Mp regeneration needs a serious buff


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Slime Squisher

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Post Friday, 18th April 2014, 23:12

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Igxfl wrote:People keep stating that offensive magic is stronger than melee, but that isn't so clear to me. That might just be an assumption brought in from other games.

Parrow can reliably kill a titan in 4-ish turns from anywhere on the screen. This is hugely powerful when you are in a crowded or time-sensitive area (V5 as an easy example). One/two-shotting every convoker I see the instant I see them? Yes please. Similarly freezing cloud or good-spellpower-Fireball or bolts can destroy or at least cripple packs in less time than even cleaving - and that's disregarding the time it takes to move into melee range - with none of the risk involved in cleaving (or normal melee). Not getting into bows because ranged combat is OP.

I can easily deal with low MP, it's just that anything that isn't "spam channeling" (which is still boring, especially with Sif) or "be lucky to find sublimation" is so boring

melee isn't boring imo

Not necessarily against a "mana regen" ego, but I'm doubtful about whether it can be made a significant effect without also being very powerful (of course it can just be rare to compensate, but then the whingers in this thread will keep whinging).
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Barkeep

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 01:16

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

I don't think it's really fair to call it "whinging." Bloax and Bart have a reasonable point: the game's score is higher when you go faster, and it's possible to get really high scores with a variety of species/background/god combinations except when you choose to killdude with MP, which sharply limits your religious options.

Of course, this game can't accomplish all these goals at once; that's why we talk about which goals we're trying to accomplish. I personally think the asymmetry here is impossible to resolve for speedrunners and slowcrawlers at the same time. But if we're discussing where we want this open source game to go, discarding people's good faith ideas and criticisms as "whinging" seems right out.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 01:44

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Seems like not clearly a problem and digressing into discussion on how to play ~*~casters~*~, moved to Advice for now.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 04:00

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

tasonir wrote:imho removing the deminishing returns on mana would be an elegant solution. You could pick a high mana race, wield a staff of power, and have 70 mana, which comes with a much higher mana regeneration rate.

But ultimately I don't think this is a big enough problem to justify most of the proposed solutions. The final arrangement would be worse than what we have now. Magic is stronger than melee with the downside of not always being available; it's quite well balanced imho, although I think the increased real time it takes to fight with spells vs holding tab makes melee more popular.


Not sure why this post was disregarded. Then again, I'm also not sure why there are such harsh diminishing returns on mana to begin with(if someone could explain this, I'm quite curious).

Those who are 'against' a buff to mana regeneration seem to collectively be arguing for the most part that there is a strategy to the efficiency with which you cast spells. But in crawl, a large portion of the strategy comes from itemization. Players are encouraged to cultivate characters to meet their goals. Should pre-emptive strategy carry as much weight as mid-fight strategy? Especially since the mid-fight strategy is largely one-dimensional(meaning there isn't much 'strategy' to be had) given the extremely limited options.

Then again, I have very limited experience, so I don't doubt I may be very wrong. But felt this sentiment from one more veteran than I was worth echoing.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 06:26

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

By the way, if you are trying to speedrun, why Chei? And why a pure caster and not a hybrid?
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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 08:45

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Magipi wrote:By the way, if you are trying to speedrun, why Chei? And why a pure caster and not a hybrid?

IIRC the turn count for speedrun purposes is how many actions (that took time to complete) you've done, not the amount of in-game time it took (resting and auto-explore of course being a series of individual turns/waits). In that case, Chei isn't as bad as it seemed.
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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 08:53

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Patashu wrote:
Magipi wrote:By the way, if you are trying to speedrun, why Chei? And why a pure caster and not a hybrid?

IIRC the turn count for speedrun purposes is how many actions (that took time to complete) you've done, not the amount of in-game time it took (resting and auto-explore of course being a series of individual turns/waits). In that case, Chei isn't as bad as it seemed.

Yeah but the right way to play Chei is to spend time healing and otherwise do things that increase your turn count (step through time, etc). That is probably why it seems so counter-intuitive.
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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 09:03

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Chei gives you devastating power and ways to get out of trouble with, and with the former you don't really need all that health. The increased movement delay also makes melee monsters engage you much faster than they otherwise would - and you kill things faster too. All this contributes very well to actually going fast.
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  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 10:55

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

TheDefiniteArticle wrote:
Igxfl wrote:People keep stating that offensive magic is stronger than melee, but that isn't so clear to me. That might just be an assumption brought in from other games.

Parrow can reliably kill a titan in 4-ish turns from anywhere on the screen.

Normal melee char can kill it for 10 autons, 2 turns, in melee range of course.

This is hugely powerful when you are in a crowded or time-sensitive area (V5 as an easy example). One/two-shotting every convoker I see the instant I see them? Yes please. Similarly freezing cloud or good-spellpower-Fireball or bolts can destroy or at least cripple packs in less time than even cleaving - and that's disregarding the time it takes to move into melee range - with none of the risk involved in cleaving (or normal melee). Not getting into bows because ranged combat is OP.

