Major Background Trimming

[crate]

Or you could, you know, just not have curare stop exactly one spell. What was wrong with it stopping zero? There are still lots of ways to deal with convokers without curare, so making it interact with one particular spell in a strange way is completely unnecessary.

Monsters having gimmicks is fine and good, but I think a game with twenty strong gimmicks that are each used repeatedly is much better than a game with one hundred that are each used once and aren't as good (since, of course, you'd choose the twenty best out of your pool of one hundred).

[bel]

Or you could, you know, just not have curare stop exactly one spell. What was wrong with it stopping zero? There are still lots of ways to deal with convokers without curare, so making it interact with one particular spell in a strange way is completely unnecessary.

As far as I understand the convoker's recall, it is a multi-turn spell. So if you hit the mob in the middle with confuse, it is interrupted. If you hit it with curare, it loses its breath, so it is interrupted. I can see the reasoning there. That said, I am also fine with removing the curare effect.

Monsters having gimmicks is fine and good, but I think a game with twenty strong gimmicks that are each used repeatedly is much better than a game with one hundred that are each used once and aren't as good (since, of course, you'd choose the twenty best out of your pool of one hundred).

Gimmicks in the Abyss feel very different from gimmicks in vaults or Tomb. It is hard to say which is "better", indeed, they might be incomparable. This is one of the things which gives each branch its own flavour. I personally don't see much problem with it. The way I think about Crawl is that you have lots of branches and you don't have to explore most of them.

One way of knowing about the gimmick is certainly to die to the monster (that is totally fine), but that is not the only way. One can escape somehow and try again etc. The convoker gimmick is certainly dangerous, but not necessarily fatal. The important thing should be to not have the gimmick to be gratuitous, tedious or impossible to defeat unless spoiled.

[crate]

Gimmicks in the Abyss feel very different from gimmicks in vaults or Tomb

Yes, this is precisely why you can use the same ones repeatedly instead of needing new gimmicks for each location. You obviously don't give every branch the same monster set, so the same gimmick (working in exactly the same way) can create situations that play out very differently in different areas. This is still a lot easier from the "burden of knowledge" standpoint, even if it ends up being more complicated to figure out which actions are the best to take.

If you hit it with curare, it loses its breath

Then why doesn't it affect other spellcasting from other monsters that are affected by silence? Why doesn't it prevent player spellcasting? if this was a thing applied consistently, I'd be ok with it. But it's not, it's literally just "curare messes with this one spell".

[Sandman25]

Gimmicks in the Abyss feel very different from gimmicks in vaults or Tomb

Yes, this is precisely why you can use the same ones repeatedly instead of needing new gimmicks for each location. You obviously don't give every branch the same monster set, so the same gimmick (working in exactly the same way) can create situations that play out very differently in different areas. This is still a lot easier from the "burden of knowledge" standpoint, even if it ends up being more complicated to figure out which actions are the best to take.

Reusing the same gimmicks can make all branches similar to each other. Currently player can choose the easiest branch (and it depends on gear greatly), this possibility is lost if all branches have Convokers/Wardens/Sentinels.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Reusing the same gimmicks can make all branches similar to each other. Currently player can choose the easiest branch (and it depends on gear greatly), this possibility is lost if all branches have Convokers/Wardens/Sentinels.

I don't think that sort of things is what's being proposed. At least not to that extreme.

[bel]

Gimmicks in the Abyss feel very different from gimmicks in vaults or Tomb

Yes, this is precisely why you can use the same ones repeatedly instead of needing new gimmicks for each location. You obviously don't give every branch the same monster set, so the same gimmick (working in exactly the same way) can create situations that play out very differently in different areas. This is still a lot easier from the "burden of knowledge" standpoint, even if it ends up being more complicated to figure out which actions are the best to take.

I think the gimmicks in Abyss are pretty cool. But I would hate to see them in other places, even if the monsters are different. Sometimes I am not in the mood for such gimmicks, and then I can avoid the branch entirely. If I don't feel like avoiding death curses, I can avoid Tomb, and so on. Also, many of the gimmicks won't fit in other places. How does the spatial maelstrom gimmick work in other places? Well, it doesn't, so one could get rid of it, I suppose. But I think it is cool and gives some good flavour to the abyss. I actually didn't figure out for a long time that the spatial vortices move randomly -- which was totally ok. I could survive the abyss without knowing it.

