Please let me know what you think! I'd love for everyone to have some high-quality discussion about the game in the comments. We'll be back to entertaining gameplay and guides with the next video!

This is excellent video. Well researched, clear points, and honestly professionally delivered. I think this is going to make some good discussion in both the player space and the dev space.

I'm a senior software engineer/designer at a game dev company, 5 years experience I agree on all points, just wanted to leave a comment for the algorithm

Well done my friend. As a fellow hobbyist I just have to say, you've demonstrated better communication, better thought leadership and a better roadmap in 20 minutes than we've seen from this game in the last year. Well said. I don't agree with 100% of all your ideas here, but any plan is better that what we have now. I commend you.

I have had basically the same conversations with my friends who play the game. Very succinct and delivered super professionally. I hope this video gets the traction and attention from iron mace that it deserves.

This man cooked up a Michelin star meal

Pls IronMace listen to this guy, this is honestly the best video talking about the state of DaD!

Some good points made here. Ironmace has lost the plot

the TTK has been 1-3 hits for at least a year, damage scales way faster than Vigor or Armor rating and on top of that they buffed headshot damage but left helmets only use being to give you more physical power, after that I gave up on the game as any skill expression was dead and buried

I agree with a lot of the video but I feel like a couple of the points are just wrong. The base stats on uniques are very high compared to blue, but the way stats work in DaD means the value of those stats on the higher end HEAVILY fall off in value, so a person in full uniques is not 75% stronger than a blue geared person, but much less. Not only that, the amount of low counterplay cheese in the game makes getting very geared (Which should be one of the main motivations) feel kinda meh, especially in solos/duos. Gear is insane, and a majority of the playerbase is still scared to run anything higher than blues, making gear worse wouldn't help this in my opinion. Second point was about "Make random modifiers worse and make base stats better", Ironmace did this, we had this exact patch for around a week, and a majority of the playerbase said it was the most boring the game ever was, hence it instantly getting reverted. There was 0 build diversity, finding loot was not hype or exciting, if you found a piece of gear one rarity higher than the one you are currently wearing, you always picked it up to wear with 0 thought. There was no thought about what stats you need or if it has added damage it was just "oh I went from a green chest to a blue so now I'm 10% stronger". Which would only make the gear problem worse, because now you can't build specific attributes on green/blue gear to beat higher geared players, you will just always be out geared and lose against anyone with higher rarity items. Random attributes also add hype / rng to looting chests and bosses. I agree with a lot of the video and the format of actual constructive criticism was a breath of fresh air, but I respectfully disagree when it comes to gear.

ty for making this video, really explained what IronMace needs to do for Dark and Darker to prosper🙏

This video is literally perfect. IM needs to watch this ASAP.

Think you hit the nail on the head! amazing video! I personally just cant stand playing during this multiclassing phase which pains me as I love this game.

More people gotta see this, not only the devs. I really hope this gets to other dark and darker content creators and they also chime in on their ideas for the game. Ideally the conversations should be had to refine and brung out some synergy between content creators

You have summarized and brilliantly articulated all of the key issues I have with the game. It has 100% been frustrating continuing to see repeated mistakes. Well done.

This mann just gave a concise corporate n professional solution to a very serious problem facing this company.... And he did it for free. What an angel.

almost cried tears of joy at the riveted gloves hypothetical gear changes

as someone who is literally brand new to this game (4 unsuccessful raids) im sure glad i found this channel, very informative clear and precise. im here for the ride! wake up Ironmace!

I've played since playtest 1, and I have a long history of balance thought and discussions under my belt across many games ranging from casual to competitive, thus I've decided to give my thoughts on the gear balance of dark and darker; which is where the majority of the games balance issues stem from. Ultimately it boils down to how Ironmace has chosen to balance the gear in the game; specifically damage vs resistances. Now what do I mean by that? Simply put there is an imbalance caused by the relation between resistances and damage in the game where the damage has been continuously raised to match resistances. This leads to a disparity between damage and non resistance builds where if you aren't running a resistance build you get 2-3 tapped if not one shot by a high burst damage build (looking at you add damage) or on the other end some builds require true damage to even be able to fight resistance builds. This all came about because Ironmace decided to buff damage to match resistances, except in rogues case where they couldn't buff damage due to modifiers in their perks so they buffed pen instead. There are 3 ways to fix this but I will highlight the one that I think will be healthiest for the games balance in the long run. Cap resistances at 50% and balance the weapon and spell base damage as well as add and true damage around it from there. This will help with the overall balance of the game and tone down the absurdly low time-to-kill vs non resistance builds, as well as leave room for perk and skill re-balancing that will not be pen/damage focused. my thoughts over 2 years of playing this game - Shickkz

What an amazing video really appreciate you taking your time to explain all this. I hope the devs see this!

