[Proposal] QUEST SYSTEM, GAMEPLAY TWISTS

[Enish]

Each dungeon can be dug further.


Hello,

I would like to share some basic ideas of mine, the most important section is COMBAT. I don't understand why fighting with an axe would allow anyone to make full circles devastating everything in 360 degrees area, how to hit an insect with an arrow, how to not break your knuckles hitting the plate armour or how to - catch a ghost in a net. The second thing is the exploration itself, a good game need some sense of mystery and research, not tedious quests - 'give item X for Y'. Finally, if we agree that starting and ending are the most memorable parts of our actions - enhance these in the actual game.



COMBAT

1)

I would like to see skeletons/wasps immune to piercing damage.

2)

Axe Cleave dealing damage with only 3 tiles - the direction of attack and 2 adjacent.
Alternatively, divide Axe attacks: 50% are vertical [Cleave] and 50% are horizontal making the swing stronger [Slay].

3)

If unarmed and unskilled - there could be a chance of dealing damage to yourself if your US is below the XL of the monster. Iron Gloves granting a good bonus to Unarmed.

4)

Phantoms and Ghosts immune to physical damage.

Pray command would render them vulnerable to attacks. Why praying? Any god want to get as many souls as possible to his realm. Demigods could gain bonuses for dealing with player's ghosts - like getting temporary aptitude boost to the skill which palyer's character was most experienced in - Dg race is difficult by default. Ghost Hunting!

EXPLORING

1)

Finding a Map of Treasure. The treasure would be hidden in random place beneath the walls, in the ancient structure of dungeon. The player, knowing the location could unlock in this way Treasure Trove without sacrificng item - which is tedious. The Ashenzari worshipers and already implemented passive scanning mutation could detect anormality in dungeon's structure and could create a great surprise element. Shoals being pirate friendly are naturally great context for this change. In this situation adding a Ring of Swimming would be great, and allow character to grab items that are sunk, like missiles, which can happen from time to time in each part of the dungeon.

2)

Make Wand of Diging leave a sveral of stones in the new corridor. In 1/10 of attempts a Large Rock just for Ogre desperates; In the Orcish Mines - add a chance to find a several pieces of gold.

AMBIENCE

1)

Make the enterenace ALWAYS pre-created, not procedural, thus making it look so cool and guaranting that a pack of 3 kobolds will not gank your mage up leaving your hero with NO chances of survival.

2)

Escaping with the Orb... Maybe another algorithm? Monsters being spammed always in the same way isn't a sophisticated method of creating a most memorable exeperience in a whole clever craftsmanship.

SCORING / QUESTING

1)

At the start of the game generate several quests/personality traits for a character to gain a bonus SCORE. For example - Greedy - collecting 10.000 coins at the end of a game, Devoted - for not changing a god, Fit - Eat below 100 chunks of food in a gameplay.
The game could generate 4 of those quests, and only fulfilling up to 3 of them would actually increase your score.

Each race/class could have unique quests list possible to get. Each god, after praying at his altar at max piety could give an additional quest. Maybe completing it would give a bonus piety star?




How good it could be if at least one of these ideas would be active in the next release of Crawl: Stone Soup?

[Dharmy]

I liked your use of formatting.

[dynast]

I don't understand why fighting with an axe would allow anyone to make full circles devastating everything in 360 degrees area, how to hit an insect with an arrow, how to not break your knuckles hitting the plate armour or how to - catch a ghost in a net.

Must be a video-game... Also, you cant net ghosts, but you can net jellies.

[Enish]

I don't understand why fighting with an axe would allow anyone to make full circles devastating everything in 360 degrees area, how to hit an insect with an arrow, how to not break your knuckles hitting the plate armour or how to - catch a ghost in a net.

Must be a video-game... Also, you cant net ghosts, but you can net jellies.

If you can't catch them in the net how can you hit them with a sword?

Each game somehow try to represnt reality. If there is magic and gods involved in the system, and these forces enhances mundane creatures and their actions - there could simply be a Charm spell which allows you to make IMPOSSIBLE stuff. Like full-rotation cleave.
Arguing that this is a video-game doesn't change the game developing philosophy that lives beneath. I can see that Crawl is based on real physics, as each Fantasy based game, but allowing character do impossible stuff like shooting lasers from eyes don't fit the concept.

