Stop passive regeneration (unless pressed 5, s or "."

[Sandman25]

Characters don't regenerate HP/MP unless they rest or pass turns (amulet, mutations and spell still work). Solved problems:
1) Pillar dancing makes no sense. You don't retreat as caster waiting for MP to regen. You don't retreat as fighter if you are wounded and monster is not.
2) There is no popcorn. Your XL 27 Gr in CPA eventually will die to goblins, you can't clear the whole level non-stop. Vaults 5 is triple fun.
3) Luring has one less reason: when Yaktaur hits you with a bolt, you don't retreat to heal. Similar to pillar dancing except the monster is not adjacent.
4) Hell becomes more distinct, no more complaints about boring diving to last level
5) Throwing stones/tomahawks/javelins is no longer no-brainer. Passing turns makes sense.

Additional benefits:
1) Tr and VS become more distinct from other species
2) Sp and Fe become more distinct from other species
3) New item: amulet of mana regeneration, allows to regenerate MP while moving. Gourmand is no longer no brainer for casters.
4) Consumables become more important. I hope we will no longer have 20+ potions of healing for MiBe when it is played by bad player
5) Weak combos will be weak indeed. It was always exciting when you are running/teleporting all over the level but now you don't regenerate while doing it
6) Speedrunning will be more fair, no longer situations when both players had decided to explore at 90% HP and one of them found a dangerous monster on next turn and died while another was able to regenerate to 100% before finding the same monster.

Spoiler: show

Stealth buff

[Siegurt]

A couple of your points I would dispute:

Gourmond is not a no brainer for spellcasters, in falls in the middle of the preference pack for me, in the situation you describe, amulet of regen MP would be a no-branier as long as 1-2 points of mana is relevant (which it is for large sections of the game) Also partially defeats the point of the proposal, since conjuration luring would be tedious and fully more optimal than the alternatives.

Throwing would only suffer the most minor of all drawbacks, in nearly all cases killing things more quickly so they can't do damage to you would be of more use than regenerating another point of hps/mana (The exception would be when the creature in front of a pack would do less damage than you could regenerate)


(Unless of course you drastically increase the rate of resting regeneration, which wasn't proposed, but might be a logical counterbalance to the proposed lack of moving regeneration)

The Abyss would be *MUCH* harder.

In your proposal would you remove the amulet and spell regeneration, or have them give you mobile regen?

Overall I think this might be fun, but might also require some additional fiddling to smooth out the weird edges.

Also you could be clearer at the outset of your proposal that you mean "Stop regeneration while you are doing anything but actively resting with . or 5" (In particular in the title of the post) to make it more understandable what you mean at a first glance

[KittenInMyCerealz]

I like this idea.

[Hurkyl]

Benefit 6 is more general. I know when I started, I felt like I shouldn't waste time resting to full, and would instead get my HP/MP topped off while exploring.

[Pollen_Golem]

The way I understand this, everybody has Slow Healing 3 unless they wait doing nothing, in which case they instantly revert to regenerating.

Monsters should lose regen if they're in LOS, to have some monster-player symmetry.

(Unless of course you drastically increase the rate of resting regeneration, which wasn't proposed

Well DUH. One thing at a time.

Overall I think this might be fun, but might also require some additional fiddling to smooth out the weird edges.

Kind of like how making Slow Healing 3 work properly requires smoothing out the relevant weird edges.

[KoboldLord]

This isn't a bad plan in principle, but it would be pretty hard to get from where we are to where you're suggesting we should be. One major problem is that you're proposing existing pillar-dancing be replaced with a system where you can forestall death indefinitely by pillar-dancing, but your situation never actually changes for better or for worse so the optimal choice continues to be to circle endlessly. Even if monster generation or starvation eventually solves the problem, this is potentially a very long sequence of controllable helplessness, and that sort of thing really isn't fun. Possibly it could be paired by making all speed 10 monsters just a little bit faster; if there is no intention of allowing the player to run from battles anyway, the monsters might as well just be faster than the player so at least they aren't all tedious about it.

