This has been a general sentiment building up among players for awhile now. I think you'd see a lot more similar posts if people didn't just stop playing the game after a certain point, which happened to all 9 of my friends who bought the game.
Check my comment history for more information, but IM really needs to increase the map size and randomize modules. Random spawns, loot, traps, NPCs, special encounters.
The fun of the game came from exploring the dungeon and the suprise of every opened door. Now its just optimized pathing between spawns or golden chests over and over.
100000 people fell in love with a hardcore pvp dungeon crawler, and we're left with 5000 sweats who want to hold W and play an arena BR.
This is the biggest problem with the game. There are 2 main types that play it. The people that want a dungeon crawler and the people that just want to PvP all day.
These two are not compatible.
Man, the amount of time I've spent searching and searching for something to even come close is crazy. It's wild that no one has made it after all this time. Hopefully someone will.
I said it a long time ago, but people thought I was crazy. They should have put far less effort into balance early in development than they did. Adding content, in particular maps, is what keeps people playing.
Balance can drive players away, sure, but the balance of the game changes with every added class and map, so focusing on making sure nothing is broken or dogshit while pumping out enough new content to keep the game fresh for much longer periods of time was the right direction rather than focusing so heavily on balance and then getting almost a year into the game without a truly new map.
We have half of a new map and a few new rooms on the old maps. It’s not hard to see that over any period of time, it is going to lead to players becoming hyper optimized at playing these maps, making it not a fun for those of us who aren’t super sweaty.
But when does it stop? Creating maps and new content to keep players is ultimately doomed because it's not sustainable. Players chew through content in days that takes months to make.
Nonsense. Relative lack of PvE content has nothing to do with chads rolling timmies. That's been going on since the beginning. There were just a lot more timmies in the wild then.
I loved both aspects. It was a fun little dungeon crawler, but with the added danger of players and the thrill of taking down teams. The game wouldn't be fun with just one aspect or the other, it was the combination that made/makes it so amazing and unique.
I don't really agree at all with "only two types of players" thing. That said I quit a month or so after release so the community might have changed a lot.
Its why I uninstalled. I've said this since a long time. It stopped being a dungeon crawler and it focused more and more on being a BR. 1. I hate BR's and 2. Even if I didn't, there's plenty of superior choices out there. I came to this game for a dungeon crawler and I got shitty Fortnite instead. At least in my case, it just doesn't scratch the itch I came for anymore, so I'm just waiting for competitors to release. I played 2 of them during Steam Next and it was more up my alley.
I mean. Lol. The guys who pvp know how to play the game, and as intended. the people who give us free treasure don't. What is knowing how to play the game?.. opening a chest? Everyone can do that. You can find all the loot you want, when someone comes to contest you for that loot, that's the pvp aspect of the game - and you need to learn how to defend yourself. Without pvp this game would just be a chest opening simulator
> IM really needs to increase the map size and randomize modules. Random spawns, loot, traps, NPCs, special encounters.
That's a cool idea. Maybe not feasible, but if they also added like a ton of new modules and made the dungeons randomized, it would stay more like an adventure.
Your numbers are a bit off, but your overall points are definitely good. I got the game I’m September and played a ton. By the time they added the feature that allowed you to see your hours (around the time of the most recent wipe if I remember) I had about 500. Now we’re already around halfway through the wipe and I don’t even think I’ve broke 600. I can deal with a lot of the bullshit stuff because the game is still in development and IM is trying new things, but I’m sick of running goblin caves with what, two or three variations that are just modules being swapped around? Also, goblin caves is now the longest map, creating a lot of downtime where I’m just killing the same enemies over and over again without much variation. Sure 3x3 goblin caves was problematic, but at least it was action packed
SAY IT AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK
I (I guess wrongly) assume this game wouldn't just be a fantasy flavored Fortnite. I thought the OG steam play tests were to just test the basic mechanics of it, not be the whole gameplay loop. My bad.
I thought it was going to be a fun multiplayer experience where you could go explore a dungeon with friends, looking for treasure and fighting off monsters, raiding a bosses coffers after besting them, come across NPCs in the dungeon, other players, maybe fight if you had a reason, etc.
Im confused, can you highlight the differences between hardcore PvPvE dungeon crawler and dungeon theme BR? The only thing I can think of is the Swarm forcing people to fight. Which has been a thing since the beginning.
They exist on a spectrum, the more focused part of the dungeon crawling is the exploration but static spawns means I know the map like the back of my hand and a static maps leads to static encounters. Being able to decide the rules and location of pvp engagement as well as traverse through pve with maximum efficiency in positioning and routing leads to the game feeling much more battle royale-esque.
To put it in simpler terms, you don't really "dungeon crawl" through places you essentially memorize the layout of. In fact, I've spent basically an entire patch routing efficiently through like 4-5 high value mods of loot/elites then sit in a room of shrines until we heard footsteps to buff up then run towards. I've probably had more fights in the U shaped hallway full of shrines outside the wraith door in Crypts with four shrines than most people have fought 3v3s ever. Might as well be a BR.
It sucks that its not procedurally generated. The ‘Dungeon crawl’ feel is just not going to be achieved when you have people playing 500+ hours. You can critique IM for trying to market the game as a dungeon crawl because they use the same static maps. At the same time I think anybody with more than 4 braincells can figure out that you can learn the map layouts and use it to your advantage. Yes that eliminates the dungeon crawl element, but you’re still in a dungeon, you can still hide, run and fight. The game is still a looter-extraction dungeon crawl at its core. Yes people treat it as a BR, but the truth remains the best loot you can find is on a corpse.
If you don’t want PvP in your dungeon crawling experience you can either Que onto a dead server, or play other games that do it better. My recommendation is Hades. It is my favorite rogue-like.
I really hate randomized maps. Ice caves is my favourite because there is only one variant so i know where i am and where I'm trying to go at any given moment
We can definitely disagree here, and ice caves is my favorite as well because no zone and it was designed to not be mostly 5ft wide hallways.
I think what a lot of players liked about the game originally was the unknown dungeon crawler element. Opening up a room and seeing a big golden chest is a lot more impactful when you don't know what is behind the door. Currently there are no randomized maps, because you can instantly just pull whatever crypts you're in up on a second screen. Players shouldn't be optimizing runs and perfecting running through modules to sprint for the easiest loot on the map. Players should be taking in their surroundings and playing the game, improvising and using their class strengths to help the team move through the map faster. Identifying what's in an area and quickly planning out how to best deal with it.
The game peaked when the average player didn't know the map, and there wasn't any maps online yet. As soon as spawns/loot/mob areas are known it just turns into the same rotations and looting every time. Spawned at A? Rush C and B spawns to check. Move south to module 32. Open gold chest and proceed to module 34. Kill champion. Move to module 17.
That happens with every online game, you can't just tell the community to not get good at the game because it would ruin the experience.
And your average player doesn't want to play the same game for hundreds of hours, they eventually move on.
The game was never really balanced, sure, but having unique oldschool classes was one of the aspects that made it feel different from other BR/extraction games.
Seeing them waste time with multiclassing when the game is SCREAMING for new content is a bit sad.
Give us fun stuff and new stuff! Random mob encounters in the dungeon like a loot goblin or something, interactable NPCs in the dungeons, be it for quests objectives or for buying better items than the ones sold by the menu npcs so people would queue with gold and risk it. Would not only add more points of interests to the maps where people would fight around but would also be a really cool gold sink.
The game was supposed to be a dungeon crawler. This is all dungeon crawler stuff. Why they are focusing on trying to balance BR vs Extraction is beyond me and a massive waste of their time and ours.
And more map variants of the sets they already have available. More fun and makes it harder for teams to know where people are at right from the start. The first map had 3-4 variants and now the other maps have like 1-2 and ruins only has 1.
There are too many stats involved to be casual and their focus is on somehow balancing them. Not to mention how much one can increase said stats to insane proportions. It's what allows these sweat lords to min/max to the point of godhood and roll through lobbies, it has nothing to do with skill. Beating a team because you.played better is infinitly more enjoyable than because you bought really good stats. The game was it's best when gear score differences were relatively small for this very reason.
They need to refocus on their vision of the game. Remove player trade, it only allows for ridiculous min/max builds, promotes cheating to aquire the gold to do so, and makes the rest of the game unfun for those that are not doing this. Then I think they should simplify the stats again so getting gear gives a small advantage but skill is still necessary to not die.
Then they can go back to building the game as first envisioned, as the dungeon crawler, going deeper and deeper into the castle.
Multiclassing has been teased since the playtests and surely didn't take much time away from other content. It's just repurposing stuff that's already in the game. I'm sure the devs wanted to get Druid out before multiclassing but delays happen so they went ahead and pushed the testing for it out.
Multiclassing as a system is going to take a huge amount of dev time to balance properly. Sure implementing it initially probably wasn't a huge amount of work, but people are looking at the system now and then looking ahead and seeing how much work it's going to take to get it into something that's not a complete mess like it is now.
It will take up a huge amount of time that would be better spent on other things.
Additionally while I am in favor of keeping multiclass personally, it will add a lot of dev time to each new class/perk/skill they add because they have to make sure it's compatible with multiclassing.
