Suggestion - Warning

[Alweth]

I'd like to throw in my vote, again, for a death warning.

Frankly, I was very surprised when I came back to the game after not playing for months and found that there was still no death warning. Since then I have died twice to interface hiccups and twice to not paying close enough attention.

The role of death in teaching new players and engaging people, while potentially legitimate, don't seem to be relevant to this particular issue, since we're not talking about deaths due to misplaying, nor have any of these deaths been anything but unengaging for me, at least. After all, here I am posting my discontent rather than playing, and these kind of deaths make the game feel tedious rather than fun. In contrast, when I almost beat a hard dungeon but am just shy of being able to finish it, that's when I immediately try again.

[q 3]

Just a thought, since the devs have said they like "death" itself (so morbid ), what if instead of a warning before you die, you got a chance to undo your last action after you die? Like in an interactive fiction game, the score screen gives you the option to (E)xit, (R)estart, or (U)ndo. Seems like that would retain just about all of the benefits of player death, while still assuaging the frustration of someone who died for a reason mostly or entirely outside their control. It would also work very well with a "Flawless" badge for victories that did not require an undo. (It would probably need to be disabled if you had a % dodge, though.)

[Alweth]

Just a thought, since the devs have said they like "death" itself (so morbid ), what if instead of a warning before you die, you got a chance to undo your last action after you die? Like in an interactive fiction game, the score screen gives you the option to (E)xit, (R)estart, or (U)ndo. Seems like that would retain just about all of the benefits of player death, while still assuaging the frustration of someone who died for a reason mostly or entirely outside their control. It would also work very well with a "Flawless" badge for victories that did not require an undo. (It would probably need to be disabled if you had a % dodge, though.)

I think that's a fine idea, although liking death still doesn't seem relevant to this issue. And I actually thought that Dodge always came with Dodge Prediction now, which is also an idea I like.

[The Avatar]

I don't think you would have to make it so dodge characters couldn't undo, you'd just force their first hit after an undo not to dodge.

[Picotrain]

I think a warning should be good enough. As said previously, any logical person will not intentionally kill him/herself. Most times, death is accidental. I do think it should be an option though, since some do not want the warning at all.

[DevArmaya]

Could always be added as an option in the options, that way it can be enabled/disabled at player preference.

I myself like the idea. I have died multiple times due to mis-clicking monsters side by side.

[Alweth]

It occurred to me recently that accidental deaths may be preventing players from arriving at legitimate deaths. I have noticed that when I click Restart a dungeon or Exit to try to tweak a strategy on a dungeon, it is almost always in response to Retiring because I was unable to pull off a win. In contrast, when die accidentally, my tendency is to view a second similar run not as a second try but as replaying something I just played, which is tedious. So I usually stop playing DD for a while, or rarely might try a different dungeon. At the point of the accidental death, I almost always feel like I have a chance at completing the dungeon, but that belief might not be true. If I had not died accidentally, I almost certainly would have played through to the point where I either won or Retired. And if it were a legitimate death, I would have learned something and been motivated to try more.

In summary, if the developers like death they should add a death warning.

[Weltall Zero]

I just registered on the forums to post on this topic. This is how strongly I feel about it.

I love this game: I've been addicted to it since I discovered it a few days ago. You've done an amazing job and everything feels perfectly balanced. However...

Frankly, I don't know how anyone can make an argument for accidental deaths because of an interface quirk and keep a straight face. My mouse buttons are quite sensitive and have a tendency to double-click; I play my games having to choose between having the constant tension that my mouse will kill me, or playing with excruciatingly slow, deliberate mouse clicks for everything. This has already happened a few times, plus another time where I clicked the wrong tile. I fail to see how the constant threat of this, nothing you have any control about, adds anything to a game about strategy and planning; if anything, it's extremely distracting, not to mention hugely frustrating when it does happen. What the poster about said hits the nail on the head: an engaging game makes you feel like your losses are due to a mistake you made, a mistake you won't make in the future. That's what FTL does; that's what Spelunky does. What exactly am I learning when my mouse kills me again? What is added by having to fight an unfriendly interface that does exactly the opposite of what I want? This is very literally the definition of fake difficulty; there is zero intellectual or gameplay challenge in dying because of this.

Inevitably, this happened again today. Your theory that people misclicking are immediately engaged seems not to apply to me at least, since I'm here, not replaying the dungeon. I was having lots of fun, until the interface decided my run was over. Well, thanks a lot, interface; I'm done for today.

[dislekcia]

I just registered on the forums to post on this topic. This is how strongly I feel about it.

I love this game: I've been addicted to it since I discovered it a few days ago. You've done an amazing job and everything feels perfectly balanced. However...

Frankly, I don't know how anyone can make an argument for accidental deaths because of an interface quirk and keep a straight face. My mouse buttons are quite sensitive and have a tendency to double-click; I play my games having to choose between having the constant tension that my mouse will kill me, or playing with excruciatingly slow, deliberate mouse clicks for everything. This has already happened a few times, plus another time where I clicked the wrong tile. I fail to see how the constant threat of this, nothing you have any control about, adds anything to a game about strategy and planning; if anything, it's extremely distracting, not to mention hugely frustrating when it does happen. What the poster about said hits the nail on the head: an engaging game makes you feel like your losses are due to a mistake you made, a mistake you won't make in the future. That's what FTL does; that's what Spelunky does. What exactly am I learning when my mouse kills me again? What is added by having to fight an unfriendly interface that does exactly the opposite of what I want? This is very literally the definition of fake difficulty; there is zero intellectual or gameplay challenge in dying because of this.

Inevitably, this happened again today. Your theory that people misclicking are immediately engaged seems not to apply to me at least, since I'm here, not replaying the dungeon. I was having lots of fun, until the interface decided my run was over. Well, thanks a lot, interface; I'm done for today.

While I understand your frustration, it seems to be mostly around hardware that doesn't perform correctly, that sucks I assume that only certain types of games work ok with your current setup?

Your hardware situation makes your case different to the general user experience that we've been measuring, the best thing to fix your frustration is either getting a new mouse, or us adding different types of control/input schemes. I'm not sure why the development on the selection-style interface stopped, but I'll poke everyone about it next week to see what's up with that... We definitely do want to provide different ways of interacting with the game, instead of changing the game's inherent feel. I hope that makes sense.

[Nandrew]

I think we were gonna have a dedicated meeting about that ... it may have gotten lost during the Great Unity Crash Crisis.