Neft kiting

[VeryAngryFelid]

I hope I don't need to list reasons why kiting is bad.
http://crawl.homedns.org/crawl#lobby nerfed it by making first movement after non-movement action always cost at least 20 auts (even as hasted Spriggan), so you can no longer kite. It resulted in more enjoyable/fun game, I even played Sp again. Also it resulted in pure melee nerf (approaching enemy around corner/near door) except for polearms users. It helped with anti-luring also somewhat

[Leszczynek]

I hope you also removed Felids and Centaurs from the game.

[dynast]

Im inclined to believe those changes would prevent most forms of kiting, pillar dancing and stairdancing, unfortunately it doesnt work on that fork because for whatever reason you move at 0.9, which means you can lose your enemies in straight pathways, which the dungeon generates a lot, not to mention moving at 0.9 makes it easier to get distance from a enemy and cast spells like conjure flame, or summoning in general.

So that fork got it backwards. If the player moved slower than the enemies most of those problems would be solved, instead its just more annoying because it encourages the player to drag monsters into straight hallways where he can kill hole and have a escape if needed.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am not suggesting to do exactly like is done in that branch. Personally I don't like some changes there too (0.9 move and monsters being unable to use stairs among other things) but that branch proved that crawl is playable (and more fun to me) without kiting. All I wanted to suggest is in the OP

[crate]

I'm not sure what this even fixes. For actual ranged attacks you can still kite just fine since it only affects one move (so it actually just makes it more tedious, since you need to do more moving).

For polearms, ok, but if you are using a polearm to kite an enemy indefinitely you could always just use a ranged attack instead, since you are already faster than the enemy (otherwise it doesn't work with polearms), and the enemy is melee-only (otherwise you actually just take more damage by kiting than by not), and since the enemy is thus completely harmless you don't even need a good ranged attack (you just need to outpace enemy hp regen, but you can do that with almost anything better than 0-skill-thrown-stones) so there's no xp investment concern.

I guess it affects pillar dancing somewhat (you just need to start one action earlier, again). Not sure how much that matters, since I don't pillar dance things.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It's much harder to overcome HP regen when it takes 20 auts to move first tile. Even for Spriggan it takes 5 turns to move 6 tiles: 2.0 + 0.6 * 5 = 5.0. Combine it with pillar-dancing nerf suggested in other thread for max effectiveness (it's impossible to move for too long in one direction and changing direction imposes some penalty again).

[Lacuenta]

Another problen is how do you communicate this to new players or anyone who's not keeping up to date constantly?
Also its quite illogical too have fast species which arent actually fast.

[VeryAngryFelid]

When you try to retreat from adjacent monster, you are attacked immediately, after that you keep distance between you and monster. I believe there is little to communicate here.
Fast species still can run away easily, they just no longer have an absolutely safe, boring and time-consuming way of killing some monsters.

[yesno]

i don't think you can nerf kiting in crawl unless you reduce the game to a restricted series of tactical encounters, like zigs, or completely alter monster behavior so that monsters can attempt to ambush and overwhelm you. Kiting is an element of basically every game with a bunch of open space and monsters who mindlessly follow the player.

Fast species still can run away easily, they just no longer have an absolutely safe, boring and time-consuming way of killing some monsters.

Sure they do... I do this in vampire batform all the time. I spam ranged attacks and then spend one turn turning into a bat before the monster closes to melee range, fly away, spend another turn ending batform, and then do it all over again. This proposal would make kiting as a fast species similar to kiting with batform. It would barely diminish the effectiveness of kiting, while making it even more tedious.

instead of nerfing kiting this would just make retreating by walking away much more dangerous, meaning that a felid who accidentally let a monster get adjacent has to spend 2 aut dodging attacks before it has a chance to get away.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I suggest you to try the branch. The branch is not 100% what I am suggesting but you will get some impression.
If you spend 4 turns on changing form and initial movement and have roughly double speed, I guess you will be able to attack once every 70 auts (I haven't tried Vp in the branch, I hate the species).

Probably I should have created a single thread for my suggestions , kiting is also really limited due to "nerf pillar-dancing mechanic", you will rarely have terrain to run without changing direction. On some Lair level it was not trivial to escape from hydra as Spriggan without any time wasted on attacks.

Edit. Also yes, it makes game much harder. You will have to teleport/train stealth/play without major mistakes etc.

[yesno]

the branch doesn't sound fun to me and i only have so much time to spend playing crawl. it seems pretty straightforward: as vp you would spend 4 turns attacking a speed 10 monster at edge of LOS, one turn changing form, two aut on first movement, however many aut it takes to get monster out of LOS again, one turn changing back while monster is out of LOS, then 4 more attacks, etc. as fast species, same thing except you get 5 attacks from edge of LOS before you have to move, and save 2 aut on transformations each cycle. even if this were enough time for a monster to regen HP, that is not really an issue because frequently when kiting a monster you're just waiting for good rolls to kill it or hex it in the time it takes to approach, rather than trying to gradually whittle it down.

[VeryAngryFelid]

This is why I suggested you to try the branch: changing movement direction has an extra penalty. I am sure you will not be able to kite everything because it will kill you with out of depth monsters or eventually you will be surrounded with monsters and will be unable to retreat upstairs.

Spoiler: show

Try hard mode for extra fun to see sleeping Ogres and Water Mocassins on D1 in less than 100 turns

[yesno]

seems like it would have been easier to just put that in OP than tell me to try the branch. sounds like you sure do like this branch a lot. it sounds like a great branch if it's very important to you that the player stand next to monsters a lot. have fun.

[Lacuenta]

What I meant was it doesn't feel intuitive, it feels odd that some moves would take more "time" then others. Especially concerning movement.
And I think most players including me dont worry about "time" during the game that much, except for when to swap armour/memorise.
This is why we have nagas and chei. And why it takes time to learn to play them.