Another argument is that Axes are poorly balanced compared to other weapons. At the late game the only danger are swarms of enemies, and just by using the axe, as a pure melee character, you gain huge advantage over different types of wepaons. During character creation I always try to pick a character that could begin using them, or easily switch to them later in game. Swords and Polearms are inferior.

Narrowing the view down to pure mechanics... It is silly to watch when you happen to get Axe of Vampirism in the early game, and then softly cleave through up to 8 enemies. Game changes then. To mashing a [Tab] button.

[dynast]

Games are based around reality, they dont try to be realistic unless thats their goal (see games like Unreal World) which i doubt is the case for stone soup. But if you want we can dig it further, here is an example: Why using axes cut a hydra's head? you can swing it in a way that it would cut a hydra from head to toe forcing it to become two or die, unless the hydra has a immense lower body in which case you have something else to hack other than the hydra's head. Or you could hack 3 heads at once. Then you notice thats not how a hydra is designed to be.

[Lasty]

Moved to CYC. Enish, please read the rules for posting in GDD.

[Marbit]

Each game somehow try to represent reality.

The game tries to be true to reality only when doing so improves gameplay. There are good games that create interesting situations while being quite abstract (chess for example) and dealing away with minutia that would just distract the players.

The question is, how do your proposals improve gameplay.

[Enish]

Games are based around reality, they dont try to be realistic unless thats their goal (see games like Unreal World) which i doubt is the case for stone soup. But if you want we can dig it further, here is an example: Why using axes cut a hydra's head? you can swing it in a way that it would cut a hydra from head to toe forcing it to become two or die, unless the hydra has a immense lower body in which case you have something else to hack other than the hydra's head. Or you could hack 3 heads at once. Then you notice thats not how a hydra is designed to be.

Good fantasy game is when you start as a novice and end up as a master. It catches the essence of a pursue for power, which, as human-beings we like, because it enhances our chances of survival as a specie. Can you recall a game when you started as a God and ended up as a mortal? GoW, okay. But no RPG game narrates your character to be weaker and weaker during a gameplay - and at the end you are crippled and powerless like an old man. Explanation of this fact may seem simple - Beacause that is just sad, and it's counter-intuitive to the statement that we play to entertain ourselves. My statement is that immersion and pursue of power with a pinch of realism is a foundation of RPG-genre.

Hydras. Well, theoretically when they fight they are creating distance between their body by trying to jab swiftly and fiercely. Only way to hit them or defend from their gnasty jaws is to hit the closest part you can reach. I assume that when paralyzed or asleep the adventurer would have clear adavantage by choosing the part to strike. In other situations the simplification of cutting one head at the time works. The hydras evolution system clearly developed in the way of dealing with slashing damage so creating and disadvantage represented by a Myth-based flavour satisfies my sense of cohesion.

Mundane character grabbing an axe and cut through several creatures don't, as well as hitting insects with arrows.

The question is, how do your proposals improve gameplay.

If we agree that immersion is an important part of a gameplay, and agree that axes are superior to other kinds of weapons (balance) I would conclude that these particular changes can improve the experience during the game.

[Pollen_Golem]

Mystery and research are better off as they are now, being randomly generated, or pre-designed areas that suggest a story without reciting it. Goals are more naturally generated by simply what the player wants, e.g. loot as incentive. It's a passive kind of quest system where no NPC yells "help, my cellar is infested with rats, clear it and I shall reward you."

People play with self-imposed challenges of various sorts, sometimes agreed upon as a competition. It would be unfair and arbitrary for the game itself to pick a quest, impose it at the beginning of the game and have it bear on the score.

Sorry, I missed what crippled and powerless old men have to do with anything.

Wow, your sense of cohesion is strengthened by applying the theory of evolution to Crawl, peculiar.

[ydeve]

DCSS is not ADOM, Dwarf Fortress, or Nethack. Flavor and realism is secondary to the game.

[Enish]

Mystery and research are better off as they are now, being randomly generated, or pre-designed areas that suggest a story without reciting it. Goals are more naturally generated by simply what the player wants, e.g. loot as incentive. It's a passive kind of quest system where no NPC yells "help, my cellar is infested with rats, clear it and I shall reward you."

People play with self-imposed challenges of various sorts, sometimes agreed upon as a competition. It would be unfair and arbitrary for the game itself to pick a quest, impose it at the beginning of the game and have it bear on the score.

