"Got enough stuff, I'm outta here." - The Hero "needs" concept

[moradus]

I've tried, tried, tried to like Dungeons, but its basic premise just baffles me.

We all know that that there are not and never were heroes that entered mystical dungeons to fight for fame and experience points. (You... stop crying. D&D was only a game!)

But if there WERE such heroes, they wouldn't act like they do in Dungeons. The heroes in Dungeons act like tourists visiting gift shops.

At best, Dungeons confuses the laws of "need" with the laws of encumbrance. A hero would not leave a dungeon because he's found too much gold. He might leave if he can't carry too much gold.

Also, the random showing up and leveling up of heroes just doesn't seem grounded in any sensible premise. I mean, in Dungeons, if you're doing you're job right, all the guys that got all the loot are quite dead. So their rave reviews of your dungeon never rose above their eventual raving in your torture chamber.

So, how to fix this? Some possibilities (just thinking out loud):

- Heroes "usually" go to dungeons to get a specific "something." The Dungeon Keeper (oops) should have have a selection of specific artifacts that he can put in the dungeon.
- If heroes have any real need, it will be for that artifact. If you kick the crap out of them too soon, they'll run for the door before continuing to get the artifact.
- If you draw heroes far enough into your dungeon, they will persevere in the face of certain death. The "well, we can't go back now" concept.
- A way to get more heroes to search for a given artifact is to actually let a random hero see the artifact in all its glory and kick him the hell out of your dungeon. And he tells two friends, and they tell two friends, etc.
- You have to protect the artifact, but if you don't let a hero get to it once in a while (for the purposes of kicking him out), other heroes won't come because they won't believe the artifact legend after a while.
- However, when you let a hero "escape" (which you do deliberately), the next round of heroes will be more powerful and will bring more gold, magic and equipment that will increase the value of your dungeon.

From there, at least you have a plausible premise why you would want to carefully drag out the dungeon experience. Your goal as Dungeon Kee.... Lord will be to kill off "most" of the heroes, but not all.

And by "plausible premise," I mean the best I can do on my first cup of coffee.

It just seems like these guys were kind of onto something with the hero "needs" thing, but just fubared it.

Cheers!

[54x]

This game is pretty clearly a parody and it wears it on its sleeve- it's not exactly supposed to make logical sense in a real world, it's supposed to be a reversal of RPG mechanics that makes fun of them.

You should think of a hero leaving when they get their needs fulfilled as them going back to town and coming back later through the same gate. Your job is to snipe them off just before or just after they fill all of their needs for maximum suffering- captured at the moment of triumph and all that.

It's certainly a mechanic that requires a bit of micro, (the portal to your dungeon heart is really helpful though) and during missions that also require timely use of your hero for both primary and secondary goals, you'll often end up letting heroes escape because you just didn't have the time to check whether they were getting close to full or because you simply couldn't spare your dungeon lord.

[moradus]

This game is pretty clearly a parody and it wears it on its sleeve- it's not exactly supposed to make logical sense in a real world, it's supposed to be a reversal of RPG mechanics that makes fun of them.

Yeah, I get that. But when the parody is neither funny nor intuitive, it's time to give up the parody. Let's face it. No one is doing spit-takes over this game. In fact, posters have gotten more mileage out of making fun of the "needs" scheme than have been citing it for its humorous value. (I seem to recall someone mentioning a new room called the "Adventurer's Day Care"... now THAT'S parody!)

If you want funny, then Dungeon Keeper wins out (again).

I was just offering a way to keep the basic dynamic of Dungeons in tact while making it make some kind of sense that anyone would care about.

[Neverpleased]

I think the problem here is not that the heroes seem trivial in their pursuits of glory, but that there are only 2 rooms to satisfy all 7 needs. Do damage, take damage, heal, knowledge, traps, gold and equipment.

The only needs that are kept separate are equipment and knowledge. You really only need to build 2 rooms for this. It lobs something that could be broken down into a far complex system into a big old lump that has 1 single interaction object.

You could have broken down Knowledge up into Spells, Scrolls, Alchemy, Dark Rites, Summoning etc. Same for equipment, but no we just lump it all onto one interaction object and give the heroes max of 4 needs before they leave.


Besides that obvious mistake let's go back to what you said about how a hero usually gets in a dungeon. I usually take a quest of killing a number of monsters or getting an ancient MacGuffin. I don't leave half way through getting to the big evil.

