How to Defeat Luring

[Shtopit]

Luring is bad, it kicks puppets and killed Harambe. However, there is a way to defeat it; it is a serious proposal, but it also is very different from general Crawl design.

Essentially, instead of following you, groups of monsters should start fortifying the area they are in. Build siege weapons, create lightning spires, plant oklob seeds, set traps, permanently summon demons. Splat walls with acid, place bush-like obstacles. The more time you give them, the better they'll prepare themselves.

It doesn't need to always happen. Animals, especially fast animals, wouldn't be able to. And, maybe, there should be engineers (like "kobold engineer", "orc engineer", and so on), and this thing should only happen when they are present. Each species could have slightly different "fortifications".

Any opinions?

[PseudoLoneWolf]

This is, like you said, _very_ different from existing Crawl design. I think that many parts of the game would have to be tweaked or changed outright in order to support this.

However, I love it - particularly with the inclusion of Engineers. An Engineer should always spawn with a pack of allies, who will (G)uard the area the Engineer is in like player allies do when given that command. Engineers will try to run away at low health, but otherwise will park in their spawn location and start fortifying.

Kobold engineers will set up stone launchers and net traps.
Orc engineers can plant plants, and place low spellpower lightning spires.
Centaur and Gnoll engineers can set up ballistas (a significantly more dangerous version of the stone launcher) and stronger lightning spires.
Certain necromancers should be able to shack up with a bunch of derived undead and fortify an area with spectral flame traps, phantom spawners, zombie dispensers, or even just a Rotting Statue that generates clouds of miasma around the place until broken.

I see potential in this, for a fork if not for mainline. This could be really interesting.

[Sorcerous]

I would disagree with this anti-luring design. Luring can (and frequently does) lead to gameplay that is boring, predictable, and (personal bias) cowardly. This being said, it also allows for survival when going all out will end with "you die..." A coward knows when to turn and run, and thus survive to take to a fight again. It takes at least some measure of intelligence to understand charging at a group of smiters is liable to fail horribly, or that an early game char should probably settle for a luring approach when lacking options. Crawl is already a very difficult game, and I can't agree with a change in design that will make it even more difficult/spoiler reliant for inexperienced players and will just annoy or slightly inconvenience veterans.

The idea of monster groups having defensive tactics is interesting, but just imagine a scenario like the ones you outlined in practice: an oklob plant (or three) would just make a bad situation much worse, especially if there's suddenly a row of bushes around it to let it spit acid at you with impunity. Newly built traps could be more in line with existing gameplay elements, so I wouldn't mind a "trapper" variant added to the game. Unfortunately, this would only mean these new "trappers" would become priority targets, get rekt, and the luring possibilities would return just the same. Having this change hinge on an enemy template just means gaming against that particular type, much like how smite/torment capable enemies are now.
Fortifications - eh, maybe? I don't know how much you're talking in terms of terrain modification, and I'm feeling apprehensive.

Would you be willing to consider a more streamlined approach to existing groups of enemies, with something like squad tactics as a response instead of static obstructions? Along the lines of taking time to adjust formations to give beefy ones a frontline presence, with buffers/debuffers and ranged threats taking up positions towards the back of the group or diagonally from your char's point of exit (all the better to snipe from). This would mean no changes to the existing enemies as separate entities, and would mean pseudo-AI scripts in terms of "lure assessment" or "regroup/reposition". A lot of existing enemies will move away during a group encounter anyway.

Your thoughts? Maybe forking would work, if not a mainline addition.

[TheMeInTeam]

It'd be hard to do w/o reworking even basics like the game's XP system. Players could also pin monsters into camping and then simply apport any relevant loot --> back off/run away with impunity.

[RoGGa]

these are good ideas but before anything can be considered, I think we need to improve the AI for intelligent monsters...especially when the player retreats behind a corner.

[tealizard]

This sounds like a variation of the failed "bezotting" experiment, with a lot less bite. Keeping the monsters close to where they generate is good, but allowing the player to decline to engage with them is bad. The stakes sound pretty low, pretty much just the xp loss of leaving monsters alive. It's hard to tell from the proposal what happens when the player decides to come back for something later.

I don't think there's a satisfactory solution based on monster behavior. It's more of a problem with the way the dungeon works than the monsters.

[delarado]

My completely unhelpful post of the night is the thought of somehow integrating dwarf fortress with DCSS, where the monsters are the dwarfs. You are the vagrant home wrecker come from far away to destroy their creation.

Its a million miles away but it could be quite fun to have a "me vs everyone" game where the enemy constantly tries to rebuild and fortify the areas you attack, yet you get stronger the more you destroy. Kinda like imagine each branch started with low level monsters, but regenerated with harder monsters as the game progress. You could clear spider until it got too hard, then pop over to shoals for some more XP and then come back to spider to kill the legions of emporer scorpions

[Sorcerous]

My completely unhelpful post of the night is the thought of somehow integrating dwarf fortress with DCSS, where the monsters are the dwarfs. You are the vagrant home wrecker come from far away to destroy their creation.

Its a million miles away but it could be quite fun to have a "me vs everyone" game where the enemy constantly tries to rebuild and fortify the areas you attack, yet you get stronger the more you destroy. Kinda like imagine each branch started with low level monsters, but regenerated with harder monsters as the game progress. You could clear spider until it got too hard, then pop over to shoals for some more XP and then come back to spider to kill the legions of emporer scorpions

This reads like it should be in a completely different thread. Also, I've heard a lot of internet noise about DF. Is it really that amazing of a game?
Asking for myself, naturally.

[tasonir]

It's a good game but it's not very newbie friendly. I still include that warning even in a roguelike forum, which are already difficult games, but dwarf fortress is even worse. I did a few test games but never really got that far into it, so I'm probably still a scrub. It's more of a city management/simulation than an RPG, although if I remember correctly there's also an RPG mode, because why not.