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Thread: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

  
  1. #11

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Yes, these rooms are part of the game - and if bullfrog polished the game a bit more thet would have been part of a better game.

    And really you don't see how they are overpowered? A Scavenger and Graveyard are not always that much of a problem, but a prison almost always is. You don't need gems to make that room problematic, because it is always much, much cheaper to get a level 10 skeleton or a level 10 wizard from the prison than it is to train a troll or a sorcerer to level 10. Every level which has a prison, has heroes and gives the player some time becomes too easy.
    And yes, you could try making your maps in such a way that the problem isn't that big - but that is the whole problem - you now have make your map in a very specific way to work around the issue of how useful this room is. And really there aren't that many ways to do so, if you give the player time to build AND a prison you can only have ONE strong hero attack. A second one would just be defeated by the first one.

    I've been playing some of the maps people have been making, see this topic, and also did the Barbarian campaign darkkingkongman made, and this is an issue that keeps coming back - too easy because you convert to many heroes or get too many vampires. Look at this post made by you(!!), where you also shared your experience with the maps, the maps which have the most heroes are the easiest.
    Look at your description on level 20, you say it would be more difficult if the parties were stronger or reapers added in, but that wouldn't have worked, because your army would be even more powerful and YOU would have reapers as well.

    Time and time again, people want to make more difficult maps, add more heroes, and still the map is very easy. Bullfrog tried releasing new maps - deeper dungeons - and ended up just not giving these rooms to the player in most of the maps.
    If you could limit the effectiveness of the prison, you could quite easily make the map more difficult by adding a few more heroes and make more fun maps.

    A temple and workshop are nowhere near as problematic, with sacrifices you can get some more powerful creatures and countless imps (and because of that you can use the graveyard to get 3000-gold vampires), and given enough time with the workshop you could make yourself defensively very powerful. Boulder traps are particularity problematic, and lava traps as well as they put a stop to advancing heroes, but not giving a player those traps has little impact on the game.
    Last edited by YourMaster; February 12th, 2015 at 00:50.

  2. #12
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    But I don't really see what makes these rooms sooo very overpowering right now. I understand that they can be, but that has more to do with how the map is made than with the rooms themselves.
    When mechanics like this exist and are so powerful and / or abusable, they provide restrictions to the level designer who must bend the map around these design choices in order to make something challenging yet fun and interesting. Having too many of these type mechanics will provide level designers with too many restrictions, resulting in a complete lack of true level variety when attempting to design around these mechanics.

    To each exploitable mechanic, there is a number of ways that a level designer can answer it. With too many of these mechanics, however, the number of ways it can be answered is greatly reduced. This is because a solution has to answer each and every one of these mechanics all at once, and there are so few solutions that are capable of doing that. Thus, there is a lack of true level variety.
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  3. #13
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    And really you don't see how they are overpowered?
    I do see how they can be overpowered, but I see that as a map problem and not as a specific room problem.

    A Scavenger and Graveyard are not always that much of a problem, but a prison almost always is. You don't need gems to make that room problematic, because it is always much, much cheaper to get a level 10 skeleton or a level 10 wizard from the prison than it is to train a troll or a sorcerer to level 10. Every level which has a prison, has heroes and gives the player some time becomes too easy.
    You forget that you need an army first to obtain Skeletons and strong heroes like a Wizard. Killing a level 10 Wizard needs a couple or at least one powerful creature like a level 6+ mistress. (in 1st person mode you could beat a wizard) So it's not that you can have one captured and tortured within the first 5 minutes of the map and then rape everything on the map 10 minutes later.

    You would need to research both Prison and Torture Chamber, then attract a Mistress, then train her and then you can start looking for a lonely wandering level 10 Wizard, which would be easy prey. You would really need to make a map that wants the player to capture and convert heroes.

    And yes, you could try making your maps in such a way that the problem isn't that big - but that is the whole problem - you now have make your map in a very specific way to work around the issue of how useful this room is. And really there aren't that many ways to do so, if you give the player time to build AND a prison you can only have ONE strong hero attack. A second one would just be defeated by the first one.
    That is the whole point isn't it? Making good maps. I get the idea you want to make the terrain map in 5 minutes and then spend a ton of time in the text files balancing everything. I would look at it from the other way around.

