Nemelex changes/removal

[archaeo]

bcadren, I want you to know I am not being sarcastic or at all cruddy when I say that I am genuinely interested to see an actual roguelike you turn out. It seems like you have plenty of ideas; I think one of the important steps in the creative process should be realizing when you should move from the idea phase to the execution phase. If you want to execute them in Crawl, do so, and test them out on your own machine before plugging them into Mantis. But I suspect that that's a hard thing to do, especially since there are a wealth of devs who already have their own ideas. Instead, maybe you should invest this creative energy in your own projects; that theoretical roguelike seems like a good place to start.

</offtopic>

[crate]

Oh, I missed this earlier since I assumed it was more commentary on something else:

What exactly do you mean by having a 'strategic impact'? Why is it bad?

The division between "tactical" and "strategic" is this: "tactics" refers to how you fight individual encounters; "strategy" refers to how you deal with encounters in general (i.e. character building, in this case.).

The place I am starting from is that a Nemelex-like tactical-effects god is a good idea. From that starting point, then, the question becomes: why should I add strategic effects to this god? I do not believe there is a good reason to do so, and the only real argument is "but that's how Nemelex actually exists". But, as this topic shows, Nemelex as implemented has problems, and as Nemelex changes over the past few versions show, strategic effects are being phased out from Nemelex anyway, so there is evidence that the devs agree that the part of Nemelex most worth keeping is the tactical effects.

I think adding a strategic category of effects to such a god is doing a few bad things:
1) If the strategic effects are powerful, then you must make the tactical effects weaker; this sort of defeats the entire purpose of having a tactical-effects god in the first place, which is the design I am supporting. If the strategic effects are not powerful, then they should just not exist: no need to bloat the god with useless things.
2) Strategic effects are, by nature, more of a "passive" thing than tactical effects. The interesting part of Nemelex, the part that no other god can replicate, is that encounters with enemies play out differently because you have lots of different tactical effects available. The effects of Wonders (and I'll even look at old wonders here) are not unique in that way: Ash and Oka both provide skill boosts (xp card, sage card), Jiyva and Xom provide mutations and Zin cures them (Helix card), Jiyva shuffles stats and Chei boosts them (shuffle card, focus card), various gods (Oka, Trog, Gozag, etc.) provide more items to your character (trowel card). So these effects both a) do not change how individual encounters go and b) are already in the game, provided by other gods.

Perhaps a various-strategic-effects god is also a good idea! (You could, in fact, argue that Jiyva is just such a god.) It is, however, a different idea than the one I am presenting.

[XuaXua]

New Wonders Card Effects:

• Forced Randomized Acquirement Scroll read
  
  • PLAIN: Xom-level
    
  • ORNATE: Okawaru / Trog-level
    
  • LEGEND: Useful
• Forced Enchant Scroll Use
  
  • PLAIN: EW I
    
  • ORNATE: EW II
    
  • LEGEND: 2 x Enchant Armour
• Random Manual-style +4 to skill aptitude applied
  
  • PLAIN : 1/16 length of time
    
  • ORNATE: 1/8 length of time
    
  • LEGEND: 1/4 length of time
• Permanent Invisible Pet
  
  • PLAIN Sky Beast
    
  • ORNATE Unseen Horror
    
  • LEGEND Ghost Moth

[Megabass]

Thanks for the clarification, crate. Understanding what you mean now, I tend to agree. From both a flavor and design standpoint, I feel like Nemelex should be more about what you're calling tactical options than one overarching game-long strategy.

[Leafsnail]

I'm glad to see the piety and inventory management issues being addressed (wow Nemelex has a lot of problems).

I think the main problem with having strategic effects as a deck is the fact that there's virtually no reason not to just burn straight through it as soon as you have enough piety to avoid the bad cards. As such they don't really provide any kind of interesting choice, if you want the XP card in the game then you might as well just have Nemelex gift you XP every now and then.

I basically agree with crate's analysis. My own solution would be to remove decks entirely and just have Nemelex allow you to invoke/pick from abstract decks (with the piety costs for his abilities adjusted to make that the limitation). I don't think that the "two kinds of piety" really need to exist - a god that lets you choose between cost, power and choice seems interesting enough, and doing this would eliminate the inventory annoyances entirely and be more in-keeping with the idea of Nemelex as an "active god".

The two other things I'd sortof want to see:
1. Meaningful and intuitive differences between cards within the same deck. At the moment most summons seem like just a bunch of bodies, and while some are better than others I don't think there's much actual choice between them. Having it so that the player has to choose which ability from a limited set would benefit them most in this situation would be good.
2. Making it so that something like Triple Draw is the default mode of picking from decks. This is for a similar reason to the above - a god who just lets you blindly spam random powers for cheap doesn't seem as interesting as one who gets you to choose from a random limited selection. A powerful and random ability like Deal Four can stay because the piety cost associated with it means it can't be spammed.

[MrPlanck]

No, we don't care.

