I want to share with you a player critique I got this night, as comment on an earlier blog entry. As this entry is very old, the critique might be overseen by others, and because I want to be as open as possible, I re-post the critique here (formatted bold) with my comments (in italics). Most of it, however, is already known and being worked on.
Doban wrote:
Graphics - the netbook mode doesn't work on my netbook since the window doesnt fit in my screen - you forget that you have title bars etc. even if I remove toolbars and hide the taskbar, still doesnt quite fit, and you dont allow window resizing.
This is a good point he mentions. The Netbook mode has been written and tested on my Netbook, in 2009 when it still ran Windows XP. The screen could display 1024x600 pixels, but the display driver for the Intel GMA could handle 1024x768 in fullscreen, so you could simply scroll with the mouse up and down. The Netbook mode was optimized for these fullscreen conditions. When I switched to Windows 7, I noticed that the scrolling was not possible anymore, so the Netbook mode is something that has to be rewritten anyway.
Inventory - the inventory limit is such a pain that I'm giving up. I got a dungeon key early on that I dont need yet, then some scraps of paper which I have no idea if I'll ever need or not (totally unfair to the player to give him that unless he has unlimited storage and can store the junk until he knows if its junk or a quest item), the I need food, cola, bow, arrows, sword (for when arrows run out), another key i'm unlikely to need for 10 levels etc. So I go into the dungeon, i only have 2 spare slots.
It was always my intention that the inventory is very limited, because players need to decide what to keep and what not to keep. The only thing unfair on the inventory itself so far is that equipped items are not stored in separate slots -- and this will be changed in 1.5.4 patch, as revealed some days ago.
So in 2 minutes I find 2 items of loot to sell, run out of space, and have go back up to trader via endless shoot-direction shoot-direction keypresses, sell, then back down again, find 2 more items, back up. This gets boring very quickly.
And arrows - having to stand and talk to the trader 25 times (even ifyou rest in between) to stock up on arrows and cola enough for adungeon clearing session is such a boring pain. Either that, or theboring up-down-up-down every 3 minutes.
1. You don't have to kill every monster. Especially the beginning of the game (of which you seem to talk) has rather few monsters which you can easily avoid.
2. You don't need to pick up everything. You need to find out what is worthy to keep for yourself, what is valuable enough to keep for selling and what to ignore. You don't need Cola, for example, if you're playing a character who doesn't use magic. If you ARE playing a magic character, you regain PP for example by sitting on a stool. There's also no need to keep different food items at the same time. Eat food once you have it and use only one slot for food. If you have meat and bread, you can even combine both to a sandwich, saving 1 slot.
3. Traders are not only in the 1st dungeon level, but also in 5, 10 and 15. It is already known that they should have at least a guaranteed supply of the most basic items (such as arrows, in your case). Being worked on, too. There will also be the possibility to create ammunition by combining raw materials.
4. Pressing shoot, then entering direction is perhaps not that conveniant as i.e. DoomRL does ranged battle (with target selecting), but I'm intentionally restricting shooting to the 8 directions. As you can't bump to shoot, two keypresses are needed. An alternative coming into mind is perhaps using a "long-range" mode, where every direction press automatically shoots, instead of moving. But then you had to change the mode everytime you want to move.
Edit: Shift + Direction would work, too.
Overall, while most of Doban's points are correct and known, and many of them will be solved in 1.5.4, even currently you can win the game (rather easily, in fact), once you become aware of the fact that getting loot and selling stuff is not as necessary as it may seem. The whole game mechanics are focused on resource management and good use of dungeon features -- not on building up the richest or most powerful character you can get.
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