DRL > Requests For Features

Less reliance on the wiki

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Zecks:
I've spoilered the schematics already. It's mostly the poopy builds I'm doing. Also bad mod luck and just generally not bothering with whizkid/finesse since I'm always punching everything to death anyway and also tactical shotty I guess.

It's kinda a bad habit.

Creaphis:
I never made even a token attempt to discover the assemblies the "intended" way.


--- Quote from: thelaptop on March 29, 2012, 07:31 ---It's like telling SquareEnix to please incorporate the spawn rates, the drop rates in-game as opposed to putting it in a book and selling that.  O.O

--- End quote ---

An interesting analogy!

I'm not at all interested in secrecy in games - I would consider it an outmoded trend, popularized partly by the lovable but profoundly flawed RPGs made by SquareEnix. If your game is a strategy game (RPGs and Roguelikes fall into this category), then the player needs information to strategize, and the fun of playing comes from strategizing correctly. If you're hiding important info, then the player can't strategize as well, and will have less fun as a direct and obvious result.

Also, one side effect of hiding information from the player is that, if something is actually not working as intended, then this takes a long time to be discovered, because the players don't know how the feature is supposed to work. There are SquareEnix examples I could list here as well.

Ashannar:

--- Quote from: Klear on March 29, 2012, 07:12 ---Speak for yourself. So far I've discovered all the basic and half advanced assemblies by guessing/armory schematics. It's actually very nice to discover the assemblies one at a time, so you can experiment with each one as it becomes available.
--- End quote ---

This. I only recently found the last of the basic assemblies. And I have one advanced assembly. A few I guessed, but most I found at the armory. I'm looking forward to finding only advanced assemblies now. :)

I like it. Think of it as a longevity-based reward rather than a merit-based one. It turns whizkid and scavenger into more 'veteran' traits. I sort of like having some traits that get better with age.

Game Hunter:
I think a lot of this discussion has to do with what kind of game wants to be played. If you're the kind of player that wants a world to explore, you're going to discover what the game has to offer at your own pace and, thus, winning becomes the metaphorical exclamation point of the journey when you reach it. If you're the kind of player that wants to win as quickly/efficiently as possible, you're going to want (more or less) a database of information in front of you that allows you to calculate the best move, each move, and don't want to waste time gathering it yourself. Certainly these are very different games (and one can play both, over time) and I don't know if we should necessarily deny either experience.

Surely there are plenty of ways to number-crunch in the original game (as the Doom Wiki's statistics clearly show) but I don't think most people would have wanted a bunch of GUI clutter in order to do it during the game, nor would it have made much of a difference. Where do you propose we should put this information? I guess a bit can be added to the help manual (especially constants like accuracy penalties and running stats), but there's also all of the monsters: HP, armor, damage, damage type, accuracy, speed, and quite a few more. All of these things can be valuable information but there's no good place to put most of them without severely cluttering the message buffer. As far as I know, Kornel wants to keep both the graphical and console versions completely compatible with each other, so there are limits as to what can be done with a 80x25 screen.

Anyway, from what I can tell and have experienced, you don't need to know game stats to win on the easier difficulties. The game is pretty forgiving, save a couple of things that should probably be balanced out more, and a lot of ITYTD or HNTR victories can be achieved simply by following an effective build and making good use of your surroundings. If you want to handle the tough stuff then yes, you'll certainly want to take whatever advantage you can get, but by then you're already playing a very different game.


--- Quote from: Creaphis on March 29, 2012, 09:12 ---If your game is a strategy game (RPGs and Roguelikes fall into this category), then the player needs information to strategize, and the fun of playing comes from strategizing correctly. If you're hiding important info, then the player can't strategize as well, and will have less fun as a direct and obvious result.

--- End quote ---
That's assuming the game is entirely about dealing with strategy. Many of the SquareEnix games aren't solely designed around winning them, as the aesthetics and plotlines that come with the game prove quite nicely. A great deal of fun can be derived not only from solving, but from learning as well.

Creaphis:
Fair enough. I realized after posting that I can't speak for people who enjoy games differently, as whenever I try to play a Final Fantasy game for its gameplay I find it simultaneously dull and frustrating, yet it's one of the most popular franchises out there. (For the record, I do enjoy some styles of RPG - Fire Emblem is much more up-front with most important information and it rewards elegant play, as carelessness results in permanent character death).

I disagree, however, that there's "no good place" to put some of the information that you mention. All monster statistics could easily fit on the monster description screens (which currently have nothing but an ASCII picture and a snippet of flavour text). If the percentage chance of hitting your target was added to the message buffer it could be written simply as "(XX%)", taking up less space than "(wounded)". Whether or not you want this in your message buffer could be chosen in a config option, like the  other message config options. I think it would also be useful to see which squares will be hit by a shotgun blast, which could be shown through some kind of highlighting rather than a message.

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