Sil: What are your least liked features of Sil?

[half]

My proposal was merely to give a perception roll (maybe with added difficulty when more items are concerned) when you simulate the permanent effects of your wielded / worn equipment with self knowledge

A disadvantage of this is that I'm currently considering a previous proposal to eliminate the perception rolls for identifying things by use altogether (i.e. to make them always succeed). Adding them back here would be strange. I like the idea otherwise though.

I'm definitely inclined to have self-knowledge auto-id your weapon, as the weapon text explicitly says where the effect is coming from (as opposed to your equipment in general, or possibly even a timed effect).

I like the way that currently neither self-knowledge nor understanding dominate the other. I think self-knowledge is better earlier on for the thoughtful player, while understanding wins out in the end.

Proposals that identify things as soon as you could possibly work it out yourself appeal to people who already play perfectly and then are frustrated that the game doesn't identify an item whose identity they know. However, they actually remove some interesting gameplay for the less skilled or knowledgable people.

Keep up the proposals though. I'm interested.

Also note that the Sil way of doing identification by use is to give you a perception-linked chance (or maybe just a guaranteed success) at identifying it when it produces a clear effect, not just when you know that nothing else could have given the effect. Indeed, your boots of free action are identified even when you are wearing a ring of free action too. I'd ideally like to keep this model, though it does rather suggest auto-iding all worn items when you use a staff of self-knowledge, which is not on the cards. It would be too powerful unless I made the staves much rarer, and I don't want that as I have improved the screen in the dev version to show you exactly how all the bonuses are stacking which is useful for players.

[taptap]

I've been trying to figure out a good way to handle this - on the one hand you'll often know for sure what quite a few of your equipped items are with self-knowledge, so they should just always fully identify in that case. But just making it always identify everything you're wearing would be a stronger effect than currently since there's ambiguity in a fairly decent number of cases, and the way the effect works makes it tricky to actually have the game calculate when you've unambiguously identified something with it in a bunch of cases. I think the best solution I came up with so far was maybe just to randomly identify a few equipped items (maybe 1-3?).

You only get a perception roll when you see the effect. (With 0 grace your not so clever char may need time to identify even a Gondolin sword when bashing orcs.) My proposal was merely to give a perception roll (maybe with added difficulty when more items are concerned) when you simulate the permanent effects of your wielded / worn equipment with self knowledge - that would give at least a decent chance to identify (w/ xp) +0 rings / amulets and your only chance to identify adornment (other than direct understanding staff or smithing it). So people playing without loremaster had a chance to gain this bit of experience as well.

[MarvinPA]

As many people say ID game is their least favourite part of the game, I guess I can put this here. It would be lovely if a staff of self knowledge would not only list the special effects allowing me to ID, but also give your char a roll to recognize them (often you have clear knowledge your weapon is strong against trolls and orcs but still don't recognize it is of Gondolin).

I've been trying to figure out a good way to handle this - on the one hand you'll often know for sure what quite a few of your equipped items are with self-knowledge, so they should just always fully identify in that case. But just making it always identify everything you're wearing would be a stronger effect than currently since there's ambiguity in a fairly decent number of cases, and the way the effect works makes it tricky to actually have the game calculate when you've unambiguously identified something with it in a bunch of cases. I think the best solution I came up with so far was maybe just to randomly identify a few equipped items (maybe 1-3?).

[tg122]

I really enjoy Sil, but I think the thing that I like least about it is that the Edain are so inaccessible to many players because they are so weak. I know they are supposed to be the challenge race, but from a lore perspective, I find them very intriguing.

Not that I think Edain should be as powerful as Sindar/Naugrim, but I would like to see them start out with maybe 1 point of dex, and 1 point of con (or some other small stat combination) instead of zeroes across the board. This would allow for some pretty versatile builds while making them a little more accessibe to many players, instead of just labelling them as a pure challenge race.

Then, maybe add Easterlings as the pure challenge race with no starting stats.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I posted something a little like this before. When you go to inscribe a longsword, it asks you if you want to inscribe all longswords with Gondolin, instead of the property that makes you think it is Gondolin. Like, perhaps there is a rune on it. You know it is special, at the least. Something is different about it. Perhaps the differentness of it is the same for all items of the same differentness. Man, I need to raise my int score. Anyway, I hope you get my idea. You wouldn't get experience, but at least you could sort your loot in an intelligent manner until you get perfect id.

Or, maybe I'm just being silly. Rings and amulets are always the same, so an inscription makes sense to span their particular flavors, but I can't imagine a scenario where you would want to label all longswords a particular way.

Edit: For what it's worth, I don't mind the ID game. If the perception tree weren't chocked so full of goodness, I would take loremaster. But, I'd rather have other nummies.

[taptap]

As many people say ID game is their least favourite part of the game, I guess I can put this here. It would be lovely if a staff of self knowledge would not only list the special effects allowing me to ID, but also give your char a roll to recognize them (often you have clear knowledge your weapon is strong against trolls and orcs but still don't recognize it is of Gondolin).

