'Autokite'

[Patashu]

You know what's incredibly tedious, but optimal? Fighting monsters with slower move and attack speed than you by hitting them once, backing up a step, waiting for them to come next to you and then hitting them again. If we have a button to 'autofight' on tab, why not a button to 'autokite' on (for example) caps lock? It'd work something like this:
1) If nothing is within reach of your wielded weapon, wait a turn
2) If boolean 'waiting_to_strike' is false, back one step away in a direction that puts you adjacent to no monsters (and put a preference on diagonals, so you automatically pillar dance) and set 'waiting_to_strike' to true
3) If boolean 'waiting_to_strike' is true, make an attack on the slowest monster within reach and set 'waiting_to_strike' to false
The onus is still on the player to use it in the correct situation, but all the tedium has been taken out for you.
(Possibly this can be coded in a lua script?)

[dpeg]

The underlying problem is slow monsters (and quick players, if you want). Slow monsters should have tricks upon their sleeves that make kiting at least undesirable. Snails are really bad in this regard, jellies are much better.

Personally, I believe that every slow monster should get something to compensate kiting or be removed.

[Patashu]

The underlying problem is slow monsters (and quick players, if you want). Slow monsters should have tricks upon their sleeves that make kiting at least undesirable. Snails are really bad in this regard, jellies are much better.

Personally, I believe that every slow monster should get something to compensate kiting or be removed.

It's worth noting that if you're a spriggan/felid/centaur with low weapon delay or polearm/sling/spells, almost every monster is a slow monster

[evilmike]

Personally, I believe that every slow monster should get something to compensate kiting or be removed.

Agreed. Unfortunately, this is a huge number of monsters

Zombies are the main offender because they're common. But golems aren't much better, and there are a few other misc enemies, like snails, bone dragons, beetles.

Slow monsters can be dealt with either by giving them ranged attacks, by giving them swiftness (or a swiftness-like ability such as what boulder beetles have), or by making them move normally but attack slowly. For instance, zombies could keep their base speed, but receive a penalty to their attack speed. This would probably still be a zombie (and thus animate dead) buff. I'd also apply this "slow attacks" change to other slow melee enemies. I don't know if others think this is a good solution.

I don't think the jelly solution (making them retaliate on melee) is a good one. Corrosion prevents reach-kiting, but does nothing against ranged attacks. These sorts of things essentially just punish melee. Also, I'd argue the main reason why jellies are a bit tricky to kite is because they're speed 9. Most slow melee monsters are 8 or lower.

[evilmike]

It's worth noting that if you're a spriggan/felid/centaur with low weapon delay or polearm/sling/spells, almost every monster is a slow monster

Yeah. Centaurs make good reach-kiters. Spriggans a bit less so, because of weapon restrictions. Tengus can also do this, but they usually cast spells. The good news is, this is limited to just a few races (unless you find boots of running, but these are extremely rare). There's also swiftness, but it has some drawbacks.

Basically, in a game where you allow the player to move quicker than normal, you're going to allow kiting. The problem with slow melee enemies is that almost *any* character can do this (even nagas can kite some of these enemies). These enemies are problematic because they are near-harmless and uninteresting to almost every character.

Oh, and on a related note... Wandering mushrooms are free xp to anyone with a spear. To me this is the same issue as reach-kiting a zombie, but taken to the most ridiculous extreme. I don't know what the solution here would be.

[dpeg]

evilmike: Regarding jellies, it is not just that they retaliate on melee; rather, they cause problems by splitting when they eat stuff. So at least kiting is not entirely trivial with them.

Regarding zombies: normal movement speed, half attack speed would work. What I had in mind (for we clearly want to keep zombies) is that they might rise other (fake, i.e. "summoned") zombies nearby. And/or they have the buried corpses reach out and grab your ankles, effectively entangling you. As it happens, Brogue implements something similar, using nausea and vomit

[dpeg]

Back to jellies: I think they would be better if they had a chance to split spontaneously. The new jelly, in this case, would have the *same* health as the original one and it would count as summoned (no XP, no piety). If we get the chance right, then this would turn the current kiting into a much more interesting choice:
(a) kill the jelly quickly -- kiting is too slow, perhaps unless you can do really ranged damage
(b) write off the level.

This is because meandering on a level with a jelly (whether you kite or not) will produce more jellies, even with slurping, making the place less and less attractive.

[Patashu]

Back to jellies: I think they would be better if they had a chance to split spontaneously. The new jelly, in this case, would have the *same* health as the original one and it would count as summoned (no XP, no piety). If we get the chance right, then this would turn the current kiting into a much more interesting choice:
(a) kill the jelly quickly -- kiting is too slow, perhaps unless you can do really ranged damage
(b) write off the level.

This is because meandering on a level with a jelly (whether you kite or not) will produce more jellies, even with slurping, making the place less and less attractive.

Hmm.. This is giving me bad memories of MULTIPLY monsters in Angband. Anyone who has played it will know what I mean.

[Deimos]

I think that jellies splitting by themselves is not a good idea. There's too many implications on the difficulty of the early game and corrosion, as well as implications on vault design.