Really well argued points overall, though I do think the numbers you brought up when talking about gear are misleading. Stats from gear are added onto base stats, so going from +1 str to +6 str isn't a 600% increase overall. It's something like +1% physical damage bonus going to +6% physical damage bonus on a fighter, or less if the str is high enough. Still, I 100% agree that it's an issue. The most fun time on Dark and Darker was that one day where gear was bad.

Excellent video. That was worth of your time! Thx a lot:) waiting for you multiclass cleric

This goes so hard. Amazing work!

amazing video, hope ironmace and other players see this.

Thank you for putting the time into making this video well done.

I appreciate you sharing these ideas man. Looking forward to your streams!

This is a good video, its time to have these kind of honest discussions about the game if we want it to be here in the future. It may be critical, but his is the opposite of dooming, this is what putting actions behind your hopes looks like. One alternative to the 3-tier map backpack space issue, and its a band-aid we need to rip off eventually anyway: reduce the abundance of gear drops across the board. Loot drops have been buffed several times over in attempt to "equalize" the gear disparity issue and make gear easy to acquire for all. The result was increased inflation, and the same stratification between employed and unemployed, and those with game knowledge and those without. You can loot purples in your spawn room and yet gear disparity is as bad, or worse than its ever been. Less gear in circulation would mean even the wealthiest players would be running bis less often, lowering the acceptable window of gear to bring into HR considerably. Removing trade entirely would take this concept even further, and not much would be lost in the process IMO if they also nerfed random modifiers and reduced gear disparity. The gear you find in the dungeon would be more useful, even if it doesn't have the "correct" RNG rolls. There is nothing HaRdCoRe about a game where you make and spend the majority of your money on Instacart. It just makes the gameplay loop feel cheap. *we need to remember, this trade/reselling centric version of the game was DIRECTLY LOBBIED FOR by special interest groups mentioned briefly at **18:00** , namely the LordCollector Discord, Dytch, and Mendo. These people passed around petitions to quit the game, called it boring and abused their relationship with Ironmace to get the patches that nerfed gear disparity REVERTED in under 12 hours, this happened TWICE around hotfix 16-18 era. These people are where the "the entire game is gear, if they nerf gear the game will die, scrubs just need to git gud gear disparity is not a problem" etc. sentiments come from. That shit is literal propaganda.*

fantastic video. tons of issues in this game i wish were just flushed out and fixed and you covered them perfectly

good video and well explained :)

What a beautiful video, everything is on point! I really hope they will see it, keep it up!

This was such a wonderfully put together discussion. I really love how you phrased your criticisms, and it is clear that you are coming from a place of love for the game. The number 1 thing that makes me rage quit/instant exit to desktop is when I either get kited to all hell (or have a zero-movement ranged fight of endless spam), or when I try and finally take the fight and the melee battle ends in 2-3 swings. If I bring in high PDR, I get kited/burst by magic damage, and if I go with MR/high mobility I get chipped by physical range damage. It is like so many of my fights are coin-tosses if I built my kit better than the other person! I've been playing battle royales and extraction games for years now, and some HR fights in DaD feel like the least agency I've had in any video game, specifically when it comes to how much influence I have over the outcome of a fight. There are some techniques that high-level DaD players have gotten used to to regain some of this agency that I just don't think are healthy playstyles for the average person (including door spam, range spam, dancing to avoid range spam, and unbalanced movement speed differences). Normal games before multi-classing felt like we were closer to this type of combat balance I've been hoping for, but now even normal games feel like pseudo-HR matches with how much the TTK has decreased with all these additional stats flying around (like slayer, spear prof, and other various shenanigans). Again, this was so well put together and I'm thankful to have a good place to share some more thoughts about the game that isn't toxic.

agree with every single point, down to the purple torch. great video. hopefully they make it fun

Very well put together, these suggestions clearly come from high game experience and knowledge. You understand the sistems Fully and is taking a neutral stance about the game without bias we see all the time on reddit and discord: "buff my class, nerf everything else" You perfectly hit every single important aspect of the game, and how to fix/improve it ! Amazing research done here, i hope the devs watch and consider your suggestions. You cleary love the game and want the game to last for years to come ! Cheers! Great video !

