Consumables in DCSS [split]

[duvessa]

mod note: split off from this thread

As haphazardly designed as ToME4 is, one thing it did get right was removing most consumables. When you have consumables, they pile up higher and higher as the game goes on, making things easier and easier. This is what happens in every game that has consumables; not a single one has solved this problem without cutting consumables entirely.
Look at this post where a dev straight-up admits to trying to force consumable use to make the late game harder. That this even seems like a reasonable thing to attempt is a testament to
1. how bad consumables are for the game
2. how ingrained consumables are in roguelike players and developers' minds, to the point that handing out consumables and then forcibly destroying them sounds like a more reasonable solution to the scaling problem than just removing consumables.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Maybe we should start another thread about consumables.

Main problems IMHO:
1) existence of teleportation scrolls/wands. Using haste potion or blinking scroll to escape is fine, they are rare and then don't put you several screens away from the monster you were trying to escape.
2) existence of haste spell/wand. Haste should be a level 8 spell if you want to keep it, maybe even 9.
3) existence of wand of heal wounds. Also add a cooldown for potions of heal wounds so you cannot quaff potions while waiting for teleport (the cooldown is not necessary if teleportation is removed from the game).

[duvessa]

Haste and blinking are far, far more powerful escapes than teleportation. A controlled blink is pretty much always better than an instant uncontrolled teleport.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Oh, I forgot about CBlink spell, it should be removed of course.

Potions of haste and scrolls of blinking are rare enough IMHO, though personally I don't object to making them more rare.

Edit. There is a game called Demon, it has much in common with DCSS. It does not have any teleportation or stairdancing, can kill you in every fight right from level 1, "scrolls of blinking" are extremely rare but people still win it. It is challenging and not boring during the whole game because it becomes harder and harder with every floor.

[Sprucery]

If the devs want to make the game harder, removing scrolls of blinking would be a very efficient step. At least personally, whenever I use a scroll of blinking, I am in a direct danger of dying. I'm sure I would die quite a lot more often without those scrolls. Or maybe I would learn to play better :)

[tabstorm]

Consumables only pile up because you can basically never use a single consumable, god power, or evocable after lair and easily win due to the glut of experience... it's almost as if you're incentivized towards using consumables when the relative danger level is higher!

I think the #1 thing that could be done to make the game harder is to just remove Lair and place the branches in D.

[Sprucery]

Consumables only pile up because you can basically never use a single consumable, god power, or evocable after lair and easily win due to the glut of experience... it's almost as if you're incentivized towards using consumables when the relative danger level is higher!

I think the #1 thing that could be done to make the game harder is to just remove Lair and place the branches in D.

That would be bad, because I for one like Crawl and I don't want to have less of it. And Lair is a very good branch, good atmosphere etc. A much better solution imo would be just to multiply all exp gained by 0.75 or so and see what happens. Or if Lair exp in particular is the problem, multiply all Lair experience by 0.5 or something like that.

A downside would be that some harder combos might become nearly impossible after changes like this.

[dpeg]

I am in favour of a harder game. My reasoning is that Crawl's winnability is too close to 100%, which means that we're losing out on several layers of game depth. (Hard to distinguish levels of players who can reliably win unless employing extra measures.)

I am not convinced that the existence of consumables is to blame. However, I do agree that Crawl hands out too many consumables. The thing is that if you remove all consumables, then you also remove the decision of when to use them. When you have them, but they're more rare, then the game is harder while still having those choices. (Perhaps my own playing skill is too low, and I don't realise that these decisions are trivial.)

I also agree that wands, especially Healing and Teleportation, don't make very good items. We have other consumables for this, and there is no need for providing the same thing in an extra special, many-uses-in-one-item portion.

A hard-headed change against stockpiling could be a rule change: cannot take consumables through portals (this affects e.g. Zot). But simply generating fewer of them would be an easier first step.

Another possibility, which would be probably equally unpopular (and additionally comes with an UI problem): all consumables have a limited life span, say 2000 turns. This is announced, and kept track of. This means that you're (a) encouraged to use stuff and (b) that going fast is now not only good for score, but can actually *increase* your safety.