    If you build the Autobahn, give the player a ton of money to buy Ferarri's, Porsches and other Supercars. Then you're probably suggesting you want the player to go drive them on there as fast as they can.

    What you're saying is that you want to have the Autobahn, the money, the Porsches, the Ferarri's and the other supercars. But they can't go faster than 30 miles an hour else it's unfair. So when the player enters your autobahn you all give them a chip which limits them to 30 miles an hour.

    Look at this post made by you(!!), where you also shared your experience with the maps, the maps which have the most heroes are the easiest.
    Look at your description on level 20, you say it would be more difficult if the parties were stronger or reapers added in, but that wouldn't have worked, because your army would be even more powerful and YOU would have reapers as well.
    Almost all the points I mentioned were map related or basic script related. I never went that far to suggest alterations to the game. Which is in my opinion not needed, clearly you see that differently.

    Since you mention the last map of that campaign, especially that level is made very poorly in both map and script. (Compared to the other maps in the campaign) I think my autobahn example fits perfect here. The creator clearly wanted the player to have everything, have infinite time to make the best army ever and then walk over the Heroes like they were never there. If that isn't the idea of that map, then the maker should go back to the drawing board with that one.

    Time and time again, people want to make more difficult maps, add more heroes, and still the map is very easy. Bullfrog tried releasing new maps - deeper dungeons - and ended up just not giving these rooms to the player in most of the maps.
    If you could limit the effectiveness of the prison, you could quite easily make the map more difficult by adding a few more heroes and make more fun maps.
    Maybe you shouldn't keep adding heroes since that isn't the route of making a map hard. Instead you can limit things. If you lower the amount of creatures a player can have you wouldn't need a lot of heroes.

    As I said before if you have only 1 or 2 gem sides to mine from (or no gems at all) then you can't sustain a big army for long. Getting a massive Skeleton army takes time, creatures which need to kill/stun the heroes and a lot of money to train them and pay them. So a lot of factors which you can play with to not be able to have tons of skeletons. And still be able to have the Prison and Torture Chamber.

    Giving an option in the script saying there's only 10% chance of getting a skeleton sounds more like an excuse to not have to do those things, than actually "fixing" a room.

    The thing I would love to see is to be able to make maps/scripts random. Not 10 Orcs in the pool but 8 - 15 Orcs in the pool, each time you play the map that can change. You could even go further by doing it with rooms, spells and workshop items. Sometimes you get the Prison, sometimes you don't etc. That makes maps challenging (and also increases the replay factor by a lot)

    I've said it before, check the map "Swedish Spirit" in one of the custom campaigns. (it's the first map of the campaign so just go of the list and you'll find it soon enough) It's a very good example of a challenging map without making the player overpowered after a while. It's a shame the rest of the campaign doesn't come close to the quality of that map. I can understand it took quite some time to make it.

  4. #14

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    I do see how they can be overpowered, but I see that as a map problem and not as a specific room problem.

    You forget that you need an army first to obtain Skeletons and strong heroes like a Wizard. Killing a level 10 Wizard needs a couple or at least one powerful creature like a level 6+ mistress. (in 1st person mode you could beat a wizard) So it's not that you can have one captured and tortured within the first 5 minutes of the map and then rape everything on the map 10 minutes later.

    You would need to research both Prison and Torture Chamber, then attract a Mistress, then train her and then you can start looking for a lonely wandering level 10 Wizard, which would be easy prey. You would really need to make a map that wants the player to capture and convert heroes.
    But this isn't true at all. Just three level 4 orcs can take down a single level 10 wizard. Then a few minutes later they can do so again, and again. Hero parties are just 8 heroes strong(game limitation), so if you have about 12 creatures you win easily. Than you have 20 for the next party of 8, then 28 for the next one and that means you don't even have to be careful anymore.
    This is not some crazy or rare situation, it is in EVERY map which lasts more then 10 minutes, has a prison and is more than just a single fight at the end. Even the original campaign suffers from this.


    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    That is the whole point isn't it? Making good maps. I get the idea you want to make the terrain map in 5 minutes and then spend a ton of time in the text files balancing everything. I would look at it from the other way around.

    If you build the Autobahn, give the player a ton of money to buy Ferarri's, Porsches and other Supercars. Then you're probably suggesting you want the player to go drive them on there as fast as they can.

