Monster gimmick usage

[roctavian]

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).

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'd be interested in hearing a discussion of what people think are good gimmicks or bad ones, and what could be good situations to re-use current gimmicks in. I don't have any goal in mind, but I got curious about everyone's opinions while reading the background trimming thread.

[dpeg]

It starts with the question: what is a gimmick? (I think part of the problem is that the word "gimmick" has a negative connotation.)

For example, is smiting of orc priests an example? Anyway, I think that torpor snails (automatic slow movement for being in sight), vault wardens (can seal doors/stairs), slime creatures (combine into much more deadly forms in cramped space), deep troll shamans (can, among others, dig to make more of their band reach the player) are good gimmicks: all of these work with the concept of space and have made me do things differently because of the presence of one of them.

It's certainly a good question and hopefully leads to a good thread.

[Pereza0]

I feel that Engulf doesn't do a lot right now. The fact that it only shows up on water elementals( a pretty weak monster) doesn't help a lot. It is not too clear what it does in-game.
Same goes for Drown.
They should probably merged and made clearer somehow, along with them being made more relevant by giving them to more powerful monsters. Those are the worst examples I can think of.

Sticky Flame is quite irrelevant right now too, it should probably inflict -Scrolls on the user. I would like more Ice/Fire effect that restrict consumable use to compensate for the removal of destruction.

Other than that I think the gimmicks are pretty good overall

[Sprucery]

I like the fact that different branches have gimmicks that don't appear elsewhere. It gives the branches a unique feeling and atmosphere. So I wouldn't like to see starcursed-mass-lites or junior vault wardens in early dungeon.

[johlstei]

The abyss having bizarre stuff you don't see elsewhere is at least thematic.

I'd like to see the demonspawn powers distributed elsewhere but I don't have specific suggestions or ideas. This is probably mostly because I don't go to Pan and haven't seen them.

[njvack]

I agree that "gimmick" is a problematic word; maybe "trick" is better. I'd say, though, that's generally something that's mechanically important (and usually nonobvious) when facing a monster, that you won't see on basically(?) any other monsters. At the same time, it's something that you either won't see the PC able to do, or that is mechanically unimportant to the PC. Uniques are, I think, mostly exempt from this because hey, they're unique and learning them and their tricks is part of the game. Though: keeping the total number of uniques in check is somewhat important, so players don't need to learn a million

Some examples of tricks I think are kind of problematic:

* Octopode Crusher player throwing
* Airstrike -vs- flying PCs
* Shatter/LRD -vs- stone PCs
* A bunch of the Forest and Crypt monster effects
* Flaying
* Ghost moth MP drain
* Mesmerise / Fear

This doesn't mean I think all of these are bad effects! Flaying is great. It would be nice if it were used on more monsters, so the lesson of "this monster can hurt you a lot while it's alive but you get better right away when it is dead" can be put to use in other places. Something in Lair or early D could do this -- maybe with MP instead of HP.

Another good example is torpor snails: a monster that affects you simply by being in LOS. I like this mechanic, and it comes up again much later (though flavored very differently!) with ancient zymes. I think it'd be totally reasonable to see this again.

Similarly: I like Orc Priest smite, because it introduces a mechanic that will be important throughout the game — namely, monsters can hurt you without direct LoS. And things like Catoblepas breath: it's good because it works like other monster breath: get out of the cloud right away and you'll be OK. Otherwise, be ready to deal with the effect.

In contrast, the Airstrike thing is important versus like two monsters when you have a relatively uncommon status, but it's really really important then. Similarly, PC vulnerability/resistance to LRD/Shatter. You'll see Mesmerise on two monsters in one branch, and Fear similarly rarely. There's really no thematic or mechanical reason those things can't happen in more places.

It might be worth coming up with a giant list of monster tricks, and see if they can be grouped somewhat. I certainly don't think every monster should just be another boring melee bruiser, but there can be a lot of interesting situations created even if monsters have a fairly constrained vocabulary of possible effects.

[nicolae]

I like the fact that different branches have gimmicks that don't appear elsewhere. It gives the branches a unique feeling and atmosphere. So I wouldn't like to see starcursed-mass-lites or junior vault wardens in early dungeon.

