A couple of misc questions/observations
Gibbering
people have comments in their logs, which is useful for others who
read the history.
2) Can you tell who is watching your game while you play?
3) Is it really necessary for Okawaru to give you bolts all the
time? Moreover, they're always one-use bolts of fire or cold it
seems. Due to the plenitude of yaktaurs, I'm never at a shortage for
bolts anyway, which makes these gifts even more useless. Almost
makes it worth NOT using crossbows if you're a worshipper of Okawaru
so you don't increase the chance of utterly useless gifts.
4) When eels and such hide from you underwater, and you can "see a
disturbance" in the square, doing a *+direction causes me to always
"swing at nothing". How can I hit them? My mahklebites can always
target them no problem with lesser destruction, so why cant my
warriors swing at them?
5) I'm told that ctrl-direction is the same as *-direction, but ctrl-
direction always moves me. Is there an option I must set to enable
this?
6) Why must sewers/ice-caves and such be timed vaults? They are so
rare as it is, seems odd to make a character b-line for the things
when they find them.
7) Has there even been any consideration into lowering the devastation
of draining attacks? Even with 2 levels of resist negative energy,
you can easily lose 2 levels on Vault-8. I mean, it's REALLY bad.
I know many think this game is dead-simple as it is and can win 95% of
their games, but the amount of XP lost per draining attack is way out
of whack in my mind.
8) When playing a demonspawn, would it be too much to ask that if
you're not a magic user at all (no spells learned) that you not be
given the mana-regen mutation?
That's all I can think of at the moment. Thanks for any answers!
Peter Huebner
@u25g2000prh.googlegroups.com>, rob...@gmail.com says...
>
> 4) When eels and such hide from you underwater, and you can "see a
> disturbance" in the square, doing a *+direction causes me to always
> "swing at nothing". How can I hit them? My mahklebites can always
> target them no problem with lesser destruction, so why cant my
> warriors swing at them?
>
In shallow water you can ctrl-hit them with a polearm, in deep water you
need a polearm of reaching, apparently.
-P.
Stefan O'Rear
> 1) How can I annotate my morgue file's turn section? I see many
> people have comments in their logs, which is useful for others who
> read the history.
Use the ':' command.
> 2) Can you tell who is watching your game while you play?
Nobody, unless you're on one of the public servers, in which case you can't.
(Be grateful; some public roguelike servers tell you in the form of massive
lag spikes. :) )
> 3) Is it really necessary for Okawaru to give you bolts all the
> time? Moreover, they're always one-use bolts of fire or cold it
> seems. Due to the plenitude of yaktaurs, I'm never at a shortage for
> bolts anyway, which makes these gifts even more useless. Almost
> makes it worth NOT using crossbows if you're a worshipper of Okawaru
> so you don't increase the chance of utterly useless gifts.
This has been changed for the next release, Okawaru gives much more
diverse ammo gifts. Note that in 0.5 you can prevent ammo gifts by
keeping 65 bolts in your inventory at all times; he'll only gift ammo
if he thinks you're nearly out.
> 4) When eels and such hide from you underwater, and you can "see a
> disturbance" in the square, doing a *+direction causes me to always
> "swing at nothing". How can I hit them? My mahklebites can always
> target them no problem with lesser destruction, so why cant my
> warriors swing at them?
Your weapon doesn't have enough range. Polearms can do it, if you're
an axe user you'll need to use a ranged attack (have I mentioned recently
that Makhleb is an awesome gpd for warriors?)
> 5) I'm told that ctrl-direction is the same as *-direction, but ctrl-
> direction always moves me. Is there an option I must set to enable
> this?
Whether control-direction works on any given combination of operating
system and terminal emulator is very much a crapshoot; we created *
specifically for people like you whose control-direction doesn't work.
> 6) Why must sewers/ice-caves and such be timed vaults? They are so
> rare as it is, seems odd to make a character b-line for the things
> when they find them.
Because otherwise it would be possible to power up your character
before entering. The idea with those vaults is that you have to tackle
them at a fairly low level or not at all.
> 7) Has there even been any consideration into lowering the devastation
> of draining attacks? Even with 2 levels of resist negative energy,
> you can easily lose 2 levels on Vault-8. I mean, it's REALLY bad.
