The Tavern

On the right-hand side of the screen, below the player statuses, you can find a list of monsters in view.
It seems redundant with the main screen, because you can see all those monsters there too.
It doesn't help you find where the monsters are, if they're blending into the background. x and - or + does that.
Unlike the useful ctrl-x, it doesn't show extra information about each monster.
I'm wondering why valuable screen space is used up on this.

The monster list is a very useful interface component: monsters are one of the most important things in Crawl, and the monster lists just shows them. This is useful for when autoexplore/travel stops, and you immediately know why. It is also useful in battles to check who's around. There's the danger colouring which, while imperfect actually conveys some information.

I have some ideas how to add more functionality to monster list, but there's no way this is going to go away.

The monster list in console is so you know whether the blue @ is Eustachio or Donald.
The monster list in tiles is so that spectators which haven't memorized the tiles know which monsters correspond to which tiles.

I do wish the monster name colour were used for literally anything else, though.

huh, okay... it's just that autoexplore/travel already tells you what's in view, in the message bar. That's where I tend to see that
"Donald the Adventurer comes into view."
And if Donald and Eustachio are somehow both in view, the monster list does nothing to tell you which @ is who.

edit: misread the question

I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is. Do you people just go through all the game features to look for one thing that wasn't complained about recently or something?

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:huh, okay... it's just that autoexplore/travel already tells you what's in view, in the message bar.

"You don't need the Ctrl-x screen, x-v already tells you everything."

Leszczynek wrote:I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is.

True, I didn't even contemplate whether the OP is joking -- that's how ingrained REMOVE!! is into this place.

Now it's actually a decent idea to mentally check everything for removal. But if you subsequently suggest the monster list for removal, then you got your priorities entirely wrong and you should abandon the thought experiment.

The danger rating in the monster panel on online play is one of the most useful things because it means you won't have to x->v monsters to know how dangerous they are. If you are playing offline then you are
1. Doing it wrong
2.have no credible game data
3.probably play with a mouse

I've also never found much use for it. Monster danger rating is not useful information, as it's pretty misleading. It does make sense that it's much more useful in console mode.

I'd much rather have my inventory shown instead of monsters though. That information is very useful at all times.

I find the monster panel very useful. It's a lot easier to parse for me than the dungeon screen, so it's usually the first thing (and very often the only thing) that I look at. Especially useful for a quick "is there a threat here" evaluation. As I don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of crawl monsters, I even find the colour coding useful.

If I could change one thing though, it's to not display allies on the monster list. I find this info less useful and distracts from the actual threats.

I would rather my inventory shown then monster panel in all fairness but being a new hard core player (been trying to learn for a few months now. ) the monster danger rating has been useful in getting me to understand how dangerous a monster is relative to my character the first few times I'm won. I've been neglecting it now that I'm understanding the game more

Leszczynek wrote:I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is.

Do you notice that the thread is in Dungeon Crawling Advice? It's here because I could not find a use for it, and other people may be the same. I did not imagine that some people often play just by looking at the monster screen, but I see that it is feasible, and I may try it. But how is the "complaint" ridiculous when the monster panel takes up several lines and keeps popping in and out of the corner of your eye, plus is often incomplete with ellipsis, plus is bugged to hell in the Abyss - imagine what else could go in that space.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
Leszczynek wrote:I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is.

Do you notice that the thread is in Dungeon Crawling Advice? It's here because I could not find a use for it, and other people may be the same. I did not imagine that some people often play just by looking at the monster screen, but I see that it is feasible, and I may try it. But how is the "complaint" ridiculous when the monster panel takes up several lines and keeps popping in and out of the corner of your eye, plus is often incomplete with ellipsis, plus is bugged to hell in the Abyss - imagine what else could go in that space.

A lot of (primarily tiles) users dont look at the message area, this serves as a collected list of the things that you might have to deal with, in case you didn't notice something popping on screen.

I think as a "reminder of things that you should know about" it serves it's purpose adequately.

That being said, what would you rather see there instead? Do you have a suggestion to improve it?

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
Leszczynek wrote:I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is.

Do you notice that the thread is in Dungeon Crawling Advice? It's here because I could not find a use for it, and other people may be the same. I did not imagine that some people often play just by looking at the monster screen, but I see that it is feasible, and I may try it. But how is the "complaint" ridiculous when the monster panel takes up several lines and keeps popping in and out of the corner of your eye, plus is often incomplete with ellipsis, plus is bugged to hell in the Abyss - imagine what else could go in that space.

