Let us turn off ghost generation.

[duvessa]

Slaying doesn't affect ghost damage. Only the weapon's base damage, weapon skill, Fighting skill, and strength affect ghost melee damage, unless you have a permanent claws mutation and were unarmed when you died, in which case your XL is also added to the damage.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

The reason for randomising names is to eliminate offensive names.

[Shard1697]

Is that a major problem, though? If a name is seriously actually offensive(like, contains a racial slur or something), that's the sort of thing which should be dealt with regardless of ghosts, while if someone's name is DikFuk420 it's not a big deal

[Tiktacy]

The reason for randomising names is to eliminate offensive names.

Is this a meme or something?

[KoboldLord]

The reason for randomising names is to eliminate offensive names.

Is this a meme or something?

Whenever the topic of player ghosts come up, there is the argument advanced that player ghosts create interactivity between players in this single-player game. This is somehow advanced as an argument as if that interactivity is a good thing, instead of one of the main reasons to pick a single-player game like Crawl in the first place. Players who use racist slurs and their character name are really only one snappy example of ways other players can intrude on my experience, but since my preferences for not interacting with idiots are not a mechanical issue with ghost generation the problem isn't really calling out for a mechanical solution.

Really, there is no possible defense for the continued existence of ghosts as a game feature. They are not only spoiler-reliant, they are the most spoiler-reliant feature in the history of the game. You really ought to be checking the morgues every time they appear, and the process of checking the morgues is much more objectionable than tabbing over a window to check a wiki or the learndb, or even brute memorization. Ghosts are not just poorly placed as monsters, they include features that appear nowhere else in the game and have never been rigorously play-tested in any other context. A new unique will get its spawning range moved to a shallower or deeper location if data from actual play shows that it is not suited to its current location. A player ghost cannot ever produce a statistically relevant set of data and problems caused by them will never be possible to demonstrate. Were we to intentionally devise the worst feature for Crawl ever, I doubt we could do much worse than the player ghost.

But oh, it's apparently supposed to be so much fun interacting with twelve-year-olds on the internet that this totally makes up for the fact that the feature is raw sewage laced with arsenic. And if I point out that I do not enjoy interacting with a twelve-year-old who is desperately trying to shock me with racist slurs that he doesn't even properly understand, I get suggestions like randomized player ghost names when the main problem is that my ghost sandwich is still made out of arsenic-laced poop.

[andreas]

Calm down.

[Sandman25]

Calm down.

I guess you were not spectator in that game where player explicitly said that their goal is to create the nastiest possible ghost. They specifically selected Felid for speed advantage and asked spectators which spells would be the worst. I remember the ghost had at least Fire Storm and Haste. "Player interaction", this is ridiculous.

[Sar]

that sounds really fun, a good argument for keeping ghosts imo

[andreas]

I agree with this part. The game should evaluate the strength of a ghost, and if it's too much for where it died, place it deeper.

Seems like Rast's idea would help a lot with griefers. Even easier: just don't place ghosts if the ghost would be beyond some xl bound that is a function of the depth.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Another option might be to always generate ghosts on the the most difficult level a character reached, rather than where they died. Of course it would need some kind of ranking system for branches.

[andreas]

Griefer will mummy scum.

edit: I'm an idiot, please ignore.

[Shtopit]

You could even justify it in lore. "The Orb will call the stronger ghosts closer to herself, turning would-be-thieves into guardians."

[infinitevox]

might a swear filter help with the ghost name issue?

So is Dick a swear word then? And a ghost named HaistaVittu would be pretty offensive to me but not to most people. Filtering would be a lousy band-aid.

Personally I think the names aren't offensive enough! My only stipulation is that one should have to be clever about it.
DickyFarFart - No, not creative enough
CursedCamelToe - Acceptable level of creativity

Seriously though, the names are often pretty funny, and often give me a good chuckle. "OrcJesus" being one of my favorites.
Removing XP from ghosts just removes any incentive to kill them. Imo that would actually make them even more annoying, as there is no reward for slaying them.

