Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Detrevni|inverteD]

I think it was a poor choice to call the decorations "Gimmicks". It makes the game feel extraordinarily shallow (Not that it isn't if you look at it). Infact, the entire game is dragged down by poor design choices. So much promise, gone to waste. I would say there is still hope through patches, but that is kind of a slim chance.

[Draco18s]

I think it was a poor choice to call the decorations "Gimmicks". It makes the game feel extraordinarily shallow (Not that it isn't if you look at it). Infact, the entire game is dragged down by poor design choices. So much promise, gone to waste. I would say there is still hope through patches, but that is kind of a slim chance.

Also very true.  "Gimmicks" indeed.
*Sigh*

Also dying from anything but dirrect confrontational murder makes you less of a person.

That made me laugh.

[nenjin]

The thing about the campaign is the whole meta-balance between all your resources: without prestige, you're dead. Just plain dead. Without soul energy, you can't get prestige, which lets you do ALL the stuff that makes your life easier. Higher monster level. Guardian. More Goblins. And of course, prestige.

The # of heroes in the demo is trivial compared to what they throw at you later in the campaign. Add in champions coming down on a timer, going straight to your dungeon heart, and requiring all your attention and powers to bring down...yeah. Part of the design mechanic is this immense juggling act. The other part is the "fun design your own dungeon" part.

The problem is where the two try to meet. If you try to design a dungeon aesthetically or in a way that's fun for you, it can make the whole-meta resource game much, much harder. If you say "I think that's enough objects in this room, it looks "cool"", you're probably setting yourself up for getting beaten up by heroes. It forces you to overload on prestige objects for the sheer numbers value. The fact prestige guides heroes around the dungeon becomes secondary to getting the stat boost.

That is, if you even have enough soul energy to DO prestige objects. I'm so strapped for soul energy in the campaign, I'm lucky if I have enough energy to float one or two objects at a time. Why? Because I'm waiting for goblins to dig out passage ways and rooms, rather than just immediately throwing down treasure and monsters by the gates to start racking up soul energy. And I would summon more goblins to get that done faster, if I had soul energy, which I need chests to even start getting, which I need rooms to start putting it in....

The game lets you play it either way, pure victory or your own free-form style. But one is way more time consuming, stressful and difficult to pull off than the other. One solution is to get your income going temporarily then restructure. Depends on what campaign level you're on, or if you're in the sandbox and what challenges you face there.

Part of the challenge and an element of the fun for me is getting the whole meta-game at arms length so I can do things the way I want. It's easy to spend an hour + on a level if you're not just "trying to get through it."

Definitely not for everyone, though. There's a lot of improvement that could be done, even the devs won't deny that. From talking to them on the forums, they're going to smash bugs for a while and then try to work in as many suggestions as they can. Sort of depends on how long they get to continue working on Dungeons before they need to do something else.

As for the humor, it's hit and miss. I like the voice acting, the setting, for the most part. The text humor....is about 50/50 though. There's a few funny observations in there about the whole genre. But then there are far too many ones like "This is a crystal which is really just a lamp. This is what happens when you tell designers you can't have the same object in two levels." Reminds me of Stardock humor >.>

[Draco18s]

See, the "meta-game" income resource bit should flow seamlessly with the "design your own dungeon" fun bit.

In fact, it should almost be necessary.  The whole point of an efficient dungeon is one that takes care of itself, generating the income you need without intervention on your part.

And when the rules steal resources from you when you do that (i.e. monsters that kill heroes) it's frustrating.

Especially when, on level 3, the heros have a GINORMOUS soul bar, but only get about 10 "soul" from beating up the monsters I throw (because they like to take damage, but have dodge and defense rates of like 60%) and a total 20 soul if they manage to fill their pockets with the 100 gold they want (which takes like 4 piles).

So most of them were slain when they had 10 or 20 soul.  I had one up at over 60, but who got mobbed by monsters (4 skeletons and 8 bats) and died before I could slay her myself.

