Poll: Do you like large dungeon crawling and grinding levels?

#42

Hah, I was feeling the exact same way when playing that W3 quest. I was so eager to push through to the end because I was getting so bored that I wasn’t even sure what really happened in there. I hate filler combat, even if the combat mechanics are mostly enjoyable. Personally I enjoy quick, highly lethal combat and highly dislike damage-sponge enemies and bosses. Most of these are only difficult since they take so damn long because your super lethal weapon suddenly deals proportionally as much damage as a soggy baguette. I’m totally over loot now as well. There is so much of it in games now that it’s a tyranny of choice. As someone who’s not a min-maxer, I don’t even worry about it anymore. I just pick what looks nice and has good enough stats (Which may be the cause of my troubles above as well!).

I do like exploring a lot, but I don’t like to do it in dungeons much since the exploration there is often sealed behind or followed by combat “walls”. And it only prolongs my time in the dungeon! I much prefer wandering around and exploring the open world.

A lot of games these days, like Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Origins, felt like Wandering in the Dark stretched out over 40 hours to me. In terms of main game and story length I personally think 15-20 hours is the sweet spot, with maybe 10 hours of optional extra content. I honestly don’t have time for more than that these days. Single main-story quests should be somewhere between 20-60 min in my opinion. Enough time to develop a story beat, but not too time consuming. It also gives you some extra time for side-questing, inventory management and non-story exploration in a gaming session (assuming a gaming session of 60-90 min or so).

It’s worth pointing out that a 10 hour season of Game of Thrones easily has more a more complete, complex story than a game twice the length. And even a single season is difficult enough to binge watch. Although, of course, Game of Thrones has no gameplay - but to counterbalance that, it does have multiple different story threads going on at once.

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#43

In other games, the side missions are very boring. Here (in The Witcher 3) I am looking for them because they are so varied. I do not need 10 pieces of something to collect. The beautiful dialogues, the fantastically detailed world make me play the game to the end. This happens in a minority of games.

#44

The answer to the question depends on the circumstances (i.e. the particular game or game-type)

  1. I really like rogue-likes (Nethack, Slash’em, DCSS, ToME, …), and in their original form those are one long dungeon crawl. The reason I like them is a) the chance of perma-death, which keeps you on your toes, b) there is usually a good variety of enemies with different abilities instead of wave after wave of goblins. If you encounter a polymorphed giant shoggoth in the Slash’Em town, you WILL be interested (not to mention dead, if you don’t pay attention), that is not standard grind. Also, there is usually always the chance for REALLY great loot, from some bone-pile or a random drop or a shop. So: Variety == good. Chance of serious things happening == good.
  2. I can’t stand Skyrim/Oblivion dungeons, although they tend to be more varied and interesting. The main reason I hate them is the level-scaling of the world that Bethesda does. It’s so stupid. Sure, it suits the open-world system, you can go anywhere you want and you will face a manageable challenge whereever you go. But it’s just funny when the beginners cave in Oblivion is suddenly filled with high-level trolls instead of low-level bats, after you leveled a bit. This completely kills the sense of progress for me, even though it keeps you on your toes. So: No sense of progress == bad.
  3. Most of the time, I like the quests and locations in “The secret world”. They tend to be a bit on the grindy side, but what sets them apart is the mission design. Most of what you do is closely to a mission and the missions are almost always interesting and varied. So: Level design == good. Varied missions == good. Interesting puzzles == good.
  4. For the most part, I really enjoyed “Dark Souls”. Level design is truly excellent, there is some grinding (kind of) while you do that “learning by dying” thing that you have to do, but then there is the sense of achievement when you master an area. Sens castle is an exception, though, I hate that. And the two skeletons with the bows in Anor Londo, of course ;). But again: The level Design is excellent and there is very little “generic filler dungeon”. So, again: Level design == good.

As a conclusion, here’s my answer to the OP question: In principle I don’t mind long dungeons. But they should be filled with interesting and varied encounters, with non-trivial traps/puzzles, if appropriate. They should not consist of a single tiring layout and graphics-design and while you traverse them you should get story and/or objective updates at regular intervals.

