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War for the Overworld[Discussion] My extended review of WftO(10 posts)(10 posts)
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Posted June 28, 2017
Hello, everyone. I figured I'd share my extended review here because of the character limit in the store page reviews.

--------------------------
Gameplay rating: 4/5
Campaign rating: 2/5

This review will contain some spoilers, but I will try to keep it as mild as possible.

**The good**
- The narrator is AMAZING. He perfectly embodies the wit and evil that this game is all about.
- Gameplay is solid. Digging tunnels and designing a base is very entertaining.
- The game has many layers of complexity due to rituals, potions, defences, etc. There are many unique buildings and units.

**The bad**
- The writing and story is low quality. [Spoiler:] you're evil and you want to invade the overworld. The humans/dwarves are like a caricature of the most dim-witted, naive, heroic, defenders you can think of.
- Enemies always announce their intentions loudly and dim-wittedly: "Let's go lads! Attack now and destroy this evil lord!" (repeat x100 for most missions). It's boring even if it's intentional. The human enemies all have the same single-minded personality. [Spoiler:] The other underlords are much more fun! The one mission where they all fight you is very entertaining! Albeit, it was too easy difficulty-wise.
- Unpolished game (see bugs below)
- Wildly varying difficulty between levels, and the final missions are too easy.
- 60% of the campaign feels like a long tutorial
- You can finish the campaign in 7-10 hours.
- Human enemy AI is very limited and predictable. [Spoiler:] The enemy Underlords are a little more creative.
- [Spoiler:] Many missions are quite boring. For example, there are several defence missions where you can just build a door and some cannons, and the enemies will never get past, because they always attack the same place with the same units.
- [Minor spoiler:] Lacklustre, anti-climatic, cliffhanger ending. I won't go into specifics, but you can google it.

**Bugs**
- Poor framerate (my PC handles other demanding games just fine).
- Game will periodically (every 20-60s) freeze for half a second.
- I spent a lot of time (~4h) fixing the load bug (couldn't load games).
- In the last mission, many of the enemy siege doors were placed sideways.
- Enemies repeating their dialogue
- Enemies mysteriously froze and stopped attacking in the final mission, even if the main boss kept announcing that they were coming

**Extended review**
I enjoyed the overall experience of the game but can't help but feel a little sad that this game's campaign potential went to waste. I also wonder how the game is currently sitting at 4.5/5 stars in the GoG store page. The game clearly has many issues that hasn't been addressed yet. For example, there's also the issue of game balance that I haven't covered above.

There are many spells that can be abused to unfairly influence the game. For example, the lightning strike. It stuns enemies for a second. This can be used to stun-lock difficult enemies while your minions wail away at them. In one mission, I was being assaulted by an archon. In contrast to the loading screen description, this titan IS a one man army. He wiped out my entire dungeon by himself because he's self-healing. However, once I discovered that I got stun-lock him with my lightning, I just did that so he couldn't heal himself, while my minions slowly killed him. Then I made my own archon and easily won the game. Then there's the shockwave spell which blasts enemies away from a location. If you're being attacked and you're unprepared, worry not! Just find a choke point and use shockwave so that the enemies will never be able to enter your dungeon!
Posted June 28, 2017
Hi Pejorative,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and feedback on the game, we always appreciate candid reviews and feedback as they help to give us a feel and view of where we might improve in the future. Of course a great deal of feedback can be rooting in opinion but there's always qualitative data we can take from these to apply in future projects.

Figured I'd jump in and provide some insight from our side and share our thoughts on some of the points you've raised.

The writing and story is low quality. [Spoiler:] you're evil and you want to invade the overworld. The humans/dwarves are like a caricature of the most dim-witted, naive, heroic, defenders you can think of.

Enemies always announce their intentions loudly and dim-wittedly: "Let's go lads! Attack now and destroy this evil lord!" (repeat x100 for most missions). It's boring even if it's intentional. The human enemies all have the same single-minded personality.
You're right in that this is pretty much intentional, there is little respect shown for heroes throughout War for the Overworld and they are indeed intended to be caricatures of the types of goodly adventurers you'd find in RPGs.

The broadcasting of their intentions is as much a sign of this as anything though is diled up to 11 with characters like Lord O'theland. We also noticed that when observing players without the broadcasted attacks they'd often be too engrossed in managing their dungeon to handle them appropriately.

