Swamp Slogger
Posts: 155
Joined: Friday, 18th April 2014, 16:42
Saturday, 31st May 2014, 19:33
What is wrong with Crawl
So it seems to be all the rage lately for people with suggestions to make their own threads to consolidate their ideas. So I figured I'd follow suit to try and give some form and function to all the things I think are wrong with this game. And I know I'm gonna have a lot of detractors, but such is life. If people don't agree with my sentiments, they are free to ignore my thread. In an effort for full disclosure, not all of these are purely my ideas. Some are modified from ideas in other threads. But I think they need as much attention as possible, because they are problems.
Mana Pool soft cap:
Currently, there is a soft cap on mana so when you pass 5O, you start receiving half increases for any more mana beyond that. This is something that serves no real function but to give the illusion of usefulness. If mana is supposed to be a limited resource, and players are meant to be required to find alternatives like worshiping Sif or a crystal ball of energy; then this would be served much better as a hard cap. If the intent is to nerf magic, this is a very obtuse and ineffective approach and it’d be better to actually tackle the magical spells that are the problem. This makes the softcap more of just an inconvenience than an actual limiting factor. And any argument that can be made about the balancing of magic is thrown out the window when things like Vehemet are brought into the picture that largely trivializes the concept of the soft cap in any context. But being shoehorned into a God like that is a bad thing. The biggest problem with this cap though, other than being a general nuisance for no actual gameplay benefit, is that it is a massive limiting factor for player choice. It trivializes the benefits of high MP races in the mid to lategame, which is bad enough. But it also massively harms itemization choice. If a player decides that an extra 9 MP is worth a ring slot over something else, they should have that option. But when it’s a mere 4, it isn’t even a choice. And that’s to say nothing of artifacts that have +MP on their list of attributes. So in short, this soft cap does nothing to add balance to the game, and just adds frustration and limits player choice, and should therefore be removed.
Distortion Brand:
Distortion Brand is an outlier that causes a lot of big problems in a lot of ways because it is always a possibility. If you are an average player, optimal play patterns dictate that you ignore the fact that this brand exists and play as if it doesn’t, because of how rare it is. But if you’re on a streak and want to keep every character alive, then any enemy with any glowing weapon needs to be treated as a massive and imminent threat. They suddenly need to be top priority because of the chance that they will suddenly effectively instant-kill you by banishing you if they get an attack off. When in reality the odds of this are astronomically small, they are still considered by streakers because perma-death. This leads to extremely frustrating gameplay for the hardcore players, and also random ‘unavoidable’ deaths for the average player every now and this. I shouldn’t need to explain why this should be unacceptable in terms of enemies. But then there’s the problem with wield-IDing on top. Again because of the extremely unlikely occurrence of this brand existing, suddenly the whole game changes because it is the only thing that makes wield-IDing a bad idea(assuming you have remove curse scrolls(. This makes it so if you want to be safe you have to use an ID scroll on every ego weapon you find, which is extremely inefficient and scarcity makes it hard to do. There are so many things that could be done to fix this, from making Distortion unique in that it auto-IDs, removing the abyss-related things to distortion, removing ID-ing altogether as many people are advocating for, making distortion an artifact-only brand, etc. But as it stands right now it is an extremely rare occurrence that completely changes the way people play or is ignored and used as a frustrating instant-death when it does show up.
