Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres


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Post Monday, 30th July 2018, 16:52

Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

According to objstat the game currently puts around 8 of them in D and 50 in the game total. They are actually more common than regular ogres everywhere except Orc. They're basically hill giants without nets, yet they soaked up the generation rates for hill giants and for old two-headed ogres (which were more like regular ogres than they are like new two-headed ogres), the result being that you see a ton of this speed 10 monster that most melee characters can't fight until after Lair, so you end up kiting them around a lot. The hill giant/2HO niche is a real one that does deserve a monster, but they don't need such a high weight.
And there is no point in generating them in Depths/Vaults/etc. at all imo, ogre mage pack or not.

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Post Monday, 30th July 2018, 20:09

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

duvessa wrote:And there is no point in generating them in Depths/Vaults/etc. at all imo, ogre mage pack or not.


Unfortunately, this is true of most monsters generated after the runes.
take it easy

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Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 08:29

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

What if DCSS replaced some of them with some sort of...introductory giant? You know, a "___ Giant" enemy.

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Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 14:07

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

How about a half-headed ogre?

"This one looks a little slow..."

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Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 19:52

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

PseudoLoneWolf wrote:How about a half-headed ogre?

"This one looks a little slow..."


What about a single-headed two-headed ogre?

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Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 19:55

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Guys, I'm not complaining about hill giant removal, the last thing I want is another type of ogre/giant. I'm just saying 2-headed ogre generation weight should be lower.

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Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 20:50

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Personally I don't like that both two headed ogres and ettins exist. Seems kind of redundant. Ettins also have the death yak problem. That two headed ogres aren They do seem kind of common though, but it could be confirmation bias as they are one of the few regular threats that can kill you in one or two hits.

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Post Tuesday, 31st July 2018, 23:28

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

new monster: two-headed bee

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Post Wednesday, 1st August 2018, 00:43

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Two-headed ogrecrawl, all two headed ogres all the time!
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Post Wednesday, 1st August 2018, 20:56

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

This game needs human centipedes.

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Post Thursday, 2nd August 2018, 11:55

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Siegurt wrote:Two-headed ogrecrawl, all two headed ogres all the time!

Even better: N-headed ogrecrawl, where N is the depth. (Except maybe Lair+branches, which have N-headed hydras)

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Post Thursday, 2nd August 2018, 17:24

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

I didn't change the number of post-Dungeon two-headed ogres, but in ccba5386 I basically halved the number you see from D:8-D:11 on-average.

It might be nice to remove their usage in later areas, but there's a long list of re-used monsters that show up in later branches where they're relatively trivial (plain orcs in Vaults, anyone?!). Even things like the Deep Trolls that show up with Deep Troll Shamans could use looking at. Shamans would probably work better if they could just haste/might anything in Depths. Allowing them to only buff monsters that are really weak for Depths isn't a great design. Anyhow, trimming relatively trivial things from later branches is a good project, but I'd prefer to work on that a bit more systematically, even if it has to be done in batches.

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Post Thursday, 2nd August 2018, 20:06

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

rigrig wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Two-headed ogrecrawl, all two headed ogres all the time!

Even better: N-headed ogrecrawl, where N is the depth. (Except maybe Lair+branches, which have N-headed hydras)



So heads growing out of heads, or arms or legs...Ogre lovecraft style.
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Post Friday, 3rd August 2018, 20:39

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

  Code:
<causative> !lg * depths s=ckiller
<Sequell> 22854 games for * (depths): 1452x a stone giant, 1059x a caustic shrike, 939x a frost giant, 888x a spriggan air mage, 802x a fire giant, 800x an ettin, 710x a deep troll, 661x a spark wasp, 620x a deep troll earth mage, 606x a very ugly thing, 507x a lich, 489x a tengu reaver, 489x a spriggan berserker, 482x an ice dragon, 480x a spriggan defender, 475x a vampire knight, 431x a titan, 425x a
<Sequell> fire dragon, 396x an iron troll, 387x a juggernaut, 354x quitting, 299x a yaktaur, 290x a deep troll shaman, 263x a yaktaur captain, 230x a golden dragon, 185x an iron giant, 181x an octopode crusher, 180x a pandemonium lord, 174x a storm dragon, 173x a crystal guardian, 173x an ancient lich, 152x a hell knight, 151x an ugly thing, 147x Sojobo, 143x a shadow dragon, 138x a quicksilver dragon,

