Player ghost aggravation

[watertreatmentRL]

*whole thread of why ghosts are bad*

guy 1, wryly: It's almost like every thing unique to ghosts is actually bad...

guy 2, looking surprised: What? Name one thing that's bad about them!

[ezero]

*whole thread of why ghosts are bad*

guy 1, wryly: It's almost like every thing unique to ghosts is actually bad...

guy 2, looking surprised: What? Name one thing that's bad about them!

This is the only decent piece of argument in this whole thread:

You cant change the odds of OOD monsters or uniques spawning by choosing a different server, waiting until the middle of the night, or reinstalling the game.

You also cant spawn all the OOD monsters or uniques in other games and then play a game where you dont meet any.

Its a good argument for making ghosts optional and that i can understand.

Uniques chance of spawning and spawning depths for monsters are selected by the developers and are presumably balanced to enhance gameplay. But with a ghost its just a random grab bag.

Ghost's strength is presumably balanced by the developers. See? i can make no sense too.

[VeryAngryFelid]

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23984&p=317750

Or do you expect us to write the same things again and again in every thread about removing ghosts?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Uniques chance of spawning and spawning depths for monsters are selected by the developers and are presumably balanced to enhance gameplay. But with a ghost its just a random grab bag.

Ghost's strength is presumably balanced by the developers. See? i can make no sense too.

Did you miss that the chances are selected by developers? Not presumably selected, but selected. There is an explicit range of possible floors for every unique in source code of DCSS.
Ghost's strength is not balanced at all, not presumably, just not balanced, you can get XL 27 ghost with 5 level 9 spells on D:5.

[stoneychips]

In my view, it isn't whatabouttery at all. Aren't there whole threads fussing about the frequency of random "small" monsters appearing with super strong wands in recent versions of Crawl? I'm sure there are whole threads complaining about Ijyb, or Sigmund, or Mara (even without wand chances).

Okay perhaps... But some of us don't see either case as criminal enough to be worthy of the nuclear option.

And additionally, some of us are going to be upset if you remove one or both of them. We might also wonder if you won't apply similar logic to whatever the "next worst random" feature is in the game, once that hurdle was crossed. Not to say that everything must be a slippery slope, but it has been awfully en vogue for various people to suggest removing all sorts of things lately.

While these aren't absolutely solid reasons not to change anything... They're reasons to suggest that perhaps the specific merits of what's bothering you are either not that 1) pertinent or 2) clear (if they are indeed that 3) serious), at least to some people.

I can remember many games where I met a ghost or few, and found them pretty irrelevant in the scope of things. They're so common that I rarely recall the details of what an individual ghost had after the game, any more than I remember the differences between most of the ogres or orc warriors. Usually it's just a matter of the ghosts take slightly more fuss on average, if they are good. If they are average to bad, then a typically well developed character who doesn't charge in blindly way over their head or keep fighting without any exit plan can beat them or go around them most of the time. Are most of the ghosts on some servers really racking up maximum kills during their stay, or something?

Or is the complaint more that simply, many of the players are trying to use them to cheat the scoreboard? (I'm not getting 15 runes - personally, I don't care that much about the scoreboard. Your mileage can vary so be it, but this IS mine.)

Once in a while, some ghost is godawful hard and blocking progression pretty seriously such that it really matters more. And then, I have to adapt or complain about it like so many other cases of terrible bad luck or killer layouts or failure of given things to ever show up in run for my class to get the kick it needs during just some particular range of levels. But I don't usually ask for all these things to be removed wholesale as features. Tweaked a touch, now I might consider suggesting perhaps.

[ezero]

Did you miss that the chances are selected by developers? Not presumably selected, but selected. There is an explicit range of possible floors for every unique in source code of DCSS.
Ghost's strength is not balanced at all, not presumably, just not balanced, you can get XL 27 ghost with 5 level 9 spells on D:5.

  Code:

  1930 | D:3      | Noticed Ijyb
  1930 | D:3      | Noticed Grinder
  1930 | D:3      | Paralysed by Grinder for 3 turns

I guess i was buying the wrong lottery ticket then.

