Slime Squisher
Posts: 400
Joined: Saturday, 24th September 2011, 03:45
some crawl despoilering tweaks
I. recolor '(Hit _)'
You can't give console players help if they don't see that message in the corner, and the blue doesn't stand out. I recommend a bright orange or magenta, or one of the glowing colors like mutagenic.
II. Have show_game_turns/show_gold_turns on by default
And have these numbers explained in the game's tutorial.
Speed in Crawl is not always intuitive. It may be the most important number in the game, yet it is completely hidden by default. Why? Is it any wonder why the uninformed praise Na^Chei when the only thing they see is the massive boost to their stats? How many new Troglodites have you seen die because they were exploring while slowed+exhausted? SwiftHaste are possibly the best spells in the game, yet neophytes rarely use them because (I'm guessing) they don't get direct feedback beyond the buff message. An explained turn counter could fix these things.
III. Weapon stats
The amount of times I’ve seen splatters wielding hand axes in Zot suggests something is wrong. A new player finds '+9,+2 falchion of killdudes {flame, +Inv rPois rN+ Str+1 Sinv Stealth+}' -look at all the things it does! - they don't understand why this weapon is outclassed by a vanilla demon blade. The trouble is the game doesn't actually explain anywhere that base damage and min delay skill are nearly always more important than anything else a weapon does.
I suggest that weapon and weapon skill texts are expanded to emphasize the importance of base damage, as well as explicitly stating the skill needed for min delay.