The Tavern

A lot of people (incl. me) pick up items for only a moment, so they can turn on the skill associated with the item. You can drop the item and continue training. While I would hardly call this "broken", and I like it, I have to admit it doesn't make much sense. How do you practice Conjurations without any Conjuration spells or Conjurations-spell-containing books? Do you just 'get the hang of it' and then manifest little cantrips here and there when the player isn't looking?

Gongclonker wrote:You can drop the item and continue training.

When was this changed?

I'm playing offline... was it fixed recently? Didn't know it had been fixed at all; never seen anyone mention it.

There is no such thing as what "makes sense" outside of user interface and gameplay considerations. It is a game.

What actually makes no sense is the game sweating whether your character is carrying a polearm on d:1-8 when you're using a dagger of venom to cheez every encounter. The game lets you allocate skill points more or less however you want and that's good. The less nonsense checks about "uh, well, I don't know if it makes sense for you to get polearm skill points for killing something with a dagger when you're not even carrying a polearm" the better.

goodcoolguy wrote:There is no such thing as what "makes sense" outside of user interface and gameplay considerations. It is a game.

There is no such thing as games either, outside of user fun and entertainment considerations. This is a forum.

goodcoolguy wrote:The less nonsense checks about "uh, well, I don't know if it makes sense for you to get polearm skill points for killing something with a dagger when you're not even carrying a polearm" the better.

So... you're okay with players picking up a shield and being able to attain master level with shields, despite having never actually used one? If this were a hack'n'slash and not a tactical roguelike, I'd agree. I actually like the system the way it is - but of all the mechanic-finaglery things that have been nerfed/removed, I'd have expected this one to be, too.

If players couldn't train like this, making the decision of what to train/pick up would become more important. It would make room for any given item or spell to be improved, since it would be more of a commitment to use it. Perhaps this isn't in keeping with DCSS' design philosophy - but I don't think "evolve or die" means "pick up an otherwise-useless item for 2 seconds in case you want to use a good one later".

I am pretty sure you cannot train Conjurations without corresponding spells memorized in last stable (0.18.1). If it was changed in trunk, I hope it requires pressing * first in m screen.

Gongclonker wrote:There is no such thing as games either,

Actually, there is,

Clonggonker wrote:So... you're okay with players picking up a shield and being able to attain master level with shields, despite having never actually used one?

Yes, absolutely. Not only is that okay, it is actually very, very good.

The rest of the post looks like word salad to me, so I'll spare everyone a point by point run down...

Conj was my example (a bad one, admitted). The trick works with equippable items and evokables.

goodcoolguy wrote:Actually, there is,

Okay.

EDIT: It IS very, very good that the trick works - for player survival. I just don't think it helps make the dungeon of Zot a foreboding place. You can wander in there with some random and attain mastery with any random thing just by finding a like type of thing. I have wins I don't really deserve because of it...

I don't get your complaint, or how this helped you get 'undeserved wins'.

Are you saying you should only be able to use auto training? Or that victory dancing should be brought back? Or are you saying that you believe inventory slots are enough of a strategic consideration that you have to choose between carrying something just to train the skill or carrying something that might help you survive?

Current mechanic is the best. Making it more realistic would result in bad gameplay where you would need to stop attacking monster with melee and finish it with wand to get Evocations trained or equip buckler before the kill.

Well, there are many other games where you only get shield skill when you block with your shield, you only get weapon skill for hitting with your weapon, and the way they generally work is to give you a tiny bit of XP for that skill every time it happens. It sounds decent, but I've never seen it work out to fun gameplay.

For example, the elder scrolls games work this way. Leading you to continuously cast the same spell over and over into the horizon to get better at it, or to just stand in front of a weak monster to improve your defensive skills, etc.

Gongclonker wrote:So... you're okay with players picking up a shield and being able to attain master level with shields, despite having never actually used one?

You train as needed between fights, the game just lets that happen implicitly rather than force you to go through the motions.

dowan wrote:I don't get your complaint, or how this helped you get 'undeserved wins'.

Are you saying you should only be able to use auto training? Or that victory dancing should be brought back? Or are you saying that you believe inventory slots are enough of a strategic consideration that you have to choose between carrying something just to train the skill or carrying something that might help you survive?

I think he is saying its exploitable to be able to use zero weapon skill and no be affected by the no-brainer decision of coming by a venom dagger or that unusual +10 elec randart whip.

Sandman25 wrote:Current mechanic is the best. Making it more realistic would result in bad gameplay where you would need to stop attacking monster with melee and finish it with wand to get Evocations trained or equip buckler before the kill.

It would make sense that you study evocables, meaning you get exp allocated to it when you decide to train it. Same applies to spells regardless of what are you casting. But some of the damage you did with a weapon should go to that weapon skill, and no, there would be no such thing as swapping a weapon to finish off a foe to get all the exp to that weapon.

dowan wrote:Well, there are many other games where you only get shield skill when you block with your shield, you only get weapon skill for hitting with your weapon, and the way they generally work is to give you a tiny bit of XP for that skill every time it happens.

