Muh balance. Who cares about balance.
Yes muh balance, I do care about balance. I'm tired that most games boil down to either:
- The player is absurdly overpowered, it doesn't matter what you do, you will win anyway;
- A lot of options are simply weak and going for them means that you are just screwing yourself.
You know, I'm just ranting about the warrior here, I haven't even started talking about class skills and movesets, because this post is already huge and bringing it up can take this discussion to a whole new level. But just throwing a bone here: ranger is a one button class basically and fighter is a local "spin to win" meme embodied.
Some classes are always better than others in RPGs. That's what makes them fun and unique.
It's not just that some classes better than the others, sometimes the classes are just gimped, why should I put so much more effort to get a worse result ? Warrior is just terrible, the class has no redeeming qualities (except some augments) at all. I don't care how many videos of people beating strong monsters with warrior or soloing BBI or whatever there are, I'm sure if you try hard enough you can wipe your ass with your foot, it doesn't change the fact that the warrior sucks. Mage serves no purpose after a short period of early game, mystic knight and archer don't kick in until way later. So, 4 out of 9 vocations have some glaring issues, that's pretty fucking scary if you ask me.
I guess you can make an argument that some vocations are meant for the early game and some for the late, but it doesn't apply to DD, it's simply not well structured:
- The basic vocations: Strider is great throghout the whole game, same with fighter but he's not as amazing, mage on the other hand falls off super hard past the beggining part;
- The hybrid vocations: Mystic knight and archer require a good investment and understanding of how the game damage and stat progression works, they become really strong later. Assassin is good from the moment you unlock him and doesn't require you to know anything in advance, especially if you consider the fact that it's the class with the highest physical attack gain per level;
- Advanced vocations: Everything here is good from the get go (if word good can be applied to warrior at all), I don't have much experience with the sorcerer, but I know that even at early levels he can spam magic bolt while jumping for a very respectable DPS and it only becomes better later, and for supporting he also brings elemental enchants, which are very useful at any point.
There are no in-game hints about vocation power curve either, so I don't see anything implying that certain classes are purely late game options.
You're not going to find a good RPG where all the classes are the same and just as viable as one another.
Can I at least get a game where all classes are just viable ? And I mean really viable. I don't consider fighter and assassin to be super strong, but they are viable, they may be outmached by other classes, but they are still truly useful. I don't think it's too much to ask the developers to make it so none of the classes feels like crap and has a proper progression.
No I never had problems with the inclination system. Like I said there's a mod where you can edit the pawns inclinations. Sure there are some abilities they use better than others, but I never had problems with pawns. You can put health potions into their inventories and they'll use them often to heal, unfortunately it raises Nexus so you have to drop it down to 0 often, but this isn't a problem. I suggest using the mod so you can control what they do and learn how inclinations affect their behavior. Not equip them with abilities like spells that take long times to charge.
It's not just about inclination, pawns will try to repeat the actions you do. If you play a warrior it's likely that you are spamming jump attack, eventually your pawn will try to do it too, needless to say they are terrible at it, this behaviour is not affected by inclination as far as I know. Then there's knowledge system and unless you have all three stars unlocked, the pawns will purposefully act dumber in a fight. Never heard of the mod that enhances your control over the pawns, but the last time I played the game was in 2016. No spells for pawns, really ? They can't be hybrids, which is pretty bad on it's own, but now you say that 2 out of 6 remaining options for them aren't good either, am I understanding you correctly ?
If you were having problems with BBI at level 100 then you were doing something wrong. Likely you were using a split damage weapon or something. You want to go full physical or full magic weapons depending on class and damage type you do because monsters have separate defense and magic defense stats and if your damage in your weapon is split between both then it has to go over both stats to do damage. I had trouble my first time as well in the 70s because of this, but once I get a new weapon in BBI and upgraded it, it was smooth sailing. I don't know what to say to someone who couldn't even make it through the second run of BBI. I soloed through the game on my second playthrough with a magic archer. Sure it's the easiest class to solo with, but I just can't believe you couldn't beat it at all with a party of 4 and then you thought it was a good idea admitting it to support your argument.
Sjukob I really have to question your claim about struggling against BBI 2.0 on "minmaxed" lvl 100 characters because I have cleared it up until the daemon with gear that was far from optimal on Hard. I last played the game in 2018 so I don't have everything in fresh memory but going from the first clear to the second, I can't say I remember the enemies outscaling the levels and gear you get without grinding. I didn't beat daimon 2.0 but that was mostly because I put the game down for something else, rather than giving up on it.
Yeah, I did use hybrid weapon, but I'll get to that point, and yes I read about monster defences and hybrid damage problems. Anyway, I was playing a fighter, with fighter and warrior damage augments (getting that vocation to lvl 9 was a torture) and all that, BBI wasn't that bad on the first attempt, I remember my first encounter with gorecyclops, I did the usual thing - climbed it, positioned myself on his head and started swinging: "1/3 of the life bar per attack, BBI isn't so scary after all" I thought. Then I encounterd garm: "Why does this thing take so long to kill ?", obliterators appear "These guys are fun, but for fucks sake why do I have to clubber you so much ?!", poisoned undead takes something like 4 dragon maws to die and my weapon is holy enchanted, oh well. I even tried picking a fight with death, but that thing was impenetrable, whatever, you aren't meant to fight it anyway. I was using ascalon and dragon's dogma, which are like the best weapons you can get pre BBI.
