Tedium and the Illusion of Lethality

[Igxfl]

FWIW I find the early game very easy (and very short) and I find that I die or have problems more frequently once I've passed the lair or orc. My experience contradicts your statement about the mid-game being nonthreatening for everyone, I may be the exception to the rule rather than the general case though.

This probably means you know what to do but get bored easily (easily by roguelike standards, at least). I doubt this is much of an exception -- I suspect most mid-tier players get to Lair relatively frequently but have poor Lair=>Win ratios, myself included.

[damiac]

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/killers.html

Kobold, hobgoblin, gnoll, orc priest, orc wizard, ogre, Sigmund, adder, orc, jackal, goblin, orc warrior...

statistically more people die early in the game, but that's easily explained by the fact that if you suck at the game, you're going to die somewhere. You get chances to die on D1, D2, D3, D4, etc... before you get a chance to die in Zot. Since you're going to die the first time tabbing into an enemy doesn't kill it first, it's likely that's going to happen early on.

Seriously, just walk into each enemy until it or you is dead. You will die to one of those things on the list almost every time. You can't die in a rune vault if you already died to the first gnoll you came across.

Aside from that, as I said, a lot of early game deaths are unavoidable. That's why even the best players die early on sometimes. If you are willing to play in a horribly boring fashion, you can prevent yourself from getting into a lot of bad situations, but once in a while you'll still start with a kobold with an electric dagger right outside the starting vault.

[Lasty]

FWIW:

  Code:

Lasty: !lm Lasty !boring (cao|cszo) br.enter=Lair / won
Sequell: 10/32 milestones for Lasty (!boring (cao || cszo) br.enter=Lair): N=10/32 (31.25%)

Lasty: !lm Lasty (cao|cszo) began !boring
Sequell: 75. [2014-05-24 12:16:00] Lasty the Charmwright (L1 VSSk) began the quest for the Orb on turn 0. (D:1)


Note: only the cszo/cao Lasty is me. I dunno who that other guy is, but it looks like he stopped playing a long time ago.

42.6% of my characters who start make it to Lair; 31.25% of my characters who make it to Lair go on to win. 36.58% of my characters who finish Lair win. And that's considering that I tend to play a lot of weak starts and try for tournament challenge conditions.

I still believe that the early game is objectively more dangerous than the last game, since you're much less likely to have a way to avoid or get out of bad situations, but I don't think that'll necessarily be reflected in each player's stats, since there are players like me who know how to get through the early game with relative regularity, but lose focus in the late game.

It's probably also worth noting that the relative difficulty of the early versus late game has probably changed enough over the last six major versions or so to make the older data less reflective of the current state of the game.

edit: fixed finishing Lair stats -- forgot to filter on cao|cszo.

[Mankeli]

42.6% of my characters who start make it to Lair; 31.25% of my characters who make it to Lair go on to win. 39.25% of my characters who finish Lair win. And that's considering that I tend to play a lot of weak starts and try for tournament challenge conditions.

Also, it might be a good idea to note a) how long in real time/turns does it take to get to Lair compared to death count and b) how long real time/turns does the game take after that compared to death count. I bet then you really start to see how pre-Lair is pretty dangerous.

[damiac]

The early game has certainly been made less cheap, for example, when gnoll packs were removed from D1. And knowing to turn around and go the other way when you see grinder or sigmund is an important skill for early game survival. But since there are such limited options early game, a sensible player only has a few things to choose from, thus it is simpler to make decisions. The reason those sensible players still die sometimes is because either no option was the right one (unavoidable death) or the 'right' option was only right due to luck (avoidable death, but only due to chance, not by making a sensible decision). For example, if you see a goblin with a glowing dagger outside your starting vault, but don't have any way to get around him, you've got options, but there's no guarantee any of them will prevent you from dying. Maybe if you stand and fight you'll kill it. Maybe if you run away you'll get pinned between the goblin and something else. But I wouldn't call that harder, just less fair.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying the early game is less dangerous than the later game, just that it's less difficult. By that I mean, if every starting character had a 50% chance to just die on turn 1, turn 1 would be the most dangerous part of the game. But it wouldn't be difficult. Difficult implies you need skill to overcome it. Player skill is less involved with early deaths than later deaths. However, I will agree the game gets somewhat more forgiving of errors later in the game, but the errors one can make in the early game are pretty easy to avoid.

Hopefully I haven't completely contradicted myself. I'm not even sure anymore. It all made sense when I typed it.

[Sar]

Earlygame difficulty isn't really only about instakills. Making a step towards a monster that is on the edge of your los is a tactical error; making it past earlygame is dramatically less likely to kill you (since your character is probably strong and also has a bullshit amount of escape options).

[zardo]

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying the early game is less dangerous than the later game, just that it's less difficult.

