Hey Rat Punchers, happy new year once again!
After a bit of a holiday break, I’m back to work on Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which includes laying out some plans for the coming year! This post starts with a year in review, and then lists the major changes and additions that I have planned for Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2025 and beyond.
Whether or not the quest is like the sewers is entirely up to how it’s designed. I would design the quest with this sort of limitation in mind and the intention certainely wouldn’t be to have it kill >50% of runs. If anything I think giving everyone a common starting point will make it much easier to balance this quest, as the state the player is in during the quest can be much more tightly controlled.
While I prefer a token gambling collosseum, or something like the caves quest, it’s up to you on how to proceed with the city quest!
Though I’m not sure how to balance that vault idea other than completely eliminating challenges during the quest. On diet, swarm, champions, pharma, and barren lands are lethal, but FIMA will be the worst offender as it eliminates most of the gear progression in that vault microcosm, making all melee weapons + armor useless. That “starting point” is always the most lethal in high challenges, but by the time players reach the city it’s usually a winning run already and they have the correct builds to proceed. If the city quest can even cause 20% death at this stage in the game… my biggest worry will be not experiencing the imp update entirely because skipping it becomes the optimum play on high challenges. Hope that’s not the case!
Players can prepare against tengu or caves quest to boost the winrate, but this vault quest is something that they cannot prepare against, and that constant death rate might be too unappealing as it goes against the core gameplay of “preparing for the next fight”. It might act as a fun minigame if done well, but it seems hard to execute well.
A lot of people thought the same about the caves quest. A lot of people I saw playing were skipping it because it’s too taxing for On Diet
Players adapt better than you imagine
I also thought On Diet made the caves quest difficult, but I manage to adapt to it specifically because I can prepare for it. That’s the entire point of this message, every obstacle in this game can be adapted to because there is a way to prepare items. That’s what makes roguelikes fun, you see an impossible boss ahead, and on the next run, you bring solutions to counter that boss.
The vault quest however, has no possible way to prepare if you start at zero again. That’s the problem. The only way to adapt to vault quest is if players are allowed to pre-buff before the vault, but at that point it’s no longer worth getting the +2 ring as you need those buff items for dwarf king and yog in 9-chal. If the vault quest won’t be as RNG-hell as 9-chal sewers, then there is another way to adapt via skill and memory, but that’ll be difficult to balance with challenges.
To a degree you also can’t prepare for the caves quest
You can only damage enemies with the one item you are given, which is the Pickaxe
I’m sure the Vault quest will follow a similar logic, you start with no items but get to pick items based on the current situation
Maybe you will find a unique sword that can kill unique enemies, or a unique spear that can keep them at bay, however you can’t hold both of them at once
A part of Roguelikes is also adapting to unique and unexpected scenarios. This might be one of them
And you keep on yapping about challenges making things harder… Like bro, they are challenges
Not true, only the boss needs to be pickaxed. Everything here can be prepared: sight options, cleansing potion for food, preparing huge damage + crowd control for the minions. Stamina potion can help chase and dodge against the boss, which essentially gives the player high pickaxe DPS. Without options, there is no adaptation, and that’s the “sewer problem” that’ll hopefully not exist in the vault.
And please stop twisting my words. I never said that challenges are bad because they make things harder. I’m saying that a game can be both difficult and fun, and if said difficulty strips away entire classes and core gameplay elements to remove player choices, then it’s bad game design, and we can learn from successful games on how to better create difficulty. If the google result to “Shattered PD challenges” is players complaining how poorly designed it is, then there’s a problem.
You can win the quests without encountering minions, fighting them, without wasting food, and without vision
Even if you can’t, you can severely limit the minions damage output with proper positioning
Also, I really don’t care what your opinion on challenges are
But you only complain that it’s gonna make the game harder for people who play challenges. A really big portion of people don’t play challenges
And if you happen to be someone that does, then you gotta take the difficulty level that comes with it
That’s an exaggeration, but it’s not about what’s possible. The game is about tweaking the winrate in your favor with better options and decisions, using core gameplay elements from your bag, and having choices like these are essential to the game.
And that’s perfectly fine if you don’t care about my opinion! But I’d like to share my opinion to the dev and other people regardless, in hopes it will improve the game like warrior, and you cannot stifle these discussions just because you don’t care about it.
Challenges can be added + improved for those who play it, to be more fun. Imagine if the hard mode of RPGs simply remove your spells and gear. Sure, it’s more difficult, but it’s like installing a “negative update” that removes entire chunks of gameplay. Players criticize Shattered’s challenges because they care about Shattered, and telling them to just “take the difficulty level” is insensitive and improvements cannot be made like that.
Bro, this isn’t about the challenges, the challenges will get probably be better in the future
Your criticism as you call it, is basically telling a Dev to drop a whole concept and replace it with your own
It’s not helpful feedback, at all.
That’s what I have issues with, you haven’t even seen the quest and you already want it gone.