Dragon's Dogma has an Easy mode now.

[piinyouri]

To my surprise after booting my PS3 up I see a screen I'm usually only used to seeing when I pop Skyrim in, the patch update screen.

I quickly punch in the patch number on google and lo and behold, they did in fact add in a toggel-able Easy mode for both the Jap and American releases.


So what are you fellow DragDog players thoughts on this?
My own opinion is of course it's not hurting me in anyway, but I can't help but feel an easy mode was not what the game could have used the most. I don't find the game particularly hard myself (No, I'm not some l33t Souls player. In fact I'm not even a fan of that series)

The game starts off difficult enough, but it get's easier pretty quickly and if you stop and go through every side quest, I found it's almost as bad as Borderlands (ie becoming so powerful mid-game that the rest of the game is straight out boring because you never ever die).
I've gotten to where now with new characters, I intentionally miss certain side quests just to keep myself from becoming to beefy.

Anyway, it's still a nice addition to the game for those who will be using it.
(Hoping a Hard mode switch is in the pipe though...)

EDIT: Edited because I am half asleep and made silly mistakes. GLARGH

 

[yuval152]

Alot of people on the gamespot forums were butthurt about it, but I don't mind it as long it dosen't interfere with my game experience.

But I think they should focus on making a big DLC like

Spoiler: Dragon's dogma ending spoilers

Broken Steel

I got the game a few days ago and I'm finding it pretty tricky actually. Not stupidly hard, but I'm finding myself dying pretty often. Way more often than I'm used to. I might try out easy mode if it gets irritating though. It hasn't so far. The thing that's annoyed me the most is that my pawns won't use the healing items I give them. They end up dying and screwing up fights.

They do but they only use them once they have very low health,and they do mess up sometimes.

 

[Scrustle]

I got the game a few days ago and I'm finding it pretty tricky actually. Not stupidly hard, but I'm finding myself dying pretty often. Way more often than I'm used to. I might try out easy mode if it gets irritating though. It hasn't so far. The thing that's annoyed me the most is that my pawns won't use the healing items I give them. They end up dying and screwing up fights.

 

[piinyouri]

I got the game a few days ago and I'm finding it pretty tricky actually. Not stupidly hard, but I'm finding myself dying pretty often. Way more often than I'm used to. I might try out easy mode if it gets irritating though. It hasn't so far. The thing that's annoyed me the most is that my pawns won't use the healing items I give them. They end up dying and screwing up fights.

Hmmm, that is strange. My problem tend to be the opposite.
I can't let them have any healing items I want for myself even temporarily as they will wolf them down in no time.

The game does get harder later. I won't spoil it, but safe to say you'll need a LOT of wakestones.

 

[yuval152]

I got the game a few days ago and I'm finding it pretty tricky actually. Not stupidly hard, but I'm finding myself dying pretty often. Way more often than I'm used to. I might try out easy mode if it gets irritating though. It hasn't so far. The thing that's annoyed me the most is that my pawns won't use the healing items I give them. They end up dying and screwing up fights.

Hmmm, that is strange. My problem tend to be the opposite.
I can't let them have any healing items I want for myself even temporarily as they will wolf them down in no time.

The game does get harder later. I won't spoil it, but safe to say you'll need a LOT of wakestones.

*venting alert*

This game is so hard,the only reason that I can stay alive is because I use my pawns as human sheilds.

I was once walking and then out of no where 2 magical archers and 3 warrios OHKed me and my pawns.

And you can't walk in the night without getting attacked by dire wolves or bandits.

 

[everythingbeeps]

I've run into a few idiotically hard spots, but I'm assuming they're places I'm not meant to go yet. The difficulty has been all over the damn place so far.

That said, if I can change the difficulty to easy mid-game, I probably will. Games like this I'm not interested in any challenge, just in exploration and story.

 

[AwkwardTurtle]

WHAT THE FACK!??!?!?!?!

Okay so it's really late at night/early in the morning and the above is clearly an exagerrated reaction. However, I'm really surprised that this addition was made. Does the easy mode just lower the amount of health that monsters have? (I assume this would be the easiest thing to implement via patch).

I know it doesn't affect me and I should let people have their options, but I don't know about this. I never once thought that the game needed an easy mode. On my first time going through it I rarely died.

I died once because I tried taking on these lizard folk way before I was apparently supposed to. I thought, "Well shit, I'll come back when I leveled up." Then I did like one more quest, discovered that their weakness was ice, and THEN I PROCEEDED TO WRECK THEIR SHIT.

I died a couple of other times simply due to sheer stupidity and fall damage. (I just wanted to see what would happen.)

