FLat skill systems

[acvar]

I don't think it's as simple as that. The XP needed to train even lower level skills increases as your total level of skill levels increases. When you are XL 20, the XP it took to raise short blades from 0 to 15 would not raise another skill to 15.

You are right there is a kludge in the game designed to fix the problem the experience system creates. Obviously the developers were aware of the problem at one time. The thing is the kludge does not fix the problem as is evidenced by the way successful players play the game.

Also, you have to take into account the fact that at higher levels you are killing monsters that provide 1000X the XP than they did at XL 1. It is not "broken" that it takes more XP to raise levels later in the game. Every RPG is like this. 10-15 XP gets you to XL2. It does not follow that 1000-1500 XP should get you 100x the improvement that XL 1 -> 2 represents.

No not every RPG does it this way. If you ever played an RPG that uses a flat system you would quickly see its benefits. If you ever actually did some design work on both types of systems we would not be having this discussion. This really is a no brainer decision from a design standpoint.

Something is "broken" if it negatively affects gameplay. While the skill system would be designed differently by different people, it works well in that it is central to the game and lots of people seem to love the game. If you think it's broken, fork the game and do it right as you see fit, or just don't play it. That, or at least give a clear illustration of how it is "broken".

It does negatively affect the game. It removes much of the decision making that should exist in the game. It causes people to play cookie cutter characters because it severely punishes specialization while rewarding generalization. It does not work well at all. It is a problem and it can be fixed. There is no need to fork (or at least no permanently).

Anyhow, this is all off-topic.

Actually a discussion of how the experience system effects the choice of skill advancement is very much on topic for the question at hand.

[dpeg]

Obviously the developers were aware of the problem at one time. The thing is the kludge does not fix the problem as is evidenced by the way successful players play the game.
...
If you ever actually did some design work on both types of systems we would not be having this discussion. This really is a no brainer decision from a design standpoint.
...
It does negatively affect the game. It removes much of the decision making that should exist in the game. It causes people to play cookie cutter characters because it severely punishes specialization while rewarding generalization. It does not work well at all. It is a problem and it can be fixed.

You manage to repeatedly tell us in almost offensive terms that we're doing it wrong. And that there's a trivial solution out there. But you never bothered to indicate anything specific enough to get started.

[galehar]

No not every RPG does it this way. If you ever played an RPG that uses a flat system you would quickly see its benefits. If you ever actually did some design work on both types of systems we would not be having this discussion. This really is a no brainer decision from a design standpoint.

You've been whining all over the place about how broken the experience system is. You've yet to explain how its is, or how to fix it. Please, stop repeating the same thing over and over, it's really annoying. If you really have something to say about the experience system, create a new topic and enlighten us as to what is a flat experience system and how does it work.

[danr]

I would actually like to know what acvar is actually advocating, but yeah, it never gets very specific. Specifics please!

You obviously like the game enough to care about it's development. So please try to contribute positively and usefully.

Now, can I have my thread back?

Under the CURRENT SYSTEM (which I do not have the power to change), which skills are no-brainers to leave on all the way for a HaBe.

[chrysalis]

For legal reasons I am limited in how much detail I can go into on the subject. I can convey my basic understanding of the subject but can not legally explain how I came to that understanding. I can propose a system, but I must be very careful that is different then what I worked on in the past. I have no problem having private conversations with anybody that wants a more detailed example, but I do not, due to legal encumberments, feel comfortable discussing the subject in detail in a public forum.

If only the trolls in crawl were this fun!

[acvar]

Nothing trolly about it. Some of us have worked in the gaming industry and I would prefer not to be sued for breaking NDAs. But go ahead and continue to make personal attacks on me.

[lucy_ferre]

Please refrain from accusing other users of trolling and derailing the topic. If you believe someone in a thread is trolling do not respond to them. Report their posts.

@acvar

Your posts don't contribute anything to the thread. Keep it up and you'll be banned.

[Vastin]

Hiya! First post here, so I'll just dive into the deep end. Never believed in long hellos in any case.

Regarding the questions about flat XP systems, I can actually describe how those work, generally speaking.

