Making resistances more fine-grained

[Snaaty]

Hello Forum,

recently I succesfully escaped with the orb for the first time. However, playing so far into the late game for the first time got me thinking about this game and led me to the following thoughts:

1.The resistances-system in Crawl is very much binary-like. The different "stages" of resistances consist of either three or even just one positive level of resistance.

2.This is especially annoying for the player in branches that are a lot easier to do with a certain resistance. Most prominently this is probably Snake/Spider with Poison resistance. ( I know, there are, in fact several levels of rPois, however, the player can see and influence only one.)

3. Most sorts of resistance in this game are acquired through items. Getting decent Items is however almost entirely (not counting acquirement, Trog, Oka) dependant on luck. So if you happen to find a swamp dragon armour somehow on D:8, you are good to go for the lair. If not, well, your problem.

4. Currently, I have the impression, that Races with lots of instrinsic Resistances (Gargoyles, certain Demonspawn) are usually very strong. Changing the way resistances work would perhaps tone those down a bit.

5. One level of vulnerability (of any resistance) is right now pretty much a death sentence, if you happen to run across Pikel with a flaming whip before the RNG gave you some rF+. (Looking at you, mummies.)

6. One Level of any of rF+, rC+ and rN+ (any of the three-parted resistances) is pretty much enough for the basic game, more specific branches (Volcano, IceCave...)
are doable with just two levels, and should be seriously avoided without one level of resistance. This leads to the already mentioned very binary feeling of resistances.

My Proposal: Pretty much the title of this thread: Simply increase the different stages of the resistances from 3 -> 5 (rF, rC, rN) and/or from 1 -> 3 (rPois, rElec). Also this would reduce the penalty of one or two (currently the same, I think) levels of vulnerability.

In my opinion this would really benefit the gameplay because having resistances is no longer a gamble over life and death. Also this allows for more interesting item intrinsics (read: interesting= more), and therefore more and more interesting choices in equip. Perhaps even some base types of certain armour or weapons could give certain resists or vulnerabilities, e.g. Platemail giving rElec-.

In addition this would allow to spice some species up, by giving them perhaps one or two levels of a resistance (only if it makes sense flavour-wise, of course), and therefore would make some species more different from each other (e.g. Kobolds get rPois+, Merfolk rC+,..). That one or two levels would probably not be sufficent for the late game but give the early game and the races more flavour.
If the levels of vulnerability subsequently get increased as well, this could also allow perhaps one level of that for some species (rPois- for Formicid, anyone?), since, with reduced effect of a single level of a certain vulnerability, vulnerabilities are no longer an instant death sentence.

The numbers for this are not set, of course. Also, I am aware, that this is a rather major change, especially because it would have some major impact on all undead races due to their countless resistances. Changes here have to be tested and some races probably have to be rebalanced.

Altogether, those changes could make DCSS a more fun and also less luck-dependant gaming experience.

TL;DR Resistances in Crawl are very simple, and therefore highly item-drop dependant. Also, the third level of e.g. rF is mostly obsolete. Even worse with "binary" resistances, (e.g. rPois), where the possession (and therefore just one lucky item drop) can open up (or prevent you from doing) entire dungeon branches.

I hope it is clear what my proposal is, please tell me what you think, (if it is worhty of consideration, or total nonsense, if so, explain why) and excuse my English, as I am not a native speaker.

[KoboldLord]

Finer-grain resistances make equipment dependency worse, not better. If I need a pip of fire resistance, I can currently get that on my body armour or a ring slot, or rarely on an auxiliary slot. Once I find any of those, I'm probably okay to handle elemental dragons and giants as long as I handle them with reasonable care. They're still dangerous, but not so much that I can't handle them. In a finer-grain system or resistance like you suggest, though, to get the same level of security I'd need to locate body armour and a ring, or a ring and an artefact cap, and that's going to be more luck-dependent. Even worse, if I do find the requisite two levels of fire resistance and two levels of cold resistance, I probably can't wear them all at once because I only have so many body parts, so I'm going to have to hot-swap potentially multiple pieces of equipment every time I fight something that I might want to have a resistance for.

