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Nethack indeed suffers from that a but, but Dungeon Crawl in my opinion is one of the best games ever made, and it gets revamped constantly, and they make tough

Nethack indeed suffers from that a but, but Dungeon Crawl in my opinion is one of the best games ever made, and it gets revamped constantly, and they make tough choices and I have to admit they are usually right, even when first impression says otherwise.

nvarsj 11y ago
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is indeed a brilliant game. Some of the best gameplay I have ever experienced in any game, commercial or not. And it's interesting how this happened by organic iterative design with a few guiding hands over years, rather than the typical commercial big bang release date with years of up front dev. DCSS does suffer from the optimum local minima thing as well, though. There are a lot of big design choices that stick around because they've always been there, rather than being good choices. For instance: the difficulty curve, melee being superior to spell casting, big random damage spikes, length of the game (too long), tediousness of summons / spell casting, kiting as the optimal strategy 99% of the time, and the other things that make dcss what it is.
- gnuvince 11y ago
  I agree with some of the sub-optimal design choices you've mentioned, but I think the Crawl team has shown itself willing to be quite able to change the game to reduce tedium, even sometimes when a lot of players express reservations. For example, in terms of game length, Orcish mines has been reduced to 2 floors (used to be 5), Swamp/Shoal and Spider Nest/Snake Pit have been reduced to 4 floors (used to be 7), The Vaults have been reduced to 5 floors (used to be 8), the Dungeon has been split into Dungeon (15 floors) and the Depths (5 floors), rather than the old 27 floors. The weight limit for players that required low-strength casters to juggle items is gone, removing an important source of tedium. I'll say this: I've played both NetHack and Crawl (and many other roguelikes) and the main difference between the two of them, for me, is that I have fun playing Crawl and I have never enjoyed myself playing NetHack.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  One of the fantastic design choices in crawl (actually true for netball, too) is that it isn't balanced across all race+class combinations. Some are easy (mainly hack and slash power combos, like the gargoyle fighter) others are tough but trash you a lot about the game (tengu conjurer), and others are nigh impossible (mummy almost anything). If something is to easy, you can just choose to play a harder game, with less tolerance for mistakes. Eventually you start finding mistakes you weren't even aware of...
chongli 11y ago
Dungeon Crawl in my opinion is one of the best games ever made Having played a lot of both NetHack and Crawl, I think it's pretty bold to claim either game as the "best game ever". Both suffer from the same problem: past a certain point, your character has too many options for every situation and choices become boring and trite. Crawl tries to "fix" the problem by making a lot of your powerful options unreliable. I believe this is the wrong way to do it. It messes with the player's natural feedback loops by inviting them past a point of no return demarcated by a hidden variable (the random seed governing the unreliable option). Both games also suffer for the fact that they misuse a food clock. A food clock is a crude mechanism to stop the player from abusing regeneration of health and respawning of monsters. The problem with it is that it's a linear mechanism which simply does not function properly with a nonlinear game. Again, it invites players past a point of no return in cases such as foodless dungeon branches. Crawl tries to "fix" this by giving the player way too much food, but that just lengthens the feedback loop without actually solving the problem. The original Rogue (and its spiritual successor, Brogue) has a working food clock because it's a strictly linear game with a finite amount of food balanced against a finite number of areas to explore. Both Crawl and NetHack also suffer heavily from the problem of "windshield monsters". Like so many bugs splatting on the windshield, the games lull you into a sense of complacency until inevitably you walk around a corner and something really nasty notices you and you die. Yet another case of a long feedback loop that messes with the player's expectations. This is the game play analogue of jumpscares from the horror genre; a cheap trick that ends up pissing off the player most times.
- pmoriarty 11y ago
  "the games lull you into a sense of complacency until inevitably you walk around a corner and something really nasty notices you and you die" That just means you have to be careful so that can never happen. For some that makes the game boring, for others it's part of the fun. I like being prepared, so it's fun for me.
  - chongli 11y ago
    I admit the argument is a bit weak, but it's possible to have "something really nasty" around the corner without making the vast majority of enemies complete grist for the mill. Brogue illustrates this concept rather well. As you get further into the game there are plenty of those "oh shit!" moments but the regular enemies you're fighting are still very challenging and interesting to deal with. The boring part of the game is not the nasty thing that killed you, it's the thousand useless orcs you had to kill before it happened.