That's too bad.

[reaver]

The Exploration piety thing has been implemented by N78291 and pushed to a branch.

If there's a few more changes (N78291 may or may not be working on more) we might be able to get an experimental new_nemelex branch set up. You can also download the branch locally and compile yourself, if you want. Any patches to improve Nemelex are welcome, including possibly an implementation of the "zero items ever" housekeeping conduct discussed.


Edit: Also, since some people might not know how to checkout out a remote branch, the command is:

  Code:

git checkout -b new_nemelex origin/new_nemelex

You can then use git pull and git branch like you can on master.

[reaver]

Rather than further editing my post: 78291 has made further changes. Mainly, new cards, combining all Nem cards into a single deck, and changing peek at two to be incompatible with other Nemelex changes.

None of these changes are final, but most of them look great.

Also CBRO has the experimental new_nemelex branch up now.

[Quazifuji]

By combining all nem cards into a single deck, do you mean shuffling all decks of the same type together like other people have mentioned, or making it so there is only a single type of deck that Nemelex gives that has all types of cards?

Anyway, not sure if I understand the most recent changes well enough to discuss them, but from earlier in the discussion, I think I agree with Crate on strategic effects. Overall, I feel like Nemelex has two main things that are interesting and not redundant with other gods:

1. The powerful strategic effects from the Deck of Wonders (and previously dungeons)

2. The way the different active abilities let you vary the reliability and power of decks at different costs (triple draw lets you increase reliability for a higher cost, stack five gives very high reliability at an even higher cost, draw four gives much higher power but at higher cost and less reliability, etc)

The problem is, these two things are somewhat incompatible with each other. The powerful strategic effects naturally have to be balanced out by the possibility of nasty negative strategic effects, otherwise it would just be a no-brainer to spam any strategic decks you get. But then all that happens is that it just becomes optimal to draw from strategic decks with a more controlled ability like triple draw or stack five. So now it's just a no brainer to use those on strategic decks as soon as you can afford the piety.

Really, what it comes down to is this: in order to be interesting, strategic effects need to be either uncontrolled (e.g. god gifts), unreliable (e.g. mutation or beneficial mutation potions), or have decisions involved (e.g. enchant scrolls, acquirement). If they are controlled, reliable, and have no decisions, then there's no thought to them - you simply use them when they come up, and they are good. As long as Nemelex has an ability that lets you make a deck perfectly reliable (stack five), his decks have none of these properties, and thus it's a no-brainer to simply stack-five every strategic deck you find (unless they're sufficiently reliable that draw three-ing is more efficient).

Personally, I think the variable reliability is the most interesting aspect of the god to focus on. It's not something other gods (or effects in general) really do in this game, and it has the potential to be very interesting (possibly more interesting than it is now). Stack five can pose interesting strategic decisions not in terms of what strategic effects you want, but what tactical effects you want to prepare reliably for later, and deciding whether to use a single draw, draw four, draw three, or use a stacked deck can be a very interesting decision. The question is how to set things up to emphasize this aspect.

[archaeo]

Assuming that Nemelex still occasionally throws in cards from Deck of Oddities, there will still be some strategic benefit; one assumes that a few times per game, you'll hit Helix, anyway.

In a couple previous attempts at a Nemelex reform, I tried to come up with a card game you'd play with Nemelex in order to win strategic cards. Unfortunately, it always came across as deeply silly, and playing poker at the same time you're playing Crawl really wouldn't be much fun, probably. I suppose, if you wanted to preserve some kind of useful strategic benefit out of worshipping Nem, you could give him a 6* ability to make a one-time draw from the Deck of Wonders, which would be exclusive to this ability, in the hypothetical version I'm spinning. And these could be rad cards, since you'd just get one.

But I'm interested to see where N7 takes the god, and like Quaz said, it's unclear whether or not Nem really needs a "strategic" or long-term reward for worship.

[reaver]

By combining all nem cards into a single deck, do you mean shuffling all decks of the same type together like other people have mentioned, or making it so there is only a single type of deck that Nemelex gives that has all types of cards?

Nemelex now gifts exclusively decks of war, which contain most of his old cards. He no longer gifts any wonders cards. This is the change which I feel the most might need to tweaked.

I linked the commit log which has pretty good explanations. I won't be around to further clarify for a day or so.

[nht]

Played the new_nemelex branch to xl 16 on cszo. Piety on exploration is great, cuts down on message and button spam. The rate of piety gain will be somewhat different than the old system, which tended to provide a lot of decks in junk-heavy areas like Orc (lots of armour, weapons, corpses). Shouldn't be too difficult to balance though (piety scumming Pan and Abyss being a potential problem) and encourages reckless exploration without killing everything (a good thing!).

Re: Nemelex only gifting Decks of War - if going this route, I think it's better to go the whole hog and remove physical deck gifting (and possibly physical decks altogether). Make card power a function of Evocations (no more deck rarities), give Draw One a small piety cost. Triple Draw and Draw Four work as before, Peek Two and Stack Five can be redesigned or removed. This solves the inventory clutter issue and streamlines the interface for drawing cards.

