Dungeon Defenders II

The original Dungeon Defenders was fun for a while, but then started to drag. There were serious Mudflation issues with the loot design.

That and it got hacked pretty good. So being level 100 and having to work for your gear really didn't mean much...

Although it's the only game recently I got totally addicted too for a while. Burned hot and fast though, but was well worth it for the 100 hours I dumped into it.

I play II, it's a decent little game but I believe it suffers from some of the same problems as the first and some new problems as well.

DD1 was one of my favorite games though, my hours played in that is embarrassing MMO level high If the second one stays priced at 15-20$ it will still be worth it, but this company has just gone in circles I think they had an amazing idea with DD1 and then with 2 first it was a shitty MOBA, now they are trying to reinvent things with DD2. All they really needed to do was make new characters, new towers, better/new maps, fix the "end game", etc. I mean it will never be LOL or whatever but they could have had another huge success.

Anyway I have not played since the last patch so some of this may be off but general opinions:
-Maps are way way better. Not only do they make more sense and for the most part seem to have better pathing aside from some odd bu(pre-alpha) they are just so much more interactive and fun. There are levels you call pull/shoot to release waves of water/gas/fire that takes out entire waves of enemies. The gates have little pink lines showing the path monsters will take to the "crystal". There are "mini crystals", which you do not have to defend but if you don't you make things harder. Like a drawbridge lever for instance that if you let fall now makes mobs spawn through the bridge where they didn't before.
-Generally speaking towers and heroes are the same, with some minor changes that won't be too foreign. They did seem to get rid of tower range as a stat which create some problems. These new spear guys can pretty much outrange any level 1 tower causing some annoying problems early on. Upgraded towers get buffed just like before, increasing their range so it's less of a problem, but can still pose a threat if the little guys form a wall protecting them(think orcs in front of archers allowing archers to shoot).
-Towers now have some combo crap. So if you freeze a mob with cold tower, then launch it up with earth tower, it breaks on land like Terminator 2 and liquid nitrogen. There are other combo's as well. Makes using different heroes and working as a team a bit better
-You seem to have a huge excess of defensive units now. Not sure if this is an "alpha" thing that will change or what. But the current focus seems to be on tower upgrades over tower numbers and good build locations.
-They changed stats recently, but I have not had a chance to really dig in at it. Basically every item has a primary stat and two secondary stats, blah blah. I'm sure they will change it again before launch but it seems like they are trying to move away from the everyone gets its all crap, not sure I agree but this is one of those "how much power should I have at high level" conversations that mucks up MMO threads too
-The new item upgrade system sucks. I hope they change it. Instead of just mana you need gold, which you get by selling items(just like you used to get from mana) BUT you also need....items. So now you have to jump through hoops and do all sorts of strange shit to upgrade instead of just selling items and using mana. All they did was add a level of obfuscation without making the system interesting, different, or more challenging.
-New enemies, good variation and seems fun so far. No complaints


So yea, they need to improve a few things but overall it's fun...it's DD!

Interesting that they give you more tower numbers, but still focus on tower upgrades. That's exactly what DD1 is, due to the build limits. You can't scatter towers everywhere. Or are they trying to go more the traditional tower defense, where you build towers along the entire walk path of the mobs?

I hope that they keep improving, and keep listening to the community, because it really could be another great game.

I played the first one a bunch until they started doing the major patches changing core shit every three days for months, lets hope they have a better handle on what they want to do this time.

Crone_sl said:

Interesting that they give you more tower numbers, but still focus on tower upgrades. That's exactly what DD1 is, due to the build limits. You can't scatter towers everywhere. Or are they trying to go more the traditional tower defense, where you build towers along the entire walk path of the mobs?

I hope that they keep improving, and keep listening to the community, because it really could be another great game.

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No, you don't want to build along the entire path like a browser based TD or whatever. You still defend choke points, crystals, mini-crystals if you choose....

They are still adjusting the tower numbers so I wouldn't be surprised if they move things around a little. There are "specs" now too, like really simplified skill trees from an MMO. So for instance my wizard now has a 40% chance to shoot a second fireball for 70% dmg each shot. The items have more variation now it seems as well, things like +3.5% experience from mobs kill by hero/tower, +1.45% dmg from fireball towers, +7% earth tower AE splash, etc.

You can also hit shift during the waves and see the actual range of your towers, neat feature. Items also seem character dependent though I'm not positive if that's true or will stay.

Overall I loved DD1 and it really seems like they are trying hard to get DD2 on the right track and the price point is low enough that if you have any interest in this genre or the first one you really can't go wrong. I personally thought the first one was fantastic aside from the shitty end game. The gameplay itself was never bad. So if they can just make the same old fun game I'm in.

