Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 11111
Joined: Friday, 8th February 2013, 12:00
Learning from death
Any good roguelike is reliably winnable by any smart person in one attempt who has never played roguelikes before.
Let me describe some examples.
1) You see an unknown monster called Ogre with Giant Spiked Club and you are a melee character with 25 HP.
1a) Good roguelike will display that the Ogre can deal up to 39 damage in a single attack. If player tries to attack the monster and dies in a single attack, the player learns "I was stupid, I should escape (use scroll of blinking etc.) when there is a monster who can one-shot me. And of course I should not melee it if I have any choice". You learn it once and it works with all monsters (Ettins, Hydra simulacrum, Azure Jelly, Jugernaut etc.)
1b) Bad (you can treat it as "not so good" if you like) roguelike will not display max damage. If player tries to attack the monster, gets 27 damage and dies, the player learns "I should not melee Ogre when I have less than 28 HP. I still can try to melee it if I can kill it with 2 attacks, I have more than 27 HP and the ogre misses me during first attack. I should escape (use scroll of blinking etc.) if I am adjacent to Ogre and I have less than 28 HP".
You learn 27 damage for Ogre, then you learn 39 damage for Ogre, then you learn 70 damage for Ettin, then you learn 116 damage for Etting, then you learn 130 damage for Azure Jelly, then you learn 272 damage for Azure Jelly, then you learn 105 damage for Jugernaur, then you learn 120 damage for Jugernaut etc. That's lots of unnecessary deaths to learn something that can be see in crawlwiki or #crawl.
Should the player think "I was stupid, I am guilty in attacking extremely dangerous monsters"? If your answer is yes, continue reading very carefully.
2) You see an unknown monster which is extremely dangerous.
2a) Good roguelike either has very few extremely dangerous monsters so you can avoid them almost always or it has not so few extremely dangerous monsters and then it provides a detailed description of them because you are expected to kill at least some of them, you cannot avoid them for too long. Good roguelike will list that extremely dangerous Boggart has 13-28 HP so you can try to kill it with a wand or other relatively weak attack. Good roguelike will list that extremely dangerous Caustik Shrike has 95-141 HP so using a wand or another relatively weak attack is not a very good idea. If player dies to Caustik Shrike, he learns "I was stupid, I should not use a wand which deals 30 max damage on a monster with potentially 141 HP".
2b) Bad roguelike has not so few extremely dangerous monsters and does not give detailed description of them. So you cannot avoid them for too long but you cannot choose a good target for killing either. If you try to attack an extremely dangerous Caustik Shrike with a wand, you will get 114 damage in a single turn and will die. Because you had no idea that Caustik Shrike can have 141 HP, deal 57 damage per attack and attack twice per turn. After death player learns "Strange, Caustik shrike wasn't damaged that much, probably it has high HP, or maybe I was just unlucky and it is not realy much tougher than Boggart"
3) You see an unknown monster which is suspectible to Control Undead, Mass Confusion, Mephitic Cloud, Dazzling Spray, fear scroll, blinking scroll during constriction etc.
3a) Good roguelike will provide a way to see how likely you are to affect the monster. It will show something like "Skeletal Warrior has 15% chance to be affected, Centaur Zombie has 56% chance to be affected. Continue casting Control Undead? y/N"
Good roguelike tries to be nice to all players so if some players don't want to see the chances, there will be a way to hide it (even as default probably). After death player learns "I was stupid, casting the spell with 15% chance was a serious mistake" or "I was stupid, fear had only 45% chance to save me while blinking had 75% chance, why did I save blinking?"
3b) Bad roguelike will hide this chance, really bad ("really not so good", remember?) roguelike will have some hidden parameter like HD which makes it impossible to affect some monsters (Frederic and Mephitic Cloud, for example). After death player learns "Probably I was unlucky or Frederick is special-cased to be resistant to Mephitic Cloud, let's write it down for future games"
Did I say hidden parameteres? Let's talk about it some more.
4) You see a monster, it shoots at you with arrows.
4a) Good roguelike will treat all monsters with arrows in the same way. If you got adjacent to Centaur and it switched to melee immediately, then you safely assume that when you get adjacent to Deep Elf Master Archer, it will switch to melee too exactly like Centaur did. If Deep Elf Master Archer is special, you will clealry see it in its description, something like "This monster continues shooting arrows at you even when adjacent". Without any dark and fog which can be problematic to non-native English speakers. After death player learns "I was stupid, description clearly states that it does not make much sense to get adjacent to Master Archer, why didn't I read description carefully, I should have escaped instead".
4b) Bad roguelike will have several types of monsters, one archer will switch to melee (no "Archer" flag) and another will not, one monster will have increased accuracy ("Fighter" flag) and another will not, one monster will be able to open doors ("Open doors" flag) and another will not and so on. You will get nice descriptions like "The blade it wields is ethereal, passing easily through shields and armour, and rendering those it strikes more susceptible to magic." instead of clearly saying something like "their attacks completely ignore shields and are only affected by half of your AC, also your MR has 50% chance to be halved after successful attack for 5-22 turns".