Nerfing ranged damage isn't really needed, there's one super easy fix to make physical ranged not so bad...REMOVE SLOW ON HIT FOR RANGED AND INCREASE IT FOR MELEE. For Magic, nerfing the random damage values will help but they should also just get rid of any 'hit scan' attacks like Zap, Holy Strike, CoP, or Lightning Strike. All ranged should be skill shots and be blockable. They should then reduce the recoil you get from blocking without needing a perk so you are more incentivized to bring a shield and running without one is now a bigger disadvantage.

Excellent video, excellent points of focus, completely agree with all of it, well said.

Massive respect and appreciation for putting such a well put together analysis on the entire game. Thank you.

Although I am fan of the idea of multiclassing, I do agree with you 100%. The game is not ready for it and many other things they have tested. The core gameplay loop is not hardened enough to be adding such systems. They have great project with a lot of potential, but they should right now stick with what they have and make sure the quality of the base game is in good shape, before moving to big game changing systems. I hope devs will see this and re-evaluate their approach.

this is all great. well put together and clearly explained

Give this man a job at IronMace

This video is just what we need... Well done bro

very good video, i really hope the devs take a good and long look at this

Fantastic video. Hopefully IM takes heed on some of these points.

Very nice video man! Hopefully IM will take some of this into consideration. The guys over at The Darkest Hour pod gotta get you on!

Perfectly said, couldn't have worded it better. You've gained a new sub, and I hope the devs see this and really consider all the points you've made in your video. Well done!

I had a few of the same arguments but it's usually met with "skill issue" in that toxic discord. I absolutely loved this video, thank you for making it.

Great vid mate. Dark and darker needs this

Congrats man! You've earned yourself one more subscriber! Keep up the professional work! Ironmace could really use people like you to make Dark and Darker even greater.

This is the type of presentation I hear from a Annual Quarter report on stocks, i like it

great video, i love your content. thank you for not scrapping this

this has been all my guild has been talking about recently. thanks

this is spot on hopefully they take some of this on board

Absolute W, very well made with fantastic points.

Great video! I hope IM takes these suggestions onboard.

Good video! I like the suggestions. One big problem with the home phase as you named it, is they seem to really dislike quality of life features, its almost like they take pride in things being obtuse or taking more steps to accomplish which also leads that phase into taking longer. I think they relaly need to flesh out this part to be more quick and intuitive without punishing players for it aside the points you made

IM take notes !! this was an awesome video holy hopefully they see this

100/100 percent best well put together take in the real issues with DAD. Keep posting this in general chat

Agree with everything! Thanks for putting all my thoughts into words!

beautiful. Been playing since the very first play test. For someone who plays high level and for fun you hit almost all the fundamentals that need to be worked on. Last few weeks I have found myself saying "this gameplay loop is ass". From my perspective it looks like they are REALLY trying to iron out the game for actual release(EX asking for help in all language translation and super unnecessary rush of multi classing) They need more money/project management/resources. I love this game and I think IM public image could be improved ten fold if they stopped over promising and underdelivering. It's in IM hands now.

Goated post. Ive pretty much said, and agree with every aspect of this. Well done gamer

im glad you made this video i highly respect it. these are defenitly core issue that need to be addresed with the devs and i hope this reaches them. Great video 10/10

i deeply love this video amazing work and honestly explaining it very well, its hard to talk about what makes the game suffer when everyone is upset, our emotions get the best of us and I think a less reactionary video is a good idea. I really enjoyed the presentation I have high respect for this type of format when it comes to explaining one's POV. Takes a lot of effort and careful wording to get the right words out. Loved the video!

