Felid Reform

[Grudge]

I like the concept of Felids, but in practice they are a terrible race. I have some ideas for how they could be reformed. I am in the process of coding these.
Extra lives should be removed. They go against the design goals of Crawl, and I have noticed that if you die once, you are much more likely to die again. This means that extra lives are only sort of a safety net. In compensation for this, their aptitudes should go up across the board, and their HP should be increased.

These changes will (hopefully) make Felids less tedious. More hp means less kiting and fleeing. I don't think that the removal of extra lives would make it more tedious to play a Felid, as either way you will play as if you don't have extra lives.

If anyone has suggestions or criticism, I will take it into account and I might code and test it.

[dowan]

Make them faster? What's the point?

This just sounds like it'd make felids easier, and maybe even more boring than they already are. More HP would be nice I guess.

[Sar]

that would literally turn felids into spriggans

[ajon]

Literally? they still couldn't use any armour or weapons like spriggans.
Even if they were changed to just level faster, it might help. Considering that they lose a level on death and cannot wear any eq, leveling faster might help make them a little tougher and make up for the lost life easier.

[Grudge]

The purpose of making them faster is to make their kiting less tedious, as most of the things you want to kite are already slower than you. Still, I don't care much either way on the speed question. It might be better to make them speed 10 and balance it in other ways.

[Berder]

Felids are already among the strongest races for streaking, perhaps the single strongest.

[bel]

Felid is pretty strong. If you want less boring felid, play Op.

[Grudge]

I presume that most of the Felid streaking power comes from their extra lives. I am proposing the removal of extra lives. The buffs to Felids are mainly to compensate. I think that these changes might make Felids less streakable, not more.

[zxc23]

Felids are already among the strongest races for streaking, perhaps the single strongest.

There's no way this is true. Adders on D:1 can result in unavoidable deaths. So can orc priests on D:2. Tr, DD, HO and Mi don't have this problem (it depends on the background too but these races are more likely to survive adders). Once you get the extra life as felid, you're in much better shape, but surviving until then cannot be guaranteed.

[and into]

@zxc23:

Berder is basing his statement on this:

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15936

Of course the other species you mention are strong for streaking (and strong in general), but it is definitely fair to say that Fe is a very strong race if one is concerned with winning. (This doesn't change the fact that I find them un-fun and very rarely play them, personally, but I certainly see their advantages.)

But, more to the point, the relative streakability of Fe is not really on-topic for this GDD thread, so if you do wish to disagree and continue this discussion, please do that in a different thread.

I like the concept of Felids, but in practice they are a terrible race. I have some ideas for how they could be reformed. I am in the process of coding these.
Extra lives should be removed. They go against the design goals of Crawl, and I have noticed that if you die once, you are much more likely to die again. This means that extra lives are only sort of a safety net. In compensation for this, Felid speed should be increased (fast 2). Their aptitudes should go up across the board, and their HP should be increased.

If anyone has suggestions or criticism, I will take it into account and I might code and test it.

It is always cool when someone is actually coding something, and uses GDD to get feedback. But we cannot really give suggestions or criticism if we don't see what you (initial) plans for changing Fe would entail. Can you put more detail in the OP, Grudge?

[reaver]

I would oppose a patch to remove extra lives/otherwise move Fe towards Sp.

The major design features of Fe are:

> Extra Lives

> Extreme equipment restrictions

> Fast speed

> Low hp

Of those, the last two are explored in other species - notably Sp.

Fast speed is kind of degenerate and I think too many species have it in general, although I suppose making already fast species faster to avoid kiting being tedious is reasonable. (see the suggestion to move Jellies to speed 8 when they were speed 9, although they were instead made speed 10).

Low hp is slightly annoying but does work fine a making you feel fragile/change how you play, although I think it kind of works against extra lives.

I think Extra Lives work OK? They aren't some super great game-changing feature like 8 ring Op or VS antimagic bite/guardian spirit, but they work well that making Fe feel a bit different and don't cause any degenerate gameplay. I certainly enjoyed the feeling of having some byes on the Fe I've played.

I don't like Fe equipment restrictions, they were more interesting but also more annoying when Fe couldn't use wands. In the current state I don't think Fe equipment restrictions create more interest/novelty than they remove.

If I was going to redesign Fe, I'd probably start at "Hu with extra lives but worse apts" and somehow go from there.