[Sandman25]

Siegurt
Additional benefits are not that important, I am more interested in solving problems.
I updated thread title.

KittenInMyCerealz
See OP.

Hurkyl
Yes, this is my experience also. Too much luck.

Pollen_Golem
This is not slow healing 3, I didn't want to keep it possible to run around a big pillar and heal while being without monsters in LoS sometimes.

KoboldLord
It could make sense to change energy randomization so that monster could get an extra turn but could never lose a turn.

[mps]

If anything regeneration should be faster. It would be better to think about how to eliminate resting than making it even more essential to life. You don't seem to reckon with the existence of stairs here, which are in many ways more problematic than pillar dancing. As long as stairs work the way they do, you're still going to have pillar dancing. Pillar dancing isn't just about regeneration. It's also about scumming energy randomization to make cheap escapes, often followed by getting upstairs.

I think the right way to deal with hp recovery would involve a coherent notion of an "encounter" and making hp operate on a "per-encounter" basis. Of course, there's a hard question of how to define and implement such a thing in a way that isn't easily exploited and maintains the general tactical contours of current crawl.

[Sandman25]

mps,
Stairs are very good in crawl. "Fix" stairs and you will get an arcade/shooter instead of RGL, at least for spell-less characters, no decisions on either tactical or strategic levels.

[duvessa]

sandman25 is right. the other day i repaired a crack in my chessboard and it turned into a pinball machine

[Chicken]

I don't see the advantage. Going round and round is not exactly safe and not exactly sure ... it's not like it isn't a tactical decision. It reflects how confident you are that you can blink in two or three tries despite a '5%' fail rate, when a rat comes the other way. Dancing around a single square of pillar, well... given the 'energy randomization' that is not exactly safe or sure either! To me, the tactics of escape and evade seem more interesting than the tactics of 'let's try to guess in advance if we can beat a random monster'. The game already has a lot of the latter anyway.

Besides, if you only heal on resting, well, everyone is going to be backing off and resting a lot, which sounds like a lot more waiting for the amount of play you do.

[Sar]

I kind of like the idea of "no healing on the move", not sure MP regen should be tampered with, though.

[Sandman25]

I kind of like the idea of "no healing on the move", not sure MP regen should be tampered with, though.

Pillar dancing applies to both HP and MP.

Chicken
Let me know when you will be online, I can show you how it is almost impossible to die in early dungeon because of pillar dancing.

[bel]

How about the case where in the early game, a hobgoblin gets a couple of lucky hits and there is no way to survive other than pillar dancing? The comment about speedrunning is very strange as well, but I think Sandman does not do speedrunning so I am discounting it. I am not sure pillar dancing needs fixing anyway. What is wrong with it?

[Sar]

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with pillar dancing. Well, now I am not sure I even like the proposal that much. Your lategame examples were interesting, though.

[tabstorm]

I don't see what this improves outside of making bad combos or spellcasters worse on D:1-10 because you can't pillar dance (so I agree with point (1)). I don't buy (2) and (3): This will just make the game take longer, since you're forced to stop and rest up. The game isn't much more dangerous: You retreat up the stairs to rest instead of doing it on the level you are currently exploring, if you are truly worried about any old random monster that outspeeds you coming along and killing you. Kiting monsters to a cleared location is encouraged even more, because you will want to maximize your chances of having a safe retreat to the upstairs. The same is true of (4), it will just take even longer to rest up in Hell and changing gods to TSO/Makhleb will just be an even better strategy than it is currently. For (5), I assume you mean throwing items to whittle down a few hp on a monster while they approach you. Is there any point to doing this after the earliest floors? It can't make a difference of more than a few HP. As you said a lot of these things are currently optimal play that no one does because it would make the game excruciating.

I really think this change would make some of the annoying things about Hypothetical Optimal Play even more visible.