Edit. To make it clear having all these flags is fine, I love it. I don't love it that they are not visible in monster description because they can be quite important.
5) You enter a new branch
5a) Good roguelike will describe every branch, providing a list of typical monsters. So when you are going to enter Elven Halls from Orcish Mines at XL 10, you will see something like "The branch can contain Deep Elf Sorcerers, Deep Elf Annihilators, Deep Elf Blade Masters etc.". and you will be able to check every monster and think "Uh, I have 45% chance to be banished by the sorcerer. U, the annihilator can deal 102 damage with LCS. I should probably avoid this branch for a while". Ok, with Elven Halls it is kind of expected that it is populated with Elves so you can probably use "?/melf" and be fine, but you would get the same description for Depths, Vaults, Crypt etc.
5b) Bad roguelike will describe branches like this: "Possibly constructed by some powerful madman, the Vaults are said to be home to great treasures. The blood spattered liberally around the entrance suggests that there is a certain amount of violence, too.". Nice, I know that I should be prepared for 60% Mark, 100% door seal and V5 ambush, don't I???
6) You enter a new floor
6a) I will start with bad roguelike first. Bad roguelike will kill you for entering a new floor with wrong equipment. After the death you will learn "I see, so Erolcha can generate on D9, I will need to wear ring of MR instead of robustness/shaolin when entering this floor". Or "I see, so Ijyb is special-cased to have a wand of fire on D2", I should wear ring of rF+ instead of ring of MR/+5 AC when entering the floor. Or "Wow, Ijyb can have wand of draining too. Not sure what I should wear now".
6b) Good roguelike will not effectively kill you from the edge of LoS. It will give you a chance to do something vs banishment, it will let you know that Ijyb has a wand of cold in inventory and the wand can do 1-37 damage and that you can get it to 50% by rC+, to 33% by rC++ and to 20% by rC+++". You will learn something from the death, because it was your mistake, you knew what you were against and you didn't do everything you could (I am ignoring unavoidable deaths here)
7) Monsters with unknown properties
7a) Good roguelike will warn you that you can be paralyzed by melee attack of a panlord which ignores everything. If the same Panlord can cast LCS or Fire Storm, you will see it in its description and will act accordingly.
7b) Bad roguelike will describe the monster as "A formidable demon lord inhabiting the endless halls of Pandemonium. Each one is different, with its own set of strengths and weaknesses." and then will write "You die..." after unavoidable death of a character you spent literally hours on.
If you put stasis one, you can get Singularity or Fire Storm and just die because you are unable to blink. If you don't put stasis on, you can get summons with paralyzing eyes or chaos melee attack so there is no safe choice here but at least you knew what you were against.
8) Damage
8a) Good roguelike will have a clear feedback for player to let him know how he's doing. That includes 66% chance for Throw Flame vs a goblin as XL 1 DEFE with 1d10 roll. Or if player wants, he can get just damage numbers "Flame hits goblin (3 damage)". Or if player wants, no damage numbers at all (as default). Those numbers make it much easier to choose what spell to use, what weapon to use, what launcher to use, what wand to use etc. Good roguelikes show something like "Throw Icicle hits Ice Dragon but it partially resists (damage 15 instead of 43). This makes it obvious for players how training magic skills increases damage from spells, how training Evocations increases damage from wands/rods, how training Invocations increases damage from abilities etc.
8b) Bad roguelike will hide everything, you will get only two types of message "You hit foo" and "You miss foo". No info about current monster HP also. Too unplayable? Ok, let's add "You hit foo but do no damage". What, still unplayable? Ok, let's add "You hit foo!" , "You hit foo!!" and "You hit foo!!!". No, you don't need to know what is the difference between "!" and "!!!", the latter is better and that's all you need to know. If you want to compare weapons, count the "!" for yourself. No, "!!" is not the same as "!" + "!" and the damage is randomized and non-linear too. Don't be too demanding, it is a free game. Why do you need to know how damaged the monster is? You know that you can spend literally dozens of turns without dealing any damage, don't you? Just out of curiosity? Ok, we can split monster HP in 4-5 categories and we will call them "lightly wounded", "heavily wounded", "almost dead" etc. What, that's too easy for players? Ok, let's randomize monster HP, 9-21 HP for a monster 7-17 smiting attack should be good enough. We will add different hidden stepdowns (for Dex, for spellpower, for piety) while ignoring OP items and spells which are used by 70+% winning characters.
TL;DR. Learning from death means player should learn what he did wrong, not that some monster can deal 27 damage.
This is my final post. Thank you everyone, I enjoyed my years on the forum. Happy crawling!
Full Windows 64 bit version can be downloaded at https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ufdv1a2qbn6b ... 9.zip?dl=0
I play offline.