The problem with mummys is that they can wait forever *without going anywhere* making anywhere that has a staircase 100% safe, if there's a problem of any sort, just wait 100000 turns at it will walk away, encounter another problem, go upstairs and wait another 100000 turns, do it a few times if something sticks around when you don't want it to. What's more they can do this *at the game start* before they have access to infinite items, or even any number of consumables that they could use to escape trouble if they got into it. Doing so in the part of the game before you can scum for infinite items means the challenge is completely gone from what's usually one of the most challenging part of the game, provided you're willing to trade challenge for infinite patience.
Quoted is disjointed from the reality of crawl on multiple counts:
- There is stuff you can't get away from and will follow you upstairs. If you wait 10000 turns or even 100 turns, you die.
- The moment you follow a god, waiting huge periods of time will tank your piety. Wait long enough and it will get you wrath.
- Not following a god as a mummy (or in general as non-Dg) is a really bad idea if you're actually trying to win the game, so that alternative is not attractive.
- No amount of this optional waiting can move mummies into even the top half of potential species choices in DCSS, if you're just trying to win.
- Going down a staircase and then immediately going back up the staircase can, and sometimes will, kill you. Even early game, and more so as the game goes on.
The problem with waitscumming is not merely that it's "safe." The real problem is that it allows the player to decline to interact with the dungeon as (presumably) intended. This is true with or without stairs and it's not unique to waitscumming.
"Intent" seems to be an awfully slippery thing when it comes to pinning coherent standards down in advance of implementing anything with "intent". For example, everything about DCSS's design screams "you should lure monsters whenever possible". Noise won't attract more problems, it's safer and more consistent, and prevents unexpected extras that threaten life/consumables. It's a natural conclusion of playing the game by the rules, at all. It's also allegedly a problem...but then so were things that let the player get by more safely w/o doing it, for other reasons.
Post Today, 17:31
Declining to interact with the dungeon as intended takes many forms, with simply not exploring and trying to bring monsters to you through Brownian motion being an extreme form of it. Patrolling a small part of the dungeon and encountering a trickle of monsters, again via Brownian motion, is a similar story. Luring monsters to the same or similar terrain for every fight subverts dungeon generation in a different way to similar effect.
No.
The logical extreme of quoted position is that players should always tab towards monsters like brainlets holding an obsidian axe in their minds.
On the other hand, you have mechanics like "lots of stuff attacking you at the same time will do more damage" and "noise attracts enemies to your position". Deliberately exposing yourself to danger by ignoring useful mechanics like positioning yourself and limiting number of things beating on you is not consistent with reasonable play in crawl based on its stated rules. You don't need "Brownian motion", you just hold shift and explore with the stair escape as a central location of safety, pitch stones at stuff to pull them to you, and kill them in explored areas. If this wasn't "intended" the sheer design/implementation of nearly everything in crawl is wrong, including the basic option of player movement as it is right now.
And that will still hold true if you delete the upstair, because of how noise and monster wandering works. It's why you clear a safe area and work out from there when shafted and not already near stairs...still luring monsters back even w/o being able to go up.
I can only say what the intention of dungeon generation should be: To create varied tactical play. Anything that allows the player to neutralize the impact of random terrain generation and monster placement on tactical play subverts dungeon generation.
Recognizing and neutralizing adverse impacts of where you are fighting IS part of "tactical play". A crucial part of the reason less than 1% of games result in wins is that players fail to adequately consider their surroundings in the dungeon, including terrain.
Food does almost nothing to alter this consideration, BTW.
but originally this game was completely unplayable and to some degree remains so, hence the need to reevaluate these things.
That's a rather strong claim, as you are advocating for what amounts to an entirely different game. Constraining one of the player's most important survival tools, that rookies/intermediate players *routinely fail*, in a game where the winrate is sub-1% and the median player has never won, strikes me as an odd design choice in its own right. I question how that would make it "more playable" to most people who actually play crawl.