dislekcia wrote:Hmm. Would Shifting Passages feel like it made more sense if the walls closest to the enemy you killed were the ones that popped up? That's something I've been wondering about for a while, not saying we can make it work that way with any kind of reliable speed, but it might make the dungeon more predictable to play through.
I think any kind of obvious patterning would help. Right now, it seems to be completely random, so it tends to make it impossible to plan more than one kill ahead. You could even keep the current wall-adding method and add some prediction to it, marking the next round or two of incoming walls, or an outline of the eventual pattern.
dislekcia wrote:Generally, the hard-level dungeons (which is where it sounds like you are right now) are about establishing efficiency in players, at least, that's what we're trying to teach with them. What options do you have in terms of building upgrades and item quests right now? Do you have any particular item combos you enjoy playing with and have you dipped into the challenge dungeons yet? I'm trying to figure out what sort of Kingdom options you have so that I can see what it might be that's causing you to feel blocked like this - maybe that will give us some insight as to how to deal with that perception in players...
My buildings are pretty heavily upgraded. I've got all the racial buildings built and all of the class buildings to L3. The only obvious upgrades at this point are the L3 witch and alchemist, and much like the gods, I've no clue how to unlock those. It'd be nice if there was a hint somewhere so I didn't have to explore at random and hope to stumble across them. Even just a suggested dungeon or quest would do, to let me know where there's something left to unlock and point me towards a more reasonable difficulty progression.
I've done a few of the challenge dungeons and all of the puzzles. I've got a couple of the really good items lockered (trisword and crystal ball). There doesn't seem to be much incentive for unlocking more items, because the difficulty's so high that there's no room for experimentation. You take the best you've got, and interesting strategies will have to wait for an easier situation that never comes. At least, not unless you want to go waste time on a non-quest run in one of the Normal dungeons you've already played to death.
dislekcia wrote:After all, DD is supposed to be hard, but it's not about frustrating people into hating it. Not yet, at least. Wait till the vicious post-endgame for that
Well, the higher-tier dungeons have interesting mechanics like additional bosses, changing layouts, bosses that drain the remaining low-level enemies, defined chokepoints with guardians, remnants, and so on. On their own, those new mechanics would be plenty to adjust to and create interesting gameplay. At the same time, though, we're getting enemy types with improved statistics and additional nasty effects. So much difficulty gets added all at once that you end up struggling to fight the basic enemies, leaving you mentally worn out by the time you hit the bosses, even if you've managed to preserve your character's resources. And after limping your way through that dungeon, it's on to the next one, which is just as hard if not worse.
My suggestion: Give us a break. Literally. Build in some simple quests that are unlocked by things harder than them, so the player has a chance to gather themselves before moving on to the next big challenge. And make that obvious by doing something like giving them a different color of quest flag. (Heck, difficulty-coding the quests in general would be nice, just don't forget to check it against colorblindness.)
