Easy Mode...

[basil]

I don't think the skills (?) one learns during savescumming play are the "skills" you need to be good at playing Crawl normally, but I am not really sure how to express it.

You can not-die in almost all circumstances if you savescum for long enough due to that variance, so skill isn't really needed.

[Sar]

Well, according to some comments on the regen.bat link there are people who can't win Crawl while savescumming, so I don't know!

[linear]

Here's an idea that would give people who need help a partial workaround to permadeath and fighting player ghosts. It retains consistency with both mechanisms without taking anything away from people who like these features.

When you die, you are restored to full health as your ghost.

You get a second chance to figure out how to beat your lethal situation. You can try any item/spell/ability you didn't use the first time. But as with most NPC undead, you are trapped on the level, and the game is over. If you force-quit or save-quit, the game ends as usual: the character goes to the morgue, and a bones file is created. If you die again as a ghost, the character goes to the morgue, but no bones file is made.

Of course, a player still ought to think over how he/she got into the lethal situation. The ghost could be teleported, perhaps to the level entry point, so that there is an opportunity for a different approach. To stay fluffy, undead characters would be destroyed on first death. This would require a little coding. This could be called the "revenant" system or "ghost of a chance"

[dck]

Games with a definite goal and with game overs should have a game over mechanic when you've become permanently unable of achieving said goal.
Personally I think it would be a terrible thing to have in the game as it'd not teach anyone anything (you just got full borg'd for free and free undead resistances in the middle of a fight -if you have the tele part then you're not even able to examine the battlefield properly anymore to see how you fucked up), it'd encourage finding ways of killing yourself not to leave a potential ghost (or worse, weakening yourself massively and then quitting); what's worse, many players who would be the target for this system likely weren't paying that much attention to begin with when they died, so now they're dead and they know they screwed up big time and the frustration goes to holding tab a bit and killing everyone.

[mopl]

With no permadeath you don't really have to care about monsters that -can- sometimes do really dangerous things and you don't learn to assess danger appropriately.
Also permadeath at least tries to remove part of the hoarding mentality of never using the powerful expendable tools at your disposal because you might need them later.

Very true. But it allows to compare consumables. Should I read Silence vs Cursed Skull? Or maybe speed? Or Might? Or just Blink? Save scumming wouldn't be needed as much if crawl displayed something like that:
1) Silence - 27 turns 5 tiles radius, 20 turns 4 tiles radius, ... No effect vs current monsters in LoS.
2) You are expected to kill Cursed Skull in 11 turns, Cursed Skull is expected to kill you in 9 turns.
3) Speed - You are expected to kill Cursed Skull in 8 turns
4) Might - You are expected to kill Cursed Skull in 9 turns
5) Berserk - You are expected to kill Cursed Skull in 5 turns (50% chance to lose the fight if you have no clarity), Cursed Skull is expected to kill you in 14 turns.
I know it's not going to happen but save scumming at least tries to answer some of those questions.

Maybe true for you, surely very false for the new players who would come to Crawl because of easy mode/save scumming

I'm pretty sure that it's likely to be like :

For i:=1 to 50 do

1. Oh Mara, I'll : stab him/beat him up to death with this great mace/iron shot him/pacify him/banish him - choose the answer corresponding to your current character
2. Holy crap, he killed me, let's copy the save again
3. i:=i+1;

Oh, he died, what an easy monster, I can even beat him being level 15... Crawl is so an easy game

[Klown]

Remove normal mode and hints mode. Just have Insane Nightmare mode.
That'll teach them million new players a year to come here!

[and into]

Here's an idea that would give people who need help a partial workaround to permadeath and fighting player ghosts. It retains consistency with both mechanisms without taking anything away from people who like these features.

When you die, you are restored to full health as your ghost.

You get a second chance to figure out how to beat your lethal situation. You can try any item/spell/ability you didn't use the first time. But as with most NPC undead, you are trapped on the level, and the game is over. If you force-quit or save-quit, the game ends as usual: the character goes to the morgue, and a bones file is created. If you die again as a ghost, the character goes to the morgue, but no bones file is made.

Of course, a player still ought to think over how he/she got into the lethal situation. The ghost could be teleported, perhaps to the level entry point, so that there is an opportunity for a different approach. To stay fluffy, undead characters would be destroyed on first death. This would require a little coding. This could be called the "revenant" system or "ghost of a chance"

You shouldn't be put in a position where dying is good. (Rekilling your ghost prevents said ghost from showing up later.)

Otherwise this is a neat idea, but probably not good for Crawl. Death should be streamlined for same reasons as the character / background selection screens. Also, oftentimes people know at least one of the things they did wrong, and in many cases death occurred because you fought something you shouldn't have, period, and the correct response would have been to run away, not to attack in a slightly different manner. Mostly having a ghost as you describe would mean that you get a shot at revenge, which might be kind of fun, but I'm not sure how educational it would be, and having to manually quit after dying would be annoying.

[Sandman25]

You die...
Do you agree it was your fault? Y/n? n
You are back to life for 3 turns with HP and statuses which you had before your last turn. If you kill all monsters in LoS before time expires, your player ghost will not be generated.

[dck]

it is always your fault

[Hirsch I]

this does not mean you agree.

[Klown]

Plenty of no-chance scenarios pop up over time.
The worst was my cheigargoyle taking one step around the corner and getting splattered by Nessos' barrage of arrows, with literally not even 1 turn to do anything.
But I guess it was my fault for worshipping Chei.

[Hirsch I]

any deaths you suffer with chei will be your fault for not convincing the devs to implement that cool passive ability you tought of.