Well there went about 3 adventurers worth of soul power.

[nenjin]

That's the critical difference between Dungeons and DK. They've reserved that as a sandbox goal, rather than as the way the game optimally gets played. You've still got the choice the whole time, one is just far tougher. They're looking at things to try and help bridge the gap between the two better. (Like secret doors, god how that would speed up getting where you need to go.)

Rather than being super bitter about what it isn't, I've tried to look at it as a whole fuck ton of additional challenges on the road to building my ideal dungeon. Which is kind of nice considering in DK, it was 30 minutes of building punctuated by 20 minutes of minion management, and 10 minutes of hero assaults before you got bored.

Once I finish the campaign, I'm going to mod the hell of out of the LUA files to tweak all the timers and stuff on hero levels and arrivals.

[Draco18s]

I'm at the point where I've played 2 hours and never want to play again.

Its like they intentionally designed their game around Spore's space age.  The "Run here, do this, run there do that.  Oh, you wanted to actually have time to do fuckwhatever you want?  Screw you buddy, you've got heroes to punch in the face!"

I'm sorry, I thought that's what I had minions for.

[Neonivek]

I sort of Hate the Goblins, often I don't feel like they do as much work as I think they should.

I actually found that often Goblins won't work on a spot unless you happen to be near it.

You can be waiting for a painfully long time before Goblins decide to dig out a single tile.

They NEED to work on the goblins. Who thought it was a good idea that Goblins should carry 1 gold from digging to you personally? I could care less! Leave it there and dig more!

Also even the HARDEST most Time Crunchiest Dungeon Keeper level felt less juggly and "NO TIME" then even some of the easy Dungeons levels.

[Draco18s]

Who thought it was a good idea that Goblins should carry 1 gold from digging to you personally? I could care less! Leave it there and dig more!

Also even the HARDEST most Time Crunchiest Dungeon Keeper level felt less juggly and "NO TIME" then even some of the easy Dungeons levels.

QFTMFT.

Also, from the Steam forums:

I have a feeling the main character has no idea what his job is supposed to be.  It's like he wanted to be an interior decorator and his dad said, "NO SON OF MINE IS DOING THAT, YOU'RE GOING TO KILL HEROES AND LIKE IT!!"

[Zangi]

Disappointment was expected.  =/

[burningpet]

Nenjin, lets talk reviews, dont you find most reviews (good score or bad) failing to really capture the essence of the cons and pros of the game?

[Shades]

So. It's important to know that heroes tend to sense thing radially within a certain distance. That's what tends to screw up my designs, is putting say a treasure chest or spawn right next to a wall that paralells a long corridor. Heroes tend to sense the goodies (and the prestige objects) closest to them, and use those as their guide. Their radial sense for monsters seem to be much smaller, on the order of 4 to 5 tiles.

Even when I remove everything else, creature, goal or gimmicks, within a large radius except along the path I wish them to take it's still very hit and miss. Enough that attempting to plan anything based on it feels like a waste of my time and I'm actually better off having a large room full of goal and critters and letting them take there fill right next to the entrance while having my avatar idle just to one side.

Kinda sad that the dungeon building isn't more involved really. I doubt I'll be buying this at this point unless it's on a pretty heavy sale.

[engy]

There is a real trick to luring heros into the paths you want them to take.  However, it's very possible and pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

You have to put things heros want to do along the path, and they have to be able to see it.  Most heros will always attack a monster if they can see it, the only problem is heros can't see forever down a straight path so if you find heros are attacking one set of monsters and then back tracking add another set a little closer to where they stopped.  Heros that like gold will stop and pick up gold they can see if they haven't filled their limit, so dig out 1 or 2 squares out of the side of each wall in the hallway and put some small gold piles; you can use larger ones if you want to, but the whole point is to keep the heros going down your path, not going home.  Decorations attract heros if they can see them, the more they cost the more likely they are to go look at them, so lay a string of cheap ones slowly getting more expensive along the path.