In my opinion, the single biggest problem of current Crawl is not related to consumables: it is the fact that threats can be reliably, safely and tediously scaled down using tactics such as luring, kiting and stair-dancing. I had hoped for a while that some rule changes (monster movement, noise etc.) could work against that, but I have been convinced otherwise. Right now, I am at a loss how to combat luring.

A downside would be that some harder combos might become nearly impossible after changes like this.

This is not a problem! If we're happy to make the game harder, then it's not a bad thing that some combos become nearly impossible. In fact, it's a good thing!

[Shard1697]

I sort of feel like if you want a roguelike without luring, you need to design it that way from the ground up.

[Midn8]

I also agree that wands, especially Healing and Teleportation, don't make very good items. We have other consumables for this, and there is no need for providing the same thing in an extra special, many-uses-in-one-item portion.

I think the use for those wands is to turn scrolls of recharging into other consumables. But that usually isn't too much of an issue of removed. Just turn some recharge scrolls (and those wands?) into the original consumable. Wands of heal wounds are really useful for mummies, however, and mummies may become practically (or actually) unwinnable with their removal (no way to heal rot).

Another possibility, which would be probably equally unpopular (and additionally comes with an UI problem): all consumables have a limited life span, say 2000 turns. This is announced, and kept track of. This means that you're (a) encouraged to use stuff and (b) that going fast is now not only good for score, but can actually *increase* your safety.

I feel like this would have to be quite a bit over 2k turns to be reliable, and people would just drag all their consumables over long distances with apport if it triggered when picked up. If one were to trigger it when it came into LOS or when generated, you might lose consumables before getting to them. Also, this would give some races, namely spriggans, trolls, and possibly vine stalkers, a huge advantage.

While this may be a good idea, it feels a lot like item destruction, which was removed because it felt bad. I think item rot would also feel bad also.

Finally, I find myself often wishing for a "consumables acquirement" to get things like scrolls of recharging, potions of might/haste/agi/brill/invis, potions of curemut, and scrolls of blinking (and remove curse for my ash worshippers). I don't think that the game generates enough of them sometimes, honestly.

[goodcoolguy]

Consumables only pile up because you can basically never use a single consumable, god power, or evocable after lair and easily win due to the glut of experience... it's almost as if you're incentivized towards using consumables when the relative danger level is higher!

I think the #1 thing that could be done to make the game harder is to just remove Lair and place the branches in D.

Quoted for truth.

What's been said about the problems of consumables is correct, but it has to do with the length of the game being too close to infinity. There's too much experience, too much floor space, too many items. An endgame character played by a good player according to sound overall strategy has an overwhelming number of consumables, it's true, but this is because so many generate in a huge expanse of low threat density floors that seem to be there just to provide the "bigness" to make dumb character builds (e.g. the level 9 "blaster caster"), switch gods for extended (lol), and so on.

On the other hand, lair has better layouts but worse monster design than mid-dungeon. If you cut out the yaks and rats and other trash monsters, replace them with bees, wasps, and some other faster monsters, you might have something. I'd say replace floors 8 through 13 of dungeon with lair layouts/monster set and remove lair. Also, replace depths with vaults, so that V5 has a rune and a zot gate vault. Remove some of the trash monsters in vaults in favor of the some depths monsters. It would be great to have only one lair branch too.

An ancillary benefit of cutting out excessive branch structure is that it massively simplifies autotravel, which is horrible as it stands. Crawl is so much nicer when you don't have to screw around so much with backtracking through branches, getting hungry, fighting imp spawns and so on.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Above you can see yet another proof of what I was talking about in initial thread:
1) people complain about crawl being too long
2) people complain about crawl being too easy after Lair and try to make it harder.

"Hard early game, easy late game" paradigm does not work, it is not enjoyable/fun for players.

[phloomp]

Combining some of the ideas/goals already mentioned, and disregarding balance entirely:

• Every time you move from one level to another (including shafting, portals, stairs and hatches) all consumables that you are carrying, all consumables that you have seen, and all consumables in shops that you have seen, are destroyed.
• This also happens to consumables carried by monsters that travel between levels for whatever reason
• All good player statuses are lost upon moving from one level to another

Flavor: ???

