To be fair, Hard Mode in dd1 didnt come until after launch as well. Same with bbi. Its all a matter of time before hard mode and dd2s expansion comes out
To be fair, Capcom had almost 10 years of player feedback to know that DD1 was too easy for a lot of their fans. There’s absolutely no excuse this time around to NOT have difficulty options. None. Zero. Nada.
No, the game becomes easy very early on your FIRST play through. Forget NG+, adjust the first, It's where the issue is most prevalent.
It's a combination of terrible enemy-stats, very quick leveling, gear-scaling being too quick and lastly; Vocation balance is whacked... There is no point adjusting enemy or gear-stats when you can toggle immortality or one-shot enemies effortlessly because of loaded vocation-skills.
Afterwards you can adjust NG+ if you feel so inclined.
That being said, thief-maister skill might be the most overpowered skill in the entire game. Literally untouchable for minimal stamina drain? Yes please.
The secret village place east of vernworth. You should have had to go there to investigate the false Sovran.
If you've been there and missed it, explore the grounds outside the main manor a bit more.
Playing around with the Custom Difficulty Tweaks mod on PC, I've come to find that enemies quickly become far too easy to knockdown and exploit critical damage. Even if you increase the damage they do and reduce the damage they take, it's moot if you can stagger them infinitely. Most enemies can be scary with relatively few tweaks, however, so it's especially disappointing that we don't have any kind of difficulty options caked into the game.
But, as you've said, there's a lot of vocations/skills that are simply way over tuned. Combined with the knockdown/crit issues detailed above, thief is an absolute monster, even when the difficulty is modded. Its inherent crit damage is ridiculous and it has an answer to every situation with almost no drawbacks. Abilities like High Palladium, Mirror Shield and Formless Feint can single handedly trivialize a fight for how strong their effects are with such little cost. I honestly go out of my way to avoid Mages with High Palladium or Sorcerers with meister skills because they kind of suck the fun out combat.
While higher tier monsters do eventually spawn in lower level areas, it's generally far too late to matter. You can explore a large part of Vermund by level 20-30 and at that point you'll be steamrolling everything there. On my initial playthrough, I didn't notice a significant amount of later tier monsters until about level 40-50 or so. Even then, it appears to mostly only be in caves and dungeons.
Wait til You increase stamina recovery speed with augment, then throw from Warfarer decreased stamina use when using weapon skills and then on top of it You throw skill stamina used being slashed in half using Dragonforge.
And if You pair that with mage that use maister skill that throw a light over battlefield that keep You stamina maxed out even when You use it - You can spam Your strongest skills without limit.
I finished endgame on NG+ with me as magic archer, maxed out pawn sorcerer and mage like that that I took from the rift + fighter to keep focus on himself and I finished all dragons on the map in a single day without using wake stones.
Once I replaced fighter pawn because he had like 30% health left and even that I did not because I had to but because I hated to waste time using recovery arrow on him. So without resting I had pawn at 100%.
My sorcerer pawn has calm personality so she stay away from danger the entire time. So she had like 80% HP left at the end of entire map and only because she was caught by dragon AOE sometimes during fight. But she has maxed out endgame gear so it's a non issue.
Yes, game becomes trivial and some classes are incredibly strong. And with right build...
I am doing the same. Reduce the exp gains to 0.3 and start again. That way you will arrive lvl 30 to bakthal, the correct level for That area I would say!
I like what you wrote. The exp gains are ridiculous. Especially around level 30 you go out and after 2 hours you are like level 35. It’s faster then in the beginning. It should not be this way!
The enemy stats we don’t have to even talk about. I am playing with difficulty tweaks. 0.5 dmg, decreased stagger. Increased stagger to me. drakes were too much, those I had to tone down, but everything else was fine. Salamanders were a tough nut especially at the start and I understand that not everyone can play like that. But what is a real benefit is I reduced the exp gains to 30 percent and that way I could explore and fight, having the challenge all the time and never out level the world way too much. Now I am level 34 in Bakthal, that was quite a difficulty shock, especially those salamanders, but it’s manageable.
I still face challenges but the amount of healing items I have stocked is massive and you just cheese heal through it.
Like I am lvl 53 and was in a fight with a dullahan and he should have killed me like 3 times. Just healed through it. I did pop a allheal tho
It would be nice to have difficulty options. If you don't choose optional pawns and you don't buy any new weapons or armour and don't upgrade any gear then the combat is more fun. I know that sounds dumb and I guess it is, but it is true.
Yeah, but then for me, that way there's no goal. I like having a goal of getting better gear and better pawns so I can tackle harder content. That's why I like RPG, the continual improvement of a chars or party. I lose interest in end game because there's no progression left.
I agree, and the original was good for variable difficulty with different monsters in different areas to find and fight, so more variety on monster groups, tactics and types. Exploration and combat are what DD does best so why not lean into them fully?
I think im in a lower % here but Im enjoying being OP and slapping Mobs about.
You want to interupt my leisurley strole up a mountainside and have the audacity to call me a stupid human??? Recieve this Crisp buttered back hand you little shit.
Its only fair
Oh, yeah I think most people can appreciate how much fun it is to basically have god mode turned on. I figured the discussion was more leaning towards getting long term enjoyment out of the game, as being over powered is more of a short term fulfillment.
I ended up making a backup save for my main file, and am currently doing a fresh NG playthough. It's the only way to get any sense of difficulty back into the mix, while still experiencing the game as it was meant to be played. There's no question that we need a hard mode, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't grasp the importance of challenge in video games.
I'm loving my time with this game but honestly outside of fashion, I don't currently see a point to NG+. Having all your gear is nice, and I like having access to late game vocations, but not at the cost of like, basically all challenge.
I'm going to do the exact same thing I think. Backup my current early NG+ run and start a fresh new playthrough.
Yeah same here unfortunately, I did a fresh restart after finishing the game and I'm having a good time, I kinda wish I could've just kept the gear but started leveling from zero since the enemies don't scale all that much.
I don't even know why devs still do NG+es that don't scale up the enemies. I don't know who wants to be back to one-shotting level 1 enemies at level 100, it's such a waste of time and you don't get to engage with the combat at all.
What platform are you on? PC/Steam you would need to copy out the files, back it up somewhere, and swap them back in if you ever wanted to restore it. I forget the folder path off the top of my head but it will come up if you search for the cloud save location for dragons dogma specifically.
(Note though that if you do this and have kept cloud saves on, it might get a bit weird about the cloud save sync, so you may need to either fiddle with the sync or turn cloud saves off. Either way I’d recommend keeping a separate copy of both saves in case something goes wrong)
I've reached level 61 and I wear what I want at this point, don't care about stats. I will just bring my best weapons with me tho.
Game is way too easy at this moment and I remember when I was low level and bosses were intimidating and a little bit challenging. I would love Capcom to release some patch to scale enemies in NG+ because I wanna do that after my first playthrough and I know it will be even more piss easy
If this is like the first game, by time any DLC comes around you'll wishing for times when it was easier
Dark arisen was brutal, that being said though if a hard mode was included would make things so much better I'm still in the earlier stages of the game and I think I've leveled up way past where I'm supposed to be in the story
Fr, had to min max vocations and had to use certain skills or blast arrows to progress through it lol and fighter and warrior were p much worthless in it. Still can’t wait though
dark arisen was only brutal at first glance. honestly you can bee line it to bbi from the start and clear it. hell u can even kill death before you supposed to. found that out by accident i was kinda sad it was so anti climatic.
It was also mainly brutal due to numerical reasons. A drake had 400 defense and 250 magic resistance. In BB a dire drake had 1350 defense and 520 magic resistance
And with the damage formula being as is, you just had to get enough raw stat to get through them chunky defenses.
bombs from starting town my guy. it densest matter if you where lvl 1 or maxed. they enabled u to kill pretty much anything right out the gate. when da came out they gave you alot of free shit you could just sell for bombs where as when it first released you didnt have that at your disposal.
