Luring (was: DCSS has a power creep problem)

[Ceann]

I am very fine with more deaths.

I don't have a problem dying.
I have a problem dying because there is no tactically correct decision to make. Making adjustments to essentially make all classes "Naga" isn't really ideal. Neither is making stealth useless because everything either shouts constantly.

[Hurkyl]

Plenty of games do just fine requiring you to fight entire groups in the terrain you encountered them (unless you successfully use an escape ability to get away from the fight entirely). Crawl can be tweaked to be one of those games if desired.

[all before]

Luring needs a drawback.
The drawback should be: should be the risk of running into other monsters and putting yourself in a worse situation.
The way to implement that drawback is: to make levels smaller and spawn more monsters awake and/or by stairs.

Having monsters shout as they chase you just encourages you to stairdance more, and be even more tedious in the way you explore a level.
The ood clock is already unintuitive, why implement a different version with even more special casing?

[ion_frigate]

One solution would be to combine IVAN and Brogue:

• IVAN: You can run, doubling your movement speed or more, but after a fairly short period it massively hampers your combat abilities, and also increases food consumption.
• Brogue: Monsters can follow you across levels, and groups of monsters *always* follow as a group.

This is meant to be a starting point - obviously it would need some adjustment to work in DCSS. Running would definitely need to create a ton of noise, and probably also increase monster spawning (so that running back to a cleared level wouldn't be safe). It would still need a lot of re-balancing, but any solution to luring is probably going to require some fairly fundamental changes - half-measures like energy randomization have done very little. This particular solution has several benefits:

• It (hopefully) gives luring a real tactical and strategic cost, creating a "safety now for a more dangerous situation later"-type choice, which many of the proposals here have been suggesting.
• It makes the luring that does happen a lot less tedious, since you aren't getting into a boring speed-10 chase with no definite end (hopefully the improved group AI and stair-following would be enough to discourage normal speed 10 luring. If not, all monsters could just be made move speed 11).
• It completely removes stairdancing.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

In Crawl, there can only be one creature on a square at a time, so things like corners will tend to make groups have "odd" behavior -- they can't *all* take the shortest path to the player so they spend turns pathing around each other. So as you lure groups around terrain, they tend to elongate and get separated. If you make the group leaders hang back with the rest of the group, it means they'll fall behind relatively fast, so walking away from the whole group is easier than it is now. And since ranged combat exists, it's even easier to kite the leader of the group, because they'll spend a bunch of time waiting for the pack's stragglers instead of walking towards the player.

It's not really an issue if monsters break off from their group because they're too fast, but it is an issue if the group hangs back instead of following the leader as closely as possible.


The order in which monsters take action after you do something is arbitrary.

Proposal: this order is instead based on the distance between monster and player. So, monsters closest to you get to act first. This would be an improvement and solve most of the group AI self-weakening.

We know this wouldn't be a computational or programming issue. Noise propagation goes tile-by-tile, and often happens several times per turn. We can similarly have a propagation of "taking an action" emenate from the player, after every player action. We could make it very simple and ignore everything other than distance; or, we could make this propagation stop at walls (probably better); water/lava/doors should have no effect.

Problems I can think of regarding this: I can see allies messing the system a little. Also this can buff the player very occasionally, e.g. trampling monsters pushing you out of sight from a smiter, denying the smiter a free smite. Monsters with Dig would act later than is optimal for monsters, if the propagation stops at walls. Nothing serious.


Note, with this system, two monsters won't repeatedly swap with each other in the same turn, wasting time. The monster closest to you will swing at you, then the farther monster will swap closer to you. Now let's talk about a related mechanic: monsters making room for other monsters. It takes them time to do so, and often lets you get in a free hit if there's a pillar to dance around:

  Code:

your  .Y.  next  Y..  NEXT  YY.
turn  @#Y  turn  @#Y  turn  @#.

There are multiple mechanics here, and they partially nerf the group. Let's change it to a single mechanic (simpler is better, generally) which buffs the group. Proposal: monsters don't initiate movement to open space for other monsters. In this example, the yak closest to you goes first, and hits you. Then the second yak goes, and displaces the first yak, and the first yak has the immediate choice of where to be displaced. The first yak tries to get displaced as close to the player as possible, which may mean swapping with the second yak, depending on terrain etc. If swapping is refused by the first yak (e.g. the second yak is flying over lava, or the first yak is petrified) then the second yak does something other than swap with the first yak. Picture:

  Code:

your  .Y.  next  ?Y?  SAME  YY.
turn  @#Y  turn  @#?  turn  @#.

In both systems, the two-yak group hits the player once, but takes 2 turns to do so in the first system, and only 1 turn to do so in the second system.

P.S. apologies, I feel like I'm lagging behind in the conversation and derailing the thread with my focus on simple, universal mechanics, instead of what I feel will be the next Energy Randomization or Legitimate Deck Use (link). The thread blew up very quickly.

P.P.S.

A better option would be to have at least one *meaningful* choice to compete, which means luring needs a cost. Lured creatures shouting all the time nullifies the conduct completely, which just moves the problem elsewhere without solving it.

what conduct? what problem? I can't parse this paragraph at all. For what it's worth, degenerate luring is "luring part of a pack away from the rest of the pack" and it's the degenerate tactic that would be nullified by lured creatures shouting.

Plenty of games do just fine requiring you to fight entire groups in the terrain you encountered them (unless you successfully use an escape ability to get away from the fight entirely). Crawl can be tweaked to be one of those games if desired.

Crawl looks like that game to newbies. It’s only by spoiling yourself or being a genius that you learn otherwise. (I count walking away as a “successful use of an escape ability”)

Luring needs a drawback.
The drawback should be: should be the risk of running into other monsters and putting yourself in a worse situation.
The way to implement that drawback is: to make levels smaller and spawn more monsters awake and/or by stairs.

I disagree with the first two and how does #3 do what you say it is supposed to do? I don't think it does that.

