Predict the future of Crawl development

[Pollen_Golem]

State how you think the game is going to change, though not necessarily how you think it should change. Will hunger go the way of the skill point pool? Will charms or conjurations follow stabbing and traps & doors? Maybe a popular unrand will be retired? For bonus points, be really specific, maybe even mention the year/version of the change.

[tasonir]

Is it too late to get credit for removing -Ctele?

I'd say that we're going to see repel missiles removed. Deflect missiles might stay, or could be removed with it. Really the problem with this spell is that it's level 2, not that it's good. It is good as a level 6 spell, but not many people pick up deflect missiles unless they're high int characters with heavy investment in magic. Which seems appropriate to me.

I'd like to see haste removed as well (definitely the spell, possibly the wand as well - potions can stay), but I consider this less likely. My ideal situation: Remove spell, wand, and double the potion's generation. You now have a fairly well constrained amount of haste in the game, which is decently high, but you will run out of it if you use it much.

High elves/Kobolds are likely to be merged/removed races.

[Rast]

Food will go away.
Ammo mulching will go to 100%.
One of the devs will try to ruin ranged, but will be defeated.
More information will be added to the game interface. Surprisingly, this will not ruin crawl.
Oka and Trog will get nerfed again.

[Pollen_Golem]

My prediction is that potions will continue to conglomerate into a smaller total number. Potions will have more combinations of positive and negative effects, making them more situational, but also more universally useful across a large variety of characters. The following might happen (but not now that I've written it)

resistance + flight = opposition (you resist gravity)
magic + decay = energy (maybe rots you 2-3 points instead of 3-5)
beneficial mutation + degeneration = development (your flesh transforms into organs)
might + agility + poison = virulence
brilliance = insight (but also grants sickness and See Invisible)

[Sandman25]

Necromutation will be removed in 0.20
Borg will be level 7 Necro/Transmut in 0.21
Dispel Undead will be level 6 in 0.22
Op will have -2 HP in 0.23

[tasonir]

What do you mean continue to conglomerate? What potions have merged? They've added more and more resistances to !resistance, but that's not really merging potions. And cancellation/lignification are fairly new potions, so if anything the number of potions is increasing.

[and into]

In the year 2000....

Octopodes will be renamed "Mountain Dwarves," with no other changes, just to troll.

[duvessa]

by the time crawl makes it to 0.27, killing a monster with okawaru will give negative piety

[Rast]

...but he'll still be good.

[Berder]

These are my fears/predictions.

Food will continue to tighten so that mages get pooped on, and hunger won't go away.
Any remaining tricks that let you kill enemies or pass areas in ways other than using your main damage will get removed or nerfed. I expect this to include, at minimum, blowguns.
Ranged damage will be ruined by becoming a support skill, unsuitable for your primary damage, and not worthwhile to get since you instead want to get evocations which are more versatile.
Melee support magic (buffs, etc) will continue to get nerfed or removed so that there's even less excuse not to be a troglodyte
The game will add more and more ways to get ambushed at random by hard to escape enemies, making it less and less feasible to play a weaker character
New items will be added without doing anything to increase inventory size, exacerbating the problem where you have to page through your inventory to find items to drop.

These are (some of) my hopes, which I have no expectation of happening:

More branches, randomized like the lair branches, so there is more variety in how your games can progress
Far fewer and somewhat more challenging enemies in the later game so fights are more meaningful
Radically compress the later game - once my character is established the suspense is over and I don't want to spend 75% of the game playing it out.
Make the late game more like the early game
Remove monster spawning
An end to hunger and food
104 size inventory
To reduce inventory clutter, maybe have some games simply not contain certain items, e.g. one game you might have no sacks of spiders or !agility, another game you might have no elemental evocables or scrolls of immolation. This would also randomize games more, which would be nice.
Vampires start with a bottomless cup of blood (or receive it somehow after reaching a certain stage of the game, e.g. maybe the Horn of Geryon can produce blood in addition to summoning hell beasts) so they don't need kiku for extended
Bring back shadow step to plants

[Rast]

[tabstorm]

I would not be surprised if the following were removed sometime in the near-ish future:

Races:
One of halfling or kobold
Vampire
High Elf
Deep Dwarf

Spells
Charms school in its entirety,pseudocharms (e.g. phase shift), especially haste.