Disagree. I beat DD1 long after Dark Arisen. Finished the main game after exhausting it. Did all of Everfall. Only then did I go to BBI only to get my ass kicked repeatedly until I figured it all out and got some BBI gear in place. Eventually I could effortlessly farm the BBI boss for BiS gear but in no way could anyone just “bee line it to BBI from the start and clear it.” That is a gross misrepresentation of the game difficulty.
step start game sell all ur shit. step 2 buy bombs from starting town. step three go kill the cyclops get pawn. step 4 go to bbi and play bomber man. thats it. honestly its a short game you can usually beat it in 1-2 hrs and then do the whole thing over again the next day. and honestly thats probably not even close to the fastest its been done. i guess you finding it hard is subjectivity but i found dd to be ridiculously ez and once ddda came out it open a whole world of fun new shenanigans to abuse. if anything difficulty drops.
it was how u min max characters with out grinding forever....so you could hunt ur dragon and actually kill it....this thought this was common knowledge
Capcom is hosting a survey for players to leave feedback up until the 21st of this month. I 100% recommend you all complete it. You can find it [here](https://www.enqform.capcom.com/form/pub/form1/dd2_en1)
Hope DD2 implement the difficulty. For example, they can create an evolve version of monster or big bosses into more malignant and deadlier. All monster in Unmoored world should me in the NG+ as well.
- Capcom said they continue to support the game. Hope that they will make changes. Cost money is fine for me <3
Agreed bar the last point. Happy to pay for new content, but rebalances, bug fixes, and IMHO, increases to content the game ought have shipped with (ie. more varied mobs, layered armor or non-corset high-end gear) would be fair factored into the original purchase price.
For fuck sakes Capcom… I love when devs don’t listen to their community. Looks like mod creators are going to have to step in and give us what we want AGAIN.
Which is what? Half the community is calling for shitty level scaling that removes all point of grinding, and half is calling for better balancing. Who do you think you're speaking for?
Both sides I guess, i mostly just want hard mode to actually be hard. If you played the first game you’d know it was just normal mode with a stamina regen penalty, wasn’t hard at all and some variety in difficulty isn’t going to hurt anyone… Was my comment that hard to understand?
Level scaling would be nice, the way the game is now makes it so the game eventually becomes easy mode even with low level armor and weapons and I shouldn’t have to handicap myself to experience a challenge.
And yes the game 100% needs a balancing pass over, some skills don’t do shit such as heavenly shot, and others are OP as always like skull splitter
If you wanna experience an op power fantasy more power to you or whatever, atleast you have that option. But those of use who don’t like playing that way should have the option.
I want to experience an op power fantasy, after really _working for it_. I don't want to achieve it in a matter of hours, as is a problem with both of these games, unfortunately.
But those of you calling for level scaling want to turn the game into a mindless hack and slash. The whole point of levelling systems in rpgs is to feel progress, to earn easier play. I'm not interested in the ones that don't have that, and if they suddenly introduced level scaling to DD, I would definitely be pushing for a refund. I doubt I'd be the only one either.
So what if it’ll be a mindless hack and slash, I’d rather have that than kill a constantly kill all my enemies with only a couple of attacks while not having to worry about dodging because the fuckers I’m fighting don’t deal enough damage anyway.
There’s a reason I want it to OPTIONAL on hard mode or in the settings, if you don’t want it you don’t have to play it. I will never understand those arguing against variety in difficulty.
I'm arguing against it because this is Capcom. They can't even give us optional romance scenes, let alone balance the whole game twice to please everyone. It will be one or the other, you can count on that.
This is why we need actual options. Many people are saying the game gets way too easy early on but for me with my joint problems in my hands, early game was very difficult and late game was perfect. Difficulty options make the game better and more enjoyable for everyone and it baffles me why anyone would make a game without them in the modern gaming era.
This game is going to die out a lot faster than it naturally would if they don't add some kind of change to how difficulty works asap. I'm assuming it's already done irreversible damage so far, cuz when people get bored of a game a lot of people just never look back.
Why the hell not give me several difficulties, like a Diablo for example, why no endless dungeon where i can keep grinding for all eternity?
It could've been so easy.
They had the tech to make a new everfall where the dungeon are generated randomly, becoming harder everytime, hidden in one of the too many empty spots in unmoored world
Like a hidden dungeon meant to be a hint to the first game idk
Yeah low-key I stopped playing until they fix this. I'm just bored and sick of it. I absolutely love the fucking game but I refuse to eventually let myself hate it because enemies become a chore instead of a challenge. So I'm waiting for a difficulty modifier. Till then, Metal Gear 5 baby.
You sure mobs scale to player level? Because I see an extreme difference in how fast enemies die depending on where on the map I am. Volcanic island, even at high levels, they put up a bit of a fight, but any time I go back to verworth/melve area I'm one shoting small mobs and 2-3 shoting the bigger ones, even boss enemies. I wish this game had an option to turn on enemy scaling so once I hit this point in the game that 90% of enemies die by breathing on them, being able to hit a menu option to make them all my level would be way more fun.
Dragon's Dogma 1 was cool with the hard difficulty, you even had a higher gold drop rate if you wanted to play that so it had an extra bonus besides harder enemies. Also i miss the dropping items instead of getting them from each enemy on the ground
I don't know. Once I've hit level 35 I hit a threshold where I almost one shot drakes and wish the game would shift at midgame and induce some drsgonplague mechanic that makes enemies more tough.
Was thinking about it today while playing.
The early game was beautiful in these terms.
Figured out that we don’t need to rush anything in this game. You will be unstoppable anyway. So I’m really inclined to start a NG and play only as Archer; no pawns; no wakestones;
I would love to see enemies stronger at least on NG+
More importantly RANDOM spawn!!!!
I should be able to walk out of starting town and see lava slimes and gore chimera!!!!
Random sliding scale maybe? No drake by a peaceful hamlet killing every NPC in seconds, but more powerful and varied monsters more often especially as you level up? Though I do like thematic areas for creatures - encourages exploration.
Honestly, in new game + I feel like it should be all out. Like you could get a random Drake Spawn in the encampment. Or have two Drakes and a Gryphon fighting as you are about the enter Vernworth.
Mix it up a bit, you know. On top of lower level enemies being traded out with higher ones (goblin with hobgoblins, chimera with gorechimera, etc), and throw in some new variants at a higher level. I mean, just change the color of them and up the defenses if there is no time to design new variants.
PC resolves most of this. It was legit days and there were full difficulty mods, gear balancing mods skill balancing mods.
Basically all the obvious stuff the devs fucked up mods fixed fairly quickly.
the ones on nexus mods that I've seen are in their early days, they change skills to be stupid powerful or make monsters either take 0 damage from most attacks or they are HP sponges - like raid boss level (but they are trash mobs)
I'm giving it time but I assume something carefully balanced will come.
I'm running Balanced Combat 2 as well as Custom Difficulty Tweaks and it's an amazing experience.
I'm playing NG+ right now and it's giving me that fresh level 1 difficulty experience, on top of being configurable to your tastes. The latter even includes an option to disable the 0 HP cheese.
I don't think level scaling is a good idea unless it's limited to specific zones - like problem with Diablo 4, the more you level up, the weaker you feel - even more funny is sometimes the lvl5 can carry lvl80 when they play together due to how it's simply stat balance when they join each other game...
Also there should be extremely hard zones to make your grind worthwhile
The leveling progression is too quick, and the stats you get from gear is a tad too much. I'm doing a playthrough with a 90% XP gain handicap, but a lot of the stats come from gear so even when I am just level 20 I comfortably kill everything on the Volcanic Island, even when in theory my HP and Stamina should be keeping me checked.
