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i got answer that original purpose of new equip system is not nerf

if so, true purpose of new equip system is arranging prior complex interface

but now, new equip system is critical nerf to skilled beogh users in korea

because skilled beogh users freely change equipment of orc by using macro(\{20}p.\{20}n. - \{20} is system return key of Crtl + T), picking bare-handed orc and predicting result of weapon valuation function for monster.

i think that this problem is about gab between users and developer for understanding of beogh play.

In summary,
1. original purpose of new equip system is not nerf
2. skilled beogh users freely change equipment of orc
3. but now, at piety[*****] we can change just once only weapon
================my first opinion posted at 2014-06-15 14:11================

Have any devs ever seen the Beogh speedruns? They are really quite something, and are totally eliminated by the mon-pickup removal. The basic strategy, as I understood it, was to gather about 4 orcs, give them one-handed polearms (holy wrath, antimagic, and similar brands), shields, and decent armor. They would then train up those orcs and micromanage them to beat the game in very few turns.
Mon-pickup and Ctrl-T were necessary for these tactics.
http://kr.dobrazupa.org/morgue/trunk/ha ... 162326.txt [^]
This is a log of one such recent game. It is probably possible to watch the ttyrec on FooTV.
================support of any user posted at 2014-06-14 12:20================

The purpose of the change was to improve the interface generally and not to nerf Beogh specifically, yes, but the fact that it ends up nerfing Beogh in some ways as a result also isn't especially a problem and definitely isn't a bug. Making some speedrun techniques harder or impossible is even less of a problem than something that would significantly affect normal games. If Beogh turns out to be too weak in normal games then it'll be pretty easy to adjust his item upgrades in some way (one thing that has been mentioned is allowing Beogh to grant ranged weapons and ammo, along with the existing upgrades).
================reply of devs posted at 2014-06-14 12:43================

A long time ago, stone soup user's objective is just escaping with 3 runes or 15 runes though it may take much time

But,

as overall stone soup user's skill had improved for a long time, their objective changed to speedrun.

Why do you want to distinguish normal game and speed run.

In addition, a character suitable for speedrun means that he is powerful throughout the entire game.

Naturally, the character is powerful in normal game.

Making speedrun impossible also means that weakening in normal game.
================my counter argument posted at 2014-06-15 14:03================

if i summit revised orc follower equip system like this...
Which one is the most acceptable?

1. Blow up the under "if" statement and let user change orc's equip freely
if (_given_gift(mons))
{
mprf("%s has already been given a gift.", monsname);
return false;
}

2. Interchange this code to original monster picking function that only rooting higher valued equipment than theirs by monster-only evaluation function
mons->take_item(item_slot, body_armour ? MSLOT_ARMOUR :
shield ? MSLOT_SHIELD :
MSLOT_WEAPON);

3. Chance for gifting item reset to level up(hd) or class up(orc -> orc knight)

4. Make chance for gifting item god's gift(Trog's weapon) with gift timeout


ps. Required piety point to get beogh_gift_item ability same as getting first orc follower
================my revised orc follower equip system suggest posted at 2014-06-15 14:03================

Summary
1. I waited for communicating with developers
2. There was no response
3. Plz Blow up the under "if" statement and let user change orc's equip freely and make piety-condition for the ability ease
if (_given_gift(mons))
{
mprf("%s has already been given a gift.", monsname);
return false;
}

ps. As i communicate with honon12, he said that "beogh play is suppressed"

Speedrunners are, to be frank, a vanishingly small minority of crawl players. We like speedrunners and want them to be happy, of course, but when there's a choice between improving the game for speedrunners and for normal players, we're going to side with the normal players, just because that makes a much larger impact.

The purpose of the change wasn't only to remove the previous terrible equip system; it was also to remove the need to micromanage every single orc's equipment, which is both optimal and extremely tedious under the old system. It's fine for speedrunners, since they have very few orcs to manage, but for the ordinary player (who tends to amass a small army of orcs), it's awful. Suggestion (1) would return us to that problem, so it's not going to happen.

