Pillar dancing

[danr]

I hate pillar dancing, so I'm starting a new topic about it for ideas about how to make it less necessary.

One suggestion elsewhere was to provide other escape options. I guess that would mean a few more scrolls or potions lying around, or escape hatches, teleport traps, throwing nets - there are many options, but they have to be provided to the starting player somehow.

I started brainstorming about some kind of run or jump ability that would get you out of melee range, perhaps with a hunger cost or a chance of getting cramped or slowed, but that would probably break the game somehow.

So, any ideas? How can the need to tediously regain HP by pillar dancing be reduced? Or is this a necessary part of the game?

[szanth]

It's not necessary, but it's useful, so people will continue to do it no matter what. The only way to prevent it would be to make all monsters move faster than the player, which is retarded.

This is one of those things where people invented something because it helped them, and it's not going away.

[evilmike]

So, any ideas? How can the need to tediously regain HP by pillar dancing be reduced? Or is this a necessary part of the game?

Pillar dance until you have enough HP to survive a hit, and then run to the nearest stair. If the monster is still next to you, use the weapon swap command (they will take a swing at you, but weapon swapping is quick enough that you'll be able to move away from the enemy on the next turn).

Pillar dancing will exist as long as retreating is an option (as it should be) and pillars exist.

It's also usually unnecessary for extended periods of time. I can't remember the last time I did it to regenerate HP. Usually it's only to regenerate MP, on those sorts of characters that start with around 3 MP at level 1. If I want HP, getting off the level is usually more effective.

[dpeg]

It's not necessary, but it's useful, so people will continue to do it no matter what. The only way to prevent it would be to make all monsters move faster than the player, which is retarded.

This is one of those things where people invented something because it helped them, and it's not going away.

That's not true. A simple and effective proposal (by David Damerell) was to only heal when you're moving. This solves pillar dancing nicely, but has the drawback of forcing players to rest up all the time manually.
From there, you can investigate variants: don't heal when monsters are around etc. I am open to discuss other approaches.

Also note that pillar dancing itself is rarely necessary after the very early levels and sometimes ogres. It does come up with casters, however.

[MrMisterMonkey]

written before new posts:
In addition to providing alternatives, pillar dancing itself should also die.
Random movement energy was supposed to help with this, but it only makes it a little more dangerous (can get a hit on you) and additionally allows funky things like kiting big groups of enemies (retreat until one pops in front and the rest fall behind, hit it, run away as the rest catch up you) and actually escaping from enemies directly behind you (wait until they fall behind, run up stairs), so I don't like it.
An idea I had (though I'm sure it's been proposed before by others) is to make monsters call for assistance (normal 0-turn monster shouts? attract nearby monsters and new spawns?) after tailing the player for a while; sort of like how lollygagging on a level causes out of depth monsters to spawn, pillar dancing for too long would overwhelm the (presumably fragile, assuming need to pillar dance) player (with existing monsters, else risk birth of pillar dance grinding).

dpeg:
only heal when you're moving? you mean only heal when standing still? sounds good to me, though

I agree with minmay, too.

[dpeg]

dpeg:
only heal when you're moving? you mean only heal when standing still? sounds good to me, though

Sorry, yes. Not healing when moving. It is a very simple solution but it will cause more aggravation than you may expect at first.

[MrMisterMonkey]

I recall having an idea similar to that too, and I just remembered the reason why I discarded it: it would make regeneration rate near meaningless outside of Hells and the such, where resting is dangerous.

[evilmike]

dpeg:
only heal when you're moving? you mean only heal when standing still? sounds good to me, though

Sorry, yes. Not healing when moving. It is a very simple solution but it will cause more aggravation than you may expect at first.

Yeah that sounds like it could be a real burden... HP regeneration would go from a nice automatic thing to basically being manually controlled.