Sar kinda scooped me but I was being more specific:

I see what you're saying but I'm not convinced, because after the first few levels you have fairly reliable outs to most situations - haste or teleport and book it. The mid-game does present more paths one can take - "If I'd remembered to quaff might I woulda been able to tab that guy" - but if you 're even somewhat good (i.e. appropriately cautious) you can also generally screw up something, catch it, *and* get away with no harm but a more significant dent in your future escape options. At the beginning there are unavoidable unavoidable deaths, but there are also lots of avoidable choices that lead into unavoidable deaths. And I'm not sure they are all obvious.

I guess would we would really want to look at is the distributions of survival rates for different parts of the game.

[sanka]

I think that the problem (and the original topic of this thread) is not that the late game is easy (or hard). The problem is that it's very long for many players (including me, who is not a great player and dies in the late game a lot). I think that the progression in the second part of the game is way slower than in the first part, and while slowing character progression rates are an old roleplaying heritage, it's not a good one. If the fights/meaningful improvement of the character rate is good in the first part, it's not good later.

Also, I guess that those players who like to build a very powerful character tend to like the extended end game. There are already optional content in crawl, which is good perfectly for the variable player base. So it's possible to shorten the "normal" game significantly and moving some content to the "extended" area for those who like it - I think nothing would be lost. Yes, you can achive something like it currently if you dive and skip a lot of levels, for example in the Lair branches (I currently dived Swamp with my MuWn because I got bored), but I think a shorter normal (and more varied extended) game would be much better.

[tasonir]

Crazy idea time: Shorten lair sub branches (including slime) to 3 levels each. Vaults, depths, and Zot also become 3 levels. Slightly increase the item generation in these branches to be roughly the same. Reduce the amount of experience requires to raise skills from roughly 15+, or remove the "the more exp you have, the less skill exp you get per exp gained" penalty thing. How much to change the exp formulas I don't know, but my goal is to keep it roughly the same as now, and not further reduce the exp available in a 3 rune game.

[Siegurt]

Well, and just to give a further weight idea that the perception that the "mid and late game" is an experienced-player phenomenon:

  Code:

Sequell: 13202/193328 milestones for !greatplayers (br.enter=Lair): N=13202/193329 (6.83%)
Sequell: 5412/15456 milestones for greatplayers (br.enter=Lair): N=5412/15456 (35.02%)


35% of games played by 'greatplayers' that make it to the lair result in a win,
7% of everyone else's games that make it to the lair result in a win.

To me this implies that excellent players do find the late game easier, but that the general populous does not. I'm sure that most of this is the learning curve, you have to *know* which things are nasty and which things aren't, and how to respond appropriately. This learning curve is, to me, what largely makes up my enjoyment factor for a game.

The "filler" combats are there to make the hard combats relatively uncommon, if every combat is non-filler, then you rapidly encounter the entire possible set and the learning curve is exhausted much more rapidly, this makes for a game with a much shorter learning curve and hence one that you lose interest in more quickly.

So removing the large number of trivial combats not only makes the game shorter, but it makes it so you encounter new things more quickly, which then become not-new, which reduces the replay value for players who get most of their enjoyment from exploring something new.

Experienced players have *already* seen the entire set of uncommon things, and so there's nothing available to them in terms of enjoyment from being surprised by something new (Aside from new content being added) that's why an experienced player isn't going to be killed by the 'unexpected new thing that they've never seen before' and is more likely to be killed by tedium, bad decision making, etc.

[crate]

This is offtopic but I think this is actually a far more interesting discussion than the original topic so I'll go ahead and post instead of not posting. As I've said before I don't personally actually have any problem with crawl's difficulty, and in fact I think it's in a pretty good spot. This post is not going to have a coherent position or anything, it is more a collection of observations.

I'm not even sure what you are trying to query here:

  Code:

Sequell: 13202/193328 milestones for !greatplayers (br.enter=Lair): N=13202/193329 (6.83%)
Sequell: 5412/15456 milestones for greatplayers (br.enter=Lair): N=5412/15456 (35.02%)

Obviously worse players will win less often after reaching lair; they're worse (and while greatplayers does not specifically select players who are good at crawl, it contains a large number of the best and they are all at least good enough to have won 20+ times). You didn't even do a query that supports your position at all: you should note that "!@greatplayers" also reach lair much less often than greatplayers do!

Here's a better query:

  Code:

<crate> !lairratio !@greatplayers !boring rstart>2014
<Sequell> !greatplayers (!boring rstart>2014) has reached Lair in 39084 of 404003 attempts: 9.674185587730785 %
<crate> !lm * !@greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014 / won
<Sequell> 2432/39091 milestones for * (!@greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014): N=2432/39091 (6.22%)

<crate> !lairratio greatplayers !boring rstart>2014
<Sequell> greatplayers (!boring rstart>2014) has reached Lair in 1335 of 3752 attempts: 35.58102345415778 %
<crate> !lm greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014 / won
<Sequell> 552/1335 milestones for greatplayers (br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014): N=552/1335 (41.35%)

This data at first glance does support your argument that post-lair is more deadly than pre-lair games for most crawl players.