[tompliss]

I tried the Nemelex sprint branch on CSZO, and got to the end of its Orc lane with no piety from Nemelex but got a deck of war from killing bears (so I don't think they dropped it). Is the piety multiplier missing ?

[reaver]

I tried the Nemelex sprint branch on CSZO, and got to the end of its Orc lane with no piety from Nemelex but got a deck of war from killing bears (so I don't think they dropped it). Is the piety multiplier missing ?

Sorry, Exploration Piety has never worked in Sprint IIRC. (i.e. it's a problem with Ash too). This may have been worth noting before Nemelex Sprint was made.

[XuaXua]

By combining all nem cards into a single deck, do you mean shuffling all decks of the same type together like other people have mentioned, or making it so there is only a single type of deck that Nemelex gives that has all types of cards?

Nemelex now gifts exclusively decks of war, which contain most of his old cards. He no longer gifts any wonders cards. This is the change which I feel the most might need to tweaked.

I linked the commit log which has pretty good explanations. I won't be around to further clarify for a day or so.

I've always found decks of summoning to be helpful except when they summoned enemies all the time. Too many Crusade cards.

[Tenaya]

By combining all nem cards into a single deck, do you mean shuffling all decks of the same type together like other people have mentioned, or making it so there is only a single type of deck that Nemelex gives that has all types of cards?

Nemelex now gifts exclusively decks of war, which contain most of his old cards. He no longer gifts any wonders cards. This is the change which I feel the most might need to tweaked.

Has there been any change to Decks of War, or are they still a combination of ranged attack, healing, buffs, summoning, and escape? If no change, then I do not see how this would be useful unless one were to use piety based abilities with every draw.

[Klown]

Hi~
Is Nemelex now staying for good since he got 'fixed' or is removal still an option?

[nicolae]

Hi~
Is Nemelex now staying for good since he got 'fixed' or is removal still an option?

Removal is always an option. *prepares guillotine*

[and into]

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[cbkazl]

I've recently played around with the recent Nemelex changes, here are my opinions on them

Peek at Two - I like this change, it is a useful and balanced ability.

Fortitude - This card does basically the same thing as the Helm card, I did not find it particularly interesting

Storm - I really like the concept, but in practice the card was pretty much useless when it only summoned rainclouds and too dangerous when it summoned the twister. I would recommend changing the card so that the tornado does less damage to the player, and is only summoned at high card power. At lower power the card could have some other effect that damages both the player and monsters, such as electric damage to everything in LOS.

Degeneration - I liked this card, it is easy to understand and the effect has the potential to be both useful and dangerous. However this card shares the same problems as other sources of polymorph - that certain enemies such as worms and slugs will turn into enemies that are dramatically more dangerous.

Shaft - I liked this change, it is simpler and more unique than the Flight card.

Illusion - This is a great card. It is interesting, easy to understand, and unique. I particularly like how it is by nature balanced throughout the game, unlike other summoning cards such as the Repulsiveness which can be overpowered early game and underpowered late game. One small problem is the weapon swap screen that appears, which has the potential to be confusing if you don't know what the card does. One solution would be to only show the swap screen if the player is wielding a deck of cards.

Flame - I liked the change, but got the impression that it was a bit underpowered, especially in the mid to late game.

Velocity - I have mixed feelings about this change, the new card is more complicated and seems a bit less escape oriented. On the other hand it is more situational and more interesting.

Portal removal - I strongly dislike this change, the Portal card has the potential to cause many interesting decisions and situations. It is a good escape card with unique drawbacks (the delay, the chance to be teleported into another bad situation) and strengths (fairly reliable, can escape even fast creatures).

Decks - I really don't like the deck giving changes, it feels a lot less fun to play Nemelex now that there are almost no choices in what deck to use. I agree with the idea the the old decks should be changed, but merging most of them together doesn't seem to work.

Piety - I don't like the piety changes, it feels like I need to do nothing to gain a bunch of benefits. I liked the feel of being rewarded for finding valuable but useless items that came with the old piety system, and there still needs to be a drawback to worshiping Nemelex.

Overall I think that most of the new cards will be excellent additions the the game after a little tweaking. Peek at two is also a great improvement. On the other hand, though I am glad that someone is working on them, I find the current piety and deck mechanics to be less fun than the old Nemelex.

[Patashu]

Degeneration - I liked this card, it is easy to understand and the effect has the potential to be both useful and dangerous. However this card shares the same problems as other sources of polymorph - that certain enemies such as worms and slugs will turn into enemies that are dramatically more dangerous.

FR - polymorph reform - polymorph and derived effects look at XP (or a generalized 'how deep is this monster expected to be seen') instead of HD (which is non-transparent, spoilery and often times meaningless!)