I died once to a Chimera, learned to avoid/run from it and didn't die from it ever again.

I want to attribute it to the fact that "Oh I did a ton of the side-quests and I became stupidly overpowered.", but that's not even true. On my second go at the game I discovered that there were WAY more side-quests available to me that I didn't even know about.

I thought the game struck a magnificent balance between challenge and difficulty. I mean wasn't a walk in the park like Kirby or something equivalent. (That's the best I could come up with right now). However, at the same time it wasn't like ridiculous levels of difficulty that's more akin to the Dark Souls experience.

That's one of the main reasons why I freaking loved this game. I mean yeah the action-orientated combat was super awesome and it felt nice to just chop everything up, but you also needed to exercise a boatload of caution throughout the game. You couldn't actually just run through everything by just hack-n-slashing everything to bits. Quests required planning. At lower levels you couldn't get caught out at night. You could potentially get destroyed by the increased number of monsters. You had to plan your journeys so that you could get back to the capital while it was still day, or bring extra supplies knowing that you'd have to face the terror of the night.

Also, I liked the fact that this game felt like it had an emphasis on learning the game. This emphasis on learning is an element that greatly emphasized the importance and awesomeness of the pawn system, but I don't want to get too off-track. You, the player, had to learn about the world that you were in. Did a monster just wreck you and your party to kingdom come? Well, try to mix things up. Try a different tactic or a different elemental attack. Once you discover that monster's particular weakness most of them become total pushovers. (In my opinion at least.) This felt amazing because the game itself didn't just go like, OH HEY THIS IS THE BADDIE'S WEAKNESS USE YOUR SUPER SPECIAL ABILITY THAT IT IS WEAK AGAINST.(However, I will say that if you had some pawns that were higher leveled and knowledgeable then you could counter-argue that the "game" does tell you a monster's weakness. Still, I don't want to delve too deeply into a discussion on the pawn system.) It was a process where you had to learn, by actually attacking and trying to find the monster's weakness.

That was a ridiculous rant. I just love this game so much.

Overall, I suppose I'm not personally affected by the implementation of an optional easy mode, but I feel like playing in that mode slightly undermines the whole idea of learning about the game and being able to naturally overcome the challenges thrown at you.

The game does get harder later. I won't spoil it, but safe to say you'll need a LOT of wakestones.

That's a surprising thing to hear. I never used any Wakestones on myself. In fact, I thought the only purpose of Wakestones was to revive any NPC's you killed/accidently got killed during an escort quest. Although I suppose you would naturally find out that Wakestones revived you if you just died while one was in your inventory.

Unless you just meant

Spoiler: This is a spoiler about the end of the game, do not click it if you don't want any of the game to be spoiled.

The part at the end of the game where you have to get 20 Wakestones as part of the story quest.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

I would love to have a hard mode. This game get`s way to easy after a short time. I did many sidequests in my first playthrough and stayed away from the only real dangerous spot on the map until i reached level 25. The only way to play this game on hard now is to play with only one or without any pawns at all.

 

[piinyouri]

Spoiler: This is a spoiler about the end of the game, do not click it if you don't want any of the game to be spoiled.

The part at the end of the game where you have to get 20 Wakestones as part of the story quest.

Didn't so much mean that as I meant the place you have to go through to get those stones.

Spoiler

The Everfall is the only truly difficult place I've experienced. (Aside from going to the smugglers lane when you are level 20 or so)
Some floors can be fairly easy, but there are certainly floors that will eat you alive, even at high levels with good gear. Chamber of Fate?
Or even just any floor that has a lot of Hellhounds. The Archydra also gave me trouble the first couple times, but that's smoothed out now.

 

[CD-R]

I would love to have a hard mode. This game get`s way to easy after a short time. I did many sidequests in my first playthrough and stayed away from the only real dangerous spot on the map until i reached level 25. The only way to play this game on hard now is to play with only one or without any pawns at all.

According to the Capcom forums they are supposedly going add "new play elements"

http://www.capcom-unity.com/dragonsdogma/go/thread/view/122057/29223447/Hideaki_Itsuno:_were_continuing_to_prepare_new_play_elements

So hopefully a hardcore mode or proper expansions will be coming.

WHAT THE FACK!??!?!?!?!

Okay so it's really late at night/early in the morning and the above is clearly an exagerrated reaction. However, I'm really surprised that this addition was made. Does the easy mode just lower the amount of health that monsters have? (I assume this would be the easiest thing to implement via patch).

All it does is reduce the amount of damage enemies do to you. But that looks like that's all it does. So if you get hit with a Cockatrice's petrifying gaze and you don't have any softeners or a cyclops tosses you off a cliff you're still fucked.

