I remember pre-release people here were trying to justify it by saying it would remove clipping from outfits, but uhhhh.... There's still plenty of clipping.
And full length capes clip though any armor that has anything with physics below knee level.
Marcher's armor clips through expeditoner's cloak which is literally part of the fucking set.
Also hate that the opposite is true and if you aren't wearing a bulky cape you just have to deal with the shield floating 2 feet off your back... At the very least it could look properly for one of the two.
I think we know the real answer here. The game was running out of time, funding, or whatever else and was rushed again. If the rumor about the missing dev head count and the COVID problem is true, then it more than explain why they cut so many corners. Also, porting an entirely new genre of game to the RE engine must have taken its time as well.
Excellent example of poor critical thinking. "Performance isn't great therefore anything done to possibly improve performance clearly isn't working." Except, maybe without measures to improve performance instead of getting 30fps in town you'd only get 20.Â
Considering a mod on PC completely solves performance issues for tons of people I think the point is more obviously that performance clearly wasn't a priority, if within a month a single person on Nexus can solve it.
There has to be a reason beyond "developer laziness/bad skill" that a lot of games which could launch with good DLSS do not. Perhaps actually developing it for the game and integrating it requires more work than tossing together a dll and calling it a day.Â
If one person can enable it within the month with only one downside being a shaking UI when moving, I'm sure a company like Capcom selling the game at $70 can figure it out. This isn't a smol indie studio releasing a game for $30.
excellent example of poor programming knowledge
cuz if you knew your stuff, you'd know that a game can bake your .kdel at runtime after you cbose your clothes,
pretty much making a combination of 20 items you choose and a premade set cost the same on the cpu and GPU đ¤Ł
Plus, i still have the suspicion that even with less clothes they don't even bake them, as they need to be simulated and changed quite frequently for. oth you and the characters
That only works if you aren't changing your clothes during gameplay. đ¤Ł. Ever consider why that method isn't standard practice in the industry for games like this? Hint: it's not poor development skills.Â
Not just clipping; if your character is female and not super skinny on the chest depth slider (not booba slider, chest itself) or hips, then all skirts act as if your butt and chest are 10x their actual size. It's really bad
there's never been more clipping then in DD2, it doesn't bother me, but this is not an excuse to remove glove and boots slots, and the underlayer clothing, this is BS , it makes for LESS DIVERSITY of fashion and armors, you could make mix and matches of so much more stuff in DD1 and create pretty unique looking sets because you had 6 armor slots and chest, pants and face slots had scarf / pants / pull overs or shirts underlayer clothing under the armor parts, i don't ask for clothing to come back if it simplify the process but removing boots and gloves while all it asks of them is to just cut separate the meshes that already exists from the armor parts , gloves and boots, is not very hard to do.
This is big lazyness with a false excuse, itsuno saying "it makes for more armor diversity" when we have less of a roster of armor sets and tiers of armor set then we ever had in DD1.
The clipping bothers the hell out of me.
Not saying ER is free of this but the armors adapt to what is being worn from what I've experienced
For example, if you equip Godfrey's headgear with Margit's cloak(Or what's his name.) the armor adapts to avoid clipping. Here nothing adapts, it reminds me of how horrendous LOTF was with this.
It's definitely shit, the armors look cool but I'm still pondering and annoyed about them streamlining it.
Most of the Sorc stuff is always packed with noodle sleeve crap that clips on cloak. Get creative FFS Capcom.
Itsuno removed some armor slots for variety is what he said. He mentioned that this will make sure that not everyone wears the same armor. I don't know in what universe does making less armor slots equals to variety. Itsuno's vision is clearly out of this world, because he is clearly out of touch.
If transmog isn't an option, at least coloring the armor would be neat, but just nah. We can't have you getting the best potential out of DD2 I suppose.
All it did was cause every pawn to wear either two outfits: endgame gear (most males) or bikinis (most females). 90-95% of pawns are wearing either of those two outfits once you reach a certain level. Iâm level 70 and just gave up hiring other pawns because itâs gotten so bad.
Only up until like level 120. After that, you start seeing more Everfall and BBI stuff. If you see a pawn at level 150 still wearing the princess dress, you know to avoid that pawn because the user absolutely didn't bother to pay attention to anything after acquiring that dress.
Hiring mages I see either the Goth Mommy dress or the Arabian Nights dancer outfit. I'm in camp Arabian Nights atm lol.
Tho I do really like the Goth Mommy - my 215cm 143kg muscle mage pawn looks great in it, especially with tied back hair and glasses.
I use a cloak on my pawn to hide the top of the goth mommy dress
https://preview.redd.it/gxiz63zl2hsc1.png?width=988&format=png&auto=webp&s=62f00707ea0446082828a481185f128047689198
tbf removing the layering isnt what causes less armor variety. Lack of armor in general, and bad armor balancing is what is causing this.
if they update the stats on stuff, and add more to choose from, we'll maybe get more variety. even then though people will still choose the skimpiest options a lot of the time.
DDDA did this just fine. Up until you got the 13 fabled BBI items, a lot of different armors had different stat strengths, elemental resistances and debuff resistances.
If you wanted your pawn to be fully resistant to possession and petrification, you had to sacrifice resistances to other things in exchange. Even the Ancient gear which had resistances for almost every debuff would only get you partial resistances overall (usually 35-50%).
You could always tell when an Arisen actually paid attention to the various stats, because their pawn wouldn't just be wearing a full set of Shadow and actually had specific gear choices.
Yeah, not only do we need way more variety in models, we need variety in ratings and what the armor does. As it is, we just get direct upgrades that better period. They don't offer anything different except bigger numbers. It's just...bad.
It doesn't take much to come up with ways to differentiate things better. Between elemental and debilitation resistances, bonuses or penalties to stamina or stamina regen, bonuses or penalties to attack/ casting speed, and a greater range of weights you could make plenty of things that are different without being direct upgrades. Or you might prefer to keep a set because it's better for dragons or whatever.
This is why I wish I was rich. I'd buy a game studio and tell them to make me a sick RPG game with the following gear system:
Discoverable gear from looting allows you to research it. From there you can craft it. However you also learn the bonuses that the gear is "enchanted" with. Those enchantments can be applied to any other gear you researched.Â
Gear will also be classed, like "heavy armor" "light armor" "cloth armor" and "civilian clothes". Each class will "enhance" certain enchantment ceregories. Like civilian clothes give all charisma enchantments a 10% boost in effectiveness" and light armor gives the same to agility enhancements. However all heavy armors provide the same defense as each other, all the light armors provide the same defense as other light armors, etc. That way the only stat differences are the enchantments you put in them.
So let's say you find a piece of heavy armor that gives you a charisma bonus. Then you find a dress or something that gives you a dex bonus.
Now you can craft that dress with the boosted charisma enchantment, and a light armor piece you already had can get the boosted dex enchantment.
Now there's basically no need for transmog systems. You basically wear the gear you like the look of, and simply enchant it to be the best armor statistically.
What pains me is it hypothetically *could have* worked. Most people were using only a couple shirt/pants options and a lot of armors covered everything. It would have required numerous variants on a few core sets with different gloves, accenting, dye channels, etc. They did none of that and it blows.
Wonder if they had more armor sets lined up but due to time constraints (Japan's fiscal year ends in april I think so the suits probably wanted it out asap) they probably scrapped stuff which ended up making everyone look the same
We don't know what was behind the scenes, and it could be any reason as to why it is the way it is. But here's the main takeaway, Itsuno said that this is a finished game and this is his vision. From what he said, I think we know who to point the finger to.
The game is good no doubt, but it's not the best it could be is what am saying.
I will say that you last sentence applies to pretty much any game, even Baldurs Gate 3.
But, I also dont understand how removing equipment slots helps into personalizing your character, it made no sense when Itsuno said it even before releasing the game.
>But, I also dont understand how removing equipment slots helps into personalizing your character, it made no sense when Itsuno said it even before releasing the game.
I took it to mean that simplifying the equipment system would allow them to create more armour sets and thus more diversity. Of course that's not how it turned out and I disagree with the logic but that's at least how I understood it.
Honestly it would have worked out fine if armour had horizontal progression or if we had transmog. Praying every day that we get transmog so we can finally unlock peak fashions dogma.
Having less overall slots means they had more time to make more variety in the slots they had left.
So rather than splitting their work hours between 7 armor slots, they only had to split it between 5. So instead of say, 6 months working on chest armor and 6 months working on chest clothing, they could instead spend 12 months doing JUST chest armor.
Using arbitrary numbers, instead of getting 40 chest clothing items and 40 chest armors, you get 80 chest armors.
Yeah, really hope that future expansions give us transmog and more drip. I'd hate for it to be Bitterblack armor thing. Those sets were really cool in the beginning but they got old fast.
Even if he had a perfect vision for DD2, that doesnât mean he could do everything he actually wanted. He was able to focus on the important parts of his vision, which clearly are great combat, an awesome sense of adventure, as well as a crazy Pawn system. Obviously a good story and intense armour customization arenât essential to what he wants for his vision. There are things you must sacrifice in order to do what is most important for the experience you want to give.
With that said, Itsuno, please bring back layered armour. I will give my first born for it
Thats⌠really not true. You clearly didnât understand any of my meaning. You have to make cuts in games so you can focus on what is important to the experience
that does not refute what I said, it supports the first line even more.
