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

[piinyouri]

1. Dragon's Dogma.
If you actually reached the end of the game you would understand the title.

Spoiler: Spoilers ahoy

A dogma is, "A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true." The entire theme of the game is that the world is an unending wheel, and history repeats itself forever. The dragon, all of the hardships you face, even all of the people you meet are all created and given direction by the Seneschal, the current "God" of the world. Your character literally becomes God at the end of the game, and it is made abundantly clear that since you chose to fight the Dragon rather than take his offer, it has been your choice that lead you to this point. You then rule the world only to be replaced by the next coming Arisen to brave the battle with the Dragon and rise to become the next Seneschal, who will grant you the sweet release of death from an eternity of serving as the world's guardian.

So this pretty much?

So blasting that next time I face Grigorri.

 

[Hawkolf]

My only problem with this game is how Japanese it is if it makes any sense... Quests actually require you to think. Like Escort Quest with that little girl. How was I supposed to know I was supposed to LOSE the race to get the Gold Idol. I have no brains to figure things like that out ._.
Oh yeah and I've had some problems with one save file. I think that's the biggest flaw of this game.

 

[piinyouri]

My only problem with this game is how Japanese it is if it makes any sense... Quests actually require you to think. Like Escort Quest with that little girl. How was I supposed to know I was supposed to LOSE the race to get the Gold Idol. I have no brains to figure things like that out ._.
Oh yeah and I've had some problems with one save file. I think that's the biggest flaw of this game.

I get that completely.
Some of the quests are very old school RPG in that they don't follow normal logic and to be honest don't make a hell of a lot of sense. (Like the quest to get the idol you mentioned)

This game has shown me a lot from back then was good, and a lot was also bad, and I'm glad those bits aren't the norm anymore.

 

[Zaik]

I'm getting flashbacks to every internet argument about Morrowind ever.

Sounds like they made a lot of the same mistakes, and the same weird people who ran to defend it's flat out poor design choices are doing the same here.

I wonder why though. These same people, who will shit fire and bleed rage over Dragon Age 2 reusing interiors, will gladly slog across the same terrain again and again at retard speed for hours.

Why is that?

 

[Mintee10]

I'm getting flashbacks to every internet argument about Morrowind ever.

Sounds like they made a lot of the same mistakes, and the same weird people who ran to defend it's flat out poor design choices are doing the same here.

I wonder why though. These same people, who will shit fire and bleed rage over Dragon Age 2 reusing interiors, will gladly slog across the same terrain again and again at retard speed for hours.

Why is that?

That doesn't make sense...sounds like you're doing what you accuse these people of doing, except with your Dragon Age.

DD doesn't reuse terrain details, so maybe that's why? lolz
I'll admit that some of the interiors DO look the same though...

 

[Sir Grumps]

About your step one; you'd rather just discover a location when you have a quest you haven't done, just fast travel there and just get it done with and get money? Seems like a lot of fun. That takes the fun out the exploration aspect of the game, the game devs. just wanted you to explore the world that they made and worked their asses off for. When you add a fast travel system like TES it's just point and click (I read the reply that you don't like Skyrim). Capcom made an open world for you to explore and actually level up. In a lot of other RPG's it's just grind for your levels and that's it.

Step 2; it depends on how much you carry, your stamina, and your class. The more you carry the more you weigh, the slower you go. A lot of the items you sell, hell, ALL of the items you can sell. And I'm sure if you were tired from running you'd be panting too, if you even get outside.

Step 3; The respawning enemies is there so if you need to upgrade your weapons and armor, you can go kill them and and get what you need go back and enhance your shit. The bosses in this game are fun to fight. And depending on what time of day it is, it'll be different enemies. so while you're out doing something else and it's getting night you can go there and kill off those enemies and go back to Gran Soren.

Step 4; The NPC's can have some helpful stuff they can say what enemies are weak to, if you're stuck talk to them. You can turn off the subtitles at least that's not annoying. The NPCs can help, when they're down it sucks but, but when they get back up, they can kick ass.

Step 5; The inventory isn't that bad, you're just over-exaggerating it. It's pretty well organized, and it's easy to access your partner's.

Basically to me it's like you're saying Dragon's Age is superior than a lot of other RPG's. It's good that the enemies respawn too when there's a TWO-HUNDRED level cap. Makes it have more replay value. So with all of that said who cares? If you don't like a game, STFU. Just play it a little and return it if you don't like it.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

(It's a rant, don't take it too seriously.)

So... you're a developer and you're in the process of making a game. It's an open world action-RPG and it's coming along nicely. You've got some solid character customization options in there, solid RPG elements, good albeit unpolished combat, some big cool monsters to fight and an interesting mechanic that allows players to trade and hire each other's party members.

You're going to call it Dragon's Dogma because where you come from there's a law against video games with non-goofy titles.

But wait! Your game is actually pretty good. Well, you'll have to do something about that! So here is my guide to screwing up an otherwise decent game in just five and a half easy steps.

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.

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.

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.