[VeryAngryFelid]

  Code:

  1930 | D:3      | Noticed Ijyb
  1930 | D:3      | Noticed Grinder
  1930 | D:3      | Paralysed by Grinder for 3 turns

I guess i was buying the wrong lottery ticket then.

You can always create a GDD thread asking to change it.

  Code:

NAME:   uniq_ijyb
DEPTH:  D:3-5
: place_unique(_G, "Ijyb")

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/c3d ... s.des#L154

  Code:

NAME:   uniq_grinder
DEPTH:  D:3-6
: place_unique(_G, "Grinder")

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/c3d ... s.des#L146

[ezero]

No, i actually wanna see these xl27 ghosts on my d:5.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Do you want me to write that link 3rd time in this thread??? It has a link to D:6 ghost with glaciate right in OP.

[stoneychips]

This is starting to go round in circles.

I'm wondering what exactly is who (and particularly VaF) asking to be done again... (I looked back and didn't find too much agreement on prescriptions, where there were any.)

Or is this only intended as a "they're really bad... No they're not!" gripe/vent/muse thread, again?

[ezero]

Do you want me to write that link 3rd time in this thread??? It has a link to D:6 ghost with glaciate right in OP.

YES! I do know its possible, im just annoyed that i wasnt lucky enough to have it happen to me. Why are you so boring? And before you think im trolling you, why do you think dying to some absurdly stupid ghost is worse than just dying to rng in any boring or average way?

[watertreatmentRL]

Yeah, I mean we can go around in circles all day trying to get this guy to read the thread linked, but can't we all agree that saying ghosts are bad is ultimately useless and counterproductive? I mean, if something was in the original Linley's Dungeon Crawl, presumably that means it's good, right?

[VeryAngryFelid]

This is not GDD so nothing will happen no matter what we do
I want ghosts made optional online like I have them optional offline.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Do you want me to write that link 3rd time in this thread??? It has a link to D:6 ghost with glaciate right in OP.

YES! I do know its possible, im just annoyed that i wasnt lucky enough to have it happen to me. Why are you so boring? And before you think im trolling you, why do you think dying to some absurdly stupid ghost is worse than just dying to rng in any boring or average way?

Personally I haven't died to a glaciate on D:5 either so what? What I did personally is I met a Gr ghost with about 70 AC (I don't remember details now) on Spider:4. It was very unfun to teleport every time it got in my view (I was Na) and I wouldn't like to have it happen again. Retreating 50+ tiles to closest stairs is not fun either. There should no be unkillable monsters which can move in the game.

I am not boring, I am very angry.

[Sprucery]

This is not GDD so nothing will happen no matter what we do :(

And even if it was, nothing would :)

[ezero]

What I did personally is I met a Gr ghost with about 70 AC (I don't remember details now) on Spider:4. It was very unfun to teleport every time it got in my view (I was Na) and I wouldn't like to have it happen again. Retreating 50+ tiles to closest stairs is not fun either. There should no be unkillable monsters which can move in the game.

Fantastic ghosts and where to find them. I dont recall having troublesome(in a bad way) ghost encounters( and i have gone down lair's entrance adjacent to 2 dr ghosts before their breath was removed, and fought 4 ghosts on a bailey once, also left 3 dr ghosts on a bailey once and someone came to me and said "beat them all, you asshole"), the only ghost problens i had were due to having just a bad run in general where pretty much anything was dangerous, and even then most of my memories are absurdities caused by uniques, like the time i had to fight polyphemus, mara and ilsuiw in shoals as a naga with poor equipment, not the wandering ghost on the last floor. I always have fun killing blomdor's and cerealjynx ghosts...

[stoneychips]

This is not GDD so nothing will happen no matter what we do
I want ghosts made optional online like I have them optional offline.

I wouldn't mind that. I generally agree with people having more options, or variants around to play (or not, as one likes). Not that I have to design them, but anyway.

There might be some fuss about tournament style decisions or scoring, but I would think some compromise could be drawn up -- if devs really wanted to anyway. (I doubt from the sound of it that they would lately... But I wouldn't be against the idea.)

[Shtopit]

There are two problems with wand monsters: they must be immediately and clearly distinguishable, and they must give you a way to save yourself when you meet them. They are related, but I find that the former is easier to securely implement than the latter.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Fantastic ghosts and where to find them.