The way I see it is that pre-designed starting areas could exclude situation when you die just because the game generated enemies near, your mana pool is small and your spells so weak.
Quests and /personality traits/ could be used to play each time a bit differently and focus on different elements, which has nothing to do with the classic rats in the cellar or the Treasure Trove Entrance asking a player to collect items.

In order to judge the fairness and unfairness of Starting Quests we should consider number of quests, system of generating them, theirs' difficulty and the actual scoring-fairness and importance of it. Also, we can ask ourselves if by depicting "@" by the words of "Aggresive", "Smart", "Sincere", "Faithful" we can perceive the genderless symbol on your screen by something more than it.

Finding out these traits hidden in some window are somewhat corelated to the mechanics would be great for me and my overall satisfaction of playing a game with this level of complexity and attention to detail.

[Dharmy]

Your starting quest is to retrieve the Orb of Zot and escape the dungeon with it. You get to pick your species and background.

When you play checkers, you don't complain that it's not like chess. If you wanted chess, you would play chess. DCSS is a roguelike, so it has certain stylistic restrictions, governed by the philosophy.

[Enish]

Your starting quest is to retrieve the Orb of Zot and escape the dungeon with it. You get to pick your species and background.

When you play checkers, you don't complain that it's not like chess. If you wanted chess, you would play chess. DCSS is a roguelike, so it has certain stylistic restrictions, governed by the philosophy.

Major design goals
challenging and random gameplay, with skill making a real difference

> Axes and mashig the [Tab] button doesn't stand for skillful gaming.
> Dealing with enemies that are resistant to some kind of damge sources - /wasps/ /phantoms/

Minor design goals
replayability (using branches, species, playing styles and gods)

>Traits/quests influencing the decisions of experienced players.

And by the QUESTS I mean something different that we are accustomed to. "Obligations" or "Aims" would be more accurate. I think the hearing this word automatically light a red lamp, but there's no need to fear tweaking a bit a faulty and innacurate scoring system.

Enhancing the view of the genre, and focusing on not that obvious elements is coherent part of developement. Especially if possibilities of change fullfill more than one highlighted criteria, even if presented from a different angle.

[dynast]

Im curious, what are your thoughts on lajatangs and how do you picture a spriggan fighting a hydra with one?

[Enish]

Im curious, what are your thoughts on lajatangs and how do you picture a spriggan fighting a hydra with one?

The outcome of that clash would depend on natural factors including magical capabilities of the weapon, the god's favour, and the level of magic that the Spriggan can harness.

[archaeo]

...huh?

[ontoclasm]

Realism as a design principle is terrible and if the reason you want a change is "it would be realistic" that generally means it's a bad change. You can shoot bees with arrows because it's a video game and it would be irritating and silly if you couldn't. Play Nethack if you want to experience the joy of having to remember to wash the grease off your hands half a dozen times a game because somebody once thought it would be ~realistic~ if eating greasy food made you drop your sword.

[Enish]

Realism as a design principle is terrible and if the reason you want a change is "it would be realistic" that generally means it's a bad change. You can shoot bees with arrows because it's a video game and it would be irritating and silly if you couldn't. Play Nethack if you want to experience the joy of having to remember to wash the grease off your hands half a dozen times a game because somebody once thought it would be ~realistic~ if eating greasy food made you drop your sword.

Simplification doesn't decrease the feeling of realism. That is the case of unneccesary micro-management, not making the game more realistic.

Some sense of realim decreases the need of checking the stats of particular enemies. "Oh, I see a bee. I will try to deal with it with something other than a rapier." is even more reasonable from "Oh, there's a basilsk, I should watch out, because it can turn me into a stone statue." After setting things clear and predictable, thus based on real-life and archetipic fantasy features we can adjust our actions using just common sense, not scrolling through learndb.

On the other hand, I don't see the point of making features less realistic that they could be.

[dynast]

Have you ever fought a dragon in Skyrim?

[Enish]

No, but when I see the dragon I expect piles of gold in it's lair, that it will make use of it's mighty wings and - according to my intuitive knowledge - I will face one at a time.
The same will go with angelic creatures, that they shouldn't harm my hero without a good reason. And bees, that fighting them with piercing wepons would not be so good idea at all. Maybe using a smoke, jumping to water, or just run away .

[dynast]

Here is where i jump the boat:
You dont know the difference between realism and pulling **** out of your ***. Why would a fire breathing winged lizard live inside a lair, guarding a treasure out of all things?

