Quick Nemelex fix: No more Nemelex

[duvessa]

please

[wizzzargh]

y'all heretics don't even believe in the heart of the cards

[gammafunk]

This is an old FR I pushed for at one point, but it was roundly criticized as being too simplistic. Critics pointed out that Nemelex could be redesigned every other version or so, effectively removing old Nemelex to make new Nemelex, thus satisfying everyone.

[savageorange]

Replace nemelex with lemonex -- a god whose characteristics randomly change every time you draw a card.

(I'm not sure exactly how terrible that is. It might even be less terrible than I initially thought.)

[duvessa]

Replace nemelex with lemonex -- a god whose characteristics randomly change every time you draw a card.

(I'm not sure exactly how terrible that is. It might even be less terrible than I initially thought.)

I mean, it's a better idea than nemelex

[KoboldLord]

Perhaps bring back item sacrifice? The problem with the old item sacrifice is that it was unbearable inventory management, but that can be fixed by making item sacrifice compulsory and automatic, applied to all items. No key pressing necessary, if you see an item Nemelex takes it after perhaps 100 turns, just enough time for you to see what it is. Nemelex would be a choice for those who want to be completely free of the tedious burden of inventory management.

[Sar]

LEAVE NEMELEX ALONE

(okay probably take his cards from the inventory and put it in some special space or something but don't ruin the funnest Crawl god)

[Croases]

Sorry, but it has been decided that fun is not what a hypothetically optimal player should be having.

All instances of fun and fun-encouraging gameplay will therefore be removed in the next version, and all players found to have "fun" of any description will be executed to the ninth degree of kinship.

[Clownie]

This is an old FR I pushed for at one point

Can someone tell me what FR means? It's not on the wiki and 1046 results on the learndb.

edit: just after posting this, I realised the learndb is, in fact, sorted alphabetically and that I'm an idiot. Feature request, gotcha.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

it also means "For Real", basically the same thing.

here's a question going out to those that enjoy Nemelex:

do you like the aspect of stacking decks, identifying top cards, and noting the number of cards drawn from each deck? is it by now a fun, integral part of Nemelex that you're attached to? all else being equal, would removing that part ruin Nemelex?

[Sar]

I like stacking decks, indifferent about the second one, the game does the third one for you already.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

the third one I meant for the purpose of inventory management as well as calculating or guesstimating your chance of getting less than 3/4/5 cards when using Nemelex's TD/DF/SF abilities.

do you stack in-battle, or out-of-battle? is keeping one or the other essential, or would it be okay for the game to force you into doing one of those?

how many decks do you like to keep stacked? does it matter how many stacks you're allowed to make, and how many cards the stacks hold? would it hurt to limit the number of decks the player can keep stacked?

[all before]

no.

[wizzzargh]

it also means "For Real", basically the same thing.

here's a question going out to those that enjoy Nemelex:

do you like the aspect of stacking decks, identifying top cards, and noting the number of cards drawn from each deck? is it by now a fun, integral part of Nemelex that you're attached to? all else being equal, would removing that part ruin Nemelex?

Heck no I draw cards blind from the top and can probably count on one hand the times I've actually used non-draw four abilities

Just draw cards and win, seriously

[Sar]

I stack them out of battle, obviously. Mostly escapes for those sweet Tombs. I like having maybe one stacked legendary destruction, I remember having one with 3 Hammers on top. 3 full-los crystal spears? Why not. Used it on Tiamat in that game, I believe.

I don't think limiting number of stacks makes sense. Not only does the ability cost piety, it also discards a lot of cards if you do it on a fresh deck. Blind drawing is fine for most combat situations, stacked decks are for emergencies IMO.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

okay so you're saying stacking is costly enough that further capping it seems weird, like, why would a cap even be there.

The main thing about Stack Five though, and what differentiates it from some kind of "ID the top card" mechanic, is that it creates stacks of cards: you can see every card, but you can't access it until you've drawn all the cards above it. Get several stacks, and your options become very convoluted.

Let me ask another way. Suppose that instead of Stack Five, you could discard two cards from a deck, and one of them would become available from the abilities menu (auto-assigned to capital letters: A, B, C, ...?) like a modified version of Peek At Two. What would that change for you, aside from convenience and more inventory space?

[Sar]

your options become very convoluted

I'm might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I don't really experience option paralysis when I have a bit more options that "draw war", "draw destruction" and "draw escape".

