Dragon's Dogma: How to Screw Up a Game in Five and a Half Simple Steps.

[Zhukov]

Dear OP, it sounds to me like you would just absolutely hate Dark Souls. Please don't buy it and make this EXACT same thread.

Way ahead of you there buddy.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.372675-I-shall-now-say-unkind-things-about-Dark-Souls

Dark Souls was a similar case. Cool game ruined by a single aspect of terrible design.

Open world RPG
Fast travel
what?

Yes because fast travel at the convenient click of a button just makes the world feel so "open" and "amazing" mhm :L

flawless logic you got there buddy

Yeah, because walking down the same road, fighting the exact same groups of enemies in the same places and stopping every ten seconds or so to recharge my stamina makes the world feel "open" and "amazing", right?

Oh wait, no it doesn't. It makes the world feel small, repetitive and padded and it would, lest we forget, waste my bloody time.

Besides, given how ugly and nondescript the world in Dragon's Dogma is, nothing is ever going to make it feel "amazing".

 

[Dante Neko]

To everyone complaining about the fast travel system it becomes much much more flexible than most games in new game +. once you start that you can begin buying port crystals from the forgery dude for 200k each and you can set down up to 20 crystals. now you cannot place a crystal in a town, dungeon, ect. but u can place it in the open world outside the front door. 20 crystals is enough to cover nearly all major questing areas, towns, and farming locations. whats more since you are the one determining exactly where to place the crystal, you can place it say at a dungeon back door and a end up with a nice shortcut. the lack of fast travel in the first playthrough is to avoid people skipping portions of the game that you might have missed if you simply fast travel. an example being the first time you see a Cockatrice

 

[Burst6]

Yeah, because walking down the same road, fighting the exact same groups of enemies in the same places and stopping every ten seconds or so to recharge my stamina makes the world feel "open" and "amazing", right?

Oh wait, no it doesn't. It makes the world feel small, repetitive and padded and it would, lest we forget, waste my bloody time.

Besides, given how ugly and nondescript the world in Dragon's Dogma is, nothing is ever going to make it feel "amazing".

Waste your time? The whole point of video games is to waste your time. Just because a game doesn't shower you constantly with new things doesn't mean its horrible, it means you need a bit of patience to get into it.

There are a lot of things that people like about dragons dogma and a lot of its fans don't care that they run through the same place more than once. It makes the game feel more organic. It looks like you have the same problem with dark souls in that you don't have either the time or patience to be playing a game like this.

If you're really so angry about the fast travel there's a way to make a lot of money really fast and easy in this game. Then you can buy all the ferry stones you want and pretty much cut your travel time in half. Google it.

 

[DorkRunner]

Dude, I feel like open world RPGs may not exactly be your thing; from what I've heard, you don't like this, or Elder Scrolls, or Dark Souls (though that's debatable whether it's "open world" I suppose). You ever just realize that there's a certain type of game that you're just not going to like, and leave that type of game alone and just play the ones you do like?

 

[Zhukov]

To everyone complaining about the fast travel system it becomes much much more flexible than most games in new game +. once you start that you can begin buying port crystals from the forgery dude for 200k each and you can set down up to 20 crystals. now you cannot place a crystal in a town, dungeon, ect. but u can place it in the open world outside the front door. 20 crystals is enough to cover nearly all major questing areas, towns, and farming locations. whats more since you are the one determining exactly where to place the crystal, you can place it say at a dungeon back door and a end up with a nice shortcut. the lack of fast travel in the first playthrough is to avoid people skipping portions of the game that you might have missed if you simply fast travel. an example being the first time you see a Cockatrice

So I only have to play through the entire game before I get a decent travel system?

Yeah... that's not exactly a point in the game's favour, at least not in my eyes.

Yeah, because walking down the same road, fighting the exact same groups of enemies in the same places and stopping every ten seconds or so to recharge my stamina makes the world feel "open" and "amazing", right?

Oh wait, no it doesn't. It makes the world feel small, repetitive and padded and it would, lest we forget, waste my bloody time.

Waste your time? The whole point of video games is to waste your time. Just because a game doesn't shower you constantly with new things doesn't mean its horrible, it means you need a bit of patience to get into it.

There are a lot of things that people like about dragons dogma and a lot of its fans don't care that they run through the same place more than once. It makes the game feel more organic. It looks like you have the same problem with dark souls in that you don't have either the time or patience to be playing a game like this.

