Author Topic: Darkest Dungeon has been released today  (Read 23803 times)

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #45 on: January 20, 2017, 08:57:16 pm »
I admitted from the very beginning that the dumbest thing about this game is the "wikiculty". That is, the things like boss runs that you really have to look up beforehand to prepare for, otherwise you're essentially guaranteed to lose a party or two figuring it out.

I admit that's complete bullshit and bad game design (though to be fair most roguelikes are designed like this, it just happens to be a terrible mechanic for this game in particular). However it takes precisely 2 minutes to look the boss up on the wiki and get a general idea of what party composition to bring to maximize your chances of success.

If you had looked it up beforehand Managarmr (which I told you to do), that boss would have given you little trouble.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #46 on: January 20, 2017, 08:58:16 pm »
Jumping in...

You can plan your party accordingly for the first run, creating a "sacrifice" party for testing purposes. Or you can simply retreat if you need to. However, in soem boss fights you might still leave a valuable hero behind because a lot of bosses can "trap" your hero.

This is stupid game design.

...jumping out again.

Offline TheVampire100

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #47 on: January 20, 2017, 09:13:17 pm »
This is debatable, especially if the entire game is centered around the mentallity of what you are willing to sacrifice in order to reach your goal.
I mean, this is in every little edge of the game, if you want to press on despite your party being low on health or sanity. Do you spend more money on supplies or less and risk that they run out in the mid of the dungeon.

I think I read somehwere in a review that your party members are nothing more than disposals.

I know that people like to get attached to their characters in game sometimes, but in some games they are just... another kind of resource.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #48 on: January 20, 2017, 10:41:46 pm »
As I've said before,the trial and error aspect of the game is a fundamental mechanic of roguelikes.
Take Binding of Isaac for instance. You would probably lose to a boss you'd never fought before ten billion times before you figure it out. At least you're expected to lose several times before you begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses.

Darkest Dungeon, being a roguelike is no different. The problem is that you can't just start a fresh run if you lose to a boss in this game. It's much more grindy and frustrating when you have a party wipe. So if you don't want that to happen,you can lower your chances by researching it first.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #49 on: January 21, 2017, 12:03:04 am »
Darkest Dungeon, being a roguelike is no different. The problem is that you can't just start a fresh run if you lose to a boss in this game. It's much more grindy and frustrating when you have a party wipe. So if you don't want that to happen,you can lower your chances by researching it first.

This is why it's bad game design.  For every boss you have to play [as much as you've already played] again.  It's not just "fight the boss and learn stuff."  Because you need to create a second party, level them up to a competent level, and then throw them into a literal meat grinder just so you don't accidentally your current party.  Or vice versa.

Roguelikes are at least interesting when you bollocks up and have to start over.

Hell, Rogue Legacy at least made you stronger every time you died.  Every time you found something new and got a hit off on you you could retreat to the previous room and say "ok, I'm not going to encounter those for a while" and GTFO every time you see one.  Hell, I avoided whole regions when I first encountered them until I felt comfortable taking a shot at some of those new enemies.  And I'd take a few hits, realize I was in over my head, and retreat back to the "safe" part of the castle and try and build up gold, so I could die, have the money needed to rank up, and try again.

Sure every boss took a few tries, but you always knew they were coming, avoid them until you were ready, and then dump all your gold into maintaining the castle's layout for practice because you found the entrance on a run, now all you have to do is teleport there.  Quick, easy, painless.

Offline Wingflier

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #50 on: January 21, 2017, 12:59:30 am »
I don't know if you've ever played Darkest Dungeon but you can avoid the boss battles there too, for as long as you like.

Any research at all makes the boss battles much easier. You just need a general idea of what you're up against.

In any case I agree that though this trial and error mechanic against bosses is typically core for roguelikes, it's silly for this game. I see why they did it that way though, it's just the style of roguelikes.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #51 on: January 21, 2017, 01:21:45 am »
As I've said before,the trial and error aspect of the game is a fundamental mechanic of roguelikes.
Take Binding of Isaac for instance. You would probably lose to a boss you'd never fought before ten billion times before you figure it out. At least you're expected to lose several times before you begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses.

