michthro
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Yes, I know the issue has been raised before, but not for a long time. I also know what the arguments against it are, and that nothing is likely to come of this, but I'd still like to state my case and suggest a possible compromise.

I think your views on this depend heavily on how you play DROD. There seem to be three ways:
1) You're only interested in completing rooms, without any regard for how many moves you use.
2) You go for reasonable efficiency, but not too seriously. You'll save a move here and there, move diagonally, go to the nearest exit etc., but you're not going to replay a room umpteen times for the sake of efficiency.
3) You're interested not only in solving rooms, but also in minimising the number of moves you use.

If you fall into one of the first categories, you probably are against it. Otherwise, you almost certainly are all for it, and I hope you will support me on this. I think most players who are against it perhaps don't realise just how high the standards set by players like StuartK, Kevin, Bibelot, and many others, are. And then there's Rabscuttle... When going for #1 scores, it's not just about saving the odd move, it's about optimising. The idea is to analyse the room and try to find the shortest possible solution. With long rooms players seldom go for absolute efficiency, but the standards are still high. With shorter rooms, if you leave a move in it, your high score won't last. By the way, this is not just about competing, it's also very interesting to optimise solutions. Trivial rooms become interesting, often with unexpected, interesting solutions. The simplest room can become a big challenge. The thing is, doing this sort of thing is much like analysing a chess position on a board. Doing so while only allowing yourself to undo one move, or otherwise going all the way back, would be a nightmare. It's the same with analysing DROD puzzles. Optimising involves a lot of trial-and-error, trying different approaches, replaying the same part over and over. It becomes extremely tedious, frustrating, and annoying. Not having unlimited undo simply wastes a lot of time. It detracts from the game. Those who like to go for efficiency will know the feeling.

Now for the other side of the coin:
People have said that unlimited undo makes rooms trivial. I don't see how unlimited undo tells me that the idea is to move goblin 1 to position 2, use it to shorten snake 3, but not kill it, then get it to 4 etc. Some rooms may become easier, and it may become too easy to find an optimal solution. But there are already many such rooms (mostly monsterless entrances), and anyway, the number of such rooms is far outweighed by the number of rooms that would still be far from trivial, and for which optimal solutions would not be easier to find, only quicker.

If you feel that appropriate checkpoint placement will do the trick, you don't understand what I mean by optimising. Try beating a couple of #1 scores, and you'll soon see what I mean. (And I'm sure you will beat them, but you'll see why unlimited undo would save a lot of time.)

Another argument is that players will get lazy, and start solving rooms by trial-and-error. Well, you don't have to use it. So there's the concern about newcomers getting the wrong idea, doing it by trial-and-error because they're not forced to think. Very valid point, so I suggest the following:

Let unlimited undo only become available, as an option, once you've completed KDD or JtRH. That way
1) newcomers aren't affected.
2) players not interested in optimising don't have to use it if they feel it spoils the fun for them.
3) players interested in optimising, believe me, will want to use it, and have more fun.

eytanz
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I don't get it. This seems to me to be an arugment mostly against unlimited undo - some people can optimize without it. Most people can't. Thus, must people end up having lower scores than the people that are really good. Unlimted undo will help level the playing field.

Thus, we should avoid unlimited undo because it will make the high scores meaningless, while at the moment the high scores reward the best players while giving the rest of us something to look up to.

In my first post-relaese playthrough, I got an average of #50 in JtRH rooms. Since then, I've been slowly trying to improve it. I'm now at an average score of around #30, which is because I have about half good scores and half really crappy ones. When I take a #95 scores and improve it to the top twenty scores for that room, I feel a sense of achievement. If I get it to the top 8, I feel even better. With unlimited undo, that would be a lot easier, and a lot less interesting.

Unlimited undo is great when trying to figure out if a room is even solvable, which is why you get it in the editor. Even though I don't really support it in general, I think I can probably be persuaded that it might be useful for general puzzle solving. But I'm positive it shouldn't be used as a tool for optimizing.

I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

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Oneiromancer
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eytanz wrote:
I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

That's a really good idea. I'd be behind that for sure.

Game on,

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michthro
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eytanz wrote:
Thus, we should avoid unlimited undo because it will make the high scores meaningless.

