Crawl things I don't get.


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 400

Joined: Saturday, 24th September 2011, 03:45

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 03:58

Crawl things I don't get.

There's a lot of small bits of DCSS that I don't understand or appreciate, but I don't want to make 12 different threads. I'm not complaining here. I'm not asking for them to be changed or removed - for now - I'd like (dev) input on what/how/why these things are the way they are:

A. Sickness
All this ever accomplishes is forcing me to rest more and immediately after a fight with Komodos/Mosquitoes/sometimes ugly things. Crawl has too much enforced 5'ing, and this is a major cuplrit. (I really want to add nausea in here too but I think it's been discussed to death)

B. Corpse Sacrifice
Fedhas' LOS sacrificing is really slick - why don't Oka/Trog/Mak/Lugonu function the same way?

C. Non-renewable evoked Levitation/Flight
Why am I forced to stop levitating before I can start again? It's pretty irritating in the Abyss. Same goes for Black Drac flight.

D. Negative AC Armour
This just doesn't make any sense to me. The robe of misfortune is a funny joke, but the -7 randart gloves aren't so much. Feels like a NetHack leftover.

E. Contam Ego
Flat out ruins anything it touches. I've hear it justified as making a good swap option, but after 1000 games I have never seen randart jewelry with just the right properties to see myself doing this.

F. Fleeing
There's way too much of this going on. Elephants are massive killing machines, Slime Creatures are mindless - why are they getting scared all the time? Does anyone actually enjoy chasing dudes down? While we're on the subject:

G. Submersion
I'd kill it with fire but it's hiding. Right next to me. Underwater. And there's nothing I can do about it.

H. Ring ID Game
Ego'd armour and weapons auto-id. Why don't rings with the exact same egos work the same way?

I. Skeletal Warriors
Why do they have so much AC? Why do they have to come in packs? Bad monster draws can have you fighting 20+ of these dudes per Crypt floor. It's not an enjoyable experience (unless you have LRD).

J. Food Shops
1000 games and the only times I've used them is when they happen to be significantly closer than my stash and I've run out of potential shop/bazaar generation to use gold on. There's enough food in Crawl that these are a downer whenever they show up. Food is not fun.
User avatar

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1850

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 04:22

Location: Surabaya, Indonesia

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 04:13

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

eeviac wrote:A. Sickness
All this ever accomplishes is forcing me to rest more and immediately after a fight with Komodos/Mosquitoes/sometimes ugly things. Crawl has too much enforced 5'ing, and this is a major cuplrit. (I really want to add nausea in here too but I think it's been discussed to death)

How about changing it so that while having it:
1. Your HP (and maybe also MP) does not recover naturally, or recover at a slower rate.
2. If you take a rest, your attributes will drop.

So the player will have to choose between resting (attribute drop) and moving on (no attribute drop but the fights will get more dangerous for a while).

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 07:25

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

You should be aware that Crawl is an old game. The DCSS devteam has been willing to take drastic steps but it's far easier to suggest drastic changes than to carry them out. It's good to have a variant, Crawl Light, which experiments with such things.

A. Or the food clock is too lax. Not being able to heal is interesting at times (when in a dangerous sitatuation). This happens a lot less often than the boring sickness situations, granted (but it's a reason why some monsters do it). Also, sickness could be beefed up.

B. Because things evolve. The interface has been improved drastically over the last five years. This includes prayers (used to be 'o'ffer). When we made Fedhas, it was convenient and natural to have the mass sacrifice. I guess the same will happen to other gods as well. This would be an easy change. It needs a little discussion and then some effort. Coding manpower is sparse. If you want to help, take it to ##crawl-dev.

C. In order to distinguish temporary and permanent flight. The solution is not ideal but there is definitely a logic.

D. Not a problem, in my opinion. It is a problem that too many mediocre randarts are generated. But having gloves with three resists and negative AC sound very good to me.

F. Fleeing has often been discussed. Perhaps they should just leave the level (and you get xp/2 for that or so). Probably the first question should be for which monsters fleeing can be interesting. This excludes all critters. I think it is interesting for uniques and possibly a few more standout monsters.

G. Submersion should be used by the game as an attack technique -- think of it as a trap. You cannot spot the monster (optional: you spot it depending on T&D skill) and it will bite you in the face if you're next to it. This is similar to mimics but can be augmented: if one formerly submerged monster (I don't think they should ever re-submerge) attacks you, others of the same kind should approach (submerged) and attack you too. The goal is to create interesting tactical situations that cannot be dealt with trivially from afar.

J. Food shops are good with Fedhas. That's not enough as raison d'etre, but it's also not nothing. Spriggans like them, too. It'd help to have more magical food (and to sell it in shops).

For this message the author dpeg has received thanks: 3
dtsund, eeviac, MyOtheHedgeFox

dd

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 295

Joined: Sunday, 3rd June 2012, 20:05

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 13:08

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

I like fleeing. Enemies often do annoying things. That's why they're enemies.

