The Tavern

rF+++ and rC+++ gives only a minor advantage over rF++ and rC++ while new players use bad items trying to reach the 3rd pips.

This also helps differentiate from rN, where 3 pips renders you *actually* immune rather than mostly.

To compensate for removal of the third pip I’d recommend that the damage reduction be changed to 50%/75% for +/++, just to make the numbers cleaner.
EDIT: or 33%/66% to bring it in line with other resistances. The nerf is probably fine.

Let's say you have 200 health and eat a 60 damage pure fire elemental attack:

- No resistance lets you take 3 hits before dying. (60 damage per hit)
- rF+ lets you take 6 hits before dying. (30 damage per hit)
- rf++ lets you take 9 hits before dying. (20 damage per hit)
- rf+++ lets you take 16 hits before dying. (12 damage per hit)

You will get somewhat different break points at different health and enemy damage values, but it's not true that the 3rd pip is minor in situations where a large proportion of damage is coming from a particular element.

I thanked the OP because the third pip should be removed, even though their reasoning is actually backwards (going from rF++ to rF+++ has a bigger effect than going from rF+ to rF++).
The second pip should be removed as well. There is no need for 3-pip player resistances. One pip is enough for electricity and poison and corrosion; it's enough for fire and cold and negative energy too.

I don't want to turn it into another long "relative vs absolute" discussion but number of turns to live is almost useless after it is high enough, especially considering that most monsters don't use fire attacks.
Pips - Lost HP:
0 - 60
1 - 30
2 - 20
3 - 12

60 is close for average damage of orb of fire when you have 0 AC, usually the numbers will be much smaller. Also if you are concerned with orbs of fire that much, you can keep 3 pips in fire but make it unreachable unless you quaff potion of resistance.

duvessa wrote:The second pip should be removed as well. There is no need for 3-pip player resistances. One pip is enough for electricity and poison and corrosion; it's enough for fire and cold and negative energy too.

So you'll only have rF+ against Cerebov, and he removes it with his sword, then what?

You're right, but the gimmick on cerebov's sword could be just removed and something else eventually added.

I think it would be better if *all* resistance had 1 pipe - or immunity when the case - and possibly reduced the damage of the same ratio instead of a different behaviour for each different resist.
This last change could mean that some enemy's elemental attack could need some balance...

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I don't want to turn it into another long "relative vs absolute" discussion but number of turns to live is almost useless after it is high enough, especially considering that most monsters don't use fire attacks.
Pips - Lost HP:
0 - 60
1 - 30
2 - 20
3 - 12

60 is close for average damage of orb of fire when you have 0 AC, usually the numbers will be much smaller. Also if you are concerned with orbs of fire that much, you can keep 3 pips in fire but make it unreachable unless you quaff potion of resistance.

The example was simplified, but you get a similar outcome if you are anticipating multiple sources of 10-20 damage from a particular element. More effective HP being "almost useless" implies extremely high defense, more than most builds possess.

How much damage monsters *should* do is a little out of scope, but in terms of damage reduction/survivability the third pip is meaningful in some situations in practice. Especially because sometimes the opportunity cost is worth (fast ring swap away from something you don't need) and sometimes it isn't (dumping otherwise-needed MR or AC +8 in a situation where the elemental damage isn't overwhelming).

You are welcome to reread OP where I call it a minor advantage vs fire attacks and then almost useless vs "all monster" attacks in my previous post because minor thing in a small part of attacks is almost useless thing indeed.

It isn't always minor though. In some cases elemental portion of damage can account for 1/3 to 1/2 of the damage you'd take. Earlier you mentioned "turns to live" being "high enough". In most actual crawl situations you're not consistently so strong where you just face-tank damage trivially because you have "enough turns to live". If the 3rd pip of resistance gives you more turns to live than alternative equipment choices, it's a meaningful benefit and it outcompetes those other choices (with some exceptions).

The problem is that it only gives you that many turns to live if you're only taking fire damage. In more realistic dangerous situations (outside Z:5, at least) you're already blocking so much fire damage at 2 pips that it's dwarfed by the non-fire damage, which means you don't get much extra time to live by reducing the fire damage.

Flipped the other way, if you're only taking fire damage, and you've got 2 pips of fire resist, you probably CAN face tank it trivially (again, outside Zot:5.) You have 2/3 damage reduction on top of your normal defenses (which have to be good enough to handle all the non-fire threats you've been facing.) Fire damage isn't inflated above non-elemental damage by anywhere close to a factor of 3.

