Likes and Hates

[snow]

What are the top things you like or hate about the game? For me:

Likes:

1. The large maps, vaults, and uniques give the game a nice feel.
2. The crazy difficulty. Dying has never been so much fun!
3. There are lots of different skills, species, spells, and such so you can win in different ways.

Hates:

1. Draining. It's not fun at all and adds nothing unique or interesting to the game. Does anyone like this?
2. The convoluted and confusing combat formulas. It seems like everything is overcomplicated for no reason.
3. The need to constantly recast buffs. I hear this is going to be fixed though.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Likes

1. The well-done random factor that makes each vastly different from the last but yet overall can be played consistently.
2. Variety of options.
3. The mutation system! Why'd they have to remove Alter Self? That spell was fun, especially if you followed Jiyva.


Dislikes

1. Contaminated chunks. All they do is waste time and make me munch a choko sooner than I'd like.
2. Most of the gods you aren't worshipping are rather invisible. You notice Beogh and TSO a bit since stuff calls on them to smite. Lugonu and Jiyva are seen a little less but they do have their own branches. All the others might as well not exist if you're not worshipping them, ticking them off, or have their altar in front of you. Crawl's pantheon needs a bit more visibility in the dungeon.
3. Streaks where I lose about 30 characters in a row no later than just after I find the Temple, usually before.

[eharper256]

Based on 0.8, so if anythings changed since then, well...

Likes
1. Randomness, variety and difficulty, like everyone else; this is Crawl's big draw for me.
2. Fun references.
3. Magic is wide and varied and fun. I really do feel a great difference between being a Summoner and an Elementalist.
4. Oddly enough, the whole food and sustenance thing. Its actually a great tool for preventing grinding and I like that.
5. Having to balance your desire to win with your desire to survive. Difficult choices, when present, are great.
6. Xom

Hates
1. Lack of physical combat styles; its always just hit it harder and faster. Where's my dual-wielding? My flashy fighter moves? And two handed weapons are never very good; you're basically moved along to either Demonwhip or Quickblade, especially now Katana is missing. Everyone is Sword and Board. Even mages.
2. Related to above, learning magic becomes a no-brainer unless you're Trog worshipper.
3. Again, same vein, sometimes, fun thematic options are not optimal play. And in a game where you die without optimal play...
4. Summoners getting hostile creatures and statdrain. When they also have to deal with miscasts like other mages, they shouldn't have this on top.
5. Not being able to see damage numbers in the text.
6. Xom not being in the slightest bit playable unless you save scum up the wazoo. His bad stuff happens seemingly more than good since most of his good stuff can only happen in combat like situations. You can't control his interest in the slightest!

[Regnix]

Likes:
Randomness
Auto-explore
Tiles graphics
Webtiles

Dislikes:
Not having a source of rMut (sometimes)
Victory dancing
Berserkitis

[Zuboki]

Likes
BEOGH
CrawlWiki spoilers
Random character concepts
Stabbings, Dig, and Sticky Flame (and similar Melee aids)
Slime walls no longer corroding equipment
Saint Roka as an ally
Using Knights as popcorn shields in Hell

Dislikes
MDFi and HECr
Summoning
Learning firsthand that Anateus has a 75-40 attack, after he killed my knight and stole his artefact Great Mace of Freezing
Heavy armour
Healing potions that just don't feel like surviving ice attacks
Ruining an excellent mutation set by having Hell effects give me teleportitus

[dpeg]

Why should this be locked? Everything is civil, and the lists of dislikes are extremely interesting to read.

+
Meaningful choices. (god, (most) species/background)
Shops don't buy, teleports are not immediate, wishing has high variance.
Small portal vaults.
Cool uniques.

-
Non-meaningful choices (weapon, stats, food usage).
Resting all the time.
Channeling.
Okawaru and armour/weapon gifts.
Levels are too big.
Branches are too long.
Food clock is too lax.
Pizzas.
Item description quotes.
Large portal vaults. (not all of them, but some)
Midgame: too long, not dangerous enough.
Monsters which just differ by numbers.
Pillar dancing.
Probably forgot half of it...

[galehar]

the incoming locking of this thread

No, I like it! People saying what they don't like is perfectly fine as long as it's done in a polite way.