A Deep Troll is the #7 killer in depths, killing more players than any other kind of troll. If you take deep troll packs as a whole, they are the #1 killer (710 for deep trolls + 620 for deep troll earth mages + 396 for iron trolls + 290 for deep troll shamans = 2016 total).
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Post Friday, 3rd August 2018, 21:00

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

rigrig wrote:
Siegurt wrote:Two-headed ogrecrawl, all two headed ogres all the time!

Even better: N-headed ogrecrawl, where N is the depth. (Except maybe Lair+branches, which have N-headed hydras)

sounds like it's time to bring the hydrataur out of retirement

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Post Friday, 3rd August 2018, 22:07

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Bring back iron giants and octopode crushers in Depths.
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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 00:06

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

354x quitting
What is going on here?

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 02:00

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Seems misleading to post raw monster kill statistics without accounting for the quantity of each type of monster generated. There are significantly more deep trolls than liches generated in depths in a typical game, for example.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 05:17

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Hellmonk wrote:Seems misleading to post raw monster kill statistics without accounting for the quantity of each type of monster generated. There are significantly more deep trolls than liches generated in depths in a typical game, for example.

While true, the threat posed by a monster depends on both its quantity and its individual danger. If a pack of individually weak monsters nonetheless kills many players, the pack taken as a unit belongs where it is. Imagine something like a speed 20 orc priest, and now imagine a pack of 20 of these in depths smiting you. That would be a great danger even though each individual enemy is so weak.

Also I expect that the deep trolls that are killing players are the ones that are mighted and hasted, and a mighted and hasted deep troll would tear a lich to shreds.
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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 07:13

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Plantissue wrote:
354x quitting
What is going on here?

Probably "aw crap I'm dead, might as well quit already".

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 07:17

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Hellmonk wrote:Seems misleading to post raw monster kill statistics without accounting for the quantity of each type of monster generated. There are significantly more deep trolls than liches generated in depths in a typical game, for example.

This is a good point, however when the discussion is about what to do about popcorn in Depths, one should take into account that more popcorn is generated in the first place.

In my opinion, much of the danger in Depths (insofar as it exists) is due to packs and/or "monsters walking in at inappropriate times" and stuff like that. In these situations, even popcorn can be dangerous, and if one reduces the number of popcorn and replaces them with (fewer) tougher monsters, one might end up actually reducing danger, instead of increasing it.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 14:53

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

You don't need to generate fewer monsters. There are more than enough knobs we have to tune monster difficulty in Depths. If we change one aspect, like removing a trivial monster, we can change another aspect, like replacing the weight of said monster with that of more appropriate monsters.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 15:01

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Yes, of course, one doesn't need to do it. I was simply saying that one should keep in mind the point I raised above. One reading of the OP is saying that one can simply remove two-headed ogres from Depths. My point is simply that popcorn can still be dangerous if it's part of a pack, or simply part of a bigger group of monsters.

Imo, having a pack (with different monsters having complementary abilities) leads to more interesting situations. I have already ranted about the opposite tendency (having a single tough monster), especially caustic shrikes, elsewhere.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 15:16

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

The argument that popcorn monsters do something sometimes is not very compelling, generally speaking. There are just plenty of relatively more dangerous monsters to choose from for Depths, and they would work very well as a replacement for deep trolls if we allowed them to be buffed by e.g. deep troll shaman. If might/haste other provides an interest combat situations involving deep trolls, it will likewise provide them for what we replace deep trolls with. And it's perfectly fine to let the shamans continue to have a band; that's simply another aspect of monster placement you can adjust. You could consider merging deep trolls with iron trolls (probably making the resulting monster speed 10) and simply letting that be the band, or you could pick some good candidates from other monsters in the Depths set.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 16:08

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

The consensus that deep trolls are dangerous can't be dismissed. Deep trolls edge out spriggan packs for the most deadly pack in depths, so they don't need to made more deadly. In addition, we don't want to lose deep troll packs by making shamans lone wandering monsters like everything else. There's flavor to consider. What is a shaman without his tribe?
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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 16:08

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

The devil is in the details. What counts as a popcorn monster? Do Deep Trolls count? And what does this sentence mean?
The argument that popcorn monsters do something sometimes is not very compelling, generally speaking.