I mean, if you meet a monster that starts to look like it's too much for you, are you just going to stand there being slaughtered... Or are you going to flee and maybe try it again later? So why should you expect the monsters to act any differently?

Besides, it's fun to chase down your prey and kill it. It's somehow much more satisfying than bashing the attack button while the enemy basically just stands there waiting to be killed.

Next someone's going to complain how inconvenient it is that monsters fight back...

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 879

Joined: Tuesday, 26th April 2011, 17:10

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 13:42

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Yeah, monsters fighting back and monsters fleeing are pretty much the same thing. Wait, what?

I totally agree with the OP (and dpeg) on the fleeing issue: The problem is not fleeing itself, it is kinda cool and maybe even interesting in some occasions. The problem is the horrible overuse of it. It is especially tedious in vaults and swamp.
User avatar

Barkeep

Posts: 4435

Joined: Tuesday, 11th January 2011, 12:28

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 14:25

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

dd wrote:I like fleeing. Enemies often do annoying things. That's why they're enemies.


I fundamentally disagree. Enemies (and the game in general) should put your character in risky situations that require planning and thought to overcome. Situations designed to be annoying without real in-game impact don't have a place in something designed to be fun. And yes, I know that "annoying" is as much in the eye of the beholder as is "fun."

In the fleeing example: monster fleeing as-implemented doesn't have much in-game impact. If the monster flees, maybe you're out a bit of ammo and/or food (either from attack spells or in hunting time). You can find it again; it's always going to be around. It's not worth spending resources to kill fleeing monsters because you can just do it later.

If they leave the level (as in dpeg's comment) with reduced XP gain, then you get to decide: do I take the reduced XP, or work harder to kill faster and get all the XP? Either way, you've showed Crawl you can deal with the monster and don't need to do it again.

As to why a lot of these things stay around unchanged -- in any software project, changes that seem easy often have wider-ranging impacts that are hard to deal with. Crawl is a big piece of software; I'm frankly surprised and impressed that the dev team can change things at the pace they do.
I am not a very good player. My mouth is a foul pit of LIES. KNOW THIS.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 400

Joined: Saturday, 24th September 2011, 03:45

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 14:27

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

I hadn't thought of Fedhas and food shops (I never worship him). That makes sense.

I must stress that I'm not complaining or even requesting change here, and that 'linley did it' and 'not enough manpower' are acceptable answers.

I might try my hand at coding the LOS prayer thing (I am an oka superfan after all). I have little c++ and even less git experience, but I assume the fedhas' code can be reiterated.

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 879

Joined: Tuesday, 26th April 2011, 17:10

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 15:11

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

minmay wrote:It's really hard to think of cases where fleeing/submerging is interesting. If I can get a monster to almost dead, I can do it again - and even if I can't, I can just switch to a launcher and kill the enemy anyway. If anything, it's making the monsters less dangerous, which is pretty bad considering it also makes them more annoying.


The interesting situations I can think of are very few too, but I'm not a dev :D . Maybe when you fight a monster that in order to win you must use some unusual tactics like potion of resistance or something. Because you only have a limited amount of those potions you would really want to get rid of that monster there and then. This would apply to maybe something like electric golems if don't have access to rElec. But of course there is ranged combat so pretty marginal, I know.

I also don't mind if fleeing is completely removed even if it did have its uses. The most important thing for me is to drastically reduce fleeing behaviour as it is currently implemented.

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1776

Joined: Monday, 21st February 2011, 15:57

Location: South Carolina

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 16:37

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

If when one enemy fled, all of that genus fled until they were out of LOS (or even maybe just out of melee range?) then you would end up with packs of enemies that could show up while you're weakened dealing with something else. Groups that wouldn't follow you into corridors and that retreated towards packs of their kin would be a nice touch, but that would make more sense for humanoids than for animals.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3163

Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 18:45

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 16:42

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

I'm fine with enemies acting in the interest of self preservation. Ranged enemies trying to keep their distance and enemies that can't reach you retreating when pelted by missiles/spells make the game more interesting. If you know that dumber creatures will turn tail and run when they get low, you'll adjust your tactics accordingly.

For this message the author BlackSheep has received thanks:
dd

Blades Runner

Posts: 546

Joined: Monday, 20th December 2010, 14:25

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 16:55

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

minmay wrote:Contam is a pretty bad randart property. It has no appreciable effect if you swap out the item, and an absolutely terrible effect if you don't. So it makes body armour completely useless and has no effect on jewellery or weapons except being really annoying. It's potentially interesting on items that also have the Curse property, but that's about it.


Good idea. Perhaps Contam can be restricted to (or very likely to) appear on re-Cursing equipment.

Snake Sneak

Posts: 113

Joined: Saturday, 12th May 2012, 21:18

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 17:01

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Why is that a good idea? It just makes glow artefacts even less desirable. Adding MORE drawbacks to something is the absolute worst way to make things interesting. The superior way to make interesting gameplay is to give the player several good options, not several bad ones and ask her to pick the lesser of evils.

