The Tavern

first of all i need to address the mechanic of "falling through levels". its like a child created this game for only himself to win. how the fuck can you counter that? I HAVENT EVEN FUCKING WON ONCE YET AND EVERY FUCKING RUN I FALL DOWN 2-3 LEVELS AND GET DESTROYED BEFORE I CAN FIND A WAY OUT. completely idiotic and now im able to understand why its not as popular as i thought it should be. because of completely unfair shit like that. REMOVE FALLING THROUGH LEVELS. and lastly the forum sign up service is atrocious. what is this 2002?

You know what? I feel a lot better about myself now. Thank you.

here's a hint that might help you while the developers are considering your suggestion:

Spoiler: show

Congratulations on single-handedly ensuring that shaft traps will remain in crawl for the next seven versions.

also, gitgud

You fall through a shaft!
The shaft crumbles and collapses.
Crazy Yiuf the Enlightened comes into view. He is wielding a quarterstaff of chaos.

Mod note: Moved from GDD to CYC.

zloan2 wrote:and lastly the forum sign up service is atrocious. what is this 2002?

nah man, you don't understand, the whole point of this forum is to advertise cell phone jammers and shoes.

I agree that the service here is terrible. I've been waiting for over three versions for the waiter to remove my food!

Oh man this was in GDD, I wish I could have seen it in the wild

1. good point
2. calm the hell down or noone will listen

Yeah shafts are very annoying and sometimes can kill you outright.

BabyRage wrote:Yeah shafts are very annoying and sometimes can kill you outright.

Like a lot of things in early dungeons, Can't believe someone is complaining about early dungeons again lol

So glad I got shafts into the game.

I have some ideas for later, extra-super plus versions of the shaft concept.

dpeg wrote:So glad I got shafts into the game.

Oh yes, shafts are almost as good an idea as shadow traps.

agreed, shafts are great

no but seriously I actually tend to like them a lot. trying to find your way back up out of a scary depth is cool+fun

Shafts are fun.

Now, a combined shaft+alarm trap would be hilarious.

dpeg wrote:So glad I got shafts into the game.

I have some ideas for later, extra-super plus versions of the shaft concept.

You're such a troll sometimes...

Shafts do have very legitimate issues, although the OPs style isn't likely to garner any support, nor did he bother do actually list what's wrong with them..

dowan: I know the issues, or some of them, and they could be circumvented...

As far as style goes: I'm only adapting to the thread.

and into wrote:
You fall through a shaft!
The shaft crumbles and collapses.
Crazy Yiuf the Enlightened comes into view. He is wielding a quarterstaff of chaos.

What is this, the beginning of a porn movie?

Anyway, this game needs abyssal shafts and an infinite number of abyss levels, getting worse and worse, until you reach Abyss: 666, where your character loses all identity and the game mechanics change into Pacman.

Shard1697 wrote:agreed, shafts are great

I think if this happened to me I would have legit quit crawl for a good week or two. That's as bad as getting banished from an ogre Mage at the back of the pack, glad that can't happen anymore.

Can we actually remove shafts though

Sorry Laraso, your post fell through 3 topics and was never heard from again.

CypherZel wrote:
Shard1697 wrote:agreed, shafts are great

I think if this happened to me I would have legit quit crawl for a good week or two. That's as bad as getting banished from an ogre Mage at the back of the pack, glad that can't happen anymore.

theres nothing wrong with taking a 2-week break from playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Everything in this game stands by the design philosophy, until it doesnt.

As the author of the design philosophy, I decree that shafts are 100% in it, guaranteed!

Seriously, shafts are a mechanic to trigger completely unprepared-for encounters. That way, they increase game depth: while everyone can encounter an unavoidable shaft death, player level really matters here. I know about the shortcoming (theoretically having to remember safe on the ground), but as I said, that could actually be solved. It just wasn't ever considered important enough. I bring this up because in my opinion shafts are absolutely worth this effort, when push comes to shove.

CypherZel wrote:
Shard1697 wrote:agreed, shafts are great

I think if this happened to me I would have legit quit crawl for a good week or two. That's as bad as getting banished from an ogre Mage at the back of the pack, glad that can't happen anymore.

I survived this situation just fine though.