It's easy, just play MuSu of Chei and get a player ghost with Sticky Flame one tile away from you after entering Bailey with no exit in view, the ghost will laugh at your AC/EV and will take care of your rF-.

[ezero]

like i would play mummy...

[VeryAngryFelid]

You are reading my mind. May I suggest inexperienced players to refrain from making comments about balance?

[ezero]

You are not reading mine though. You think i wouldnt play a mummy because its weak? I wouldnt play it because its a very poorly designed race that only exists to fill an idea of a niche for the players to try out. What would be like if the game had no clock, no potions, no poison and no negative energy... what happens to the game when you start taking things away from it...

[mibe420]

Uniques chance of spawning and spawning depths for monsters are selected by the developers and are presumably balanced to enhance gameplay. But with a ghost its just a random grab bag.

Ghost's strength is presumably balanced by the developers. See? i can make no sense too.

But ghost strength and spawning location are not balanced by anybody, its just based on who has recently died on the server.

How did I not make sense?

[ezero]

Uniques chance of spawning and spawning depths for monsters are selected by the developers and are presumably balanced to enhance gameplay. But with a ghost its just a random grab bag.

Ghost's strength is presumably balanced by the developers. See? i can make no sense too.

But ghost strength and spawning location are not balanced by anybody, its just based on who has recently died on the server.

How did I not make sense?

If you can assume the developers of this game balanced this game properly how do you also believe that a ghost, someone who died due to not being strong enough is a umbalanced threat for the next player who comes by? How does a ghost becomes such a gigantic threat that somehow died in the same place the next player is surviving through?

Lets not talk about griefing, the amount of work to grief is immensely higher than the amount of work to dismiss this griefing. And bots shouldnt be running on servers, this is ludicrous. Run your bot offline or on a private fork or something.

[NhorianScum]

Stuff.

Early Sp/Ce ghost with a weapon of venom/drain/elec/disto.

"balance"

Since these are strong races and the bestest early brands this is not even remotely uncommon even outside of intentional griefing.

[ezero]

So uncommon i never find them, probably because those races with good gear are VERY unlikely to die. Do you bother if i compare them with regular enemies? because a orc wizard, who can spawn on the first floor(unless it was changed with the spawns removal) with any of those brands is just as dangerous.

[Hellmonk]

I think this ghost difficulty argument largely misses the point. Yes, DCSS doesn't make much of an attempt at balancing ghosts and that leads to very stupid things getting generated that should not get generated (both too strong and too weak). I don't think that "occasionally a ghost is dangerous" is the biggest problem with ghost balance, though. Obviously shit like D:6 glaciate ghosts are indefensible, but unreasonably difficult ghosts are very rare in my experience. The bigger ghost balance problem is that the majority of them are boring sacks of defensive stats that are incredibly unpleasant to fight but aren't threatening. When your choice is between dealing with a 20 AC 70 Hp melee-only monster on D:6 or doing stupid ass metagaming stuff like running shaftbot, there is a problem with the game. Just make ghosts optional already.

[VeryAngryFelid]

So uncommon i never find them, probably because those races with good gear are VERY unlikely to die. Do you bother if i compare them with regular enemies? because a orc wizard, who can spawn on the first floor(unless it was changed with the spawns removal) with any of those brands is just as dangerous.

It does not matter how likely or unlikely something is. It happens. If we have an easy way to fix it, we should fix it.
Are you seriously comparing Orc Wizard (9-20 HP, AC 2, MR 20, needs to have Haste and spend little time on cantrip) with an XL 5 CeFi ghost who was using a trident of draining, regular shield and +3 chain mail?

[duvessa]

this sure is a lot of words

[ezero]

Are you seriously comparing Orc Wizard (9-20 HP, AC 2, MR 20, needs to have Haste and spend little time on cantrip) with an XL 5 CeFi ghost who was using a trident of draining, regular shield and +3 chain mail?

No, im comparing the probabilities, not whos stronger.

[NhorianScum]

So uncommon i never find them, probably because those races with good gear are VERY unlikely to die. Do you bother if i compare them with regular enemies? because a orc wizard, who can spawn on the first floor(unless it was changed with the spawns removal) with any of those brands is just as dangerous.

No. Just No.

