What in Crawl isn't fun?

[omndra]

Theres plenty of ways to improve this without eliminating the hive. My personal favorite idea is to provide alternative branches to hive much like the alternatives that exist between swamp/snake/shoals.

Yeah it should be Hive/Spider/Ants&Beetles

[Stormfox]

Drowning.

Its the Only kind of death that will really Ticks me off.
I can get blasted to smithereens in Zot:5 right in front of the Orb, and be completely unfazed by it.
Then 10 minutes later I start yelling and throwing things because my Lv4 character drowned in the sewers after Miscalculating a Lev potion.

As an old Nethacker, I find it refreshing in Crawl how hard it is to drown by comparison. Personal preference, though.

[jackalKnight]

Theres plenty of ways to improve this without eliminating the hive. My personal favorite idea is to provide alternative branches to hive much like the alternatives that exist between swamp/snake/shoals.

Yeah it should be Hive/Spider/Ants&Beetles

I like this idea--since we have a "corrupted altar", we can also have an "invaded hive" (Ants/Beetles invade the hive and eat some of the honeycombs/royal jellies) and a "dead hive" (spiders take over and eat the bees).

[Grimm]

You enter the Hive.
This Hive has suffered Colony Collapse Disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

[njvack]

In general, Crawl is really fun. This is a short list. But! I hate:

• Getting unexpectedly one-shot confused/paralyzed and killed after the very early game. Getting resistance to these (especially paralysis) is hit-or-miss, and one lucky hit from a monster with a wand can take you out, without warning, at pretty much any point. Confusion isn't quite so bad, as potions of healing are common... unless you're a mummy. Oddly, I don't mind the Eyes doing it; at least I expect it.
• On the same note, "The <monster> casts a spell. You resist." I hate not knowing what I just resisted -- resisting Slow is a very different story for me than resisting Paralyze. Or Banishment.
• Friggin' scrolls of paper. I don't know why, but MAN, do I hate these.

[Morosgovanyi]

I find the first dungeon level always extremely boring.

I think it should be removed, making the game a little more difficult from the beginning (with a little boost in item found in the first floor, or whatever).

[dpeg]

In general, Crawl is really fun. This is a short list. But! I hate:

• Getting unexpectedly one-shot confused/paralyzed and killed after the very early game. Getting resistance to these (especially paralysis) is hit-or-miss, and one lucky hit from a monster with a wand can take you out, without warning, at pretty much any point. Confusion isn't quite so bad, as potions of healing are common... unless you're a mummy. Oddly, I don't mind the Eyes doing it; at least I expect it.
• On the same note, "The <monster> casts a spell. You resist." I hate not knowing what I just resisted -- resisting Slow is a very different story for me than resisting Paralyze. Or Banishment.
• Friggin' scrolls of paper. I don't know why, but MAN, do I hate these.

Scrolls of paper are gone! Yay!
Agree with "monster casts a spell. You resist." It should say what you resist. Information gets lost here, can you mention that idea on the wiki?
We are aware of paralysis etc. These deaths have a habit to be annoying, but paralysis is not meaningless.

[zasvid]

One thing that I really despise in Crawl is managing stacks of ammo (at least with a god that gifts ammo, though the wild herds of centaurs and yaktaurs that run around in the midgame would probably be enough to cause a good headache). Various different stacks of ammo quickly fill up my inventory (because they come in innumerable varieties - dwarven, elven, orcish, normal, steel, silver and some of them are also flaming or frosty or reaping and then you also have to factor various levels of enchantment etc.) and then it's back to the stash to shoot them at a wall to discover their qualities and merge different stacks and figure out how to enchant them in a way that maximizes the size of the best stack. Even though I am not playing a primary range attacker, I feel compelled to do this to get the best bang out of my launchers, because I'd really like to get a win or two before ignoring some possible advantages. In the end, I spent several minutes figuring this out only to die a while later to some blunder and feel like I've wasted that time. Could something be done to cut down this process?

What I would really like to see happen to ammunition would be the following:
* easier identyfing of ammunition (e.g. brands like flaming and frost should be seen without firing a missile, just quivering it, like is the case with wielding weapons - though, for missiles, maybe even picking them up should suffice)
* removal of ammo enchantments - that's quite a bold proposition, but I think they add more tedium than anything else and since I've read on the wiki that ranged combat needs a nerf, this could be it!

[Grimm]

I second easier identifying of ammo. Even with 12+ levels of Crossbows I sometimes have to shoot two dozen bolts before the enchantment level appears.

