Rehashing progression yet again

[Lujo]

Which is sorta depressing to me because I know how much stuff is obscure only because noone really spells it out for you and then a lot of people give up before really discovering anything. Whenever I was explaining very simple stuff to RL newbies "How was I supposed to know that" cropped up a ton. Back when I originally suggested a codex what the codex turned out to be wasn't what I had in mind, this is the kind of game that needs a *pedia, like the civ series does, easily browsable, clearly informative, conductive to putting two and two togather and establishing connections about features. I'm willing to bet that a simple infographic simply spelling out what what means and some very basic stuff without expecting any experimentation or brain using on the part of the player would push the point at which folks give up unbelievably (I know this because I made one for some buddies, but I'll be damned if I shared it, I see the game being frustrating and unapproachable as a design decision 3rd parties just have to accept).

Because what I see from the numbers is a large percentage of the people giving up before figuring out or getting to see anything at all. It's great when a game has a helpful community, not so great when it feels more like it needs one (if it wasn't for the wiki, I'd have never figured out anything in the alpha but the Monk. And some folks that gave up on the game before figuring anything out had to be told by a 3rd party what part's the elbow and what part's the arse and then they went back to the game after writing it off and discovered the actual game. Shocked "Why didn't the damned game tell me that?!" was a common reaction.). And this is coming from me, and I've played several Moba's who are, like, the epithome of encyclopedic learning of unintuitive mechanical interactions (with execution practice also involved). It's also part of why I never really felt like doing work on the wiki - the game doesn't give off a vibe like it really wants to even have one, despite the glaring fact that it's quite unplayable without one. As far as I know a good percentage of pople who bought the game and never got anywhere just don't look up wiki's for games, and they never had the initial learning curve kinks solved for them by it or a forum. Seeing this is pretty obvious, my conclusion is that the devs wanted it that way for whatever personal reasons, why mess with that?

You'd be amazed at how many people gave up just because trying to melee stuff with "the Fighter" didn't work. Or never figured out gods because they ran into GG with a Priest and decided gods aren't worth even touching afterwards ("If they did that to The Priest, wtf are they gonna do to anyone else?"), and stuff like that. Saying "The Fighter's the wizard and the Priest is the fighter" in an assuring tone of voice actually helped people out to just keep playing on more than one occasion, as stupid as that sounds. That's pretty much the first thing you have to tell most struggling newbies, in my experience, and then explain the concept of ding (kill stuff above your level, eat lower level stuff while you fight the boss) and then that they're meant to use glyphs with everything ever (to counter the immediate disbelieving "How the hell do I kill higher level stuff!?") and then confirm that "Yes, even with the fighter. He's not a Fighter he's a Wizard, remember. Oh, and the Priest, too, use glyphs with him, even though he's the Fighter, but buy him that sword. Just use glyphs on everything, don't think just listen to me and do it you'll believe it when you see it."). Turns the game from "unplayable" and "not for me" to "wow this game is great" in no time.

[MTaur]

[MTaur]

That's sort of true that some things like GG Priest and the name "fighter" are thematically off by a bit. And there is a lot to learn. It's sort of amazing how many relatively basic things I still didn't know about even after beating vanilla GT.

The wiki helps a lot. It definitely speeds up the process of figuring stuff out. Even now, I tend to feel more iffy about JJ than I should, and it's embarrassing how long it took for me to realize that Earthmother can be used early a lot of the time - not just for end-game mana spikes.

I don't think of Fighter as a wizard. Maybe a vanilla Hero/Adventurer class, if I had to explain it to someone. There's only one Fighter skill that actually scales, and one skill they use only once per dungeon, and then a utility skill that's only really good for Balanced Dagger users. That XP perk does almost all of the work.

The Priest is more of a D&D Cleric zombie slayer. They feel sort of derpy to me. They just have ton of health, pop potions, and kill undead. Their shtick is that Zombies are their weakest prey, which sort of turns the game on its head, but otherwise, they're just a Halfling shenanigans class to me.