Darkest Dungeon, being a roguelike is no different. The problem is that you can't just start a fresh run if you lose to a boss in this game. It's much more grindy and frustrating when you have a party wipe. So if you don't want that to happen,you can lower your chances by researching it first.

There's a HUGE difference though between this game, and somethign like Isaac, or any other.

Let's look at Starward for example, and because I'm lazy and it's the easiest for me to explain.   Yes, you're likely to lose to a new boss; they're made to kill you after all.  BUT.  You WONT lose JUST because you dont have the tools to beat them.  Even against a boss you have never fought, you DO have the tools (I make absolutely freaking certain of it), and knowledge, to beat them.  Bosses in that game attack with patterns that are typically made of slow-moving bullets; you have time to analyze what's happening on screen, and figure out a way to dodge it, or otherwise deal with it.  The patterns are also layered, as a rule, each pattern being made up of multiple layers given specific colors to make them easy to pick out, so that you can see, that much easier, exactly what's happening.  Through it's visuals, the game is giving you all the info you need; if you are good enough, you can win the FIRST time. 

But if Starward worked similarly to DD (aka, NOT giving you enough info), it'd work like this:  Bosses using hyper-fast attacks requiring you to have memorized, IN ADVANCE, where to stand and what's going to happen in order to not get hit. You're just not given visual info in that case.  You DO NOT have the tools to win the first time.  It becomes, in essence, trial and error, even if you're very skilled at the genre.  Some traditional shmups do this, and I tell ya, they aint much fun.


Isaac is similar to Starward in this way.  Enemies dont use hyper-fast "need to be memorized" moves against you.  Bosses tend to have very visible tells, bullets tend to be slow-ish, and even when they do something new, it's usually shown in a way that's pretty obvious as to what's likely to happen.  For instance if you see a boss (like Monstro for instance) suddenly launch into the stratosphere, the pretty-darn-obvious conclusion is that some sort of big downward stomp attack is coming, because what goes up must come down.   With ten kersquillion bosses the game does make a few mistakes here (such as Conquest's hyper-RNG light beam attack, or the Heart's spinning brimstone attack) but for the most part the bosses, and the enemies, always follow these rules.  You have the info, visually, to take them down the FIRST time, even with a bad build, if you're good enough. 

It's all alot like that Dark Souls example I'd given before.

And giving the player that info... regardless of the type of info... is important.   Even most turn-based roguelikes (the GOOD ones, anyway) do this.  Usually you can check new enemies/bosses to see info on them and what they can do, so that you can start planning on how to deal with them with your current build/inventory.  Yeah, some roguelikes get this horribly wrong of course, but again, the truly good ones generally get it right.

It really is an important concept in game design as a whole.  When it's missing, the whole game suffers, regardless of which game it is.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #52 on: January 21, 2017, 09:03:27 am »
And, to be completely open about this:

Aside from it's trial and error nature, I really like Darkest Dungeon. Everything outside of it's actual stingyness with info, is pretty darn good. Heck, even some of the combat mechanics are rather interesting. It's just that I don't quite like spending hours leveling up characters only to have them ground into dust on a boss until I've figured out the magical combo.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #53 on: January 21, 2017, 10:42:28 am »
@Misery - I have agreed many times at this point that the way Darkest Dungeon handled boss fights was bad design. You're just preaching to the choir.

However, having to spend 2 minutes looking at the wiki before the occasional boss fight is really not the end of the world. I just consider it information that is meant to save me a lot of time and frustration that I would have encountered otherwise.

However, some people enjoy figuring these things out on their own, like Vampire. Obviously the developers are also those kinds of people, or they wouldn't have made it that way. It's extremely subjective and in the end somewhat irrelevant because if you don't want to walk into a boss battle completely blind, you don't have to. I certainly never did, and I rarely ever lost a boss fight as a result.

Once you know the composition you need to bring, and the mechanics of the boss, it's pretty easy. You can either discover this yourself as some people enjoy doing or you can spend a couple minutes looking it up and "spoil the fun".

Either way I don't see this as a game breaking problem unless you make it into one. Do I think this mechanic is stupid? Yes in my subjective opinion it's stupid. But that's why the wiki is there, so I can avoid unnecessary heartache.