The change you mentioned for the marketplace items not being able to be resold until extracted with I think would be a great change.

excellent video, it's impressive how majority of gamer are agree with your idea, lot of idea i had the same with my friend about the state of the game but the devs are not aware of i hope they will implement contents on your way it will be a good game!! keep going

I think getting a translator for this video would do some good and hopefully help you be heard and get the attention that’s deserved. Made all great and valid points and I couldn’t agree more.

Brother I'm 1 Minute 36 Seconds into the video and I can already tell this is a fantastic guide for the devs to save this game. I hope they see this and take some notes. Love you NotLikeThis

I would like to see a video on the other ideas you mentionned at the end. I find your take interesting

Loved the video and the breakdown of everything I had an interesting idea when it comes to add damage modifiers. Removing add damage modifiers is definitely needed but I think a great replacement is putting in more armor and magic penetration. This would still allow people to counter build against tanks (high amor or magic resist builds) but it wouldn’t have any effect on time to kill for those that don’t build armor and magic resist. Allows for build flexibility still but removes add damage stacking as a must across the board to be competitive

100% agree. I really love this game so I have a lot of patience for it and it’s devs, but I do feel like they need to start being a little more strategic since the bigger this game gets the more structure is needed.

amazing video i hope the entire community sees this

Started same playtest you did, have 1600 hours right now, this video is amazing and I really hope someone at IM watches it

Great video, here's a comment for the algorithm!

Truly well said, need to get the attention of the devs ASAP

damn this is some next level shit, WOW

Very thought out and everything made perfect sense to me. I hope someone from iron mace can at least think about the ideas and points raised.

I never comment about a video twice unless I’m responding to someone but I’d have to safe that this video was phenomenal. I agreed with most if not all your statements and really hope that the devs/sdf take some of these ideas into consideration.

great vid, hope they see this and learn something

I wish I could shout this video from the mountaintop. Good job.

Ironmace hire this man please

Quality and well said good sir. No disagreements its like you can read my thoughts!

I hope someone at IM sees this. This is exactly the kind of feedback they need to improve the game, well done.

We do really care. Great to see a video with fully articulated opinions.

This is an amazing video. It covers almost everything that is an issue and gives some really good points. I think if they take even a few of these ideas into the game it will be way better. One thing I can say is when it comes to the nerfing of gear and random modifiers(which I think is a good idea) they need to balance classes around the new lower gear. For example them nerfing rogue base stats to horrid levels instead of reworking invis. If a new system of gear it would be way way harder to get that strength and vigor out of the negatives from 6 vigor 9 strength to 15 and 15. Along with this classes like wizard really aren't great at low tier levels, but are extremely strong with high gear. However nerfing the high gear would make the class extremely painful to play. You can say the same with so many other characters. I can say a similar thing with fixing the ranged meta, while I think the ranged meta is bad you can't just make ranged way worse without killing multiple classes(mostly ranger). Then lastly when it comes to there "collecting data" they need to do that with changes on the test server. And to make the data collection better they need to make the test server a better test environment with stuff like max level characters, full completely quests, and possibly boosted gold rates/free gold.

Great as always. Keep it up .

Really good stuff. I hope IM see this and take some of it into account.

Great take 🔥🔥

I used to love playing Dark and Darker. The original playtests were some of the best gaming experiences of my life. The time to kill and lack of skill expression led me to leave quite a while ago, but I am really hopeful that it will eventually become a great game. I really like most of the ideas you have presented here.

I really enjoyed watching this video as it brought up a lot of very good points and ideas, personally I had the same problem with Gbmm last night where my friends and i ran into a trio who 2 tapped us all, they were in bis gear and one of them even had fulgor i was in full blue plate armor and weapons and there was nothing i could do

Fantastic video, agree with basically everything that was said, and have echod the same points in nearly every way both on reddit and podcasts. I am optimistic that sdf knows what he's doing, and there are good times ahead.