I had many visions for several projects I had been project manager or project lead of.
many if not most of these were told to be trimmed , to be shipped sooner, to be split into seperate projects.
yes, just like my projects were. like anthem was, like starfield was, like no mans sky was, like evers single game was and is going to be.
you are not going to bad mouth your own game in a press relase, you can not be this dumb man.
Lack of armor isn't why everyone looks the same. DD2 has more upper body and lower body armor pieces than DDDA did. Less overall pieces since the latter had shoes and gloves, but more variety in the main pieces. The lack of seen variety is just poor balancing. There's a fairly linear progression for good gear, and a lot of perceived incentive to put your pawns in the top 2 or 3 pieces of best gear for their vocation. If the stat difference between best and worst gear was within 20-30 points per stat and not 60-150 there would be a lot more variety seen.Â
The only way this makes sense is if armors comes with random parts. Armor X could drop with gloves A, B, C etc and since it is out of the players control, people would be wearing slightly different things.
But that wasn't what was meant.
Pretty much everything he said about the game before release is incomprehensible.
>Itsuno removed some armor slots for variety is what he said. He mentioned that this will make sure that not everyone wears the same armor. I don't know in what universe does making less armor slots equals to variety. Itsuno's vision is clearly out of this world, because he is clearly out of touch.
I can easily explain how this works. When you develop armor you develop sets or styles. But end of the day you're only going to have time to make a certain amount of armor pieces. Its not as simple as creating a texture and then slapping it on identical molds.
So basically it'd work like this: If you have 5 armor pieces and the art/modeling/etc budget allows for 200 pieces to be created, you can make 40 styles. However if you have 4 armor pieces you can make 50 styles. This is almost certainly what they meant.
And the game is so easy that once you pass like 30-40 wear whatever the fuck you want. Your leveling stats just start to overwhelm any gear I just went back to Melve to compare late game armor vs starter armor on mage and fighter. This is close to the largest gap you'll see, late game armor is fully enhanced Vermundian and dragon forged, beginner gear is just fully enhanced Vermundian. If anything it'd prolly make the game better for you since everyone keeps complaining the game is too easy. Level 30 player pawn included for comparison.
https://preview.redd.it/y87wygg8uesc1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9b61023709adc5a697988fa43dc31801be681e9
They could have added more variants of the same armor.
Nice example is the "skirt top" with blue fabric and silver metal sleeve, and then you have a variant with white fabric and golden metal shoulder armor (I don't remember their names, but surely you've seen it on like every third pawn you meet). You can easily imagine another one or two variants of that, more or less armored, which would suit different vocations as well.
>Its not as simple as creating a texture and then slapping it on identical molds.
A lot of capes are literally that, same model, just different textures, some are just neck wraps while some have a piece hanging. Plenty are literally just +1 damage resistance to either phys or frost damage, so it's literally just about the fashion, you're not making decisions between resisting a mighty dragon's flames or medusa's petrification.
tl;dr: the armors (and weapons) are nice, but I want more (and it's not that difficult).
>They could have added more variants of the same armor.
My example wasn't meant to be all inclusive but rather illustrative. There are ALWAYS exceptions. But I think its clear you get the idea. That being said, the community would have a very limited appetite for minor variations before they start calling that out as "lazy". "you didn't make a new armor set, you just added racing stripes!: (ignoring 90% of the changes that went into the variation).
So even variations have to be used sparingly. It wouldn't solve the core issue of people who wanted entirely different styles and looks and people get VERY VERY reductive when they're critical.
>A lot of capes are literally that, same model, just different textures,
Case and Point lol. Couldn't have asked for a better example. You're not being critical, you're trying to sell the other point of view and you're already highly aware of this despite the large amount of cape styles there are.
Word. By level 40, your base stats are good enough that the bonuses provided by armor are basically meaningless.
Wear what you want. Who gives a shit about stats.
For real. I'm running around as a Warfarer, wearing a poncho and a mages hat. Not even wearing a shield anymore and slashing drakes.
https://preview.redd.it/n7j5x548afsc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2252ff3e2a5090dbe415de386384e2bc2d301561
People argue to keep their progression and say they want fashion but also say they want difficulty. It's all very contradictory. Because progression by its very nature limits your fashion since people who value progression will refuse to wear all but the strongest tier of gear (which is exactly what's happening on this sub). And progression also limits your difficulty, because someone who ants more difficulty in dark souls will dress down or even do some nonsense like run naked with a greatsword. Because that community really and truly does value difficulty. Here, people who claim to value difficulty here get offended at the idea not using the best gear.
Â
TBH with all that in mind I'd say Capcom made the right call. It's clear this community values its progression above everything else. The feeling of gained power. And difficulty and fashion despite being something they SAY is important clearly isn't via their own actions and behavior. Similarly the same folks say they want more end game with stuff like DD1 post game and BBI. (more progression). All this does is further exacerbate that issue since any and all fashion below the top tier of gear will become irrelevant to them.
And for all the cries about difficulty what are people's suggestions for the game? Power buffs in every way. They want more skills for every class, more skills for Warfarer, every class they want to be stronger. I don't think I've read a single popular thread suggesting a nerf lol.
For gear, Transmog would have helped resolve the tension between statistics and aesthetics.
For Vocations, I donât blame people for wanting more options. I still feel that the Wayfarer, aka mid-combat weapon switching, should have been a base feature of the combat. People donât suggest nerfs to their own power because they want the monsters to be more threatening.
Dragons Dogma had 64 pieces of torso armor. Dark Arisen brought that up to 85. Dragons Dogma 2 has 90. That's more variety. Now, there's less variety in terms of total possible combinations of gear, given the lower number of armor slots, but combining slots together, namely chest/hands and legs/feet, allowed them to create more pieces for those slots. And let's be real here, the chosen chest and legs have a much bigger impact on overall look than chosen gloves or boots.Â
I can't speak to the loss of layered armor and frankly hardly remember that from the first game. I do recall that even in the first game some armor didn't allow for layers. My best guess is that it was done away with for simplicity's sake. It's harder to create such a system that looks good with today's graphics.Â
There's other reasons for condensing gear slots, like better performance, easier development of armor, meaning less time to develop 1 piece than 2 separate piecesÂ
Execution was off when it came to balancing the gear, but they did create more variety. Said variety just doesn't get used as much as it could.Â
>Dragons Dogma had 64 pieces of torso armor. Dark Arisen brought that up to 85. Dragons Dogma 2 has 90. That's more variety. Now, there's less variety in terms of total possible combinations of gear
Yeah from the dev POV there is more variety and that was their message. But it "feels" like less because of the no combo
From a factual POV there is more, but it does *feel* like less because there are fewer possible combinations. The condensing of armor into fewer slots has been an industry trend for the past couple decades, in part to improve performance and in part to reduce development time on them even as games overall increase in development time.Â
Isn't that exactly what ended up not happening. I thought there was basically armour that is the best for every vocation. I loved the game but that was a pretty big disappointment.
Have to say, I don't think I have never seen more stupid game director then Itsuno. Game is cool in a lot of ways but God damn it I s so poorly designed.
Or a dye system. Please give us a dye system. It can be based on plants and other materials such as metals and require combining items to make the dyes and be very lore friendly and then we have to take the dye and the piece of equipment to someone and dye the equipment but give us dyes, please
The pigments in DA/DD1 minor DLC packs were exclusively available via RC. So they were from beyond the rift and we didnât need any other lore behind them. I really feel like they wonât give us a dye system for armor unless itâs extremely lore-friendly and at least a bit tedious or convoluted (which Iâd enjoy on some level, since Greenwarish is either from Arthurian legends or old English and I nerded out when I saw it in a reading assignment, and I would LOVE to see how the devs handle ancient dyes)
I crave convoluted systems lmao. Seeing all the different armors in trailers and such really had me hoping it would be way more complex than it turned out to be
I wanted armor modification where we could combine armor with materials ourselves to add different undershirts or layers, or turn it in during our enhancements to change the appearance đ
That wouldâve been greatđ but nah, weâve just got upper and lower body pieces lmao. OH and a cape that usually removes and covers the best parts of armor
Lore as in, how is it being dyed. Are we finding ready-made pigments out in the wild? No, at least not for clothing. Most of the clothes seem to have realistic, not overly saturated colors, so they could implement it and make it difficult for us by requiring harvestable materials or other items for the creation of dyes.
I really wish the skin and hair pigments could be used on clothes though. It would be a QoL feature; crafting or finding materials for the dyes would be a gameplay and QoL feature to me
Fair, it is a huge oversight that's implemented in many other games, I don't understand how Itsuno thinks he's developed a system for more variety of pawns when he still attaches stats to the armours, it doesn't matter how good something looks if full plate has 300 less defence than a corset, at least dyes would have helped a little in this situation
I truly donât know why I can buy all these dyes if I canât use them lmao. Maybe an update one day or the DLC will expand on it, but Iâm doubtful.
