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Thread: Why DK1 is better than DK2

  
  1. #61

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    I can understand having a higher standard for it. Just makes me shake my head everyone constantly praise DK1>DK2 When DK2 was hardly bad, I mean if you wanna be technical. DK2 is still the one seeing activity and play, while DK1 is kinda.....gone.

    I never got the unit diversity thing. To me diversity means nothing if the units you made were crap. At least in DK2 only 2 units were considered bad, the Fly and Goblin. DK1 you had Fly, Beetle, Spider, Hellhound, Ghost. All are awful, if I was being nice and counted sacrifice as making up for it, that would still give you 3 crap units. Also I will forever see it as a fatal negative to DK1 that legit on the creature side, you basically had 5 creatures. 2 of them you had to go out of your way for. So for all intent and purpose, there was 3. Orc, Mistress, Bile Demons. Even Dragon was debatable, it was rough to kill, but not really threatening. Every creature but Fly and Goblin was useful in DK2.

    Also I never got the issue with comparing Warlock to Wizard and as well as Dark Elf and Elven Archer. Warlock was more support based with Heal while Wizard was pure damage. They are both spellcasters? Since DK1 didn't have what? Witch, Wizard, Monk, Fairy all be basically similar? Same deal for the archers. Dark Elf was purely about single target damage, Elven Archer actually while similar early on, gained AoE damage later on. At least if it was Guard and Royal Guard I will agree, was stupid a recolored Guard is the elite Hero unit. But ahh well. Also I saw Guards as fine, they were weaker Knights sure, but more common. Throw 8 mid level knights into a single room is rough, throwing say 5 mid level guards and a few knights is more tolerable.

  2. #62
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by IamShonji View Post
    I can understand having a higher standard for it. Just makes me shake my head everyone constantly praise DK1>DK2 When DK2 was hardly bad,
    To be fair, it's really hard for a game to actually be bad on its own. It's usually relatively bad, like for DK2. There's really no good reason for DK2 to be the way it is when DK1 showed how to do it better. A lot of the problems either DK1 showed could be solved, or they were poorly thought out solutions to DK1's problems, or they were outright lazily implemented ideas.

    Quote Originally Posted by IamShonji View Post
    I mean if you wanna be technical. DK2 is still the one seeing activity and play, while DK1 is kinda.....gone.
    ?

    DK1 still sees a lot of play, you still see recent posts for DK1. DK1 also has KeeperFX, while no one actually has gone nearly to the effort to do the same for DK2. There's a lot of campaigns for DK1 as well.

    The forum is pretty quiet now days, but I've been around for a long time and activity has generally favored DK1 over DK2.

    Quote Originally Posted by IamShonji View Post
    I never got the unit diversity thing. To me diversity means nothing if the units you made were crap.
    To say that DK1 is more diverse is to say that every unit is unique and feels unique. Bile Demons are special not because they're top tier but because they're unique. Tentacles, Hell Hounds, Demon Spawns, even the Beetle all offer different flavors that someone can become attached to. It's really hard to feel anything special from Knight #4, from seeing how your units and the Hero units are basically black and white versions of the same thing. It's creatively lazy.

    Having a larger separation between creatures and heroes creates a sense of identity that evil and good are more than just opposites of each other, but they're their own thing. This is important for a lot of reasons, but one important big reason is when you fight an enemy Keeper, it feels more distinctly like you're fighting evil because evil creatures are so different from Heroes. Fighting Heroes, likewise, feels different. In DK2, a lot of that is muddied into one thing. The line becomes a lot blurrier. Not to say it doesn't exist in DK2, it's just not as strong a contrast.

    Stat-wise, again, melee units are so similar in DK2 as are ranged units. I can tell you the differences because I can look at the numbers, and I still say they're not that differnet. Players don't have access to that, but they can just see the performance of every unit. When everyone just runs up to each other and whacks enemies with their weapon of choice until one falls, it gets incredibly samey after a while. Hell, movement speeds are pretty similar, so creatures running up to each other also gets to feel pretty samey. Spells are just basic projectiles most of the time, and ranged units are also a rare breed so even those don't matter so much. Spells themselves are just so rare. After a lot of DK2, everything just gets so mindnumbingly similar.

