by Galefury on Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:35 pm
Having some humps in the difficulty curve is nice IMO. Proper spikes, not so good. You seem to think that especially proper use of religion creates problematic spikes in the learning curve.
Unlike you I actually rather liked my experience with gods and difficulty. You probably remember when religion switching and altar desecration were introduced. The first time I had a game where I worshiped three different gods and desecrated two altars to turn a sure loss into a close win felt incredible, and completely changed my perspective on gods in DD. Suddenly, everything could be a valuable resource (piety), depending on which gods were on the map. Getting the most out of those resources by switching gods at opportune times to maximize both piety and what I was getting for that piety was a whole new and incredibly complex part of the game, deeply interwoven with every other part by the various piety mechanics. A completely new thing to master (which I'm sure I never did). Suddenly new ways to win that I never even knew existed were brightly lit up and open for exploration.
Of course these new ways to win didn't always exist, and that they were newly introduced at the time surely helped me discover them. It still took me a while to figure out. I don't know how much the game currently hints at these possibilities, so you may have a point when you say it is currently too hard to figure out how to properly use the gods. Hell, I'm not even sure if I have figured out gods, there may be even more incredible possibilities behind the next hump in the difficulty curve, and you might be referring to those.
Anyway, my point is that such revelations can be really fun, and a completely smooth curve doesn't have them. The times I got over some hump and opened up completely new ways to improve my play were some of the most fun I had with DD. The problem is when the hump is too high and people get frustrated. And it's always going to be too high for some people. The devs really have to know their audience to get it just right.
It is possible to create something similar to these revelations by artificially locking content, and DD does this to a huge extent (classes, items, gods, dungeons and preps all need to be gradually unlocked). But this doesn't provide the same feeling as figuring out some new technique purely by the power of your own brain. I think it is important to have these moments in a puzzle game, because other genres have a much harder time providing them.