[crate]

Degeneration card does have a problem, but it's not the one mentioned above. The problem with degen card is it works on plants and fungi and such ... I should not have to explain how turning plants into oklobs is not a card effect that should happen. It turning weak monsters into strong ones is fine, Nemelex isn't supposed to be strictly-good effects (and it is a very powerful card effect anyway).

[Kate]

Degeneration card does have a problem, but it's not the one mentioned above. The problem with degen card is it works on plants and fungi and such ... I should not have to explain how turning plants into oklobs is not a card effect that should happen. It turning weak monsters into strong ones is fine, Nemelex isn't supposed to be strictly-good effects (and it is a very powerful card effect anyway).

I can't reproduce this, it looks like it's never been able to affect firewood in the current implementation. If it does happen somehow, can you Mantis it?

(Edit: it looks like it was broken at some point on the experimental branch but was fixed, and then the branch was rebased so the fix doesn't show up in master).

[Sjohara]

I noticed in the changelog that Nemelex gifts decks of escape separately from War again. That's good; I don't think Nemelex was going to be viable with just one deck. I also think the decision to get rid of strategic effects is generally a good idea, primarily on the grounds that I've always liked gods with interesting active abilities but have been intimidated by Nemelex because of how much knowledge was required to use decks like Wonder and Dungeons safely and effectively. That said, I have some concerns about the current implementation.

Even with Escape split off, I'm still not sold on the Deck of War. Decks of Destruction and Summoning were always nice because you knew basically what you were getting. Outside of the occasional dangerous misfire, you were always going to be softening up an enemy from range or summoning in some support. They were consistent enough for blind drawing to be rewarding but varied enough for spending piety on controlled draws to be rewarding. Combining them together is a nerf (primarily since it means you can't spam Summoning to get a huge meatshield), but not the end of the world, since the two decks serve a basically similar purpose (give you a direct advantage without forcing you into melee). However, I'm concerned that the Battle cards are at cross-purposes with the rest. Most of them are useful ONLY if you go directly into melee combat, and even then they have a pretty good chance of being mediocre (Helm), useless (Blade, most of the time), or actively harmful (Metamorphosis most of the time). I can think of few situations where I'm drawing from a Deck of War and I'm happy to see any Battle effect. Even if they were more potent (or I'm underestimating them), I'm concerned that they're diluting your powers too much.

I don't like that piety for using unmarked cards is completely gone. It was nice being actively encouraged to use your resources rather than hoard them, and it made sense thematically that Nemelex got bored with people who never gambled and gave them fewer gifts. It also made the decision to use Nemelex's abilities a bit more complicated (since the cards discarded by Triple Draw and Stack Five, in addition to being wasted, were also not contributing to your next gift). Having him just throw decks at you at random and not care what you do doesn't feel very trickster-like. It's also pretty atypical for a tactical god to not reward you at all for overcoming a difficult tactical situation. I know that old stuff like spamming Destruction in order to fish for Wonders was scummy, but that's not much of a problem anymore. You could even give War and Escape different timeouts and only have War's mitigated by active card use. Item sacrifices sucked, but I really feel like Nemelex piety should be more interesting than just exploration.

I'm also not a fan of the current implementation of Peek Two. If easing deck management is a goal, then creating an irreversible distinction between decks that have been peeked into and decks that haven't is undesirable, and I'm not entirely clear on what problem it's supposed to solve. I'd rather have the peeked cards be forcibly shuffled or discarded before using your next ability rather than blocking the ability permanently. It's cleaner in terms of the interface and it plays into the extant ecosystem of piety costs and card costs better. Encouraging the player to carry five Decks of War at once because these three have been peeked at and these two haven't and they thus serve fundamentally different purposes sounds like a real mess. Even moreso than the current Nemelex, who encourages having maybe one or two stacked decks and the rest being mostly interchangeable.

[crate]

Most of them are useful ONLY if you go directly into melee combat, and even then they have a pretty good chance of being mediocre (Helm), useless (Blade, most of the time), or actively harmful (Metamorphosis most of the time).

Helm card is actually super good so I don't know what you're talking about there. You get a level 5 spell, a level 2 spell, a level 4 spell (except two of these are actually usually better than the spell, and the shield isn't really cshield but let's pretend it is) and a potion of resistance all at once if you're lucky (from legendary decks). If you're as unlucky as possible you get "only" a level 2 spell and a potion of resistance. It's one of the absolute best cards Nemelex offers imo.

Blade card and metamorphosis card are, by my count, the only ones that "force" you into melee (and even then the different forms change your defenses also, so you can argue about metamorphosis card; yes metamorphosis card is weak but not everything should be a winner all the time). (You could count battlelust but power 2 gives agility.) Besides, old Nemelex had the "problem" of "forcing" you to be at range for spark card and flame card! So why is that acceptable but the opposite isn't?