Gods:
Beogh
Nemelex

Backgrounds: As merged into Hu

Other:
More ranged changes.

Won't be removed but I wish it were:
Felid
Tomb

[duvessa]

tbh I think felid is more likely to be removed than any god

[tabstorm]

I can dream, can't I? Just being reminded that they are a "feature" saddens me alittle. Probably the second least fun race I've ever played after Op.

[Lasty]

One of the devs will try to ruin ranged, but will be defeated.

My ears are burning!

[mps]

New monsters with questionable mechanics will rotate in and out. The ratio of manually designed vault content to random "layout" content per game will continue to increase, but it will take the form of continued reduction in number of floors per branch and will not be understood in those terms. Vestigial mechanics like food/hunger, identification, and curses will hang around for a surprisingly long time. Soup levels will remain more or less constant.

[jejorda2]

Just as dungeon levels were reduced from 27 to 15, max character and skill levels will be reduced to 15. Max stats will be reduced to 51.

For clarity, race names on the character selection screen will be replaced with useful numbers. For instance, felids will be renamed 12speed0slots1apts.

Skill names will also be replaced with numbers. Fighting will be called 4hpand1.2%weapondamage, while Fire Magic will be called 1.2%elementaldamageon15differentspellsanddurationonringofflames.

[XuaXua]

In the year 2000....

yes.

[XuaXua]

All quirky culture vaults will be removed (Indiana Jones vaults, TMNT vaults, etc...) if not already.

[tannisroot]

• Stock ammo will be infinite, brand ammo finite, and all ammo will mulch
• Chunks removed. Use 'e' to eat corpses on the ground.
• God gifts will drop pre-identified
• Turn queue will be displayed

[Jeremiah]

Controlled Blink will be nerfed or removed.

[Rast]

All quirky culture vaults will be removed (Indiana Jones vaults, TMNT vaults, etc...) if not already.

I hope you aren't a dev.

[XuaXua]

All quirky culture vaults will be removed (Indiana Jones vaults, TMNT vaults, etc...) if not already.

I hope you aren't a dev.

I suggested a thing that I expect to happen given trends, not a thing that I would particularly like.

Thread is Predict the future of Crawl development, not Predict your desired future of Crawl development.

[duvessa]

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?p=37625#p37625
context:

Spoiler: show

crawl was going through a big turn of removing information and adding more mimics and traps to the game, and a couple of the more publicly visible devs were saying that skill training is boring and everyone should just use auto mode or something i dont remember

[Rast]

I just from the DCSS lab, blood on my hands. Those damn guinea pigs don't last ten minutes. Somehow, the dwarves were sturdier. Then again, the guinea pigs make cuter noises when being pressed, crushed, quartered and axed

[onget]

0.20: various things (hunger, etc.) will be resolved by killing.
0.25: all will recover by killing.
0.30: All the "fun" things will be removed.
0.35: Any (except escape and spam attack)tactic/strategy ideas will be prohibited.
0.40: All linley's crawl content will be removed.
0.45: All of the devs it looks like completely crazy xom.(But xom has been removed completely)
0.50: All will be removed.
0.??: all will collapse.
0.??: all will be forgotten.
??: Forever.

[jejorda2]

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?p=37625#p37625
context:

Spoiler: show

crawl was going through a big turn of removing information and adding more mimics and traps to the game, and a couple of the more publicly visible devs were saying that skill training is boring and everyone should just use auto mode or something i dont remember

It is my sincere hope that one day, when someone is told that "choko" was once the actual string used to tell how much it cost to cast a spell for many versions of crawl, it will seem so obviously un-crawl like that it will not be believed by those who did not witness it and have not examined the source repositories.

