I've talked about this long ago in soem other thread (I don't remember which one) where I said DD2 is a very terrible game and has a very terrible buisness model.
Now I've changed my opinion. the buisness model still is crap, you pay horrendous amounts of money for very minor stuff. nad no one can tell me a little costume is worth 20$.
The gameplay itself however have been improved.
But let's start from the beginning. For those who don't know th egame, Dungeon defenders 2 is the successor of the well praised game dungeon Defenders and the not so well received Dungeon Defenders Eternia. The game takes several years after the first one but does not follow a true storyline at the momemt. The game is a hybrid of tower defense and rpg, you place towers and barriers in a 3dD environment but you also fight with a created character along your towers. Your character can level up and invest status points in his attributes, you collect also equipment with various traits. Those benefit both you and your towers in different ways, they can increase attack speed, damage, health or give special abilities.
The goal is like in any TD game to protect your base from waves of enemies, after each mission you are awarded with loot, xp, gold and medals.
Medals are a currency that has been introduced when the first new hero entered the game. Medals are used to buy various stuff but the main reason why tehy have been created was that you buy new heroes with it. The developers ignored the fact that people had already a working currency because they didn't want all people to buy the new hero instantly. Why? Because they wanted to sell him also for real money. You needed 12.000 medals to buy him. The reward for a daily quest (you get one each day and can holp up to three) was around 100 medals. 200 medals was the best you could get. This means you had to grind for 60 days (or more) to get the new hero. The backlash on this was really hard, the developers had to bear a lot of negative criticism but they pretended you could get the new hero in a week or two.
At that point I stopped playing the game because I was fed up how they handled the game. If you haven't guessed already, DD2 is a free to play game and is designed as a MMO game. Somethign the first game wasn't. But the first one had also its flaws because the released every tiny update as purchasable dlc instead of adding new features for free. I can understand when you charge for an expansion (which they also did. They made an expansion and divided it into four parts, you had to buy each part for the full expansion) but why do I have to buy the new hero that could have been free? Or why do I have to buy a winter themed costuem that coul also have been free? The dlc system wasn't well liked and because of this they went with the f2p model this time. because when the game is free you have a good excuse for charging extra stuff. Yay!
Like I said before, the buisness model is bullshit. They haven't leanred a single thing in the years and I doubt they ever will. But at least they won't charge for extra maps this time, these are for free (now).
Okay, all this sounds bad, so why do i suggest the game? Because they imrpoved the worst part of the game, the medal system. When the medal system came out it was the most terrible thing int he game. You could buy only one thing int he game and this was an overprized mess ant took you forever to get it. They chnaged this entirely. First they have improved the daily rewards, from 200 medals max to 450. They also decreased the cost of new heroes. Heroes still cost 12.000 medals but two weeks after release the prize will drop permanently to 10.000 medals. Additionally they also removed the monthly quests which were too hard and grindy to fulfill and added weekly quests that are easy to achieve. Weekly quests give you 600 medals each. Additionally each weekend is 3x medals weekend that increases the medal drop on maps you beat (does not increasee the amount from quests). With this imrpovements you can get a new hero in less than a month. This is still a lot of time but it's fair. Medals got also multiple new uses, you can use them as alternate currency to gold in every shop, you can also buy soem special ability spheres (give your characters new abilities) that are unobtainable with gold. the best thing is however, you can use them to by more slots for heroes. Each player has alimit of four characters that you can increase if you unlock a new hero or buy a new slot directly with medals. Before it changed to medals it was only obtainable with real money.
They also have drastically buffed all the older heroes that were too weak compared to the new hero and enemy statistics.
The reason I got back to DD2 was basically because of the release of a new hero, the Lavamancer. That hero looked so badass, I wanted to try him out. I'm glad I gave DD2 another chance, it's a better experience than before and I don't have to work my ass off for tiny rewards. The game still needs big improvements but it's now playable for people that don't want to spend a single dime.
These are currently the heroes tha are in the game:
The four base heroes (free from the start) are the Squire, Apprentice, Huntress and Monk. These were also the four basic characters from the first game.
The Squire is a tanking hero, he has a lot of health and can build barriers with a lot of health. These barricades block enemis in the way and attract their attacks, protecting your other towers and of course your base. He also has some attack towers to assist his barricades.
The Apprentice is a jack of all trades, he can cast powerful abilities, has his own barrier, has strong attack towers and a good support tower that slows down enemies.He can be built in any direction and is good for newcomers.
The Huntress builds traps instead of towers. Traps will never be ignored by enemies and amage them if they walk over them. A triggered trap looses a charge and will eventually disappear once out of charges unless you refill them. She also has a poison tower that deals damage over time and is her only true tower.
The Monk is a supporting character, he has no great offensive qualities but he has auras that affect enemies and towers in range. He can place a damaging aura, a healing aura for allies and a protection and damage boost aura for towers, he also has an anti air tower that targets only airborne enemies.
Since then the developers have added 4 new heroes.
The Abyss Lord was the first new character. Instead of towers he summons udnead creatures to the field that follow the basic tower rules. However each creature has its own ability that the Abyss Lord can trigger at wish. he also ahas a movable ultimate defense, the colossus. he can have only one but he can move him wherever he wants.
EV2 is the remade version of EV from DD1. She is asupport character that builds small laser stations that link to other stations and build a laser grid. The built grid can either reflect incoming shots, slow down enemies or heal and boos other towers. She can also build a weapon manufacturer that gains charges with defeated enemies and builds a super weapon for a one-time use.
The Gun witch is the first combat only character. She cannot build a single defense but instead has twice the amount of abilities that regular heroes have. She can also fly in air and snipe enemies from there without having to fear getting hit.
The Lavamancer is the newest character in line. He is mostly a support character but has also a very strong attack tower that is however very costly. For his abilities he uses lava mana instead of regular mana, he has to collect lava mana from chasms that he can build for free on the map (two per map). He can build oil geysirs that slow down enemies and also a barricade that petrifies enemies and makes them taunting targets for nearby enemies. He can burrow underground and travel very fast while healing himself. His ultimate defense is a large and expensive volcano that can hit the entire map (except soem very large ones) and attacks very fast but the attacks are random and unpredictable. He can have only one volcano and move him around if he needs to (for some of the bigger maps). Additionally the Lavamancer can "errupt" which boosts all defenses in range with more attack damage, attack speed and special abilities. Thsi erruption costs a lot of his lava mana but is useful to boos defense points where a strong attack is happening.
