Grind seems to intended as well because when some hardcore guy figured a team composition that max-min to victory, they nerf the heroes. Making it much harder for the non-hard core players.
Argg, twice I lost parties due to a stupid error. I got my party set, selected my dungeon and then realized I wanted to upgrade some armor.I went out and did that, came back, got provisions and embarked. Well, the selected dungeon changed and I sent my 1 and 2 level guys into a harder dungeon. I had to bail just before I could complete the quest and that set off some stress and heart attacks. Boom 3 guys gone.
Did the same exact thing with level 3 guys on the next run.
I gave up and installed the “Easy Grind” mod and restarted. The “one more turn” effect came back immediately.
Hmm, that sounds intriguing. Tell me more. I would normally loathe to use a mod in a rogue-like such as this, but the tedium is killing Darkest Dungeon for me.
-Tom
Another RNG heavy (perhaps more so) game is Dungeon of the endless. For some reason that game had me press on until I had completed it at least once.
That’s not the case for me with DD, despite the outstanding visuals, music and VO.
The Lesser Grind and it’s counterpart Easy Grind mod makes changes to a few key things that reduces the grind by quite a large factor.
- Increase inventory stacking sizes so that the discards are less when you go through a dungeon. It removes the minor cash back from consumables to “balance”.
- It Lesser Grind allows heroes of 1 additional level reputation to join lower dungeons. This allows easier farming. Easy Grind makes heroes of all level able to access all dungeons. This reduces the problem of farming for money allow easier cash farming runs with higher level heroes.
Those 2 are the key changes that are implemented to help to reduce the tedium.
I think it’s great because it allows much faster progression. Instead of being forced to repeat again and again same content just to grind up the facilities and heroes for the end game content.
The end game challenge is not affected as the heroes’ skills and stats are not tweaked. Only grind related changes are implemented.
I think there is some significant percentage of players - I won’t try to claim what the % is - who are feeling this way.
Terrific game but the grindiness is really painful and it doesn’t really fit with the game. In most games when you grind its to gain power to overcome a challenge. But with Darkest Dungeon, you have to grind up to get a party to run the titular Darkest Dungeon and it’s likely you’ll lose them. And you might lose them at the champion phase because things are that hard and sometimes a bad roll or two is all it takes. So you do the exact stame stuff over and over to get the necessary gold to make a party Champion and then DD worthy. And it takes a metric shitload of gold. With full upgrades it still takes tens of thousands for a single party. And you’ll be doing it for more than one party.
What DD doesn’t have is that new game experience, those new stories that arise, when you play a rogue like. Whether it’s a powerful artifact dropping early, or a tough vault that provides a host of needed upgrades (for certain resists/ or granting certain abilities like see invis). There’s not really any satisfaction to leveling parties over as the equipment and progression mechanics are simplistic (though appropriately so, until you hit the point where it’s just grinding all the time). To me it’s not merely that there is grinding but that it is quite rote.
Another thing that gets me is certain UI elements. The town screens are all wrong; you need to set the active party first thing because it makes it easier to decide which upgrades for characters to pursue. Also, even though there’s an unequip all trinkets button the process of getting a new party outfitted is really obnoxious and gets on my nerves.
I might check out the mods cicobuff recommended, myself.
So I sent this email to a friend last week after, I dunno, 20 hours of Darkest Dungeon.
"I’m not 100% sure yet, but DD will probably outstay its welcome by many, many hours. Progress is good but so slow and… unsatisfactory. The game it reminds me of most is X-COM in that it isn’t really about your soldiers/heroes so much as it is about building up the infrastructure of your bases/hamlet. Your people are tools to get all that in place so, when they inevitably die, you can get scrubs back up to speed as efficiently as possible. The big difference between the two is that X-COM always has you unlocking new and interesting technologies or throwing unexpected events at you that mix the game up. Darkest Dungeon doesn’t, really.
I mean, for the last 10-15 hours I’ve been doing the same thing over and over again. The last new thing I saw, aside from the bosses, was… camping. Yeah I know, that’s early game stuff. Sure, I’ve been using different combos of heroes and abilities and the synergies between them are really cool – that’s where the meat of this game is, along with when and where to use those synergies – but I don’t feel like the game is going to change much from the slow grind it is now to the Darkest Dungeon. Heroes, weapons, armour and abilities as well as enemies will increase in rank upping various stats, but that’s not especially exciting.
I feel like they should have gated some of the hero types and locations early on just so there’s a bit more to roll out and keep the pacing up. Part of the allure with Risk of Rain and Dungeon of the Endless is unlocking/discovering the different characters because they fundamentally change the way you play. In DotE each character and structure can be levelled/upgraded as well so there’s always something potentially new and exciting to get. In DD you pretty much get the whole shebang right off the bat and the only things you really unlock as you play are stat increases so, uh, yay.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying it and there’s loads I love about it but my spider senses are tingling. We’ll see how it pans out."