I would suggest that this isn't necessarily meaningful, depending on what you actually care about; it's far, far easier to "luck" your way into reaching lair than it is to win an entire game: even really awful players and bots will reach lair sometimes (even rw has done so! and it has zero hope of ever winning the game). Perhaps the best illustration is this:

  Code:

<crate> !lairratio qw
<Sequell> qw has reached Lair in 172 of 676 attempts: 25.443786982248522 %
<crate> !lm qw br.enter=lair / won
<Sequell> 3/172 milestones for qw (br.enter=lair): N=3/172 (1.74%)

qw literally cannot think for itself (it is a bot); if you play crawl in this completely mindless fashion, then you can still reach lair 25% of the time (and win occasionally)! You might even argue that there is no difficulty at all in crawl if a bot can win: you just automate the whole thing and then keep trying until you succeed.

Personally I don't really find myself able to draw any conclusions about how difficult different parts of crawl are from looking at players who don't win with some sort of regularity. You can make it to lair purely by holding o and tab (and sometimes pressing G>) with MuBe occasionally, but does that actually give you a meaningful statement about crawl's difficulty? You're also unlikely to beat Super Mario Bros without ever pressing the run button, but that doesn't say much about how hard that game is, right? I see this as sort of the same thing. Maybe you don't.

Players who do win with some sort of regularity are almost certainly aware of the important crawl mechanics and are certainly outperforming qw.

I find it pretty telling that very nearly every single good player (even using either the "goodplayers" nick or "greatplayers" nick) dies less often after reaching lair. Using all of a player's games here is problematic: it will obviously bias the sample toward dying more often anywhere (as players get better at crawl over time, and I'm trying to select players who are already reasonably good). But even if you do strip out early games (with rstart) then the same pattern holds: pre-lair is more deadly (or very close to the same, for a few players like N7) for every single player I've checked except for a few who are specifically not trying to win every game (e.g. 4tharra).

This tells me that even if you play reasonably well, pre-lair has deaths that are much more likely to happen. However, if you compare the really good players (elliptic, mikee_, bmfx, etc.) to merely "goodplayers" or "greatplayers" then you still see that they reach lair much more often, so there is absolutely still skill in avoiding these deaths. To me this says that pre-lair crawl is definitely more difficult, and this is the only group of players where you can study data to compare pre-lair games and post-lair games in my opinion (as I said above; I am not going to elaborate on this more; as I said this post is not trying to convince anyone of anything, really). Of course, a large majority of crawl players never win even once.

Having to learn such a large number of monsters and items and such that crawl has is something that strikes me as more of "fake difficulty" than anything. Dying to something once because you don't know what it does doesn't necessarily mean that said monster is difficult to deal with (Mara, for instance, will almost certainly kill an unspoiled player the first time if the player chooses to fight, despite the fact it's usually quite easy to just avoid Mara if you know he's that dangerous). I don't have a problem with having to die to learn how to win crawl, but I do have a problem with the number of different things that crawl includes, but as I said earlier I'm not going to talk about that.

[zardo]

another thing to note is that for obvious reasons, players get more practice pre-lair sooner. but they seem to reach a plateau

[tasonir]

I'm not even sure what you are trying to query here:

  Code:

Sequell: 13202/193328 milestones for !greatplayers (br.enter=Lair): N=13202/193329 (6.83%)
Sequell: 5412/15456 milestones for greatplayers (br.enter=Lair): N=5412/15456 (35.02%)

Obviously worse players will win less often after reaching lair; they're worse (and while greatplayers does not specifically select players who are good at crawl, it contains a large number of the best and they are all at least good enough to have won 20+ times). You didn't even do a query that supports your position at all: you should note that "!@greatplayers" also reach lair much less often than greatplayers do!

Here's a better query:

  Code:

<crate> !lairratio !@greatplayers !boring rstart>2014
<Sequell> !greatplayers (!boring rstart>2014) has reached Lair in 39084 of 404003 attempts: 9.674185587730785 %
<crate> !lm * !@greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014 / won
<Sequell> 2432/39091 milestones for * (!@greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014): N=2432/39091 (6.22%)

<crate> !lairratio greatplayers !boring rstart>2014
<Sequell> greatplayers (!boring rstart>2014) has reached Lair in 1335 of 3752 attempts: 35.58102345415778 %
<crate> !lm greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014 / won
<Sequell> 552/1335 milestones for greatplayers (br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014): N=552/1335 (41.35%)

This data at first glance does support your argument that post-lair is more deadly than pre-lair games for most crawl players.