    Quote Originally Posted by IamShonji View Post
    At least in DK2 only 2 units were considered bad, the Fly and Goblin. DK1 you had Fly, Beetle, Spider, Hellhound, Ghost. All are awful, if I was being nice and counted sacrifice as making up for it, that would still give you 3 crap units. Also I will forever see it as a fatal negative to DK1 that legit on the creature side, you basically had 5 creatures. 2 of them you had to go out of your way for. So for all intent and purpose, there was 3. Orc, Mistress, Bile Demons. Even Dragon was debatable, it was rough to kill, but not really threatening. Every creature but Fly and Goblin was useful in DK2.
    There's a lot of garbage in DK2.

    Any Melee unit is outclassed by the super accessible Black Knight. The only one who potentially challenges that role is the Vampire but then we start getting into exploit territory, although Vampires are still a good bonus with Black Knights since they don't count against the creature portal limit. Dark Angels are technically stronger but their inaccessibility makes them worse practically. Black Knights also have a particular advantage in their massive threat value of 213, which is significantly higher than any non-boss unit's outside of the Dark Angel and of course, Hero Knight's. The next units in line are the Royal Guard and Giant with a Threat of 160, and the Bile Demon and Guard with 120. Mistress and Vampire have 107 to follow, and as you can imagine, threat values start dropping pretty lowly after that. A Black Knight can intimidate any non-boss enemy of equal level except for the Mistress, Bile Demon, Dark Angel, Guard, Giant, Royal Guard, and of course, (Black) Knight. Most units, especially if playing PvP, become unusable against a Black Knight.

    There's two ranged units, the Warlock and the Dark Elf. Their damage is 300 every 5 seconds, that's a lot weaker than Black Knight's 400 damage every 1.5 to 2 seconds (1.5 is their recharge time, I'm making an estimate that their animation could run up to 2 seconds). The Dark Elf's upgraded spell at level 4 is 450, and by level 8 it's... back to 300 actually, I don't know why their Guided Bolt at Level 8 drops back to 300. Anyway, this is obviously garbage compared to what the Black Knight gets every level, it's +25% of base so 1000 health and 100 attack. Warlock Healing is shit, it takes literally 3 seconds to react to a dying unit, seeing as they only heal once a creature is at critical health. The Heal Spell is overpowered so that is flat out better. So Warlocks don't exactly stand out as better, they have a slower attack speed than Dark Elves.

    Of these two garbage ranged units, the Warlock is necessary because it's the only unit that can research, yay DK2. Unless you get yourself some Vampires but then they're researching and not training, and Warlocks are more easily accessible without getting into exploit territory. That means you have no room for Dark Elves. Likewise, Trolls or Bile Demons only become relevant to manufacture. The Troll actually has a manufacture value of 60, while the Bile Demon a value of 50. Not much of a difference, considering the Bile Demon has 5000 more health, and the Troll has an attack of 130 every 1.3 seconds for a DPS of 100, while the Bile Demon has an attack of 525 every 3.5 seconds for a DPS of 150.

    So pretty much your army consists of Black Knights, Bile Demons, and Warlocks. Warlocks can be dumped out once you finish researching or get all the research you care for to trade in for more Black Knights. Although I suppose there is *some* advantage to having projectiles as opposed to a bunch of melee fighters, but it's only 300 damage every Fireball, 600 if a Warlock gets to Level 8. A Black Knight at Level 4 gets you 7000 health and 700 damage every hit.

    So no, if we're talking about playing optimally with units, looking at the numbers, you shouldn't be using anything but three units in DK2. Not exactly an improvement from DK1 in the way you're suggesting.

