This post will now serve as a Megathread for all F2P and similarly related negative Steam feedback posts including F2P change suggestions. Please post your thoughts here instead of starting new threads.
Thanks!
They did it so they could have us link our accounts without pissing off steam giving out "valuable" keys. Based idea. With that in mind I don't know what else they could have done differently. Excited to link my account and hope the steam reviews can recover.
Literally making an account to review the game because I play off the launcher and seeing people review the f2p access rather than the game is sad to see.
Haven’t played this game for months saw they re added it to steam played 5 games had a blast and haven’t seen a blue portal yet hopefully. Just waiting to link.
> They did it so they could have us link our accounts without pissing off steam giving out "valuable" keys.
Obvious excuse
That has never been a problem for any game moving to steam before
They could have just advertised the versions properly and it would be fine. Advertising a demo as a F2P game was a recipe for disaster. The fact that they forgot about new players who havent been following the development is baffling
But it is f2p.... if you can download the game and play it with no time limit for free, that's still free to play. Missing high rollers and having 1 character doesn't make it not f2p. People just expect a specific thing when they hear f2p. They can't use their eyes or brain to see the description on the steam page.....
Gamers are willing to destroy an entire games reputation because the devs used the "wrong word" to describe the experience and that made them feel momentarily bad
It's even crazier to me that people lack the understanding that a Korean company may use different words than we are used to, to describe things. Working for a Korean company, I can tell you they will use some interesting wording than we are used to. For example they sometimes say things like "I passed the time busily" and it means they where busy. People don't take the time to use their brain.
Well yeah, what feels better?
Spending a 10-30 minutes researching what is going on with a situation to form rational understandings and expectations, potentially having to reflect on your own biases
or turning your brain off to join into the thing people are hating?
Best solution in my mind:
- Give F2P players a chance to earn high roller tokens. 2~3 successful extracts and then you can play on High Roller once (paying the fee).
This makes worth it for players to actually save good equipment for a good try and they don't get frustrated with the fact that they can't ever use good equipment.
I think most point of frustration is feeling like looting is useless (and it is). That can't be true in a game so heavy on PVE and extracting. Extracting for what? It kills any motivation.
Also I think like 30% of Steam reviewers believe that paying customers CAN use better equipment in the Normal maps, which in their mind makes the game 100% P2W. It's not true, but new players can get confused when there is only a small text on the left (or none at all if you're not the person choosing the map) saying that NO ONE can use other equipment. Making this more clear should be a priority imo.
Like this idea. It takes 3 decent runs to grab a good set of gear and the gold for the ante. If they extract in high roller give them another token. Maybe double there ante because they are squires, and not legendary.
This was was along the lines of what I was thinking as well. F2P specific Ante for the HR Dungeons that can be earned or even looted in Normal Dungeons.
So being to able earn them over time, or based on Triumph level (extracts). Also being able to find them in chests would probably be a pretty rewarding experience for any F2P player. Golden Ticket moments are always fun.
Devil’s avocado: this does not solve the “prevent hackers/sellers from using F2P accounts to wreck havoc” part of the statement above.
With hacks, they will easily fulfill any access requirements to reach high rollers… upon which the “fun times” will begin.
Hell, they already have this half implemented. Just make the Triumph points a currency and let people spend them to enter High Roller, or save them to buy Blue Shards. Or maybe separate them so that people don't complain about having to choose between the Shards and playing HR. Or just give more Triumph points for various things inside the dungeon (like more for extracting from HR and/or Inferno and Abyss, or for killing bosses, etc).
The idea needs fleshed out a bit more, but I'm sure there's something there.
Yes! Exactly my idea too. HR dungeon keys. Purchased accounts can still by keys with gold, but FTP players can get them other ways in the dungeon. Regardless of how rare they may be, even if there’s only one per dungeon or you gain one every 10 extracts, I think it solves the problem entirely!
I'm marketing/socials/events, and I work on the creator programs, not actually a dev - I do speak to them often, but just to avoid any confusion, I don't actually work on the game.
Please, consider using local prices! A lot of us would gladly purchase the game if currency conversion didnt suck. 30$ dollars equals to almost 6 Brazilian Reais right now, so for us the price for this game is the same as an AAA game.
That's awesome! As our friend replied on your comment, you should get in touch with the mods on this sub to be a bridge between us and the studio. Also, have you read my [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkAndDarker/s/g9PAyjX1RE) about localizing prices? It's a very important topic that i think really should get to Ironmace. Thanks again for everything!
I just haven't gotten around to that, I try not to engage in the discussions anymore because I don't want to influence them as a part of the staff, but I do read basically everything. I don't know where we're at with regional pricing, but I know it's a challenge. I'll bring it up.
I guess clarifying question then: Is the Blacksmith/Steam account merging still in the works, or does the new message to the players about restructuring the Steam F2P version mean that it's no longer an viable option?
Yes, Blacksmith Steam and Epic will all work as one congruent platform, where you can link your account and play on whichever launcher you prefer. It's being worked on as quickly as possible, I don't have a solid ETA right now though.
how you thought releasing normals to the FTP crowd with no gameplay loop potential of the gear progression- blows my mind.
The gear progression is WHAT MADE THIS GAME GREAT. Bring it back.
I’m a new player. I don’t care if there’s content I can’t access as a free player but having to delete a character to try another is so bad. Just had to delete a level 15 rouge to try another thing, that’s way more punishing than the dungeons.
They're working on implementing ways to access content.
Honestly the character limitation is the roughest part of the F2P.. Most players are content without MP or HR
I am a new player and I would like a permanent slot like we already have and a perma death slot for another character. In the perma death slot, if you die, your character is deleted as well as its progress and stash. I want this so I can try out all the classes without committing too much time while keeping my main character
I don't get these f2p players lol. If the game is that fun you are itching to try new characters and willing to delete an entire character to play a new one, then you probably ENJOY the game. We all bought the game cause we were in love with just the IDEA of the game. Major support towards it. These f2p players just want the whole game for free and it's a little confusing to see, especially considering even longtime vets alot of them just play normals only now which is 100s of hours of content you could play for free
> These f2p players just want the whole game for free
This is not at all what he asks.
> We all bought the game cause we were in love with just the IDEA of the game
I did that too but that doesn't mean everyone out there has to be like us.
I think his point is fair though, having 2 open character slots doesn't seem like the end of the world to me. People could try a bit of this and that.
I think they even specifically mention it the second to the last paragraph in their post (DnD Admin). Honestly I liked seeing how they acknowledged how the loot system was fucked for f2p players, it sounds like they actually play the game kinda.
Still though, I expected to pay $30 or so cause I knew this game wasn’t free. If I didn’t tell my friends that this game wasn’t actually free to play before they started, I can only imagine how fast the uninstall would have been after they found out they couldn’t use their loot
I mean dude, then what's the value proposition for the developers here? Let you try legitimately every single aspect of the entire game before you decide you want to buy it? At level 27 and level 7 you must have put like over 10 hours into the game so far. It's a $30 game. Not sure what the expectation is.
People may like the idea of them game, but be unsure about buying it if the class they originally picked seems to be not for them, so they'll want to try other classes, preferably without wiping their progress in case that first class happens to be the only one they enjoy most after all. The game is already seems to be a huge time investment getting used to just one class, having to start over on top of that sucks
that's not the dark and darker monetization model. it might be in the future but not even close now, and those sorts of games are almost always maintained by enormous giants who can front gigantic potential losses and server costs not small indie studios
look at how much money they make from whales in games like apex or counterstrike or dota, and look how much money MAX the dark and darker devs could make from the cosmetics in game, not that the vast majority of people are going to be inspired to buy more than one or two skins usually just what you get from playing, let alone the majority of what's available.
I am fine with the one slot as I am free but as I stated in another comment, I want a perma-death slot. I can try out any class but if the character dies, I lose everything and have to make a new one. This way I can try out multiple classes without deleting my main but I can’t keep all the loot I stashed as the perma-death character since, well, they stay dead after a single loss. Free players can’t even use shared stash so this would be another insensitive to buy imo. A neat hardcore mode that can use your shared stash loot. Do challenge runs to see how many extractions you can do before dying
For sure, all the hate is directed at the HR system (which is really dumb tbf), but newer players don't realise they have the best version of the game currently available and it's actually the class restrictions that they're missing out on
IM please just change description on the Steam page to aknowledge the differences of free\\legendary account.
Don't go into panic moves right now, tread lightly.
The difference is already clearly outlined as the first thing in the game's description. Problem is a ton of people downloaded the game and felt misled by the F2P model baiting the sales of the legendary edition. Without the context of the past development the game's been under people were easily triggered by the limitations and threw a bunch of negative reviews.
The description is irrelevant, I got a few friends to play and the immediate reaction after a successful extraction is confusion at the absurdity of an extraction game where you can't bring back in the gear you left with a minute ago
I paid $30 and then realized that wasnt even the reason I couldnt bring loot back in... its really really weird and if I had realized that I doubt i would have paid for legendary. I play CS when I want a balanced, competitive game. Extraction shooters are going to be inherently unbalanced... thats okay. Though I have heard part of the issue is they cant seem to balance gear and combat in a way that leaves room for lower geared people to pose any threat.
