What it is target players of DCSS?

[onget]

I believe DCSS also does not target any players boring perfectionism art or base source code for your own games.

[Abominae]

Dem gurlz wit dem phat ass bootys, obv.

[mps]

Fantasy hipsters, imo.

[duvessa]

sexy elves

[Siegurt]

http://dhs.georgia.gov/sites/dhs.georgia.gov/files/imported/DHR/DHR_CommonFiles/DCSS_Enhanced_Transitions_Job_Grant_Board_Presentation.pdf

[Sprucery]

Bots.

[ZipZipskins]

I'd just like to say that lots of players are really happy with the amount of remove

[advil]

I know this is cyc but a sort of answer actually is here. So: male, 24yo, american, and easily confused by letters.

[mps]

That's who actually plays, not the "target audience." The OP is asking us to guess what the devs think.

[dynast]

That's who actually plays, not the "target audience." The OP is asking us to guess what the devs think.

so... themselves?

[Sandman25]

I know this is cyc but a sort of answer actually is here. So: male, 24yo, american, and easily confused by letters.

I wonder if average age is 27 now.

[onget]

I'd just like to say that lots of players are really happy with the amount of remove

Most of the non-fanatic of remove and devs we have left the crawl.

I hope development stop of DCSS. For the more crawl variant.

[jejorda2]

It would be fun to see an average age weighted by turns or hours played.

For the more crawl variant! Purge the faithless!

[byrel]

If we want the more variant, wouldn't it be purge the faithful?

[dpeg]

The natural, and mostly correct reply is: developers themselves. There is absolutely no point in trying to develop for someone else. The underlying premise is that if we like it, then there's a bunch of people out there who will also like it. (Naturally, there will be no shortage of people who don't, or who adamantly disagree with some change/nerf/removal and quit afterwards. But that's okay: better to have a bunch of serious players than a barrage of lukewarm ones.)

Note one crucial point for this to work: there is no money at stake. If we would sell something, then consumer expectation would matter a lot. And I claim the product would be actually worse, but I'm a lowly punk in this regard.

To address the implied question: yes, removals are good. There is often no devteam concensus, so they get stalled too much. Also, additions are cooler (to invent and to code), so despite appearances, the game actually gets bigger rather than slimmer. Thanks for believing the opposite

[onget]

How do good remove the specie for player of understand Infinite complexity and all the species?
and, the remove specie does not have any of the game balance problem.

If you want a serious player, you do not get the newbies. You get the incoming person instead.

If you are not wanted the player, there is no need to go simple. There is a need to go more complex. (Assume DCSS is a game. In fact it is a perfectionism Art.)

Only simple game you need to go simple but, DCSS is obviously a complicated "game".

Most of the reason for remove is terrible. Simply it has been made by perfectionism. As a result, DCSS have gained a more terrible game balance.

Most of the remove, I do not want to rPois in battle of use poison attack monster, It is a non-interesting and contrary to perfectionism, it is recommended a non-optimal play, and was carried out by various other stupid reason.

I will not be able to understand the recommended non-optimal play. If a non-optimal play is not present, the choice does not exist.

If always want to force the optimal play, it is going to be boring(like angband, always is best to use the infinite patience, the choice does not exist.)

[archaeo]

You know, everything else aside, I think your English is getting a lot better, onget.

[Wahaha]

If you want a serious player, you do not get the newbies. You get the incoming person instead.

If you are not wanted the player, there is no need to go simple. There is a need to go more complex. (Assume DCSS is a game. In fact it is a perfectionism Art.)

Only simple game you need to go simple but, DCSS is obviously a complicated "game".

Many current devs want the game to be simple and perfected to the extreme, not understanding why people like dcss (hint: it's not only for the highly intelligent tactical combat of pressing tab). I liked some changes that made the game simpler because they removed annoying things like the Sick status and secret doors. But that was until version 0.13 approximately. After that I think most changes that removed things are a mistake, but I don't play crawl anymore so whatever. Worth noting that I would be playing crawl if it had new additions. The game would not be worse one bit if it had more unique races, though I wouldn't trust most people to design a good race.

[tedric]

"perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

[Sar]

To add to what Wahaha said: a big thing that got axed was itemdest, and while it was a pretty terribly implemented mechanic in my, and most other people apparently, opinions, nothing came to take its place (many different alternatives were suggested) except for a general 10% reduction in consumable spawn rates. I think that was a mistake, I mean corrosion got a replacement that removed the problems old corrosion caused and added something new to the game. Now it seems like food will get the axe next at some point, and the way it is currently implemented is actually pretty bad, with the constant chopping of corpses, but will something come to take its place? Who knows.

