Remove/reform the spell repel missiles

[argonaut]

Split off from the haste thread...

crate wrote:
where are the remove rmsl threads? rmsl is far, far, far more problematic from a design standpoint than haste is (and this isnt really disputable).

I wrote the patch for the current version of rmsl to reduce the tedium of recasting it. I now think that wasn't the right fix since it didn't get to the real problem which is that it's too effective for a level 2 spell. There really is a need/use for a low level missile protection spell and I think that rmsl actually does a good job in the pre-lair dungeon. The problem is that it stays really good all through Zot.

The best solution I've come up with is a new spell that basically makes a stationairy rmsl effect. There's a patch rotting on Mantis for it (the patch has a higher level version too but I think that's not needed).

So I'd propose:

• replace the rmsl spell in books with wind wall (wind wall could be Air only at L2 or L3 instead of L2 Charms/Air)
• keep rmsl as a Quaz/amulet of the air effect (and maybe amulet of innacuracy to give that one some use)
• keep the dmsl spell as is (it requires a much higher investment and doesn't seem as broken)

If anyone's interested in testing the wind wall spell I can post an updated patch.

[crate]

The problems with rmsl actually have nothing (or very little) to do with its power level.

This is actually a common thing I see in GDD threads: players are (I think) much too focused on "balance", which is actually one of the less important design concerns. It is true that things being very good or very bad is noticeable to lots of players, but simultaneously these things are usually easy to fix since they are possible to fix by just changing numbers. If the only problem with rmsl is that it is too strong it is easy to make rmsl weaker, but of course that doesn't actually fix anything (it still remains a useful out-of-combat spell). Much more problematic are things which are badly designed in some fundamental way (some examples: evaporate, djinn, twisted ressurrection, enemies picking up items, the old version of sac sanity for Iashol/Ru, etc.). It is true that charms in general tend to have fundamental design problems (old rmsl indeed had these as well, not just new rmsl), and in fact these problems are much worse than any power level concerns.

Perhaps this is why haste discussion threads in GDD annoy me so much, because haste gets it right where very few other charms do: it has a real drawback that means you do not want to keep it active at all times, so you are forced to treat the spell as an in-combat spell. (Yes, you can quibble with how the drawback works in practice, but at least the idea is sound, even if the execution is not.)

---

From a personal perspective, I can also say that things being too powerful or too weak do not really hurt my enjoyment of crawl very much. But things that encourage playing in a way that goes directly against the design principles of crawl decrease my enjoyment a lot more. I don't care too much that haste is a strong spell; it at least has the right design ideas behind it: there is a drawback that does work in making you not keep the spell continuously active, and this drawback means you must treat it as an in-combat spell in most cases. But things like Twisted Ressurrection encouraging me to create and then herd around an army of two dozen abominations (have you ever tried to do this? It's excruciating. I did it once back in 0.4 and it murdered the whole game and it was the worst thing ever) really does hurt my enjoyment of the game, since I don't find it fun to purposely play worse (e.g. not make aboms) even when I can win doing so.

This isn't so much a comment directly about rmsl; the old version clearly had design problems just as clearly as the new version also has design problems. I personally feel the new version has more serious problems but admittedly from a purely player-oriented viewpoint it might be an improvement. I don't think "make ranged attacks miss more often" is an effect that deserves to be a spell to begin with for several reasons. The wind wall idea seems to me to be a noticeable improvement, but I don't personally think there's really much harm in just outright removing repel missiles and deflect missiles either without a replacement.

[KoboldLord]

I don't think the problems with Repel Missiles have anything at all to do with the problems with Twisted Resurrection. Passive boosts for xp investment is an established method of character upgrades for Crawl, so I don't see why charms are inherently broken just because they act more like armour or dodging than like conjurations or translocations. Pay xp into dodging, and more attacks miss you. Pay xp into charms, and more of one specific type of attack misses you. That's fine. Anybody want to argue that characters should have to use an a-menu ability to activate their dodging or armour skill abilities? Probably not. That would be pointless busywork.

The problem with Repel Missiles is almost entirely that the benefits wildly blow out the costs associated with it.

[crate]

If charms just passively gave you EV or something that wouldn't be a design problem per se (though it would certainly be very weird), but that's not what happens.

