KickStarter Darkest Dungeon Pre-Release Thread

[Reinhardt]

leave

No such word in my dictionary. We will stand and fight!

 

[Matalarata]

In this game leaving a mission is the closest thing you have to a fail-state, anyway I'd like to see that attitude when playing a real roguelike like DCSS...

 

[Celerity]

In this game leaving a mission is the closest thing you have to a fail-state, anyway I'd like to see that attitude when playing a real roguelike like DCSS...

If you want some real drama, suggest or insinuate in any way that this game should have a fail state, watch everyone rage because "Roguelikes like FTL and Isaac are short".

Though now it will probably be met with "You can get it, just grind through the super long and grindy game so you can unlock NG+, get stuck with all the tedium on, and possibly actually get the Roguelike experience you paid for.

I think their business model at this point is difficulty (in remaining awake) so they can call the game hard because no one beats it without snoozequitting.

 

[Suicidal]

I haven't played the game yet, but I've seen let's plays and the Death Door mechanic was pretty stupid and exploitable.

Dude is fighting a boss, which deals about 20 damage per hit. Boss brings one of the characters to 0 hp, triggering Death's Door. Dude heals the character for 1 hp. Boss attacks again, bringing him for 1 to 0 and triggering Death's Door (note that a character can only be killed if attacked in the Death's Door state, if a character has more than 0 hp, no matter how much damage an attack deals, it will bring him to 0 hp and Death's Door first, but cannot kill him immediately), dude heals for 1 hp again, rinse and repeat till boss is dead with 0 casualties. That was pretty facepalm-inducing to watch. So I'm glad they added at least some sort of penalty to Death's Door. It's not a very good penalty and I definitely would have done something else, but I feel it's better than nothing.

 

[Celerity]

Unless the penalty stacks it's still fully exploitable, especially if it doesn't do anything relevant. Both of which are likely true. You're right though, it puts a very low ceiling on difficulty, while at the same time being the only reason they can get away with having one enemy per zone actually do damage (and sometimes randomly one hit kill people).

 

[Seethe]

The penalty does not prevent that cheese strat.

 

[Suicidal]

Well then the devs ARE stupid for nerfing a broken easily exploitable mechanic in a way that doesn't fix anything.

 

[Celerity]

Well then the devs ARE stupid for nerfing a broken easily exploitable mechanic in a way that doesn't fix anything.

That's why I've became increasingly annoyed with them from the beginning. They were ALWAYS this way. Right from the point they "buffed" Plague Doctor in a way that in no way addresses her lack of mathematical capabilities, and "fixed" the Hellion stacking in a way that explicitly does not punish Hellion stacking. But it's ok because Tyler Sigman is a rocket scientist and that means he's good at math. Just like it's ok the game's a trivial one dimensional joke because we're informed of how very different from that it is!

 

[Starwars]

The Plague Doctor is like my MVP in the current build. She's fucking awesome, especially in the cove.

That said, was surprised to find the "novice" (or whatever it's called) level stuff extremely easy in the current build. And the difficulty jump to the "veteran" levels seems pretty steep atm, though I think I've had some bad luck on the runs I've done as well.

 

[Celerity]

This is a PBPDAC. That's Problem Between Plague Doctor and Chair. Remove one of the weakest classes in the game from your party and replace them with an actual damage dealer and you will see dramatically improved results.

 

[Matalarata]

No, PD is able to stack 6+ blight damage with each hit (or double if you target the back row), is one of the only two classes with a double stun (with the added bonus of having a trinket to increase its proc% AND other stats) and removes blight/bleed, very gud.
Celerity when is the last time you actually played the game, without any of your bias? They're quite good for cove/weald/ruins atm, probably the best class in the cove.

 

[Celerity]

6 damage? And you say this like it's a high number? Yes, let me scratch the balls of a trash mob for 20% of its life, IF I hit, and IF I don't fizzle with an unreliable attack.
...Or I could use a real character class and 1-2 hit kill this shit with perfect accuracy.

Or instead of doing that I can use a stun with the same miss/fizzle chance that gives it less of a net success rate than an attack from a level 0 Leper (which would also likely kill a trash mob if it DOES land). Or how about I waste a character's action so I can prevent a DoT, which is even more shitty than hero DoTs and will absolutely result in my taking more damage, anyways, because I just gave the enemy more turns by not killing them?

I expect that Tyler Sigman will prattle on about how he's a rocket scientist and understands math while the Plague Doctor Incisions herself in the corner because she is not mathematically relevant on account of dealing less damage over the 3 rounds she doesn't get than real classes do instantly.

