Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?


If it doesn't fit anywhere else, it belongs here. Also, come here if you just need to get hammered.

What do you think about shaft effects?

Shaft effects are alright as they are
19
49%
Probability should be slightly reduced
4
10%
Probability should be reduced
3
8%
Probability should be strongly reduced
5
13%
Shaft effects should be removed
8
21%
 
Total votes : 39
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 07:42

Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I recently made two topics about what I called unavoidable deaths after chars were shafted. It turned out that the death of my DsHu (Bad luck or yet another shaft death?) was avoidable as well as the death of Nebukadnezar's TrCj (Yet another shaft death ended streak of Nebukadnezar).

Nevertheless, I don't like it as it is.

In another recent game my char died on spider:4 - I was low on emergency options because of earlier shaft problems. E.g. my char fell down from spider:2 to spider:3 and was surrounded by so many foes that I used two blink scrolls. Having these scrolls in spider:4 would have saved my char.

So what do you think about exploration based shaft effects?

(The other exploration based effects - mark, teleport - seem to be a lesser problem but comments about these are welcome as well.)


*******

Edit:
When I made this poll I forgot that a similar question was already asked in January by delarado: Shafts - Too common now? Thanks to bel who reminded me of this topic in one of the answers below.
Last edited by Turukano on Thursday, 28th November 2019, 20:14, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 08:54

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I know that there are at least two kinds of players in crawl: seasoned players, who are capable of surviving almost anything and regular players. Seasoned players are the elite, they relish danger, enjoy it and think these modifications are welcome because the “game is too easy”. They state that, with perfect play, it was always possible to survive.
I am not one of them. I don’t like teleports, shafting or marks. I have lost characters to all of them, some of them in Zot: 5.
I have always felt cheated after having invested so much time in a char and then have it killed by a bunch of mobs in a situation I don’t control because I was suddenly teleported in the middle of 6 OoF, 2 ancient liches, 1 or 2 killer clowns and assorted other nasties.
I’m currently in a game where I found a ring with -Tele. I partied (yay, if this guy survives to Zot: 5 he will not die to the stupid teleport traps. But he can still be shafted or marked in places where he will have a hard time escaping.
It’s true that marking can be mitigated by very disciplined manual exploration. I frankly have no patience for manual exploration. It sounds too much like a job. I play crawl to have fun, not to perform dredging, boring work.
I wish some of these things could be opted out but would be marked on the morgues.
Then elite players could play their games with higher difficulty settings while common folk like me could enjoy their, aham, limited, if somewhat brainless activity.
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 10:18

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I do find some of the new trap interactions annoying - an obnoxious one has to be the alarm/*teleport trap on downstairs, which enforces a penalty for playing the game as intended. Not sure if taking one-way hatches down instead of stairs would have the same probability of producing the exact same trap interactions, but by all accounts it would. Scouring the dungeon or farming one of the endless branches to obtain {-Tele} is also a very bad thing imo. It introduces a needless and ugly priority in terms of item properties, and that just isn't good for a game with an emphasis on diverse character builds and player agency. My vote is for a slight reduction, however. While the rework of traps and their link to exploration has made the game (on the whole) more likely to screw players over, it has also provided new challenges for us to think our way through. And I'm saying this as a slightly filthy casual.
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 11:12

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Where is the "Probability should be increased" option ?
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 12:58

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I don't often suggest removing things from Crawl, but maybe the -Tele property should just be removed from items (except fixedarts). It encourages tedious behaviour.

Otherwise I don't have an opinion about teleportation traps yet, but if I do die on Zot:5 because of them, I will probably have one... So far the current traps haven't killed me and shafts are ok by me.
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 16:12

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

The reasoning is somewhat unclear. Are you talking about shafts in general, or just the new exploration-based system?

All the new system does (in principle) is to have shafts depend on exploration instead of having an actual shaft trap tile on the floor. The trap rate was toned down from when it was initially implemented, but it might still be a bit higher than it used to be, especially in the later game (not sure on this, but the numbers shouldn't be too different either way).

So is your question a poll about how high the rate should be? Or do you dislike shafts in general and want them reduced, or gone?
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 16:27

bel wrote:Are you talking about shafts in general, or just the new exploration-based system?

I mean the trap overhaul in 0.23 which leads to epxloration-based traps.

bel wrote:So is your question a poll about how high the rate should be? Or do you dislike shafts in general and want them reduced, or gone?

Now that you asked I made my vote as well. In my opinion shaft effects happen much too often so I voted for should be strongly reduced.

Note that I care about turncount and always explore manually.
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 16:36

Fingolfin wrote:Where is the "Probability should be increased" option ?

I should have made a bet that this question shows up, I would have won. :-)

But I expected somebody else to ask it.

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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 16:37

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Would being shafted feel more fun/fair if it was coupled to some kind of reward? (like a consumable or quasi-acquirement or shop placement?)

(I'm asking the people who dislike shafts)

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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 19:06

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

About -Tele items: personally, I don't go out of my way to find one. But it is true that now I hold on to them while in the old days I avoided them. If someone is advocating they should be removed because their existence entices people to perform boring play to get them then the fix is probably to remove the cause of their value: tele traps. Marks can be solved by potions of cancellation and/or always ensuring a large range is available around stairs. Tele traps need -Tele. Shafts are the worse. There no immediate solution for them.
My suggestion is: make them optional or remove them. People who like these effects can even increase their frequency if they want.

I like the new ghost system. If you don't like ghosts, leave them alone.
How about this: more "gauntlets" and remove these new traps. People can see the kind of monsters, but not their placement and they know that, at the end, there are a lot of goodies.
You find a timed portal. By entering it, you get into a kind of arena with a new level with lots of monsters where you'll probably need your wits to survive. This is kind of like shafting where you can be thrown into nasty situations, or like being teleported into the lungs of Zot: 5. At the end there are prized, something like the end of Slime or Tomb.

