Why DD's healers prevent the game being hard.

[No One]

I will precisely define what [hard] means.

A hard game requires the player to deeply understand the mechanics, and use every part of the buffalo. It rewards mastery and punishes ignorance.
Primarily because, if there are spare mechanics you don't need but aren't entirely irrelevant, using those mechanics anyway will trivialize the game. E.g. in any Dragon Quest with a bag, you can fill your bag with herbs and never have to use a healing spell outside of boss fights. Spend the healer's MP on damage. You can also buy herbs and spend no MP on damage, and instead all on healing. The game is easy, so your choices don't really matter; you win regardless. If you buy all the herbs and only use MP for healing regardless, you end up with 80%+ MP all the time, crushing the game to dust.

If DD were hard, you would need to understand and use pulls, stuns, debuffs, buffs, repositioning, disenchants, combo tokens, the flavours of bleed, and combat items. It would throw deadly situations at you that would just kill you (or at least wear your HP down way too much) if you did not properly prepare to respond. Maybe there's an enemy in act 4 that simply slaughters you if you don't have highway robbery. That's how roguelikes are supposed to work. With DD's random mashes, you should have to figure out how to combine preparations for all possible fights into one simultaneous loadout. In general, mashes should have two ways to instantly murder the unprepared, requiring the player to adapt to and accommodate what's happening in the battle.

Risking the loss of a 3-hour run in DD2 makes this style far more viable than losing heroes representing 20 hours collectively, or at worst your entire 80-hour stygian estate.

In actual DD2, you can just heal through it. Heals >> stuns, debuffs, most combos, etc etc. Heals have to be OP or you wouldn't use them at all.

Hard games don't allow party variety. It's not up to you, there's a best party and your job is to try to find it. On the hard torches, freedom of choice shouldn't be a thing, unless you count freedom to die. Each party should have a ceiling. The best parties should be about bringing the most options, so you can exploit the optimal action in the widest variety of situations.

Perhaps you can have freedom to die. Have a nonviable party, but compete on a leaderboard to see how far you can take it. Learn from Dwarf Fortress: losing is fun.

Every party does have a ceiling, it's just that in real DD2 all but possibly the very worst parties have a ceiling above the "hard" torches. Your choice in party doesn't really matter, with the sole exception of healerless parties. If you're willing to figure out how to make it work, you'll be fine.



DD combat is one dimensional. You minimize incoming damage. If it's less than you can heal, you win, and every time you manage to prevent more, you can attack instead of healing, double dipping on prevention.

With a one-dimensional combat system including healing, you have three options.
1. Healing prevents less damage than just hitting them, and you don't use it.
2. Healing prevents more damage than striking, and good players never die.
3. Healing prevents more damage than striking, but still can't prevent/restore all damage; eventually every player dies.

DD is 2, players above some (modest) level of skill never die.
(E.g. healing thresholds force players to attack instead of healing, because healing is better and they would if they could.)

You could move DD to 3, but players would just stack four healers to maximize the life uptime. It would be a very boring healing-spam system. Players would try to minimize the damage output without actually taking it to zero, dragging everything out as far as possible.

E.g, what if healing was powerful but all heals faced harsh use limits, so you would run out and fall behind? Solution: take two healers for twice the use limits, or rather four, for four times. PD-VES-OCC-CRU.

You could also try moving to 1 but forcing players to use healing anyway by bursting them down in every fight. E.g. the enemy does 20 damage and you can heal for 10-15. You don't want to heal, but if your dude has less than 20 hp, you have to.
In this case, the lost damage from healing increases incoming damage, and unless the fight is almost over it will spiral out of control. Your dude has 10 HP, so you need to heal them. 25 HP. Hit again, down to 5...and now there's no point in healing them, because even after the heal they reach DD in one hit. If the monster switches targets now you have two targets which need healing.
Again, you want to stack healers. 15*2=30, you're back in situation 2. Red Hook would have to respond by increasing damage (or nerfing healing) even further, making the healstack obligatory.

Even if you were somehow limited to one healer, there's lots of problems: strict pass/fail thing; has to be very tightly balanced (not an RH forte) or else the solution is to take no healers, kill them before they can burst. Crits become extremely nasty. With high burst damage and no viable recovery, the game could absolutely RNG you to death with a crit streak.
Finally, vastly empowers stuns, relatively. If healers are banned, in this degenerate regime, instead of taking four healers, you take four stunners. Like degenerate healerland, it's very slow.

