Tomb Titivator
Posts: 895
Joined: Saturday, 15th June 2013, 23:54
Color coded difficulty levels
Sandman25 wrote:Other games have explicit difficulty levels, crawl has hidden difficulty levels: species, backgrounds, gods...
I actually posted this before but it was tacked onto a larger & different idea, so it kind of got kicked to the side.
For the character selection screen, 'easy' species/backgrounds would show up green(gargoyle/berserker), normal/medium difficulty species would show up yellow(human/transmuter), and hard/difficult species would show up red(mummy/wanderer). Then once you select a species, the background page shows up with colors/difficulties based on your species(and vice-versa if you choose background first). Then when praying over an altar, it'll show the God's name by the same colors depending on how easy they are to play & learn.
Newer players would be able to jump straight into the strongest combinations without dozens of trial & error games, limiting early frustrations.
Then once they learn how to play and improve, and get some CeHu/MiBe wins under their belt, they'd jump into a yellow combo and improve some more. Sure, they might know they're playing something a little tougher on the inside, but it'll confirm any doubts about their game improving.
Then pros win every 'hard' combo in the game to show off their skills/challenge themselves.
The current 'recommended/not recommended' style is alright, but it ends up recommending anything decent. SpNe & SpEn are on the same level by this scale, whereas they'd probably be yellow & green respectively in the above idea. This adds a more user-friendly character selection, while solidifying the fact that DCSS has a built-in difficulty level already, virtually removing the need for 'small balance' change discussions.