But I think a really balanced ferrystone price would be around 4000 G. And a Portcrystal at least about 12000 G. Everything not so much acessible, of course, something like wanderers having about 2-3 ferrystones and only one wanderer with 1 Portcrystal with very long restock time. Shops can have 1 ferrystone as usual but no portcrystal.
This would greatly alleviate the fast travel problem without allowing fast travel to be used for everything IMO.
I'll keep this in mind. I plan to play myself to see how my current prices feel (beyond the basic testing I've done to make sure it actually worked in the first place) and I might tweak them later. I also might just make a separate version with more expensive prices in line with your suggestions.
Seconded. @500 gold, it's not quite cheating, but its so low it's like "why even bother" charging for it in the first place. Near the beginning of the game, your fast travel options are limited anyway and there's not many areas where you'd really need to use a ferrystone, so it's not as if 500 gold is "balanced" towards early game play by making them somewhat expensive (especially when inn stays cost even more). Not even factoring in oxcart rides, being only marginally cheaper (Vernworth to Bakbattahl only costing 400g).
I feel like the fast travel in this game isn't meant to be quite as "convenient". In that you have to really decide whether or not you want to fast travel, and whether it's worth it to do so. 3-4k gold to do so seems like a really fair compromise. Keeping fast travel as a bit of an "investment", but not breaking the bank (10k is just way too much). This makes using a ferrystone still feel like a deliberate choice, and still guilt-tripping the player for "wasting" one to travel an extremely short distance that they could have covered in a few mins walk.
An interesting exercise might just be to take the map, and make a circle around the major areas in terms of how far you'd be willing to walk to/from without using a ferrystone in the base game. Like say you made a circle centered around Vernworth, that extended to about Harve village, it'd be like you'd be willing to walk to Harve, but walking to Melve would be too far (ignoring oxcarts). Then base the price of the ferrystone based on how much the player should be "punished" for using a ferrystone right outside that limit. Here's an example (it's not at all accurate, but it's just a visual to help). Using the default price of 10k gold for the Ferrystone (and assuming no oxcarts, and the player could only buy Ferrystones). The inner blue circle is the distance the player is willing to walk to get to/from Vernworth. The outer circle is how far it "makes sense" to use a Ferrystone to travel back (how much is that convenience worth?). The middle gradient is how "guilty" (there's probably a better word for it) the player should feel to use one to travel a short distance back. Red means they should feel pretty guilty since it's just outside the range they would normally travel, and green means it's more or less justifiable. I think as you lower the price of the ferrystones, the middle and outer circles will shrink. At 500 gold, they'd be shrunken considerably to the point where that middle gradient just doesn't exist anymore (the center probably would too). The trick is to find that nice middle ground. Where the ferrystones are perfectly justifiable to use with the size of the map. I mean hell, you might just end up deciding the default of 10k isn't such a bad price after all.
I really do like the concept of this mod, and I'll keep my eye on it. But as it is 500g is just way too cheap. Hell, I'd even opt to make the more expensive one the de-facto choice for the mod. Sorry for the detailed write-up, and the visual would probably be a bit too involved for such a small mod, but I think the ferrystones offer a really unique concept to balance that you don't really see in other games.
I agree that the cost of stones is a bit much, and locking Portcrystals behind quests that you have to look up (I do...) is a sign that Capcom's method for obtaining them is flawed. I will give your mod a shot. I'm excited to see if this improves things.
I don't have a problem with lack of time, as I never play more than two games a year. Only one in some years. Nevertheless, I can understand that for consumers of video games, it's a problem, especially for those with a large backlog. Thank you for the mod, DOctOrSauce.
One of the best ideas about salespeople! Your idea is so good, that I think you should expand the proposal to include, for example, sersepsis crystals and metamorphosis art tomes in the same mod or complementary mods.
