I would love to see more longer videos like this from you in the future. You were really able to dig into stuff nicely and I also liked how you addressed counterpoints within the video.
Thanks! There will definitely be videos of this length (and even longer) on the channel in the future, although my next one is likely to be a short video. Ideally, by alternating the scope of projects, I hope to be able to maintain my current schedule of releasing a video every month while still occasionally putting out larger videos like this one.
@@TheGemsbok Length is not a problem. Take all the length you need to make your point or points. Looking forward to them. If I were you, wouldn't hold myself to releasing schedules, make videos whenever you feel like and don't when you're not in the mood. When you only do things when you feel like to you do them better with less effort as well ^-^
Hahaha, nothing to be ashamed of. I think that's basically the default playstyle for starting a new strategy game. Personally, that's exactly how I was playing Darkest Dungeon until I got to the level 5 missions.
As a D&D GM, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the low level grind parties in this game. They feel like One-shot parties that I run in TTRPGs, and often they suffer the same fates. Have an exciting run, maybe some deaths along the way, and hopefully enough loot and fun to make the crawls worth it. That being said, I don't think that they should have made higher level adventurers too pompous to go on lower level missions. I think the opposite should be at play, where you can take them on lower level missions that still have the real possibility of death, but lower stress build up because they have done it all before. This paired with the smaller roster idea that you made really strong points for could make it so the firm attachment to the stronger heroes is maintained and hopefully keep them in The Hamlet less often considering how much they have to be utilized for farming good gear. Only big issue I can think of is the afflictions that would need to be either rebalanced or adjusted entirely.
If I were to remold this game, I would remove as much of the grind as possible. You can't remove negative quirks, you can't lock in quirks, stress relief in town is more effective and doesn't cause drawbacks. Your roster caps out at like 15 heroes. A maximum of 4 new heroes appear per week. Make the trinket purchasing option in town more effective at getting you what you need so you don't have to grind for ages in dungeons to get trinkets you need. Remove the dungeon difficulty levels and hero levels. The difficulty of dungeons raises with the number of weeks that have passed. Hero upgrades are more compact, only 2 upgrades per move and 2 upgrades for weapon and armor to add some progression without making things obnoxious. These upgrades would allow characters to rise to the increasing difficulty of dungeons and powerful trinkets would allow newcomers to weather the increased difficulty as well. Hero corpses would be a thing. Reduce the intrinsic need for money and heirlooms to feel like you're progressing and instead push the need to defeat various area bosses to gain progression. Each defeated boss gets an item that allows you to purchase a hamlet upgrade once you have the required heirlooms to do so, which you should have by that point. This would force players to seriously judge the upgrades they wish to purchase for the hamlet and prioritize getting to bosses quickly and efficiently as the difficulty of dungeons keeps naturally rising. Players can't repeat boring strategies and feel compelled to make their starting heroes work in a race against the clock thus endearing them to their roster and forming intimacy with the game's demanding pace. A strong focus on reducing the grind to manageable levels would also improve the pace of the game and respect the player's time more.
Really well-made video. It really seems like the developers should be able to make these changes pretty easily to make the gameplay align better with their intentions. I have a feeling the corpse mechanic will be changed, especially since it is in the DLC...
Unfortunately, the devs have stated in a Q&A about the new DLC that they aren't planning to bring the player-character corpses into the singleplayer content ( www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/gscihh/the_butchers_circus_dlc_dev_qa/ ). But I do hope they'll change their mind about it, as the reasoning they present there is basically just that 'they haven't considered it enough.' The mismatch between the pacing of the town/character management mechanics and the pacing of dungeon mission progress is a hairy issue that would probably be pretty tough to fix, but the issues surrounding the affliction and positioning systems should indeed be fairly easy to improve. But even for those easier things, with development on their last DLC done and Darkest Dungeon 2 now looming on the horizon, I'm pessimistic about the prospect that further development attention will be directed toward the game.
I remember watching a streamer play through the Stygian difficulty as his first playthrough blind successfully. The strategy he ended up relying on was stalling out combats for lengthy periods of time as he let his characters gain afflictions, then recovering them with a party with multiple stress relievers until he rolled a virtue on all 4 characters. It was incredibly dull to watch, and probably shouldn't be a thing that's possible.
Very odd! I'm surprised to hear that a strategy like that would work in Stygian, since you can't disable the extra stress and enemy reinforcements that trigger on long battles in that mode. Or maybe those elements were added later, just to address that method?
@@TheGemsbok It was a long time ago, but as I recall, he'd leave two enemies alive to prevent reinforcements, and the extra stress wasn't enough to counter the healing. It may have been changed since then though.
I am thoroughly impressed by the quality of this video, you certainly are a hidden gem! Will check out the rest of your channel and hopefully you can grow because you deserve it!
Thank you for a very nice comment! I am currently aiming to release a new video essay in every calendar month, so you can rest assured that more is on the way.
Excellent video, I enjoyed darkest dungeon as well. The art style, many of the game mechanics, random dungeon design, and character design also. However, after I finished the first "darkest dungeon" I knew I was done. The amount of effort and mental resilience required on my part to complete the run left me with a sense of relief, instead of Satisfaction or Joy and that's not why I play games. If the ability to remove stress from afflicted characters was improved, I would have finished the game.
Very good points that are well made throughout the length of the video, absolutely will be subscribing for more of this quality in the future. The part for me that generated an eventual annoyance with the game, leading to discontinuing play(and this is before the DLCs) was well covered- it is often most effective to buff a set of heroes into being powerhouses, and using the rest as a rotating pack mule team that goes spelunking and exists purely to bring back as much in the way of profit and supplies as possible before being fired, and then just hiring new heroes to repeat the process again until your A-Team is back in action. The inventory system particularly felt constricting to me, too little space and too many items that couldn't stack up into a single slot often meant leaving missions early or discarding equipment, continuing the eternal parade of the pack mules.
That's a great point about the inventory management that I completely overlooked when writing this video. Any time I ever did a long-duration (or, even worse, epic-duration) mission, I inevitably ended up discarding large amounts of available resources. Actually, looser inventory restrictions would've definitely made the Crimson Court epic missions less of a chore---as then they could always result in 'shopping sprees' in town afterward. Anyway, thanks for the solid comment and for the subscribe.
The video basically explained how I felt perfectly. The first fifteen to twenty hours learning character synergies and the different dungeons and bosses were really enjoyable and I thought the game was great but then slowly devolved into an unfinished and tedious game that I was just bored by more than anything. I swear it went from a 9/10 to a 6-7/10 so seamlessly it was odd
Indeed, the only reason I never beat the campaign is because the game just doesn't respect my time. I don't have time to spend 4-8 hours making team of level 5 heroes with perfect trinkets, quirks and upgrades that can brave the darkest dungeon only for them to be literally useless in exploring the rest of the darkest dungeon and needing 4 new shmucks to get through the next part. I do not have the time to replace fallen level 5 heroes, I do not have the patience to grind for trinkets and I do not have the desire to form 3 groups of heroes adequate to defeat the final challenge of the game with a large chance for one or more of those heroes to die as nbn d thus costing me more time. I just want to paint the interesting, strategy filled portion of the game. I do not want to play a grinding simulator. It is tedious and boring.
I agree with your video, especially with your comments on roster size and blatant padding. My one nitpick is with the Crimson Court districts. The ridiculous cost of Crimson Court districts are probably intended to force the player to make trade-offs when deciding which district buffs to go for when playing on the hardest difficulty, which puts a time limit over the entire campaign. Grinding to complete a ton of districts is one of those problems where players are taking the fun out of the game in the name of completion. Then again, if you need to police yourself to make the system engaging, that's still a system with room for improvement. I think the campaign-wide time limit generally does Darkest Dungeon's town layer a lot of good since it forces the player to make more compromises and think more about what they're doing on the campaign level. It also encourages players to progress the campaign instead of grinding trinkets and so on. Maybe that time limit should've been applied by default to every difficulty level. On the other hand the game is already really intimidating the new players, and the noob traps tend to result in a ton of wasted time. Really I think DD's biggest problem is that the punishment for fucking up is hours of grinding. Having a DD alumni's experience buff helps speed things along, but it's still a chore to replace a level 6 guy who you had been grooming for your next Darkest Dungeon run.