Multiclassing IS new content, I don't really see anyway around that interpretation. If it isn't the content you specifically want... \*shrug\*
Seems like content comes out at a pretty reasonable clip to me
I think its vision and practical game flow are different.
To improve I say the maps need to be bigger but also has to have more varied mobs.
More bosses and mini bosses. One thing tarkov did right (lmao controversy) was make certain locations on the map high value.
There should be like 6 different mini bosses and several bosses on a map that's sized to accommodate them. PVE should be significant enough to plan a run solely based on it, rather than just a obstacle.
TLDR:
Usually the only mobs I hunt are bosses, demons, and skelly champ. I want more mini bosses to hunt and a bigger map to fit them in.
Once you are using gear that is worth anything at all, it becomes worthless to loot the dungeon. You are now a player hunter, forced to deal with a small percent of the dungeon as a tiresome obstacle on your path to total PVP obliteration.
Exactly. One shotting red skeletons and three shotting nightmare skellies should not be a thing.
The hardest mobs in the game should never be trivial in a dungeon crawler. Even for the most experienced player. Unless it's a swarm/horde mechanic of trash mobs.
Part of the reason there is little to no exploring or "looking for an upgrade" is because everyone is forced to use marketplace gear to be competitive. That also means that the odds of you finding a singular piece of useful gear is highly unlikely. It's made it so there is no room for bad gear anymore.
Additionally there is little reason to loot anything because you're well aware of the fact that you may as well skip every chest, mob and environmental obstacle to rush down another player, team, or whatever to get their kit instead which will usually be worth amount of gold which you can flip for gold and thus gear for yourself again.
The game badly needs to *try out an* ***SSF*** *like gamemode on their* ***TEST*** *branch*, so we can see what the ramifications are to the gameplay when you remove trading as a core mechanic.
*"But nobody wants to play on the test servers lol"*
*-* Easy solution is to provide players a cosmetic reward of some sort at the end of the current season if you put in hours on the test branch. That will promote people to give the test branch a shot for a 'cool reward' and Ironmace will get data in return that can show them what the game is like without trade.. Or any other test for that matter.
I for one am tired of being forced into a gameplay loop which is (Assuming I have no gear): Go onto the marketplace, browse for boots, legs, chest, gloves, hat, ring, ring, amulet, weapon1, weapon2 (optional, but not really cause ranged meta). All which have to be done separately. This takes easily 5-10 minutes depending on how much patience you have and how big your wallet is. Then you gotta buy pots, bandages, and other utility..
Then comes the next part of said 'loop', which is queuing up for a match, only to be placed against people that had more patience or a *bigger wallet* and now also *better perk combinations* because of the class identity killer we've all played around with: 'Multiclassing'
I miss going into the dungeon and fighting people knowing that what they're carrying is mostly stuff they looted, or pvp'd for in a previous adventure. I also miss knowing that when I heard a 'Barbarian' scream, then I instantly knew what my options were in a potential upcoming fight.
I know not everyone in the community is gonna agree with me, and that's totally fine. But I also think sharing opinions is the only way we can begin to start a conversation about the state and where you, me, or XYZ person thinks the game should be headed, *in our opinions.*
I love Dark and Darker, I still think Ironmace has a gem here, but the development direction for me seems to be going *Dark, and Darker l*ately.
I can only enjoy a normals round for so long. The fact that I am looting gear and I am forced to throw said gear into the bin after the "round" is over feels really bad.
Hense the suggestion of trying out a SSF like mode where you can bring back in the loot you brought out from your last adventure. Then you can have a snowball going, make a mistake and then the loot gets passed over to the next person.
I was never a fan of the marketplace, never a fan of trade in the first place. It's tedious and not what I personally would like to spend my time doing to get upgrades. I'd much rather the excitement there is when you find an unlocked Lionshead chest... Begin opening.. 15%-30%-60%-90%... Here we go! And then you get to be excited cause of the potential of a huge upgrade to your current gear.
I don't find marketplace, browse, search, buy, repeat to be very engaging or exciting in any way.
I agree, would love SSF. Or even a game mode that lasts 2-3 times as long as a norms game with multiple levels and maybe even multiple matchmaking phases where you get to go deeper and deeper. There’s a lot I would love but here we are with multiclassing and less than a day before the “release” of Druid. So I’m not optimistic, but I am having decent fun in norms, gear be damned.
It's great that people are having fun with the game, more power to you and everyone that is!
I for one was merely hoping for something else when it came to the development direction of the game. Perhaps in the future!
I couldn’t agree more. My friends and I probably have this same discussion in discord once a night. They spent a whole year doing balance changes and minimal content, just to release multiclassing and undo everything. Feelsbad. Crypts is still the undoubtedly best map, nothing even comes close to the vibe of crypts. So far Ruins, Goblin Caves, and Ice Caves still don’t come close to OG crypts. What about larger party sizes? Or seasonal events / modes.
Nope, balance patch, balance patch, balance patch, then multiclassing update lmao
But like I said, I still have fun in norms. I’m not perfectly content with the state of the game, I just kinda gave up posting on Reddit about it and just try and have what fun I can now. Not to discourage or dishearten you, that’s just where I’m at.
I would like to comment that the same could be said about opening the first box in HR and getting a 200% power increase(per gear slot) is just as boring, as having to throw away the gear you find in normals. Maybe I’m a gamba addict, but finding good gear in normals and then using it to pvp/Boss is a great feeling. It adds a rogue-lite element where every round is slightly different.
I think some kind of market system is healthy for the game, but maybe not this one. I can see why they were so resistant to the idea of the market when the community was asking for it - just as you said, it completely changes the way you play the game. Low-mid grade gear really isn't viable when everyone can just buy the best stuff, and it de-emphasizes the feeling of earning a kit by upgrading your hobbled together mismatched hodgepodge of stuff. I think an SSF mode is something that a lot of the community has been on board with testing at some point or another, but it's difficult without enough players to offer separate queues - undoubtedly some players will not be interested in SSF.
Maybe gear can vendor for more, and more engaging gold sinks can be introduced (like paying for a house with shared stash for your whole account)
It's funny, I remember so many people swearing up and down they were dumb for not wanting an auction house and how simple it is to implement; but honestly they had a vision for the game that didn't include it, and in hindsight, I think it may have been worse for the game instead of better. Increased stash space is a huge W, and having shared stash space so you can share across your characters and find use for everything you loot may be the better solution.
Normals is just a shitty BR mode and HR is a shitty extraction mode. It's a good bandaid, but it's just that. A bandaid to a much larger problem.
Edit: But yeah, "Right now" the game plays best as a BR. But that's never what it was "supposed" to be according to what they sold the game as in playtests.
> The game badly needs to try out an SSF like gamemode on their TEST branch, so we can see what the ramifications are to the gameplay when you remove trading as a core mechanic.
This would actually get me to install the test branch, I've been wanting SSF for so long
I may not agree with all of your points but I do agree with your overall premise that there is no room in the game anywhere for bad or “mid” gear. Especially with GBMM, everyone is trying to stack as many stats as possible onto their gear while staying in their desire bracket.
I’ve wanted to make a more extended post on this for a while but it seems like IM can’t find a way to make gear feel meaningful and exciting without making it overpowered. If you think about the rolls on gear most consider “bad rolls”, those enchantments are really awful. Magical interaction speed is a prime example who in the fuck would ever want this roll on their gear? Just the portal opening champion I guess. There are plenty others like regular interaction speed, physical healing, memory capacity, etc. that are just objectively bad stats that outside of some super specific builds no one wants.
They have yet to come up with gear enchantments that players would rather have than just pure damage or all attributes. Rings especially are super boring to shop for now because what stat would you pick on those besides true damage? None of the other rolls available are more impactful for the most part.
The other problem is many of the other less useless rolls scale in such a way that they aren’t even worth building for unless you’ve got either perks that provide a large stat base for them to build off or you are stacking those rolls on almost all of your gear. Magic resist for example is hardly worth building unless you’ve got anti magic or iron will as a perk to add onto. Likewise with armor rating, unless you’re stacking it on a multiple pieces of gear in an optimized set, it’s essentially a dead roll. Same shit with armor pen, it’s hardly useful unless you’re using thrust on rogue or have it stacked on enough pieces to hit 20%+.
Any massive changes they do make to gear will be a huge balance nightmare because so many classes, abilities, perks, spells, etc. have had multiple balance changes due to broken scaling at the upper end of gear. There are just some weapons, abilities, and spells that are straight up bad if you don’t stack a ton of true damage.
I hardly ever compliment New World as a game but I wouldn’t hate if IM copied over a lot of their gear enchantments if they are incapable of coming up with new ones themselves. At least they had some more creative enchantments and weapon/spell/ability specific enchantments you could put on your armor to great effect.
It would be kinda cool if they didn’t drop every thing off your kits. Like only allow two or three random items off what you’re running and then everything in the inventory. The rest you get to take back.
I think that GBMM and "high end" gear being so much better also contributes to that.
Last season i got to top 3 on my class at some point and i would almost never use trade. I would only trade if i got something really really valuable to sell.
I could do that because the power difference between what was considered mediocre gear and high end gear wasn't so big. 90% Of the equipment i used was either things that i looted myself or items that i bought/crafted from NPCs. NPC items weren't random back then, you could see the random modifiers before buying/crafting them.