Victory dancing
Berserkitis

Well, I've got good news for you. Yesterday, I tone down the frequency at which berserkitis triggers. So it should be more bearable at level 1. And I'm actively working on skill training hopping to finish it in time for 0.9.

[Grimm]

Item description quotes.

Why don't you like these? I am planning to find more to add.

[dpeg]

Item description quotes.

Why don't you like these? I am planning to find more to add.

They are too long, and they don't relate to Crawl at all. It would be great to have hand-written descriptions. Just cobbling together quotes from books or the internet is not good enough in my opinion. However, I know that some folks really like them and I won't fight against them (anymore). Just don't think they add much in their current incarnation.

[Grimm]

I like the erudite atmosphere they lend. The quotes are one of the things that kept me playing through early days of getting slaughtered. I would read the quotes, which are carefully chosen, and think "there must be some clever minds behind this. I'll keep at it."

I'll try and think of some ways to improve them. Maybe put them all on a right-click screen?

[XuaXua]

I hate that one card in the deck of changes/wonders that permanently swaps your attributes.

[Zuboki]

I hate that one card in the deck of changes/wonders that permanently swaps your attributes.

I think 90% of people do. Maybe it should be changed- Rank 0 swaps randomly like it is now, Rank 1 lets you choose 1 attribute to keep the same and switches the other 2, and rank 2 lets you rearrange all three as you see fit? No changing the values themselves, though.

[evilmike]

The main thing I like about crawl (and the thing which keeps me playing) is its tactical depth. It's a lot harder to be good at crawl than it is to be good at most other major roguelikes. Most games don't result in an uber unkillable character (while such characters are possible in crawl, its pretty rare to have one without farming... compare this to nethack, where it usually just takes spoiler knowledge and a few wishes). I like that I can win a game in crawl and still feel like I accomplished something.

As for things I don't like...

The early game:
I'm not a big fan of the very early game (d:1 to d:3 or so), where monsters can kill you in two hits in melee, and an unlucky centaur on d:2 means almost certain death if you haven't gotten lucky with scrolls/potions. I find there are basically two ways to play this part of the game, for most characters: (a) melee things, and just deal with the fact that you'll die a lot, or (b) get a ranged attack asap and use it as much as possible, kite as much as you are able to, and pillar dance (as a last resort... and usually to regenerate mp, and not hp). The early dungeon still has some amount of tactical depth, but it's not as good as the rest of the game. I don't like how certain monsters deal so much damage, and how important it is to find a stack of darts on d:1.

I think the problem isn't so much that enemies can do a huge amount of damage, but that so many enemies in the early dungeon can do a lot of damage. Early on, any hobgoblin, kobold or goblin with a weapon should be treated as a major threat... and there are a lot of these. Compare this to later enemies like ogres and hydras, which also hit hard, but are rarer.

This is why if you're on a winning streak, the single most important factor is having a character that has a good early dungeon. Centaurs are excellent (and have a high win rate online) because of this: they don't have many problems in the early dungeon thanks to their speed and high HP. Once you get past d:3 or so, your chances of winning go up by a huge amount. I think this is ok to some extent (the early game should be harder than the rest of the game), but I think crawl takes this a bit too far.

A disclaimer: I haven't tried 0.9 recently, and understand that HP was buffed a bit.

Summoning:
I don't like how monster summoners are able to spam summons so much. Monsters should only be allowed to summon one demon at a time. Vampires should not be able to fill the screen with rats. And so on. Basically I think all monster summoners should be nerfed hard, preferably so their summoning spells worked more like the player versions. To compensate, abjuration should also be nerfed to be single-target, or some sort of fireball-like AOE effect.

Summon spells are also too powerful for the player. I've heard a number of ideas on how to balance them better, particularly the idea of capping the number of summons you can have. I don't really like that though. I think the best solution would be to cap the number of summons per spell (base it on power). So for example, a high powered summon small mammals could get you (for example) up to 8 at a time. Recasting it when you are at that cap would instead extend its duration, or something like that. The cap wouldn't affect other spells. That way you'd be encouraged to use a mixture of summoning spells if you want a huge army. I think it would be possible to actually balance summons around a system like that, without it being annoying like a general summons cap would be.