[Snaaty]

Finer-grain resistances make equipment dependency worse, not better. If I need a pip of fire resistance, I can currently get that on my body armour or a ring slot, or rarely on an auxiliary slot. Once I find any of those, I'm probably okay to handle elemental dragons and giants as long as I handle them with reasonable care. They're still dangerous, but not so much that I can't handle them. In a finer-grain system or resistance like you suggest, though, to get the same level of security I'd need to locate body armour and a ring, or a ring and an artefact cap, and that's going to be more luck-dependent. Even worse, if I do find the requisite two levels of fire resistance and two levels of cold resistance, I probably can't wear them all at once because I only have so many body parts, so I'm going to have to hot-swap potentially multiple pieces of equipment every time I fight something that I might want to have a resistance for.

Ah yes, I should have also elaborated in that in the post: Of course, when increasing the possible number of total resistance levels, one also has to increase the sources of resistances. As I already proposed, some races could get an intrinsic two levels of some resistance, and resistances overall have to be made more common. Perhaps even on basic items, e.g. Metal armour automatically giving rF+ and non-metal armourgiving rElec+. (you probably can think of better examples.)

I can see that this would change probably more than I thought at first, however I think this is a worthwhile change, if it reduces damage-spikes, impact of luck and makes races more distinct.

Edit: Just an idea that came to my mind in response to the lack of slots: Races instrinsic resistances (and vulnerabilites?) could also increase slowly (e.g. rC from + to +++ for Merfolk), while advancing in level. This could be much or not so much, I don't know how easy it is to change the drop rates of resistance-giving items.

[Lasty]

I believe that several of your premises are mistaken:

Most sorts of resistance in this game are acquired through items. Getting decent Items is however almost entirely (not counting acquirement, Trog, Oka) dependant on luck. So if you happen to find a swamp dragon armour somehow on D:8, you are good to go for the lair. If not, well, your problem.

The role of luck in the game is to make each game feel different. If players were guaranteed to resist poison before they're motivated to explore a poison-heavy branch, then there might as well not be a poison-heavy branch, since players necessarily are protected against the branch's signature threat. The current system means that some people will undertake the interesting challenge of fighting through a poison-heavy branch without resisting poison.

4. Currently, I have the impression, that Races with lots of instrinsic Resistances (Gargoyles, certain Demonspawn) are usually very strong.

The reason gargoyles are strong is that they get an absurd amount of bonus AC and have relatively good aptitudes. The resistances are just icing on that cake. Powerful races tend to be powerful because they get increased speed, bonus AC, high HP, or strong aptitudes. I don't think any currently-existing crawl species that has a resistance would be significantly weaker without it.

6. One Level of any of rF+, rC+ and rN+ (any of the three-parted resistances) is pretty much enough for the basic game, more specific branches (Volcano, IceCave...) are doable with just two levels, and should be seriously avoided without one level of resistance.

The only real exceptions to the rule of "one pip of resistance is good enough" are Cerebov, orbs of fire, and Cocytus. In some other cases having two pips is helpful, particularly if your defenses/hp are quite bad, but are not at all necessary. Of course, that makes it even more binary, as you're arguing.

My Proposal:

This strikes me as fiddly without offering much gain. Do I choose halfling over kobold because one has 15% more fire resistance and the other has 15% more poison resistance? I probably care more about the other differences. And that's when choosing between two very similar species, even. Having to keep track of the resistance pluses and minuses of every piece of equipment I wear (and they'd all need to have some to make 5 pips work) as well as constantly hot-swapping to optimize against the exact opponent I'm fighting sounds really frustrating and slow. I would much rather know that if I put on a ring of fire resistance, I resist fire pretty well and that's good enough.

