Things that bug me about dd2 and some possible solutions

Time for my very own thread about things pissing me off in dd2. So here it is in a random but hopefully understandable order.

Onslaught stuffs:

• The 60+ grind is too long and the monster scaling isnt fast enough. The scaling between floors is horribly low (it feels 1% pr floor) compared to a game like diablo. Even at 114 Gregory had less hp than an average c7, 4 player boss when the scaling was 50%, lol. Having time being the great bottleneck doesnt make for a great experience its just tedious and boring. Possible solution: double/triple the scaling pr floor past 65 and move the cosmetics accordingly so difficulty between floors can be felt.

• Getting back to 114 after doing the ancient power grind will be too much time investment and another boring grind where time is the bottleneck and not difficulty. Possible solution: Introduce a feature similiar to the old gr key leveling system from diablo. Once we reach 65 we get an option to launch a map similiar to the old onslaught where every 3 waves the monsters scale up by 1-5 floors. Allow us go as high as our highest achieved floor so we can quickly get back to 92 or 114 or whereever we were when we prestiged the 1st time.

• We need more detailed information on the lane modifiers. Give us all the numbers for all the different modifiers so we can counter each modifier in the right way. Possible solution: Write it in a book in town or give some of the useless npcs a purpose so it wont fill the screen when pressing shift.

• Tell us ingame from what floor we will face each individual enemy, so basicly the enemy appreance section of this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-DcLxtWOKD_kGXsMhcbtGGnmfcRWVNWgaK6Xqt_rt14/edit#gid=1736969127 Again write in a book in town or add npc dialogue. Also add a quest that shows them where they can get find the information.

• We need more tutorials for the following:

1. Chaos enemies
2. Frost enemies
3. Lava guardian
4. Lane modifiers

A huge thing turning off potential new players imo. Hold their hand and help them understand why flame auras dont work against cyborgs or why that frost orc just marched through the lane and nothing attacked it. 

Possible solution: Make a short video showing everything about each individual monster and how they deal with sorounding towers/auras/walls. You can even team up with juicebags or another youtuber and have him make them?

• Introduce a way for people to play with their friends despite a difference in floors. Being forced to play solo isnt what this game is about and its making this horrible grind even worse. Possible solution: Have people able to join higher floors but scale their loot to their current achieved floor level and have them gain 2-3 floors pr floor so they can eventually catch up to their friend. Make it 1-1 till 65 to avoid people carrying for faster prestiging.

• Save and reduce floor progression. Screw having to dedicate 1-1.5 hours of gametime because someone somewhere might abuse the system and get carried by friends.Also doing 3 maps every floor in this current system is too much. Either increase the monster scaling pr floor or tone the maps pr floor down to 2.
  

• Too much lost temple. Towards the end of my climb i found myself using 60% of my time on lost temple and 40% on the 2 previous maps so its safe to say that im tired of that map. Can we tone it down to once every 2-3 floors? Or even better, have it on every 5th map and put it in the ramdom map rotation. This way it feels special once we finally do get Lost Temple.

• Every schedule should have at least 1 of each of its possible monster types on wave 1. this whole building for one schedule only for the game to add 1-2 monsters by wave 2 is annoying and the wrong kind of difficult. LOLOL surprise frost orcs!!!!
  

• Too many frost lanes possible. Depending on rng we will eventually be steamrolled by a Frost map where 3+ lanes are frost monster. They usually take 1-2 extra towers pr lane so having too many will make the map unfairly hard. Possible solution: Have a cap of 2 frost lanes possible pr map.

• #buff Timmy
  

Ancient Power/Prestiging:

• Grinding ancient power is too much stick and not enough carrot. It will burn everyone out before they can feel any gains from it. Possible solution: 

Increase the rewards from each prestige:

1. Exp to 10% and increase even more if it still doesnt feel right
2. Gold to 20% to allow us to relevel our damn shards after each prestige. This is just one more annoying thing that punishes anyone that doesnt have a 100mil bank. 
3. Reduce the amount of prestiges needed to max out ancient power to either 10-20. that will still be between 125-250 hours of game time to max and that still leaves the talent caps open to farm for those who still want a longer grind.
   

• Fix the ancient power points so they scale with shards and ascension. As is 1% dp wont give you anywhere near 1% dps which just makes the rewards almost useless.

• With the new gating system in chaos the gear drops should no longer scale off of equipped ilvl like it did before. Right now we have 2 systems in place to make sure noobs to progress too fast so i think we should finetune one and remove the other and in this case remove drops based on ilvl.
  