Boredom/Tedium:
I get bored of certain parts of the game. Mainly this is because levels are too big and not varied enough. Swamp, labyrinth, the abyss, and the latter half of the dungeon are the big offenders here. Vaults (especially large vaults) make things more interesting, I find, but certain branches are lacking them (particularly the Vaults, ironically). Luckily this aspect is pretty easy to improve on.

I'm often tempted to just dive through the late dungeon once I feel my character is endgame-ready. I don't though, because this would be needlessly risky: leaving levels unexplored would make the orb run *much* more dangerous.

Crawl's food system is also rather boring. I find food to be a non-issue for most characters. It's only really an issue for heavy spellcasters, and even then, only barely. I do not think making the food system more strict would make the game more fun though. Characters with food issues (eg centaurs, ogres) tend to just be more annoying to play, rather than more interesting/harder. Food is just a silly concept, for the most part, and crawl overcomplicates it. Getting rid of it would be imbalancing, but I think a good start would be to get rid of the chunks system. Just let me eat corpses directly, and lower the weight of corpses a bit to make it easier to carry them around. I'd also like it if I had to eat less often. The amount of food in the game should also be lowered, regardless of what else happens. Hive is usually unecessary: these days I tend to enter it more for victory dancing bees (good for training shields/dodging) or sacrificing them for piety, and often just ignore the food.

XP:
Xp values are a bit too high in the late game, and slightly too high in the midgame. Early game xp levels are fine though.


There's more, but that's all I can think of for now. I'm focusing this post on negative stuff because I think it's more helpful to point out what I think needs improving on. I actually like crawl quite a lot.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

+:
The Space Rangers 2 feeling of constantly changing and moving world
The way the game arouses your "what if" curiosity by constantly mixing everything up and sending your characters into uncomfortable situations
The fighters can compete with spellcasters, and sometimes are the only ones who can successfully defeat some spellcasters
Old School looks
Non-isometric tileset
Descriptions for the items
Quotes for the items
Xom
Save-scumming becomes boring

-:
Focus on destruction (killing, obliterating, dominating...)
The impossibility to make a legal backup copy of your character
A bit complex skill system (I needed to read at least one guide in order to understand how to make my Enchanters dangerous)
The game is in English and is not to be translated anytime soon

[Grimm]

Translation would require a Wesnoth-style mass effort. Userbase is probably not large enough yet.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

And possibly going through a lot of codefiles adding foreign grammar support, and squishing all the translateable strings into some files.
And swearing while working in Poedit that has no undo function.

[dolphin]

Like -

• Meaningful Choices for the entire game
• Antiscumming - (When I was young, I played Pokemon...)
• The Crawl Philosophy
• Training skills by using skills
• Huge depth and breadth (I haven't even come close to playing all types of classes, or species, much less any combination)
• Random Dungeons and items.
• Vaults (Always fun. Always, except for Volcanoes, which simply kill me)
• Winning after a tough fight
• Getting a cool artefact
• Flavour for Gods, Branches, Vaults.

Dislike -

• Bolt of Foo - All the same!
• Fire/Ice symmetry in Conjurations - I think they should be equals, not equivalents.
• Draining brand - Dangerous used against you, less useful than more common brands when you use it.
• Abjuration - I win!
• Not being able to see my base stats when I have the level-up stat choice.
• Strength - Acts like Constitution but is still called Strength
• Mottled, Steam Dragons - Weak and non-dragony (Actual Mottled Dragons or Steam Dragons could be scary)
• Mummies - Don't feel very undead. Curse is tediously mitigated (to 1 RC) or avoidable. Compare to Wight.
• Binary Mutations - Good for you OR Bad for you. Not good for you in this situation, but bad for you in that situation ()

[Moose]

I wont bother enumerating the likes here, because there are so many. The fact that Crawl is the ONLY game I play is a testament to how much I like it.