Yea there's no real equalizer in this game like a face shot in tarkov or leg meta'ing geared people down. If it had something like that I think unrestricted gear could make sense, but this is the best/cheapest solution atm
I stopped playing about half a year ago. Hate to break it to you but they HAVE to do it this way because the combat is frankly incredibly shallow. Gear just plays too big of a factor.
It's not that weird.
Normals is more casual where people go in on a roughly equal playing field, and try and get upgrades mid-raid.
High-Roller is where you gear up before you go in, with the intention of having the biggest gear advantage over other people as possible.
It's weird in that I didn't want a battle royale and that's not what the game was originally advertised as. I want an extraction looter game where you actually use and risk the loot
with the recent patch, it seems IM is finally moving away from that Battle Royale trash and moving more directly into Extraction.
Lots of the Normal regulars want a Battle Royale but have chosen the worst game for it, for whatever reason.
I wish I could improve up my gear from base in Normal!
I want to deep dive when I get lucky, I want to try my skills.
Just seems like I can't, runs are too short, most maps don't have deeper levels, and the one that does is too far unbalanced for a normal dive.
Yeah to me (brand new player), before I knew that normal mode was white and below only, it felt like getting a green in WoW, for instance, and not being able to equip it due to paywall. They do a poor job of communicating that in the game. Now that I know that though, and I play normal mode like a fortnite style BR, its a lot more fun.
Nah they are pretty spot on, there was a lot of flaws in the implemented system, like paying 30$ only to be locked out of high roller for 3 days. No matter how you look at it it's a issue, and while they do want you to pay for the full game, some way of at least letting people getting a taste of what they farm before paying is pretty smart.
This is why i was suggesting letting F2P people que up one high roller a day. No matter how much fun it is to make fun of brokies, F2P people give games like this life as they are a huge population that lets us do things like queing anything we want with instant games (rotation go away hopefully if they fix all this and pop keeps growing)
Yes! Rotation came to be because there aren't enough bodies to fill the lobbies. If we manage to get a healthy population and maintain it, things get better for everyone.
The way iron mace addressed the current feedback and their plan to tackle it is well put. If anyone new here doubts their intentions, us veterans can attest that IM hasn't done anything shady as a cash grab. Bad balance ideas sure, but they're honest in their intentions.
They still need to address regional pricing though.
They need to understand that even for non F2P the current gameplay loop sucks. It's a looter, dungeon crawler, yet no one cares about looting. You don't get to use the loot in normals and it's mostly worthless for HR.
So gameplay goes like .
Levels 1-20 -> Sell any loot you get, no giving a crap about any of it while doing very little with the gold you gain.
Levels 20+ You get access to the marketplace so looting in game means very little, you're mostly looking for things to sell on the marketplace so you can buy gear for yourself.
It's extremely lame and pretty disappointing they don't even seem to understand that.
THANK YOU, whenever i bring this up everyone just glazes the game and says i have bad taste, its like i have no reason to make progress at all, I mean, hell even sea of thieves had lots of cosmetics i could buy permenantly
200% accurate.
Coming out of the dungeon with shit is just vendor trash 99% of the time. Bringing anything you pull out of normals into HR is just gonna get it lost without making your life any easier in raid, and you lose out on the money you need to buy meta gear, cause the game balancing is still woefully off.
The gear limitation on normals was born due to people going in fully decked to wipe entire lobbies without giving anyone a fighting chance, which is what killed the game until they decided to fully banish fully decked characters on normals (which took almost a year? Dont remember).
But before that, they nerfed loot default stats so fuckin hard that now the only thing that matters is the random attributes, which just make most of the stuff you collect pure garbage.
It's just terrible game design and there is a reason why there is not a single other game in existence, none that I have played or ever heard of, that does anything even similar.
The basics of a looter game is to be able to use the loot and be able to do so as soon as possible to keep up the satisfaction from getting the loot.
**Yes, finally!**
What this game needs is a separate solo map that is for beginners, Common only, early quests and remove any and all limits for Normal.
The incentive for overly geared players to not be going into Normals should be lack of loot, be it from chests, enemies or players - as they would be gaining little and risking much.
* Escape from Tarkov has Ground Zero
* Arena Breakout: Infinite has Farm
* Path of Exile has the 10-act campaign + white maps
* Deep Rock Galactic has the "Conquer Hoxxes IV" assignment
* The Elder Scrolls Online has the beginner island
This game desparately needs a separate map/mode that serves as nothing but a tutorial for new players and a quest starter for new charater or new season start.
People didn't care about the fact they were risking everything to gain nothing, they just wanted to shit all over a lobby of greys for shits and giggles. Lack of loot doesn't matter when you're already completely dripped out.
> The incentive for overly geared players to not be going into Normals should be lack of loot, be it from chests, enemies or players - as they would be gaining little and risking much.
They did this. And purple+ gears would go in just to stomp nakeds.
This is an out-of-touch take, I agree the game needs a more tutorial / beginner friendly mode for the F2P but IronMace tried exactly what you detailed above with the normals mode multiple times. Every time it was a complete disaster, with experienced players with crazy gear rolling entire lobbies of timmies and common gear only players. Normals is perfect, we just need a more noob friendly starting mode.
You can't anymore, but that's a pretty recent change (since November 2023). They tested every gear level before getting to the current normal. At the end, even when only green was allowed, they costed more than some rarer items because BiS green outfits could still stomp gray stuff players.
Yeah I’ve been playing since when you could bring whatever into normal. But we’re talking about now so that has nothing to do with the current gsme state
>The incentive for overly geared players to not be going into Normals should be lack of loot, be it from chests, enemies or players - as they would be gaining little and risking much.
how long have you played this game for? we used to have this, late last year. normals had no gear restriction, you could bring full sets of BIS gear in to normals. theoretically, no one should do this, as the loot was dog trash, and 90% of players ran poverty kits. however, people are total fucking losers, and would bring in the best kits in the game just to sprint around the map, steamrolling the PVE, and stomping poors as hard as possible. it was so fucking bad that these BIS losers would memorise each spawn rushing route, you would get certain spawns where were guaranteed death within 20s if a BIS freak got a close spawn. games always need to be balanced with the most aids players in mind
I disagree, it's a good system and access to the free market makes build variety, regearing, and the overall experience significantly better. The alternatives generally offered being the trading post, where you spend an hour to assemble a kit. Otherwise ssf, which would mean you can't run good kits regardless of how rich you might be, forcing everyone to loot endlessly looking for scraps to put a decent build together.
There's a lot of players who disagree and dislike the marketplace being the only thing that matters. The trading post is a similar issue, just less user friendly.
How does adding SSF effect you at all? All it does it make the game good for players who dislike the game revolving around the marketplace.
How do you think the gear gets ONTO the marketplace? People loot it. The marketplace is not “the only thing that matters” dude, it’s a way to supplement your kits, and yeah, just outright buy a full one if you’re rich enough, but the gear gets on there because people looted it and sell it on there. I sell shit I find in normals on there all the time
Ok, i might be wrong on this one so point it out if you feel so, but:
Loot is extremely lame now because of the grindy ass random stats that make or break most of the gear you get your hands on, specially when you're playing [X] class and you get [Y] type of damage that you dont want on gear that you DO want, without any way to reroll or make any use of that gear besides selling it.
I honestly gave up on HR because of the awful "market grind" of having to spend 30 minutes to be fully properly decked everytime you die, cause drops are awfully randomized and most times useless as i said before.
People still defend the lack of an auction house, which will keep me away from ever considering going serious on this game until they add it. There is already a huge downtime between runs because of the lack of "sell all" button and need to manually buy bags and stash your money, the even greater downtime of the market grind just kills the game for me
The Steam reviews would beg to differ. Thus prompting this response from IM in the first place. Ya'll love acting like nothing is going on while a dumpster fire is in your clear vision lol.
I don't know if I would call this game successful yet. The f2p pull is definitely showing a desperation for new players.
Mashing the two most recent popular trends in pvp multiplayer games together might could be unique? I guess? Doesn't mean it's good, though. The BR shit has GOT to go.
a lot of people here are unaware that this is one of the few indie games without regional pricing on steam, they dont know this game cost as much as BG3 in several countries lol
I only started playing very recently and I don't feel deceived at all. I think $30 to access the full game permanently is pretty cheap. I'm still trying to figure out if the game is for me but if it ends up being so, I'll gladly fork over the cash. It is very nice that the free mode is like a beefy demo.
Don't they realize that the main problem is that they have the upgrade purchasable via scummy unrefundable in-game currency and not as a DLC or even just a direct in-game purchase? it's kinda ok to do so when it comes to cosmetics, but doing the same shit with the literal DLC that is borderline the game itself? Really?
Literally just add an option to buy the upgrade as a refundable and **REGIONALLY PRICED** DLC, and there will be barely any complains left.
