Don't spawn player ghosts in portals

[yesno]

portals are fun. they are a quick diversion from the rest of the dungeon and often have good loot. they are usually small spaces with no room to run from a ghost. seeing a player ghost in a portal usually means you should just leave immediately so the ghost doesn't kill you. this is super awful.

[tedric]

It's not that unusual for portals to spawn where the normal contents are too much for a character to handle, so I don't think the addition of ghosts makes a significant difference here.

In fact, one of my best portal experiences was a recent ice cave -- the two-room teleporter layout -- in which a "very dangerous" player ghost spawned with the twin ice statues in the second room. I had a thrilling little skin-of-my-teeth encounter dashing around to collect the loot and escape before I got overwhelmed. +1 would play again!

[PowerOfKaishin]

It's not that unusual for portals to spawn where the normal contents are too much for a character to handle, so I don't think the addition of ghosts makes a significant difference here.

What you're missing is that ghosts don't replace content, they add to it. Ghosts always add difficulty, especially to an area where you can't even run much less stair dance.

In fact, one of my best portal experiences was a recent ice cave -- the two-room teleporter layout -- in which a "very dangerous" player ghost spawned with the twin ice statues in the second room. I had a thrilling little skin-of-my-teeth encounter dashing around to collect the loot and escape before I got overwhelmed. +1 would play again!

That's cool but not every character has the luxury of having options to get out of that and the incredibly small pool of characters that can actually fight the damn ghost are already strong enough not to need the treasure.

Generally speaking I need to not be distracted to deal with the ice fiend/ice giant/ice dragons at the end.

[elmdor]

Although most players enter portals with an approximate idea of their difficulty, and calibrate their portal choices accordingly, ghosts can cause portals to be unexpectedly hard. I think this is fun because it forces you to make a calculation you wouldn't otherwise make in crawl -- should I give up the treasure forever and leave to ensure I survive, or should I go all-in on this risky fight for a chance of a high reward? Removing ghosts from portals would make both of them less interesting.

Also, any nerf to ghosts would reduce my chances of gaining ghostkills, and is therefore bad game design.

[dynast]

As much as i like player ghosts i have to agree that portal ghosts are a bad thing, mainly because unlike normal floors in the game, portals can appear too early or too late. When you find a ghost on d:10 its a ghost of someone who went down to d:10 and died, when you find a ice cave ghost it could be the ghost of someone who died on dungeon, lair, orc, elf or even a rune branch, while you are a player on one of those early areas(i could be wrong about that, and in the case i am i take it all back).

[tedric]

What you're missing is that ghosts don't replace content, they add to it. Ghosts always add difficulty,

I'm not missing that, I'm saying it's at least not a bad thing.

especially to an area where you can't even run much less stair dance.

Of course you can run, there's always a portal back out right by the entrance. As for stairdancing, the entire point of portals is that they offer loot only if you can overcome whatever threats are inside and escape with your life in one go. The RNG already provides a wide variety of challenges here, ghosts are just a small part of that variety.

In fact, one of my best portal experiences was a recent ice cave -- the two-room teleporter layout -- in which a "very dangerous" player ghost spawned with the twin ice statues in the second room. I had a thrilling little skin-of-my-teeth encounter dashing around to collect the loot and escape before I got overwhelmed. +1 would play again!

That's cool but not every character has the luxury of having options to get out of that and the incredibly small pool of characters that can actually fight the damn ghost are already strong enough not to need the treasure.

Every character in that situation has the option of taking one step and exiting the portal. It's not like we're talking "portal ghosts = instadeath" here -- all you're losing is a bit of additional loot that you were never guaranteed to be able to collect anyway. "Give me more loot for less risk" is not a good design argument.

[yesno]

in most situations you don't have a close encounter, nor do you make an interesting decision. in most situations, you are evaluating the portal and your character's ability to handle it (ie the fun and interesting part), when a ghost shows up that makes your decision for you: "leave now or accept 95% chance of death", or worse maybe a ghost shows up right at the portal entrance, and that portal might as well have been a mimic. you can choose to gamble and get an anecdote out of it if you're lucky but i don't think it makes portals more fun in a typical game. it's the same thing with a regular dungeon floor (you usually want to just dive to the next level) but those maps are bigger and you can return via another stair to keep exploring.

[goodcoolguy]

Strongly agree with the OP. Portals are filled with ghosts on populated servers. Many players do not seem to be able to gauge the threat level in them properly or are perhaps just getting killed by other ghosts.