Damage Variance:
Unfortunately for me, Tasonir posted an entire thread about this a few days ago, which is linked here. But it is still a major problem that I’d like to address. Damage varies too much in this game, with many damages being based off a single die roll that can go from 1 to ridiculously large numbers. This is compounded by the fact that the way AC works is randomized off a similar die roll, so the possibility exists to have any reduction reduced by almost nothing or a very large number. This inconsistency is really bad in a game about strategy and permadeath. It is hard to plan an optimal strategy when an enemy is doing on average ~3 damage to you, and suddenly they do 47 because they got a good roll and your AC roll was bad. And while you could argue(and i’m sure the elitists will( that you could just be safer, and always plan for the worst roll possible, it does not make this a smart or sensible design decision. Players don’t want to assume their armor is useless. Players don’t want to feel like they invested an Octopode level of ring slots to get 38 AC and then get one-shot anyways because it was effectively ignored by an unlucky toss of the dice. This is a deep problem that would take a lot of work to fix. Lowering variance on enemy attacks would be a start, but that is a lot of time and coding to go through each and every attack in the game to minimize it. I think we’d be better served to take a closer look at the way armor and shielding work and make them more consistent, as well as having more pronounced GDR to make use of as well. Tl;dr every enemy shouldn’t have the opportunity to be Yuif if luck is on their side.
Torment:
I’m not sure exactly how to approach torment from an objective standpoint, but Torment is extremely poorly designed. Percentage based damage in a game with such limited healing options is a poor thought to begin with. Percentage based damage in a game with such limited healing options than can’t effectively be reduced or mitigated(15% is not nearly enough for ‘maximum resist’( is ten times worse. It ignores magic resist, it ignores direct LoS, there is no REAL way to combat it outside of extremely niche things like lich form or worshiping kiku. And that’s the problem. On an average character, there is no way to mitigate it, no way to stop it, you are going to get hit by it, and it’s going to take out over a third of your health in best case. It lacks counterplay(fog isn’t enough, especially when stairs are involved like tomb..and since you’re likely to be hit the turn they come into LoS(. It lacks strategy. There needs to be more that can be done about it, simple as that. The tomb isn’t challenging because it’s challenging. The tomb is challenging because it is so densely packed with the worst designed mechanic in the game.
Binary Runic Gameplay:
That header probably conveys very poorly what I’m trying to say, so I’ll try to spell it out. Right now there is a fairly binary system in place between the 3/4-rune win and the 15-rune win. People will either do the bare minimum, and win the game, or they will go “into extended” and probably do all of it. And while that in and of itself isn’t a problem, the problem is that transition and how extended is designed. Going from Vaults/Slime into Pan/Hell is a massive difficulty spike. Regardless of how easy or hard you think the endgame is, the transition could be smoother. And I think this is primarily because of how the extended game is designed. The popular sentiment among most players is “If I’m strong enough for <insert endgame branch> then I’m strong enough for all the others.” There is a very flat mesa-eque difficulty curve after that initial spike. Everything there feels kinda samey. And this is the root cause of older players thinking the game is too long. It isn’t that it’s too long, it’s just that there’s this expanse of time where the enemies don’t really get any more threatening. The solution isn’t to shorten the amount of gameplay but rather vary it. This is a problem I haven’t fully thought out a solution to, but I know a good place that we can start with(again, idea taken from another thread(. Take the demonic rune out of Pan, and instead have a rune at the bottom of Elf. This would at least give some sense of progression between the “easy” runes and the “hard” runes. It’s definitely still on the easy side, but players could get more than the bare minimum before having to dive into the hardest areas in the game, which a lot of newer players aren’t prepared for.
Species:
There are a few species that need work. All three of these species share common problems. They are all considered by the community based on poll results both extremely underpowered as well as extremely unfun to play. And that’s a problem. A race can be one or the other and still survive in the context of crawl. But when their downside is that they are bad at ‘everything’ then their upside can’t exist. And when there’s no strengths to play to, there is no reason to play them. Formicids get a lot of flak for being terrible, but they at least have some things going for them. They have some solid aptitudes and a few unique attributes that give you a unique experience and allow you to at least attempt to compensate for their glaring flaws. But these three don’t really have that, they are just bad.
