Korean feedback

[basil]

What I hope, like every other player, is that the game is fun and challenging with combos that I like playing the most.
It just doesn't give me any pleasure if I have to make my own challenges (I shall play with my left eye closed and don't use any items with letter "g" in its name).

I wasn't really criticising the difficulty, but rather that i feel it's mechanics are being removed and only features are being implemented.

Gr takes away having to think about defenses or defensive skilling, and Trog takes away adapting to book generation and gives you exceeding strong game abilities for no investment. So if you're not being challenged by playing an easy combo, maybe fool around with Gr not-Be or something else that restricts your decisions so severely? Hu's pretty fun in that respect.

Anyway, nausea was just a nuisance like sickness before it that didn't make the game more difficult or interesting. And item destruction slowed the game down substantially when it worked in full force (i.e., dropping all iof your scrolls in order of usefulness when sticky-flamed), without contributing anything that was good (in my opinion) to the game. All that nausea and item destruction did was perhaps make you expend one or two rations throughout a game and reduce your available consumables respectively; if those consequences are desired, perhaps instead suggest reducing food generation in any number of ways, and reducing consumable generation. Regarding no item weight, I like it but I'll skip the response because I think it'd be too much a matter of opinion.

That said, feel free to recommend new, more interesting mechanics; my best work has been from other people's ideas, and I think it's pretty nice to get community involvement towards Crawl development.

[Leafsnail]

You can drop all your scrolls on the floor every time you see a mottled dragon if you want to continue to experience all the excitement of item destruction.

[Zammy]

You can drop all your scrolls on the floor every time you see a mottled dragon if you want to continue to experience all the excitement of item destruction.

For me item dest was more like "hmm, got banished to abyss just when I found nice bunch of blink scrolls. Hope I don't get set on fire by smoke demons too many times before I get out". Or not having silly amounts of consumables in pan (or in the course of entire game).
Item dest was a lot more than the drop scrolls in fear of getting on fire. Yet many people are totally fixed on mottled dragons.

[Leafsnail]

That's because mottled dragons perfectly embodied what item destruction brought to the game. I guess a few of the extended branches (that I'd point out most people don't play, making it a bad argument for a mechanic that affects everybody) lack the "you can just go back and get your other scrolls if some of them burn" factor, but they still had that wonderful scroll dropping minigame.

[crate]

Item destruction is a bad example to bring up, since it had actual gameplay effects and was removed because players hated it, not because it was bad design in some other way. Weight is a better example, since in a game where you can go pick up items you left behind it does not actually accomplish anything meaningful.

[Croases]

Weight still imposes meaningful choices by limiting the amount of options you can have at any one point. It's just that item slot limitations do the same thing much better.

Making weight more important would have been just as acceptable as removing it.

[crate]

The item slot limits don't actually do anything meaningful either (like I said, you can just go pick up the items you dropped), and if there was an acceptable way to provide an interface for more than 52 items I'm sure that it would be considered.

[Croases]

Only because these limitations are too lenient and the items truly vital to progress are too few. If the choice came down to, say, having to take either !heal wounds or ?blink, then we'd be talking.

[Hirsch I]

limit inventory to 2 potions, 2 scrolls, a wand, and what you can wear, and give x turns for the player to pick up something on the ground. everything he drops is destroyed in x-alot turns. ~tada!
- makes the game much harder
- reduces inventory management
- "what do I take" is suddenly a meaningful decision
- speeds up looking at the inventory
I see no downsides.

[giovform]

Weight is a better example, since in a game where you can go pick up items you left behind it does not actually accomplish anything meaningful.

When you are in a place you can't go back immediately, it is meaningful. There were a few places, but instead of increasing the number of places and the meaningfulness, it was removed, as was removed the excitement those situations brought. Make crawl have two options of games:

- Kids style (nothing is ever corroded permanently, destructed and you are Hulk)

- Real man style

[nilsbloodaxe]

When you are in a place you can't go back immediately, it is meaningful. There were a few places, but instead of increasing the number of places and the meaningfulness, it was removed, as was removed the excitement those situations brought.

Portal levels, Pan, and Abyss are the locations where this would have had the most potential to be meaningful. With the exception of the Abyss, these levels are voluntary, and so it is far less likely to be meaningful there. That means that limiting weight (which is mostly a limit on potions since scrolls weren't that heavy and wands each have their own slot, making the 52 limit more important) having an effect because of inaccessibility of a stash is mostly going to deal with the Abyss or stupidity. And frankly, I doubt that not being able to access a stash was really the cause of much of the tension in the Abyss.

[Leafsnail]

My ability to tolerate irritating mechanics makes me a real man

[Sprucery]

If I am a weak mage, and can carry 20+ rations, then starvation will never "await me" on the Labyrinth. That was a price for being weak. Now everything goes into INT and/or DEX.