I agree the goblin gold is kinda silly, and I don't think it's intended because goblins carry 100% of the gold they have to you or the Dungeon Heart, whichever is closer, as soon as they have any gold, usally this means one, however, they can easlly carry 8-16 from a gold square or hundreds to fill up your treasure chests.  I think they forgot to add a return gold if over 20 pieces or carry gold for x time before returning.

[Shades]

You have to put things heros want to do along the path, and they have to be able to see it.  Most heros will always attack a monster if they can see it, the only problem is heros can't see forever down a straight path so if you find heros are attacking one set of monsters and then back tracking add another set a little closer to where they stopped.  Heros that like gold will stop and pick up gold they can see if they haven't filled their limit, so dig out 1 or 2 squares out of the side of each wall in the hallway and put some small gold piles; you can use larger ones if you want to, but the whole point is to keep the heros going down your path, not going home.  Decorations attract heros if they can see them, the more they cost the more likely they are to go look at them, so lay a string of cheap ones slowly getting more expensive along the path.

This is pretty much what I was trying, in an attempt to pull them down a corridor, with no other objects in other directions for a fair range however I was still getting them turning back or even just ignoring them completely often enough that it doesn't really make sense. The only reliable pull I've found so far is creatures but the problem there is creatures seem to spot them and charge before they spot the creature and so chaining is proving to be hard.

[nenjin]

Epic-6am-coffee-fueled-post-incoming.

Nenjin, lets talk reviews, dont you find most reviews (good score or bad) failing to really capture the essence of the cons and pros of the game?

Positives? Absolutely. Negatives? I think people have some of the game's mechanical short-comings pretty well in their scopes. Piled on top of that is a lot of bitterness at the real and perceived use of fan love of DKII to make sales, both of which still don't give the guys credit for the parts of the game that are an homeage to DK. Half of Dungeon's gameplay has DKII to thank for the inspiration. To people that aren't getting what they expected, it's like a punch in the nuts, when combined with some of the game's less than inspired humor.

I'll get to the positives in a minute. Because I've got some evidence to present. This is my take on the game up to the first boss.

Its like they intentionally designed their game around Spore's space age.  The "Run here, do this, run there do that.  Oh, you wanted to actually have time to do fuckwhatever you want?  Screw you buddy, you've got heroes to punch in the face!"

I'm sorry, I thought that's what I had minions for.

In a 3 hour game on Happy Manor (I think), I had...

5 Deaths.
6,500 Prestige
15k Soul Energy
12k Gold
_1_ hero escape.

How many heroes did I personally kill because I felt I "had to?" Maybe 30. 
How many heroes did my minions personally kill? I stopped keeping track after 60. I imagine 100+.
How die I did 5 times? I stupidly ran into 4 or more heroes when my prestige was like, 200. Terrible idea.

This is my super-spiffy diagram explaining the very odd ball way this game plays out:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's how it goes: the timer on hero level is what really in the end dictates difficulty. They've set it far faster than you can possibly get soul energy to stay competitive without working pretty hard in the very beginning.

Because your monsters aren't worth spit when heroes are 8 levels above you, not only do you not even get chump change soul energy in the first 10ish minutes for killing heroes while your stuff is building, they're bored because the stuff is too easy. So they head for your dungeon heart.

Right about then is when the campaign events kick in, and you start feeling pressured. 

And then you try to take down more than 2 heroes and die, because by now the difference between the hero's level and your innate stats is becoming a problem because your prestige is low. I'm sure the co-efficient for prestige vs. bonus gets worse and worse, which means your rate of growth, even if you're dumping everything into prestige, is constantly getting slower, while hero power growth just gets faster, and faster, and they get more gates, and more gates, and more gates...

