I translated an impromptu QnA SDF had with a korean streamer
I'm a native speaking Korean who has some experience translating during my mandatory military service.
I did this for a friend, so it's rough and riddled with silly comments from me, but I'm posting it here because I thought some of his answers were interesting, and I thought you all might find them interesting, too. If you're able to get something useful out of it, great, if not, I'm not looking for notes.
Have a wonderful day/night <3
TL;DR--
Twitch drops planned next season + They are planning on removing region select and having it ping-based.
Full Notes
(sdf mentions that he's free rn because they're patching, during this qna. This happened KST 5AM)
- working long hours. "I basically eat, sleep, work"
- mpb change "you might feel like casters are very weak, but this is something we'll have to observe and change"
- on a follow-up point to above: "We have a very small balance team, which can be attributed to why our balance changes might be inefficient"
- items tend to be introduced stale (has around the same stats), because its hard to test
- sdf saw a lot of feedback "even naked wizards are so strong"
- wanted to nerf mpb by around ~40%
- targeted buffball
- sdf is planning a vtuber company
- sdf talks about how, in a big (korean) gaming company, there is no comunication, so its something that he's unused to and trying to get better at
- sdf show data which shows (which classes enters the dungeons, how gold is made and spent, etc.) 1:07:45
- sdf comments "We can't make a game that everyone likes. I'm just making a game that I think will be fun"
- it is mentioned that Dark and Darker has a bad rep (negative view because of lawsuit news) in korea
- 1:45:30 ish, sdf leaves to work more on the patch... he comes back to say smthing went wrong "There will be a 1 hour delay" LMAOOO THE QNA GOT THE DELAY LIVE
Chat QnA:
Q. Is there a possibility that multiclass will be added as an official feature?
A. (...) Multiclassing was implemented to test another future feature, but it is very complicated. At the very least, multiclassing will be a part of another official feature.
Q. Ironmace talked about how they intend to make it a frontline (melee) meta, but it seems to skew more towards backline (ranged) meta, can you speak more about this?
A. I disagree- it's not a backline (ranged) meta. Last season we started to limit pdr with nerfs, which made rangers stronger. The addition of sorcerer might make it feel as if frontliners (melee) are weak...
Q. Are there plans for extra utility spots in the inventory?
A. I think the problem is that you need so much utility items in the first place. We definitely intend to add something. You can see we've reserved spots for them (bags, quivers, etc). It's just that (for example), our "inventory guy" was working on fixing the hotswap, so the utility bags/quivers are lower priority atm.
Q. Are there plans to put the unbuyable skins from the past on the market?
A. We haven't thought about that specifically. We're thinking we might implement a battlepass, which our audience seems to favor more and more compared to the past.
Q. Around what time is the new map planning to be released? What are the expected features?
A. We want to deliver on an underwater battle experience, which requires a lot of development (the person in charge of this development was also working on the sorcerer, and others), which attributes to further delays. We could technically release the map sooner, but I'm not interested in releasing a map with water that offers nothing- we will release it once the underwater battle features are in place.
Q. Are there plans to lessen the frequency of crows (rat players) and third parties?
A. Crows exist because its low-risk, high-reward, but as the gurauntee for escapes lessen (removal of statics), they will be forced to fight their way out. We expect this will naturally lessen crows.
Q. How will sashes be used?
A. They will be implemented for guilds, mass religions, etc. I played a game in the past where you would go into raids with the same color sashes, and I partly implemented the sash thinking back fondly to those days.
Q. What are the plans for Dark and Darker advertising?
A. We have no immediate plans to advertise further in korea... We are planning on doing another twitch drop next season.
Q. When random-matching, we can queue as same classes. Is this intended?
A. Yes. This is to lower match-making time. We want players to be able to queue immediately into the game whenever they press that button. In the future, we want to make it so you can't have same classes in one team.
Q. How will you combat the numerous glitch-spots (cheese spots vs mobs)
A. These things will occur more and more as maps get introduced- its not really avoidable. We're continuing to remove them as we see.
Q. The boss' difficulties and rewards don't always match (ex. spectral knight is hard but is on the first floor and offers only spectral fabric)
A. Maybe you think that the reward is low because those bosses (on the first floor) are very accessible. We've changed the drop-rate a lot to be in favor of the players who don't play as much. In the next season, drop-rates will probably lower by a lot, which will hopefully make every drop feel more rewarding (??? i sort of get this but idk if i agree with that philosophy)
Q. Are there plans to lessen the knowledge penalty on wizard perk: spell overload?
A. This is something we'd have to think about. We think spell overload is a perk that neutralizes a wizard's weaknesses too much.