[ezero]

Do i have to spoon feed you? d:1 orc wizard = d:3 player ghost in the sense of "you lost the game", heck why did i even bother with orc wizard. Here:

Untitled-11.jpg (166.38 KiB) Viewed 12008 times

versus

Untitled-12.jpg (220.63 KiB) Viewed 12008 times

which of the three is more likely to lose the game?

Untitled-13.jpg (263.52 KiB) Viewed 12008 times

[Shard1697]

the first, but that's primarily because they're on d1 and your other examples are lair and onwards

more importantly this thread keeps going in circles around how the main problem is not how dangerous ghosts are, it's that they're usually not dangerous because they often don't do scary things at range and can't follow you up stairs, BUT despite not being dangerous usually they take forever to kill(or are not reasonably killable) because they have huge defensive stats due to being based off players, and also have undead resistances. ghosts generally just mean you walk back to stairs a hell of a lot more often than they mean any kind of meaningful gameplay challenge. hell, take a look at your own examples-there's interesting things going on in the 1st and 3rd, but in the 2nd it's just stairdance city.

because it seems like some people itt are just sidestepping the actual problems with ghosts I'm gonna quote that whole hellmonk post instead of linking it so there's no excuse not to read it

Due to recent events on the CBRO server, I feel compelled to make yet another post about player ghosts. Player ghosts are an extreme case of poor design and are possibly the worst feature in DCSS. There's so much wrong with ghosts that it's hard to know where to start, but I think these are the four biggest problems with them. None of these arguments are new, but I feel like they should be brought up again since no major changes to player ghosts appear to be forthcoming.

• Player ghosts are essentially impossible to balance. They have a massive range of possible attributes based on the character that died (including HP, AC, EV, spell selection, melee damage, melee weapon brand, movement speed, resistances) and zero checks to ensure that they are a reasonable spawn for their dungeon level. Hence you can get a D:6 ghost with glaciate or you can get a spriggan ghost with no spells and 1 melee damage. A lot of player attributes don't translate well to monsters, which exacerbates this problem. I am thinking specifically of AC, where 20 is endgame material for monsters and achievable in lair for players. Then there's stuff like monster dazzling spray, which works different from the player spell for no apparent reason other than to make conjurer and wizard ghosts abnormally dangerous. Other monsters can get pushed around or have stats tweaked to make them an appropriate threat; ghosts cannot because of the way they're generated.
• The vast majority of ghosts are not interesting. People complain about bullshit deaths from eg. D:3 CeCK ghosts, but to me that is infinitely preferable to the typical ghost. Dangerous early ghosts can present interesting scenarios. Instead, most online earlygame ghosts are speed 10 melee only monsters with too much HP and AC but that can't climb stairs, so you get to manually explore floors while stairdancing repeatedly. Others are weak enough that you can kill them, stairdancing once or twice if the fight goes poorly. Lategame ghosts are almost all trivial bags of experience. I have seen perhaps two semi-interesting ghosts in all of my online games, but I've gotten dozens of annoying ones. Regular monsters could replicate the couple scenarios where a ghost is actually interesting, except they could do it reliably and their balance could be tweaked as needed.
• Ghosts encourage checking morgues. In addition to examining every ghost, you should always check the player's morgue. You get to see the exact AC and EV, which are not shown in game, so this is still worth doing even now that damage is displayed.
• Ghosts encourage metagaming. The number and danger level of ghosts depends on which server you play on, or the history of your DCSS install if you play offline. There are lots of ways that you can abuse this. You can run a shaftbot, or manually suicide formicids on an alt, before entering a new floor to reduce your chance of dealing with ghosts. You can also check how many players are dying and what combos they’re dying on before you start a game, and avoid hours when bots are playing to avoid getting their annoying ghosts. While actually griefing with a bot set up to run CeCK will get you banned, running a MiBe bot probably won’t and is almost as annoying. It is bad in principle that this kind of behavior could give someone an advantage.