That’s definitely an interesting point, and it’s very fair to say that the analysis in this video is geared much more toward Darkest and Radiant than it is toward Stygian. But given the exceptional rarity of a player going all the way through Stygian (0.7% of players, according to Steam), most of whom have likely already completed a campaign in one of the other modes, I don’t think that it should have been a significant factor in the balancing of the Crimson Court for the other modes (if, indeed, it was). The bigger issue I’m underlining in that section is that adding small buffs that are obtainable through additional farming is not an interesting way to grow the game. Rewarding players for finishing unique challenges will always feel better than rewarding them for grinding. That’s why I say it’s an element of design that reminds me of a free-to-play title; usually, that kind of design is reserved for manipulative mechanics intended to pressure players to pay their way past. Realistically, even up at Stygian, I believe the district system would’ve been greatly improved if the DLC bosses (Fanatic, Crocodillian, Baron, Viscount, and Countess) were tied to specific districts whose repair/construction materials they were ‘hoarding’ or ‘guarding’, in a manner similar to how the Garden Guardian quest always rewards two trinket-set trinkets. Unfortunately, I have a sinking feeling that if that WAS how the districts were implemented, they would’ve found another way to have it result in a gigantic grind, such as requiring 5 or even 10 kills of each boss to unlock each district. (After all, that’s essentially how the districts and trinkets added in the Color of Madness work.) I completely agree with you that the padding/grinding is the biggest issue plaguing the game; that’s why it’s the subject of the longest section of my analysis, as well as most of the conclusion. At the end of the day, making mistakes is not the only way to be subjected to extra hours of grinding. As I say in the video, characters can die in “sudden and tragic twists of fate.” Sheer bad luck is more than sufficient to kill a character every once in a while; all it takes is the same character getting hit by a crit from one enemy, and then a bad death’s door roll from any source before the player has a chance to intervene.
You enjoy the core loop if the game is enjoyable. DD just stops being enjoyable after a while, mainly due to permadeath costing you hours of real world time to set up for another attempt at the Darkest Dungeon or a boss fight for a trinket. Moreover, if your party wipes you lose trinkets gathered over hours of long dungeons with difficult bosses. This is the real reason why7 few people try to finish the game. Especially since in this day and age it is so much easier to watch the ending on UA-cam or Twitch, because after failed 10+ attempts up and a maxed-out town you don't care about Dismas #12 and Reynauld #11, you just want to finish the thing. It's a great game damaged by design choices which should be restricted to Stygian/Bloodmoon. Catering to the very vocal elitist masochistic part of the community made the game unenjoyable at midgame and in the lategame.
This video is fucking awesome, the analysis is clear-minded and the rhetoric is lit. I fully expect this channel to explode at some point, subscribed and I'm off to watch every other game video you have.
Well, that is an exceptionally nice comment! Thanks so much. I think I've finally ironed out the last of the kinks in my video style over the past few months, so I do expect the rest of this year's videos to bring a lot of growth to the channel.
Icame back to this game recently and found myself cheating through the grind.. especially those new buildings. And then I was like.. jeez whats the point anymore. This video convinced me to just uninstall and move on. 6 years.. they should have balanced this.
Same. Like... those new buildings... such a grind. I just prefer games where u level up a character & don't lose it & have to start over dozens of times & re-level & retrain it
I 100% agree with the inflimation of game play and the problem with corpses. The game could possible be shortened in the late game as the grind is quite harsh at times. However the time gate and the affliction problem also seem to be less so in the hardest difficulty as it changes the entire game with adding an endgame. Additionally, the creation of "perfect characters" is also a misleading concept as the quirks are made to strategy lock bad quirks that do nothing to your character and locking in one of many hypothetical positive quirk. The week limit placed in bloodborn makes your resource management and planning much more impact full with an endgame in the horizon. However the fact that the game is still long sucks as it sometimes might seem so much for one run.
I agree I would probably have more than one playthrough if it wasn't such a drag in certain aspects my first playthrough was like 80 hours but I stretched it over like 2 years because I'd mad grind it like 20 hours and then take time off INORDINANT EXAGUINATION
your comment about DD having 30 hours of great content but taking 60 hours to complete is EXACTLY the thought I had about Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Except in that one it’s more like 30 hours of great content in a 90 hour game.
darkest dungeon was explain well in this video, i could not get into the grindy stuff and the issues in later game. Swords and Sandals was the first game i remember of this type of game, 10 years before darkest dungeon released.
Great video, dunno if you’re still looking through the comments on this one, but I feel like the sequel will address some of your complaints with the original. From what we know, the game will focus on a journey to a destination, with the devs comparing it to the LOTR; and the journey to Mordor. Possibly Meaning a considerably shorter campaign, and hopefully less grinding. The game will also focus on your relationship with your heroes, since from the looks of things, you’ll only get 4.
Beyond the initial trailer, I haven't looked into any material about the sequel. That last point in particular, about maybe only getting 4 characters, sounds very promising. It would please me greatly if the sequel were to be an improvement over all or most of the elements covered in this video. Thanks for sharing that info.
i honestly just completely ignore diseases and quirks. I mean i consider them when picking a team for a quest but I dont spend money to remove/lock them in ever. i am at 24 weeks maybe i will need to adjust my strategy
Love it great content but I have a question im hoping someone could answer i play on console so perhaps my issue is that simple but how do you get the werewolf guy amd the cleric in the same party for me certain religious charecters won't playe with party with "abominations:
On PC, that restriction was removed when The Color of Madness DLC released. I don't know whether it's actually part of the DLC or is a separate update for the base game from the same time, and I also don't know whether the relevant update is available on console.
Having now checked out your website, I'm wondering how you decide which articles are worth making into videos, and which are better off in text format..
Great question! In terms of the four main categories, I decided to only turn game and film articles into videos because I think videos are inherently closer to how people consume games and films. I figure that the literary analysis and philosophy are fine to leave as articles, though, because the majority of literature and philosophy is consumed as writing anyway. But within the game and film series (which is what I figure you were probably really asking about), there are actually very few articles that I'm not planning to eventually turn into videos. Basically, I'll be leaving a few older/lower-quality articles (and all of the guest posts) out. But other than that, just about all of them should be videos some day. The only guiding principle in which ones are getting converted first is that I've been starting with the more accessible stuff (with the exception of the Papers, Please video) and some of the easier videos to make in terms of required footage (with the exception of the Isaac video). I'll start mixing in the heavier analytical material and larger projects at some point later on.
I know there are a lot of things to criticize this game about, and I have quite a few myself, but this is still one of my favorite games/experiences of all-time. It’s a game about making the best of a bad situation. If the RNG is working against me, my party gets afflicted, etc. I always come back to that quote. The best aspect of the game for me, and the one that made this game have such a lasting effect on me, is the transformation that you go through while playing it. I’ve explained it in much more detail in other places on the internet but you explained it pretty well when you talked about the attachment to the characters. The moment you stop naming people is when the characters stop being “characters” and are just means to an end. They become pieces of meat for you to throw at challenges and discard until you finally succeed. Once you take a step back and realize all of the changes that have occurred in your playstyle since the beginning of the game, it makes you feel kind of like a monster and it’s a pretty great feeling. The game in general and the specific mechanics I mentioned have a ton of problems that you brought up here, but it can never take that initial experience away from me.
@@TheGemsbok don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with every criticism you brought up about the game. I could probably add more on top of it too. As much as I loved the experience I mentioned here, I also lost that first save file before I could even attempt the Darkest Dungeon due to some bug I encountered and had to start over from scratch but by that point the game already had me in it’s grasp so I couldn’t just walk away from it. But I don’t think these issues should discourage anyone from playing the game. Even with all it’s issues, it really is something special. On paper, I should have hated a lot of the aspects of this game but I believe the whole is better than it’s parts and I’m glad I gave it a shot instead of listening to some of the criticisms I read about it at launch. Anyway, great video. I added a bunch more to a playlist to listen to at work. I don’t know how I’ve gone so long without stumbling upon your channel.
I agree with this a lot but in addition my main problem with this game is that you rarely feel like you are getting any better at it, most of the progress i ever made was almost entirely based on the characters i bring, their level and equipment and especially on my luck aka the map layout, combat encounters and stress. I'd would be completely fine with the harshness of the mechanics if they were used to teach the player but instead it feel like the game is just shitting on you for the sake of it
The grindy mid-to-late game isn't something that's easily solved, I feel. Your points were solid but as I see it, any fix would have negative consequences. First, one could reduce the dull grind by providing larger monetary rewards for hard missions and making stress healing more consistent so your main heroes could get back into the action faster, thus obviating the tedium at the cost of making high-leveled, powerful heroes less rare and therefore less precious, reducing your connection to them even further. This might still be preferable by allowing players to get to the end-game before they've lost interest in the game. The other option might be to make high-level heroes harder to get, possibly by lowering the maximum possible level of a "fresh-off-the-coach" hero so that every high-level hero you have was the result of your precious time and energy, making them more valuable and making losing them more painful, but that just dramatically increases the grind necessary should you actually lose them. Unfortunately, I think the problem is almost intractable because the systems are working at cross-purposes and fixing one element exacerbates the flaws of the other. It's possible there's a solution out there and I'm just constrained by trying to work within the confines of the game-as-it-exists, of course.
