Weapon rarity: a hidden spoiler


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Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Sunday, 21st October 2018, 20:52

Weapon rarity: a hidden spoiler

tl;dr: Some of the weapons that have high base damage for their type and handedness are generated in much large numbers than others. Is this a hidden spoiler of the sort that the design philosophy's desire for "Clarity" discourages? It can't be learned in-game other than by experience; on the other hand maybe it's not all that important because (eg) a battleaxe is not a terrible weapon to have.

I was looking at the objstats output for 0.23-a0 (although I think the numbers are similar in any recent version); specifically at the numbers per game of various desirable weapons. For each row here the numbers are the average found in a 3-runer with Shoals and Spider; with Swamp and Snake; and extended excluding Abyss, Pan, Zig.
quick blade: 1.87 1.77 1.83
demon blade: 2.12 2.13 7.07
double sword: 0.69 0.72 0.86
triple sword: 0.63 0.64 0.75
demon whip: 3.11 3.17 21.99
eveningstar: 1.02 1.01 1.14
great mace: 33.8 33.73 47.95
lajatang: 3.65 3.5 4.73
demon trident: 4.01 2.55 14.28
bardiche: 5.48 5.64 6
executioner's axe: 0.83 0.79 0.92
triple crossbow: 0.47 0.4 0.53
fustibalus: 3.04 2.12 2.63

Of course this doesn't paint the whole picture because when in the game you get the weapon matters, and because the different distribution of brands in makeitem.cc can make the average value of a find vary; but on the face of it it's bad news for two-handed Long Blade, Crossbows, and Axes users. My concern is not whether these probabilities are "right", but whether it's a hidden spoiler; the player is not told at weapon selection or anywhere else that if they go Long Blades they'll probably have to settle for a greatsword, but if they go M&F they'll have a huge selection of great maces with a decent chance of just picking up the brand they want.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.

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Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

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

Post Sunday, 21st October 2018, 23:19

Re: Weapon rarity: a hidden spoiler

For completeness, here's my old floor weapon brand table which is probably still up to date:
  Code:
                    Whip   Morningstar   Eveningstar   Other maces    Long blades   Demon weapons   Dagger   Other short*   Axe   Spear   Other pole   Quarterstaff   Lajatang   Launcher*
No brand             34%           15%            8%       26.67%             23%             27%      20%            33%   31%     46%          36%            50%        34%         58%
Antimagic             1%                          2%        0.95%              1%              3%       1%             1%    2%      2%           2%             2%         4%
Distortion            2%            2%            2%        0.95%              1%                       1%             1%    2%      2%           2%             2%         3%
Draining              7%           10%           19%        9.52%              5%             10%       9%             9%    3%                                  8%           
Electrocution        16%                                                      10%             16%       6%             6%   11%                                            12%
Flaming               6%            4%            6%                           5%              7%       4%             4%   10%      7%           7%                                   16%
Freezing              6%            4%            6%                           5%              7%       4%             4%   10%      7%           7%                                   16%
Holy wrath            3%           15%           15%       14.29%             23%                       5%             5%    1%                   1%             2%           
Pain                  4%            2%            2%        0.95%              1%              4%       2%                   1%      2%           2%             2%         7%
Protection                         30%           30%       28.57%              8%                       6%             6%                        12%            18%         9%
Speed                                                                                                                 10%                                        8%        12%
Vampiric              5%            2%            2%                           4%              7%       4%             4%    5%      5%           5%                       12%
Venom                16%            5%            6%        4.76%              2%             19%      28%            17%    8%     17%          17%                        7%
Vorpal                              9%            6%       13.33%             15%                      20%                  16%     12%           9%             8%                    10%

*Naturally generated quick blades and blowguns never have brands.
As you can see, it's unfortunately not even consistent within weapon classes. Certain monsters and vaults mess up the distribution further. You could have just one set of brand probabilities for each weapon class, and they'd remain just as distinct from each other.

It would be nice to just have 2 or 3 levels of weapon rarity instead of the like 50 that there currently are. If you ignore monsters and vaults, there are still around 15 different rarities for weapons. I think you could safely have 3 categories:
common: club, whip, mace, flail, dagger, short sword, falchion, long sword, hand axe, war axe, spear, trident, hunting sling, hand crossbow, shortbow
uncommon: morningstar, dire flail, great mace, giant (spiked) club, rapier, scimitar, great sword, broad axe, battleaxe, halberd, glaive, quarterstaff, blowgun, fustibalus, longbow, arbalest
rare: demon whip, eveningstar, quick blade, demon blade, double sword, triple sword, executioner's axe, demon trident, bardiche, lajatang, triple crossbow

These categories would be relatively reasonable to figure out from experience (and the natures of the items themselves), though you still wouldn't know anything close to the exact chances without spoilers.