Also, this change won't really increase the fairness of speedruns much (if at all) either. You still rest sometimes on a speedrun, if your HP gets very low. Without an amulet of regeneration, this change would probably amount to something like 7-8 hp between encounters. This adds up after awhile, but essentially it shifts the dice roll from "regenerating enough on exploration between encounters" to "deciding to rest or not". Of course, with an amulet of regen, you barely ever need to rest, so this would make a good run even more contingent on finding an amulet of regeneration than it already is - an amulet of regeneration can easily save a few thousand turns on a 15 rune speedrun currently so you can imagine how large the difference would be.

It seems that this change would encourage "proper" crawl tactics on a speedrun (resting up to heal) somewhat, but the whole point of doing them is that "proper" crawl tactics are unfun in some ways. On a "proper" run, every fight is trivial because you lure every enemy to a safe location and kill it while taking little to no damage, then rest up to full hp and retreat. Essentially, you are using "out-of-battle" tactics. On a speedrun you don't want to do this, so you have to wisely use "in-battle" tactics (like abilities, potions, and careful positioning) because you're underleveled and have crap items. To me this is more fun than spotting a monster, throwing an item at it, and walking back 200 steps to a staircase to kill it, taking 5 damage in the process.

A very good turncount mainly comes down to luck finding branch entries on crawl's gigantic maps, and finding the various items you need to not die (mostly jewellery and a good body armour).

[Sandman25]

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with pillar dancing.

Pillar dancing protects vs bad luck and makes it impossible to die to single monster: you missed and monster hit you? Ok, let's spend some real time to reset the battle and try again at full HP. It requires no skill but much patience and can be very time-consuming. I would be fine with pillar dancing if someone shared a bot for it.

[Sandman25]

I don't buy (2) and (3): This will just make the game take longer, since you're forced to stop and rest up. The game isn't much more dangerous: You retreat up the stairs to rest instead of doing it on the level you are currently exploring, if you are truly worried about any old random monster that outspeeds you coming along and killing you. Kiting monsters to a cleared location is encouraged even more, because you will want to maximize your chances of having a safe retreat to the upstairs.

I don't get it. Players complain that middle/late game is boring because they tab everything and when I suggest a way to stop tabbing and player must stop and take a decision, you are saying that it does not solve anything except makes game longer. Players don't want mindless tabbing, players don't want to stop tabbing, players don't want to make terrain play greater role (see my thread about different tactical properties for different tiles like forest/hill/swamp), players don't want to lure, players don't want to remove pillar dancing. So my question is "how does ideal crawl fight look like", what do you want, people? I feel that crawl is very simple at tactical level, easy for 7-years old child with unlimited patience
Bot wins prove this point by the way.

[Sandman25]

I will play a game without regeneration as in OP and let you know how it works. I am tired of normal crawl anyway.

[bel]

Just because there is a problem doesn't mean your solution will make it better. The reasons are given above, you may or may not agree with them. Pillar dancing can be tedious, and can be necessary (consider the example I gave above).

I do not think your "pillar dance till full HP" is a good mechanic, let alone optimal. You can never be sure whether another monster sees you while pillar dancing, or whether an OOD monster is generated on the level because of too much scumming and finds you. If those mechanisms are weak (they probably are), they should be strengthened. I do not like this mechanism.

[Sandman25]

Just because there is a problem doesn't mean your solution will make it better. The reasons are given above, you may or may not agree with them. Pillar dancing can be tedious, and can be necessary (consider the example I gave above).

What example? This?

How about the case where in the early game, a hobgoblin gets a couple of lucky hits and there is no way to survive other than pillar dancing?

Player should die in this case. Currently it is almost impossible to die to a single goblin. Crawl can just instakill any goblin who comes into view if there is a pillar to run around, it will save some real time and key presses.

I do not think your "pillar dance till full HP" is a good mechanic, let alone optimal.

Because it is "pillar dance until you are safe to try killing monster again". And yes, it is optimal but bad for players.

You can never be sure whether another monster sees you while pillar dancing, or whether an OOD monster is generated on the level because of too much scumming and finds you. If those mechanisms are weak (they probably are), they should be strengthened. I do not like this mechanism.