The typical defense for player ghosts is that they provide interactivity. Assuming that this is desirable, it would be better to have a dungeon feature, like a gravestone, than a monster. Moving over it could give you information on the player that died: "Here lies dickylongcocking the poker, merfolk of okawaru". This would decouple interactivity from game balance. An alternative solution is to let players opt out of generating or receiving ghosts. This solution has been proposed and rejected in the past because it has an impact on balance, but ghosts already have an impact on balance because you can play on a different server if you want to get more/fewer/different ghosts. Naturally, complete ghost removal is an option as well. Any of these solutions would be preferable to the status quo. The current system of player ghost generation is not tenable.

[ezero]

how do you stairdance 2 ghosts to death when theres only one access... nevermind. How do you think i killed mara, ilsuiw and polyphemus in shoals as a naga? This thread will keep going in circles whenever you state something that happens with player ghosts and dismisses that it also happens with every other enemy in the game. Thats why i asked for whats uniquely bad to ghosts(and i have already received the link and read it, thanks). So i apologise for dragging this on, you can lock this thread for all i care, i have nothing else to add.

[mibe420]

If you can assume the developers of this game balanced this game properly how do you also believe that a ghost, someone who died due to not being strong enough is a umbalanced threat for the next player who comes by? How does a ghost becomes such a gigantic threat that somehow died in the same place the next player is surviving through?

Lets not talk about griefing, the amount of work to grief is immensely higher than the amount of work to dismiss this griefing. And bots shouldnt be running on servers, this is ludicrous. Run your bot offline or on a private fork or something.

Maybe you didn't understand what I meant by 'balanced to enhance gameplay'. I didn't mean balanced to be easy, or hard, or even to be fair. I never mentioned ghost difficulty. I mean the devs decides Ijyb can spawn on d:3 because they think it makes the game more fun, it could easily be changed to spawn on d:4 instead if it was better for the game.

With ghosts you can have the equivalent of a komodo dragon on d:4, or you could have a rat that gives as much exp as grinder, or you could have a spriggan who casts dazzling spray. It all varies from game to game, from server to server.

There is no way to balance what sort of gameplay you get from ghosts.

[Shard1697]

if either of them doesn't have huge defenses you reset the fight until you get lucky rolls and kill one, and if they're not you can still make progress forward by walking away from them, pulling other enemies to the stairs and taking them up with you to kill safely because the ghosts don't get enough attacks to threaten you if you do this carefully(since you can reset at basically any time since the ghosts can't follow you) if they aren't unreasonably lethal(which you should check via morgues upon meeting them, which is also a problem with ghosts), and if you ever commit to a fight against them you always get to escape for free and try again because they can't follow you. or you read one teleport scroll, which you have plenty of, go down a different set of stairs, pull one ghost, and stairdance it to death at a different set of stairs. and it's far worse when you don't have 2 ghosts at one entrance, which is almost always the case. normal stairdancing is nowhere near as degenerate as repeatedly resetting until you get good RNG, which is often the right idea vs player ghosts.

enemies not being able to follow you up stairs, having huge defenses, and sometimes being extremely unreasonably lethal are all things that absolutely do not happen with every other enemy in the game.

[ezero]

  Code:

             Slain by a centaur
             ... wielding the +8 dagger "Weedd" {venom, *Contam rPois rC+++ MR-}
              (12 damage)

The devs decided that absurdly strong weapons can generate early on vault rooms, which are populated with enemies that can usually walk over it and pick it up because they think it makes the game more fun.

[ezero]

enemies not being able to follow you up stairs,

You realised that its not whether or not a enemy follows you uptairs thats the problem, but having stairs in the first place? or just having a bad clock? Any enemy who can blink is basically a more annoying undead to kill, how do you think a killed ilsuiw and mara? luring them? no, wait on the stairs until their rng dies out and they just hug you for a while, if they blink, reset. Thats fun i guess...

[tabstorm]

can that D:6 glaciate ghost actually spawn online or are there further restrictions based on XL?

[Doesnt]

The game doesn't constrict ghosts by XL at all, although realistically that'd only happen due to either trolling or orbrun death.

[duvessa]

can that D:6 glaciate ghost actually spawn online or are there further restrictions based on XL?

https://webzook.net/soup/morgue/trunk/okmg321/morgue-okmg321-20170404-144254.txt

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ezero. You argue pro ghosts in a very wierd way: you agree that they are bad but then you keep mentioning other monsters who share their problems. I don't know what to tell you except what I have already told: presence of other problems is not an excuse.