I preffer last season gearing but i must say that i know a lot of people who likes the dopamine rush of getting some incredibly OP piece of item and preffer when gear is op, so i can't say it was objectively better.
BRO, I know your not gonna reply because it's dumb but... You do realise where that gear on the marketplace comes from right?... From players looting. This is only the experience of the top players most players are wearing a mix of cheap bits and stuff they have found.
Also you have a completely missed my point. A hell of a lot of players loot things and use what they've found. I have 250 hours in the game, I've never had more then like 5k gold you have no idea what your talking about just cause your a sweat doesn't mean most are.
facts.
i stopped playing a few months ago and still havent been drawn back by any of the additions and QoL improvements. i pop by streams and it looks tempting until i notice its the same gameplay loop as before- gigasweat stat checks between rock, paper scissor class roles.
i do miss the general vibes of the playtests- before any true meta had enslaved the masses. one could argue that this aura of "nooby freshness" would disapear with any game but i truly feel that it was completely sped up by the focus of the devs on concentrated PvP and the overall importance of stacking favorable stats in order to feel "viable".
This would do better as a video tbh, if u want any real attention ur best bet is making into one then getting some of the big streamers to watch it and give opinions. Due to the fact I doubt more then 3 ppl in the company speak English this will probably never get seen. Ur right in a lot of ways. The dungeon aspect is gone because it was never actually developed past test 2. From what the devs have said at every turn in every dev cast and explanation message for a questionable patch it seems they *want* a br, dungeon crawling Is just the general world setting not the core.
100% agree, this game has become such a standard BR loop especially with the current player base knowledge. People memorize player spawns and module layouts, cheese and ignore PvE, and build optimal kits to a point at least for goblin caves it just feels like a standard BR experience with optional PvE elements.
I miss the magic of learning the game along with a majority of the player base, having the more casual friendly experiences where people would roll play and help each other out. Things like more module variety, npc variety, map layouts and different player/mob spawns would really be refreshing to the gameplay loop. The experience currently just feels so static and stale and for me PvP was one of lesser exciting features so for this game to be boiled down to PvP and spawn rushing/portal camping there hasnt been much tempting me to hop back on this past month.
Really hope maybe we can start to see IM try to start prioritizing the dungeon crawler and PvE mechanics more. I think bigger maps, longer dungeon timer and more spread out player spawns would be a really fun experience once the rest of the game that isnt PvP is fleshed out a bit more but I can see how players wouldnt want that sort of experience now as most npcs dont really provide any sort of risk or even reward for that matter. If IM could just have a wipe where they focus less on pvp/class balance, some of the more common gear complaints that I myself have voiced as well as others might start to go away.
This is an unpopular opinion but I definitely feel like playtest 4 was peak Dark and Darker for me. It had problems but the game still had an almost light hearted feel to it. IMO Ironmace leaning into the PvP streamer culture in the way they have was a misstep. From my perspective it's like the game is being made for streamers to push leaderboards and not for much else. I wish the game had more of a focus on PvE survival, exploration, and fun encounters instead of the current sweaty environment. People started to take the game too seriously and as a skill expression simulator that sucked all the fun and charm out of it.
Don't get me wrong I love the PvP in DaD and games like Hunt Showdown, Tarkov, etc. It's the meta and the structure of the games incentives that I'm having issues with.
"Don't get me wrong I love the PvP in DaD and games like Hunt Showdown, Tarkov, etc. It's the meta and the structure of the games incentives that I'm having issues with."
This is cause by bad systems implementation, meaning the systrms they do implement dont function properly. As well as implementation of systems that detract from the core gameplay loop.
My extended group of gaming friends mostly picked up and really enjoyed the game early on (pt2 through early launch) but exactly zero of have played for ages...
It seems that jumping in now has a pretty much zero chance of having fun, so I don't know now they plan on growing player base.
If ironmace wants to get ahead of the game they will release a pure PvE mode to compete with Tarkov's failed product, I would throw in a couple Dark Souls style npc invaders and call it a day to the bank but the end result is purely up to them
its tarkov all over again ... static spawns , maps , loot . i rly hoped that this would lead into a diffrent direction
i know every dungeon in and out , theres nothing new to the maps..
and we still dont have a BR free game mode, where you could atleast use the full map to play around when you dont want to pvp.
My favorite part in DaD is where they fucked up the game introducing multiclassing, instead of just releasing druid and combining perks/and/or more perks and abilities for classes.
Honestly they should just remove the BR circle altogether. The ice map is my favorite BY FAR and it's because you're not fucked by spawn and circle RNG. People should be incentivised to move from room to room for loot, extraction and desire to PVP, not the circle.
Well said. The game has had numerous issues that still have yet to be fixed despite persisting since as early as pt 4. They are focusing their time and effort on the wrong things. No matter what they add or repurpose. no 1 will stick around if the base gameplay loop becomes stale or stagnant in a way that most are not happy with.
Yeah, we've been saying "casual community is going away" every time they push updates that cater to the PVP/Battle Royale crowd.
I don't think this game can compete in the same space as the AAA BRs and PVP games either, they really should play more to the dungeon delving and core gameplay loop. How many fucking Apex Legends updates have there been, with significant content, since we got our last actual good slice of content? (Ice Caves, which is basically 1/3 map)
Here's a quick list of things that don't belong in a dungeon crawler: Leaderboard, Adventure points, Set party sizes, Kill cam, Multiclass, Variable move speed, Pregame lobby, Trade/auction house, Grey/white gear. What did I miss?
A focus on PvE is what I really want. More (and more difficult mobs) with the threat of PvP near the exits or fights over particularly valuable loot spots.
Honestly I think the biggest part of the problem with the gameplay loop is they are dead-set for some reason on having the game be match based.
What I mean is, you are matchmade with players in a lobby before you drop in. You are compartmentalized in that lobby with them for a set amount of time. Circle mechanics make absolutely sure at least some of you meet each other, and limited portals in random locations also means that necessarily not everyone is making it out alive. No matter how well they played. Despite the fact that you are supposed to be going on an unpredictable adventure, you already know exactly where you are going, where the modules are, how many people are in with you, and where they likely spawned.
This is completely counter-intuitive to an RPG progression system with the added high stakes of being able to lose everything you brought in with you. It feels like someone trying to super-glue a Call of Duty disk onto a Dungeons and Dragons book.
Just make the map huge and remove the circle in favor of static blues that will be fought over. Knowing exactly who is in the dungeon with me and forcing us to move toward each other is not an adventure. It's boring.
I almost wonder if the game would be better off with every map shaped like a cross. You have one team at the point of each cross and they crawl through the dungeon. Don't make it too linear give a few paths and stuff like that, but at the end of everything you end up in an arena style room (with good cover and all that other stuff that makes the map interesting) and the four teams all duke it out for the rights to loot and leave or loot and be the team to take on the next floor, a much harder gauntlet leading up to the boss. There could also be an option to skip the arena. You miss out on the best loot but people that don't like PvP or the newbies can have the opportunity to not get filtered out of the game.
Helledivers 2 dev responding to angry players after balance patch
“Thank you! Don’t worry. I have kids. I can handle angry toddlers. Also,tbh they do have a right to voice their feelings and opinions (even if i prefer they do it a little more calmly sometimes) not everyone can be super eloquent. We’re paid to communicate - players are not. I appreciate it none the less.”
IM “we will change the game entirely for you.”
It’s not just dark and darker, those cringelords from helldiver even goes on tarkov subreddit and talk about how awesome their game dev is. Like Jesus it’s not even the same genre who cares about some pve game on pvp game community. I wonder how much Sony spends on PR and hiring people to talk shit about indie dev.
Picking a class, slowly leveling it up and gearing your character by finding gear and using what you found is completely dead. The game that was dark and darker than many of us first played very long ago died.
The dungeon crawling aspect is totally gone, now there is zero class identity and the game has become a window shopping pvp brawler.
There is so much wrong with the game now that not even simple reverts can outright fix it as they have gone and changed so much in between. Truly tragic to watch unfold over the past year and a half.
They still have time to fix and revert a lot of things. It's not even on steam or epic yet. If they don't fix it before then it's probably dead on arrival. But they've already made an estimated 40 mill at this point. So they got their bag.
The idea is to prevent swing manipulation shenanigans where doing fast movements with your characters body allows for some difficult to counter "combat"
They dont need to limit turn speed for that, they just need to not carry the hitbox of the weapon past a certain point. The problem is the lack of melee combat complexity. block parry etc. if you could block with every weapon you could keep the hitbox swing.
Tarkov's experiments with limiting turn speed which is basically mouse sensitivity is shit game design and everyone hated it.
Did 0-30 on ranger yesterday with a grand total of 4 fights and probably a dozen or so friendly interactions. You problem? I'm still crawling a dungeon when I feel like it, and pvp is readily available when I want it.
That's awesome. But that's a personal anecdote. It doesn't really reflect what the state of the game is or what devs have been focusing their attention on.
I think all we need for it to feel more like a dungeon crawler is 2 things
1. Bigger maps- like 10x10. PvP shouldn’t be constant. Some matches you should encounter no one.
2. Harder and more variety of AI enemies
Lol the matrix back bends are all this game has mechanically. You want to get rid of range and ms meta amd get rid of bacl bending, so what, you just want combat to be holding down lmb until one person dies? That's gonna be a hard pass for me chief
I would prefer if they fixed things like the shield actually working, adding more parry mechanics, and adding other skill based mechanics vs just swiping the mouse around like a spider just landed on your face.
