why do you think

[radinms]

Why do you think this game is a well designed game?
you are worshiper of the god of DCSS?

[tabstorm]

Crawl is so easy that it's not fun to play "just" to win anymore. But I like playing for high scores because it makes most of the things that make "optimal" play unfun (like kiting enemies to safespots all the time) forbidden and puts you in more interesting situations.

That aside, Crawl has a lot of variety for people who aren't obsessive over optimal play or win rate and aren't going to engage in maximally degenerate play if it means getting a win despite being bored the entire time. Playing for score is pretty fun too except for the RNG for book/jewellery drops screwing you and removing items that basically only get used for playing for score (Yes I'm still salty about +/*tele and cTele even though it has a ridiculous effect on your score). Difficulty issues aside, the developers removed a lot of bad features that made the game unpleasant to play (e.g. itemdest) and added a lot of interesting new ones over the years. The difficulty issues can't really be fixed without a massive overhaul of the game so I'm not too bothered by it. Most people don't think the game is easy so it's not that big of a deal. Overall I think it's a pretty good game.

[dynast]

Its a game with a elaborated system, fun gameplay factors and progression, yet, it doesnt require the player to understand or care about any of it in order to have fun.

[amaril]

Because crawl is not competitive (for me), I do not have to play perfectly. I don't need to explore in some hypothetical optimal manner, and I don't need to lure each individual enemy back to a staircase before fighting. Thanks to suboptimal play, I end up in a remarkable number of 'dangerous but solvable' situations, and these situations are the 'core' of the game (for me). 'Dangerous situations' often require a judgement call--can I fight these monsters if I get my back to a wall? Or should I teleport and risk a more dangerous situation? If I use a haste pot/scroll of blinking, this situation would become substantially easier, but I have a limited # of valuable consumable resources. etc.

If I found 'optimal play' to be a primary draw of gaming, I probably wouldn't enjoy crawl (unless I started speed running, which adds a competitive dimension to the game).

[Sar]

It's like Diablo, but with less shitty combat.

[Tiktacy]

It's like Diablo, but with less shitty combat.

I don't even agree with this, but it made me laugh so +1.

[moocowmoocow]

Well my criteria for "well designed" is "captures and holds my interest". Crawl did that for many many hours. I think the large amount of thought and effort that's gone into it over the years really shows. Most games either have a lot of money thrown at them but lack heart, or are someone's pet that shows promise but gets abandoned. Crawl is unique in that respect, and also in taking a lot of the great qualities of roguelikes and putting it into a more user friendly package.

[savageorange]

It has well designed parts. I don't know if it is well designed as a whole -- but it certainly is a better game overall than every other of the many, many games I've played. There are certainly better designed games (eg. brogue, despite its issues with traps), but none that are as fun, to me.

In other words: I don't care if it is 'designed well'. I care that it is fun to play. I also care that it -has- a design philosophy -- while acknowledging that the philosophy is carried out imperfectly, I believe the fact it has a design philosophy driving it in a relatively unified direction, is a primary factor in its continued improvement and increasing fun-ness.

[ololoev]

It's like Diablo, but with less shitty combat.

You're wrong! Combat system is the same.
In Diablo you clickclickclick as a melee dude and shift-click! right click! shift-click! as a caster.
I Crawl you tabtabtab as a melee dude and z-a-enter! z-b-enter! z-a-enter! as a caster.

[Sar]

In Diablo it takes way more time to kill trash. Then there's the difference between TB and RT combats. And then there's grinding bosses for loot.

[sweetrabies]

You're wrong! Combat system is the same.
In Diablo you clickclickclick as a melee dude and shift-click! right click! shift-click! as a caster.
I Crawl you tabtabtab as a melee dude and z-a-enter! z-b-enter! z-a-enter! as a caster.

In Diablo it takes way more time to kill trash. Then there's the difference between TB and RT combats. And then there's grinding bosses for loot.