    Quote Originally Posted by IamShonji View Post
    Also I never got the issue with comparing Warlock to Wizard and as well as Dark Elf and Elven Archer. Warlock was more support based with Heal while Wizard was pure damage. They are both spellcasters? Since DK1 didn't have what? Witch, Wizard, Monk, Fairy all be basically similar? Same deal for the archers. Dark Elf was purely about single target damage, Elven Archer actually while similar early on, gained AoE damage later on. At least if it was Guard and Royal Guard I will agree, was stupid a recolored Guard is the elite Hero unit. But ahh well.
    You're right that it is technically wrong to be comparing the Warlock and Wizard and Dark Elf and Elven Archer, however you also miss the point completely as to why they're compared. They're aesthetically similar, being more direct counterparts of each other. DK2 introduces more of this direct counterpart setup, and then to top it off, they don't do enough to really distinguish themselves, so it feels distasteful and samey, lazy. Also as YourMaster says, leaves very little to explore. If Melee units are all so similar, then Ranged units with their spells would be the big opportunity to express distinctions, and yet, you have Warlocks and Wizards and Dark Elves all with the same level 1 spell of 300 damage every 5 seconds. Knives and Wizard Firebomb are both 450 damage every 7.5 seconds, against the Warlock's worthless Heal spell due to cast restrictions. I said above that the Guided Bolt is actually weaker, back to 300 damage, for a Level 8 spell, and Wizard gets Super Firebomb for 600 damage every 10 seconds, weaker than the Warlock's Firebomb for 600 damage every 7.5 seconds, although I'm honestly not going to try and math out which one's DPS ends up being higher at that level. So for several levels, the Warlock and Dark Elf are basically the same, until the Dark Elf can start to outclass the Warlock at level 4 in combat at least. Then the Dark Elf is similar to the Wizard outside of attack speed, for like 7 levels. Out of 10. Like, that is really not that different.

    The Elven Archer is interestingly enough, more distinct than the others, but again, that's never been mentioned as to precisely how because it's so minuscule that no one really noticed it until I looked at the exact numbers. They have 225 damage every 2 seconds, which is better at lower levels since it gives them something to constantly cast. This actually makes them pretty reasonable damage dealers at level 1, at least, compared to the other non-Black Knight units. Guided Bolt is 150 damage every 3.5 seconds, so Elven Archers actually get worse, much like Salamanders. As for Grenade, their AoE, it travels 4.8 tiles away from their cast point and detonates after 4 seconds with a recharge of 7.5. It deals 480 damage over 2 seconds (60 per 1 instance), and while it does have a 2 tile range, which is good for an AoE, it deals range-from-origin damage instead of constant aoe damage. That, combined with it traveling 4.8 tiles ahead, can make it much weaker of an AoE because it's less precise. I have to emphasize from my experience of using Range-from-origin damage in custom spells that 480 is really not a lot for a high point on something as inconsistent as this. This is also level 8. This wouldn't be good if it was the Elven Archer's only spell but he has two shittier spells with similarly low cast times he's also going to waste time on.

    I'm not sure how to respond to the rest though, I really am not. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. As I understand it, you're trying to say that DK1 had its share of similarities because of the Witch, Wizard, Monk, and Fairy all being spell castors, and that is just... wrong? I'm not sure exactly how to explain it because it seems so obvious to me, plain as day, to be wrong, so I can't even begin to comprehend why you'd suggest that.

    The Priestess is distinct because of her Wind spell alone, but even at early levels, she fights with Poison Gas to give her an early AoE. The Fairy is high on DPS due to her Luck stat, with Drain and Lightning both being multi-hitting attacks so she'll frequently up her damage. It's comparable to the Mistress with Speed, and although the Fairy's damage isn't as high as the Mistress', she does gain other abilities like Rebound, Meteor, and Freeze to differentiate herself from the Mistress. The Wizard is really well balanced but has a distinct level of survavability, with more Health than the other Hero ranged units, as well as gaining a combination of Rebound, Heal, and Drain in addition to Freeze. The Monk is a melee fighter, and he distinguishes himself from other melee fighters by having a lot of spells that both increase his offense and defense. I might as well mention the Archer, but he is a more basic and simplified ranged unit, which does comparatively make him stand out. He has faster movement with the Speed spell combined with slow, and an early level Navigating Missile.

