KickStarter Darkest Dungeon AKA the Celerity Attention Whore Thread

[Lujo]

What the fuck are they talking about? Do words mean anything nowadays or everyone just gave up?

"RPG" has lost all meaning a looooooong time ago. Also, raging at gaming journalism is weird, ofc it's all paid promotion, ALL journalism is these days. "Post news" is a thing.

As much as we codexians love to love AoD and love to hate Derpest Dungeon, in truth AoD does many things poorly and Derpest Dungeon does many things well.

If we are honest about ourselves, we love AoD and hate Derpest Dungeon because we are combatfags to some degree or another.

I'm not really a combatfag at all and still dislike DD, despite liking its ambience. Yes a combatfag can (and I guess will?) dislike it.

The problem with DD is that its kind of ambience requires either a combat system which rewards you for figuring it out, or a completely random dicefest. A good dicefest lovecraftian game really enforces the "shit's out of your control" and can be good fun (see Elder Sign: Omens), but DD isn't that because the results of failure are grindy tedium. Figuring the system out, on the other hand, just leads to not being in any sort of danger whatsoever which makes all the ambiance fall flat.

It ends up feeling like a ripoff no matter how you feel about combat. Style over substance has been around forever, and has usually been very marketable. I'm a fan of HoMM strategy games from King's Bounty onwards, but besides KB they always were style over substance. The first one looked beautiful and had no balance whatsoever. Second one too. Third one didn't even look good if you preferred the more cartoonish graphics, and hadn't changed much. Those games were some of the most popular stuff ever made for the PC, I don't think it's exaggeration to say, but as much as I love them and have fond memories of them - mechanically the combat sucks hard. And they're basically just combat. And that's part of why they were so sucesfull - graphics which draw you in and mechanics even a dipshit can get to the bottom of. DD is like that, except it draws attention to it's failings so it's easy to end up feeling ripped off.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/radiant-mode-dev-update/

RADIANT MODE DEV UPDATE

The light, the promise of safety!
– The Ancestor

Last month we announced our plans for Radiant Mode in our “Hamlet for the Holidays” update. Radiant Mode is a new game mode designed to help reduce the overall time needed to complete the game. Since today is Friday the 13th, we felt it would be a great day to release a bit more info on this upcoming addition to the game.

RADIANT MODE
When creating a game, you will now have the option to select one of three modes: Radiant, Normal, and Stygian (Formerly NG+). Radiant Mode is not being designed to be an “easy” mode. The intent is to adjust things that typically affect the time it takes to build up your roster and assault the Darkest Dungeon. Our goal is to get the completion time down to around 40 hours, although playtests will confirm where we land. Having all three modes available gives more flexibility for Darkest Dungeon to adapt to your lifestyle, without changing the core experience.

QUALITY OF LIFE
We are also using this opportunity to make a number of tweaks, tuning adjustments and improvements that affect all modes. We’ve been compiling community feedback for several months, and will be incorporating many of the great suggestions put forward by you, our players!

NEW HORRORS EMERGE IN THE CHAMPION DUNGEONS!
One of the most exciting parts of the game is the jump from Apprentice to Veteran Dungeons. Right when you begin to feel your confidence surge as you master Apprentice Dungeons, you engage with new, challenging monsters in Veteran dungeons. In this spirit, we are adding a new monster to each region for Champion Dungeons.

These new monsters have some insidious, never-before-seen abilities that will add variety and new synergies to Champion Dungeons. In addition, we’ve also noticed some of Vvulf’s raiders have slipped out, mingling amongst the bandit ranks in the champion-level regions.

Today we wanted to share the first of four new champion monsters: The Bone Bearer.