I just wanted to break this down a bit more, as most people aren't familiar with the bots and I don't even know how to write queries like this. I've been meaning to learn more about how to write queries for the bots, but it always gets postponed as I just play crawl instead.

The first one is checking if not-great players reach lair, removing boring games (quits on turn 1? what else does boring remove?) that have been played in 2014. 9.7% of general players reach lair. Of those games, 6.2% go on to win. So you're more likely to reach the lair than to go on from the lair and win. The opposite is true for greatplayers - they reach the lair 35.6% of the time, but once they are there, they can win 41.4% of the time.

Honestly I'm not that sure it's a meaningful gap - greatplayers just have already learned and know how to respond to all of the late game branches, which gives them an obvious edge. I think that explains most/all of the gap. If great players reached lair more often and then died a lot afterwards, it would seem to agree with the original thread idea - that they're getting bored and reckless. This seems to suggest they're able to hold it together and win. My current streak of killing off 5 characters with a rune since my last win notwithstanding

[Hurkyl]

I wonder how strongly "greatplayers" correlates with "people who are patient enough that they don't get bored and reckless" as compared with "good at the game when they aren't bored and reckless"?

[Igxfl]

Greatplayers are the ones who don't get too bored and reckless; otherwise they would die too often to be greatplayers.

It's the rest of us who get to lair and then die a lot.

[Sandman25]

I believe now it is clear that late game is not really different from early game, even "greatplayers" have only 6% less chance to die late game than early game and also they still die more often than win even after reaching Lair.

[duvessa]

that's a pretty wild misrepresentation of everything ever (also it's 8% not 6% if you care about your figures making any sense at all, but you obviously don't)
here's a misrepresentation that is considerably less wild: elliptic's account reaches lair in 38% of games and wins 76% of games that reach it, that's 61% less chance of dying not 8%

it's pretty obvious that most/all accounts in greatplayers don't actually try to win every game; my own account is an example of this! but i can guarantee that if you went up to the people who play those accounts and asked them about the subject, they would overwhelmingly agree that the game after reaching lair is dramatically easier than the game before reaching lair

also, even if the chances to die after reaching lair/before reaching lair were exactly the same, that would STILL mean the post-lair game is much easier because it is several times longer. around 40-45 levels compared to 8-11 levels. if you have the same chance of dying in both of those sets of levels then obviously the 8-11 levels must individually be more dangerous, and in the case of crawl, this is despite most of the 40-45 levels having a higher density of monsters

[Sandman25]

duvessa,

<crate> !lairratio greatplayers !boring rstart>2014
<Sequell> greatplayers (!boring rstart>2014) has reached Lair in 1335 of 3752 attempts: 35.58102345415778 %
<crate> !lm greatplayers br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014 / won
<Sequell> 552/1335 milestones for greatplayers (br.enter=lair !boring rstart>2014): N=552/1335 (41.35%)

41.35%-35.58%=5.77% Do you see 8% here?
Also I want to ask you again to stop personal attacks.

[duvessa]

41.35%-35.58%=5.77% Do you see 8% here?

chance of death before lair: = 1 - 0.4135 = 0.5865
chance of death after lair: = 1 - 0.3558 = 0.6442
(0.6442 - 0.5865) / 0.6442 = 8.96%

this rounds to 9% of course, not 8%; i gave 8% because i rounded the original percentages to two figures
taking the absolute difference of two numbers and presenting it as a percentage is not useful for anything in this context

Also I want to ask you again to stop personal attacks.

i don't think pointing out your intellectual dishonesty is a personal attack

[Sandman25]

Sometimes I think you are a bot who is unable to understand context. Choose correct answer for question "What's the difference between 1% and 4%?":
a) 3%
b) 75%
c) 300%
d) 3%, 75%, 300%

[stickyfingers]

Sometimes I think you are a bot who is unable to understand context. Choose correct answer for question "What's the difference between 1% and 4%?":
a) 3%
b) 75%
c) 300%
d) 3%, 75%, 300%

3 percentage points is something different than 3%, regardless of context. This is, like, middle school maths.

[archaeo]

The Tavern is the most tedious branch of Crawl.

[Sandman25]

Sometimes I think you are a bot who is unable to understand context. Choose correct answer for question "What's the difference between 1% and 4%?":
a) 3%
b) 75%
c) 300%
d) 3%, 75%, 300%

3 percentage points is something different than 3%, regardless of context. This is, like, middle school maths.

What is "percentage point"?
In my country 4%-1%=3% or to make it more clear 0.04-0.01=0.03

[WalkerBoh]

Sorry man, duvessa has it right as far as the numbers go. PM me if you're curious and I can explain further, it's really waaaay beside the point of this thread.

