Review Dungeon Lords first impressions

[Eron]

Well, I've made myself clear.. Several times. Once again, YES the game is unpolished and it shoud have been held back even longer to finish.. As I last recall the game was delayed till may 20'th, then all of a sudden we get word that it has gone gold.. Dreamcatcher definately rushed this one, as did Atari with TOEE, as with many other games out there..

I hate this trend.. And it's really getting to a point where YES people should do something.. So, what does one do.. Don't buy the game.. Plain and simple. Am I going to buy it?

You see I ain't justifying my measly 39.99 cause I have not spent it yet.. The first patch will likely make me decide yes or no..

So take ur shrink terms, and ur psychological assesments and shove them..

So keep the flames comin at me.. I got a LOT more time than any of you have. Believe me.

Being financially free has it's benefits eh?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Volourn can still make some intelligent points. We've seen him do them, and we know he can do them - sometimes he chooses not to.

These idiots, however, have yet to show any arguments other than i prove'd u don haev teh game cause i says so or u = meanie, i dint insulted yuo, i jus call u teh bad names now i angry yuo treat me mean like!.

Fuck's sake.

 

[Eron]

Ya ur all way to 3l33t for me.

 

[Spazmo]

When you're talking up Volourn as an example of a reasonably intelligent poster, you know you've been around waaaay too many complete morons.

 

[bgillisp]

Agreed. BTW, where is he these days anyways, I have not seen a post from him in a long time?

 

[Shagnak]

Ummm...yeah..ummm
First off, don't wanna get involved in the "u r stoopis" kinda talk. The state that the game is apparently in, is indefensible. Even Eron seems to be saying that.

I just wanna know...does the game have any game-killing bugs/fucked quests etc, Eron?
Thanks.

Err...pointless argument can recommense now... :wink:

 

[Elwro]

So keep the flames comin at me.. I got a LOT more time than any of you have. Believe me.

Prison or asylum?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

So keep the flames comin at me.. I got a LOT more time than any of you have. Believe me.

Prison or asylum?

Braindead kiddie shit stirrer somewhere over the net. It doesn't matter where he is, only what's his intention, and that one has become painfully obvious.

 

[Shagnak]

:sigh:

Edit:
oh well, you may have scared him off
Went looking at the forums, so far found one ridiculous bug that people seem rather enthusiastic to exploit (despite the fact that it may unbalance a game that already has its share of problems):
http://dreamcatcherinteractive.com/foru ... hp?t=21023

I had 157 lockpicks on my character when I walked in the Apothacary.
When I sold all of them, the game subtracted one lockpick and gave me
$2982. There was then one lockpick available to buy and I had 156 left
that I could sell over and over. The Apothacary still had only one in the shop.

I did this about 20 times until I had an "IDEA".
I bought 100 each of Snake Skin, Spider Yolk and Rat Tail, which cost me
$3440 and mixed the reagents to make 100 charges of the Nether Spell
Soften. I then sold the 100 charges to the shop for $171,000.
Hows that for a profit?
I now have over $750,000 and the Apothacary has not run out of reagents.
I am going to play around with mixing reagents to get more formula.

Now that's silly. Surely someone would have noticed such an easy exploit?

Edit2:
A "patch coming soon" thread was started by Chuk22 a little while ago:
http://dreamcatcherinteractive.com/foru ... hp?t=21027

One thing mentioned is "Fixed some er, money related exploits.". So the above exploit may be gone with the coming patch.

 

[bgillisp]

I have another ? for Eron also: Could you list some of the pro's of the game, or some things you like about it (as you do seem to like it)? All I see are the negatives, and would like to hear something positive about the game.

 

[LlamaGod]

To bring up an old thing:

It's funny how Spiderweb has 1-3 people work on a game and its incredibly stable (with only a handful of minor bugs), almost quadruple in length, completly non-linear, better written, and has more fun gameplay then Dungeon Lords.

Also it only takes 6 months or so for a Spiderweb game to come out.

Now lets compare to Dungeon Lords which has been going for about 2 years now?

Yeah. D.W. Bradley sucks.

 

[Shagnak]

Apparently Vogel actually listens to beta-testers :wink:
(so any shit bugs, we're gonna blame you for not noticing )

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

:sigh:

Edit:
oh well, you may have scared him off

If that is the case, then great. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say. I mean, seriously, what were his points again?

• He feels the lack of polish of the game shouldn't be defended.
  
  No kidding, people have been saying this all along.
  
• He feels people should ignore the numerous negative feedback on forums because it might prevent people from missing "a good play".
  
  Which is just inane. People should be alerted of a game's state before buying it so they don't spend money on heavilly unfinished products.
  
• "A lot of the complaints are just that. Complaints."
  
  Could he be any more vague and apologetic? That's right, complaints are complaints. Oh boy, nothing gets past him! We can't even understand if he's agreeing with something so redundant or wheter he is questioning people's right to criticism. I *think* it's the second, but I was never good at solving cryptic and vague puzzles.
  
• This is the kind of place where I get insulted for liking a game because one person insulted me.
  