Dislikes:

1) Recasting buffs
2) The need to victory dance
3) Being unable to butcher corpses on low levels becuase you wielded a cursed -1 -3 spear.
4) Pure melee is only viable in a couple of builds, and is pretty boring.
5) The fact that seemingly 2/3s of the randart armor I find has insane negative modifiers on it (like -7 chain mail of the wind {rF++})
6) The lack of early game armor for trolls and ogres so they can start training armor skill
7) The fact that you cannot turn off Trog and Oka's ammo gifts, and that they dont give javelins.
8) The Labyrinth
9) The Abyss is too hard to escape from (i.e. it takes far too long to find an exit)
10) Volcanoes ... too rare, and often you need rF++ at least to do some of them, many characters dont have that by the time they do orc, and have to skip the portal vault.
11) Too many gods
12) Scrolls of curse foo ... only a real impediment in the first few levels of the game, and then just a waste of space from that point on.
13) I think the bottom half of the dungeon is rather repetitive and boring ... also it feels too much like vaults 1-7.
14) Hive ... again it's boring... I'd just rather it be replaced with a guaranteed beehive or 2 somewhere in the dungeon or Lair.

guess that's enough for now...

[XuaXua]

I hate that one card in the deck of changes/wonders that permanently swaps your attributes.

I think 90% of people do. Maybe it should be changed- Rank 0 swaps randomly like it is now, Rank 1 lets you choose 1 attribute to keep the same and switches the other 2, and rank 2 lets you rearrange all three as you see fit? No changing the values themselves, though.

I think one option shouldn't directly swap, but re-balance. Getting offtopic.

[XuaXua]

Summoning:
I don't like how monster summoners are able to spam summons so much. Monsters should only be allowed to summon one demon at a time. Vampires should not be able to fill the screen with rats. And so on. Basically I think all monster summoners should be nerfed hard, preferably so their summoning spells worked more like the player versions. To compensate, abjuration should also be nerfed to be single-target, or some sort of fireball-like AOE effect.

I'd love enemy priests/spellcasters to be subject to the same magic rules/limits (MP) that the character is subject to. We both lose and regenerate HP; why are their magic reserves unlimited? The only reason the AI doesn't make the most dangerous choice (orc priests should be spamming smite!) is because it's been explicitly told not to, rather than being limited.

Crawl's food system is also rather boring. I find food to be a non-issue for most characters. It's only really an issue for heavy spellcasters, and even then, only barely.

A food system is irrelevant without an equivalent pooping system.

[XuaXua]

The impossibility to make a legal backup copy of your character

Just copy your .cs file out of the folder and copy it back if you die. I don't do it myself, but it's "legal" in the sense that it can be done; just don't come back and brag about how you got 15 runes with that guy if you had to restore him.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

The impossibility to make a legal backup copy of your character

Just copy your .cs file out of the folder and copy it back if you die. I don't do it myself, but it's "legal" in the sense that it can be done; just don't come back and brag about how you got 15 runes with that guy if you had to restore him.

I tried doing this, and that is why I have one of the Likes in my list. =)

[Blashyrkh]

+

The whole Crawl design philosophy and how amazingly well it is actually implemented. It takes quite a lot of playtime to realize that.

The tiles artwork (except Shoals).

The astonishing depth, interesting choices, meaningful decisions etc yadda yadda, this has been mentioned before

Webtiles! Now that there's webtiles, I might not need another video game ever again.

Transmuters. A very unique gameplay experience, and I like the large amount of tactical options one has even at lower XLs.

Portal vaults.

-

The game is too long. I can see cutting everything by a third as an improvement, but obviously this leads to balancing issues for an unending number of reasons. But this thread didn't ask for solutions

The lack of corpses makes Fedhas rather useless in the post-endgame. He/she/it is so much fun to worship, but I don't see a Fedhasite (?) taking on Pan.

Jiyva could be awesome, were it not for the stat shuffling and the too high frequency of mutation 'gifts'.

Abjuration is the king of no-brainers. A level 3 spell must not boost a character's power in the endgame by so much.

Vampire mosquitos. I will not explain that.

The food system isn't too interesting. Lots of tedious resting for some characters.

Using throwing as one my main skills and then discovering that Shoals has not been generated. Say goodbye to those sweet sweet, almost guaranteed silver and steel javelins.

Felids are silly, but that's just me. If people like 'em, by all means keep them in.

Another minor point: For those of us who like to follow the design process closely, it seems a bit cluttered. By my count, we have the tavern, the dev wiki, the mailing list and IRC.

