Community Discussion - NG+

[redhookjohn]

Salutations Hamlet dwellers!

I wanted to invite everyone to a community discussion. From time to time as we are looking for explicit feedback on a feature or topic, we post these and invite the community to weigh in. It’s been awhile since an official community discussion has occurred and to remedy the absence we wanted to talk about New Game Plus.

NG+ is a mode that unlocks after completion of the game that invites players to a more challenging experience of the game. We increased the hit points, and overall deadliness of the monsters, as well as put in a fail state that checks both time and deaths.

This is generally speaking, an area of the game in which we’ve had the least amount of time to tweak and adjust due to time restrictions and access to players. Since many of you are touching it now we wanted to ask some questions, but not too many as to draw attention away from suggestions and feedback that others have.

So to start, is it too hard? Is it too easy? In particular, with the week limit of 91, players can just go straight into the Darkest Dungeon and beat the game in 40-50 weeks. Should we make Caretaker goals (even if just all bosses) part of the requirements?

I won’t ask more than that, as we want to get as much directed discussion going as possible. So let’s hear your thoughts!

As always I will be streaming on Wednesday @ 2pm PST on our twitch channel: twitch.tv/redhookstudios/

I will be playing the game and answering questions relating to the game overall, the upcoming update, and now this community discussion.

[Taron]

Before discussing the details of the mode, I have something to say about what the mode is called and how it is unlocked.

New Game+ is a deceptive name for this option. In the history of gaming, since the term was first coined, New Game+ has meant playing through the game again carrying over elements from your previous playthrough - usually meaning your characters retain their stats and items and such (short of plot-device items). In most cases, New Game+ is actually significantly easier than a normal New Game because of this, and though a few games also add an extra bit of difficulty (Dark Souls), even then its generally easier the second time around from starting out with a fully powered character.

In this case, nothing carries over. This is not "New Game+", this is just a Hard Mode (or whatever you want to call it, Speed Run Mode, whatever) that's unlocked by beating the game. A harder mode that unlocks by beating the game has been around as a concept for much longer than "New Game+".

The problem with the misnaming is that you confuse both crowds - those that like New Game+ modes, and those that like challenge modes. The players that typically enjoy New Game+ modes are expecting stuff to be carried over and maybe get alternate endings ala Chrono Trigger (the game that first coined the term). By contrast, the players that are looking for extra challenge might overlook New Game+, as they've been trained from past games that it means an easy mode as a reward for beating the game for players that like the feeling of power. This second group is going to be looking for something called "Hard Mode" not for something called "New Game+". Speaking for myself, when I tried to make up a self-restricted challenge to make the game more fun for me, I did not realize that NG+ was already supposed to do that until other players let me know, due to my assumptions from what the term usually means.

Call a spade a spade - this is an unlockable challenge mode, NOT New Game+.

Now, since this isn't actually a New Game+ mode that means it doesn't in any way depend on the actual full data from a previous play-through and is just a flag that gets set somewhere saying whether or not its unlocked. Therefore there is no technical reason why the game must be completed first in order for this mode to function, like there would be with a true NG+ mode. And that means one has to question why it requires beating the game in order to unlock it at all.

There are some, like myself, that think having infinite time and infinite new heroes makes the game a bit too easy and far too tempting to just grind endlessly rather than challenging themselves to take risks to win. Coming from playing games like XCOM:EU on Ironman Impossible difficulty (which is available from the start for that game), I am disappointed that I have to go through this entire game on an easier difficulty to play the mode I would rather sink my time into. I'd prefer this mode be unlocked earlier, like say, just beating the tutorial, or beating a boss, or something. Just long enough to make sure the player knows how to play the game, then let them decide if they want to jump straight into a bigger challenge.

As for the mode itself, can't give much feedback since I haven't unlocked it yet, hence previous statement.

[oldnoob]

Well.. Maybe you should increase champion's stun resist for a bit...

91 weeks is just fine to play it slow and safe without stress in real life. :P

I was surprised that there is no class restriction. Like 2 -3 of each, no more - more variety of team squads will make this mod more challenging. Not like in my case 5x the same team - the stun team :)


Looking forward for new features... but for now i have the last achievement to get... and then I need to relieve my stress in another game. :)

[Redalion]

It feels too easy to me. I noticed the higher hp of the monsters but what else is harder? It doesn't feel like they do more damage... maybe they have higher crit chance? I haven't completed it yet, mostly because I found it feels no different than the first playthrough. I am in week 40 and have enough level 6 guys to complete the game, but have become bored farming deeds to upgrade the blacksmith.