Not at all. My point is that unlimited undo would save time. With or without it, I'm going to optimise. What often happens is that I have to repeatedly play through the first part of a room while working on something later on. And again, go look at a couple of Rabscuttle's demos, and tell me if you still think that even with unlimited undo, everyone would get the same score. Take a look at Dusty Dungeon L1 1N2E. Would everyone be able to land up with the last snake down to the least possible two segments just because they have unlimited undo? And doing the rest of it in the most efficient order? It would only have saved a lot of time, not to repeatedly hold down the "5" key for what seems like ages until you can actually get started on the room.

eytanz wrote:
I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

You could simply optimise the room, penalties and all, and then replay it once without undoing

eytanz
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michthro wrote:

eytanz wrote:
I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

You could simply optimise the room, penalties and all, and then replay it once without undoing

You can also just watch the #1 demo and replay it if all you are interested is in short-cutting the stage where you try to figure out how to optimize. Plus, it's harder than it sounds to play a room without mistakes, at least for the rooms that need more than a couple of hundred moves.

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michthro
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eytanz wrote:
You can also just watch the #1 demo and replay it if all you are interested is in short-cutting the stage where you try to figure out how to optimize. Plus, it's harder than it sounds to play a room without mistakes, at least for the rooms that need more than a couple of hundred moves.

Using unlimited undo wouldn't be short-cutting, it would save time. I know exactly how hard it is to play a room without mistakes. It's terrible having to play through part or nearly all of a room without mistakes over and over. That's why I want unlimited undo.

It looks to me as if the problem here is the misconception that optimising is all about trial-and-error, as if you simply try everything until you find a minimal solution. Not even a computer can do that. (The word optimising is a little misleading.) There's a lot more to it, and you can only really know how it goes once you've tried it.

eytanz
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It's a lot easier for a person to do it than a computer.

But no, I think the misconception is on your side. I understand that it's not about trial & error, at least not on the large scale (though it is sometimes in a small-scale, when you know you have 5 moves to do something and aren't sure what and you have limited possibilities). The problem I have with unlimited undo is that it saves time. It doesn't make it much easier to find the optimized solution, but it sure makes it easier to achieve it. And I don't see why that should be made easier, not when there's some people - a handful, but in every competition, champions are a handful - who can do it anyway.

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michthro
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eytanz wrote:
The problem I have with unlimited undo is that it saves time. It doesn't make it much easier to find the optimized solution, but it sure makes it easier to achieve it.

But that's exactly it! If it doesn't make it easier to find optimal solutions, what is wrong with it saving time?

eytanz wrote:
And I don't see why that should be made easier, not when there's some people - a handful, but in every competition, champions are a handful - who can do it anyway.

It doesn't make it easier, it makes it less tedious and frustrating for them.

eytanz
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Saving time makes it easier because people have lives and only a limited amount of time to devote to DROD. If it'll take less time, more people will get optimizied highscores. Hence, easier.

If you find it tedious and frustrating, why are you doing it?

Frankly, you're the #4 ranked person on the highscores. You're good at this, and you want to make your life easier. I respect that, but I don't think you fully appreciate the ways unlimited undo would affect people like me, who are not as good (and maybe I'm not the best judge either since I'm #14, not #40).

Anyway, this is my last post in the matter unless I change my mind about something, because I think I've run out of stuff to say.

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larrymurk
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I guess we already know I support unlimited undo.

In general I like holds where one must think to solve the puzzles. The unlimited undo won't help you solve these by randomly doing/undoing them. It helps take away the wasted time to try solutions.

I find it very entertaining to watch the top players' demos to see how they solve rooms using entirely different tricks than anyone else was able to find. I don't think the unlimited undo would help me come up with their brilliant solutions, but at least it would make it more fun/ less tedious for me to try different solutions/optimizations.

michthro
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eytanz wrote:
Saving time makes it easier because people have lives and only a limited amount of time to devote to DROD. If it'll take less time, more people will get optimizied highscores. Hence, easier.

I'm not trying to drag you into another post when you've said you're through, but people having lives is an argument for saving time. And unlimited undo won't save all that much time. It's more a matter of tedium than time, come to think of it. I suppose I still spend more time staring at the screen than I do redoing the same old moves.

eytanz wrote:
If you find it tedious and frustrating, why are you doing it?

