Remove Player Ghosts

[bcadren]

I remember this being discussed before but it never got it's own thread I don't think.

Proposal: Remove Player Ghosts from the game.

Reasons:

• Player ghosts are limited to a melee attack and spells; a lot of characters create easy bags of XP when their invocations, form spells, ranged attacks, etc. are stripped from the character.
• Occasionally player ghosts (especially conjurers) do manage to be something absurdly strong. Examples I've actually seen:
  • TeAE died in Lair with Conjure Ball Lightning, Meph Cloud and Swiftness; while wielding a Lajatang of Electrocution.
  • SpEn died on Orc:4 with Dazzling Spray, Confuse, Ensorcelled, Invis...and a dagger of chaos.
• Some ghosts fixate on weak spells.
  • Saw an Ogre Wizard that died with Sticky Flame and Fireball castable. The ghost spammed blink and summon butterflies.
• With GauBot active; I've seen 5 different GauBot --Be ghosts in one game and all of them were just as boring as the last. (Similar danger to just adding a silenced Frost Giant to the floor). [Melee backgrounds make boring ghosts. Bots add a lot of boring ghosts to the game.]
• Overall it boils down to; especially if you are lopping off half of player capabilities, it makes no sense to create 'dangerous monsters' from players that died here, because it creates both absurdly strong ones and absurdly weak ones.
• If you wanted random unique it makes more sense to create code specific to random unique instead of picking through bones files.

Either; cleanly remove ghosts (1) or replace them with something with random melee's and spells that are reasonably dangerous (as much as a normal unique) for the depth they are being spawned at; like an early game equivalent to an Ancient Lich or Pandemonium Lord. (2)

[ion_frigate]

Re bots: is there any reason that they can't just be flagged not to leave ghosts? It's not unheard of for public servers to modify the game a bit for usability (like NAO for NetHack), and not leaving a ton of prolific and boring ghosts around is a very good reason to do so.

Oh and I agree on removing ghosts entirely - they're also particularly annoying when they build up on local games - but I figured blocking bots from leaving ghosts might be a less controversial change.

[onget]

Early game player ghost is boring. Simply run away or die.

[Aule]

is there a way to check one's rate of ghost kills based on total encounters?

[ajon]

It would be interesting to see how many ghosts one has killed, how many one has created, and how many other players one's ghosts have killed. Maybe "slightly morbid and sadistic" is a more apt term than interesting too.

[Aule]

This link ranks player-killing ghosts, and player victims to ghosts. It should also rank ghost killing players, IMO, although I understand that would be far less straightforward to accomplish.

[ajon]

ahh does each entry represent all of a player's ghosts or a specific ghost?

[TeshiAlair]

I really like the flavor and concept of Player Ghosts, but the implementation needs work because of how swingy it can be. I really like the idea of making them portal-vault esque- you encounter a portal vault, or something more thematic like a gravestone in the dungeon, that has the v breakdown of the ghost on it. You can choose to activate it to fight a ghost. Rather than getting a massive chunk of exp, you get a bit of exp and a random one of the items they were holding, heavily weighted towards suitable to your character. This would make it less "must do for free stuff" than Labyrinths but preserve the fun elements.

[Berder]

Player ghosts are dangerous. I'm not sure where you've been playing but most of the time in the early game I just don't want to fight a player ghost, and later on it's an unusual challenge if I do.

[bel]

I kind of liked player ghosts when I was new, but now I just avoid them, so they are not too interesting. Though, I learnt pretty early on to avoid them. It was probably psychological, a pseudo-multiplayer feeling in a single-player game.

[KoboldLord]

Player ghosts are dangerous. I'm not sure where you've been playing but most of the time in the early game I just don't want to fight a player ghost, and later on it's an unusual challenge if I do.

There's usually no danger involved. Just look up the morgue to see if you got a trivial ghost or a bad ghost. If the source character died with an equipped launcher or otherwise was somehow neutered, collect your free xp. If the source character has a troublesome spell or got lucky with a melee weapon or defensive gear then you shouldn't even try, and just avoid the problem. You have perfect knowledge if you check the provided spoilers.

