The horse is not quite dead: Locker space and fun

[dislekcia]

Hey dude, I respect you as a developer and all, but I really don't appreciate your tone or the way you just equated me with a thief. I am guy that liked your game enough to pre-order it, recommend it to my friends, and provide extensive feedback and introductory tutorials. I was also one of the few people that used to faithfully restart his kingdom every few weeks to catch new bugs, and I have the bug feedback record to prove it.

Apologies. I wasn't trying to equate you to a thief/pirate - I'd have said "You are a thief" if that were the case . I was equating the lack of emotional context that easy acquisition of something that usually has value (in this case games) with the same lack of emotional context that happens when a player chooses to circumvent a game's systems through hacking.

[Sidestepper]

No, I get it. I never really seriously thought you were calling me a thief. I reacted to it the way I did because the word pirate is nails-on-chalkboard annoying when used even in the vicinity of someone who has paid for the product. I understand what you are saying about getting a warped views of things by short circuiting the process, but I kind of hoped you'd give me the benefit of the doubt after having been here a year and creating several strategy guides. I've cranked out more games of DTD than I care to admit, and the reason I hacked those slots back in is because the process took months and to do and I have no intention of redoing it.

I'm afraid that the nature of this thread has changed from a co-operative endeavor in which the players and the developers come together as part of the creative process to an antagonistic one where the player suggestions are being perceived as a demand and therefore any changes made based on that feedback would be taken as a defeat. That's not what anyone wants. Not even Lujo Maybe even especially Lujo.

[dislekcia]

How would you feel if all the people complaining about sensible adjustments were actually throwing abuse at you instead of me? Would you ban every one of them if some vet doesn't tank that for you, or maybe think about that you were not as right as you thought you were?

We're plenty good at dealing with negative comments and outright over-the-top criticism. We've been doing this for years in much more hostile environments and don't need people to "tank" anything, thanks. Consider that if we really were that touchy, you'd have been banned ages ago

Additionally, I suppose, if we had something like a stacking 1,000+1,000/ or 1,000x2/item cost to be able to summon stuff to the locker at will (even if THAT summoning costs more gold, making it a gold sink rather than a time sink to relocker items), that'd be a much smoother, more personalised and more valuable goldsink than the current upgrade-bank, add-a-locker-slot, rinse repeat business. Make it more exorbitant than that (say 5,000+5,000 gold/item) and post-game only or something, and it'd still be great. If anything, that'd give players a more unique long-term kingdom state than currently exists, complementing the short-term locker system.

Ok. Let's play this out... Say we implement this as functionality somewhere. The first thing that happens is that people are all "Yay, thank you so much, this is awesome!" and then, slowly they start normalising the idea and forgetting the previous context that they played the game in, the one that made the high costs of summoning an item something they were ok with. People would start being annoyed at the price, they'd start complaining that the price is actually doubled because you have to pay again to replace an existing locker item that you didn't want to un-locker in the first place. They'd justify the price angle by saying they could just do a single silver challenge run instead of the multiple PQI/burning runs required to earn that gold again, so the price is obviously out of whack, right? Why are the devs being so obtuse about this one simple thing that could totally change the game for the better - just make it cheaper to summon items, then we'll be ok with it.

Of course, there's no actual point at which people are ok. There's always going to be the desire to get everything for free and to store an infinite amount of stuff. That's human nature... There will always be friction on this topic and we're far more likely to try and cut that friction short by just saying "No" at a point that we feel is less damaging to the game and the game's eventual release than one which makes development and debate drag on and on.

By all means, feel free to discuss more options, feel free to talk about ways to solve what you obviously perceive as a problem with the game. Just be aware that we perceive a different problem in the long term application of many of these ideas that have been thrown around in this thread.

[Sidestepper]

I think we deserve a bit more credit than this. I don't think anyone has ever asked for free locker slots. In fact, the most heated point of discussion with regards to balance has been "Trisword is probably too good, please consider nerfing." When scaled back the Rogue damage, people approved with nary a complaint. There really is a balance point where most reasonable people are satisfied, we just aren't there yet.

[dislekcia]

I think we deserve a bit more credit than this. I don't think anyone has ever asked for free locker slots. In fact, the most heated point of discussion with regards to balance has been "Trisword is probably too good, please consider nerfing." When scaled back the Rogue damage, people approved with nary a complaint. There really is a balance point where most reasonable people are satisfied, we just aren't there yet.