[stoneychips]

Ezero. You argue pro ghosts in a very wierd way: you agree that they are bad but then you keep mentioning other monsters who share their problems. I don't know what to tell you except what I have already told: presence of other problems is not an excuse.

I don't know about Ezero, but I wouldn't argue the other uniques are necessarily bad enough to get removed either (certainly not all of them). Tweaks might be in order if I were one to consistently argue for balance. I don't know that I'm personally quite that consistently concerned to go there.

It also depends on what you consider a limit case. For me, it's precisely that I'm not sure if I understand the principle of various people upset with ghosts well enough. If I don't find a consistent argument held by most of the annoyed there (not saying people should not have differing reasons), but a few people are screaming remove: Then I have to think about both, do I want this particular thing just removed and also what else would get removed if the same logic is true?

For what it's worth, the fact that there have been threads upset about ghosts before isn't sufficient proof in my mind that they need to simply go away (perhaps be tweaked, I wouldn't mind though). There are also many responses out there, if not whole threads, more about how to deal with them and carry on. Neither fact is really enough to "prove" anything... Except that together there's a great range of opinions about whether they're especially problematic for play -- or at least, how much.

Again, yeah tweak the ghosts for particular foibles in scaling and translation/maybe some drops even, or make it an optional feature (although tournament and/or regular scoreboard scoring compromise might be a bit of hell to argue over after that, I bet it could be done though).

I just can't really get on the wagon where some people seem to want them just gone. There's nearly a whole Crawl game full of stuff that people are saying could be removed across umpteen threads, and I have to see first how much of it would be for pretty much the same reasons. I happen to like a fair bit of random-ness in a "dungeon" theme (heck I kinda miss 27 levels D although it could take quite a while). So when people are saying just remove this and that feature that either I enjoy or basically doesn't bother me terribly most of the time and adds something a touch out of the ordinary, I want to be a little careful about "Why exactly this and not the rest of it, too? Or else, what is going to be next? And after that?"

You think i wouldnt play a mummy because its weak? I wouldnt play it because its a very poorly designed race that only exists to fill an idea of a niche for the players to try out. What would be like if the game had no clock, no potions, no poison and no negative energy... what happens to the game when you start taking things away from it...

I don't know about actually playing mummies or how balanced or not they really are. But yes, I agree with the concern for where things are going when certain arguments are raised, if people were consistent across dealing with the whole game. Personally, I'm perhaps more concerned about people wishing for so many removals that the game becomes checkers. The more extreme cases often say they're looking for chess as a guiding ideal (which also is most certainly not Crawl -- chess has a more simple, non-random heart)... But I'd like to think that even those are still imagining some forward push toward an Orb might be left somewhere. Thus checkers. I could maybe be wrong.

[stoneychips]

I suppose there could also be a simple rough analogy:

Is hellfire too awful for extended players to be faced with, or is it a key part of how Crawl is and should be to provide humility-horror-some extreme form of balance or whatever?

And based on whatever you feel about hellfire, what should happen to it and then what should happen with ghosts?

Actually, I quite like this question because it seems much of the time, people talk about changing features that disproportionately affect the early portion of the game... And yet, it's often people who clearly are able to go near or into extended, who are bringing up these things without always discussing whatever the relationship is between their time in extended and the recommendations they are making. (I rarely get to much extended since oh 0.17 it seems... But I do find the impact and frequency of hellfire a bit much!)

So... I'd say tweak either resistances (so that hellfire isn't quite so reliably devastating) or lessen the frequency of mobs with hellfire at least. To be roughly consistent, I wouldn't mind greater ghost powers (bolts of draining, OOD spell sets, OOD number of pips in stats perhaps) being capped and thereby toned down in the system. With the note that I feel that so far, I've actually had a lot more trouble with hellfire than with ghosts, for the levels you encounter these things at.

I suppose your server-mates could perhaps abuse the ghost system just to be annoying and purposefully produce OOD monsters as things are -- which they won't so generally be able to do with hellfire. And I also suppose, while we're at it, that there must be quite a few ways to "abuse" the scoring system -- ghosts or no ghosts, if one has the patience or will to annoy. I still think tweaking (or possibly rendering the feature optional) rather than removal would be ideal, though.