[taptap]

It could mainly focus on guiding players to abilities that are strong (as opposed to merely sounding good), and away from certain traps (such as spreading too thin, or not buying enough abilities).

Buying too many low tier abilities and not specializing at all is probably the biggest obstacle as a beginner (but of course we have seen you can win even so). Another one for me was playing as a dedicated smith which makes the early game harder than it needs to be as does any other commitment that would pay off in endgame strength but doesn't help when you are dead as soon as you see wargs. And yes, figuring this out was part of the fun and I remember the excitement when I saw my first wargs and much later my first cats.

[half]

Interesting ideas on hinting about builds. I agree that some advice would be useful, but I'm not sure how to do it. I see a couple of challenges:

1) Even realising basic combinations of Abilities that work well together is a fun task that is part of playing the game. In general it is good for games to have some fairly obvious things that go together well to give the player a feeling of progression even at the start. Taking this away has drawbacks.

2) Part of the point of the game is the open character creation as opposed to class based play. I want the game to draw in those people who will like the full game, so I wouldn't want to switch it round too much.

The tutorial already offers some advice, but I can see people would want more (and that is a jack-of-all-trades character which is best not to emulate). Maybe a shortish list of advice would be good. It could mainly focus on guiding players to abilities that are strong (as opposed to merely sounding good), and away from certain traps (such as spreading too thin, or not buying enough abilities). I could either put this in the manual, in a game screen (like the help screens), or in a series of one liner hints that show up when you start the game (like in quite a few other games).

[evilmike]

DCSS does something a bit like this with its "hints mode", which is a sort of step between the tutorial and the real game. Instead of letting you choose your race + class, it gives you a small list of preselected characters which are considered to be strong examples of various playstyles. It's up to the player how to progress in the game beyond that, but various help messages are printed during the early game to help things along.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

How about picking some of your favorite heroes from Tolkien and show what choices they made in the manual? "Aragorn's Path", for example.

You could call these examples Iconics like in D&D's third edition.

[Derakon]

Perhaps the game could have some built-in builds? So when you go to allocate experience, there'd be a "melee fighter", "ranged", "singer", etc. option to auto-allocate, or you could go off the rails and figure things out yourself. The builtin options would be reasonably competent but unimaginative, and of course not necessarily applicable to your immediate circumstances.

The simplest way to handle it would be to have a list of choices for each build (e.g. "take 1 point of stealth, then 1 point of melee, then...", and to only allow using the build recommendations as long as you stayed on the rails. Simple and stupid and easy to implement.

[Bodhi]

To get back on topic, it can be difficult to figure out what builds are effective for a new comer without extensive trial and error.

Few people are going to read through the 30 page Sil topic, but many people might be interested in what kind of builds can allow them to explore the first few levels of the dungeon

This could be a design choice, but I think that the game would be much more accessible if a new comer could see how some successful characters were built without really delving into the forum or HOF.

[BlueFish]

I was slightly offended because Bluefish seemed to imply that having politics (= your values) affect game design choices or forum discussion arguments is somehow bad. I'm a feminist. I guess that affects my game design sensibilities too, in subtle ways, and I think that's good.

I respect that you're able to admit that politics can affect game design in subtle ways. And that you're proud of it, if it affects your own designs.

That said, the female/male choice in Sil was probably not at all a "political" decision originally, it was just the alphabetical order, but Bluefish turned it into politics. That's somehow very funny, and I guess that's why people are still commenting.

I've been playing CRPGs for decades. Where defaults exist for PCs, they're male. I know, that's a symptom of the problem, a problem that needs fixing. But fixing it is an intentional choice, and a political one.

It's not as if politics around this issue are new. There's a reason that males and females have identical stats. They didn't, always.

[BlueFish]

I tried to ignore this ridiculous discussion, but it is both derailing a great thread and filling it with unpleasant comments. This makes the Sil community less welcoming for others and this is something that I care about.

For all those people who think that BlueFish is wrong about this (which appears to be everyone) .

Wrong about what, specifically, half? I know you're above answering these questions, but: That male is the most common choice? That a default that doesn't correspond with the most common choice is odd? That in this specific context, where the default is easy to accidentally accept, one must start over with character creation they may have spent the last 15 minutes pondering? (Granted, re-do takes less time if you remember what you did.)

You can be dismissive as you please. You're above insults so if you want to be insulting that's what you have left. I get it.

It is pure fantasy to think I could have presented this in any way that it wouldn't have been dismissed, and in which I would not have been made fun of.

[half]

I tried to ignore this ridiculous discussion, but it is both derailing a great thread and filling it with unpleasant comments. This makes the Sil community less welcoming for others and this is something that I care about.

For all those people who think that BlueFish is wrong about this (which appears to be everyone) he won't be able to post on this issue anymore if no-one replies to his comments. He has said his piece.

BlueFish: I don't think that your suggestion really deserves a response, especially given the hostile way you phrased it. So I will not offer one. Yes, I've read all of your points. You don't need to repeat or expand on them. I'm still happy you enjoy the game though, and will respond to other issues you have with it.