Dragons Dogma. Why the Pawn system is a great concept.

After 175 hours played of Dragons Dogma I went to sleep yesterday asking myself why I'm still playing it. I've pretty much just been grinding the same stuff over and over for a long while now yet I still find myself coming back to it.
Why?

I woke up this morning, checked my low level alt pawn who has pretty good gear and I notice that in the hours I've been sleeping 13(!) people have been using her and given lots of good feedback. And it's a good feeling. Instead of drooling at my own character then realizing I have nothing left to do I feel rewarded. I feel helpful, all my work is beneficial for other people. Helps them out. This is what keeps me going.
I'm hardly trying to gear my main character at all, that gear is "just" decent. All my best gear goes straight to my pawn cuz I feel more rewarded improving her than myself.
Speaking with other people who play 100+ hours of DD, it's mostly the same. They are focusing on their pawn rather than their own character.

That being said, DD's pawn system is rough and unpolished. The AI's are terrible at times and there are pretty much no restrictions since you can hire any pawn for free just by befriending the owner which causes imbalance for low levels. But in the end that is the players choice, if they want to let pawns smash through their content or want to challenge the content themselves.

I hope that other games will utilize a similar, more polished version of this feature in the future. For all that Dragon's Dogma is, the pawns is the reason why people play 100+ hours of this game and why it's so popular.

And pawns is the reason there is just one savegame slot supposed to be cheatproof.
That concept doesn't look great to me, sorry.

joxer said:

And pawns is the reason there is just one savegame slot supposed to be cheatproof.
That concept doesn't look great to me, sorry.

Click to expand...

Irrelevant. One savefile was a decision made to avoid corrupted savefiles which a lot of people who use save managers get. That's just poor design which could easily have been fixed with a user save system similar to Original Sin. The concept of pawns aren't based off the devs decision on how savefiles work.

joxer, why must you always try to poop on everyone's party?

It's a great idea. Their AI can be glitchy at times, switching from genius to morons, it adds to the fun. Unlike Inquisition who were consistently morons.
Only thing I would have changed is their integration in the world...a bit too "gamey" for my taste.

JDR13 said:

joxer, why must you always try to poop on everyone's party?

Click to expand...

Diversity.
No, not the brits awsome streetdance group.

BoboTheMighty said:

Only thing I would have changed is their integration in the world…a bit too "gamey" for my taste.

Click to expand...

I think that's a good way of putting it. I'm not a fan of the summoning system at all. I would have preferred meeting companions at inns or some other such places.

My pawn isn't getting rented out much at all. I'm around level 60 now and I think he got hired four times. Only once did the player bother to rate. I've yet to see a comment or a gift. Though there was one time when I got something like 50k RC, doubling my count. SOMEBODY must have used him for quite some time! He's a good pawn: a scather/medicator and has sure served me well.

Still, it is a fun system. It's interesting to see how other people's pawns are doing. Checking in on old, favorite pawns is fun, too.

joxer said:

And pawns is the reason there is just one savegame slot supposed to be cheatproof.
That concept doesn't look great to me, sorry.

Click to expand...

Errr, there's two actually. Your checkpoint save and your "normal" save.

P.S. Goblins ill like fire!

Zloth said:

He's a good pawn: a scather/medicator and has sure served me well.

Click to expand...

If you want the pawn getting hired frequently, there is only one recipe.
Turn the pawn into she, if possible with huge butt and boobs, skills irrelevant.

Getting your pawn regularly hired does require a bit of effort either in researching the most wanted setups or using the community forums on steam (preferably both).
I'm getting around 3-5 hires on a daily basis for mine atm.

Well, the biggest thing needed to get your pawn hired, is to pretend to be a girl yourself AND have a girl pawn that dresses scantily and then beg on steam for hires.
I've never bothered. I think someone hired one of my pawns once and they gave me a nut as a reward. I thought that was ironic

I do rent pawns but I just go to the primary/secondary skills tab and hire that way. I've had some pretty freaky looking pawns show up I never hire much above my own level. If I played on hard, I might think about it. I think the pawn system is good for people who crave social attention. I would rent Nyx's pawn, but I'm sure they're too high a level for this Arisen. I think I'm in the 20's somewhere.

My pawn could prolly complete the game for you solo

Rents seem to have gotten better after I complained here. Guess I need to do more complaining!

Best quote from my pawn:

Seriously? No way we could have lost to the Ur-Dragon? I admit I got lucky with the timing but the UR-DRAGON!?

crpgnut said:

I think the pawn system is good for people who crave social attention.

Click to expand...

Ah, that would explain why for me personally I don't see any sense in lending pawns.

I must admit that I never bothered much about that game - but pawn that can get rented ??? That's new to me.
Sounds great to me, and like much potential. Community play in a different way.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I must admit that I never bothered much about that game - but pawn that can get rented ??? That's new to me.
Sounds great to me, and like much potential. Community play in a different way.

Click to expand...

Yeah the community is pretty great to be honest. People are extremely helpful and it's contagious. Even more so since it's pretty bad manner fool proof. If you try to be an ass to somebody's pawn it actually ends up helping them out more than it hurts them.

Ewwwww, yukk.
The very reason I'm enjoying League of Legends right now is the toxic community. Learned quite a few fresh curses and insults there.

Pawns are strange critters, to say the least. They look human but they most certainly aren't. They're more like trans-dimensional androids.

That Ur-Dragon getting killed in the screenshot is actually another manifestation of the online-but-alone aspect of the game. It actually has the hit points of many THOUSANDS of dragons! You aren't likely to beat it yourself. Instead, you pound on it as much as you can until you run off or get killed. The damage is recorded by Capcom servers and the next person to cause the Ur-Dragon to spawn will see that damage already done to the dragon. Multiply by thousands of players and the dragon can be killed in a matter of hours.

When the dragon does go down, two things happen. First, every player that contributed will be assigned rewards. The next time that player goes to the Ur-Dragon's area, the rewards will spawn (instead of the dragon?). Also, a 'grace period' happens where anyone trying to attack a new Ur-Dragon will actually get a very weakened version and actually finish the beast off themselves, which generates even more rewards and an achievement. That allows people who are continuously going in, attacking, running away, and going back in again to attack some more a chance to really defeat the thing.

Of course, if you don't like the multi-player aspect then you can just set the game to off-line and you'll get random pawns and an Ur-Dragon that can actually be beaten by your party alone.

There's really a lot of original stuff in this game. I should write up a review (where I don't use the word 'actually' quite so much).

Zloth said:

Of course, if you don't like the multi-player aspect then you can just set the game to off-line and you'll get random pawns and an Ur-Dragon that can actually be beaten by your party alone.

Click to expand...

I think I'll play the game exactly like that. If it's even possible.

Definitely possible - it's in the options menu. You can switch it on and off whenever you like.