How do I feel about it now? Well, I’m currently on week 30 or so after 34 hours of play and it’s really starting to outstay its welcome. Progress is painfully glacial and I don’t even feel like I’m doing badly or anything. How on earth are you supposed to maintain interest through all the repetition? It’s been a while since my enthusiasm for a game tanked so dramatically.
At this stage, I’m not really prepared to start over for (admittedly very interesting sounding) mods because I feel like I’ve invested so much into my current hamlet. At the same time however, I’m not sure how much more I can take before I break and just leave it for good.
I will say though, Darkest Dungeon has made me want to go back to the sublime Dungeon of the Endless. I loved it before but now I feel like I appreciate it even more. It’s a much tighter game that constantly throws more interesting and tough decisions at you while you manage what little you have. And, while I love the art in Darkest Dungeon, I think there’s a greater sense of place in DotE’s procedural dungeons, whether it’s the weird stuff you see in certain rooms and the subtle lighting effects or watching one of your characters research in a room on her own while the others hold the front line venturing further afield and stretching your power supply to breaking point.
I love this and am a little more forgiving of some of the shortcomings… but a few of the fixes/mods such as inventory stack sizes and a balance pass on the upgrade gold/deeds crunch are pretty much no-brainers. The first 10-15 hours of this game are really great: you’re getting better at the game because you-the-player are learning more about the systems and the classes and the dungeons and appropriate risk and everything else, at the same time as your team is getting those first few levels, new skills, new recruits, etc. Then you get a team ready for a level 3 dungeon, and it’s a bit more challenging, but you’re a little disappointed because of the re-skinned content… and then for a lot of people everything really flops once you see a level 5 dungeon.
That’s a bit of a shame, too, because the last 5-10 hours of the game are freaking awesome again, as long as you’re not going to have a mental breakdown when you lose a few characters inside the Darkest Dungeon. But there’s about 30 or 40 hours in between all the really great stuff where the dungeon grind along has to carry it, and for a lot of people it doesn’t. I don’t think it’s a difficulty thing, either; I think the base game (pre-New Game Plus) is actually a touch easy in spots, once you get over that initial learning hump. It’s just the damn grind in getting that many hundreds of deeds and tens of thousands of gold. Ideally, you’d get everything you need in about as much time as it takes to max out a roster of level 6s; in reality, unless you’re losing high level characters left and right, it takes 50 or 100% longer.
So I mentioned before that I felt the Red Hook team has been very receptive to community feedback and felt that they would listen to the “grind” complaints and address them. Just saw this post on the darkest dungeon steam forums:
The ‘March Update’ Update
http://www.darkestdungeon.com/the-march-update-update/As February wraps up, our internal discussions have been centered around the overall scope of the planned March 8th update, as well as the feedback we’ve been receiving from the community over the past few weeks. Based on those discussions, we’ve made some changes to our plans.
The original March 8th update was to include Town Events and The Antiquarian.
The ‘Antiquarian’ is the final name for the ‘Merchant’ class – a hero designed to help make your runs more lucrative (treasure bonuses), but also a bit riskier due to the class being underpowered in combat.
‘Town Events’ are designed to add variety to the Hamlet over the course of a campaign. Upon returning from an expedition, there is a chance for a thematic event to trigger in town – this functions akin to a deck of event cards.
As always, we have been constantly reading all the feedback and discussions that happen on our community boards. There’s been a good amount of chatter around the potential of Town Events, but there has also been major discussions about the current state of end game grind. We know that there are pain points around getting the jump from Veteran to Champion as well as some difficulty in maintaining forward momentum after losing high level parties in the Darkest Dungeon.We have decided to delay Town Events, for two major reasons.
Community Input. Our community is incredible! Since starting up work on Town Events, we’ve been reading great suggestions and ideas. While the original plan would have been fine, there is increasing excitement around the feature and consequently, we want a little more time to make the system more robust. This will also allow us to look at implementing some of our community-generated ideas!
Grind. Losing high level parties can be a big hurdle to come back from, and this discourages some people from continuing with the late game. While we fully intend to keep the overall deadliness in the game, there are a couple things we are looking at and we feel that it is important to take some action on that front prior to introducing new unrelated features. Specifically, we are looking at making some higher level heroes available in the Stagecoach in certain conditions, as well as some other tweaks.So what does this mean?
Our March 8th update will now consist of The Antiquarian and some changes to help alleviate the end game grind. Town Events will be delayed until a later date, and will benefit from the additional development time. We can’t give an exact timeframe just yet, but it will be our primary focus for development after the GDC (Game Development Conference) wraps up in March.
As always, we thank you for your support and feedback as we continue to improve and expand the Darkest Dungeon experience!