[Grudge]

Speed 10, no extra lives and higher HP? Also, I think that good apts might be a good way to compensate for the equipment restrictions. I dislike extra lives for two reasons. First, in the early game if you lose a life, you are likely to die anyway from being underleveled. Second, I feel that one of the themes of Crawl and roguelikes in general is that of only one chance to win per character.

[archaeo]

Speed 10, no extra lives and higher HP? Also, I think that good apts might be a good way to compensate for the equipment restrictions. I dislike extra lives for two reasons. First, in the early game if you lose a life, you are likely to die anyway from being underleveled. Second, I feel that one of the themes of Crawl and roguelikes in general is that of only one chance to win per character.

Part of what's interesting about felids, though, is the way they subvert that. Being a "more pure" roguelike isn't really a selling point, imo.

Otherwise, it does sound rather like your changes will really only accomplish making felids more like octopodes or spriggans, and we already have those species.

[johlstei]

Your lives are a resource to spend like any other, no need to think about them as getting more than one chance to win - it's more like a full heal+teleport that costs XP that you can only use a few times per game. The notion of what a "chance" is is what you should change - it's certainly no different from amulets of life saving.

[Grudge]

Those are good points. I never thought about it that way before. Even if extra lives stay, Felids still need some changes.

[Berder]

I would oppose a patch to remove extra lives/otherwise move Fe towards Sp.

The major design features of Fe are:

> Extra Lives

> Extreme equipment restrictions

> Fast speed

> Low hp

Don't forget jump attacks. Oh wait

[Zwobot]

How about giving them innate controlled blink, which causes exhaustion? Instead remove the speed bonus and give them some more HP. Kiting is annoying and unfun - with this they get a chance to reset a fight, it would be powerful enough - but if the exhaustion timer is long enough it could at least remove the kiting tedium a bit.

[reaver]

Even if extra lives stay, Felids still need some changes.

What problem are you trying to solve? Why do Felids "still need some changes"?

It's hard to give feedback on a solution when you don't know the problem

[savageorange]

Even if extra lives stay, Felids still need some changes.

What problem are you trying to solve? Why do Felids "still need some changes"?

It's hard to give feedback on a solution when you don't know the problem

It's right there in the OP. Most felids are tedious. Exceeded only by mummies, IME.

[adozu]

dcss is largely about kiting and fleeing, personally i find felid less tedious than speed 10 races where "kiting" is replaced by "pillar dancing" ogres which still occasionally get a hit on you based on obscure "energy randomisation".

i mean sure, they are not very good at just tab-o-tab gameplay but there's a lot of other races that can fill that role

[bel]

Felids are tedious for much more than kiting purposes. They have very few weapon options (only UC), can't wear armour or shields etc. Plus the super low HP makes me play very carefully.

I have only played 4 Felids I think, I won two of them, one I quit because I was bored. I like Op much better.

But to OP's point, it is not possible to "fix" felids unless one replaces them with Sp or Op.

[Grudge]

The number one reason why Felids need to be changed is the fact that they are so incredibly frail. This means that instead of kiting powerful monsters, like ogres, you have to kite every monster, even if it is just a hobgoblin.

[tasonir]

I wouldn't mind, in theory, a version of felids where the extra lives was removed and their hp was buffed, either to -2 or -1. In other news I never liked octopodes being -1, and think they should be 0. But I'm not entirely sure if this is really much of an improvement for felids. It'll make them more normal, which some people would like, but there is definitely an argument for keeping them as unique as possible. As frustrating as -40% hp can be, players have won them without dying once, and less careful players like me can win them with a few deaths

I'd say the jump attack/blink ability would be the buff that fits in best with keeping them unique, and fits in well with an ultra-mobile low hp race concept.

[savageorange]

I wouldn't mind, in theory, a version of felids where the extra lives was removed and their hp was buffed, either to -2 or -1. In other news I never liked octopodes being -1, and think they should be 0. But I'm not entirely sure if this is really much of an improvement for felids. It'll make them more normal, which some people would like, but there is definitely an argument for keeping them as unique as possible. As frustrating as -40% hp can be, players have won them without dying once, and less careful players like me can win them with a few deaths

The blink idea is not bad. The question is whether it really addresses the tedium - to me it looks like it just makes the tedious action (running away) easier to do.

I mean, personally, it seems to me that there are FeBe (and FeFi of Makh, or Ely, maybe) and then there are all other Fe, in terms of level of tedium. FeBe can be fun, anything that doesn't inherently have HP boost / heal isn't fun. In practice it might simply be the case that -3 hp apt doesn't work out.

