Magic vs Melee

[Sandman25]

Honestly I think almost all of the perceived variance among offensive spells is "fake" (doesn't meaningfully affect how you play) except for the conjurations vs summons divide.

Really?
Ice:
Freeze - do I cast it to try slowing down a cold-blooded monster like Hydra or cast something with more damage? Great vs high EV/low AC targets.
Freezing Cloud + Force Lance combo
EH - the best spell in the early/middle game. Should I cast it at monster 1-2-3 tiles away keeping in mind it can be resisted or the monster wakes up and becomes immune for a while.

Fire:
Conjure Flame - similar to ?
Inner Flame - similar to ?
Sticky Flame - similar to ?
Fireball - similar to ?
Ring of flames - similar to ?
Fire Storm - similar to ?

Earth:
Sandblast - will I spend the stone?
Passwall
Liquefication
Pretify
LRD
Statue Form
Shatter

Air:
Mephitic Cloud
Static Discharge
Air Strike
Lightning Bolt
Poisonous Cloud
Conjure Ball Lightning
Tornado

And we also have Translocation/Transmutations/Necromancy etc., I am lazy at this point

I know many top players claim melee is superior to magic, requires better playing skills etc. and it makes me cry "What?" Melee is boring and trivial (at least in crawl), even a bot can win games with pure melee character. Retreat behind a corner, retreat into a corridor, retreat 10 tiles, run around pillars attacking occasionally when pack monsters move instead of attacking, use a weak monster as cover while using reaching vs more dangerous monsters, quaff haste/might/agility and/or escape, did I miss anything?

[crate]

other than the melee/range divide I do think that pretty much all the actual damage spells listed in the OP (ring of flames is a charm) are basically the same thing
hexes (including petrify/EH) are pretty much the same as a conjuration in most cases (leda's is a charm)
statue form is a charm
almost all charms don't really do anything to change how you fight

"melee" characters typically end up using charms anyway unless they're with trog (in which case they still use charms, it's just limited to consumables and berserk)

anyway that's my explanation and that's as much as you're going to get, i don't feel like wasting more time trying to explain this if it's not clear to you and it'd be a colossal waste of time to try to convince people to agree with me since I know it's not going to happen

a similar idea: real-time-strategy (RTS) games and fighting games are basically the same, with only a very select few rule changes, of which the most generally important is that fighting games pretty much without exception give you perfect information whereas RTS games usually do not.
if you don't see why I think that statement about RTS games and fighting games is true, then you're not going to see why I think all conjurations are the same; if you do, perhaps you can see where I'm coming from. i suspect very few people would agree with me that the most important difference between fighting games and RTS games is perfect vs imperfect information, but that is the main difference to me.

[Sandman25]

I hope I understand what you mean regarding RTS/fighting (I am not expert in fighter games but for me there are only 2 huge genres in the whole gaming industry - real time and turn based, I almost never play the former but enjoy many games of the latter category) and though I feel my current understanding of your words is wrong (melee characters require skills because it is fair play and player must use brains to get upper hand while all casters use cheating tools which are not available to monsters) I appreciate your response.

[qwesdf]

Why didn't you just post in the original thread instead of making a whole new thread?

[Sandman25]

Why didn't you just post in the original thread instead of making a whole new thread?

Two reasons:
1) It would be offtopic in that thread
2) I didn't realize that thread was moved out of GDD subforum

[tasonir]

I'm sure there are differences between crate and my understanding of magic, but on the general idea that conjurations are the same, I agree. For me the two on your list which is most different would be sticky flame/freeze, because it's melee ranged. I could also see the claim for conjure flame, when it is used to stop an intelligent monster from pathing closer to you. Dropping it on a tile you know a non-intelligent monster will walk into isn't any different from most conjurations. And I suppose a final one would be EH, for enabling stabs, but I'm a bit fuzzy on hexes in general because I don't really use them much.

