Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[half]

In the other thread, I asked for people's favourite features, but I'd also like to know what people like least about it. This would ideally be something that is fixable, but even if it is something basic and inherent to it, we'd love to know. This helps us see where Sil is in the landscape of roguelike games and who it is or is not appealing to. It should also help us to improve it.

Even if you really like the game, do speak up. We are more interested in having a game that some people absolutely love than a game everyone likes, and so we are particularly likely to improve things that the fans want improved.

[LostTemplar]

1) How skills are learned.
1a) Possibility to stock exp. to learn skill only if needed is a huge drawback imho. It completely ruins all the strategy for me.
1b) Easy way get skill to it's cap e.g. perfect stealth (well, it is not too easy, so it is only a slight drawback imho)

2) Time limit implementation seems like a crutch to me, not like a part of a game it should be.

Overall it is fine if played with "learn things immediately" self restriction and ironman.

[Psi]

I realise I am probably part of the reason behind the way things are, but I do think that smithing costs are now prohibitively high, unless you eek out every last point of smithing that you can.

Survivability in the early game is down to how quickly you can find some armour. Not massively important as there is not much to replay, but it irks occassionally.

As has been mentioned the "forced descent" isn't the prettiest mechanic, but I haven't thought of any alternative to achieve the same ends.

[Starhawk]

I'm a little frustrated with gear drops, as I am not much interested in the Smithing skill (especially as it's being made more difficult to use, to accommodate the highly skilled players in the community who use it to beat the game like a redheaded stepchild). Given the severity of the level timer, I am often forced to dive to my death without gear of any consequence.


Another note on gear: a little bummed at how many items give penalties to hit or evasion. But that's balance and I can live with it.


Also: I read in passing somewhere on this forum that using stairs in Sil takes turns off the timer, to discourage stairscumming. If turns are being burned, should we be popping up on the next level fully healed and hungrier?


Related to the points above: sometimes I'd like to repeat a level at the depth I'm on. i.e. the next level down will be too dangerous, and the next level up won't have any monsters worth looking at for xp. Since using stairs has an impact on the timer, it's not a great idea to just go up then immediately back down. At least that's my understanding. Would it be possible to add a third kind of stairwell that takes you to a new level at the same depth? Call it a 'tunnel' or some such.


edit: i hate that 'mindless' monsters like molds still seem to have enough common sense to shoot spores at me, but not at the orcs/Easterlings/whatever that are chasing me. Ditto for the various bugs and worms. I'd love to be able to use those things against the more intelligent dungeon dwellers. Traps, too.

[Patashu]

Also: I read in passing somewhere on this forum that using stairs in Sil takes turns off the timer, to discourage stairscumming. If turns are being burned, should we be popping up on the next level fully healed and hungrier?

This got taken out when stairs were changed to randomly collapse if you've taken a lot of stairs lately, instead. So you don't have to worry about this.

[fph]

I like the fact that you are explicitly looking for negative feedback; this speaks a lot about your attention to your users.

Anyway, here are some tips for improvement; but most of it are interface/minor stuff.
1) Two separate keymaps are used, when, with a little more optimization, one would probably suffice: none of the hjklyubn keys is really that important that it cannot be remapped.
2) Loremaster is too an easy way out of the identification minigame. It easily pays off for itself in XP.
3) the interface for increasing abilities and gaining skills could be unified; now they are too logically separate.
4) the final Carcharoth level is a bit dull if compared to Morgoth's lair. Only one way out, no real incentive to visit the other rooms.
5) a quiver-like interface for throwing weapons.
6) it should be easier to explore the forging options even when not at a forge ("what would I be able to forge if I took artifice?")

[debo]

So I've hardly played 1.1.1 at all, so these might not be relevant at all.

a) I don't like how the 1.5lb two handed / 0.5lb throwing weight-per-damage-side-per-Str was changed to use 1lb across the board, and I also don't like the introduction of momentum. There seems to be little incentive to use two-handed weapons outside of flavour reasons anymore, and I actually did like the hilarity of stunning monsters with a two-handed axe.

b) I feel like the song tree could be tweaked a bit. The song tree in particular seems a bit unsuited to the same experience progression expense calculation as the rest of the trees, since it would conceivably be neat to have a "bard" type character who could situationally use 6 or 7 songs. Right now, songs seem relegated to the same status as throwing weapons, which is in the 'clearly you will only use 1 or 2 for support' bucket.

