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So since 0.14, I've been noticing a thing: I either have to really fight through the mid-game (a good thing) and squeak by and win maybe 30/70, or I just blaze through the midgame because I found some early enough bolt + OoD/weapon of killing everything/unreal ring of slaying and I just collect an almost certain win (probably not a good thing). I feel like since the change to 15 floor main dungeon from 27, it really feels like the power of those items and spells and circumstances that obliterate the mid-game are exaggerated a great deal. Maybe it's just because what I at least mentally classify as 'mid game' is significantly shorter now and it's not so much that they are being exaggerated, but more that the realize their potential much more rapidly inside a smaller window. Either way, I dunno if it's better or worse, but it does feel significantly different. The end result is that my win rate is actually almost completely unchanged, so take that for what it's worth.
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Aug 28, 2014 07:23
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Totally forgot about the tournament! I need a team. I don't care what the team is. I have about 50 wins under my belt, about Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 28, 2014 |
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Aug 28, 2014 19:14
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Tollymain posted:join the purple feast On that -- Who is the captain?
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Aug 28, 2014 19:31
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kaschei posted:PanicAtNabisco, but FYI Zippy and Person Dyslexic asked for the 5th and 6th spots in the old thread. If they have dibs on them, then so be it. I'll not intrude. If one of the bails, I'll be on board. In the mean time, I still probably need a team!
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Aug 28, 2014 19:46
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Panic! at Nabisco posted:Zippy's in and confirmed, but I don't think I saw Person Dyslexic's post. If they pipe up before tomorrow, they get it! Otherwise, Canine Blues Arooo is welcome to the purple-eating master race. Word -- I'll keep an eye out!
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Aug 28, 2014 22:52
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Sage Grimm posted:Bug: Can not start game I know this is sacrilege to a certain set of people, but there is very little reason to play ASCII anymore. Yeah, when it was the only online option, or when online tiles was in it's infancy, there was still a compelling reason for it, but modern tiles has a better interface and gives the player more information on the same screen than ASCII. At this point, I cannot think of a good reason to be playing ASCII barring some extenuating circumstances, and of course, 'because it's what I'm used to'.
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Aug 29, 2014 19:33
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Mr. Wednesday posted:- it's easier to get away with playing at work Reading this made me laugh. It's the same reason I still use console as well. Enemy list is pretty nice actually, although I find it a lot less important on tiles, but it is still a nice touch.
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Aug 29, 2014 19:44
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kaschei posted:I think even when you are familiar with the tiles, it takes a bit longer to process each screen and notice relevant changes. I think this is largely because console players hold the most experience. I feel like I can parse screens equally as quickly, with maybe a small edge going to ASCII earlier before items get identified, because you effectively have dozens of graphics for ' and ! and / while only 'needing' one, until of course, identification icons start making that easier.
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Aug 29, 2014 19:58
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Yet another stupid game with no rMut, and this includes 15 levels of Zig. I was going to 15-rune this dude, but it wouldn't be the first time I get severely bitch-slapped by a lack of rMut and end up dropping a character. 3 runes it is :S.
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Aug 30, 2014 06:48
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A list of all players can be found here: http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.15/all-players.html Find yours on the list and click on it! Alternatively, you can go directly to your tourney profile with a link like so: http://dobrazupa.org/tournament/0.15/players/YOURNAMEHERE.html
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Aug 30, 2014 06:59
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PleasingFungus posted:You absolutely do not need rMut to get 15 runes. All characters, if played well, can avoid the vast majority of malmutations; you're a conjurer, so you're in pretty much no danger at all. Certainly you don't *need* rMut, but twice I've lost characters in extended to untimely berzerkitis. I'd just rather not go down that path again especially when I was in a position to collect 3 and try again.
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Aug 30, 2014 10:08
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Midgame melee superman: There is not much that lives through more than a single swing
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Aug 30, 2014 23:21
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Jack Trades posted:I need some advice on how to proceed with my current character. Just a postmortem note on this, and this seems to be a somewhat common mistake. When you are pushing through the midgame, do the absolute easiest thing you can on that character at that given time. For a melee character worshipping Chei, a branch full of fast things and things that don't want to be near you is the thing you should be absolutely dreading. Just looking at your morgue file, you only went as deep as D9 and L3. I clear to D15 and L8 nearly *every* game before I even touch rune branches, because that poo poo is usually easier to do. The only time I don't is if there is some really scary unique or map layout that I just don't want to deal with, but the logic still applies: Do the easiest thing you can do at that moment.