Again, normal melee char can survive 3-4 giants, titan, 1-2 warden with branded weapon. He don't need to immediately kill all in LOS. But what can happen with chars, who relies on magic, when 3-4 giants come to melee range? Heartbreaking spectacle.

Also, I want to state the fact - char who invest 66% of Exp into melee and 33% into supporting magic - more flexible, more strong, and has a largest survivale potential, then char who has 66%\33% in magic\melee.
Only once I had char that was able to cast OoD, and even can't stand some unique - mana just run out, and there was no time to Sif muna channeling.
Melee char never have such problems. Caster just a pussy vs melee.

Also about "pack of sgeen rats vs squishy mage "- maybe devs should make new cheap spell, like Battle Sphere, that supplies caster with weak long-lasting attack, like 4 MP, or redo Battle Sphere to match this?
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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 13:42

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

GlassGo wrote:Normal melee char can kill it for 10 autons, 2 turns, in melee range of course.

Not 'normal' melee, at least not reliably. The most powerful uber melee can do it, sure, but in that case you are spending more XP than the guy casting Parrow. And it still has to be adjacent to things, so it is still infinitely worse.

Again, normal melee char can survive 3-4 giants, titan, 1-2 warden with branded weapon. He don't need to immediately kill all in LOS.

No he can't because Crawl is random, and a couple unlucky rolls can put you at critical health even with GDR (which only applies to melee attacks anyway)

But what can happen with chars, who relies on magic, when 3-4 giants come to melee range? Heartbreaking spectacle.

For a character with magic, "3-4" giants DON'T come to melee range. You kill them too easily from too far away. That is the entire reason magic is stronger!

The mage can easily have good enough defenses to stand next to giants. The fact that he doesn't have to is an advantage.

Then again, I'm also not sure why there are such harsh diminishing returns on mana to begin with(if someone could explain this, I'm quite curious).

Crawl's magic is designed around this very tight limitation: even the most powerful spells in the game cost a scant handful of MP. Parrow is ridiculously more powerful than IMB, yet only costs 2 more MP, and that balance only works thanks to the strict limits. When worshipping Vehumet, it is easy to see how being able to overuse high-level magic would result in very dumb things. Vehumet's mana contributions are pretty limited, and even they feel slightly silly at times.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 15:54

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

TheDefiniteArticle wrote:
Then again, I'm also not sure why there are such harsh diminishing returns on mana to begin with(if someone could explain this, I'm quite curious).

Crawl's magic is designed around this very tight limitation: even the most powerful spells in the game cost a scant handful of MP. Parrow is ridiculously more powerful than IMB, yet only costs 2 more MP, and that balance only works thanks to the strict limits. When worshipping Vehumet, it is easy to see how being able to overuse high-level magic would result in very dumb things. Vehumet's mana contributions are pretty limited, and even they feel slightly silly at times.

That...doesn't really explain anything. It seems a rather evasive and irrelevant bit of data to avoid the question. For example, if I were to apply this to melee I could say something along the lines of:
"A +8/+8 Bardiche is ridiculously stronger than a +3/+3 Bardiche, yet only costs...nothing more." As you progress through the game, you get more powerful resources at your disposal. That is how the roleplaying genre works. And yet in terms of casting, you have to commit skill points into the spells to get them to low % of failure(and yet the vast majority of time they still have at least 1%, which could mean a random death at any time from a firestorm miscast or the like), you commit to sub-optimal defensive choices, etc. to achieve the ability to use that higher level spell. Where in the Bardiche example you...use nothing. It's a gross misunderstanding of basic game mechanics to say it 'only' costs 2 more MP. You are sacrificing a lot for it.

As for Vehemet, 2 things:
1. The whole purpose of this thread is the concept that Vehement(and Sif/Kiku) is(are) the only real option(s) if you want to be a caster. And that's extremely limiting. And since even with no cap you'd still have better 'spam' efficiency from Vehemet, there's not really an issue here.
2. If you were worshiping Vehemet with no cap, little would change. Since you acquire a static amount of MP from Vehemet you either get enough from him, or you don't. Total pool is not relevant to his 'regen'.

As a point of note. What of 'spells' that cost HP(yes, there are few, but they exist...all hail Makhleb). There is no cap on HP as there is for MP(so far as I know, I've never reached it...so at least it's less strict a one). So why is there such a double standard, why don't these spells suddenly get out of hand?

You can make it so that Mana scaling from XPLvl/Spc/etc. taper off at the higher levels to force more commitment of resources, but if you want to use a ring slot on a ring of magical power over a randart full of resists, you should have the option of getting the full benefit from it.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 16:45

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

NessOnett wrote:It's a gross misunderstanding of basic game mechanics to say it 'only' costs 2 more MP. You are sacrificing a lot for it.


That was TDA's point. You do have to invest a substantial amount of experience, you have to find the spell in the first place, etc. However it only costs 2 MP more. Ergo even small boosts to your total mana pool can be quite significant if you have access to high level spells, because the greatest difference between any two spells is 8 MP.

