Complicated Tasks, Pt 6 Help!

[Alweth]

[Lujo]

Ofc, sorry, I am abit gloomy and doomy at times, it's just... Well, there's talent here, both on the side of the devs, and on the side of the testers, and I really like the game - as well as the system. It can go places ^^

So, constructive advice:

1) The intro, easy, normal or casual content, call it what you want, but there needs to be more of it. The "Complete everything with everything" aspect of the alpha was a major draw to that game, it needs to remain in some form. The devs could make it apply to the ring of inner dungeons (ones without a major "twist", Venture Cave, Den of danger, Spike Trouble, Chokebox and Doubledoom). That would certanly alleviate the hardcore powergaming / unbalance analysis required for the "story" missions.

2) The rewards for such could be racial building levels, as I have suggested previously, which could allow, at some level, to locker relics (but to make them exclusive with the guild and each other as preparations). This could incite the non powergamer crowd to try out the more demanding stuff. If there is another non-gold way to reward poeple for doing it, post ideas, but there has to be a reason for people to want to finish those dungeons with everything. Or in different ways - parched, race constricted, whatever...

3) The solutions for gear unlocking quests should not be things that severely unbalance other aspects. A dungeon is not really solvable if it requires a current triling with higher tier dungen gear unlocked, blah blah blah. If it's gonna be like that, then make them ALL solvable by exploiting unbalances, don't make quests like Witch pt. 6 where the "cheat" in question can't be prepared and requires scumming (and 10 tries).

4) With "quest" dungeons the game has lost the "ready up and go" asect of the alpha, a failed run now means way more grinding, or to be specific, way more concentrated and tedious griniding than before. If the product is going to be sold, this should be kept in mind. Some players have "broken" the bank, but for various reasons, this can't IMO be expected from regular people (takes a certain combination of virtues / flaws, some of which not very common). And beta testers should always ask themselves if what they achieved is doable by someone who is not them, and a quest that can be solved only after reading a guide and then scumming and grinding should not necessarily for practical purposes be deemed as solvable.

5) Something has to be done, again, IMO with the taxidermist. If he had a prep that put a second boss in the dungeon but removed something to balance out the XP, and having the second boss be the one you're looking for I think the game would be more acessible for regular people, as well as make all the "complete the inner ring with everything" quest chain I suggested above even more worthwhile and add a toggleable challenge gauge to it. Call it "formal challenge" or whatever, but for the love of God, add it, it would help the game immensly, especially as it would add depth and replayability to the "generic" dungeons.

6) Please, do find the "racial building levels" thread and read my posts there, and notice that the whole thread was mostly spam about cosmetics apart from them. Mostly. I had to put some credentials in here, as I felt that my possibly constructive criticism, and valuable time I spent on dedicated beta testing of this game would be wasted again unless I put some weight behing my words. Again, I appologise if I hurt anyones feelings, annoyed anyone or anything, really. The game as it is, IMO not really where it should and could be, and has some flaws that i don't see are being adressed (maybe they are but I just don't see it). And if the devs are financially not doing to well (and considerign how few people are posting here, I should certanly think they are not), this is very likely due to the "elitist" component that has snuck into a very accessible game that was alpha DD. I'd like them to succede, and keep making games, as I haven't seen anything with as much hit-potential (and worth at the same time) since Blizzard turned the action/arcade scene on it's head with Diablo 1.

7) I think this concern needs a bit more detail. Currently in th MOBA world, LoL is far more sucessful than HoN, and the major reason for that is that HoN devs ignored the majority of the playerbase in favor of the "pro's", which alienated the customers who deserted in droves, untill it got to the point that HoN can only be considered a financial sucess in terms of what it cost to produce as it is an inde game. Lol at the same time is a far worse, less complex, less deep game that made their company orders of magnitude richer. I think DD has the potential to appease both crowds, but only if this is kept in mind. There.

[The Avatar]

Hmm... DD right now is a bit of an "Elitist" game. I personally think if you were to remove all quest, and it were just the dungeons, it would be fair. The problem is that they are throwing out some obscene quests (Wizard WARMONGER? and priest feeling parched) and then also making you do them in tough dungeons with mechanics like 202 damage when below 75% hp.