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1776

Joined: Monday, 21st February 2011, 15:57

Location: South Carolina

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 18:13

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Vampiric used to be a property that encouraged switching, but the costs were changed so that you hunger on wield instead of hungering while wielding.

Should +mut be changed the same way, such that you have a chance of getting a (often bad) mutation or heavy glow when equipping the item, but there is no penalty for continued use? That way, you tend to commit to the item instead of tending to switch to it when you need it.

This also has the advantage of working just as well for jewelry and armour as for weapons.
Last edited by jejorda2 on Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 18:18, edited 1 time in total.

For this message the author jejorda2 has received thanks: 5
danharaj, dpeg, Galefury, Midpoint, TehDruid

Snake Sneak

Posts: 113

Joined: Saturday, 12th May 2012, 21:18

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 18:16

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

jejorda2 wrote:Vampiric used to be a property that encouraged switching, but the costs were changed so that you hunger on wield instead of hungering while wielding.

Should +mut be changed the same way, such that you have a chance of getting a (often bad) mutation or heavy glow when equipping the item, but there is no penalty for continued use? That way, you tend to commit to the item instead of tending to switch to it when you need it.


This is a fantastic idea and I love it.
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1533

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:52

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 20:10

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

I can never recall what kinds of decisions are deemed to be interesting for a player to have to make.

If +Mut were changed as described here, I'd only ever use it if I had some way of resisting the mutations or a big stack of cure mutation potions. That is, even less than I currently use items with +Mut, which is already pretty much never.

Personally, I don't like the items like Faith, Vampiric, distortion etc. that impose a huge one-time cost. I may use them for a bit early on but later in the game I'll invariably have a number of other things I want to swap in that same slot. It's pretty rare that I'll find an item so good that it's worth giving up the ability to use other items occasionally without major cost.

So for me it ends up as a no-brainer - I just leave items with those properties behind. Maybe I'm not right, but I suspect there are a lot of players who think likewise. Whether they are correct or not, it results in less interesting gameplay for them.

Getting heavy glow makes me feel mostly just sad - great, my nice character is probably going to get screwed up and there's nothing I can do about it. So I just wouldn't use it.

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 36

Joined: Saturday, 21st January 2012, 22:56

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 21:01

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

jejorda2's suggestion would take +Contam items from never useful to situationally useful, so I don't see how this could be a bad thing. For example if I am a fighter relying on a +3 +3 short sword and I see the Plutonium sword on Lair:1 I might actually want to use it, even with no !cMut.

Should +Contam items ID before use (the way vampiric items usually do)? It could be annoying to have to scroll-ID every item in case it is +Contam and I get red glow.

It would be neat IMO if cure mutation potions removed any contamination in addition to their normal effects (or do they do this already?). This might actually make !cMut worth carrying around, and I could use-id a +contam item if I already had teleportitus 3 and was about to cure it, for example.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3163

Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 18:45

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 21:06

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Cure mut doesn't remove contamination, but scrolls of vulnerability do.

For this message the author BlackSheep has received thanks:
chessplaya

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 21:11

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

chessplaya: Yes, for example by a "strange glow". If, furthermore, such objects had a tendency to come with good properties...
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 832

Joined: Saturday, 30th July 2011, 00:58

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 21:22

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Funny, I mentioned a couple weeks ago how +MUT is pointless and got jumped on by a bunch of folks saying it isn't a problem.
KoboldLord wrote:I'm also morbidly curious now as to how Shatter is abusable for 'stealth tricks'. It's about as stealthy as the Kool-Aid Man smashing through the walls and running through the room

Dungeon Master

Posts: 3618

Joined: Thursday, 23rd December 2010, 12:43

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 21:44

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

bobross: Care to link?

Perhaps it's not what you said but the way you said it?
User avatar

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 832

Joined: Saturday, 30th July 2011, 00:58

Post Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 22:30

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

viewtopic.php?p=62291#p62291

Is the post that really started the MUT+ conversation, my first reply is a couple down. And apparently it wasn't a bunch of folks, just CS lol. If nothing else, the link gives some additional feedback on MUT+. I still thinks it makes everything worthless... I have yet to find a MUT+ item that even made swapping worthwhile, so the argument about it is fairly academic... Do such items exist? Probably, but I doubt they spawn enough to warrant keeping MUT+ in the game as is.

I'd be more in favor of having it act like Faith/Vamp. This would make for some more interesting choices to me, and apparently give me a reason to tote Vulnerability scrolls around as a melee hehe. Or maybe if Glow didn't always give you really really crappy mutations (Got Zot trapped once and ended up with Blurry Vision, Teleportitis2, Zerkeritis1, and about -4 stats... I just said screw it and quit)... MUT+ could be fun if it acted more like a really fast Evolution, but I guess then MUT+ items could be scummable (so glad I have to worry about that argument coming up because some folks like to game the system).

