End monster spawning

[mps]

Are there actually any figures on what one could reasonably expect to gain by reexploring an apparently clear level to find stragglers? I can't see this offering more than an extra 2 or 3 percent of experience...

I realize this is an unlikely case, but I strongly considered spending a few thousand turns in a recent game lingering around the Depths and Zot. I'd found a trove that needed a storm dragon armour to open. By the time I'd cleared my way to the Orb chamber, I'd slain a dozen such dragons, but found no hides. So yeah, that is a case in which scumming would've paid off; we currently have monsters that OCCASIONALLY drop items that are OCCASIONALLY key items.

Easy fix: All dragons always drop hides. I don't see why this matter should be a coin flip.

I see. But if you're after items, seems like at that stage a ziggurat would make more sense... Also, of course, if monsters did not spawn after generation, you'd quickly realize you're not going to get the storm dragon hide you want.

There's a strange tension here that the check against scumming is precisely what enables the case of scumming you suggest. I don't see how exploring a level twice to catch monsters you somehow missed on the first run around is scumming either -- my understanding of the word involves manipulating monster/item/level generation through repetition, which not at all what is going on when you hang around a level to try to find a monster you missed.

[Giant Orange Brainbow Dash]

To clarify my situation a little, I had cleared all the non-Hell, non-Pan, non-Tomb content without any source of rMut, and was hoping a jewellery trove would solve that. I considered dipping into Pan like that, but wasting some time hoping for a storm dragon to pop seemed like a much safer option than asking legions of cacodemons and neqoxecs to rearrange my parts for me. Ascending turned out to be the least obnoxious choice though

[Siegurt]

Hm, if the problem is tedium caused by travel being stopped by harmless monsters, why don't we have something similar for ignoring monsters to the option we have to ignore auto-pickup items when inventory is full:

"GD1"
"A gecko is in view, ignore this monster and continue travelling? (Y/N)"

I'm not sure about the negative impact about auto-travelling to your destination with a harmless melee-only creature 1 square away the whole time though.

[Sar]

there's little difference between pressing tab and pressing Y to get rid of the gecko

[grisamentum]

there's little difference between pressing tab and pressing Y to get rid of the gecko

Oh, but there is my favorite: the monster went out of view, so you can't tab.

[Sar]

please no

[Siegurt]

there's little difference between pressing tab and pressing Y to get rid of the gecko

Well, except Y always gets rid of the gecko, tab might miss, also it might be more than one keypress to kill it at range if it is at the edge of your los.

As distinct from the current "you just can't travel right now because a monster is in los" I would find it less annoying. Also good for auto traveling past monsters stuck behind plants.

[duvessa]

you also wouldnt get the giant gecko piety

[Siegurt]

you also wouldnt get the giant gecko piety

oh noes!

(Also I initially misread that as giant gecko party, it made me think of a gecko wearing a birthday party hat for a brief moment, which made me smile, but that also made me think of terry pratchett, which made me briefly sad. Look at all the feels you make happen!)

[Berder]

The larger annoyance is when the fight is not totally trivial, but not deadly either. For instance, the inspiration for this thread was clearing zot:4 (for some silly reason, don't ask me) and kept going up to zot:3 to rest and having to repeatedly fight more and more bands of draconians and other things that spawned, then rest again after those fights, etc. It's just more fighting than I wanted to do, and without enough of a tangible sign of progress.

[Rast]

The larger annoyance is when the fight is not totally trivial, but not deadly either. For instance, the inspiration for this thread was clearing zot:4 (for some silly reason, don't ask me) and kept going up to zot:3 to rest and having to repeatedly fight more and more bands of draconians and other things that spawned, then rest again after those fights, etc. It's just more fighting than I wanted to do, and without enough of a tangible sign of progress.

But those are exactly the kind of fights that monster spawning is there for.

[bcadren]

The larger annoyance is when the fight is not totally trivial, but not deadly either. For instance, the inspiration for this thread was clearing zot:4 (for some silly reason, don't ask me) and kept going up to zot:3 to rest and having to repeatedly fight more and more bands of draconians and other things that spawned, then rest again after those fights, etc. It's just more fighting than I wanted to do, and without enough of a tangible sign of progress.

