The Vague Questing is Hilariously Stupid

[Homebrew]

All the apologists and defenders of the game seem to think there's a certain element of realism and/or alignment with the whole role playing open world adventure genre because the game basically gives you the absolute bare minimum information on a quest, and 98% of the time your responses are limited to "Accept" or "Decline." Even the stupid ass escort missions ask you for an escort BEFORE THEY EVEN TELL YOU WHERE THE ♥♥♥♥ THEY WANT TO GO. Imagine if a friend was like hey buddy can I get a ride? And you're like I mean that depends, where to? And they're like don't worry about it. I'll tell you later.

If you want to shoot for this level of vagueness, you need to give the player the ability to ask pertinent and realistic follow up questions. If the argument is that this is somehow realistic in the RP universe then I assume you've never had a conversation with a person before.

"Ser, ser! Please! My cat ran away and it's like roughly in a 50 mile radius probably and I think so can you please find it I'll give you 1/500th of your current gold I mean when you're not trying to save the world or whatever."

ACCEPT | DECLINE

Is the protagonist a moron? You wouldn't like, have other questions?

1. What does the cat look like?
2. Is it vocal?
3. Has it done this before? Did it come back?
4. Can you think of anyone that wanted/wanted to hurt the cat?
5. Have there been crimes in the area?
6. Is your cat the only cat that's gone missing?
7. How old is the cat?
8. Are there dangerous creatures in the area?
9. Is there a toy or food that might lure it to me?
10. Literally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ anything that would give you more information.

But nah, just ACCEPT or DECLINE. That's some heavy RP action right there. It's one thing to not put a quest marker on the map; that's fine. But the inability to ask quest givers (for the most part) any questions to narrow down your search and limit the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TIME VAMPIRE that this game really is, maybe give me a few more ideas what the hell I'm doing?

Regardless when you're done reading this would you mind grabbing me some food while you're out? I mean there's definitely a correct food that I want but let's see what you bring back and if it's not that food I guess you'll need to try again ;)

The quest where an NPC is like "I'm going to find a place where I belong" I don't know maybe you could give me an idea where you're going since you CLEARLY have a destination in mind? Oh, no? I'll just run town to town and hope I find you?

IMMERSION.

[Homebrew]

I appreciate the responses, even if some of you are outright calling me stupid. That's fine; it's the internet.

I don't want to swap pawns just to get the equivalent of a quest marker. That's just a quest marker with extra steps.

And that's the point. If you're calling me stupid because I can't handle something so trivial, you're calling yourself smart for figuring out something so trivial. I think that's much, much worse.

This game isn't hard. It's vague. There's a difference. Yeah I can look for Rodge, and I did look for Rodge, and I found him, and escorted him home and it was BORING AS ♥♥♥♥.

This game is basically a really good RPG where everything is 10 extra steps for no other reason than because it makes average people feel like geniuses because they employed "strategy." To people like me, it's just mowing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lawn.

[ODevil]

Originally posted by Kashra Fall:

Originally posted by Homebrew:

The problem with this for me, as much as I appreciate the grounded response, is that swapping out pawns every time you want guidance on a quest is just another layer of tedium the game relies on for extended content, but that's just me.

Like I said, if you can't figure it out, you hire a pawn. If you can't figure something out in a game, what do you do? You youtube it, right? Same thing here, except no chrome required lol.

Exactly, I actually appreciate the option being there even if I hardly needed it. Pawns with quest knowledge can also give hints just from random dialogue or when talking about important matters with them.

[GorishiDan]

Originally posted by nazgull2k1:

Originally posted by The Technoviking:

OP would start cowering and hissing if you presented them with a copy of Morrowind

Morrowind is like 50 years old. This isnt 1995 dude.. its 2024.

OP is absolutely correct. This crap is so barebones even the skeletons are asking for a sandwich to bulk up.

I 100% agree with him. Most times I just cancel and move on. The rewards are just meh "Oh look guys! 150 gold! SO exciting.. lemme toss that onto the 234,000 Ive got already!" or "Oh look... dried fruit. My GOD this is just what I needed to make this game fun and interesting!"

/snore /wrist /uninstall

This game is worth 30 bucks max. We all got straight up robbed @ 70 dollars.

$30-40 for me but yeah $70 feels like robbery. I'm sure the game will get updates and DLC and become better but idk if i'll have any interest then if its most basic version cannot hold my interest past me not having anything better to play.

It's true when people say that when you get a game on release you're paying the highest price for the lowest experience but at least you learn something for next time.

[m_train1]

Japanese are different. Doesn't make them stupid.