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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 20:39

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I think shafts are ok, but every now and then they are not ok.

Getting shafted 3 floors from D:2 has happened to me a few times. As has getting shafted on D3 and then getting shafted again trying to get back upstairs.

IMO we need to:

-Decrease probability of shafting if player has recently been shafted
-Limit the number of floors a player can be shafted to 1 up until d:4

I think that keeps the danger/fun element without the unfairness element.
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 20:59

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

petercordia wrote:Would being shafted feel more fun/fair if it was coupled to some kind of reward? (like a consumable or quasi-acquirement or shop placement?)

(I'm asking the people who dislike shafts)


Yes and no - the obvious reward for surviving shafts is confidence ("I got gud, yay!") and disproportionate amounts of XP if you snag some solid kills on the way back. Sometimes even loot. I suppose the risks involved are much worse for inexperienced players who are prone to 1) panicked decisions 2) not knowing how useful/ powerful some options are. Current game had a 1- and 3-floor surprise. Paid with wand charges, 1 !immolation - got a lightning rod, acid wand, and a level out it, now on L: entrance.
  Code:
     0 | D:1      | Diosm the Gnoll Warper began the quest for the Orb.
     0 | D:1      | Reached XP level 1. HP: 20/20 MP: 6/6
   235 | D:1      | Reached XP level 2. HP: 26/26 MP: 7/7
   288 | D:1      | You fall through a shaft!
...
  7100 | D:10     | Noticed a death yak
  7230 | D:10     | You fall through a shaft for 3 floors!
  7322 | D:13     | Noticed a skeletal warrior
  7400 | D:12     | Noticed a deep elf mage
  7438 | D:12     | Killed a deep elf mage
  7464 | D:11     | Noticed Erolcha
  7472 | D:11     | Noticed Nergalle
  7484 | D:11     | Reached XP level 11. HP: 80/84 MP: 22/22
  7484 | D:11     | Killed Nergalle
  7484 | D:11     | Killed Erolcha
...
  7526 | D:11     | Found a flagged portal.
  7570 | Bailey   | Entered a bailey
...
  8502 | D:10     | Noticed a death yak
  8531 | D:10     | Found a staircase to the Lair.
  8532 | D:10     | Noticed a death yak
  8551 | D:10     | Killed a death yak
  8551 | D:10     | Killed a death yak
  8553 | D:10     | Killed a death yak


So, the first shaft wasn't really important because an upstairs was close by. The second could have been a splat, but staying calm about things instead gave serious XP. D:11 had both Ice and Bailey portals, and a welcoming party of yaks and two uniques.
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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 21:12

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

In case of shafting, maybe reducing the amount of shafting, probably the number of times the number of levels is 3 would be enough. For instance, having something like {1: 0.75, 2: 0.25 * 0.75, 3: 0.25 * 0.25} would be better. Some safeguards like not dropping to V: 5 or Zot: 5 would probably help as well.

It's true that surviving shafts gives a boost of confidence. I was in Vaults and got a shaft. My first reaction was "oh no, I'm going to die!" but was only shafted 2 levels to V: 4. I survived and was immensily pleased. Then again, it was an easy char.

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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 22:16

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I think all traps should be removed because they suck ass (and they incentivize ridiculously tedious behaviour).

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Post Thursday, 28th November 2019, 23:38

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I think it's important to define WHY people think shafts are bad. That's the first step to improving the situation.

This comment is illuminating:
I recently made two topics about what I called unavoidable deaths after chars were shafted. It turned out that the death of my DsHu was avoidable as well as the death of Nebukadnezar's TrCj.

Nevertheless, I don't like it as it is.

Shafts don't lead to many "unavoidable deaths". Or at least, the people who claim they do haven't posted many (any?) examples.

But shafts feel bad to many players. And not just a little bad, a lot bad. Other mechanics with similar dislike are malmutation and paralysis. I think there is a common reason these mechanics are disliked so much. They are a startling loss of control in a game which is otherwise about the player having full control at all times.

Sure, once the mechanic happens to you (you're shafted, you get mutated), there are counterplay options. But before the mechanic happens the player can do nothing to minimise the risk.

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 00:48

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

But there are a ton of things you can do to minimize the risk of malmutation and paralysis before they happen...

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 01:52

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Remove shaft effects, remove upstairs. It's the tried and true formula.

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 13:20

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Why do most people complaining about shafts claim they've started disliking shafts specifically after those were made exploration-based? I mean... I refuse to believe all of you have ACTUALLY been using exclusion carpet lol.

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 17:50

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Just got *two* marks while on Orc: 2. This is new. The number of marks by exploration is way off.
It's true that most of the time it doesn't make any difference. For instance, in my case it didn't because the first one was 3 squares from the stairs and the other one was after killing everything.
But it is a bit too much. In a place like Depths or Zot it could be the death of me.

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 18:15

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Zhorgal wrote:In a place like Depths or Zot it could be the death of me.


A trap in a place where it could *not* be the death of you is quite pointless, isn't it.

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 19:08

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Stairdancer wrote:Why do most people complaining about shafts claim they've started disliking shafts specifically after those were made exploration-based?

Because shafts became 500% more common, that's why.

Stairdancer wrote:I mean... I refuse to believe all of you have ACTUALLY been using exclusion carpet lol.

What does that have to do with anything? Nobody ever used that (except UV4 in that one game), but it would be just as useful now as it was then.

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Post Friday, 29th November 2019, 20:18

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Magipi wrote:it would be just as useful now as it was then.

To be (perhaps overly nitpicky) technically it would not.