As Berder showed above, "sometimes" is actually "quite frequent".

I don't know what "very compelling" means. What is the standard to judge compulsion?

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 17:06

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Well you yourself referred to them as popcorn monsters in a previous post, so I'm not sure why you'd dispute the definition now. As far as getting frequent kills goes, don't worry, anything they get replaced with will also frequently get kills. In fact, said replacement is basically guaranteed to get more kills than deep trolls did. There is absolutely nothing that deep trolls do which cannot be done through an already existing Depths monster. There's no need to treat whether deep trolls should exist as they do now as some kind of deeply (hah) unanswerable question. They are simply a monster that was added to support another monster that wouldn't be as relevant if it generated by itself. But deep trolls were selected specifically for flavor reasons, not because they're a good fit for Depths.

There are certainly problems with the idea of having more pack monsters and with the idea of having more monsters that make the player retreat upstairs to rest off some monster effect. However, allowing that deep troll shaman are a good idea, it's easy to use a better monster to support them. If you care strongly about the "troll flavor" of shaman bands, merging iron trolls and deep trolls is a good approach. If that flavor isn't too important, you have many suitable band replacements in the Depths monster set. I think it might be more interesting if they could buff anything and had a more general monster band, but that's the sort of thing that can be play-tested to see how well it works.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 19:02

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

As far as getting frequent kills goes, don't worry, anything they get replaced with will also frequently get kills. In fact, said replacement is basically guaranteed to get more kills than deep trolls did

That would be a problem, considering deep troll packs are already the player-killingest pack in depths.
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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 19:02

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Originally duvessa referred to two-headed ogres. You brought up Deep Trolls. One or both or neither can be popcorn. I was just asking what is your definition.

You say that the replacements will get even more kills. But my question (and Berder's) is why Deep Troll packs need to be buffed at all, given that they already get quite a few kills.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 19:05

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Wtf, Berder is ninja-ing all my posts.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 19:47

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Deep trolls get a lot of kills in Depths because 1. players play badly and 2. players are unspoiled and enter Depths way earlier than they should. Evaluating monster danger (or pretty much anything else) from Sequell queries is guaranteed to produce pure bullshit. Worms have more kills than centaurs, for god's sake.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 19:56

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

They're both popcorn; you can see this by how similar the profiles are of a two-headed ogres and deep troll, especially when you consider that the former get more damage from two weapons. And Deep trolls really don't get many kills at all in Depths; they are quite far down in the ranking (14th) for e.g. players in 0.21+ with exactly 1-3 runes in depths. What's more important than their precise ranking is the fact they make for bad Depths monsters when fought individually in that Branch, and that's why they'll get looked at in 0.23.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 21:47

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

you can see this by how similar the profiles are of a two-headed ogres and deep troll

Do you truly believe this? There's something you should always consider that makes deep trolls in depths far more dangerous than two headed ogres.

It's this: two headed ogres don't normally get mighted, and less frequently get hasted. A buffed up deep troll can do 3-4x more damage/turn after armor than an unbuffed one (in part because the mighted damage gets past your AC better). A mighted, hasted deep troll also is more difficult to escape because it walks fast and is accompanied by diggers. To my character in fsim with 37/16/27 defenses, a mighted, hasted deep troll does 6x more effective damage than a two-headed ogre wielding two giant clubs.