If you hit it with curare, it loses its breath

Then why doesn't it affect other spellcasting from other monsters that are affected by silence? Why doesn't it prevent player spellcasting? if this was a thing applied consistently, I'd be ok with it. But it's not, it's literally just "curare messes with this one spell".

I can't think of any other multi-turn spells. The convoker spell is very different in this respect. But, as I said already, I am fine with removing this behaviour.

[Siegurt]

Actually I would love it if curare would stop anything that had a breath timer and was in progress, and would add (or increase the duration of) a breath timer (like you'd just breathed flames or what not) to the player and any creatures that it hit, and if any vocal multi-turn spells and abilities that don't have one, *required* a breath timer, one mechanism for all!

Breathing fire/flames/poison etc, reciting zin's law, casting searing ray, casting convoke, mesmerising, shouting perhaps? I dunno, I'm sure there's others I missed.

However having a consistent structure which works for a bunch of different abilities is very very not the same thing as we have presently, I'm not sure if it'd work well, but if it's not going to work, yeah, getting rid of that one weird exception would be good.

[CanOfWorms]

Actually I would love it if curare would stop anything that had a breath timer and was in progress, and would add (or increase the duration of) a breath timer (like you'd just breathed flames or what not) to the player and any creatures that it hit, and if any vocal multi-turn spells and abilities that don't have one, *required* a breath timer, one mechanism for all!

Breathing fire/flames/poison etc, reciting zin's law, casting searing ray, casting convoke, mesmerising, shouting perhaps? I dunno, I'm sure there's others I missed.

However having a consistent structure which works for a bunch of different abilities is very very not the same thing as we have presently, I'm not sure if it'd work well, but if it's not going to work, yeah, getting rid of that one weird exception would be good.

I thought that's what it currently did? See [1] Word of Recall uses a breath timer, [2] Curare increases the breath timer. The inconsistency crate describes comes from the fact that things that interact with the breath timer, e.g. Recite, Draconian breath, Engulf from water elementals do not explicitly mention it. (Technically Engulf does mention stopping breath, but it's not presented in a list of effects like other gameplay mechanics.)

Whether or not spellcasting should use the breath timer, I have no strong opinion on that.

[mechanicalmaniac]

I'd like the breath timer to inhibit more things, actually. Currently it just feels like a cooldown clock for breath weapons... I've never been a fan of simple cooldown clocks of the type you find in MMOs.

[njvack]

I'm just gonna point out that this is ranging pretty far from "Major background trimming." I don't know that I can really split this into sane topics; if y'all have one, feel free to start a thread with a choice quote or something.

[Cragspyder]

While it's disappointing to see that I am in the minority here, I can live with that; it's interesting to note that we enjoy the same game for quite different reasons.

I've put too many walls of text in this thread as is. I will just add some point-form responses:

@everyone: DCSS already has huge barriers to new players and I don't want to increase them; however, I feel that more backgrounds don't exacerbate this problem, especially due to the Hints mode "easy' choices that most new players will try initially.

@bel: This is not what I meant. O as autoexplore and TAB as autoattack are readily available to see, the issue is that they are not intuitive for players coming from any other video game background, and were selected because literally every other button on the keyboard is a hotkey and these were the best choices. My example of information unavailable through the game was GDR, which is an important factor in armour choice.

@roctavian: Balance IS important in DCSS, especially monster balance, to shape player experience. My point, and if I wasn't specific in my last posts I apologize, is that balancing backgrounds is pointless, and hence removing backgrounds for good or bad balance is also pointless, because they never interact with one another in game (outside of Player Ghosts which are already meant to be an imbalanced "challenge" aspect of the game). The existence of Berserker (on the easy side) and Chaos Knight, Artificer and Wanderer (on the hard side) proves this.

@lasty: There is so much inconsistancy in information (and opinions) here. Zealots are toxic because god choice is too important to be locked into character creation, yet apparently these backgrounds are removed because the starting god choice made so little difference that it was not interesting (see Death Knight, Zin Priest). You state that gods are a late-game choice, but the Temple appear at D7-10, which is not late-game by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Temple-diving to get a god as quickly as possible is a strategy so commonly used that I can almost guarantee that you will know what I mean when I type "Temple Diving". Zealots simply restrict the choices the player has in exchance for less risk. If it makes the early game easier or the late game harder, I ask again "Why does that matter?"