It's too bad they threw out the PvP portion.

Kriptini_sl said:

It's too bad they threw out the PvP portion.

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I disagree, but whatever. There are so many MOBA/PVP shooter style gamges. I actually liked TD, and there are very few outside of iOS/Android that are decent. That was DD1's niche, they fucked up bad when they abandoned it.

Rangoth_sl said:

I disagree, but whatever. There are so many MOBA/PVP shooter style gamges. I actually liked TD, and there are very few outside of iOS/Android that are decent. That was DD1's niche, they fucked up bad when they abandoned it.

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The plan was never to abandon TD. The plan was to have both.

Only issue I had with DD and trendy was their horrible mudflation abuse, and the fact that you'd grind for a week to boost your shit only to have them release a patch where the trash drops blow your shit away.

Same. I was part of the first crowd to get into the 20's on survival and had an almost complete set of near capped gear and quit when they made gear 4x better than what I had attainable with little to no comparable effort.

Bought it day 1 but have yet to install due to data cap. Taking my box to the hotel on the 4th when I'm in town to download all my steam sale shit and hoping to gove it a try once we swap to Hughes net and I have free data from midnight to 5am. Fuck rural living.

I've been playing DD1 at night offline legit from lvl 1 and no mana to upgrade except for what drops and been having a great time as well. Half way through the medium campaign with my apprentice. Thinking about starting over and two boxing with monk and huntress with my 360 controller. Should make it a lot more challenging. Kinda need to sell my +500 level 30 shit though... Too god damn tempting. DD1 really was an amazing game before mudflation got so out of hand.

I both love and hate this game(DD2 and DD1 I guess). I think that post/webblog or whatever about how the studio is fucked is true. It's like a Brad McVision all over again, just in a small game not many people care about.

I just don't get it. TD's, while never maybe the best cash crop, are reasonably successful, especially on iStuff and mobiles. Kingdom Rush, Plants vs. zombies(kinda like td?), etc. Trendy I think really had something here but they continue to just make foolish mistakes and what I would call blind gross oversights in basic concepts of the game. But let's face it, they have virtually no competition in their particular space.

First they blew it with trying to make a MOBA, but whatever that is the past though one could argue they lost almost a year+ of development time. Now on to my current issues, and yes I know it's alpha but input from the devs/community seem completely against certain changes.

-The current upgrade system is terrible. Think old school EQ clicking. I won't rag on too badly because I really think this one might change but it shows you the type of ideas and themes they create from scratch. Even talking about this in a meeting would prove it's a poor choice. Basically they took a slightly strange, inflated, awkward system from the first DD, completely obfuscated it and gave it the possibility to misclick/be lazy and accidentally combine the gear you want to upgrade so it's lost forever.

-Loot. Not sure how to begin on this one. They make loot diablo-ish style. Tons of it but lots of random both quality and desired stats. I've got zero problem with this as it fits the game. But then they give you absolutely no way of filtering it, quickly checking it, or managing it. This was one of the biggest complaints in DD1 and you'd think they would fix it from the ground up. Now it's almost even worse. Everything gets dumped into a giant temp box that you have to manually filter through after each match. At least previously crap was directly turned into mana so you could move along quickly.

-The spec system. I may be alone here but it needs major rehaul. As it stands with the first level increase I will be able to max out all important specs to the point of severe diminishing returns. They really need to switch to a tree type system like MMO's use. Then instead of just being hero/tower spec, you could be fire tower spec, earth tower spec, etc and each one would have a tangible effect on your playstyle and character. Unlike DD1 two apprentices with equal gear could play entirely differently based on spec. Imagine one earth spec apprentice who does lots of AOE but no CC and one frost who can lock enemies down but does little dmg or whatever. Not saying I've created all the trees but it's the idea that's important. This would also help with the toxic player environment of "I have best stats stop building or I troll lose the game or kick you" that we have now. It won't solve it, that kind of shit will always exist but you can join and say, yo im ice spec, it's cool if I build an ice tower in each lane? Not only can it promote teamwork and mutual building, having two apprentices doesn't just devolve into "whomever has best stats build everything other guy fuck off"

-Still to this day there are stats that do absolutely nothing to various towers and abilities. And on top of that it's vague what they do at best. I call it the "hidden power" complex some fucking games have. +1 to str...great what does it do exactly? Well it says "increases power"....by what? how much? You mean the only way I can know if an upgrade is good or fits my playstyle is to be a fucking wiki-forum bandit? You can't just tell me in game this increases tower dps by .01% per point or something? wtf? I'm getting to the point where I'll refuse to play a game where the basic stats and abilities don't tell me what they are. It's like old school EQ up in there.



