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Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 13:49
by VeryAngryFelid
Don't give XP for "easy" and "harmless" monsters, give it just for "dangerous" and "extremely dangerous" monsters.

It is boring/time-consuming to return back to D3 after clearing Lair to kill some dangerous unique you escaped initially.
It is boring/time-consuming to kill popcorn when autotraveling and you can just run away from it, yet it is still optimal because of XP.
No more need to have out-of-depth monster generation or food as time-clock, there is no much difference between fighting dangerous monsters on D1 or on D15.
No more need to reduce branches or whatever to decrease XP, it will happen automatically: if players don't get XP from kills on a floor, they go to somewhere else, like diving to Swamp 4 if they are already overleveled after clearing whole Spider branch.

Players still may want to autoexplore everything to pickup consumables, that can be fixed by reducing item generation and increasing item drops from dangerous and very dangerous monsters (nothing drops from easy/harmless monsters ever). The interesting thing about it is if player escapes from Crazy Yuith and returns back later when the monster is easy/harmless, nothing drops, both cloak and weapon disappear. So it will be another reason to fight dangerous monsters (and use consumables hopefully!).

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 15:47
by dpeg
This sounds very interesting. A big can of worms is how to estimate "harmless" vs "dangerous".

Something I suggest from time to time is related to this: whenever you reenter a level, the game should check whether it wants to discard some monsters. The hydra you parked in L:2 does not need to wait for you if you want to hunt it down four XLs later. I would always exempt uniques (because they're not too many, and they're tracked). There shouldn't be any compensation, i.e. don't replace discarded monsters by harder spawns or so. This proposal still has the problem of measuring "easy monster now, discard". But I think it is easier to go for than the OP because it is only a binary decision ("keep" vs "discard") rather than a scale, and it only happens upon re-entry: for your first attempt at a level, you get a shot at everyone. In other words, can have more leeway with discarding monsters. (It says a lot about the game, however, that removing monsters -- officially making it easier for the player -- can make it harder instead.)

I like the idea of turning some (more) loot into death drops. Instead of trying to assess thread, one could go for time: the longer the duration between monster generation and death, the lower the chance for loot drop. But I am sure there's problematic gameplay with a mechanic like this.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 15:54
by VeryAngryFelid
I assumed we can use "easy"-"dangerous" scale which already exists, it is displayed for every monster in x.

Discarding easy monsters is much better indeed, though we should do something about stairs abuse i.e. player can leave the level immediately after entering it for the first time just to delete all harmless monsters which can get in the way when dealing with dangerous monsters.

Probably easy monsters should be removed automatically if there are no dangerous monsters left on the level, the floor is marked as "cleared" so only dangerous monsters can generate there after that. So if you are autotraveling, you will never meet popcorn on cleared levels.

Also note my proposal fixes "XP farm" problem for Mummies etc.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:11
by Shard1697
VeryAngryFelid wrote:I assumed we can use "easy"-"dangerous" scale which already exists, it is displayed for every monster in x.
It's not always accurate though, for some characters certain enemies marked as "dangerous" are actually quite easy to kill.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:37
by johlstei
Shard1697 wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:I assumed we can use "easy"-"dangerous" scale which already exists, it is displayed for every monster in x.
It's not always accurate though, for some characters certain enemies marked as "dangerous" are actually quite easy to kill.

False positives on calling something dangerous are more acceptable to me than false negatives, I don't think that's the end of the world. Are trivial monsters ever non-trivial? That one I'm not sure about.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 18:06
by njvack
The thing about harmless monsters is that they generally offer trivially small amounts of XP. Leave Menakure parked on D:3? You're probably gonna kill some hyrdas before he's "harmless;" each of those is worth almost 6x the XP. If you get to mowing down the few dozen Stone Giants you'll encounter, each of those is worth almost 10x the XP.

The main time I can imagine going back to get earlier monsters for XP would be if I've acquired some kind of ranged kiting attack and wanted to go, say, cast Sting on a D2 ogre until it is dead.

Sometimes I'll go back and hunt down an early unique or problematic monster, but it's because I am filled with spite and pretending Crawl is an RPG -- I'm under no illusions it'll make a practical difference to my character.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 18:31
by VeryAngryFelid
Also I remember we discussed giving XP for only first N monsters of every kind some time ago, it can be combined with OP so if some "dangerous" monster is not exactly dangerous for a build, it stops giving XP.

