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[PeterVenkman]

Purposefully stopped playing back during early access, not because it was bad but because it was going to consume me. I'm really glad I waited now for the full release and for those wondering this was a wonderful Early Access experience. Constant patches and communications from Red Hook.

 

[Icelandic_Jazz]

This is a really great game. Feels like a 2D XCOM a lot of the time. Love the artstyle too.

 

[Fallout-NL]

So, is there going to some sort of release day patch today?

Bought this over a year ago, but held off on playing it due to some of the criticism.

 

[Herr Starr]

corpses are a non-issue in this game if you run a balanced party that can target into the enemy's rear ranks and have access to damaging bleed and blight effects because enemies killed by blight or bleed do not leave corpses. Additionally, there there a few abilities in the game that remove all corpses (but you don't really even need to use them).

I'm not really sure about heart attacks, as I very rarely get over even 100 stress.

No offense, but your post made it pretty clear to me that you're not the best person to listen to when it comes to opinions about game balance in Darkest Dungeon. You sound like you might be deep into the game mechanics in a way that most players probably won't ever be.

Jim Sterling posted a great article about this problematic phenomenon a few months ago. He rightfully points out that trying to cater to the small percentage of über-fans who understand every little mechanic and can min-max the shit out of the game, is detrimental to the game's overall quality. If the game feels unbalanced to these people, that says next to nothing about how well balanced it is for Average Joe, ie. the rest of us.

Odds are that for most of us posting in this thread, listening to the opinions of someone with plenty of experience with the game before its release is counterproductive, as they represent a kind of fan most of us will never be, and will never think like.

The better guide is the hordes of people who loved this game to death when it first came out in early access.

 

[Gothos]

I don't know if you guys know but there are several gameplay options that make some of the new stuff (like corpses) completely optional. So you are free to tailor the experience to your expectations

 

[Draft]

Every once in a while RNG is going to take you to the woodshed. Crit, then crit again, then a big DOT, then it's goodbye to the best Vestal you ever had. That's RPG though. Disasters can be mitigated, but never banished.

The maps are too repetitive. There aren't many quests. There are a lot of classes, and a lot of ways to staff a party. Customization of individual party members might be lacking, but overall the game offers a lot of variety in play style. Each location is visually unique, and personally I think the art is gorgeous. Lots of cool monsters that vary considerably in appearance and behavior. The bosses "repeating" isn't the most thrilling progression system, but 3 bosses per dungeon seems like a good mix to me.

Valid complaints against Darkest Dungeon are repetitiveness and sometimes really punishing RNG. I find that some of the harshest critics tend to bury somewhere in their review "after playing 100 hours" or "after leveling every class to maximum," and I think, well yes, maybe Darkest Dungeon does start to fall apart after being completely conquered. It's probably not a forever game that can be played over and over again.

I've been playing the early access release for months and think the game is really fun. There are many rogue lites, many turn based strategy games, many 2D games with striking art, many horror games, even the cosmic horror sub genre is well represented! Darkest Dungeon takes elements common in many games, then combines them into a compelling experience unlike any other game I've recently played. I think it's a terrific time and recommend it to anyone who enjoys games that demand a little more from their audience.

 

[Vandole]

I just started last month and I'm about 30 hours in and loving it. My one tip is to treat your characters like meat for the first half of the game. Just focus on upgrading your town. Once you get the town facilities upgraded it's much easier to keep your adventurers healthy, strong, and sane.

 

[mjc]

I just started last month and I'm about 30 hours in and loving it. My one tip is to treat your characters like meat for the first half of the game. Just focus on upgrading your town. Once you get the town facilities upgraded it's much easier to keep your adventurers healthy, strong, and sane.

Yup, I echo this 1000x. Your gut instinct is to freak the FUCK out when you start losing heroes early on, but try not to. Just focus on finishing quests and getting enough supplies to upgrade your town.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Every once in a while RNG is going to take you to the woodshed. Crit, then crit again, then a big DOT, then it's goodbye to the best Vestal you ever had. That's RPG though. Disasters can be mitigated, but never banished.