Secondly, players new to the game are not likely to be overwhelmed by too much choice in background, considering they (hopefully) went into Hints mode and picked Minotaur Berserker, Centaur Hunter, or Deep Elf Conjurer. I know I did. When they are ready, they can dive into the full list of options.

Thirdly, I disagree with what you said about character creation. Many people (including myself) enjoy the character creation process as enjoyment unto itself. Consider Baldur's Gate, Skyrim or indeed any other game of this genre. You can pick a background that sounds good and take it for a test drive, like my girlfriend does, then ditch it if it gets annoying. Or you can spend hours looking through the possible options until you find one that's right for you, like me. And we do the opposite for the character's appearance; I slap on some facial scars and go to it, my girlfriend spends an hour designing her nose. More options in character creation is always a good thing, and due to Hints mode, players don't have to be overwhelmed until they are ready to be overwhelmed.

@and into: The reason I made this thread is because I would rather have some kind of bloated, but interesting mess than a constant burning of 'excess features' until we are down to a dull, skeletal core. Despite being probably the most accessible "classic roguelike' out there, DCSS is still a clusterfuck compared to pretty much every other modern game, and I didn't think anyone played it if they didn't enjoy that...until I started this thread, of course. We're allowed to want different things, though.

@njvack: If this didn't get derailed somehow I would worry that I wasn't on the internet

Oh crap this was still a wall of text....sorry.

[nicolae]

More options in character creation is always a good thing

This is not always true, particularly if it's mandatory for the player to choose the option. Players in Skyrim or other games with customizable characters don't have to bother with choosing a hairstyle or outfit or facial scar if they don't want to, and so they can ignore all fifty kinds of pants if they don't care about pants. But a Crawl player has to choose a species and background (and, in some cases, a weapon), and having to choose from a multiplicity of options can be daunting. I first downloaded Crawl back in version 0.4 or 0.6, I can't recall right now, and even back then I was overwhelmed with all the variety, especially as compared to Nethack, which was my only prior roguelike experience.

Granted, how much complexity is too much is a personal choice -- there are certainly players who think that more than a handful of species or classes are too many, and conversely there are certainly players who aren't satisfied with choosing less than a half dozen traits with thirty options each. And that's fine! But Crawl can't be all things to all players, and the direction that Crawl design has gone has been to make the character creation process as quick and painless as possible, so you can get right into the game.

[dpeg]

Threads about supposedly over-zealous content removal happen from time to time. I believe the most important realisation is this:

Providing variety (of species, or backgrounds, or monsters, or spells etc.) for the sole purpose of variety is harmful.

The drawbacks are:
(1) meta/fake choice instead of actual choice (e.g. former GE/HD/MD species)
(2) higher learning cost for players (e.g. undifferentiated weapon classes)
(3) frequently, the variety can suppress decisions (e.g. among backgrounds, adding zealots for flavour restricts god decisions)

In general, we (i.e. this is somewhat of a design goal) would like to trim down the game until is has only the good kind of variety. This is hard, for a number of reasons:
* for most people (players and developers), adding is more fun than removal
* both adding and removing is actual work, but there are lots of ideas for what to add (monsters, spells, gods etc.) whereas removals tend to require long discussions
* whether some feature is purely fake variety or not is often debatable (see discussions about monsters)

I think this is why more monsters are added than get removed. However, it also explains why backgrounds tend to be removed: it is much harder to come up with genuinely new ideas for a fresh background (than for a species or a god or a monster), and removing a background is comparatively little work.

Some more random notes on backgrounds:
First, they don't have to be equal in power; we're fine with having Be as an easy background. That does not mean that "balance is pointless" -- a decade of tweaking starting spellbooks proves the opposite (note that starting spells are some of the longest-lasting boons a background can convey; along with gods, I would say).
Second, zealots are not "toxic", we have just realised over the years that it is a bit better if we don't allow god choice at game start. (Note that Beogh, Elyvilon, Makhleb, Yredelemnul, Zin, The Shining One all used to be available.) We have specific reasons to keep the remeaining zealots (Trog makes for a very easy early game and for a nice way of seeing how gods work in Crawl in general; this is great for new players. Lugonu is available so that players can get a feeling for the Abyss without having to read spoilers or use wizard mode. Xom is Xom.) Note that in DCSS 0.1, six out of twelve gods could be chosen at game start; in DCSS 0.17, this is three out of 22.
Third, regarding character creation: devteam concensus is that this should be quick. Thankfully, Crawl has never bothered to ask for gender, and over the course of DCSS, we have cut on secondary prompts. Another aspect of this is that the lists of species and backgrounds should not overwhelm new players (which will happen nonetheless) -- another reason why keeping variety for its own sake is harmful.