Amusingly, this included Crawl (some details changed) until version 0.9. It was pretty bad.

I've yet to see a similar system that wasn't actually bad. I know it's terribly tedious in real life to get good at a skill...

dynast wrote:But some of the damage you did with a weapon should go to that weapon skill, and no, there would be no such thing as swapping a weapon to finish off a foe to get all the exp to that weapon.

It does not help. You may want to infinitely melee a Troll with dagger if you don't need to kill monsters to change XP distribution.

I assume he meant if you did 50% of the trolls life with your dagger, and 50% with your sword, you'd get 50% of a troll's XP toward your dagger skill, and 50% toward your sword skill.

The infinite melee with a dagger problem is present in most systems like that though. It certainly exists in the elder scrolls games.

dowan wrote:I assume he meant if you did 50% of the trolls life with your dagger, and 50% with your sword, you'd get 50% of a troll's XP toward your dagger skill, and 50% toward your sword skill.

The infinite melee with a dagger problem is present in most systems like that though. It certainly exists in the elder scrolls games.

It would exist in crawl too. Because I can deal 400% HP damage to Troll with dagger without killing it and finally kill it (100% HP damage) with my sword when I am bored/tired, thus sending 80% XP into dagger.

Gongclonker wrote:A lot of people (incl. me) pick up items for only a moment, so they can turn on the skill associated with the item. You can drop the item and continue training. While I would hardly call this "broken", and I like it, I have to admit it doesn't make much sense. How do you practice Conjurations without any Conjuration spells or Conjurations-spell-containing books? Do you just 'get the hang of it' and then manifest little cantrips here and there when the player isn't looking?

Can you give an example of this? What's an example of an item that you pick up just for a moment to enable skill training, and what's the corresponding skill? I can't reproduce this with a shield, a book of Conjurations, or a wand.

Idk what are you guys on about but what i meant is how it currently works with summons or collateral damage, if you dagger a troll to nearly death swapping to another weapon to finish him off that dagger exp is wasted on nothing, as if the troll was sitting on fire from a vehumet altar or something. If you can do 100% damage to a troll then... whats the point?

dynast wrote:Idk what are you guys on about but what i meant is how it currently works with summons or collateral damage, if you dagger a troll to nearly death swapping to another weapon to finish him off that dagger exp is wasted on nothing, as if the troll was sitting on fire from a vehumet altar or something. If you can do 100% damage to a troll then... whats the point?

I meant you deal damage with dagger which is almost instantly healed by Trolls regeneration, nothing near "nearly death". Though it is off topic in GDD so I shut up.

PleasingFungus wrote:
Gongclonker wrote:A lot of people (incl. me) pick up items for only a moment, so they can turn on the skill associated with the item. You can drop the item and continue training. While I would hardly call this "broken", and I like it, I have to admit it doesn't make much sense. How do you practice Conjurations without any Conjuration spells or Conjurations-spell-containing books? Do you just 'get the hang of it' and then manifest little cantrips here and there when the player isn't looking?

Can you give an example of this? What's an example of an item that you pick up just for a moment to enable skill training, and what's the corresponding skill? I can't reproduce this with a shield, a book of Conjurations, or a wand.

I mentioned earlier that Conj was a bad example - I just used it because it was easier to explain a guy pretending to use magic than a guy pretending he's got a sword and is swinging at nothing. The bug/feature/exploit/thingy worked with equippables/evokables.

I can do it in 0.17 and a few versions of 0.18.* trunk, can't do it in 0.19-a0-805-g0a78ef0. I guess it was changed pretty recently... I didn't manage to see/find that discussion.

Anyway, I liked it as it was, but only because I have bad habits and make kooky characters who are more or less designed to die, and anything that gives me a foothold is OP... but, by those rules, so are javelins and scrolls of summoning.

I still don't have any idea of what you're describing, or how it gives you an advantage.

So at the start of a game, you find a long blade on the ground, and turn on the long blades skill. Then you drop the long blade, and continue training the skill? If so, how does this make the game any easier than if you had to hold onto the sword?

If not, please describe an example scenario, because I am utterly lost.

njvack wrote:
dowan wrote:Well, there are many other games where you only get shield skill when you block with your shield, you only get weapon skill for hitting with your weapon, and the way they generally work is to give you a tiny bit of XP for that skill every time it happens.

Amusingly, this included Crawl (some details changed) until version 0.9. It was pretty bad.

I started playing in either 0.7 or 0.8, I think, and the removal of victory dancing is probably my favorite thing to happen to Crawl since I started playing. And I'm saying that as someone who's generally been very happy with the direction of the game's development and thinks it's mostly just gotten better every patch. Victory dancing was terrible, and even a new system to train the skills you use without the victory dancing component would be bad.

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Skill training vs. inventory content

Skill training vs. inventory content

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