Also it can never be 1/2. 40%(13/33) at most (20% damage vs 33% damage)

byrel wrote:The problem is that it only gives you that many turns to live if you're only taking fire damage. In more realistic dangerous situations (outside Z:5, at least) you're already blocking so much fire damage at 2 pips that it's dwarfed by the non-fire damage, which means you don't get much extra time to live by reducing the fire damage.

Flipped the other way, if you're only taking fire damage, and you've got 2 pips of fire resist, you probably CAN face tank it trivially (again, outside Zot:5.) You have 2/3 damage reduction on top of your normal defenses (which have to be good enough to handle all the non-fire threats you've been facing.) Fire damage isn't inflated above non-elemental damage by anywhere close to a factor of 3.

It isn't just Zot 5, you also have situations vs uniques and in extended. If other mitigation is more important players can switch gear. So far the rationale in this thread is similar to a suggestion to cap AC at 40 or 50 or something. You can certainly win the game reliably at 40 AC, but that by itself doesn't mean it shouldn't go higher. Same for resists. If you don't want to trade more useful alternatives for rF+++, you don't have to do it.

TheMeInTeam wrote:You can certainly win the game reliably at 40 AC, but that by itself doesn't mean it shouldn't go higher.

Sure, this isn't in itself a good reason to reduce the number of pips of rF/rC/rN, but there are plenty of other reasons to do it:
- It reduces inventory clutter. You would only carry around one ring of protection from fire/cold/negative instead of two. With DCSS having such a glut of items that you're constantly at the 52 item limit, any reduction in the number of useful items is a significant quality of life benefit.
- It makes the game easier to balance and gives you more freedom when designing monsters. It's hard to make a monster fire or cold attack work well when it can do anything between 20% and 150% damage. We've seen DCSS introduce several new partially-resistible fire/cold/negative attacks just to get around this.
- If you remove the second and third pips from resistances, and change rPois from 2/3rds reduction to 1/2, then all resistances would be one pip that reduces damage by half. That's a huge benefit for making the game easier to approach: you can simply tell the player that resistances halve damage.
- The OP points out that it acts as a newbie trap, where players think they need resistances that they don't. This is present with the single-pip resistances too, however, so I don't put that much stock in it.

In general I support this change, but there would need to be some sort of provision for non-armour users, felids/octopods. For these types of characters the extra damage reduction trough 3 pips is really important since there is no other damage reduction. Eating Fireballs at only rF+ sounds real bad.

Nah, they'll be fine.

Fe/Op can have crazy EV and/or Statue Form.

TheMeInTeam wrote:It isn't just Zot 5, you also have situations vs uniques and in extended. If other mitigation is more important players can switch gear. So far the rationale in this thread is similar to a suggestion to cap AC at 40 or 50 or something. You can certainly win the game reliably at 40 AC, but that by itself doesn't mean it shouldn't go higher. Same for resists. If you don't want to trade more useful alternatives for rF+++, you don't have to do it.

I don't think it is good design when the most dangerous monsters in the game become trivial due to common items. I had many characters who didn't care about damage from orbs of fire, getting only 20% damage is ridiculous.

I disagree with your analogy, a closer one would be something like this: stone giant deals 45 damage max, would an idea to create common items which reduce the damage to 9 damage max be accepted by devs? No matter the AC of course. Because this is what rF+++ does. If anything, even 50% damage is too much as there is no any choice here: if you have an item with rF+, you equip it, even if it means taking off ring of robustness/shaolin/slaying. I am playing other games as well and there I think hard if I need +15% fire resistance or something else even in branches with lots of fire monsters.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Fe/Op can have crazy EV and/or Statue Form.

Crazy EV does nothing against fireball (What the player was complaining you needed the extra pips of rf+ for as a fe/op) And statue form isn't available in every game (though probably the majority)

Siegurt wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Fe/Op can have crazy EV and/or Statue Form.

Crazy EV does nothing against fireball (What the player was complaining you needed the extra pips of rf+ for as a fe/op) And statue form isn't available in every game (though probably the majority)

Great, then fireball will be a bit reworked. Currently Felids have problem with it too as they hardly can get rF+++, especially if they sacrifice hand.

I've long felt rF/rC could use a rework, mainly because I think 50% resistance is just too large. Having a single resist becomes so important that games where you can't find it become much more punishing. Having it be something like 25/50/75% or just 25/50% in a 2 pip version would work better, and then you lower elemental damage by some degree (probably around 15% less damage). You then are somewhat safer with no resistance, but also not trivializing elemental damage if you happened to find 2 sources of resistance.