We've seen song-heavy builds that put all their eggs in one basket (be that lorien, or the majesty one) out of sheer expediency, but I for one would like to see more flexibility here. I haven't thought this one out much.

c) Throwing weapons continue to frustrate me. Maybe applying a bucketing rule like arrows (where you can only get a +0, 2d4 or a +2, 2d5 throwing axe or something) would help, because right now it's a pretty big pain to manage them. There's also a large range of available throwing weapons (daggers, spears, throwing axes), but I don't know how much value that adds. A throwing quiver might be nice too.

Again, I'd like to see throwing specialists made viable as a build, but this would suffer the same balancing problems as archery I think.

d) I know that archery is a big thematic part of this game, and that we want melee characters to use it as support, but I think the 50% evasion penalty is still a bit extreme in that regard. I'd like for melee characters to have to invest, say, at least 1 point per 100 feet of dungeon depth to make it viable.

I also think versatility is a bogus ability. If you're going to make an archery specialist, I think you should have to invest in melee to survive if things get up close, or get good at running away. As it stands, we've had characters with only ~15 archery kill V (although this might not be possible in 1.1.1. anymore?), so it's not like archer builds can't afford it.

e) I'm looking forward to having more options to test forging without actually having any skills / abilities in it.

That's all I've got for now. I'm sure I'll come up with more later I am generally not very good at reasoning about what makes a good game, so a lot of these may be useless whinging.

Edit: I also agree with Psi on the armor thing. I always thought it would be helpful but not easy-mode if you were to always find a [-1, 1d4] leather armor or something in that first room. It makes a huge difference in the first 200', and it's pretty common for me to only find boots or gloves before the first forge. You get used to it after a while, but it must be annoying to newbies?

[Derakon]

1) How skills are learned.
1a) Possibility to stock exp. to learn skill only if needed is a huge drawback imho. It completely ruins all the strategy for me.

Again, I've not played Sil yet, but AIUI different upgrades cost different amounts of experience, so there's no really reasonable way to say "you must learn a skill now" unless you've earned enough experience to buy anything that's currently available.

However, it occurred to me that you could possibly remove some of the gameism by only allowing the player to upgrade at fixed points, e.g. every time they reach a new dungeon level. Perhaps that's too rare though. *shrug*

[clouded]

* Some sort of forced decent is absolutely necessary, however I have a problem with one aspect of the current method: it almost always makes sense to do 900-950ft several times. There is a reward for diving quickly/playing well/playing riskily which is you get the maximum amount of time to do 950ft over and over, but I think this is a case of the best strategy not actually being much fun (diving is fun, repeating 950ft isn't).

Any sort of turncount clock will always have that aspect, I see a few other methods:

1) Ironman

The main change with ironman is not being able to use stairs as an escape, which I don't mind as that is fairly cheap (especially with connected stairs). If up stairs simply took you to a different up stairs on the same level, I think the game would play roughly the same.

2) Persistant levels

Similarly, persistant levels would act the same, you would go up stairs to the previous level and down a different set of stairs to a different part of the lower level. Persistance does bring in some largely negative things that anyone who plays crawl will be familiar with: The method of going up/down stairs I just described, stair scumming, which in crawl is repeatedly going up and down the same set of stairs to lure enemies up one by one, and the biggest one is that you can stash items (which is awful if you don't have autotravel). I don't like this option much for Sil.

3) Items drying up, similar to how XP does

You could take the average number of items per depth and when the player has seen ~150% of that number, remove all items from the level and do not generate any more at that depth (including drops). I would remove items from the current level because you could generate a new level when you are close to the limit and have an entire level of items over what you should have otherwise. Tracking this as the player sees items rather than on item generation is important, or else this causes the weak to stay weak and the strong to get stronger. The problem with this is staff of treasures, I'm not sure it should work.

The big advantage I see for option 3 is that you retain a few very important aspects of angband, having situations where you must completely abandon a level and not forcing you to fully explore each level. The latter of those is where I start to dislike playing ironman a bit.

