Robot - new hard species

[VeryAngryFelid]

Players streak Op, Mu, Na, Fe and ask to bring back ghosts for challenge so I think we should try to create an actually hard species instead.

The species can have name "Robot" as it has some really unique intrinsics and limitations.

• Every item gets "Fragile" modifier so no easy swapping
• Slow 2 mutation (same as Na) so no easy luring
• Deformed body (loses half AC from body armour), also unable to wear anything except robes and dragon scales so no early heavy armour etc.
• UC has aptitude -4, everything else has aptitude -3 so don't expect to start as Tm and join Chei to have easy time
• Reading a scroll or quaffing a potion causes average draining AND exhaustion so you basically cannot spam items in fights and also scrolls of identify are not as straightforward as usual
• Ashenzari does not accept the species as worshiper for obvious reasons, we still want problems with item identification and items are not supposed to be swapped anyway due to fragile property
• If you abandon a god, wrath never ends so you cannot start as Be or with Oka and later easily switch to TSO or Zin
• Species does not get any mutations from malmutations or potions of mutation so you cannot play mutation lottery trying to get Robust and alike. Instead mutations drain you.
• Large size so you get a penalty to EV
• Inability to use regular shield and large shield, only buckler is wearable
• God abilities cost double piety and cause draining, piety decay rate is doubled too. That leaves gods with passives like Vehumet and Makhleb still very useful but I have no idea how to make them weaker in a general way
• Regeneration 1 at XL 4 and Regeneration 2 at XL 12 (same as VS), it would be too annoying to play otherwise IMHO. As a bonus it makes Makhleb less useful and due to speed penalty we should not worry about pillar-dancing
• Normal magic resistance (5 per level)
• Normal MP (aptitudes are enough to make spellcasting hard)
• Str 10, Dex 10, Int 10, Str/Dex/Int every 4th level. We do not want to encourage any particular play styles as all of them are expected to be possible but pretty hard.

[Sprucery]

Draining is a very annoying mechanic imo, how about just make all scrolls and potions be like xp-gated evokables: you can't read another scroll or quaff another potion until you've gained some more exp?

This should be done, we need more combo words like these: RoBe, RoCK, RoAM, RoAr :)

[duvessa]

• Deformed body (loses half AC from body armour), also unable to wear anything except robes and dragon scales so no early heavy armour etc.
• UC has aptitude -4, everything else has aptitude -3 so don't expect to start as Tm and join Chei to have easy time
• Ashenzari does not accept the species as worshiper for obvious reasons, we still want problems with item identification and items are not supposed to be swapped anyway due to fragile property
• Large size so you get a penalty to EV
• Inability to use regular shield and large shield, only buckler is wearable

It's not clear to me what the goals of these are. Unarmed sucks even without a bad aptitude for it, and since when is Tm of Chei easy? The rest of the species features are already biasing it towards playing as a "pure caster" (specifically a summoner), no point in shutting off armour and shields that it won't use anyway.
You say the reasons for prohibiting Ashenzari are obvious, but I'm not seeing them. You aren't going to magically make identification meaningful past early game just by making the scrolls drain you. Seems to me like Ash would be a weaker choice than lots of other gods.

I don't know how many of the existing species were actually intended as "challenge species", but if the number is greater than zero, it'd probably be better to just make those "challenge species" weaker instead of adding another one (if there actually needs to be a weaker species, which I am not convinced of). Mu already fits the bill as being generally bad at everything, that's basically its entire niche, so you probably want to either apply your changes to Mu or just straight-up replace Mu.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It's not clear to me what the goals of these are.

To make the species hard. MiFi has awful aptitudes in magic yet is one of the easiest combos.

Unarmed sucks even without a bad aptitude for it, and since when is Tm of Chei easy?

World record game used UC and Chei.

  Code:

Action                   |  1- 3 |  4- 6 |  7- 9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19-21 | 22-24 | 25-27 || total
-------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------++-------
Melee: Unarmed           |    29 |       |       |     1 |   101 |   156 |   120 |   173 |   372 ||   952
       Bite              |     5 |     2 |     4 |    11 |    25 |    38 |    38 |    47 |    81 ||   251
       Dagger            |       |     9 |    55 |    79 |       |       |       |       |       ||   143
       Flail             |       |    14 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       ||    14
       Punch             |       |     1 |     1 |     8 |     2 |       |       |       |       ||    12
       Staff             |       |       |    27 |    11 |       |       |     3 |     1 |    10 ||    52

The rest of the species features are already biasing it towards playing as a "pure caster" (specifically a summoner), no point in shutting off armour and shields that it won't use anyway.

