Trunk update on the 24th, no more racial weapons

[Sar]

The patch on mantis said that "all armour will be treated as dwarven for acid resistance purposes", is that correct?

[Galefury]

I don't think so.

Squashed (minus the corrosion change) and pushed, thanks!

[Ataraxzy]

If you want weapons to generate with more enchantment, just generate weapons with more enchantment.

I agree, from a purely mechanistic viewpoint. From other viewpoints though, this change is not so good.

In terms of meta-game reasoning:
Flavor matters. In-game knowledge and experience matters. Taking flavor out is almost always a bad idea - vanillifying the in-game world means fewer people will be interested, and some of those that are interested will lose interest faster. You need to give people stuff to hang their imaginations on. Is there other stuff for them to do so? Sure, but that stuff isn't this stuff. As we'll see below, racial weapons don't actually subtract anything from the game, they don't make anything harder, they just add variety, especially to an early-game that's all 'g's with clubs, 'k's with darts, 's's that constrict, and 'w's that hit like trucks.

In terms of early-game reasoning:
Racial weapons are a great idea that adds to the game, while subtracting nothing. A 'racial' dagger is better than a 'standard' dagger, when you find one, you switch! (unless it's a cursed dagger, of course!) They've always been the first level of 'enchantment', a bit of a helping hand to low-level players who won't have any safe ways of identifying items: Dwarves make durable stuff, Elves make accurate stuff, Orcish stuff hurts more &ct. Demon weapons don't show up until later in the game and their description should say 'if you're a demon, you get extra benefit out of it', to avoid any problems of the 'you shouldn't have to read the wiki to win' type.

There's no need to add trash like 'rusty' daggers, but having some small percentage of weapons drop be of a make other than 'vanilla human-ish', not only makes a lot of sense from a background perspective but it lets people upgrade their starting gear while searching for their first ego weapons.

So, perhaps a revamp of the idea is in order.

One thought would be a minor buff that could apply to any weapon, branded or not:
Elvish +xAcc, -yDam
Orcish -xAcc, +yDam
Dwarvish +xAcc, +yDam [of lesser extent than either Elvish or Orcish]
The item would then be reported as a 'racial' [WeaponType], visible from the ground or while wielded by a monster.
So the game, when generating a weapon could do so like such:
1. Determine weapon type.
2. is unrandart or randart? No? Continue w/ step 3.
3. Determine plusses, if any.
4. Determine ego, if any.
5. Determine racial make, if any.

Elves should racially negate the damage 'penalty' of Elvish weapons,
Orcs should racially negate the accuracy 'penalty' of Orcish weapons and
Dwarves should get a small bonus to both stats for Dwarvish weapons.

All in all, it gives EVERYONE a small boost early game (find a racial weapon, switch out, first upgrade!), gives racially matched weapon/race combos another - small - boost (it makes sense that Elves would really prefer to use an Elvish long sword over an Orcish one, all other things being equal, right?) and it gives min-maxers a choice: all other things equal, is it more important for my character to connect (Elvish) or to damage when connecting (Orcish), or, on the gripping hand, do I need a good balance (Dwarvish)?

Now people have an interesting choice to make, perhaps an elven weapon is more suited to a stabby type and your typical SpEN will nearly always want an Elven dagger, but that HOFi could really use a +1,+3 Orcish War Axe {Flame} when surrounded by hydras on Lair:7 - the problem with hydras isn't hitting them, it's killing them before they kill you!

My $0.02.

[and into]

That's a lot of stuff to retain just for a small change to weapon +s or -s. The only unique thing about them would still be that Elves, Orcs, and Deep Dwarf get a little bit of a bonus on a specific sub-type of weapons, but the bonus is so small that it will almost never be a factor in deciding between which weapons to use. Well, except that elvish weapons would just be worse all around because +acc and -damage is generally going to result in poorer average damage over time, so you'd have some weapons randomly be that "rusty dagger" you dislike, unless you are an elf at which point it becomes a "very slightly better than a vanilla dagger" weapon.