Basically we're learning there's a very good reason Dragon Quest has MP. Although this is also a harsh pass/fail system. Either you have enough MP and you might as well have had infinite MP (like current DD), or you don't, and have to leave the dungeon.

DD has to move to 3 if it wants to be a hard non-degenerate game, but something has to stop you from just stacking healers. Is there a way to do some kind of Mario RPG party-wide MP without rewriting the DD engine?

Solution: healing exhaustion debuffs. Use limits not on the caster, but the target. Stack fifty healers if you want, doesn't matter if the low-health target has -100% healing taken.
Bonus: wyrd's selling point could be lower healing exhaustion.

DD must implement healing exhaustion if it wants to be a hard game. Though I think the necessary damage overhaul is far beyond what Red Hook is willing to do at this point.
There's also the distinct possibility the "hard" thing is a marketing gimmick and they never wanted it to be hard. Illusion of difficulty through e.g. high punishment.

--

With healing exhaustion, the idea would be that average damage is higher than what you can heal on average, including the road heal. HP would slowly deplete over time.
Or rather, on the usual torch, if you played well enough the road heal would slowly refill you. If you got sloppy, you would start falling behind.
On a proper infernal torch, even a perfect player would lose HP over time. Better players would simply lose less HP.

To do this, HP maximums would have to be a lot higher. Early in a region, crits would be totally unable to threaten you, except for their implications regarding later in the region. Only later, with HP getting low, would crits in fact be directly dangerous. The lower the player allowed HP to get, the more dangerous they would be.

At present, skipping the region boss would be an auto-win, so it would have to be adjusted to live at the end, in a binary choice with the oblivion's rampart. Two possible final nodes instead of one. The rampart would have to be buffed so it was weaker but not trivial compared to the boss.

Your health would be your score. You could tell at a glance how well you were doing.

We're basically replicating the Dragon Quest MP system, but directly on HP instead of going through a conversion. This means it's quite possibly a pass-fail system. Either you have enough HP and you might as well have had infinite HP, or you die.

To fix this, Darkest Dungeon 2 should live up to the hype: everyone dies. With the hardest torch, Even a perfect player should, if unlucky enough, lose a run through no fault of their own. Trying to cope with a hero death should be part of everyone's gameplay experience.

What playing better would do is merely reduce this chance. The better you played, the more health you would reach the end boss with, and the more trouble they would have with focusing one hero to death. This way, the system isn't a binary pass/fail. Instead players always have room to improve. Instead even poor players can win sometimes, through sheer persistence.

In a properly hard game, the idea of challenge runs is just silly. Such things would merely take the nonzero chance of random death to a higher nonzero chance.

[Polyurethane]

Originally posted by No One:

I will precisely define what [hard] means.

Hard games don't allow party variety. It's not up to you, there's a best party and your job is to try to find it. On the hard torches, freedom of choice shouldn't be a thing, unless you count freedom to die. Each party should have a ceiling.

Perhaps you can have freedom to die. Have a nonviable party, but compete on a leaderboard to see how far you can take it. Learn from Dwarf Fortress: losing is fun.

Every party does have a ceiling, it's just that in real DD2 all but possibly the very worst parties have a ceiling above the "hard" torches. Your choice in party doesn't really matter, with the sole exception of healerless parties. If you're willing to figure out how to make it work, you'll be fine.

To fix this, Darkest Dungeon 2 should live up to the hype: everyone dies. With the hardest torch, Even a perfect player should, if unlucky enough, lose a run through no fault of their own. Trying to cope with a hero death should be part of everyone's gameplay experience.

I've boiled down the arguments to the thesis statements so you can see OP is just elitist scum. It's not objectively wrong, it's just that it's myopic, cruel and caters to niche appeals that would never satisfy the populous in any significant way.

[hardy_conrad]

What is right for one person is wrong for another. Folks are different after all. Good news is that if someone doesn't like this game, news flash, there are others.

[Potato Demon]

Yeah, makes sense. DD2 MIGHT punish you for a mistake and obliterate you, it doesn't mean it consistently WILL. DD2 difficulty is like Leper's damage range, if you play perfectly on the standard difficulty or one of the tamer flames you'll be at the bottom but still winning with the worst RNG possible and absolutely crushing it on a lucky run. If you play perfectly on something like Bastard's the lowest RNG nets you a guaranteed loss while the best luck still makes you feel like you barely got through it. The base game doesn't make you run meta optimal team comps to win, it gives you some freedom. I'd rather be forced to use meta teams every time on Bastard's Flame anyway.

