Re: Roguelike Engines and Short Form Game Modules

Rick Frankum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:16:27 GMT:
> DarkGod wrote:
>> The Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:55:23 +0000, after eating far too many mushrooms
>> of confusion David Damerell wrote:
>>>It's in Rogue. It serves to put a clock on the game, preventing
>>>Angband-style play where one spends ages doing easy levels on the
>>>off-chance of getting a little useful stuff. It makes a lot more sense
>>>than it appears to.
>> There are better ways to do that...
> How does ToME go about discouraging scumming, other than offering better 
> rewards at lower levels?  I think the playstyle is different enough in 
> rogue/crawl/nethack, where resource management is a *serious* part of 
> the game, but in *band it's more about collecting resistances than 
> trying not starve to death.
> I can't stand the "feature", either.  I haven't been turned off by any 
> recent game as badly as when I found out Crawl's best strategy was to 
> carry around bloody gobbets of flesh.

  If you have persistent maps and no or very few "wandering monsters"
generated over time, the player won't have any incentive to repeat
previous maps.

  I prefer to treat food as a healing item, rather than a deteriorating
stat, simply because then the player *wants* to find food, rather than
feeling that it's forced on him by the game.  It's not realistic, but
neither is starving to death if you don't eat every couple of hours.

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/";> Mark Hughes </a>
"I believe in communication.  If I communicate with you every so often,
 you'll be bothered by what I say enough that you won't ask me to, which
 means more sleep for me." -Something Positive, 2003Sep22