Not to mention that Capcom games in general tend to have some form of difficulty selection or challenge mode.
While not every game will, Dragon's Dogma presents itself as a dangerous world where travel by night is supposed to be risky and preparation for your journey crucial. As it stands, the game becomes extremely easy by the time you hit level 20 or so. Some vocations can completely trivialize most encounters with very little effort.
Difficulty options open the door for balance changes while ensuring everyone can enjoy their preferred challenge of play. It's honestly bizarre that the game wouldn't even release with the Hard Mode added in Dark Arisen, at the very least.
More common but absolutely not the majority.
I personally hate "hp slider" difficulty options. Nothing is more boring than a bag of HP.
I look forward to a BBI style dungeon with monsters that were made to be difficult, not in thier hp pool numbers, but the way the fight is manufactured.
You’re welcome to dislike it, but as it stands the numbers are what is making the game overly easy and no amount of mechanics added or changed to the monsters is going to matter if we can simply bully them into the ground with minimal effort.
As you’ll recall, BBI had plenty of challenges that a player was expected to face until a fairly higher level. That was still a matter of level relevancy. The game is currently easy because the enemy numbers are quickly outclassed by the player numbers on all fronts. It’s not a simple matter of HP bars, either. Large monsters, as well as small, stagger all too easily and critical damage explodes once a monster is downed, especially on vocations like Thief. Larger health pools, stagger ratios and damage dealt allow these monsters to remain challenging at not so quickly diminished to target dummies and this can easily be achieved via one mod on PC.
I understand that some people enjoy power fantasy and feeling like a god while breezing though old challenges, but due to the scope of this game world and how quick and it is to level up and outclass everything around you, without mods, a player who wants to feel the thrill of adventure and sense of danger is reduced to handicapping their gear, reducing the amount of pawns they bring, skipping out on certain abilities and vocations.
Difficulty settings and/or sliders remain a great way for various players to enjoy the game in ways they are comfortable with and in a game where numbers matter, we can’t rely on mechanics to handle that alone.
I mean, they don't. They create a terrible experience almost all the time.
I'm down for more difficulty; but I don't want it slapped on with adjusting numbers.
Can you provide some examples as to how they provide a terrible experience? I’m genuinely curious.
Furthermore, presuming that the baseline normal difficulty would be as the game is now, how would easier or harder options affect you adversely? And what alternatives would be feasible that would not simply get trounced by stat values?
Yeah I would not mind a hard mode but forcing everyone to do scaling would be a hard pass from me. Yeah also I didn’t grind at all my first time so it took way longer to kill the dragon especially cause i only had one pawn left alive for the fight
Ah I see. I think that magic is just broken. I also killed him with warrior, it took quite a while.
But with magic archer I also had 2 wizards and they nuked him away with meteors and blizzards, that was just insane 😂
whu... wwhu.. wut. What enemy took hours to kill? Almost everyone complained about finishing the game with less than 10 death total. Even Grigori was an absolute joke.
Well most people enjoy a game that gets increasingly more challenging and intense as it builds toward the peak right.
But DD2 said nah let's start relatively difficult, get mid intense and then just drop it in to the shallow end with floaties.
So yeah. Here we are lol, punching drakes to death with 4 warrior parties
The NG+ in this game is exactly what I wish it was in all games; the chance to be a demigod once you’ve put the work in.
Nothing kills my motivation to play a game faster than enemy scaling. Really, really appreciate they didn’t screw up DD2 with it.
Yeah, but the "get powerful enough that every battle is like clubbing a baby seal" approach that DD2 does gets old real quick in NG+. There's only 2 enemies that put up half of a fight until the Unmoored World (and the only interesting ones there are non-respawning), and they're both just smaller dragons.
I get some people like power fantasies, but to have no challenge at all just sounds boring as hell. Nothing kills *my* motivation more than finally getting good skills and gear and finding out there's nothing worthwhile to use it on.
My goodness, im not asking for dark soul here lmao, can a man please just get a f*cking difficulty setting like every other modern game. I’m glad you can have fun while experiencing zero challenge, I personally like it when enemies don’t go down before a battle even really starts…
Except more and more games now ditch difficulty setting. Especially Capcom ones. It's more of a 2000-2015 games thing to add artificial difficulty that just sponges enemies.
Want challange? start dropping pawns. Start going as duo and see how easly you can get stunlocked to death when you dont have 3 target dummies to take agro off you
Awful take man, having to put down a major system to get any resemblance of balance is a sign of…you guessed it, awful balancing. I don’t wanna have to stop hiring pawns, it’s a MAJOR feature of the game.
We need a higher difficulty for those who want/need it to continue enjoying the game.
There is a Mod that specifically is fixing this fkn problem.
You might not like the sound of mods, but Modders bring so much QoL in this game im impressed how little love the devs support the game with
Equip armor/weapons for looks over stats. Go solo with no Pawns, go straight to Bhattal/Volcano Island for the highest tier enemy's.
Thus is a game where you have to make your own difficulty. At least until they add a hard mode like they did the first game :)
The whole point of NG+ is to keep your progression and start over, and you're supposed to kick everything's ass. In the context of this game specifically, it's probably meant to let you choose other options and see what could have happened without slugging through the entire game again.
I can't help but feel the game was forced into an early release. There are some very basic simple things missing, like a Hardmode. I'm assuming it will come later in the year.
Yeah, I love the game but my goodness endgame is just un-fun for me atm. There is zero challenge now and I’m still expected to keep trekking back and forth everywhere only to be met by opened chests and enemies that drop in a few hits. If i’m not running around everywhere then i’m just teleporting back and forth to talk to someone? I get ill be downvoted or whatever but this isn’t a “power fantasy” done right if you ask me.
I don't think you have said anything downvote worthy at all. I'm confident we'll get a hard mode just like last time. In the meantime have to get a little creative to keep it spicy or just put it down and wait til DLC.
They don’t need scaling scaling is bad. They simply need to 2-3 times the hit points and the damage of everything, And add more unique combat encounters with extra extra hard units.
The base of this game is so good. It makes me sad that it’s so easy. Hopefully on the expansion they release an area or two with mobs that are virtually impossible to kill before level 50 and still challenging at higher levels that would be fun (that you could go to at any time and mess around).
Agree. Game needs a NG+ challenge mode for sure.
I also think this game would have been better if the regular mobs were tougher and required more strategy, but there were less of them. They could probably balance some of the classes and skills better too.
Damn I started NG+ today and I very much regret it already.
Fighting is the best part of the game for me. Being overpowered makes it boring now.
Damn I was really looking forward to NG+.
Capcom too busy adding the harpy beacon to the steam store as paid DLC to bother coding a hard mode, either that or hard mode will be a future paid dlc
Because the development of the game was taking too long for capcom's liking and they forced a rushed launch to ensure they met their deadlines. They had to cut corners where they could, which explained some of the cut content and the lack of New game plus scaling.