So. You're trying to build prestige, get soul energy from virtually nothing, and the hero gap is getting bigger by the second. Cue "truly frustrating part" because mages can kill you very quickly if they gang up on you at this point (because your damage reduction against spells is based on *drumroll*...prestige, as is your HPs, which help you stay competitive with their final damage.) A group of fighters with stuns can also take you apart.

This is when most people give up.

Here's the secret to getting past that part: get your monster level up. They are NOT stingy with the monster cap in the campaign. Throw those bastards out there and let them take the heat from the heroes, don't camp on your monster cap or use it to expand. Having monsters out there buys you time and they become phenominally effective when the level gap between them and heroes is close. Even at -3, heroes start getting minor soul energy for getting in fights.

If monster's aren't keeping the heroes at bay OR amusing them, you're completely screwed. You have to have level parity with the heroes, no greater than -3 in my experience, to get things going. Any lower than that and you're in trouble on a lot of levels. Any higher than +3 and heroes won't survive long enough to get any soul energy.

*Stuff for people actually interested in still playing.*

At this point, heroes are still marching toward your dungeon heart, not acquiring much soul energy before you kill them. But it's more than before. If you can take heroes one or two at a time (which you can at your dungeon heart because they'll generally make their way to you in the groups they spawn in as, when they're dissatisfied ) the level difference is minimized. Fight them in your Dungeon Heart room with your guardian, and you're fine.

By now your goblins are finally doing their job and you can start getting real rooms together, taking the pressure off you for a little while and getting heroes more than 1/3rd full of soul energy. Keep maxing out your monster level, not going any higher than 1 or 2 above the hero's current level.

Once you're at equilibrium with the hero level, start building prestige items like mad. Your effectiveness against heroes will sky rocket through the roof.

*End frustrating part, begin fun part.*

This is where I start saying good things about Dungeons.

There are a few different ways to design based around the kind of dungeon you want to run. It's all about throttling hero satisfaction increases versus controlling where they go in the dungeon. You do this by building armories and libraries at different capacity and efficiency rates. Prestige gimmicks and monsters kind of connect the areas, by getting heroes to move around, by keeping them from going straight to the Dungeon heart.

Once you really understand how to make the whole system work for you, and you start getting all the objects in place and lots of heroes running around, it actually is kind of cool from a Sim-perspective.

By the time I finally brought things under control, my monsters were one level below the heroes and took care of EVERYTHING. I went from having no soul energy, to floating 1,000 easy. I went from pausing like a madman, to doing nothing for long stretches of time just watching heroes as they went about doing stuff. The rest from there was cake and experimentation, occasionally casting DH Teleport to kick the shit out of a champion, and beating the boss (which by the time I was maxed out was trivial. But that was the warm up level to an actual DL opponent.) I actually designed for fun, like making crypts with (Revenants) in them, slime pits with statues of Horny in them, surrounded by mushrooms. There was actual design fun to be had, eventually.

Now that I know what I'm doing, I can start planning a dungeon for real real this time and really pull apart the mechanics. There are a few basic designs I think any functioning dungeon ends up with:

A Wing-based Design, where each wing is basically self sustaining in terms of hero needs. You end up placing these near hero gates out of necessity. While each wing is nice and insulated, the downside is you have to run in there to gank ripe heroes. A recipe  for an asskicking early game if your prestige isn't high enough, and their level is.

A hub-design. It's like a wing-design, except you carefully arrange the libraries, armories, gold and monsters so that all the easy to get, easy to beat, small pay off, slow efficiency stuff is at the exterior of your dungeon. This keeps heroes semi-satisfied, but moving ever deeper to get at better quality chests and rooms that arent empty or in-use. At the center, near your dungeon heart, you use the best objects, the highest efficiency, highest capacity rooms, and the most amount of monsters. Result? Heroes come in half full, get almost full and almost dead, and you walk 5 feet to take them out. The downside is the hero AI choosing not to wander, and you end up with a low efficiency hub-design. They'll also get dissatisfied, but that simply brings them toward the place you want them to go, now doesn't it?