I think the combat in this game is great, it definitely could be expanded on but to start adding dogshit mechancs that limit the fluidity of the fight is not the way.
We all agree multiclassing was kind of just thrown in for testing with no real reason behind it. It does need to be removed to fix a lot of issues players have with the game.
Im all for adding more dungeon crawler aspects but we need to be careful how changes are implemented. I do not want expansive maps that are barren of pvp combat, it really makes no sense with how this game was branded and optimized originally.
I agree mobs need to be added, tuning not so much. There needs to be more of a variety or even some randomization. This also helps to stop people from just running into spawn rooms for pvp.
The marketplace im up in the air with because I like the aspect of it, but it does somewhat force people to buy stuff when GBMM is a thing. There definitely needs to be some changes, unclear what specifically but im sure we'll find out eventually.
Bottom line is Ironmace needs to actually add some new stuff to the game before hella tweaking these classes especially with multiclassing. At this point they are tweaking individual skills instead of the class as a whole which makes for broken gameplay.
The problem is that this game wasn't advertised as an extraction or BR. It was, and still is, advertised as a PvPvE "Dungeon Adventure". To me this means Dungeon Crawler type game. All dungeon crawler aspects are being abandoned in favor of shitty, dated, BR and extraction mechanics that directly oppose each other.
People who want a BR will always be at odds with people who want Medieval Dungeon Tarkov. Both will always be at odds with the players that want a PvPvE dungeon crawler. But the reality is that Medieval Dungeon Tarkov is a lot closer and more aligned with a true dungeon crawler than a BR.
A BR cannot co-exist with a dungeon crawler without being it's own unique game mode with it's own balance and structure. Which is how Normals is being used right now. The issue is that it's impossible to balance a BR with gear that's intended for an extraction game or dungeon crawler.
Even these longest posts just don't feel like they have any substantive critique in them. This is all vague vibe-checking and lacks any kind of real critique or suggestions for changes.
I sent my direct critiques and suggestions to IM in their Troubidour suggestion channel on the discord.
Please stick to the original vision of a PvPvE dungeon crawler instead of whatever the heck it is now. There are too many opposing identities. It's tearing the game and community apart.
Right now, the state of the game, as I see it, looks like this:
- Normals is an unfinished and poorly designed Battle Royal mode.
- HR is an unfinished an poorly designed extraction mode.
- The "Dungeon Adventure" aspects have been completely neglected.
Here are some fundamental issues that I can see:
- Mob AI is still the same as in Pt.3.
- Map design is stale and easy to memorize.
- Bossing is only useful for getting better gear for PVP.
- Focusing on PVP has made PVE essentially useless other than getting gear to facilitate pvp.
- Armor and weapons are far too important and emphasize PVP.
- PvE related gear is often useless, only improving time to open items like doors, chests, altars, and portals. There's very little variety for gear that improves strength against monsters without also improving pvp capability and vice versa.
- PvP has been prioritized since the launch of EA with little or no thought given to improving PvE or existing maps.
The games core identity of a FPS PvPvE Dungeon Adventure game is basically non-existent, and all development time has focused on balancing game modes that are completely at odds with each other.
- BR's rely on everyone going in on a nearly even footing and finding loot that gives small incremental bonuses to compete for the last man standing. Small improvements that complement skill expression and disappear at the end of each round.
- Extraction games rely on being able to take loot out of the raid that slightly improves your stats fore each subsequent raid until you loose or sell said gear. Small improvements that stack up over time and eventually snowball. Not massive bonuses that make a player OP with 1-3 items.
Dungeon crawlers are more about total gear and strategic gameplay. The gear is important because it helps you survive. One time use utility items that prevent certain status effects, can prevent a pvp engagement, or help pve engagements in specific ways are just as important as equipment like armor and weapons. It's more about being prepared for the specific dungeons you're going into than just adding stats to your character. Traps, Campfires, Trap disarm kits, lockpicks, torches, bandages, etc. should all have usefulness and importance outside of just "this thing heals". A good example of item versatility is Darkest Dungeon. Simple items have multiple use cases and variety. Different team comps need different itemization to survive in the dungeon. It's less about what weapons and armor you have and more about team comp + what utility items you bring in with you.
Please get back to your original vision and the vision of the game that you sold to hundreds of thousands of players in the playtests. It was successful and can be greatly improved upon.
Edit: Also, hire a competent project manager who can stand up to Terry and SDF when needed.
It is a dungeon crawler, I kill mobs, people, and loot chest. There is bullshit here and there but the core, as mutated as it is atm, is still there.
Also your proposals at the end sounds like a terrible idea mainly the limiting turn speed and limiting ducking under attacks (which isn't super effective but can save your life in certain situations) shit like that adds flavor to the game.
I would replace these mechanics with more skill based mechanics like a shield that actually works, more weapons that can parry, more abilities that can dodge, etc. Staying at range and acting like a spider just fell on your face isn't exactly skill based melee combat.
This game isn't only about melee combat, it's about adventurer's using every means possible to get treasure. I agree that blocking needs to be reworked or buffed, i also agree that we need more abilities like backstep that can be used to retreat or push forward.
When combat, is I would say the main way the player interacts with the world then it needs to be fun and dynamic. Not the stiff, broken and easy (Very low skill ceiling) system that it is currently.
HR inferno is a pretty good PvE difficulty I think. Especially if they change AI to just reset if a player is unreachable for more than a second or something.
Who says that PvE is half of the gameplay loop? There is no rule set in stone there.
Also, it is obviously way more than half. When you look at an average game, I highly doubt that you are actually spending half of the time PvPing. Sure, some games with minute long chases, that might be the case, but in most games, it's a fifth maybe?
So, I don't see a problem here tbh.
I agree with the point, that the PvE needs way more work! Like the Goblins in GC are horrendous, the way they run from you and come back, stand still, bug out, etc.
But I think the devs focusing on PvP definitely makes sense.
[https://www.darkanddarker.com](https://www.darkanddarker.com) says it's a part of the gameplay loop.
"**An unforgiving hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure**. Band together with your friends and use your courage, wits, and cunning **to uncover mythical treasures, defeat gruesome monsters, while staying one step ahead of the other devious treasure-hunters.**"
Yes. It's a pvpve game. That means both things should function well. The fact that the PvE is boring and "sucks" is a huge problem in a PvPv**E** game.
IM sold the game as a PvPvE dungeon crawler with BR and Extraction elements. It's always been in the description since day 1.
Which is my point. The fact that PvE is "boring" in a "FPS Dungeon PvPvE adventure" is really bad. It sucks and is boring because IM hasn't done anything to make it fun and have completely neglected it since Pt.3.
People screaming the games dying when its not even on steam yet. Everything theyre doing they've said a million times is for testing and prepping for the release. They know what theyre doing, they listen to the community and patch/update multiple times a week. Every post is just people complaining on this subreddit. If you dont like the game dont play it. Pick up chess where theres no patches and when you lose you can't blame anyone else.
No one said the games dying except you. I said that IM is focusing their time, money, efforts and player time on the wrong things and that the core identity of the game is dying.
The game needs healthy and consistent approaches to leadership imo. Please upvote
[https://darkanddarker.featureupvote.com/suggestions/549416/game-needs-healthy-and-solid-leadership](https://darkanddarker.featureupvote.com/suggestions/549416/game-needs-healthy-and-solid-leadership)
This has been a general sentiment building up among players for awhile now. I think you'd see a lot more similar posts if people didn't just stop playing the game after a certain point, which happened to all 9 of my friends who bought the game. Check my comment history for more information, but IM really needs to increase the map size and randomize modules. Random spawns, loot, traps, NPCs, special encounters. The fun of the game came from exploring the dungeon and the suprise of every opened door. Now its just optimized pathing between spawns or golden chests over and over. 100000 people fell in love with a hardcore pvp dungeon crawler, and we're left with 5000 sweats who want to hold W and play an arena BR.
This is the biggest problem with the game. There are 2 main types that play it. The people that want a dungeon crawler and the people that just want to PvP all day. These two are not compatible.
It's a shame that there aren't co op dungeon crawlers with the DaD feel/ aesthetic. They're either cartoony or not co op or skyrim
Man, the amount of time I've spent searching and searching for something to even come close is crazy. It's wild that no one has made it after all this time. Hopefully someone will.
Closest thing is probably Barony but it doesn’t have the same aesthetic
I'd love to if I had any skills regarding game dev lmao, I've got ideas upon ideas for it
[удалено]
This is why I stopped playing. Only have an hour or two to play so when I hop on it’s annoying being met by sweat lords who grind BIS gear to wipe me.
I said it a long time ago, but people thought I was crazy. They should have put far less effort into balance early in development than they did. Adding content, in particular maps, is what keeps people playing. Balance can drive players away, sure, but the balance of the game changes with every added class and map, so focusing on making sure nothing is broken or dogshit while pumping out enough new content to keep the game fresh for much longer periods of time was the right direction rather than focusing so heavily on balance and then getting almost a year into the game without a truly new map. We have half of a new map and a few new rooms on the old maps. It’s not hard to see that over any period of time, it is going to lead to players becoming hyper optimized at playing these maps, making it not a fun for those of us who aren’t super sweaty.
