Rename Elves

[nicooo]

One elf species is enough. The gameplay is different enough between the three and I don't think the elven halls even have high or sludge elves in them. Also, deep elf and deep dwarf sound similar but have nothing in common.

[snow]

High elves are like deep elves only better. I'd argue they aren't different enough.

Also I once had a dream that I was a giant floating stone head and I vomited boiling water all over this deep elf's face. I'm not sure how relevant that is though.

[Mankeli]

Also I once had a dream that I was a giant floating stone head and I vomited boiling water all over this deep elf's face. I'm not sure how relevant that is though.

You, sir, are a liar.

Also going from 3-->1 needs some more arguments, me thinks.

Edit. Also to rename and to remove are two different acts.

Edit. 2 Also Why is it bad that different "elf" species resemble one another but also a bad thing a when different "deep" species don't resemble one another?

[XuaXua]

Rename Sludge Elf to Mountain Dwarf.

[KoboldLord]

Remove elves entirely. Really, do it. The word has too much pop culture baggage. The existing elf subraces can simply be renamed with little or no change by substituting some other name from folklore that doesn't drag quite so many strong and often conflicting prior meanings with it.

Deep elves could be the sidhe or aes sidhe, from Irish and Scottish mythology. They live underground and are powerfully magical, but are also likely to be capricious.

Sludge elves could be huldu or huldra, from Scandinavian folklore. Huldufolk are forest-dwelling beings with cow's tails who aid or torment people who wander into their territory. They are quick to take offense from humans, and often exact retribution far beyond the severity of the offense.

High elves are honestly just good candidates for removal. They don't really have any interesting hooks other than 'being elves' that are stereotypical as possible, and they don't have any interesting features as a species. Their weak aptitudes are carefully placed to be as irrelevant as possible, such that they are reasonably strong at every sort of character archetype in the game.

[Mankeli]

Rename Sludge Elf to Mountain Dwarf.

Or rename Sludge Elf to Mountain Elf. Only armour slot is headgear. No hats, helmets only!

[sardonica]

High elves are honestly just good candidates for removal. They don't really have any interesting hooks other than 'being elves' that are stereotypical as possible, and they don't have any interesting features as a species. Their weak aptitudes are carefully placed to be as irrelevant as possible, such that they are reasonably strong at every sort of character archetype in the game.

I really agree here. They're clearly designed to be the "magic/melee hybrid" but there are many other races which fill the role just as well.

[dd]

High elves are honestly just good candidates for removal. They don't really have any interesting hooks other than 'being elves' that are stereotypical as possible, and they don't have any interesting features as a species.

I totally agree.

In fact, why stop at High Elves? We should totally remove humans. They don't really have any interesting hooks other than "being humans" that are as stereotypically average as possible, and they don't have any interesting features as a species.

[Deimos]

I think Humans should stay. They are a very clean pick, and while being boring, they actually do quite well in many roles without any racial drawbacks whatsoever.

High elves? Junk em. They are terribly boring. Deep Elves can stay as is or be renamed. I vote Sludge Elves are renamed.

[danharaj]

I disagree with tossing high elves. They have good skill aptitudes but a very bad experience aptitude. This is 'interesting'.

[yogaFLAME]

DE and SE should definitely stick around, in whatever naming scheme is decided. HE I do enjoy playing but I wouldn't have a MD breakdown if they were cut.

[snow]

I wouldn't mind removing high elves. Some people are going to complain though because they're basically deep elves with more HP.

[Sporkman]

Another possibility: shift humans towards fighting and make high elves the 'jack of all trades' type. Popular culture seems to insist on humans being average, why not make them decidedly not?

[Kulutes]

I agree. we should just remove every race that has ANYTHING in common with another. Its just unacceptable.

This means we should only have humans, Felids and octopodes as playable species. clearly all these humanoids are far too similar.

But why stop there? look at all these backgrounds we have? just BEGGING to be removed!
I suggest we trim it down to 2 backgrounds. "Power Tabber" and "Firestormer" that should fill all the unique and interesting roles we need yes?

I also understand that the devs want to be conservative. but the removal of 4 spells this update is erring too far on the side of caution. Just remove all the spells except magic dart and firestorm.
Utility spells like Projected noise, see invisibility, insulation and evaporate are just a waste of magic anyway because they don't just kill everything in sight instantly, Am I right fellas?

