remove stairdancing?

[Grmpf]

Short form: I strongly dislike that stairdancing is a viable tactic and would like to propose a change that fixes this.

The problem: Monsters do not following you at stairs (if they are more than one step away). This
* breaks immersion/is highly illogical: Any semi-intelligent monster that chases you around half of a dungeon floor that is physically capable of using stairs should not stop doing so just because you try to escape by moving up or down.
* enables stairdancing, a tactic that is repetetive and boring. Vault:8? down, up, kill 8 or often less baddies without the added danger from range attacks, heal, rinse & repeat. Tomb? Tough moster hordes elsewhere? Just kill them in small groups.
Sure, stairdancing is a must-use tactic if you can't take on all of the monsters at once, but it just doesn't feel right. Beeing helpless while using stairs helps a little, but it does not solve the root of the problem: How can some monsters use the stairs during the same step i use them, but other monsters cannot?

Proposal: Change the monster/ally behaviour at stairs. Remove the 1-ring instant teleport, and implement a logical following behaviour. Any monster that is able to use stairs and has an incencitive to chase you should do so (Some territory-defense oriented animals/monsters could be exempt from chasing across level/branch stairs). They should move towards the stairs you just left, and with their next move appear on the corresponding stairs on the other level or next to it if that field is occupied. If the stairs and all 8 neighboring fields are full, the monster should wait until a spot is available. This way, you can use stairs as a chokepoint (only 1 monster per turn makes it through), but not as an immediate monster-stopping device (That should be reserved for escape hatches).

Technical implementation: If it is not possible to simulate monster behaviour on two floors at once, you could emulate this with a simple list that contains references to monster that will use the stairs, the position in the list representing the turns until it appears (Initialized once the player leaves the level, based on distance and monster speed)

While i am not sure if this proposal is balanced, it would surely make some typical stair battles more challenging.

[galehar]

It does sound fair and logical, but I have serious doubts regarding gameplay and balance. Stairs are the only way to disengage from same-speed enemies without using consumables. On the other hand, it would be great for allies.

[smock]

I like it. This would kill many players! It would make swiftness, potions of speed, centaurs, etc much better. It would be a relative boost to stealth, killing things dead, otherwise disabling opponents. I'd like to see this or a near variant implemented at some point, but it's probably require many other area of the game to be rebalanced along with it.

[dpeg]

Stairs should stay the way they are. If you stand next to a hydra, then using the stair (or not) in order to escape from other peril is a non-trivial choice.
(Note that real world and optimal behaviour aren't good guides: in a perfect world, the V:8 crew would wait for you on D:1.)
If we think that stairs are broken (I don't really think it is a big problem), then there are numerous other ways to change the current behaviour: guardian monsters (orb guardians, vault guardians, guardian mummies could be more intelligent, i.e. not always take the stairs with you; monsters that were close to the stair when you fled could group around it, or around another one etc.

[KoboldLord]

So you're saying, every single time I run out of mp before killing everything on the screen for the course of the entire game, I have to manually pillar-dance my entire mana bar back up to full rather than just mashing 5 twice?

Do not support, at least not as presented. Pillar-dancing is an annoying thing that I put up with. It should not be the main activity taking up the entire game.

[Jeremiah]

I agree that stairs should stay as they are; allowing monsters to follow you from further away would break one of the basic principles of Crawl - that you don't have to kill everything.

As soon as monsters start following you everywhere, then basically you do have to be able to kill everything that is the same speed as you.

[Kate]

I'd like to see a solution to it in at least a couple of places, at least. I think it was suggested for vault guards not to leave V:8, which might help there. And I remember brainstorming some ideas in IRC about the Tomb staircases having a chance of crumbling after repeated use and trapping you in Tomb:3 (presumably with hatches back up in the loot rooms or at the back of the level or whatever. Dunno if that's a good idea necessarily though, Tomb:2-3 require a whole lot of stairdancing due to the mass of death curses and tormenting and summon spam so probably the balance there should be looked at too if stairdancing is prevented somehow).

Although I really hope something along these lines can be done for permanent allies and interlevel travel some day.

[galehar]

Keeping the vault guards on V:8 is a great idea, and probably very easy to implement. Tomb is more tricky to address since it's already one of the most difficult place of the game.

[vintermann]

One slightly less radical idea: (some) creatures get better at following you through stairs, but no creature can follow you through trapdoors. This would make trapdoors more interesting.

* The advanced stair-followers should be only particularly relenteless, intelligent creatures (such as uniques with a contract on you). They shouldn't follow you up stairs straight away (unless they're next to you), but if they have spotted you and see you leaving the level, there's a chance they follow you up the stairs in 5-8 turns.

* If they don't, there's a small chance they'll go up to your level much later (50+ turns), possibly through another stairwell, hoping to catch you by surprise.

* If they don't see you, they don't follow.

* This means you can still escape, with a little more effort and risk.

* non-levelbound allies should behave the same way, except for the sneak-follow option.

[dpeg]

vintermann: yes, improving the "AI" of standout monsters (uniques, Pan lords, ancient liches) is generally good.

[joellercoaster]

uniques with a contract on you<SNIP/>... if they have spotted you and see you leaving the level, there's a chance they follow you up the stairs in 5-8 turns.

I like this very much!

Even cooler if they sometimes sneak up a different set of stairs...

[Stormfox]

Back to the Vault:8 guards, Geryon was changed a while back to not follow you back to D through the portal, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep the guards on their level.

In my latest contribution to "stop having fun, guys" (and I'm not even a good enough player to lay much claim to that!), I abused the hell out of this in my current game, a SpVM dabbling in necromancy. With skeletons 3-deep around me on Vault:7, I went down to Vault:8. Not having zombies and skeletons follow you off the level meant that I had a full 8 spaces around me to lure the guards back up. But going back up to the previous level, my skeletons were still there, and instead of being surrounded by vault guards I had a nice buffer of big skeletons (yaktaurs, stone giants, that sort of thing) with a few gaps for the guards to be shunted into. Poisonous Clouds all around, Airstrikes to make sure I got some credit for the kills, and wait for the dust to settle...and then animate any corpses left behind to strengthen the skeleton army. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Stair handling overall should not be changed much, but some special cases can definitely be tweaked.

[KoboldLord]

Agreed. The most serious concern when fighting the Vault 8 welcoming committee is to keep the noise down so as to not wake up the glowing shapeshifters nesting on the loot piles. The hallways dividing the four corner vaults are far more defensible than the main stairwell area, if survival is the only important concern.

I'm not sure there's any need to fix this particular location, though. The contents of the corner vaults provide a good amount of challenge in exchange for access to their contents. The entry fight is an evocative setpiece that allows you to feel the power of the levels and treasure you've accumulated in the game so far, and that's a worthy purpose too.