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Nethack is, ahh, really bad and I'm glad roguelikes/lites/esques are moving away from megadick gameplay puzzles and sudden instant gently caress-you loss conditions. Darkest Dungeon is good without an arbitrary fail state.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:39
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Only major issue I have with the game atm is how much some of my characters seem to miss.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:40
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how me a frog posted:But then what is the challenge? Just grind your way to success at that point. Why not make it f2p and sell heirlooms for steambux? I hope the devs arent reading this thread cause that would probably work. Duffours resolve is being tested, spend 5 gems to reset stress? 
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Feb 13, 2015 22:44
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how me a frog posted:But then what is the challenge? Just grind your way to success at that point. Why not make it f2p and sell heirlooms for steambux? I hope the devs arent reading this thread cause that would probably work. Duffours resolve is being tested, spend 5 gems to reset stress? The challenge is 'Goddamnit, Dismas, you're one of the only guys I know by name you can't die now!'
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Feb 13, 2015 22:45
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Failure states are a weird thing in games like this because quite often they are something that only punishes new players that are already struggling with the game and doesn't make it any harder for players that know what they are doing. I don't see how adding a failure state would really improve this game unless it changed drastically. Right now a failure state would only work for discouraging scummy behavior involving suicide runs, but suicide runs aren't something you'll be doing if you're playing correctly anyways. It just punishes someone that is already failing at the game, rather than making things harder for people that know what they are doing. I'd like this game to be harder* later on, but a failure state would add absolutely nothing in that regard while punishing all the people that are struggling to get themselves into the game still. *I haven't played the level 5 dungeons since the difficulty patch so maybe those are brutal now VVV Crests are the cheapest heirloom currency and thus required in large quantities. Check the upgrade values; the heirlooms are not all considered equal. As for the gypsy, she's something that becomes more useful later on when you don't need to spend gold upgrading guys. There ARE good trinkets, there's just a sea of poo poo ones as well.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:46
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Also what is up with crests. I permanently have 0 busts, 0 paper things while having like 200 crests in the bank. All dungeons are on the same level. Wonky loot tables, less than ideal design, or rounding errors? You decide! What is even the point of the gypsie, whos gonna spend 3k on a poo poo trinket, we're drowning in trinkets anyway. I noticed my lvl 4 crusader habitually doing less damage than his lower damage threshold. What's that about?
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Feb 13, 2015 22:46
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how me a frog posted:Also what is up with crests. I permanently have 0 busts, 0 paper things while having like 200 crests in the bank. All dungeons are on the same level. Wonky loot tables, less than ideal design, or rounding errors? You decide! If you look at the quests on the map, each dungeon gives different component rewards. Crests are the catchall that you get from all dungeons, right? So you're gonna end up stockpiling those while needing more busts/paintings/whatever eh? how me a frog posted:What is even the point of the gypsie, whos gonna spend 3k on a poo poo trinket, we're drowning in trinkets anyway. For the... not poo poo ones? Comeon dude 
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Feb 13, 2015 22:48
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how me a frog posted:How is not being able to stunlock not a huge nerf to stuns? Because the stuns themselves still work. You just have to deploy them with a bit more timing now. Stun stuff you don't want to kill yet, or want a Bounty Hunter to delete, then kill/debuff-into-impotence stuff that ain't stunned. When stuff that was stunned comes off stun, you can kill them and anything that wasn't stunned before can get stunned instead or finished off. If for some reason stuff is still is still alive at the point, the buff has worn off of stuff that was stunned. Sure you can't keep the entire right side of the map locked in a daze, but you can still use it to shut down the opposition reliably and safely. Even post "nerf" I can go several fights without giving the enemy a chance to actually act. While I don't rely on my PD for damage, something that's immune to stun because of absurd resistance is also usually a big bag of hit points, so blighting it shaves off how many turns it'll take to burn, and it's overall more accurate since blight/bleed tics, once landed, don't miss.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:51
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paranoid randroid posted:Nethack is, ahh, really bad and I'm glad roguelikes/lites/esques are moving away from megadick gameplay puzzles and sudden instant gently caress-you loss conditions. Darkest Dungeon is good without an arbitrary fail state. Yeah I always get a kick out of people pretending that Nethack was some paragon of difficulty because like 95% of its challenge comes from either refusing to tell you the rules or one particular monster spawn that is clearly buggy (soldier ants). Its a bad game and i say this as someone who has ascended every character. I lost more games due to abandoning them from boredom than anything else really.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:55
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A hard mode where you only have X weeks to win wouldn't be a bad addition.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:56
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paranoid randroid posted:A hard mode where you only have X weeks to win wouldn't be a bad addition. Win?!?! There is no win, only madness and death.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:59
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Nethack really is extraordinarily successful at what it wants to do, though. If you know it well and play it correctly you can win almost any game, and there is a huge variety of solutions to almost every problem. I totally understand why people wouldn't enjoy Nethack or roguelikes in general, but it really does what it tries to do excellently. The "difficulty" is really actually similar to Darkest Dungeon -- it seems terrifyingly hard at first, and then you realize how to get control of things and you learn how to play more optimally, and then it's pretty easy as long as you take your time to make the right decisions and don't get hosed by the RNG. That said, of course it has flaws -- it's a game from the late 80s that hasn't been updated in what, 15 years?