Anyway, one thing that took me a while to learn is that you have to read everything. If you think a glyph sucks and should be auto-converted every time, then you probably haven't read the complete description. Sometimes you DO convert them as they lay on the ground, but it's worth thinking twice.

DD benefits a lot from a wiki for these reasons, and the combinatorics involved still leave more for players to discover on the fly than could ever be written down explicitly.

[Lujo]

[MTaur]

There are definitely some misnomers. "Priest" is more like a sort of exorcist, or something. And Fighter is some sort of plucky Adventurer or the like, a total blank slate. It's unfortunate that these are some of the earliest classes in the game. Sometimes you have to unlearn archetypes so you can learn to read what things actually do. I never went so far as to not bother using my mana on a Fighter, but I didn't notice right away that hey, this class doesn't actually have a slant toward melee (or anything else for that matter)...

[Lujo]

Priest has nothing to do with gods. That's really confusing for people. The devs didn't want anything about gods on a tier 1 class, but it makes people misunderstand and completely misuse and blunder around with the simplest class in the game. Took me forever to understand him - there's nothing to understand, he's just a figther, but his name kept telling me there's gotta be something more to him. You tell the newbie "it's a fighter" - very quickly turns into the one class they can actually beat Venture Cave or whatever with.

Funny thing is, the fighter with his XP gaining (and thus levels or wisdom) and no inherent fighting ability which you can get from gods later on, would make much more sense if you called him "Priest", folks would figure out how you play him easier. Not possible, because you can't call the first default guy "priest". But that guy's a great class to discover dings with so it makes sense as the inital class, except hardly anyone ever discovers it without being told about it because only 10% people would think you're supposed to use spells on a "fighter". They'll use some, but won't think it's the whole point, and there aren't enough other things in the game early on, dings for spells is all he's got (and he really kicks ass with them even early on)... but that's not a "Fighter" to most people.

From what I've seen, if the Figher had the Priests class abilities, and the Priest the fighters class abilities (renamed in whatever way) newbies would struggle less and fewer people wold've given up on it before seeing much. Would make little thematic sense for the fighter to have +100% vs undead, or the Priest to scout monsters or whatever, but they'd be playing those guys more like you're supposed to with less need for outside help. Was way too late for that a long time ago, probably... But eh, field testing confirms what I just said for me...

---

But here's a lovely bit of understanding of how special this game is - this is a game where the baseline adventurer is not the melee guy. It's the guy who needs you to use spells to really work, most simmilar to what you'd expect from a wizard. At the same time the typical fighter-guy (DD Priest) is in the usual RPG 4-char-party-hybrid/def spellcaster slot (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard). I very much get the point of making the most baseline guy for DD specifically the first thing folks encounter, but with the whole naive "we can set it up so people have to do what we expect" thing kinda falls apart for most folks if you tell them to expect to see a "fighter". They think that's what you expect from them, and just give up when it doesn't work. Since they can't tell which abilities are important (or what stuff like % based damage increases even really do as they don't know anything), names is all they've got to go on. But when someone tells them DD has the priest and the fighter kinda switched up (or just plain in the wrong slot), blam, game's good. If they don't, they just go melleing stuff that the monster scouting reveals, get nowhere and the game makes no sense and it's not for them (that game would not be for anybody, they haven't even seen DD ). Seems like such a small thing, and the devs did go out of their way not to call the guy Warrior, but there you have it - learning curve steeper than the himalayas...

[dislekcia]

I've split these posts away from the Dailies thread, where they were significantly off topic. Keep this sane if you really must go over how wrong everything is, again.

[Lujo]

No problem, tnx, not everything's wrong at all, the DD Fighter really has a good baseline skillset for learning basic things. The only problem is that his name confuses people into not learning it (and misusing the monster spotting). No joke, "Use glyphs on everything, really, do" is magic words when it comes to keeping people playing. They complain that "that makes no sense, why's he a fighter then", you tell them to never mind that and just trust you - magic! Seen it with my own eyes.