This kind of fight sounds like...actual scumming. Hah. I personally still don't think the gain/loss from it would ever be enough to justify actually waiting to have those kinds of fights on purpose; but that is pretty much the definition of actual scumming; hard enough to have some good loot/XP; easy enough to not threaten to kill you. Repeatable.

[Berder]

Yeah, I was getting safe XP from it, but my intention wasn't to scum, it was just to clear zot4 for greater safety. Due to my character (MuAE with lightning bolt, OOD, and a bunch of rods) that was taking a long time, which resulted in scummable encounters that I didn't want.

[Siegurt]

Well in all fairness, having zot 4 not be a 100% safe zone even with little to no health to retreat to is pretty much why spawning exists.

Clearing zot 4 certainly makes it much safer as things currently work, but I suspect making floors 100% clearable would make already overpowered stair dancing even more attractive.

[edgefigaro]

I recently won a lvl 19 FeBe-->jiyva game. Zot was crazy hard. I could barely kill anything. I got beaten back an additional level at one point. I wasn't fighting for more xp, I was fighting through on a weak char trying to win the game.

I won and it was awesome. I am happy monster spawning still exists.

[Berder]

Well in all fairness, having zot 4 not be a 100% safe zone even with little to no health to retreat to is pretty much why spawning exists.

Clearing zot 4 certainly makes it much safer as things currently work, but I suspect making floors 100% clearable would make already overpowered stair dancing even more attractive.

The thing is - once the floor is cleared it remains pretty much cleared, because then you leave the floor and things stop spawning. It's just that you get more encounters while clearing it.

Why bother characters who are going slowly with extra encounters, just for going slowly? Or from another way of looking at it, why reward characters who are going slowly with more XP, just for going slowly?

[bcadren]

Ok. If the point is discourage stair-dancing and that's the whole point...why not have a chance to get new spawns created by the act of using stairs? ...perhaps level appropriate? ...hell, you could make them super-high level as a cute feature during the ascent. Ascensions do need to be made a bit harder... bunch of semi-controlled cBlinks or holding onto the lantern of shadows and running is all it takes. Everytime you use the stair (if you aren't very high level to make this area irrelevant and only being fast traveled through); there's a chance of a band not immediately in melee range of the staircase when you get there, but within range to be immediate problem. Stair dancing discouraged! [course in places where the tactic is NECESSARY for most characters (Vaults:5 and Tomb:3, for example); this might be plain cruel, but otherwise.]

[Greyr]

Stair dancing to Vaults:5 is not a great idea with wardens, contrict, smite and the like

[Berder]

The best way to do vaults 5 if you aren't noisy/ are a little stealthy is to walk/blink way off to the side, to the middle of one of the width 2 corridors on the very edge. This will prevent you from getting surrounded and soon let you rest at your leisure.

[Sandman25]

I love when there is a escape hatch to Vault 5 and I have relatively powerful character. You evoke/cast Control Tele, evoke ring of teleportation and use the hatch. If you are happy with where you landed, you just fight and later cancel the tele, if not, you read scroll of mapping and choose where to land. It's great when you land where you want without using any consumables

[jeremie]

The escape hatch to vault 5 is even better when you have a weak character.

[ion_frigate]

Why are the anti-scumming OOD spawns real monsters, and not durable summons? As mps said, there is indeed a tension inherent when the thing that's meant to punish scumming also rewards it. But this at least can be trivially solved. I may be wrong, but it's actually quite possible that the reason those OOD monsters are real to begin with is that durable summons may not even have existed back in 0.5, when they were introduced.

Making OOD spawns into summons doesn't solve any of the other issues raised in this thread, but it just seems odd that you can scum the anti-scumming timer.

[hannobal]

I like that monsters keep generating - It means there are no 100% safe places to rest.
If they didn't generate, you could always go upstairs and rest without danger (with current mechanics).
Monster generation also means you'll sometimes bump into something dangerous while travelling between branches.

I don't think farming is an issue at all, because wasting time lowers score.
Most of this being already said in the posts above of course.

[Berder]

Why are the anti-scumming OOD spawns real monsters, and not durable summons? As mps said, there is indeed a tension inherent when the thing that's meant to punish scumming also rewards it. But this at least can be trivially solved. I may be wrong, but it's actually quite possible that the reason those OOD monsters are real to begin with is that durable summons may not even have existed back in 0.5, when they were introduced.