1. The whole purpose of this thread is the concept that Vehement(and Sif/Kiku) is(are) the only real option(s) if you want to be a caster.


This is simply not true. In fact "casters" (those who start with a book) have a *wider* choice of gods than melee-only starts. Because often times if you start as a Fighter you really don't want to go Sif, and probably not Vehumet; Kiku possibly but even then the benefit would only come much later than if you worshiped lots of other gods. Melee-only start can worship Trog, which is unreasonable for a book background. Casters actually have more (reasonable) choices. Okawaru, Nemelex, Fedhas, Jiyva (if you find early altar vault), Dithmenos, Makhleb, etc. are all really good on "casters" even if they don't directly support casting, as such.

2. If you were worshiping Vehemet with no cap, little would change. Since you acquire a static amount of MP from Vehemet you either get enough from him, or you don't. Total pool is not relevant to his 'regen'.


Total pool is relevant since (among other things) the exact amount of MP you get on kills with Vehumet is randomized. Vehumet increases your casting "stamina," so does having a higher MP pool, and they work together cumulatively.

As a point of note. What of 'spells' that cost HP(yes, there are few, but they exist...all hail Makhleb). There is no cap on HP as there is for MP(so far as I know, I've never reached it...so at least it's less strict a one). So why is there such a double standard, why don't these spells suddenly get out of hand?


Piety is a resource you don't want to waste and it decays, rather than regenerates, over time. So if nothing else you don't want to go around spamming greater destruction and greater demon willy nilly because you will burn through your piety too fast. This isn't a double standard, you get those invocations online fast because you just gotta train one skill, and it isn't affected by armor penalty, etc. They are just two different things.

You can make it so that Mana scaling from XPLvl/Spc/etc. taper off at the higher levels to force more commitment of resources, but if you want to use a ring slot on a ring of magical power over a randart full of resists, you should have the option of getting the full benefit from it.


Completely agree with the conclusion here, actually. Just not how you were arguing your way to that conclusion. I don't think it would be overpowered if you could get up to 60 or 70 MP at the cost of ring slots. I doubt it would be very wise to do that unless those were the best rings you had, but I agree the option should be there. If +MP items exist then they should be at least a potentially attractive option, even for relatively high level characters.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 17:10

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

1. I still don't see how this is a problem. The difference between X and Y for casters is 8mp, and the difference between X and Y for melee is nothing. You're supposed to get stronger spells. And you're supposed to be able to use them. Instead of running out after 2 casts. Small boosts are supposed to be significant.

2. If you worship Oka/Fedhas/etc on a 'caster' then you don't have enough mana to play the game. You 'have' to worship one of the 3 caster gods to have enough mana, even with Sublimation or a Crystal Ball. This discussion is concerning pure casters. Not hybrids.

3. The argument was 'Vehemet makes things silly' by offsetting mana costs, and the fact is he would do that regardless of total pool.

4. Pain, etc. There are other non-piety related 'spells' that cost health.

But I have still yet to hear any actual reason as to 'why.' Why there is a cap. A lot of irrelevant points about differences in MP costs. But in it's simplest form. "You're supposed to get stronger as you progress" and there has been no valid reasoning for impediments to this. Just concessions that you have to commit a lot to get those spells(which is the offsetting factor of their power already).

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 19:01

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Well, having MP as large as your health pool would be silly simply due to the scale of the game. That was my point regarding the 8 MP difference. The most you will pay for is 9 MP, so the max size of your MP pool should reflect that fact. All that being said, I agree that maxing at 50 is bad, but for reasons quite different from the reasons you've offered. (Namely, it makes the +MP advantage of certain species not really matter at high levels, and it devalues +MP items in a way that isn't actually called for.)

Why is there an MP cap at all, though? Well because magic should be made to be different from melee. If you could get arbitrarily large MP pools you might as well just make casting spells cost nothing at high levels. As it stands you have to work with the MP you are given, and contrary to what you are saying there are many ways to do that (not just worshiping sif or vehumet).

2. If you worship Oka/Fedhas/etc on a 'caster' then you don't have enough mana to play the game. You 'have' to worship one of the 3 caster gods to have enough mana, even with Sublimation or a Crystal Ball. This discussion is concerning pure casters. Not hybrids.


This is staggeringly wrong. Plenty of people who aren't great at the game (myself included) have ascended blasters with heavy emphasis on magic and little melee capabilities while worshiping Ash, Oka, Fedhas, etc. Demigod casters have won the game, which means no god assistance of any kind. Give me a break.

More fundamentally, it seems that the way you are using the terms "pure caster" and "hybrid" simply do not apply well to this game.

All characters need to get defenses in a game with permadeath and magic can boost your defenses but not substitute for them (unlike some games). Also magic cannot literally substitute for training melee. (There isn't a "magic sword" spell or likewise that you can activate that suddenly lets you use your intelligence and spell casting skill for all your melee rolls, as there are in some games.) So even very casting-focused builds typically want some melee capability beginning at some point in the "mid-game," at least.

