Remove Berserkers

[TeshiAlair]

Pros of Be as a background:

1. Fun
2. Easy
3. Newbie friendly

Cons:
1. Overpowered, and doesn't teach newbies how to handle early D which is an important thing to learn- the newbie-friendliness is a trap, not a feature.
2. Unnecessary unless you reaaaally hate waiting for altars
2.5 Similarly, would make it an interesting choice for melee classes- go for an early Oka altar, or wait to get a Trog. Currently if you want Trog, you go Be, if you don't, you don't.
3. Wouldn't be added to the game if suggested now: far far far more interesting zealots are being rejected as it is. /opinion

[Siegurt]

Pros of Be as a background:

1. Fun
2. Easy
3. Newbie friendly

Cons:
1. Overpowered, and doesn't teach newbies how to handle early D which is an important thing to learn- the newbie-friendliness is a trap, not a feature.
2. Unnecessary unless you reaaaally hate waiting for altars
2.5 Similarly, would make it an interesting choice for melee classes- go for an early Oka altar, or wait to get a Trog. Currently if you want Trog, you go Be, if you don't, you don't.
3. Wouldn't be added to the game if suggested now: far far far more interesting zealots are being rejected as it is. /opinion

I had suggested a while ago that berserkers lose trog, and gain an amulet of rage for starting equipment.

[Shtopit]

Does it make sense to remove Be without removing Trog? Just asking.

From my POV, Be is something you can outgrow, but it's too important for beginners to be removed.

[Siegurt]

Does it make sense to remove Be without removing Trog? Just asking.

From my POV, Be is something you can outgrow, but it's too important for beginners to be removed.

Trog is a pretty powerful god even if you don't get him at the start of the game, but he isn't *stupid* powerful if you get him later, he's in the same neighborhood as some of the other powerful gods, and isn't a no-brainer, so I personally think Trog makes complete sense divorced from the Be background.

[njvack]

The main thing I like about Be is that it means the character never needs to think about choosing a religion or exploring the magic system. Also, it trivializes skilling (autoskilling will probably be fine). These things make for a much, much simpler strategic game.

Yes, it kind of sucks that Trog also adds an absurdly strong tactical option on turn 1, so he does kind of mess with learning tactics, but yeah. I guess I think having a background that is so much simpler for beginning players outweighs its being a zealot and stupid strong for experienced players.

[bel]

Having an overpowered background does not have any balance implications at all. This is because you can only access Be's advantages by starting as a Be. If you don't want to be overpowered, just don't start as a Be. Choices made before the game start all fall into this category. Thus, it is totally ok if Mummies and DD have different power levels.

If one wants to restrict Trog to Be, that's fine with me. But Gods are not balanced anyway, so whatever.

The only complaint which would make sense to me is the following: there are too many choices for newbies on the start screen and one should cut Be on this basis. I don't buy that.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am really worried that we are seriously discussing removing a background when even the person who wants it removed writes "Fun" as first "pro" of the background. I believe fun things should stay in the game unless it is fun for only a few players.

[TeshiAlair]

I am generally hella in favor of keeping things that are raw fun in the game (I will faded altar every time, and I was crushed when the Council changed into it's wildly less fun incarnation)

My point by including that as a pro is to not be 100% down on trog- i play a LOT of Be because it is satisfying as hell.

However, from a game design perspective, it's poor design. Why does Be exist rather than just playing Fi/Gl/Mo and picking Trog? Because newbies. Except then you have a god for newbies that doesn't teach the basics of the game.

Fi is a great newbie start- you have a button (potion of might), you have decent defenses, and you are a melee class. But you still need to position and assess threats else you'll be overwhelmed. I can't think of a single early game threat short of maybe Grinder or a hexing player ghost that hitting aa can't solve.

I also feel that altar availability does lead to interesting and meaningful choices, though that's a contentious issue.

The other zealots let you play a god you might not get to otherwise*. Be lets you have trog 4-7 floors earlier.

*I still like the idea of a zealot of Vehumet because bookless magic start seems neat. Also ffs give us Slime Knight, I hate only playing Jiv when I get a very lucky faded altar.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Be is a start without shield and low Int aimed for heavy armour, fi/gl/mo are totally different. You mentioned faded altar and I want to tell that I will never use it because I hate some gods but I don't suggest to remove it because I realize it is fun for many players and I can just ignore it. Just ignore Be. It is my most played background (won all races as Be) and I still want to be able to play it in the future (currently playing DsBe in hellcrawl by the way)

[syringe]

Other than god, Gl differs from Be by 3 throwing nets and minutiae. Mo is similar and gets Berserk + Trog's Hand upon converting. Note that Be was created far before monks got starting weapons and extra piety.