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Aug 31, 2014 08:47
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Ketsa posted:Any free spot in a team ? I thought I took my time but you sir, you play one very methodical and deliberate game of crawl.
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Aug 31, 2014 10:45
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amuayse posted:Huh, I found the Shield of Resistance and a Shield of Reflection. I'm conflicted. Shield of Reflection is hilarious. Shield of Resistance wins games. efb Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Sep 1, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2014 03:48
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Internet Kraken posted:Why does the serpent of hell exist? It doesn't seem remotely threatening. I almost didn't even noticed I killed it just now because I was just mashing tab and it died in two hits. Depends where it spawns. If it shows up in Geh, it'll cast hellfire, which can be a real threat depending on the circumstance. Tar has miasma, so there is that. Other than that, it's usually a pushover.
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Sep 1, 2014 04:08
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Distortion is a cool and neat thing and totally belongs in the game because despite all the esoteric poo poo that's being purged, as much as Crawl likes your decisions to matter, sometimes 'lol random' is more important. If I had a streak going, I'd probably kick a baby right now.
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Sep 1, 2014 04:20
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nucleicmaxid posted:Pretty much. Please do, in the meantime, let me find the set of 3 games in a row that I've dropped characters because of being abyss'd be distortion. We'll pretend that I had some neat tactical decision I could have made to prevent that from happening.
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Sep 1, 2014 04:27
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Either removal or delaying distortion/banishing enemies until later in the game. Or making it a timed thing. Or adjustments to the exit gate spawning mechanisms to make it easier to find an exit. I don't know, it could use something to make it less of a pain (and Abyss-diving somewhat less tedious, from what I've heard the extended game supposedly has problems including that?).. Abyss is really weird, where there is a small window where the Abyss (at least Abyss:1) is challenging, but not a death sentence 99% of the time. If you get thrown into it too early, you at the mercy of the RNG to get out. If you get thrown into it too late, it's just a tedious timesink before you find the exit. Because you really wouldn't purposely go there until you can walk over at least Abyss:1, it's place in the game is really weird. Now, I will say that Abyss:5 has never been a total cakewalk for me on any character and I find that it shifts between 'incredibly frustrating' and 'delightfully challenging' for most my 15-rune PCs since the change. That was a good change and makes actually getting the abyssal rune something more than an eventuality. The problem though is every time you go to the Abyss for any reason besides to get the rune, 95% of the time, it's either tedious or it's a death sentence. It exists in an odd place.
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Sep 1, 2014 05:06
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After dropping what was a sure DeCj to Antaeus while holding 2 legendary decks with Alch cards on top and only remembering that way too late, I restarted a DeCj and found a book of Minor Magic on D2. Let me tell how easy the first quarter of the game can be if you are holding RMsl, Mephetic Cloud, Conjure Flame, Blink and have access to IMB and Searing Ray. I'm actually totally convinced that Conjurations + Minor Magic are the best 2 books in combination for the first quarter of the game. Also, remember when up against something that seems like certain death, check your goddamn inventory before throwing away a character with the Elemental Staff.
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Sep 2, 2014 19:03
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Dee Ehm posted:That's it. I'm terrible at this game. Once you overcome the mountain of information that you need to know about Crawl to actually be able to evaluate all your options (what all the items, monsters, spells, etc. do. How turns work. How combat works, etc.), then Crawl is very much a game about making as few mistakes as possible. So, assuming you know what you need to know, then this advice: PleasingFungus posted:you're playing too quickly Is probably dead on. A thing I do is when I feel like I have absolutely no options to live, I'll go through my entire inventory item by item and try to come up with something. I usually find something that'll get me out of the pickle I'm in. Something that's also really important: You need to recognize at least 5-10 turns in advance when you are in trouble. Being surrounded by 6 baddies with 10 health is not the time to figure that out. Some things take more than 1 turn to happen. Invisibility and Teleport come to mind, so being able to recognize when you are about to die several turns in advance is a big deal.
