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Stairs are bad, but I think the degree of their badness is being exaggerated in this thread. If the effect of stairs is to be able reduce any encounter to a few enemies at a time, this effect can replicated without stairs using basic luring once you've cleared some of a level. Hellcrawl is a better ...

not a dev, but: 1. Persistent floors are a bad idea. 2. Roguelikes should be linear. (Branching paths are ok, but not going back and completing the initially unchosen path.) 3. Roguelikes can't both be long and have strategic (rather than tactical) depth. 4. You should avoid having multiple systems ...

duvessa wrote:I woke up 3 times this year to the news that one of my friends was murdered for being LGBT.

jesus. hope you're ok.

1 and 2 sound like great additions to webtiles. Would be great if they made their way to other servers.

faded altars wouldn't be as terrible if there were no chance of getting a god that actively made it more difficult for you to win (xom, chei, qaz).

1 s-branch/game (or only 2 runes for the win, one of which must be non-S)

for phones, and also just good in general: downwell, hoplite

I'd generally put it on the highest damaging weapon I have, because if tele or banish don't trigger, I'd prefer the monster to be dead.

i'd be alright with trog burning all books immediately, even after you abandon him.

Getting shafted to V:5 is a problem because of crawl's branch layout, not because of shafts. The fact that V:5 should be completed after U:5 is completely counter-intuitive to a new player.

The fact that most players don't know what stats do is a good indication that they're poorly designed.

Crawl is too random to make replaying levels much of a learning experience. Monsters that get good damage rolls against you one time won't the next, for example. To get better you have to think about what the possibilities could occur in an encounter and prepare for them, even if they're unlikely. S...

I think we basically agree; I just don't think religion has to be categorically different than race/background. Obviously, if everyone wanted the highest chance to win every game, they'd just choose Tr/Mi/GrBe every time. But the game finds ways to communicate that choosing race/background isn't par...

i mean, that's not really the point, but you can re-roll random selections at the start screen, where it doesn't have any in-game consequences, unlike waiting another few floors for a non-annoying god.

crate: Huh. I can’t see how choosing the first altar you find increases variability any more than worshipping at one of those random-god altars once you got to an all-inclusive Temple, or choosing random god at the start screen, would. The current situation certainly decreases choice, though, since ...

I assume the point of spreading out altars across the dungeon is to create the sense of a strategic choice. Do you want this god now, or will you hold out for a more suitable god later? That would be ok if the gods were better balanced, or the game placed better gods at lower depths, or in some othe...

It's a subjective decision whether the game should make gods like backgrounds and races (no attempt at balance) or like weapon classes and S-branches (which at least theoretically should be balanced, even if the game currently fails to do so). Crate really enjoys finding altars in different orders, ...

Duvessa is right. It doesn't make sense for gods to be both a strategic decision and a difficulty setting. Making a version of crawl where the gods were balanced would be a massive undertaking. On the other hand, owning up to the fact that gods aren't supposed to be balanced and removing the strateg...

dpeg: i like your idea 5!

Having all monsters, awake or in los, follow you upstairs is bad because it doesn't allow you to use stairs to escape from non-adjacent monsters (what I called function 2 above). The idea that "you don't have to fight all encounters" is pretty fundamental to crawl.

I don't like stairs as they exist currently, because they are nearly always the best place to fight from and so encourage lots of luring and eliminate having to choose the best place to battle. But it's hard to change stairs because they perform multiple functions. Here are some things that stairs l...

If the point of having multiple S branches is that the player make a choice between them, then having one branch be significantly harder doesn't help that.

The problem with luring as it exists is that good tactics are also boring tactics. It's true that luring is a fundamental part of crawl in the sense that being aware of noise, choosing good terrain, and deciding whether to engage or escape are all deeply ingrained elements of crawl's tactical system...

Crawl's species, backgrounds, and gods are its difficulty levels. Devs have said they have no interest in balancing them with one another.

Sidenote: This is also why having altars appear on different levels is a bad idea. A difficulty-level choice shouldn't be a strategic choice.

s25, ydeve and i are both saying you can lure any non-fast monster while it is still 2 squares away from you back to the stairs. Then rest off the penalty, go back down, and fight.

You can't think of any country where men enjoy wearing dresses...seriously? I hope all of them!