* Perhaps this is just the way I play, but I feel song of sharpness is mandatory. Even for characters that can kill ancient serpents and kemenrauko, you still always want it for the throne room. This ties in to what debo was saying about bard type characters, it ups the price of all other songs by a lot so you can't experiment as much. I never use Este or Staying despite them being really good, because I can't afford the cost or convince myself to play without sharpness. Of course this all changes if you are lucky enough to find a weapon with sharpness, which I would say is the best thing you can possibly find.

There are a few skills that act a little the same on the silrun, sprinting is a must as is exchange places unless you are purposefully playing without stealth. This isn't as big of a deal because the game is over at that point, but still.

* I agree with debo about throwing weapons, simplification here would be good - only having +0,2d4 throwing axes would be fine by me.

* The Noldor being the best at everything. This certainly is just me, and it isn't even strictly true. I understand the point of the Noldor but it bothers me. If I were to make a personal version I would reduce their power to the same as Naugrim and Sindar which I think is the best difficulty setting. I like playing Edain too, but there is a lot of emphasis on getting con while playing them. Alternately to reducing Noldor power, I would simply make them the best at one thing (no frills melee combat) and add a perception niche to elsewhere.

* Early game monster variety. I don't like to mention this again as I've done so a couple of time before but this is definitely a place for improvement. I haven't thought too much about what monsters could come in, but I'm sure there are a lot of mechanics that could work well and keep in line with Sil's style.

* A couple of complaints I've heard introducting the game to people are: 1) centre map continuously option not working. 2) radius 1 lights are terrible.

On the lights, keen senses is in my "I can't stand playing without this" category.

I feel like an asshole posting here when I completely neglected the positive thread, there's obviously a lot about Sil that I love, but I couldn't bring myself to make such a glowing post, I am a negative person. I'll sum up briefly what I appreciate most about Sil.

* Minimalism, while retaining enormous tactical and strategic depth.
* Theme, feel and tone.

I've taken a lot away from Sil in a design sense.

[emulord]

1. Opaque forced descent turncount.
I feel like drying up exp / torches / light should make this worthwhile anyway. Maybe increase danger if you stay somewhere too long, like Morgoth's minions have caught on that there is an intruder. Accompanied by a message so the player is aware of the mechanic.

2. Skill/experience system.
I'm not a fan of "choose skill" levelups anyway, because mistakes are permanent and can cripple a otherwise decent character. I like DoomRL because its levelup system is simple enough to completely comprehend at once. Increasing costs and planning ahead is too difficult to "wing it". You have to die A LOT to figure out a good build or cheat and look at ladder characters.

2b. HOWEVER. I love the "see monster exp" and "kill monster exp" that becomes less significant. And without making increasing costs, of course unbalanced builds would be the only way to go. Im not sure how to improve, its just not my cup of tea.

[bron]

1) Sil, by design, has elements with high variance. I find it to be just a little *too* random in the early going. Too many characters die in those first couple hundred feet, no matter what you do.

2) It is not possible to forge certain artefacts that you can find, no matter how good you are. You cannot make your own Ringil clone, because the game won't let you put that much evasion on a sword. You can't make a Crown of Feanor because you can't put Smithing on a crown. And so on. I understand the usual dodge in these situations is to say "the skills needed to do that were lost in a bygone age", but isn't Sil supposed to be set *in* that bygone age of skill?

3) Archery is too good.

4) The Naugrim deserve a (little) buff.

5) The game encourages "restart scumming". e.g. you want to run a smithing character, so you just play the first couple of levels over and over until eventually you find those Smithing gauntlets and another forge at 200 feet.

6) No one except the one Edain house has Melee affinity.

7) Forging can be horribly frustrating since you have to commit to a forging strategy early on, yet can get hosed if you don't find enough forges, something that is completely outside of your control.

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Now, that said, I will mention my personal suggestions about what might be done about these, but I wanted to make a clear separation between the statement of things I don't particularly like, and my own probably stupid ideas about dealing with (some of) these:

The character should have more starting equipment. Some leather armor and a pair of boots would go a long way to boosting early survivability. It's not like you weren't going to find some eventually anyway.

