Too Much XP in Crawl? (was: New hosted branch: haste reform)

[BabyRage]

Reminder: People (plural) have won a Mummy Monk, with no body armor, no evocations, no spells, and no (other conducts that I forgot) and developers are still fixated on a spell that you won't learn until you have already effectively won, and a wand that rarely spawns. Why is this possible? There is too much experience. Remove Lair, or remove Depths. Either one will fix the problem quite neatly.

So the game should be balanced around those few people, instead of, like 90% of player base who haven't even won once?

[tabstorm]

No, the point is to illustrate that the problem is not consumables or whatever. It is too much experience.

[zackoid]

No, the point is to illustrate that the problem is not consumables or whatever. It is too much experience.

But that would just make winning at XL9 even easier.

[TeshiAlair]

I posted this in another thread, but I really do think that portals that operate like treasure troves would be a great way to optionally gate exp. Portals cost exp to enter, but have loot and enough monsters to get back the exp and potentially then some. So, you end up with an optional, but risky source of more exp and loot if you are a bit behind or short on resources, plus this shortens the game as well. In some ways, I guess this is already present in a sense with Elf and in an even more general sense with Abyss, minus the exp gating.

[duvessa]

I posted this in another thread, but I really do think that portals that operate like treasure troves would be a great way to optionally gate exp. Portals cost exp to enter, but have loot and enough monsters to get back the exp and potentially then some. So, you end up with an optional, but risky source of more exp and loot if you are a bit behind or short on resources, plus this shortens the game as well. In some ways, I guess this is already present in a sense with Elf and in an even more general sense with Abyss, minus the exp gating.

Adding more power spiral in order to solve power spiral is an interesting approach.

[ontoclasm]

I posted this in another thread, but I really do think that portals that operate like treasure troves would be a great way to optionally gate exp. Portals cost exp to enter, but have loot and enough monsters to get back the exp and potentially then some. So, you end up with an optional, but risky source of more exp and loot if you are a bit behind or short on resources, plus this shortens the game as well. In some ways, I guess this is already present in a sense with Elf and in an even more general sense with Abyss, minus the exp gating.

This is like the definition of "win more."

[archaeo]

leaving in GDD for now

[goodcoolguy]

Reminder: People (plural) have won a Mummy Monk, with no body armor, no evocations, no spells, and no (other conducts that I forgot) and developers are still fixated on a spell that you won't learn until you have already effectively won, and a wand that rarely spawns. Why is this possible? There is too much experience. Remove Lair, or remove Depths. Either one will fix the problem quite neatly.

So the game should be balanced around those few people, instead of, like 90% of player base who haven't even won once?

Is it actually true that 90% of players who actually stick with the game over a reasonable period of time never win? This does not match my observation at all. I think you have to have a really generous definition of "player" to make this true.

[neil]

Is it actually true that 90% of players who actually stick with the game over a reasonable period of time never win? This does not match my observation at all. I think you have to have a really generous definition of "player" to make this true.

Judging by online play only, it doesn't seem to be as bad as 90%:

• 9226 players have played more than 100 games online. Of those, 4152 (45%) have won at least one game, and 2859 (31%) at least two.
• 1278 players have played more than 1000 games online. Of those, 972 (76%) have won at least one game, and 803 (63%) at least two.

But that includes players like me, who have won twice, but not since nearly five years ago unless you count meleebug.

Edit: Correct numbers that were off by a factor of three because $(length) worked differently than I expected; percentages are unaffected.

Edit 2: 68911 players have played online at all. Of those, 5977 (8.7%) have won at least one game, and 3505 (5.1%) at least two.

[goodcoolguy]

I see, so people talking about the 90% number are advocates of "players" who played six games five years ago. That's more or less what I expected.

[tabstorm]

Most players are really bad though, to the point where disabling their movement keys with enemies in view would probably make them more likely to win.

[DracheReborn]

Most players are really bad though, to the point where disabling their movement keys with enemies in view would probably make them more likely to win.

FR: player fungus race

[VeryAngryFelid]

Most players are really bad though, to the point where disabling their movement keys with enemies in view would probably make them more likely to win.

That's because with default RC/init.txt file tab moves PC towards monsters and no javelins, tomahawks etc. are on autopickup.

[lethediver]

Been playing hellcrawl for the past few days and the XP crunch definitely makes the game more difficult. However, the lack of items is the part I find more interesting, from a player standpoint.

Lack of exp is very binary. Either I knew from experience (lol) how much experience there is in the game, and planned accordingly... or i didn't. If I sank a lot of xp into a spell school or armor or whatever to get something important castable, but didn't quite reach the threshold, and am out of safe places to accrue more XP... then i'm pretty screwed. At that point, boring abusive grinding begins.. ie, wear gourmand, travel between cleared areas and wait for RNG to throw more monsters at me. Repeat for 1000000000 turns.. go back and forth through the dungeon stairdancing different branches one at a time to let monsters drift away from the stairs.. etc... not so fun.

Lack of items is way different. I can't generate more by safe abusive grinding, but I can conceivably get more through dangerous skillful diving into new areas while avoiding hard monsters. Also, lack of items places interesting choices on me. Do I attempt spider:3 with no Sinv? Swamp with no rPois? I still havent found any good weapons to match my char's aptitudes, should i start using polearms since i found a nice artifact? Im out of remove curse scrolls, do i still wear-ID these artifact rings hoping to land a good non-cursed one? Should i burn my one blink scroll knowing i may never get another, or try and survive this fight on potions? Hellcrawl presents a lot more of these interesting "scrappy" scarcity-driven decisions than regular crawl and it's the part I'm enjoying the most thusfar.

So yeah, siding with "too many items in crawl" here.

[tabstorm]

Most players are really bad though, to the point where disabling their movement keys with enemies in view would probably make them more likely to win.

That's because with default RC/init.txt file tab moves PC towards monsters and no javelins, tomahawks etc. are on autopickup.

I know, I use the default rc. I just started playing a MiBe using the conduct that no hjklbyun in combat is allowed (except when terrain blocks tab-move or I have to swing at the outline of an invisible monster) and there have been no problems. My suggestion was sort of ironic, but now that I'm playing this, I'm not sure if there isn't some merit to it - it forces you to think about abilities instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off. The winrate for MiBe is like 1.5% in 0.19 and the most common deaths are in early game as you'd expect. Even when you account for winrate deflation by speedrunning, this begs the question of "What the hell are new players doing to splat when you can do most combat like a 2-button arcade game and not die?" I think they must be repositioning too much when they don't need to.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am glad you are playing something similar to what I suggested in viewtopic.php?f=23&t=21482, hopefully Trog will give you a vampiric battleaxe soon

[stickyfingers]

"What the hell are new players doing to splat when you can do most combat like a 2-button arcade game and not die?" I think they must be repositioning too much when they don't need to.

Berserk when near unexplored terrain, then getting killed by something new while slowed maybe? At least I remember dying like that a few times.