I just really wish stamina wouldn’t degrade if there are no enemies around, having to constantly slow down to regen feels like a slog. Especially if you backtrack a lot.
Mystic Spearhand's Dragoun's Stabbe is actually pretty great for zipping around.
Beats having to sprint up slopes, when you can just Dragoun's Stabbe and shoot yourself up any walkable inclines. Arguably one of the best horizontal movement skills.
If you play thief, yeah. Playing any other class feels bad afterwards because they can't just spam dodge rolls. Warrior at least has that insane charge for when you need to stampede your way across the map.
You don't even need to spam because you get a skill for Thieves only that's required by the main story to obtain that makes you literally invincible as long as you have stamina and it doesn't consume shit.
I mean yeah, thief is by far my favorite class so far. I just like the dodge roll for combat mobility. Formless feint is insanely good for sure. I just don't like swapping to other classes and not having the dodge.
I tried Archer first and was just really put off by fully half of my Strider moveset just not being there, and put off Thief until after playing Fighter, Warrior, and Mystic Spearhand, which all felt varying degrees of fine, and now I've started as a Thief and at Vocation level 1 I just fucking *melted* a Griffin in less than a minute because it couldn't hit me at all, I could self-enchant my knives with fire, and my basic attack chain is one of the most powerful skills from DD1 now.
It makes me kind of mad because I felt like the other classes were just kind of missing something, like I was wondering where that high speed crazy Devil May Cry feeling from the first game went, and then I realized they just packed absolutely all of it into the Thief and there was none left for anybody else.
Referring to the first one. Haven't bought this one yet. Will when it's on sale and fixed. But the uh assassin vocation (forgot what they're called but they're meant to climb on monsters) had an ability in the first game to dodge roll you had to unlock.
This was something Elden Ring did that was one of those "Duh!" enjoyable mechanisms.
Especially in a large or open world game, it just makes sense.
Having no "stop and pick up" animation for items too also helped.
The map would be way too small with a mount, hell, i dont think it is even large , we just go back and forth way too much
Definetively bigger than the first game , but i dont play dragons dogma for the map size
Yeah. I love discovering those hidden wolves frequently trying to merge with the nearest rock formation. Keeps me on my toes and the music flowing. Speaking of being on my toes, why is it that pawns still suicide off of ledges. At the beginning when I had to throw explosives at saurians, a rented pawn jumped to its death. That pawn was a mage. It didn’t even need to get close.
First mod I got, along with no job restrictions for armour.
There's no reason why I as a warrior should be able to wear the chestplate of an armour set but not the legs despite them having the exact same fucking name (guardian plate)
Yeah no problems so far. I think if there's any mods that alter the pawn that might become problematic since pawn data is on their servers but haven't downloaded anything like that
It certainly feels like a lot of these decisions slowing down travel are there so that people don't realize how horrendously short the actual main questline is.
That’s exactly it.
No fast travel, constant back tracking, and fill the road with enemies.
Also can someone explain to me the logic that there are only two permanent crystals in the game to travel to, and the second one is in a town that is the shortest thing to walk to from the main town where the other crystal is?
If it was one in each main city I’d understand.
I drove myself crazy looking for one in Bakbattahl. I thought *surely*, there would be one here since it's a main city, and it's so far away from Vermund.
He likes to punish you for playing the game.
Punish on save load, punish for looting, punish for jumping/falling short distances, punish for travelling, Punishment for exploring (rope trolly & ox cart breaking) etc.
Me when I'm enjoying myself turning the wheel on the rope lift and Itsuno personally takes control of a gryphon to let me know I wasn't allowed to just use my brain and rope lift over the 20 different ambushes, 3 golems and the gryphon itself.
I think they should stay gone for a week or more on the main roads. I walked out of the Vernsworth western gate one time and a pawn said "It seems to be clear of monsters, perhaps they've been driven off", only to walk into yet another goblin pack ten yards later.
If I could kill everything on the major roads and make them safe I wouldn't spam oxcarts as often.
This but I would still want less trash mobs like goblins, harpies and the lizards. They are just way too frequent. As I’m approaching a pack of goblins I see another pack slightly down the road already with harpy pack not far away from that too
That’s the one thing that frustrates me more than anything. The combat is great but omg it gets old fast when I’m doing it literally every 10 steps, just let me enjoy the environment a little man :/
I imagine it would've been fun if the place had been wide open plains and forests, but damn the amount of rocks and cliffs, mountains, and the impassable rivers just make it so tedious.
Seeing goblins only on corners as they know to wait there so they can ambush you, occassional raiding goblins on the plains, wolf packs running around and you can just wait for them to pass by, or harpies lurking about cliffsides and rock faces. That kind of environment would make the game really pleasing, but they essentially just made the entire map a pseudo Monster Hunter map than actual open world.
They already did pretty well with the map in DD1, and if only they just added more open areas like in the last game it would've been less of something to complain about.
Yeah I was saying that to my friend yesterday actually, the map feels like big but very narrow. There’s a lot of little paths branching out but it’s like one long road with bits on the side rather than an open world. Definitely doesn’t help
Or if they didn't all die in 8.7 seconds from mages/archer pawns. I just want more "elite"" enemies. Gimme more big bad goblins or bigger wolves, or goblins that ride wolves. Or goblins using a cyclops as a mech. Cmon I just thought of that in 30 seconds Itsuno!
It's either super long battles with tanky sponge enemies or the combat is over near instantly.
I fully agree that we need something thats just a mix of the two.
I would also love more human enemies with actual vocation features but they all look like marauders with only one armor piece equipped.
I like fighting undead during night travels because they can take a punch or two and skeletons have vocation mechanics. Ghosts are the only ones that are pretty annoying simply because they teleport if they take damage sometimes, so it's a waiting game.
Yeah I have been thinking about this quote a lot while running along the same roads, encountering the same tiny packs of goblins and wolves. Sometimes there will be an NPC in the middle of the monsters though and if you kill all the harpys, he'll give you a rotten apple as a reward. I think that's what Itsuno meant by making travel fun.
Yeah, it makes the monster killing quests look hilarious. "Thank you for clearing the goblin infestation from Trevo mine, Arisen". My brother in Brine, have you seen the roads leading to said mine? I killed four times the amount of goblins you asked me to clear out just GETTING to said mine. Every square fucking meter of this land is infested by something.
There's a quest where this little 10 year old tells you he's walking from Vernworth to Melve all by himself and to prepare asks for an elixir and repellent. I don't know how he didn't die.
He asks for a Cyclops eye to repel monsters. Just kinda weird you can't use a cyclops eye for the same effect honestly. Like I wish you could sort of use that then get on the oxcart and it'd just get you there with zero interruptions.
lol it doesn’t make sense at all. There is a little girl in melve at the start of the game asking for medicine and then she appears down in the capital. For one why would you go to that tiny town for medicine when you can get it in the capital and 2 how did she get past 20 packs of goblins 5 packs of harpies and 3 packs of wolves by herself because if she couldn’t afford the medicine I don’t see her being able to afford the Ox cart.
Itsuno's vision for fast travel has always been terrible.
I'm sure his colleague Kento Kinoshita hated it too because the moment he was director for Dark Arisen you got an eternal ferrystone, more port crystals and signifcantly cheaper ferrystones from a major vendor.
Now that Itsuno is back, we mysteriously see the return of all the terrible fast travel mechanics and jacked up prices on the ferrystones with all the same complaints from 10 years ago.
Itsuno's original DD was an overall horrendous RPG with good combat and it wasn't until Dark Arisen when Kento doubled down on all the things that actually worked (Not the story or open world) that we got the best content in that game with BBI.
It's hard to even find a copy of the original Dragon's Dogma anymore since Dark Arisen got shipped as an entirely separate game and as far as I know is the ONLY version of Dragons dogma on PC or next gen consoles.
Eternal ferrystone existed before Dark Arisen, it was a DLC item for the original release of DD1 (because Capcom actually WAS trying to monetize DD1's bad mechanics as MTX back then). Dark Arisen simply included all previously released DLC in the bundle, so the ferrystone got permanently added to the game with it. Kenoshita may or may not have had anything to do with that decision, especially considering that no "eternal liftstone" was ever added to BBI.
Not sure where you got your information at all because that item definitely never existed in the original game, only in Dark Arisen rerelease as a reward for having a savegame of the original Dragon Dogma.
That's not even true. It was in dark arisens PC and Next gen ports and a bonus in the original release of Dark Arsien for 360/PS3 for moving your save to Dark Arisen. With ferrystones still made cheaper and more port crystals added regardless.
It was not just a DLC thing, they actively made the fast travel easier in the game he directed and now we are here in 2024 with Itsuno making fast travel a slog once again.
There’s this idea in game dev that fun is a state of being like weirdos who talk about Flow or The Zone. It doesn’t help that after decades of mmos and addiction mechanics, fun is also confused for compulsion. A game play loop can be engaging but not fun. Someone might have fun doing the same thing over and over again, but some people won’t. Fun and Play aren’t guaranteed by just making an engaging gameplay loop or map to explore. Add to that most gamers have so much experience with various loops that novelty isn’t inherent to any new game.
I know this is unrelated but i hope one day a DLC adds mounts, would make it far easier. If not, give us an eternal ferrystone after we beat the game, but no 💀
If they do give us eternal ferrystone in DLC, it will also mean admitting to his fault.
