Need an opinion of DoomRL and/or classic roguelike players.

[sidav94]

The title.
DoomRL was amazing, but its combat lacks the depth of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Yet it was remaining very interesting for many hours of gameplay, thanks to its combat being tactical enough and its very good (becauser of the "what-if?" component) equipment system. So, how JH game compared to DoomRL, speaking in terms of pure gameplay only? And can it be compared with any classical roguelike no, THE BINDING IF ISAAC AND FTL ARE NOT ROGUELIKES IN ANY WAY in terms of possible combat decisions depth?

[Kref]

For now this is a seriously downgraded DoomRL as I see it.

[sidav94]

Originally posted by Kref:

For now this is a seriously downgraded DoomRL as I see it.

Even downgraded? Can you please explain?

[Kref]

1. No diagonal movement
2. Armor can not be stored in inventory, you can change armor with one on the floor
3. Weapons can not be stored in inventory, you have 3 (2 for scouts, more then 3 with perks) weapon slots
4. Looks like all projectiles have unlimited speed, as far as I remember in DoomRL rockets or fireballs sometimes needed more then on 'turn' to reach player
5. No knives, I saw only a chainsaw as a melee weapon for 3+ hours of playing
6. It looks like there are signifficantly fewer perks in game (15 for scout, others also have such or about such amount; you can take more then 1 level of a perk as before)
7. Special levels do not look so special and so fun
8. You always have plenty of regular ammo, also it is a not so good choice on advanced levels
9. Didn't saw an option to carry two pistols
10. Didn't saw an option to repair armor

[Epyon]

1-3 is streamlining the game - it was unnecessary complexity, such as we removed from traditional roguelikes when doing DoomRL
4 - this is false - all projectiles in DoomRL were instantanous
5 - melee barely didn't make it into this release version, it's coming real soon!
6 - master traits are missing, but the traits are more oriented on actual active things that you can do, instead of just bumping numbers (there are still a couple of those leftover, but we're removing them slowly in favor of actionable or feelable stuff)
7 - agreed, most of them were done when the script mechanics were poor, this is something we intend to make better with time!
8 - what difficulty are you playing on? On Easy ammo is not an issue, but generally you cant beat the game with a single ammo type unless playing a Challenge Mode
9 - dualgunner is coming soon, but it requires a revamp of the animation system, that's why it didn't appear yet.
10 - there are repair kits

[deshipu]

Well, 1. has no impact on depth, 2. and 3. add depth, not remove it, together with limited inventory space, because you have one more decision to make, and you have to make it before leaving the level. 4. makes it less random and dependent on your luck, 5., 6. and 7. are due to the game still being developed and new weapons, enemies and level types are being added even as we speak. 8. is simply not true on later levels, when you have more monsters and fewer (former) humans. 9. you can carry even four pistols if you like, though I have no idea why you would want to.

So yes, right now the game has less content than DoomRL, but I wouldn't say it's less tactical. There are smoke grenades, active skills, weapon and armor mods, and the whole cover system which add a fair bit of tactics. But of course it's not chess. And when you get bored with the main game, there are the challenge modes.

[eb]

It's a streamlined DoomRL. Some people are strangely enamoured with feature bloat and obscure mechanics, so there will certainly be complaints, but from what I've seen the basics look a lot more solid.

[Kref]

Originally posted by epyon:

1-3 is streamlining the game - it was unnecessary complexity, such as we removed from traditional roguelikes when doing DoomRL

Well, I see some of your point. Still, I remember that in DoomRL I had hard choices what to grab and what to leave behind. Extra armours would give me protection, additional weapons would reduce risk that I would run out of ammo. Or maybe I should take more ammo to reduce risk that I would remain without it? I also often stored mods for future using.
Cyber armor was an amazing thing in resource-management terms - should I take it or not?
Now I just put on an armour when I see it (I could probably take it before leaving a level but then I would have some trouble to search for it again).
Now the game looks like wandering and shooting without that much resource-management thinking. I am playing on medium difficulty.
I found myself much rarely shooting in space hoping that it would accidently hit someone even as bullets are common - is there a new structures of levels to blame or the bullets now just primitivly hit a square instead of having a long fly with some chance to hit those on the squres it would bypass? I can't tell for sure.