I have just checked my last online game and I believe we should not get full XP for monsters like
  Code:
74 ugly things
74 yaktaurs
65 deep elf magi
64 nagas
52 ogres
50 black mambas
47 orc warriors
47 slime creatures
38 yaks
36 very ugly things

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 18:46
by duvessa
I don't want to track how many of each monster I've killed.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 18:50
by VeryAngryFelid
You don't need to. I am sure we will need some visual effect for monsters who don't give you XP anyway so we won't have to check monster descriptions to see if they are dangerous or easy.
We already have something similar for summons.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 19:23
by Shtopit
How about calculating monsterXP against your total XP? When your total XP is x times greater than e.g. koboldXP, you stop getting XP from killing kobolds. It can be a simple proportion (like, 100 times) or it can be a more complex growth calculation.
You can also add a rule like "the first 20 monsters of a kind you kill will always grant you XP, no matter what".

I like the idea, BTW. It feels like it's in the same spirit of not being able to sell items.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 19:29
by Doesnt
"damn, the game is giving me nothing but useless deep trolls. i could really use some great orbs of eyes, i don't have any exp from them yet and i have enough MR that they won't do anything to me anyway"

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 19:36
by VeryAngryFelid
Doesnt wrote:"damn, the game is giving me nothing but useless deep trolls. i could really use some great orbs of eyes, i don't have any exp from them yet and i have enough MR that they won't do anything to me anyway"


That's the point of the change, yes.
Is it bad? Maybe you will stop XP farming and will dive or will go into different branch?

Spoiler: show
"damn, the game does not give me any fire dragons. i have 9 scrolls of enchant armour and I might finally fix that rF- from being a mummy".

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 20:34
by Seven Deadly Sins
I fail to see how this is actually an issue, and any solution to it is likely to be needlessly complex and convoluted. It also takes out some potentially fun bits, like going back and squashing the Sigmund / Player Ghost / whatever dangerous thing your ran away from once you become strong enough to wreck them, which may not be optimal, but is fun.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 21:47
by Doesnt
VeryAngryFelid wrote:
Doesnt wrote:"damn, the game is giving me nothing but useless deep trolls. i could really use some great orbs of eyes, i don't have any exp from them yet and i have enough MR that they won't do anything to me anyway"


That's the point of the change, yes.
Is it bad? Maybe you will stop XP farming and will dive or will go into different branch?

Spoiler: show
"damn, the game does not give me any fire dragons. i have 9 scrolls of enchant armour and I might finally fix that rF- from being a mummy".


no, limiting experience to the first N monsters of a species you kill actually gets annoying if the game throws lots of that particular species at you. in that example deep trolls are much more threatening to the player than great orbs of eyes, but because the player is getting unlucky and having to fight a lot of them they're being punished with exp penalties for getting unlucky rolls in monster gen. the optimal play in that case is actually to not dive, and instead to dick around in depths for great orbs of eyes because there is a finite amount of experience and the player hasn't extracted as much of it as they'd like.

in case you haven't played far enough to get there, both deep trolls and great orbs of eyes are native to depths, which is a mandatory section of the game to at least pass through. (orbs also occur in slime but most characters give that a mile-wide berth if rcorr hasn't shown up).

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 21:58
by VeryAngryFelid
Doesnt wrote:no, limiting experience to the first N monsters of a species you kill actually gets annoying if the game throws lots of that particular species at you. in that example deep trolls are much more threatening to the player than great orbs of eyes, but because the player is getting unlucky and having to fight a lot of them they're being punished with exp penalties for getting unlucky rolls in monster gen. the optimal play in that case is actually to not dive, and instead to dick around in depths for great orbs of eyes because there is a finite amount of experience and the player hasn't extracted as much of it as they'd like.


If player chooses to fight dangerous monsters for no XP/items, that's fine with me, call it strategic choice or mistake depending on your view. The point of my suggestions is to make late game harder, you cannot just kill the same monsters again and again.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 23:01
by lethediver
One problem is that crawl already throws an aggravatingly unnecessary number of monsters at you. Removing the XP gain from killing them makes them purely an inconvenience which is likely to cause players to kinda... wake up to the fact that the game is too long. Which is already fairly annoying problem.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 23:06
by duvessa
So real talk, the idea in the OP is bad because it just leads to players leaving uniques until right before the game stops considering them "dangerous", since otherwise they lose XP. It not only doesn't solve the core problem, it makes the problem of tracking monsters on previous levels actively worse. No amount of smoothing is going to solve this, you'll just go back as soon as the monster becomes trivial to kill, which is exactly the status quo, except this proposed system would make it much more important to do.

