–Eino

How about being able to perform a shield bash? Or sword users being able to parry? What about dual-wielding certain weapons? Optional special moves that are race-dependent and / or dependent on skill level with certain weapons?

I think changes like that would allow for greater racial diversity for melee-focused races. One race could focus on shields, other races could have strong biases towards certain weapon types which come with their own special combat abilities, etc. I hope that the developers are planning on adding some depth to melee combat in this way in the future.

Before I forget, I want to say that I love Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and I have agreed with most of the changes the devs have made (I’ve been playing since v0.6). I just don’t want to see melee characters fall by the wayside.

I was also really hoping to get my first win with my Mountain Dwarf FIghter newbie build, so I may stick with v0.91 for a little longer. Last time I came REALLY close!

4. I guess your point with saying you haven’t played mountain dwarves in at least 2 years is that it isn’t what makes you not play the game/despise the change.

Some reasons provided here to why people hate the change are downright ridiculous (fx. roleplaying) and all the dev bashing is just distasteful.

2 other things that concerned me are first – what is so hard or bad about picking an old version of crawl to play if you dislike the changes? I like most of the changes (maybe dislike the cloud traps a bit), but if I didn’t, instead of a big bad ‘Fuck you’ posted here, I would just enjoy a version of crawl that I liked more.

Second: What is so emotional about playing the dwarf in crawl instead of in any other game? It feels like most people posting the negative comments played crawl BECAUSE IT HAS DWARVES and now that it doesn’t they will stop!

This is a single player game, you can’t really say this was a ‘nerf’ to something because you are not pitted against each other, furthermore there are multiple versions of the game available for download – and since this game is a single player game you’re actually still allowed to play dwarves.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually dislike felids and think that octopodes are the worst idea ever, but this change striked me as fairly reasonable. I wouldn’t have thought anyone cared about this species anyway ;).

Because of all these, we generally think like this: whenever we’re evaluating content, we ask (i) Is it good to have in the game? If not, would we’d be better off removing it? (ii) Is it too strong? Will a nerf help, or do we have to remove? (iii) Will new content hurt what’s already there?

We are pretty strict about this, but in my opinion, that’s the only way for longterm appeal. You should note that Crawl has gained heaps of new content over the years: branches (including portal vaults — which make the game longer but allow for unique flavour and threats, and we *love* to add stuff; a random single level vault is the smallest unit by which to expand the game world), monsters, species, backgrounds, gods, spells, items, uniques, the whole package. Not all new stuff will please everyone; some removed old stuff will hurt many (like the MD removal obviously does).

I think I have explained the advantages of our strategy (and en passant why having an “add only branch” won’t really fly — apart from the fact that is would be a lot of work to maintain). What are the drawbacks?
1. Moving goalposts. The game is always in a flux. If you’ve grown used to a particularly strong feature (e.g. god or spell), chances are it gets nerfed sooner or later, or even removed. This can be discomforting. Is it really still the game you used to play back in the day?
2. Flavour. Since balance takes precedence over everything else, flavour is thrown overboard at times. This hurts; typical examples are how Nemelex has the “portable altar” or how berserkers lost their spears. MD removal does not really fit (it was not removed for balance concerns); see below.
3. Old vs new. We’re only human, so it is much more tempting to remove old content rather than new one. (This does not apply to nerfs: we nerf anything that is deemed too strong.) Since older content is more familiar among players, this is a potential source of conflict right there. On the other hand, I believe that the standards of design have risen (some old branches, species or gods would never be accepted if proposed today), so there is some advantage to the system.
4. Us vs them. Very often, it comes down to an executive decision. So we think the overlap between two features is too big and one has to go. The matter is discussed in the devteam and that’s it. We don’t think about popularity at this point but only what seems more fun to ourselves. (The hope being that fun for us will also mean fun to some players.) If we manage to hit a sensitive spot with players, we get an outcry. (MD removal is not the first one. Others were: megabats (we gave in needlessly, in my opinion), food reform (there were serious flaws and we came up with something better, which however may have never come about without the original reform), randomised energy (got tweaked but not removed). I would like to write what “community participation” means, but this text is too long already.

