>automatically fail side quests just because you decided to play ONE main quest

I'd even settle for just a bigger variety of sets

That implies the devs knew what they were doing in the first place, and not just slapping together a half-ass to recoup costs.

Like, un-ironically, DD was an ambitious game, where like 70% planned content was cut. You see it everywhere, from the pseudo-food/health mechanics, not being able to swim while living RIGHT NEXT TO A BEACH (lolbrine), the Greatwall Encampment...

I mean, frick, the opening to Witchwood is RIGHT THERE, but only staff wielders can reach it.

>No one said this.
Other than the very post I was replying to

>game stopped me from running past enemies that were too hard for me
wowie

The developers seem to have a firm grasp of diagetics in game design, so I can only interpret their designing the hydra quest to take place in the morning as intentional.
Why would they intentionally put the player in a time of day where there are enemies that pose the greatest threat on the path to witchwood and then give no hint that your odds might be different if you tried to sneak through bandit territory at night? It would be a great way to teach new players to game the rest system and overworld enemy comps.

Except we know for a fact this isn't the case because they would have used pawn chatter to indicate it, like they do everywhere else in the game. Instead, the only pawn chatter saying anything about the time of day tells players its more dangerous at night. The fact that there are appropriately leveled wolves right after the bandits so close that you can end up fighting them at the same time if you make it past the first group is pretty strong evidence that the entire thing is unintentional. Those bandits were most likely supposed to be of the weaker variety that you encounter on the main path but someone fricked up and made them the strength of the ones in front of and inside the ruins.
>the game beats you over the head constantly that you don't need to fight everything
The game reminds you that you can run away from enemies that are too strong. It never once tells you to run through them. Which makes sense, because nowhere else in the game will you find weaker enemies by running past strong ones. That is a phenomenon exclusive to this one area.

Sounds like a skill issue to me.

Keep this non-argument in the fromsoft threads, thanks.

>All that was said was you can run past them.
Why are you defending errors in a game you've never played? The reason people say "just run past them" is because there actually are weaker enemies after them. If there weren't, the quest these people are defending wouldn't even be realistically do-able until later in the game because Quina would get murdered by enemies that the arisen can barely scratch. The entire argument hinges on pretending you didn't look at a guide.

You're the only one crying

What even is this attempt at an argument?
>your argument is invalid because you aren't criticizing the quest that isn't actually the problem
The issue with lost and found isn't that it fails when it does. It's entirely the over strong bandits in the way. Everything the player has been told and experienced up to that point will mislead them into believing that they aren't ready to do lost and found yet. That is the only reason why the very next main story quest sending them all the way to gran soren and the one after it failing lost and found are a problem. If those bandits were simply the same ones as on the main trail, new players would never have any reason to believe they stumbled in to a high level area and that they were supposed to come back later.
And the existence of ng+ isn't an argument against any of this. Yes, there are all sorts of missable things and things that are mutually exclusive with one another on a single playthrough. But none of those are easily missable because two groups of overlevelled enemies trick players who are trying to complete the quest into progressing too far in the main story.

What the frick are you even talking about? It is literally impossible for lure of the abyss to have the same issue because it's an un-failable main quest. If you get wrecked by the ogre you can leave, complete every single quest you have available, and then come back and still complete lure of the abyss. Lost and found is the only time that a level appropriate quest is guarded by inappropriately leveled enemies and will fail if you leave to try and get stronger first.

>somehow anyone that got LaF canceled by LotA got through it
Because it's un-failable. The only way to "not get through" lure of the abyss is to stop playing the game entirely. Meanwhile, failing lost and found is as simple as not knowing that the witchwood isn't full of enemies just as strong as the bandits guarding it. How fricking moronic do you have to be to try this argument?
>you go aaaall the way to Gran Soren first
You mean the very next main story quest? The one that Mercedes asks you to start before you leave the encampment and get lost and found? The one that Mercedes talks about like it's somewhat urgent? And then if you do that quest you have to immediately backtrack all the way along the path you just took in order to not fail lost and found, although admittedly that part is less bad now with the eternal ferrystone.
And yes, if you do all the sidequests available before off with its head, you can be high enough level to fight those bandits. But that itself is half expecting guidehomosexualry. You mention the saurians, but that quest too is one that can initially turn players away since they're also a jump in both defense and damage over what players have faced up to that point. And, unlike lost and found, it doesn't fail until you kill the dragon so leaving it for later isn't even a bad idea.
It's always this hindsight bullshit of expecting new players to already know everything you do after playing through the entire game multiple times. All to avoid admitting that the quest is shit. Or really not even the quest itself, the part once you get to the witchwood is good. But those bandits are bad and there is zero reason to defend it.