For the most part I feel this is heavily subject to personal perspective on the matter and opinions will wildly vary on this topic. As for variance in personality you might find a little more difference in the characters in the Heart of Gold expansion, although

The other underlords are much more fun! The one mission where they all fight you is very entertaining! Albeit, it was too easy difficulty-wise.
If you liked thtese then you'll no doubt enjoy the next expansion and major patch which will focus heavily on Underlords with a completely overhauled AI driving them.

Wildly varying difficulty between levels, and the final missions are too easy.
Difficulty is a tricky subject and is affected by a number of factors and everyone will have a different perspective on this. It's a great regret of ours that we never had the opportunity to deliver multiple difficulty levels, but the development cycle up to release was so fraught and pressured that it never made it in, and unfortunately it's now all but impossible to work in without completely redoing the original and heart of gold campaigns.

We've often played around with the difficulty of the levels in response to player feedback though and we're mostly happy with the difficulty curve for the average player. For the next expansion as it primarily focuses on AI I expect we'll be able to vary the difficulty more to cater to different classes of player.

- You can finish the campaign in 7-10 hours.
This is about what we'd expect from the main 13 mission campaign, you can add a few more hours on for Heart of Gold as well. Although we wished it could have been longer time and resources kept that from happening.

Instead we've filled the game with more modes and content and in the future there's another campaign and... something even more interesting to come, which we hope will expand the lifespan of the game dramatically.

- [Spoiler:] Many missions are quite boring. For example, there are several defence missions where you can just build a door and some cannons, and the enemies will never get past, because they always attack the same place with the same units.
You'd be surprised how often players fall over on these levels as well! Out of curiosity though which levels in particular do you feel were most easy and out of line with the expected difficulty curve? Do you feel that a sort of "hard mode" would really benefit in this regard?

- [Minor spoiler:] Lacklustre, anti-climatic, cliffhanger ending. I won't go into specifics, but you can google it.
This is something we really want to change, although the story itself won't receive much in the way of tweaking we want to at least make the ending feel better. As such we'll be revisiting the final level and the ending sequence in 2.0 and giving them the polish they were never able to receive during their development.

**Bugs**
- Poor framerate (my PC handles other demanding games just fine).
- Game will periodically (every 20-60s) freeze for half a second.
We're always happy to help address bugs when they're reported to us, unfortunately we're not in the position to have an extensive QA team so it's inevitable sometimes things will slip through the cracks but we're quick to respond and eager to fix bugs as soon as they're reported.

With regards to framerate we're always looking for places we can make improvements, WFTO is a bit of a unique game and has different bottlenecks to your average title but for the most part it should run smoothly on high-end PCs. Our system requirements can give an idea of what we'd expect performance to be like in certain ranges.

We're not aware of any significant performance issues in the latest versions of the game but if you'd like us to take a look at your logs then we might be able to spot a potential cause for your framerate issues.

With regards to the micro-stutter we're aware this is an issue that affects some systems, we're not exactly sure what the factor is which causes it to become prevalent from machine to machine but we are aware of the cause. As mentioned above WFTO is something of a unique title and has different bottlenecks to other games, due to the vast range of AI Activity, terrain adjustments and pathfinding among many other things the game needs to access large amounts of memory for quick activity.

This causes the creation of something known as Garbage, data in memory which doesn't need to be used anymore, it must be removed in order to prevent memory leaks this garbage must be removed. However the Unity Engine's Garbage Collector is now somewhat outmoded and high latency compared to what WFTO truly needs to handle the amount of garbage generated, in a custom engine this may have been fine but unfortunately the GC algorithm can take so long to finish it's task that it causes a short stutter in rendering.

The good news is that Unity are aware that this is an issue and they are working on a new low-latency GC in order to handle games like ours better. However there is currently no set date for when this will debut in the engine and until that happens we cannot make use of it. We're really eager to get our hands on it though and hope it will make it into a 2017 version of Unity, as soon as it does you can rest assured we'll work on integrating it.

- I spent a lot of time (~4h) fixing the load bug (couldn't load games).
We're really sorry this one slipped by both ourselves and the GOG team, it's incredibly frustrating when something like this slips through and especially so when it only affects one version the game (in this case GOG when it was running without Galaxy) we rolled out a fix as soon as we identified the cause but for some unknown reason the fixed version of the game didn't solve the problem for those already affected.

