Suggestion - Warning

[The Avatar]

I think we can all agree (hopefully) that there should be an optional click-to-select mode, and that would appease people who want warnings. RIght?

[q 3]

That was what innitially caused me to ignore what most other people on the forums were doing. That sort of thing just doesn't happen to a monk - so I was more inclined to ignore BURNDAYRAZ and CYDSTEPP and in fact ended up playing a whole different game just by stubbornly and purpusefully ignoring what was from my perspective a borderline deal breaking UI issue. So keep in mind that things like that can happen, unless the person doesn't just quit after the Xth time he died through no fault of his own.

Funny, I feel like I die from misclicks far more often playing as a Monk than anything else. With a CYDSTEPP strategy - and especially as a Rogue - I'm literally counting off every attack in my head. It takes five hits to kill this monster, so click one, cast, click two, cast, click three, cast... With a Monk, on the other hand, it's going to take like twenty hits to kill this monster, and I'm going to have to regen at some point in there, too, so I don't actually know how many clicks I'll need. Click one, click two, click three, click four, this is boring, clickclickclickclickDIE. Oops, clicked one too many times. (This might be part of why I personally don't like Monk/regen/turtle strategies and prefer heavy hitters like Rogues.) (And no, while I really like the click-to-select mechanic, it wouldn't help in this particular situation, because it involves repeated clicks on a single monster.)

As an aside, these discussions are always kind of embarrassing for me, because everyone's like, "no no, misclick deaths are rare and kind of exciting!" and I'm like "what? it happens to me, like, every third or fourth serious attempt at beating a difficult dungeon!" Either my manual dexterity is just way worse than the rest of y'all, or y'all are playing on much better hardware than a laptop touchpad. Probably a bit of both, I suppose.

[The Avatar]

Ouch. Touchpads are tough.

Hmm... I don't think there's anything to be done unless you create a mode where it deselects the monster if it's one hit from killing you. I personally think that would be a serious pain, but I don't know about everybody else.

[Lujo]

Funny, I feel like I die from misclicks far more often playing as a Monk than anything else.

The reason it's opposite for me is that malleing something without glyh use involves only one button. If i'm about to hit something I press that one button and see where I'm at. Then I either press it again or not, I don't get inpatient. With CYDSTEP something which ussually involves only one button now involves two buttons (and with hotkeys, one buttn on the keyboard and one on the mouse) and the penalty for missing your beat is death.

Pardon my grossnes, but if I chopped of one of my arms my death rate would deceese to a very slim "stubbed my toe on a gorgon" level.

What is insane, besides the factually true grossnes up there, is this:

Either my manual dexterity is just way worse than the rest of y'all, or y'all are playing on much better hardware than a laptop touchpad. Probably a bit of both, I suppose.

Just the fact that you can say that. It's a turn based game, that punishes people with death, but the huge majority of ways you can actually die in the game comes from - manual dexterity! W T F ? Well, that and hardware issues, but then you have an indie browser coffe break game which you need proper hardware for, which is even more

I wanna play desktop dungeons, guess I gonna have to whip out some cash for a proper tabletop PC - it sounds ridiculous, but it is in fact true. Do the guys have a deal with hardware sellers?

I mean, I get that with a warning system turned on (say there is an optional one), there is very little chance to die, and all semblance of roguelikeness finally goes out, and the game is revealed to be an awesome puzzle game that it is. But it's allready an awesome puzzle game, and it's not very likely to sell well on account of having an in built "rock fall everyone dies" mechanism.

Or is it?

Could we at least test this?

[Lujo]

I tested it.

Or, rather, I seem to have had a rather in depth expirience with dying in this game through no fault of my own.

Back when I did all those uncountable Gaan'Telet runs which ended in a unitiy crash I kept dying through no fault in my reasonign, strategy, preparedness, sobriety or even level of sanity. I'd go through the designated most difficult dungeon in the game which doubled as a roguelike of it's own, killed the end boss with resources left over, and repeatedly got my sense of reward and acomplishment yanked away from me by the Unity Bug.

The devs decided that the designated goal was in fact to kill Horatio, and the dungeon got nerfed to an appropriate difficulty level by taking out the bug, and then buffed to account for the severaly reduced difficulty

I propose the same be done with all manual dexterity hazards, or at least introduction of a "hopeless wuss mode" button which would let non-leet casuals like me, or guys on a hardware budget, play the game without that extra layer of challenge.

EDIT: On a sidenote, Unity Bug really made the game addictive, I'll tell you that. The fact that you didn't just die at random intervals certanly reduced the replayability of Gaan'Telet, as far as going in with the exact same class/race/loadout is concerned. On the plus side, it's quite a bit harder to go bankrupt because of it these days.

[Nurator]

How about the game starts with a warning system for EVERYTHING. You get warned if you get poisoned (directly with an explanation what happens when you are poisoned), manaburned, weakened and so on.
As a reward for a beginner quest you get the possibility to turn this to "A few warning" rewarding in a higher gold reward for every dungeon. This would only include Death, Mana Burn with full mana and other severe things.
As a reward for intermediate quest you can turn this completly off, leaving you with a high additional gold reward, but leaving you unprotected against midclicks.

With this system you could easily get into the game after a long time of abscence by giving you hints about everything you forgot at first. When you get acustomed again, you turn this feature off to really get into financing your kingdom again.

Oh and this is always turn off when you start Vicious What do you think?

[berpdreyfuss]

I'm with Darvin on this one, the threat of death is part of the game. If there was a warning there would be no death at all, except for trying for a lucky dodge or getting trapped. Misclicks are a bad thing and I understand if you play with a touchpad it's more of a problem, but the only misclicks I had were by playing too fast and overseeing something, I think there should be a penalty for that.

[q 3]

One thing I'm curious about regarding the "but then you would never die!" idea - how often do you all actually die?! Outside of misclicks, or the aforementioned "trying for a lucky dodge or getting trapped," I literally never die. I do, however, end up in unwinnable positions, in which I don't have enough HP/MP to keep fighting - that is, in fact, the usual "loss" condition. What difference does it make whether you lose by dying or lose by being unable to continue? If anything, I think having to admit defeat and surrender is the more punishing mechanic; a glorious death in a hopeless battle offers some semblance of dignity, at least.

[Lujo]

The only misclicks I had were by playing too fast and overseeing something, I think there should be a penalty for that.

Yes because if you finsih a run too fast then youre not doing it the way God intended.

And a bit of food for thought: There are no deaths in this game, unless you missclick. You can miscalculate and some monsters play this up, but they could simply have an ability called "Sneaky" which means they give no warnings. But as far as any content in the game except failed dodges or patches telepors - there IS no death in the game.

And as long as you don't miscalculate, you can only die to missclicks. Now, a situation where my cat can be seriously detrimental to a run by tapping my mouse because its a laser guided one that flashes a bit (bugger killed me twice), and none of the actual game features have killed me anywhere close to how many times i've died to popups, active window desync shennanigans, muscle memory, pressure difference between mouse and keyboard or outright bugs (all the same category) - I'd say that it's not a feature but a bug or a controller related design flaw or whatever.

Or rather, it's "extreme mode" and should be toggleable to some degree, possibly along the lines of what Nurator suggested.

[berpdreyfuss]

I think we should seperate technical misclicks that happen because of a popup or lag or something (Which have not happended to me, it may be because I didn't play too much) and misclicks that happen because you don't pay attention (like not thinking of a retaliate fireball). The first should be avoided, the others are part of the game imho. Just knowing that it only takes one click to end your run is part of the suspense for me.

If you realise you're in a not winnable position it's totally fine to surrender.