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Is DCSS any good these days? I remember playing it back aruond 2014 (0.14-0.15?) and beating the game a few times, but it felt like each update just increasingl

Is DCSS any good these days? I remember playing it back aruond 2014 (0.14-0.15?) and beating the game a few times, but it felt like each update just increasingly dumbed it down

djur 6y ago
If you thought it was dumbed down in 2014, you probably will still prefer another roguelike.
- jere 6y ago
  Considering they're removing food completely yea. I do think most of the changes are thoughtful and make sense but sanding all the edges off makes the game seem a little bland these days.
- voldacar 6y ago
  I mostly play brogue currently but I've been getting into angband variants. Sil is probably my favorite of those so far
bitdizzy 6y ago
I was actively playing DCSS at that time, beat the game with every race and every class, did 15 rune and all and I don't think it was getting dumbed down. A lot of pointless stuff was removed but the tactical depth of the game was preserved quite well. Hm, maybe I should boot it up again and see what's been changed.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
I still really enjoy it. I feel like one of their guiding principles is "if doing something tedious or annoying would make you more successful, let's remove that". So, for instance, instead of having to take notes about what's in your stash, you can just search all items you've ever seen and where they're located.
klmadfejno 6y ago
Some people like(d) DCSS because it was a complicated system with lots of entropy that sort of gave an illusion of complicated decisions. A lot of recent design decisions have been around removing decisions that aren't really that interesting if you know what you're doing. There's merit to both views. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. The biggest change recently was removing food. On one hand, I've never finished the game without a huge surplus of rations. Food did not affect the game, almost ever, even for trolls and spriggans so long as you were not overly cautious about eating food when needed. Once you understood this, food didn't really serve any purpose in the game for 99.9% of game time. On the other hand, newbies might think its interesting, and overindex on, say, spellcasting to reduce hunger costs and hoarding rations and think its a fun added challenge.

Is DCSS any good these days? I remember playing it back aruond 2014 (0.14-0.15?) and beating the game a few times, but it felt like each update just increasingly dumbed it down

djur 6y ago

If you thought it was dumbed down in 2014, you probably will still prefer another roguelike.

jere 6y ago
Considering they're removing food completely yea. I do think most of the changes are thoughtful and make sense but sanding all the edges off makes the game seem a little bland these days.
voldacar 6y ago
I mostly play brogue currently but I've been getting into angband variants. Sil is probably my favorite of those so far

bitdizzy 6y ago

I was actively playing DCSS at that time, beat the game with every race and every class, did 15 rune and all and I don't think it was getting dumbed down. A lot of pointless stuff was removed but the tactical depth of the game was preserved quite well. Hm, maybe I should boot it up again and see what's been changed.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

I still really enjoy it. I feel like one of their guiding principles is "if doing something tedious or annoying would make you more successful, let's remove that". So, for instance, instead of having to take notes about what's in your stash, you can just search all items you've ever seen and where they're located.

klmadfejno 6y ago

Some people like(d) DCSS because it was a complicated system with lots of entropy that sort of gave an illusion of complicated decisions. A lot of recent design decisions have been around removing decisions that aren't really that interesting if you know what you're doing. There's merit to both views. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. The biggest change recently was removing food. On one hand, I've never finished the game without a huge surplus of rations. Food did not affect the game, almost ever, even for trolls and spriggans so long as you were not overly cautious about eating food when needed. Once you understood this, food didn't really serve any purpose in the game for 99.9% of game time. On the other hand, newbies might think its interesting, and overindex on, say, spellcasting to reduce hunger costs and hoarding rations and think its a fun added challenge.