[dpeg]

Above you can see yet another proof of what I was talking about in initial thread:
1) people complain about crawl being too long
2) people complain about crawl being too easy after Lair and try to make it harder.

"Hard early game, easy late game" paradigm does not work, it is not enjoyable/fun for players.

Stop pretending you're in possession of some absolute truth. You have an opinion, and you're not alone with it. That does not imply your sweeping generalisations.

For many players, Crawl is extremely hard. Some people have complained about Crawl's length since ever. Crawl has also been shortened for almost a decade.

[VeryAngryFelid]

For many players, Crawl is extremely hard. Some people have complained about Crawl's length since ever. Crawl has also been shortened for almost a decade.

You seem to miss my point. Of course there are some players who are unable/unwilling to learn and keep doing the same mistakes again and again, for them crawl will stay extremely hard no matter what. Majority (I hope so) of players who want to win, win pretty soon after being able to consistently reach Lair.

[goodcoolguy]

Above you can see yet another proof of what I was talking about in initial thread:
1) people complain about crawl being too long
2) people complain about crawl being too easy after Lair and try to make it harder.

"Hard early game, easy late game" paradigm does not work, it is not enjoyable/fun for players.

Stop pretending you're in possession of some absolute truth. You have an opinion, and you're not alone with it. That does not imply your sweeping generalisations.

For many players, Crawl is extremely hard. Some people have complained about Crawl's length since ever. Crawl has also been shortened for almost a decade.

Hm, many players think Crawl is extremely hard, whereas there have always been these people who complain about Crawl's length... Now between this first group of honest players, just trying to make it in this very difficult game, and all the malcontents whining about five hour games, which of these two should we listen to?

Here's another absolute truth for you: Crawl is at least twice as long as it should be given the way experience and item generation works and the actual diversity of game content.

[twelwe]

i like might potion,i like heal w

[Shtopit]

I would have all standard rings and amulets have an evocable function (which doesn't require wearing them) beside their passive function, like all rings of slaying have an evocable function of might, all EV rings have an evocable agility and make them reload with XP like lamp of this and stone of that.

Then you can make self-targeting wands and a bunch of potions and scrolls disappear, and keep those like restore health which are meant to be used in bulk or curing.

It doesn't solve all inventory problems, but it means that you can't spam certain evocables anymore and need to use them in a tactical way.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I would have all standard rings and amulets have an evocable function (which doesn't require wearing them) beside their passive function, like all rings of slaying have an evocable function of might, all EV rings have an evocable agility and make them reload with XP like lamp of this and stone of that.

Then you can make self-targeting wands and a bunch of potions and scrolls disappear, and keep those like restore health which are meant to be used in bulk or curing.

It doesn't solve all inventory problems, but it means that you can't spam certain evocables anymore and need to use them in a tactical way.

Very interesting ideas. Maybe we could even give a chance to lose 1 slaying when evoking ring of slaying for might, then players would think twice about evoking it.

[Magipi]

When you have consumables, they pile up higher and higher as the game goes on, making things easier and easier.

This is certainly not the case with me. I tend to use consumables, so they do not pile up. This is probably because I am not a very good player. However, very good players (let's try to define this: those who think Crawl is too easy) are a tiny minority, my guess is 0.1%.

[tabstorm]

If you really think all the difficulty issues in DCSS don't stem from an XP glut, try playing a no-Lair game, or winning a 15 rune game in under 50k turns. Please. Just try it.

[VeryAngryFelid]

If you really think all the difficulty issues in DCSS don't stem from an XP glut, try playing a no-Lair game, or winning a 15 rune game in under 50k turns. Please. Just try it.

It depends on how you look at it. You can either remove XP or make monsters more dangerous, result will be the same since we always have "I can kill the monster in N turns and it can kill me in M turns". If N>>M, the game is too hard (dagger vs Orb Fire). If N<<M, the game is too easy (Statue/Dragon Form with Chei vs most melee monsters), that's why a single non-unique monster is not dangerous. The most interesting fights happen when N is close to M, you start to reset fights, split packs, use consumables, get low on HP/MP etc.