Giving less XP for monsters that have been killed a lot has no purpose at all, aside from maybe simulationism.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 23:14
by VeryAngryFelid
duvessa wrote:So real talk, the idea in the OP is bad because it just leads to players leaving uniques until right before the game stops considering them "dangerous", since otherwise they lose XP. It not only doesn't solve the core problem, it makes the problem of tracking monsters on previous levels actively worse. No amount of smoothing is going to solve this, you'll just go back as soon as the monster becomes trivial to kill, which is exactly the status quo, except this proposed system would make it much more important to do.

Giving less XP for monsters that have been killed a lot has no purpose at all, aside from maybe simulationism.


If you are concerned with it, we can randomize those states (dangerous/easy) so it will be impossible to calculate even if you source dive. If you are going to return back often and check the monster, it's ok, you still lose piety/food for doing that.

Current situation is much worse, you can return to kill that unique at any time and get full XP/items, the proposed system at least introduces some constraints.

Giving less XP is intended to fix broken situation when you are sitting in Lair with cloak of invisibility and are stabbing all those "dangerous" Death Yaks, Elephants etc.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Monday, 12th September 2016, 23:26
by Sprucery
Let's go the Nethack way and stop generating a certain monster type once enough of them have been generated. The limit can of course depend on the monster (and not be 127 like in Nethack (mostly)). For example, maybe 3 bats and rats would be enough, but no limit for OoFs :)

e: it's 120 in Nethack, isn't it...

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 08:18
by ion_frigate
duvessa wrote:So real talk, the idea in the OP is bad because it just leads to players leaving uniques until right before the game stops considering them "dangerous", since otherwise they lose XP. It not only doesn't solve the core problem, it makes the problem of tracking monsters on previous levels actively worse. No amount of smoothing is going to solve this, you'll just go back as soon as the monster becomes trivial to kill, which is exactly the status quo, except this proposed system would make it much more important to do.

Giving less XP for monsters that have been killed a lot has no purpose at all, aside from maybe simulationism.


Ignoring the problem of uniques, it *is* possible to limit total XP from a given monster type without encouraging degenerate behavior like this. Just use some sort of asymptotic function for total XP (the simplest way would be to have each monster killed be worth some X% of the last one). Obviously individual monsters are eventually going to be worth nothing since XP is discrete, but I don't think even the most insane optimizer is going to track when a monster crosses from being worth 1XP to being worth 0.

Honestly, I also like this idea better simply because it doesn't penalize the player for intelligently using travel exclusions. Recognizing when a monster is too great a threat for you to handle is an important skill in any roguelike, and there's no reason for the player to be punished for it.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 08:24
by Seven Deadly Sins
These sure are a lot of convoluted and non-transparent ways to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 12:34
by VeryAngryFelid
Seven Deadly Sins wrote:These sure are a lot of convoluted and non-transparent ways to solve a problem that doesn't exist.


Yes, we have already realized you disagree that there is too much XP in the game and it is ok to farm easy monsters when you are afraid of going deeper but you should have realized too that you are in minority here.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 13:53
by njvack
VeryAngryFelid wrote:If you are going to return back often and check the monster, it's ok, you still lose piety/food for doing that.


Right now, you still lose piety for going back to mop up trivial stragglers. I would suggest that it's basically always better to spend piety killing more difficult monsters than it is to lose piety while you go back and hunt down that last yak (maybe: 'yaktracking'???).

Right now, piety decay is not a very obvious mechanic, and I think people underestimate its importance -- or at least, underestimate the amount they'd have a more powerful character using their divine abilities more. I wonder if there's some UI way to let people know when piety decay happens, and how strong a nudge it would be to players' behavior.

If yaktracking really is something that's balance-optimal, one way to address it would be to turn up the rate of piety decay.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 14:02
by VeryAngryFelid
njvack wrote:If yaktracking really is something that's balance-optimal, one way to address it would be to turn up the rate of piety decay.


