ebering wrote:Can you stop derailing threads with lesswrong sloganism mixed with (willful?) misrepresentation of devteam positions. Regen was not removed because it was like Trog's hand. Regen was removed for the combination of reasons presented in the commit message taken together as a single conjunct. The design philosophy is an aesthetic philosophy—not a set of axioms ; crawl development is not analytic philosophy (I'm being charitable here, your post doesn't rise to that level).
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
It's not clear how discussing the refutation of OP's suggestion being valid vs not is derailing the thread. The reasons to make or not make the change IS the topic, so any discussion about the validity of the reason(s) given for making the change vs not is on topic by necessity.
The crawl manifesto does not say anything about "aesthetic philosophy". It does state some major and minor design goals. One of which is to avoid no-brainer decisions, which OP presented troll UC to be. Is that in dispute? For most of the game UC will outdamage everything they can possibly use other than throwing at range. It's guaranteed available instantly. It allows one of their more efficient defensive tools (shield). On the flip side, using large clubs/GSC now looks pretty rare even for the species that *doesn't* start with one of the strongest melee options in practice instantly as an alternative.
And actually, "internal consistency" is also listed as a design goal, albeit a minor one. The discussion about troll's getting M&F boosted does not appear to meet either the major or minor aspects of the manifesto. That "combination of reasons in a single conjunct" involves exactly two reasons: 1) duplicates a god ability and 2) no brainer. Going for ad hominem with "willful?" misrepresentation doesn't change that. The standards for #2 are clearly not consistent, since players who pick troll *nearly always* train UC, while for regen the "can cast it" isn't guaranteed and it might not have merited the spell slots. I don't see how I've made a mistake in my argumentation, though I welcome pointing out where I did so more precisely if I did rather than sarcasm. I *do* want crawl to be more replayable and fun rather than less, and snide remarks because I let another site influence my style a little too much don't get us there.
I'm not asking for some kind of *rigorous* analytic philosophy, I'm pointing out that the standards being used recently aren't consistent, and that's led to a few questionable changes.
I'm not glossing over shields existing; it's just that comparing the equipment and training options compatible with a given weapon tends to be futile because it is so character dependent. Damage potential for XP invested, on the other hand, can be looked at easily.
It also does not inform player choice effectively in practice. Which is more likely:
- Most players picking trolls don't know about the secret that M&F are actually already competitive with just using UC.
- UC is actually more useful for trolls in nearly every case, and players choose it for that reason.
We can go with raw usage data or we can go by "rules of the game" or whatever is sometimes emphasized as an alternative here. You don't have a GSC on D:1, and it will be half of the game before you swing a GSC at < 10 aut, including the entirety of it where player death is most likely. Meanwhile, there is an alternative option with more immediate damage, less equipment restriction, far less RNG to access and use to potential, and less swingy in individual attacks...
If we are really, seriously working with the manifesto then the standards aren't consistent. Trolls right now have as much a focused build dictated by their aptitudes/starting position as even the old ogres. Maybe more so. In principle, this should be an issue with "meaningful decisions" and "replayability". Troll is one of my least-played species, and even THAT is front-loaded. Glancing at others' stats, it's not quite at the bottom of their pick rates, but it's in the neighborhood pretty often. This despite that it's one of the strongest species to pick for a 3 rune win.