Making OOD spawns into summons doesn't solve any of the other issues raised in this thread, but it just seems odd that you can scum the anti-scumming timer.

Just remove OOD spawns. And remove/drastically reduce the other spawns. Running into OOD monsters that you don't even get any XP for killing would be just beyond frustrating. Again, the point is why punish a player for going slowly by giving him unwanted fights. It just makes a slow game even slower. I don't think everybody should be forced into doing speedrun-like play if they don't want to.

[mechanicalmaniac]

OOD monster hunting can be lots of fun, though -- you're waiting in suspense, wondering what horrors the game will throw at you next, and formulating a plan to react to whatever is come. The EXP is the incentive, but in a lot of other ways, the strategy itself is its own reward. You are, to a degree, defying the game -- the game wants you to go on, but you refuse to do so until you have no other choice. There's a certain thrill in that. If you remove the EXP reward, the OOD timer just becomes a second, more directly menacing hunger clock.

Maybe it's just my gaming background, but I've always held the philosophy that it's bad game design to punish playing the game in a way you didn't expect it to played -- some games actively encouraged going off the rails, and were all the better for it. Super Metroid comes to mind: the developers, despite anticipating and deliberately allowing many of the game's sequence breaks, never dreamed in a million years that anyone would be able to clear Maridia without the Gravity Suit. But people did it. They entered the wrecked ship from the back door while Phantoon was still alive and got to see all the trippiness that comes with sequence-breaking past an event flag. I've never been able to pull off the feat myself, but the mere knowledge that it is possible adds just that much more thrill to the game.

You could make the argument that Super Metroid is a different type of game, a more emergent and reactive one, but what is more emergent than a roguelike?

[johlstei]

it would be bad if super metroid let you make your character stronger by walking in and out of the same room over and over and killing a single monster each time

[mechanicalmaniac]

Apples and oranges are both delicious fruits, and can be compared to one another on that level. Go any more specific, and it's apples and oranges.
Crawl and Super Metroid are both emergent video games, and can be compared to one another on that level. Go any more specific, and it's apples and oranges.

[Sandman25]

I don't think everybody should be forced into doing speedrun-like play if they don't want to.

I believe devs (most?) have different opinion here

[Wahaha]

Monster spawns are a significant part of the difficulty of the game. They make retreating less safe and cause dangerous situations regularly.

[johlstei]

comparing apples and oranges is quite a feasible thing to do, and something you do every time you choose between apple and orange juice at a continental breakfast

e: sorry I know this isn't CYC, I'll stop

[ion_frigate]

Just remove OOD spawns. And remove/drastically reduce the other spawns. Running into OOD monsters that you don't even get any XP for killing would be just beyond frustrating. Again, the point is why punish a player for going slowly by giving him unwanted fights. It just makes a slow game even slower. I don't think everybody should be forced into doing speedrun-like play if they don't want to.

Oh yeah I do agree with this, though it would require some re-balancing: in particular it'd reduce the amount of experience in a 'normal' game, and the player would have likely have to be compensated . Also, more monsters would need to generate awake.

I just think that making the super-OOD-you've-been-on-this-level-too-long spawns into durable summons would be a relatively uncontroversial change: it shouldn't require any re-balancing since those spawns aren't factored into the normal XP curve anyway, and it removes a potential way to scum for experience/items. Also it has the benefit of communicating to players that this isn't a normal spawn, in a sense giving them feedback on how quickly they 'should' be playing.

[Siegurt]

Sometimes though, you get a super OOD spawn when you haven't been playing "slowly" at all, OOD spawns start with a really tiny chance of happening, in a relatively short amount of time:
https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10340&p=208303#p208303
Of course that could be adjusted, but it appears that *as currently written* the intention is for you to rarely, but occasionally, come across super OOD spawns during "careful, but not super slow play"

[acvar]

Why are the anti-scumming OOD spawns real monsters, and not durable summons? As mps said, there is indeed a tension inherent when the thing that's meant to punish scumming also rewards it. But this at least can be trivially solved. I may be wrong, but it's actually quite possible that the reason those OOD monsters are real to begin with is that durable summons may not even have existed back in 0.5, when they were introduced.