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Feb 13, 2015 23:00
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Part of the urgency in X-Com is eventually you know the enemies are going to get tougher even if you've been dicking around and loving up. You can count on better equipment and build up back up teams, but the game sets a pace you have to meet. Darkest Dungeon, at it's current state, allows you to spend literally years going into endless tunnels, halls, and forests looking for endless loot with nothing pushing you to greater challenge other than your own units refusing to take on babby's-first dungeon crawl.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:03
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I have no problem with darkesr dungeons bein eezy breezy lemon squeezy if it didnt position itself as a hardcore hard game. I hate the fact that anyone can beat any game these days. My mindset comes from a time where if you told people you beat a game your peers woUld doubt you. Fine it is what it is, but dont sell me this babby game under the GRIMDARK pretense of "you will fail, a lot". The tubers I follow where all coasting through the game and had to fill the dead air with "when i played this at pax It was brutal".
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Feb 13, 2015 23:11
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Games used to have to be cripplingly difficult to mask the fact you could beat them in 45 minutes though.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:12
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Lotish posted:Part of the urgency in X-Com is eventually you know the enemies are going to get tougher even if you've been dicking around and loving up. You can count on better equipment and build up back up teams, but the game sets a pace you have to meet. Darkest Dungeon, at it's current state, allows you to spend literally years going into endless tunnels, halls, and forests looking for endless loot with nothing pushing you to greater challenge other than your own units refusing to take on babby's-first dungeon crawl. Also most of the runs have literally no meaningful impact on your team from either an attrition or a loot point of view so it's very same-y every drat time. Screw loss-states and the like - give us full equipment panels, more in-depth skill trees, and more incremental growth. The sting of loss should be the death/crippling of a beloved character or 3, not a game-over screen. Serious setbacks have the same impact to overall difficulty as a game over without actually forcing people to abandon the game entirely (unless they choose to restart). As is I seriously only know the name of one of my characters, haven't bothered renaming the rest (because who cares), and the only real impact from leveling is having to rotate out my team since they're too high for the old dungeons and need to move on to different, effectively identical, versions of the same.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:13
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The difference being that Darkest actually lets you learn from more than one mistake per game and doesn't have any complete out of left field bullshit that isnt metnioned anywhere to make the game a ton easier. Yes i am talking about Elbereth and holy poo poo that is so incredibly bad. I still have never seen a single in game hint that explains even half of that mechanic. People tell me they exist and whatever i believe them but how many loving hours do you need to play for that? Its stupid.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:14
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Aside from hp i cant even discern a relevant difference between enemies. Stress aint no thing so just have everyone hit whoever they can hit, if there are multiple options pick the one whose hp bar is lowest. Game designers hate this one simple trick...