At any rate, I think there are ways that could be used to make MUT+ items more fun while still keeping the tactical choices in there.
KoboldLord wrote:I'm also morbidly curious now as to how Shatter is abusable for 'stealth tricks'. It's about as stealthy as the Kool-Aid Man smashing through the walls and running through the room

For this message the author bobross419 has received thanks:
dpeg
User avatar

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 301

Joined: Saturday, 21st May 2011, 08:23

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 02:52

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

danr wrote:Personally, I don't like the items like Faith, Vampiric, distortion etc. that impose a huge one-time cost. I may use them for a bit early on but later in the game I'll invariably have a number of other things I want to swap in that same slot. It's pretty rare that I'll find an item so good that it's worth giving up the ability to use other items occasionally without major cost.



Faith is by far the best amulet to have in the early game. Imagine a god ability that would give you two extra ranks of piety now, at a cost of one rank of piety later on. Would you use it? Of course. That's what Faith is.

You rarely need another amulet in the early game. And the piety cost is laughably small when you take it off, compared to the benefits of getting a gift or a skill online several floors early.
(p.s. this is stupid some dev please make it not stupid) - minmay
User avatar

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 482

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 21:08

Location: Savannah, Ga.

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 18:53

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

eeviac wrote:G. Submersion
I'd kill it with fire but it's hiding. Right next to me. Underwater. And there's nothing I can do about it.


You can equip a weapon with reach, 'v' and target the square.
  Code:
Jory screams, "No, no!" before exploding into a cloud of blood!

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3163

Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 18:45

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 18:59

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

tcjsavannah wrote:
eeviac wrote:G. Submersion
I'd kill it with fire but it's hiding. Right next to me. Underwater. And there's nothing I can do about it.


You can equip a weapon with reach, 'v' and target the square.

This was removed in trunk.
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1533

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:52

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 21:49

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

sardonica wrote:
danr wrote:Personally, I don't like the items like Faith, Vampiric, distortion etc. that impose a huge one-time cost. I may use them for a bit early on but later in the game I'll invariably have a number of other things I want to swap in that same slot. It's pretty rare that I'll find an item so good that it's worth giving up the ability to use other items occasionally without major cost.



Faith is by far the best amulet to have in the early game. Imagine a god ability that would give you two extra ranks of piety now, at a cost of one rank of piety later on. Would you use it? Of course. That's what Faith is.

You rarely need another amulet in the early game. And the piety cost is laughably small when you take it off, compared to the benefits of getting a gift or a skill online several floors early.


I'm pretty sure that I once donned a faith amulet at ******, and when I took it off, I was at ***... . That really ripped my gitch because I hadn't even benefited from gaining any piety by it. Perhaps the effect has bee limited?

Or maybe it was from *****. to ***... The way those piety rankings work, it might be the same amount of piety loss that causes different numbers of *s to be lost depending where you are on the scale. IIRC *****. is 120 piety and ****** is 160 - 200, so that one star of piety loss could be as much as 80 piety points. The only way to know though is to go source diving.

If piety amounts and costs were more transparent that would be really nice.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3163

Joined: Friday, 6th January 2012, 18:45

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 21:58

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

You lose exactly one third of your piety when you take off the amulet.
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1533

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 20:52

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 22:01

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

That's a big chunk when you're at ****** ! Depending which God you have and how easy it is to restore piety at your point in the game, you could be down for a long. It's like a super-bad penance, although you do still have some piety, you won't bounce back to full nearly as quickly.
User avatar

Vaults Vanquisher

Posts: 482

Joined: Thursday, 16th December 2010, 21:08

Location: Savannah, Ga.

Post Thursday, 28th June 2012, 22:39

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

BlackSheep wrote:
tcjsavannah wrote:
eeviac wrote:G. Submersion
I'd kill it with fire but it's hiding. Right next to me. Underwater. And there's nothing I can do about it.


You can equip a weapon with reach, 'v' and target the square.

This was removed in trunk.


BOO-urns.
  Code:
Jory screams, "No, no!" before exploding into a cloud of blood!

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3037

Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06

Post Friday, 29th June 2012, 00:28

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

danr wrote:That's a big chunk when you're at ****** ! Depending which God you have and how easy it is to restore piety at your point in the game, you could be down for a long. It's like a super-bad penance, although you do still have some piety, you won't bounce back to full nearly as quickly.


Assuming you are the minimum legal ****** piety of 161, the penalty will take you all the way down to ****, but at that point you are at 107 piety and only have to hit 120 to get back up to *****. This shouldn't take very long.

In this worst case scenario, you temporarily lose a single relevant ability from… Cheibriados, Kikubaaqudgha, Lugonu, Makhleb, Okawaru, The Shining One, Yredelemnul, and Zin. Gifts also slow down a bit. None of these relevant abilities require more than that 13 piety to get back.

