Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Carceri]

It tells Striders to climb. Not the other pawns.

Where exactly did you get this from? You made me curious. I assume it's something you read somewhere. You seemed to acknowledge yourself that is a connection between the bestiary related scripts that tells them that something is climbable and under what circumstances, and the Utilitarian inclination that sets the climbing behavior as a priority or not.

This is easily observable while casually playing the game. Let me give you an example that is easily testable, you just need to play a bit more to reach BBI:

- Best example are the Poisoned Undead. A BBI specific monster, that has a knowledge flag which triggers 100% climbing behavior for pawns that do not have an elemental based attack. As long as the Poisoned Undead is in its default state and not incapacitated, knocked down, or affected by some ailment (these are some things that influence pawn behavior/tactics together with their weapons being enchanted through a skill) it will always be climbed by the pawns, regardless of their primary inclination. Now, take a strider pawn that knows the Poisoned Undead is weak to fire and give it Fracture Dart, and you'll observe that the pawn will never try to climb, instead it will only spam Fracture Dart, no matter what its inclinations are. Take away Fracture Dart and the pawn will straight up go climb it, upon encountering the monster, with no hesitation, 100% of the time, again, regardless of its inclinations.

BTW there's a huge difference between Shield Summons and Shield Drums. Time. Because what matters most for Fighter pawns is Time Free for Perfect Blocking.

Now, taking away skills does not necessarily decrease Time. Often it'll hesitate as it tries to find an appropriate skill. You do want a skill or two on your pawns because their scripting doesn't take into account being skill-less. It'll try-catch, which will be lag.

The most 'Time Free', as you call it, for perfect blocking, that a pawn has, is when there are no shield skills slotted. You cannot perfect block while you're using a shield skill. The pawn can get hit when it tries to use whatever shield skills instead of focusing on blocking. Whether this is desirable or not, is probably a matter of preference, as you might value some shield skills that could be useful in some specific situations.
Regarding the number of skills, again, it is exactly the other way around. The best fighter pawns I have ever rented, and I have rented hundreds, never had more than 2 sword skills and they had no shield skills. There was no 'hesitation', nor 'lag'. In fact, for a fighter pawn to be effective it needs only one skill: Dragon Maw. The rest is only flavor.
Dunno where you got this from, but the fewer skills they have the better they perform, as they are more limited in their options, they have fewer dumb choices to make. You are probably thinking about not having a weapon equipped. That's something else entirely and that can, indeed, result in a confused pawn.


Btw, I have found your pawn in the rift. Next time I play, I'll generate a fuckton of RC for you.

 

[Black]

instead it will only spam Fracture Dart

That's a good thing by the way, FD is one of the best strider skills. Its damage and stagger potential are amazing. You can stunlock Matt Daimon's second form with it.

 

[Carceri]

instead it will only spam Fracture Dart

That's a good thing by the way, FD is one of the best strider skills. Its damage and stagger potential are amazing. You can stunlock Matt Daimon's second form with it.

Totally agree. Once you get the hang of it Fracture Dart is absolutely devastating and very satisfying. I love this skill.
When it comes to pawns using it, it's a double-edged sword though. On one hand, they can make short work of some mobs in BBI with it, and the scenario in which they fall off bridges because they climbed a poisoned undead never happens. On the other hand, being unaware of the level geometry, pawns will still spam it in low ceiling rooms, thus doing exactly zero damage in that situation. I've seen many players complain about this. Personally, I think it's all about managing the pros and cons. My main account pawn always has Fracture Dart on when I play, cause I use it a lot and I like it when we're firing it in tandem, but the skill is rarely equipped on her for other players. Sometimes, folks from the friends list want the skill on her, so I don't remove it when I rest online.

 

[Mangoose]

instead it will only spam Fracture Dart

That's a good thing by the way, FD is one of the best strider skills. Its damage and stagger potential are amazing. You can stunlock Matt Daimon's second form with it.

Totally agree. Once you get the hang of it Fracture Dart is absolutely devastating and very satisfying. I love this skill.
When it comes to pawns using it, it's a double-edged sword though. On one hand, they can make short work of some mobs in BBI with it, and the scenario in which they fall off bridges because they climbed a poisoned undead never happens. On the other hand, being unaware of the level geometry, pawns will still spam it in low ceiling rooms, thus doing exactly zero damage in that situation. I've seen many players complain about this. Personally, I think it's all about managing the pros and cons. My main account pawn always has Fracture Dart on when I play, cause I use it a lot and I like it when we're firing it in tandem, but the skill is rarely equipped on her for other players. Sometimes, folks from the friends list want the skill on her, so I don't remove it when I rest online.