Good flavor is good, but only if it is actually flavor, rather than a minor game play difference that is almost never meaningful. "Flavor" should not be considered a characteristic of game play ideas ("This feature has good flavor and thus should stay"); rather, things that affect game play need to be justified on their own basis, in terms of game play. If, and only if, so justified, one then tries to create good flavor that elegantly rationalizes the feature and maybe fleshes out a little something about the setting, at the same time.

[Siegurt]

If you want weapons to generate with more enchantment, just generate weapons with more enchantment.

I agree, from a purely mechanistic viewpoint. From other viewpoints though, this change is not so good.

In terms of meta-game reasoning:
Flavor matters. In-game knowledge and experience matters. Taking flavor out is almost always a bad idea - vanillifying the in-game world means fewer people will be interested, and some of those that are interested will lose interest faster. You need to give people stuff to hang their imaginations on. Is there other stuff for them to do so? Sure, but that stuff isn't this stuff. As we'll see below, racial weapons don't actually subtract anything from the game, they don't make anything harder, they just add variety, especially to an early-game that's all 'g's with clubs, 'k's with darts, 's's that constrict, and 'w's that hit like trucks.

In terms of early-game reasoning:
Racial weapons are a great idea that adds to the game, while subtracting nothing. A 'racial' dagger is better than a 'standard' dagger, when you find one, you switch! (unless it's a cursed dagger, of course!) They've always been the first level of 'enchantment', a bit of a helping hand to low-level players who won't have any safe ways of identifying items: Dwarves make durable stuff, Elves make accurate stuff, Orcish stuff hurts more &ct. Demon weapons don't show up until later in the game and their description should say 'if you're a demon, you get extra benefit out of it', to avoid any problems of the 'you shouldn't have to read the wiki to win' type.

There's no need to add trash like 'rusty' daggers, but having some small percentage of weapons drop be of a make other than 'vanilla human-ish', not only makes a lot of sense from a background perspective but it lets people upgrade their starting gear while searching for their first ego weapons.

So, perhaps a revamp of the idea is in order.

One thought would be a minor buff that could apply to any weapon, branded or not:
Elvish +xAcc, -yDam
Orcish -xAcc, +yDam
Dwarvish +xAcc, +yDam [of lesser extent than either Elvish or Orcish]
The item would then be reported as a 'racial' [WeaponType], visible from the ground or while wielded by a monster.
So the game, when generating a weapon could do so like such:
1. Determine weapon type.
2. is unrandart or randart? No? Continue w/ step 3.
3. Determine plusses, if any.
4. Determine ego, if any.
5. Determine racial make, if any.

Elves should racially negate the damage 'penalty' of Elvish weapons,
Orcs should racially negate the accuracy 'penalty' of Orcish weapons and
Dwarves should get a small bonus to both stats for Dwarvish weapons.

All in all, it gives EVERYONE a small boost early game (find a racial weapon, switch out, first upgrade!), gives racially matched weapon/race combos another - small - boost (it makes sense that Elves would really prefer to use an Elvish long sword over an Orcish one, all other things being equal, right?) and it gives min-maxers a choice: all other things equal, is it more important for my character to connect (Elvish) or to damage when connecting (Orcish), or, on the gripping hand, do I need a good balance (Dwarvish)?

Now people have an interesting choice to make, perhaps an elven weapon is more suited to a stabby type and your typical SpEN will nearly always want an Elven dagger, but that HOFi could really use a +1,+3 Orcish War Axe {Flame} when surrounded by hydras on Lair:7 - the problem with hydras isn't hitting them, it's killing them before they kill you!

My $0.02.

Actually dwarven/elven/orcish weapons used to have a slightly higher chance to generate with enchantments/maluses much as you suggest. As such, if you collected 10 things and two of them were dwarven, they had a slightly higher chance of being enchanted. Back when weapons didn't auto-ID this was a valuable way of playing the odds and "guessing" that you might have found an upgrade to your vanilla starting weapon.

