Celerity
Takes 1337 hours to realise it's shit.
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2015
- Messages
- 1,096
I find it really strange that DD became as popular as it did. Not that it's a bad game - on the contrary, it's quite fun to play for an hour for a day and then shelve till the next time you get a craving. However I think the level of difficulty of the game puts it in a strange spot where it's too hard for casuals and too easy for people familiar with RPGs or tactical games.
*snip*
So how can a game too hard for a typical casual mouthbreather and too easy for the hardcore RPG/tactics/turn-based combat crowd become this popular. Is it really because of the art and presentation?
Because the game is designed as video/reviewer fodder, which means aside from only looking good for about 5 hours, the difficulty is low but targets insecure hypercasuals who think they're hardcore. Result: People failing at this "hard" game, but as they can't actually lose they win, then feel good about themselves, then carry on with this "Git Gud" nonsense (when they haven't done so themselves yet). It doesn't help that the developers are both very secretive and don't understand math, so it's hard for them because they're insecure hypercasuals, and they won't let actual gamers bang on it first because they'll reach the same conclusion I did (seriously, sort posts oldest first... there were a LOT of Celerities in the past, back when that meant solid well informed info about the game instead of about the game's scams). More importantly though, that mass video campaign got it the casual audience in the first place. If not for that, the actual challenge gamers would get bored and leave, there'd be nothing, and this game would have died out before March of last year. In fact, I originally posited that was the reason they never fixed their balance. They knew making an actual hard game meant driving away all their moneys, so they started being deceptive so they could retain their casual audience. That was the most charitable theory, and given how much further they've went since it was probably the product of active malice from the start, but...
I am actually gonna argue in good faith here. Darkest Dungeon is fundamentally a good game but with misleading marketing. Let us abstract what it says it does and look at what it actually does.
Ok, let's look at the game:
The combat is just damage spam with class and skill stacking, everything else is clearly and obviously mathematically inferior, if not deliberately made useless.
The non combat part of the dungeons is a 3 step chart that is basically Rekt Hook cherry picking "Giant Alien Spiders" out of the hundreds of FTL events and copy pasting it everywhere. Blue option or GTFO.
The hamlet part could be replaced with a static leveling track and it'd make no difference aside from protecting people from themselves.
So completely ignoring all the shit with the devs, the community, etc, you have very little content that offers very little of interest.
Given how stretched out the content is, most people won't reach the endgame (like most people don't reach the endgame of facebook games) but that doesn't mean they can't get their money's worth by treating it has a casual experience.
That only fuels their narrative as:
You have few hours, you don't know.
You have many hours, you got your money's worth.
Few people will grind through the game, there are few completions, so it's hard.
Counterpoint: 21% of people have the achievement for doing one quest, so 79% aren't even interested in the game at all anymore.
P.S. I think you will find out that your definition of "real RPG" will be significantly different from most people on this site given your lack of knowledge about Fallout which is a sacred cow around here. http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9453 here is a top of games made by the RPG Codex regulars. If you don't consider any of the games in the Top 20 "real RPGs" then this site probably isn't for you. Which isn't something wrong, you like what you like but when you starting using terms like "group think promoter" unironically while having an obvious lack of knowledge about the games that are highly regarded around here, it is hard not to make fun of you and generally disregard what you say. Also, subcultures generally frown upon outsiders embracing their language in a wrong manner then thinking they are owed an explanation. Do try to be more humble, you aren't owed anything by anyone here.
I remark about "groupthink promoter" because people freak the fuck out about Fallout 1-2 (which I never said anything bad about, beyond assuming the entire series was Bethesda made). They also freak the fuck out about Divinity, when I blasted it for being a poser hardcore game full of bugs. And the thing about it is, my criticisms started out mild and instead of pointing out that I had a version from a little over a month after release and it got better since then they just mindlessly raged, which just proved I was right because they could offer no counterpoints until I finally found someone reasonable and dragged actually useful infomation out. It's not even about games, anyone who goes against what they are informed they should think gets swarmed immediately from all sides.
Also, from looking at the list it seems like most people here are just caring about story, or at least more than game mechanics. That's not necessarily bad, but it's not what I'm looking for. I see few games on that list I know have good mechanics, so real RPG or not I am not so impressed. For example, Baldur's Gate. I was only interested in the commentary of the guy running the thread, the actual game part was just grinding on trash and a very predictable story. I forget who made the thread, but he's the one doing a solo Insane run. I do have the actual game somewhere, but after seeing that I am significantly less interested in it.
Interesting tactical combat/mechanics are what compels me. Anything else is secondary, but not unimportant.