[Ceann]

One solution would be to combine IVAN and Brogue:

• IVAN: You can run, doubling your movement speed or more, but after a fairly short period it massively hampers your combat abilities, and also increases food consumption.
• Brogue: Monsters can follow you across levels, and groups of monsters *always* follow as a group.

This is meant to be a starting point - obviously it would need some adjustment to work in DCSS. Running would definitely need to create a ton of noise, and probably also increase monster spawning (so that running back to a cleared level wouldn't be safe). It would still need a lot of re-balancing, but any solution to luring is probably going to require some fairly fundamental changes - half-measures like energy randomization have done very little. This particular solution has several benefits:

• It (hopefully) gives luring a real tactical and strategic cost, creating a "safety now for a more dangerous situation later"-type choice, which many of the proposals here have been suggesting.
• It makes the luring that does happen a lot less tedious, since you aren't getting into a boring speed-10 chase with no definite end (hopefully the improved group AI and stair-following would be enough to discourage normal speed 10 luring. If not, all monsters could just be made move speed 11).
• It completely removes stairdancing.

How does this end up being anything except a nerf to ranged classes,stealth, casters?
Any race that an inherent speed boost "in the case of Fe and Sp at great cost" receives a difficulty upgrade.

I am fine with things waking up, you can add something to stealth to maybe diminish sound or something like that, but I don't think whatever drawback is added should impact ranged/fragile races that have speed bonuses as part of the compensation to their huge HP mallus.

[ion_frigate]

All characters, melee, caster, and ranged would have to think more carefully about how much of a group they can kill - I don't think that's a problem, and it works very well in Brogue. It's not even that huge a nerf to casters anyway: if you manage to run out of MP attacking a large group of monsters and need to retreat, there's a good chance the survivors are already in melee range anyway. And "attack part of a group, retreat up stairs, come down different stairs, repeat" is a really dull strategy that deserves to die anyway.

In addition, Ce and Sp are generally viewed as overpowered anyway, and this isn't exactly a huge nerf to them - they can still run away from just about everything (without generating noise/monsters), they just no longer have the option of running back to the stairs and pressing 5. Fe have never been a well-liked race, and I highly doubt this would make a huge difference.

Furthermore, any large change to game mechanics is necessarily going to make some species weaker, and others stronger:

• AC nerf weakened MD/HO/Mi by quite a bit
• AC unnerf weakened Ko/Ha/Sp, since you could no longer get +5 robes/leather armor
• Aptitude system changeover nerfed several races: Dg and Ds had aptitudes of 110 across the board, which is halfway between 0 and -1; Te (then Ke) had weapon apts of 75, actually closer to +2 than the +1 they got.
• The increased starting HP was a huge buff to low HP species, since they got proportionally a lot more HP (IIRC it was a straight up +3 HP for everyone).

[ontoclasm]

How does this end up being anything except a nerf to ranged classes,stealth, casters?

Okay, you keep saying this, so let me clarify: there's nothing wrong with changing balance in the process of fixing things. If we're not allowed to change anything that nerfs a playstyle in any way, we can't ever change anything substantial at all. If a change turns out to hurt those character types too much, then they can be buffed in other ways afterwards. Focus on whether the change is good design-wise, not on how it impacts the power of such-and-such a character.

e: f;b

[Rast]

If we're talking about possible penalties, lemme derail my own derail thread a little further. I've been thinking about a concept of a "doom clock", a bad-things-timer that generally increases over time and increases more under certain circumstances.

Because regen isn't strong enough already.

[ydeve]

All characters, melee, caster, and ranged would have to think more carefully about how much of a group they can kill - I don't think that's a problem, and it works very well in Brogue. It's not even that huge a nerf to casters anyway: if you manage to run out of MP attacking a large group of monsters and need to retreat, there's a good chance the survivors are already in melee range anyway. And "attack part of a group, retreat up stairs, come down different stairs, repeat" is a really dull strategy that deserves to die anyway.

I fail to see how this proposal stops running upstairs to press 5. Sure, you can't come back down the same flight of stairs because you have low AC and tons of monsters waiting there, but there are 3 flights of stairs...

ETA: Also, any caster with experience would not be surrounded with a bunch of enemies in melee range when they run out of MP. You run early, so you go upstairs with like 1 death yak and half your mp, kill the death yak safely, then press 5. Then go down a different staircase if there are a bunch of monsters below, which happens already because of conjurations noise

[WalkerBoh]

Making enemies faster is the easiest and most effective solution. This also has the benefit of allowing you to remove energy randomization, which is easily one of the most aggravating ways to die. This would result in more deaths early in the game when you get a couple bad rolls and can no longer pillar dance to restore HP - to me this is not an issue, since doing this always feels like a moral loss anyways.

[WingedEspeon]

Making enemies faster is the easiest and most effective solution. This also has the benefit of allowing you to remove energy randomization, which is easily one of the most aggravating ways to die. This would result in more deaths early in the game when you get a couple bad rolls and can no longer pillar dance to restore HP - to me this is not an issue, since doing this always feels like a moral loss anyways.

Except that doesn't work because luring is still a good tactic on nagas/chei characters and means that I reach the point where I can suboptimaly stop luring so much and still not generate a significant chance of death as a result take longer. It also makes being able to sinply run away, run up some stairs, go down some different stairs and dive to the next level technique for dealing with an early unique a lot less reliable and IMO recognizing that you don't want to fight X at all and that you are willing to bypass the entire level just to not fight X should work.

[Siegurt]

A better option would be to have at least one *meaningful* choice to compete, which means luring needs a cost. Lured creatures shouting all the time nullifies the conduct completely, which just moves the problem elsewhere without solving it.

what conduct? what problem? I can't parse this paragraph at all. For what it's worth, degenerate luring is "luring part of a pack away from the rest of the pack" and it's the degenerate tactic that would be nullified by lured creatures shouting.

Actually you're incorrect, the degenerate part of luring is that it's optimal to lure *every creature* whether a single creature or part of a pack, into previously cleared territory, breaking packs apart is a relatively minor (and I would argue even a beneficial aspect of) luring.

