Cocytus Succeeder
Posts: 2184
Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05
Another idea for a clock
There are several "clocks" in crawl (food, piety etc.) which don't work too well. Here's a different approach. It's a simple idea, so maybe it has been suggested before (I don't recall seeing it).
Items on the current level (which are not picked up by the player) are destroyed over time at a constant rate. That's it.
Advantages:
(a) Player is incentivized to use consumables, lure less and rest less.
(b) Non-intrusive.
(c) Smooth (no breakpoints).
Disadvantages:
(a) A bit like speedrunning, which is not to everyone's taste. The rate can be tweaked to try to mitigate this a bit, but this part is unavoidable.
(b) Your character might get screwed bit by bit, and not realize it until its too late. This is not dramatically different from current crawl (compare the XP system which also has sunk costs), but is still something to keep in mind.
(c) Perhaps Crawl should contain more monsters which force consumable use, for the limit to matter in practice.
Items on the current level (which are not picked up by the player) are destroyed over time at a constant rate. That's it.
Advantages:
(a) Player is incentivized to use consumables, lure less and rest less.
(b) Non-intrusive.
(c) Smooth (no breakpoints).
Disadvantages:
(a) A bit like speedrunning, which is not to everyone's taste. The rate can be tweaked to try to mitigate this a bit, but this part is unavoidable.
(b) Your character might get screwed bit by bit, and not realize it until its too late. This is not dramatically different from current crawl (compare the XP system which also has sunk costs), but is still something to keep in mind.
(c) Perhaps Crawl should contain more monsters which force consumable use, for the limit to matter in practice.