"Be is fun" is a misleading statement. What it usually means is "Trog is fun", but Be gives you that fun right away. Since you naturally go Be whenever you want Trog, you associate "fun" with Be and not with Trog. Losing Be would feel like losing Trog because you hardly acknowledge a Be-less Trog.

But Be lures you in with instant gratification like a venus flytrap, and traps you into a samey middle game you've grown tired of. That is, if you're a kind of player that would be relieved by Be's removal. Be is the player's way of correcting the game's perverse difficulty slope, but it does not have to be so narrow.

Minotaurs with a warrior start have an easy time getting to a Trog altar, and have the advantages njvack points out without the disadvantages. Better buff Mi start than keep Be around.

[VeryAngryFelid]

For me Be is fun because:
1) I don't need to search for Trog's altar or think about joining Oka, Fedhas etc. if I find their altars earlier
2) I can rely on Trog for dealing with Grinder and Sigmund (both are very unfun to me).
3) early fights will be enjoyable, I won't need to pillar-dance with first goblin I find.

Not sure what Be has with Mi. Try BaBe, it should be quite different from BaMo or BaGl which cannot reach Temple as easily.

[TeshiAlair]

Be is a start without shield and low Int aimed for heavy armour, fi/gl/mo are totally different. You mentioned faded altar and I want to tell that I will never use it because I hate some gods but I don't suggest to remove it because I realize it is fun for many players and I can just ignore it. Just ignore Be. It is my most played background (won all races as Be) and I still want to be able to play it in the future (currently playing DsBe in hellcrawl by the way)

I agree with all of this, and heck I play a LOT of Be. But I also think on some level it isn't good for the game conceptually.

[duvessa]

Gl and Mo both have no shield, low int, and are aimed for heavy armour...

I would love for Be and AK to be removed. Be is always defended with "but new players!" which ignores the fact that new players usually pick Fi, not Be. In most cases, they have to be told to pick the easy-mode species or background before they actually pick it, and the tutorial isn't enough in that regard. Otherwise, they pick the first option on the screen - when Hu stopped being the first species on the list, the number of online Hu games immediately plunged. I'm also unconvinced of Be's newbie friendliness in the first place, since new players have a lot of trouble understanding berserk, rarely use brothers in arms, and don't know how to compare weapons (so weapon gifts aren't as good).

[Majang]

I would love for Be and AK to be removed. Be is always defended with "but new players!" which ignores the fact that new players usually pick Fi, not Be. In most cases, they have to be told to pick the easy-mode species or background before they actually pick it, and the tutorial isn't enough in that regard. Otherwise, they pick the first option on the screen - when Hu stopped being the first species on the list, the number of online Hu games immediately plunged. I'm also unconvinced of Be's newbie friendliness in the first place, since new players have a lot of trouble understanding berserk, rarely use brothers in arms, and don't know how to compare weapons (so weapon gifts aren't as good).

All this described me perfectly as a new player. I was scared of using Be...

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I do wonder how players end up playing crawl for the first time. Literally the first thing I ever read about crawl suggested MiBe as the easiest combo. Is that very different from most people?

[Majang]

I did the tutorial first, which, IIRC, was indeed a Mi converting to Trog. And there I noticed that berserking was somewhat powerful (but I did not really know how powerful), but ended me being slow and exhausted. It was that 'exhausted' status that scared me more than anything else - it sounded more ominous than it really was. I envisioned me flailing around without power and dazed, and it just meant that I could not berserk for some time. So I left the berserker background alone for quite some time. I also did not understand enough about armour, and thought that I was supposed to run around with this leather armour as a berserker. I found that the Fi background communicated a lot more to me what is was all about.

[archaeo]

However, from a game design perspective, it's poor design.

It's possible to understand this from the perspective of someone who thinks we should remove all zealots; I strongly disagree (Be, AK, and CK all make the game different enough that I have no problem with them whatsoever, and I honestly wouldn't mind adding a few more), but I think it's reasonable to suggest that the game would be more elegant if all characters had to pick gods based on what they find in the early dungeon. But you seem to just be saying that they're not useful to newbies, which is incorrect; as njvack says, they simplify a few relatively complicated facets of Crawl's gameplay, allowing the player to get further in the game than they otherwise might with a less straightforwardly powerful background. You can always come back to the finer elements of tactical Crawl play, but when you're getting started, it's real nice to be able to focus on just learning what's in the game without having to think too much about how to perfect your character, imo.

Plus, I'm a moderator on this forum, and I will quit if the devs decide to remove anything as popular as bersekers.