Then next time make useful suggestions instead of complaining for the sake of complaining, italics included.

Leszczynek wrote:
HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
Leszczynek wrote:I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is.

Do you notice that the thread is in Dungeon Crawling Advice? It's here because I could not find a use for it, and other people may be the same. I did not imagine that some people often play just by looking at the monster screen, but I see that it is feasible, and I may try it. But how is the "complaint" ridiculous when the monster panel takes up several lines and keeps popping in and out of the corner of your eye, plus is often incomplete with ellipsis, plus is bugged to hell in the Abyss - imagine what else could go in that space.

Then next time make useful suggestions instead of complaining for the sake of complaining, italics included.

Or just don't post when you say you don't intend to reply seriously. This is a valid topic, and actually there has been a suggestion for improvement here: display the inventory before the monster panel.

Offline players outnumber online players by a LOT, so to say offline players don't count is ridiculous. And you know what the offline tiles build doesn't show? The monster panel. You know what it does show? It's the same thing almost everyone will tell you to check first in a dangerous situation. The inventory screen.

I've never once seen anyone ever advise anyone to look at the monster panel. That's not to say it's never happened, but it's obviously much less common than the #1 suggestion of check what you have in your inventory.
This is an entire forum for discussing dungeon crawl. If you don't like a particular topic, or don't feel inclined to discuss it, nobody is forcing you. But you have no right to tell the rest of us we can't discuss it, and by attempting to derail the thread with nonsense that's exactly what you're doing. Stop.

Leszczynek wrote:
HardboiledGargoyle wrote:
Leszczynek wrote:I'm not going to even reply seriously, that's how ridiculous this complaint is.

Do you notice that the thread is in Dungeon Crawling Advice? It's here because I could not find a use for it, and other people may be the same. I did not imagine that some people often play just by looking at the monster screen, but I see that it is feasible, and I may try it. But how is the "complaint" ridiculous when the monster panel takes up several lines and keeps popping in and out of the corner of your eye, plus is often incomplete with ellipsis, plus is bugged to hell in the Abyss - imagine what else could go in that space.

Then next time make useful suggestions instead of complaining for the sake of complaining, italics included.

da hell? why would I be making suggestions when I'm asking for advice?

Siegurt wrote:That being said, what would you rather see there instead? Do you have a suggestion to improve it?

Actually, any of a lot of useful things could go in the side panel - resistances/vulnerabilities, worn jewellery, a full bar for % to next XL - but to pass the threshold for inclusion, they have to be absolutely essential, since they encroach upon the already limited space allotted for the monster list.

As both online and offline player I want to say that having different UI made me ignore inventory panel in offline and monster panel in online.

I much prefer the monster panel to an inventory panel. I know what's in my inventory. But having all the monsters in a list saves time.

in console it is damage indicator, and I find it very usefull

green: full HP
yellow: heavily wounded
purple: severely wounded
red: almost dead

Seeing red/yellow/white/black names is one of the best features for newbs. It's a, "if you died to this, don't say you weren't warned" type deal.

Of course, veteran players already know which monsters are dangerous and when. So maybe the names panel should be toggleable.

In addition, I thought that the monster panel was shown instead of inventory in webtiles because of lag reasons and that the inventory panel works far better with mouse controls,

lethediver wrote:Seeing red/yellow/white/black names

I played 1735 games of crawl before I learned about this feature. Maybe it could be better documented?

lethediver wrote:Seeing red/yellow/white/black names is one of the best features for newbs. It's a, "if you died to this, don't say you weren't warned" type deal.

I think printing the monster's XP value would be much more helpful for newbs and others than painting its name, to be honest.

information that some monster is giving more xp then another one isn't to help new players that much
(e.g. Ijyb gives more xp then an adder, but adder is more dangerous)

Eyesburn wrote:information that some monster is giving more xp then another one isn't to help new players that much
(e.g. Ijyb gives more xp then an adder, but adder is more dangerous)

adders dont spawn with big wands of fuck you on d:3

Eyesburn wrote:information that some monster is giving more xp then another one isn't to help new players that much

Did you know that threat level is a function of the monster's XP and the total XP you've earned? The monster panel is basically ordered by rough XP value, but less helpful because it adjusts for your XL (adjusted by XL apt), which is not a great indicator of your good your char is. Ijyb could be yellow while the adder is white.

oh, so then instead of monster panel add monster XP value next to threat level function, so new players can calculate it for every monster in the LOS;
or you are suggesting new threat level function ?