Really the whole concept of quantifying how much harder one area of the game is than another is foolish in the first place because we don't have unbiased samples. Duvessa's example with elliptic was closer to accurate, but even then you can only conclude "once elliptic reaches lair, his win % is much higher than when he started the game".

[Patashu]

Sometimes I think you are a bot who is unable to understand context. Choose correct answer for question "What's the difference between 1% and 4%?":
a) 3%
b) 75%
c) 300%
d) 3%, 75%, 300%

It depends on what the question is.

Let's say The Worst Player In The World plays Crawl. His survival to lair rate is 0.01% (e.g. 99.99% fatality). From lair, he has a 10.01% chance of winning (89.99% fatality).

Now let's say The Most Mediocre Player In The World plays Crawl. His survival to lair rate is 80% (20% fatality). From lair, he has a 90% chance of winning (10% fatality).

Now there are a number of questions you could ask, like:

1) If you play a million times, what will be the ratio of games lost before lair : games lost after lair? 1.0*0.9999 : 0.0001*0.8999 = 11111.23458 : 1 vs 1.0*0.2 : 0.8*0.1 = 2.5 : 1
2) If we examine a million start-to-lairs and a million lair-to-ends at random, what will be the ratio of deaths between them? 0.9999 : 0.8999 = 1.1111 : 1 vs 0.2 : 0.1 = 2 : 1
3) If we examine a million start-to-lairs and a million lair-to-ends at random, what will be the ratio of successes between them? 0.0001 : 0.1001 = 1 : 1001 vs 0.8 : 0.9 = 1 : 1.125

I could come up with more questions, but you get the idea - there's no 'default' way to throw two percentages (probabilities in this case) at each other and get a new number. All of these questions have correct answers and meaningful interpretations of what the results mean. It depends on what operation you want to perform - what is the question?

[Leafsnail]

There's also the fact that you can get a similar character back much quicker if you die in the early game, so it doesn't feel as bad. I mean yes, looking at it from a strictly win-percentage based analysis I should avoid fighting every enemy with a glowing weapon for a substantial part of the game, but in general I'd rather just take the risk and save some time because that's less boring.

So basically even if I die more in the early game it doesn't feel as dangerous because I don't care about the deaths.

[Patashu]

There's also the fact that you can get a similar character back much quicker if you die in the early game, so it doesn't feel as bad. I mean yes, looking at it from a strictly win-percentage based analysis I should avoid fighting every enemy with a glowing weapon for a substantial part of the game, but in general I'd rather just take the risk and save some time because that's less boring.

So basically even if I die more in the early game it doesn't feel as dangerous because I don't care about the deaths.

Yes, this is another important statistic - mean time to reach lair from start / mean time to reach end from lair / mean time to reach end from start. If you're concerned with mean time between wins more than winrate, then you'll play riskier/faster in the early game, for example, because that 'optimizes' for it.

[damiac]

Sometimes I think you are a bot who is unable to understand context. Choose correct answer for question "What's the difference between 1% and 4%?":
a) 3%
b) 75%
c) 300%
d) 3%, 75%, 300%

It depends on what the question is.

Let's say The Worst Player In The World plays Crawl. His survival to lair rate is 0.01% (e.g. 99.99% fatality). From lair, he has a 10.01% chance of winning (89.99% fatality).

Now let's say The Most Mediocre Player In The World plays Crawl. His survival to lair rate is 80% (20% fatality). From lair, he has a 90% chance of winning (10% fatality).

Now there are a number of questions you could ask, like:

1) If you play a million times, what will be the ratio of games lost before lair : games lost after lair? 1.0*0.9999 : 0.0001*0.8999 = 11111.23458 : 1 vs 1.0*0.2 : 0.8*0.1 = 2.5 : 1
2) If we examine a million start-to-lairs and a million lair-to-ends at random, what will be the ratio of deaths between them? 0.9999 : 0.8999 = 1.1111 : 1 vs 0.2 : 0.1 = 2 : 1
3) If we examine a million start-to-lairs and a million lair-to-ends at random, what will be the ratio of successes between them? 0.0001 : 0.1001 = 1 : 1001 vs 0.8 : 0.9 = 1 : 1.125

I could come up with more questions, but you get the idea - there's no 'default' way to throw two percentages (probabilities in this case) at each other and get a new number. All of these questions have correct answers and meaningful interpretations of what the results mean. It depends on what operation you want to perform - what is the question?

EDIT: Grumble grumble about 'intellectual dishonesty'

For almost all crawl players, pre lair is about the same difficulty or easier than post lair(as we all knew already, from playing the damn game). So anyone giving advice saying that 'post lair is easier' are incorrect, from my point of view. Odds are the average player will get more characters from start to lair than they will get from lair to win.

What does this mean? The notion that anything that can help you survive to the lair = you win is false, if your advice is aimed toward anyone approximating a 'typical crawl player'.