[sub][sub]Captcha: "make my day"[/sub][/sub]

VERY late to the party - if you weren't able to fight some of the same enemies then the side quests where you have to kill "x" amount of monsters wouldn't work. If you had dead enemies all over your map, the game would be more difficult because it'd be harder to level up, and you would also be forced to play it a certain way no matter which character class you chose.

If they tried to do what you suggested, the game would have be made a bit easier. As it is, you can go into any section of the map that you want to, whenever you want to go there. If you're not prepared, you'll die, period. Grinding comes in the form of fighting the same enemies over and over again. I actually prefer these fights because it helps me get accustomed to everything - plus you can choose to fight the same enemies using different tactics. If you're trying to play the game for the story, then I agree that the design is tedious. If you're playing the game for the combat, then Dragon's Dogma is absolute heaven. It's WAY better than Skyrim or Amalur's combat, and from what I've seen of the Witcher and Dark/Demon's Souls it's got better combat than those too... Not sure comparing Dark/Demon's souls to Dogma is fair b/c they are very different, but Dogma does combat right. A sequel to Dogma, or possibly this next upgrade (Dark Arisen) will make Dogma one of the best games to come around in a long time. I tend to overlook many of the design issues if the game is fun to play, but I'm old school.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

STEP ONE is to not have a fast travel system.

I agree with you in principle; however, the game does have a fast travel system. It's just a bit of a pain to use is all.

You also need to make that travelling as slow and tedious as possible. So STEP TWO is to make the player walk really slowly.

Personally, I managed to more or less sprint all of the time. That's more a factor of managing your encumbrance and the fact that the player's personal weight matters than anything else.

STEP THREE is to have respawning monsters

The respawning monsters are the game. Without that, the world would be empty inside of a few hours of play. If you end up actually liking the combat mechanics (and I did - they held up well enough for the length of the game), it's rather fun. Couple that with the fact that there is a monster hunter core and you basically always want something that the next enemy will drop.

OThat's why STEP FOUR is to saddle the player with three companion NPCs that never, ever, ever, ever shut their fat fucking mouths.[/quote] You can tell your pawn to shut up and it works perfectly well. If the other two really get in your nerves (and I admit that they do grate), you probably don't really need them anyhow. After about 10 hours, there isn't much you can't accomplish with two. If you just pick them up for one of the really hard fights (Drake for example) they aren't so bad.

STEP FIVE is to make that inventory management as clumsy and awkward as possible.

I'll agree entirely here. That interface is fairly terrible. Even after a long period of play I was making mistakes regarding where I was sending an item, noting if it was actually equipped, etc.

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.

The game's story, in total, is actually fairly good. The problem, as I see it, is that you get a story chunk at the start, a bunch of stuff only tangentially related to the story throughout, and a chunk at the very end. Given you can go for 30+ hours without really learning anything meaningful about the story, I'd say the way the story is presented is unambiguously bad.

Dragon's Dogma, ladies and gentlemen. Proudly demonstrating that the only thing worse than something crap is something crap that could easily have been good.

I was actually fairly surprised by how much I ended up liking the game. It certainly has flaws. For example, that pawns constantly talk and yet never, in sixty hours did they ever say anything useful or interesting. Why, then, do they talk at all?

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Wait, you mean to say that your character's appearance affects travel speed?

Huh. Apparently so. [http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Character_Weight]

"Hey, I know, let's cripple anyone who wants to make a large character! We'll make them move slower, run out of stamina faster and take longer to recover! Then we'll make them run up and down the same road over and over again! Man, this game is going to be awesome."

Urgh, that's even worse design than I realised.

Actually, it isn't quite like that. There are advantages regardless of how you play. The heavier your character, for example, the more weight you can carry. This means that in actual fact, a heavier character can often move faster simply because they aren't encumbered at all times. Heavier characters also tend to be taller which lets them reach higher places a feat that can, from time to time, not only yield additional items, but often shortcuts to objectives. Beyond that, they also can hold enemies in place by grabbing them meaning entire classes of enemies lose effective attacks against you. You also gain weapon reach, maximum depth of water you can wade in without losing latern light (which is a minor but really irritating thing that happens often in certain dungeons).

That said, smaller characters regain stamina faster but they also use it faster. They are also more vulnerable to knockback, knockdown, and grabs.

All told, the things you gain and lose at either end are fairly balanced. A small character has trouble playing a heavy armor class simply because the stamina penalties for being encumbered. But they gain some advantage by playing a class with light armor - especially if they need to grab and hold on to something (like a boss monster).

 

[Zhukov]

I think this is the third time this thread has been rezzed.

[snip]

You can tell your pawn to shut up and it works perfectly well.

Hi there.

I've already had all the arguments over this and don particularly wish to have them again. Besides, I have since purged this game from my memory to make room for other, better games.

However, I am going to pick on that one statement quoted above.

No, telling your pawn to shut up does not work. I tried it. Oh, how I tried. I sat that gormless dunce down in the "special chair" over and over, and I told him to shut his mouth every single time. I spent a good twenty minutes telling him to shut up. I told him to shut up, then walked him around to see if it worked, then sat him back down and told him to shut up all over again.

He continued to talk so damn much that he often couldn't even get a sentence out before interrupting himself with the next bit of inane babble.