Mastery:

• Add rewards for redoing master maps. As is Mastery is just a huge chunk of content i wont every play again. Its a wasted effort by the devs to not have replayability. Possible solution: Being able to reset mastery progress and gain rewards similiar to the ones we got on 1st playthrough and maybe add quests or weeklys along the lines of ''gain xxx stars in the mastery mode''. Gaining more hyper shards would be dumb since it would probably offset the game balance and add another boring grind that we dont need now that we have prestiging so leave them at 1 each account.

• Add a view all public mastery maps to the war table. Allow people who are searching for mastery maps to easily see what maps are going on at the moment.

• Rebalance mastery (keep it hard still). The race is over so let us join our friends mid map and nerf the 30 sec build timer.
  

Other stuff that annoys me:

• Green chests are still lackluster 200 gold, 2 green items and shards? I thought i would be looking foreward to them after the patch...

Final thoughts

If i should give my current impression of this patch i would say that it continues along the same path as mastery. Mastery felt like it was made for the ''elite'' which is fine since its literally called Mastery.

Onslaught however shouldnt be for the elite. Sure with infinitely scaling mosters it should eventually be but the whole system (not saving progress mid floor, centered around prestiging, complicated modifiers and monsters, day long grinds to get to endgame) just feels like more of the same ''elite'' only content. 

Since this games ''skill'' in my opinion lies in observing an enemy and knowing how to counter it, then people will only start enjoying enslaught and mastery once they learn this. So i think developing the noob experience of the game is what will grow the playerbase and community which is what we all want.

Kind regards

Simon

   

I found some more mastery notes and since im having trouble editing the OP heres some more.

More mastery:

• I gotta say that the mastery race has been the most fun ive had in dd2 for quite i while although im not sure that is because of the challenges themselves or just the race itself. With that said i would like to talk a little about the missed oppotunity i think mastery was:
• 1st of all i think there were wayy too few challenges which prevented each map from feeling unique. It felt like most if not all maps were aimed at screwing over aura users which left ev2 and dryad defenses.  

1. only use x% of the du
2. only use nodes
3. only use traps (masochists only)
4. 40/50/60 second build timers on larger maps
   

• Changing obelisks and volcanoes to tower type defenses. What purpose did this serve other than to completely cheese every no block map. This change ruined a perfectly good challenge and increased the gap between the casual and hardcore since casuals cant cheese with 10+ obelisks.

• Difficulty didnt increase with chaos level. If you ignore M6 UC then the increase in difficulty over the mastery tiers was almost non existant. 

• M1-3 was supposed to be geared towards the ''casuals'' and should have been doable by almost everyone
• M4-6 should only be doable with duplicate relics/heroes/shards and most ''casuals'' would have to group in order to complete
• M7 should have been the masochist only tier where every map should take multiple tries and very specific tower setups in order to work like M6 UC.

Some really good points. Also when you start to prestige it feels like you are stuck with it until you are done prestige. Will probably be a long boring grind (with nothing else to do) for most casuals like myself.  

Very good points..... they need such observation for upcoming fixes. So thanks for sharing!

I agree with everything you've put.

Good post

Extremely well-written post. Along with loads of constructive criticism and ideas. Not to mention from one of the most avid players (especially in recent times.) I know Trendy will take this to heart. A lot of your gripes are infallibly correct; concerns that the entire community shares. How Onslaught needs tweaks as mentioned above. And of course needs some form of retry ability on second or third maps since losses from disconnects and glitches are so common.

How Ancient Power needs to have drastically better gains for drastically less loss in trade for them. Since right now it's just not worth it. Even people like Juicebags, who literally play and stream games full-time as their livelihood, aren't seeing any huge value from its rewards. Yes, him and a select few others have found ways to "streamline" the process within their parameters. However the average player, even the average hardcore player, can't be expected to dedicate 60-70 hours per week to DD2. For months on-end. Just for the sake of Ancient Power. So seeing people saying "you can prestige one time in as little as 84 maps if you do it perfectly and have good luck with drops," makes me both laugh and cry.

Plus something we haven't seen as much mention about lately. How Mastery was a wonderful and interesting mode; yet it has zero incentive for replay. Outside of helping friends who still need the rewards. And folks who help friends like that: give them something nice as well. Foster that community spirit. Such a cool idea and nice use of assets; it's shame to have it relegated to "one and done." I'm surprised that there isn't, at the least, some form of comparable XP/gold/shard rewards to incentivize repeat plays. Or as noted, since the Mastery Race is over, lessen some of the more severe and unfun limiters from the mode.

well i prestige 7 times and the exp% bonus needs to be higher. its honestly feels no different if i didn't go through with it. pls make it 20%.