Since it's now not relevant what you step on, only what squares you reveal, using an exclusion carpet to prevent yourself from stepping on new squares isn't really important, since you can always just see what squares you haven't revealed and continue to not-reveal them with non-exclusion movement.

An exclusion carpet would let you use auto-travel without revealing any extra squares, but it wouldn't provide any additional tracking which isn't already available automatically. Additionally, since the new objective in trap minimization is to prevent *revealing more squares* it requires less effort to actually set up such an exclusion carpet, if desired (which it shouldn't be, don't do this, seriously) By comparison the old objective was to "reveal as many tiles as was required while stepping on as few distinct tiles as possible" which required using exclusions to track which tiles you had previously stepped on (Or I suppose pen and graph paper, or a eidetic memory)

Additionally, the "exclusion carpet for auto-travel" isn't of as much benefit as it is during initial exploration since auto-travel usually means backtracking across already-explored levels, and getting shafted from an already-explored level at full health to another already-explored level at full health isn't nearly as risky as being shafted during the initial exploration phase (So a significant portion of the use cases will not pose additional risk).

Of course that doesn't in any way negate this point:

Magipi wrote:What does that have to do with anything? Nobody ever used that (except UV4 in that one game)


The complaint is that being shafted is more common *in the new typical case* than they were *in the old typical case* the extreme/weird "optimal" tracking case isn't relevant or material to the complaint or the proposed resolution.
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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 09:40

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

"Unavoidable deaths" is kind of irrelevant, because almost no death in Crawl is strictly "unavoidable". However, we can tweak the idea to "difficulty level", or "chance of dying" to make the idea relevant.

I think the reason why shafts feel bad is the following: it can lead to a big spike in difficulty and it's completely out of control of the player. So, it can feel like the game has screwed you over for no reason at all. Your chance of dying is not very dependent on how you've played so far.

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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 09:57

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Magipi wrote:
Stairdancer wrote:Why do most people complaining about shafts claim they've started disliking shafts specifically after those were made exploration-based?

Because shafts became 500% more common, that's why.

Is that number true?

According to posts in the thread I linked above, the number of shafts over a won game has increased by about one shaft per game. It used to be 1.45 shafts per game, now it's 2.53 shafts per game. In percentage terms, that's something like a 75% increase overall.

Most of the increase is in the later game; the early game shaft chance is basically unchanged. I think most "unfair" shafts are in the early game; by the late game, the player tends to have a lot of resources to deal with them.

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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 12:21

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

There are two serious problems with shaft effects in dcss: The first is that they are delivered via traps, which makes players feel they should be able to avoid them, can "take the player off guard" in terms of identification or whatever early in the game, and so forth. The second and more serious problem is that the player can go back upstairs to negate the impact of the shaft, sometimes immediately upon being shafted.

The first is easily solved by making shafts replace stairs on some levels so that the player is forced to take a shaft to progress. Not exactly the same thing as traps, but it will get you around a lot of the player psychology to implement shafts without the coyness of traps, making them a matter of inevitability rather than bad luck. The second could be dealt with using mechanics that lock stairs going back up or otherwise make them unavailable to the recently shafted player.
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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 12:57

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

tealizard wrote:There are two serious problems with shaft effects in dcss: The first is that they are delivered via traps, which makes players feel they should be able to avoid them, can "take the player off guard" in terms of identification or whatever early in the game, and so forth. The second and more serious problem is that the player can go back upstairs to negate the impact of the shaft, sometimes immediately upon being shafted.

The first is easily solved by making shafts replace stairs on some levels so that the player is forced to take a shaft to progress. Not exactly the same thing as traps, but it will get you around a lot of the player psychology to implement shafts without the coyness of traps, making them a matter of inevitability rather than bad luck. The second could be dealt with using mechanics that lock stairs going back up or otherwise make them unavailable to the recently shafted player.


So, your solutions to something players dislike because it is a hit to player agency both require the game to reduce or eliminate player agency. Did I read this correctly?
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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 14:24

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

bel wrote:According to posts in the thread I linked above, the number of shafts over a won game has increased by about one shaft per game. It used to be 1.45 shafts per game, now it's 2.53 shafts per game. In percentage terms, that's something like a 75% increase overall.

Most of the increase is in the later game; the early game shaft chance is basically unchanged.

I don't think the figures in that thread are at all reliable.

As it happens, I have the archive of morgues from crawl.XTAHUA.com. There are 110,530 morgues from January 2018 to June 2018. (The first commit that introduced exploration trap effects was originally committed on the 30th of June 2018.) The expression "fall through a shaft" appears 15,556 times in those morgues (in the Notes; I have not made the error of double counting shafts that appear in the record of messages printed just before the game ended.) The average number of shafts seen in those games was 0.141.

There are 80,928 morgues from 0.23 and 0.24 games. The expression "fall through a shaft" appears in 15,797 of those morgues. The average number of shafts seen in those games was 0.195.

However, the number of shafts in the Dungeon in the pre-change games is 12,678 (0.115 per game); in the post-change games, 11,180 (0.141 per game). In D:1-6, 9,358 pre-change (0.0847 per-game), 7,912 post-change (0.0978).

If I use ebering's Sequellese from that thread but modify it to tell me only about ebering's games:
  Code:
.echo $(/ (!lm ebering vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm ebering vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495 shaft br=D lvl<7 x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))

Sequell tells me ebering had 1.0 shafts per game in D:1-6. This is interesting because:
  Code:
!lm ebering vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495 shaft br=D lvl<7

tells me ebering was shafted 7 times in D:1-6 (in those versions of DCSS) and
  Code:
!gamesby ebering vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495

tells me ebering played a total of 30 games in such versions. Unless I am missing something, I conclude the first Sequellese invocation is just wrong.