That said if I can't get my dream version, a single pip version at 50% resistance and removing cerebov's -rF effect would be fine too.

I'd suggest reducing incoming damage by 29%/50%/65%. That way each pip reduces damage by 29% (sqrt(50%)) of the current, regardless of how many pips you have.

You could even let people get an indefinite number of pips; a dedicated zigger might get 7 pips, for a total reduction of 92% (similar to 3 pips now.)

Or you could limit it to 2 pips, so that that element is always somewhat of a threat regardless of the strategic investment in preventing it.

I'd just say that 29% (sqrt(50%)) is a very easy and clear formula to tell to new players

also, sqrt(50%) is 71%

This is going into wall'o'text territory, but I want to try and understand this from a broad angle.
@VeryAngryFelid started this thread in terms of third pips being a problem with new players and bad items. This makes little sense to me, as players new to DCSS and roguelikes in general will splat for dozens of varied reasons which boil down to ignorance, arrogance, or a blend of the two. Resistances and immunities are no different than hunting for a particular weapon brand to make so-and-so branches easier or at least more convenient to play. Items and their properties also make a huge difference in terms of particular builds. A caster can shift forms or cast Ring for rF++, for example. By the time rX++ or rX+++ matters, even an experienced player may well have to compromise because the RNG gave no rings/spellbooks/armour that allows for anything resembling safety or convenience.
This being said, I would support a shift into resistances being capped at rX+, if there were also esoteric resistances available, and if some builds/randarts/fixedarts gave outright immX. An idea of randart angel/demon crafted weapons or even armour with rDamn/rHoly could be interesting, while adding the possibility for styled builds and playstyles, new(ish) vaults and so on (an example idea, not a full suggestion). Just like the present game, this resistance cap / immunity availability would depend on the RNG, but the premise would still fit what I consider the rewarding aspect of DCSS: having to compensate for what you don't get by cleverly using what you do have, and getting favourable results.
The implementation of rX+ giving 50%, and immX giving 100% would also mark an easy difference. The current resistances are, as @Vanguardan noted, just all over the place. rPois is a 90% proofing against getting poisoned, but rCorr is at 50% for both damage and effect mitigation. rN+++ gives full protection against drains, but can't block off torment or flay (which seems to be a torment derivation effect?). It would work for simplicity, and be easier to understand.
@duvessa also made a point about inventory management, which I partially agree with. Having to carry swap items/sets of items does annoy me, but it still accounts for part of the game strategy. It doesn't feel different in concept to learning niche case spells, or having a particular wand at the ready.
Obviously, any direct changes are still up to the resident devs and forkers anyway. I just want to make sure that they can make sense of what is beneficial to players, gameplay, and within the DCSS guidelines to begin with. Other than that, it is an interesting thread.
If there is anything more, please let me know what I've missed.

You missed what I started the thread with i.e. "rF+++ and rC+++ gives only a minor advantage over rF++ and rC++". I mentioned new players because devs are more likely to fix things if it helps new players to avoid unnecessary confusion (or at least I believe so).

Misunderstood you there, sorry.
I don't think devs should feel pressured by the new player suggestions/problems any more than yours, though. If anything, veteran crawlers are less likely to mistake well-tested mechanics for problems in the first place.

What would you suggest to solve/help this resistance issue? There are good ideas from at least four responses above who agree with your initial post.

It does not matter what I think about those ideas. I am sad that the thread has not inspired any devs to make changes, any changes would be better than current situation IMHO.

Another way to reduce inventory clutter: don't make resistances stack.
So the only way to get rX++ would be finding a rX++ item, at which point you can ditch the rX+ version.

Maybe simplofy resistances so they all(except MR) work the same, so something like
* every pip of rX reduces damage from X by 30%, standard "ring of protection from Xoo" grants rX++ (49%)
* if you have several rX items, you get the rX of the best item
* only rX∞ (or immX/Ximm) grants complete invulnerability to X
* any rP protects from effects like Mephistic Cloud confusion, but not from being poisoned. rP reduces the damage from being poisoned though.
* split rNeg and rTor
* rNeg applies to draining damage+amount
* rTor only ever spawns as a single pip (gargoyle/statue form gives rTor++)
* rTor applies to Agony

@VeryAngryFelid What you think does matter. Aren't devs more likely to react to clearly formulated suggestions and ideas? If multiple players come together in terms of opinion, the more the better. If you have at least a rough sketch for changes, bounce it off any tavern patron who cares to look here. Might as well try, see if it gets the attention you think it should. Even if players and/or devs don't react immediately, or in a week, or a trimester, they can still see it.
If the resistances change drastically, so does every aspect of play that takes them into account. If the existing elemental attacks have to get a 20% slash down across the board to support a solid version, so be it. It is still an idea to consider. Player agency is still in effect, exactly like the reworks to Tomb, right? More than one player suggested that stairs be replaced with one-ways, initially. I hated that idea, now it makes perfect sense to me.