I'm pretty sure that these changes are not intended to keep Nemelex at the same power level, and in fact are not terribly concerned with doing so. The main idea is to make Nemelex less cumbersome to worship, and from playing the new_nemelex branch it definitely succeeds on that front, and splitting escape off from war solves the biggest problem I had with the branch (at the cost of, yes, making Nemelex slightly more cumbersome again. But two decks is a dramatic improvement from four). He still seemed pretty powerful to me in new_nemelex and was still quite enjoyable.

[archaeo]

I still feel as though the current design simply creates a replicated experience (you have escape abilities and killdudes abilities), but instead of simply charging your character directly to use those abilities, you are charged to micromanage those abilities. And instead of the reward for that micromanagement being "You gain theoretically infinite mutations and exp pots" as it was previously, your only reward now is "You can train one school to improve the power of all your secondary killdudes/escape options."

Personally, I think Nemelex would work best if that micromanagement minigame was either a) fun in and of itself or b) removed entirely. Either design a fun micromanagement scheme (good luck) or just give Nemelex a suite of abilities that let you draw from virtual, god-held decks.

But on the other hand, I respect N7 & Co. enough to say that they have a better handle on design than me and I'm still curious to see where this ends up.

[Sjohara]

Most of them are useful ONLY if you go directly into melee combat, and even then they have a pretty good chance of being mediocre (Helm), useless (Blade, most of the time), or actively harmful (Metamorphosis most of the time).

Helm card is actually super good so I don't know what you're talking about there. You get a level 5 spell, a level 2 spell, a level 4 spell (except two of these are actually usually better than the spell, and the shield isn't really cshield but let's pretend it is) and a potion of resistance all at once if you're lucky (from legendary decks). If you're as unlucky as possible you get "only" a level 2 spell and a potion of resistance. It's one of the absolute best cards Nemelex offers imo.

Blade card and metamorphosis card are, by my count, the only ones that "force" you into melee (and even then the different forms change your defenses also, so you can argue about metamorphosis card; yes metamorphosis card is weak but not everything should be a winner all the time). (You could count battlelust but power 2 gives agility.) Besides, old Nemelex had the "problem" of "forcing" you to be at range for spark card and flame card! So why is that acceptable but the opposite isn't?

If Helm was an Okawaru invocation, Okawaru would be considerably stronger, because you could use it whenever you wanted, and by joining Okawaru you're already committing yourself to a character build such that you expect a small boost to melee prowess will be sufficient to let you take on the vast majority of foes.

None of that inherently applies to Nemelex. Generally speaking, if you're drawing cards, it's because you've encountered something that you're not comfortable taking down with your normal tools and you're fishing for a clear edge in the battle. Drawing a Potion of Resistance is only good if you just so happen to be facing down elemental damage that you don't already comfortably resist. Drawing some extra defenses is nice, but if those extra defenses aren't enough to make the difference between "I want to melee that" and "I can't risk meleeing that", it doesn't amount to much. If your character build is such that you don't try to melee highly dangerous foes as a general principle, it won't make that difference in any scenario. That goes double for Battlelust. Blade is very likely to do nothing at all even if you DO value your weapon in the encounter (since your weapon is probably already branded), and Metamorphosis is very likely to be harmful for everyone except unarmed characters. I'm not sure how good Invisibility is as a draw, but a character who trains Evocations probably has access to Invisibility anyway, so I'm going to lean towards "bad".

Helm and Battlelust are not necessarily weak effects on paper, but if they existed in old Nemelex's Deck of Destructions, they would very often be dead cards, because the situations in which you want to blow something up with conjurations and the situations when you want to buff yourself up for melee are often not the same. Even more importantly, the CHARACTER BUILDS that want to blow stuff up with Destruction cards and the CHARACTER BUILDS that want to buff themselves up for melee are often not the same. A lot of people who greatly valued Decks of Destruction and Summoning previously will be discouraged from worshipping new Nemelex at all, because suddenly their decks are diluted by a bunch of new cards that do little or nothing for their build. Pretty much any build benefited from all of Nemelex's tactical cards before. Blasting off a chunk of a unique's health or summoning in an Executioner or Bone Dragon is never not good. Torment and randomly hostile summons are always bad, of course, and variable-radius attacks can be limiting, but I'm not arguing that every draw has to be risk-free. I'm arguing that the Deck of Battles in its entirety--even the GOOD cards in the Deck of Battles--has a very high chance of producing dead draws in a large number of scenarios, and thus probably shouldn't be present in Nemelex's new Deck of War. He didn't offer those cards before, so there's no particular reason why he has to now.

I'm pretty sure that these changes are not intended to keep Nemelex at the same power level, and in fact are not terribly concerned with doing so. The main idea is to make Nemelex less cumbersome to worship, and from playing the new_nemelex branch it definitely succeeds on that front, and splitting escape off from war solves the biggest problem I had with the branch (at the cost of, yes, making Nemelex slightly more cumbersome again. But two decks is a dramatic improvement from four). He still seemed pretty powerful to me in new_nemelex and was still quite enjoyable.

