Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?


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Post Wednesday, 3rd September 2014, 23:52

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Aule wrote:Well, if you examine the morgue, you'll see that I took on only one, and after emptying MP with dart and throwing stones until his last breath, he could not kill the lone jackal. Any other suggestions?

You still want to do all the available tactics/positioning/etc to only have to fight one at a time, have a good opportunity to retreat, etc. but Crawl is a luck based game, and sometimes even with all the tricks you have you get shafted.

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Post Thursday, 4th September 2014, 06:27

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

You could have let that one wander away too and gone and killed some speed 10 thing instead.

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Post Thursday, 4th September 2014, 13:12

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Sandman25 wrote:I believe the best players can win 95% games with every possible combo except xxCK.


I changed my mind after playing FeSk lately. I don't think it is possible to have 95% wins consistently with this combo because of 9 HP, AC 1, EV 17, unstealthy status and lack of rPois.

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Post Thursday, 4th September 2014, 16:57

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

duvessa wrote:
damiac wrote:So, if you take a snapshot of the best players at their best, and discount all their other games, they have a win rate of 100%. OK, that's true of any player with any win ever.

I'm not doubting really good players can win the majority of games they play, I am just curious where this 95% number is coming from? Because the link Duvessa gave doesn't have anything to do with overall win rates.

What I see is that one time, some players managed to have a 95% win rate across about 20 games. Impressive, sure, but it's pretty silly to extrapolate that and claim those players are good enough to maintain such a win rate.
Well what would convince you? Do you just want an account with a >95% winrate? Because I can give you dozens of those.
The point of linking to the streaks page is to show that it is easy to win Crawl very consistently, not to specify a certain win rate.


People keep saying "If you just follow these tips and play like the pros, you too could have a 95% win rate!"

But, if a 95% win rate was easily achievable, there would be much better streaks than 25. Someone would have used this '95%' method to repeatedly get streaks around 20, and of course, they'd have some streaks that were much longer. Since people seem to care about high scores on the crawl boards, it's safe to assume that a 95% win rate is much higher than even the best players can reliable achieve.

Yeah, if you just make a new account every time you lose, and you're really good, you could get some really high winrate accounts. But you'd also have a lot of low winrate accounts, and your average would be a hell of a lot lower than 95%.

Of course, if someone wants to prove me wrong it should be easy, just go beat the streak high score. If you win 95% of your games, you've got a 21% chance to win 30 in a row. So odds are, if 5 of these awesome players all go for a streak, we should see at least one streak above the current high score.

I won't hold my breath on that happening though, because that 95% figure is completely bogus.
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Post Thursday, 4th September 2014, 17:27

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

damiac wrote:Someone would have used this '95%' method to repeatedly get streaks around 20, and of course, they'd have some streaks that were much longer.

Why? It's not fun.

Good players know what they could do to avoid premature deaths. Instead they often choose to push their luck because playing optimal is a pain in the ass.

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Post Thursday, 4th September 2014, 23:29

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Tedronai wrote:
damiac wrote:Someone would have used this '95%' method to repeatedly get streaks around 20, and of course, they'd have some streaks that were much longer.

Why? It's not fun.

Good players know what they could do to avoid premature deaths. Instead they often choose to push their luck because playing optimal is a pain in the ass.


Every last player? There's nobody just itching to set a really high score? I find that hard to believe. To some people, having a ridiculously high score is fun, do none of those people play crawl?

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Post Thursday, 4th September 2014, 23:37

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Lots of people play crawl for high scores, you can see them here. But yes, I suspect nobody plays crawl who wants to sacrifice dozens of hours of potentially productive/fun time just to prove a point to some random guy on an Internet forum. It's staggeringly obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the game that far, far under 5% of games are unwinnable, and the people who don't have a rudimentary understanding of the game wouldn't care about long streaks anyway.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 04:22

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Tedronai wrote:
damiac wrote:Someone would have used this '95%' method to repeatedly get streaks around 20, and of course, they'd have some streaks that were much longer.

Why? It's not fun.

Good players know what they could do to avoid premature deaths. Instead they often choose to push their luck because playing optimal is a pain in the ass.

I think that's it in a nutshell. Pushing beyond what is prudent is a very human characteristic. Despite being sentient we still need to be the fool and gamble precisely because it is thrilling and the payout is often spectacular compared to doing what is predictable, easy and deliberate.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 13:00

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Hopeless wrote:I think that's it in a nutshell. Pushing beyond what is prudent is a very human characteristic. Despite being sentient we still need to be the fool and gamble precisely because it is thrilling and the payout is often spectacular compared to doing what is predictable, easy and deliberate.


I am not sure about it. During some games in sudden death challenge tournament I spent 30+ minutes on first 3 floors, it was simply anti-fun. I would stop playing crawl if it was the only way to win, usual play has nothing to do with luck hunger IMHO.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 14:58

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Hopeless wrote:I think that's it in a nutshell. Pushing beyond what is prudent is a very human characteristic. Despite being sentient we still need to be the fool and gamble precisely because it is thrilling and the payout is often spectacular compared to doing what is predictable, easy and deliberate.

IMO, that's sort of exactly the opposite of the sentiment you quoted.