[Amnesiac]

Was it really "slightly" higher chance? I was always checking dwarven and orcish daggers/short blades, because it was quite possible to find something like -1+3 orcish foo, which was significant early on. Also dwarven pieces of armour, which might be even more important.

[dck]

I think most of this suggested change only shows a complete lack of understanding of what racial weapons did and how having a weapon be elvec/orcish/dwarven affected its generation (or if it does then it's suggesting to hide it, which is stupid).
It also doesn't seem to grasp how current combat works because the incredibly minor bonus to accuracy isn't going to make anyone take elven weapons over weapons that do more damage and are everywhere.

[Sprucery]

I will surely miss branded elven ring mails (VpVM with 5 runes ascended wearing a +5 elven ring mail of fire resistance). Elven cloaks and boots too, to a lesser extent.

[Ataraxzy]

The only unique thing about them would still be that Elves, Orcs, and Deep Dwarf get a little bit of a bonus on a specific sub-type of weapons, but the bonus is so small that it will almost never be a factor in deciding between which weapons to use.

Not so. The reply right below yours illustrates just such an occurrence of how they are useful early-game. Even with auto-ID weapons, this is still true.

Well, except that elvish weapons would just be worse all around because +acc and -damage is generally going to result in poorer average damage over time, so you'd have some weapons randomly be that "rusty dagger" you dislike, unless you are an elf at which point it becomes a "very slightly better than a vanilla dagger" weapon.

Got math for that? Stacking accuracy is a perfectly viable strategy, SpENs wouldn't work without it. 100 attacks per cycle don't mean anything if you only hit once.

Good flavor is good, but only if it is actually flavor, rather than a minor game play difference that is almost never meaningful. "Flavor" should not be considered a characteristic of game play ideas ("This feature has good flavor and thus should stay"); rather, things that affect game play need to be justified on their own basis,

Well then, let's look at some winning statistics from CAO:

  Code:

 
Date    Games   Players  Wins
2014-02   72342   2942    470
Winning %: 0.65%


I'm going to take your statement that ""Flavor" should not be considered a characteristic of game play ideas" as true and actually apply it in the context of a game. We will then see how this argument, though it sounds good, actually fails because

a. it is always the case that any comment regarding something within the context of a game can be attacked with a 'flavor doesn't matter' argument.
b. This argument has no end-state that is mutually agreeable outside of personal preference, therefore,
c. it is susceptible to a reductio ad absurdum argument as follows:

So, since we can't justify flavor on it's own, we'll take away the dungeon, the races, the classes, the equipment, the monsters, the spells and the abilities and replace them with completely vanilla replicas, you're no longer a Demonspawn Berzerker (fun combo, btw) with an animal skin and a short sword fighting a goblin with your 12 hp keeping you alive, but choice 's, h' on maze level one with CharObjA type 0 and CharObjB type 0-2, using resource A (of which you have 12) in a competition with Entity 1, which you have approx a 92% chance of winning,

Going further down this road, all of these things, vanilla as they are, can be mapped onto more flavorful concepts, so we should probably get rid of them.

The game now consists entirely of a single random number generator that outputs a number between 1 and 1000, if you get under 65, you win.

Long story short? There's a reason you're not playing as a silly pony having trouble picking flowers on a quest to bring down a piece of used bubble-gum from the 27th floor of a building. Flavor matters a LOT more than you think it does.

[Ataraxzy]

Actually dwarven/elven/orcish weapons used to have a slightly higher chance to generate with enchantments/maluses much as you suggest. As such, if you collected 10 things and two of them were dwarven, they had a slightly higher chance of being enchanted. Back when weapons didn't auto-ID this was a valuable way of playing the odds and "guessing" that you might have found an upgrade to your vanilla starting weapon.