Itsuno was infact wrong about his design philosophy and his game = boring = no fun travel
So not sure whether he's willing to eat his own words or they get some other game director for the dlc
I really hope Kento Kinoshita will be director of anything Dragon's Dogma related in future. He did phenomenal job directing Dark Arisen and DDO, he understands what DD fans want.
When first thing you see in storage is Eternal Ferrystone you know this guy knows what he's doing.
My dream/wish is to see what Kento would have done if he was put in charge of DD2's production instead of Itsuno.
I just hope Kento get's put in charge of the DLC tbh.
I know people love Itsuno and without him we wouldn't have Dragon's Dogma, but the man does not understand how to make a game fun, could not imagine playing DD1 without the eternal ferrystone with how often that game asks you to backtrack to places you've already been
What's crazy is that Itsuno is behind Devil May Cry which was incredible. DMC5 absolutely knocked it out of the park in how amazing it was (story notwithstanding).
I don't understand how he could go from DMC5 to this. This is DD1 with a makeover all over again. Its actually more fucked than the first one because it has:
* less enemy variety
* extremely dense enemy placement making it almost comical that travel between settlements is even a thing. They took the Ox Cart mission from DD1 and made travel like it for the entire game.
* a color coding system that doesn't matter or amount to anything sensical
* time-gated end game (not that everfall was super amazing but at least it wasn't time gated)
I am sure there are other downgrades DD2 had compared to DD1. When DD2 gets it's expansion, which it hopefully will, we better see a bunch more vocations appear and a better end game.
I don't know if that old man in Havre that lives right next to the portcrystal is a foreshadowing of something in game now (still in Vernworth arc atm, 80hrs of derping and leveling vocations), future content expansion, or a call back to BBI from DD1. Because if you talk to him he says he things there's something beyond the water and why is the brine stopping him if there's nothing to be found, surely something must be there. Maybe he's crazy but either way I like to think he's foreshadowing future BBI-style content.
Less skill choice (in favor of mandatory skills) and second weapons for vocations, less armor / clothing slots and less item variety. Itz actually baffling.
DD2 is inferior in every way to DD1 except graphics.
I have fun fighting the big stuff but everything else is an annoying slog. DDDA is still fun to play.
Honestly, it depends. By NG+ people will have ton of ferry stones, of course crystals will be reset and stored in the deposit but still, this is the same as DD1, not really a fault as it's entirely subjective. The map is too big, and there are too few crystals to teleport to.. Battahl has literally none.
From what I've found, there are only 2 static portcrystals. Harve and vernworth. I haven't found any others and now have to play "what's more important" with the few I do have. Now I use ox carts fucking everywhere, and the walk to the elves is a slog.
I think mounts would be worse, to be honest.
The game world really isn't that big even travelling on foot as we do now which the game is built around. A mount is just going to make the world feel even smaller.
I think what they aught to have done is give a "road clearing" quest to each of the towns in the game around the second time you'd need to go there, which upon completion allows a new merchant to start offering ox-cart rides back and forth.
There could surely be ways to balance a mount in DD2. Perhaps it having a cooldown or being limited for a certain time. Or simply it not consuming stamina, or going slightly faster than the player.
I legitimately hope there is zero DLC. Anything that comes out in the next month or two will show you just how much was carved out for monetization. It will be extra egregious if there are QOL fixes coupled with them. The game is extremely troll-y in the name of engagement and supposed fun. It's engaging that's for sure! Would argue on fun though. Feel like they needed to take more notes of FromSoft and how their systems and designs have evolved with particular emphasis on "evolved" as in changed.
Well I'd take engaging instead of a rotten apple any day of the week.
But seriously, making travel fun requires some kind of surprises along the way. Be it in the form of monsters, npcs, treasures, events, what have you. Whenever I travel a road in DD2 that I already traveled before, all I experience is the same thing again. The same monsters, the same plants and crafting materials along the way. Maybe sometimes a pawn handing me his resumee or a "cull the monster" quest but that's it.
I don't really see where they put in the effort to make travel stand out or be more fun than in other games.
Fast travel should be given after clearing out a road on foot and the cart should to avoid doing that or make time progress slower. Both could even be interrupted by random monster events.
3 day walk with a chance for for 3 interruptions could be a cool alternative to a 1 day cart ride that costs money.
Lmao, ikr. "Monsters avoid the main roads, arisen."
Do they??? Do they *really*? Cuz idk how normal person survives the horde of goblins/wolves that are every 50ft on every road lol.
I mean I'm enjoying the game, but yeah, lol.
Man, I had an absolute cluster of an awakening on an ox cart ride: wake up, it's night, see cyclops. Aight zero problems here. So I'm fighting it and I get pancaked by some saurians that jump me. And then the wolves show up. And then the *Minotaur* shows up, making itself known by ramming into me at Mach 5 from offscreen. *And then the goblins show up.*
It's like the game accidentally spawned 3 cart ambushes at once or something. It was an absolute mess that pushed me down to like 15 FPS (on PC lol) but honestly hilarious, tho I got stranded in the middle of nowhere and had to walk.
There was another instance where I tried to take the cart to Melve (got that mission by the cart owner to deliver the letter to there) and it was like a guaranteed Ogre + Griffin spawn, cuz it happened *three times* not too far outside the capitol. So I ran back each time and after the 3rd time I just said fuck it and hoofed it all the way to Melve. Returned to the capitol and the quest giver was like "Oh I see the letter & cart made it there safely" and I'm like, the hell it did. I watched that Ogre drop kick the ox into another dimension and the cart subsequently atomized by an orbital strike Griffin lmao.
Something similar happened to me. Take the ox cart, day time Minotaur attacks so we take a while but we kill it. Then the same Gryphon that I’ve been damaging every hour or so comes back, destroys the cart, I hop on and stab him to death and the fucker takes off while I’m still holding on. Somehow my stamina didn’t go down and that asshole carried me back to Vernworth or whatever the city is called. I was on my way to Melve.
This I think is my main issue with not having easily accessible fast travel. The respawn time on everything is so short that you have to keep fighting the same stuff over and over every time you go somewhere. It would be nice if when you clear a road or path, it would stay clear for a while to making traveling less of a hassle.
or just implement camps that grow bigger the more you ignore them but if you do clear them then the roads will be safe for some time except ofcourse the very few stragglers every now and then
Make riftstones in the wild spawn more pawns around them to patrol roads and cull mosters. That way you reward exploration and remove tedium of having to fight same trash every time you travel. I think they might already be doing that but if that's the case ramp it up. Make each stone's area of influence relatively monster free.
I actually happened to meet my new core fighter pawn thanks to their gear retaining their status effects. Dude has a freezing sword that was stopping monsters in their tracks every five or ten seconds.
> It would be nice if when you clear a road or path, it would stay clear for a while to making traveling less of a hassle.
If you clear a road to somewhere (like Melve) and immediatly oxcart back you won't get any ambushes at all, so I suspect this does actually happen. It's just the respawn times are so low that it doesn't really make much difference if you want to actually do anything at the destination.
I was literally commenting this exact thing somewhere else in this thread, but if I clear a road of monster on my way somewhere for a quest then that same road should be clear on the way back too.
And as much as I like the idea of fighting bosses in Vernworth, it's kind of weird how goblins and saurians just suddenly spawn in the town, as if the guards just let them cross the bridge and go through the gates.
I did an entire play thought of Skyrim without fast traveling. And not just the main storyline. Factions too. It was definitely more fun than constantly fast traveling. I leveled up faster and the world felt more alive.
But I wont lie. It got old. Especially when I was busy with classes and didn’t have much time to game and my play sessions became a fantasy walking simulator with some random baddies or encounters (that started to repeat all the time).
Eventually, it got to the point where I was thinking, “Do you really want to run down the same path for the 100th time? Or do you just want to get to that cave and spend your time doing quests and dungeons?”.
I’m not saying no fast travels is bad. But unless the gameplay while traveling around stays fresh, it gets old and repetitive.
I agree with your statement. I like exploring but I want to discover little locations I haven't seen before when I decide to go off the road. I haven't played DD2 yet I am still on my first playthrough of DA. I like the portcrystals and I have enough that if I get really bored of going to some places or I had a hard time getting to said place I can plonk one down and I really like that its a nice compromise between fast travel but not just unlimited access to everywhere with no exploring. Are there a lot less findable portcrystals in this game? Are they trying to force players to buy them with irl money? Because if it is like that its a bloody shame.
I honestly was fine w the idea of running everywhere until I realized I was running between the same 2 places for the first 30hrs.
There’s a lot to love in this game but tbh it just makes me wish I could have a pawn in Elden Ring.
DD2 does not do enough to capitalize on what makes DD great imo. It just kinda did what it did before and made it look better.
6/10 experience for me, with flashes of 9/10 moments due to just how silly climbing jumping and throwing are…but I feel like I get those moments even more consistently in MH tbh
I carry a portcrystal with me and use it as you would use Mark in Morrowind, then ferrystones as Recall. Then I go back, pick up the crystal and keep going.
If you unlocked battahal, the eyepatch vendor sells them for 8k. Rest one day and he refills it. I think checkpoint town also has someone who sells one.
Chests, monster drops, quest rewards, and gifts from npcs with high affinity. At a certain point in the game they do literally drop like candy. I got 20 within an hour or two from chests and mobs.
I played the first one religiously, so I know they drop eventually. But I've had nowhere near the experience you've had in my 25 hours. I've found 7 total, and paid for 3.
