Remove ghosts from the game (or let us disable them).

[PowerOfKaishin]

Please, for the love of god, just let us disable them or remove them entirely. This feature still persists, even though no one but the most masochistic players enjoy it. Ghosts have the potential to be far more lethal than anything in the early game, even Grinder and Sigmund. Why should I be punished because a SpAs with a dagger of electrocution decided to die in D:3, a location that I reached without having yet obtained a scroll of Tele?

Random elements are supposed to be there to challenge the player, not unavoidably kill them. It's the same story with the jackal packs and adders on D:1. It's not a challenge, it's just unfair. Sigmund is already chasing me down a hallway tossing bolts of flame and forcing me to make MR rolls to avoid being confused. I don't need to run into Balthazar the Amateur Minotaur of Trog while I'm at it.

And don't say "play offline". I play trunk so that means I have to redownload every day and deal with constant crashes (offline autosaves every time there's a floor change, unlike on a server, forcing me to restart from the last time I went up some stairs). In addition every time I splat something I have to delete the bones. There's a problem no matter what.

If some players actually do like this feature, that's fine: just give us an option to disable it (preferably one which is set to "Disabled" by default). The players that like ghosts can play the way they want and the players that don't like ghosts can play without worrying (as much) about getting randomly forced into an unwinnable situation and murdered.

I will report any comment that talks about how to deal with ghosts in-game by running away or reducing the problem by playing undead. This discussion is solely about the removal of ghosts. I haven't been the best about not derailing my posts, but I will be here.

[duvessa]

(offline autosaves every time there's a floor change, unlike on a server, forcing me to restart from the last time I went up some stairs)

Actually, both versions save at the same times; if you crash on a server you'll restart from the last time you changed levels too.

I definitely think ghosts should be removed, not because they are dangerous (it is very rare that they are) but because they 1. make you check morgues in order to fight them, 2. make crawl games unequal based on the computer you're playing on, 3. have repeatedly served as a gateway to add terrible monster spells.

Making them an option would be really bad, unless maybe you make ghosts offline-only, because they have an effect on balance (albeit a very small one).

[dynast]

I would be pro the removal of ghosts if most of my deaths or most of my early deaths were their cause. Since they arent, i believe other player's ghosts bring a fun aspect to webtiles.

[Brannock]

I would be pro the removal of ghosts if most of my deaths or most of my early deaths were their cause. Since they arent, i believe other player's ghosts bring a fun aspect to webtiles.

According to the all-time list, player ghosts are the #7 killer in the game, and are responsible for 3.15% of deaths.

Not sure what the numbers look like for only the recent versions.

[Siegurt]

1. In addition to auto save happening at the same time, the code for the online and offline versions is the same, so I don't know why you would have any more crashes offline than on.

2. If you were playing offline, you could create a startup script that deleted your bones file, eliminating the need to interact in any way shape or form with ghosts in a manual way ever again.

3. One of the appeals of playing online is that you can play with a group of people who are playing the game on an equal footing, with the same sorts of challenges, you can't make the same claim offline, since you can't know if someone start scummed, or cheated, or plain old changed the game code and compiled it themselves. I therefore don't think that "optional ghosts" is a viable option, having some people be able to eliminate ghosts and others not wouldn't work. Additionally, if only some percentage of people were eliminating ghosts but they were generated at the same rate, each game with ghosts would have far too many, otoh, excluding 'no ghost' games from generation would mean too few. Removing ghosts altogether is feasible though.

4. Ghosts are not automatic death (you even preemptively rejected posts which offer solutions to them) if you want to argue that they should be removed, but forbid discussions about how to avoid dying to them, you should probably not talk about how unfair deaths to them are. Stick to why they are bad for the *game* and avoid talking about why they are bad for the character. That something killed you is not a reason it should be removed from the game (a lot of devs would consider it a reason to keep it, to encourage action, you need to demonstrate clearly and concisely why it makes playing the game objectively worse)

For example duvessa makes the completely rational point that ghosts encourage you to get out of game information which is bad (this could be solved by simply removing them, or by adding all relevant information to the in game display, possibly reducing the amount of it if need be)

[TeshiAlair]

We should also remove uniques, they can do things other creatures can't and kill you early.

Also orc priests can smite you and that's just not fair.

[dynast]

I would be pro the removal of ghosts if most of my deaths or most of my early deaths were their cause. Since they arent, i believe other player's ghosts bring a fun aspect to webtiles.

