Dungeon of the Endless

[Gustaran]

All I wanted to say is that other permadeath games make the amount of hours lost in a failed session of this game look like nothing.

Yes, I understand that, but just because there are other games that apply an even more rigid approach to permadeath does not render my point invalid.
It's like saying you dislike free boni through early exploration in Civ 5 and I answer by pointing out that the game "Ultimate Realmbuilder" gives you three extra cities and two free Scouts whenever you explore ruins and this makes the Civ 5 boni look like nothing.

I pointed out FTL and Rogue Legacy because it shows that the most popular games with a permadeath mechanic do use anything but a 30-hours-session-length-model (and neither does DOTE to be fair).
If you like that kind of gameplay, all the power to you, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this particular very rigid implementation is neither the most popular among players nor particularly highly rated among reviewers.

To me FTL's session length is quite spot on and motivating (even when suffering permadeath) and DOTE's session length is not. If that doesn't bother you, great, the game might be a good buy for you.

[Nystul]

To claim that Rogue Legacy has any sort of permadeath mechanic is really quite a stretch. Dying in Rogue Legacy is almost entirely beneficial.

[antisocialmunky]

Honestly I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. You said that it would be nice the game were shorter. I gave you another game for comparison implying that Endless's play session isn't that long. You go on this weird tangent about how Rogue Legacy and FTL get better review scores because they are shorter like the games are being rated solely for play length which is a very strange claim to make.

I'm not even sure what you are trying to do anymore besides arguing against a strawman that exists in your head, no offense. I'm just getting confused and annoyed at whatever is going on in this thread.

[Sullla]

I think that the issue with Dungeon of the Endless is less about game length and more about game pacing. A game's runtime can be any length at all so long as there's fun stuff to do and interesting decisions to make. Rogue Legacy has character who die constantly (typically lasting 5-15 minutes each for normal players) but the deaths themselves are fun because each one levels up all future characters. FTL has some of the tightest balance you'll ever see in a strategy game, with the eight sectors (roughly 2-3 hours of playtime) producing just enough scrap needed to defeat the flagship. There's some leeway on Easy difficulty, less on Normal, and absolutely no room for error on Hard. You will almost never be in a situation where there's scrap sitting around piling up needlessly. I know nothing about this game Sots, but I'm assuming that there's some kind of pacing mechanism in that game as well. For a Hardcore Diablo character, the pacing comes in the form of assigning stat points, skill points, gambling/crafting new gear, fighting new and more difficult monsters, etc. You might be playing for 30 hours on a permadeath character, but there's plenty to keep you occupied the whole way.

Dungeon of the Endless suffers from serious pacing issues. The game works very well for about 6-8 floors, when you need to research new stuff and you're searching for additional heroes and gear to outfit them. But in the last few floors, the gameplay comes to a crashing halt. I always have everything that I need to research completely finished by floor 8 or so, turning science into a completely useless resource. Your team or heroes is full, they've all got excellent gear, and so on. There's not much to do at this point. If the game ended here, it would be very well paced and a lot more fun.

Instead, the game drags out for 3-4 more floors of tedious grind, with very little to do. The monsters don't change up the gameplay in any way, there's just more of them and less dust to work with. It's padding; it's like if your ship was all maxed out after 8 sectors in FTL, and then you had to pass through 3 more sectors with nothing to upgrade while scrap just sat there piling up. The game is also in this weird place where it's too long to play out a game in a single session, but also too short to work as a traditional game where you lead a single group of characters on a long journey. 4-5 hours is a weird duration for a game like this. Still, the real issue is the pacing, not the duration in hours. The game drags because you've finished upgrading your research/characters/equipment, and absolutely nothing steps in to fill that gameplay void. You just have to grind another 4 floors and 2 hours to reach the ending.

Anyway, the game is indeed fun but the balance is nowhere near as good as FTL. I'm having fun watching people stream the game on Twitch though - a large majority of them are completely clueless.

[antisocialmunky]

I'm curious, have you beaten 'easy' mode? The game seems to brick wall around the point where you were on cruise control on 'too easy' atleast for me when the game just decides to give you 17 dust starts with maybe ~60 dust on the whole map. Who knows, maybe they balanced it for 'easy' and not 'too easy' since I cannot for the life of me get past level 8 with the play style you used on 'too easy'.

It is actually quite frustrating to lose compared to FTL :\.

OT:
The Sots: The Pit's pacing mechanism is much like Diablo, you are allocating points and customizing your character.

[Wyatan]

Thank you Sullla for the play through. Haven't finished watching it (watched the first 8 floors so far), but it did raise a few questions:

- Your approach seems hands-down the best: defending with turrets (industry) means wasting resources (turrets don't carry over), while defending wih food is an investment that carries over.
I expect that approach not to work on the higher difficulty level, or the game would indeed be very poorly balanced, with a whole aspect being basically useless for most of its length.
What I gathered from comments is that "too easy" is indeed pretty easy, while "easy" is damn hard (which, in FTL terms, I translated as "too easy" = "easy", "easy" = "hard").
- I'm a bit worried about the "tower defense" aspect. My approach with that genre has always been as a high scorer, meaning trying to solve the puzzle in the "perfect" way. Which requires lots of retries, and having all the information available.
That's obviously not what you get with random input that you get a single shot at. I find this tends to lead to a "generic" solution that you simply apply every time, with little variation.
- You basically ignore monster types: they're all "monsters". There's no specific approach to deal with the various mobs. Again, I expect that the harder mode requires you to take that into account.
I suspect/hope that the harder mode actually requires you to place down defenses once the mobs are generated, to build up your defenses accordingly. But if there's no refund on replacing turrets... I guess we're back to the "generic solution" approach.

Anyway, I'll see when I try it out for myself.

[Sullla]

Yes, I've been playing around a bit with the "Easy" difficulty last night and today. There is a massive increase in the challenge between the two settings; going from FTL's Easy to FTL's Hard is an appropriate comparison. I'm not sure if the enemies themselves get more difficult on the higher setting, but the one thing that's very apparent is the player's lack of resources. You get way less of everything, and it requires essentially flawless execution to make any progress at all. I'm losing character left and right despite everything that I can do. Looks like the tower defense part of the game is much more important, I'll have to experiment more with that. But you have so much less industry available to spend as well, it's painful to spend some of it on turrets... Tough choices. I barely made it through the lower difficulty setting on a perfect run (all doors opened on all floors, no one died). Right now I don't see how you would manage that on the harder one. Maybe you just run for the exit on the last couple floors? This is a brutal game.

Oh, and it's obnoxious that the two difficulty settings are called "Too Easy" and "Easy". Seriously, just call them Easy and Hard next time guys, OK?

[antisocialmunky]

My conclusion is almost the opposite of yours regarding industry. On my best runs my characters were actually under-leveled (less than floor) because I was always floating industry to put up the cost 3 turrets and making running retreats through turret hallways.

The really obnoxious thing about the tower defense portion of the game is that you don't know what's coming and what the critters coming at you actually do. The worst offenders are the suicide bombers which you can't even target with your heroes. If you want a turret defense that plays like this game, go get Revenge of the Titans. :\

[Lurker]

Oh, and it's obnoxious that the two difficulty settings are called "Too Easy" and "Easy". Seriously, just call them Easy and Hard next time guys, OK?

To be fair, if you can win a roguelike on your first run while more or less ignoring one of the central mechanics (tower defense), "Too Easy" is pretty accurate.

[antisocialmunky]

It really feels like the less tanky heroes are not viable on 'easy.' You really have to pick combat heroes because they more often end up in 1's and 2's.