I don't quite understand (2) - is it suggesting returning to the old 'monsters pick things up from the floor' system, with a tweaked monster pickup priority system? That seems like the worst of all worlds.

(3)... if you're talking about "blessing orcs with items" when they level/class up, something along those lines is reasonable, and something I'd been thinking about anyway. If you're talking about "changing blessings to make orcs level up instead of giving them items", that seems silly and counterproductive.

(4), again, I'm not sure I understand. If you're talking about changing orc item gifts to be based on a piety timeout system, rather than the current kill-based system, that seems potentially reasonable & something we'd already been discussing. If you're talking about making Beogh give the player item gifts, like Trog/Okawaru, then that seems completely unnecessary.


Addressing your final points - we have communicated with you, both on IRC and on the forums. You've quoted some of our responses in your post, actually. I'm not really sure why you say we've been ignoring you...? Just because we haven't implemented your every request doesn't mean we're not listening to what you're saying!

The following gods have faster 15-rune wins than Beogh: Vehumet, Sif Muna, Makhleb, Cheibriados, Trog, Dithmenos. He's not even in the top 5, even if you exclude Sif (because summon nerf). I would therefore submit that the change is almost entirely inconsequential for general speedrunners.

Moved to GDD upon request of a developer—the Contributions forum is specifically for people who are, or need help with, submitting content in the form of code or tiles or the like.

Also changed the title to make it more descriptive of the content of the OP.

Frankly I think the solution is worse than the problem in this case. Playing an ally-oriented god you have to be open to some level of micromanagement. Being able to improve your allies equipment as the game goes on just makes sense and not being able to do so I think is frustrating on a level that makes the overall experience worse than before.

Blessing with items seems like a fine solution to the solution, though. Or perhaps something like allowing multiple gifts but restricting all gifts to higher-level orcs?

Counter argument
1. Unique position of beogh play
Orc squad tactics of beogh play is unique among the many species-god combinations
Replacing the species-god combinations for another suitable speedrun means that discard the unique fun

2. A long time ago, stone soup user's objective is just escaping with 3 runes or 15 runes though it may take much time
But,
as overall stone soup user's skill had improved for a long time, their objective changed to speedrun step by step.
Why do you want to distinguish normal game and speedrun.
In addition, a character suitable for speedrun means that he is powerful throughout the entire game.
Naturally, the character is powerful in normal game.
Making speedrun impossible also means that weakening in normal game.

3. Crowd of orc?
Orc squad tactics of beogh play keeping small group(4~5) is standard tactics.
How to deal with OOF in zot realm by lead the crowd of orc(low hp by experience is distributed)?
Even 3 rune clear is impossible with the crowd of orc

4. Apparent nerf in the normal game
In early game, week orc without spear, heavy armor is easy to die.
because none-reach attack weapon makes him close face-to-face with monster
In addition, the presence of a shield is critical in front of the powerful range attack at late game

Yes, tactical micromanagement is key for ally-oriented gods. Inventory micromanagement, however, is not.

I'd be interested in how you feel after playing a game of New Beogh and reporting back - I personally haven't found it frustrating at all in practice, since the new divine blessings cover basic equipment needs pretty well, but I'd be curious to hear other opinions.



This simply is not true. "Overall stone soup user's skill" has improved somewhat (or rather, the game has become somewhat easier), but not that dramatically. The average Stone Soup player still wins less than 1% of games; looking online, about 10% of players have ever won a game at all, and only 25% have found a single rune. How many of those people do you think are doing speedruns?

Speedrunners exist on the edge of the game design, exploiting bugs and strange behaviours, and generally just playing in a way that's very very different from the average player. "a character suitable for speedrun means that he is powerful throughout the entire game.... Naturally, the character is powerful in normal game" - that's not really true at all! Watching recordings of the famous hanon12's play, he constantly exploited strange AI behaviors, keeping his warlords alive by carefully keeping himself outside the enemy's LOS as much as possible, almost never actually attacking enemies - it hardly resembled "normal" crawl play at all!

