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Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 20:53
by tasonir
I don't think there are any players out there looking for dragon slaying equipment, dragons tend to not be the most difficult monsters in crawl, and we don't need a brand to deal specifically with them. If you want to keep it the only place I could see it being worthwhile is on wyrmbane. It could stay as it is, or just give it a vorpal/flaming brand and it'll probably be a better weapon (although possibly overpowered?).

And then player draconians can stop getting one/two shot by reapers and gnolls and whoever else randomly gets a dragon slaying glaive.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 21:24
by Sar
As long as it doesn't fuck up The Bane of Wyrms in any way.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 21:34
by KittenInMyCerealz
Does the dragon-slaying brand even exist in any other weapons than the Wyrmbane?
If it's generated on enemies it's kinda stupid and only shits on Draconians while everyone else is unaffected. (EDIT: forgot dragon form takes the extra damage as well)
I don't think i've seen any dragon-slaying branded weapons in any of my 0.15 games though.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 21:36
by crate
KittenInMyCerealz wrote:Does the dragon-slaying brand even exist in any other weapons than the Wyrmbane?

It can be on any polearm, I believe, and it at least used to be the most common polearm brand. It does not exist on non-polearms.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 21:37
by Sar
@Kittenz: You should play a draconian some time:

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=6856

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 21:42
by KittenInMyCerealz
Sar wrote:@Kittenz: You should play a draconian some time:

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=6856

Ouch.
I don't like draconians because their mutation are somewhat boring compared to Ds & i like muh body armour :mrgreen:

Also a randomization between 1% and 150% bonus damage seems incredibly retarded, if it's still done that way.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Wednesday, 18th June 2014, 22:24
by reaver
This seems completely reasonable and nobody objected in ##crawl-dev, so I'll do this. Poke me if I haven't done this in the next week or so.

(And yes I'll give wyrmbane a special case which lets it keep the bonus damage to dragons.)

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 02:31
by tabstorm
How about this:

Along with removing dragon slaying brand, remove pain/disto/holy brands from spawning normally on weapons (only on randarts), and make it exclusive to their respective gods. This allows for some level of danger to be maintained in early D with stuff like elec, venom, and drain, while averting a situation where a player trying to play optimally would be taking on all monsters with glowing weapons in a paranoid fashion in order to avoid abyss trips or random huge damage from holy.

What does randomly spawning disto brand add, anyway? It just is a random annoying abyss trip for players who don't want to tediously take down every enemy with a glowing weapon without getting melee'd by them.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 02:35
by Psiweapon
was that irony or sarcasm? I never really understood the difference.

translation: tabstorm, no, please ;__;

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 02:45
by tabstorm
Why not? I am 100% serious. Do you think theoretically being encouraged to act in a paranoid way around every glowing weapon for fear of an abyss trip or huge holy damage is a good thing? I feel it just interrupts the flow of the game if you care about avoiding those consequences, and if you don't, well, sometimes you might randomly die to holy damage or have a thrilling time in the abyss. Some of the development team might feel that these random abyss trips are interesting, but I don't. It's not like my opinion is really defensible from a design-philosophical viewpoint, but it does reduce the number of potential abyss trips in a game, which makes me happy.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 09:20
by rchandra
Having enemies with distortion weapons is a small price to pay for making distortion weapons available without having to start as AK.
If you remove those you could also just remove all enemies with melee or LCS, too.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 09:47
by Hurkyl
tabstorm wrote:How about this:

Along with removing dragon slaying brand, remove pain/disto/holy brands from spawning normally on weapons (only on randarts), and make it exclusive to their respective gods. This allows for some level of danger to be maintained in early D with stuff like elec, venom, and drain, while averting a situation where a player trying to play optimally would be taking on all monsters with glowing weapons in a paranoid fashion in order to avoid abyss trips or random huge damage from holy.

What does randomly spawning disto brand add, anyway? It just is a random annoying abyss trip for players who don't want to tediously take down every enemy with a glowing weapon without getting melee'd by them.