The maps are too repetitive. There aren't many quests. There are a lot of classes, and a lot of ways to staff a party. Customization of individual party members might be lacking, but overall the game offers a lot of variety in play style. Each location is visually unique, and personally I think the art is gorgeous. Lots of cool monsters that vary considerably in appearance and behavior. The bosses "repeating" isn't the most thrilling progression system, but 3 bosses per dungeon seems like a good mix to me.

Valid complaints against Darkest Dungeon are repetitiveness and sometimes really punishing RNG. I find that some of the harshest critics tend to bury somewhere in their review "after playing 100 hours" or "after leveling every class to maximum," and I think, well yes, maybe Darkest Dungeon does start to fall apart after being completely conquered. It's probably not a forever game that can be played over and over again.

I've been playing the early access release for months and think the game is really fun. There are many rogue lites, many turn based strategy games, many 2D games with striking art, many horror games, even the cosmic horror sub genre is well represented! Darkest Dungeon takes elements common in many games, then combines them into a compelling experience unlike any other game I've recently played. I think it's a terrific time and recommend it to anyone who enjoys games that demand a little more from their audience.

Honestly having a games criticisms only work against it after you obsessed on it for over 100 hours?

Sounds like a solid game and solid investment to me!

 

[DiscoShark]

Corpses were added in as a mandatory addition at one point, where if you killed an enemy they wouldn't simply disappear like the original EA release had, instead they would leave behind a corpse and you'd have to hit again to make it disappear to get the row rotation going. It added a pointless additional round to kill an enemy that was already killed.

I want to say that I remember reading that it addressed an issue where you could simply stack your team's power on just overwhelming the front character until everyone was dead. The corpse mechanic made it so that there's more emphasis on better balancing out your team's most effective hit position or making use of mechanics that allowed you to shift the position of individual enemy units to take care of problem characters first.

Beats me though, today will be the first day I play the game.

 

[RMI]

Question is, how many of those problems are objective and subjective.

I mean it is my opinion, and my tastes might be different from other people, but here are my main issues with the game. there is a lot of smaller stuff but I don't have all day.

1) The progression in this game is completely quantitative. Numbers go up (i.e. attacks do more damage, or your town is better at treating stress and disease etc) and down, but beyond level 1 (which can be achieved by completing one apprentice mission with a fresh recruit, there are no new qualitative changes to the gameplay, meaning that the way you play stays the same once you have access to the full customization of each character, and this happens very early on. Trinkets help a little in this regard because they also just change the numbers.

2) there is no overall tension or urgency in the game's overall objective (i.e. restoring your ancestral manor). The game does provide tension through the RNG in the dungeon, however, and it does this quite well. People complaining about the RNG and how it is not fun are wrong, as it is one of the sole sources of fun in this game. The game hands a shit situation on a regular basis, and it is up to you to solve the problem of how to survive.

The main issue with this is that failing has little consequence beyond the time and resources you invested in each hero. The Dungeon isn't going to win or put you into a fail-state if you don't beat all the bosses or do the caretaker objectives in time. You can take all the time you want, which means that you never have to send a hero in if he has high stress, and you can always use fresh recruits (who are free) to raise money to keep your A-team fresh. In practice even this is usually unecessary, and you just develop a B-team that eventually becomes quite good as well. So essentially all the resources that the dungeon generates (money and heirlooms) are infinite resources that you can generate at no cost (since fresh recruits are free) except for your time.

3) most of the quirks are meaningless. Your characters acquire all these little quirks that are supposed to give them personality, but most of them don't do much and even the worse ones can easily be negated by spending time in the sanitarium (which just costs money, which is an infinite resource).

No offense, but your post made it pretty clear to me that you're not the best person to listen to when it comes to opinions about game balance in Darkest Dungeon. You sound like you might be deep into the game mechanics in a way that most players probably won't ever be.
.

I'm not criticizing the game's balance. I think the changes Red Hook have made are actually good, and the game's issues are deeper rooted than these balance tweaks like corpses and heart attacks.

 

[Dark_castle]

Played several hours of early access and stopped to experience the full product. Very interesting game.

 

[Zavist]

I think people have just the wrong expectations about this game. It is a rouglelike,right. It is random ,grindy and linear by design. Was anything different promised?

 

[Uthred]

No offense, but your post made it pretty clear to me that you're not the best person to listen to when it comes to opinions about game balance in Darkest Dungeon. You sound like you might be deep into the game mechanics in a way that most players probably won't ever be.