I suppose it's worth discussing what to do with "signature" abilities like vault warden door sealing, and a few unique powers might be okay in small doses. But there are a lot of other powers that aren't as interesting - how many monster variations of "blink others" are there now, and how many of those distinctions are tactically relevant?

[grisamentum]

Forest gimmicks on Spriggan Druids feels pretty stupid. Or maybe I just feel stupid for dying to it a few weeks ago.

But really: a spell that's only on one monster (I don't think I've ever seen a Dryad) that only works in one branch and a few vaults, and even then only matters depending on where you're standing? Really?

[Zeke]

I really like the idea of slime creatures -creatures that join together where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I would like there to be more of those. Perhaps an orc artillery team that worked together to clumsily fire off a cannon would be thematic and fun.
I don't like monsters with annoying abilities. I know it's a question of preference, but I'm sure the community could agree on a list of gimmicks that are simply not fun. I find invisible stalkers to be one of those monsters. There combination of batty movement and invisibility make them either too easy to deal with (with see invisibility) or an annoying generally non-threatening pain in the butt.

[Zeke]

I feel that Engulf doesn't do a lot right now. The fact that it only shows up on water elementals( a pretty weak monster) doesn't help a lot. It is not too clear what it does in-game.
Sticky Flame is quite irrelevant right now too, it should probably inflict -Scrolls on the user. I would like more Ice/Fire effect that restrict consumable use to compensate for the removal of destruction.

Other than that I think the gimmicks are pretty good overall

Maybe engulf should induce silence. I like the idea of on fire status or a 'chilled' status inflicting -scrolls and -potions on the player.

[Sar]

Engulf already does that.

[and into]

Personally, I think "gimmick" can be used pretty neutrally, though it can carry a negative connotation, whereas "gimmicky" is clearly and nearly universally negative. I would describe, and perhaps have described, what vault wardens do as a "gimmick," but I quite like what they do. (In general; crate pointed out some weird stuff that the "sealing rune" does beyond just make you unable to open doors and use staircases and (I think?) hatches, and those seem like excessive and thus not very good features.)

This is not exhaustive, by any means, but off the top of my head:

Works well, could be used more/earlier:

Sealing
MP drain
Marked status
Recall
Flaying


Good, but possibly overused:

Summoning
Blinking
Torment (in "post"-game)


Problematic:

Banishment — When this happens to the right character, it is very interesting and tense. When it happens to sufficiently strong characters, it only succeeds in attacking the player's patience. This is a perennial concern, and I know the dev team knows about this, but it seems worth mentioning.
Fear/Mesmerize — Mesmerize seems like a very complicated way to punish controlled blinks. Aside from that, if the situation is dangerous, I respond in much the same way as a lot of other situations I cannot move away from (random tele), and if it is not dangerous, I now want to preserve consumables, but I am forced to fight in awkward, uncomfortable ways. When it is dangerous, it is not bad, but it does not particularly stand out. When it is not dangerous it is very, very bad. This is setting aside all the weird interactions and special cases about noises (have those been removed yet?) and whatnot.
Spider Webs — Way overused in spider nest and also from jumping spider. Combat and autoexplore become very choppy; it isn't pleasant. Throwing nets are fine, because realistically there aren't situations where they are spammed at the player. Limiting webs to, say, Arachne and a somewhat beefy, semi-rare spider that likes to chuck throwing nets (flavored as "webs") at you would be sufficient to introduce this kind of threat, without having it be grating.
Enemies casting/using digging — I find this visually disorienting to a degree that is not compensated for by the tactical situations it can introduces. It also causes problems with certain vaults, and (somewhat related) at least potentially can make you want to kite an enemy back to a wall you need gone. "Burrowing," by contrast, does not bother me as an idea, except for the fact that boring beetles are... not particularly exciting. (No I'm not going for the easy joke.) (Also ok I guess burrowing does have the same kiting/vault breaking problem, but the "visual disorientation" issue is not there.)

[duvessa]

For the record I made a partial list of vaults that are totally broken by monster digging here. The list is out of date but I don't think any of the vaults have been fixed yet except for lemuel_angel_altar.