Of course you *can* build a viable character that doesn't hit stuff in melee at all, but it is actively gimping your character for no reason other than to role-play an archetype that is well supported in other computer games but not in DCSS. What you describe as "extremely limiting" is in fact a consequence of how you chose to make your character, not a flaw with game design. It is your choice to build your character however you like, of course, but I don't think alterations to game design made on the basis of strategies that involve self-imposed challenges are going to get very far.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 20:21

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

3. The argument was 'Vehemet makes things silly' by offsetting mana costs, and the fact is he would do that regardless of total pool.

What? If you had 500 MP, Vehumet's tiny contributions would be all but worthless. They would have no effect on balance whatsoever.

Vehumet does not offset mana costs. You do not even need to cast spells to receive the mana! He gives you mana for kills. All Vehumet does is increase your effective mana pool by a random amount, further limited by an inability to go beyond your current maximum. And you can easily see from situations where Vehumet is particularly generous, that having more mana available than the current cap pushes the limits of balance.

"A +8/+8 Bardiche is ridiculously stronger than a +3/+3 Bardiche, yet only costs...nothing more."

But we're not comparing parrow to parrow+5, we're comparing it to IMB.

Weapons are fundamentally different from spells. The cost of equipping the +8 bardiche is unequipping every other weapon that exists. You can switch back of course, but that takes time to do. Weapons, especially bardiches, are quite heavy, and carrying more than small handful is extremely impractical, as it takes space from potions and scrolls and wands and evocables and jewellery and food.

Meanwhile spells have no such limitations. You can attack with Parrow one turn and Freezing Cloud the next, without wasting a single aut. Spells take up no inventory space and weigh nothing. You can walk around with twenty spells memorized, and use any of them at any time you choose. Judging them according to the rules of melee is asinine.

And you're supposed to be able to use them. Instead of running out after 2 casts. Small boosts are supposed to be significant.

Uh 8 MP lets you cast LCS at one monster one time in one turn and 9 MP lets you cast LCS at every single monster on the screen in one turn. That not "significant" enough for you?

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 20:26

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

and into wrote:Why is there an MP cap at all, though? Well because magic should be made to be different from melee. If you could get arbitrarily large MP pools you might as well just make casting spells cost nothing at high levels. As it stands you have to work with the MP you are given, and contrary to what you are saying there are many ways to do that (not just worshiping sif or vehumet).


Magic is extremely different from melee, and would continue to be different even if there was no cap. This statement makes no sense.
Mana pools could never be 'arbitrarily' large by virtue of the way the game is built. If you stacked every single MP item you could get your hands on, you wouldn't come even remotely close to the average endgame health pool. And 9s add up to that very quickly, meaning you'd still run out if you overused it. And in the context of a given fight, you would get more mana out of casting Sublimation twice with a few chunks on hand than you would having an extra couple MP in your total pool. So balancewise there is no actual issue unless Sublimation, Crystal Ball, etc are all massively overpowered.

As for a 'magic sword', very few games have what you're describing. In most games that give a magic option, that is what it is. Magic. You use magic as you are a magic-user. If you want to not use magic, you don't have to. If you want to not entirely use magic, you don't have to. But most mages in most games never wield a sword or an axe, they merely use magic(Hint: there's a reason why none of the magic classes in this game start with a weapon...and yet also have no skills in unarmed combat). Most games that do have some melee option for mages is in much the same variety as Infusion or Song of Slaying, but they are rarely if ever used by pure casters. In fact I'm hard pressed to think of more than a handful of games that suddenly convert Intelligence into melee skill. Most, as I've said, merely allow you to use your magic...as that is what you designed your character around.

Defenses are different than Offenses. I'm not sure why you even decided to bring this up, as it is more completely irrelevant information. This is concerning offenses. Of course everyone needs defenses(Actually, that's debatable, as I've seen people with 80 health, 3 AC, and 12 EV clear the game). But 'defenses' and 'ability to fight in melee' are two entirely different things.

As far as actively gimping myself for trying to be a mage. That is what this game is about. Doing DIFFERENT things. If you wanted to do the same thing every time, you'd be a MiBe and tear everything apart(well, actually you probably wouldn't play this game at all. You'd choose a non-randomized game with no choice given to the player). The game actively encourages you to play many different strategies, and it is on the devs to balance those strategies to make as many viable as possible.



But once again, I have still yet to see any actual reason as to "WHY." Just a lot of "It has to be this way" and some <insert irrelevant information here> and <gross exaggeration like suggesting MP would be as high as HP>

and into wrote:All that being said, I agree that maxing at 50 is bad, but for reasons quite different from the reasons you've offered.

