Any way to check 'exact' monster stat in-game (or out-game)?

[sanka]

Azure Jelly
Dam: 12(cold:15-44), 12(cold:15-44), 12, 12

What is the problem with this line? (Ok, maybe change "Dam" to "Attack damage" or something).

[partial]

I smell an impending fork to gdd to discuss stat transparency

[nordetsa]

I also think monster descriptions such as 'It looks easy' should definitely go. Even as a level 27 character with 45 AC/ 19 EV/ 32 SH and +11 antimagic lajatang, one should never get the message 'It looks easy' on a mummy priest. Sure my character can kill this priest in 1~2 hits (even oneshot if I'm lucky with Zin's recite) but how does that make this monster easy? Against non-undead species one torment is enough to take half of your hp if you lack rN, and with summon demon and undead you can get nasty surprises like fiends and flayed ghosts. Don't forget smite which can kill you from afar if you're not careful.

And yet the game says the monster looks easy?

[dpeg]

Azure Jelly
Dam: 12(cold:15-44), 12(cold:15-44), 12, 12

What is the problem with this line? (Ok, maybe change "Dam" to "Attack damage" or something).

Personally, I think it's way too technical. I really don't want to encourage players to add numbers. Several times during a battle. In this case, they're even asked to contemplate expected values and variance.

This is why I suggested "Azure Jelly (136)" in the monster list. It is much coarser information, but that's exactly my goal.

You got slightly pissed, he got slightly banned... Don't disagree with dpeg, that's my advice (It's on topic!)

Wow, dowan. If Aristotle was still alive, he'd add that to the syllogism. I've been rereading the whole freaking thread, and I don't think the banning was my undoing. Regarding mps, I mourn his loss the most -- he was source & target for my awesome Berlin Interpretation jokes, a true pity.

[nago]

Personally, while I'd like to have all the data of the monster available in game, because occasionally I'd need it to see if I can take another hit without risk and so on, I don't think that would be useful at all for the newbie player base.
I mean, crawl is an enormous game with a shit load of weird different notions to know, and I don't think a new player would really benefit a new set of things to read he have no actual idea of what do really, unless if he'd be a math/statistic/whatever addict who prefer to learn a lot of numbers instead of playing the game.

Were the useless and non-threatening monsters, as well the silly and weird effect, plus the remaining corner cases, as much the player's resist /defences simplified I guess it would be useful even to new players... But then I guess as well we could just download brogue or a rogue like similar.

Just for example, weapons' description currently shows, for my opinion, a good balance between the usefulness of information provided and lengthness/spoilerness... Yet most of newbie don't give/understand /I don't know what a crap about that and all eager to throw their +5 vamp/elec/AM glaive/lajatang/gs for the +1 hand axe "shit" (chop, rf+, rpois) because uuuuuh... Artefacts!

[byrel]

This is why I suggested "Azure Jelly (136)" in the monster list. It is much coarser information, but that's exactly my goal.

This is good. This is very simple and straightforward. Yes, yes, imprecise, energy randomization, doesn't take into account AC/EV/GDR/the number of sacrifice to RNGesus you made this morning. But it gives you a very straightforward simple scale, which will actually be useful.

[dpeg]

byrel: The really funny thing is that this is probably quite close to what Sandma wanted in this thread in the first place. Didn't get that far, had other important things to do...
I'll float this idea on ##crawl-dev, perhaps people think it's worthwhile to test it in trunk.

[Hurkyl]

Azure Jelly
Dam: 12(cold:15-44), 12(cold:15-44), 12, 12

What is the problem with this line? (Ok, maybe change "Dam" to "Attack damage" or something).

Personally, I think it's way too technical. I really don't want to encourage players to add numbers. Several times during a battle. In this case, they're even asked to contemplate expected values and variance.

This is why I suggested "Azure Jelly (136)" in the monster list. It is much coarser information, but that's exactly my goal.

Too course in this instance; the facts that AC helps four times and that over half of that damage is cold-resistible are both important.

[Hurkyl]

Just for example, weapons' description currently shows, for my opinion, a good balance between the usefulness of information provided and lengthness/spoilerness... Yet most of newbie don't give/understand /I don't know what a crap about that and all eager to throw their +5 vamp/elec/AM glaive/lajatang/gs for the +1 hand axe "junk" (chop, rf+, rpois) because uuuuuh... Artefacts!

The problem is that the displayed information is not actually the useful information.

[dpeg]

Azure Jelly - Dam: 12(cold:15-44), 12(cold:15-44), 12, 12

Personally, I think it's way too technical. ... This is why I suggested "Azure Jelly (136)" in the monster list. It is much coarser information, but that's exactly my goal.

