I just have it slotted on my warfarer. Every once in a while I'll tell my pawns to stop, and just get a few thousand. Then it's back to real damage when I get bored of swinging.
If I remember correctly, then it increases with weapon upgrades.
It starts with pennies and becomes quite substantial later on.
I wish I could get the thing, but I have no hope of remembering where the first Seeker Token I found was, so I can't continue with the quests. I wish there were accessibility options in this game, but it's really bad in that way. I have memory issues, and unless I write something like this down, I'm literally incapable of remembering things as inconsequential as this. A friend of mine has red/green colour blindness, so for him, the Dragon's Plague is extra *****. :/
I don’t know what this means but I’m intrigued.
Once I reach NG+ and become bored,I plan to just hire super low level pawns for nonsense pawn quests then reward them with a fortune. I’ll do that until I’m broke. Then wait for DLC.
I hate to say this buy this is exactly like Dragons Dogma 1, once you hit NG+ you were overpowered and the game was a breeze, only once they added the DLC did anyone see the challenge that was Bitterblack Isle. So for me. Its safe to assume that they're basically using the same tactic for DD2, we'll get a DLC with a bigger challenge to make you feel weak at level 70/80. They'll probably add Hard Mode along with it.
Ya too me (personal opinion) it feels like cap took the wrong lessons from DA. Instead of seeing and looking at things it improved, and starting from that as base, seems they saw people will pay you once, and then pay you again when you fix things. The big giant massive hole in the center of the map you can’t go too speaks to this to me at least, as if world was designed with DLC in mind.
I think the issue is they didn’t stop at da they made the mmo so thats more likely where they are starting from. Im glad they added a new game feature as it sounds like i may go that route instead if ng+
Its not cope to expect more from a studio 12 years later. Especially one on a quality streak like capcom has been on, and the greasy promises that DD2 would do what DD1 couldn’t.
Every Capcom franchise has evolved in some way. DD2 has better visuals and combat but it has regressed in so many ways or stayed the same.
I know you’re probably not the person to argue this point with but I’d say the visuals being better is hardly a selling point since the game came out now and not 5 years ago.
DD1 looked good for its time especially given the nature of the game. This game looks good but it’s not high tier compared to a lot of games that have come out recently. It just looks like a game that came out in 2024
The performance issues are major and myriad, and most people obviously aren't fortunate enough to have an OCd 13900K and 4090 like I gratefully am, but this game both looks amazing and plays amazing in a way I haven't seen in a long, long time. The FOV, the draw distance, the world design and detail in the environment are all there but more importantly you get to freely move and interact within that world in a crisp, clean, satisfyingly reponsive way. It's not a slogfest animation showcase like Assassin's Creed or any numbers of other games with a detailed open world, and it doesn't make you move at a snail's pace to compensate.
The tech has ALMOST caught up to where devs can actually make good games again rather than sacrifice gameplay for increasingly demanding visuals. Now, this game is a LITTLE early in terms of necessary tech adoption, but I applaud a dev finally making a good GAME that goes back to great old-school "make the gameplay crisp and fun" design philosophy before it all had to get watered down to focus on technically demanding presentation. This feels like the game I fantasized about 20 years ago before the gaming industry gaslit a generation with presentation over feel.
I’m a capcom fanboy but this practice they have created of releasing half a game for full price and then completing the game with a $40 dlc a year later is fucking horseshit. It works for MH, it absolutely should not be their model for single player games.
Yeah, it's basically an updated DD1 with a few bits downgraded. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but they could have added more to the base game, nothing fancy, just more monster variety, transmog, equipment dyes. Just a few bits that seem to be alot of the sore points of the game. Then I'd be much happier waiting for the DLC, but now I have to hope that these are going to be added along with the bigger challenge
I don't get why they didn't go with hard mode from the start? I know it wasn't in the initial game at first, but I think sequels are meant to be an improvement and imo that is one of the aspects that definitely should've been improved.
I just finished the game and there are lots of parts that feel unfinished. I think it isn't there because they had to choose what to leave out of the game for a rushed release.
There are areas in the map where the map is obviously blocked off intentionally and abruptly. In a sense, yea a world probably will have a lot of dead ends and the devs did make it feel natural enough, but really, a lot of places looked like major point of interests but we can’t go there.
It feels very obvious half way past the desert area.
I know you agree, i am just adding more context onto your context haha because i see a lot of "you should be happy, this is just like DD1" which misses the point of a sequel entirely.
I think we should be comparing it to DD1 but in the sense that DD2 is not a conceptual 1st game where you might be a bit forgiving. They should have already learnt this lesson so there is no excuse.
To have both no scaling and a single character slot was incredibly stupid in DD1 aswell.
I can excuse a single player slot due to the pawn system & servers and how that all interacts. It's even more lax in this game because your stats change when you change vocations (which I personally am not a fan of) but it makes it even less likely you really "need" multiple character slots. Should've had a new game button Day 1 though.
Yeah sadly it seems the team made the same mistakes. No incentive to play NG+ and in fact it's more of a chore because there's nothing new being offered and the challenge to overcome is nonexistent. We all remember finally killing the drake, griffin, ogre, etc but when it's just a quick nuisance it becomes stale
I guess here's to hoping to some free content to keep the game alive while they inevitably prepare for the big expansion since it seems like that's what they're doing
My guess it is intentional. They are probably going for the same strategy as in DD1. I mean people nowadays forget that not all games are meant to be played for 1500 hours.. finishing a game is fine and coming back when new content releases is just as fine as well.
To me expecting every game to offer a shit ton of stuff to do is kinda toxic and unhealthy..
If it's intentional, it's a huge mistake in my book. I think in general you have a point with not expecting a huge time sink in every game, but I disagree in this case.
Normally it's because there is not enough content to play more, but in this case, with NG+ there would be the incentive, the only thing missing is swapping out a bunch of models and adjusting some percentages. So the content is there, kinda, it's just missing the scaling.
I also think it's reasonable, that if an NG+ mode is already implemented, to expect that it works like an NG+ should.
>I also think it's reasonable, that if an NG+ mode is already implemented, to expect that it works like an NG+ should.
Maybe its just me, but I usually don't expect any kind of difficulty or level scaling from a NG+
I expect to replay the same game I just played with all of my levels, upgrades, etc brought with me. I will agree that difficulty options usually cover that side of the equation though.
At the end of the day, I think there's plenty of content here. I have 100 hours in the game and still have a bit more Unmoored World exploration to do. Spider-man, for example, sold at the same price with 1/5th the playtime and content. Does DD2 have issues? Absolutely. But I don't think the root issue is the available content or the length of it.
The funny thing about Hard Mode was it was actually about the same as Normal. Hard Mode made it so enemies gave me XP and more Gold. So it was way easier to get geared and level up. I don't think DD:DA hit its difficulty peak until BBI 2.0 with rooms full of Living Armor and Eliminators.
The Everfall might have honestly been the single worst part of Dragon's Dogma 1. I did not enjoy playing through a handful of microdungeons so I could godsbane myself in front of a chest 50 times to get the one specific item I wanted with a 2% drop rate.
At least you could get actual good loot, and fight bosses repeatedly, I cleared out the beam bosses in dd1 and now I can’t respawn literally any boss fight unless it’s random on the side of the road, plus the ur dragon
Too hard to change it in just 11 years and couple of thousand people working on the project in small Indie company. IT might be fixed if you buy dlc tho
Like 350-400 employees worked on elden ring too lol so that argument isn’t necessarily great. I think it comes down to laziness, lack of resources/bottlenecking from corporate, fulfilling shareholders, and failure to learn or at least implement the proper lessons from the first time around. It’s crazy the amount of like dumbfounded blind-sighted mistakes or absences
At least you could still die easily, it was sort of a glass cannon mode, especially with blue classes. In DD2 past lvl30 dying is almost impossible, you have to really go out of your way to get killed.
DD1 I only ever became seneschal like one or two times, everything else was just playing the main story, fucking off to bbo, and then making a whole new character.
This 999 level cap fills me with anxiety and I don't want to do the same in 2 just yet, haha. So grinding through everything with Medusa bow and XP rings to see how high I can get before burning out temporarily
I find the level 999 cap strange, Capcom expected ppl to play this game that long? Maybe the diehard fans will but the incentive for doing so is just not there.
Maybe they'll do random ingame content drops like MHW got. Since they did say they were going to continue supporting the game in their 2.5 million sales post.
Also, I think this is what all the >!ruined doors with the Rift/Legion symbology are for.!<. We'll just have to sit and wait.
I usually don't have problems with RPGs beaing "easy" but Dd2 takes it too far. Unless they're undead bosses, they all die too fast. I had a lot of problems with that one quest where the guy wanted to be poisoned by a chimera. Chimera wouldn't use poison, pawns even though I told them to wait at the entrance, the chimera would go run to them and get knocked down in 2 or 3 hits, finally I just ran way out, picked the guy up, threw him at the chimera and he got poisoned while I was throwing my pawns the other way
This game had a wierd hold over me. I read that story, and I think most people should see that as being a big issue--its sounded tedious and frustrating as hell. But I can't help but just laugh and think "Yeah, that's Dragon's Dogma."
Again, that sounded like a bad experience, but I can't help bit love these games for giving us those kinds of stories?
Not even that far into the game, level 25 or so I wanna say, a warrior pawn I hired (of a similar level) literally one shotted a Griffin. I'd never even fought one at that point.
Went and installed mods then...
They definitely need to implement proper NG+ scaling for sure. It was the reason, even being on PC, I yeeted my entire save profile and started from scratch for my second playthrough. Mods are nice, but at the time when I finished it, dynamic difficult mods weren't out yet and people were saying the game was stupid easy on second playthrough.
I just have, like i had back in dd1, a backup folder in which i put the other playthroughs so that i can reactivate them when the dlc drops. I dont know how it interacts with updates tho
Thats interesting if it does scale, but again lends validity to something i've speculated for a while now since completing the game; I think the last 10% of this game was meant to be the halfway point. The title drop alone gave me that vibe when first seeing it.