If you're really so angry about the fast travel there's a way to make a lot of money really fast and easy in this game. Then you can buy all the ferry stones you want and pretty much cut your travel time in half. Google it.

I think you are being disingenuous.

Imagine if a shooter required you to perform a ten-minute quicktime event at the start of every level. Oh, and just for kicks it would be the exact same quicktime event each time. Would you accept, "Games are supposed to waste your time and you're just not patient enough for it" as a valid justification?

I'm aware of the ferrystones and port crystal. I mentioned them in the OP. They are woefully inadequate. Say I'm in Gran Soren and the game wants me to go back to the starting city (a common situation). Well, it's walky time! I could put the port crystal there, but what if it wants me to go to the shadow fortress? Well, it's time to walk down that same road for the seventh time, kill those harpies for the seventh time, get ambushed by those bandits for the seventh time and fight that one pack of wolves for the seventh time!

You call this "organic"? I call it the opposite. Seeing the exact same bunch of enemies spring back to life each time I walk past serves only to completely shatter any sense of believability in the game world. That, and to waste my time.

Dude, I feel like open world RPGs may not exactly be your thing; from what I've heard, you don't like this, or Elder Scrolls, or Dark Souls (though that's debatable whether it's "open world" I suppose). You ever just realize that there's a certain type of game that you're just not going to like, and leave that type of game alone and just play the ones you do like?

No, I don't think that's the problem.

I would have thoroughly enjoyed Dragon's Dogma if it wasn't so poorly designed. Hell, just a proper fast travel system would have pushed the game comfortably into tolerable territory. That would have mitigated some of the other flaws and I can put up with chatty companions and a crummy inventory.

Similar scenario with Dark Souls. All it needed was non-retarded checkpoint placement.

Bethesda games are a different story. I can actually enjoy them for a while before the inevitable tedium sets in.

 

[Burst6]

I think you are being disingenuous.

Imagine if a shooter required you to perform a ten-minute quicktime event at the start of every level. Oh, and just for kicks it would be the exact same quicktime event each time. Would you accept, "Games are supposed to waste your time and you're just not patient enough for it" as a valid justification?

I'm aware of the ferrystones and port crystal. I mentioned them in the OP. They are woefully inadequate. Say I'm in Gran Soren and the game wants me to go back to the starting city (a common situation). Well, it's walky time! I could put the port crystal there, but what if it wants me to go to the shadow fortress? Well, it's time to walk down that same road for the seventh time, kill those harpies for the seventh time, get ambushed by those bandits for the seventh time and fight that one pack of wolves for the seventh time!

You call this "organic"? I call it the opposite. Seeing the exact same bunch of enemies spring back to life each time I walk past serves only to completely shatter any sense of believability in the game world. That, and to waste my time.

It's a valid justification if the time wasting enhances the game in some way. In dark souls it was to make you fear death and be more cautious, here it's to make use of the day/night cycle. Capcom designed this whole system where nighttime actually supposed to be dark and filled with more enemies which has never been done in modern games (except the stalker series). Fast travel would pretty much destroy this. If you can pretty much teleport everywhere on a whim the fear of night is pretty much gone. Yeah i know later in the game nighttime can be easy, but it's probably the main reason why capcom took out fast travel.

The day and night system is an integral part of the game and capcom designed a lot of the game around it. I don't know about you but I'm still pretty scared of the night despite knowing i can usually handle it.

Yeah it is more organic. There is no fast travel in real life, you have to go everywhere. Because DD does it similarly, it's more organic. Sure you fight enemies in the same place every time but you do that in a lot of older open world games too. Even skyrim has a lot of respawning enemies. It's less noticeable because the world is more sparse, they respawn slower, and most people rarely go through a road more than twice because of the fast travel. \

Fighting the small enemies can get repetitive but I've come to look forward to killing them. The small weak ones that respawn often give the most discipline, so there's certainly incentive.

That's another thing, fast travel pretty much cuts off exploration. If you can instantly teleport between two major areas there's not much incentive to look around on the path. If fast travel was added, combined with the day/night cycle, the game would pretty much discourage you from exploration. You would have to handicap yourself to enjoy a large aspect of the game, which is bad design. That's probably the reason for the massive fast travel boost in ng+, because you've already been through everything and you probably don't need to explore more, and you're strong enough to get through nights easily.

