Player Ghosts

[yesno]

<mibe> hey if you guys are sick of dealing with ghosts check this out
<mibe> ??shaftrobi
<Sequell> shaftrobi ~ shaftrobin[1/2]: An account that automatically selects formicid and has shaft macro'd to 1. Hold down 2 to die. Use it before playing when you dont want to see any ghosts!
<mibe> i only set up the rc and macros for cbro atm
<mibe> for best results run it several times each time you are about to descend to a new D level
<yesno> lol
<yesno> ridiculous
<mibe> !lg shaftrobin x=avg(dur)
<Sequell> 25 games for shaftrobin: avg(dur)=0:00:53
<mibe> takes under a minute
<yesno> i know but just ridiculous that ghosts exist
<mibe> i agree
<yesno> and are so bad that you did this thing
<mibe> its 100% ridiculous that shaftrobin is possible
<yesno> yes
<mibe> i dont believe any positive that ghosts bring to the game can be greater than these metagaming implications
<rumflump> mibe: I have been pondering further automating it. so that you can play your normal game in one window, then log shaftrobin in the other window and have it do a run

[Rast]

FR: re-save surviving ghosts at game end.

[yesno]

FR: re-save surviving ghosts at game end.

damnit no

[Hellmonk]

I did some modifications to qw so that it would pick formicid and automatically shaft itself a long time ago, but I was too lazy to figure out how to make a bot restart after dying. In theory, I think you could set up a bot to do this constantly and remove almost all dungeon ghosts from your server.

Ghosts are bad and should be removed btw.

[duvessa]

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20327&p=275134#p275134

[mibe420]

But wait, there's more!

  Code:

!lg * day s=src place!=d:1, d:2
<Sequell> 794 games for * (day place!=d:1, d:2): 222x cbro, 191x cwz, 161x cao, 88x cue, 63x cxc, 40x cjr, 24x cpo, 4x cdo, lld

ie, dont play on cbro, cwz, cao, if you want to minimize your chances of seeing a ghost.

  Code:

!lg * day s=cv place!=d:1, d:2
<Sequell> 797 games for * (day place!=d:1, d:2): 550x 0.20-a, 233x 0.19, 7x 0.17, 4x 0.11, 0.10, 0.16, 0.18

consider playing 0.19 instead of 0.20 trunk, its less that half as popular.

  Code:

!lg * day place!=d:1, d:2 s=nhour(end)
<Sequell> 798 games for * (day place!=d:1, d:2): 51x 14, 44x 1, 42x 5, 40x 16, 39x 21, 39x 15, 38x 3, 37x 18, 37x 17, 36x 6, 35x 19, 34x 20, 32x 2, 32x 9, 32x 8, 31x 13, 28x 22, 27x 12, 27x 11, 25x 10, 25x 7, 25x 0, 23x 23, 19x 4

dont play between 14:00 and 20:00 GMT, or 1:00 and 6:00 GMT

I'm sure someone better at sequell or math can refine these queries, but I hope I have gotten my point across.

If you aren't querying sequell to decide when and where to play, or using shaftrobin, and then run into a dangerous ghost, you could have prevented it.

-edit- whoops, my queries only return games from d:2! even though my queries are flawed, i still think my point stands!

  Code:

!lg * day s=nhour(end)
4657 games for * (day): 252x 16, 247x 21, 246x 14, 243x 1, 236x 20, 234x 18, 232x 3, 226x 15, 205x 17, 203x 19, 190x 13, 185x 8, 180x 11, 177x 2, 177x 22, 176x 12, 174x 9, 171x 0, 166x 23, 159x 10, 156x 4, 144x 7, 140x 6, 138x 5
!lg * day s=src
4662 games for * (day): 1304x cbro, 1102x cwz, 991x cao, 533x cue, 430x cxc, 158x cjr, 109x cpo, 18x cdo, 17x lld
!lg * day s=cv
4664 games for * (day): 3264x 0.20-a, 1329x 0.19, 28x 0.17, 19x 0.18, 9x 0.16, 5x 0.11, 3x 0.10, 2x 0.15, 2x 0.12, 0.17-a, 0.13, 0.19-a

pretty similar conclusions anyways, just the specific times are different.

[TeshiAlair]

This is why we can't have nice things

(though screw Dr ghosts)

[njvack]

No longer!

  Code:

Remove draconian ghost breath

Having draconian ghosts breathe negative energy doesn't make sense from a
consistency standpoint (no other muts/attributes are ghostified) or from a
balance standpoint. I can't see any good reason to make draconian ghosts
significantly more dangerous if they are XL 7 or greater.


[tabstorm]

In the inverse of this scenario, I used to entertain the idea of using a bot to create a bunch of player ghosts on a relatively unpopulated server, which I could then use as an experience boost on a turncount speedrun. I never got around to it though. I have no idea what determines how many ghosts can spawn in a game, either.

[Rast]

No longer!

  Code:

Remove draconian ghost breath

Lasty jumps into the lead in the "Best Crawl Dev of 2017" race.

[araganzar]

The primary function player ghosts perform is artificially inflating or deflating the difficulty of the early game in a way that's biased towards heavy armor melee characters.

Having them in the game gives yet another reason to play a high hp / melee apts race and put on heavy armor. You can easily kill most ghosts for xp, and if not you are tanky enough to either walk away or take a few shots at them. If you are trog or have rage, they are just xp pinatas with almost no risk zerking on the stairs.

If you do not follow this play style, the most likely effect a player ghost will have on your game is forcing you to spend hundreds of turns and waste tons of time escaping to the previous level, finding another stairs, going back down, and then repeating this multiple times until you either finish the level or give up and move on. The few times it produces an interesting experience are by FAR outweighed by the number of times it's a repetitive unoriginal PAIN IN THE ASS.