For example, holding down tab to clear out some riff-raff and hoping that nothing surprising happens to kill you is not a thrilling gamble with spectacular payoff: it is something one does because they simply don't have the patience to alternate between hitting tab once and carefully surveying how the situation has changed.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 16:40

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

I certainly won't dispute that playing to completely optimize win% means playing in a very tedious way. Which in and of itself is clearly a problem, as Crawl's design philosophy wants you to get no advantage from playing in an unfun way.

Anyway, what I was arguing is that the provided statistics conflict greatly with the assertion that 'With good play, you can win 95% of games you play'. The exact number isn't important, what is important is this:

a. Some games are in fact unwinnable, or at least, to win them would take some lucky guessing vs. simply making the best decision.
For example: I started an EE, and opened a door. A hyena then occupied the door tile. I shot 3 sandstorms with a wielded stone, miss, miss, miss, OOM. Then I threw stones at it, hoping to get another MP to try another shot. I died before that happened. I didn't make a bad decision by opening that door, but if I hadn't, maybe that character could have won.

b. Playing sensibly, but still in a fun way, is far less optimal than playing in a paranoid and tedious manner, for example, dragging single monsters far into explored territory, avoiding any enemies with glowing weapons, etc. This is seriously counter to crawl's design philosophy, I shouldn't be choosing between playing well and having fun.

I think both of those are issues. I think crawl is one of the best games ever, but still, it's not perfect, and these two things are what I view as the most major issues.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 17:03

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

damiac wrote:For example: I started an EE, and opened a door. A hyena then occupied the door tile. I shot 3 sandstorms with a wielded stone, miss, miss, miss, OOM. Then I threw stones at it, hoping to get another MP to try another shot.


Side note. It is suboptimal for spell background to throw stones at 0 MP. Optimal is to run away from the monster waiting for MP to regenerate, I do it all the time even vs fast monsters like jackals and adders.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 17:24

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

damiac wrote:I certainly won't dispute that playing to completely optimize win% means playing in a very tedious way. Which in and of itself is clearly a problem, as Crawl's design philosophy wants you to get no advantage from playing in an unfun way.

There is no real advantage, only a virtual one if ogle the streak scoring (or a high win%). In the time where I optimize my playstyle to win this one character I could just make 10 casual attempts with the joys of autofight / autoexplore and a bit of gambling. Both options end with the same result: I have won a game with this specific character combo.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 17:30

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Most players - not just beginners - have a limited understanding of positioning and use their turns inefficiently. Improving in those two areas and applying what you've learned is what I think is most helpful for improving your chances of winning, not kiting a gnoll or whatever around a level for an unreasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, those two areas are subtle enough that people who lack skill in them tend to be unaware that they are even lacking, so they focus on something less important but easier to quantify, such as kiting a monster or the fsim values of some weapon.

When you play an ee, you should wield your stones at the start of the game. You should open the first door of the game at a diagonal, and yes, you shouldn't be throwing stones in melee range. Even punching the jackal as a deee would have been better.
mikee_ has won 166 times in 396 games (41.92%): 4xDSFi 4xMDFi 3xDDCK 3xDDEE 3xHOPr 2xDDHe 2xDDNe 2xDSBe 2xKeAE 2xMfCr 2xMfSt 2xMiAr 2xMiBe 2xNaTm 1xCeAr 1xCeAs 1xCeBe 1xCeEn 1xCeFE 1xCePa 1xCeTm 1xCeWz 1xDDAs 1xDDCr 1xDDHu 1xDDTm 1xDENe 1xDEWz

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 17:38

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

Tedronai wrote:
damiac wrote:I certainly won't dispute that playing to completely optimize win% means playing in a very tedious way. Which in and of itself is clearly a problem, as Crawl's design philosophy wants you to get no advantage from playing in an unfun way.

There is no real advantage, only a virtual one if ogle the streak scoring (or a high win%). In the time where I optimize my playstyle to win this one character I could just make 10 casual attempts with the joys of autofight / autoexplore and a bit of gambling. Both options end with the same result: I have won a game with this specific character combo.


Well, sure, if your goal is to have the most wins in a certain time period, optimal win% play might be so slow that like you say, it's faster to just play loose and fast and die a few times.

I guess I view win % as the best measure of 'crawl skill', therefore, as I get better I want my win % to get better, until the theoretical point that I'm so good I always win. So I want that to be possible, and I want as little outside interference as possible, meaning, things out of my control.
Maybe others view other things as the best measure of 'crawl skill'.

Sandman25 wrote:
damiac wrote:For example: I started an EE, and opened a door. A hyena then occupied the door tile. I shot 3 sandstorms with a wielded stone, miss, miss, miss, OOM. Then I threw stones at it, hoping to get another MP to try another shot.


Side note. It is suboptimal for spell background to throw stones at 0 MP. Optimal is to run away from the monster waiting for MP to regenerate, I do it all the time even vs fast monsters like jackals and adders.


Fair enough, although if I had run into another monster I might have really been in trouble. But what I would really like is no monsters < speed 10 on D1. Also, no poison, distortion, or electric attacks. I feel removing those things from D1 would vastly improve on the 'unfair deaths on D1' front. By D2, you'll probably have a weapon, a cure potion or two, and most importantly, up stairs.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 17:48

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

mikee wrote:You should open the first door of the game at a diagonal

Why? I can't figure out this one.

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Post Friday, 5th September 2014, 18:20

Re: Dieing in first room - Difficulty setting?

So you see less of the map. And thus leave fewer chances for there to be a monster there to see you.

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