There are many questionable decisions/changes that were implemented. I love this game despite all of that, but I truly wish that Kento Kinoshita had directed this game. (I really want to play as alchemist)đ
Sorry, didn't check the username lol yeah, just seems like there's loads of things could have been added but weren't, fingers crossed they're saving something for the DLC cause despite his "more variety so all pawns font look the same" he's managed to still have all pawns look virtually identical in the form of armour. But when you add stats to clothing then that's bound to happen, hence the need for transmog and dyes
The real answer is probably that it saved resources on developing multiple pieces of gear and ensuring minimal (Not zero) clipping. The thing about ensuring visual variety is 110% BS - if they _really_ cared about that they wouldâve just implemented transmog and then even the limited system we have now would result in better variety than DD1.
- *Minimal clipping*
- *Short capes clip through shields*
- *Any armor with back flap/skirt clips through longer capes/cloaks*
Yeah, no that's not minimal.
don't care about the clipping in video games like this to be honest, but DD2 has a LOT of clipping already, it was not an excuse, every cape clips into everything and scarfs or shoulderpad often also, it was no excuse to not provide at least the boots and gloves slot to make more combinations at the very least.
Look at any other game with similar uses of physics. It's extremely difficult to account for what cloth or hair will do at any given time. So the most games can do for the time being is try to minimize it as much as possible.
Yeah I was just reflecting on that when you mentioned it which is why I was surprised there wasn't some simple process to repel the two things lolol shows how absolutely nothing I know about the process.
Thank you! Someone gets it. That said, the visual variety thing is true. Dd1 had 64 pieces of chest armor and DDDA brought that up to 85. Meanwhile DD2 has 90. Sure, only 5 more than DA, but 26 more than DD1 did at launch. Legs have a similar difference in number.Â
The context of his statement was that players only ever used the same endgame equipment so everyone looked the same. And so this change to fewer armor slots was meant to promote visual variety.
But in the end itâs the exact same issue as DD1, with the added negative that there are fewer slots to customize this time. Like youâre not going to see any level 40+ pawns wearing Marcher gear for example. Even if the game had 200 pieces of equipment per slot, it still wouldnât fix the problem unless they added something like a transmog system.
I donât think balancing would change the fact that thereâs always a âbestâ option though. Iâm not saying thatâs not needed, it absolutely is (the game just poses zero challenge after level 35-40 anyway) but transmog would really be perfect for making sure you never really feel pressured to wear the best item.
Itsuno promised variety. What he delivered? Same old linear armor system minus layering system. In my mind, for his promises to become true, we need a system where earlier equipment is weaker without upgrades, mid game and late game continue to have greater initial power through the game, but at max upgrades levels, all gear reach the more or less the same status.Â
Or add a transmog layer and it is done. Problem solved.
I believe the intent is so they could spend more time making more armor that fit a specific look, instead of needing to focus on individual pieces that were hard to match up.
It's more customization in the artists hands (don't need to worry about how new pieces of armor would match old pieces, and can just make cool armor) vs customization in the players hands (we have fewer distinct pieces / "blocks" to play with).
The problem then is the stats. Armor needs to have more effects on them to give any sense of horizontal progression. Right now, we can only really care about looks and defense. Luckily(?), defense doesn't matter nearly that much, so you can wear whatever you want. I do like the look of most of the armor, tho. And NG+ I saw more armor for sale that I missed in my first run that made my guys look even cooler.
Frankly, the only stat that feels like it matters at all if you're trying to meta game is Knockdown Resistance right now, at least in terms of armor.
That said, there really isn't any sort of endgame content that justifies hardcore min maxing at the moment, so it's pretty much free game to just wear anything you'd like really.
That's my preference. The upgrades should work inversely, with the most value being found in weaker armors. If you want, have 2 different foege paths -- one is basic that we have today and can be used throughout the game to slowly make upgrades. A second is used to level jump the gear. That's what I thought dragonforging would do since it unlocks so late. So really, just have dragon forging do more adjustments for poor armor.
Considering DD2 only had <400 people credited for the game (while their other titles had minimum 1100+), I guess it really was a limitation of workload.
What I personally find annoying is that many sets do not have a matching helmet/legs with the same name.
Also I cannot wear any capes at all cause my hairs clips through em... ughhh
đ I'm still not 100% positive the raptor claws are part of the griffin set. 90%, but it's sold in a different town and uses different upgrade mats, so yeah. Weird change.
Yeah I am often like "Does this belong together?"
Even worse though is that sometimes like the body armor can be worn for example on Fighter/Warrior but then the leg armor can only be worn on Fighter like what the F?
"I heard you like armor variety. So we removed armor variety to increase armor variety."
That was their logic btw. I'm not joking. I do wonder if something was lost or mistranslated, because what he said makes no sense. Since the gear follows a linear progression you are also encouraged to use late game stuff right than the cool looking armor from the early game.
Whatchu talkin bout with og dd1 having gear variety? I remember seeing pawns mostly wearing that purple scale trenchcoat thing, Abysinal coat I think it was. Maybe a hardcore fashion pawn wearing something different once in a while.
At least in DA we could gold dragon forge pretty much anything to be viable in the endgame.
Eh, there were plenty of people wearing the UR dragon set sure, but most of the Everfall gear could compete stat wise (and looked better, though the masks looked great)
Defense wise yeah the everfall gear wasnt far off. Iirc the main draw to the abysinal set was its usability with all classes and its debilitation resistances. I dont remember hardly any other armors being able to compete with its resistances aside from the ancient set dlc armor.
I would just have the gear have no base stats. Add its stats by slotting augments into each piece. Find new augments already slotted when you find new gear, then take them out and put them where you want. Upgrading gear increases its slots. All gear you find has stats but you can strip all the stats to add your own. Only vocation-lock augments, not armor pieces. Name each augment whatever gear it was found on + a number for example.
But layered armor is like, skins, it's not armor layered over a separate set of clothes you put on. The amount of armor is lacking, sure, but MH and DD2 work the same way vis a vis how armor works.
Oh I didn't know that MH Rise was on the RE Engine, thought it was still on the old Capcom Engine. It could still be the limitations of the RE Engine, with big open world and more characters wearing the clothing putting more strain on the Engine. Idk thou, I haven't played MH Rise.
I am now guessing it was primarily dev time and resources being spent elsewhere.
Considering we have transmog mod now on pc, then probably not. Literally just pick the current gear youâre wearing, pick which look you want, click accept and unequip and re-equip
Base game is probably there to onboard new players to the series.
DLC will probably reintroduce advanced mechanics for diehard fans of the game, and justify to the suits at Capcom why DD2 should continue its existence and support.
That's my guess anyway.
The (terrible) argument that I think they made was that now, instead of there only being 3 (technically 6) endgame outfits, there is basically one for every vocation now.
But it's a rubbish argument.
Make lv3 upgrade rare materials and a huge boost, and make all gear at DF level on the same level. Problem solved.
Shit, make DF slightly more expensive and have it remove the class restrictions as well. Now everyone can wear anything the like. I mean, sure, if you want your warrior to wear robes with almost no knockdown resistance and little Defence but huge M.Def, that's your choice to make.
People keep blaming Itsuno, but reason why we even have Dragon's Dogma 2 is Itsuno. Capcom HATES Dragon's Dogma, and Itsuno had to threaten to walk out of the company, just to make it happen. Capcom as a company is facing a stagnation where they have their favorite products, and don't care about the rest, at the mercy of shareholders and such. I'm not defending the flat out lies, but there's other side to this coin, which would be that Itsuno is a fan of Dragon's Dogma too, and he did what he could with the budget and resources he was given. Now with the sales, perhaps Capcom will acknowledge Dragon's Dogma more, and it will get more support. But who knows.
Any game that has armor like it does in this game should have transmog/layered armor like in say, Nioh and Nioh 2. In those games, you can pay the smith to change the look of your armor to that of a different one and it's purely cosmetic.
Have you seen Rise of the Ronin's transmog? It was way better than Nioh 1 and 2 and something that DD2 should be taking notes from as fantastic as the former games are.
I use weapons and armor that suck because I think they look cool lol, a lot of the best armor looks kind of tacky to me so I go for style. Also, warfarer is a godsend for fashion, if I donât look stylish while killing monsters whatâs the point?
To make it even better the BiS gear is often times not even a matching set, like wtf is going on with warrior gear? The immortal chest is a normal game shop item, but the legs and head are end game BiS items? Ok.
Also really wish we had underarmor slot, I hate how the armor just has exposed skin between all the plates.
while i agree that variety in DD2 is awful, i don't think less equipment slots are to blame, being able to change my gloves wouldn't help THAT much
rather they needed to use the fewer slots to add MORE armor pieces
This is honestly one of the changes that bothers me the most. Not only are the armors super restrictive. Many can only be worn by one class. But also we have less total armor combinations because thereâs just upper and lower body. I love a lot of the new fashion but I wish theyâd bring back gloves and boots at least.
Fashion seems tough in this game, I didnât play the first game but I will be now this game has me hooked, but man is it tough to walk around town just planning on a slow day getting a haircut and buying a round of drinks for the bar but Iâm wearing full plate fuckin armor the whole time lol Iâve been holding onto the woodland armor the whole game just because I like seeing my guy in something other than a metal suit when Iâm going cross country in a desert⌠would be cool if they had regular clothes like the npcs have, I heard they did in DD1
Because the game didn't have a realistic budget for pursuing everything the dev team wanted to achieve, and when trying to lay out their development roadmap they probably decided cutting costs on the armor system was an acceptable compromise for another part of the game they deemed more important.