Very true. My suggestion is merely a slight modification of what already exists in-game. (I leave off the 'durability' of the dwarven weapons, for instance)

Not every race/class should be 'balanced'. There SHOULD be easy and hard combos. Giving elves, dwarves and orcs a bonus that's not 'compensated for' in other races shouldn't be a problem in and of itself. Giving elves, dwarves and orcs a reason to prefer, all other things equal, racially branded weapons is cool and is a standard fantasy trope that already is in place in-game. It's not harming anything with its presence and it adds to the character of the game.

[adozu]

one of my first characters to have good success in zot (not quite enough to win unfortunately) was a HoPr a few versions ago. I had the luck to find an orc made tower shield. had something like 80 SH by the time of my demise (which came because an OOF gave me teleportitis halfway through zot5 clearing process btw).

now you might argue it's not so good, but it was awesome to me c_c

what if making equip into orc-equip could become a beogh power?

[duvessa]

orcish shields are literally identical to non-orcish shields

ed: seems I confused them with dwarven shields or something, nevermind.

[adozu]

beogh users get no bonus SH from orc shields? i was positive they did, at least in earlier versions maybe?


checked it in wizmode, regular shields give my orc (at 27 skill and with a xl1 fi stats) 36SH, orc shields with no deity give me 37SH, orc shield with 200 beogh piety gives me 40SH so no, orc shields aren't literally identical to regular one.

i'd like to check the bonuses of large shields but i have to admit, i never used wizmode before and have no idea how to generate orcish equipment rather than vanilla one.

[crate]

"&%short sword race:orcish" will generate an orcish short sword, for example. You can also do something like "&%cutlass race:dwarven ego:electrocution"

(obviously the racial part won't work on builds that don't have racial items)

[and into]

@Ataraxzy: Of course flavor matters. I often feel I care more about (good) flavor than many other posters, including some experienced players, who view Crawl more abstractly. I didn't say flavor doesn't matter; rather, my point is that first you need good game play. Then you try to be imaginative and come up with good flavor based around those core game play mechanics.

Accordingly, changes that affect game play need to be justified based on what they do to your experience in the game. Why? Because flavor can be written one way or another. Let's take corpse sacrifices—this adds a lot of key presses and unnecessary time waste to the game. But they are also flavorful. However, you can easily switch this to having Trog (let's say) "take" a portion of your kills, automatically. You can easily keep good flavor / theme around that, and (at least IMO) it improves your experience of the game. Plus, hey, your p key isn't getting such a work out. So the reductio was amusing but missed the point I was making.

If people really want more description/flavor for their weapons, you can add that to the game without having weapons and armor that look different and have all these weird special casings that confuse people—and in the name of all this opacity, all you are getting is indeed a very minor effect in game play (extremely small bonus to accuracy or whatever). The lack of clarity it brings has been well demonstrated, and the fact remains that the bonus it provides to the species in question is extremely slight. A different option would be to make these categories of weapons actually meaningful in terms of game play, but that's a more radical change and, obviously, there would have to be a compelling and original proposal for how that might play out.

The fact that "racial weapons" is a standard fantasy trope is irrelevant and, if anything, would IMO be a mark against (all else being equal). I like Crawl when it subverts or gives a weird, unique spin to "standard fantasy tropes," rather than reproduce them unimaginatively. Although that's just my own preference and doesn't necessarily correspond to how the folks who actually design the game feel about it.

