Luring nerf

[VeryAngryFelid]

There are different kinds of luring:
1) Luring to fight in better terrain (kill hole, corridor, stairs, near traps etc.)
2) Luring to avoid getting more monsters from noise
3) Luring to split packs
4) "Luring" used as an escape method
I believe all those luring tactics are good and can stay but they must not be that time consuming.
So I suggest the following mechanic:
If you moved for N turns with a monster in view, you get a penalty for all your actions except movement. For example, casting a spell will take 1.1 turn instead of 1.0, attacking with a weapon will take 0.8 instead of 0.7 etc. Of course there can be a progressive penalty (the longer you move, the greater the penalty is and the longer it lasts). Also zigzags and corners exist, so it is not enough to just lose the monster from view for a turn or two to reset the penalty, the penalty is removed if you don't see the monster during M turns. So you will be able to escape from dangerous unique if you want, just be prepared for being slower if you need to kill some goblins who block escape route. But retreating far back into that kill hole now will stop being always optimal, you will have to analyze situation, maybe it is better to fight right now or retreat not that far. Also you still can split packs but it will be optimal to not retreat very far for that.
N and M can be changed after playtesting, my initial values would be something like 20 and 10.

[Arrhythmia]

How are you going to communicate this to the players?

[VeryAngryFelid]

How are you going to communicate this to the players?

Message like "You feel your body is really used to movement, your non-movement actions will be slower for a while". Also new status indicator "Movement mode" (?), it can even be similar to draining and become yellow/light red/red.

[Shard1697]

How are you going to communicate this to the players?

Message like "You feel your body is really used to movement, your non-movement actions will be slower for a while". Also new status indicator "Movement mode" (?), it can even be similar to draining and become yellow/light red/red.

That makes zero sense. It doesn't communicate at all that you've been moving with a monster in view, just that you've been moving-which you're doing almost all the time anyways. If I got this message, I would think "oh, so I have to stop moving sometimes and rest? That's annoying." Not to mention it's really really weird on a flavor level.

I can't think of any implementation of this proposal which wouldn't be horrid and annoying. Of course, I also don't think luring is a problem to be solved. But this seems really clunky.

[VeryAngryFelid]

That makes zero sense. It doesn't communicate at all that you've been moving with a monster in view, just that you've been moving-which you're doing almost all the time anyways. If I got this message, I would think "oh, so I have to stop moving sometimes and rest? That's annoying." Not to mention it's really really weird on a flavor level.

I can't think of any implementation of this proposal which wouldn't be horrid and annoying. Of course, I also don't think luring is a problem to be solved. But this seems really clunky.

There can be another message like "You feel like your non-movement actions will be slowed soon if you continue moving" to warn the player that they can't lure monsters through the whole level for free.
Flavor is inferior to gameplay so it does not matter, I am sure we can improve the flavor anyway.
If anything, I originally wrote "annoying" in OP but then decided to replace it with "time consuming". For me it is annoying to create a single kill hole on Lair 8 and then lure every Elephant and Death Yak to it. This is literally what I did yesterday (had Catoblepas ending).

[Shard1697]

I feel like this proposal will be more annoying than any luring I ever do in crawl.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I feel like this proposal will be more annoying than any luring I ever do in crawl.

If you don't lure too much, you will not suffer from the changes. It's similar to situation where monster generation stops after some time, most players don't suffer from it.
I think it is obvious but I will write it anyway: I don't want to choose between fun and optimal and I believe crawl design doc is with me here. Luring monsters across the whole level (including to stairs!) is such dilemma and I am trying to fix it.

[amaril]

If this change were implemented and conveyed to the player properly, I still feel like I would lure quite a bit: if you are facing an elephant that you can't beat, you are now incentivized to continue luring it until energy randomization gives you a gap square so that you can abandon it on another floor, then rest off the attack speed malus.

I feel like the best way to nerf luring (if such a change is desirable) is to make the average monster speed 11, and this has been proposed many times.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I feel like the best way to nerf luring (if such a change is desirable) is to make the average monster speed 11, and this has been proposed many times.

Yes, I agree, that would be better. But for some reason it does not happen so I am suggesting other options. CA fork has player speed 9, luring there is very close to ideal IMHO.

[all before]

Making monsters faster than the player would result in more frequent luring. I believe the same is true of sandman25's proposal, though I haven't thought about it enough to be absolutely sure. Here's my explanation from an older thread:

I could be wrong here, but it seems like speed-11 monsters would lead to more luring, not less. (By luring, I mean walking monsters back to stairs, or I guess back far into already cleared territory, though I think stairs is nearly always the best choice.) Take speed-11 hydras as an example. Currently characters who lack the ability to kill a lair hydra (or don't want to spend a consumable) have the option to simply retreat to the stairs and go back down another. In the case of a slightly faster hydra, retreating is still an option only if the hydra is encountered relatively near the stairs. Which means that a weak character really wants to avoid making any noise far from the stairs. So, when the character encounters popcorn monsters that it would normally just plow through, it should instead lead these monsters back to the stairs to avoid potentially attracting the attention of a hydra. Basically, speed-11 increases the incentive to lure non-threatening monsters.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Yes, I remember that reply. It does not apply to OP, there is no movement penalty ever so you will be able to retreat from that Hydra who came into view while you were fighting the Yak. From this perspective OP is better than speed 11 monsters.

[Shard1697]

I feel like this proposal will be more annoying than any luring I ever do in crawl.

If you don't lure too much, you will not suffer from the changes.

I lure pretty frequently.

