Cthulhu_55 wrote:Maybe it's not bad but with each retired monster game lose part of its atmosphere. And that can be not very good for Crawl.
Crawl Development pretty consistently prioritizes gameplay over flavor (it may not have always done so in the past, but that's definitely how it operates right now). If an enemy weakens Crawl's gameplay, it will get removed, even if the enemy is great for flavor.
I think generally, nearly every monster that has been removed can be put into one of two categories, each of which has two subcategories.
Category 1: Enemy is more annoying than insteresting.
1a. Enemy is not interesting at all, but is annoying. Goliath beetles are a good example of this. It's very rare that you have a dangerous encounter with a goliath beetle. On the other hand, killing a goliath beetle safely is often very tedious, but still optimal (for experience). Thus, goliath beetles frequently create annoying situations, and rarely create interesting ones. They are therefore bad for the game.
1b. Enemy is interesting, but extremely annoying in a way that outweighs that. Alternatively, things in this category could generally be said to be interesting in theory, but annoying in practice. I think Phoenixes and Shedus are both good examples of this. In theory, both have unique and interesting mechanics that change the way you approach fights with them. In practice, both are frequently non-threatening but a massive nuisance to kill. Lamia could also arguably fall into this category. At least, when she got deleted, the general gist of the discussion that I got was that she was so easy to run away from but threatening enough to kill that there was basically no reason to ever fight her, which I think qualifies.
Category 2: Enemy is incredibly similar to other enemies already in the game, making it redundant.
2a. Enemy appears in the same branch as the enemies it is redundant with. It therefore adds nothing to the game's gameplay, because similar threats already exist in that area, but it does increase the knowledge required to play the game, since you have to know that those enemies are effectively the same for the purpose of handling them. The only point in its favor is atmosphere, but Crawl's current development philosophy clearly prioritizes gameplay over atmosphere.
2b. Enemy appears in a different branch from the enemy it is redundant with, but is a different enemy for flavor reasons. An example of this is Ravens, which are basically just harpies or bats that appear in the Swamp and have slightly different stats. In this case, the issue is that different types of threats is a big part of what makes different branches interesting, so putting the same type of threat with a different coat of paint in several different branches generally isn't very interesting. Ravens didn't really contribute anything to the Swamp. They were just "here's a Swamp-flavored weak batty creature." So they're redundant and don't really serve any gameplay benefit while increasing the knowledge required to play the game. There are cases where, if the gameplay context is different enough, very similar enemies are allowed to appear in different branches - Vault guards are extremely similar to Orc Knights, for example, but there's a big difference between that type of enemy appearing in the middle of an orc pack or it appearing in the middle of a vault human pack, and flavor-wise orc knights travelling around with vault wardens and ironheart guys would be silly, so they stay despite being somewhat redundant. But other cases, like ravens, aren't worth keeping.