RPG General discussion thread

[Frindis]

The PC Gamer review found that the issue hitting framerate is the NPCs. Having just a few isn't a problem, but in town, they kill the framerate. What's more, they do it by spiking the CPU! Dumb the graphics down to 1990 graphics and you'll still have problems. I didn't pay attention enough to find out if there's a limit on how many cores get used for the calculations. If it's all done on a single thread, even a beefy CPU won't help all that much more.

There is more though, stuff like shadow flickering and weird-looking graphics through DLSSR. I'm sure the Denuvo protection is also not helping, but the latter is pure speculation on my part.

I don't really care, though. By the sound of it, you can get 50+ f/s outside of town without too much trouble. For a game like this, that should be all I need. Close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and when dropping tornadoes on your foes.

Yeah, I could live with 50+.

You will tell us about your exploits, right? I need to know when to send the passkey to Capcom so they can get to their recent code changes.

This just in: I met a giant red dragon in Devilfire Grove. It didn't like me trespassing and I wouldn't say I liked it breathing fire on my pawns, so I ran past it. Now the dragon is confused and probably even angrier the next time we cross paths.

Wakestones and rift crystals - bah. Just cheats to make the game easier and, from the reviews, there's no need for that at all. I guess the warp location marker simply shows you where fast travel locations are? I would be more likely to pay to keep those from being marked than the other way around.

The character editor is more concerning. I think this must have been what FextraLife was talking about. Like, there's a way to edit your character in game, but this DLC makes it so you can do it anytime, or something like that?

It is consumable, so when you use it, it is gone. "Obtain an item that allows the Arisen to edit their own appearance or the appearance of a pawn. It can be used only once when visiting a barberie.

A lot of games like to put these stupid cheat microtransactions out there. "Make the game easy by paying more money! Sure, you could lower the difficulty, but you're too good for that!" There's a psychology paper in there somewhere for sure.

The sad part is that the developers most likely did not want this shait in the first place, but then you have these greedy executives who do not care. The insane amount of money they will get through these microtransactions overshadows negative talk about them. The biggest part that infuriates me is that by having this type of microtransactions in the first place in a single-player game (which in itself is dumb) is that they can adjust the difficulty in getting the same type of currency in the game, making people more prone to buying into them or getting a worse experience because of it.

 

[Zloth]

The sad part is that the developers most likely did not want this shait in the first place, but then you have these greedy executives who do not care. The insane amount of money they will get through these microtransactions overshadows negative talk about them.

IS it insane? I don't know who's buying this stuff. Nothing about any of them sound like something you would want immediately and there's no special sale going on. If you try the game out, it isn't going to take long to see that at least some of the DLCs are for suckers, so you'll be dubious about the rest right away. And don't forget the heavily negative reviews for the DLCs.

So, who is buying them? People with a lot of money and low self esteem?

I've seen them in other games, too. Assassin's Creed has a DLC that will let you gain XP faster, for instance, in a game where you would have to ignore a ton of sidequests to avoid the level cap. They keep putting them in, though, so they've got to be making money from somebody.

For me, they mostly make me worry that, by the time I buy the game and they are included in the full package, the fool things will make the game too easy. I'll have to be careful with this one and disable them before starting.

 

[Frindis]

IS it insane? I don't know who's buying this stuff. Nothing about any of them sound like something you would want immediately and there's no special sale going on. If you try the game out, it isn't going to take long to see that at least some of the DLCs are for suckers, so you'll be dubious about the rest right away. And don't forget the heavily negative reviews for the DLCs.

So, who is buying them? People with a lot of money and low self esteem?

I don't think low self-esteem necessarily correlates to spending money, but I do know that a few people tend to spend a lot of money which probably makes them a target of interest. People like jtisallbusiness who spent over 100K on Diablo Immortal MTX because he could. I don't see many whales going for huge microtransactions investment in Dragons Dogma 2 as it would not make much sense, but I can see a lot of people who don't want to spend the time grinding for the in-game currency doing it. These types of players are why MTX exists and why profit is to be made - pay for convenience or pay for progress/power.

 

[Brian Boru]

they've got to be making money from somebody

It probably doesn't take much uptake to make it profitable. While not the same thing, a spam researcher 20-25 years ago concluded that it took 15 responses to every million spam emails to make it profitable.

a few people tend to spend a lot of money which probably makes them a target of interest

Applies in every walk of life. People buy Ferrari and Rolex and Versace and on and on and on—why should entertainment products be any different?

 

[Zloth]

...but I can see a lot of people who don't want to spend the time grinding for the in-game currency doing it.

They don't have to grind for this stuff, they just play the game. I could see somebody buying it because they aren't sure they're going to be good enough to play through it, so they get all the perks they can just to make sure. I could also see folks that don't really care much about $42 buying it because they don't want to take the time to do the research into them.

Brian is right, though, this is very low effort work. It won't take many sales to end up in the black. Unless, of course, they become an internet scapegoat on opening weekend and cost uncounted base game sales.

P.S. The game is back up over 50% in the reviews. The Steam discussion area is a hopeless mess, though.