GREAT video! EXTREMELY well made, researched, and POINT BLANK STRAIGHT FORWARD HONEST. I was a HARDCORE DaD player since playtest 3. when EA came out i bought it SECOND 1 and was paying EVERDAY like 8-10 hours PER DAY. The whiplash of going back and forth on changes, the horrible balancing, and the LACK OF CONTENT added is what drove me to quit around December 2023. Multiclassing being added has only reinforced my drive to NOT return i HATE the lack of class identity. Then i saw they added +2 All attributed back and on more pieces like WHAT R U THINKNING IRON MACE?!?! In all my play time since playtest 3 i have been a 90% duo's player 5% solo and 5% trio. With duos being FORCED to play on the ice map (which IMO is the worst map) just ruins duo's for me. Before i quit in December (so during like November) My teammate and I did all quests except for killing the bosses 10 times because we r duos. Then they added map rotations which i thought was going to be awesome, but the duo version of the bosses were still the trio bosses and i feel they should be balanced for duo(whatever party size is on the map so like 205 health reduction and if needed mechanic rework, tho i dont think any CURRENT bosses need that as their mechanics all work). Another reason i quit as stated already was the WHIPLASH from FLIP FLOPPING on balance changes. 1 second they want longer fights then the next day they add +3 all on every piece of armor. Then they say +3 all is bad for the game but in 2 weeks they add +3 all back again. this has ruined my trust on their vision(they say they want X but do Y) and also proven to me IM just doesnt know how to balance/is not good at balancing. Another thing that drove me to quit was Barbarian/Throwing axes/Ranged meta(bows and throwables/NOT MAGIC) - Throwing axe being able to SLOW me (without Achilles strike) AND allow the barb to run faster is just simply NOT FUN. THEN ADD ACHILLIES STRIKE ON TOP OF THAT. it ruined the game. and the fact that from late October/early November to NOW APRIL 27th THIS IS STILL AN ISSUE AND STILL HAPPENING is just simple put A JOKE. secondly mentioned was ranged meta, how long does ranged meta need to be a thing until they realize its horrible??!?!? holding doorways for 5 minutes as a standoff cuz of ranged meta is NOT FUN. Why does a ranger do MORE DAMAGE than a wizard when the ranger gets to shoot IMMEDITELY vs a Wizard having to CHARGE UP his spell? I am one of the FEW ppl who dont think Cleric/Wizard is an issue. These are just a few of the reasons that drove me away from the game and have KEPT ME AWAY from the game PREVENTING ME FROM COMING BACk. one thing i lastly want to touch on is CONTENT ADDITIONS.... in NOVEMEBER IM said Druid and ice was coming next month(dec) and thn it got pushed back, then it got pushed back AGAIN, then AGAIN... DRUID IS STILL NOT OUT BUT THEY ADDED MULTICLASSING?!?!?! like wtf?!?! ADD CONTENT TO THE GAME STON FLIP FLOPPING BALANCE CHANGES WASTING MONTHS AND MOTNHS ON REPEATED MSITAKES!!!! And DONT GET ME STARTED ON HOW HORRIBLE THEM MAKING ARENA MODE IS. THAT WILL KILL THE GAME MARK MY WORDS. Dark and Darker and Dark and Darker arena WILL NOT COEXIST mark my words. One will kill the other.

Perfect video. IM needs to watch this

fantastic video. my friend pointed out that stat curves dont make it 600% stronger but its still rough. I hate GBMM and multiclass, etc.

Couldnt say it better than u did. Great Job and nice graphics 👍

Only a few minutes in, but this is perfect. Very well made video and I completely agree.

Thank you for this video, I was trying to release one myself but I honestly felt like I couldn't put EVERYTHING in the video, Theres so much to talk about and advice to be given to IM, But you hit everything spot on :) -Sleepy

this guy is definitely goonmaxxing up this game, great video

The focusing on core gameplay loop, stop repeating old mistakes and remove multiclassing are your strongest points in my opinion, can't say I agree with all your balance ideas though.

This is 100% what's needed. I have stopped playing since multiclassing. My friends tried this game, but stopped playing after an hour because they couldn't be arsed to deal with the fast pvp encounters. I have talked to my friends who still play, but stopped like me when multiclassing came about what would do it to make it a better game. Your video hit the nail 100% - I am just afraid that they listen to the discord playerbase. It feels like most of them want multiclassing. And how does this get to Ironmace? Well hopium!

if the devs arent listening they need to. your advice is spot on and honestly they need to listen to people like you if they want this game to grow. awesome video. you earned my sub.

well said sir i hope IM thinks long and hard about what you've pointed out

Excellent work. I hope IM pays attention.