This is actually pretty good timing for me. A couple of my friends just got X Boxes for the first time and I wanted to show them this game. They are definitely going to need this.

Also

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.378778-The-Pawns-Guild-Dragons-Dogma-Pawn-and-Friend-exchange

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

According to the Capcom forums they are supposedly going add "new play elements"

So hopefully a hardcore mode or proper expansions will be coming.

I´ve seen those news too, sadly they don´t tell anything about the things they have in mind.
Hopefully it won`t be just a new set of clothes and weapons. I would love to see a new area with quests and new enemy types. At least they are planning something and i wasn`t going to resell this game anyway. I had roughly over 100 hours of fun with it but atm i just needed and took a break.

A second Dragon`s Dogma is almost a sure buy, i haven`t had this much fun with a Capcom game since the 16 bit times are gone.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

In the very beginning the game can be difficult, mainly the first 5 hours or so if you are predisposed to avoid the main plot in every rpg ever like I am for as long as possible.

Sadly EVERY SINGLE enemy encounter is precisely the same each time you go anywhere till the final 5% of the game when its swapped out for new ones. Basically you will only ever be surprised by something once.

Also when you get about lv80 you are pretty powerful no matter what your gear is, or the lack therof, or how you built your skills.

Unless you used Warrior asap and never looked back the game will be really easy in all but 2 or 3 rooms of Everfall.

Since you can get to lv200 with no increased enemy difficulty , an easy mode is not really needed. Since the same amount of effort could easily have made a harder mode I think that may be a possibility.

I stopped playing it a while ago having all but finished my 2nd run, due to lack of interest in farming rare gear, as I already had the best stuff from Ur.

I could also pretty much pwn everything by facerolling the controller.

 

[lapan]

To my surprise after booting my PS3 up I see a screen I'm usually only used to seeing when I pop Skyrim in, the patch update screen.

I quickly punch in the patch number on google and lo and behold, they did in fact add in a toggel-able Easy mode for both the Jap and American releases.

I'd argue what it really needs is difficulty. Enemies don't scale well or at all and get much too easy as you progress through the game. Some proper scaling would have added much replayability.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I never found Dragon's Dogma difficult in the slightest.
Yes, I am a 'l33t Souls player' as OP aptly put it, but I don't think that really applies because the two games require different skill sets.
I only died when I accidentally fell off a cliff, or picked up by a Griffin and one-shot with fall damage, but I'd call that a fuck up on my part, not the game being hard.
That said, I haven't played it in a while because I'm on my fifth playthrough, and I'm incredibly OP, so it became a bit boring.

 

[piinyouri]

To my surprise after booting my PS3 up I see a screen I'm usually only used to seeing when I pop Skyrim in, the patch update screen.

I quickly punch in the patch number on google and lo and behold, they did in fact add in a toggel-able Easy mode for both the Jap and American releases.

I'd argue what it really needs is difficulty. Enemies don't scale well or at all and get much too easy as you progress through the game. Some proper scaling would have added much replayability.

I would agree.
Fingers crossed for that one.
The game could have really benefited from a Souls type of NG+ as well, as how things are now, there's not much of a reason to start a NG+ (Other than buying port crystals to make getting the "The Hero" achievement easier.)

 

[Contradiction]

Sounds like good stuff to me. For begginer players the Saurians can be pretty daunting depending on when you face them. As long as it introduces people then I see no negatives to it.

However

Alot of people on the gamespot forums were butthurt about it, but I don't mind it as long it dosen't interfere with my game experience.

But I think they should focus on making a big DLC like

Spoiler: Dragon's dogma ending spoilers

Broken Steel

If we're going to use

Spoiler: DLC analog

Broken Steel

as an example I say screw that why don't we ask for the far superior improvment that series implememnted and go for a

Spoiler: DLC analog

HARDCOREMODE

 

[yuval152]

Sounds like good stuff to me. For begginer players the Saurians can be pretty daunting depending on when you face them. As long as it introduces people then I see no negatives to it.

However

Alot of people on the gamespot forums were butthurt about it, but I don't mind it as long it dosen't interfere with my game experience.

But I think they should focus on making a big DLC like

Spoiler: Dragon's dogma ending spoilers

Broken Steel

If we're going to use

Spoiler: DLC analog

Broken Steel

as an example I say screw that why don't we ask for the far superior improvment that series implememnted and go for a

Spoiler: DLC analog

HARDCOREMODE

We need a save system(like skyrim) for hardcore mode, but since we don't we are bound to 1 checkpoint and 1 save that will make it impossible to play hardcore mode.