I'm saying a lot of things, but making players calculate threat level based on given XP values is absurd. What the game does is estimate how dangerous monsters are, in general, by looking at their XP value. But then it goes further and estimates how dangerous it is, to you, and uses nothing but your XL to guess how powerful you are. This introduces a lot of noise. It would be better to give the absolute, char-independent danger ranking. Crawl could still paint monster names if it wanted, into colors corresponding to XP ranges, such as 10,30,70,120,180,250,350,500,700,950,1300,1750,2350,3000,8000.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:I'm saying a lot of things, but making players calculate threat level based on given XP values is absurd. What the game does is estimate how dangerous monsters are, in general, by looking at their XP value. But then it goes further and estimates how dangerous it is, to you, and uses nothing but your XL to guess how powerful you are. This introduces a lot of noise. It would be better to give the absolute, char-independent danger ranking. Crawl could still paint monster names if it wanted, into colors corresponding to XP ranges, such as 10,30,70,120,180,250,350,500,700,950,1300,1750,2350,3000,8000.

As much as I like displaying some numbers I don't think those numbers are useful, quite the opposite actually, people don't easily distinguish one 4-digits number from another 4-digits number. If you want to display numbers, it should be something like 1,2,3,4,5 or even better -2,-1,0,+1,+2 (relative to your "strength") and it is pretty similar to what we already have with harmless, easy, dangerous, extremely dangerous. Also color coding is better than numbers for important things with just a few grades (we wouldn't like to see 3, 2 and 1 instead of red, yellow and green in traffic light, do we?)

actually color is even better for a different reason - it inserts a level of abstraction, which is appropriate: a monster's danger is related to its coloring, not determined by it. Many colors are appropriate because dangerousness and XP is rather continuous. I mean, use actual XP or use colors, but not those terrible rounded numbers in "1,2,3,4,5" or "-2,-1,0,+1,+2".
lich
hydra
orc knight
ogre
hobgoblin

Oh, it looks like I missed your point and we are saying the same things.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:lich
hydra
orc knight
ogre
hobgoblin

this is misleading and would only confuse new players

This is important:
giant gecko

As a tiles user I have been annoyed with the monster panel in the past, but it was because it was bugged really badly in the abyss, not because of what the panel is supposed to do.

unfortunately, the game considers giant geckos "easy", same as rats, from turn 1.

Eyesburn wrote:
HardboiledGargoyle wrote:lich
hydra
orc knight
ogre
hobgoblin
this is misleading and would only confuse new players

sorry, what? How is it more misleading/confusing than monsters who change colors the way they do now? tbf I wasn't careful with the palette there. The game could use a broader progression of colors, say: grey, white, green, yellow, red, purple, then deep blue, with transition colors in-between. Players could then link colors to certain concepts like "tough early", "mid-game popcorn", "ultimate nasty". Like, "you've done mines, you can tab yellow now", "green? that's out of depth here, better avoid".
This would allow relying on memory and past experience to some degree. E.g. there are quite a few monsters that are usually popcorn, but occasionally appear out of depth. The way current threat indicators work, they incline you to think of them as "easy", and disincline you from thinking of them as a so-and-so-tier threat, making it really natural to thoughtlessly start tabbing a pre-lair griffon or something, or on the contrary, beware ogres and such for an unreasonably long time.

Don't forget that those hobgoblins can be (extremely) dangerous when you meet them for the first time, having them with green color is very misleading.
Also I don't like using more than a few colors, as otherwise it is harder to differentiate (is purple more dangerous than red? why?) and can result in visual clutter when you have many monsters in view.

I think you'd get used to it. Ex. blue = endgame elite, so red+blue = close to endgame elite. Green is at least colored, which is more striking than white. And white is brighter and thus more striking than grey. Monster tiles also have a color/brightness and threat correlation.