A scatter design. This one I haven't really tried yet, but I'm going to. Basically, lots of open space between objects of interest that forces heroes to travel decent distances to get every kind of satisfaction. Probably results in the most interesting looking dungeon. It's also probably the most annoying to manage, because it will involve lots of chasing guys down, unpredictability and hero trains. And without the requisite prestige objects to connect it all so they don't get bored, it will turn into a hero train to the dungeon heart. Probably not a good thing if champions are around.

So as you can tell, *I* think it's got some depth, once you get over the total resource scarcity at the start of every level. The trick is figuring out how to survive that difficulty spike in the early game without making the level unfun for yourself. (Designing like an asshole and just throwing stuff out there to get it done. In my mind that is the worst way to play this game.)

Some other things worth noting:

Prisons: They act like you should build them next to your dungeon heart. This is a bad idea. Champions go straight for your DH every time....unless they happen to cross a prison cell on their way. Then they let all your prisoners out. If your prisons are right outside your DH, depending on design, champions will walk straight through them on their way to the heart. In order to defend your prisoners, you have to step out of your Dungeon Heart (and away from your Guardian's protection).

So if you build prisons in their own little part of the dungeon, well away from the path to your DH, you never have to worry about champions screwing with them.

In general, my "build order" is this:

-Basic prestige (I.e. enough to get access to the next level of prestige items.)
-Monster level
-Very basic gold and monster spawns, to be moved/destroyed later
-Monster level
-Goblins
-Monster Level
-Guardian
-Monster Level
-Goblin
-More advanced rooms
-Monster level
-Prestige
-Monster Level
-Armories and Libraries
-Prestige, repeated until heroes are easy to survive.
-Monster Level, repeated to max.
-Full construction, beating the level.

Another tip: Don't save the high-end prestige stuff for the heart of your dungeon. That is where it's the LEAST useful. It's MOST useful in between areas of interest to heroes, to prevent them from "losing admiration" for your dungeon. Using cheap prestige gimmicks to line long distances of non-interest to heroes basically increases the chance they'll waste time looking at objects which are filling their admiration at a much slower rate than they're losing it.

I sort of Hate the Goblins, often I don't feel like they do as much work as I think they should.

I actually found that often Goblins won't work on a spot unless you happen to be near it.

You can be waiting for a painfully long time before Goblins decide to dig out a single tile.

I <3 my Goblins. It's true the best way to get work done is to stand by it, because you'll always have at least one goblin following you around unless you're maxed on tasks. They seem to pick work based on proximity as well, so being closer to what you want to mine immediately gets them working on it faster. You can also divide up tasks among them on the Information Pane, but I haven't really seen a need to do that. Nothing is ever happening so consistently I need x goblins always refilling chests and rooms,  imprisoning heroes, or digging walls.

Once you get a bunch of goblins, and you start investing in them, the little bastards will snake corpses out from under you before you can teleport them to prison yourself. I only wish I could get them to hit shit with the mining picks.

They NEED to work on the goblins. Who thought it was a good idea that Goblins should carry 1 gold from digging to you personally? I could care less! Leave it there and dig more!

Well the idea is they want you to upgrade them so they can carry more in their packs. It's just another element of dungeon efficiency, but I agree, they need to work a little longer at those walls before coming back.

Also even the HARDEST most Time Crunchiest Dungeon Keeper level felt less juggly and "NO TIME" then even some of the easy Dungeons levels.

I never did the DKII campaign, really. But yeah, Dungeons is automatically more of all that, because you don't have the resources to build out even 1/10th of your Dungeon before you have to expose yourself to "fun."

Also, from the Steam forums:

Quote from: A Ghost

    I have a feeling the main character has no idea what his job is supposed to be.  It's like he wanted to be an interior decorator and his dad said, "NO SON OF MINE IS DOING THAT, YOU'RE GOING TO KILL HEROES AND LIKE IT!!"

