Displeased with some of the changes...

[Jorlen]

Originally Posted by tacitus

I haven't found problems with food/potion economy issues, that might be character/playing differences. But ... sheesh ... the bag availability. Gee I see a wandering bag vendor and they have 2 bags and when they restock they have only 1 bag. I found "bag vendor" in the dungeon - and they had NO bags. Sigh.

Bags were not always this rare, I imagine somewhere along the way, the drop rate got reduced significantly.

And this is our main issue with the game, is that since the beginning, there have been a lot of changes along the way that had the unfortunate side-effect of making the game more difficult.

Balance is an extremely difficult thing, we know that, and the work Shadow has put in this game is mind boggling. The sad part of it though, is that having this game as tough as it is now, translates into less fun for me and my bro.

We play dins for a co-op dungeon crawling experience, we're not hardcore gamers. For us, Din's was about going through dungeons and feeling like a bad-ass, watching our characters grow and hoarding loot. Now, it feels like it's about survival and XP debt. Without changing any options, our characters are less powerful, die more often, get less good loot and have to pick up gray items to sell so we can afford food.

I've been playing Din's since shortly after release, and it's quite a different experience now, and it breaks my heart to say that I am no longer enjoying it as I once did. If the majority feel opposed to this, then I suppose it's simply time to move on, not a big deal.

I've noticed tons of options that can be toggled upon town or character creation to make the game more difficult, I can't fathom using any of them. It seems even without checking these, some of the more difficult balance changes have leaked into the game.

Sincerely,

[DeathKnight1728]

Ive gotten more characters to that turning point of 30-40 and i can thankfully say that its been much easier now than before (some 5-6 months ago). Before i could barely enter combat range without getting swatted for a ton of damage, now i find it to be much more manageable. I do agree though that some of the new changes might be annoying. I used to use thunderbolt quite a bit, now its almost pointless. But hey, that doesnt mean that it cant be remedied.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by DeathKnight1728

Ive gotten more characters to that turning point of 30-40 and i can thankfully say that its been much easier now than before (some 5-6 months ago). Before i could barely enter combat range without getting swatted for a ton of damage, now i find it to be much more manageable. I do agree though that some of the new changes might be annoying. I used to use thunderbolt quite a bit, now its almost pointless. But hey, that doesnt mean that it cant be remedied.

Right. From what I read on these forums, most of the changes have made it easier rather than harder to play DC. I think Jorlen experienced some very specific issues that pissed him and his brother off.

I personally don't consider the paucity of bags a major issue, but if there are specific other things he can point to (other than inflation which I think is a valid point), I think those can be handled on a case by case basis, thunderbolt being a good example.

Another point is that nerfing of a power is *usually* done for a reason. It means that that power was too dominant. I'm not sure that applies to thunderbolt (in fact it probably doesn't), but DC allows you to respec to find a balance of powers that works better. And if that's not good enough, Jorlen, you can always play at a lower level town or slower pace -- there's no shame in that. That's what those settings are for.

[Bak]

I think problems with food and/or going broke is a playing style, because I've never had either of those problems. (Except for towns where all the vendors are dead for a long time, so no one to buy food from.)

I stock up on food, so I don't have to buy when prices are higher (darkness machine, poisoning, etc.). Pick up almost everything in the dungeon and sell it in town. Also use Din's altar as much as possible, rather than rely on food/potions.

The drawback is that it is a little more tedious, and sometimes the quests escalate while my character is running to and from town. But again, that is a choice of playing style. Should be able to find a balance between penny-pinching on food, and beserker fighting that uses up all the food.

[m0stly_harmless]

You guys are forgetting that there are TWO of us going into any of these dungeons. We're not doing a berzerker styled game. We try to save every city we enter and we deal with all the modifiers that are thrown in.

We both have been playing Din's pretty much since it came out. The points we bring up are from our experiences with the game since day one.

We've played MANY variations of just about every character class and have settled on which work better in our co-op games and which we can use to go exploring alone.

We both have two different main characters to which we've spent plenty of time choosing skill sets that compliment each other (and we found the good combinations to be wanting). Our characters used to work very well together and we used to be able to handle a dungeon that was 2 levels higher than we are at the time. We didn't mess around with any of the game modifiers as we found the gameplay satisfactory to our needs & likes.

Now it just seems we spend our time getting are proverbial butts handed to us and spend all our money on food and potions.

We do pick up everything that falls. We have to to pay for our food & potions somehow, right? Problem with this is that there isn't enough items that fall to be shared between the two of us so we can properly keep stocked up. Then you go an add the higer priced modifiers (famine, low stock) and we're broke.

Now, we're all ok with some changes and mods as long as the basic playing style of the game remains unchanged. We started this thread because we felt that this style has been changed with detrimental effects on our playing enjoyment.

One should not be expected to be a level whatever character and have to create lesser levelled town just because the monsters will be weaker (and give out much less XP) for the sake of not having to die all the dang time.

One should also not have to not update to the new patches (in case there are some major changes) to be able to enjoy the game.