[and into]

Obligatory "you freely elected to worship Chei, ergo..." response. (Although I liked and supported your passive ability idea, too, Klown.)

[dck]

Well probably more things happened in that level prior to the encounter with nessos -the character could've been built differently, probably noise was made here and there and the place could've been explored in a safer way, so ways likely existed to avoid the instakill.
It is unreasonable that players are expected to play in the absolute safest way at all times to avoid instant death scenarios but if you choose to worship the god of making instant death scenarios more plausible and then do not exercise extreme caution it is your fault when you die.

[damiac]

My first character who made it to zot was a DDBe. I got nervous, and backed up my character. I eventually died on zot5. But the game became so much more boring after I made a backup of my character, I just tabbed myself to death, and I couldn't get myself to actually restore the backup and try again.

However, savescumming to see more of the content isn't totally crazy, and Sandman's point of dying on level 10, then having to slog through the easy levels 1-9 makes sense. If I want to develop good tactics for clearing tomb, making a backup once I get to tomb, then trying it over and over until I find a way to beat it makes some sense, so long as I'm not factoring the fact that I have a backup into my tactics.

So, if I do that, I can get in a lot more tomb runs than a character who dies in the tomb, and now has to get another character back to that point before he can try again.
Maybe someone doesn't want to clear dungeon, lair, and vaults just to get one more try on tomb.

Now, personally, I just play without scumming, because for me, the game isn't any fun without the risk of permadeath. But I'm only one person, and different people can enjoy the same game for different reasons. And yes, some people do enjoy playing starcraft, cheating up a ton of resources, and stomping the computer. I personally don't see the appeal, and I'd laugh at them if they said they were good at the game, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest if they want to play it that way.

[Patashu]

Playing a roguelike permadeath is like playing an arcade game 1CC. You can credit feed any arcade game and inevitably beat it no matter your skill level, and it's not impressive or skillful in any way. BUT, if you're credit feeding a game just to experience it all and come up with strats, not because 'you want to beat it', it's something you're doing with the aim of being able to 1CC it with your testing and strategizing. Kinda the same thing in roguelikes - if you savescum to practice, not to win, it's beneficial, so the right mindset is required or it's all 'a waste'.

[Greyr]

Easy mode? I guess you just love the idea of the Russian new world order too, huh?

Greyr

[Kismet]

For me the hardest part of Crawl is the time commitment. I would be really interested in an interpretation of crawl that shrunk a game down to 2 hours, 1 hour, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, 30 seconds, etc.

[cerebovssquire]

there is a game mode that shrinks a game to 2 hours and it's called trog (also, dungeon sprint seems to be exactly what you are asking for?)

[Kismet]

Yup I'm aware of Trog and Dungeon Sprint. That's a pretty uncharitable reading of my post.

[Klown]

My Trog runs go 8+ hours and 95% of that is o + tab.
hax

[Patashu]

Yup I'm aware of Trog and Dungeon Sprint. That's a pretty uncharitable reading of my post.

One of the Dungeon Sprints is really cool, though. It's like a miniaturized version of the game with fast exp growth and a selection of all the biggest challenges you're likely to face in it. It's called something like the 15 rune sprint, I forget exactly. It's a ton of fun and probably the closest thing you'll get to 'Quick Crawl' for now.

[Kismet]

Yup I'm aware of Trog and Dungeon Sprint. That's a pretty uncharitable reading of my post.

One of the Dungeon Sprints is really cool, though. It's like a miniaturized version of the game with fast exp growth and a selection of all the biggest challenges you're likely to face in it. It's called something like the 15 rune sprint, I forget exactly. It's a ton of fun and probably the closest thing you'll get to 'Quick Crawl' for now.

I agree, Sprint is cool.

[Slap and stab]

Maybe this would suffice as an easy mode:
1. A new free ability: the time travel thing from ToME. When you activate it, you get 50 turns (less? more?). Whatever happens next, after the turns run out (or if you end it prematurely or die) the game rolls back to the point when you activated it. Useful for staircase peeking, trying different strategies against uniques, hard monsters, ... The turn count should be high enough so a player can try different tactics and actually learn how to deal with the threat without having to start the whole thing over.
2. A hint message to tell a player when he'd better to activate this ability.

Note this is different from permadeath removal or save/loading as you are forced to load the game regardless of what happens.
Also note that some spoilers may occur, like cards peeking or wands/potions/equipment id. Maybe items id'ing should be disabled and cards should be generated randomly while time traveling... Or just leave it as it is. It's an easy mode after all.

[Patashu]

Maybe this would suffice as an easy mode:
1. A new free ability: the time travel thing from ToME. When you activate it, you get 50 turns (less? more?). Whatever happens next, after the turns run out (or if you end it prematurely or die) the game rolls back to the point when you activated it. Useful for staircase peeking, trying different strategies against uniques, hard monsters, ... The turn count should be high enough so a player can try different tactics and actually learn how to deal with the threat without having to start the whole thing over.
2. A hint message to tell a player when he'd better to activate this ability.

Note this is different from permadeath removal or save/loading as you are forced to load the game regardless of what happens.
Also note that some spoilers may occur, like cards peeking or wands/potions/equipment id. Maybe items id'ing should be disabled and cards should be generated randomly while time traveling... Or just leave it as it is. It's an easy mode after all.

I like this.

It makes a clear distinction between 'playing to practice' and 'playing for keeps', such that you can do the former as much as you like but the difference is clear, and eventually you have to go back to the 'playing for keeps' world.