The presence or absence of Deck of Battle cards in gifted Nemelex decks has zero bearing on how cumbersome the deck system is. Condensing Destruction and Summoning does, but the addition of the Deck of Battle to the mix doesn't accomplish any stated design goal that I'm aware of. But it does affect both the tactical viability of blind-drawing from gifted decks and the strategic viability of worshipping Nemelex with a given build.

[Leafsnail]

Degeneration card does have a problem, but it's not the one mentioned above. The problem with degen card is it works on plants and fungi and such ... I should not have to explain how turning plants into oklobs is not a card effect that should happen. It turning weak monsters into strong ones is fine, Nemelex isn't supposed to be strictly-good effects (and it is a very powerful card effect anyway).

It's not a problem if monsters sometimes get better, but it is a problem if certain particular monsters get better based on a non-transparent system. To accurately judge how good an idea it is to polymorph something you need to know its HD (a hidden property) and also the threat level of all the monsters in the same genus (or whatever it respects) with similar HDs, that seems bad to me.

Either design a fun micromanagement scheme (good luck)

Deckbuilding!

[archaeo]

Deckbuilding!

I tried this! Let me summarize my idea, and then I'll tell you why it's stupid:

First, remove all current cards. Nemelex deals you a hand of seven cards in four renamed suits with cards numbered 1-10. Helm gives an AC/EV buff, Beasts give summons, Wands give energy blasts, and Swords give a slaying/brand bonus. Higher number = higher power. 2mp cost to draw a card. If you are able to complete a streak (Beasts 1-3), you get an improved effect; if you can complete a set (10 of Swords, Helms, Beasts, Wands), you get Nemelex's Grace and receive a 2x Damage booster (equivalent to 50% Quad Damage). If you can play all your cards at once, Nemelex lets you draw from the Deck of Wonders, where the strategic cards live. Cards cost 2mp each to play, so playing all 7 requires 14mp.

That's the basic idea. But this just takes the micromanagement to a huge extreme; do you really want to play a card game at the same time you're playing Crawl?

Of course I also get the impression you're talking about M:TG-style Deckbuilding. If a simple card game like my proposal would be too micromanage-y and tedious (and I think it probably would be, though I think it's cool), I can only imagine the tedious micromanagement that would happen if I had to play M:TG at the same time I'm playing Crawl.

e: removed "a"

[crate]

It's not a problem if monsters sometimes get better, but it is a problem if certain particular monsters get better based on a non-transparent system. To accurately judge how good an idea it is to polymorph something you need to know its HD (a hidden property) and also the threat level of all the monsters in the same genus (or whatever it respects) with similar HDs, that seems bad to me.

This is not even talking about Nemelex at this point, you're instead complaining about how polymorph works in crawl

I don't personally have a problem with it but I have polymorphed a lot of things in my time playing crawl so I cannot judge how easy it is to learn any more. I think you are dramatically overcomplicating things by saying "you need to know HD" though, as I've explained elsewhere. There are 3 categories of good poly targets, and two of those are not hard to figure out in my opinion:
1) monsters which are dangerous because of equipment (orc warrior, Sonja, Nessos, etc.)
2) monsters which are dangerous because of a particular ability (often resistible) but otherwise are not strong (fire crab, boggart, red wasp, etc.)
3) this is the spoilery one: special cases (water monsters, though you could put eels in category 2; ugly things of a bad colour; shapeshifters; monsters which are currently berserk and you need to cancel the berserk; etc.)

Bad poly targets pretty much always fall into one of two categories: either they're not going to kill you (so why poly and risk getting something dangerous?), or they're wall-of-stat monsters, like Stone Giants, that are just generally strong. Turns out HD is strongly correlated in most cases with monster strength!

If the polymorph system in crawl fits whatever you want it to be, then is a card that polymorphs everything in LOS a bad card? If the answer is no, then your complaint is not about the card at all.

A lot of people who greatly valued Decks of Destruction and Summoning previously will be discouraged from worshipping new Nemelex at all, because suddenly their decks are diluted by a bunch of new cards that do little or nothing for their build.

And how about the characters who prefer these new effects to the old ones? Why was old Nemelex (who had, by the way significantly more overlap with Makhleb) better in this regard than new Nemelex? With large changes like this, of course you're going to change which characters the god appeals to. Okawaru became a lot less attractive for short blade users when he went from Might -> Heroism, for example. Does that mean that that change was a bad thing?

If you could only choose two decks to have Nemelex gift, which two would you choose? Please try to consider this from a design standpoint instead of from a player standpoint; as a player you would probably prefer escape + summoning because that's the strongest combination but that is not a good reasoning here. I think current war + escape is pretty decent: escape is probably the most unique set of effects (other gods don't replicate them at all), and war has a large breadth of effects that still manage to be useful in a broad "offense" category. Possibly war should have fewer cards than it does.

