Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[half]

What if the whole wield/unwield process could be handled automatically?

I wouldn't do this as it has very large changes on the way the game works. So far (I think!) the only multiturn actions are running and resting, which are very predictable in how they work. They also abort when interrupted. Having a more complex multiturn action would considerably complicate the player's understanding of the game.

On reading this, I also came up with the proposal of just having to have a digger in your inventory/equipment in order to tunnel. I might be OK with this approach. I'm not sure. The main issue is the speed and convenience of digging. This is fine for rubble, but more problematic for quartz and granite. The turns swapping in and out currently make this more difficult to do in the middle of combat. In Angband, you have a tiny chance of succeeding in digging each turn (to model it taking many turns). I changed this to a two stage process of stone -> rubble -> floor, which is less realistic, but more abstracted and more roguelike in my opinion (c.f. changing armour in the time it takes to move 10 ft). This does mean that convenience digging could be a bit too good. (Note that you can currently do this, but only with a trumpet of blasting and at a cost of 20 voice). I suppose my main concern is people tunneling around Morgoth too easily in the escape, but you still need to take 4 hits from him, compared to 5 before, or 2 hits from using Exchange Places.

There are some other minor issues such as now being able to dig when you were wielding a cursed weapon. This is not bad gameplay-wise, just a bit odd thematically. However, you can still remove you gloves (unlike Nethack...) and can use a trumpet etc, so it this is not so different.

We would also want to at least allow you to still wield mattocks given Tolkien's references to dwarves using them. So they will still have to remain weapons with stats, which makes it a bit odd to get this ability when not wielding them.

Overall, I'm still unsure, but am considering it. The current implementation definitely makes me go another way when I find a blocked tunnel instead of digging it out, which is a bit silly.

[BlueFish]

Alphabetical order pleases me aesthetically, and that would trump tiny speed benefits for me. And if alphabetical order is used in some other lists, having male first here would bother me slightly. That would seem like a political decision.

There's no obvious order to a set of possibilities where you can only see one at a time. Where alphabetical orders make sense is where you know what you want and you have to search for it within a large list. Otherwise it just appeals to OCD types.

Look at the order of races. Does it offend you that they're not alphabetical? Why not?

(Personally, I always choose sex at random in *bands. And having to choose sex when it doesn't affect anything is not cool.)

Well it's a thing. It's reported on the character sheet. Maybe that's offensive too. They're just Dwarves, or Elves, after all. Further classifying them by gender is un-evolved.

Roguelikes have already abandoned gender inequalities, even if balanced such that differences do not equate to superiorities. That's an axis of design freedom sacrificed to fear of being labeled offensive. If roguelikes wanted to strike a blow for equality, maybe they should come up with a balanced stat allocation for males and females s.t. either was a good choice depending on playing style.

But if males and females in roguelikes are identical, then we're left with role-playing elements to make the choice. If most players are male, well, I suspect they would be drawn to playing males. Maybe not though. I understand why not, for some.

[BlueFish]

The current implementation definitely makes me go another way when I find a blocked tunnel instead of digging it out, which is a bit silly.

Yeah, the thing is, in Sil, your inventory is effectively always full, when you want to dig (lower depths). That's a big change from vanilla Angband, so the UI issues around digging might be more important.

Actually just changing the diggers to one handed is fine. Reducing their damage dice is fine too.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Look at the order of races. Does it offend you that they're not alphabetical? Why not?

Beginner and thematically more appropriate races make sense before challenge or "exotic" choices.

[BlueFish]

Beginner and thematically more appropriate races make sense before challenge or "exotic" choices.

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

[Scatha]

There are some other minor issues such as now being able to dig when you were wielding a cursed weapon. This is not bad gameplay-wise, just a bit odd thematically.

Actually I always thought that the idea of a weapon you couldn't bear not to use was more Tolkienian than one that was literally stuck to your hand. Putting it down briefly to eat, change, shoot, or dig works fine with that interpretation.

[Scatha]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

There's definitely something to this approach (similarly the height and weight fields). The main advantage of them is to let players who want to engage with imagining their character have a couple more tools. Writing your own background section and naming artefacts are in the same direction (but have higher benefit/cost).