If you are likely to die to the goblin, you pillar dance and hope that nobody else notices you. It is a no-brainer (those who attack immediately without trying to pillar dance first are impatient (=bad) players).

[archaeo]

what do you want, people?

It's almost like the Tavern is a collection of a bunch of different people who have different ideas about what the ideal Crawl looks like.

FWIW I completely agree with Tabstorm and think every single one of these changes would only serve to make Crawl more tedious to play, not less. Tedium is not challenge.

I feel that crawl is very simple at tactical level, easy for 7-years old child with unlimited patience

I like Crawl's difficulty level. I have to pay attention and play well, but if I do that, I can win a fair amount of the time. If this means I have the mentality of an impatient 7-year old child, I'm basically ok with that.

[bel]

How about the case where in the early game, a hobgoblin gets a couple of lucky hits and there is no way to survive other than pillar dancing?

Player should die in this case. Currently it is almost impossible to die to a single goblin. Crawl can just instakill any goblin who comes into view if there is a pillar to run around, it will save some real time and key presses.

So, a player should die in the early game with no consumables and no way to fix it just because a hobgoblin got a couple of lucky hits? I am sorry, I think this "solution" is worse than the problem it is meant to solve. You have your own sensibilities and are of course free to modify the game as you see fit.

[Hurkyl]

I do not think your "pillar dance till full HP" is a good mechanic, let alone optimal. You can never be sure whether another monster sees you while pillar dancing, or whether an OOD monster is generated on the level because of too much scumming and finds you.

If you don't heal during the fight, you have to heal after the fight. The OOD timer is irrelevant here, and avoiding dancing because you're worried another monster will seeing you doesn't have much beneficial effect either; most of the time the monster would still find you while you're hurt anyways; whether that happens while you're still fighting the previous monster often doesn't matter, because you can render that fact irrelevant by continuing to dance, and using a corridor to fight just the one monster at a time when you're ready.

[Siegurt]

I feel that crawl is very simple at tactical level, easy for 7-years old child with unlimited patience

If you can find a 7 year old child with unlimited patience, you need to recommend their parents for a nobel prize, because surely they've accomplished some sort of miracle.

[bel]

If you don't heal during the fight, you have to heal after the fight. The OOD timer is irrelevant here, and avoiding dancing because you're worried another monster will seeing you doesn't have much beneficial effect either; most of the time the monster would still find you while you're hurt anyways; whether that happens while you're still fighting the previous monster often doesn't matter, because you can render that fact irrelevant by continuing to dance, and using a corridor to fight just the one monster at a time when you're ready.

We are talking about the ultra-cautious strategy of "pillar dance always till full HP" - even when HP is 95%, not 10%. Obviously there is a point where the extra safety of pillar dancing is dominated by the chance of some other monster finding you. This is what I referred to above: if this mechanic is weak (perhaps it is), it should be strengthened. The approach in the OP is in the wrong direction, imo.

[Sandman25]

Is there anyone who understands why I wrote about 7 years old child? Correct answer below spoiler.

Spoiler: show

I was referencing intelligence, not mentality/patience. You can be as stupid as 7 years old child and still have a great win percentage provided you are patient enough

[Siegurt]

Is there anyone who understands why I wrote about 7 years old child? Correct answer below spoiler.

Spoiler: show

I was referencing intelligence, not mentality/patience. You can be as stupid as 7 years old child and still have a great win percentage provided you are patient enough

7 year olds aren't stupid, they're often misinformed, greatly lacking information and perspective, and are typically excessively self-interested and unaware of how their actions influence the world around them, but stupid? No not particularly.

That doesn't mean that a 7 year old would have as good of an understanding of tactics as a more mature person would typically, they won't, but it's not stupidity, it's just lack of experience and information.

For clarification, intelligence refers to one's *capacity* for understanding, "Experience" refers to one's *accumulated* understanding, "Wisdom" is the ability to *apply* accumulated understanding to new, but related, situations. The opposite of "wise" is "foolish", the opposite of "intelligent" is "stupid" the opposite of "experienced" is "naive"

If you said "You can be as naive as a 7 year old child and.." it'd probably resonate more soundly.