Part of the goal with the new_nemelex change, according to the person who coded it (n7) was "active Xom", which the new decks unequivocally accomplish better than the old decks. This is different from old Nemelex, but I do not see why it is (from a design standpoint) worse. In fact I would argue it's probably better since it's farther away from other gods!

I still feel as though the current design simply creates a replicated experience (you have escape abilities and killdudes abilities), but instead of simply charging your character directly to use those abilities, you are charged to micromanage those abilities.

I literally have no idea what you mean here. What does "replicated experience" mean? The same (from a player perspective?) as the old Nemelex? It does not solve all the problems with Nemelex but it eliminates one of the big ones (sacrifices) and reduces the other one (inventory management--with only two decks you never really have to carry more than 4 decks at a time (ornate + legendary of each type; plain is pretty worthless if you have better decks), whereas before you were encouraged to carry up to 8). As I stated earlier, I do not think that the broad design of Nemelex was in need of changes, so what's the complaint here?

What does "charging your character directly to use those abilities" mean? Do you mean the deck system existing at all? I didn't explain this earlier, but my opinion is that switching to "virtual decks" has problems that are probably as large as the problems with using decks:

One option is to put all cards into one deck. This is good because it reduces the interface problems significantly; the problem is now every single Nemelex effect is in the same deck. I argued earlier why I think this is less good than multiple decks ... it's serviceable if you intend triple draw to be the main method of using cards, but single-draw is really really bad with a single deck unless you dramatically narrow the breadth of Nemelex's effects. The plus is you do improve Nemelex's interface.

If you keep multiple "virtual decks", well then you hit interface problems in another way: it's still at least three keypresses to use an ability, so you don't get a benefit there (a, [ability letter], [deck letter], then possibly [further choice]). You lose the ability to single-draw decks N times with N+2 keypresses (1 to wield, N to draw, 1 to rewield weapon). You have screen-space problems (see Gozag potion petition, which has this also) and doing something like changing the entire screen (like Stack Five does now) is not acceptable since then you cannot see the viewport while you are making your choice of deck/ability/whatever. Additionally, how do you view what cards are in a "deck"? This also takes a lot more coding work than just changing what decks/cards Nemelex gifts. If you can overcome these problems, then probably this is a good solution, but these problems are real things.

[archaeo]

I literally have no idea what you mean here. What does "replicated experience" mean? The same (from a player perspective?) as the old Nemelex? It does not solve all the problems with Nemelex but it eliminates one of the big ones (sacrifices) and reduces the other one (inventory management--with only two decks you never really have to carry more than 4 decks at a time (ornate + legendary of each type; plain is pretty worthless if you have better decks), whereas before you were encouraged to carry up to 8). As I stated earlier, I do not think that the broad design of Nemelex was in need of changes, so what's the complaint here?

I think the third big problem with "old" Nemelex is the fact that cards mostly duplicate existing spells/consumables, and those cards that weren't merely duplicating effects were either worthless/super situational (warpwright, water) or outright broken (exp, trowel). That's what I mean by "replicated experience." Worshipping Nemelex is just getting access to a wide group of conjurations, summons, and potions/scrolls. Obviously, N7 has done a good job of differentiating cards from the non-card effects, but I still think the problem remains.

Right now, Nemelex has 2 decks for 2 situations: you can do damage or improve your ability to do damage, or you can directly escape or improve your ability to escape. If we consider the gods at their most reductive level (abilities either do damage or prevent you from taking damage) Nemelex gives you access to a much greater range of these tools than any other god, such that, when used optimally, Nemelex will do what any other god will do, except better. And for this wide range of effects, you only need Evo. In exchange, you pay an opportunity cost (you can't worship another god) and a time cost (all your abilities require the added step of deck management). The New Nemelex removes all the other added benefits, such that Nemelex isn't wildly better than any other god, and reduces the inventory/interface flaws, but it doesn't address this central issue: Nemelex requires that player "pay" in real time spent in return for outsized benefits when compared to other gods.

Before, this cost was a reasonable one to make from a player's perspective, since the return on your real time investment was kicking the XP curve to the ground and getting infinite good mutations. Now, I'm investing my cognitive energy on just two decks that do what lots of gods would do in exchange for doing those things ever so slightly better depending on how much time I invest in the decks.

What does "charging your character directly to use those abilities" mean? Do you mean the deck system existing at all?

Yes. If I worship Chei, I don't get a deck of cards that I then have to stack or draw three to use optimally; I just hit the button for Slouch or the button for Step from Time. I just don't find deck management a very fun suite of abilities, especially now that my only reward for doing so isn't "lol helix/xp" but is instead just optimizing consumable use.

I haven't quoted the parts about virtual decks because you're absolutely right about all of it and I have nothing I could add.

[crate]

If we consider the gods at their most reductive level (abilities either do damage or prevent you from taking damage) Nemelex gives you access to a much greater range of these tools than any other god, such that, when used optimally, Nemelex will do what any other god will do

So you disagree with the entire premise of an "effects god" like I laid out in my first post in this topic?