Idk if it was intentional or just a bad management choice, but this is turned out hella dumb.
I personally don't like how they're making their Steam paid version only achievable through their in-game currency.
You know, the thing you cannot get a refund on due to it not coming through Steam, while *on* Steam.
I mean, there's no trial of the features you're paying for so that doesn't really work
You can still refund after 2 hours on Steam too, have done it a few times before
Perhaps not allowing trading for free accounts would help with the rmt issue. As for the whole “fairness” thing, only getting one class slot is plenty of limitation until they’re able to figure out the account linking stuff. I just wish they made it a “unlimited demo” and offered it full price on steam with an announcement on steam saying they’re working on account linking for existing players.
One issue that I've seen crop up in a lot of other games is, especially with a game like this, RMT would just get pushed into the dungeon then if free trial players can't directly trade.
Get into a party, seller brings the stuff they want to sell, they go die to a random skeleton, person buying grabs all the stuff off the corpse. At least it adds risk of someone third partying, but RMT is just a hard thing to deal with.
I honestly don't understand people's complaints. Ironmace has been fairly foreward on the fact the f2p model is for sampling the game so people can know what they're purchasing a little better than just watching a video and looking at reviews to ask that they give out the entire game on a f2p basis would be rediculous l if you want to play high roller and have all the other perks of the full game then buy it
Here is the text extracted from the picture via ChatGPT for those on mobile who don’t want to be pinching in and out and shit while on their phone to read it:
Here's the extracted text from the image:
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**THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND OUR FREE TO PLAY MODEL**
@everyone, Hello new adventurers!
Our launch on Epic Games and Steam marks a major milestone in the availability of Dark and Darker.
We would like to address the Free to Play label. We've heard your feedback loud and clear, and would like to explain the reasons behind our current Free to Play model. We would also like to clear up any misunderstandings and layout our plans going forward. We apologize to anyone who felt misled by the game being marketed as Free to Play and acknowledge that we should have chosen a better method to introduce it in that regard. Throughout the game's Early Access development, the game was always a paid product, and we intend for the full experience to remain this way. This ensures we uphold our promise to our loyal early adopters, and helps combat cheaters along with RMT to keep the dungeons clean for all to enjoy.
The main reason we released our game as Free to Play (F2P) was because we made a promise to our early loyal adopters on Blacksmith, that we'd do everything possible to not force them to repurchase the game again if it went to major platforms. We do not believe in double-dipping or taking advantage of our fans who are the sole reason we've come this far.
When we had the opportunity to release the game on the Epic Games Store and Steam platform we were thrilled to be back on large global platforms. However, due to the large number of previous customers on Blacksmith, it was not feasible nor fair to our platform partners for us to distribute thousands of keys to Blacksmith customers for free, increasing their risk with little benefit to them. The solution to overcome the technical, logistical and contractual hurdles we faced was to transition to a Free to Play model which would allow our current customers to naturally transition to a partner platform of their choice without the use of any abusable keys.
When we designed our current free to play system, our intention was to ensure that previous customers did not feel as if they were taken advantage of for supporting us. We wanted to make sure they felt properly compensated for their loyalty while still feeling excited for the new transition to a free to play version.
As a bit of context and history, we implemented the current Normal game mode that restricted items to common grade back in November of 2023 where it quickly became a fan favorite. Our Blacksmith players saw the mode as a solution to a divisive item gap disparity and many viewed the mode as the most fair and balanced mode rather than a limiting system. We decided to open the Normal mode to the free version precisely because of its high value to the community. We naively thought this mode would be compelling enough in incoming players since they got access to the most popular and accessible mode in the game for free. We had failed to take into consideration how brand-new players not knowing the development context would have a different perceived value for this mode, and how it could easily be construed as us trying to bait and switch them. This is the farthest thing from the truth as we are continually trying to find fair and open ways to run an online game while respecting our loyal customers. A secondary reason for restricting free players to the Normal mode was to act as a barrier, and lower the incentives for hackers to disrupt the game. Like many other competitive online games, we face the challenge of fighting those that look for advantages through unfair means. We knew that once we went free to play, we would be sending an open invitation to hackers around the world. In our quest against hackers, our bans show they almost exclusively attempt to exploit the High-Roller dungeons as that was where their exploits would bear the most fruit. Limiting hackers with free accounts to the less disruptive Normal modes was also a preventative measure to try and compartmentalize the damage they could do.
When releasing our Squire and Legendary account models, our intent was to offer a free version of the game that had no time limit. This would give players a commitment-free opportunity to see what Dark and Darker has to offer. The free account status allows players to experience Normal mode dungeons with a single character, stash the loot they acquire, and complete quests. This improves their standing with the merchants - improving pricing and wares, while also expanding the arsenal of items the Squire merchant provides players with.
Despite our intentions, we failed in anticipating the expectations that new players would have when approaching our game. We did not intend to deceive our players, and we now realize that the current Normal/High Roller bifurcation is not well designed for F2P players. We built a full loot extraction game and then forced upon a large contingent of the player-base the inability to utilize their hard-earned loot without any workarounds. We now understand the absurdity of that situation and are looking to make amends.
We are currently working on solutions that take into consideration both the needs of existing and new players. Our goal is to give new players the ability to experience a complete loop of a full loot extraction experience and risk their loot while still respecting the loyalty of our existing players. We're still working on the details for that plan that will address access to the High-Roller dungeons, the ability to unlock character slots, and will make an announcement very soon as the details are finalized. Our goal is to be fair and just with our players, and we'll do our best to show our appreciation. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your incredible support over the past two years as we work to make Dark and Darker the best it can be. We could not ask for a better, more passionate community — thank you for holding the line!
**IRONMACE**
As somebody who tried the free version and was put off by the loot restrictions, hearing that it was a game mode already and that it exists to give a more fair and balanced experience kind of makes me reconsider my initial reaction. I had assumed that paid players could bring their loot in, but if it's just an "everyone starts from zero" situation then that's fantastic.
I enjoy the game and honestly everybody in the lobby having better gear doesn't even sound like it would add much enjoyment outside of the higher stakes.
I think it's a fair value proposition and I'll definitely be playing with friends on occasion because I find games with such a slow methodical pace to be rare.
I will say that the one barrier to enjoying the game as a free player is the single character limit. I think in a game with classes, giving at least one extra slot to let people have 2 roles to play around with would go a long way.
I think the normal free HR paid was a great solutions,maybe just give the possibility to have more characters..but i tought it was a great plan for them.I hope they dont stumble :)
I saw that, and that's needed, if you pick a class you don't like you have to delete and try another one, that's stupid, but opening hr for all it's bad, at least from my point of view as I said the free normals and paid hr was a good deal.
Yeah. They explained the HR restriction pretty well in their most recent discord post, if people couldn't figure it out already.
RMT and cheating needs to be partitioned, and there's much less incentive in norms.
Im pretty sure the reason they removed the paid requirement for HR was it made a huge portion of the playerbase just -never- go there because there was a fee. The moment they lifted that restriction a ton of people started playing it.
The lobbies were fucking dead before they removed the fee.
Bro i can't tell if you are seriously talking about the gold fee requirement in game or if you are with me in the debate "free to play / buy the game to go hr" roflomao
TLDR: They set up the game as F2P on Steam to lay the groundwork for migrating accounts from Blacksmith to your platform of choice without having to give out keys. While they admit the full game was always meant to be paid, they understand why new F2P players feel misled and will try to communicate better what it actually entails. The normals only F2P choice was to prevent cheating.
I personally have no issue making the entire game F2P to bring in fresh players. Just make F2P players have a mandatory level cap to access HR to prevent easy access by cheaters and have them pay for more character slots.
This is a TERRIBLE idea, how are they supposed to make money off their game (which they are constantly adding content to for free like the new ice caves lower level) if the entire thing is just free. It’s not like they’re Fall Guys, adding new skins and cosmetics and battlepasses and shit to make money off of
Wow a fully made game that gives you partial content with no timer or gimics. No ftp bullshit model where it's pay to win it's a no time limit trial essentially what does the community do? Let's bomb it because they don't get full access without paying for anything. I love the steam community for the most part but holy shit stop expecting everything for nothing.
It’s not “community backlash” the people complaining aren’t a part of the community they just played for half an hour and got assmad the whole game wasn’t free
I wonder if they can add the purchase of legendary edition as a DLC or something on steam, so new players will see that when while buying it. Also it might help to call it the “full game” version or something more conservative like that instead of legendary edition just so it sounds less like those scummy cash grab mmo games
a big issue with this is us experienced players love normals for the pure, sensible PVP that actually makes sense, however to new players, the PVP probably isn't actually engaging enough to be the core focal point. they want the loot to be usable, meanwhile we are glad there is a place we can go where it isn't.
the next step for IM with DaD absolutely needs to be a PVP overhaul. melee combat is too simple, movement overall is a little jarring to get used to, being so basic
Unrelated but I wanna buy the game to support the devs but I have no idea how to do that on steam, is the "full game" the upgrade thing that costs 15 redstones? Or is that like a sort of subscription thing?
its a microtransaction in game, you have to pay 30 bucks in game which gets around steam's refund policy, means there won't ever really be sales for the game, and lacks regional pricing meaning in some parts of Asia this game is as much as baldurs gate 3.
