The annoyances of Crawl


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Dungeon Dilettante

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 09:37

The annoyances of Crawl

Warning : This is me writing my opinion about something I noticed in the game if you think this is wrong or a waste of time forgive me but I wanted to see if anyone shared my opinions or wanted to discuss them.

I have seen a sentiment that people dislike the annoyances of crawl from weight, food to the curses mummies place on you when you deal the killing blow. I am just curious like if all those annoyances and others were removed from the game isn't the game losing its flavor? Like to me the experience of crawl goes from when I was still learning how to play on my SpVm or my MfIe. I had problems managing my food and I would run out of food and then I learned how to keep it managed , when to cast spells. Which monster was worth casting a high level spell on. Maybe id delay a vault due to the effects of hunger. IF a monster with item destruction came up , I would need to learn how to properly deal with that mechanic so I don't lose all my stuff. That's how I enjoyed and learned to love crawl,learning how to handle the challenges and master the mechanics. I would go on irc ask people , watch footvs of people in similar situations get laughed at by pros and then advised and given a different opinion. Over time I was able to handle all those challenges. I am just curious if all those "annoyances" like inventory management, item destruction, strategic items you can have limitless numbers off. I don't see how this will still maintain the flavor of crawl. Like what will be left of the game? This is just my two cents.. If the game was driven were annoyances were all gone what will be left??

I only played 75 games and I have only won 4 times and that will probably make you unqualified at an opinion I guess but I feel like I wanted to talk about it.

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 09:57

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

I only played 75 games and I have only won 4 times and that will probably make you unqualified at an opinion I guess but I feel like I wanted to talk about it.


First of all, that's really good (I needed ~1000 games for my first win) and it's not like game design should only consider the opinions of veteran players.

You mention weight in your first sentence and then it isn't mentioned again in the challenges you face due to the "annoyances". Maybe you just left it out in your post and it was relevant for you but maybe that also goes to show that weight isn't even challenging for people who are new to the game. But it remains annoying for everyone, since it really doesn't matter for a lot of items if they are in your inventory or on the ground, so you drop things all the time due to inventory restrictions, but that doesn't influence your character's strength since you can backtrack and pick them up when you want to use them. It wouldn't make the game easier if you didn't have to drop these items.

I don't think removing the food system completely is going to happen in the near future or at all, if I understand the plans correctly they are to remove chunks for most species. Food does currently have a balancing function on how many spells or Elyvilon invocations you can use during a fight, so it isn't a completely meaningless annoyance like weight.

Mummy death curses are e.g. problematic because of summons... killing guardian mummies in particular is very easy whether you use your main attacks or some form of summons, but the latter is clearly better and takes more time and boring tactics.

Like what will be left of the game?


All of the more interesting strategic decisions: what type of species/background do I want to start with, what skills do I train at what stage of the game, which god do I pick, what to equip, what do I acquire, etc. And the more interesting tactical decisions like positioning in combat, which spells to cast (which isn't mainly based on hunger, spells are diverse enough that it isn't simply a "this spell is more powerful but costs more nutrition" consideration, different spells are useful in different situations due to their effects), when do I run away from combat etc.
Last edited by cerebovssquire on Friday, 23rd May 2014, 09:57, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 09:57

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

I guess removing such features will make crawl less of a crawl that I played a year ago, but im perfectly okay if those changes alongside with new features that are going to be added to the game makes the game more enjoyable and interesting.

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 10:06

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

If we remove all annoyances, maybe we'll finally get a good tab'n'slash game with permadeath!

I hope that Crawl is not interesting due to Stockholm syndrome. Watching out whether your flight did not start to expire over deep water or spending hours trying to get rid of overburdened state are simply bad.