Making OOD spawns into summons doesn't solve any of the other issues raised in this thread, but it just seems odd that you can scum the anti-scumming timer.

Why should any monsters that spawn after level generation be "real" monsters. Make them all durable summons. This puts an end to scumming, and gives the game more control over the amount of experience in the game.

[ion_frigate]

Again, I agree in principle -- but what you're suggesting does require some degree of re-balancing, since I'm pretty sure the proportion of XP in a typical game from after-generation spawns isn't trivial. Making the super-OOD spawns into durable summons shouldn't: Siegurt's right that they do occasionally appear for more 'normal' games, but I can't imagine they constitute a significant part of a character's XP. And even just doing that removes a large incentive to scum.

[Sandman25]

Again, I agree in principle -- but what you're suggesting does require some degree of re-balancing, since I'm pretty sure the proportion of XP in a typical game from after-generation spawns isn't trivial. Making the super-OOD spawns into durable summons shouldn't: Siegurt's right that they do occasionally appear for more 'normal' games, but I can't imagine they constitute a significant part of a character's XP. And even just doing that removes a large incentive to scum.

I think we don't need super-OOD spawns if normal-OOD spawns are summons and don't give any XP. Also that would partially solve problems with slow games, OOD spawns are much easier to escape than super-OOD.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Making OOD spawns into durable summons would be shadow traps all over again. Shadow traps throw monsters at you with no reward, slowing the player down and depleting their resources with no possible gain. It's a lose-lose. Durably summoned OOD spawns would do the same thing, but rushing the player along instead of slowing them down. The effect would be made even worse because OOD spawns are significantly more of a threat than shadow traps.

You could argue that this is the whole point of OOD spawns, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating to have the game throw EXP-less, drop-less monsters at you to push you onward. If we make OOD spawns clearly distinguishable from regular ones (other than the fact that they are out-of-depth,) the player will stop thinking, "I should really get a move on," and start thinking "Oh look, the game wants me to get a move on." If, on top of that, their new distinguishing feature is being all risk and no reward, this will hammer home even harder that the game is saying "No, you can't do that; you're not allowed to do that; that's against the rules." Nobody wants a game like that. At least, I don't. Going back to the Metroid analogy, (good) Metroid games don't actively punish sequence breaking, even though sequence breaking is a difficult and potentially tedious process that is, in a sense, "against the rules."

[basil]

I don't know much about these things, but sequence breaking seems like it hinges on making progress through the game, whereas scumming means you make no progress while you scum.

If we make OOD spawns clearly distinguishable from regular ones (other than the fact that they are out-of-depth,) the player will stop thinking, "I should really get a move on," and start thinking "Oh look, the game wants me to get a move on."

I'm not seeing the difference with a D:2 centaur warrior.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Sequence breaking just means you're doing things out of order. Some breaks let you progress through a game more quickly, others are for their own sake. Honestly, most are for their own sake. My point is that waiting around for OOD monsters can be for its own sake, too.

The reasoning behind the dev team's crusade against opportunities to scum is that, given the choice between a low-risk, repeatable activity with a small but certain reward and a high-risk activity with a large reward, it's a no-brainer to pick the one that guarantees reward. But waiting for OOD monsters to show up actually falls into the latter category.

You might want to argue that scumming is, by definition, a boring and repetitive activity, and that making sure that no boring and repetitive activities give the player a significant advantage objectively is one of the design principles of Crawl. Although I do agree with Bloax when he says that the punishment for pudding farming is pudding farming, I can't argue with the Crawl bible. I can, however argue with the assertation that hunting for OOD monsters is boring or even repetitive. On the contrary, it is quite exciting. Due to the fact that deeper monsters tend to be much more interesting and distinct than the ones you would come across if you just progressed normally like a good little dungeoneer, it can actually be less repetitive.

[bananaken]

Well in all fairness, having zot 4 not be a 100% safe zone even with little to no health to retreat to is pretty much why spawning exists.

Clearing zot 4 certainly makes it much safer as things currently work, but I suspect making floors 100% clearable would make already overpowered stair dancing even more attractive.

I'd argue that for most 3-4 rune characters if you can take your time clearing any Zot level you could just as easily carve a path between stairs for each floor and clear enough of Zot:5 to run with the orb. It sounds lazy, but since your goal is to run with the orb, clearing levels you don't need to is already punishing you anyway (by potentially draining you of resources to survive the fights and/or recover between fights).