I agree mostly minor complaints and for what they claim will be F2P....I guess I should just shut the fuck up Personally I think they are better off with the 15-25$ charge to buy the game than F2P. They claim no items that affect gameplay so now it's all skins and crap for money. I can't imagine many people will want those(though I've been wrong before) and because it's F2P they sorta gimp their ability to charge 5$ for expansions. And most of their DD1 expansions were well worth 5-10$ considering the hours I got out of them

Sad part is that I still like the game. I have some kind of unfounded love for TD games and I want DD to be good so bad. I guess I understand when people get all passionate about Pantheon or EQ7 or whatever now....But trendy seems unwilling to even negotiate or budge on some of the most basic concepts and problems with the game that it just baffles me. Ohh well, they claim it's still alpha so I'll stick with it until release or a reasonable competitor comes along. Speaking of, does anyone know of a game even remotely similar that's decent? If I had any time for this I would totally kickerstarter it if I knew good programmers or artists. I manage bigger crap all day long and I'm pretty sure you could build out a 1-2 map "demo" in like 6 months with a few people on it and crappy/basic artwork. Start kickstarter small then if it gains traction step it up or something.

Did they post something recently? Where is this coming from? Makes me sad, because DD1, even though I came late to the party, was the first game that I had gotten really into. Sunk 100 hours into it very quickly, then quit, but it was a great 100 hours.

Pretty much yea. No, I guess they didn't say anything in particular. It's just that they continue to ignore these glaring problems and doing god knows what. They did this with DD1 and I always just assumed they were spending time and effort to fix things for DD2 and start over right. I also didn't mind that approach since I paid 15$ for DD1 and didn't feel ripped off at all.

But how do you take a game like DD1, which was successful, at least in some sense of the word, and completely fuck the remake so badly. It's like the recreated DD1 but didn't fix ANY of the major issues people had with the game. You are completely correct, it's not a technical limitation to filter/sort loot. Which leaves me to only one possible belief, they genuinely do not like that idea and it's not part of the vision(TM). You can see this with a number of different minor features they continue to ram down people's throats despite the obvious and public complaint against them.

Yet at the same time they really did improve on the game in some aspects. The idea of subcores, environmental traps that make huge differences in lanes for people who are active players,better mobs and gameplay...yet they left all the faults. Just added new flare.

I'm not (overly) hating on them. Like I said, I love the game and I'm a huge TD fan, wish there was more competition in this field because the right game could destroy trendy or at least force them to adapt. But after the article and the continuous "dev meetings" that address none of the primary concerns, I'm starting to think it's "Brad Syndrome" at the upper levels.

I mean, after looting 75 items from a map and checking each one for possible upgrade as stated above, there isn't even a sell all button. I've got to click 50 times.

Anyway, I play an apprentice if anyone is still interested in DD2. They release patches, in theory, monthly and I'm always happy to come back and give it another go.

I played DD1 at launch, loved it, but ya it got out of hand way fast. WoW gave you a year minimum before they released content that made your gear worthless. DD1 felt like it was monthly. I have not played DD2 yet since I heard it going free to play? If they came out with a game like DD1 before any DLC then I will play until it gets out of hand again. Which I can imagine will.

Chopxsticks_sl said:

I played DD1 at launch, loved it, but ya it got out of hand way fast. WoW gave you a year minimum before they released content that made your gear worthless. DD1 felt like it was monthly.

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My biggest problem with the game was always the rampant mudflation which is something they never seemed to learn from. They added loot that trivialized the highest difficulty within a month of the game's release, so they released an expansion with an even harder difficulty... then proceeded to trivialize that with even better loot and overpowered characters. That's why I'm undecided if I should play the game when it releases and enjoy it before they break it or if I should just wait and see if they ever figured out why everyone was able to solo nearly the entire game.

It is interesting to hear you all talk about how you loved DD1 but burned out so quickly. That is pretty much exactly how I experienced it as well. Great game, great concept, but not quite fully realized yet. I think they have a good idea though, and I will probably give the second game a go-round at some point just on principal and just to support a creative dev. Plus, it is true to say that I really did have fun with the first game, however brief.

Rangoth_sl said:

But how do you take a game like DD1, which was successful, at least in some sense of the word, and completely fuck the remake so badly. It's like the recreated DD1 but didn't fix ANY of the major issues people had with the game. You are completely correct, it's not a technical limitation to filter/sort loot. Which leaves me to only one possible belief, they genuinely do not like that idea and it's not part of the vision(TM). You can see this with a number of different minor features they continue to ram down people's throats despite the obvious and public complaint against them.

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That seems a kind of harsh response to the pre-alpha not having loot filtering. You seem to care about it, and it sounds like a good idea - have you asked them to add it ?