Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
1) do not confuse laws of physics/physiology/etc and logic.
2) unnatural behavoiur can be very logical. but still unnatural.
3) unbalanced games are usually not fun. balance flaws are exploited and that ruins (at least) some portion of fun.
IMO: Properties of good skills/exp system:
1) Сonsistency. It shouldn't defy laws of common logic.
2) Fluent? It shouldn't force player to do unnatural things to progress.
3) Balanced.
In order to achieve (really?) 3, Crawl somewhat fails at 1 and 2.
It's weird to think about being able to use a skill many times without ever getting any better at it, like when you put a skill on hold.
I don't mind practicing at all.
I dislike the fact that in order to practice you need some exp in exp pool.
Even for practicing non-combat skills.
It's clear that in order to cast high level enchantment you have to
practice on low level for quite some time.
But what connection have haste with killing monsters?
Why I MUST kill monsters for, say, casting swiftness to become "practice enchantment"?
If I don't kill monsters than by casting swiftness I'll just waste my mana and won't
improve in enchantments a bit.
Once again. I don't mind practicing on weak dudes!
It's very reasonable (except for a fact that I don't really need that fighting skill at all).
But in order for this practice to be of any effect, I need to kill pack of strong
monsters with my powerful spells. Why?
What is connection between killing mobs with spells and practicing fighting skill with sword?
And as I stated, you need to find some bad ass monsters for a high level character
to gain some serious exp in the pool. And than find some weakling at the other end of dungeon...
It's just time consuming and not a single bit difficult.
But almost always there is a fun way to overcome these barriers.
That's what games are about. Overcoming barriers in a FUN way.
If all you need is to press button 1500 times in order to progress further, that's not fun at all (IMO).
No. You can't. Haste is high level spell. And miscast effect can be not very pleasant.
You need to pump a lot of exp into enchantment before you will be able to cast haste more or less reliably.
IMO grinding is effortless action that grant you some reward.
I can kill draconians with my caster. But I can't even try to engage in close combat with them.
I kill pack of draconians in zot, return to dungeon, find someone more or less harmless,
and pump exp into fighting. Repeat. And it takes a lot of time to pump fighting to a level
when I will be able to use it with more or less serious opponents, to avoid long trips.
Worst thing in this - I don't really need fighting!
I don't want to fight with sword! I'm spellcaster!
But training fighting is the only way to increase hp.
And with hp below some threshold you can't enter several areas without risk of being instakilled.
That's bad example. Actually pure fighters usually do not care about exp pool and such at all.
You just kill thing. With sword or crossbow - it doesn't matter.
Firing crossbow when there are some points in exp pool doesn't hinder too much,
fighter are tough enough to withstand a few extra punches, and you don't need to
find specific enemy for that.
Pure specialized casters are nearly the same.
But both pure fighters and pure casters are very dependent of equipment.
Even in order to simply win with 3 runes you need some serious luck.
Add 'almost' there. Even turned off skills can consume exp from pool time to time.
And that is what I don't like in crawl the most.
Imagine that you decided to learn how to make macrame.
You got book with lessons and some threads.
You successfully completed couple of lessons.
Your progress suddenly stops. You can't do new tricks, no matter how hard you try
and how much time you practice.
Now you need to take swatter and kill a few flies.
After killing them, you can make new tricks easily.
Where is logic here?
Putting logic aside (there is no much logic in fireball anyway), game forces me to do boring actions
to overcome some artificial barriers. They call this 'balance'. I call this 'bullshit'.
Both words start with 'b'.
No. It's not about lvl0->lvl1 only.
It's about all skills that are not used often.
If you want to cast haste, you need enchantment at relatively high level.
But if you don't need any other enchantment, you need to do cast something meaningless
every time there is exp in the pool.
Have you ever tried to train fighting with caster?
Kill powerful foe with spell. Return to dungeon, find some weaklings,
swing with sharp piece of metal at them (you don't even need to kill them, just attack).
Repeat. At what point this isn't some perverted form of grinding?
I don't really know why they didn't make training of combat spells by damaging
enemies and training of non-combat spells by usage only.