[Cybermg]

I find the first dungeon level always extremely boring.

I think it should be removed, making the game a little more difficult from the beginning (with a little boost in item found in the first floor, or whatever).

Agreed on the boredom. I think the main culprit here is that there are almost no meaningful decisions to make on the first floor with any character. With melee character, it's slam 'O' and move towards the nearest enemy when you stop (backing into the many D:1 hallways if there are more than one enemy). With a ranged character, it's usually enough just to spam your one attack at anything that gets in your way. It's always good to pick up darts and miscellaneous weapons that can be thrown, and to use them when you otherwise couldn't use your main attack. If you're in a tough bind, it's usually more time efficient just to risk your life and possibly start over than to take your time to deal with it.

For those who don't care about win rate, reckless play is almost encouraged, since you'll probably get to D:2 more often if you play many times quickly, compared with fewer times more carefully.

There's a lot more of this discussion here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=380. I don't have any great suggestions right now that haven't already been mentioned.

One thing that I really despise in Crawl is managing stacks of ammo (at least with a god that gifts ammo, though the wild herds of centaurs and yaktaurs that run around in the midgame would probably be enough to cause a good headache). Various different stacks of ammo quickly fill up my inventory (because they come in innumerable varieties - dwarven, elven, orcish, normal, steel, silver and some of them are also flaming or frosty or reaping and then you also have to factor various levels of enchantment etc.) and then it's back to the stash to shoot them at a wall to discover their qualities and merge different stacks and figure out how to enchant them in a way that maximizes the size of the best stack. Even though I am not playing a primary range attacker, I feel compelled to do this to get the best bang out of my launchers, because I'd really like to get a win or two before ignoring some possible advantages. In the end, I spent several minutes figuring this out only to die a while later to some blunder and feel like I've wasted that time. Could something be done to cut down this process?

What I would really like to see happen to ammunition would be the following:
* easier identyfing of ammunition (e.g. brands like flaming and frost should be seen without firing a missile, just quivering it, like is the case with wielding weapons - though, for missiles, maybe even picking them up should suffice)
* removal of ammo enchantments - that's quite a bold proposition, but I think they add more tedium than anything else and since I've read on the wiki that ranged combat needs a nerf, this could be it!

Agreed on nearly all counts, maybe even removing ammo enchantments. I've always thought that racial ammo was pointless and only made a bad problem worse. Past the early game, a ranged character will always choose the plain ammo over the racial ammo, since plain ammo is more common and thus can be enchanted in greater quantities.

[Kate]

I'd like to have racial ammo removed.

I'm pretty sure it already was in trunk.

[smock]

Re ammo:

Making these four changes together would reduce the clutter:
(1) Double the effective power of ammo enchantments. So +1 bolts would do damage as +2 bolts do currently.
(2) Half the effectiveness of scrolls of enchant weapon (by whatever means).
(3) Cap the ammo enchantment at 4 or 5. (Or, as with armour in trunk, allow different enchantment maxima)
(4) Half the bonuses on ammo when ammo is generated.

I'm not excited about carrying around +0 darts, +1 darts, +2 darts, +3 darts and +4 darts. Without imbalancing the game, this could cut out a good deal of ammo management. Rather than 5 types of darts (+0 to +4) I'd be carrying just 3 types. This would also lessen the spamminess of the ammo ID minigame.

[omndra]

What I am hearing is that people don't like how much space all the ammo tends to take up.
How about an Ammo Quiver for each kind of ammo?
The quiver would basically "hold" all of the specified ammo types and displaces them in a separate Tab.
(however i think that most of the Devs will NOT like this idea but i just wanted to throw it out there)

Satchel for sling bullets
Quiver for arrows
Bolt Clip for Crowbow bolts.
Stones and Darts shouldn't get any quiver.
Javilens maybe? They seem too big to have a quiver to me.

That and ammo should be easier to ID.

[danr]

Yeah, I floated a suggestion like that, it was a no-go.

Getting rid of racial ammo is good. I'd support removing enchantments from ammo too. Have enchantment on the launcher reduce the mulch rate.

[Grimm]

Another possibility would be to remove enchantments from special ammo (steel, silver, etc.), and make it unenchantable, but keep enchantments for vanilla ammo, and make all generated vanilla ammo +0. That would give the player a choice between spending enchantment scrolls on one stack of plain jane ammo, or packing situational stuff.