Old style D&D (and a great many games to follow) used a rapidly increasing XP advancement system, like this:

L1: 0 -> L2: 2000 -> L3: 4000 -> L4: 8000 -> L5: 16000 -> L6: 32000

etc. (I'm just throwing numbers here, the real numbers varied by class and went up in completely illogical patterns in early editions of the game. )

In this system you got a lot more XP for monsters that you killed as their difficulty increased, such that your advancement rate per session slowed, but not as dramatically as the chart would suggest at a glance. Honestly, the math to handle things this way is kind of annoyingly complex to design around, though there are reasons to take this approach, mostly to do with preventing scumming WITHOUT having to do any complex math during actual play (remember: tabletop game). One significant drawback of this system is that if the players somehow ever manage to knock over a really big monster earlier than expected, they may suddenly jump several levels (this happens all the time in Angband, for example).

There are of course other valid advancement schema, such as gradual progression:

L1: 0 -> L2: 1000 -> L3: 1100 -> L4: 1200 -> L5: 1300 -> L6: 1400

In this scheme, you DON'T reward players more for killing powerful monsters, they get pretty much the same regardless, and their advancement gradually slows according to the cost of their levels. Of course, this system would encourage players to quickly scum weak monsters for XP, so you either need to make sure such creatures are no longer available, or you reduce/eliminate the rewards for fighting them as players advance, so that they are forced to go after stuff their own size. Needless to say, the design math here is a lot easier to keep track of in many respects, but the system does demand that you do more calculation 'on the fly' as it were (to determine whether and how much to reward the players based on comparative levels), which made it arguably less suitable for tabletop - of course, math of this sort means nothing to a computer. In most cases you also do not increase rewards for killing over level, or you cap such benefits to prevent exploitative tactics.

The flat advancement schema is pretty much the same as the gradually increasing one, you just don't increase it at all. It suffers the same essential benefits or drawbacks, but the player continues to go up in level like clockwork.

As for how this applies to your SKILL advancement vs. your level advancement, I'm not entirely qualified to say, as I'm still fairly new to dungeon crawl and in all truth I've been getting my ass handed to me. Nevertheless, the decision of whether to specialize or generalize is highly dependent on which sort of scale you are using.

1st Edition Earthdawn went with geometric costs, with an xp/skill purchasing system that doesn't look all that different from the one in this game - and yes, you might like to specialize, but when it really came down to it you could end up buying a skill from rank 1->7 for the same cost as 7->8, so unless the benefit of that one more level was enormous, you just couldn't justify it compared to having a brand new rank 7 skill from nowhere. It was honestly pretty silly. Well established characters would spring massive new skill sets out of no-where from session to session, because they couldn't afford to raise their primary skills any more, but had oodles of XP to blow.

How much do you want players to specialize or generalize? You control that with the acceleration rate of the costs on the skills. The faster it increases level by level, the more severely specialization will be punished. If they don't increase in cost at all, the player is completely free to choose between focused or general builds, if they do, then the higher they go up a line, the more they will have to consider generalizing into other areas.

So:
Skill Cost pattern A (doubling):
L1: 0 -> L2: 200 -> L3: 400 -> L4: 800 -> L5: 1600
- in this version, for any given level of advancement, the cost of the skill doubles each level. As a result I can raise one skill one level, OR raise an entire new skill to level-1 instead. This severely discourages specialization. This sounds close to what's going on now in crawl? Beats me, I'm just here to talk theory.

Skill Cost pattern B (flat):
L1: 0 -> L2: 100 -> L3: 100 -> L4: 100 -> L5: 100
- In this version every level of any skill costs exactly 100 pts. The player is completely free to specialize or generalize - HOWEVER most game systems tend to naturally benefit specialists (min/maxing) so the drawback here is that players may feel that in effect they cannot afford to generalize until late in the game, if ever. Most games don't use a completely flat skill or attribute cost for this simple reason.