Could you kindly point to any reasons I offered. Because I didn't. I merely asked the question 'why'(which has yet to be answered), and shot down all the false and irrelevant responses as...either false or irrelevant. I have not made any arguments of my own. I am merely the inquisitor, so I find it highly curious that you can disagree with something I have never said. My reasons were(in the few moments that I eluded to them), the same as yours. That a lot of would-be-interesting racial and itemization choices are nullified for...a reason that has yet to be made clear other than "Because that's the way it is." If there is a blockade put up to ham-fistedly 'solve' a problem in game balance, it should be on the artificial wall to demonstrate why its existence is needed, and not on the general principle of the game to show why its not.



To draw a hypothetical corollary, which are so relevant for debates, let's consider for a second. Let us say that for whatever reason the developers decided that there would be a heavy damage penalty when wielding a dagger and a shield at the same time. Now, if I were to step into your shoes, I could point to plenty of anecdotal evidence of people with daggers and shields ascending. I could say "you're playing wrong" for wanting to use a shield and a dagger, and that you should either pick a different weapon to go with your shield or abandon your shield altogether. I could tell you that daggers attack faster than broadswords and that's why this exists(an example of irrelevant data that doesn't say anything). But ultimately, this would be a mistake of game design. And in a reasonable world there is no way to 'prove' that this penalty shouldn't be in place(other than to say it doesn't make sense). But the burden would be on the limit penalty to prove that it should. And in terms of the MP cap, the burden is still on it to prove itself necessary with some actual logical reasoning.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 20:48

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

I'm not a dev and no devs (orange names) have posted in this thread for a while, probably because the thread has turned into such an unfortunate shitshow.

But in my opinion 50 mp is a pretty good natural upper limit and a lot of other stuff in the game is balanced around that currently, and it works well for the most part. Personally, I don't like that the +MP "aptitude" trait that some species have stops mattering, and I also think that the soft cap in terms of MP+ items is not necessary. I would like to see those things changed but, again, I'm not a dev, and in any case I wouldn't consider it a major design issue.

But most mages in most games never wield a sword or an axe, they merely use magic


Yes, and Crawl is not like those games.

(Hint: there's a reason why none of the magic classes in this game start with a weapon...and yet also have no skills in unarmed combat).


Yes, that reason is because you should start off using magic, and to make these backgrounds more distinct from the backgrounds that do start with a weapon. There's a reason that copious weapons and armor spawn all over the place, even early on (but not books!): Because all characters should (eventually) be using them. The only question is which one(s).

While I'm not a dev, the developers of this game have said on multiple occasions that they want backgrounds to be "starting points" that give you tools to get going, but after that point you choose how you want to develop. A vast many design decisions have been made supporting this and it should actually be quite obvious simply from looking at how the game works, quite apart from what anyone says on a message board.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 21:03

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

TheDefiniteArticle wrote:
3. The argument was 'Vehemet makes things silly' by offsetting mana costs, and the fact is he would do that regardless of total pool.

What? If you had 500 MP, Vehumet's tiny contributions would be all but worthless. They would have no effect on balance whatsoever.

Vehumet does not offset mana costs. You do not even need to cast spells to receive the mana! He gives you mana for kills. All Vehumet does is increase your effective mana pool by a random amount, further limited by an inability to go beyond your current maximum. And you can easily see from situations where Vehumet is particularly generous, that having more mana available than the current cap pushes the limits of balance.

You have that backwards. Your argument was 'Vehumet makes things silly'(breaks the game), which means whether you had 10MP, 100MP, or 1000MP, it would still be Vehumet 'making things silly.' If Vehumet breaks the game by giving you a bit of extra mana then there's a problem because the cap is a soft cap, not a hard one, so you can already get a bit of extra mana. If there was an actual problem, there would be a hard cap instead.

As for having 500MP with no cap, that would mean you could get 275MP right now. Another example of exaggeration to disguise lack of argument.
TheDefiniteArticle wrote:
"A +8/+8 Bardiche is ridiculously stronger than a +3/+3 Bardiche, yet only costs...nothing more."

But we're not comparing parrow to parrow+5, we're comparing it to IMB.

Yes, we are comparing parrow to IMB. Which is effectively a difference in EQUIPMENT. You equip spells like you equip weapons, when you find better ones you discard the weaker ones. The mechanics are different because magic is different from melee, but it is still equipment.

Comparing parrow to parrow+5 is a comparison of STATS. That is higher Spc/Cnj/Poi. Using the same effective equipment. If you wanted to extend the Bardiche example for this, it would be a +3/+3 Bardiche with Fgt = 5 versus +3/+3 Bardiche with Fgt = 15. It's still using the same Bardiche. And you still drop it on the ground when something better comes along.

And once again, none of this has even the most remote bearing on maximum mana pool.
TheDefiniteArticle wrote:
And you're supposed to be able to use them. Instead of running out after 2 casts. Small boosts are supposed to be significant.

Uh 8 MP lets you cast LCS at one monster one time in one turn and 9 MP lets you cast LCS at every single monster on the screen in one turn. That not "significant" enough for you?