What would that change for you

Well, that would worsen interface. Also, can't you Deal Four from stacked decks?

[HardboiledGargoyle]

no, having a deck stacked prevents you from using Deal Four on it, here's an argument about it: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... stack_file

Well, that would worsen interface.

What, how? What I said means that if you want five stacked cards, then instead of using Stack Five once, you would use Discard One Card And Stack Another Card five times. But you wouldn't have to put cards in order when you use the ability. And you would be able to see all the cards you have "pocketed", all on one screen... whereas currently you have to go to your inventory and select the stacked deck if you forgot what cards are below the top card.

Anyway, you basically say it's just an interface thing? That it would otherwise have no bearing on how you play Nemelex?
P.S. I like the image of our avatars facing each other.

[Sar]

Having specific cards in ability menu accessible by pressing a instead of pressing V would be kind of bad, IMO. That's what I mean by "worsen interface". Also when you stack a deck and you get all cards that you don't want, you can just throw the deck away. If you pick two cards and have to make one of those an ability, well, what if you don't want either of those? You have to just use that ability immediately I guess, if you don't want ability clutter.

I like cats.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Well currently 'V' shows incomplete info on stacked decks and full info on all other decks, which I consider bad. (Showing all cards in a stacked deck straight from the inventory would be awkward.)

Having specific cards in ability menu accessible by pressing a instead of pressing V would be kind of bad, IMO. That's what I mean by "worsen interface". Also when you stack a deck and you get all cards that you don't want, you can just throw the deck away. If you pick two cards and have to make one of those an ability, well, what if you don't want either of those?

I did not know that you throw away stacked decks unless they're all focus/punishment cards. OK so how about this: if you don't like the card and don't want it in your abilities menu, then you can choose not to keep the card, and toss it away. But, your next use of the ability has its piety cost reduced (to zero?). So it would look like this:
You take 3 cards, 1 of which crumbles to dust. Pocket which of the other two?
(A) Tomb
(B) Elixir
(C) discard both (next use of the ability is free)

What my question boils down to is whether it is important for pre-identified cards to be in a stack which, by definition, means that only the top card is accessible.

[Sprucery]

LEAVE NEMELEX ALONE

(okay probably take his cards from the inventory and put it in some special space or something but don't ruin the funnest Crawl god)

+1

[Sar]

I throw away stacked decks if they have cards I don't need much. As in, the effect could be somewhat beneficial, but not worth dedicated an inventory slot to it.

I don't know, I don't have strong feelings about it. I don't see a huge benefit, except for freeing a bit of inventory, but it seems like a weird half-measure.

[koboldina]

Perhaps bring back item sacrifice? The problem with the old item sacrifice is that it was unbearable inventory management, but that can be fixed by making item sacrifice compulsory and automatic, applied to all items. No key pressing necessary, if you see an item Nemelex takes it after perhaps 100 turns, just enough time for you to see what it is. Nemelex would be a choice for those who want to be completely free of the tedious burden of inventory management.

This is a little too close to Jivya's mostly-compulsory item eating for my taste. IMO the way to fix Nemelex is just to remove deck items entirely and give him abilities that simulate having a "deck".

[dpeg]

I'm with gammafunk. My reason why I consider Nemelex to be bad: it's the heaviest god, with most mechanics defined to double on standard mechanics. However, once the pantheon gets full, the wheat will be sorted from the chaff.

(It's not that all card effects are bad -- if Nemelex got cut, some of them should be preserved on spells or consumables or possibly elsewhere. My point is that having a whole extra set of mechanics on "cards" is entirely superfluous, especially now that evokables have a kind of dedicated place in the game.)

[Sar]

I always thought that this is the whole point of Nemelex. Playing with him is like opening a whole new slice of Crawl. That always fascinated me and I thought that's one of those things that are cool about Crawl, content for people who are more experienced with simpler gods like Okawaru and Trog. I think nowadays most of his cards have fairly unique effects, anyway. Summoning not just demons, but random Panlords, creating huge storm clouds around the player, summoning powerful ranged warriors.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

I always thought that this is the whole point of Nemelex. Playing with him is like opening a whole new slice of Crawl.

I have to ask, what part of Nemelex's design suggests this? that Nem is Crawl+? Because s/he never gave me that impression. I see that Nem opens you up to a new aspect of Crawl but the same goes for every god, and they do it more than Nem because Nem is the least intrusive god: Nem only gives you optional, non-unique consumables (more decks than you'd find normally) and a few extra ways of using them if you're so inclined.