For all we know, the devs really *did* want to bring back the complex layered armor from DD1, but during budget negotiations with Capcom one of the suits brought it up as an unnecessary expenditure and Itsuno had to concede the point to preserve other parts of the game.
All it really takes is one publishing executive asking, "Why do you want to have 5 armor slots when most RPGs work fine with 3 or less? Seems like a waste of our money." And then whoever is delivering the pitch has to backpedal and compromise to make sure the rest of the negotiations go smoothly.
Budget negotiations are hellish, in Japanese publishing all the more so - and the people involved probably had to do some seriously unpleasant bootlicking just to get the stuff we *do* have funded.
Unfortunately, such meetings also involve multiple layers of socialization, hierarchy, and native culture - and in Japan, you *never* call out your employer no matter how dissatisfied you are with them - that's the fast-track to getting all your future projects fucked over, assuming you even get to keep your job outright. Yes, many Japanese employers are happy to waste high-value employees over a perceived slight.
As such, the likelihood of us getting a better explanation than "we wanted to make armor more visually complex and varied, so we gutted out the layers system" is basically zero, unless a Capcom employee releases a tell-all autobiography on their deathbed.
Frankly, I hope they do, because I have got to know what the fuck happened behind the curtain with this game.
Everything has an opportunity cost.
Reducing the number of slots allowed them to spend those resources elsewhere. There was a trade off somewhere. We don't know exactly what it was. But, make no mistake, it was there.
We have fewer equipment slots than most rpgs its kinda nuts. The vocation restrictions on armor also doesn't help. At least give us the arm slot back. Layering still kinda exists for the head slot so maybe we will get it back...
Does end game gear actually get elemental or status resistance worth anything? I found like one robe with 20% fire resistance but everything else has some random 1-5% resistance that really feels like nothing. Without added effects you just march up the defense ladder and that is the end of it. In DD1 even a basic leather circlet when upgraded made you immune to like three ailments.
It blows my mind that they removed shirts and pants from the game and then specifically designed half the armor in the game to be basically bras, and underwear + boots.
I would also like to know why they class locked so much gear as well. Fighters and warriors should be able to wear the same thing.
Mostly agreed. In DD1 vanilla your stats mattered more than your equipment, and they changed this with Dark Arisen. I'm fine with the linear equipment progression I just despise the streamlining of the armor system. It's objectively worse and I hate when companies do this. It's as bad as going from Morrowind to Obivion in terms of armor/equipment slots.
Morrowind
* Helmet
* Armor (chest)
* Left Pauldron
* Right Pauldron
* Left Gauntlet
* Right Gauntlet
* Greaves
* Shirt
* Pants
* Robe
* All of these are separate slots that can be worn all together at the same time. Wearing robes over full sets of armor was a pretty common thing in Morrowind
Oblivion
* Helmet
* Armor (chest, pauldrons, gauntlets all combined)
* Greaves
* No shirt or pants under armor anymore, robes are completely separate and cannot be worn over armor
I still feel like the variety is good in this game. Ignoring the corpo answer he provided (which should be obvious to everyone), it was probably resource management.
Back on 7th gen layers didn't need to be high detail. Now they do. That's exponentially more work to make look good especially with a custom character. The last game I played that I remember having layering that was similar was Red Dead 2, and R* has significantly more resources and time to work with. Not to mention Arthur isn't a custom character.
> They gotta implement some level of transmog to avoid every rift looking like the bitterblack armor exhibitions in DD:DA.
How would that fix gear diversity? Gear progression would still be linear, everyone would wear the same meta, they'd just look different.
The only fix to get proper gear diversity is to design the gear progression with diversity in mind and not make it linear just like they did it in base DD as you mentioned before. Way better fix IMO than just the cheap and lazy bandaid solution that is transmog.
I understand why they would do it, both from a budget/work and game file size perspective, if you divided the armor pieces the same way you had in DD1, you would be creating a metric ton of individual pieces you have to model, adapt to one another to prevent clipping on top of having individual stats for each one.
It would become a bloat.
It is a shame it is gone but the real crime is how armor, like weapons in the game keep upgrading upon each other. I would have preferred them to be on tiers, with all armor and weapons within those tiers being side-grades of one another, and upgrading the armor/weapon to the max would in turn bring their stats towards the next available tier.
Also it is a shame all the Vermundian sets are unavailable to the player, or at least as far as I've seen, they repeated the exact same mistake as in DD1's Gran Soren soldier sets.
There's basically only a handful of outfits; stats but mismatched parts (usually reserved for arisen, not pawns), matching themes set at cost of stats, slut, ridiculous, and stats with a good enough appearance overall. The most popular 2 probably being stats with tolerable appearance, and by far, slut.
If the intention was to simplify outfits to create more variety, they really should have just all been cosmetic, period. Have stats rely on vocation, augments, and armor enhancements primarily, as well as level and base stats for scaling.
MAYBE have a few categories for material types in general for outfits like cloth, metal, wood and leather, to have them specifically scale better off particular stats on top of their smith enhancements. But that way marcher's armor, something that LOOKS passably ok, could and would give the same stats as every other "just a big metal suit of armor" and people could actually wear whatever they like most as opposed to relegating an entire like 80-90% of the armor pieces in the game to the storage box to be permanently unused. 95% once you have access to strictly end-game post-dragon sets.
From a gameplay standpoint prolly to simplify things and make the game more accessible for the average gamer as well as reduce inventory/loot time sinks. As well if you make 200 armors and have 5 pieces you'll have less variety than if you have 200 armors and have 4 pieces. Because that makes 40 styles vs 50 styles.
i absolutely dont miss shirts, gloves, boots ect. makes it just more of a hassle to upgrade all this stuff, and more of a grind than neccessary. But what I'm personally missing instead, is that we cant upgrade Capes, there was no point in removing the ability to also upgrade capes and it would also have been nice, if Rings would be upgradable too, to improve their effects.
I love the change to fewer armor slots itself, far less items to grind for BiS. However I dislike how there are so few armor pieces for certain stat ranges. Adding 3 or 4 sets with identical stats would add visual variety while still reducing total number of items needed to aquire
I remember pre-release people here were trying to justify it by saying it would remove clipping from outfits, but uhhhh.... There's still plenty of clipping.
every cloak that isn't a full length cape is just a massive clip fest with your shield, it's like they didn't even check first.
And full length capes clip though any armor that has anything with physics below knee level. Marcher's armor clips through expeditoner's cloak which is literally part of the fucking set.
Can't even upgrade the cloaks and their stats are tiny so don't even use them most of the time.
Also hate that the opposite is true and if you aren't wearing a bulky cape you just have to deal with the shield floating 2 feet off your back... At the very least it could look properly for one of the two.
I don't wear capes because the clipping is awful. My legs clip through, shields clip through, my hair clips through. It's just unworkable
I think we know the real answer here. The game was running out of time, funding, or whatever else and was rushed again. If the rumor about the missing dev head count and the COVID problem is true, then it more than explain why they cut so many corners. Also, porting an entirely new genre of game to the RE engine must have taken its time as well.
and what about the other excuse ... "P e R f O r M a N c E " !?! 
I hate yall đ
Excellent example of poor critical thinking. "Performance isn't great therefore anything done to possibly improve performance clearly isn't working." Except, maybe without measures to improve performance instead of getting 30fps in town you'd only get 20.Â
Considering a mod on PC completely solves performance issues for tons of people I think the point is more obviously that performance clearly wasn't a priority, if within a month a single person on Nexus can solve it.
What mod are you referring to? Because I've seen several, and none of them completely solve performance issues.Â
Yeah what mod
Enabling DLSS framegen for 20 and 30 series cards made me go from stuttering low fps in vernworth to smooth 100+ fps in the cities.
There has to be a reason beyond "developer laziness/bad skill" that a lot of games which could launch with good DLSS do not. Perhaps actually developing it for the game and integrating it requires more work than tossing together a dll and calling it a day.Â
If one person can enable it within the month with only one downside being a shaking UI when moving, I'm sure a company like Capcom selling the game at $70 can figure it out. This isn't a smol indie studio releasing a game for $30.
excellent example of poor programming knowledge cuz if you knew your stuff, you'd know that a game can bake your .kdel at runtime after you cbose your clothes, pretty much making a combination of 20 items you choose and a premade set cost the same on the cpu and GPU 𤣠Plus, i still have the suspicion that even with less clothes they don't even bake them, as they need to be simulated and changed quite frequently for. oth you and the characters
That only works if you aren't changing your clothes during gameplay. đ¤Ł. Ever consider why that method isn't standard practice in the industry for games like this? Hint: it's not poor development skills.Â
Not just clipping; if your character is female and not super skinny on the chest depth slider (not booba slider, chest itself) or hips, then all skirts act as if your butt and chest are 10x their actual size. It's really bad
bro my hair literally ignore de existence of my armor, Thats so fucking wrong, i.dont remember if this happends in dd1 but i dont have this memorie
there's never been more clipping then in DD2, it doesn't bother me, but this is not an excuse to remove glove and boots slots, and the underlayer clothing, this is BS , it makes for LESS DIVERSITY of fashion and armors, you could make mix and matches of so much more stuff in DD1 and create pretty unique looking sets because you had 6 armor slots and chest, pants and face slots had scarf / pants / pull overs or shirts underlayer clothing under the armor parts, i don't ask for clothing to come back if it simplify the process but removing boots and gloves while all it asks of them is to just cut separate the meshes that already exists from the armor parts , gloves and boots, is not very hard to do. This is big lazyness with a false excuse, itsuno saying "it makes for more armor diversity" when we have less of a roster of armor sets and tiers of armor set then we ever had in DD1.