According to the all-time list, player ghosts are the #7 killer in the game, and are responsible for 3.15% of deaths.

Not sure what the numbers look like for only the recent versions.

And according to that the 3 top killers are normal moving, no special abilities monsters(though gnolls can come in packs and have nets) so there you go.

[Tiktacy]

(offline autosaves every time there's a floor change, unlike on a server, forcing me to restart from the last time I went up some stairs)

Actually, both versions save at the same times; if you crash on a server you'll restart from the last time you changed levels too.

I definitely think ghosts should be removed, not because they are dangerous (it is very rare that they are) but because they 1. make you check morgues in order to fight them, 2. make crawl games unequal based on the computer you're playing on, 3. have repeatedly served as a gateway to add terrible monster spells.

Making them an option would be really bad, unless maybe you make ghosts offline-only, because they have an effect on balance (albeit a very small one).

You could fix problem number 1 by not having the players name be listed. Instead, you could give the ghost a randomly generated name.

I agree that player ghosts should be removed though, just figured I would throw in a suggestion as an alternative to outright removal.

[advil]

(this could be solved by simply removing them, or by adding all relevant information to the in game display, possibly reducing the amount of it if need be)

There's quite a lot of information in xv these days, including what specific spells they know, brand, ac/ev, and speed. I'm not sure what else might help (and really, spells/speed are the biggest thing IME because they determine what's likely to happen if you try to walk away / back to stairs).

[johlstei]

Wow, finally a feature that isn't great design that I would genuinely miss if it were gone. They don't pass the "would I add this if it were first proposed today?" test by a longshot but they make me happy. Maybe a toggle would be okay if they were buffed(and perhaps worth 0 xp?). I wouldn't want toggling on ghosts to make the game easier but I think it'd be okay if they made it strictly harder.

Making them worth 0 XP is probably a less controversial change if you want something now. Just a thought.

[duvessa]

You could fix problem number 1 by not having the players name be listed. Instead, you could give the ghost a randomly generated name.

...I genuinely can't tell if this is a joke or not. That just makes the problem worse.

[Tiktacy]

You could fix problem number 1 by not having the players name be listed. Instead, you could give the ghost a randomly generated name.

...I genuinely can't tell if this is a joke or not. That just makes the problem worse.

My interpretation of your first issue with ghosts was that it was annoying and weird to force the player to check morgue files for an enemy in the game just to have the best chance at beating them. To fix that, remove the ability for the player to do so, therefor making them operate as unpredictable adversaries, which I consider to be a good thing.

[duvessa]

You could fix problem number 1 by not having the players name be listed. Instead, you could give the ghost a randomly generated name.

...I genuinely can't tell if this is a joke or not. That just makes the problem worse.

My interpretation of your first issue with ghosts was that it was annoying and weird to force the player to check morgue files for an enemy in the game just to have the best chance at beating them. To fix that, remove the ability for the player to do so, therefor making them operate as unpredictable adversaries, which I consider to be a good thing.

Changing the ghost's name doesn't remove the player's access to morgue files. I suppose you could remove the game's ability to generate morgues and character dumps, remove spectating from webtiles and dgl, and erase the player's memory every time they die. But that seems like a lot to sacrifice in exchange for being able to keep boring monsters that vaguely resemble previous characters.

[Tiktacy]

Changing the ghost's name doesn't remove the player's access to morgue files. I suppose you could remove the game's ability to generate morgues and character dumps, remove spectating from webtiles and dgl, and erase the player's memory every time they die. But that seems like a lot to sacrifice in exchange for being able to keep boring monsters that vaguely resemble previous characters.

I thought the ghosts name was the only way to identify which morgue file is the one in which the ghost is spawned from.

I may have a completely wrong idea of how exactly ghosts are spawned though, so I won't be surprised if something I say or some things i believe are incorrect.

[CanOfWorms]

You can just go to irc and do !lg * <species><class> xl=<whatever the descriptor gives as the xl range> to narrow down the morgue list.

[Shard1697]

Please, for the love of god, just let us disable them or remove them entirely. This feature still persists, even though no one but the most masochistic players enjoy it.