Being forcibly placed out-of-position into an unexplored floor full of out of depth monsters (comparative to your level) and being forced to travel back up three staircases, probably triggering timed portals on the way, all because "well you didn't passively detect that shaft trap", is not my idea of fun

70% of the time nothing happens, 15% of the time something mildly scary happens, 14% you get double shafted and die, and then the last 1% is when it actually feels like an enjoyable experience (almost never)

It's actually a Chei worshipper's wet dream. (I mean the bees).

Laraso wrote:Being forcibly placed out-of-position into an unexplored floor full of out of depth monsters (comparative to your level) and being forced to travel back up three staircases, probably triggering timed portals on the way, all because "well you didn't passively detect that shaft trap", is not my idea of fun

70% of the time nothing happens, the other 29% you die, and then the last 1% is when it actually feels like an enjoyable experience (almost never)

It's my idea of fun, though. Remembering safe ground is bullshit, dumb, and should be changed, but the core of it, forcing the player to find the upstairs on a level he's unprepared for, is a lot of fun.

CypherZel wrote:
Shard1697 wrote:agreed, shafts are great

I think if this happened to me I would have legit quit crawl for a good week or two. .

I think if it happened to me I would open the door and walk into the corridor. I might also read teleport.

dpeg wrote:As the author of the design philosophy, I decree that shafts are 100% in it, guaranteed!

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Dynast/morg ... 155510.txt

Code:: 3 Dynast the Charlatan (level 1, -1/12 HPs) Began as a Tengu Artificer on June 2, 2015. Killed from afar by a diamond obelisk (8 damage) ... with a tornado ... on level 2 of the Dungeon. The game lasted 00:01:36 (156 turns). 153 | D:1 | You fall through a shaft! 153 | D:2 | Found a stormy altar of Qazlal. 156 | D:2 | Killed from afar by a diamond obelisk

dynast wrote:
dpeg wrote:As the author of the design philosophy, I decree that shafts are 100% in it, guaranteed!

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Dynast/morg ... 155510.txt
Code:
3 Dynast the Charlatan (level 1, -1/12 HPs) Began as a Tengu Artificer on June 2, 2015. Killed from afar by a diamond obelisk (8 damage) ... with a tornado ... on level 2 of the Dungeon. The game lasted 00:01:36 (156 turns). 153 | D:1 | You fall through a shaft! 153 | D:2 | Found a stormy altar of Qazlal. 156 | D:2 | Killed from afar by a diamond obelisk

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/rumbl ... 225530.txt
http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/de ... 154602.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/cmpxc ... 174322.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Dynast/morg ... 015056.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/user/morgue ... 100231.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Sine/morgue ... 172945.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/Fanda ... 202440.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Lifestealer ... 205132.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/Oroborous/m ... 024623.txt
http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 001444.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/embom ... 182725.txt
http://crawl.develz.org/morgues/trunk/v ... 191553.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/grandjackal ... 152528.txt
http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/Mc ... 005403.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/dnasty/morg ... 014435.txt
http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/cciulla/mor ... 005922.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/tomas ... 030105.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/EricC ... 154332.txt
http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/CORNF ... 043626.txt

Glad i dit not waste my time reading it, then.

Lmao.

how did nobody notice

isn't there a vault tag for "do not drop into via shaft"?

Mod note: Unnecessarily sweary references removed.

Arrhythmia wrote:It's my idea of fun, though. Remembering safe ground is bullshit, dumb, and should be changed, but the core of it, forcing the player to find the upstairs on a level he's unprepared for, is a lot of fun.

Weighing the pros/cons and making the decision to shaft yourself out of a bad situation on Fo and then having to work your way back up is fun

Teleport traps are tolerable because usually half the level is already explored and it will never put you up against something that you wouldn't have ended up fighting on that floor anyway. Getting randomly unlucky by walking over shaft traps that you can't possibly tell are there and getting double shafted from D:3 to D:9 and landing in front of an orc warrior holding a glaive of distortion who then banishes you (this has actually happened to me) is a completely different experience and not fun in the slightest

If you enjoy that kind of game, why don't you just always play Chaos Knights? Getting shafted and worshipping Xom are (un)surprisingly similar experiences

At the very least, if shafts aren't going to be removed, put a 1,000 turn timer that prevents you from getting shafted again (with the exception of Fo self-shafting) until it reaches zero. The deadliest part about getting double shafted isn't that they throw you into the middle of enemies that are wildly out-of-depth for your character, they're deadly because they make you press ctrl+Q

In all seriousness, I think OP raises a valid point. This is the introduction of the post. It does not mean I agree with "ranting" (this is not important).