[Jeremiah]

Don't forget, AC is effective against many elemental attacks, so your body armour is probably already giving you some fire resistance.

[Snaaty]

First, thank you for your response.

The role of luck in the game is to make each game feel different. If players were guaranteed to resist poison before they're motivated to explore a poison-heavy branch, then there might as well not be a poison-heavy branch, since players necessarily are protected against the branch's signature threat. The current system means that some people will undertake the interesting challenge of fighting through a poison-heavy branch without resisting poison.

I totally understand what you're saying. If everything was predetermined, you could pre-calculate the likely ending of your game and that certainly isn't fun.
I agree, that the challenge to do e.g. Snake without rPois can be considered fun (although more in a dwarf-fortressy way ), however, I propose, that this challenge is in fact not something that you're forced to do (because you found no rPois and the other branches are too difficult), but something you knowingly choose upon character creation. So, for example, you take a Halfling who gets rPois- at level 8 , knowing, that this might make Lair more difficult.

So I agree with the idea, to impose challenges on players, but I simply would appreciate it, if players had more influence on it, mostly through the choice of species.
Apart from that, I think if the pips get well balanced, a player with, say, rPois+++ (which he is most likely to get through a good item drop) should still have a significantly easier Lair than one with only rPois+, meaning that luck is still important enough. (Although less game-deciding.)
I believe it is also stated somewhere in the Game Philosopy, that it should encourage strategic decisions and not be entirely dependant on luck.

Regarding the Gargoyles you are probably right. However, the "icing"-feeling of additional Resistances might be because they're very situational and therefore useless against our average orc monster. However, the average monster won't be able to kill our adventurer anyway, it will rather be something with a unusual niche-attacks and/or abilities. (e.g. Nikola, elec. eel, killer bee, one lucky early adder, ..) Discussing the Gargoyles issue though, is not the actual point of this thread, so maybe we can leave it at that for now,

The only real exceptions to the rule of "one pip of resistance is good enough" are Cerebov, orbs of fire, and Cocytus. In some other cases having two pips is helpful, particularly if your defenses/hp are quite bad, but are not at all necessary. Of course, that makes it even more binary, as you're arguing.

I'm glad we agree on this one. But do we also agree, that binary resistance systems are kind of an all-or-nothing game and therefore not very fun?

This strikes me as fiddly without offering much gain. Do I choose halfling over kobold because one has 15% more fire resistance and the other has 15% more poison resistance? I probably care more about the other differences. And that's when choosing between two very similar species, even. Having to keep track of the resistance pluses and minuses of every piece of equipment I wear (and they'd all need to have some to make 5 pips work) as well as constantly hot-swapping to optimize against the exact opponent I'm fighting sounds really frustrating and slow. I would much rather know that if I put on a ring of fire resistance, I resist fire pretty well and that's good enough.

I am convinced that this could make some species that are almost identical (like Kobolds and Halflings) more flavourful, even if the actual impact on the gameplay might not be incredibly huge. Also, some resistances (and vulnerabilities?) could also increase while you're leveling up, so perhaps getting rF+++ or rPois++ for "free" at some point in the game is not something to be ignored at character creation. I can see though, that Resistances will probably not be the first thing people will consider when picking a race, but say, I want to play some sort of assassin and now choose between Vampire, Spriggan, Halfling, Kobold and Vinestalker, each with unique resistances and vulnerabilities.
Throughout the game it should be possible for any character to obtain basic resistances more easily than in the current game, and therefore make some elemental attacks less devastating. However, basic resistances also shouldn't be sufficient for 90% of the game. In the current game, basic resistances are identical with sufficient resistances. The more spread-out resistances-levels mean that it's less of an "oh you got one pip, you will definitely survive this encounter" or "oh, you don't have the pip, well, the next mummy might have more luck".
Of course, higher levels of Resistance have to give diminishing returns, in order to avoid tedious hot-swapping. Although I have to admit I find myself hot-swapping resistances in the current game as well.
Regarding the keeping track of resistances, perhaps we could add a shortcut that prints out your major resistances, if you don't want to look at the character-screen every time.