You realise that bees can only sting you once, right? And you can pretty much crush one with your palm the moment it tries to sting you, unless we are talking about killer bees, have you seen the size of those things? they are huge!

[Enish]

Please, enlighten me.

[BugHunter]

I don't see why insects should be immune to arrows.
In real life, bees and wasps manage to punch their stingers into other insects all the time.
Entomologists stick pins through insects all the time to display them. That's about the same scale as sticking an arrow or a rapier through a killer bee.
A longbow can punch an arrow through plate armour, and I seriously doubt a bee has that tough of an exoskeleton.
Let's see, the largest creature I can think of with an exoskeleton is a large crab. Well, giant clams also come to mind, but they're so heavy that they are completely immobile, so they aren't really germane to this discussion. It's easy enough to stick a fork through a crab shell.

[dynast]

Get real.

[Fishman]

I agree that Zot 5/orb run isn't the epic climax it should be. There should be a final boss either guarding the orb or on D:1 when you are trying to escape - One final, desperate attempt to stop you in a cool anime-fight like in Dynast's picture.

[chequers]

You mentioned early that you think immersion is a good thing. For dcss I think it's not a design goal.

Additionally, you talked about systems working how the player expects, which is a good goal, but it doesn't mean dcss has to closely hew to every fantasy archetype. Dcss is internally consistent -- every enemy can be damaged with basic attacks, every attack in a hydra with slicing weapon cuts a head, etc etc.

For optional conducts I'd be happy if the game tracked them more, but they shouldn't be mandatory, or even emphasised. I tried to introduce a "random God" conduct with ecumenical altars, but the spawn chance was nerfed

[Pollen_Golem]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzhs1Z8Rwnk

[tedric]

i wish i could thank duvessa's ironic thank

[Doctor Shambango]

...how to hit an insect with an arrow...

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home; they're not much bigger than a killer bee.

[duvessa]

i wish i could thank duvessa's ironic thank

if you send me a picture of an elf that i don't already have, that's an acceptable replacement

[Siegurt]

Maybe it would help suspension of disbelief if we added random apostrophes

Kil'ler b'ee

[Enish]

You mentioned early that you think immersion is a good thing. For dcss I think it's not a design goal.

Additionally, you talked about systems working how the player expects, which is a good goal, but it doesn't mean dcss has to closely hew to every fantasy archetype. Dcss is internally consistent -- every enemy can be damaged with basic attacks, every attack in a hydra with slicing weapon cuts a head, etc etc.

For optional conducts I'd be happy if the game tracked them more, but they shouldn't be mandatory, or even emphasised. I tried to introduce a "random God" conduct with ecumenical altars, but the spawn chance was nerfed

If a change alter the atmosphere in a good way, why negate it?

About consistency, now the "p" shortcut is used only for kneeling before an altar. I would use another key if it's used for only one action in a game.
Ghost Moths and Eyes of Draining are also inconsistent, same as Slowing Snails (it would be better to make Snail Priest, which could happen to get high intelligence through being a puppet of mon Cheri). If there is a Snail which slows eveyrthing in LOS, why there is not a Leopard (or Killer Bunny) which hastens everything respectively? Why Eye of Draining cannot be more D&D based and resemble a Beholder with his eye of antmiagic and random, terrifying bolts of energy?


I just don't urdestand arguments - 'NO BECAUSE IT'S NOT A MAIN GOAL !!1'
I think that praying to a god in a forgotten altar is a very good idea. Especially before finding an Ecumenical Temple, because it is atmospheric and reasonable from perespective of gampelay and replayability. You choose if you want to earn piety earlier at the most risky stages of game, at the cost of making your character (possiby) weaker. The description is good, I buy it.

The same goes with changing toward simplified realism thus intuitive gameplay. 'NO BECAUSE REALISM IS BAD !!1'
The hell? Changing the way of dealing with bees could be fun, intuitive, immersive, and enhancing tactical aspect of the game. The same goes for axes, reducing the damage from 8 to 3 tiles is not ONLY 'realistic' but changes the mechanics for better, making axes not as overpowered option for AC tanks. BTW, IMHO good AC wins a game for a player.

But there are other shitty decissions that has nothing to do with realism.
Like nerfed Jellies, I don't see the point why couldn't they decrease the level of the enhancement like in good ol' D&D ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_monster ). They are slow and easy to deal with if you know how to treat them. Maybe throwing an enhanced item would lure them away? Or a cursed item, which poisons or disintegrates them if devoured.