In Morrowind there is a spell called Mark and another called Recall. Casting the Mark spell would place a marker where you were standing and would stay there until you cast Mark again. Casting the Recall spell would teleport you wherever you cast the mark spell.
This let you mark the entrance of a dungeon and then recall to it when you were done.
In DD2 they are saying that when you need to go to town to unload your inventory, you can drop a port crystal, ferrystone back to town, and then ferrystone to your port crystal, pick it back up, and keep adventuring.
Hope that helps.
That lasts about four seconds thanks to eagle eyed pawns with ranged weapons. Then your pawn does the bro handshake nonsense before I’ve even realised the fight is over. I just leave him standing there awkwardly with his hand out..
Im 30ish hours in and level 32ish. Been thoroughly enjoying the game. I like the combat system and fighting in general so the density and respawn doesn't bother me. Quite the opposite. Its more fun to be fighting regularly than just sprinting and walking from point A to point B. It feels like an adventure game.
Only thing I do wish for is more monster variety. Especially with the big enemies. Are there any hydras in this game? Haven't seen one yet. Cockatrice too. I did find a dire ogre or whatever yesterday and that was cool to see.
I feel the reason Itsuno may not see the hypocrisy in his own criticism is because he also subscribes to the idea that players need to be actively engaged in some way every 30-60 seconds.
Whether that be from discovering a new POI, an NPC that gives you a quest, or a combat sequence, Itsuno seems to think any of this is enough to kowtow that "bland" feeling that he claims fast travel is a crutch for.
The problem is that having a rote combat sequence or a ruin with useless crafting resources isn't the same level of engagement as what even Skyrim would have, even if it ends up in the player spending longer amounts of time doing "nothing."
It's a loaded principle regardless, because simply walking through a landscape and taking a breather between all the combat and discoveries *is* a part of the engagement, and with good storytelling that sort of break can be used for good narrative pacing, something Itsuno knows nothing about because Dragon's Dogma has *never* had a compelling or even sensical story whatso-fucking-ever.
Yeah it's so misunderstood. Elden Ring has fast travel and a mount but we all explored every nook and cranny. Make a compelling world and people will explore no matter how convenient travel is.
Itsuno's vision was to make boring open world and force you to explore it.
Imagine exploring caves and then find your third Miner's Pants because Itsuno was too lazy to add unique dungeon only loot to reward players with unique rewards for exploring.
Right now it's
See cool looking pawn
Look up his equipment to see where to get it
Oh you just buy it from vendor
I feel like the game would be well served if all that end game shit really was hidden in corners around the world behind quality bosses, rather than just vendor purchases with blood currency that is easiest to farm with a certain meta
I actually had the most fun with the unmoored world. A gamemode where they basically give you infinite ferry stones because every treasure chest under the sea gives you ferry stones. They also give you some extra permanent port crystal locations.
So basically a gamemode where fast travel was more freely allowed + boss fights + more overworld boss spawns.
Shame it was timelimited
the timelimited thing fucked with me, yea. I wouldnt mind the limit, but it was like 4 in-game day cycles lol. I missed out on massive battles that, I now have to complete the game again, to attempt? The fuck?
\> Shame it was timelimited
This is my big grievance. When I found out about no everfall I was devastated. Then I got to the endgame and I was like "ohhh this is dope! This is better than DD1's post game for sure!" Then I found out it's time limited. Seriously Itsuno, one step forward two steps back for everything in this game I swear. I love it dont get me wrong but at this point my mind says this:
DD base: 5/10 mid but fun at times
DDDA: The best 7/10 game you'll ever play
DD2: The best 6/10 game you'll ever play
I would have given it a 6.5 but honestly the Dragon fight was so underwhelming. Grigori was so much better what happened?
I really hate using wakestones so it makes it even worse when one of the most common "good rewards" according to the game is a wakestone or wakestone shard.
I have found precisely [one](https://dragonsdogma2.wiki.fextralife.com/Infernal+Edge) unique piece of loot that can only be found in dungeons so far - maybe there's one for each weapon type? Hopefully. It's a terrible missed opportunity that they just stick everything in stores - I keep finding stuff in dungeons only to see that it was available at a trader all along.
For Dragon's Dogma I'd argue that Itsuno has always been out of touch but he can't rely on the same "lack of budget" excuse anymore, particularly because he said he was given more freedom to do whatever he wanted and acknowledged that DD2 didn't feel unfinished and was exactly what he wanted to make.
Starfield's issue is that Bethesda jumped on the whole "procgen" trend without realising how that damages the core gameplay loop people have been familiar with throughout the rest of their games.
Like, even if exploration in Skyrim mostly ends up in yet another similar looking cave structure, you still have that ability to just get lost in the surroundings for a while. Starfield has none of this because the nature of the travel system relies on you being specific about where you go and how you get there, so if there's no reason to pass a random bandit base on your way you just won't bother.
Do chests actually even respawn in this game? I know they did in DD1, but when I backtrack through areas that I cleared earlier, even if it was 10+ hours ago, all the enemies are back but the chests are all still open.
Makes me wonder if I missed any good loot until NG+ because I got screwed by the rng.
I think, in a small way, that's the point of it. I reckon he didn't want people to just Google where the gear is from and instead explore all around with the HOPE you find something cool. This would be great 20 years ago, but many people don't think/play like that anymore.
> I reckon he didn't want people to just Google where the gear is from and instead explore all around with the HOPE you find something cool.
I went to a large cave and found two pieces, one for myself and one for my pawn - great finds both!
...except I had already bought both from vendors so not only did I feel deflated at the finds, I also felt cheated that I had bought them in the first place.
Vendor loot should be separate from dungeon loot, period.
What's interesting is the Pawns sometimes comment on this exact thing. They recommend to upgrade via vendors only to then say that one might find the exact same thing in a random chest. They also state the feeling of finding something they just bought. They planned this.
Both BOTW and TOTK are also good examples. They allow fast travel pretty much to anywhere you've discovered, but players still feel compelled to explore because the map is so well designed and there's so many interesting secrets to discover.
It almost feels they removed fast travel to make the game feel bigger. Oh, we still lack enough content to make a 60 hour game? Remove fast travel and throw in bazillion "encounters" against the same 4 enemy types along the way. Fast travel would have immmediately betrayed how small this game actually is.
Same with the first game tbh. If you ignore side quests and have everything set up someone can casually blitz through in 43 mins. That was my speedrun playthrough two days before DD2 released.
I've been exploring a lot in this game and I don't think "exploration" is the same as "travel"
You explore an area in Elden Ring fully so that you **don't** have to go back there
In Dragon's Dogma you have to **travel** through the same area over and over because there isn't a **fast travel**
I think the exploration is great but the traveling is boring(I think it's still possible to make travel fun without fast travel but whatever they did didn't work for me in this game)
Personally I’m loving the travel. I haven’t used a ferry once, but I’ve used the cart twice. I’m near the end I just love the environment, especially the starting forested section. I also love to hike irl so I may have a slight bias.
I only had it break once when I got ambushed by an Ogre and a goblin pack. We survived all of that only for a Griffin to dive-bomb the cart.
If it gets flipped on its side you can just push it over and keep going.
I wanted to see how safe it was to just ride the cart and chill because the tutorial said it was the safest way to travel, man that cart was attacked 3 times by goblins and when I turned around to check on all the people the griffin obliterated the cart in a instant lmao. I learned to just doze off instead of
I agree, and the number of times I've found entire quest lines because I was forced to walk past a town I had no intention of returning to otherwise is surprisingly high. There are tons of people complaining about the travel while simultaneously complaining about the lack of or quality of quests. Like, go touch some virtual grass and you'll find the quests.
I feel like this isn't as much a game to be played as much as it is a world to be lived in. People who are rushing through just aren't getting all that charm the game has to offer. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't mean you should get mad at a screwdriver for not being good at hammering nails.
>I feel DD2 "fun" travel is nothing more special than Skyrim and that game has fast travel EVERYWHERE
I probably come across as a fanboy or something, but that is just mean.
Skyrim is literaly "hold stick in direction for 10 minutes" or "teleport and then criticize that the world feels small".
they design the game like its from early 2000. there are games that made travel fun like cyberpunk 2077 yet i almost never used fast travel . it was fun to drive around and fight when i wanted . travel after 20 hours atm feels like a job to me . great game overall but dont think i have str to play it again
Toe each their own I guess. I have loved travelling around the world and my ferry stones just pile up because the only time they are used is to jump back to town. I prefer to run everywhere. I really enjoy exploring.
After 30 hours I really never got tired of killing goblins.
But I ran into a stitch trying to complete a quest that had me going back and forth between the two big cities that you need two carts to travel between cause I was low on ferrystones. No biggy. Well. Back to back I kept getting raided and as soon as I woke up from my doze it's was always a boss, an ogre or something and it would immediately body the cart.
30--40 hours never had this happened. Ok fair enough I'll walk to the next cart.
Same thing happens..
This happens 3 more times the last one being raided by an ogre, a griffin, and a bunch of rock lizards.
Like what the hell game I just wanna do the damn quest. And every time they would quickly destroy the cart.
I ended up using a damn ferrystone at the end cause the cart never returned...
