CAGD 270 - SimpleDNDMap v2 Feedback

  During this last week, we had the chance for the players to re-playtest our level, and I was able to receive more feedback from the playtesters. Most of it was positive feedback. However, there are also many things that can be improved. 

There was a positive Reaction to the enemies being more balanced; however, now it turns out they were very weak. So now the players were able to have short fights with the enemies. I tried to solve the too-strong enemies problem by reducing the enemy's defense points to almost none, which made the players have ridiculous damage to the enemies and were able to kill most easy enemies with one turn. What could be improved here would be balancing the defense stat depending on how deep in the dungeon the players are, therefore making the enemies stronger.


Another positive reaction was when there was a planned revealing for rooms; this time around I was aware when players were moving, and there weren’t any times in which a player rolled and walked into a dark room. In comparison to the first time I play-tested where the revealing was very slow because I wasn’t really used to the controls for the board.


The overall details in the map were welcomed, and they gave life to the environment and dungeon, many details acted as clues of what it may be approaching in the following room and this made the players prepare for their fights before going without expecting an enemy.



Something that the playtesters pointed out after exiting the dungeon was that the topic for the non-linear design of the level needed to be more condensed or semi-linear since, in the instructions for the level, it needed to be a “tutorial” like level, so having a non-linear experience wouldn’t really give that tutorial experience to the player. In terms of diversity, it was very good since there was a lot to explore. However, there were also dead ends with no rewards, making the players waste their time returning. 


Some of my observations were that the players took advantage of all shortcuts available to them, and they weren’t really challenging, and this made the players spend less than 20 minutes which was the planned game time for the level. Now if we add that the enemies weren’t really a challenge, the playthrough was about half of the desired play time. Making some shortcuts more difficult to achieve could solve this problem, or making a guarding enemy, so the shortcut is risky (for example, a range damage enemy on the other side of a pit shooting arrows).


Another thing that caught my attention was the use of the healing spells and how every character could do it. In the game, the enemies could not use heal spells or respawns, which added to their inability to cause conflict with the player. Enemies could have more variety and personality since most of them were melee damage characters.


A big flaw in the design of the level is that it was missing items or rewards for the player. There are many close ends in the map with a boss waiting for the player, however, once the obstacle or conflict dies. Then the player is left with nothing. This discouraged the players to keep playing the level since there weren’t any useful rewards for putting their life at risk.



Overall the feedback gave me a new perspective on how to handle levels and how to adapt it to the instructions given. There is always room for improvement, and this is no exception. Some balancing, rewards, and other features could make this level more enjoyable.

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