Felids using bows is a very silly image that just came up in my mind, as a partial remedy for the 'hit and run away... FOREVER' cycle.

Or maybe we need to make felids vampiric I mean, yeah, that would be infringing on Vp a bit, but we do need some way that the player can compensate for the -3 HP apt without just tedying.

[Grudge]

I have added a branch at https://github.com/TomConrad/crawl/tree/felid_reform with reformed felids. I made them speed 10, significantly decreased the frequency of extra life gain, and gave them -20% hp instead of -40%. I will probably put out a branch without extra lives soon.

[Sar]

so now they are literally naked kobolds

[wheals]

https://github.com/crawl/crawl/compare/ ... lid_reform

crawl:master and TomConrad:felid_reform are identical.

Looks like something got messed up in git.

[Grudge]

Oops, I forgot to commit my changes. Fixed the problem.

so now they are literally naked kobolds

What about their extra lives?

[VeryAngryFelid]

Come on, are you seriously going to "fix" Felids? It is a unique race, you are going to make it "yet another human" with minor difference. Yes, lack of armour is minor difference especially true for characters in statue form which is a very good spell for Fe. If you don't like some species, don't play it, it's very simple solution which does not waste time and resources.
Why don't you just add a new race if you have some interesting idea? Oh, wait, there is no interesting idea here, such species as new Felid would not be accepted because it is boring and overpowered.

[Wahaha]

Come on, are you seriously going to "fix" Felids? It is a unique race, you are going to make it "yet another human" with minor difference. Yes, lack of armour is minor difference especially true for characters in statue form which is a very good spell for Fe. If you don't like some species, don't play it, it's very simple solution which does not waste time and resources.

Unique does not mean good. It also doesn't mean it can't be improved. The ideas in this thread are unfinished and unfocused though.

[duvessa]

I mean really every proposal I hear (or make) about changing felids is either "remove felids" or something that might as well be "remove felids"

I personally don't think felids have much of anything worth keeping anymore now that they can zap wands - armourless is essentially fulfilled by Op and weaponless is just nothing interesting (it's how every troll plays already unless you find good rods). Innate amulet of life saving doesn't really change effective play except perhaps when swagjacking.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Unique does not mean good. It also doesn't mean it can't be improved. The ideas in this thread are unfinished and unfocused though.

What ideas?

I like the concept of Felids, but in practice they are a terrible race.

What concept of Felids do you like provided you are trying to change speed, HP, extra lives. Felid stabbing? It combines nicely with low HP and high speed.

They go against the design goals of Crawl, and I have noticed that if you die once, you are much more likely to die again. This means that extra lives are only sort of a safety net.

This means that Fe designers tried to go with design goals of crawl. Even for Felids a death does not come for free, as you have just said it makes you more likely to die. Extra lives help with unavoidable deaths, they don't make you play recklessly or feel invincible.

These changes will (hopefully) make Felids less tedious. More hp means less kiting and fleeing.

How many Felids have you won? With how many playing styles? Kiting is not necessary, it's all up to player. By the way FeBe is the worst combo for kiting in the game, it literally has no means of doing so since it cannot cast any spells or throw any missiles.

[bananaken]

In many ways I find Felids a welcome change of pace and less tedious than some other races because there's very little equipment to worry about and inventory management is a breeze. Their speed makes it so you can walk in and out of the majority of fights at will without worrying about over-committing. Once you get a few extra lives, you can get away with making more "bold" plays. I think Blaster Felids are a blast (:P) to play.

[bcadren]

If you wanted to fix felids I'd say:

Before:

  Code:

<Sequell> Fe: Fighting: 0, Dodge: 3, Stealth: 4, UC: 0, Splcast: -1, Conj: -1, Hexes: 4!, Charms: 2, Summ: 0, Nec: 0, Tloc: 4!, Tmut: 1, Fire: -1, Ice: -1, Air: -1, Earth: -1, Poison: -1, Inv: 0, Evo: 1, Exp: -1, HP: -4*, MP: 1

After:

  Code:

<Sequell> Fe: Fighting: 1, Dodge: 3, Stealth: 4, UC: 1!, Splcast: 0, Conj: 0, Hexes: 4!, Charms: 1, Summ: 0, Nec: 0, Tloc: 4!, Tmut: 1, Fire: 0, Ice: 0, Air: 0, Earth: 0, Poison: 0, Inv: 0, Evo: 1, Exp: 0, HP: -4*, MP: 1

Alternatively:
Having them trade a slightly decreased piety growth (not as bad as -Faith) for taking less damage from F$%@ING smite and other religious attacks would make them much more reasonable. Seriously; I've never had a Felid die from anything other than Giant Spores, Airstrike, Hellfire and SMITING.