And that's all well and good. My only issue is homosexuals who didn't play the game blind trying to act like there's nothing wrong with the quest and that it's the majority of players who missed it that were playing the game wrong by not knowing things they would only know by reading a wiki.

>Because it's un-failable
just because it's unfailable doesn't mean it's a cakewalk your first time through because it's arguably harder to deal with the ogre than it is with the bandits
>not knowing that the witchwood isn't full of enemies just as strong as the bandits guarding it
Same logic should apply to the everfall then, huh?
>The one that Mercedes asks you to start before you leave the encampment and get lost and found?
Yes, the one that interrupts you from immediately going off to Gran Soren
>The one that Mercedes talks about like it's somewhat urgent?
Escorting a hydra head is more important that your childhood friend disappearing?
>And yes, if you do all the sidequests available before off with its head, you can be high enough level to fight those bandits
Wow it's almost as if those things were setting you up for success and you just ignored them
>It's always this hindsight bullshit of expecting new players to already know everything
Not at all. If anything the way Lost and Found is set up is to let a new player know that trying to do too many quests at once has consequences, which is something the pawns quip on as well.

>just because it's unfailable doesn't mean it's a cakewalk your first time through
Which is completely irrelevant to your argument that it's the exact same as lost and found
>Same logic should apply to the everfall then, huh?
The everfall is a failable side quest?
>Yes, the one that interrupts you from immediately going off to Gran Soren
Seriously? You're actually trying to argue that the quest that sends you to gran soren interrupts you from going there? These are the lengths you're willing to go to not admit that those bandits are shit design?
>Escorting a hydra head is more important that your childhood friend disappearing?
Yes, actually. And you'd understand that if you had ever actually played this game blind. Actually try listening to Mercedes next time. She makes it sounds like the quest is time sensitive. Which is exactly what I thought on my first playthrough. So after I spent 20 minutes killing a single bandit only to get one shot by his friend, I concluded that I should probably go ahead and do that before coming back to the clearly much higher level witchwood.
>"not exhaustively going through a checklist on the wiki is ignoring the game"
>If anything the way Lost and Found is set up is to let a new player know that trying to do too many quests at once has consequences
No, it very clearly isn't. How many times does Ser Maximillen ask if you're sure you want to do come to court because it'll cancel sidequests? The developers clearly weren't trying to pull the rug out from under players like you're suggesting. Those bandits were simply a mistake in a rushed game.

>They have less magic defense than physical, are weak to a bunch of status ailments, and take more damage when held down. They melt to throw blasts and dragons spit, you can pelt them with nearby boulders for like half their health
Oh, this shit again. How many of these things did you know about and how to do on your first playthrough at this point in the game?

>bringing up the chimeras as if there's anything like that you can do to the bandits
You're the same guy that tried this last time, aren't you? I wonder if the thread will archive before you actually answer the question again?

>Which is completely irrelevant to your argument
it's entirely relevant because you keep whining about this difficulty roadblock when completing Lure of the Abyss is essentially the same thing AND it's the thing that cancels out Lost and Found. You just refuse to accept it because it BTFO of your complaint.
>The everfall is a failable side quest?
The part where you complained about the difficulty roadblock, see above.
>You're actually trying to argue that the quest that sends you to gran soren interrupts you from going there?
No genius, the one where you leave the Encampment to go to Gran Soren and then you're stopped and told Quina is missing is the one that interrupts you from, like I said, going to Gran Soren
>Yes, actually
So you're a sociopath then. Or likely so backed into a corner you'd pretend to be one.
>Actually try listening to Mercedes next time. She makes it sounds like the quest is time sensitive
How ironic, see pic related
>No, it very clearly isn't
It definitely is given how hard you're crying about missing it

It tricks idiots like you so speak for yourself.

I'm the one who wrote the guides in the first place, buddy. You're welcome.