[Epyon]

The slot system is directly taken from AliensRL BTW. Theres a lot more carryable items planned for JH than there was in DoomRL, so weapons and armor would just get in the way and bloat inventory. I'm pretty sure that weapon slots were a good idea, I'm not yet fully commited on the armor thing. It'd be nice to carry a spare.

As far as ammo goes, we currently have a different problem - at endgame you're basically running out of everything.

We removed the possibility to blind shoot, because it made for a really boring strategy in DoomRL. Our general design plan is to remove stuff that was either not very intuitive (DoomRL's corner shooting was actually a bug, that tied to getting shot when not seeing your enemy - couldn't fix the other without "fixing" the first) or was boring (radar shooting), or artificially slowed down gameplay (giftdropping), and instead introducing mechanics that are easy to grasp and yet still provide tactical depth. There's still a lot to improve with the latter, but I'm pretty happy with how the cover system is corner shooting without bugs, and how the new dodge system works.

This is the START of Early Access - there's a lot work to do, and I'll gladly listen to all feedback and suggestions :)

[Pangolin Legends: Arceus]

I just can't help but think the game could have been finished twice over by now if it was just ASCII.

[Epyon]

Of course it would be. But where would be the challenge in that? Not to mention, it wouldn't sell at all, and hence I'd die of starvation before

Also, our main objective is funneling more people back to classic roguelikes. And maybe reclaim the back the damn word.

[Pangolin Legends: Arceus]

Originally posted by epyon:

Of course it would be. But where would be the challenge in that? Not to mention, it wouldn't sell at all, and hence I'd die of starvation before

Also, our main objective is funneling more people back to classic roguelikes. And maybe reclaim the back the damn word.

Well I wish you luck and I know you've put a lot of work in but I feel like you might have lost a few "hardcore" rl players and I'm not sure any amount of 3d graphics will be enough to grab a sizable mainstream crowd in such a crowded market.

[Epyon]

Originally posted by The sap is rising!:

Well I wish you luck and I know you've put a lot of work in but I feel like you might have lost a few "hardcore" rl players and I'm not sure any amount of 3d graphics will be enough to grab a sizable mainstream crowd in such a crowded market.

TBH, if we'd sell this game only to the all the hardcore RL crowd that wouldn't cover production costs. This is a gamble to try to bring hardcore roguelikes to the wider audience, just as XCOM did with the XCOM-likes. I'm very much aware that it might not work out, but we're hopefully on our way to at least finish this game, which makes me happy - because for the past few years I had the best damn job ever (even though it paid less than ♥♥♥♥).

And also, give us a chance - there is a lot more nice stuff planned for the following months :)

[solaris32]

Originally posted by epyon:

Of course it would be. But where would be the challenge in that? Not to mention, it wouldn't sell at all, and hence I'd die of starvation before

Also, our main objective is funneling more people back to classic roguelikes. And maybe reclaim the back the damn word.

I wouldn't have bought this if it only had ASCII graphics. That's boring, I like to actually SEE what I'm doing. See the monster, and preferably, like this game, see the monster fall over dead.
Well as soon as the checkout problem gets fixed I'll buy it.

[harrified]

Would be cool to see the dev make some money, but the doomrl fans know this business and they've done the math. The only way to save this project now 3 years on is to make the game as unappealing as possible, and no they're not biased at all.

[Pangolin Legends: Arceus]

Originally posted by epyon:

Originally posted by The sap is rising!:

Well I wish you luck and I know you've put a lot of work in but I feel like you might have lost a few "hardcore" rl players and I'm not sure any amount of 3d graphics will be enough to grab a sizable mainstream crowd in such a crowded market.

TBH, if we'd sell this game only to the all the hardcore RL crowd that wouldn't cover production costs. This is a gamble to try to bring hardcore roguelikes to the wider audience, just as XCOM did with the XCOM-likes. I'm very much aware that it might not work out, but we're hopefully on our way to at least finish this game, which makes me happy - because for the past few years I had the best damn job ever (even though it paid less than ♥♥♥♥).

And also, give us a chance - there is a lot more nice stuff planned for the following months :)

The counterpoint is Cogmind of course.