Descending to D:15...

[Magipi]

  Code:

You fly downwards.
A brain worm, 2 vampire mosquitoes, 3 centaurs and 4 wights come into view.
The vampire mosquito buzzes angrily. The centaur warrior shouts!
The centaur shouts! You hear a shout! You hear a shout! The centaur shouts!
The centaur moves out of view.
The centaur hits you but does no damage.
The wight moves out of view. The centaur misses you.
The brain worm's bulging head throbs.
Something tries to feed on your intellect!
Found a potion of restore abilities and a scroll of enchant weapon III.
A vampire mosquito, a centaur and a skeleton come into view.

  Code:

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   #### .c
    ... c#
     #.#w###.##
     #.@c.....#
     #.#z######       ..
    ... z!.           ..
  ...y. ..#Z#        #.#
....... z.+ ..       #.#
 ...... ..#  #       #.#
  y.y.. ..#          #.#
   .... ..#          #.#
      . .            #.#



[Klown]

How about that bs Vaults staircase?
I walk down, and I'm surrounded by Donald, skeletal warriors, ogres, etc. in a Vaults:5-esque circle of death.

[reaver]

You guy realize the < key exists right?

Even if it didn't or you entered a new branch ?tele exists.

[Magipi]

You guy realize the < key exists right?

Even if it didn't or you entered a new branch ?tele exists.

You realize that this is CYC, right?

[Patashu]

How about that bs Vaults staircase?
I walk down, and I'm surrounded by Donald, skeletal warriors, ogres, etc. in a Vaults:5-esque circle of death.

That one is really fun.

[Klown]

It's just intense to put two staircases inside a circle of doom where a very weak character can enter.(D:13-14 isn't very far.)
You enter the 2nd bad staircase, you're getting hit from all sides & dragging people back, even slower if you teleport instead.

Not complaining, just intense!

[Sandman25]

I have just entered D6 as XL 8 Sp with 36 HP, adjacent to Orc Warrior and 2 Orc Priests

[Klown]

And the lair branches with all the new monsters are way tougher.
Game gets 10x more evil each release.

[Patashu]

And the lair branches with all the new monsters are way tougher.
Game gets 10x more evil each release.

Are there statistics to back this up? Do ppl win less on 0.14 than they did on 0.9?

[duvessa]

0.14-a winrate is dramatically worse than 0.9-a winrate (0.60% vs 0.71%, or 0.68% vs 0.84% if you exclude quitting/leaving). This is a completely terrible metric though, since players tend to get better at the game over time rather than worse.

[Patashu]

0.14-a winrate is dramatically worse than 0.9-a winrate (0.60% vs 0.71%, or 0.68% vs 0.84% if you exclude quitting/leaving). This is a completely terrible metric though, since players tend to get better at the game over time rather than worse.

It could also be lower because DCSS is becoming more, not less, popular over time so more newbies will be playing it. I'm not sure what a better metric would be. Mean/Median time between playing for the first time and getting one's first win?

[Sandman25]

And the lair branches with all the new monsters are way tougher.
Game gets 10x more evil each release.

I hope you like it. At least I do

[bcadren]

I had that vaults entrance vault on d:14 once...and the vaults entrance was a mimic and it constricted me to keep me from leaving...being constricted on entering a new floor and surrounded by dudes unexpectedly...pretty brutal. Maybe even more so than Vaults:5 itself (since you are expecting it and ready on Vaults:5).

[Patashu]

I had that vaults entrance vault on d:14 once...and the vaults entrance was a mimic and it constricted me to keep me from leaving...being constricted on entering a new floor and surrounded by dudes unexpectedly...pretty brutal. Maybe even more so than Vaults:5 itself (since you are expecting it and ready on Vaults:5).

Wow, Crawl is brutal.

[Hirsch I]

I lost a very good character at this vault. I find it awesome!
I say "at this vault" not "to this vault" because i basicly killed myself.
"oh, this is funny. how about reading immolation here?"
"shut up, Hirsch II, get out of my room."
soon
"damn, I should not have listen to him."

[Klown]

[netkitten]

0.14-a winrate is dramatically worse than 0.9-a winrate (0.60% vs 0.71%, or 0.68% vs 0.84% if you exclude quitting/leaving). This is a completely terrible metric though, since players tend to get better at the game over time rather than worse.

It could also be lower because DCSS is becoming more, not less, popular over time so more newbies will be playing it. I'm not sure what a better metric would be. Mean/Median time between playing for the first time and getting one's first win?

since those numbers are per cents i.e. don't depend on the size of the sample (after it reached some limit of hundreds/thousand of players which crawl audience reached ages before 0.9) so you basically claim that either the modern newbies are worse than newbies from 0.9 times or that the newbie ratio is higher now which implies that a higher per cent of people who pick crawl now don't become experienced players or quit it than it was before. imo it has no real ground

the game definitely got more intense in a lot of different ways. i haven't played for ages and don't really have much time to play now too but from the experience of playing my current char... god what did they do with vaults and the bottom of the dungeon ("depths"). trolls who lrd you on sight, some weird kinds of vault guards who prevent you from leaving the level, or close doors, nagas with bows and portal projectiles etc etc

[Magipi]

It is pretty obvious that the game is getting harder and harder. Maybe not every release is noticably harder than the previous one, but the difference between 0.11 and 0.14 is clear.

