Dragon Quest Builders 2 civilation simulation is trash.
Written
I have played Dragon Quest Builders 2 now 212 hours but I probably just run through the story and be done with it. (Before I finnishing writing this I did excatly this). That is fucking shame because
when I play Velheim or Minecraft I don't really have good reason to build cities or towns. I will be alone anyway so why build something that is going to a obsticale. Dragon Quest Builders 2 give me a reason and mechanics to do so. Game can decleare closed in two block hight (or one block hight fenced) area as a room. This room can be made spefic room like kitchen or bedroom by placing certain items in it. There is also fancyness score and certain items tally to certain ambiness. This means decorating as great emphasives which means I have a reason to create buildings and challenge my self to build certain kind of rooms.
Problem is that Dragon Quest Builders 2 simulations the civilations in the most absolute trashy way possible.
AI Pathing and Queuing
Let's start with AI pathing because this is first thing I noticed. In Furrowfield the town area has this rock area in the middle of the town surrounded by one block deep dig. Later there is a side quest to fill this dig with water to make a pond. I had guessed this so I filled it early. I noticed that even though I made paths surrounding the pond, AI would run through the water. Essentially AI seems to path it self by setting target point and send character by most direct path for a bird. When mount too high is on the way it is when reached that any type of obstical avoideness kicks in.
This is weird AI behaviour because simpler way would allow player to place nodes which would direct AI close to the target and then fall to direct route. Another way would have constly path exploring AI where pathing graph slowly updates to close what looks good. So before water been added to the pond AI would run through. After water is placed AI would start avoiding getting wet or would just calculate going through the water is slower then walking next to the pond.
That said, deal breaker this behavior is not. Not only because it is small problem but because Dragon Quest Builders 2 is rather great of hiding some of the mechanism of the game to a visual appealing items. This hiding avoids spreahsheet simulator problems of rather gamey buttons and controls. Clearly this was a design decision. Also, there is some smartness in the pathing. When in the main island I build the pyramid I made a stairs to the upper floor from the middle platfrom. AI did realize this path so somekind of dynamish was used. Still in the main island AI seems to prefer climb mountains rather than goinging in the valleys. This caused multiple AI going down one 2-3 high cliff face just to land on a place where AI no longer wanted to path down to next level causing character getting stuck.
Other weird pathing behavior happens with queues. Game can create queues to toilets or showers to make then a resource. There are multiple reason (at least in theory) why player benefits faster queue times. So when I was trying to optimize my community shower in the Furrowfield I was shocked to notice that first in the queue was not moving to the free bath. This behaviour was because baths are NOT allocated by first in the door first out of the door way. After observing queus behavior is essentially following:
- Game starts updating character in civilian behavior list which is sorted by order of appears in the story.
- Check on civial needing to go to shower returns true.
- Game at that moment places the civilian to the lowest queued bath and sets it as the target to path to.
- Game moved to next civilian on the list.
This happens REGARDLESS how far a way the civilian is. So because civialian's need go to shower is same tick everyone elses the update list decides the order of the queue. This means that other civialian can reach the door of the shower before the civilian that show is locked to making them wait for nothing.
With toilet's it was harder to see this behaviour. Mostly because to toilet need to trigger civilian must have eaten something. This makes the tick toilet going is decided more even between the civilian. I usually saw the toilet queue forming at the closest toilet of the kitchen. Unlike with baths which I only had one room in the Furrowfield I had toilets cross the town. It still seemed like that the toilet closest to the kitchen got all of the traffic. I'm not 100% on is that the case. It feels bit odd that toilets cross the town where not used evenly. Maybe the room character ends up using is decided by proximity and queue size is not a factor.
Queue formation direction is also problematic. With the Furrowfield shower I had it on elevated possition. Front door had 2 to 3 blocks before 3 block cliff face. This meant that the queue would mostly form at the bottom of the cliff rathen along the road I placed between the door and cliff. This plus the wierd queue waits meant that I stopped optimizing showers in furrfield because there was literally nothing I could improve ugly design or redoing the showers. I should have realized this queue problem is also with toilets. Later on the main island I made toilet which door faced directly to wall which otherside was stairs up. Civilians somehow got caught top of the stairs and could not path to the toilet anymore.
Other weird queue thing happened with pyramid. I placed toilets next to private rooms. This was a mistake for reasons I explain later but the for some reasons AI decided that these toilets where only place characters could be in. So they crowed the toilets. There is no pathing mechnism to go a way when density hits certains highs. With barn I saw farmers go in it to search something and place the created item to the storage chest. This means at time farmers would just hang with tidy density next to the community chest. It looks fucking weird.
Job system and chests
At the begging, in Furrowfield, farmers are introduced. They are probably most fuctioning job in the game terms of usefullness. Maybe dancers and bar tenders function better but there job is just to exists and carry drinks. Farmers plow the field, water the fieds (to improve grow speed), later in Furrowfield they can place seeds if barn exists, and even later on the main island they can gather the ready vegeties. Both the barn and gathering need a community chest to be placed. Idea is that community chest in the barn which houses seeds would be used to automaticly keep the fields going. The gathering chest needs to be placed outside on the farm (or at least that is how I understood it) and stuff is place in it.