Dungeon Dilettante

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 10:34

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

I didn't mention weight for the sake of space but weight did force you to make decisions in my experience. That phial or two options, an extra weapon or rings in case of emergency. I also really dislike the you could always go back and get it argument. If your in a bad situation you couldn't run from and you have limited teleports and heal wounds it will save you. I've died due to running out of cure potions vs poisonous monsters and having no access to rpois. I couldn't carry all of the potions that I could have. It's just hard to see how ppl don't feel like any of this has an effect. Or that fruit isn't a problem for fedhas and you can just spam it
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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 10:36

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

Despite the cynical remarks I sometimes make. I honestly think crawl is very well designed, and that some of the annoyances make the game what it is. The frustrating nature of it and the urge to give RNG a huge knuckle to the crotch makes this game very satisfying to win, and because of how hard it is to do when you are new to it. Frankly, I have burnt out my crawl career and with all things in this world doing too much of one thing sorta makes it a chore. While it was fun while it lasted, I will say though that it was for me an interesting experience to go from never believing I could ever win this game to getting 20 wins. Its remarkable what this game taught me about probability, persistence, crazy combos, and most of all vengeance.

My only wish left is to have plums added to this game.
Spoiler: show
>:V=3

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 11:30

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

Im relatively new to crawl (maybe 300 games under my belt with 1 win) but my take on the annoyances are as follows:

Food is a mini game that keeps players honest with spells/swinging weapons and resting. It gives real meaning to the term: Turn Based. Without it you still take turns but there is a little less of a problem for instance with berserking whilst hungry.

IDing things vs auto iding. I prefer games where the identification works like a psuedo id over time rather than picking stuff up and trying to guess what they are after hours of holding them because you REALLY need a particular item and no ID scrolls are to be found. I hate that part of the game. I do know that there is supposed to be a tension about holding stuff despite not knowing what it is and dropping junk. If ID scrolls were actually plentiful or there were wands/spells of IDing then i'd be fine with how things work now as I'd know from experience that eventually I can get stuff ided. And with newer players the learning curve would include figuring this out.

The weight vs # of items in inventory limit: This is a core idea of roguelike play but I can't say I much enjoy it. It always struck me as as a picayune way of running a game. As a DM I might sometimes check a player's character sheet to see what they are carrying and to give them a reality check ("seriously? 100k copper pieces= too heavy for you. yes that's right you can't move at all and you ache all over and your chest hurts particularly badly and you really just want to drop it. Yeah? Ok even 5k is a bit much but we can talk about it.") But the whole "your bag can hold 15lbs before it rips so choose wisely" thing got old really quickly. I dropped a lot of that kind of book keeping from my games and the players did not complain nor did they abuse it for the most part. (The other side of the coin was if stuff got out of hand I helped them rectify it in an agreeable manner for all of us.) The fun thing is in a pc game it isn't that much of a chore to keep track of weight. Otoh who cares? As was pointed out, you can drop what you don't want to carry (because you really don't want to be burdened+ but why this is so is opaque to an unspoiled player) but it isn't all that fun playing the accounting game.

Traps were unfun and most removed I assume. Good I hated running into hundreds of traps on non-rogue characters in Angband and variants.

On the other hand if there were puzzle type traps ...those could be cool. I like puzzles (duh?)

Item destruction is just frustrating in crawl. Often it happens in combat when you didn't know the monster(s) you are facing has an ability (sticky fire, freezing attacks/spells, etc) and you find out too late to protect that precious consumable you just picked up before the encounter started. You weren't prepared to protect it because you didn't think you would need to. And then blam and your survivability just dropped by half. Or worse. imho either get rid of it or make the warning system be a lot more aggressive. And make work arounds easier than d + ! (to drop all potions) when such a monster comes around the bend. Maybe some kind of item protection skill/mutation similar to what Lava Orcs have.

Stores not selling good items. I have had a series of games now (about 20 in a row) where I couldn't find a thing of interest to buy in any shops up to and past the middle game. That means nothing in D, L, O or the two branches that you get your first runes from. This kind of annoyance is problematic because it means gold is useless outside of just buying up overpriced scrolls and potions that you already have. (Though occasionally there are games where there aren't enough of any of those either.) Item availability in general peculiarly ranges between feast and famine most games. I realize that procedurally generated dungeons means random stuff on floors/dropped by monsters/in vaults and shops. I love that idea in games but hate when it is really swingy one way or the other.