I think that's an excellent analysis of the situation. I come to a similar conclusion about elements working 'at apparently cross purposes' in the video, although obviously I don't try to provide robust potential solutions to the grind issue there. I agree that it's definitely a hairy problem that touches on multiple aspects of the game's design, and would likely require fairly drastic reworking to properly address. In thinking about it for a moment just now, I think it would require a multi-pronged approach, possibly including some of the following alterations: - The restrictions on high-level characters entering low-level missions could be removed, to make it possible to power-level characters after first acquiring a crop of max-level heroes. - Both random benefits and detriments of town activities could be made more rare and more impactful. - The experience rewards for champion-level and long-duration missions could be greatly increased, to make it strategically incentivized to play these otherwise high-risk-low-reward missions in order to speed up the campaign as a whole. - The way that dead heroes can occasionally wander out of the graveyard and return to life could be made into a full-fledged mechanic, rather than being a very rare possible weekly event. - More variety could be introduced into mission goals, to make completing missions feel less like doing the same task nearly a hundred times in a row. - A barter system could be introduced into the trinket shop in the town, in order to make it possible to exchange valuable trinkets and thereby make it faster and more reliable to acquire a set of trinkets that meshes well with one's team synergies.
Sorry, just a question: from which point of view should "grinding" be considered a bad game design choice? More like...something you do not like...? Because it is not...unless you have your team at level 10 vs enemies at level 40
As explained in the video, the grinding is unwelcome because it represents such a dramatic mismatch between the time required to experience the content of the game and the time required to complete the content of the game. In Darkest Dungeon, the former is far shorter than the latter. Repeating identical content for hours on end to make up lost ground---particularly when that ground was lost to random chance or insufficient information provided by the game---feels more like a chore than an engaging experience. With sufficient variance, the content of a game may offer some defense against feeling like it has been fully experienced even when it runs out of strictly new content (many of the past decade's successes in the roguelike genre offer ready examples). Darkest Dungeon does not provide sufficient variance along those lines to maintain full engagement throughout a completed campaign; its strategy mechanics are ultimately too shallow, its missions too interchangeable, and its enemy variety too limited to justify its campaign length being in the range of 60-80 hours.
@@TheGemsbok I mean: some (and I repeat: some, not all) of the problems get solved if you play with mods just like I do, but I overall agree with you. DD grinding is not fun, but it is something that makes you waste a lot of time doing the same missions over and over again and forces you to repeat the same tasks just because you are unlucky.
I don't even think it has 30 hours of great content. There's a lot of stuff that seemed interesting at first, but ended up being smoke and mirrors eventually. There is a lot of reusing of content, terribly boring grindy tactics (sending lvl 1 heroes on suicide missions to get gold, stalling out fights), and the terribly lackluster character development, which is pretty giving your guys higher numbers. Your critique was quite mild, even if fairly accurate, but I'm really disappointed in how many people actually... enjoyed this game.
Ha, you might be the first person in the past year to suggest I may have gone too easy on the game in this video. But in a way, I'm sure you're right. I have a long history of playing both roguelike games and RPGs with random battles---so I am primed to accept some repetition of content. As a result, the repetition didn't start to bother me personally until about the 20-hour mark (around when I started to see all of it as grinding, and accordingly stopped being able to have any real emotional investment in any aspect of the game). So if it had ended around 30 hours, I probably wouldn't have bothered making this video. But even with that conservative estimate, that still leaves 30+ hours of what I deem to be completely unnecessary and even unwanted repetition in a first playthrough . . . which is quite a lot of needlessly wasted time.
@@TheGemsbok I agree. I had high hopes for the game, but sadly it didn't deliver for me. That said, they're taking a very different approach to DD2 and from what I've seen they've actually taken steps to radically change the loop of the game the second time around.
1) The implementation of afflictions: Agreed, the tutorial could be better. About removing afflictions though: Unless you are talking about early game, if you've never been able to reduce the stress to 0 with a stress healer in your party, you don't know how to stall properly. 2)The Awkward Pace of Town mechanics: Your heroes come out of the dungeons with high stress? Early on dismiss them and get new ones. Lategame: Always bring someone who can stress heal and come out of the dungeon with 0 or close to 0 stress. Learn how to create opportunities to heal. Focus stress dealers. Even if there are no stress healers in a party, if it is efficient enough, you won't need to send everybody to relax. Go to Cove for quirk removal. Get disease resist and/or someone who can heal diseases when camping if going to Warrens/Weald. By lategame, there shouldn't be any "expendable" teams this way. No need to grind away for eternity to upgrade everything in hamlet. You only really need Stagecoach, Blacksmith, Guild, Sanitarium and maybe some upgrades to Abbey. The only really game changing district is a bank, that, if build early enough in the campaign + with some antiquarian gold farming early on, can satisfy your needs for money for the rest of the game so you can focus solely on gathering the heirlooms. The rest are good, but optional/skippable. 3) Character Death's Effect on Positioning: It really does seem unfair if you think about it, but I always felt that it is fair enough. Plus at some point after sinking enough hours playing the game, I rarely lose characters, and when I do, losing one is usually not that detrimental to a team's position in a fight. 4) Preemptive Addressing of a Likely Rebuttal: While it is true that Darkest Dungeon was intended to be frustrating by the developers, I think it is frustrating for all the wrong reasons. New players who like the game enough to keep playing will eventually get good, stop complaining about rng and start complaining about grinding. I'm going to say it: it is not a hard game, but it is punishing. It doesn't take much skill to complete it, but usually people who do, will remember the slog they had to go through, put the game on a shelf as completed and move on. Only some crazy maniacs like me will stay for more. And at some point you start finding ways to avoid the grind and move through the game faster. As I've said, it doesn't take much skill to complete the game, but it does take a lot of game knowledge, tactics, planning ahead and bumping up the game speed to about 5x with third-party software to truly enjoy it. Is it a problem? It's hard for me to tell, because I do enjoy Darkest Dungeon as it is(apart from having to up the game speed by my own means) and I'm not a game developer, so I can't really think of a solution. 5) Conclusion: Overall I'd say all your criticism is completely understandable. I don't think you are "ready for prime time games journalism bud" like one angry commenter said. I know I stated all these counter-arguments above, but to learn stuff like that, you need to get really invested in this game, and that can be hard at times. On the other hand, It's hard for me to imagine what can be changed to relieve these issues without removing something that I personally enjoy.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed comment. To your points: 1) While stress management and stress reduction are certainly possible, the game actively opposes stalling tactics through the implementation of reinforcements and added stress as the duration of most battles increase ( darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Reinforcements ). It's true that combat delay penalties can be disabled in the options, but that more-or-less proves that doing so is in contradiction of the game's design. Moreover, I'm not just talking about general stress reduction there; I'm talking specifically about curing afflictions. Once a player realizes that they should universally do it, avoiding 100 stress is relatively straightforward. The issue I highlight there is that the game's virtues, tutorials, and concealed stats sum together to mislead a player into allowing 100 stress well into their first campaign. As the majority of afflictions themselves increment stress and cause rejection of camping skills, having a single stress healer is rarely sufficient to cure afflictions in a party. 2-5) In these points, you're talking about a highly optimized metagame strategy. I think the majority of people would agree that the experience of a game on its first full playthrough at normal difficulty really constitutes what the game is like---moreso than the experience available to a speedrunner or a super-fan on their 3rd+ playthrough. The first playthrough is, after all, the only experience that over 95% of players (literally, as measured by Steam) will have. I agree with basically everything you say in point (4). When you grant that an ideal way to play may ultimately include a mod that increases game speed by up to a factor of 5, that strongly implies that even an experienced player would naturally agree there's a pacing issue in the game as designed.
I dissagree on your first point, because how its worded is important. the game dont say "You can remove aflictions if they reach 0 stress so make sure to try to get them down to it" the way it is written will make you try to reduce it for a mission and then not try it because you realize how impossible of a task it is without a team built for that purpose.