Yeah, the Pawn is really good at Fracture Dart; better than you - but yeah that depends on awareness of "level geometry" (quoting you). Actually it depends on mechanics themselves; if you mod the skills, they will choose the "new" skill as if the old lol.

So right now I have Fracture Dart because I'm still in Gransys. When I go to BBI, or maybe even indoor dungeons, I switch up the skills. I switch skills a lot. Which is why I end up accidentally saving at the Inn 24/7. hahaha

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I switch skills a lot

Meanwhile I haven't changed a damn thing since pommel strike, arc of deliverance, and exodus slash.

 

[Mangoose]

It tells Striders to climb. Not the other pawns.

Where exactly did you get this from? You made me curious. I assume it's something you read somewhere. You seemed to acknowledge yourself that is a connection between the bestiary related scripts that tells them that something is climbable and under what circumstances, and the Utilitarian inclination that sets the climbing behavior as a priority or not.

Where exactly did this come from? Well, let's see. If you have Scather, you challenge the biggest monster. Your pawn thus will use its most damaging attacks.

The Strider's most damaging attacks come from climbing and stabbing shit to death. The AI knows this.

BTW there's a huge difference between Shield Summons and Shield Drums. Time. Because what matters most for Fighter pawns is Time Free for Perfect Blocking.

Now, taking away skills does not necessarily decrease Time. Often it'll hesitate as it tries to find an appropriate skill. You do want a skill or two on your pawns because their scripting doesn't take into account being skill-less. It'll try-catch, which will be lag.

Dunno where you got this from, but the fewer skills they have the better they perform, as they are more limited in their options, they have fewer dumb choices to make. You are probably thinking about not having a weapon equipped. That's something else entirely and that can, indeed, result in a confused pawn.

No, because the first thing the code does is find a skill to match the situation. But that takes several milliseconds, as it parses through each skill slot, empty or not. That's what the code expects. Only after verifying there are only empty slots does it "catch" the error and move to general attack/blocking.

Yes, the code itself expects all empty slots to be filled. Because it has memory addresses for each. In other words, if you have an empty slot, then the code will see a "-1" or "null" in that empty slot.

If you unpack the save file and convert to XML via XFS, then you can see that is how this all works:

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma/mods/500

 

[Mangoose]

I switch skills a lot

Meanwhile I haven't changed a damn thing since pommel strike, arc of deliverance, and exodus slash.

I meant for my Pawns lol.

Edit: Because I switch vocations a lot and like to fuck around with skills.

I'm like Tzeentch. You should see the bullshit I do in this game.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

meant for my Pawns lol.

I don't even know what class my pawn is. Toss 'em in the sea and all that.

 

[Mangoose]

Hm... I threw Julien over the cliff (intentionally offered to escort him).. But I can't remember if I beat the Dragon before the week was over or after Julien respawned again.

Either way he died loloo

 

[Carceri]

Mangoose
Whatever you say man.

Btw, I have released your pawn. I hope you'll find the goodies useful.

 

[Mangoose]

Hm I think I'm gonna cut Utilitarian back on my Pawn. It honestly seems like Scather-climbing will come from Utilitarian Bestiary, if (the AI decides) there is no other recourse.

I had both my fighter pawns climbing the Hydra heads for example lol.

 

[Mangoose]

I need a Judeau or Rickert, have no archer and I don't feel like MAing it up right now:

 

[Mangoose]

Often code goes "wrong." Like Pioneer. Pioneer tells your pawn to move forward... but movement itself is code. And that code includes pathfinding. And you know how bad pathfinding is in games. (The code isn't actually wrong. The computer monkey (or dumb designer asshole boss) was wrong)

In DDDA sometimes the pathfinding is so bad that it ends them up lagging behind. From what I read, Mages like going Pioneer because it causes Mages to hang back.

 

[Anonona]

In today's Capcom's showcase on the TGS 2022 there has been a long segment talking about Street Fighter 6. What got my attention though was when they were speaking about the character creator for the "World Tour" mode, a sorts of story mode where you create your own fighter. They mentioned that they had used the character creation system from other projects of the company. At first I though they were talking about Monster Hunter, but then they showed that you could alter the height and body proportions of the characters, which makes me believe that it may be a modified version of what we may see on Dragon's Dogma 2.



Maybe I'm just thinking things to deep, but it would be interesting if true.