nvarsj 11y ago

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is indeed a brilliant game. Some of the best gameplay I have ever experienced in any game, commercial or not. And it's interesting how this happened by organic iterative design with a few guiding hands over years, rather than the typical commercial big bang release date with years of up front dev. DCSS does suffer from the optimum local minima thing as well, though. There are a lot of big design choices that stick around because they've always been there, rather than being good choices. For instance: the difficulty curve, melee being superior to spell casting, big random damage spikes, length of the game (too long), tediousness of summons / spell casting, kiting as the optimal strategy 99% of the time, and the other things that make dcss what it is.

gnuvince 11y ago
I agree with some of the sub-optimal design choices you've mentioned, but I think the Crawl team has shown itself willing to be quite able to change the game to reduce tedium, even sometimes when a lot of players express reservations. For example, in terms of game length, Orcish mines has been reduced to 2 floors (used to be 5), Swamp/Shoal and Spider Nest/Snake Pit have been reduced to 4 floors (used to be 7), The Vaults have been reduced to 5 floors (used to be 8), the Dungeon has been split into Dungeon (15 floors) and the Depths (5 floors), rather than the old 27 floors. The weight limit for players that required low-strength casters to juggle items is gone, removing an important source of tedium. I'll say this: I've played both NetHack and Crawl (and many other roguelikes) and the main difference between the two of them, for me, is that I have fun playing Crawl and I have never enjoyed myself playing NetHack.
sdenton4 11y ago
One of the fantastic design choices in crawl (actually true for netball, too) is that it isn't balanced across all race+class combinations. Some are easy (mainly hack and slash power combos, like the gargoyle fighter) others are tough but trash you a lot about the game (tengu conjurer), and others are nigh impossible (mummy almost anything). If something is to easy, you can just choose to play a harder game, with less tolerance for mistakes. Eventually you start finding mistakes you weren't even aware of...

chongli 11y ago

Dungeon Crawl in my opinion is one of the best games ever made Having played a lot of both NetHack and Crawl, I think it's pretty bold to claim either game as the "best game ever". Both suffer from the same problem: past a certain point, your character has too many options for every situation and choices become boring and trite. Crawl tries to "fix" the problem by making a lot of your powerful options unreliable. I believe this is the wrong way to do it. It messes with the player's natural feedback loops by inviting them past a point of no return demarcated by a hidden variable (the random seed governing the unreliable option). Both games also suffer for the fact that they misuse a food clock. A food clock is a crude mechanism to stop the player from abusing regeneration of health and respawning of monsters. The problem with it is that it's a linear mechanism which simply does not function properly with a nonlinear game. Again, it invites players past a point of no return in cases such as foodless dungeon branches. Crawl tries to "fix" this by giving the player way too much food, but that just lengthens the feedback loop without actually solving the problem. The original Rogue (and its spiritual successor, Brogue) has a working food clock because it's a strictly linear game with a finite amount of food balanced against a finite number of areas to explore. Both Crawl and NetHack also suffer heavily from the problem of "windshield monsters". Like so many bugs splatting on the windshield, the games lull you into a sense of complacency until inevitably you walk around a corner and something really nasty notices you and you die. Yet another case of a long feedback loop that messes with the player's expectations. This is the game play analogue of jumpscares from the horror genre; a cheap trick that ends up pissing off the player most times.

pmoriarty 11y ago
"the games lull you into a sense of complacency until inevitably you walk around a corner and something really nasty notices you and you die" That just means you have to be careful so that can never happen. For some that makes the game boring, for others it's part of the fun. I like being prepared, so it's fun for me.
- chongli 11y ago
  I admit the argument is a bit weak, but it's possible to have "something really nasty" around the corner without making the vast majority of enemies complete grist for the mill. Brogue illustrates this concept rather well. As you get further into the game there are plenty of those "oh shit!" moments but the regular enemies you're fighting are still very challenging and interesting to deal with. The boring part of the game is not the nasty thing that killed you, it's the thousand useless orcs you had to kill before it happened.