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#45

Some of us do not have a lot of time to play, and (i belive) that all the players in the same situation as me want to waste (not a good word, its not a waste, but my english is bad so i cant use another) in the history, not in dungeons, of course we need a little, but not long ones.

PS: i’m here because u guys said that will not have any magic in this game, dont dissapoint me

#46

The same reason I am here :smile: Time is scarce, but what is more scarce is the opportunity to find a game more or less similar to this where you don’t have to fight skeletons, zombies, witches, dragons, devils, and all type of fantasy creature in awkward dungeons.

The story and the meaning of your actions should be more important than repetitive actions with different foes, more or less ugly. I am a bit surprised at the size of maleficent fantasy the games these days have, I am not sure how constructive are for a youngster character, I remember things being totally different many years ago. I think games like Hatred are pinacle of how wrong things keep on going, in my humble opinion. It’s important to have good and bad, but these dungeons and fantasy characters are just way too much.

Too many games are just a long line to the same end, whatever option you take, you end up beating the latest boss/final event. I would like to see something different than dungeons and stuff like that. And more types of ending, if there is an end, giving a meaning to your actions.

#47

i have to say dungeons is a good way spend some time playing the game as long it not too repetitive and boring and as mentioned i think Witcher 3 does it very well actually, but yeah dungeon can either be boring or fun depends on how it is developed :smile:

#48

I think it’s something some devs did right, then every other dev copied it in hopes to get it right by pure luck. In my opinion, the extend of a dungeon that a dev should create is directly proportional to the sense of accomplishement that it’s lore should reflect.

For example: A standard city streets, that have been transformed into a dungeon crawl because of X convenient events has little in the sense of accomplishement, probably little loot, and not much interest.

On the other hand, the tomb of King Sullas IV, with it’s 2nd, 3rd and fourth subterranian level progresively less touched by scavengers, with fabbled riches at the final chamber where the king rests, and possibly ample recognition for your deed once you get out… Has it much better on my book.

ps: I think it could be reduced to one phrase “I’m exploring this because I want to (for loot, curiosity, challenge, doesn’t matter)”.

#49

Not keen on dungeon crawling personally, especially those that go on and on and on. The only positive is the relief when getting out in to the open world again. I therefore hope KCD will not include them, or not make them critical to progress if they do. :smile:

#50

Maybe you can create a short dungeon quest as a prison break. If you kill too many villagers, they will come to hang you, lad. You could choose to beg for mercy (in which case they will cut off your nose and ears and your charisma is forever gone) or you can try to escape - by picking the lock and sneaking out. The downside of escaping is that you are unarmed and weak, and cannot run too fast. If they spot you they will catch you and they will put you to the sword right there.

#51

Didn’t play the Witcher yet (although bought it), but judging by TES/Fallout games, I definitely don’t like long grinding dungeons. I remember, I was playing Skyrim and then realized that despite being set in a huge beautiful world, MOST of the gameplay happened in dungeons, very similar to each other. The open world itself was simply a path, filled with random annoying enemies, between dungeons. I felt like the world has more ancient tombs than living villages. Then I kinda lost my interest for the game.

#52

Honestly, I cannot imagine dungeon crawling in KC:D. I guess what we’ll see of “dungeons” will be some kind of cave that will be a shelter of some band of brigands or castle dungeon we will try to free a prisoner from. What other dungeon crawl (true to the realism) could we really have?

#53

In real, there is possible to have some big cave system and with some “story”. For example, in other part of bohemia there is one famous cave system and it was used in midleage as shelter for coin counterfeiting :smiley: .

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#54

Id like the old “fall down the hole, find your way out or die” at least once. You could interrupt some fishy bussines or like. But it must feel real, I have to worry if I can actually survive.

#55

I have no Problem with dungeons if they are well made of course, if there is an explanation, why they are there and if they aren´t too long ( Your example of two hours would be an example for too long)
I´m ok with grinding, if it isn´t necessary to make progress in the game. There are few things that annoy me more than the necessrity to farm xp and loot for hours and hours just to play the next two main story missions and to repeat this over and over again <-<

#56

For me it really depends on the type of game and dungeons. As much as I love Zelda OoT and Dark Souls’ dungeons I’ve found Skyrim’s and Amalur: Reckoning ones very repetitive and quite boring. So for KCD I would say: no dungeon crawling, please.