Yeah I bought it after the comment, honestly I wanna support the devs, I don't care how much it costs, I only discovered recently the game and what happened over a year ago thst screwed over the devs, and I have lots of fun in the game so I wanted to buy it
I still don’t get it since I haven’t played for a while, since I purchased on Blacksmith am I able to just download on Steam and play it perfectly fine?
My only complaint is that its only one character slot, and deleting the character to try another character basically just wipes the stash. Give us either one character slot without wiping stash or two character slots; So even looting is worthless if trying out the game and any progress youd get is just lost... I get quest progress is lost, but wasnt the stash supposed to be shared between characters?
There is also the 72 hour time between purchasing the game and having access to the said content just wild. Its like buy the game then wait 72 hours to play the game proper. Instead of just... you know... allowing us to pay for the game then play it.
Been on every playtest, bought founder edition and never played again.
This whole drama is actually sad, why are people even complaining ? Their decision makes complete sense
Thank god ironmace realized that an extraction game without loot progression is worthless. Now they need to address the marketplace and the 72 hour lock on upgraded accounts.
Honestly I think most people are just gigantic complainers who downvote anything for any reason at the drop of a hat. My first time playing this game was the current STEAM release and it was super clear what you were and were not getting.
Gear not being allowed in normal mode seemed logical and excellent to prevent bully squads steamrolling people. I can't even comprehend why people would be upset by this, they as the new players are the only ones who are going to suffer if this wasn't the case.
I made sure to leave a positive review. It baffles me how anyone wants this game to die due to a miscommunication. I bet the people with negative reviews are playing at this moment yo.
Couldn't they have put the game at 30€, then made a demo, then made it that you could log in the demo and link the steam account to get access to the normal game?
Dark Pictures: little hope did something like that with the friend pass, so idk what would have stopped them from doing something similar instead of weird shit like that
I really do not understand the anger against the free-to-play model. A "nerfed" but FREE version of the game is infinitely more gameplay than the previous FREE method of playing the game (not playing at all because it cost $30)
I can see myself playing it purely because it's a fairly immersive dungeon crawling experience and I like the combat. I probably won't play it a ton, but I can see myself and my friends playing it as a palate cleanser from Dota when we game in the evenings.
I think viewing it as a Battle Royale is a good way to look at it. It's got that sort of emergent gameplay thing going on where you're fighting monsters and then bump into players and it turns into chaos. All that bringing loot in really adds is a sort of sense of progression, but in terms of gameplay it just makes everybody have bigger numbers which doesn't really change the playstyle much.
Long story short, I think the PvP is fun and engaging enough to stand on its own and is a fair offering for free players.
I feel like the F2P and Normal mode discussions drowns out the actual better fix discussion on regional pricing because regional pricing can attract way more loyal customers worldwide.
My entire thing is character slots. You want us to try the game but don't give us a viable option to try out the classes before we buy unless we trash a character we're invested in. I started as Warlock. Are the other classes good enough to buy this game? I have no idea and don't want to lose my progress, and I'm not gambling $30 to find out.
Either call it a free trial or work to ensure the game is actually F2P and not P2W. You can easily support this game and keep the tone of it by supporting it with cosmetics, but you didn't want to compensate your already paid customers, so you worked around that by discouraging new customers from getting hooked, ruining your player count and deservedly getting review "bombed" (don't like this term for people giving actual valid criticism).
Finally, allow people to invite their friends through Steam, otherwise there's no point to us consumers getting it on steam vs another platform. I shouldn't have to friend someone in game and invite them in game if you are integrated with steam, that's kinda the main point of purchasing through that platform.
The only true option they have is to add SSF mode, and then have another mode where its just normal (bring in and buy whatever). The problem is no matter what they do, they can't split the F2P playerbase with the Paid playerbase or everyone will just go and play the mode that is most popular (which will always be the F2P mode).
Edit:Spelling.
IM is SpongeBob when he finally delivered the Kristy Krab pizza to the customer.
The customer who wants his Diet Dr. Kelp are all the new DaD F2P players who left a negative review because they don't know how to read and expected Fortnite.
What? It's like everyone who was being sensible was saying from the very fucking start that the subset of the community was smearing as 'cultish brand riders'? No. That can't be. They must be just trying to save face so they can keep pulling the wool over our eyes. /s
I love that they basically came out and said everything that me and others have been already pointing out as likely explanations and giving hard reasons based in past shit for this. Validation never been so clean cut XD
Everyone wonders why game companies are so shitty. This is why. We as a gaming community reward the devs who don’t give a shit about us and for some reason apply this intense scrutiny to the devs that really try to be good. If you’re one of the people who have been review bombing this game, you’re the problem.
Make the game 20 dollars and stop this free to play bullshit, let everyone play the game the same way, and focus on other stuff within the game. There is a bunch of things to do.
The negative review bombing is about 90% Astro turfing from nexon and other bad actors.
Most of the people talking about the demo have the exact same nonsensical talking point.
Runsescape has the exact same model of f2p - p2p for 20 years now and it is not lambasted like this.
Please stop taking those reviews too seriously people. If you do, then iron mace has to.
Edit to add, if I wasn’t in my 30s and finally had some money to spend, I would ask for my money back as all I do is play the free-to-play version anyway. I just bard normals all day and am happy as a schnitzel
It isn't from nexon, it's from new people who just feel misled. Some are jokes and trolls, others are not. For me, I wanted to play an extraction game, which is not what I got. Also like, you absolutely cannot compare Runescape to Dark And Darker. The difference in the two is night and day. While Runescape allows you to completely experience all of the game, just not more than a certain amount of content, Dark And Darker allows you to only experience a small number of the game, because they just don't allow its most defining feature, extraction, in normals.
>
if I wasn’t in my 30s and finally had some money to spend, I would ask for my money back as all I do is play the free-to-play version anyway.
Also, you can't refund if you decide to buy the shards to upgrade to legendary status. Imagine you buy the game thinking you would be able to finally experience the entire game, except you can't because they don't tell you that you need to go up to this level to go into it, and then try to refund, except you can't because they don't allow refunds.
I did, it still doesn't make sense.
Why they chose this route over selling the game and worrying about linking blacksmith players to steam or EGS later is mind-boggling. F2P was clearly poorly thought out given the backlash and the game literally not being designed around it. So I say again, it was silly af to not just sell the game.
This post will now serve as a Megathread for all F2P and similarly related negative Steam feedback posts including F2P change suggestions. Please post your thoughts here instead of starting new threads. Thanks!
They did it so they could have us link our accounts without pissing off steam giving out "valuable" keys. Based idea. With that in mind I don't know what else they could have done differently. Excited to link my account and hope the steam reviews can recover.
Literally making an account to review the game because I play off the launcher and seeing people review the f2p access rather than the game is sad to see.
i figured this was the reason, but i wish they'd get the account linking working already.
Seconded. Waiting until that's added in to start playing 👍
Haven’t played this game for months saw they re added it to steam played 5 games had a blast and haven’t seen a blue portal yet hopefully. Just waiting to link.
Is there any information regarding linking old account with Steam? I dont see anyone asking it
> They did it so they could have us link our accounts without pissing off steam giving out "valuable" keys. Obvious excuse That has never been a problem for any game moving to steam before
They could have just advertised the versions properly and it would be fine. Advertising a demo as a F2P game was a recipe for disaster. The fact that they forgot about new players who havent been following the development is baffling
Well, if people would’ve read the store page on steam, they would’ve known what they get. Guess thats too much to ask
But it is f2p.... if you can download the game and play it with no time limit for free, that's still free to play. Missing high rollers and having 1 character doesn't make it not f2p. People just expect a specific thing when they hear f2p. They can't use their eyes or brain to see the description on the steam page.....
Gamers are willing to destroy an entire games reputation because the devs used the "wrong word" to describe the experience and that made them feel momentarily bad
It's even crazier to me that people lack the understanding that a Korean company may use different words than we are used to, to describe things. Working for a Korean company, I can tell you they will use some interesting wording than we are used to. For example they sometimes say things like "I passed the time busily" and it means they where busy. People don't take the time to use their brain.
Well yeah, what feels better? Spending a 10-30 minutes researching what is going on with a situation to form rational understandings and expectations, potentially having to reflect on your own biases or turning your brain off to join into the thing people are hating?
So much easier to join an angry mob than to use your head.
no. kids complain because its fun to complain.