1. Mummies. First and foremost is a race near and dear to my heart. Mummies, the unofficial challenge class of crawl. It is that pedigree that makes the mummy the hardest to try and change. For some unknown reason, people like mummies being both terrible and unfun to have something to make fun of. It’s a terrible place for the race to be in; because again, ‘bad at everything’ is a really poor design decision. They have the worst aptitudes across the board, slowest exp gain, and a host of negative attributes not the least of which is the inability to quaff. And in exchange for that, they get to be undead and…nope, that’s it. And undead in itself is a mixed bag because of the ‘dispel undead’ vulnerability, God and transformation limitations, etc. Mummies need a purpose, a function, something they can excel at.
2. Demigods. A while back I did the math on demigods bonus stats versus negative aptitudes and found that on average humans(the most mundane race( were better than demigods at nearly everything assuming equal exp. And at worst they were very close. This is to say nothing about all the races that push past humans in terms of anything. In the end you’re left with a race designed not to specialize in anything(because specialists would want to choose a race that is good at that thing(, but which gets such negative returns on all his skills that he effectively has to specialize to be able to function at anything. You end up getting a human that is worse than a human in every way save for base HP/MP, that also can’t worship a God(which is a major hindrance(. If anything, this should be the challenge race, given how generic the concept currently is. If that were the case I could see it staying how it is(and in which case, please buff mummies for the love of Cheibriados(. But there’s so much design space that could be utilized for a “Demigod.” They are descendants of Gods, they should be strong. But they are frail, meak, and just…bad.
3. Ghouls. Ghouls get ignored a lot, mostly because they are both bad and unfun, but also because they lack the identity that mummies do. They continue the ‘bad at everything’ theme of the previous two, with aptitudes -1 almost across the board, but also have the worst base stats in the game on top. They get to specialize a bit better than the other two as they have at least a few redeeming aptitudes of 1, but their base stats being so weak, and their growths being so poor, means that even the things they are good at…they aren’t very good at. Add to this an extremely finicky and micromanagey food system(way worse than old Nemelex, what’s with that devs?(, and you have a race that nobody really wants to play as.
There’s a reason these three races consistently show up with among the lowest playrates and winrates. They need overhauls. They need tweaks. They need some form of advantage to give them a reason to be played over their counterparts that are almost strictly better besides “I want to be sub-optimal to make this harder”(because most players don’t want that, and those that do don’t want it until they’ve played for a long time and gotten very good(.
But this thread took a while to write up, and I'm sure it's full of typos, bad grammar, missed points. But overall...thoughts?
Mana Pool soft cap:
Currently, there is a soft cap on mana so when you pass 5O, you start receiving half increases for any more mana beyond that. This is something that serves no real function but to give the illusion of usefulness. If mana is supposed to be a limited resource, and players are meant to be required to find alternatives like worshiping Sif or a crystal ball of energy; then this would be served much better as a hard cap. If the intent is to nerf magic, this is a very obtuse and ineffective approach and it’d be better to actually tackle the magical spells that are the problem. This makes the softcap more of just an inconvenience than an actual limiting factor. And any argument that can be made about the balancing of magic is thrown out the window when things like Vehemet are brought into the picture that largely trivializes the concept of the soft cap in any context. But being shoehorned into a God like that is a bad thing. The biggest problem with this cap though, other than being a general nuisance for no actual gameplay benefit, is that it is a massive limiting factor for player choice. It trivializes the benefits of high MP races in the mid to lategame, which is bad enough. But it also massively harms itemization choice. If a player decides that an extra 9 MP is worth a ring slot over something else, they should have that option. But when it’s a mere 4, it isn’t even a choice. And that’s to say nothing of artifacts that have +MP on their list of attributes. So in short, this soft cap does nothing to add balance to the game, and just adds frustration and limits player choice, and should therefore be removed.