So what is the problem? Well, the system seems to work. There is a work allocating problem because on my main island beds for the farmers are way too far a way. This means that farmers don't have time in the day come to the farm. But when they are there they are doing there job. Fix would be just have beds closer. Except when they gather from the fields they seems to place at any chest I have on the near by area. I don't know is this problem where chest are not linked to certain farm plot rather AI decides closest free chest and orders farmer to go there. Also since for some fucking reason farmers take out too many seeds from the barn chest and place the remaining seeds to these community chests. So do these seeds get used or not is not clear! Furrowfield made pretty clear that seeds need to be in the barn community chest!
This unclearness about what community chests is for major hickup of the system! I noticed this first with cooks. So kitchen has a community chest to place food items into. Chef than takes these items and puts on the cooking place and starts a recipe. When recipe is done cook puts cooked item back to a community chest or chooses a plate or other free cooked item holder to place the item into. Why there no clear other container to place the cooked food is not clear to me but there is futher problem. Some ingridents are eatable them self. So what kept happening in Furrowfield was that I would place gabbage to the chest to be cooked into salad. But other citizen would come and eat those gabbages from the kitchen community chest before they were cooked. Why not exclude that chest since we have eatable containers as a seperate category?
Since I mentioned cooks there is a problem their recipe selection. Player has to first discover recipe mostly through try and error (not AI related complained but game needed a hint system for these and rooms). After discovery chiefs than can make that recipe. However cooks select the recipe based upn what is avaible at the chest. So if there is multiple recipes cook can do it is not clear what recipe is selected. There might be element of randoms here but in my play time I could figure out a pattern. There might be system in place where higher tier of product is priorities but it is not clear. Game could have used a recipe board/ordering board or something like that to make it clear what recipies this kitchen produces.
Now let's discuss miner's and blacksmiths. Both are introduced in second island Khrumbul-Dun. There is special mechanic in the island where miners "mine" resouces and after each day place the items to central community chest. This is constant amount per day which changes based upon quest/story progression. If you go into the mine the miners will be teleported in the mine and do there job. This is a nice simple simulation where only problem is that miners are phantoms to the monsters inside the mine. Blacksmith in the town works like a chief. You place materials in then community chest in the smithery and blacksmith will turn them into weapons. This feature is undercut by not really having a reason to have this kind of production. Player them self easily can make the weapons. However blacksmith also can speed up forgers in the smithery to process ore to materials. This is more useful.
So what is the major problem here. Well only one blacksmith exists in the game. One in Khrumbul-Dun. After story in Khrumbul-Dun he comes with you to the main island. Okay so how do I get more blacksmits? Well, miners stop mining and start doing the ore processing helping in the main island. This confates the two jobs. May point here is that miners do not MINE! I can understand that resouce accusion rate would be too damn high if I would use keep getting ore like in Khrumbul-Dun. In fact I'm pretty sure I still have 90% coal from Khrumbul-Dun still in a chest in the main island. But why not have mechanic where going to randomly generated islands and taking miners with you could mine some resouce. Right now even if you take them with you they don't even help with resource gathering!
Other jobs introcuded in the Khrumbul-Dun are dancer and bartender. Idea in the story is that miners mine the day then go into the bar for a bit (get some alcohol and dances) before going to a sleep. With miners and mine simulation works but the bar is complate mess. In the Furrowfield I noticed processed food end up in the barn chest. This was odd but it was not until I was back to main island I realized that chiefs would run out of the kitchen to place food items every where in the map where there is community chest or eatable container. In Furrowfield I placed couple eatable containers outside of kitchen so mechanic some what worked but in the main island because I placed beds and fields far of away situation got out of hand. Khrumbul-Dun bars illustrates the problem. There is 1-2 (maybe third but I'm not sure) chiefs in Khrumbul-Dun town. One of them doubles as dancer. I think the AI is made so that kitchen food goes to the community chest mainly and dancers and bartenders then distribute to the tables. Dancers also will dance on the dance tabs inside the bar and bartenders go behind the counter. Problems arise since there simple is not enough time to AI to do the food distribution. So only way for the AI is to go to kitchen. If player wants good bar exprience they have to distribute the food. AI will still find it's way to the kitchen though. This also happens in the main island if the distances get too long. This means decorating rooms with plates is actual worst thing for the AI.
If you cannot tell, how community chest are handled is causes a lot of issues. There is also hard cap of them per map. I think like 64 or something. This cap exists only because AI is coded to search every community chest in the map. If the job system would limit it self to certain containers the input and output could be linked and the limit if not illimated could be raised. But okay amount is quite high? NO! Other containers also have limits. For eatable containers maybe limit exists for a reason but for non-chest general containers like cupboards AI is not even using them for anything why the limit?
Okay, jobs left to discuss are singers, bards, shopkeepers, nuns, and various warriors. Singers and bars I think just hand around. Singer when required also said she does dancing but I don't thing they are particulary interesting. Various warriors use the same AI as monsters which just go to the enemy