But yeah, it's easy to throw around ideas when you don't have to implement them so I don't know, I don't really feel like I have any rights to complain. I still do though, that's how much of an asshole I am!

[archaeo]

not understanding why people like dcss (hint: it's not only for the highly intelligent tactical combat of pressing tab)

It'll never stop being funny to me that people unironically think that the devs are some kind of tab-happy IRL Trog worshippers

[tasonir]

not understanding why people like dcss (hint: it's not only for the highly intelligent tactical combat of pressing tab)

It'll never stop being funny to me that people unironically think that the devs are some kind of tab-happy IRL Trog worshippers

This is for the best; if they knew the truth that gammafunk actually plays summoners and recommends dragon form on octopodes, it would shatter their fragile minds.

I liked some changes that made the game simpler because they removed annoying things like the Sick status and secret doors. But that was until version 0.13 approximately. After that I think most changes that removed things are a mistake, but I don't play crawl anymore so whatever. Worth noting that I would be playing crawl if it had new additions. The game would not be worse one bit if it had more unique races, though I wouldn't trust most people to design a good race.

There have been a ton of additions post .13, especially in gods, with Ru, Dith, and Qaz being added. Weren't Formicids new in .14? And of course lots of incremental changes to monster sets, particularly in snake, but everywhere really.

[onget]

I expect the "version up" variant of the Linley's crawl to DCSS.

However, DCSS became mere boring perfectionism Art.

I do not have to issue a secret door and sick. species, backgrounds, spells, remove of such is a problem.
It is a loss of freedom. It does nothing other than.

Many current devs want the game to be simple and perfected to the extreme, not understanding why people like dcss (hint: it's not only for the highly intelligent tactical combat of pressing tab).

DCSS will not be able to achieve it. If it you are the target, select a variant of the crawl is a stupid idea. I If you want to target it, and base on the chess and shogi.

[ontoclasm]

A (partial) list of major features added just since 0.14, not counting literally thousands of bug-fixes and smaller improvements:

• Gozag
• Ru
• Dithmenos
• Qazlal
• Formicids
• Vine Stalkers
• The Depths
• Squarelos
• Lehudib Portal
• New Corrosion
• New Draining
• Dozens of new or remade unrands
• Megazigs
• Panlord pursuit
• New Wanderers
• New, three-headed SoH
• New Tomb Monsters
• Shrikes
• All the new summoning spells
• Artifact generation rework
• Massive card/deck rework
• New Ely
• New ranged combat math
• Unique titles
• Rune lock
• Race<>Background recommendations
• Tons of items and monsters I'm not going to bother listing out

But all that stuff is meaningless, obviously; the only things about DCSS that were ever fun were a) Sludge Elves, b) ankuses, and c) that minigame where you wait off nausea while eating contaminated chunks and gambling that the nausea won't worsen, since that would mean you'd have to wait more and eat more contaminated chunks.

[yesno]

versions of crawl over the past few years have seen some excellent changes and additions, like: monster AI changed to take cover behind walls rather than take multiple ranged attacks during approach; deep troll earth mages using dig and LRD; dithmenos; guardian serpents with blink allies encircle; spells like mana viper, spellforged servitor, battlesphere; stabbing skill removed; gargoyles; monsters and uniques like shrikes, robin, jorgrun, torpor snails and ghost crabs; chunks greatly simplified...

(i do miss monster item pickup a little though. i died once to a wandering imp who picked up a dead centaur's bow and blinked around my retreat with it. and it was cool when orc and gnoll packs would arm themselves while their allies fell.)

personally i tend to play crawl a bunch for a month or two at a time, a couple of times a year, so i am usually approaching a new version after a period of absence, and there are always substantial, interesting, and positive changes to the game.

[jejorda2]

I've seen several orcs pick things up and use them in trunk. I wonder if somehow orcs still get to pick things up form the floor, as a side effect of Beogh gifts?

[Rast]

sexy elves

I bet you haven't even seen an elf naked in real life.

[Wahaha]

It'll never stop being funny to me that people unironically think that the devs are some kind of tab-happy IRL Trog worshippers

This is for the best; if they knew the truth that gammafunk actually plays summoners and recommends dragon form on octopodes, it would shatter their fragile minds.

@both Misinterpreting what I said is pointless, unless you just want to makes jokes, but I don't think that was particularly funny.

There have been a ton of additions post .13, especially in gods, with Ru, Dith, and Qaz being added. Weren't Formicids new in .14? And of course lots of incremental changes to monster sets, particularly in snake, but everywhere really.