+1 to these points.

As someone who has reset a bit I would like a better feel for resetting. I know its a time base increase for each reset but I would like to feel it slightly in the early game that makes me wanna keep resetting.  I've played other MMO/Games with a Prestige/Rebirth system before and they let you feel your first prestige. You know that you prestige and they make you wanna reset again and again, you feel powerful. Examples would be a game I use to play. When you first rebirth you feel it because you get extra skills right off the bat at level 1. At  level 75 you got an ultimate skill. For DD2 you could give people the choice for new towers or skills for a hero for each reset.

For Example: Lets say you just hit your first prestige. You would get your bonus Gold and Exp %, AND you would get to choose to unlock on a hero you own a new Tower or Skill. Monk for example Has 3 skills + his heal, and his 4 Towers/Auras. What if you don't like or use the Monk's Boost Aura. One of his locked towers would be a Slow Aura. Now you can switch that Boost Aura with the Slow Aura. Something like this would make me wanna keep resetting to unlock all the new skills and towers for all my heroes.

Just one of my many random thoughts I get while playing DD2.

TLDR: More incentives to Prestige

+10 to this! 

Also, I actually would not mind having vicious strikes on multiple defenses. Same thing goes for Mass destruction and a couple other hyper shards! :-)

I agree with everything simonb posted, this would go a long way to fixing many of the issues with both onslaught and mastery and hopefully trendy is listening ... ahem [[166314,users]] 

Nice. Pretty much all of this has already been said, but nice to have it summed up in one post. The weird thing is, many of these things should go without saying,.. 

My thoughts:

1. Coming back to the previous achieved floor is definitely desired. I mean, for certain, I'm at floor 128, for sure the thought of prestige and grind all the way back to 128 already prevent me from prestige. 65 seem to be a good starting point as OP suggested, once you clear it, u can get back to your highest achieved floor. Reason? there's no difference in gear progressing anymore much after c7, it's capped at c7, why else should I keep proving myself that I'm capable of clearing higher floor after I prestige if I already cleared it?

2. The idea of Piki is what I talked about in Discord a while ago. Make prestige interesting, instead of mindless number. It's proven that I certainly don't need those 5% more of stat to reach high floor. It's more about RNG of mobs, and how it bless you with less frost and less cybork. Also, grand special skill for heroes when prestige and make it more powerful after each prestige. Like, for certain, Flame Aura is nice, but not desired in some combo, what if I have option to turn it into Water Aura, that I gain cuz of my prestige. I get it, prestige and endless floor make it more grindy and player keep playing; but people want to feel powerful, it should be rewarding.

3. Rework defenses that are fallen out of favors. For example, I rarely use Huntress' Explosive Trap. Even in favorable situation that gave Spellbreaker and Proximity mutator with no cybork, there's no reason to use Explosive trap, I can just places bee on the path. Another example is Geyser trap: It would seem like a fantastic choice against Controlled burn lane with geode, but only if the lanes dont have cybork or frosty big orc, and if it doesn't have 4s attack rate. Many defenses really need rework or buff to make them more used. Now, I know bee's OP, slime's OP. But, why nerf them and not buff all other to their level. Think of it as reward, people love reward, not punish(nerf).

4. Now that pack are unlocking skins, how about releasing those past event cosmetics into the loot? I want the Clown monk head.

@Lawlta quote:

@Nigiri_Toro quote:

I agree with everything simonb posted, this would go a long way to fixing many of the issues with both onslaught and mastery and hopefully trendy is listening ... ahem lawlta 

You don't need to tag me.... I see evvverrryyyythiiiiiiiiiiingggg. I'm like Santa Claus, we both see everything, but instead of giving gifts, I give gifs.

Well then, hehehe, still waiting for a response on this.

 Why Bundle of the Beast overstayed it's welcome (a part two)

@Mighty Mango

1. Yeah, starting from floor 1 means that if you ever Prestige once, you will legitimately never have a challlenge again for 100s of hours, since you are a) incentivized to keep prestiging when you hit the minimum amount b) be doing easy floors for the entire duration. So if I ever prestige I'm looking at 100s of hours of literally face roll easy content. Why would I want to remove all challenge for the next few months I play this game?

