Out Of Depth flavour idea

[mumra]

Something occurred to me about the OOD timer. It's a feature of the game that's still very spoilery in nature - it's completely non-obvious to most players until they make a comment on the forum like, "I got a centaur on D:1, what gives?" - and it encourages watching the turn count (which isn't even particularly visible by default) to see when you need to move on.

So my idea was, how about if the game started dropping some flavourful hints when the counter was close and when it expired? This would hopefully make newer players aware of the vague (and completely random) time limit, without getting bogged down in numbers, and in a way that could introduce some element of fear. Things like:

"You experience a sense of urgency and are driven to press forward"
"You feel you have lingered too long in this place"

Up to:

"Distant voices chide you for your tardiness"
"A chill in your bones tells you something is out of place here"

etc.

Thinking story-wise, perhaps OOD encounters can be explained by the fact that deeper denizens have received word that a wet-behind-the-ears adventurer is aimlessly wandering around in the top levels, and they're heading up there to finish things early and go home for a nice cup of tea?

Maybe when OOD monsters enter your line of sight they could have special case speech so there's no doubt as to why they're there. So when the centaur comes appears around the corner he says, "You dawdle so. I've come to get this over with before lunchtime!"

[Galefury]

I never noticed triggering the OOD counter, and I play quite slowly (turns and real time). Consequently I don't think warning about it is necessary. Also irrelevant warning messages would cause a lot more confusion than the status quo.

[mumra]

I never noticed triggering the OOD counter, and I play quite slowly (turns and real time). Consequently I don't think warning about it is necessary. Also irrelevant warning messages would cause a lot more confusion than the status quo.

Personally, I never notice it either - I regularly take a number of turns in excess of the typical amounts to explore a level, but I've never had one of these ridiculously overpowered encounters that I see people talking about.

But, it does quite often appear to cause confusion for new players when it does happen (perhaps when those players are less aware how to deal with the threat).

With the introduction of more flavour around that system, however, perhaps it could be made more extreme and more relevant. If there were obvious messages relating to it, then perhaps the more serious OOD encounters could trigger more often, perhaps even more serious foes could be allowed to appear.

What perhaps needs to be clarified is, what exactly is the purpose of the OOD timer? Presumably it's to encourage players to move through levels quickly. As a mechanic I'd say it's not really achieving that effect as is. Players like myself and Galefury ignore it and explore each level completely no matter how long it takes (except for having to move on say due to a threatening unique), dealing with any OOD threats or running away without really noticing it. New players are unaware of the timer anyway and will simply experience frustration when killed by something OOD without ever knowing the reason behind it (unless they think to post on these forums).

Also there is already a mechanism in place to encourage players to move on quickly - namely the food clock.

I guess what I'm saying is in it's current form, the OOD timer could be completely removed - or if there's a compelling reason for keeping it then perhaps it could be reinforced into something more meaningful.

[Kate]

It's not supposed to stop you exploring each floor completely or to encourage you to rush (it's rare to get anywhere near to triggering it in normal play, although it can happen very occasionally), it's supposed to stop you remaining there long after the floor is cleared farming the respawning monsters for experience, particularly for races where the food clock isn't a factor.

Possibly some people are confusing regular out-of-depth monsters which can happen at almost any time (very early centaurs, etc) with the harsher ones that are triggered by spending thousands of turns on a level?

[Stormfox]

I played the first Shiren the Wanderer on the DS and it has its own mechanism for preventing players from dawdling (which later games in the series probably share). If you spend too long on a level, a divine wind sweeps you back to the starting town, which drops you back to level 1 with no equipment (in effect negating that run, except for any progress toward the carry-over quests). You got a couple of unmistakable warnings before it happened, so in theory it should never have caught you unaware.