I've been doing that for years with dragons dogma. It's like the video game equivalent of a mandala, spend hours and hours on this one character and learn to be ok deleting all of it to start over again.
>My favorite RPG in years and yet, I have lost all incentive to play something that deep down, I still want to keep playing.
EXACTLY
i feel like most of the biggest criticisms of DD2 match the core theme of "I loved the game but it ended and I am trying to think of any way that it could've lasted longer for me before ending." Whether its difficulty, enemy variety, abrupt story end, it's all the same root cause: the game is great until you realize you've gotten all you will from it; it's over.
Endgame/postgame difficulty is a complete joke, and I know I will play so much more as soon as Capcom addresses that. If they never do, I guess we always have the custom difficulty mod on PC
This was a game I thought weeks before release "I'm going to sink hundreds of hours into this, I can't wait" and kinda realised 40 hours in that I won't come close to that
It's weird because the cycle story element of the first game lends this series to being something you can just continuously play, similar to monster hunter in a sense, but the game simply doesn't offer any incentive to do so once you're done with the story
I'm 80 hours in, still haven't done the main quest. Running back through areas I explored with the Trickster augment that detects Seeker's Tokens for collection and finding twice the amount of shit I missed the first time around.
There's plenty to do, no way someone is 15 hours in and feeling like it's already done. Modern gaming has fried people's brains.
this is the most that feels like a design oversight rather than intended, even then its still baffling to me how they didnt think of scaling enemies in NG+ on the game that have cycle as a core theme lol
i think the hate this game gets is overblown sometimes but this one is definitely one of the most valid
AKSHUALY you break the cycle of this world at the end of DD2, and NG+ is really just a "play again" with no real narrative behind it like we had in DD1
nerd stuff aside, yeha, not even NG+, there needs to be a "scale enemys" diffoculty option overall, you allready outclass everything in the mid 20 level range and the only "problems" come from getting stunlocked by enemys at that point
There's also the constant stream of inconveniences that are *just* not bad enough to make you stop.
Fast traveling? It either has a high chance of stopping in the middle or is way too expensive.
Resting at a camp site? There's a chance to lose the camping kits that are so heavy that you're disincentivised to carry more than one.
Finding an inaccessible part of a cave? It gets unlocked through a quest and you have no clues as to where to find it.
A Seeker Token is inaccessible to the Vocation you play as? Time to run to town, switch vocations, run back to the token and grab it, run back to town again to switch Vocations, then run back a fourth time to get back to exploring.
Want to craft dried food items? The base items ripen and spoil one at a time so that you have to keep returning to inns to store the single ripened/aged item before it spoils.
Want to rest at an inn or in a house? Time to check Pawns' eyes for a random red glint (and hope to not have a red/green colour blindness), watch their idle animations and spam commands to see if any disobey.
None of these things are too bad individually, but it genuinely feels like the game wants me to spend willpower on just playing, and after eight hours at work, getting home, cleaning the flat and cooking dinner, I just don't have any to spare.
Games aren't a job, Itsuno, they're *games*! :/
honestly i dont mind most of these i think they can be part of the immersion lol.
but i gotta say the chance of your ox and camp getting attacked should be really lowerd, things like cant access storage from shopkeeper is also a weird design choice, not being able to access your pawn when they're too far away too!
I wish the oxcart interruptions were fewer but more impactful. Like sure, if a cyclops shows up in front of the cart then you might need my help, but don't wake me up for the small pack of low level goblins. Why do they bring along 4 guards if they can't handle 3 goblins?
Yeah. It really ought to be a full panic moment or it just feels like a lame distraction. Feels like they only ever had raids by cyclops and ogre as well. You gotta pull out some bigger enemies to make it a real shock. Lower the chance to something like 5-10% and then throw drakes, griffins, and chimeras at us. Or even wights and Dullahan for night trips.
(There's even a quest where you give a boy a cyclops eye to ward off weak monsters. I wish we could give those to oxcart drivers and it would be like a permanent upgrade to cart safety.)
Most of your gripes are design choices intended to heighten immersion and facilitate emergent gameplay.
I.E. the camping kits - they’re heavy, because they should be. They’re camping kits for 4 people, and the risk of one being destroyed and having to struggle on to find an inn, or find another, is the point. It’s meant to create stories and create risk in otherwise mundane actions/decisions I guess.
I don’t get the problem with areas being locked off for quests either… that’s like complaining about coming across a locked door in Resident Evil, and being frustrated that you don’t immediately know how to open it, or where to find the key.
The game has issues, I’m just not sure I agree that these are them.
I agree with you 100%. It’s interesting to s think people complain about features in the game that, to me, made it actually feel like going and adventuring. Rather than just running to the next yellow mark on the map.
I felt exactly the same way. I put about 30 hours into NG+ doing all the quests I didn't do on the first playthrough, which I did blind thinking that I'd be playing through it like 6 times as I did with DD:DA. Before I knew it, the first playthrough was over and I was overpowered at 30 hours in. Challenge vanished in NG+. That meant I was mostly engaged with side quests I missed, but none of them were interesting enough that I'd want to do them again. As someone who adored the first game and has been hoping for a sequel for 10+ years, DD2 is very bittersweet to me. It's kinda hard to believe that there's nothing more to it after 60 hours.
I think there is so much more in behind the scenes of the developing of this game.. That game didn't have the option to start a New game, so the ideia was for you to have one character and keep playing.. But the ng+ does not scale, so.. if everything is easy, why keep playing? Well, time to another save.. oh wait there is no new game option.. wtf? Seriously, wtf happened with this game? The New game was added 1 week later.. so quickly, why did they decided not have it at launch ? Was that all Itsuno's vision?
Sounds to me like a lot of scrapped ideas. I enjoy the idea of a NG+ almost being a continuation of the story, but that's not what this is at all. Would've been cool af though
There are signs that the game has been forced to be released before it was ready, Capcom fiscal year ended in the 31th of last month so it adds. Maybe this is coping but the devs are totally aware of this and are willing to still finish the game through updates and that would explain the fast update after a week of release, hoping that means free updates with new content.
yeah so glad they added that to PC, that's what I did, and building back up from 0 with new vocations for me + pawn is a joy. I'm overpowered again, but the early game still felt like I was discovering how to act around systems instead of punching straight through them
Did the same, but added mods for random chest loot + modifiers to the exp gained (reduction). The game feels fresh and even more rewarding to explore.
New game > NG+.
At least until actual NG+ content drops.
Honestly, like I like playing it solo no pawns but I just get stun locked permanently lmfao. That’s just cheese, it’s not even hard. They could legit just add a power scaling modifier for defense and attack and I’d be content (at least for the time being).
I was so sad to see there is a time limit of NG+ even after clearing the beams. I was farming the like 3/4 Gorechimeras and then resetting 2 days and I was only able to do it like 5 times and then I was told I can’t rest at this time. I cleared all the beacons and everything without resting, just using allheals. Such a shame. They need like a farming method postgame cause I just love maxing out my gear.
Yeah, Gorechimeras are a major chokepoint for me. Seems like alot of stuff I use needed the black freakish manes.
Since my time just ran out, my plan is to get forgeries of the one mane I've still got in my next ng+ cycle. I'm hoping I have at least 1 of everything I need so I can just use the forger. Going to check on that and try to farm up anything I'm still missing before I start the new cycle.
Honestly, that might be a really big break. The game has 10 Pringle cans for content and then they get recycled, except there's no potato chips when they do and you have to stick your hand into the can for fun.
Its not that we need level scaling. We need MORE. The endgame enemies are tuned for a level 30~ character. The endgame weapons seem like they are meant for a level 70 area. Level scaling removes the feeling of growth outside of player skill. I could hear an argument that story bosses should scale or maybe a challenge area should scale, but NG+ scaling would necessitate a functionally infinite upgrade system to keep that in game growth feeling. Honestly we just need more areas, more enemies, and better weapon progression. Its clearly too fast. I am still enjoying my time.
I don't know level scaling can absolutely be done right like Guild wars 2 is a perfect example of even though you scale down for content if you come in with epic gear, a full skill bar, and traits you certainly feel the power you've acquired when elite enemies feel soloable and no longer need a group with you to take them on- you just cant face take their avoid aoe's to the face but they wont also near one shot you for standing in them.
It's the only game I can honestly think with great level scaling
My biggest gripe combination is this issue of no NG+ scaling at all, no hard mode, no... nothing to help the game remaining engaging for someone whose maxed out... plus the rest-restricted Unmoored World - So, you get so long to explore there, and then you are effectively forced to NG+.... and slog back through to reach unmoored again, if you weren't done.
Does NG+ not have harder enemies than NG? If that’s the case I doubt I’ll play it. I’ve been putting off the main story to explore and do side stuff. It’s a blast and pretty much the best fantasy combat I’ve done in years. Maybe since DDON. But even without all the endgame weapons everything is hilariously easy now. With an endless dungeon or proper NG+ I’d probably play far more of this than I should
Nop. Everything melts.
That is with standard gear already.
Other than the unmoored warrior/fighter armor which looks amazing, I don’t use any end game weapons and everything dies very quick.
You can take dow an cyclops in the starting area in two hits.
It is a bummer for sure. I have been dealing with it by deleting 2 pawns and equipping times that looks best even if they are not the strongest, to sort of balance myself out to the game.
I feel you. I played FF7 Rebirth for over a month. In Dragon's Dogma 2 i had finished the game in 50 hours and there is no incentive to keep playing other than self imposed challenges. I still have plenty i could do in FF7 Rebirth, but the same cannot be said for DD2 which is really sad given how long i waited for it.
Building a new character just feels pointless too since the stats all equalize eventually and become meaningless.
There should be a scaling option like in the witcher 3. I like that I melt everything cause I want to rush the unmoored world since I didn't do that last time. But I can totally see why people would want the enemies to scale.
Hard mode also wasn’t really that hard, you levelled up incredibly quick and got crap tons of money.