You have to activate the EV boost (I'm treating rmsl like an EV boost here), and it's precisely the fact you have to activate it at all that is problematic. Current rmsl still has this problem. If learning the spell just made it permanently active with no concern for success rate or anything then that would actually be a dramatic improvement design-wise when considering rmsl alone, though for consistency with other spells I do not think this is an acceptable solution either.

[archaeo]

If learning the spell just made it permanently active with no concern for success rate or anything then that would actually be a dramatic improvement design-wise when considering rmsl alone, though for consistency with other spells I do not think this is an acceptable solution either.

This seems like a reasonable design space that would be interesting to explore, learning spells to make them permanently active. I don't know if it's very Crawl, but it reminds me of proposals for, like, just giving rmsl/EV and stoneskin/AC progressively as you gain Air and Earth skill, progressively. Heck, give the first pip of rF, rC, and rN with Fire, Ice, and Necro, give a little MR for hexes, a little rPois for Pois, etc., etc.

I've always liked this solution, though of course it gets ridiculous as you try to extend it to every skill that doesn't give some added benefit. Otherwise, I find it hard to get hyper-motivated about charms reform, even rmsl, which crate probably accurately describes as "problematic" on some level. If they're "no brainers," then I suppose I like using no brain, as it were.

[njvack]

If learning the spell just made it permanently active with no concern for success rate or anything then that would actually be a dramatic improvement design-wise when considering rmsl alone, though for consistency with other spells I do not think this is an acceptable solution either.

Hm. I agree with the 'consistency with other spells' reasoning. And with crate's whole previous post, really.

What if learning "permabuffs" had some completely different kind of mechanic -- say, either the spell itself would be on a rare consumable*, or you needed to use this consumable in concert with a spell book? Then, you can learn as many buffs as you find of this item, and the effects are passive. Some backgrounds might start with one of these, or a buff already memorized.

Some charms (swiftness, haste, ddoor) wouldn't be permable and I think this is fine.

* Scroll of Enchant Self? Kidding.

[Siegurt]

Personally I think "You learn a bunch of skills and therefore can get a slotless bit of equipment" to be a very uninteresting mechanic, I've played games where that was the primary way of advancing/equipping your character, and I'd rather have something I have to activate or wear, at least there's some choice involved there. Permanant, passive buffs for all skills (or even a significant portion of them) sounds like a pretty awful game to me. (At a minimum because it takes away your need to adapt to what you find)

While I agree that rMsl isn't excellent (I don't have a problem with it the way some people do, even the old one wasn't that bad, but of course, I subscribe to the "just because something is theoretically optimal, but happens to also be horrible and stupid, doesn't mean I'll do it" style of play) I also didn't like the 'infinite duration' method of solving it's problems, but at least it's a problem that's not in-my-face obnoxious.

I think the 'wind wall' design would be a large improvement. It would solve the complaints of both the old and the new version of rMsl and I would personally find it fairly entertaining as a bonus

[hannobal]

One solution would be to have Rmsl give some debuff, for example 6 negative slaying + 10% spell failure + negative spellpower enhancer.
Dmsl could have half the debuff, or none. Casting the spell again while it's active would cancel the spell.

That way Rm/Dmsl would be strictly defensive and situational spell, allowing you to get in melee range of footaur pack or run away from someone casting crystal spears.
But having them up always would not make sense because of the offensive debuffs.

edit: The Wind Wall & co looks like nice too.

[Kate]

So I'd propose:

• replace the rmsl spell in books with wind wall (wind wall could be Air only at L2 or L3 instead of L2 Charms/Air)
• keep rmsl as a Quaz/amulet of the air effect (and maybe amulet of innacuracy to give that one some use)
• keep the dmsl spell as is (it requires a much higher investment and doesn't seem as broken)

Like I said on the Mantis report, I still intend to look at the patch and quite possibly do something along these lines at some point (possibly replacing both of R/DMsl with the new spell, not sure what would work best there). I very much doubt I'll get around to it for 0.15 though.

[KoboldLord]

Like I said on the Mantis report, I still intend to look at the patch and quite possibly do something along these lines at some point (possibly replacing both of R/DMsl with the new spell, not sure what would work best there). I very much doubt I'll get around to it for 0.15 though.