I think the shafting rate in early D has increased by substantially more than ebering's numbers would suggest (by about 15% rather than a sub-1% quantity) and the figure of an average 1 shaft per game in D:1-6 is completely wrong, but also that the increase is nothing like the perception of "twice as many" that some people report.

I have a wild guess that part of that perception is because of how one plays after being shafted. I think the typical player tries to find the stairs up as expediently as possible. In the old-traps world this made it unlikely to step on a shaft while doing so - you don't repeatedly traverse the same areas on different tiles as autoexplore might, or run around rooms fighting monsters and picking up their stuff if you can avoid it. In the new-traps world this doesn't help - indeed trying to see as many tiles as quickly as possible while looking for the stairs is also the best way to get shafte. I speculate this has made double-shafting (being shafted without having returned to the level you were last shafted from) more likely in a way that isn't reflected in the overall numbers of shafts - in the old-traps world you'd be more likely to hit the second shaft later while clearing the level normally.
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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 15:19

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Sorcerous wrote:So, your solutions to something players dislike because it is a hit to player agency both require the game to reduce or eliminate player agency. Did I read this correctly?


Of course players will be indignant whiners no matter what you do. As a designer, you owe it to the player to give it to them straight, not layer mechanics with misdirection to baffle their confused minds.

It's not complicated. If you're going to give the player the shaft, you should be clear about what you're trying to do and what effect you're looking to achieve. You need to pursue that seriously. You should not be willing to risk a shafted player landing on stairs that allow them to just walk away unscathed. Similarly, if shafts are such a valuable mechanic that the game needs to have traps just so that the shaft can be one of their effects (and let's be real here, that's exactly what's going on), why leave it to chance whether the player gets the shaft at all?

If shafts are good, which they are, then every game should include them. They should be integrated into the structure of the dungeon, not relegated to a random, freak occurrence that doesn't even happen in some games. When it does happen, there should be no freak possibilities like easily accessible stairs, that allow the player to luck their way out of the situation.
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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 16:05

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

nvm. I don't know what's going on in those Sequell queries.

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Post Saturday, 30th November 2019, 22:11

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

bel wrote:nvm. I don't know what's going on in those Sequell queries.

I just hope the discovery that those figures are apparently wrong is not buried beneath the usual tide of tealizard guff.

I've had an interesting conversation with ebering where it turns out the Sequellese in the earlier thread is indeed wrong - it reflects the number of shafts in games with at least one shaft, which is why the answer always comes out to be at least 1.0.

  Code:
<ebering> .echo $(/ (!lm * vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm * vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495  x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))
<Sequell> 0.0795210191579344
<ebering> .echo $(/ (!lm * vlong>=0.23-a0-517 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm * vlong>=0.23-a0-517 x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))
<Sequell> 0.11774210058494002


This is a circa 50% increase. Furthermore if I do:
  Code:
.echo $(/ (!lm * vlong>=0.24 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm * vlong>=0.24 x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))
<Sequell> 0.14126860888641088

This is nearly twice the 0.22 pre-change rate (but ebering observes that post-release 0.24 games is a small sample size).

If this Sequellese is correct, shaftings in D:1-6 have increased post-change and the rate has continued to increase (presumably because of later tweaks to the implementation); it seems possible they now happen about twice as often as in pre-change games, and we can be reasonably sure they happen at least 50% more often.

I think the discrepancy between my figures from CXC and these is that mine include some pre-change 0.23 games, an error on my part which means 15% is less than the real effect. I could recalculate them, but I'm now reasonably convinced this Sequellese is giving the right answer.

(Ebering suggested an alternative metric involving the proportion of games with at least one shaft in D:1-6. I'm not sure this is a better metric (double-shaftings are the time shafts have the most dramatic effect on your game, so why not count them as two?) but it also seems to have increased by a similar amount.)
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Post Sunday, 1st December 2019, 00:47

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

tealizard wrote:[...]why leave it to chance whether the player gets the shaft at all?

If shafts are good, which they are, then every game should include them. They should be integrated into the structure of the dungeon, not relegated to a random, freak occurrence that doesn't even happen in some games. When it does happen, there should be no freak possibilities like easily accessible stairs, that allow the player to luck their way out of the situation.


I disagree. The game is heavily based on how the RNG treats you anyway. There's nothing wrong with sometimes lucking out of shatfs unscathed, because the RNG was good to you.
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Post Sunday, 1st December 2019, 03:24

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

It seems to me that you have no positive vision of the game beyond what it already is. You might be sad if .24 were the last stable release, but only because that is a change in the way things are in crawl, not because you have any real hope of things moving in interesting new directions.

As for this particular "disagreement," shafts create interesting gameplay by pushing the player to extremes of what's possible in dcss combat. Lucking out destroys that potential. I'm not interested in what's okay or has "nothing wrong" with it. I'm interested in the possibilities of crawl. Dosing every mechanic having interesting potential with chances to destroy that potential is bad. It creates a bland, tedious product.
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Post Sunday, 1st December 2019, 10:58

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

tealizard wrote:It seems to me that you have no positive vision of the game beyond what it already is.

On the contrary. I have always loved to have a new version of Crawl (starting with Linley's Dungeon Crawl 3.20 back in 1998 or so), even though I haven't agreed with all changes every time.

It creates a bland, tedious product.
Imo Crawl is currently very far from a bland, tedious product. I play it practically every single day. It's the randomness that makes it addictive. Sometimes you get a good shafting, sometimes a bad one. That's good.
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Post Sunday, 1st December 2019, 12:10

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

tealizard wrote:It seems to me that you have no positive vision of the game beyond what it already is. You might be sad if .24 were the last stable release, but only because that is a change in the way things are in crawl, not because you have any real hope of things moving in interesting new directions.

