Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks


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Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Wednesday, 23rd March 2022, 16:52

Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

A common ally positioning maneuver is to swap from (enemy) (player) (ally) to (enemy) (ally) (player). This is much more dangerous with the new opportunity attacks mechanic, as the enemy may get a free attack against the player who swaps positions with their ally. Combined with the fact that summoned allies appear at random locations near the player, and often farther away from the enemies than the player, this means that summoners should begin combat as far away from enemies as possible to minimize the damage they take. However, prior to the introduction of the opportunity attacks, this was less important, as the player could often correct for bad positioning at the cost of a turn. Now that they also take damage for doing so, there's considerably more incentive to use noise to lure enemies into long corridors or wide open areas so there's more time to maneuver allies in between the player and the enemies before the enemies can close to melee range... especially in areas with fast enemies. This is especially true when the player must round an unexplored corner which may hide an enemy, but shouting before rounding every unexplored corner is very tedious, feels grindy, and is incompatible with some forms of fast travel.

My understanding is that opportunity attacks are meant to punish kiting enemies while recovering health, in which case punishing players for adjusting their positioning relative to their allies seems to miss the mark. Also, opportunity attacks aren't applied to cases where the player moves faster than the enemies, suggesting that they are not meant to punish the player for moving away from enemies they should be able to escape from, in which case applying them to players who can escape from enemies by using allies to interfere with enemy movement should also not apply opportunity attacks in order to be consistent.

Maybe opportunity attacks should only apply when monsters move next to the player before the player's next turn?

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1131

Joined: Tuesday, 4th January 2011, 15:03

Post Monday, 28th March 2022, 21:06

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

I miss the time when these kind of gameplay changes (or much less) provoked a long long war. Tavern is dead, it would be better to officially archive it.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

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

Post Sunday, 3rd April 2022, 02:43

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

Swapping with allies was too powerful (and still is), it's good that it was nerfed.

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Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Thursday, 7th April 2022, 00:35

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

I'm not convinced of that, but I'm also not really looking at this from a balance perspective. I would like to point out that even if ally swapping should be nerfed, opportunity attacks aren't necessarily the best way to do it.

Here's some food for thought: both opportunity attacks and ally swapping are, in a sense, free actions that cost no time. It seems more intuitive to me that when you swap with an ally, it should delay that ally's next turn as if it had chosen to move a space, and similarly, if a monster takes an opportunity attack, it should delay that monster's next action as if it had chosen to attack normally.

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petercordia

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

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

Post Thursday, 7th April 2022, 18:23

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

Nekoatl wrote:if a monster takes an opportunity attack, it should delay that monster's next action as if it had chosen to attack normally.
This would completely defeat the purpose of opportunity attacks and reintroduce pillar dancing.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 392

Joined: Sunday, 11th September 2016, 17:21

Post Friday, 8th April 2022, 01:10

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

How so? When I resort to pillar dancing, it's because I'm being chased by an enemy I'm in danger of dying to and can't disengage from without a consumable which I don't want to (or don't have the option to) use. If the opportunity attack caused the enemy to spend a turn attacking instead of chasing, that would create a tile of distance that I could use to flee up a staircase, which would prevent the need for the tedious behavior of pillar dancing... well, assuming there is an available staircase, that is. If there isn't, then there would still be an incentive to pillar dance, although larger pillars would be required. However... that doesn't seem much different from the current situation, unless all reusable forms of blink are to be removed from the game as well, and similar effects that can create at least a one tile gap between the player and an adjacent enemy. I guess the biggest difference would be that players would have less incentive to gravitate towards backgrounds and gods that provide such escape options if my proposed change were implemented... well, that and players would be punished less severely for tactical repositioning.

To truly remove pillar dancing, it may be necessary to remove pillars.

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Zot Zealot

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Joined: Thursday, 16th August 2018, 21:19

Post Friday, 8th April 2022, 09:37

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

If every time a monster had an attack opportunity it created one tile distance, it would make pillar dancing less tedious and punishing, it would allow strategical retreat without Blink in more situations, and it would make repositioning in the middle of combat less punishing.

Pillar dancing if frustrating because precise movement is required, because a single false move will undo a lot of work. With Nekoti's proposal a single false move will usually result in a single attack attempt within 3 turns of the mistake, no more and no less. Since precision wouldn't be as important, it'd be less tedious.
With the current behaviour, where you can only pillar dance if the gap is of size 1 or more, mistakes are punished very harshly, which results in tedium.

Not being able to retreat has been rather frustrating, since I always felt that knowing when to retreat is a key part of crawl. It's possible I will change my mind on this.

The devs said they wanted to encourage careful positioning. When repositioning when you're surrounded results not only in the loss of a turn but also in ~2 instant free attack attempts, fixing dicy situations through careful positioning is discouraged.
Naga's could always retreat to a better spot, even if they'd take a bit of damage on the way, but with the free attack attempts they now take twice as much damage whilst retreating.

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Nekoatl, Wahaha

Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 12:30

Post Tuesday, 23rd August 2022, 06:37

Re: Ally Swapping vs Opportunity Attacks

Opportunity attacks make the game more tedious to play than pillar dancing ever did, while simultaneously dumbing down combat. This change is so absurd and detached from how DCSS works as a game that I don't think there's any common ground for understanding or discussion. I'm just left hoping that maybe after playing with this change for a while people will be like "uhh yeah so this was a horrible idea... let's revert it" but I'm not holding my breath.

Small thought related to the thread topic: Swapping with allies is relatively a much much stronger tactic now that opportunity attacks exist, compared to when opportunity attacks did not exist.

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petercordia

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