[Reptisaurus]

Ah shoot, I just created a player ghost thread. I did not know there was a "Wah! Ghosts! Wahhhhh!" thread in Game design. Here's why I dig 'em:

(1) I never even thought of looking at morgue files before this thread.

99.9% of Crawl Players behind me, en Masse "Yeah, we didn't either!"

What's the advantage, really? You already know just from looking at it that the ghost has decent AC, a broad axe of electrocution, fire, cold, and steam resistance, and it can blink. What else you need?

(2) I DO appreciate the limited interactivity.

(3) They're damn good training in "You don't have to kill everything." Good practice for really dangerous uniques who can use stairs.

(4) I know this is a little subjective, but "You will never succeed when I failed!" is the creepiest experience in crawl. Mood-wise, they add a lot to my play experience.

(5) I've never run into a ghost name I've considered potentially offensive to anyone. You all can certainly prove me wrong, but as of now I question the scope of the problem. And you're still gonna see "CursedCamelToe" hanging out in the lobby when you sign on - Seems like a mod issue rather than a problem with ghosts.

(6) For the overwhelmingly vast majority of players the only spoiler you need for ghost is "They can't use stairs" which is right there in the description.

(7) They can often be beaten with stairdancing. I don't see this as being all that different than "Ghost moths can be beaten with see invisible/Conjure flame" or "Hill Giants can be beaten with a potion of rage." Monsters have specific weaknesses that can be exploited. Is it vitally important to get rid of orc warlords with bardiches for the same reason?

(8) Yeah, okay, the difference in power between various ghosts is a problem. Range ghosts can definitely use a buff.

(9) Griefing ghosts... Yeah, show of hands. How many of you have actually been summon horrible thinged to death by a ghost on d:3? Again, I'm not convinced this is a huge problem.

[Quazifuji]

I think the ideal solution would be to display exact AC/EV/weapon etc. of the ghost in their description (along with standard bars of course) to remove any reason to look into morgue file. One more reason why I dislike ghosts is that they make you suspend normal play to check their morgues.

This seems reasonable to me, personally, and I'm not sure why it's not being discussed anymore. If the biggest problem with ghosts is that they're spoilery because you can look up morgue files to get important information about them that isn't available in the game, then the solution to that should be to provide any relevant information you could reasonably want out of the morgue in game.

Balance issues, offensive names, and stairdancing would still remain as problems, but this seems like a straightforward solution to the morgue issue to me.

[Sandman25]

This seems reasonable to me, personally, and I'm not sure why it's not being discussed anymore. If the biggest problem with ghosts is that they're spoilery because you can look up morgue files to get important information about them that isn't available in the game, then the solution to that should be to provide any relevant information you could reasonably want out of the morgue in game.

Balance issues, offensive names, and stairdancing would still remain as problems, but this seems like a straightforward solution to the morgue issue to me.

I think it is not discussed because it will not be implemented anyway. Why am I sure? Because the same thing applies to normal crawl monsters, we have no idea about stats like HP, damage and HD and have just limited knowledge of things like speed and AC/EV/MR unless we use knowledge bots and wiki.

[KoboldLord]

I think the ideal solution would be to display exact AC/EV/weapon etc. of the ghost in their description (along with standard bars of course) to remove any reason to look into morgue file. One more reason why I dislike ghosts is that they make you suspend normal play to check their morgues.

This seems reasonable to me, personally, and I'm not sure why it's not being discussed anymore. If the biggest problem with ghosts is that they're spoilery because you can look up morgue files to get important information about them that isn't available in the game, then the solution to that should be to provide any relevant information you could reasonably want out of the morgue in game.

Balance issues, offensive names, and stairdancing would still remain as problems, but this seems like a straightforward solution to the morgue issue to me.

The devteam doesn't seem to much like putting exact numbers for monsters in the game, even when exact numbers exist. Their reasons are their own, but they're probably not going to make an exception for player ghosts.