My basic framework is ranged vs melee, and what you're going to use for both. You want both. Sometimes you start with one and pick up the other later, sometimes you train both from the start. Ranged tends to play easier/safer, melee is faster/more fun. I've started quite a few of my chei-statue form unarmed characters with slings just because getting to lair with slings is roughly 3 times easier than punching from the very start. For example, action table from my last win:

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Short sword       |    88 |       |       |   210 |       |       |       |       |       ||   298
       Unarmed           |       |       |       |       |   651 |  1255 |  1443 |  1235 |  2849 ||  7433
 Fire: Hunting sling     |    56 |   174 |   398 |   472 |       |       |       |       |       ||  1100
       Greatsling        |       |       |       |   552 |  1476 |  1151 |   317 |     6 |     2 ||  3504

I'm pretty sure the sudden spike of 210 short sword uses at level 10-12 is me killing plants in lair to get back my sling ammo stuck underneath them.

[Sandman25]

I don't understand, sorry. LRD is used with rock walls and is smite-targeted, OoD is not that useful in corridors, Sticky Flame is good with non-Chei non-Na, Conjure Flame on adjacent tile is good even with Na of Chei, Fulmisant Prism/Fireball for killing statues but it is still one and the same spell while melee is more varied and more interesting tactical-wise because you have 2 options: 1) move forward 2) move backward, and those 2 options are still available to mage also. I guess I will never understand.

[Berder]

Fighters may use charms - but mages have a much easier time learning charms, and can use more of them and higher level ones. You almost never see an armored tank casting ring of flames, for example.

There are significant differences between many spells. "Which enemies are immune to my magic?" is the major question. And spells are generally more complex to use and require more selection between them than melee. Air strike, for instance, is powerful on flying enemies and back-rank mage enemies, but poor as a general damage source. Contrast it to fireball, etc. Magic involves selecting the right tool for every job, whereas melee is usually just the same tool, once you have a strong weapon and aren't switching between brands anymore.

even a bot can win games with pure melee character. Retreat behind a corner, retreat into a corridor, retreat 10 tiles, run around pillars attacking occasionally when pack monsters move instead of attacking, use a weak monster as cover while using reaching vs more dangerous monsters, quaff haste/might/agility and/or escape, did I miss anything?

This

[crate]

For a human (or at least for me, I dunno I guess maybe there are players for whom this isnt true) selecting which offensive spell to use is basically the same level of "difficulty" as deciding whether you should have your sling equipped or your long blade equipped (if you have trouble with this latter decision, um, ok...). There's either one obviously correct choice (bolt of fire for instance), or you're in a situation where it really doesn't matter which option you choose among the ones that make some amount of sense (this is like choosing between long blades and polearms; it doesn't actually matter which you choose even though they are technically different).

This is very hard for a computer to do. Bots have to follow some sort of algorithm. You'd have to code in countless different situations to make it work, and even though I could tell you at a glance (within a second) what spell I'd use in any given situation I cannot write down a set of rules that will lead you to the same decision I made. (Well, I could for any specific situation, of course, but I can't give you a set that generalises to more scenarios.) Probably I could do okay by just telling it to throw icicle at everything but that's much worse than what a human would be doing, and you get penalised for that pretty heavily since you're wasting mp.

Melee's strategical simplicity makes it far easier for bots to play compared to using spells. I do not agree that this automatically means that it is also more difficult for humans.

This is perhaps related to my earlier idea that conjurations are pretty much all the same, but it is not the same idea.

---

A related thing is that even though "run in and hold tab" is a pretty bad tactic, it's good enough to work sometimes, particularly if you build a very strong character. Building a strong melee character is very easy to do just following a set of rules (and in fact I would suggest that players actually manage to get this wrong quite often, because they're not given the set of rules that qw follows). The floor for melee tactics is thus higher than the floor for magic tactics (being as bad as possible while still doing something that is at all reasonable will work better with melee), but I suggest that similarly the ceiling is higher (playing significantly better than average is more difficult) because of what I think is more difficult positioning. Basically everyone this side of Zermako is significantly better than this floor for tactical play on average*, so I think the ceiling is more indicative of difficulty.

*a note here: because of how crawl punishes mistakes, it's actually much more important to not make mistakes than it is to play better on average; computers are really really good at doing exactly what you tell them to do, and players are not, so even players who are significantly better on average than qw (this is almost everyone) will still die more often. I will allow that it is easier to make a mistake you can't recover from if you're a "caster".

If what you're really arguing is that it's so easy to build a strong melee character that the tactical difficulty doesn't matter much, then okay I agree with that. But I don't personally think that's a very useful or interesting thing to talk about.