 

[Black]

In today's Capcom's showcase on the TGS 2022 there has been a long segment talking about Street Fighter 6. What got my attention though was when they were speaking about the character creator for the "World Tour" mode, a sorts of story mode where you create your own fighter. They mentioned that they had used the character creation system from other projects of the company. At first I though they were talking about Monster Hunter, but then they showed that you could alter the height and body proportions of the characters, which makes me believe that it may be a modified version of what we may see on Dragon's Dogma 2.



Maybe I'm just thinking things to deep, but it would be interesting if true.

There's one problem with your theory: DD2 isn't happenig.

 

[deuxhero]

In today's Capcom's showcase on the TGS 2022 there has been a long segment talking about Street Fighter 6. What got my attention though was when they were speaking about the character creator for the "World Tour" mode, a sorts of story mode where you create your own fighter. They mentioned that they had used the character creation system from other projects of the company. At first I though they were talking about Monster Hunter, but then they showed that you could alter the height and body proportions of the characters, which makes me believe that it may be a modified version of what we may see on Dragon's Dogma 2.



Maybe I'm just thinking things to deep, but it would be interesting if true.

"body type" and "identity"are both visible options, so it's shit. Their priority is appealing to a small crazy part of the population to the disgust of everyone else.

Edit: Official survey for showcase. Tell them to keep that shit out of DD2

https://www.enqform.capcom .com/form/pub/form1/tgs2022_en

 

[cruel]

I've finally finished this game, after like 4+ years of trying and 4 different characters. It's a good game and worth playing for anyone who likes RPG as a genre, but to be honest, after all the hype this game receives on Codex, I was expecting more.

There are few things this game does really well:
+ magic: probably the best magic system in any 3D RPG game. All spells are unique, behave differently, and give you the feeling of power in your hands. I don't think any other game gave me the feeling I got when single, properly cast Maelstorm was enough to annihilate the whole bandit camp, even on higher levels.
+ nights: dark, scary, dangerous. You actually need to plan ahead and get 'uncomfortable' when the night falls on you and you're not ready to go back yet.
+ combat: fast, responsive, monster weak points + climbing stuff. While I still prefer Nioh or From combat, I need to admit combat was done properly here - although sometimes it reached 'clusterfuck' very quickly.
+ pawn system: sometimes cool, sometimes annoying, but need to admit it's something fresh and interesting

But, the list of cons is also as impressive:
- enemy variety: goblins, wolves, harpies, saurians, bandits (counting non-boss enemies). 5 freaking regular enemy types. For an action RPG that focuses a combat, this is an absolute disaster. I wanted to kill someone when I heard, for the 90th time that goblins hate fire or wolves hunt in packs. This game seriously needed a goblin repellent or just more enemy variety.
- consumables accessible through full pause Another WTF for a combat focused game. Imagine any Souls game or Nioh with something like that. Any fight that gets tricky - no worries, you can just pause, heal everyone one by one, maybe buff them as well, go get coffee and come back - win.
- difficulty: it's all over the place. Normal is too easy, hard means getting one-shot, nothing in between. Anything resembling a challenge completely disappears after level 30-40+ (base game, BBI takes the whole thing to the wrong end of spectrum sometimes)
- enemy damage resistance: they did something funny with enemy damage resistance that's hard for me to describe properly. I felt like too many times my weapon, let's call it 'stick +1', did zero or almost no damage; then I come back with 'stick +2' and suddenly the whole fight is won very easily. Too many fights completely missed the sweet spot for me because of that - I think DR calculation is done in a funny way, and I would much prefer if they did it in smaller increments / thresholds.
- quest design: MMO tier, outside of few exceptions (Troublesome Tome, Duchess in distress)
- not a big fan of itemization through RNG
- inventory management is horrible and wastes time; just give me a shared stash that's not accessible during combat, if you're going to shower me with million mushrooms and saurian scales
- game is clearly unfinished / rushed (Duke saying stuff about opening all roads etc.)

And also, many, many aspects of the game just scream 'average'. Story - average. Character design - average. Same for writing, music (outside of BBI), open world design, etc.

Overall, a very flawed game, but at the same time, a very unique experience and still worth playing, for some strange reason. I'm hoping they will fix enemy variety and consumables in DD2, but I will be cautious about that.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

T'riffic write up.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I've finally finished this game, after like 4+ years of trying and 4 different characters. It's a good game and worth playing for anyone who likes RPG as a genre, but to be honest, after all the hype this game receives on Codex, I was expecting more.