Thanks for reading. I hope we can all walk together into a bright future without all of these intimidating things known as "options" or "tactical flexibility" things like that are killing gaming.

[Kate]

I also wouldn't mind removing High Elves but I think I'm in the minority on the dev team. I'd certainly be in favour of de-elfifying at least one of the elf types, though (sidhe was already thrown around as a possibility for HE renaming in fact, I think).

Also maybe some people could save everyone time by not posting at all, instead of writing unproductive hyperbolic rubbish that everyone else then has to ignore (in general this is probably a good guideline for discussing game design?).

[evilmike]

I've argued elsewhere that the three elves are suitably differentiated, and if we still decide they are too close to each other, there are ways we can differentiate them even further. See the recent change to deep elves (better at earth, worse at air). I am firmly opposed to removing any of these races when there are changes like this we can make.

While I think "gimmicky" races are fine, I think Crawl should have many races that are "normal" except for apt differences. I also think there are enough niches to fill (in the "hybrid" sort of character) that we can do without cutting anything in this area.

I have no particular attachment to the "elf" name; my argument is strictly about gameplay. There is a separate argument here, which is that we have too many races named "elf". In that case, the solution is not removal, but renaming. Some ideas exist here.

I'm not a fan of renaming for the sake of renaming, though. It should at the very least come with some apt changes. Here are some ideas:

Aside from draconians, no race has an ice or fire apt higher than +1. One of SE/HE could be made to favour fire, and one ice (with -2 to the other apt). Ice has more potential, since there are two proposed races which might come up soon that heavily favour fire. Also, tengus already fill this role of above average fire, below average ice).

Long blades are a relatively underused weapon type. One race could favour these more (at the expensive of other weapons). I'm talking an increase from +2 to +3.

Make sludge elves bad with bows, but good with crossbows.

Reduce high elf tloc, and tmut apts to 0. Increase sludge elf tloc to +1.

Reduce one of the races invocations stat to 0 or -1. There are few races with poor invocations, and almost everyone gets +1 or better.

Note: the above proposals haven't been given much thought. I'm just saying these because I think if your argument is "these races are too similar", it's very easy to come up with several ways of making them different. That's the nice thing about races which favour magic.

If you're going to argue along the lines of "well, none of these races get unique abilities", my response is that unique abilities/mutations should be the exception, not the rule. It is a good thing to have "normal" races.

[KoboldLord]

I've argued elsewhere that the three elves are suitably differentiated, and if we still decide they are too close to each other, there are ways we can differentiate them even further. See the recent change to deep elves (better at earth, worse at air). I am firmly opposed to removing any of these races when there are changes like this we can make.

While I think "gimmicky" races are fine, I think Crawl should have many races that are "normal" except for apt differences. I also think there are enough niches to fill (in the "hybrid" sort of character) that we can do without cutting anything in this area.

High elves go beyond being 'hybrid', though. They aren't bad at anything. All conjurors play pretty much the same as other conjurors, all archers play pretty much the same as other archers, and all melee beatsticks play the same as other melee types. Their weak necromancy and summoning were perhaps intended as weaknesses, but unfortunately they were necromancy and summoning which are both extremely powerful regardless of aptitude. There is no build at the game that high elves don't have the aptitudes required to excel with.

This does not apply to deep elves. Deep elves have excellent magic aptitudes, but their terrible melee aptitudes and hit points mean that hybridization is a vastly more xp-intensive process for them than any other species in the game. They're giving up something for the power they wield.

Sludge elves look superficially similar to high elves, but their weak aptitudes are in much more important places. Poor conjuration is a much more significant cost for a caster making use of it than either necromancy or summoning, and charms is at least temporarily significant for everybody. They also have fairly limited options for hybridization, since staves and unarmed combat are both more xp-intensive than short or long blades.

Aside from draconians, no race has an ice or fire apt higher than +1. One of SE/HE could be made to favour fire, and one ice (with -2 to the other apt). Ice has more potential, since there are two proposed races which might come up soon that heavily favour fire. Also, tengus already fill this role of above average fire, below average ice).

I don't really see why super-high aptitudes for ice and fire are necessary. Ice and fire casters come with conjurations, so good conjurations aptitudes makes for being a good ice or fire caster automatically. Most elemental conjurations play out approximately the same, anyway, so pigeonholing species into one particular element doesn't actually improve gameplay much or at all.

