Old DD verteran, is it worth getting DDA?

Hi everyone,

I've played DD1 and DD2 for a VERY long time, and I was very active in this community a long time ago too, especially during the DD2 alpha times. Some of the older veterans among you guys might recognize my username (changed my avatar though). I've played over 500 hours of DD1 and over 1.2k hours of DD2, so you can say that I'm very much a big fan of the franchise.

I left a long time ago and stopped following any news on the franchise. You can imagine my surprise when I came across Dungeon Defenders Awakened recently. So to all of you guys, I have to ask if this game is worth in the current state? I know it said released, but knowing the franchise and the devs the content is probably ongoing and missing quite a lot of stuff. Here are a couple questions:

1) What's different from DD1? What's new, and what has been removed?

2) What's the current state of the game? What's available, what are the near update plans, and what are the long term plans?

3) Bugs, there are usually a lot of those at the beginning of a release. How is this version?

4) Would you recommend it?

5) Does it support Widescreen? My monitor is 3440x1440 and I was wondering if it switches to 16:9 or if it supports 21:9. 

6) Since it has technically launched and is out of early access, will all progression be kept? Or is it possible that there's a wipe?

 

Also, if there are still any devs from the old days that are active here and remember me, cheers! 

 

Cheers! 

Edited July 14, 2020 by MushroomCake28

1) its overall a dd1 remake. Theres a couple new maps, and the forge system was thrown out so you can access your inventory and switch your characters around from anywhere. They took the character deck system in dd2 so you have 4 available character to switch too using f1-f4, however you cant switch mid combat phase like you could in dd2. The starting characters and their towers are the same with little difference. The skills are different and its overall a smoother and easier experience. The loot system is pretty much the same as dd1 other then loot not dropping with negative stats. Pets work the same as dd1 with a few changes.

 

2) Right now the base campaign is available with 6 difficulties ( massacre mode being new hardest). theres 12 maps for the campaign and 3 extras, with 15 overall. We have survival mode/pure strat/mixed mode available for all difficulties other then massacre where we only have campaign( i believe an update is coming this month thats adding in survival for massacre though). Theres also challenge maps available. There is a road-map with different ideas for the future https://roadmap.dungeondefenders.com/ , you can upvote what you like and ideally whatever has the most upvotes will take priority. 

 

3) Its honestly not that buggy, theres a few hiccups for some people and the usual DD bugs like stuck mobs, towers acting weird sometimes, pets dropping with no stats rarely. Its a pretty clean experience for the most part( from what im aware of at least).

 

 4) If you liked dd1 then you will enjoy the DDA playstyle and having some of the quality of life from dd2. however you are right that it is lacking content overall compared to dd1 and dd2, and will take time for it to catch up. But even now, playing pretty casually i was able to sink 200 hours into before i started to get somewhat bored. I would recommend checking out some streams or videos and see if its something you like.

 

5) i dont have an answer to this question sadly :)

 

6) i dont think they will wipe, or at least plan on it. They already had a semi-wipe at launch where anyone playing early access could play their old accounts on 1 server, and was going to be where you could mod. and then another server where you would play legit but have to start over if you were an early access player, and it was not received well for most the player base and they had to undo/fix it.

 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Debs

To be honest, I'd wait a couple weeks/months until they add more content.

The game is currently losing 50-100 average active players every week and it has been resurected three times already.

If you want to take the dive, you can get a good 100 hours of content if you don't leech for gear.

Thank you, both of you! 

Is survival mode still there? And do the devs plan to add all the DLC content from DD1 (Forest, Desert, Sea, and Skycity, plus the heroes, and the other maps). 

And also, are there fairly a lot of players? Like is it easy to find a match and join it for any map? 

11 minutes ago, MushroomCake28 said:

 

Is survival mode still there?

Yes there is, currently Survival mode exists up until Nightmare Mode, whereas Massacre Survival is suppose to come with the next update (hopefully this month.) If you are not aware, Massacre is the newest level of difficulty, it basically makes dps heroes required and towers obsolete, late game, and for those who play efficiently once you reach Massacre you almost stop using apprentice, I dont even carry him in my deck on Massacre maps.

11 minutes ago, MushroomCake28 said:

 

And do the devs plan to add all the DLC content from DD1 (Forest, Desert, Sea, and Skycity, plus the heroes, and the other maps). 

I can not tell you what the Devs plan to all release, there is a road map (found here) that is partially community driven and is there to help the Devs look in the right direction at certain aspects of the game. The next planned DLC will have Eve and with the amount of support for other heroes im sure they will be added in. As for the maps I heard the planned DLC is suppose to be bigger in size than the eternia shard maps; but I could not tell you if those maps will end up just being the shard maps, although in my opinion I would prefer new maps at least.

11 minutes ago, MushroomCake28 said:

And also, are there fairly a lot of players? Like is it easy to find a match and join it for any map? 

I have roughly 350 hours in DDA, and from my time on there, there is no shortage of players to join. Although a lot of players you can expect are the min/max (efficient) players and so youll most likely be forking over your build mana upon joining. That can be a downside to some as everyone just wants to help, but this genre relies on good strategy and towers, and sometimes a good build is what is needed. The good side to this is there are plenty of new players as well, so you can find games that are more cooperating or chill, you can also host your own lobby. When you get to end game content like Massacre mode you will see less and less lobbies show up offering Massacre level difficulty. On average I will come across 2-10 massacre lobbies in one of my sessions, plus new ones appear all the time. Time matters, weekdays are naturally slower, and weekends will have more.

Alright thanks for all the answers! I just got the game, even if it's early in development I've always liked helping the devs of this game! Looking forward to seeing all of you guys in-game, and for those of you guys who like sitting at the top spot, watch out I'm coming :P

Also, I can confirm that widescreen works perfectly. 

I run it on my 1440x3440 wide screen and it runs without problems, detects the correct resolution too

For widescreen the UI works just fine but for game play it zooms in and cuts off the top and bottom.  Still perfectly playable but a little more zoomed in than I would like.