> I know many think this game is dead-simple as it is and can win 95% of
> their games, but the amount of XP lost per draining attack is way out
> of whack in my mind.
I think it's a good thing that draining attacks are meaningful. If they
weren't, life protection would be useless. On the other hand, low levels
of life protection are considered underpowered; we're going to fix this,
but for now, 3 levels is required.
> 8) When playing a demonspawn, would it be too much to ask that if
> you're not a magic user at all (no spells learned) that you not be
> given the mana-regen mutation?
We consider the fact that the player can influence mutations at all to be
a bad thing, since it forces unintuitive choices. For the next version,
we're removing all possibility of this; additionally, the mutations
themselves are being redone to not favor one type of character excessively
over another. Channelling is gone.
> That's all I can think of at the moment. Thanks for any answers!
Thanks for feedback!
Stefan
tenaya
>
> 4) When eels and such hide from you underwater, and you can "see a
> disturbance" in the square, doing a *+direction causes me to always
> "swing at nothing". How can I hit them? My mahklebites can always
> target them no problem with lesser destruction, so why cant my
> warriors swing at them?
I bring a blowgun or flame/frost sling and attack the disturbances
when my experience pool is empty.
Allies will also attack the hidden creature in their efforts to stand
close to you.
>
>
> 7) Has there even been any consideration into lowering the devastation
> of draining attacks? Even with 2 levels of resist negative energy,
> you can easily lose 2 levels on Vault-8. I mean, it's REALLY bad.
> I know many think this game is dead-simple as it is and can win 95% of
> their games, but the amount of XP lost per draining attack is way out
> of whack in my mind.
That's a not-so-subtle way of telling you to come back later and do
Vault:8 when you have rN+++
David Ploog
Plenty of good comments already, so I can be brief.
> 2) Can you tell who is watching your game while you play?
On CAO, not at all. On CDO, it used to be possible, although I cannot find
the page anymore. If you are interested, the CDO maintainer would surely
make the spectators public again. And it couldn't hurt to ask Rax about
the same feature for CAO.
> 7) Has there even been any consideration into lowering the devastation
> of draining attacks? Even with 2 levels of resist negative energy,
> you can easily lose 2 levels on Vault-8. I mean, it's REALLY bad.
> I know many think this game is dead-simple as it is and can win 95% of
> their games, but the amount of XP lost per draining attack is way out
> of whack in my mind.
Apart from what the others said: XP is not so much important for levels.
XP is important for skills. So if you get drained with an empty xp pool,
it's not that bad. Easier to achieve for spellcasters, I know.
David
George Moyer
> > of draining attacks? Even with 2 levels of resist negative energy,
> > you can easily lose 2 levels on Vault-8. I mean, it's REALLY bad.
> > I know many think this game is dead-simple as it is and can win 95% of
> > their games, but the amount of XP lost per draining attack is way out
> > of whack in my mind.
>
> That's a not-so-subtle way of telling you to come back later and do
> Vault:8 when you have rN+++
Right, but I think his question is what's the point of achieving rN+
+? Right now it seems more like you're building a three-piece device
that fully protects against draining rather than stacking up draining
resistance.
tenaya
> On 2009-12-10, Gibbering <robl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 8) When playing a demonspawn, would it be too much to ask that if
> > you're not a magic user at all (no spells learned) that you not be
> > given the mana-regen mutation?
>
> We consider the fact that the player can influence mutations at all to be
> a bad thing, since it forces unintuitive choices. For the next version,
> we're removing all possibility of this; additionally, the mutations
Is that to say that a Makhleb worshipper _could_ be given throw frost/
flame?
What about "animate dead", could a Yred worshipper be given that one?
If so, ouch. For me, the fun of playing a Demonspawn is getting cool
mutations, despite having poor aptitudes. If I had too many redundant/
weak mutations it would certainly take out some of the charm of
playing them.
Stefan O'Rear
From the part you cut off: "the mutations themselves are being redone."
That means, among other things, all mutations that are entirely
redundant with some god ability or spell, are being cut.
Stefan
David Ploog
> On Dec 10, 1:23�pm, Stefan O'Rear <stefa...@cox.net> wrote:
>> On 2009-12-10, Gibbering <robl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> 8) When playing a demonspawn, would it be too much to ask that if
>>> you're not a magic user at all (no spells learned) that you not be
>>> given the mana-regen mutation?