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Sep 3, 2014 06:11
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quote:If you need to use exponets, squares, and other complex equations then your system is poorly designed at its base. Do you really want professional mathamaticians as your only target audience? All curves must be linear. Anything else is TOO COMPLEX and therefore bad. badforums.txt is great. I believe I contributed #20 around 0.6 or 0.7. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 09:22
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Alright, just ascended a DeCj and I swear I end every 3 rune caster that doesn't stumble upon the gear to just roll over the game with this mental state, so I'ma make a mad post about it since I usually cool down and am less mad in an hour, but right now, I'm really mad, so... You know what pisses me off: High level casters. Now, you can trip over the right kind of gear to make the end game trivial, but if you don't, the way spells and resources are treated makes it a test of your mental fortitude more than anything else. See, what ends up happening is that every spell you cast has series implications. Huge implications. If you miss a crystal spear, that is 16% of your resource pool and unless you are just clearing 'trash', that's going to have an effect on how you approach battle. Is that a good thing? I don't know, but it makes it a goddamn headache to clear Zot, because if you have 16 mana and an orb guardian is staring you down, I sure as hope you either one shot that son of a bitch, or you don't miss, because otherwise, you have to burn some kind of consumable. God forbid it's on Zot 5, because you can *easily* tp to your death and blink is unreliable. At the point you need to lean on sif, some other channel source, or magic pots. Now, you can say, 'well, you should have prepared', but the fact of the matter is that no matter what you do, everything surrounding casting is so unreliable that you can't guarantee almost any result. Sub can net you 30 mana or 1. Channel at 24 invocations is 8 mana or 1. Crystal ball and you are rolling a different kind of dice. So what do you lean on? Well, you lean on what is reliable: Level 9 spells, but even those usually sit at 1% miscast and failing one of those casts is just as brutal as anything else. But lets say they don't fail, then what: Well, then better be ready to fight half the floor with your super limited mana pool or stair dance for the next 15 minutes because gently caress if you aren't going to have to fight 10 dragons and 30 draconians, which is totally impossible on one bar of mana. Which brings up another problem: Single Target is so inefficient. Almost comically so. Even if two fire dragons are on the screen, it is more efficient for me to cast firestorm than it is for me to hurl a spear, nevermind that spear has a chance to miss. The trade off you are really making here is 'noise' vs 'reliability/efficiency'. And you are playing with a fifth of your mana at a time, so hope you don't gently caress up! I dunno how you fix it. Making it so high level conjurations can't miss under certain circumstances would be a good start. Even something as simple as, 'Crystal Spear can't miss at point blank range' would be enough. You pay 8 loving mana for the thing, you might as well get something out of it. Creating an 'efficiency' skill that reduces the cost of spells might mean you don't have to lean on some kind of channeling or MP-on-kill mechanics (which are also unreliable). Also, setting miscast chance to 0 once if gets below 2% naturally seems like a pretty good idea. The end game is just a never-ending clusterfuck unless you have fantastic gear when you can just tank poo poo and not care, but if every turn means -40 HP for you, then missing spells is a huge, huge deal. This is all madposting, so we'll see how much of this I agree with in a day, but fuuuuuuck. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Sep 6, 2014 |
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Sep 6, 2014 04:47
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Colour posted:So I'm working on grabbing my 10th rune from Gehenna, and I've never made it this far into the post game before so I feel like I could use another emergency button. Am I right in thinking that death's door would be better than borg's revivification? I've never gotten either castable before. Or maybe I should pick up Haunt instead? I prefer Borg's Revivification, although Ihaven't used it for some time. More important perhaps might be Lichform.
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Sep 6, 2014 06:53
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Darox posted:Deaths Door is much, much stronger than Borgs. Borgs doesn't come with the same risks but it's really easy to use it and just get tormented again. DDoor is a little harder to cast but since you have haste at 1% that shouldn't be an issue. This is a pretty good point right here -- I suppose Borgs is pretty poo poo when you have 3 tormenters on the screen.
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Sep 6, 2014 21:17
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LogicNinja posted:I play a lot of casters, and overcommitting and running out of MP is a problem just like overcommitting and running out of HP is for melee dudes. MP management is one of the tradeoffs casters make for not having to be next to poo poo to kill it and for being able to kill it in big groups at once. This is my core complaint though. There is no reliability in casting, and the stakes on *every* spell are way, way high because of the relationship between max MP, available MP regen options and spell cost. It's not an overcommitment if you throw 3 spears at an orb guardian and the all miss. That's just lovely luck, but under certain circumstances, it's the kind of luck that will end a game on the spot. That is my complaint: Casting is very high stakes, and completely unreliable in all aspects, even in the post end-game. There is no stability in it and if you are ascending a character that's living on the edge to begin with, that lack of stability can kill a character no matter how prepared you are, no matter how little you commit to.