- In the last mission, many of the enemy siege doors were placed sideways.
This one slipped through in a recent hotfix, for some reason these doors occasionally like to change their orientation even when the level itself hasn't received any changes. There will be a hotfix this week to address this issue and a few others.

- Enemies repeating their dialogue
Happy to look into this one, we've not had any reports of this recently but if you can point us to a level and rough time estimate or what was happening we can probably pinpoint the issue.

- Enemies mysteriously froze and stopped attacking in the final mission, even if the main boss kept announcing that they were coming
That sounds peculiar indeed, I'll get our QA guy to play through the level a few times to see if he can cause this to happen. If you have any information that could help point us in the right direction, such as your strategy or a save file we'd much appreciate a full ticket on our bug tracker :)

I'll pass on your balance feedback for the spells and the Archon titan to our designer, we're planning a big balance pass for 2.0 as well, the third of its kind and any feedback we receive is valued.

Cheers,

Lee
Post edited June 28, 2017 by Noontide13
Posted June 28, 2017
Hello, Noontide, and thanks for the response.

You mention that things are better in HoG and the next expansion. The only issue is that I've now had this disappointment, so I won't spend more money on this series. It's very bold of you to suggest I should buy another product if I'm not satisfied with this one.

As it stands right now, I find the game to be unfinished in almost all aspects: campaign, dialogue, AI, graphics, performance, and story. The sound quality and music are excellent, however.

> Do you feel that a sort of "hard mode" would really benefit in this regard?

Other games offer choices of different difficulty levels. So yes, I would expect the option of being able to choose difficulty. This is standard, imo, and its absence is one of the reasons I say this game is unfinished.

> Out of curiosity though which levels in particular do you feel were most easy and out of line with the expected difficulty curve?

The last level, for example. It's supposed to be the hardest, but it was quite easy. The only difficult part about this level is to survive their first attack. I lost my first playthrough of this level because the first wave was very powerful. But once you know where and when they're coming, you just build some defences and survive with ease. And since the enemy is very predictable, you can easily bolster your defences and survive with ease while you build a massive and unstoppable army. I don't know what to call this type of difficulty. The difficulty stems entirely from the timing of the attack. You need defences built before they announce the attack, and you survive with ease. If you don't have the defences already prepared, it will be very hard. So it's a very strange and arbitrary type of difficulty. After the first attack it's very easy. The last level, I'd expect to be very hard throughout.

The thing with this campaign is that it rewards boring playstyles.

- Want to defend? Build a garrison, some bombards with defenses in the one place they send all their forces. Use lightning/shockwave if things REALLY get out of hand. Don't worry about unexpected counterattacks because the enemy is very predictable.

- Want to attack? Just spend time building a large army and use your rally flags to charge and win. And use heal too. That's the extent of what you need to win. If you want to win with even less effort, build an archon and send it with your army.

I also find it a little strange that the game still has major balance, bug, and performance issues. Wasn't it released in 2015? You're telling me now that you still want to fix the ending? I'm reading through the Steam reviews and many users are making the same criticisms I am, two years ago.

You're suggesting many fixes are just around the corner, but it's a little too late. Once you've experienced the main campaign in any game, then you can't "unexperience" it. The feeling I'm left with after completing the campaign: "was that really it?".
Post edited June 28, 2017 by Pejorative
Posted June 28, 2017
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Pejorative: You mention that things are better in HoG and the next expansion. The only issue is that I've now had this disappointment, so I won't spend more money on this series. It's very bold of you to suggest I should buy another product if I'm not satisfied with this one.
That is completely understandable and I apologise if it seemed like I was trying to upsell you on other products. I wasn't sure whether you may have owned these already such as having purchased the Anniversary collection or were one of our Kickstarter / Humble backers.

I definitely support your decision as a consumer not to purchase further content for WFTO, I would do the same if I was as disappointed in a title. I am of course disappointed that it has come to that for you and as a developer all I can say is that we will continue to work on WFTO with both free and paid content as we have done so in the past.