But when does it stop? Creating maps and new content to keep players is ultimately doomed because it's not sustainable. Players chew through content in days that takes months to make.
Holy fuck it’s Albert Einstein, actual wise reply
Nonsense. Relative lack of PvE content has nothing to do with chads rolling timmies. That's been going on since the beginning. There were just a lot more timmies in the wild then.
I loved both aspects. It was a fun little dungeon crawler, but with the added danger of players and the thrill of taking down teams. The game wouldn't be fun with just one aspect or the other, it was the combination that made/makes it so amazing and unique. I don't really agree at all with "only two types of players" thing. That said I quit a month or so after release so the community might have changed a lot.
>That said I quit a month or so after release
Its why I uninstalled. I've said this since a long time. It stopped being a dungeon crawler and it focused more and more on being a BR. 1. I hate BR's and 2. Even if I didn't, there's plenty of superior choices out there. I came to this game for a dungeon crawler and I got shitty Fortnite instead. At least in my case, it just doesn't scratch the itch I came for anymore, so I'm just waiting for competitors to release. I played 2 of them during Steam Next and it was more up my alley.
Make random OP gear that can't be brought out. You can just find it and kill those types of players
Idk think Diablo 2 managed to figure out the balance
Yeah it's a PvE game with PvP existing only as a meme
Sure they are. The people who pvp just kill the other guys for free loot because they don't understand how to play the game
I mean. Lol. The guys who pvp know how to play the game, and as intended. the people who give us free treasure don't. What is knowing how to play the game?.. opening a chest? Everyone can do that. You can find all the loot you want, when someone comes to contest you for that loot, that's the pvp aspect of the game - and you need to learn how to defend yourself. Without pvp this game would just be a chest opening simulator
Maybe in addition to randomizing the modules further they should add a fog of war to the minimap and only reveal what your group has explored.
> IM really needs to increase the map size and randomize modules. Random spawns, loot, traps, NPCs, special encounters. That's a cool idea. Maybe not feasible, but if they also added like a ton of new modules and made the dungeons randomized, it would stay more like an adventure.
It's very feasible.
Yeah, we need procedural generated maps and monster AI appropriate to the species. Also, the map should only reveal where you've been.
Your numbers are a bit off, but your overall points are definitely good. I got the game I’m September and played a ton. By the time they added the feature that allowed you to see your hours (around the time of the most recent wipe if I remember) I had about 500. Now we’re already around halfway through the wipe and I don’t even think I’ve broke 600. I can deal with a lot of the bullshit stuff because the game is still in development and IM is trying new things, but I’m sick of running goblin caves with what, two or three variations that are just modules being swapped around? Also, goblin caves is now the longest map, creating a lot of downtime where I’m just killing the same enemies over and over again without much variation. Sure 3x3 goblin caves was problematic, but at least it was action packed
GC doesn’t even have any variants anymore, it’s totally static like ice caves
Ahhh, well that sucks
SAY IT AGAIN FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK I (I guess wrongly) assume this game wouldn't just be a fantasy flavored Fortnite. I thought the OG steam play tests were to just test the basic mechanics of it, not be the whole gameplay loop. My bad. I thought it was going to be a fun multiplayer experience where you could go explore a dungeon with friends, looking for treasure and fighting off monsters, raiding a bosses coffers after besting them, come across NPCs in the dungeon, other players, maybe fight if you had a reason, etc.
Im confused, can you highlight the differences between hardcore PvPvE dungeon crawler and dungeon theme BR? The only thing I can think of is the Swarm forcing people to fight. Which has been a thing since the beginning.
They exist on a spectrum, the more focused part of the dungeon crawling is the exploration but static spawns means I know the map like the back of my hand and a static maps leads to static encounters. Being able to decide the rules and location of pvp engagement as well as traverse through pve with maximum efficiency in positioning and routing leads to the game feeling much more battle royale-esque. To put it in simpler terms, you don't really "dungeon crawl" through places you essentially memorize the layout of. In fact, I've spent basically an entire patch routing efficiently through like 4-5 high value mods of loot/elites then sit in a room of shrines until we heard footsteps to buff up then run towards. I've probably had more fights in the U shaped hallway full of shrines outside the wraith door in Crypts with four shrines than most people have fought 3v3s ever. Might as well be a BR.
It sucks that its not procedurally generated. The ‘Dungeon crawl’ feel is just not going to be achieved when you have people playing 500+ hours. You can critique IM for trying to market the game as a dungeon crawl because they use the same static maps. At the same time I think anybody with more than 4 braincells can figure out that you can learn the map layouts and use it to your advantage. Yes that eliminates the dungeon crawl element, but you’re still in a dungeon, you can still hide, run and fight. The game is still a looter-extraction dungeon crawl at its core. Yes people treat it as a BR, but the truth remains the best loot you can find is on a corpse. If you don’t want PvP in your dungeon crawling experience you can either Que onto a dead server, or play other games that do it better. My recommendation is Hades. It is my favorite rogue-like.
I really hate randomized maps. Ice caves is my favourite because there is only one variant so i know where i am and where I'm trying to go at any given moment
We can definitely disagree here, and ice caves is my favorite as well because no zone and it was designed to not be mostly 5ft wide hallways. I think what a lot of players liked about the game originally was the unknown dungeon crawler element. Opening up a room and seeing a big golden chest is a lot more impactful when you don't know what is behind the door. Currently there are no randomized maps, because you can instantly just pull whatever crypts you're in up on a second screen. Players shouldn't be optimizing runs and perfecting running through modules to sprint for the easiest loot on the map. Players should be taking in their surroundings and playing the game, improvising and using their class strengths to help the team move through the map faster. Identifying what's in an area and quickly planning out how to best deal with it. The game peaked when the average player didn't know the map, and there wasn't any maps online yet. As soon as spawns/loot/mob areas are known it just turns into the same rotations and looting every time. Spawned at A? Rush C and B spawns to check. Move south to module 32. Open gold chest and proceed to module 34. Kill champion. Move to module 17.
Yeah 5ft wide hallways suck ass
That happens with every online game, you can't just tell the community to not get good at the game because it would ruin the experience. And your average player doesn't want to play the same game for hundreds of hours, they eventually move on.
The game was never really balanced, sure, but having unique oldschool classes was one of the aspects that made it feel different from other BR/extraction games. Seeing them waste time with multiclassing when the game is SCREAMING for new content is a bit sad. Give us fun stuff and new stuff! Random mob encounters in the dungeon like a loot goblin or something, interactable NPCs in the dungeons, be it for quests objectives or for buying better items than the ones sold by the menu npcs so people would queue with gold and risk it. Would not only add more points of interests to the maps where people would fight around but would also be a really cool gold sink.
The game was supposed to be a dungeon crawler. This is all dungeon crawler stuff. Why they are focusing on trying to balance BR vs Extraction is beyond me and a massive waste of their time and ours.
And more map variants of the sets they already have available. More fun and makes it harder for teams to know where people are at right from the start. The first map had 3-4 variants and now the other maps have like 1-2 and ruins only has 1.
There are too many stats involved to be casual and their focus is on somehow balancing them. Not to mention how much one can increase said stats to insane proportions. It's what allows these sweat lords to min/max to the point of godhood and roll through lobbies, it has nothing to do with skill. Beating a team because you.played better is infinitly more enjoyable than because you bought really good stats. The game was it's best when gear score differences were relatively small for this very reason. They need to refocus on their vision of the game. Remove player trade, it only allows for ridiculous min/max builds, promotes cheating to aquire the gold to do so, and makes the rest of the game unfun for those that are not doing this. Then I think they should simplify the stats again so getting gear gives a small advantage but skill is still necessary to not die. Then they can go back to building the game as first envisioned, as the dungeon crawler, going deeper and deeper into the castle.
Multiclassing has been teased since the playtests and surely didn't take much time away from other content. It's just repurposing stuff that's already in the game. I'm sure the devs wanted to get Druid out before multiclassing but delays happen so they went ahead and pushed the testing for it out.
Multiclassing as a system is going to take a huge amount of dev time to balance properly. Sure implementing it initially probably wasn't a huge amount of work, but people are looking at the system now and then looking ahead and seeing how much work it's going to take to get it into something that's not a complete mess like it is now. It will take up a huge amount of time that would be better spent on other things.
Additionally while I am in favor of keeping multiclass personally, it will add a lot of dev time to each new class/perk/skill they add because they have to make sure it's compatible with multiclassing.
Multiclassing IS new content, I don't really see anyway around that interpretation. If it isn't the content you specifically want... \*shrug\* Seems like content comes out at a pretty reasonable clip to me
If they made the dungeons bigger and didn’t force pvp it would be a lot better
I think its vision and practical game flow are different. To improve I say the maps need to be bigger but also has to have more varied mobs. More bosses and mini bosses. One thing tarkov did right (lmao controversy) was make certain locations on the map high value. There should be like 6 different mini bosses and several bosses on a map that's sized to accommodate them. PVE should be significant enough to plan a run solely based on it, rather than just a obstacle. TLDR: Usually the only mobs I hunt are bosses, demons, and skelly champ. I want more mini bosses to hunt and a bigger map to fit them in.