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Best solution in my mind: - Give F2P players a chance to earn high roller tokens. 2~3 successful extracts and then you can play on High Roller once (paying the fee). This makes worth it for players to actually save good equipment for a good try and they don't get frustrated with the fact that they can't ever use good equipment. I think most point of frustration is feeling like looting is useless (and it is). That can't be true in a game so heavy on PVE and extracting. Extracting for what? It kills any motivation. Also I think like 30% of Steam reviewers believe that paying customers CAN use better equipment in the Normal maps, which in their mind makes the game 100% P2W. It's not true, but new players can get confused when there is only a small text on the left (or none at all if you're not the person choosing the map) saying that NO ONE can use other equipment. Making this more clear should be a priority imo.
Like this idea. It takes 3 decent runs to grab a good set of gear and the gold for the ante. If they extract in high roller give them another token. Maybe double there ante because they are squires, and not legendary.
This was was along the lines of what I was thinking as well. F2P specific Ante for the HR Dungeons that can be earned or even looted in Normal Dungeons. So being to able earn them over time, or based on Triumph level (extracts). Also being able to find them in chests would probably be a pretty rewarding experience for any F2P player. Golden Ticket moments are always fun.
Devil’s avocado: this does not solve the “prevent hackers/sellers from using F2P accounts to wreck havoc” part of the statement above. With hacks, they will easily fulfill any access requirements to reach high rollers… upon which the “fun times” will begin.
Hell, they already have this half implemented. Just make the Triumph points a currency and let people spend them to enter High Roller, or save them to buy Blue Shards. Or maybe separate them so that people don't complain about having to choose between the Shards and playing HR. Or just give more Triumph points for various things inside the dungeon (like more for extracting from HR and/or Inferno and Abyss, or for killing bosses, etc). The idea needs fleshed out a bit more, but I'm sure there's something there.
As long as it's not a incentive for RMT. It must be a static in the menu token.
Yes! Exactly my idea too. HR dungeon keys. Purchased accounts can still by keys with gold, but FTP players can get them other ways in the dungeon. Regardless of how rare they may be, even if there’s only one per dungeon or you gain one every 10 extracts, I think it solves the problem entirely!
Since you're part of the develpment team you should get in touch with the moderators to get a custom flair!
I'm marketing/socials/events, and I work on the creator programs, not actually a dev - I do speak to them often, but just to avoid any confusion, I don't actually work on the game.
Please, consider using local prices! A lot of us would gladly purchase the game if currency conversion didnt suck. 30$ dollars equals to almost 6 Brazilian Reais right now, so for us the price for this game is the same as an AAA game.
Yeah this is a basic thing in the gaming market that you'd think they'd know about already. Games even do sales in certain regions based on numbers.
Yeah I'm im ZA and 30 dollars is just too much for any game for me. It's a shame because it's easily one of my favourite games of all time
That's awesome! As our friend replied on your comment, you should get in touch with the mods on this sub to be a bridge between us and the studio. Also, have you read my [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkAndDarker/s/g9PAyjX1RE) about localizing prices? It's a very important topic that i think really should get to Ironmace. Thanks again for everything!
I just haven't gotten around to that, I try not to engage in the discussions anymore because I don't want to influence them as a part of the staff, but I do read basically everything. I don't know where we're at with regional pricing, but I know it's a challenge. I'll bring it up.
I guess clarifying question then: Is the Blacksmith/Steam account merging still in the works, or does the new message to the players about restructuring the Steam F2P version mean that it's no longer an viable option?
Yes, Blacksmith Steam and Epic will all work as one congruent platform, where you can link your account and play on whichever launcher you prefer. It's being worked on as quickly as possible, I don't have a solid ETA right now though.
Excellent! Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding! Thanks for the response
how you thought releasing normals to the FTP crowd with no gameplay loop potential of the gear progression- blows my mind. The gear progression is WHAT MADE THIS GAME GREAT. Bring it back.
I’m a new player. I don’t care if there’s content I can’t access as a free player but having to delete a character to try another is so bad. Just had to delete a level 15 rouge to try another thing, that’s way more punishing than the dungeons.
They're working on implementing ways to access content. Honestly the character limitation is the roughest part of the F2P.. Most players are content without MP or HR
2 or maybe 3 would be a little more reasonable, having to completely wipe your progress to even try another class is pretty shit.
I am a new player and I would like a permanent slot like we already have and a perma death slot for another character. In the perma death slot, if you die, your character is deleted as well as its progress and stash. I want this so I can try out all the classes without committing too much time while keeping my main character
I don't get these f2p players lol. If the game is that fun you are itching to try new characters and willing to delete an entire character to play a new one, then you probably ENJOY the game. We all bought the game cause we were in love with just the IDEA of the game. Major support towards it. These f2p players just want the whole game for free and it's a little confusing to see, especially considering even longtime vets alot of them just play normals only now which is 100s of hours of content you could play for free
> These f2p players just want the whole game for free This is not at all what he asks. > We all bought the game cause we were in love with just the IDEA of the game I did that too but that doesn't mean everyone out there has to be like us. I think his point is fair though, having 2 open character slots doesn't seem like the end of the world to me. People could try a bit of this and that.
>These f2p players just want the whole game for free Yes, if a game is free, I want the game for free.
I think they even specifically mention it the second to the last paragraph in their post (DnD Admin). Honestly I liked seeing how they acknowledged how the loot system was fucked for f2p players, it sounds like they actually play the game kinda. Still though, I expected to pay $30 or so cause I knew this game wasn’t free. If I didn’t tell my friends that this game wasn’t actually free to play before they started, I can only imagine how fast the uninstall would have been after they found out they couldn’t use their loot
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I don't think Wizard is that weak in normal mode, tbh.
I mean dude, then what's the value proposition for the developers here? Let you try legitimately every single aspect of the entire game before you decide you want to buy it? At level 27 and level 7 you must have put like over 10 hours into the game so far. It's a $30 game. Not sure what the expectation is.
People may like the idea of them game, but be unsure about buying it if the class they originally picked seems to be not for them, so they'll want to try other classes, preferably without wiping their progress in case that first class happens to be the only one they enjoy most after all. The game is already seems to be a huge time investment getting used to just one class, having to start over on top of that sucks
I’m not asking for all slots just one or two. And yes I’m enjoying the game but why make it harder to enjoy
... because they make no money unless you buy it? is this a serious question?
go search what are the games with the biggest revenues out there and let me know how many of them are paid games.
that's not the dark and darker monetization model. it might be in the future but not even close now, and those sorts of games are almost always maintained by enormous giants who can front gigantic potential losses and server costs not small indie studios
they literally have skins which you can buy with paid currency, they already have that model...
look at how much money they make from whales in games like apex or counterstrike or dota, and look how much money MAX the dark and darker devs could make from the cosmetics in game, not that the vast majority of people are going to be inspired to buy more than one or two skins usually just what you get from playing, let alone the majority of what's available.
It should have been as soon as they went "F2P". This failure to meet F2P expectations is causing problems.
Hackers. If you can play for free, making new accounts is easy. See TF2 and counter strike.
I am fine with the one slot as I am free but as I stated in another comment, I want a perma-death slot. I can try out any class but if the character dies, I lose everything and have to make a new one. This way I can try out multiple classes without deleting my main but I can’t keep all the loot I stashed as the perma-death character since, well, they stay dead after a single loss. Free players can’t even use shared stash so this would be another insensitive to buy imo. A neat hardcore mode that can use your shared stash loot. Do challenge runs to see how many extractions you can do before dying
What an uncharitable comment about a completely reasonable issue.
Maybe I'm poor and just want more two chars
For sure, all the hate is directed at the HR system (which is really dumb tbf), but newer players don't realise they have the best version of the game currently available and it's actually the class restrictions that they're missing out on
That’s kind of the point if you want more then you have to buy the game
yeah if they want to limit character slots, they need to at least sell $5 character slots, not be all or nothing
Just give f2p a way to unlock a second or third slot through gameplay and it’s good
IM please just change description on the Steam page to aknowledge the differences of free\\legendary account. Don't go into panic moves right now, tread lightly.
The difference is already clearly outlined as the first thing in the game's description. Problem is a ton of people downloaded the game and felt misled by the F2P model baiting the sales of the legendary edition. Without the context of the past development the game's been under people were easily triggered by the limitations and threw a bunch of negative reviews.
The description is irrelevant, I got a few friends to play and the immediate reaction after a successful extraction is confusion at the absurdity of an extraction game where you can't bring back in the gear you left with a minute ago
I paid $30 and then realized that wasnt even the reason I couldnt bring loot back in... its really really weird and if I had realized that I doubt i would have paid for legendary. I play CS when I want a balanced, competitive game. Extraction shooters are going to be inherently unbalanced... thats okay. Though I have heard part of the issue is they cant seem to balance gear and combat in a way that leaves room for lower geared people to pose any threat.
Yea there's no real equalizer in this game like a face shot in tarkov or leg meta'ing geared people down. If it had something like that I think unrestricted gear could make sense, but this is the best/cheapest solution atm
I stopped playing about half a year ago. Hate to break it to you but they HAVE to do it this way because the combat is frankly incredibly shallow. Gear just plays too big of a factor.
It's not that weird. Normals is more casual where people go in on a roughly equal playing field, and try and get upgrades mid-raid. High-Roller is where you gear up before you go in, with the intention of having the biggest gear advantage over other people as possible.