I expect the Steam forums will have a self selected group of mouth breathing fuckwits who possess similar informed trait math skills and defend the trash classes accordingly.

But for all your unfortunate "molested by modder half a decade ago" ways I figured the people here at least understood basic math. After all, you largely saw through Derpest on your own. Was that not true either?

 

[Gord]

This is a discussion that's done to death on the Steam forums as well.
Imo, DoT effects are ok if you play normally, but become underwhelming once you begin to powergame and/or use exploits.
Given some grinding to acquire the necessary trinkets, damage stacking can push direct damage into regions that make it plain superior to DoT effects.
However, that's probably not mirroring the experience of the average player (I never really bothered with such builds either, although that's probably partly because I've mostly stopped playing in earnest long before trinkets actually became useful).

 

[Celerity]

With 0 optimization, a direct damage basic attack does 15, and a DoT does 5. So assuming combats actually last 3 rounds, the DoT is a lower accuracy attack with a second fail chance and a slower damage rate. The direct damage then scales based on every offensive parameter, which are commonly available and the DoT scales on practically nothing as instead of just getting your damage/accuracy/speed in a nice package you're stuck just compensating for your own failures and poorly. The DoT actually has negative scaling, as no fight in the game including boss fights lasts 3 rounds against a proper party so the real comparison is more like 1 DoT tick vs 1 direct hit and that's even more one sided.

Once you do optimize and go with the One True Way the developers are clearly hellbent on forcing the direct damage basic attack does 40 (with at least a 1:3 chance of doing 70 instead) and the DoT still does... 5...).

Remember, direct damage has ALWAYS been dominant. That includes the point where trinkets were useless. It's just a question of degree.

 

[Matalarata]

There are a lot of high defense mobs now in the game against which DoT is much more useful than direct damage, and that's even powergaming or damage stacking, at least for the PD. The other heroes using blight are quite underwhelming, bleed is niche but you can build really performing parties around it.

6 damage? And you say this like it's a high number?

yes it is! Considering after the second hit you get 12 and vs bosses you manage to rack up 18 per round, again when have you last played the game? Try and frontloaddamage in any veteran+ run and you'll see what I mean. Octotanks have a def of 50% in apprentice iirc, good luck breaking them with an hellion. Is not that it won't work, it's actually something you can build a party around but there's more to the game than just pure-direct damage, even if we talk about "hardcore" high performance builds.

mouth breathing fuckwits

Can't you disagree with someone or something without taling like a 12yrs old retard?

But for all your unfortunate "molested by modder half a decade ago"

No, you fail to realize you're providing quality entertainmente here, much more than what red hook delivered, this much I must concede

 

[Matalarata]

With 0 optimization, a direct damage basic attack does 15, and a DoT does 5.

nope, again go play!

 

[Celerity]

You're very bad at this whole math thing aren't you? I will handle you in the same manner as the clueless then.

Protection is an effective life buff, and not enough of one. That's it. In practice what happens is you do 40 damage reduced by some number, and the net result is still higher than 5, so you still don't use DoTs, because they are still bad. Bleed is the only one that could arguably have any merit and that's only because an otherwise useful attack "If It Bleeds" has a random bleed effect on it just for show. Every other DoT attack was actively crippled, ironically as part of the same page that allegedly made them useful because ROCKET SCIENTIST MATH GUYS.

Yes, you sit there and stack your piddly little DoTs. It will take 7 attacks, each involving 2 RNG checks before you are doing the damage of one hit from one real character. Out of four. A round. Every. Round. Meanwhile, there is not a single enemy in the game that can withstand 7 attacks from a real character and that includes bosses. You hit them 7 times, they take ~350 damage, their effective life is < 350, and they explode. Do do do do do do do do do...

Perhaps you've forgotten here, but I'm the guy who made Deepest Dark precisely because this game was casual and one dimensional as fuck and I wanted the originallly advertised game about a difficult Roguelike etc? In the end, the difficulty needed a 5x increase MINIMUM, and nearly every skill, class, and enemy in the game needed a complete redesign before tactics could even begin existing? But do keep telling me about how I couldn't effortlessly rofflestomp vanilla, or how "useful" mathematically broken abilities are with trademarked noob logic. Oh and keep telling me about how trash mobs with an effective life of 50 are this insurmountable obstacle when I deliberately put stronger enemies in the starter dungeons on purpose. And also made an endgame boss get revived if you fight him incorrectly, have fun going through that 646 effective life again! PS: I made DoTs useful.

