KickStarter Darkest Dungeon AKA the Celerity Attention Whore Thread

[Lujo]

As for the imbalances, it's really very simple. The game has always been about damage spam as damage spam has always been incredibly powerful, and everything else was deliberately and mathematically made worthless.

Ok, what exactly do you mean by damage spam?

There's too little "game" for there to be anything in it but damage spam in one way or another. You got stuns, you got dmg and you got heals. Positioning is kind of a factor, but that mostly boils down to which skills you can use at any given point. DoT is just stacking damage, from what I've seen it mostly lets you get a techincal killing blow on something in a way which lets the rest of your guys act before the fight ends (meaning heals). On bossess it's stacking damage, when used on your guys it's atrition. But the system itself, take from it or add to it, is so simplistic that I'm having a hard time imagining what you (or me or anyone) would do to it to improve it (or make it worse). If something can kill the enemy before it gets a chance to act it's strictly better than anything else, more or less, with the system as such you can't really get it any other way.

I'm beginning to get a feeling too many people fell for the art/style/premise taking itself seriously, really, and imagined there's too much room for improvement or that the game is difficult because it presents itself as difficult. I think there's too many skills in the game, not because of numbers on this or that skill, but because there's no real room for all these skills whatever you do. Unless there's specific challenges that then require you to have this skill to deal with them. But what the game then lacks the most is enemies.

You seem to have protested (as far as I can tell) the design strategy of adding things to the game which made people have to use mathematically sub-par skills or, say, deviate from damage stacking. But that's all you can do with this kind of system, it desn't have an inherent need for anything but damage. It's a phone game.

Have you considered that you, too, probably more than most folks, fell for the ambience and the art? The system is so simple minded that it's not worth arguing over, but what could have convinced you that it has more potential? It's a shame that you aren't familiar with the old fallouts, as they have almost the same exact problem - the combat system is a complete joke, yet legions of modders and tinkerers over the years have tried "fixing" the game by fiddling with guns because the gun artworks and combat sounds/animations convinced them that it's supposed to be a game about guns. And both early fallouts are essentially point and click dialogue adventures that happen to have a strange interface.

If you ran into an actual phone game with less engrossing art would you even bother with the combat mechanics at all or would it have been obvious to you right away that there's no point?

 

[Xor]

Every time I see a shill fail a basic intelligence check it reminds me what I fight for and against. That is why I "care so much".

 

[Gord]

The damage spam complaints are thus:
Take a hero class that has direct attacks with high damage. Give them some +damage trinkets (which might or might not require some grinding to get hold of the right ones), probably apply further buffs (from camping skills, curios, other chars). See them one-hit-kill most enemies (those with high PROT or HP might take slightly longer).
Easy way to acchieve this is e.g. by taking a crusader to the ruins, giving him one of the fairly common trinkets that have +25% damage against unholy and whatever else you have. Together with his inherent buff against unholy enemies he will hit pretty hard and you can dispose of enemies quicker than by using DoT.

However, DoT has been buffed during EA and a good DoT party will also be viable, plus they might have an easier time against high-PROT enemies.
The whole thing is mainly an issue if you consider the "optimal" strategy to be the only strategy.

 

[Ivan]

got ambushed with 1 more room to clear on a 2 camp hard dungeon, 2 knife guys and 2 riflemen. 3 of my guys got killed and I had to abort the mission

pro tip: always take PREVENT NIGHT AMBUSH

 

[Xor]

got ambushed with 1 more room to clear on a 2 camp hard dungeon, 2 knife guys and 2 riflemen. 3 of my guys got killed and I had to abort the mission

pro tip: always take PREVENT NIGHT AMBUSH

That exact same thing happened to me, except I didn't lose anyone. I did finish with three characters at death's door and one with over 100 stress, though. The entire party was scrambled in just the wrong way and the bandits were free to spam AOE and murder my now front row vestal, while my crusader and hellion were stuck in the back unable to do anything.

 

[Ivan]

The entire party was scrambled in just the wrong way

this. so much fucking this will be the cause of most of your deaths

that and it was 2 am and instead of using group heal I accidentally single healed a guy who wasn't even at death's door -_-

 

[Matalarata]

In those situations what usually kills you is trying to use characters in sub-optimal position to avoid "wasting actions". What you should do is plan in advance how many moves you need to recover functional positioning and do that asap, that usually means the enemy only gets a free turn on you.
That said, some party compositions are badly screw'd when shuffled, I usually plan for at least a couple mobility skills for each group. Not always possible.
Still, it's been ages since last time I lost a Lv 3+ hero, sometimes you just need to press the "nope" button.

 

[Zombra]

I'm confused. Can't you just hire the guys you want and not hire the guys you don't want? More come every week.

What does that solve? You're still subject to the complete randomness of it, just like XCOM:EU, especially for the first half dozen runs or so, which is when I just always stop since I keep getting stuck with classes that remove all the fun from it. Restarted about 10 times, same bullshit. How fucking hard can it be to put a bloody "Hire dude" button for like 100-500 gold and you get the fucking classes you want. Game already completely gamey as it is, this just makes it more like a bloody Pachinko machine for gambling addicts than anything else.