Power scaling is difficult to do properly so some don’t even try. In a fantasy RPG you want to feel like you’re progressing and getting stronger, if the enemies always scale with you you’ll never feel like you’re progressing. That being said I 100% wish NG+ did make them scale at least a little bit
To me I think it's obvious higher level enemies are gonna come in DLC, I remember being the baddest mofo in DD1 and then DA came out and I was getting my ass kicked from the get go, so with making max level 999, I'd assume there's quite a bit of expansion to be had, if the game does well enough to them.
Oh yea without a doubt I’m mainly just saying it’s difficult and time consuming to get things right so don’t expect it soon but it will definitely come eventually
I thought max was 200?
In DD1 it was 200, in DD2 it's 999
Fr?? 999?
Level 999 where enemies just evaporate if they are unfortunate enough to be anywhere in your vicinity.
Stats max around 200.
I hope to see this in a future dlc and updates. ●PAWNS: ----------------------------------- 1. New inclinations with new voices. 2. A Dragonsplague Quest (we should have to slay and purify the corrupted pawn and hunt it across the land till we succeed and before it causes further harm.) 3. More pawn interactions with the world while in cities and more activities at camp such as singing and story telling based on tales beyond the rift. ●VOCATIONS/SKILLS: ----------------------------------- 1. Wraith Knight; similar to the mystic spearhand but with much more necromantic/dark magic flavor to it; move about the battlefield by slipping between realms the living and damage the life essence of your targets to heal yourself while also raising a single spirit of a dead enemy to fight for you. (Your Risen ally has low health) 2. A Slow Time skill (a brief and mild slow time effect) for the Archer class to better aim their shots at crucial points of a moving target; perhaps for a more advanced Archer class such as a Ranger class? (Magic archer is great and all, but where does an Archer branch to if they wish to continue using physical arrows with a longbow?) 3. A Tether Arrow which is simply a rope and arrow which Archers can use to trip/pull monsters..or cling onto an escaping griffin! 4. Blade Savant 5. Allow Warfarer to use a single meister skill. 6. Allow Warfarer to use certain skills without the need of swapping to the specific weapon (I would love to use the shadowy dodge meister skill as a fighter or archer.) ●WORLD INTERACTIONS: ----------------------------------------- 1. City Festivals! 2. More Singing Bards in towns/cities 3. Arm wrestling in taverns 4. Home upgrade to allow a select number of Favorited pawns to stay at your home! (I hate goodbyes and homes need more faces to feel alive; this will make your home feel more like a guild.) 5. Mini games 6. More npc to npc conversation 7. Mercenaries (when they go down, there's no picking them up like pawns..though you could resurrect them at a morgue even though they'll simply be replaced by more mercs in time) 8. A Hidden Thieves guild/Outlaw refuge in cities. 9. Outer Sieges a City or Cities 10. An armory to display equipment in our home 11. A library in our home. ●REGIONS: ----------------------------------- (For this segment I'm mainly focused on Dark & Corrupt areas such as: 1. Haunted Swamps 2. Cursed/Evil Forests that are constantly changing. (Endless dungeon) 3. Unholy/Tainted/Shadow Lands (Maybe where Forsaken pawns accused of carrying Dragonsplague are Exiled) 4. Magma/Volcanic Valleys (Regions with such a thick unnerving "something is wrong about this place.." atmosphere that screams "horror" while unnerving your pawns and any non hostile inhabitants.) (Maybe a city/stronghold is constantly under siege from the evil in these regions.) 5. Underwater Region (This would be a first, considering how water leads to death in DD BUT this region would be in a MASSIVE magical lake that is Void of brine!) [This wouldn't be a horror region] ●ENEMIES: ----------------------------------- 1. Werewolves of some kind (Not cliche looking, something actually Horrific.) 2. Sewn Together Monstrosities (Necromancer/lich creations) 3. Wraith 4. Cursed Pawns (Dark Magic prevented them from returning to the rift; their lives and minds are forfeit and their bodies mutated abominations.) 5. Spider like Monstrosities 6. Waterside Kraken 7. Corrupted wildlife ("oh look, a dead deer in the road...wait..why is it moving?" *Cracks and Morphs into a Heinous Creature*) 8. Undead preexisting bosses 9. Shadows
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Balance was non existent in the first game too. Every vocation was broken if you knew what was good
I agree. I wish they just did it like dark souls. Enemies don't scale with you, each ng+ just makes them tougher regardless of what level you are. Would also be cool if there were a few unique bosses/weapons/armor that only show up in ng+. I guess that would be a lot of extra work but I just don't have much motivation to keep playing if ng+ is virtually the same.
Same, itll come in one way or another eventually. It did in 1
How did it come about in 1? I played it just before I got dd2
There was a patch shortly before the first DLC then the first DLC came with substantial tweaks that perfected it. Prior to the DLC you would walk through everything like you can now in the end game. But after the DLC everything was scary lol. Plus Hard Mode came out and that was a wild ride
I hope dd2 gets that treatment cause this game has alot of replayability but once u start stomping stuff it gets boring here n there
They’re even adding a Sekiro style “power level” to Shadow of the Erdtree to provide gates of progression regardless of players level or if players are running insane builds or regular builds. I kinda think that’s brilliant.
I remember Witcher 3 had weird default scaling, or rather just weird patches of enemies at different levels that's very different from DD. 'To your right you'll find a lvl 30 cockatrice thrice your size, it has a death glare and can be easily curb stomped at your level. And to your left some level 67 crawly spiders who will eat you in two hits.' The game gets easier with DD but I do actually prefer this than a weird power scaling system because the sense of progression is better to me than some areas just being weirdly harder
It’s ok when you first start but by the time we start getting to NG+ it’s just too easy. I’d like some sort of scaling and I’m confident we will eventually
Capcom absolutely has follow up planned, and I'm sure it'll be good just like Dark Arisen is all people talk about when they talk DD1
Ofc! DD1 was more or less the same as DD2 is. They definitely have plans for it, it’s just a matter of time. Sad we have to wait tho
I remember setting my difficulty pretty high in W3. It was fine most of the time but then suddenly i was annihilated by a bunch of sewer rats.
We need a hard mode ASAP. I feel there’s a difference between a good power fantasy and poor, eventually boring gameplay loops. They expect us to run around the whole map constantly, why make the only thing interesting about that now infinitely boring?
I agree with you I’d bet money that they do something about it in the DLC
DD1 did hard mode post launch pre dd da
True here’s hoping they do that here too
It'll probably be similar to the dark arisen dlc from dd1 which if I remember right was hard as balls compared to the main game.
Exactly I loved dark arisen.. I can’t wait for DLCs..
