The Tavern

I've been playing crawl since like 0.17 and this is, by far, the largest change in terms of how it affects patterns of play. It removes the ability to retreat without consumables, which was one of the most basic and fundamental strategies in the game. So many of the game's other mechanics seem to be specifically built around this strategy (constriction, swift enemies, manticore barbs, and many others are important because they situationally disable it and force players to prioritize targets so they can unlock it again, killholes offer players the tradeoff of sacrificing it in exchange for taking on enemies one at a time, lots of vanilla 10speed monsters like hydrae and 2headed ogres were deliberately made with massive stats to force players to play around it). I'm just coming back to the game after a long break, and I'm curious to know how this change has affected gameplay and how people have adjusted to it before I jump into the new patch.

You can still retreat before you're in melee range, which is the best strategy anyway for speed-10 melee-only enemies one isn't yet ready to fight. And retreating in melee range was always dangerous once you were low on HP because of energy randomization. So the main effect for me has been to make me less selective about terrain, since if I accidentally find myself in melee in the open I believe I'm now better off fighting where I am.

For me, the most annoying change to my behavior in response to opportunity attacks is how often I retreat to a chokepoint. I used to fight enemies more or less where I found them, typically luring them only a few tiles from the frontier at most, unless and until other significant threats began to close in, at which point I would retreat to a chokepoint so I could fight them one at a time. Now, if I were use that strategy, I would give away a number of free hits to the first monster I engaged with, so instead, I proactively retreat to a chokepoint upon drawing the attention of any nontrivial enemy, which is rather tedious.

yeah, having played a bit that's something I don't like about it. I know it was created to alleviate a tedious but powerful strategy, but it can force you to play safe in even more tedious ways. I'm also worried about the game's learning curve because it's a lot more intuitive to newer players to retreat than it is to preemptively lure. Overall though, it wasn't as different from the old game as I expected it to be, largely because you can still do the indefinite kiting of 10speeds as long as you have any amount of gap.

All in all I'm in favor of the change, because it put a stop to much of what is called "optimal game play" in this forum. This not only is tedious, but it also keeps players from using different and more interesting strategies for winning the game, such as conjurations, Chei-based characters, or stabbers. These have always been somewhat less safe in terms of scoring a win, but once you have developed a character beyond the early game, they provide a more satisfying experience than optimal play.

I'd be interested to see the stats from the last tournament (not out yet) - I suspect that the winrate must have gone done quite considerably compared to previous tournaments. This may either drive people away from the game (which would be sad), or it may prompt them to play the game in new ways - which I would hope for.

It only changed the optimal gameplay.... and made it more tedious and annoying.

I'm not convinced that they play patterns created by the changes are /less/ tedious. As a general rule in Crawl, the more risk there is, the more meticulously and optimally you need to play. If any 10speed can beat you to death if it gets a few lucky hits or you get an unexpected guest to the fight, it forces you to kite every piece of floortrash way back into explored territory and make sure you get the most optimal possible engagement with it. Also, like... kiting isn't gone. I've used it plenty during my 0.29 runs, you just need to have a gap of at least 1 to do it. If anything, this patch encourages kiting because fights are so punishing that you want to get every advantage you can before you engage in melee range.

I also don't see how this is supposed to encourage conjurations-based characters. Spellcasters were probably the biggest beneficiaries of retreating, because it lets them recharge their MP. Running out of MP is a lot more deadly when you have to fight your way out of every situation. And I think it's probably bad for stabbers too. The inability to retreat makes it extra dangerous to fight multiple enemies at once because you can't retreat to heal up between kills, which means luring enemies back into explored territory is more important than ever. Stabbers have to run into unexplored territory to stab sleeping enemies, which can get them caught in deadly situations if something wakes up and they can't retreat to safety.

I don't think this patch will introduce new strategies so much as force players to play extra carefully. The ways you play around AOOs are largely tactics that already existed and were already optimal, they just became more necessary now that you get punished harder for not playing as safely as possible. Allowing players to retreat within melee range doesn't so much change the optimal play patterns so much as reduce the punishment for not following them.

It being optimal to retreat before enemies get adjacent makes the game feel more tedious for me.

So I don't bother, and sometimes I die.

The stealth factor is a good point, however, the impact is pretty inconsistent depending on species. Spriggans and Felids are fast enough that most enemies don't get opportunity attacks. Vampires can kind of do the same thing with Bat Form, and despite the disadvantages it comes with, opportunity attacks have trained me to use it early and often with no regard for the stat loss and to invest in Dodging earlier than I otherwise would. Octopode stabbers are simply dead to me in the world of opportunity attacks.

It's always been optimal, it's just gotten more important.