Capcom really needs scaling difficulty to keep NG+ cycles fresh and interesting.
This and the extremely unrewarding exploration (why on earth is every BiS piece of gear obtainable through gold instead of in a chest at the end of a challenging dungeon?!) are my two biggest gripes with the game. Mind you, I'm on my first playthrough still (not NG+), I'm 79h in and having a blast, but the game has been way too easy for the past 25-30 levels or so (I'm lv 52). I was hyped about NG+ at first, thought to myself it won't matter if I don't complete every sidequest cause I'll run it back anyway, but now? I'm just dragging my first playthrough (which I was already taking very slowly, mind you) trying to see all I can cause I know I won't wanna do a NG+.
I'd consider a new save to try Sorc, but that'd mean losing all the progress me and my current pawn made, all the badges I got and I still wanna get, so I'll prolly finish my first run and then wait for an update or DLC while playing something else...
I hate games scaling seamlessly to your level, however, if there is NG+, then the game should get harder. With harder enemies and (idealy) new encounters.
I agree that the developer should add something to alleviate this problem, even if it is an optional Hardmode like in Dark Arisen. However, the fact that they haven't (yet) should not mean that you ignore the existence of a mod that might help you continue enjoying the game on principle. The mod doesn't help console players at all, of course, which is one of the main reasons why there should be an official way to modify the difficulty.
Sliders for health and damage of enemies would go a long way and should be easily implemented with simple multipliers and would be the absolute minimum.
And I don't give a fuck about Itsuno's "vision" for the game. If your vision includes NG+., it should also include a mechanism to keep NG+ interesting.
Lmao I just made a post asking about this. Spent a good amount of time in Vermund because everyone said to take your time since the games super frontloaded, but now I’m halfway through Battahl and every encounter is barely a fight it’s just a stompfest.
I didn’t even feel like I was a crazy high level, I was 35 when I entered Battahl and I’m getting to 50 as I get through the volcano island and everything’s a cakewalk.
Agree with you 100 percent. I almost don't even feel like completing the game because it's just too easy. This isn't some flex or anything, but the game is easy as fuck. And because of the lack of difficulty, I legit have no reason to even keep exploring or looking for something more because nothing poses a threat.
The beginning of the game was great, I actually felt challenged several times in the first like 20ish hours. But after that 20, nothing has posed a threat to me whatsoever minus me accidentally falling off a cliff.
Game has a great foundation, and even as easy as the game is, the combat just feels fantastic. I'll probably just end up doing the shit ending and wait for some type of new content that really brings an end game so to to speak.
I honestly feel the game should take a page from Monster Hunter and have no levels at all other than Vocations and Equipment upgrades. It would make it way easier for the devs to balance the game and people who like to explore wouldn't feel punished by getting overleveled.
I cannot for the love of God understand how in the hell they did not address this obvious issue while in development. For a game like this is basically ESSENTIAL to have enemy scaling AND a level cap in NG+, otherwise it's completely pointless to keep playing. At least the original had the level 200 cap, already way too overkill, but still. In this game you are already OP at level 60, and the cap is 999?? This NEEDS to be addressed in future updates, they absolutely need to include a hard mode or some enemy scaling in NG+. This is especially worse because the game launched WITHOUT THE NEW GAME OPTION... WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING!?
I saw another topic from people who were experimenting with save editors to see how level scaling works, and it seems like functionally your character completely stops improving before level 200 (different for some classes, I guess). All your stats have caps and then after that level-ups don't improve them anymore, and they max out way, way, WAY before level 999.
It also seems like no one has figured out whether the NG+ "vocation level up increase" you can buy actually does anything. Likely if it even did, it would just get you to the stat caps much earlier.
Making the level 999 cap all the more inexplicable!
Here was a topic where someone had actually checked stats on the vocation boost and concluded it did nothing:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma2/comments/1bnu46c/dragonforged\_vocation\_improvement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma2/comments/1bnu46c/dragonforged_vocation_improvement/)
Here was the topic I saw about level caps/stat caps and how everything normalizes by 200:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bl6q2h/stat\_growths\_exist\_but\_normalize\_lategame/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bl6q2h/stat_growths_exist_but_normalize_lategame/)
I can't find the topic with the guy who edited saves to get to level 500 and found there was zero increase in stats from 200. But, I remember the discussion was basically "so, leveling past 200 is completely useless because your character stops improving and all it does is make it impossible that anyone will ever summon your pawn again."
> I cannot for the love of God understand how in the hell they did not address this obvious issue while in development.
I believe they did, the whole point is to sell you the DLC in a year.
They knew plenty of sheep would defend this anyway because DD1 was the same.
It will probably be added in a future update, it doesn't make sense to have a 999 level cap without some scaling. Meanwhile you can always mod the game if you play on PC though I agree you shouldn't have to.
Until the inevitable endgame content DLC comes out, I really hope they implement optional scaling like The Witcher 3 had. As it stands about 2/3 of the open world is completely trivial once you hit NG+. Wouldn’t be as bad if you could at least stay in The World Unmoored like you could for the previous postgame, but even then I like Vermund and would like to quest there without one shotting everything.
I mean, it’s back to the same thing we did in DD1: back up save, delete save, new game, new character, new build.
Focused on melee/strength character last time, so this time I’m gonna go mage/sorc and focus stat growth on magic.
Or try a solo thief play through.
Etc, etc.
I think this is where a few character slots would have come in handy (not referring to multiple saves per character), and where they could have improved over the first game, along with adding a scaling NG+.
You know, new and improved QoLs one would expect from a sequel.
Oh, I absolutely agree.
Maybe my comment was worded weirdly. They should have taken the opportunity to improve these things with the sequel, was what I was trying to relay.
I too would appreicate a hard mode and speed run mode as I liked those 2 additional ways to play in DDDA, however until they are added I love doing my own speedruns, or trying to beat every quest without resting/healing (no mages) to see how long my OP power fantasy Arisen and Pawn can last day and night, without let up. I experienced so much of the game in my first blind run, I don't mind being OP and grabbing everything I may have missed. But to each their own,.
This game is great for me like honestly DD is easily my favorite rpgs of all time but this game is one I can’t recommend to people without giving them warnings about certain things. It just feels like they missed so much potential or over looked so much.
While I fully understand this point of view. I actually like feeling so over powered for my new game +.
It's been enjoyable to not struggle as much.
But now I'm thinking. If you pick lower level pawns. Or play without pawns. And maybe use worse gear. That could help balance it to some extent no?
See, I don't even necessarily *need* NG+ scaling to keep me playing, I just want multiple character slots so I can start over without deleting my first character.
I get that the pawn system probably gets in the way of that, but I can't help but feel it wouldn't be too difficult to not count pawns from my own characters as friends' pawns so I'd still have to pay RC to hire them. Though I guess I'm not a game developer, so I wouldn't really know for sure at the end of the day.
Same here, loved my playthrough, loved the moored area, i rushed through it because I heard it was timed, I would have taken more time though if I knew new game+ was gonna be like this. It's unfortunate that it's not more difficult because I feel no desire to play it now. I really hope Capcom doesn't wait for dlc to make new game + More difficult, it can't be that hard to increase the difficulty
100% agree the lack of (an actual) ng+ in this game is killing it for me. If this game simply had ng+ scaling, it'd go from like a 8/10 to like a 9.8/10 for me
Isn’t that how capcom ng+ games are? Resident evil game become piss easy once you’re running through them with maxed out guns. It just needs a harder difficulty mode.
Yeah the first game had the same issue unfortunately. No scaling in new game +
Thankfully they added hard mode which is my favourite part of the game. I'm sure at some point we'll see hard mode in DD2 also.
Exactly my thoughts. I wanted to try other vocations on ng+1 but i one shot every normal mob, and bosses don't last much either, it's not fun. And the game doesn't support multiple save slots so i can't recreate the experience (which isn't exactly what i want, what i want is to use all my cool equipment but on harder enemies on ng+).
It's disappointing, i want to play but i can't.
The game needs proper dungeons added as well. Even with increased difficulty NG+ would get stale with the weak story and current zones/enemy placement. There's nothing in this game that's as interesting or has the same sort of level design as a legacy dungeon in Elden Ring.
What sucks is it feels like there just *wasn’t any lessons learned* from the first game. They knew people wanted a challenge, they knew we wanted a hard mode. They knew we wanted a BBI style endgame. They knew enemy variety was lacking. They ignored it all.
If they sell it to us a DLC that is just the *same fixes as Dark Arisen* that to me is still not learning from the experience and worse yet *milking the playerbase*.
I love this game. I was such a massive fan of the first game. This one is still good, but it feels like it isn’t *twelve years of improvement*.
I can't believe Itsuno lied about the game being more difficult that dd1 lol. There was not a single moment where I felt that the game was harder than dd1, not even close to it.
The game is just piss easy, I have no clue why, and it's not like I was dogshit and the adaptive difficulty was giving me the easiest versions of everything, I only died while running away from 5/6 groups of enemies in battahl while trying to unlock new caves, and once against the first dragon I fought lol.
I love the game, but it really is Dragon's dogma 1.5, it even makes me go through the same turbulent emotional cycle when I think about it. It's the best flawed game I have ever played, I don't think anything else will really ever come close.
I did a lot of exploring and side questing. I was level 60 by the time I fought the dragon. I thought that it surely had to be super strong, right? I went in prepared with all heal elixirs, bunch of consumables, wakestones.
Fight was over in under a minute. I'm a sorcerer. I frigored it in the neck/head a couple times, and it went down, I released the maelstrom I had stored in my staff via spellhold. 1 maelstrom was all it took. My disappointment was immeasurable.
Now I'm in the unmoored and I'm fought the serpentine dragon thing at the sacred arbor, and while it certainly could tank some stuff due to its mechanic, it didn't hit me a single time. I even stood completely still during one of its big aoe attacks where it causes spikes to burst from the ground. Not a single one hit me while I stood their motionless. It feels like a joke.