Are you planning to re-do every spell buff in the game after that? Repel Missiles is clearly the worst because it's strong enough to tempt the player into doing an obnoxious thing for the power, but every spell buff periodically spams me with a request to confirm that I still want it up. On the few spells where I don't want it up all the time, mostly transmutations, I usually want to end it before I get that request, which means I have to go through the a-menu anyway.

[njvack]

Another off-the-wall suggestion: what if buff spells were simply not a thing, and buff effects were armour and/or jewelry egos? Say, you could have a Robe of Ozo's, which would give bonus AC based on your Ice skill. {Regen} might be more effective with necro skill. {rMsl} could be more effective with Air, and {Phase} with tloc. And so on.

Maybe Charms generally makes these things egos more effective. Or maybe Charms goes away entirely.

[Kate]

Like I said on the Mantis report, I still intend to look at the patch and quite possibly do something along these lines at some point (possibly replacing both of R/DMsl with the new spell, not sure what would work best there). I very much doubt I'll get around to it for 0.15 though.

Are you planning to re-do every spell buff in the game after that?

Feel free to start new topics if you have specific ideas for other spells. If you're planning on creating patches for all of them like argonaut has helpfully done for RMsl then I will absolutely look at them at some point in the indeterminate future, yes!

[TeshiAlair]

For me, I think one major issue here is that the spell schools literally don't matter. With higher level spells, particularly elemental spells, you need to dip pretty deep into that element, and it usually isn't vital to do so: Leda's is a fine spell, but certainly not worth dipping into earth for. With lower level spells, not getting the element matters: Stoneskin and Ozo's Armour require the element to be effective. However, RMSL can be grabbed just by someone with only spellcasting- if you can cast it 50% without bad effects, just keep on trying till it sticks.

That being said, I think it does have a valuable niche, because having multiple ways to defend against threats is a good thing IMO. Here'd be my suggestion:

Move it to level 3 or 4, and possibly move Armour to 2. Have casting it give you a passive buff, that holds 5% of mana and can be disabled at any time as an ability. When you get hit with a ranged attack, the buff "pops," creating a wind shield that lasts a number of hits based on air magic, and will expire if left on for a while (say, a '5" of time).

Benefits:

1. Encourages use as a combat spell by making there be a cost to having it up all the time, yet still providing that convenience.
2. Making it scale off of a spell school to discourage just dipping.
3. Make it higher level to reflect it's longer-term power.
4. Temporary effect based on hits means it will trail off more late game when you have to deal with larger footaur packs.

[njvack]

With lower level spells, not getting the element matters: Stoneskin and Ozo's Armour require the element to be effective.

Actually, in trunk, the buffs use spellpower. So unless I'm mistaken, Charms and swapping enhancers will help nicely.

[johlstei]

I don't think that's a great change, for that reason. I understand that the gains in consistency are nice but "//TODO: Fix charms" doesn't seem like a great reason to make things worse in the meantime. If enhancers are really going to affect (out of combat) charms then please calculate spellpower as if I'm wearing any enhancers I have in my inventory. Just imagine that I would have wielded the majin-bo and put on a ring of ice before casting ozo's armour, don't make me press the buttons to do it.

[njvack]

That doesn't entirely work, because if you're in combat and want to cast Ozo's maybe you don't want to swap weapons and jewelry and anyhow carrying around archmagi and three enhancer staves for bonus power for buffs would be very silly indeed.

I know this has totally derailed from "reform rMsl" but IMO it's hard to talk about rMsl without talking about charms in general. And honestly, as many pixels have been spent on that as have Haste threads.

[and into]

With lower level spells, not getting the element matters: Stoneskin and Ozo's Armour require the element to be effective.

Actually, in trunk, the buffs use spellpower. So unless I'm mistaken, Charms and swapping enhancers will help nicely.

The lack of transparency and oddly rigid breakpoints of how those spells used to operate are worse, and it is a good thing they were changed. I mean swapping equipment to cast stuff is pretty bad IMO but that applies to a lot more than just these spells, so at least now these spells don't suffer from these specific weird, obscure problems, but only from general problems that affect many things and thus are fairly visible and well observed.

[XuaXua]

Split off from the haste thread...
The best solution I've come up with is a new spell that basically makes a stationairy rmsl effect. There's a patch rotting on Mantis for it (the patch has a higher level version too but I think that's not needed).