The dunce chair made no noticeable difference.

 

[Slevin7]

(It's a rant, don't take it too seriously.)

So... you're a developer and you're in the process of making a game. It's an open world action-RPG and it's coming along nicely. You've got some solid character customization options in there, solid RPG elements, good albeit unpolished combat, some big cool monsters to fight and an interesting mechanic that allows players to trade and hire each other's party members.

Dragon's Dogma, ladies and gentlemen. Proudly demonstrating that the only thing worse than something crap is something crap that could easily have been good.

[sub][sub]Captcha: "make my day"[/sub][/sub]

Sorry I didn't edit your OP in quote I just cut it to avoid wall o text.

Okay honestly I do prefer RPG's to have no fast travel IF they do it right. Skyrim could of had no fast travel if it wasn't so big and running wasn't limited, its a lot of running around but there is SO much to do and see in between cities. Fast travel to much and people miss all the hard work that went into making those detailed graphics and side quest (along with a bunch of random events that are fun)

Not a big Skyrim fan, I am a fan of Dragon Age, Witcher and KoA:Reckoning (Also StarWars The KNIGHTS of the old Republic was my favorite RPG of all time, that's the RPG game NOT the MMO.

I loved Dragon's Dogma but hated it at the same time. The graphics aren't too bad, combat is pretty good if you know what your doing, the story while had its yawns wasn't a bad idea and it wasn't like it was stolen or anything *cough*DragonHeart*cough*

Yeah I turned off all voices at some point cause I was literally throwing my pawns off a cliff for not shutting up. Yeah I basically avoided all the side missions because I did NOT want to walk around and fight the same enemies all the damn time. The game was pretty challenging and to those that say the game was way too easy from start to finish get the fuck off Easy mode because the first levels are rough, anyways the challenge means you have to heal yourself from time to time and using that menu did annoy me.

BUT BUT BUT There is a game of year somewhere in here. Its buried under a shit ton of frustration and annoying crap, but there is a good game here. I love this game, I can't put it down I just want to keep playing it. This COULD have knocked Skyrim off its high horse, took Dragon Age down a peg and topped Witcher 2! But it didn't, that doesn't mean its a bad game. There is enough good to out weight the bad. I signed up to this website JUST to reply to this message to say this, try it out! Don't throw it in the DO NOT BUY section yet! Its a good game, its got its problems but with enough people interested in it they might make a second game. Dark Arisen gave us a somewhat fast travel and fixed only a few things. Get Dark Arisen trust me, they did fix some stuff. But if its popular and people buy it we could see a Dragon Dogma 2 where they finally fix almost everything, and if they do this is easily game of the year material and will be the next ultimate RPG. I mean do we really want to rely on Dragon Age 3 after we saw what happened in Dragon Age 2? And I'm sure Fable is dead now. KoA could of been the next big thing but the company died and Skyrim DragonBorn is coming out yeah but is anyone else sick of Skryim yet? I'm just saying keep an open mind with this game.

 

[hazabaza1]

Kind of late to the party again but from what I hear the Dark Arisen thing clears up most of those issues, so I guess Capcom have been spying on you Zhukov.

 

[Colt47]

Not trying to be the bad guy here, but it sounds like someone didn't look at the user reviews or the official reviews for the criticisms people had of the game before buying it. It's understandable that some people are skeptics when it comes to game journalism, but Dragons Dogma has been out for a while and even other players pointed out the issues.

So moral of the story: Read reviews before buying games and make sure the common issues people point out are not going to be a barrier to enjoyment.

 

[daveman247]

Ha, I remember this thread.

At least TWO of the issues have been fixed for dark arisen (fast travel, inventory) SO at least they listened

I waited for this version of the game and so far i'm having good fun with it. How to level up threw me a bit until I realised it was oldschool and you had to buy skills from guys.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

The worst part is the pawns. They just repeat the same lines endlessly and it drives me up the wall.

 

[Schadrach]

Respawning monsters, so you'd be happy with an empty map?...

Worked for the Gothic series. Fixed number of enemies in the world, new stuff only spawned at main plot chapter boundaries.

Are you sure that's the easiest way to screw up a game? I would've thought the easiest way to ruin your perfectly good game is to program it to, at some point, when the player does something very crucial to the story, make a prompt appear that reads 'NO FACK U' and then delete their saved data. But okay, I guess what you said works as well.

Got the final ending in Nier, huh? If not, then after a few new game + playthroughs and meeting some requirements it literally gives you the choice to never have existed, and thus solve everything, but there will be no memory or record of you ever having existed. Making that choice gets you the best ending and deletes your save.

I sort of have to agree on the fast travel bits. I mean, going through the same valley a hundred times just to go back to your home village is a pain, and the "ferrystones" are not only rare, but when you can buy them they're incredibly expensive (20,000 gold just to buy ONE. Also, they're destroyed after using it once.)

Overall, I enjoy the game, but absolutely HATE the lack of fast travel, at the very least they could make Ferrystones have an unlimited number of uses.

Didn't Dark Arisen give you an unlimited ferrystone if you convert a DD save, or something like that?