[goodcoolguy]

No. Resetting fights is not interesting. It's scumming. Scumming combat rolls, scumming stealth rolls, scumming random monster actions. Monster buffs will only send the game further down the power spiral.

You have two interrelated problems: The game is too damned long and characters begin to max out on useful experience and items too early in the game. Both of these problems have the same solution. Knock down the amount of floor space and don't hold the experience and item generation constant.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Resetting fights is not always possible, especially if teleportation is removed from the game. You suggest to remove XP hoping that it will make player to spend more consumables, I suggest to decrease consumables, make the game harder and test how easy it is to reset fights.

[Shtopit]

I may be grossly misreading this, but what would the difference between "no resetting of fights" and "you must kill all monsters that see you" be?

[VeryAngryFelid]

I may be grossly misreading this, but what would the difference between "no resetting of fights" and "you must kill all monsters that see you" be?

I believe if PC is adjacent to some monster, it should not be possible to escape (=reset fight) without using some consumable or god ability. Otherwise we have too easy/annoying game indeed.

[bcadren]

However, I do agree that Crawl hands out too many consumables. The thing is that if you remove all consumables, then you also remove the decision of when to use them. When you have them, but they're more rare, then the game is harder while still having those choices. (Perhaps my own playing skill is too low, and I don't realise that these decisions are trivial.)

I got used to having no non-wand consumables in late game/extended (because item destruction) you still pretty much don't need them. Get the spell versions of the most important ones online and leave it at that. That said, yea, the consumable count in late game was never dropped enough to make up for the end of item destruction. That said...early game you kind of have too few consumables (because you end up with a sizeable stack before you get everything IDed).

[goodcoolguy]

Resetting fights is not always possible, especially if teleportation is removed from the game. You suggest to remove XP hoping that it will make player to spend more consumables, I suggest to decrease consumables, make the game harder and test how easy it is to reset fights.

Actually, I suggest that floors be removed or merged, for example 5-6 floors of lair replacing mid-dungeon and vaults replacing depths, without changing the amount of loot and monsters generated on those floors. This means that you'd have a net decrease in the number of consumables, for example, that generate in a typical game, as well as experience, equipment, and so on.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Yes, it can work.

[dpeg]

tabstorm: I agree that xp is a big issue. It should be possible to produce average xp gains of various branches (say Vaults and Lair) for various versions. One of the ideas with branch reductions was to also reduce the huge xp belly you chow through in the midgame. It is possible that in a kind of power spiral new monsters offset that effect.

In any case, while I agree with making Crawl shorter (heck, I suggested reducing and then cutting Hive in the first place), I have no clue why some posters argue so vocally for radical solutions. I think it is much safer to do it slowly, rather than to overcompensate and try to find some equilibrium haphazardly.

Now that I've pestered and into into splitting the thread, I am back talking not about consumbles.

[Hellmonk]

While it's true that the game is shorter now, incremental cuts so far have done absolutely nothing to reduce overall available experience. Final xl for a winning 3 rune game has remained essentially flat since version 0.10 even as branches have been shortened and cut (I used !lg * cv=[whatever version number] urune=3 won x=avg(xl); the lowest average xl in this range was 25.79 in version 0.13, the highest was 26.7 in 0.12, 0.15 and 0.18 have almost identical average winning 3 rune xl and their average is higher than version 0.10 average winning xl). People are advocating radical solutions because they don't want to wait another 8 versions for Crawl games to be a reasonable length and don't want to wait infinity versions for Crawl games to remain difficult after lair. FWIW I understand the hesitation to radically change trunk and alienate the playerbase, but a lot of the ideas in this thread or the other one would be worth trying on experimental at the very least.

As far as consumable generation is concerned, some consumables are less of a problem because they fall off in usefulness pretty severely. I don't actually care if 10 or 1000 lignification potions generate in a game because it's usually a garbage item by the end of lair if not sooner. The big problem items are the ones that stay incredibly powerful the entire game. I care a whole lot if I get 10 ?blink or only 1, because in the former case I can make nine more gigantic mistakes and not die. Of course generating a bunch of crap that's useless past lair just gives me more items to ignore, so I'm not sure if this observation should matter at all from a consumable generation standpoint. I guess what I'm really trying to say is remove scroll of blinking.

