HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT DUNGEON CRAWLING?

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charblar
"wait you made this a career?"
3574
As I'm moving on to make a full game I started to think back to Persona 3 and more specifically Tartarus (If you've never played it Tartarus is a 100+ dungeon and the only dungeon in the game you climb it to certain points every 30 days to get to the next section and train for a boss battle during a full moon) how do you feel about dungeons that go on for extended periods of time?
I thought Tartarus was a pretty interesting.

However....

...I do tend to get a bit impatient if the game is story-heavy, but uses its plot beats as book-ends to several hours of plotless dungeon-crawling. This didn't happen so much in Persona 3, but it did irritate me in Soul Hackers and SMT Strange Journey.

Which is funny, because I can play a roguelike for hours. I guess it's because there's minimal plot in many roguelikes? I guess my preference is all or nothing?

Anyway, that's just my personal preference: If you're aiming to tell a deep story, don't pad it out with hours of no story.

BUT DUNGEONS ARE GREAT
Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
Broadly speaking, fulfilling dungeon crawling is basically almost everything that I want from videogames. It is almost everything I want from tabletop roleplaying, also.

What I want most in life is to explore an immersive, detailed, vast shared imaginary space that feels intrinsically real, presents dangerous challenges, and reveals its secret history holistically, or to preside over others' explorations of such a space, and watch their wonder and delight. This is my ongoing obsession in life. It is an itch I will never scratch, a jones I will never lose.

Which is funny, because I can play a roguelike for hours. I guess it's because there's minimal plot in many roguelikes? I guess my preference is all or nothing?

Roguelikes may not have pre-manufactured plot (although have you played Sword of the Stars: The Pit because there's some VERY intriguing worldbuilding to discover through play there) but the best ones are INCREDIBLE engines for generating story through emergent play.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
the original xenosaga pulls the same sin as you described, nurvuss. it's part of why i'll never replay it, even though i'm glad i've played it once

>hour of cutscenes
>hour of no-cutscene tough dungeon
>repeat

whyyyy

...anyway. just remember that dungeon crawling is not boring halls with enemies that are tough purely because of their hp and atk stats. you really need some sort of a central theme to tie your location, narrative, systems and enemies together. otherwise, it's an incoherent mess.

etrian odyssey 2/4 (the best ones)? "slightly mutated woodlands over a traditional-but-fast-paced rpg"

diablo? "demons lurking in the dark over tons and tons of loot"

digital devil saga? "hinduism and buddhism in a war-torn world over solid character customization and press-turn battles"

...and then you have shit like torchlight, which was a bunch of random systems on a bunch of random locations with a mediocre UI. shite
Best 100 floor dungeon? Lufia II's one.

I like dungeons. I like dungeon crawling... as long as I'm given reason to want to continue - treasure and exploration are my loves (on the gameplay side of things) so as long as I'm not constantly getting battled and get a good supply of upgrades, cool items and shit that I can use, I'm happy.

slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
I've been super into dungeon-crawlers recently, especially roguelikes. They're good for playing in short or long bursts, which is great since I never know how much free time I'm gonna have.


With regards to story... I'm interested in this idea that it's better to not worry about a thick plot when creating a dungeon-crawler. Some of my favorites, like FTL and Binding of Isaac, have cool themes but are very light on plot. I've been wondering if it's possible to tell a story through a roguelike structure - where certain events might not always happen in order, or may never happen due to random chance? Or maybe it's better to stick to just reinforcing a theme, like Craze said.
Dungeon Crawlers have to be a bit on the easy side for me to enjoy them because they tend to be intentionally redundant. If the game becomes too difficult because of randomness, if making progress takes too long or if the only option at one point is to grind/farm, then I lose interest regardless of how good everything else is.

Redundant + Easy = Tolerable
Redundant + Hard = Unappealing

I'm definitely interested in non-redundant Crawlers.
Tartarus is probably the worst dungeon ever made. Randomly generic with only like 5 different map tiles. Incredibly boring design.