As always we believe in supporting the customer as best we can and that includes protecting their rights and I certainly appreciate your candid review and hope others will consider it carefully :)

> Out of curiosity though which levels in particular do you feel were most easy and out of line with the expected difficulty curve?
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Pejorative: The last level, for example. It's supposed to be the hardest, but it was quite easy. The only difficult part about this level is to survive their first attack. I lost my first playthrough of this level because the first wave was very powerful. But once you know where and when they're coming, you just build some defences and survive with ease. And since the enemy is very predictable, you can easily bolster your defences and survive with ease while you build a massive and unstoppable army. I don't know what to call this type of difficulty. The difficulty stems entirely from the timing of the attack. You need defences built before they announce the attack, and you survive with ease. If you don't have the defences already prepared, it will be very hard. So it's a very strange and arbitrary type of difficulty. After the first attack it's very easy. The last level, I'd expect to be very hard throughout.
Hmmm yes the last level is intended to be somewhat less hectic than the level before, in a way it's trying to invoke a similar feel to other Dungeon Management Games where the final levels which are against a scripted challenge rather than a fully AI driven one.

Curiously many players much prefer this sort of approach and that was the informing direction behind the Heart of Gold and My Pet Dungeon campaigns, where people want a predictable enemy to face so they can plan their traps and defenses before hand.

I can completely respect your feelings on this though and we know that some of our players want to face off against some real challenge in single player content, this is one of the things that informed the Crucible survival mode and the upcoming expansion.

If nothing else I'll be sure to raise concerns about how the final level behaves, but we don't want to discourage too many players from completing it. I'll also raise questions as to whether it's possible for us to invest the time in developing some form of hard mode for the campaign, but there are serious roadblocks towards us doing something like that. You're not the only person who would like more challenge!
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Pejorative: I also find it a little strange that the game still has major balance, bug, and performance issues. Wasn't it released in 2015? You're telling me now that you still want to fix the ending? I'm reading through the Steam reviews and many users are making the same criticisms I am, two years ago.
We're always working to improve the game where we can, in some cases such as the ending it's simply a matter of time and resources (something that was severely lacking during the development of the main campaign). All I can say is if a bug is reported to us we'll do our best to fix it, likewise for performance issues and I'm pleased to say that many people report to us that the game is leaps and bounds better than it was in 2015.
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Pejorative: There are many spells that can be abused to unfairly influence the game. For example, the lightning strike. It stuns enemies for a second. This can be used to stun-lock difficult enemies while your minions wail away at them. In one mission, I was being assaulted by an archon. In contrast to the loading screen description, this titan IS a one man army. He wiped out my entire dungeon by himself because he's self-healing. However, once I discovered that I got stun-lock him with my lightning, I just did that so he couldn't heal himself, while my minions slowly killed him. Then I made my own archon and easily won the game. Then there's the shockwave spell which blasts enemies away from a location. If you're being attacked and you're unprepared, worry not! Just find a choke point and use shockwave so that the enemies will never be able to enter your dungeon!
I had some more thoughts on this, I don't know at what stage you encountered this but as an Archon could only appear in Level 12 I would imagine you'd be facing off against the Three Underlords, in this stage you are actually empowered by the Kenos (also in Level 13) which gives you insane levels of mana regeneration not normally present, essentially it completely eliminates the cooldown from your mana regenerating.

It seems you used the Lightning and Shockwave spells to great effect as they are intended, with the Lightning spell essentially intended to make taking down lone targets much easier, even without the Kenos the ability to carefully stun an opponent can help render it less effective and thus prevent the Titans from being the one man army.

I can definitely applaud you in this sense as it seems you're using your spells effectively which many players overlook, some even consider these spells pointless and prefer to spend their mana on more and stronger defenses instead.

In either case I'll still raise these to see if they're positioned as our designer intends but I think they were working at least as they're currently intended to in your scenario.
Post edited June 28, 2017 by Noontide13
Posted June 28, 2017
I have to agree, that game difficulty is overall too low in this game and that this might be connected to a very predictable AI and that the AI actions are actually announced. But I wonder what the alternative is. There are a lot of games that make you play each lvl twice, because you cannot possibly predict an event that is too hard to react upon, but too easy to master, when you know what is going to happen.

Btw, I think that the writing is very orthodox, but quite nice - I like the point that you are replaced with your last enemy. Of course you see this coming, especially after fighting the formerly discarded overlords, but it is nice nevertheless. Maybe it is too self-mocking at times, but I certainly would not say the writing is low quality.
Post edited June 28, 2017 by Sdfghj
Posted June 30, 2017
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Noontide13!