[Gorgon]

The devs want to make the game difficult. DD was never meant to be easy, you need strategy. And the game is easy enough at the beginning for new players. Quests are not mandatory, and money grinding is not that boring.

Most content is unlocked in the early game. Classes, races, gods, everything; but every game needs to get harder at some point.

Also, the game is still in beta development, so it's not complete yet!

[The Avatar]

Very true. Though they could use more ! Dungeons for the bloodmage, monk, and assassin.

[Gorgon]

Yeah, they could make one "!" dungeon for each class in the game.

[The Avatar]

Or maybe even goblins and orcs! I mean, those dungeons were the ones that teach you strategy.

[TigerKnee]

Hum.

If anyone is going to claim the devs of being elitist and targeting the games towards super geniuses, I would kindly redirect you to the "Buff Fighter" thread, where just about every elite player in the game wanted a buff for fighter and the response was some vague "We need the Fighter as it is because of newbies"

Anyway, if you're new to the Beta, I note that the style they've taken is generally to put in things at nuts high power, throw them against super hard dungeons/quests (like Dark Souls) and then tone it down later with a few outliers, like sucky vampires. In the early days of Beta you could have 50MP Gnome Paladin Gods who crashed the game.

So if you feel something is way too hard now, just voice your concern and then see what happens in a few weeks. Chances are they might add some new mechanic and class or something that makes it easy. We used to fight bosses without WhupAz or elite items, but now they exist. Difficulty is going to swing wildly back and forth during Beta and that's sort of part of the "fun", as opposed to the full released game which will remain static unless expansions are released.

Edit: Incidentally, I would like to add that it's generally a better idea to consider ideas and suggestions on their own merits rather than the person who provided it.

Generally speaking, Darvin or the Avatar will probably provide better suggestions because of their experience and knowledge in the game, HOWEVER, that doesn't mean they are infallable! Likewise, a complete noob might still provide good suggestions, especially on the subject of learning new concepts.

So I don't really see the need for "gaming credentials", on certain overly competitive forums, sure, but that sort of culture doesn't quite exist here.

[The Avatar]

Wow... I could never have said it better myself. Anyways, most of my suggestions are things I'm just putting out there without major consideration. So just because I'm the Avatar shouldn't mean my suggestions get extra attention. I haven't been around as long as most people, I just have way too much free time.

[Lujo]

I'm not new to the beta, I just didn't post since we were in the "adding content, putting anything in" phase ^^ I see where we are at, impossible challenges, all that, but I feel that were nearing the end of un-added content from alpha (gods are full roster now) but some issues were not adressed or even discussed, and I had a bunch of observations to share, and a way to make poeple at least pay attention.

The quest that finally made me really engage in posting my observatios just frustrated the hell out of me, as it was preventing me from getting the whupaz potion, and exploring other content. Couple that with the fact that a bunch of bosses don't have a reliable farming dungeon for taxidermy, and the fact that I had no incentive to try a whole bunch of "normal dungeons" for... is it months now? I felt it stuff was not being adressed.

How many of you have ever tried spike trouble, grimms grotto or the chokebox? Outside of possibly quests? Hours of gameplay were wasted trying to sovle inhumane puzzles while tons of content lies there unused and untested. How many people were able to complete certain dungeons without resorting to Transmuters or Cydstepp scumming? Those runs don't really mean anything, for most dungeons the Transmuter is impossible to balance and is praticaly a cheat (either he can breeze through it, or can't do it at all), and cydstepp breaks rogues in half.

And all that makes balancing the power curve quite difficult, as if you look at the tier lists - stuff that isn't broken is considered meh. Also, the thief isn't balanced at all - he is possibly the most broken class of all, short of transmuter, I'm amazed noone really noticed it till recently. He is considered "balanced" or "strong", but if you remove or fix the major offenders (fundamentaly wrong guys who break the resource rules, Trans, Bloodmage), the thief turns any potion into a better GG's protection, that needs no piety. In a game where you can buy kegs? And he finds more of them lying around? Really? And they're a small item? And they also cure poison and manaburn? And power up Trisword and Whurlgarble? And the Alch Scroll? And you can pick a race that converts stuff into them?

That kind of stuff seems to go unnoticed. And it's right there. I find it stupidly frustrating that I have to jump through flaming hoops to try new content out, and get a class like Thief right at the start that makes a good half of the content allready there boring and unchallenging -.-