Summoners are among the safest characters indeed but I am not sure it will be that easy due to low speed (no easy retreats) and bad aptitudes (miscasts and low MP).

You say the reasons for prohibiting Ashenzari are obvious, but I'm not seeing them. You aren't going to magically make identification meaningful past early game just by making the scrolls drain you. Seems to me like Ash would be a weaker choice than lots of other gods.

Ashenzari allows identifying items for free, discourages swapping, has passives mostly, greatly helps characters with bad aptitudes due to skill boost, gives monster detection (works nice for low speed characters). Overall Ash makes many of species limitations irrelevant or not that important.

[duvessa]

Unarmed sucks even without a bad aptitude for it, and since when is Tm of Chei easy?

World record game used UC and Chei.

To get a high score. Chei is quite good for getting high scores, since score is based on turncount rather than elapsed aut. This does not convince me to describe unarmed or Chei as being good or easy for winning the game in general. And I don't think there is any risk of this species being used to break the high score record, even if you give it a better unarmed combat aptitude.

Ashenzari allows identifying items for free, discourages swapping, has passives mostly, greatly helps characters with bad aptitudes due to skill boost, gives monster detection (works nice for low speed characters). Overall Ash makes many of species limitations irrelevant or not that important.

The identification "limitation" is already not important, unless you're suggesting a really crazy amount of draining like 500. Yes, Ashenzari discourages swapping and Fragile also discourages swapping. Ozocubu's Refrigeration prevents you from quaffing potions, and being a mummy also prevents you from quaffing potions, yet that does not make Ozocubu's Refrigeration an amazing spell for mummies.
Sure monster detection is good in general, and the skill boost does "bypass" aptitudes for some reason, but man, that's a pretty small advantage over non-robot Ash, and it's still no comparison to what Fedhas/Gozag/Jiyva/Kiku/Nemelex/Ru/Trog do at comparable piety levels.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I am not sure what's your point. I am trying to make the species hard for every god, every starting background and so on.
Ash makes some id limitations less meaningful, Chei makes speed penalty less severe, forms make melee damage very high so I added specific measures to prevent the exploits. They can be changed of course if needed.
Also yes, draining from scroll is very severe (probably even red draining), you are not supposed to use many scrolls on every floor, just a few. Also you are supposed to use items for a long time because of both fragile property and lack of easy id.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Also I am trying to have some unique game experience, Ash will destroy it.
Comparing to Fedhas/Kiku/Nemelex Ash is easier because it does not require training Invo/Necro.
Gogaz does not help that much either because potion drains and exhaustes and identifying bought items causes draining/destroys current items. Be is still strong but not as strong as for other species because being exhausted after berserk disables reading scrolls/quaffing potions. The same with Ru, after using its abilities you cannot read/quaff and vice versa. That's assuming "Exhausted" is also added to potions/scrolls which look like a good idea to me.

[crawlnoob]

I think robots should be athiest and not even have an option to worship. I also think the shields restriction is contrived and makes no sense thematically. If anything, robots should have innate shields.

But most importantly, I think that the real question here is what does it mean for the game in general, that so many players are requesting a species that is "hard", and that the latest solution given is a species that restricts pretty much everything.

[VeryAngryFelid]

But most importantly, I think that the real question here is what does it mean for the game in general, that so many players are requesting a species that is "hard", and that the latest solution given is a species that restricts pretty much everything.

Let me try to explain my way of thinking. As you probably know there are streakers of NaWn with 0 Dodging which IMHO proves that slowness and lack of EV is not a big deal when you have crazy AC and can use large shield easily so I tried to fight them with those limitations. Disabling body armour and shields was an option too but IMHO it would lead to boring games as there would be little point in playing the same species again and again when it always plays casters way, uses 2h weapon, dodging and/or goes for transmutations.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I think robots should be athiest and not even have an option to worship. I also think the shields restriction is contrived and makes no sense thematically. If anything, robots should have innate shields.

I'd like to keep ability to worship gods as it greatly increases variety IMHO (personally I am not a big fan of Dg).
I agree about issue with prohibited shields making little sense thematically so probably it can be flavored to something other than robot. Note I am "mechanic first" guy, flavour is useless to me, the proposal is about mechanics for hard games, not about being a robot.