    What you're saying is that you want to have the Autobahn, the money, the Porsches, the Ferarri's and the other supercars. But they can't go faster than 30 miles an hour else it's unfair. So when the player enters your autobahn you all give them a chip which limits them to 30 miles an hour.

    Almost all the points I mentioned were map related or basic script related. I never went that far to suggest alterations to the game. Which is in my opinion not needed, clearly you see that differently.
    First of all, I don't like making maps, I like playing them. I just made a single one, to assist the topic I made on how people can make the best kind of maps with the game how it currently is. Because right now - with these rooms as powerful as they are - people are having a really difficult time making good/fun maps. Right now in 100 situations you can think of, 97 of those will be no fun because the player gets too powerful because of these rooms, leaving just 3 options to make a good map. Say, a puzzle map, a first-person map, and a map without those rooms. If the rooms would not always be so powerful, out of the 100 situations you could think of, 60 would work, making sure we'd have 20 times the fun.

    To stick to your metaphor, I think the prison is kind of a drag racer, a super fast car in a straight line. If you give people that car (let them play with a prison) you can only have them play on straight racetracks, and if you want to make a more diverse racetrack (F1, Indycar, Rallytrack), people crash and burn. (Most maps crash and burn).
    And I'm seeing all carwrecks, so I'm arguing to perhaps give this car not as big an engine, a break and a proper steering wheel. This way we can have all types of tracks (maps)

    Or - in fact - have some flexibility. Because currently, all maps with a prison, lots of heroes and enough gold to support an army are bad maps. If a prison would be not as powerful (all the time) those maps would be good maps - and we would have more good maps to play.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    Since you mention the last map of that campaign, especially that level is made very poorly in both map and script. (Compared to the other maps in the campaign) I think my autobahn example fits perfect here. The creator clearly wanted the player to have everything, have infinite time to make the best army ever and then walk over the Heroes like they were never there. If that isn't the idea of that map, then the maker should go back to the drawing board with that one.

    Maybe you shouldn't keep adding heroes since that isn't the route of making a map hard. Instead you can limit things. If you lower the amount of creatures a player can have you wouldn't need a lot of heroes.

    As I said before if you have only 1 or 2 gem sides to mine from (or no gems at all) then you can't sustain a big army for long. Getting a massive Skeleton army takes time, creatures which need to kill/stun the heroes and a lot of money to train them and pay them. So a lot of factors which you can play with to not be able to have tons of skeletons. And still be able to have the Prison and Torture Chamber.
    You mentioned it particularly on that map, that's why I referenced that, but I had the exact same issue on many maps of the campaign - basically on ALL the maps with a prison. For example the level where 'blue is too weak', which you mention too. Blue gets more creatures than the player does, but as you have a prison by the time you face blue your army is 10 times as strong.

    Map with two or more rival keepers on it by default are already to easy - get all the creatures of the first keeper you defeat, so the second one is a pushover.

    Training heroes is never a problem - you never face low level heroes because otherwise they would melt away against your trained creatures. So they come pre-trained, like skeletons.
    Even if you forget training, Paydays are no problem either because heroes are not more expensive then creatures. If a map has enough gold for 15 creatures to receive 10 paydays, that would mean you could also have 15 creatures, 15 heroes and 5 paydays. Or 45 heroes and 15 creatures, just one payday and win ever fight straight away because any fight your 15 creatures would have taken some time to clear would be waltzed over by your army of 60.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    Giving an option in the script saying there's only 10% chance of getting a skeleton sounds more like an excuse to not have to do those things, than actually "fixing" a room.
    Right now you only get a vampire in 10% of the cases. Everything you say would be just as true if every corpse would get you a single vampire. You would need a lot of gold to train and pay for those vampires, and it would still be possible to make a 'good' map taking this situation into account.
    I would argue though, that in just at most 1 in 100 maps it would be most fun to have 1 corpse per vampire. Perhaps in 10 in 100 maps it would be most fun like it is now, with 10 corpses per vampire. 30 in 100 maps it would be most fun if the player doesn't get any vampires (happens now in most maps, no graveyard), but perhaps in 10 in 100 maps it would be most fun if only once every 50 corpses the player gets a vampire.
    Giving the mapmaker flexibility on how powerful the graveyard is, allows him to select the most fun possibility for every map type.

