The alternative to pillar dancing is dying

[Berder]

PIllar dancing is something you use, generally only on d:1, to avoid dying. If pillar dancing were "solved" the result would be more deaths on D:1 at complete random, breaking streaks through no fault of the player. My TeEE nearly died just now on D:1 due to bad dice rolls but was saved by pillar dancing.

If you don't care about streaking or winrate then don't pillar dance, just die and make a new character. If you do care about streaking you're very glad to have pillar dancing in the extremely rare times when you need it.

That is all.

[Pollen_Golem]

Monsters should just get bored and walk away if you pillar dance for too long.

[duvessa]

I'm not glad to have grindy mechanics just because they make the game easier.

[Wahaha]

This is one of the reasons why I suggested a few times to have a tiny floor above D:1 that is empty and has 2 or 3 stairs down.

[Berder]

There's nothing "grindy" about something you use maybe five times a game at the outside.

The main point is that if you don't like streaking or winrate, you don't have to pillar dance. If you do like streaking or winrate, given a choice between pillar dancing vs. a random unavoidable death that isn't your fault, pillar dancing is by far the lesser evil.

[Pollen_Golem]

@Wahaha, there can also be a permanent Sanctuary-like area, as with Zin, on D:1. It's not like luring monsters there from D:3 would do you any good, even if you managed to do it.

[duvessa]

If pillar dancing is removed, and you don't like dying because of your bad play (or "dice rolls" as you call it), you can use wizmode. So why do you care if it's removed?

[Berder]

If pillar dancing is removed, and you don't like dying because of your bad play (or "dice rolls" as you call it)

Don't try to shift the blame. Player skill was not a factor in the situation I described. Four sandblasts with wielded stones failed to kill a hobgoblin with a club, so pillar dancing was the only option. It was that or death.

you can use wizmode

Get outta here.

[ontoclasm]

pillar dancing was the only option

Did you know you can escape via downstairs as well as upstairs?

Also, all characters are able to attack in melee, even without skills or weapons!

[Siegurt]

Well, and what is "pillar dancing" I retreat to regen a point or two of MP on D:1 all the time, is retreating not-in-a-circle somehow different than retreating in a circle?

Is it still pillar dancing if the thing you're walking around is 3x3 instead of 1x1? how about if it's 6x6, or 10x10? or some large awkward shape? Why or why not?

(Typically when I retreat on D:1 it's only occassionally in a circle, most of the time I pick a better fighting location and retreat to there.)

How many steps does it take before this is "tedious" (Usually it's only like 3-4 before I get 1 more MP and can finish off the critter in question)

Is it "bad play" if you start with a book and don't have a weapon or aux attacks to retreat to get 1 mana to attack your opponent with it? Is it good play if you do attack your opponent with unarmed at 0 MP? (Note that tengu, in particular, do a damn lot of damage as a level 1 no-skills-trained character, you stand a decent chance of killing that hobgoblin without spells or training, just because of your aux attacks, but that's neither here nor there)

[Pollen_Golem]

How many steps does it take before this is "tedious"

You may have to run around a 3x3 pillar something like a dozen times to get your health back. I think that counts as tedious. I'd rather die.

[bel]

Nobody is stopping you from dying.

[Pollen_Golem]

Which is why I choose death.

[dynast]

Even speedrunners pillar dance. If this is a design flaw just make every monster mesmerize the player and problem solved.

[Sandman25]

Even speedrunners pillar dance. If this is a design flaw just make every monster mesmerize the player and problem solved.

  Code:

You have been moving for too long. You are too tired, MP/HP regeneration is suspended until you stop moving.

[dynast]

  Code:

You have been moving for too long. You are too tired, MP/HP regeneration is suspended until you stop moving.

You just merged pillar dancing with stair dancing.

[Sandman25]

You just merged pillar dancing with stair dancing.

There is always a solution.

  Code:

Are you sure you want to go upstairs with adjacent monsters? Note that this would be last (3rd) time when you are able to use the stairs along with adjacent hostile monsters.

[dynast]

  Code:

Are you sure you want to go upstairs with adjacent monsters? Note that this would be last (3rd) time when you are able to use the stairs along with adjacent hostile monsters.