As you can see from this thread, for some players the "constant burning of radical features" is not nearly radical enough (of course, they don't have to make the decisions, which is often not easy and leads to discussions). However, if you play Crawl, you sort of accept that features come and go. The accusation of converging to a "dull, skeletal core" is timeless; as I see it, there should be more careful assessment of old and new features alike, and more trimming, but all of this is a lot of work. (Hence Crawl gets bigger and bigger, threads like this nonewithstanding. At least we are aware of the problem.)

[mikee]

In fact, Temple-diving to get a god as quickly as possible is a strategy so commonly used that I can almost guarantee that you will know what I mean when I type "Temple Diving".

I know this is kind of pedantic but I find it interesting - is this actually true?? There's no benefit to that strategy, and in years of spectating games I've never seen anybody do it. I think once or twice a newbie might have asked if they should 'dive to temple' and I said no.

[duvessa]

It actually is pretty common. But yes it's also terrible so I'm not sure what Cragspyder's point is with that, exactly.

[1010011010]

I dislike zealots as a concept because of most of the reasons given above.
I also believe a small number of zealots classes is very beneficial to new players, as the current number of gods can be a daunting and distracting option for new players.

The current number of zealots is good and each serve a purpose.

[Lasty]

My example of information unavailable through the game was GDR, which is an important factor in armour choice.

There are other threads in the forum right now discussing this point (again), and I'd most veteran players agree that GDR really isn't an important factor in armour choice ever. Some veteran players contend that GDR is an important difference between characters with high AC and no armour and characters with high AC and armour, but the difference in these cases is fairly small.

The existence of Berserker (on the easy side) and Chaos Knight, Artificer and Wanderer (on the hard side) proves this.

I've never heard anyone disagree that there are or should be easier and harder backgrounds, though I think you're quite mistaken about the challenge provided by the Artificer and Wanderer backgrounds. Artificer is a strong background, thanks to its variety of useful consumables and decent stat balance, and Wanderers have the potential to be pretty bad, but often are quite able to compete with the better backgrounds. Aside from chaos knights, the backgrounds that are the weakest tend to be the ones that have a hard time getting past the early dungeon due to the way their xp is split: skald, warper, and sometimes transmuter.

@lasty: There is so much inconsistancy in information (and opinions) here. Zealots are toxic because god choice is too important to be locked into character creation, yet apparently these backgrounds are removed because the starting god choice made so little difference that it was not interesting (see Death Knight, Zin Priest).

"Toxic" is your word choice, I probably would choose something less hyperbolic, like "inherently problematic"; not everyone agrees with me on this point, even within the dev community. So yes, being locked into a god from the start removes some interesting choices, but it also has the potential to create uniquely interesting gameplay if and only if the god powers available from the start of the game make the early game significantly different (note: differently in this context does not mean "the same as normal but much easier"). So, the zealots that have been removed are the ones that have bad elements (they are zealots) but don't have good elements (they don't make the early game feel markedly different).

You state that gods are a late-game choice, but the Temple appear at D7-10, which is not late-game by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Temple-diving to get a god as quickly as possible is a strategy so commonly used that I can almost guarantee that you will know what I mean when I type "Temple Diving".

I didn't say that gods are a late-game choice. I did imply that gods are (essentially) end-game equipment, though: the god you start with is usually the god you end the game with, and for most gods, they offer you significant benefits throughout the game. Starting the game with a +9 vampiric lajatang would be bad not just because it means that the game is trivially easy, but also because it means that you've completely eliminated the interesting gameplay of weapon choice and upgrades. Starting with a god is not exactly the same (you'll get the god you want in most cases pre-Lair, but you won't always get a vampiric lajatang by the same point), but the principle is the same.

Others have already pointed out that regardless of how common it is among bad players, temple-diving is not actually a good choice for players who want to win. But yes, getting a god quickly is obviously good, which is why good players often advise newbies to take the first god whose altar they stumble across if they can tolerate playing with that god. Having to choose whether or not to take these early altars provokes interesting and meaningful choices.

Thirdly, I disagree with what you said about character creation. Many people (including myself) enjoy the character creation process as enjoyment unto itself.