Also I disagree on the heals in this game. They all have limited uses and/or cooldowns, you can't spam any of them forever unless it's Strategic Withdrawl (nerf this already, this move should only be usable once it gives MAA Block Plus and puts him back to like half health for god's sake, Flagellant has to get his inhaler for a couple turns and can't use Sepsis after two or three times I think. MAA shouldn't outshine Flagellant on self healing). Some of the heals in this game do make shorter Road Fights and even longer encounters a lot easier though (Battlefield Medicine smh). So actually you have a point on that. And characters with heals are better than those without, I don't see Highwayman giving himself three Dodge Plus and restoring a third of his health. I love Dismas but Gravrobber's pretty fine looking with that Absinthe. Actually add Grave Robber to the list of characters with heals that are way too good, Leper has two Solemnity uses and Graverobber can just pop her triple Dodge Plus heal three times in a fight. This was fine when Graverobber was bad but she's almost keeping up with Highwayman Damage now. Give Absinthe a one use limit and it's good.

[Gal Kraft]

I appreciate the explanation of why some label this game too hard, when it could be worse. And I hope we're saying that we like it like it is, pending a few balance adjustments, so that we can enjoy all the variety of party formations that it has to offer. As for combat healing, it does seem a significant handicap without. Note that only HWM and DUE lack any heal, so it would require determination to not use any.

Healing exhaustion sounds like Hellion's winded, except with a 3 turn timer like most tokens. Could be interesting but just adds to the learning curve.

[Shiku]

Originally posted by No One:

If DD were hard, you would need to understand and use pulls, stuns, debuffs, buffs, repositioning, disenchants, combo tokens, the flavours of bleed, and combat items.

We already had the stun meta in DD1. People were annoyed by it because every difficult situation that was solvable through stuns was solved through stuns. It was not complex, required no adaptations and simply speaking was boring when combined with fight prolonging for recovery.

I'd say DD2 is in a good spot when it comes to combat items, trinkets and other "minor things" a player can do to up the chances. There are quite a lot of options to countering bosses through usage of these. Particularly act 3 and 4 but also lair bosses.

Originally posted by No One:

Maybe there's an enemy in act 4 that simply slaughters you if you don't have highway robbery. That's how roguelikes are supposed to work. With DD's random mashes, you should have to figure out how to combine preparations for all possible fights into one simultaneous loadout. In general, mashes should have two ways to instantly murder the unprepared, requiring the player to adapt to and accommodate what's happening in the battle.

Remember the old act 3 boss? That's exactly what it was. Bring speed+taunt or bust. How did people like it? THEY HATED IT and RH had to change the boss like 5 times.

Originally posted by No One:

Hard games don't allow party variety. It's not up to you, there's a best party and your job is to try to find it. On the hard torches, freedom of choice shouldn't be a thing, unless you count freedom to die.

and

This would also 'simply be added challenge.' In DD1, as in Diablo, you run deathless by taking zero risks, thus never challenging yourself.
Come to think, that means it's actually an anti-challenge run.

In a post before you said that a game or challenge isn't difficult if you're making correct decisions and therefore minimizing risk factors. Now, you're suggesting a difficult game design should push the player towards making optimal decisions (e.g. party comps). Which of the two is it?

Originally posted by No One:

DD combat is one dimensional. You minimize incoming damage. If it's less than you can heal, you win, and every time you manage to prevent more, you can attack instead of healing, double dipping on prevention.

With a one-dimensional combat system including healing, you have three options.
1. Healing prevents less damage than just hitting them, and you don't use it.
2. Healing prevents more damage than striking, and good players never die.
3. Healing prevents more damage than striking, but still can't prevent/restore all damage; eventually every player dies.

DD is 2, players above some (modest) level of skill never die.
(E.g. healing thresholds force players to attack instead of healing, because healing is better and they would if they could.)

You could move DD to 3, but players would just stack four healers to maximize the life uptime. It would be a very boring healing-spam system. Players would try to minimize the damage output without actually taking it to zero, dragging everything out as far as possible.

If I understand your point 1) correctly then healing output of the team is less than incoming dmg? If that's what it means then that's where DD2 is at (you could combine it with point 3). Not accounting for combat items any usual 1 healer team will eventually die to most encounters if you do nothing but heal. Most two healer teams will eventually die too. The reason good players don't die is because they can prevent most of the enemy dmg (by killing enemies quickly, disable, defensive measures e.g. taunt/block/dodge).