Fear/throwing, AF_ROT, and AF_KITE are ridiculous. Their entire purpose is saying "you can't melee this monster". How is that possibly interesting?

[Pereza0]

I like monster digging a lot, and I have never found it disorienting either. Maybe creating some additional animations for digging would help a lot with that.

The vault stuff should definitely be adressed though

[njvack]

AF_KITE

oh god I forgot about orb spiders

look I can deal with your orbs, for the love of god let me hit you with a stick

[duvessa]

orb spiders do not have AF_KITE, they have that maintain range thing which is similarly awful

[bel]

oh god I forgot about orb spiders

look I can deal with your orbs, for the love of god let me hit you with a stick

Orb spiders are obnoxious. The gimmick itself is cool.

[Sar]

I like orb spiders.

[nilsbloodaxe]

I like the fact that different branches have gimmicks that don't appear elsewhere. It gives the branches a unique feeling and atmosphere. So I wouldn't like to see starcursed-mass-lites or junior vault wardens in early dungeon.

A couple of unique gimmicks might be okay. However, I think crate is right, there should be fewer gimmicks overall, with each branch mostly differentiated by the combinations of gimmicks present.

[Sandman25]

I don't think we should limit number of gimmicks. 60 good gimmicks is better than 20 good gimmicks. I don't like gimmick reuse, it's similar to fighting the same monster at higher XL again but with more HP/damage.
We should identify bad gimmicks (if there are any) and fix/remove them.

[duvessa]

I don't think we should limit number of gimmicks. 60 good gimmicks is better than 20 good gimmicks.

I don't agree with this. Do you think Crawl would be better if it had, say, 100 more spells, even if they were as good as the existing ones?

[nilsbloodaxe]

I don't think we should limit number of gimmicks. 60 good gimmicks is better than 20 good gimmicks. I don't like gimmick reuse, it's similar to fighting the same monster at higher XL again but with more HP/damage.
We should identify bad gimmicks (if there are any) and fix/remove them.

Except that combinations of gimmicks are, basically a new gimmick, particularly when things are dangerous, because they make you make decisions. Also, I would note that there are a number of monsters with more than one gimmick, it wouldn't be the same monster if you shuffled those gimmicks.

[Sandman25]

Do you think Crawl would be better if it had, say, 100 more spells, even if they were as good as the existing ones?

Yes, I do for gimmicks (one per monster). "Ironbrand Convoker comes into view. It can recall allies". "Vault Warden comes into view. It can lock stairs/doors". More detailed info is available in monster description and experienced players can mute the extra messages in log (it is a separate channel and can be muted by a single command if desired).

[Sandman25]

Except that combinations of gimmicks are, basically a new gimmick, particularly when things are dangerous, because they make you make decisions. Also, I would note that there are a number of monsters with more than one gimmick, it wouldn't be the same monster if you shuffled those gimmicks.

I like combinations of monsters with different gimmicks, I suspect it is the best thing that could happen in my game because it would result in almost unlimited "replaybility", many fights would be very different from each other. Which monster should I attack among Warden/Convoker/Sentinel is what I enjoy the most in current crawl.
Monsters with several gimmicks are bad IMHO, at least ones with unrelated gimmicks (it takes much time to learn all their gimmicks).

[n1000]

e: several replies before I finished writing this post.

The advantage to reusing mechanics is that they can combine in complex ways. An orc priest behind a squad of vanilla orcs is a potentially dangerous situation that forces the player to figure out how to deal with a single "gimmick." Being stuck some distance between both a sphinx behind some ugly things and a stone giant is a difficult situation that arises from the combination of super simple, but effective gimmicks: smite damage and powerful ranged attacks.

A huge number of complex situations can develop with even a small number of gimmicks simply by forcing the player to fight multiple monsters at once. With even as few as a dozen good gimmicks, an easy number for any player to understand, we have hundreds types of encounters with 3 gimmick monsters, and thousands with 5 monsters. This is the principle behind boss modifiers in Diablo 3, which are introduced one at a time, and then are paired and tripled as the game goes on to increase complexity.