I still think MP is the main reason to pillar dance, though. Some combos simply can't take even one melee hit at level 1, and if you run out of MP before your enemy is dead, the only safe solution is to run. Usually this shouldn't lead to pillar dancing, but it can if you get unlucky (say, you turn a corner and bump into a hobgoblin).

[asdu]

It seems some people in this thread consider pillar dancing as "scumming" and propose solutions that would discourage it by making it ineffective. I don't agree at all. Pillar dancing is something you're usually forced into: your attack(s) missed and the monster's maybe didn't and now you're out of hp/mp and left with the choice of either running until you can risk another attack, or throw yourself at the enemy and hope for a good dice roll (or keep exploring while the monster is still chasing you, or emergency quaff/read/zap whatever you might have, both very likely to lead to an early death). In short, when you need to pillar dance, either you do it, or you're dead in 1-2 turns.
"Nerfing" pillar dancing would replace the tedium of it with the tedium of yet more D:1 deaths. Why do I not see it as an improvement?
IMHO, if pillar dancing is seen as such a big problem (it isn't in my experience, but I don't play weak combos) it would be best to find ways to make it less necessary (as danr correctly said), not less effective. And radical changes such as making HP regeneration only work while standing still would impose a huge hassle that affects the whole game only to fix a relatively minor issue that for the most part only comes up in the very early game, and not even every time. Please don't do that.

[danr]

radical changes ... would impose a huge hassle that affects the whole game only to fix a relatively minor issue that for the most part only comes up in the very early game, and not even every time.

Excellent point.

And actually, I want to see how the new random movement energy affects this. I think that breaks up the mechanistic determinacy of running away from something with equal speed and provides those occasional moments where you have free space to get yourself out of trouble.

[MrMisterMonkey]

asdu, I'd like to note how a lot of the focus has indeed been on making it unnecessary, but if pillar dancing is still optimal (compare with item usage, for instance; I don't think it'd be easy to make squandering a magic potion better than wasting some turns dancing around a pillar, as an example), it should die.

[asdu]

asdu, I'd like to note how a lot of the focus has indeed been on making it unnecessary, but if pillar dancing is still optimal (compare with item usage, for instance; I don't think it'd be easy to make squandering a magic potion better than wasting some turns dancing around a pillar, as an example), it should die.

The fact you mention item usage and describe pillar dancing as "optimal" makes me wonder if we're actually discussing the same issue.
I'm talking specifically about pillar dancing in the very early game (say, D:1-3, but mostly D:1, really). At that point it's very likely that all items that could turn the tide of a battle or allow me to escape are still unidentified and giving the ID-roulette a shot is reserved for the direst emrgencies (fast enemies, ranged attacks or being sandwiched between two monsters in a corridor).
If the game forced me to quaff an un-ID'd potion in every situation where a dozen turns of running away would do, the many unavoidable deaths that would result from it would be far more aggravating than pillar dancing itself. Nor would it be strategically more interesting, since there's nothing more to it than "try the biggest stack first".
Later on, when panic buttons of various kinds become available, pillar dancing is made much harder by the fact that many more monsters are faster than you, or have ranged attacks, or can confuse you, etc. There may be a time in the late early game (or early mid-game, whatever) when a few useful consumables have been discovered and "generic melee guy" monsters are still prevalent and retreating from one such monster while low on health to avoid wasting a potion could be a viable alternative, but even then I would hardly call it an optimal tactic. You never know which corner hides an even bigger threat. Bad players like myself fall for it all the time
So, to repeat myself, I think it would be a bad move to make drastic changes to gameplay to remedy an issue that only affects a small portion of it (for the record, I think that monster energy randomization WAS a bad move).