    These DK1 Heroes are different from each other even early on, and they maintain that even at higher levels, if not further distinguishing themselves. It takes DK2 ranged units all the way up to level 8 to really distinguish themselves from one another, more than 3/4s of their leveling, and they're barely different from each other. I really do not understand how the two are even remotely comparable.

    Quote Originally Posted by IamShonji View Post
    Also I saw Guards as fine, they were weaker Knights sure, but more common. Throw 8 mid level knights into a single room is rough, throwing say 5 mid level guards and a few knights is more tolerable.
    At that point, why not use lower level Knights instead of mid level Knights, or fewer than 8 Knights? Having Guards as a weaker version of the same enemy doesn't really open up level design in any way. Sure, DK1 has a bit of this too, but even in examples like comparing Dwarves, Thieves, and Barbarians, they all still have unique abilities to separate them at mid to higher levels, and the difference between the power level of a Thief and Barbarian for example is so high that it's worth making them a separate unit, with Barbarians having over 2x the health of a Thief. Guards are literally 25% less health than a Knight with the same attack power but lower attack speed by a little bit. This is really bad when DK2 is already starved for unit variety with its reskinned melee units.
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  3. #63

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Furthermore, that in DK1 some units are way more powerful than others isn't really a knock against the units themselves, but against how you can form up your army. With the ability to throw away the weaker units there's for example no real reasons to keep trolls over orcs, or beetles over bile demons, but you shouldn't get to make this choice like this and you should end up with an army that's based around the dungeon you built, with just a few of the stronger units.

    And don't forget, in the 20 level campaign, in the first few levels you do play with the weaker ones, as you progress you get more of the stronger ones and that gets you some sense of progression. You're certainly not playing 20 levels with just orcs, mistresses and biles.

  4. #64

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    /Didn't wanna create a new thread specifically just for this question/

    My question is - am I right to understand that DK2 combat/stat system is much simpler compared to its predecessor?

    As far as I understand it, in DK2 you've got Health and Strength (damage), that's it.

    Whereas in DK1 you've got Health, Strength, Skill (chance to inflict) & Dexterity (chance to avoid), as well as Defence (decreasing damage) and Luck (chance to double attack or roll twice for defense).

    Am I understanding this right? why do you guys think DK2 was effectively dumbed down?

  5. #65

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Don't forget speed and attack speed.

    But it's easy to criticize dk2 for its combat, but streamlining the stats is not 'dumbing down' in any way. The DK1 stats were a mess. Defence(armour) for instance decreases damage, but as a straight percentage so it hardly does anything else compared to just increasing the hitpoints of a unit. (It only matters how effective the heal spell is). It would be much better for example if it would reduce damage by a fixed amount. That way you could have some slow units that hit hard (and be effective against high armour units) and fast units that hit often (to be effective against low armour units) and actually have it made a difference and require a balanced army somehow.
    DK1 had some stats, but the stats screens were a mess with faulty information and incorrect descriptions, but there really wasn't much of a point to know those stats either.

  6. #66

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Gear Rex View Post
    To be fair, it's really hard for a game to actually be bad on its own. It's usually relatively bad, like for DK2. There's really no good reason for DK2 to be the way it is when DK1 showed how to do it better. A lot of the problems either DK1 showed could be solved, or they were poorly thought out solutions to DK1's problems, or they were outright lazily implemented ideas.



    ?

    DK1 still sees a lot of play, you still see recent posts for DK1. DK1 also has KeeperFX, while no one actually has gone nearly to the effort to do the same for DK2. There's a lot of campaigns for DK1 as well.

    The forum is pretty quiet now days, but I've been around for a long time and activity has generally favored DK1 over DK2.