[all before]

Ah ok, I misunderstood the OP. Wouldn't this idea encourage the player to lure any slightly dangerous monster back to a stairwell before engaging, then go up and rest off the penalty, then return back to fight?

This reinforces my belief that something needs to change about stairs for any luring reform to be meaningful.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ah ok, I misunderstood the OP. Wouldn't this idea encourage the player to lure any slightly dangerous monster back to a stairwell before engaging, then go up and rest off the penalty, then return back to fight?

This reinforces my belief that something needs to change about stairs for any luring reform to be meaningful.

I believe luring the monster to stairs will be a bad idea often. If the monster is dangerous, then that action (read "attack") delay can make a difference between win and loss. If the monster is not dangerous, then why just not kill it without luring that far? Also you can meet something more dangerous while luring/fighting and then it will be even more dangerous because your non-movement actions are already slowed.

Stairdancing is a different issue and can be fixed too (in many ways) but this proposal does not address it, I think first we need to fix normal luring since it happens more often and is more annoying

[VeryAngryFelid]

I lure pretty frequently.

It is not about frequency, it is about distance. You still can lure every monster without penalty if you like, you just cannot lure it too deep into explored territory. What is typical distance you lure monster for? Imagine the N from OP is exactly that value so you are not affected.

Edit. I hope everyone agrees that luring monster for 5 tiles is ok and I hope everyone agrees that luring monster for 100 tiles is not ok. In this case N is clearly somewhere between 5 and 100 and we can customize it as we want.

[ydeve]

Who waits for dangerous monsters to be adjacent before luring them to the stairs? I'd lure them while there is still some distance between us, climb the stairs, wait off the penalty, then descend and attack.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Who waits for dangerous monsters to be adjacent before luring them to the stairs? I'd lure them while there is still some distance between us, climb the stairs, wait off the penalty, then descend and attack.

Monster does not need to be adjacent to penalize your actions speed, it's enough that you move and you didn't have M turns without monsters in view.

[ydeve]

Um, that and the stairs are the point. You don't have the penalty because you're upstairs...
Then you come back down and fight the thing on safe terrain...

[VeryAngryFelid]

Um, that and the stairs are the point. You don't have the penalty because you're upstairs...
Then you come back down and fight the thing on safe terrain...

I don't see the point. If you lured a dangerous monster a long way to stairs, now you have an attack penalty, how are you going to kill the monster if you couldn't reliably kill it even without penalty? I am not trying to completely prevent stairdancing, just trying to make terrain count. Player must not select terrain for free.

Or do you mean you will retreat upstairs, wait for the penalty to disappear and then fight the monster? Yes, that's a problem

[HardboiledGargoyle]

tsk tsk tsk you're a VeryBadFelid too

[all before]

s25, ydeve and i are both saying you can lure any non-fast monster while it is still 2 squares away from you back to the stairs. Then rest off the penalty, go back down, and fight.

[dynast]

There are different kinds of luring:
1) Luring to fight in better terrain (kill hole, corridor, stairs, near traps etc.)
2) Luring to avoid getting more monsters from noise
3) Luring to split packs
4) "Luring" used as an escape method
I believe all those luring tactics are good and can stay but they must not be that time consuming.

So basically you dont wanna nerf luring but "kiting"(dragging a monster around with no specific goal for the sake of it because it is not faster than you)instead. Personally, i would just mesmerize the player after spending too much time in the LoS of a monster and communicate it with "look dude, i know what you are up to".

[VeryAngryFelid]

s25, ydeve and i are both saying you can lure any non-fast monster while it is still 2 squares away from you back to the stairs. Then rest off the penalty, go back down, and fight.

Yes, I see. It looks like stairdancing nerf is required too. I like how it is done in CA fork - you stop ascending/descending if taking any damage. It does not help in this situation though, unless you met some other monsters while retreating.

So basically you dont wanna nerf luring but "kiting"(dragging a monster around with no specific goal for the sake of it because it is not faster than you)instead. Personally, i would just mesmerize the player after spending too much time in the LoS of a monster and communicate it with "look dude, i know what you are up to".

I don't think devs will do it, they want to keep ability to escape via stairs vs hydra and alike.

[VeryAngryFelid]

There is a intrinsic flaw because we cannot differentiate escape vs stairs and luring to stairs for stairdancing, you can do it once with Mara or 10+ times with harmless monsters just because you are paranoid/optimal and you can.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Oh, I think we can differentiate the two. If stairs are used while having action penalty, they are locked until the player enters the same level via different stairs. So if player was just trying to escape, it does not affect him/her (he/she wasn't going to use the stairs anyway). But if player was just luring for stairdancing, now he/she cannot stairdance.
First level of every branch has only single stairs and is not locked of course, it is bad enough since all new monsters are generated near those single stairs so it is much more likely that the situation will be bad with too much time spent on the level. Also the hardest floors of the game (they have either rune or orb) don't have single stairs.

[ydeve]

There are different kinds of luring:
1) Luring to fight in better terrain (kill hole, corridor, stairs, near traps etc.)
2) Luring to avoid getting more monsters from noise
3) Luring to split packs
4) "Luring" used as an escape method
I believe all those luring tactics are good and can stay but they must not be that time consuming.

So basically you dont wanna nerf luring but "kiting"(dragging a monster around with no specific goal for the sake of it because it is not faster than you)instead. Personally, i would just mesmerize the player after spending too much time in the LoS of a monster and communicate it with "look dude, i know what you are up to".

This only works if you think people should never be able to run from monsters. Your criteria doesn't differentiate between (for example) running away to the stairs and pillar dancing.