The potentially misleading nature of the relevant tutorial message is only one of three aspects of the implementation of the affliction system highlighted in that section, as summed up toward its end: "the incredible harshness of its secretive mechanical effects, the fiction that it can be overcome at regular intervals, and the false hope of glowing virtues." It's only through the combination of these elements that the system gives and implies bad strategic advice.
@@TheGemsbok I mean alot is not told to you via gameplay and to any normal player (There are statistically a chance someone didnt have it ofc) most ppl will have afflictions the first few times they reach 100 stress meaning they are scared of it. it does teach players that trying to rely on getting virtues just is not going to work. Now I do agree on the point that it can be clearer since I personally never used any virtue changing relics due to not knowing/wanting to risk it. But my point is that the game teaches most things like perma death and what curios do by trial and error. Therefore I dont think that how the game introduce it is bad with how it tells you that you can remove afflictions and how you are expected to just run into it to figure out stress WHILE still seeing the value in the point you bring up with the viritue chance stat being shown
Ah, thank you for clarifying. Yes, you do learn about it by trial and error. But most mechanics at least have statistics associated with them to use as reference points (and it's not necessarily good design in the strategy genre to rely on player trial-and-error when it comes to basic mechanical concepts anyway; trial-and-error in strategy games should be reserved for strategy). Anyway, sorry if my previous comment came across as curt.
What i would say is that i NEVER uptdated past the first anitcuarian uptdate. Why? Because they BUUUUUFFF money earning so much balanze just brake. I get it was for the Buildings after, but you have to realize how easily now is to pay for characters equipment and skills compared to before Also, never had the problem of Overpower team A vs disposable B. This is because i always concider ALL characters important planing the 6 final teams from the begining. So i am having the teams take turns and build their position and skills individually with "personal" trinkets. Also, abusing decises is funny, for example, leting a crusader keep his +damage -acc and focus with damage trinkets makes it a trully interesting character. Finally, an issue i abuse of, relife in town, even at 198 stress, when coming back to town ANY character is set to 100 stress. And you have that level 1 relife is 20,40 and 60% for each, scalating around 20% up to 2 times. So at MAX the relife is 60, 80 and 100. But also, just having character in town restores 5%. So, because of taking turns with mission i have each character 3-5 weeks just siting, restoring up to 25% of its stress So, you dont need to go MAX relife, ONLY max on the chepaer and some onghe middle to reduce stress enough to be use withouth problem. I realize this as i still play in money problem mechanics, but is an exploit non the less as i literally DONT NEED half the upgrades on town.
Good video, but most of your critque about the slug grinding and less care about your heros can be thrown out of the window if you play Stygian/Bloodmoon difficult. You have a time and death limit to beat the game and u are forced to work with what you get (ttinkets and heros), means you build a connection with them and death is tragic for the whole story. + The dread to lose after the time limit.
It's definitely true that the content of this video is geared primarily toward Darkest and Radiant, but I'm not convinced that the mere existence of Stygian addresses any of the criticisms presented here. The time limit imposed on Stygian only caps the campaign in the 40-50 hour range, and the vast majority of players will not play it for their first campaign (the game even explicitly recommends 'Radiant' to new players when selecting a difficulty). But even if one did choose Stygian for their first playthrough, this wouldn't solve the game's problems with misleading the player, showcasing a mismatch between hamlet progress and mission progress, and amplifying the weaknesses of the character positioning system when characters die. Heck, even if someone did make the unlikely choice to play on Stygian for their first playthrough in order to dodge some of the emotional investment issues mentioned in the second section of this video, they would probably lose the campaign at least once . . . and playing Stygian twice to reach a single campaign victory could actually take longer than playing on either of the other difficulties once.
not to be an ass but i thought about your thing with the affliction and went to try it; i was able to bring back 3 people from affliction out of 6 using crusader and jester heal and camping skills. i think besides those 2 and the occultist tho its basically impossible. tho i do disagree about the new players thing; i never met anyone who thought it would be possible/easy to relieve the affliction
@@TheGemsbok i took a standard party and made sure that 1 member was either crusader or jester and then let the skeleton with the wine stress someone out in a early fight in the dungeon. then i played as normal but made a point to try to remove the affliction. i tried this 6 times and was able to safely do it 3 times. i do concede that if you get afflicted at the end of the dungeon or dont have jester/crusader/occultist this is basically impossible but i think if you have the right camping skills and a stress healer its def doable. sidenote: i did it yesterday night too after a shambler fight and wasnt even thinking about it but it was def only possible cuz crusader has a lot of minus stress camp skills
Ah, I understand. Yes, inducing and then completely removing an affliction on a single character is certainly possible. I tested that out myself after making this video, and was able to do it a couple times. The point in the video is more about the situation in which a normal player might find themselves if they are misled into believing that curing afflictions will be a reliable strategy. The situation in question would not just be getting a single afflicted character with multiple forms of stress healing ready-to-hand---but rather a single afflicted character at a time when the rest of one's team is also nearly afflicted, and in a team composition where stress healing may not be a major priority. Coming back to zero stress on all involved characters when in a situation like that is what I deem to be basically impossible under ordinary circumstances. But even then, it's fairly telling that under the relatively ideal circumstances in which you were testing---only a 50% success rate was obtained.
TL:DR; Darkest dungeon should have been version 1.0; the latest version wastes your time and you won't care for the heroes. OK. How does one achieve that in-game? PS Came here because I was looking for Darkest Dungeon the card game. Not a video game.
Just to be clear: what part of the video do you think talks about version differences? I've never played any earlier version of the game, and there are only two small moments where I say anything about the DLC content. If anything, what I've read about the earlier versions leads me to believe that many of the issues highlighted in this video used to be even worse.
@@TheGemsbok Fair enough. From 13:02 to 13:20 - you mention the game changes from good and meaningful to bad boring and disinteresting. I thought you talked about early iterations of the full game, but it seems you talk about how the full game plays out during a campaign. 14:00 - 14:28 the multiple team thing is also present in old games like dark spire (DS) and most of Etrian odyssee, and much older like Legend of Faerghail (atari), but in all those game you DID care about the teams and members in them. What makes you to "not care about either of them": the fact that having your low-level much used farmers, well, farm, takes too much effort (compared to the laid-back, off-handed playstyle of aforementioned examples). Thanks again for your taking the time to upload this video and I enjoyed your adult approach in describing the mechanics. It is a rare thing nowadays to find somebody actually able to articulate his critique on a game experience instead of praising everyting into high heavens. Might suggest a point-wise summary in the end next time. Upvoted and subscribed ;-)
Well said, regarding how roster-based strategy and RPG titles can keep the player invested in their characters. I haven't tried the Etrian Odyssey series yet, but I've heard good things about it. Thank you for all of your nice comments on this video, and thank you for subscribing!
Thank you for your concern. I assume that you decided to make that comment because you are familiar with the pronunciation of the word 'gemsbok' in Afrikaans. But the word 'gemsbok' is now also a word in the English language, where it is pronounced with a hard 'g' sound, like that found in the words 'guy' and 'gap.' You can confirm this by listening to the pronunciation sample for the word in an American dictionary: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gemsbok
I would love to see more longer videos like this from you in the future. You were really able to dig into stuff nicely and I also liked how you addressed counterpoints within the video.
Thanks! There will definitely be videos of this length (and even longer) on the channel in the future, although my next one is likely to be a short video. Ideally, by alternating the scope of projects, I hope to be able to maintain my current schedule of releasing a video every month while still occasionally putting out larger videos like this one.
@@TheGemsbok Length is not a problem. Take all the length you need to make your point or points. Looking forward to them.
If I were you, wouldn't hold myself to releasing schedules, make videos whenever you feel like and don't when you're not in the mood. When you only do things when you feel like to you do them better with less effort as well ^-^
"And may even be the type of player who refuses to use any ability that neither deals damage nor heals"
> I'm in this photo and I don't like it
Hahaha, nothing to be ashamed of. I think that's basically the default playstyle for starting a new strategy game. Personally, that's exactly how I was playing Darkest Dungeon until I got to the level 5 missions.
Knocking it straight out of the park yet again sir. Really fracking good video. Keep up the good work!
Haha, thanks. Will do.
As a D&D GM, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the low level grind parties in this game. They feel like One-shot parties that I run in TTRPGs, and often they suffer the same fates. Have an exciting run, maybe some deaths along the way, and hopefully enough loot and fun to make the crawls worth it. That being said, I don't think that they should have made higher level adventurers too pompous to go on lower level missions. I think the opposite should be at play, where you can take them on lower level missions that still have the real possibility of death, but lower stress build up because they have done it all before. This paired with the smaller roster idea that you made really strong points for could make it so the firm attachment to the stronger heroes is maintained and hopefully keep them in The Hamlet less often considering how much they have to be utilized for farming good gear. Only big issue I can think of is the afflictions that would need to be either rebalanced or adjusted entirely.