Originally posted by No One:

E.g, what if healing was powerful but all heals faced harsh use limits, so you would run out and fall behind? Solution: take two healers for twice the use limits, or rather four, for four times. PD-VES-OCC-CRU.

That's exactly where it's at right now. Thresholds and limit usage prevents you from spamming heals like DD1 and going infinite. I'd even argue that usage limit on heals is a counterproductive design. It's not making the game any harder for experienced players because you barely ever run in a situation where the fight is so long that you'd use up all the heals. However, it does make the game harder for beginners who have longer fights.

Originally posted by No One:

Solution: healing exhaustion debuffs. Use limits not on the caster, but the target. Stack fifty healers if you want, doesn't matter if the low-health target has -100% healing taken.
Bonus: wyrd's selling point could be lower healing exhaustion.

What would be the strategical consequences of this kind of change? Well, you'd want to run only heals that heal big chunks at once. So run a PD with IS and combine with a MAA tank. That's exactly where were are at right now but it would make the whole class balance even worse than it already is. You'd still want to run Foeter and use more of the "healing received" items that you get along the way. In terms of pets run rabbit or snake and stack up on healing tonics/kits/salves as much as possible. Other combat items would lose their value and it would be an auto-equip big healing items. You could completely neglect this mechanics through various trinkets, stagecoach and inn items with "healing received" (like the old act 3 boss).

Originally posted by No One:

You could also try moving to 1 but forcing players to use healing anyway by bursting them down in every fight. E.g. the enemy does 20 damage and you can heal for 10-15. You don't want to heal, but if your dude has less than 20 hp, you have to.
In this case, the lost damage from healing increases incoming damage, and unless the fight is almost over it will spiral out of control. Your dude has 10 HP, so you need to heal them. 25 HP. Hit again, down to 5...and now there's no point in healing them, because even after the heal they reach DD in one hit. If the monster switches targets now you have two targets which need healing.
Again, you want to stack healers. 15*2=30, you're back in situation 2. Red Hook would have to respond by increasing damage (or nerfing healing) even further, making the healstack obligatory.

That's where the game is actually at: enemy (potential) dmg output is higher than the team's healing. You can stack 2 healers but you don't have to. You can even run 0 healers if not combined with certain torches.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, the suggestion of a "healing exhaustion debuff" doesn't sound to appealing. It wouldn't particularly make the game any more difficult but just put an even stronger bias on the established optimal playstyle. I can also see a lot of ways simply ignoring or counteracting it. It might be a nice idea for a torch but sounds pretty bad as a general game design and would invalidate many elements of the game.

[Shiku]

Originally posted by Potato Demon:

Also I disagree on the heals in this game. They all have limited uses and/or cooldowns, you can't spam any of them forever unless it's Strategic Withdrawl (nerf this already, this move should only be usable once it gives MAA Block Plus and puts him back to like half health for god's sake

I see people on the forums and Youtube argue it should be nerfed but I never understood why. Every time I've decided to put a mastery in this skill and equip it for the last fight (or Exemplar) I ended up not using it. If you prepare well for the final fight, MAA is never going to be at deathsdoor. I think the last time it got actually good use out of it was in act 3 on a fresh account challenge run. If a skill only shines in dire situations and mostly for people who struggle the most with the game I think it's totally fine.

[HighLanderPony]

I still think healing should be adjusted based on MISSING HP instead of having a threshold. You'd get the same incentive of healing on as low HP as possible being the most efficient, but you wouldn't be locked out of healing in edge cases where doing so would feel better.

[No One]

Originally posted by Polyurethane:

I see, you are mad. Any anger or sadness caused by this thread was wholly unintentional.

Originally posted by hardy_conrad:

If someone doesn't like this game, news flash, there are others.

There are a couple hard single-player platformers. I don't like platformers.

There are indeed other games...if I want to play a trivial game.

You seem to be arguing that Darkest Dungeon shouldn't be hard. Like every other similar game. Unlike DD1 it doesn't say "challenging" on the store page, so that's a valid position. However, it would be nice if I didn't have to read the position into the post, but instead saw it argued explicitly.
I would prefer if nonzero hard games existed.

I would be fine with Red Hook making a version of DD where another player controlled the enemies, to take advantage of the self-balancing nature of PVP.