I liked the idea of the Trove that requires X # of a fairly common item (typically double digits) so that it is an obtainable key and yet there is some small agonizing...do I REALLY want to give up 12 remove curse scrolls?? What if I can't find any after cleaning out the trove and want to use id some items? I don't like when that number is unrealistic. 18 Healing Potions? Not bloody likely even if I could find that many in a game. That's not a choice...just a taunting tease.

Flavorwise there is a lot to crawl that is unique without the annoyances and much of the annoyances are about quality or quantity rather than all or nothing. Tweaking stuff would go a long way to ridding the game of flaws which aren't as charming after the thousandth time as they might have been the first 20.

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 11:48

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

Fizybubbleh wrote:I didn't mention weight for the sake of space but weight did force you to make decisions in my experience. That phial or two options, an extra weapon or rings in case of emergency. I also really dislike the you could always go back and get it argument. If your in a bad situation you couldn't run from and you have limited teleports and heal wounds it will save you. I've died due to running out of cure potions vs poisonous monsters and having no access to rpois. I couldn't carry all of the potions that I could have. It's just hard to see how ppl don't feel like any of this has an effect. Or that fruit isn't a problem for fedhas and you can just spam it

Weight limitation forces mostly to drop excessive potions/scrolls/food on the ground, rarely evocables. While there is small tactical value in quantities you choose/are forced to keep in backpack, most of the time weight limitation just leads to running back and forth to restock. In case of fresh players it might be difficult to evaluate how many teleport scrolls you need, but for experienced gamers the decision is fairly obvious and very rarely has significant impact on the game.

Poison mechanic is still available in game, although it works in slightly different way. Annoyance of non-deterministic approach was exchanged for clearly defined effect, but poison didn't become less deadly.

Many other changes - too many to name them - might seem meaningful (and possibly interesting), but they also quickly become very tedious while having barely no impact on core of gameplay. By purging Crawl of annoyances, the game might seem simpler to newcomers, but actually allows old Crawlers to still enjoy the game and focus on meaningful and interesting parts.

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 18:40

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

vengefulcarrot wrote:My only wish left is to have plums added to this game.
Only if we also get mangoes. Especially death mangoes.

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 20:07

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

sgrunt wrote:
vengefulcarrot wrote:My only wish left is to have plums added to this game.
Only if we also get mangoes. Especially death mangoes.


  Code:
You eat the unidentified mango.
It was a death mango!
You are sick!
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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 20:45

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

sgrunt wrote:
vengefulcarrot wrote:My only wish left is to have plums added to this game.
Only if we also get mangoes. Especially death mangoes.


new zot enemy
take it easy

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 21:25

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

Some annoyances I hate is the game generating monsters around a corner when you are retreating and the whole "x appears out of thin air!" is pretty dumb. The non-beam spell spam of hellfire/torment/smite is also lame. It also shouldnt be removed because I would have 15-runed this game long ago and moved on. Its mainly ziggurat this kills me.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 23:52

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

shizmoo wrote:Some annoyances I hate is the game generating monsters around a corner when you are retreating and the whole "x appears out of thin air!" is pretty dumb.

I believe that that message means that the monster stepped on a teleport trap somewhere else and got teleported to your LOS.
DCSS: 97:...MfCj}SpNeBaEEGrFE{HaAKTrCK}DsFESpHu{FoArNaBe}
FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 23rd May 2014, 23:54

Re: The annoyances of Crawl

Sprucery wrote:
shizmoo wrote:Some annoyances I hate is the game generating monsters around a corner when you are retreating and the whole "x appears out of thin air!" is pretty dumb.

I believe that that message means that the monster stepped on a teleport trap somewhere else and got teleported to your LOS.



Unless it is Pandemonium. Monsters can spawn in player's LoS in Pan.

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