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#57

First off, thanks for taking the time to ask us and get our opinions!

I think that can be a tough question. In general I don’t like big dungeons. But I think it’s less about big dungeons than it is about repetitiveness. Does Assassins Creed have big dungeons? Not really, but god those “stalking” missions are bloody terrible, and they’re not even that long. One or two would be fine but when you get to your fourth one you’re like “what the hell is this? Really guys? Really!?”

I also think gameplay mechanics have a lot to do with it. For instance, in the Witcher the combat mechanics are pretty simple. You click a button to slash, another button to block, another to dodge. The animations are cool at first but it get’s old fast. Doing this for two hours straight would just get annoying… BUT, with combat mechanics like yours I could see myself still spending two hours in a dungeon, a much smaller dungeon but it would still take two hours, why? Because the combat wouldn’t be a hack and slash breeze. (Well, maybe not, I don’t know if you’ve designed any dungeon to take two hours regardless of size, but you get the point.)

I believe stakes are also very important. In Skyrim if I had a quest to save Morgroks nephew (made up name btw) and his nephew was being held in a cave, I’d probably only want to give that 15 to 20 minutes tops. However, if my mission is to find the band of Imperial soldiers sent to reinforce Whiterun that went missing…I may very well spend an hour trying to track their path all the way to the dwemer ruins with a bloody body on the ground. And then another hour or two inside the ruin fighting the bandits and the stormcloaks that hired them to capture the Imperial soldiers. (Made up quest, don’t worry I’m not spoiling anything!)

All I’d say is that if it doesn’t have a clear purpose in driving the particular story you are playing (could be the main story, or just a side story (side “quest”) than there’s no need for it. Quantity doesn’t equal quality. “We have 300+ hours of gameplay!” That’s wonderful…I’m only going to actually play 30 hours of that because the rest is crap.

And I’ll tell you something, I’m 20 years old and I also have trouble finishing games. I didn’t use to. There was a time I’d get a game at 6pm (18:00) and by 4am I’d have it beat. That was actually a good feeling. But now trying to get through most games is just a huge pain. Some do it well though. I actually really like Far Cry 3, I think they nailed the dungeons because they made navigating them interesting and combat had a lot of options.

So to sum it all up. In my mind what can make or break a dungeon (and a game for that fact) is:

.Repetitiveness

.Gameplay Mechanics

.Stakes

The only other thing is, if you and the folks in the office wouldn’t want to play it, chances are your consumer probably wouldn’t want to either (regardless of what some corporate marketing moron might tell you, I don’t care how much “data” he has.)

Just my opinions.

Cheers!

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#58

i can only relate to skyrim dungeons, it was kinda my first rpg where i spent a lot of time in it and i enjoyed all these dungeons even tho there are a lot :smile:

#59

Okay I hate dungeons. Probably the only “dungeon” I really liked. Was less of a dungeon and more of an undeground location (deep roads in Dragon age origins). Dungeons are not logical. Mostly it’s some sort of asymetrical structure or toomb. With few rooms full of enemies or traps. Going over and over again. Until you are sick of it, and you want to return to surface.

#60

Dungeons are great as side quests to do as an added option, especially when you do it with friends. However they can be extremely annoying when you want to get through the main quest and your being made to do inane jobs. I dont belie the game will be to dungeon heavy as it would not fit in with the story and game ethos.

#61

Depends. The problem with dungeons is that they rely on relatively narrow, straight forward path. But in real life. Mines and undeground passes Such as Silver mine Kutná Hora. Are really narrow. And I mean, like half the size of what you think is passable mine shaft. And only rarely it’s wider, or bigger. Not in medieval times.

So the only thing remains are natural caves. And most of them, especially in Czech Republic are short. Really short and small. They offcourse could make them bigger and add some kind of bandit encampment. But that seems like a such a cliche, that nobody really likes.

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