No, im gonna pillar dance a little more to make sure theres no adjacent monsters, unless they are faster than me, in which case i already died for being too far from the stairs and exhausted from auto exploration.

[bel]

Which is why I choose death.

Good for you. But the point of this thread is to force other people to die.
Edit: oh I mixed up the threads. This is not Sandman's thread. So nvm.

[tabstorm]

Honestly I think a lot of problems in Crawl are most easily fixed by making a new game entirely that does not feature:

-upstairs
-energy randomization
-branch structure

and maybe adjusting the balance of D:1 a bit so that extremely wimpy characters like TeEE aren't screwed.

Some roguelikes have this and it's fine, you don't really die to RNG much at all.

[Wahaha]

There's nothing wrong with branches.

[Berder]

If the TeEE had used unarmed melee on the hobgoblin, he would have very likely died. The situation was: 6/10 HP, hobgoblin "severely wounded," which means the hobgoblin probably had 2 HP left. My reasoning why he had 2 HP: hobgoblins can have 4-7 HP. "severely wounded" is 21-40% HP remaining. That equates to 1 HP if his max HP is 4, or 2 HP if his maxHP is 5-7. His max HP was probably not 4 since he survived 4 sandblasts. Therefore his current HP was 2.

fsim tells me an unarmed TeEE deals 0.2 or 0.3 AvEffDam vs a hobgoblin, call it 0.25, and the hobgoblin deals 1.1 AvEffDam to me. Average number of turns to kill the hobgoblin = 8. Average number of turns for the hobgoblin to kill me = 5.5.

On the basis of this I would estimate my odds of surviving that fight were below 50%, probably well below. You can't take that kind of risk if you want to streak.

In the actual game I didn't calculate all that out. I was going on intuition/experience.

[Sandman25]

TeEE, lol. I still remember duvessa's comment in CSDC thread, it was pretty unusual. The point was that TeEE is a challenge combo, you should have died to that hobgoblin.

How about the following example - I am DE with 1 HP and Glaciate at 1%, I have 0 MP and am adjacent to wounded Hill Giant. I keep moving until I get 9 MP and then cast Glaciate. "Please keep pillar dancing, why should I die to Hill Giant"? Unavoidable deaths must happen, bad rolls must kill, not just increase real time and number of key presses.

[dynast]

The only way to die with a TeEE on d:1 is to jackals. And thats why we have jackals.

[dynast]

How about the following example - I am DE with 1 HP and Glaciate at 1%, I have 0 MP and am adjacent to wounded Hill Giant. I keep moving until I get 9 MP and then cast Glaciate. "Please keep pillar dancing, why should I die to Hill Giant"? Unavoidable deaths must happen, bad rolls must kill, not just increase real time and number of key presses.

What if it was a boulder beetle isntead? or if you were a centaur? would you just give up on life?

[Berder]

In my view, every time there is a truly unavoidable death, Crawl has failed the player. The most enjoyable part of Crawl for me is trying for streaks/winrate. If the early dungeon is full of unavoidable deaths, magnificent streaks like elliptic's won't be possible anymore, unless you choose only strong combos.

The point was that TeEE is a challenge combo, you should have died to that hobgoblin

"should have"? There's no "challenge" in failing a few dice rolls and just dying. "Challenge" implies skill, not luck. If every TeEE rolled 1d6 and died on turn 1 if it didn't come up 3, would that be a "challenge"?

The challenge in TeEE and other hard combos shouldn't be that the RNG just randomly kills you sometimes. It should be that it requires skill and planning to stay alive, but with the correct decisions you can make it work almost all the time.

There is, anyway, skill in recognizing that the correct course of action is to pillar dance. A different player might have tried to melee the hobgoblin - likely to fail - or might have headed for the downstairs, a similarly dangerous plan. Then there's the planning of which pillar you will dance around, weighing the danger that more enemies will show up as you dance versus the ease of escape in case they do (will you get trapped?). Even before it's time to pillar dance, it adds an extra dimension to D:1 exploration. One of my highest priorities with initial D:1 exploration is finding a good pillar.

