So, with the success of the original D:OS and the fact that it truly was a great game on so many levels, I feel like I'm not seeing enough people bring up the one thing that was probably the worst thing about D:OS - in fact, for many players it was game-breaking and it most likely alienated a lot of players. But the problem is that, once you start criticizing a game that is otherwise excellent, the fanboys are there to shut you up like flies on crap.
In fact, in spite of what I'm about to say, I give D:OS a 9/10.
The Abhorrent "XP Buffer" in D:OS:
Usually, when you design an RPG game, you always want to make sure that it has a buffer of side-quests and other things that ensures that your Level is always on par with the area you're currently in. Players can still rush through the game for a greater challenge, but at least you're certain that everybody will actually get through the experience. If RPGs isn't your strong suit, or you're just unfamiliar with the character system and risks building the "wrong character", you should still be able to beat the game. These are 60h+ games, after all. Not exactly a Quarter-coin arcade.
My experience with D:OS was like this:
I created a team and I recruited the various characters and it all felt like I was mastering the game. And then slowly, I started lagging behind on my levels. At some point, I was thinking to myself that "I really hope there's some additional areas that allows me to get my Level back on par". But sadly, no such extra area existed.
When I finally got to the White Witch, I was underleveled and I knew I had done everything I could do up until that point. I even went online to look for guides etc. But the thing is, once I started talking about this to other fans of the game, they just gave me the cold shoulder and told me that "I'm not playing the game the right way" or "I made a wrong build".
Do people making these comments even have any idea about what game design is about?
Yes, I probably would've beaten the game if I had made the "right build". But when you spend 60+ hours in a game and you need the benefit of hindsight to tell you what you're doing wrong, game-breakingly so, I think any rational person should understand that there's something wrong going on here.
What's the point of a classless system if only a few methods are even viable? And yes, a game is always going to have optimal builds, but optimal does not equal viable.
A proper solution - How to Avoid this for D:OS2:
One of the biggest reasons why this whole thing frustrates me, is because the solution is so damn simple. In Dark Souls games, if you suck, you simply grind your way to higher levels so that the experience becomes smoother. I consider myself average in those games, but I've been able to kill every single boss nonetheless. This is because the total XP pool in good games is much greater than the xp you need in order to stay on par. This has been the staple solution in RPG since the dawn of computer games.
Even in games that don't have enemy respawns (i.e. a fixed XP pool rather than infinite), the developers make sure that enough side-missions and optional areas exist so that the game has what I called an "XP Buffer". They do this to make sure everyone of us gets to the end, that nobody is left out of the endgame.
However, not all developers can afford to design tons of areas outside of the main trajectory. Which is exactly why respawning enemies were conceived of to begin with.
Dear Larian Studios:
This is not me being angry at you guys. It's more about how I feel like I'm being met by fanboys when I bring up points that quite clearly and objectively have merit. This isn't just "my opinion", it's something that can have ramifications for game sales etc. And yes, 500k copies is impressive. This isn't about one feature making or breaking a game. It's about the potential for maybe selling 1M copies instead, because you made sure that the game was accessible even to the people who don't min-max and numbercrunch their characters to death and back. People who simply want to enjoy the game on their own terms.
But this isn't about dumbing down a game. In fact, I'm the first to criticize dumbing down gameplay, because it alienates the solid players. What I'm advocating here is features that open up for a wider audience, rather than swap out the existing player base with another (which is basically what dumbing down is all about - catering to a casual crowd in a way that directly impact the hardcore player's experience)
All I'm saying is this:
If nothing else, then at least make the enemies respawnable - OR - if you insist against that, for some aesthetic reason, at least make sure that there's enough ways to acquire XP to ensure that you're beating a game.
The penalty for making honest mistakes should NEVER be to have to redo 60+ hours of content. There's a reason why fail states exist in a game. For people who mess up progression, the fail state is "some additional grinding" - THAT should be my punishment if I mess up.
Another punishment in D:OS that I wholly accept, is the fact that I need to save my game before big battles and I need to reload to rethink my approach. Even if there's random things involved (God forbid), you're still just punished with a few minutes or an hour worth of progress lost.
Now compare that to having to lose 60+ hours of progress just because you made progressional mistakes that you had no way of knowing were wrong until 60 hours later.
Is this fair? Especially when the XP pool could've easily been a little higher? Now, it's no small task to design large new areas to adventure in, but I KNOW that Larian knows that respawning an enemy is NOT a major programmatical problem to solve. The enemy already has a create and delete function. All you need is to refactor those criterias slightly.
Anyways, just some thoughts from me. It's all good, and I'm confident that D:OS2 is going to be a great experience. But I thought I'd spend my two cents nonetheless.
Peace.
(PS: The image verification system on this forum is REALLY bad haha)
Last edited by vometia; 11/01/17 10:17 PM. Reason: formatting