If anyone's interested in testing the wind wall spell I can post an updated patch.

Explain windwall better, please.
It affects a single square?
Range?
Smite-targeted?
Use it between you and a target, or on same-square?
If on same square, does it affect outgoing missiles?

[headcrab0803]

I like the idea where casting rmsl toggles it on and the spell takes away two mana slots half permenantly until you turn it off again

[nicolae]

I like the idea where casting rmsl toggles it on and the spell takes away two mana slots half permenantly until you turn it off again

I wonder if that would sufficiently deal with the problem at hand, though, which is casting rMsl out of combat and leaving it on to wait for combat. Since you don't usually cast spells while out of combat, you could just cast rMsl whenever and walk around with little problem.

Here's an idea I just thought of which might be terrible: redo as Redirect Missile (Charms/Hexes? Charms/Tloc?), target another monster and as long as that monster is in your LoS, hostile, and still alive, all the projectiles that hit you have a chance to hit that other monster instead. It would require you to have somebody else around, so you can't cast it outside of battle, and it won't hang around permanently.

[tedric]

Redirect Missile

That sounds neat as like a level 3 or 4 spell.

I'd also echo XuaXua's curiosity about details on Wind Wall.

FWIW, my biggest problem with rMsl is that it's completely boring for basically every reason anyone has ever mentioned. But the core idea of a missile-defense buff is sound and quite welcome in many areas of the game.

Sounds like these alternatives would put a more tactical spin on the concept and maybe open up some interesting new interactions. It's nice to see that there are still creative ideas in the well-worn rMsl reform space, I really hope one of them can be made to work well enough and put this issue to bed.

[Siegurt]

As I understand wind wall from how it was described to me:

You cast it and some clouds appear at random places around you (higher spellpower gives you more clouds) they are fairly short lived, and any projectiles which travel through them have their accuracy reduced by a significant margin.

They don't move, and they aren't smite targeted, they don't block LOS or do anything other than reduce missile accuracy.

[KoboldLord]

Wouldn't you just put one down every time you approach a corner or a door, and drag ranged enemies back into it? Odds are you're dragging the dangerous ranged enemies back to this type of terrain anyway. If there ends up not being a ranged enemy around that corner or beyond that door, it isn't like it cost you anything important.

[argonaut]

The way I have wind wall right now is it creates a 3 space cloud next to you in a given direction. The clouds remain in place:

  Code:


 ~~~         ~        ~~
  @         @~        @~
             ~   


For every cloud square a physical missile (bolt, needle, etc) goes though there's a decent chance that it stops right there. It doesn't effect magic beams/bolts so conjurations go right through (branded missiles still get stopped though). It's not so good for Hunters unless they have portal projectile since it will stop your own missiles too.

You can get even better protection by [cast, step back, cast] so that arrows have to travel through more squares. You can also use it for minor protection from other clouds since you can step into the wind wall.

[XuaXua]

The way I have wind wall right now is it creates a 3 space cloud next to you in a given direction. The clouds remain in place:

  Code:


 ~~~         ~        ~~
  @         @~        @~
             ~   


For every cloud square a physical missile (bolt, needle, etc) goes though there's a decent chance that it stops right there. It doesn't effect magic beams/bolts so conjurations go right through (branded missiles still get stopped though). It's not so good for Hunters unless they have portal projectile since it will stop your own missiles too.

You can get even better protection by [cast, step back, cast] so that arrows have to travel through more squares. You can also use it for minor protection from other clouds since you can step into the wind wall.

Is it easier for Penetrating-branded ammo to make it through?

[johlstei]

Wouldn't you just put one down every time you approach a corner or a door, and drag ranged enemies back into it? Odds are you're dragging the dangerous ranged enemies back to this type of terrain anyway. If there ends up not being a ranged enemy around that corner or beyond that door, it isn't like it cost you anything important.

Yeah, it seems like it would encourage a lot of dragging monsters to the ideal "arena" (not that that isn't true already.

Scroll of repel missiles seems like an okay idea if we don't want to remove the spell effect completely outside of qaz/amulet of the air.

[Jeremiah]

What if Wind Wall just affected your current location, and was instantly dispelled if you moved?

Also, rms/dmsl could be given the disadvantage of working both ways, i.e. they deflect outward ranged effects that you fire/cast as well as incoming attacks.