Remove fleeing

[Sar]

What it says on title.
On top of my head the only fleeing enemies now are dragons and drakes (presumably so they can use their breath attacks).
Justification: gameplay-wise, in practice it pretty much never does anything except for annoying player (please correct me if I'm wrong), and dragons are already good enemies with strong melee and ranged attacks and don't need more gimmicks. Flavour-wise, they are god damn dragons, a yak and a lich will fight to their deaths but a dragon will flee because... ?
This proposal does not concern orb spiders in any way.

[dck]

Bears also flee now, supposedly so they can zerk and get back into melee. Bit weird but bears aren't very common or matter a whole lot.
While only tangentially related, I also think monsters like Mara and Erica should lose tele self.

[Sandman25]

Well, Shadow Dragons are very interesting to fight, I would not like them changed even if it is annoying. It makes player realize that s/he should have some ranged options also.

[Mankeli]

At least apocalypse crabs, fire crabs, acid blobs, ancient bears, black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears and krakens flee too. In theory, all these monters have some reason of fleeing (ranged, tentacles, berserk). On practise, I've always found fleeing hugely annoying and voiced opinions about this as well.

EDIT. To be fair, fleeing was much more annoying in the past (I called it the "mass marathon of Crawl") but still, eventhough all the monsters left have kind of have a reason to flee, it still feels annoying. Also at least some uniques can flee, I had Jorgrun pleading for his life the other day.

[Sar]

Oh, absolutely, I remember playing 0.9 one day to win a certain uncombo, and everything in Lair was fleeing at low HP. That was quite something.

[dck]

Just remembered, krakens fleeing is something that while rare I particularly loathe. You almost never even see any and even when you see them you don't normally fight them, so having them ruin the fight right at the end feels pretty stupid.

[Baldu2]

Enemies fleeing is excellent for raging without divine help.

Even if it's thematic and increases challenges, it's pretty unfun so it's one of the reasons I usually use polearms, one whack when they approach and another when they try to leave.

[MDvedh]

When I bash golden dragon with my whip and he starts fleeing my only think is "COME ON!"

[brendan]

Done.

[Sar]

This is the best thing.

[brendan]

This is the best thing.

It may go back in if we can get the AI right. Dragons should take a few steps away from you and blast you, rather than fleeing off screen. amethyst thinks the underlying cause were changes to fleeing behavior to accommodate fear. A fleeing gnoll shouldn't poke you with his pokey stick.

For now, Krakens, crabs and acid blobs will continue to flee.

[Sar]

Dragons already blast you while you are getting close to them and even in melee range. I'm not sure another desperate blast at low HP will change anything except for adding, well, annoyance.
I mean, if you really want to emphasize the ranged aspect you can give them maintian range and and higher-than-average speed... I'm kidding, of course.

Edit: I am also not sure why do acidic blobs of acid flee but at least they are rare enough.

[Sar]

https://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commit/1ac6d2f7296b210b45f3d70fcbab6cd72a9fe656

  Code:

Give acid blobs the dragon treatment.

As mindless creatures, them fleeing in the first place was weird.


This is getting better and better. Thanks, kilobyte!

[starless]

I don't mind fleeing.

Isn't this what the player does when close to dying? Why wouldn't other intelligent creatures be allowed to do the same?

[Sar]

Because they are not player.

Because "smart" AI does not always make for better gameplay.

I mean, why don't orc priests chain-spam Smite? It deals good damage and works at any range. What's up with that? Are they stupid?

[starless]

I mean, why don't orc priests chain-spam Smite? It deals good damage and works at any range. What's up with that? Are they stupid?

MP and hunger cost?

[brendan]

I don't mind fleeing.

Isn't this what the player does when close to dying? Why wouldn't other intelligent creatures be allowed to do the same?

We could write an AI you couldn't beat. It would be really no fun.

If you ducked into a corridor, monsters would stand on both sides of the entry way, out of your LOS. Other monsters would cut off your retreat. Then they'd wait for you to starve to death.
Centaurs would maintain their range and keep a distance from each other so you could only engage them in melee one at a time.
Summoners of all kinds would maintain range
Moths of all sorts, Silent Spectres, and other buff/debuff monsters would run away if there was nothing else in sight.

This game would bear no resemblance to anything you'd enjoy playing.

(I keep clicking the 'Thank' button instead of 'Quote'...)

[XuaXua]

HARD MODE

As long as it didn't cheat, and the monsters are properly limited (orc priests who spam smite might fail or run out of piety; MP limits for enemy wizards) this should be an option.

[Zammy]

We could write an AI you couldn't beat. It would be really no fun.
...
This game would bear no resemblance to anything you'd enjoy playing.

Surely there must be something between "incredibly stupid drooling blob" and "super smart and unbeatable".
I feel it's rather weird that even smartest of monsters will just stand there getting killed.

It's not like every monster should flee with low hp, but why not some?
It makes so much sence in thematically. It will annoy some people. Personally I don't mind fleeing monsters since they add some feel of intelligence to them.

[siprus]

I don't mind fleeing.

Isn't this what the player does when close to dying? Why wouldn't other intelligent creatures be allowed to do the same?

We could write an AI you couldn't beat. It would be really no fun.

If you ducked into a corridor, monsters would stand on both sides of the entry way, out of your LOS. Other monsters would cut off your retreat. Then they'd wait for you to starve to death.
Centaurs would maintain their range and keep a distance from each other so you could only engage them in melee one at a time.
Summoners of all kinds would maintain range
Moths of all sorts, Silent Spectres, and other buff/debuff monsters would run away if there was nothing else in sight.

