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[Column] Darkest Dungeon: Darkest Dungeon - The Redemption of Early Access
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The games media has been on fire this week. The topic, not for the first time, has been Steam Early Access – or more precisely, Peter Molyneux, but we’ll get to that later. Amidst all the chaos of broken promises and players rightfully feeling taken for a ride, we’ve had the chance to play a game that does Early Access right: Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon. It’s a game with fresh ideas and a sense of style. It’s also a game that’s not completely broken and has an actual plan to release. Smell that? That’s fresh air.
Read more of Christopher Coke's The RPG Files: Darkest Dungeon - The Redemption of Early Access.
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Comments
I'm not big on early access. In fact the only one I have chosen to support was Ultimate General: Gettysburg because it was headed up by one of the best Total War modders and creator of Darth Mod across several TW titles. I still kind of even regret that a little bit, though he did mostly deliver on what he said would.
It's too much of a gamble to give these guys money and hope they listen to your feedback. They might listen to some of the feedback given to them, but they can't listen and act on all of it. That's not their fault, but still sucks when it seems your particular feedback gets ignored.
The best way I feel to support these guys making these games is to buy their product when its FINISHED or considered feature complete. If it's in early access just to complete some minor polishing/balancing then I will probably bite. If there is content or game modes missing or still "planned" then I simply "plan" to take another look when those items are actually put into the game.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
The above reasons are exactly why I've stayed the hell away from Early Access games. Also, many of the reasons above are exactly why I bought Darkest Dungeon, the first Early Access game I've ever purchased. Kudos to that game and it's team.
Jim H. Moreno
I generally don't follow early access news from the myriads of wallet-pickers out there. For the most part, I view it as a trend of opportunism that targets the desperate, the naive, and those people that simply have to be first no matter what it costs them. If the fine print of signing up says, "Product not guaranteed to launch" in legalese, you add another layer of risk for the consumer that puts the onus on them for responsibility. You get what you pay for.
Regarding Darkest Dungeon, I am curious about it. I love those old school turn-based RPG dungeon crawlers. This one reminds me of Wizardry, but grittier and with a great deal of style. It's awesome to see studios that are looking outside of the box.
The redemption of Early Access? Bit of hyperbole I think. Project Zomboid, Space Engineers, The Forest, Prison Architect and several other games have all been a part of Early Access and shown how to do it right. If you're going to point at the scum in Early Access, one need also point at all the scum being let through and released proper as well. Steam in general has seen a generous decline in quality of it's titles. Mobile Ports, $10 Unity purchases turned games (looking at you Digital Homicide Studio), and the like...
And where do they spawn from? Greenlight. Early Access isn't the biggest issue here, it's Greenlight. Valve KNOWS the program is broken, they know it isn't accomplishing the goal it was originally meant to, all the while they continue to use it. Soon after they had admitted it was broken, they began letting in hundreds of titles at a time - go ahead, look it up. Going from "10-15 titles" to "1-200 titles" is bound to start flooding the store with garbage. They've only JUST started discouraging developers on Greenlight from gifting free keys for votes, because it has become a major issue, further destabilizing an already sinking dingy.
Let me repeat that. Valve is endorsing the wave of Early Access Garbage by refusing to shutter a system they've admitted is completely broken and worthless, and have instead chosen to continue to allow games to go through it despite the obvious vote-tampering going on behind the scenes. You know how many of those broken, borderline scam titles get through? It's sure as Sherly not via the virtue of it's presentation. It's junk accounts and free key offers, neither of which the system is designed to stave off.
As for the Molyneux issue? It's more than the under-delivering as well. The reason he is being hit as hard as he is right now is because he no longer has the protection of big mother Microsoft or some major publisher guarding his hide. The man whined about Microsoft having people ensuring his chair wasn't going to throw out his back... And now he's whining the press is being unfair towards him. If you want to see the interview that really sparked his reaction, here ya go.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/13/peter-molyneux-interview-godus-reputation-kickstarter/
The "winner" of Curiosity, by the by, has yet to even get a cent from them despite the fact they've apparently been setting aside money for him. It's more than underdeveloping, it's seeing just how terrible at management the man is. It's seeing why he NEEDS an overlord to even start to keep him in line. He's already admitted he is doing something else entirely. The man has always had a disgusting cycle of "praise then poach". Fable 1 was the god of games, until he announced Fable 2 at which point Fable 1 was terrible. Fable 2 was the definition of his career, until Fable 3 was announced at which point he (ironically) called it shite. Etc. Etc.. I may almost respect that "I want to make the bestest thing ever" attitude of his, but it's balanced by the fact the man can't see out from his own arse, and only admits his faults if it serves to hype up the next thing he's doing.
And if you want to see much of the same? Well... Warren Spector isn't far behind. He may have more... clout, I guess one could say, behind his name... But that doesn't exclude him either. His last major contribution was 2004. Since then he has had two games he was in charge of (Epic Mickey 1 & 2) both of which were subpar. They fell to the same kind of focus-tested dreck he'd normally be against, and whenever people had a complaint he defaulted to the much loved "You're just doing it wrong" defense. This project of his is riding on his name alone, and while I hope for the best I'm expecting something of the same for him as what has happened with Molyneux.
