The Tavern

These are in no way comprehensive, just top on my mind as I stop playing trunk.

Attribute Loss

Removing potions of restore abilities (now attributes) was a bad idea. It needs to be brought back. Recent and actual in-game example: had a character to about level 15, completed D:1-15, Lair:1-7, Orc:1-4 and Shoals:1-4 (got the rune). Went to work on Spider (nowhere else to go but Elf, and MR+ only with no rN). Got trapped by a ghost moth on Spider:2. No see invisible. Nearly died, finally got away. Playing a Troll, so Dex was 1. Str and Int also down about 5 or 6 points. Since blink scrolls are as rare as acquirement scrolls, it was just an idiotic situation that there was no way to escape or fight this thing, and then the only way to regain attributes was to fight more. With 1 Dex. I left for the only real place to go, which was Elf, and tried bringing the attributes back up. Got drained an awful lot, but eventually got dex out of the red before being banished. He lived through that, somehow, getting attributes back, but, come on, what the hell was wrong with a damn potion? This is ridiculous, IMO.

Apportation Nerf

Really? This was too powerful? So the solution was to make it just frigging tedious? Very lame. So very lame.

Shortened Branches

Not enough XP for challenged species (like Troll) as it is, and so let's cut even more so a only select few can benefit. I really don't see the point in this, other than a few elitists claiming the game is too easy for them.

Square LoS

We finally have a winner! This should have been done a long, long time ago. It only makes sense on a square grid surface.

Teleportitis Mutation

I've already stated my thoughts on this. Purely evil, should be reverted to the old form.

Summary

So I've had enough of trunk. Done with it. I simply LOVE square Los, but I cannot take the rest. I know you guys do a lot of work, and I remember one dev saying you only do it for yourselves, but damn, look at the player base. The vast majority of win rates are nowhere near the elite's rates. You're just making it less enjoyable for the majority to cater only to the elite minority.

Aule wrote:Apportation Nerf

Really? This was too powerful? So the solution was to make it just frigging tedious? Very lame. So very lame.

What apportation nerf? The only one I can remember is that the orb run starts if you cast apportation on the orb.

Shortened Branches

Not enough XP for challenged species (like Troll) as it is, and so let's cut even more so a only select few can benefit. I really don't see the point in this, other than a few elitists claiming the game is too easy for them.

Losing two levels from the S-branches is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the vast amounts of XP in the game. This is especially true in the midgame; it might be different if the game lost a bunch of Lair levels, but by the time you're doing the S-branches, your character should be fully established and set on shoring up weaknesses or gaining new skills.

The change had nothing to do with difficulty; reaver just thought the Lair rune branches "outstayed their welcome". I think they're still a level too long! If the game's difficulty rises too much because of an XP deficit, something I think you'd have to cut a dozen levels out of the game to see, the devs can rebalance how much monsters give.

You're just making it less enjoyable for the majority to cater only to the elite minority.

Given how often the elite minority complain about the game, it sure seems like the devs aren't doing a great job of catering to them!

From my perspective (and I'm hardly an elite player), the game really hasn't gotten much more or much less difficult. The stats seem to suggest the same thing; the total winrate for various versions have hovered between 1.22% in 0.16 (a high we can probably attribute to the double damage bug) and 0.62% in 0.13 Trunk. Given how noisy that data is, it's hard to draw any firm conclusions from it, but the game doesn't seem to have gotten dramatically harder (0.17 has a 1.17% winrate).

Aule wrote:Teleportitis Mutation

I've already stated my thoughts on this. Purely evil, should be reverted to the old form.

I suspect you don't understand how the new version works. The amounts of times that you teleport somewhere dangerous is exactly the same as before. The only difference now, is that if you would have teleported somewhere safe, you won't teleport at all. It saves tedium in the harmless use-cases and is exactly the same otherwise.

It's not obviously true that shorter branches make the game harder. Even a non-challenging floor can occasionally present dangerous situations due to uniques or the right combination of monsters appearing. Having fewer floors means less chance of these dangerous situations arising. And one can get attention fatigue from tabbing too much through easy areas and be caught off guard by such situations. So, after a certain point in the game, having more floors probably makes the chance of winning go down AND makes the game more boring. I don't think this is just true for elite players (I'm definitely not one); if anything, the best players are the ones who train themselves not to let their guard down even in areas that seem easy.

Seems to me that if you just become an elite player you might enjoy the game more.

Aule wrote:challenged species (like Troll)

i lack words

DCSS require only the elite players.
(Oddly, there is a stupid reason for change, such as confusion for beginners.)

Arrhythmia wrote:
Aule wrote:challenged species (like Troll)

i lack words

pretty sure a challenged troll is exactly what we're seeing here

archaeo wrote:What apportation nerf? The only one I can remember is that the orb run starts if you cast apportation on the orb.