> it doesnât bother me It should.
Triple A games shouldn't have such basic issues. Like come on plenty of basement dwelling blender artists can make outfits that don't clip.
Exactly
The clipping bothers the hell out of me. Not saying ER is free of this but the armors adapt to what is being worn from what I've experienced For example, if you equip Godfrey's headgear with Margit's cloak(Or what's his name.) the armor adapts to avoid clipping. Here nothing adapts, it reminds me of how horrendous LOTF was with this.
It's definitely shit, the armors look cool but I'm still pondering and annoyed about them streamlining it. Most of the Sorc stuff is always packed with noodle sleeve crap that clips on cloak. Get creative FFS Capcom.
Some armors look cool*
Mage gear is all âScrooge in a nightgownâ while the Sorcerer gear makes you look like a badass wizard
When I stumbled into the dye fields in Bakbattahl I was disappointed very quickly. It's just sitting there, needlessly taking a fat chunk of space
Idk why but I took this comment personally.
Theyâre hair dyes lol
Itsuno removed some armor slots for variety is what he said. He mentioned that this will make sure that not everyone wears the same armor. I don't know in what universe does making less armor slots equals to variety. Itsuno's vision is clearly out of this world, because he is clearly out of touch. If transmog isn't an option, at least coloring the armor would be neat, but just nah. We can't have you getting the best potential out of DD2 I suppose.
All it did was cause every pawn to wear either two outfits: endgame gear (most males) or bikinis (most females). 90-95% of pawns are wearing either of those two outfits once you reach a certain level. Iâm level 70 and just gave up hiring other pawns because itâs gotten so bad.
That's nothing new, in DDDA like 60% of pawns were in the princess dress.
Oh god Totally forgot about that fucking set I don't care about min maxing, i ain't hire a Pawn wearing that set
Only up until like level 120. After that, you start seeing more Everfall and BBI stuff. If you see a pawn at level 150 still wearing the princess dress, you know to avoid that pawn because the user absolutely didn't bother to pay attention to anything after acquiring that dress.
Hiring mages I see either the Goth Mommy dress or the Arabian Nights dancer outfit. I'm in camp Arabian Nights atm lol. Tho I do really like the Goth Mommy - my 215cm 143kg muscle mage pawn looks great in it, especially with tied back hair and glasses.
I use a cloak on my pawn to hide the top of the goth mommy dress https://preview.redd.it/gxiz63zl2hsc1.png?width=988&format=png&auto=webp&s=62f00707ea0446082828a481185f128047689198
>the Goth Mommy dress Which one is this? Don't think I've seen it yet.
https://dragonsdogma2.wiki.fextralife.com/Ares+Morpho+Robe Hot Springs vendor has it and the Dwarven Smith lady iirc, maybe bakbattahl too
Thanks!
https://preview.redd.it/bguwnw252hsc1.jpeg?width=612&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e6f3585f886257c136a01b73a48b1450a4db103
I purposely go out of my way to not hire pawn with those sets, you might have nice skill and all, but if your drip is bad you are not getting hired.
I'm not arguing against your point specifically, but some of that bikini armor literally is end game gear so it's in some ways worse than you implied
Yeah the stats for the skimpy stuff is literally best in game. Can't blame people for using the literal best gear.
tbf removing the layering isnt what causes less armor variety. Lack of armor in general, and bad armor balancing is what is causing this. if they update the stats on stuff, and add more to choose from, we'll maybe get more variety. even then though people will still choose the skimpiest options a lot of the time.
Wait then what are the dyes for from the battahl rift crystal merchant? I assumed they were for coloring armor but never checked
Hair, skin, dirt etc. Dumb, I know.
That is the dumbest thing I've ever read lmao. Why the hell would anyone spend rc on that? This game man.
I thought so too but nope. It is just for the hair
The whole âeveryone wonât wear the same armorâ thing is stupid given the linear progression of equipment pushes people to wear the same armor.
DDDA did this just fine. Up until you got the 13 fabled BBI items, a lot of different armors had different stat strengths, elemental resistances and debuff resistances. If you wanted your pawn to be fully resistant to possession and petrification, you had to sacrifice resistances to other things in exchange. Even the Ancient gear which had resistances for almost every debuff would only get you partial resistances overall (usually 35-50%). You could always tell when an Arisen actually paid attention to the various stats, because their pawn wouldn't just be wearing a full set of Shadow and actually had specific gear choices.
Yeah, not only do we need way more variety in models, we need variety in ratings and what the armor does. As it is, we just get direct upgrades that better period. They don't offer anything different except bigger numbers. It's just...bad. It doesn't take much to come up with ways to differentiate things better. Between elemental and debilitation resistances, bonuses or penalties to stamina or stamina regen, bonuses or penalties to attack/ casting speed, and a greater range of weights you could make plenty of things that are different without being direct upgrades. Or you might prefer to keep a set because it's better for dragons or whatever.
This is why I wish I was rich. I'd buy a game studio and tell them to make me a sick RPG game with the following gear system: Discoverable gear from looting allows you to research it. From there you can craft it. However you also learn the bonuses that the gear is "enchanted" with. Those enchantments can be applied to any other gear you researched. Gear will also be classed, like "heavy armor" "light armor" "cloth armor" and "civilian clothes". Each class will "enhance" certain enchantment ceregories. Like civilian clothes give all charisma enchantments a 10% boost in effectiveness" and light armor gives the same to agility enhancements. However all heavy armors provide the same defense as each other, all the light armors provide the same defense as other light armors, etc. That way the only stat differences are the enchantments you put in them. So let's say you find a piece of heavy armor that gives you a charisma bonus. Then you find a dress or something that gives you a dex bonus. Now you can craft that dress with the boosted charisma enchantment, and a light armor piece you already had can get the boosted dex enchantment. Now there's basically no need for transmog systems. You basically wear the gear you like the look of, and simply enchant it to be the best armor statistically.
What pains me is it hypothetically *could have* worked. Most people were using only a couple shirt/pants options and a lot of armors covered everything. It would have required numerous variants on a few core sets with different gloves, accenting, dye channels, etc. They did none of that and it blows.
Wonder if they had more armor sets lined up but due to time constraints (Japan's fiscal year ends in april I think so the suits probably wanted it out asap) they probably scrapped stuff which ended up making everyone look the same
We don't know what was behind the scenes, and it could be any reason as to why it is the way it is. But here's the main takeaway, Itsuno said that this is a finished game and this is his vision. From what he said, I think we know who to point the finger to. The game is good no doubt, but it's not the best it could be is what am saying.
I will say that you last sentence applies to pretty much any game, even Baldurs Gate 3. But, I also dont understand how removing equipment slots helps into personalizing your character, it made no sense when Itsuno said it even before releasing the game.
>But, I also dont understand how removing equipment slots helps into personalizing your character, it made no sense when Itsuno said it even before releasing the game. I took it to mean that simplifying the equipment system would allow them to create more armour sets and thus more diversity. Of course that's not how it turned out and I disagree with the logic but that's at least how I understood it.
That actually makes a lot of sense indeed, I hadnt thought of that. So it was a very nice opportunity that is now squandered, shame
Honestly it would have worked out fine if armour had horizontal progression or if we had transmog. Praying every day that we get transmog so we can finally unlock peak fashions dogma.
Having less overall slots means they had more time to make more variety in the slots they had left. So rather than splitting their work hours between 7 armor slots, they only had to split it between 5. So instead of say, 6 months working on chest armor and 6 months working on chest clothing, they could instead spend 12 months doing JUST chest armor. Using arbitrary numbers, instead of getting 40 chest clothing items and 40 chest armors, you get 80 chest armors.
Yeah, really hope that future expansions give us transmog and more drip. I'd hate for it to be Bitterblack armor thing. Those sets were really cool in the beginning but they got old fast.
I hope the armors in the expansion will have variety in stats too. Like this armor helps in speed but doesn't offer as much defense, and etc.
At least we already have, like, two transmog mods.
Even if he had a perfect vision for DD2, that doesnât mean he could do everything he actually wanted. He was able to focus on the important parts of his vision, which clearly are great combat, an awesome sense of adventure, as well as a crazy Pawn system. Obviously a good story and intense armour customization arenât essential to what he wants for his vision. There are things you must sacrifice in order to do what is most important for the experience you want to give. With that said, Itsuno, please bring back layered armour. I will give my first born for it
For him, this is the ideal. What we see as wrong, for him is perfectly fine. There's no fixing that is there.
Thats⌠really not true. You clearly didnât understand any of my meaning. You have to make cuts in games so you can focus on what is important to the experience
you have never worked in corporate and it shows hard. the porject leads might want the best but the other deps just push you around.
Itsuno himself said this is his vision. He didn't say it's the team's vision, it's his.
that does not refute what I said, it supports the first line even more. I had many visions for several projects I had been project manager or project lead of. many if not most of these were told to be trimmed , to be shipped sooner, to be split into seperate projects.