>which isn't a problem
because the quest isn't failable you disingenuous mongrel.
>The one that interrupts you from going straight to Gran Soren
And so you go up the trail to try and complete it, see that the enemies are way too strong for you, conclude that you need to come back later, and then fail the quest. That's been the argument the entire time, no use in pretending you don't get it now.
>"you're a sociopath because this video game is just like real life"
If we're going to treat this like real life then Quina would have either been killed by the bandits before reaching the witchwood or have been tough enough to beat them and therefore nothing in the witchwood would have been a threat to her.
>It literally only filters autists who can't handle missing something in a game the first time they play through it even though the game itself is built to be replayed over and over
That's just it, though. When people complain about missing this quest you homosexuals don't say "yeah, it's easy to miss. but you can just do it on another playthrough" like was the norm when this game released. No, instead you insist that the quest is actually perfect and anyone who misses it is playing the game wrong because they should have known things they couldn't have known without looking at a wiki.

>"You're the only one who has been bringing up guides and wikis, dipshit."
>continues to suggest a course of action that only makes sense if you read a wiki

>says the guy pretending not to understand the point
Holy fricking projection
>good thing it isn't
You're the homosexual that tried arguing that applying video game logic to a video game makes you a sociopath.
>all the way to Gran Soren
Literally the next quest, that the game portrays as time sensitive.
>and then beat a quest with an arguably much more difficult roadblock
It's either that or immediately backtracking the way you just came. Also, you've been conveniently ignoring how frequently the ogre kills himself. He did it in my first playthrough and I've even seen people who think it's scripted because it always happens to them.
>They did
>but actually no, the quest is good
The quest is blatantly misleading and no one used to have any issue admitting this. Bending over backwards to defend flaws in the game isn't a good thing. Stop doing it.
>oh look, a dialogue that only pops up if you decline the quest and then talk to Mercedes again
Incorrect, guidegay. She says it as soon as you decline the quest. Which is what I did initially because I still hadn't finished the flower quest and I thought I was going to be immediately forced to do the head one since the last time I took Mercedes up on an offer it jumped straight in to the hydra fight. Then she dropped that line and made it sound time sensitive. And yet, despite that I still tried to go to the witchwood first. It was only after getting wrecked and concluding that it must be a higher level area that I decided I needed to complete the head escort before it failed.

And what if you just tell Mercedes "no"?
[...]
You went in at vocation rank 7 and still got spanked? Were you still using the rusted bow? I'm sure you meant 3 fold so it's whatever. But it's not unrealistic to be vocation rank 3 by that point and have the likes of either toss and trigger for burning, helm splitter for better melee damage, ensnare for the easy pin, or full bend for a bow move with some actual punch to it. Not to mention that with weapon enhancement opening up to you just beforehand it's not unreasonable for someone to want to round up materials to take advantage of it.

Yeah, I meant threefold. And I think I did still have the rusted bow. I spent all my money on daggers and fashion. And I think I just had burst strike and kisses for dagger. Don't remember anything but threefold for bow.

Because even with my better knives, killing them took forever and I still took an absurd amount of damage. Why would I keep bashing my head against enemies that were clearly too high a level? If someone were to say the game sucks because they went to bbi early and got their shit pushed in no one would try and act like they should have kept going. But that's exactly you people's stance on this quest, because you can't admit there's a flaw.

>Holy fricking projection
Says the guy who fricking screams "YOU USED A GUIDE YOU USED A GUIDE" when people say they did the quest normally, and you say shit like, "These enemies have 5542 hitpoints and are level 20 and at exactly 23:00PM they stop appearing on the road." because you got so fricking buttblasted the second the QUEST FAILED notification popped that you immediately looked it up.

>it's just completely making shit up now

>Holy fricking projection
no one is dumb enough to think LaF and LotA are being compared by their ability to be canceled so there's literally only one explanation why you keep crying about that instead of accepting what's actually being discussed here
>You're the homosexual that tried arguing that applying video game logic to a video game makes you a sociopath
In the context of you thinking like a sociopath? Correct.
>Literally the next quest
which gets interrupted by Elvar telling you Quina's gone missing
>It's either that or immediately backtracking the way you just came
Which would have solved your problem but you're missing the point that it's actually the same problem to begin with.
>The quest is blatantly misleading
it's literally about finding Quina and returning her safely to the village
>no one used to have any issue admitting this
Oh did you mean the quest being something that filters people? No one has denied this.
The only reason people are so blunt about it is because there's an inordinate amount of whining that it makes the game bad somehow and if that's honestly how you feel then you should feel the same about Lure of the Abyss, the post-game difficulty spike and BBI which makes people think the game isn't for you.
>She says it as soon as you decline the quest
So somehow you got the impression that quest would fail but looking for Quina wouldn't? Sorry but all this just continues to make it sound like you're looking for excuses as to why this is "bad design" when you already knew what you were getting into