Skill Cost pattern C (linear):
L1: 0 -> L2: 100 -> L3: 120 -> L4: 140 -> L5: 160
- This version gradually increases the cost of skills with each level in a linear fashion, such that by level 10 or so, you are paying a 2-1 premium against a new skill. It modestly discourages high levels of specialization, but wouldn't likely prevent them in the case of a character completely dedicated to doing so.

Skill Cost pattern D (multiplied):
L1: 0 -> L2: 100 -> L3: 120 ->L4: 144 -> L5: 178 -> L6: 207
- This version multiplies the cost of each previous level by 20%. It is functionally similar to pattern A, save that its curve is far less punishing. This version allows a fair amount of early specialization, but eventually the costs do become high enough that some degree of generalization is strongly encouraged.

For my part I tend to prefer pattern C in most cases. The math remains very simple, and with some tweaking you can usually find a decently comfortable balance between the benefits of min/maxed specialization, and those of a more general build. Pattern D allows for a somewhat more rigid control of a character's advancement, such that they cannot easily escape the expected bounds of your game's resolution system by spamming a critical skill very high early in the game (in many games some version of evasion is often abusable in this way). Pattern B usually makes straight specialization too attractive, to the point where it effectively punishes generalization, while pattern A is so strict that it forces as much generalization as the player can profitably take advantage of at all.

Patterns C & D can both obviously be tweaked in terms of how aggressively each advances, to further encourage or discourage specialization vs. generalization.

[danr]

Thanks for the primer on XP systems. It'll be interesting to see if any practical suggestions for Crawl's skill system arise from this discussion. For myself, I don't think the skill system has any problems sufficiently serious to warrant the massive overhaul to the game that this would entail.

[galehar]

crawl's system starts out mostly linear, then switch to a flat but expensive system:

Number of skill points you need to gain to reach a level:
1: 200
2: 100
3: 200
4: 250
5: 300
6: 300
7: 350
8: 400
9: 450
10: 600
11: 600
12: 650
13: 850
14: 950
15+: 1800

First level is expensive to get. Then, there are some strange irregularities. The main problem of crawl system is that it doesn't reward enough high level skills. Damage bonus from weapon skills should be boosted, and spell power should be more significant for a number of spells.
Also, I'm not sure the sudden boost in cost at skill 15 is justified. Maybe it should keep its linearity. I don't have the time to run the numbers right now, but I think any change should aim at keeping the total cost of L27 skill the same (so, maybe linear until the end).

[Vastin]

Yup, that chart looks like it follows a moderately aggressive linear progression with a few hiccups in it, followed by that big spike and plateau at the end. Overall its probably aggressive enough to discourage specialization for any case that doesn't involve substantially increasing returns.

I don't know how many of the skills are calculated in combat yet, so I can't comment on whether the returns in crawl tend to increase or decrease in any given case. If they tend to decrease, then generalization is further warranted - if they tend to increase then it'll be more of a particular decision of the player's strategy whether they really warrant the increased cost to specialize.

[TGW]

Getting a skill from 1 to 27 takes 29,400 EXP if my math is right. It would be nice if it were linear (at least get rid of the weird jumps like at level 15) but that would mean higher costs at lower levels so you might have to redo the experience formula. Marginal returns on skill increases are generally flat or diminishing, so ideally there would be a gentle nudge toward generalisation at most.

Maybe keep the +50 per level and reduce experience gains at high levels.

[danr]

I'm glad to know about the big requirement for level 1, it explains why it is so G-D hard to get that 1st level in fighting with a character with -2 aptitude and for whom melee is not a very optimal situation!

I am curious about the rationale for it though. Is the idea for players to have a hard time branching out from their starting background and thus preserve differentiation?

[KoboldLord]

A couple relatively simple ways to flatted out the skill system:

1) As you gain experience, instead of getting xp in an xp pool, you gain undifferentiated skill levels that you can then place in a skill of your choice, either by a 'practice' mechanic such as victory dancing or by a Nethack-style skill menu. In this system, the amount of xp required to gain one of these undifferentiated skill levels slowly grows depending on how many you've earned so far in the game, but once you have a skill level available for use it will get you one level of any skill, regardless of whether that skill is already high or just starting out. The second level of Fighting costs the same as the fifteenth of Fire, if you're currently at Fighting 1 and Fire 14.