If I were to remold this game, I would remove as much of the grind as possible.
You can't remove negative quirks, you can't lock in quirks, stress relief in town is more effective and doesn't cause drawbacks. Your roster caps out at like 15 heroes. A maximum of 4 new heroes appear per week. Make the trinket purchasing option in town more effective at getting you what you need so you don't have to grind for ages in dungeons to get trinkets you need. Remove the dungeon difficulty levels and hero levels. The difficulty of dungeons raises with the number of weeks that have passed. Hero upgrades are more compact, only 2 upgrades per move and 2 upgrades for weapon and armor to add some progression without making things obnoxious. These upgrades would allow characters to rise to the increasing difficulty of dungeons and powerful trinkets would allow newcomers to weather the increased difficulty as well.
Hero corpses would be a thing. Reduce the intrinsic need for money and heirlooms to feel like you're progressing and instead push the need to defeat various area bosses to gain progression. Each defeated boss gets an item that allows you to purchase a hamlet upgrade once you have the required heirlooms to do so, which you should have by that point. This would force players to seriously judge the upgrades they wish to purchase for the hamlet and prioritize getting to bosses quickly and efficiently as the difficulty of dungeons keeps naturally rising. Players can't repeat boring strategies and feel compelled to make their starting heroes work in a race against the clock thus endearing them to their roster and forming intimacy with the game's demanding pace.
A strong focus on reducing the grind to manageable levels would also improve the pace of the game and respect the player's time more.
Really well-made video. It really seems like the developers should be able to make these changes pretty easily to make the gameplay align better with their intentions. I have a feeling the corpse mechanic will be changed, especially since it is in the DLC...
Unfortunately, the devs have stated in a Q&A about the new DLC that they aren't planning to bring the player-character corpses into the singleplayer content ( www.reddit.com/r/darkestdungeon/comments/gscihh/the_butchers_circus_dlc_dev_qa/ ). But I do hope they'll change their mind about it, as the reasoning they present there is basically just that 'they haven't considered it enough.'
The mismatch between the pacing of the town/character management mechanics and the pacing of dungeon mission progress is a hairy issue that would probably be pretty tough to fix, but the issues surrounding the affliction and positioning systems should indeed be fairly easy to improve. But even for those easier things, with development on their last DLC done and Darkest Dungeon 2 now looming on the horizon, I'm pessimistic about the prospect that further development attention will be directed toward the game.
I remember watching a streamer play through the Stygian difficulty as his first playthrough blind successfully. The strategy he ended up relying on was stalling out combats for lengthy periods of time as he let his characters gain afflictions, then recovering them with a party with multiple stress relievers until he rolled a virtue on all 4 characters. It was incredibly dull to watch, and probably shouldn't be a thing that's possible.
Very odd! I'm surprised to hear that a strategy like that would work in Stygian, since you can't disable the extra stress and enemy reinforcements that trigger on long battles in that mode. Or maybe those elements were added later, just to address that method?
@@TheGemsbok It was a long time ago, but as I recall, he'd leave two enemies alive to prevent reinforcements, and the extra stress wasn't enough to counter the healing. It may have been changed since then though.
I am thoroughly impressed by the quality of this video, you certainly are a hidden gem! Will check out the rest of your channel and hopefully you can grow because you deserve it!
Thank you for a very nice comment! I am currently aiming to release a new video essay in every calendar month, so you can rest assured that more is on the way.
Excellent video, I enjoyed darkest dungeon as well. The art style, many of the game mechanics, random dungeon design, and character design also. However, after I finished the first "darkest dungeon" I knew I was done. The amount of effort and mental resilience required on my part to complete the run left me with a sense of relief, instead of Satisfaction or Joy and that's not why I play games. If the ability to remove stress from afflicted characters was improved, I would have finished the game.
Very good points that are well made throughout the length of the video, absolutely will be subscribing for more of this quality in the future. The part for me that generated an eventual annoyance with the game, leading to discontinuing play(and this is before the DLCs) was well covered- it is often most effective to buff a set of heroes into being powerhouses, and using the rest as a rotating pack mule team that goes spelunking and exists purely to bring back as much in the way of profit and supplies as possible before being fired, and then just hiring new heroes to repeat the process again until your A-Team is back in action. The inventory system particularly felt constricting to me, too little space and too many items that couldn't stack up into a single slot often meant leaving missions early or discarding equipment, continuing the eternal parade of the pack mules.
That's a great point about the inventory management that I completely overlooked when writing this video. Any time I ever did a long-duration (or, even worse, epic-duration) mission, I inevitably ended up discarding large amounts of available resources. Actually, looser inventory restrictions would've definitely made the Crimson Court epic missions less of a chore---as then they could always result in 'shopping sprees' in town afterward. Anyway, thanks for the solid comment and for the subscribe.
@@TheGemsbok You don't need to carry torches in Crimson Court though, so that would save 2 or 3 worth of inventory space
The video basically explained how I felt perfectly. The first fifteen to twenty hours learning character synergies and the different dungeons and bosses were really enjoyable and I thought the game was great but then slowly devolved into an unfinished and tedious game that I was just bored by more than anything. I swear it went from a 9/10 to a 6-7/10 so seamlessly it was odd
Indeed, the only reason I never beat the campaign is because the game just doesn't respect my time. I don't have time to spend 4-8 hours making team of level 5 heroes with perfect trinkets, quirks and upgrades that can brave the darkest dungeon only for them to be literally useless in exploring the rest of the darkest dungeon and needing 4 new shmucks to get through the next part. I do not have the time to replace fallen level 5 heroes, I do not have the patience to grind for trinkets and I do not have the desire to form 3 groups of heroes adequate to defeat the final challenge of the game with a large chance for one or more of those heroes to die as nbn d thus costing me more time. I just want to paint the interesting, strategy filled portion of the game. I do not want to play a grinding simulator. It is tedious and boring.
I agree with your video, especially with your comments on roster size and blatant padding. My one nitpick is with the Crimson Court districts. The ridiculous cost of Crimson Court districts are probably intended to force the player to make trade-offs when deciding which district buffs to go for when playing on the hardest difficulty, which puts a time limit over the entire campaign. Grinding to complete a ton of districts is one of those problems where players are taking the fun out of the game in the name of completion. Then again, if you need to police yourself to make the system engaging, that's still a system with room for improvement.
I think the campaign-wide time limit generally does Darkest Dungeon's town layer a lot of good since it forces the player to make more compromises and think more about what they're doing on the campaign level. It also encourages players to progress the campaign instead of grinding trinkets and so on. Maybe that time limit should've been applied by default to every difficulty level. On the other hand the game is already really intimidating the new players, and the noob traps tend to result in a ton of wasted time.
Really I think DD's biggest problem is that the punishment for fucking up is hours of grinding. Having a DD alumni's experience buff helps speed things along, but it's still a chore to replace a level 6 guy who you had been grooming for your next Darkest Dungeon run.
That’s definitely an interesting point, and it’s very fair to say that the analysis in this video is geared much more toward Darkest and Radiant than it is toward Stygian. But given the exceptional rarity of a player going all the way through Stygian (0.7% of players, according to Steam), most of whom have likely already completed a campaign in one of the other modes, I don’t think that it should have been a significant factor in the balancing of the Crimson Court for the other modes (if, indeed, it was).
The bigger issue I’m underlining in that section is that adding small buffs that are obtainable through additional farming is not an interesting way to grow the game. Rewarding players for finishing unique challenges will always feel better than rewarding them for grinding. That’s why I say it’s an element of design that reminds me of a free-to-play title; usually, that kind of design is reserved for manipulative mechanics intended to pressure players to pay their way past. Realistically, even up at Stygian, I believe the district system would’ve been greatly improved if the DLC bosses (Fanatic, Crocodillian, Baron, Viscount, and Countess) were tied to specific districts whose repair/construction materials they were ‘hoarding’ or ‘guarding’, in a manner similar to how the Garden Guardian quest always rewards two trinket-set trinkets.
Unfortunately, I have a sinking feeling that if that WAS how the districts were implemented, they would’ve found another way to have it result in a gigantic grind, such as requiring 5 or even 10 kills of each boss to unlock each district. (After all, that’s essentially how the districts and trinkets added in the Color of Madness work.)
