Remove D:1 Jackal Packs


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 723

Joined: Monday, 9th June 2014, 13:39

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 14:25

Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

A pack of jackals usually means death for a brand-new XL1 character, especially one with no weapon yet found (or worse, stuck with a cursed one first found). There is no escape from these packs; they spell doom if noticed. Maybe a sequell maven can derive the actual stats, but in my experience, there is nothing for them.

Note that I am not requesting that jackals be removed, just their spawning by packs on D:1. One, maybe two would be appropriate, but four encountered just outside the starting position is an instant death sentence where absolutely nothing can be done to prevent it if there are no doors.

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1774

Joined: Tuesday, 23rd December 2014, 23:39

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 14:56

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

Welll... meeting a jackal pack as your first enemy on d1 is bad, but I've survived them more often than not. Most recently was my MuAM where I killed them by making use of a wall to separate them, and by being stealthy enough that they didn't all notice me at once.

Still, there are certainly characters for whom it spells doom.
streaks: 5 fifteen rune octopodes. 15 diverse chars. 13 random chars. 24 NaWn^gozag.
251 total wins Berder hyperborean + misc
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guides: safe tactics value of ac/ev/sh forum toxicity

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1739

Joined: Tuesday, 13th March 2012, 02:48

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 15:53

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

147975 games for * (recent place=d:1 xl=1): 36513x, 25273x a hobgoblin, 18904x a jackal, 18277x a kobold, 10949x a giant gecko, 9278x a goblin, 8195x a gnoll, 4034x a bat, 3907x an ooze, 3288x a rat, 2463x a giant cockroach, 1686x a giant newt, 1368x a giant mite, 1225x a worm, 913x an adder, 837x a ball python, 177x a quokka, 167x the player character, 89x an adder zombie, 34x a jelly, 28x the capriciousness of Xom... etc

66440 games for * (recent place=d:1 xl=2): 16500x, 8526x a jackal, 8334x a hobgoblin, 7661x a kobold, 5677x a gnoll, 3870x a giant gecko, 3758x a goblin, 2604x an adder, 1309x a rat, 1229x a bat, 1153x an ooze, 1143x a giant mite, 1015x a worm, 724x a giant newt, 661x a giant cockroach, 278x a ball python, 237x the player character, 174x a quokka, 148x Robin, 140x Terence, 115x a worker ant, 110x the capriciousness of Xom... etc

9920 games for * (recent place=d:1 xl=3): 1789x, 1661x a gnoll, 1563x an adder, 653x a jackal, 570x a kobold, 568x a hobgoblin, 365x a goblin, 352x a worm, 292x Robin, 253x a giant gecko, 162x Terence, 109x a rat, 103x an ooze, 101x Ijyb, 99x a giant mite, 81x a worker ant, 80x a jelly, 74x a quokka, 71x a giant newt, 70x a bat, 65x Sigmund, 65x a giant cockroach, 64x an orc wizard, 46x an orc, 43x the capriciousness of Xom... etc

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Aule

Tartarus Sorceror

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Location: South Carolina

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 16:10

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

Rast's numbers make it look like in practice, jackals are not more dangerous than other enemies on D1 for low level characters.

Could it be that most of those deaths are from people who don't understand what they are doing, and the problem is that good decisions don't reduce deaths to jackals like they reduce deaths to hobgoblins and kobolds?

If D1 had a special noise factor that made everyone more effectively sneaky, would that be likely to help the problem?

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1601

Joined: Sunday, 14th July 2013, 16:36

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 16:21

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

jejorda2 wrote:Rast's numbers make it look like in practice, jackals are not more dangerous than other enemies on D1 for low level characters.

There are more hobgoblins than jackals, I think.

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Aule

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 853

Joined: Thursday, 29th August 2013, 18:39

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 16:28

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

I've always wanted units of crawl that were smaller scale than sprint, like the crawl version of chess puzzles. These could be for both teaching and challenge. (A good teaching one would be something that explicitly taught a new player how to use LOS to fight a centaur - I forget if that's in the tutorial or not.) The D:1 jackal pack is a natural fit for this sort of puzzle - I bet I'd be better at the situation if I could practice it over and over.