If you're giving advice only to the top 1% of crawl players, then there's a slight difference, and post lair is more survivable, but still not by much.
If you're giving advice just to the best 10 players of crawl, then... why are you giving them advice. They're better than you at crawl, they don't need your advice. But they do much much better post lair.

[Sandman25]

<offtopic>In my country percentage points are not learned in middle school, they are not learned even in university. I asked several people from my country (all graduated IT universities as I did) and nobody knew what percentage points are. The term is used in banking system mostly and is not widely known.</offtopic>
Sorry for offtopic.

[duvessa]

The facts are in anyway, for almost all crawl players, pre lair is about the same difficulty or easier than post lair(as we all knew already, from playing the damn game). So anyone giving advice saying that 'post lair is easier' are the ones involved in 'intellectual dishonesty'. You can try to twist the numbers around all you want, but odds are the average player will get more characters from start to lair than they will get from lair to win.

So, since you consider winrates to be infallible evidence:

  Code:

-> *sequell* !lg * s=god / won o=%
*Sequell* 18849/3297620 games for *: 552/3328x Jiyva [16.59%], 1785/40207x The Shining One [4.44%], 35/956x Gozag [3.66%], 1089/31765x Ashenzari [3.43%], 67/2166x Qazlal [3.09%], 2073/78179x Vehumet [2.65%], 261/9864x Fedhas [2.65%], 192/7773x Dithmenos [2.47%], 859/34887x Kikubaaqudgha [2.46%], 512/21194x Zin [2.42%], 1371/66028x Makhleb [2.08%], 560/26984x Cheibriados [2.08%], 1333/69093x Sif Muna
*Sequell* [1.93%], 692/40315x Nemelex Xobeh [1.72%], 2356/137908x Okawaru [1.71%], 354/32224x Elyvilon [1.10%], 2559/267826x Trog [0.96%], 438/55054x Yredelemnul [0.80%], 571/80362x Lugonu [0.71%], 246/34672x Beogh [0.71%], 364/74149x Xom [0.49%], 580/2182686x [0.03%]

We'd better buff trog, he's one of the worst gods in the game - less than half as strong as chei! Also better nerf tso and jiyva.

  Code:

-> *sequell* !lg * s=tiles / won
*Sequell* 18849/3297620 games for *: 11571/1898188x false [0.61%], 7278/1399432x true [0.52%]

Uh oh, we had better make the console version harder - it's easier than webtiles!

  Code:

-> *sequell* !lg * s=crace / won o=%
*Sequell* 18849/3297626 games for *: 846/58045x Deep Dwarf [1.46%], 600/41454x Centaur [1.45%], 823/66593x Gargoyle [1.24%], 526/43019x Halfling [1.22%], 18/1725x Hill Dwarf [1.04%], 182/19088x Vine Stalker
+[0.95%], 1773/196810x Minotaur [0.90%], 222/27869x Lava Orc [0.80%], 339/43510x Ghoul [0.78%], 628/81514x Ogre [0.77%], 1018/139227x Hill Orc [0.73%], 867/122582x Merfolk [0.71%], 671/95746x Naga
*Sequell* [0.70%], 630/91413x Troll [0.69%], 465/68572x Demigod [0.68%], 357/56760x Felid [0.63%], 22/3547x Gnome [0.62%], 359/62169x Tengu [0.58%], 993/173840x Spriggan [0.57%], 542/97275x Mountain Dwarf
+[0.56%], 596/113307x Kobold [0.53%], 720/138886x Draconian [0.52%], 371/74625x Sludge Elf [0.50%], 507/111004x Human [0.46%], 5/1095x Elf [0.46%], 758/168924x High Elf [0.45%], 137/32091x Formicid
*Sequell* [0.43%], 1369/359771x Demonspawn [0.38%], 167/45462x Kenku [0.37%], 388/108413x Vampire [0.36%], 21/6046x Grey Elf [0.35%], 518/153795x Mummy [0.34%], 14/4289x Ogre-Mage [0.33%], 938/322071x Deep Elf
+[0.29%], 345/125279x Octopode [0.28%], 113/41342x Djinni [0.27%], 1/466x Grotesk [0.21%], 0/2x Yak [0.00%]

We better give nagas slow movement 3 - they're stronger than trolls and spriggans right now!

  Code:

-> *sequell* !lg * dr s=race / won o=%
*Sequell* 720/138886 games for * (dr): 102/3515x Green Draconian [2.90%], 99/3451x Grey Draconian [2.87%], 95/3490x Purple Draconian [2.72%], 92/3474x Red Draconian [2.65%], 75/3438x Mottled Draconian [2.18%],
+67/3425x Black Draconian [1.96%], 64/3395x White Draconian [1.89%], 62/3308x Pale Draconian [1.87%], 64/3521x Yellow Draconian [1.82%], 0/107869x Draconian [0.00%]

Need to buff infinite fog, it's clearly weaker than getting a level 3 spell at xl7.