Some games allow you to spends hours on character creation. In these games, the premise is usually that you'll be spending a lot of time in the company of this character, perhaps imagining yourself as that character. Often these games allow you to see some visual representation of your character. None of these things are true about crawl. Most of your characters will die quickly and without ceremony. Putting two hours into crafting the shape of the nose your @ has makes no sense, and would feel absolutely pointless when that character gets poisoned to death on D:2.

Aside from the example of character creation in conceivably rewarding contexts, the suggestion I was responding to wasn't for a nuanced, multi-step character creation process with a bunch of menus each of which contains a few options (and no, I don't like that idea for Crawl either). What I was responding to is your suggestion for a "one-click version" of a multi-step interface, where you could choose from "every possible option". No matter how much you love character creation and no matter how many hours you want to spend on it in the crawl context, there's no conceivable way you genuinely want to actually use the interface this suggests, which would literally involve millions, or maybe even billions of individual choices, most differing from the others in the allocation of a single attribute point or skill level.

[duvessa]

I've never heard anyone disagree that there are or should be easier and harder backgrounds

This is tangential but I disagree that there should be easier and harder backgrounds

[crate]

Artificer is only "hard" because people misunderstand crawl backgrounds.

[Cragspyder]

While this discussion has been pretty civil so far, I have to say I don't appreciate the theme that seems to be cropping up where allusions are made to the fact that, if I were any good at Dungeon Crawl (ie. 'veteran players know that x is true' and so forth), then I would know better or I would agree with you.

In regards to Temple-diving, I'm not sure that fact that it is a bad idea is relevant; god choice changes the game so notably that players will dive for the Temple to get a god as quickly as possible. God choice might be an interesting decision, but in my opinion it is usually a decision that is made at character selection more often than not, even if you don't officially worship yet. You plan to worship a particular god, in relation to your race and background, right from level 1 in most cases.

@dpeg - Such a polite and coherent post that clarifies a lot of things. Thank you.

I generally quite enjoy games that evolve and develop over time; however, the removal of features that were, to my perception, both unique and iconic tends to grind my gears, but so be it. You've given solid arguments to keep the remaining Zealot backgrounds as well, and I seem to be outgunned in relation to defending the old ones, so I feel we can steer this back to the point of the thread.

With that in mind, should we remove further "overlapping" backgrounds like Assassin and Monk (merging them into Hunter and Fighter/Gladiator, respectively) or can we justify their presence?

I think you all can guess my feelings by this point; I think they should stay. At the risk of sounding like a broken record:

- removing these backgrounds takes away some of the theme and personality of Dungeon Crawl
- removing these background is not worth the time and effort devoted to it compared to it being spent on other feature
- removing these backgrounds wastes and nullifies previous developer time that was spent creating and developing the background in the first place
- removing these background does not benefit the game in any way that makes up for the above

With that said, I rebutt my own argument with this: if backgrounds like Death Knight can be removed then what protects Monk and Assassin as they are, both of them, less distinct from Fighter/Hunter then Death Knight was from Necromancer, as so by the same logic used for Death Knight, they ought to be removed as well.

What do you think?

[duvessa]

- removing these backgrounds wastes and nullifies previous developer time that was spent creating and developing the background in the first place

This is completely irrelevant.

[nicolae]

- removing these background is not worth the time and effort devoted to it compared to it being spent on other feature
- removing these backgrounds wastes and nullifies previous developer time that was spent creating and developing the background in the first place

There have been plenty of removed features whose original implementation required a hell of a lot more coding and time than what's required to define a new background. There was a whole food reform thing tried out in trunk several versions ago that was coded by I think one guy, and then it all got removed when it wasn't working out. I think if you contribute code to a project like DCSS you kind of have to accept that your stuff might be removed. (Personally, I've not contributed any code at all, but I have contributed several vaults, and at this point I usually don't mind if a vault of mine gets cut unless it was one that a lot of people liked. I know that's just how things go.)

Plus there's a few devs who don't seem to mind coding up things that don't get used. Grunt codes up his bizarre whims on a regular basis and many of those never even make it into experimental branches.

With that said, I rebutt my own argument with this: if backgrounds like Death Knight can be removed then what protects Monk and Assassin as they are, both of them, less distinct from Fighter/Hunter then Death Knight was from Necromancer, as so by the same logic used for Death Knight, they ought to be removed as well.

Monk at least has the unique mechanic of starting with more piety, and one could make the argument that it lets new players get familiar with gods more quickly. Rolling Assassin into Hunter by giving Hunter a blowgun choice makes a lot of sense to me, though I don't feel strongly enough about it to say that it definitely should be done.

