Crown of Eternal Torment

[Lasty]

the majority of people [...] devs care too much about certain parts of the playerbase

What makes you think that your opinion represents either the majority or the part of the playerbase the devs should care more about?

Try replacing "play" and "single-player game" with "read" and "book," or "watch" and film."

Some artists think that their work should only be enjoyed a certain way, and they are always wrong.

It sounds like the argument you're making here is that artists have no right to decide which elements are or are not in their work: if the crawl devteam doesn't want a crown of eternal torment in their game or Jane Austin didn't want car chases in her novel, both are equally invalid? I'm sure there's a part of the Austin readership that would enjoy it more with the car chases.

Does this line of argument you also mean that it was stupid for the dev team not to have added a crown of torment sooner, or is it only that content becomes irremovable after it's been added?

this philosophy of obsessively controlling how people play and enjoy ... Reading posts from the devs itt is kind of painful ... The painfully stupid thing ... I don't care about whatever semantic runaround people will give me to discredit

This is level of drama and obnoxiousness isn't warranted, but it is a great way to get people to stop taking you seriously.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

And people also need to admit that the postgame needs an overhaul.

I don't know what the current state of affairs is but for the few years i've been here, pretty much everyone has agreed that torment is idiotic and should be removed and a better mechanic added in it's stead. the problem is, i don't think anyone even bothers to enter that mess since it's been there for ages and devs are too busy removing stuff and chasing after *hack'slash'crawl, no fun allowed*

[KittenInMyCerealz]

I don't care about whatever semantic runaround people will give me to discredit whatever parts of my post they don't want to address.

It isn't a "semantic runaround." Your entire point rests on the premise that the devs don't care enough about the players, which is absolutely wrong. Let's try this instead of flippant one-liners: above, you said, "I just don't understand this philosophy of obsessively controlling how people play and enjoy a single-player game." Try replacing "play" and "single-player game" with "read" and "book," or "watch" and film."

Trying to apply the same rules to normal media and interactive media is like giving you a deck of cards and saying you can only play solitaire with them, nothing else. and if you do anything else the guy who gave you the cards flips his shit cause "you aren't using them right"

[bel]

While File2000's comments are all over the place, most of which I don't agree with, I agree with the point that controlling too much how someone enjoys the game is not a good idea. The crown was not unambiguously bad (plenty of people have said it can be useful, don't tell me they're all bad players), there was no reason to remove it on the basis that someone thinks that it is suboptimal. If someone overvalues torment, let them. If other mostly bad but fun items are going to be removed, one could start with gong and alchemist hat, for instance. Of course, there are all sorts of other factors, like there can't be infinite unrands, so the line has to be drawn somewhere etc.

Shorter version: people's utility functions differ. Of course the devs' opinion matters more, because they're coding, but ideally shouldn't try to override the utility functions of other players.

Although, as I said above, if the commit text had a semi-decent reason, some of which were mentioned in the thread, there would have been little protest. Stuff gets removed all the time (which is a good thing).

[byrel]

And people also need to admit that the postgame needs an overhaul.

I don't know what the current state of affairs is but for the few years i've been here, pretty much everyone has agreed that torment is idiotic and should be removed and a better mechanic added in it's stead. the problem is, i don't think anyone even bothers to enter that mess since it's been there for ages and devs are too busy removing stuff and chasing after *hack'slash'crawl, no fun allowed*

I dont think torment is the biggest problem in extended. The big problem is that its way too trivial for a lot of characters.

[Sar]

pretty much everyone has agreed that torment is idiotic and should be removed

Wait, what? I'm pretty sure the common agreement is "torment is a great mechanic to make player feel uncomfortable, but it's overused, just like hellfire".

[gammafunk]

"everyone thinks torment is idiotic and should be removed" in no way resembles the current state of affairs. I don't feel that hellfire is overused, but the use of torment could maybe see some reduction in Tomb. What I'd rather see in Tomb is a better branch layout/design, though.

[archaeo]

What I actually said, as you quoted, is that the devs care too much about certain parts of the playerbase. That's the entire motivation behind removing these features that some people want: the features are teaching them bad things and messing up the way they play the game.

I mean, if we extend this idea to its logical conclusion, then the game would have Elm species, about fifty new level 9 spells, and a gajillion gods. There's going to be curation, especially since Crawl is lucky to have a motivated playerbase, and that means some people are going to be disappointed. That's how it goes.

Trying to apply the same rules to normal media and interactive media is like giving you a deck of cards and saying you can only play solitaire with them, nothing else. and if you do anything else the guy who gave you the cards flips his shit cause "you aren't using them right"

Uh, aren't cards more like a medium than a piece of media? Silly similes aside, yes, obviously there are differences between "normal" media and interactive media. But what I said isn't one of them; whether it's a chapbook or a triple-A video game, creators have to be obsessive, they have to exercise authorial control. And they have to care about their audience, though creators get to pick who they're trying to please.