Please don't increase piety decay rate. Piety decay is already quite bad as it makes optimal play more annoying like avoiding autoexplore or avoiding autotravel to get items when you need them instead of picking them up when they are found.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 14:28
by JFunk
These weak monsters already give insignificant amounts of exp, and if you're obsessed with killing them for that "optimal" exp, it's only your own obsessions that are betraying you. The gain is not significant enough to affect your game at all, and you're just wasting turns that will ultimately lower your score (so much for "optimal"). If you spend any meaningful amount of time intentionally searching this experience, the scum timer will kick in ruthlessly quick. I regularly generate Deep Trolls in early dungeon not by intentional scumming, but simply by following Tavern orthodoxy when playing one of the so-called "best species" -- centaurs. Even if you aggressively try to farm monsters (and I have, on certain tougher, exp-impoverished builds, when trying to rush an ability), your efforts will barely move the needle. A handful of extra yak packs does virtually nothing for a PC's progress and imposes real costs in terms of piety, and yes, even food. (You will burn through food FAST when scumming as the rate of monster generation slows down and you have to chow a ration or two between each pack that generates.)

As has correctly been pointed out, imposing an arbitrary "no more exp" cutoff or gradient just arbitrarily penalizes the player. Removing the monsters from the map based on the assumptions of some algorithm that knows nothing about how you play the game would be even worse.

There is no such thing as a trivial monster. Weaker monsters become threatening in groups, which is what most dangerous situations in crawl involve. Monsters ranked "easy" by the game still kill players all the time. The "war of attrition" is a well-known way to die from weaker monsters. I know your characters only die when they get shafted 3 floors on their first move off the staircase on D1 and dropped immediately adjacent to an ogre with a spiked club, but try getting back in touch with reality again and scroll down that big meaty non-winning section of the high score list to see what's actually killing players.

Plus, weaker monsters make advanced tactics possible, like using weaker or slower hostile monsters to block fire or detain stronger monsters. (This is one of the reasons that it's also generally a bad idea to remove slow monsters from the game simply because "you can just walk away from them" or "they are just free exp." In fact, those monsters can be used creatively by the player, and if the player walks away from them, they run the risk of being sandwiched later on when luring another monster on the same level.) Even the truly "trivial" can provide food, blood, or be confused, paralyzed, or enslaved to block a hallway. Hordes of monsters are integral to a Necromancer's typical approach. (Although it seems that Necromancy is currently in the process of being watered down from its former state as one of the best computer game implementations of Necromancy that exists, so maybe this nerf would be considered desirable.)

It seems like this is one of those things where anything that interrupts a berserker's TabTabTab, or even theoretically provides a slight benefit to a strategy that diverges from TabTabTab is considered "tedious" and therefore a "problem."

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 14:48
by VeryAngryFelid
Sorry, I am not clear. So the extra XP from yaks is "insignificant" or important because it "arbitrarily penalizes the player"?

Also let's not forget that XP is not shown in game. I have been playing crawl for many years and I still have no idea how much XP each monster gives so I am trying to kill all of them. If we cannot remove harmless monsters from the game, we should at least make it clear to players that they don't get much from killing the monsters. Displaying them as giving no XP/piety might help players realize they are actually wasting piety/food by fighting them.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 15:40
by nublet
johlstei wrote:Are trivial monsters ever non-trivial? That one I'm not sure about.


Giant eyeballs immediately spring to mind...

Also, entropy weavers, and other "gimmicky" monsters that do something hard- or impossible-to-resist, after a certain point they become "trivial", and, on their own, they already are, but in some situations you want them dead quickly.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 13th September 2016, 16:09
by Shard1697
It's fine to let the player get XP that they don't need because more skilled players are going to try and win faster/be more comfortable winning with less anyways.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 14th September 2016, 00:35
by Seven Deadly Sins
VeryAngryFelid wrote:
Seven Deadly Sins wrote:These sure are a lot of convoluted and non-transparent ways to solve a problem that doesn't exist.


Yes, we have already realized you disagree that there is too much XP in the game and it is ok to farm easy monsters when you are afraid of going deeper but you should have realized too that you are in minority here.


In what universe am I in the minority when more than 1/3 of the posts in this thread are you harping on this, and of the remaining posters, only 2 really actually back the idea?

On topic, JFunk hit the nail on the head in pretty much every way. Monster quality is not the only indicator of monster threat. River rats are 100% trivial in Lair, but they are a space-filling creature that can cause issues when, say, they show up as you're fighting a Death Yak. Orc Priests are probably trivial by the time you have beaten Lair and gotten to Orc:2, but in the Temple ending, having 10 of them on the screen is Real Bad.

The other thing is that an extra Yak pack or two is basically a drop in the bucket compared to the overall EXP that a character gains over their lifetime, and it's so far beyond inefficient to attempt to "farm" them that at that point you're running up against piety decay, the food clock, and the OOD Timer that all are there to cause problems.