It's not surprising that the campaign is easy, since DK2 was easy as well. This design is a little schizophrenic: it doesn't know if it wants you to take your time and build something creative, or respond to threats quickly. Both things are sources of enjoyment in the game, but challenge is much more difficult to implement than an easy-going, creative vibe.

In terms of GC, looks like a lot of Unity devs are feeling the pinch of GC pauses. Have you guys done serious GC profiling with Unity's tools?
Posted June 30, 2017
Hey Bluddy,

Glad to hear that you're enjoying the, uh, varied, design of the campaign.

GC is a big issue for us, and as you're bringing it up I guess you are suffering from the symptoms. Unfortunately we have done most everything we can to prevent this being an issue with the GC'er. As with every other Unity dev we are spending a lot of time in the Sanctuary conducting rituals and tributes to the Unity Gods as we await the new compiler.

Maybe a few more drops of Gnarling blood will finally do it...


(On a more serious note we have done a lot to improve it but due to the scale and scope of the game cannot rectify this without an engine update unless we scale back large parts of the game(Unit count, map size etc.))
Posted July 07, 2017
I really am enjoying it. Thank you for making such a great spiritual sequel for one of my favorite games of all time.

And for what it's worth, performance is great on my system. I'm actually not a game dev myself, and I'm amazed at what can be done now in C# and Unity. Aside from GC woes, it's got to make actual game development so much more enjoyable than in the C/C++ days.
Posted July 10, 2017
Darkest greetings Keeper, er Underlord. As a longtime Dungeon Keeper fan this game is a long awaited gem. Having purchased the core game as well as the pet dungeon and heart of gold DLC and having finished them along with a few skirmish games I thought id leave some feedback. No game is perfect and although ive found some quarks and shortcoming overall i rate this game 5 stars and to any Dungeon Keeper fans out there who may have not yet played the game i do ***highly*** recommend it- the overworld is not going to conquer itself you know.

===== issues and quarks ive come across =====
- Once game has loaded sitting too long in opening main menu causes issues. Game can end up crashing and can run into running out of memory issues with pop up warning. further issues can persist after the game has been closed
- Slowest loading up game i own
- Shadow lost! Shadows and Imps have a high death rate wherever lava is to be found, ive caught shadows simply walking around in the lava
- often find spirit workers trapped floating out in the middle of lava
- need better way to see status of units in combat (dungeon keeper 1 did it best), combat right now is just a mess and you have no idea what is going on, focusing too much on trying to make sure they are fed and paid so they will actually fight
- does anyone actually use potions? Maybe more useful against human opponents- all crackpots that enter my dungeon are quickly thrown into the crypts or end up vampire food
- Why cant i face north? i have camera rotation to PAINFULLY slowest setting and still have a hard time facing north
without being off center. Does anyone ever play from a corner viewpoint??
- How many creatures can my portal attract? How many tiles do i need to place to increase max number of x unit?
- shame doors dont count as a fortified wall for rooms or at least as a partial fortified wall
- When game is first loading up the window size cant seem to make up its mind
- Shadows have engaged the enemy when there are no enemies to engage
- Clicking the ritual icon near my sins at the top of the screen should activate the ritual not switch to ritual tab
- Prophesy is too short, can actually be difficult to cast it then switch tabs to build an outpost in time
- need upgrade that increases the base level that imps start at like in dk2, they die WAY to easy and my imps are
virtually always level 1
- one of your creatures are unhappy, no he is not he is just hungry and just now has decided to go eat
- one of your creatures are unhappy, great to know - why?
- if i have a rally all flag i dont need a million messages about each creature is in combat drowning out any possible
useful messages, I only need one message when any of my minions following x flag encounters an enemy and minions not following said flag can still allow individual messages per monster when under attack
- dropping a creature near an enemy creature and watching my creature walk away is not right, fighting should always be a higher priority than getting food or gold or going to x room unless creature is very upset with me, when one monster is under attack nearby allies should be rushing to help never walking away
- spend too much of my time focusing on reactivating gold ritual, dropping creatures into crypt so necromancers can
actually have ghouls, and making sure vampires are staying fed
- exp transfer of spirits into minions is grossly overpowered while channeling exp into minions is too expensive and
doesn't seem much faster than just training plus then you have to babysit the creature receiving the experience
- imps need to pick up loose gold, so much loose gold everywhere and always so much just sitting in the tavern
- even with basic pointer it can be hard to line up to pick things up like trying to pick up piles of gold
- animated hands of evil pointers are even harder to position and run very slowly and choppy
- I see a visual on how much gold i can still store but would be nice to put my pointer over my gold and find out what
my actual max is
- I see a visual on how much of my mana is locked and what is locking it- would like to know how much is actually being locked by all imps or all ember demons or all traps
- during a skirmish game there can be times where all i can hear is different enemies throwing down flags after flags and can get annoying after awhile, would be nice if the sound would only play if the flag was planted where you can actually see
- would be nice to know which monsters are currently seeking to train and level up and which are doing other jobs like researching or build defense parts etc.
- why is unlocking a whole new room that attracts more monsters have the same sin cost as unlocking one type of individual potion for an already unlocked room?
- imps have a proper leveling skill tree, everyone else has skills that you may not understand how they work with the only way to figure them out is to possess them and scroll to the skill to finally get a description and everyone gets a single new skill all at level 5 period :/
- miss seeing monsters hurl fireballs and lighting at each other
- many rooms dont really seem to benefit from walls and it ends up being better to remove the wall so you have another tile to build on
- sadly many of the pet dungeons i ended up skipping as really all i had to do was wave in heroes and kill them as they were worth a ton of points and figured the only level really worth building a pet dungeon on was the very last one.

