Trenix's First Impression Feedback

[Trenix]

This is my feedback as a first impression, it's very critical and only talks about the negative. If it wasn't mentioned, then that means I like it the way it is. Don't let my strong feedback fool you, this game is amazing and I enjoy it very much.

General

• The game starts at a very bad angle that’s extremely difficult to play in, this is not user-friendly whatsoever and I find myself always having to zoom it out every match. That’s just not an overall good impression for newcomers.
  
• As someone who’s played dungeon keeper, I really don’t like the whole dig tool idea. Digging should always be active like the original.
  
• In the tutorial you should let people know that you’re able to throw out creatures by dropping them back in the Nydus Worm, otherwise it gives dungeon keeper fans a very big advantage.
  
• There needs to be a better and a more visual way of knowing what you’ve picked up. The first time I’ve played I was surprised of how many creatures I’ve had in my hand.
  
• Rooms need an indicator like the original dungeon keeper, telling us the capacity and such.
  
• The combat system is currently too confusing to know what’s going on. When there are over 20+ creatures in one given area, you can’t possibly know who to heal or who to pick up. There desperately needs to be a combat log.

Research
(I gave this mechanic a chance, but it just doesn’t work well with a dungeon keeper style game, so I’ll just give you reasons explaining why it’s bad.)

• Takes away the capability of stealing traps and spells.
  
• Gives us no reason to increase the size of our furnace or psionic nest, unless it’s to gain more research points (I'm assuming), since they’re not used as storage for spells and traps like in the original dungeon keeper.
  
• Upgrading rooms sounded like a neat idea, but it’s made taking care of your creatures absurdly easy. The more upgrades that you’ll add, the easier it’ll get, making this game become less and less like dungeon keeper.
  
• Adds unneeded complexity to the game which doesn’t really help your playerbase. You should just keep the game nice and simple like the original. We shouldn’t be playing long enough to be dealing with a research tree. Remember that losing after playing a long game gets people angry, making them less likely to play your game again. Maybe you should only have this feature for invasion.

Rooms

• The 'furnace' should be renamed to 'workshop' or 'furnace room' otherwise the name of the room doesn’t make sense. The room should also store traps like the original dungeon keeper.

Invasion

• The incoming enemies should be destroying your rooms, giving us a reason to make our hive’s better.
  
• The incoming enemies should be stealing minerals from your hive and treasury.

Spells

• I personally don't like the idea of vespene gas (mana) and I never did. You should be encouraging people to make a hive (dungeon) rather than clear out dirt and claim land, because that is going to make their hive very vulnerable. It also just adds another thing to worry about while forcing people to use spells in fights or else they're at a disadvantage. This was a horrible mechanic that was added in Dungeon Keeper II, it was much better when spells costed gold like in the original Dungeon Keeper. Reason being, you were capable of making keepers broke by killing their workforce. You may think this is unfair, but it's actually pretty strategic, especially when fighting against a keeper that's very wealthy.
  
  In the original, you actually had an option to use spells or not, and spamming your spells to get an upper hand of a fight could easily make you become broke, as it should. This could then lead you to making your creatures unhappy and ultimately having them leave your dungeon, making it vulnerable. The idea in itself was pretty much brilliant. The only possible way of seeing this vespene gas (mana) mechanic work is by adding something like a vespene chamber (vespene gas room) which would require creatures to generate vespene gas (mana) for you. The vespene gas (mana) would be stored inside the room, similar to the way minerals are currently stored inside the treasury. That way the mechanic can be countered since you can have your room stolen which will stop you from casting altogether. In addition, if you want to cast while you're fighting, you're going to have to leave some creatures behind so they can generate vespene gas (mana) for you. If that isn't balance enough, maybe the creatures should also be paid to gather vespene.

 

[Bibendus]

First I wanted to tell you I really appreciate in-depth like yours, I read the thread few days ago but I had no time to write a proper reply.

General
1+2) A lot of points you made are unfortunately engine limitation.
The proper dungeon keeper mouse commands would require a constant single tile highlight on mouse hover and an area highlight for drag & drop selections.
Unfortunately I can't do the first one because the game offers only the current position of the mouse at height 0, it means that to properly detect wich dirt tile your mouse is on (height 3) I have to calculate an intersection between the mouse position at height 0 and the camera. Doing that multiple times each second to track your actual mouse position at tile height would destroy your CPU. At the moment I do these calculations only at mouse click and release.
I would love to rotate the default camera by 45°, the problem is that the mouse drag selection doesn't rotate with the map. Try to rotate the camera and see how it feels to select tiles to dig :|
I was able to make the drag & drop selection that highlights tiles properly (DK style) but unfortunately it lags on bnet due to a sc2 engine limitation.
3) I have noticed people reporting the issue of not beeing able to swap creatures, I'll sure add a tutorial step.
4) Even the original DK had this issue I think, the problem is that I can't add UI elements attached to the mouse cursor. I could make a separate list somewhere but it won't be the same. Aaaand I need time to create a proper UI for it.
5) The info tool will do the job, I just need time to work on it.
6) I know the combat is confusing but at the moment I don't know how to improve it. In DK units spreaded when dropped, here I have issues to emulate the same. Except for that do you have any other idea?