Probably if they did start putting exact number in, people would notice that a typical Lair ghost often has higher AC, EV, or hp than an orb of fire. If most of them weren't slow melee-only brutes that are harmless as long as you don't let them touch you under any circumstances, they'd be a much more unmanageable problem instead of just being generically terrible. A really good ghost is not just inappropriately strong for its location; it is stronger than everything else in the whole game. The combat system is not meant to include monsters with 80AC or 60EV and performs poorly when forced to accommodate player stats as monsters.

[Hands]

Player ghosts are, let's face it, a design clusterfuck incarnated as code. And that's fine I guess. And at the same time, popular features are removed for such abstract reasons as mild overlap with other features. And that's fine too. It's just strange how these two things happen at the same time. I mean, it's not actually strange, because development is just individuals having a go at stuff which interests them, but it is inconsistent. It's like a military drill where one guy is getting chewed out because his boots aren't shiny enough while the guy standing next to him dressed in a velvet clown suit gets a pass.

[Reptisaurus]

I think the ideal solution would be to display exact AC/EV/weapon etc. of the ghost in their description (along with standard bars of course) to remove any reason to look into morgue file. One more reason why I dislike ghosts is that they make you suspend normal play to check their morgues.

This seems reasonable to me, personally, and I'm not sure why it's not being discussed anymore. If the biggest problem with ghosts is that they're spoilery because you can look up morgue files to get important information about them that isn't available in the game, then the solution to that should be to provide any relevant information you could reasonably want out of the morgue in game.

Balance issues, offensive names, and stairdancing would still remain as problems, but this seems like a straightforward solution to the morgue issue to me.

The devteam doesn't seem to much like putting exact numbers for monsters in the game, even when exact numbers exist. Their reasons are their own, but they're probably not going to make an exception for player ghosts.

Probably if they did start putting exact number in, people would notice that a typical Lair ghost often has higher AC, EV, or hp than an orb of fire.

Although (as we all know) orbs of fire are far more dangerous than 90% of lair ghosts.

Note that But the "x" "v" command does give +++++ stats, so you actually can tell if a player ghost has significantly higher stats if you compare it to an orb of fire.

And, y'know, in all honestly I'm not sure what exact tactical decisions you're going to make differently once you look at the morgue file and figure out the ghost has an ac of 21 rather than ++++.... You know what weapon the ghost is using, what it's resistances and vulnerabilities are, and what spells it can use. And it ain't like a player ghost is gonna pull out a stone of tremors on you because it died with one in her inventory.

It might be a little spoilery to know that trolls have a shit-ton of hit points and do a lot of unarmed damage, but anyone who's so into the game that they're gonna look up morgue files knows that anyway.

Another thing I like about ghosts is you really have to study them carefully to make a decision about whether or not you should fight or leave 'em. I've been killed by player ghosts because I was playing stupid, and I've been killed by a draconian ghost on top of yak pack, but I've never been killed because I didn't get enough information in game.

[duvessa]

A ghost's melee damage can be anywhere from 4 to 50 and you cannot actually narrow that down at all without checking the morgue*. That's kind of a big deal.

*unless the ghost has a Fighting title, in which case you could narrow it down to "between [5 or 6 or 7] and 50"

[Sandman25]

It's not fun to enter Bailey as Mummy of Chei and find yourself 2 tiles away from a ghost with Sticky Flame without exit in view. Argument about orbs of fire does not apply because you don't get orbs of fire in Lair, you actually have to want to fight them to have a chance to meet them.

[ydeve]

Argument about orbs of fire does not apply because you don't get orbs of fire in Lair, you actually have to want to fight them to have a chance to meet them.

(emphasis added)
You have a very funny definition of the word "want".

[Shard1697]

The point is they only show up in one place, are at an appropriate power curve for that place, and always have the same abilities. You are not surprised when you play through the whole game, get to Zot 5, and see OoF. You gotta do well to even reach the point that something that dangerous will show up at.