===== Positive traits to highlight =====
+ Truly faithful recreation of past dungeon keepers
+ Neat to see the return of the spirit although they dont really do much exploring and spying like i thought they would
+ Beasts are an awesome addition
+ Flags that tell your imps to not go there was long overdue
+ Interesting spin on the Vampires although honestly i never summon them due to their upkeep cost so only have them if i find them and then only keep 1
+ Never will you find your monsters infighting because they dont like each other nor are there any disgruntled wizards taking pop shots at passing imps (although seeing spiders and flies fight just felt right)
+ Necromancer - all the yes
+ Most creatures are actually useful - can be hard to pick which ones to use for sacrifices or vampire food
+ Different dungeon skins for rooms/heart/imps are a nice touch, hope to see more in the future even if paid DLC
+ Demicorn (or however it is spelt), come on who doesn't love these things?
+ Ability to rebuild walls - THANK YOU!!!
+ Separate rally flags, visual of all control groups, and ability to teleport all minions back to base is soooo nice
+ no drop stun, that was such a pain of a mechanic in dk2 and glad it didnt find its way here
+ even if limited gold and/or no infinite gold mines a dungeon still has all it needs to sustain itself
+ Level editor's mirroring feature is amazing
+ Temple concept is more balanced. You wont see an army of horned reapers created from sacrifices nor infinite mana from an army of skeletons forever praying, many rituals are quite useful and wish you could get upgraded versions of them further down the tech tree
* I like how you are limited in monsters only basically by how many tiles for their associated room you have built, want more necromancers build a larger crypt