Finally, some words on what I consider to be misconceptions.
1. The game gets harder and harder. Or: Developers only care about the best players, i.e. design for themselves.
These are just not true. While Crawl always had a reputation of being fiendlishly difficult and we enjoy that, it really was a lot harder in older versions. Two examples: In 4b26, anything could be spawned in the starting room. In 0.9, every character got +3 HP. It is easy to miss the buffs among the nerfs/removals that get all the attention. What is true is that broken features get removed — but this hurts spoiled players much more than anyone else. (The bit about the meta information, i.e. spoilers, I cannot comprehend. We are very much aware of spoiler information and try to reduce it. A spoiled player always has a huge advantage over a naive player, but the game is not designed for source divers. Also, we did not remove MD because it was too easy. As stated upthread, Mi is just as easy. It was only about (lack of) differentation.)
2. Instead of removing, why don’t they just make it interesting?
Yes, that is always an option. But it also requires a lot of work. Someone has to come up with ideas, they have to be assessed and discussed and finally implemented, tested and tweaked. The way from a player saying “they should simply do *this*” to the released version is much longer than people expect. Often, we prefer to remove instead. MD is an example: ignoring the name/flavour side for a moment, once we agreed that certain species were lacking differentiation, we did discuss tweaks. None of them seemed good or easy enough (small size was even tried out), so we went with removal. Players have all kinds of ideas; one player made a patch which may turn into a new, official species at some point. (And even so, the Forge Dwarves still have to go some distance, if I understand my fellow developers correctly.)
3. They are getting their flavour all wrong. (Aka: approach to Tolkien/D&D/whatever)
To a certain, small extent, designing a game is like art. We would like to express ourselves. Is it more fun to follow large footprints or to discover something yourself? The question is not rhetorical and you may discover that being a developer or being a player makes a difference in the answer. But even if you’re a fan of a kind of flavour we don’t like so much (e.g. Tolkien dwarves), you may appreciate that Crawl’s uniques, branches and gods are beginning to get a life of their own. (Uniques used to be very bland: now they often stand out, not just as threats rather than re-named standard monsters, but also in flavour. Branches like Slime, Orc or the Abyss have become a lot more interesting over the years, in my opinion; and again not just in gameplay but also in their own lore. Gods are supposed to be less like slot machines and more like divine beings. It is an awfully long process, but we enjoy it.) Ultimately, flavour decisions are even more subjective than “what is fun” (in comparison, “what is balanced” is outright objective a question). There were reasons to keep Mi over MD and you are fully entitled to disliking all the reasons. But if you were in the driver’s seat, would you take the option *you* like less? (This is one of the instances where the fact that no copies are sold is crucial. In a commercial game, you’d always put your vision behind what the market demands. In a project like this, not necessarily so.)

In the end, everyone should be aware that it’s only a game. There are more important things in life. If you cannot relate anymore, take a break. If you decide to have a look after a year or five, you can be sure that there will be some version under development, with all kinds of new features to play with.

I just started to get the impression that anytime something became subjectively unbalanced, the devs would take it out. Whether it was fun or not. I mean, every time I come to check on the status of the game, the Devs are removing something, or nerfing something, etc. I understand that there is a vision to this game. I just that vision seems to be in the direction of very hard core, and based on a lot of meta information. It would be interesting to see the diffences in perception of a race based on dozens of games, and no access to the source code. I would say even in the early versions of the game, there were no trivial games. The only people who thought that a character class combination was trivial was because they already had so much meta information about the game, they could play exceptionally well. They knew what monsters were to be found, and how to fight them. In addition, why not have some race class combinations that are easier? I mean the MDBe is one of the first combos I could get down to any levels with. I learned about the game this way. The removal of the MD makes me sad. Like somehow an entire race of people have been wiped from the face of this world. It is an act of fictional genocide. All the heroes whose bones litter the depths of those crawls will never be remembered by their people in song, cause their people are gone. No more heroes from the halls of the mountain king will seek the orb of zot.