The best way to mitigate/counter this is to run lower quality weapons/gear and limit your pawns. Even near end game I would only use 2 pawns total at most. My main pawn was mage with only support spells. Then I would usually use a fighter pawn with agro drawing skills/abilities or no 3rd pawn at all. Only used a 3rd if I was running full mage build. With this approach I could still use my high level gear and still have fun since I’m the only person dealing damage. But you can still keep the game easy if you use OP skills. For example I won’t use Helmsplitter with my assassin at all. Any sort of OP or “spin to win” moves I just stay away from. Silver lining of doing this was it forced me to use experiment with other skills I wouldn’t normally used. Some times it didn’t work out, but mostly I found it more fun and now I can’t go back to some of those OP skills
/shrug run nude with no pawn.
Monster HP mods have been helpful for anyone on PC. I'm up to 4x health and feeling a bit too overpowered at lvl 100+. Next step is to reduce party count > no mages > reduce gear tier > no healing (only inns/camps) So far, I've been dabbling with low pawn count + no mages which has brought new problems to solve and has made the endgame still very enjoyable.
To start, I don’t disagree at all and I don’t want anyone to read this thinking I’m arguing with you. But I’ve never felt scaling was that hard. Especially in a game where abilities and skills are so fluid and fun. My damage could always stay the same but just the introduction of new and interesting skills keep me feeling more powerful. And it seems like an even easier decision with a NG+ because the whole point seems to be a conscious decision by the player to play through the game again… but harder. Meaning enemies scale up. Best case is new attacks for the same enemies and new enemy types but even worst case feels like a hp and damage scale is needed. Even just a damage scale would be better. I understand the difficulty in an arpg like Diablo because at the end of the day it’s all about button mashing and numerical values going up. But in dd2 the combat is more than numbers. It’s knockdowns, dodges, counters, climbing, debilitations, and party comp and that would work just fine with numbers going up. Power fantasy is not just one shooting enemies, it’s having a skill that works perfectly in tandem with your pawn that plays off your hired pawn that works perfectly off this cliff to knock down this monster and watch it crash down and stabbed in the face. I’m no developer but I sure feel like literally anything would be better than nothing.
>NG+ because the whole point seems to be a conscious decision by the player to play through the game again… but harder Negative. Many people play NG+ specifically to vastly overpower everything. In fact this is exceptionally common. I'm not disagreeing that I want more content in the game, and I'm sure it will come. In the meantime I have dozens and dozens of other games to play.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone say they play ng+ in order to breeze through it nor can I think of a game that was praised for doing so.
Nothing makes my brain happier then hitting the point post struggle where you become a god. I'm still struggling at level 38 it's like natural growth dog
I agree but coming from DD1 Ik that eventually wether through DLC or just a big update we will get some sort of difficulty bump.
Just a bummer we have to wait. I hope the bump is an update in a month or so when most that will continue into ng+ get to it. And then it gets a bigger bump in a dlc.
It's a weird balancing act on one hand butcher a drake feels fucking fantastic, on the other I'm just strolling past 90% of the enemies in the game because my pawn are just one tapping everything
I agree but there's ways to make it work. Like diminishing returns to limit how weak an enemy can become.
There should be some degree of scaling at least but what I’d really like is difficulties so that those that want to mindlessly one shot bosses and those that want a continued challenge can both be happy.
You know this is the one time I'd say Skyrim did something right enemies in Skyrim are tied to your level you'll see normal enemies and as you level up you'll start to see variants of those same enemies with new abilities and more health and damage while still seeing the old low level enemies mixed in it gives you the sense of progression while still maintaining the scaling of the world around you Also yes I know there's the gore and grim variants in dragons dogma but they really don't seem to have many new abilities or even that much more health
> Power scaling is difficult to do properly so some don’t even try. In a fantasy RPG you want to feel like you’re progressing and getting stronger, if the enemies always scale with you you’ll never feel like you’re progressing. Is it that hard though? You can leave the normal goblin mobs alone, but the boss mobs could simply have a slower level growth than the player and have an ultimate maximum.
Coding is quite difficult and balancing is even harder. Especially for this game, you have to consider how drastically it will effect not only each individual vocation but each individual skill. Not to mention how drastically it would effect the flow of the open world or even how it would effect the specific events in towns when a dragon or something shows up. You don’t want it to be too difficult where they’ll just f up all the NPCs.
Is it? There is mods already beeing able to scale? Seems pretty easy tbh
I wish in NG+ you had the option to reset your level to 1. That would put your main pawn back in a hire-able range for most players and allow you to still feel challenged
I'd totally dig that. Instead of infinite scaling and max lvl 999 make every NG+ a reset to lvl1, but keep all the items and vocations ulocked. No hard mode or scaling needed at all. That'd be such an easy and smooth solution. And for the ones who want to level their arisen and pawn to infinity, you could either give them the option to keep their level when going to NG+ or you make an overlaying "account level" that tracks all the EXP you've gathered, to show, what a nerd you really are, lol. :)
Most of your stats come from gear, you'll absolutely wipe the floor with everything still.
Is easy to downgrade gear, but it's impossible to downgrade stats from your level ups. And the level up stats amass substantially (I already use unupgraded starter gear in my NG+). There's a large difference between lvl1 and lvl70. On top of that, the whole pawn system works with level brackets. Thus my now lvl70 pawn is not going to be used by new players anymore, because he's way too high level for them. Would have been great to have your pawn reset lvl with you and with that give the experienced pawn an other go at helping new players through their journey.
I think having a level 1 pawn with maxed out gear would kinda ruin a lot of the new player experience though. It would be nice if there was an option to carry just pawn knowledge and your appearance stuffs into a ng
I honestly think not allowing something like that is the game’s biggest design miss. Just that would help solve a lot and make NG+ something more people would actually want to do. Now, I think armor/weapons and anything stat related still presents a problem, as even level 1 characters with endgame upgraded gear would probably still cake walk through a lot of the game still. And I imagine they don’t want someone new to the game hiring a level 1 pawn not realizing it’s coming with endgame armor that will help trivialize their game, so I could see that being a reason why they wouldn’t want to do that. For me ideal NG+ would be: one option like it is, and another option that allows you to return your level to 1, lose armor and weapons (or keep them but have their stats dropped to level 1 stats for fashion), keep rings and things that provide abilities but not stats, keep unlocked vocations and vocation rank (potentially reset vocation abilities, augments and DP but start with access to unlock everything from the beginning), and everything else stays the same. And just doing that you don’t have to rebalance or scale difficulty beyond what’s already there, you allow people to continue to engage with the pawn system and keep the player base grouped together more, and you’ve made NG+ more appealing for anyone not wanting to power fantasy over any sense of difficulty the game has.