The reason it's optimal is that every combat action taken might attract attention and every time a new creature joins a combat, it causes additional risk.

The additional risk of *not* luring a creature into a cleared area to kill it is small, but doing so consistently reduces your overall risk by a pretty significant margin, it's also very tedious, *that* is the problem that I'm talking about, and seeking to solve. I personally don't see any problem with being able to break apart packs with good tactics, but whether it is a problem or not, it's not the overwhelming problem with luring.

[WalkerBoh]

Except that doesn't work because luring is still a good tactic on nagas/chei characters and means that I reach the point where I can suboptimaly stop luring so much and still not generate a significant chance of death as a result take longer.

I don't think the point is to make luring not a good tactic. Some amount of luring is okay (it's indistinguishable from tactical repositioning, in my opinion) - it's the situations where you're consistently dragging enemies 15-20 spaces away, or back to a specific level feature (killhole, staircase, etc.) where it gets annoying. Not sure I understand what you mean about it taking longer to reach the point where you don't have to use luring as much.

It also makes being able to sinply run away, run up some stairs, go down some different stairs and dive to the next level technique for dealing with an early unique a lot less reliable and IMO recognizing that you don't want to fight X at all and that you are willing to bypass the entire level just to not fight X should work.

Or it just means you have to burn consumables, or deal with the enemy in some other way. These situations occur rarely enough for most characters that this is an acceptable solution to me (especially with Crawl's current overabundance of consumables). It sucks early on sometimes though, when you potentially have few ways of handling enemies.

[Ceann]

How does this end up being anything except a nerf to ranged classes,stealth, casters?

Okay, you keep saying this, so let me clarify: there's nothing wrong with changing balance in the process of fixing things. If we're not allowed to change anything that nerfs a playstyle in any way, we can't ever change anything substantial at all. If a change turns out to hurt those character types too much, then they can be buffed in other ways afterwards. Focus on whether the change is good design-wise, not on how it impacts the power of such-and-such a character.

e: f;b

I don't think the one shoe fits all approach is correct. Who is the primary offender of this? I watch a reasonable number of games and it is not as though I see someone luring back every single enemy they see, most of the time people use a choke point more than luring, or that this is somehow involved in a game breaking strategy that creates unfair scoring. If someone wants to tank their score by playing very carefully, why is that a problem?

I have been gaming for a long time, so the need for the balanced is understood, but if you are going to make a change there is no reason you can't account for what impacts a change can have and then implement a change with those things in mind.

[svendre]

Crawl is a complex game with any changes made sure to impact in ways not fully expected. What one person thinks is a nerf, may be a buff to another. Surely changes should be made - it keeps the game fresh and interesting, but changes should be made keeping an overall design goal in mind. Since I'm not in any sort of communication besides occasionally reading stuff here, I am not really sure what those main goals are in detail. What I can say are my perspectives as a player who has played the game across a large number of changes and how I feel about it.

I view that various combinations of races/classes/skills, tactics and strategies boils down to:

1) Take a risky path of a highly concentrated, offensive route where you may demolish almost everything quickly. The reward... higher score, challenge, fun for some. The main issue is that RNG will throw you curve balls of things which are outside your primary method of killing.

2) Take a safer, more defensive route. This applies not only to tactics (such as luring), but choices about prioritizing training defensive skills over offense and whittling away at the dungeon methodically. The reward... can be satisfaction if the player enjoys achieving a high win/ratio.