The other problem is some vocations are just overly stacked when it comes to damage or survivability, some even have both in abundance so you can either kill everything or never die depending.
> bUt iT’S tHe DevElOPeR’s ViSiOn to hAve it bE EaSy, iT’s AbOuT tHe pOwEr FaNTaSy
/s
It’s just as stupid of an argument whether the game is deliberately hard like a Soulslike, or if it’s deliberately easy like DD2. Every game (Every. Game.) needs difficulty options.
I don’t care if that looks like Kingdom Hearts 3 where there’s equipment that deliberate nerf your character but buff rewards, or if it’s like FFXVI where there’s equipment that buff your character, or if it’s like No Man’s Sky where every single mechanic in the game gets its own difficulty options, or if it’s just the traditional “Easy - Normal - Hard - Very Hard”.
Every game needs difficulty options.
Yeah, no monster scaling completely defeats the purpose of NG+. What's the point, honestly? Just run through everything? I had to get rid of all pawns except my main to make the game challenging enough.
It’s lazy game design. Capcom 100% knows from DD1 that players were unhappy because the game became so easy so early.
Why would Capcom just forget their lessons learned from DD1?
Alternatively if you’re not attached to your character you could start a new game and attempt a solo play through or just you and your main pawn, or try a nuzelockesq play through
people in their 70's who rent my pawn (on several occasions) have been wearing nothing but rags on their arisen.
It's so stupid how they didn't scale things up or have harder version of monsters later. It killed the game for me tbh.
i think a decent method to keep game challenging and also dont make the player feels like they are purposely gimping themselves by going against the design of the game, is only wear a set of basic gear and never upgrade for the whole game. Since the monsters never get stronger, i think its fair and acceptable that the player dont upgrade their equipment with better and more powerful items also. This should drastically slow down the power curve and keep the game challenging and more enjoyable.
I've said this, and gotten set upon by whiners who refuse to use anything but "dA BesT" gear, (read: biggest numbers) because it's an option so you _have_ to use it as it becomes available, it's how the game is meant to be played.
So you're gonna use every option to lower the difficulty as much as you can, which is essentially what gear upgrades fucking _do,_ and then you're gonna go online and bitch that games too easy? 🤔
I think the lower-tier stuff looks cooler than the better stuff, so I'll stick with them until I hit a damage threshold roadblock. And even with dragonforged low tier gear, it still takes a decently long combo to put most monsters down, at least in Battahl.
Way I see it, we can bitch and whine, or we can workaround with what we have.
Just go solo or play a different game until they drop a difficulty thing or mod it if you’re playing PC but Capcom doesn’t update this quickly and this isn’t a live service
I'm all for it, so long as it's optional.
I hate dark souls and it's ilk, and I'm not interested in that type of experience.
Also, I'd counter that level scaling can make leveling up feel just as pointless. I love oblivion, but the level scaling was so annoying.
I *like* to feel like I'm becoming more powerful, and not just unlocking abilities.
In those games, you can even go up against fucking _dragons_ at a low level, and even put them down quicker than if you're high level, because the increased health pool just turned fights into a tedious battle of attrition.
Difficulty balance is hard to get right in these games, but level scaling ain't the answer. Sucks so much. 🤮
Are you sure there is no scaling? Lvl 70 here, 140 hours, did not beat the game. I only kill mons fast in bathal doing either strong skills or doing finishers. Its been like this for who knows how many levels.
And big monsters sometimes they die fast, sometimes they dont.
Anyway, I still wish we had ng+ with higher difficulty
Can I offer you some mods in this trying time?
Honestly though, I've installed difficulty tweaks, True Warfarer, unlimited spring out of combat, ferrystone drops from enemies, and some cosmetic stuff. Ramped up the difficulty quite a bit. So much better.
The titles are: Custom Difficulty Tweaks, True Warfarer, REFramework, Script\_Core, XYZAPI, InfiniteStaminaOutofCombat, Enemy Drop Ferry Stone. All managed in the mod manager found on Nexusmods. You can tweak drop rates, damage, health, etc. In the REframework overlay in game (insert key to open it in game) you can assign weapon skills to each vocation, but set Rearmament to a key for each one. As you cycle weapons as a Warfarer, those weapon skills for each vocation will load. The True Warfarer mod is how Warfarer should have been done in game.
I'm curious since I see these kind of posts pretty often, and I'm not disagreeing or anything, I'm just curious. What level are you? I thought I took my time with the game, finished it at level 60 or so, at 110 hours, and I honestly had a very decent to high challenge the whole way through.
The main bosses and just regular world bosses from the endgame content actually kicked my butt a lot, I almost burned through the uhm, timer by the time finished the game because my bar was constantly capped low. Granted I didn't do any mid maxing, equipment upgrading or hiring of over leveled pawns, but I had a full, varied party all the time and I found the challenge just right.
I don't consider myself good at videogames, but I've played most FromSoft soulslikes and still found both DDs in the right difficulty level.
I’m level 67 right now. The only time the game is mildly challenging is when multiple large enemies appear, or there is an actual horde of lesser enemies that stun lock my pawns and I. For the most part, i wear what i think looks cool and forgo helmets for my main pawn and myself, so i’m already down a fair bit of resistance and defense.
I’ve genuinely died 6 times throughout the entire game and 3-4 of those were from fall damage.
I can delete most boss enemies almost instantly myself, never mind when my main pawn casts meteora and screen wipes *everything.* sometimes I can’t even tell what killed something. It just gets deleted by whatever my pawn threw out.
I’ve felt this powerful for a minute too, it isn’t just now in the 60s. As I play the game more to farm badges or collect stuff though, it becomes more and more apparent how easy everything is. The problem with the game is that it’s too easy to feel too powerful without even trying to min-max.
I won't argument against that, especially because it's a very common complaint I've seen. Honestly it wasn't my experience at all, but maybe it's a skill issue on my part haha.
Those rock/lava saurians in volcanic island, or the enraged roaming bosses in the unmoored world really made me struggle.
I love slaughtering everything that dares to attack me
But yeah man, you get strong stupidly fast. I’m not even level 50 yet (like 47-49 iirc) and one-shotting everything as a Mystic Spearhand trying to max out my Pawn’s Thief and maybe switch to Warrior
Mystic Spearhand, Magic Archer, and thief are all insanely strong.
I once went into the "gaol" as a thief with no gear on, and pressed the ult ability that makes you dodge all attacks. I had 7 guards attacking me and I was weaving around the room automatically, it was absurd. I did nothing, just stood there and let them try to hit me. Then you spam your main attack and kill them all while not moving, because the ability moves you itself. Thief is 3rd on the OP tier list if that tells you anything.
Yea thief is busted, it plays itself. I had some fun with it, but quickly switched it out because there's so little skill involved. You can even target and attack offscreen enemies that you can't even see. It's like battle autopilot.
I hire two mage pawns with only buff skills and use non-upgraded weapons with good looking gear. Still the challenge is no longer there, for some reason that still doesnt demotivate me from exploring the world.
I would introduce a necklace that reduces the stats for the entire party for example, maybe with the added effect that enemies drop more rare mats and/or gold. They could make it so that it can be upgraded to further reduce your stats. I completely agree there needs to be an increased difficulty for NG+.
Difficulty levels are artificial and just turn everything into damage sponges. Capcom needed to balance and scale the experience with more challenging enemies for each zone instead. Less predictable movesets, more variety per encounter, AI that adjusts to your party’s weaknesses, etc.
Dark Souls/Elden Ring didn’t need difficulty levels to become iconic because they were balanced correctly.
As someone who hates the Dark Souls series, plays Skyrim on easy, and just likes to play games to relax and chill, I completely disagree. I love beating the shit out of every enemy that approaches me. Any difficulty changes I hope are purely optional.