One thing gender is currently used for in the game is to determine the pronoun used in the splash poetry:
... down to the depths (s)he went alone.

[evilmike]

What if digging provoked an attack of opporunity if you did it next to an enemy? Same mechanic as when you fire a bow adjacent to enemies. Then it can stay a single turn action but severely penalize doing it in combat.

That way you could have a convenient interface of automatically digging without needing to do the whole wield/unwield dance, without upsetting game balance too much. There'd still be SOME effect on balance but I don't think it's big enough to worry about.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

Agreed.

Having your sex affect your relationships is a natural and obvious way of making the gender matter, but *bands don't usually have non-hostile characters.

I've studied cultural history, and for that reason I often like games that enforce weird cultural gender restrictions on characters. Makes for some powerful role-playing possibilities. Tolkien's world is quite boring in this respect, though, real history is where the fun is.

Stat bonuses based on gender would be offensive to many. I mean, there clearly are differences, but it's a heated discussion. I'd personally avoid going there in a game.

[Scatha]

What if digging provoked an attack of opporunity if you did it next to an enemy? Same mechanic as when you fire a bow adjacent to enemies. Then it can stay a single turn action but severely penalize doing it in combat.

That sounds a very natural solution to me.

[taptap]

Thinking about it a bit more, it's clear that a game like Sil should just do away with gender altogether. Let the player imagine his/her character as he or she will. Let the completely arbitrary name of that character be the only indication.

Sex doesn't affect anything at the moment and apparently is only there to imagine the character according to your fancy, similarly age, size, weight do affect nothing as well but really are a part of how I imagine a character. Hell, even hair and eye colour is important to me and I reroll until I find one combination that pleases me. Removing sex altogether reverts the hero to male by default - and I really can't tell from the weird elvish names. Stat differences are very hard to do - regardless of politics - when you play a game with very low numbers but nothing stops you from "roleplaying" your flexible stat points.

I doubt that male players automatically play male characters and female players automatically play female characters, I certainly do not, at least for elves and humans. I did with dwarves, because I have no real notion of female dwarves.

And please keep mattocks as viable weapons. I understand the convenience problem for shield users - one of the benefits to have moved to subtlety is not having this drop shield, dig, wield weapon, pick up shield dance anymore, although I tend to keep a swap shield and have effectively a smaller inventory this way.

[fph]

Just brainstorming: another possible solution would be allowing the player to wield a 2-handed weapon (or a digger) without removing the shield. The shield would be still equipped but "disabled" (its bonuses and flags have no effect).

The net effect of this would be having one more free slot for 2-handed weapon users. But that's an extra slot you can only use for a shield, and after all if you are a heavy 2-handed melee users ŕ la Hugo a shield is just an useless piece of junk for you.

This would need some other interface changes to handle bastard swords and other 1.5-handed weapons properly.

[Derakon]

For what it's worth, I find it hilarious that a person of the male persuasion is feeling put-upon that their preferred choice is not catered to.

Oh wait, that's not funny at all. It happens all the frickin' time. Like 90% of the games industry caters to men. Get over yourself.

[debo]

For what it's worth, this thread is becoming terrible, please stop

[BlueFish]

For what it's worth, I find it hilarious that a person of the male persuasion is feeling put-upon that their preferred choice is not catered to.

Oh wait, that's not funny at all. It happens all the frickin' time. Like 90% of the games industry caters to men. Get over yourself.

Well, this is why I already acknowledged that I wouldn't get a real conversation over this. (We had a decent enough one before this ejaculation of rage, though.)

I know, righteousness is fun. Those who want to indulge in it are emotionally incapable of having actual discussions. But absent the political stuff, the design decision here is debatable at best. It's a slightly bigger concern than one or two extra keystrokes since you can't back up in the character creation wizard, you have to start over from scratch, if you accidentally pass by gender selection.

I'm glad the gender sticks though for character re-starts that use the same race/house. It's only when you switch race or house that you have to remember to re-select gender.