Can I ask honestly, why? I understand that it is your game, and a great game it has been. Well designed, well thought out, and much dedication have gone into it. The execution is very good. I understand that some decisions will go against the community, and some of the new ideas going in have been very good. I just don’t understand why you constantly have to remove, or nerf to add new things. What’s wrong with there being an easier race to play? What’s wrong with leaving in a race just cause it conjures up good images of your character, and people relate to that? Maybe all the races should just be called Race [A-F] and you can assign numbers appropriately? Part of the fun of the game is the perceived image of the character, and part of that is the race. The differences in the dungeons really express this perception of the story. They create a sense of immersion into the game. Otherwise everything could look the same and just have different stats. The race chosen is not just for stats, but partially for the perception of that character. Without those perceptions in many senses you lose a valuable element of immersion for the game.

In my opinion, fundamentally, playing a game is about fun. I like well thought out games, I like difficult games, and I think this is a wonderful example of that. I like games that require me to think, and learn. I just have lost any interest cause if I enjoy something about the game, the next time I check it out, it gets removed, or nerfed, in the name of “balance”, or “differentiation”. I mean is it too much to ask that a branch of the game get created where you don’t nerf, or remove anything? Just add the new content. I understand that it will be more complicated than that, like the school of Divination becoming a god, but bascially that is what I want.

I mean honestly, if people just want to play dwarves, does it hurt anything to leave them in? I mean if you don’t want to use the iconic fantasy races, feel free to completely remove all the races. Then just allow people to generate a character with the stats they want to play using some sort of point system, or some other thing. That would allow for the most differentiation and specification. It would allow for the largest range of playing styles. Otherwise seek input on how to differentiate the race instead of removing it. Surely there are other ways a race can be differentiated if it feels the same to the devs. I mean it isn’t the same in perception. A dwarf is not a minotaur regardless if their stats are exacly the same, their height is not. Plus the whole horns thing is a dead giveaway A fact that was probably very important when the first fork of the game was release.

In conclusion, I want to say thank you for creating this game by forking it from the original dungeon crawl. Thank you for keeping it alive. Thank you for managing lots of new content, new versions, and a tough community. Thank you for seeking input from the community on what to implement. Please just try to remember that there are things about the game that people like, and some of us are playing because we think the game is fun. We are playing because we enjoy the concept, and perception. We are playing because there are hundreds of hilarious ways to die. Not because we can’t tell the differnce between a dwarf and a minotaur. Not because we think the game is too easy. (Please raise your hand if you think the game is too easy…) Not because we think that every class needs to be totally differentiated, and every race class needs to be the same level of “difficult”.

Just my two cents.

-themutesock

MDFi dies to orc wizards, centaurs, and kobolds with branded weapons. DDFi uses one or two wand charges instead.

I can’t speak for File200 but I would also hazard a guess that the sensible part of the discussion (offering well-though out ideas for MD differentation) has been useful for FD.

–Eino

All he did was take Mountain Dwarves and rename them, and tweak them a little bit to make them different. This is what -everyone- was saying was needed to be done.

Perhaps there is some illusion that Forge Dwarves aren’t a tolkien thing. But ultimately that seems to be what it comes down to, if you rename the race it can stay in crawl.

“Go play race X if you want palystyle X”
“MD is not interesting, similar to ”
“it entangles new player to an easy race”
” fits the armored fighter role well”

I just can’t believe such a terrible, weak, subjective statement comes out from devs of the game.

And, what makes this issue worse most is the dev’s attitude towards community.

It seems they consider any objection against the matter as pointless flaming or insult, but don’t you understand that it’s your side that started the flaming by offending many people, that was just silently enjoying the game, for “playing boring race I don’t like, which deserves removal”?