That point doesn't seem to exist with lockers. Aequitas called it ages ago when he asked how much is enough? This isn't a balance concern, it's not something that people can theorycraft out or we can figure out on our end, it's a slope that simply needs a resolute backstop at some point.

There's always going to be justification to move towards infinite locker space at no resource cost to the player. The major reason for that is because people's contexts of play change as they move through the game: You actively forget what it was like before you internalised skill X and now that skill is just something that you always did because it makes sense to do so. We see this in vet runs and videos all the time... None of you remember when locker items were permanently lost on death or conversion, that's not being seen as part of this discussion at all, yet it's incredibly relevant. Why is that?

P.S. The implementation you talk about in your first post in this thread is an infinite locker system, or "free locker slots"

[Lujo]

We're plenty good at dealing with negative comments and outright over-the-top criticism. We've been doing this for years in much more hostile environments and don't need people to "tank" anything, thanks. Consider that if we really were that touchy, you'd have been banned ages ago

Ofc, except you might've missed the point of that. People screaming abuse about nerfs aren't necessarily wrong, from the perspective that the game teaches them. If that perspective is what it seems to be, the game is "teaching" them the wrong things. Considering the amount of times you've done something, and people cried foul and went on with the ritual witchburning, what I was wondering was - being touchy as you are, would you notice how consistently people arrive at a really wrong point of view? Me included. If some of those things were "fair game" subjects a year ago, you would have had a very different experience with me, and I, for example, wouldn't have to be a boogyeman for people who's pain I both feel and share. Would you make the obvious connection and reevaluate stuff that makes people need reassurance by vets that "everything is going to be ok"? Even if said vets sometimes have no concrete guarantee that it will, because you turn into a hedgeghog every time we bring some pretty sensible stuff up?

Quoted wrong thing - but your paragraph on people never being happy with anything, and implying the current one as an ok place to draw the line

This is where you are wrong. Noone was ever ok with the current way of things after a certain point in a playthrough. I'm litteraly going through the game noticing the very negatice impact of this on me, the community, the wiki, the reception and thinking about this thing as "something you can't explain to dislekcia", or whoever's so by the book on it. More people would be feeling SMART about taking a tinker to scum for an item and save gold if they weren't forced to do it. And people who wanted to grind gold would actually play the game MORE to get it, except the runs they make would be ones they want to make, and wouldn't feel bad about their time investment.

Maybe even especially Lujo.

Very, very, very especially Lujo. There's a milion runs to make, and so many hours in the day. Make them worth it? Please?

[Nandrew]

I spent some time on the seven seas back in my day. Ain't a thang.

I'm afraid that the nature of this thread has changed from a co-operative endeavor in which the players and the developers come together as part of the creative process to an antagonistic one where the player suggestions are being perceived as a demand and therefore any changes made based on that feedback would be taken as a defeat. That's not what anyone wants. Not even Lujo Maybe even especially Lujo.

If you look over dislekcia's replies, there's been absolutely nothing from us to suggest this. That idea was actually planted in this thread by Lujo himself, along with a few strange assumptions about our moderation policies.

I think we deserve a bit more credit than this. I don't think anyone has ever asked for free locker slots. In fact, the most heated point of discussion with regards to balance has been "Trisword is probably too good, please consider nerfing." When scaled back the Rogue damage, people approved with nary a complaint. There really is a balance point where most reasonable people are satisfied, we just aren't there yet.

I think it's important to remember that forum veterans aren't "most reasonable people". Not in an abrasive way, mind you. It just means that (a) the core vocal members are way, WAY beyond the average skill curve for the average DD player in the average environment and (b) you're an incredibly small minority in a very big player base. That's just the numbers.

Suggestions, advice and feedback here are valuable / frequent and the forums play a BIG role in a lot of the areas we look at for the game, but unfortunately it's just not the case that you're representative of most DD players and occasionally we're simply going to say "no", or maybe even ignore you while we communicate with less accomplished players to find out what THEY think and experience instead (there's only a certain amount of time in the day to listen to player feedback, and Lujo's textwalls certainly don't help that). You may already notice how we pounce on new users and threads started by self-identified "noobs" while complaints about extreme upper-tier problems can sometimes gather dust.