While I was pillar dancing the hobgoblin a bat showed up. I waited until the bat had gotten in front of the hobgoblin so they couldn't both hit me at once, then sandblasted it. That's another skill-based tactic a different player might have screwed up: how to handle being interrupted while you're dancing.

How about the following example - I am DE with 1 HP and Glaciate at 1%, I have 0 MP and am adjacent to wounded Hill Giant. I keep moving until I get 9 MP and then cast Glaciate. "Please keep pillar dancing, why should I die to Hill Giant"? Unavoidable deaths must happen, bad rolls must kill, not just increase real time and number of key presses.

The example is nonsense because, first of all, it's very unlikely to be an unavoidable death if you've made it to the part of the game where you can cast glaciate. You'll have plenty of other options such as blinking or heal wounds, or you made a mistake a few moves ago. Second, if you pillar dance a hill giant at 1 HP, he will get a hit on you due to energy randomization, and you are likely to die. Third, pillar dancing basically does not happen by the time anybody's casting Glaciate, because you're hardly ever in a clear area fighting just a single speed-10 melee enemy. Pillar dancing is mostly used on D:1 to prevent unavoidable deaths, with a handful of other less common uses.

[Blobbo]

You can dance if you want to.

[Siegurt]

You can dance if you want to.

You can leave your friends behind.

[duvessa]

I don't think removing dancing would increase unavoidable deaths by much at all, especially not with TeEE. Resetting fights by dancing is a very common tool on D:1 but it is almost never the only effective tool available unless you already messed up in the first place.

[Berder]

I don't think removing dancing would increase unavoidable deaths by much at all, especially not with TeEE. Resetting fights by dancing is a very common tool on D:1 but it is almost never the only effective tool available unless you already messed up in the first place.

I don't agree. I've had many characters that would have died on D:1 had they not been able to pillar dance after a fight starts badly. My record with hyperborean proves I know what I'm talking about when it comes to safe D:1 play. I would suggest that if you don't occasionally save your life by pillar dancing on D:1, you're messing up.

[dynast]

I don't think removing dancing would increase unavoidable deaths by much at all, especially not with TeEE. Resetting fights by dancing is a very common tool on D:1 but it is almost never the only effective tool available unless you already messed up in the first place.

Thats how i clear orc mines though.

[Sandman25]

There's no "challenge" in failing a few dice rolls and just dying.

Do you think it is possible to make crawl analyze player actions? Something like "You should have blinked 3 turns ago. Now you will die in 2 turns no matter what". Otherwise a few dice rolls should kill player, many monsters die this way despite they play optimally often. Life is unfair

[Sandman25]

There is, anyway, skill in recognizing that the correct course of action is to pillar dance. A different player might have tried to melee the hobgoblin - likely to fail - or might have headed for the downstairs, a similarly dangerous plan. Then there's the planning of which pillar you will dance around, weighing the danger that more enemies will show up as you dance versus the ease of escape in case they do (will you get trapped?). Even before it's time to pillar dance, it adds an extra dimension to D:1 exploration. One of my highest priorities with initial D:1 exploration is finding a good pillar.

While I was pillar dancing the hobgoblin a bat showed up. I waited until the bat had gotten in front of the hobgoblin so they couldn't both hit me at once, then sandblasted it. That's another skill-based tactic a different player might have screwed up: how to handle being interrupted while you're dancing.

There is no skill in recognizing that the correct course of action is to pillar dance, that's the problem unless "there is skill in using scroll of blinking to escape while at 1 HP". I try to find pillar at every level, it was obvious with Fe and it is design problem IMHO (not one of Fe but one of crawl in general). With your Te example I would prefer something like this: you cast a spell at hobgoblin, notice that it took no damage so you should decide if you want to continue fighting or to run to downstairs (and possibly die there). This is what I call decision, it requires some skill and luck, also it makes EE distinct (other backgrounds have more chances to try their luck while monster is approaching). But as long as pillar dancing exists, there are no decisions and no skills, you just pillar dance and kill poor monster who obviously had no chance of killing you unless another monster shows up. "Skill" consists in being lucky that no other monster appears.