A hero should wander a dungeon until his needs are satisfied, or if he takes to much damage, if a hero is not engaged in combat and below 10% hp, without potions left, he should try to get to the exit (this takes care of spreading the rumour of a dangerous but amazing dungeon).

If a hero has satisfied all needs without getting below 10% he will try to finish his quest no matter the cost, as stated by his original quest or goal when he entered, go after a certain object, artefact, dungeon heart, dungeon lord, specific monster, the exit. He does not turn back even if he goes below 10% health however, otherwise no one would stay.

This makes getting heroes to max satisfaction a strategy, you must now allow them to get to max satisfaction without endangering them to much. Otherwise they will flee. Next you must make a kill zone near the MacGuffins to protect them.


The last thing though is the bloody unit cap. I hate the unit cap. Remove it, it has no use beyond limiting you to a certain layout.

[Jean Plantagnet]

I've tried, tried, tried to like Dungeons, but its basic premise just baffles me.

We all know that that there are not and never were heroes that entered mystical dungeons to fight for fame and experience points. (You... stop crying. D&D was only a game!)

But if there WERE such heroes, they wouldn't act like they do in Dungeons. The heroes in Dungeons act like tourists visiting gift shops.

At best, Dungeons confuses the laws of "need" with the laws of encumbrance. A hero would not leave a dungeon because he's found too much gold. He might leave if he can't carry too much gold.

Also, the random showing up and leveling up of heroes just doesn't seem grounded in any sensible premise. I mean, in Dungeons, if you're doing you're job right, all the guys that got all the loot are quite dead. So their rave reviews of your dungeon never rose above their eventual raving in your torture chamber.

So, how to fix this? Some possibilities (just thinking out loud):

- Heroes "usually" go to dungeons to get a specific "something." The Dungeon Keeper (oops) should have have a selection of specific artifacts that he can put in the dungeon.
- If heroes have any real need, it will be for that artifact. If you kick the crap out of them too soon, they'll run for the door before continuing to get the artifact.
- If you draw heroes far enough into your dungeon, they will persevere in the face of certain death. The "well, we can't go back now" concept.
- A way to get more heroes to search for a given artifact is to actually let a random hero see the artifact in all its glory and kick him the hell out of your dungeon. And he tells two friends, and they tell two friends, etc.
- You have to protect the artifact, but if you don't let a hero get to it once in a while (for the purposes of kicking him out), other heroes won't come because they won't believe the artifact legend after a while.
- However, when you let a hero "escape" (which you do deliberately), the next round of heroes will be more powerful and will bring more gold, magic and equipment that will increase the value of your dungeon.

From there, at least you have a plausible premise why you would want to carefully drag out the dungeon experience. Your goal as Dungeon Kee.... Lord will be to kill off "most" of the heroes, but not all.

And by "plausible premise," I mean the best I can do on my first cup of coffee.

It just seems like these guys were kind of onto something with the hero "needs" thing, but just fubared it.

Cheers!

Would make the game way too easy. Keep off most of the heroes but not all? Ok, i'll just send my overlord in to kill every other hero. Having to focus on just building around one specific thing to me is where the strategy aspect of dungeon keeper 2 failed where all you really needed was a single chokepoint to keep all the do-gooders out. Evil Genius had the exact same problem.

To me, the system actually makes sense. Low level heroes come in first cuz they're the only ones interested in your starting treasures.

You capture them and drain their soulpoints, upgrading your dungeon and the treasures contained within. Word spreads about the greater treasures in your dungeon and the tougher heroes seeking more fame and glory become attracted to it, if not for the treasure, for the sake of saying they survived your dungeon. The level up timer for heroes does this and adds pressure on to you as the dungeon lord.

If you took away the whole aspect of having to make heroes happy by giving them little things here and there to draw them deeper and deeper into your dungeon, then all I have to do is stack all my monster pentagrams right up against the hero gates, or at the chokepoint to my dungeon heart, or to the chokepoint leading to your suggested artifact.

I disagree with those who think you only need 1 equipment room and 1 library. The different interaction gimmicks only fill a certain amount of need per hero for a reason. You do not want them turning around that the edge of your dungeon and making your dungeon lord chase after them. You need them to battle through several layers of monsters to use up their health potions, then die trying to get out. The gimmicks are there to make heroes stop and observe them, giving your monsters more time to respawn.

The only heroes who are actually questing to defeat the Big Evil(YOU) are the champions as it should be, or the heroes who get bored cuz there aren't enough treasures and loot.