Just out of curiosity, what if you had a DoomRL "level message" thing for super-OOD monsters spawning? You can stick around and find out what it is, or high-tail it out of there if you inadvertently took too long on a floor.

[mechanicalmaniac]

Spelunky did something like that with the ghost, and that worked well.

[Gramm]

Spelunky did something like that with the ghost, and that worked well.

the equivalent mechanic in a roguelike game would be like the winds of kron in the mystery dungeon series, where you got a few messages some hundred turns before you got killed outright by the game, and then you got killed outright by the game. i never liked that much, personally.

an exact parallel to the spelunky ghost would be more like a 3x3 tile 2 speed monster that was invincible, oneshot you in melee with perfect accuracy, and could move through walls, which would probably be even worse (it makes a lot more sense in the context of a platforming game, and even in spelunky it was generally more of an annoyance than an actual incentive to move onward).

the real problem with ood spawning is that it's intended to disincentivize scumming, but it ends up sort of incentivizing it at the same time. durable summons essentially fix the latter point without resorting to kron's winds-style incentives (as compelling as they may be), so it's probably worth at least a try to see if people end up liking it.

[Bloax]

I'm not sure why so much accounting for people being silly is required. The punishment for pudding farming is pudding farming, the punishment for exp farming is exp farming.
And after all, it's not like your imaginary score points won't suffer greatly if you spend 9000 turns on every floor to hunt down every single monster.

A fairly important part of crawl's design philosophy is that tedious activity should not increase your win-rate. In general, crawl's design does not take speedrunners into account, except insofar as the score system exists at all. (This is why breadswinging still exists.)

I'm not sure using philosophy as The Rulebook of Rules From Thy Lord Thou Shalt Not Break Ever is a good idea.

also the reason breadswinging was invented and is still used today is because hp/mp regen is too low, but obviously since devs hate speedrunners it'll stay that way

[roctavian]

You can feel free to question the design philosophy if you want, but only if you have reasonable points to make. It seems to me that you're arguing with "Crawl should not reward boring, tedious behavior" with "who cares."

[Bloax]

Well currently crawl rewards "boring, tedious behavior" much more than it would without monsters spawning and faster hp/mp regen, since you can get far more experience out of waiting for all the OOD spawns to spawn than hunting down the very last monsters on the floor that might not even be there, and breadswinging is used so much because resting up at 1.5x the normal rate makes a very large difference in how many turns you spend resting - and since hp/mp regen is absolutely glacial, you will have to rest up if your hp/mp is sufficiently low, since it will not come back to any reasonable level within the span of time it'll take for you to find a new wave of trouble.

tl;dr "who cares"

Spoiler: show

And I know breadswinging is less used with faster hp/mp regen because I happen to be one of the most prominent abusers of said exploit and I use it far less when I play my little personally modded version of crawl. It's not a fun thing to do, since it grinds the tempo of the game into a halt - and since the threshold for where it's absolutely critical to rest up is much lower than in vanilla crawl, there's a much lower incentive to pull it after you drop down to 40% hp.

[bananaken]

the real problem with ood spawning is that it's intended to disincentivize scumming, but it ends up sort of incentivizing it at the same time. durable summons essentially fix the latter point without resorting to kron's winds-style incentives (as compelling as they may be), so it's probably worth at least a try to see if people end up liking it.

OOD spawning even with durable summons still leaves the issue of it occurring during normal gameplay. As durable summons, if these OOD spawns get in your way all they do is drain your resources while you get nothing in return (no XP, no corpse, no equipment). I would find OOD spawns much less likable as a result, since 1. I get them in normal gameplay anyway, punishing me for some unclear reason, and 2. It would be a no-brainer for me to just avoid a durable, super-OOD monster summon as opposed to considering killing it if I happen to have the right tools. If it was possible for there to be a clear line between "scumming" and "non-scumming" it wouldn't be an issue, but I suspect the game would be worse off if this change was made just for the sake of removing the possibility of grinding extra XP by pressing '5'.