[chequers]

Why would anyone choose to play this species? Where is the fun part?

Mummy has the "terrible species" gimmick already, so don't say that. And even mummy has some cool unique benefits.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Why would anyone choose to play this species? Where is the fun part?

Mummy has the "terrible species" gimmick already, so don't say that. And even mummy has some cool unique benefits.

It was an attempt to help players who complain like this:

As a streaker, I find that the early game is now too easy with the removal of ghosts. Ghosts provided your daily recommended dose of "fleeing in terror." How can streakers get respect when the early game is so boring and routine?

So I believe the fun part is "I am going to die, what should I do?"... And then in a few turns "Oh, I am very smart, I survived". It is pretty close to shafts and teleport traps IMHO except here we get it from most monsters instead of just a few ghosts or traps.

[charlatan]

Large species can't wear bucklers, so "no shield/large shield" actually means no shield period. Also, "standard" MR gain is 3/level, 5 is well above average.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Then I guess it means the species should have the same size as Ce/Na, they can use bucklers as far as I know.
Or maybe just add an explicit check for species like is done for Fe who cannot use buckler despite being the same size as Sp.

[ebering]

It was an attempt to help players who complain like this:

As a streaker, I find that the early game is now too easy with the removal of ghosts. Ghosts provided your daily recommended dose of "fleeing in terror." How can streakers get respect when the early game is so boring and routine?

I’m pretty sure there’s no helping this particular player, despite your noble efforts.

[Berder]

There needs to be something positive, unusual, and powerful about the race that gives a reason to play it. It's good to have a challenge but there needs also to be something to look forward to. Octopodes have constriction and rings. What could a robot have? Just to spitball, maybe they could evolve by upgrading themselves with a crafting system based on combining items found around the dungeon.

I like characters that are strong later on. A weak character in mid/late game is just a pain to play.

The early dungeon has a special charm, with unidentified items and few escapes, and a playstyle and skilling that you constantly adapt to what you find. Also, things are actually asleep in early dungeon, which adds more interest and tactics about waking them up or not, and individual monsters are much more of a challenge and risk. Mid/late game tends to devolve into just hordes of mooks that you usually can't avoid waking up, that you just slog through in a routine way.

One of the most interesting things to survive in the early dungeon, and even later in the game, is being shafted. It's usually survivable, but to survive it is a process of cautious exploration, avoidance of enemies, and use of consumables. What if robot had a "heavy metal body" mutation which gives them a small chance to fall through the floor every time they walk? And eventually they could upgrade their feet to tracked propulsion so they don't fall through, so it's a challenge more in early/mid game.

I’m pretty sure there’s no helping this particular player, despite your noble efforts.

Breaks forum rule:

• Do not harass or insult other users. Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

[Pereza0]

no easy swapping
no easy luring
don't expect to start as Tm and join Chei to have easy time
cannot spam items in fight
you cannot start as Be or with Oka and later easily switch to TSO or Zin
you cannot play mutation lottery trying to get Robust
only buckler is wearable
God abilities cost double piety and cause draining, piety decay rate is doubled too.
I have no idea how to make them weaker in a general way
We do not want to encourage any particular play styles as all of them are expected to be possible but pretty hard.

A race whose design philosophy seems to be "YOU CANT BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT PLAYERS DO IN GAMES AND I DONT WANT YOU TO DO THAT" doesn't seem really good. You are just seeing what players do and making up something to penalize them for that or to destroy that strategy.

I feel species should in the end be relatively straightforward and intuitive, and this is the opposite of that. Also lack theme. How are those things related to robots?

If Crawl needs another hardmode maybe races are not the way to do it anymore... Call me crazy but what about a hardmode alternative dungeon for those who are tired of the Orb?

[duvessa]

Chei makes speed penalty less severe

Chei literally does the exact opposite of that

[Stonar]

There are a ton of voluntary ways to increase the difficulty of your game. Most of these things are just things you could impose on yourself, if you want. I don't really see the value in this. Further, is this what people who find the game too easy want? When people ask for ghosts to come back, they tend to talk about momentary danger - a threat that needs to be dealt with immediately and temporarily. It seems like this proposal ups the difficulty constantly, which is a different thing. I personally want neither, but I'm not the target audience.