I don't think this is true at all. When I was new to DCSS, I was super into the idea of ghosts(I had never played a roguelike with a similar feature before and it was very cool and new to me), and I think things like players dying with distortion spears on tournaments to kill other players is always funny. I've always thought it was super cool to beat your own ghosts and advance passt where you died earlier(feels very meaningful to overcome your 'earlier character', as it were), and it's cool in a similar way to beat another player's ghost. Or look at your online stats and see that your ghosts have killed people.

I would imagine many other casual players feel the same way!
The only ghost change I want is removal/nerfing of draconian ghost breath.

[ZipZipskins]

Ghosts are bad but fun and I like them. Why are they bad? It's been said and hashed before. Why are they fun and I like them? Because they're spicy/salty and I like going up two levels in Fighting and Dodging

[ydeve]

When I first played Crawl I was really disappointed by the ghosts. Not the ghosts themselves, but that I was expecting a big pile of the dead player's gear.
Then I found them fun as I tried to kill them.
Then I realized that if you can't kill them easily it's trivial to walk away from them.

So now fights against ghosts are either free bags of EXP or non-threatening walk-away exercises.
(Exceptions exist ofc, like elec dagger Sp and HEFE firestorm spamming L1 troll (the human kind, not the Tr kind))

Plus, while they work well as flavor in Nethack, which is about dungeon exploration (finding the remains of previous dead adventurers in the Dungeons of Doom), they don't really mesh with any of DCSS's flavor, and they aren't threatening to a player who isn't dead set on killing every monster in the game.

[HisMajestyBOB]

(offline autosaves every time there's a floor change, unlike on a server, forcing me to restart from the last time I went up some stairs)

Actually, both versions save at the same times; if you crash on a server you'll restart from the last time you changed levels too.

I definitely think ghosts should be removed, not because they are dangerous (it is very rare that they are) but because they 1. make you check morgues in order to fight them, 2. make crawl games unequal based on the computer you're playing on, 3. have repeatedly served as a gateway to add terrible monster spells.

Making them an option would be really bad, unless maybe you make ghosts offline-only, because they have an effect on balance (albeit a very small one).

1. What additional information is present in morgues that would be useful to know and isn't viewable using "x-v"? At best you might get specific numbers, but unless you're source-diving and trying to calculate, say, exact chances to hit, that won't help you any more than seeing the ghost has X pips of AC.
2. Not if you're playing online - it's no more random than whether you encounter certain uniques. Offline, it's impossible to guarantee equal play because of the possibility players modify the game files or source.
3. Whether spells are "terrible" or not is should be debated on their own merits. Doesn't have anything to do with player ghosts or not.

[duvessa]

1. HP, AC, EV, melee damage.
2. Except that there are multiple servers, which have different player demographics that produce different ghosts.

[crate]

CDO has like 30 games per day (as long as you're not playing while someone is running a bot, at least), so you can pretty easily just dive a formicid as fast as possible to ghostbust before you start a game if you want to eliminate ghosts in D.

[Sprucery]

CDO has like 30 games per day (as long as you're not playing while someone is running a bot, at least), so you can pretty easily just dive a formicid as fast as possible to ghostbust before you start a game if you want to eliminate ghosts in D.

So is it so that if a ghost is available for a given level, it is always loaded?

[crate]

Ghosts aren't guaranteed to be loaded but you can always just run your ghostbuster more often (it's even really easy to bot it, since you just shaft until d:15 then quit).

[Tiktacy]

CDO has like 30 games per day (as long as you're not playing while someone is running a bot, at least), so you can pretty easily just dive a formicid as fast as possible to ghostbust before you start a game if you want to eliminate ghosts in D.

This needs to not be in the game. The fact that this kind of strategy exists is totally unacceptable IMO.

[ydeve]

Do you tend to find lvl1 Fo ghosts on D15 on the CDO server?

[CanOfWorms]

If you ctrl+Q a game you don't generate a ghost.

[crate]

CDO has like 30 games per day (as long as you're not playing while someone is running a bot, at least), so you can pretty easily just dive a formicid as fast as possible to ghostbust before you start a game if you want to eliminate ghosts in D.

This needs to not be in the game. The fact that this kind of strategy exists is totally unacceptable IMO.

Do you tend to find lvl1 Fo ghosts on D15 on the CDO server?

No one actually does this, I'm just pointing out that it's possible.