13 piety, and you have all your divine abilities back, even in the very worst possible case. That's nothing like penance, even ignoring the fact that you get to keep benefiting from all the lower-piety abilities, many of which are actually better than the top-tier abilities.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 2996

Joined: Tuesday, 28th June 2011, 20:41

Location: Berlin

Post Friday, 29th June 2012, 11:03

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

bobross419 wrote:Funny, I mentioned a couple weeks ago how +MUT is pointless and got jumped on by a bunch of folks saying it isn't a problem.


These are two different topics... here +MUT is being discussed from a design perspective, in that thread from its gameplay worth. As said in this thread, it does nothing on jewellery and makes armour unusable. These are the points being made in this thread in favour of removing +MUT or changing it; these are the points made in the thread you linked to being made to show that it's ok to use +MUT jewellery. I don't often use +MUT, but categorically dismissing items with it as useless is a step too far. Yes, I have used rings with it in the past (+MUT rF++ Str-3 would be a good swap for instance). I've also seen top-tier players using them as swaps. However, I do think the arguments against the existence of rMut (and the proposed "bad mutation upon wielding" change) are convincing.

P.S. my time-traveling abilities pretty much make me a 'bunch of dudes' on my own

Spider Stomper

Posts: 218

Joined: Tuesday, 21st February 2012, 21:32

Post Wednesday, 4th July 2012, 08:48

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Fleeing in Everquest (and other MMORPGs I'm sure) was monumentally bad, because the fleeing monster would chain aggro on the rest of the dungeon and you could get a big "train" of monsters on top of you. I would make a fleeing monster effect a scroll of noise at the player's location when it leaves LOS. Maybe even spawn a packmate or two when it leaves LOS, for added effect.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 400

Joined: Saturday, 24th September 2011, 03:45

Post Wednesday, 4th July 2012, 15:38

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

eeviac wrote:E. Contam Ego
Flat out ruins anything it touches. I've hear it justified as making a good swap option, but after 1000 games I have never seen randart jewelry with just the right properties to see myself doing this.

Well I have to eat my words here - in my current game I was swapping in a contam rage amulet for tough fights. It was kind of annoying to have to keep putting it off and on. That is, until I found a vanilla rage amulet.

ddubois wrote:Fleeing in Everquest (and other MMORPGs I'm sure) was monumentally bad, because the fleeing monster would chain aggro on the rest of the dungeon and you could get a big "train" of monsters on top of you. I would make a fleeing monster effect a scroll of noise at the player's location when it leaves LOS. Maybe even spawn a packmate or two when it leaves LOS, for added effect.

Wait, what? 'Fleeing was really really bad in this other game, so let's take its badness and add it to crawl's already bad fleeing.' I'm not following your logic here?

Spider Stomper

Posts: 218

Joined: Tuesday, 21st February 2012, 21:32

Post Wednesday, 4th July 2012, 17:01

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

"Bad outcome for the player" is not the same as "bad game design". In the MMORPG's it's a skill-testing situation, which has a bad consequence that happens when you don't have control of the battle. Your group had to not only deal with the break, and the fight, but the running.

In crawl, the only thing of real consequence that it does do, which is admittedly notable, is trap new/careless players, because they will chase after it and get themselves into hot water. Other than that, all it does it annoy people.

Tartarus Sorceror

Posts: 1776

Joined: Monday, 21st February 2011, 15:57

Location: South Carolina

Post Wednesday, 4th July 2012, 17:08

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Bad for the character can be good for the game. Attaching penalties to causing an enemy to flee makes you decide whether to change your tactics or suffer the penalty.

Right now it is hard to know when an enemy might flee, so the penalties would probably just be annoying. Maybe there needs to be another vidible state where an enemy will flee when hit once more so you can decide whether to try t kil it with one blow or cause flight.
User avatar

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 38

Joined: Friday, 13th April 2012, 05:35

Location: Palm Bay, Florida

Post Wednesday, 4th July 2012, 18:15

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

eeviac wrote:There's a lot of small bits of DCSS that I don't understand or appreciate, but I don't want to make 12 different threads. I'm not complaining here. I'm not asking for them to be changed or removed - for now - I'd like (dev) input on what/how/why these things are the way they are:


I'll give a whirley go at it...though I haven't started my dev'n with crawl, my background is in test development engineering where I have had my experience with developing.

eeviac wrote:A. Sickness
All this ever accomplishes is forcing me to rest more and immediately after a fight with Komodos/Mosquitoes/sometimes ugly things. Crawl has too much enforced 5'ing, and this is a major cuplrit. (I really want to add nausea in here too but I think it's been discussed to death)


In keeping with the original Dungeon Crawl by Atari, poisons makes you sick. Sickness is a part of the game. If you only got poisoned once while playing, you would be asking "Why is that there? Seems like it should happen more often."

eeviac wrote:B. Corpse Sacrifice
Fedhas' LOS sacrificing is really slick - why don't Oka/Trog/Mak/Lugonu function the same way?