I wouldn't be posting in this thread if there was no potential improvement to be had.

@rigrig Those are interesting. There would still be plenty of swap-play involved, but it would be simpler.
In terms of stackable resistance strength, maybe allow for a general principle of what you said about rTor to be applied. Equipment could protect an aspiring crawler to some degree, spells and other external effects would bring it up to full. It's workable.

Crawl development is not affected by voting or something like that. If devs read this thread (I hope they did) and didn't like the ideas, nothing is going to change their mind especially something as tiny as my like or dislike towards the ideas.

You are right, development doesn't need popular opinion. A like or dislike does not make a major difference. I still think directly providing opinions is necessary.
@byrel, @nago, @duvessa, and you all gave direct numbers and percentages. I tried my best to boil some of that down to a -100% / -50%/ 0% / 50% / 100% concept with some of my own thoughts mixed in. Examples were also provided in terms of Cerebov giving -rF (which I'll add to with Virulence giving -rPois) and disciples of the Awakened choosing to lose a limb. Also opinions, backed by facts and figures. Come to think of it, Qazlal might get more love because of adaptation +rX.
A fully formed plan with multiple use cases, charts and histograms is still dependent on opinion. I agree with your idea, the concept fits. I also want to contribute with numerical values and maybe expand on it further. Honestly, unless this thread is closed off as utterly useless to game design, I'll welcome more discussion.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:rF+++ and rC+++ gives only a minor advantage over rF++ and rC++ while new players use bad items trying to reach the 3rd pips.

THAT'S your solution?

What am I reading here? This must be the stupidest game design suggestion I've ever read on a video game forum.

"Players don't know what a particular game mechanic does, so let's remove the game mechanic". Is this for real?

Have you ever thought of doing a better job at presenting information better? Instead of removing it, don't you think it's a better idea to make it more clear as to how much resistance you actually get from a pip?
As far as I'm concerned, we can have 13 pips. Just give me more concrete information about them.

Fortunately devs are sane and will never give us 13 pips even if their meaning is displayed as convenient as in tooltip. The difference is minor/confusing/inconsistent and yes, the best solution would be to remove extra pip like it happened with rPois and rElec.

Scuka wrote:"Players don't know what a particular game mechanic does, so let's remove the game mechanic". Is this for real?

Clarity is one of the most important aspects of game design, and often that means paring things down from where you started to communicate more efficiently.

Shard1697 wrote:
Scuka wrote:"Players don't know what a particular game mechanic does, so let's remove the game mechanic". Is this for real?

Clarity is one of the most important aspects of game design, and often that means paring things down from where you started to communicate more efficiently.

And how does going from 3 pips to 1 pip make things more clear?

Let's say you remove those 3 pips and leave only 1. What does this 1 pip of fire resistance mean? 10% less damage? 50% less? 10 damage taken less? 10% chance to block all fire damage outright? How did you improve anything by removing 2 pips? You still haven't given any meaningful info to the player.
The game doesn't provide answer to these questions neither with 3 pip system nor with 1 pip system.
1 pip, 3 pips, 13 pips, it's all the same. It's still equally badly presented information and in all 3 cases you're still forced to look up wiki articles or scrounge the forums if you want to make an educated decision about which equipment to wear, which is something a well designed game with a well designed UI should never do.

Scuka here makes a fair point. The truth is there's only one number of possible pips that is perfectly clear. We just need the courage to try it.

tealizard wrote:The truth is there's only one number of possible pips that is perfectly clear. We just need the courage to try it.

Ironic tavernposting aside, it's not immediately clear to me that removing resistances would be a good thing for mainline Crawl.

In terms of base item clutter -- yeah, you'd get rid of a few ring types, which is always nice, but past that it's just affixes.
You'd also eliminate incentives for gear swapping, which has knockon of further reducing inventory clutter.

As mentioned, you'd reduce player information load and clear a whole bunch of space in the character window.

What do you lose for this?

Well, you lose the effect of some areas being more dangerous if a resistance hasn't generated, thereby reducing the dynamic strategic decision space for players, thereby making all games play more similarly as path optimality simplifies.