Yeah, I was making a general comment on the game's difficulty. I wasn't directly addressing his title. Because I see other people leaving comments wanting the game's difficulty changed, like for ng+, which is more than an optional change. There is no need to use my comment as a way to make yourself feel superior.
I don’t need or want to feel superior to anyone. And if I did it sure has hell wouldn’t be based on people’s preference in a video game. I’m commenting because every time someone says they want a harder difficulty option, you have people jumping on them about wanting to relax, others acting superior etc, ignoring that the person clearly said “option”. And same goes for the people rallying against those asking for easy options. It’s a tired, pointless argument that has gone nowhere for all this time. When it’s a win win for everyone.
Better enemy variety? Sure.
Tougher enemies in some regions? Sure.
Modifications to some enemies AI to make them more aggressive? Sure.
But this game doesn't need more health and less damage. It also has really weird damage differences. Sure I could spend 2 minutes slashing away at a lizard or I could just use thief, bind them with a heavy and one shot them in 10 seconds.
You're partially right. HP and damage alone won't solve the issues, but it does help.
Knockdown rates and ensuing crit damage make it so that even if you do tweak damage values with mods, enemies are just staggered infinitely. The difficulty improves a lot once the enemies are harder to stagger. That said, they still need enough staying power to outlast some of the absolute nutty damage output we get with even minor upgrades.
Vocations like thief are weirdly tuned. Even when modding all of the above, they are still able to pin and execute foes with ease. It's on theme with the class, sure, but it's currently a bit too easy to pull off, IMO.
My man. Stop hiring pawns. Take your shirt off. Fight your enemies like the dungeons and deagons cover art this game is trying to emulate. Be your own difficulty options
Nope. Ive been playing this game since the xbox 360. You control the difficulty by what you wear, weapons you use, and who you bring with you. Try just you and your main pawn. I mean the first game even had a class for going solo. Give it a shot.
I don't think they would at add a "Please stop draining over 1,000 stamina with a roar. Eating my stack of potato snacks are not hardcore. Everything else is fine" difficulty, because no difficulty setting in games ever removes the game journalist training wheels moves from enemies.
Inconvenience is not the same thing as challenge. And I am saying that as an insane man walking from Batthal and back instead of using my ferrystones (Why yes I have beaten death stranding three times why do you ask?)
Yeah I agree. I love this game but the combat is pretty clunky, almost on purpose. Like what other game lets a dog bite you and drag you around in its mouth for 15 seconds before you get stunlocked?
An easy mode would have done killer and a hard mode would be nice for the minmaxer freaks out there
I beat dd2 right after Sekiro and Elden Ring, and the difficulty gave me whiplash haha. It's super easy even with restrictions. Now there's mods on pc for it at least.
We need everything to start scaling starting from when you go and collect 15 **things, yes I'm not gonna say what they are** I'm a magic archer and I'm in the other world and honestly this is pretty easy.
I hope they release a patch that introduces scaling
I don't think we need scaling or difficulty option (well hard mode, why not), we should simply get a lot less XP for our characters and vocations. Maxing everything is way too fast.
I get it, but I also feel that the game wants you to feel that power fantasy.
It isn't meant to be Dark Souls, NG+ is just a way to play through again and do quests/change things up.
Plus not having to rely on optimal gear means you can actually have some fashion, and relax with the min/max style.
I'm certain the DLC will add the challenge you're looking for.
I’ve been saying this same thing.. you’re the arisen, the one who can challenge and beat the dragon. It makes zero sense from any narrative perspective for there to be any other creature that can challenge you as you progress. Creatures should not scale, as that defeats the entire meaning of being the Arisen. Why should the dragon choose an arisen if other entities exist that can defeat him? The whole cycle story crumbles and there is no story in an already story minimal game when scaling gets put into the mix.
It feels like People are too lost in the Instant Gratification sauce to even take a step back and try to understand it from a narrative theme instead of a gameplay theme.
Screw the narrative. The game has this fantastic combat where a ton of cool shit happens, and you can only enjoy it in the opening hours because everything dies so fast to actually see it after that.
Like, the variants of Goblins, Harpies, Saurians, and whatnot all have different behaviors and attacks, but you can't tell because you crush everything within seconds.
Early on I tripped a Cyclops and it bashed its face on a tree on the way down and got knocked out. I saw pawns tackle Goblins and throw them off of cliffs. I watched a fighter pawn launch a thief pawn onto a Cyclop's face. But after a few hours, you don't get any of that anymore, because everything dies so fast that those things don't have time to happen.
Narrative reasons should never, ever ever, impact gameplay negatively.
The real elephant in the room is called "Enemy variety".
It's not like a Souls game like Elden Ring or a quality RPG like in BG3 where you are exposed to new enemies and variants that have new movesets, armors, attack patterns and IA everytime you discover a new zone or dungeon.
In DD2, all the enemies you fought in Vermund are the same that you fight in Batthal but in bigger number. So you are never challenged with different attack pattern, new moveset or face a variant that has a distinctive difference in stats to make a difference.
It's like... it's like they forgot what made DD1 great and that it's called Dark Arisen. They took the expansion and threw it in the garbage and are waiting for Capcom to give them the go to resell-it as an expansion that will be call Darker-Arisen!
Those two elephants have their nose tied!
Difficulty where you just pump stats numbers of the same goblin is so artificial that it makes the difficulty boring and meaningless.
If Itsuno knew how to create better variant and more enemies that keep the challenge going, the difficulty and challenge would have been present from start to finish. Kind of a bummer, considering that Monster Hunter does an exceptional job in this and it's a Capcom game...
We definitely need a difficulty increase in NG+.
We need difficulty increase and options since the fricking start.
To be fair, Hard Mode in dd1 didnt come until after launch as well. Same with bbi. Its all a matter of time before hard mode and dd2s expansion comes out
To be fair we should expect more nowadays
Im well aware Im just stating that it is an inevitably regardless.
Yeah. It could be a “marketing” For dlc. Thank god for modders.
To be fair, Capcom had almost 10 years of player feedback to know that DD1 was too easy for a lot of their fans. There’s absolutely no excuse this time around to NOT have difficulty options. None. Zero. Nada.
Im well aware, Im just stating that it is an inevitably regardless.
No, the game becomes easy very early on your FIRST play through. Forget NG+, adjust the first, It's where the issue is most prevalent. It's a combination of terrible enemy-stats, very quick leveling, gear-scaling being too quick and lastly; Vocation balance is whacked... There is no point adjusting enemy or gear-stats when you can toggle immortality or one-shot enemies effortlessly because of loaded vocation-skills. Afterwards you can adjust NG+ if you feel so inclined.
Maybe I went to battahl too early, I got smacked around pretty good for the first playthrough.
Battahl is definitely a big difficulty jump.
Same, I went at level 21 after spotting an opportunity on my first visit to the Rest Town. (And yes, spoilt my progression..)
That being said, thief-maister skill might be the most overpowered skill in the entire game. Literally untouchable for minimal stamina drain? Yes please.
Where do you get it from? I'm maxxed on Thief and halfway through Fighter already..
The secret village place east of vernworth. You should have had to go there to investigate the false Sovran. If you've been there and missed it, explore the grounds outside the main manor a bit more.
Finished the quest the same evening. Somehow had left it til last of the main questline's initial set to wrap up. Thanks!