I like dungeon crawling, but more when it's like in Shining in the Darkness. Not random, but a fully thought-out huge super maze with options to shortcut a lot depending on far you progressed into the story.
I enjoy dungeon crawlers a whole lot.
And I agree P3 isn't the best when it comes to the dungeons themselves .. but it offers a lot of gameplay to make up for that. If you play on hard, that is.
P3P lacked this, unfortunately. But it was still tolerable playing on maniac with zero grinding involved.

What I detest the most is a slow dungeon crawler. Easy ones are annoying as well, but really, for all that is holy, do make the battle system smooth and skip overly long animations. It is incredible how much of a difference it makes. Etrian Odyssey Untold was so much more enjoyable, simply because you could speed up battles in your options.

Difficulty should not equal the need to grind hard


Hmm, well, there are different approaches to it. And all kinds of versions including first person, gridview ones and all that.
I prefer non-randomized dungeons with a decent progression, some loot to find and shortcuts to travel back easier later.
Party customization is fairly important. Puzzles can be added, but are not a given. There are a few atmospheric ones as well, like The Dark Spire. Really cool, old-schoolish one.
It's hard to make a good balance and viable teams.
In that respect, one of the many many things I loved about Digital Devil Saga is how you can use practically any and all skilltrees. Physical, magical, hunting, hell, even ailments could be used. plus the general awesomeness, starting with the mere fact that you are accumulating KARMA of all things as means to get stronger.


Roguelikes depend more on randomization and item-use compared to the usual dungeoncrawler.
Backwards_Cowboy
owned a Vita and WiiU. I know failure
1737
I don't mind grinding for maybe 30 minutes to an hour to gain a couple levels or skill points to overcome a boss, especially since it's usually brought about by my own choice of avoiding previous battles just to run through a hallway faster. But grinding should be an alternative (or in my case a punishment), not the main solution.

In Etrian Odyssey Untold, you could grind and just use brute force to get around several bosses, but the game gave you the perfect party build in Story Mode to use skills, guards, and ailments to create a strategy against every main boss. There were also hints provided by tavern patrons and some main NPCs on how to obtain conditional monster drops or defeat powerful enemies.

If your game has a story with it, then there should be plenty of ways to circumvent grinding. If it doesn't, then I can understand maybe requiring a little bit of grinding to bump up the play time, but it shouldn't form the core of any modern dungeon crawler.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
My fav dung crawler is Tower of Druaga. It has it all. Fast-paced battles and unique mechanisms. Battles mixed up with puzzles. Take some inspiration from it.

Max McGee
with sorrow down past the fence
9159
My favorite dungeon crawlers are all roguelikes (which are technically a kind of WRPG) and not JRPGs. Of course I have still never played the Persona series, so that's a major blindspot I'll acknowledge.
Rather than Persona, you definitely should check out SMT III or Digital Devil Saga if you are looking for a good dungeon crawler .. if nothing else. The press turn system is splendid, and Persona has it watered down quite a bit.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
I'd say Digital Devil Saga is a good example of good dungeon crawling gameplay mechanics (for the most part - I think I've aired enough of my opinions in the Videogames topic), but Nocturne will drive you nuts if you're the kind of person who hates having to replay entire 15-30 minute sections of a game. It's still very cool though - the pain is worth it IMO.

EDIT: Okay, Nocturne isn't that bad in terms of dungeons as long as you ignore the Labyrinth of Amala. The pain isn't worth it...
I like them. Especially if there is some kind of party-or-ability building aspect I can try to minmax.

Storywise, they tend to be meh, usually (Aside from Etrian Odyssey. That series just keeps getting better and better, aside from the "story-mode" remakes that ruin half the point for me).

I've actually got one I'm planning to work on, and I'm trying to keep myself very much aware of the risk of not having enough plot to keep things interesting, especially if the player needs to "retreat" to heal and redo the whole dungeon. Heck I have a semi-dungeon-crawler (or at least a dungeon-centric) game I'm making right now, and I'm trying my best in that game to have lots of little character development moments and to keep the dungeon length reasonable (and throw in lots of permanent shortcuts and ways to heal so you almost never need to leave the dungeon until it's done)
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