I would love for Be and AK to be removed. Be is always defended with "but new players!" which ignores the fact that new players usually pick Fi, not Be. In most cases, they have to be told to pick the easy-mode species or background before they actually pick it, and the tutorial isn't enough in that regard. Otherwise, they pick the first option on the screen - when Hu stopped being the first species on the list, the number of online Hu games immediately plunged. I'm also unconvinced of Be's newbie friendliness in the first place, since new players have a lot of trouble understanding berserk, rarely use brothers in arms, and don't know how to compare weapons (so weapon gifts aren't as good).

This all seems like a good argument for improving how Crawl introduces itself to new players, not for removing Be/AK. You could make the Background selection screen organized more like the new Species organization, for starters.

Ideally, the game would default to a character selection mode with a few recommended combos or a specially curated set of species and backgrounds, as well as hints mode, both of which could be turned off in an in-game options menu. Requiring players to turn it off through .rc files seems pretty obnoxious, though. You could probably just do this with a tab in the character selection screen, like "& - Recommended Combos" or what have you. (e: I imagine hints mode probably could use some love too, patches welcome, etc. Explaining the basics of the recommended combos would be a fine and dandy thing)

[Pereza0]

Berserker is pretty good IMO.

It is very much a complete package, the Ecumenical Temple with all its deities to read through can be pretty overwhelming for a new player who is just trying to pick "the right god".

And yeah, player is not learning tactics only. There are lots of things to familiarize yourself with that an experienced player takes for granted. Like the level of lethality of some uniques and regular monsters as they show up, how to handle consumables and when to retreat

[Veras]

Having an overpowered background does not have any balance implications at all. This is because you can only access Be's advantages by starting as a Be. If you don't want to be overpowered, just don't start as a Be. Choices made before the game start all fall into this category. Thus, it is totally ok if Mummies and DD have different power levels.

If one wants to restrict Trog to Be, that's fine with me. But Gods are not balanced anyway, so whatever.

The only complaint which would make sense to me is the following: there are too many choices for newbies on the start screen and one should cut Be on this basis. I don't buy that.

On one hand, yes, all these decisions do happen upfront. On the other hand, I've almost never had fun when I willingly nerfed my starting power in a game, and can usually feel the ramifications of it much later - "If I was a Be, I could have escaped that situation", etc. This isn't to question the potential for enjoyment of playing something weaker, it's just not the case for me. I'll try to explain my viewpoint, and maybe some people can relate.

To me having these disparate power levels feels like an illusion of choice, albeit well-disguised by the lack of investment before it's made. The real choice I make when I fire up crawl and have no idea what to pick is "what character archetype do I want to play?" -- magic, melee, hybrid, ranged, stealthy? (And this is a subject for separate discussion, but even then I can sometimes feel shoehorned into choosing whatever I view as the most powerful archetype.) Anyway, after mentally locking in the experience I'm aiming for, electing a race and class is often a no-brainer: I just pick what I view as the exemplary combination every time.

To my point, I think being more powerful means being able to have more fun in this game, or at least it mitigates a good deal of un-fun. This is simply because you can play faster and don't have to do degenerate things to keep with the power curve. Playing a weaker version of something means that you more often have to contend with the uglier parts of the game: stairdancing, pillar dancing, resetting fights, and so on.

Even if it were fun to play a 'challenge race' for me, I think the disparate power levels between combinations would still be an issue even though the decision is made before the game starts. To illustrate, imagine a version of crawl in which you start every game at XL1 as a formless blob with generic stats. Only upon reaching XL2 are you able to become a species and class with a prompt. I think players would be less inclined to choose something sub-optimal in this scenario because they have invested some time into their character, so they want to give it the best chance of survival. If you consider that even games quit on turn 0 take some modicum of time then I think you can see my point from here. Every game we play is a time investment, and I'm interested in not wasting my time on any character.

I think this disparity has less consequence for those who have netted a win before, especially in several archetypes. That said, I find myself in this position, and often just play species with a higher chance of winning because it means I don't have to do as many degenerate things and don't feel like I'm setting myself up to fail.

[bel]

I read your post, but I am unclear as to what exactly you are saying. Are you agreeing with me, disagreeing with me, or something else? Are you talking about your thought process while selecting a character? Ok, that's fine: different people play in different ways. If you don't like to play "weak" characters because you have to do a lot of un-fun things if you want to survive, well, don't play them.

By the way, I can get on to my hobby horse again, and say that the "un-fun" things can be eliminated, or at least mitigated, by focusing on average score instead of winrate. One could even give a score bonus for playing "challenge races". Crawl is a single-player game; you can make up whatever measure you like so that it is fun for you.

[Vajrapani]

To Veras(the quote is quite big):

I think quite differently, there's no point playing a character, for me, if the win is easy and simple. Sure, you have to contend with many tedious aspects of the game, but there is more potential for something interesting or novel to happen. The struggle is what really defines a game for me, and those are ones I remember most.