The last god or race added was slightly more than a year ago, so that's kind of why I said what I did. My opinion is not worth anything since I don't code anything, but my opinion is that there's space for more content and that new race/god/whatever ideas are viewed too conservatively. I don't buy the argument that "limiting content is good because too much content makes content obsolete", to a certain extent. At some point this becomes true, but maybe Crawl should reach that point first, and then start trimming? Bad content is bad though, glad the lvl 9 transloc spell got removed. And fullsome, and mountain dwarves, etc. I don't advocate for having all sorts of garbage just for the sake of content.

Also to make things clear I'm talking about removals and additions completely separately. I'm not complaining that too much stuff is removed compared to added. I'm just not happy with certain removals period (item destruction, enemies like boring beetle, is having the crown of torment in the game really that bad?, enemies picking up items, jellies eating items)

As for changes to monster sets, I pretty strongly dislike them. Snake is worse, and Depths is much worse than D:x-27. No opinion on Pan because I only did it once after demonspawn were added.

[Mulzaro]

Depths is worse than D:27?? What are you smoking?

[archaeo]

Depths is worse than D:27?? What are you smoking?

Something strong enough to also believe that removing item destruction was a bad idea, which is to say that I wish Wahaha was sharing.

Seriously though: absolutely nothing vital has been removed from Crawl since I started playing in the 0.12 era. tedric's fancy quotation is very apt; Crawl started as a very "classical" roguelike, and the genre is still stuffed with baroque examples of the form. There's nothing wrong with Crawl being the sleek, streamlined version of that formula, and most of the removals go a long way toward achieving that.

While I'm here, a few other things that should be removed: Lair:5-7, Elf:1, Hells:2-5, Shoals/Snake/Swamp/Spider:2 or 3, a healthy percentage of average Pan levels per 15 rune game, 50% of the map space of Tomb:1-3, Vampires, High Elves, Halflings. Oh, and food and hunger, but I've said more than enough on that subject!

In return, it would be great if we were adding new and vibrant content. However, we need to be adding things that actually explore new design space instead of simply tweaking existing content. I'd point to Fo as a great example: it's demonstrably different than other species, and has powerful abilities that aren't annoyingly fiddly (c.f. Dj, Vp). Ru is another good example of something different.

That said, I'd also personally welcome a version of the game that marries modern niceties with the old content people seem to miss. Nostalgia was a joke branch, but a real effort in that direction would be swell. Crawl's open source: somebody should fork it, and bring back the content they're missing.

[neil]

Crawl started as a very "classical" roguelike, and the genre is still stuffed with baroque examples of the form. There's nothing wrong with Crawl being the sleek, streamlined version of that formula, and most of the removals go a long way toward achieving that.

I'd argue that Crawl is on the whole more baroque than Nethack, or at least as baroque; it's just that the barocity* comes from stuffing in a higher count of distinct things (monsters, items, levels, ...) rather than adding more interactions among those things ("X monster can be eaten for Y resistance").

* "baroquity"?

[mps]

Polymorph into a golem, eat a trident:

"That was pure chewing satisfaction!"

sry, I think nethack's got crawl beaten hands down.

[neil]

"That was pure chewing satisfaction!"

IMO that's comparable to "You dice the ogre like an onion!!!" and "You attack the crab's weak point!!!", or "The death cob pops from nullspace!". You're probably right, though, that Nethack does have a higher quantity of silly messages that appear under very specific conditions.

[archaeo]

I'd argue that Crawl is on the whole more baroque than Nethack, or at least as baroque; it's just that the barocity* comes from stuffing in a higher count of distinct things (monsters, items, levels, ...) rather than adding more interactions among those things ("X monster can be eaten for Y resistance").

* "baroquity"?

Hm, while I'm not sure if I agree, it's ultimately a disagreement about what we mean by "baroque," which isn't a very useful thing to talk about, probably.

IMO, part of the reason we see a lot of complaints about removals is because players prize Crawl's breadth, and part of the reason we see so many calls for removals is because other players prize Crawl's succinctness. On the one hand, Crawl has relatively excellent depth and replayability thanks to its "higher count of distinct things"; on the other hand, each individual game only demands familiarity with a subset of those things, and even a dim player like me can handle remembering enough about Crawl to succeed without constant referral to spoilers.

The trick is finding content with the right balance between adding to that breadth while protecting that succinctness.

[Sar]

Snake is worse, and Depths is much worse than D:x-27.

Whoa, sorry, can't agree with that. I like most new Snake monsters and I kind of like Depths.

Also, god/race additions are an easy way to add content because they only affect you when you chose the race/god. I'd be more interesting in new enemies and mechanics that change the way everybody plays - those are also much harder to balance, though.