I'm not sure what the winning statistics was meant to illustrate, nor the point about SpEN (?). Sure blade is a good spell but that adds a large bonus to accuracy, and doesn't sacrifice any damage while doing so. So clearly that's a benefit. I'm not sure what else being an enchanter, much less a SpEN, has to do with a "stacking accuracy" though. With reasonable skill levels, accuracy is not a problem except against a few specific enemies with really high EV, and even against them a bit of +accuracy or additional skill generally doesn't make much difference, so you basically either keep swinging and killing the thing just takes longer, or you go for stuff that completely bypasses EV, like fireball, airstrike, freeze, hexes, etc. Even fewer enemies specifically have really high EV but low AC (spriggans are an example), and that's the only case where preferring +acc at the expense of damage would even possibly come out to an advantage. Against really high EV dudes, it is better to just use a wand of fireball or some other EV-ignoring attack rather than, I don't know, carrying around a different weapon that has worse damage than your main but better accuracy. Nobody does that—because it isn't worth doing. (And that's fine, it would be annoying if that were actually something you had to do in Crawl.)

[adozu]

the fact that it's a rather significant nerf to beogh stands btw, and it's not like beogh is insanely strong either.

[and into]

the fact that it's a rather significant nerf to beogh stands btw, and it's not like beogh is insanely strong either.

I was under the impression Beogh was just going to give his usual piety-based buff to all weapons now, which would actually be a buff to Beogh because fewer conditions in order to get the bonus. Anyway if that hasn't happened, it should.

[dpeg]

As usual, this change has not been made with "Beogh buff/nerf" in mind. Recall that not so long ago Beogh got dungeon-wide recall, which was a nice buff for the god.

[RBrandon]

If the primary complaint with racial weapons (and armours) is that they do not have a great enough effect, perhaps increasing their effect would be a better mode of action than simply removing them.

This removal also nukes a swath of tiles that I found very aesthetically pleasing and flavorful, especially in areas where they were most likely to be found (i.e. the Elven Halls and Orcish Mines). I suppose you could just repurpose the old tiles, but there was something nice about orcs hitting you with orcish things and elves hitting you with elven things, instead of assuming that they are all plain.

[dpeg]

If the primary complaint with racial weapons (and armours) is that they do not have a great enough effect, perhaps increasing their effect would be a better mode of action than simply removing them.

We hear this all the time. For some reason people seem to think we remove content without discussing changes.
On a broader scale: yes, everything that's deemed unfit/subpar/nobrainer/superflous could be improved instead of cut. But good ideas don't come for free, there's very many constraints to satisfy. Pretty often, "less is more" seems to be a very reasonable answer. If this change makes people annoyed enough to think up some relevant racial effects, then we'll happy listen.

This removal also nukes a swath of tiles that I found very aesthetically pleasing and flavorful, especially in areas where they were most likely to be found (i.e. the Elven Halls and Orcish Mines). I suppose you could just repurpose the old tiles, but there was something nice about orcs hitting you with orcish things and elves hitting you with elven things, instead of assuming that they are all plain.

That's a pretty minor concern. Should design really be guided by that? This game is made by developers, not by art students. (Probably half of the devteam plays console anyway, so wouldn't have a clue.) I am confident that the tiles are not lost.

[Amnesiac]

I don't think that it's minor, for me flavour is very important. Maybe we could at least have orcish and elven tiles on armour found on those, but it would be called the same and the description would be the same? You know, like cloaks, robes, etc. look differently on the character doll.

[dpeg]

Amnesiac: Flavour is important to us, too. It just takes a backseat to gameplay concerns -- and a feature that is practicially irrelevant is a gameplay concern, and a player trap. Regarding using these as alternates on players, you'd have to talk to tiles-affine developers, I live in a console.

[dck]

As the proud tiles scum I am, I would like to mention that making items that are exactly the same have different appearances dilutes the visual clarity of tiles for literally no gain whatsoever.

[Amnesiac]

I've already pretty much resigned myself to this (imo useless,sorry, because I've never been confused by racial items) update, but flavour is not "no gain". Oh well...

[dck]

Excuse me but having actual weapons that at least pretend to be different was flavorful, having a bunch of weapons that look different on tiles because an orc was wielding them or because an elf did isn't.

[Kate]

This has been discussed pretty extensively and doesn't seem to be going anywhere new, all the reasons for the change have been pretty clearly explained.