[stormdragon]

Every item gets "Fragile" modifier so no easy swapping

This is a species mutation idea I haven't seen before. I'm not sure if it would be fun or not, but it would be an interesting to try.

[Berder]

It was an attempt to help players who complain like this:

As a streaker, I find that the early game is now too easy with the removal of ghosts. Ghosts provided your daily recommended dose of "fleeing in terror." How can streakers get respect when the early game is so boring and routine?

I’m pretty sure there’s no helping this particular player, despite your noble efforts.

I'd like to draw attention to this once again - this is straight harassment and against forum rules. Two people thanked him, thereby also becoming complicit in harassment.

[sundaye]

Streakers like to win games, btw.

[duvessa]

If you believe a post breaks the forum rules, you can click on the report button to report the post to the moderators. It's the little exclamation mark at the bottom right of the post.

[VeryAngryFelid]

There are a ton of voluntary ways to increase the difficulty of your game. Most of these things are just things you could impose on yourself, if you want. I don't really see the value in this. Further, is this what people who find the game too easy want? When people ask for ghosts to come back, they tend to talk about momentary danger - a threat that needs to be dealt with immediately and temporarily. It seems like this proposal ups the difficulty constantly, which is a different thing. I personally want neither, but I'm not the target audience.

Momentary danger is not a big deal, streaking will remain easy if you have enough resources to escape every time. That's why I believe increasing permanent danger is the way to go if someone complains that streaking is too easy/boring. For some backgrounds resources are not even needed, just cast Blink or berserk after luring.

[tabstorm]

Honestly, playing gimped species isn't that fun. This species seems like an attempt at "Remove almost every strategy you use in the game because they're overpowered". If you want a harder game, the easiest way to accomplish it would be another XP nerf in the early mid-game. If you like, removed Lair, and just spawned the branches in D, but toned down Shoals a bit, that would fix a lot. Maybe reduce the number of teleport scrolls too.

Now that I think about it, Zot is quite a bit more dangerous than it used to be with the delayed teleport mechanic. To me this indicates that over-abundance of teleport is probably an issue. If I can walk around in the mid-late game with 20 scrolls of teleport at any given time, how can I die?

[sanka]

If you want a harder game, the easiest way to accomplish it would be another XP nerf in the early mid-game. If you like, removed Lair, ... Maybe reduce the number of teleport scrolls too.

Challenge race idea:

Environmentalist
1. You refuse to enter Lair to protect the habitat of endangered species.
2. You recycle 2 out of three teleport scrolls you find.

[sanka]

Ok, maybe the flavour was more of a background. How about this:

Alien
1. You cannot enter Lair. This area is lethally toxic to you.
2. You automatically eat 2 out of three teleport scrolls.

[Pereza0]

Honestly, aside from making a hard-mode dungeon (which of course, is not easy) would be to create some sort of mutator system (which would not be easy either, but hey)

Of course, you can do self imposed challenges, but who cares about them outside tournaments if the game does not recognize them in some way?

With a mutator system it would be right there in your morgue, and it could go well beyond mere self imposed challenges - these can actually change the way the dungeon works - or making another gimped race (with a contrived theme behind its gimping). Some ideas:

Permanent Pandemonium - Make a single Pan lord spawn in every floor, all game long.
Berserk Freaks - All enemies without special abilities become berserk upon noticing you.
Xom Forever - Xom effects regardless of God - worshipping Xom gets you double Xom.
Handicap - Bad mutations on races that don't have them
Density - Tiny floors with the same amount of enemies
Lernys - All hydras are the Lernaean Hydra
Sampler - Identification scrolls are removed from the game
Summon Party- All enemy summons are durable
Heroes never die - Uniques can't be killed


Each new version of the game could come with an "official" set of mutations which is the one that scores and "counts" for its tournament and until the next version releases, along with the regular game. Would be more about "Lets see who the hell can beat this" rather than "Lets see who can beat this more times in a week"

[VeryAngryFelid]

Ok, I am clear, every time some will say that crawl is too easy, I will forward them to this thread asking why it has just 2 thanks. The thread can be moved to CYC I think, now it is more about "brainstorming ideas" than about the robot from OP.

[duvessa]

If crawl is too easy for 27 out of 27 species, then adding a harder species would mean that crawl is too easy for 27 out of 28 species. That's not a big improvement. This proposal could be appealing to someone who thinks the bad species aren't bad enough, but if you're someone who thinks the game is too easy in general, it does nothing to help.