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Sep 6, 2014 23:25
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LogicNinja posted:Being at 0 MP doesn't mean you're dead. Also, don't go down to 0 MP, use your last MP to escape*. Casters have access to spells like Blink, Controlled Blink, Swiftness, haste, Death's Door... the melee guy is more survivable in melee range, but if he missed that Hellion and got hellfired three times he has only consumables for escape options. This isn't totally true though either. I just ascended a minotaur who had a slew of utility spells castable. Infact, it was only after I cleared Zot 5 that I decided to do 15 runes. If I had distributed stats differently and planned accordingly, I could have had controlled blink in <5% chance to fail on a melee idiot with a -4 in spellcasting. It's another reason why melee, at least in a 15 rune scenario (less so in 3), is so much more reliable. Not only do your attacks which hit for silly amounts of damage and are 'free' more reliable than any non-level 9 spell, you still can have access to some of the most powerful translocations and charms in the game. That dude has 4 int and can cast haste for god's sake. I mean, is it a bad thing that casters seem to unreliable? I dunno. I haven't dropped a caster in zot for probably over a year now, so there is something to be said for that, but it is mentally taxing like nothing else. It's a test of my patience and how willing I am to take advantage of the game. I feel less like I'm solving a problem and more like I'm twisting the mechanics of the game to my advantage to get to the next floor. It feels like abuse -- Very tedious, very slow abuse, and while I can't point directly at it a given thing and say, 'This is it. This is the problem. This is the solution', something doesn't feel right and I feel like every time I have to go through that struggle, I get a little bit closer to figuring it out. Maybe one day I'll have a definitive answer.
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Sep 7, 2014 01:35
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Internet Kraken posted:Quaffing a potion of exp at level 3 isn't enough to keep me from being killed by a single loving adder. I hate deep elves so goddamn much, I've lost more characters to adders on D:2 than anything else. Are you playing them as melee dudes or as casters? If you are playing them as casters, I would really, really avoid meleeing things.
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Sep 7, 2014 02:43
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Internet Kraken posted:Deep Elf Warper oh pfff -- You're on your own :P
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Sep 7, 2014 03:01
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Heithinn Grasida posted:I agree with LogicNinja. I find casters to be much more reliable and easy to play than straight melee characters. Just to clarify this here, casters scale absurdly well with gear. The difference between great gear and 'meh' gear is the ability to walk through zig 27 and being forced to play carefully through zot 1-5. Walking around in great gear does render you a demigod of the Crawl world. A lot of how much you have to twist the game depends on your gear and god.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:22
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JollyGreen posted:does a staff of earth or fire contribute more to spell power to their respective schools than a generic staff of conj? I'm not 100% on this any more, but I'm pretty sure staff of SCHOOL will always act as an enhancer, similar to ring of fire/ice, etc. It'd be equal. e:f;b
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Sep 8, 2014 03:07
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LogicNinja posted:How do I Ds? I can't freakin' get one off the ground. The slow levelling plus -1 apts just leave me wallowing in mediocrity. Ds suck. They have really lovely apts and are especially vulnerable to one of the early game threats: Priests. They are really hard to get going, and you will probably never be ahead of the curve in terms of skills because you will always be starved for XP. There are a handful of mutations that can push you through the midgame, but if you get poo poo like Torment resistance, all of a sudden, 15 runes starts to look really easy. I think I've won with one Ds ever and I never intend to revisit the race.
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Sep 8, 2014 22:10
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Internet Kraken posted:....what? Their apts are -1 across the board. That's terrible. Their mutations range from 'Fantastic' to 'mediocre' and while you can get a game-making set of mutations, Vegas's money is on you getting a moderately helpful set that may or may not scale into the endgame. The price you pay is all the bad stuff that comes with being demonic, and none of the great stuff, with the 4th or 5th(?) worst set of apts in the game. Their unfocused nature also means that you aren't given a direction to go with them, which is just another layer of difficulty to deal with.