 

[Zhukov]

[snip]

It's a valid justification if the time wasting enhances the game in some way. In dark souls it was to make you fear death and be more cautious, here it's to make use of the day/night cycle. Capcom designed this whole system where nighttime actually supposed to be dark and filled with more enemies which has never been done in modern games (except the stalker series). Fast travel would pretty much destroy this. If you can pretty much teleport everywhere on a whim the fear of night is pretty much gone. Yeah i know later in the game nighttime can be easy, but it's probably the main reason why capcom took out fast travel.

The day and night system is an integral part of the game and capcom designed a lot of the game around it. I don't know about you but I'm still pretty scared of the night despite knowing i can usually handle it.

I like the night thing. I like how getting caught out after dark is bad news. (Although I don't like how you quickly become powerful enough to make it a non issue.)

However, the ferrystones already completely defang the nightfall mechanic. Caught out? Just chuck a magic rock in air and you're safe and sound back in Gran Soren.

A fast travel system would be better. They could have made it so that you could only fast travel between towns with rest locations. That way if you got caught out you would still have had to make it back to safety but wouldn't need to engage in tedious daytime hikes.

Yeah it is more organic. There is no fast travel in real life, you have to go everywhere. Because DD does it similarly, it's more organic. Sure you fight enemies in the same place every time but you do that in a lot of older open world games too. Even skyrim has a lot of respawning enemies. It's less noticeable because the world is more sparse, they respawn slower, and most people rarely go through a road more than twice because of the fast travel.

"It's not in real life" is not a valid justification. There isn't instant healing in real life either. However, it's in the game because it's convenient. Would Dragon's Dogma be more "organic" if getting slapped by a cyclops meant you had to watch your character spend a couple of months in bed waiting for their broken ribs to mend?

"Skyrim did it" is not a valid justification. I didn't like respawning enemies in that game either. However, Skyrim mitigated the annoyance by not making me walk down the same road ten times.

That's another thing, fast travel pretty much cuts off exploration. If you can instantly teleport between two major areas there's not much incentive to look around on the path. If fast travel was added, combined with the day/night cycle, the game would pretty much discourage you from exploration. You would have to handicap yourself to enjoy a large aspect of the game, which is bad design. That's probably the reason for the massive fast travel boost in ng+, because you've already been through everything and you probably don't need to explore more, and you're strong enough to get through nights easily.

I'm happy to explore, even in a world as dull as that of Dragon's Dogma. Hell, that's half the attraction. What I don't like is being made to explore the same road ten times over.

 

[Soopy]

You're pretty much criticizing any and every RPG ever made, they all share the same monotony at some point or another.

Hell I find Skyrim monotonous even with fast travel. At least for me the light at the end of the tunnel in Dragons Dogma is worth the journey.

 

[Project_Xii]

Was not surprised to see this topic made by this poster. Nor the amount of whine contained within. I think you need a new hobby, dude, you seem to dislike or have a problem with almost every game you play. DD is fantastic, and practically everything you complain about stops being an issue after the first hour of play. You know, when the rest of us real gamers adapt and realise it's not actually an issue, it's just the way the game is played. Oh, and it's not Skyrim. Which is a damn good thing, I'm telling you.

 

[Podunk]

You pointed out personal grievances with this game! Waah! OP, you are so entitled! Also you're not a 'real gamer', because you don't like the same bullshit I like.

 

[Zhukov]

Was not surprised to see this topic made by this poster. Nor the amount of whine contained within. I think you need a new hobby, dude, you seem to dislike or have a problem with almost every game you play. DD is fantastic, and practically everything you complain about stops being an issue after the first hour of play. You know, when the rest of us real gamers adapt and realise it's not actually an issue, it's just the way the game is played. Oh, and it's not Skyrim. Which is a damn good thing, I'm telling you.

Ohh... personal attacks. Juicy!

Mate, I'm not even going to try and argue with you. Anyone who uses the term "real gamer" with a straight face is clearly beyond reach.

 

[lapan]

STEP ONE is to not have a fast travel system. After all, an open world RPG would never need one of those! Players love spending 60% of the game traipsing back and forth across the same areas. Besides, wasting their time like that allows you to say that your games has 50+ hours of content. If you really must, you can put in a half-arsed system that allows the player to teleport to only two locations on the map, but be sure to make it based on a rare finite resource. Remember, the more time the player spends traveling across the same areas over and over again, the better.