I completely agree with you that the padding/grinding is the biggest issue plaguing the game; that’s why it’s the subject of the longest section of my analysis, as well as most of the conclusion. At the end of the day, making mistakes is not the only way to be subjected to extra hours of grinding. As I say in the video, characters can die in “sudden and tragic twists of fate.” Sheer bad luck is more than sufficient to kill a character every once in a while; all it takes is the same character getting hit by a crit from one enemy, and then a bad death’s door roll from any source before the player has a chance to intervene.
You enjoy the core loop if the game is enjoyable. DD just stops being enjoyable after a while, mainly due to permadeath costing you hours of real world time to set up for another attempt at the Darkest Dungeon or a boss fight for a trinket. Moreover, if your party wipes you lose trinkets gathered over hours of long dungeons with difficult bosses. This is the real reason why7 few people try to finish the game. Especially since in this day and age it is so much easier to watch the ending on UA-cam or Twitch, because after failed 10+ attempts up and a maxed-out town you don't care about Dismas #12 and Reynauld #11, you just want to finish the thing. It's a great game damaged by design choices which should be restricted to Stygian/Bloodmoon. Catering to the very vocal elitist masochistic part of the community made the game unenjoyable at midgame and in the lategame.
dude youve made videos on all the games ive been playing recently love the content
This video is fucking awesome, the analysis is clear-minded and the rhetoric is lit. I fully expect this channel to explode at some point, subscribed and I'm off to watch every other game video you have.
Well, that is an exceptionally nice comment! Thanks so much. I think I've finally ironed out the last of the kinks in my video style over the past few months, so I do expect the rest of this year's videos to bring a lot of growth to the channel.
this was downright cathartic, holy crap
Icame back to this game recently and found myself cheating through the grind.. especially those new buildings. And then I was like.. jeez whats the point anymore. This video convinced me to just uninstall and move on. 6 years.. they should have balanced this.
Same. Like... those new buildings... such a grind. I just prefer games where u level up a character & don't lose it & have to start over dozens of times & re-level & retrain it
I 100% agree with the inflimation of game play and the problem with corpses. The game could possible be shortened in the late game as the grind is quite harsh at times. However the time gate and the affliction problem also seem to be less so in the hardest difficulty as it changes the entire game with adding an endgame. Additionally, the creation of "perfect characters" is also a misleading concept as the quirks are made to strategy lock bad quirks that do nothing to your character and locking in one of many hypothetical positive quirk.
The week limit placed in bloodborn makes your resource management and planning much more impact full with an endgame in the horizon.
However the fact that the game is still long sucks as it sometimes might seem so much for one run.
good video, and nice use of the new youtube segments feature
Thanks! Those chapter divisions should now be available on all of my videos.
I agree
I would probably have more than one playthrough if it wasn't such a drag in certain aspects
my first playthrough was like 80 hours but I stretched it over like 2 years because I'd mad grind it like 20 hours and then take time off
INORDINANT EXAGUINATION
your comment about DD having 30 hours of great content but taking 60 hours to complete is EXACTLY the thought I had about Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Except in that one it’s more like 30 hours of great content in a 90 hour game.
Yeesh, that sounds kind of miserable. (Haven't tried Xenoblade yet myself, though.)
darkest dungeon was explain well in this video, i could not get into the grindy stuff and the issues in later game.
Swords and Sandals was the first game i remember of this type of game, 10 years before darkest dungeon released.
Excellent discussion style, not treating your viewers like morons is highly appreciated. Please make more videos and don't change!
Incredible video!
Thank you! Glad you liked it.
THIS REVIEW VOCIFEROUSLY DANGLES TREATS - NOT CONVINCED YOU ACTUALLY RECOMMEND THIS GAME, BUT CONTAGIOUS HEART ATTACKS INTRIGUES. THANKS YOU BOK.
You are most welcome, Mr. Rickard.
Oh, hey. I think Red Hook addressed the corpse thing for Darkest Dungeon 2. Now your party members leave corpses too.
That's a great sign. I'm definitely looking forward to trying the sequel at some point in the coming year.
Great video, dunno if you’re still looking through the comments on this one, but I feel like the sequel will address some of your complaints with the original. From what we know, the game will focus on a journey to a destination, with the devs comparing it to the LOTR; and the journey to Mordor. Possibly Meaning a considerably shorter campaign, and hopefully less grinding. The game will also focus on your relationship with your heroes, since from the looks of things, you’ll only get 4.
Beyond the initial trailer, I haven't looked into any material about the sequel. That last point in particular, about maybe only getting 4 characters, sounds very promising. It would please me greatly if the sequel were to be an improvement over all or most of the elements covered in this video. Thanks for sharing that info.
Darkest Dungeon two came out this past October. Do you think you will do a video on it eventually?
Yes, I think I will. But I have no intention of playing it while it's still in early access, so it will likely be over a year before I give it a try.
@@TheGemsbok I havent played it cuz it seems bad. wonder what you think
Lol love the use of wii golf
i honestly just completely ignore diseases and quirks. I mean i consider them when picking a team for a quest but I dont spend money to remove/lock them in ever. i am at 24 weeks maybe i will need to adjust my strategy
Love you videos, keep it up!
Thank you! Currently aiming to keep a pace of at least 1 video every month; the video for August will be about a game.
Proof that is is possible to love this game being critical of its obvious flaws
Love it great content but I have a question im hoping someone could answer i play on console so perhaps my issue is that simple but how do you get the werewolf guy amd the cleric in the same party for me certain religious charecters won't playe with party with "abominations:
On PC, that restriction was removed when The Color of Madness DLC released. I don't know whether it's actually part of the DLC or is a separate update for the base game from the same time, and I also don't know whether the relevant update is available on console.
@@TheGemsbok thank you for the quick reply much appreciated 🙏
I would love to have a month relaxing....
Haha, but would that render you fit for battle?!
@@TheGemsbok I can battle regardless
Having now checked out your website, I'm wondering how you decide which articles are worth making into videos, and which are better off in text format..
Great question! In terms of the four main categories, I decided to only turn game and film articles into videos because I think videos are inherently closer to how people consume games and films. I figure that the literary analysis and philosophy are fine to leave as articles, though, because the majority of literature and philosophy is consumed as writing anyway.
But within the game and film series (which is what I figure you were probably really asking about), there are actually very few articles that I'm not planning to eventually turn into videos. Basically, I'll be leaving a few older/lower-quality articles (and all of the guest posts) out. But other than that, just about all of them should be videos some day. The only guiding principle in which ones are getting converted first is that I've been starting with the more accessible stuff (with the exception of the Papers, Please video) and some of the easier videos to make in terms of required footage (with the exception of the Isaac video). I'll start mixing in the heavier analytical material and larger projects at some point later on.
I know there are a lot of things to criticize this game about, and I have quite a few myself, but this is still one of my favorite games/experiences of all-time. It’s a game about making the best of a bad situation. If the RNG is working against me, my party gets afflicted, etc. I always come back to that quote.
The best aspect of the game for me, and the one that made this game have such a lasting effect on me, is the transformation that you go through while playing it. I’ve explained it in much more detail in other places on the internet but you explained it pretty well when you talked about the attachment to the characters. The moment you stop naming people is when the characters stop being “characters” and are just means to an end. They become pieces of meat for you to throw at challenges and discard until you finally succeed. Once you take a step back and realize all of the changes that have occurred in your playstyle since the beginning of the game, it makes you feel kind of like a monster and it’s a pretty great feeling. The game in general and the specific mechanics I mentioned have a ton of problems that you brought up here, but it can never take that initial experience away from me.
Perfectly reasonable point-of-view. As I say in the video, there is quite a lot to like about this game when you set aside its mechanical weaknesses.
@@TheGemsbok don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with every criticism you brought up about the game. I could probably add more on top of it too. As much as I loved the experience I mentioned here, I also lost that first save file before I could even attempt the Darkest Dungeon due to some bug I encountered and had to start over from scratch but by that point the game already had me in it’s grasp so I couldn’t just walk away from it. But I don’t think these issues should discourage anyone from playing the game. Even with all it’s issues, it really is something special. On paper, I should have hated a lot of the aspects of this game but I believe the whole is better than it’s parts and I’m glad I gave it a shot instead of listening to some of the criticisms I read about it at launch.
Anyway, great video. I added a bunch more to a playlist to listen to at work. I don’t know how I’ve gone so long without stumbling upon your channel.