Long blades are a relatively underused weapon type. One race could favour these more (at the expensive of other weapons). I'm talking an increase from +2 to +3.

Differences in aptitude among weapon types is mostly pointless, at least until the weapon type differentiation goes in. Long blades don't do anything in-game that maces or axes don't do exactly the same, so differentiating a species based on aptitudes for these three weapon classes is false differentiation anyway.

Make sludge elves bad with bows, but good with crossbows.

Why? Bows and crossbows play almost identically. So do slings. Picking up the one you have the best aptitude for doesn't actually affect much.

[evilmike]

Arguing about the lack of differentiation between weapon types is pointless right now. There is a plan for making weapons play differently, and while it looks like this will be implemented slowly, there is potential here.

As for the other stuff; fine. If making small adjustments to apts isn't enough, then make large ones. Give them -3 or even -4 to necromancy and summoning, or something. That would be pretty harsh though, compensating elsewhere would be nice. But it's something that you don't see elsewhere (good at most magic, but especially bad at these two things).

So far I am the only person in this thread who has even attempted to come up with ideas to make things different (aside from renaming, which is a different issue). As I've said before, my opinion is that these races are suitably different as they currently are - but if there's wide disagreement here, there is a lot of room for change. If anyone wants to discuss this topic with me, do it in private message or on IRC. This is a bad thread.

I find it disturbing that there are people who think things like this should be removed as a first resort, without even making an attempt at improving them. Luckily, DCSS is not this sort of project (even though to some people it may seem we arbitrarily remove stuff). If DCSS was like this, I would not want to be involved with it.

[TwilightPhoenix]

I would support the renaming of two of the Elfish species. All three perhaps, but at least two. Also, while we're at it, can we just renamed "Deep Dwarf" to "Dwarf" and "Hill Orc" to "Orc?" The sub-species distinction is really irrelevant and could possibly be slightly confusing. If anyone has an issue with our Dwarves not being stereotypical Dwarves, we can always say we don't follow stereotype (and we often don't as is).

[mad]

I think the Deep Dwarf's non-healing mechanic is so unique and far-removed from a stereotypical image of a dwarf that the distinction is probably important. Especially if someone comes to the game after a hiatus and thinks "Dwarf" is "Mountain Dwarf" and gets disappointed and confused. Dwarves ARE creatures from folklore after all, and is there any mythological basis for the "no natural healing" mechanic?

Not so with the Hill Orc, though.

[sardonica]

I agree. we should just remove every race that has ANYTHING in common with another. Its just unacceptable.

This means we should only have humans, Felids and octopodes as playable species. clearly all these humanoids are far too similar.

But why stop there? look at all these backgrounds we have? just BEGGING to be removed!
I suggest we trim it down to 2 backgrounds. "Power Tabber" and "Firestormer" that should fill all the unique and interesting roles we need yes?

I also understand that the devs want to be conservative. but the removal of 4 spells this update is erring too far on the side of caution. Just remove all the spells except magic dart and firestorm.
Utility spells like Projected noise, see invisibility, insulation and evaporate are just a waste of magic anyway because they don't just kill everything in sight instantly, Am I right fellas?

Thanks for reading. I hope we can all walk together into a bright future without all of these intimidating things known as "options" or "tactical flexibility" things like that are killing gaming.

Relax man. You must live at a hay farm because you are building straw-men all over the place. Wanting to get rid of High Elves != wanting only felids and octopodes,

Your premise is flawed too cause Projected Noise wasn't removed for not "kill[ing] everything in sight instantly." It was removed for being TOO powerful in one situation and useless in many others.

So uh, maybe dial back a few notches on the rage... it's just a game and we're all trying to make it better...

[pubby]

We all know how well removing MD went, why would we want to do it again?

Why? Bows and crossbows play almost identically. So do slings. Picking up the one you have the best aptitude for doesn't actually affect much.

Not really. The ammo types are different and the base damages are too. They are similar but not identical.

So uh, maybe dial back a few notches on the rage... it's just a game and we're all trying to make it better...

Removing does not make the game better from the players perspective. It might make the game more elegant from a game design perspective, but this is not what we should be working towards.

