Why Remove Stat Death?

[whale]

This list of development planning (last modified today) includes "Removed stat death"
https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... g:planning

If this is true, then how come? I've always thought of it as a brilliant feature. Okay, the dex death was a bit silly, but other two were actually believable. And giving monsters other ways to kill a player besides doing old boring damage is a good thing, right?

Spoiler: show

sry if I'm posting on a previously discussed topic, but I couldn't find anything on this in GDD

[BlackSheep]

Remove stat death, have stat loss below 0 cause damage instead

Death after spending a while with a stat at 0 no longer occurs, but the
negative effects (slowing, significant stat-dependent restrictions)
and the recovery period after restoring from 0 still exist, and
additional stat loss when below 0 causes some irresistible damage.
Actual stat death was rare, slightly spoilery in implementation (in
particular the death timer being precisely 90 actions) and the stat
zero restrictions remain a pretty good reason to not want to have your
stats at zero for any length of time.

[Siegurt]

viewtopic.php?p=115076#p115076

[njvack]

It's as though the dev team is trying to remove all the annoying things in Crawl

[whale]

It's as though the dev team is trying to remove all the annoying things in Crawl

Well, some features gone is a great thing. I'm all for the nausea removal, item destruction rehauling etc. It's just the stat death was a sort of a pet feature for me I suppose. It was quirky and scary and rare enough to be interesting and add depth to the game. I recall feeling elated the first time I died to zero Int, but that's just me I guess.

Now, granted, the new mechanic is okay, but it's arguably equally spoilery and maybe even less intuitive (why further stat loss damages me?). Stat death was edgy and roguelike-like.

[rchandra]

being at 0 is still very lethal as you still have the half-speed, paralysis, etc. so you will want it gone, you just won't die while making that happen - and if you can't remove it, you have a "challenge" instead of an immediate death.

[brendan]

being at 0 is still very lethal as you still have the half-speed, paralysis, etc. so you will want it gone, you just won't die while making that happen - and if you can't remove it, you have a "challenge" instead of an immediate death.

Exactly. Stat instadeath is gone. It's a drag to put on a piece of jewelry and drop dead. We want you to lose the game because you made bad choices, not because we made bad choices.