[ydeve]

I know, it was a joke.

[Reptisaurus]

A ghost's melee damage can be anywhere from 4 to 50 and you cannot actually narrow that down at all without checking the morgue*. That's kind of a big deal.

*unless the ghost has a Fighting title, in which case you could narrow it down to "between [5 or 6 or 7] and 50"

I still wouldn't know how to translate damage into a number, but code diving makes sense now.

It is a little strange that there isn't a hit point or damage indicator for monsters to go along with Evasion and MR.

Still... you know the ghost's level, race, background, god, spell abilities, weapon and maybe some other stuff I don't remember because I don't have a player ghost in any of my saved games and wizmode apparently doesn't let me create one.

Hit points might be a mystery, but it seems to me that you can generally figure out how hard the damn thing is gonna hit you. A level 27 ogre with a giant spiked club is probably not doing 7 damage, a deep elf with Orb of destruction and poison arrow on d:1o is probably not a huge melee threat without electrocution or distortion, and any ghost that ends in "the archer" is gonna be an experience pinata.

Maybe it would occasionally be worth it - the ghost of a human abyssal knight who's highest skill is invocations and who's second highest skill is bows is going to be a lot easier target than one who's second highest is polearms - but most of the time it feels like you'd be learning what you already know, damage-wise.

[yesno]

ghosts are pretty bad, they could be replaced with a 1 floor shaft trap and have a pretty similar effect on my game

[andreas]

Probably if they did start putting exact number in, people would notice that a typical Lair ghost often has higher AC, EV, or hp than an orb of fire. [...] A really good ghost is not just inappropriately strong for its location; it is stronger than everything else in the whole game. The combat system is not meant to include monsters with 80AC or 60EV and performs poorly when forced to accommodate player stats as monsters.

This sounds like a fine reason to scale down/normalize ghost AC and EV. ("PlayerGhost is but a shade of their former self, with a fraction of their old power.") Bonus: now minmay can have even more fun running morgue data through the scaling formulas.

I would particularly be in favor of this if other changes were made to make "fight even mildly threatening ghosts on the stairs" less of go-to tactic.

[archaeo]

Well, but that's the thing: ghosts aren't really a problem, it's just how we translate player stats into monster stats that seems to be the issue.

Really, we could just do what NetHack does without giving away a big pile of items. You could have a "ghost" monster, without any real connection to the player's character, spawn with a gravestone dungeon feature with pertinent details. Ideally, though, we'd find a way to have players' decisions impact their ghosts, which seems like it would more or less require simplifying them and bringing their stats more in line with monsters'.

[Sprucery]

spawn with a gravestone dungeon feature with pertinent details

Great idea! Let the player write one line for the gravestone inscription when the character dies. Then we can have proper insults instead of just boring character names...

[infinitevox]

What if there were a timed portal to "the Graveyard" or "the Morgue" that could spawn. Inside this portal there would be the 10-20 most recent ghosts, all in their own rooms with runed doors.
Like a gauntlet of ghosts. (Could also call it "the Gauntlet")

This keeps player ghosts a thing for those of us who don't mind them, and allows those who would prefer not to deal with them an option to avoid.
Also I like portals.

[duvessa]

There's no need to keep player ghosts a thing for people who don't mind them. For every removed feature, there lots of players who "don't mind it", or even want it. This doesn't make the feature any less deserving of removal.

[infinitevox]

There's no need to keep player ghosts a thing for people who don't mind them. For every removed feature, there lots of players who "don't mind it", or even want it. This doesn't make the feature any less deserving of removal.

While I understand your viewpoint, I prefer to suggest alternative solutions before calling for excision.
I also think that, while its unlikely to get implemented, a portal to a place filled with player ghosts would be cool.

[ydeve]

While I understand your viewpoint, I prefer to suggest alternative solutions before calling for exorcism.

FTFY

[Reptisaurus]

From the Crawl FAQ:

"Q12. I keep getting murdered by my own ghosts. Can I deactivate them?

