Casual vs Hardcore

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Casual vs Hardcore

Postby Scurra on Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:38 pm

I don't want to sound down on this, because I am really enjoying myself in the beta, but I think that it is really important for the QCF guys to realise that there is clearly something of a gulf between the "hardcore" players and, um, us ordinary mortals, who are more "casual" players.

At present there is not nearly enough help in the game for those of us who genuinely don't understand what these hardcore players are writing about in forum posts. There are assumptions that they are bringing which are fine, but seem counter-intuitive e.g. a game that appealed to me originally because it was more of a pastime seems to need "farming" (not a jargon term I especially like, I must admit!) in order to progress sensibly; there is little guidance about features that suddenly appear (like Weaken and Corrosion) and how to deal with them; there is especially little help with dealing with Bosses who - from this rubbish gamer's perspective - appear impossible to deal with (e.g. I still have no idea how to handle Bleaty, and that's supposed to be in a "easy" dungeon! Mind you, I don't think I ever defeated SuperMeatMan in the alpha either.) I appreciate that this sort of "tutorial" help will inevitably be one of the last things to get added; please don't forget it.

Again, please don't get me wrong - I like the game and absolutely do not regret prepurchasing it. And I realise that this is still the beta phase where balancing the game is important. I just want to remind folks that balancing a game for hardcore players is a very different proposition to balancing it for those of us who are more casual. (As a games designer myself, albeit board games, I know that it's very easy to forget the people who haven't learned all the things you have during the development process, and as a result, skew things horribly away from them...)
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Re: Casual vs Hardcore

Postby dislekcia on Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:44 pm

This sort of feedback is always useful. It's basically exactly what we need to make the game feel more approachable - it's a cycle of identifying barriers and smoothing them out.

And we do try to be careful and not listen to the hardest of the hardcore too much, sometimes balance takes a backseat to pure fun ;)
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Re: Casual vs Hardcore

Postby Galefury on Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:42 pm

I actually think the easy Bleaty dungeon is great (warlord quest). Very well designed and educational. Same goes for the other easy class/race dungeons actually, I liked every single one of these. They require clever use of the class or race features without stooping to actually telling the player what to do. Great extended tutorial IMO. Then again I pretty much went in already knowing the solution to the puzzle, so maybe I'm not the most qualified to comment on this.

The warlord dungeon seemed a bit harder than most others, but I just accounted that random difficulty spike to the dungeons being randomly generated. I definitely don't think it needs to be changed, just maybe classified as normal instead of easy. Or maybe not, sometimes being challenged feels good, at least to me. If I win every time I just don't get the same kind of satisfaction from it.
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Re: Casual vs Hardcore

Postby q 3 on Fri Aug 19, 2011 5:34 pm

A short optional tutorial (say, in the puzzle section) for each new class, glyph, monster ability, etc. would be a good idea. Implement a puzzle designing system and I'd probably make a few myself. :)
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