[archaeo]

Just look up the morgue

So first I'll do the snarky one-liner: "Yes, well-designed game mechanics often expect players to log into IRC to learn pertinent game information."

But to not be snarky, this aspect of ghosts is the one that bums me out most. Either the xv should be sufficiently detailed that players won't have to look up morgues, or the link to the morgue should be right there in the client. Personally, I never bother anymore, as xv is usually enough; the only thing missing is some kind of measure of how much melee damage a player should expect from a ghost.

Personally, I don't have a big problem with ghosts. I wish it was easier to turn them off in offline Crawl, where they're legitimately terrible, but online they don't really bother me. I do like TeshiAlair's idea, though, of turning ghosts into mini-portal vaults. I wouldn't actually want them to give away items that the ghost had, that would lead to some really dumb stuff, but making them into less "xp ballons" and more "minibosses for miniportals," maybe with modest xp and some loot? That seems cool to me.

[KoboldLord]

Dropping items is one of the few ways to make the current system worse. Nethack does that, and the result is a concept called 'bones stuffing', where you intentionally die with an important item so the bones file can be passed onto another character of yours for a challenge run. This exploit enabled all of the 10+ conduct runs that Nethack has on record, plus the ridiculous <2500 turn speedruns.

[Tenaya]

Dropping items is one of the few ways to make the current system worse. Nethack does that, and the result is a concept called 'bones stuffing', where you intentionally die with an important item so the bones file can be passed onto another character of yours for a challenge run. This exploit enabled all of the 10+ conduct runs that Nethack has on record, plus the ridiculous <2500 turn speedruns.

Ahem... actually, no. My 11-conduct NAO ascension was done without bones.

edit: but yeah, adding bones stuffing to Crawl is not going to happen.

[Sprucery]

My 11-conduct NAO ascension was done without bones.

Wow.

[Aule]

Player ghosts are dangerous. I'm not sure where you've been playing but most of the time in the early game I just don't want to fight a player ghost, and later on it's an unusual challenge if I do.

I dunno, I find them pretty doable, nowadays. It's one of the few aspects of Crawl I feel I'm pretty good at. I wanted to get a hard number to confirm or refute that feeling, but I haven't been able to figure out how to get !lg to give me anything about that. As it is, I rarely leave one behind, and they're usually red when I take them out.

Edit: Oh, and I never bother to read their morgues.

[Aule]

ahh does each entry represent all of a player's ghosts or a specific ghost?

Not certain, but I'd guess all, otherwise the list would be endless.

Edit: I've branched my statistical querying investigations into a new thread, over yonder.

[archaeo]

Dropping items is one of the few ways to make the current system worse.

You did see that I said, "I wouldn't actually want them to give away items that the ghost had, that would lead to some really dumb stuff," right? I completely agree: I like the portal vault idea, and I'm not opposed to the notion of those vaults having some random loot, perhaps with the quality tied to the danger of the ghost, as long as those vaults were sufficiently rare.

[Rast]

Dropping items is one of the few ways to make the current system worse. Nethack does that, and the result is a concept called 'bones stuffing', where you intentionally die with an important item so the bones file can be passed onto another character of yours for a challenge run. This exploit enabled all of the 10+ conduct runs that Nethack has on record, plus the ridiculous <2500 turn speedruns.

Ahem... actually, no. My 11-conduct NAO ascension was done without bones.

He means, I think, 12-conducts. 12 is the max.

[dowan]

Not to say I think ghosts should drop items or anything, but how exactly does the nethack example show they're bad? It's a big problem that some people enjoyed doing weird stuff and played the game in a different way than usual? How did someone's 10+ conduct run cause you to enjoy the game less?

I just had a 3 game streak broken by a conjurer ghost on D3 or D4, the punk hit me with a dazzling spray, I didn't have curing, so I wandered around confused, ate 2 more dazzling sprays and died. Of course, to balance that out the previous game had a hunter ghost that gave me a ton of XP with basically no risk. So I guess it's like a fish stick that's burned black on the outside and frozen on the inside, delicious!