[Sandman25]

You seem to prove my point that magic is more varied than melee. I am sure we can create some situations when it will be unclear which spell to use, or at least it will depend on additional factors like extra monsters in LoS, current MP, distance to stairs, spell noise levels, spell success rates, (spell power vs MR) chance, terrain (Lightning Bolt, Blink, Passwall, Passage of Golubria etc). MP make mages more "varied" (again this word), it is true that mages can be more powerful (clearing zigs is an obvious example) but their power is not stable, it depends on MP very much, a mage with 0 MP is extremely weak (or at least always weaker than melee character who always has higher AC/EV/HP/weapon skill).

[crate]

I'm arguing that the task is so easy--like recognizing a person's face--that it's not actually work for a human at all, despite computers being bad at it. But I dunno, maybe this isn't true for all players. It pretty much is for me though.

edit: I think the second point is more relevant to the discussion anyway though, the first was just a comment on not translating bot difficulty into human difficulty

[Sandman25]

Yes, crawl is too easy after learning optimal patterns. I wonder if there is a way to make experienced players always think hard when fighting the same monsters with the same characters.

Edit. Though it's possible that human player is wrong and chooses wrong action sometimes. It would be fun to actually create that "mage AI" and have a special "wizard" mode where player would receive messages like "You did a mistake, it was optimal to cast Freezing Cloud instead of Bolt of Cold".

[Berder]

Crate, it sounds like you're shifting the issue from variety to difficulty. Crawl may not be that difficult to an experienced player with magic or melee. Certainly it's not like chess. But the main point isn't about difficulty, it's about doing a variety of things instead of always the same thing.

The "ceiling" - the absolute optimum - of play for magic or melee are both beyond human capability, especially if you're talking about optimal for score.

The fact that it's much harder to tell a bot to play a mage does speak to the greater complexity of being a mage - even if humans don't have as much trouble with that complexity.

[duvessa]

chess has more variety than the combination of snakes and ladders + candyland + tic-tac-toe, IMO, which I think is basically what crate is getting at here

[crate]

I feel like when I'm using conjurations I'm doing the same thing as when I play a melee character except I can stand in more places. I guess that's variety, in one sense (I can stand in more places) but it also means I don't have to move as much so fights feel a lot more samey.

I probably should've just left it at that.

[kroki]

Honestly I think almost all of the perceived variance among offensive spells is "fake" (doesn't meaningfully affect how you play) except for the conjurations vs summons divide.

Sandblast - will I spend the stone?

squeezing it to the last drop

[cloud4ge]

One thing I don't understand is where melee builds are getting all this fantastic AC and EV.. Anytime I where some armour with great AC, it completely demolishes my EV even with outstanding strength and armour training..

The other thing I dont understand is how melee characters can beat enemies that can paralyze and confuse you for endless durations of time. Eyeballs, and such. How does a melee character beat slime den? The only times I get past places like that, I just assume I was extremely lucky.

DE seem to be a lot more forgiving. Just kill everything before it even has a chance to attack you. And train fighting, dodge, and stealth to keep a buffer.

I'm clearly not in the same league here..

[kroki]

One thing I don't understand is where melee builds are getting all this fantastic AC and EV.. Anytime I where some armour with great AC, it completely demolishes my EV even with outstanding strength and armour training..

enough STR to beat your armour ev penalty, high dex from starting a melee background and taking dex every third level, a lot of exp put into dodging

The other thing I dont understand is how melee characters can beat enemies that can paralyze and confuse you for endless durations of time. Eyeballs, and such. How does a melee character beat slime den? The only times I get past places like that, I just assume I was extremely lucky.

You can beat paralyse and confusion with MR (outside of chaos branded attacks with mr+++ you will be very rarely paralysed) . You also gain immunity to paralysis for few turns after being paralysed. Giant eyeballs don't spawn anymore outside of rare vaults. Slime pit is trivial for melee with rCorr or 1/2 potions of resistance.

  Code:

dive to slime:6
run to middle
buff up with all youve got - haste, might, agi, resistance (if you lack rcorr/rc for azure jellies)
lure TRJ into a corridor
use lamp of fire if youve got it
whack trj, while pumped up on all those buffs it will be gone in few swings
enjoy the loot


[Bloax]

I know many top players claim melee is superior to magic

The absolute strongest spellcaster combos are much weaker than the absolute strongest melee combos, both in terms of squishiness and actual damage output, which is rather sad.

