It’s been fascinating watching the progression of Dungeonborne from launch to its current iteration. Regardless of your feelings on the quality of the game, you have to admire how its developer is trying new things, even if those updates are not entirely successful. A big experimental change has just hit the game as part of the preseason patch and though it’s an admirable attempt to fix one huge issue, it seems fans aren’t entirely pleased.
One of the biggest problems Dungeonborne has faced since its launch relates to matchmaking. Though Mithril Interactive has never shared specifics on how it works, players have theorized that it was all based on gear. It’s considerably easier to find matches with lower-tier gear equipped, with high-level items leading to near-empty lobbies. That’s all changed now though, as the preseason patch for the RPG has completely revamped matchmaking.
Instead of queuing for a match and the game doing some behind-the-scenes work to find you a team, you’ll now choose what kind of experience you’re looking for, with each difficulty level having an “allowed item rarity” instead. This means if your gear is pretty poor, you’ll only be able to queue for games at certain difficulties, with rewards and toughness being limited in response. Similarly, if your gear is extremely rare, you won’t be able to queue for casual or classic games while you’ve got it on.
Mithril likens this approach to a “casino”, stating that it wants to “offer slot machines (low risk, low reward), roulette (medium risk, medium reward), and poker (high risk, high reward).” The problem is, however, that fans are continuing to find issues with the system, with recent Steam reviews continuing to highlight matchmaking, and balance, as fun-ruining features.
“Beginner lobbies are now filled with high-skill players killing all the new players,” reads one highly-rated review. “Today’s update killed the game for me,” opines another. “I had high hopes for Dungeonborne despite its issues, but the latest patch has managed to take the game from a 7/10 to a 3/10. I thought, ‘How could this game possibly get any worse?’ Well, this patch has answered that question—and not in a good way,” one more writes.
While Dungeonborne was already on a ‘mostly negative’ rating on Steam for recent reviews, this patch has not shifted the dial with new ratings continuing in the same vein. Since the preseason patch launch, twice as many negative reviews have come in compared to positive ones and the game is currently sitting on a 34% rating for the last 30 days.
The Before the Storm preseason patch for Dungeonborne is out now. If you’d like to make up your own mind about it, and check out the full patch notes, you can head to the Steam announcement post to learn more.
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