Gameplay Design & Median

Stealthmaster wrote:but a person who still does not know that Alt key can highlight all items on the ground should not proceed in this mod any further anyway.

A game design is truly good when you require no prior knowledge to play the game and to enjoy the game

So, of course, as a mod, most players would have played cLOD, but that doesn't mean that people cant invite their friends who have not played the mod to play it, and they would still, generally, have a lot of fun with the game/mod. When I invited my friend to play it without prior knowledge, he could still kill, move, click on items to loot (annoying, but it works) and knew that there was a way to use spells (eventually learned how), but the Alt key didn't come instantly (nor did how to use spells), but that doesn't mean they shouldn't play at all.

The alt key is a pretty general thing, but im just saying on a general level, a player should not be prohibited to have a similar level of enjoyment and playability simply because they lack prior knowledge of a game. Like how you can buy max quantity of potions in belt or in tomes via shift click instead of regular click (or was it ctrl, but i doubt).

tl;dr - not knowing one component of the game does not mean they shouldn't play the game at all; ofc ik alt key is an exaggeration

Actually I have made dozens of posts about this issue, but it seems you haven't read them. Oh, the irony

Anyways, I'm not going to repeat all that I have said, so I'll keep it short.
1- The idea behind pearl of wisdom is dumb. People want to play, not read.

2- Ubers are where they are due to limitations. Challenges work as they work due to limitations. This is plain obvious. A lot of content is not pretty due to limitations. Both laz and me had to offer content in ways that were not created in the most optimal way simply because we didn't have another choice. For example, anyone who thinks we stuck to the concept of heroic shields because we actually think the mechanism is fun and cool is just plain retarded. So is someone who tries to judge MXL from a "proper game design" perspective, really. Median XL is basically the medicine you give to your old grandma that was supposed to die 10 years ago. You cannot do this without inevitable (and many times irreversible) side effects (see: LC0 - was nice having you). If we want to talk about game design, let's grab a game where the developers actually have access to the game's source. I don't want to sound like a dick here but this is flat out the truth.

3- As for subtext to catalysts, oils, yadda yadda... Again not a great idea. How will you explain what a catalyst of disenchant does without explaining the whole concept of disenchanting and the benefits from it in the first place? Answer: the problem actually lies in the high amount of cube dependency there is throughout the game, not in the reagents having no description.

4- Docs are good to have and some aspects will require their existance. The main problem with them is how uninteresting and dull they are to read. They are using the format that was used 10 years ago, when it was fine because the layout would fit with the amount of content there was back in the day. But now there are all these information thingies most people don't really care about and they get in the way of new people accessing the information they really need to know. I am talking about things like abbreviations, monster stats, lfaq, forum&chat link (durrp), poison damage explained and more. I know a lot of work was put into these and I love they exist but they just do not belong there. Another thing that I feel has taken the docs a bit too far is the need to display or clarify absolutely everything (what's the point of having trophy recipe in cube recipes for example). I think a lot of the information was implemented from the perspective of a concurrent player, rather than a new one (who again, is the one that needs the docs the most). Additionally, laz had always a very sober style (full gray site/forum) but I think it's just not proper for 2016. I sometimes feel I'm being punished when reading the docs. Finally, the structure (and this is what I've addressed the most) kind of kills it, it uses a frameset to display information which has the issue that nothing from the documentation becomes indexed by search engines (such as google). Or the lack of searching option. Anyways, docs are not really my responsibility, mainly due to the fact that if I put one foot in, it will take me months to go out and say it's finished. Quirinus/suchbalance do an excellent job here, but I think it could be a good time to change the aproach 180 degrees. Which is actually much less exhaustive. I would go and remove as much content as possible, or maybe keep it available somewhere else. For an example just check cube recipes. All information is simply dumped right there creating this extensive list that you don't want to read. And the problem in the documentation is the lack of functionality. You could have a lot of information displayed as tooltips or hidden content, and it would make the initial view of a certain page a lot less overwhelming. Once that is done, a restructuration will be much easier and pleasant. That would be moving from frameset/html to php. Finally, adding a little touch of styling (I'm sure a 3rd person can help, for example Food has proven himself to be quite good at it) and some neat functionality (search!, tooltips, spoilers, filters) and I can assure it will be a big win.