OK, you didn't like that suggestion, here's another one. If there are so many classes you hate so much, hire all those characters instead of ignoring them and then send them in to die with no food etc. Failed runs don't cost you anything. Then a week will pass and the Pachinko machine will have new doods to choose from.

Though honestly, if you hate the RNG so much, you shouldn't be playing this anyway.

 

[Invictus]

Or simply use the backer heroes list and voila summon exactly the classes you want. That seemed kind of broken at release since after summoning a few to check which one I prefered the game crashed on me when summoning them, maybe the fixed that on the layest patch

 

[Zombra]

Or simply use the backer heroes list

Eh? Where's that?

 

[Pope Amole II]

Eh? Where's that?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10auW6fCJu-z8zeLZM4J4F3kdrOm2nIipdq99xtTwzNc/edit#gid=0

Just push enter in your carriage and type the name.

I must say that most backers don't have a slightest clue what's good in this game, though. There are almost no truly powerful heroes there (and it is quite obvious that people tried to make them powerful; at least the majority of them).

 

[Lujo]

The damage spam complaints are thus:
Take a hero class that has direct attacks with high damage. Give them some +damage trinkets (which might or might not require some grinding to get hold of the right ones), probably apply further buffs (from camping skills, curios, other chars). See them one-hit-kill most enemies (those with high PROT or HP might take slightly longer).
Easy way to acchieve this is e.g. by taking a crusader to the ruins, giving him one of the fairly common trinkets that have +25% damage against unholy and whatever else you have. Together with his inherent buff against unholy enemies he will hit pretty hard and you can dispose of enemies quicker than by using DoT.

However, DoT has been buffed during EA and a good DoT party will also be viable, plus they might have an easier time against high-PROT enemies.
The whole thing is mainly an issue if you consider the "optimal" strategy to be the only strategy.

And I suppose if you use the word "optimal" when you mean "cheeze". I think it's a system thing, though. There's no cooldowns, no passives (well, techincally there are, but no scaling ones), blah blah blah. It's one action per turn, ofc folks will use whatever gives the most plusses / wipes the most stuff off. Gotta have artificial barriers / rock paper scissors stuff, there's no room for anything else, as far as I can tell.

Blight seems to be ok, bleed keeps letting me down (apart from on the Hellion where It's doing fine against big guys-bossess). Problem with dots is that tanking doesn't seem all that viable (by design) and if the cheeze strat is taking stuff out before it can act, then dots are going to suck by default and you have to jump through hoops to make them work.

 

[Jimmious]

Eh? Where's that?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10auW6fCJu-z8zeLZM4J4F3kdrOm2nIipdq99xtTwzNc/edit#gid=0

Just push enter in your carriage and type the name.

I must say that most backers don't have a slightest clue what's good in this game, though. There are almost no truly powerful heroes there (and it is quite obvious that people tried to make them powerful; at least the majority of them).

Searched for Celerity, didn't find anything.

 

[Zanzoken]

Eh? Where's that?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10auW6fCJu-z8zeLZM4J4F3kdrOm2nIipdq99xtTwzNc/edit#gid=0

Just push enter in your carriage and type the name.

I must say that most backers don't have a slightest clue what's good in this game, though. There are almost no truly powerful heroes there (and it is quite obvious that people tried to make them powerful; at least the majority of them).

Searched for Celerity, didn't find anything.

Found him!

 

[Jimmious]

Eh? Where's that?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10auW6fCJu-z8zeLZM4J4F3kdrOm2nIipdq99xtTwzNc/edit#gid=0

Just push enter in your carriage and type the name.

I must say that most backers don't have a slightest clue what's good in this game, though. There are almost no truly powerful heroes there (and it is quite obvious that people tried to make them powerful; at least the majority of them).

Searched for Celerity, didn't find anything.

Found him!
*awesome pic*

Hahahahhahaha damn I need to be able to brofist just for posts like this one

 

[Ivan]

WTF are backer heroes?

 

[Reinhardt]

Found him!

You should change class "Apprentice Vestal" to "Typical Modder".

 

[Fug]

In those situations what usually kills you is trying to use characters in sub-optimal position to avoid "wasting actions". What you should do is plan in advance how many moves you need to recover functional positioning and do that asap, that usually means the enemy only gets a free turn on you.
That said, some party compositions are badly screw'd when shuffled, I usually plan for at least a couple mobility skills for each group. Not always possible.
Still, it's been ages since last time I lost a Lv 3+ hero, sometimes you just need to press the "nope" button.

One way to prevent night ambushes is to change your characters skills to the mobility ones before resting, ie equipping Holy Lance on the crusader before falling asleep.

 

[aweigh]

so dis game any good or what?

 

[Mangoose]

Every time I see a shill fail a basic intelligence check it reminds me what I fight for and against.

Do you ever look away from the mirror?

 

[Fug]

so dis game any good or what?

Overwhelmingly Ok. Great art, great narrator, ok gameplay, too repetitive at times.
/10

 

[Wolfe]

I am really enjoying it, would definitely recommend it.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Why did this cucklord get so worked up? Is this an act? This streaming shit really has gone too far.