Distortion Brand:
Distortion Brand is an outlier that causes a lot of big problems in a lot of ways because it is always a possibility. If you are an average player, optimal play patterns dictate that you ignore the fact that this brand exists and play as if it doesn’t, because of how rare it is. But if you’re on a streak and want to keep every character alive, then any enemy with any glowing weapon needs to be treated as a massive and imminent threat. They suddenly need to be top priority because of the chance that they will suddenly effectively instant-kill you by banishing you if they get an attack off. When in reality the odds of this are astronomically small, they are still considered by streakers because perma-death. This leads to extremely frustrating gameplay for the hardcore players, and also random ‘unavoidable’ deaths for the average player every now and this. I shouldn’t need to explain why this should be unacceptable in terms of enemies. But then there’s the problem with wield-IDing on top. Again because of the extremely unlikely occurrence of this brand existing, suddenly the whole game changes because it is the only thing that makes wield-IDing a bad idea(assuming you have remove curse scrolls(. This makes it so if you want to be safe you have to use an ID scroll on every ego weapon you find, which is extremely inefficient and scarcity makes it hard to do. There are so many things that could be done to fix this, from making Distortion unique in that it auto-IDs, removing the abyss-related things to distortion, removing ID-ing altogether as many people are advocating for, making distortion an artifact-only brand, etc. But as it stands right now it is an extremely rare occurrence that completely changes the way people play or is ignored and used as a frustrating instant-death when it does show up.
Damage Variance:
Unfortunately for me, Tasonir posted an entire thread about this a few days ago, which is linked here. But it is still a major problem that I’d like to address. Damage varies too much in this game, with many damages being based off a single die roll that can go from 1 to ridiculously large numbers. This is compounded by the fact that the way AC works is randomized off a similar die roll, so the possibility exists to have any reduction reduced by almost nothing or a very large number. This inconsistency is really bad in a game about strategy and permadeath. It is hard to plan an optimal strategy when an enemy is doing on average ~3 damage to you, and suddenly they do 47 because they got a good roll and your AC roll was bad. And while you could argue(and i’m sure the elitists will( that you could just be safer, and always plan for the worst roll possible, it does not make this a smart or sensible design decision. Players don’t want to assume their armor is useless. Players don’t want to feel like they invested an Octopode level of ring slots to get 38 AC and then get one-shot anyways because it was effectively ignored by an unlucky toss of the dice. This is a deep problem that would take a lot of work to fix. Lowering variance on enemy attacks would be a start, but that is a lot of time and coding to go through each and every attack in the game to minimize it. I think we’d be better served to take a closer look at the way armor and shielding work and make them more consistent, as well as having more pronounced GDR to make use of as well. Tl;dr every enemy shouldn’t have the opportunity to be Yuif if luck is on their side.
Torment:
I’m not sure exactly how to approach torment from an objective standpoint, but Torment is extremely poorly designed. Percentage based damage in a game with such limited healing options is a poor thought to begin with. Percentage based damage in a game with such limited healing options than can’t effectively be reduced or mitigated(15% is not nearly enough for ‘maximum resist’( is ten times worse. It ignores magic resist, it ignores direct LoS, there is no REAL way to combat it outside of extremely niche things like lich form or worshiping kiku. And that’s the problem. On an average character, there is no way to mitigate it, no way to stop it, you are going to get hit by it, and it’s going to take out over a third of your health in best case. It lacks counterplay(fog isn’t enough, especially when stairs are involved like tomb..and since you’re likely to be hit the turn they come into LoS(. It lacks strategy. There needs to be more that can be done about it, simple as that. The tomb isn’t challenging because it’s challenging. The tomb is challenging because it is so densely packed with the worst designed mechanic in the game.