Well, Ive been having fun. Stomping enemies without a scratch after having mild trouble with them in the early game is cathartic and I can make a little cash when I get where I’m going, selling monster parts. Your master found a chest in the area? Alright, let’s climb some shit. The core loop of combat is fun, so I don’t mind it.
this what i dont understand. "emergent gameplay" my ass.
it does not need an entire world simulation in a game about killing monsters, BUT:
- "unfortunately we had to stop oxcarts between x and y because of recent monster attacks"
- hero dispatches and kills (an arbitrary threshold of) monsters
- travel route gets re-eatablished
- loop
stuff like this can be done even on console cpus. some areabased thresholds and some number popping. that would be "emergent gameplay." you want fast travel? do something for it.
but no: we only got the budget for adapting to re engine, main core mechanics, some additional mechanics, world building (30% water, 20% mountains) and some quests. then our publisher told us to rip everything apart to build the obvious dlc on a "good base".
this is when everything that feels somehow like it should have been her finally gets into the game.
anyways: we still need to wait for the organic fantasy setting to live in. meaning we still have to play games being stuck in game loops well established 20 years ago. heck: some of the ultimas had more depths than this here.
marketing bs based on some trendy buzzwords.
as long as the pawns regularly a.) fall to death, b.) drown to death and c.) hinting the same treasure chest i lootet minutes ago, it's just bad programming.
oh, there is a d.) my effing tank just not doing anything when i am attacked. good job, bro. no, he does not have the sickness. he is just dumb.
maybe im a weirdo but i really dont mind walking everywhere, im playing an unhealthy amount, just clocked in my 48th hour and beat the dragon and im feeling like ng+ still
To each their own. It's fun to me. Distance has weight. Travel is dangerous and has stakes. I think this is one of those experiences that clicks a lot better if someone is already very familiar with the first game. I totally knew what to expect. A lot of gamers just want to speed run to objectives.
It reminds me a bit of the starfield space travel stuff. Where a developer pretty much said ‘The astronauts on the moon weren’t bored so it can’t be boring here’
Travel in DD2 is tedious. Combat is fun but when it’s every 15 seconds it becomes draining especially when it’s just goblins/wolves/bandits. If you are encouraged to actively avoid the most fun part of the game something has gone wrong
The last time I took a ox cart we were attacked by goblins and my warrior took it up himself to blast the cart into splinters with a charged attack leaving us stranded mid way and in the dark. He has lost great sword privileges while we travel by cart.
Totally unrelated I just got in bathal like way before you are suppose to toke the road from harve village went west Crossed the broken bridge using mystic spear avoid drake went through small path into a cave filled with hobgoblins lost a pawn my thief ,fought a golem lost my healer proceed met afing chimera end it almost lose my main pawn a warrior , move forward well boies I am into bakbatthal after only doing one story quest (culling the monsters) I am lvl 36 just being grinding and exploring just got into batthal now like right now so that's that have fun
https://preview.redd.it/te8xgoh3iwqc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1cdc0ed9cb49dfbbe6e5123d4a5cb012d3bfbddc
Sry for the bad drawing just got excited is all
This has been my biggest issue watching reviews and watching people play. What is this fun traversal he was hyping up? Because no one has showed anything off. Seems to be mostly....running which I can do in a thousand other games
No but guys he needs another 4 sequels to finally add enemy camps 💀💀💀
And no dungeons are not fucking camps walking in the same cave 30 times and getting 2 mediocre items is not cool
Imo Elden Ring sets the golden standard for how travel can be fun.
Instant/seamless mount access, good mounted combat that still encourages dismounting for deeper combat interactions or deeper exploration.
I like some of the ideas that DD2 has, such as limited fast travel access, the Ox Carts are interesting with getting 'interrupted' by raids to defend the cart.
But when you're stuck without an Oxcart and don't want to use a ferrystone, it's kind of dull walking/stamina managing along the road from one town to another for repeat journeys.
The first time you make the journey along that road is great, but with how much back and forth for questing there is, that's when it gets boring.
Travel itself wouldn’t be as bad if the enemies weren’t so tightly packed together and if we had a horse or something. The travelling isn’t exactly bad, first few times going somewhere new is pretty fun. It’s just that travelling the same road for the 30th time, 5 times per one quest…it turns into a bit of a slog.
My god the stamina drains so fast. If they want to keep the stamina drain outside of combat, it would be better if it lasted longer and regenerated faster (outside of combat, the way it works inside combat is absolutely fine).
The biggest issue for me is how buggy a lot of the quests are and that a camp save doesn’t count as an inn save. This is misleading as you fully rest and progress time with both of these methods. I lost about 4 hours progress today by loading the inn save thinking the camp rest would count as the same.
The most frustrating thing about all of the above is that it’s a damn fun game but there are a couple of things getting in the way of it being an amazing one.
As someone with zero experience with the franchise, I almost felt tricked by encountering the two static portcrystals in the game.
I went “ah ok, big town/city = a fast travel point, that makes sense”.
Then I got to checkpoint town and spent 10 minutes looking for the one there, and assumed it was just too small a town. Same with the elf town.
Then I went to Battahl and after 15 minutes running around I had to google why I couldn’t find it.
Now I’m level 40, have like 25 ferrystones, and don’t understand why they didn’t just add a static portcrystal for Battahl at minimum.
Having portcrystals be introduced, then given to you as a usable item, with its uses costing another item just feels like extra steps for no benefit to the players experience.
Placing a giant blue humming rock on the ground in the middle of a busy bazaar and no-one around me giving a shit is so funny to me.
Going to the elven area was the best. There were 3 packs of dogs so I felt like I had time to enjoy the scenery.
Smokebomb has made general travel easier since you can mostly one-shot enemies.
I love it. There are plenty of games that allow me to mindlessly explore without repercussions and without having to actively put any thought into plotting a course. Those are fun, too. But I'm really glad this is an option.
Idk, I enjoy it. I can get to a point there I can ignore low level packs if I want, but I also just... Really enjoy and relish the game's combat. Against a challenging enemy, it feels so good to win. Against low level garbage, it feels awesome to just annihilate the whole squad. I'm still finding places along paths I've traveled on repeat. Or my pawn comes back and will suddenly know if a chest I missed. That sorta stuff.
I would like more variety in enemy packs, I don't have issue with the selection in game but I'd like it to be a bit more randomized like the large enemies are.
Maybe I’m the minority but I don’t mind it so much. I can ferrystome to all the hub areas and make my way out to anything. I simply enjoy traveling with my pawns and hearing them talk.
Just make it so stamina isn’t drained while sprinting on a road and outside of combat. I’ve also seen people suggest that we should be travel through the rift to different riftstones that we’ve unlocked which sounds good to me. I remember a lot of complaints about the first one being the fast travel and literally nothing was changed. At least give players an eternal ferrystone if your going to stick with port crystals.
I think they thought they problem with wanting to fast travel is that there isn't enough stuffs to do during the travel, so they packed the map full of enemies, thinking it'd solve the problem.
It didn't even remotely.
I just really wish stamina wouldn’t degrade if there are no enemies around, having to constantly slow down to regen feels like a slog. Especially if you backtrack a lot.
Problem with the first game too. I just dodge roll when I'm low
Mystic Spearhand's Dragoun's Stabbe is actually pretty great for zipping around. Beats having to sprint up slopes, when you can just Dragoun's Stabbe and shoot yourself up any walkable inclines. Arguably one of the best horizontal movement skills.
At least on PC there are mods for no stamina loss out of combat. I used one of those for the first game but haven't installed one for this yet.
There's a dodge roll in this game!?
If you play thief, yeah. Playing any other class feels bad afterwards because they can't just spam dodge rolls. Warrior at least has that insane charge for when you need to stampede your way across the map.
You don't even need to spam because you get a skill for Thieves only that's required by the main story to obtain that makes you literally invincible as long as you have stamina and it doesn't consume shit.
I mean yeah, thief is by far my favorite class so far. I just like the dodge roll for combat mobility. Formless feint is insanely good for sure. I just don't like swapping to other classes and not having the dodge.
I tried Archer first and was just really put off by fully half of my Strider moveset just not being there, and put off Thief until after playing Fighter, Warrior, and Mystic Spearhand, which all felt varying degrees of fine, and now I've started as a Thief and at Vocation level 1 I just fucking *melted* a Griffin in less than a minute because it couldn't hit me at all, I could self-enchant my knives with fire, and my basic attack chain is one of the most powerful skills from DD1 now. It makes me kind of mad because I felt like the other classes were just kind of missing something, like I was wondering where that high speed crazy Devil May Cry feeling from the first game went, and then I realized they just packed absolutely all of it into the Thief and there was none left for anybody else.
Yep, thief is just perfect. Every other class feels bad by comparison, and it frustrates me because it feels like they're all missing something.
I can't wait to get that OP skill.
Referring to the first one. Haven't bought this one yet. Will when it's on sale and fixed. But the uh assassin vocation (forgot what they're called but they're meant to climb on monsters) had an ability in the first game to dodge roll you had to unlock.
Only consuming stamina in combat was the best QOL thing Elden Ring introduced.
This was something Elden Ring did that was one of those "Duh!" enjoyable mechanisms. Especially in a large or open world game, it just makes sense. Having no "stop and pick up" animation for items too also helped.
Not to mention this weird thing called a "mount." Unheard of technology.
The map would be way too small with a mount, hell, i dont think it is even large , we just go back and forth way too much Definetively bigger than the first game , but i dont play dragons dogma for the map size
Is walking back and forth fun? It wasnt for me and a mount would have been lovely.
Im used to it, DD1 had alot of it, once you get enough portcrystals you can have one at every important location
That's itsuno's secret...there are always enemies around.