[goodcoolguy]

tabstorm: I agree that xp is a big issue. It should be possible to produce average xp gains of various branches (say Vaults and Lair) for various versions. One of the ideas with branch reductions was to also reduce the huge xp belly you chow through in the midgame. It is possible that in a kind of power spiral new monsters offset that effect.

In any case, while I agree with making Crawl shorter (heck, I suggested reducing and then cutting Hive in the first place), I have no clue why some posters argue so vocally for radical solutions. I think it is much safer to do it slowly, rather than to overcompensate and try to find some equilibrium haphazardly.

Now that I've pestered and into into splitting the thread, I am back talking not about consumbles.

5% do what it takes. There's no way to incrementally reach the Thick. Solid. Tight. version of crawl people are advocating across various threads here.

Removing lair or merging lair with mid-dungeon is not radical. What's radical is maintaining a status quo where the consensus of good players is that, for example, gods whose game develops too slowly to do anything in pre-lair dungeon are mediocre to bad. Wouldn't it be great if the late and mid game performance of gods mattered for reasons other than powergaming funsies?

[Siegurt]

tabstorm: I agree that xp is a big issue. It should be possible to produce average xp gains of various branches (say Vaults and Lair) for various versions. One of the ideas with branch reductions was to also reduce the huge xp belly you chow through in the midgame. It is possible that in a kind of power spiral new monsters offset that effect.

In any case, while I agree with making Crawl shorter (heck, I suggested reducing and then cutting Hive in the first place), I have no clue why some posters argue so vocally for radical solutions. I think it is much safer to do it slowly, rather than to overcompensate and try to find some equilibrium haphazardly.

Now that I've pestered and into into splitting the thread, I am back talking not about consumbles.

5% do what it takes. There's no way to incrementally reach the Thick. Solid. Tight. version of crawl people are advocating across various threads here.

Removing lair or merging lair with mid-dungeon is not radical. What's radical is maintaining a status quo where the consensus of good players is that, for example, gods whose game develops too slowly to do anything in pre-lair dungeon are mediocre to bad. Wouldn't it be great if the late and mid game performance of gods mattered for reasons other than powergaming funsies?

That doesn't make any sense, shortening the game (in any of the aforementioned fashions) would make the slow-developing gods performance even worse. Gods who are only good post-lair are good post-lair because it takes that long to get anything out of them, making "early game" be a larger portion of the game just means those gods who take longer to develop will be useful for an even smaller portion of it.

There are plenty of reasons to want the game to be shorter, but "some gods dont really shine until later" isn't one of them.

[goodcoolguy]

Actually, it is. You see, if the game is so stuffed full of threat-free floors you're maxing out on xp, items, etc. early and it becomes impossible to die with reasonably careful play around lair 4, it doesn't matter if a god, for example, gives you three times as many skill points as you would normally have unless they do it before that point in the game. Also, the game currently is stuffed full of threat-free floors. But if there were some concern you could die after lair, then this god might make more sense.

[Siegurt]

Actually, it is. You see, if the game is so stuffed full of threat-free floors you're maxing out on xp, items, etc. early and it becomes impossible to die with reasonably careful play around lair 4, it doesn't matter if a god, for example, gives you three times as many skill points as you would normally have unless they do it before that point in the game. Also, the game currently is stuffed full of threat-free floors. But if there were some concern you could die after lair, then this god might make more sense.

Even if we presumed you were correct, and that at some magic point you become immune to death, and that the only time you could get any real benefit from a god was prior to that point, if you remove the "threat-free" floors, then you not only make the 'post lair' part of the game more harder, you *also* make the gods in question bestow their benefits later, because it's not just XP and Items you're reducing, it's also piety gain and gained invocation skill (Which comes in with XP gain after all) that you reduce, meaning that for gods, at least as presently implemented, at very best, it's a net 0 gain/loss in terms of relevance.