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Feb 13, 2015 23:17
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paranoid randroid posted:A hard mode where you only have X weeks to win wouldn't be a bad addition. We've already got character permadeath, you want game permadeath too? That seems a little harsh. ...Although higher stakes would be nice. I'd like to see retreating from missions (or failing) hurt the town. Angry pigmen/skeletons come calling in the wake of your fuckup. Take up slots at the sanitarium and church with terrified townsfolk, maybe even knock out an upgrade on a random building. It would keep people from abandon-rushing missions, and it would bring back the pucker factor for players who were maxed out on town upgrades. Those last few tiers are expensive as hell.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:17
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how me a frog posted:I have no problem with darkesr dungeons bein eezy breezy lemon squeezy if it didnt position itself as a hardcore hard game. I hate the fact that anyone can beat any game these days. My mindset comes from a time where if you told people you beat a game your peers woUld doubt you. Fine it is what it is, but dont sell me this babby game under the GRIMDARK pretense of "you will fail, a lot". The tubers I follow where all coasting through the game and had to fill the dead air with "when i played this at pax It was brutal". God you sound like the type of person I would enjoy hitting in real life.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:23
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fargom posted:God you sound like the type of person I would enjoy hitting in real life. Physical violence over a difference of opinion on such an inane topic is a bit extreme if you're serious. So if you're a preteen boy don't worry, it gets better. Otherwise get in touch with a therapist because if you don't life is going to go poorly for you.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:32
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fargom posted:God you sound like the type of person I would enjoy hitting in real life. You're the guy in the corner who didn't take his jacket off.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:34
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fargom posted:God you sound like the type of person I would enjoy hitting in real life. You are 100 times worse.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:36
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I think the core game is sufficiently challenging, except for a few mechanics that allow cheesing it, such as being able to fire heroes with zero repercussions instead of dealing with their stress levels and negative quirks. Heroes shouldn't be easily disposable like that, because part of the difficulty has to come from having to deal with a group of adventurers that become more powerful over time but also more difficult to deal with and keep in line. Having to deal with a badass crusader who is also a kleptomaniac and brothel-addict is part of the game's unique allure. They also need to change the mechanics a bit to add more depth to various status effects. Regular heals should be less effective on bleeding and blighted heroes in order to make their removal skills more valuable and balance Vestals with other caster/support heroes such as Plague Doctor. There should also be mobs who receive buffs/heals whenever your heroes take damage from bleed/blight (e.g. vampires). Stunned targets should not be able to dodge, and there should be stun removal skills. There's also a distinct lack of healer enemies in the game, which makes mid and-late game battles heavily skewed in the player's favor.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:37
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how me a frog posted:I have no problem with darkesr dungeons bein eezy breezy lemon squeezy if it didnt position itself as a hardcore hard game. I hate the fact that anyone can beat any game these days. My mindset comes from a time where if you told people you beat a game your peers woUld doubt you. Fine it is what it is, but dont sell me this babby game under the GRIMDARK pretense of "you will fail, a lot". The tubers I follow where all coasting through the game and had to fill the dead air with "when i played this at pax It was brutal".  Source your quotes dude.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:37
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how me a frog posted:Also what is up with crests. I permanently have 0 busts, 0 paper things while having like 200 crests in the bank. All dungeons are on the same level. Wonky loot tables, less than ideal design, or rounding errors? You decide! You realise that Crests are used for upgrading literally every building in the hamlet and are the sole heirloom used for the trader and survivalist? Of course they'll be more abundant than the rest. Also lol @ you if you haven't yet figured out the utility of having 6 new cheap trinkets available after each run. Some of those ancestral trinkets are amazing. how me a frog posted:I have no problem with darkesr dungeons bein eezy breezy lemon squeezy if it didnt position itself as a hardcore hard game. I hate the fact that anyone can beat any game these days. My mindset comes from a time where if you told people you beat a game your peers woUld doubt you. Fine it is what it is, but dont sell me this babby game under the GRIMDARK pretense of "you will fail, a lot". The tubers I follow where all coasting through the game and had to fill the dead air with "when i played this at pax It was brutal". 
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Feb 13, 2015 23:48
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Hahahah look at all these spergs, welcome to Something Awful dot com folks, a comedy website!