Too coarse in this instance; the facts that AC helps four times and that over half of that damage is cold-resistible are both important.

I am fine with having to use Sequell if you want details on that level.

[tasonir]

I agree that "Azure Jelly: Dam 136" is better than the full stat line "Azure Jelly - Dam: 12(cold:15-44), 12(cold:15-44), 12, 12" but I wonder if some middle ground might be better than both; I'd like to know that a fair portion of the damage is cold resistible. How about "Azure Jelly: damage 48, cold damage: 88".

If we want to go full "english" on this, it could presented like so: "Attacks by this creature can cause up to 48 damage, with 88 additional cold damage."

[dpeg]

tasonir: I assumed that rC+ would be taken into account, reducing the number shown.

[tasonir]

That works too, I had assumed the string didn't change based on the player.

[dpeg]

Actually, perhaps instead of showing the absolute damage, it'd be better to present it as a fraction of player current HP. That way you say that a monster with (90%) with dangerous, one with (150%) could be lethal. (This is essentially what Brogue does, it's not a new idea.)

[duvessa]

tasonir: I assumed that rC+ would be taken into account, reducing the number shown.

You do realize that players would then swap jewellery to figure out how resistances reduce damage, right? And after they record that rC reduces damage by 50%/66%/80%, they would start swapping jewellery to figure out what portion of an individual monster's attacks are cold damage. So displaying one number and taking resistances into account basically gives the same information as displaying the "damage 48, cold damage 88" line that tasonir suggested, except it's presented in a much less convenient and much less immediately understandable format.
Not to mention that if you're taking resistances into account you'd probably also want to take things like GDR, damage shaving, etc. into account, which just makes it really confusing to the player imo - they'd wonder why yak damage seems to be different in every game.

[ThreeInvisibleDucks]

Although I understand the reasoning behind simplifying the max damage number, I think a single number could be misleading, even if it took all player defenses into account. There's a huge difference between 3 attacks doing 20 damage and one doing 60. Yes, theoretically 3x20 could result in 60 damage through reasonable EV/AC/SH, but 1x60 has a lot higher chance of actually doing so.

[byrel]

tasonir: I assumed that rC+ would be taken into account, reducing the number shown.

You do realize that players would then swap jewellery to figure out how resistances reduce damage, right? And after they record that rC reduces damage by 50%/66%/80%, they would start swapping jewellery to figure out what portion of an individual monster's attacks are cold damage. So displaying one number and taking resistances into account basically gives the same information as displaying the "damage 48, cold damage 88" line that tasonir suggested, except it's presented in a much less convenient and much less immediately understandable format.
Not to mention that if you're taking resistances into account you'd probably also want to take things like GDR, damage shaving, etc. into account, which just makes it really confusing to the player imo - they'd wonder why yak damage seems to be different in every game.

I think we need to revisit the point of not showing everything. It's not that we're trying to hide exactly how much cold damage an azure jelly does. It's that we're trying to give minimal info for maximum impact. We don't want to drown new players in the crawl formulas (they'll think whoever thought of calculating spellpower that way was insane ) but we do want to provide them with enough info to make useful decisions.

So that fact that someone could go through gymnastics by swapping jewellery around and figure out these numbers from the game isn't a problem. We aren't trying to hide the numbers we aren't showing. We're trying to avoid shoving all of them in someone's face and say 'Here! Eat all our numbers!'.

That said, I'd prefer the damage displayed to not be dependent on resistances. Either show the default maximum value for an unresistant human or show something like tasonir suggested:

  Code:

Attack Damage:
Physical: X
Cold: X

Attacks per move:
1.2

I'm not very invested in the numbers vs bars vs english words debate at this point. I think numbers are the easiest to compare straightforwardly, because it's obvious that 40 damage is twice 20 damage, and less obvious that Dangerous is twice Requires Caution. But I'd be happier with this displayed in any of the formats.

[sanka]

Personally, I think it's way too technical. I really don't want to encourage players to add numbers. Several times during a battle. In this case, they're even asked to contemplate expected values and variance.

This is why I suggested "Azure Jelly (136)" in the monster list. It is much coarser information, but that's exactly my goal.

I think that would be very confusing, as you can easily see from the messages that the jelly attacks multiple times. So 136 would suggest that this is the damage for one attack. If the player realizes that it is not, than she is encouraged to *divide* the damage by the number of attacks to get a better estimate.