For brands, in addition to using the same brand chances for all weapons within a class, might I suggest making them more exclusive? Let everything generate with vorpal, distortion, pain, and vampiric, but make the rest of the brands more restricted, so only some of the weapon classes can get each brand. Like this for example:
  Code:
                    Axes   SBL   LBL   Maces   Polearms   Staves
Antimagic             X                  X                   X
Draining                    X            X
Electrocution               X     X                          X
Flaming               X           X                X
Freezing              X           X                X
Holy wrath                        X      X         X
Protection                               X         X         X
Speed                       X                                X
Venom                 X     X
Of course, both of these changes would have significant balance implications, but hey, Crawl makes changes with significant balance implications all the time.

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Airwolf

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 139

Joined: Saturday, 10th January 2015, 22:27

Post Monday, 22nd October 2018, 16:54

Re: Weapon rarity: a hidden spoiler

It seems like a lot of this could be smoothed out by tweaking the monster gear probabilities.

For example, great maces are pretty common, because they're used by (at least) orc-type monsters (e.g. warriors, knights, warlords), ogre-type monsters (fairly high probability), and vault-guard-type monsters. And those are just the ones that I can think of off the top of my head - they might also be present on skeletal warriors, draconians, demonspawn, etc. Compare that to executioner's axes, or triple swords, which are commonly wielded by...ummm...nothing, as far as I can remember.

Even for the more middle-of-the-road examples, like quick blades - mostly you either find spriggans (defenders, berserkers, etc.) wielding them, or, more rarely, find them in some vault somewhere.

And within a category...well, all you have to do is look at double swords vs demon blades, or eveningstars vs demon whips. Hell knights, for example, are pretty much guaranteed to show up in a 3-rune game, and a pack of them will likely drop a demon weapon. Meanwhile, eveningstars and double swords are rarely found on a few uniques, and can sometimes be found in vaults/portals, but aren't reliably carried by any monster type.

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duvessa

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1508

Joined: Monday, 21st November 2011, 07:40

Post Monday, 22nd October 2018, 17:20

Re: Weapon rarity: a hidden spoiler

Maybe it would be worth adding rarish/endgame monsters that could spawn with each of the rare weapon types that don't have them?

Perhaps Shadow Giants that are basically wights-but-bigger. Tough as a stone giant, wield bardiches, exe axes and triple swords, drain on hit, mostly show up in Tartarus, Crypt, and occasionally in depths/vaults? Probably need haste to be relevant.

Sniper demon (VERY creative name), with triple crossbow or fustibalus, and a customized movement ability like the red devil, but ranged. Fire and blink to edge of LOS. Fire and blink to edge of LOS. Maybe a long attack time, so they can be caught up to (ala juggernaut, but probably feeling quite different as it's a retreater instead of a charger.) Sounds REALLY annoying to deal with, so better make them actually hurt, rather than be crimson imp Mk 3. Place them in hells, depths rarely, and various evil vaults. Maybe low MR for the location, so people have tools to deal with them, guaranteed. If they're willing to spend them.

Hell Champion: leads bands of hell knights, orc warlord-ish abilities. Triple-sword, Great Mace, Bardiche, generally branded. Maybe give him the guardian serpent 'surround enemy' spell? Getting surrounded by mighted hell knights is way more likely to be a threat than just hell knights.
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Slime Squisher

Posts: 419

Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25

Post Monday, 22nd October 2018, 17:38

Re: Weapon rarity: a hidden spoiler

Aean wrote:It seems like a lot of this could be smoothed out by tweaking the monster gear probabilities.


A lot of it could also be smoothed out (if that's the desired remedy) by giving no weapon rarity 0. The weapons on this list that turn up less than once per game all have rarity 0, whereas the lajatang, fustibalus, great mace, and bardiche have non-zero rarity.

Of course, I appreciate part of the design is meant to interact with brand distribution, etc, so perhaps the desire isn't to smooth it out... but if not, it'll remain a hidden spoiler.

(How are weapons with rarity 0 generated at all? makeitem.cc first checks if it will generate a weapon from a hardcoded list: lajatang, fustibalus, triple
crossbow, demon whip, demon blade, demon trident, double sword, eveningstar, executioner's axe, quick blade, triple sword. Only then does it do something based on rarity.)

ETA: Also, I could be wrong, but I think one of the more misleading numbers in the above is that for quick blades. I dunno what proportion come in pairs on deep elf blademasters, but I think it's enough that the chance of getting at least one isn't as high as one might think from 1.8 per game.
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