Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread


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

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 45

Joined: Monday, 4th December 2017, 19:23

Post Saturday, 2nd June 2018, 18:11

Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

This thread is made to split off the discussion from "Vehumet's early gifts are really weak"; These are the main points raised so far in the thread regarding nerfs to Nemelex:

Siegurt wrote:
Cornercat wrote:
Hellmonk wrote:You're aware that I post a rework/nerf Fedhas thread once every couple months, right?

e: here is a list of gods that I think should be nerfed: Fedhas, Gozag, Hep, Kiku, Nemelex, Ru, Trog, Yred

I don't want to derail this thread but I have to ask, how would you go about nerfing Nemelex? Only thing I can think of is to add in more negative card effects.

Off the top of my head: Slow down gift rate, give less power per invo investment, remove some of the better summon effects (those tend to be the most broken)

Cornercat wrote:
duvessa wrote:Balance-wise, the worst thing about current Nemelex is that you get a deck immediately. Because Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded, a god that gives you something immediately is pretty much always going to be better than the ones that don't. Most gods don't give you anything immediately, or if they do it's something very niche that you likely can't use anyway (Trog's Burn Books, back when it existed, was obviously not useful if you hadn't found a book yet), or at least has a big penalty attached (Chei's Bend Time comes at the cost of being slow).
However, Gozag, Hep, Nemelex, and Uskayaw all give you something good right away, with little or no drawbacks, so they're top tier regardless of their later abilities. A god that doesn't pay off until later cannot possibly compete.

mattlistener wrote:
duvessa wrote:Because Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded

Depends on the player. Crawl's difficulty is frontloaded for highly experienced players, who after the early game have typically found a way to climb above the power curve, and have mid- and late-game threat assessment mastered. For other players, gods that are stronger mid-game or late-game would be more attractive -- wherever they most need the power or survival boost.

This is interesting as this seems to be the exact opposite reason for why the OP made the thread (that Vehumet doesn't do much until way later in the game). Hep and Usk do this by design, so its hard to adjust. As for Nemelex, what if the starting deck was just.. worse than a plain deck? Make it equal to the average wand you would have by this stage of the game but perhaps give it extra charges. Could also add the ability to 'consolidate' cards into this deck, for when you have tons of plain cards and do not want to juggle your inventory. This would obviously reduce the power of any 'consolidated' cards.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread anymore so I'll be making another thread on the topic of "Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread" if anyone wants to continue discussing this.

The prime offender seems to be that Nemelex immediately gifts a relatively powerful plain deck of destruction. Another offense is that summons are generally too effective. E: I made a Formicid Artificer with 0 Invo and still got great value out of plain decks. The destruction deck did at least equal damage to my 6 Evo starting wands and when drawing storm, it would create an incredibly advantageous battlefield. Roughly 1/3 of plain summons were hostile, but they were of such a higher XL than where I was at, that they made most threats at the pre-Lair stage trivial.

So I suggest three primary changes: Nemelex gifts a 'deck of many things' (name subject to change) to start. Nemelex gifts only plain decks until reaching a certain piety. Plain decks of all types are rebalanced for pre-Lair to early Lair use without heavy Invo investment. This adjusts Nemelex to be a strong mid-game god without losing any late-game power while removing the glaring issue of trivializing early threats.

The 'deck of many things' would essentially be a deck that is slightly worse than a plain deck, but can draw all card types and can store infinite cards. It starts off with roughly 3x the cards of a regular plain deck. Without Invo investment, the cards are roughly half as effective as a plain deck. There are more negative card effects, or negative cards are more common (may still have same number of positive cards overall). The player can Invoke Nemelex to make the 'deck of many things' consume any other deck (yes, it eats it). This adds all cards in the consumed deck with a 2/3rds chance of keeping the card the same and a 1/3rd chance of randomizing it, another 1/6th chance per card of adding an extra negative card (at least 1, never more than 6). Any 'discard deck' effects will instead make the deck lose 2dX cards and randomize the order of the rest. The main purpose of this change is two-fold. To reduce the power of the starting gift without simply removing it. To give Nemelex players a way to avoid some inventory management once they are swimming in plain decks at the cost of more chaotic draws and weaker card effects until reaching X Invo (as alot of players avoid Nemelex because of inventory management fears). I'm unsure how the 'deck of many things' should go about consuming decks better than plain.