I agree with this a lot but in addition my main problem with this game is that you rarely feel like you are getting any better at it, most of the progress i ever made was almost entirely based on the characters i bring, their level and equipment and especially on my luck aka the map layout, combat encounters and stress. I'd would be completely fine with the harshness of the mechanics if they were used to teach the player but instead it feel like the game is just shitting on you for the sake of it
All true.
The grindy mid-to-late game isn't something that's easily solved, I feel. Your points were solid but as I see it, any fix would have negative consequences. First, one could reduce the dull grind by providing larger monetary rewards for hard missions and making stress healing more consistent so your main heroes could get back into the action faster, thus obviating the tedium at the cost of making high-leveled, powerful heroes less rare and therefore less precious, reducing your connection to them even further. This might still be preferable by allowing players to get to the end-game before they've lost interest in the game.
The other option might be to make high-level heroes harder to get, possibly by lowering the maximum possible level of a "fresh-off-the-coach" hero so that every high-level hero you have was the result of your precious time and energy, making them more valuable and making losing them more painful, but that just dramatically increases the grind necessary should you actually lose them.
Unfortunately, I think the problem is almost intractable because the systems are working at cross-purposes and fixing one element exacerbates the flaws of the other. It's possible there's a solution out there and I'm just constrained by trying to work within the confines of the game-as-it-exists, of course.
I think that's an excellent analysis of the situation. I come to a similar conclusion about elements working 'at apparently cross purposes' in the video, although obviously I don't try to provide robust potential solutions to the grind issue there. I agree that it's definitely a hairy problem that touches on multiple aspects of the game's design, and would likely require fairly drastic reworking to properly address.
In thinking about it for a moment just now, I think it would require a multi-pronged approach, possibly including some of the following alterations:
- The restrictions on high-level characters entering low-level missions could be removed, to make it possible to power-level characters after first acquiring a crop of max-level heroes.
- Both random benefits and detriments of town activities could be made more rare and more impactful.
- The experience rewards for champion-level and long-duration missions could be greatly increased, to make it strategically incentivized to play these otherwise high-risk-low-reward missions in order to speed up the campaign as a whole.
- The way that dead heroes can occasionally wander out of the graveyard and return to life could be made into a full-fledged mechanic, rather than being a very rare possible weekly event.
- More variety could be introduced into mission goals, to make completing missions feel less like doing the same task nearly a hundred times in a row.
- A barter system could be introduced into the trinket shop in the town, in order to make it possible to exchange valuable trinkets and thereby make it faster and more reliable to acquire a set of trinkets that meshes well with one's team synergies.
Sorry, just a question: from which point of view should "grinding" be considered a bad game design choice?
More like...something you do not like...?
Because it is not...unless you have your team at level 10 vs enemies at level 40
As explained in the video, the grinding is unwelcome because it represents such a dramatic mismatch between the time required to experience the content of the game and the time required to complete the content of the game. In Darkest Dungeon, the former is far shorter than the latter. Repeating identical content for hours on end to make up lost ground---particularly when that ground was lost to random chance or insufficient information provided by the game---feels more like a chore than an engaging experience.
With sufficient variance, the content of a game may offer some defense against feeling like it has been fully experienced even when it runs out of strictly new content (many of the past decade's successes in the roguelike genre offer ready examples). Darkest Dungeon does not provide sufficient variance along those lines to maintain full engagement throughout a completed campaign; its strategy mechanics are ultimately too shallow, its missions too interchangeable, and its enemy variety too limited to justify its campaign length being in the range of 60-80 hours.
@@TheGemsbok I mean: some (and I repeat: some, not all) of the problems get solved if you play with mods just like I do, but I overall agree with you. DD grinding is not fun, but it is something that makes you waste a lot of time doing the same missions over and over again and forces you to repeat the same tasks just because you are unlucky.
Oh, interesting. Are there any specific mods that you would highly recommend?
Exactly my issue with the game, it largely doesn't take a lot of skill, it just takes a lot of time.
A perfect summary! If I could express myself as succinctly as you, this video would've been a lot shorter. Haha.
I don't even think it has 30 hours of great content. There's a lot of stuff that seemed interesting at first, but ended up being smoke and mirrors eventually. There is a lot of reusing of content, terribly boring grindy tactics (sending lvl 1 heroes on suicide missions to get gold, stalling out fights), and the terribly lackluster character development, which is pretty giving your guys higher numbers. Your critique was quite mild, even if fairly accurate, but I'm really disappointed in how many people actually... enjoyed this game.
Ha, you might be the first person in the past year to suggest I may have gone too easy on the game in this video. But in a way, I'm sure you're right. I have a long history of playing both roguelike games and RPGs with random battles---so I am primed to accept some repetition of content. As a result, the repetition didn't start to bother me personally until about the 20-hour mark (around when I started to see all of it as grinding, and accordingly stopped being able to have any real emotional investment in any aspect of the game). So if it had ended around 30 hours, I probably wouldn't have bothered making this video. But even with that conservative estimate, that still leaves 30+ hours of what I deem to be completely unnecessary and even unwanted repetition in a first playthrough . . . which is quite a lot of needlessly wasted time.
@@TheGemsbok I agree. I had high hopes for the game, but sadly it didn't deliver for me. That said, they're taking a very different approach to DD2 and from what I've seen they've actually taken steps to radically change the loop of the game the second time around.
Engagement via comment.
Gratitude via reply.
1. meehh critique
2. 50-50 Ok criticism
3. 100% agree
4. 100% agree
1) The implementation of afflictions: Agreed, the tutorial could be better. About removing afflictions though: Unless you are talking about early game, if you've never been able to reduce the stress to 0 with a stress healer in your party, you don't know how to stall properly.
2)The Awkward Pace of Town mechanics: Your heroes come out of the dungeons with high stress? Early on dismiss them and get new ones. Lategame: Always bring someone who can stress heal and come out of the dungeon with 0 or close to 0 stress. Learn how to create opportunities to heal. Focus stress dealers. Even if there are no stress healers in a party, if it is efficient enough, you won't need to send everybody to relax. Go to Cove for quirk removal. Get disease resist and/or someone who can heal diseases when camping if going to Warrens/Weald. By lategame, there shouldn't be any "expendable" teams this way. No need to grind away for eternity to upgrade everything in hamlet. You only really need Stagecoach, Blacksmith, Guild, Sanitarium and maybe some upgrades to Abbey. The only really game changing district is a bank, that, if build early enough in the campaign + with some antiquarian gold farming early on, can satisfy your needs for money for the rest of the game so you can focus solely on gathering the heirlooms. The rest are good, but optional/skippable.
3) Character Death's Effect on Positioning: It really does seem unfair if you think about it, but I always felt that it is fair enough. Plus at some point after sinking enough hours playing the game, I rarely lose characters, and when I do, losing one is usually not that detrimental to a team's position in a fight.
4) Preemptive Addressing of a Likely Rebuttal: While it is true that Darkest Dungeon was intended to be frustrating by the developers, I think it is frustrating for all the wrong reasons. New players who like the game enough to keep playing will eventually get good, stop complaining about rng and start complaining about grinding. I'm going to say it: it is not a hard game, but it is punishing. It doesn't take much skill to complete it, but usually people who do, will remember the slog they had to go through, put the game on a shelf as completed and move on. Only some crazy maniacs like me will stay for more. And at some point you start finding ways to avoid the grind and move through the game faster. As I've said, it doesn't take much skill to complete the game, but it does take a lot of game knowledge, tactics, planning ahead and bumping up the game speed to about 5x with third-party software to truly enjoy it. Is it a problem? It's hard for me to tell, because I do enjoy Darkest Dungeon as it is(apart from having to up the game speed by my own means) and I'm not a game developer, so I can't really think of a solution.
5) Conclusion: Overall I'd say all your criticism is completely understandable. I don't think you are "ready for prime time games journalism bud" like one angry commenter said. I know I stated all these counter-arguments above, but to learn stuff like that, you need to get really invested in this game, and that can be hard at times. On the other hand, It's hard for me to imagine what can be changed to relieve these issues without removing something that I personally enjoy.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed comment. To your points:
1) While stress management and stress reduction are certainly possible, the game actively opposes stalling tactics through the implementation of reinforcements and added stress as the duration of most battles increase ( darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Reinforcements ). It's true that combat delay penalties can be disabled in the options, but that more-or-less proves that doing so is in contradiction of the game's design. Moreover, I'm not just talking about general stress reduction there; I'm talking specifically about curing afflictions. Once a player realizes that they should universally do it, avoiding 100 stress is relatively straightforward. The issue I highlight there is that the game's virtues, tutorials, and concealed stats sum together to mislead a player into allowing 100 stress well into their first campaign. As the majority of afflictions themselves increment stress and cause rejection of camping skills, having a single stress healer is rarely sufficient to cure afflictions in a party.