One thing I have no decent solution for yet are species that have extreme equip-restrictions, like Felids. Giving them most of the resistances simply as mutations seems kind of... strange. Perhaps Gods can also give some resistances (all good gods e.g. giving rN+) or there could be potions/scrolls of gain rF+ permanently.

Don't forget, AC is effective against many elemental attacks, so your body armour is probably already giving you some fire resistance.

Ah yes, but this is also not something I would consider intuitive or flavourful.

[Sar]

Honestly, I'm not sure you even know how resistances work. First level of fire/cold resistance gives you 50% resistance to the respective element, which is more than enough in most cases. Furthermore, while rC+ is nice to have in certain areas at least as a swap, it's most definitely not necessary to win. To win, you need rF because of one particular monster (orb of fire). That's pretty much Crawl's "ascension kit".

Edit: there are some other monsters that make rF very desirable as Fireball ignores EV, but oofs are a particularly deadly combination of speed and firepower.

[Snaaty]

Honestly, I'm not sure you even know how resistances work. First level of fire/cold resistance gives you 50% resistance to the respective element, which is more than enough in most cases. Furthermore, while rC+ is nice to have in certain areas at least as a swap, it's most definitely not necessary to win. To win, you need rF because of one particular monster (orb of fire). That's pretty much Crawl's "ascension kit".

I do know in fact the way resistances work. Actually I'm not sure that you read my post. Needing just one pip of resistance is simply...just too simple for my taste. Take for example ToME, another roguelike, (admittedly there they also have many different types of damage, something I would also like to see here), where there are many different resistances the player should accumulate, if he wants to win. So I am aware of the way resistances work now, but I would like them to have more of an impact.

The goal of my proposal is to make interaction with different types of damage more interesting and less of a 0 and 1 game. Don't you think this could improve the players interactions with different types of enemies?

To clarify: I believe that "binary" resistances (which you also admit to be the case in this game) are bad, because:

1. Early/Mid game Resistances depend largely on item-drop luck.
2. Lategame resistances can be largely ignored (some exceptions) as you stated as well (also in the lategame you definitely have enough artefacts or jewelerry to cover everything important)

Apart from that, improving other damage types would benefit the game in the light of the recent removal of item destruction in trunk, by making it more interesting and diverse.

Another idea would be to give certain levels of resistance additional boni, like resistance against a cloud of that damage type.

To be honest, the idea for this came in the light of resistances against Confusion, Mut, and Corr, in some of my past games. Those resistances are entirely binary and also very rare leading to some games where you get rCorr, Clar and rMut at the end of Orc, and others you're desperately looking for rMut to face the OoF.
Making those resistances multi-tiered does indeed seem rather finnicky, so I proposed it for the "classic" resistances instead.
(Just another silly idea )

[Sar]

I just don't see what's so wrong with it (and I might be wrong here). You only need some rF to win, but having additional resistances in usable form can make certain parts of the game easier. This way, it's extremely unlikely you're screwed out of your win because you lack a resistance (theoretically it's possible you will never find any rF or potions of resistance and also no fire dragon would drop a hide, AND that you will play something unable to steal the orb to boot, but I haven't encountered a situation like that in about 80 Zots I did), but resistances aren't completely useless either. Your proposal, I don't know what to make of it.

Btw I haven't played ToME, but in Crawl increasing the impact of resistances would lead to even more jewellery juggling. I'm not sure that is desirable.

[duvessa]

resistances in tome4 are probably even less important than they are in crawl (but also like in crawl a lot of players greatly overvalue them)

[Snaaty]

Well, I posted this proposal, to see if there are some people that agree with me.