[archaeo]

So you disagree with the entire premise of an "effects god" like I laid out in my first post in this topic?

I guess so! For one thing, I think Qazial serves as a pretty good new "active ability god," if you're concerned about that niche. But the "effects god" design as you laid out in that first post inexorably leads to Nemelex, and I just don't find deck management interesting or fun. It's an item management minigame, and I think Crawl's a better game when it reduces item management as much as possible.

e: for what it's worth, I did play and win an Old Nemelex game and had fun doing so, but it reminds me of Nethack. I enjoyed playing and winning that game too, but the inventory management midgame for both made replaying seem distasteful.

I suppose I should say that this is a matter of taste, certainly. New Nemelex does a very good job of hewing to that first post of yours, inasmuch as it retains "effects god" while eliminating/reducing the interface problems. Old Nemelex also gave way, way more in-game power in exchange for moderately more real-life time. New Nemelex makes that ratio make more sense, but it still strikes me as a clumsy thing that I will likely never opt for in my own games. I feel like the problems I've talked about are design problems, but it's totally possible it's just subjective (and therefore not very helpful) criticism, so I'll stop spamming this thread.

[crate]

q is my least favorite god in crawl and it's not even close, i would much prefer worshipping no god, but that's off topic

[Leafsnail]

If the polymorph system in crawl fits whatever you want it to be, then is a card that polymorphs everything in LOS a bad card? If the answer is no, then your complaint is not about the card at all.

Fair enough. I agree that polymorph is often ok but I still don't think some of your "special cases" are actually pretty problematic (eg is it obvious that a hydra is a bad target).

One option is to put all cards into one deck. This is good because it reduces the interface problems significantly; the problem is now every single Nemelex effect is in the same deck. I argued earlier why I think this is less good than multiple decks ... it's serviceable if you intend triple draw to be the main method of using cards, but single-draw is really really bad with a single deck unless you dramatically narrow the breadth of Nemelex's effects. The plus is you do improve Nemelex's interface.

If you keep multiple "virtual decks", well then you hit interface problems in another way: it's still at least three keypresses to use an ability, so you don't get a benefit there (a, [ability letter], [deck letter], then possibly [further choice]). You lose the ability to single-draw decks N times with N+2 keypresses (1 to wield, N to draw, 1 to rewield weapon). You have screen-space problems (see Gozag potion petition, which has this also) and doing something like changing the entire screen (like Stack Five does now) is not acceptable since then you cannot see the viewport while you are making your choice of deck/ability/whatever. Additionally, how do you view what cards are in a "deck"? This also takes a lot more coding work than just changing what decks/cards Nemelex gifts. If you can overcome these problems, then probably this is a good solution, but these problems are real things.

I think my preferred choice would actually be one (virtual) deck limited by piety and triple-draw as Nemelex's "main" ability. That would kill off the inventory annoyances entirely and make it so that the defining Nemelex trait is decided which of a set of three effects would be best in the current situation, which is pretty cool. It does overlap with Gozag a but he's not in a stable version yet and that seems like his only ability that's actually working well.

Alternatively, you could split Draw One into two abilities (one draws from what is currently the "deck of escape", the other draws from the "deck of war"). You could explain the decks in the ability descriptions, and I think this would amount to less keypresses in most cases (and the added bonus of not having to search your inventory for the deck you want).

[melek]

I really like Nemelex thematically with an adventuring rogue - stabby and in way over his head, making it further than he should because of these fickle decks. I play Nemelex worshipping octopode assassins - pretty badly - most of the time, so I've played the trunk's nemelex quite a bit and I have to say it is, at least to me in its current state, terribly boring.

*There is no interaction with the god. Before, I wondered what Nemelex needed all those clubs for, and what he did with all those corpses! And he doesn't even care whether or not I use the decks he gives me, at least to my understanding.
*The two types of gifted decks feel watered down. I agree with above posts that say summoning and destruction made for a good level reliability mixed with risk. Right now it is too unreliable, I rarely ever use decks in critical situations. On my non-nemelex characters, I wouldn't even be sure whether to use them at all without some of the abilities to sidestep useless cards. I really love the idea of some inventory-saving deck mechanism, maybe that will replace this system.
*Decks of wonder are now boring. Why remove Experience if Nemelex no longer gifts wonder decks? Are potions of experience also removed? Before I became giddy when I got a deck of wonders. Now I don't do much with them, if I even keep them in my inventory.

I tend to agree with above posters that have pointed out that Nemelex fans are not going to be interested in the god anymore. It may attract some people who didn't like nemelex before, but those people probably already have/had a favorite god that I didn't particularly care for. I don't really get the point of worrying about overlap with Makhleb, I would not play Makhleb because I find his theme against the kinds of characters I want to play - brave/stupid opportunists, not destruction mongers. Doesn't the flavor matter, not just the mechanics?