    To say that DK1 is more diverse is to say that every unit is unique and feels unique. Bile Demons are special not because they're top tier but because they're unique. Tentacles, Hell Hounds, Demon Spawns, even the Beetle all offer different flavors that someone can become attached to. It's really hard to feel anything special from Knight #4, from seeing how your units and the Hero units are basically black and white versions of the same thing. It's creatively lazy.

    Having a larger separation between creatures and heroes creates a sense of identity that evil and good are more than just opposites of each other, but they're their own thing. This is important for a lot of reasons, but one important big reason is when you fight an enemy Keeper, it feels more distinctly like you're fighting evil because evil creatures are so different from Heroes. Fighting Heroes, likewise, feels different. In DK2, a lot of that is muddied into one thing. The line becomes a lot blurrier. Not to say it doesn't exist in DK2, it's just not as strong a contrast.

    Stat-wise, again, melee units are so similar in DK2 as are ranged units. I can tell you the differences because I can look at the numbers, and I still say they're not that differnet. Players don't have access to that, but they can just see the performance of every unit. When everyone just runs up to each other and whacks enemies with their weapon of choice until one falls, it gets incredibly samey after a while. Hell, movement speeds are pretty similar, so creatures running up to each other also gets to feel pretty samey. Spells are just basic projectiles most of the time, and ranged units are also a rare breed so even those don't matter so much. Spells themselves are just so rare. After a lot of DK2, everything just gets so mindnumbingly similar.



    There's a lot of garbage in DK2.

    Any Melee unit is outclassed by the super accessible Black Knight. The only one who potentially challenges that role is the Vampire but then we start getting into exploit territory, although Vampires are still a good bonus with Black Knights since they don't count against the creature portal limit. Dark Angels are technically stronger but their inaccessibility makes them worse practically. Black Knights also have a particular advantage in their massive threat value of 213, which is significantly higher than any non-boss unit's outside of the Dark Angel and of course, Hero Knight's. The next units in line are the Royal Guard and Giant with a Threat of 160, and the Bile Demon and Guard with 120. Mistress and Vampire have 107 to follow, and as you can imagine, threat values start dropping pretty lowly after that. A Black Knight can intimidate any non-boss enemy of equal level except for the Mistress, Bile Demon, Dark Angel, Guard, Giant, Royal Guard, and of course, (Black) Knight. Most units, especially if playing PvP, become unusable against a Black Knight.

    There's two ranged units, the Warlock and the Dark Elf. Their damage is 300 every 5 seconds, that's a lot weaker than Black Knight's 400 damage every 1.5 to 2 seconds (1.5 is their recharge time, I'm making an estimate that their animation could run up to 2 seconds). The Dark Elf's upgraded spell at level 4 is 450, and by level 8 it's... back to 300 actually, I don't know why their Guided Bolt at Level 8 drops back to 300. Anyway, this is obviously garbage compared to what the Black Knight gets every level, it's +25% of base so 1000 health and 100 attack. Warlock Healing is shit, it takes literally 3 seconds to react to a dying unit, seeing as they only heal once a creature is at critical health. The Heal Spell is overpowered so that is flat out better. So Warlocks don't exactly stand out as better, they have a slower attack speed than Dark Elves.

    Of these two garbage ranged units, the Warlock is necessary because it's the only unit that can research, yay DK2. Unless you get yourself some Vampires but then they're researching and not training, and Warlocks are more easily accessible without getting into exploit territory. That means you have no room for Dark Elves. Likewise, Trolls or Bile Demons only become relevant to manufacture. The Troll actually has a manufacture value of 60, while the Bile Demon a value of 50. Not much of a difference, considering the Bile Demon has 5000 more health, and the Troll has an attack of 130 every 1.3 seconds for a DPS of 100, while the Bile Demon has an attack of 525 every 3.5 seconds for a DPS of 150.