This game would bear no resemblance to anything you'd enjoy playing.

(I keep clicking the 'Thank' button instead of 'Quote'...)

Actually trying some kind of monsters will fuck you up mode might be fun. (Though probably there are still some things monsters shouldn't do, like on first level group up into huge ball of doom) Also might be better if players didn't start from level 1 in this mod (maybe new dungeon sprint)

[Sar]

You guys should just play Sil.

[XuaXua]

You guys should just play Sil.

Yeah. Their thank button isn't as close to their quote button.

[mikee]

Pretty frequently on tavern, a lot of people don't seem to see what would be problematic with having a super smart AI for monsters. They suggest things as bizarre to me as monsters that walk around the level herding all the other monsters into a big group, summoners that stay at the edge of los and leave if their summons die, all this stuff that everyone I know would hate. I think maybe there is a perspective missing: why would those people hate these things?

Think of defeating an AI as solving a puzzle. Ok, so there's a monster fleeing. You might think of a couple simple solutions to this, such as chasing it into a corner or, if it only requires one more hit to kill, into a wall to get a free hit on it. You might feel clever solving this puzzle, which makes the experience rewarding. It does take about 30 seconds and a bunch of keystrokes, but no big deal. Well, in my last game of crawl I won with 3 runes and killed about 3500 monsters. Imagine doing this 3500 times per game... not really rewarding anymore, and the keystrokes and realtime are still there, adding up. "What if only intelligent/unintelligent/whatever monsters flee?" Well, what's that going to be: 1000 monsters per game? Even with 1 monster per game, what happens is that people will come to look at the experience as a chore. And you might say that a lot of situations repeat in crawl, but the aim is for these to be sharp tactical situations; they threaten you with actual character death and pay off over a short period of time. On the other hand, no one wants to play tic-tac-toe on a regular basis.

[mikee]

Actually trying some kind of monsters will fuck you up mode might be fun. (Though probably there are still some things monsters shouldn't do, like on first level group up into huge ball of doom) Also might be better if players didn't start from level 1 in this mod (maybe new dungeon sprint)

You could try crawl 4.1, which is available on cdo console. Its features include: centaurs that actually kite you; monsters that go invisible and then move to random locations so you cannot find them; most monsters fleeing and through other monsters, regardless of genus; monsters that sit in a corridor you are trying to go down and wait for you to move adjacent so they can hit you. This game is widely considered broken and I don't think anyone enjoys playing it (although to be fair, this is for other reasons as well).

[Sandman25]

There is another approach to AI also - when AI selects the best possible option in specific situation. Beating such AI feels very satisfactory because you know you won due to your smartness, you overplayed AI. Exactly what you said - think of defeating AI as solving a puzzle. Winning a game when you knew you could be killed if some monster cast spell X instead of spell Y is not satisfactory to some players, they know they deserved to die. Also such randomness is reason of many frustrating deaths - you kill many Deep Elf Annihilators without serious problems until one of them decides to 2-shot you, it feels unfair.

[Sandman25]

Actually trying some kind of monsters will fuck you up mode might be fun. (Though probably there are still some things monsters shouldn't do, like on first level group up into huge ball of doom) Also might be better if players didn't start from level 1 in this mod (maybe new dungeon sprint)

You could try crawl 4.1, which is available on cdo console. Its features include: centaurs that actually kite you; monsters that go invisible and then move to random locations so you cannot find them; most monsters fleeing and through other monsters, regardless of genus; monsters that sit in a corridor you are trying to go down and wait for you to move adjacent so they can hit you. This game is widely considered broken and I don't think anyone enjoys playing it (although to be fair, this is for other reasons as well).

Thank you for letting know. I will try it.

[XuaXua]

Monsters who kite only work as a tactic if enemy ammo (MP for spellcasters) is limited and as a tactic which forces you to switch up from your melee to compensate. Lack of ammo can be monster incentive to endanger itself by approaching ammo.

[and into]

Of course you *could* design a game with consistently intelligent AI and make it balanced, but the entire game would need to be balanced around that fact in order to still be fun. Doing this in Crawl while still having the game be fun would probably necessitate a lot of other changes—for starters, you'd almost certainly need fewer enemies (or at least far fewer intelligent enemies with strong AI) so you don't run into the problem mikee described.

(Also, for the record, fleeing is not smart AI behavior. It is smart behavior if we stupidly presume "realism" and think that ugly things etc. have evolved preservation instincts and want to save themselves. From the standpoint of defeating the player, which is the goal of the AI, that ugly thing is just one pawn of thousands of others and the AI doesn't care if it dies. Having that purple ugly thing take one more whack at you, even if the chances of meaningfully damaging or impeding your character are slight, is nearly always smarter than running away. What is smart for the player is not the same as what is smart for the AI, because player only dies once [except Felids] whereas computer has legions of dudes to throw at you.)

I do think some uniques can and should have smarter AI to distinguish them. Some (like Nessos) are already designed to reflect a somewhat intelligent player-killing build. This almost completely avoids the repetition problem, because within one game you won't have to "solve" the same puzzle twice, and any two characters in different games would (nearly always) have at least somewhat different tools at their disposal. The difficulty is in designing uniques who present a major difficulty without being unfair or gimmicky.

Even on uniques though, I agree that self-teleport often does not make sense (for same reason as fleeing, discussed above). Certainly it does not make sense on Mara, however fleeing could make sense on other uniques who present a different kind of challenge (it makes sense on Maurice, for instance).