🚀 go-pugleaf

Although in general I feel that DESCENT rocks, I have two main problems
with the game.  One is not so important, but one is a real
show-stopper.  I don't expect to register DESCENT if they insist on
keeping it.  

* Of course, I'm referring to the save game "feature".  I understand 
Interplay/Parallax's philosophy on this issue, it's just wrong.  OK, 
so they think that allowing the player to save at arbitrary times would
allow the player to use save-game as a super-equalizer and defeat
any enemy by repetition.  To which I reply, "So what?"

It's true that some people play that way.  It's true that this problem
has existed since the beginning of computer games, and nobody has yet
found a satisfactory answer for it.  DESCENT's way is not the solution.
The solution is simply that a player be honest with him/herself.  It's the 
way I played out DOOM, for example.  But if I don't 'want' to be honest,
then who the hell is the software vendor to tell me how I should use
the product?  It took me five hours to try to complete Level 7 of the
shareware, and I still died. (Hotshot level).  Five hours.

Five hours.

When the hell do I expect to have five hours, in a single block of
time, to attempt that level again?  Level 7 is HUGE.  I can't take on 
that level, get halfway through it, save it, and get some sleep (or go 
to work).  I need to find another five hours, and I'm not even sure
that that five hours will get me anywhere, because I can't even save the
game.

So there's a very good chance that I'll never get past level seven, since
I'll never find the five (10,15,20,25?) hours I'll need to do so,
and I'll just say "screw it, I'll play Heretic instead."  Which is too
bad, because DESCENT is really a good game.

In making their save-game "feature", Interplay/Parallax isn't just
telling me how their game shoul be played; they're butting in to my
life and telling me how my life should be lived.  "You have a job?  Other
responsibilities?  Well if you want to play our game, you're going to
have to put them off for a little while."

Come on, guys!  You have a whole audience of busy professional people,
students who actually attend classes and do their homework, lots and
lots of people like me who ARE NOT GOING TO BUY THIS GAME because it
asks for far too much of a time commitment.  And it's all because of
your stubborn stand on the save-game "feature".  But it's only a GAME,
after all.  Give us an arbitrary save-game and I guarantee your sales
will reflect the decision.  Sadly, I can't buy the game without it.

(other alternatives might include reducing the size of the levels, or
allowing the game to be saved at selected "check-points" in the mine.
But you'd better do something...)

and now for the little problem I had with the game:

* I love the mulitplayer game.  I played via modem with a friend and
boy was it great!!  SO much easier to get going than any other product
of its kind (you know what I'm talking about).  However, we had a problem
with the multiplayer rule that when you die, your powerups are scattered
in the vicinity of your scene of death.  It seems to me that this rule was
conceived with the 3+ player game in mind, and it seems appropriate to
tht type of game.  It is less appropriate to the 2-player game, since the
recently killed player must now swoop all over the mine trying to get
whatever powerups are left before being found again by an even stronger
enemy.  It's actually more effective, if you've just been killed, to 
head for the reactor and blow it -- because you've got a fair chance of
stripping the other guy of all his powerups if he can't make it out of the
mine in time.  That'll make for short and unsatisfying anarchy games.  I
would much prefer to see Interplay/Parallax add a switch to the multiplayer
games setup which allows the selection of an option to either (a) as now,
distribute powerups in the vicinity of where you bit it, or (b) distribute
powerups randomly through the mine when you bite it.  This still won't
eliminate the issue, which is just a fact of all multiplayer games, but
for 2-player games at least, it will redress the balance just a little. 

Sorry for the length, but I need to get this out.  Anybody want to 
tell me how to get these ideas to Interplay?  Do they read this group?

Patrick