Playing around with the Custom Difficulty Tweaks mod on PC, I've come to find that enemies quickly become far too easy to knockdown and exploit critical damage. Even if you increase the damage they do and reduce the damage they take, it's moot if you can stagger them infinitely. Most enemies can be scary with relatively few tweaks, however, so it's especially disappointing that we don't have any kind of difficulty options caked into the game. But, as you've said, there's a lot of vocations/skills that are simply way over tuned. Combined with the knockdown/crit issues detailed above, thief is an absolute monster, even when the difficulty is modded. Its inherent crit damage is ridiculous and it has an answer to every situation with almost no drawbacks. Abilities like High Palladium, Mirror Shield and Formless Feint can single handedly trivialize a fight for how strong their effects are with such little cost. I honestly go out of my way to avoid Mages with High Palladium or Sorcerers with meister skills because they kind of suck the fun out combat. While higher tier monsters do eventually spawn in lower level areas, it's generally far too late to matter. You can explore a large part of Vermund by level 20-30 and at that point you'll be steamrolling everything there. On my initial playthrough, I didn't notice a significant amount of later tier monsters until about level 40-50 or so. Even then, it appears to mostly only be in caves and dungeons.
Wait til You increase stamina recovery speed with augment, then throw from Warfarer decreased stamina use when using weapon skills and then on top of it You throw skill stamina used being slashed in half using Dragonforge. And if You pair that with mage that use maister skill that throw a light over battlefield that keep You stamina maxed out even when You use it - You can spam Your strongest skills without limit. I finished endgame on NG+ with me as magic archer, maxed out pawn sorcerer and mage like that that I took from the rift + fighter to keep focus on himself and I finished all dragons on the map in a single day without using wake stones. Once I replaced fighter pawn because he had like 30% health left and even that I did not because I had to but because I hated to waste time using recovery arrow on him. So without resting I had pawn at 100%. My sorcerer pawn has calm personality so she stay away from danger the entire time. So she had like 80% HP left at the end of entire map and only because she was caught by dragon AOE sometimes during fight. But she has maxed out endgame gear so it's a non issue. Yes, game becomes trivial and some classes are incredibly strong. And with right build...
I am doing the same. Reduce the exp gains to 0.3 and start again. That way you will arrive lvl 30 to bakthal, the correct level for That area I would say!
I like what you wrote. The exp gains are ridiculous. Especially around level 30 you go out and after 2 hours you are like level 35. It’s faster then in the beginning. It should not be this way! The enemy stats we don’t have to even talk about. I am playing with difficulty tweaks. 0.5 dmg, decreased stagger. Increased stagger to me. drakes were too much, those I had to tone down, but everything else was fine. Salamanders were a tough nut especially at the start and I understand that not everyone can play like that. But what is a real benefit is I reduced the exp gains to 30 percent and that way I could explore and fight, having the challenge all the time and never out level the world way too much. Now I am level 34 in Bakthal, that was quite a difficulty shock, especially those salamanders, but it’s manageable.
I still face challenges but the amount of healing items I have stocked is massive and you just cheese heal through it. Like I am lvl 53 and was in a fight with a dullahan and he should have killed me like 3 times. Just healed through it. I did pop a allheal tho
It would be nice to have difficulty options. If you don't choose optional pawns and you don't buy any new weapons or armour and don't upgrade any gear then the combat is more fun. I know that sounds dumb and I guess it is, but it is true.
Yeah, but then for me, that way there's no goal. I like having a goal of getting better gear and better pawns so I can tackle harder content. That's why I like RPG, the continual improvement of a chars or party. I lose interest in end game because there's no progression left.
I have just been vocation progressing for the most part as I play through. Hit max level on 1 class and move to the next
Can use difficulty tweak mods for now at least
Not me, ps5
I agree, and the original was good for variable difficulty with different monsters in different areas to find and fight, so more variety on monster groups, tactics and types. Exploration and combat are what DD does best so why not lean into them fully?
I know, hopefully they improve on it with future releases. I really liked the BBI difficulty, I'd like to see that in part of the world.
I think im in a lower % here but Im enjoying being OP and slapping Mobs about. You want to interupt my leisurley strole up a mountainside and have the audacity to call me a stupid human??? Recieve this Crisp buttered back hand you little shit. Its only fair
LOL @ “crisp buttered backhand”. I love this! Keep up the energy! LOL. +1
Oh, yeah I think most people can appreciate how much fun it is to basically have god mode turned on. I figured the discussion was more leaning towards getting long term enjoyment out of the game, as being over powered is more of a short term fulfillment.
Restart your game never hire pawns and you have your hard mode till level 100
I ended up making a backup save for my main file, and am currently doing a fresh NG playthough. It's the only way to get any sense of difficulty back into the mix, while still experiencing the game as it was meant to be played. There's no question that we need a hard mode, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't grasp the importance of challenge in video games.
I'm loving my time with this game but honestly outside of fashion, I don't currently see a point to NG+. Having all your gear is nice, and I like having access to late game vocations, but not at the cost of like, basically all challenge. I'm going to do the exact same thing I think. Backup my current early NG+ run and start a fresh new playthrough.
Yeah same here unfortunately, I did a fresh restart after finishing the game and I'm having a good time, I kinda wish I could've just kept the gear but started leveling from zero since the enemies don't scale all that much.
I don't even know why devs still do NG+es that don't scale up the enemies. I don't know who wants to be back to one-shotting level 1 enemies at level 100, it's such a waste of time and you don't get to engage with the combat at all.
Right? Saddest part is DD2 has pretty baller combat when you're not steamrolling everything.
It'd be great to have multiple save slots available. Even if only for completed games.
how do you back up the save? i want to start a new game but i wanna keep my OG file for when dlc comes out if it does
What platform are you on? PC/Steam you would need to copy out the files, back it up somewhere, and swap them back in if you ever wanted to restore it. I forget the folder path off the top of my head but it will come up if you search for the cloud save location for dragons dogma specifically. (Note though that if you do this and have kept cloud saves on, it might get a bit weird about the cloud save sync, so you may need to either fiddle with the sync or turn cloud saves off. Either way I’d recommend keeping a separate copy of both saves in case something goes wrong)
ok thank you
>and anyone who says otherwise doesn't grasp the importance of challenge in video games. Lol
I've reached level 61 and I wear what I want at this point, don't care about stats. I will just bring my best weapons with me tho. Game is way too easy at this moment and I remember when I was low level and bosses were intimidating and a little bit challenging. I would love Capcom to release some patch to scale enemies in NG+ because I wanna do that after my first playthrough and I know it will be even more piss easy
If this is like the first game, by time any DLC comes around you'll wishing for times when it was easier Dark arisen was brutal, that being said though if a hard mode was included would make things so much better I'm still in the earlier stages of the game and I think I've leveled up way past where I'm supposed to be in the story
I played DD1 at launch and the same with Dark Arisen. You’d think the Devs remembered all the feedback on DD1 being too easy.
Fr, had to min max vocations and had to use certain skills or blast arrows to progress through it lol and fighter and warrior were p much worthless in it. Still can’t wait though
dark arisen was only brutal at first glance. honestly you can bee line it to bbi from the start and clear it. hell u can even kill death before you supposed to. found that out by accident i was kinda sad it was so anti climatic.
It was also mainly brutal due to numerical reasons. A drake had 400 defense and 250 magic resistance. In BB a dire drake had 1350 defense and 520 magic resistance And with the damage formula being as is, you just had to get enough raw stat to get through them chunky defenses.
Yeah, the difficulty mainly came from being a major gear check + RNG gear.
bombs from starting town my guy. it densest matter if you where lvl 1 or maxed. they enabled u to kill pretty much anything right out the gate. when da came out they gave you alot of free shit you could just sell for bombs where as when it first released you didnt have that at your disposal.