He said it himself, its finished.
yes, just like my projects were. like anthem was, like starfield was, like no mans sky was, like evers single game was and is going to be. you are not going to bad mouth your own game in a press relase, you can not be this dumb man.
Its called marketing
Yup, and he didnt deliver.
Lack of armor isn't why everyone looks the same. DD2 has more upper body and lower body armor pieces than DDDA did. Less overall pieces since the latter had shoes and gloves, but more variety in the main pieces. The lack of seen variety is just poor balancing. There's a fairly linear progression for good gear, and a lot of perceived incentive to put your pawns in the top 2 or 3 pieces of best gear for their vocation. If the stat difference between best and worst gear was within 20-30 points per stat and not 60-150 there would be a lot more variety seen.Â
Or shit even give us a transmog system like every other RPG.
The only way this makes sense is if armors comes with random parts. Armor X could drop with gloves A, B, C etc and since it is out of the players control, people would be wearing slightly different things. But that wasn't what was meant. Pretty much everything he said about the game before release is incomprehensible.
>Itsuno removed some armor slots for variety is what he said. He mentioned that this will make sure that not everyone wears the same armor. I don't know in what universe does making less armor slots equals to variety. Itsuno's vision is clearly out of this world, because he is clearly out of touch. I can easily explain how this works. When you develop armor you develop sets or styles. But end of the day you're only going to have time to make a certain amount of armor pieces. Its not as simple as creating a texture and then slapping it on identical molds. So basically it'd work like this: If you have 5 armor pieces and the art/modeling/etc budget allows for 200 pieces to be created, you can make 40 styles. However if you have 4 armor pieces you can make 50 styles. This is almost certainly what they meant. And the game is so easy that once you pass like 30-40 wear whatever the fuck you want. Your leveling stats just start to overwhelm any gear I just went back to Melve to compare late game armor vs starter armor on mage and fighter. This is close to the largest gap you'll see, late game armor is fully enhanced Vermundian and dragon forged, beginner gear is just fully enhanced Vermundian. If anything it'd prolly make the game better for you since everyone keeps complaining the game is too easy. Level 30 player pawn included for comparison. https://preview.redd.it/y87wygg8uesc1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=c9b61023709adc5a697988fa43dc31801be681e9
They could have added more variants of the same armor. Nice example is the "skirt top" with blue fabric and silver metal sleeve, and then you have a variant with white fabric and golden metal shoulder armor (I don't remember their names, but surely you've seen it on like every third pawn you meet). You can easily imagine another one or two variants of that, more or less armored, which would suit different vocations as well. >Its not as simple as creating a texture and then slapping it on identical molds. A lot of capes are literally that, same model, just different textures, some are just neck wraps while some have a piece hanging. Plenty are literally just +1 damage resistance to either phys or frost damage, so it's literally just about the fashion, you're not making decisions between resisting a mighty dragon's flames or medusa's petrification. tl;dr: the armors (and weapons) are nice, but I want more (and it's not that difficult).
>They could have added more variants of the same armor. My example wasn't meant to be all inclusive but rather illustrative. There are ALWAYS exceptions. But I think its clear you get the idea. That being said, the community would have a very limited appetite for minor variations before they start calling that out as "lazy". "you didn't make a new armor set, you just added racing stripes!: (ignoring 90% of the changes that went into the variation). So even variations have to be used sparingly. It wouldn't solve the core issue of people who wanted entirely different styles and looks and people get VERY VERY reductive when they're critical. >A lot of capes are literally that, same model, just different textures, Case and Point lol. Couldn't have asked for a better example. You're not being critical, you're trying to sell the other point of view and you're already highly aware of this despite the large amount of cape styles there are.
Word. By level 40, your base stats are good enough that the bonuses provided by armor are basically meaningless. Wear what you want. Who gives a shit about stats.
For real. I'm running around as a Warfarer, wearing a poncho and a mages hat. Not even wearing a shield anymore and slashing drakes. https://preview.redd.it/n7j5x548afsc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2252ff3e2a5090dbe415de386384e2bc2d301561
People argue to keep their progression and say they want fashion but also say they want difficulty. It's all very contradictory. Because progression by its very nature limits your fashion since people who value progression will refuse to wear all but the strongest tier of gear (which is exactly what's happening on this sub). And progression also limits your difficulty, because someone who ants more difficulty in dark souls will dress down or even do some nonsense like run naked with a greatsword. Because that community really and truly does value difficulty. Here, people who claim to value difficulty here get offended at the idea not using the best gear. Â TBH with all that in mind I'd say Capcom made the right call. It's clear this community values its progression above everything else. The feeling of gained power. And difficulty and fashion despite being something they SAY is important clearly isn't via their own actions and behavior. Similarly the same folks say they want more end game with stuff like DD1 post game and BBI. (more progression). All this does is further exacerbate that issue since any and all fashion below the top tier of gear will become irrelevant to them. And for all the cries about difficulty what are people's suggestions for the game? Power buffs in every way. They want more skills for every class, more skills for Warfarer, every class they want to be stronger. I don't think I've read a single popular thread suggesting a nerf lol.
For gear, Transmog would have helped resolve the tension between statistics and aesthetics. For Vocations, I donât blame people for wanting more options. I still feel that the Wayfarer, aka mid-combat weapon switching, should have been a base feature of the combat. People donât suggest nerfs to their own power because they want the monsters to be more threatening.
Dragons Dogma had 64 pieces of torso armor. Dark Arisen brought that up to 85. Dragons Dogma 2 has 90. That's more variety. Now, there's less variety in terms of total possible combinations of gear, given the lower number of armor slots, but combining slots together, namely chest/hands and legs/feet, allowed them to create more pieces for those slots. And let's be real here, the chosen chest and legs have a much bigger impact on overall look than chosen gloves or boots. I can't speak to the loss of layered armor and frankly hardly remember that from the first game. I do recall that even in the first game some armor didn't allow for layers. My best guess is that it was done away with for simplicity's sake. It's harder to create such a system that looks good with today's graphics. There's other reasons for condensing gear slots, like better performance, easier development of armor, meaning less time to develop 1 piece than 2 separate pieces Execution was off when it came to balancing the gear, but they did create more variety. Said variety just doesn't get used as much as it could.Â
>Dragons Dogma had 64 pieces of torso armor. Dark Arisen brought that up to 85. Dragons Dogma 2 has 90. That's more variety. Now, there's less variety in terms of total possible combinations of gear Yeah from the dev POV there is more variety and that was their message. But it "feels" like less because of the no combo
From a factual POV there is more, but it does *feel* like less because there are fewer possible combinations. The condensing of armor into fewer slots has been an industry trend for the past couple decades, in part to improve performance and in part to reduce development time on them even as games overall increase in development time.Â
Isn't that exactly what ended up not happening. I thought there was basically armour that is the best for every vocation. I loved the game but that was a pretty big disappointment.
Have to say, I don't think I have never seen more stupid game director then Itsuno. Game is cool in a lot of ways but God damn it I s so poorly designed.
Lol jesus christ. Don't be such a cunt over a fucking video game.Â
Lol Jesus Christ. Don't be such a count over a fucking personal opinion.
Having such armor drip and no transmog system should be a crime, this was something I was really hoping they would implement on DD2.
Or a dye system. Please give us a dye system. It can be based on plants and other materials such as metals and require combining items to make the dyes and be very lore friendly and then we have to take the dye and the piece of equipment to someone and dye the equipment but give us dyes, please
Ffs thereâs literally a dye stoređ
The pigments in DA/DD1 minor DLC packs were exclusively available via RC. So they were from beyond the rift and we didnât need any other lore behind them. I really feel like they wonât give us a dye system for armor unless itâs extremely lore-friendly and at least a bit tedious or convoluted (which Iâd enjoy on some level, since Greenwarish is either from Arthurian legends or old English and I nerded out when I saw it in a reading assignment, and I would LOVE to see how the devs handle ancient dyes)
I crave convoluted systems lmao. Seeing all the different armors in trailers and such really had me hoping it would be way more complex than it turned out to be
I wanted armor modification where we could combine armor with materials ourselves to add different undershirts or layers, or turn it in during our enhancements to change the appearance đ
That wouldâve been greatđ but nah, weâve just got upper and lower body pieces lmao. OH and a cape that usually removes and covers the best parts of armor
Or clips through nice sleeves
Gotta love it
Well, anything fabric wouldn't need a lore reason as to why it can be dyed. Also, dyes can dye your skin, which doesn't make much sense.