Research
I'll tell you what were the issues in the old DK research system that made me rework it completely.
- In multiplayer rooms and traps were available from the beginning, that caused players to rush to the most powerful tech ignoring the weaker one. I heard that massing dark knights was the basic strategy to win a multiplayer game.
- No strategic choices in spell research
- No use for workshop when traps or doors were not needed

The overall rework gives a lot of strategic options and tries to balance the multiplayer aspect.

1+2) The new research system does not block the possibility of using phisical objects to store researches. In the future I'm going to create books/traps when you research something, forcing you to build bigger rooms and allowing stealing. The system is as it is because it was faster to implement. I'll have to find a solution for the workshop considering it will have to store phisical traps and research schematics
3) Upgrading rooms is an option and you are not meant to be able to upgrade all of them in a single game, same for traps and spells. If at the moment you are able to do so, it means I have to balance it
4) Upgrades are a standard game mechanic that players understand. I think that the research system was the weakest point of DK games, I hope I found a way to improve it.


Rooms
1) I would need a proper zergish name for the workshop, any idea?


Invasion
1+2) Stealing and room destroying are on my dev list and, considering they are not too complex to implement, they should come before 1.0


Spells
1) I don't agree about what you said, expanding should be awarded somehow considering the risk. Additionally this allows me to implement vespene geysers tiles that players will fight to conquer. Vespene gas room will be the equivalent of a dungeon keeper temple, generating mana for each creature working inside it. Making it cost minerals could be an option but I'm not sure about it.

 

[Trenix]

First I want to mention that I'm more of an original dungeon keeper fan than I am a dungeon keeper 2 fan. I just really didn't like most of the overall changes they've made in the game and it just wasn't as fun as the original. I think that the only thing that I actually enjoyed about the second version is the rooms.

General

I would love to rotate the default camera by 45°, the problem is that the mouse drag selection doesn't rotate with the map. Try to rotate the camera and see how it feels to select tiles to dig :|

What I was saying is that the game should start out with the camera angle already zoomed out instead of having people do it themselves, it's just better overall.

6) I know the combat is confusing but at the moment I don't know how to improve it. In DK units spreaded when dropped, here I have issues to emulate the same. Except for that do you have any other idea?

I know in the original dungeon keeper, only a certain amount of creatures would take part in a fight depending on how many enemies they were up against. For example, you weren't able to have all twenty creatures against a single enemy. If you decided to throw too many creatures down, they would stay out of the fight and root for their allies by jumping up and down. If one of their allies died, one of the rooters would then jump in and take their place.

Fights also had an interface and it was viewable through the notification area, the place where it informs you when a creature is angry and such. The interface showed you what creatures were fighting and what heroes and creatures they were up against. Through there you were able to cast abilities and even pick up your injured creatures when needed.

Research
I'll tell you what were the issues in the old DK research system that made me rework it completely.
- In multiplayer rooms and traps were available from the beginning, that caused players to rush to the most powerful tech ignoring the weaker one. I heard that massing dark knights was the basic strategy to win a multiplayer game.

I think that was only in dungeon keeper 2. In the original, I could of swore that rooms needed to be researched with a library in multiplayer. Anyway, you can't blame rooms entirely. It's bullfrogs fault for making a creature so overly powerful that it wasn't beneficial to obtain any other.

1+2) The new research system does not block the possibility of using phisical objects to store researches. In the future I'm going to create books/traps when you research something, forcing you to build bigger rooms and allowing stealing. The system is as it is because it was faster to implement. I'll have to find a solution for the workshop considering it will have to store phisical traps and research schematics

Now that I know that stealing and physical objects will still co-exist with the research system, I respect the feature a bit more.

3) Upgrading rooms is an option and you are not meant to be able to upgrade all of them in a single game, same for traps and spells. If at the moment you are able to do so, it means I have to balance it
4) Upgrades are a standard game mechanic that players understand. I think that the research system was the weakest point of DK games, I hope I found a way to improve it.

Now I currently oppose the idea of room upgrades. It's one thing to let players research rooms in a particular order that's based on their playing style, but it's another thing when you begin to make creature managing even easier than it already is and start to have rooms replace each other. I also don't like the idea that upgrading rooms gives you the ability to keep them small while having them still be efficient. You should be forcing us to make bigger rooms because it's part of managing our creatures and it keeps the game challenging. Frankly, I don't think I've ever had such small rooms in a dungeon keeper game before.

Rooms
1) I would need a proper zergish name for the workshop, any idea?

All I can think of is workshop or manufactory. It's hard to make it zergish being that zerg don't make doors or other gizmos.