gjaustin wrote:dislekcia wrote:Yes, it would solve the problem quite nicely. That's where the locker started and how it was first implemented. People moaned and the slippery slope began.
And I think it was as bad of a design idea as having to farm gold between runs in the alpha. So said "moaning" was justified.
And yet so many people loved being able to carry gold over between runs. Apparently the sense of permanence was yet another thing DD did differently to many other roguelikes... Different strokes for different folks. The hard part is trying to find a set of systems that work for both, seeing as we didn't like the results of the gold carryover. Right now, we have a system that only works *most* of the time, breaking down for a few people way late into the game's progress... We say the slippery slope isn't solveable because all the solutions so far seem to result in earlier frustration/devaluation of play for one or both of the types of DD locker users.
OneMoreNameless wrote:Okay, so after reading the rambling design article and dislekcia's latest fearful post, it's pretty clear that the dev's decision to ignore this complaint is an emotional one rather than a logical one. The slippery slope argument being wielded is fallacious and a little silly - you are the devs, nobody is going to force you at gunpoint to implement random terrible ideas to replace the one existing scummy behaviour you're being asked to fix. All that we're hearing from you right now is moaning that players are never happy, or broad and tenuously related design theory, or arguments about other changes that are not being asked for. It is a little frustrating for me to spend an hour carefully explaining why these complaints and solutions are unrelated to your 'slippery slope' ... only to be met with a blanket statement that every suggestion has been a slippery slope and no further or specific reasoning being given.
Let me try this a different way.
Desktop Dungeons, right now, has effectively infinite locker space. The player can at any time easily prep any item that they've unlocked in stores. The cost for this prep is (let's say) fifteen minutes of scumming. This is boring for the player to do, but absolutely possible and sometimes they may reluctantly pay it to try something out.
Now imagine that one of the solutions proposed in this topic is implemented. The player will at any time be able to easily prep any item they've unlocked in stores. The cost for this prep will be an in-game resource. This will be fun for the player to obtain, and already possible but now they'll sometimes cheerfully pay to try something out.
The only difference is that you'd be explicitly asking the player for a in-game resource (gold) instead of implicitly asking for an external one (time). Nothing more or less is being allowed than in your current implementation. If anything, that's going UP your alleged slope. Heck, if you really don't want players to be able to start with their choice of items then feel free to go further and randomise the contents of locker slots after each run. That could be thematically fun and encourage experimentation. But the setup you've chosen so far demonstratively encourages mindless scumming and this is a flaw that one way or another you need to fix.
Apologies for rambling, I wasn't overly happy with that post

How would a system that randomises a pool of items after each run not be open to scumming? Surely players would just go through single runs until they arrived at the item that they were looking to prep, right? At which point they'd have exactly the same "time tax" argument against the system.
q 3 wrote:I guess what I don't see is why the locker is any different from the other prep slots. Why don't you change the Church to only have three deity slots, and if you want to have a different deity available to prep then you have to beat a dungeon (or puzzle) while worshiping that deity? Or change the Blacksmith so that it only has three slots and replacing an item means you have to scour random subdungeons until you find enough raw metal to craft the new item?
We actually tried that sort of system with some preps: Witch potions were supposed to require monster soul recipe items (which had a chance to randomly drop when you killed any enemy) that would allow the Witch to make you a limited number of potions per batch; We even played with having an economy around those random drop items by making the Alchemist require them for monster classes (so you had to give him 10 dragon scales to play the Half-Dragon 3 times, etc).
We also had a prototype of a limited Church prep pool, funnily enough. Both systems turned out not to be as much fun as we'd thought and encouraged scumming... DD used to be a whole lot MORE scummy, actually. Designing a roguelike is almost one long battle against scumming. We kinda see it as a victory when "scumming" means completing an entire run instead of dropping in for 2 seconds and restarting. At least that has players engaging with the actual gameplay, even if they do find it trivial eventually.
And hey, that's fine. We all get tired of games. I mean, yeah, I'd love it if DD was one of those games people came back to after a cool-down period and were able to fall in love with all over again, but if all we can do is be fun for some people for a little time, then that's cool too.