Good point. I don't know. I love the game, so I'm prepared to put up with some shortcomings, I guess. And of course, not all of it's tedious. It's the tedious part I'd like to eliminate.

michthro
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larrymurk wrote:

Thank goodness, some support at last. Now if some other players I can think of would also pitch in, we can have this thing wrapped up in no time..

Citrus
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eytanz wrote:
I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

I'm on this side. If we are choosing sides. I hope we don't have a war.

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michthro
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Ezlo wrote:

eytanz wrote:
I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

I'm on this side. If we are choosing sides. I hope we don't have a war.

So you're for unlimited undo (with the penalty idea). yayyy! some more support.

eytanz
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Michtro - I think you should remember that DROD is not a democracy. Whether or not you'll get unlimited undo doesn't depend on how much support there is, it depends on whether or not you convince Mike Rimer.

Now, getting wide support will certainly not hurt your cause and you should go for it - but the way you're responding makes it seem like you think that your goal here is to get wide support, which it isn't.

And I'm talking from experience here, having been in your shoes on other issues where there was wide support but ultimately were decided against.

(I should point out that as a member of the JtRH/TCB dev team, I have a more direct line of communication to Mike about feature requests than you do. That usually means I get to hear "no" more often - oh, and I promise I'm not, nor am I going to, attempt to dissuade Mike or anyone else from unlimited undo in any non-public way)

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[Last edited by eytanz at 02-06-2006 04:22 PM]

michthro
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Well, to be honest, I didn't think that support would hurt, but my responses weren't serious. I am hoping that more people with some influence and better than me at expressing themselves and explaining things and so on (and of course who agree with me) will get involved.

Swivel
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eytanz wrote:
I'd recommend that in the unlikely case that Mike decides to implement unlimited undo, than any undo beyond the first one in a row will increment the turn count. That'll let people use multiple undo if they feel they must, but not allow them to get on the highscores that way.

Some undos are more valuable than others. (Some may be worth 1 turn, others 2 turns, most somewhere in between, etc.) I am completely, or at least, mostly, against against penalties. So instead of providing penalties, just cancel the high score for the room. A demo might be "marked" so that it could be exported and imported, but have the number of turns statistic the normal count and with some special "double-undo" marker.

Tahnan
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michthro wrote:
I think your views on this depend heavily on how you play DROD. There seem to be three ways:
1) You're only interested in completing rooms, without any regard for how many moves you use.
2) You go for reasonable efficiency, but not too seriously. You'll save a move here and there, move diagonally, go to the nearest exit etc., but you're not going to replay a room umpteen times for the sake of efficiency.
3) You're interested not only in solving rooms, but also in minimising the number of moves you use.

If you fall into one of the first categories, you probably are against it. Otherwise, you almost certainly are all for it, and I hope you will support me on this.

My apologies for coming in late--though I didn't think "four hours after the first post" was going to be "late"--but I actually disagree with the latter two sentences.

In terms of minimizing, I agree with eytanz; if I want to be maximally efficient, I need to plan things out to the point that I probably shouldn't be undoing at all.

But as someone who's always played with attitude #2,(*) unlimited undo (or save-anywhere) had always seemed like a good idea to me. For instance, (cut not for spoilers, but only because it's dull):



The point is: having gotten the idea behind the room, I wasn't really interested in having to go through it all over again because of a few careless keystrokes at the very end. But I had no choice. If only I could have undone more than one move!

[Edit to add:] I forgot to mention that, for a player like me, save-anywhere might be a more useful option; though it, too, should probably come with either a move penalty or a "this doesn't count for high scores" marker.

(*) ...well, until recently, when I started seeing "25th place!" in-game, or worse, nothing at all, which makes me go, "wait, wait, I want to do better than that!"

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[Last edited by Tahnan at 02-06-2006 05:50 PM]

Jatopian
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Tahnan wrote:
In terms of minimizing, I agree with eytanz; if I want to be maximally efficient, I need to plan things out to the point that I probably shouldn't be undoing at all.

