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Thread: Why DK1 is better than DK2

  
  1. #11
    Mapmaker Skarok's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    lol what a load of bullshit.
    There is absoluetly nothing wrong with DK Mobile, whatsoever.

  2. #12

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by Skarok View Post
    lol what a load of bullshit.
    If you think his reasons are bullshit, why don't you try to explain why DK1 is so much better than DK2?

  3. #13
    Fly Gold Knight's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Of course I'm not saying that the functionality of the prison/torture/graveyard rooms should be removed entirely. Those are for a large part what makes the game interesting in the first place. What I'm saying is that the game having so many potentially exploitable tactics makes it very difficult to make good and interesting maps. For those rooms I proposed one of many possible solutions in this topic to balance them out.
    Interesting topic, and I certainly agree that those rooms are all overpowered. However, I don't think basing the Prison and Torture Chamber designs largely around random number generation is the way to go. I can guarantee you, a great deal of players would simply save and load in order to get their required results. Instead, I think if a creature is to be converted to one's cause, they must have the appropriate rooms as well. For example, the Avatar needs at least a 4x5 Lair, 5x5 Hatchery and 6x6 Training Room before he'll even consider switching sides. Maybe the player has to have had no unhappy creatures for at least 10 minutes, no recent "food is scarce" alerts, lots of gold, etc. Maybe a Samurai won't convert if a Mistress has been tortured alongside him at any stage. Randomness could still have its use, but only as a last resort after everything else has been taken into account.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And as for your imp strategy, you say it is interesting and viable, I would say it is trivial in both player engagement and impact. Even against another human player or a hypothetical good AI. You say it is a mechanic worth having, I feel any potential interesting game play is outweighed by it thematically not sitting right with me. It's a matter of opinion, but it does adequately explain why I prefer my imps to go 'splat poof' instead of fainting when they get hit on the head by an enemy Orc.
    A game should generally always prioritise gameplay/design over realism and aesthetic. The Imp strategy may seem "trivial" to someone who knows the game inside out, but half the game feels that way if you only look at it from a single perspective.

    To me, it doesn't make sense that a creature is just as powerful and able to fight at 1 HP as it is at 1000 HP. Sometimes games have to forgo a bit of realism to remain fun.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And yes, in a DK3 I would like to see more gameplay mechanics centered about using and opposing imps. Them automatically getting dragged off to prison where they will stay forever without any further player interaction is not it for me.
    Yeah, I can see what you mean there. I never really thought about it happening so "automatically." Hmm, I think I may have been swayed. I imagine it would be a lot better to hold enemy creatures rather than their Imps and try to starve them of creatures. At least that way, they may require constant player interaction to maintain, i.e. ensuring they don't starve. It certainly gives Spiders a bit more utility as well.

    Nevertheless, I do wish it was easier to be able to "hunt" someone's Imps if they weren't careful. Perhaps if the spell's price could not be reduced via the Temple, things would be more interesting.

    Quote Originally Posted by Skarok View Post
    lol what a load of bullshit.
    Thank you for your wonderfully insightful input.
    Last edited by Gold Knight; January 2nd, 2017 at 01:18.

  4. #14

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    I agree gameplay is most important of all, but - I - have never enjoyed the gameplay benefits of this. For me how this works in the overall gameplay just not bring any enjoyment, and currently only exploits. The things you mention are trivial to me, where you have to pay close attention to ever notice any effects on how you play the game. Surely in a hypothetical DK3 current flaws can be improved, but I think it's better to focus elsewhere.
    And by the way, you yourself had an entire chapter about 'tone' - how stuff feels when playing, the entire setting is important. Giant creatures SHOULD feel like they have weight, and magically created creatures should feel differently from attracted creatures. Having imps go 'splat poof' helps giving them character. Something overall DK1 does very well and is a mayor aspect on why people enjoy this game.

    And right now the torture room does work by change - 1/3 chance of converting against 2/3 chance of revealing information. Problem is, you can keep healing creatures so that all creatures you ever encounter can be captured and converted. So making a map with more enemies, simply allows the player to convert more creatures and does not give the mapmaker any ability to make a map more difficult. Unless he removes these very fun rooms from the level entirely. In an ideal world capturing and converting successfully would take more player input, but only an x% of creatures actually getting captured/converted is a very easy fix and very flexible to do on a per map basis. Using savegame-cheating is not a valid concern, outcomes can be pre-generated so that loading a save will always give the same outcome.