Luckily, for some reason, they still don't eat stones.

[dynast]

If you dont understand or cant accept the design goal or phylosophy of a specific game dont try to change it based on the goals of other games in general(or just the ones that please you). You can play Unreal World and have fun chopping trees down, carving it into log, hauling it together other logs and build a house, then feed your dog, go hunt a bear, etc. That doesnt mean that stone soup should be that way.
To understand why realism is bad first you have to understand what is realism, which you dont, apparently you think a nom starving dragon sleeping inside a cave guarding a treasure is realism, for me you just want this game to look like D&D for some reason and thats just your reason. If everyone came up with their perspective of realism and the developers had to bow to it everytime then imagine what this game would look like.

[Bart]

Enish, Crawl is not your typical rougelike - especially the latest revisions. Many of "immersive" aspects have been removed in favor of simplicity; some other exist no more to avoid what is called "a boring and repetitive, yet optimal play". Since you are (apparently) relatively new to Crawl, you have not learned to value simplicity sufficiently. My point is that if you play the game for the thousandth time, many things become extremely boring or even annoying - since immersion has gone long time ago.

Let's walk over your proposals one by one.

Scoring/questing - this would not work because of startscumming (i.e. one would restart the game until desirable quests were assigned). As one-time achievements they are OK, but not important enough for anyone to code (unless you want to do that by yourself).

Ambience
1) Currently even the first cockroach might kill your character and this is part of game's design. You cannot change that without substantial changing of mechanics. No size of pre-created dungeon will guarantee that you won't die. On the other hand, interesting pre-generated layouts are always well seen. Feel free to contribute.
2) Monster spawn during ascension is completely random and while there is no consensus about orb-run, I can guarantee that it can provide you one of the most memorable experiences in the game.

Exploring
1) Once you find a map of treasure, you have to backtrack for it. If the treasure is guarded, it isn't any different than already generating vaults... except of backtracking part, which won't be an exciting journey. For the first time this might sound like an immersive add-on, for 100th - it would be a chore.

2) I don't mind rocks appearing in dug corridors (for flavor), as there is such an abundance of stones that nobody would be bothered. On the other hand, gold found in orcish mines would lead to repetitive, boring, yet desirable behavior of emptying all excess digging wands there to get a bit more of gold.

Combat
1) Following that, you'd need to differentiate slashing/piercing/crushing even further. That could work... in a different game. We are simple people here, we do not need more confusing choices about weapon selection, we do not want to learn which weapon is more efficient against which enemy, we do not need even more weapon swapping in combat - god, no, not in our crawl, please.

2) I would recommend playing crawl a bit more, until you figure out by yourself why axes are not the strongest weapons in the game and why fighting more than one enemy at a time is a bad idea. (Axes hitting all adjacent enemies was actually a change to make them not so awfully bad)

3) Why would you want to complicate life of players choosing unarmed combat over armed? Why would you like to have some unobvious mechanics that force player to check if his skill is sufficient to fight a particular enemy unarmed?

4) OK, so before attacking phantoms and ghosts it would be required to pray or find an elemental weapon. Additional keystroke (to pray), not convincing flavor, additional loot dependency. This is good for D&D, not here.

You should understand that devs have some vision in their mind, which differs a lot from yours. Also, they are people who are not paid for improving crawl, so if you want some features in the game, your best chance is to code them by yourself and convince the rest of community that they are worthy.

[sweetrabies]

No, but when I see the dragon I expect piles of gold in it's lair, that it will make use of it's mighty wings and - according to my intuitive knowledge - I will face one at a time.

Honestly, while I didn't really agree with anything in the OP (although tracking conducts as optional bonus things could be cool) and pretty much expected this thread to just turn into something great to read on a dreary day, this is where you lost me. Why would dragons always be by themselves? Where do you think new dragons come from? It seems pretty unrealistic to just expect them to spawn out of thin air in a lair full of gold.

[Enish]

Here's a very good source, my little friend. If you want to read about dragon's physionomy or sexual habits you will want to give it a try. Since DCSS is D&D inspired some of the facts should fairly describe Dragon race inhabiting the mysterious Dungeon of Zot.
DRACONOMICON - http://www.reality.net/dnd/pdf/DnD%20-% ... 20iOCR.pdf

[dynast]

DCSS is D&D inspired but is not a D&D ripoff.