Edit: It would increase complexity by a lot for the sake of nerfing 4 species.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I believe the branch author tried to make it more realistic, not less. I think new players can expect that first movement is slower than others (IRL it takes more time to run first 5 meters than next 5 meters) and that changing direction takes extra time (IRL you cannot run 10 meters and then run 5 meters back with the same speed as if you were still running forward 5 meters).

[dynast]

This is why I suggested you to try the branch: changing movement direction has an extra penalty. I am sure you will not be able to kite everything because it will kill you with out of depth monsters or eventually you will be surrounded with monsters and will be unable to retreat upstairs.

Thats the main issue, its not only weird for the inexperienced player that moving in different directions takes longer, but also that you have to keep track of the direction you are going, while experienced players have to backtrack mentally the way they are going in case they need to retreat because they have to make as few turns as possible. Then theres the problem of auto exploring making a diferent move into a room, revealing a dangerous pack of enemies and giving them a free turn to act upon you, then having to give them another free turn if you want to retreat.

Spoiler: show

Try hard mode for extra fun to see sleeping Ogres and Water Mocassins on D1 in less than 100 turns

I did try it on hard and i didnt see any of that, thankfully.

[Rast]

http://crawl.homedns.org/crawl#lobby

Do you support console mode also?

[VeryAngryFelid]

The server does not support console mode as far as I know. I am not the author or server admin, I am just a player.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Movement in Crawl is better conceived as a kind of guarded walking than outright sprinting. It takes the same speed whether you're exploring or escaping or sneaking. You can dodge and block attacks at the same time. It does not give you the Breath or Exh status.

I don't know how roadrunner-like movement can play out well in a non-racing videogame (because just look at Resident Evil) and I believe Crawl's mechanics are best geared for free movement and positioning.

This movement also nerfs charging (and buffs gnolls with polearms in corridors) and gives you occasional Cheisteps when autoexploring and tabbing, which is kind-of the opposite of kiting. In punishing most movement it rewards non-kiting ranged, so bows/etc remain powerful.

When you try to retreat from adjacent monster, you are attacked immediately, after that you keep distance between you and monster.

I can't help but think that this is better implemented directly, if to eliminate timing attacks to kite slower monsters who have the same range as you. Here are some ideas in increasing order of complexity:

A. If you melee a monster within its melee range and move out of its melee range before the monster has a chance to do something, then the monster gets an opportunity to melee you as you're leaving, if that's what it would have chosen to do had you not moved away, and the delay of this attack is added to the monster's energy (if that's how monster turns work) so that a gap usually opens up when disengaging from Speed 10 monsters.

B. Same as above but extended to all instances of the player attempting to inflict damage or statuses to monsters, and extend from melee retribution to anything else the monster can do to directly inflict damage/statuses, so you can't even kite yaktaurs with Confuse while hasted (because if you fail to confuse a yaktaur, and move away, then it will shoot you before you can move).

C. All player movement is treated with the same mechanics as Blurry Vision. Doesn't really solve much; it is still possible to kite like this if you're fast enough e.g. hasted Spriggan.

All of these come with quirks and indeterminate cases that would have to be ironed out (what if the retribution tramples you, or blinks you, or blinks the monster to where you are or want to be?) and I don't even know if it would help much, so feel free to spin any of these off into another thread.

while experienced players have to backtrack mentally the way they are going in case they need to retreat

that's not a big problem; the game could just show your footprints after manual moves, as after autoexplore.

whoa, that's a big post I just wrote!

[Quazifuji]

I believe the branch author tried to make it more realistic, not less. I think new players can expect that first movement is slower than others (IRL it takes more time to run first 5 meters than next 5 meters) and that changing direction takes extra time (IRL you cannot run 10 meters and then run 5 meters back with the same speed as if you were still running forward 5 meters).

It's somewhat realistic if you imagine that your character is always running, sure. That doesn't mean it's intuitive in a turn-based, grid-based video game when the speed of your actions is only shown as a number in the corner and there's no running animation you can use to convey the notion of acceleration. Personally, I've never seen a turn-based game try to convey the notion of acceleration in movement. The closest I've seen to this mechanic in a turn-based game would be opportunity attacks in D&D, but I think I might agree with Hardboiled Gargoyle that if we're going to try to use a mechanic like opportunity attacks to discourage kiting, it might be better to implement it directly as a free attack rather than by altering move speeds to players to try to convey a sense of acceleration.

[Lasty]

It seems like the main effect of the three changes in this branch are to penalize maneuvering during combat, which seems like an odd choice. As others have pointed out, the penalties apply very lightly to kiting, so it isn't a particularly effective deterrent. The penalties are extremely heavy to other forms of in-combat movement, particularly situations where you might want to reposition periodically throughout a combat. Luring is a problem, but other in-combat movement is generally a good thing. Breaking the latter to fix the former is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Edit: also, maybe use one thread to hype a branch next time instead of three.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Oh, I missed Lasty's response. The branch was changed, no more movement penalty.

Spoiler: show

Your reply would be better without edit. I believe you are smart enough to realize that those changes can be applied independently, at least stairdancing. So no, that wasn't hyping, hyping is that I am playing your Ukayaw god currently http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... dman25.txt

[Lasty]

Haha, fair enough. I just noticed that organizationally people seemed to be discussing all the changes in one thread.

[Sandman25]

I just noticed that organizationally people seemed to be discussing all the changes in one thread.

I got impression that people ignored stairdancing idea. I am not sure why, it really works (even for Fo) and makes crawl more interesting. I remember you had a god who prevented stairdancing, it was fun too.