(Optional ideas here:) Nemelex can be Invoked (with a small to mid piety cost) to make the 'deck of many things' draw a specific card type (EX: Destruction, Summon or Escape type cards) but this has a chance to backfire (draws negative card). If the player decides to draw from the 'deck of many things' while not worshiping Nemelex, bad things may happen (rarely). There is also potential for the 'deck many things' to scale with piety, so at higher piety it can consume higher tier decks and this unlocks more card types for the 'deck of many things' to draw, thus improving the deck over time. Heck, maybe at end game or in extended the 'deck of many things' could grow to be better than a legendary deck (still worse though because of chaotic draw). Potential for a 'deck of many things' to spawn in the dungeon, this would have more negative cards than normal (IE: Really bad cards you do not want to draw ever). This random 'deck of many things' can be a mimic. 'Decks of many things' can consume other decks of many things. Xom may occasionally "gift" a 'deck of many things'.

Thoughts?

Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 689

Joined: Saturday, 12th December 2015, 23:54

Post Saturday, 2nd June 2018, 23:21

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

Nemelex is much like Fedhas in that the high power level is coupled to severe mechanical/interface problems, in this case the inventory management involved in lugging around dozens of decks. There is also a very high burden of knowledge to the god, since you need to at least sort of know what card effects you'll come across in each deck and there are a lot of different cards. I do not support making the burden of knowledge worse by adding a fourth, extremely complicated, deck type. It also does not actually solve inventory management at all if the deck is worse than a plain deck because it is better to just not use the effect and continue inventory juggling. I think gating higher level decks behind piety thresholds is probably good though. Here is what I would do to rework and nerf Nemelex:

1) Don't gift a deck until *..... piety. Reduce the size of the first deck, possibly of all decks for that matter.
2) Gate ornate and legendary decks behind piety thresholds at ***... and *****. piety respectively, or remove them and adjust card power scaling to run off of invocations skill and piety alone (naturally the threshold before better effects start coming up has to be pretty high for this to work).
3) Remove or rework or nerf some of the specific problem cards. I am thinking mostly of the one that summons a friendly panlord, but people who play Nemelex more could give a better list.
4) Goldify decks or make them stack. The inventory management is so bad, holy shit.

For this message the author Hellmonk has received thanks: 2
duvessa, Zhorgal

Temple Termagant

Posts: 10

Joined: Tuesday, 4th April 2017, 19:17

Post Saturday, 2nd June 2018, 23:42

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

On the subject of inventory management: I think that despite Nemelex's ridiculous early game, inventory management is the biggest issue with this god. I would fully support making the god into an invocable Xom. At *..... you can draw a random plain card for a very small piety cost this scales to legendary with piety. At ***, you can choose the deck it comes from. Even better, remove all references to decks and just make him the god of gambling.

For this message the author Beargit has received thanks:
Hellmonk

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Saturday, 2nd June 2018, 23:45

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

Beargit wrote:On the subject of inventory management: I think that despite Nemelex's ridiculous early game, inventory management is the biggest issue with this god. I would fully support making the god into an invocable Xom. At *..... you can draw a random plain card for a very small piety cost this scales to legendary with piety. At ***, you can choose the deck it comes from. Even better, remove all references to decks and just make him the god of gambling.
I had a proposal similar to this.

For this message the author duvessa has received thanks:
Hellmonk

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 276

Joined: Sunday, 6th November 2016, 19:19

Post Sunday, 3rd June 2018, 02:17

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

As for card stacking, I tried to make them stack like wands when I was trying my hand at re-working Nemelex.