[reaver]

0.14-a winrate is dramatically worse than 0.9-a winrate (0.60% vs 0.71%, or 0.68% vs 0.84% if you exclude quitting/leaving).

0.14-a isn't the outlier, 0.9-a is. In the entire history of Crawl, the 0.9 - 0.11 period was when it was easiest to win a game:

Winrates:

  Code:

         |   0.5-a    0.7-a    0.9-a   0.11-a  0.13-a  |0.14-a
=================================================================================
!boring  |   0.36%    0.46%    0.84%   1.31%   0.71%   |0.68%
         |                                             |
total    |   0.16%    0.29%    0.71%   1.17%   0.63%   |0.60%

So 0.14-a isn't the game becoming harder. It's the game regressing from a time when it was abnormally easy. Not even all the way! Just a little bit.

[Sandman25]

I hope we will never get to 0.16% again, I think main reason of such low rate was lack of spells in monster descriptions, greater presence of unavoidable deaths and similar bad things.

[TeshiAlair]

I feel like the game has also become a ton more fair as well though, which is nice.

[damiac]

What are top streaks for each version? That's somewhat telling of the level of unavoidable deaths in each version. As well as the number of streakers attempting to streak, of course...
Stupid statistics

[Patashu]

What are top streaks for each version? That's somewhat telling of the level of unavoidable deaths in each version. As well as the number of streakers attempting to streak, of course...
Stupid statistics

I don't think this will be a good metric, because all the best streakers already got the highest streak they want to get and aren't likely to try and top it.

[Klown]

Also, since 0.14 is basically evil. Maybe 0.15 can bring some cool new things(iron troll armour, no more bad potions, etc.) Little nice things to balance it out.

[reaver]

Also, since 0.14 is basically evil. Maybe 0.15 can bring some cool new things(iron troll armour, no more bad potions, etc.) Little nice things to balance it out.

The best way to do this is to learn to code and make patches for cool new things.

[Lyrick]

no more bad potions

The best way to do this is to learn to code and make patches for cool new things.

  Code:

if (generateItem) == (decay | degeneration | paralysis | confusion | poison | strongpoison | slowing):
     generateItem = experience


[duvessa]

0.14-a winrate is dramatically worse than 0.9-a winrate (0.60% vs 0.71%, or 0.68% vs 0.84% if you exclude quitting/leaving).

0.14-a isn't the outlier, 0.9-a is. In the entire history of Crawl, the 0.9 - 0.11 period was when it was easiest to win a game:

Winrates:

  Code:

         |   0.5-a    0.7-a    0.9-a   0.11-a  0.13-a  |0.14-a
=================================================================================
!boring  |   0.36%    0.46%    0.84%   1.31%   0.71%   |0.68%
         |                                             |
total    |   0.16%    0.29%    0.71%   1.17%   0.63%   |0.60%

So 0.14-a isn't the game becoming harder. It's the game regressing from a time when it was abnormally easy. Not even all the way! Just a little bit.

well that's great but Patashu asked about 0.14 and 0.9, not about 0.5 and 0.7 and 0.11 and 0.13

i still don't think it is remotely reasonable to say this has any significant correlation with difficulty whatsoever

[netkitten]

the game at 0.7 was definitely less intense than now, not sure if it was easier but it was more abusable. i mean those who knew how to play to win might win easier but those who didn't probably had more problems than now with victory dancing etc mechanics

[mikee]

Well I don't want to go into statistics very deeply, but it might be worth noting that the sample size of 0.14-a is roughly 10 times that of 0.9-a and 5 times that of 0.11-a, so I'm not sure how telling those are.

On the other hand, the single biggest change during that period that made crawl easier was the starting hp of every character being slightly increased in 0.9. If you compare the top few killers across each version you will note a pretty substantial shift from hobgoblin/kobold to gnoll/orc priest.

[Confidence Interval]

Well I don't want to go into statistics very deeply, but it might be worth noting that the sample size of 0.14-a is roughly 10 times that of 0.9-a and 5 times that of 0.11-a, so I'm not sure how telling those are.

What's important in terms of our interpretation is not the sample size nor even the size of the population involved (which may be what you mean here*) but the characteristics of that population in relation to likelihood of winning - skill and experience, most likely. Since we have no real way of knowing those it's not possible - as has already been suggested in this thread, by duvessa and others - to assess whether the difficulty of the game is changing or not.

Put another way, there are two major unknowns here: the difficulty of the game, and the average level of skillfulness of (all) the players. We might reasonably expect a change in either one of those, or in both, to lead to a change in the proportion of games won. The proportion of games won does change but we can't tell which of the putative explanatory factors has changed so we can't comment on whether the game has become harder or non - or at least, not on the basis of those numbers. (Qualitative judgements are of course possible.)

tldr: we can't tell.




* by which I mean that if you say "the sample size is bigger" is implies to me a larger sample drawn from the same population, which would enable more precise estimates to be made. I think you mean, and forgive me if I'm wrong, that more people are playing - i.e. that the population itself has grown larger.