Clock Brainstorming Thread


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 24th August 2020, 16:50

Re: Clock Brainstorming Thread

rigrig wrote:
ZipZipskins wrote:"because something is tedious" is still not a sufficient deterrent for players to abuse it if it is "optimal"
It's not just about people abusing tedious behavior. It's also about feeling bad about your last death because it could have been prevented by engaging in tedious behavior.

this idea that score is a punishment in a roguelike is pretty laughable to me
Definitely, especially if it's just some large number.

"Number of runes obtained" feels more meaningful to me. (and they still count for the large number score anyway)

Another idea: maybe put extended branches behind a timeout?
- Right away when you enter the dungeon: timer starts after which vestibule+pandemonium portals close (very relaxed, but enough to prevent "infinite" abyss farming before attempting hell/pan runes)
- When you enter the vestibule: timer starts after which all hell branches close
- When you first enter Pandemonium: timer starts after which the next runed realm will only have an exit(or Abyss) portal, and all entrance portals in the dungeon close. (got a whole streak of empty realms? Tough luck, that's the RNG for you.)

The idea being all players could make it to hell/pandemonium and give one of them them a try, but you really need to rush if you want a chance at all 15 runes.

An alternate implementation: Runes start to disintegrate when picked up, and given enough time will disappear altogether.
Spoiler: show
This high quality signature has been hidden for your protection. To unlock it's secret, send 3 easy payments of $9.99 to me, by way of your nearest theta band or ley line. Complete your transmission by midnight tonight for a special free gift!

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 900

Joined: Sunday, 30th December 2012, 05:26

Post Monday, 24th August 2020, 17:12

Re: Clock Brainstorming Thread

rigrig wrote:It's not just about people abusing tedious behavior. It's also about feeling bad about your last death because it could have been prevented by engaging in tedious behavior.


definitely, it just feels like i've gone around and around on this whole "tedium is its own deterrent" thing so many times. but there are certainly even more criticisms of the concept. for instance, both "meaningful decisions" and "no scumming" are major goals in crawl's own stated design philosophy, and infinite time with no pressure removes a lot of meaning from decisions and allows scummy movement and engagement based behaviours. another is trying to square the circle of no clock or any time pressure and the very existence of the abyss and pandemonium (which, while being an entirely different can of worms on its own, still exposes issues with this particular argument) as they relate to "no scumming". there is also a nearly endless body of evidence that runs counter to this concept that somehow tedious choices are punishment enough from other games that are more tedious than crawl but whose players continue to engage in the scummy, tedious behaviour anyway because it improves, no matter how incrementally, their chances of winning otherwise difficult or punishing or arbitrary games.

same as it ever was i guess

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 24th August 2020, 17:42

Re: Clock Brainstorming Thread

ZipZipskins wrote:definitely, it just feels like i've gone around and around on this whole "tedium is its own deterrent" thing so many times. but there are certainly even more criticisms of the concept. for instance, both "meaningful decisions" and "no scumming" are major goals in crawl's own stated design philosophy, and infinite time with no pressure removes a lot of meaning from decisions and allows scummy movement and engagement based behaviours. another is trying to square the circle of no clock or any time pressure and the very existence of the abyss and pandemonium (which, while being an entirely different can of worms on its own, still exposes issues with this particular argument) as they relate to "no scumming". there is also a nearly endless body of evidence that runs counter to this concept that somehow tedious choices are punishment enough from other games that are more tedious than crawl but whose players continue to engage in the scummy, tedious behaviour anyway because it improves, no matter how incrementally, their chances of winning otherwise difficult or punishing or arbitrary games.

same as it ever was i guess

To be clear it's not "all possible tedious behavior" that is negative its "tedious behavior which is also optimal from a winning percentage or score optimization perspective"

Tedious behavior *that also has no benefit* should be allowed, and *is it's own deterrent* which is fine and not the problem, it's when "non-optimal tedious behavior" is collapsed with *optimal* but tedious behavior that the conversation breaks down. If people want to empty levels and then accumulate enough dig charges to create levels with (to them) funny things or no walls at all, then by all means, go right ahead, that's not the type of tedium that we need to combat.

And also there's a *very* large gradient of what's considered "scummy" movement based engagement-based behaviors, from "step backwards around a corner when something comes into view is scummy" to "always lead things back to staircases to fight them one on one on the previous level is scummy" both having proponents and detractors.