2) Each skill level requires a flat amount of xp from your xp pool, but as you gain in power (calculated as either a function of your level or as a total of your skill levels) you begin to gain less xp from fighting weaker monsters. Killing rats starts to simply do nothing for your skills, and you must harvest ever-stronger monsters to maintain your ability to advance.

That said, I don't really support flattening out the skill system too much. Rewarding generalization is a feature, not a bug. Being able to do different things according to the situation is more fun than hammering the same ability regardless of what issue comes up. I would probably not bother playing a game that just asked me to macro Bolt of Fire and spam it whenever I see something move. Indeed, my most coveted feature request is to add early-game options to backgrounds who do not have them right from D1. Certainly, the current system could use some refinement, and the point of diminishing returns is a bit too sharp, but I believe that the matter is just in need of some fine-tuning, not a complete overhaul.

[acvar]

That said, I don't really support flattening out the skill system too much. Rewarding generalization is a feature, not a bug.

This is true to some point, but in my experience developing games I have found:

Generalization is its own reward. Generalization promotes survivability against the diverse threats that you encounter in the dungeon. Learn only fire magic and you can be killed by a mere imp. Only poison magic and then even the crypt is impossible. Even on a completely flat experience system without actually placing incentives on specialization people will still generalize. As crawl stands now there are plenty of incentives to specialize in magic. The magic system is designed to scale geometrically as higher level spells increase in power by orders of magnitude. This is a good thing, but it also needs to be true for non magcial skills. This would not be an easy task. I am not sure how you can get things like dodging, armor, and weapon skills to scale geometrically without either making them godlike in the endgame, or useless in the early game. It would take some pretty significant balancing to pull it all together.

[acvar]

crawl's system starts out mostly linear, then switch to a flat but expensive system:

Number of skill points you need to gain to reach a level:
1: 200
2: 100
3: 200
4: 250
5: 300
6: 300
7: 350
8: 400
9: 450
10: 600
11: 600
12: 650
13: 850
14: 950
15+: 1800

First level is expensive to get. Then, there are some strange irregularities. The main problem of crawl system is that it doesn't reward enough high level skills. Damage bonus from weapon skills should be boosted, and spell power should be more significant for a number of spells.
Also, I'm not sure the sudden boost in cost at skill 15 is justified. Maybe it should keep its linearity. I don't have the time to run the numbers right now, but I think any change should aim at keeping the total cost of L27 skill the same (so, maybe linear until the end).

I am not sure where you are getting your numbers, but a quick trip with wizard mode disagrees with you. The first 100 XP gains you 4 levels in a +0 skill. The next 330 XP gains 3 more levels. Then it is 2 levels for 840, 1300 XP for the next 2, 2200 for the next level taking you to level 12.... It takes 20,000 XP to get the skill from first to 15th level, and another 20,000 won't even get you to 17th level.

[galehar]

I am not sure where you are getting your numbers

skills2.cc:1572

I'm talking about skill points, not XP. In the beginning of the game, 10 skill points cost 1XP. The cost rise with skill level and total skill points up to 250XP for 10 skill points.

[acvar]

Why discuss "Skill points" at all then. What really matters is XP. You don't earn SP. You earn XP. So going from level 1 to level 2 costs 10 XP and going from level 15 to level 16 ~45,000 XP. And it is not even close to being linear since it is 2 "linear" progression being multiplied together which is geometric progression. The whole things is a big Rube Goldberg experiment. No wonder there are so many balance issues.

[galehar]

Why discuss "Skill points" at all then. What really matters is XP. You don't earn SP. You earn XP. So going from level 1 to level 2 costs 10 XP and going from level 15 to level 16 ~45,000 XP. And it is not even close to being linear since it is 2 "linear" progression being multiplied together which is geometric progression. The whole things is a big Rube Goldberg experiment. No wonder there are so many balance issues.

Even if your example doesn't make any sense, you've got a point. The system is messy and could use some balancing. I'll look into it.