Elec is already enough reason to be paranoid about glowing weapons. I've been one-shot by a dagger of electrocution far more than I've been abyssed in early D.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 10:16
by Leafsnail
I think just pre-IDing those would be best, particularly if monster pickup is now gone. They're meant to be crackling with electricity or glowing with divine radiance anyway.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 11:22
by dck
I think glowing weapons are well implemented and distortion is a valid result from deciding to melee a monster with such weapon. The game already warns you enough about all branded weapons, too.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 17:07
by tabstorm
Hurkyl wrote:
tabstorm wrote:How about this:

Along with removing dragon slaying brand, remove pain/disto/holy brands from spawning normally on weapons (only on randarts), and make it exclusive to their respective gods. This allows for some level of danger to be maintained in early D with stuff like elec, venom, and drain, while averting a situation where a player trying to play optimally would be taking on all monsters with glowing weapons in a paranoid fashion in order to avoid abyss trips or random huge damage from holy.

What does randomly spawning disto brand add, anyway? It just is a random annoying abyss trip for players who don't want to tediously take down every enemy with a glowing weapon without getting melee'd by them.

Elec is already enough reason to be paranoid about glowing weapons. I've been one-shot by a dagger of electrocution far more than I've been abyssed in early D.


That's basically my point. In the early game there is enough danger from non-distortion glowing brands so that you still must act carefully around them. After Lair or so it is almost always irrelevant what the glowing brand is, since the chance of distortion is very low and the chance of being banished on first hit is even lower, so it is a waste of real life time to behave cautiously around every glowing weapon by the midgame for a vanishingly small chance of being annoyed by an abyss trip.

Have I gotten banished on first hit from an enemy with distortion? Yes, a few times.
Was the resulting abyss trip extremely tedious and unfun? Of course, it's the abyss.
Was it preferable to carefully avoiding or using ranged against every enemy with a glowing weapon that I could otherwise easily kill? Definitely.

With that said, my understanding is this:
Design decisions are to be made by considering idealized games where the player always acts optimally.

In such a game, a player should act very cautiously around every enemy with a glowing weapon, using ranged attacks, etc. to avoid the vanishingly small chance of being banished on the first hit from a distortion weapon, even if the player could win the encounter no matter what the brand the enemy is using is. If this is not tedious I don't know what is.

The holy and pain brand suggestion was more for design symmetry.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 19:44
by Tenaya
tasonir wrote:I don't think there are any players out there looking for dragon slaying equipment, dragons tend to not be the most difficult monsters in crawl, and we don't need a brand to deal specifically with them. If you want to keep it the only place I could see it being worthwhile is on wyrmbane. It could stay as it is, or just give it a vorpal/flaming brand and it'll probably be a better weapon (although possibly overpowered?).


I like dragon-slaying as a brand and now that there is no absolute way to create a nice brand for use in Zot, having the possibility of a dragon-slaying polearm is quite useful.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 19:46
by cerebovssquire
Dragon slaying kills draconians and dragons very easily, but are they ever a big problem once you reach Zot? I would rather have a brand that isn't completely useless against egolems, orbs of fire, orb guardians and ancient liches.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 19:49
by Bim
For the love of god...STOP REMOVING FLAVOR. This is really getting annoying now - there's no need for crawl to be the leanest, most cut down, slash or blast game ever. We're losing a ton of interesting content just because it's not optimal or seen as in some way needless. Some of this is ACTUALLY FUN.

Sure, if they're not powerful enough make them more powerful! Make it so the player wants to use it (make dragons in the area sometimes recoil in disgust, make it stun, do whatever!). Don't just get rid of it out of some sort of mechanical wish for crawl perfection.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 19:56
by duvessa
...a weapon brand is flavour?

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 19:57
by Bloax
If we're talking flavour, then orcslaying was probably the more flavourful of the two.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:01
by cerebovssquire
If anything, this change adds flavour because it makes Wyrmbane a more unique weapon and also I don't understand why every second gnoll on D:2 would have a weapon specially made for killing dragons.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:10
by Psiweapon
Bim wrote:For the love of god...STOP REMOVING FLAVOR. This is really getting annoying now - there's no need for crawl to be the leanest, most cut down, slash or blast game ever. We're losing a ton of interesting content just because it's not optimal or seen as in some way needless. Some of this is ACTUALLY FUN.

Sure, if they're not powerful enough make them more powerful! Make it so the player wants to use it (make dragons in the area sometimes recoil in disgust, make it stun, do whatever!). Don't just get rid of it out of some sort of mechanical wish for crawl perfection.


