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Thread: Have Camapaign levels been tested

  
  1. #1

    Default Have Camapaign levels been tested

    If you must know I've reached level 7 of the main campaign so far and it's impossible. The first six were pretty good. As for seven we have fifteen minutes to train an army and then defeat an endless wave of up to 330 heroes. Fifteen minutes! More time is needed. Have these levels actually been tested before release?

  2. #2

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    I don't think you will get an answer here from the Wfto Team. Go to their forums https://forum.subterraneangames.com/

  3. #3

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    I think moving a bit of the chatbox discussion to this topic is a good thing, guess people do feel the need to discuss WftO here.

    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    I've been strongly thinking about buying WftO, despite knowing it's bad. I just have to see for myself how bad it is and what it would take to fix it.
    I probably will, maybe make a let's play out of it or something and post it on the forums.
    Quote Originally Posted by Skarok
    I wouldn't pay the full price for a barely functioning game
    You'll probably be able to get it quite cheaply during a steam sale in the next couple of months anyways
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    It's not a big deal for me to buy it, money wise. It's more a question of do I want to really take the time to investigate the game in greater detail, then report back for the people of KK I guess.
    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster
    It is a bit of a shame they didn't use the kickstarter money to hire a producer and a designer. They ended up with a fangame with high production values. The things that work are the things that are copied from DK.
    For me downloading big things is an issue, so I'll wait until I no longer have to download a new patch each day.
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    If my information is correct then you can't pick up creatures not in your land, not a bug but an intentional design choice. So it's not all DK.
    Quote Originally Posted by Crafty
    i wont be buying wfto until it is actually somewhat finished.
    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster
    I'm not saying it is all DK, I'm saying most of what people enjoy is pretty much DK
    Unfortunately the 'CEO' was also design lead and producer and whatever and was just a kid without any relevant experience who enjoyed difficult DK2 maps and multiplayer. He had made what he thought he would enjoy. No one made any assessment on budget prio
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    Yeah I think Josh was pretty bad for the project overall.
    I'm still a bit sore about how my ideas got scrapped during the IP change because of him for literally no good reason. And how he kept trying to take control of the story I was creating while I was there by forcefully adding his own ideas.
    Actually I think I just don't like him.
    I remember a number of discussions being had in regards to game design. From my understanding of what the game came out to be, it seemed none of those discussions were relevant and Josh just did what he wanted.
    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster
    Well yes, ask 10 people what they like about DK and you get 10 different answers. His priority was to build his answer to the question. And then tried to build the 9 other things on top as well without upping the budget or knowing how to integrate them.
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    Well I'm more on about issues like the balance between offensive and defensive play is completely skewed towards defensive play, more so than ever before because of poorly thought out decisions like the removal of pick up and drop when the creature is not in your land.
    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster
    I'm betting what most people dislike now - besides the bugs - is not balance but pacing. Many people like to relax and build, which is one of the key components of dk, yet so far WftO has none of that.
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    I guess I'll see for myself how that really is when I get in there.
    Quote Originally Posted by Skarok
    Well, DK had its fair share of slow missions, but there were also fast paced ones in both games
    I think you need to find a good balance between the two, two much of one side and the campaign can easily get boring
    And in DK or DK like game the campaign is arguably the most important thing
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    Well it's not like multiplayer can be a thing. It seems like every DK game is plagued with multiplayer problems.
    The management side of things I find to be a little boring in both DK1 and DK2, but I guess that's because they're older and much simpler on those levels, so I guess it's understandable.
    I've had a lot of ideas on how to approach the management side of things to keep things very interesting with a good amount of variety.
    And I very much enjoy the combat of patched DKII, so there's that. I just wish DKII wasn't as screwed in the programming department.
    But it captures the point well enough on what needs to be done to make combat interesting in a game like DK.
    Yeah I've been rethinking this whole "Buy WftO" thing.
    Quote Originally Posted by Crafty
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW3ZPHNn9aQ
    well done review of wfto for me to consider not buying for quite some time
    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    Watched it before already.
    I can't help but feel that TB is really biased because WftO is DK, and he really wants a DK game (not because he backed WftO personally).
    I've heard and seen a lot of things that he didn't quite touch upon, and also apparently he thinks the level design is amazing when it looks quite ugly and boring to me.
    I mean you can't even compare them to my or Skarok's maps for instance because that's how uninspired they appear to be.
    Also heard of how unfair the level design is.
    I mean I knew all this beforehand and still was considering getting it, just began to wonder when I saw it randomly crash and also could see how badly balanced it appeared to be. Like I didn't even need to play it to know it.
    Last edited by Metal Gear Rex; April 7th, 2015 at 11:36. Reason: fixed quotes, added quote