A solution I would support was mentioned in the thread about early game balance:

It might be worthwhile to start with a few consumables as an early-game emergency button. These could be motivated by mechanics (a potion of speed for berserkers, to abbreviate the aftereffects of one rage) or flavor (a scroll of fear for necromancers, to drive off a dangerous living early-game enemy and allow a reprieve), but in either case the consumables should provide a benefit early on but not later. Just potions and scrolls, basically, which can be used to alleviate RNG screwjobs early on but will eventually be popped by fire or cold effects (or just become obsolete) if the RNG screwjob doesn't happen. Transmuters already get this -- their starting potion of poison can be used to flat-out solve any one otherwise-dangerous encounter before the Temple, and the starting potions don't seem to cause any detrimental power creep for them later on.

The only thing I'd add to this is that these consumables would have to be special ones unavailable in the dungeon, to avoid everybody starting with healing potions (or whatever) already identified.

[dpeg]

It might be worthwhile to start with a few consumables as an early-game emergency button. These could be motivated by mechanics (a potion of speed for berserkers, to abbreviate the aftereffects of one rage) or flavor (a scroll of fear for necromancers, to drive off a dangerous living early-game enemy and allow a reprieve), but in either case the consumables should provide a benefit early on but not later. Just potions and scrolls, basically, which can be used to alleviate RNG screwjobs early on but will eventually be popped by fire or cold effects (or just become obsolete) if the RNG screwjob doesn't happen. Transmuters already get this -- their starting potion of poison can be used to flat-out solve any one otherwise-dangerous encounter before the Temple, and the starting potions don't seem to cause any detrimental power creep for them later on.

The only thing I'd add to this is that these consumables would have to be special ones unavailable in the dungeon, to avoid everybody starting with healing potions (or whatever) already identified.

I didn't support sprint-style additional consumables because of the identification issue. But your post made me realise that we can get by if we use food. All food items are always pre-identified. If there's one type that heals somewhat (doesn't have to be a lot), we could give a number of those (say zero to two, depending on background) at start, and that's it.

(Btw, I also agree with what was said about pillar dancing. I think it is only an issue very early on, and not later. No interface/gameplay changes affecting the whole game just to get rid of three levels of pillar dancing. Don't throw out the baby with the water!)

[Moose]

I really am not a fan of adding additional items to the game just to fill one niche purpose. I was pretty bummed when I saw scrolls of amnesia and scrolls of curse jewelry creep into the mix.

We already have an item that heals a small amount (potion of healing), and it would be (imo) unnecessarily redundant to add a piece of food that did the same.

I do not think that auto-identifying 1 item (whether it be potion or scroll) is that much of an issue.

I do however, applaud dpeg's consistent stance against making the game any easier though, I sometimes feel that if it weren't for him (and anyone else who thinks like him), this game would degenerate very quickly. Good to have that keeper of the flame, even if it makes him quite unpopular with certain sectors of the playerbase at times.

[MrMisterMonkey]

asdu, I guess I got my threads confused; I was actually referring to the discussion in the early game balance thread, yes.

[dpeg]

I really am not a fan of adding additional items to the game just to fill one niche purpose. I was pretty bummed when I saw scrolls of amnesia and scrolls of curse jewelry creep into the mix.

I agree, that might feel like item creep. But it's slightly unfair, because by adding the scroll of amnesia we got rid of a spell! That should balance it out. The scroll of curse jewellery is a genuinely new item, but that's the price we pay for a new god. (For example, decks of cards exist because of Nemelex.)

We already have an item that heals a small amount (potion of healing), and it would be (imo) unnecessarily redundant to add a piece of food that did the same.

I do not think that auto-identifying 1 item (whether it be potion or scroll) is that much of an issue.

Oh, it is a huge issue. The question of attempting to identify the healings poiont (when and how) matters a lot! Paladins, priests, healers benefit a lot from just knowing these potions.
By the way, I was talking about a food item on purpose. We have a billion fruit types. There's no reason why one of them couldn't heal a small amount (or all them could, for that matter).

[KoboldLord]

Oh, it is a huge issue. The question of attempting to identify the healings poiont (when and how) matters a lot! Paladins, priests, healers benefit a lot from just knowing these potions.