    So pretty much your army consists of Black Knights, Bile Demons, and Warlocks. Warlocks can be dumped out once you finish researching or get all the research you care for to trade in for more Black Knights. Although I suppose there is *some* advantage to having projectiles as opposed to a bunch of melee fighters, but it's only 300 damage every Fireball, 600 if a Warlock gets to Level 8. A Black Knight at Level 4 gets you 7000 health and 700 damage every hit.

    So no, if we're talking about playing optimally with units, looking at the numbers, you shouldn't be using anything but three units in DK2. Not exactly an improvement from DK1 in the way you're suggesting.



    You're right that it is technically wrong to be comparing the Warlock and Wizard and Dark Elf and Elven Archer, however you also miss the point completely as to why they're compared. They're aesthetically similar, being more direct counterparts of each other. DK2 introduces more of this direct counterpart setup, and then to top it off, they don't do enough to really distinguish themselves, so it feels distasteful and samey, lazy. Also as YourMaster says, leaves very little to explore. If Melee units are all so similar, then Ranged units with their spells would be the big opportunity to express distinctions, and yet, you have Warlocks and Wizards and Dark Elves all with the same level 1 spell of 300 damage every 5 seconds. Knives and Wizard Firebomb are both 450 damage every 7.5 seconds, against the Warlock's worthless Heal spell due to cast restrictions. I said above that the Guided Bolt is actually weaker, back to 300 damage, for a Level 8 spell, and Wizard gets Super Firebomb for 600 damage every 10 seconds, weaker than the Warlock's Firebomb for 600 damage every 7.5 seconds, although I'm honestly not going to try and math out which one's DPS ends up being higher at that level. So for several levels, the Warlock and Dark Elf are basically the same, until the Dark Elf can start to outclass the Warlock at level 4 in combat at least. Then the Dark Elf is similar to the Wizard outside of attack speed, for like 7 levels. Out of 10. Like, that is really not that different.

    The Elven Archer is interestingly enough, more distinct than the others, but again, that's never been mentioned as to precisely how because it's so minuscule that no one really noticed it until I looked at the exact numbers. They have 225 damage every 2 seconds, which is better at lower levels since it gives them something to constantly cast. This actually makes them pretty reasonable damage dealers at level 1, at least, compared to the other non-Black Knight units. Guided Bolt is 150 damage every 3.5 seconds, so Elven Archers actually get worse, much like Salamanders. As for Grenade, their AoE, it travels 4.8 tiles away from their cast point and detonates after 4 seconds with a recharge of 7.5. It deals 480 damage over 2 seconds (60 per 1 instance), and while it does have a 2 tile range, which is good for an AoE, it deals range-from-origin damage instead of constant aoe damage. That, combined with it traveling 4.8 tiles ahead, can make it much weaker of an AoE because it's less precise. I have to emphasize from my experience of using Range-from-origin damage in custom spells that 480 is really not a lot for a high point on something as inconsistent as this. This is also level 8. This wouldn't be good if it was the Elven Archer's only spell but he has two shittier spells with similarly low cast times he's also going to waste time on.

    I'm not sure how to respond to the rest though, I really am not. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. As I understand it, you're trying to say that DK1 had its share of similarities because of the Witch, Wizard, Monk, and Fairy all being spell castors, and that is just... wrong? I'm not sure exactly how to explain it because it seems so obvious to me, plain as day, to be wrong, so I can't even begin to comprehend why you'd suggest that.

    The Priestess is distinct because of her Wind spell alone, but even at early levels, she fights with Poison Gas to give her an early AoE. The Fairy is high on DPS due to her Luck stat, with Drain and Lightning both being multi-hitting attacks so she'll frequently up her damage. It's comparable to the Mistress with Speed, and although the Fairy's damage isn't as high as the Mistress', she does gain other abilities like Rebound, Meteor, and Freeze to differentiate herself from the Mistress. The Wizard is really well balanced but has a distinct level of survavability, with more Health than the other Hero ranged units, as well as gaining a combination of Rebound, Heal, and Drain in addition to Freeze. The Monk is a melee fighter, and he distinguishes himself from other melee fighters by having a lot of spells that both increase his offense and defense. I might as well mention the Archer, but he is a more basic and simplified ranged unit, which does comparatively make him stand out. He has faster movement with the Speed spell combined with slow, and an early level Navigating Missile.