[vintermann]

"zero risk": the vault is timed, so there is some risk when rushing to the entry; also players have died to the minotaur;

In my latest game, I very nearly did: I found my first (and only? ) labyrinth before lair, on d:10 or so. My reaver was still a wimp. Minotaur took over half of my health in one hit. Luckily, I sneaked up on him so he didn't get time to pick up any of the loot. He was standing on it though, and blocking the exit!

How did I live? I chased him away without a fight by using scrolls of fear! Grabbed the loot, left through the trapdoor before he regained his courage. Definitively one of my more proud Crawl moments.

[vintermann]

You enter the Hive.
This Hive has suffered Colony Collapse Disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

Would make for an awesome hive layout. Very few bees, no queen, lots of bee corpses in various stages of decomposition. Instead you have a nastier cousin of the giant mite (giant varroa mite), and a very large, well-developed fungal colony... I might make a project out of this

[Morosgovanyi]

#2:
Every time I clear a level, it's a pain to look at that very small map to find those very little purple dots.. and then to click them (because if I click on a wall, my character will not move there).
Very annoying.

#3:
Special level portals closing for time running out because of a trapdoor.

#4:
Go downstairs, then ta-dah! Sigmund in the square next to me.

[galehar]

#2:
Every time I clear a level, it's a pain to look at that very small map to find those very little purple dots.. and then to click them (because if I click on a wall, my character will not move there).
Very annoying.

"X > Enter" or "G >"

[smock]

Theres plenty of ways to improve this without eliminating the hive. My personal favorite idea is to provide alternative branches to hive much like the alternatives that exist between swamp/snake/shoals.

Yeah it should be Hive/Spider/Ants&Beetles

I'd like it if I were offered both but could only pick one. This could also work for elf/dwarf and swamp/pit/shoals. Players would make more strategic decisions. And Crawl could offer any number of themed levels without wrecking game balance.

It would also be a great experiment to see which themes are more popular. If every player on CDO chooses the nest over the hive, then we know (quantitatively!) that something is wrong with the hive (not fun or underpowered or too dangerous) of the nest (overpowered or too safe).

[lk1d]

The vast majority of games I play lack enough cure mutation potions. Considering the sources of mutation, the ability to cure them is unbalanced. I'd like to seem them made more plentiful. By the end game I usually have a long list of bad ones and spend a long time in the Abyss or Pande fruitlessly looking for them. Which isn't much fun.

[smock]

What I am hearing is that people don't like how much space all the ammo tends to take up.

Sure don't! While it makes sense to me to have a cost for carrying a bunch of ammo, weight limits should be good for that.

Getting rid of enchantments and instead introducing materials as proxies would clean up inventory and have decent flavor:
arrow/bolt < ironwood arrow/bolt
stone/dart < steel bullet/dart

If they came ID'ed already that'd be fine with me. The ammo id minigame is not great fun for me at present.

[coyo7e]

I feel that draconians not being able to use bucklers is both stupid and unfun. They're humanoid with a tail, they have fairly humanoid hands, and they can use larger shields, just not bucklers. Their aptitudes are already abysmal, what gives?

[Grimm]

big claws

[coyo7e]

big claws

Then why can I wield all normal weapons without any penalty or noticeable negative aptitude? Why can't I get a claws attack? Why can't I carve chunks without a sharp object?

[Grimm]

O.K. I was wrong about the claws

really it's that draconians are superstitious about bucklers because the word "buckler" sounds like the word "measles" in the draconian language

[Cybermg]

Not exactly like scroll of paper, since they aren't inherently useless, and not exactly unfun, but why do cFly amulets exist?

There's the extremely hypothetical situation where you accidentally drank a potion of levitation and for some reason want to escape downstairs instead of up, or immediately want to pick up some items, or want to access an item over a moat in one potion of levitation instead of two (instead of the million other ways you can get there), but I've never been in any of these situations in all the time I've played. Even assuming these situations came up, I'd rather just have the extra inventory slot.

And speaking of items that seem fairly worthless, what about the box of beasts? It's extremely heavy, and the last time I checked, it's basically like a wand of spammals.

There are also some items that I've never personally used, but I could probably see a use for. But who knows, maybe it means they're not really that interesting. These would be the tome of destruction (never really experimented with it, maybe it's cool), disc of storms (too risky, maybe worth it with rElec and high evo), and any of the elemental summoning items.

[Grimm]

Box of beasts looks cool and is flavourful, but on cFly I concur with extreme prejudice.

[galehar]

Not exactly like scroll of paper, since they aren't inherently useless, and not exactly unfun, but why do cFly amulets exist?