>no one is dumb enough to think LaF and LotA are being compared by their ability to be canceled
Then why did you bring up lure of the abyss?
>"you're a sociopath for not unevenly applying real world logic to a video game"
>repeating itself
>intentionally missing the point about what part is misleading despite it being explicitly stated several times
>"filtered" homosexualry
>So somehow you got the impression that quest would fail but looking for Quina wouldn't?
I got the impression that the quest behind enemies that I could barely scratch was intended to be done later. But then, you already know that and being a disingenuous homosexual.

>all that time spent on the game
>can't get over being butthurt from failing an early game quest
now this is autism

>"if you acknowledge a flaw in a a game you must be butthurt about it"

>Because it features the same thing you're complaining about Lost and Found
No it doesn't.
>a difficulty roadblock
That doesn't result in players failing the quest if they decide to come back later.
>more shit about sociopathy that doesn't even make sense anymore
>There's literally nothing misleading about the quest though
As was already explained like 200 posts ago, the bandits are the misleading part. A player going in blind is given the impression that the following area, and consequently the quest beyond/within it, is too high a level for them and is intended to be returned to later. This is not the case. The most appropriate time to do lost and found is immediately after you get it, the witchwood itself isn't hard at all. But the presence of those bandits completely fricks up that impression.
>ng+
Not an argument for the quest design not being shit.
>it's not that at all
Then why are you incapable of acknowledging this blatant flaw? And you clearly know it's a flaw since you go so far as to pretend you expect new players to know shit they couldn't possibly know and intentionally miss the point of what's wrong.

[...]

>flee from strong enemies
>fail quest
inb4 the 15th
>no see you're supposed to flee INTO them

>it just does OK!
>no see if you only retreat but then never actually do anything to get higher level the quest doesn't fail so therefore the game pushing you to retreat is totally fine
>i know, i'll keep declaring that someone is a sociopath because of a poorly designed video game quest, that's definitely been a winning argument the last 12 times i've repeated it
>the enemies guarding the way to a quest have nothing to do with the quest
>the 30th iteration of "just run past the enemies because you somehow know the area beyond it is easier"
>i'm totally willing to admit the game isn't perfect, except actually if you criticize something it means you're butthurt
>even though i myself know it's so indefensibly bad that i've been resorting to dishonest arguments the entire thread to defend it

>encounter bandits
>kill them all, except the fighter
>"huh, must be a bandit leader or something"
>go to the rift, get mage pawns
>fighter dies eventually
>bandits after deal a ton of dmg but are killable
>wolves join in
>book it to my quest marker
>witchwood is easier
And that's how you play if you aren't brain damaged. Imagine getting roadblocked by a single enemy

>encounter enemy that takes no damage
>"ah yes, i'll go get mage pawns for some reason"
Even someone following a guide isn't gong to know they can just barely break the magic defense of this enemy that they can't get past the defenses of. This one is even worse than acting like players will already know that throwblasts are OP.

>I don't drop a save and try to do stuff to see what happens
>I must do everything perfectly the first time

>i totally knew that i should "drop a save" and make a suicide run past these specific overlevelled enemies to a safer area i have no reason to believe exists or a quest would fail an hour from now
>i'm definitely not just trying to come up with an ex post facto excuse for this quest with the benefit of hindsight because i'm a homosexual that thinks imperfect = bad

Dude, I just played through the start of the game as a mage like two weeks ago. Even completing all the side quests up to that point and buying a new staff, holy focused bolts tickled him and I had to batter him down with ingles. Even if you did go back and get mages, there's no way you could have gone through the shitshow of baby sitting mage pawns while they slowly whittled him down without understanding why anyone could possibly conclude that the quest is intended to be done later. That's what makes you come across as a guidegay. Not getting past them, but treating bashing your head against them as more logical than coming back later when there's nothing to indicate that the following areas will be any easier.