There are few things this game does really well:
+ magic: probably the best magic system in any 3D RPG game. All spells are unique, behave differently, and give you the feeling of power in your hands. I don't think any other game gave me the feeling I got when single, properly cast Maelstorm was enough to annihilate the whole bandit camp, even on higher levels.
+ nights: dark, scary, dangerous. You actually need to plan ahead and get 'uncomfortable' when the night falls on you and you're not ready to go back yet.
+ combat: fast, responsive, monster weak points + climbing stuff. While I still prefer Nioh or From combat, I need to admit combat was done properly here - although sometimes it reached 'clusterfuck' very quickly.
+ pawn system: sometimes cool, sometimes annoying, but need to admit it's something fresh and interesting

But, the list of cons is also as impressive:
- enemy variety: goblins, wolves, harpies, saurians, bandits (counting non-boss enemies). 5 freaking regular enemy types. For an action RPG that focuses a combat, this is an absolute disaster. I wanted to kill someone when I heard, for the 90th time that goblins hate fire or wolves hunt in packs. This game seriously needed a goblin repellent or just more enemy variety.
- consumables accessible through full pause Another WTF for a combat focused game. Imagine any Souls game or Nioh with something like that. Any fight that gets tricky - no worries, you can just pause, heal everyone one by one, maybe buff them as well, go get coffee and come back - win.
- difficulty: it's all over the place. Normal is too easy, hard means getting one-shot, nothing in between. Anything resembling a challenge completely disappears after level 30-40+ (base game, BBI takes the whole thing to the wrong end of spectrum sometimes)
- enemy damage resistance: they did something funny with enemy damage resistance that's hard for me to describe properly. I felt like too many times my weapon, let's call it 'stick +1', did zero or almost no damage; then I come back with 'stick +2' and suddenly the whole fight is won very easily. Too many fights completely missed the sweet spot for me because of that - I think DR calculation is done in a funny way, and I would much prefer if they did it in smaller increments / thresholds.
- quest design: MMO tier, outside of few exceptions (Troublesome Tome, Duchess in distress)
- not a big fan of itemization through RNG
- inventory management is horrible and wastes time; just give me a shared stash that's not accessible during combat, if you're going to shower me with million mushrooms and saurian scales
- game is clearly unfinished / rushed (Duke saying stuff about opening all roads etc.)

And also, many, many aspects of the game just scream 'average'. Story - average. Character design - average. Same for writing, music (outside of BBI), open world design, etc.

Overall, a very flawed game, but at the same time, a very unique experience and still worth playing, for some strange reason. I'm hoping they will fix enemy variety and consumables in DD2, but I will be cautious about that.

I think this is a fair assessment, but despite the praise, no one's said that this is a flawless game. It's very clearly not finished as has been described in interviews and as you can tell just by playing it. The people that tend to be really into DD are ones who highly value those pros, in some fashion. The enemy variety is improved in BBI, but can also be chalked up to the game not being finished. Many of the other cons are matters of taste and/or things that can be complained about across a variety of games and don't do anything to detract from the pros.

tl;dr The strengths of the game are things that you don't see in any other game, the weaknesses of the game are things that you see in many other games.

 

[Mangoose]

Okay, a few updates.

Finally finalized my Main Pawn (for now). It is not easy. However, designing your Pawn party is GODDAMN IMPORTANT in this game. Why? Because you are one member of a 4 person party. The only difference is that you can be a hybrid class (Mystic Knight/Magick Archer/Assassin) and they don't. But.. that still makes you one member - one role - in a four person party. So you need heals. You need "tank"/distraction/suppression. You need DPS, physical melee physical ranged, magical ranged magical melee... Different debilitations and debuffs come from other vocations. If you're not one of the major DPS classes (Strider/Ranger) you're going to need a pawn to handle it. Because they are a shitload better than you at DPS, built right.

But that doesn't make me pointless. I have to put in my share.

However, because Pawns use Artificial Unintelligence... You need to understand the nuances. It ain't easy.
#1, pawn AI is pretty crappy at most skills. So you gotta do some personal research for each skill. In fact, think about pawn building as building an efficient AI that will not be confused. Literally, K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Shorty )
#2 don't upgrade the spells on your pawn. They will always use the highest level spells. So any High/Grand Anodynes are going to either take too to cast and you die, or you win before they finish casting. This includes damaging spells. You don't want to fizzle out all the time throwing High (x) at minions that die before you're half done incanting. Though quicker spells like Halidom and Grapnel you can upgrade to High. BTW do not give the AI spellcasters their core skills. Because that gives the AI more decisions to make. That's how you fuck up. You need to limit your pawn's choices. They're dumb. Not to mention that they're not exactly great at the upgraded core skills. Different story for the non-casters because they know how to melee and shoot quite fine.
#3 Inclinations are not a huge deal because most suck. A mixture of Scather/Challenger/Mitigant is pretty smooth. Add Medicant as 2ndary if you want your pawns to proactively buff before battle. Besides that, Guardian sucks. Nexus sucks. Acquisitor sucks. All of them because they make your pawn not do combat. Again this is about whether the AI actually can understand the scripting. Again the AI can't understand Guardian and Nexus and end up not attacking anything until it gets aggro. And Acquisitor literally makes them look during combat.
#3a? Utilitarian and Pioneer are a bit more complicated. Utilitarian basically gets better the more Bestiary knowledge you have (actually, pawn AI gets "better" in general. Utilitarian tells them to focus on their nerdiness). TBH not too complicated there - once you're pawn gets enough knowledge, then basically you can add Utilitarian into the mix of Scather/Challenger/Mitigant/(Medicant). Maybe even replacing one of them. Pioneer is a whole other topic that we still aren't sure. Including the super-theorycrafting-math wizzes.