The only implementation that makes sense is just to disable spawning and make enemies fixed so that after you clear a floor it remains clear. Solves the issue of mummyscumming, solves the issue of having long distance travel interrupted randomly, solves the issue of whatever this thread is supposed to address.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 14th September 2016, 01:26
by VeryAngryFelid
In the same universe where players believe there is too much XP in the game and ask to reduce XP/make the game shorter. And not only players, but devs too. You can see how Vaults, Lair, 4 Lair branches, Orc lost some floors.
In the same universe people complain about popcorn monsters and ask to remove them. And again not only players, but devs too. You can see how slow/weak monsters are removed all the time but I am lazy to create the list. Too hard monsters are removed/relocated too and it means devs care about balance. If you were correct, they would keep the monsters in the game because the more monsters we have on screen the better, they still can serve as meat shield to monsters who can actually kill player, right?

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Friday, 16th September 2016, 22:36
by infinitevox
VeryAngryFelid wrote:You don't need to. I am sure we will need some visual effect for monsters who don't give you XP anyway so we won't have to check monster descriptions to see if they are dangerous or easy.
We already have something similar for summons.


So that the game can become super extremely tedious as I have to walk around and avoid any monster who isn't going to give XP? Because why would I waste valuable resources fighting a monster I know I'm literally going to get nothing out of?

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Friday, 16th September 2016, 22:58
by VeryAngryFelid
infinitevox wrote:So that the game can become super extremely tedious as I have to walk around and avoid any monster who isn't going to give XP? Because why would I waste valuable resources fighting a monster I know I'm literally going to get nothing out of?


It is not different from current situation except you get some XP which people in this thread claim to be insignificant anyway. You still can kill them all with suggested changes if you want. You can think of it as of intermediate step, maybe we will reach the point where most popcorn is removed from the game, who knows (dreaming, dreaming...).

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 18:33
by grisamentum
Would this make Abyss scumming (more of) a thing?

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 18:37
by VeryAngryFelid
grisamentum wrote:Would this make Abyss scumming (more of) a thing?


Why? Abyss has basically the same danger level as other most dangerous branches: ancient lich, different fiends, hellion, hell sentinel, tormentor etc. Delayed teleport makes Abyss more dangerous than other branches IMHO.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 23:12
by WingedEspeon
We could just remove monster spawning after the level has generated. No more scumming for more exp, no more getting auto travel interrupted by popcorn.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 23:14
by VeryAngryFelid
That would make stairdancing even more powerful than it currently is. If you are retreating from Snake 1 to Lair, there should be a chance to see a 8-headed hydra adjacent to you ;)

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 23:21
by Shard1697
If you've already cleared liar and are doing branches 1 hydra is no longer scary

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 23:28
by VeryAngryFelid
Unless you are wounded or have other dangerous monsters adjacent which happens often with stairdancing.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Tuesday, 20th September 2016, 23:46
by Shard1697
I can honestly say that spawned monsters causing stairdancing to be dangerous in any way, in all of my 3238 games is... vanishingly rare

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 00:44
by Seven Deadly Sins
Shard1697 wrote:I can honestly say that spawned monsters causing stairdancing to be dangerous in any way, in all of my 3238 games is... vanishingly rare


Yeah, this is a thing that literally never happens. The intersection of the randomness of spawns, the size of maps, and how often they occur makes this a non-event.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 01:49
by VeryAngryFelid
It is rare but it happens. I remember getting an adjacent hydra after going upstairs at least twice, last time it was during previous week ;)

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 02:30
by Siegurt
VeryAngryFelid wrote:It is rare but it happens. I remember getting an adjacent hydra after going upstairs at least twice, last time it was during previous week ;)

I got mauled by a hill giant on ascent once

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 16:23
by and into
No spawns after level gen also means adders will not appear on D1. It would mean no ood spawns. It would make lengthy retreats a bit safer. Stair dancing, too. Those are the changes roughly in order of "major" to "minor" imo. Overall the game would be noticeably easier, actually, if you add all that stuff up.

Alternative: Upon level gen you create randomized reserve "bench" of enemies for that level, composed of mostly level-appropriate entries, but a few ood ones mixed in as well. Over time as player spends turns on the level, these enemies spawn. Once the bench is empty, no new enemies are placed on the level. Calibrate it to finish spawning around the average time it takes to explore a floor, maybe plus a little bit. Around 1000 turns about right, probably.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 20:04
by shummie
njvack wrote:Right now, piety decay is not a very obvious mechanic, and I think people underestimate its importance -- or at least, underestimate the amount they'd have a more powerful character using their divine abilities more. I wonder if there's some UI way to let people know when piety decay happens, and how strong a nudge it would be to players' behavior.