Which Diablo are you talking about? Because Diablo 1 doesn't really work around grinding bosses for loot (I mean, you CAN, but it's really not necessary outside of getting ridiculously unlucky with drops from just playing normally), and Diablo 2 lets you click-and-hold to autorepeat inputs (to the point where some builds like frenzy barb or furywolf or zealot can be mostly played by just holding down the right mouse button and cycling skill hotkeys as needed). If you're talking about Diablo 3, then I have no comments, since I haven't played that one.

In any case, considering Crawl has had like 20 times the development time as any individual Diablo game, it's not exactly a fair comparison.

[dynast]

Diablo 1 you farm everywhere for loot, except bosses, finding book rooms to increase your spell's level, farming atribute potions, its just a farming fest, but the game is short and not that hard so it is not really necessary.
Diablo 2 is farming and grinding fest, get to level 99(for whatever reason, ladder i guess) do the events, yada yada...
And Diablo 3? well, what would you expect at this point...

[daggaz]

In diablo you drop stuff and click on it real fast and eventually you can double all your cool gear and max your money.

In DCSS, you enter wiz-mode.

DCSS is superior design.

[Sar]

to answer the question in the title of the thread, though: I don't

[sweetrabies]

Diablo 1 you farm everywhere for loot, except bosses, finding book rooms to increase your spell's level, farming atribute potions, its just a farming fest, but the game is short and not that hard so it is not really necessary.
Diablo 2 is farming and grinding fest, get to level 99(for whatever reason, ladder i guess) do the events, yada yada...
And Diablo 3? well, what would you expect at this point...

A lot of the farming in Diablo is driven by silly gamer completionism. D2 was grindier than D1 because of the harsher resist penalties in hell and more threatening monsters, but either one can be beaten with a reasonable character just working through the game normally without farming. Talking about stuff like farming attribute potions in D1 or grinding to level 99 in D2 is like talking about farming for pink tails in Final Fantasy 4.

But maybe I'm being too serious for a CYC thread.

[dynast]

My point is that farming in diablo games is what increases its play/replay value.

[archaeo]

Whatever else is true, I think any game that sees pretty constant development and maintenance for a decade, as well as widespread recognition among genre fans, is "well designed" by at least some metrics. There's something about the game that keeps people coming back; I suspect it's a combination of a really crunchy core gameplay loop that succeeds in cutting a lot of cruft out of roguelike play (autoexplore works brilliantly) and a great deal of attention paid to curating an interesting set of species, gods, and backgrounds that expand the replayability.

I'm still enjoying myself, anyway!

[sweetrabies]

My point is that farming in diablo games is what increases its play/replay value.

I disagree, but I know that there are lots of people who did play Diablo games to farm up the AITAMZ, so I'll concede that that is part of the appeal to at least some part of the player base.

As far as the actual topic of this thread, I think that Crawl has a lot of good design ideals/philosophy. The actual implementation leaves something to be desired, but overall, it's still a hell of a lot better than many of the alternatives.

[dynast]

Please dont be that guy. I am fine if you want to say that you didnt play diablo because of the loot, but you cant just say it was not a major aspect of the game because of that, especially since the loot in diablo was always been amazing and a one of the biggest complaints when diablo 3 came out was about having a auction house and the loot being so damn rare. So many games tried to recreate the magical feeling of looting that diablo gave to players new to that type of game back then.

[Tranquil Suit]

If I'm to be brutally honest. I think DCSS has design flaws on the fundamental level!

It's both too easy and too long. The toast is too big and the jam is spread too thin.

[1010011010]

DCSS I would say is appealing for reasons that most rogue-likes are appealing.

The worst part of it's design is its difficult curve.

[tasonir]

I liked the part in diablo where you could kill things to get experience and items. Then you could do it again, to get more. I found this fun. I think you might be able to design a game around that as the central mechanic, really.

[ZipZipskins]

I almost wrote a reply about how every time I find the DCSS altar in game I worship it for the fun factor but instead I decided it sucked so I didn't write it