[Sprucery]

God choice might be an interesting decision, but in my opinion it is usually a decision that is made at character selection more often than not, even if you don't officially worship yet. You plan to worship a particular god, in relation to your race and background, right from level 1 in most cases.

I don't know how most people play but personally I almost* never decide to go for one particular god. I make decisions when I see the first altars.

*The only exception I currently have is that my Artificers will go Nemelex until I've won one Ar.

[PleasingFungus]

(Of course, if you look at crawl development, you will notice that the number of monsters continues to increase every version, despite this being arguably the most important place to limit feature creep. So although I personally agree with the philosophy of removing choices that are not distinct enough to warrant retaining, I will not argue if you claim the devs don't follow their own philosophy very well and would like a different explanation.)

0.15 added two monsters and removed

vapours, thorn lotuses, giant goldfish, silver stars,
flaming corpses, grizzly bears, spriggan enchanters, phoenixes, shedu,
plague shamblers, giant slugs, elephant slugs, giant fireflies, brown oozes,
pulsating lumps, big fish, sharks, lava worms

18 monsters.

0.16 added 8; 0.14 added 20 and removed 15. That's a net -3 over the 'recent' versions - I don't know that you can really claim that "the number of monsters continues to increase every version"...

(0.13 removed "a large number of vault monsters", which means someone would probably need to do more work than I did to figure out the +- on monsters that far back.)

[bel]

I would not be sad to see at least one or two of crocodiles, sheep, elephants, yaks, death yaks and komodo dragons go. They all seem the same (except komodo dragons don't come in packs, and death yaks have very high MR). At least give some of them poison resistance to avoid kiting.

(edit: added sheep and crocodiles)

[PleasingFungus]

Mark also confuses a lot of players, partly because of the fact that sentinels have both mark and a separate "shout" that is super loud (so it's often not clear that mark by itself doesn't wake things up, and this is actually reasonably important to know!). (Alarm traps are also super loud, so they have the same problem.)

The main problem is that mark without an associated noise source has a good chance of not doing all that much (which is why both sentinels & alarm traps have their own source of noise). That might be fine for an earlier monster, possibly somewhere in the D/Lair/Orc range.

It would also be good if there was some way to get long descriptions of status effects (who actually knows what 'Frozen' does?), as long as we keep adding obtuse new types. (Or as long as we're stuck with the existing ones.) I have long-term plans to replace @ with a verbose status screen, and also add a ?/ status lookup tool, but it's a lot of work.

In particular the protector (whatever those are called, I probably have the wrong name) ability set would work perfectly fine elsewhere, and combining them with a different monster set (for instance, perhaps with a splitting monster like starcursed masses) would lead to the desired effect of fights in Vaults feeling different from fights in Dungeon etc. without adding nearly as much of a burden of knowledge on players.

But, instead what happens is you just get more monsters with unique abilities.

Nota bene: The Seraph currently has Injury Bond (the preserver's spell).

I agree with the rest, though.

[PleasingFungus]

I would not be sad to see at least one or two of crocodiles, sheep, elephants, yaks, death yaks and komodo dragons go. They all seem the same (except komodo dragons don't come in packs, and death yaks have very high MR). At least give some of them poison resistance to avoid kiting.

(edit: added sheep and crocodiles)

if you're going to put sheep & death yaks in the same list (!), why not also add iguanas, (river/green) rats, giant mites, hippogrives, griffons, trolls, deep trolls, dire elephants, and so forth - all your 10-speed pure melee monsters?

I suspect that crawl could stand to lose some subset of those, but there is a specific reason why the group "elephants, death yaks, and komodo dragons" was brought up - namely, because they're all pretty close in terms of threat. sheep, crocodiles, and yaks are absolutely much smaller threats.

(Sheep specifically have very little reason to exist right now, besides weakening cyclopes.)

[bel]

I would not be sad to see at least one or two of crocodiles, sheep, elephants, yaks, death yaks and komodo dragons go. They all seem the same (except komodo dragons don't come in packs, and death yaks have very high MR). At least give some of them poison resistance to avoid kiting.

(edit: added sheep and crocodiles)

if you're going to put sheep & death yaks in the same list (!), why not also add iguanas, (river/green) rats, giant mites, hippogrives, griffons, trolls, deep trolls, dire elephants, and so forth - all your 10-speed pure melee monsters?