But as someone who's always played with attitude #2,(*) unlimited undo (or save-anywhere) had always seemed like a good idea to me. For instance, (cut not for spoilers, but only because it's dull):

Click here to view the secret text

×When playing King Dugan's Dungeon : Twenty-First Level : 1 West the other night--with its inconveniently-located checkpoint--and had finished the room but for a few queens located at point 1 in the above link. I moved above them, pointed the sword south, and charged...killing the bottommost queen four turns into the spawn cycle, which I hadn't noticed, and thereby finding myself with four rather angry roaches to my east. A single undo wasn't enough; consequently, I had to restart the whole thing. (Which didn't help my efficiency; I still ended up 28th, about typical for me on that level.)

This expresses my feelings perfectly. Have a rank point.
I support eytanz's idea, if it comes to that versus nothing. Though even high-scorers might want the semblance of life (gasp!) beyond DROD.

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 02-07-2006 06:20 PM : on the fence]

michthro
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Tahnan wrote:
I actually disagree with the latter two sentences.
...
In terms of minimizing, I agree with eytanz; if I want to be maximally efficient, I need to plan things out to the point that I probably shouldn't be undoing at all.

Well, I'm glad you disagree with the first sentence - I was being conservative when I said type #2 players are probably against it.
As for the second sentence, let's take an example. Consider JtRH L1 6N5W: An optimal solution requires 75 moves, which means you start killing roaches as soon as possible (i.e. you kill the first one on move 11), then kill a roach on every single move, and when you kill the last roach, you're right next to the exit. Seriously, please try doing this room in 75 moves, and then tell me if you still feel the same about planning things out. Everyone, please do this, and see if you feel the same about unlimited undo making it easy and all the other arguments. This is only one example of a common type of situation. There are many others, and many other completely different situations where unlimited undo would really help.

mrimer
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Thanks for making the effort to outline reasons for and against adding unlimited undo (UU). The ideas suggested here and other places are intriguing. I can see people have put a fair amount of time into thinking about this thorny issue.

So far, I see the core play issues potentially affected, are as follows:

- When trying to beat a room for the first time: As people who have used it attest, UU often serves as a crutch, saving time by avoiding thinking while blindly plowing forward -- leading to unfun focus on undesirable trial and error play when rooms are designed to support this style of play (consider those rooms where you are forced to wrangle the correct solution from a tedious and unintuitive puzzle). In this case, I would encourage better puzzle/room design. UU is another solution, but in my mind the next point takes precedence to fixing bad puzzles that way.

- For optimising rooms after completing a hold for the sake of higher scores: In this case, this isn't just about achieving good scores, but rather at beating other people's already good scores. Adding quicker ways to achieve higher scores seems like an arms race lacking any contribution to more meaningful play. I don't see a reason to add a more powerful way to get high scores.

Take a contrasting game like N with online high scores. There's no undo there (e.g. time rewinding, a la Prince of Persia) for the sake of getting high scores, as well there shouldn't be. "But wait!" you say. "That's an action game, and this is about puzzle solving and planning out what to do ahead of time, not properly using twitch reflexes." Quite right, and I think that futhers the reason not to add UU for the sake of getting higher scores in a game like DROD.

I don't see how UU would resolve these difficult issues.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 02-06-2006 07:11 PM]

Chaco
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You don't get highscores in DROD by undoing; you get them by planning.

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michthro
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OK, one last try:

mrimer wrote:
Adding quicker ways to achieve higher scores seems like an arms race lacking any contribution to more meaningful play.

Unlimited undo would be a quicker, less tedious way to achieve the same scores. As I said before, I've been optimising anyway. (Which is why I've been tending not to replay long rooms.)
And what about the chess analogy? DROD, like chess, and many other games, lends itself to analysis. The way it is at the moment is just impractical. Not having a convenient, user-friendly interface for analysing DROD rooms is a serious defect.
One more argument, which I was hoping not to have to bring up, is that, since the source is available, it is all too easy for players to play with unlimited undo anyway, and I strongly suspect there are players who do. You might as well make sure the playing field is level.

Blondbeard
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Actually It has to be noted that unlimimited undo in fact probably would make it harder for michtro (and I guess for me also) to get those highscore points, since it would probably get more people to try and go for highscores. But THAT is the point that makes it so good. If more people would try to optimize the overall player standard would increase. I know I've learned a lot since the day I started chasing the highscores. And if optimizing where easier then I and others would probably increase our DROD skills even more. I don't think this is a big deal, but I'm definitly suportative of the idea.

