Temple Termagant
Posts: 13
Joined: Friday, 17th February 2012, 08:21
Early game vs mid game vs late game
I find early game crawl to be exceedingly boring. So boring that I get extremely frustrated trying to get what I call a 'functional guy'. A functional guy is a guy who's cleared lair, and is pondering how to proceed with spells/skills. When I get a 'functional guy', I find the game extremely fun.
Dying on a non-functional guy (an early game character) doesn't bother me. What bothers me is how somewhere around 90% of my characters are dead non-functional guys.
Early game isn't challenging, because there's often no options to try. Do I drink a random potion I haven't IDed to beat this annoying unique, or do I just press TAB a few more times and start over? I assure you, it'll be slowing, paralysis or poison. Or maybe mutation. Could be restore attributes.
Do I try this here wand? Oh, nice. It just healed him. Or hasted him.
I often play Spriggans to avoid this, since the early game on Spriggans is relatively painless. I do not understand melee guys, at all. I blow things up. On my 'functional guys', if i have mana, I am winning fights, since I've played enough to understand my targets. The vast, vast majority of 'non-functional guys' run into Grinder, or a giant frog, or a hill giant, or an unseen horror, and just can't handle that. Spriggans somewhat bypass this by being faster than everyone. Besides maybe bees. I can't tell you how often I've been on that brink between non-functional and functional, and opened a door to bees and been like 'Uh, crap.'
Deaths of functional guys = learning experience. Deaths of non-functional guys = frustration.
This divide between the frustration of the early game and the joy of the mid/late game is something the development team needs to look at. I can tell you that I would find the mid game more fun if the challenge shifted to it. The mid game is often trivial, since you usually get 1 or 2 big nukes operational (but situational, due to food costs) and anything challenging you just trade food for... continuing to play. The late game is when you round out your big nukes with support spells, drop the hunger costs to something you can deal with, and then have to play tactically, since it'll throw difficult situations at you regardless.
So, to recap:
Early game = boring because you have few options available, a bunch of unIDed potions that typically turn out to be paralysis or slowing or poison, no way to deal with the plethora of OOD crap. Early game is insanely difficulty as a result.
Mid game = boring because _ALL_ encounters besides an early Mara, Mennas or Boris can be handled. You have 1 or 2 big nukes you can use to clear out difficult situations, or enough options (ID'ed might, zerk, agility, brilliance potions to handle difficult situations, wands, etc). Once you're functional, you just cruise on autopilot until D:20 or so. Mid game is trivially easy, but often enjoyable because it's so rare that you enjoy just blowing things up with no real challenge.
Late game = tactically difficult. You've got all your big spells up, with support spells and items. Any mistake you make is going to be in how you handle difficult situations, and a death is a learning experience. Late game is challenging and fun.