Yes, some of the paths did get tedious, i especially hate that canyon between the starting city and Gran Soren. However as you explore the world you will find multiple shortcuts that even allow you unlimited stamina after clearing them out from enemies. Overall it wasn't enough of an issue to be a problem to me.

You also need to make that travelling as slow and tedious as possible. So STEP TWO is to make the player walk really slowly. You can include a sprint function, but make sure it requires a stamina bar that is used quickly and regenerates really slowly. As the final touch, when the player runs out of stamina make them watch their character stand still panting for a few highly annoying seconds.

Character creation seems to make a LOT of difference here. My first character was a male warrior and i frequently ran out of stamina after short running. After i beat the game i rerolled a new character, this time a female strider. Now i run about 3 times as fast and have little problems at all with stamina while running.

However, the player needs something to do during all that slow, tedious and repetitive traveling. STEP THREE is to have respawning monsters. Furthermore, it is important that there not be any kind of variation or randomisation in these spawns. Make the exact same monsters respawn in the exact same places in the exact same numbers. That way the players doesn't feel any sense of progression, accomplishment or impact on the world as they fight the exact same monsters while travelling through the exact same place for the tenth time.

The respawniong monsters arent a problem for me, however they DESPERATELY need to scale with you. 90% of the enemies will lag behind you after a short time and become simple cannonfooder. This applies even to the large enemies. Similary, New game+ needs a lot of difficulty adjustment. I simply rerolled and deleted my first character after i heard there is almost no difficulty adjustment.

Oh, but don't think we're done yet. You've made your game repetitive, boring, tedious and needlessly time consuming. However, it just isn't quite irritating enough yet. That's why STEP FOUR is to saddle the player with three companion NPCs that never, ever, ever, ever shut their fat fucking mouths.

I have no problems to 90% ignore their talking, but i know other people don't have such an easy time. I can see how this could be annoying to some.

Now, since your game is an RPG is will probably have a bit of inventory management involved. STEP FIVE is to make that inventory management as clumsy and awkward as possible. Menu's are the key. Also, rather than one of those convenient shared inventories a la Dragon Age, give each character separate inventories to maximise the amount of tedious item shuffling. For the love of all that is holy, do not include any shortcut buttons, radial menus or anything similar. That way, if the player wants to use an item to restore their stamina because the they got tired while slowly trudging back through the same areas and killing the exact same monsters, then by golly they'll need to go through at least three menus to do it!

I would have welcomed a quick access button to potions and food, but overall i don't have a problem with the inventory. The limited and seperated inventory makes you actually think about what you really need to take with you. Besides, you can always use your pawns as yur mules if you get to overloaded.

Lastly, just for kicks, make your game's story consist entirely of infantile drivel that wouldn't pass muster on a preschooler's fanfiction website. After all, it is just a video game. Nobody will mind so long as you give them bigger numbers every few minutes.

Not much worse than every other generic RPG story. The thing i have to critize however is how little influence some quests have on the NPCs. You can have the Duke throw you into jail, simply walk out of there and everyone will instantly have forgotten about it. The jail is laughable really, all it does is deequip your stuff.

 

[Burst6]

/snip

I like the night thing. I like how getting caught out after dark is bad news. (Although I don't like how you quickly become powerful enough to make it a non issue.)

However, the ferrystones already completely defang the nightfall mechanic. Caught out? Just chuck a magic rock in air and you're safe and sound back in Gran Soren.

A fast travel system would be better. They could have made it so that you could only fast travel between towns with rest locations. That way if you got caught out you would still have had to make it back to safety but wouldn't need to engage in tedious daytime hikes.

/snip

"It's not in real life" is not a valid justification. There isn't instant healing in real life either. However, it's in the game because it's convenient. Would Dragon's Dogma be more "organic" if getting slapped by a cyclops meant you had to watch your character spend a couple of months in bed waiting for their broken ribs to mend?

"Skyrim did it" is not a valid justification. I didn't like respawning enemies in that game either. However, Skyrim mitigated the annoyance by not making me walk down the same road ten times.