 

[Fug]

Of course it's an act, that's the whole point of streaming. Act like a gigantic fucking faggot on camera, people will watch and laugh at you being pathetic.

 

[Celerity]

DoT is useless and Hellion/damage spam is mathematically superior?

You know what the biggest joke here is? Hellion is a primarily DoT character. Even previously, when her AoE was way too good, you'd have to be dumbfuck to say you can AoE through the game - however good it is at grinding the trashmobs, it doesn't do anything against the bosses (which are, like, the main objective of the game). Unlike DoT, DoT rules there. And, well, it also rules rather generically as long as you know how to build your party around it.

Except that... she isn't. She did have If it Bleeds, which was a useful single target attack that just had a bleeding effect there, but it wasn't good because of the bleeding effect, that was just kind of there. Of course now that skill is gimped for being a DoT skill like all the others, leaving only direct damage. Which is still mathematically superior, because literally 90%+ of encounters are trash mobs and for the rest? Well you hit 2 instead of 1. (Though it is worth mentioning AoE spam vs a single target boss will still 4 round it, likely better than what your gimp tactics do anything despite being the obvious wrong tool for the job).

As for the imbalances, it's really very simple. The game has always been about damage spam as damage spam has always been incredibly powerful, and everything else was deliberately and mathematically made worthless.

Ok, what exactly do you mean by damage spam?

There's too little "game" for there to be anything in it but damage spam in one way or another. You got stuns, you got dmg and you got heals. Positioning is kind of a factor, but that mostly boils down to which skills you can use at any given point. DoT is just stacking damage, from what I've seen it mostly lets you get a techincal killing blow on something in a way which lets the rest of your guys act before the fight ends (meaning heals). On bossess it's stacking damage, when used on your guys it's atrition. But the system itself, take from it or add to it, is so simplistic that I'm having a hard time imagining what you (or me or anyone) would do to it to improve it (or make it worse). If something can kill the enemy before it gets a chance to act it's strictly better than anything else, more or less, with the system as such you can't really get it any other way.

The game has:

Single target damage.
AoE damage.
Bleed.
Blight.
Stun.
Move.
Buff.
Debuff.
Heal.
Cure status.

It could make all of those useful, instead it only makes the first two useful and punishes you for anything else, thus damage spam. It would still be a simplistic system, but it would offer more than one dimension. And given some of these are just basic mathematical failures (DoTs do less damage over 3 rounds than instant damage does instantly, when they should do more damage long term but less immediately) it just shows how incompetent the developers are, as does me fucking around in some text files without any technical knowledge, just basic game design knowledge and doing a much better job. It makes them look bad by existing, which is the real reason they were never a fan of me even before I became hostile. Because as much as people here like strawmanning about me being arrogant or whatever, I really haven't done much and the fact it's better than their work just shows how terrible at design they are without saying anything positive about myself.

I'm beginning to get a feeling too many people fell for the art/style/premise taking itself seriously, really, and imagined there's too much room for improvement or that the game is difficult because it presents itself as difficult. I think there's too many skills in the game, not because of numbers on this or that skill, but because there's no real room for all these skills whatever you do. Unless there's specific challenges that then require you to have this skill to deal with them. But what the game then lacks the most is enemies.

You seem to have protested (as far as I can tell) the design strategy of adding things to the game which made people have to use mathematically sub-par skills or, say, deviate from damage stacking. But that's all you can do with this kind of system, it desn't have an inherent need for anything but damage. It's a phone game.

That's not actually what I said. The whole atmosphere thing, it's hollow without that difficulty, without that enemy/ally balance. It's an illusion. You're right, the gamespace is so narrow a lot of skills are just redundant. But nothing has ever been added that "makes people use mathematically sub par skills or deviate from damage stacking". Even 80% protection does not make direct damage worse than DoTs, and the fact they think it does again demonstrates their mathematical cluelessness. You're right about it being a phone game though. Lots of grind, minimal interaction and game.

Have you considered that you, too, probably more than most folks, fell for the ambience and the art? The system is so simple minded that it's not worth arguing over, but what could have convinced you that it has more potential? It's a shame that you aren't familiar with the old fallouts, as they have almost the same exact problem - the combat system is a complete joke, yet legions of modders and tinkerers over the years have tried "fixing" the game by fiddling with guns because the gun artworks and combat sounds/animations convinced them that it's supposed to be a game about guns. And both early fallouts are essentially point and click dialogue adventures that happen to have a strange interface.

If you ran into an actual phone game with less engrossing art would you even bother with the combat mechanics at all or would it have been obvious to you right away that there's no point?

I wasn't decieved by the atmosphere, I was decieved by the mechanical potential. I thought it would actually be the hardcore Roguelike about making difficult decisions. It wasn't. I failed my Will save vs false advertisement.

Though I'm glad you tell me about the old Fallouts. People here love going full retard over them. Now that I know the combat mechanics are shit I know I have no interest. Comparing them with Derpest is... amusing, but even if they are objectively good games shit mechanics = lolnope.