Isn't the philosophy of the game that "Death should be a learning experience rather than an exercice in frustration?" These may not be the exact words (this is not important), but you get the general idea (this is important).

I don't see how that holds togehter in the case of shafts. For starters, there is 0 counterplay possible when it comes to avoiding traps; you cannot prevent it in any way. Your skill doesn't matter at all, it is completely arbitrary (This is somewhat important but not the main issue). Do Ash/TSO still help in revealing them? This is not important.

So if you stumble into a shaft trap, you either get lucky and get back relatively unscathed, you get somewhat unlucky and have to burn through a lot of resources to scramble and gamble your way back out, or you get very unlucky and end up in an absolutely inescapable situation and you just die. This is very important.

What could one possibly learn from such a death? The only thing I can think of is "identify your items early". But if you did that, you might still die anyway because you simply do not have the tools to escape or fight your way out. And then you'd learn nothing. Because there was nothing you could have done. And that would be an exercice in frustration. Doesn't that directly contradict the spirit of the game? I believe it does. This is the core of the post.

Shafts doesnt add anything of value to the game that isnt already acquired through other better mechanics. Having to face dangerous enemies = OoD spawns; Having to explore a unexplored level = applies to every floor in the game already; being on a bad spot = teleport traps. All shaft does is combine these three things, cross its fingers and expects the outcome to not be utterly unfair or just trivial because, again, you already have those mechanics constantly working in the game.

Shard1697 wrote:
CypherZel wrote:
Shard1697 wrote:agreed, shafts are great

I think if this happened to me I would have legit quit crawl for a good week or two. That's as bad as getting banished from an ogre Mage at the back of the pack, glad that can't happen anymore.
I survived this situation just fine though.

In my mind you had no scrolls or anything, but it's actually mid dungeon so I guess I would have just tele or open the door and blink

Agreed, Shafts only serve to function as a obnoxious way of artificially putting the player in danger. Where with most rng, you can manipulate it or avoid it entirely, it is impossible to avoid shafts, or manipulate them. Removing shafts wouldn't even affect formicids in a major way, since from my experience, formicids rarely if ever use shafts to save themselves.

Alatreon wrote:Where with most rng, you can manipulate it or avoid it entirely, it is impossible to avoid shafts, or manipulate them.

Strictly speaking, this isn't true, as Tabstorm points out, you can avoid them by remembering ground you've walked on, and exclusively walking on it whenever possible. Assuming this was true though, you can't avoid/manipulate shafts, but you can avoid/manipulate the consequences of shafts, because the player has so many resources at their disposal past like, D:4.

Laraso wrote:Teleport traps are tolerable because usually half the level is already explored and it will never put you up against something that you wouldn't have ended up fighting on that floor anyway. Getting randomly unlucky by walking over shaft traps that you can't possibly tell are there and getting double shafted from D:3 to D:9 and landing in front of an orc warrior holding a glaive of distortion who then banishes you (this has actually happened to me) is a completely different experience and not fun in the slightest

I disagree. That sounds quite fun. It's a test of skill that very rarely comes up, and even if it is a test that can't be solved (i.e., the shafting begins on like, D:3), the sheer improbability of getting double-shafted and then corner-banished is funny in its own right. As to why I don't worship Xom every game: Xom has many more effects than "shafting the player", both literally and figuratively, his effects occur far too often for my tastes (as compared to the within epsilon of once a game that shaft traps happen), and Crawl has many more Gods than Xom, who are quite fun to worship in their own right.

Arrhythmia wrote:Strictly speaking, this isn't true, as Tabstorm points out, you can avoid them by remembering ground you've walked on

I cant confirm but i dare say that is not true, that it is possible to walk over a undetected shaft without triggering it.

Arrhythmia wrote:It's a test of skill that very rarely comes up

I would think there is something wrong when a game rarely requires me to test my skill, i call that "road block". Also, out of curiosity, when was the last time you got shafted from v:3 to v:5 or tomb:2 to tomb:3?

dynast wrote:I would think there is something wrong when a game rarely requires me to test my skill

Yes, this is a big problem that crawl has.

