You can't make everyone happy, AKA "What I want to see in Dredmor 2" thread

I like that the devs are listening to people, but I hope they're not spending all of their time just to update Dredmor. It's better to just fix any current bugs, then work on Dredmor 2 with new content. I know you guys are an indie group, so don't blow all your development money on updating, and then realize you don't have any money left over to make Dredmor 2.

If the devs really want to make more content, just make mod tools and people can create their own content. Then make Dredmor 2 backwards compatible with the mods.

This thread is now a "What I want to see in Dredmor 2" thread.

1. Named mini-bosses with special tactics and skills. They can appear out-of-depth (e.g., a named miniboss that appears on floor 2 that can easily kill you). You have to run if you see him, and then return later to kill him. They shouldn't appear on floor 1 though, because that would be instant suicide for the player. For floor 2+, players can retreat to the previous floor and then return at another different stair to further explore the dungeon.
2. Mini towns where you see other adventurers trying to beat the dungeon. This won't work with only 10 floors, but maybe if you had 20 floors?

 

Um, wait. I don't think Dredmor 2 is happening. Unless I missed something.
So, miniboss monsters sound like a bad idea if they're that much more powerful than they should be. In any game. Even out of depth monsters in most Roguelikes have a way to counter them, by going up the stairs, and going down to a newly generated map. Or teleport monster, etc, etc.

So, not a fan of your miniboss ideas.

 

Developing Dredmor 2 so early after Dredmor 1 is a bit of a stretch, especially since they have little money, as you say. Their best bet would probably be to fix Dredmor and expand it a bit further to attract more sales based on word of mouth etc.

 

What makes you think they have little money? From what they've said publically, DoD's sales far exceeded expectations.

I agree that they shouldn't get too bogged down with this game, but a few months of patches and upgrades isn't entirely out of the question.

 

Its too bad that sales are some degree of confidential for game companies to be releasing. I would have been very interested to know just how many sales they made per day for the first couple weeks of release and how many they are still making. (Just for curiosity's sake and nothing else.) But releasing that data is against the steam TOS i believe, and just not good business practice anyway.. this close to release.

I agree with Tacroy here, they shouldnt get too bogged down with Dredmor, but spending some time refining a few details, fixing some bugs, and adding a bit extra content isnt out of the question. I suspect their next game is quite a ways off yet anyway.

As for the original posters sequel idea.. Im not sure what would make a good sequel to Dredmor. It almost seems to me that the original was a hit because of its unique style and approach. That style and approach can only go so far before it gets a bit stale though, theres only so much you can do with such a 'simple' game.

As is the problem with any sequel, you have to both meet and beat the expectations of the people who played the first one. Which means that you pretty much have to scrap everything and give the player an entirely new experience otherwise first impressions of a new game would be 'i already played this before.'

Either that or the sequel would probably need to delve much harder into the traditional roguelike experience in order to keep the player entertained with many more things they can do to affect the outcome of their playthroughs. Which would also mean increasing the difficulty and possibly alienating a section of their playerbase.*

*This of course is only my opinion. But so close to having just released Dredmor, i dont think the team has anything in the way of plans for a sequel or similar type of game in mind for their next one.

 

I think it's better if they expand on the rogue-like engine instead of concentrating too much on Dredmor 1. And I still think they can easily create more content by just releasing mod tools. Look at Mount and Blade. It's an indie group with a huge following. The initial release of Mount and Blade sucked, but the devs released mod tools and the community greatly expanded what you can do in the game (the community made new content, items, and bug fixes). Because of that, developers only needed to concentrate on making the sequel.

Or look at oblivion. Devs released mod tools and the community created their own content. Because of that, the devs only concentrated on bug fixes, DLCs, and sequels.

 

Modding tools will be a great thing, without question, and will extend the life of the original game nearly infinitely if they are good enough and or if people have enough interest. Anyone ever heard of half-life and counterstrike (half life is nearly 13 years old now, wow..)

The base game needs a bit more official polish before we are quite at the point of dumping it off onto mod-support for sustainability though. (My opinion.)

I still think that theres a lot of problems with making a sequel to a game like this. What would they add thats new and interesting and not just a rehash of exactly what we just played? A simple change of graphics and sounds wont make a new game more interesting if the gameplay is pretty much the same, so they would have to really figure out what to how to change the core gameplay.

Im no expert in game design here, but as a game player here, i would expect a sequel to have more depth, which would mean more complexity (probably) which could mean alienating its original audience? Unless the original audience somehow evolved to want their game bigger and harder.

Im not saying its not possible, just saying that it will require a lot of effort, and probably mean many compromises on the components that make Dredmor what it is now; a simple and easily accessible roguelike for the masses, with just barely enough elements to interest the more hardcore rogue enthusiasts. (Who, ironically, are probably still the core audience pool for Dredmor i would imagine. Would love to see numbers on that!)

 

They will have no money until steam releases payments to them, how that works depends on steams policies and the contract they negotiated. The money doesn't just go DIRECTLY to gaslamp when you buy via steam. It takes TIME.

So yeah, right now they're a bunch of broke programmers waiting on paydays. lol

 

Not to derail the original posters thread (Sorry man!) but does anyone have more information about how much of a cut steam takes, what they charge for bandwidth, what kind of other fees they charge, and or more of an idea when steam makes payments? I would be very interested in knowing the inner workings of these things.

 

Well, here are some ways how other rogue-likes make it more interesting

multiple towns and dungeons, dungeons inside of dungeons (e.g. a hostile dwarf city inside a mining level), NPCs, requiring the character to escape out of the dungeon while it collapses.

Of course, this isn't easy to do. And you have to make sure to keep the game simple enough so the casual audience would enjoy playing it.