It's a fine line the DEV needs to thread and we feel for him. That said, things don't change if the fans keep their traps shut. I think it's a sad day when a great games starts to looses it's appeal.

[alstein]

Have you looked at Magitek's mod? That might fix some of your problems.

That said, I do think there's a legit problem in the base game of many skills being worthless/underpowered in comparison to others, as well as many skills having vastly excessive cooldown timers. I think this is something that needs to be handled before release. I'd like to see someone go through the classes and point out the underused/underpowered skills.

As for thunderbolt, if it's gimped that much, maybe lightning mastery should work on it again?

[Manumitted]

Originally Posted by DeathKnight1728

Well what is the chance of [Thunderbolt] stun? If it is lower than 25% then a change should make it to 25% or 40%. Those are much more reasonable than what it is now. I heard it was 10% but i dont think that is correct.

The trouble is that Thunderbolt is so fast even before the inevitable Cast Time gear that you get 4 chances at re-stun every time you stun a mob. With Cast Time gear, the 4 chances become up to 7. 7 chances at a 25% occurrence will hit that occurrence at least once 87% of the time. Even the 4 chances succeed 68% of the time. At 10% stun, 4/7 chances become 35%/52% success. Unless the mob is within melee range with a fast weapon, you can add at least one more chance to these figures to represent the time it needs to close the range and swing its weapon.

I agree with the OP that food, drink, and potions escalate in price too rapidly, but I think that's intended as a money sink to balance the increasingly valuable gear that the player is selling by the cartload. This idea seems to break down once players start dying constantly in the late game. I personally stockpile the more cost-effective food and potions (some on mules) or use lower-leveled characters to buy for their betters, who reciprocate by passing down phat loots. Food and potions 3 tiers down from the "proper" stuff are still very effective for me.

I also linger in conveniently arranged towns after saving them to do some item-farming as I milk the respawns. Once you're a bit overleveled for the town, it's easy to put on the item/magic-finding suit without much risk of death. Aside from keeping one's purse full, this approach increases the quality of one's main gear over time, making higher town levels less hazardous.

[Nim]

Originally Posted by alstein

That said, I do think there's a legit problem in the base game of many skills being worthless/underpowered in comparison to others, as well as many skills having vastly excessive cooldown timers.

I'll second this. The number of not awful skills is surprisingly small.
Regarding the money side of the game, I'm having the exact opposite experience. I have too much money because apart from food there isn't exactly much to spend it on.
Bag availability seems to be absolutely random. My current HC char is lvl 28 and has already 2 Knapsacks ( 12 slots) while with other chars I only had 6 or 8 slot bags available at around the same lvl.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Nim

I'll second this. The number of not awful skills is surprisingly small.
Regarding the money side of the game, I'm having the exact opposite experience. I have too much money because apart from food there isn't exactly much to spend it on.
Bag availability seems to be absolutely random. My current HC char is lvl 28 and has already 2 Knapsacks ( 12 slots) while with other chars I only had 6 or 8 slot bags available at around the same lvl.

I agree with bag availability, and I think it's not a problem because of the shared stash. I like the randomness.

Regarding skills, I think it'd be much more useful if you pinpointed specific skills and their deficiencies. Again, this game is REALLY difficult to balance well because of all the possibilities. You could help by indicating what you think is too weak (or too strong).

The money issue is really interesting. I think characters that have an easy time don't have any trouble money-wise, because the most expensive stuff is the food and potions which have inflation. Weaker characters that die a lot need many potions, and they can go broke. Not sure if anything can be done about this since one can adjust the town difficulty and make a weak character 'strong', or keep playing after a town is saved to gather money, so the economy is unpredictable.

If donation bliss gets steadily expensive (as I suggested elsewhere) that would be something strong characters could invest their excess money into.

Maybe we could also purchase town defenses? Donate a certain amount to the steward, and the game will spawn a town defense totem quest. Also, since donations would be getting universal special functions, we could say that if you donate a certain amount to the weaponsmith, he'll spawn a specially crafted item quest. Basically donations would be an expensive path to order optional quests that you want.

[Nim]

I agree with bag availability, and I think it's not a problem because of the shared stash.

No shared stash in HC I'm afraid.

I like the randomness.

I don't. Running back and forth more often to sell crap just because I have a small inventory is not my definition of fun. But then I don't like the whole inventory system anyway.

The money issue is really interesting......

Last time I died at lvl 58 I had ~ 170 GP. I've played with poor + unlucky before and even though it does make a difference it still doesn't matter that much. But I don't think this is an important thing to fix anyway, too much money certainly doesn't break the game.

Regarding skills, I think it'd be much more useful if you pinpointed specific skills and their deficiencies. Again, this game is REALLY difficult to balance well because of all the possibilities. You could help by indicating what you think is too weak (or too strong).

Sure could but whats the point ? There are so many design desicions I fundamentally disagree with and so many obvious flawed skills that haven't been tackled that I think this is intentional.