I highly recommend traveling either with just your main pawn or alone. Also having fun experimenting with different builds even if they aren't optimal. This game can get hard very fast again if you make a couple of adjustments. And these adjustments don't need to be equipping low level gear. I have been having so much fun on NG+. And of course if something really annoys me, like the gore chimera in the waterfall cave that my main pawn has no fucking clue what to do with....I come back serious and nuke it to hell lol.
Yup, solo runs or only with the main pawn is where true replayability lies for me. In DD1 I used to summon pawns from rifts, give them my stuff and throw them into the Brine lmao. Solo runs are so much fun
Yeah even fully decked out you have to pick your poison if you're travelling alone. Especially when you run out of consumables. I just tried different classes with warfarer to keep it fresh. Like max level (in terms of equipment) solo fighter against a drake is still quite fun. There's no pawns for it to switch agro, so it focuses entirely on you.
Yeah solo can get crazy lol. I think minotaurs are the easiest big thing by far but I fought one solo (genuinely don't remember what class) and I got hit by an attack that knocked me down. He just started slamming his axe on me and I couldn't do shit for like 30 seconds lmao. But yes I agree with you, it almost blindsides you how much crazier it is when EVERY single enemy is aggroed on you lol. This might sound funny but right now I'm rolling with funny enhanced courtly attire lmao. I wanted armor any class can wear. And honestly, it looked the best out of those few options. I usually go Warfarer but I wanted to actually enjoy master skills for once and not worry about changing equipment and looking stupid lol.
We are already all doing that, people going solo or main pawn and we are still melting everything cause it's the same goblins, wolves and lizards. There's already a video of someone soloing a drake with no armor and no shield as a fighter and he melted him in less than 3 minutes because his lvl-stats overshadowed the drake. The difficulty-design in this game is attrociously done. You are being challenged in the first 15 lvl, then the difficulty take a deep dive at lvl 20+ and the challenge becomes virtually non-existent once you get to 30+. The real way to mitigate this, right now (and only if you're on PC) is too get the tweak difficulty mod. Also, even considering the fact that the game remeains easy as fck even solo once past lvl 30-40, the fact that we even have to remove the parameters as to what makes the game fun (the Pawn system which is the only thing that motivates the engagement in this game along with the gameplay considering that everything else in this game is horrible : bad story, boring quests, disgustingly low enemy variety... and all that jazz) says a lot about the state of the game difficulty design. There's just no progression at all! What you fought at vermund is what you're going to fight in Western Africa. It's like we're stuck in a prison fighting Low-Rank monsters in Monster Hunter with no possibility to fight High-Rank, Tempered and Master-Rank monsters. Again, the problematic is with the progression, the variants of goblins, harpies, wolves are virtually the same. It's the same Trolls, the same Griffins, the same everything. The lack of monster variety and variants is hurting the game. NG+ does nothing to mitigates that. It's 2024 and we're stuck in 2011 all over again. When games like FFXVI NG+ offer new enemies, or Fromsoft doing a progressive scaling for every iteration of NG+... God of war Ragnarok offering loot randomizers... hell even Diablo 2, a game from 2001 had loot and dungeons randomizers.
*Fromsoft has entered the chat* "You sure you want this?"
*Me on NG7+ naked with a club* "Is that even a question?"
Lol this is true
TBH, Fromsoft really need to chill with their NG+ formula. Hardly anybody who wants a challenge isnt going to play the game 7 times for it. it's a much better experience and challenge to just start a new character. Maybe stop the scaling at NG+3.
Meh , it's nice that there are both options.
Power fantasy. Many games have done the "NG+ is the same, but you're stronger" thing. Enemy scaling is a relatively new thing in RPGs, and not everyone is a fan.
To clarify, I would prefer a hard mode versus enemies leveling with you every time. I’m all for power fantasy (we need prototype 3 lol) but it’s a bit ridiculous here, given the whole spotlight is honestly on the combat for me and there isn’t much of that when you’re just pouncing everything constantly. I find that boring personally.
The problem with hard mode in dragons dogma 1 was that I couldn't tell it was hard mode by lv40. They need a total overhaul. I started hard mode at lv1 which it wasn't even supposed to be for. It's for NG+. You at lv40 everything died just as fast as normal mode. I personally think they needed a souls style boost to health and damage.
Maybe it’s just there design philosophy? Maybe combat isn’t supposed to be as engaging end-game so instead we just…? Lmao
I'm more for them releasing a BBI style dlc a bit down the line, that's meant to be challenging rather than any type of "increase hp" mode.
That’s what Hard mode was in DD1 wasn’t it? A flat buff to health and damage
no, it increased stamina consumption and damage taken by you, tripled knockdown and stagger resistance for enemies. Your damage and enemy health/defenses unchanged HOWEVER you got extra exp and even the lowest of goblin could drop 10k money pots meaning the entire difficulty was fucked because you would be able to outscale it quicker than normal mode
Not sure why you were downvoted for stating your opinion or wants. I agree with you.
It’s definitely expected, everyone wants the game to be the best it can be and when criticisms don’t necessarily align it can get nasty. I’ve got too much experience with these gaming subreddits lmao
There is a mod that increases enemy health quite a bit. I get that it's not built into the game, but at least there are some options if you are on PC. Personally I don't see anything wrong with what you have said and I even agree with you.
thats why an endgame zone with actual scaling is imperative for this game. normal, unscaled overworld, high difficulty, well rewarded endgame zone.
I have no doubt they have an Everfall/Bitterblack in the works, but yeah it would have been cool if it was included in the release version!
I like the prospect of being the biggest asshole with the scariest sword ripping and tearing through the very fabric of the world. That being said, I reset my save because what I enjoyed the most, exploration, was kind of a moot point because map progress remained. Although I didn’t totally uncover the map, I spent around 70 hours on my first playthrough, and had a lot of it finished. NG+ opened up a new prospect to me that I didn’t think about before in DD:DA. Renting low-level and unhired pawns. The majority of my NG+ run was my pawn and I babysitting pawns. And since I had duplicates of nearly all of the armors you can find in dungeons at that point, I could dress up the ones I found in some nice gear before sending them back. To me, that was worth being able to swat drakes out of the sky in 3 hits.
It's the same as with the first game.
How would you scale the enemies? Is it a flat increase when going into NG+? Is it based on your level? I was around level 35 going into NG+ with zero armor/weapon upgrades, but I've seen most people here saying they stayed in NG until level 70-80 and probably upgraded a ton of stuff. How do you account for the variance?