    These DK1 Heroes are different from each other even early on, and they maintain that even at higher levels, if not further distinguishing themselves. It takes DK2 ranged units all the way up to level 8 to really distinguish themselves from one another, more than 3/4s of their leveling, and they're barely different from each other. I really do not understand how the two are even remotely comparable.



    At that point, why not use lower level Knights instead of mid level Knights, or fewer than 8 Knights? Having Guards as a weaker version of the same enemy doesn't really open up level design in any way. Sure, DK1 has a bit of this too, but even in examples like comparing Dwarves, Thieves, and Barbarians, they all still have unique abilities to separate them at mid to higher levels, and the difference between the power level of a Thief and Barbarian for example is so high that it's worth making them a separate unit, with Barbarians having over 2x the health of a Thief. Guards are literally 25% less health than a Knight with the same attack power but lower attack speed by a little bit. This is really bad when DK2 is already starved for unit variety with its reskinned melee units.
    I don't remember how to do the seperate quotes so bare with me.

    I agree with the first part, DK2 shoulda either did the same things DK1 did that was good if not do it better, and improve on the things DK1 failed at. Like was said, it did have a mix of improvements and failures, and I won't deny it had more negative than positive.

    2nd part fair enough.

    3rd part I always was of the mind I don't like excess fluff for the sake of fluff. It could just be my mindset, but I don't like bad units that are meant to be bad. I don't want all units to be on par with Mistresses, but would have been nice if more units were alright. I myself used to have an affinity for Spiders funny enough since I LOVE Hailstorm and they were basically one of the only units that had it on creature side. But I never expected it to live any serious combat. Rest of it true, since you see the numbers I can get everything feeling the same. From a playing standpoint, even if I don't play vanilla DK2 anymore as you already know, I used to like just seeing a huge amount of fireballs from Salamanders, even if it did actually weaken them, things like that was awesome to see.

    4th part I forgot about the ease of Black Knights, not much can be said about that. I forgot the dreaded, build Lair, Hatchery, Treasury, Combat Pit, and Library and thats it.

    5th part I was mostly going off the idea of what is so wrong about having something simply like....good mage and bad mage, good archer and bad archer? For the archer's case, how different can you really make 2 units that shoot bows? At least mages coulda gave them different spells to make them feel different (Warlock being the dark mage, having fire and dark spells, ones that make more sense in an underground/hellish land. Meanwhile Wizard had more elemental based ones more expected on the surface, stone based, lightning based, water based even etc)

    Also for the mention of the spellcasters in DK1, I was merely saying since Heroes had 4 spellcasters, why isn't that a call to sameness? I know Witch was special since she was a nuisance with Wind and Ass Gas and didn't do much else, but the rest of them more or less wasn't that too different. Seeing a high level Wizard/Monk/Fairy it all felt the same at that point even if they looked different, they all basically shot the same projectiles that you could change them all to 1 unit and it would basically be the same. Fairy had Lightning, Wizard had Hailstorm, Monk had Nav Missile which was mostly the only difference. Again point I was trying to make was they felt samey but again coulda been me.

    The final point I could just be biased since I liked Guards, but I never saw an issue with just a flat at weaker unit. Even in old medival days, there was plenty of melee fighters, some shittier than others, but still existed. Knights are a rarity, not everyone is a noble or did an extreme deed to get such a title, some guys are just standard file warriors, which to me was the Guard. Not everyone was a full plate soldier with a huge sword or pike, there was plenty of guys that had no armor or lesser armor and lesser weapons that were more standard. I got special pleasure seeing a group of Guards beating the snot out of Knights, seeing the little man take down the big rich boy.