[dowan]

The game could just start the player at the power level of a level 3 char, and with D1 tuned to the difficulty of D2, to slightly smooth out the early possibility of these situations arising. I know the devs wouldn't go for that, but the described situation is really only one that happens on D1 anyway.

I'd love for pillar dancing to be removed, if something were done to address the original issue. A d1 mage background that misses 4 spellcasts in a row, or a d1 fighter who misses 4 swings in a row, and is now in a situation where continuing to fight would be suicidal. Should you just die on D1 unavoidably 10% of the time? 5%?

Pillar dancing is a fortunate accident, a somewhat ugly patch over an even uglier problem. The problem is that starting characters don't have enough HPs for the dice rolls to come close to averaging out over the course of a fight, on top of the fact that most combos don't start with any escape mechanism at all.

If Duvessa would just tell us how to not miss (bad rolls are bad play, right?) we could probably just remove pillar dancing.

[Lasty]

Honestly I think a lot of problems in Crawl are most easily fixed by making a new game entirely that does not feature:
-energy randomization

I don't think energy randomization needs to stay in current crawl. At some point I'll be trying out alternative ideas.

[dynast]

Because pillar dancing is something that you just "remove".

At the moment only sandman proposed something to actually adress pillar dancing and tabstorm who realise that is necessary to make and entire new game to adress the issue.

Some of the things you gonna need to remove pillar dancing include:

Getting rid of regeneration - you can only renegerate when you rest.
Getting rid of stairs - somehow.
Tackling - monsters will charge you down.
Pinning - monsters will pin you to the ground.

Or you could just look at ToME4, a game where you throw your flavour attacks then teleport away, rest and repeat.

[Lasty]

At the moment only sandman proposed something to actually adress pillar dancing and tabstorm who realise that is necessary to make and entire new game to adress the issue.

Actually, the topic has been addressed several times in the past, and many people have suggested different solutions. None of them has yet been tried (to the best of my knowledge), but that's not because they aren't potentially good solutions.

[ontoclasm]

I dunno about tackling or pinning. I don't want some weird complex bandaid that patches a hole in the rules, I want the rules to not have holes. What I would do (in the horrifying case where I had any authority to do so) is:

• Set the normal energy cost for monsters taking a step to 9. In other words, everything walks faster than you. Deal with it. For fast player races... I dunno, fast player races are silly. Monsters should always be faster than you unless you are using a consumable, as far as I'm concerned.
• Block the use of upstairs when monsters are in LoS. Sure, you'll sometimes be able to do weird LoS tricks to get upstairs, that's fine. But with monsters faster than you you can't do it reliably, and certainly can't make a gap via pillar dancing.
• Stop regeneration altogether unless you haven't seen a monster in, say, 20 turns, at which point you heal very very rapidly. We lose a few cases where you "get caught resting" but for the most part if you can get 40 turns of safety you can get 500 turns of safety.
• Incidentally remove energy randomization (since it would no longer do anything meaningful).

Would this increase unavoidable deaths? Maybe, I guess. That's the cost of progress in my opinion. You'd probably want to increase starting HP or accuracy or something to compensate? Balance is (and should be) an afterthought to good mechanics. But honestly I think the game would play very, very similarly outside of the (intended) change that you can't trivially escape 90% of your fights by fleeing upstairs. Remember that you can still run from things that are faster than you, and that it's often a good idea, since it lets you fight them in a safer position. The thing you can't do is walk away from them in perfect safety and heal to full at your leisure.

I guess I could make a branch for it at some point since I know most people won't believe me without playing it themselves.

[tabstorm]

This is also yet another area in which Crawl's huge maps cause a problem. In a game with smaller maps enemies are more likely to come along and make running around to regen difficult. I think this mostly is a strategy used for mage backgrounds, so increasing their starting MP a little (and maybe the HP pools of extremely frail races like DE, Te, Op, HE) could greatly reduce the need for running around in circles.

[Pollen_Golem]

I'm pretty sure you can make an algorithm to ensure that there are no loops in the level, i.e. that pillars don't exist. D:1, D:2, maybe D:3 can be made to have, for example, tree-like layouts where you can go back and forth but not around and around.