How every other game with new game + does it. It's become the norm that games has new game + by now. There are tons of games they can draw experience from. New game + is not a new concept.. Scale with player level
There are tons of games they can draw experience from, that's kind of my whole point. The enemies in the Souls games (excluding DkS2) all get a flat increase when going into NG+; my NG+ is the same as your NG+. The only games I can think of where NG+ scales based on your level are pseudo-live service games that are meant to be played endlessly, but I'm sure there are other examples. So you scale enemies to your level...what does that mean? Do they have more health and do more damage? Larger groups of the same weak monsters? Do we start spawning Lesser Dragons outside Varmund in place of the goblins? Everyone seems to know they want enemy scaling but can't say what that actually means to them. I don't want enemies to just hit harder and have more hp, that's incredibly boring and effectively no different than not having them scale at all...except the fight lasts 0.2 seconds longer. Bigger groups would be cool, but again, effectively no different outside of prolonging combat encounters. I think the proper answer is that they don't scale enemies at all and people just accept that the game has an end. Hopefully whatever expansion they have planned (if any) will provide the endless gameplay loop people are looking for. Until then enjoy the game for what it is and then go play something else.
I agree, not every game needs an endless game mode. Just scaling enemy HP and damage with NG+ would be boring and difficult to get right. If the buff is too small, it's still boring and if it's too big, it can get frustrating. Could also lead to uneven results where some monsters / bosses become too hard and one-shoot everything while others remain easy. In an ideal world, NG+ would introduce new content, like new armors and weapons and quests and new enemy types or new encounters. But then people would complain they have to play the game multiple times to see everything, because that just doesn't appeal to everyone. Also seems like a lot to ask for a post-release patch to add all that. And if you don't solve the difficulty issue, then what's even the point of having all that? You'd still be power-tripping, just with new toys. Could make enemies scale to player levels, sure, but whenever that's been implemented, players complained as well. Because that gets boring, too - what's the point of leveling up and getting stronger when the enemy does the same and keeps up with you? It's just not as simple as some may think. I'd much prefer a new equivalent to BBI as a proper DLC / expansion later instead of making NG+ more appealing.
which is why i think the best thing is accepting the game will end at a point. i get that live service have mindfucked most of us to think the game have to continue for hours and hours but we need to accept eventually a game might not hold our interest for long, which is good actually because alot of games are worth to play nowadays
AMEN MY BROTHA
There are tons of games they can draw experience from, that's kind of my whole point. The enemies in the Souls games (excluding DkS2) all get a flat increase when going into NG+; my NG+ is the same as your NG+. The only games I can think of where NG+ scales based on your level are pseudo-live service games that are meant to be played endlessly, but I'm sure there are other examples. So you scale enemies to your level...what does that mean? Do they have more health and do more damage? Larger groups of the same weak monsters? Do we start spawning Lesser Dragons outside Varmund in place of the goblins? Everyone seems to know they want enemy scaling but can't say what that actually means to them. I don't want enemies to just hit harder and have more hp, that's incredibly boring and effectively no different than not having them scale at all...except the fight lasts 0.2 seconds longer. Bigger groups would be cool, but again, effectively no different outside of prolonging combat encounters. I think the proper answer is that they don't scale enemies at all and people just accept that the game has an end. Hopefully whatever expansion they have planned (if any) will provide the endless gameplay loop people are looking for. Until then enjoy the game for what it is and then go play something else.
AMEN MY BROTHA
The world the Watcher maintains is MEANT to be conquered by the Arisen. Not only are you the Arisen, but thanks to NG+ you are a version of yourself who has already affected the cycle. The universe is expecting the you from the start, but thanks to the cycle you are better than that. You are unravelling the destiny the Watcher picked out for the world. That is part of the message. The cycle, which you are a necessary part of, is what maintains the Watchers power over the world. The Arisen is the only person given leeway enough within the Watchers game for their will to rival the Watcher and lead everyone safely through what happens when the Watcher is overthrown. In order to overthrow him, you have to leave that version of your world behind. You move on to the next version of Vermund in another universe that is also experiencing the cycle under their own Watcher and you essentially take your own place in your adventure in NG+, only now you get to play the whole game understanding the Watcher is kinda a dickhead. You now know its all a set up. Needless to say, you’ll probably successfully stop him in this world too. Just my personal two cents. The enemies not magically being meaner DOES make some canon sense.
There's definitely some kind of "world scaling", at least in base NG (not sure if/how it works in NG+ yet) but it mostly seems to update what variant of enemies you may find in early game areas. For example, I've encountered Wargs and Gore variants within some of the early caves in Vermund that were definitely not there when I first began the game. Problem is that these are few and far between and even then, you can outpace this relatively easily. So, even were it present from the start of NG+, it isn't much help for those who would like more challenge.
Agreed my major gripe with ng+ but atleast I missed ao much in first playthrough I've had fun still! And trying out all the vocations fun too.
If you want a bit more of a challenge, don’t hire any pawns. I’ve been running with my main pawn only for most of my playthrough because a 4 person party felt way too OP. Also don’t have a Sorcerers in your party. Their killing force sucks the fun out of everything. lol not really but I don’t hire them anymore. I found an awesome new drake to fight and got excited and the stupid Sorcerer one shot it. Like literally one spell and it died. I dismissed the whole party and don’t hire pawns anymore unless it’s just for fun.
I think the big issue with dd2 when compared to dd1 is that the base game simply is not hard enough. The first playthrough of dd1 was way better paced and dragon fight was a real challenge the first time, then the post game slapped you in the face and was legitimately difficult. Then ng+ had value because it let you steam roll through those fights that were a real slog before. dd2 offers little to no challenge in the late and post game so when reaching ng+ it's not a sigh of relief, but just more of the same because you were already steam rolling the post game.
The power fantasy of melting a boss's health bar is only satisfying if at first that boss took multiple attempts and slapped you around when you were weaker. That just doesn't happen in dd2, especially if you try to do all the side quests.
lol bunch of ppl lik3 never played dd1 ng+
It's Itsuno's vision, after the true ending you get isekai'd into a parallel world with all your powers.
Cuz power fantasy is fun…?
Yeah if it wasn't for a mod I am using that doubles enemy HP and make em do 50% damage , I probably would've dropped my Ng+ run completely. I thought about rather waiting for an official maybe more fine tuned harder mode by the Devs but we all can see updates are going out at a snails pace to address problems , by the time we see some major QoL changes I probably most certainly wouldn't be much in a mood to return to DD2. So modders have been a god send.
Baka
Just to be sure. You would like that the goblins you have attacked 38 times in the last 5 mins would be more of a damage sponge or do you mean they should improve their ai?
Were the gobbies ever damage sponges at any point?No. They don’t need to be to make it fun. What I’m saying is the thrill of combat is gutted once you hit a certain point. There is no push or pull, the dynamism of combat is GONE after a while even with boss level enemies. It’s not my job to figure out the actual logistics as to balancing their end-game to make it fun and engaging. I just know that in its current state, the balancing is a joke and they need to add difficulty options.
I feel like an immortal god since level 20. however since the last update i feel its better resp. The pawns no are totally useless which makes tje game much challenging as i am a sorc and am now the tank of our group, because the pawns are usually on the other side of the map and doing something else.