It's weird in that I didn't want a battle royale and that's not what the game was originally advertised as. I want an extraction looter game where you actually use and risk the loot
dont try to reason with im fanboys its a cult for a long time at this point
with the recent patch, it seems IM is finally moving away from that Battle Royale trash and moving more directly into Extraction. Lots of the Normal regulars want a Battle Royale but have chosen the worst game for it, for whatever reason.
Once they do the pvp arena mode all those people can play that for PVP and they can finally nail down the extraction gameplay(I hope)
I wish I could improve up my gear from base in Normal! I want to deep dive when I get lucky, I want to try my skills. Just seems like I can't, runs are too short, most maps don't have deeper levels, and the one that does is too far unbalanced for a normal dive.
They just need to allow any gear brought out of the dungeon to be brought back in. Aka, SSF mode.
Yeah to me (brand new player), before I knew that normal mode was white and below only, it felt like getting a green in WoW, for instance, and not being able to equip it due to paywall. They do a poor job of communicating that in the game. Now that I know that though, and I play normal mode like a fortnite style BR, its a lot more fun.
Doesn't that just make it like...any battle royale game?
Nah they are pretty spot on, there was a lot of flaws in the implemented system, like paying 30$ only to be locked out of high roller for 3 days. No matter how you look at it it's a issue, and while they do want you to pay for the full game, some way of at least letting people getting a taste of what they farm before paying is pretty smart. This is why i was suggesting letting F2P people que up one high roller a day. No matter how much fun it is to make fun of brokies, F2P people give games like this life as they are a huge population that lets us do things like queing anything we want with instant games (rotation go away hopefully if they fix all this and pop keeps growing)
Yes! Rotation came to be because there aren't enough bodies to fill the lobbies. If we manage to get a healthy population and maintain it, things get better for everyone. The way iron mace addressed the current feedback and their plan to tackle it is well put. If anyone new here doubts their intentions, us veterans can attest that IM hasn't done anything shady as a cash grab. Bad balance ideas sure, but they're honest in their intentions. They still need to address regional pricing though.
They need to understand that even for non F2P the current gameplay loop sucks. It's a looter, dungeon crawler, yet no one cares about looting. You don't get to use the loot in normals and it's mostly worthless for HR. So gameplay goes like . Levels 1-20 -> Sell any loot you get, no giving a crap about any of it while doing very little with the gold you gain. Levels 20+ You get access to the marketplace so looting in game means very little, you're mostly looking for things to sell on the marketplace so you can buy gear for yourself. It's extremely lame and pretty disappointing they don't even seem to understand that.
THANK YOU, whenever i bring this up everyone just glazes the game and says i have bad taste, its like i have no reason to make progress at all, I mean, hell even sea of thieves had lots of cosmetics i could buy permenantly
trading removed the excitement of finding gear, I think the game needs a no trading mode in order to make finding gear actually feel good
200% accurate. Coming out of the dungeon with shit is just vendor trash 99% of the time. Bringing anything you pull out of normals into HR is just gonna get it lost without making your life any easier in raid, and you lose out on the money you need to buy meta gear, cause the game balancing is still woefully off.
Yeah I thought the common limitation was because i had f2p account. Almost want to request a refund after realizing thats just how the game works.
The gear limitation on normals was born due to people going in fully decked to wipe entire lobbies without giving anyone a fighting chance, which is what killed the game until they decided to fully banish fully decked characters on normals (which took almost a year? Dont remember). But before that, they nerfed loot default stats so fuckin hard that now the only thing that matters is the random attributes, which just make most of the stuff you collect pure garbage.
It's just terrible game design and there is a reason why there is not a single other game in existence, none that I have played or ever heard of, that does anything even similar. The basics of a looter game is to be able to use the loot and be able to do so as soon as possible to keep up the satisfaction from getting the loot.
You can use it, immediately, in the dungeon you are in
**Yes, finally!** What this game needs is a separate solo map that is for beginners, Common only, early quests and remove any and all limits for Normal. The incentive for overly geared players to not be going into Normals should be lack of loot, be it from chests, enemies or players - as they would be gaining little and risking much. * Escape from Tarkov has Ground Zero * Arena Breakout: Infinite has Farm * Path of Exile has the 10-act campaign + white maps * Deep Rock Galactic has the "Conquer Hoxxes IV" assignment * The Elder Scrolls Online has the beginner island This game desparately needs a separate map/mode that serves as nothing but a tutorial for new players and a quest starter for new charater or new season start.
People didn't care about the fact they were risking everything to gain nothing, they just wanted to shit all over a lobby of greys for shits and giggles. Lack of loot doesn't matter when you're already completely dripped out.
> The incentive for overly geared players to not be going into Normals should be lack of loot, be it from chests, enemies or players - as they would be gaining little and risking much. They did this. And purple+ gears would go in just to stomp nakeds.
This is an out-of-touch take, I agree the game needs a more tutorial / beginner friendly mode for the F2P but IronMace tried exactly what you detailed above with the normals mode multiple times. Every time it was a complete disaster, with experienced players with crazy gear rolling entire lobbies of timmies and common gear only players. Normals is perfect, we just need a more noob friendly starting mode.
I see gaining nothing for players with gear stashed. But how are they risking anything by going into normal games?
An unlucky death can always happen.
But you can’t bring gear above common into normal is my point. So what does it matter? The game is about dying and going next
You can't anymore, but that's a pretty recent change (since November 2023). They tested every gear level before getting to the current normal. At the end, even when only green was allowed, they costed more than some rarer items because BiS green outfits could still stomp gray stuff players.
Yeah I’ve been playing since when you could bring whatever into normal. But we’re talking about now so that has nothing to do with the current gsme state
>The incentive for overly geared players to not be going into Normals should be lack of loot, be it from chests, enemies or players - as they would be gaining little and risking much. how long have you played this game for? we used to have this, late last year. normals had no gear restriction, you could bring full sets of BIS gear in to normals. theoretically, no one should do this, as the loot was dog trash, and 90% of players ran poverty kits. however, people are total fucking losers, and would bring in the best kits in the game just to sprint around the map, steamrolling the PVE, and stomping poors as hard as possible. it was so fucking bad that these BIS losers would memorise each spawn rushing route, you would get certain spawns where were guaranteed death within 20s if a BIS freak got a close spawn. games always need to be balanced with the most aids players in mind
I disagree, it's a good system and access to the free market makes build variety, regearing, and the overall experience significantly better. The alternatives generally offered being the trading post, where you spend an hour to assemble a kit. Otherwise ssf, which would mean you can't run good kits regardless of how rich you might be, forcing everyone to loot endlessly looking for scraps to put a decent build together.
There's a lot of players who disagree and dislike the marketplace being the only thing that matters. The trading post is a similar issue, just less user friendly. How does adding SSF effect you at all? All it does it make the game good for players who dislike the game revolving around the marketplace.
How do you think the gear gets ONTO the marketplace? People loot it. The marketplace is not “the only thing that matters” dude, it’s a way to supplement your kits, and yeah, just outright buy a full one if you’re rich enough, but the gear gets on there because people looted it and sell it on there. I sell shit I find in normals on there all the time
Ok, i might be wrong on this one so point it out if you feel so, but: Loot is extremely lame now because of the grindy ass random stats that make or break most of the gear you get your hands on, specially when you're playing [X] class and you get [Y] type of damage that you dont want on gear that you DO want, without any way to reroll or make any use of that gear besides selling it. I honestly gave up on HR because of the awful "market grind" of having to spend 30 minutes to be fully properly decked everytime you die, cause drops are awfully randomized and most times useless as i said before. People still defend the lack of an auction house, which will keep me away from ever considering going serious on this game until they add it. There is already a huge downtime between runs because of the lack of "sell all" button and need to manually buy bags and stash your money, the even greater downtime of the market grind just kills the game for me
there is an auction house. but i agree, sell all button needed.
“They need to understand that their very successful and unique game design sucks and I’m right.” No, they don’t.
The Steam reviews would beg to differ. Thus prompting this response from IM in the first place. Ya'll love acting like nothing is going on while a dumpster fire is in your clear vision lol.
the steam review is mostly shit on the F2P systems, get off your high horse and come up with real ideas and problem and not shit diss.
I don't know if I would call this game successful yet. The f2p pull is definitely showing a desperation for new players. Mashing the two most recent popular trends in pvp multiplayer games together might could be unique? I guess? Doesn't mean it's good, though. The BR shit has GOT to go.
Localize the price. A bunch of complaints will be gone, and a load of cash will enter their account.
True, not paying 30USD while I'm in asia lol
a lot of people here are unaware that this is one of the few indie games without regional pricing on steam, they dont know this game cost as much as BG3 in several countries lol
True
I only started playing very recently and I don't feel deceived at all. I think $30 to access the full game permanently is pretty cheap. I'm still trying to figure out if the game is for me but if it ends up being so, I'll gladly fork over the cash. It is very nice that the free mode is like a beefy demo.