Basically... most Pawn builds suck. #1 reason is they have Guardian, Nexus, and/or Acquisitor in their builds. #2 because they have skills that Pawn AI suck at using. #3 they have High/Grand something (that's not Halidom, Grapnel, Ingle or Levin). (#3 they don't know how to gear)

Having pawns that suck is like playing a game with other people that suck ass. Zero difference. Guardians I throw off the cliff.

I've also been using Lefein's World Difficulty mod (modifies spawns, enemy stats, and well she doesn't want to reveal.. but (A) It's NOT health bloat yayyyyy and (B) I think most people who still play all use it. The mod isn't on Nexus because the mod creator I think has some financial issues dealing with their health or their family's health... And her mod is like 4GB so she doesn't have the finance for that bandwidth. So she distributes it separately through Discord right now.. but still for free lol. It's a bit of a maze to find it (probably to limit bandwidth :\) but if anyone's interested I can guide you.

The only explicit example in WD - basically mandatory - is that you don't install WD until after you finish A Fortress Besieged. I didn't know this first time around. I got stomped. But again I haven't run into any health bloat issues... srsly I hate hp bloat so much that I wouldn't be able to play it if that were the case.

Oh and here are the mechanics that the nerds have tested and figured out. https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Avxu-W6BCjDrglXtHg8Z3sKB_z_5tlWhV1Vmf_YWHw/edit


Edit: Also the whole party needs gear to cover all debilitations (debuffs). I just started BBI; my pawn has 60% against silence and 90% against skill stifling. Why do I mention my pawn? She's the party's healer and cleanser. If needs be, I can use my inventory for myself... but I cannot use my inventory for others. Unless I'm a caster, it's my pawn that needs that shit. Or if you could find a nice healer pawn but eh I keep seeing upgraded Anodyne lol.

 

[Mangoose]

omg i just learned the ruined sigil + magic cannon trap

edit: Yessss got rarifying material. Time to make some forgeries.

 

[gaussgunner]

"body type" and "identity"are both visible options, so it's shit. Their priority is appealing to a small crazy part of the population to the disgust of everyone else.

Yup, body type is male/female and they didn't even show what manner of gay faggotry is under "identity" but I assume it's more than male and female.

Now to play devil's advocate, if you can make your characters hot chicks, does it really matter what labels are available? And you can create disgusting gender bending horrors in DD1 even without the tranny mods from Nexus.

And if it has Capcom's current DRM shit, I'm not playing it anyway.

 

[HereticGuy]

However, designing your Pawn party is GODDAMN IMPORTANT in this game.

When your main pawn summons for the first time at the riftstone, I always go outside of Encampment and throw the bastard from the cliffs, alongside with Rook :D . I have never played this game with a party, always soloed. But I didn't try "world difficulty mod" as you did; so a party may be essential with it.
(And thumbs up for your write up, it's always good to see obsessed people with Dragon's Dogma :D )

 

[deuxhero]

Yes, it does matter.

 

[gaussgunner]

I've also been using Lefein's World Difficulty mod (modifies spawns, enemy stats, and well she doesn't want to reveal.. but (A) It's NOT health bloat yayyyyy and (B) I think most people who still play all use it.

I don't

The mod isn't on Nexus because the mod creator I think has some financial issues dealing with their health or their family's health... And her mod is like 4GB so she doesn't have the finance for that bandwidth. So she distributes it separately through Discord right now.. but still for free lol. It's a bit of a maze to find it (probably to limit bandwidth :\) but if anyone's interested I can guide you.

cause I ain't got time for that.

If it's too easy on hard mode just start over, ditch your pawns, wear less armor, use shitty weapons...