Dark Deity

yeah dude your edits made the menus look so much cleaner, the old menu wasn’t bad but yours just makes much more sense and the compromised one, in my opinion looks even better! Major props.

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Back to Dark Deity, a very cool video just dropped.

A quick look at every map in the game.

15, 19, 27, and 28 are the real award winners.

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I’ve been hearing about the grave wounds system and how it’s better than permadeath, since I haven’t played would anyone mind giving a quick run-down? Far as I understand it you lose a random stat point whenever you take a death?

It’s not random; apparently, it’s based off the enemy weapon damage type that kills you (which weapon type causes which stat drop is never fully explained, as far as I know). However, the stat drops are fairly minimal and can be undone with a level or two given how inflated growths are. The bigger penalty is losing experience for the rest of the chapter on that unit since experience growth is also really high.

I definitely don’t agree that it’s better than permadeath. Removing permadeath means you can kind of just throw your units around wherever and be just fine. I can confirm this since I did exactly that with Irving. He died probably around 10 times or so, lost quite a few stats (when he wasn’t getting -0 Magic, lol), and still was near the top of my damage chart by endgame. All in all, the grave wounds system is negligible and kind of lame, imo.

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That sounds like “This is but a scratch.”, except unironically.

Ah thanks for the explanation. Sounds better than what I thought it was like, but based on my own Casual mode playthroughs, simply having the unit come back in the next chapter changes a lot even if they come back with a stat penalty of 1 point in one stat.* It’s not the punishment that forces the player to be more careful that permadeath can be.

Personally I’d have taken off an entire level (i.e. your growths rates are the chance of losing a point in each stat)

*Hell if it’s a healer or utility unit they basically lose nothing, they don’t use stats.

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that thumbnail legit just saved me from buying this

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I’m quite late to this but I only started recently reading up on Dark Deity. Can’t speak for anything gameplay related but this tweet is a joke.

Many of these professional VAs knew exactly what they were signing up for: an indie title made by one guy, when they signed the dotted line. There was never a pretense of some kind of bonus pay for hitting a sales goal. You can’t make a stink about being paid industry rates when you are doing this for an indie developer when there was never a promise to boost pay after the fact.

Interesting how nobody that was part of the project made noise about getting paid 20% of the industry rate. Because they’re adults and knew what they were putting their name on.

Also when people responded to that tweet, he backpedaled and was less passive aggressive. Clearly this guy refused to sign up for the project because he didn’t like the low pay. But I mean… fine? No need to make a tweet like that.

There’s something else to be said when massive AAA game developers low-ball voice actors below industry rates, because that is scummy and exploitative, and that is where unions get involved. But this? Come on.

Everyone can criticize DD for its gameplay or UI, but let’s not pretend that they’re some dev team that tried to undercut voice actors.

I know i’m late to the thread but I really wanted to emphasize this in case people took this out of context tweet screen-cap seriously.

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I wonder how you guys will react when CMB drops :joy:

I haven’t tried Dark Deity yet, but I would support the devs regardless. That is, if you want more games of this ilk dropping on Steam.

As mentioned, it’s programmed mainly by one person and made with Game Maker Studio. Their next game is bound to be 10x better, so I’d give them the leeway to allow for that next release to be awesome. I can’t even imagine trying to make CMB as a solo programmer, it’d take ages and be super stressful. It’s a marvel that he’s even made a successful release alone – hats off to him!

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I mean, if most of people’s issues are with the maps, balancing, etc. then it doesn’t seem like the programming is the issue here, right?

Then, it’s probably even fixable by launching updates and DLC with better quality tiles and level design.

Buying the game helps make those things happen, imo

As would funding the game. Oh wait…

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The problems with the game are on a fundamental level. Unless there is a massive update that basically reworks the entirety of the game design (there won’t be) then this isn’t happening. It’s already pretty obvious they don’t care very much because they couldn’t be bothered to even play through the game before throwing it on the store as “completed”.

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I’ll have to see for myself, then. In any case, I find this topic educational as a dev

Dude. Lighten up. This is the dev’s first ever game. To say they never bothered to even play through the game is incredibly ignorant and I know for a fact is just plain wrong.

How many projects from first time hack developers here have started out as bad or worse? I doubt you would extend that same remark to people in this community. Even though DD has a price tag, that doesn’t change the fact that any first-time dev, especially for an SRPG, is prone to mistakes we’ve all been through already.

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I could excuse it as being “first time dev” sort of mistake if it was just the gameplay being bad or whatever, but the game was painfully bug laden. You couldn’t access the wait menu command without zooming the camera fully in if your unit is at the bottom of the screen. Yeah, the UI doesn’t adjust based on screen position. There is also a map that forces a group of your units to be on a path that follows the bottom of the screen.

Also, no, I’m not going to apply the same standards to Joe blow’s free passion project than something that took several thousand dollars from backers and asks me to cough up money to play. This isn’t how standards work.

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Sure. You can apply harsher standards for a paid product. I don’t care about about harsh, yet fair criticism and the dev himself is being receptive to the feedback. But you’re smelling your own farts when you say nonsense like the dev couldn’t be bothered to play through his own game.

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Going to hop in and say this.

You should judge something based off its price somewhat in its own catagory, but price isnt end all be all if something is bad its bad regardless of price. Just that you need to cough up less money to play it in some cases. I would say something being polished doesn’t mean it cant have interesting and fun ideas or gameplay either. I’ve played the game myself and even though I can tell it is rough around edges all that matters really in my opinion is that its just fun. That’s what games I thought are meant to be, good fun.

Sorry for the rant just wanted to spill my thoughts.

You can believe what you want to believe I suppose but I’m not being willfully ignorant when I say I really believe that the singular programmer didn’t actually go through and play the game beforehand.

This is true in a general sense. If Dark Deity was free I would still think it is horribly designed and unfun. However the game doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the fact is that it a) costs money and is worse than free products and b) took a lot of kickstarter money. If you enjoyed the game, you are entitled to that opinion.

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I have seen him play it really often on Twitch. I agree that it should have probably went Early Access for a while, it’s a good way to get the feedback you need.

I’m just happy to see the game do well. As a fellow first time gamedev, it’s a great sign.

I also understand the level you’re being held to as a Kickstarted venture, but 75k (maybe $68k post KS fees) in game development is not a huge amount. I mean, I hope to raise at least that amount but it’s by no means a lot in the scheme of things.

I’ll withhold my opinions on it until I snag a copy.