[VeryAngryFelid]

If crawl is too easy for 27 out of 27 species, then adding a harder species would mean that crawl is too easy for 27 out of 28 species. That's not a big improvement. This proposal could be appealing to someone who thinks the bad species aren't bad enough, but if you're someone who thinks the game is too easy in general, it does nothing to help.

I think everyone agrees that species in DCSS work like difficulty levels in other games so having 5 easy species, 20 normal species and 5 hard species is probably close to what we want. Also if some players say that crawl is too easy for them but they don't think a harder species should be added, then I suspect they are cunning or just bragging since they still want DCSS to stay easy.

[duvessa]

Also if some players say that crawl is too easy for them but they don't think a harder species should be added, then I suspect they are cunning or just bragging since they still want DCSS to stay easy.

or maybe, just maybe, they want crawl to be harder for the existing species

[sundaye]

I think everyone agrees that species in DCSS work like difficulty levels in other games

Yes, the only difference between formicid and mummy is the difficulty level.

Also if some players say that crawl is too easy for them but they don't think a harder species should be added, then I suspect they are cunning or just bragging since they still want DCSS to stay easy.

So, do you think elitism is a good enough excuse to add a new race to the game?

Im excited to see new content to the game in any shape of form, if you want a race to be bad for the sake of being bad im fine with it but your reasoning cant legitimely be "we need a new race for the pros out there".

[Pereza0]

Im no crawl elitist. Not even a good player

I like new species as long as they are cool thematically and in terms of mechanics. I love Octopodes, I love Gnolls, I love Formicids, I love Barachi. Not because of their difficulty or lack of thereof but because they truly feel like something special. Even a hard species like Octopode I can often fantasize about how cool it would be to play an Octopode with background X and god Y.

Could never ever see it happening with your proposal. What is the cool thing about your robots that should make me want to play them even if they are the hardest race in the game? Just bragging rights?

EDIT: Basically what Berder said

[VeryAngryFelid]

So, do you think elitism is a good enough excuse to add a new race to the game?

This is not correct question to ask. I am author of DCSS branch where you can change difficulty levels for any combo by XP modifier and monster HP modifier. I still believe rejecting explicit difficulty level is a mistake in DCSS design.
But in current situation yes, having a very hard species is the way to go. After all, I stopped playing all games where I don't get challenged even at the hardest level and I think I am not unique in that.

[sundaye]

Have you added said race to your DCSS branch so ppl can play it and give you better feedback?

[Wahaha]

In my opinion many of the attributes for this species shouldn't be there (UC lower than everything else, draining, Ash, permanent wrath, no mutations, only buckler, god ability nerf, regeneration). Many of these are attempts at addressing weird special cases that don't need to be addressed, because they aren't problems to begin with. Basically, if you want to make a species harder, change the rules of the species, not the rules of the game. Not sure if this will convey properly, hopefully it will.

Draining, regen, and god ability nerf are bad due to other reasons. Draining because it's gross to play with and I'd prefer a different way of making it harder. Regen because I don't understand why they have regen. God ability nerf because it nerfs different gods by different amounts and I don't see why you'd punish some gods more than others.

I don't think a robot fits in crawl so personally I'd prefer different flavor.

I think the game is at a good difficulty level but I'm in favor of making the easiest parts of it harder (lair, last few D levels before U because you're overleveled from Lair, branches that are often cleared while overleveled - Elf).

[VeryAngryFelid]

Have you added said race to your DCSS branch so ppl can play it and give you better feedback?

No, I am no longer interested in coding.

[tasonir]

I'm not too interested in the details here, but I'd like to make a "big picture" comment. Races intended to be *THIS* hard should probably just be player conducts. Like the whole MuMo with no god, body armor, magic, or evokables challenge; that challenge is extremely difficult. I don't think something that hard should be fully set and restricted by your turn 0 race choice. After all, some people still want to get that great player title, and these challenges are really more for a smaller masochistic portion of the player base.

I'm also bitter I still can't win a MuMo with no body armor/god/magic, so there's that.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I'm not too interested in the details here, but I'd like to make a "big picture" comment. Races intended to be *THIS* hard should probably just be player conducts. Like the whole MuMo with no god, body armor, magic, or evokables challenge; that challenge is extremely difficult. I don't think something that hard should be fully set and restricted by your turn 0 race choice. After all, some people still want to get that great player title, and these challenges are really more for a smaller masochistic portion of the player base.

