Let's brainstorm together...

Let's brainstorm together, Holla Forums and list the reasons why this failed and is not able to induce a feeling of comfyness in us.

I'll start.

I think the fatal flaw of dungeon keeper games is that you cannot manually choose what minions will spawn for you. It's automatic and based on what rooms you have built. This is a problem because sometimes rooms are built for utility or unlocking a hierarchy, and not built for the minions they attract. So it's very common to build a library in the beginning to research spells or something, but run out of gold before you build the barracks/training room. So in that time you were waiting for money, a whole bunch of warlocks spawned when realistically you'd have liked to save your population for melee minions or something down the line.

The only way to free up your population is to send your already spawned minions off to die, which can be painful if some of them have spent resources to level up or whatever. It's just an unintuitive mechanic that seems so simple to fix, just let me spawn minions based on my currently built rooms like I can spawn imps/workers.

It was released far too early
At release it was highly unoptimized and had a shit ton of bugs

Comfy is the sense you get when there is no difficulty and you're just playing a game to pass time, not to have a challenge or interest in the game. Essentially comfy is for the people who really just want to mindlessly grind all day because they want to pass the time. Not because they enjoy it.

it wasnt really a bad recreation of the genre, but they released a really buggy mess instead of leaving it another few months. I have fun playing it but I was following the game through development and they released early probably because they were running out of money

Its a little more stable now and its still relatively fun to play

good analysis, but very bad suggestion

having to manually summon minions is not comfy at all

4/10


I played the campaign a bit after release (IIRC the first major patch that brought lots of bugfixes) and recently a few months back

not much changed, the campaign is pretty abysmal compared to DK2

also NO FUCKING DIFFICULTY MODES RRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE


fuck off, that's not what comfy means

Comfy is when you can build a neat base, but you can still very much be challenged. In fact when I discovered how ridiculously easy some very thematic old DK2 missions were, they lost all feelings of comfyness for me

Okay sure, but they patched it now.

I don't think bugs are what made the game shit, because no the game is bug free, but it has no soul. No magic for me.

I'll tell you one thing that made the game shit.


WELL NOW IT'S A WASTE OF TIME TO BUILD ANY TRAPS EXCEPT FOR A FEW TO SPAWN FIRE DEMONS!!!

That was such a bad design decision, just because of MUH FUCKING MULTIPLAYER balance.

FUCKING FAGS wanted to balance it for muh esports.

It's not a huge deal but personally I've never liked that these kinds of games never have strong themes, it's always just super generic fantasy to give you a bunch of different shitty fantasy minions to choose from
You're not anything specific like a lich with undead minions or a cultist controlling other cultists and summoned creatures, you're just "bad guy" and you have access to the widest possible range of "bad guy" monsters


Nice formatting bro

What I liked about the theme of DK2, just purely graphical was that you basically recruited a bunch of generic fantasy creatures.

Everyone knows the standard goblin, evil wizard, dark knight, etc.
WFTO kinda tried to to do their own style, but it was just as bland without looking familiar. And it was very overdesigned. Not as bad as Ubisoft's HoMM series, but a hybrig.

pic related

The problem is it was built solely for competitive multiplayer and they completely forgot it was supposed to be a dungeon management game. Hell, Dungeons 2 is closer to what DK3 was gonna be than this shit.

Do you just have that response on speed-dial? Cause we've had this thread countless times now and every time you post the exact same thing word for word.

really?

Yes. Just look at how the abilities were designed. They look almost mmo-like. I think it really broke the magic and immersion.

Do you know what I mean?

It's not really surprising that this happened, given that the devs were Keeper Klan autists who more or less exclusively played DK for the multiplayer.


But really, the "perfect balance" thing that modern strategy games ask for largely kills the classical comfy feeling because you can't really have unique or randomized events.

To the developer's defense, they did listen to the fans and developed Heart of Gold with a much slower pace in mind (then did a 180 with survival mode and now presumably are doing a 180 back to slow-paced gaming with My Pet Dungeon).

The devs were deep in the reds and had gone without pay for several weeks prior to the game's launch, so they didn't really have much of a choice

couldnt have said it better

pick one, retard.

it's a symbiotic relationship, user

it doesn't mean that comfy has to be challenging, but it goes well together :3

Greets, Dev here. Always interested in discussion and feedback on how we can improve and can offer some insights as well.