You wouldn't put an Unseen Horror on D2 but you have no problem placing a spriggan ghost with a dagger of draining and dazzling spray (which btw was at 99% fail when the spriggan died). I can't see what this adds to game play other than making things even easier for the dumbest playstyle and littering other playstyles with deaths and delays they will justifiably see as unfair.

It wouldn't even be that hard to make ghosts a hell of a lot more reasonable. Place the ghost at their deepest level instead of where they died. Scale their AC and EV to a reasonable spectrum and normalize their weapon plus. There, now no need to go to the morgue. Set speed to 10 (that felid ghost is floating, not running). Remove spells from their set that are over 10% fail as well as ones that are overpowered on ghosts such as Confuse and Dazzling Spray. Lower the xp reward.

But in the end, the fact that players are now making bots and choosing servers and play times based on this mechanic should tell you it needs to be retired or neutered. It also provides a tangible way for a player to manipulate the difficulty for everyone on the server. We're willing to flip the table to keep people from feeling like they have to swap rings or stash extra scrolls to play optimally and we're okay with this? Doesn't make sense. Get rid of them until they can be done better.

[Sprucery]

Remove spells from their set that are over 10% fail

The limit is currently 50% afaik.

If ghost-like monsters should exist, they should be random monsters, not based on any actually played characters.

[mibe420]

In the inverse of this scenario, I used to entertain the idea of using a bot to create a bunch of player ghosts on a relatively unpopulated server, which I could then use as an experience boost on a turncount speedrun. I never got around to it though. I have no idea what determines how many ghosts can spawn in a game, either.

What about seeding easy ghosts with no MR, like a gnoll. Then you can play a necromancer and cast control undead. If you knew what you were doing and cared enough, you could probably get a free ally on any level of D you wanted!

Unfortunately my shaftrobin idea only clears out D ghosts, I guess if you want to play lair with no ghosts, you could make a dummy account and play mibe and just tab through as quick as you can. Do this a few times before you play on the account that you dont want to encounter ghosts on!

[Elitist]

No longer!

  Code:

Remove draconian ghost breath

Lasty jumps into the lead in the "Best Crawl Dev of 2017" race.

This stopped being a race when Lasty coded a special message and interaction for a player who has a ring on their left finger and sacrifices a hand.

Player ghosts aren't going away, this probably isn't up for discussion.

[duvessa]

You wouldn't put an Unseen Horror on D2

  Code:

*Sequell* 32 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2): 3x silentsnack, 3x firemonkey, 2x xomscumming, mamga, xixvx, xnavy, bairyn, Floodkiller, giantspikedclub, JasonMel, kal9871, kelbaugc, Luxivar, Elynae, Neil, njkz123, Nordon, okmg321, onwiheg, roushey, sadalin, Sildraith, SirSamVimes, tormodpwns, Chantix, blinkrobin, ZucchiniSpooks

[Floodkiller]

You wouldn't put an Unseen Horror on D2

  Code:

*Sequell* 32 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2): 3x silentsnack, 3x firemonkey, 2x xomscumming, mamga, xixvx, xnavy, bairyn, Floodkiller, giantspikedclub, JasonMel, kal9871, kelbaugc, Luxivar, Elynae, Neil, njkz123, Nordon, okmg321, onwiheg, roushey, sadalin, Sildraith, SirSamVimes, tormodpwns, Chantix, blinkrobin, ZucchiniSpooks

Can you do that query for any deaths where the player wasn't worshipping Xom?

[duvessa]

  Code:

*Sequell* 20 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2 god!=xom): 3x silentsnack, okmg321, Chantix, Elynae, firemonkey, Floodkiller, JasonMel, Neil, Nordon, blinkrobin, onwiheg, sadalin, Sildraith, bairyn, SirSamVimes, tormodpwns, xnavy, ZucchiniSpooks

[Doesnt]

You wouldn't put an Unseen Horror on D2

  Code:

*Sequell* 32 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2): 3x silentsnack, 3x firemonkey, 2x xomscumming, mamga, xixvx, xnavy, bairyn, Floodkiller, giantspikedclub, JasonMel, kal9871, kelbaugc, Luxivar, Elynae, Neil, njkz123, Nordon, okmg321, onwiheg, roushey, sadalin, Sildraith, SirSamVimes, tormodpwns, Chantix, blinkrobin, ZucchiniSpooks

Can you do that query for any deaths where the player wasn't worshipping Xom?

<Sequell> 20 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2 god!=xom): 3x silentsnack, okmg321, Chantix, Elynae, firemonkey, Floodkiller, JasonMel, Neil, Nordon, blinkrobin, onwiheg, sadalin, Sildraith, bairyn, SirSamVimes, tormodpwns, xnavy, ZucchiniSpooks

I imagine most of these were people discovering the out-of-depth timer, which has no respect for silly concepts like "fairness", given:

<Doesnty> !lg * ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2 god!=xom s=race
<Sequell> 20 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2 god!=xom): 12x Mummy, 3x Octopode, Centaur, Ghoul, Vampire, Djinni, Kobold
<Doesnty> !lg * ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2 god!=xom s=turn
<Sequell> 20 games for * (ckiller=unseen_horror place=d:2 god!=xom): 1087, 2503, 4101, 7373, 8921, 9588, 10841, 11018, 11755, 12731, 13592, 14468, 14631, 15083, 15464, 25156, 29023, 31838, 35636, 54806

also i know duvessa ninja'd me but i'm posting this anyway because there's info that post lacks

[kroki]

bunch of babies

[damerell]

FR: re-save surviving ghosts at game end.

Ghosts that have scored a kill (or been an accessory after the fact) could be removed to compensate for this but still to cut shaftrobin off at the knees. (Disclaimer: I like player ghosts).