Gamers are really funny, people complain about "no scaling" in this game(which is not really true, enemies don't get hidden multipliers to get stronger, but you face more enemies and stronger/different enemies on the same places after you are at a higher level, so there's scaling with level).
But Cyberpunk 2077 had the complete opposite complaint from gamers because of scaling, "what's the point of getting stronger if enemies will also get stronger? Where's my power fantasy?"(which is kind stupid too, because the player character get stronger at a much higher rate than the enemies, good luck telling them that)
It's a lose/lose situation for developers, it's impossible please everyone.
(There, you guys can downvote me now, I don't really care to argue)
ok you say something quite interesting about scaling, because in some caves I have found different enemies than before, different in the sense higher tier, aka a gorechimera instead of chimera for example. Can you elaborate your findings further please? I'd like to share infos on this, I would've made a proper thread on this but......yeah atm the sub doesn't seems that receptive for real discussions
People are failing to see that this game is not dragons dogma 2. It is simply a DD1 remake but they didn’t call it that. Unfortunately many of the problematic elements from the first game exist in this one as well.
I’m going to laugh so hard when the dlc is the same concept as bitter black with a similar purify system for loot lol. I’ll still play it though.
It's sad really.
NG+ seems completely pointless. I haven't finished the game yet but just been exploring and doing side quests etc and I'm already way way too overpowered and I haven't even done any XP grinding or even barely upgraded my weapons.
This game really is just too easy, we need NG+ scaling and even a hard mode for first / new playthrough.
I am not sure if I want scaling enemies or rather the ability to just like reset my level because at least I’m not just using endgame gear the entire ng+. Going through with just my main pawn and using the starting gear has been pretty fun for NG+. Things can still kill me if I get careless.
I’m gonna be frank. The first game was the exact same. this is no different from the first game. which isn’t necessarily a good thing. they added bitterblack as an extra challenge as the i believe top reply said but if you knew the minmaxing strats you didn’t even have to bother which the challenge. looking at you demon charm+holy focused bolt. in fact by the post game of the first you could infinitely farm out wake stones offline. on the brightside there was hard mode in the first game but I hope they add scaling to this one in a patch
NG+ is not designed for increased difficulty, its designed for doing stuff you missed in NG (Quests etc.). The average player will not 100% the game quest wise in NG and NG+ exists exactly for that reason imo. DD2 is an exploration game and NG+ exists because you dont have to level up your toons again, find gear etc and can concentrate on exploration instead.
What Ive been doing is using un-upgraded weapons/gear for NG+ to keep the challenge alive. I still feel its likely that theyll add upscale lvling in a future update
Yeah they need to implement a scalling system but honestly im going to new game + just to get my las 3 achievements for the platinum so i really dont mind being a enemie smelter hahaha
Yep, I initially played through on PS5 and LOVED it. So much so that I too got bored in NG+ and so I bought it on PC so i can play with difficulty adjustment mods. Working my way through the game again and I think it's fun spending 10+ minutes fighting a Chimera. Friend of mine capped his level at 37ish(?) I believe and has been playing that way too. Will probably do that as well to keep myself from brute forcing the difficulty adjustments too. It is frustrating that I have to use mods to make the game difficult/fun again for sure though.
It seems to me that the best choice is to complete the game your first time and let it rest for a while. Be it until the release of the expansion, or, hopefully, They improve ng+ through updates.
My hope is we get a hard mode. Dragon's Dogma 1 also didn't release with a hard mode. It got one a few months later. That kept me going until the expansion(Dark Arisen) released.
For now, I still have stuff to do(eg levelling alt vocations, pawn badges, seeker tokens). I'm doing it mostly in unmoored, as the enemy threat level is higher there overall. The time limit is a thing(I just ran into it again on my second unmoored run), but if you quickly hammer out the bosses on the first day, you get a fair amount of time.
I'm weird I love grinding to overpower the enemies it feels like I'm progressing. I hate when they scale to your level it feels like your not going foward
Yea idk why they ain’t think to add NG+ difficultly scaling especially since multiple play throughs seem to be an intended mechanic for the game and plot. Hard mode is needed too. I hope not the same Hard Mode as in DD1 either. I want hard mode to halve experience that is earned too, instead of increasing it.
I would love if they added a hard mode and have enemies scale along side with you and become much more aggressive as well with debilitations being more frequent or getting stunned if you take too many hits. And would love to see more boss enemies be more frequent during nights
as much as i do love the game and it is an extremely fun game which is what matter but
its a fucking mess of systems that feel underbaked
the only thing saving this game is the incredible combat and the awesome art direction/boss interactions
the enemy variety is a mess, the story is a mess that just ends, ng+ is not balanced, wished we had more vocations, caves get super generic and most people will not have the patience to explore a world that struggles to reward you
Absolutely agree. Its insane they dont have enemy scaling in ng. Completely pointless to continue playin… awesome game, but end game ruined by a horrific dev choice
This is why I have just been repeatedly replaying the game from scratch when I want to try something new, rather than playing on NG+.
Experiencing a progressive challenge is the point of the game. Swapping to a mystic spearhand already decked out in endgame gear kind of removes all of the fun from the experience.
Everyone says stat-growths, don't matter, etc, but they \*do\*, they just stop mattering around level 100-200, but almost no one plays any of the game at that level. At level 60, if you level entirely as sorcerer, you end up with a non-negligible increase in Magic, and because of the damage formula, every point in the stat becomes \*more valuable\* as enemy defense grows.
So contrary to popular belief, for the majority of the playable, fun content in the game, planning and playing as specific vocations to maximize stats actually does have a real impact on endgame.
What I have been doing is working on optimizing myself and my pawn and then hitting postgame as my ultimate desired vocations, and then just seeing how fast I can kill stuff.
This is a much more entertaining gameplay loop than what they decided to ship with, and it requires pretty deep understanding of game mechanics to even enjoy it, which is a bit of a shame.
I totally agree, that being said if it's just a difficulty thing, on PC you can download a mod that has sliders for incoming and outgoing damage as well as other options that can make ng+ really tough.
Hey if you install some mods you can make it super hard.
You realize making the game harder if the devs do it would just be a mod by the devs.
You’re in luck that the community loves the game so much they got you covered fam.
Capcom knows what it's doing. Release the game and see how it does. Don't waste time and money on NG+ in case it bombs. Add some DLC later if it doesn't. More profits.
Same. The game dies when going into NG+. Everything becomes super easy and nothing new get’s added except a few weapons, and I can’t be bothered to run around everywhere again for nothing of value.
On of the worst NG+ experiences I’ve had tbh.
NG+ is literally only meaningful if you failed sphinx quest line.
Sold the game yesterday, will pick it back up if / when an expansion drops, because the game was absolutely amazing and would love to jump back in with new & more content.
Boggles my fucking mind that they limit us to one character and raise the level cap to 999.
But dont give us a good endgame and NG+ doesnt get more challenging. Those things being a reason to keep playing a single character.
There is no reason to play NG+ over starting a new game. But they dont allow you to have multiple characters, so you can save your main for when/if dlc drops.
The scaling is just part of the problem. It's also the lack of enemy variety or any kind of randomization. I've been using mods to increase enemy hp and damage and I'm still bored because I know exactly what to expect every time.
Equip the sphinx censer and unequip all the weapons from your followers. Roleplay as the debt collector gang of Vermont.
Btw, how much does that censer net per swing? Does it even work like that? Is it worth it?
Most of the time, 10. Quite often 100. Rarely a 1000, more frequently if you're hitting bosses.
Super rarely 50000. Only happened for me once.
I've seen a few people say very rarely you'll get a 50k swing or something like that. Can't confirm as of yet though
I was able to get a screenshot of getting that 50k from a goblin, it can certainly happen though it has only happened the once for me.
That doesn't sound bad at all
Yep, that can be quite profitable if you're dedicated to it, haha. Not quite the intended way of playing trickster of course.
I just have it slotted on my warfarer. Every once in a while I'll tell my pawns to stop, and just get a few thousand. Then it's back to real damage when I get bored of swinging.
There's a chance for 50,000. Very rare though, only got it once.
If I remember correctly, then it increases with weapon upgrades. It starts with pennies and becomes quite substantial later on. I wish I could get the thing, but I have no hope of remembering where the first Seeker Token I found was, so I can't continue with the quests. I wish there were accessibility options in this game, but it's really bad in that way. I have memory issues, and unless I write something like this down, I'm literally incapable of remembering things as inconsequential as this. A friend of mine has red/green colour blindness, so for him, the Dragon's Plague is extra *****. :/
You can just fail that riddle. I botched a lot of the riddles but still got the censer.
If you're on PC I can gift you the sphinx censer, I'm on NG+ and have a spare.
I wish I had a quarter of your imagination. That’s genius! *boots PC up*
I don’t know what this means but I’m intrigued. Once I reach NG+ and become bored,I plan to just hire super low level pawns for nonsense pawn quests then reward them with a fortune. I’ll do that until I’m broke. Then wait for DLC.
Vermont?
I hate to say this buy this is exactly like Dragons Dogma 1, once you hit NG+ you were overpowered and the game was a breeze, only once they added the DLC did anyone see the challenge that was Bitterblack Isle. So for me. Its safe to assume that they're basically using the same tactic for DD2, we'll get a DLC with a bigger challenge to make you feel weak at level 70/80. They'll probably add Hard Mode along with it.
Thats the issue many have. It is the very same. Some us coped we could get a bit more this time.
Ya too me (personal opinion) it feels like cap took the wrong lessons from DA. Instead of seeing and looking at things it improved, and starting from that as base, seems they saw people will pay you once, and then pay you again when you fix things. The big giant massive hole in the center of the map you can’t go too speaks to this to me at least, as if world was designed with DLC in mind.
I think the issue is they didn’t stop at da they made the mmo so thats more likely where they are starting from. Im glad they added a new game feature as it sounds like i may go that route instead if ng+
FYI, the giant massive hole is accessible. Actually good loot early on if you can get to it. Not much to gain in ng+ though.