The games mechanics arent that deep, nearly every single class has one or more abilities that move enemies or remove corpses. If you cant figure out the corpse mechanics then the reason is you literally cannot read whats on the screen.

but most of them don't do much and even the worse ones can easily be negated by spending time in the sanitarium (which just costs money, which is an infinite resource).

While technically infinite money is the games key resource and certainly earlier on deciding what to do with quirks is part of the resource allocation that forms the games main engine. They arent quite as trivial to get rid of until mid to late game (depending on what you upgrade)

 

[Randomizer123454444]

I had like 4 characters die in my 44 hour run, and it was all due to me being too greedy.

Hah, I just had to explore one more room even though I knew my my party could not take another fight. Yep, that's a room full of enemies. Yep, the character that was one hit away from death died. Too prideful to abandon the mission even though it was clearly doomed

Loose some of the loot + keep characters alive > loose all loot and have whole party dead.

 

[Falk]

I mean it is my opinion, and my tastes might be different from other people, but here are my main issues with the game. there is a lot of smaller stuff but I don't have all day.

1) The progression in this game is completely quantitative. Numbers go up (i.e. attacks do more damage, or your town is better at treating stress and disease etc) and down, but beyond level 1 (which can be achieved by completing one apprentice mission with a fresh recruit, there are no new qualitative changes to the gameplay, meaning that the way you play stays the same once you have access to the full customization of each character, and this happens very early on. Trinkets help a little in this regard because they also just change the numbers.

Completely agreed on this. Even the bosses are the same. At least now there's progression through to the Darkest Dungeon.

People complaining about the RNG and how it is not fun are wrong, as it is one of the sole sources of fun in this game. The game hands a shit situation on a regular basis, and it is up to you to solve the problem of how to survive.

Also this. Complaining about RNG on a game that's supposed to be about RNG and making the most of the hand that's been dealt is something I'll never truly understand. Tharsis Steam forums are also a cesspool of this exact same shitposting.

 

[DeadPhoenix]

I think people have just the wrong expectations about this game. It is a rouglelike,right. It is random ,grindy and linear by design. Was anything different promised?

Yep, this is exactly what the game was from the beginning, with a really nice paint job, that admittedly, I can see how people might have been confused. I would have liked more stuff, but then again, when I reach the point that i have 20+ characters of various levels, I think too many more options would kind of hurt the game. There is some content I remember being planned that never came out though... I remember seeing something about village quests where you can choose to send off a character to do something(like send a plague doctor to heal a... well plague.), this could have opened up some interesting options(especially with characters that you have on the bench), but I guess they ditch that idea.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Yep, this is exactly what the game was from the beginning, with a really nice paint job, that admittedly, I can see how people might have been confused. I would have liked more stuff, but then again, when I reach the point that i have 20+ characters of various levels, I think too many more options would kind of hurt the game. There is some content I remember being planed that never came out though... I remember seeing on about village quests where you can choose to send off a character to do something(like send a plague doctor to heal a... well plague.), this could have opened up some interesting options(especially with characters that you have on the bench), but I guess they ditch that idea.

Sounds like the game has a nice foundation to it

Certainly good enough for me to dive in

 

[More_Badass]

The better guide is the hordes of people who loved this game to death when it first came out in early access.

So the better guides would be the people who played the game before all the changes, improvements, and refinements?

And simple tips like having party members that can attack rear ranks and deliver bleeding/blight damage aren't exactly things only uber fans would know

 

[Sub Zero]

I think people have just the wrong expectations about this game. It is a rouglelike,right. It is random ,grindy and linear by design. Was anything different promised?

Problem is that in most good roguelikes each run is fun and unique. In Darkest Dungeon, outside of the occasional boss each dungeon/run is pretty much the same and it gets old pretty fast.

 

[fastford58]

Hmmm...looks interesting. I may have to check it out. Need something to hold me until Division retail.

 

[Nothus]

Every once in a while RNG is going to take you to the woodshed. Crit, then crit again, then a big DOT, then it's goodbye to the best Vestal you ever had. That's RPG though. Disasters can be mitigated, but never banished.