We can all blame customers for being stupid enough buying into early access like its finished products but its the gaming press that hypes up these titles. H1Z1 was promoted the same way a finished game is promoted.
After six months of early access you can do a proper assessment if darkest dungeon is doing early access right, now you are just hyping up another unfinished game.
i see several others have said exactly what i was thinking i buy plenty of EA games all the time.matter of fact I would buy EA way before i would buy triple A games. See the thing is if you blindly buy EA you're looking to get burnt i do my homework on EA games for months usually before i buy.
We have $60 dollar triple A games shipping broken vs EA games majority are between 10-25 bucks,yet i play alot of the EA games for hours and hours compared to what i put into some triple A's.
EA doesn't guarantee a finished game ever,but i'm not paying 60 bucks either.your taking the same chance on a 15 dollar EA game that you are with a 60 dollar triple A.
Another thing for me anything above $20-$25 EA i don't do.
Let's forget about all the other titles that delivered from early access and current titles that are doing active updates. Let's forget a small game called Kerbal Space Program, a early access game that has massive updates every time and has more to offer then most AAA that come out every year. And lets forget about the many other success stories like Divinity Original Sin, Wasteland 2, etc etc.
There are two major problems with early access:
1. People having no idea how long it takes to make a game and what the different stages mean:
People have forgotten that making games is a time consuming business. Often there are complainments that the developers are scammers cause they didn't release a new patch every week. Most early access games are made by small teams. Meaning it simply takes more time then a studio that has millions of dollars to spend and a team of dozens if not hundreds of people. Call of Duty is being made in 2 years (each dev team gets 2 years for their title, that way they have a new CoD every year). There are over 100 people working on CoD. And CoD is a rather simple game to make, the engine has been reused for many years so not much work there. So you can imagine how much time it takes for a studio that needs to build everything from ground up and more complex then a shooter. RPG's for example are more complex to make and yet many early access games are RPG's or even sandbox building games.
People also often complain about alpha access being broken, and i can only sigh when i see that. I think people need to stop paying for early access if they don't understand that they aren't buying the complete game. They are paying to support the developer. They get the game in the end but the money spend during early access goes into development.
2. As with anything that involves money you have the scammers:
This is a sad truth. You have that in every business. You got them a lot in the construction business as well. Where people could buy a vacation home on some amazing resort in a sunny country. LIke with many houses they start the sales before the construction and then a few years later they still haven't started. 10 years later its still just a spot with some machines on it with no work being done.
This is no different with early access. You got these idiots who want to earn a quick buck before their game gets pulled from steam.
In many cases it even amazes me when people are surprised a game is a scam. When you look at the screenshots and you see a game being nothing but unity standard models and level design that looks like they just put random stuff down...then how can people not see this is a scam? How can they still buy it? Then you are contributing yourself to the problem of scammers on greenlight. Yeah steam needs to fix their control on games there. But that also goes for consumers. Often it is very clear that someone is a scammer and always make sure you do some investigation before buying a game.
However, there are sadly also cases where you as consumer couldn't know. Yeah there is this warning blabla. But sometimes you have these early access games that seem trustwortthy. They put a lot of time in creating good updates on a regular base for the first year, their alpha seems rather stable and playable and suddenly they go dark. You don't hear from them for months and boom game is canceled. Some examples:
Spacebase DF9: This is one of the worst things i have bought myself into. Double Fine had a good reputation with me. Tim himself hated the way Activision handled Brutal Legend and had a oppinion about certain publishers i could agree on. Sadly he and his team were no hair better. Spacebase DF9 went dark after a few months after they put it on early access. Months of no patches nor news. This is often a bad sign. And yup it was. Suddenly they are alive again, they bring us some news about a upcomming patch...and a month later or so we get to hear "Game is done, have fun". The game jumped from Alpha into a released version. Major features were not in the game and they blamed it on running out of money so they had to release it. Here is the thing what makes me call them scammers. They openly admited they knew this was gonna happen months before they released the game. They didn't communicate any of this with the people who bought the early access. Instead a few days before the release they even had a huge steam sale on it. A steam sale with a promise of a new major patch generates a ton of new buyers. And after all that money you say "Yeah we are done with it, have fun". Their appology was rather weak in the begining. The dev team on it didn't even seem to be sorry, they where even proud of their garbage stunt.
Tim himself had a weak excuse himself but it became very clear that he is a major hypocrite who complains about others like Boby Koytic from Activision while doing the exact same thing himself. It wasn't just Spacebase though, more of their titles began to have a shady name.
Sure a month or so later they did give us the game Hack and slash for free. But to be honest that doesn't make it up with me that i never got the game i was looking forward too. And that they blunty lied in our faces for months about it. EA does the same trick after all, they screw things up and give a free game to calm the majority of the people down again. So they seem like good guys who atleast give you a free game for all the trouble.