There's also the synergy with swiftness. If you haven't found the flight spell (or can't afford the spell slots or whatever), you can use the amulet instead. And there's the awesome amulet of the air!

[dpeg]

I agree that cFly is one of the weaker amulets. Also, it has purely tactical value, which seems to go in the opposite direction to what we're doing with amulets (Faith, Guardian Spirit, Gourmand).

Regarding the Box: wait for the mythical miscitems overhaul! Here's the plan: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:item:misc

[mageykun]

There are definitely times when evokable flight is preferable to evokable to levitation. Just because you wouldn't necessarily wear it to Zot:5 don't make it useless.

Not exactly like scroll of paper, since they aren't inherently useless, and not exactly unfun, but why do cFly amulets exist?

There's also the synergy with swiftness. If you haven't found the flight spell (or can't afford the spell slots or whatever), you can use the amulet instead. And there's the awesome amulet of the air!

This. I would argue to keep the whole item class, just to preserve that one awesome unrand.

[lk1d]

Not exactly like scroll of paper, since they aren't inherently useless, and not exactly unfun, but why do cFly amulets exist?
There are also some items that I've never personally used, but I could probably see a use for. But who knows, maybe it means they're not really that interesting. These would be the tome of destruction (never really experimented with it, maybe it's cool), disc of storms (too risky, maybe worth it with rElec and high evo), and any of the elemental summoning items.

I don't think you can use the disc of storms with relec, but I'd use it much more if you could. The randomness factor on a lot of the miscellaneous items makes them pretty much unusable in tense situations. The elemental items are the exception imo, cause you can get the appropriate skills trained to mitigate the randomness -I'll usually train air if if I find the fan.

[mageykun]

Only time I found the disk useful was as a HOPr I ran back in 5 or 6.0. I sat in a corner and waited out a Beogh penance by evoking it once or twice every time He threw an orc cloud my way. This would kill everything except the named warlord/high priest/sorcerer leading the pack, who I'd promptly whack. Pray over and loot the corpses, hit 5, rinse and repeat. Way easier than running.

[hxy]

Sultanas and grapes are annoying... or can we have a short-cut command to eat the whole bunch of grapes instead of one at a time?

[Curio]

Sultanas and grapes are annoying... or can we have a short-cut command to eat the whole bunch of grapes instead of one at a time?

I have nifty button on the mouse that provides 1 click into x3

You can make a macro to eat something repeatedly. Or just use "repeat" feature. Don't remember which button. I think it's 0 on numpad.

[Grimm]

= i (sultana letter) r

Relabelling them to r makes it quicker, you can go e r e r e r fourteen times and boom you're sated.

[MrMisterMonkey]

(you can also use ` to repeat your last action, so to eat repeatedly you could er``````)

[coyo7e]

So I recall someone talking about cFly amulets recently somewhere.. I think cFly is not fun. It's not on enough items overall, and some races gain innate cFly for no really good reason I can figure out, such as Draconians.

Why isn't there a cantrip to mid level spell which gives Control Flight as an effect? It strikes me as the kind of spell an apprentice spell user would learn very early - probably before his teacher allowed him to learn any spells that'd let him leave the ground!

(you can also use ` to repeat your last action, so to eat repeatedly you could er``````)

Yeah this is how I eat fruit.

[szanth]

Well there is kind of a spell like that. Flight.

[Stormlock]

I think players could use a viable stash spot deeper in the dungeon. Maybe around levels 14-20. It's especially annoying for low strength characters and Nemelex worshippers, who need to make trips more often. Going all the way back to the Temple or Lair is a long slog, and the Hall of Blades requires going through the Vaults, which contains some nasty stuff, and the Hall itself can be pretty rough for a lot of characters. Not to mention if the Vault is shallow enough and the temple and halls deep enough the Temple can actually be closer to the main dungeon than the Halls! Maybe move the Hall of Blades out of the Vaults and put it a bit deeper in the main dungeon, or create another tiny branch deep in the dungeon similar to the Orc Mines. Maybe Ogre or Troll themed, or trap themed.

[galehar]

I think players could use a viable stash spot deeper in the dungeon. Maybe around levels 14-20. It's especially annoying for low strength characters and Nemelex worshippers, who need to make trips more often. Going all the way back to the Temple or Lair is a long slog, and the Hall of Blades requires going through the Vaults, which contains some nasty stuff, and the Hall itself can be pretty rough for a lot of characters. Not to mention if the Vault is shallow enough and the temple and halls deep enough the Temple can actually be closer to the main dungeon than the Halls! Maybe move the Hall of Blades out of the Vaults and put it a bit deeper in the main dungeon, or create another tiny branch deep in the dungeon similar to the Orc Mines. Maybe Ogre or Troll themed, or trap themed.