Deep trolls really don't get many kills at all in Depths; they are quite far down in the ranking (14th) for e.g. players in 0.21+ with exactly 1-3 runes in depths

How can people discuss claims like this if they can't see the data you're working from?
  Code:
<causative> !lg * depths cv>=0.21-a urune>=1 urune<=3 s=ckiller
<Sequell> 4058 games for * (depths cv>=0.21-a urune>=1 urune<=3): 307x a caustic shrike, 217x a stone giant, 174x a frost giant, 161x a spriggan air mage, 150x a spark wasp, 133x a very ugly thing, 125x a fire giant, 119x an ettin, 105x a juggernaut, 104x a deep troll earth mage, 101x a lich, 98x a deep troll, 91x a tengu reaver, 86x a spriggan defender, 85x a vampire knight, 84x a spriggan berserker, 75x
<Sequell> an iron troll, 74x an ice dragon, 69x a titan, 68x a fire dragon, 60x quitting, 47x an ancient lich, 45x a deep troll shaman, 44x a yaktaur captain, 42x Sojobo, 41x a golden dragon, 41x a storm dragon, 39x a pandemonium lord, 39x a yaktaur, 38x a shadow dragon, 38x a quicksilver dragon, 32x a draconian, 31x a crystal guardian, 30x a tentacled monstrosity, 28x Mennas, 28x a battlesphere, 24x Jory,

First of all they're in 12th place, not 14th by this query. And places 6-12 all have a similar amount of player kills. They're tied with liches, ahead of tengu reavers and vampire knights. Do you think tengu reavers and vampire knights are popcorn?

Now look at spriggan packs, the 2nd most deadly packs for the general query:
  Code:
<causative> !lg * depths cv>=0.21-a urune>=1 urune<=3 s=ckiller ckiller~~spriggan
<Sequell> 363 games for * (depths cv>=0.21-a urune>=1 urune<=3 ckiller~~spriggan): 161x a spriggan air mage, 86x a spriggan defender, 84x a spriggan berserker, 14x a spriggan rider, 9x a spriggan air mage (illusionary), 4x a spriggan defender (illusionary), 3x a spriggan berserker (illusionary), a spriggan druid, a spriggan defender zombie


  Code:
<causative> !lg * depths cv>=0.21-a urune>=1 urune<=3 s=ckiller ckiller~~troll
<Sequell> 341 games for * (depths cv>=0.21-a urune>=1 urune<=3 ckiller~~troll): 104x a deep troll earth mage, 98x a deep troll, 75x an iron troll, 45x a deep troll shaman, 4x a deep troll (illusionary), 3x a deep troll shaman (illusionary), 3x a deep troll earth mage (illusionary), 3x a deep troll earth mage simulacrum, 2x a deep troll simulacrum, 2x a deep troll shaman zombie, an iron troll simulacrum, a
<Sequell> troll

Yes, deep troll packs kill slightly less than spriggan packs under the specific constraints you described, making troll packs only the 2nd most deadly pack instead of the 1st. Deep troll packs kill more players than caustic shrike packs, ugly thing packs, ogre packs, etc. Your specific query makes deep trolls look a little bit weaker, but still very threatening.


What's more important than their precise ranking is the fact they make for bad Depths monsters when fought individually in that Branch

How dangerous they are when fought individually is irrelevant, because they are a pack monster. They get mighted and hasted in their pack.
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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 21:58

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

That perfect characters would rarely die, is a bad measurement to use to gauge the deadliness of a monster. In any case, what would anyone define as popcorn, and not-popcorn? You can't just always freely press and hold tab and kill a troll pack, so it seems fair to say that deep troll packs aren't popcorn.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 22:19

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

gammafunk wrote:anything they get replaced with will also frequently get kills

deep shrike
deep shrike ice mage
deep shrike acid shaman
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 22:23

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

How a depth-appropriate character that plays well would fight e.g. a deep troll or two-headed ogre is exactly what you consider when deciding whether a monster is appropriate for a given location. That someone "holding down tab" occasionally dies to one isn't relevant, since those players should be punished for playing poorly, and there are just lots of other monsters in Depths that can do that job. Deep trolls are just too weak for Depths, and adjusting them would be no different than any other relatively small adjustments we've made to monster sets in various branches. I say relatively small because the change we make in 0.23 won't have any huge impact on game difficulty, but it'll at least make encounters with deep troll shaman bands a little more exciting.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 23:20

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

I would say that a character that press and holds tab vs deep troll packs faces about the same chance vs a lich. The only difference is escape options once your hp goes down enough that you realise you should escape.