I think encounter design which focuses on combining mechanics as the player progresses (which already happens on the character-building side of things) instead of introducing gimmicks would be very strong. Indeed, the situation in crawl is much better than my Diablo 3 example for many reasons, monsters in crawl have single or multiple attack mechanics which are built in and thematic, instead of arbitrary "modifiers," and encounters often have many different types of enemies at once.

This is complexity implemented at its most elegant form. The player is not forced to learn (and more importantly, our masters are not forced to develop) scores of mechanics, but by the end of the game is faced with true tactical problems. In other words, a dozen-odd gimmicks, when different types of monsters are fought in groups, explode into a number of gimmicks so large that the optimal strategy for each case becomes impossible to memorize, and thus tactics are born.

[Sandman25]

No matter if we have 20 or 60 gimmicks, player does not have more than 10-15 monsters in LoS at any moment.
For me ideal crawl would be to have 5 gimmicks on D1, add 2 more on D2, add 2 more on D3 etc. It will not be hard to learn and will create interesting battles.
I was wrong about reuse. If we want to have a combination of gimmicks on D15, we need a monster with gimmick which was introduced on D2 but with D15 danger power.

[ontoclasm]

I agree that Crawl probably has too many monsters but I've never understood why it has to be so melodramatically distressing. I'm sorry, I get the whole "but it takes longer to learn!" thing, but most Crawl monsters are very, very simple. There are maybe 30ish monsters in Crawl that I might describe as "complex." It is not a burden to learn how a fucking yak works (beyond the burden of learning how Crawl works in general). And I seriously doubt that a lot of deaths, even those of absolutely new players, are due to a lack of understanding of some minor monster mechanic. I mean, the most dangerous monsters in crawl, by miles, are hobgoblins and killer bees and orc priests and such; the thing that newbies struggle to learn is basic positioning and tactics, not which effects stop Convoke.

If you asked me, I would like it if, sometime during 0.16 development, we just went through the list of monsters, ranked them vaguely by some balance of "how fun is it to fight" and "how confusing it is to learn about", and then wiped the last, say, 20% of the list. Not because there are too many, per se, but because some of them are bad and bad stuff should be removed.

Note that a lot of the 30 complex monsters above would be high on my list for removal.

[crate]

The thing is, it's pretty important to know roughly how much damage a yak can do to your character, especially if you primarily hit things with a melee weapon. Simple monsters add close to as much to learn about as complex monsters (my problem with the complex ones is generally more disliking "complexity for no reason" like the curare/convoke interaction, and then since the gimmicks get used only once you're increasing the absolute number of monsters more than you would have to if you reuse the monster entirely).

Crawl deliberately hides how much damage monsters can do from the player. If you're not going to change that design decision, it's pretty important to cut down on redundant monsters also, because this is the place where "dying to learn about a monster" is the big problem. There's really no reason to have death yaks and elephants and komodo dragons all in lair: they're very nearly all the same monster. A good thing about crawl development is it has at least recently avoided adding more of these monsters; a bad thing is, well, they still exist. At least giant brown frogs (toads) are gone, and yellow snakes. This is where the absolute number of monsters matters, and why it's so depressing that monsters just don't get removed very often.

[dpeg]

I think that assessment is changing over time, too: back in the day (I am thinking of an r.g.r.misc posting here, so consider the time in question to be the late Pleistocene), unseen horrors were justified as good design -- around D:10, they are a completely new type of threat, and they warrant a number of solutions. Apart from the obvious teleportation & leaving level (always a valuable lesson), you can use bolt spells/wands, perhaps coupled with digging. Threads complaining about this gimmick came up occasionally, and all regular seemed convinced that unseen horrors are a good yardstick on the way to winning at Crawl. [Some other developments somewhat relatedly to the monster: scroll of fog added, spell of See Invisible removed, early semi-invisible added, at least partially to explain the mechanic.]

I still believe they're ok as monsters, but I'd say that from the point of view of 0.16, their gimmick is not particularly strong. If they were on the 0.17 guillotine, I might utter a word or two for them on nostalgic grounds, but in my opinion a number of new monsters (including uniques) capture the old unseen horror Oh Shit moment better. (Also note that giant eyes, another ancient monster with a unique gimmick, is on semi-hiatus -- it can be made in vaults, but is not randomly generated anymore. So it can swing both ways.)