So ask yourself, which reward is correct and which is wrong? It depends on the player. At present with luring a possible mechanic, a player can choose to use it - or not. Removing it will have consequences which are difficult to predict, takes away player #1's perception that they are being punished for playing aggressively (although they still have a choice) but completely removes player #2's reward for playing leaving them no choice but to play like player #1 or not play.

~~~ All subjectivity aside (a dangerous thing), if the Gods decree that there is a right and wrong way to play, which is ultimately the fate of the "Gods" to decide, otherwise nothing ever changes... and they decide, we want players to focus on speed playing, charging in - less retreat, kill or be killed with each encounter... then, why should luring be the only thing nerfed? Why wouldn't you also want to nerf AC (a bigger offender in this case imo)? Are you sure that AC for example, isn't a larger factor in the offense/defense balance?

I think what happens is that a newer player starts out gung ho, and gets the floor mopped with their face. Then they employ more defensive strategies, eventually landing a win. Over time, as their knowledge and experience in the game increases, they begin to become bored playing combinations and tactics which they feel are more of a sure thing. It's then more interesting to try something bolder, riskier and see if they can still pull off a winning outcome. I believe it's very likely most people who would be at a stage of "developer" and such are more likely to fall into this category because they've played the game a lot more. There are always exceptions.

I ask of those who contribute their time and effort, which I think is not trivial for a game like this - to at least please be careful to try to see how and why the game could be appealing to other people when making decisions.

One of the best features of crawl that I've seen are the multiple "modes". For example, the speed game, is a perfect arena for diving into an extreme high risk mode of the game. The standard game, due to it's turn-based scoring method seems a balance. Then, I also recall (fuzzy at the moment) another tower-defense like mode where you fight an endless onslaught of enemies, which appeals to the survivor. Having these multiple modes means you can perfectly appeal to a larger audience without shaking game balance issues as much.

I'll admit here my view. I would like crawl to be a game which is )(*@% deadly, just not from cheesy mechanics. I do feel it has gotten easier over time, but that is complicated to answer why. The thing I most enjoyed was trying to figure out, what is the absolutely best - more sure way to win 100%. I didn't want that to be easy, but that was the game for me. Also, I had fun figuring out - what is the ultimate strongest character capable of surviving 1000 zig runs. These goals had no room whatsoever for taking turn-count into consideration with exception of the food clock and piety. In that sense, I feel like I would be a decent candidate to talk about what is overpowered from this perspective at least. On that note, while luring is certainly helpful - I hardly think it is the biggest "offender" in playing the game in the safest possible way. The things that are, is a topic for another discussion and I won't get into it unless anyone even wants to know.

More recently, I've taken an interest in trying some games maximizing turn-count. The trouble I have with it, is when I do this, I really want to go extreme... it usually ends up totally amazing until RNG decrees "splat", and the problem I have with it is, although I most definitely enjoy the early game better than late game, I don't want to replay it quite so much. Only after characters reach a higher level, and only if they have more time, can you tinker with more combinations of skills and spell/interactions.

In conclusion, I'd just like to say - if defensive behavior is bothering some people, please consider taking the issue to different game modes rather than decreeing what is the correct way to have fun playing. I'd like to see a standard game, with an emphasis on winning being an amazing accomplishment, no matter how long it takes... along with the speed modes, and the current balanced in the middle.

Thanks for your consideration.

[ion_frigate]

I fail to see how this proposal stops running upstairs to press 5. Sure, you can't come back down the same flight of stairs because you have low AC and tons of monsters waiting there, but there are 3 flights of stairs...

ETA: Also, any caster with experience would not be surrounded with a bunch of enemies in melee range when they run out of MP. You run early, so you go upstairs with like 1 death yak and half your mp, kill the death yak safely, then press 5. Then go down a different staircase if there are a bunch of monsters below, which happens already because of conjurations noise

And then said monsters follow you through that flight of stairs - part of this proposal is that monsters can do that whether they're adjacent when you take the stairs. The point is that there would be no safe space to run and retreat to; you'd have the option of basically trading a mini-mini-Orb Run for a large burst of movement speed.

[ontoclasm]

Crawl is a complex game with any changes made sure to impact in ways not fully expected. What one person thinks is a nerf, may be a buff to another. Surely changes should be made - it keeps the game fresh and interesting, but changes should be made keeping an overall design goal in mind. Since I'm not in any sort of communication besides occasionally reading stuff here, I am not really sure what those main goals are in detail. What I can say are my perspectives as a player who has played the game across a large number of changes and how I feel about it.

I understand how you feel, but the gist of your argument seems to be "I should get to play how I want to." If you want to use luring extensively, shouldn't we let you? But that's not how game design works; a large part of a developer's job is saying "no, you can't play that way." That might sound bad, but consider: your argument could just as easily apply to, e.g., a basketball player who just really enjoys carrying the ball in his hands and doesn't understand why the basketball devs made this dumb rule where you have to "dribble" it all the time. Or maybe he wants to take his time and advance up the court strategically -- why does there need to be a shot timer hurrying him along? From his perspective, those rules are curtailing his enjoyment, and only there to please elite, high-level players who've grown bored with a slow, defensive approach to basketball.

Removing luring will not stop people from playing defensively. In fact, assuming we go for a relatively sane solution, it will still be a good idea to reposition yourself in combat, and to pull enemies into better positions in which to fight them. You guys keep acting like we're just going to flat-out remove your ability to take steps when monsters or visible or something, so that every fight is TO THE DEATH, but that's not remotely what's being discussed. What we (well, I) want is to remove that thing where you find 6 slime creatures, laboriously catch the attention of precisely one of them, drag it 100 steps to and up the nearest set of stairs, kill it, and then go back down and repeat 5 more times. Yes, I have done this. I have seen other people do it. This is not some imaginary theorycrafting fantasy, it is a 100% real thing people do, and the fact that it's possible to abstain from doing it doesn't matter in the slightest. I do it sometimes, because it's powerful; I avoid it sometimes, because it's annoying and takes a long time; I resent the situation because I'm paying, in in-game safety, for out-of-game convenience.

[kuniqs]

Why people (me) lure:
1. Because damage spikes make fighting more than 1 monster at a time much more dangerous
2. Because fighting causes noise which attracts monsters, which leads to point 1
3. Because shouting alerts nearby sleeping monsters who will wander around the shouter's original position. Those monsters will shout too, alerting even more trouble