The maps are too repetitive. There aren't many quests. There are a lot of classes, and a lot of ways to staff a party. Customization of individual party members might be lacking, but overall the game offers a lot of variety in play style. Each location is visually unique, and personally I think the art is gorgeous. Lots of cool monsters that vary considerably in appearance and behavior. The bosses "repeating" isn't the most thrilling progression system, but 3 bosses per dungeon seems like a good mix to me.

Valid complaints against Darkest Dungeon are repetitiveness and sometimes really punishing RNG. I find that some of the harshest critics tend to bury somewhere in their review "after playing 100 hours" or "after leveling every class to maximum," and I think, well yes, maybe Darkest Dungeon does start to fall apart after being completely conquered. It's probably not a forever game that can be played over and over again.

I've been playing the early access release for months and think the game is really fun. There are many rogue lites, many turn based strategy games, many 2D games with striking art, many horror games, even the cosmic horror sub genre is well represented! Darkest Dungeon takes elements common in many games, then combines them into a compelling experience unlike any other game I've recently played. I think it's a terrific time and recommend it to anyone who enjoys games that demand a little more from their audience.

Great post, echos my thoughts exactly. Even the bit about the RNG inevitably screwing you over

 

[DeadPhoenix]

So the better guides would be the people who played the game before all the changes, improvements, and refinements?

And simple tips like having party members that can attack rear ranks and deliver bleeding/blight damage aren't exactly things only uber fans would know

Actually this is a thing I haven't seem people talk about much here... changing you skill set can basically turn you into a whole other class(except for the abomination... he has a skill that changes him between 2 different classes). I personally am very ridgid with how I set up pretty much every class, to the point it actually kind of hurts me. Especially when I get surprised or my characters just get there positions swapped(suddenly my vestal get sent to position 1 and can't do shit except move. wee). There are a lot of options. It a bit of a gold investment early on to unlock all the skills(plus more gold once you level them up), but there is potential for some neat tricks(a party of characters who all use attacks them move their position could be interesting...)

 

[Falk]

There actually are a couple of builds that function around position-changing abilities.

 

[Nazo]

Aww man, I thought it was coming out tomorrow on ps4. I'll just go ahead and buy on steam cause I'm not really playing anything else right now.

I thought the same thing too. I'ed get it on Steam but I think my laptop would catch fire if I tried to run it.

 

[mrchampipi]

My 2015 GOTY.
Forcing myself not to play the different builds after the initial early access (was a backer) was hard...but now, just one more hour to go and I can finaly dive back!

There are some constructiv critics in this tread, but calling DD overrated is really unfair: it is a really unique game.

 

[Usoto215]

SOMEONE HELP PLEASE!

I bought a new laptop and its the first one able to run any Steam/PC game. I instantly bought DD during Xmas sales but DD won't ever start, just says .exe stopped running.

Is this BC I have Win10? Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Jetman]

Is this releasing in PS4 the same day/week as the Steam release? I'd heard it wasn't hitting Sony machines until the summer..,

 

[Draft]

SOMEONE HELP PLEASE!

I bought a new laptop and its the first one able to run any Steam/PC game. I instantly bought DD during Xmas sales but DD won't ever start, just says .exe stopped running.

Is this BC I have Win10? Any help would be greatly appreciated

I don't know why the game won't run on your computer, but it runs on my Windows 10 machine just fine.

 

[johnsmith]

My main problem with the game is how it seems to punish you for success. When I finally level up a team that can beat the dungeons I can't use them anymore because they're over leveled and have to move up to the harder difficulty, but I get absolutely destroyed on the higher difficulty levels. The transition between difficultly tiers just seems awful, and I stopped playing at that point.

 

[DrROBschiz]

SOMEONE HELP PLEASE!

I bought a new laptop and its the first one able to run any Steam/PC game. I instantly bought DD during Xmas sales but DD won't ever start, just says .exe stopped running.

Is this BC I have Win10? Any help would be greatly appreciated

If its a fresh install then there are likely several packages you will need to download

Though Steam should be giving you all the required software automatically....

 

[Usoto215]

If its a fresh install then there are likely several packages you will need to download

Though Steam should be giving you all the required software automatically....