When you run into a ghost on a normal dungeon level, there are a lot of ways to deal with it that ultimately aren't that consequential to how the game plays out. On the other hand, if you have to back out of a portal because there's a troll ghost on the entrance, you lose a lot of loot purely by the luck of the draw. It's silly.

[Siegurt]

Strongly agree with the OP. Portals are filled with ghosts on populated servers. Many players do not seem to be able to gauge the threat level in them properly or are perhaps just getting killed by other ghosts.

When you run into a ghost on a normal dungeon level, there are a lot of ways to deal with it that ultimately aren't that consequential to how the game plays out. On the other hand, if you have to back out of a portal because there's a troll ghost on the entrance, you lose a lot of loot purely by the luck of the draw. It's silly.

On the other hand if more people did this, there would be less ghosts in portals.

[PowerOfKaishin]

I'm not missing that, I'm saying it's at least not a bad thing.

Not by itself, but let's use a standardized monster for that instead of something with a wildly varying yet still lethal offense with ridiculous amounts of AC and EV and a host of annoying immunities alongside a weakness that can be exploited only very, very rarely (not at all in Oss or Sewer).

Of course you can run, there's always a portal back out right by the entrance. As for stairdancing, the entire point of portals is that they offer loot only if you can overcome whatever threats are inside and escape with your life in one go. The RNG already provides a wide variety of challenges here, ghosts are just a small part of that variety.

Ghost generation is independent of that. If ghosts replaced enemies your argument would work, but they don't. They only add difficulty, and randomly at that.

Every character in that situation has the option of taking one step and exiting the portal. It's not like we're talking "portal ghosts = instadeath" here -- all you're losing is a bit of additional loot that you were never guaranteed to be able to collect anyway. "Give me more loot for less risk" is not a good design argument.

It's not. Good thing I wasn't making it. Please do not put words into my mouth. Literally the only thing added here is the ghost. The loot is unchanged and the only thing added is an additional horribly designed incredibly random difficulty spike that only a handful of players can overcome. It's nice that you found a ghost that could only hit you in melee (or that didn't have an otherwise overwhelming offense) and that you had the tools to escape from. It's cool you had that experience. I don't doubt that it was interesting. But if you want others to experience the same thing, let's use something that doesn't vary wildly, that the player knows the mechanics of, in order to properly simulate that feeling.

I'll take an Ice Fiend over that, because I know what an Ice Fiend does, I know that an Ice Fiend doesn't randomly show up around a corner, regardless of whether or not it's been discovered already and I had to flee prior, and I know that an Ice Fiend is generated asleep.

[elmdor]

I frequently play somewhat weak and weird characters, at least according to people in tileschat who keep telling me my builds are "bad fam", but I still rarely run into ghosts that are strong enough to make me flee portals instantly. Probably 75% of the time I end up fighting and killing the ghosts I meet. And of the 25% of the ghosts that do I flee from, not all of the escapes were no-brainers -- sometimes I'm fighting them and the fight goes badly, so I bail.

In other words, when I encounter ghosts, I don't often experience the feeling of "I'm dead if I fight this thing." This probably varies with playstyle, more risk-averse players or those attempting to streak would probably prefer to encounter no ghosts in portals. My view as a non-hypothetically-optimal player who plays for fun instead of winrate is that the extra loot in portals should come at the cost of extra danger, including the danger of meeting a tough ghost.

[tedric]

Yeah all of these arguments against ghosts in portals really just boil down to arguments against ghosts, period. As long as the feature exists, I don't see why portals should be exempt from it. You're never guaranteed to get each particular portal, much less be able to complete them -- the small number of cases in which an unbeatable/unavoidable ghost generates might as well be cases in which the portal never generated at all.

I don't think I've ever been unavoidably killed by a portal ghost. If that's a thing that happens on the regular to decent players, show me the numbers and I'll agree it's a problem. But nobody in this whole thread has argued that the problem is portal ghosts causing unavoidable deaths, rather it's that

seeing a player ghost in a portal usually means you should just leave immediately so the ghost doesn't kill you.

Which is another way of saying "Give me more loot for less risk."

[duvessa]

Yeah all of these arguments against ghosts in portals really just boil down to arguments against ghosts, period.

oh no, he cracked the code!

[yesno]

seeing a player ghost in a portal usually means you should just leave immediately so the ghost doesn't kill you.

Which is another way of saying "Give me more loot for less risk."

there needs to be some latin name for this argument

[PowerOfKaishin]

seeing a player ghost in a portal usually means you should just leave immediately so the ghost doesn't kill you.

Which is another way of saying "Give me more loot for less risk."

there needs to be some latin name for this argument

We have an English one already: strawman.