    The mapmaker now already has this script option on the entrance room - he can determine which creature types are available and how many are in the pool - to give him flexibility in design. I am pretty sure that if every map had a creature limit of 30 creature, and every creature would be available(if you have the rooms) the game would be not as good as it is now. This script option to determine the effectiveness of the entrance rooms gives the mapmaker a lot of flexibility and makes the game better for it.

    The same is true for the prison as well, if you would give the mapmaker more flexibility in the effectiveness of the prison, he could make many more map-types that are fun to play and the game would be better for it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    The thing I would love to see is to be able to make maps/scripts random. Not 10 Orcs in the pool but 8 - 15 Orcs in the pool, each time you play the map that can change. You could even go further by doing it with rooms, spells and workshop items. Sometimes you get the Prison, sometimes you don't etc. That makes maps challenging (and also increases the replay factor by a lot)
    Actually it is already possible:
    Code:
    ADD_CREATURE_TO_POOL(ORC,Random(8,15))
    ROOM_AVAILABLE(PLAYER0,TREASURE,1,random(0,1))
    I don't really see how this would help much though, I would be already happy with a map that's really fun once. If the second time would be just a tiny bit different, well OK.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    I've said it before, check the map "Swedish Spirit" in one of the custom campaigns. (it's the first map of the campaign so just go of the list and you'll find it soon enough) It's a very good example of a challenging map without making the player overpowered after a while. It's a shame the rest of the campaign doesn't come close to the quality of that map. I can understand it took quite some time to make it.
    I think I remember you advising that map before, couldn't find it last time. I see it is the first map of the Twin keepers campaign, I thought that was a bit of a 'puzzle map', but I'll give it a try for sure.

  5. #15

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Quote Originally Posted by Krizzie View Post
    I've said it before, check the map "Swedish Spirit" in one of the custom campaigns. (it's the first map of the campaign so just go of the list and you'll find it soon enough) It's a very good example of a challenging map without making the player overpowered after a while. It's a shame the rest of the campaign doesn't come close to the quality of that map. I can understand it took quite some time to make it.
    I've played it, fun map. But I think it is an excellent example on how prisons are overpowered as hell. You start out with a prison in this map, after a while I sold my training room and I had a massive army of skeletons, that overwhelmed any hero party.
    Note that I had no torture room, so I had to get rid of all the fairies, monks and wizards. When you have both rooms you get even more powerful of course.

    Than the only thing that provided a speedbump on the map were the pockets of heroes on islands with guardposts that could only be harmed by ranged creatures.

    Just to make sure you understand: I had a prison, but no spells at all, no workshop, no gems, no torture chamber and the map used some exploits to try to make it more difficult, and I still had a much bigger army than I could handle, all because of the prison.

  6. #16

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    I love this game. Read through this thread and HAD to break my habit of only lurking on forums just to participate in the discussion!

    It seems like the root problem of these rooms is that:
    1) they all allow you to expand your army infinitely past your creature limit from the portals, and
    2) having a huge army is enough to make levels very easy

    So far, the thread has been a debate between two options:
    1) Make the rooms less effective by adding random elements to whether they work on a case-by-case basis
    2) Make infinitely large armies more difficult to maintain, by increasing wages, decreasing food, etc.

    It seems to me that if you use random elements to make the rooms less effective (option 1) it's still possible to grow your army infinitely - it just makes it take more time on average. So eventually any level would still get too easy.

    Here are two radically different possible solutions I'd love to hear your opinions on:
    1) Remove the portal limit.
    Portals will keep attracting creatures forever. You can convert additional creatures to get them faster or get vampires if you want, but now it's not overpowered COMPARED to portals. This only solves issue 1 - levels would need to adjust accordingly to place other effective limits on your army size, perhaps making wages or food more of an issue.

    2) Make the portal limit apply to creatures no matter how you obtain them.
    Now, no matter how you get the creatures, if you're over the limit for the level, then creatures start to feel crowded and leave your dungeon until you're back at the limit. Or maybe you just CAN'T get a creature in any way if you're over your limit. Either way, growing your dungeon now is a big tradeoff given the creatures you've already got. Do you really want to get another level 1 vampire if it means giving up one of your level 8 dragons at this point?

    One thing that would be nice about either of these approaches is they remove the need in many levels to wait until you're at your portal limit before you go and recruit neutral creatures or use those rooms. Maybe some kind of balanced approach where your creature limit is affected by some otherwise unused room (I'm looking at you, Barracks).

    Thanks for reading!