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Post Saturday, 4th August 2018, 23:35

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Berder wrote:Do you think tengu reavers and vampire knights are popcorn?
In Depths? Yes.
Berder wrote:How dangerous they are when fought individually is irrelevant, because they are a pack monster. They get mighted and hasted in their pack.
You don't have to fight the whole pack at once.

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 01:25

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Deep trolls are just too weak for Depths

Repeating this does not make it true. All monsters in Depths can be managed with minimal risk for most characters, if the player is sufficiently careful and knowledgeable about both the monster and safe tactics. This does not mean that all monsters in depths are popcorn. Or does it, in your mind?

duvessa wrote:
Berder wrote:Do you think tengu reavers and vampire knights are popcorn?
In Depths? Yes.

No.

How dangerous they are when fought individually is irrelevant, because they are a pack monster. They get mighted and hasted in their pack.
You don't have to fight the whole pack at once.

... except for those times when it's unavoidable without taking a greater risk.
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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 03:22

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

I run away from Deep Troll packs much more often (pretty much every time) than from many other Depths monsters. They're very dangerous.

Another thing I want to mention is that just because a monster doesn't bring you to the brink of death by itself doesn't mean it's a bad monster, and in fact the game would be much less interesting tactically if every monster was like that (and this is the direction that the game has been heading into without properly considering the pros and cons).

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bel

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 04:57

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

I can report that I also find Deep Troll packs to be reasonably hard, and the claim that "you don't have to fight them all at once" is simply ridiculous: using that logic, there is no point to any pack in the game.

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 05:44

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Deep troll packs as a whole can sometimes be dangerous, but they are really not all that dangerous. If deep troll packs become somewhat more dangerous than they are now, we can adjust their frequency of placement accordingly, should that actually be necessary. Depths is just in no way shape or form in need of another monster that's so completely trivial to fight by itself, certainly not one that common. And what plain deep trolls are replaced with doesn't have be a caustic shrike, or anything. Definitely don't agree that the game is anywhere even remotely close to having every monster be life-or-death in a 1v1 fight, or that any great negative aspects are being introduced by turning formerly trivial monsters into more relevant ones. If crawl had actually headed significantly in that directly, the game would already be much more difficult compared to recent past versions (and player winrates would certainly reflect this).

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bel

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 05:51

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

gammafunk wrote:Deep troll packs as a whole can sometimes be dangerous, but they are really not all that dangerous. If deep troll packs become somewhat more dangerous than they are now, we can adjust their frequency of placement accordingly, should that actually be necessary. Depths is just in no way shape or form in need of another monster that's so completely trivial to fight by itself, certainly not one that common.

See, I simply do not understand this incoherent passage. What does "all that dangerous" mean? How did you determine it? And why do you keep saying that "it's trivial to fight by itself", when it never generates by itself? This property is inherent in the way packs work: each monster is individually easier, but they generate in a pack, so the overall difficulty is harder.

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 06:27

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

bel wrote:the claim that "you don't have to fight them all at once" is simply ridiculous: using that logic, there is no point to any pack in the game.
I think this is pretty much true for slow packs, and to a lesser extent for melee packs in general. Centaur packs work fine, but when was the last time you were actually forced to fight multiple yaks at once?
Now, if deep troll shamans could cast haste other before any deep trolls come into view, that would be a different story, but, well, they can't. And I think I'd rather increase the natural speed of deep trolls than add more out-of-LOS monster casting.

Ugly things are usually more dangerous when they don't generate in a pack because being in a pack slows them down to the point where a normal speed player can outrun them. Same goes for speed 10 yaks etc. when playing a naga/barachian.

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 06:29

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Hello everyone, I am new here. If you can't defeat the two-headed ogres within a run, is that run even worth continuing? Wrapping your head around the game's mechanics, while not taking tough monsters head-on in order to overcome them seems to be fun part of DCSS anyway.