You can use Hive and the Vestibule for deeper stashes.

[Stormlock]

The Hive is hardly a deep stash when it's on level 11 or 12. Hell is close to the right level range, but not exactly somewhere everyone wants to visit, especially when they first encounter it.

[danr]

I just think players should be able to lock / bar doors so that they can turn little rooms into handy stash places.

I don't think limiting the number of stash places adds anything to gameplay. It just forces players to go on long treks back and forth through the dungeon.

[Stormlock]

The only problem with that is it gives you safe resting places to recover when you're fleeing monsters too. Safe spots don't need to be everywhere, but my poor spriggan shouldn't have to travel back 15 levels, recasting Flight half a dozen times and stopping to murder 3-4 random mooks on the way, and then repeating the process to get back to the dungeon, for every ~70 aum of useful loot I find. It's basically tedious scummy behavior, only instead of selling everything, you hoard it. Making players unable to hoard stuff like that would make Str much much more important, so I think instead it should just be made less tedious, and the best way is to provide a small stash spot between level 16-20 or so. Either that or some sort of shortcut back to the temple, which would have much bigger effects on gameplay overall.

[coyo7e]

Why can't portal vaults persist if the player clears them? They'd make ideal stash locales. I don't particularly like being given a "second chance" to finish off enemies and pick up loot which I couldn't fit the first time, but maybe there'd be a reasonable way to "sweep up" a portal vault the first time you came across it, and then allow the player to enter and leave at whim after that, with no chance of anything else on the ground being left? You could have a flavor message the first time you leave "you don't trust leaving anything valuable here for the time being" and upon returning to the portal vault, it could update to say something like "Now that this area has been cleared of threats you feel more secure about leaving valuables behind in here."

[KoboldLord]

I usually just let my buffs lapse when I'm on a stash run. They waste a lot of turns, but only about four keystrokes each way, since I have a waypoint at my stash. Usually the levels between stay cleared, and on the occasions they don't it just means I eat some chunks instead of permafood to pay for the trip.

I'm not sure I can think of a better solution than autotravel, honestly. Controlled levelporting really needs the game to be built around it to be reasonable, and moving an entire stash from Lair 2 to the Vestibule is even more tedious than just running scrolls up to Lair 2 every few cleared levels, because there's so much stuff there that I can't carry it all. Sometimes I can't even carry all the potions and food I'm going to use on a Tomb run in a single trip, and that's just a ministash used to clear one three-level branch.

[Stormlock]

Letting your flight buff drop isn't an option when it's the only thing letting you move. It's safer to run around with as large a toolkit as you can manage generally, and for me that means being burdened without flight even as I'm leaving my stash. On the way back I'm generally 1 aum away from not being able to climb stairs even while flying.

It's not so bad if you get some nice Str going, but for a Spriggan or elf that has poor luck with artifacts, you get pretty slim margins, especially when you want to carry around various decks, 2-3 wands, half a dozen potions and half a dozen scrolls. God forbid you need a spare weapon or armor for covering certain resists.

Honestly, putting in something like a small empty room in as a guaranteed branch would be stupid flavour wise (And isn't what I want) but is anyone arguing that it would hurt the gameplay at all? If you concede that that would be fine gameplay wise, it's just a matter of finding a way of putting in another stash spot or two that doesn't ruin flavour or gameplay.

Maybe some kind of trophy branch, where it just has statues of all the uniques you've killed appear or something? It'd be fun and have no gameplay impact. Or maybe a branch filled with summoned versions of guys you've killed (Or sets of guys, like there's a room or sub branch that summons orc branch mobs, another that does slime branch or elf branch), just for practicing/playing with, but drop no loot or xp. It's not like players can't just go back to the lair and beat up toads to train weapon skills anyways if they want.

[szanth]

Hm. What if you could stash items in stores, and retrieve them from whatever store you find later? Reminds me of Resident Evil 1-3, where the stash game was the entire game, and every safe room you found would have the inventory you stashed in whatever previous one. But jeez I can't even imagine trying to play the stash game in RE1-3 without that mechanic; it's possible that if this is implemented, people will look back and wonder how we dealt with things the way they are.