I've re-installed the game several times but I get the error message immediately. Every other game I've picked up had given me no issue

 

[DrROBschiz]

I've re-installed the game several times but I get the error message immediately. Every other game I've picked up had given me no issue

Time to hit them steam forums

 

[Claptrap]

SOMEONE HELP PLEASE!

I bought a new laptop and its the first one able to run any Steam/PC game. I instantly bought DD during Xmas sales but DD won't ever start, just says .exe stopped running.

Is this BC I have Win10? Any help would be greatly appreciated

First you should disable the steam overlay:
- Go to your Library
- Right click -> Properties on Darkest Dungeon
- Uncheck "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game"

Game wouldn´t start for me either with that checked.

Win10 specific:

1) Rerun the vcredist from:
Steam\SteamApps\common\DarkestDungeon\_CommonRedist\vcredist\2013
Then reboot your computer

2) Try running Steam as an administrator

3) Try running the Darkest.exe in Windows 7 compatibility mode

 

[Usoto215]

Time to hit them steam forums

Tried that, did the highest recommended solution. All it did was delay the crash slightly haha

 

[Usoto215]

I don't know why the game won't run on your computer, but it runs on my Windows 10 machine just fine.

OK good to know, some people have mentioned that win10 might be been the issue. Thanks mate

 

[DrROBschiz]

OK good to know, some people have mentioned that win10 might be been the issue. Thanks mate

Reinstall windows

Fire everything

 

[Basileus777]

I regret buying this game. The lack of variety in the content and the dearth of interesting customization makes the game turn stale very quickly. This game is style over substance, which doesn't work very well in this genre.

 

[Randomizer123454444]

Patch is downloading!

 

[Falk]

THIS PATCH CAN'T DOWNLOAD FAST ENOUGH FOR ME

 

[Bizzquik]

I wish I had bought this on Steam in Early Access (at the reduced price).

Also, I wish it would come to Xbox One.

 

[Sotha Sil]

Oh boy.

 

[Anno]

i like that NG+ will add in some failure conditions. Hopefully there's an option to do that on normal playthroughs in the future. Also cool to see that they're committing to free expansions and mod support. I hadn't heard much about their post-release plans. Can't wait to play!

I wish I had bought this on Steam in Early Access (at the reduced price).

Also, I wish it would come to Xbox One.

Isn't it the same price now? Or do you mean in the winter sale?

 

[DrROBschiz]

I regret buying this game. The lack of variety in the content and the dearth of interesting customization makes the game turn stale very quickly. This game is style over substance, which doesn't work very well in this genre.

Whew

Harsh criticisms. Im gonna have to play this

 

[Lombax]

I have not played this since January of 2015. Looking forward to playing the finished product!

 

[Usoto215]

How do I run in Win7 mode? I'm totally new to all things PC

 

[Usoto215]

First you should disable the steam overlay:
- Go to your Library
- Right click -> Properties on Darkest Dungeon
- Uncheck "Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game"

Game wouldn´t start for me either with that checked.

Win10 specific:

1) Rerun the vcredist from:
SteamSteamAppscommonDarkestDungeon_CommonRedistvcredist2013
Then reboot your computer

2) Try running Steam as an administrator

3) Try running the Darkest.exe in Windows 7 compatibility mode

NVM SHITS RUNNING!! THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU GLORIOUS BASTARD!!!

 

[Gully State]

I thought the release was adding more heroes on top of the last dungeon? Did I miss something?

 

[Usoto215]

Thanks to all the folks that threw some advice at me! Very much appreciated. Brb gonna go ignore the world playing this

 

[Gully State]

For those of you starting out

-Don't get attached to your starting guys, you'll probably lose them.
-Upgrade your stage coach ASAP (increase recruits available to 4). You'll always be able to field a party no matter how shitty your previous run was.
-This most likely is obvious to others but it wasn't to me - killing someone is generally better than AOE damaging and stunning (preferably the enemy at the back). I lost a lot of people early on because I used the highwayman's AOE way too much. Every attack has the potential to really screw you over no matter the strength of the enemy so really you just want to see as few turns as possible from the enemy.

I only started playing the game recently so I never got used to the game before corpse mechanic was implemented. As of 20 hours, I don't feel as though the game has been ridiculously hard..maybe RNG screws you over at times, but you have enough tools at your disposal to mitigate.