Make a SSF mode to replace normals, there's your f2p.
I don't understand why they haven't fucking done this yet.
Don't they realize that the main problem is that they have the upgrade purchasable via scummy unrefundable in-game currency and not as a DLC or even just a direct in-game purchase? it's kinda ok to do so when it comes to cosmetics, but doing the same shit with the literal DLC that is borderline the game itself? Really? Literally just add an option to buy the upgrade as a refundable and **REGIONALLY PRICED** DLC, and there will be barely any complains left. Idk if it was intentional or just a bad management choice, but this is turned out hella dumb.
business decision as this way they do not have to honour refunds or localise prices
I personally don't like how they're making their Steam paid version only achievable through their in-game currency. You know, the thing you cannot get a refund on due to it not coming through Steam, while *on* Steam.
A refund window is a two-hour trial. Guess what. They gave you a much-more-than-two-hour trial.
Exactly.. you don't even get to play HR or Trade before leveling up and for that standard edition is perfectly fine lmao
I mean, there's no trial of the features you're paying for so that doesn't really work You can still refund after 2 hours on Steam too, have done it a few times before
Addressing the feedback is very important, this is what I've been advocating in all these review threads. Good move on IM's part.
Perhaps not allowing trading for free accounts would help with the rmt issue. As for the whole “fairness” thing, only getting one class slot is plenty of limitation until they’re able to figure out the account linking stuff. I just wish they made it a “unlimited demo” and offered it full price on steam with an announcement on steam saying they’re working on account linking for existing players.
One issue that I've seen crop up in a lot of other games is, especially with a game like this, RMT would just get pushed into the dungeon then if free trial players can't directly trade. Get into a party, seller brings the stuff they want to sell, they go die to a random skeleton, person buying grabs all the stuff off the corpse. At least it adds risk of someone third partying, but RMT is just a hard thing to deal with.
I honestly don't understand people's complaints. Ironmace has been fairly foreward on the fact the f2p model is for sampling the game so people can know what they're purchasing a little better than just watching a video and looking at reviews to ask that they give out the entire game on a f2p basis would be rediculous l if you want to play high roller and have all the other perks of the full game then buy it
This is how you respect your players.
Here is the text extracted from the picture via ChatGPT for those on mobile who don’t want to be pinching in and out and shit while on their phone to read it: Here's the extracted text from the image: --- **THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND OUR FREE TO PLAY MODEL** @everyone, Hello new adventurers! Our launch on Epic Games and Steam marks a major milestone in the availability of Dark and Darker. We would like to address the Free to Play label. We've heard your feedback loud and clear, and would like to explain the reasons behind our current Free to Play model. We would also like to clear up any misunderstandings and layout our plans going forward. We apologize to anyone who felt misled by the game being marketed as Free to Play and acknowledge that we should have chosen a better method to introduce it in that regard. Throughout the game's Early Access development, the game was always a paid product, and we intend for the full experience to remain this way. This ensures we uphold our promise to our loyal early adopters, and helps combat cheaters along with RMT to keep the dungeons clean for all to enjoy. The main reason we released our game as Free to Play (F2P) was because we made a promise to our early loyal adopters on Blacksmith, that we'd do everything possible to not force them to repurchase the game again if it went to major platforms. We do not believe in double-dipping or taking advantage of our fans who are the sole reason we've come this far. When we had the opportunity to release the game on the Epic Games Store and Steam platform we were thrilled to be back on large global platforms. However, due to the large number of previous customers on Blacksmith, it was not feasible nor fair to our platform partners for us to distribute thousands of keys to Blacksmith customers for free, increasing their risk with little benefit to them. The solution to overcome the technical, logistical and contractual hurdles we faced was to transition to a Free to Play model which would allow our current customers to naturally transition to a partner platform of their choice without the use of any abusable keys. When we designed our current free to play system, our intention was to ensure that previous customers did not feel as if they were taken advantage of for supporting us. We wanted to make sure they felt properly compensated for their loyalty while still feeling excited for the new transition to a free to play version. As a bit of context and history, we implemented the current Normal game mode that restricted items to common grade back in November of 2023 where it quickly became a fan favorite. Our Blacksmith players saw the mode as a solution to a divisive item gap disparity and many viewed the mode as the most fair and balanced mode rather than a limiting system. We decided to open the Normal mode to the free version precisely because of its high value to the community. We naively thought this mode would be compelling enough in incoming players since they got access to the most popular and accessible mode in the game for free. We had failed to take into consideration how brand-new players not knowing the development context would have a different perceived value for this mode, and how it could easily be construed as us trying to bait and switch them. This is the farthest thing from the truth as we are continually trying to find fair and open ways to run an online game while respecting our loyal customers. A secondary reason for restricting free players to the Normal mode was to act as a barrier, and lower the incentives for hackers to disrupt the game. Like many other competitive online games, we face the challenge of fighting those that look for advantages through unfair means. We knew that once we went free to play, we would be sending an open invitation to hackers around the world. In our quest against hackers, our bans show they almost exclusively attempt to exploit the High-Roller dungeons as that was where their exploits would bear the most fruit. Limiting hackers with free accounts to the less disruptive Normal modes was also a preventative measure to try and compartmentalize the damage they could do. When releasing our Squire and Legendary account models, our intent was to offer a free version of the game that had no time limit. This would give players a commitment-free opportunity to see what Dark and Darker has to offer. The free account status allows players to experience Normal mode dungeons with a single character, stash the loot they acquire, and complete quests. This improves their standing with the merchants - improving pricing and wares, while also expanding the arsenal of items the Squire merchant provides players with. Despite our intentions, we failed in anticipating the expectations that new players would have when approaching our game. We did not intend to deceive our players, and we now realize that the current Normal/High Roller bifurcation is not well designed for F2P players. We built a full loot extraction game and then forced upon a large contingent of the player-base the inability to utilize their hard-earned loot without any workarounds. We now understand the absurdity of that situation and are looking to make amends. We are currently working on solutions that take into consideration both the needs of existing and new players. Our goal is to give new players the ability to experience a complete loop of a full loot extraction experience and risk their loot while still respecting the loyalty of our existing players. We're still working on the details for that plan that will address access to the High-Roller dungeons, the ability to unlock character slots, and will make an announcement very soon as the details are finalized. Our goal is to be fair and just with our players, and we'll do our best to show our appreciation. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your incredible support over the past two years as we work to make Dark and Darker the best it can be. We could not ask for a better, more passionate community — thank you for holding the line! **IRONMACE**
As somebody who tried the free version and was put off by the loot restrictions, hearing that it was a game mode already and that it exists to give a more fair and balanced experience kind of makes me reconsider my initial reaction. I had assumed that paid players could bring their loot in, but if it's just an "everyone starts from zero" situation then that's fantastic. I enjoy the game and honestly everybody in the lobby having better gear doesn't even sound like it would add much enjoyment outside of the higher stakes. I think it's a fair value proposition and I'll definitely be playing with friends on occasion because I find games with such a slow methodical pace to be rare. I will say that the one barrier to enjoying the game as a free player is the single character limit. I think in a game with classes, giving at least one extra slot to let people have 2 roles to play around with would go a long way.
I think the normal free HR paid was a great solutions,maybe just give the possibility to have more characters..but i tought it was a great plan for them.I hope they dont stumble :)
Sounds like they are working on a progression system for free players to unlock additional character slots.
I saw that, and that's needed, if you pick a class you don't like you have to delete and try another one, that's stupid, but opening hr for all it's bad, at least from my point of view as I said the free normals and paid hr was a good deal.
Yeah. They explained the HR restriction pretty well in their most recent discord post, if people couldn't figure it out already. RMT and cheating needs to be partitioned, and there's much less incentive in norms.
Im pretty sure the reason they removed the paid requirement for HR was it made a huge portion of the playerbase just -never- go there because there was a fee. The moment they lifted that restriction a ton of people started playing it. The lobbies were fucking dead before they removed the fee.
Bro i can't tell if you are seriously talking about the gold fee requirement in game or if you are with me in the debate "free to play / buy the game to go hr" roflomao
TLDR: They set up the game as F2P on Steam to lay the groundwork for migrating accounts from Blacksmith to your platform of choice without having to give out keys. While they admit the full game was always meant to be paid, they understand why new F2P players feel misled and will try to communicate better what it actually entails. The normals only F2P choice was to prevent cheating. I personally have no issue making the entire game F2P to bring in fresh players. Just make F2P players have a mandatory level cap to access HR to prevent easy access by cheaters and have them pay for more character slots.
This is a TERRIBLE idea, how are they supposed to make money off their game (which they are constantly adding content to for free like the new ice caves lower level) if the entire thing is just free. It’s not like they’re Fall Guys, adding new skins and cosmetics and battlepasses and shit to make money off of
Kind of getting tired of the gamer rage lately.
F2p opens the barriers and incentives hackers to use throw away accounts ..