>i totally knew that i should "drop a save" and make a suicide run past these specific overlevelled enemies to a safer area i have no reason to believe exists or a quest would fail an hour from now
You don't "know" you should drop a save - this is something you do when you are about to try some stuff out to see what happens. You don't do that. You don't play games, you complete them and get upset that your usual checklist now has a big fat FAILED on it.
>the quest dialogue suggests much danger and much urgency. Didn't read. I'll just do it later.
>noooo, how could it fail

>i'm definitely not just trying to come up with an ex post facto excuse for this quest with the benefit of hindsight because i'm a homosexual that thinks imperfect = bad
You literally said it's shit design.

>Holy fricking projection
no one is dumb enough to think LaF and LotA are being compared by their ability to be canceled so there's literally only one explanation why you keep crying about that instead of accepting what's actually being discussed here
>You're the homosexual that tried arguing that applying video game logic to a video game makes you a sociopath
In the context of you thinking like a sociopath? Correct.
>Literally the next quest
which gets interrupted by Elvar telling you Quina's gone missing
>It's either that or immediately backtracking the way you just came
Which would have solved your problem but you're missing the point that it's actually the same problem to begin with.
>The quest is blatantly misleading
it's literally about finding Quina and returning her safely to the village
>no one used to have any issue admitting this
Oh did you mean the quest being something that filters people? No one has denied this.
The only reason people are so blunt about it is because there's an inordinate amount of whining that it makes the game bad somehow and if that's honestly how you feel then you should feel the same about Lure of the Abyss, the post-game difficulty spike and BBI which makes people think the game isn't for you.
>She says it as soon as you decline the quest
So somehow you got the impression that quest would fail but looking for Quina wouldn't? Sorry but all this just continues to make it sound like you're looking for excuses as to why this is "bad design" when you already knew what you were getting into

Most of the bandits go down easy and they only one shot you on hard. It’s not the wall you think it is. Hell there are fighters on the way to the hydra escort too. If anything it should tell you there is a way to get past them.

were getting right down to the problem here. this game isnt for you.
for reference, my first playthrough, blind, i stumbled into the cyclops on cobal coast before taking off for gran soren.

if any encounter is giving you trouble, it is solely because you are not engaging with some mechanic. its your job as a player to figure that out and change your approach.
the game IS literally perfect twoBdesu

>Because it's un-failable
just because it's unfailable doesn't mean it's a cakewalk your first time through because it's arguably harder to deal with the ogre than it is with the bandits
>not knowing that the witchwood isn't full of enemies just as strong as the bandits guarding it
Same logic should apply to the everfall then, huh?
>The one that Mercedes asks you to start before you leave the encampment and get lost and found?
Yes, the one that interrupts you from immediately going off to Gran Soren
>The one that Mercedes talks about like it's somewhat urgent?
Escorting a hydra head is more important that your childhood friend disappearing?
>And yes, if you do all the sidequests available before off with its head, you can be high enough level to fight those bandits
Wow it's almost as if those things were setting you up for success and you just ignored them
>It's always this hindsight bullshit of expecting new players to already know everything
Not at all. If anything the way Lost and Found is set up is to let a new player know that trying to do too many quests at once has consequences, which is something the pawns quip on as well.

>properly assess the situation when they lose half their life in one hit
You mean like leaving and coming back later? The very behavior that fails the quest and that guidegays in these threads consistently criticize as playing the game wrong?

>these enemies are too strong for me
>i'm sure the area and quest beyond them is easier
fricking guidegays

>i totally played the game blind
>which is why i'm pathologically incapable of understanding why anyone would turn back against enemies that take no damage and one shot the player
>even though i definitely 100% didn't already know that the enemies beyond them were easier

>hurr, I must fight everything in my path, the concept of running literally doesn't exist in my mind
Even when I tried out the XIV free trial, I ran from the south desert city to the north forest city through high level areas while avoiding enemies. I'm just on a different level than you.

>just run past them
>but i totally didn't look at a guide to know the enemies after them are weaker

You have to completely bypass the first group of bandits and aggro the second to get to the wolves. And what is that shit about arrows supposed to mean? That it somehow makes sense to run into a seemingly too difficult area because arrows are dodgeable?

>hurr, I must fight everything in my path, the concept of running literally doesn't exist in my mind
Even when I tried out the XIV free trial, I ran from the south desert city to the north forest city through high level areas while avoiding enemies. I'm just on a different level than you.

part of it is probably just bbi having way more larger enemies like giant saurians for them to get confused on