QCF Design Community

So, I had an idea...

At the moment Vicious is seen as the pinnacle of difficulty, however there is a whole other layer of variable difficulty in the game through using unusual class-race combos.

For instance, monks rarely tackle dungeons with may debuff monsters. Elves are rarely berserkers, halflings are rarely spellcasters and few bother finishing most dungeons with more than a few classes. Certain gods are better with certain classes and races, as are certain items, and some dungeons are full of meat men and goos, or glass cannons.

Badges reward unusual feats, but don't cover as much as they could; once a player has barreled through a dungeon with it's most suited class, completed all quests and gotten all badges, why go back? The goals of the game are fixed, not dynamic.

Some players have been setting unusual and difficult challenges for themselves to alleviate the boredom between updates, to great success and amusement of the community.

The issue is that only a few players have the attention span these days to create and pursue their own goals like that, not to mention the fact that coming up with these challenges requires inspiration and knowledge of the game that not many DD players will have.

Given that badges and completion stats are already collected by the game, is there any reason why that data could not be used to figure out which race and class combos are the most and least used on certain dungeons?

If the game can track what race and class you pick the most and least often, it can provide rewards for trying others.

If it notices you have completed a dungeon with only a few classes, it can provide incentive to finish it with more. If across all games of DD people are using a certain class with a certain race, then a reward can be set for giving something else a go. If certain items aren't being used with certain classes, reduce the cost for prepping them with that class.

I think this would reveal a very large amount of undiscovered replay value and difficulty in the early dungeons. Difficulty is relative for each class and class in each dungeon, and leveraging that would help the progression and user-friendliness of the game.

I also think it would greatly reduce the feeling of 'exploit redundancy', namely the point when you realise that one class and race combo can stomp everything, and you lose the urge to try other classes. This was something that Lujo held close to his heart, and i think applying diminishing returns to exploited classes would give players a whole new lease on the game.

The devs could create a random quest generator. It would feed you quests that involve beating a dungeon with an unusual class, badge, and/or class+race combo. You could choose which difficulty. Easy would just be an usual class for the dungeon, medium an unusual class with a bad race combo for the dungeon, and hard an unusual class with a bad race for the dungeon plus a hard badge to get with the class or in the dungeon.

I'm not someone who's motivated by doing random challenges, but my usual suggestion is that the "racial" buildings should have upgrade preparations that can only be used by specific "weak" combinations (such as the mentioned Elf Berserker or Halfling spellcasters) to boost them.

I think I was trying to say that there has been too much focus on completing hard dungeons, and not on using hard classes.

One of the biggest differences with the beta is the RPG progression elements, but I think a fair few things have been left behind as a result. The focus on the endgame and specific content has meant a lack o the kind of dynamic content, randomness and high scores that usually drives puzzle games.

I imagined it as a reason to try different things when grinding for gold. Using the same old class you always do is more reliable source of income, but trying something the quest generator suggests could win you big bucks.

Its an optional risk reward system that wouldn't be too hard to put together (I would hope)

In alpha, trying an unused class and beating a challenge dungeon is guranteed to give you a permanent upgrade. Someone who has completed all challenge dungeons with all possible classes is stronger than someone who only uses certain classes.

In beta, only set quests give you special rewards but I'm not sure what you can actually give the player without hardcoding in some more new content. Gold only useful up until a certain point...

I like both the ideas of random challenges and specific "these are hard to play" quests that force odd race/class combos. We've always planned to have a set of difficult quests like that once you've "run out" of progression/unlock quests, so that will definitely happen at some point. Random runs are going to go in as well: I don't know if we need the random quest modifier as well though.

In the mean time you could have the flame level give you a random class you need to use to get the 5x reward. Completing it with a different class would just give 1x but the flame would move off.

Hmm, that's not a bad idea - I'll float it in the design meeting today. Think it might be more like we'd give you a bonus for a specific class or race, not take away the whole gold reward

Or have two flames?

Looking forward to these kinds of quests. I just figured that procedurally generated goals are easier than custom content, kinda like the taxidermist. It could be a 'I'm feeling lucky' button which chooses a dungeon or class you haven't had a go at in a while.

Also with the new gold sinks more gold risk-reward modifiers won't hurt. Negative preps for massive gold anyone? You could unlock a dungeon of your own for the kingdom where all the ghosts of defeated bosses hang out and bet you money that you can't win dungeons with handicaps. Those bosses never learn...

I personally like the idea of the flame choosing a random class. It adds both fun, variety and challenge.