[VeryAngryFelid]

If ghosts are fixed to be balanced, they are no longer ghosts, just random monsters inspired by ghosts and then they can be generated no matter if some player died on the level or not. Really similar to pan lords.

Once again, why current ghosts are different from uniques and cannot be fixed:
1) They can be unkillable. For instance, no monster has AC 30 and 120 HP on Lair 6 and this is typical for a HO in heavy armour. Should I prove that unkillable monsters are bad or do you agree that retreating 50+ tiles to upstairs is not fun?
2) They cannot use stairs so you can try killing them multiple times with zero chance to die (just retreat upstairs) until you are lucky with damage rolls. I remember games where I killed a ghost from 4th attempt. Why can't they use stairs? Because of previous point: they can be unkillable so not using stairs is a band aid.
3) They can have crazy resistances. All ghosts are immune to draining, venom. I remember ghosts with rF++, rC++ and rElec. It's ok for late game monsters but even then crystal guardians have just 42-86 HP.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Hellfire is optional, I haven't entered extended for ages...

[watertreatmentRL]

can that D:6 glaciate ghost actually spawn online or are there further restrictions based on XL?

https://webzook.net/soup/morgue/trunk/okmg321/morgue-okmg321-20170404-144254.txt

He wasn't a true firebug. Fire cannot kill a firebug.

[stoneychips]

If ghosts are fixed to be balanced, they are no longer ghosts, just random monsters inspired by ghosts and then they can be generated no matter if some player died on the level or not. Really similar to pan lords.

I don't really understand this. Are you recommending that it should be adjusted such that they should be potentially generated in various other ways...

Or are you saying that's technically the only way to do it? I don't see why the latter should have to be true, actually. Is it "just so" in coder land? I don't know the code that runs the game.

Once again, why current ghosts are different from uniques and cannot be fixed:
1) They can be unkillable. For instance, no monster has AC 30 and 120 HP on Lair 6 and this is typical for a HO in heavy armour. Should I prove that unkillable monsters are bad or do you agree that retreating 50+ tiles to upstairs is not fun?

So what, there is some hard wiring thing that can never be changed so they can not possibly be related to the level? Ghost code is god? (And does this apply to anything else in the game, if so? How much or often?)

2) They cannot use stairs so you can try killing them multiple times with zero chance to die (just retreat upstairs) until you are lucky with damage rolls. I remember games where I killed a ghost from 4th attempt. Why can't they use stairs? Because of previous point: they can be unkillable so not using stairs is a band aid.

I'm curious about this... What of the times when the ghost is patrolling a narrow space you want to move through... If only you could drag the damn thing upstairs and kite it away from your path on a level with more space, so you could go back on down and get moving again?

We don't have to kill everything in the game in order of appearance every time. (If one believed we did, then for consistency they should probably want most to all uniques just gone too, and probably next every sub-boss after that, and I'm not so sure about going there.) I would modify hellmonk's statement about just not being able to kill stuff... How about just, not being able to "get on" with stuff sometime, as a more important question?

Okay, and I ignored your objection to stair-dancing, because that's become so common in the whole game I don't really know where to begin. (Except that I think "zero chance" can be dubious with the randomness of some movement computations, but it depends on what exactly each character/ghost has sure.)

3) They can have crazy resistances. All ghosts are immune to draining, venom. I remember ghosts with rF++, rC++ and rElec. It's ok for late game monsters but even then crystal guardians have just 42-86 HP.

And this can never ever be tweaked or capped by coders why, again? I'm still missing that info.

I also still say, it isn't all that often that I meet a ghost I have felt there has been nearly no chance to kill or escape. I do get the hair standing up thing. There are some that are damn nigh inescapable (just had to disintegrate some spriggan ghost heh), and there are quite a few where it's a darn close fight. But there are almost always some completely regular mobs in these boats, too. Is one or two more in the form of a ghost, occasionally, all that big a deal? Generally though... There is a whole lot to be said for having a balanced character -- carrying missile weapons, not relying on only one elemental school for offense, building some defense any way you can, saving consumables for only the very worst fights like ghosts and ogres/centaurs etc. depending on your particular weaknesses, learning not to use teleport on less extreme cases. Stuff goes a long way. There have been threads about this too, I'm sure.

