Player Ghosts' Extended Descriptions

[archaeo]

Are player ghosts' extended descriptions really satisfactory to anyone? Currently, you get the species and background, a rough approximation of its power level that more or less requires spoilers (can you put "powerful," "great," "mighty," and "experienced" in the right order?), and apparently buggy indications of resistances (I've heard that sInv and MR aren't always described properly, among other things). For more, you have to look up the morgue, something I see players do regularly, and even that won't completely solve the problem, thanks to the randomized spell set caster ghosts receive.

Given that Crawl's tendency in extended descriptions is toward avoiding spoiler-y behavior, especially with the addition of spell sets, is it really ideal to continue to have very ambiguous and unpredictable player ghosts? The current description encourages looking up morgues, which seems like a design flaw to me; since sharing morgues is a fundamental part of the roguelike experience, you can't very well hide them from players, so it seems like the game should make it unnecessary to do so. I wouldn't go so far as to ask for a link to the morgue right in the description, but it seems reasonable to say that the player should get more information than what's currently provided.

All that said, I'm no programmer and I have no idea how squirrely the ghost code is. But player ghosts are already virtually broken offline; since they're much more functional online, it would be nice if they didn't encourage things like combing through morgues.

[duvessa]

thanks to the randomized spell set caster ghosts receive.

This is wrong. Ghost spell sets are deterministic. Not that this detracts from your point at all...

[Sandman25]

Player ghost can be cause of unavoidable death (I've read recently about a ghost with foo storm who killed several characters instantly) so it should be removed.
Of course I realize it will never happen because it is the only advantage of webtiles over local play.

[dck]

I think the MR thing is already on mantis though.

[archaeo]

This is wrong. Ghost spell sets are deterministic. . . .

Thanks for pointing that out. It's worth noting that this is the kind of thing I'm talking about; when oral tradition is the only way to predict what a ghost will do, we've got a problem, especially given the wiki's unreliability and learndb's extreme concision. Even linking to the morgue in the description would be worthless without a thorough understanding of how players' characters work as ghosts.

I think the MR thing is already on mantis though.

And that's why I feel a little bad about whinging over this; it's a known family of problems that I imagine a dev would've already knocked out if it was trivial to do so. I didn't see any previous discussion in various public fora, though, so I figured I'd bring it up as a topic of conversation. What exactly do we need to include in the description? How can we prevent players from feeling like they have to look up the morgue? And, maybe more importantly, is it even possible to have player ghosts that feel distinctive without being so dependent on spoilers?

edited for style because I'm dumb

[Kate]

All that said, I'm no programmer and I have no idea how squirrely the ghost code is.

"it's pretty squirrely"

If someone were to write a patch to display player ghost spells in the same way as regular monster spells, I imagine it would be pushed! But yeah, the person to write that patch is not me, at least.

[reg]

If you didn't mind sucking a bit of the 'fun' out of ghosts you could have them take on a name/gear/appearance of a dead player but bring their skills/spells/behavior into line with the actual base class and level, so that you know that the "Mighty Ice Elementalist" is probably going to Freezing Cloud you and not haste and try to sword you.

[tompliss]

There is that, yeah.
For other monsters and most uniques, reading the description will tell you what to expect.

When you meet a ghost, you never know what will happens, and the fact is, you don't know what type of armor and weapons they have, what they should look like (stat-wise, a 10 Str 10 dex 30 int may look like something different from a 30 str 10 dex 10 int), etc ... :/
It's ok to have some kind of unexpected action going on, but... it may be a little too much, right now ...

[rebthor]

There is that, yeah.
For other monsters and most uniques, reading the description will tell you what to expect.

When you meet a ghost, you never know what will happens, and the fact is, you don't know what type of armor and weapons they have, what they should look like (stat-wise, a 10 Str 10 dex 30 int may look like something different from a 30 str 10 dex 10 int), etc ... :/
It's ok to have some kind of unexpected action going on, but... it may be a little too much, right now ...

You do know and it's pretty easy to see. Go on IRC, type !log <PlayerName> <RaceAbbreviation><ClassAbbreviation< <DungeonLocation> and you can see exactly what equipment the ghost has.

So as an example, to see my demonspawn abyssal knight that died on Vaults:2, you would type !log rebthor DsAK V:2 and the bots will spit out the morgue link, http://dobrazupa.org/morgue/rebthor/mor ... 040646.txt

Edit - I want to be clear that I think what OP raised is a legitimate issue, one should be able to see at least some of the morgue info in the game, but it's not like player ghosts are a complete black box.

[galehar]

Fully identifying the equipment should be easy and would help a lot. If we also manage to display spells, that should be good enough I'd say.

[I want to believe]

Perhaps, at least on tiles, it could display what their player doll looked like, instead of the random one it seems to use? This wouldn't help if you're one to customize your player doll, but it'd at least let you know which character that was in that case. Of course, it'd probably be more useful to simply describe what it has equipped in its description, but it'd be nice to see what weapons/armor its wearing at a glance.

[ontoclasm]

Perhaps, at least on tiles, it could display what their player doll looked like, instead of the random one it seems to use? This wouldn't help if you're one to customize your player doll, but it'd at least let you know which character that was in that case. Of course, it'd probably be more useful to simply describe what it has equipped in its description, but it'd be nice to see what weapons/armor its wearing at a glance.

Actually the tile it uses isn't random, but is determined by the dead player's stats. For instance, ghosts with high AC will appear to be wearing plate mail, and a ghost whose main skill was Axes, but who has a very weak attack, will appear with a hand axe. These are completely divorced from what the player was actually wearing, and not at all obvious or even helpful, but there is some rhyme and reason to it - e.g. if you meet a ghost and it seems to have an executioner's axe, be ready for it to have very strong melee.

[duvessa]

It's also a tiles information leak. Not that it really matters since most online console players know what morgues are.

[archaeo]

I'm glad people agree that the ghosts could use some more information; any optimal play that begins with "Go to IRC" is not fun. I tend to agree that just adding in identified equipment and spell lists would go a long way, as well as correcting the MR bug and any other weird irregularities in ghost xv descriptions.

While we're on the subject of ghosts, it's worth noting that galehar brought up adapting hearse for crawl over a year ago and got no response. A properly sufficient xv description would make player ghost distribution feel more fair, and I think it would add a lot to the offline client. It would be really awesome if a crawl dev could slog through the ghost code to make it all functional, online and offline alike.

Of course, now that I'm suggesting adding a major new feature to the game when my own contributions amount to bupkis, I think I'll leave it at that. I'd love for a dev to address this stuff, but it sounds like a pain, so I'll crawl with contentment until someone gets around to it.

[galehar]

adding in identified equipment

Sorry, but this was a pretty stupid idea I suggested. Ghosts don't have equipment. We could give them some fake one to give console players the same info as tiles one though. But it may not be easy.

While we're on the subject of ghosts, it's worth noting that galehar brought up adapting hearse for crawl over a year ago and got no response.

Someone did came up with a tool to share local bone files. Not sure how functional it is.

[brendan]

If we also manage to display spells, that should be good enough I'd say.

This would be great. In my last game I ran into one ghost that had nothing but summon butterflies and another one that spammed fire storm.

[Cedor]

done :

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=7779

[Hirsch I]

I guess they will never drop the loot they have in life, am I right?
it could be so fun...