You have to yoink things more than once now to get them right under you to pick up.

archaeo wrote:From my perspective (and I'm hardly an elite player), the game really hasn't gotten much more or much less difficult. The stats seem to suggest the same thing; the total winrate for various versions have hovered between 1.22% in 0.16 (a high we can probably attribute to the double damage bug) and 0.62% in 0.13 Trunk. Given how noisy that data is, it's hard to draw any firm conclusions from it, but the game doesn't seem to have gotten dramatically harder (0.17 has a 1.17% winrate).

Well, including the upper crust in the totals is not a good way to clarify the murkiness, I am sure.

Anyway, my main beef is with the restore abilities thing. I've also gone over my thoughts on that before, here. Given how drastically one can lose those points, the method of regaining them in trunk is grossly inadequate. There was nothing wrong with the potion.

triorph wrote:I suspect you don't understand how the new version works. The amounts of times that you teleport somewhere dangerous is exactly the same as before. The only difference now, is that if you would have teleported somewhere safe, you won't teleport at all. It saves tedium in the harmless use-cases and is exactly the same otherwise.

I know how it works, and I have experienced it. It is definitely more dangerous, especially when entering fresh levels, because there is NO CHANCE of being teleported somewhere safe, so "exactly the same otherwise" is not even logically the same at all.

WalkerBoh wrote:Seems to me that if you just become an elite player you might enjoy the game more.

Someone actually said this. But being one of the elite, you should probably already know that, mathematically speaking, not all can become elite. The elite are by definition the top of the top. Since you probably already knew that, I can only guess your motivation was to deliver a jab. If so, you missed. I will never be elite, and it doesn't bother me in the least. I don't play solo RPG games to compete with others. I play them because I enjoy them. I play puzzle games, too, for the same reason. Pretty sure I'm not alone in this in the crawl universe, but I could always be wrong.

duvessa wrote:
Arrhythmia wrote:
Aule wrote:challenged species (like Troll)

i lack words
pretty sure a challenged troll is exactly what we're seeing here

Laugh it up, fuzzball.

But in the context of the statement, which was XP gain, and given that a troll's aptitudes are ALL NEGATIVE, yeah, I'd say that's a challenged species for training skills. Of course, if you only want to train three skills so you can just tab your way through the game, grab three runes and repeat ad infinitum, well then that may be less challenging and may even make you elite, but it's not very imaginative.

Aule wrote:You have to yoink things more than once now to get them right under you to pick up.

pretty sure this is how apportation has always worked; you were just playing a low Int Tr or didn't train translocations or both.

Well, including the upper crust in the totals is not a good way to clarify the murkiness, I am sure.

Nope, winrate data is pretty lousy, I agree. But it's probably useful insofar as nothing produced big swings in that data, if nothing else.

Anyway, my main beef is with the restore abilities thing. I've also gone over my thoughts on that before, here. Given how drastically one can lose those points, the method of regaining them in trunk is grossly inadequate. There was nothing wrong with the potion.

If new stat drain is really so bad, they should just reduce the XP needed to cure the drain or something else. The potion just meant that stat drain literally never mattered.

edit: man I wrote all of this before I noticed what was going on upthread, we should probably lock the thread down if we're just going to get all angry-bout-video-games-y about it.

So, I want to get this straight: you did something extremely unusual (How did the ghost moth corner you in the first place, despite the constant staring telling you it's nearby? Why not just teleport away from it and go do V or something, if it's causing you trouble? And you know you can still claw it even without seeing it, right?). Okay, that's fine, it happens. This got you into a terrible situation, far worse than anyone would normally encounter. You were then faced with a challenge, but you carefully and successfully fought your way back, despite obstacles and difficulty, to having no drain or stat loss at all.

And you find the above story less interesting and meaningful than pressing qVY?

archaeo wrote:
Aule wrote:You have to yoink things more than once now to get them right under you to pick up.

pretty sure this is how apportation has always worked; you were just playing a low Int Tr or didn't train translocations or both.

Actually this makes me wonder, do items no longer have a weight at all or is it just hidden? If the first, is a plate mail now just as easy to apport as a scroll?

ontoclasm wrote:So, I want to get this straight: you did something extremely unusual (How did the ghost moth corner you in the first place, despite the constant staring telling you it's nearby? Why not just teleport away from it and go do V or something, if it's causing you trouble? And you know you can still claw it even without seeing it, right?). Okay, that's fine, it happens. This got you into a terrible situation, far worse than anyone would normally encounter. You were then faced with a challenge, but you carefully and successfully fought your way back, despite obstacles and difficulty, to having no drain or stat loss at all.

And you find the above story less interesting and meaningful than pressing qVY?

I don't always read all the messages. I miss a great number of them. Webtiles becomes very visual, to me. And I tried clawing, repeatedly. I tried evoking, emptying both a wand of fire and a wand of cold on the thing. I didn't think ghost moths were that hardy, but I imagine that when you can't see them you miss them a lot more. And I did end up killing the character pointlessly later on, anyway, because it's so darn easy. (Second banishment, for unwielding a weapon. The temerity!)