Regardless,

DD must implement healing exhaustion if it wants to be a hard game. Though I think the necessary damage overhaul is far beyond what Red Hook is willing to do at this point.
There's also the distinct possibility the "hard" thing is a marketing gimmick and they never wanted it to be hard. Illusion of difficulty through e.g. high punishment.

Originally posted by Potato Demon:

If you play perfectly on something like Bastard's the lowest RNG nets you a guaranteed loss

It doesn't. You can absolutely learn to win 100% of the time on Bastard's Beacon. Doesn't even look like you need a strict meta-comp; PD-CRU-MAA-FLG with CRU twiddling his thumbs uselessly in the back? Sufficiently powerful.
You can try to write a guide for nethack, but it's too long. There's too much stuff to master.
As with DD1, writing a guide to DD2 is largely about all the stuff to ignore, plus some boss gimmicks. You can hit 100% win rates on bastard's beacon without a special training regimen.
Nethack is not reasonably spoilable. Darkest Dungeon is very, very spoilable, because most of the mechanics not only don't matter, but are often actively holding you back (compared to just hitting the thing).

Generally what's holding players back is self-satisfaction. E.g. they're proud of the comp they came up with and don't want to hear - even from themselves - that it can be improved. The game has to be "hard," therefore whatever random jank they assembled is the best possible strategy. Perfectly logical, see?
CRU-OCC-JES-FLG. Triple artillery to the back, if they somehow live, JES finale. CRU or FLG main healer; your choice. Go full damage on the OCC.
The obverse of self-satisfaction is feeling like they can't be proud of any composition but the very best composition. Imperfection isn't allowed; the game has to be hard so they don't have to admit to imperfection. Improvement isn't something to be proud of, because that means admitting imperfection.

Which is, in turn, a good thing as long as the game isn't actually hard. If they started to improve they would rapidly trivialize the game.

Secondly, the illusion of difficulty is highly valuable to anyone who wants to be win against a hard game without having to unlearn their initial reactions and play strategies.

Originally posted by Gal Kraft:

so that we can enjoy all the variety of party formations that it has to offer

I can't enjoy it. There's no reason to pay attention to my comp or, much of the time, even what the comp is doing. "Can heal? Can inspire? Great, comp wins." Play the game on autopilot. Give me FF12 gambits and I'll make the game play itself.

I guess what you're saying is: "sucks to be you, I guess"

Originally posted by Xenagos:

As usual, off-topic. Consider starting your own thread to discuss those things. I would assume you've refuted the absolute heck of the post you imagined I wrote. I will not respond to a post that is not, in actuality, responding to me.

Originally posted by Xenagos:

If you prepare well for the final fight, MAA is never going to be at deathsdoor.

Strategic withdrawal would be a wonderful skill in a game that's actually hard. In this game, plenty of tools exist to prevent an MAA from ever hitting death's door in the first place, and it's generally a waste of a bar slot.
Yes, it's great for players who are already struggling. This is fine, except the part where, if they're struggling that much, it is unlikely that withdrawal alone will save them. Using withdrawal largely makes them take longer to learn to prevent damage or heal efficaciously.

Originally posted by HighLanderPony:

you wouldn't be locked out of healing in edge cases where doing so would feel better.

Mantra+ and divine comfort are no-threshold heals with no use limits. If you want it, you can do that. In extremis, there's the chirurgeon's mixing kit, as salves also lack a threshold. There's also deathless, although FLG OP on purpose. Speaking of, endure has no threshold. Although there's also reflection, inspiring cry+, chaplain mantra+, and, effectively, take aim.

Maybe you don't think these things are worthwhile? They feel better, but other things feel even worse in exchange?

[Polyurethane]

Meh, if I was that perturbed I would have tried harder to answer it point by point, but this rant is lazy logic at best. It's self serving and unimaginative.

I can't imagine you really think it would be a better game like this, and if you do, you probably don't even realize your main enjoyment from video games comes from establishing yourself as better than other people and less about your experiences from the games you get.

I'm sure it would be a better game for you, but most people would prefer a game with more variety.

[Shiku]

Originally posted by No One:

As usual, off-topic. Consider starting your own thread to discuss those things. I would assume you've refuted the absolute heck of the post you imagined I wrote. I will not respond to a post that is not, in actuality, responding to me.

I have to admit that it's not easy to understand your English but I'm pretty sure I got your points.