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Sep 8, 2014 22:55
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BigFactory posted:This is kinda old at this point, but Ds are like the easiest race to get going, and I suck at the game. The -1 apts are perfectly fine. Decent, even. And mutations are usually stupid good. You get full item slots -1 (unless you win the lottery and get antenna) and if you get a 2nd tier mutation early you can probably guarantee getting to lair just based on that. Ds rule. The easiest race to get going is probably a Minotaur, Gargoyle, or Kobold, probably with a Berserker background. Maybe Troll? -1 Apts are not 'perfectly fine'. They are functional. They work if you know what you are doing. If you are new or newish or we'll say, 'winless' in the game, there are much, much better choices. Wanna hit people with a sharp object? Mi is almost always a superior choice, Wanna use a specific weapon, say an Axe? Hill Orc works better. If you wanna throw spells at a bro, there are better choices. If you want to cast for a specific school, there are better choices. No matter what you want to do, there are better choices. Yeah, -1 Apts isn't damning, but this is a game of relative strengths. -1 is really bad compared to what other purpose-built races offer. If you are an experienced player, then there is a totally different story at play here and flexibility becomes more important than focus, but I'm talking about actual 'easy' races for someone who isn't sporting 10s of wins. Ds is not one of them, barring some exceptional mutation combinations that can carry a player through midgame. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 02:11
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Internet Kraken posted:I'm fine with torment as a mechanic but I don't like the implementation of it in Hell and Tomb. As I mentioned, torment is simply unavoidable. In Pan, you can play well and take out torment enemies quickly and reliably to keep yourself safe from it. Its a threat, but one that you can negate with offense. That isn't the case with Tomb and Hell though. You WILL be tormented. The effects of torment are devastating when you don't have protection against it, so these places are utterly miserable without that protection. The main reason I've only 15 runed with statue form characters is because statue form lets you ignore a lot of the bullshit that comes from these irresistible effects. I've done 10 rune characters that only go to Pan and ignore Hell and Tomb, simply because those places are too irritating without excellent torment defense. I'd agree with most of this, but I will say that so much effort gets put into mitigating Torment in the post-end game that it probably deserves a look at it's role in the game. Torment by itself is not a bad thing, but the threat of torment is so ubiquitous in the post-end game that if enemies would ever act 'optimally', you'd be dead at any point in Tomb 3 every turn. That is where I have a problem with torment specifically. Imagine how much more terrifying tormentors would be if they actually tormented every turn unless you walked out of line of sight. It'd be really difficult to manage, so much so that you'd probably *have* to walk into there with some way to almost completely mitigate it as an issue or risk 3x torment + smite at any turn. I really don't like that the mechanics are balanced around the fact that mobs will not act optimally and things like torment just amplify that problem more. Big mummies can torment. Most 1s can torment. Tormentors can torment. It's obnoxious. Hellfire is a different issue. The mechanic again isn't necessarily bad, but it's damage range is a little stupid. 3d20 is hard to plan for when have 170~ HP. 2 Hellions can kill you in 2 turns. Will they? Probably not, but are you acting on what is possible or what is likely? If you are acting on what is likely and the unlikely happens, is it your fault? I guess, but then is the game actually fair when it happens to act and roll well? My point is it's impossible to act assuming the game will play optimally because if it did, it'd put a dildo in your butt and you'd drop every character unless you take extreme precautions that might not even be achievable by some set of characters. There of course needs to be some endgame threat, but I don't think the current formula gets it quite right. Even doing something like normalizing hellfire's frequency and damage might make the game both more dangerous in some scenarios and less trivial if you meet *certain conditions* (See: Worshipping TSO), but I digress. It's a pretty hard problem to solve and it really isn't offensively bad as it is now.
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Sep 11, 2014 06:09
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PleasingFungus posted:Imagine how dangerous D:3 would be if orc priests smote every turn? Yes, imagine that. It'd kinda suck. Nothing is really stopping them. Would it be such a terrible thing to normalize that action at least somewhat? What it really be so terrible to maybe start to focus the game into a more tactical experience? I don't know, but dismissing the conversation because it's different or because that's not how we always did it or because this works well enough or whatever the reason may be is pretty dumb.