[lethediver]

Alternate proposal:

Have ghosts drop all their sweet, sweet artifact gear on death... =)

[ion_frigate]

Have ghosts drop all their sweet, sweet artifact gear on death... =)

That will never happen: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:planning:wont_do. I do wonder if the devs would be friendlier to the idea of ghosts dropping a single good item upon being killed (an item unrelated to what they had in life). I've always found that XP alone is a pretty unsatisfying reward.

[Quazifuji]

On top of all the bizarre meta-gaming strategies people are discussing, I've found ghosts often result in a much more straightforward tedious stair dancing tactic for me. I've found that, if I encounter a ghost that's kind of dangerous but not incredibly deadly, the best strategy seems to be luring it to a staircase and then repeatedly attempting to fight it until the RNG comes down enough into my favor for me to win. If it looks like things aren't going my way, I just retreat up the stairs, rest, and repeat the process. As long as I'm not low on food and the probability of my winning a straight up no-consumable duel with the ghost is non-negligible, there's no meaningful downside to this tactic besides boredom, and in the end I'm rewarded with a bunch of experience, as well as reducing the danger of the floor by eliminating the risk of running into the wandering ghost when I'm not ready to fight it.

Stair dancing is already tedious in some cases, but it often at least carries *some* risk because enemies follow you upstairs. But when you're fighting a ghost that's comparable to your character in power, there's basically no risk whatsoever to stairdancing it to death.

[ydeve]

The punishment for pudding farming is pudding farming. Ghost stairdancing is optimal, but does it make that much of a difference in a game? (unlike pudding farming)

[Shard1697]

I think so, because it's something that people actually do fairly often.

[dpeg]

I am not here to discuss ghosts, but I want to quickly mention something that comes up every so often:

This feature still persists, even though no one but the most masochistic players enjoy it.

It is absolutely okay to hate feature X, to start a thread about it and to argue for its removal. Or just to vent your frustration. However, please try to avoid the temptation that "nobody likes X". It is most certainly not true, and undermines whatever credibility your other points have.

Yours, the ghost buster

[daggaz]

Seriously, ion_frigate??

Ghosts usually give awesome XP that can boost your character like no other fight on the level. I always try to kill them as soon as its reasonable, which admittedly is pretty cheap, especially since most of the time they are push-overs. It's like a free, identified potion of experience that sort of fights back.

[RBrandon]

Ghosts can lead to the most degenerate fights in the whole game. This only makes sense, seeing as they are non-designed monsters. For example, today I killed bcadren's awful, awful felid ghost that had 69 HP, 41 EV and good melee. Stairs all right next to each other. Can't run away, but it can't kill me either. Had to stairdance that thing way past the point of tedium.

A second problem with ghosts is one of clarity. As daggaz said, they are most often pushovers or easily ignored speed 10 non-threats. But occasionally you get ridiculous pseudo-panlords. I don't care how much information you shove into xv, it will never be as clear as seeing a known monster tile or glyph.

The game would be better without ghosts.

[Tiktacy]

I would be pro the removal of ghosts if most of my deaths or most of my early deaths were their cause. Since they arent, i believe other player's ghosts bring a fun aspect to webtiles.

According to the all-time list, player ghosts are the #7 killer in the game, and are responsible for 3.15% of deaths.

Not sure what the numbers look like for only the recent versions.

"Boulder Beetle Skeleton"

WHAT

[Tenaya]

The punishment for pudding farming is pudding farming. Ghost stairdancing is optimal, but does it make that much of a difference in a game? (unlike pudding farming)

I've never liked this meme. It just isn't true. For a devnull tournament I set up a pudding farm by leaning a book against the keyboard and checking on it every 5 minutes.

[crate]

Crawl philosophy also explicitly says that things like pudding farming are bad design and should be fixed (see grinding), so the argument very much does not work when discussing crawl design.

[dpeg]

Remember that ghosts are the only feature that allow a sort of player-player interaction in this single player game. So I think that trying to improve ghosts has a high priority.

Myself, I never really minded ghost parking, they can make you skip a level after all. However, I wouldn"t oppose testing out ghost boosts, such as increased movement speed or allowing to change level (presuming that if the ghost does not die, there level stays at the original one).

[ydeve]

Crawl philosophy also explicitly says that things like pudding farming are bad design and should be fixed (see grinding), so the argument very much does not work when discussing crawl design.

There are 6 runes in the game that exist in a place allowing grinding, but the benefit of grinding there is so small that it's not worth it. Is it worth "fixing" these places to remove the grinding, or is it ok because of how little the grinding does for you?