Some recent versions added very many new monster mechanics. While not all of these have been (and can be) pure gold, I think it's great that so much creativity was poured into Crawl's monsters. As always, ideally some time later we'd revisit and remove the chaff and strengthen the successful ones. Ideally, a thread like this can help -- I don't think there's any other way than discussing monsters/mechanics one by one. (I mean, feel free to mention many in your posting, but I don't think one can make very useful sweeping statements about "gimmicks in general".)

[tasonir]

While I'm probably far too late to influence word choice, I'd call them "abilities" rather than gimmicks, because really that's all they are. The monster has an ability it uses. This could include the ability "can cast bolt of fire" all the way up to "combines with other monsters of it's type for added hp/damage" (slimes) and more complex things.

I don't see why an unseen horror would be an example of a bad monster that you would want to cut - invisibility is a pretty robust mechanic and learning all of the ways to deal with it explains a lot about crawl's mechanics. Sky beasts show it for short bursts, and then unseen horrors require that you understand the mechanic to move on. My most commonly used technique to kill unseen horrors, by the way, is ctrl+direction to force attack the side of me they are in, while in a corridor. Learning that this command exists and when to use it (also when confused, usually) is a great lesson.

Giant orb of eyes I'd be glad to see go, though. Honestly I don't even remember what they do, I usually just charge and kill them, so their gimmick isn't even memorable to me. I just looked it up - it's one of those MR-checking monsters that I ignore because the rule "get magic resistance to 3 pips asap" is just good safety and I follow that most every game. So it's just a weak caster mob that doesn't hurt much.

Some monsters that annoy me are phantasmal warriors, both for the -MR effect and because there's apparently some hidden bypass AC/SH effect on them, most anything with paralyze, and deep elf necro-whatevers, the ones that spawn lost souls which revive monsters. Mostly just the lost souls, not the elf, who could probably be reworked to do something else.

[PleasingFungus]

Great Orb of Eyes have a decent & cute gimmick, namely "weaker versions of all the other eyes". They aren't a bad design, they're just too weak for most of the places in which they appear. (Depths, Slime, and, er, Pan (!?) - I think they're fine in Vaults.) I don't think that's an insoluble problem.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

I don't think we should limit number of gimmicks. 60 good gimmicks is better than 20 good gimmicks.

I don't agree with this. Do you think Crawl would be better if it had, say, 100 more spells, even if they were as good as the existing ones?

I very much think so.
More stuff = more choices = more fun.

[basil]

More stuff = more choices = more fun.

For spells I'll set aside the "learning cost". Assuming that some spells are better-designed than others, then with a fixed spellbook generation rate and fixed average book size adding more spells makes it less likely to get those well-designed spells, which isn't good.

And a minor tangent regarding monsters: You might be fine with 10 or 100 new monsters, but what about 1000? It would be doable if somebody on the devteam felt like it via monster templates, and to an extent it has been partially done with jobbed Dr and Ds. But that would be a substantial burden to both old and new players if the templates had noticeable effects. I think that burden would outweigh whatever fun was gained.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

More stuff = more choices = more fun.

For spells I'll set aside the "learning cost". Assuming that some spells are better-designed than others, then with a fixed spellbook generation rate and fixed average book size adding more spells makes it less likely to get those well-designed spells, which isn't good.

And a minor tangent regarding monsters: You might be fine with 10 or 100 new monsters, but what about 1000? It would be doable if somebody on the devteam felt like it via monster templates, and to an extent it has been partially done with jobbed Dr and Ds. But that would be a substantial burden to both old and new players if the templates had noticeable effects. I think that burden would outweigh whatever fun was gained.

100 more spells, even if they were as good as the existing ones

If the spells were as well designed as current ones, i see no problem with this. And that was what i was referring.
And if those 1000 new monsters were well-designed, had a branch in which they fit in, and added something new to crawl, i see no problem with that either.

