Darkest Dungeon - New Team Update

xSamhainx said:

what's your point?

On one hand, you seem to be saying the game is horribly punishing. On the other hand you appear to be saying it's totally easy.

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when he said it's punishing, he's using sarcasm, his opinion is that the game is too easy compared to the developers original plan.

After spending a few hours watching streamers, (there are some at the moment, including a woman with a large follower retinue, a dutch guy who just beat the swine prince, no casualties etc), getting results through bot play is straightforward.

I have yet to see one player fail a quest.

I have yet to see any evidence that the game is punishing in any kind of way.

Opinions, every one has one. Some are grounded in reality, others are not.

DD is not that bloodbath, that hero killer machine that was painted by some.
Losing three or two heroes over more than 40 dungeon run is not punishing.
That kind of loss also does not fit the original depiction.

Um well, you watched streams that should settle it.

I have failed quests.

I have fired adventurers before they died because they may not have died in an adventure but they were screwed up beyond saving. Just because they don't die, doesn't mean they aren't finished.

It has tons of atmosphere.

I'm not sure how you get through without ever failing? Sometimes it just is impossible not to....guess some people have though.

I disagree, ive found the game challenging. Especially since the last patch where theyve nerfed the stuns a bit, which was the one big saving grace, in my opinion. After that, ive been making it thru as i said - by the skin of my teeth w/ everyone almost dead a lot of times, or quitting a dungeon early to prevent a total wipe.

for me, losing a character is a big deal, so it has me on the edge, and i find that thrilling. Im happy that this is early access, eager to see whats coming next

I just lost two complete crews....very easy to do if you don't manage your money right.

ChienAboyeur said:

I have yet to see one player fail a quest.

I have yet to see any evidence that the game is punishing in any kind of way.

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This is one I watched a week ago, Skip to 2:15:00

Of course, you can find people who managed to fail.

The remark was done relatively to the time spent on watching streamers playing live.
I'm doing it at the moment and yet same remark: I've yet to see one guy fail a quest.

That is about five to six hours and nobody failed and failure is supposed to be frequent in DD. More than a dozens of players observed and only successes.
How can this fit the depiction of frequent failures supposedly brought by DD?


Streamers have been failing at DD much less than they would have failed playing other games.

rune_74 said:

I have fired adventurers before they died because they may not have died in an adventure but they were screwed up beyond saving. Just because they don't die, doesn't mean they aren't finished.

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Opening selectively chests or neutralizing them beforehand works wonders.

To learn how to reduce failures, avoid losing heroes etc
http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Darkest Dungeon

Watching for one hour or two various streams should be enough. Better to avoid those titling first, blind run etc

If the whole point of the game is its oppresive atmosphere and difficulty and you spend a bunch of time watching videos of people who have figured out how to optimize every choice and action…well, I think you may be missing the point.

Had a TPK last night. Shouldn't have pushed that last fight… Still fun as hell.

wolfing said:

This is one I watched a week ago, Skip to 2:15:00

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Oops, I forgot the link to the video...
Skip to 2:15:00
http://www.twitch.tv/briarstone/b/622324731

People who figured how to optimize every action and choice? That is so distant from reality, better to watch a few of them before telling things like that.

For players who struggle with DD, the recommendation is:
http://www.twitch.tv/kamikt/profile

Cleanest play I witnessed: proper management of stress, good distribution of benefits like death blows, pull/push enemy out of their position to deprive them of their primary attack, use of stun, do not abort turns, do not extend encounters too etc Could do better on the use of positional play of his own party to cope with shuffle.
Still, once learned from him, only breathers to come.

For people who want to watch the craziest play ever, the recommendation is:

http://www.twitch.tv/sattelizergames/profile

Absolutely plain crazy, very entertaining. The streamer should stream this night (for people in the same area) or tomorrow for people in Europe (for example)

Worth watching.

I'm not sure the point you are trying to make?

That there are loopholes that people can do to be successful?

I'm just not getting your point.

rune_74 said:

I'm not sure the point you are trying to make?

That there are loopholes that people can do to be successful?

I'm just not getting your point.

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his point is that the game's original design was for it to be very punishing, that you would go to any dungeon expecting at least one death, and to fight bosses expecting to wipe, but the designers have changed it and made it easier and easier, to the point that people shouldn't die unless there is a boss and even then, expect to win.

Is that a fair point? depends, if the majority likes it some way, that makes them sell more copies, shouldn't they change their approach? In a normal publisher/developer scenario sure, but in a kickstarter game where people put money because the game was presented as how it was originally, maybe not. I'm guessing the best solution would be to have 2 difficulty settings. The "hard-core" where the game behaves as originally planned and is closer to being a 'rogue-like', and the "money-maker" where the game is more forgiving and is closer to being a standard party based RPG.

wolfing said:

his point is that the game's original design was for it to be very punishing, that you would go to any dungeon expecting at least one death, and to fight bosses expecting to wipe, but the designers have changed it and made it easier and easier, to the point that people shouldn't die unless there is a boss and even then, expect to win.