[Sar]

The part where you get a truckload of unique effects? Was that not clear? And yes, you can find decks normally but I pretty much never used them and I imagine that being true for a lot of players.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

you pretty much have to have followed Nemelex to know that it gives you many* unique effects; why would it be cards, anyway? why not gold, or plants? and if you dare blind-draw Nemelex's decks, why would you not use found decks?

* - other gods give many unique effects too, just not that many... so it's the number that counts? If Nemelex has the breadth of several gods rolled into one, that's what makes Nemelex stand out, and be good, and be worth keeping?

[MainiacJoe]

Not only does Nemelex give you access to many unique abilities, but you also have limited control over which of them you'll get. And enjoying gambly behavior is a player profile Crawl ought to support. Kinda like how Messiah is a player profile Beogh supports, and if you don't like it, don't worship him.

[KoboldLord]

The distinct benefit of Nemelex is that your spendable piety stockpile is distinct from your piety income. Every other deity has a soft-cap on piety, such that if you hoard it your income gets less and less until you effectively can't get any more until you spend some. The normal piety dynamic is actually one of the best design decisions in Crawl, since it encourages regular use of your special abilities while still limiting the rate at which you can use them. Nemelex de-couples piety income from your piety stockpile by redirecting stockpiled piety into your card stash, which is not considered for further piety income. You can hoard to your heart's content and still continue stockpiling more and more, but you can also freely blow as much of your stockpile as you want with no restrictions whenever you decide you want to really trivialize some challenge.

Nemelex's original design appears to have been an attempt at radical gameplay alteration, in that you lose valuable permanent items in exchange for extra consumables to use as you see fit. This never worked because there was a billion junk items that nobody could possibly ever use anyway, so you just got the extra consumables as long as you were willing to role-play a maid service cleaning up all the dungeon clutter. While removing item sacrifice reduced the busywork considerably, Nemelex has always been and still is fundamentally broken in design compared to the other deity options. Currently Nemelex is functionally unlimited direct damage, summoning, and escape consumables in exchange for not following another deity, but this is not a problem that is fixable through a nerf alone because the stockpiling issue means that the sweet spot is at a radically different position for every character combination and every random dungeon generation.

[Sar]

wow nemelex is so op lets nerf nemelex!!!

(meanwhile trog continues being trog because lol we need a newbie option and fedhas continues being fedhas because no one plays fedhas and)

[Tiktacy]

LEAVE NEMELEX ALONE

(okay probably take his cards from the inventory and put it in some special space or something but don't ruin the funnest Crawl god)

Amen.

Nemelex the one god that never seems to get boring for me no matter how far into the game I am.

A lot of people might disagree with me here, but I consider nemelex to currently be one of the most well designed gods, and if his decks didn't take up inventory slots then I would probably give him the number 1 slot(or at least tied with Ru).

[Sprucery]

I've always thought Nemelex is more like the newer gods that are being/have been added like Ru, Gozag and Uwhatshisname. They introduce a different way of playing the game. Compare to "old style" gods like Vehumet or Okawaru who boost the basic things characters generally do.

I personally would really, really miss Nemelex. Get rid of physical decks if you want (and make them Nemelex-only), but remove Vehumet and Okawaru at least before Nemelex.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

KoboldLord then are these problems:

• there is no potion nor scroll destruction nor cap, so you can stockpile them
• there is almost no way to drain wand charges aside from zapping wands
• sacks and boxes are forever
• permanent corroders are removed, only malmutators remain that have similar effects
• deep dwarf max MP for healing
• Gozag's gold and Fedhas's fruit
• once-per-game divine abilities

[KoboldLord]

KoboldLord then are these problems:
there is no potion nor scroll destruction nor cap, so you can stockpile them

I acknowledge as a problem the fact that I've virtually never had the experience of running out of any important consumables after around Lair or so. Fixing item generation is a hard problem, though, because it's baked into the game. Nemelex piety is an easy problem to fix, albeit at the cost of upsetting players with a removal. Fixing her is a harder problem.

deep dwarf max MP for healing

Deep dwarves being fundamentally broken is also true, but not on-topic for the thread. This is a Nemelex thread.

once-per-game divine abilities

No problem for those. Turn them into passives or remove them with no compensation.