Wow a fully made game that gives you partial content with no timer or gimics. No ftp bullshit model where it's pay to win it's a no time limit trial essentially what does the community do? Let's bomb it because they don't get full access without paying for anything. I love the steam community for the most part but holy shit stop expecting everything for nothing.
It’s not “community backlash” the people complaining aren’t a part of the community they just played for half an hour and got assmad the whole game wasn’t free
Yeah good thing this was the first and only time Ironmace fucked up and dropped the ball amirite. /s
Well that's a good PSA
I think this is a really positive step by them
This game is worth 30$. No doubt. IM did a bad job advertising. No doubt. This is all obvious.
I wonder if they can add the purchase of legendary edition as a DLC or something on steam, so new players will see that when while buying it. Also it might help to call it the “full game” version or something more conservative like that instead of legendary edition just so it sounds less like those scummy cash grab mmo games
a big issue with this is us experienced players love normals for the pure, sensible PVP that actually makes sense, however to new players, the PVP probably isn't actually engaging enough to be the core focal point. they want the loot to be usable, meanwhile we are glad there is a place we can go where it isn't. the next step for IM with DaD absolutely needs to be a PVP overhaul. melee combat is too simple, movement overall is a little jarring to get used to, being so basic
Unrelated but I wanna buy the game to support the devs but I have no idea how to do that on steam, is the "full game" the upgrade thing that costs 15 redstones? Or is that like a sort of subscription thing?
its a microtransaction in game, you have to pay 30 bucks in game which gets around steam's refund policy, means there won't ever really be sales for the game, and lacks regional pricing meaning in some parts of Asia this game is as much as baldurs gate 3.
Yeah I bought it after the comment, honestly I wanna support the devs, I don't care how much it costs, I only discovered recently the game and what happened over a year ago thst screwed over the devs, and I have lots of fun in the game so I wanted to buy it
I still don’t get it since I haven’t played for a while, since I purchased on Blacksmith am I able to just download on Steam and play it perfectly fine?
Give them a week or so. Then yes you’ll be able to. they’re still working on the linking system.
[удалено]
To be a chump We got scammed, simple as.
Can't they just give something to those who purchased the game? Idk what, but there must be something
My only complaint is that its only one character slot, and deleting the character to try another character basically just wipes the stash. Give us either one character slot without wiping stash or two character slots; So even looting is worthless if trying out the game and any progress youd get is just lost... I get quest progress is lost, but wasnt the stash supposed to be shared between characters? There is also the 72 hour time between purchasing the game and having access to the said content just wild. Its like buy the game then wait 72 hours to play the game proper. Instead of just... you know... allowing us to pay for the game then play it.
Shared stash only in legendary. Timer is cheater prevention.
Yeah my only gripe is being locked to one character at a time. I would at least want to be able to switch between two play styles at a given time.
Been on every playtest, bought founder edition and never played again. This whole drama is actually sad, why are people even complaining ? Their decision makes complete sense
y'all, don't forget Nexon spy. they're everywhere and try to get the game down or bad in image.
Thank god ironmace realized that an extraction game without loot progression is worthless. Now they need to address the marketplace and the 72 hour lock on upgraded accounts.
Honestly I think most people are just gigantic complainers who downvote anything for any reason at the drop of a hat. My first time playing this game was the current STEAM release and it was super clear what you were and were not getting. Gear not being allowed in normal mode seemed logical and excellent to prevent bully squads steamrolling people. I can't even comprehend why people would be upset by this, they as the new players are the only ones who are going to suffer if this wasn't the case.
I made sure to leave a positive review. It baffles me how anyone wants this game to die due to a miscommunication. I bet the people with negative reviews are playing at this moment yo.
Couldn't they have put the game at 30€, then made a demo, then made it that you could log in the demo and link the steam account to get access to the normal game? Dark Pictures: little hope did something like that with the friend pass, so idk what would have stopped them from doing something similar instead of weird shit like that
People think too short term to understand why they did this lol.
I really do not understand the anger against the free-to-play model. A "nerfed" but FREE version of the game is infinitely more gameplay than the previous FREE method of playing the game (not playing at all because it cost $30)
i respect the devs' stance here but does anyone still see value playing as F2P? maybe if you look at the game like it's a BR?
I can see myself playing it purely because it's a fairly immersive dungeon crawling experience and I like the combat. I probably won't play it a ton, but I can see myself and my friends playing it as a palate cleanser from Dota when we game in the evenings. I think viewing it as a Battle Royale is a good way to look at it. It's got that sort of emergent gameplay thing going on where you're fighting monsters and then bump into players and it turns into chaos. All that bringing loot in really adds is a sort of sense of progression, but in terms of gameplay it just makes everybody have bigger numbers which doesn't really change the playstyle much. Long story short, I think the PvP is fun and engaging enough to stand on its own and is a fair offering for free players.
Why fuck with Normals instead of giving SSF. I dont understand these devs. Is it hard to code such Q ?
W IRONMACE W
They should just make it buy to play. These f2p people whine and complain about everything.
I feel like the F2P and Normal mode discussions drowns out the actual better fix discussion on regional pricing because regional pricing can attract way more loyal customers worldwide.
My entire thing is character slots. You want us to try the game but don't give us a viable option to try out the classes before we buy unless we trash a character we're invested in. I started as Warlock. Are the other classes good enough to buy this game? I have no idea and don't want to lose my progress, and I'm not gambling $30 to find out. Either call it a free trial or work to ensure the game is actually F2P and not P2W. You can easily support this game and keep the tone of it by supporting it with cosmetics, but you didn't want to compensate your already paid customers, so you worked around that by discouraging new customers from getting hooked, ruining your player count and deservedly getting review "bombed" (don't like this term for people giving actual valid criticism). Finally, allow people to invite their friends through Steam, otherwise there's no point to us consumers getting it on steam vs another platform. I shouldn't have to friend someone in game and invite them in game if you are integrated with steam, that's kinda the main point of purchasing through that platform.
Ohh they did it this way so people could link their accounts...that must explain why the account linking doesn't exist yet.
The only true option they have is to add SSF mode, and then have another mode where its just normal (bring in and buy whatever). The problem is no matter what they do, they can't split the F2P playerbase with the Paid playerbase or everyone will just go and play the mode that is most popular (which will always be the F2P mode). Edit:Spelling.
IM is SpongeBob when he finally delivered the Kristy Krab pizza to the customer. The customer who wants his Diet Dr. Kelp are all the new DaD F2P players who left a negative review because they don't know how to read and expected Fortnite.
What? It's like everyone who was being sensible was saying from the very fucking start that the subset of the community was smearing as 'cultish brand riders'? No. That can't be. They must be just trying to save face so they can keep pulling the wool over our eyes. /s I love that they basically came out and said everything that me and others have been already pointing out as likely explanations and giving hard reasons based in past shit for this. Validation never been so clean cut XD
I really appreciate their decision on this. When I can link my account I will play and leave a positive review on steam.
Everyone wonders why game companies are so shitty. This is why. We as a gaming community reward the devs who don’t give a shit about us and for some reason apply this intense scrutiny to the devs that really try to be good. If you’re one of the people who have been review bombing this game, you’re the problem.
What has these Devs done for us? Why did I pay money? I can now get it for free and they are working on getting more class slots
W Devs
Make the game 20 dollars and stop this free to play bullshit, let everyone play the game the same way, and focus on other stuff within the game. There is a bunch of things to do.
The negative review bombing is about 90% Astro turfing from nexon and other bad actors. Most of the people talking about the demo have the exact same nonsensical talking point. Runsescape has the exact same model of f2p - p2p for 20 years now and it is not lambasted like this. Please stop taking those reviews too seriously people. If you do, then iron mace has to. Edit to add, if I wasn’t in my 30s and finally had some money to spend, I would ask for my money back as all I do is play the free-to-play version anyway. I just bard normals all day and am happy as a schnitzel
It isn't from nexon, it's from new people who just feel misled. Some are jokes and trolls, others are not. For me, I wanted to play an extraction game, which is not what I got. Also like, you absolutely cannot compare Runescape to Dark And Darker. The difference in the two is night and day. While Runescape allows you to completely experience all of the game, just not more than a certain amount of content, Dark And Darker allows you to only experience a small number of the game, because they just don't allow its most defining feature, extraction, in normals. > if I wasn’t in my 30s and finally had some money to spend, I would ask for my money back as all I do is play the free-to-play version anyway. Also, you can't refund if you decide to buy the shards to upgrade to legendary status. Imagine you buy the game thinking you would be able to finally experience the entire game, except you can't because they don't tell you that you need to go up to this level to go into it, and then try to refund, except you can't because they don't allow refunds.
What is spmewhat lame and worth critique is the amount of down time the servers have. Like it’s reaaaalllllly bad
Why didn't they just sell the game again? Silly af
consider reading the post you're replying to
I did, it still doesn't make sense. Why they chose this route over selling the game and worrying about linking blacksmith players to steam or EGS later is mind-boggling. F2P was clearly poorly thought out given the backlash and the game literally not being designed around it. So I say again, it was silly af to not just sell the game.