In this particular case I don't give a rat's ass about dragon slaying, but I FEEL THIS WAY IN GENERAL TOO.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:12
by XuaXua
cerebovssquire wrote:If anything, this change adds flavour because it makes Wyrmbane a more unique weapon and also I don't understand why every second gnoll on D:2 would have a weapon specially made for killing dragons.


Well, you don't see any dragons on D2, do you?

That's because the gnolls are doing their jobs.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:16
by Bim
This contributes to flavor. I'm not saying it's anything big, but all these little removals gradually affect the game as a whole and in a negative way. A lot of other people (on other forums) are saying the same thing and it's a real shame.

Slay Orc was probably more flavorful, but Orcs are an easy enemy so it quickly became useless - dragons (especially golden/quicksilver) are some of the harder enemies and so it is (or should be) more useful.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:31
by TheDefiniteArticle
imo bardiche of clearing zot is not very flavorful

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:32
by duvessa
Bim wrote:This contributes to flavor. I'm not saying it's anything big, but all these little removals gradually affect the game as a whole and in a negative way. A lot of other people (on other forums) are saying the same thing and it's a real shame.
This is vaguer than a politician in an interview

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:46
by giovform
The current trend is cut things out and create new gods

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:54
by nilsbloodaxe
Bim wrote:For the love of god...STOP REMOVING FLAVOR. This is really getting annoying now - there's no need for crawl to be the leanest, most cut down, slash or blast game ever. We're losing a ton of interesting content just because it's not optimal or seen as in some way needless. Some of this is ACTUALLY FUN.

Sure, if they're not powerful enough make them more powerful! Make it so the player wants to use it (make dragons in the area sometimes recoil in disgust, make it stun, do whatever!). Don't just get rid of it out of some sort of mechanical wish for crawl perfection.


I'm sorry, but this is not flavor, it is a mechanic, and a bad one.

This is actually something that I see often on these boards, the conflation of flavor and mechanics. That is not to say that they can't be related (many games base mechanics on the flavor that the game wishes to represent), but flavor certainly isn't necessary for a fun game. In fact, I would argue that a game tends to be better if the mechanics are the focus vs the flavor. I am an avid board gamer and honestly, most of my favorite games are the ones where the flavor or theme is completely secondary to the game or even totally unnecessary, something tacked on at the end to give it some extra marketability (eg, artwork). I mean, seriously, would Crawl be any better or worse if the flavor of the game wasn't a D&Desque dungeon crawl but a futuristic sci-fi setting, with the exact same mechanics just renamed?

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 20:56
by Psiweapon
duvessa wrote:
Bim wrote:This contributes to flavor. I'm not saying it's anything big, but all these little removals gradually affect the game as a whole and in a negative way. A lot of other people (on other forums) are saying the same thing and it's a real shame.
This is vaguer than a politician in an interview


Sorry duv that's a logical impossibility

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 21:01
by Psiweapon
Bim wrote:This contributes to flavor. I'm not saying it's anything big, but all these little removals gradually affect the game as a whole and in a negative way. A lot of other people (on other forums) are saying the same thing and it's a real shame.

Slay Orc was probably more flavorful, but Orcs are an easy enemy so it quickly became useless - dragons (especially golden/quicksilver) are some of the harder enemies and so it is (or should be) more useful.


I think this statement is very interesting.

Would you please disclose what forums are you talking about?

If you rather wouldn't, would you mind telling me via PM? I promise to keep my mouth shut.

Re: Remove Dragon Slaying brand

PostPosted: Thursday, 19th June 2014, 21:08
by Kate
Bim wrote:For the love of god...STOP REMOVING FLAVOR. This is really getting annoying now - there's no need for crawl to be the leanest, most cut down, slash or blast game ever. We're losing a ton of interesting content just because it's not optimal or seen as in some way needless. Some of this is ACTUALLY FUN.

Sure, if they're not powerful enough make them more powerful! Make it so the player wants to use it (make dragons in the area sometimes recoil in disgust, make it stun, do whatever!). Don't just get rid of it out of some sort of mechanical wish for crawl perfection.

https://github.com/tmhedberg/dcss-ehe enjoy your splint mail and ant larvae i guess

(Closing, since the suggestion has been implemented and this isn't going anywhere productive. If you have actual thought-out suggestions on how to add a dragon slaying brand and make it worthwhile and interesting, feel free to start a new thread following the GDD guidelines).