龙的教条2经济是一种混乱

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has its claws firmly in my chest and it’s ripped out my heart, intent on devouring it whole, still-beating. I don’t quite understand why, because the main quests are kinda boring (sorry, Captain Brant), the stakes are low (at the moment, a dozen hours in), and the performance is struggling. But hey, at least the fast travel evokes one of my favourite ever fantasy RPGs .

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But, most importantly, the gameplay loop is incredibly engaging. Exploration is rewarding, fights are maybe too frequent, but perfectly balanced. I got murdered by a Saurian in the opening hours of the game – the damn lizard hid in the darkest recess of a cave I was passing through – and now I can take on three or four at a time. I have to be careful still, I can’t just jump into the middle of the fray, but with the right techniques and judicious application of a broadsword, I can beat them. With that said, it’s not Elden Ring levels of difficulty, which ultimately puts me off a game.

Then you graduate to the big guys. The first Minotaur I faced was devastating, and I was forced to retreat. Now, just ten hours later, I can handle them with relative ease. While the story progression is a little dull, the progression of your martial abilities feels great.

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an arisen stabbing a cyclops in the nether regions in dragons dogma 2

As you progress, you earn gold. I’ve been spending all my cash on buying and upgrading my weapons and armour up until this point, forgoing spending the night at an inn in favour of camping to save a few extra pennies. But when I was on one such shopping spree, I noticed that the Vermundian economy is in shambles.

Let’s talk costs. In the early stages of the game, the finest sword in Vernworth will set you back 5,650 gold. That’s around the price of three nights’ stay at the local inn for your party of four. That all makes sense. You can chuck a couple of hundred coins at an oxcart driver to carry you across the country. And a haircut costs 10,000 gold.

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Who is getting haircuts for this price? Who, in this world of monsters and danger around every corner, is getting a trim instead of buying two swords? That’s three weeks’ rent at an inn to get your highlights touched up. Now there are plenty of rich folk in Vernworth – I’m trying to get into a fancy masquerade ball and the clobber will set me back 300,000 gold – but for us Arisen and our Pawns, earning our keep from picking up 200 gold from every fifth goblin we slay, are we stuck with our haircut for life?

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It’s worth noting that some of the pricings clearly don’t have lore reasons, they’re in place to make the gameplay systems work. Oxcarts are cheap as chips because Capcom wants you to use them to traverse its world. Likewise, Ferrystones cost 100 times as much because the developers didn’t want you to use that system as freely.

If you believe that Capcom made Ferrystones expensive so you have to buy microtransactions to fast travel, you don’t understand game development or Dragon’s Dogma 2 .

Inns are quite expensive to encourage you to camp – something that not only impacts your carry weight as you have to lug your tent around with you, but is also a dangerous affair. Better weapons are also expensive to encourage you to find better armaments in chests or picked off the corpses of felled foes. Everything is designed to stop you from minmaxing and forcing you to engage with the game’s core loop: exploring and scrapping.

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a beastren arisen clinging onto a dragon for dear life as it flies into the air in dragon's dogma 2

But what purpose does setting haircuts at that price point serve? Are the developers trying to force you to live with your hairstyle decisions made in character creation? Haircuts make no sense in-universe and no sense from a developer standpoint, so why do they cost so much? How are the barbers still in business? Do they rely on two rich customers popping in per month in order to make rent? I don’t understand the Vermundian economy, but I sure as heck know I’m not getting a trim any time soon.

Next: Game Design And ADHD With Games Workshop Veteran James Hewitt

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