Hmm, I don't remember if I've ever had to eat more than one ration in a Labyrinth. Usually there's no need to eat anything there. A few rations should be enough for anyone.

[giovform]

If I am a weak mage, and can carry 20+ rations, then starvation will never "await me" on the Labyrinth. That was a price for being weak. Now everything goes into INT and/or DEX.

Hmm, I don't remember if I've ever had to eat more than one ration in a Labyrinth. Usually there's no need to eat anything there. A few rations should be enough for anyone.

You are awesome! I never died of starvation there too, but I know it has happened - the text that appears when you are about to enter the Labyrinth never scared much, but it could. Now it really makes no sense at all.

Spoiler: show

[Roderic]

If I am a weak mage, and can carry 20+ rations, then starvation will never "await me" on the Labyrinth. That was a price for being weak. Now everything goes into INT and/or DEX.

Hmm, I don't remember if I've ever had to eat more than one ration in a Labyrinth. Usually there's no need to eat anything there. A few rations should be enough for anyone.

You are awesome! I never died of starvation there too, but I know it has happened - the text that appears when you are about to enter the Labyrinth never scared much, but it could. Now it really makes no sense at all.

Time to remove labyrinth then

[giovform]

hahaha! remove all!

[Patashu]

You don't get it guys, we have to have labyrinth as long as nethack has sokoban. It's the ultimate game of chicken

[and into]

This is great, and I'd love to thank your friend—but how would one go about doing that?

Here; I sent him a link to the thread.

Cool—thanks for translating for us, if you are reading this!

Weight is a better example, since in a game where you can go pick up items you left behind it does not actually accomplish anything meaningful.

When you are in a place you can't go back immediately, it is meaningful. There were a few places, but instead of increasing the number of places and the meaningfulness, it was removed, as was removed the excitement those situations brought.

"Meaningful" doesn't equal good, and for the changes you want to happen to not produce terrible game play, they would necessarily entail much more fundamental changes to Crawl.

For DCSS, outside of early game (and rare cases of extremely weird luck), you have a very wide array of options for dealing with stuff, and the game has invested a lot of design effort and attention in giving the player lots of ways to get out of tough spots provided you can 1.) identify danger early and 2.) use your consumables effectively. That's what a big part of Crawl game play consists in; the emphasis is on how you use various items and abilities and options. If you are willing to adapt to what you find, you will almost certainly have enough stuff to win the game. (This is in contrast to other games where scarcity of options and resources is more central to the game play; think of old school Oregon Trail.)

Now, if you couldn't go back up stairs in Crawl, or if items disappeared when not carried with you (which would make the whole game analogous to Pan), or whatever, then yes you could build more meaningful game play out of equipment/inventory choices. But then you would be really fundamentally changing Crawl's infrastructure and making it a different game. On the other hand, if you keep all the underlying mechanics the same, but just limited item slot number, or if you added in a lot more item destruction, you would add a lot more frustration, but very little legitimate challenge, because you can just go back to a stash and grab whatever you need.

At any rate, I don't think that having a high tolerance for (pardon the overused term) "fake difficulty" makes one more or less of a man. I never felt legitimately challenged or threatened by item destruction or weight limits, so I'm glad those things have been removed. I welcome their removal, not because the game is now easier without them, but because I never felt them to be all that relevant in terms of my chances to beat the game, and yet those mechanics nonetheless intruded on game play. Intrusive =/= challenging.

[PleasingFungus]

You are awesome! I never died of starvation there too, but I know it has happened - the text that appears when you are about to enter the Labyrinth never scared much, but it could. Now it really makes no sense at all.

Across all online versions, out of 65,015 characters entering labyrinths, 3511 died there. 67 of those deaths were to starvation; roughly 2%. A mere 0.1% of lab entrances led to death by starvation.

We can then conclude, logically, that the lab entrance text makes only 99.9% as much sense as it did before.

[johlstei]

I am the 2%.

[giovform]

You are awesome! I never died of starvation there too, but I know it has happened - the text that appears when you are about to enter the Labyrinth never scared much, but it could. Now it really makes no sense at all.

Across all online versions, out of 65,015 characters entering labyrinths, 3511 died there. 67 of those deaths were to starvation; roughly 2%. A mere 0.1% of lab entrances led to death by starvation.

We can then conclude, logically, that the lab entrance text makes only 99.9% as much sense as it did before.

What does it say now? Did you change it? "Beware, starvation waits" or something like that. If it is the same, you are just reinforcing my argument that the text doesn't make sense. Funny the blind thanks under any circumstances.

[giovform]

At any rate, I don't think that having a high tolerance for (pardon the overused term) "fake difficulty" makes one more or less of a man. I never felt legitimately challenged or threatened by item destruction or weight limits, so I'm glad those things have been removed. I welcome their removal, not because the game is now easier without them, but because I never felt them to be all that relevant in terms of my chances to beat the game, and yet those mechanics nonetheless intruded on game play. Intrusive =/= challenging.

