Make hexes show failure chance

[RBrandon]

Hexes obviously can have awesome effects, but often I find them off-putting because you don't really know how well it effects things without being spoiled. You get a general idea on failure, but that is based on how well the dice roll turned out so isn't really that informative.

I think that showing a failure/success chance (a general line based on spellpower and monster mr) when targeting a hex at a monster would be in line with Crawl's philosophy of providing information to the player as well as making hexes generally more usable.

[1010011010]

Although Crawl is transparent in that it shows you all the pieces, It avoids giving you all the answers, that's part of the game. What your suggesting is like the damage prediction when bolt of fire is targeting a monster. Your given your spell strength, the monsters MR and how effective your spell was after an attempt.

If anything, you want the monsters resistance level shown (immune, very resistance etc.) but not a calculated prediction.

[Sandman25]

Actually damage range for Bolt of Fire can be predicted easily.

Edit. And crawl could display it like "no damage", "almost no damage", "minor damage" etc.

[BrewFall]

A calculator and the wiki open: that's the real way to crawl

[duvessa]

What your suggesting is like the damage prediction when bolt of fire is targeting a monster.

...
Is this supposed to make the suggestion sound bad?

[RBrandon]

Hexes are a little different from damage spells in that you can generally tell how many hits it takes to kill something. Hexes either effect something or they don't and humans are generally awful at estimating probabilities.

[1010011010]

Is this supposed to make the suggestion sound bad?

Have the game use hidden numbers to effectively tell me what spell to use, I'd rather play the game myself.

[damiac]

Is this supposed to make the suggestion sound bad?

Have the game use hidden numbers to effectively tell me what spell to use, I'd rather play the game myself.

Yeah, playing crawl right means you have to go to the wiki, look up the monster, find the formula for power vs resistance, and calculate your chance!

Or, like with games like XCom, and Final Fantasy Tactics, you could just show the damn %, and let me decide if a 75% chance hex is worth trying or not. Because to me, playing the game informed is still playing the game. I still make the interesting choices, but I'm not just blindly guessing.

And damage done by spells is displayed, in a way. If it hits a monster, you see how far their life bar goes down. If a monster "easily resists" then "barely resists" I have no idea if that means I got a couple bad rolls on a 75% chance, or if I should just stop trying to use hexes on this monster. Trying to have players figure the mechanics out themselves with random stuff happening just means players are going to come in incorrect conclusions. See discussions about the agony spell to see what I mean.

[Implojin]

playing crawl right means you have to go to the wiki

snarky_comment_for_free_thanks.png

[damiac]

playing crawl right means you have to go to the wiki

snarky_comment_for_free_thanks.png

Right back at you pal.

Did you notice the rest of the post?

[headcrab0803]

or reform all the mr texts cuz they are quite misleading

[Bloax]

Or just simply display your average chance to affect the monster as the failure text, so that you won't see something stupid like

  Code:

"The kobold struggles to resist."
"The kobold easily resists."
"The kobold easily resists."
"The kobold resists."

[galehar]

And damage done by spells is displayed, in a way. If it hits a monster, you see how far their life bar goes down. If a monster "easily resists" then "barely resists" I have no idea if that means I got a couple bad rolls on a 75% chance, or if I should just stop trying to use hexes on this monster.

Damage is randomized too. The amount by which the HP bar goes down varies just like the hexes resisting messages.

[Bloax]

Damage is randomized too. The amount by which the HP bar goes down varies just like the hexes resisting messages.

Except with damage you actually have feedback in terms of exclamation marks, in addition to the "remaining health percentage" texts.

With hexes you just have a binary operation with completely misleading (because it displays the result of a volatile function) failure feedback.
That something "resists" should mean that its resistance is about even with your hex power, if it "resists with some effort" it should mean that your power is a bit over it.
And not that (MR+100-Power) was close to (random2(100)+random2(101)).

[Siegurt]

Yeah, I personally agree that the resistance message should be based on the monster's *average* chance to resist your spell, rather than the roll actually performed.

If we were to try to compare it to damage, the "damage" is yes/no (it worked or didn't) and the roll which the messages in question are interpreted to represent is the equivalent of the evasion roll for an attack, if evasion was given messages like "The kobold easily dodges your blow" I would also expect those to be based on the *average* chance rather than the actual roll.

That's because the I personally interpret descriptions where the subject is the target like "easily resists" and "barely resists" (or "easily avoids" or "barely avoids") to reflect the creature's *skill* at avoiding your attempt, not now badly this particular attempt failed.

If on the other hand the message was about the *attack* rather than the *target* I would expect it to reflect the *attempt* rather than the creature's *skill* so "The blow barely misses the kobold" and "The magic fizzles and pops without ever touching the kobold" would be appropriate descriptions of the *attempt* failing, and would clearly let the player know that this *roll* was bad, and not that this *creature* was particularly good at resisting it.

I also happen to feel like "you missed" type messages are more valuable feedback to the player if they reflect the target's skill at avoiding you rather than the results of this particular roll (As you can get a better and more immediate sense of how difficult it will be to have success at this particular task)

FWIW I'll go write this up and make it available as a patch in case the preponderace of devs decide it makes more sense this way.

[Siegurt]

Patch Available:

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=7894

[damiac]

Along those lines, it's like how when your armor skill is low, and causes your to-hit to lower enough to cause a miss, the game outright tells you "Your scale mail prevents you from hitting the foo"

This is a great way to provide transparency, without requiring the player to stare at a bunch of numbers.

So, like many others have said, if I have a 75% to stick a hex to a kobold, I'd like that indicated to me somehow. Like "The kobold barely resists your hex" or "You easily cast your hex on the kobold"

Then, if I go after a high mr creature "The magic resister easily resists your hex" or "You are just barely able to cast your hex on the kobold"


To be honest, I'd rather just get see a "75%" when I target the kobold with my hex, but getting decent feedback after the fact would still be much better than the current system.

[galehar]

Patch Available:

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=7894

Patch is in, thanks!

[Hirsch I]

love you guys.