Several seasoned adventurers have whispered, gripping tankards of ale to hide shaking hands, that new horrors await in the deepest regions of the Ruins. The repulsive ranks of the malignant skeletons therein are said to rally around banner-bearers of extreme decrepitude. Theirs is a blasphemous and ensorceled flag whose presence in battle lends great strength and other unspeakable assistance to their damnable kin. These chittering fiends are even said to tap into the hoarish energies that animate the long-decayed corpses! A new threat whose grinding teeth and shuffling steps echo endlessly in the shadowy arcades of the ruined battlements…

RADIANT RELEASE
Our goal for Radiant mode is to have it ready for PC/MAC/Linux release by early February, which is mere weeks away! PS4/VITA will also get this update, but it won’t be till after the PC release, so we can be sure the mode, and the additional content/changes are rock solid. (The patching process on console is longer and more difficult to make small tweaks and fixes.) We also hope to have a small public beta right before release, as we have done with all our major updates. As we lead up to the release we will share more information on feature changes and additions as well as more details on the new monsters.
We know many of you are anxious for additional information on our first major DLC “The Crimson Court”. After the decision was made to double down and add content as part of the Radiant update, this unavoidably shifts Crimson Court date a bit, but we feel this is for the greater good of the game. A significant amount of work has already been completed for the Crimson Court, and we are estimating it will ready in April. We will update you as we make progress, so keep your eyes peeled for more art and information! We are dedicated to making this expansion an exceptionally robust, and terrifying bunch of features and content!

Full Res of Banner Image

 

[valcik]

Right when you begin to feel your confidence surge as you master Apprentice Dungeons, you engage with new, challenging monsters in Veteran dungeons.

Bollocks. They are the same monsters as before, with the same abilities and "tactics", with exception of bigger damage and bloated HP.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I think there's a couple that don't show up at first (gargoyles and ghouls I think? At least they didn't when I played the EA version). They don't really require a new approach and bosses are still exactly the same so it doesn't matter much.

Radiant Mode is not being designed to be an “easy” mode. The intent is to adjust things that typically affect the time it takes to build up your roster and assault the Darkest Dungeon.

That would actually be a small step in the right direction, my experience with the game after playing some on the first difficulty wasn't bad, it's only when you reach the second round and have to beat the same missions and bosses again (and then again) you realize that's all there is to it, by then you should have a strategy for party composition and beating every boss and it just becomes a boring slog. If they cut all the fat (that is 3/4 of the regular missions and only have each boss fight once) and improved the character and recruitment system it might've been an alright game.

 

[Celerity]

More copy pasted pallete swaps? That's just what Derpest Dungeon needed!

I also find it hilarious that in this article they say the "less" grindy version is 40 hours, then say on Tyler Cuckman's Twitter that each "quest" is half an hour on average. Meaning the less grindy mode is 80 weeks when you've still ran out of content after 8! Classic Rekt Hook, doing whatever superificial low effort thing tricks retards!

Also, the biggest grind adder is "Never Ahain" (need 4 clone teams instead of 1) and no mention of that at all. I ask myself just how stupid are these cucks and how stupid they think everyone else is, then I watch their increasingly hilarious interactions with based GamerGate shitlords and regret asking!

And I think the most hilarious part is that I actually made a difficult game AND deliberately made the late game bosses extremely long (2-3 hours... each, not counting fail time). That's STILL less grindy because if you just go Derpest and spam damage you lose in 30 seconds. You're actually thinking for that 2-3 hours.

 

[Jimmious]

Ok, that was the third time I tried to go through it, I completely lose interest after I beat the bosses once.
The fucking ability gains/equipment upgrades are all so minimal and insignificant that I honestly don't know what would keep people playing this thing, after they see the content once.
Such a missed opportunity.. Nice setting, nice art...

 

[Celerity]

Blame Tyler Sigman, who has spent the last 3+ months constantly Triggered by Trump(tm) meanwhile they're delaying "content" (read: 2 palette swaps) again.

 

[Celerity]

Speaking of, he's been curiosly silent for a while. Wonder if he joined in any of those libtard vs people protests and got Executed With Impunity because he believed his own narrative about being remotely competent! One can hope!