In any case, if ghosts are meant to be killable I want a guide on how to do so reliably. If I don't want to flee from a bailey how do I dispatch the ghost? I can generally take out everything else in that bailey but the ghost. The orc knights and warlords will be very tough, but the ghost is generally impossible for me to kill.

[dowan]

It varies wildly from ghost to ghost. The guide is to open the morgue of the character who created the ghost, find out the ghost's statistics, and judge from there if/how to kill it.

That guide also outlines several of the problems with ghosts...

[Rast]

In fact, one of my best portal experiences was a recent ice cave -- the two-room teleporter layout -- in which a "very dangerous" player ghost spawned with the twin ice statues in the second room. I had a thrilling little skin-of-my-teeth encounter dashing around to collect the loot and escape before I got overwhelmed. +1 would play again!

Wait, that layout ever has good items?

[andreas]

In any case, if ghosts are meant to be killable I want a guide on how to do so reliably. If I don't want to flee from a bailey how do I dispatch the ghost? ...

I see no reason to think that a character should always be able to kill everything it comes across.

[PowerOfKaishin]

In any case, if ghosts are meant to be killable I want a guide on how to do so reliably. If I don't want to flee from a bailey how do I dispatch the ghost? ...

I see no reason to think that a character should always be able to kill everything it comes across.

Herein lies another problem. If something isn't killable it can be left alone and will stay asleep forever. Good thing that also works with gho-oh, wait...

Ghosts cheat.

[dynast]

Herein lies another problem. If something isn't killable it can be left alone and will stay asleep forever.

Unless it detects you, or you believe everyone should train stealth and avoid wearing heavy armor? There is also howler monkeys and alarm traps.

[lethediver]

"Yeah all of these arguments against ghosts in portals really just boil down to arguments against ghosts, period"

Ordinary ghosts dont seal off parts of the game, because u just use stairs to avoid them. the specific combination of portal+ghost turns ghosts from "flavorful annoyance/free xp" into "significant chance of one less portal in your game"

We could always up portal generation i guess, usually by the 2nd portal ghost my pc already has the tools to reliably beat/avoid ghosts

[PowerOfKaishin]

Herein lies another problem. If something isn't killable it can be left alone and will stay asleep forever.

Unless it detects you, or you believe everyone should train stealth and avoid wearing heavy armor? There is also howler monkeys and alarm traps.

Characters that can't be stealthy are going to be stronger and thus more able to take on ghosts head to head. For the mages in the back that can't just spam confuse and start stabbing until the cows come home, stealth and avoiding excessive noise is how they deal with major threats.

But ghosts are always awake and in a portal you can't simply avoid them without attracting their attention. More often than not they locate you rather easily.

[Blomdor]

I generally find your average dungeon-haunting player ghost to be a highly avoidable nuisance, but they're so entirely borking random that occasionally they are something more. Caster ghosts may spam disproportionately powerful spells like their living counterparts never could, and I'm sure we're all aware of the issues with draconian ones. In those cases, or with fast species encountered sufficiently far from stairs, you can be in real danger occasionally.

The problem I have with portal ghosts is that they can easily bar a weaker character from experiencing what are (IMO, at least) fun diversions from the rest of the game that can carry some unusually exciting battles and loot, simply because some person on the server you happen to be playing on managed to get a centaur in randart +10 armor and a triple sword of distortion (use your imagination; the sky's the freaking limit here - I've encountered an XL 27 ghost on D:12) killed in a portal. You can say they just add to a risk that was already present, but the risks presented by a given portal and that posed by ghosts are very different things, and much more knowable in the former case. There's no rhyme or reason to them, and I think that a fire blasting, undead, AC/EV+++++++-ad nauseam monstrosity is pretty damned out of place in an ice cave that is, for a common example, otherwise full of yaks, polar bears, and a single frost giant.

Ghosts in the dungeon may present a danger that warrants skipping a level and coming back to it later, or they may basically be free experience. Ghosts in portals, on the other hand, may potentially bar a good number of characters not of Trog from unique game content, or they may...basically be free experience. There is a difference here, I believe.

Ghostless portals may provide loot for less risk than the alternative, but I would question whether it is a good thing that the player is sometimes essentially punished for the way other people play (and splat) their games.

[goodcoolguy]

re: "exempting portals from ghosts," there are already rules that prevent ghosts from spawning in certain levels and rules controlling the number of spawns on a given level. There is absolutely no reason more such rules couldn't be added.

The basic reason that portals are different from other levels is that you can't exit and reenter them, which is the only thing that makes ghosts tolerable on other dungeon levels.