What? My heroes don't want to go back - Spoilers

[Kain]

To the darkest dungeon, after I completed it they refuse to go back. What gives even if you win you still one 4 good warriors.

[Weird_Butt62]

Yup, they have the Never Again quirk. While they won't go back to the DD I think they will be able to do lower level quests. Or you could mess with the game and make them go.

[Kain]

Originally posted by Precious_Roy62:

Yup, they have the Never Again quirk. While they won't go back to the DD I think they will be able to do lower level quests. Or you could mess with the game and make them go.

Can't I remove that?

[robgordo]

Originally posted by Kain:

Originally posted by Precious_Roy62:

Yup, they have the Never Again quirk. While they won't go back to the DD I think they will be able to do lower level quests. Or you could mess with the game and make them go.

Can't I remove that?

Nope sorry.

[Hobbes]

Never again looks to be hardcoded, I'm still studying the quirks file to see if it can be messed with, but at this point assume it's not something that can be hacked out.

[robgordo]

Originally posted by Hobbes:

Never again looks to be hardcoded, I'm still studying the quirks file to see if it can be messed with, but at this point assume it's not something that can be hacked out.

I'm kinda lukewarm about this. I think it makes sense they don't want to go back, and it prevents the same OP team from just wiping every Darkest Dungeon floor. But, training a whole squad of level 6's is a pain in the ♥♥♥♥. It took quite a bit of time to finally complete the Darkest Dungeon.

[Hobbes]

It's a blunt hammer tool which really is only there to hide the fact that the Darkest Dungeon element is not really a solid endgame. You've four missions where your soldiers either go to die, or they complete their task and become effectively redundant. Regardless of outcome, they're effectively "done". So no matter what, you've lost them.

It's a bad solution covering a bad design choice. Which is annoying because everything leading UP to the Darkest Dungeon is solid gold. The fact that the Darkest Dungeon is accessible right away should have made me start ringing alarm bells.

[robgordo]

Originally posted by Hobbes:

It's a blunt hammer tool which really is only there to hide the fact that the Darkest Dungeon element is not really a solid endgame. You've four missions where your soldiers either go to die, or they complete their task and become effectively redundant. Regardless of outcome, they're effectively "done". So no matter what, you've lost them.

It's a bad solution covering a bad design choice. Which is annoying because everything leading UP to the Darkest Dungeon is solid gold. The fact that the Darkest Dungeon is accessible right away should have made me start ringing alarm bells.

Your missing the fact that the darkest dungeon is best designed and most fun dungeon.

[Hobbes]

Originally posted by robgordo:

Your missing the fact that the darkest dungeon is best designed and most fun dungeon.

I'm not. It's four maps, which are hand designed. This is great from a player content perspective, but it's terrible from an endgame perspective.

Think about it like this. You've worked your way up through the ruins, the cove, the weald and the sewers, beating bosses and completing missions, you've weaved your own story in each of these places. You've created your own narrative, you've suffered your own setbacks, but you've fought through and won, and you're now at the Darkest Dungeon.

Now you enter the first darkest dungeon map, have an excellent time, you finish it, the next one unlocks, but now your first four heroes are entirely locked out. If you've prepared ahead of time because you KNEW about this in advance, you'll have twelve to sixteen heroes set up so you can just knock down the maps in succession, this is less fun because you're basically gaming the system for maximum efficiency. You'll consume the content which is great but you'll do so quickly, and these specific encounters are pretty much one bite and you're done, unlike the other areas you're not really weaving your own story.

The other, much worse case scenario is that you didn't prepare, and you've only say, five to seven heroes total at max resolve and gearing levels, and you took your best four in to that first map on the basis that you'd be running them in as far as you could. Now you've lost your best "A" team because of a hardcoded reason which is entirely out of your control and you're facing the really unpleasant prospect of having to grind out a ton of gold and experience to generate a fresh team for the next map, and the map after that.

Neither of these outcomes is -fun-. They're the opposite of fun, one is basically the player pre-planning for efficiency, they get to experience the content quickly, but in doing so they're playing the system. The other one is perhaps as it's "meant" to be experienced, but subjects the player to an extended grind.