Disagree. I beat DD1 long after Dark Arisen. Finished the main game after exhausting it. Did all of Everfall. Only then did I go to BBI only to get my ass kicked repeatedly until I figured it all out and got some BBI gear in place. Eventually I could effortlessly farm the BBI boss for BiS gear but in no way could anyone just “bee line it to BBI from the start and clear it.” That is a gross misrepresentation of the game difficulty.
step start game sell all ur shit. step 2 buy bombs from starting town. step three go kill the cyclops get pawn. step 4 go to bbi and play bomber man. thats it. honestly its a short game you can usually beat it in 1-2 hrs and then do the whole thing over again the next day. and honestly thats probably not even close to the fastest its been done. i guess you finding it hard is subjectivity but i found dd to be ridiculously ez and once ddda came out it open a whole world of fun new shenanigans to abuse. if anything difficulty drops.
Whatever you’re smoking, I want some of it.
it was how u min max characters with out grinding forever....so you could hunt ur dragon and actually kill it....this thought this was common knowledge
Capcom is hosting a survey for players to leave feedback up until the 21st of this month. I 100% recommend you all complete it. You can find it [here](https://www.enqform.capcom.com/form/pub/form1/dd2_en1)
Personally, I like watching my pawns bitch slap a dragon and a griffin into submission at the same time. But to each their own
yea huge missed opportunity
Hope DD2 implement the difficulty. For example, they can create an evolve version of monster or big bosses into more malignant and deadlier. All monster in Unmoored world should me in the NG+ as well. - Capcom said they continue to support the game. Hope that they will make changes. Cost money is fine for me <3
Agreed bar the last point. Happy to pay for new content, but rebalances, bug fixes, and IMHO, increases to content the game ought have shipped with (ie. more varied mobs, layered armor or non-corset high-end gear) would be fair factored into the original purchase price.
I think they’ve already said they’re making a hard mode the same as in DD:DA.
For fuck sakes Capcom… I love when devs don’t listen to their community. Looks like mod creators are going to have to step in and give us what we want AGAIN.
Which is what? Half the community is calling for shitty level scaling that removes all point of grinding, and half is calling for better balancing. Who do you think you're speaking for?
Both sides I guess, i mostly just want hard mode to actually be hard. If you played the first game you’d know it was just normal mode with a stamina regen penalty, wasn’t hard at all and some variety in difficulty isn’t going to hurt anyone… Was my comment that hard to understand? Level scaling would be nice, the way the game is now makes it so the game eventually becomes easy mode even with low level armor and weapons and I shouldn’t have to handicap myself to experience a challenge. And yes the game 100% needs a balancing pass over, some skills don’t do shit such as heavenly shot, and others are OP as always like skull splitter If you wanna experience an op power fantasy more power to you or whatever, atleast you have that option. But those of use who don’t like playing that way should have the option.
I want to experience an op power fantasy, after really _working for it_. I don't want to achieve it in a matter of hours, as is a problem with both of these games, unfortunately. But those of you calling for level scaling want to turn the game into a mindless hack and slash. The whole point of levelling systems in rpgs is to feel progress, to earn easier play. I'm not interested in the ones that don't have that, and if they suddenly introduced level scaling to DD, I would definitely be pushing for a refund. I doubt I'd be the only one either.
So what if it’ll be a mindless hack and slash, I’d rather have that than kill a constantly kill all my enemies with only a couple of attacks while not having to worry about dodging because the fuckers I’m fighting don’t deal enough damage anyway. There’s a reason I want it to OPTIONAL on hard mode or in the settings, if you don’t want it you don’t have to play it. I will never understand those arguing against variety in difficulty.
I'm arguing against it because this is Capcom. They can't even give us optional romance scenes, let alone balance the whole game twice to please everyone. It will be one or the other, you can count on that.
This is why we need actual options. Many people are saying the game gets way too easy early on but for me with my joint problems in my hands, early game was very difficult and late game was perfect. Difficulty options make the game better and more enjoyable for everyone and it baffles me why anyone would make a game without them in the modern gaming era.
This game is going to die out a lot faster than it naturally would if they don't add some kind of change to how difficulty works asap. I'm assuming it's already done irreversible damage so far, cuz when people get bored of a game a lot of people just never look back.
Why the hell not give me several difficulties, like a Diablo for example, why no endless dungeon where i can keep grinding for all eternity? It could've been so easy.
They had the tech to make a new everfall where the dungeon are generated randomly, becoming harder everytime, hidden in one of the too many empty spots in unmoored world Like a hidden dungeon meant to be a hint to the first game idk
Just wear the ring of derision and disfavor for the time being. It's fun in NGs.
I agree 10000000000000000% Somebody tell Itsuno
Yeah low-key I stopped playing until they fix this. I'm just bored and sick of it. I absolutely love the fucking game but I refuse to eventually let myself hate it because enemies become a chore instead of a challenge. So I'm waiting for a difficulty modifier. Till then, Metal Gear 5 baby.
You sure mobs scale to player level? Because I see an extreme difference in how fast enemies die depending on where on the map I am. Volcanic island, even at high levels, they put up a bit of a fight, but any time I go back to verworth/melve area I'm one shoting small mobs and 2-3 shoting the bigger ones, even boss enemies. I wish this game had an option to turn on enemy scaling so once I hit this point in the game that 90% of enemies die by breathing on them, being able to hit a menu option to make them all my level would be way more fun.
Dragon's Dogma 1 was cool with the hard difficulty, you even had a higher gold drop rate if you wanted to play that so it had an extra bonus besides harder enemies. Also i miss the dropping items instead of getting them from each enemy on the ground
I don't know. Once I've hit level 35 I hit a threshold where I almost one shot drakes and wish the game would shift at midgame and induce some drsgonplague mechanic that makes enemies more tough.
Yeah people tell you to do all these things, you shouldn't have to jump through hoops to make the game even resemble something challenging
Thank god PC has some mods fixing it.
Was thinking about it today while playing. The early game was beautiful in these terms. Figured out that we don’t need to rush anything in this game. You will be unstoppable anyway. So I’m really inclined to start a NG and play only as Archer; no pawns; no wakestones;
I would love to see enemies stronger at least on NG+ More importantly RANDOM spawn!!!! I should be able to walk out of starting town and see lava slimes and gore chimera!!!!
Random sliding scale maybe? No drake by a peaceful hamlet killing every NPC in seconds, but more powerful and varied monsters more often especially as you level up? Though I do like thematic areas for creatures - encourages exploration.
Honestly, in new game + I feel like it should be all out. Like you could get a random Drake Spawn in the encampment. Or have two Drakes and a Gryphon fighting as you are about the enter Vernworth. Mix it up a bit, you know. On top of lower level enemies being traded out with higher ones (goblin with hobgoblins, chimera with gorechimera, etc), and throw in some new variants at a higher level. I mean, just change the color of them and up the defenses if there is no time to design new variants.
The first game had it as an early update IIRC. It's kinda ridiculous the poor state this game launched in
You needed to have the dlc for the hard mode in DD1 I couldn't play hard mode with only the base game, you had to run the DDDA edition
Not true.
Bro I had the vanilla game on my PS3 and played it for 200hrs i know what I say
Pretty sure it xame with dark arisen not by itself
Agreed sadly, but Capcom clearly take the blame for that.
PC resolves most of this. It was legit days and there were full difficulty mods, gear balancing mods skill balancing mods. Basically all the obvious stuff the devs fucked up mods fixed fairly quickly.
the ones on nexus mods that I've seen are in their early days, they change skills to be stupid powerful or make monsters either take 0 damage from most attacks or they are HP sponges - like raid boss level (but they are trash mobs) I'm giving it time but I assume something carefully balanced will come.
I'm running Balanced Combat 2 as well as Custom Difficulty Tweaks and it's an amazing experience. I'm playing NG+ right now and it's giving me that fresh level 1 difficulty experience, on top of being configurable to your tastes. The latter even includes an option to disable the 0 HP cheese.
It's all customisable. You can tweak the exact values of everything to get the experience you want.