Sure and into, it was just a little joke and I know I can just accept the changes and play, or don't play anymore. The majority (participative majority) wins and there is nothing else to say, but I felt I had to say anyway even knowing it would let to nothing.

[Leafsnail]

I'm pretty sure that roughly 0% of the starvation deaths in labyrinths were caused by item weight limits

[Siegurt]

I'm pretty sure that roughly 0% of the starvation deaths in labyrinths were caused by item weight limits

I've never died from starvation due to weight limits, however I have played a low strength character, gotten to a level with a lab on it, with only 1 fruit-type thing in my inventory a couple times (because I couldn't keep enough rations on my person, with my preferred consumables and armour, but could eat chunks, so 1 food thing was all I needed)

In those cases, I have gone back to a stash for an additional ration or three, and in one case, doing so made me miss the timed portal (I didn't happen to have found a ?mapping)

While certainly an edge case, the weight limit with regards to food in this case did effect my ability to do labyrinths in a significant way.

FWIW I do consider the removal of the weight limit to have made the game easier, by a very small amount, and more convenient to play, by a much much larger amount.

[Winwons]

Koreans are the best gamers, we should listen to them.

[Leafsnail]

To be honest I don't really see how you could lock rations out of your inventory, even in the most extreme circumstances. I could always carry at least one even when playing spriggan spellcasters.

e: I guess if you carried around huge stacks of each consumable you might? Dropping a bit from each stack wouldn't have any real gameplay consequence.

[duvessa]

I don't think I have ever used more than about 1000 nutrition in a labyrinth except from berserking or something

[PleasingFungus]

Got in touch with my friend again, and had him translate & post this:

Hello! Thanks to everyone for the responses - it’s great to hear from players on the other side of the world!

Responding to the most common feedback:

- Superficial parts of the game are being simplified, with changes like jewelry auto-ID and the removal of item weights. Complexity is also being added in other places, with the addition of gods, races, monsters & items. The goal is to focus on what crawl does well, rather than being a bad “dungeons and dragons” or “nethack” clone.

- Everyone knows that the “demigod” race is boring; no one can agree on how to fix it, or even if it should be fixed, since some people like such a simple race. Someday maybe it will be changed.

- Everyone also agrees that “extended” (Pandemonium/Hell/Tomb) is not very good. We are working on slowly improving it, but it is very large, and most characters never even go there. So, it is never the first priority.

- Poison magic is intended to be stronger than average early on, and later than average weaker. This is to provide an interesting choice for players: do you spend XP on something that will help you survive the very dangerous early game, at the cost of being somewhat weaker later, when you need to diversify? If you added powerful high-level poison spells, there would be no point.

Two specific responses:

- Thank you to 크롤러 for reporting the Pan bug! We had no idea about it.

- To the person who described our language progress as being very slow, it is worse than that - the developer who led work on localization left, some time ago, and there is currently no one with the skills or expertise to work on multi-language support. I would like to report happier news, but I can’t.

Thank you all again!

Perhaps I'll see if I can do this again next year!

[Sar]

Everyone knows that the “demigod” race is boring

Some very experienced players on this forum (and also me!) don't consider them boring. Now, you can argue that playtime does not make their opinion more significant; but I would argue it doesn't make it completely insignificant and non-existent as well.

[duvessa]

That poison magic claim confuses me. Do you really think that VM has an easier early game than the elementalists, and that poison arrow/cloud are worse than bolt of fire? I suppose you only said it was intended to be the case, not that it actually is.

Also the syntax of "stronger than average early on, and later than average weaker" is painful for me to think about.

[Sar]

stronger than average early on, and later than average weaker

/

[PleasingFungus]

Everyone knows that the “demigod” race is boring

Some very experienced players on this forum (and also me!) don't consider them boring. Now, you can argue that playtime does not make their opinion more significant; but I would argue it doesn't make it completely insignificant and non-existent as well.

Yeah, that was poorly phrased on my part. Perhaps better to say "it's widely considered boring here, too"...

stronger than average early on, and later than average weaker

/

Right - I noticed and fixed that before actually handing it to my friend to translate, but forgot to fix it before copy-pasting here.

I am a master of language

[KoboldLord]

Any chance you can get your friend to do more surveys? I have idle curiosity, at the very least, and if the Korean community feels like we care about their opinion, they might want to try their hand at contributing. Even in spite of the language barrier, a larger pool of people reporting bugs or writing vaults or so on is a good thing.

[PleasingFungus]

Any chance you can get your friend to do more surveys? I have idle curiosity, at the very least, and if the Korean community feels like we care about their opinion, they might want to try their hand at contributing. Even in spite of the language barrier, a larger pool of people reporting bugs or writing vaults or so on is a good thing.

I'd like that too, but I feel like I've imposed quite enough for a while.