With extraction shooters threatening to take over the world, it’s great to see that there are some twists on the formula, with both Dark and Darker and Dungeonborne providing fantasy, dungeon-crawling versions. While the former has been out for a year, it’s still very much a work-in-progress and recently developer Ironmace has made some big changes to how matchmaking works. Those changes have had a rocky start to life so far, but a new patch promises to fix problems with the system.
Hotfix #60 for Dark and Darker is all about the developer re-tuning the new matchmaking system. The biggest change that players of the RPG will experience is the absence of the pre-match base camp, where you could mill about with your teammates before delving into your next dungeon. That’s now gone – instead you’ll be plonked right into the level from the menu screen, which is a little less immersive but should avoid some of the issues it caused, such as pre-teaming.
Another update should give players “better quality matches”, which is a vague term but presumably means you’ll be placed with players with similar gearscores more accurately, leading to fewer situations where you get ganked by a massively overleveled wizard coming out of nowhere. The downside of this is that it may mean longer queue times for some, though the developer promises that matchmaking will continue to be tweaked so this may even out in the future.
There’s one part of this patch, however, which is causing a small amount of consternation among fans right now. Solo queue players who have the lowest gear score in a lobby may find their matchmaking canceled when there are no valid parties to join. Ironmace recommends raising your gear score if you get this message, with some players querying how this is possible to do if you can’t get matches due to your low gear score.
What’s clear from this patch, and the preceding one which overhauled the matchmaking system, is that Ironmace is not afraid to tinker with the guts of the game and I expect more changes will no doubt arrive as Dark and Darker plows ahead to its full release. If you’d like to get the full lowdown of what’s new in this update, you can head over to Steam to read the patch notes.
Should you be looking for a different experience, our guides to the best fantasy games and the best co-op games on PC will help you find what you’ve been searching for.
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