The time restriction seems pretty lax... I finished the first run through the game in 108 weeks killing all bosses and fully upgrading town. And this was with wasting a lot of time experimenting with weird group comps as well (granted I was already very experienced with the game when it came out of early access).

[LaserGuy]

I've played NG+ up to about week 30 so far. Haven't tackeld Champion dungeons yet, but I've done plenty of Apprentice and Veteran.

I haven't honestly noticed a huge difference in difficulty between regular play and NG+, though perhaps that's because in my NG+ save I'm playing more conservatively to avoid deaths. Yes, monsters have a bit more HP and a bit more speed and damage, but you don't really need to significantly change your strategy to be successful.

That said, I'd be impressed if people were able to beat NG+ in 40-50 weeks. That seems very tight to me in terms of being able to get the upgrades you need and level enough heroes to finish the DD. I may be able to do it in 60, but that will probably involve 10-20 solid weeks of grinding the Champion Weald for deeds. Changes to the deed economy or to the levels of heroes in the stagecoach would presumably allow this to be brought down a fair bit though.

I think it can probably be harder, not in terms of raw stats but in terms of removing some cheesy strategies from players. A few possibilities I might suggest:
-Disable backer heroes and trinkets in NG+. Some of these are very OP and using them can really trivialize the game.
-Increase the stun buff from 40% to 100% to shut out stun locking.
-Include dismissed heroes into the death count.
-Disable the last upgrade in every building, so skills/gear cap out at level 4, max hero count is 21, etc.

[oldnoob]

Originally posted by aaron.m.barlow:

I think it can probably be harder, not in terms of raw stats but in terms of removing some cheesy strategies from players. A few possibilities I might suggest:
-Disable backer heroes and trinkets in NG+. Some of these are very OP and using them can really trivialize the game.
-Increase the stun buff from 40% to 100% to shut out stun locking.
-Include dismissed heroes into the death count.
-Disable the last upgrade in every building, so skills/gear cap out at level 4, max hero count is 21, etc.

Good suggestion for insane mode. :) Without 5 lvl skill, gear and good stun champion (to counter guard ability) it will be almost impossible to finish 1 and 2 DD missions. :)

100% instead of 40 % ? sure.. or perhaps 40% for 2 tuns will be better ? If you have trinkets that inrease stun chance, then you can go for second stun in row.. the thrid and next will be impossible.

[wckowalski]

I agree new game plus isn't the right name for this mode. It should instead be called hard mode or something more flavorful to that effect. New game plus implies a kind of element not found in this mode.

[oldnoob]

Just call it World End mode.... or add "happy ending" cutscene after the last mission :)

[Lujo]

I've been playing NG+, chasing achievements before the next update potentially invalidates silly tactics and playing around with backer trinkets.

These are my thoughts:

1) This mode should've been the default game, more or less, in terms of monster health (and whatever else is going on in dungeons). Or rather, anything you can do to this mode, you can do to the original game. If you make this mode harder, it'll just feel like another "why did they make me go through that slog before I can play this?" kind of letdown, simmilar to how the Darkest Dungeon evokes a sense of "well, this should've been what the game's like all the time, why did thy put this away behind so much repetitive slogging?"

2) This mode is also rather pointless because it suffers from all the problems the regular mode suffers from. But if all those were fixed, they should be fixed in the regular mode, so this one would, again, be pretty pointless.

3) Since it's impossible to get all the achievements without completing it, and completing it means going through the game doing basically the exact same things, please don't remove backer trinkets and heros from it. Especially because:

4) It doesn't require any more skill than the regular mode, so the matter of going for 99 weeks (or less) is all about ignoring content. You don't use the tavern, you don't use the abbey, you don't use most skills, you don't bother with bossess, you don't use whatever you don't have to use, but most of those things you really don't have to use even in the regular game. Since this is "Really don't bother with anything but the small minority of actually relevant features: the mode", let us just have the backer stuff so that we can speed through it, get our achievements and be done with it. Otherwise the time limit becomes more about how long it takes you to score decent trinkets, and in my regular playthrough I was cut off from many popular and mindlessly powerful strats because related trinkets just didn't pop up in god knows how many weeks.