(I'm not 100% sure if they are all still immune to venom, could have sworn I poisoned one or two ghosts somewhere somehow -- I'm confused about this honestly as I don't think it was normally possible, but that's a very minor question compared to the rest.)

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am not recommending to adjust ghosts. Some players mentioned that ghosts can be fixed (no orb run ghosts, for example, or decreased AC/HP/resistances to make them killable etc.) and I am saying that those won't be ghosts, just normal monsters.

Luring ghosts out of area which I want to explore is primary method of dealing with dangerous "melee only" ghosts indeed. Another reason why ghosts are bad.

Again, if ghosts are tweaked, they are no longer ghosts. I wrote it before in this thread but I will repeat it again: if some ghosts are interesting, just create normal monsters or uniques based on that. I mean if you like to have a Sp with Confuse and dagger of draining, just add it to the game. You can even call it Enchantress

Edit. Sorry, I am tired of arguing, this thread is pointless

[mibe420]

So when people are saying just remove this and that feature that either I enjoy or basically doesn't bother me terribly most of the time and adds something a touch out of the ordinary, I want to be a little careful about "Why exactly this and not the rest of it, too? Or else, what is going to be next? And after that?"

Maybe I can explain my thought process. Why ghosts and not the rest of it too? Ghosts are the only feature in the game, that depend on a factor outside of the game. Every game you start will have the same chances of running into sigmund on d:2, running into a centaur with a nasty wand, or any other dangerous or controversial feature. But your chance of running into ghosts depends on what other players are doing, and how poplular your server is. If you play offline, it depends on how many games you have played since you emptied your bones file.

Other players may have other problems with ghosts, but this is my primary issue. Ever since I had the idea of shaftrobin, I have always had this thought in the back of my mind when I encounter a ghost, that I could have made this not happen. It's true that 9/10 the ghost isnt dangerous, and I can easily avoid it with stairs. Most ghosts are normal speed monsters with no spells. So I start exploring the level and see the ghost, run back to stairs. Explore again, see the ghost again, run to stairs. With unfavorable rolls the ghost can kill me in 3 or 4 turns. So I dont fight it, but its free to retreat from.

Occasionally I meet a ghost that is fast or knows dazzling spray or throw icicle, or any of the other spells that are extremely dangerous in the early game. Then again, I think I could have avoided this by playing several shaftrobin games. 9/10 times this happens you can escape it with luck or consumables, and dive the floor. But there is still that issue that you could have spawned this ghost on another game, a game that is just a formicid shafting for 30 seconds. And your 'real' game would have had no ghost.

Once you reach lair I think ghosts are pretty much a non issue. Unless you are very unlucky and a dangerous ghost does the worst thing it can do when it enters LOS, most ghosts are easy to escape from or avoid. In the mid game and beyond ghosts are irrelevant, you can be powerful enough to kill easily or have enough options to avoid entirely. Its always the early game, pre lair ghosts that annoy me and force me to think about how all it takes to avoid is 'dummy' games to spawn all the ghosts.

I dont think its really analogous to damnation/hellfire. That feature is the same in every game you play, and I think it is reasonably designed and balanced. There are multiple ways to handle any situation involving damnation. If I was wrong and people disagree, hellfire could be tweaked to do less damage, be on different enemies, etc etc.

But ghosts as implented right now can not be balanced. Hellmonk said it better than I could so here you go

Player ghosts are essentially impossible to balance. They have a massive range of possible attributes based on the character that died (including HP, AC, EV, spell selection, melee damage, melee weapon brand, movement speed, resistances) and zero checks to ensure that they are a reasonable spawn for their dungeon level. Hence you can get a D:6 ghost with glaciate or you can get a spriggan ghost with no spells and 1 melee damage. A lot of player attributes don't translate well to monsters, which exacerbates this problem. I am thinking specifically of AC, where 20 is endgame material for monsters and achievable in lair for players. Then there's stuff like monster dazzling spray, which works different from the player spell for no apparent reason other than to make conjurer and wizard ghosts abnormally dangerous. Other monsters can get pushed around or have stats tweaked to make them an appropriate threat; ghosts cannot because of the way they're generated.