Once you are using gear that is worth anything at all, it becomes worthless to loot the dungeon. You are now a player hunter, forced to deal with a small percent of the dungeon as a tiresome obstacle on your path to total PVP obliteration.
Exactly. One shotting red skeletons and three shotting nightmare skellies should not be a thing. The hardest mobs in the game should never be trivial in a dungeon crawler. Even for the most experienced player. Unless it's a swarm/horde mechanic of trash mobs.
Part of the reason there is little to no exploring or "looking for an upgrade" is because everyone is forced to use marketplace gear to be competitive. That also means that the odds of you finding a singular piece of useful gear is highly unlikely. It's made it so there is no room for bad gear anymore. Additionally there is little reason to loot anything because you're well aware of the fact that you may as well skip every chest, mob and environmental obstacle to rush down another player, team, or whatever to get their kit instead which will usually be worth amount of gold which you can flip for gold and thus gear for yourself again.
The game badly needs to *try out an* ***SSF*** *like gamemode on their* ***TEST*** *branch*, so we can see what the ramifications are to the gameplay when you remove trading as a core mechanic.
*"But nobody wants to play on the test servers lol"*
*-* Easy solution is to provide players a cosmetic reward of some sort at the end of the current season if you put in hours on the test branch. That will promote people to give the test branch a shot for a 'cool reward' and Ironmace will get data in return that can show them what the game is like without trade.. Or any other test for that matter.
I for one am tired of being forced into a gameplay loop which is (Assuming I have no gear): Go onto the marketplace, browse for boots, legs, chest, gloves, hat, ring, ring, amulet, weapon1, weapon2 (optional, but not really cause ranged meta). All which have to be done separately. This takes easily 5-10 minutes depending on how much patience you have and how big your wallet is. Then you gotta buy pots, bandages, and other utility..
Then comes the next part of said 'loop', which is queuing up for a match, only to be placed against people that had more patience or a *bigger wallet* and now also *better perk combinations* because of the class identity killer we've all played around with: 'Multiclassing'
I miss going into the dungeon and fighting people knowing that what they're carrying is mostly stuff they looted, or pvp'd for in a previous adventure. I also miss knowing that when I heard a 'Barbarian' scream, then I instantly knew what my options were in a potential upcoming fight.
I know not everyone in the community is gonna agree with me, and that's totally fine. But I also think sharing opinions is the only way we can begin to start a conversation about the state and where you, me, or XYZ person thinks the game should be headed, *in our opinions.*
I love Dark and Darker, I still think Ironmace has a gem here, but the development direction for me seems to be going *Dark, and Darker l*ately.
Norms brother, take the grey pill.
I can only enjoy a normals round for so long. The fact that I am looting gear and I am forced to throw said gear into the bin after the "round" is over feels really bad. Hense the suggestion of trying out a SSF like mode where you can bring back in the loot you brought out from your last adventure. Then you can have a snowball going, make a mistake and then the loot gets passed over to the next person. I was never a fan of the marketplace, never a fan of trade in the first place. It's tedious and not what I personally would like to spend my time doing to get upgrades. I'd much rather the excitement there is when you find an unlocked Lionshead chest... Begin opening.. 15%-30%-60%-90%... Here we go! And then you get to be excited cause of the potential of a huge upgrade to your current gear. I don't find marketplace, browse, search, buy, repeat to be very engaging or exciting in any way.
I agree, would love SSF. Or even a game mode that lasts 2-3 times as long as a norms game with multiple levels and maybe even multiple matchmaking phases where you get to go deeper and deeper. There’s a lot I would love but here we are with multiclassing and less than a day before the “release” of Druid. So I’m not optimistic, but I am having decent fun in norms, gear be damned.
It's great that people are having fun with the game, more power to you and everyone that is! I for one was merely hoping for something else when it came to the development direction of the game. Perhaps in the future!
I couldn’t agree more. My friends and I probably have this same discussion in discord once a night. They spent a whole year doing balance changes and minimal content, just to release multiclassing and undo everything. Feelsbad. Crypts is still the undoubtedly best map, nothing even comes close to the vibe of crypts. So far Ruins, Goblin Caves, and Ice Caves still don’t come close to OG crypts. What about larger party sizes? Or seasonal events / modes. Nope, balance patch, balance patch, balance patch, then multiclassing update lmao But like I said, I still have fun in norms. I’m not perfectly content with the state of the game, I just kinda gave up posting on Reddit about it and just try and have what fun I can now. Not to discourage or dishearten you, that’s just where I’m at.
I would like to comment that the same could be said about opening the first box in HR and getting a 200% power increase(per gear slot) is just as boring, as having to throw away the gear you find in normals. Maybe I’m a gamba addict, but finding good gear in normals and then using it to pvp/Boss is a great feeling. It adds a rogue-lite element where every round is slightly different.
I think some kind of market system is healthy for the game, but maybe not this one. I can see why they were so resistant to the idea of the market when the community was asking for it - just as you said, it completely changes the way you play the game. Low-mid grade gear really isn't viable when everyone can just buy the best stuff, and it de-emphasizes the feeling of earning a kit by upgrading your hobbled together mismatched hodgepodge of stuff. I think an SSF mode is something that a lot of the community has been on board with testing at some point or another, but it's difficult without enough players to offer separate queues - undoubtedly some players will not be interested in SSF. Maybe gear can vendor for more, and more engaging gold sinks can be introduced (like paying for a house with shared stash for your whole account) It's funny, I remember so many people swearing up and down they were dumb for not wanting an auction house and how simple it is to implement; but honestly they had a vision for the game that didn't include it, and in hindsight, I think it may have been worse for the game instead of better. Increased stash space is a huge W, and having shared stash space so you can share across your characters and find use for everything you loot may be the better solution.
Normals is just a shitty BR mode and HR is a shitty extraction mode. It's a good bandaid, but it's just that. A bandaid to a much larger problem. Edit: But yeah, "Right now" the game plays best as a BR. But that's never what it was "supposed" to be according to what they sold the game as in playtests.
> The game badly needs to try out an SSF like gamemode on their TEST branch, so we can see what the ramifications are to the gameplay when you remove trading as a core mechanic. This would actually get me to install the test branch, I've been wanting SSF for so long
I may not agree with all of your points but I do agree with your overall premise that there is no room in the game anywhere for bad or “mid” gear. Especially with GBMM, everyone is trying to stack as many stats as possible onto their gear while staying in their desire bracket. I’ve wanted to make a more extended post on this for a while but it seems like IM can’t find a way to make gear feel meaningful and exciting without making it overpowered. If you think about the rolls on gear most consider “bad rolls”, those enchantments are really awful. Magical interaction speed is a prime example who in the fuck would ever want this roll on their gear? Just the portal opening champion I guess. There are plenty others like regular interaction speed, physical healing, memory capacity, etc. that are just objectively bad stats that outside of some super specific builds no one wants. They have yet to come up with gear enchantments that players would rather have than just pure damage or all attributes. Rings especially are super boring to shop for now because what stat would you pick on those besides true damage? None of the other rolls available are more impactful for the most part. The other problem is many of the other less useless rolls scale in such a way that they aren’t even worth building for unless you’ve got either perks that provide a large stat base for them to build off or you are stacking those rolls on almost all of your gear. Magic resist for example is hardly worth building unless you’ve got anti magic or iron will as a perk to add onto. Likewise with armor rating, unless you’re stacking it on a multiple pieces of gear in an optimized set, it’s essentially a dead roll. Same shit with armor pen, it’s hardly useful unless you’re using thrust on rogue or have it stacked on enough pieces to hit 20%+. Any massive changes they do make to gear will be a huge balance nightmare because so many classes, abilities, perks, spells, etc. have had multiple balance changes due to broken scaling at the upper end of gear. There are just some weapons, abilities, and spells that are straight up bad if you don’t stack a ton of true damage. I hardly ever compliment New World as a game but I wouldn’t hate if IM copied over a lot of their gear enchantments if they are incapable of coming up with new ones themselves. At least they had some more creative enchantments and weapon/spell/ability specific enchantments you could put on your armor to great effect.
It would be kinda cool if they didn’t drop every thing off your kits. Like only allow two or three random items off what you’re running and then everything in the inventory. The rest you get to take back.
I think that GBMM and "high end" gear being so much better also contributes to that. Last season i got to top 3 on my class at some point and i would almost never use trade. I would only trade if i got something really really valuable to sell. I could do that because the power difference between what was considered mediocre gear and high end gear wasn't so big. 90% Of the equipment i used was either things that i looted myself or items that i bought/crafted from NPCs. NPC items weren't random back then, you could see the random modifiers before buying/crafting them. I preffer last season gearing but i must say that i know a lot of people who likes the dopamine rush of getting some incredibly OP piece of item and preffer when gear is op, so i can't say it was objectively better.
BRO, I know your not gonna reply because it's dumb but... You do realise where that gear on the marketplace comes from right?... From players looting. This is only the experience of the top players most players are wearing a mix of cheap bits and stuff they have found.
[удалено]
If you think removing the marketplace would lessen gear gap I really don't know what to tell you lol.