Yeah non of you exactly said such, but not using explicit words does not make it a reasonable and sane claim when the outcome / determination process is not reasonable one at all.

Why you just can’t leave them if only handful of people don’t like it?
Why couldn’t you notice the community more eariler and have a poll about it?
Why we need to be forced to choose a race based on your feelings?

The list can go a lot more, and none of devs answers them in reasonabe way.

I am very saddened to see such negative way of communication is initiated from the devs of this wonderful game.

I admit that having a nice, “default” melee race is comforting, and dwarves did that well, but having that default also discourages exploration. Very little was really lost in the way of flavour; Deep Dwarves fulfill the dwarfy role just fine, and Forge Dwarves sound incredibly cool. Nothing was lost in the way of gameplay; Hill Orcs and Minotaurs fill *every single role Mountain Dwarves played.* The only solid reason to keep Mountain Dwarves is tradition, and that is not good enough.

That is all.

The other thing is, never! Never!! NEVER!!! take away a feature that a lot of people like. Not everyone plays the game the way you envision it. So what, there’s a Tolkienesque race in the game? So what if there are a few races which are very similar? Similar aptitudes aren’t the only factors — as many others have said, just being able to recognize a character and predict intuitively what it’s strengths and weaknesses should be is golden for a newcomer. And if a lot of people play a combination in a lot of games, it means they like it. For someone who struggles to reach Lvl 15, infinite replayability is finding a unique way to die every time. And those people who win 2/3 their games can always play with voluntary handicaps like choosing bad combinations or by just not picking up some items.

My suggestion would be the same as what several people have said before. Revert, and if you must do something to differentiate then tweak the similar races to make them different.

* A jack of plates is esentially a padded leather or canvas coat sewn around the better part of a suit of plate armour, being designed primarily around protecting the arms and torso from arrows.

** It could be argued that some of the leather armours found in the dungeon are gambesons, though spritework indicates otherwise.

One more thing. People have suggested to change MD’s aptitudes and such around to make them sufficiently different from HO and Mi to justify their existence. But because they were so similar to HO and Mi, doing this would require making them into what would basically be a completely new species – so why should it be called mountain dwarf?

Sad that these decisions are still being made like this. What happened to “stone soup”, are the original developers still around?

As for the players lost to “no dwarves” you make a false comparison. You already had dwarves AND minotaurs. It seems like you are only going to be picking up the players whose line is “I refuse to try a game with Mountain Dwarves in it” Have you been hearing much of that? The closest I’ve seen to such a weird mindset seems to be coming from the dev side :)

Seriously, I love this game a lot and will remain deeply grateful for it even without Mountain Dwarves. I’ll keep trying the latest versions to see what cool things develop. But that doesn’t mean this whole episode doesn’t seem like a tragic case of a few people who can’t stand the idea of Tolkein fans having fun.

And one more: For every potential player lost to “no dwarves” (discriminating against deep dwarves, as it happens), there might be one enticed by the species that are actually there. We won’t know, and obviously here we will mostly (but not exclusively, despite the rants!) hear from those who mourn.

You know that we will not (read: cannot) care about the “I’ll not play 0.10″ statements but if
you want to go the constructive path, follow fellow player file200, who wrote a patch for a new species, dubbed Forge Dwarf. https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:species:forge_dwarf

Roleplaying is never mentioned in the design philosophy. For this reason, I doubt DCSS is intended to be a roleplaying game.

I abandoned the boards and giving my feedback as soon as I realised that most of the changes were just from devs that had been playing crawl for so long that they wanted to change it up.

As pretty much everyone has said on the most commented blog post in the time of crawl – people enjoy playing them ALOT. However, this is obviously a crutch, and people would enjoy the game alot more if they were forced to do what they don’t enjoy.

However, I do think that there could have been more mixing up of the HArmour classes, but not like this.