We added a feature to control spawning of units in one of the minor patches. I think 1.4.1, clicking a Gateway will show the list of units, you simply click what you don't want to spawn. No more throwing the stuff you don't want away.



I think this is a good insight into why things weren't as good as they could have been. Honestly we launched too early but given our position at the time we had no choice.

Our goal ever since has been to make up for that as best we can through our free updates and DLC. We've carried on development for a further two years now.


The Game is definitely not balanced for ESports, though balance was a concern. We felt defender advantage was too great in any mode and a good way to limit it is to limit your mana pool.

That said you can still easily place down dozens, probably hundreds of traps (they cost much less mana than they used to)

In the next expansion (Not MPD) we'll be adding something to expand your mana pool even further… at a cost.

Interesting contrast in these two posts, visual design is very difficult we tried to tow the line between original and derivative, I definitely agree we missed the mark in a few places but personally I like a lot of the units we have, especially the new ones that we've introduced since Patch 1.4 (and Heart of Gold) and as we progress into the new stuff!

But this shows a difficulty in how you can't appeal to everyone's tastes, some want one thing, some want another. Perhaps the problem is trying to appease everyone? More on this soon!


This is a topic I've pondered on for a while and one as a player I'm not sure how I feel about. I think this is a contrast in what i call "Rawness" the thing about games and design these days is they're very refined, very particular in how they're put together and how things are done.

Compared to the 90s when everything was a lot more "Raw" and less so comprehensively designed, it was sorta just bashed together and I think the result ended up feeling a bit less contrived. It's a difficult balance to strike and still not sure where I stand on it.

There are benefits in both things and I think as developers we should be careful of how much we refine our designs. This is something I'll be bringing up during the development of our next title.

This comes back to trying to please everyone I mentioned above. The Dungeon Management fanbase, is perhaps a bit more fragmented than most. In particular because the two genesis games DK1 & 2 are quite different from one and other.

Our approach was the tow the line and try and make something that worked for everyone. As a DK fan myself I personally think we missed the mark with the original campaign but did much better with Heart of Gold.

But then we discovered problem 3. By creating a game we had further fragmented our fanbase. Now I divide our players into four groups:

- Dungeon Management fans that like the pressured & tight gameplay of the original campaign
- Dungeon Management fans that want a more relaxed, thoughtful experience
- Strategy fans that want to feel challenged
- Players that enjoy the game regardless of the direction

We found that the original campaign, although very flawed did appeal to a large portion of our audience, while Heart of Gold appeared more to Group 2 than it did with Group 1 & 3. Group 4 remains largely appeased no matter what we do.

So rather that building a game that sits strictly by our vision we're trying to refine ourselves and provide experiences for that appeal to subsets of the player base. If Heart of Gold was a more thoughtful and methodical experience we wanted the next thing to be a bit more extreme and quick, to express the range the game is capable of.

Now that Crucible is out of the way My Pet Dungeon seeks to give a subset of our audience exactly what they've been asking for and beyond that Campaign 3 will likely flop a little again (though this one is liable to have difficulty levels!)

This is among one of the core reasons for the game launching in the state it did, by the time we launched most of us had gone without pay for months, we had a retail partner breathing down our back and were left in an impossible situation.

There's a much bigger story available on our website that covers a lot more background to how it got to that state, but to say finances were the only problem was an understatement. A lot of challenges were overcome to bring WFTO to market such as overcoming organizing a global team of nearly 20 people at peak, overcoming our own inexperience as well as bad management decisions taken by someone who… is not with us any longer (and hasn't been for years).

It's a long story but it underlines a simple fact. Developing games is hard. We started a huge project on a shoestring budget, one that far outweighed our capabilities at the time. If WFTO was made today it would be a different game altogether but we're still proud of what we've made.

It's been sucessful and still managed to please a lot of our fans, more importantly it did well enough for us to keep working on it, even though some core issues may never be fixed the game today is nothing like it was at launch, we've rewarded our fans as much as we can with free content, scores of updates and more.

We've learned a lot from the process and we're going to take everything we've learned forward into the future

You can appease strategy fans without constant pressure
There are any number of ways you could go about doing that, some I'm sure more effective than others, but it's not like it's an impossibility

I never played this game so I don't know.