[savageorange]

If you wanted to fix felids I'd say:

Before:

  Code:

<Sequell> Fe: Fighting: 0, Dodge: 3, Stealth: 4, UC: 0, Splcast: -1, Conj: -1, Hexes: 4!, Charms: 2, Summ: 0, Nec: 0, Tloc: 4!, Tmut: 1, Fire: -1, Ice: -1, Air: -1, Earth: -1, Poison: -1, Inv: 0, Evo: 1, Exp: -1, HP: -4*, MP: 1

After:

  Code:

<Sequell> Fe: Fighting: 1, Dodge: 3, Stealth: 4, UC: 1!, Splcast: 0, Conj: 0, Hexes: 4!, Charms: 1, Summ: 0, Nec: 0, Tloc: 4!, Tmut: 1, Fire: 0, Ice: 0, Air: 0, Earth: 0, Poison: 0, Inv: 0, Evo: 1, Exp: 0, HP: -4*, MP: 1

Seems reasonable -- Felids with a caster start are especially tedious, and positive UC apt + negative HP apt looks like a good and thematic balance to me.

It would be a little unthematic, but some level of resistance to hellfire and smiting would make sense to me too, since these are already terrible for characters that have decent HP; make hellfire and smiting merely terrible for felids, instead of ridiculously terrible.

[Pollen_Golem]

Alternatively:
Having them trade a slightly decreased piety growth (not as bad as -Faith) for taking less damage from F$%@ING smite and other religious attacks would make them much more reasonable. Seriously; I've never had a Felid die from anything other than Giant Spores, Airstrike, Hellfire and SMITING.

Meh, why not give them full immunity to smiting and a full -Faith intrinsic? Makes them more differentiated, which is exactly what is desirable.

[Sar]

that would be a nerf

[savageorange]

Yeah, -Faith sucks pretty bad. Demigods demonstrate that well, and god powers only become more valuable to a race that has major basic weaknesses (HP-4, no armour, no weapon brands).

[PleasingFungus]

Yeah, -Faith sucks pretty bad. Demigods demonstrate that well, and god powers only become more valuable to a race that has major basic weaknesses (HP-4, no armour, no weapon brands).

I think you're misunderstanding - "-faith" refers to "reduced piety gain, etc" - the inverse version of wearing an Amulet of Faith. it's not "can't worship", which is what demigods have.

That being said, the real reason I'm posting here is to appreciate the existence of the VeryAngryFelid account.

[partial]

give them an -30% hp and call it a day imo

[Sandman25]

That being said, the real reason I'm posting here is to appreciate the existence of the VeryAngryFelid account.

Sorry, VeryAngryFelid will not post any more. I wasn't going to post any more but couldn't stay silent spectating how my favorite race is ruined.

[goldstarbrother]

I made an account specifically to say this; Felids are one of my favorite races because of the extra lives and fragility. All of the proposed changes (besides controlled blink - that one's pretty good) in this thread are terrible. Felids are pretty good the way they are, but if anything needs to be changed, it's not the extra lives, it's how hard it is for them to kill things and how easy it is for them to get smited to death. Extra lives are there because there are some things that just kill Felids, and that's the way it should be - they're fragile but they have a bit of a safety net.

The problem is the fragility means you have to kite everything, but the solution isn't to make them stronger, it's to make them better at killing things stealthily and hiding (i.e. make them more effective kiters). Therefore I propose two changes: move the unarmed Felid attack into the same stabbing category as short blades, and have Felids bleed smoke when taking lots of damage like high level Dithmenos followers (also possibly make monsters lose track of them quicker somehow). The stabbing change means they can more reliably kill things, and the smoke makes it harder for them to instadie to smiting while complimenting the "hide and stab" plan that Felids are ostensibly built around. Plus, tactical smoke is a highly underused mechanic and it could use some love. Another possible change would be to give them a chance to trade places with unsuspecting enemies (i.e. sneak past them) while both the enemy and the player are engulfed in smoke, or make all enemies lose track of them instantly when they enter a 4x4+ patch of smoke. I've been interested in contributing for a while so I think I'll try and code these up when I get the chance.

[Sar]

move the unarmed Felid attack into the same stabbing category as short blades

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=2cf2ab92471ed5d69ace566fafa8284564712456

have Felids bleed smoke when taking lots of damage like high level Dithmenos followers

Why should they get god powers for free?