>>
>> We consider the fact that the player can influence mutations at all to be
>> a bad thing, since it forces unintuitive choices. �For the next version,
>> we're removing all possibility of this; additionally, the mutations
>
> Is that to say that a Makhleb worshipper _could_ be given throw frost/
> flame?
> What about "animate dead", could a Yred worshipper be given that one?
No to both. The point is exactly that the DS mutation set should be cool,
regardless of what style you chose. This is achieved by removing those DS
mutations that are plain copies of spells or god abilities.
> If so, ouch. For me, the fun of playing a Demonspawn is getting cool
> mutations, despite having poor aptitudes. If I had too many redundant/
> weak mutations it would certainly take out some of the charm of
> playing them.
Well, what can I say? The idea is to make DS (more) fun. Needless to say,
any change we implement will cause someone to say the old state was
better. However, doing that *before* the change....
David
tenaya
Ah, ok. I got it. I'll look forward to seeing what changes.
tenaya
> On Wed, 23 Dec 2009, tenaya wrote:
> > On Dec 10, 1:23 pm, Stefan O'Rear <stefa...@cox.net> wrote:
> >> On 2009-12-10, Gibbering <robl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> 8) When playing a demonspawn, would it be too much to ask that if
> >>> you're not a magic user at all (no spells learned) that you not be
> >>> given the mana-regen mutation?
>
> >> We consider the fact that the player can influence mutations at all to be
> >> a bad thing, since it forces unintuitive choices. For the next version,
> >> we're removing all possibility of this; additionally, the mutations
>
> > Is that to say that a Makhleb worshipper _could_ be given throw frost/
> > flame?
> > What about "animate dead", could a Yred worshipper be given that one?
>
> No to both. The point is exactly that the DS mutation set should be cool,
> regardless of what style you chose. This is achieved by removing those DS
> mutations that are plain copies of spells or god abilities.
Cool. Good idea.
>
> > If so, ouch. For me, the fun of playing a Demonspawn is getting cool
> > mutations, despite having poor aptitudes. If I had too many redundant/
> > weak mutations it would certainly take out some of the charm of
> > playing them.
>
> Well, what can I say? The idea is to make DS (more) fun. Needless to say,
> any change we implement will cause someone to say the old state was
> better. However, doing that *before* the change....
>
I do find DS a lot of fun and I just won two games with a DSBe (3-
rune) and a DSFi (all-rune). It's a fun species to play although it
sure is disappointing to get "Your skin feels tough (x2)" for a first
mutation.
The only comment that I would have at this point (since you're working
on them anyway) is that I did tend to reroll quite a bit with the
species. Since my games take over 10 hours to play (and hopefully
win) I don't think too much of restarting a game after a measly 20
minutes if my first two mutations are disappointing (e.g. horns, tough
skin, minor demons, channel energy, throw frost/flame, teleport
control) . Of course there is no guarantee that these mutations won't
come later after a significant investment of time in a game but given
that I have no streak to protect or care for percentage, it's easiest
to just start over if matters start out less than desirable.
Tenaya
Stefan O'Rear
> I do find DS a lot of fun and I just won two games with a DSBe (3-
> rune) and a DSFi (all-rune). It's a fun species to play although it
> sure is disappointing to get "Your skin feels tough (x2)" for a first
> mutation.
>
> The only comment that I would have at this point (since you're working
> on them anyway) is that I did tend to reroll quite a bit with the
> species. Since my games take over 10 hours to play (and hopefully
> win) I don't think too much of restarting a game after a measly 20
> minutes if my first two mutations are disappointing (e.g. horns, tough
> skin, minor demons, channel energy, throw frost/flame, teleport
> control) . Of course there is no guarantee that these mutations won't
> come later after a significant investment of time in a game but given
> that I have no streak to protect or care for percentage, it's easiest
> to just start over if matters start out less than desirable.
This is basically our starting point - we're reducing the variance in
mutation sets, so you won't get just tough skill or teleport control.
Horns are still in, but you might as well keep them, as you're guaranteed
to lose a slot at some point and the headbutt damage is nice.
Stefan