Even though I do like the game, I've got to say, that's hilariously fucking ironic. So much of people's problems with Dungeons would not exist if:

YOU'RE GOING TO KILL HEROES AND LIKE IT!!"

Was not part of their design philosophy.

This is pretty much what I was trying, in an attempt to pull them down a corridor, with no other objects in other directions for a fair range however I was still getting them turning back or even just ignoring them completely often enough that it doesn't really make sense. The only reliable pull I've found so far is creatures but the problem there is creatures seem to spot them and charge before they spot the creature and so chaining is proving to be hard.

It's easy to think the game is about obsessing over what one hero is doing, because in the beginning of a level it primes you for that. The reality is that when you have 15 to 30 heroes wandering the dungeon, what one hero is doing isn't really a big deal. It's just getting to the point where one hero isn't a big deal on any level is tough to do if you don't understand the whole system.

Here's where I talk bad about Dungeons:

Jesus Christ. They missed the biggest lesson they could have learned from Mud TV, that people aren't wild about ACTION/SIM hybrids. If you do that hybrid, either side of the game has to pause or at least slow down for the other. The two together, at the same time, incessantly, just pisses people off and prevents them from taking the time to understand what the hell your game is really about.

Dungeons is also guilty of not explaining/showing the player enough of the mechanics, and pacing their introduction to the game. The 2nd level of the game is a joke compared to what you go through later. You almost never get to choose when the first, let alone the majority, of heroes gates opens in the campaign. That alone freaks people out. Then the player has to decide which is more important among three vital resources and they have to start doing it immediately. The 2nd Level is when the tutorial pretty much ends, yet figuring out how to use Armories and Libraries the right way happens in a level where shit is thrown at you non-stop.

Meanwhile, the game implies that you're supposed to do all this fun aesthetic design, when in fact, in the campaign, you're committing suicide by trying to be creative right from the outset. You need to min/max your ass off in the first 20 minutes of a level, and the game doesn't prepare you for that realization at all.

I played probably 14 hours of the demo, and I only *now* feel like I get Dungeons. Does that make it "deep" or just poorly executed? Both, to me. For example, the skill trees are, by and large, pretty damn boring. I still think so. And yet, when you take how tough dungeons can be on you, even those stupid, passive skills become important choices that can actually affect the game. I was like "I'll never use the Eagle Sight spell!" when I started. Now I use it all the fucking time, because it's easier, in terms of time and logistics, to use it. Magic Missle seems worthless, but at 400% prestige, it wastes heroes. Prestige and Item discount skill seem worthless? How about at the start of a level when you have diddly squat for prestige, and hero levels go up every 2 minutes? Seem so worthless then?

Does the game actually have depth? Yeah, I think it does. I've probably seen about 80% of what the game has to offer right now, and I'm still excited to go on to the next set of Dungeon levels. Maybe I'll be sick of it before I finish, who knows.

But I do know that if Realmforge can keep developing the game, it will only get better. Right now, most of the fan base is pushing them to a) add features that make the game a lot less tedious to play and b) add features that just add fun and simness to it. Realmforge seems to be totally open to making changes, the real question is whether they'll have the time or the backing. I hope they do. With some work and some added details (and streamlining if need be), I think the game could actually stand out as a gem. Right now, it's a diamond in the rough...and you have to believe there's beauty there to even see it.

It kind of makes me sad. I see all that's really good about this game, but man, people are so horribly fixated on the parts of it that don't work.

[Shades]

It kind of makes me sad. I see all that's really good about this game, but man, people are so horribly fixated on the parts of it that don't work.

If you were meaning me in that group, it's probably because if I'm frustrated at the randomness of heroes and the endless chasing then I'm not enjoying the game. And lets face it if your not enjoying a game it's not a good game regardless of any good points in it. I really am trying to give it a fair chance though, keep trying to play a little more.