2-5) In these points, you're talking about a highly optimized metagame strategy. I think the majority of people would agree that the experience of a game on its first full playthrough at normal difficulty really constitutes what the game is like---moreso than the experience available to a speedrunner or a super-fan on their 3rd+ playthrough. The first playthrough is, after all, the only experience that over 95% of players (literally, as measured by Steam) will have. I agree with basically everything you say in point (4). When you grant that an ideal way to play may ultimately include a mod that increases game speed by up to a factor of 5, that strongly implies that even an experienced player would naturally agree there's a pacing issue in the game as designed.
I dissagree on your first point, because how its worded is important. the game dont say "You can remove aflictions if they reach 0 stress so make sure to try to get them down to it" the way it is written will make you try to reduce it for a mission and then not try it because you realize how impossible of a task it is without a team built for that purpose.
The potentially misleading nature of the relevant tutorial message is only one of three aspects of the implementation of the affliction system highlighted in that section, as summed up toward its end: "the incredible harshness of its secretive mechanical effects, the fiction that it can be overcome at regular intervals, and the false hope of glowing virtues." It's only through the combination of these elements that the system gives and implies bad strategic advice.
@@TheGemsbok I mean alot is not told to you via gameplay and to any normal player (There are statistically a chance someone didnt have it ofc) most ppl will have afflictions the first few times they reach 100 stress meaning they are scared of it. it does teach players that trying to rely on getting virtues just is not going to work. Now I do agree on the point that it can be clearer since I personally never used any virtue changing relics due to not knowing/wanting to risk it. But my point is that the game teaches most things like perma death and what curios do by trial and error.
Therefore I dont think that how the game introduce it is bad with how it tells you that you can remove afflictions and how you are expected to just run into it to figure out stress WHILE still seeing the value in the point you bring up with the viritue chance stat being shown
This is why I simply responded to that section of that point as it was the only thing I actually had any real problem with :P
Ah, thank you for clarifying. Yes, you do learn about it by trial and error. But most mechanics at least have statistics associated with them to use as reference points (and it's not necessarily good design in the strategy genre to rely on player trial-and-error when it comes to basic mechanical concepts anyway; trial-and-error in strategy games should be reserved for strategy). Anyway, sorry if my previous comment came across as curt.
What i would say is that i NEVER uptdated past the first anitcuarian uptdate.
Why? Because they BUUUUUFFF money earning so much balanze just brake.
I get it was for the Buildings after, but you have to realize how easily now is to pay for characters equipment and skills compared to before
Also, never had the problem of Overpower team A vs disposable B.
This is because i always concider ALL characters important planing the 6 final teams from the begining.
So i am having the teams take turns and build their position and skills individually with "personal" trinkets.
Also, abusing decises is funny, for example, leting a crusader keep his +damage -acc and focus with damage trinkets makes it a trully interesting character.
Finally, an issue i abuse of, relife in town, even at 198 stress, when coming back to town ANY character is set to 100 stress.
And you have that level 1 relife is 20,40 and 60% for each, scalating around 20% up to 2 times.
So at MAX the relife is 60, 80 and 100.
But also, just having character in town restores 5%.
So, because of taking turns with mission i have each character 3-5 weeks just siting, restoring up to 25% of its stress
So, you dont need to go MAX relife, ONLY max on the chepaer and some onghe middle to reduce stress enough to be use withouth problem.
I realize this as i still play in money problem mechanics, but is an exploit non the less as i literally DONT NEED half the upgrades on town.
Good video, but most of your critque about the slug grinding and less care about your heros can be thrown out of the window if you play Stygian/Bloodmoon difficult. You have a time and death limit to beat the game and u are forced to work with what you get (ttinkets and heros), means you build a connection with them and death is tragic for the whole story. + The dread to lose after the time limit.
It's definitely true that the content of this video is geared primarily toward Darkest and Radiant, but I'm not convinced that the mere existence of Stygian addresses any of the criticisms presented here. The time limit imposed on Stygian only caps the campaign in the 40-50 hour range, and the vast majority of players will not play it for their first campaign (the game even explicitly recommends 'Radiant' to new players when selecting a difficulty).
But even if one did choose Stygian for their first playthrough, this wouldn't solve the game's problems with misleading the player, showcasing a mismatch between hamlet progress and mission progress, and amplifying the weaknesses of the character positioning system when characters die.
Heck, even if someone did make the unlikely choice to play on Stygian for their first playthrough in order to dodge some of the emotional investment issues mentioned in the second section of this video, they would probably lose the campaign at least once . . . and playing Stygian twice to reach a single campaign victory could actually take longer than playing on either of the other difficulties once.
not to be an ass but i thought about your thing with the affliction and went to try it; i was able to bring back 3 people from affliction out of 6 using crusader and jester heal and camping skills. i think besides those 2 and the occultist tho its basically impossible. tho i do disagree about the new players thing; i never met anyone who thought it would be possible/easy to relieve the affliction
To be clear: what do you mean by 3 out of 6? Obviously you didn't have a party of 6 characters.
@@TheGemsbok i took a standard party and made sure that 1 member was either crusader or jester and then let the skeleton with the wine stress someone out in a early fight in the dungeon. then i played as normal but made a point to try to remove the affliction. i tried this 6 times and was able to safely do it 3 times. i do concede that if you get afflicted at the end of the dungeon or dont have jester/crusader/occultist this is basically impossible but i think if you have the right camping skills and a stress healer its def doable.
sidenote: i did it yesterday night too after a shambler fight and wasnt even thinking about it but it was def only possible cuz crusader has a lot of minus stress camp skills
Ah, I understand. Yes, inducing and then completely removing an affliction on a single character is certainly possible. I tested that out myself after making this video, and was able to do it a couple times.
The point in the video is more about the situation in which a normal player might find themselves if they are misled into believing that curing afflictions will be a reliable strategy. The situation in question would not just be getting a single afflicted character with multiple forms of stress healing ready-to-hand---but rather a single afflicted character at a time when the rest of one's team is also nearly afflicted, and in a team composition where stress healing may not be a major priority.
Coming back to zero stress on all involved characters when in a situation like that is what I deem to be basically impossible under ordinary circumstances. But even then, it's fairly telling that under the relatively ideal circumstances in which you were testing---only a 50% success rate was obtained.
TL:DR; Darkest dungeon should have been version 1.0; the latest version wastes your time and you won't care for the heroes.
OK. How does one achieve that in-game?
PS Came here because I was looking for Darkest Dungeon the card game. Not a video game.
Just to be clear: what part of the video do you think talks about version differences? I've never played any earlier version of the game, and there are only two small moments where I say anything about the DLC content.
If anything, what I've read about the earlier versions leads me to believe that many of the issues highlighted in this video used to be even worse.
@@TheGemsbok Fair enough. From 13:02 to 13:20 - you mention the game changes from good and meaningful to bad boring and disinteresting. I thought you talked about early iterations of the full game, but it seems you talk about how the full game plays out during a campaign.
14:00 - 14:28 the multiple team thing is also present in old games like dark spire (DS) and most of Etrian odyssee, and much older like Legend of Faerghail (atari), but in all those game you DID care about the teams and members in them. What makes you to "not care about either of them": the fact that having your low-level much used farmers, well, farm, takes too much effort (compared to the laid-back, off-handed playstyle of aforementioned examples).
Thanks again for your taking the time to upload this video and I enjoyed your adult approach in describing the mechanics. It is a rare thing nowadays to find somebody actually able to articulate his critique on a game experience instead of praising everyting into high heavens.
Might suggest a point-wise summary in the end next time.
Upvoted and subscribed ;-)
Well said, regarding how roster-based strategy and RPG titles can keep the player invested in their characters. I haven't tried the Etrian Odyssey series yet, but I've heard good things about it. Thank you for all of your nice comments on this video, and thank you for subscribing!
Why dont you know how to say your own UA-cam channel name?
Thank you for your concern. I assume that you decided to make that comment because you are familiar with the pronunciation of the word 'gemsbok' in Afrikaans. But the word 'gemsbok' is now also a word in the English language, where it is pronounced with a hard 'g' sound, like that found in the words 'guy' and 'gap.' You can confirm this by listening to the pronunciation sample for the word in an American dictionary: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gemsbok
it was really cool at the start and turned into a borefest hard mode probably didnt help either the had huge potential instead they made dd2 :-