No wait... I mean terrible. In two ways at once.

[ontoclasm]

Man, okay, I see that argument over and over: "If you don't like it, just don't use it! Let us play how we want!" And it's a really, really bad argument.

Suppose, due to a strange bug, the game was guaranteed to generate a +9 demon blade on D:1, but only if you manually walk over every square on the floor. I love demon blades, and this is a fun little bonus for those of us who are willing to walk around for a while! It makes the game more enjoyable for me, and taking it out would be a massive nerf to my playstyle of choice. What does it matter to you if some people enjoy walking on all the squares and playing the game a different way than usual? How does my using the demon blade trick cause you to enjoy the game less?

Defining what you can and can't do in the game is literally and exactly what developers do. If you want to "play how you want" there's always wizmode.

[dowan]

Sure, and I generally agree with you. But the only ill effect listed was that it allowed people to do weird runs, not that it promoted doing more tedious behavior. In your example, everyone should step on all the floor tiles because otherwise you're seriously gimping your character by not having a +9 demon blade. In the nethack example, you could set up a weird conduct run if you wanted to, but it certainly wasn't optimal by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, you have to lose repeatedly for this to work... why not just win with the character with the good items?

And by the way, bones stuffing still exists in a form in crawl. You can create all the hunters you want, and get them killed while wielding bows all over the dungeon, even killed by the other ghosts so you can get multiples on the same floor. Then you can have the character you actually intend to win with kill those XP bags. Actually, if you intend to win, it's optimal to do this tedious thing, because it would make your character that much more powerful. And if you intended to do some weird conduct, this tedious behavior would help!

[Sandman25]

Actually, if you intend to win, it's optimal to do this tedious thing, because it would make your character that much more powerful.

I doubt the underlined word. I wizmoded a Dr recently and didn't realize that color is picked automatically when setting XL to 7 by &l command so I set XL to 6.99 with intention to kill a monster and get to XL 7 naturally. Unfortunately it got truncated to XL 6 so I tried killing monsters right on D1. And you know what? It took several goblins to get to 6.01 so I created an Orc Warrior instead and instantly got to 6.47 after killing it.
I mean even if you got to XL 7 on D1, it will not help much, you will have something like XL 26.02 instead of XL 26.00 later.
And I doubt someone is killing XL 15 characters just to help future characters have XL 26.03 instead of XL 26.00

[dowan]

Hmm, I think you misunderstood my post. The "much" goes with "that", not with "more". As in, how much more powerful are you? That much. Not, you will be much more powerful.

Also, in your example, if you got to XL7 on d1, the advantage isn't that you'll be more powerful in Zot, it's that you're much more likely to actually make it to Zot due to the early game power.

Now I've typed the word much, much too many times, and it doesn't look like a real word anymore...

[Siegurt]

Hmm, I think you misunderstood my post. The "much" goes with "that", not with "more". As in, how much more powerful are you? That much. Not, you will be much more powerful.

Also, in your example, if you got to XL7 on d1, the advantage isn't that you'll be more powerful in Zot, it's that you're much more likely to actually make it to Zot due to the early game power.

Now I've typed the word much, much too many times, and it doesn't look like a real word anymore...

Much too much much

[Chicken]

Never mind seeing how many ghosts your player has killed... the REAL stat you want to see is how many PLAYERS your ghosts on one of the public servers have killed.

[ajon]

Much more than everyone else's I hope.

[tasonir]

If I understand the ghosts in the machine page correctly, that's exactly what's shown there. I believe it's for all of a player's ghosts combined, right? So I'm ranked #149 with 68 players killed by my ghosts (sorry!), and logicninja is leading with 339 player kills from his ghosts. Aule linked it above, but again, the link is http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/gkills.html.

[lessens]

Instead of removing player ghosts convert every player ghost to a CeFE that casts fireball if <xl15 and firestorm if >xl15.