I think the less information is displayed the more players are encouraged to do complex calculations - because it is *good* to know this information, no matter what you display in the monster description, and if you encode it in any way, than it's simply encouraged to decode it.

By the same logic I think that modifying the displayed damage based on players stat like GDR and resistances would be very bad. That would simply encourage to calculate the amount of cold damage a jelly does by removing ring of cold resistance and check the damage again.

I still think at least an option would be good to display sequell's damage numbers. I use sequell frequently and I have never "calculated" expected values and variances, I have no idea why it would be useful - I'm generally interested about the threat level -that is, roughly comparing the damage numbers to my hp.

[byrel]

I think the less information is displayed the more players are encouraged to do complex calculations - because it is *good* to know this information, no matter what you display in the monster description, and if you encode it in any way, than it's simply encouraged to decode it.

I think this is only true for a relatively small subset of players. Most players will never try to calculate those things exactly.

  Code:

Azure Jelly (135/1.0 time)

Provides enough useful information. It's already stated in the description that the attacks are cold-branded; people will expect rC to reduce it. If you think it's useful to give a better picture of how much rC reduces it

  Code:

Azure Jelly
Physical: (X/1.0 time)
Cold: (X/1.0 time)

seems to work fine.

[sanka]

I have no idea how it would be less confusing, because I do not understand what the "1.0 time" should mean.

I think that because the number of attacks are already quite visible, it would be much clearer to give the damage per attack.

I think that it's not very important to show the proportion of cold damage - it's enough to know it that it's cold branded. How much resistances decrease the damage isn't showed any way.

[byrel]

We already display the time of the most recent action in the status panel, with 1.0 as the human walk delay. Calculating damage per 1.0 sounds quite reasonable, and doesn't require them to understand anything we're not providing them. If they're using a demon trident at mindelay, it'll show 0.6 as the most recent action's duration.

Edit: and damage per attack doesn't work, as some monster's attacks aren't all identical. An executioner for instance.

[asdu]

Azure Jelly
Dam: 12(cold:15-44), 12(cold:15-44), 12, 12

What is the problem with this line? (Ok, maybe change "Dam" to "Attack damage" or something).

Personally, I think it's way too technical. I really don't want to encourage players to add numbers. Several times during a battle. In this case, they're even asked to contemplate expected values and variance.

This is why I suggested "Azure Jelly (136)" in the monster list. It is much coarser information, but that's exactly my goal.

I don't understand, you keep repeating you don't want to expose numbers because you think they might be misleading without full knowledge of the underlying mechanics (an argument I can respect even though I don't quite agree), but then propose exposing numbers in a form that is misleading even if you do know the underlying mechanics?

[partial]

how about an in-game bestiary?

[archaeo]

I mean, we literally have an in-game bestiary, it's what happens when you hit ? / M, or use x v on an enemy. It's just not detailed enough for some.

edited to add: fwiw, I think it'd be a big waste of time for developers to replicate a bunch of existing work just to save people the trouble of opening another browser window; instead, it'd be a better idea to just make accessing the existing bot info easier. Gammafunk's already working on some kind of tileschat bot that will let you query the IRC bots, for example.

[byrel]

I don't understand, you keep repeating you don't want to expose numbers because you think they might be misleading without full knowledge of the underlying mechanics (an argument I can respect even though I don't quite agree), but then propose exposing numbers in a form that is misleading even if you do know the underlying mechanics?

I don't think providing a single number that is the maximum damage this creature could do to an unresisting human is misleading. You kind of expect that damage shaving, resistances, etc. would block part of it.

Put another way, what other single number would be more relavent and less confusing than a simple 'max unresisted damage' number? I mean sure, you'll take more than that if you have rF-. But that should be clear from the 'this creature can attack to do extra damage with cold'.

The only other alternative fore a single-number is the 'Actual Maximum Damage' taking into account resistances, GDR and damage shaving. But that's relatively confusing, as it provides you with a lot of factors keeping you from applying things you learned in this game from applying to the next. I prefer Maximum Unresisted Damage. But I'm not that picky; I think any of these would be an improvement.

[partial]

I mean, we literally have an in-game bestiary, it's what happens when you hit ? / M, or use x v on an enemy. It's just not detailed enough for some.

edited to add: fwiw, I think it'd be a big waste of time for developers to replicate a bunch of existing work just to save people the trouble of opening another browser window; instead, it'd be a better idea to just make accessing the existing bot info easier. Gammafunk's already working on some kind of tileschat bot that will let you query the IRC bots, for example.

I agree that it's a duplication of work

but it'd be pretty handy for offline players to be able to look up detailed info in-game