5) The reason people might just want to get it over with and tunnel vision a minority of the cheeze is not because the mode is too hard to bother with other stuff, it's that you don't have to bother with other stuff but you don't know that the first time around. The tedium of the grind is there because long after you've seen everything there is to see you still have to grind, and the game doesn't have enough in-dungeon content to really have replay value. Heck, it loses it's current-play value while it's going on, and there are a lot of folks who aren't even haters, who like the style and the idea and everything, but who'll all tell you sincerely that slogging through it all even once is enough.

The time limit just returns you back to grinding heirlooms, doing everything you've been doing for too long AND the added pressure is sure to make it even more repetitive because of reductiveness. Time limit means - you lose one guy somewhere, you have to grind up another one, so anyone looking for the 2 achievements (and probably the reynauld and other guy one) is going to be playing ultra-conservative. So, please - leave the backer stuff in. It's cheating, but anyone who's slogged through one full playthrough basically deserves a refund and a medal of honor for patience, let alone a bit of speed boost through all the slog again.

6) Don't make the bossess part of the requirements. V. good reason for this is that you can't get all the bosses while maintaining natural progression, as your dudes outlevel bossess and you can't clear a path fast enough. Other reason is that several bossess mandate/require/reward skills and lineups that you would essentially never use otside of those fights, and some champion level bossess can and will kill your guys depending on the RNG.

Again, if either of these were not true, I would've killed all the bossess on my current playthrough, but as it is, with backer trinkets and backer heros, insanely tight play and hauling out max loot balanced with heirlooms out of every run - I've killed 6 apprentice level ones and 2 veteran level ones. If I wanted to kill the remaining 2 apprentice ones securely I'd have to hire 2 new teams, and in 4 missions my 16 guys will all be champion and unable to approach veteran level bosses. The only champion level bossess I'll do are the hag because she's easy to do, and... that's that. Other guys can randomly kill someone, and that would mean more grind, and I really don't need folks randomly dropping to this or that boss when the 6 deaths limit pretty much means I don't get the achievement if I get 2 wipes anywhere and someone's bound to die to RNG at regular champion anyway.

That's basically why I'm speedrunning it with backer stuff, there's no point risking additional grind and potential loss vs. the bossess. I could do it, it's all the same as in the regular game, but doing it while making sure noone dies wouldn't make it more difficult (you could script all those fights) but just add a lot of additional hours for no good reason. I could do it all with my eyes closed by this point, but it would just take time.

Anyone who's looking to play it wihtout backer stuff will go kill a bunch of bossess for the rewards anyway, plenty of them are well worth it. So no need for anything explicit.

Those are my thoughts so far.

---

Otherwise I'd agree with the stunlockign thing, but for the regular game. It's preposterously mind-numbingly stupid. Just don't do it in the next couple of days so I can get my damned achievements by abusing it.

[Lu]

It's been said before, but I think NG+ would be a lot more entertaining and challenging with a class permadeath rule. Basically, you only get given one character from each class, so when your Leper or Houndmaster dies, you don't get a new Leper or Houndmaster. When you can no longer field a full party of four, it's game over.

This would put players in a situation where they have to experiment with party setups that they wouldn't normally try rather than simply running the same old setups against slightly harder monsters. It would also make death feel far more impactful and encourage long term strategizing, especially if the player feels that some classes are going to be more essential to their success than others.

Beating all of the Champion level bosses should be a requirement to actually complete the game.

[wckowalski]

Originally posted by Marma:

It's been said before, but I think NG+ would be a lot more entertaining and challenging with a class permadeath rule. Basically, you only get given one character from each class, so when your Leper or Houndmaster dies, you don't get a new Leper or Houndmaster. When you can no longer field a full party of four, it's game over.

This would put players in a situation where they have to experiment with party setups that they wouldn't normally try rather than simply running the same old setups against slightly harder monsters. It would also make death feel far more impactful and encourage long term strategizing, especially if the player feels that some classes are going to be more essential to their success than others.

Beating all of the Champion level bosses should be a requirement to actually complete the game.

Um, that rule would make it technically impossible as you need 16 different high level heroes to complete the darkest dungeon quests, and there aren't that many classes.