4. Because there's always a possibility that our safe escape route (stairs) will be blocked by a wandering monster
5. Because it's almost impossible to 'lose' a monster that's chasing you

1st is not going to be 'fixed' anytime soon, and I like damage spikes 'cause they make the game tense. 2nd can be removed, because combat noise is spoilery and special-cased in branches and generally annoying. 3rd & 4th are not bad by themselves and will become less problematic once you fix 2nd.

My fix of 5th is to improve the chance that a monster will switch to 'wandering' once you break LOS. Currently, I only managed to do this with a reaper and uncannily stealthy char by pillar-dancing him for like a 100 turns.

[Hurkyl]

When I was first playing crawl, a few lucky (and noticed) experiences gave me the impression that you could be a stealthy stabber by losing enemies and trying to stab them while they're searching for you. It took a long time where I tried to do this off and on before I gave it up as a bad job.

[Sprucery]

In my experience, it is pretty easy to lose a chasing monster if you have some stealth. But you have to break LOS for several turns (twisty corridors are your friends). Of course, if the monster is already close to you this is harder to achieve.

[lethediver]

Crawl is a complex game with any changes made sure to impact in ways not fully expected. What one person thinks is a nerf, may be a buff to another. Surely changes should be made - it keeps the game fresh and interesting, but changes should be made keeping an overall design goal in mind. Since I'm not in any sort of communication besides occasionally reading stuff here, I am not really sure what those main goals are in detail. What I can say are my perspectives as a player who has played the game across a large number of changes and how I feel about it.

I understand how you feel, but the gist of your argument seems to be "I should get to play how I want to." If you want to use luring extensively, shouldn't we let you? But that's not how game design works; a large part of a developer's job is saying "no, you can't play that way." That might sound bad, but consider: your argument could just as easily apply to, e.g., a basketball player who just really enjoys carrying the ball in his hands and doesn't understand why the basketball devs made this dumb rule where you have to "dribble" it all the time. Or maybe he wants to take his time and advance up the court strategically -- why does there need to be a shot timer hurrying him along? From his perspective, those rules are curtailing his enjoyment, and only there to please elite, high-level players who've grown bored with a slow, defensive approach to basketball.

Removing luring will not stop people from playing defensively. In fact, assuming we go for a relatively sane solution, it will still be a good idea to reposition yourself in combat, and to pull enemies into better positions in which to fight them. You guys keep acting like we're just going to flat-out remove your ability to take steps when monsters or visible or something, so that every fight is TO THE DEATH, but that's not remotely what's being discussed. What we (well, I) want is to remove that thing where you find 6 slime creatures, laboriously catch the attention of precisely one of them, drag it 100 steps to and up the nearest set of stairs, kill it, and then go back down and repeat 5 more times. Yes, I have done this. I have seen other people do it. This is not some imaginary theorycrafting fantasy, it is a 100% real thing people do, and the fact that it's possible to abstain from doing it doesn't matter in the slightest. I do it sometimes, because it's powerful; I avoid it sometimes, because it's annoying and takes a long time; I resent the situation because I'm paying, in in-game safety, for out-of-game convenience.

Yeah, I do this as well. I think part of the problem is that the game IS designed around luring - most characters aren't strong enough to take on groups of mobs without special tactics, and often times the only tactic available is luring (the slime example is a good one because of the burning walls preventing bottlenecks).

Thats not an insurmountable problem, but it seems to me that if luring is gimped the game will need a massive rebalance. That, or the addition of some new tactic or resource that the player can use in place of luring. Many char types currently require luring/stair abuse to actually make it to the late game. I'm thinking primarly of fighter/caster hybrids or any race with a frail early/mid game.

Luring IS extremely strong... there's a reason they say walking backward is the strongest move in crawl... not sure this is an issue thats actually fixable without drastically reworking the game though. Given the nature of roguelikes and the fact that players want to win, defensive, arch-conservative play is kind of inevitable. Unless you gave the player a REALLY strong incentive to not waste turns, and i dont think you can do that without making it a totally different game.

Having said all that, i do think smaller maps would help somewhat. I mean, look at zigs. lol.

[Lasty]

The ood clock is already unintuitive, why implement a different version with even more special casing?

Because, as I explained, it would replace several problematic aspects of the game (food and traps). I question whether the OOD clock is unintuitive, but that's not really relevant here: the purely-hypothetical doom clock would be a core game mechanism, and it would only achieve its goal if it was displayed clearly and explained thoroughly.

[Ceann]

Crawl is a complex game with any changes made sure to impact in ways not fully expected. What one person thinks is a nerf, may be a buff to another. Surely changes should be made - it keeps the game fresh and interesting, but changes should be made keeping an overall design goal in mind. Since I'm not in any sort of communication besides occasionally reading stuff here, I am not really sure what those main goals are in detail. What I can say are my perspectives as a player who has played the game across a large number of changes and how I feel about it.

I understand how you feel, but the gist of your argument seems to be "I should get to play how I want to." If you want to use luring extensively, shouldn't we let you? But that's not how game design works; a large part of a developer's job is saying "no, you can't play that way." That might sound bad, but consider: your argument could just as easily apply to, e.g., a basketball player who just really enjoys carrying the ball in his hands and doesn't understand why the basketball devs made this dumb rule where you have to "dribble" it all the time. Or maybe he wants to take his time and advance up the court strategically -- why does there need to be a shot timer hurrying him along? From his perspective, those rules are curtailing his enjoyment, and only there to please elite, high-level players who've grown bored with a slow, defensive approach to basketball.

Removing luring will not stop people from playing defensively. In fact, assuming we go for a relatively sane solution, it will still be a good idea to reposition yourself in combat, and to pull enemies into better positions in which to fight them. You guys keep acting like we're just going to flat-out remove your ability to take steps when monsters or visible or something, so that every fight is TO THE DEATH, but that's not remotely what's being discussed. What we (well, I) want is to remove that thing where you find 6 slime creatures, laboriously catch the attention of precisely one of them, drag it 100 steps to and up the nearest set of stairs, kill it, and then go back down and repeat 5 more times. Yes, I have done this. I have seen other people do it. This is not some imaginary theorycrafting fantasy, it is a 100% real thing people do, and the fact that it's possible to abstain from doing it doesn't matter in the slightest. I do it sometimes, because it's powerful; I avoid it sometimes, because it's annoying and takes a long time; I resent the situation because I'm paying, in in-game safety, for out-of-game convenience.