As for how I'm addressing you, it's really very simple. Talk like an intelligent person with some basic common sense and I will address you in kind. Speak like an idiot troll and I will start trolling. Failing at basic math is a good example of an idiot troll, or 12 year old retard, or whatever you wanna call it.

With 0 optimization, a direct damage basic attack does 15, and a DoT does 5.

nope, again go play!

See, this is an example of failing at math forever. The damage ranges are right there. Sounds like someone grinded Derpest so long they rotted their higher thought functions.

 

[Matalarata]

Sure thing darling, I won't harass you with facts anymore, since your answer is a mumbo-jumbo of insults and random numbers pulled from your ass. See, a low level attack from an Hellion is 8-16 before def reduction, some mobs have 50-60% def, in your uttermost math superiority can you tell me what's the average damage? And that's the most damaging hero.They usually hit for 4-7 damage in the early game and blight is stackable. You also have to take other things into consideration, like sinergy with stun and the fact the DoT is applyied to two enemies, which you accidentally forgot to mention in your above rant. Also DoT = no corpses while the RNG point is the most useless one, the game tells you what's your % to proc an effect and the enemy % resist, you can reach 100%.
Fortunately math isn't an opinion, while you dearie are either a retard or a liar, anyone ITT just needs to fire up the game to see how far your math is from reality.

Steam says I grinded 43 hours into this game, that's with 3 playthrough*, I'd say you're the one who grinded too much his brain into this fucking game, where did the bad devs touch you? Was it in the balance or... under there, you know... in the math?

*one after each major patch

 

[Seethe]

Is this the first time an early access title has been discounted at 50% before release?

It crashed that hard.

 

[Abu Antar]

Is this the first time an early access title has been discounted at 50% before release?

Nope, lots of EA games have been discounted.

 

[Siveon]

Is this the first time an early access title has been discounted at 50% before release?

Nope, lots of EA games have been discounted.

 

[Celerity]

Is this the first time an early access title has been discounted at 50% before release?

I don't know about first. It definitely is not the norm. I've seen Early Access games on sale before. They were not this extensively discounted, or this frequently discounted, and most certainly were in a better design state at the time of the sale.

It's not the 50% sale alone that damns this game - it's the increasing cut rate discounts: 10, 20, 25, 33, 40, 50 and increasing frequency. Imagine a heart monitor for a normal person. Then make him panic. Then play that in slow motion. That's what it looks like.

https://www.steamprices.com/us/app/262060/darkest-dungeon

In particular note that there are 2 distinct sales pre July 15th, and 5 post July 15th even though if you create a timeline of Feb 3rd-Dec 28th July 15th is almost exactly at the halfway point (July 17th). That of course is the day this game's public perception exploded, though it had problems before this. After this well, wall of negative reviews, lots of recommended votes from buyers who go elsewhere, you know the deal.

By comparison look at say... Undertale. Before Undertale was ever discounted it had more overall sales. When many games would go on sale and Undertale did not it still sold well. Even though people generall ignore non discounted titles during major sales. Now not everyone likes Undertale. I don't think it's the best game ever or anything. But this is what happens when you make a solid, honest game and don't bullshit your fanbase. Quality sans bullshit equals results. QED. (And when Undertale did go on sale its sales figures exploded, despite it being a very modest discount)

Sure thing darling, I won't harass you with facts anymore, since your answer is a mumbo-jumbo of insults and random numbers pulled from your ass. See, a low level attack from an Hellion is 8-16 before def reduction, some mobs have 50-60% def, in your uttermost math superiority can you tell me what's the average damage? And that's the most damaging hero.They usually hit for 4-7 damage in the early game and blight is stackable. You also have to take other things into consideration, like sinergy with stun and the fact the DoT is applyied to two enemies, which you accidentally forgot to mention in your above rant. Also DoT = no corpses while the RNG point is the most useless one, the game tells you what's your % to proc an effect and the enemy % resist, you can reach 100%.
Fortunately math isn't an opinion, while you dearie are either a retard or a liar, anyone ITT just needs to fire up the game to see how far your math is from reality.

Steam says I grinded 43 hours into this game, that's with 3 playthrough*, I'd say you're the one who grinded too much his brain into this fucking game, where did the bad devs touch you? Was it in the balance or... under there, you know... in the math?