  7. #67
    Awakening Game Master Metal Gear Rex's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    DK2 did simplify things too much to the point that melee combat becomes stale. If there's one nice thing about DK1 it's that there's not a clear cut winner to a melee fight, whereas in DK2, the predictability of it makes the fight practically end when it first begins.

    Randomness doesn't have to be the answer to this, but it's probably better than waiting for two big dumb idiots to finish hitting each other.

    Actually, I lied. Some units do have randomness in DK2, and that's because they have two separate attack animations. These attack animations can end up being longer than their melee cooldown, resulting in them waiting for their animation to finish. Therefore, there is randomness in whether or not you get the shorter or longer of two attack animations. Note that not everyone has two melee attack animations.
    Black Knights always win against Knights for example, even though they're statistically the same, if only because they have one attack animation different from each other, where the Knight's ends up being longer so he attacks less frequently.
    Dungeon Keeper 2 Patch: With More Balance and Pie [Hiatus]
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  8. #68

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    When you want to separate a quote, simply type [/quote] at where you want make the quote stop. Then, copy and paste the first line of first quote right after that and type you message in between.

    As for how similar the Monk/Wizard/Fairy/Witch are,... first of all they look and sound and move very differently. They don't look like variations of the same unit.
    But beyond that, they all have very different behavior and require different units to fight. The Monk is a melee unit with heal and drain, if you have low level units they will just wreck you because you can't kill them. A Wizard is a unit that is excellent in one on one fights, it freezes, does high damage, heals, but if there are two damaging melee units and it doesn't have protection it quickly falls. A Witch however can kill a Wizard and most other spellcasters in a fight because it has lightning, but most importantly the gas/wind combination it has makes it very difficult to defeat with melee units either. It needs to either be defeated by Bile Demons, by a larger number of units with lightning/drain or with a micro management, what helps is that heal comes very late for witches and on most maps the witches that come come without heal. Now Fairies are already unique because they fly and come from different angles, but they also do a butt-load of damage quick, and if they are over lava you better deal with the situation quickly or you're toast.

    Now the hero diversity isn't too bad for DK2, but it doesn't help that the evil creatures resemble them so much. In DK1 the evil side is really different from the heroes, with the warlock being the only human in the bunch. In DK2 you have the Dark Knight, Rogue, Elf on top of that.

  9. #69

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2

    Fair enough, also Mistress was also clearly human. So 2 humans DK1, 4 humans DK2, Warlock, Rogue, Mistress, and most likely Black Knight. Both games had a bunch of humanoids. DK2 was more humanized since it only had 3 nonhumanoid creatures, Fly and Salamander and Bile Demon vs DK1 that roughly half the roster was nonhumanoids.

    I think moral of the story is both games had their flaws. DK2 got simplified too much sure, but like I was saying originally, things like Boulder traps being insanely busted and made most levels a joke, as well as exploits like Vampire generation, imp imprisonment, hell even Guard post against lava/water I didn't like nullified it a lot. In DK2 if you are opened to water, you are opened to water, Secret Door was your only solution and it came so late that it mostly didn't matter. If Lava traps didn't exist it would be more tolerable but you could create your own unpassable terrain too.

    I also like to mention I feel combat contrary to what was said, felt more alive in DK2. You had more HUGE scale battles in DK2. What comes to mind is the first Keeper level and the final level, you had something like 50+ heroes on the map, in the final level's case, you had fights against 20+ heroes at once. DK1 you rarely fought more than a few heroes at a time usually.

    My own opinion as well is I often find myself coming back to DK2 more than DK1. I know I don't play vanilla anymore, I play Rex's patch, but I see that as roughly similar to play KeeperFX for DK1. Honestly I couldn't even explain why. I just prefer DK2 over DK1.
    Last edited by IamShonji; September 11th, 2019 at 16:23.

  10. #70

    Default Re: Why DK1 is better than DK2


    Mistress doesn't look human to me at all.

    But it's fine if you prefer DK2 somehow. I completed DK2 just a single time myself with no intention of coming back.

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