[TwilightPhoenix]

- Sometimes with all the options, I stare at the character generation screens and am utterly clueless as to what I should play next.
+ Luckily, there's a random button.

- Lack of corpses in the post-end game seriously harm the viability of some gods and species (as just said with Fedhas, but that's not the only god). Could easily be fixed by having at least some demons leave corpses.
+ Random artifacts. I just wish I'd find them more often on my characters who don't make it too far since they're fun.

[MonorailCat]

- Lack of corpses in the post-end game seriously harm the viability of some gods and species (as just said with Fedhas, but that's not the only god). Could easily be fixed by having at least some demons leave corpses.

Yeah, thats my biggest dislike too. All Gods should have viable endgame-options.
But it's especially noticeable on those gods, that rely on corpses.

[XrBob]

Yeah, thats my biggest dislike too. All Gods should have viable endgame-options.
But it's especially noticeable on those gods, that rely on corpses.

I dunno, are gods designed so that they should be equally useful throughout the game. I haven't used most of them, but if you look at the standard Okawaru to The shining one, it's very common, and it works very well. Okawaru can be played late game, but there gets to a point where you don't need anymore gifts, the bonus skill boost doesn't matter, and you don't need finnese when you have haste. On other hand TSO would be difficult in the beginning, no gifts, very slow to get piety, and you don't fight many demons and undead until much later.

Like:
PERMADEATH. It really changes the way I look at games. If I play any other game where you can reload your save after dying, it nearly feels like cheating. Death, or losing, forces you to evaluate what went wrong, what you can do to fix it and improve upon next time. Usually there's something you could have done better or safer, but there are times especially in the early game where you lost for no reason other than dumb luck. But that's life!

Tiles are well done, I do enjoy them, I can't imagine playing on the console ASCII version.

I feel like there are a variety of effective playstyles and races and you get to find out what works especially for you.

Dislike:

I kinda wish the races were more balanced. It's not bad, but some seem clearly superior than others. I got my first win with a melee warper/crusader type high elf. I then wanted to try and win the game with a spellcasting nuker. High elf is not only a good choice for nuking, but one of the best if not the best well-rounded race for that. Spellcasting is so important, so other races might stand out more if others had a positive spellcasting aptitude. I suppose they don't all have to be good, some just seem more more versatile and usable than others.

I understand that the game has roots in hardcore ASCII stuff, but maybe the tiles interface could have some more graphical options for customization? A way for you to change all the options without having to dig through config files.

Food isn't awful, but it feels mostly like a system to make spellcasters less powerful, as in without high spellcasting and intelligence there's only so many bolts of fire you can cast at honeycomb hunger before having to eat or run away. Otherwise it's there to force you to keep moving and prevent scumming which I guess is ok, but the abyss and pan still exists for scumming needs. It'd be neat if you could take chunks and cook them to make them last longer, or even keep them in a refrigerator, though I don't know how to fit that in.

The biggest gripe is the community. It's just not big enough! The people are mostly friendly, but it feels like a ghost town here compared to larger games. This isn't really a fault of the developers or anyone else, it's just the nature of game having a high learning curve and requires a lot of patience. Maybe people don't feel like they'd have enough time to learn it, or just don't know about it. I just found out about it through reading the questionable content webcomic, would never be here otherwise. I think it's worth saying though that once you're comfortable with it, it's the easiest game to just pick up and play for how ever long you want, be it a couple minutes or longer. Loading doesn't take long and you save at any time with no penalty, it's all turned based!

[Grimm]

Fedhasite (?)

Fedhashian

[absolutego]

nothing new, so i'll keep it short. i love the interface with all my heart. the amount of effort, past and ongoing, on making the game as easy to play as possible is inspiring. aside from that, and beyond the obvious stuff (flexibility, the importance of short- and long-term strategical decisions, relative balance and fairness, etc) i'm very fond of vaults: there could be even more of them, and i'd like to see more full levels similar to the spriggan's forest. they offer variety and often mix up threats. i wish i could contribute there, but alas...