Shorter version: people's utility functions differ. Of course the devs' opinion matters more, because they're coding, but ideally shouldn't try to override the utility functions of other players.

FWIW, I always find that devs are totally receptive to players and listen to their concerns. Two of them are in here now, explaining their reasoning and having a conversation about the change. But, I mean, DCSS has been actively developed for nearly a decade now, and every year more players participate in the tournament and more hours are logged. They've got a solid track record, who can blame them for figuring that their tenants of game design are pretty on point?

It's possible to change their minds -- I think we did with item destruction, for example! -- but we've all got to be more cool about it. Gettin' mad about video games is bad for everybody.

[Sar]

I think we did with item destruction, for example!

and that was terrible, RIP itemdest

[Arrhythmia]

I think we did with item destruction, for example!

and that was terrible, RIP itemdest

i wish i could somehow anti-thank you

[Sar]

you can not-thank my next post you find thankworthy

(like this one)

[tasonir]

Not sure how many people are still reading this thread, but the central problem of extended, which also applies somewhat (but less so) to the end of a 3 rune game, is that characters with high defenses are much, much stronger than characters with low/just enough defenses. High AC, especially with high EV, can trivialize a great deal of enemies. Torment and hellfire are attempts to solve this problem, and are partially successful at doing so. I don't think there's really a perfectly clean solution to the problem, though. The best recourse is to just always leave those areas of the game as optional, and let people avoid them, as it already is.

I try to play high ac/ev characters because I like trivializing monsters and tabbing everything, but of course that's a personal opinion, and the devs have good reason to try to maintain some level of challenge in the end game, even if it isn't easy to do so.

[duvessa]

yes, characters being stronger than weaker characters is a difficult problem to solve

[Pollen_Golem]

Why is Alchemist's Hat getting lumped with other bad items? What is its drawback - the -2 AC?? This is like some running gag; I feel like there's a smirking mod removing smileys off every post that mentions Alchemist's Hat.

[tabstorm]

It's more like -6 to -7 AC depending on your armour level (can't wear a +2 helm). If you already have a rank of resist, another rank is not worth -7 AC. It is easy enough to get rf+/rc+. Hat of the alchemist isn't that great (unless you are really lacking in resists).

[Pollen_Golem]

and rMut, rCorr, MR, rElec, etc. are also easy enough to get that you'd prefer a +2 helmet of +3 INT or whatever?

[bel]

I'm sure there's a part of the Austin readership that would enjoy it more with the car chases.

Random pedantic comment. Perhaps this is a typo of "Jane Austen". Though Wikipedia informs me that "Jane Austin" was also a writer, and her books perhaps make more sense in this context. You learn something new every day.

[Pollen_Golem]

It's more like -6 to -7 AC depending on your armour level (can't wear a +2 helm). If you already have a rank of resist, another rank is not worth -7 AC...

The only way you can lose 7 AC by swapping out a non-artifact helmet for the -2 hat is in certain edge cases, due to rounding, if you have strictly more than 22 armor skill. In which case you probably have around 40 AC from body armor alone so the AC hit is likely not that big a deal.

[KoboldLord]

Why is Alchemist's Hat getting lumped with other bad items? What is its drawback - the -2 AC?? This is like some running gag; I feel like there's a smirking mod removing smileys off every post that mentions Alchemist's Hat.

A -2 hat is 5AC less than a +2 helmet, and that means you get an average of 2.5 more damage from literally every attack made against you forever. Elemental attacks are sometimes a big deal, but the overwhelming majority of attacks in the game are physical damage that ignores all resistances anyway. You suffer an additional 2.5 damage from all of them. All of them.

In cases where a resistance is important, it usually only takes one turn of action to equip it. Even the strongest elemental attack loses half its punch the instant you swap in the appropriate ring. You only very rarely get broadsided by an elemental attack such that you cannot afford to spend one turn of action to equip for it, and in those cases you would probably be wise to spend that turn on a scroll of blinking to escape rather than trying to fight. So there's not really much pressing need to have these resistances on all the time.

Furthermore, only a truly tiny proportion of monsters refrain from telegraphing the element they're going to use against you, and there aren't very many circumstances where you can expect to get hit by more than about two elements at a time, even when multiple monsters are on the screen. When you see a fire giant, it's not likely to use ice or poison attacks on you, so you don't care if you don't have those resistances on when you're fighting it. Getting all the resistances on the same item makes it so you don't have to swap it, but really it only means you don't have to spend all those item slots on swap items since most of the time you'll only be using one of those resistances at a time anyway.

The Alchemist's Hat isn't quite a trap item, since occasionally you do get that game where you get halfway through vaults before you get an equippable item with fire resistance or something like that, but for the majority of characters it's an unfavorable trade compared to stacking AC as high as it goes and just swapping jewelry for resistances.