It's great that you guys are having fun, but you can't expect design to be dictated by what makes speedrunning easier for a tiny number of players.

Just chiming in to say I've played a few games with 'new' Beogh and it's much better - great work!!
As always, a few things...I'd prefer the giving of items to be smite targeted instead if possible. I know it breaks the 'reality' barrier a bit in terms of giving items, but its just a pain when your lower orcs keep getting in the way of the warlord you're trying to give stuff too.

I'd also really like to see a 'floor limit' on armor/weapons. I've had Warlords running about with leather armor and daggers, which seems a bit silly. This could be in terms of a blessing that happens when they level up to make sure they have some decent kit.

Lastly, although I think I said it somewhere before, there could really do with being a 'gain orcs' button. After one particularly nasty battle I was down to 1 knight, and pretty much stayed like that for the rest of the game (until I made a big error and died in Zot). It should definitely cost a chunk of piety, but Beogh without orcish followers is kinda not much fun.

I would hit that OoF and it would die, because I'm a Hill Orc, and I have stupid aptitudes in almost all relevant skills, and it's pretty much impossible to make a Hill Orc that is bad in melee.
Yeah, by Zot your ally orcs usually start dying like flies due to massed elemental attacks if you don't just order them to stay back, but your character should be fine.

Note that I am not arguing for or against OP's general statement, I just disagree with the quoted part.

It is interesting that:

1. (edit: Many) Western players probably don't like playing Beogh (or similarly, Yred) even after the removal of ctrl-T because ally play is considered boring.
2. The entire ctrl-T feature was removed, effectively axing stuff like mercs, because it is believed that a player would find it tedious to manage the allies' equipment. (Along with things like throwing launchers or distortion weapons into lava so enemies don't pick them up? I've never done this and I can't think of a death I've had in which I can say: Man, if I had just lava'd that launcher, I would be alive now.)
3. Korean players who actually enjoy ally play like being able to manage their allies equipment, so I imagine they don't find it tedious.

I'd very much like to be able to hear from a wider cross-section of the Korean playerbase, rather than only hearing the opinions of a couple of players & then relying on cultural stereotypes to fill in the rest of the details.

SiotWarrior, if there's some kind of Korean forum/messageboard/community for dungeon crawl? I'd be really interested to see the broader community reaction.

1. First of all, Weapon evolution like "spear-> trident->halberd -> glaive" doesn't mean enhanced total damage.
Because monster's damage mainly depend on his base damage like "orc warload: 32 (hit: plain)" not weapon's damage.
Even monster's weapon' damage and attack speed are not boosted by fight skill, weapon skill, stat bonus by str weight
Orc's best weapon is actually elemental "spear"(flamimg, freezing, vorpal, holy)
Do you think that the bardiche is the best?
No! bardiche's slow attack speed will only be a burden which do not take advantage of his base damage like "orc warload: 32 (hit: plain)"
(Ofcouse, i consider that there are some avg function for monster's weapon attack speed standardization)
Just look at this, we can know that sometimes hardcore user's understanding better than developers because of huge stone soup system
So admit that hardcore user better than devs at least in part of beogh play

2. http://nethack.byus.net/
In summary, overall users feel the absence of a shield

honon12, he said that "beogh play is suppressed"
Thrall, he said that "recent change spoiled the beogh play"

3. I'll speak briefly.
Beginners prefer to powerful combination like "troll-trog"
Because it is easy to crawl the harsh dungeon due to his powerful regeneration rate and claws
Speedrun is just optimization of powerful combination, we can't play speedrun with "felid-trog"
Sources of powerful beogh play are multi reach attack with spear and decent depend of shield
Devs removed source of powerful beogh play
This affect not only hardcore user with speedrun but also normal user


ps. Think about that how spartan defeated the persian large army in movie "300"?