    And hunting for imps, sure, a new game could include stuff around this. Perhaps a keeper-spell that temporary drains all magic from an area and all imps going there will slowly petrify if they aren't saved as well as creature spells not working. And you could then steal/capture that imps somehow.

  5. #15
    Fly Gold Knight's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I agree gameplay is most important of all, but - I - have never enjoyed the gameplay benefits of this. For me how this works in the overall gameplay just not bring any enjoyment, and currently only exploits. The things you mention are trivial to me, where you have to pay close attention to ever notice any effects on how you play the game.
    Yeah, there is often a fine line between intuitive nuances and arbitrary conditions or restrictions. It would certainly be hard to figure out why a certain hero is not converting if the player did not have the appropriate rooms. I was just providing examples of different ways of looking at the problem.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And by the way, you yourself had an entire chapter about 'tone' - how stuff feels when playing, the entire setting is important. Giant creatures SHOULD feel like they have weight, and magically created creatures should feel differently from attracted creatures. Having imps go 'splat poof' helps giving them character. Something overall DK1 does very well and is a mayor aspect on why people enjoy this game.
    Of course, and I agree. I believe Imps should be classed as magical beings and feel different to other creatures. However, I don't think the Imps of DK1 are truly "magical" beings - that is, they are flesh and blood just like every other creature, but with a few bonuses such as the no sleep/eating. They are perhaps animated by magic, but they are not comprised of it. Of course DK2 fixed this, and I definitely prefer the way they die in DK2 (although it can be annoying when trying to perform an autopsy, i.e. determine cause of death).

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And right now the torture room does work by change - 1/3 chance of converting against 2/3 chance of revealing information. Problem is, you can keep healing creatures so that all creatures you ever encounter can be captured and converted. So making a map with more enemies, simply allows the player to convert more creatures and does not give the mapmaker any ability to make a map more difficult.
    While I agree these rooms are definitely a problem for map makers to deal with, I'd argue any map maker who allows the player both a Prison and Torture Chamber should design their maps with the expectation that the player is going to capture and convert every enemy. Giving the player these rooms is basically the same as providing them with Gems. Any map that allows the player unlimited time to prepare is of hardly any challenge at all. In fact, the entire game is hugely lacking in the challenge department, particularly because it was primarily designed as a multiplayer game, in which challenge is mostly derived from the game's agonistic qualities.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Unless he removes these very fun rooms from the level entirely. In an ideal world capturing and converting successfully would take more player input, but only an x% of creatures actually getting captured/converted is a very easy fix and very flexible to do on a per map basis. Using savegame-cheating is not a valid concern, outcomes can be pre-generated so that loading a save will always give the same outcome.
    Oh, duh! Using a seeded random would solve everything related to save/load exploits. I guess that's a null argument.

    I think an ideal solution would be to have the likelihood of a hero or creature converting increase as it loses health. This is originally how I expected it worked before experience told me it was completely random. Conforming to one's expectations/intuition is often a good indicator of a well-designed mechanic. It would make it so that players cannot just come back every few minutes and fully heal any victims; they would have to closely monitor them and try to keep them balanced on the edge of life and death. The conversion chance could work like the graph below:



    Of course, the above graph is just a scale, and different creatures/heroes would have different "pain tolerance," i.e. the Avatar has to be kept to near 0% health to have a reasonable chance at conversion while a Thief or Fairy could be at 50%.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And hunting for imps, sure, a new game could include stuff around this. Perhaps a keeper-spell that temporary drains all magic from an area and all imps going there will slowly petrify if they aren't saved as well as creature spells not working. And you could then steal/capture that imps somehow.
    Now that sounds interesting. It would certainly help to emphasise Imps as being magical, as well as being subtle enough to increase the skill gap between bottom and top players.