You're comparing mana cost vs mana pool. So your argument here is either: "LCS is underpowered" or "Shatter is undercosted." Both of these only relate to mana costs, not total mana pool...in the slightest. And if you can't see the difference, I don't know what to say.
(Ignoring the fact that I said that it was significant, and then you saying 'it's not significant enough?' trying to put false words in my mouth)
Last edited by NessOnett on Saturday, 19th April 2014, 21:13, edited 1 time in total.

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 21:08

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

well for one thing removing the cap at 50 mp means that the bug where current mp is saved as a 1 byte signed integer actually matters so this would have to be fixed
(if you get 128+ current MP and save the game you will have negative current MP when you load)
(yes this is possible in current crawl; divine vigour is the big thing)

anyway I said elsewhere I don't think the 50 mp cap is important at all so removing it seems perfectly reasonable to me but I don't really see what this has to do with mp regen either because it certainly does not change much that bart or bloax are talking about

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Post Saturday, 19th April 2014, 21:12

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

and into wrote:Yes, and Crawl is not like those games.

Ignoring the fact that you brought up the comparison to other games...
and into wrote:While I'm not a dev, the developers of this game have said on multiple occasions that they want backgrounds to be "starting points" that give you tools to get going, but after that point you choose how you want to develop.

Well that is the problem isn't it. "Choice." It's being taken away for no reason.

Or maybe there is a reason, but nobody here seems to have one. Just a lot of double-talk.

crate wrote:well for one thing removing the cap at 50 mp means that the bug where current mp is saved as a 1 byte signed integer actually matters so this would have to be fixed
(if you get 128+ current MP and save the game you will have negative current MP when you load)
(yes this is possible in current crawl; divine vigour is the big thing)

I am aware of that, which is why I'm horribly confused by a lot of the things being said. If Vehumet gifting you an extra 50 mana in a fight *breaks* the game, how does having a consistent extra ~80 not? You can already get to extremely high mana. And if that's a problem, a soft cap is a clumsy and ineffective solution.

But it's already a bug, and should already be fixed. So the fact that it would make it more common, would merely be added encouragement to the devs to fix a known issue.

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Post Tuesday, 22nd April 2014, 13:18

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

At the beginning of the game the mp regeneration is enough to play fluently, you only have to rest after big fights. It just scales horribly! Later on you have to rest/channel constantly, so much that the main reason for Sif Muna+necromutation becomes hungerless channeling! That is just sad.
More spellpower/invo/evo should not only increase the mp pool but also the mp regeneration rate.

Just imagine the standard pillar dance. With a bow or spear you can fire away as much as you like, maybe sometimes grabbing another arrow from the floor, but with a caster it's so painfully slow to recover mp that sometimes you even lose sight to your enemy or overtake him. And if you happen to try to down a troll or unique it's better to run until your pool is full and kill him fast with your biggest spells, because he regenerates hp faster than you can regenerate mp.

Sure the channeling abilities are nice, but for hp you get several regeneration abilities (rings, troll armour, mutations, spells, etc.) plus god abilities (Trog's hand, Ely's healing, etc.) plus draining weapons plus potions plus wands plus...

The casters just don't get this kind of utilities. Why not? MP draining weapons or spells for example could be very well balanced, as well as a +mp reg ego.

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Post Tuesday, 22nd April 2014, 18:13

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

crate wrote:well for one thing removing the cap at 50 mp means that the bug where current mp is saved as a 1 byte signed integer actually matters so this would have to be fixed
(if you get 128+ current MP and save the game you will have negative current MP when you load)
(yes this is possible in current crawl; divine vigour is the big thing)

anyway I said elsewhere I don't think the 50 mp cap is important at all so removing it seems perfectly reasonable to me but I don't really see what this has to do with mp regen either because it certainly does not change much that bart or bloax are talking about

It certainly isn't a huge change, and doesn't address all of bart's complaints, but I've found that people tend to dismiss radical proposals, so I try err on the side of conservative. DE's with a staff of power and/or ring of magical power can easily hit the 50 mana cap by lair. I ran a couple of conjurers in the tournament and while they tended to splat a lot, between early battlesphere and magic dart, it was very very difficult to actually run out of mana, due to how efficient battlesphere is. Late game when you're now casting IMB/Fireball/any bolt you'll probably start to run into regeneration problems again, but at least you could have 60 or even 70+ mana if you geared for it.

It was basically the strongest proposal I could think of that, as far as I can tell, has no negative side effects. More radical proposals might accomplish more, but seemed to also have too many side effects. Another simple change I'd support is the ego of mana regeneration, on a ring, or a helm, or whatever. That also wouldn't hurt anything imho.

And of course I'd support making current mp either unsigned, or a short. Can you get negative mana? Haven't seen it, I'm sure there's some strange way to do it though.

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Post Tuesday, 22nd April 2014, 21:55

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

negative mp is pretty easy in wizmode, and if you wanted to do this in a real game it wouldnt be too hard

Image

Turns out op can do it without divine vigour, though you need every op-usable MP-increasing item to do it as well as high mp 3. With divine vigour you can get there much more easily (without mutations or ponderinghat).