/snip

I'm happy to explore, even in a world as dull as that of Dragon's Dogma. Hell, that's half the attraction. What I don't like is being made to explore the same road ten times over.

Yeah i can agree that they messed up the nighttime mechanic. I feel that the ferrystones were meant to by expensive and for emergencies, but that never went through when they designed it. I still don't feel that fast travel past the ferry stone/port crystal method is required here. The port crystal already cuts out a good chunk of travel time especially since you can get ferry stones so easily and moving around the port crystal can get you to active areas quickly as long as you go there once.


Magic is already established in the setting so a lot of things like healing are explained with that, but how would you include fast travel? You can't really have carts or large city teleporters because they both mess with the games setting, where there are no horses just slow buffalo and teleport crystals are very expensive (well for the average NPC in the game anyway). The other problem is that this game was designed around fighting large amounts of small monsters. That's the best way to level vocation. If you could just skip them then you would eventually need to stop and grind in place which is less fun than running the same path multiple times. They designed the core of this game differently than a lot of other RPGs and their design doesn't compliment an easy fast travel very well.


What i meant when i used skyrim is that modern RPGs, even large proven ones, share predictable enemy spawns. It's more noticeable in DD because they're tightly packed together and you go through them often, compounded with the idea that they want to make the enemies easy to grind. Like i said above mowing through normal enemies is a great way to level discipline and a lot of people play this game for the sense of progression making your character stronger brings. Making the enemy placement more predictable makes leveling vocations nicer.


If i was never made to go through the first road 10 times i would have never had that epic cyclops fight under the waycastle.

 

[Zhukov]

These complains hardly screw the game up. Like your other threads about Dark Souls you just seem to love finding small complaints about the game and making them seem like they completely destroy the experience of the game. They're just small gripes you've completely overblown.

On their own, sure, gripes that could be overlooked.

Together... not so much.

Besides, these were all relatively easy things to fix. I'm amazed that an entire team of developers could look at the slow travel speed or the constantly blabbering pawns and think, "Nope, that'll never get annoying."

 

[TheVioletBandit]

I don't mind the no fast travel thing. As long as I can still use Ferry Stones(which are INfinite, by the way, you can buy them. Which isn't really burning any of my money because I'm getting more of it than I know to do with thanks to the fact that there's a VERY limited selection of equipment to purchase) to fast travel back to Gran Soren. Traveling to another destination doesn't really bother me.

And again, the pawns talking doesn't really bother me. I've always wondered why more games don't have your companions talking at all. Skits in Tales of Games are the closest thing I've seen, which even then isn't really them talking while you journey the land.

The inventory isn't quite as bad as you're making it out to be. There are two inventory menus. Inventory and Equipment. Wanna choose that healing item quickly because you ran out of stamina? Leave your cursor on the item when you leave the inventory, and it'll still be right there when you open it back up. Even then, the only sections you have to fiddle with are the Curative and Tools sections, since they're the only sections with items that serve a purpose beyond sitting there until you combine, store, or enhance equipment with them. Honestly, I think your complaints about the inventory menus are a just a bit exaggerated.

I don't know how you're walking really slow unless your character is absolutely tiny. Even then, you're never actually walking unless you're only halfway holding the control stick. It's not really all that slow. Oh and also, if your stamina is draining quickly and it's recovering slow, it's because your character is XBAWKS HUGE. Large characters drain stamina quicker and recover it slower. Small characters drain it slower and recover it quicker. All you have to do is find a healthy balance and you're all set. Conversely, weight limitations work in the opposite way.

I'll agree with the whole thing about the same monsters respawning in the same place every single time. Some variety would indeed be very welcome. Although, I guess I'm kind of used to it, after playing Dark Soul and Demon's Souls for so long.

All in all, I think it's a wonderfully created game. Mages and Sorcerers could stand to be a little more powerful near the start, rather than being pathetically weak until about 10 hours into the game where they turn into gods, but I think it's a great game.

So, the less you weigh the slower you recover stamina and the faster you drain it then?

 

[TheVioletBandit]

I agree with a lot of what you said, and I even have some additional complaints of my own. But I still think it's a pretty good game and I have had fun playing it. Sadly, with just a couple things fixed it could have been a GREAT game.

 

[Broady Brio]

I've only played 2 hours of this game. And... It's okay, for the moment. I'm slightly peeved about no fast-travel but who knows maybe it could work.