As for this particular "disagreement," shafts create interesting gameplay by pushing the player to extremes of what's possible in dcss combat. Lucking out destroys that potential. I'm not interested in what's okay or has "nothing wrong" with it. I'm interested in the possibilities of crawl. Dosing every mechanic having interesting potential with chances to destroy that potential is bad. It creates a bland, tedious product.


I agree with @Sprucery that the game is nowhere near bland and tedious. More to the point, I have to disagree with the way you frame real problems, derivative problems, and the lack of direction of what you post in response to them. My vote for slight reduction rather than removal is exactly for the reason that players (newbies and veterans alike) should be kept on their toes by a random difficulty spike that a shaft can produce. Not as frequently, because it would also encourage players to hoard resources that could result is a splat outside of trap-related events: I think we can agree that being overly conservative with consumables also makes for a dull game, won or lost.

Interesting gameplay aside, using "lucking out" as a point to argue with is incredibly vague and lacking in substance. What does it mean that a player has lucked out? Having two identified blink scrolls by D:8, a randart weapon that is directly or cross-trained, an actual MR+ ring before O:, having two non-body armour slots filled, or any combination thereof? The item and enemy generation can absolutely screw players over just as readily as coddle them. So can traps, and so can post-shaft placement. A very promising char dropping next to a flock of acidic doombirds in U: has certainly happened to me, but a drop three tiles from an upstairs with no enemies in range happens too. Just saying "there is a counter to a mechanic, therefore it is flawed" is even worse - you could just as well try and tell me that having hellions spawn from D:6 onwards (in open space for that extra GFY) makes for a fair and interesting game.
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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 09:22

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

damerell wrote:
Spoiler: show
bel wrote:nvm. I don't know what's going on in those Sequell queries.

I just hope the discovery that those figures are apparently wrong is not buried beneath the usual tide of tealizard guff.

I've had an interesting conversation with ebering where it turns out the Sequellese in the earlier thread is indeed wrong - it reflects the number of shafts in games with at least one shaft, which is why the answer always comes out to be at least 1.0.

  Code:
<ebering> .echo $(/ (!lm * vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm * vlong>=0.22 vlong<0.23-a0-495  x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))
<Sequell> 0.0795210191579344
<ebering> .echo $(/ (!lm * vlong>=0.23-a0-517 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm * vlong>=0.23-a0-517 x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))
<Sequell> 0.11774210058494002


This is a circa 50% increase. Furthermore if I do:
  Code:
.echo $(/ (!lm * vlong>=0.24 shaft br=D lvl<7) (!lm * vlong>=0.24 x=cdist(gid) fmt:"${x}"))
<Sequell> 0.14126860888641088

This is nearly twice the 0.22 pre-change rate (but ebering observes that post-release 0.24 games is a small sample size).

If this Sequellese is correct, shaftings in D:1-6 have increased post-change and the rate has continued to increase (presumably because of later tweaks to the implementation); it seems possible they now happen about twice as often as in pre-change games, and we can be reasonably sure they happen at least 50% more often.

I think the discrepancy between my figures from CXC and these is that mine include some pre-change 0.23 games, an error on my part which means 15% is less than the real effect. I could recalculate them, but I'm now reasonably convinced this Sequellese is giving the right answer.

(Ebering suggested an alternative metric involving the proportion of games with at least one shaft in D:1-6. I'm not sure this is a better metric (double-shaftings are the time shafts have the most dramatic effect on your game, so why not count them as two?) but it also seems to have increased by a similar amount.)

"Shaft rate per game" is a somewhat blunt metric because "a game" can be of indefinite length. So, perhaps normalize this rate by something like "number of turns in the game"? It's not perfect, but would provide a better metric.

I have no idea if this calculation is possible using Sequell, but just an idea. Anyway, I doubt that the numbers would be too different even if one makes this adjustment.

Coming back to the OP, in light of this calculation, I would prefer early shafts to be less common (and perhaps only drop you down 1-2 floors instead of 3 floors). I don't particularly care about later shaft rate.

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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 09:31

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

tealizard wrote:It seems to me that you have no positive vision of the game beyond what it already is. You might be sad if .24 were the last stable release, but only because that is a change in the way things are in crawl, not because you have any real hope of things moving in interesting new directions.

As for this particular "disagreement," shafts create interesting gameplay by pushing the player to extremes of what's possible in dcss combat. Lucking out destroys that potential. I'm not interested in what's okay or has "nothing wrong" with it. I'm interested in the possibilities of crawl. Dosing every mechanic having interesting potential with chances to destroy that potential is bad. It creates a bland, tedious product.

This is like complaining that you lucked out because Grinder didn't generate in your game. Why leave it to the RNG to decide the generation of the unique?

Crawl relies on randomness and simple mechanics to produce variety. Sometimes the situations will be interesting, sometimes they will not. Shafting is a very simple mechanic: force you to a deeper, unexplored floor. This mechanic will increase danger, on average. There's no guarantee that the danger would be higher: indeed, there's even a species with shafting as an escape mechanic.

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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 11:36

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

petercordia wrote:Would being shafted feel more fun/fair if it was coupled to some kind of reward? (like a consumable or quasi-acquirement or shop placement?)

(I'm asking the people who dislike shafts)


Yes. We have ghost graves where players can risk to get the extra XP .
We have teleporters where players can risk even more to get the extra XP and loot.
And then we have shafts where players do not get any rewards (not even extra XP!) for wasting many consumables and tedious manual exploration.
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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 11:39

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Sorcerous wrote:disproportionate amounts of XP


How? Those monsters would be dead anyway, but you would kill them without having so much risk and probably without consumables,
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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 11:43

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

bel wrote:"Unavoidable deaths" is kind of irrelevant, because almost no death in Crawl is strictly "unavoidable". However, we can tweak the idea to "difficulty level", or "chance of dying" to make the idea relevant.

