New Experimental: Cyno Species


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 16:10

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

Brannock wrote:Names are always weird until you get accustomed to them, and Crawl has intentionally been trying to draw from non-Western sources in recent years.

I don't really have a problem with them being named Gnolls, but I think here is an opportunity to draw from a fresh source that hasn't been endlessly iterated on in other media. Hyena people are neat!

Gnolls are, afaik, hyena people....
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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 16:53

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

This race wouldn't even represent bultungin beyond the name and vague carnivore associations (carnivore, I say, because hyenas aren't even canines) anyway. Its fluff was developed entirely around being a bunch of dog-headed dudes, which bultungin are decidedly not. You may as well rename tengu into alan or centaurs into tikbalang and then claim that crawl is now drawing inspiration from fresh sources.

At least call it after something that actually is a dog-headed mythological dude, like itbarak or something.

That aside, I just won my first butt and I think the race is solid. I had some pretty tight moments, but the skill transition system was smooth and I had to use consumables/spells/tactics that I wouldn't rely on under other, stronger races. 15-runing with this should be pretty interesting.

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 17:12

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

Brannock wrote:Hyena people are neat!
the word everyone already understands to refer to them is "gnoll". which also doesn't have the weird flavor of being connected to were-hyenas, which implies transforming between a human and hyena, which this species does not do!

throw 'bultungin' in the name garbage alongside Hepliaklqana and Bacharian. more complicated, more obscure names are not inherently better. if anything they're inherently worse

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 17:20

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

like no joke gnolls have been something I have wanted to play as in crawl for... quite a while now, and now that we had something with good mechanics and matching flavor I was excited to play a gnoll finally. but they're not gnolls, instead they're named some other thing which doesn't really match what they are described as and isn't what I wanted in the first place(to be a gnoll, with a strong earlygame but weak lategame which follows how gnolls are dangerous early on but not later). it's disappointing.
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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 18:17

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

If two races of beast inspired people will be added in .20, both with unintelligible/opaque names and both starting with the letter B, it will not be a good service to players trying to tell them apart.
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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 18:22

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

Okay, I agree "Bultungin" was overambitious and not a successful name. They're going to be renamed to Gnolls; just need to figure out a couple complications first.

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 18:28

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

What was wrong with calling them Gnolls?
- Gnolls are already a differentiated and widely seen monster race
- They're the only race besides Giants that doesn't have a player equivalent
- Most people who play crawl for the first time will know what the hell they are
- People who already play will definitely be familiar with them
- You've already got multiple sprites for Gnolls
- They start with a +4 on polearms

Is there some new rule that every new race name has to require a spelling dictionary and an advanced degree in Eastern mythology?

edit: Oh shit I sure had to edit that post fast. Cool.

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 18:54

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

One trouble with GNoll is that crawl had GNomes in the past, and those are still on the scoreboards.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 22:57

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

It's a shame to see that the same problem this species had since its inception is still present: DCSS already favours broad skill training. As a human, level 7+ spells and getting the heaviest weapons to min delay are already bad investments. The optimal skill training for this species is almost exactly the same as it is for a human. I went ahead and played one to try and show this; I did what I believe is optimal skill training for Bu (except for when I messed up and accidentally overtrained a skill; just mentally truncate the fractional parts of all the skills to see what it would have looked like if I hadn't messed up), and I think I would have pretty much done the exact same skill training with Hu. I didn't optimize my equipment - the boots of running were better than the slaying boots - but that's unimportant to the topic.
Basically Bu/Gn starts as a better human and ends as something almost identical to human, unless you suck at the game in an extremely specific way (thinking high skills are a good idea, rather than something to do for fun/convenience). The only significant differences from human that I noticed after entering Lair were that I actually had a reason to train shields, and that my melee was better because I had a free OP aux attack for no good reason.

I have heard two entirely conflicting claims about the intended design of the species. Floodkiller said it's intended to be a "generalist species" that can pick up everything easily, but not excel at any one thing easily. Brannock says it's intended to be easy early and hard later. Obviously, it accomplishes neither at the moment.

If it's supposed to be a generalist species
I think this design has promise but you cannot accomplish it with the skill restrictions. Characters in DCSS don't excel at a specialty based on skills, they excel at a specialty based on items. Demon weapons and properly branded quick blades are as good as bardiches and exec axes and triple swords. Maybe even better; definitely not worse. High weapon skills are just a substitute for when you don't find a demon weapon, and high spell skills are never a good idea until extended; all the worthwhile spells are level 6 and lower.
I still think the only reasonable way to accomplish this is to lock their str, int, and dex at low values (no higher than 5), make it so you can't change their stats with items (wearing a str+6 or str-6 ring just does nothing), and give them high aptitudes with no aptitude falloff. This lets them pick up weapons very quickly, but because of their negative str multiplier they will never get close to the damage output of a melee character of another species once that other species has reached min delay; and it lets them pick up spells very quickly but they will never have great spellpower. Yes, I know you tried this version and "nobody liked it", but imo it would be a massive improvement over the diminishing aptitudes version.