i mostly dislike matters of balance (esp. melee vs magic) and transparency (unintelligible log scales, hiding out the effect of racial HP, the severity of miscasting), and the fact that the game is simply too bloody long. many branches could stand to be shortened à la elven halls (vaults is a big offender and lair doesn't trail too far back), and were it not for the 27 fetish a few (not so few) dungeon floors could go too. i got used to victory dancing, but i'll be relieved when it finally dies. aside from that there are minor problems that have been brought up already, for which there are interesting proposals in the wiki, and which will probably be addressed in the future. permanent allies and herding. matters of food (the food reform proposal in the wiki is nice, but i'm not entirely sold). i must be alone in that i don't find summoning too powerful, but something should be done about monster summoning and abjuration. summon message spam. hexes in their current state. and a few more of those, but i should really get to work.

stepdowns

what does that mean?

[jejorda2]

Fedharali!

stepdowns

what does that mean?

From http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=spell%20power:

(Spellcasting/2 + 2*avg school skill) * INT divided by 10 * (1.5 ^ enhancer count). Now halve the part over 50, halve the part over 100, halve the part over 150, and plain cap at 200. Negative enhancers use 0.5, not 0.66.

Stepdowns are the "halve the part over 50" parts of the calculation.

That means after a point, stats, skills, and equipment have drastically less impact on improving the strength of spells. But it seems like the other options are reduce the improvements across the whole range (which means everything is harder) or put on a hard limit, which means some investments and finds are downright useless.

Stepdowns seem like a decent solution to me.

[RFHolloway]

so the first 50 points of formula give you 50 points of results
but it takes 100 points of formula give you the next 50 (at 0.5 per point)
then 200 points to give you the next 50 (at 0.25 per point)
then 400 points to give you the last 50 (at 0.125 per point)
because with the hard cap you can't go above 200

- have I got that right?

[absolutego]

why is that so terrible? it's rather smooth, unless i've messed up (which i do about a thousand times i day).



i fitted it to a square root (sickly green) and a weird log10 function i just came up with in twenty seconds (red) and i'd rather use the piecewise function, if only for computational simplicity.

[RFHolloway]

like the log 10 function - what is it? there seems to be some discussion I have seen around using "X^0.something" or "Y^1.somthing else" functions which kind of do a similar job.

The biggest gripe is the community. It's just not big enough! The people are mostly friendly, but it feels like a ghost town here compared to larger games. This isn't really a fault of the developers or anyone else, it's just the nature of game having a high learning curve and requires a lot of patience. Maybe people don't feel like they'd have enough time to learn it, or just don't know about it. I just found out about it through reading the questionable content webcomic, would never be here otherwise. I think it's worth saying though that once you're comfortable with it, it's the easiest game to just pick up and play for how ever long you want, be it a couple minutes or longer. Loading doesn't take long and you save at any time with no penalty, it's all turned based!

what other games would be good for "if you like this, you might also like soup stone"

Diablo, dungeon keeper, dungeon master, Fall from heaven/Civ, elemental, master of magic, Wesnoth are some that spring to mind. might be worth going to some of those boards and posting an "anyone else play crawl thread" GWJ has had some discussion about crawl.

Civ thread here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthrea ... st10642109

GWJ thread here http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/37043?page=14

[absolutego]

  Code:

f(x) = log10(1 + x/50) * 200/log10(1 + 750/50)

where x = [0,750], as 750 is the value where the function flats out.

i plotted scaling_factor*log10(1+x/k) and scaled k until i got something close to the stepdown function. i suffer from acute lack of mathematical OCD: if it works, it works!
the square root could work too: higher adjusted power early on, and a bit of a nerf later. it can also be adjusted.

i find the community pretty rocking, to be honest. i don't care how many people play the game, i care about who they are.
my first experience was with linley's dungeon crawl. i'm not a veteran, it's just that i learned of crawl when the nintendo DS port, of all things, came out, and that was in mid-2006, so DCSS was probably just getting started. and i guess there was a community of sorts, but it wasn't easy to find nor comparable to this. i played a couple months, got frustrated by a bug that ate my savegames, and stopped until late last year, when i got DCSS and taught myself how to use the vi keys. we now have IRC, very active forums, a wiki that may be somewhat-outdated and yet remains very useful to new players, the ever-useful bots, online play with (at least) yearly tournaments, and developers who actively listen to players and commit patches and improvements on a daily basis. maybe you guys play similar games with an even stronger community, but i don't (dwarf fortress excepted). you should spend some time on xbox live or something to get some perspective. ;)