TripleM
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I'm against unlimited undo. I'm fine with a single undo which is solely for the purpose of fixing a typo - but I don't think anything more than that should be allowed.

Abbyzzmal
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Here is my opinion:

I care very little about optimization most of the time, though there are some rooms where, after I finish them, I say, "Oh! Well, I can do better than that," and I go back and do it again. Last I looked, I had exactly one number one score, a room very based in optimization, and I kept going back until I was convinced I had finished in the minimum number of moves.

That urge to keep retrying the room was some of the most fun I have had in DROD, rewatching my demos and seeing where I lost a move or two and going back and trying again. With unlimited undo, it would have been trivial to minimize the solution (especially for that room), and it would have already been done long before.

High scores are one thing, but urge is much more important. Maintaining that need to play has always been a strength of DROD, and if unlimited undo were offered, I doubt that I would be able to restrain myself from using it, and I doubt that I would get as much enjoyment out of the program.

Tim
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Why do people try to bring all kind of fake ideas to just want unlimited undo (UU)? michtro has his good valid reason; he wants to use less effort to score higher than Rabscuttle. But that's not my reason.

Correct reasons for UU could be:

1) I'm a lazy player, and I paid for it, so I want to play it in a lazy way. [Edit: This isn't meant as bad. I am an incredibly lazy person. ]
2) Some #$%#@% architect designed a horribly efficient room, and intentionally removed the checkpoints. That's unfair, and I want to make the room fairer by having UU.
3) I can only make simple rooms, so if there is UU, I can make sure everybody has to clear the room by using the tightest solution.
4) I am the game designer, and I happened to like it.

Personally, I am against this UU thing. Did you know that since UU comes out in the Editor, the holds I'm testing suddenly get harder? I am very sure that if UU is standard in DROD, we will get more efficiency holds. Then everybody will ask for the "skip any room" option.

To be honest, if you want to stop situation 2), the best thing is to help playtesting other people's holds.

-- Tim (who would very probably have to make very efficient holds if UU becomes commonplace)

PS. And michtro, why do you like to retry the same rooms so much? Why can't you just finish my holds instead?

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[Last edited by Tim at 02-06-2006 10:32 PM]

smartino
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hi everyone,

Times ago (two-three yearsmaybe) I proposed to add feature which is wider the UU stuff: the capability to add macro in order to "program" Bethro movement.

I am a slow player who enjoy the puzzles and believe that the aim is not to solve a room but to do it in the less moves possible.

I like refine a solution, I know that very often to optimise it you should take a completely different approach so UU it is not the solution. But when you had to repeat the same sequence of moves, just because you waited too much o too little, then I quickly loose the interest. Drod is a reflection game not to test your capability in pushing a series of keystrokes without loosing your patience.

As regards the high scores I do not think they will change a lot.
Good solution requires fantasy and ingenuity, not brute force;but even if someone should use it to have his name as a top scorer why do you get hurted? I do not care about this. My play is to beat myself, to improve my finding, to solve optimally a room, not to run against other.

I hope not to bore anyone.

Sergio Martino

Chaco
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DROD isn't a twitch game - you have as much time as you need to press each key, so if you take five seconds to press each key you'll never mess up

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stigant
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As DROD is a highly individual game, (and hence achievement in DROD is highly individualized) I don't think that UU will ultimately ruin or even hurt anybody's experience unless they let it. That said, I see no compelling reason to add it either. I don't really care about optimizing rooms, and I don't think that the "it will make optimizing rooms easier" line of reasoning holds any water... Why should we make optimizing rooms easier? It takes away from what optimizing rooms is about. As for poorly placed checkpoints, the free market argument applied to holds should take care of architects who do so. One of the main points I bring up when testing a hold is that there aren't enough checkpoints.

One thought that I had a while ago (I'm sure its not original) is that there could be an automatic checkpoint every 30 moves (in addition to the current checkpoints). That way, you never have to repeat more than 30 moves over and over again. Its a nice compromise between tedium and those of us who think that 1 undo is enough.

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