@Man

It's really not about finding the perfect party composition, I'm sure against every boss many different compositions would work. It's about finding a party composition that does a specific thing really well. Certain classes tend to do better than others for that, but in the end there are many ways to skin a cat.

It's just the going in blind part that can be so frustrating. As I mentioned before, I do not recommend this course of action.

I would be curious how your next boss fight goes if you spend just a couple minutes researching it first.

Here's the page for the Wizened Hag http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Hag
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #54 on: January 21, 2017, 12:11:43 pm »
I know my way around wikis, thank you. ^^

But for games like these I generally find it to be a detractor to look things up ahead of time. I would *never* for instance look up a Dark Souls boss before encountering it. It just takes away the fun of learning. However, if I am to stay sane (hah) playing Darkest Dungeon, I may just have to resort to wikiscrubbing, because it's far too frustrating to try and figure it out from the very few scraps of info the game gives you.

And at that point, the game just becomes one giant, boring walk to the end. There is no skill, no learning, no adaptation. Just "do what others have done before you".
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #55 on: January 21, 2017, 06:12:11 pm »
Once again, I'm going to make comparisons to AI War.

If a player was stuck on a lower difficulty (or even higher difficulty), I would point them to the wiki.

I would even suggest they watch Let's Plays of legendary players to see what they do and emulate their style.

There's no shame in this, I don't think it makes the game much easier, for some people it just makes it bearable by saving a lot of time and frustration.
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Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #56 on: January 21, 2017, 06:57:37 pm »
Once again, I'm going to make comparisons to AI War.

If a player was stuck on a lower difficulty (or even higher difficulty), I would point them to the wiki.

I would even suggest they watch Let's Plays of legendary players to see what they do and emulate their style.

There's no shame in this, I don't think it makes the game much easier, for some people it just makes it bearable by saving a lot of time and frustration.
It's not that I want it easier, per say. I want it less frustrating, and if that means reading up on the game on a wiki beforehand, I'd rather not play. Because reading up means knowing what awaits and it becomes completely without surprise or awe. I'd rather not play like that for the first time. That's what I do when I've beaten a game once. Then I look at wikis, try new builds, look up all the things I missed etc. But never the first time.

If that is what is required to enjoy DD, I simply won't play. That's just how I am, I guess. We can't like every game we come across. It just saddens me a bit because I really did think I would like DD, and I do want to like it. But it seems me and the devs simply have different ideas of fun. No hard feelings.
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Offline Wingflier

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #57 on: January 21, 2017, 09:00:35 pm »
I respect that. As I said, I think it's a really stupid mechanic and they should have handled it differently.

I wouldn't blame someone if it were a deal breaker. For what it's worth there are still plenty of surprises even with that.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #58 on: January 22, 2017, 01:48:09 am »
Once again, I'm going to make comparisons to AI War.

If a player was stuck on a lower difficulty (or even higher difficulty), I would point them to the wiki.

I would even suggest they watch Let's Plays of legendary players to see what they do and emulate their style.

There's no shame in this, I don't think it makes the game much easier, for some people it just makes it bearable by saving a lot of time and frustration.
It's not that I want it easier, per say. I want it less frustrating, and if that means reading up on the game on a wiki beforehand, I'd rather not play. Because reading up means knowing what awaits and it becomes completely without surprise or awe. I'd rather not play like that for the first time. That's what I do when I've beaten a game once. Then I look at wikis, try new builds, look up all the things I missed etc. But never the first time.

If that is what is required to enjoy DD, I simply won't play. That's just how I am, I guess. We can't like every game we come across. It just saddens me a bit because I really did think I would like DD, and I do want to like it. But it seems me and the devs simply have different ideas of fun. No hard feelings.


Yeah, same here when it comes to wikis.

I'll use them for something like, say, Isaac, where I just want to find out what the freaking item does (or for other games, want to just see more detail on it).  But if it's something like, say, Path of Exile for example, which has a huge focus on the build you create for your character, if I do it by just looking up a guide and copying it I just feel like I cheated.  The satisfaction comes from doing it myself.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
« Reply #59 on: January 22, 2017, 05:53:51 am »
...if I do it by just looking up a guide and copying it I just feel like I cheated.  The satisfaction comes from doing it myself.
This. Very much this for me too.
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