  Generalizations like those are the stuff of legends.... Who suffer from Down's Syndrome.

Then there's the whole har har har i gunna keep make dumbass posts cause yuo smell and i gots teh time. I mean, seriously, do we really need these people here? Either they make a point, and a good one at that, or they should just go to whatever hell hole forum spawned them and pat each others backs for blindly supporting such unfinished games. It's not hard to make a good point. Yet, for someone who claims to have the time, all he/she/it does is drool on the keyboard and strike whateve keys look cute at the time.

 

[Shagnak]

Yeah, yeah, cool. It's all too easy...
I don't wanna get involved, just want some info off him. :D

 

[Naked_Lunch]

OMG DRAMA!

:D

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

:sigh:

Edit:
oh well, you may have scared him off

In that sense, perhaps yon Eron was more intelligent than our old friend Volourn...

 

[Shagnak]

Agreed. BTW, where is he these days anyways, I have not seen a post from him in a long time?

I think he might be doing a lot of NWN mod stuff

 

[Sol Invictus]

Okay, so what exactly is Dungeon Lords? It's basically a cross between the character development (I use this term very liberally in this case) system of Wizards & Warriors, especially in regards to levelling up and getting new skills, with a sub-par version of the combat in Rune. To put it simply: why bother with Dungeon Lords, when there are far superior games like Mount & Blade (which only costs 10 dollars) of similar design?

By the way, to all the people who keep saying how Dungeon Lords has the 'potential to be great', get your collective head out of your ass. That's like saying R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels have the 'potential to be great' if they were written by George R.R. Martin or Orson Scott Card. Want your Gauntlet fix? Wait for J.E. Sawyer's Gauntlet. I see no reason to settle for this piece of shit.

 

[Sol Invictus]

By the way, Dungeon Lords has no copy protection whatsoever. I guess Dreamcatcher didn't see any reason to spend another 10,000 dollars to protect this heap of shit.

 

[Shagnak]

By the way, Dungeon Lords has no copy protection whatsoever. I guess Dreamcatcher didn't see any reason to spend another 10,000 dollars to protect this heap of shit.

I thought so...heh.

I think there is a key of some sort though. Not that it matters, the internet gaming shit doesnt work anyway I think.

And even for LAN it's a bit broke.

 

[LlamaGod]

By the way, Dungeon Lords has no copy protection whatsoever. I guess Dreamcatcher didn't see any reason to spend another 10,000 dollars to protect this heap of shit.

Good. I'm not paying for it and dont feel like having to use wacky shit.

Also another reason why Spideweb's games are pretty much bug-free is because the beta testing is pretty rigorous and not just 'report if you find'.

You have to give daily or every-other-day beta reports, even if you didnt find anything, so its very thorough and also he can know which areas are pretty much clear and if nobody or not many visited a certain area, he can look around there himself.

 

[Shagnak]

I'm beginning to think there was NO beta testing for Dung Lords at all.
They had two call-outs I think. Never heard much more from any source...
What happened to their bug reports, if they existed at all?
Perhaps it's just cheaper to get the unsuspecting public to do it? :wink:
(heh, 'cept its not in the long-term, is it?)

 

[Sol Invictus]

JohnPNP was a beta-tester on the game, and he had 'good things' to say about it, about how it had potential, but he's always been a cheery, happy little guy. He did however mention that the game was nowhere ready for release - not within the next few months. I'm sure a lot of his fellow beta testers felt the same way about the game, but it appears that neither Dreamcatcher nor Heuristic paid any attention to their input.

What was the point of the beta test?

 

[LlamaGod]

yeah, I was wondering about that.

Good beta tests = testing a finished/almost finished version of the game to clean up the left-over problems

Dungeon Lords beta test = incomplete build of the game handed out to some folks, they just played it like a normal game and reported on some bugs if they found them. They probably fixed a few of the bugs, didnt fix the rest, and then shipped the game (since beta is over, it must be complete!)

 

[POD]

I bought Wizards and Warriors based on the fun I had playing Wizardry 7, played W&W for about 10 hours, and gave up. Remember the sideways scrolling towns? The lack of any rhyme or reason to do anything or go anywhere? But I did have hopes that D.W. would redeem himself with Dungeon Lords; played the demo, and saw that almost nothing has happened since W&W: same hack and slash, same bizarre menagerie of "customizable characters," same "story" or lack thereof filled with the same old boring quests. So I'm not suprised to hear the final game is in the bad shape it is; what the apologists seem to forget most of all is that there is a history here that many on the board know about. Weirdest of all is the "we should give D.W. Bradley a chance" argument; we're all tired of the endless stream of buggy, unfinished, unpolished games that lack any sense of story, sophistication, and character. It's just sheer creative laziness and/or greed (though stupid greed, if you turn out something like this that non one will buy because word has gotten around fast that it's a piece of junk), and it shouldn't be rewarded with charity, understanding, or dollars And if you care at all about RPGs, whatever your definition, you have to be concerned that too many of the few that come out look like Dungeon Lords; meanwhile, we can't even get a decent U.S. distribution of GII Night of the Raven. It really is a sad state of affairs.