VTD 21

Not a great sign when my most recent post was also VTD.

At the moment, 2025 token development is in progress, and it has just made me irritable.  I could rant and rave about how players should not be in charge of what game mechanics get made.  Oh, sure, they should provide ideas.  And, it’s not like players really make the decisions for this game.  It’s just constantly exasperating that players clamor for stuff that makes the game worse.  I should expect it.  I should also expect the publisher to care about sales and not what makes their product better.  But, even so, it’s just so discouraging.

Speaking of discouraging, half my runs had discouragement, though only a quarter of them for me.

First run was team run Friday night.  It didn’t go well (mechanically, anyway).  Whenever the group struggles, some players get frustrated.  Yet, to me, if we don’t struggle on highest difficulty with no dungeon knowledge, then where is there any challenge?  Without challenge, what’s the point?

Am I missing how different folks just get utility out of different things than I do?  Well, yeah, of course.  I always see flaws in things.  Everything.  Even if something is enjoyable, it could be better only if …  Well, maybe it can’t be better.  Maybe my expectations are just too high in terms of the types of value activities are supposed to provide.

I get utility from solitaire.  Multiple types of solitaire.  But, my expectations are different.  I don’t rail against the flaws in solitaire.  I know what they are and just flop with it.

It’s just hard for someone with my personality to not be more demanding given that the potential for certain activities is so high.  Or, at least, higher than the average.  Just writing that points something out.  So, let’s say you have a career .320 hitter (MLB) where going with batting average for sake of this analogy.  If I’m a fan of the player or the player’s team, I, of course, want that .320 hitter to go 4 for 4, 3 for 4, 3 for 5, 2 for 4, or whatever.  I want the player to do better than average … every time.  But, then, the average would be higher.  This player is going to have 0 for 4s, 1 for 4s, etc.  That’s the only way to get to the .320 average.

I have a certain level of intolerance with certain things.  Maybe I’ll follow up on this in my next post as my next post will be about CCG play, as I actually had gaming that maybe someone cares hearing about.

Anyway.  What would have made that first run better is if the DM had given us an idea that the final fight was winnable.  Based on my later runs, I think we were only 50 damage away from succeeding.  As a party.  With everyone besides one player dead.  That would have been … Epic.

Instead, it was just a death spiral with no drama.

Second run was Epic Double Down.  I enjoyed this run quite a bit as I was fully cognizant of how much the dungeon screwed melee and because we were so much closer to the right challenge level (still too easy but at least we had risk).  What this run reinforced is that the real value in VTD is doing the same dungeon multiple times.  Change builds, think about party composition, try to find the right challenge level to make it feel challenging even if victory is inevitable.

What about the puzzles?

The first puzzle was absurdly easy.  It was also the same as like two other puzzles in the past.  The second puzzle was so hard that even when multiple people had done multiple runs and knew the answer, still couldn’t figure out how to get to the answer.  When I finally learned the solution (by being told it), well, that was after my third run, so let’s get back to this run.

Third puzzle was failed Friday, got it here.  What was notable was even though my thinking leads to the solution and even though someone else got the answer from my thinking on this second run, I still didn’t understand the answer.  When I figured it out, I mostly felt that the puzzle’s creator and I just don’t think the same way.  To me, the clues are written in such a way to push me away from what was basically just an inversion of my incorrect first-thought solution.

The combats weren’t all that interesting.  The brutal room was the first combat in room 2, and it’s not like learning how to make it an auto-win makes it more interesting.  To me, the whole dungeon had good ideas that just needed editing to be more than good challenges.

So, why was this fun?  Because of the metagaming.  Because the metagaming was severe.  My Will save bonus on first run was +26.  In my three other runs, it was +3, +2, +3.  Knowing what won’t happen in a dungeon is freeing, while knowing what will happen opens up doing things wouldn’t otherwise consider.

I enjoy metagaming in CCGs, too, however it’s much easier with TD where you can know precisely what to contend with.

Third run was Anti-Cabal run.  It was okay.  Why wasn’t it better?  Maybe because I did all of my metagaming already and didn’t really do anything interesting with my build on this run.  Maybe because learned the solution to the second puzzle only by having someone just explain it.  Even the explanation was hard to follow.

So, the puzzle was clever.  Too clever?  Maybe not.  I do try to be consistent, even if I’m not as much as I’d like to be.  Consistency is being okay with the idea that certain rooms in TD are going to be hard enough that you can’t just deal with them after some … token … effort.

The third puzzle changed.  It was easy for pretty much every group as it had the same answer as another puzzle from not that long ago.  I didn’t find it that elegant, but at least there was an effort to create variety.

Room 7 was anticlimactic.  We went first, took monster down in four rounds.  The dungeon’s value to me was so much on the build level and not so much on the play level.

Fourth run, I was just poltergeisting, so it didn’t really matter.  Didn’t matter that I played at all.  Party was way, way overpowered for difficulty level.  My build can be summed up with “I chip in 35 damage per round and … that’s it.”

That didn’t help with increasing enjoyment.

Right this moment, I don’t really care about my damage tracking.  Doesn’t feel like anyone cares that I do it besides me.  I share stuff in part to hear myself talk but the other part, which is fairly important, is for the listener to get something out of my sharing.

I just don’t feel listened to.  That’s not new.  I don’t feel that my VTES comments on Discord penetrate.  I don’t feel that my Shadowfist comments on Discord accomplish anything of significance.  Many of the things I share don’t relate enough to my listeners or are too nuanced(?) to be understood.  Let’s say that nuanced is the right word.  If so, that’s not just on the listener.  The speaker has a responsibility to be understood.

But, right now, I don’t care.  If I can make an effort, listener can make an effort.  Or, they aren’t listening.  Which is a choice.  I guess I control myself but certainly don’t control anyone else.

Well, that was a post.  Maybe my next post will be more positive.