To change that you'd need to change the piety gain rate for those gods (or making the relevant powers come up sooner, or make new early and relevant powers, or some variation thereof), and if you're going to change the power rate gain for those gods, then you can do so such that they're relevant before the lair, regardless of whether you remove the lair or not. If you leave them as-is, you're going to be able to use those gods roughly at the same place XP and Item wise, as you can now. That might occur deeper in the dungeon, but the god powers would come at *the same place* in the XP/Item power curve, since god powers come from the same source as XP and Items (aka exploring and killing stuff)

So shortening the game can't possibly make the gods that are 'late bloomers' more relevant, without altering said gods ability to bestow powers earlier, which you can do whether or not you shorten the game, if it's actually a problem that needs fixing.

[lethediver]

Damn I love this post.

Anywho, I would settle for either option at this point. Less consumables or shorter game. But if I had to choose, definitely shorter game.

I introduced a good friend to DCSS. He loved the game for a while because of the strategic tension of the early/midgame, and the lack of OP strats. Once he got necromut up and entered extended though he just kinda lost interest. He never even ascended because he got bored.

Crawl late game needs to become less of a slog, for real. The game is just too long is definitely on the right track.

[dpeg]

I hope that one thing is clear: assuming we agree that a harder game is desirable, then there are very many ways to achieve that (fewer or even no consumables, less xp hence lower skills, monster damage ramped up across the board or, slightly equivalent, reduced player HP). These have different side effects, and the discussion should be about which way is best.

Hellmonk: I'm not sure if average XL of 3-rune wins is the best scale for excess experience. (However, thanks for sequelling the numbers, and I grant that they indicate the level cuts didn't do as much as they were supposed to.) The reason is that players may go farm more xp for various reasons (trying to get XL 27 for more HP, or training some skill), and Crawl gives them places to do that, such as Crypt and Elf.
I believe there's a scripts that generates dungeons and forms average xp scores of levels. This is the best scale, in my opinion. I'll try to ask on ##crawl-dev about this next time I am there.

[Hellmonk]

Thanks for the reply dpeg. Implojin said the same thing on irc last night and I agree, experience at the end of 3 runes is probably not the best metric. We did some additional querying and found that average experience level at the end of lair milestone has increased significantly between 0.10 and 0.18. Query was !lm * cv=[version number] br.end=lair x=avg(xl). 0.10 average was 13.23, 0.18 average was 13.82, min was version 0.12 (13.13), max was version 0.17 (13.87). So experience by the end of lair has increased due to monster power creep or some other factor. The lair cut seems to have dropped experience at this milestone, but I'm not sure that I did the query right and it was still higher than the 0.10 average xl. Querying for the average xl at first rune swamp rune pickup indicates about a 1 xl decrease between 0.10 and now, but a big proportion of this appears to be due to the rune lock on vaults and/or the dungeon/depths split changing optimal branch order; there's no change at all over the past four versions. Experience at the depths branch entry milestone has increased with every release, from average xl of 19.35 in 0.14 to average xl of 20.56 in 0.18, so either total pre-depths experience has increased or people are clearing more of it prior to depths now.

I'd love to see the average xp score script. I'm too bad at Sequell to form robust queries that give meaningful experience values in the midgame.

[stickyfingers]

The races have different levelling speeds, so you should normalize that or restrict to just Hu or Ds or something, otherwise the metric will be skewed by the popularity changes and stuff like MD removal.

[Implojin]

I'd love to see the average xp score script. I'm too bad at Sequell to form robust queries that give meaningful experience values in the midgame.

Seconding this.

My sequell-fu is too weak to be certain of my analysis, in particular, trying to exclude branch entry milestones wasn't working to disable results where the player took a strange branch order like dipping Depths. Seeing the script results would be very nice.


With that said, and attaching the caveat of "If my queries and analysis hold" to everything below:


From the queries we ran yesterday comparing branch enter milestone xl vs. lg:xl, it appeared that players are entering lairbranches at higher initial XL than in older versions, and gaining less XP inside of the lairbranches than in older versions. My interpretation is that players are probably adopting a surgical runegrab approach to lairbranches in current versions. If this is what's really happening, I take it to be a good thing! It means that the cumulative lairbranch monsterset changes have worked.