Due to the nature of how Dragon's Dogma 2 handles its items, every single merchant's inventories are all combined into one spreadsheet, essentially, and the same is true for consumable item data. A compatibility patch would effectively just be the entirety of my mod combined with the entirety of Wild Loot, since (to my admittedly limited) knowledge, it isn't possible to "patch" them together the same way you could with, say, a Skyrim mod. I'd think about it, but I'm not sure how Wild Loot's author would feel about it.
(It's a shame, because I do personally use and enjoy Wild Loot!)
That's a pretty good take on the teleport system, ignoring how easy it is to abuse the pawn system..
Personally I'd make the portstones weight 10 - 20kg cause even if it's magic, rock is rock, and it's heavy. Gotta trade accessibility for practicality right?
14 comments
But I think a really balanced ferrystone price would be around 4000 G. And a Portcrystal at least about 12000 G. Everything not so much acessible, of course, something like wanderers having about 2-3 ferrystones and only one wanderer with 1 Portcrystal with very long restock time. Shops can have 1 ferrystone as usual but no portcrystal.
This would greatly alleviate the fast travel problem without allowing fast travel to be used for everything IMO.
@500 gold, it's not quite cheating, but its so low it's like "why even bother" charging for it in the first place. Near the beginning of the game, your fast travel options are limited anyway and there's not many areas where you'd really need to use a ferrystone, so it's not as if 500 gold is "balanced" towards early game play by making them somewhat expensive (especially when inn stays cost even more). Not even factoring in oxcart rides, being only marginally cheaper (Vernworth to Bakbattahl only costing 400g).
I feel like the fast travel in this game isn't meant to be quite as "convenient". In that you have to really decide whether or not you want to fast travel, and whether it's worth it to do so. 3-4k gold to do so seems like a really fair compromise. Keeping fast travel as a bit of an "investment", but not breaking the bank (10k is just way too much). This makes using a ferrystone still feel like a deliberate choice, and still guilt-tripping the player for "wasting" one to travel an extremely short distance that they could have covered in a few mins walk.
An interesting exercise might just be to take the map, and make a circle around the major areas in terms of how far you'd be willing to walk to/from without using a ferrystone in the base game. Like say you made a circle centered around Vernworth, that extended to about Harve village, it'd be like you'd be willing to walk to Harve, but walking to Melve would be too far (ignoring oxcarts). Then base the price of the ferrystone based on how much the player should be "punished" for using a ferrystone right outside that limit.
Here's an example (it's not at all accurate, but it's just a visual to help).
Using the default price of 10k gold for the Ferrystone (and assuming no oxcarts, and the player could only buy Ferrystones). The inner blue circle is the distance the player is willing to walk to get to/from Vernworth. The outer circle is how far it "makes sense" to use a Ferrystone to travel back (how much is that convenience worth?). The middle gradient is how "guilty" (there's probably a better word for it) the player should feel to use one to travel a short distance back. Red means they should feel pretty guilty since it's just outside the range they would normally travel, and green means it's more or less justifiable.
I think as you lower the price of the ferrystones, the middle and outer circles will shrink. At 500 gold, they'd be shrunken considerably to the point where that middle gradient just doesn't exist anymore (the center probably would too). The trick is to find that nice middle ground. Where the ferrystones are perfectly justifiable to use with the size of the map. I mean hell, you might just end up deciding the default of 10k isn't such a bad price after all.
I really do like the concept of this mod, and I'll keep my eye on it. But as it is 500g is just way too cheap. Hell, I'd even opt to make the more expensive one the de-facto choice for the mod.
Sorry for the detailed write-up, and the visual would probably be a bit too involved for such a small mod, but I think the ferrystones offer a really unique concept to balance that you don't really see in other games.
(It's a shame, because I do personally use and enjoy Wild Loot!)
Personally I'd make the portstones weight 10 - 20kg cause even if it's magic, rock is rock, and it's heavy. Gotta trade accessibility for practicality right?