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Post Tuesday, 22nd April 2014, 22:32

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Berlioz wrote:Just imagine the standard pillar dance. With a bow or spear you can fire away as much as you like, maybe sometimes grabbing another arrow from the floor, but with a caster it's so painfully slow to recover mp that sometimes you even lose sight to your enemy or overtake him. And if you happen to try to down a troll or unique it's better to run until your pool is full and kill him fast with your biggest spells, because he regenerates hp faster than you can regenerate mp.
um
have you tried playing an early game melee character
because it sounds like you have never paid attention to how fast HP regenerates
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Post Tuesday, 22nd April 2014, 22:58

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

If anything I'd argue health regeneration (the r[egen]r[ate] or whatever it is) should always be maxhp/3 instead of (rr = maxhp/3 >= 20 ? 10+maxhp/6 : maxhp/3), and that this should further be multiplied by 1.04^TurnsStandingStill after ten turns of standing still, so that you won't have to mash 5 as something like an ogre. This would also solve the funny (degenerate) phenomenon of swinging scrolls to regenerate faster, since after ten turns (1.04^10=1.48) resting starts being more than competitive with scroll swinging - and a whole lot less silly.
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  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

Did you know that I like ruining crawl every now and then? Go check it out.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 01:08

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

What is scroll swinging? (Serious question never saw/heard of that before)

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 01:14

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

he means wielding a scroll and swinging with it
which is a stupid choice, you should use a scythe or at least a battleaxe
also it doesnt make a difference in the first place unless you are going for low turncount

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 09:29

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

duvessa wrote:he means wielding a scroll and swinging with it
which is a stupid choice, you should use a scythe or at least a battleaxe
also it doesnt make a difference in the first place unless you are going for low turncount

The point of this topic is: MP regeneration needs a buff to have less impact on turncount, not because hitting '5' two times in a row is unbearable.

When legit strategies aren't optimal / available, we get scummy play. No matter how silly it is, people trying to improve turncount can (and do) swing heavy items. It's good that bloax mentioned it, because I consider this extremely annoying and worth "fixing", although I think I understand the decision behind regeneration being tied to auts and not turns.

Bloax wrote:If anything I'd argue health regeneration (the r[egen]r[ate] or whatever it is) should always be maxhp/3 instead of (rr = maxhp/3 >= 20 ? 10+maxhp/6 : maxhp/3), and that this should further be multiplied by 1.04^TurnsStandingStill after ten turns of standing still, so that you won't have to mash 5 as something like an ogre. This would also solve the funny (degenerate) phenomenon of swinging scrolls to regenerate faster, since after ten turns (1.04^10=1.48) resting starts being more than competitive with scroll swinging - and a whole lot less silly.

Both mana and health regeneration would benefit from increased effectiveness over multiple turns, although saying might be so radical that nobody will even consider this seriously.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 09:53

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

well let's take this to an extreme: as soon as you are out-of-los you regenerate all your hp/mp in 1 turn

clearly you can see why that does not work in crawl as-is, right?

(if you think it does, then ok, I guess there is no point in continuing this discussion since you will not change your mind and it is very unlikely you can convince the other side otherwise)

so there must be some minimum number of turns that you should have to rest after fights
what that number is is debatable, I'm not going to argue about that in this post

I agree that not having to rest up at all is in theory better (this is one of the things that is very good about DoomRL) but the problem is you need to construct your game from the beginning with the assumption of no-resting for it to work

it is not at all clear to me that the current situation in crawl with respect to hp/mp regeneration is so wildly above the minimum number of turns required to make crawl work that it must be changed

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 10:07

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

crate wrote:well let's take this to an extreme: as soon as you are out-of-los you regenerate all your hp/mp in 1 turn

clearly you can see why that does not work in crawl as-is, right?

(if you think it does, then ok, I guess there is no point in continuing this discussion since you will not change your mind and it is very unlikely you can convince the other side otherwise)

so there must be some minimum number of turns that you should have to rest after fights
what that number is is debatable, I'm not going to argue about that in this post

I agree that not having to rest up at all is in theory better (this is one of the things that is very good about DoomRL) but the problem is you need to construct your game from the beginning with the assumption of no-resting for it to work

it is not at all clear to me that the current situation in crawl with respect to hp/mp regeneration is so wildly above the minimum number of turns required to make crawl work that it must be changed


I mostly agree but I can see how MP management can become frustrating. Particularly when it means you die because you can't rest in a timely fashion to recover what you needed to progress (though ultimately this would be because you made other mistakes...it does tie in though.)

The problem is: it is difficult when you are starting out (newbish players) to find out the proper way to rest to get enough mp to deal with situations that later on in your game-experience you might have non-mp methods for solving. It is intuitive to rest to recover your mana but it isn't intuitive that you should not deplete your reserves when it is likely you will be swamped with fight after fight with narrow escapes because you didn't position properly or got unlucky with something (shaft, tele, etc.) I don't know that the solution is to speed up mp generation while resting over a certain number of turns. As you said: where do we draw the line?