[Siegurt]

Why is Alchemist's Hat getting lumped with other bad items? What is its drawback - the -2 AC?? This is like some running gag; I feel like there's a smirking mod removing smileys off every post that mentions Alchemist's Hat.

A -2 hat is 5AC less than a +2 helmet, and that means you get an average of 2.5 more damage from literally every attack made against you forever. Elemental attacks are sometimes a big deal, but the overwhelming majority of attacks in the game are physical damage that ignores all resistances anyway. You suffer an additional 2.5 damage from all of them. All of them.

In cases where a resistance is important, it usually only takes one turn of action to equip it. Even the strongest elemental attack loses half its punch the instant you swap in the appropriate ring. You only very rarely get broadsided by an elemental attack such that you cannot afford to spend one turn of action to equip for it, and in those cases you would probably be wise to spend that turn on a scroll of blinking to escape rather than trying to fight. So there's not really much pressing need to have these resistances on all the time.

Furthermore, only a truly tiny proportion of monsters refrain from telegraphing the element they're going to use against you, and there aren't very many circumstances where you can expect to get hit by more than about two elements at a time, even when multiple monsters are on the screen. When you see a fire giant, it's not likely to use ice or poison attacks on you, so you don't care if you don't have those resistances on when you're fighting it. Getting all the resistances on the same item makes it so you don't have to swap it, but really it only means you don't have to spend all those item slots on swap items since most of the time you'll only be using one of those resistances at a time anyway.

The Alchemist's Hat isn't quite a trap item, since occasionally you do get that game where you get halfway through vaults before you get an equippable item with fire resistance or something like that, but for the majority of characters it's an unfavorable trade compared to stacking AC as high as it goes and just swapping jewelry for resistances.

The notable exception I can think of to that is when you have 2 +6 rings of protection already (in which case the alchemist's hat is a pretty good trade)

[byrel]

A -2 hat is 5AC less than a +2 helmet, and that means you get an average of 2.5 more damage from literally every attack made against you forever. Elemental attacks are sometimes a big deal, but the overwhelming majority of attacks in the game are physical damage that ignores all resistances anyway. You suffer an additional 2.5 damage from all of them. All of them.

The problem with this logic is that there are a lot of attacks on any high AC character where the AC rolls high enough to eliminate the damage. And that extra AC doesn't help you at all there. And then there's a category of blows which deal 1-2 damage, which will be eliminated by the extra AC, but not reduced by 2.5. This is why AC has diminishing returns. If I have 40-50 AC, I'll might be happy to take a 1/3 reduction in all elemental damage(rF+->rF++), and not have to swap rings to get the first pip up. Ideally I should swap the hat in of course, but I do compromise on optimality for convenience.

[Pollen_Golem]

The Alchemist's Hat isn't quite a trap item... but for the majority of characters it's an unfavorable trade compared to stacking AC as high as it goes and just swapping jewelry for resistances.

A +2 helmet may give up to 7 more AC than a -2 hat. But the Alchemist Hat gives 8 useful resistances, including rMut which is normally available only on amulets. So each ego is worth less than 1 extra point of AC. Concomitantly, you'd wear +1 rings of protection over rings of resistance most of time, and you'd prefer a +11 plate of nothing to a +10 plate of some resistance. Golden dragon armor would be just as good with base AC of 13 and no resistances, and so on and so forth. Well, that's just nuts.

[Sar]

not all resistances are equal

[Pollen_Golem]

not all resistances are equal

Alright then, which of the following are worth less than 1 extra AC?
rF+
rC+
rElec
rPois
rN+
MR+
rMut
rCorr

[duvessa]

rF+
rC+
rElec
rPois
rN+
MR+
rMut
rCorr

[Sar]

Depends on the character and situation. Do you even play Crawl or do you just post about it? No need to be shy, I mean I'm in the "just posting" camp myself.

[mps]

I'll admit that I actually do use the hat of the alchemist pretty frequently when it generates, but I shoot for pretty high defenses otherwise, so it's mostly just a thing of wanting to be lazy and not think about jewelry swaps. If you're doing the kind of character people around here seem to like (octopodes, "blaster casters," shields + medium armor, w/e), with total defenses around 50-60 or less, then I pretty much agree with the analysis upthread.

[Sandman25]

I used hat of the alchemist with all characters who found it. I think I would not use it on D1 as Gr though

[Rast]

not all resistances are equal

Alright then, which of the following are worth less than 1 extra AC?
rF+
rC+
rElec
rPois
rN+
MR+
rMut
rCorr

Against yaks? None of them.

Against Elf/V:5/Zot/extended? All of them.

[Pollen_Golem]

Against yaks? All of them.

Against Elf/V:5/Zot/extended? None of them.

Lol, FTFY.

[byrel]

Honestly, I think there's rarely a game where it's optimal to never use HoA. I also think it's rarely optimal to wear it continuously. However, I despise tedium, so I choose which will handle the threats I'm actually concerned about, and always do that.