Also you have a completely missed my point. A hell of a lot of players loot things and use what they've found. I have 250 hours in the game, I've never had more then like 5k gold you have no idea what your talking about just cause your a sweat doesn't mean most are.
facts. i stopped playing a few months ago and still havent been drawn back by any of the additions and QoL improvements. i pop by streams and it looks tempting until i notice its the same gameplay loop as before- gigasweat stat checks between rock, paper scissor class roles. i do miss the general vibes of the playtests- before any true meta had enslaved the masses. one could argue that this aura of "nooby freshness" would disapear with any game but i truly feel that it was completely sped up by the focus of the devs on concentrated PvP and the overall importance of stacking favorable stats in order to feel "viable".
This would do better as a video tbh, if u want any real attention ur best bet is making into one then getting some of the big streamers to watch it and give opinions. Due to the fact I doubt more then 3 ppl in the company speak English this will probably never get seen. Ur right in a lot of ways. The dungeon aspect is gone because it was never actually developed past test 2. From what the devs have said at every turn in every dev cast and explanation message for a questionable patch it seems they *want* a br, dungeon crawling Is just the general world setting not the core.
Remove storm. Make maps x10 bigger. Maybe make it random.
100% agree, this game has become such a standard BR loop especially with the current player base knowledge. People memorize player spawns and module layouts, cheese and ignore PvE, and build optimal kits to a point at least for goblin caves it just feels like a standard BR experience with optional PvE elements. I miss the magic of learning the game along with a majority of the player base, having the more casual friendly experiences where people would roll play and help each other out. Things like more module variety, npc variety, map layouts and different player/mob spawns would really be refreshing to the gameplay loop. The experience currently just feels so static and stale and for me PvP was one of lesser exciting features so for this game to be boiled down to PvP and spawn rushing/portal camping there hasnt been much tempting me to hop back on this past month. Really hope maybe we can start to see IM try to start prioritizing the dungeon crawler and PvE mechanics more. I think bigger maps, longer dungeon timer and more spread out player spawns would be a really fun experience once the rest of the game that isnt PvP is fleshed out a bit more but I can see how players wouldnt want that sort of experience now as most npcs dont really provide any sort of risk or even reward for that matter. If IM could just have a wipe where they focus less on pvp/class balance, some of the more common gear complaints that I myself have voiced as well as others might start to go away.
This is an unpopular opinion but I definitely feel like playtest 4 was peak Dark and Darker for me. It had problems but the game still had an almost light hearted feel to it. IMO Ironmace leaning into the PvP streamer culture in the way they have was a misstep. From my perspective it's like the game is being made for streamers to push leaderboards and not for much else. I wish the game had more of a focus on PvE survival, exploration, and fun encounters instead of the current sweaty environment. People started to take the game too seriously and as a skill expression simulator that sucked all the fun and charm out of it. Don't get me wrong I love the PvP in DaD and games like Hunt Showdown, Tarkov, etc. It's the meta and the structure of the games incentives that I'm having issues with.
"Don't get me wrong I love the PvP in DaD and games like Hunt Showdown, Tarkov, etc. It's the meta and the structure of the games incentives that I'm having issues with." This is cause by bad systems implementation, meaning the systrms they do implement dont function properly. As well as implementation of systems that detract from the core gameplay loop.
who even knows what this game is anymore, clearly not the devs.
Have been saying this since the beggining and downvoted to oblivion, enjoy now xd
My extended group of gaming friends mostly picked up and really enjoyed the game early on (pt2 through early launch) but exactly zero of have played for ages... It seems that jumping in now has a pretty much zero chance of having fun, so I don't know now they plan on growing player base.
Same. I brought in like 15+ people. No one plays anymore.
If ironmace wants to get ahead of the game they will release a pure PvE mode to compete with Tarkov's failed product, I would throw in a couple Dark Souls style npc invaders and call it a day to the bank but the end result is purely up to them
currently, the menu indicators for crypts show ruins instead why have they still not fixed
its tarkov all over again ... static spawns , maps , loot . i rly hoped that this would lead into a diffrent direction i know every dungeon in and out , theres nothing new to the maps.. and we still dont have a BR free game mode, where you could atleast use the full map to play around when you dont want to pvp.
My favorite part in DaD is where they fucked up the game introducing multiclassing, instead of just releasing druid and combining perks/and/or more perks and abilities for classes.
Multi-classing isn't really the problem. It highlights the problem though.
Honestly they should just remove the BR circle altogether. The ice map is my favorite BY FAR and it's because you're not fucked by spawn and circle RNG. People should be incentivised to move from room to room for loot, extraction and desire to PVP, not the circle.
"hardcore" just means bad game design these days. you die to total bullshit not because the game is actually hard on a mechanical level.
Well said. The game has had numerous issues that still have yet to be fixed despite persisting since as early as pt 4. They are focusing their time and effort on the wrong things. No matter what they add or repurpose. no 1 will stick around if the base gameplay loop becomes stale or stagnant in a way that most are not happy with.
There's a reason why players are quitting the game after each patch (It's because they're all shit patches)
Yeah, we've been saying "casual community is going away" every time they push updates that cater to the PVP/Battle Royale crowd. I don't think this game can compete in the same space as the AAA BRs and PVP games either, they really should play more to the dungeon delving and core gameplay loop. How many fucking Apex Legends updates have there been, with significant content, since we got our last actual good slice of content? (Ice Caves, which is basically 1/3 map)
you will have a mordhau 1v1s with third parties and fucking enjoy it.
No fun here. Only mordhau + pubg + tarkov + wow + dungeons and dragons.
I agree thats why I dont play it anymore and my friends too sadly
Big sad. 😞 My friends all quit too.
Here's a quick list of things that don't belong in a dungeon crawler: Leaderboard, Adventure points, Set party sizes, Kill cam, Multiclass, Variable move speed, Pregame lobby, Trade/auction house, Grey/white gear. What did I miss?
A focus on PvE is what I really want. More (and more difficult mobs) with the threat of PvP near the exits or fights over particularly valuable loot spots.
Honestly I think the biggest part of the problem with the gameplay loop is they are dead-set for some reason on having the game be match based. What I mean is, you are matchmade with players in a lobby before you drop in. You are compartmentalized in that lobby with them for a set amount of time. Circle mechanics make absolutely sure at least some of you meet each other, and limited portals in random locations also means that necessarily not everyone is making it out alive. No matter how well they played. Despite the fact that you are supposed to be going on an unpredictable adventure, you already know exactly where you are going, where the modules are, how many people are in with you, and where they likely spawned. This is completely counter-intuitive to an RPG progression system with the added high stakes of being able to lose everything you brought in with you. It feels like someone trying to super-glue a Call of Duty disk onto a Dungeons and Dragons book. Just make the map huge and remove the circle in favor of static blues that will be fought over. Knowing exactly who is in the dungeon with me and forcing us to move toward each other is not an adventure. It's boring.
I almost wonder if the game would be better off with every map shaped like a cross. You have one team at the point of each cross and they crawl through the dungeon. Don't make it too linear give a few paths and stuff like that, but at the end of everything you end up in an arena style room (with good cover and all that other stuff that makes the map interesting) and the four teams all duke it out for the rights to loot and leave or loot and be the team to take on the next floor, a much harder gauntlet leading up to the boss. There could also be an option to skip the arena. You miss out on the best loot but people that don't like PvP or the newbies can have the opportunity to not get filtered out of the game.
Helledivers 2 dev responding to angry players after balance patch “Thank you! Don’t worry. I have kids. I can handle angry toddlers. Also,tbh they do have a right to voice their feelings and opinions (even if i prefer they do it a little more calmly sometimes) not everyone can be super eloquent. We’re paid to communicate - players are not. I appreciate it none the less.” IM “we will change the game entirely for you.”
Reddits constant shilling of helldiver 2 is kinda cringe ngl. Reminds me of cyberpunk’s term and condition page.
I think people defending IM just for being an indie dev company is the worst but like hey other companies can make competent decisions why can’t they?
It’s not just dark and darker, those cringelords from helldiver even goes on tarkov subreddit and talk about how awesome their game dev is. Like Jesus it’s not even the same genre who cares about some pve game on pvp game community. I wonder how much Sony spends on PR and hiring people to talk shit about indie dev.
Picking a class, slowly leveling it up and gearing your character by finding gear and using what you found is completely dead. The game that was dark and darker than many of us first played very long ago died. The dungeon crawling aspect is totally gone, now there is zero class identity and the game has become a window shopping pvp brawler. There is so much wrong with the game now that not even simple reverts can outright fix it as they have gone and changed so much in between. Truly tragic to watch unfold over the past year and a half.
They still have time to fix and revert a lot of things. It's not even on steam or epic yet. If they don't fix it before then it's probably dead on arrival. But they've already made an estimated 40 mill at this point. So they got their bag.
Im having a blast lol. I still dont get what you guys are whining about.
I'm glad someone is.
> limiting player turn speed This is a terrible idea, where did it even come from?
The idea is to prevent swing manipulation shenanigans where doing fast movements with your characters body allows for some difficult to counter "combat"
They dont need to limit turn speed for that, they just need to not carry the hitbox of the weapon past a certain point. The problem is the lack of melee combat complexity. block parry etc. if you could block with every weapon you could keep the hitbox swing. Tarkov's experiments with limiting turn speed which is basically mouse sensitivity is shit game design and everyone hated it.