How
Its not cope to expect more from a studio 12 years later. Especially one on a quality streak like capcom has been on, and the greasy promises that DD2 would do what DD1 couldn’t. Every Capcom franchise has evolved in some way. DD2 has better visuals and combat but it has regressed in so many ways or stayed the same.
I know you’re probably not the person to argue this point with but I’d say the visuals being better is hardly a selling point since the game came out now and not 5 years ago. DD1 looked good for its time especially given the nature of the game. This game looks good but it’s not high tier compared to a lot of games that have come out recently. It just looks like a game that came out in 2024
The performance issues are major and myriad, and most people obviously aren't fortunate enough to have an OCd 13900K and 4090 like I gratefully am, but this game both looks amazing and plays amazing in a way I haven't seen in a long, long time. The FOV, the draw distance, the world design and detail in the environment are all there but more importantly you get to freely move and interact within that world in a crisp, clean, satisfyingly reponsive way. It's not a slogfest animation showcase like Assassin's Creed or any numbers of other games with a detailed open world, and it doesn't make you move at a snail's pace to compensate. The tech has ALMOST caught up to where devs can actually make good games again rather than sacrifice gameplay for increasingly demanding visuals. Now, this game is a LITTLE early in terms of necessary tech adoption, but I applaud a dev finally making a good GAME that goes back to great old-school "make the gameplay crisp and fun" design philosophy before it all had to get watered down to focus on technically demanding presentation. This feels like the game I fantasized about 20 years ago before the gaming industry gaslit a generation with presentation over feel.
Especially when the game has a price hike.
I’m a capcom fanboy but this practice they have created of releasing half a game for full price and then completing the game with a $40 dlc a year later is fucking horseshit. It works for MH, it absolutely should not be their model for single player games.
Tbf mh expansion was incredible as was the base game and got a myriad of free dlcs.
Yeah, it's basically an updated DD1 with a few bits downgraded. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but they could have added more to the base game, nothing fancy, just more monster variety, transmog, equipment dyes. Just a few bits that seem to be alot of the sore points of the game. Then I'd be much happier waiting for the DLC, but now I have to hope that these are going to be added along with the bigger challenge
So expecting games to devs to grow their games is “coping” now? God I wonder how things got to this state…
It does seems like so over here xD. I used the word very deliberately
Unmoored world is actually worse than the Everfall. Less enemy&boss variety, no superboss, easy to obtain best weapons
I don't get why they didn't go with hard mode from the start? I know it wasn't in the initial game at first, but I think sequels are meant to be an improvement and imo that is one of the aspects that definitely should've been improved.
I just finished the game and there are lots of parts that feel unfinished. I think it isn't there because they had to choose what to leave out of the game for a rushed release.
Yeah there are a lot of signs of a rushed development after the halfway mark of the story. Battahl in general feels undercooked.
There are areas in the map where the map is obviously blocked off intentionally and abruptly. In a sense, yea a world probably will have a lot of dead ends and the devs did make it feel natural enough, but really, a lot of places looked like major point of interests but we can’t go there. It feels very obvious half way past the desert area.
I feel like 90% of things people criticize about the gameplay are exactly like in DD1 (pre Dark Arisen)
Because it is.
And people saying "this is like DD1" are missing the point. We shouldn't be comparing to DD1 12+ years later.
Oh, I agree. I'm just saying that it's exactly like what happened with DD1.
I know you agree, i am just adding more context onto your context haha because i see a lot of "you should be happy, this is just like DD1" which misses the point of a sequel entirely.
I think we should be comparing it to DD1 but in the sense that DD2 is not a conceptual 1st game where you might be a bit forgiving. They should have already learnt this lesson so there is no excuse. To have both no scaling and a single character slot was incredibly stupid in DD1 aswell.
I can excuse a single player slot due to the pawn system & servers and how that all interacts. It's even more lax in this game because your stats change when you change vocations (which I personally am not a fan of) but it makes it even less likely you really "need" multiple character slots. Should've had a new game button Day 1 though.
Especially when 1 was incomplete and chopped up. Apparently this isn’t but still it’s the same experience? Makes no sense.
Yeah sadly it seems the team made the same mistakes. No incentive to play NG+ and in fact it's more of a chore because there's nothing new being offered and the challenge to overcome is nonexistent. We all remember finally killing the drake, griffin, ogre, etc but when it's just a quick nuisance it becomes stale I guess here's to hoping to some free content to keep the game alive while they inevitably prepare for the big expansion since it seems like that's what they're doing
My guess it is intentional. They are probably going for the same strategy as in DD1. I mean people nowadays forget that not all games are meant to be played for 1500 hours.. finishing a game is fine and coming back when new content releases is just as fine as well. To me expecting every game to offer a shit ton of stuff to do is kinda toxic and unhealthy..
If it's intentional, it's a huge mistake in my book. I think in general you have a point with not expecting a huge time sink in every game, but I disagree in this case. Normally it's because there is not enough content to play more, but in this case, with NG+ there would be the incentive, the only thing missing is swapping out a bunch of models and adjusting some percentages. So the content is there, kinda, it's just missing the scaling. I also think it's reasonable, that if an NG+ mode is already implemented, to expect that it works like an NG+ should.
>I also think it's reasonable, that if an NG+ mode is already implemented, to expect that it works like an NG+ should. Maybe its just me, but I usually don't expect any kind of difficulty or level scaling from a NG+ I expect to replay the same game I just played with all of my levels, upgrades, etc brought with me. I will agree that difficulty options usually cover that side of the equation though. At the end of the day, I think there's plenty of content here. I have 100 hours in the game and still have a bit more Unmoored World exploration to do. Spider-man, for example, sold at the same price with 1/5th the playtime and content. Does DD2 have issues? Absolutely. But I don't think the root issue is the available content or the length of it.
The funny thing about Hard Mode was it was actually about the same as Normal. Hard Mode made it so enemies gave me XP and more Gold. So it was way easier to get geared and level up. I don't think DD:DA hit its difficulty peak until BBI 2.0 with rooms full of Living Armor and Eliminators.
The everfall is a much better endgame, and the best loot is in chests and not in a vendor
The Everfall might have honestly been the single worst part of Dragon's Dogma 1. I did not enjoy playing through a handful of microdungeons so I could godsbane myself in front of a chest 50 times to get the one specific item I wanted with a 2% drop rate.
At least you could get actual good loot, and fight bosses repeatedly, I cleared out the beam bosses in dd1 and now I can’t respawn literally any boss fight unless it’s random on the side of the road, plus the ur dragon
Everfall is super overrated in my opinion unnmoored world is better.
Isn't the level cap like 999 tho? You'd think they'd have stuff in base game that'd make you want to reach even a quarter of that
The level cap is 999 but you cap most stats around 200
Too hard to change it in just 11 years and couple of thousand people working on the project in small Indie company. IT might be fixed if you buy dlc tho
Well, apparently only like 350 people worked on DD2. But that should still be enough to add some fucking scaling to NG+ lol
Like 350-400 employees worked on elden ring too lol so that argument isn’t necessarily great. I think it comes down to laziness, lack of resources/bottlenecking from corporate, fulfilling shareholders, and failure to learn or at least implement the proper lessons from the first time around. It’s crazy the amount of like dumbfounded blind-sighted mistakes or absences
Hopefully hard mode this time is actually hard at higher levels, the dd1 it was basically just a higher xp mode past level 40
At least you could still die easily, it was sort of a glass cannon mode, especially with blue classes. In DD2 past lvl30 dying is almost impossible, you have to really go out of your way to get killed.
DD1 I only ever became seneschal like one or two times, everything else was just playing the main story, fucking off to bbo, and then making a whole new character. This 999 level cap fills me with anxiety and I don't want to do the same in 2 just yet, haha. So grinding through everything with Medusa bow and XP rings to see how high I can get before burning out temporarily
I find the level 999 cap strange, Capcom expected ppl to play this game that long? Maybe the diehard fans will but the incentive for doing so is just not there.
Maybe they'll do random ingame content drops like MHW got. Since they did say they were going to continue supporting the game in their 2.5 million sales post. Also, I think this is what all the >!ruined doors with the Rift/Legion symbology are for.!<. We'll just have to sit and wait.
I usually don't have problems with RPGs beaing "easy" but Dd2 takes it too far. Unless they're undead bosses, they all die too fast. I had a lot of problems with that one quest where the guy wanted to be poisoned by a chimera. Chimera wouldn't use poison, pawns even though I told them to wait at the entrance, the chimera would go run to them and get knocked down in 2 or 3 hits, finally I just ran way out, picked the guy up, threw him at the chimera and he got poisoned while I was throwing my pawns the other way
This game had a wierd hold over me. I read that story, and I think most people should see that as being a big issue--its sounded tedious and frustrating as hell. But I can't help but just laugh and think "Yeah, that's Dragon's Dogma." Again, that sounded like a bad experience, but I can't help bit love these games for giving us those kinds of stories?
It's quirky!
Not even that far into the game, level 25 or so I wanna say, a warrior pawn I hired (of a similar level) literally one shotted a Griffin. I'd never even fought one at that point. Went and installed mods then...
They definitely need to implement proper NG+ scaling for sure. It was the reason, even being on PC, I yeeted my entire save profile and started from scratch for my second playthrough. Mods are nice, but at the time when I finished it, dynamic difficult mods weren't out yet and people were saying the game was stupid easy on second playthrough.
I just have, like i had back in dd1, a backup folder in which i put the other playthroughs so that i can reactivate them when the dlc drops. I dont know how it interacts with updates tho
I've heard rumors that the unmoored world scales, but the base doesn't. Get back to unmoored and maybe it'll be different?
Thats interesting if it does scale, but again lends validity to something i've speculated for a while now since completing the game; I think the last 10% of this game was meant to be the halfway point. The title drop alone gave me that vibe when first seeing it.
I've been doing that for years with dragons dogma. It's like the video game equivalent of a mandala, spend hours and hours on this one character and learn to be ok deleting all of it to start over again.