[acvar]

It is not that it does not make any sense. It does. It just is far more complex then it needs to be, and as such has a lot of wasted effort to both create and maintain it. The creation point is over, but the maintenance problem will never go away. As the game grows, and it is growing quite quickly, things are just going to get worse.

I understand what the developers were trying to do. They wanted it to be harder to advance as your level goes up, but not just as individual skills go up, but as total skills go up. That is the reason for the 2 progressions being multiplied by each other. The thing is this is only necessary because of the base geometric experience system. Since as characters go up in level and face more powerful monster each giving ever higher experience high level characters have huge experience pools to spend. If you don't increase the costs of level they come too easily. So thats the reason for the whole thing. The thing is it is just far easier to not give all that extra experience in the first place. Then you don't have to make everything cost more to balance things. Tie experience given to relative strength of the monster and flatten out the costs of levels, and balancing things gets way easier. That or find a bunch of math PHD's to do the heavy lifting of balancing all the diverse geometric progressions.

[danr]

The math of either system is way beyond me, and I was no slouch in math. This will need a lot of very clear explanation and illustrations to bring people on board.

[galehar]

The whole magic system is balanced with progressive experience. If you're playing a DEFE, you really have to specialise a lot, because even if it's expensive, access to fire storm is worth the investment in XP. What you are saying about a flat experience system is interesting, but it just can't be applied to crawl. At least not without massive rewrite.

So, the realistic way to fix crawl skill system is to reward better certain high level skills, weapons being the most obvious. Also make training easier (faster for armour, and maybe an accelerated or automatic system). And maybe tweak some numbers. How about this. Next, I'll look into the skill point cost.

[starless]

Perhaps introduce special abilities once you master a skill?

For example:
When you master Short Swords you can invoke the ability Assassinate (costing MP and food+cooldown or fatigue?) which will make all your attacks not miss in the next 1d3+1 rounds.
When you master Axes you gain the ability Butcher (costing MP and food + cooldown or fatigue) which lets you inflict max damage with your attacks in the next 1d3 rounds.
When you master Fighting you gain the ability to attack twice each round.
When you master Armour you gain the ability to receive half damage for a short while.

This might stimulate players to specialize in certain skills to their highest levels as soon as possible.
For some really good benefits you could introduce permanent HP/MP cost or the chance of losing permanent HP/MP.

[starless]

Or even easier: some passive bonus for mastering a skill:

Fighting: +2 Damage or an additional check to cause maximum damage with a melee attack (10% chance)
Armour: +4 AC bonus or an additional check when hit which will negate 1/2 damage (10% chance)
Dodging: Additional check to avoid an attack completely
Bows: + 1 range

Just examples off the top of my head.

[acvar]

The whole magic system is balanced with progressive experience. If you're playing a DEFE, you really have to specialise a lot, because even if it's expensive, access to fire storm is worth the investment in XP. What you are saying about a flat experience system is interesting, but it just can't be applied to crawl. At least not without massive rewrite.

So, the realistic way to fix crawl skill system is to reward better certain high level skills, weapons being the most obvious. Also make training easier (faster for armour, and maybe an accelerated or automatic system). And maybe tweak some numbers. How about this. Next, I'll look into the skill point cost.

Actually there are 2 choices here. You can as you say keep the geometric costs and try to make all the skills advance geometrically, or you can keep the weapon skills, dodging, armor, traps, evocations, invocation, etc, etc, flat as they currently are and rebalance the magic skills. It just seems to me that scaling back the power of spells is the easier option.

[galehar]

Actually there are 2 choices here. You can as you say keep the geometric costs and try to make all the skills advance geometrically, or you can keep the weapon skills, dodging, armor, traps, evocations, invocation, etc, etc, flat as they currently are and rebalance the magic skills. It just seems to me that scaling back the power of spells is the easier option.