I suspect that crawl could stand to lose some subset of those, but there is a specific reason why the group "elephants, death yaks, and komodo dragons" was brought up - namely, because they're all pretty close in terms of threat. sheep, crocodiles, and yaks are absolutely much smaller threats.

(Sheep specifically have very little reason to exist right now, besides weakening cyclopes.)

My intention was not to lump them all together. I phrased it badly. However, lair does have too many speed 10 pure melee monsters.

While elephants, komodo dragons and death yaks hit similarly hard, I usually have different tactics for them. In particular, I often stair-dance death yaks, but don't do it with elephants because of trampling. Komodo dragons don't come in packs, so I just tab them and rest afterwards.

[jejorda2]

If being "cold blooded" mattered more, then the reptiles wouldn't seem so similar to the mammals.

What if:
-In addition to cold branded melee attacks slowing cold-blooded things, all damage that is resistible by rC causes slowing. So branded missiles and conjurations would do the trick.
-Any damage that is resistible by rF speeds up cold-blooded things.
-There is a limit to how much something can be sped up or slowed down by temperature: maybe 66% to 110% is the speed range?

This would differentiate geckos from goblins and kimonos from yaks, along with making weapon brands and magic school choices matter more.

Hitting hydras with flaming edges is a little weird now, though.

[Sar]

Sheep specifically have very little reason to exist right now

Sticky Flame

[XuaXua]

Sheep specifically have very little reason to exist right now

Rupert gets lonely.

[johlstei]

kimonos

*chuckles*

[Cragspyder]

- removing these backgrounds wastes and nullifies previous developer time that was spent creating and developing the background in the first place

This is completely irrelevant.

I see what you're driving at with the link, but I believe this concept only applies if:

A) You can agree that the background was a mistake to add in the first place, and thus my committment to its presence based on prior work is irrational, since all work on the background was wasted regardless. As has been clear, I do not agree with this.

and

B) I was suggesting continued work on the background to justify its presence. I was not.

hence I am not 'throwing good money after bad' but simply making (what I think is) the best use of work already invested. If you buy ten thousand pencils and later figure out you needed ten thousand pens, do you throw the pencils away or make the best use of them that you can? Either way you still need ten thousand pens and the pencils aren't valueless because of it.

[roctavian]

If the pencils aren't what you need, they're irrelevant to the issue of the pens -- you could throw all those pencils in the trash and you aren't losing anything. You might not think that sounds logical, but it is explicitly logical. You could apply that argument to the cliche of "NASA spent bazillions developing a space pen and the Russians just brought pencils, ha-ha" by selectively ignoring the aspect of "small bits of wood and graphite from pencils floating around in zero gravity are an unnecessary risk in space." Things should be developed precisely and specifically for their purposes, and not included simply because "we have it already."

Besides that, cut content doesn't simply evaporate from the earth. You can still compile an up-to-date version of crawl, but with removed features included. This isn't asking you to do rocket science, it would take ten minutes.
edit: Looking back, I think that last line comes across in a way I didn't intend: what I mean is, if you are interested in a kind of crawl that is slightly different from how it currently is, it can be easily accomplished, and there are even people who will help make it happen if you ask in the right places.

[grisamentum]

- removing these backgrounds wastes and nullifies previous developer time that was spent creating and developing the background in the first place

This is completely irrelevant.

I see what you're driving at with the link, but I believe this concept only applies if:

A) You can agree that the background was a mistake to add in the first place, and thus my committment to its presence based on prior work is irrational, since all work on the background was wasted regardless. As has been clear, I do not agree with this.

and

B) I was suggesting continued work on the background to justify its presence. I was not.

hence I am not 'throwing good money after bad' but simply making (what I think is) the best use of work already invested. If you buy ten thousand pencils and later figure out you needed ten thousand pens, do you throw the pencils away or make the best use of them that you can? Either way you still need ten thousand pens and the pencils aren't valueless because of it.

Um, what? Why aren't the pencils valueless? If you need pens, end of story, then, yes, 10,000 pencils are valueless.

All developer time spent on backgrounds is gone. You can't get it back either way. At this point you just have to make the best choices possible for the game.

[njvack]

You could apply that argument to the cliche of "NASA spent bazillions developing a space pen and the Russians just brought pencils, ha-ha" by selectively ignoring the aspect of "small bits of wood and graphite from pencils floating around in zero gravity are an unnecessary risk in space." Things should be developed precisely and specifically for their purposes, and not included simply because "we have it already."