[goldstarbrother]

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=2cf2ab92471ed5d69ace566fafa8284564712456

Forgot about that, thanks.

Why should they get god powers for free?

The same reason they get extra lives for free? Presumably it would be after a certain level. Maybe let them breathe smoke after a certain level to differentiate it?

[tasonir]

Reiteration: The only thing felids need is the return of jump attack. And we should restore jumping as an ego on boots, but that's offtopic.

[Pollen_Golem]

It doesn't even have to be a jump attack - at least let them jump.

[Wahaha]

The ability never worked particularly well in its original form. Its original intent was to combine attacking and translocation, but because it ended up being a low-level ability, the attack become only a tool to ensure the repositioning wasn't brokenly powerful rather than a meaningful thing by itself. This was particularly true for stabbing, which had to be disabled in jump-attack so that it didn't break stealth. Boots of jumping never saw much use, and while there are a few fans of felid jumping, that species already has tremendously good positioning ability.

- Attacking and closing more than 1 tile of distance, all in 1 turn, is useful. How is the attack only a balancing factor for the repositioning? The attack's usefulness relative to the actual ability that the attack is part of (close distance+attack) is pretty useful. Who cares if the attack is not useful compared to a broken cblink ability, that the jump+attack ability ISN'T. This is badly phrased sorry.
- Boots of jumping were the most useful boots after boots of running, or sometimes more useful than boots of running. So "boots of jumping never saw much use" - what?
- Felids might be good at positioning because of fast speed but jumping is a very useful ability for them regardless.

I don't know if Dith fills the jumping niche. Maybe he does? I think boots of jumping and felid jumping are good things. It's hard to tell if Dith fills the entire jumping design space.

[archaeo]

Boots of jumping were the most useful boots after boots of running, or sometimes more useful than boots of running. So "boots of jumping never saw much use" - what?

Without commenting on anything else, boots of jumping were like lanterns of shadow: optimal to use, always ignored. They were indeed really good, but Gamma wasn't just talking out of his bum, as I also saw people routinely ignore them as they were playing.

If you click on Gamma's name in my previous post, btw, it will take you to the full commit. Agree or disagree with him, but I think he explained his reasoning quite well.

[Sandman25]

boots of jumping were like lanterns of shadow: optimal to use, always ignored

Boots of jumping could be fixed by giving draining, noise or 2 turns delay before next action.

[tasonir]

Boots of jumping were the most useful boots after boots of running, or sometimes more useful than boots of running. So "boots of jumping never saw much use" - what?

Without commenting on anything else, boots of jumping were like lanterns of shadow: optimal to use, always ignored. They were indeed really good, but Gamma wasn't just talking out of his bum, as I also saw people routinely ignore them as they were playing.

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 202635.txt

I would always take boots of jumping, assuming I don't have a really good randart, every time. I mean, I might be somewhat biased since I'm not going to take running if I'm playing chei (about 50-60% of the time), but jump was amazing. And tons of fun. Jumping over OOD's gives you a "I beat the system" feeling like few things in crawl can. I still to this day can picture the EXACT engagement in tartarus where I did this to an ancient lich, in this specific game. It was that awesome. This game is now over a year old.

  Code:

  Evoke Jump Attack |       |       |       |       |       |       |     3 |     7 |    90 ||   100

You'll note that I used them 100 times, however that's artificially low since I didn't find them until the very late game. My felid, on the other hand:

http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/tasonir/mor ... 155739.txt

  Code:

 Jump Attack       |       |       |       |       |       |    20 |       |     1 |     2 ||    23

Only jumped 23 times. Still, that's more than the 14 times I cast repel missiles all game long, which is something that should be ignored even though it is optimal to always use. Also this was only a 3 rune game, and I wasn't really that threatened by much, having statue form online in the level 13-15 range. Most of my jump attacks (20) come right after getting statue form online - while having mobility problems with the increased slowness, I needed to engage more carefully, and then a few levels later I had caught up on my training physical skills and stopped bothering.

I guess the main point here is that boots of jumping/felid jumping supported playstyles that some players are very, very attached to. Just because some other players didn't use it, doesn't mean they were unused. I've still never played dith, don't really care about dith much, and I don't want dith's existence to remove a useful item from the game. Because there's no way to combine shadow step with Chei's abilities now, and I sure as hell am not giving up +15 to all stats

Apologies to dith fans: I do intend to play a dith character soon, but I don't want to be forced into dith to be able to jump.