Anyways I said I'll keep it short and I failed once agian. Whatever

Imo docs do NOT belong ingame. I HATE having to wait 30 minutes after "starting" a game to actually play it. When I came to this mod I knew it was not the original game and did not expect the game itself to teach me how to play it. Even non-modded games require a player to do SOME research before jumping in and expecting to be able to pwn the whole thing. I get that it's frustrating for new players to miss level-dependent challenges. That information SHOULD be in the game (and as i understand, will be in sigma

. just my 2 cents.

So since there is a hardcoder in the team (whist), there are less limitations which means it is now possible to shape the game design as intended. Sigma will fix some aspects of the issues discussed here imho.

Actually I have made dozens of posts about this issue, but it seems you haven't read them. Oh, the irony

I tend to miss a lot of things, whoops

1- The idea behind pearl of wisdom is dumb. People want to play, not read.

The same applies to the docs as well. Not to say that having documentation is dumb by any stretch. Having background information is always welcome to have of course. Especially with D2, since just about every day I learn something weird on how it handles things. Hell, I still don't get how poison damage works sometimes.
My issue with Median, at least, comes from the requirement of reading them, for reasons I already explained.

2- Ubers are where they are due to limitations. Challenges work as they work due to limitations. This is plain obvious. A lot of content is not pretty due to limitations. Both laz and me had to offer content in ways that were not created in the most optimal way simply because we didn't have another choice. For example, anyone who thinks we stuck to the concept of heroic shields because we actually think the mechanism is fun and cool is just plain retarded. So is someone who tries to judge MXL from a "proper game design" perspective, really. Median XL is basically the medicine you give to your old grandma that was supposed to die 10 years ago. You cannot do this without inevitable (and many times irreversible) side effects (see: LC0 - was nice having you). If we want to talk about game design, let's grab a game where the developers actually have access to the game's source. I don't want to sound like a dick here but this is flat out the truth.

I do understand where you come from though. We have ubers where we are because there is no other place to put them. Heroics exist to 'simulate', in a pseudo manner, a boss with massive health, to compensate for the fact that caps exist for health. Median is probably one of the more innovative mods to push the game as far as it can, while keeping the installation involving a single file. It's flawed yes, but I feel like there could of been methods to work around the issues. Granted, now that I actually read your posts, considering where you can now place Ubers out of sight and mind, this is mostly irrelevant and it seems pointless to go on about potential solutions, because Sigma.

3- As for subtext to catalysts, oils, yadda yadda... Again not a great idea. How will you explain what a catalyst of disenchant does without explaining the whole concept of disenchanting and the benefits from it in the first place? Answer: the problem actually lies in the high amount of cube dependency there is throughout the game, not in the reagents having no description.

I agree with you on that. In cLoD, you get the cube for the first time. Cain tells you of it's possibilities, and what kind of recipes you can make with it. But the most relevant thing he tells you is how to upgrade games. That is it. The game never tells you any additional cube recipes, apart from cubing quest items in act 2 and act 3. Instead it incentives you to go look it up, and see what discoveries people made on what you can do with the cube. You don't get anything that at least drops a hint, or anything that encourages experimentation. No one in their right mind would say to themselves "what is I try this Helm, Perfect Ruby, Jewel, and Ral rune in the cube?" Or better, who in their right mind would consider throwing away their Stone of Jordan on a rare? Many of the cube recipes involve oddly convoluted and specific materials to be shoved together in the cube.

Same thing applies to runewords. Who the hell is gonna toss in random runes they found, when they cannot unsocket them, when you don't have any contextual clues on what sorts of combinations to use (apart from the barbarian mercenary trainer who hints you to put them in an order)?

Granted with Median, yea you couldn't explain every inch of detail without shoving a wall of text on something like oils of crafting now that you mention it. With that specific oil, it would be something like: "Cube with a jewel, arcane shard, X rune for this effect", times how many possibilities there are.

In the case of runes for Median, one may toss a gem or jewel into their weapon or armor at the start of the game. To their surprise, they notice that it only took one rune, gem or jewel to make a "runeword". But when they realize about an item having 2 sockets, it makes them ponder on why it didn't work this time. It either leads to experimentation, or just the knowledge that it, at bare minimum, takes only a socket to make a runeword. Alongside with the knowledge of the fact that one can unsocket a runeword, the only penalty it could lead to is some gold.