No details on what specifically they are doing to address the concerns yet but I have confidence!
Good deal. I’d love to get back into DD, it’s such a great game, but they need to address some of that stuff and I’m interested in seeing just how they do that. It’s a shame the Town Events are being pushed back, but on the other hand if they end up being an even better feature then it’s probably for the best. They need to focus on making the game smoother and more fun for the long term first.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for this game to “get good” forever now, between EA and now a lot of the issues people have been talking about since release. Honestly it’s a little worrisome. I especially get antsy and wary with people throwing the term grind around (even the developers). Even a faint echo of the word “grind” is enough to send me running for the hills.
Meh, I think it’s f’ing amazing as it is. True there is some grind if you lose high level heroes, but I enjoy it. To each their own.
Agreed, it’s already good. In fact, it’s excellent and a ton of fun. It’s just that it wears out it’s welcome well before you can get to the last dungeon and start running end-game runs. Too many bosses along the way, maybe. Too expensive to upgrade and maintain high-level heroes, for sure. Stuff like that compels you to run dungeons over and over to climb over the curve, which is just a bit too steep to be enjoyable by then. It’s only a grind though, if you don’t enjoy the game. I actually DO have a lot of fun while I play, just the act of assembling a party and taking off, but after week 68 or so with no real end in sight, it started to bog down. Sure, other games also came out and that didn’t help, stuff like XCOM 2 and such, but I put almost 60 hours into this (that does include 20 or so hours of Early Access though) and that’s a little much for a game like this, I think.
When my tank gets two shotted by a regular mob in a level 5 run, the balance is off. Characters rapidly hit level 5, but once there are complete pussies to everything in the level 5 dungeon. Since they get there so fast, you can’t possibly keep upgrades up with them, much less afford said upgrades. Before long everyone is level 5 and basically worthless because they can’t do anything. They can’t run lower level content and die instantly in “at level” content. So you’re forced to rotate 4 newbies over and over again to grind Deeds (which you need a stupid amount of to do anything in the game, seriously how is this still a thing?). After about 4 hours of that you can maybe run a party through a level 5 run. Where your team gets nearly killed on the first encounter because everything has 40-80 health and hits for 15-20 damage.
The scaling just completely falls apart at level 5. You can run a level 3 without being completely pimped with everything. Completely pimped with everything on a level 5 run results in you still getting your ass handed to you. You’re investing tens of thousands of gold into each guy on the run and the end result is they’re basically useless. I love the game and have since day one, but they really, really, really dropped the ball on level 5+. A level 3 run upgraded with level 2 items, is fairly easy. With level 3 items and skills, it’s practically a cake walk. A level 5 run in the same situations is hopeless improving to nearly impossible.
There is a steady curve to the game’s difficulty that becomes a sheer fucking cliff for no reason at level 5. I could almost accept that for the final dungeon. Ok, you need the best of everything in the game to win. Fine. But that isn’t the case. Instead every success makes you weaker. Every dude that hits level 5 is now effectively lost because they can’t do anything. So you end up with a group of 0-2’s grinding for Deeds and cash literally for hours to try to make a single doomed run with the rest of your roster who are all now unable to do anything at all because they’re “too awesome” for anything but a death march into things they can’t beat.
I must have a short attention span or something because I’m at week 31 with a full roster of characters (level 1-3, so not high), haven’t lost many so far, and I’m already feeling the grind. I don’t mind slow progress but I do mind the repetition of farming heirlooms. My focus has been amassing a stable of heroes (and working them all up together) and reducing the cost of upgrades to save money in the long run but, man, is it a long run or what? The thing is, a lot of Darkest Dungeon fits together so well and I was absolutely smitten when I first started playing it, but it has become rote so damn quickly, particularly given how much longer the game expects me to do this for.
I do like this game a lot but I have no idea why they made it a 60 hour game or whatever it is going to eventually be. That’d make more sense if there were micro transactions or something :)
So much this for me.
See, this is what I’m talking about! Back on to the “one more patch” pile for Darkest Dungeon. Except maybe it’s the “one more patch except the developers are potentially just making the game worse and worse and maybe I should have just played it in EA instead” pile along with things like Starbound.
I’m curious as to how people are playing in terms of light levels. I’ve actually got 2 games going, one where I’m playing as I suspect most people are: keeping my light level nearly topped off and never going under 50%. The other game I’m running very low light. I take 0 torches on short runs, 4 on mediums. The only exception are boss runs where I go full light.
The full light hamlet is in week 23, the low light in week 18 and they are nearly identical in terms of hero numbers and levels, and in town development. The low light hamlet, however, is sitting on 40000 more gold than the full light. In low light short runs I come back with 10k+ gold (having invested much less gold going in) and up to 20 or so heirlooms. I wonder if people are making the grind worse than it has to be because they aren’t taking advantage of the significant increases in loot from running dark.