[Kashra Fall]

https://gamingbolt.com/dragons-dogma-2-doesnt-have-quest-boards-or-markers

That is how capcom was going to do it. No fast travel, no quest markers and your pawn guided you to the location if you so chose to, aka couldn't figure it out.

"There are quest markers in Dragon's Dogma 2, however they vary per quest. Some quests mark an exact location for you to go—whether you've been to that area or not—while other quests mark a general vicinity of where the next objective is and it'll be up to you to find the exact point once you get there."

This is how they decided to do it. Fast travel is readily accessible and you have quest markers. Was it because of the complaints on reddit? Possibly, Can't say it would be a hard fix to do in 2 and a half months =P.


So you should thank your lucky stars you even got this system, because it could of been worse!

[Glenarn]

The problem you seem to be having with the game stems from assuming the game is going to be heavy on the RPG elements like the Witcher but it leans far more into it's Action Adventure. You'll find not everyone enjoys those types of games and half the questions are redundant, why would I care about the daily activities of a cat? All I want to do is go fight some Dragons or Ogres.

Yes the game would be better if they included more dialogue and have actual meaning to the quests but Itsuno did the same thing he did with the first game where he was too ambitious and wasted time on new ideas, we didn't even get a satisfying final boss.

[Karax]

Even the stupid ass escort missions ask you for an escort BEFORE THEY EVEN TELL YOU WHERE THE ♥♥♥♥ THEY WANT TO GO. ĺ

That seems like a really stupid decision, I haven't picked up escort missions yet, but in the first game, you would get a brief about them and the location beforehand...so that way I would know where to place a portcrystal and skip the "escort" part entirely.

Now on the other hand, if you're talking about the first ever escort mission, thats another story

[Homebrew]

Originally posted by Kashra Fall:

https://gamingbolt.com/dragons-dogma-2-doesnt-have-quest-boards-or-markers

That is how capcom was going to do it. No fast travel, no quest markers and your pawn guided you to the location if you so chose to, aka couldn't figure it out.

"There are quest markers in Dragon's Dogma 2, however they vary per quest. Some quests mark an exact location for you to go—whether you've been to that area or not—while other quests mark a general vicinity of where the next objective is and it'll be up to you to find the exact point once you get there."

This is how they decided to do it. Fast travel is readily accessible and you have quest markers. Was it because of the complaints on reddit? Possibly, Can't say it would be a hard fix to do in 2 and a half months =P.

So you should thank your lucky stars you even got this system, because it could of been worse!

I mean I would have just passed on the game, haha. But yeah that would have been unfortunate. I get what you're saying, but a few things:

Fast travel is not readily accessible. You can have a max of 10 portcrystals on the map at any given time. That's after you find ALL 10, and good luck with that by the time you haven't already traversed the same ♥♥♥♥ 150 times on foot. You expend ferrystones, a relatively expensive and/or finite resource every single time you travel as well. I have a decent amount of them at this point but I don't even want to know how many I used when I probably shouldn't have.

Quest markers are often there, pawns often have some feedback to provide, yeah, sure. But again, just tell me where to go if you're going to "tease" me with answers. At that point it's not fun, it's just quest markers with extra steps (as I've said).

Regardless, let's not forget I'm not just referring to quests with specific destinations, but quests where NPCs want a very specific thing, with no idea where to get it let alone what they specifically want. It's the equivalent of "I want something sharp, and heavy, that I can use as a weapon?" "So like a sword?" "I want something sharp... and heavy."

[OldWhovian.YTTV]

Yeah; people that are defending Crapcom's implementation of the Markerless Quest concept are experiencing that design for the first time. They don't know what a good version of it is, so this is by default the best they've ever experienced for that design concept.

Morrowind is the game that did that design best (it's a very old design). Morrowind pulled it off because it let the player ask questions to get info, gave real directions, planned for multiple styles of approach (with appropriate, thematic consequences), and had an actually immersive world that followed relatable rules. Coming from that game to this is like watching a bunch of people eating rotted fish screaming about how amazing the fetid carcass they're eating tastes and how everyone that doesn't like rotting fish carcass is just too low IQ for them.

[Bill Gates]

Originally posted by Homebrew:

I appreciate the responses, even if some of you are outright calling me stupid. That's fine; it's the internet.

I don't want to swap pawns just to get the equivalent of a quest marker. That's just a quest marker with extra steps.

And that's the point. If you're calling me stupid because I can't handle something so trivial, you're calling yourself smart for figuring out something so trivial. I think that's much, much worse.

This game isn't hard. It's vague. There's a difference. Yeah I can look for Rodge, and I did look for Rodge, and I found him, and escorted him home and it was BORING AS ♥♥♥♥.