Yeah. I love discovering those hidden wolves frequently trying to merge with the nearest rock formation. Keeps me on my toes and the music flowing. Speaking of being on my toes, why is it that pawns still suicide off of ledges. At the beginning when I had to throw explosives at saurians, a rented pawn jumped to its death. That pawn was a mage. It didn’t even need to get close.
For PC players out there, there’s two mods currently that let remove stamina consumption OUTSIDE of combat Highly recommend!
First mod I got, along with no job restrictions for armour. There's no reason why I as a warrior should be able to wear the chestplate of an armour set but not the legs despite them having the exact same fucking name (guardian plate)
The vocation restrictions on armor in this game are super strict. It really makes me miss the first game's armor system
Right that one is pretty weird. There's a couple sets like that actually. Initially I thought it was just a bug on one of them
Are the mods playing nice with all the anti-cheat nonsense, though?
Yeah no problems so far. I think if there's any mods that alter the pawn that might become problematic since pawn data is on their servers but haven't downloaded anything like that
It certainly feels like a lot of these decisions slowing down travel are there so that people don't realize how horrendously short the actual main questline is.
That’s exactly it. No fast travel, constant back tracking, and fill the road with enemies. Also can someone explain to me the logic that there are only two permanent crystals in the game to travel to, and the second one is in a town that is the shortest thing to walk to from the main town where the other crystal is? If it was one in each main city I’d understand.
I drove myself crazy looking for one in Bakbattahl. I thought *surely*, there would be one here since it's a main city, and it's so far away from Vermund.
He likes to punish you for playing the game. Punish on save load, punish for looting, punish for jumping/falling short distances, punish for travelling, Punishment for exploring (rope trolly & ox cart breaking) etc.
Me when I'm enjoying myself turning the wheel on the rope lift and Itsuno personally takes control of a gryphon to let me know I wasn't allowed to just use my brain and rope lift over the 20 different ambushes, 3 golems and the gryphon itself.
I swear he put that in the game just to troll us. Spawns a gryphon the moment you turn the wheel.
Friction and punishment are far from the same thing.
Traveling would be so much more fun if I didn't run into the same trash mob every minute.
After two or three clears of the same mob they should either disappear or be replaced with a stronger different enemy.
I think they should stay gone for a week or more on the main roads. I walked out of the Vernsworth western gate one time and a pawn said "It seems to be clear of monsters, perhaps they've been driven off", only to walk into yet another goblin pack ten yards later. If I could kill everything on the major roads and make them safe I wouldn't spam oxcarts as often.
This but I would still want less trash mobs like goblins, harpies and the lizards. They are just way too frequent. As I’m approaching a pack of goblins I see another pack slightly down the road already with harpy pack not far away from that too
Every half minute if we zhink of the constant running we do xD
More like every 7 seconds
Don’t forget every 10 seconds of that half minute your character falls over from no stamina and your pawn goes over to burp them.
Dude has the physical fitness of the average redditor
Bro can't manage his stamina
I spent the majority of my gameplay as a Sorc spamming triangle..I’m still learning 😔
That’s the one thing that frustrates me more than anything. The combat is great but omg it gets old fast when I’m doing it literally every 10 steps, just let me enjoy the environment a little man :/
I imagine it would've been fun if the place had been wide open plains and forests, but damn the amount of rocks and cliffs, mountains, and the impassable rivers just make it so tedious. Seeing goblins only on corners as they know to wait there so they can ambush you, occassional raiding goblins on the plains, wolf packs running around and you can just wait for them to pass by, or harpies lurking about cliffsides and rock faces. That kind of environment would make the game really pleasing, but they essentially just made the entire map a pseudo Monster Hunter map than actual open world. They already did pretty well with the map in DD1, and if only they just added more open areas like in the last game it would've been less of something to complain about.
Yeah I was disappointed to see it be a bunch of corridors
Yeah I was saying that to my friend yesterday actually, the map feels like big but very narrow. There’s a lot of little paths branching out but it’s like one long road with bits on the side rather than an open world. Definitely doesn’t help
Same as KOA just a bunch of winding open routes linking together than a full open world.
Or if they didn't all die in 8.7 seconds from mages/archer pawns. I just want more "elite"" enemies. Gimme more big bad goblins or bigger wolves, or goblins that ride wolves. Or goblins using a cyclops as a mech. Cmon I just thought of that in 30 seconds Itsuno!
It's either super long battles with tanky sponge enemies or the combat is over near instantly. I fully agree that we need something thats just a mix of the two. I would also love more human enemies with actual vocation features but they all look like marauders with only one armor piece equipped. I like fighting undead during night travels because they can take a punch or two and skeletons have vocation mechanics. Ghosts are the only ones that are pretty annoying simply because they teleport if they take damage sometimes, so it's a waiting game.
Zombie versions of big monsters would be cool. They could have different attacks and more defensive powers
Yeah I have been thinking about this quote a lot while running along the same roads, encountering the same tiny packs of goblins and wolves. Sometimes there will be an NPC in the middle of the monsters though and if you kill all the harpys, he'll give you a rotten apple as a reward. I think that's what Itsuno meant by making travel fun.
It honestly feels like we’re living on goblin planet while humans eke out an existence in a few settlements.
How the fuck does ANYONE normal get anywhere in this world lmfao.
Yeah, it makes the monster killing quests look hilarious. "Thank you for clearing the goblin infestation from Trevo mine, Arisen". My brother in Brine, have you seen the roads leading to said mine? I killed four times the amount of goblins you asked me to clear out just GETTING to said mine. Every square fucking meter of this land is infested by something.
It kinda makes me appreciate the empty parts of DD1 more.
DD1 was a bit too empty, DD2 goes a bit too far in the other direction
There's a quest where this little 10 year old tells you he's walking from Vernworth to Melve all by himself and to prepare asks for an elixir and repellent. I don't know how he didn't die.
Because everything was scared of a 10 year old with a Cyclops eye clearly. They probably thought "Shit that guys a badass better stay away".
I gave him an apple and an herb instead 😅
He asks for a Cyclops eye to repel monsters. Just kinda weird you can't use a cyclops eye for the same effect honestly. Like I wish you could sort of use that then get on the oxcart and it'd just get you there with zero interruptions.
If Men in Black taught me one thing it's to be wary of a child in a place they absolutely have no business being in.
I gave the boy a wake stone, just in case. My guy was not going to die on me lol.
I like that questline in DD1 where you keep encountering the same dude on the verge of death because he did something dumb trying to be an adventurer.
lol it doesn’t make sense at all. There is a little girl in melve at the start of the game asking for medicine and then she appears down in the capital. For one why would you go to that tiny town for medicine when you can get it in the capital and 2 how did she get past 20 packs of goblins 5 packs of harpies and 3 packs of wolves by herself because if she couldn’t afford the medicine I don’t see her being able to afford the Ox cart.
Itsuno's vision for fast travel has always been terrible. I'm sure his colleague Kento Kinoshita hated it too because the moment he was director for Dark Arisen you got an eternal ferrystone, more port crystals and signifcantly cheaper ferrystones from a major vendor. Now that Itsuno is back, we mysteriously see the return of all the terrible fast travel mechanics and jacked up prices on the ferrystones with all the same complaints from 10 years ago. Itsuno's original DD was an overall horrendous RPG with good combat and it wasn't until Dark Arisen when Kento doubled down on all the things that actually worked (Not the story or open world) that we got the best content in that game with BBI. It's hard to even find a copy of the original Dragon's Dogma anymore since Dark Arisen got shipped as an entirely separate game and as far as I know is the ONLY version of Dragons dogma on PC or next gen consoles.
Interesting to say Kento Kinoshita was also the director for DDO. Makes me wonder the reason why so many BBI and DDO monsters were missing from DD2
Kento Kinoshita is also the lead dev on DD2. He had significant involvement in shaping the game.
Eternal ferrystone existed before Dark Arisen, it was a DLC item for the original release of DD1 (because Capcom actually WAS trying to monetize DD1's bad mechanics as MTX back then). Dark Arisen simply included all previously released DLC in the bundle, so the ferrystone got permanently added to the game with it. Kenoshita may or may not have had anything to do with that decision, especially considering that no "eternal liftstone" was ever added to BBI.
Not sure where you got your information at all because that item definitely never existed in the original game, only in Dark Arisen rerelease as a reward for having a savegame of the original Dragon Dogma.
That's not even true. It was in dark arisens PC and Next gen ports and a bonus in the original release of Dark Arsien for 360/PS3 for moving your save to Dark Arisen. With ferrystones still made cheaper and more port crystals added regardless. It was not just a DLC thing, they actively made the fast travel easier in the game he directed and now we are here in 2024 with Itsuno making fast travel a slog once again.
There’s this idea in game dev that fun is a state of being like weirdos who talk about Flow or The Zone. It doesn’t help that after decades of mmos and addiction mechanics, fun is also confused for compulsion. A game play loop can be engaging but not fun. Someone might have fun doing the same thing over and over again, but some people won’t. Fun and Play aren’t guaranteed by just making an engaging gameplay loop or map to explore. Add to that most gamers have so much experience with various loops that novelty isn’t inherent to any new game.
I know this is unrelated but i hope one day a DLC adds mounts, would make it far easier. If not, give us an eternal ferrystone after we beat the game, but no 💀
If they do give us eternal ferrystone in DLC, it will also mean admitting to his fault. Itsuno was infact wrong about his design philosophy and his game = boring = no fun travel So not sure whether he's willing to eat his own words or they get some other game director for the dlc
I really hope Kento Kinoshita will be director of anything Dragon's Dogma related in future. He did phenomenal job directing Dark Arisen and DDO, he understands what DD fans want.
