Pandemonium Purger
Posts: 1341
Joined: Monday, 24th October 2011, 06:13
Sky Beasts
I think sky beasts were a great addition to the game when looking at how crawl introduces its mechanics to new players. Before this addition, a player's first encounter with an invisible character would be an orc wizard or ogre mage, which does not necessarily teach the player how to deal with invisibility. Much worse, they are often surrounded by plain companions (orcs, ogres) who cannot go invisible and may distract the player from noticing that the purple O of the bunch just disappeared. With sky beasts, you learn they are going to become visible relatively soon, and that you can rely on positioning to try to hit them when they become invisible again. I think this mechanic teaches a new player what invisibility means - harder to hit, attacking based on patterns and not guessing - and helps when the eventual unseen horror comes out swinging.
There are a lot of chances to use this mechanic introduction style for other specific monster types or uniques. Grinder draws a lot of complaints for having full-effect paralysis. It looks like the devs aren't about to change paralysis any time soon, so why not use Grinder as a stepping stone for players to understand and develop a healthy fear of paralysis? Give grinder a turn restricted paralyze, and leave giant eyes how they are.
Anti-magic, as far as I know, has no place or introduction in the early game. I sometimes think that this brand spawning on monster's weapons is a bit silly, and that against players it would be better to ease in the mechanic with a few monsters capable of stealing very small amounts of mana by ranged or melee.
Rotting should belong in the early game, and I think necrophages should have a higher chance of causing rotting but it should be reduced to a maximum of one hit point lost. It should function like glow, where the negative effect does not necessarily happen instantly, but the rotting is reduced (removed) the moment the hit point is lost. When a potion of curing is used, a message should state that a rotted hit point has been cured.
Crazy Yiuf feels like he's introducing the chaos brand to players, but the lesson never unfolds into a more pervasive threat from chaos effects. I've thought for some time now that there should be a spider's nest-like-portal vault of chaos effects. Maybe a small area with abyss-like terrain, but under the control of Xom the Curator? The Library of Xom?
Corrosion is probably alright as it is. Same with poison, cold, confusion and teleportation. I'm not sure how negative energy could be introduced to a player.
What mechanics do you think Crawl could do a better job at presenting to the player? I hear the abyss mentioned a lot on these forums. Scaling the abyss to the players level may work, but it also might give them false impressions of the abyss later in the game. The suggestions I'm putting forward aren't intended to give the player a misunderstanding of how these mechanics ultimately play out, but to teach the newer player how to deal with these threats and to spice up the early game with more dangerous but temporary effects.