[tabstorm]

I don't buy (2) and (3): This will just make the game take longer, since you're forced to stop and rest up. The game isn't much more dangerous: You retreat up the stairs to rest instead of doing it on the level you are currently exploring, if you are truly worried about any old random monster that outspeeds you coming along and killing you. Kiting monsters to a cleared location is encouraged even more, because you will want to maximize your chances of having a safe retreat to the upstairs.

I don't get it. Players complain that middle/late game is boring because they tab everything and when I suggest a way to stop tabbing and player must stop and take a decision, you are saying that it does not solve anything except makes game longer. Players don't want mindless tabbing, players don't want to stop tabbing, players don't want to make terrain play greater role (see my thread about different tactical properties for different tiles like forest/hill/swamp), players don't want to lure, players don't want to remove pillar dancing. So my question is "how does ideal crawl fight look like", what do you want, people? I feel that crawl is very simple at tactical level, easy for 7-years old child with unlimited patience
Bot wins prove this point by the way.

Because it's not an interesting decision, it's just "well, I had better walk that enemy back to the stairs for the 1486th time". Optimal play won't change, you will just have to do it more often to win. If you wanted to increase difficulty, I think the most natural thing to do is shrink map size and cut experience a bit. The huge maps are what allows the "kite enemies across the level" to be a viable strategy, combined with overabundance of XP.

With that said, in almost any game, at some point you are going to essentially master it and it won't provide much of a challenge. This is when you set extra rules to challenge yourself or just play something else.

[Sandman25]

Is there anyone who understands why I wrote about 7 years old child? Correct answer below spoiler.

Spoiler: show

I was referencing intelligence, not mentality/patience. You can be as stupid as 7 years old child and still have a great win percentage provided you are patient enough

7 year olds aren't stupid, they're often misinformed, greatly lacking information and perspective, and are typically excessively self-interested and unaware of how their actions influence the world around them, but stupid? No not particularly.

That doesn't mean that a 7 year old would have as good of an understanding of tactics as a more mature person would typically, they won't, but it's not stupidity, it's just lack of experience and information.

For clarification, intelligence refers to one's *capacity* for understanding, "Experience" refers to one's *accumulated* understanding, "Wisdom" is the ability to *apply* accumulated understanding to new, but related, situations. The opposite of "wise" is "foolish", the opposite of "intelligent" is "stupid" the opposite of "experienced" is "naive"

If you said "You can be as naive as a 7 year old child and.." it'd probably resonate more soundly.

Intelligence is not binary. Different studies claim that intelligence greatly depends on brain and as you probably know brain at 7 years is not completely formed yet. My point was that current crawl does not require any advanced tactics, it is almost always known what to do next.

Because it's not an interesting decision, it's just "well, I had better walk that enemy back to the stairs for the 1486th time". Optimal play won't change, you will just have to do it more often to win.

There is huge difference between stairs and pillars - new monsters spawn near stairs, so that 1486th time can be very different from previous 1485, also there are only 3 stairs and they can be blocked or near each other at the edge of map. My intention is not difficulty increase but first 3 items in list from OP. Difficulty increase is a side effect and I suspect it can be removed by changing something if really desired.

[Speleothing]

This is pretty high up on the list of terrible ideas I've seen on the tavern.

[Aean]

Hmm. Well, I'm not going to get into the whole 7-year-old thing, but with regards to the thread topic...

