Oni in Rush's sanctum?

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Re: Oni in Rush's sanctum?

Postby Ferret » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:57 pm

I've actually been thinking about multi-encounters again lately and working on a design for adding them in properly instead of leaving them to horrible random chance (which tended to at time be brutally unfair about it.) This is something I probably will get to sooner rather than later.

Way, way, WAY back in the day, unsummoning actually used to require line of sight. :D Biggest problem with that was that your allies themselves tended to wander out of sight to fight enemies or to path around "traffic jams". Those both happen much less than they used to (especially the wandering out of sight during combat part), but I agree it'd probably still be too mean to put back at this point... especially as I'm finally working on putting multis back in.

Yeah, I think Glyphs (well, they need a different name now since I use those for some of the consumables.. I think maybe I started calling them Brands in my notes somewhere, but I don't have those with me right now) are probably a pre-req to having "interesting" loot beyond abilities at this point. Granted, Glyphs will only be adding one slot per demon, but given that Glyphs will be far rarer than abilities, finding them should be more interesting.

Currency will eventually be able to buy consumables, and even Glyphs. :) I know that wasn't your favorite change ever, but I appreciate that you've been willing to talk about why and what I could do to make it less frowny for you.
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Re: Oni in Rush's sanctum?

Postby mbj » Tue Apr 04, 2017 9:45 pm

I wrote this huge post about currency but I lost it because I got auto-logged out and filled my copy buffer with some random thing. Kill me :lol: :lol: :lol:

Anyway the gist of it was that the main issue of currency was the "removal of rarity" since it converts a lot of previously limited and rare resources that resulted in a lot of excitement upon finding and with which you had to make tough decisions on a game by game basis, into a single pooled resource that basically reduces all that into a single number incrementing on your screen.

The secondary gist was that currency in part reduces reliance on tower drops (the "adaptation factor" where you need to adapt to dungeon loot to survive). I brought up DCSS Demigod Wanderer as a contrasting example to help show that the adaptation factor is mostly absent in Demon save for early game healers (or lack there of) and modified demon abilities (which will only help complete a build and are almost never necessary to improve your survival chances). I also made parallels between dungeon drops and demons, and shops and the transmutations menu. I said how replayability is limited due to how Demon's counterparts for these things are mostly static and guaranteed in comparison to other roguelikes, and that this guarantee is actually a necessary evil in a sense due to how Demon is supposed to be played (predetermined strategic ability synergy sandbox, which is facilitated by the existence of those static elements).

Also I had realized that currency was just a symptom of how the game is supposed to be played (as mentioned before) and that currency isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself (nor is the game for that matter).
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Re: Oni in Rush's sanctum?

Postby Gaswafers » Tue Apr 04, 2017 10:39 pm

The lack of diversity between games is a pure content issue. Demon could get along in the style it has now, but it needs more content so you don't end up seeing the same thing every game. Also, better assignment of random abilities so modified demons are less of a joke.
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Re: Oni in Rush's sanctum?

Postby Ferret » Thu Apr 06, 2017 3:48 pm

I imagine it used to be exciting to find Matrices... but I'd never intended for modifiers to only available at random: I wanted it to be rare (hence the credit cost being pretty high), but not at the RNG's whim.

The "make do with what you find" vs. "use what you will" axis is definitely a long one in roguelikes. Demon's position is definitely closer to "use what you will", but not slammed all the way in that direction like say, ToME is. Demon promises you that you'll probably be able to go in the general direction you want to go, but you may not get the exact details you want. i.e.: You can make a nuker, but you don't necessarily get to pick and choose your nukes. DCSS is actually somewhat close to Demon on this axis via the god system: major archetypes are supported strongly enough by a god where you can "force" the issue (Okawaru/Trog for warriors, Sif Muna/Vehumet for casters, etc.), though as with Demon, you won't get to pick the details necessarily. ToME on the other hand is the extreme case of "use what you will": you get your entire skill tree and for the most part can pick anything you want from it (barring unlock restrictions.) The random loot you find in ToME is fun and useful, but it doesn't really affect build decisions in the way it can in DCSS, for example.

Replayability's an issue, and as Gaswafers points out, for a game like Demon a lot of it can be solved by more content for the RNG to choose from, and better use of what's there. Multiple people have said they find the early game much more interesting since the last build, which added a fair number of new demons/abilities into the mix there. I plan on tweaking modifiers further soon to try and improve their threat level a bit. I'm not sure I'd agree modified demons as a group are a joke though: I get pretty frequent reports of nasty ones showing up. There are definitely some dud results though, and I am interested in trying to minimize those.
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