Your assumption is that the game is too easy because enemy damage is lower than the team's healing output and that's factually wrong (for most 1-2 healer comps). You can quickly check it by reading the wiki or test it in-game. Your proposed solution is to include a healing received debuff on the target whenever it gets healed. This, however doesn't really solve the presuming problem and at the same time would create a lot more problems in other areas. You can even test your solution by editing the game files and creating an infernal flame for this.

[Potato Demon]

Originally posted by No One:

Originally posted by Polyurethane:

I see, you are mad. Any anger or sadness caused by this thread was wholly unintentional.

Originally posted by hardy_conrad:

If someone doesn't like this game, news flash, there are others.

There are a couple hard single-player platformers. I don't like platformers.

There are indeed other games...if I want to play a trivial game.

You seem to be arguing that Darkest Dungeon shouldn't be hard. Like every other similar game. Unlike DD1 it doesn't say "challenging" on the store page, so that's a valid position. However, it would be nice if I didn't have to read the position into the post, but instead saw it argued explicitly.
I would prefer if nonzero hard games existed.

I would be fine with Red Hook making a version of DD where another player controlled the enemies, to take advantage of the self-balancing nature of PVP.

Regardless,

DD must implement healing exhaustion if it wants to be a hard game. Though I think the necessary damage overhaul is far beyond what Red Hook is willing to do at this point.
There's also the distinct possibility the "hard" thing is a marketing gimmick and they never wanted it to be hard. Illusion of difficulty through e.g. high punishment.

Originally posted by Potato Demon:

If you play perfectly on something like Bastard's the lowest RNG nets you a guaranteed loss

It doesn't. You can absolutely learn to win 100% of the time on Bastard's Beacon. Doesn't even look like you need a strict meta-comp; PD-CRU-MAA-FLG with CRU twiddling his thumbs uselessly in the back? Sufficiently powerful.
You can try to write a guide for nethack, but it's too long. There's too much stuff to master.
As with DD1, writing a guide to DD2 is largely about all the stuff to ignore, plus some boss gimmicks. You can hit 100% win rates on bastard's beacon without a special training regimen.
Nethack is not reasonably spoilable. Darkest Dungeon is very, very spoilable, because most of the mechanics not only don't matter, but are often actively holding you back (compared to just hitting the thing).

Generally what's holding players back is self-satisfaction. E.g. they're proud of the comp they came up with and don't want to hear - even from themselves - that it can be improved. The game has to be "hard," therefore whatever random jank they assembled is the best possible strategy. Perfectly logical, see?
CRU-OCC-JES-FLG. Triple artillery to the back, if they somehow live, JES finale. CRU or FLG main healer; your choice. Go full damage on the OCC.
The obverse of self-satisfaction is feeling like they can't be proud of any composition but the very best composition. Imperfection isn't allowed; the game has to be hard so they don't have to admit to imperfection. Improvement isn't something to be proud of, because that means admitting imperfection.

Which is, in turn, a good thing as long as the game isn't actually hard. If they started to improve they would rapidly trivialize the game.

Secondly, the illusion of difficulty is highly valuable to anyone who wants to be win against a hard game without having to unlearn their initial reactions and play strategies.

Originally posted by Gal Kraft:

so that we can enjoy all the variety of party formations that it has to offer

I can't enjoy it. There's no reason to pay attention to my comp or, much of the time, even what the comp is doing. "Can heal? Can inspire? Great, comp wins." Play the game on autopilot. Give me FF12 gambits and I'll make the game play itself.

I guess what you're saying is: "sucks to be you, I guess"

Originally posted by Xenagos:

As usual, off-topic. Consider starting your own thread to discuss those things. I would assume you've refuted the absolute heck of the post you imagined I wrote. I will not respond to a post that is not, in actuality, responding to me.

Originally posted by Xenagos:

If you prepare well for the final fight, MAA is never going to be at deathsdoor.

Strategic withdrawal would be a wonderful skill in a game that's actually hard. In this game, plenty of tools exist to prevent an MAA from ever hitting death's door in the first place, and it's generally a waste of a bar slot.
Yes, it's great for players who are already struggling. This is fine, except the part where, if they're struggling that much, it is unlikely that withdrawal alone will save them. Using withdrawal largely makes them take longer to learn to prevent damage or heal efficaciously.

Originally posted by HighLanderPony:

you wouldn't be locked out of healing in edge cases where doing so would feel better.

Mantra+ and divine comfort are no-threshold heals with no use limits. If you want it, you can do that. In extremis, there's the chirurgeon's mixing kit, as salves also lack a threshold. There's also deathless, although FLG OP on purpose. Speaking of, endure has no threshold. Although there's also reflection, inspiring cry+, chaplain mantra+, and, effectively, take aim.