  7. #17

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    1) I don't see any advantage to removing the portal limit. Right now, the portal limit can be configured by the mapmaker, and if he wants to he can set it as high as the creature limit( the came can only support 255 creatures on a map). So maps like this can already be made.

    2) Giving a player a creature limit could work in some scenario's, but it would alter the game radically. Let's just say you have your maxed out army of 15 dragons, and you kill some creatures so a vampire is raised - what happens now? Do I automatically lose my dragon? Do I have to make a manual choice?

    However, I disagree with your premise that the problem with these rooms is that it allows you to grow your army indefinitely. I think the problem with this rooms is that these rooms allow you to grow stronger based on how strong your rival is, and that because of that you are always stronger.
    Making the prison less effective, say you need 10 enemies to get one prisoner, does not simply 'delay' the problem, it could solve the problem completely. If the heroes manage to kill at least 1 or 2 of your creatures for every 10 of them you kill, you don't grow stronger when you are attacked.

    Enemies in the game should serve a purpose of making the player weaker - they are enemies for a reason. The skill of the player should determine if he is completely worn down by attacks or can weather them and build his strength quicker than the heroes can damage him.

    Currently when you are attacked by an army that rivals your own - you have 20 creatures and you face 20 heroes. When killing them you can expect to lose around 5-10 of your creatures. So after the fight you have 15 creatures and 20 heroes, and are stronger then you were before. The next attack of 20 heroes now gets overwhelmed by the army of 35, you lose just 1 creature and end up with an army of 55 in two attacks.
    Now lets suppose you only succeed in capturing 1 in 10 heroes, same battles. After the fight you have 15 creatures left, and with a prison you'll manage to restore your army to 17 strong. That leaves you a bit weaker for the next attack and you'll face the 20 heroes with your army of 17, which is a pretty good fight.
    This is something that the mapmaker can balance quite easily, by tweaking the effectiveness of the prison, the frequency of the hero attacks and their power. In other words he can make a simple map or a challenging map.
    In the original scenario after the two fights the map was over.

  8. #18
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    1) Remove the portal limit.
    Portals will keep attracting creatures forever. You can convert additional creatures to get them faster or get vampires if you want, but now it's not overpowered COMPARED to portals. This only solves issue 1 - levels would need to adjust accordingly to place other effective limits on your army size, perhaps making wages or food more of an issue.
    This isn't an option cause it will make the game even more unstable than it already is when there is a lot going on on the map.

    2) Giving a player a creature limit could work in some scenario's, but it would alter the game radically. Let's just say you have your maxed out army of 15 dragons, and you kill some creatures so a vampire is raised - what happens now? Do I automatically lose my dragon? Do I have to make a manual choice?
    This can be an option, but I would suggest two limits instead of one.

    For instance a maximum of 15 Portal creatures and a maximum of 20 creatures in total. That way you can raise a vampire/ghost/skeleton even when the portal limit is reached.

    If the maximum number is reached than the next Vampire raised will be put on hold (Prisoners and Tortured victims will just die like normal when the limit is reached) But only 1 will be stored. So it's not that you would get 10 vampires after a big loss of creatures, just because you had 100 bodies stored from an earlier fight.

    If you can only have 10 creatures out of the portal it will be a lot harder to destroy high level Hero parties to convert. And if you can have a total maximum of say 20 creatures then you can convert 10 Hero's and the rest will die when tortured. This also Applies for the Prison of course.


    I might have an other idea for the Torture chamber problem, in DK2 when a creature dies in the chamber it will give map Information.

    What if there's a chance of converting a hero/creature or getting information on the map.

    1, Creature/Hero converts
    2, Creature/Hero gives map information and dies (not generating a ghost) (health can be at any point when this happens)
    3, Creature/Hero dies and returns as a Ghost (Runs out of health and dies, just like normal)*
    *(Incase of creature limit the tortured unit just dies without giving anything)

    This may also "fix" the issue that some creatures give a lot of map information and then join you as an extra bonus.
    Last edited by Krizzie; February 13th, 2015 at 17:27.

  9. #19

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    1) I don't see any advantage to removing the portal limit. Right now, the portal limit can be configured by the mapmaker, and if he wants to he can set it as high as the creature limit( the came can only support 255 creatures on a map). So maps like this can already be made.

