DRL > Discussion
Ideas to make DoomRL even faster and furious'er
2DeviationsOut:
I'd like to apologize for my rant, if anyone's interested in accepting my apology. Roguelikes and Counter Strike are my sole refuges against what I consider to be the plague of consoleitis and difficulty drops, so I tend to overreact when I think that something that I love as much as DoomRL would have it's sharp edges removed. Really, it's up to you how you want to play the game. I know that I'm incredibly obsessive and I won't stop until I've done everything that there is to be done. I also know that I'm not the majority of people, and I'm alright with that.
In summary:
The game should not hold your hand, and ask you if you're sure if you want to do something obviously stupid. This might be acceptable on ITYTD, but not on N!.
Any actual interface flaws should be fixed.
Perhaps there should be a greater difficulty spread.
In the future, I'll try hard to not discuss difficulty in games. It seems to be such a source of rage and flames that it's not worth bringing up.
Matt_S:
--- Quote from: 2DeviationsOut on April 02, 2012, 06:55 ---I'd like to apologize for my rant, if anyone's interested in accepting my apology.
--- End quote ---
No biggie.
--- Quote ---The game should not hold your hand, and ask you if you're sure if you want to do something obviously stupid. This might be acceptable on ITYTD, but not on N!.
--- End quote ---
I agree that players shouldn't have to jump through any hoops if they really want to do something stupid. I think we disagree on what is and isn't hand holding. My "safety mode" idea is something the player turns on, with a keypress in-game, when they want it, and they turn it off when they don't want it anymore. I don't imagine it to be, and I don't want it to be, a "help me beat the game" mode. I imagine it as more along the lines of a "let me know when something happens" mode. Perhaps walking along until seeing an enemy isn't the best play (I very rarely radar-shoot, because I'm over the top with ammo conservation), but if so then that playstyle will be punished even if I don't accidentally keep walking.
--- Quote ---Perhaps there should be a greater difficulty spread.
--- End quote ---
That depends on which end you want to spread :) I think ITYTD really needs some tweaking. There's already hardly any enemies, so the levels just feel empty.
skarczew:
--- Quote from: Kornel Kisielewicz on April 01, 2012, 07:50 ---Still, I consider myself a hardcore gamer, who in the day won UFO: Enemy Unknown on Superhuman using Save/Load only to take breaks.
--- End quote ---
Kornel, it was not that hard, as there was bug within the game that was resetting the difficulty to the easiest after the first Load ;) .
Try Terror From The Deep on Superhuman, now this is something hard to play even with savescumming.
Game Hunter:
There are a few things in here that could be worth implementing:
* Directional run buttons. The idea of using "SHIFT+[direction button]" is pretty appealing, and it would be a nice shortcut from the current setup. Eight separate keybindings for this is probably the "easy" way to do this, but it might be more fluid to have binding that simply selects which button you hold down and assumes you'll be using the same directional keys to step as well as run. (Note that you can very easily change the binding of the run command right now, making its use a lot smoother: in my case, since I use a numpad for movement, I have it on the INSERT key.)
* I imagine there's a way to add a safety buffer: that is, based on the same conditions that stop you during run, you additionally wouldn't be able to input anything for some amount of time. Definitely needs to be an option, though, since I know I would never want it on (as, perhaps ironically for some, it would break the fast and furious flow for me).
* Along the same vein, there could also be a confirmation to continue an action if you're caught by surprise. To prevent abuse, however, I'd only want this to be of use for particularly long actions, like (full) reloading: otherwise it'd be the same problem as waiting in 0.1s intervals. Thus, it would be tied entirely to the player's speed value (1.0s normally, 0.9s for scouts), and if something happens in between a speed interval, you could stop what you're doing to do something else.
* "Save anywhere" is slated for the next release, or at least Kornel wants to work towards it.
Insta-deaths are usually the result of two things: Mancubi and/or barrels. The Mancubus already needs a spread-attack rewrite, so that's something we can strive to balance appropriately; barrel-deaths are almost always the fault of the player, so I don't lose sleep at night because people aren't being as safe as they should be around them.
But let me just vaguely and briefly comment on the "other" dicussion here. DoomRL is meant to be a fast-paced game, and a lot of the design is centered around just that. This is not the same thing as saying it is a game that expects you to be reckless all the time, and I can't really think of a goal-oriented game that fits such a bill. Games require you to learn their rules, and you have to allow yourself the time to get used to them. In particular, this is one of the main contributors to difficulty in roguelikes: learning through death. Just as recklessness in Doom got you killed, so too will it occur here: at the same time, I believe that DoomRL is pretty forgiving when it comes to what you're allowed to do, just as you often have plenty of time to react to a given situation in Doom. This is already balanced quite well, in my opinion, but certainly we can accomodate a few things here and there to get players used to the setting.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot the funny comment I was going to make.
--- Quote from: Tormuse on April 02, 2012, 01:42 ---I was once told that I "deserved to die" after I complained about the "unfairness" of a DoomRL game I had just played.
--- End quote ---
Maybe we should tell more people that: if they turn out the same way you do, we'll be swimming with veterans in no time!
Matt_S:
--- Quote from: Game Hunter on April 05, 2012, 12:44 ---I imagine there's a way to add a safety buffer: that is, based on the same conditions that stop you during run, you additionally wouldn't be able to input anything for some amount of time. Definitely needs to be an option, though, since I know I would never want it on (as, perhaps ironically for some, it would break the fast and furious flow for me).
--- End quote ---
I'm glad to hear that. But I think a key to toggle it on and off in-game would be better than just a config option. I think even I'd get annoyed if it popped up, say, if an enemy I was already corner shooting popped into view and it made me wait. And just FYI, I used to play slower before I saw how fast you were in some of your videos :)
--- Quote ---Along the same vein, there could also be a confirmation to continue an action if you're caught by surprise. To prevent abuse, however, I'd only want this to be of use for particularly long actions, like (full) reloading: otherwise it'd be the same problem as waiting in 0.1s intervals. Thus, it would be tied entirely to the player's speed value (1.0s normally, 0.9s for scouts), and if something happens in between a speed interval, you could stop what you're doing to do something else.
--- End quote ---
I do think something should be done to make full reloading more useful, and having it be interruptable by enemies is acceptable to me. I'm not sure about extending it to other long actions, though.
--- Quote ---Insta-deaths are usually the result of two things: Mancubi and/or barrels. The Mancubus already needs a spread-attack rewrite, so that's something we can strive to balance appropriately; barrel-deaths are almost always the fault of the player, so I don't lose sleep at night because people aren't being as safe as they should be around them.
--- End quote ---
I mostly agree. But barrel levels can be pretty frustrating, especially if one wants to stay and kill enemies.
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