I don't think rebalancing 200 spells and the whole experience system is easier than adjusting the other skills for better benefits at high skill level. And how would you do it anyway? By nerfing fire storm damage down to magic dart x9? Or by making it a level 80 spell? If the former, then it sucks. Having awesome high level spells is one of the best feature of crawl. If the latter, then how does it change anything? Having a different scale won't change things as much as you might think. If you really think it's better, then show us a game that use this system, and explain how it makes it better. Or make a new game or crawl fork with this system, because obviously, we won't take care of the huge task of coding the changes you're asking for dubious benefits.

Anyway, let's come back to your initial complain. Crawl rewards generalists and punish specialists. It's only half true. While generalisation is easy and very tempting, it can be a trap too. If you've got plenty of level 12 skills, you might feel like you are prepared for any opposition. But at some point, none of your options is efficient anymore and you're having trouble. About punishing specialists, this isn't true for all builds. Stalkers and conjurers benefit a lot from raising their main skills as much as possible. Some spell schools and weapon skills don't benefit enough from high level and that is what we have to fix.

[dpeg]

Seconding galehar. Some design decisions are so deeply ingrained in the game that "fixing" them is just not an option. The task is similar to "rewrite the game in another programming language". For example, if I were to design a roguelike from scratch, I would be very careful to avoid the "rest to regain HP/MP" mechanic. However, that's just not possible with a dinosaur like Crawl. So I had to be content with adding one and a half species who don't use the mechanic, and that's it.
With skills it is similar: we need to ensure that specialising is worth something. This is not as problematic as it sounds, some skills already have that.

By the way, early on, you'll kill yourself with generalising. There you're much better off with sticking to your guns. It is only later in the game that generalising becomes an option.

[Grimm]

Out of curiosity, what sort of healing mechanic would you use, were you to design a new roguelike?

[szanth]

re: Starless' skill mastery idea - Something Crawl doesn't have that I miss from when I played Powder were those situational melee special attacks you could do. If you learned 'Charge', you would do additional damage to an enemy when you've been running in a straight line and the enemy is in front of you. Or you could leap over a square, and there was an additional move that let you do damage to an enemy if you landed on them while doing it. It was pretty fun.

[danr]

re: Starless' skill mastery idea - Something Crawl doesn't have that I miss from when I played Powder were those situational melee special attacks you could do. If you learned 'Charge', you would do additional damage to an enemy when you've been running in a straight line and the enemy is in front of you. Or you could leap over a square, and there was an additional move that let you do damage to an enemy if you landed on them while doing it. It was pretty fun.

That's interesting. I've been floating ideas about sprint or jump abilities that would be single-move techniques that could work as a way of escaping trouble, at some cost of food or exhaustion. No uptake so far though...

[MrMisterMonkey]

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... pon_reform

[acvar]

I don't think rebalancing 200 spells and the whole experience system is easier than adjusting the other skills for better benefits at high skill level. And how would you do it anyway? By nerfing fire storm damage down to magic dart x9? Or by making it a level 80 spell? If the former, then it sucks. Having awesome high level spells is one of the best feature of crawl.

You don't have to rebalance all 200 spells. Only some of the spells are "out there" and it is easy to see which ones. Even those only require a slight decrease in damage. Remember you want benefits to scale faster then costs to encourage specialization.

Yes fire storm needs to be nerfed. Look at the crawl design philosophy. It says there should be meaningful decisions. There should be no "no-brainers". Fire storm is a no-brainer. Just build up to it then throw it at every encounter while restoring mana with your favorite method. It doesn't matter whether you are facing 1 powerful enemy or an army of grunts. Just throw fire storm.

Having "awesome", no-bainer high level spells is not a feature. It is a bug.

[galehar]

I don't think rebalancing 200 spells and the whole experience system is easier than adjusting the other skills for better benefits at high skill level. And how would you do it anyway? By nerfing fire storm damage down to magic dart x9? Or by making it a level 80 spell? If the former, then it sucks. Having awesome high level spells is one of the best feature of crawl.

You don't have to rebalance all 200 spells. Only some of the spells are "out there" and it is easy to see which ones. Even those only require a slight decrease in damage. Remember you want benefits to scale faster then costs to encourage specialization.