Again, I don't understand why you're against a broad or even a continuous 24-bit spectrum. Pigeonholing monsters into one of very few large boxes is what's misleading. You only want to give a rough idea, not that "extremely dangerous" is categorically different from "dangerous" (in fact, a "red" monster can currently turn into a "yellow" monster as you kill a single rat)

Currently harmless monsters become grey and you easily see extremely dangerous monsters because they are red.
With your proposal I will see a bunch of differently-colored monsters and will need to spend more time and will be more likely to make a mistake.
Players should learn to respect yellow monsters too, recently I met 2 hill giants early (one after another) and the second was yellow after I killed the first red one.

Basically at some point I stop caring about hobgoblins, ogres, orc knights etc. so they should use a single color, not 3.

Well I think people would easily start filtering out the range of colors that correspond to the easiest monsters, once they get to a certain stage. Current game tends to call some "easy" and some "harmless", is that distracting?

I think that adjusting a monster's difficulty for your character is something that players should be doing by themselves, implicitly. Rather than having the game awkwardly try to do it for them.

But even aside from that... let's assume the current model holds... is there any good to having monsters be discreetly white/yellow/red? I think it would be better to have intermediaries, like light yellow and orange. The breakpoints between threat levels are so far apart that a color can mean a ton of things. I think your latest anecdote attests to this. You can rip straight through reds sometimes, yellows may tear you apart.

Assuming monster panel still lists monsters by XP value, i.e. the most "threatening" monsters rise to the top, that's what will tell you what the colors mean.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:Well I think people would easily start filtering out the range of colors that correspond to the easiest monsters, once they get to a certain stage. Current game tends to call some "easy" and some "harmless", is that distracting?

I don't see difference between easy and harmless indeed and would prefer to delete all harmless monsters.

I think that adjusting a monster's difficulty for your character is something that players should be doing by themselves, implicitly. Rather than having the game awkwardly try to do it for them.

I would like the game to help me determine danger and it means I want relative danger, not just XP of the monster. I mean I don't want to spend time and mind to differentiate ogre from hobgoblin when I am XL 20. Players just need to understand that there is no major difference between red and yellow monsters, except red ones are more likely to kill you in 1-2 attacks.
Overall I like current system. More often than not red monsters are more dangerous than yellow monsters, and yellow monsters are still dangerous.

But even aside from that... let's assume the current model holds... is there any good to having monsters be discreetly white/yellow/red? I think it would be better to have intermediaries, like light yellow and orange. The breakpoints between threat levels are so far apart that a color can mean a ton of things. I think your latest anecdote attests to this. You can rip straight through reds sometimes, yellows may tear you apart.

I don't see how having more levels will help players. Currently it is possible to be afraid more of some yellow monsters than of some red ones with specific characters, with more levels we will have even more exceptions.

Assuming monster panel still lists monsters by XP value, i.e. the most "threatening" monsters rise to the top, that's what will tell you what the colors mean.

What is so good if you see orange and red monster instead of just 2 red monsters? Disadvantages are clear:
1) orange still can be more dangerous than red despite XP values
2) more visual clutter
3) having to remember my current XL because those colors have different meaning for XL 5 and XL 20 characters
4) I can be so high level that both should be really displayed as yellow or even green instead

I don't understand the visual clutter argument. You're only broadening the palette, not adding anything new to the screen.
People generally cannot determine exactly what color is used, just by looking at it. It's not possible and it's odd hearing that people will look for differences in color, when the whole purpose is just to catch your attention when something threatening is in view.
edit: And I don't see how you'd spend time or mind differentiating goblin from ogre, because they're colored slightly different. Even with their tiles, which are objectively quite different from each other, they scream: "I don't matter, hold tab", when you reach a certain point.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I don't see how having more levels will help players. Currently it is possible to be afraid more of some yellow monsters than of some red ones with specific characters, with more levels we will have even more exceptions.

Yes, exactly - it is functional to treat the color as a mere suggestion, not as a strict directive. The exception is normal.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:3) having to remember my current XL because those colors have different meaning for XL 5 and XL 20 characters

You should not be using your XL to know how strong you are. If you're doing that, that's weird.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:I don't understand the visual clutter argument. You're only broadening the palette, not adding anything new to the screen.

Compare

lich
hydra
orc knight
ogre
hobgoblin

to

lich
hydra
orc knight
ogre
hobgoblin

edit: And I don't see how you'd spend time or mind differentiating goblin from ogre, because they're colored slightly different. Even with their tiles, which are objectively quite different from each other, they scream: "I don't matter, hold tab", when you reach a certain point.