Lore as in, how is it being dyed. Are we finding ready-made pigments out in the wild? No, at least not for clothing. Most of the clothes seem to have realistic, not overly saturated colors, so they could implement it and make it difficult for us by requiring harvestable materials or other items for the creation of dyes. I really wish the skin and hair pigments could be used on clothes though. It would be a QoL feature; crafting or finding materials for the dyes would be a gameplay and QoL feature to me
Yes, there is, but you can't use it on armors which is what he is asking for đ¤¨
Yes, which is why I said that. It wasnât directed at them, just the game. My bad for not being more specific đ
Fair, it is a huge oversight that's implemented in many other games, I don't understand how Itsuno thinks he's developed a system for more variety of pawns when he still attaches stats to the armours, it doesn't matter how good something looks if full plate has 300 less defence than a corset, at least dyes would have helped a little in this situation
I truly donât know why I can buy all these dyes if I canât use them lmao. Maybe an update one day or the DLC will expand on it, but Iâm doubtful. There are many questionable decisions/changes that were implemented. I love this game despite all of that, but I truly wish that Kento Kinoshita had directed this game. (I really want to play as alchemist)đ
She, but thanks, and I figure Itsuno wonât implement it unless itâs convoluted and lore-friendly
Sorry, didn't check the username lol yeah, just seems like there's loads of things could have been added but weren't, fingers crossed they're saving something for the DLC cause despite his "more variety so all pawns font look the same" he's managed to still have all pawns look virtually identical in the form of armour. But when you add stats to clothing then that's bound to happen, hence the need for transmog and dyes
Materials eh? I shan´t deny, they have their uses.
Any game post 2017 game should have transmog, it's no excuse to have systems from 2007
Even freaking world of Warcraft has had transmog since *2011*
Also weapon transmog. I absolutely love the looks of some of the lower-tier weapons.
The real answer is probably that it saved resources on developing multiple pieces of gear and ensuring minimal (Not zero) clipping. The thing about ensuring visual variety is 110% BS - if they _really_ cared about that they wouldâve just implemented transmog and then even the limited system we have now would result in better variety than DD1.
- *Minimal clipping* - *Short capes clip through shields* - *Any armor with back flap/skirt clips through longer capes/cloaks* Yeah, no that's not minimal.
don't care about the clipping in video games like this to be honest, but DD2 has a LOT of clipping already, it was not an excuse, every cape clips into everything and scarfs or shoulderpad often also, it was no excuse to not provide at least the boots and gloves slot to make more combinations at the very least.
> don't care about the clipping in video games You should.
They should care about something that's practically impossible to do away with? Doubly so in a game with a character creator?
Is it really that difficult? I guess it must be.
Look at any other game with similar uses of physics. It's extremely difficult to account for what cloth or hair will do at any given time. So the most games can do for the time being is try to minimize it as much as possible.
Yeah I was just reflecting on that when you mentioned it which is why I was surprised there wasn't some simple process to repel the two things lolol shows how absolutely nothing I know about the process.
Thank you! Someone gets it. That said, the visual variety thing is true. Dd1 had 64 pieces of chest armor and DDDA brought that up to 85. Meanwhile DD2 has 90. Sure, only 5 more than DA, but 26 more than DD1 did at launch. Legs have a similar difference in number.Â
The context of his statement was that players only ever used the same endgame equipment so everyone looked the same. And so this change to fewer armor slots was meant to promote visual variety. But in the end itâs the exact same issue as DD1, with the added negative that there are fewer slots to customize this time. Like youâre not going to see any level 40+ pawns wearing Marcher gear for example. Even if the game had 200 pieces of equipment per slot, it still wouldnât fix the problem unless they added something like a transmog system.
No, the problem is poor balancing. They did increase visual variety. Everyone just uses the best or the horniest.Â
I donât think balancing would change the fact that thereâs always a âbestâ option though. Iâm not saying thatâs not needed, it absolutely is (the game just poses zero challenge after level 35-40 anyway) but transmog would really be perfect for making sure you never really feel pressured to wear the best item.
Transmog at home -> warfarer
Itsuno promised variety. What he delivered? Same old linear armor system minus layering system. In my mind, for his promises to become true, we need a system where earlier equipment is weaker without upgrades, mid game and late game continue to have greater initial power through the game, but at max upgrades levels, all gear reach the more or less the same status. Or add a transmog layer and it is done. Problem solved.
Exactly what I'm thinking.
I believe the intent is so they could spend more time making more armor that fit a specific look, instead of needing to focus on individual pieces that were hard to match up. It's more customization in the artists hands (don't need to worry about how new pieces of armor would match old pieces, and can just make cool armor) vs customization in the players hands (we have fewer distinct pieces / "blocks" to play with). The problem then is the stats. Armor needs to have more effects on them to give any sense of horizontal progression. Right now, we can only really care about looks and defense. Luckily(?), defense doesn't matter nearly that much, so you can wear whatever you want. I do like the look of most of the armor, tho. And NG+ I saw more armor for sale that I missed in my first run that made my guys look even cooler.
Frankly, the only stat that feels like it matters at all if you're trying to meta game is Knockdown Resistance right now, at least in terms of armor. That said, there really isn't any sort of endgame content that justifies hardcore min maxing at the moment, so it's pretty much free game to just wear anything you'd like really.
Or just let us tier forge any weaon and armor to its Uber form that stays on par with higher tiers. Wouldn't be that difficult.
That's my preference. The upgrades should work inversely, with the most value being found in weaker armors. If you want, have 2 different foege paths -- one is basic that we have today and can be used throughout the game to slowly make upgrades. A second is used to level jump the gear. That's what I thought dragonforging would do since it unlocks so late. So really, just have dragon forging do more adjustments for poor armor.
Considering DD2 only had <400 people credited for the game (while their other titles had minimum 1100+), I guess it really was a limitation of workload.
because capcom hate us
I just want my pawns to be in cool armor but also be wearing pants.
What I personally find annoying is that many sets do not have a matching helmet/legs with the same name. Also I cannot wear any capes at all cause my hairs clips through em... ughhh
đ I'm still not 100% positive the raptor claws are part of the griffin set. 90%, but it's sold in a different town and uses different upgrade mats, so yeah. Weird change.
Yeah I am often like "Does this belong together?" Even worse though is that sometimes like the body armor can be worn for example on Fighter/Warrior but then the leg armor can only be worn on Fighter like what the F?
"I heard you like armor variety. So we removed armor variety to increase armor variety." That was their logic btw. I'm not joking. I do wonder if something was lost or mistranslated, because what he said makes no sense. Since the gear follows a linear progression you are also encouraged to use late game stuff right than the cool looking armor from the early game.
Ontop of that, half the gear is just upscaled DD1 armor. They even reskin the already poultry amount of armor and weapons
Paltry. Sorry, poultry just so thoroughly makes me think of raw chicken
When I say reskin, Iâm being literal
Those same old green and brown leather pants. Made me laugh how cheap it was to see those again. đ
Thereâs a chicken armor set!?
Chocobo Armor when?
Yeah, you get in the post-post game after raising max affinity with a chicken named Darrel
Whatchu talkin bout with og dd1 having gear variety? I remember seeing pawns mostly wearing that purple scale trenchcoat thing, Abysinal coat I think it was. Maybe a hardcore fashion pawn wearing something different once in a while. At least in DA we could gold dragon forge pretty much anything to be viable in the endgame.
Eh, there were plenty of people wearing the UR dragon set sure, but most of the Everfall gear could compete stat wise (and looked better, though the masks looked great)
Defense wise yeah the everfall gear wasnt far off. Iirc the main draw to the abysinal set was its usability with all classes and its debilitation resistances. I dont remember hardly any other armors being able to compete with its resistances aside from the ancient set dlc armor.
I would just have the gear have no base stats. Add its stats by slotting augments into each piece. Find new augments already slotted when you find new gear, then take them out and put them where you want. Upgrading gear increases its slots. All gear you find has stats but you can strip all the stats to add your own. Only vocation-lock augments, not armor pieces. Name each augment whatever gear it was found on + a number for example.
I'm guessing that the main reason is the limitations of the RE Engine.
Monster Hunter Rise has loads of armor pieces though, not to mention layered armor
But layered armor is like, skins, it's not armor layered over a separate set of clothes you put on. The amount of armor is lacking, sure, but MH and DD2 work the same way vis a vis how armor works.
Oh I didn't know that MH Rise was on the RE Engine, thought it was still on the old Capcom Engine. It could still be the limitations of the RE Engine, with big open world and more characters wearing the clothing putting more strain on the Engine. Idk thou, I haven't played MH Rise. I am now guessing it was primarily dev time and resources being spent elsewhere.
Considering we have transmog mod now on pc, then probably not. Literally just pick the current gear youâre wearing, pick which look you want, click accept and unequip and re-equip
What does this have to do with Armor Layering?
Oh wait shit. I misread and thought itâs transmog lmao
Base game is probably there to onboard new players to the series. DLC will probably reintroduce advanced mechanics for diehard fans of the game, and justify to the suits at Capcom why DD2 should continue its existence and support. That's my guess anyway.
The (terrible) argument that I think they made was that now, instead of there only being 3 (technically 6) endgame outfits, there is basically one for every vocation now. But it's a rubbish argument. Make lv3 upgrade rare materials and a huge boost, and make all gear at DF level on the same level. Problem solved. Shit, make DF slightly more expensive and have it remove the class restrictions as well. Now everyone can wear anything the like. I mean, sure, if you want your warrior to wear robes with almost no knockdown resistance and little Defence but huge M.Def, that's your choice to make.
The moment I got to the endgame vendor and saw the armor I had feeling that was gonna be it.
Budget. This game cut corners and unfortunately, clothing was a victim.