I think the reason why shafts feel bad is the following: it can lead to a big spike in difficulty and it's completely out of control of the player. So, it can feel like the game has screwed you over for no reason at all. Your chance of dying is not very dependent on how you've played so far.


The most important reason is lack of reward! Give me a level of Robust mutation every time my character gets shafted and I will love shafts...
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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 12:51

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

The game has mechanics which limit "OOD" monsters appearing. Too many of these are "not good", where "not good" is an ellipsis for a number of things, including subjective elements ("not fun"), applicability to the DCSS "philosophy" (https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl-ref/docs/crawl_manual.rst#n-philosophy-pas-de-faq), or contrary to some large amount of expectations, etc. The fact that OOD monsters are limited seems to have a large degree of congruity with the "philosophy" linked to above, particularly the subsection on "balance":

Crawl is designed to be a challenging game, and is also renowned for its randomness. However, this does not mean that wins are an arbitrary matter of luck: the skill of players will have the largest impact. So, yes, there may be situations where you are doomed - no action could have saved your life. But then, from the midgame on, most deaths are not of this type: By this stage, almost all casualties can be traced back to actual mistakes; if not tactical ones, then of a strategical type, like wrong skilling (too broad or too narrow), unwise use of resources (too conservative or too liberal), or wrong decisions about branch/god/gear.


I would add focus on one brief phrase:
But then, from the midgame on


In other words: the early game (before the midgame) is an area in which causing OOD events should be particularly minimized.
A single OOD monster can, with careful gameplay, be avoided. A shaft cannot be avoided; no amount of skill, or in-game arbitrariness (e.g. having a character with certain shaft-immune properties, such as, one might expect, flying) will cause you to avoid them. Then you are faced with not one, but an entire level of OODs. What's worse: you'll have met them anyway a bit later. It seems thus not only "unfair" (in the sense that in seems to have much less congruence with the DCSS philosophy quoted above) but somehow pointless.

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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 13:02

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
bel wrote:"Unavoidable deaths" is kind of irrelevant, because almost no death in Crawl is strictly "unavoidable". However, we can tweak the idea to "difficulty level", or "chance of dying" to make the idea relevant.

I think the reason why shafts feel bad is the following: it can lead to a big spike in difficulty and it's completely out of control of the player. So, it can feel like the game has screwed you over for no reason at all. Your chance of dying is not very dependent on how you've played so far.


The most important reason is lack of reward! Give me a level of Robust mutation every time my character gets shafted and I will love shafts...

Maybe a random good mut when you get shafted? Interesting idea. (Btw, Hellcrawl has mutagenic hatches, though they are not the same thing.)

Some people don't like mutations at all, unfortunately, so this might not please them. But it's an interesting idea. It can't be gamed either, because you have no control over being shafted.

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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 15:57

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

I don't think shafts are actually all that interesting, a lot of times they just force you to dive up. Occasionally they screw you by essentially doing the equivalent of a random teleport into a bunch of monsters or a bad unique. I actually think they are kind of dumb.

They are certainly in no way more interesting than trying to get a high score in Hellcrawl by diving through everything Depths and below with the lowest turn count possible while still picking up every rune. Its essentially a similar mechanic of trying to find stairways but actually challenging on many levels, both in magic mapping resource usage and because you can never go up and are forced to go balls to the wall since you can't stair dance. You basically get shafted everytime you use a downstairs in hellcrawl but without the option to dive back up. Shafts in normal crawl are kind of trivial and dumb. Given the fact that every single floor of hellcrawl will do worse than a typical normal crawl shafting (so you will be ultra shafted at least 30 times) and I can reliably win it and have even high score 9 runed it and done the equally hard 1 rune run (i.e. you only grab the hell rune during the orb run), I think that conclusively shows that shafting is not that big of a deal for anyone who has attained an adequate level of the key skill of managing their escape options and when to use them.

When I get shafted to floor 4 from floor 2, yeah it dangerous but in the end its just a kind of annoying dive back up because I need the xp and early chars are so weak that they basically have to go in floor order for the power curve. Sometimes you get unlucky, sometimes you don't, but you can make the run 2/3rds of the time. meh. whatever. If you get shafted on Depths 2 and you were doing fine killing stuff, then getting shafted to depths 3 doesn't really matter unless you get a bad spawn. In the end shafts are just a random chance (and actually rather low chance) to be put into a situation where you need to use the escape options you've been saving. Shafting itself is relatively rare, and only a small minority of shaftings will require you to blow an escape option. I just think they are dumb and annoying. They mostly just cause tedious pointless maze running.

The interesting vs dumb/annoying ratio on shafting is unfavorable. Oh no I am on another floor. What will i ever do. Oh woe is me. I may have to avoid monsters and find a stairway up. This is a travesty. Nah its just annoying and not actually interesting at all 80% of the time. It is truly dangerous on the first few floors, but even then a char with even modest stealth and decently smart gameplay is often fine just diving back up.

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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 17:06

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

if shafts aren't dangerous past early game it's because nothing is dangerous past early game; that would be a problem with past-early-game, not with shafts

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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 18:31

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

bel wrote:This is like complaining that you lucked out because Grinder didn't generate in your game. Why leave it to the RNG to decide the generation of the unique?

Crawl relies on randomness and simple mechanics to produce variety. Sometimes the situations will be interesting, sometimes they will not. Shafting is a very simple mechanic: force you to a deeper, unexplored floor. This mechanic will increase danger, on average. There's no guarantee that the danger would be higher: indeed, there's even a species with shafting as an escape mechanic.


This is a facile comparison. On one hand, there would be nothing wrong with guaranteeing Grinder generation or generation of one of a group of Grinder-comparable uniques in the early dungeon. There's nothing special about the way it's currently generated that makes one way obviously superior to the other -- you're just leaning on the default uncritical stance toward how things already work. It could very well be better to generate uniques this way and it wouldn't be an unreasonable argument to make.