I'm also bitter I still can't win a MuMo with no body armor/god/magic, so there's that.

You can win MuMo, you just don't want to pillar dance every goblin until you find a randart ring with rF+ and slay +5.
Here we have a dilemma: either I am right or show me a person who wins 10 MuMo in 10 games to prove it is not luck-based and I will tell you that we need a species with slow speed. Then show me streakers of slow NaWn and I will tell you we need a penalty to AC/HP/shields/Gozag and so on. Eventually we will be discussing my robot again

[duvessa]

what?

[VeryAngryFelid]

what?

Ok, TL/DR for you. MuMo challenge is not hard unless it is changed to "you have only 3 attempts and you must win all of them".
For the record I tried MuMo, got tired of pillar-dancing and quit/died.

TL/DR for TL/DR post: To make MuMo challenge hard it should prohibit all items.

This is typical MuMo winner:

  Code:

Health: 249/249    AC: 18    Str: 22    XL:     27
Magic:  9/9        EV: 37    Int:  9    God:   
Gold:   9543       SH: 34    Dex: 23    Spells: 0 memorised, 26 levels left

rFire  + . .     SeeInvis .       - Unarmed
rCold  + + +     Clarity  .     (no armour)
rNeg   + + +     SustAt   +     R - +8 large shield {AC+3} {pretty nice}
rPois  ∞         Gourm    .     Y - +2 helmet
rElec  .         Spirit   .     X - +2 cloak {MR+}
rCorr  .         Warding  .     y - +2 pair of gloves {Str+3}
rMut   .         Stasis   .     n - +2 pair of boots {Stlth+}
MR     +++++                    a - amulet of rage
Stlth  +++.......               r - ring "Qouseuph" {*Confuse rF++ rN+ MR+}
                                t - ring of Ataimunt {SustAt rC++ rN++ Stlth-}


  Code:

 O Level 27 Fighting
 - Level 16.5 Armour
 * Level 26.3 Dodging
 - Level 20.4 Stealth
 - Level 25.0 Shields
 O Level 27 Unarmed Combat

What is so hard here if it has decent defense, crazy offense and even can afford to train Armour to 16.5 without body armour???

[duvessa]

i would guess that the hard part is the part that comes before you get 37 ev and multiple skills at 27

[VeryAngryFelid]

i would guess that the hard part is the part that comes before you get 37 ev and multiple skills at 27

I realize that, that's why I am saying that having unlimited number of tries makes the challenge meaningless. It is called start-scumming as far as I know. You basically die to first fire dragon or fire crab unless you find an item with rF+ and so on.

Edit. There is no skill in the challenge, there are barely any decisions, you train UC/Dodging/Fighting all game and put bonus points into Dex. A bit of stealth can help early on but it is not even needed, you can just start a new game if unlucky.

[VeryAngryFelid]

For instance, the player I took the dump from, had 171 MuMo games to win once.

[Implojin]

Be careful with those sequell queries, I'm pretty sure that the player in question intentionally threw MuMo games for about a year before winning. The given reasoning at the time was that they they wanted to foster competition in the originating thread where the challenge came from, instead of just clearing it.

(Then they went on to drunkenly play more of that combo during a later tournament under stacked challenge conducts well beyond those on the poster (they were trying for scrollless in addition to other things if I remember correctly), making the raw query less accurate.)


As highlighted in another thread, this is a problem with looking at top player DCSS winrates: The game is widely considered to be easy enough that players need to handicap to make it interesting, and the logfiles/milestones are incapable of tracking many of those conducts.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Thank you for explanation, I was surprised to see those 171 games indeed. From my tries I had impression that it should not take that many games to win. (I got to Lair on 3rd attempt as far as I remember).

[bel]

I'd like to draw attention to this once again - this is straight harassment and against forum rules.

You can use the "report post" button on the bottom right of the post to contact a forum mod.

[bel]

Coming back to topic, I think anything can be made "hard" by imposing appropriate conducts and using an appropriate measure of your success (preferably not winrate). It's also more fun that way.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Coming back to topic, I think anything can be made "hard" by imposing appropriate conducts and using an appropriate measure of your success (preferably not winrate). It's also more fun that way.

Of course. I was suggesting to create a hard species for players who don't use conducts but want to make game harder for everyone instead. Specifically I like current solution for player ghosts and wouldn't like to see the commit reverted.