...That was my excuse for joining the conversation, because I actually just wanted to thank Berder for helping me during my current run. I searched for direct mail addresses but didn't find any. It seems I can only thank you through forum threads, so thank you Berder! I had lost connection with the server back then :D

bel

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 06:44

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

duvessa wrote:
bel wrote:the claim that "you don't have to fight them all at once" is simply ridiculous: using that logic, there is no point to any pack in the game.
I think this is pretty much true for slow packs, and to a lesser extent for melee packs in general. Centaur packs work fine, but when was the last time you were actually forced to fight multiple yaks at once?
Now, if deep troll shamans could cast haste other before any deep trolls come into view, that would be a different story, but, well, they can't. And I think I'd rather increase the natural speed of deep trolls than add more out-of-LOS monster casting.

Ugly things are usually more dangerous when they don't generate in a pack because being in a pack slows them down to the point where a normal speed player can outrun them. Same goes for speed 10 yaks etc. when playing a naga/barachian.

See, here is the problem I have. When you say things like this (completely seriously), people don't realize that you're making a very radical claim, similar to "the game is won by Lair" meme. People shrug it off as duvessa being duvessa.

I, on the other hand, do take your claim seriously, because it's clear that you really think so. That means that you consider a vast majority of Crawl to be fundamentally broken. You are fine to think so, but this state of affairs can't be fixed with minor tweaks to Deep Trolls or two-headed Ogres. For even discussing the issue somewhat seriously, one should have a standard of what is the operating principle of how Crawl is being developed, and not retreat always to the extreme claim. Because that is simply too easy, and evades the issue.

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 09:03

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

Packs with speed <= 10 do not constitute the vast majority of Crawl. Sure there are gnoll, orc, and yak packs, but there are also lots and lots of monsters that generate as individuals, and even some speed > 10 pack monsters like jackals and killer bees and the aforementioned centaurs.

bel

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 09:29

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

No, but I also take your other claims about Crawl seriously. Which do imply the statement I made.

Needless to say, I do not think gammafunk is proposing that every speed-10 monster pack be eliminated. That would be a much larger discussion.

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 15:07

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

bel wrote: When you say things like this (completely seriously), people don't realize that you're making a very radical claim, similar to "the game is won by Lair" meme. People shrug it off as duvessa being duvessa.


I feel that you just resort to the "duvessa makes radical and false claims" meme. But it does not seems to be true to me, neither here, nor on most other occasions. She just omits the context, as elfs usually do. Because she thinks it is obvious to others, while in reality it is obvious that it is not obvious to others.

What is radical about her assessment of slow (<=10 speed) packs? My experience is the following:
1. They are weaker as a group than individually, because they obstruct each other thus moving much slower. It does not need too much skill to abuse it.
2. They are *much* more tedious to play against.

These packs usually seems to me as a "kill by annoying the player to death" monsters. It is easy to separate them, but it is tedious, so many players (including me) do not even consider it, and of course sometimes die in the process.
The fact that sometimes "monsters shows up at inappropriate time" does not convince me that week monsters are good. By this logic you could bring back green rats to Lair. It is a much more interesting situation if an actually dangerous monster shows up at an inappropriate time.

Note that I do hate Depths. My feeling is that it works much worse than the main dungeon as a challenge. There are a huge number of individually not threatening monsters, which results in a much, much more tedious and boring game, that do not even pose a real challenge unless you get so bored that your mind is elsewhere. (And this is true even without the horrible huge vaults that generate there, where the only thing you need to do is to lure out monsters one-by-one, and there are a huge amount of monsters.)

By the way, I am a player who frequently die to worms and deep troll packs. I am absolutely not convinced that either of them is a good enemy.

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bel

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Post Sunday, 5th August 2018, 15:45

Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres

I explicitly did not discuss the validity of duvessa's claim. Indeed, I took the claim as true, and made explicit what it implied.

It is my impression that gammafunk is NOT proposing that all speed-10 packs be eliminated. If he is indeed saying that, let him come out and say it. Then we can have a proper discussion.
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