On the other hand, you suggest that the fact that there's an element of randomness is a justifying factor when obviously there would be randomization in my picture as well, arguably more randomization because there would be no chance for the player to subvert the situation generated by the RNG by taking an easy out. It simply is not the case that throwing in a possibility that subverts and negates all others results in greater variety.
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Post Monday, 2nd December 2019, 19:38

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

duvessa wrote:if shafts aren't dangerous past early game it's because nothing is dangerous past early game; that would be a problem with past-early-game, not with shafts


While there is something to this argument, and in general many people would say once you reach a certain point in DCSS you should be able to 3 rune win, its not really the full story. The early game powercurve is incredibly impactful, radically more than anything else even after just the first few character levels. Just gaining one or two levels makes a corner ogre radically less dangerous simply due to increased HP being such a radically larger percentage increase of previous levels HP relative to later char levels. Of course this depends on species but its one of the major reasons species with increase HP are (often) considered very strong.

On the first few levels missing out on even one floor's XP is simply a radically different change in power level. Going from 2 to 5 is simply not even vaguely equivalent to going from Depths 1 to Depths 3. Many branches often have very little difference between the various floors, going one or two down is not going to radically change the tactical milieu other than the fact that something new was generated and you were put into it and more often than not a shafts puts you into a square with no monsters visible or very few visible. If you go from Lair 1 to Lair 3 there is little reason to believe you will be much worse off, of course if you get shafted to the bottom of the Lair this will change since its a special floor.

You could force people to run through Tombs instead of Zot to get the orb and run the orb through a branch of Hell, this would make the past-early-game harder to win (at least on its face I think it would). But you would still be left with the same issue that a 3 floor shaft on floor 2 is radically worse than a 3 floor shaft on Depths 1 or Lair 1 or Swamp 1, simply because the generation on those does not radically change and your overall power level has become more gradual and regular. So yes while the problem you identify does exist AND will cause this symptom. There is also another issue which will cause this symptom as well. This is rather bad.

However it is always the case that a bad shafting can force you to use a an escape option that you would otherwise not need to use. Past the early game a couple floors descent is almost never enough of a power difference to seriously scare you except in special circumstances. The only really scary part is that the shaft is essentially a random teleport and has all the same risks of a random teleport on a mostly unexplored map and it has exactly the same options of that situation which is a situation that is realatively common and part of regular gameplay anyway. And amusingly enough one of the "answers" to a bad shaft is to randomly teleport. But this is also why a floor 2 shaft is so much radically worse, because you often won't have stored up the "answers" that a bad shafting can force, you may have even found or at least ID'd a teleport scroll yet.

Now if shafts were more like getting abyssed where they put you into another branch or whatever this might be different. Like for example they don't shaft you down but shaft into a vault-like temporary side branch that is scaled to some kind of difficulty relative to where it happened.

The problem you identify is something that makes balancing out the mmm realative interestingness of shafts to be very hard, maybe even impossible, i.e. that past a certain point, barring extreme things like putting someone on the worst abyss floor, the shafts does very little because past-early-game you can handle most things. But there is a further problem with shafts, the content itself is not really designed such that there is much of a major difference between Generic floor X and generic floor X+2. Yes it gets a little harder, but not really much harder except under certain very particular circumstances (i.e. early floors or going from normal vaults to last vault floor or last swamp floor that has Lerny etc).

Even if we somehow solved the "not dangerous past early-game issue" we would still have the relative danger between floors issue. Indeed it is probably impossible to create a generalized "fair" shafting algorithm for DCSS as it stands, there are so many corner cases based on branch and floor. By "fair" I mean that being shafted 2 floors always resulted in a similar increase in "danger". The "danger" of being shafted 2 floors is so radically variable depending of various factors. If I remember right many lowest floors can't be randomly shafted to so many of the most egregiously bad cases can't occur, but even so the trend itself essentially stands and the fact that so many things need exceptions to the mechanic tends to indicate its simply a bad/awkward mechanic.

Personally I would very much prefer that shafts were essentially involuntary portals to something vault-like (but a vault designed to have options to possibly escape without fighting). Because currently, in the vast majority of cases, they are functionally really just random teleports and those already exist. The vault-like mechanic would mean you could tailor things to give an appropriate level challenge at any point on any floor. An argument against it might be if people often did not wind up going roughly back to where they were shafted but I think most people probably do, unless they are playing the sort of game where they are gonna skip a lot of stuff anyway (like trying to minimize turn count).

But I would say that a run of Hellcrawl does in fact feel dangerous for the whole run, especially if you try a minimal turn count 9 rune run. I have done a winning 18.5k turn count 9 rune run of hellcrawl (and I think 4 other sub 23k runs), in order to get this I dived through depths, zot, and the hell branch trying to find and take the first stair I could find. This run also includes an un-stairdancable bottom level of Vaults and Zot has MUCH harder creatures in it. Every time you take a stair you are doing the equivalent of a 1 floor shaft. I did this run as an Octopode, so a low starting HP species. So even in a case where past-early game is in fact dangerous, far far more dangerous than normal crawl, I was still able to cope with the equivalent of 30 1-floor shaftings ( worse really because you can't ascend stairs and rest in a previously cleared floor). And believe me a pack of Cool Robins with the Combo Robin in Zot is really damn dangerous and iirc I ran into them on that run. Running through Vestibule while carrying the orb at level 23 when you don't know which of the 4 hell branches is enabled is not trivial. This is all well and fine, but what does it prove? It basically shows that a large amount of 1 floor shafts does not actually generate enough shitty situations to exhaust the escape options you will find even when the entire play through is extremely dangerous. I believe on my 1-rune hellcrawl playthrough win (i.e. you skip all unnecessary branchs by doing only dungeon 1-15 and then immediately zone into depths then zot then hell and pick up hell run in the hell boss room) I was going into Zot before I hit level 20 and I picked up the hell rune while carrying the orb at like level 23 or something. Maybe I suck but it felt incredibly dangerous the whole way. So even missing out on massive amounts of loot ( no vaults, no extra side branch, no slime vault etc) I still had enough escape options to deal with D15+U3+E1+Z5+H7 = 30-ish total 1-floor shaftings while running through zones at a character level 5 or more less than what people often run them at all while not having the option to use stairs to go up to "safe" floors which would have saved me even more escape options. I have done bottom level vaults at like XL 17 in hellcrawl a number of times with no upstairs, it feels very dangerous to me.