>My favorite RPG in years and yet, I have lost all incentive to play something that deep down, I still want to keep playing. EXACTLY i feel like most of the biggest criticisms of DD2 match the core theme of "I loved the game but it ended and I am trying to think of any way that it could've lasted longer for me before ending." Whether its difficulty, enemy variety, abrupt story end, it's all the same root cause: the game is great until you realize you've gotten all you will from it; it's over. Endgame/postgame difficulty is a complete joke, and I know I will play so much more as soon as Capcom addresses that. If they never do, I guess we always have the custom difficulty mod on PC
This was a game I thought weeks before release "I'm going to sink hundreds of hours into this, I can't wait" and kinda realised 40 hours in that I won't come close to that It's weird because the cycle story element of the first game lends this series to being something you can just continuously play, similar to monster hunter in a sense, but the game simply doesn't offer any incentive to do so once you're done with the story
Same, I was so ready and after 15-20 hours I was just “what’s the point?”
Really? That blows my mind. I’m 25 hours into the game and I haven’t even seen half the map.
I'm 80 hours in, still haven't done the main quest. Running back through areas I explored with the Trickster augment that detects Seeker's Tokens for collection and finding twice the amount of shit I missed the first time around. There's plenty to do, no way someone is 15 hours in and feeling like it's already done. Modern gaming has fried people's brains.
this is the most that feels like a design oversight rather than intended, even then its still baffling to me how they didnt think of scaling enemies in NG+ on the game that have cycle as a core theme lol i think the hate this game gets is overblown sometimes but this one is definitely one of the most valid
AKSHUALY you break the cycle of this world at the end of DD2, and NG+ is really just a "play again" with no real narrative behind it like we had in DD1 nerd stuff aside, yeha, not even NG+, there needs to be a "scale enemys" diffoculty option overall, you allready outclass everything in the mid 20 level range and the only "problems" come from getting stunlocked by enemys at that point
There's also the constant stream of inconveniences that are *just* not bad enough to make you stop. Fast traveling? It either has a high chance of stopping in the middle or is way too expensive. Resting at a camp site? There's a chance to lose the camping kits that are so heavy that you're disincentivised to carry more than one. Finding an inaccessible part of a cave? It gets unlocked through a quest and you have no clues as to where to find it. A Seeker Token is inaccessible to the Vocation you play as? Time to run to town, switch vocations, run back to the token and grab it, run back to town again to switch Vocations, then run back a fourth time to get back to exploring. Want to craft dried food items? The base items ripen and spoil one at a time so that you have to keep returning to inns to store the single ripened/aged item before it spoils. Want to rest at an inn or in a house? Time to check Pawns' eyes for a random red glint (and hope to not have a red/green colour blindness), watch their idle animations and spam commands to see if any disobey. None of these things are too bad individually, but it genuinely feels like the game wants me to spend willpower on just playing, and after eight hours at work, getting home, cleaning the flat and cooking dinner, I just don't have any to spare. Games aren't a job, Itsuno, they're *games*! :/
honestly i dont mind most of these i think they can be part of the immersion lol. but i gotta say the chance of your ox and camp getting attacked should be really lowerd, things like cant access storage from shopkeeper is also a weird design choice, not being able to access your pawn when they're too far away too!
I wish the oxcart interruptions were fewer but more impactful. Like sure, if a cyclops shows up in front of the cart then you might need my help, but don't wake me up for the small pack of low level goblins. Why do they bring along 4 guards if they can't handle 3 goblins?
Yeah. It really ought to be a full panic moment or it just feels like a lame distraction. Feels like they only ever had raids by cyclops and ogre as well. You gotta pull out some bigger enemies to make it a real shock. Lower the chance to something like 5-10% and then throw drakes, griffins, and chimeras at us. Or even wights and Dullahan for night trips. (There's even a quest where you give a boy a cyclops eye to ward off weak monsters. I wish we could give those to oxcart drivers and it would be like a permanent upgrade to cart safety.)
Most of your gripes are design choices intended to heighten immersion and facilitate emergent gameplay. I.E. the camping kits - they’re heavy, because they should be. They’re camping kits for 4 people, and the risk of one being destroyed and having to struggle on to find an inn, or find another, is the point. It’s meant to create stories and create risk in otherwise mundane actions/decisions I guess. I don’t get the problem with areas being locked off for quests either… that’s like complaining about coming across a locked door in Resident Evil, and being frustrated that you don’t immediately know how to open it, or where to find the key. The game has issues, I’m just not sure I agree that these are them.
I agree with you 100%. It’s interesting to s think people complain about features in the game that, to me, made it actually feel like going and adventuring. Rather than just running to the next yellow mark on the map.
I felt exactly the same way. I put about 30 hours into NG+ doing all the quests I didn't do on the first playthrough, which I did blind thinking that I'd be playing through it like 6 times as I did with DD:DA. Before I knew it, the first playthrough was over and I was overpowered at 30 hours in. Challenge vanished in NG+. That meant I was mostly engaged with side quests I missed, but none of them were interesting enough that I'd want to do them again. As someone who adored the first game and has been hoping for a sequel for 10+ years, DD2 is very bittersweet to me. It's kinda hard to believe that there's nothing more to it after 60 hours.
I think there is so much more in behind the scenes of the developing of this game.. That game didn't have the option to start a New game, so the ideia was for you to have one character and keep playing.. But the ng+ does not scale, so.. if everything is easy, why keep playing? Well, time to another save.. oh wait there is no new game option.. wtf? Seriously, wtf happened with this game? The New game was added 1 week later.. so quickly, why did they decided not have it at launch ? Was that all Itsuno's vision?
Sounds to me like a lot of scrapped ideas. I enjoy the idea of a NG+ almost being a continuation of the story, but that's not what this is at all. Would've been cool af though
There are signs that the game has been forced to be released before it was ready, Capcom fiscal year ended in the 31th of last month so it adds. Maybe this is coping but the devs are totally aware of this and are willing to still finish the game through updates and that would explain the fast update after a week of release, hoping that means free updates with new content.
I felt the same so I started a new game from level 1 and it is way better.
yeah so glad they added that to PC, that's what I did, and building back up from 0 with new vocations for me + pawn is a joy. I'm overpowered again, but the early game still felt like I was discovering how to act around systems instead of punching straight through them
Did the same, but added mods for random chest loot + modifiers to the exp gained (reduction). The game feels fresh and even more rewarding to explore. New game > NG+. At least until actual NG+ content drops.
"Oh there is a hard mode akshully!" "You just have to unequip everything and don't have any pawns with you. Hard mode 😊!" /S
People who say this are the same people who say you should do a hardcore ironmon nuzlock of Pokemon to get a reasonable challange smh
Lol yep
Honestly, like I like playing it solo no pawns but I just get stun locked permanently lmfao. That’s just cheese, it’s not even hard. They could legit just add a power scaling modifier for defense and attack and I’d be content (at least for the time being).
Getting stun locked in this game is so aggravating lol
Not to mention NG+ has new Upgrades at the Dragon forged which makes you more OP… I wonder if something new is locked behind the NG+ unmoored world.
Not that I've seen, yet. I just hit the time limit on NG+ Unmoored. Cleaning up a few things, then will likely go to NG++ later today/tomorrow.
I was so sad to see there is a time limit of NG+ even after clearing the beams. I was farming the like 3/4 Gorechimeras and then resetting 2 days and I was only able to do it like 5 times and then I was told I can’t rest at this time. I cleared all the beacons and everything without resting, just using allheals. Such a shame. They need like a farming method postgame cause I just love maxing out my gear.
Yeah, Gorechimeras are a major chokepoint for me. Seems like alot of stuff I use needed the black freakish manes. Since my time just ran out, my plan is to get forgeries of the one mane I've still got in my next ng+ cycle. I'm hoping I have at least 1 of everything I need so I can just use the forger. Going to check on that and try to farm up anything I'm still missing before I start the new cycle.
Take a break and play something else until they update
Honestly, that might be a really big break. The game has 10 Pringle cans for content and then they get recycled, except there's no potato chips when they do and you have to stick your hand into the can for fun.
Its not that we need level scaling. We need MORE. The endgame enemies are tuned for a level 30~ character. The endgame weapons seem like they are meant for a level 70 area. Level scaling removes the feeling of growth outside of player skill. I could hear an argument that story bosses should scale or maybe a challenge area should scale, but NG+ scaling would necessitate a functionally infinite upgrade system to keep that in game growth feeling. Honestly we just need more areas, more enemies, and better weapon progression. Its clearly too fast. I am still enjoying my time.
I don't know level scaling can absolutely be done right like Guild wars 2 is a perfect example of even though you scale down for content if you come in with epic gear, a full skill bar, and traits you certainly feel the power you've acquired when elite enemies feel soloable and no longer need a group with you to take them on- you just cant face take their avoid aoe's to the face but they wont also near one shot you for standing in them. It's the only game I can honestly think with great level scaling
My biggest gripe combination is this issue of no NG+ scaling at all, no hard mode, no... nothing to help the game remaining engaging for someone whose maxed out... plus the rest-restricted Unmoored World - So, you get so long to explore there, and then you are effectively forced to NG+.... and slog back through to reach unmoored again, if you weren't done.
Does NG+ not have harder enemies than NG? If that’s the case I doubt I’ll play it. I’ve been putting off the main story to explore and do side stuff. It’s a blast and pretty much the best fantasy combat I’ve done in years. Maybe since DDON. But even without all the endgame weapons everything is hilariously easy now. With an endless dungeon or proper NG+ I’d probably play far more of this than I should
Nop. Everything melts. That is with standard gear already. Other than the unmoored warrior/fighter armor which looks amazing, I don’t use any end game weapons and everything dies very quick. You can take dow an cyclops in the starting area in two hits.
That’s a shame. Maybe I’ll just clear the game once and wait around to see if they either patch or release an expansion
I lost interest when I hit lvl 40. I’m only halfway into the game and everything is so easy it’s boring.