[Greyr]

Hey remember when Crawl had robots and floating swords and undead cor- no wait, Crawl still has undead corn.

I mean, Crawl is a game where, RIGHT NOW, I could roll a sentient octopus that shoots flame out of it's tentacles. What is even the point of discussing realism?

[Sar]

Ehhh, while I do disagree with OP and his premises, there's stuff like verisimilitude, internal consistency, etc. It's one thing to accept that this setting has dragons, it's another thing when stuff that works one way in out world suddenly and inexplicably works differently in another.

[sweetrabies]

See, the thing is, D&D didn't invent dragons. I know, I know, they're in the name and all, so you might think that they did, but they didn't. They didn't invent dungeons, either, but I digress. The point is that how D&D handled dragons is not any more realistic just because that's how D&D handled dragons.

And, of course, there's the questionable merit in even discussing the realism of a totally fictional creature, too, but again, that's beside the point here.

Also, in D&D, a 10 foot ladder costs less than two 10 foot poles, so you might want to use a source that doesn't mess up basic economics as your basis for realism.

Oh, and if you just go to the page about dragon life cycles, it clearly says that (a) dragons mate with other dragons and (b) dragon eggs are laid in groups, which one can reasonably assume means that they hatch around the same time. Both of those point to justifications for dragons not being encountered one at a time.

I could go on, but this is going to stand as a sad enough testament to how little I had to do at work today as it is.

[Enish]

Enish, Crawl is not your typical rougelike - especially the latest revisions. Many of "immersive" aspects have been removed in favor of simplicity; some other exist no more to avoid what is called "a boring and repetitive, yet optimal play". Since you are (apparently) relatively new to Crawl, you have not learned to value simplicity sufficiently. My point is that if you play the game for the thousandth time, many things become extremely boring or even annoying - since immersion has gone long time ago.

I don't agree. This type of game can be more than it is for now if each time you play you have the opportunity to notice a small detail you have never noticed before. Like in big, pixelated mosaic.
That doesn't need to affect the game very much. The point is to increase the sum of elements (I am big fan of Unrands) that make each gameplay unique, and making the first games more interesting without backfire'ing at veteran players.

If the goal is to remove tedious things, why are there Scrolls of Random Usellesness and food - or different kinds of perma-food?

1) Currently even the first cockroach might kill your character and this is part of game's design. You cannot change that without substantial changing of mechanics. No size of pre-created dungeon will guarantee that you won't die. On the other hand, interesting pre-generated layouts are always well seen. Feel free to contribute.

I like the way it is, but 1/100 games I open the door near to the entrance, I can only run towards it to avoid certain death. It could be a method to at least give a theoretical route of escape.

2) I don't mind rocks appearing in dug corridors (for flavor), as there is such an abundance of stones that nobody would be bothered. On the other hand, gold found in orcish mines would lead to repetitive, boring, yet desirable behavior of emptying all excess digging wands there to get a bit more of gold.

Thank you. Gold piles only for flavor, golds sum like "1" with 50% chance of occuring, just to add some depth to the game. There could be also piles of stones after destroying Earth Elemental/Gargoyle and casting Shatter. Statues turning into Gargoyles. Gargoyles characters bleeding stones when taking several damage. After all it's the "Stone Soup", isn't it? Very small chance of bats suddenly flying from the shafts... And so on.

1) Following that, you'd need to differentiate slashing/piercing/crushing even further. That could work... in a different game. We are simple people here, we do not need more confusing choices about weapon selection, we do not want to learn which weapon is more efficient against which enemy, we do not need even more weapon swapping in combat - god, no, not in our crawl, please.

It's just for obvious monsters and the easy to predict outcomes of actions - like attacking wasps - not for creating over-complicated system which I am also against of.

2) I would recommend playing crawl a bit more, until you figure out by yourself why axes are not the strongest weapons in the game and why fighting more than one enemy at a time is a bad idea. (Axes hitting all adjacent enemies was actually a change to make them not so awfully bad)

At the end game with 50AC it's not that bad idea. One swing deals with several enemies thus in 1 turn you can achieve more than the same character with quickblade, clever playing and no AC. According to Scoring, I don't see the point favoring the first player. So instead of teleporting in the middle of pack of Draconians and deal with them in 10 turns player could deal with them in 30 turns, and clever NO-AC player in 90 turns. I'm also not a big fan of high AC and highly regenerative builds which can safe time over different types in terms of resting. I also think that resting itself should count as a fraction of other actions for the purpose of achieving Score.