Solved problems(?)
1) Doesn't make that much sense. A smart fighter or mage should retreat from a powerful monster if they're wounded and the monster isn't. Basically, instead of limiting tedium by eliminating stairdancing, you change it from stairdancing to a lot of retreat-and-healing. I suppose, though, you could limit it by introducing a slow/exhaustion status after a while, though, as a limiting factor for tedious behavior.
2) Un-enhanced regeneration is pretty slow. By the time where you get to the lvl 27 Gr with CPA example, you've also got a character that has access to regen items, gods that give HP/MP, and can easily cast regeneration. Seems like this would just lead to slightly more spamming of regeneration, rather than really solving any problem.
3) This...also doesn't wash. It just means that you retreat further to heal than you did before (say, up a staircase). Seems like this would be at least as tedious as stairdancing.
4) How does this make Hell more distinct? You'd just have the same diving as before, but you'd have people retreating back up to the vestibule more often. Besides, using 5 to rest in Hell is perfectly doable. And again, I'd say Hell-diving characters are getting more healing from Regen+, regeneration, and HP-on-kills than from passive regeneration anyway.
5) Unless regeneration from waiting/resting is significantly boosted, it seems unlikely that it'd become optimal to pass turns instead of fighting. The healing from waiting is slow enough that killing the enemy a turn sooner is usually much more valuable than a turn of healing.

Additional benefits(?)
1) Tr and VS don't really become more distinct. Mostly they just continue to rest slightly less than other species.
2) Sp and Fe don't really become more distinct. Mostly they just continue to rest slightly more than other species.
3) Not a bad idea for an amulet, even without the stopping of passive regeneration. But like our current amulet of regeneration, translates to "rest slightly less, retreat slightly less."
4) Consumables do become more important. But then, is that necessarily a good thing? Sure, it'd mean that the MiBe no longer finishes with 20+ potions of healing, but it'd mean that people lose more low-level characters simply because they lacked the right consumable. Mostly it penalizes new characters, and has little-to-no effect on high-level characters, because they've had so much of a chance to stockpile consumables. Better a level 3 with one potion and a level 27 with 20, than a level 3 with none, and a level 27 with 10.
5) Debatable as to whether this is any sort of benefit. If you want to be weak, that's always an option. You can use only clubs, or no spells above third level, or any sort of challenges you want without affecting all other characters and combos.
6) Call me biased, but I'd say that the game as a whole shouldn't be changed just to alter speedrunning.


Mostly, seems like this would just encourage more retreat-to-heal, increasing tedium instead of decreasing it.

[TeshiAlair]

Here's a thought:

We already have out of depth spawns after spending a really really long time on a level. What if you had a similar effect if you spent a medium amount of time on a level- even if its something like "Monsters become more attuned to your presence" which reduces stealth or causes some noise or a mark effect or whatnot. That would put a soft cap on pillar dancing rather than a hard cap.

[Pollen_Golem]

Basically, instead of limiting tedium by eliminating stairdancing, you change it from stairdancing to a lot of retreat-and-healing.

Eliminating stairdancing is another option, OP didn't announce being opposed to it.

Seems like this would just lead to slightly more spamming of regeneration, rather than really solving any problem.

If you're doing anything other than waiting, there's NO REGEN except trog's hand - no regen the spell, no regen+ from items, and healing doesn't count as regen.

2) Sp and Fe don't really become more distinct. Mostly they just continue to rest slightly more than other species.

No; mostly because they will actually be able to go away, and heal, with pillar dancing gone.

6) Call me biased, but I'd say that the game as a whole shouldn't be changed just to alter speedrunning.

That's why it's the last point under "Additional benefits"

[Sandman25]

Aean
Thank you for detailed reply. I disagree with some points but I don't think it will change anything, I see the idea is not good enough even to inspire some other ideas.

Eliminating stairdancing is another option, OP didn't announce being opposed to it.

I had another crazy idea "Character cannot heal at all if it is closer than 10 tiles to stairs" but I was not brave enough to write it initially.

Mods. The thread can be moved to CYC I think. Thank you.

[Pollen_Golem]

When was stairdancing mechanic originally introduced? I understand how it can lead to fun "oh crap it followed me!" moments, especially for newbies, but it's just more exploitable than anything, and monsters can hit you while you ascend or descend anyway. It would be so easy to disable stairdancing in trunk for a week and see what happens.

[ydeve]

Stairdancing is a common tactic used in all rougelikes with persistent levels.