As for the story, I don't know what "pressing qVY" means, so the comparison is lost on me.

That would be the keys for drinking a potion in slot V. In other words, you made a mistake, and the game handed you a cool challenge -- which you overcame -- instead of it doing literally nothing to you because you could just drink restab.

I guess I just don't get complaints like this. You're basically annoyed that your tabbing session was interrupted by something fun happening.

ontoclasm wrote:That would be the keys for drinking a potion in slot V. In other words, you made a mistake, and the game handed you a cool challenge -- which you overcame -- instead of it doing literally nothing to you because you could just drink restab.

I guess I just don't get complaints like this. You're basically annoyed that your tabbing session was interrupted by something fun happening.

I wasn't "tabbing my way" anywhere, which makes it extra-challenging in the first place (though square LoS does help. Did I mention I love square LoS?) And frustrating beyond belief is not the same thing as fun. Sorry, but I'm just giving an honest report.

archaeo wrote:pretty sure this is how apportation has always worked; you were just playing a low Int Tr or didn't train translocations or both.

I would like to edit my OP to exclude the section, now, because I was completely ignorant of that fact about apportation, having apparently only ever used it on an appropriately-skilled character before. Thanks for the clarification. I had naturally thought that it simply did what it always did before (for me), but that was an incorrect assumption.

triorph wrote:I suspect you don't understand how the new version works. The amounts of times that you teleport somewhere dangerous is exactly the same as before. The only difference now, is that if you would have teleported somewhere safe, you won't teleport at all. It saves tedium in the harmless use-cases and is exactly the same otherwise.

I know how it works, and I have experienced it. It is definitely more dangerous, especially when entering fresh levels, because there is NO CHANCE of being teleported somewhere safe, so "exactly the same otherwise" is not even logically the same at all.

You obviously don't understand how it works, because you've just described it having a higher chance of teleporting you somewhere dangerous, when the chance is exactly the same. If anything its less dangerous, as it won't teleport you somewhere safe but unexplored, leaving you better retreat zones.

triorph wrote:You obviously don't understand how it works, because you've just described it having a higher chance of teleporting you somewhere dangerous, when the chance is exactly the same. If anything its less dangerous, as it won't teleport you somewhere safe but unexplored, leaving you better retreat zones.

I seem to remember it teleporting me somewhere I had not been, but I cant be sure about that. However, having zero chance to tele somewhere safe is by definition less safe than a nonzero chance, unless you've already cleared the level, in which case it simply will not trigger. So it seems I do understand how it works, okay? I just don't agree that it's better.

triorph wrote:
triorph wrote:I suspect you don't understand how the new version works. The amounts of times that you teleport somewhere dangerous is exactly the same as before. The only difference now, is that if you would have teleported somewhere safe, you won't teleport at all. It saves tedium in the harmless use-cases and is exactly the same otherwise.

I know how it works, and I have experienced it. It is definitely more dangerous, especially when entering fresh levels, because there is NO CHANCE of being teleported somewhere safe, so "exactly the same otherwise" is not even logically the same at all.

You obviously don't understand how it works, because you've just described it having a higher chance of teleporting you somewhere dangerous, when the chance is exactly the same.

Actually, neither of you understand how it works. The teleportitis trigger rate was increased along with that change, so you get teleported to "dangerous" (lol) places more often than before.

Why not merge potion of restore attributes with curing? (So that !curing also restores attribute damage).

I don't always read all the messages. I miss a great number of them. Webtiles becomes very visual, to me.

I'd highly recommend changing this behavior. One of the habits which accompanied my becoming a pretty good player has been to read as much of the message window as possible while playing quickly. If I may make a suggestion, try adding this to your .rc file to make the message window more relevant (credit to crate for pointing out its importance)

Code:: #The most important setting clear_messages = true

I rarely read the message box and it dosen't really affect me negatively. You could always add an .rc option to force "more" when an enemy wields a weapon of distortion or elec (below a certain XL).

Aule wrote:Laugh it up, fuzzball.

haha

I think that Draining still needs some work. It probably takes too much experience to remove in the early game and too little in the late game. Draining breath from player ghosts and wands of draining are especially annoying in the early game.

I've lost access too all my spells on a book background after encountering a Kobold with a wand of draining. I've taken one hit from a dagger of draining and not recovered for three full floors.

I've also been drained by a shadow dragon and regained my skills on the same turn as it is worth enough experience to restore the loss.

Draining is good when it gives meaningful consequences that the player is motivated to avoid. But it's bad in that I can't really do anything about the consequences. I'm nearly always already playing in the safest area available to me, so I can't go scum for experience in an easier branch. By the time I can decide to work off drain in the Abyss instead of working Pan, drain is gone too quickly to matter.

Notwithstanding a few serious replies, from the beginning this thread has been structured in a way that will mostly yield antagonism and insults, so I'm locking it.

The Tavern

NON-Elite Player Trunk Evaluation

NON-Elite Player Trunk Evaluation

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Re: NON-Elite Player Trunk Evaluation