So after my first run through BBI
I get this, I thought that I would beat everyone into dust with my new weapon. First room after Barroch, undead dragon spawns. Cool, time to test my new murderstick ! Apply dragon's maw to the chest - no damage. What ? Try again, still no damage. Look up dragon's resistances on the wiki, says it's weak to holy and I'm using the best holy weapon in the game. Alright, may be my old sword will do the trick, use dragon's dogma, still no damage. Fine, may be this type of dragon is absurdly strong, re-enter the room until another enemy appears, super lightning dragon spawns, can't damage it either. So I can't beat the enemy that spawns at the very beggining, what am I going to do against garms, obliterators, living armors, daimon ? Well, I guess I'm fucked. I could've tried to acquire a better pure physical weapon, get even higher stats, but att that point I just lost my interest in the game, I've already seen everything it had to offer, so the only thing that was left there is to keep cranking up numbers, but what for ?
I think it's fair if you blame me, but looking at how one of the supposedly best weapons in the game wasn't killing stuff that was weak against it, and how it was never an issue before second visit to BBI, and how I spent a lot of time on that character, it was all very discouraging.
why are they unfun? their unique traits are what make them a new experience.
Dude, have you even played the game ?! Let's start with the monsters I mentioned:
- Ghost - poses no threat, yet for some reason wants to you to chase it around and take time to kill it;
- Maneater - you are absolutely forced to play it's gimmick and there's nothing you can do. Remember mimicks from dark souls ? Now imagine that you can't hurt them untill you try opening them up and get chewed, and that's literally how maneater works. Don't try telling me how it's a party game and that the pawns will save you, it's beside the point. The game basically tells you: "Get bitten, fuck you !";
- Golem - oh dear, explaining this would require me to also talk about something else.
Here's the thing, in DD vocations not only differ in strength, they also differ in convenience and it's not just about the damage they do or many resistances they can bypass, it's also about the controls. When I was done with the game I wrote a post about my impressions in DD topic, it's a mess but I'd rather quote myself, than type another message with the same context:
One of the major problems with combat is bow dominance , but it's not that bows are overpowered by themselves , several factors contribute to this . First of all you MUST exploit enemy weakness , there is no way around it in this game , if you don't do that your damage will be heavily reduced , a lot of the enemies have weakspots in hard to reach places and either require you climbing on them or waiting for them to expose , while bow users can rain arrows at any moment from afar , putting themselves in a much less dangerous position than melee . Magic users are hampered by wonky aiming and significant delay ( casting ) before they can attack , bow users have almost zero delay between their attacks and manual aiming is very responsive . Secondly , it's easy to deal with flying enemies when you have access to ranged combat , much harder when you don't , another point scored towards archers . Third , magic users HAVE to utilize elemental weakness of the enemies ( see the point above ) which results in additional running to the tavern to change skills , this becomes much more annoying in BBI where you can only change skills with the help of Olra , and again bow users don't have to deal with this problem , their skills are "equip and forget" . And the last one , although not directly conserning bows , all classes that can use bows have the best mobility in the game , they can roll , double jump , cancel their actions , while other classes are much more limited in movement , this becomes especially noticeable when you are playing casters . The only thing casters and melee users can provide over archers is knockdown/stagger which is quite a big thing , but not big enough to compete with the advantages the bow provides .
P.S. Fuck Ur dragon . This is the most badly designed enemy in the whole fucking game . Pure melee classes are fucked , you can kill him as pure melee , but that's like pulling your eye out of it's socket through your ass with your broken arm . The fucking thing jumps around and spins in circles constantly making it hard for you to aim . And sometimes he flies to the tower where you can't even properly damage him and there is no way to make him go down except waiting and if you hide , he flies away forcing you to restart the fight . WHAT THE FUCK ?! What kind of idiot designed this shit ?! Talking about bad design , the retard that made golems ( both of them ) was surely desperately looking for a way to get analy raped by his boss and the game community .
and then I'll also quote other people to save myself some time:
At this point the game has truly stretched its enemy variety thin. The golems I saw in the woods are here in the pass to the tower, and they have the exact same movesets as cyclops except they're made out of rock and they only get harmed in the specific gems around their body. I'm really not liking this specific design of a monster taking most of the damage on very small gems on the body while the rest of the body receives only 10% or 0% damage.
It works in Shadow of the Colossus because the Colossi there are much much larger than the monsters here. Here, you get stupid things like trying to hit a drake's chest that is practically on the ground meaning most of my dagger hits fail to hit the actual gem on and instead just register as a chest hit. Even worse is the golem who has a gem on the palm of his hand and can't be harmed anywhere else on his body, so you have to try to hit that ridiculously small target with a sword or dagger while it's flailing all around. Mounting the monster doesn't even make it easier. How disappointing to cast a meteor and multiple crash down on your opponent just to do zero damage because it hit its back and not it's palm or knee gem?
Yeah, Metal Golems are bullshit. Had a fight were the last medallion was floating high in the air and I was solo with a melee-only assassin...the solution was climbing on top of the golem and jumping to land like 3 hits in mid-air on the medallion.... like 15 times.
What do you think would happen when you require a strong party cooperation to take down a monster in a game where AI is braindead and coop mode doesn't exist ?
are you some kind of retard that demands balance and that all classes must be able to deal with everything or something?
Heh, archers in this game can virtually take down anything (mystic knight can literally take down anything) and it feels pretty good to control them. Why not bring everyone else to the same level ? Does relying on wonky AI make for a better experience ?
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