Basically even in a playthrough that actually is dangerous the whole way through, once you get a modest nest egg of escape options you are almost certainly going to have what you need to deal with a bad shafting and only like 1 in 10 shaftings would even require you to use up a stored escape option with decent play, not even optimal play. I don't even vaguely try to play optimally or have any kind of good win percentage. Just decent fairly wise play. The "interestingness" of normal crawl shaftings, outside of a few corner cases, is entirely illusory. I feel very confident that Hellcrawl essentially proved this.

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Post Tuesday, 3rd December 2019, 01:43

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

bel wrote:"Shaft rate per game" is a somewhat blunt metric because "a game" can be of indefinite length. So, perhaps normalize this rate by something like "number of turns in the game"? It's not perfect, but would provide a better metric.

I have no idea if this calculation is possible using Sequell, but just an idea. Anyway, I doubt that the numbers would be too different even if one makes this adjustment.

I'm acting on the assumption that the average game length is unchanged (there wasn't a huge bout of start scumming in 0.22, say). That could be tested, but it's not obvious to me how to do so.
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Zot Zealot

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Joined: Monday, 29th September 2014, 09:04

Post Tuesday, 3rd December 2019, 03:27

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

onomastikon wrote:In other words: the early game (before the midgame) is an area in which causing OOD events should be particularly minimized.
A single OOD monster can, with careful gameplay, be avoided. A shaft cannot be avoided; no amount of skill, or in-game arbitrariness (e.g. having a character with certain shaft-immune properties, such as, one might expect, flying) will cause you to avoid them. Then you are faced with not one, but an entire level of OODs. What's worse: you'll have met them anyway a bit later. It seems thus not only "unfair" (in the sense that in seems to have much less congruence with the DCSS philosophy quoted above) but somehow pointless.


I think you are misreading the philosophy. In my opinion, it says that random events leading occasionally to unfair outcomes are good.

In particular:
1. The section you quote says skill should have the "largest impact" on winrate. But luck can contribute the other 49%.
2. "Challenging and random gameplay" is a major design goal, whereas "proper use of out of depth monsters" is a "minor design goal".
3. The "Balance" section says: "Thus, computer games can be soft in the sense that optimal play ensures a win. ... Alternatively, they can be hard in the sense that unavoidable deaths can occur. We feel that the latter choice provides much more fun in the long run."

Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 3rd December 2019, 11:57

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Speaking of shafts: I was just shafted on D:3 to D:6. No tele scrolls, most potions not identified, got a bunch of wights and assorted mobs that surrounded me. RIP
Being shafted in D:3 is as fun as having a goblin in D:1 with a dagger of elec or finding centaurs in D:2. I think I even found Orc priests as low as D: 2 or 3. Frankly I respect people who are able to have extremely high percentages of wins. I don't know how they cope with this stuff. I sometimes survive these spikes (sturdy chars, cool head, luck) but often I don't.

Anyway, it seems, at least to me, that these events are more frequent recently.

Tomb Titivator

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Post Tuesday, 3rd December 2019, 20:23

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

Things I’m observing:

-Shafts are perceived to not cause unavoidable deaths, but instead present an increased challenge that good players should be able to deal with
-Shafts present a disproportionally larger increase in challenge when encountered early Compared to later
-Difficulty is not a bad thing and random difficulty spikes are desired

My take always:
-Really good players don’t need to worry about early game shafts as deaths are generally avoidable.
-New players often die as a result of early shafting combined with incorrect decisions
-Mid game shafts do not have a radically different effect on good or bad players

So it seems the people that can handle shafts don’t care for them, and the people that cant, dislike them.

One question I’m asking myself is... did I learn anything from my early game shaft deaths? I Don’t know the answer. But If as a mediocre player I am not learning anything from them, and as an experienced player I would not get enjoyment from them, should they be left alone?

Spider Stomper

Posts: 241

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Post Tuesday, 3rd December 2019, 20:49

Re: Poll: What do you think about shaft effects?

delarado wrote:Things I’m observing:

-Shafts are perceived to not cause unavoidable deaths, but instead present an increased challenge that good players should be able to deal with
-Shafts present a disproportionally larger increase in challenge when encountered early Compared to later
-Difficulty is not a bad thing and random difficulty spikes are desired

My take always:
-Really good players don’t need to worry about early game shafts as deaths are generally avoidable.
-New players often die as a result of early shafting combined with incorrect decisions
-Mid game shafts do not have a radically different effect on good or bad players

So it seems the people that can handle shafts don’t care for them, and the people that cant, dislike them.

One question I’m asking myself is... did I learn anything from my early game shaft deaths? I Don’t know the answer. But If as a mediocre player I am not learning anything from them, and as an experienced player I would not get enjoyment from them, should they be left alone?


Early game shafts can be a good demonstration to newer players of the relative merits of decent stealth if they are trying to stair dive back up. Of course this only happens under a certain set of circumstances and you'll probably learn more by just picking a stealth species and trying to dive to Ecu Temple so meh.
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