Folktale: It's not really a scam, but what they done was rather bad in my eyes. After more then a year or so they decided to have a poll ammong their community what approach the game should take. This poll was never really advertised so many early access buyers weren't aware of it as communication was so slow on their part that most people had forgotten about them or feared it was a scam.
Now they ditch the story driven rpg/rts/city building for another sandbox style game. This is not what many opted for. From what i knew when i bought the game it would have both to begin with, you would have you story mode and your sandbox mode but not appearantly after 2 years of hardly any progress (most updates where for the freaking editor) they go full sandbox mode now.
Things like that don't help. When well known and respected names turn out to be shady and when games follow a course for 1,5 year, gain fans that way and then suddenly change course.
Finally about Peter......People who bought his early access should have known. Sorry but he has a reputation everyone knew off. Everyone knew he would say a lot of things but his games of the last 10 years never came close to what he promised they would be. If you are upset about Godduss not delivering and having features cut then you can only blame yourself. You had all the fable games to look at and the black and white games to compare too. You knew this. Don't blame it on early access, blame it on the fanboys who were blinded by them being huge fans and bought it blindy without thinking twice. Atleast Peter been concistant. With him you knew that if half the stuff would make it in it would be a lot. With Double Fine i did not expect it. Hence i decided to support Double Fine and looked at Godduss with a raised brow and was gonna wait till release to see what it really was gonna be like.
In conclusion, Early Access has a bad name cause the focus is only on the bad stuff. But if you look at it, there are a lot of success stories too that no one focusses on cause it is to be expected that a game is delivered. Like with everything, you always hear more about the bad then the good. This game is not saving early access, its just another of the many games that doesn't screw early access buyers over as it should.
And for the scammers, most titles that give a negative name to early access don't even sell as well or for some reason get bought a lot cause its a fun thing to joke with for youtubers. And when youtubers do funny movies about crappy games you always see a bunch of people buying these games to do the same. Look at all the horribel simulators that no one spend any attention too till a few years ago when they became popular thanks to big youtubers playing them. You can blame early access for it, but its often also with the consumer, not always but often it can be prevented if people would understand what early access is and if they don't just buy from day one and do proper research before getting it.
I'm not big on kickstarters or early access games.I've only gotten involved with a couple.
That being said...
Darkest Dungeon is fun as heck. I have been totally sucked in and I cant wait for the completed game to ship later this year.
The brutal difficulty and permadeath ADD to the flavor of the game. Heroes are plentiful, but getting one to a high level alive and mentally sound is the challenge.
Here are a couple tips-
Get more cash ! - Save 4 character spots for disposable heroes. Send those 4 level 0 characters into the dungeon grab as much loot as you can and get out. Let them go crazy, you can just grab 4 more new ones.(for free)
Don't need torches ! - Forget about buying torches, it is a waste of money. Some items and skills work better in the dark anyways.
Typical short embark ? - I take 8 food, maybe 12 or more if I'm low on healing. Then I take a shovel and a key. You should be able to heal most bleeds and blights during fights, or heal the damage they cause so don't buy potions or bandages. The shovel is only because roadblocks cause significant stress if you don't use a shovel. The key is for the one big chest you will probably find near the last fight. Hopefully you will find some more useful stuff along the way and by all means use everything you find because it doesn't roll over or count for anything after you leave.
Good group? - Take a Hellion 1, a Bounty Hunter 2, an Occultist 3, and a Vestal 4. Focus on stuns and juggling positions on the enemy line. Bring their mages and archers to the front , stun them and let the BH blast the stunned units. The Occultist can debuff and mark strong units and again the BH gains a bonus against them with the right skills. Hellion should use Yawp when the front line needs stuns or has strong attacks otherwise. Vestal can attack from the rear or heal as needed. Just don't get so caught up in your juggling and stunning that you forget to actually do some damage and drop some fools!
Great Game and Good Luck !
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
This whole argument is stupid beyond belief. There are numerous examples of games that went through EA and were outstanding. Kerbal Space Program anyone? One of the very best games I've ever purchased. Hand of Fate is the latest games I bought as EA that has emerged in a finished state and is excellent.
This is exactly like kickstarter. Do your research, and don't spend money you can't afford to lose.
ps: Anybody who wasn't aware that Molyneux ALWAYS overpromises has been living in a monastery in Peru for the past 25 years.
Grim Dawn is also doing Early Access right. The only reason the game hasn't come out yet is because the devs keep adding new stuff that wasn't even mentioned in the Kickstarter, which is a good thing in my opinion.
The faction system is really taking shape and now they are talking about adding a "small" Act 4. I say "small" because they said the other acts would be "small", yet they weren't. There's also the upcoming Augment System and the Devotion System to look forward to.
Plus the devs say they are holding some thing back to release as a surprise to the players when the full game releases.
Anyways, not a bad deal for $25 on Steam. Though personally, I would buy it straight from the devs site since they offer different packages.
Yup, this exactly. I haven't been burned once, because I'm not stupid.