For example, I was playing a FoFi and I had gotten a lajatang of speed by d:4 and the Plutonium sword on d:10 or so. That was pretty much a guaranteed win from there but it wouldn't be satisfying if I picked an easy tabber god, so I went with Xom and still proceeded to win the game. Not being able to rely on god abilities, and having Xom cause situations where I was forced to actually think instead of tab was far more fun than choosing Makhleb/Oka/Trog/Gozag and getting a smooth win.

Another example is any Gnoll game, they are very,very strong and so strong that they are actually quite boring after a few playthroughs. I actively wish to die and play a more exciting character when I play late-game gnoll, which has caused me to die to a series of silly tactical mistakes in the orb chamber in Zot:5 which wouldn't have happened if I actually cared about the character.

Being challenged, losing over and over, reaching for a goal until I finally achieve that sweet victory is what really makes crawl worth playing for me. Out of 720 games I have only ever played 15 berserkers. Maybe it seems like I'm a strange sort of masochist, but just winning in itself doesn't seem to do anything for me unless I worked hard for that win. The intentional gimping of a character(e.g. by not choosing to worship gods or not do certain brances) is just an inelegant way to increase game difficulty in the absence of an actual 'hard mode', rather than anything to do with maximizing winrate.

[Veras]

bel: Just stating my opinion, since no one had really made the case for wanting the power levels of race/classes to be closer. A lot of people seem to be for removal of Be because of its overcentralizing power, and I partially wanted to make a commentary on why I also see it being disproportionately powerful as an issue. I personally would like to see it fall more in line with the other classes in power instead of being wholesale removed, though.

Vajrapani: Good points about weaker characters creating interesting situations. I think in the few CKs I've played I've managed to have some fun too, due to these strange scenarios and maybe less ability to tab everything. The fun was often just overshadowed by the realization that I was below the power curve and needed to start resorting to things that I find boring, or die. You did point out that these boring things could be fixed, and that would certainly change things since it would mean being weak wouldn't necessarily equate to a less fun game in my eyes. Fixes to these issues with the core system aren't going to come quickly if they come at all, though.

Finding myself in interesting situations and trying to work my way out is probably my main source of enjoyment in crawl, and I feel I can experience this more as a powerful character than not due to the added wiggle room before a winnable situation turns sour, which simultaneously promotes combat with larger groups and protects against the need to stairdance/lure to dispatch the pack. I would of course miss out on some need for planning by tab-winning fights that a weaker character might have had some trepidation on, but a situation that gives a stronger character pause will still arise commonly and will probably be more tactically complex. More monsters often means more tactical wrinkles (considering their abilities, and heck - even popcorn can block movement), so I think the bigger the better when it comes to these situations.

The one thing you will really miss out on with strong characters is variety, like the strange perks of Mu or the joy of having Xom polymorph things or torment you or something. Every now and then I will play one of these, but some of the less-than-desirable side effects of being weak do tend to get in the way of my enjoyment.

[ragnarokchu]

Removing berserkers seem kinda weird considering the only difference it would have is that I would have to go down to floor 7 to get trog as opposed to starting with it. Considering it's very easy to dive to floor 7 anyway or at least survive very well with a heavy armor tab character, I don't see how removing trog "nerfs" trog anymore than the fact that you can't start with it. If trog is OP by the virtue of starting with it, then zealots should be removed in general since that's the case with any decent early game god if you could start with it.

If anything move down berserker and trog hand down one piety level. If zealots are 'unbalanced" because of 3-rune win specialize gods, might as well rebalance gods to be actually powerful consistently throughout the game.

[Shtopit]

I think that balance between different species, gods and backgrounds should be an important target. However, I doubt that this is the direction development has chosen. I believe that an easy god should be easily understandable in powers, tactics and strategies, instead of greatly overpowered compared to the others.

Trog however has a great advantage on most Crawl gods: he isn't just powerful, he is a powerful god that's also fun! Name me another if you can And Berserker is a fun background, although it can become repetitive because of little choice available to the player.

I think Berserker is in a similar design space to Tm, although less varied and far more powerful at the beginning.

I think that part of the problem however is how defences work in Crawl. Maybe, if there were a rock paper scissors system, Be wouldn't be that OP. I mean, it has HP, damage, MR, AC: is there anything it cannot defend against? Yes, a background-based rock p s system would make background choice have permanent consequences deeply affecting the game, but I think that it would actually increase replayability.

[Roderic]

Make a zealot background to encompass all lost and current religious backgrounds and potential new ones. You are prompted to choose a god instead of a weapon equipment and you get the god from start and a standarized inventory fitting for that.

If isn't fun enough because it removes the joy of deciding which god fits better for your early build, then make them a randomized choice of god from the beginning, although it makes a little pointless the fading altar it follows the same approach.