[Blade]

Jellies are already the most annoying early-game monster. Why make them worse?

[twelwe]

The underlying problem is slow monsters (and quick players, if you want). Slow monsters should have tricks upon their sleeves that make kiting at least undesirable. Snails are really bad in this regard, jellies are much better.

Personally, I believe that every slow monster should get something to compensate kiting or be removed.

Snails could leave behind some kind of slime on all traveled tiles while pursuing a player and not wandering. The slime's effects could be detrimental only to the player to prevent scumming and/or have synergy with certain creatures. The snail could also gain a speed bonus if traveling on slime to catch a player kiting in circles. Goliath beetles could be thunderously loud and be a huge annoyance to stealth characters without poison. Boring and boulder beetles are good right now but jellies have the best mechanic.

[dpeg]

"players annoyed by monster" != "monster badly designed"
Some examples might be: unseen horrors, hydras, the jelly, Mennas.

Jellies are not annoying because they eat items or corrodo stuff, in my opinion. That's something you can deal with. In my experience, the aggravation comes from the reaction: "A jelly! Oh my, I'll be running in circles, throwing stones, for the next 120 turns once more." And that's a valid reaction.
My proposal would deal with that, by the way. That's why I made it.

[Blade]

On the contrary, jellies are annoying exactly because they eat items and corrode stuff. The "running in circles throwing stones for 120 turns once more" is a symptom, not the problem. And the jelly -is- currently badly designed. Unseen horrors, hydras, and Mennas are all significant tactical threats. Jellies are utterly trivial in most circumstances, but manage to be incredibly obnoxious despite that. The way to fix this is not "make them less trivial and more obnoxious"

[BlackSheep]

I agree with Blade on this. Killing jellies isn't the bad part. It's losing items and having your equipment degrade that's annoying. They already got a minor buff now that they can degrade a weapon on the killing blow.

To the original issue, I think autokiting is taking automation a little too far. You're free to write your own macros and lua scripts to make playing more convenient, but I wouldn't ask a dev to spend their time writing a proc to play the game for me.

[crate]

The only monsters in the game that annoy me are ones that have no threat to actually kill me but manage to do permanent damage in some other way (corrosion, mutation, item destruction). Please just make them dangerous but not annoying.

[Grimm]

Snails could retreat into their shell when attacked from range.

[smock]

The only monsters in the game that annoy me are ones that have no threat to actually kill me but manage to do permanent damage in some other way (corrosion, mutation, item destruction). Please just make them dangerous but not annoying.

A monster that only destroyed potions or only corroded armour but could't kill you could still be dangerous. It could kill you indirectly because you could later run out of speed consumables. Of course, a monster that mutates but doesn't kill you would be the least scummy because you can drop potions but you can't drop yourself. Or would such monsters still be annoying?

[kefir645]

"players annoyed by monster" != "monster badly designed"
Some examples might be: unseen horrors, hydras, the jelly, Mennas.

Mennas and Hydras aren't annoying. They're both dangerous, downright terrifying if you encounter them for the first time unspoiled.

Plus Mennas is one of the few enemies (and probably the only unique) that's less dangerous for melee dudes then conjurations-based builds (that didn't train Charms hard enough or get really unlucky).

Unseen horrors I think should get some kind of additional power when seen. For example, they can actually cause fear or something like that.

[dpeg]

It's well established that players hate item destruction and developers keep it for a reason. So no need to dwell on that. The points minmay addresses would properly addressed by item destruction on the floor. Nothing unheard of; Brogue has it.

Assuming that jellies stay in the game (and I am very confident of that, after all there is Jiyva), it seems good to think about to how to reduce the annoyance. I hate the slurp like everyone else as a player, but I hate to spend five minutes of my game running in circles a lot more. Kiting is rarely interesting, and should be addressed on a monster-by-monster basis. I'd be happy if I knew that running in circles was a bad tactics and I'm better off doing something else when facing jellies.

[crate]

Well the easy solution for jellies is to make them either speed 8 or speed 10 instead of the most annoying speed in the game.

[dpeg]

Agreed, both on the speed (I'd prefer 8) and the corrosion. People would still throw stones... another option would be to have them eat stones as well.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Throwing stones at jellies is pretty suboptimal way to deal with them anyway unless you either have amazing throwing skill or you're a non-caster and have not had any wands or slings spawn. A sling with some rocks will kill it far faster than throwing. Training Slings to 2 will usually kill them without any need to kite and usually requires a very modest XP investment. Most wands make short work of them. And then there's always using a trash weapon you don't intend to keep or any enhancer staves or randarts you got really lucky and found early. If your armor corrodes, so what unless you had an amazing early find.

Unless I'm playing a Felid, I almost always have a quick way to deal with jellies when they show up that doesn't require throwing 120 rocks at them (and the Felid can't do that anyway).

[njvack]

Unless I'm playing a Felid, I almost always have a quick way to deal with jellies when they show up that doesn't require throwing 120 rocks at them (and the Felid can't do that anyway).

If you're playing a Felid, you don't need the items it's eating anyhow.