I just want to build my dungeon and take care of my minions while waiting for heroes. A total sandbox dungeon experience.

Agreed, I suppose perhaps I am being too abstract with regards to that group.

All genres have a huge diversity in them but the core point is that you can't possibly please everyone with everything. Hence why different content is aimed towards different people.

I should probably mention as well that in Patch 1.6 the main campaign is getting some more timing tweaks to hopefully make it less pressured, there are deeper problems in it but should help a bit.

We're also slowing much of the core pacing by 25-30%, interested to see how the majority of the fanbase responds.

Stop or go away.

I really, REALLY disliked the beast spam.
Archons were too easy to get.
Kind of disliked the how they implemented researching with the tree and shit.
Too little variety in units on the Keeper side, since lel beasts.
The non-beast units had little to no personality from what I remember.
And fucking Unity? Why Unity? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? WHAT THE FUCK. STOP MAKING GAMES WITH THIS CANCEROUS PIECE OF SHIT JESUS FUCK THE LAG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AND UNRESPONSIVE INTERFACE TOO FUCK FUCK

protip: never try to please everyone.

Half the people in this thread are doing it
You can't fight that kind of cancer, even mark is on board with it

Nah, not familiar with these boards as you might tell. But if you ask nicely and explain what I'm doing wrong I might comply ;)

Can't particularly comment on a few of those personal preference mostly. But on Unity I can say that at the time we tried several engines and none would give us the features we wanted other than Unity.

If we had the resources and experience though I think a custom engine would have been the way to go at the time. Maybe not today, we'll have to see what happens if we ever make a sequel.

Yup as I said it's impossible, but there's no reason not to try and provide an enjoyable experience for as many divergent fans of Dungeon Management as possible.

Interesting topic to discuss on the balance of community input vs solidarity of vision. Not for here though :)

It really is a mystery why it failed, truly.

How the fuck do you expect people to read any of this shit when you double (reddit) space everything? Why the fuck are you using emoticons on an imageboard? Fuck off. Nobody else posts like that, you should AT THE VERY LEAST be able to learn from the environment you are in.

I'll be waiting patiently for the sequel.
Emoticons, other than :^), are forbidden by international law.

Gotcha. Though environmental exposure is a poor learning device if the environment is inconsistent. Cheers for your measured and helpful response.

I'm pretty sure everyone here has already called you a humongous cockmuncher for the way you type.

Hopefully you get raped by niggers and die of AIDS.

Hey, I recognize you. You definetly seem to be active. Didn't know you come here. That's cool.

what's the point if the lock your mana?
You want to have lots of Imps, a few of those Ember demons and still not have your mana locked out to the maximum.

There is no point to put any traps anywhere except near your dungeon core.

I mostly played the campaign and a few maps.
I don't even know exactly what the different types of creatures do. I never needed to know, because I just create a nice little dungeon and then deathball in to the enemy.

Apropos difficulty. I remember you saying once that difficulty options like a hard mode for the campaign is not being considered.

Why? That's honestly not only a problem in your game, but DK2's as well. You could have really improved there. I am just not being challenged by those missions at all.

Will it also be a dungeon management or god game?


Can you go deeper into that? Are they big changes?

Because I already played the campaign two times and I don't really feel like doing it again, so don't jew me here by giving me an unclear answer.


I guess it was inevtiable. After all it was done by fans who played a lot of DK and they either had to have played custom games or a lot of multiplayer.


huh, how did you find this site btw? because people bitch on me for reddit spacing all the time, so I am just curious, since this seems to be the first time anyone called you out on it

kyle is that you faggot

I've played DK 1 and DK 2. Unfortunately for me I like DK 1 much more then DK 2. And WTFO is like improved DK 2. My problem with DK 2 is that it even if it had some improvements from DK, it lost some depth and QoL things because of new graphics.

I am talking about rooms and monster abilities. In DK 1 you could train all your creatures from level 1 to 10. You needed lots of time and money, but you did not have to micromanage training and could train lots of creatures at the same time. In DK 2 you can only train creatures to level 5, training room requires much more space because of dummies. And further training in gladiator pit requires much more micromanagement and only gives level 8. Level 10 is only reached through real combat, so very few creatures will ever get it. Because of this there are no evolving monsters like thief and lizard from DK 1. As result you also have more lower level monsters and more boring battles, since they just hit each other in melee instead of using abilities on lower levels.