[dynast]

• Set the normal energy cost for monsters taking a step to 9. In other words, everything walks faster than you. Deal with it. For fast player races... I dunno, fast player races are silly. Monsters should always be faster than you unless you are using a consumable, as far as I'm concerned.
• Block the use of upstairs when monsters are in LoS. Sure, you'll sometimes be able to do weird LoS tricks to get upstairs, that's fine. But with monsters faster than you you can't do it reliably, and certainly can't make a gap via pillar dancing.
• Stop regeneration altogether unless you haven't seen a monster in, say, 20 turns, at which point you heal very very rapidly. We lose a few cases where you "get caught resting" but for the most part if you can get 40 turns of safety you can get 500 turns of safety.
• Incidentally remove energy randomization (since it would no longer do anything meaningful).

Changes to greatly reduce the strategic value of the game because it "looks silly" otherwise.

[tabstorm]

I dunno about tackling or pinning. I don't want some weird complex bandaid that patches a hole in the rules, I want the rules to not have holes. What I would do (in the horrifying case where I had any authority to do so) is:

• Set the normal energy cost for monsters taking a step to 9. In other words, everything walks faster than you. Deal with it. For fast player races... I dunno, fast player races are silly. Monsters should always be faster than you unless you are using a consumable, as far as I'm concerned.
• Block the use of upstairs when monsters are in LoS. Sure, you'll sometimes be able to do weird LoS tricks to get upstairs, that's fine. But with monsters faster than you you can't do it reliably, and certainly can't make a gap via pillar dancing.
• Stop regeneration altogether unless you haven't seen a monster in, say, 20 turns, at which point you heal very very rapidly. We lose a few cases where you "get caught resting" but for the most part if you can get 40 turns of safety you can get 500 turns of safety.
• Incidentally remove energy randomization (since it would no longer do anything meaningful).

Would this increase unavoidable deaths? Maybe, I guess. That's the cost of progress in my opinion. You'd probably want to increase starting HP or accuracy or something to compensate? Balance is (and should be) an afterthought to good mechanics. But honestly I think the game would play very, very similarly outside of the (intended) change that you can't trivially escape 90% of your fights by fleeing upstairs. Remember that you can still run from things that are faster than you, and that it's often a good idea, since it lets you fight them in a safer position. The thing you can't do is walk away from them in perfect safety and heal to full at your leisure.

I guess I could make a branch for it at some point since I know most people won't believe me without playing it themselves.

You would pretty much need to remove Tomb. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[archaeo]

We're confusing two problems.

The first is pillar dancing, which all seems like much ado about fuck all to me but really gets some people worked up. Siegurt is totally correct in saying that "pillar dancing" is just short for "running away in sight of a monster to regen," so the only solution we need, if this is really seen as a problem, is some kind of tweak to energy randomization or a removal in favor of some new system. Simple problem, simple solution.

The rest of what's being discussed is the entire paradigm of Crawl's combat system. Personally, I am a huge fan of the fact that Crawl encourages experimentation; you have a lot of license to engage in a fight and disengage if it doesn't go well in order to give it another try. All of the proposals to correct this problem seem like they would mostly just serve to increase the difficulty of Crawl or require huge changes to the entire game in order to maintain the same level of difficulty despite seriously constraining players' escape and combat options. As I've said before, I like Crawl's difficulty level, I like how broadly "fair" it feels, and a game where you are forced to either commit to every fight or spend limited resources on escaping doesn't seem like it would be able to maintain that fairness.

Of course, I also advocate for sweeping, game-changing things like "remove food," so maybe I don't have room to talk. Oh well.

[Sandman25]

Personally, I am a huge fan of the fact that Crawl encourages experimentation; you have a lot of license to engage in a fight and disengage if it doesn't go well in order to give it another try.