Ah ok, I misunderstood the OP. Wouldn't this idea encourage the player to lure any slightly dangerous monster back to a stairwell before engaging, then go up and rest off the penalty, then return back to fight? This reinforces my belief that something needs to change about stairs for any luring refo...

commit log wrote:Total experience in Lair changes from ~63k to ~53k, which isn't actually a very substantial drop - it should generally result in characters still leaving the Lair at XL14 on average, just slightly further from XL15.

Making monsters faster than the player would result in more frequent luring. I believe the same is true of sandman25's proposal, though I haven't thought about it enough to be absolutely sure. Here's my explanation from an older thread: I could be wrong here, but it seems like speed-11 monsters woul...

I'd be down with a food clock like in Rogue (no corpses), that gave sufficient nutrition you'd only have to hit 'e' once in a great while, and no interaction with abilities or spells.

andreas wrote:Off the top of my head, a while ago someone suggested merging the two sorts of bardings, and the argument seemed to entirely be that it would be simpler.

andreas from that thread wrote:Is there a reason to reduce item base types, besides trying to reduce this kind of cognitive load and avoid player confusion?

I don't think I've ever seen anyone advocate "removal and simplification for its own sake," and the opposition between adding good content and removing bad or extraneous content is a false one. If anything, there is a fetishization for adding or retaining bad features due to a sunk cost fa...

I don't really have an issue with decks so much as much as deck and card identification. If the design goal of decks is to provide random but useful effects in certain tactical situations, then identification is directly counter to that goal. In other words, I think it would be fine if decks remaine...

I disagree with dpeg's argument because: 1) There are already more intuitive ways to differentiate lost games: depth reached and, later, runes acquired. (This is how I assessed my progress when I was learning, and still is how I measure how "good" a lost game was. Out of curiosity, did/doe...

I don't know if you realise this, but you are not entitled to a reply. Beogh is the orc god because we like it. What else do you want? A developer that doesn't troll the player community. As I said above, if this is how you feel, I'm not sure why you post in this forum. Devs have the right to make ...

dpeg: this is a meta-discussion, but I find it frustrating the number of your posts that feature phrases like "I don't think I can convince you," "it's purely subjective," "this is no longer worth discussing," "this idea is pure flavor [ie. bad design] but I don't ...

Flavor-wise, I'd much prefer the game to end after I surmount one of its most difficult challenges than after a lot of tedious walking and avoiding battles. If it's really desirable for the game to end where it began, I suggest placing the Zot entrance next to the entrance to D with a runelock. Desi...

"there are a lot of new players who find spell selection intimidating" seems like a good reason to let Veh spell gifts stack. Justified or not, many newer players worship Veh over Sif when playing conj, and those players should be encouraged to try out spells with little risk, as there are...

Crawl already has a relatively well-designed ranged attack with tactical limitations (conjurations) and a relatively well-designed ranged attack with strategic limitations (evocables, assuming we forget rods exist for the moment). That doesn't leave much space for ranged weapons to be interesting. C...

dpeg: I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not disagreeing with your claim that "whether, when and what to scroll-id or use-id" can be a meaningful set of decisions. I hold no opinion on that. I'm saying that you need to compare that set of decisions with the decisions that...

People defending the id game don't need to show the id game can be interesting. People defending the id game need to show the id game is *more interesting* than choosing how to use consumables in the early game. What decision would you rather make? 1) choosing what to id from a list of unknown items...

like, in crawl or in general?

what does doomrl do?

Getting rid of permafloors would be pretty difficult so long as branches exist. Also, you could keep replaying easy floors to scum for items, though that could be fixed with a mindepth timer like in Sil. I think some kind of stair reform + smaller levels would be the way to prevent the easily known ...

would you worship a skill cap god if its altar appeared on d:7?

I agree with duvessa. Swapping rings is nearly never an interesting decision.

Bringing fun play and optimal play as close to coincidence as possible is one of crawl's design goals.

I'm undecided about this proposal, but I wanted to point out that this change isn't really about organization but moderation. Prior to this thread, I've never seen anyone complain about the tavern's organization making it difficult to find posts they're interested in. I've instead seen two kinds of ...

No particular order: 1. Smaller Floors 2. Fewer floors (L, M, V, and U 4 floors; E, Z, and all S branches two floors.) 3. One S branch and one non-S branch rune to win. 4. Turn stairs into hatches. 5. Hellify non-D loot (ie. no floor drops; food, consumables, and gear appear in vaults at branch ends...

Or juggle items by picking them up, dropping others, then after a bit picking up the others and dropping the originals. It'd introduce a lot of tedious workarounds.

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