Characters should not be able to have both a bow and a melee weapon ready. The game already recognizes you can't have both a 2-handed weapon and a (1-handed) shield, so why can you have both a 2-handed weapon and a (2-handed) bow? Being forced to swap between them (as in Moria) would cut down on the effectiveness of bows, without needing to change any of the archery mechanics.

As I've said elsewhere about the Naugrim: Belegost should add Melee affinity, Nogrod should add Will affinity.

I would like to see a Smithing ability that lets you squeeze one extra use out of a forge. One more use would not let you forge 2 artifacts at a single forge, but would ensure that you could always forge one, even if it was nominally a 2-use forge. This would help mitigate problems for unlucky smithers, at the cost of taking the ability. You should not be allowed to put such a skill onto an artifact.

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Lastly, along the lines of my complaint about the lack of melee affinity characters, I think it would be fun to be able to do a *complete* design-your-own character. E.g. you get 6 starting stat points (no more than 3 points in any one stat), and your choice of 2 affinities and one proficiency. With the option to get a 7th stat for the cost of a negative stat point, and/or a third affinity at the cost of a skill penalty (like the Naugrim do). I imagine Half-Trolls with 3 Str, 1 Dex, 3 Con, -1 Gra. Or maybe you should only start with 4 stat points and 1 affinity+proficiency for a full design-your-own. But it sounds like fun.

[andrey]

As I said in the previous post, I don't really like the fact that the Dwarves are so lousy. Please make them a bit stronger to play.

Swords are much more versatile than axes - you have a span from short sword to great sword, which allows you changing your tactics according to the monster you meet. I use to switch weapons a lot in the game. Axes are only on one part of the range. Also, there are defender swords, which combined with parry give you +4 to evasion, which is a huge buff.

Also, most of the artifact weapons are swords, so you're most likely to be forced to play with a sword anyway by the late game, unless you artifice.

Archery is so useful that I tend to use it with Naugrim anyway, but with the (-2) penalty - (compared to elves).

Elves start with lambas, Dwarves have dark bread. That means that a Dwarf smith cannot smith out a helm of radiance because he can't restore that grace point.

Elves have +2 more points in (str,dex,con,gra) which is a lot more.

To be fair, I am kind of "cheating" right now to play dwarves. I've edited the files in the "edit" folder and gave them a buff in the (s,d,c,g) department. I am attaching my "fair races" files , in case someone else have the same feelings about dwarves. (These files are to be unpacked in the "edit" folder). I hope that the author is not offended by this act of editing.

[debo]

I don't actually understand all the angst with dwarves. They're really not that much harder than the Sindar IMO, just different, and there's no general outcry to make the Sindar stronger

The only thing I'd maybe like to see with them is a re-jigger of stat / proficiency combos, since Belegost feels inferior to Nogrod in some critical ways that aren't really made up for by the Will proficiency.

I imagine that something as simple as giving both dwarf houses +1 Dex would go a long way to smoothing out the early game for them, but as HM said -- if you're willing to do unthematic things like wield a longsword for the first few hundred feet, you can increase your odds a bit.

But I don't think this thread was supposed to be a conversation thread, so I'ma gonna shush now

[Philip]

If you don't like dwarves, stop playing them. If they feel weak, then play them as challenge games. I also don't like dwarves, because they are contrary to my playstyle, so I don't play them. Dwarves were considerably less powerful than Noldor (their only achievement being to severely wound glaurung, while the Noldor killed a whole load of balrogs, did damage to Morgoth et al. One of them barehand killed a werewolf.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Hmm, I guess if I had to point out something, it's confusing to me that rfear isn't on the will tree in some form or fashion, or perhaps tacking on rfear to a song like slaying or something. It just seems natural, since you can control your hunger, break curses and resist confu/hallu on the will tree, but not fear. Fear is something I worry about late game, so I try to have rage and liquor available as even when I have decent will score and maybe even rfear on an item, I still get afraid sometimes.

I've no beef with Dwarves, I would tally them second easiest race to win with... but you stealthy/archer types probably peg Sindar easier. They are supposed to be challenge races, after all.