[damiac]

Well, winrates, and any and all crawl statistics are driven by player choice and what not, so they're not infallible obviously, but I wasn't the one dragging up statistics when people insisted they proved the post lair game was harder. So some flawed evidence is better than no evidence at all, especially when you have nothing else to back up your assertions.

What you've shown confirms what I've been saying before on the subject of statistics: There are too many variables contained within the final result you see.

Trog is a very strong god, but he's also a very basic and beginner friendly god. He's also available at character selections. Therefore people who aren't good at the game are more likely to pick Trog, and it's also possible to die with trog before it's possible to die with most other gods, simply because you can die with Trog before you've even seen an altar.

The options that are less attractive to less skilled players are going to perform better statistically, even if the same player would do worse with the less attractive option, because the best boon to any combo's win rate is to get unskilled players not to play as that combination.

The worst players who want to win will be attracted to the most winnable species, background and gods. Those same players will lose a lot. There are more bad players than good players. So the most winnable species, background, and gods are going to have very deflated win values as a result. On top of that, the better players don't want to play the most winnable combos. So once again, this deflates their win %.


If all I have is my own common sense and experience, some flawed statistics, and other people drawing the opposite conclusion of what those flawed statistics are showing, all I can do is go off what i have, which is what I did. My own common sense says the post lair game is harder. The flawed statistics say post lair is harder. The only thing that says post lair is easier are other people, and they're pointing at the flawed statistics that go against what they're saying!

The great thing about my point of view is that it's flexible. If later on facts show that a different conclusion should be drawn, I'll take them into consideration. On the other hand, if your point of view is based off nothing but your own point of view, it's inflexible, and no amount of facts will change it. Therefore it's unreliable. Since you feel the need to attack other posters on irrelevant details rather than back up your point of view with facts, you show that you're more interested in stopping people from disagreeing with you, rather than having an informed discussion.

You can attack the evidence I used to back my point of view, and I agree, it's shaky evidence at best. But it's the evidence that both sides of the discussion are using, so it makes more sense to point at shaky evidence that supports what you're saying, rather than point to shaky evidence that goes directly against what you're saying.

[WalkerBoh]

Triple points for bringing back a thread to make aggressive offtopic posts. I mean, seriously?

[damiac]

EDIT: More off topic grumbling

[Igxfl]

If there are two politicians, and one has 49% of the vote, and I tell you the other one is winning by 1%, every sane person will assume the second politician has 50%, not 49.49%..

Sure but, sanity is less important than BEING RIGHT!

[damiac]

It's one thing to point out a technical correction. It's another to point out that correction, then say

that's a pretty wild misrepresentation of everything ever

and

i don't think pointing out your intellectual dishonesty is a personal attack

Informing people is a good thing. Informing and attacking, not so much.

Now this thread is fully derailed... damn it.

[WalkerBoh]

Edited.

[partial]

Perhaps I'm in the minority with the viewpoint that I just want to make a really powerful character and kill everything in the game

that's how I roll too

[duvessa]

It's one thing to point out a technical correction. It's another to point out that correction, then say

that's a pretty wild misrepresentation of everything ever

and

i don't think pointing out your intellectual dishonesty is a personal attack

Informing people is a good thing. Informing and attacking, not so much.

Now this thread is fully derailed... damn it.

These parts of my posts were not referring to Sandman25's odd use of 6% instead of 8% or 9%. That was a minor detail that I obviously shouldn't have even pointed out. Rather, I was referring to the way he spun a very twisted interpretation of the statistics given in crate's post.

[Sandman25]

Report button does not seem to work, I reported "intellectual dishonesty" last week and it's still there so apparently mods agree with that comment.

damiac,
Thank you. Please stop defending me.

duvessa,
Post-Lair is easier by 6pp for greatplayers and it is still below 50%. If people had to get 15 runes to enter Zot, I hope nobody would say that post-Lair is too easy. So it's up to players, those who want to complain about easy games, win with 3 runes autoexploring every floor which is easy for the character and ignore every dangerous floor like Hall of Blades or Tomb. I am not saying it is bad.

[damiac]

I think you can disagree with someone without assuming they're being dishonest. I disagree with you fairly regularly, but I don't think you're a liar. I know you disagree with me fairly regularly too, hopefully you don't think I'm a liar. I just assume you're making mistaken assumptions or looking at things differently than I am, and hopefully you make similar assumptions about me when you think I'm wrong.

I just wish you'd dial back the hostility and harshness. I feel that we have pretty intense, but friendly debates on this forum, and then you and a few others take it to a hostile place, which tends to kill any discussion, or leads to huge derails like this one.