So could you not do something like...give certain enemies a fog like ability or something like submerge? This would force players to get much closer to certain groups of enemies and not be able to safely pull them from max distance. This would let you choose when players can and cant lure if the expectation is that they should fight certain kinds of enemies as a group. It is much harder to lure when you have to get within 2-3 squares of them in the first place.

[kuniqs]

Swamp worms had just lost the submerge ability 'cause it was annoying as hell...

[Ceann]

Swamp worms had just lost the submerge ability 'cause it was annoying as hell...

More like Sea Snakes or trapdoor spiders, which are not "annoying as hell" the reason swamp worms were annoying is because they were restricted to water entirely. This would not be the case.

[Blink Frog]

I am not sure I understand what is considered "luring" for the purposes of this discussion. Which of the following counts?

1. I see a pack of monsters, I get the attention of one (or a few) of them, retreat a few screens away and kill the monster(s) that follow. Rinse, repeat. Luring? Yes?
2. I see a pack of monsters and back up into a corridor or corner to limit the number that can attack me while I fight. This may require me to move a screen or two to find favorable terrain if I am on an open level. Luring? Not luring?
3. I see Grinder and run away for the nearest stairs up to the prior level so I can come back via a different set and hoping to avoid Grinder entirely. This may also require me to move multiple screens if the stairs are far away. Not luring?

[njvack]

What we (well, I) want is to remove that thing where you find 6 slime creatures, laboriously catch the attention of precisely one of them, drag it 100 steps to and up the nearest set of stairs, kill it, and then go back down and repeat 5 more times. Yes, I have done this.

In this particular example, it doesn't help that slime creatures are probably the creature in the game whose design most encourages luring.

[dpeg]

I am not sure I understand what is considered "luring" for the purposes of this discussion. Which of the following counts?

1. I see a pack of monsters, I get the attention of one (or a few) of them, retreat a few screens away and kill the monster(s) that follow. Rinse, repeat. Luring? Yes?
2. I see a pack of monsters and back up into a corridor or corner to limit the number that can attack me while I fight. This may require me to move a screen or two to find favorable terrain if I am on an open level. Luring? Not luring?
3. I see Grinder and run away for the nearest stairs up to the prior level so I can come back via a different set and hoping to avoid Grinder entirely. This may also require me to move multiple screens if the stairs are far away. Not luring?

1. is the behaviour we're trying to cull.

As I see it, there are the following problematic features (problematic as in, useful to do but tedious to carry out):

1. Luring: Spot a monster and make it follow you. Attempts to only ever fight one on one, in safe terrain.
2. Kill-holing: Makes sure to fight and see only a single monster, no matter how large the group.
3. Pilllar dancing: When in one on one combat with a monster and low on MP or HP, run in circles to regain HP/MP. Potentially also get an extra action due to energy randomisation for safe stairs.
4. Stair dancing: Various uses, including (1) leading monsters in small groups (between 1 and 8 depending on layout of destination level) to a safer place, (2) skipping a fight to regain MP (or HP).

It is hard to solve all of these at once. Each one is a "tactic", i.e. you may feel smug when it's the margin to win a fight. But Crawl throws hundreds of monsters at you, so it becomes very stale if you apply them all the time.

Perhaps it helps to think about this in the following way: suppose Crawl was a board game and you're the game master, and your friend is the player. If your friends keeps using the above methods, all the time, well, you can throw a spanner in his works... How would you do it? Can you algorithmise it?

[grisamentum]

Seems like the answer is in the question. I'm the game master, so I'm controlling all the monsters. I can do things like send monsters to guard the stairs up, or cut him off on a hallway. If I/the monsters know the player is going to enter a room (because they're "awake" or "warned" or something) I would also do sensible things like spread out my orc priests so the player can't blow them all up with a single fireball.

Maybe the smarter monster AIs need to calculate the available "width" to attack the player, and if there are too many orcs trying to get in the hallway, the orcs at the back will try to path to the other side of the hallway, or decide to go guard the stairs. Certainly we have some kind of group AI right now, but it doesn't seem sufficient to carry out tactics like this. And I don't know if it works with forming ad hoc task forces. Or if it could do things like, the last orc in group 1 realizes his group is being decimated, if he could run somewhere else for reinforcements, awaken another group on his own, and then have them preemptively cut off hallways or exits.

[Blink Frog]

Thank you, dpeg. That explanation is very helpful. I agree deterring 1. should be good for the game.

For what it is worth, my experience has been that I tend to take greater risks/use more consumables when I have an incentive. Portals are a good example. If I get a portal message, I may use a magic mapper or fight at lower hp or try to get around packs. This has led to a few splats, but they've always been memorable/enjoyable games.

So perhaps employing an incentive system may help? What if Portals and Shops are announced a few floors earlier (with an appropriate adjustment to the timer/a timer added, respectively)?

[dynast]

@Grisamentum, i dont think the devs are trying to create a AI that would defeat luring, they are not even trying to come up with monsters that can do it, mainly because that doesnt solve the problem(the player can always outsmart AI behaviors, exploiting it),(we already have "anti-luring" mechanics, like mesmerize). I believe the idea is to change whatever is making luring monsters optimal, like the cost/efficiency of stairs or magic pool/rod charges issues and reward pre-luring behavior, like exploring the map.

[grisamentum]

@Grisamentum, i dont think the devs are trying to create a AI that would defeat luring, they are not even trying to come up with monsters that can do it, mainly because that doesnt solve the problem(the player can always outsmart AI behaviors, exploiting it),(we already have "anti-luring" mechanics, like mesmerize). I believe the idea is to change whatever is making luring monsters optimal, like the cost/efficiency of stairs or magic pool/rod charges issues and reward pre-luring behavior, like exploring the map.

I can see what you're saying but I'm not sure that's what dpeg asked (although I don't mean to speak for him, just how I took the question). The main issue with luring and kill-holing is that most monsters that can't see you might as well not exist. They don't do anything useful. There are some rare exceptions, like digging/wall-destroying monsters.

To me "change whatever is making luring monsters optimal" means changing the fact that monsters will stand in a line for you, waiting for their turn to die. It means changing the fact that monsters that can't see you will all always blindly follow you and no matter how many others are, and they never try to cut you off from the other direction or stage ambushes.

[Hurkyl]

There is an easy way to solve all of those at once: give every monster an irresistible mesmerize ability, but modified so you can't move sideways to break line of sight. Or add temporary walls to box in the player with a monster whenever a fight is deemed to be engaged.

For a nondegenerate solution, we have to list what behaviors we want to keep too: here are some options.

• Escaping from a fight without consumables in various ways
• Escaping from a fight with consumables (which ones?)
• Avoiding fights with monsters that have seen you
• Avoiding fights with monsters that haven't seen you
• Maneuvering a fight to nearby favorable terrain
• Maneuvering a fight to distant favorable terrain