*one after each major patch

Yes, tell me more of your Tyler Sigman brand facts and logic, in which 5 is a larger number than 50, or even 8. Tell me more about these mythical 50-60% protection level 1 enemies when anyone can look and see the real number is 33, and if you reduce 8-16 by one third you get 5-11 - which you guessed it is higher than 4, which is the actual damage a level 1 PD does when you quit moving the goal posts between early and late game enemies and characters several times within the same post. Tell me more about failure rate math when anyone can see the rate is 100% - enemy's non 0 resistance - and sure you can waste trinket slots compensating for double miss instead of actually killing the enemies. Your chance will STILL be less than 100% no matter what your blight chance and resist values are because it's capped lower than that. Tell me more about wasting additional actions on other useless abilities while the enemies are still alive and are still killing you. In particular, tell me more of this "stacking", given that by its very nature it involves combats having at least 2-3 times their natural duration meaning you take double-triple the damage, stress, debuffs, diseases, and other shit in a game that specifically makes recovery shit as a means of forcing damage spam as the only viable strategy since, you can only prevent this by killing enemies before they kill you and you can only do that via... damage!

Oh and I did not ignore the whole "back row hitting 2 enemies". Ever hear about the amazing damage of no damage Occultists using the tentacle attack? No? But it's single digits man, it's great! ...Just people aren't stupid about that and forget their math and common sense at the door with direct damage. It's obvious a low direct damage direct damage ability is bad. But obscure that even a little and you have people cliaiming PD is great while slowly tickling the backrow (and then posting rage posts about heart attacks and shit because you just ignored the back row for a bunch of rounds).

Now see I almost felt bad about this. You made an idiot shitpost at the wrong time, and I made an example of you. Then I started doubting if you really deserved that much instant hostility for a comparatively minor derp. Just as I was debating whether or not I should apologize though I see you're still at the anti math anti logic shillish spamposts. I now regret that weakness in not trusting my first instinct.

Trolling aside, the fact of the matter is direct damage is a 90% accurate 1-2 hit kill on every trash mob in the game and a 1 round kill on every mini boss in the game, and a 2 round kill on every boss in the game. DoTs, meanwhile have lower accuracy, lower damage, and a second chance of failure. They will ALWAYS be weaker and less reliable. They easily could be relevant - it'd require enemies that don't die instantly, as well as damage over time effects that actually deal more damage than direct damage. That requires both math and design skills however, both of which have been lacking from this dev team from the beginning. Other status effects are even worse, as aside from being weaker and less reliable "instant death" renders all other statuses irrelevant.

 

[Starwars]

I don't know who this Tyler Sigman is but did he fuck your mom or your girlfriend? Which one was it? Both?

 

[Viata]

I really think you should move on. There's a thread for Lords of Xulima here, you may post there you mod, talk to people about that game and whatnot. Just ignore this game, man, for your sanity.

 

[Celerity]

I don't know who this Tyler Sigman is but did he fuck your mom or your girlfriend? Which one was it? Both?

The designer of this game. He goes on and on about how he's a rocket scientist and is great at math, yet most of the balance problems are basic mathematical failures an average 5 year old child will catch. Doesn't prevent him from defending his own poor choices though.

I really think you should move on. There's a thread for Lords of Xulima here, you may post there you mod, talk to people about that game and whatnot. Just ignore this game, man, for your sanity.

If this were merely a shitty game I'd have done that a long time ago. You won't see me rage about Diablo 3 for example. Terrible, clueless design, but the devs and community never made it personal and neither did I. In all seriousness though I don't think anyone on these boards is much interested in mods/modders of any kind after Drog pissed them off a few years ago and even if I were wrong about that this conflict is still ongoing. Hell, there's about five separate Reddit threads raging about me right now. Why? Because clearly it's my fault the negative reviews have 1,250 votes on them. So much lies and rage about me (reviews from 2014, release date Feburary 3rd 2015 LMFAO) - and if I didn't stalk myself I'd have never noticed their rage threads and threads promoting stalking me because I dismissed Reddit as another 4chan months ago. Their dismissals are growing so desperate they completely disregard basic facts such as "Every single most helpful review is made within the last month, the last major patch was exactly a month ago so every displayed review is relevant." Or ya know, recent reviews must predate the game and not be relevant anymore.

Quitting now is like beating down my enemies in the most spectacular manner possible and then showing mercy at the end. That is not happening. Rekt Hook themselves is just a running joke at this point - it's their supporters that are fueling my damage control efforts at this point.

Oh and as for the Xulima project itself it's been on an unannounced pause, mostly because no other challenge gamers have contacted me with an interest in my work and I've been busy with either the Derpest Drama or other games I had no hand in making at all.