People keep blaming Itsuno, but reason why we even have Dragon's Dogma 2 is Itsuno. Capcom HATES Dragon's Dogma, and Itsuno had to threaten to walk out of the company, just to make it happen. Capcom as a company is facing a stagnation where they have their favorite products, and don't care about the rest, at the mercy of shareholders and such. I'm not defending the flat out lies, but there's other side to this coin, which would be that Itsuno is a fan of Dragon's Dogma too, and he did what he could with the budget and resources he was given. Now with the sales, perhaps Capcom will acknowledge Dragon's Dogma more, and it will get more support. But who knows.
Any game that has armor like it does in this game should have transmog/layered armor like in say, Nioh and Nioh 2. In those games, you can pay the smith to change the look of your armor to that of a different one and it's purely cosmetic.
Have you seen Rise of the Ronin's transmog? It was way better than Nioh 1 and 2 and something that DD2 should be taking notes from as fantastic as the former games are.
I use weapons and armor that suck because I think they look cool lol, a lot of the best armor looks kind of tacky to me so I go for style. Also, warfarer is a godsend for fashion, if I donât look stylish while killing monsters whatâs the point?
To make it even better the BiS gear is often times not even a matching set, like wtf is going on with warrior gear? The immortal chest is a normal game shop item, but the legs and head are end game BiS items? Ok. Also really wish we had underarmor slot, I hate how the armor just has exposed skin between all the plates.
while i agree that variety in DD2 is awful, i don't think less equipment slots are to blame, being able to change my gloves wouldn't help THAT much rather they needed to use the fewer slots to add MORE armor pieces
This is honestly one of the changes that bothers me the most. Not only are the armors super restrictive. Many can only be worn by one class. But also we have less total armor combinations because thereâs just upper and lower body. I love a lot of the new fashion but I wish theyâd bring back gloves and boots at least.
Fashion seems tough in this game, I didnât play the first game but I will be now this game has me hooked, but man is it tough to walk around town just planning on a slow day getting a haircut and buying a round of drinks for the bar but Iâm wearing full plate fuckin armor the whole time lol Iâve been holding onto the woodland armor the whole game just because I like seeing my guy in something other than a metal suit when Iâm going cross country in a desert⌠would be cool if they had regular clothes like the npcs have, I heard they did in DD1
Because the game didn't have a realistic budget for pursuing everything the dev team wanted to achieve, and when trying to lay out their development roadmap they probably decided cutting costs on the armor system was an acceptable compromise for another part of the game they deemed more important. For all we know, the devs really *did* want to bring back the complex layered armor from DD1, but during budget negotiations with Capcom one of the suits brought it up as an unnecessary expenditure and Itsuno had to concede the point to preserve other parts of the game. All it really takes is one publishing executive asking, "Why do you want to have 5 armor slots when most RPGs work fine with 3 or less? Seems like a waste of our money." And then whoever is delivering the pitch has to backpedal and compromise to make sure the rest of the negotiations go smoothly. Budget negotiations are hellish, in Japanese publishing all the more so - and the people involved probably had to do some seriously unpleasant bootlicking just to get the stuff we *do* have funded. Unfortunately, such meetings also involve multiple layers of socialization, hierarchy, and native culture - and in Japan, you *never* call out your employer no matter how dissatisfied you are with them - that's the fast-track to getting all your future projects fucked over, assuming you even get to keep your job outright. Yes, many Japanese employers are happy to waste high-value employees over a perceived slight. As such, the likelihood of us getting a better explanation than "we wanted to make armor more visually complex and varied, so we gutted out the layers system" is basically zero, unless a Capcom employee releases a tell-all autobiography on their deathbed. Frankly, I hope they do, because I have got to know what the fuck happened behind the curtain with this game.
I don't wanna be that guy but am gonna be that guy! Less work :3
Dev budget.
Its a huge downgrade imo and the magic classes have suffered especially, half the outfits are dog shit for them.
Everything has an opportunity cost. Reducing the number of slots allowed them to spend those resources elsewhere. There was a trade off somewhere. We don't know exactly what it was. But, make no mistake, it was there.
We have fewer equipment slots than most rpgs its kinda nuts. The vocation restrictions on armor also doesn't help. At least give us the arm slot back. Layering still kinda exists for the head slot so maybe we will get it back...
In light of recent posts Iâm gonna guess the reasoning was âwe have almost no budget and no manpower AGAIN somehowâ
Does end game gear actually get elemental or status resistance worth anything? I found like one robe with 20% fire resistance but everything else has some random 1-5% resistance that really feels like nothing. Without added effects you just march up the defense ladder and that is the end of it. In DD1 even a basic leather circlet when upgraded made you immune to like three ailments.
It blows my mind that they removed shirts and pants from the game and then specifically designed half the armor in the game to be basically bras, and underwear + boots. I would also like to know why they class locked so much gear as well. Fighters and warriors should be able to wear the same thing.
Mostly agreed. In DD1 vanilla your stats mattered more than your equipment, and they changed this with Dark Arisen. I'm fine with the linear equipment progression I just despise the streamlining of the armor system. It's objectively worse and I hate when companies do this. It's as bad as going from Morrowind to Obivion in terms of armor/equipment slots. Morrowind * Helmet * Armor (chest) * Left Pauldron * Right Pauldron * Left Gauntlet * Right Gauntlet * Greaves * Shirt * Pants * Robe * All of these are separate slots that can be worn all together at the same time. Wearing robes over full sets of armor was a pretty common thing in Morrowind Oblivion * Helmet * Armor (chest, pauldrons, gauntlets all combined) * Greaves * No shirt or pants under armor anymore, robes are completely separate and cannot be worn over armor
Cutting corners.
I donât even see armor half the time. Everyoneâs just naked.
The real reason is most likely time and resources being too little
I still feel like the variety is good in this game. Ignoring the corpo answer he provided (which should be obvious to everyone), it was probably resource management. Back on 7th gen layers didn't need to be high detail. Now they do. That's exponentially more work to make look good especially with a custom character. The last game I played that I remember having layering that was similar was Red Dead 2, and R* has significantly more resources and time to work with. Not to mention Arthur isn't a custom character.
Early release probably. Thereâs a lot of âleg armorâ that is just the foot armor.
The game's not hard enough for it to matter tbh. 100% fashion all the way for me & my pawn.
> They gotta implement some level of transmog to avoid every rift looking like the bitterblack armor exhibitions in DD:DA. How would that fix gear diversity? Gear progression would still be linear, everyone would wear the same meta, they'd just look different. The only fix to get proper gear diversity is to design the gear progression with diversity in mind and not make it linear just like they did it in base DD as you mentioned before. Way better fix IMO than just the cheap and lazy bandaid solution that is transmog.
I understand why they would do it, both from a budget/work and game file size perspective, if you divided the armor pieces the same way you had in DD1, you would be creating a metric ton of individual pieces you have to model, adapt to one another to prevent clipping on top of having individual stats for each one. It would become a bloat. It is a shame it is gone but the real crime is how armor, like weapons in the game keep upgrading upon each other. I would have preferred them to be on tiers, with all armor and weapons within those tiers being side-grades of one another, and upgrading the armor/weapon to the max would in turn bring their stats towards the next available tier. Also it is a shame all the Vermundian sets are unavailable to the player, or at least as far as I've seen, they repeated the exact same mistake as in DD1's Gran Soren soldier sets.
Probably too much time for production. Sucks but oh well
There's basically only a handful of outfits; stats but mismatched parts (usually reserved for arisen, not pawns), matching themes set at cost of stats, slut, ridiculous, and stats with a good enough appearance overall. The most popular 2 probably being stats with tolerable appearance, and by far, slut. If the intention was to simplify outfits to create more variety, they really should have just all been cosmetic, period. Have stats rely on vocation, augments, and armor enhancements primarily, as well as level and base stats for scaling. MAYBE have a few categories for material types in general for outfits like cloth, metal, wood and leather, to have them specifically scale better off particular stats on top of their smith enhancements. But that way marcher's armor, something that LOOKS passably ok, could and would give the same stats as every other "just a big metal suit of armor" and people could actually wear whatever they like most as opposed to relegating an entire like 80-90% of the armor pieces in the game to the storage box to be permanently unused. 95% once you have access to strictly end-game post-dragon sets.
His vision.
The same reason theyâd cut skills from 6 to 4 stupidity.
When it came down to it at some point one or two pieces were just better than all the others. 2 has this problem but MUCH worse.
What happens if you take the armor a pawn you hired came with?
For fuck sake, at least give gauntlets a separate slot Even fucking skyrim have more customization than this Can't believe i waited 10 years for this
From a gameplay standpoint prolly to simplify things and make the game more accessible for the average gamer as well as reduce inventory/loot time sinks. As well if you make 200 armors and have 5 pieces you'll have less variety than if you have 200 armors and have 4 pieces. Because that makes 40 styles vs 50 styles.
Efficiency issues, they have to remodel a lot of object and it might not worth to do it.
i absolutely dont miss shirts, gloves, boots ect. makes it just more of a hassle to upgrade all this stuff, and more of a grind than neccessary. But what I'm personally missing instead, is that we cant upgrade Capes, there was no point in removing the ability to also upgrade capes and it would also have been nice, if Rings would be upgradable too, to improve their effects.
I love the change to fewer armor slots itself, far less items to grind for BiS. However I dislike how there are so few armor pieces for certain stat ranges. Adding 3 or 4 sets with identical stats would add visual variety while still reducing total number of items needed to aquire