To thine own self be true. Why have a variety of Gods, if they all do the same thing? It adds diversity.

eeviac wrote:C. Non-renewable evoked Levitation/Flight
Why am I forced to stop levitating before I can start again? It's pretty irritating in the Abyss. Same goes for Black Drac flight.


Levitation is not a compound spell, so the more you do it, won't make you go higher. It is because of this thinking that some people have tried to apply to it in RPGs that the spell must expire before it can be recast. It's just the way the spell is defined globally.

eeviac wrote:D. Negative AC Armour
This just doesn't make any sense to me. The robe of misfortune is a funny joke, but the -7 randart gloves aren't so much. Feels like a NetHack leftover.


Variety. Having the same item every game coming up with the same cursed stats makes the game dull. The object is to make the game seem different every time it gets played.

eeviac wrote:E. Contam Ego
Flat out ruins anything it touches. I've hear it justified as making a good swap option, but after 1000 games I have never seen randart jewelry with just the right properties to see myself doing this.


Contamination leads to mutations. It is a way to keep a very powerful item from being used to death.

eeviac wrote:F. Fleeing
There's way too much of this going on. Elephants are massive killing machines, Slime Creatures are mindless - why are they getting scared all the time? Does anyone actually enjoy chasing dudes down? While we're on the subject:


It's called "Preservation of Life" and every animal will do it. Every intelligent being will do it. Though I tend to agree, it doesn't seem like behavior that a slime creature would take, but then I can also think of the times that I was glad to see one evade so it didn't take down an enchantment just before I got to kill it.

eeviac wrote:G. Submersion
I'd kill it with fire but it's hiding. Right next to me. Underwater. And there's nothing I can do about it.


It's a peek-a-boo encounter. Now you see me, now you don't. I understand at times it feels like your playing whack-a-mole, but it brings a counter to flight and levitation that allows someone to think they can move over deep water to evade an encounter.

eeviac wrote:H. Ring ID Game
Ego'd armour and weapons auto-id. Why don't rings with the exact same egos work the same way?


Many do. They just don't do it as soon as you put them on. For example ring of fire. You won't know it is a ring of fire until you get hit with fire.

eeviac wrote:I. Skeletal Warriors
Why do they have so much AC? Why do they have to come in packs? Bad monster draws can have you fighting 20+ of these dudes per Crypt floor. It's not an enjoyable experience (unless you have LRD).


They are made of bone. It is not like destroying the flesh will end this encounter. You must destroy a bone mass, and many of these are trolls so that makes the mass even greater. Bone is hard enough to use as a shield, so there is probably a shield bonus in there too.

eeviac wrote:J. Food Shops
1000 games and the only times I've used them is when they happen to be significantly closer than my stash and I've run out of potential shop/bazaar generation to use gold on. There's enough food in Crawl that these are a downer whenever they show up. Food is not fun.


Tell that to a human wizard with no amulet of gourmand. It depends on the race and class that you play for some of these to make sense.
One out of fouw people suffews fwom Ewmuh Fudd Syndwome. Guess whaaat?

Tomb Titivator

Posts: 879

Joined: Tuesday, 26th April 2011, 17:10

Post Wednesday, 4th July 2012, 18:51

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Thurman wrote:It's called "Preservation of Life" and every animal will do it. Every intelligent being will do it. Though I tend to agree, it doesn't seem like behavior that a slime creature would take, but then I can also think of the times that I was glad to see one evade so it didn't take down an enchantment just before I got to kill it.


Yeah, every shadow dragon that I've encountered in real life has done this, yeah. Seriously, Crawl is not a real-world simulator although "logical" behaviour of monsters may lead to easier gameplay, lower learning curve (you know what to expect) and more flavour. However, I don't think the mass marathon that crawl monsters tend to practise adds anything right now. It might if implemented differently, though.
User avatar

Blades Runner

Posts: 536

Joined: Wednesday, 10th August 2011, 01:06

Post Saturday, 7th July 2012, 05:47

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Time for mass quotation!

Thurman wrote:
eeviac wrote:B. Corpse Sacrifice
Fedhas' LOS sacrificing is really slick - why don't Oka/Trog/Mak/Lugonu function the same way?


To thine own self be true. Why have a variety of Gods, if they all do the same thing? It adds diversity.


You think it adds diversity to the gods if one forces you to walk over and press a button on each corpse and the other does it all with one button? They are functionally identical, one is just outright annoying to use.

Thurman wrote:
eeviac wrote:E. Contam Ego
Flat out ruins anything it touches. I've hear it justified as making a good swap option, but after 1000 games I have never seen randart jewelry with just the right properties to see myself doing this.


Contamination leads to mutations. It is a way to keep a very powerful item from being used to death.