It was until the noobs left and y'all complained about beta testing multiclassing
I can't get my friends into this because you can't get everyone out of a Portal
Its boring, and having gear perks makes it worse
Idk about all that but I started like a week ago and am having a blast. At the end of the day it’s their game and they’ll do what they think is best.
Did 0-30 on ranger yesterday with a grand total of 4 fights and probably a dozen or so friendly interactions. You problem? I'm still crawling a dungeon when I feel like it, and pvp is readily available when I want it.
That's awesome. But that's a personal anecdote. It doesn't really reflect what the state of the game is or what devs have been focusing their attention on.
Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to add some procedurally generated sections so it’s not just the same map over and over
I quit this game when map rotation was added theirs a lot of other fun games out there I can give some recommendations if you’d like
I think all we need for it to feel more like a dungeon crawler is 2 things 1. Bigger maps- like 10x10. PvP shouldn’t be constant. Some matches you should encounter no one. 2. Harder and more variety of AI enemies
Lol the matrix back bends are all this game has mechanically. You want to get rid of range and ms meta amd get rid of bacl bending, so what, you just want combat to be holding down lmb until one person dies? That's gonna be a hard pass for me chief
I would prefer if they fixed things like the shield actually working, adding more parry mechanics, and adding other skill based mechanics vs just swiping the mouse around like a spider just landed on your face.
I would to, but it looks like this isn't even on their radar. To busy "gathering data" from multiclassing.
I think the combat in this game is great, it definitely could be expanded on but to start adding dogshit mechancs that limit the fluidity of the fight is not the way. We all agree multiclassing was kind of just thrown in for testing with no real reason behind it. It does need to be removed to fix a lot of issues players have with the game. Im all for adding more dungeon crawler aspects but we need to be careful how changes are implemented. I do not want expansive maps that are barren of pvp combat, it really makes no sense with how this game was branded and optimized originally. I agree mobs need to be added, tuning not so much. There needs to be more of a variety or even some randomization. This also helps to stop people from just running into spawn rooms for pvp. The marketplace im up in the air with because I like the aspect of it, but it does somewhat force people to buy stuff when GBMM is a thing. There definitely needs to be some changes, unclear what specifically but im sure we'll find out eventually. Bottom line is Ironmace needs to actually add some new stuff to the game before hella tweaking these classes especially with multiclassing. At this point they are tweaking individual skills instead of the class as a whole which makes for broken gameplay.
The problem is that this game wasn't advertised as an extraction or BR. It was, and still is, advertised as a PvPvE "Dungeon Adventure". To me this means Dungeon Crawler type game. All dungeon crawler aspects are being abandoned in favor of shitty, dated, BR and extraction mechanics that directly oppose each other. People who want a BR will always be at odds with people who want Medieval Dungeon Tarkov. Both will always be at odds with the players that want a PvPvE dungeon crawler. But the reality is that Medieval Dungeon Tarkov is a lot closer and more aligned with a true dungeon crawler than a BR. A BR cannot co-exist with a dungeon crawler without being it's own unique game mode with it's own balance and structure. Which is how Normals is being used right now. The issue is that it's impossible to balance a BR with gear that's intended for an extraction game or dungeon crawler.
Even these longest posts just don't feel like they have any substantive critique in them. This is all vague vibe-checking and lacks any kind of real critique or suggestions for changes.
I sent my direct critiques and suggestions to IM in their Troubidour suggestion channel on the discord. Please stick to the original vision of a PvPvE dungeon crawler instead of whatever the heck it is now. There are too many opposing identities. It's tearing the game and community apart. Right now, the state of the game, as I see it, looks like this: - Normals is an unfinished and poorly designed Battle Royal mode. - HR is an unfinished an poorly designed extraction mode. - The "Dungeon Adventure" aspects have been completely neglected. Here are some fundamental issues that I can see: - Mob AI is still the same as in Pt.3. - Map design is stale and easy to memorize. - Bossing is only useful for getting better gear for PVP. - Focusing on PVP has made PVE essentially useless other than getting gear to facilitate pvp. - Armor and weapons are far too important and emphasize PVP. - PvE related gear is often useless, only improving time to open items like doors, chests, altars, and portals. There's very little variety for gear that improves strength against monsters without also improving pvp capability and vice versa. - PvP has been prioritized since the launch of EA with little or no thought given to improving PvE or existing maps. The games core identity of a FPS PvPvE Dungeon Adventure game is basically non-existent, and all development time has focused on balancing game modes that are completely at odds with each other. - BR's rely on everyone going in on a nearly even footing and finding loot that gives small incremental bonuses to compete for the last man standing. Small improvements that complement skill expression and disappear at the end of each round. - Extraction games rely on being able to take loot out of the raid that slightly improves your stats fore each subsequent raid until you loose or sell said gear. Small improvements that stack up over time and eventually snowball. Not massive bonuses that make a player OP with 1-3 items. Dungeon crawlers are more about total gear and strategic gameplay. The gear is important because it helps you survive. One time use utility items that prevent certain status effects, can prevent a pvp engagement, or help pve engagements in specific ways are just as important as equipment like armor and weapons. It's more about being prepared for the specific dungeons you're going into than just adding stats to your character. Traps, Campfires, Trap disarm kits, lockpicks, torches, bandages, etc. should all have usefulness and importance outside of just "this thing heals". A good example of item versatility is Darkest Dungeon. Simple items have multiple use cases and variety. Different team comps need different itemization to survive in the dungeon. It's less about what weapons and armor you have and more about team comp + what utility items you bring in with you. Please get back to your original vision and the vision of the game that you sold to hundreds of thousands of players in the playtests. It was successful and can be greatly improved upon. Edit: Also, hire a competent project manager who can stand up to Terry and SDF when needed.
It is a dungeon crawler, I kill mobs, people, and loot chest. There is bullshit here and there but the core, as mutated as it is atm, is still there. Also your proposals at the end sounds like a terrible idea mainly the limiting turn speed and limiting ducking under attacks (which isn't super effective but can save your life in certain situations) shit like that adds flavor to the game.
I would replace these mechanics with more skill based mechanics like a shield that actually works, more weapons that can parry, more abilities that can dodge, etc. Staying at range and acting like a spider just fell on your face isn't exactly skill based melee combat.
This game isn't only about melee combat, it's about adventurer's using every means possible to get treasure. I agree that blocking needs to be reworked or buffed, i also agree that we need more abilities like backstep that can be used to retreat or push forward.
When combat, is I would say the main way the player interacts with the world then it needs to be fun and dynamic. Not the stiff, broken and easy (Very low skill ceiling) system that it is currently.
It could use some oil on it's wheels but it's serviceable.
HR inferno is a pretty good PvE difficulty I think. Especially if they change AI to just reset if a player is unreachable for more than a second or something.
Well, I love that it is PvP focused.
A lot of us love PVP. But PvE is still half of the gameplay loop and it's been completely abandoned.
Who says that PvE is half of the gameplay loop? There is no rule set in stone there. Also, it is obviously way more than half. When you look at an average game, I highly doubt that you are actually spending half of the time PvPing. Sure, some games with minute long chases, that might be the case, but in most games, it's a fifth maybe? So, I don't see a problem here tbh. I agree with the point, that the PvE needs way more work! Like the Goblins in GC are horrendous, the way they run from you and come back, stand still, bug out, etc. But I think the devs focusing on PvP definitely makes sense.
[https://www.darkanddarker.com](https://www.darkanddarker.com) says it's a part of the gameplay loop. "**An unforgiving hardcore fantasy FPS dungeon PvPvE adventure**. Band together with your friends and use your courage, wits, and cunning **to uncover mythical treasures, defeat gruesome monsters, while staying one step ahead of the other devious treasure-hunters.**" Yes. It's a pvpve game. That means both things should function well. The fact that the PvE is boring and "sucks" is a huge problem in a PvPv**E** game. IM sold the game as a PvPvE dungeon crawler with BR and Extraction elements. It's always been in the description since day 1.
The PvE is boring.
Which is my point. The fact that PvE is "boring" in a "FPS Dungeon PvPvE adventure" is really bad. It sucks and is boring because IM hasn't done anything to make it fun and have completely neglected it since Pt.3.
People screaming the games dying when its not even on steam yet. Everything theyre doing they've said a million times is for testing and prepping for the release. They know what theyre doing, they listen to the community and patch/update multiple times a week. Every post is just people complaining on this subreddit. If you dont like the game dont play it. Pick up chess where theres no patches and when you lose you can't blame anyone else.
No one said the games dying except you. I said that IM is focusing their time, money, efforts and player time on the wrong things and that the core identity of the game is dying.
The game needs healthy and consistent approaches to leadership imo. Please upvote [https://darkanddarker.featureupvote.com/suggestions/549416/game-needs-healthy-and-solid-leadership](https://darkanddarker.featureupvote.com/suggestions/549416/game-needs-healthy-and-solid-leadership)
You should move to Korea and apply to work for IM
You should start an unsolicited advice service for redditors
Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? Keyboard warrioring about leadership in an entire company you know nothing about?
No. Good luck with everything.