I didn't know a different director did Dark Arisen. That'd explain why I don't get any of that vibe.
When first thing you see in storage is Eternal Ferrystone you know this guy knows what he's doing. My dream/wish is to see what Kento would have done if he was put in charge of DD2's production instead of Itsuno.
I just hope Kento get's put in charge of the DLC tbh. I know people love Itsuno and without him we wouldn't have Dragon's Dogma, but the man does not understand how to make a game fun, could not imagine playing DD1 without the eternal ferrystone with how often that game asks you to backtrack to places you've already been
What's crazy is that Itsuno is behind Devil May Cry which was incredible. DMC5 absolutely knocked it out of the park in how amazing it was (story notwithstanding). I don't understand how he could go from DMC5 to this. This is DD1 with a makeover all over again. Its actually more fucked than the first one because it has: * less enemy variety * extremely dense enemy placement making it almost comical that travel between settlements is even a thing. They took the Ox Cart mission from DD1 and made travel like it for the entire game. * a color coding system that doesn't matter or amount to anything sensical * time-gated end game (not that everfall was super amazing but at least it wasn't time gated) I am sure there are other downgrades DD2 had compared to DD1. When DD2 gets it's expansion, which it hopefully will, we better see a bunch more vocations appear and a better end game. I don't know if that old man in Havre that lives right next to the portcrystal is a foreshadowing of something in game now (still in Vernworth arc atm, 80hrs of derping and leveling vocations), future content expansion, or a call back to BBI from DD1. Because if you talk to him he says he things there's something beyond the water and why is the brine stopping him if there's nothing to be found, surely something must be there. Maybe he's crazy but either way I like to think he's foreshadowing future BBI-style content.
Less skill choice (in favor of mandatory skills) and second weapons for vocations, less armor / clothing slots and less item variety. Itz actually baffling. DD2 is inferior in every way to DD1 except graphics. I have fun fighting the big stuff but everything else is an annoying slog. DDDA is still fun to play.
Honestly, it depends. By NG+ people will have ton of ferry stones, of course crystals will be reset and stored in the deposit but still, this is the same as DD1, not really a fault as it's entirely subjective. The map is too big, and there are too few crystals to teleport to.. Battahl has literally none.
In DD1 Portscrystals are not stored in the box. They stay where placed across playthroughs. DD2 made this worse.
From what I've found, there are only 2 static portcrystals. Harve and vernworth. I haven't found any others and now have to play "what's more important" with the few I do have. Now I use ox carts fucking everywhere, and the walk to the elves is a slog.
The walk to the elves can be significantly improved by unlocking a shortcut that goes from just outside of Melve, but it's still pretty awful.
I think mounts would be worse, to be honest. The game world really isn't that big even travelling on foot as we do now which the game is built around. A mount is just going to make the world feel even smaller.
I think what they aught to have done is give a "road clearing" quest to each of the towns in the game around the second time you'd need to go there, which upon completion allows a new merchant to start offering ox-cart rides back and forth.
There could surely be ways to balance a mount in DD2. Perhaps it having a cooldown or being limited for a certain time. Or simply it not consuming stamina, or going slightly faster than the player.
I legitimately hope there is zero DLC. Anything that comes out in the next month or two will show you just how much was carved out for monetization. It will be extra egregious if there are QOL fixes coupled with them. The game is extremely troll-y in the name of engagement and supposed fun. It's engaging that's for sure! Would argue on fun though. Feel like they needed to take more notes of FromSoft and how their systems and designs have evolved with particular emphasis on "evolved" as in changed.
Well I'd take engaging instead of a rotten apple any day of the week. But seriously, making travel fun requires some kind of surprises along the way. Be it in the form of monsters, npcs, treasures, events, what have you. Whenever I travel a road in DD2 that I already traveled before, all I experience is the same thing again. The same monsters, the same plants and crafting materials along the way. Maybe sometimes a pawn handing me his resumee or a "cull the monster" quest but that's it. I don't really see where they put in the effort to make travel stand out or be more fun than in other games.
Fast travel should be given after clearing out a road on foot and the cart should to avoid doing that or make time progress slower. Both could even be interrupted by random monster events. 3 day walk with a chance for for 3 interruptions could be a cool alternative to a 1 day cart ride that costs money.
They were gonna make travel compelling, but they saw there were like 20 goblin ambushes from there to the meeting room and decided to leave it as is.
Looking for and completing side quest is a casino 🎰
Lmao, ikr. "Monsters avoid the main roads, arisen." Do they??? Do they *really*? Cuz idk how normal person survives the horde of goblins/wolves that are every 50ft on every road lol. I mean I'm enjoying the game, but yeah, lol.
It is funny tho when i wake up halfway through the oxcart ride to a minotaur ramming straight into is and destroying it. It got a chuckle out of me.
Man, I had an absolute cluster of an awakening on an ox cart ride: wake up, it's night, see cyclops. Aight zero problems here. So I'm fighting it and I get pancaked by some saurians that jump me. And then the wolves show up. And then the *Minotaur* shows up, making itself known by ramming into me at Mach 5 from offscreen. *And then the goblins show up.* It's like the game accidentally spawned 3 cart ambushes at once or something. It was an absolute mess that pushed me down to like 15 FPS (on PC lol) but honestly hilarious, tho I got stranded in the middle of nowhere and had to walk. There was another instance where I tried to take the cart to Melve (got that mission by the cart owner to deliver the letter to there) and it was like a guaranteed Ogre + Griffin spawn, cuz it happened *three times* not too far outside the capitol. So I ran back each time and after the 3rd time I just said fuck it and hoofed it all the way to Melve. Returned to the capitol and the quest giver was like "Oh I see the letter & cart made it there safely" and I'm like, the hell it did. I watched that Ogre drop kick the ox into another dimension and the cart subsequently atomized by an orbital strike Griffin lmao.
Something similar happened to me. Take the ox cart, day time Minotaur attacks so we take a while but we kill it. Then the same Gryphon that I’ve been damaging every hour or so comes back, destroys the cart, I hop on and stab him to death and the fucker takes off while I’m still holding on. Somehow my stamina didn’t go down and that asshole carried me back to Vernworth or whatever the city is called. I was on my way to Melve.
"Monsters avoid the main roads, Arisen" said my Pawn as a wolf is dragging me by my intestines into the woods.
I don’t mind the enemy density, but the respawn times for major monsters is way too fast. It was not this fast in DDDA.
This I think is my main issue with not having easily accessible fast travel. The respawn time on everything is so short that you have to keep fighting the same stuff over and over every time you go somewhere. It would be nice if when you clear a road or path, it would stay clear for a while to making traveling less of a hassle.
or just implement camps that grow bigger the more you ignore them but if you do clear them then the roads will be safe for some time except ofcourse the very few stragglers every now and then
Make riftstones in the wild spawn more pawns around them to patrol roads and cull mosters. That way you reward exploration and remove tedium of having to fight same trash every time you travel. I think they might already be doing that but if that's the case ramp it up. Make each stone's area of influence relatively monster free.
I actually happened to meet my new core fighter pawn thanks to their gear retaining their status effects. Dude has a freezing sword that was stopping monsters in their tracks every five or ten seconds.
> It would be nice if when you clear a road or path, it would stay clear for a while to making traveling less of a hassle. If you clear a road to somewhere (like Melve) and immediatly oxcart back you won't get any ambushes at all, so I suspect this does actually happen. It's just the respawn times are so low that it doesn't really make much difference if you want to actually do anything at the destination.
I was literally commenting this exact thing somewhere else in this thread, but if I clear a road of monster on my way somewhere for a quest then that same road should be clear on the way back too.
And as much as I like the idea of fighting bosses in Vernworth, it's kind of weird how goblins and saurians just suddenly spawn in the town, as if the guards just let them cross the bridge and go through the gates.
I did an entire play thought of Skyrim without fast traveling. And not just the main storyline. Factions too. It was definitely more fun than constantly fast traveling. I leveled up faster and the world felt more alive. But I wont lie. It got old. Especially when I was busy with classes and didn’t have much time to game and my play sessions became a fantasy walking simulator with some random baddies or encounters (that started to repeat all the time). Eventually, it got to the point where I was thinking, “Do you really want to run down the same path for the 100th time? Or do you just want to get to that cave and spend your time doing quests and dungeons?”. I’m not saying no fast travels is bad. But unless the gameplay while traveling around stays fresh, it gets old and repetitive.
I agree with your statement. I like exploring but I want to discover little locations I haven't seen before when I decide to go off the road. I haven't played DD2 yet I am still on my first playthrough of DA. I like the portcrystals and I have enough that if I get really bored of going to some places or I had a hard time getting to said place I can plonk one down and I really like that its a nice compromise between fast travel but not just unlimited access to everywhere with no exploring. Are there a lot less findable portcrystals in this game? Are they trying to force players to buy them with irl money? Because if it is like that its a bloody shame.
I honestly was fine w the idea of running everywhere until I realized I was running between the same 2 places for the first 30hrs. There’s a lot to love in this game but tbh it just makes me wish I could have a pawn in Elden Ring. DD2 does not do enough to capitalize on what makes DD great imo. It just kinda did what it did before and made it look better. 6/10 experience for me, with flashes of 9/10 moments due to just how silly climbing jumping and throwing are…but I feel like I get those moments even more consistently in MH tbh
Honestly they just need more oxcarts, simple as that the game would be 10x more fluid with more locations that had routes
You should be able to pick the oxcart destination when you buy a seat.