Anything else that I'm forgetting?**

I'd be curious to hear ideas to get rid of resistances while preserving the dynamic branch/portal decision space.

(Frankly, I think that dynamic path optimality in mainline Crawl needs to be enhanced, not reduced or eliminated. I've advocated in the past for moving Crawl to a linear branching dungeon layout for several reasons, this among them.)

**edit: There's an obvious extremist argument above in favor of removing *all* passive items, converting anything you decide is worth keeping into a charge-based system; retaining only charge-based items (and probably goldifying as many of those as you can), and a game based off of Crawl and reduced to that extent would probably even be fun to play, but it's pretty far from Stone Soup.

I think it would be fair to say that poison resistance is the only resistance that would ever significantly alter the player's preferred path through the branches of a dcss game. Fire and cold resistance could have an impact on entering/completing volcanos or ice caves for some characters.

Looking at the various attacks that resistances affect, a lot of them are pretty much the same damn things and differ primarily in which kind of resistance they check. I conclude that the reason resistances exist is to maintain the pretense that these very similar attacks are really different. Without those resistances, we'd need to put on our thinking caps and carefully consider what the real difference between fire and cold is in this game. We would have to conclude that if there is going to be real difference, we will have to make it. That could be a productive exercise.

I too favor linear dungeon structure (i.e. no backtracking, branch decisions are irreversible) and like the idea of route as a major strategic decision. I would say that the way to make up for any deficit created by elimination of resistances (which would be small imo) would be to make branch selection more sensitive to skill and equipment commitments instead and greater randomization of available branches/route choices. Of course, all of this would add up to a pretty substantial project.

tealizard wrote:I think it would be fair to say that poison resistance is the only resistance that would ever significantly alter the player's preferred path through the branches of a dcss game.

and it only does that because new players don't realize how little rPois actually does in spider/snake

Sure. Even in a context where the player is much weaker and poison is more dangerous, as in hellcrawl (which is much closer to the linear dungeon structure implojin alludes to), you can get by without poison resistance in these branches. In hellcrawl you never get a choice of which lair branch to do because there's only one. Your choice is more about skipping branches to produce a more challenging route. Another reasonable take would be to offer mutually exclusive alternatives. In that situation, I could definitely see taking shoals over spider for some characters without rPois.

My take on this thread is that the uniform one pip/50% proposal has the most merit of anything mentioned, but at some point to make real progress (and of course, the prevailing attitude is that progress as I understand it is bad) there has to be a broader discussion of what these elemental flavored attacks are supposed to be doing, whether it's good/works, what could be better, and how resistances do or do not play a role in any of this.

Please don't dumb down resistances. There are many other important things to adjust.

One pip/50% would smarten up resistances, in my opinion.

It would make some builds relatively less viable compared to others, however. The consequences in terms of gear decisions, balance in hells, and character builds vs damage aren't insurmountable but it wouldn't be a trivial thing to change in the game.

Can you give an example of a character build that would become unviable without multiple pips of resistances?

duvessa wrote:Can you give an example of a character build that would become unviable without multiple pips of resistances?

Just because you might be able to do something, doesn't always mean you should.

I'm afraid this will make the game more difficult. Not everyone plays games like you play chess. Not everyone cares about the winning rate and the winning streak. Even now, DCSS is difficult. Don't make it any more difficult.
Always be mindful of newbies.

I honestly think that a one pip=50% reduction system would be easier for new players because for new players clarity is way more important. Crawl is not hard for new players because they do not play it like chess, optimizing every single command. It is hard for them because they have no idea what matters and what does not, they have no idea how the game actually works.

sanka wrote:I honestly think that a one pip=50% reduction system would be easier for new players because for new players clarity is way more important. Crawl is not hard for new players because they do not play it like chess, optimizing every single command. It is hard for them because they have no idea what matters and what does not, they have no idea how the game actually works.

Well, Do you think Newbies lose between 100 and 500 games because they don't understand this system? Currently, players understand the concept that it is advantageous to gain resistance even if they do not know the exact number. When they win their first victory, do they win because they are fully skilled in tactics? Ladies and gentlemen, did you already have the ability to score Winning streak on your first victory? Of course you are better than you were at first. But I think many of the resistance you got lucky helped. You may not be aware of it, but your argument is very harsh on the Newbie.

sdynet

Did you miss OP? It will be easier for new players to win if they stop paying so much attention to second and especially third pip.

The Tavern

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