That would be an interesting argument if it had a good chance or even a tendency to only spawn on good items. Almost every Contam item I have seen hasn't been worth it. Beyond that, why even spawn it on heavy amour? That's just floor trash; its the same as not spawning the item at all. Its just a trap for unspoiled players.

Thurman wrote:
eeviac wrote:I. Skeletal Warriors
Why do they have so much AC? Why do they have to come in packs? Bad monster draws can have you fighting 20+ of these dudes per Crypt floor. It's not an enjoyable experience (unless you have LRD).


They are made of bone. It is not like destroying the flesh will end this encounter. You must destroy a bone mass, and many of these are trolls so that makes the mass even greater. Bone is hard enough to use as a shield, so there is probably a shield bonus in there too.

Then why is almost every other skeletal creature a complete pushover? They are tough because they are warriors and are trained, I guess, but being made of bone has nothing to do with it.

Thurman wrote:
eeviac wrote:J. Food Shops
1000 games and the only times I've used them is when they happen to be significantly closer than my stash and I've run out of potential shop/bazaar generation to use gold on. There's enough food in Crawl that these are a downer whenever they show up. Food is not fun.


Tell that to a human wizard with no amulet of gourmand. It depends on the race and class that you play for some of these to make sense.


The only time food matters is if you're playing a Spriggan, Ce caster, or CeBe. If your human wizard cant get by without Gourmand, something is wrong.

For this message the author Deimos has received thanks:
Bloax
User avatar

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 38

Joined: Friday, 13th April 2012, 05:35

Location: Palm Bay, Florida

Post Monday, 9th July 2012, 04:12

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Deimos wrote:Time for mass quotation!


I was going to answer this in a long post, but for the sake of argument, I am going to assume you don't program or use arbitrary math on a daily basis. I assume the workers here are few, but the needs are many. Why else would the R-click on one page exit you from it, but on another you have to hit the ESC key, and another it says you can exit by using R-click yet it doesn't work. This is what we in the coding industry refer to as a WIP (Work in Progress).

One God demands a fire sacrifice, the other disembodiment. Yet another wants it impaled on a pole. Some Gods are more demanding than others, or irl the issue just isn't as important as fixing a bug, or proof reading of the next release, or checking a branch that someone has submitted to see if it follows tradition. Choose a suggested idea, or come up with your own. There are 568 files of code currently and growing. Some of which have upwards to 4000 lines of code. They have been written by various people. Some where great with math, and some not so. Some came up with some outstanding routines, and some leaves one thinking what were they thinking?? Some where like "I am in a hurry here, someone please come back and make this code smaller." It works so much better to offer up a suggestion with what seems to be a redundant routine, than just bringing up the fact that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Personally, I don't see how you can slip into Hell and get 4 runes without carrying food with you, but maybe I am missing something. It's pretty hard to chop up and eat a corpse that disappears into a puff of smoke.

I'm not trying to be bellicose, in fact it is not to my best interest to spend time I don't have trying to prove a point that is not that pertinent at a particular hour I should be doing something else. If you feel that I am, I will apologize now. Perhaps just playing the game is not enough for you anymore. Perhaps contributing to a new branch idea or perhaps presenting the post in a fashion of "I see this... What I would love to see is this... Is that even possible, type of format would get a better result. Also try to remember that the Tradition of Rogue was not to build the strongest player possible, but to take the weakest possible character in and out. It is a game of strategy not power. So if you are finding too much food, perhaps you are focused on clearing the level, and not just trying to find the stairs and evade encounters. Many elements are there for a variety of play styles. This was not so in the beginning of the Rogue Tradition. In the beginning it was more like very few Gods, and no water to be concerned with submersion and was never based on skill sets. It's not perfect, but hats off to those who have sacrificed their time to make it what it is today. I look forward to helping once I get through reading what seems to be a copy of "War and Peace."
Last edited by Thurman on Monday, 9th July 2012, 05:03, edited 1 time in total.
One out of fouw people suffews fwom Ewmuh Fudd Syndwome. Guess whaaat?

Halls Hopper

Posts: 81

Joined: Saturday, 18th December 2010, 07:08

Post Monday, 9th July 2012, 04:47

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Thurman wrote:Corpse Sacrifice: I am sure that every deity throughout history irl has a handbook on how to sacrifice on an altar and everyone who ever performed a sacrifice did it the same way throughout history. There is variety. The Mayans did it by decapitation, Baals did it by incineration. Why is it surprising that one God would be more demanding than another?
(That explains it, but simply put, have you ever looked at the code? I am working on trying to understand it myself. The code has been written by many people. Some of it has been rewritten to simplify or condense to save memory. Some is just a pain to figure out what each variable ties to because the variable it ties to is another variable that is tied to another variable which is tied to another until it reaches the original variable, or so it seems. Trying to chase a variable is not fun. There is no reason for on one screen you can R-Click to exit and another you don't, yet another says you can, but you can't. This is from what I have read in the works to be corrected, but that is minor compared to the real work that has to be done to keep the game progressive.)

