dpeg wrote:it'd help much more to get in-depth reviews.
Is this something that would actually be helpful for the development team? I was under the impression that, for the most part, developers don't really typically read or interact on tavern (with a few exceptions), and that the ideas presented here were preferred in the form of a proposal. For the most part, the useful ones that go through to implementation are of the form "why didn't we think of that/why isn't it already like that"; ideas that align with crawl design and unambiguously make the game better, usually involving a small amount of work. If you'd like to read one random dude's opinions on various parts of the game, I'd be happy to post them - the AWBW irc channel already gets an earful of my madness from time to time.
Possible subjects could include:
Boulder beetles being a fantastic monster because they represent a unique threat, but have a windup and animation that's so readable there's essentially no burden of knowledge - I've seen multiple unspoiled first time players sidestep these things in their first encounter, without xv. They even have a bonus of kind of teaching you how OoDs work (though not really because those can turn - orb spiders are the real OoD training ground). Convokers also have a bit of a windup that's harder to read, but I'd like to see these types of mechanics explored more.
Ogre Magi being my LEAST favorite monster ever, because the game spawns them like psuedo popcorn, but one of their 5 spells in one of their 5 spellbooks is paralyse, so to truly play correctly you need to treat them with the same caution you treat spinxes, great orbs of eyes, and giant eyes, on the offchance that this particular ogre mage pulls off the 1/100 paralysis. These high threat monsters are fun, when they're rare.
Vaults being the best branch because, with the new humans, the theme of the branch is generating the feeling of a bank heist in the player. You have to make a difficult entry, after which you get trapped and hunted (which works extra well because it plays into primal human fears). Then the next tier of branches are the ones that are focused on the theme of a mechanical gimmick; shoals is about dealing with ranged threats over difficult terrain with little cover, snake is about high power threats that are slow but have tricks like constriction and blink allies encircling that make it more difficult to escape (maybe mesm would fit better here than in shoals, even). The worst branches are stuff like tomb or almost every GDD branch suggestion where the theme of the branch is something cosmetic, like lets make this branch about frogs, rather than focusing on a particular type of player experience or mechanical trick (the way branches are named in crawl probably does not help with this).
I think that the existence of popcorn monsters or that your 2nd lair branch is easier than your first is actually good for the game, because players tend to find games more fun when the tension/difficulty has natural peaks and valleys. When you keep the tension ratcheted up to the max the entire time it tends to make the experience stressful, which you sometimes feel on really hard characters. It's cool that this happens on rare occasion (personally these games end up being my favorite), but I think its a bad place to be for the default experience. Mummy exists to help you generate this whenever you want it.
Or anything you guys would specifically like feedback on. Posts would probably be somewhat more complete than this, but not too much longer - I have a pretty terse writing style. I enjoy doing this kind of critique, but I only want to do it if it's stuff that will legitimately be read and considered by people who actually make decisions on what goes into crawl. Let me know if you'd like to see more like the above, and don't be shy to tell me that you aren't really looking for that kind of thing
Friday, 27th March 2015, 16:35 