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Sep 11, 2014 06:50
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IronicDongz posted:the game being unpredictable(including monster's actions) is kind of a fundamental part of what makes it tactical No it doesn't, for the very reasons I listed in my previous post. Your making decisions on expected values the entire game, not predictions and fine analysis. Monster action being unpredictable and effectively random is what makes the game beatable, not tactical. Crawl is actually by in large un-tacticle. Knowing when to burn consumables, which consumables to burn and how to progress through the game without putting yourself in a position where you need to burn consumables is a pretty significant portion of the game. That's not really tactical. Tactical would be planning individual motions and actions in an immediate timeframe, like the next 10 turns. There is some of that in the game, and god knows it's important at times, but that's not really the bulk of the game. Most of the time, the best answer is the most obvious: Hit the mans with your stick or blow him up with your big spell. There isn't anything wrong with that, but there is room to do more, and there is potential here to tighten up monster AI and force the players to maybe make more interesting decisions, while providing a more consistent experience in the post-end game instead of leaning on the current crutches. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 07:09
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PleasingFungus posted:I'd argue that tactical choices with strategic impact ("do I quaff hw now, or try to kill him without wasting it? Do I really need to !cure this confusion, or are my enemies weak enough that I can wait it out? Is it time to ?blink?") are very core to Dungeon Crawl's design, and are good, and not bad. These are really good things! I love the consumable management part of the game and I wouldn't change a bit of it. quote:Talk to me, though. Let's say that we agree that orc priests & pals are too random, have too much variance, and remove meaningful choice from that game. How do you improve the situation? This is a Hard Thing™ to pin down. Like I said, it's not so terrible that it'd stop me from playing the game, and hell, I wouldn't even complain about it outside of these forums simply because we can spitball here pretty freely because it really is a rather minor thing. That said, I'd love to think about it. I'll post a thing here in a bit with hopefully something that resembles a well though out something
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Sep 11, 2014 07:57
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Darox posted:Hey that sounds like all fights against threatening monsters, which includes basically everything with torment or hellfire. Because your operating under the premise of expected values with crazy high variation.
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Sep 11, 2014 09:16
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Darox posted:That doesn't make the game less tactical. You don't have to input your actions in 10 turn chunks, and the variation on any single turn is only high if there are many threatening targets on screen, in which case you have already made a severe tactical blunder. That's exactly what makes the game less tactical. The most tactical games on the planet are those where your decisions and your opponents decisions have absolute effects and where the expected values of actions little or no variance. Games like Frozen Synapse represent a class of games that gets incredibly close to a brand of game play that is purely tactical. On the opposite side you have games like Monopoly that are totally untactical. Yeah, your expected value of any given roll is 7, but the prime difference is you can't even approach a goal. If you want your roll to be '4', it's not like you can combine actions to somehow to get your desired end goal, at least immediately. In the middle, you have games like Risk and Catan and a lot of other modern board games that pretend to be tactical, but they really aren't. Risk for example, is a game where you can work toward an immediate goal and take actions to get there, but the result is still a dice roll, or in this case, a number of dice rolls. Variance from expected values is exactly what moves a game away from 'tactical' and closer towards 'crapshoot'. Now, there is another kind of game that doesn't exist on that spectrum, where there is huge variance in expected value of some event, but for every event the stakes tend to be low and you participate in a lot of these events. Games like Poker fall into this. Just to be clear here, this doesn't mean that games that are more heavily based on luck or do have high variance are bad. Monopoly is actually super bad, but Crawl isn't, and the difference is this: Crawl allows you to mitigate the an unfavorable scenario. It gives you a lot of tools to do that. It lets you avoid it, delay it, recover from it, all that stuff. A big part of the game (as PleasingFungas noted) is managing your consumables, because they really are your lifeline when Crawl deals you a bad hand. How you manage that stuff is a big part of the difference between great players and mediocre players, and Crawl does a sublime job of developing that experience. It's actually better in Crawl than any other game I can think of right now -- It really is that good. But that's strategy, not tactics, and that's really a key difference here. Crawl at it's heart is much more of a strategy game than a tactical game. How you manage your resources, where you spend consumables and on what, what skills you learn and how you intend to approach the beginning, middle, end, and post-end of the game all matter a lot more than the individual actions you take along the way. As your strategy gets better, the relevance of your tactics approaches zero (assuming you are always taking 'default action' -- Think 'tab' for a melee character) It's why you can develop a character that can tab through 98% of pan without a problem. This is fine. This is what most roguelikes have been built on for generations, and quite frankly, making all 6067 creatures I killed in my last 15 rune run an ordeal by forcing the player to use clever tactics for each encounter is a great way to piss everyone off. Imagine if hellions had Orb Weaver AI and you had to force them into a corner. Yeah, gently caress that. But, there is an opportunity to rethink about how some creatures, and how one of the arguably weakest points of a fantastic game -- The mechanics that keep the post-end game threatening -- Actually work, and reanalyze if they are actually forcing the player to make interesting decisions or if they are just another hurdle you prepare for and either have That Thing™ to deal with it, or die without it. In my head, I call it the Drakeling vs The Tower of Eternal Flames Test. Right now, I don't know if hellfire and torment are doing a good job of what they are supposed to do. I will think about it and I will probably write a monster post about it that 3 people might read, but it's a difficult problem to solve and analyze. Canine Blues Arooo fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Sep 11, 2014 |
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Sep 11, 2014 10:34
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