That's my point. Why are they colored differently if they are functionally the same?

You should not be using your XL to know how strong you are. If you're doing that, that's weird.

It's a good estimation of PC offense/defense.

It's a good estimate of how far into the game you are, but it does not at all take into account whether you've been struggling or steamrolling.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:That's my point. Why are they colored differently if they are functionally the same?

Because "threat persistence" is a useful quality as I discussed above (to the point where the disadvantage looks negligible to me):

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:This would allow relying on memory and past experience to some degree. E.g. there are quite a few monsters that are usually popcorn, but occasionally appear out of depth. The way current threat indicators work, they incline you to think of them as "easy", and disincline you from thinking of them as a so-and-so-tier threat, making it really natural to thoughtlessly start tabbing a pre-lair griffon or something, or on the contrary, beware ogres and such for an unreasonably long time.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:It's a good estimate of how far into the game you are, but it does not at all take into account whether you've been struggling or steamrolling.

Do you have a better estimate than XL? XL at least helps to differentiate spriggan who dives to first downstairs from spriggan who explores everything and kills everyone.

Because "threat persistence" is a useful quality as I discussed above (to the point where the disadvantage looks negligible to me):

I don't think it will work, you will still need to remember specific monsters. If you don't have problems with Ogre (XP 118), it does not mean you will not have problems with Boggart (XP 117).

I'm not saying it would work everywhere perfectly but it is useful to a degree. Biased goalposts here - it's not like the current system warns you about boggarts.

I said the game would better not even attempt to estimate how strong you are.

let's not forget this whole discussion is contingent on the game continuing to use XP to indicate threat level

there are better ways to indicate various kinds of threat, XP is just a convenient one we're used to, and after all, it can be nice to know how much juicy XP you're sucking up

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:I'm not saying it would work everywhere perfectly but it is useful to a degree. Biased goalposts here - it's not like the current system warns you about boggarts.

Yes, that's why having more levels is bad, we will have more situations when a monster from higher danger level is less dangerous than a monster from lower danger level.

I said the game would better not even attempt to estimate how strong you are.

While I said that I like the game combining hobgoblin, ogre and orc knight in one danger level for XL 20 character but keeping them in different danger levels for XL 5 character.

let's not forget this whole discussion is contingent on the game continuing to use XP to indicate threat level there are better ways to indicate various kinds of threat, XP is just a convenient one we're used to, and after all, it can be nice to know how much juicy XP you're sucking up

I am not sure we can create a better estimation than XP provided it takes into account monster speed, HD, HP, spells etc. as far as I know.

Really? The game could calculate the average damage/aut that a monster would inflict on you, if it had its way with you. Using generic functions to estimate casting frequency, to crunch damage/accuracy/defenses/resistances, etc. It's not a stretch, considering that monsters often estimate collateral damage or the effectiveness/futility of their actions. You could special-case boggarts and giant eyeballs to always be high priority. Change threat level when it hastes or something. Ignore movement speed because that's largely a trinary (>/</=) consideration.

I doubt it's better than raw data, though

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
HardboiledGargoyle wrote:I'm not saying it would work everywhere perfectly but it is useful to a degree. Biased goalposts here - it's not like the current system warns you about boggarts.

Yes, that's why having more levels is bad, we will have more situations when a monster from higher danger level is less dangerous than a monster from lower danger level.

This is hard to take seriously. Let's say we had only 2 danger indicators, white and red. We'd have fewer situations "when a monster from higher danger level is less dangerous than a monster from lower danger level", but it would be that much less useful. Have only 1 danger indicator, and we'd have no such situations at all.

HardboiledGargoyle wrote:This is hard to take seriously. Let's say we had only 2 danger indicators, white and red. We'd have fewer situations "when a monster from higher danger level is less dangerous than a monster from lower danger level", but it would be that much less useful. Have only 1 danger indicator, and we'd have no such situations at all.

That's absurd of course. Having a separate color for each monster is as absurd

3-4 levels is optimal I believe.

Heh, new webtiles user asked this question:

A person wrote:Also on the servers, how do I (can I) get the same info display of inventory that's bottom-right on the desktop?

Not exactly a statistically significant sample or anything, but I bet far more people would like an inventory display there instead of a monster display.

The Tavern

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