It's a benefit, sure, but how big of a benefit, really? I usually identify most of my potions by quaff-testing on D2 or D3, depending on how many generate. I start with the small stacks in hopes that the big ones are healing, and quaff-testing usually wastes one of each type of potion. Risk of death is extremely low as long as I'm not trying to amuse Xom by drinking in combat. The loss of a healing potion or two is nearly trivial, considering how many of those generate in a normal game, and since the reduction of waste is predictable item probabilities can simply be altered to compensate for the non-wasted potions. The waste of a cure mutation potion or exposure to a mutation potion is the main risk of quaff-testing, and of course neither of these would start autoidentified with any background because that would be crazy talk.

[dpeg]

Oh, it is a huge issue. The question of attempting to identify the healings poiont (when and how) matters a lot! Paladins, priests, healers benefit a lot from just knowing these potions.

It's a benefit, sure, but how big of a benefit, really?

The benefit is so big that we will not give this information to all starting characters. Of course it is easy to pick out !healing when you have collected some potions. But knowing which potion is the right one from turn 1 is something really different.

[KoboldLord]

The benefit is so big that we will not give this information to all starting characters. Of course it is easy to pick out !healing when you have collected some potions. But knowing which potion is the right one from turn 1 is something really different.

My previous post was meant as a genuine request for elaboration.

[galehar]

I really am not a fan of adding additional items to the game just to fill one niche purpose. I was pretty bummed when I saw scrolls of amnesia and scrolls of curse jewelry creep into the mix.

scrolls of amnesia are not "just to fill one niche purpose". Replacing selective amnesia by scrolls completely changed the memorisation strategy of all casters.

[KoboldLord]

Healing is the most valuable potion in the first few levels of the game, as characters are pretty weak and can easily die to, say, poison. While you can identify healing by drinking every potion you find, you're likely to kill or cripple your character first. That's not even mentioning that you get extra potions.
Play a few Zin priests for the first few dungeon levels; you will quickly realize just how good potions of healing are.

Okay. Let me ask a follow-up question, then.

Why is this considered a good thing?

If you get poisoned by a kobold's dart or snake early enough that it's probably going to be fatal on its own, you're basically going to kill the perpetrator and then start quaffing random potions in hopes of dealing with the problem. You have no way to influence whether this will be successful; you may not have picked up a healing potion, and you can't distinguish potions that would be dangerous in this situation like paralysis. Ultimately, the only place where player skill factors in is to not get poisoned in the first place, which you would try to do whether or not you've identified potions of healing.

As near as I can tell, the current system would be almost perfectly replicated in power by pre-identifying every consumable, and then spawning nothing in place of where the first one of each type would have been generated. Potions of mutation and cure mutation are the only ones that mix quaff-testing up a bit and justify consumable identification as a mechanic at all, because they give a permanent effect that you may want to defer until later.

Mind you, I don't support removing the item identification sub-game entirely. It does have some interesting effects, largely because of those two types of potions. I do, however, want to see meaningful choices for all backgrounds starting from turn 1, and if the item identification sub-game gets altered in the process I don't really see what the problem is.

[Regnix]

Slightly off-topic, but on Incursion: Halls of the Goblin King (worth checking out if you've not played it) the passage of time does not heal the player, instead you have a "rest" command. Basically, you sleep, so need to lock doors and set traps/have companions take watch etc. It adds a lot of "flavour"!

[Shade]

dpeg:
only heal when you're moving? you mean only heal when standing still? sounds good to me, though

Sorry, yes. Not healing when moving. It is a very simple solution but it will cause more aggravation than you may expect at first.

Because of that 'aggravation' why not make healing and MP regen only go at 1/2 the rate on turns when actions are taken, or on turns where the player is successfully attacked?