I think the easiest way would be to display the actual piety level next to the current **.... system. But it seems that not displaying precise values provides some benefit to the player.

If i knew that going back to kill those yaks cost me 5 piety, I'll remember next time and am able to decide if it's worth it or not. Right now I can't tell if my piety decayed from *****. to *****. so of course I'm not going to know

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 20:15
by VeryAngryFelid
shummie wrote:I think the easiest way would be to display the actual piety level next to the current **.... system. But it seems that not displaying precise values provides some benefit to the player.

If i knew that going back to kill those yaks cost me 5 piety, I'll remember next time and am able to decide if it's worth it or not. Right now I can't tell if my piety decayed from *****. to *****. so of course I'm not going to know


Sorry, I don't understand. Is the second paragraph an example of when hiding precise piety value is beneficial to player?

I can give you a real example when I was "killed" by hidden piety value. I got "Slimify" ability from Jiyva while fighting some extremely dangerous monster, I didn't notice it and died in a few turns. If I knew that my piety is 99, I would pay closer attention to piety meter and would likely notice that I can slimify now.

Spoiler: show
Please don't suggest to read messages or use force_more_messages ;)

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 20:29
by shummie
VeryAngryFelid wrote:
shummie wrote:If i knew that going back to kill those yaks cost me 5 piety, I'll remember next time and am able to decide if it's worth it or not. Right now I can't tell if my piety decayed from *****. to *****. so of course I'm not going to know


Sorry, I don't understand. Is the second paragraph an example of when hiding precise piety value is beneficial to player?


Sorry, I was being a bit snarky in my reply. There was no difference between the two since right now I can't meaningfully tell what my piety level was at. If I knew it was at 103, and I knew the last time I went off to kill some meaningless xp popcorn it dropped to 98, then I would be able to learn from that and apply it to future games.

As it stands today, I can't tell since the scale is so chunky. That is, I don't think about piety decay since it's nearly impossible to tell if/when i'm gaining/losing piety. I think that if a piety counter was introduced, more people would be utilizing their god abilities. Right now using it feels like a black box. This ability uses a low amount of piety. What does that mean? Can I use it 5 times? once? I don't know and I don't feel like source diving to find out. If I had the actual piety value from 0-200 displayed then I can tell more precisely how piety works.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Wednesday, 21st September 2016, 20:35
by VeryAngryFelid
Yes, I agree. I am really surprised devs are ok with displaying "Small" or "Average" as divine ability piety cost. It is almost useless info. Is "Average" equal to 2 "Small"s? Or to 3? Of course it is obvious that more powerful abilities require higher piety and have higher piety cost. How many times can I cast "Small" cost ability before I lose a star of piety? And even * piety scale is not linear, it has different value depending on number of stars. And then we have extra penalty for earning highest piety as bonus for players who like to read spoilers. It's just impossible to play excellent if you refuse to use out-of-game resources :(

Edit. "DivinG ability" was too fun.

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Friday, 23rd September 2016, 14:22
by dowan
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Yes, I agree. I am really surprised devs are ok with displaying "Small" or "Average" as divine ability piety cost. It is almost useless info. Is "Average" equal to 2 "Small"s? Or to 3? Of course it is obvious that more powerful abilities require higher piety and have higher piety cost. How many times can I cast "Small" cost ability before I lose a star of piety? And even * piety scale is not linear, it has different value depending on number of stars. And then we have extra penalty for earning highest piety as bonus for players who like to read spoilers. It's just impossible to play excellent if you refuse to use out-of-game resources :(

Edit. "DivinG ability" was too fun.

Oh come on, everyone knows how to convert smalls to averages to larges.
A small is 1/3 of a choko
An average is 2 jerkies
A large is 1 meat ration

Or are you saying you can't convert fractional chokos to jerkies? That's certainly not something I'd want to admit on the internet!

Re: Don't give XP for easy and harmless monsters

PostPosted: Friday, 23rd September 2016, 15:10
by and into
Let's make piety costs clearer. Something like this should suffice, taking Lugonu as an example:

Depart the Abyss: quite costly
Bend Space: uncostly
Banish: choko
Corruption: 12
Enter the Abyss: +++++++----