DRL > Discussion
Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
Napsterbater:
It's utterly ridiculous to say that DoomRL has the best interface of any roguelike. Full-stop. The three other roguelikes mentioned in this thread have been in continuous development for 17+ years, by teams much larger than DoomRL's.
And could we please save the flames for the cacodemons?
2dev, you like DoomRL's game mechanics. That's great, so do I. I don't currently play any other roguelike. Angband takes too long to get started and I don't last long enough on the interesting parts. It takes 2-3 hours of fast gameplay to get deep enough where you start finding the cooler items/monsters. Then I maybe last half an hour or so before I die. Too much buildup. Don't take this as a complaint against Angband. If I had oodles of time to while away, I would play Angband. On the whole, it's the better game, believe it or not. Most of Angband's *variants* are better than DoomRL, the top-shelf ones, anyway.
I put up with DoomRL and the sillier of its design decisions because it's the roguelike I can take a break with. It's a game I don't have to do any real mental heavy-lifting to play. It's fun even when I die. Dying is not fun in Angband. I can stare at the tombstone for 5 minutes before I clear the screen.
I don't think you're quite understanding my complaint, nor of the others who've voiced support for my proposed changes.
I get difficulty. I don't like games that aren't difficult. I play DoomRL because every single Wii game I've ever played was shit. The console world hasn't seen a difficult game since the Super Nintendo. Easy games are not fun. I expect a learning curve from every game I play. I expect a slow buildup of skill. I just don't think that certain things are skills. Taking any more time than it takes to form a tactical plan to move is not a skill. It's a waste of time that detracts from the real game.
I get game balance. I don't complain about the five or so early levels which are more perilous than the last fifteen. Because I can see how difficult it is to balance all that out. Making the first levels more interesting while being easier than the rest is, well, I'm not even sure it's possible. You either get tedium like in Angband, or painful difficulty/randomness like in DoomRL. Not a lot of middle ground.
Before you make more blanket statements about how you assume I play the game, check back to the three requests I made and actually look at what I'm suggesting. I started this thread looking for ideas, not just to complain. I don't see how fixing interface problems makes the game easier. In fact, it can open the way for making the actual game even harder, through monster AI improvements or whatnot, which I would welcome. I've been following roguelike development cycles for a few years now, mostly Angband's. They devote a lot of time to streamlining the interface. And it shows.
Napsterbater:
--- Quote from: LuckyDee on April 01, 2012, 01:09 ---The game wasn't built for speed, it was built for strategy.
--- End quote ---
Can we dispense with this nonsense? People keep saying this without anything to back it up. It says right there on the DoomRL homepage:
"DoomRL (Doom, the Roguelike) is a fast and furious coffee-break Roguelike game, that is heavily inspired by the popular FPS game Doom by ID Software."
If you don't have the skills to play fast, then don't. But don't attack us for wanting to play fast and finding that the interface isn't as well-suited to it as it could be.
LuckyDee:
Isn't this all just a matter of misguided expectations? If you have problems with the interface, which was built for strategy, aren't you playing the wrong game? I mean, extremely oversimplified this is like playing simcity and complaining that the firepower of your residential area is lacking. I mean, with a lot of games it's fun to play them differently than intended, but if it doesn't work, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.
Napsterbater:
Do you know the difference between strategy and tactics? There is no strategy involved in DoomRL, save that of choosing an advancement path.
Ashannar:
--- Quote from: Napsterbater on April 01, 2012, 02:52 ---I put up with DoomRL and the sillier of its design decisions because it's the roguelike I can take a break with. It's a game I don't have to do any real mental heavy-lifting to play. It's fun even when I die. Dying is not fun in Angband. I can stare at the tombstone for 5 minutes before I clear the screen.
--- End quote ---
You say that as though a guy can't faceroll through any roguelike until he dies without doing any mental heavy-lifting. But how many platinum and diamond badges has facerolling gotten you lately?
I guess what I'm saying is I don't see DoomRL's typical characterization as a 'light' roguelike as particularly meaningful. A game takes an hour or two as opposed to 8+, but what does it matter if I play eight times as much? Every action I take in DoomRL seems to matter a lot more than in most roguelikes. The gameplay elements all work together to support each other. A few core concepts combine to form a very rich and satisfying experience, which is something that most other roguelikes never capture. A lot of them feel like a lot of 'cool' stuff slapped together.
And don't get me started on the difficulty/badge progression in DoomRL. It's absolutely unmatched in the RL world. It complements this tendency to play more games fantastically by rewarding devotion in addition to skill. Whizkid gets better with age, as I gradually find more and more schematics. The XP/rank system, though maybe minor to some, is a really nice touch to me. I like how it rewards time put in as well as raw ability. It's always interesting to see how some people get a high rank in one but not the other.
Yeah, I rambled a bit. I guess the takeaway here is I don't like these subtle jabs I sometimes see about DoomRL being less 'deep' than other roguelikes. I don't agree at all.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version