Monster attack speed does not depend on weapon, that warlord will make one attack with a spear per turn (unless hasted/slowed), same with a bardiche. So yes, bardiche is much better than a spear.

yes it does, monster attack delay with a weapon is (10+[base delay])/2
so a monster attacking with a bardiche has an attack delay of 15 and one with a spear has an attack delay of 10 or 11 randomly

What? Does it work for all monsters, not just allies?

yes

Well, shit.

Who are you to question the skilled Beogh users of Korea, Sar?

TBH I think all this demonstrates is how much of an advantage you got through tedious behaviour before this change.

It also suggests that the monster damage formula should change to be more dependent on weapon type, to avoid unintuitive outcomes like this. (I remember it's come up before - iirc warlords chucking stones were a main offender, though I'm not sure what affect the ranged combat rewrite has had on that.)

I'm going to assume it was akin to a death ray. Please tell me I'm wrong.

It did orc warlord damage (so, ~1d32), but at range. (This may still be the case.)

Understandably, a lot of people don't expect stones to do that much damage!

Wasn't it based on HD, not base damage?

yes, it is. the 32 has absolutely nothing to do with it

Regardless, it was a surprising amount for a dude chucking a regular ol' rock.

They didn't make him a warlord for no reason.

There's no "phalanx" tactic in Crawl.

Late to this thread, but I'm still pretty happy to read it, if only because it answers the question of Beogh's incongruous popularity in my mind. It seems a subset of users found a way to exploit Beogh, and shared these tactics amongst themselves. In that respect, it doesn't seem different to people abusing, say, Nemelex experience cards, who were also upset when those got removed.

That said, it seems striking to me that monster orcs apparently become extremely strong with 1H polearm and shield. I'll admit it doesn't seem all that intuitive to me at first, but on reflection, 1) rushing into a pack of monsters with polearms (e.g. gnolls) in the open generally means death; and 2) trying to hit a monster with a shield (e.g. Mennas) is indeed a huge pain, so maybe there's something to this.

In light of that, why not simply let ALL of Beogh's orcs get 1H polearms and shields? No more inventory hassle for anyone. No one's play is suppressed. Thematically, it even fits - whoever heard of an army without foot soldiers toting polearm and shield? It's also a way to distinguish Beogh orcs from other perma-allies. Lastly, no one has ever accused Beogh of being overpowered before, so I think it's ok to give Beogh a buff (if indeed it is one).

Proposal: on joining, bare orcs get kitted out with spear, buckler, and leather armour (Beogh's Bounty). Beogh blessings work as they do now. So if those basic orcs stick with you, eventually you'd have a squad of orcs in plate and large shields to call on (presuming you could still gift them weapons). Not sure what to do with equipped orcs, but I think keeping them as they are is fine (some 2H non-polearm orcs in the mix is fine, surely?)

I finally parsed the OP post and realized what was being said; as an advocate of finer ally management, I sympathize with the OP's complaint. Unfortunately, there is nothing that I can do about it.

Who cleans up the dev wiki pages? There's a lot of text there from 2010 or so, lots of debate over whether taking stairs should allow only 8 minions to follow you, or 12, or 24...When you can just use the recall ability now to recall infinite minions to any level. Seems like half of that page should be removed/archived.

I would do it, but I don't know specifically what is irrelevant.

Maintaining the dev wiki is kind of a "ehhhh, whenever somebody gets around to it" type of job.

Since the change in trunk whats the command to change an Orc followers weapon?
(my Orc Knights still using short swords and the Orc Priest a merely club)

Unless they've also changed the monster with weapon attack delay formula from what duvessa posted above, short swords are more or less an ideal weapon, aside from the fact they don't have reaching. Congrats on getting good equipment!

Uhm not hearing an answer but thanks...

Change introduced new Beogh ability (so my guess it is in the a menu) that allows you to give an item to your named follower. Only works once per a follower, though.
Also, Beogh will now upgrade followers' weapon types occasionally.