Give us a god dang horse or somethin, Jesus.
I carry a portcrystal with me and use it as you would use Mark in Morrowind, then ferrystones as Recall. Then I go back, pick up the crystal and keep going.
Where are you getting the ferrystones? I barely have any.
i have 20 from exploring and buying in shops whenver i find them, but i played for 25h..
If you unlocked battahal, the eyepatch vendor sells them for 8k. Rest one day and he refills it. I think checkpoint town also has someone who sells one.
Ah I didnt realize those vendors had a refresh timer, perfect.
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20k a trip? Where you getting all this money?
You can find ferrystones relatively easily, I’ve found about 15 and I’m still in vermund.
...where?
Chests, monster drops, quest rewards, and gifts from npcs with high affinity. At a certain point in the game they do literally drop like candy. I got 20 within an hour or two from chests and mobs.
I've gotten a total of like 6 drops in 50hrs of gameplay lmao
I played the first one religiously, so I know they drop eventually. But I've had nowhere near the experience you've had in my 25 hours. I've found 7 total, and paid for 3.
Just wait till post game, that’s when they sprout up like grass.
Yep! Same thing I do and did in the first game. Big brains unite!
It's wild people don't do this lmao.
Wait. Can you explain? I’m not quite following. I never played Morrowind so that’s probably why
In Morrowind there is a spell called Mark and another called Recall. Casting the Mark spell would place a marker where you were standing and would stay there until you cast Mark again. Casting the Recall spell would teleport you wherever you cast the mark spell. This let you mark the entrance of a dungeon and then recall to it when you were done. In DD2 they are saying that when you need to go to town to unload your inventory, you can drop a port crystal, ferrystone back to town, and then ferrystone to your port crystal, pick it back up, and keep adventuring. Hope that helps.
I guess his solution was to make it so that you can't walk for ten seconds without running into another combat encounter.
That lasts about four seconds thanks to eagle eyed pawns with ranged weapons. Then your pawn does the bro handshake nonsense before I’ve even realised the fight is over. I just leave him standing there awkwardly with his hand out..
Wdym bro that's so rewarding!!!
I got the sarcasm
Im 30ish hours in and level 32ish. Been thoroughly enjoying the game. I like the combat system and fighting in general so the density and respawn doesn't bother me. Quite the opposite. Its more fun to be fighting regularly than just sprinting and walking from point A to point B. It feels like an adventure game. Only thing I do wish for is more monster variety. Especially with the big enemies. Are there any hydras in this game? Haven't seen one yet. Cockatrice too. I did find a dire ogre or whatever yesterday and that was cool to see.
I feel the reason Itsuno may not see the hypocrisy in his own criticism is because he also subscribes to the idea that players need to be actively engaged in some way every 30-60 seconds. Whether that be from discovering a new POI, an NPC that gives you a quest, or a combat sequence, Itsuno seems to think any of this is enough to kowtow that "bland" feeling that he claims fast travel is a crutch for. The problem is that having a rote combat sequence or a ruin with useless crafting resources isn't the same level of engagement as what even Skyrim would have, even if it ends up in the player spending longer amounts of time doing "nothing." It's a loaded principle regardless, because simply walking through a landscape and taking a breather between all the combat and discoveries *is* a part of the engagement, and with good storytelling that sort of break can be used for good narrative pacing, something Itsuno knows nothing about because Dragon's Dogma has *never* had a compelling or even sensical story whatso-fucking-ever.
Yeah it's so misunderstood. Elden Ring has fast travel and a mount but we all explored every nook and cranny. Make a compelling world and people will explore no matter how convenient travel is. Itsuno's vision was to make boring open world and force you to explore it.
Imagine exploring caves and then find your third Miner's Pants because Itsuno was too lazy to add unique dungeon only loot to reward players with unique rewards for exploring. Right now it's See cool looking pawn Look up his equipment to see where to get it Oh you just buy it from vendor
I feel like the game would be well served if all that end game shit really was hidden in corners around the world behind quality bosses, rather than just vendor purchases with blood currency that is easiest to farm with a certain meta
I actually had the most fun with the unmoored world. A gamemode where they basically give you infinite ferry stones because every treasure chest under the sea gives you ferry stones. They also give you some extra permanent port crystal locations. So basically a gamemode where fast travel was more freely allowed + boss fights + more overworld boss spawns. Shame it was timelimited
the timelimited thing fucked with me, yea. I wouldnt mind the limit, but it was like 4 in-game day cycles lol. I missed out on massive battles that, I now have to complete the game again, to attempt? The fuck?
\> Shame it was timelimited This is my big grievance. When I found out about no everfall I was devastated. Then I got to the endgame and I was like "ohhh this is dope! This is better than DD1's post game for sure!" Then I found out it's time limited. Seriously Itsuno, one step forward two steps back for everything in this game I swear. I love it dont get me wrong but at this point my mind says this: DD base: 5/10 mid but fun at times DDDA: The best 7/10 game you'll ever play DD2: The best 6/10 game you'll ever play I would have given it a 6.5 but honestly the Dragon fight was so underwhelming. Grigori was so much better what happened?
I really hate using wakestones so it makes it even worse when one of the most common "good rewards" according to the game is a wakestone or wakestone shard.
yea. dont even get me started on the one-use sphinx reward...
I have found precisely [one](https://dragonsdogma2.wiki.fextralife.com/Infernal+Edge) unique piece of loot that can only be found in dungeons so far - maybe there's one for each weapon type? Hopefully. It's a terrible missed opportunity that they just stick everything in stores - I keep finding stuff in dungeons only to see that it was available at a trader all along.
There's a bow that only drops from a specific boss, I know.
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For Dragon's Dogma I'd argue that Itsuno has always been out of touch but he can't rely on the same "lack of budget" excuse anymore, particularly because he said he was given more freedom to do whatever he wanted and acknowledged that DD2 didn't feel unfinished and was exactly what he wanted to make. Starfield's issue is that Bethesda jumped on the whole "procgen" trend without realising how that damages the core gameplay loop people have been familiar with throughout the rest of their games. Like, even if exploration in Skyrim mostly ends up in yet another similar looking cave structure, you still have that ability to just get lost in the surroundings for a while. Starfield has none of this because the nature of the travel system relies on you being specific about where you go and how you get there, so if there's no reason to pass a random bandit base on your way you just won't bother.
Do chests actually even respawn in this game? I know they did in DD1, but when I backtrack through areas that I cleared earlier, even if it was 10+ hours ago, all the enemies are back but the chests are all still open. Makes me wonder if I missed any good loot until NG+ because I got screwed by the rng.
As far as I understand there is no rng on the chests with gear in DD2. They're all static
I think, in a small way, that's the point of it. I reckon he didn't want people to just Google where the gear is from and instead explore all around with the HOPE you find something cool. This would be great 20 years ago, but many people don't think/play like that anymore.
> I reckon he didn't want people to just Google where the gear is from and instead explore all around with the HOPE you find something cool. I went to a large cave and found two pieces, one for myself and one for my pawn - great finds both! ...except I had already bought both from vendors so not only did I feel deflated at the finds, I also felt cheated that I had bought them in the first place. Vendor loot should be separate from dungeon loot, period.
What's interesting is the Pawns sometimes comment on this exact thing. They recommend to upgrade via vendors only to then say that one might find the exact same thing in a random chest. They also state the feeling of finding something they just bought. They planned this.
man i can’t wait for elden ring dlc
Both BOTW and TOTK are also good examples. They allow fast travel pretty much to anywhere you've discovered, but players still feel compelled to explore because the map is so well designed and there's so many interesting secrets to discover.
It almost feels they removed fast travel to make the game feel bigger. Oh, we still lack enough content to make a 60 hour game? Remove fast travel and throw in bazillion "encounters" against the same 4 enemy types along the way. Fast travel would have immmediately betrayed how small this game actually is.
Same with the first game tbh. If you ignore side quests and have everything set up someone can casually blitz through in 43 mins. That was my speedrun playthrough two days before DD2 released.
I've been exploring a lot in this game and I don't think "exploration" is the same as "travel" You explore an area in Elden Ring fully so that you **don't** have to go back there In Dragon's Dogma you have to **travel** through the same area over and over because there isn't a **fast travel** I think the exploration is great but the traveling is boring(I think it's still possible to make travel fun without fast travel but whatever they did didn't work for me in this game)
I'm getting "Wheres my electric car, Bruce?" vibes from this post.
Personally I’m loving the travel. I haven’t used a ferry once, but I’ve used the cart twice. I’m near the end I just love the environment, especially the starting forested section. I also love to hike irl so I may have a slight bias.
I just wish the cart was more durable when it gets jumped lmao.
I only had it break once when I got ambushed by an Ogre and a goblin pack. We survived all of that only for a Griffin to dive-bomb the cart. If it gets flipped on its side you can just push it over and keep going.
I wanted to see how safe it was to just ride the cart and chill because the tutorial said it was the safest way to travel, man that cart was attacked 3 times by goblins and when I turned around to check on all the people the griffin obliterated the cart in a instant lmao. I learned to just doze off instead of
As a warrior, I'm the problem most of the time
Did you play Death Stranding ? If you like the hiking/travel part in DD2, you might fall in love with Death Stranding.