The result is that the player gets into a position where they decide "You know what? I can't be bothered, I'll wait and see if mods make this solvable" or perhaps they just don't -bother-.

[Hobbes]

Any time you're taking the decisions out of the players hands, or you're forcing the player into a position where they're effectively having to work out the optimal way to beat "the system" as opposed to having fun beating the game, you've screwed something up with your game. That's what's happened with the Darkest Dungeon.

Instead of being the endgame dungeon which takes everything you've learned from the first four dungeons and weaving it together to make this big final dungeon where you work your way in and steadily progress deeper with a mix of those four "content heavy" dungeons and some high profit / high risk proc-gen dungeons to keep the money and resolve income flowing nicely, instead you've a dungeon that's very disjointed and doesn't slot in with the rest of the dungeons.

It feels like it doesn't fit in, and that in turn is what results in bad blunt hammer solutions like "Never again" in order to artificially extend the game length, to prevent the player from zipping through DD the moment they have a full set of Res 6 characters. "Never again" is a symptom, one that's borne of the fact that the final Dungeon is basically not fully fleshed out as a final test of the players abilities. It's got the boss fights, but not the bits in between.

Therein lies the issue, and hence why it feels so arbitrary right now when players end up losing their heroes "because devs said so".

[Muscarine]

Originally posted by Hobbes:

snip

I understand the feeling of having to let go characters you've grown attached to depites a victory, but first, this is end game so it's not like you're going to use them a lot more anyways, and second, it's briliant in strict terms of lore.

Then when it comes to being prepared or not roster wise, i think it's pretty clear you're supposed to maximize your roster quality and quantity from the start.

Never Again is harsh and it fits absolutely with the game's tone, difficulty and lore.
If anything, you're left with the impression it artificialy extends the game's length because RedHook didn't dare throwing a game over before NG+ (i can't even imagine the outcry, tho).
You're given a chance to restart from scratches, and if anything i feel that this second (infinite) chance is the actual mechanic that shouldn't have had its place.

So here, either you're allowed to work ("grind" ... no) your way back to the top, either you get a game over. Which one do you think would have caused the most tears ?
Infinite lives, infinite retries, heroism withh no counterpart, where would have the grim,desperate, hopeless lovecraftian theme of the game gone ?

[Kain]

I'll dismiss them. I mean, yes they can still fight, but if they wont' fight the one that matters, better they find life and redemption elsewhere , for I need the boold of the brave to stave of darkness.

[Maple]

Originally posted by Kain:

I'll dismiss them. I mean, yes they can still fight, but if they wont' fight the one that matters, better they find life and redemption elsewhere , for I need the boold of the brave to stave of darkness.

Uh... They don't take up roster slots. There's no reason to dismiss them.

[robgordo]

But you have to look at it from a balance perspective. If you could send out the same OP team of On Guard, Unerring, Heavy Hitter, Hard Skinned quirk locked badass heros, then it would be too easy. This way you have to save your OP team for the final assault, and use other fodder for the preceding dungeons.

[Kain]

I want to send Dismas and Reynauld to the last mission, but I'm afraid they'll die.

[Hobbes]

Originally posted by robgordo:

But you have to look at it from a balance perspective. If you could send out the same OP team of On Guard, Unerring, Heavy Hitter, Hard Skinned quirk locked badass heros, then it would be too easy. This way you have to save your OP team for the final assault, and use other fodder for the preceding dungeons.

Hence the "Never again" is simply a band aid for what is a more significant issue.

The fact that the Darkest Dungeon is simply four one-shot scenarios where you send people to either die or become redundant. It's not a true endgame state. It's unlocked from the beginning (which is a major "wat" in my book), rather than being locked and requiring you to clear the other areas first, and were it not for the arbitrary debuff, it would mean the moment you had heroes up to spec, you could zap the Darkest Dungeon pretty quickly.

That's the underlying issue.

Bad endgame design which has had a bad sticky plaster (in this case arbitrary banning of heroes) stuffed on top of it.