Archetypes do actually work for the Thief and the Wizard, people don't even suspect they're not supposed to work, and the genral RPG archetypes are reaaaaaaaaly well established by this point (and also intuitive). You've seen how many newbies call glyphs "spells", right? I get why they aren't called spells, your average newbie doesn't. It's too subtle, and "Fighter" is a strong indicator of what to expect from that guy (except not in DD). Yeah, it supposed to tech people that a "fight" in DD is supposed to involve glyphs, but it most often ends up with them concluding that "this game makes no sense" instead, or alternatively that "fighter sucks and I can't play him".

The Priest would've even sorta worked if he was "Cleric", but he's Priest! Those aren't synonims, you don't expect a Priest to be the warmongery melee tank guy, priesthood is about spirituality not kicking asses. That's exactly why they're called clerics rather than Priests everywhere else - seeing him called a Priest points to "this guy is not a Cleric, he's the spritual sort of guy, if he was just *exactly what he really is* they'd have called him Cleric". But at least the skillset is less DD specific and very simple, you tell a newbie he's just "the actual fighter" the newbie figures him out right away. They do ask what the fighter is then, you tell them "he's a wizard, you use glyphs to kill higher level stuff and eat the lower level stuff to refill for more spells and even a hit or two" - then they figure the fighter out, too. Would also work if you told them he's a priest "same routing, but you combine spells and melee whenever you ding", a more precise approach but less immediately useful if you just want them to use glyphs (because they think of those as spells, like stuff you do with wizards).

It's actually easy to learn, and a great choice for the first class in DD, makes perfect sense that you'd want people to learn to use everything and ding right away, but people see the name and completely miss it. They tend to only calm down when you point them to the "actual fighter" and they beat something with it just to make sure game's even playable Wizards tend to confuse them because the early item pool is a bit skewed towards melee stuff and he doesn't point towards dings (and can't do anything if you can't ding as there's no refills), and they possibly figure out at least some glyphs with the thief (but then go around scratching their heads about the fighter even more because then they're REALLY not sure what's he supposed to be about). Thief and Priest can maybe work if you level them up and then fight with no dings, wizard can't but doesn't point to dings, and the guy who's supposed to teach them about them can't kill stuff above his level without glyphs - and he's called Fighter. The small percentage of folks who read the wiki or the forum or get told IRL get past this, others can't really farm up 2nd tier buildings it seems.

Stuff like that adds a few more hurdles than's good for keeping folks around for long, as you've also seen by now from the statistic numbers. As MTaur said, plenty of things to keep a player busy for a long time due to the comibinatoric and the vastness, and plenty of tricky stuff to learn anyway, but you guys did overdo on the "show - don't tell" approach. Some stuff just doesn't work if shown, has to be straight up told. Seen that with my own eyes too.

Anyway, it's not like you can't try for yourself if you don't believe me.

And, err, where's the Dailies thread?

[dislekcia]

I strongly suggest you make your own games and stop second-guessing this one with the same things over and over again, Lujo. You've said all of this before, please don't say it again - it's really boring.

[Lujo]

That's not second guessing, that's experience. I buy a game for someone or talk them into buying, they complain to me privately that it's confusing them, I take a look, and that's how I fix it. For folks who don't get confused I ask how they figured it (some of the very basic stuff) out - they read it from the wiki or a forum.

It's very easy try for yourself. Has always worked for me. "Are you trying to melee stuff with the Fighter?" "Yes." "Don't?" "Why?" "Don't ask, just don't, use glyphs. Melee stuff with the Priest, but also use glyphs." Frustrated newbie into satisfied customer in a blink of an eye. Well, satisfied friend for me, satisfied customer for you, so I somehow supposed this might be of greater importance to you than it should for me, I can always appologize to a friend. There was one who really actually didn't like the game as he prefers real time stuff more, everybody else was just confused by things like that.