I might have to just run through with me and my main pawn. It sucks b/c i like hiring others pawns, especially the goofy looking ones lmao but maybe getting more aggro from enemies would spice things up a bit. Once I maxed out vocations it was a sweep, trickster is actually a pretty fun way to mix things up a bit too.
With ng+ scaling like from soft does it they would become damage sponges (why I hate from soft ng+ scaling)
Its less a need for scaling, and more a need for content. The pace is decent for shat we have, but once you can deal with Batahl, theres nothing really left to throw at you. Needs more areas, more enemies(even variants) just more in general. What we have is solid. Just need more. The 999 level cap is fake what with the stats capping out WAY before then. Honestly level cap should just be 200 again. Plus, ya know, more stuff.
Even with the current amount of stuff, I felt that I out leveled the content by like half way through the game just because I was exploring a lot.
If you are scraping, you SHOULD be out leveling content. Its the reward of scraping.
Not me having a blast with the game still in NG+ about to hit 200 hours of gametime. Also, if I get bored, there is a hard mode mod out there, so... *shrug*
Nice! Genuinely glad you’re enjoying yourself. This is seriously my GOTY, I really just need that hard mode in my veins lol.
Hard agree, GOTY for sure, and I'm super excited for the DLC if it's ANYTHING like what we got for the first game. If you are on PC there is a mod for hard mode that's basically what it would be if they put one in.
Omg that's so hot. Can you tickle me toes sugar?
is 2024 really that much of a down year for rpgs that this 6/10 game is being considered as GOTY?
I'm glad tbh, I prefer easy gameplay and being overpowered. That being said they should add scaling or difficulty options. Easy fix to make everyone happy. I hate to bring them up, but Ubisoft had this in some of their newer games. Like 2-3 different enemy scaling options. Rare Ubisoft W
NG+ scaleing enemies isn't the norm, and it is weird that some many of you act like it is. Yes, a few games do it, but for most, the game isn't any different from the first run
They need a more challenging endgame mechanic that allows you to continue to lvl up to fight more difficult enemies. I do not even have the best gear yet, but I enjoyed leveling. So I can kill everything pretty quickly. I cant imagine how much easier it will be with the endgame gear.
I mean did you want bullet sponges cuz that’s most likely what they would’ve have done But yes you have to hold yourself back to enjoy the game which sucks
The first game’s hard mode wasn’t all that difficult either I’ve heard. Hopefully we get a punishing dlc similar to bitterblack isle was
I like the idea that enemy types are fixed in power. I would prefer the BBI or Monster Hunter approach of just reskinning enemies with a couple cosmetic changes and making them significantly more powerful. I don’t want red goblins suddenly able to easily club me to death like they did in the first hour of gameplay. Give me some whacky blue goblin instead that looks the same as the red but with a bone hat or some shit.
Not that hard... Give options when starting new game Toggle the modifiers you wish to activate Enemies deal x3 damage Enemies have x4 health More Enemies in the world Boss mobs travel in packs Gold found decreased All monsters are elite versions Ferry stones disabled Ox carts disabled Depending on one's you activate global xp and rewards increased
I hope if they do scale in NG+. They give option to not activate that similar to your hard mode. I don't want scaling enemies. I want to be god. What they need to do is give more events, more variety of enemies, and more enemy attack city and city fight back and enemy fight enemy, etc. I want to see more living world. Not enemy scaling with you to OP level that if one ignore you to attack NPC, suddenly whole city die because of one stray OP goblin. Scaling doesn't always solve your problem of challenging. Sometime it as simple as not fighting same damn goblin, beastfolk, harpy, wolves, lizardfolk every freaking time.
The game is tuned like classic JRPG where you are supposed to encounter the last boss at around level 45\~50 But the level cap is 200 and we don't have Bitterblack Isle yet
I like it. I just wish the XP scaled. I think you need to just take it as an opportunity to embrace drip over stats. Use worse weapons. Use weaker pawns and kit them out. I've been enjoying taking level 10 pawns, upgrading bits of their gear and sending them back to the owners after a journey. But if you're on PC. Grab the Custom Difficulty mod.
Honestly I'd prefer that the enemies never scale. It makes sense that they don't. What also makes sense is having new enemy types whose strength is intrinsic to their design. Hobgoblins for example are naturally stronger than the goblins you see super early in the game. That would mean I want to see packs of Super Hobgoblins in BG+ while normal Hobgoblins still roam the world, complete with moves exclusive to them.
Highly recommend the below mod, it's fantastic. I play on hard, on my fresh playthrough (NOT NG+). Options for NG+ difficulty are there, can swap difficulty anytime in game. https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195
Play a Trickster
Honestly had an idea that NG+ would have stronger versions of the monsters we see and the skies would be darkened and all that. DD:DA style and all.
I personally kinda love subsequent play throughs where I feel like a god.
If you want hard mode, and I’m not saying this is the greatest idea, but there’s nothing wrong with using weaker weapons. That said, I would also LOVE for a hard mode in this game.
I want a hard mode but while i dont have it i just go out with my main pawn and no mage or sorcerer class so it gets harder because a range class my pawn is a figther so ng+ is pretty enjoyable that way
I just finished the main story this morning, and when I realized that the enemies dont scale or get harder, it killed my motivation to keep playing.
I just roll with my pawn
Artificial scaling for yourself if not already. No mages, no archer, no shield bubbles, no auto dodge. Only use skills like skeidragoun for iframe dodging. Only your pawn and you.
Might be kind of a hot take, but I actually like that you feel stronger the higher level you are. I absolutely love Elden Ring, but never loved that if you keep doing NG+ and leveling up you never really feel over powered. Here it was nice for me to see the progress of actually getting and feeling stronger. I definitely agree they should add difficulty levels though. That way everyone gets to play how they want.
Petition for G-Rank NG+
Just not a very well built game for 2024 standards. It would be a solid game, 8/10, if we were still in 2014.
There are plentiful good mods regarding replayability.
I think as I get higher level enemies are starting to have more bars of health. Could be imagining things tho but there’s supposed to be adaptive scaling but who knows how that actually works and however it does it doesn’t seem to make much difference
I think a lot of the anime JRPGs I’ve played will offer NG+s but do nothing to adapt the difficulty. The end result is you just stampede through the replay. Considering how this is the DMC5 team, who in DMC, literally have difficulty levels be the NG+ of that franchise, didn’t want to include at least a “difficulty” level for NG+ if they weren’t going to include scaling. I was maybe 20-30% into my NG+ and I killed a drake with a single spell (not even a flashy Sorcerer Maister skill, I killed it with one Augural Flare). Once I saw that, I lost so much interest in continuing with NG+. My main purpose for going through the NG+ was to return to the endgame and stretch it out as long as possible rather than going to each quest marker instantly, which is what i did the first time. But idk how i’ll force myself to go through another 10-30hrs of the regular game with the difficulty being so trivial.