Here's an off the wall idea: Why not a fatigue system? Ie, attach a fatigue cost to every action, and mitigate but not eliminate the fatigue cost of actions based on the skill level of the skills involved. The action cost would be deducted from a strength (and maybe + level) based fatigue pool, be compounded by your 'encumbered' or 'overloaded' status, AND BY WHAT % OF HP YOU HAVE-- There could be two negative fatigue states: 'Fatigued' and 'Exhausted'. They should carry roughly similar penalties to 'encumbered' and 'overloaded' and stack with them. To make it work, the fatigue pool should be fairly large, and regenerate quite quickly based on some Strength (and maybe + level) based formula. A character with Max HP, who's not encumbered, and who has, oh say, 12 or so STR should never be fatigued from just walking, and like I said, 'fatigue' should recover very quickly. edit: There should probably be a status message when you get 3/4 of the way to 'fatigued' like, "You are beginning to feel fatigued" or some such.

[galehar]

Here's an off the wall idea: Why not a fatigue system? Ie, attach a fatigue cost to every action, and mitigate but not eliminate the fatigue cost of actions based on the skill level of the skills involved. The action cost would be deducted from a strength (and maybe + level) based fatigue pool, be compounded by your 'encumbered' or 'overloaded' status, AND BY WHAT % OF HP YOU HAVE-- There could be two negative fatigue states: 'Fatigued' and 'Exhausted'. They should carry roughly similar penalties to 'encumbered' and 'overloaded' and stack with them. To make it work, the fatigue pool should be fairly large, and regenerate quite quickly based on some Strength (and maybe + level) based formula. A character with Max HP, who's not encumbered, and who has, oh say, 12 or so STR should never be fatigued from just walking, and like I said, 'fatigue' should recover very quickly. edit: There should probably be a status message when you get 3/4 of the way to 'fatigued' like, "You are beginning to feel fatigued" or some such.

This idea has been discussed a bit on the wiki. Fatigue is a french word which means tiredness. So either actions adds to fatigue, or they reduce stamina, but a fatigue pool (like in Oblivion) doesn't make any sense.

[szanth]

Eh, I don't hate the idea, but it does sound slightly offputting that there would be yet another meter (in addition to food) to keep track of while staying alive.

[Shade]

Here's an off the wall idea: Why not a fatigue system? Ie, attach a fatigue cost to every action, and mitigate but not eliminate the fatigue cost of actions based on the skill level of the skills involved. The action cost would be deducted from a strength (and maybe + level) based fatigue pool, be compounded by your 'encumbered' or 'overloaded' status, AND BY WHAT % OF HP YOU HAVE-- There could be two negative fatigue states: 'Fatigued' and 'Exhausted'. They should carry roughly similar penalties to 'encumbered' and 'overloaded' and stack with them. To make it work, the fatigue pool should be fairly large, and regenerate quite quickly based on some Strength (and maybe + level) based formula. A character with Max HP, who's not encumbered, and who has, oh say, 12 or so STR should never be fatigued from just walking, and like I said, 'fatigue' should recover very quickly. edit: There should probably be a status message when you get 3/4 of the way to 'fatigued' like, "You are beginning to feel fatigued" or some such.

This idea has been discussed a bit on the wiki. Fatigue is a french word which means tiredness. So either actions adds to fatigue, or they reduce stamina, but a fatigue pool (like in Oblivion) doesn't make any sense.

I never saw the discussion. Neat. The notion of a 'hidden' pool with rapid regeneration is just 'implementation speculation', and there are many other people that could probably come up with a far better system than I. With that being said, a system that was done right shouldn't interfere with a adequately strong, healthy, unencumbered character who's exploring and gets into a fight, but should be sufficiently 'tough' to discourage running in circles to rest up.

A halving or elimination of HP and MP regeneration, and / or similar extensions or penalties of other negative status effects, may well have a similar effect without being as opaque or tedious. As far as the Oblivion comment goes, I'm Linux only and my last console was the SNES.