Shoals Surfer
Posts: 253
Joined: Monday, 20th June 2016, 15:27
Thursday, 5th January 2017, 17:25
Unrandarts and stupid memes - Enemies of progress
This is a formal request to rethink the role of unrandarts in the game.
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I think they are, in their current incarnation and under current circumstances (explained later) actually a detrimental factor when it comes to increasing fun.
And I think we could use some fun increase right about now.
What makes me draw this bizarre conclusion is that most unrandarts have interesting semi-unique traits that are fun.
But because you are 1. unlikely to find one and 2. even more likely to find one that you actually consider equipping on your current character, you rarely get to experience said fun.
I don't personally agree with this, but at least I can understand it.
---
Now none this wouldn't be much of a problem by itself - the argument could be made that them not being in every game is part of the fun. But when combined with my next point...
...the stupid redundancy meme. Or obsolete meme, or uniqueness meme or design space meme, technical limitations meme... it goes by many names but it remains ugly all the same.
This unwritten Tavern law states that every feature in the game must be 100% unique and it must not vaguely resemble anything ever, no matter how far-fetched, flat-out wrong, or nonsensical the comparison between the supposedly similiar features is. Because of this, the special effects of unrandarts are completely locked and is also used to instantly shut down potentially interesting ideas for new gods, races etc. with no real reason.
You can easily see how INVALID this meme is by drawing the natural conclusion from it - "Trog gifts weapons, Oka gifts weapons, Gozag grants access to shops that sell weapons, remove 2 of them". You can repeat this lunacy with everything in the game until there is no game left to play. Of course things should not be a carbon copy of each other, a. the game's nature pretty much demands for certain things to be accessible in more than one way, and if these ways are at least somewhat different, that's "uniqueness" enough in most cases. And b. crawl is just not the type of game where we will see completely brand new, never-seen before things that have nothing in common with anything that has ever been unless the game gets completely rewritten from scratch.
Btw, directly attacking this meme is a death wish. It has grown too strong and the devs caved in under the pressure. So your only chance to get anything done around here is to abide by these meme laws, which is literally impossible as I just explained since the meme is made so that you can compare anything to anything on no grounds at all, thus instantly destroying any attempt at innovation.
This has become a memeocracy, with the "rule of meme" guiding all of it's decisions. I will not stand for it.
---
I'd find it more interesting to put unrandart effects on something more MMMMMMM... accessible. Like a god ability, spell, intrinsic, regular brand, wand or whatever. Rather than only having access to them every 5000 games.
But because of the design-space embargo, there is 0 hope to see let's say, a disarm ability/weapon passive on anything other than Captain's cutlass which you will never find.
---
TL;DR: Don't block interesting "design space" with features that you will use in 0.1% of your games AND killing new ideas on the basis of memetic (INVALID) reasoning. Thank you.
---
I think they are, in their current incarnation and under current circumstances (explained later) actually a detrimental factor when it comes to increasing fun.
And I think we could use some fun increase right about now.
What makes me draw this bizarre conclusion is that most unrandarts have interesting semi-unique traits that are fun.
But because you are 1. unlikely to find one and 2. even more likely to find one that you actually consider equipping on your current character, you rarely get to experience said fun.
I don't personally agree with this, but at least I can understand it.
---
Now none this wouldn't be much of a problem by itself - the argument could be made that them not being in every game is part of the fun. But when combined with my next point...
...the stupid redundancy meme. Or obsolete meme, or uniqueness meme or design space meme, technical limitations meme... it goes by many names but it remains ugly all the same.
This unwritten Tavern law states that every feature in the game must be 100% unique and it must not vaguely resemble anything ever, no matter how far-fetched, flat-out wrong, or nonsensical the comparison between the supposedly similiar features is. Because of this, the special effects of unrandarts are completely locked and is also used to instantly shut down potentially interesting ideas for new gods, races etc. with no real reason.
You can easily see how INVALID this meme is by drawing the natural conclusion from it - "Trog gifts weapons, Oka gifts weapons, Gozag grants access to shops that sell weapons, remove 2 of them". You can repeat this lunacy with everything in the game until there is no game left to play. Of course things should not be a carbon copy of each other, a. the game's nature pretty much demands for certain things to be accessible in more than one way, and if these ways are at least somewhat different, that's "uniqueness" enough in most cases. And b. crawl is just not the type of game where we will see completely brand new, never-seen before things that have nothing in common with anything that has ever been unless the game gets completely rewritten from scratch.
Btw, directly attacking this meme is a death wish. It has grown too strong and the devs caved in under the pressure. So your only chance to get anything done around here is to abide by these meme laws, which is literally impossible as I just explained since the meme is made so that you can compare anything to anything on no grounds at all, thus instantly destroying any attempt at innovation.
This has become a memeocracy, with the "rule of meme" guiding all of it's decisions. I will not stand for it.
---
I'd find it more interesting to put unrandart effects on something more MMMMMMM... accessible. Like a god ability, spell, intrinsic, regular brand, wand or whatever. Rather than only having access to them every 5000 games.
But because of the design-space embargo, there is 0 hope to see let's say, a disarm ability/weapon passive on anything other than Captain's cutlass which you will never find.
---
TL;DR: Don't block interesting "design space" with features that you will use in 0.1% of your games AND killing new ideas on the basis of memetic (INVALID) reasoning. Thank you.
- For this message the author removeelyvilon has received thanks:
- Malevolent