Maybe you don't think these things are worthwhile? They feel better, but other things feel even worse in exchange?

The main thing I'm seeing here is that team building is only enjoyable for you when it's a 'forged in fire' kind of thing more so than 'I wanna screw around a bit and still have a shot', Which is understandable. Teambuilding can lose it's luster when anything can work reasonably well. Has this ever bothered me? Not really. I enjoy finding the most efficient team regardless and the freedom of being able to just do something different on a run even if I don't change anything is nice. But I've played games where I've been obliterated from existence for going off meta and it's a challenging experience that tests your metal and skill, I just don't want that to be every experience. Sometimes it's nice to just play Darkest Dungeon 2 where I can do stupid stuff and still take a run seriously, making a dumb braindead mistake can cascade into a hero death and while I'm not going to lose a run by not completely locking in just the risk of losing from a misclick makes the game tense for me.

You say that you should NEED to fully utilize and take advantage of pulls, debuffs and such for the game to be fun but it's the fact that you don't have to and can do your own thing that makes the game fun. This is going to sound like a REALLY stupid example but let's look at Kirby. In Kirby you have the option to engage in the platforming and puzzles but you can also just infinitely float over everything. Is this the same as Darkest Dungeon? Hell no. Kirby is meant to be an easy silly platforming nintendo game. Darkest Dungeon is a punishing Roguelike. But even adding that degree of player choice, just giving players the option to ignore the deeper mechanics and use simple team comps, it opens up the game to a lot more people and gives it a more 'freeing' feeling if that makes sense. Like you're choosing to use something like Occultist and going for fun pull stuff and can because the game lets you, not because the game FORCES you to. It's not like you can just turn your brain off and ignore basic teambuiilding but even having that small degree of freedom helps.

Also I remember you were talking about a game where if you wanted to win you run the best possible and well suited comps, but there were still community challenges where you can compete with how far you get with bad or off meta comps. This is a cool system and properly hard and punishing games should use it.

TLDR: Darkest Dungeon 2 is the Kirby's Return to Dreamland of Roguelites.

[Potato Demon]

Originally posted by Polyedra:

I think the real thing, which is fairly obvious to spot once you've read a few thousand posters, is that some are exceptional, yet modest; knows best but is humble about it. Others are worse but, being humble, it's not pointed out; directly.
Since I've realised this point some time ago, I took the liberty of skipping the read.

Yeah, some of the people in this thread come off as rude and condescending for sure. And OP doesn't seem condescending or rude, they're just so straightforward and mathematical about their take on things that some people might take it that way. It's always nice to hear about someone else's experience and take on the game even if it's out there and they come off like a robot.

[Gal Kraft]

Originally posted by No One:

Originally posted by Gal Kraft:
so that we can enjoy all the variety of party formations that it has to offer
...
I can't enjoy it. There's no reason to pay attention to my comp or, much of the time, even what the comp is doing. "Can heal? Can inspire? Great, comp wins." Play the game on autopilot. Give me FF12 gambits and I'll make the game play itself.

I guess what you're saying is: "sucks to be you, I guess"

Hey don't put words in my... fingers. Of course I'm not saying that. I genuinely thought you were just countering what others were saying about it being "too hard". Anyhow,

Yes, it is seemingly easier with a heal/stress heal solid team. But the game works well enough that most comps still work for those who are up to the task. Especially with all the items.
When I was spending time on the discord, I witness folks making interesting challenges for each other, or for themselves. The boundaries of a base game's challenge need to be broad enough to cater to more than one player type, though, I would think. It does suck for those who find it too challenging, and I do what I can in these forums to help that.

But to my point, the key element of entertainment, at least that I have found, is the replayability through variety. I don't think anyone has done 17,160 runs yet, to try them all, or 4,392,960 if counting paths, much less skill choices.

[Chicken biscuit]

Look.
I understand that some people find losing to be a fun way to play.
And I don't ever expect to win every run at ALL.
But in dwarf fortress, the game doesn't "end" Until you technically "Lose"
That's the games base format, it's HOW you're supposed to play.
You could technically keep a fortress running forever with good management and knowledge of the games mechanics, but that's not really how the game is played, because you can't "win" the game.

DD2 is different than DF. It has a final boss. It can be beaten like any other game with end bosses.