Even the very existence of the locker slot chokepoints (with the four Vicious trophies being a commonly cited situation) is a niche problem experienced by the tiny percentage of players who can actually bust through all four Vicious scenarios in the first place.

There's a common problem discussed among developers who struggle to "step back" from a game after working tightly with it for so long, because they lose touch with players who experience far less of the game than they do. To a lesser extent, I think that also applies to veterans who have been close to the development process for a good long time. Don't see it as a lack of credit being given, it's just part of a whole new set of problems that emerge uniquely for people who have invested a lot of time and thought in something.

[Lujo]

Appologies for inconvinience. Just wanted to explain soething. It's a bit strange to me, and always was, that you consider breaking through all 4 vicious as something of an achievement, considering how much of an obstacle they are is more related to the lack of info on resources than any "footwork" skill cap. Once stuff is on the wiki, everyone'll be able to do it. If you're not sure - remember the q3 vid? Not a day after, a self-admitted newbie's beat NL simly off of info he was missing and found there.

What I assume is that the game is going to be played for a long time by a variety of people. I've seen it with games, I've known several complete non gamers, housewives, who latched onto games like tetris variants and played them as a way to unwind for years and years. There's more of that these days then 20 years ago. There isn't really any need to chalk off post-endgame as "something few people will be able / willing to do". This is that kind of game - one that I'll be playing 20 years from now, and I've already dropped every other game in favour of it, pretty much.

EDIT: The qoute in HARD GT is right: "this is where the real game starts". Except your locker gets clogged, so the quote would be more right if it said: "this is where you grind 200 000 gold, and take forever to do it and then the real game starts, only you have 2 functional locker slots unless you clog those up too".

Your game might be better and more interesting than what you're giving it credit for It's deffinitely not as hard as you think, and we are deffinitely less skilled (I am) than you assume - it's just that creating artificial difficulty worked too well concerning a few things. What we are saying - you don't need to inflate the time it takes to become a vet anymore. You can deffinitely do without time mandatory to explore content and combo's - would make even vet feedback more sensible, for one thing. The game is infinitely replayable, and what makes some parts not as enjoyable can be remedied without hurting anything else.

[berpdreyfuss]

From the perspective of an intermediate player, I haven't felt the need for infinite locker space but I see that it's totally different for the people who have beaten the game multiple times and unlocked everything multiple times.
Wouldn't it be possible to grant only those people unlimited space, maybe limited to the beta phase? I can certainly see the benefit of some people being able to try everything in a short amount of time if an item is changed. They have contributed a lot to the beta testing so I think it would make sense to not let them waste time scumming.

[Nandrew]

Appologies for inconvinience. Just wanted to explain soething. It's a bit strange to me, and always was, that you consider breaking through all 4 vicious as something of an achievement, considering how much of an obstacle they are is more related to the lack of info on resources than any "footwork" skill cap. Once stuff is on the wiki, everyone'll be able to do it.

That is a gross oversimplification of player capabilities.

The fact that a wiki exists doesn't mean that everybody will go to it or learn from it -- I'd go a step further and suggest that some wouldn't even be interested in learning from it despite knowing about its existence. There's a frequent term in the roguelike community known as the "no-spoiler" victory, and it's actually quite possible for a person to know about a wiki and refuse to read it.

Again, I bring up the idea that there's a group confirmation bias because the sort of people who post on forums and compare strategies and submit hour-long video guides are the same sort of people who bring those strategies to wikis and read up on other games that have strategy wikis and watch hour-long video guides. Do you really think this is Average Joe Gamer stuff? It's that same "small slice of the player base" argument and it simply doesn't hold when we want to look at the bigger picture.

Not to mention that you really don't seem to appreciate how complex all of the little routines you've learned for day-to-day DD sessions actually ARE. We've seen some of your videos, Lujo. There's a lot of universal activities that have become second-nature to you through experience, such that you don't even mention doing them, and these are still really, really intimidating concepts for a lot of newer players who really can't internalise this stuff, or hold everything in their heads at once, even after a careful explanation (sit down with newbies as often as we have, and you'll find this to be a startling truth).

It is far easier to forget that something is difficult than it is to forget that something is easy.