3) Why would you want to complicate life of players choosing unarmed combat over armed? Why would you like to have some unobvious mechanics that force player to check if his skill is sufficient to fight a particular enemy unarmed?

Well, you got the point here. But still I would like to see the bad-ass gloves which enhances the Unarmed Combat.

4) OK, so before attacking phantoms and ghosts it would be required to pray or find an elemental weapon. Additional keystroke (to pray), not convincing flavor, additional loot dependency. This is good for D&D, not here.

Just giving the phantoms ability to "Apportate" items at the @ using telekinesis - dealing very small damage - would add taste as pinch of spice in you favourite dish.

[Enish]

Scoring/questing - this would not work because of startscumming (i.e. one would restart the game until desirable quests were assigned). As one-time achievements they are OK, but not important enough for anyone to code (unless you want to do that by yourself).

If there would be 4 traits at the start, which only up to 3 being counted, there could be 2 certain for class/race + 2 random. For example Felid Bersekrer can have the trait Aquaphobia <points for not entering the water duing the game> (Felid) or Brutal <for hitting !!!!!! on your damage score> (Berserker). That would define two slots. 2 other slots could be random from another list. One to ignore.

Races which are statistically better for Speed Runs could have more difficult tasks.

So startscumming could be avoided by setting the high difficulty of the task not so high, but making a difference in player actions. Avoiding making your fur wet needs some kind of strategy and discipline, but if you fail you can always make 3 other which will suit you. Not eating humanoid creatures not only because you want to be a god's favoured, but because that is the personal hero's belief. Or not killing sleeping monster as being true Honorable. Fire mages getting bonus for not ever casting an Ice spell.

You got the idea, tasks not so hard to even think about re-creating character, but seen more as a 'OK, this guy is "a","b","c","d" - if I want I can adjust my strategy a bit - and roleplay a little'. It may also add some depth to the starting classes. Choosing a starting god could help you with the task, adding additional trait as an alternative; maybe a card in the Deck of Wonders altering adventurer's personality... And so on.

[chequers]

Everything you're proposing (well, nearly everything) is adding a lot of complexity for relatively little flavour. You can see the result of this approach in games like Nethack or Dwarf Fortress or Space Station 13. This is one approach to making a game, and it results in fun games like those three. Your suggestions would fit in well to games like this.

But DCSS is designed with the opposite balance of complexity and flavour. Flavour is only added if its extra complexity is low. For DCSS, your suggestions are too involved, and require too much player attention, for too little reward.

[CanOfWorms]

Here's a simple solution: code the features you want in as a patch and submit them to mantis.

[Enish]

Everything you're proposing (well, nearly everything) is adding a lot of complexity for relatively little flavour. You can see the result of this approach in games like Nethack or Dwarf Fortress or Space Station 13. This is one approach to making a game, and it results in fun games like those three. Your suggestions would fit in well to games like this.

But DCSS is designed with the opposite balance of complexity and flavour. Flavour is only added if its extra complexity is low. For DCSS, your suggestions are too involved, and require too much player attention, for too little reward.

If some of those would be acceptable...

x Adding a stone or two in the corridor made by WoD
x Gargoyle dropping a stone when damaged severely
x Earth Elemental's corpses made of piles of stones

x Bats sometimes flying through the shafts when the character comes near

and, of course -

x adding a Refreshing Rabbit as a nemezis of Torpor Snail that lures in the Lair


I would be glad to see that kind of changes in the next release.

Here's a simple solution: code the features you want in as a patch and submit them to mantis.

That would be tricky one, since I'm not a skilled programist - but I think I could give it a try.

[dynast]

Are you done trolling?

[Pollen_Golem]

He has one subtle point tucked away amid the insanity, just to be fair.

[archaeo]

P_G, dynast, I doubt this is "insanity" or "trolling"; let's assume good faith of our fellow posters.

I'm going to go ahead and lock this thread. Enish, if you'd like to try and program some of these features, feel free, but I'd encourage you to re-read the responses from ontoclasm, Bart, and chequers to avoid wasting your time on code that will not make it into the game. A look at the current updates to the game should give you a better idea of the developers' intentions and goals; while Crawl will likely never have the wide ranging verisimilitude of other major roguelikes, it has many of its own charms. Better that Crawl be a better Crawl than be a wishy-washy imitator of another game.