The main problems were that the top deck's tier took precedence over that type (e.g. If you had a legendary deck of destruction, all decks of destruction picked up would be a legendary deck) and card drawing was very buggy.

But I am a fairly crappy coder, so goldifying decks should be something fairly easy to do once you sort out those issues.

The easiest and most convenient way would be to make decks something like a 'wand of nemelex effects' that randomly picks from either destruction,summoning or escape card pools (depending on which deck you're drawing from) and is skewed towards stronger and better effects with higher invo/piety.

If Nemelex's inventory hassles were solved, that'd instantly make him x100 better to play with.

Of course, just doing away with decks and making them all abilities is also a fine idea, as duvessa suggested above.
Attachments
deck stacks.png
deck stacks.png (9.99 KiB) Viewed 3043 times
Last edited by Vajrapani on Sunday, 3rd June 2018, 04:22, edited 1 time in total.
16/26 on the way to GreaterOctopode (Win all backgrounds as an Octopode)

Progress so far : OpFi, OpGl, OpWn, OpAr, OpCK, OpMo, OpBe, OpHu, OpVM, OpAM, OpWr, OpFE, OpEE, OpNe, OpTm, OpSk

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 45

Joined: Monday, 4th December 2017, 19:23

Post Sunday, 3rd June 2018, 03:07

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

Hellmonk wrote:Nemelex is much like Fedhas in that the high power level is coupled to severe mechanical/interface problems, in this case the inventory management involved in lugging around dozens of decks. There is also a very high burden of knowledge to the god, since you need to at least sort of know what card effects you'll come across in each deck and there are a lot of different cards. I do not support making the burden of knowledge worse by adding a fourth, extremely complicated, deck type. It also does not actually solve inventory management at all if the deck is worse than a plain deck because it is better to just not use the effect and continue inventory juggling. I think gating higher level decks behind piety thresholds is probably good though. Here is what I would do to rework and nerf Nemelex:

1) Don't gift a deck until *..... piety. Reduce the size of the first deck, possibly of all decks for that matter.
2) Gate ornate and legendary decks behind piety thresholds at ***... and *****. piety respectively, or remove them and adjust card power scaling to run off of invocations skill and piety alone (naturally the threshold before better effects start coming up has to be pretty high for this to work).
3) Remove or rework or nerf some of the specific problem cards. I am thinking mostly of the one that summons a friendly panlord, but people who play Nemelex more could give a better list.
4) Goldify decks or make them stack. The inventory management is so bad, holy shit.

The intention behind the 'deck of many things' was for it to start off worse than a plain deck and end up slightly better with adequate Invo investment. I probably was not clear enough on that point. Goldifying decks is a cleaner solution but for some reason I have the impression that someone doesn't want to go that route, so tried to think of alternate strategies for cleaning up Nemelex inventory.

Also I think it should be noted that with the 'deck of many things' that I had in mind there would not be a strat for optimizing its card draw. So no burden of knowledge. It can draw all card types and theres a reason I went with the name 'deck of many things' :twisted:

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 139

Joined: Friday, 13th March 2015, 13:33

Post Sunday, 3rd June 2018, 10:02

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

give a permanent deck of destruction at 1*, summoning at 3*, and escape at 5*. Then have him gift additional cards randomly instead of more decks. Change deal 4 to something else.

bel

Cocytus Succeeder

Posts: 2184

Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05

Post Sunday, 3rd June 2018, 10:31

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

If you want to nerf Nemelex a bit, just delay the first deck.

Nemelex has other problems, mostly having to do with inventory. The approach right now in Hellcrawl (removing plain and legendary decks, and consolidating decks into three stackable types) will remove 95% of the inventory issues.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 200

Joined: Sunday, 11th May 2014, 11:26

Post Sunday, 3rd June 2018, 12:05

Re: Obligatory nerf Nemelex thread

Please understand the grammatical errors that may occur during the translation process.