 

[Invictus]

Instead of all that retarded eazy mode bullshit why couldnt they just do a 20 hour version as simple as this; bosses show up only once, they scale bosses so they be either beginner, advanced, endgame so some bosses like the Pig King is like a beginner boss while the Necromancer is endgame for example so dont have to grind like a fucking idiot and lose interest halfway like I am guessing 95% of their players
Adjusting the costs os everything to fit into that 20 hour window sounds like a winning stategy that actually encourages replayability and trying different kinds of parties instead of going for a "super party build A, B & C" because they can be killed at any second because the collector might show up or whatever
I like the game but the grinding is bullshit and I consider myself a combatfag but not a grindy torture fag

 

[Celerity]

They're trying that but failing as usual. Their "less grindy mode" is 80 in game weeks or 40 hours which is still more than it was when it launched and there's still no unique content, just massive copy pasta. Also, how much you wanna bet it's buggy as fuck, completely misses the point, or bonus points if it's actually MORE grindy?

Also ya know, still 2 classes. Hellion and Trash. So lol replayability.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Seriously, why the tunnel vision nerd rage? Ask yourself, self, why am I OCD raging on this POS? Never mind 1337 hours, it has been a focus of your online life for a significant time. You have spent more energy raging on the game and the makers than they have making the fucking thing. The difference is, they are making money.

 

[Celerity]

Don't confuse rage with amusement. They're having complete mental breakdowns over me, and complete mental breakdowns over Trump just because he has the same sort of political incorrectness that triggers SJWs.

You're probably right I've spent more time mocking their failure than they spent making it though. You're also right they scammed money, which is why I'm still here.

 

[Zombra]

Sometimes, a comedian comes up with a joke he thinks is so brilliant, it's worth basing his entire career (and life) on it. Sometimes he's even right.

Not always, though.

 

[Celerity]

But I didn't found Rekt Hook Studios!

 

[Zombra]

Bullseye.

 

[CptMace]

This thread is so cool.

 

[Lujo]

Did anyone actually try the new stuff? A bunch of what they said they did sound like stuff I told them to do a while back. I suppose others did, too.

 

[Zombra]

Did anyone actually try the new stuff? A bunch of what they said they did sound like stuff I told them to do a while back. I suppose others did, too.

Eh? Is the new vampire edition or whatever out?

 

[Lujo]

Did anyone actually try the new stuff? A bunch of what they said they did sound like stuff I told them to do a while back. I suppose others did, too.

Eh? Is the new vampire edition or whatever out?

No, but the public beta for the "radiant mode" update is. Seems to add one monster per site (at the highest difficulty?), reduce grind from all directions (or so it seems from what they said they changed, I haven't tried it yet, but there's a boatload of small things that ought to add up nicely), added some boss you can fight to get lost trinkets back (I bet I wasn't the only one to tell them to do this). Its like they took one of my "comprehensive list of everythng that's wrong with your game" rants and ticked off everything unrelated to the classess with at least a token adjustment.

This still won't fix the problem that the game has about 1 quarter of the in-dungeon content it would need to be as interesting as it tries to pass itself off as, and I'm kind of sure stunlock still completely destroys the combat at a conceptual level, but wth, it's certainly going to be less grindy. That also doesn't necessarily mean that much, as the game used to be insanely grindy, but wth.

 

[Gord]

I'm limited to my portable toaster for a few days, so maybe I'll play a couple of dungeons until i get bored by the game again.
Update sounds like a step in the right direction, but ultimately a more fundamental overhaul would be needed.
The art is still nice, though.

 

[Lujo]

I'm limited to my portable toaster for a few days, so maybe I'll play a couple of dungeons until i get bored by the game again.
Update sounds like a step in the right direction, but ultimately a more fundamental overhaul would be needed.
The art is still nice, though.

