pratamawirya wrote:But who actually does that? How many players actually do that?
Also, people don't just do boring stuff like that. There's always a reason.
Whether or not people exploit a mechanic is irrelevant to whether or not it's a good mechanic. There are many reasons not to exploit tedious mechanics - e.g. tedium - but as long as one of the reasons
to exploit it is that it increases your odds of winning, then it's a bad mechanic.
Because Fo are frail (because being a little bit beefier human but with permastasis kind of sucks), they encourage a boring way of playing that is digging killholes everywhere they can. Really, this line of thought isn't that hard to understand.
(Do you realize we use "encourage" rather liberally here?)
I don't understand how killholes utility are related to Fo's frailty. They would also be very useful on a Dg or Hu or whatever.
The only plausible argument I could see is that you are more likely to exploit a bad mechanic if you think your odds of winning without it are lower relative to other races, but I think the problems with this argument are pretty obvious
My understanding of "encourage" is "if you play this way, you are more likely to win" because that's the most important factor for the player as envisioned by the design philosophy. So the game "encourages" using two-handed weapons at high skill, but does not encourage repeatedly apporting the Orb of Zot.