If the idea is to have a species with as few choices involved as possible in order to minimize the chance of screwing up, felids are better at accomplishing that than mountain dwarves ever were.

If the idea is to have a species with as few choices involved as possible in order to maximize the chance of

Skills: Arm +1, Ddg +1, Sth 0, Stb 0, T&D 0, Inv –1, Evo –1, HP +1, MP –2, EXP 140, Fgt +2, SB1 0, LB1 0, M&F +2, Axs +4, Pla +2, Stv 0, UC +1, Thr +1, Slg 0, Bws 0, Crb 0, Spc –3, Coj –3, Hex –4, Cha –4, Sum –3, Nec –3, Trl –3, Trm –2, Fir –3, Ice –3, Air –3, Ear –2, Poi –3

//Now add Class Specific bonuses to each god, and i´ll cry of happiness.

My minotaur would have excellent unarmed combat skill for the horns.
Both player and monster minotaurs would be able to charge enemies by moving one square and then butting the now adjacent enemy. This ability could be e(v)oked like a weapon of reaching. Accuracy and damage would be equivalent to stabbing. (Actually just use the stabbing code but use the unarmed skill.) Give the minotaur a bit of stealth and detect terrain/detect monster then I can play a high risk ambush style that is not currently available in Crawl.

-Walter

So now that its settled, lets all focus into getting MDs (or Hill Dwarfs, heck i be happy to have ANY dwarf along with the DD) back to the game by giving constructive suggestions on how they could be implemented .

I´ll go first:

MD (or any new dwarf race)
Reintroduce them as they were with the req of only good & neutral gods, Shields raised from +2 to +3, and a +10% gold amount drop bonus (MD only skill: gold find)
HO Revert to old but with +2 Inv
Mi Revert to new but with Axes +4, shield –1

–Eino

Until then, maybe all that dwarf equipment could be generated as “human” gear – give them the racial bonus for it…

But seriously, the dwarven fighter is one of the pillars of fantasy now. The ‘pokemon’ comment above is spot on. Avoiding the Tolkein stuff or the ‘obvious’ stuff is the same as avoiding what people are interested in.

Designing to some stereotypes is AWESOME because it lets people dive right in and try the game and have a decent intuition about how they should play. Then they can get hooked and get informed and starting trying more innovative stuff…if they want.

Also, the whole lack of differentiation…well I’m not buying it. The evocation, crossbow, HA, and earth combo was distinctive.

I *loved* having heavy armor a decent option again, and to have a mainstay armor user go away is sad. The only upside I see is that maybe humans get a little more appealing now since they get full slots, unlike minotaurs. I kind of like that effect, but overall I’m definitely against this change.

Personally, I prefer to play races without gimmicks/in-built mutations. I play mostly humans and high elves. I never played MD much, so I’m not particularly passionate about this issue, but I am slightly disappointed that they’ve been removed.

“Because it’s common in fantasy” isn’t a good reason to have something in the game, but it also isn’t a good reason not to have something in the game.

I guess the outcry is from the people who have an emotional attachment to a specific race, rather than seeing them as a collection of numbers and attributes to be maximized.

Just stick to generally recognized fantasy themes, like LOTR, Greek myths(Centaur, Minotaur) and modern horror (Mummy, Vampire, Ghoul).

Name a few.

Also, I support the notion something should be done about high elves. SE, DE are fine (well, maybe SE could be a bit more sludgey), but HE are just the ones you choose when you don’t actually know what you want to do.

The game play reasons for getting rid of MD also feel weak. There are many races in the game that have similar aptitudes and class preferences. Why choose to cut this race now? Seems like putting simplification before fun is not a good idea.

I don’t see anything logical and persuasive argument given by the devs on this matter.
Its nothing but a personal preference of tolkin-hater.

if you want your own themed fantasy so badly, which i would not complain at all, just screw every single known-species from the game and replace them with original ones.

In this way, no one would complain about any race addition or deletion, problem solved.