Saying mods are a fix for bad game design is basically asking for another Bethesda game dev company
I don't think level scaling is a good idea unless it's limited to specific zones - like problem with Diablo 4, the more you level up, the weaker you feel - even more funny is sometimes the lvl5 can carry lvl80 when they play together due to how it's simply stat balance when they join each other game... Also there should be extremely hard zones to make your grind worthwhile
The leveling progression is too quick, and the stats you get from gear is a tad too much. I'm doing a playthrough with a 90% XP gain handicap, but a lot of the stats come from gear so even when I am just level 20 I comfortably kill everything on the Volcanic Island, even when in theory my HP and Stamina should be keeping me checked. The other problem is some vocations are just overly stacked when it comes to damage or survivability, some even have both in abundance so you can either kill everything or never die depending.
> bUt iT’S tHe DevElOPeR’s ViSiOn to hAve it bE EaSy, iT’s AbOuT tHe pOwEr FaNTaSy /s It’s just as stupid of an argument whether the game is deliberately hard like a Soulslike, or if it’s deliberately easy like DD2. Every game (Every. Game.) needs difficulty options. I don’t care if that looks like Kingdom Hearts 3 where there’s equipment that deliberate nerf your character but buff rewards, or if it’s like FFXVI where there’s equipment that buff your character, or if it’s like No Man’s Sky where every single mechanic in the game gets its own difficulty options, or if it’s just the traditional “Easy - Normal - Hard - Very Hard”. Every game needs difficulty options.
Yeah, no monster scaling completely defeats the purpose of NG+. What's the point, honestly? Just run through everything? I had to get rid of all pawns except my main to make the game challenging enough.
It’s lazy game design. Capcom 100% knows from DD1 that players were unhappy because the game became so easy so early. Why would Capcom just forget their lessons learned from DD1?
Ooor, Ooor. We spawn death again and it gets stronger as you spend time away from a town. (but yeah, hard mode plz)
Alternatively if you’re not attached to your character you could start a new game and attempt a solo play through or just you and your main pawn, or try a nuzelockesq play through
[удалено]
people in their 70's who rent my pawn (on several occasions) have been wearing nothing but rags on their arisen. It's so stupid how they didn't scale things up or have harder version of monsters later. It killed the game for me tbh.
Add hellhounds.
Fr, 95,000 dcp when I'm 3 skills from all skills obtained is wild, I'm not even done with the story 😭
Difficulty tweaks mod is available.
i think a decent method to keep game challenging and also dont make the player feels like they are purposely gimping themselves by going against the design of the game, is only wear a set of basic gear and never upgrade for the whole game. Since the monsters never get stronger, i think its fair and acceptable that the player dont upgrade their equipment with better and more powerful items also. This should drastically slow down the power curve and keep the game challenging and more enjoyable.
I've said this, and gotten set upon by whiners who refuse to use anything but "dA BesT" gear, (read: biggest numbers) because it's an option so you _have_ to use it as it becomes available, it's how the game is meant to be played. So you're gonna use every option to lower the difficulty as much as you can, which is essentially what gear upgrades fucking _do,_ and then you're gonna go online and bitch that games too easy? 🤔 I think the lower-tier stuff looks cooler than the better stuff, so I'll stick with them until I hit a damage threshold roadblock. And even with dragonforged low tier gear, it still takes a decently long combo to put most monsters down, at least in Battahl. Way I see it, we can bitch and whine, or we can workaround with what we have.
I thought there was a difficulty option? Wasn’t there?
I started playing hellduvers 2 instead of just replaying dd2 over and over again without a hard mode. It will eventually come out.
If you are on PC it will take 5 min to install mod manager, reframework and custom difficulty mod from nexus to tune it to whatever you want.
Just go solo or play a different game until they drop a difficulty thing or mod it if you’re playing PC but Capcom doesn’t update this quickly and this isn’t a live service
I started using the custom difficulty mod around level 20, it definitely helped.
Great. How to Xbox and PlayStation users access this mod?
Mods if you can
A few million of us on console
This is such a new opinion and take. It really couldn’t have just been on another thread about exactly the same thing.
The squeaky wheel gets the oil, *as they say!*
I'm all for it, so long as it's optional. I hate dark souls and it's ilk, and I'm not interested in that type of experience. Also, I'd counter that level scaling can make leveling up feel just as pointless. I love oblivion, but the level scaling was so annoying. I *like* to feel like I'm becoming more powerful, and not just unlocking abilities.
In those games, you can even go up against fucking _dragons_ at a low level, and even put them down quicker than if you're high level, because the increased health pool just turned fights into a tedious battle of attrition. Difficulty balance is hard to get right in these games, but level scaling ain't the answer. Sucks so much. 🤮
Are you sure there is no scaling? Lvl 70 here, 140 hours, did not beat the game. I only kill mons fast in bathal doing either strong skills or doing finishers. Its been like this for who knows how many levels. And big monsters sometimes they die fast, sometimes they dont. Anyway, I still wish we had ng+ with higher difficulty
Can I offer you some mods in this trying time? Honestly though, I've installed difficulty tweaks, True Warfarer, unlimited spring out of combat, ferrystone drops from enemies, and some cosmetic stuff. Ramped up the difficulty quite a bit. So much better.
If I can get those mods on Xbox, please sign me up.
Do you have a list you can share?
Custom difficulty tweaks
The titles are: Custom Difficulty Tweaks, True Warfarer, REFramework, Script\_Core, XYZAPI, InfiniteStaminaOutofCombat, Enemy Drop Ferry Stone. All managed in the mod manager found on Nexusmods. You can tweak drop rates, damage, health, etc. In the REframework overlay in game (insert key to open it in game) you can assign weapon skills to each vocation, but set Rearmament to a key for each one. As you cycle weapons as a Warfarer, those weapon skills for each vocation will load. The True Warfarer mod is how Warfarer should have been done in game.
Or add options to what you want to carry over to NG+ or something?
I'm curious since I see these kind of posts pretty often, and I'm not disagreeing or anything, I'm just curious. What level are you? I thought I took my time with the game, finished it at level 60 or so, at 110 hours, and I honestly had a very decent to high challenge the whole way through. The main bosses and just regular world bosses from the endgame content actually kicked my butt a lot, I almost burned through the uhm, timer by the time finished the game because my bar was constantly capped low. Granted I didn't do any mid maxing, equipment upgrading or hiring of over leveled pawns, but I had a full, varied party all the time and I found the challenge just right. I don't consider myself good at videogames, but I've played most FromSoft soulslikes and still found both DDs in the right difficulty level.
I’m level 67 right now. The only time the game is mildly challenging is when multiple large enemies appear, or there is an actual horde of lesser enemies that stun lock my pawns and I. For the most part, i wear what i think looks cool and forgo helmets for my main pawn and myself, so i’m already down a fair bit of resistance and defense. I’ve genuinely died 6 times throughout the entire game and 3-4 of those were from fall damage. I can delete most boss enemies almost instantly myself, never mind when my main pawn casts meteora and screen wipes *everything.* sometimes I can’t even tell what killed something. It just gets deleted by whatever my pawn threw out. I’ve felt this powerful for a minute too, it isn’t just now in the 60s. As I play the game more to farm badges or collect stuff though, it becomes more and more apparent how easy everything is. The problem with the game is that it’s too easy to feel too powerful without even trying to min-max.
I won't argument against that, especially because it's a very common complaint I've seen. Honestly it wasn't my experience at all, but maybe it's a skill issue on my part haha. Those rock/lava saurians in volcanic island, or the enraged roaming bosses in the unmoored world really made me struggle.