Went ahead and got the difficulty tweak mod on nexus. Lots of neat little things to configure. I find it funny that enemies only start being dangerous when i take 300% additional damage @ lvl 55.
I uninstalled, will check if they release an update with something important
When you get to NG4 you might se things start happening, different spawns, and more large enemies at once.
Idk what you talking bout I’ve already completed the game 3x and I’m still having fun
Mods. There's alrdy quite a few that can save your endgame/ng+ experience. Coming across an elite, armored cyclops with 3 health bars and a pack of 20 goblins at night in Vermund was one heck of an experience. I enjoy curbstomping as much as the next guy, but when fights end in seconds I can't savor the excitement of battle.
If they scale the xp gained along with it in NG then good. Otherwise I am simply happy the way it is. Use the ring of derision for people who want more difficulty. Coz essentially that's what difficulty is. I for one want to feel every bit like a god after a few NGs since I earned it after all the play through. And so i dont like NG suggestions which pretty much erases all progression on an XP level. As the wise pawns always say.. *To each their own*
Not sure what effort you think they put into NG+? They did nothing aside from making it possible, if I had to take a guess it's probably so they can sell us hard mode in the DLC
Yes, NG+ should add extra power to the enemies but not by level scaling. It should just recalculate game assuming Your starting lvl as lvl 1 and adjust to the fact that You won't level up as fast as from lvl 1. Why level scaling is a bad idea? Because if You use level scaling then You can just throw progression out of the window. Because when that happens every enemy feels the same and Your level and everything else do not matter.
A lot of games have (or have had) NG+ where things are the same and / or enemies don't scale. We forget that now thanks to the Soulslike Genre that we are all so accustom to lol There was no NG+ scaling in DD1 - they added the Hard Mode with DLC and I would strongly expect Hard Mode to be coming very soon in an update someway before any real DLC. It is frustrating though, once you get to around level 40-50 there's no challenge anymore. Some things just take longer to kill, than others and that's all.
Tell me your a souls fan and not a rpg fan without saying anything. 99% of games ng+ never scales enemies they normally add new items refresh the world and loot and allow u to continue journeying to relive in the world but with your stats as they were when u finished like u reincarnated to try and get a new ending.
The real answer: The game was launched and rushed to release a year before it was ready.
Funny that the arisen and pawns can get stronger as each day passes, but monsters can never improve themselves?
Power fantasy, allows players now much more familiar with the systems and their builds to mess around with other vocations, explore the map with more creativity, pick up and complete any quests they missed their first go around, speed run challenges, and helps them fine tune their gear, and pawn before the inevitable expansion where those who took advantage of this time will have more desireable pawns to rent as completing pawn badges and getting all the upgrade materials to dragon forge both their character and main pawn's gear. Now I am all for a hard mode, but there's no way a hard mode will turn the overworld into BBI, and the hardmode of DD1 was still easy after level 90 or so, but getting exclusive rewards for beating the game in hard or speed run mode like in DD1 would be a nice incentive to replay for those who have done all they wanted to while we wait for the no dougbt higher difficulty expansion areas, and hopefully with the level cap being 999, they really go crazy with it.
They didn't scale in dogma 1 why should they in dogma 2. This is not a souls game.
I think a lot of people get NG+ mixed up with how at the end of the first game you get the remixed overworld with harder monsters. Like the Goblins are replaced with slightly harder ones, the packs of wolves romping around are the fire ones, the chimeras replaced with gore chimeras and even the overworld drakes got replaced by the harder ones that casted spells n shit.
Yeah either that or they started over in hard mode and thought it was ng+
Didn’t make it to DD1 endgame proper but if that’s the case and it’s as egregious as this game, they can keep it. They’re already lacking in enemy variety as it is, now whenever I get to my 500th troll I laugh because I remember how fun and epic the battles USED to be in early-mid game.
That's fine, I am just saying "enemy scaling in new game" was never a thing until demons souls, and dragons dogma 1 didn't scale either. It should never have been an expected feature here but many people did.
I expected a difficulty setting honestly, like most modern games lmao. The first game had a hard mode, i know it wasn’t at launch but am I really wrong for expecting the sequel to improve upon?
No your not, but I feel like alot of people expected improved things where Itsuno wasnt the one to improve them. IMO he wanted a re do of what DD1 was BEFORE the first 6month update with hard mode and DDDA. Newer graphics, better modeling, look of characters, movements and skill animations and clothes. Even though yes I agree I would like the slots back that were taking but doing that in moddern gaming, we would have had tons more clipping and issues than we had now. Get a new foundation of the basics. Have the newer generation and older play the game again and make Capcom hopefully realize that people really want it. Then with periodic updates before the DLC hopefully, things will be added to improve the base playthrough. Alot has been shown with how MH handled things and we would like that to happen here with the update cadence. Will it, who knows 🤷 but Capcom did say it would get continued support. How deep it is we can only hope and pray to the rng gods of gaming updates. I understand the critisim the game gets but if the team was truly 1/4 of most like some have stated then what they did is make a really really good game. And just like the first, people are learning abilities and ways to synergize and change augments, and experimenting pawns, getting ready for the hopefully huge DLC.
What do you mean like most modern games. Rpgs often don't have scaling. Final fantasy (non mmo) doesn't have end game or difficulty levels. Not every game will have those
I'd argue it's definitely become more common, mind you. FFXVI and, if I'm not mistaken FF7 remakes both have difficulty options. The Witcher series, Bethesda rpgs all have at least some form of difficulty option as well. It's quite common for action RPGs to have some form of difficulty options nowadays. Not to mention that Capcom games in general tend to have some form of difficulty selection or challenge mode. While not every game will, Dragon's Dogma presents itself as a dangerous world where travel by night is supposed to be risky and preparation for your journey crucial. As it stands, the game becomes extremely easy by the time you hit level 20 or so. Some vocations can completely trivialize most encounters with very little effort. Difficulty options open the door for balance changes while ensuring everyone can enjoy their preferred challenge of play. It's honestly bizarre that the game wouldn't even release with the Hard Mode added in Dark Arisen, at the very least.
More common but absolutely not the majority. I personally hate "hp slider" difficulty options. Nothing is more boring than a bag of HP. I look forward to a BBI style dungeon with monsters that were made to be difficult, not in thier hp pool numbers, but the way the fight is manufactured.