    2) Giving a player a creature limit could work in some scenario's, but it would alter the game radically. Let's just say you have your maxed out army of 15 dragons, and you kill some creatures so a vampire is raised - what happens now? Do I automatically lose my dragon? Do I have to make a manual choice?

    However, I disagree with your premise that the problem with these rooms is that it allows you to grow your army indefinitely. I think the problem with this rooms is that these rooms allow you to grow stronger based on how strong your rival is, and that because of that you are always stronger.
    Making the prison less effective, say you need 10 enemies to get one prisoner, does not simply 'delay' the problem, it could solve the problem completely. If the heroes manage to kill at least 1 or 2 of your creatures for every 10 of them you kill, you don't grow stronger when you are attacked.

    Enemies in the game should serve a purpose of making the player weaker - they are enemies for a reason. The skill of the player should determine if he is completely worn down by attacks or can weather them and build his strength quicker than the heroes can damage him.

    Currently when you are attacked by an army that rivals your own - you have 20 creatures and you face 20 heroes. When killing them you can expect to lose around 5-10 of your creatures. So after the fight you have 15 creatures and 20 heroes, and are stronger then you were before. The next attack of 20 heroes now gets overwhelmed by the army of 35, you lose just 1 creature and end up with an army of 55 in two attacks.
    Now lets suppose you only succeed in capturing 1 in 10 heroes, same battles. After the fight you have 15 creatures left, and with a prison you'll manage to restore your army to 17 strong. That leaves you a bit weaker for the next attack and you'll face the 20 heroes with your army of 17, which is a pretty good fight.
    This is something that the mapmaker can balance quite easily, by tweaking the effectiveness of the prison, the frequency of the hero attacks and their power. In other words he can make a simple map or a challenging map.
    In the original scenario after the two fights the map was over.
    Ah, thank you - this IS a different issue. Basically as long as you can "win" a fight (in that you kill more creatures than you have killed yourself), AND keep control of the fight area afterwards so that you can capture and convert creatures, then you grow stronger as a result of the carnage. You have to admit, it does keep within the theme of the game quite well: The enemy had better send a party big enough to get the job done or they're actually FEEDING the evil!

    The scavenger room has something of an opposite problem, in that you can grow your army stronger at the expense of your enemy's but only if yours is stronger already (as far as that creature goes).

    On a related note, one of the most nostalgic things about DK1 is how broken it could be. As nicer as the control system was for DK2 compared to DK1, a lot of changes in attempts to fix broken mechanics make DK2 feel like a neutered game compared to DK1. Creature stun on drop, no boulder trap, creature collision, horned reaper is a spell instead of a creature to attempt to manage, and spells cost a separate limited pool rather than your easily unlimited gold. Adding in a chance of failure would definitely stop you from getting more powerful from those "almost lost" fights, but you still have to win them in the first place.

    As for the idea of a creature limit, how it might work is if you're past your creature limit then creatures start getting annoyed faster, until eventually it's impossible to keep them happy until some leave. Adding in more temple recipes might be a fun way to still get an advantage out of the extra creatures. Maybe sacrificing gives gold, map info, or a chance of a magic item effect.

  10. #20

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Well, yes actually, in that way the prison and torture room fit the theme of the game very well. That's why it is nice to have those rooms on a map.
    But the thing is, it needs to be properly balanced,... in the sense that if you fight a small force you are allowed to end up stronger then before. However, if in a 20 vs 25 fight, you lose 18 of your creatures and end up with 27 after the fight that is in no way fair.
    Now the only way you actually grow weaker is if you are completely destroyed by the heroes.

    I think to make it the most fun is if the map-maker can strike such a balance between the size of the hero parties that attack and the effectiveness of captivity is if the player does a really good job he grows stronger, if he does a bad job he ends up weaker. And some attacks might serve a purpose of ending up just exp. or prison fodder, others should serve a purpose of doing serious damage.
    And that latter is currently not really possible.

    Please note the scavenger room also works on heroes! If you capture and convert a hero, you can scavenge all the similar heroes present on the map.

    I do agree that we shouldn't try to make this game like DK2, but allowing mapmakers to make maps where players can just capture some of the heroes and creatures instead of all of them, doesn't make the game as slow as the sequel.

    ------------------
    On the creature limit,... it might be more fun to include the possibility for heroes to rebel, if you have more heroes than creatures in your army, they might decide to turn on you and kill you.

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