Thursday, 12th March 2015, 01:39 by dpeg
dolphin: Oh, I don't mind the thread. It *is* interesting to see what players think on the matter. However, it is important to realise that even if you don't like a feature, it can still be good for something. This is not the dreaded "if you don't like it, then don't do it" argument!
For example, species, backgrounds and god are independent of each other, and while it is bad to increase their numbers, in principle more do no harm. Of course, you have witnessed removals of species and backgrounds, when we thought they weren't sufficiently distinguished (a notion that also changes with time... I believe the metric for species distinction has become coarser over the years). It's true that no god has ever been removed (one god came close), but gods are a bit better protected, since you don't see them when starting a game. So the list of gods can only overwhelm a new player when she is reaching the Temple for the first time, whereas the long lists of species or backgrounds can scare away people before they have started.
This point does not hold for monsters, spells, branches, items -- content that can come up in every game. While it is true that at large more gets added than removed (for reasons I explained elsewhere), things do get cut. PleasingFungus recently pointed out that the net gain in new monsters is much smaller than often bemoaned on these pages. Also, it is one thing to scream "off with their heads" all the time, but something very different to come up with good monster designs. In general, it's hard to say whether a new monster will work or not. So it's great when someone steps up and implements a new idea. Time and testing will tell if it is good enough to keep, or even to spread the gimmick to other monsters, or whether it's better culled.