FWIW *any* interaction could be labeled as tedious, depending on your individual threshold, so the battle for "no optimal tedium" can never possibly be over without removing all interaction from the game (at which point it ceases to be a game any more), the best you can do is look for the most egregious (and/or obvious) cases and decide if there's a way to fix those, and iterate on that until you're happy with it. Removing all behavior which could improve your chances of winning completely eliminates "meaningful decisions" but allowing any behavior at all means infinite choices, which means infinite possible tedium, finding the best middle ground for your audience is what good game developers do.
Spoiler: show
This high quality signature has been hidden for your protection. To unlock it's secret, send 3 easy payments of $9.99 to me, by way of your nearest theta band or ley line. Complete your transmission by midnight tonight for a special free gift!

For this message the author Siegurt has received thanks:
Majang

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 900

Joined: Sunday, 30th December 2012, 05:26

Post Monday, 24th August 2020, 17:59

Re: Clock Brainstorming Thread

Siegurt wrote:To be clear it's not "all possible tedious behavior" that is negative its "tedious behavior which is also optimal from a winning percentage or score optimization perspective"


i think it was pretty clear that i was talking about tedium in this context? i apologize if it wasn't

And also there's a *very* large gradient of what's considered "scummy" movement based engagement-based behaviors, from "step backwards around a corner when something comes into view is scummy" to "always lead things back to staircases to fight them one on one on the previous level is scummy" both having proponents and detractors.


definitely. this is always going to be a push and pull thing with individual preference playing a tremendous role, not denying that at all.

FWIW *any* interaction could be labeled as tedious, depending on your individual threshold, so the battle for "no optimal tedium" can never possibly be over without removing all interaction from the game (at which point it ceases to be a game any more), the best you can do is look for the most egregious (and/or obvious) cases and decide if there's a way to fix those, and iterate on that until you're happy with it. Removing all behavior which could improve your chances of winning completely eliminates "meaningful decisions" but allowing any behavior at all means infinite choices, which means infinite possible tedium, finding the best middle ground for your audience is what good game developers do.


it starts to be difficult to talk about the general direction of a game's design when you start from the premise that individual experience is so disparate that any kind of interaction is tedious. for instance, there is a subset of the population (also known outside of these hallowed halls as "the vast majority") that finds traditional roguelikes tedious inherently. those people's opinions shouldn't count as to what makes crawl tedious- trying to cater to them is a pointless exercise. so then we jump back to "all of the design is subjective and subject to the whims of the devteam" which, while true, also is somewhat obstructive when it comes to discussion of that design itself.

all of that aside, i also thought that "entirely removing any game clock or time pressure leads to tedious decision making that violates the 'best middle ground for the audience'" was pretty clearly my general viewpoint. again, apologies if that was unclear.

For this message the author ZipZipskins has received thanks:
Shard1697

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Monday, 24th August 2020, 19:43

Re: Clock Brainstorming Thread

ZipZipskins wrote:all of that aside, i also thought that "entirely removing any game clock or time pressure leads to tedious decision making that violates the 'best middle ground for the audience'" was pretty clearly my general viewpoint. again, apologies if that was unclear.


And how do you feel about the current implementation (which has a loose clock, with a hard deadline)?

Also I'd still like a clear list of *what* are the tedious decisions which one is prone to make in the absence of a clock, as my supposition is that any remaining things which are tedious, but optimal, in the absence of a clock, would still be tedious, but optimal *with* a clock, and you just wouldn't be able to do *as much* of it with one (Clocks being a fairly poor solution to the actual problem). If we can clearly identify behaviors that are problematic, it's worth investigating whether the *behaviors* can be removed (or made not-optimal) regardless of the presence of a clock.

What I *know* of is "too much luring" which is unfortunately poorly defined and broadly disagreed-upon, and I personally don't think can really be eliminated without drastically limiting game-play to the point of removing all tactical decision making. (And if the intention is to not to limit "too much luring" with a clock, what *is* the intention?)
Spoiler: show
This high quality signature has been hidden for your protection. To unlock it's secret, send 3 easy payments of $9.99 to me, by way of your nearest theta band or ley line. Complete your transmission by midnight tonight for a special free gift!
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 857

Joined: Monday, 31st January 2011, 23:19

Post Friday, 1st January 2021, 11:11

Re: Clock Brainstorming Thread

I consider myself an expert on degenerate gameplay, having gotten many, many characters to all 27s using bots. Food has never, ever been a limiting factor.

You guys do realize that you can just bot pan, right? So any type of clock at all would be pointless. Honestly the biggest thing preventing degeneracy right now is the mutation system.

Anyway, a clock isn't needed. By the time you can do degenerate stuff you've already basically won. It's not like you're grinding in the temple or something, those days are long gone. Piety is good enough: any gains from wasting a million turns is offset by not having god abilities.

As a side note, the game is much more fun without food casting costs. I hope that's never coming back.
Previous

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 27 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.