===== Side Notes =====
* 3 x 3 micro piglet and a 5x3 tavern and food is taken care of no matter dungeon size - kinda odd but okay
* Would be neat to have a room that could randomly attract rare creatures like the demicorn (power scaled down version)
* I figured there wouldn't be any horned reapers in the game but sadden by an also lack of dragons
* an upgrade to allow storage of more gold per tile would be nice
* would be nice to know how many tiles of each room i have or how many of each room i have
* a visual reminder of which rooms i have turned on/off
* maybe an expensive room that can feed vampires and supply crypts with bodys for ghouls - an upgraded micro piglet variation or something?
* Ive seen ppl note that the campaign is too easy and runs like a long tutorial. Odd- isn't that what the campaign is
supposed to be? Even as a long time player the first thing i did was run through the campaign to learn how War For The Overworld works. It was easy for me since it plays so much like DK1 and DK2 but for someone completely new to the concept may not find it as simple. Even with the easier curve i found the levels enjoyable
* considering how long loading is a few more varied tips (or in-game jokes) below loading bar would be nice
* Listen to the music from dk2 where you summon the horned reaper- the very music sets the tone and theme, DK1 really gave you that dark dungeon feel while you played while WFTO feels like it could do a bit more to come across as a dark and sinister dungeon as its just not quite there (from my opinion)
* there is a distinct lack of vampires with boogy fever, sometimes you minions just need express themselves through dance- how can i truly be a dark and evil underlord without running a possibly illegal and rigged gambling casino?
* Would be nice to have a way to set max level above 10 (with a vastly lower power growth curve for each level above 10). For pet dungeons i would actually love if waves of heroes could be toggled to come and could start waving at levels above 10
Posted July 12, 2017
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naton9: - Shadow lost! Shadows and Imps have a high death rate wherever lava is to be found, ive caught shadows simply walking around in the lava
Oculus are particularly bad for charging to their deaths. I like the scouting, and that they harass melee enemies they encounter, but I do not like the fact that they'll just stand there while ranged traps or enemies shred them.
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naton9: - does anyone actually use potions? Maybe more useful against human opponents- all crackpots that enter my dungeon are quickly thrown into the crypts or end up vampire food
I think the biggest problem is that it's one of those features that's hard to experiment with. You need to prep potions ahead of time so you can't just try them out spontaneously, you have to plan to use them in advance. Especially given how many sins are required to unlock them, and how many levels have limited real estate with which to build rooms, it's just too easy to pass over this building and not even attempt to use it.
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naton9: - need upgrade that increases the base level that imps start at like in dk2, they die WAY to easy and my imps are
virtually always level 1
Worker mortality rate is extremely high, especially against the AI on levels with mana shrines since it's quick to fry anything that steps one foot on its territory with lightning.
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naton9: - why is unlocking a whole new room that attracts more monsters have the same sin cost as unlocking one type of individual potion for an already unlocked room?
This is one that gets me, too. The amount of sins required to get a respectable number of potions and rituals is boggling compared to other things in the game which typically only require 1 or 2 tops. The forge gets away with this because it has an entire side of the veins of evil devoted exclusively to itself, but if you want to unlock rituals or potions that's going to take up almost all your sins. (And good luck playing without traps; you'll run your minions ragged if you don't have automated defenses to pick up the slack while they eat, sleep, and train)
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naton9: + Flags that tell your imps to not go there was long overdue
Oh my goodness, yes!
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naton9: + Necromancer - all the yes
A classic staple of any evil fantasy army, I was very pleased to see these guys.
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naton9: + Ability to rebuild walls - THANK YOU!!!
Especially in skirmish mode, where the AI loves to punch holes in your walls early and often. Fortifying your own walls just takes too long unless there's a specific small stretch you want reinforced.
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naton9: + no drop stun, that was such a pain of a mechanic in dk2 and glad it didnt find its way here
I take very much the opposite opinion. Drop-stun was if anything way too soft a penalty in DK2. There's no reason to maintain guard posts or creature amenities at strategic locations when you can easily ferry creatures directly to the front lines with no downside other than the 3 seconds of your own attention to do it. Drop-stun at very least meant you couldn't drop your minions directly into flanking positions against an invading enemy and had to deploy them at a safe distance, meaning you had to put at least some thought into your deployment. I dislike that WFTO did away with this feature without any suitable replacement.
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naton9: * Ive seen ppl note that the campaign is too easy and runs like a long tutorial. Odd- isn't that what the campaign is
supposed to be? Even as a long time player the first thing i did was run through the campaign to learn how War For The Overworld works. It was easy for me since it plays so much like DK1 and DK2 but for someone completely new to the concept may not find it as simple. Even with the easier curve i found the levels enjoyable
I think it's a symptom of modern strategy games having more content but shorter campaigns. Setting aside the basics of lair, hatchery, treasury, and bridges, Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 both had 10 rooms and 20 levels. That's one new room every other level. On the other hand War for the Overworld has 13 rooms and 13 levels. It's literally introducing new rooms twice as quickly. This greatly increases the focus on the tutorial aspect of the campaign. To an extent it's understandable how this shift happened (because it's not just WFTO; not at all) because the expectations for the level of detail and narrative interwoven into campaign levels is much higher today. This means it takes more resources to produce each campaign level, leaving less space to introduce game mechanics. And when players demand more game mechanics too, you kind of reach saturation at a certain point where the campaign just one long extended tutorial. It's a problem, but I don't think it's one with an obvious solution.
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War for the Overworld[Discussion] My extended review of WftO(10 posts)(10 posts)
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