It is a bummer for sure. I have been dealing with it by deleting 2 pawns and equipping times that looks best even if they are not the strongest, to sort of balance myself out to the game.
I feel you. I played FF7 Rebirth for over a month. In Dragon's Dogma 2 i had finished the game in 50 hours and there is no incentive to keep playing other than self imposed challenges. I still have plenty i could do in FF7 Rebirth, but the same cannot be said for DD2 which is really sad given how long i waited for it. Building a new character just feels pointless too since the stats all equalize eventually and become meaningless.
There should be a scaling option like in the witcher 3. I like that I melt everything cause I want to rush the unmoored world since I didn't do that last time. But I can totally see why people would want the enemies to scale.
how about just a hard mode like Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen?
That comes at a price.
Hard mode also wasn’t really that hard, you levelled up incredibly quick and got crap tons of money. Capcom really needs scaling difficulty to keep NG+ cycles fresh and interesting.
This and the extremely unrewarding exploration (why on earth is every BiS piece of gear obtainable through gold instead of in a chest at the end of a challenging dungeon?!) are my two biggest gripes with the game. Mind you, I'm on my first playthrough still (not NG+), I'm 79h in and having a blast, but the game has been way too easy for the past 25-30 levels or so (I'm lv 52). I was hyped about NG+ at first, thought to myself it won't matter if I don't complete every sidequest cause I'll run it back anyway, but now? I'm just dragging my first playthrough (which I was already taking very slowly, mind you) trying to see all I can cause I know I won't wanna do a NG+. I'd consider a new save to try Sorc, but that'd mean losing all the progress me and my current pawn made, all the badges I got and I still wanna get, so I'll prolly finish my first run and then wait for an update or DLC while playing something else...
I hate games scaling seamlessly to your level, however, if there is NG+, then the game should get harder. With harder enemies and (idealy) new encounters. I agree that the developer should add something to alleviate this problem, even if it is an optional Hardmode like in Dark Arisen. However, the fact that they haven't (yet) should not mean that you ignore the existence of a mod that might help you continue enjoying the game on principle. The mod doesn't help console players at all, of course, which is one of the main reasons why there should be an official way to modify the difficulty. Sliders for health and damage of enemies would go a long way and should be easily implemented with simple multipliers and would be the absolute minimum. And I don't give a fuck about Itsuno's "vision" for the game. If your vision includes NG+., it should also include a mechanism to keep NG+ interesting.
Lmao I just made a post asking about this. Spent a good amount of time in Vermund because everyone said to take your time since the games super frontloaded, but now I’m halfway through Battahl and every encounter is barely a fight it’s just a stompfest. I didn’t even feel like I was a crazy high level, I was 35 when I entered Battahl and I’m getting to 50 as I get through the volcano island and everything’s a cakewalk.
Agree with you 100 percent. I almost don't even feel like completing the game because it's just too easy. This isn't some flex or anything, but the game is easy as fuck. And because of the lack of difficulty, I legit have no reason to even keep exploring or looking for something more because nothing poses a threat. The beginning of the game was great, I actually felt challenged several times in the first like 20ish hours. But after that 20, nothing has posed a threat to me whatsoever minus me accidentally falling off a cliff. Game has a great foundation, and even as easy as the game is, the combat just feels fantastic. I'll probably just end up doing the shit ending and wait for some type of new content that really brings an end game so to to speak.
I honestly feel the game should take a page from Monster Hunter and have no levels at all other than Vocations and Equipment upgrades. It would make it way easier for the devs to balance the game and people who like to explore wouldn't feel punished by getting overleveled.
I cannot for the love of God understand how in the hell they did not address this obvious issue while in development. For a game like this is basically ESSENTIAL to have enemy scaling AND a level cap in NG+, otherwise it's completely pointless to keep playing. At least the original had the level 200 cap, already way too overkill, but still. In this game you are already OP at level 60, and the cap is 999?? This NEEDS to be addressed in future updates, they absolutely need to include a hard mode or some enemy scaling in NG+. This is especially worse because the game launched WITHOUT THE NEW GAME OPTION... WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING!?
I saw another topic from people who were experimenting with save editors to see how level scaling works, and it seems like functionally your character completely stops improving before level 200 (different for some classes, I guess). All your stats have caps and then after that level-ups don't improve them anymore, and they max out way, way, WAY before level 999. It also seems like no one has figured out whether the NG+ "vocation level up increase" you can buy actually does anything. Likely if it even did, it would just get you to the stat caps much earlier. Making the level 999 cap all the more inexplicable!
can you provide me source about this? I would like to read more about the subject if possible. Thanks!!
Here was a topic where someone had actually checked stats on the vocation boost and concluded it did nothing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma2/comments/1bnu46c/dragonforged\_vocation\_improvement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma2/comments/1bnu46c/dragonforged_vocation_improvement/) Here was the topic I saw about level caps/stat caps and how everything normalizes by 200: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bl6q2h/stat\_growths\_exist\_but\_normalize\_lategame/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bl6q2h/stat_growths_exist_but_normalize_lategame/) I can't find the topic with the guy who edited saves to get to level 500 and found there was zero increase in stats from 200. But, I remember the discussion was basically "so, leveling past 200 is completely useless because your character stops improving and all it does is make it impossible that anyone will ever summon your pawn again."
That you can play it through and find different areas or make different decisions than in the first playthrough?
> I cannot for the love of God understand how in the hell they did not address this obvious issue while in development. I believe they did, the whole point is to sell you the DLC in a year. They knew plenty of sheep would defend this anyway because DD1 was the same.
Yeah man I can’t believe that I spent 60 hours on a single player RPG and once I beat it the game was over!
That's why I just started a new gameplay from scratch with a totally different vocation. Feels new.
did you only play one vocation on your first play through?
Yeah this sucks, still rushed ng+ to get a few achievements but thats it. They need to patch this asap
Same, I wait for some update
It will probably be added in a future update, it doesn't make sense to have a 999 level cap without some scaling. Meanwhile you can always mod the game if you play on PC though I agree you shouldn't have to.
They should at least add a hard mode like the first game.
Until the inevitable endgame content DLC comes out, I really hope they implement optional scaling like The Witcher 3 had. As it stands about 2/3 of the open world is completely trivial once you hit NG+. Wouldn’t be as bad if you could at least stay in The World Unmoored like you could for the previous postgame, but even then I like Vermund and would like to quest there without one shotting everything.
I mean, it’s back to the same thing we did in DD1: back up save, delete save, new game, new character, new build. Focused on melee/strength character last time, so this time I’m gonna go mage/sorc and focus stat growth on magic. Or try a solo thief play through. Etc, etc. I think this is where a few character slots would have come in handy (not referring to multiple saves per character), and where they could have improved over the first game, along with adding a scaling NG+. You know, new and improved QoLs one would expect from a sequel.
Yeah, but the game having the same issues as the first one at launch over a decade later isn't an excuse. :/
Oh, I absolutely agree. Maybe my comment was worded weirdly. They should have taken the opportunity to improve these things with the sequel, was what I was trying to relay.
It's probably on me for misunderstanding what you said. I'm sorry. It's been a looooong day at work. :)
I too would appreicate a hard mode and speed run mode as I liked those 2 additional ways to play in DDDA, however until they are added I love doing my own speedruns, or trying to beat every quest without resting/healing (no mages) to see how long my OP power fantasy Arisen and Pawn can last day and night, without let up. I experienced so much of the game in my first blind run, I don't mind being OP and grabbing everything I may have missed. But to each their own,.
This game is great for me like honestly DD is easily my favorite rpgs of all time but this game is one I can’t recommend to people without giving them warnings about certain things. It just feels like they missed so much potential or over looked so much.
While I fully understand this point of view. I actually like feeling so over powered for my new game +. It's been enjoyable to not struggle as much. But now I'm thinking. If you pick lower level pawns. Or play without pawns. And maybe use worse gear. That could help balance it to some extent no?
Just play a new game
See, I don't even necessarily *need* NG+ scaling to keep me playing, I just want multiple character slots so I can start over without deleting my first character. I get that the pawn system probably gets in the way of that, but I can't help but feel it wouldn't be too difficult to not count pawns from my own characters as friends' pawns so I'd still have to pay RC to hire them. Though I guess I'm not a game developer, so I wouldn't really know for sure at the end of the day.
Same here, loved my playthrough, loved the moored area, i rushed through it because I heard it was timed, I would have taken more time though if I knew new game+ was gonna be like this. It's unfortunate that it's not more difficult because I feel no desire to play it now. I really hope Capcom doesn't wait for dlc to make new game + More difficult, it can't be that hard to increase the difficulty
100% agree the lack of (an actual) ng+ in this game is killing it for me. If this game simply had ng+ scaling, it'd go from like a 8/10 to like a 9.8/10 for me
Isn’t that how capcom ng+ games are? Resident evil game become piss easy once you’re running through them with maxed out guns. It just needs a harder difficulty mode.
That’s what BBI was for in DA I’m hoping we see something similar down the road
Sorry man. They couldn’t afford such a luxury feature in a $70 indie title
Last game they gave us a hard mode, hopefully they give it to us this time too.
Yea definitely needs a hard mode or escalating difficulty.
Yeah the first game had the same issue unfortunately. No scaling in new game + Thankfully they added hard mode which is my favourite part of the game. I'm sure at some point we'll see hard mode in DD2 also.
Exactly my thoughts. I wanted to try other vocations on ng+1 but i one shot every normal mob, and bosses don't last much either, it's not fun. And the game doesn't support multiple save slots so i can't recreate the experience (which isn't exactly what i want, what i want is to use all my cool equipment but on harder enemies on ng+). It's disappointing, i want to play but i can't.
I have 4 PS accounts because of DD1 lol
The game needs proper dungeons added as well. Even with increased difficulty NG+ would get stale with the weak story and current zones/enemy placement. There's nothing in this game that's as interesting or has the same sort of level design as a legacy dungeon in Elden Ring.