I think xobeh needs to do right now is an improvement on the DAMN INTERFACE.
So, I brought a new plan.


[highlight]
gift - xebeh no longer presents the card deck.

As soon as you believe in God, can use three card decks(Destruction, Escape, Summoning) from the power menu.
These card decks are rechargeable, like a lightning rod. The amount of charge is (5/5).
The card deck does not take place in the inventory. Only the power menu can be checked and used.

deck strength - The strenghths of the deck is determined by Piety.
Plain: 74 Piety or less
Ornate: over 75 Piety
Legendary: over 120 Piety

deck charge - Exploring the world.

power
(delete)Deal Four
(new)up one's sleeve: Re-use the last used card. (Costs 2 MP, 2-3 Piety)
(No change)Triple Draw
(change)Stack Five: View the five cards of any deck and order them however you want. You can stack a deck only once. After that, charging works normally. (Costs 5 MP, 10-15 Piety)



The mechanism of xobeh differs from the direction of current dcss.
I think xobeh is too complicated. The goal is to simplify the complexity and keep the play method.
At the heart of the rework is to clean the dirty room of xobeh.

now, you can not use a card unless you are a xobeh player. I mean, it is an item that can not be used if you do your apostasy. The deck is a 'xobeh power' that mimics the item.

Then you do not have to be in the inventory.

Do you need more than three power icons in the power menu? No, three are enough. Destruction, Escape, Summoning. So, I deleted the gift. It does not have to exist.
Getting a new card, imitated a lightning rod. It is rechargeable. Charging energy is Exploring. The strength of the deck increases in proportion to Piety.
You can no longer collect more decks. There was also a change in 'power' accordingly.
'Triple Draw' no change. 'Deal Four' was deleted.
I suggest new power up one's sleeve. This power is a designed to compensate for the lack of cards.
Stack Five has not changed much. The only difference is that decks using this power work normally.
The rate at which the deck is charged will be controlled through the data.
Personally, putting the power icon in the quick evoke menu seems ok.
To summarize, it is as follows.

Racial restrictions
Demigods cannot worship Nemelex Xobeh (or any other god).

Appreciates
Exploring the world.

Deprecates
Abandonment. You'll lose on average 1 piety every 700 turns.

Given Abilities
All of Nemelex's abilities deal with manipulating or controlling decks. Nemelex will gift you additional cards as you gain more piety.
Piety level -: "Pannier"
Card power improvement: The power of any card you draw is increased by (Piety × (Invocations+ 25) / 27) (see card power). This improves your chances to get improved effects from Ornate or Legendary decks. In addition, when drawing the Damnation card, you'll have a slightly improved number of targets (about Piety/5% chance to get one more target). (Passive)

Piety level *: "Jester"
up one's sleeve: Re-use the last used card. (Costs 2 MP, 2-3 Piety)

Piety level **: "Fortune-Teller"
No new abilities.

Piety level ***: "Soothsayer"
Triple Draw: Draw three cards from any deck in your inventory, look at them, and decide which one to use, discarding the other two. If only two cards remain in a deck, then only the remaining two cards will be displayed. If only one card is left, then it will be played as normal while still incurring the regular ability cost. (Costs 2 MP, 150 Food, and 2-3 Piety)
Note that even if all viewed cards are undesirable, you must draw one of them; there is no way to back out once you have seen them.

Piety level ****: "Magus"
No new abilities.

Piety level *****: "Cardsharp"
Stack Five: View the five cards of any deck and order them however you want. You can stack a deck only once. After that, charging works normally. (Costs 5 MP, 375 Food, 10-15 Piety)

Piety level ******: "Hand of Fortune"
No new abilities.



Please, inventory is hard. ;)
I am warmly welcomed if I have a better interface.

For this message the author sdynet has received thanks:
Zhorgal

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.