There are a lot less abilities for monsters in DK2 as well. I've seen a custom map in DK 1 where you have to fight hordes of archers, mages and other heroes as a single ghost. Its almost impossible, but ghost abilities (deflect, defence and heal) give very strong counter against ranged monsters. In DK 2 there are much fewer abilities and they have longer cooldowns. This just removes a lot depth and fun from battles for me. I haven't got to later levels of WTFO but it seems much more like DK 2 then DK 1. Especially with beasts. More fancy graphics, less in-depth gameplay and less options, counters. More micro as well. I will give WTFO better look later, maybe it gets better. But I wish DK successors were closer to Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, focusing more on depth then on graphics.

I really wish someone made DK successor with different fantasy evil factions with asymmetrical balance. Just some ideas - undead with powerfull magic, greenskins with numbers, pillaging and hit and run tactics, demons that are good all around, and underground monsters (dragons, minotaurs) that have slow progression, but lots of gold, traps and decent magic. Now combine this with more in-depth environment that has more options, traps, resources (like catacombs, caves, old mines instead of just soil). Then maybe add random events and AI only good human faction as a boss or bigger danger. And now we have something completely different that is still DK successor but is fresh enough to be its own thing. I really wish for more RTS that are between DK and usual base-building games.

I feel akward, because I barely remember playing DK1. I was a small babbie.

It was also funny to me when I realized from scrambled childhood memory that I did in fact play HoMM2. (because of the nigger caveman and the knigh in golden armour)

there's no greater way to detect newfags than fuckers who get triggered by double spacing. there is no greater pressure than to see "in" and try to outgroup people with no fucking understanding of history. nobody gets this assmad about spacing except people who a) are new as fuck or b) fell for the d&c shit that started when Holla Forums started getting barraged by shills in election days. you know that was mostly an argument tactic that was meant to piss people off because they knew the little "muh sekret klub" fagchan refugees like you would fall for it hook line and sinker and get pissed off at people who posted like they've been posting since 2003, right?

no you don't, now calm your tits you little sperg. this goes out to all of you fags who bit on this garbage.

double

spacing

are you

triggered

now?

( ° ʖ °)

the first Dungeon Keeper is the superior one out of the lot due to the fact that, it has the most content out of the lot and kept a nice comfy and consistent style to it thanks on par to 3dmodels used as sprites and almost perfect sound design

that said, wfto plays and looks as though it wants to be a DK2 clone which was a step down from the first in almost all regards

Issue with double spacing is its hard to read if you have allot of text.

This

faggots have been "reddit spacing" since 03

There's nothing wrong with it

People have complained about it for a long time, but they used to say "stop formatting your posts like that, it's a fucking eyesore" instead of "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE NORMALFAG REDDIT SPACING GET OFF MY BOARD GOD DAMN". I still find it annoying but the reaction it gets here nowadays is not only retarded but is unbelievably exploitable for trolling.

I liked War for the Overworld, just for the necromancy, succubus, and corrupting mechanics.
The only thing I didn't like about it was that the good guys weren't really portrayed as good guys. The one level I liked was the one with a hero trying to get through and it starts off with him being super confident and chivalrous promising that he'll bring all his men home, then eventually breaks down into despair when he realises how hopeless it is. I wish the whole game was like that but instead the good guys were mostly shown as idiots or nincompoops, it wasn't just the characters and missions, it also applied to the aesthetics of their dungeons and units. They didn't feel very good. I think that was on purpose from what I can tell, but it really worked against the whole idea of 'you are the bad guy and they are the good guys'

They shits new DLC with map editor and… sandbox missions.

I mean I don't know what your talking about, It it great and it is getting content updates almost monthly recently. The game was pretty messed up on release with bugs and horrible optimization but now it's the new Dungeon Keeper game I have always wanted. Dungeons 2 was also pretty decent despite it just being a slow consolized version of DK and I'm excited for the 3rd one.


The first one is my favorite too, the moody dark soundtrack, great sound design and dark ominous sprites made the game ooze with atmosphere. I really liked DK2 but I never liked how bright and cartoony the visuals looked.