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 850

Joined: Wednesday, 25th April 2012, 03:07

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 16:41

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

Pure numbers aren't informative. How many more hobgoblins, rats, bats, etc. are created than jackals. If jackals have a low chance to spawn but still kill a high number, proportionally they could be the most dangerous. It is difficult to determine this from raw deaths alone.

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 850

Joined: Wednesday, 25th April 2012, 03:07

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 16:44

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

johlstei wrote:I've always wanted units of crawl that were smaller scale than sprint, like the crawl version of chess puzzles. These could be for both teaching and challenge. (A good teaching one would be something that explicitly taught a new player how to use LOS to fight a centaur - I forget if that's in the tutorial or not.) The D:1 jackal pack is a natural fit for this sort of puzzle - I bet I'd be better at the situation if I could practice it over and over.


You could start a bunch of XL1 characters for jackals and practice positioning and escape to your hearts content. Additionally, the entire game is practice to get better at this. Essentially, repetition over a long period of time. Just keep doing it. Slow down and think about each situation instead of tabbing.

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 853

Joined: Thursday, 29th August 2013, 18:39

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 16:53

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

ajon wrote:
johlstei wrote:I've always wanted units of crawl that were smaller scale than sprint, like the crawl version of chess puzzles. These could be for both teaching and challenge. (A good teaching one would be something that explicitly taught a new player how to use LOS to fight a centaur - I forget if that's in the tutorial or not.) The D:1 jackal pack is a natural fit for this sort of puzzle - I bet I'd be better at the situation if I could practice it over and over.


You could start a bunch of XL1 characters for jackals and practice positioning and escape to your hearts content. Additionally, the entire game is practice to get better at this. Essentially, repetition over a long period of time. Just keep doing it. Slow down and think about each situation instead of tabbing.
Yeah, but a formalized, repeatable way to present things like that would be valuable to helping players learn, I suspect. I could write about it more but I don't want to derail this thread, we should stick to jackabl packs.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 245

Joined: Sunday, 1st March 2015, 19:26

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 17:50

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

johlstei wrote:I bet I'd be better at the situation if I could practice it over and over.


Your winrate must be pretty good if you're not practicing this over and over. :D

Spider Stomper

Posts: 234

Joined: Thursday, 30th April 2015, 08:29

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 18:05

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

remove the early game. always same game play, or died in random. That's all.

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 173

Joined: Saturday, 23rd November 2013, 23:58

Post Monday, 13th July 2015, 18:30

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs


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File200

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 293

Joined: Tuesday, 25th October 2011, 05:04

Post Monday, 20th July 2015, 18:50

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

onget wrote:remove the early game. always same game play, or died in random. That's all.
Agreed. Also remove Grinder, Sigmund, Orc Wizards, Orc Priests, Menkaure, and anything else that can kill you early on. Then we should remove banishment and paralysis. Why should I have to wear MR items when they're suboptimal most of the time? Poison is bad too, and it sucks to miss Spriggans repeatedly, and high damage rolls can kill you too easily. Don't even get me started on malmutates. In fact, let's take out anything that uses the rng, and anything that can cripple me or make me use consumables, and also everything that ever killed me because it was clearly unfair and thus unfun.

For this message the author File200 has received thanks: 2
Rast, scorpionwarrior

Lair Larrikin

Posts: 28

Joined: Sunday, 10th July 2011, 05:17

Post Tuesday, 21st July 2015, 08:30

Re: Remove D:1 Jackal Packs

File200 wrote:
onget wrote:remove the early game. always same game play, or died in random. That's all.
Agreed. Also remove Grinder, Sigmund, Orc Wizards, Orc Priests, Menkaure, and anything else that can kill you early on. Then we should remove banishment and paralysis. Why should I have to wear MR items when they're suboptimal most of the time? Poison is bad too, and it sucks to miss Spriggans repeatedly, and high damage rolls can kill you too easily. Don't even get me started on malmutates. In fact, let's take out anything that uses the rng, and anything that can cripple me or make me use consumables, and also everything that ever killed me because it was clearly unfair and thus unfun.


Delete the crawl executable? Problem solved.

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