There isn’t any such option, and we’re not planning to add one, either."

This is right after the FAQ recommends Xom as a God for a beginning player, so it might not be absolute gospel.

But it seems like ghosts are safe for the time being. (HOORAY!)

[dowan]

Oh well? The crawl faq was probably written years and years ago, when Mountain Dwarves were a thing. They certainly weren't safe, and they seemed a lot better designed than player ghosts.

And another thing people aren't bringing up about ghosts is even if they're avoidable, they essentially break auto travel on the level they're on. So I see a bad ghost I can't kill, no biggie, I go upstairs, come down somewhere else. Sure, I could skip the floor, but that's dangerous, and what if I'm still looking for the temple? So I then manually explore the level, and every time I see the ghost I repeat the process. I can't autoexplore because it really wants to explore that one corner with the ghost in it, so now I spend an hour of my time dicking around D4 trying to find out if in fact the temple is there. And that's not even suboptimal, because I don't have a god to lose piety with yet anyway!

That's when I'm feeling patient. When I'm not, I just hold down tab, and I don't really care whether it's me or the ghost who dies. If I die, good, I'm done with that horrible game, maybe I won't get a shitty ghost next time. If I win, maybe I get a bunch of XP, and my game is easier than it should have been.

[andreas]

This is only incidentally about ghosts. This happens when there's a speed 10 threat that's bad enough that the right response is backing up to the stairs and going down another stair. Eg ogres cause a similar effect on some characters.

[Sandman25]

Ogres are "better" because you still can die to them if you went downstairs and found an Ogre adjacent to you. With ghosts you can just return to previous level immediately, ghost is very unlikely to kill you from full HP during ascending.

[Shard1697]

That's kind of why I think ghosts should vanish if you exit their level. That way when you encounter them you decide "can I fight this for XP or not?", and then either fight it legit, or give it up and lose the possible XP. No cheesing with stairs, no parking ghosts and then coming back 5 levels later for free XP.

[Quazifuji]

The devteam doesn't seem to much like putting exact numbers for monsters in the game, even when exact numbers exist. Their reasons are their own, but they're probably not going to make an exception for player ghosts.

I'm aware that the devteam does not like putting in exact numbers. However, I am under the impression that, in general, the concept behind avoiding exact numbers is generally that it is often possible to provide the player with sufficient information to make a correct, informed decision without providing exact numbers. For example, while the player's stealth is an exact number behind the scenes, the interface is designed with the goal that any different in your stealth that doesn't add or remove a + is small enough that it doesn't need to affect your decision.

The monster stats are, I assume, intended to work in a similar way. Two monsters with ++ might not have the same EV, but it should at least be close enough that the difference in EV between those monsters isn't enough to meaingfully affect how I should approach fighting those two monsters. And I don't think this goal is inherently bad. After all, I don't need to know the exact EV and AC of every enemy in the game to make informed decisions - just having a rough idea is generally enough.

So if the xv interface is not giving sufficient information to make an informed decision when fighting ghosts, leading players to search the morgue for more detailed information, it seems to me that there are two possibilities:

1. The parts of the monster interface that don't use exact numbers (HP, AC, EV, MR) aren't granular enough. Two different values represented the same way in the xv interface can still be different enough to warrant different approaches. If this is the case, that doesn't mean numbers are necessary, it just means the scale of the meters needs to be adjusted, and possibly made more granular, until this is no longer true.
   
2. There is information that is not present in the xv interface at all (not merely given approximately without an exact number) that can be learned through sources outside the game (morgues, learndb) that affects how the player should approach the fight. In that case, this information should be in xv.

In neither case are exact numbers necessary. Unless you're telling me that it is essential to know the exact numerical value of an enemy's AC, EV, HP, or MR, and no non-numerical representation would ever provide enough information to allow the player to always make a correct informed decision. But I have trouble believing this is true.