If you're arguing that LOS-sacrifice isn't or shouldn't be a thing only because it's flavorful for some gods to make you do the interface legwork, that's dumb and contrary to the development philosophy (and while I disagree with parts of said philosophy, I agree wholeheartedly with the parts that are relevant here). If you're arguing that LOS-sacrifice isn't or shouldn't be a thing because of implementation difficulties, well, Crawl Light's had the feature for a while now. It wasn't terribly hard to implement.

...actually, I should probably go ahead and post a patch for that to Mantis.

If you're arguing neither of these things, then I don't even know what to say.
Just a well-spoken spambot.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 400

Joined: Saturday, 24th September 2011, 03:45

Post Monday, 9th July 2012, 04:55

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

That would be awesome if you did post a patch, man. I've been trying to figure out the code myself but I'm no good at this stuff.
User avatar

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 38

Joined: Friday, 13th April 2012, 05:35

Location: Palm Bay, Florida

Post Monday, 9th July 2012, 05:08

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

Let me apologize, I am use to my post not getting read at this hour, and I made an edit up above. Please check it. Thanks.
One out of fouw people suffews fwom Ewmuh Fudd Syndwome. Guess whaaat?

Halls Hopper

Posts: 81

Joined: Saturday, 18th December 2010, 07:08

Post Monday, 9th July 2012, 05:10

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

eeviac wrote:That would be awesome if you did post a patch, man. I've been trying to figure out the code myself but I'm no good at this stuff.

Done.
Just a well-spoken spambot.

For this message the author dtsund has received thanks:
eeviac

Spider Stomper

Posts: 233

Joined: Saturday, 18th February 2012, 04:40

Post Friday, 13th July 2012, 11:04

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

ddubois wrote:Fleeing in Everquest (and other MMORPGs I'm sure) was monumentally bad, because the fleeing monster would chain aggro on the rest of the dungeon and you could get a big "train" of monsters on top of you. I would make a fleeing monster effect a scroll of noise at the player's location when it leaves LOS. Maybe even spawn a packmate or two when it leaves LOS, for added effect.


I too remember fleeing in EQ1 but for different reasons. Once a mob got below a certain amount of HP (20%<) movement speed was reduced drastically and if you snared (read: slowed) the mob whilst fleeing, it stopped altogether. The bad news was that it worked vs. players as well and some mobs could snare you too. This was brilliantly done in that game and the whole game system was partly built around that (and a million other things) to the point of having specifically needed snare classes and ways of loosing aggro if you yourself got below 20%< hp and/or snared.
But that is an mmorpg and how it would be implemented and of practical use in DCSS i have no idea.

Halls Hopper

Posts: 85

Joined: Sunday, 15th April 2012, 08:40

Post Friday, 13th July 2012, 11:27

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

I just won a 15-runer with my main weapon being a +8 artifact +contam bardiche of freezing given by oka. +contam part hardly caused any problems, even when tabbing through rooms with something like 40 monsters in it - I never accumulated enought glow to get a mutation. Still I was obliged to unwield that weapon after ANY fight and that's why I was fighting almost all popcorn monsters with a +6 +8 glaive of fire. It is suboptimal most of the time nad caused ONLY by the tedium involved in wielding and unwielding the weapon.

I actually think that +contam glaive should give MORE glow to make the property matter. Otherwise it's just annoying. As mentioned. +contam armour is unusable and any other piece of stuff with +contam is barely annoying. Should we probably make it more harsh? Right now that weapon has not cost me any decisions, even when using haste it seemed safe.
User avatar

Abyss Ambulator

Posts: 1249

Joined: Sunday, 18th September 2011, 02:11

Post Saturday, 14th July 2012, 01:05

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

onton wrote:I actually think that +contam glaive should give MORE glow to make the property matter. Otherwise it's just annoying. As mentioned. +contam armour is unusable and any other piece of stuff with +contam is barely annoying. Should we probably make it more harsh? Right now that weapon has not cost me any decisions, even when using haste it seemed safe.

The way to fix one of the worst randart props in the game is absolutely not "make it even worse"
User avatar

Vestibule Violator

Posts: 1509

Joined: Wednesday, 21st September 2011, 01:10

Location: St. John's, NL, Canada

Post Saturday, 14th July 2012, 01:07

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

granting rMut- could be interesting. The item doesn't contaminate you directly, but makes your immunity weaker.
Won all race/bg, unwon (online): Nem* Hep Uka
Favourites: 15-rune Trog, OgNe/OgIE/OgSu (usually Ash), Ds, Ru, SpEn, Ce of Chei, Qaz

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6393

Joined: Friday, 17th December 2010, 18:17

Post Saturday, 14th July 2012, 03:40

Re: Crawl things I don't get.

rchandra wrote:granting rMut- could be interesting. The item doesn't contaminate you directly, but makes your immunity weaker.

Possible niche for a new race there?

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 30 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.