  4. #4

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex
    Well it's not like multiplayer can be a thing. It seems like every DK game is plagued with multiplayer problems.
    The management side of things I find to be a little boring in both DK1 and DK2, but I guess that's because they're older and much simpler on those levels, so I guess it's understandable.
    I've had a lot of ideas on how to approach the management side of things to keep things very interesting with a good amount of variety.
    And I very much enjoy the combat of patched DKII, so there's that. I just wish DKII wasn't as screwed in the programming department.
    But it captures the point well enough on what needs to be done to make combat interesting in a game like DK.
    Yeah I've been rethinking this whole "Buy WftO" thing.
    Well, yes, you're one of the people who prefers to combat over the management side, and that's fine. However check the youtube link Crafty posted, totalbiscuit also mentions that 'combat never meant anything in DK, just drop all your creatures and the largest army wins. I'm not saying that view is better than yours, but there is a significant portion of people who do play it mostly for the dungeon sim bit. And those did not really get their dues with this game.

  5. #5
    Awakening Game Master Metal Gear Rex's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    Didn't realize this was a thread before I made more of a response in chat, so I edited YourMaster's post to include my last response. I just got up so I probably could have worded that better to get my point across more. I also noticed there were some errors with the order of the quotes so I fixed that too.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I think moving a bit of the chatbox discussion to this topic is a good thing, guess people do feel the need to discuss WftO here.
    I actually wouldn't even want to go over to the SubterraneanGames forum right now. I've seen a lot of drama going on because of the poor release and heard it's all over the forums. A discussion over there would be difficult because people are either angry or on the defensive because other people are angry, thus there will be a lot of one-sided bias to convolute any discussion to be had. Then the devs are also trying to do a lot of crowd control right now which could also get in the way of a proper discussion.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Well, yes, you're one of the people who prefers to combat over the management side, and that's fine. However check the youtube link Crafty posted, totalbiscuit also mentions that 'combat never meant anything in DK, just drop all your creatures and the largest army wins. I'm not saying that view is better than yours, but there is a significant portion of people who do play it mostly for the dungeon sim bit. And those did not really get their dues with this game.
    As a means to clarify, I don't prefer the combat over the management side. It's just that, from my experiences, DKII combat with my patch possesses more depth and variety than either DKII or DK1 management. There's a lot of things to interact with to gain influence over my creatures and the tides of combat itself, so I find the whole experience more involved. In management of DK, I plan my dungeon in accordance, plan my desired creatures, and then I'm done and my dungeon isn't even fully built. Once the dungeon is built and during the management process, I often run out of things to do and find myself quite bored.

    There needs to be more mechanics like the slap that give the player something to do. Slapping increases efficiency and needs to be done every now and again, so more little things like that that help improve the overall. Micro managing shouldn't be a necessity but it should have a lot of potential power and exist in many more forms than it already does. As it stands, I can micro manage the crap out of my dungeon and still get bored because I'm running out of things to do, or because I'm essentially doing the same thing over and over again. I also think there should be different creature interactions to spice up the dungeon but that's a different story.

    Back to the main point, I'm well aware combat isn't really meant to be anything. I believe I mentioned this before in some threads past but I ultimately just find it disappointing to put a lot of time and effort in making the combat mechanics interesting / colorful only to never really use or care for them because 'combat isn't meant to be the focus of the game'. I just find it to be wasteful as combat has the potential to freshen up the experience and give more variety to what the player is doing, so long as it is done right and keeping to the general style of the overall game.

    Regardless, I'll still criticize the combat of WftO. Why? Because it's so terribly messy that you can't even tell if you're winning. Thus, you can't tell if you should retreat or need to cast a spell or, well, anything. It's very very bad for player feedback and just looks ugly to begin with even if you don't care about combat. DK1 had some messy combat, but you could tell what was going on to some degree. With WftO, you can't because they have meshes that merge into each other as there is no DKII collision to keep them separate. Health flowers are larger like in DKII but that's turning out to be a bad thing because creatures squish together so much, you end up not even being able to tell who or what is where. Even if Combat is not meant to be a priority of the game (and if I understand it correctly, combat is supposed to be more involved so maybe they failed thee too), there has to be some standard level of quality and WftO certainly does not reach it.

    * * * * * * * * * *

    There looks to be a lot of other problems. As I mentioned, the level design looks very dull. Balance aside, levels should at least look pretty to some degree, but they just appear so bland. They look worse than some of my own maps made years ago.

    Balance is still quite important because it effects the management side of things and the overall experience. If the level design is broken then it doesn't matter how solid the game might be at its core, it will still be a pretty bad experience.

    In vanilla DK2, Black Knights are spammable and overpowered, so if one player decides to abuse them then it really limits what the other player can do and forces them to use certain broken tactics, rather than trying to have fun with building a dungeon. And losing certainly isn't very fun. Bad balance will easily make for an overall bad experience and can scare some people away from multiplayer, which can end up being another problem altogether.