[dynast]

"whenever a fight is deemed to be engaged" is the problem. How do you define that without taking the freedom away from the player but also preventing the player from exploiting it in any way?

[Hurkyl]

I never said you could; taking away all options is the easiest way to eliminate the unwanted ones. The point of that suggestion was to motivate thinking about what options we should retain along with what we want to cull.

In fact, many problems are more easily solved by "working backwards"; e.g. in this case, thinking of minimalistic ways to permit the desired behaviors may or may not be more productive than trying to think of how to curtail the currently permissive state of affairs.

[TeshiAlair]

What if, after X amount of time of a monster in LOS/following you without dying, you get a message saying "The foo calls for backup!" which spawns a pack of monsters at each staircase and marks you for as long as the calling monster is alive. These monsters act like summons in that they don't give experience, to avoid scumming by luring. This would also help with lure+stairdancing, though not stairdancing overall.

[dynast]

This is devolving into mental ginastics now.

[Ceann]

This is devolving into mental ginastics now.

Isn't that what this was in the first place?

You could easily say an Enchanter is unfair because they can just confuse essentially every single enemy in the entire dungeon and you can almost single handed do a 3 rune run with just confuse. I guess we should remove the spell because it provides a choiceless option for an enchanter.

Once my Cj can cast firestorm there is almost no need to cast any other spell, we should change that too?

When you see any enemy you can take one of 3 actions...
1. run away from it "this includes luring, kiting, choke points and actually just running away"
2. stand your ground/used ranged "which would include choke points and kill holes"
3. move towards it to attack it "melee,stabbing, close ranged spells"

I don't see how you can make 1. a unfeasible option and not do anything short of preventing the player from moving, considering that a big part of the game is knowing WHEN to run away or avoid what you can't fight. Maybe have enemies that run away from you and leash back to a certain area? I am pretty certain the solution would be in some part of monster behavior and not doing something to the player.

[dynast]

Isn't that what this was in the first place?

You could easily say an Enchanter is unfair because they can just confuse essentially every single enemy in the entire dungeon and you can almost single handed do a 3 rune run with just confuse. I guess we should remove the spell because it provides a choiceless option for an enchanter.

Once my Cj can cast firestorm there is almost no need to cast any other spell, we should change that too?

Thats derailment AND bikeshedding, im not even gonna comment on that.

I am talking about throwing ideas like TeshiAlair just did, then now we have to analyse it then explain why this idea is bad and not going to work like "what if you had abjuration, what if you had discord, what if... and so on".

I don't see how you can make 1. a unfeasible option and not do anything short of preventing the player from moving, considering that a big part of the game is knowing WHEN to run away or avoid what you can't fight. Maybe have enemies that run away from you and leash back to a certain area? I am pretty certain the solution would be in some part of monster behavior and not doing something to the player.

Enemies used to flee in older versions and it was painfully annoying.

I am going to make a proposal to deal with luring that includes consumables but that will be on a specific topic and probably on CYC.

[o_O]

Make packs work like the old balistomyocytes: you only get exp when the whole pack is dead and if left alone the pack will regenerate over time?

It's only a partial solution to one of those problems, but it would force you to confront or ignore the whole pack.

[Ceann]

Isn't that what this was in the first place?

You could easily say an Enchanter is unfair because they can just confuse essentially every single enemy in the entire dungeon and you can almost single handed do a 3 rune run with just confuse. I guess we should remove the spell because it provides a choiceless option for an enchanter.

Once my Cj can cast firestorm there is almost no need to cast any other spell, we should change that too?

Thats derailment AND bikeshedding, im not even gonna comment on that.

I am talking about throwing ideas like TeshiAlair just did, then now we have to analyse it then explain why this idea is bad and not going to work like "what if you had abjuration, what if you had discord, what if... and so on".

I don't see how you can make 1. a unfeasible option and not do anything short of preventing the player from moving, considering that a big part of the game is knowing WHEN to run away or avoid what you can't fight. Maybe have enemies that run away from you and leash back to a certain area? I am pretty certain the solution would be in some part of monster behavior and not doing something to the player.

Enemies used to flee in older versions and it was painfully annoying.

I am going to make a proposal to deal with luring that includes consumables but that will be on a specific topic and probably on CYC.

My point is that calling luring a problem or too easy is simply railroading a single tactic. Like if someone is actually resorting to luring after like the first couple dungeon floors, they aren't even really trying to play the game anyway.
I ask where its a problem and people say "it just is because people do it"
That isn't really an argument nor an explanation.

People say its because its too redundant and boring.
Well if someone wants to play redundant and boring you can't really stop them.
I don't see how it is anymore redundant than using Confuse or Meph Cloud or Stone Arrow or playing Mak with the tab key you can clear the entire dungeon with any one of these, all of these are redundant mindless strategies that can be rinse and repeated. So my question is out of all of these options, how is luring the gravest sin? When it there are multiple offenders of the same crime.

If anything calling out luring specifically is bikeshedding if the goal is to prevent a repetitive and mindless behavior, when there is clearly an abundance of them.
It is arresting a guy for jaywalking in the middle of a riot.

[dynast]

People already replied to you why luring is problematic, so im not going to keep repeating their words. If you dont want to aknowledge then just dont, it is your right to disagree. If you want to cite how other things are just as problematic maybe create a specific topic for it.

[all before]

It's going to be really hard to fix luring as long as stairs function the way they do. Even if monsters could awake the entire floor and mark you as soon as you started retreating, as long as you can get to the stairs, you can stairdance or go down in a different spot. If you make monsters faster when you retreat, it will still be optimal to lead them upstairs unless they can nearly kill you before then. So to prevent luring, you need to change how stairs work.

[WingedEspeon]

Except that doesn't work because luring is still a good tactic on nagas/chei characters and means that I reach the point where I can suboptimaly stop luring so much and still not generate a significant chance of death as a result take longer.

I don't think the point is to make luring not a good tactic. Some amount of luring is okay (it's indistinguishable from tactical repositioning, in my opinion) - it's the situations where you're consistently dragging enemies 15-20 spaces away, or back to a specific level feature (killhole, staircase, etc.) where it gets annoying. Not sure I understand what you mean about it taking longer to reach the point where you don't have to use luring as much.

Right, I often use just sitting in place or walking back 2-3 squares when something walks into LOS as nice compromise between total degenerate luring and YOLO tabing.