Q. There are cases when you kill someone, their corpse ragdolls off the map (ice abyss) and even when I come back from another module the body hasn't loaded in and I don't get my reward
A. This is part of the game. We could probably do something about it, but it would be forced.
Q. Bosses like wyvern and troll are ones where even if all three players know the attack patterns, its more efficient to have one player solo-kill it. Are there plans to change this?
A. We don't perceive this as a problem.
Q. There arent very many varities of keys, and the rewards are very low (golden key, skull key, etc). Will this and the interaction time of treasure hordes be changed?
A. This is something that was talked about before with "too low rewards mentality" (4 questions above). We don't think is as important as differentiating the quality of loot you get from each floor (loot from crypts should be noticeably better than ruins), which is something we're working on. Treasure hordes taking long to interact with is working as intended.
Q. Are there plans for a training ground? (to test damage etc)
A. There are no plans for this. We're hoping something like this will come naturally from the new guild halls
Q. Is it intended for people to be able to take their clothes off mid-chase for higher ms? Will unclothing time be changed to be longer?
A. This is something we perceive as a problem. Equipping and unequipping is something we're working on in generally in tandem with hotswapping etc.
Q. Will replay system be added?
A. We want to make this. The deathcam was intended to be the jump-off point into making the replay system. Right now, the person who is in charge of making the replay system made: the arena, the random dungeons, and the gathering hall. So as you can see he's very busy. In general, each person in the company is in charge of multiple things and it can be hard to prioritize/work on everything.
Q. If we kill a teamer, we can't report the corpse. Will there be features to report people like this?
A. We're working on a system where you can report people you've played with recently. Anti-cheat, teamers, these are all things we take seriously. In the meantime, because we understand a lot of the frustration comes from feeling powerless about seeing blatant cheating and not being able to do anything about it, we will be taking self-policing more seriously. On the other hand, we can't simply open a player's tribunal. You will be able to see the report-to-ban ratio- we've observed that the average ratio is 3.3%... if we leave it up to you guys, we are doomed. (LMAOOOO)
Q. Wyvern farming/boss farming is so boring, do you have thoughts about this? (what the fuck kinda question is this)
A. It can't be helped. It's boring because it's repetitive. I believe this is partly our fault for not being able to provide enough diverse ways to have fun in the game. There are people who farm pve for gear, and people who pvp to get gear, but the goal is the same: get items and become rich. There are already a diverse amount of ways to gain gold and play the game, but we recognize there could be more.
Q. Are there thoughts about changing the way gold storage works?
A. There have been ideas about making the gold just a number, but we have no plans to change it to that rn. This is partly to stop inflation. We understand this is just a band-aid solution, but if we were to make that change rn, gold could inflate to infinity. We're definitely thinking of making the storage curve less steep (with recent addition of gold coin pouch etc)
Q. Currently, the only end-content is the arena. Are there any other end-contents planned?
A. Keep in mind this is very far in the future: After the release of guilds, we are thinking of guild-specific modes. Maybe a 10v10 mode? capture the flag? We're at the concept stages. Just releasing the guild and saying "here are guilds, aren't they so cool?" seems dull and we want to give it more meaning/features. We're also thinking about adding a PVE boss that is super hard, think WoW bosses, but this is too big scale at the moment.
Q. Achievements were recently added. What are the future plans for it?
A. We will make more titles for achievements as time goes on.
Q. The number of servers in korea is too low. Have you thought about combining korea and tokyo servers?
A. In the future, we are thinking of removing servers entirely and making it so that it auto-fills you based on ping. This will happen around next season.
Q. It's been a long time since new perks were added to the existing classes.
A. As we make the next class, monk, we will be adding new perks and reworking existing perks
Q. Will monk be released next season?
A. Even if we commit the entire company to it, it would take about a month. The release won't be next season, but it will come out this year.
Q. Is the next class paladin (after monk)?
A. We've gotten several requests for paladin, so it's in consideration but we don't even know if we want a paladin class in the game yet.
The later questions were about drop-rates, repeat questions, questions about blacksmith and epic games client, so i didn't bother translating. gg