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| ESRB:T
Dungeon Runners Dev Journal: Dungeons to Run In
Today, the Dungeon Runners Dev Team has provided us with a new developer journal about the use of dungeons in, well, Dungeon Runners.
Early in the development process we decided that we needed to have dungeons. This may sound a bit strange since we call our game Dungeon Runners, with the natural assumption being that at the very least there would be dungeons, you know, to run through. This decision didn’t come lightly as we spent weeks debating it in endless mind-numbing meetings. However, once the dissenting team members were properly subdued, we made this momentous decision and the rest, as they say, is history.
Okay, so there was a little more than that. Since we didn’t have a mind-blowing budget to work with and we were absolutely loaded with hard drives full of art from various unused or cancelled projects, it made sense to use as much pre-created art as possible for Dungeon Runners, repurposed to many dungeons, creature models, weapons, armor, and environmental/combat effects. This includes material spawned for us from the fertile mind of comic book artist Joe Madureira, where a lot of Dungeon Runners’ distinctive look and feel originally came from.
Now, one of our big notions behind Dungeon Runners is to offer fun variety. We find it quite uninteresting to run through the same dungeon or instance over and over again; you know where the creatures hang out, you know where the entrances and exits are, and you got the boss fights all mapped out to an exact science. Instead of following that well-worn-out path to utter boredom, we decided to randomize just about everything. The game randomizes each map (in other words, each specific dungeon level) each game session (the overall layout of each dungeon level, the boss locations, the exits, NPCs, you name it). The dungeons still make some amount of sense and have to follow guidelines—there aren’t any half-sized corridors, missing walls, miniature doors, stuff like that. However, you’ll pretty much have a different experience each time you go in. Also, unless;)
you’re in a group, you won’t run into a gaggle of people all trying to get to the same piece of treasure or boss—each dungeon is instanced for you personally. Since these instances exist throughout your game session, if you’ve cleared it you don’t have to clear it again (until you log off).
Visually, of course, we try to make the larger dungeons and the connected mini-dungeons different and interesting, a type of cue that lets you know you’re advancing from one section to another in a very general sense. There are forests, dank caves, lava pits, libraries, hazy ember-filled halls and ice caverns, just for starters. The monsters you’ll encounter vary between the dungeons, mini-dungeons and environments, and there are all sorts of huge mobs and boss encounters.
;)
We have also been adding new large-scale dungeons as well as mini-dungeons, but we wanted players to be able to experience each of the existing ones for an extended length of time, so there is a broad range of character levels for most of them. For instance, the first major dungeon players will run across after arriving in Townston is Algernon, which players level three through twenty can experience. We recommend The Horrific Dungeon of Legend for players of level twenty-five on up—there are no level boundaries here (except the level cap). Currently players can access eleven major multi-level dungeons (most are seven levels each), from Dew Valley to The Shadow’s Embrace, with dozens of mini-dungeons and one-map instances (such as The Tainted Grove, Clan of the Cave Yeti and The Cold Copse).
We’re not going to stop with just we have; lots of new dungeons, especially to accommodate our growing number of high-level players, are in the works. For instance, in Chunk #1 we added our newest high-level dungeon, Rasputin’s Gulag (accessible from fifth level of Shadow’s Embrace), which is intended for players level seventy-five and higher. We’re always looking for new visual themes and creatures to populate our dungeons with, and better ways to provide a fun experience for everyone to enjoy.
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This game just has no niche. In it's pay to play version, it just does not stack up to any of the competition. Granted they had a small budget, but billing people to play this is just absurd, it just does not offer enough in today's market to justify that. There are free to play games that offer far more than their pay to play game.
The free to play version is just horrible. Over half the equipment in the game is unavailable to the f2p player and most of the amenities like the warehouse. At later levels it makes playing very difficult, the pay to play players are so superior with the better equipment.
Not sure how they intend to go forward, but supporting a game that fails every niche in the MMO market has got to be very hard.
My recommendation, avoid this game like the plague, it offers nothing you can't find better in another game.
To the players that actually pay to play this game, boy are you missing out on far better games. You really should reconsider paying for this game, you could do so much more with your money in other games.
Ozmodan, first off, I think the bulk of people who play this game ARE others from other games. I play this for my down time from Guild Wars, and I'm not disappointed. The game is fun, and doesn't take itself seriously at all but still manages to crank out updates and content.
I'm not going to sway you to this game, you've already made your decision and I can understand your stance. But don't belittle the people who enjoy this game, respect it, and have had fun in it to where you criticize them for how they choose to spend their money.
For anyone else who hasn't played the game yet, and is looking for an opinion, there's been many forum posts in the Dungeon Runners forums on here talking about the pros and cons of it. But for christ's sake it's a free game, just go download it and see if you like it or not. It's a way to kill a few hours of downtime, hack up a bunch of monsters and get "kewl" loots without taking yourself so seriously.
And about it offering nothing you can't find better in other games:
The combat is freaking fun. The graphics have improved over the last couple updates. The overall tone of this game is funny. If you can't have fun, go justify your existence paying whatever the trendy MMO grindfest of the season is. The rest of us will enjoy our downtime hacking their way through this
You really can't be serious about the free to play portion, the restrictions are monumental. Like trying to play diablo with only blue items. You can play it, but never experience the harder levels. Nothing worse than finding lots of nice items in the game only to have to toss them away.
Don't get me started on the pay to play either, there are a lot of free to play that offer more than this game does, so why in the world would you even bother?
Of course if you have money to throw away and like the game, have at it. I was just addressing what content is available compared to other games.
Actually there is no casual "oh let's play it for a few minutes when i don't have something else to do" loot whore mmo around atm, and the korean grindfests are much worse. The one or two half decent free mmos around just aren't suitable for a few minutes of fun tho,
I would be interested to see Ozmodan's list of free-to-play games that are better than the paid version of DR.
If Anarchy Online is on that list, I will laugh and laugh.