  6. #16

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    While I agree these rooms are definitely a problem for map makers to deal with, I'd argue any map maker who allows the player both a Prison and Torture Chamber should design their maps with the expectation that the player is going to capture and convert every enemy. Giving the player these rooms is basically the same as providing them with Gems. Any map that allows the player unlimited time to prepare is of hardly any challenge at all. In fact, the entire game is hugely lacking in the challenge department, particularly because it was primarily designed as a multiplayer game, in which challenge is mostly derived from the game's agonistic qualities.
    That's the point, with the current implementation of these rooms, giving them to a player is basically removing any challenge. However, this game would shine if it would allow a long preparation but still provide a challenge. Simply put, allowing 20 creatures on a map and plenty of time to prepare you could script thee hero invasions of 15 heroes should give you a difficult map.
    These rooms are far more limiting to map design than gems, most of all because the mapmaker has the option to use gems or not, determine how many gem faces the player has access to, and at what point of the level he gets access. A single gem face is not enough to sustain a dungeon. Gems are perfectly balanced and not a hindrance to map design at all. Having access to a prison on the map is however completely dominating how you can design the map from that point forward, and taking it away takes out a big part of the gameplay which you don't want to do. I think it is still possible to make fun maps with these limitations in mind, it is just very difficult and limiting and most maps suffer because of it.

    I doubt that this game has been designed as a multiplayer game though. Video's from early builds I've seen basically had it as some sort of tower defense game before that genre existing, with just corridors and heroes streaming in. If anything the overpowered rooms just indicate a rushed game, they managed to get some fun campaign levels and called it a day, not having time to reconsider their mechanics for skirmish maps. I think they became fully aware of this problem when they released a quite expensive expansion that included just 15 maps, that many don't even enjoy, and where on most maps you don't get access to all rooms.




    As to your magical imps,... if I were to design a DK3 I think I would give the dungeon heart itself a more central role, making that more obviously your physical representation as a fleshy, evil magical growth. Imps would be generated from, and at the expense of the dungeon hearth so that building them is not expensive but comes as a trade-off. This limits the imps and punishes the player for losing them. Other mechanics in the game would allow you to grow in power, and as such allows your hearth to grow and enable you to have more imps.

  7. #17
    Fly Gold Knight's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    That's the point, with the current implementation of these rooms, giving them to a player is basically removing any challenge. However, this game would shine if it would allow a long preparation but still provide a challenge. Simply put, allowing 20 creatures on a map and plenty of time to prepare you could script thee hero invasions of 15 heroes should give you a difficult map. These rooms are far more limiting to map design than gems, most of all because the mapmaker has the option to use gems or not, determine how many gem faces the player has access to, and at what point of the level he gets access. A single gem face is not enough to sustain a dungeon. Gems are perfectly balanced and not a hindrance to map design at all. Having access to a prison on the map is however completely dominating how you can design the map from that point forward, and taking it away takes out a big part of the gameplay which you don't want to do. I think it is still possible to make fun maps with these limitations in mind, it is just very difficult and limiting and most maps suffer because of it.
    I know, and I was using Gems as an example, not a direct comparison. I could have said Boulder Traps, Lightning spell, Chicken spell, Cave-In spell, Guard Post / Temple walling, etc. Almost everything can make the game significantly easier, and giving the player access to anything is pretty much akin to reducing the challenge. Of course, the combination of Prison and Torture Chamber (and to a degree, Gems and Heal spell) is a significant reduction, but just about anything can be if a player knows their way around the game enough. This is an unfortunate consequence of the way the game was designed. Besides that, I feel like taking away any of these 4 things (Prison, Torture Chamber, Gems or Heal spell) would break the chain.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I doubt that this game has been designed as a multiplayer game though. Video's from early builds I've seen basically had it as some sort of tower defense game before that genre existing, with just corridors and heroes streaming in. If anything the overpowered rooms just indicate a rushed game, they managed to get some fun campaign levels and called it a day, not having time to reconsider their mechanics for skirmish maps. I think they became fully aware of this problem when they released a quite expensive expansion that included just 15 maps, that many don't even enjoy, and where on most maps you don't get access to all rooms.
    I don't think the entire game was quite rushed, but I can't help but get the feeling that the idea of single player was. I just remembered reading about it from one of the developer interviews. Here it is below:

    Quote Originally Posted by Tyrant Cenobite View Post
    Moreover, at the time Bullfrog designed all its games as multiplayer first, single-player second. Most of Keeper was designed and balanced around epic late-night play sessions between members of the team. This gave the game a very unique flavour, but also meant that we didn't prioritize narrative and level design quite as much as we should have.
    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    As to your magical imps,... if I were to design a DK3 I think I would give the dungeon heart itself a more central role, making that more obviously your physical representation as a fleshy, evil magical growth. Imps would be generated from, and at the expense of the dungeon hearth so that building them is not expensive but comes as a trade-off. This limits the imps and punishes the player for losing them. Other mechanics in the game would allow you to grow in power, and as such allows your hearth to grow and enable you to have more imps.
    Yeah, even something simple as Imps taking a certain amount of "life force" to conjure (or maintain) would be interesting enough. DK3 certainly is a fun idea to play around with, but it's a shame that's all we can really ever do.

  8. #18

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    ...and giving the player access to anything is pretty much akin to reducing the challenge. Of course, the combination of Prison and Torture Chamber (and to a degree, Gems and Heal spell) is a significant reduction, but just about anything can be if a player knows their way around the game enough. This is an unfortunate consequence of the way the game was designed. Besides that, I feel like taking away any of these 4 things (Prison, Torture Chamber, Gems or Heal spell) would break the chain.
    Those other things don't have as much impact as the torture/prison combination. Try to see if you can beat this map, use all the boulder traps you want. Blocking out heroes with a guardpost or lava trap for example can of course also completely change the course of a map, but taking away that possibility does not impact the overall joy of the game at all, removing prison/torture room does. The heal spell doesn't really matter here as many heroes have the heal spell themselves and the other can be healed by chickens. Taking out gems - and the workshop - and not giving enough gold - can make the map more difficult even with a torture chamber, but that produces a very specific low-econ game that many people don't enjoy. This affects much more than just converting, it limits training even more.

    That's why I made the topic, DK1 would already be so much better if the effectiveness of capturing and converting heroes could be reduced on a per-map basis. Just look here how many times maps are being ruined by easy converting.

  9. #19
    Fly Gold Knight's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Those other things don't have as much impact as the torture/prison combination. Try to see if you can beat this map, use all the boulder traps you want.
    I tried it and so far I'm about 15 mins past when the heroes tunnel out of the Library with the Lightning spell inside and whatnot. All it really seems to require so far is a serious amount of Bile Demon Gas / Grenades and it's pretty straight forward. I'm not sure how it is really related to what we're discussing here though, unless you're trying to show the Boulder trap as not reducing the challenge that much? I guess I could try it again with Boulder usage in mind...

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Blocking out heroes with a guardpost or lava trap for example can of course also completely change the course of a map, but taking away that possibility does not impact the overall joy of the game at all, removing prison/torture room does. The heal spell doesn't really matter here as many heroes have the heal spell themselves and the other can be healed by chickens.
    I can't say I find any lack of access to those rooms impacting my enjoyment though (in general). Chickens can work but they require a lot of micromanagement and their constant use can impact the rest of the dungeon (your creatures need their fair share). And sure, any creatures or heroes that have the Heal spell kind of break this area too. I think it would be better if creatures or heroes could not use any spells while imprisoned or proceeding to the torture tables. It doesn't make sense to me in the same way that capturing Imps doesn't make sense to you; if creatures can use spells, surely they can teleport out (Mistress, Vampire, Tunneller etc.), or shoot off offensive spells at their captors.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Taking out gems - and the workshop - and not giving enough gold - can make the map more difficult even with a torture chamber, but that produces a very specific low-econ game that many people don't enjoy. This affects much more than just converting, it limits training even more.

    That's why I made the topic, DK1 would already be so much better if the effectiveness of capturing and converting heroes could be reduced on a per-map basis. Just look here how many times maps are being ruined by easy converting.
    I think that's also partly the map-makers' fault for not considering how game-changing those rooms can be. Hopefully a future version of FX (if it ever continues) can address this issue with the solution you suggest.

  10. #20

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Yes, that's also up to the mapmaker. So now you need a good mapmaker to make a halfway decent map. If it was easy to make a good map, there would be more good maps to play.

    And yes, I just linked that map because I made it thinking it will be quite difficult to beat even for experienced players, and I have given access to boulder traps and most spells. Those things don't make maps easy.

    On maps without heal spell or with limited gold I just build a very large additional hatchery next to the prison and torture room. It goes quite quickly as most creatures don't need to many to be full health.

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