Yes fire storm needs to be nerfed. Look at the crawl design philosophy. It says there should be meaningful decisions. There should be no "no-brainers". Fire storm is a no-brainer. Just build up to it then throw it at every encounter while restoring mana with your favorite method. It doesn't matter whether you are facing 1 powerful enemy or an army of grunts. Just throw fire storm.

Having "awesome", no-bainer high level spells is not a feature. It is a bug.

What are you talking about? Do you think all winners have memorised and used fire storm? It is off course balanced by the huge investment in XP you need to do to be able to cast it reliably. It's a no-brainer only to fire elementalists, and that is the whole point of specialisation.

[acvar]

One spell does not a balanced system make. Lets take the fire storm argument to its logical all be it ridiculous end. Lets make a new spell. This is going to be the most "awesome" spell yet. It will be the first 10th level spell. It will be a translocations spell. For lack of a better name we will call it "I Win". When it is cast it transports you to the up stairs on the first level and drops the orb and all 15 runes at your feet. Would this be good for the game? I mean by the arguments here it is balanced since it requires a great deal of experience to get it castable, and only characters that specialize in translocations can use it. Does that really make it balanced? Of course not. The idea that you need powerful high level spells to entice people to specialize is a good idea, but firestorm takes this idea too far. It is too far with the current experience system, and it would be way too far with a flat experience system. A small number of completely busted spells are not a good reason for not changing things.

[szanth]

I've yet to even see Shatter come close to being castable. -_- Less a statement about the spell and more a sad story of how I can't use earth elementalists.

[MrMisterMonkey]

Shatter is wimpy vs. flying and amorphous monsters
if you want overpowered, go tornado

and while "I win" may be balanced (as for your example specifically, as a spell that essentially lets you win when cast once, you guys left out all the reskilling every skill into it (incidentally, I dislike reskilling), stripping of heavy armour (substitute Archmagi), putting on a ton of wizardry and +Int, and quaffing brilliance; it's not balanced at all), it's exceedingly poor design, regardless.

[szanth]

It is if all that is taken into account. If you go through and put forth the exact same amount of effort and thought into casting that spell as you would a successful 15-rune win, then it -is- balanced.

[MrMisterMonkey]

(the specific example wasn't balanced because it required substantially less effort to cast than a 15-runer would require -- I put it in parentheses because it had no relation to my point, yet is still important to consider when designing a spell of the such)

(and my point, which is entirely separate, is that "I win" is of the poorest design, regardless of balance.)

[danr]

I'm losing the thread here...

The following seem to be crucial facts here though:
- The devs regard any fundamental overhaul to the skill system as undoable.

Even if it would improve the game, at that point it would be just as simple to redevelop a new game from scratch, as apart from all the programming work, every element of the game, from skills to monsters to items, would need rebalancing, which would probably take a decade. The game is pretty good right now, I don't think the size of the problem (a number of balance issues) warrants the massive rewrite this would entail. The devs know the code, their own ability and their time availability, so no one can really second-guess them on this issue. And I don't want a new game. I want DCSS.

- The existing balance problems can be addressed (though perhaps imperfectly) through much more modest tweaks to certain skills.

Therefore, as good as the abstract design arguments may be for certain skill systems, it's just not going to happen. It's a much better use of time to identify specific issues and propose tweaks to the existing system, rather than to campaign for the implementation of a specific vision of perfect game design principles.

If this were Microsoft, there might be the resources and central authority to make a fundamental rewrite possible. As a relatively small FOSS project, this is simply not going to happen unless the devs became convinced it was the second coming of Christ. Given the current high quality of the game, I can't imagine a proposed rewrite that would warrant this amount of time and energy.

In the end though, the devteams no means no, and we crawlers have to accept that and be grateful for the game we do have.

You can't lead a horse to water, and you certainly can't make a volunteer programmer program what you want them to.

[Danei]

I am curious about the rationale for it though. Is the idea for players to have a hard time branching out from their starting background and thus preserve differentiation?

I like that increase in XP needed for level 1, for exactly that reason. I like to think that my choice of starting background actually means something (something besides which spellbook I start with; I mostly play magicless backgrounds).