[RFHolloway]

  Code:

f(x) = log10(1 + x/50) * 200/log10(1 + 750/50)

where x = [0,750], as 750 is the value where the function flats out.

i plotted scaling_factor*log10(1+x/k) and scaled k until i got something close to the stepdown function. i suffer from acute lack of mathematical OCD: if it works, it works!
the square root could work too: higher adjusted power early on, and a bit of a nerf later. it can also be adjusted.

i find the community pretty rocking, to be honest. i don't care how many people play the game, i care about who they are.
my first experience was with linley's dungeon crawl. i'm not a veteran, it's just that i learned of crawl when the nintendo DS port, of all things, came out, and that was in mid-2006, so DCSS was probably just getting started. and i guess there was a community of sorts, but it wasn't easy to find nor comparable to this. i played a couple months, got frustrated by a bug that ate my savegames, and stopped until late last year, when i got DCSS and taught myself how to use the vi keys. we now have IRC, very active forums, a wiki that may be somewhat-outdated and yet remains very useful to new players, the ever-useful bots, online play with (at least) yearly tournaments, and developers who actively listen to players and commit patches and improvements on a daily basis. maybe you guys play similar games with an even stronger community, but i don't (dwarf fortress excepted). you should spend some time on xbox live or something to get some perspective.

Cheers for that - no doubt the community is quality, perhaps that is due to the fact that the game requires a bit of investment to really get.

One thing I would love (but don't have the skills to get started) would be some ongoing competiton. The two ideas I have are as follows.

1) a monthly high score table, with the players listed in order of the total points scored in the last month, and their total points scored in the current month.

2) a top 10 highest scoring games ever (with filters by race and class) so that you could see the top 10 TrWz games or the top 10 troll games, or the top 10 Death Knight games.

[jejorda2]

One thing I would love (but don't have the skills to get started) would be some ongoing competiton. The two ideas I have are as follows.

1) a monthly high score table, with the players listed in order of the total points scored in the last month, and their total points scored in the current month.

2) a top 10 highest scoring games ever (with filters by race and class) so that you could see the top 10 TrWz games or the top 10 troll games, or the top 10 Death Knight games.

http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=milestone
use irc to log onto chat.freenode.net and /msg sequell, which is a bot that answers these kinds of questions. If you join the channel ##crawl and issue the milestone commands to the channel, the whole channel sees the response.

Some of the score lists at http://crawl.akrasiac.org/ are just for the tournaments, and some are all time. I can never keep straight which are which.

EDIT: Added double hashes to channel name

[RFHolloway]

http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=milestone
use irc to log onto chat.freenode.net and /msg sequell, which is a bot that answers these kinds of questions. If you join crawl and issue the milestone commands to the channel, the whole channel sees the response.

Some of the score lists at http://crawl.akrasiac.org/ are just for the tournaments, and some are all time. I can never keep straight which are which.

OK if I get some time I will try and work out how to "use irc to log onto chat.freenode.net" . should be OK in testing queries and presenting the results once I get the data.

Ideally I would love to adjust how

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/top-N.html

and

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/top-combo-scores.html

are generated, by applying a couple of filters to the first, and extending to the top 10 results for the second.

[Charliy]

Like
Amazing user interface
Stabbing ancient Liches
Swiftness & Flight
Vault: 8

Dislike
Webtiles does not yet have the map and inventory
Sigmund
The tomb (Specifically mummies)

[LunarHarp]

I am amazed at crawls ability to be so random yet still be strategically playable. Oh you like that awesome spell eh, well it does 20-180 damage. That monster have AC well subtract a random number from that. I don't know how but it all works very well.

I like any game with a skill system and crawl does this pretty well. Who wants to be shoehorned?

Dislikes. Only thing I can think of is the long midgame. Every character I have played has a boring part some time in the middle of go down stairs, kill everything, go down stairs, kill everything, oh no a lich!, run away, go down stairs, kill everything. If the game takes 12 hours to beat (I know I am pretty easily distracted) then I would say about 8 of those hours is doing this it seems.