[aardvarkpepper]

So to start, is it too hard? Is it too easy? In particular, with the week limit of 91, players can just go straight into the Darkest Dungeon and beat the game in 40-50 weeks. Should we make Caretaker goals (even if just all bosses) part of the requirements?

1. Best leave it too easy rather than too hard. The more the game's pushed towards "hard" the more the game's pushed towards strictly optimal strategies, the more it's players going through the motions so to speak, rather than taking things at their own pace and enjoying themselves. Some harder, sure, but making it really truly nasty, no.

2. Can make Champion bosses requirements *if* the bosses don't need to be beaten on Apprentice and Veteran, and the grind requirements to get up to Champion bosses is reduced. Again, the more hoops a player has to jump through, the less fun it is. Beating each boss through once, sure, okay, beating each boss three times over again, definitely not.

3. "New Game +" has been pretty co-opted by Final Fantasy and other titles to mean keeping all the progress from your old game, and building on that. As I see it, the current implementation of NG+ for DD ought to have been the default mode (with a few additional features I won't get into here), then a different NG+ including new content, maybe new heroes or monsters or new ending, alternative storylines, &c. Of course that's substantial additional work but that's the "plus".

Having a few additional options like number of lives per hero customizable to not applicable (default), 3, 2, or 1 permadeath or whatever would require severe rebalancing, not that I'm opposed to that.

[Lu]

Originally posted by wckowalski:

Um, that rule would make it technically impossible as you need 16 different high level heroes to complete the darkest dungeon quests, and there aren't that many classes.

Hmm, good point. I guess "Never Again" could be disabled to make the gamemode work.

[Redalion]

What I'd really like to see is extra enemy mechanics that make the game harder and make you play in different ways. If you look at the Pitch Black mod, there are some great ideas there. I think that mod goes a little overboard with the extra monster affixes, but has some fun things like enemies randomly having stun immunity, skeleton corpses standing back up, cultists that can buff/heal, or enemies with added stress to all their attacks. All of these examples increase difficulty and force you to change your strategy.

[Lu]

Originally posted by aardvarkpepper:

1. Best leave it too easy rather than too hard. The more the game's pushed towards "hard" the more the game's pushed towards strictly optimal strategies, the more it's players going through the motions so to speak, rather than taking things at their own pace and enjoying themselves. Some harder, sure, but making it really truly nasty, no.

We're talking about an optional hardcore mode here, not the vanilla game experience.

The worst thing a hardcore mode can possibly be is too easy, because that defeats the whole purpose of it even existing. It's not there for completionists to get another achievement. It's there for people who find the vanilla game too easy and want a much greater challenge.

[Lujo]

^ They can't get a "much greater challenge", the man explained it well enough. You either use cheeze and have 0 to very moderate challenge, or you don't use cheeze and fail. Currently the champion dungeons in NG+ are tough enough even with the backer trinkets and stun spam simply from the monsters having high enough health.

There's no design space for "hardcore" mode, skill is not enough of a factor in the game. Memorisation is. You always do the same things, those things either work all the time, or they fail to work all the time, or you occasionally get screwed by the RNG but that's it. Bumping the numbers on stuff or imposing the restrictions doesn't do anything other than potentially make it impossible to play at all. I just did a long champion run with a bunch of lvl5 guys, and most of the monsters piled their attacks (the ones they got to perform) on one of my guys - I simply got lucky that they didn't crit, a lucky crit would've just ended the run at any point. It's exactly the same as vanilla in that regard and you can't make it any harder, make it any harder and it's unplayable.

It's barely playable as is, tbh, the stun spam kept most enemies from ever doing anything, and with the health as high as it is I'm not sure something else would've worked. Backer trinkets also stop making much of a difference at champion, most enemies have enough speed that they start taking turns before your guys and the bonuses you do get are about the same you'd be getting from regular +att +crit stuff anyway. So yeah, even with kinda unbalanced trinkets you're still always 1-2 hits away from death.

If it's hardcore you're lookign for, champion NG+ is pretty hardcore. It's very boring, but it's as hardcore as you can get before getting into f**k this territory. Might be a bit too punishing at champion as it is, even. I sure as hell won't go looking for champion level bossess at this difficulty, for some it would just mean sending one identical squad after another in untill one gets lucky. Can be in one try can be in 16, but you go in knowing what you're going to do, you can check the guides and your experience, but that's it. They perform their script, the boss either bites it or you get unlucky.