[duvessa]

Remember that ghosts are the only feature that allow a sort of player-player interaction in this single player game.

I don't think that enabling griefing should be considered a point in their favour.

[dpeg]

duvessa: That is a very pessimistic outlook, I think. I've never been hurt by a griefer's ghost, but maybe I don't play enough, or in the wrong online place to see it.

Like with all abuses, we can invest effort to distinguish grief ghosts from honest ghosts. My point is that honest ghosts are a valuable addition, for various reasons, so that it's worth spending some work on them.

[Lasty]

I tend to agree with dpeg that ghosts allow for a form of player interaction, and that player interaction is on its face a good thing. That's not to say that player ghosts as they exist at this moment are always a good addition to the game; many people have in this thread identified problems with them. Overall I'd much rather work on making ghosts a better part of the game than remove them.

Specifically on the point of rewards for killing ghosts, I absolutely do not want players to get items as a reward. I'd much rather remove all rewards for killing ghosts (making them purely a hazard) than increase the already substantial rewards.

[Sprucery]

I'm playing a single-player game on my computer. I don't want to interact with my older games. Why can't I switch ghosts off with an rcfile option? I could delete them, but I don't, because I feel like that would be cheating.

I also haven't died to a ghost in many many years so that's not the problem.

Random ghosts would be totally ok by me. Rcfile option for regular/random ghosts?

[archaeo]

Yeah, I agree with Sprucery's identification of a problem, if not necessarily the solution.

I don't really have a problem with online ghosts; I understand the dissenters here, but I think they're good on balance and their problems have solutions. But offline ghosts are exceedingly frustrating. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to make them even somewhat desirable would be if we implemented something like NetHack's bones files and the programs to automatically suck them off the Internet to populate offline games. Absent that, they should just be removable with an option.

[ydeve]

(making them purely a hazard)

I like this idea. If people are complaining that it's tedious but optimal to stairdance them for the xp...

[dpeg]

Overall I'd much rather work on making ghosts a better part of the game than remove them.

Specifically on the point of rewards for killing ghosts, I absolutely do not want players to get items as a reward. I'd much rather remove all rewards for killing ghosts (making them purely a hazard) than increase the already substantial rewards.

Absolutely.

So what are the problems?

1. Offline ghosts suck.
Best solution to this is hearse-style ghost sharing; after that, randomly generated ghosts.

2. Ghosts require checking morgues.
The relevant information can and should be given in xv.

3. Ghost parking.
Not really a problem, in my opinion, but can still be made more interesting in some ways. Some random ideas: (a) ghosts move smaller than their living incarnations. (b) when entering a level with a known ghost, there is a high chance the ghost is present (flavour: moving through walls). (c) Ghosts, or perhaps later ghosts, can follow stairs or prevent you from using stairs.

4. Ghosts are tedious but earn so much experience.
The obvious solution is to remove the experience. I guess there are more subtle approaches: for example, ghost xp could go down with time. If you slay the ghost right when you meet it, full xp. If you come back 3000 turns later, peanut xp. Or, to feed into identification: killing a ghost identifies some items for you

Did I miss anything?

edit: Now player gods would also make cool (if less direct) player interaction, but that's more for DCSS 0.45

[galbolle]

Ghosts as monsters could be removed, but ghost levels be kept: you arrive at the site of the demise of a previous adventurer, but you don't have to fight their ghosts, only their killer. This is keeps ghosts as a boost to the average challenge of the game (a level that killed a PC is possibly slightly harder than a random level). These grave levels would be announced, and the ghost manifests as mini-hell effects (thus introducing the mechanic). These effects could be active either on the whole level, or only active within LOS of the previous player's grave, or within LOS of the ghost. In this last case, ghosts would be unkillable, non-damage dealing, randomly/slowly moving, wall traversing.

[Floodkiller]

I like online player ghosts, and would like them even more if they only got deleted from generation if they were killed (and not just skipped). At the very least, doing so temporarily would help to highlight where the minor balance issues with the system are that need to be tweaked.

[Rast]

I like online player ghosts, and would like them even more if they only got deleted from generation if they were killed (and not just skipped). At the very least, doing so temporarily would help to highlight where the minor balance issues with the system are that need to be tweaked.

Agreed, but if a ghost gets deliberately skipped, it should be moved one level deeper for the next player, and if it kills a player it should move two levels deeper.