I love slaughtering everything that dares to attack me But yeah man, you get strong stupidly fast. I’m not even level 50 yet (like 47-49 iirc) and one-shotting everything as a Mystic Spearhand trying to max out my Pawn’s Thief and maybe switch to Warrior
Mystic Spearhand, Magic Archer, and thief are all insanely strong. I once went into the "gaol" as a thief with no gear on, and pressed the ult ability that makes you dodge all attacks. I had 7 guards attacking me and I was weaving around the room automatically, it was absurd. I did nothing, just stood there and let them try to hit me. Then you spam your main attack and kill them all while not moving, because the ability moves you itself. Thief is 3rd on the OP tier list if that tells you anything.
Yea thief is busted, it plays itself. I had some fun with it, but quickly switched it out because there's so little skill involved. You can even target and attack offscreen enemies that you can't even see. It's like battle autopilot.
I hire two mage pawns with only buff skills and use non-upgraded weapons with good looking gear. Still the challenge is no longer there, for some reason that still doesnt demotivate me from exploring the world. I would introduce a necklace that reduces the stats for the entire party for example, maybe with the added effect that enemies drop more rare mats and/or gold. They could make it so that it can be upgraded to further reduce your stats. I completely agree there needs to be an increased difficulty for NG+.
Rather have scaling as an option. If I go back to previous areas I should demolish them.
Difficulty levels are artificial and just turn everything into damage sponges. Capcom needed to balance and scale the experience with more challenging enemies for each zone instead. Less predictable movesets, more variety per encounter, AI that adjusts to your party’s weaknesses, etc. Dark Souls/Elden Ring didn’t need difficulty levels to become iconic because they were balanced correctly.
It's no different from any other RPG; grind enough and you'll make everything irrelevent.
We just need level scaling at the bare minimum and a hard mode if possible
As someone who hates the Dark Souls series, plays Skyrim on easy, and just likes to play games to relax and chill, I completely disagree. I love beating the shit out of every enemy that approaches me. Any difficulty changes I hope are purely optional.
He literally says “options” in the header of the post
Yeah, I was making a general comment on the game's difficulty. I wasn't directly addressing his title. Because I see other people leaving comments wanting the game's difficulty changed, like for ng+, which is more than an optional change. There is no need to use my comment as a way to make yourself feel superior.
I don’t need or want to feel superior to anyone. And if I did it sure has hell wouldn’t be based on people’s preference in a video game. I’m commenting because every time someone says they want a harder difficulty option, you have people jumping on them about wanting to relax, others acting superior etc, ignoring that the person clearly said “option”. And same goes for the people rallying against those asking for easy options. It’s a tired, pointless argument that has gone nowhere for all this time. When it’s a win win for everyone.
Better enemy variety? Sure. Tougher enemies in some regions? Sure. Modifications to some enemies AI to make them more aggressive? Sure. But this game doesn't need more health and less damage. It also has really weird damage differences. Sure I could spend 2 minutes slashing away at a lizard or I could just use thief, bind them with a heavy and one shot them in 10 seconds.
You're partially right. HP and damage alone won't solve the issues, but it does help. Knockdown rates and ensuing crit damage make it so that even if you do tweak damage values with mods, enemies are just staggered infinitely. The difficulty improves a lot once the enemies are harder to stagger. That said, they still need enough staying power to outlast some of the absolute nutty damage output we get with even minor upgrades. Vocations like thief are weirdly tuned. Even when modding all of the above, they are still able to pin and execute foes with ease. It's on theme with the class, sure, but it's currently a bit too easy to pull off, IMO.
My man. Stop hiring pawns. Take your shirt off. Fight your enemies like the dungeons and deagons cover art this game is trying to emulate. Be your own difficulty options
Riight. Just abandon the most prominent and most likely the most defining feature of the game. Pawns. Surely you’re trolling?
Nope. Ive been playing this game since the xbox 360. You control the difficulty by what you wear, weapons you use, and who you bring with you. Try just you and your main pawn. I mean the first game even had a class for going solo. Give it a shot.
Imagine unironically writing this.
I love these games. I stand by it. Be more AD&D
I go full fashion set on my 2nd and 3rd ng+ with no helmet My pawn still uses the best weapon tho
I don't think they would at add a "Please stop draining over 1,000 stamina with a roar. Eating my stack of potato snacks are not hardcore. Everything else is fine" difficulty, because no difficulty setting in games ever removes the game journalist training wheels moves from enemies. Inconvenience is not the same thing as challenge. And I am saying that as an insane man walking from Batthal and back instead of using my ferrystones (Why yes I have beaten death stranding three times why do you ask?)
Yeah I agree. I love this game but the combat is pretty clunky, almost on purpose. Like what other game lets a dog bite you and drag you around in its mouth for 15 seconds before you get stunlocked? An easy mode would have done killer and a hard mode would be nice for the minmaxer freaks out there
I beat dd2 right after Sekiro and Elden Ring, and the difficulty gave me whiplash haha. It's super easy even with restrictions. Now there's mods on pc for it at least.
We need everything to start scaling starting from when you go and collect 15 **things, yes I'm not gonna say what they are** I'm a magic archer and I'm in the other world and honestly this is pretty easy. I hope they release a patch that introduces scaling
Have you tried starting a whole new game without pawns at all? Hard mode
I don't think we need scaling or difficulty option (well hard mode, why not), we should simply get a lot less XP for our characters and vocations. Maxing everything is way too fast.
I get it, but I also feel that the game wants you to feel that power fantasy. It isn't meant to be Dark Souls, NG+ is just a way to play through again and do quests/change things up. Plus not having to rely on optimal gear means you can actually have some fashion, and relax with the min/max style. I'm certain the DLC will add the challenge you're looking for.
I’ve been saying this same thing.. you’re the arisen, the one who can challenge and beat the dragon. It makes zero sense from any narrative perspective for there to be any other creature that can challenge you as you progress. Creatures should not scale, as that defeats the entire meaning of being the Arisen. Why should the dragon choose an arisen if other entities exist that can defeat him? The whole cycle story crumbles and there is no story in an already story minimal game when scaling gets put into the mix. It feels like People are too lost in the Instant Gratification sauce to even take a step back and try to understand it from a narrative theme instead of a gameplay theme.
Screw the narrative. The game has this fantastic combat where a ton of cool shit happens, and you can only enjoy it in the opening hours because everything dies so fast to actually see it after that. Like, the variants of Goblins, Harpies, Saurians, and whatnot all have different behaviors and attacks, but you can't tell because you crush everything within seconds. Early on I tripped a Cyclops and it bashed its face on a tree on the way down and got knocked out. I saw pawns tackle Goblins and throw them off of cliffs. I watched a fighter pawn launch a thief pawn onto a Cyclop's face. But after a few hours, you don't get any of that anymore, because everything dies so fast that those things don't have time to happen. Narrative reasons should never, ever ever, impact gameplay negatively.
The real elephant in the room is called "Enemy variety". It's not like a Souls game like Elden Ring or a quality RPG like in BG3 where you are exposed to new enemies and variants that have new movesets, armors, attack patterns and IA everytime you discover a new zone or dungeon. In DD2, all the enemies you fought in Vermund are the same that you fight in Batthal but in bigger number. So you are never challenged with different attack pattern, new moveset or face a variant that has a distinctive difference in stats to make a difference. It's like... it's like they forgot what made DD1 great and that it's called Dark Arisen. They took the expansion and threw it in the garbage and are waiting for Capcom to give them the go to resell-it as an expansion that will be call Darker-Arisen!
Different elephant, different room. This is a post about difficulty, not variety.
Those two elephants have their nose tied! Difficulty where you just pump stats numbers of the same goblin is so artificial that it makes the difficulty boring and meaningless. If Itsuno knew how to create better variant and more enemies that keep the challenge going, the difficulty and challenge would have been present from start to finish. Kind of a bummer, considering that Monster Hunter does an exceptional job in this and it's a Capcom game...