This game is basically a really good RPG where everything is 10 extra steps for no other reason than because it makes average people feel like geniuses because they employed "strategy." To people like me, it's just mowing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lawn.

The game is boring as ♥♥♥♥ and agree with you. I have tried to play more tonight and find myself so bored. I understand some will like it and thats ok. And for others it will be bad and thats ok too.

Imo, Its not worth $70.

[Homebrew]

Originally posted by Glenarn:

The problem you seem to be having with the game stems from assuming the game is going to be heavy on the RPG elements like the Witcher but it leans far more into it's Action Adventure. You'll find not everyone enjoys those types of games and half the questions are redundant, why would I care about the daily activities of a cat? All I want to do is go fight some Dragons or Ogres.

Yes the game would be better if they included more dialogue and have actual meaning to the quests but Itsuno did the same thing he did with the first game where he was too ambitious and wasted time on new ideas, we didn't even get a satisfying final boss.

Take my award. Couldn't have said it better myself. And I'm not going to try, but in much harsher terms:

He absolutely did this on the first game. The reason it had a cult following and not a mainstream fanbase like Skyrim was because it was a million awesome ideas and none of them were fully baked. It's his signature move at this point. I knew as soon as this game got more budget he wasn't going to focus on the faults of the first (though he said just that) while expanding on great ideas. He was going to take the money and come up with another 100 things he couldn't "finish."

And I feel it every time I launch this identity crisis.

[Nox]

Don't let the atagonizing apologists get to you man.

The game design around the quest writing in this game is inexcusably bad. It's not better because they are counterintuitive, arbitrary or lack the information to actually make reasonable decisions to complete them - they are just flat out very poorly written and designed.

[OldWhovian.YTTV]

Originally posted by Homebrew:

Originally posted by Glenarn:

The problem you seem to be having with the game stems from assuming the game is going to be heavy on the RPG elements like the Witcher but it leans far more into it's Action Adventure. You'll find not everyone enjoys those types of games and half the questions are redundant, why would I care about the daily activities of a cat? All I want to do is go fight some Dragons or Ogres.

Yes the game would be better if they included more dialogue and have actual meaning to the quests but Itsuno did the same thing he did with the first game where he was too ambitious and wasted time on new ideas, we didn't even get a satisfying final boss.

Take my award. Couldn't have said it better myself. And I'm not going to try, but in much harsher terms:

He absolutely did this on the first game. The reason it had a cult following and not a mainstream fanbase like Skyrim was because it was a million awesome ideas and none of them were fully baked. It's his signature move at this point. I knew as soon as this game got more budget he wasn't going to focus on the faults of the first (though he said just that) while expanding on great ideas. He was going to take the money and come up with another 100 things he couldn't "finish."

And I feel it every time I launch this identity crisis.

You're halfway to the point OP is making. IF the quests aren't meant to be that deep and are there as flavor then why make them OBTUSE. The first game didn't make them the highlight; so they were very simple to find and expectations clearly defined; they didn't try to make them depend on you following no clearly defined objective along a rigidly defined path of "choices". You can't have your cake and eat it too. It can't be okay that the quests are obtuse to do intentionally AND that killing things is the only point.

Like, if the quests aren't the point then it's a problem because they're ill defined making them feel super gamey and bad when they should be flavor for why you're killing monsters. Or they are important, and then it's bad because they're just bad...either way it's a problem.

[AvG]

The side quests are nice but they did require quite a bit of chatting with npcs. That is one of the reasons I have 1300 goblin kills and only finished the masquerade today while most people already finished the game once. Of note though, almost all the side quests not related to master training did not result in rewards of note. They are only a minor concern for completionists I think. Even the pawn specialization scrolls, a lot of them can be gotten just by gifting presents instead of doing quests for npcs.

[OldWhovian.YTTV]

Originally posted by AvG:

The side quests are nice but they did require quite a bit of chatting with npcs. That is one of the reasons I have 1300 goblin kills and only finished the masquerade today while most people already finished the game once. Of note though, almost all the side quests not related to master training did not result in rewards of note. They are only a minor concern for completionists I think. Even the pawn specialization scrolls, a lot of them can be gotten just by gifting presents instead of doing quests for npcs.

It was the same for most of the quests in the first one; 90% were just "kill/deliver/escort". But you could just pick them up from a board at leisure. If you want some extra loot for your trouble it's kind of a pain to have to manually ask 100 people in a town to find 3-4 that actually need the help. It's made all the worse when some of the requests are "go find the thing" with no detail about...where...and no in-game resource to do the research (outside of getting a pawn that just plays the game for you).