However, players are still entering lairbranches at higher initial XL than in older versions. This is definitely not intended, with the branch shortening targeted specifically at D, Lair, and Orc. My interpretation follows dpeg's here: Individual monster XP return in D, Lair, and Orc has likely spiraled upward while the branches were shortened, probably due to the HD factor in XP granted (possibly also due to more thorough clears). (Relevant side note: Dropping high HD monsters in early-ish Dungeon vaults increases the amount of XP returned in early-ish Dungeon if players buff and kill. Take note!)


Accordingly, if the above analysis holds, there might be two separate XP problems to attack:
1a) The amount of XP available prior to lairbranches is too high in current versions. Much more so than seems intended, especially after the branch length reductions.

1b) Lairbranches themselves are probably in an okay place. Players need to get the rune, but they don't really want to spend time there.

1c) Attacking the XP glut prior to lairbranches should thus probably be handled delicately. If the lairbranches are in a good place, perhaps an XP hill needs to be placed that allows for lairbranch entry at a similar XL to current, but backloads much of the available experience immediately prior to the point where players enter lairbranches. Changing the curve to produce a dearth of experience in the area from roughly D:7 to Lair, backloading much of it instead into late Dungeon, might have the desired effect.


2) There's still way too much experience available towards the end of the game, but I'm not sure what you can really draw from this beyond "Players can clear Zot quickly, or delay their ascension by three levels if they want." In my opinion, this is of less importance. Whether the game is shortened or not, a glut of endgame experience seems unavoidable while access to extended areas is allowed. Reducing XP towards endgame without other changes to its structure would just route players into doing selective bits of extended, and feeling as though their 3 rune game became longer.

[Hellmonk]

The races have different levelling speeds, so you should normalize that or restrict to just Hu or Ds or something, otherwise the metric will be skewed by the popularity changes and stuff like MD removal.

Average xl for demonspawn at end of lair milestone, version 0.10: 12.88
Average xl for demonspawn at end of lair milestone, version 0.12: 12.93
Average xl for demonspawn at end of lair milestone, version 0.14: 13.26
Average xl for demonspawn at end of lair milestone, version 0.16: 13.55
Average xl for demonspawn at end of lair milestone, version 0.18: 13.63

Average xl for minotaur at end of lair milestone, version 0.10: 13.4
Average xl for minotaur at end of lair milestone, version 0.15: 13.65
Average xl for minotaur at end of lair milestone, version 0.18: 13.75

Average xl for gargoyle at end of lair milestone, version 0.13 (first version with gargoyles): 13.68
Average xl for gargoyle at end of lair milestone, version 0.18: 14.08

Someone who is better at sequell can try to normalize across all races, but every race I checked shows an exp increase at the end of lair milestone.

Average xl for demonspawn when grabbing decaying rune as first rune, version 0.10: 16.97
Average xl for demonspawn when grabbing decaying rune as first rune, version 0.16: 16.76
Average xl for demonspawn when grabbing decaying rune as first rune, version 0.17: 16.44
Average xl for demonspawn when grabbing decaying rune as first rune, version 0.18: 16.71

Average xl for demonspawn at depths entry, version 0.14: 19.06
Average xl for demonspawn at depths entry, version 0.15: 18.64
Average xl for demonspawn at depths entry, version 0.16: 19.28
Average xl for demonspawn at depths entry, version 0.17: 19.82
Average xl for demonspawn at depths entry, version 0.18: 19.89

So at least for demonspawn, the experience trends appear to be the same as previously described. Paging Sequell experts to construct some better queries and really dig into this.

[duvessa]

So, while xp per level probably has increased what with stuff like the zombie/skeleton spam increase, I will point out that a lot of players started doing more of D before entering Lair when it was shortened, both times. It's also possible players are spending more turns per level but I'm not sure of that at all. I suspect at least some of the difference comes from player (in)competence rather than developer incompetence.

I also don't think these milestones are especially good. Many bad players think they shouldn't enter Lair:6 right after Lair:5, many players won't bother to grab X rune until they actually need to enter Vaults, and many players enter branches then immediately leave and do something else. That said, I can't think of any milestones right now that would have less noise...

Don't we have objstat for this kind of stuff?