So no, I disagree. Losing is not fun in this game, and I honestly don't believe you, or anyone I don't know personally who would say that about THIS game specifically.

Maybe you're different than me, and that's perfectly fine. But I fail to see the "Fun" in losing a 2 hour run for any reason.
We already have replayability in the game without making losing a core "Feature" of the game lol.

[No One]

I just don't want that to be every experience.

Originally posted by Gal Kraft:

The boundaries of a base game's challenge need to be broad enough to cater to more than one player type, though, I would think.

My solution is healing exhaustion, not removing non-Beacon torches from the game.

My solution is about allowing Beacon to be genuinely difficult, instead of merely an exercise in using something like VES-JES-CRU-DST or HWM-JES-CRU-FLG. Right now if they tried to make Beacon actually difficult, all that would happen is that JES would have to be swapped for PD or OCC.

As above, it is wildly unlikely to happen in any case.

Due to the above fact, stuff like stuns is simply a waste of code and developer time. If anyone is using them, they shouldn't be. Debuffs are almost in the same boat. I can't remember anyone using weakening curse for the debuff. RUN blind is above the waterline but still very rarely used. Blinding gas may as well not exist (thankfully players understand). Not used enough to be worth the dev time. Non-seraph paths are essentially unused - hope they were basically afterthoughts. YAWP is only used for the taunt. There's also stuff if like maniac lashs gift... You can (and probably should) just ignore highway robbery.

Because you just don't need it.

Even if they were good, the hassle and complexity of using them would be negative, as the gain would be cancelled by new mistakes. Even if stuns were acceptably useful, many players trying to use them would end up behind by using them wrong, and would benefit by going back to [just hit it]. Meanwhile the players who are already good, and not likely to make mistakes, could win-more by using stuns, because you just don't need them. Good stuns would make the game even harder for poor players, and even easier for good players.

Now, if Beacon were the only mode and it required stuns to be useful, then stuns would be made useful. Players wouldn't have the [just hit it] option, so they would learn, by necessity. In this sense, removing the other torches could lead the devs to fix their game. And they could call it hard without a laugh track.
The remove-torches plan is merely stacking two kinds of impossible on top of each other, however.

Originally posted by Gal Kraft:

It does suck for those who find it too challenging, and I do what I can in these forums to help that.

But, of course, sucks to be anyone who finds it too easy. Just don't play vidja, lol.

Originally posted by Gal Kraft:

replayability through variety

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1940340/discussions/0/4205867749043706126/#c4355619963547118480

If parties in DD don't vary considerably in power, it's just a walking simulator. Pick whatever, do whatever, win anyway. If DD doesn't want to be a glorified walking (driving!) simulator, then bad parties need to get players killed.
Notably, with 1.3 million or so "characters" there's no way some of them aren't dramatically more powerful than average, not to mention dramatically worse. The only possible gameplay in a DD-style game is finding the good parties. Unless you include self-imposed challenges, but self-imposed challenges are dumb, as per my definition of a hard game.

Originally posted by Polyurethane:

I understand. You are still mad. Yes, I agree: you are angry.

I do in fact know ways you can be less angry, if you're interested. I'm just assuming you're not interested.

Originally posted by Polyedra:

"I don't like you as a person."
Okay.
I will not offer a reciprocal personal evaluation.

Originally posted by Chicken biscuit:

And I don't ever expect to win every run at ALL.

Originally posted by Chicken biscuit:

But I fail to see the "Fun" in losing a 2 hour run for any reason.

If you fail to see the fun in roguelikes, why are you playing one? Isn't the fact you can't always win a detriment to DD2 in your view? Shouldn't you be trying to convince Red Hook to de-roguelike their game, instead of trying to convince me that I shouldn't want a roguelikes to be similar to rogue?

It is very likely that in the future I will be posting a "how to win every grand slam on beacon" guide.
This guide will be relatively short. It will, for example, barely mention trinkets, as you can't 100% if you rely on specific trinkets.

I have already released this guide for DD1. The only thing stopping anyone from doing DD1 deathless (and retreatless) is the fact it's tedious to play that safely. The guide is about a 25 minute read. If you hate losing, I recommend it. Will quickly get DD1 up to 100% mission clear rates.

In DD2, you can build a party that hankers for specific regions. Or...you can build a party that can totally ignore what region they're going to and kill region bosses for fun. Choose region based on ancillary rewards or purely on style points. It is vaguely difficult to guarantee an arbitrary boss kill region 1 on bastard's beacon.