Changes I would make to high elves (overwriting old apts):
+3 long blades
+2 shields
+1 staves
+0 armour
-2 fire magic
+2 ice magic
-2 conjuration
-2 necro
-3 summoning
+0 tmut
-2 invoc
Mutations:
Clarity
Wild magic level 2

Changes to sludge elf:
-2 bows
+1 xbows
+2 poison
-3 conjuration
-3 charms
+1 hexes
Mutations:
Slimy coating - grants EV based on their poison magic level (0-14)

[dpeg]

1. What MarvinPA said: please leave your dreams and "witty" hyperbole out of game design discussion.

2. The only weak elf (weak as in weakly differentiated) is perhaps High Elf. But evilmike gave enough food for thought about HE aptitudes.

3. The Elf situation is completely unlike to MD removal: there, we had several melee-oriented species who played alike, and one had to go. (That the choice fell upon MD, and why, is a different matter.) There is much more space for differentiation among magic-oriented species.

4. Attempting to differentiate species with aptitudes (only) is a worthwhile goal. We did this with the Ogre + Ogre-Mage merge/removal, and evilmike points out that there is a lot of potential untapped, which I agree with.

5. Regarding gimmicks: I have no idea whether there is an ideal ration between "pure" (no gimmicks) and "gimmicky" species. However, I really want that all the species are different from each other, and have some flavour to build on. Another point: as with gods and backgrounds, it is good to have easy-to-go species (quite clear choice of fitting backgrounds, straigthforward career path, e.g. Mi, DE) as well as subtle and/or difficult ones. I interpret evilmike's reasoning to ask for not too many of the former kind, which I agree with.

6. Regarding Hill vs Cave Orcs: This never really affects the player, and it carries a lot more flavour than you may think. First, the player orc comes from the outside, whereas the monster orcs live down there (this is why monster dwarves/elves are deep dwarves and deep elves). Second, the idea of the messiah coming from abroad is well established; Crawl appeals to that without wasting any words on it.

[sanka]

Once I had an Ogre, training maces, who found a +7/+7 triple sword (fire, rC+,rF+, MR) in lair. I already had a giant spiked club and m&f skill about 16. What would you do: would you switch? (Of course GSC has 2 more base damage...). I'm not sure if good players would switch to long blades - I did not. If I were playing a human (training axes for example) I think I would switch.

I agree with KoboldLord on this topic, and I think some of you missed his point. Increasing the differences would make the situation even worse. If you are a high elf, than in almost all games you simply ignore non long blade weapons. Yes, it's theoreticaly possible to find a executioner axe (+15/+15 speed rF++ rC++ MR) on dungeon level 1, but I do not think that species should be balanced around extremly rare cases.

This is mostly true for elemental aptitudes as well. A bad aptitude in one element (having good in an other one) will not make a race weaker, it just makes much less choices during gameplay/character creation. It's already rarely optimal to train many elements - these will be even rarer.

This has mostly nothing to do with the planned changes on weapon types. If a usual human will train only one weapon skill, the situation is the same. Differentiating species with aptitudes works well when a tipical human want's to train BOTH skill. If a tipical human ignores one, well - than that attribute does not matter much. Also there are skills where the aptitude is not so important. There much bigger differences are needed.

Based on these assumptions I think if we want to differentiat a race with aptitudes, we should first try to identify what skills a typical human want's train on the same character, and make one of them worse, the other better: to make an actual drawback for the better attribute. -7 axes is not a good drawback for +3 swords, and -5 ice is not a good drawback for +2 fire. -2 fighting/weapons skills is a good drawback for +3 spellcasting.

I'm not talking about making the races equal in power: -2 fighting/weapon skills and +3 spellcasting still can make a race more powerful than humans, but it also makes them different, because you do want to train fighting and some weapon skill.

[sanka]

My short proposal for High elves: make them good at hybrid like fighters that use no direct offensive spells. A little bit reverse Tengu in a sense.
fighting: 0, all weapons types +1, staves/UC : -1.
all ranged weapon types: +1
spellcasting: 0.
charms: +3,translocations+3,hexes:+3
conjurations, summoning, necromancy: -3, elemental schools: -2.
stealth: -3, stabbing: -3, dodging: 0, armour -3.

-20% HP, +10% mana

I hope it will be different enough from merfolk.

[Kulutes]

I think sanka's idea is pretty good, making them the quintessential "Fighter-mage" Gish race. although i would contend that the Hitpoint penalty and mana bonus contradicts that.
A race thats focused around both fighting and magic should probably be average in both HP/Mana.