Magic is pretty okay in terms of variation (much better than back in like 0.10), but I still find all the limitations casters face (like almost nonexistent mp regeneration :D:D) rather absurd when you both have ranged weapons that do almost the same thing (triple crossbows are rods of lcs) but with infinite ammo (and let's not forget portal projectile!) and melee that runs off your hp (which doesn't have silly stepdowns) as the alternatives.

[Berder]

The absolute strongest spellcaster combos are much weaker than the absolute strongest melee combos, both in terms of squishiness and actual damage output, which is rather sad.

Until you start casting level 9s!

[Bloax]

What is that worth when you've already won (unless you manage to royally screw everything up) by the time you're oneshotting everything in lair with said melee combos?
You don't even have that good chances of getting said level 9 spells, while said melee combos are nice and deterministic.

(and unlike silly spellcasters you won't run out of mp either)

[duvessa]

I know many top players claim melee is superior to magic

The absolute strongest spellcaster combos are much weaker than the absolute strongest melee combos, both in terms of squishiness and actual damage output, which is rather sad.

Magic is pretty okay in terms of variation (much better than back in like 0.10), but I still find all the limitations casters face (like almost nonexistent mp regeneration :D) rather absurd when you both have ranged weapons that do almost the same thing (triple crossbows are rods of lcs) but with infinite ammo (and let's not forget portal projectile!) and melee that runs off your hp (which doesn't have silly stepdowns) as the alternatives.

what am i even reading

ranged weapons that do almost the same thing (triple crossbows are rods of lcs)

yeah ok that is definitely melee that you are talking about here

[kroki]

The absolute strongest spellcaster combos are much weaker than the absolute strongest melee combos, both in terms of squishiness and actual damage output, which is rather sad.

Until you start casting level 9s!

which rarely happens in a regular (3-5 runes) game during which a MiBe will absolutely shit on DECj in terms of both survivability and sustained damage output. The fact that MiBe with axes can count as permanently hasted and mightied (you can berserk with no risk for more than 90% encounters in regular game) is another can of worms entirely

[Bloax]

ranged weapons that do almost the same thing (triple crossbows are rods of lcs)

yeah ok that is definitely melee that you are talking about here

i'm sorry that i don't strictly stay to a single subject

maybe i should do that more often just to upset everyone that cares so much about it :)

[Berder]

So what if easy mode is GrFi or MiFi? Easy mode is for sissies.

But I do think the game should encourage magic more because it's more interesting. F'rinstance, any character can pick up a weapon on D1, and as a result wanderers usually just play like weak fighters. What if there was a good chance of random spellbooks on D1-2? That could encourage more character to pick up magic sooner or instead of melee.

[Bloax]

Just because easymode is picking a very strong melee character then it doesn't change the fact that magic is pretty shitty.
because hi why do you think easymode is picking a very strong character in the first place

[Berder]

Magic's not that weak. In the early game a lot of backgrounds are like being a hunter with unlimited ammo.

[Sar]

MiBe will absolutely shit on DECj

That is because DE are actually secretly mediocre.

Book backgrounds can be really good if you pick them with an actually strong race. Be is still probably better but Be are special and not all melee characters are Be.

I do think the game should encourage magic more because it's more interesting

I don't think game should really encourage any specific path.

[Sandman25]

MiBe is better than DEBe but MiWz is worse than DEWz. I know it from experience, I lost 2 MiWz to early Ogres where DEWz would just blink away.
For me mages are easier than melee because with careful play they cannot die, they are not subject to bad rolls because they are almost never attacked by melee-only monsters and most early threats are melee only. Orc Priests are a threat of course but it is related to HP, not to being mage/fighter (though being able to take them at range still helps). GhIE was extremely powerful, for example. MuSu/Cj is stronger than MuGl as well (I tried all these).

[tasonir]

I feel like magic just got a huge buff in trunk with +9MP randarts spawning now. It's going to be floor-god-dependant, of course, but in extreme cases, damn that's a lot of mana. My HEEn wore +28 mana worth of gear. Made up for saccing mana capacity twice

I'd suggest removing the stepdowns on max mana, or at least moving them to higher up (60 or 70 mana) which also would increase regen, as regen is tied to your total mana. Letting octopodes go up to 100 mana might be a bit much, but letting heavy magic users get to 70-80 mana isn't too bad.