It's still the same damned thing. It's a bit easier on you when it comes to hauling stuff out of the dungeon, but I haven't played for what feels like a year and after a couple of runs it feels like just going through the motions. Collector jumped me on 2nd or 3rd run I just kicked his ass... I'd like to see the new monsters and round up the new achievements and stuff but getting the monsters to appear only at champion level runs feels too late. There's two difficulty levels of same-old to slog through until you get there.

 

[Zombra]

I'm limited to my portable toaster for a few days, so maybe I'll play a couple of dungeons until i get bored by the game again.
Update sounds like a step in the right direction, but ultimately a more fundamental overhaul would be needed.
The art is still nice, though.

It's still the same damned thing. It's a bit easier on you when it comes to hauling stuff out of the dungeon, but I haven't played for what feels like a year and after a couple of runs it feels like just going through the motions. Collector jumped me on 2nd or 3rd run I just kicked his ass... I'd like to see the new monsters and round up the new achievements and stuff but getting the monsters to appear only at champion level runs feels too late. There's two difficulty levels of same-old to slog through until you get there.

I fooled around with DD for a number of hours but never got into the late game. If I ever go back to it, would you recommend starting over with the less grindy version, or continuing my old save?

 

[Lujo]

I fooled around with DD for a number of hours but never got into the late game. If I ever go back to it, would you recommend starting over with the less grindy version, or continuing my old save?

This is hard to answer. First because they were a bit vague about what they changed. I'm no't sure what was applied to the game in general and what was applied just to the new mode. It all sounds hugely superior to the way things were so if most of it only applies to radiant mode then by all means, start over. The game has a completely deserved reputation for being quite unplayable due to the grind and there didn't need to be a separate "less grind" mode at all.

On the other hand, I have no idea how far in you were. The game was insanely grindy so you not being close to the late game could mean anything. The juiciest and most noticeable bits of the update, the monsters, have been made something that shows up only 20% of the time and even that only in champion level dungeons. So if you start over, you could be looking at god knows how many hours of what you've allready seen and didn't like much before you even get to see the new stuff which you may or may not like.

The grind reducing shennanigans they did were mostly obvious stuff that any semi-competant designer or developer would have done before releasing a beta and could've patched in at any time (it's all stuff that they were told to do numerous times by anyone reasonable). But the big problem which they didn't adress is that the game just lacks content. The number of possible encounters in any type of dungeon is abysmally low, and every direction has you meeting encounters from an universal pool, too, so you keep seeing those wherever you go. Adding something excluive to Champion tier which only rarely happens doesn't solve it. The entire game has about enough encounters for one interesting dungeon type, and it has 4 dungeon types. It'll be 5 dungeon types in the expansion. That's complete fail, what they need is one more full "tribe" per dungeon direction at least, and whether the game mechanics even allow for it is a decent question. But what's there gets boring and repetitive long before you get to playing champion level dungeons.

The curios are still the same and still have the same narrow ways you can interact with them (making them all basically the same "event") so that's still boring, too. Idk, if you got bored before, you'll likely get bored again.

 

[Invictus]

This could have been a nice chance to make 20 hours playthoughs and make this palatable but seems it is just a sprinkling of chocolate and sunshine over the same old grindfest
I wonder, they do have their own forums, has nobody told them about this? Do they not have metrics that show that maybe 5% of their players have finished the damn thing? Or something? Maybe we arr the crazy ones or they are perfectly happy with a game that is fun and challenging the first 10 hours but then turns into a grind fest and most players drop it but who cares because they already paid
I actually enjoyed my first real playthrough until I found out that bosses came in 3 flavors and the parties thay entered the darkest dungeon were done for good, figured that making a copy of my saves was probably the best way to save me the rage of getting jumped by the collector or just getting wiped on some random enconter

 

[pippin]

has nobody told them about this?

99,9% of the people who didn't liked the game just stopped playing it (the difference being Celerity of course)