I had another idea thats somewhat related to the Gish archetype. Though it may be better for a background or god ability *shrug*

The ability to cast spells in advance and store them in your weapon. sort of like a custom rod.
Let it store 1 spell level per level of enchantment. so at most you could store 1 level 9 spell, 3 level 3's etc.
It could be used to re-apply buff's mid fight if it went long. or maybe some emergency spells if things go south.
Or perhaps you could have them cast at the same speed as your weapon delay (after weapon skill is applied) so you could use it throw a few offensive spells more quickly in a pinch.

I think the hard limit of 9 spell levels (maybe a few more for exceptional artifacts) combined with that it would have to be reloaded manually, instead passively, like a rod would keep it balanced
while also adding some "flavor" to the fighter-mage playstyle.

Though it would likely require a limit of only one of these Weapon/Rods being in existence at a time. So people don't just carry just carry around a dozen daggers loaded with spells.

[KoboldLord]

I find it disturbing that there are people who think things like this should be removed as a first resort, without even making an attempt at improving them. Luckily, DCSS is not this sort of project (even though to some people it may seem we arbitrarily remove stuff). If DCSS was like this, I would not want to be involved with it.

Eh, it's fine to save things. It's actively good to save things that are mechanically useful or have interesting flavor. But there's a limited supply of effort and creativity available at any given time, and sometimes it's better to use it on something that's already awesome and could be better than to use it on something that's not much more than a leftover D&D-ism.

But ultimately messing with high elves is not that important, and I'll leave my opinion on the table now. Tweaks might even help, although the same people who would be enraged as losing the third elf subrace will probably be upset at anything that makes them look slightly less like D&D elves, so it is probably futile to worry about them.

Deep elves, though, do have a problem that needs a fix. New players see that name and think "drow", so that's what they expect to get when they play one. Often they keep thinking about deep elves as D&D drow even after encountering them in-game repeatedly, or clearing the branch end of Elf. Deep elves are in fact nothing like drow; if we wanted to tack them onto some D&D-ism they'd be more like grey elves that happened to live underground. They've got nothing to do with spiders, only two elves in the whole of Elf dual-wield anything, and they don't have a bondage-themed culture designed to appeal to teenage boys.

[dpeg]

KoboldLord: regarding "drow": I would never care about such things but you probably already knew that. They can read what we mean by "deep elf" in the manual.

[VargrVeum]

Deep elves, though, do have a problem that needs a fix. New players see that name and think "drow", so that's what they expect to get when they play one. Often they keep thinking about deep elves as D&D drow even after encountering them in-game repeatedly, or clearing the branch end of Elf. Deep elves are in fact nothing like drow; if we wanted to tack them onto some D&D-ism they'd be more like grey elves that happened to live underground. They've got nothing to do with spiders, only two elves in the whole of Elf dual-wield anything, and they don't have a bondage-themed culture designed to appeal to teenage boys.

Must admit that I saw "deep elves" and thought "dark elf" when I first started, and was drawn in (I'm not a teenage boy, but bondage themed cultures appeal to me nonetheless).
Personally - I like the idea of renaming deep dwarves to just dwaves - as it would make quite a statement that dev isn't concerned with playing unimaginatively to fantasy cliche; they make a lot more sense as a subterranean species than the usual hearty, stout miners of tolkien. (possibly interesting point - I believe "dark elf" in nordic mythology was a term for dwarf.)

Would it make sense to keep high elves as a fey and mystical race with combat skills leaning toward bows and finesse (blades rather than maces etc) - and perhaps twist deep elves into a slightly more dark-elf feel (they already have a knack for "darker" magic - perhaps boosting their poison and stealth?) I've enjoyed playing sludge elves in the past - but I find from a purely flavour perspective that there's something slightly unsatisfying and undefined by the species... but that's just my opinion.

I realise i've not actually said anything particularly useful in this comment, apologies.

[dd]

bondage-themed culture designed to appeal to teenage boys.

This is no doubt the greatest single lack in Dungeon Crawl. Once we get this implemented, the game is pretty much done.

[One-Eyed Jack]

  Code:

Pikel zaps a wand of enslavement. You are enslaved! Pikel hits you with the whip of pain. It feels divine.

[BlackSheep]

bondage-themed culture designed to appeal to teenage boys.

This is no doubt the greatest single lack in Dungeon Crawl. Once we get this implemented, the game is pretty much done.

Then get to work tarting up the Ashenzari altar, tile dude!