[Sar]

0.30: All the "fun" things will be removed.

look at this dev shill

all the fun things were removed in 0.10

[onget]

0.30: All the "fun" things will be removed.

look at this dev shill

all the fun things were removed in 0.10

I hate devs for stupid remove and stupid development policy.

I want to play "version up" variant of linley's crawl. It does not exist.

Because some of the "fun" things are excluded from stupid remove priority list, it has somehow survived.

[Sar]

well maybe you can name those so called "fun" things so the devs can put their removal on their priority list

[and into]

Whenever I feel that the Tavern is full of reactionaries upset by the smallest changes, I read the comments to the development live blog updates, and I feel better about the community here.

[onget]

"fun" things list of which has not been completely removed:
God (Unfortunately,some god of blasphemy)
Mutation
rune vault(include elf and zot)
unrand
Some of the monsters, especially Royal Jerry and quokka
Other minor effects such as

Unfortunately, some of these been stupid removed.
remove of MD is the most stupid.
fuck tolkien, fuck D&D, fuck Opponent. is the worst remove excuse.

[Sar]

Quokka?

[mps]

"The quokka tells an offensive joke."

[pickled_heretic]

I predict all decisions for play (cautious or risky, what skills, items etc, how many consumables you use) will be compiled into the init file. Then, all actions can be completed with a single key press (O) that decides what the player wants to do at a given time. This way the game is completely streamlined for online speedruns.

[duvessa]

[Pollen_Golem]

Nemelex and decks will not be removed or replaced, but will change:

• You will not be able to draw single cards from a deck any longer.
  Instead, you will only be able to draw all their cards in a single turn.
  Deck size will be decreased to 3-7 cards to compensate.
• Nemelex will only have 2 active abilities.
  Ability 1: reveal all the cards in a deck, at the cost of removing 1-2 cards.
  Ability 2: evoke a deck, but choose the order in which cards are drawn.
  The order of the cards is actually very important and can make a big difference.
• Identifying a deck will tell you the type of deck, but not the top card.
  Instead of the top card, it will tell you the number of cards in the deck.
• Ornateness levels will remain in the game.
• Decks will share a second inventory along with scrolls, books, and food.
• Nemelex will not be good, but still better than previous incarnations.
• This will happen within two years.

[Rast]

Serious prediction: Nemelex followers will automatically ID any deck they find. It might already be that way; I don't play trunk

[Insomniac]

Zealot backgrounds will be removed entirely by 0.20. I wouldn't even oppose this, TBH: choosing a god based on the altars you find on the upper floors is actually more fun IMO. And if you're dead set on serving a certain god, well that's what Temple is for, innit?

[onget]

pre-temple is very boring. Always same game play or stupid death. remove the zealot backgrounds will be more boring early game.

[treerex5]

0.20: various things (hunger, etc.) will be resolved by killing.
0.25: all will recover by killing.
0.30: All the "fun" things will be removed.
0.35: Any (except escape and spam attack)tactic/strategy ideas will be prohibited.
0.40: All linley's crawl content will be removed.
0.45: All of the devs it looks like completely crazy xom.(But xom has been removed completely)
0.50: All will be removed.
0.??: all will collapse.
0.??: all will be forgotten.
??: Forever.

???: All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.


If you get the reference and pm it to me, you get a cookie.

[tasonir]

I'm going to break both rules and 1) not get the reference and 2) reply here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich

I didn't get the reference, I just googled it, but I thought the page was interesting, so I'm spreading it. Apparently the first known english book to have been written by a woman. I'll understand if I don't qualify for a cookie. I'm not sure if this is the source you were thinking of, of if the phrase has made it into some other more well known source.

[Zwobot]

Nice. Always interesting to learn odd cultural tidbits...

To actually add something... Mhmm.. I'd say all simple buffs will be removed or changed to be always on - with some way of compensation. Recasting Shroud is among the most annoying crawl habits. :/

Ozocubu's Armour
Stoneskin
Shroud
Phase Shift

Either ammo of penetration or Portal Projectile will be removed (or changed). Regeneration will probably stay as is - though the net effect is similar to +AC buffs.