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Feb 13, 2015 23:48
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how me a frog posted:I have no problem with darkesr dungeons bein eezy breezy lemon squeezy if it didnt position itself as a hardcore hard game. I hate the fact that anyone can beat any game these days. lol
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Feb 13, 2015 23:50
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Cat Army 
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Something does really need to be done to increase the difficulty of this game after the first 30 minutes of play because as it is darkest dungeons is a reddit adverb meme generator.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:52
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Providing game difficulty settings seems like a pretty obvious solution.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:58
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Predictably, the forum thread about Darkest Dungeon is gnawing at my sanity, too.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:04
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OK so I've collected my thoughts on this game because sometimes you take a shower and your brain decides to do something inane like this. Right now the game suffers from two primary problems, both of which really hurt its potential but could also be alleviated by some relatively significant (but straightforward) design philosophy changes: 1. The game is too same-y 2. The game is too easy Both of these are pretty significant issues that I know have caused people to quickly lose interest in what could be a long-term love affair instead of a 3-hour fling. The neat thing is that once we break down the mechanics behind these two issues, solutions present themselves! Let's look at the first problem, since the second in part descends from the first and I don't really feel like tackling the difficult issue right now. Suffice to say that by making dungeons more individually deadly to characters, and making individual characters much more valuable and unique, the game could be made more difficult without having dumb artificial game-over scenarios like where you run out of money. 1. The game is too same-y Corollary 1: Every character is roughly the same There is nothing to really distinguish one Bounty Hunter from the next. Skills, camp skills, and trinkets are interchangeable. Even gaining levels doesn't make a character identifiably better since dungeon difficulty somewhat scales and there aren't really any new abilities to unlock. The problem here is that in a game about mood and setting we totally lack identifiable, interesting characters since we have no real part in building these faceless, same-y entities. When a character dies (which happens exceedingly rarely) I don't even bother checking the graveyard because seriously, who gives a poo poo, they weren't special. The quirk system does a poor job of providing customization since there is very little player choice, bad quirks can be removed, and most of the time the quirks as a whole are either minor enough to be ignored or utterly character-shattering and require a sidelining until dealt with. Neither of these scenarios endear the player to his doodz and really only serve to drive home the repetitive nature of leveling up. The great thing is not only is this super fixable, but doing so will fix some of the other issues with the game! The solution, of course, is to make characters more customizable by forcing the player to make actual, weighted decisions. Right now when you level up, you can immediately upgrade all your gear, skills, and generally become better at everything at the same time. Furthermore, all characters of a class can get every skill at the same time. This is bad game design! While it may seem fun to have every skill on every character, the end result is that leveling up is unexiting and characters are indistinguishable from one another. Having a skill tree with limited points, on the other hand, encourages the player to make tough decisions, specialize in specific things, and generally craft more interesting parties. There's a major difference between a DoT specialist and a Stun specialist in this world - unlike the current game where every idiot plague doctor is the same. This could even go a step further - make camp skills require investiture of skillpoints at the expense of combat skills. Right now camp skills are insanely powerful - but if bringing along a dedicated camp specialist weakened your combat potential, or at least made you compromise somewhat as to where you skillpoints went (maybe a camp skill is linked to certain combat skills on a skill tree - allowing the devs to balance combat skills against one another more effectively) you'd at least be making choices instead of hurling 4 randos into an ineffective blender. Corollary 2: Level-ups are terrible and boring Somehow this game manages to make levelups be so totally bland that they might not as well exist. PEOPLE LOVE LEVELING UP. MAKE IT FUN, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. This is easy as hell to do. First off, there need to be more than 5 levels. 5 is a laughably low number and ensures either that character levels will be basically imperceptible or that characters of even 1 level difference will be dramatically unequal in ability. For a game supposedly about hurling heroes into a blender with only a shining few emerging, neither of these options is in any way attractive. Bump the level counter up to somewhere around 20 (or higher!) and make each level a noticeable, but relatively small, upgrade, and suddenly finishing a dungeon becomes interesting and fun. Hell, assign some randomization to the stat growth levels to make testing out (and sometimes rejecting) various new recruits more enjoyable. Maybe that Crusader with the huge starting Str has woeful HP and agility growth - suddenly you are having to make a choice, are investing in your guy. Suddenly you care a lot more about keeping your caravan upgraded, about developing a wider roster. Maybe there are buildings to help measure someone's skill growth - or change it, reroll it, whatever. Suddenly we have depth from a very simple beginning. Corollary 3: Every dungeon is roughly the same Honestly this can't be addressed until the skill system is fixed, imho, but it breaks down into 2 major factors: dungeons need to offer more interesting and varied rewards, and dungeons need to have more interesting encounters. Right now dungeons feel like doing dalies in an MMO, and that's not a good thing. They're easy, often tedious, offer very imperceptible rewards (heirlooms are basically just Marks of Honor or what have you) and all can be approached in the same way. One way to fix this is to have way more inventory slots, way more varied (and useful) gear rewards, and to genuinely make there be a reason to fight just one more battle. We figured this out with Diablo decades ago, and it's not really any different today. Tedium can be alleviated to a large degree by at least some useful randomized loot that slightly changes your character. Dungeons can be made progressively harder as a result, with more specialized tasks needing completion. This is a tricky one, though, since the encounter system is very linearly implemented at the moment and designed to simply tax static resources barring terrible crit/dodge rolls. Hell, make gear permanently affixed if you have to. It will make characters more distinct even if it's somewhat frustrating at times.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:05
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To continue the X-Com comparisons, leveling up in X-com means new abilities, some of which are clutch or class defining. In DD, leveling up is opening up a +5 accuracy to a skill and maybe a few points of damage/healing at the guild/blacksmith. If class features (the part of the character sheet that doesn't appear to be used yet) has a feature list for each resolve rank, perhaps those abilities can do something to change this. They'd have to completely change their advancement system to make it more X-Com at this point, and I wouldn't really want them to, but you do need something remarkable at each level to make that level feel like a triumph.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:30
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Lotish posted:To continue the X-Com comparisons, leveling up in X-com means new abilities, some of which are clutch or class defining. In DD, leveling up is opening up a +5 accuracy to a skill and maybe a few points of damage/healing at the guild/blacksmith. Xcom has levels? Its been a while since I played it but I Dont remember levels being present at all.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:43
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Lotish posted:To continue the X-Com comparisons, leveling up in X-com means new abilities, some of which are clutch or class defining. In DD, leveling up is opening up a +5 accuracy to a skill and maybe a few points of damage/healing at the guild/blacksmith. Eh, leveling up already feels like a triumph to me. You get: - more dodge - more hitpoints - more damage - more speed - more crit - more chance to hit - more debuff/cure chance Dodge is the most important because it becomes more valuable as you get more of it. Going from 5 dodge to 10 dodge makes more difference than going from 0 dodge to 5 dodge.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:46
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I Love You! posted:Bump the level counter up to somewhere around 20 (or higher!) and make each level a noticeable, but relatively small, upgrade, and suddenly finishing a dungeon becomes interesting and fun. Hell, assign some randomization to the stat growth levels to make testing out (and sometimes rejecting) various new recruits more enjoyable. Maybe that Crusader with the huge starting Str has woeful HP and agility growth - suddenly you are having to make a choice, are investing in your guy. Suddenly you care a lot more about keeping your caravan upgraded, about developing a wider roster. Maybe there are buildings to help measure someone's skill growth - or change it, reroll it, whatever. Suddenly we have depth from a very simple beginning. That would be really retarded. This is not the kind of game that should have quick level ups.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:53
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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:Xcom has levels? Its been a while since I played it but I Dont remember levels being present at all. The old ones don't, 2012 XCOM does and is also really good if you haven't played it.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:55
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The idea of giving this game a lose state boggles my mind. I don't know how fast some of you are playing through the game, but I've put about 10 hours into a single file and I'm only maybe a little over halfway done. If I lost 10 hours of progress, I'd be pissed and probably never play again. I'd imagine I'm not the only one who feels that way.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:57
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Lotish posted:To continue the X-Com comparisons, leveling up in X-com means new abilities, some of which are clutch or class defining. In DD, leveling up is opening up a +5 accuracy to a skill and maybe a few points of damage/healing at the guild/blacksmith. Original X-Com got by without any stinking abilities.  New X-COM is okay but old X-COM is better and one of the best games of all time.They could easily add additional skills that nobody starts with that you have to buy at the guild, but have to be a certain rank to unlock. Things like that would be super easy to add. Harder to add would be cool stuff like abilities based on quirks, but still do-able. Hopefully lots happens during the rest of development, but they've been pushing patches round the clock so I have high hopes.
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Feb 14, 2015 00:58
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| # ? May 21, 2024 21:25 |
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I keep forgetting this game is like 6 months from actual release. I think that's a good sign.
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Feb 14, 2015 01:01
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