If it's supposed to be easy early and hard later
Well first of all that's a terrible stupid design, but fine, if you really want that, you can do it with the skill gimmick. You just need to be much more aggressive. Training a skill to 10 with Bu/Gn should cost more xp than training a skill to 27 with a human. It'll remain godly in the early game and actually be noticeably worse than Hu later, in that case.



*Note about the game: it is not normal for training multiple weapon skills to be optimal; what happened in that game was that I started with axes then found a polearm good enough that it was optimal to switch to training polearms skill (the pain spear), then later found a mace that was good enough that it was optimal to switch to training maces skill (the elec dwhip).



edit: Another option is to change the global skill cost tables (or rebalance weapons and spells) to make specialization more skill-dependent and narrow skill training more viable. This may be desirable anyway, but isn't going to happen fast, so if you want to go with that plan there's no way this species will be ready in time for 0.20.
Last edited by duvessa on Friday, 7th April 2017, 23:36, edited 1 time in total.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 23:29

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

shping wrote:One trouble with GNoll is that crawl had GNomes in the past, and those are still on the scoreboards.

Gl works just as well. Plus then you can have a GlGl, which is just hilarious to try to say.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 23:31

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

Please don't name them Gl. It's annoying to have to specify --Hu or Hu-- all the time and you would break existing Sequell queries that use 'Gl' as a shortcut. Gn is less disruptive; you can always check the version to see which Gn it is.

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Shoals Surfer

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Post Friday, 7th April 2017, 23:46

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

duvessa wrote:If it's supposed to be a generalist species
I think this design has promise but you cannot accomplish it with the skill restrictions. Characters in DCSS don't excel at a specialty based on skills, they excel at a specialty based on items. Demon weapons and properly branded quick blades are as good as bardiches and exec axes and triple swords. Maybe even better; definitely not worse. High weapon skills are just a substitute for when you don't find a demon weapon, and high spell skills are never a good idea until extended; all the worthwhile spells are level 6 and lower.
I still think the only reasonable way to accomplish this is to lock their str, int, and dex at low values (no higher than 5), make it so you can't change their stats with items (wearing a str+6 or str-6 ring just does nothing), and give them high aptitudes with no aptitude falloff. This lets them pick up weapons very quickly, but because of their negative str multiplier they will never get close to the damage output of a melee character of another species once that other species has reached min delay; and it lets them pick up spells very quickly but they will never have great spellpower. Yes, I know you tried this version and "nobody liked it", but imo it would be a massive improvement over the diminishing aptitudes version.


I do think this is a reasonable approach to take if the current version isn't acceptable; the version I tried with low stats also had versions of the skill cap in place at the same time, which may have compounded with each other to lead to the "nobody liked it" aspect. With this approach, I would probably recommend locking the stats to a static number and allow no increases or decreases regardless of source, not just items. However, I still don't think this approach would fix the issue of weapon choice being limited: it would become even more necessary to find a fast one-handed weapon with a good brand, pain in particular becoming incredibly powerful.

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Post Saturday, 8th April 2017, 01:09

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

Floodkiller wrote:With this approach, I would probably recommend locking the stats to a static number and allow no increases or decreases regardless of source, not just items.
That's what I meant by "locked", just didn't phrase it well.
Floodkiller wrote:However, I still don't think this approach would fix the issue of weapon choice being limited: it would become even more necessary to find a fast one-handed weapon with a good brand, pain in particular becoming incredibly powerful.
It does make additive brands significantly better, that's true. But a draining whip/dagger/etc. is still inferior to a two-handed weapon with enough skill, and unlike now you'd get enough skill for the two-hander very quickly. Pain, distortion, and chaos are rare outside specific gods and even with 1 str a pain/elec great sword or whatever outperforms a non-demon pain one-hander in most cases if you can spare the xp.

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Post Saturday, 8th April 2017, 05:59

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

duvessa wrote:high spell skills are never a good idea until extended; all the worthwhile spells are level 6 and lower.


I disagree. Spellforged Servitor is the most MP efficient method of spellcasting and you can easily get it castable by Zot. A servitor with LCS can solo Orbs of Fire, and if you've been using Iron Shot, which you probably have, it's likely you have LCS at <50% fail which means the servitor can cast it. Even if it can't cast LCS it's still really good with Iron Shot or OoD. They shield you from the OoF's Malmutate too.

Shoals Surfer

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Post Monday, 10th April 2017, 15:04

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

I opened a feedback thread here now that they are in Trunk, in order to separate it from all of the development posts I made and also because it isn't named Cyno anymore.

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Post Monday, 10th April 2017, 17:55

Re: New Experimental: Cyno Species

Locking topic to avoid duplication, but please feel free to continue the conversation from this thread in the other topic if warranted.
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