A persistent item that helps regen mp would be great imho. Even if its only an ego that shows up on randarts. (Though that would probably be rare enough to be insignificant by itself.) I know there are staves that help but that means you are using staves which aren't great for the most part (afaik, and not including La-Jatang in that ofc.)

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 10:25

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

crate wrote:well let's take this to an extreme: as soon as you are out-of-los you regenerate all your hp/mp in 1 turn

clearly you can see why that does not work in crawl as-is, right?


Perhaps I am the only one who does not see it.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 10:29

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 11:47

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 15:35

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

The proposal was to make increased regeneration after several turns of resting, aka standing still. No scroll reading, no eating, no weapon swinging. This means that you could not run from enemy forever in order to benefit from getting out of his sight.

Even in case of regeneration working immediately without monsters in sight (which is also stupid because of invisible monsters), you could still buy yourself only a few turns of regeneration and only assuming that you did not want to spend these turns in more reasonable fashion than waiting (shooting? drinking potions? whatever else).

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 16:04

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Bart: Perhaps the discussion has come around to this, but it did not start as a "lowering turncount/convenience" discussion. I mean the thread title is "MP regeneration needs a serious buff" and there were a lot of posts about how casters are weak, which were neither here nor there really (and not accurate anyway).

If it is just a matter of convenience, and also lowering turncount for those doing speed runs or trying for high scores, then that's a somewhat different discussion.

Currently +HP regen is meaningful even when there aren't enemies lurking just around the corner, and in part that is because it lowers the number of turns you are resting. This means much fewer instances of enemies wandering up to you while you are at less than full capacity. So it would be a very large buff to resting, although it might improve interface slightly and help with speedruns specifically (however the game is notably not designed around speedruns).

Now for MP regen only, maybe it would be okay. MP tends to fill back up much more quickly anyway (unless you got tons of +HP regen stacked) and is a smaller pool than HP (usually) so letting it slowly accelerate during inactivity until full, when no enemies are nearby, would probably result in a less extreme difference between this hypothetical change and current situation. It also wouldn't be oddly competing with and possibly devaluing lots of common items and spells and effects that increase HP regen. But even here, of course, the devil would be in the details, and it might be hard to design any such mechanism in a way that others, once knowing what that mechanism is (and the formulas etc.) won't be able to "game it" in some silly unnecessary but technically "optimal" way.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 18:36

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Speedrunners: Playing a naga of chei and moving back and forth is 40% more efficient than swinging a scythe, get on it.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 20:15

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

It's not, time taken is capped at BASELINE_DELAY (10) for hunger and regeneration purposes.

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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 20:57

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

What if resting (with no monsters in sight) didn't count toward scores turn-counting purposes? (I realize that this would screw around with existing speed-running scores and make 'take a lot of damage' strats no worse than 'play so as to take less damage' strats for speed running, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing)
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Post Wednesday, 23rd April 2014, 23:00

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Siegurt wrote:What if resting (with no monsters in sight) didn't count toward scores turn-counting purposes? (I realize that this would screw around with existing speed-running scores and make 'take a lot of damage' strats no worse than 'play so as to take less damage' strats for speed running, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing)

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Post Thursday, 24th April 2014, 05:53

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

If you think you can clear vaults:5 with a severely underlevelled mummy (which means that your skills are already low) then yes, mummies would be great for speedrunning.
take it easy
  Code:
!lg * won !DD-- min=turns -log
<Sequell> 20749. Bloax, XL24 VSTm, T:13320: http://crawl.lantea.net/crawl/morgue/Bloax/morgue-Bloax-20140907-000920.txt

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Post Thursday, 24th April 2014, 06:15

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Bloax wrote:If you think you can clear vaults:5 with a severely underlevelled mummy (which means that your skills are already low) then yes, mummies would be great for speedrunning.

If resting doesn't count towards turn count here is how you mummy speedrun
1) Wait on the downstairs until everything is asleep
2) Go downstairs and kill stuff
3) When stuff wakes up, go upstairs and go to 1

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Post Thursday, 24th April 2014, 18:50

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

Resting does count towards your speed run, and always should, imho.

Re: crate's -127/129 mana: You got negative mana only because of the overflow, right? I meant if there was a way to legitimately get negative mana, then it might need to stay signed, but if an overflow error is the only way, make it unsigned and you won't have any more problem. Of course in either case a short is probably a good idea.

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Post Thursday, 24th April 2014, 22:12

Re: Mp regeneration needs a serious buff

tasonir wrote:Resting does count towards your speed run, and always should, imho.

Re: crate's -127/129 mana: You got negative mana only because of the overflow, right? I meant if there was a way to legitimately get negative mana, then it might need to stay signed, but if an overflow error is the only way, make it unsigned and you won't have any more problem. Of course in either case a short is probably a good idea.

I'm just pointing it out because I bug reported this like a year ago and it's not fixed and I find that amusing.

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