Is that a fair point? depends, if the majority likes it some way, that makes them sell more copies, shouldn't they change their approach? In a normal publisher/developer scenario sure, but in a kickstarter game where people put money because the game was presented as how it was originally, maybe not. I'm guessing the best solution would be to have 2 difficulty settings. The "hard-core" where the game behaves as originally planned and is closer to being a 'rogue-like', and the "money-maker" where the game is more forgiving and is closer to being a standard party based RPG.

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I don't know...I keep getting my but kicked....have I watched the vid how to game the system? No.

But, it's in early access....so it still has loop holes that can be closed.

TheSattelizer is streaming right now. For people who want to see crazy play. Level 5 heroes and stuff... Good to watch. For those who can...

I knew the "hardcore difficulty" and "Dark Souls atmosphere" was only a gimmick to lure people in, when in reality the game keeps you very comfortable and only gives you an illusion that you've accomplished "hardcore" feats.

Humanity has risen! said:

I knew the "hardcore difficulty" and "Dark Souls atmosphere" was only a gimmick to lure people in, when in reality the game keeps you very comfortable and only gives you an illusion that you've accomplished "hardcore" feats.

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Sure.

The problem is that it's all subjective. For some people, losing even one character is a failure. For others, beating the boss with only one character remaining is total success. It's tough to balance this.

A hard mode, most likely, would be a scam. Hard, punishing, there are words used by players who did not like what they saw.

DD was supposed to be built around non linear progression. It is fully built on linear progression.

Contrary to the assertion made in post 15, there was nothing new in the core design.

DD core design's spirit was old school. DD is first and foremost a dungeon crawler and traditionally, dungeon crawlers aimed at emulating the experience of a party going underground on a limited stock of food, health potion, mana potion or various items.
Dungeons were not cleared in one swoop but in several explorative journeys. The party, on the stock, could go that far before hitting the point of no return.
When the player perceived the party was around the point of no return, the options were: backtracking to the surface from the entry point, fearing for the random encounters on the path back to the daylight or hoping that the exit on the other side was near.
Later, as dungeons got deeper, features like rest rooms or egress spell/item were introduced to avoid burdening with the journey back to the entry point.

The progression was non linear, the party hitting dead ends, getting caught in harsh fights, running out of supporting items and moving back.
The decisions when to retreat or to abort an exploration journey were fully part of the strategical thinking.

DD was on the path to revive that old school design, when retreating from an encounter or aborting a quest were all relevant questions.

The death toll: up to players to decide. If players feel that they are hitting the point of no return, they can either choose to move back or keep pushing the party.

wolfing said:

The problem is that it's all subjective. For some people, losing even one character is a failure. For others, beating the boss with only one character remaining is total success. It's tough to balance this.

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The all subjective stuff. For non linear progression, it's been a while success/failures were characterized. Success/failures are always a matter of objectives.

• Success:the quest is completed/No hero died during completion of the quest
• Semi success: the quest is completed, one hero at least died
• Semi failure: the quest is not completed, no hero died
• Failure: the quest is not completed, one hero at least died

Have you played the game or just watched videos?

You can, and will get to the point of no return if enough of your heroes fail/die.

Failing actually feels worse then dying because the cost to reduce their stress isn't worth it anymore.

Reading this thread and some others would have answered that question.

I tried DD on SEA release ( to witness the nerfing rounds DD went through)

From that experience, it appeared two alternatives on the case of players complaining about supposed hardships:

One: players do not know the basic metagame associated to the type of DD( very unlikely when it comes to turn based "ugoigo" veterans: this type of turn structures usually takes time, playing ten games of this type means spending 500 to 1000 hours, that is a lot of time spent on an activity to emit the hypothesis that people who allocate such an amount of time do not even understand the very basics of the activity.)

Two: players know the basic metagame and do not bother to apply it.

Because that is all what it takes to succeed in DD: applying the casual metagame associated to that type of games.
DD way to success is bot play.

That was from my own experience with DD. Then it was supposed that the results came from cracking DD, that players in general struggle with DD, that the results I got could not be extended to anyone.

The benefit of the doubt was given: I completed the observation by watching players playing live on Twitch, to achieve the same conclusion as players do not struggle, they keep succeeding and succeeding.

Actually, players usually fail less in DD than they would fail when playing many other games.

The conclusion still stands, this time not only from my own experience only, also from observing other players:

succeeding in DD only takes to apply the prosaic metagame associated to the turn based sequence "ugoigo"

By the way, I finally witnessed one player failing: the satellizer failed.
He failed when he forgot to bother about torch. So not bothering about quirks, stress relief and torch is what it took to get him fail. That is a lot of things.