As this thread literally cannot get any farther off-topic, the Space Pen was developed independently by Fisher, neither explicitly requested nor funded by NASA. The need for an alternative writing device became apparent after the Apollo 1 fire, when there was a very urgent realization that having flammable things in the capsule's pure oxygen environment was a bad plan. Not having tiny bits of conductive graphite floating around was a nice (and important!) side effect.

NASA used pencils in the Gemini and Mercury programs, and the Russians switched to pens around the same time we did.

So even the cliche is wrong

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Sheep should stay just because of that Xom vault.

Komodo dragons have no reason to exist now that their gimmick has been removed.

[kroki]

Komodo dragons have no reason to exist now that their gimmick has been removed.

komodo dragon melee is hilariously strong. that combined with the fact its usually "yellow" by the time you meet it (as opposed to usually "red" death yak) has undoubtedly led to hundreds of sudden death scenarios

[Cragspyder]

Um, what? Why aren't the pencils valueless? If you need pens, end of story, then, yes, 10,000 pencils are valueless.

All developer time spent on backgrounds is gone. You can't get it back either way. At this point you just have to make the best choices possible for the game.

If the pencils aren't what you need, they're irrelevant to the issue of the pens -- you could throw all those pencils in the trash and you aren't losing anything. You might not think that sounds logical, but it is explicitly logical.

I realize this is very far gone from the point of the thread, but I can't let this go, for some reason. I simply can't understand this disconnect between what several of you think is logical and what I think is logical. I need, in some fundamental way, to understand where you are coming from.

In my view, a thing isn't valueless just because it is not exactly what you need. I realize analogies are often supposed to be used in a vacuum with no external factors, but consider the pencil/pen analogy I made:

You have ten thousand pencils, you need ten thousand pens. Why on earth would you throw the pencils away (getting no value for your money)? Why wouldn't you:

A) Sell the pencils to partially finance the cost of the pens

or

B) Since pencils have a use similar to pens, look for a way to use the pencils until you can afford the pens you need. Even if there is no overlap, pencils still have a use, either present or future. Owning something (assuming there are no issues of maintenance or space, which there could be) is always better then not owning it.

The only time where your logic makes sense is where buying the pencils was such as mistake that keeping the pencils costs you more than simply throwing them out, and we are keeping them due to some sort of ego or pride issue (which is what Duvessa's link was about).

Applying this to backgrounds in crawl, and equating developer time as being equal to money, gives me these thoughts:

A) As Grisamentum said, all developer time spent on backgrounds is gone regardless. The 'pencil', meaning a background that is not interesting or unique, still had a cost in developer time that cannot be reclaimed. However, unlike actual pencils, you cannot sell backgrounds back to return time spent. In fact, they cost you developer time to dispose of them (even if it might be trivial).

B) Keeping a background cost no maintenance and take up negligible space. Having a 'pencil' background in no way prevents or limits the addition of 'pen' backgrounds (in other words, backgrounds that ARE interesting or unique).

C) Even 'pencil' backgrounds add positive value to the game, and can fill roles, such as thematic or roleplaying value, until better 'pen' backgrounds are available, even if these roles are not optimal.

Thus, I conclude that these backgrounds add net positive value to the game, despite not being optimal, and should be kept. This is what we've been arguing about the whole time, and I simply cannot see how you feel that these backgrounds are net negative, meaning they are actively harming development and gameplay, and so ditching them is the correct solution.

I agree that if they ARE net negative, then ditching them IS the correct solution, as per Duvessa's link. If you are implying that I am somehow ignoring facts or information because I cannot admit that I am wrong (due to an irrational investment on features that we have 'determined' to be net negative) I can only say that you seem to be skipping to the end of the discussion and assuming you were right all along.

I mean, it's the Internet and convincing anyone to change their opinion on anything is hard enough in real life. But I assure you I am listening rationally to your arguments. I have been persuaded before, even in this thread, as I was with the value of Berserkers and Gladiators. But you have yet to convince me that these removed Zealot backgrounds were so bad for the game that it cancelled out the value they provided.

[duvessa]

See the thing is, we don't see these backgrounds as pencils, they're more like termites or bronies, things that we'd rather not have in our houses. The whole point is that yes, they ARE net negative.

[Kate]

This thread is pretty much just repeating itself at this point, I think it is past the point of going anywhere new and productive.