Binary Runic Gameplay:
That header probably conveys very poorly what I’m trying to say, so I’ll try to spell it out. Right now there is a fairly binary system in place between the 3/4-rune win and the 15-rune win. People will either do the bare minimum, and win the game, or they will go “into extended” and probably do all of it. And while that in and of itself isn’t a problem, the problem is that transition and how extended is designed. Going from Vaults/Slime into Pan/Hell is a massive difficulty spike. Regardless of how easy or hard you think the endgame is, the transition could be smoother. And I think this is primarily because of how the extended game is designed. The popular sentiment among most players is “If I’m strong enough for <insert endgame branch> then I’m strong enough for all the others.” There is a very flat mesa-eque difficulty curve after that initial spike. Everything there feels kinda samey. And this is the root cause of older players thinking the game is too long. It isn’t that it’s too long, it’s just that there’s this expanse of time where the enemies don’t really get any more threatening. The solution isn’t to shorten the amount of gameplay but rather vary it. This is a problem I haven’t fully thought out a solution to, but I know a good place that we can start with(again, idea taken from another thread(. Take the demonic rune out of Pan, and instead have a rune at the bottom of Elf. This would at least give some sense of progression between the “easy” runes and the “hard” runes. It’s definitely still on the easy side, but players could get more than the bare minimum before having to dive into the hardest areas in the game, which a lot of newer players aren’t prepared for.
Species:
There are a few species that need work. All three of these species share common problems. They are all considered by the community based on poll results both extremely underpowered as well as extremely unfun to play. And that’s a problem. A race can be one or the other and still survive in the context of crawl. But when their downside is that they are bad at ‘everything’ then their upside can’t exist. And when there’s no strengths to play to, there is no reason to play them. Formicids get a lot of flak for being terrible, but they at least have some things going for them. They have some solid aptitudes and a few unique attributes that give you a unique experience and allow you to at least attempt to compensate for their glaring flaws. But these three don’t really have that, they are just bad.
1. Mummies. First and foremost is a race near and dear to my heart. Mummies, the unofficial challenge class of crawl. It is that pedigree that makes the mummy the hardest to try and change. For some unknown reason, people like mummies being both terrible and unfun to have something to make fun of. It’s a terrible place for the race to be in; because again, ‘bad at everything’ is a really poor design decision. They have the worst aptitudes across the board, slowest exp gain, and a host of negative attributes not the least of which is the inability to quaff. And in exchange for that, they get to be undead and…nope, that’s it. And undead in itself is a mixed bag because of the ‘dispel undead’ vulnerability, God and transformation limitations, etc. Mummies need a purpose, a function, something they can excel at.
2. Demigods. A while back I did the math on demigods bonus stats versus negative aptitudes and found that on average humans(the most mundane race( were better than demigods at nearly everything assuming equal exp. And at worst they were very close. This is to say nothing about all the races that push past humans in terms of anything. In the end you’re left with a race designed not to specialize in anything(because specialists would want to choose a race that is good at that thing(, but which gets such negative returns on all his skills that he effectively has to specialize to be able to function at anything. You end up getting a human that is worse than a human in every way save for base HP/MP, that also can’t worship a God(which is a major hindrance(. If anything, this should be the challenge race, given how generic the concept currently is. If that were the case I could see it staying how it is(and in which case, please buff mummies for the love of Cheibriados(. But there’s so much design space that could be utilized for a “Demigod.” They are descendants of Gods, they should be strong. But they are frail, meak, and just…bad.
3. Ghouls. Ghouls get ignored a lot, mostly because they are both bad and unfun, but also because they lack the identity that mummies do. They continue the ‘bad at everything’ theme of the previous two, with aptitudes -1 almost across the board, but also have the worst base stats in the game on top. They get to specialize a bit better than the other two as they have at least a few redeeming aptitudes of 1, but their base stats being so weak, and their growths being so poor, means that even the things they are good at…they aren’t very good at. Add to this an extremely finicky and micromanagey food system(way worse than old Nemelex, what’s with that devs?(, and you have a race that nobody really wants to play as.
There’s a reason these three races consistently show up with among the lowest playrates and winrates. They need overhauls. They need tweaks. They need some form of advantage to give them a reason to be played over their counterparts that are almost strictly better besides “I want to be sub-optimal to make this harder”(because most players don’t want that, and those that do don’t want it until they’ve played for a long time and gotten very good(.
But this thread took a while to write up, and I'm sure it's full of typos, bad grammar, missed points. But overall...thoughts?