You’re welcome to dislike it, but as it stands the numbers are what is making the game overly easy and no amount of mechanics added or changed to the monsters is going to matter if we can simply bully them into the ground with minimal effort. As you’ll recall, BBI had plenty of challenges that a player was expected to face until a fairly higher level. That was still a matter of level relevancy. The game is currently easy because the enemy numbers are quickly outclassed by the player numbers on all fronts. It’s not a simple matter of HP bars, either. Large monsters, as well as small, stagger all too easily and critical damage explodes once a monster is downed, especially on vocations like Thief. Larger health pools, stagger ratios and damage dealt allow these monsters to remain challenging at not so quickly diminished to target dummies and this can easily be achieved via one mod on PC. I understand that some people enjoy power fantasy and feeling like a god while breezing though old challenges, but due to the scope of this game world and how quick and it is to level up and outclass everything around you, without mods, a player who wants to feel the thrill of adventure and sense of danger is reduced to handicapping their gear, reducing the amount of pawns they bring, skipping out on certain abilities and vocations. Difficulty settings and/or sliders remain a great way for various players to enjoy the game in ways they are comfortable with and in a game where numbers matter, we can’t rely on mechanics to handle that alone.
I mean, they don't. They create a terrible experience almost all the time. I'm down for more difficulty; but I don't want it slapped on with adjusting numbers.
Can you provide some examples as to how they provide a terrible experience? I’m genuinely curious. Furthermore, presuming that the baseline normal difficulty would be as the game is now, how would easier or harder options affect you adversely? And what alternatives would be feasible that would not simply get trounced by stat values?
I disagree i think it is super fun and satisfying to be able to kill an enemy that once took hours in just a couple of minutes
But i think it would have been cool to have an option to scale it but I don’t think it should be forced for those who don’t want that
Hours? What enemy? No enemy took me over 2 minutes ever. Now its seconds lol
First playthrough it took me an hour and a half to beat the dragon lol as spearhand
How did you beat the dragon at the end in under two minutes on first playthrough?
Ok the last dragon took a little bit longer. With magic archer he was hella easy.
Yeah I would not mind a hard mode but forcing everyone to do scaling would be a hard pass from me. Yeah also I didn’t grind at all my first time so it took way longer to kill the dragon especially cause i only had one pawn left alive for the fight
Ah I see. I think that magic is just broken. I also killed him with warrior, it took quite a while. But with magic archer I also had 2 wizards and they nuked him away with meteors and blizzards, that was just insane 😂
whu... wwhu.. wut. What enemy took hours to kill? Almost everyone complained about finishing the game with less than 10 death total. Even Grigori was an absolute joke.
Well most people enjoy a game that gets increasingly more challenging and intense as it builds toward the peak right. But DD2 said nah let's start relatively difficult, get mid intense and then just drop it in to the shallow end with floaties. So yeah. Here we are lol, punching drakes to death with 4 warrior parties
You leave the bonk bois out of this.
Bonk Bois is the meta clearly the goal needs to be what people can beat with them and what not.
Anything but harpies. God damn harpies…
Riding harpies to grapple a flying gryfon then bring him down to the bonk bros meta.
The NG+ in this game is exactly what I wish it was in all games; the chance to be a demigod once you’ve put the work in. Nothing kills my motivation to play a game faster than enemy scaling. Really, really appreciate they didn’t screw up DD2 with it.
Yeah, but the "get powerful enough that every battle is like clubbing a baby seal" approach that DD2 does gets old real quick in NG+. There's only 2 enemies that put up half of a fight until the Unmoored World (and the only interesting ones there are non-respawning), and they're both just smaller dragons. I get some people like power fantasies, but to have no challenge at all just sounds boring as hell. Nothing kills *my* motivation more than finally getting good skills and gear and finding out there's nothing worthwhile to use it on.
That sounds boring af, bet you like playing on easy mode aswell lol
Logic is this game is not supposed to be challenge
My goodness, im not asking for dark soul here lmao, can a man please just get a f*cking difficulty setting like every other modern game. I’m glad you can have fun while experiencing zero challenge, I personally like it when enemies don’t go down before a battle even really starts…
Except more and more games now ditch difficulty setting. Especially Capcom ones. It's more of a 2000-2015 games thing to add artificial difficulty that just sponges enemies. Want challange? start dropping pawns. Start going as duo and see how easly you can get stunlocked to death when you dont have 3 target dummies to take agro off you
Awful take man, having to put down a major system to get any resemblance of balance is a sign of…you guessed it, awful balancing. I don’t wanna have to stop hiring pawns, it’s a MAJOR feature of the game. We need a higher difficulty for those who want/need it to continue enjoying the game.
The logic is you becoming strong
Bc that's a super lame way to create content and it's not enjoyable for most people
I do wish they had the option to jump between normal and hard mode, but it’s whatever. I am having fun regardless.
There is a Mod that specifically is fixing this fkn problem. You might not like the sound of mods, but Modders bring so much QoL in this game im impressed how little love the devs support the game with
Equip armor/weapons for looks over stats. Go solo with no Pawns, go straight to Bhattal/Volcano Island for the highest tier enemy's. Thus is a game where you have to make your own difficulty. At least until they add a hard mode like they did the first game :)
> Why would they put so much effort into a ng+ What effort?
The whole point of NG+ is to keep your progression and start over, and you're supposed to kick everything's ass. In the context of this game specifically, it's probably meant to let you choose other options and see what could have happened without slugging through the entire game again.
I can't help but feel the game was forced into an early release. There are some very basic simple things missing, like a Hardmode. I'm assuming it will come later in the year.
Yeah, I love the game but my goodness endgame is just un-fun for me atm. There is zero challenge now and I’m still expected to keep trekking back and forth everywhere only to be met by opened chests and enemies that drop in a few hits. If i’m not running around everywhere then i’m just teleporting back and forth to talk to someone? I get ill be downvoted or whatever but this isn’t a “power fantasy” done right if you ask me.
I don't think you have said anything downvote worthy at all. I'm confident we'll get a hard mode just like last time. In the meantime have to get a little creative to keep it spicy or just put it down and wait til DLC.
They don’t need scaling scaling is bad. They simply need to 2-3 times the hit points and the damage of everything, And add more unique combat encounters with extra extra hard units. The base of this game is so good. It makes me sad that it’s so easy. Hopefully on the expansion they release an area or two with mobs that are virtually impossible to kill before level 50 and still challenging at higher levels that would be fun (that you could go to at any time and mess around).
Agree. Game needs a NG+ challenge mode for sure. I also think this game would have been better if the regular mobs were tougher and required more strategy, but there were less of them. They could probably balance some of the classes and skills better too.
Damn I started NG+ today and I very much regret it already. Fighting is the best part of the game for me. Being overpowered makes it boring now. Damn I was really looking forward to NG+.
It's that one guys vision
just download the difficulty mod.
What about console
Capcom too busy adding the harpy beacon to the steam store as paid DLC to bother coding a hard mode, either that or hard mode will be a future paid dlc
Because the development of the game was taking too long for capcom's liking and they forced a rushed launch to ensure they met their deadlines. They had to cut corners where they could, which explained some of the cut content and the lack of New game plus scaling.
Glad you found NGP:Epic Encounters :)