It's starting to feel really cramped in my roster, and if you're somewhat proficient in the game, you will have a fairly decent number of leveled up vets you do not want to send away in order to make room for noobies. I feel like this is really hampering my experimentation with composition in the game, and i'm wondering if the team has addressed this at all.
Posted Dec 3, 2015, 11:40 PM UTC
This was discussed on a twitch stream a little yesterday. Here's my best shot at transcribing it.
"Let's start with roster size. This question comes up frequently so I can talk about this because we talk about this internally, about whether or not we want to increase roster size. So we did it once before and we talked about whether we wanted to do it again for the abomination, and we still might, we haven't totally ruled it out. Here's like the main concern with increasing roster size. Right now, there is no end game in place. So it's actually sort of too early to tell what is the proper roster size for end game because how the game is structured, sort of having that end game in place sort of determines how much, sort of, how expansive of a team you need to get there. Part of the challenge is, we want to make sure the roster size is just enough to make that arc, make that whole progress of getting to the end game correct. Since we don't have it in place, it's not quite there yet.
So what we've been doing is as we introduce new classes is we've been increasing roster size so people can just play. And that's totally rad, because when you get to end game you're going to grind, you're going to do a bunch of different comps, you're going to experiment which is awesome it's what we love. But, the problem is increasing roster size is very easy. It's literally just increasing a number and all of a sudden you can have as many more people as you want. The problem is, what if we over-estimate? What if we give you too large of a roster size and you get to end game and you find out the economy, the general game economy is adversely affected? The issue is, that if...what if we have to remove it? What if we have to reduce the roster size? That's a much more painful thing to do than to increase it. We're sort of leaning on the side of being more judicial in whether or not we want to increase roster size or not. We're not totally against the idea of increasing roster size, however, we want to do it very carefully, we don't want to just do it.
We want to make sure it's very necessary and it fits into the larger structure of the game which, again, is really hard to talk about because the end of the game's not in place and we don't want to talk about that too much because we want that to be a secret. So, for right now, roster size is probably going to stay where it is, but it's not final. We're more concerned now with how everything else is working before we increase the roster size. So, not Right now. Sorry. I know it's a total bummer because it's such an easy thing to do, but hopefully those reasons make sense.
Imagine if you had a full roster of characters you liked right, and then all of sudden it said, "Get rid of 4." You have to get rid of 4 just to keep playing the game you have to get rid of them. That's not cool, that's not fun, that's not exciting, that's...also that's painful, we're taking something away, like, you worked for that and we're just taking it away? What the hell? That's absurd. Hopefully that's a good answer for the question.
I know it's not fun, I know it's a lot of, "Uh, but they're being so wishy-washy." But it's for good reason, I hope you guys can all understand it's for good reason we don't want to give you something and have to take it away later. And, it's only a month...like, guys...It's only a month! Holy Shit it's, like, only a month! But it might change in the future."
As a side note, do all game devs have to talk so damn fast?
fast talking is a personal problem of mine. I come from a big family so you had to be quick to get a word in. ;) Thanks for transcribing this, I used to do transcriptions and IT IS A TOTAL BUMMER OMG.
Did you use a foot pedal? That will speed things up.
I don't know how impregnable development is at this point, but given the general premise of DD, roster size could easily be tied to a mechanic or a whole system in order to allow players to enjoy larger rosters without endangering game's economy with endless influx of free, disposable mercenaries.
In Darkest Dungeon, player can choose the amount of risk they are undertaking. Less light, less food, more afflicted characters, less stress relief, etc. What if roster size was a safety buffer, whereby players had scaling benefits depending on Estate's populace.
Smaller roster = mercenaries get more care, but there's fewer of them and so service providers (inn, smiths) ask higher prices.
Larger roster = more mercenaries, less care for each one in particular (maybe diseases spread?) but prices drop to accomodate larger crowds.
Right now it's pretty limiting in terms of allowing players to experiment with various lineups on the same save file.
The problem with increasing the roster size in my mind is that you dont have to pay to heal as much, so you'd have way more money.
That could be balanced by having more diseas spread with more people in estate and decreased stress heal, so that you might not have to heal people as much because you have more of them, but you can't rely on particular heroes as much.
Yes, it would be fun to have an unlimited roster in the game, and I'm sure there are mods out there which accomplish this, but I think the base game having a limited roster size is just yet another one of those difficult decision points and I like having it in the game. Don't get me wrong, if I could have 50 roster slots it still wouldn't be enough, I want four of (almost) every class so I can make any group I want! But at that point, I just start a new estate I guess.
Also, if you really don't have room for new people and wish you did, just do a couple dark runs, fight a few shamblers! If nobody dies, you get bonus gold and loot, and if somebody dies, hey, new friends in the estate! :-)
we need bigger hotel
What if we got more slots from completing the roster goals? you would be in the late game and have a lot of weeks in by that point so its not a freebie or anything.
That actually sounds like it would work really well.