2. I was really disappointed when Ancient Power was first revealed, and I made it known. I'm not the only one. The time / reward investment is way out of whack. There's a lot of super simple things that would make Ancient Power appealing. Faster walking speed in build phase? Double jump on other heroes? 1% higher number does nothing and worse - doesn't make the player feel more powerful. There are lots of indirect power options they could have gone with.

3. It's really not efficient to buff all defenses rather than nerfing the outliers. You have 4 table legs, and you need them to be the same size. Do you cut down one? Or build up the other 3? It's literally 3x the amount of work for the same result, and even more so when there's so many defenses. Bee is really the main reason so many defenses are not used. Explosive Trap is incredibly strong and efficient, but compared to Bee, it's lackluster. I imagine when Bee gets nerfed the amount of defense diversity will skyrocket, since right now its possible to literally build bees from floor 1 to floor 300, from campaign to mastery 7.

@Mighty Mango quote:

4. Now that pack are unlocking skins, how about releasing those past event cosmetics into the loot? I want the Clown monk head.

What do you mean "clown monk head"? I've never seen a clown monk in the cosmetics.

If you mean the Dragonfall carnival Zen Juggler Monk. And you mean his "exclusive" jester-ish hat, Lucky you, it's no longer exclusive. It's now in every Zen Juggler costume now. 

(darnit, I wish that's still an exclusive even though I don't have it...)

@The Jason Order quote:

3. It's really not efficient to buff all defenses rather than nerfing the outliers. You have 4 table legs, and you need them to be the same size. Do you cut down one? Or build up the other 3? It's literally 3x the amount of work for the same result, and even more so when there's so many defenses. Bee is really the main reason so many defenses are not used. Explosive Trap is incredibly strong and efficient, but compared to Bee, it's lackluster. I imagine when Bee gets nerfed the amount of defense diversity will skyrocket, since right now its possible to literally build bees from floor 1 to floor 300, from campaign to mastery 7.

There aren't any other factors to consider at all!

*laughs in Cybork*

This thread makes me happy. Appreciate the time folks here have given to give us feedback. :)

bonjour / bonjour désolé à l'avance de mon anglais plus que personne, étant un joueur plutôt ramdom (avec plus de 700h (dépenser beaucoup d'argent pour soutenir le jeu que j'aime) je suis revenu sur le jeu, je me suis dit à super un nouveau système, je monte l'étage 63 est d'un degust complet mon arrive je gagne à chaque fois 2 cartes sur 3, la 3ème carte je perds tout le temps, soit je tombe, comment te dire que je ne suis pas 12h libre de jouer DD2 J'ai une vie de famille je travaille, mais j'adore DD2, mais au vu de ce qu'il devient ça commence à me dégoûter de ce qu'il devient du système de redémarrage Eh bien, mais j'ai l'impression qu'il nous pénalise plus que quoi que ce soit d'autre 5% xp / gold est juste ridicule, je passe des centaines d'heures pour xp à faire mes trucs sans compter le temps incroyable pour faire de l'or, j'espère vraiment que très bientôt il y aura un patch, car jeJe ne suis pas le seul à être soulagé du jeu, il devient un jeu exclusivement pour ce qui ne fonctionne pas, c'est 12 heures de temps libre, je parle au nom de 8 amis qui arrêtent presque tous = (J'espère que le jeu deviendra jouable pour des gens comme nous bon jeu à tous j'espère que mon avis sera pris en compte . 

ps: I hope I will be understood I made the effort to write in English while it is not my language at all

@Ext |™Colonel Sn@py quote:hello / hello sorry in advance of my English more than anyone, being a rather ramdom player (with more than 700h (spend a lot of money to support the game I love) I came back on the game I got said to super a new system, I go upstairs 63 is a full degust my arrival I win every time 2 out of 3 cards, the 3rd card I lose all the time, either I fall, how to tell you that I do not I am not 12h free to play DD2 I have a family life I work, but I love DD2, but in view of what it becomes it starts to disgust me of what it gets from the reboot system Well, but i feel like it penalizes us more than anything else 5% xp / gold is just ridiculous, i spend hundreds of hours for xp doing my stuff besides the incredible time to do gold, I really hope that very soon there will be a patch, because II am not the only one to be relieved of the game, it becomes a game excluded for what does not work, it's 12 hours of free time, I speak on behalf of 8 friends who stop almost all = (I hope the game will become playable for people like us good game to all I hope that my opinion will be taken into account

Google translate 4tw!

Have to say, great suggestions! Though I'm kinda uncomfortable with resetting those stars. It's kinda a pain for me to get them. But then, there's no race to get all anxiety about, so maybe the feeling could be different this time.