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QCF Design Community • View topic - Beta update: screw you, monks


Beta update: screw you, monks

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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby Galefury on Mon Aug 15, 2011 11:08 am

I don't think de-emphasizing gods is a good idea, as they are extremely interesting and fun to play with, especially with god switching thrown in. I fully agree of course that any 3 gods should provide useful bonuses to every class on every level, preferably similar in power, and possibly requiring adaptation and changes in strategy. I am aware that this is incredibly hard to achieve, but you already were pretty close in the previous version (except for Dracul, who is now a lot better than before even if you don't use lifesteal related exploits). Sure, one specific god was always (and always will be) the best for a specific race/class/level/prep combination by some varying margin, but I could get excellent mileage out of any combination with most classes, and it was often not that obvious which god would be best. Each of the gods has different times in the game when the boons and drawbacks are most important and when it is easiest to get piety, which leads to very interesting dynamics. Designing the gods to have some use for all playstyles was a great step in the right direction. I think simply nerfing gods and focusing on items is the easy way out, powerful but balanced gods (and eliminating exploits) would provide far better gameplay.

Shifting the focus from gods to items just means you will have to balance those properly to make sure finding one or more specific items in a shop will not be vital to success, and items are far less interesting than gods IMO. Probably also a lot easier to balance, in part thanks to the locker system providing guaranteed access to a single shop item, and in part due to being less complex.

Besides, the core problem will never go away. DD is a random game, and luck can always compensate for an almost impossible challenge or lack of skill to some degree, or make a normally easy level very hard. For me enemy composition usually had a far bigger influence on game difficulty than what gods I got. I think randomness is great, just trying to get rid of the extremes would be good. In a long game like Crawl you will almost always be unlucky at some points and lucky at others (if you survive the unlucky parts). In a short game like DD the odds can really stack up for or against you. The preparations help a lot with cushioning these extreme strokes of good or bad luck, and good balancing and clever design can do the same for gods and items. I just think emphasizing the more interesting of those two would be better.
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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby fall_ark on Mon Aug 15, 2011 12:26 pm

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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby TigerKnee on Mon Aug 15, 2011 12:37 pm

Has anyone done the final Bloodmage quest? Bloodmage isn't exactly the best suited class for this boss especially since the blinking plants can possibly screw you over, although at least you don't have to worry about spawning altars, harhar.
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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby Wargizmo on Mon Aug 15, 2011 1:15 pm

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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby q 3 on Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:58 pm

I strongly agree that deities shouldn't be essential to beating dungeons, but the item system will need a lot of work before it can supplant worship. Especially on no preparation runs. With no preparations, you can count on almost always finding an altar that you can make good use of, but items are a total crapshoot right now. I rarely get more than 20 gold in a dungeon, excepting the rare occasions when there's a treasure subdungeon or an early Midas Gloves, which is enough to buy one cheap item but not much more than that. Increasing the value of gold piles, even just by 1 or 2, might be worth considering.

Speaking of items, Midas Gloves should probably be a little more expensive - like, 12 gold - and have a much lower conversion value - like, 10. Right now they're essentially a must buy unless you find it too late to get a return on your investment, but even then they are usually worth it for the conversion points alone. Bloody Sigil should probably also be a little more expensive and also have a much lower conversion value. The trade-off that it had in the alpha, of more power at low levels but more detriment at high levels, no longer applies, since as soon as the extra HP is no longer worth the reduced attack you can just get rid of it; having it be also cheap and worth many conversion points makes the Bloody Sigil a must buy. Some of the other items could stand a price reduction; in particular the Agnostic Collar and the Berserker sword are virtually never worth buying on a no preparation run (you need ridiculous luck just to be able to afford them anyway, and will lose out on much of the sword's bonus having to kill enemies for gold first).
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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby q 3 on Thu Aug 18, 2011 7:00 pm

Double posting to note that I've been messing around in the "easy" Monk dungeon a bit and it's solidifying my opinion that the new Monks pretty much suck if you don't have Orcs, Taurog/Dracul, and/or lots of big swords. If anything, they've even more imbalanced in favor of Orcs than the old Monks were ever in favor of Humans. Although both types of Monk start at 2 damage dealt at level 1 (which makes it nearly impossible to kill anything above your level), with the old style any race could reasonably get that up to 3 just by finding an attack bonus on the ground, and being able to mitigate the damage penalty even further with the cheap spell BICEPS made it that much easier to get a non-human Monk up to a reasonable attack value; with the current style, however, those attack bonuses on the ground are pretty much worthless at level 1 and don't help all that much even at later levels, and the only reliable way to get to 3 damage at level 1 is by buying a Spoon (which, unlike the attack bonuses or BICEPS, loses most of its value as you level up). Seeing as Orcs are overpowered at the moment anyway, I hope a more balanced approach can be found for Monks...
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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby PeaceChaser on Thu Aug 18, 2011 8:10 pm

I used orcs in the alpha when the change from +XP to +base damage anyway. People swore the calculations were in favor of the humans, but I disagree. The base damage is amazing.

But I do want to say this as somewhat of an agreement to Q3: the game is pushing towards damage > magic in all cases. There are a lot of HUGE base damage modifiers, and tons of nerfs to magic users. Lots of monsters are magic resistant or immune, AM doesn't do that much anymore, the elf was nerfed, fireball never did a whole lot anyway, there's only one direct damage spell (come on, there's got to be SOME other clever magic type attack other than fireball?).... I even beat the final blood mage quest by as an orc bloodmage with the +3dmg/lvl sword and with cydstep.
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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby Darvin on Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:24 am

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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby TigerKnee on Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:40 am

I'm not sure if it's fair to compare current Orcs to Alpha. Alpha Orcs base damage bonus was just straight (+2 per conversion), there were less possible conversion and there doesn't exist items like sensationary stone to really ramp up Orcs base damage!
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Re: Beta update: screw you, monks

Postby fall_ark on Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:15 am

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