[Gramm]

OOD spawning even with durable summons still leaves the issue of it occurring during normal gameplay. As durable summons, if these OOD spawns get in your way all they do is drain your resources while you get nothing in return (no XP, no corpse, no equipment). I would find OOD spawns much less likable as a result, since 1. I get them in normal gameplay anyway, punishing me for some unclear reason, and 2. It would be a no-brainer for me to just avoid a durable, super-OOD monster summon as opposed to considering killing it if I happen to have the right tools. If it was possible for there to be a clear line between 'scumming' and 'non-scumming' it wouldn't be an issue, but I suspect the game would be worse off if this change was made just for the sake of removing the possibility of grinding extra XP by pressing '5'.

i agree with you in that it would come off as nebulously punishing without some silly flavor text ("this monster feels as though you have lingered in its rightful territory", "chei feels threatened by your inordinate slowness," etc) and even with some would feel unsatisfying, but as in many cases the lack of a clear distinction between 'scumming' and 'non-scumming' seems to be the result of the fact that few people really do the behavior in the first place, and so disincentivizing that behavior isn't actually going to directly impact nearly as many people as it indirectly impacts in a more negative way. the design philosophy can take precedence over something like that, but this is, again, another case where both sides have some valid argument and neither side is very clearly 'correct.'

expanding upon the above, durable summons definitely bring up a sort of dichotomy between 'can potentially use resources to garner above average xp gain,' and 'will potentially be presented with a monster that there is clearly no benefit in engaging (even less benefit than some oft-maligned uniques!).' this sets up the scumming vs. no-brainer situation, with scumming being the less easily-defined side, as you essentially pointed out. there may be a more creative, less brings-up-new-problems-ish solution someone more intimate with the game could come up with, but what about increasing the average difficulty of monster spawns ever so slightly if one spends far too long on a floor?
this could potentially be implemented as:
small average hd spawn increase on the same floor after x turns
small average hd spawn increase on the next floor after x turns
small average hd spawn increase on the next floor during placement after x turns
small average hd spawn increase on the same floor after mapping it
...which would gradually increase as more and more time was spent there, with little warnings like "those who would keep you from the orb have noticed your lingering" and "the monsters of [branch] have begun to send stronger forces to your location as a result of your extended stay there," etc.

i realize this essentially doesn't solve the problem but it at least makes it less make-or-break than ood spawns. the xp of the new spawns could be scaled back to whatever you normally might get without drastically changing how you approach the floor - a similar approach could be taken with ood spawns, which might give xp scaled back to their dungeon level, so that engaging them would still be sort-of-rewarding but not scummy-rewarding.

[Berder]

Monster spawns should be removed because they are aggravating, not because of any balance reason or wanting to prevent scumming. They interrupt and degrade gameplay. This is the scenario where it happens.

• I'm clearing a level. There's nothing so dangerous on it that I have to dive, therefore clearing it is safer.
• It's taking a long time, which is tedious, probably due to some heavily populated vault and/or having a weak character.
• In the midst of this I keep running into random packs of monsters in areas that I already cleared. These are probably newly generated packs.
• Each such pack just makes me annoyed that I have to kill even more things in areas that were supposed to be clear already.
• Such packs interrupt me in what I was doing (clearing the level) and being interrupted is frustrating.
• The lack of a sense of definite forward progress creates additional frustration.

Have you ever played an RPG where there are way too many "random encounters" when you're just trying to walk somewhere, and you can't skip them? Remember how annoying that was?

[bel]

Perhaps don't clear the level.

[Berder]

If you want to have a high winrate or streak, you should clear most levels. You get more XP and loot, and also a cleared level is a safer level in case you need to take an escape hatch from the level below or stairdance from the level below.

But let's not get sidetracked into a discussion of tactics. Monster spawning needlessly prolongs already slow levels and is detrimental to an enjoyable game experience, just because it's aggravating to get interrupted. Clearing a level is enjoyable, like painting. Imagine painting a room and a toddler keeps smearing gunk over parts you've already painted.

[bel]

If you want to have a high winrate or streak, you should clear most levels. You get more XP and loot, and also a cleared level is a safer level in case you need to take an escape hatch from the level below or stairdance from the level below.

I don't agree. For instance, often in Depths or Zot, there is a big, heavily guarded vault containing 2 of the 3 downstairs (though sometimes they contain all 3, in that case you have no choice). You can often skip the entire thing and take the third downstairs. That is much safer, though it has less loot.