Anyway, I reported what I saw as a personal attack, and also reported myself for the derail, so hopefully pretty much all the posts from today will just get deleted and this conversation can resume.

FAKEEDIT: OK Sandman. But just FYI, I don't make a stink about stuff like that because I'm trying to defend you personally, it's because I don't like one person dominating all conversation by being nasty to whoever disagrees with them. But like I said, I'm stopping.

[duvessa]

Post-Lair is easier by 6pp for greatplayers and it is still below 50%.

Crate explained why this is a bad way to measure difficulty in the same post that he gave this statistic. If you have an argument for why you think this is a good way to measure difficulty, then please present it.

If people had to get 15 runes to enter Zot, I hope nobody would say that post-Lair is too easy.

Um, I would definitely say that.

[tabstorm]

If people had to get 15 runes to enter Zot, I hope nobody would say that post-Lair is too easy.

Extended is just as easy as everything else after Lair:1, man.

[XuaXua]

I take a hard break once I clear L2.
Unfortunately, when I come back, I tend to forget any crucial details and get whacked.

[Sandman25]

Crate explained why this is a bad way to measure difficulty in the same post that he gave this statistic. If you have an argument for why you think this is a good way to measure difficulty, then please present it.

No, I don't have any arguments. Statistics is not relevant indeed since players are humans and humans are different. Personally I lose more characters after Lair than before Lair and I realize some players may have quite the opposite.

[Sprucery]

Extended is just as easy as everything else after Lair:1, man.

I disagree, because of hellfire, torment, hell effects and mummy death curses. Slime and Abyss are usually quite easy after getting 3 runes, in my experience.

[Brannock]

Extended is just as easy as everything else after Lair:1, man.

I disagree, because of hellfire, torment, hell effects and mummy death curses. Slime and Abyss are usually quite easy after getting 3 runes, in my experience.

And we have come full circle in this thread. None of those are actually that dangerous -- they force you to retreat and reassess the situation and play much more carefully. But rarely will they outright kill an enemy unless you run into a truly lethal danger like paralysis.

However, I would suggest that making lategame etc just as lethal as the first few Dungeon floors is a bad idea. Losing a 5-hours character is vastly, vastly, vastly more awful than losing a 5 minute character. Making mid/late/extended more lethal would just promote even more conservatively tedious play in response.

[tabstorm]

Extended is just as easy as everything else after Lair:1, man.

I disagree, because of hellfire, torment, hell effects and mummy death curses. Slime and Abyss are usually quite easy after getting 3 runes, in my experience.

And we have come full circle in this thread. None of those are actually that dangerous -- they force you to retreat and reassess the situation and play much more carefully. But rarely will they outright kill an enemy unless you run into a truly lethal danger like paralysis.

However, I would suggest that making lategame etc just as lethal as the first few Dungeon floors is a bad idea. Losing a 5-hours character is vastly, vastly, vastly more awful than losing a 5 minute character. Making mid/late/extended more lethal would just promote even more conservatively tedious play in response.

if anything I would like to see early game be a little less dangerous, but try to keep difficulty somewhat uniform.

[Sprucery]

Extended is just as easy as everything else after Lair:1, man.

I disagree, because of hellfire, torment, hell effects and mummy death curses. Slime and Abyss are usually quite easy after getting 3 runes, in my experience.

And we have come full circle in this thread. None of those are actually that dangerous -- they force you to retreat and reassess the situation and play much more carefully. But rarely will they outright kill an enemy unless you run into a truly lethal danger like paralysis.

Yes, and that's why extended is not "as easy as everything else after Lair:1". Note that I did not claim it to be "too difficult" or "extremely difficult" or even "very difficult".

And just for the record: I think Crawl is very enjoyable the way it is. I like the fact that if I can clear Lair, I'm starting to be a powerhouse that can take care of most situations. You still have to play carefully and not make any stupid mistakes around dangerous monsters. I also like to play all possible character combinations, which makes the games different and interesting.

[njvack]

Hey all,

If the report button isn't working, send a PM. I don't log in to Tavern that much these days. PM's generate an email and I do look at those.

That said, this thread has devolved into egregious offtopic bull****. Locked.

[and into]

Report button does not seem to work, I reported "intellectual dishonesty" last week and it's still there so apparently mods agree with that comment.

My apologies to njvack for posting in a thread that has already been locked, but I think this warrants a response.

Moderating isn't about agreeing or disagreeing. When someone reports a post, the question is, "Does this post cross 'the line'?" The problem is that where "the line" is, exactly, depends a great deal on context. (And even then, it is a matter of judgment.)

Please don't take it as an affront or anything when a moderator decides not to delete a post you have reported. It doesn't mean that moderators agree with, or even like, what has been posted. It just means that the post that was reported falls (perhaps easily, perhaps just barely) within the realm of acceptable discourse, as judged by at least one mod.