Maybe I should just play less ToME and more Crawl.

In most recent changes and forum posts, I have observed an inclination towards removing mechanics alltogether, because the way they currently are (were), are somewhat illogical or imbalanced. In my opinion, though, roguelike-games should offer as much content and mechanics as possible (of course with reasonable balancing), because that is one of the areas of games where they can truly shine compared to other modern games. Increasing the impact of Resistances is one way of making this game deeper, and in my opinion an interesting one.

Also, jewellery-juggling could be minimized by giving other item-slots more possible resistances. Keeping jewellery-juggling under control by basically making everything above one pip an overkill is a somewhat crooked solution, I think, and leaves out a lot of potential in working with different damage types.

Anyway, I'm glad about your feedback to a newbie regarding game discussion.

[zardo]

the pointlessly huge number of damage/resistance types is one of the very worst things about ToME. the number of stats on items in general - it is absurd how confusing it is to try to figure out what is best for a particular character/situation

[savageorange]

the pointlessly huge number of damage/resistance types is one of the very worst things about ToME. the number of stats on items in general - it is absurd how confusing it is to try to figure out what is best for a particular character/situation

The same can be said for Angband.. after thinking about Snaaty's proposal, I thought 'so, you want to make it more like Angband? .. No please.'

Meaningful equipment choices means having fewer, more powerful effects, designed to interact in interesting ways. DCSS could definitely improve here, but making resistances more fine grained would, as you point out, actively make equipment management more confusing, less fun, and less meaningful.

A proposal more likely to get up would propose one or two unique -- that is, not simply a variant version of something already in the game -- effects, which were designed to interact with other mechanics/equipment flags in a way that is both fairly obvious and fun.

[Hurkyl]

the pointlessly huge number of damage/resistance types is one of the very worst things about ToME. the number of stats on items in general - it is absurd how confusing it is to try to figure out what is best for a particular character/situation

Ah, but crawl wouldn't show you the states anyways, so there's no problem, right?

[savageorange]

the pointlessly huge number of damage/resistance types is one of the very worst things about ToME. the number of stats on items in general - it is absurd how confusing it is to try to figure out what is best for a particular character/situation

Ah, but crawl wouldn't show you the states anyways, so there's no problem, right?

Just like crawl doesn't show Regen, rPois and rN item properties, eh?

[Snaaty]

the pointlessly huge number of damage/resistance types is one of the very worst things about ToME. the number of stats on items in general - it is absurd how confusing it is to try to figure out what is best for a particular character/situation

Also, if you read my - admittedly not well structured - proposal properly, you would have noticed, that I did not suggest increasing the number of damage types, but instead making those we already have more interesting, and therefore adding to the depth of the game.
In addition, you have to admit, that roguelike-games do will a rather niche spot in the gaming spectrum, therefore, anyone who is willing to abandon Graphics and real-time gameplay in favour of squares, odd keybindings and unforgiving permadeath will most likely be able to figure out some mechanics, damage types and their sources pretty quickly. (Which are pretty self-evident in most of the cases, aynway.)
Personally I also think it is part of a game, to discover the different elaborate features it has, of course, it shouldn't be too unintuitive (e.g. two thirds of what seem to be your elemental resistances are mostly obsolete), but it is also a part of becoming better at a roguelike-game with every run, because you get to know the mechanics and how to take advantage of them.

However, in some other thread I saw a proposal to reduce the number of resistance-pips to just one for the major resistances also. I just hope that this doesn't go the way of many other semi-problematic features, that they get removed altogether in the end.

I think it is no coincidence that probably one of the most valued stats in ToME is % rAll. So saying that resistances are highly overvalued in ToME is probably only partially true. Also note, that ToME has a vast abundancy of Resistance-sources, much unlike crawl. (Crawl, in its current state doesn't need many sources, as you only need few resistances.