Are you sure you are talking about crawl? If you learned a wrong spell, you need to find amnesia scroll. If you trained skills wrong, you can do nothing before you enter dangerous areas (unless Ash). If you purchased an item just to see how it works, you cannot return it to shop even for half price. If you forgot to switch to MR or invoke Trog's hand, you got sent to Abyss. If you used wrong weapon brand, you got problems and now need to spend a consumable etc.
I remember how I played with savescumming, that was what I would call "encourages experimentation".

[Zooty]

If the early dungeon is full of unavoidable deaths, magnificent streaks like elliptic's won't be possible anymore, unless you choose only strong combos.

This shouldn't matter. The fact that current speedrun records would be untouchable didn't save cTele.

[archaeo]

Sandman25, did you not read the rest of the sentence? Crawl's gameplay is currently pretty lenient when it comes to letting players approach an enemy and then get away if it doesn't go well. I like that. I enjoy the fact that sometimes, I head toward a vault, run away when the situation gets dicey, and come back in from another direction, maybe using different spells or weapons or jewelry depending on what I found.

Removing pillar dancing alone wouldn't really affect that, so much; you'd probably have to be ready to tank more hits when running away, but you could still rely on stairs and other tricks to manage it. The changes you and Ontoclasm have proposed would transform Crawl into a game where the only way to get out of a fight is to use limited resources like consumables or god abilities (or memorize cBlink, I guess), and it would never be a sure bet, since you would have to contrive a way to retreat upstairs without any enemies following you.

[Berder]

If the early dungeon is full of unavoidable deaths, magnificent streaks like elliptic's won't be possible anymore, unless you choose only strong combos.

This shouldn't matter. The fact that current speedrun records would be untouchable didn't save cTele.

Maybe it should have! I'm sure I'd be livid if I was a speedrunner when cTele was removed.

Besides, streaking is qualitatively different from speedrunning in that it isn't so much about setting records. A 5 streak is exciting because it's a 5 streak, not because you're breaking any particular records. It's fun for its own sake.

Imagine every time the game starts you flip a coin and if it turns up heads you die immediately. That would immediately preclude all significant streaking and would be a huge unfair pain in the butt.

[Sandman25]

Sandman25, did you not read the rest of the sentence? Crawl's gameplay is currently pretty lenient when it comes to letting players approach an enemy and then get away if it doesn't go well. I like that. I enjoy the fact that sometimes, I head toward a vault, run away when the situation gets dicey, and come back in from another direction, maybe using different spells or weapons or jewelry depending on what I found.

Removing pillar dancing alone wouldn't really affect that, so much; you'd probably have to be ready to tank more hits when running away, but you could still rely on stairs and other tricks to manage it. The changes you and Ontoclasm have proposed would transform Crawl into a game where the only way to get out of a fight is to use limited resources like consumables or god abilities (or memorize cBlink, I guess), and it would never be a sure bet, since you would have to contrive a way to retreat upstairs without any enemies following you.

I misunderstood you, my point was that crawl is not a game that encourages experimentation. I agree that suggested changes would discourage experimentation even more. You probably should not assume that everything else stays the same, there could be other changes to compensate the "never-ending war".

[tedric]

If the early dungeon is full of unavoidable deaths, magnificent streaks like elliptic's won't be possible anymore, unless you choose only strong combos.

This shouldn't matter. The fact that current speedrun records would be untouchable didn't save cTele.

Maybe it should have! I'm sure I'd be livid if I was a speedrunner when cTele was removed.

Besides, streaking is qualitatively different from speedrunning in that it isn't so much about setting records. A 5 streak is exciting because it's a 5 streak, not because you're breaking any particular records. It's fun for its own sake.

Imagine every time the game starts you flip a coin and if it turns up heads you die immediately. That would immediately preclude all significant streaking and would be a huge unfair pain in the butt.

You might have been livid, but you'd have little justification for it. The devs have been pretty clear that speedrunning, highscores, streaking -- basically any player goal except "grab runes, win game" -- are not important design concerns. They're a meta-game that the player base invented, and as such the player base will have to adapt to the trickle-up effects.

I think the coin-flip analogy is incredibly hyperbolic.

[Sprucery]

Well, I'm probably the opposite of a speedrunner myself, but I can't even imagine why speedrunning records are not always listed per version. That's the only way to keep the scores comparable.