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QCF Design Community • View topic - Preparations Should Be Free


Preparations Should Be Free

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Preparations Should Be Free

Postby Zazu on Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:47 am

I love this game, in my opinion it will sell by the hundred of thousands and the makers will get deservedly rich.

But there is one aspect of the game I loath, and that everyone I heard mention the subject hates as well; the fact that it costs money to properly prep for a tough dungeon run. I HATE this mechanic and I cannot imagine the thinking that keeps it in the game. It basically forces players to constantly grind easy dungeons just to beat the hard ones. Its an insipid design choice that basically forces players to grind boring content to "earn" a chance to play the interesting stuff. I really hope that the mechanic is removed from the game and preparations are free, without the need for grind acquired gold. The costly preparations add nothing to the players experience and kill the addictive "one more try" nature of the game.

Anyone else agree or am I alone on this?
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby Murdus on Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:56 am

With the flaming dungeon and Bet on Boss mechanics, I think most of your arguements are invalid - plus removing preparation costs would remove a gigantic plot point. You dont need to CONSTANTLY grind - you can easily beat most Hard dungeons Purist, so you don't need Patches anyway. With a low-prep loadout, you can get a net profit of 1100~ on most Normal and Hard dungeons. With a high-prep loadout, the profit is reduced to 700ish.

I do see your point, though, but I actually enjoy the economy aspect.
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby TigerKnee on Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:56 am

Well, Alpha gold grinding was even more boring really.

Anyway, gold exists because the devs wanted to add a meta-layer of interesting strategy to preparations.

Think of what X-Com would be like without the base building and only alien-killing parts.

Of course the problem is that right now it's not actually very interesting at all because preparations are mostly wildly imbalanced, either in the useful or useless camp.
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby Kuranes on Sat Feb 25, 2012 11:02 am

What if there a sort of Artificer building you could unlock later on, which would reduce prep costs in Vicious dungeons only? Prehaps some additional complicated tasks (like with the Witch) to reduce these costs further?
"Which farm animal is featured prominently in Desktop Dungeons?" "Snakes"
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby Sidestepper on Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:12 pm

Nah. You shouldn't ever have to stoop to grinding gold to fund adventures. Between the quests, normal trophy returns, and the new 'first-time' bonuses for each dungeon, you should be fine. You only get in trouble if you blunder a lot of adventures after Horatio totally crashes your economy, in which case the solution is to kill Horatio. Since you have to beat Horatio purist style, it doesn't matter how much gold you have at that point.

Gold is an interesting resource in so far as buying new buildings goes, but quickly loses depth once you have all the upgrades. With preparations, the real price you pay is the opportunity cost of not using the competing preparations.

I'd prefer that we have some kind of gold sink that allows us to purchase small but permanent improvements at inflated prices. My number one choice would be the ability to purchase new locker spaces. In spite of qcf's postings to the contrary, limited locker space doesn't create interesting choices, it just demotivates the player to try any preparation that isn't known to be the most efficient in its class. I would love to experiment with a Wicked Guitar prep (or rather, I would have before Glowing Guardian got replaced by his evil photonegative), but I can't prep it without dropping something that would be a monster pain in the ass to replace when I'm done experimenting.
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby Kuranes on Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:58 pm

Agreed Sidestepper. The ability to purchase further locker space at stupid prices would be intresting, since as you mentioned the gold losses its value some way through once you have upgraded the buildings. This would also add another kind of completion to strive for should people want it. Filling up your "item vault" with every special item.

But as long as you can still only prep 1 locker item, using your locker won't be a meaningless decision.

Also, since locker space is limited some items (such as in my case the Argonistic Collar or Troll Heart) won't get used since I need that space for other things. Having the extra space would make it more like I consider using some items I don't consider "stock". So I think having a wider variety of items to choose from would be great all in all, as long as you can still only pick one from your Locker.
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby zeemeerman2 on Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:56 pm

I keep having the idea of putting gold into an in-game charity as a gold sink, though I'm not really sure what it will do or what the player motivation will be to do so.

Examples include:
- For every 1.000.000 gold, all players combined, goes 1 dollar to Child's Play.
- A gold high score
- For every 100.000 gold, separate per user, qcfdesign's next game will be 1 dollar cheaper.
- I heard something about economy crashes. For every so much gold, your economy is a percentage less likely to crash.
- For every so much gold, all players' economies are less prone to crash.
- For every so much gold, all other players' economies are more prone to crash, adding a competitive level of game-play - but can be misused by elite players to constantly crash other less great players.
- Once per charity payment (a fixed amount), You may roll two six-sided dice. Then you gain an amount of brick, lumber, wool, grain, or ore, depending on your kingdom's location and the number rolled. If you roll a seven, you may move the robber to another location and steal a resource from another player next to the new location of the robber. In addition, if a player has more than seven resources, he or she must discard half of it.
If you have 1 brick and 1 lumber, you can trade them in for a street.
You may build new kingdoms at other locations if you have 1 grain, 1 wool, 1 brick and 1 lumber, gaining access to new dungeons, and may spend 2 brick and 3 ore to unlock Vicious dungeons in that kingdom.
You may also spend 1 grain, 1 wool and 1 ore for a knight card. A knight card is worth 1 victory point. You need to have at least 10 victory points to win the game. In addition, knight cards have some effects, like "leave the prison without paying" or "go to prison. You do not pass Start and do not gain any gold for doing so." or "You won the second place of a beauty contest. You gain 200 gold."
- Something else that is totally original and isn't related to any board games. Like... Civilization V (video game)... or Warhammer 40K (miniature game), or Dungeons and Dragons (roleplaying game), or Avatar (Larp), etc..
- I'm weird.
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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby Darvin on Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:31 pm

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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby dislekcia on Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:47 pm

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Re: Preparations Should Be Free

Postby zeemeerman2 on Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:26 am

I like to think you said when you read my post "Hey, guys, check out this post!" towards your co-developers.

Seriously though, maybe not the Settlers of Catan or Monopoly, but something as a greater something to be the gold sink in the game for when you have all building upgraded. Or something in the likes of it.

Just imagine something. You're good at it!
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