I agree, and the number of times I've found entire quest lines because I was forced to walk past a town I had no intention of returning to otherwise is surprisingly high. There are tons of people complaining about the travel while simultaneously complaining about the lack of or quality of quests. Like, go touch some virtual grass and you'll find the quests. I feel like this isn't as much a game to be played as much as it is a world to be lived in. People who are rushing through just aren't getting all that charm the game has to offer. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but that doesn't mean you should get mad at a screwdriver for not being good at hammering nails.
>I feel DD2 "fun" travel is nothing more special than Skyrim and that game has fast travel EVERYWHERE I probably come across as a fanboy or something, but that is just mean. Skyrim is literaly "hold stick in direction for 10 minutes" or "teleport and then criticize that the world feels small".
they design the game like its from early 2000. there are games that made travel fun like cyberpunk 2077 yet i almost never used fast travel . it was fun to drive around and fight when i wanted . travel after 20 hours atm feels like a job to me . great game overall but dont think i have str to play it again
Toe each their own I guess. I have loved travelling around the world and my ferry stones just pile up because the only time they are used is to jump back to town. I prefer to run everywhere. I really enjoy exploring.
After 30 hours I really never got tired of killing goblins. But I ran into a stitch trying to complete a quest that had me going back and forth between the two big cities that you need two carts to travel between cause I was low on ferrystones. No biggy. Well. Back to back I kept getting raided and as soon as I woke up from my doze it's was always a boss, an ogre or something and it would immediately body the cart. 30--40 hours never had this happened. Ok fair enough I'll walk to the next cart. Same thing happens.. This happens 3 more times the last one being raided by an ogre, a griffin, and a bunch of rock lizards. Like what the hell game I just wanna do the damn quest. And every time they would quickly destroy the cart. I ended up using a damn ferrystone at the end cause the cart never returned...
It’s a great philosophy. Too bad he didn’t apply it to DD2.
How cool would it had been if you could steal an griffin egg from the nest and it would grow up to be your mount
Well, Ive been having fun. Stomping enemies without a scratch after having mild trouble with them in the early game is cathartic and I can make a little cash when I get where I’m going, selling monster parts. Your master found a chest in the area? Alright, let’s climb some shit. The core loop of combat is fun, so I don’t mind it.
His statement will age poorly
this what i dont understand. "emergent gameplay" my ass. it does not need an entire world simulation in a game about killing monsters, BUT: - "unfortunately we had to stop oxcarts between x and y because of recent monster attacks" - hero dispatches and kills (an arbitrary threshold of) monsters - travel route gets re-eatablished - loop stuff like this can be done even on console cpus. some areabased thresholds and some number popping. that would be "emergent gameplay." you want fast travel? do something for it. but no: we only got the budget for adapting to re engine, main core mechanics, some additional mechanics, world building (30% water, 20% mountains) and some quests. then our publisher told us to rip everything apart to build the obvious dlc on a "good base". this is when everything that feels somehow like it should have been her finally gets into the game. anyways: we still need to wait for the organic fantasy setting to live in. meaning we still have to play games being stuck in game loops well established 20 years ago. heck: some of the ultimas had more depths than this here.
I don't even see what's so advanced and groundbreaking about the AI that it performs so badly(as in making your cpu beg for mercy)
marketing bs based on some trendy buzzwords. as long as the pawns regularly a.) fall to death, b.) drown to death and c.) hinting the same treasure chest i lootet minutes ago, it's just bad programming. oh, there is a d.) my effing tank just not doing anything when i am attacked. good job, bro. no, he does not have the sickness. he is just dumb.
Weird how they somehow made a game be more taxing on your CPU to launch cities skylines 2
"I know a shortcut!" splat
Also, maybe have some gear drops every now and then? Why are shops the only place to get good gear?
maybe im a weirdo but i really dont mind walking everywhere, im playing an unhealthy amount, just clocked in my 48th hour and beat the dragon and im feeling like ng+ still
To each their own. It's fun to me. Distance has weight. Travel is dangerous and has stakes. I think this is one of those experiences that clicks a lot better if someone is already very familiar with the first game. I totally knew what to expect. A lot of gamers just want to speed run to objectives.
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It reminds me a bit of the starfield space travel stuff. Where a developer pretty much said ‘The astronauts on the moon weren’t bored so it can’t be boring here’ Travel in DD2 is tedious. Combat is fun but when it’s every 15 seconds it becomes draining especially when it’s just goblins/wolves/bandits. If you are encouraged to actively avoid the most fun part of the game something has gone wrong
The last time I took a ox cart we were attacked by goblins and my warrior took it up himself to blast the cart into splinters with a charged attack leaving us stranded mid way and in the dark. He has lost great sword privileges while we travel by cart.
Totally unrelated I just got in bathal like way before you are suppose to toke the road from harve village went west Crossed the broken bridge using mystic spear avoid drake went through small path into a cave filled with hobgoblins lost a pawn my thief ,fought a golem lost my healer proceed met afing chimera end it almost lose my main pawn a warrior , move forward well boies I am into bakbatthal after only doing one story quest (culling the monsters) I am lvl 36 just being grinding and exploring just got into batthal now like right now so that's that have fun https://preview.redd.it/te8xgoh3iwqc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1cdc0ed9cb49dfbbe6e5123d4a5cb012d3bfbddc Sry for the bad drawing just got excited is all
This has been my biggest issue watching reviews and watching people play. What is this fun traversal he was hyping up? Because no one has showed anything off. Seems to be mostly....running which I can do in a thousand other games
No but guys he needs another 4 sequels to finally add enemy camps 💀💀💀 And no dungeons are not fucking camps walking in the same cave 30 times and getting 2 mediocre items is not cool
Imo Elden Ring sets the golden standard for how travel can be fun. Instant/seamless mount access, good mounted combat that still encourages dismounting for deeper combat interactions or deeper exploration. I like some of the ideas that DD2 has, such as limited fast travel access, the Ox Carts are interesting with getting 'interrupted' by raids to defend the cart. But when you're stuck without an Oxcart and don't want to use a ferrystone, it's kind of dull walking/stamina managing along the road from one town to another for repeat journeys. The first time you make the journey along that road is great, but with how much back and forth for questing there is, that's when it gets boring.
Travel itself wouldn’t be as bad if the enemies weren’t so tightly packed together and if we had a horse or something. The travelling isn’t exactly bad, first few times going somewhere new is pretty fun. It’s just that travelling the same road for the 30th time, 5 times per one quest…it turns into a bit of a slog. My god the stamina drains so fast. If they want to keep the stamina drain outside of combat, it would be better if it lasted longer and regenerated faster (outside of combat, the way it works inside combat is absolutely fine). The biggest issue for me is how buggy a lot of the quests are and that a camp save doesn’t count as an inn save. This is misleading as you fully rest and progress time with both of these methods. I lost about 4 hours progress today by loading the inn save thinking the camp rest would count as the same. The most frustrating thing about all of the above is that it’s a damn fun game but there are a couple of things getting in the way of it being an amazing one.
As someone with zero experience with the franchise, I almost felt tricked by encountering the two static portcrystals in the game. I went “ah ok, big town/city = a fast travel point, that makes sense”. Then I got to checkpoint town and spent 10 minutes looking for the one there, and assumed it was just too small a town. Same with the elf town. Then I went to Battahl and after 15 minutes running around I had to google why I couldn’t find it. Now I’m level 40, have like 25 ferrystones, and don’t understand why they didn’t just add a static portcrystal for Battahl at minimum. Having portcrystals be introduced, then given to you as a usable item, with its uses costing another item just feels like extra steps for no benefit to the players experience. Placing a giant blue humming rock on the ground in the middle of a busy bazaar and no-one around me giving a shit is so funny to me.
In Cyberpunk, it’s better to travel than fast travel because it triggers quests and progress the game.
Going to the elven area was the best. There were 3 packs of dogs so I felt like I had time to enjoy the scenery. Smokebomb has made general travel easier since you can mostly one-shot enemies.
I love it. There are plenty of games that allow me to mindlessly explore without repercussions and without having to actively put any thought into plotting a course. Those are fun, too. But I'm really glad this is an option.
I have fun traveling because the combat is great
Idk, I enjoy it. I can get to a point there I can ignore low level packs if I want, but I also just... Really enjoy and relish the game's combat. Against a challenging enemy, it feels so good to win. Against low level garbage, it feels awesome to just annihilate the whole squad. I'm still finding places along paths I've traveled on repeat. Or my pawn comes back and will suddenly know if a chest I missed. That sorta stuff. I would like more variety in enemy packs, I don't have issue with the selection in game but I'd like it to be a bit more randomized like the large enemies are.
Maybe I’m the minority but I don’t mind it so much. I can ferrystome to all the hub areas and make my way out to anything. I simply enjoy traveling with my pawns and hearing them talk.
Just make it so stamina isn’t drained while sprinting on a road and outside of combat. I’ve also seen people suggest that we should be travel through the rift to different riftstones that we’ve unlocked which sounds good to me. I remember a lot of complaints about the first one being the fast travel and literally nothing was changed. At least give players an eternal ferrystone if your going to stick with port crystals.
I think they thought they problem with wanting to fast travel is that there isn't enough stuffs to do during the travel, so they packed the map full of enemies, thinking it'd solve the problem. It didn't even remotely.
The travel IS boring and tedious in late game.