    I feel I should stop at some point else I'll just keep going on and on, so I'll stop here.

    I still might get the game to be able to give a detailed report back but not as sure about it anymore.
    Dungeon Keeper 2 Patch: With More Balance and Pie [Hiatus]
    Forever Hiatus. Probably. Latest Version: 3.5 w/Levels 1-11 Revised.

    The Awakening: GM Powers Activate!
    Tesonu is napping!

  6. #6

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    Yes I agree that in the dungeon keepers there isn't much to do, and a spiritual successor could do very well to improve on that. In the sense that you should be able to use the creatures and rooms you have to improve yourself. You can now drop creatures in the workshop and build traps, in DK2 you have to combat pit which takes some management, but that is about it. But there could be a lot more, use creatures to summon/construct bigger creatures, upgrading rooms, tech trees, whatever. At least WftO seems to have a few nice additions there that if the game ever gets finished would add something to the game.

    It is such a shame though that they had no proper leadership had wasted more time than they spent. After the IP change they had a while with their first developer and a half who left after getting frustrated with the way things were run and took their stuff with them. This was when they were supposed to be almost ready to release a demo or beta or whatever. Then by luck a new development team joined the team, made the same mistake of listening to Josh and again wasted 8 months of development before they got going.

    If only they had some proper focus it could have been great,.... get your mechanics done right first, playtest the hell out of it to make sure people like the mechanics. Hell, they would have done much better releasing a game with simply 3 basic maps but really well done mechanics. This is an overgrown fangame after all, then have the fans make some capaigns and skirmish maps.
    In fact, if they would have gotten the mechanics done and very basic graphics the community could have already started on making some maps.
    Right now they ended up hiring back the amazing voice actor from the earlier games, who again did some great voicework, but on a script that could have been written by a random fanboy on a forum.

    But all in all, they really did need a proper - experienced - designer who understands gameplay systems. And a producer who could make the hard decisions on what to do when. What I read on the forums there is that they projected in February last year they would run out of money by november/december last year, and back then it was already known they could never finish everything they wanted before release. They managed to stretch it to their 'February 2015' release date and then had their people work for free for 2 months. So eventually they had to release to stay afloat, but it would have been wiser to make some cuts 14 months ago that would result in a planned release of a minimal viable product 2 months before money runs out.

    Beyond that, I'm kinda disappointed they went with a DK2-2, instead of a DK3 that takes the best of both games and add new things on top.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    I've actually purchased the copy of the game and I have to say it's very good.

    Here's the things what I rate so far.

    Graphics 9/10
    Gameplay 8/10
    Performance 7/10
    narration for levels 7/10
    Music 8/10
    Voiceovers 9/10
    sound effects 7/10

    Overall 7/10

    I have actually played far worse games than this. But this is very good. There's still a lot to improve though. Give it a chance.
    Last edited by darkkingkongman; April 11th, 2015 at 15:25.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    Quote Originally Posted by darkkingkongman View Post
    I have actually played far worse games than this. But this is very good. There's still a lot to improve though. Give it a chance.
    I'd rather give it a try when it all works. Many people say they are really affected by the bugs, and I want my first playthrough to be enjoyable without gamebreaking bugs. And I don't want to download 200MB of patches every day.

  9. #9
    Awakening Game Master Metal Gear Rex's Avatar
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    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    Playing it right now I can say it is certainly not 9/10 material. I think even a 7 is quite generous. Control and movement, something so incredibly basic, is very laggy and does not feel at all comfortable. Richard Ridings does a really good job. I like him not based on nostalgia as I don't actually feel any of that when I hear him, but on pure quality of his acting alone. Other voices... very cringe-worthy from what I've hard so far.

    I'm still trying to understand the mechanics overall as I'm in the early stages of the game, but I'm so far not very happy with a lot of decisions made for the game design.

    There's a lot of other things I could complain about but I'll leave that for now. I'm planning on making some videos about it and I'll touch on those more then.
    Dungeon Keeper 2 Patch: With More Balance and Pie [Hiatus]
    Forever Hiatus. Probably. Latest Version: 3.5 w/Levels 1-11 Revised.

    The Awakening: GM Powers Activate!
    Tesonu is napping!

  10. #10

    Default Re: Have Camapaign levels been tested

    This game does have a lot more to offer that dungeon keeper. You have more options to choose from some of the games mechanics. You can brew potions to improve your morale and perform rituals that can do some bizarre stuff. One of the mechanics on one level I noticed was you could turn a creature into a gold statue and then sell it for gold. Some very interesting spells and rituals. A lot more to choose from than dungeon keeper. The game also has some humorous voiceovers that are quite amusing.

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