Saturday, 19th April 2014, 01:09 by evilmike
I never felt like energy randomization fixed anything that needed fixing. I am aware of pillar dancing, but I remain unconvinced that it ever was, or currently is a problem. There are theoretical arguments as to why it's a problem, but I haven't seen practical examples of this being a problem in game yet (although, I keep an open mind, so if anyone wants to show me a truly degenerate case of pillar dancing, go ahead). I also have never found it particularly useful outside of the first few levels, as a means of restoring MP.
In general, I do not think energy randomization changed much with regards to pillar dancing itself. It is still useful in situations where it was useful before. I'm fine with that.
Energy randomization does have an indirect effect, however. If you want to escape from an enemy that's next to you, one thing you can do is retreat from it a bit until the randomization causes a gap to open up between you and a monster. From there you can hopefully retreat to a stair, or try to place something between you and the enemy to increase the distance (conjure flame, summons, etc). Pillar dancing can actually a pretty useful way of creating such a gap although it's not the only way. Because of this, one could argue that energy randomization made pillar dancing more useful, albeit in a different (and less tedious) way.
With regards to its intended purpose, energy randomization is a failure. What it does do is (a) make enemy movement less predictable (you can't know EXACTLY how many moves away from you a speed 10 enemy is), and (b) made speed 10 enemies a bit easier to escape from. Both of those seem ok to me, even if they could be seen as "side effects". I think any question of what (if anything) should be done with energy randomization should focus on those two features of it, and not whatever its original goals were.
I'm not really sure now if I would prefer the game with or without it. I'm tempted to say "without", but the grass is always greener on the other side. I'd have to actually try Crawl without it to decide (playing 0.5 doesn't count).
What I am fairly sure of is that if the game lost energy randomization, it does not need any "alternative" mechanic to replace it. Either keep things as they are, or remove the feature entirely and leave it at that.