[BobIsDead]

I'm definitely in favour of reusing gimmicks. Most gimmicks seem interesting but as they're rare or only found in a select few branches, we seldom get to see the full range of tactical dilemmas that those gimmicks offer.

With regards to adding in more monsters or taking them out, an important part of that discussion is interbranch vs. intrabranch diversity. For example, you might say that there are too many spellcasting enemies to keep track of or to learn about. This is an argument from an interbranch perspective, looking at the game as a whole. From an intrabranch perspective (as in, looking at one branch at a time), you might not see as many superfluously similar spellcasters. After all, the elves have their own set of spellcasters, as do the orcs, as do the draconians. But they're all (for the most part) separated into their own branches.

This sort of ties in with my overall view on gimmick complexity (both in terms of how complex each gimmick should be and how many there are). Sure, I don't see that there should be a hard upper limit on the amount of gimmicky monsters from an interbranch perspective, but from an intrabranch one there definitely should be. Each branch should be easy enough to get to grips with in terms of what you have to watch out for. The main dungeon allows for more variety but even that should avoid being a complex mess, filled with just about every single different type of monster.

Sure, you could argue that the need for a limit on intrabranch complexity means that there's an effective upper limit on interbranch complexity, but I think it's still an important distinction to make. I'm more than happy for more monsters and gimmicks to be put into the game, so long as they have a place that they can fit in happily.

[ragnarokchu]

Although a quick word here, it's okay to have some redundant monsters. Yes something like a yak, komdoo dragon, elephants are all nearly the same. But the do the job of "fleshing" out the world itself and making it feel alive. It may not matter on people who don't play without tiles, but it makes the game alot more fun for me when I fight all of theses different creatures although they may be the same underneath combat wise. While having massive amounts of redundant creatures may be a big thing, having some variety is a good flavor thing with being very little detrimental to the design of the game.

For example having an orc "pyromancer" who only cast fire spells with it's own tile and a orc "Cyromancer" who only cast ice spells which is somewhat the same thing with it's own tile. They may just be spellcasters who just cast spells, but that adds a flavorful interesting type of monster that you can know what they do with a level of redundancy that's good.

I mean the difference between komdoo dragon was it's bite could make you sick which was removed, thus removing what made it special. Yak gimmick is "technically" swarming you with a ton of them at one time. Elephant is that they constantly knock you back making escaping or positioning hard. I believe all of this is brilliant game design and makes the game interesting even if they don't do anything crazy or ultra noticeable at first. Yaks swarming you letting you not escape while a komdoo dragon makes you sick is interesting interaction, elephant knocking you into a yak herd if interesting and thus on.

As oppose to throwing more torment and summon spam at you with spellcaster throwing unlimited high level spells at your character at high levels I think we could go for more "passive" gimmicks like above.

[cheetah7071]

I think Vaults is probably the yardstick against which other branches should be measured--it has 3-4 monsters that do something new, interesting, and deadly, and a number of other monsters that you can can figure out just from their name or have seen before. My biggest complaint is probably that the vault humans don't have evocative enough names, and can be difficult to tell apart for a new player (I personally had trouble remembering which one did which). Ironheart preservers have the best name of the bunch, but wardens could probably stand to be renamed jailers or something. I have no idea what to do with convokers/sentinels. There's also minor redundancy (griffons/hill giants/vault guards all do the same thing), but it's a lot better than pretty much anywhere else but Dungeon.

[grisamentum]

I like orb spiders.

I also like orb spiders.

[edgefigaro]

A couple ideas:

I really like the feel of angelic pan as opposed to all the other pan levels, and I wish it was a branch instead. I feel like a couple of more monsters with quality gimmicks could flesh it out. I have a few thoughts, and I am sure it has been proposed before, don't want to derail. Something to think about if we are looking for less torment in the endgame.

Two, I think a tiger could be interesting on lair 8. It's gimmick would be that it starts invisible/hidden, follows you, and jumps you from behind when you are engaging something else. Conceptually, I feel lair 8 should be similar to orc 4, where I may be confident in 1-7, but I should expect 8 to be dangerous.