[removeelyvilon]

I find it kinda funny that more people are concerned with the ghosts' names than the glaringly flawed design of the concept as a whole.

Others have already expressed why they are problematic better than I ever could, so all I can say is, I couldn't agree more - remove player ghosts. That is one feature I am really not going to miss at all.

Plus, fighting 3+ tstbtto ghosts in every game is kinda getting out of hand...

[Sandman25]

In neither case are exact numbers necessary. Unless you're telling me that it is essential to know the exact numerical value of an enemy's AC, EV, HP, or MR, and no non-numerical representation would ever provide enough information to allow the player to always make a correct informed decision. But I have trouble believing this is true.

I believe devs won't display ghost's HP even as bar so there will always be a reason to look up morgue files.
I believe so because devs don't display normal monster's HP even as bar.

Spoiler: show

and this is very bad from design perspective of course. People start to use exploration mode because they don't have the luxury to learn fiends' or panlords HP by trial and error method

[Floodkiller]

I like player ghosts, but the arguments about them being unbalanced could be fixed if they were redesigned as approximations/generalizations of the character rather than an exact copy. Take the species, background, and XL (and maybe god) and generate a ghost named after the character by:
-Using species to determine base speed, HP, AC, EV, MR; also resistances/innate mutations
-Using background to determine base abilities/spell sets, modify species AC/EV by stereotype of the background
-Using XL to determine HD and scale stats/abilities/spell selection by it
-Maybe using god to add extra abilities to the ghost based on a simplification of what the god does.

By making it an approximation, it becomes less personal (rip LogicNinja ghosts), but becomes much easier to balance and observe.

[Sandman25]

Alternatively we can make some unique being unable to use stairs and call them player ghosts. Maybe there is something wrong with being unable to use stairs since we don't have such uniques currently.

[ydeve]

Similarly, why can't derived undead use stairs?

[duvessa]

Similarly, why can't derived undead use stairs?

so that necromancers can't carry their permanent undead armies across levels---wait...

[elmdor]

A lot of the arguments in this thread boil down to "ghosts have bad design, because they meet my own personal definition of bad design."

My view is that this discussion is always going to be somewhat circular and subjective anyway, so why pretend to be objective? All I can offer is my personal opinion, and that is that I find everything about ghosts incredibly fun. The spooky quotes, getting in challenging and unexpected fights, the XP bonus on wins, even the wonky possibility of looking up the morgue, it's all fun to me. I love the social dimension of seeing another crawler's "death snapshot" -- it informs me what's going on with the recent games of my tileschat friends and perhaps gives me a reason to drop in and chat, whether to say RIP or congratulations on a tough battle. I also frequently check my ghostkill page and compare it to a previous version I've saved in order to read up on my newest victims, reading their morgue files if possible in order to relish their deaths. I love it when my ghost manages to kill a player who didn't show enough respect for my power in the dungeon. And of the course, the ultimate pleasure is watching it happen live

In short, I love player ghosts, they are probably one of my favorite things about crawl, and I would even advocate buffing them so they are statistically even more lethal.

[Hands]

A lot of the arguments in this thread boil down to "ghosts have bad design, because they meet my own personal definition of bad design."

Not really. It's more that ghosts are obviously inconsistent with the stated design aims for the game, and also with the documented justifications for various other game changes (some of which have been highly controversial).

If the design aims of Crawl could be summed up as "Basically anything that seems cool. We don't really care about encouraging degenerate behaviour or game balance" then sure, player ghosts would be flawlessly designed.

[elmdor]

What if I suggested to you that the stated design aims are a fig leaf for the more important aim of creating a game that is fun to play, and ghosts add to that fun?

[KoboldLord]

What if I suggested to you that the stated design aims are a fig leaf

Then you are probably wasting your time here in the Game Design Discussion forum.

[elmdor]

In my view this is very pertinent to design discussion in that one oughtn't follow rules off a cliff. I'd rather play a fun game than a "consistently" designed game, after all, this is a leisure pastime, not a logic test.