The point where I generaly stop luring is around vaults because my characters are usualy strong enough to just YOLO tab everything at that point and still not die (yes, even the mummies). Occasionally I have to use a consumable when I go too YOLO tab but it is no big deal because I have plenty stockpiled.

It also makes being able to sinply run away, run up some stairs, go down some different stairs and dive to the next level technique for dealing with an early unique a lot less reliable and IMO recognizing that you don't want to fight X at all and that you are willing to bypass the entire level just to not fight X should work.

Or it just means you have to burn consumables, or deal with the enemy in some other way. These situations occur rarely enough for most characters that this is an acceptable solution to me (especially with Crawl's current overabundance of consumables). It sucks early on sometimes though, when you potentially have few ways of handling enemies.

Early on is generaly when I use this tactic as I rarely train stealth as I prefer to use brute force of running away as soon as I see the threat. this Isn't a tactic I usualy use when I have consumables.

My main point is still that luring is more important for a naga than for something speed ten like a human because a human can fight an orc in a hallway and if an orc warrior or two followed by a bunch more orcs shows up just run to the stairs and go down deifferent ones. The naga can't outrun the orc warrior so the naga has to lure the orc back a bunch of spaces. TLDR; speed 11 monsters doesn't solve the problem.

[CanOfWorms]

If the problem is isolating monsters, clearly what monsters need is a buddy system. Whenever a pack is generated each monster is paired with at least one other monster, and they are aware of everything their partners are aware of. Luring a monster upstairs also brings their partners upstairs, regardless of where they are.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

degenerate luring is "luring part of a pack away from the rest of the pack" and it's the degenerate tactic that would be nullified by lured creatures shouting.

Actually you're incorrect, the degenerate part of luring is that it's optimal to lure *every creature* whether a single creature or part of a pack, into previously cleared territory, breaking packs apart is a relatively minor (and I would argue even a beneficial aspect of) luring.

The reason it's optimal is that every combat action taken might attract attention and every time a new creature joins a combat, it causes additional risk.

The additional risk of *not* luring a creature into a cleared area to kill it is small, but doing so consistently reduces your overall risk by a pretty significant margin, it's also very tedious, *that* is the problem that I'm talking about, and seeking to solve. I personally don't see any problem with being able to break apart packs with good tactics, but whether it is a problem or not, it's not the overwhelming problem with luring.

What we (well, I) want is to remove that thing where you find 6 slime creatures, laboriously catch the attention of precisely one of them, drag it 100 steps to and up the nearest set of stairs, kill it, and then go back down and repeat 5 more times.

It seems to me like you're making some kind of distinction between the abstract notion of split-luring, and specific instances of split-luring. If you split a pack in two, that's okay, but if you split off one monster from a pack, that's degenerate? And there's some point, between 1 and half, at which you pass the threshold into degeneracy? I would not make any distinction based on the # or % of monsters lured away from its pack.

Maybe there's some confusion arising from the word "pack"? I don't know how rigid that word's definition is, and what a better word might be. For what it's worth, I'm referring to any grouping of monsters, even if it's just two unrelated monsters that happened to spawn close to each other.

Surely changes should be made - it keeps the game fresh and interesting, but changes should be made keeping an overall design goal in mind.

Keeping the game fresh and interesting is a bad reason to introduce changes. It's a meta-game that lasts alpha/beta testing and gets buried. Making the game better, on the other hand, is a good reason to introduce changes.

I'd like to see a standard game, with an emphasis on winning being an amazing accomplishment, no matter how long it takes...

Actually, enabling Degenerate Luring interferes with that emphasis, by making long and degenerate games look far less amazing, thus tainting the idea that any win is an accomplishment.

[Siegurt]

It seems to me like you're making some kind of distinction between the abstract notion of split-luring, and specific instances of split-luring. If you split a pack in two, that's okay, but if you split off one monster from a pack, that's degenerate? And there's some point, between 1 and half, at which you pass the threshold into degeneracy? I would not make any distinction based on the # or % of monsters lured away from its pack.

Maybe there's some confusion arising from the word "pack"? I don't know how rigid that word's definition is, and what a better word might be. For what it's worth, I'm referring to any grouping of monsters, even if it's just two unrelated monsters that happened to spawn close to each other.

So it appears to me that we have several different things which we are calling luring, and we are getting bogged down in comments about one thing, when someone else is acutally taking about a different thing altogether, or trying to solve a completely different problem.

Thing one is pack breaking, crawl acutally has a specific definition of a pack, a pack spawns together, and has special logic to try to stay together,

Similarly there is also "breaking apart arbitrary groups of critters who happened to be closer to each other" this is actually fairly similar to pack breaking, but it is slightly easier since the critters aren't actively trying to stay together. They are just all chasing you.

a third thing that happens is "drawing critters into cleared areas so as to minimize noise and risk of attracting things that aren't in the immediate area"

A fourth thing is "drawing creatures to a tactically advantageous choke point to limit the number of attackers you face at s time"

A fifth thing, related to the fourth is "drawing creatures back to a single location on the level that you have set up to be especially tactically advantageous" kill holes, oklob farms.

A sixth thing very simular to the fifth and fourth is "leading creatures up stairs to kill them without having to deal with any others"

A seventh thing is leading a creature around in cleared areas, in order to reset a fight by regenning hps or mana for which you either were unlucky or simply overestimated your chances.

An eighth thing is simply trying to disengage from a fight that you estimate yourself insufficiently likely to win.

A ninth thing is attempting to use energy randomization to gain a space to escape from a combat by staircase.

There are probably other things which have been mixed in with people's opinions and some people are going to collapse some subset of these things into a single category and I may have collapsed this into a single category that other people would not, but it is important to note: Not everyone is going to collapse exactly the same set of things into the same category.

Addionally, there's some disagreement over how many of these things are actually degenerate, or even tedious.

It appears that my personal opinion about which of these things is a problem happens to be slightly different than other people's, I am not shocked by this, nor should you be.

Ftr: The only one of these cases I personally consider a significant problem that needs work/attention is the third one, as it effects every combat in the game, but that is just my opinion.

[ontoclasm]

Siegurt explained it far better than I could, but for clarification, what I had in mind above was #3 and #7 -- nothing to do with packs or groups in particular.

[Sprucery]

Just to address item 6 on the list: If stairdancing is considered bad, it is easy to fix just by making it impossible to use stairs while a hostile creature is next to you. Some roguelikes have this feature.