Temple Termagant
Posts: 9
Joined: Saturday, 2nd April 2011, 20:34
Monday, 4th April 2011, 14:37
Very disappointed about the changes I've heard about
I will begin by saying this that I have not actually played 0.8 yet, but so far from what I've heard I am expecting to be very disappointed in the way that the developers have nerfed fire elementalists and the way that the game developers try to "balance" the game in general by nerfing useful abilities in general.
Let me preface this by saying that I have been almost exclusively focused on sludge elf fire elementalists. I chose this class/combo, because it seemed to offer some challenge but also not too hard and room for versatility. Originally I thought of playing as a fighter class but the general consensus on the net was that in 0.7 fighters had become too difficult. Playtesting a few MDFi of the truth of this: fighters (who originally had fewer options to begin with) having their armor nerfed made them generally unplayable and un-fun. I've had lots of fun learning about the class/race combo and doing my best to get as far as possible. It's been great.
In 0.8 I'm glad they made armor playable again. But they also decided to "balance" it by making robes enchantable only up to +2 enchantment, removing ac/ev bonuses from randarts, and making sticky flame a one square blast radius (this is after, of course, nerfing ALL ranged spells in general) This doesn't make the game fun, it makes it discouraging to play the new version. And the armor thing doesn't even make much sense to me, the original problem was that armored classes had become too frail, the solution to make casters frailer to make it better does not seem sensible to me. This weird striving for consistency and balance not only doesn't make sense, it's also against the game philosophy that argues for gradients of difficulty and the reason why ogres have never seriously been made more powerful. For me it just makes me not really want to invest the time and energy in updating to the new version and has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Here's the crux of the issue: Crawl is already really really hard. Probably one of the hardest games I've ever played. When new versions come out you naturally want to see all the new shiny things around. But when you spend countless hours figuring out how to make a class work only to find out that they made it nigh unplayable in the new version because your barely survivable character's abilities were "too powerful" is not fun in the slightest. actually I might just go back to 0.4.5 or .5 again the versions I started on just to give me consistency.
On a side note though, I would like to say that there are many many things that sound really fun too. Mummies getting a badly needed upgrade to playable, as are the concepts of phase bats, the new god etc. makes me really want to play mummies now.
Does anyone else feel this way or am I the only one?
Let me preface this by saying that I have been almost exclusively focused on sludge elf fire elementalists. I chose this class/combo, because it seemed to offer some challenge but also not too hard and room for versatility. Originally I thought of playing as a fighter class but the general consensus on the net was that in 0.7 fighters had become too difficult. Playtesting a few MDFi of the truth of this: fighters (who originally had fewer options to begin with) having their armor nerfed made them generally unplayable and un-fun. I've had lots of fun learning about the class/race combo and doing my best to get as far as possible. It's been great.
In 0.8 I'm glad they made armor playable again. But they also decided to "balance" it by making robes enchantable only up to +2 enchantment, removing ac/ev bonuses from randarts, and making sticky flame a one square blast radius (this is after, of course, nerfing ALL ranged spells in general) This doesn't make the game fun, it makes it discouraging to play the new version. And the armor thing doesn't even make much sense to me, the original problem was that armored classes had become too frail, the solution to make casters frailer to make it better does not seem sensible to me. This weird striving for consistency and balance not only doesn't make sense, it's also against the game philosophy that argues for gradients of difficulty and the reason why ogres have never seriously been made more powerful. For me it just makes me not really want to invest the time and energy in updating to the new version and has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Here's the crux of the issue: Crawl is already really really hard. Probably one of the hardest games I've ever played. When new versions come out you naturally want to see all the new shiny things around. But when you spend countless hours figuring out how to make a class work only to find out that they made it nigh unplayable in the new version because your barely survivable character's abilities were "too powerful" is not fun in the slightest. actually I might just go back to 0.4.5 or .5 again the versions I started on just to give me consistency.
On a side note though, I would like to say that there are many many things that sound really fun too. Mummies getting a badly needed upgrade to playable, as are the concepts of phase bats, the new god etc. makes me really want to play mummies now.
Does anyone else feel this way or am I the only one?