[roctavian]

A couple more ideas:

An ironbrand convoker could be interesting in a Bailey or two -- they certainly aren't more dangerous numbers-wise than some monsters you can encounter there, and they could escalate things while still being counter-able.

It would be thematic, at least, for a monster in Dis to have Warden-style door locking. I haven't been there often enough to judge how well the monster set can take advantage of such an ability, but it seems like it would be a good obstacle.

Portal vaults seem like a good opportunity to use monster gimmicks that show up later on in the game. Players not comfortable with (or not interested in) specific mechanics can opt not to enter, monsters won't screw up vaults they aren't intended to be around. There isn't enough room to include more than one or two unique mechanics at once, but the nature of portals is conducive to different vaults that contain different challenges.

[duvessa]

Players not comfortable with (or not interested in) specific mechanics can opt not to enter

I hear this argument routinely (usually with regard to things like labyrinths and crypt) and I hate it. If playing badly (skipping portal vaults) is more fun than playing well, there is something wrong with the game.

[comebackshane]

gud: Vault Guards

I always liked the human guards of Vault and how they work together. Eeach of them (well, except Vault guards, which are just there for muscle) have a not-hard-to-understand-but-its-going-to-cost-my-life-if-I-do-nothing-about-it ability, henceforth known as nhtubigtcmliidnaia.
It makes you think on how you go about the situation, which one do I attack first etc.

unguud: torment

Yeah I know you are tired of hearing it by now and it comes up again and again, but it's overused in extended; also mandatory gear check:

Do I have torment resistance?

Yes ☐
No ☐
What the hell is torment, I died D:2 to a gnoll pack ☑

[njvack]

An ironbrand convoker could be interesting in a Bailey or two -- they certainly aren't more dangerous numbers-wise than some monsters you can encounter there, and they could escalate things while still being counter-able.

Or give Recall to a top-tier Gnoll or Kobold or early unique or something. Word of Recall's danger tends to auto-scale with depth.

It would be thematic, at least, for a monster in Dis to have Warden-style door locking. I haven't been there often enough to judge how well the monster set can take advantage of such an ability, but it seems like it would be a good obstacle.

Yeah; the thing about it in Vaults is that there are tons of doors there, and I don't know how often that happens in Dis either. But if there were a postgame place to see it, Dis would be the one.

[Wahaha]

Bad gimmicks: mark on Sentinels, dimension anchor, lock doors+stairs. First two because they get an MR check boost for no reason. Third one because it locks stairs.

[Pereza0]

Lock stairs is bad because it locks stairs?

[Wahaha]

It is bad because locking stairs is too strong of an effect for an enemy like wardens, compared to other monster gimmicks, given how stairs in Crawl work. They were perfect when they only locked doors.

[roctavian]

Players not comfortable with (or not interested in) specific mechanics can opt not to enter

I hear this argument routinely (usually with regard to things like labyrinths and crypt) and I hate it. If playing badly (skipping portal vaults) is more fun than playing well, there is something wrong with the game.

This is a helpful thing to establish in the course of this discussion, then, because it brings us closer to concrete language for discussing good and bad mechanics -- is X so bad that players can't even stand it in a controlled environment? Alternately, what kind of strong mechanics could use a portal vault as a spotlight?

[dpeg]

Lasty: I agree that "if players don't like X, they don't have to do it" is a bad argument. After all, this is how Nethackers explain the presence of Elbereth and polypiling -- yes, these are boring, but you don't have to do it!

Then again, a player stating "I dislike X so much I never do it" should not mean too much to us. I bet that for every single feature in the game, there is someone who does not like it. Even if fifty players jump up and down with this statement, ultimately it remains a subjective notion. In other words, we (developers) have to decide whether we find it fun or not.

The point of portal vaults was still a good one, althought perhaps for slightly different reasons: you simply cannot work around a portal vault! On the one hand, you can always leave right away, if risk seems too high. On the other hand, you cannot backtrack for skills or items. That means a door-locking monster in a portal vault is cool, assuming we play fair. (A portal-locking monster should be out of the question, for example.)

[Lasty]

Haha, I think you mean roctavian?

[dpeg]

roctavian: Indeed!

Just too many red guys!!!