Vermain posted:

it still beggars belief that people are being caught off guard by a mechanic that the game literally stops you dead in your tracks to tell you how to avoid

Broken Cog posted:

I want to turn my pawn back into a fighter, but I've a hard time letting go of this outfit, and it's Warrior only. Decisions, decisions...

Countblanc posted:

has anyone else been having camera issues where the camera will swing 90-180 degrees, as if focusing on something, seemingly randomly? it started happening to me yesterday and now it seems constant.

Megaman's Jockstrap posted:

Where did you get this helm?

quote:

I'm always cautious of talking like this because it can come off as smug or superior but I think ultimately that's the truth of the matter here. This was not a well-played franchise before now and even if it's a AAA title, there's a way in which this game is meant to elide most AAA open world trends. You are expected to traverse. If you want relatively cheap and faster travel, you're meant to find an oxcart and pay the (quite modest) fee to move between trade hubs much like you would pay for a silt strider in Morrowind. Even if you do this, you could be ambushed on the road and in the worst case the ox pulling the cart can be killed. Something being "possible" in a game doesn't always mean it is intentional but Dragon's Dogma continually undercuts the player's ability to avoid long treks. Portcrystals, which act as fast travel destinations, are limited and ferry stones (while not prohibitively expensive compared to weapons and armor) are juuust expensive enough that you need to consider if the expense is worthwhile. Once is happenstance. Multiple times is a pattern. And the pattern in Dragon's Dogma is to disincentivize easy travel. It screams of intent.

quote:

That's because players issue (panick? hysteria?) with dragonplague is as much to do with what it represents as what it does. Players are used to the notion of game worlds being spaces where they get to determine every state of affair. They are, as I've suggested before, eager to play the tyrant. Eager to enact whatever violences or charities that might strike their fancy. They do this with the expectation that they will be rewarded for the latter but face no consequences for the former. Dragonplague argues otherwise. No, it says, this world is also one that belongs to the developers and they are more than fine with heaping dire consequences on players. Before the dragonplague's consequences were known, players were running around the world killing NPCs in cities because it would stabilize the framerate. They're fine with mass murder on their own terms. they love it!

quote:

It's easy to boil everything I'm saying down to "Dragon's Dogma is not afraid to be rude to the player" but that doesn't capture the spirit of the design. It invites players to go on a hike. It makes no attempt to hide that the hike is difficult. But that's the extent of it. It offers little guidance on the path, doesn't check if you're a skilled enough hiker. Your decision to go on the hike is taken as proof of your acceptance of the fact that you might fall down.

This is not unique to Dragon's Dogma. In fact, this is part of the appeal (philosophically) of a game like Elden Ring. The difference being that even FromSofts much-lauded gamer gauntlets (excepting perhaps Sekiro, conincidentally their best work) offer more ways to adjust and fix the world state to the player's liking. Even the darling of difficulty will offering you a hand when you fall. Dragon's Dogma is not so eager to do so. In a decade where convenience is king for video games, that represents both a keen understanding of its lineages and a shocking affront to accepted norms and expectations.

Detective No. 27 posted:

I saw an excellent written review of the game posted on Twitter today. The writer actually has nuance and good observations on player vs developer oriented world design.

https://cohost.org/dreamcastaway/post/5275166-abandon-all-delusion

Some good bits:





I remember liking the first one a lot, despite only buying it as a time killer while waiting for Skyrim which came out about a month later. I ended up being extremely bored with Skyrim, essentially hating the two Elder Scrolls games after Morrowind. Glad to see Dragon's Dogma 2 having the stones to continue making risky decisions. I wish I had more time to play.

Detective No. 27 posted:

I saw an excellent written review of the game posted on Twitter today. The writer actually has nuance and good observations on player vs developer oriented world design.

https://cohost.org/dreamcastaway/post/5275166-abandon-all-delusion

Some good bits:

I remember liking the first one a lot, despite only buying it as a time killer while waiting for Skyrim which came out about a month later. I ended up being extremely bored with Skyrim, essentially hating the two Elder Scrolls games after Morrowind. Glad to see Dragon's Dogma 2 having the stones to continue making risky decisions. I wish I had more time to play.

johnny park posted:

Unfortunately this reviewer misses the trees for the forest, so to speak. They laud DD2 for daring to push back against the AAA open world trend of easy travel but don't touch on the fact that DD2 forgot to make the mandatory traveling fun or interesting. It's just pack after pack of goblins/harpies/bandits every 10 feet

Zore posted:

Which forge is best for magic upgrades? The elf one?

Detective No. 27 posted:

I saw an excellent written review of the game posted on Twitter today. The writer actually has nuance and good observations on player vs developer oriented world design.

johnny park posted:

Unfortunately this reviewer misses the trees for the forest, so to speak. They laud DD2 for daring to push back against the AAA open world trend of easy travel but don't touch on the fact that DD2 forgot to make the mandatory traveling fun or interesting. It's just pack after pack of goblins/harpies/bandits every 10 feet

CharlestonJew posted:

the 2nd longest part is rubbing my junk against the terrain in the hopes of finding the one rock that will let me clamber up to that treasure chest on top of a cliff

Jack Trades posted:

D.Fuzzbot posted:

A lot of the praise sounds so weird when it boils down to "they don't have easy fast travel!" or "there's no additional saves!"

Phlegmish posted:

Personally confirmed: to get access to Dwarven smithing, you just have to do the Dulled Steel, Cold Forge quest (which you get at the palace grounds from a guy called Roman so make sure to pick it up when you're in Vernworth), and the follow-up one. It takes you to Volcanic Island, but you can get there without having to progress the main story by taking the southern route. It would be a good idea to bring a portcrystal with you, and plop it down in the Volcanic Island Encampment while you're there.

I'm all about those Dwarven smithing bonuses, so I knew I had to do this as soon as possible.

Roobanguy posted:

any fighter/warrior mains who are frustrated about getting staggered easily, i'd suggest going back to vernworths castle at night after entering Battahl and getting a quest there.

you'll get a quest that requires you to fix a dull sword. finishing that quest gets you a new upgrade type, dwarf, which heavily increases the knockdown resist/power of armor and weapons respectively.

Vermain posted:

dark souls birthed an entire subgenre off the back of the conceit of "what if you couldn't quicksave/quickload every 5 seconds and had to take your health seriously", it's not that weird

D.Fuzzbot posted:

It's more the sense I dont hear why certain systems like quests and traversal are good in the same way the combat is praised but rather, I hear that because they didn't implement things that would be considered normal for AAA games.

Vermain posted:

the endless goblin/harpy/dog packs are there to provide life to the world to emphasize its hostility and to add to the loss gauge if you don't handle them efficiently. they're kind of a necessary precondition in an open world that prioritizes traversal like this: if you don't have them, then the world seems barren and the run to a specific PoI is just holding forwards with nothing to break it up, but if they're too difficult, then it makes the journey too tedious since you have to really pull out the big guns every few minutes

what they probably should have done is add more midweight encounters that can randomly take the place of standard spawns, so that you occasionally have an increased hit of friction without creating encounter fatigue. i actually wonder if this was part of the initial plan, since battahl has the alpha wolves that have miniboss sized healthbars without the accompanying HUD element, and they either chose not to go with it or didn't have the budget to implement it for every monster clade

johnny park posted:

how does trade between Battahl and Vermund function when you're accosted by saurians/goblins/bandits every two minutes?