[duvessa]

I think it is no coincidence that probably one of the most valued stats in ToME is % rAll. So saying that resistances are highly overvalued in ToME is probably only partially true. Also note, that ToME has a vast abundancy of Resistance-sources, much unlike crawl. (Crawl, in its current state doesn't need many sources, as you only need few resistances.

I would say resist all is one of the most badly overvalued stats in tome4, and that you don't actually need (or even particularly want) most of the resistances - I can think of three that I typically care about at all, which is proportionally less than in Crawl.

Before and into splits this off, I'd like to say I think this is actually very relevant to the topic. It suggests that Snaaty fundamentally does not understand the actual value of these sort of defenses in games, which helps to make sense of his or her proposal.

[Snaaty]

I would say resist all is one of the most badly overvalued stats in tome4, and that you don't actually need (or even particularly want) most of the resistances - I can think of three that I typically care about at all, which is proportionally less than in Crawl.

I have to admit that I am by no means a veteran of playing ToME, I just drew the comparison to ToME because it came to my mind, and perhaps I shouldn't have. However, in pretty much every single guide I have read on ToME, the generic talent "Thick Skin" (which gives rAll) is recommended to go 5/5 as soon as possible. I also believe these guides to be not too terribly outdated, and guess the author is not too bad of an ToME player, too.

Apart from that, this thread shouldn't be about ToME, but about crawl.

Before and into splits this off, I'd like to say I think this is actually very relevant to the topic. It suggests that Snaaty fundamentally does not understand the actual value of these sort of defenses in games, which helps to make sense of his or her proposal.

While I have to admit, that I might overvalue the resistances as a defensive stat a bit, claiming that I don't funamentally understand these stats in "games" is a bit of a stretch.
Also, you don't seem to understand, that I am aware of the situation of resistances in crawl as it is. That is why I am proposing to increase the impact of those on gamplay, and make them less of a gamble and more flavourful and of strategic importance.

I can see however, that this idea is apparently pretty much the opposite of what some more experienced and influential players imagine for crawl (a simple, if not binary resistance system, that is), so I will humbly continue with playing trunk, watching and learning.

Just one last thought that came to my mind is, that perhaps more experienced players may easily do some branches without their corresponding resistances, the average joe might not be able to do so, and is therefore cut off from advancement with a certain adventurer. Maybe there is a way of balancing this out?

[savageorange]

Just one last thought that came to my mind is, that perhaps more experienced players may easily do some branches without their corresponding resistances, the average joe might not be able to do so, and is therefore cut off from advancement with a certain adventurer. Maybe there is a way of balancing this out?

Doing branches without their corresponding resistances is often not fun, but average joes can do it by learning to run away.
(not kidding here. If I had to make a list of most important traits to succeed at crawl, #2 would be 'don't skimp on the running away' (#1 being mental endurance and resolute concentration). You can win at easy combos without mastering this skill, but no matter your build, great running-away skills are a virtual panacea.)

I have to admit that I am by no means a veteran of playing ToME, I just drew the comparison to ToME because it came to my mind, and perhaps I shouldn't have. However, in pretty much every single guide I have read on ToME, the generic talent "Thick Skin" (which gives rAll) is recommended to go 5/5 as soon as possible. I also believe these guides to be not too terribly outdated, and guess the author is not too bad of an ToME player, too.

I should apprise you that DCSS players generally have a bad relationship with guides: most of the available guides are terribad, and not necessarily in an obvious way. This is partly because of DCSS' nature (mechanics rapidly evolve, playstyles are varied enough that having a few terrible or outright false things in yours won't necessarily kill you enough for you to take notice). Not having played ToME much, I can't say whether these problems apply to ToME guides or not.

I say that as a way of pointing out that reference to guides may not be considered a good thing here. I certainly had a reflexive negative reaction when I read 'in pretty much every single guide'..

[duvessa]

The tome4 guides are as bad as (or possibly even worse than) the crawl guides, yeah.