First off, I want to say that one of the things that makes this game great is that it accommodates a wide variety of playing styles. You can play fast and furious, or slow and ponderous and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it. I have a lot of respect for Kornel and the devteam for being able to keep it balanced enough to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers. I'm very firmly in the category of players who take the "slow and ponderous" route, but nevertheless, I'd like to approach this thread being open to the fact that other people will want to play it differently.
Napsterbater had a neat little summary of his points a few pages back:
Yes, I posted this to get discussion going, and it seems the best way to fix this would be to add three things:
1) Have Shift-R on combat shottys interrupt when an enemy comes into view.
2) A smoother Run function. I suggest making shift-move work.
3) Make the character confirm moving into a fluid that will damage him. Optionally, only make him confirm when it would do a certain amount of damage or percentage of current health.
1) This is reasonable. At present, using full reload on Combat Shotguns is completely useless. (unless you're invulnerable) Implementing this idea will make that feature useful again and benefit anyone regardless of playstyle.
2) If by "smoother," you mean clearing the buffer issue, then I'll agree that that's reasonable too. (provided it isn't a major headache to rework the input system; I'm not sure about the programming side of things) I've only leaned on an arrow key once, but I did observe the problem that I continued moving for over a second after I released the key, and so I took a lot more damage than I would have if I had stopped moving the instant I had released the key. Personally, I don't lean on the buttons any more, but I can see how fixing the buffering issue could be a big help to people who favour that playing style. As for using "shift-direction" to run, that's also perfectly reasonable. (Or just make a bindable key for it?) Perhaps it could even be made a toggle (Just like "fast-play" in the original Rogue!) Switching to "fast-play" mode would make it so that any time you push an arrow key, it treats it as if you did the run command. That feature alone, I think, would cover a lot of Napsterbater's complaints.
3) This one I would only accept if it's an option I can turn off. Even though I take things slowly anyway, I don't want the game prompting me every single time I step into acid. (That would just get irritating) My suggestion is to have a line in the config.lua file that says something like "safety threshold for fluids" followed by a number which would be your percentage of health. If you set the number to 0, then the game will never prompt you when you try to step in acid. If you set it to 200, the game will *always* prompt you when you step in acid. If you set it to, say, 20, the game will only prompt you if you're close to death. This way, it's customizable to fit any playstyle. (Obviously, it shouldn't bother prompting you if you're invulnerable or wearing an envirosuit)
As for difficulty balance issues... I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the line underneath my username to the left. I was once told that I "deserved to die" after I complained about the "unfairness" of a DoomRL game I had just played. I didn't take it as a serious insult, but it did raise an important point. I learned, that day, that the subject of DoomRL's difficulty is a real hot button on these forums. So, let's all keep that in mind if we decide to talk about difficulty again. :) The fact that we're all exchanging messages by text here makes it really easy to misinterpret emotions and intentions, so it's really easy to appear hostile when we don't mean to be. In cases like this, I think it's important to choose your words carefully. (Hopefully, mine are chosen carefully enough!) ;)