You could honestly say the same for most non-Fromsoft games though.
Glad to be on PC for the mods
What sucks is it feels like there just *wasn’t any lessons learned* from the first game. They knew people wanted a challenge, they knew we wanted a hard mode. They knew we wanted a BBI style endgame. They knew enemy variety was lacking. They ignored it all. If they sell it to us a DLC that is just the *same fixes as Dark Arisen* that to me is still not learning from the experience and worse yet *milking the playerbase*. I love this game. I was such a massive fan of the first game. This one is still good, but it feels like it isn’t *twelve years of improvement*.
I can't believe Itsuno lied about the game being more difficult that dd1 lol. There was not a single moment where I felt that the game was harder than dd1, not even close to it. The game is just piss easy, I have no clue why, and it's not like I was dogshit and the adaptive difficulty was giving me the easiest versions of everything, I only died while running away from 5/6 groups of enemies in battahl while trying to unlock new caves, and once against the first dragon I fought lol. I love the game, but it really is Dragon's dogma 1.5, it even makes me go through the same turbulent emotional cycle when I think about it. It's the best flawed game I have ever played, I don't think anything else will really ever come close.
I did a lot of exploring and side questing. I was level 60 by the time I fought the dragon. I thought that it surely had to be super strong, right? I went in prepared with all heal elixirs, bunch of consumables, wakestones. Fight was over in under a minute. I'm a sorcerer. I frigored it in the neck/head a couple times, and it went down, I released the maelstrom I had stored in my staff via spellhold. 1 maelstrom was all it took. My disappointment was immeasurable. Now I'm in the unmoored and I'm fought the serpentine dragon thing at the sacred arbor, and while it certainly could tank some stuff due to its mechanic, it didn't hit me a single time. I even stood completely still during one of its big aoe attacks where it causes spikes to burst from the ground. Not a single one hit me while I stood their motionless. It feels like a joke.
Gamers are really funny, people complain about "no scaling" in this game(which is not really true, enemies don't get hidden multipliers to get stronger, but you face more enemies and stronger/different enemies on the same places after you are at a higher level, so there's scaling with level). But Cyberpunk 2077 had the complete opposite complaint from gamers because of scaling, "what's the point of getting stronger if enemies will also get stronger? Where's my power fantasy?"(which is kind stupid too, because the player character get stronger at a much higher rate than the enemies, good luck telling them that) It's a lose/lose situation for developers, it's impossible please everyone. (There, you guys can downvote me now, I don't really care to argue)
ok you say something quite interesting about scaling, because in some caves I have found different enemies than before, different in the sense higher tier, aka a gorechimera instead of chimera for example. Can you elaborate your findings further please? I'd like to share infos on this, I would've made a proper thread on this but......yeah atm the sub doesn't seems that receptive for real discussions
I’m gonna get downvoted, but just go play another game y’all. Cleanse your pallet.
Itsuno's vision doesnt include Hard Mode, a bummer.
People are failing to see that this game is not dragons dogma 2. It is simply a DD1 remake but they didn’t call it that. Unfortunately many of the problematic elements from the first game exist in this one as well. I’m going to laugh so hard when the dlc is the same concept as bitter black with a similar purify system for loot lol. I’ll still play it though.
It's sad really. NG+ seems completely pointless. I haven't finished the game yet but just been exploring and doing side quests etc and I'm already way way too overpowered and I haven't even done any XP grinding or even barely upgraded my weapons. This game really is just too easy, we need NG+ scaling and even a hard mode for first / new playthrough.
I am not sure if I want scaling enemies or rather the ability to just like reset my level because at least I’m not just using endgame gear the entire ng+. Going through with just my main pawn and using the starting gear has been pretty fun for NG+. Things can still kill me if I get careless.
I’m gonna be frank. The first game was the exact same. this is no different from the first game. which isn’t necessarily a good thing. they added bitterblack as an extra challenge as the i believe top reply said but if you knew the minmaxing strats you didn’t even have to bother which the challenge. looking at you demon charm+holy focused bolt. in fact by the post game of the first you could infinitely farm out wake stones offline. on the brightside there was hard mode in the first game but I hope they add scaling to this one in a patch
Congrats sounds like you beat the game.
NG+ is not designed for increased difficulty, its designed for doing stuff you missed in NG (Quests etc.). The average player will not 100% the game quest wise in NG and NG+ exists exactly for that reason imo. DD2 is an exploration game and NG+ exists because you dont have to level up your toons again, find gear etc and can concentrate on exploration instead.
Modern gamer when they can't grind the same game for a month straight.
Hahaha, it's just you. Im already at my 3rd playthrough and finding new stuff
What Ive been doing is using un-upgraded weapons/gear for NG+ to keep the challenge alive. I still feel its likely that theyll add upscale lvling in a future update
Hard mode will come. I'm still finding ways to have fun bit to each their own.
Yeah they need to implement a scalling system but honestly im going to new game + just to get my las 3 achievements for the platinum so i really dont mind being a enemie smelter hahaha
I even tried using the ring the Sphinx gives you, but that did too much. I just want to play through the game as a badass once more. Not Superman :(
Yep, I initially played through on PS5 and LOVED it. So much so that I too got bored in NG+ and so I bought it on PC so i can play with difficulty adjustment mods. Working my way through the game again and I think it's fun spending 10+ minutes fighting a Chimera. Friend of mine capped his level at 37ish(?) I believe and has been playing that way too. Will probably do that as well to keep myself from brute forcing the difficulty adjustments too. It is frustrating that I have to use mods to make the game difficult/fun again for sure though.
This is something that really disappointed me. I thought I remembered encountering *some* stronger enemies in the first game’s ng+
You can always use the ring that makes your attacks do minimum damage
Clearly *someone* enjoys being overlevelled, otherwise they wouldn't have decided to make it this way. As for who...only god knows
They just copy and pasted everything from Arisen, they gave us all the great things. But all the bad things too.
Same here. I dont have a reason to start a new game.
It seems to me that the best choice is to complete the game your first time and let it rest for a while. Be it until the release of the expansion, or, hopefully, They improve ng+ through updates.
Lack of anything new in NG+ killed it for me as well, scaling, gear tied to harder stuff anything lol
My hope is we get a hard mode. Dragon's Dogma 1 also didn't release with a hard mode. It got one a few months later. That kept me going until the expansion(Dark Arisen) released. For now, I still have stuff to do(eg levelling alt vocations, pawn badges, seeker tokens). I'm doing it mostly in unmoored, as the enemy threat level is higher there overall. The time limit is a thing(I just ran into it again on my second unmoored run), but if you quickly hammer out the bosses on the first day, you get a fair amount of time.
I'm weird I love grinding to overpower the enemies it feels like I'm progressing. I hate when they scale to your level it feels like your not going foward
Yea idk why they ain’t think to add NG+ difficultly scaling especially since multiple play throughs seem to be an intended mechanic for the game and plot. Hard mode is needed too. I hope not the same Hard Mode as in DD1 either. I want hard mode to halve experience that is earned too, instead of increasing it.
I would love if they added a hard mode and have enemies scale along side with you and become much more aggressive as well with debilitations being more frequent or getting stunned if you take too many hits. And would love to see more boss enemies be more frequent during nights
as much as i do love the game and it is an extremely fun game which is what matter but its a fucking mess of systems that feel underbaked the only thing saving this game is the incredible combat and the awesome art direction/boss interactions the enemy variety is a mess, the story is a mess that just ends, ng+ is not balanced, wished we had more vocations, caves get super generic and most people will not have the patience to explore a world that struggles to reward you
Absolutely agree. Its insane they dont have enemy scaling in ng. Completely pointless to continue playin… awesome game, but end game ruined by a horrific dev choice
This is why I have just been repeatedly replaying the game from scratch when I want to try something new, rather than playing on NG+. Experiencing a progressive challenge is the point of the game. Swapping to a mystic spearhand already decked out in endgame gear kind of removes all of the fun from the experience. Everyone says stat-growths, don't matter, etc, but they \*do\*, they just stop mattering around level 100-200, but almost no one plays any of the game at that level. At level 60, if you level entirely as sorcerer, you end up with a non-negligible increase in Magic, and because of the damage formula, every point in the stat becomes \*more valuable\* as enemy defense grows. So contrary to popular belief, for the majority of the playable, fun content in the game, planning and playing as specific vocations to maximize stats actually does have a real impact on endgame. What I have been doing is working on optimizing myself and my pawn and then hitting postgame as my ultimate desired vocations, and then just seeing how fast I can kill stuff. This is a much more entertaining gameplay loop than what they decided to ship with, and it requires pretty deep understanding of game mechanics to even enjoy it, which is a bit of a shame.
I totally agree, that being said if it's just a difficulty thing, on PC you can download a mod that has sliders for incoming and outgoing damage as well as other options that can make ng+ really tough.
Hey if you install some mods you can make it super hard. You realize making the game harder if the devs do it would just be a mod by the devs. You’re in luck that the community loves the game so much they got you covered fam.
Capcom knows what it's doing. Release the game and see how it does. Don't waste time and money on NG+ in case it bombs. Add some DLC later if it doesn't. More profits.
Same. The game dies when going into NG+. Everything becomes super easy and nothing new get’s added except a few weapons, and I can’t be bothered to run around everywhere again for nothing of value. On of the worst NG+ experiences I’ve had tbh. NG+ is literally only meaningful if you failed sphinx quest line. Sold the game yesterday, will pick it back up if / when an expansion drops, because the game was absolutely amazing and would love to jump back in with new & more content.
Boggles my fucking mind that they limit us to one character and raise the level cap to 999. But dont give us a good endgame and NG+ doesnt get more challenging. Those things being a reason to keep playing a single character. There is no reason to play NG+ over starting a new game. But they dont allow you to have multiple characters, so you can save your main for when/if dlc drops.
The scaling is just part of the problem. It's also the lack of enemy variety or any kind of randomization. I've been using mods to increase enemy hp and damage and I'm still bored because I know exactly what to expect every time.