Also, out of curiosity, when was the last time you got shafted from v:3 to v:5 or tomb:2 to tomb:3?

I teleport on V:5 until I get some nice positioning, and I do it immediately after V:4, which is isomorphic with being shafted, so "every game". I don't do Tomb anymore.

Arrhythmia wrote:Yes, this is a big problem that crawl has.

So you gonna agree with me that it is a problem and disagree with everyone that considers shaft to be one of those problems? Also, i dont even think that crawl has that problem(it may have that problem for inexperienced players that fail to learn from their deaths, who constantly hits the same road blocks) you just have to pick the right combo(one that is not bothered by being shafted) the same way you just have to not pick Xom as a god. If that bothers how narrow you combo selection becomes then... oh well.

I teleport on V:5 until I get some nice positioning, and I do it immediately after V:4, which is isomorphic with being shafted.

Not even remotely, you completely overlooked the fact that some players do v:1-v:4 leaving v:5 for later because they cannot handle it yet. Also im pretty sure you cant be shafted to v:5 or tombs:3, which just makes shafts even less interesting than they already are and more head-scratching.

dynast wrote:So you gonna agree with me that it is a problem and disagree with everyone that considers shaft to be one of those problems?

Let me be clear: I believe that the sparseness of "tests of skill" is a problem, and that the solution should be to increase them, rather than decrease them. That is, I want crawl to be harder. I think that shafts (not as implemented) are a good way of doing this, and wish there were more things like them.

Not even remotely, you completely overlooked the fact that some players do v:1-v:4 leaving v:5 for later because they cannot handle it yet.

I'm confused as to how my behaviour w/r/t V:5 isn't essentially identical to someone who was shafted into V:5.

...because you CHOSE to?

jwoodward48ss wrote:...because you CHOSE to?

Yes, outside of the game it's different. Inside of the game though, what's the difference between taking the downstairs on V:4 and teleporting immediately after finishing V:4, and being shafted into V:5?

e: Like, how do these two characters look different? Do they have different resources, different skills? Is the best behaviour for them now that they're on V:5 different?

As an aside, I think shaft traps cannot drop you to a branch end floor.

Arrhythmia wrote:Let me be clear: I believe that the sparseness of "tests of skill" is a problem, and that the solution should be to increase them, rather than decrease them. That is, I want crawl to be harder. I think that shafts (not as implemented) are a good way of doing this, and wish there were more things like them.

Jezz, you couldnt be more on top of the wall if you tried. I guess its my fault for giving it to you that shafts are a "test of skill".

Arrhythmia wrote:Yes, outside of the game it's different. Inside of the game though, what's the difference between taking the downstairs on V:4 and teleporting immediately after finishing V:4, and being shafted into V:5?

You realise monsters on v:5 vary A LOT from monsters on v:1-4, that some players do those floors earlier for the exp because vault guards are not threatening for them(yet, titans, golden/shadow dragons, etc are), that some players are looking for crypt, some are just farming bolts and some of them are a formicid of chei. The point is, in places where the existence of shafts could lead to dangerous situations that the player is aware of they simply dont exist.

Arrhythmia wrote:
e: Like, how do these two characters look different? Do they have different resources, different skills? Is the best behaviour for them now that they're on V:5 different?

The impossibility of being shafted to V:5 aside, the character that entered voluntarily would probably be hasted and buffed in various ways, be at full HP/MP, and also with more experience and skill levels than the shafted character. The best behaviour for former would be to do whatever it is people do when they enter V:5 voluntarily (find the rune, get some loot, kill some guys etc.), and depending on the circumstances, this might also be the best behaviour for the latter character, but it might also be "get the fuck out of V:5".

That said, I like shaft traps quite a lot; the gameplay between getting shafted and finding your way back to the original level is tense and exciting for me, though clearly not everyone feels this way. My only complaints are that shafting sometimes happens too early, when you don't have the tools to survive and simply die (the Yermak streak-ender shaft in the 0.18 tournament comes to mind), and the fact that you can tediously keep track of where you've stepped to minimize your chances of getting shafted, a problem common to all traps.

The Tavern

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