Hep nerf

[CypherZel]

Why

[tedric]

what nerf are you referring to?

[CypherZel]

Frail 1, seems like they made a alternative God into a play for the challenge god which seems pointless

[tedric]

oh, i missed this in the commit log: https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/8 ... 0e191eab12

fortunately for you, PleasingFungus provided an explanation:

  Code:

Make Hep give innate frail 1
The god is a bit too strong right now; this seemed like the most
fun way to weaken it. (I don't want to make the ancestor much
weaker than they are at present, since it's not fun if the
ancestor is weak... though there's probably still some room to
manuever, there.) Easy to theme, too; powering your ancestor with
your life essence...

Frail 2 might be more dramatic? Not sure.

as for the claim that this makes hep a "challenge" god, i dunno -- Frail 1 is only -10% HP, that's nowhere near as challenging as some others that will surely be mentioned here in a minute

[CypherZel]

So hep has frail 1 and trog has nothing??? The logic, as if someone (or group of people) legitimately thought that hep needed a nerf when there's so many things that should be considered before that. There is now 0 reason to ever go hep

[Shard1697]

I'd go as far as to say Hep is still a fairly strong god.

[Sar]

I still have no idea why the hell Hep gives you an ally as soon as you join, without even requiring reaching the first star of piety... But that does make it an attractive god.

[agentgt]

The god is ridiculously strong.... I almost 15 runed in 69K turns with Hu but died on the @$%^! orb run.... yes died with 15 runes on the orb run... I'm not going to play crawl for some time because of that (I just suck at the game.. I have no patience and I only like to do 15 rune).

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/ ... 235546.txt


Hep is one bad ass mother $%^&@ ... the whole game.

[BabyRage]

  Code:

Your butt elemental hits the Orb Guardian.

Sorry what?

[Sandman25]

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/agentgt/morgue-agentgt-20160822-235546.txt

Sorry about the loss but why do you have 113 HP as XL 27 Human with 26 levels in Fighting? It's more like Frail 5 (249*0.5=124), not Frail 1 the morgue lists.

Edit. Oh, it's Born, casted 9 times.

[Sar]

@BabyRage: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=e86740c36ac01e25e088c7d924551205157b2875

[BabyRage]

@BabyRage: http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=e86740c36ac01e25e088c7d924551205157b2875

Sorry if I'm slow, what do you do with this?

[Sar]

  Code:

To use it, set "language = butt" in your rcfile.

Do you play online or offline?

[BabyRage]

Online, I got it now. There just was a bunch of code and I thought I have to do something with it.

[PleasingFungus]

i think you actually want to use fake_lang = butt. if you want to customize the butt rate, you can say "fake_lang = butt:1" or "fake_lang = butt:100" or anything in between

[Arrhythmia]

Unpopular but right opinion: the fake languages are unfunny garbage.

[Hirsch I]

YOU are unfunny garbage

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Unpopular but right opinion: the fake languages are unfunny garbage.

At least they are optional.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

So hep has frail 1 and trog has nothing???

Trog's conduct is one of the harshest in the game. Probably only Chei and Qazl are worse.

[CypherZel]

So hep has frail 1 and trog has nothing???

Trog's conduct is one of the harshest in the game. Probably only Chei and Qazl are worse.

-4 club [-cast, rStupidity---] bait

[Shard1697]

It's not untrue, not being able to cast any spell at all is a really bad downside. It's worth it because of how strong the upsides are, but saying that Trog has no downside is simply false.

[CypherZel]

It's not untrue, not being able to cast any spell at all is a really bad downside. It's worth it because of how strong the upsides are, but saying that Trog has no downside is simply false.

It isn't a downside at all because you don't need spells to win the game with or without trog(assuming we are talking 3 rune) it is really just a personal preference. You do need health however

[Shtopit]

Unpopular butt

Fixed that for you.

[agentgt]

For those that butt curious why butt have butt turned butt. It is butt it butts down my gameplay so I butt butt cautious/slowly.

Actually to be butt that is the butt rationale I keep having as I'm just too butt to turn it off. I was hoping to break butt and report to butts about it butting but it is good at butting.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

It's not untrue, not being able to cast any spell at all is a really bad downside. It's worth it because of how strong the upsides are, but saying that Trog has no downside is simply false.

It isn't a downside at all because you don't need spells to win the game with or without trog(assuming we are talking 3 rune) it is really just a personal preference. You do need health however

I don't think this is a good argument. You don't need items to win the game either. But people use them, because they help a lot. You don't need potions to win the game, Mu wins exist after all. You don't need 100% health to win the game, Fe, Te, DE all win games.

Of course being unable to learn spells is a downside. Presumably that's also one of the reasons why Trog's abilities are so strong.

Not learning support spells on a non-Trog character is a mistake, even in a 3-rune game. Sure, you wouldn't get haste, but RMsl, blink and swiftness are incredibly powerful for a relatively small investment.

[CypherZel]

It's not untrue, not being able to cast any spell at all is a really bad downside. It's worth it because of how strong the upsides are, but saying that Trog has no downside is simply false.

It isn't a downside at all because you don't need spells to win the game with or without trog(assuming we are talking 3 rune) it is really just a personal preference. You do need health however

I don't think this is a good argument. You don't need items to win the game either. But people use them, because they help a lot. You don't need potions to win the game, Mu wins exist after all. You don't need 100% health to win the game, Fe, Te, DE all win games.

Of course being unable to learn spells is a downside. Presumably that's also one of the reasons why Trog's abilities are so strong.

Not learning support spells on a non-Trog character is a mistake, even in a 3-rune game. Sure, you wouldn't get haste, but RMsl, blink and swiftness are incredibly powerful for a relatively small investment.

I agree with the statement that it was a bad argument but I still feel as though the nerf was just put in to add difficulty but there was no flavour link between the God and the nerf. I also feel that the nerf wasn't needed because hep was never considered too strong by most players and there are other gods you would expect to be nerfed before hep

[Sandman25]

I agree with the statement that it was a bad argument but I still feel as though the nerf was just put in to add difficulty but there was no flavour link between the God and the nerf. I also feel that the nerf wasn't needed because hep was never considered too strong by most players and there are other gods you would expect to be nerfed before hep

I think devs want Trog to stay as easy mode for new players (Berserker) but every new god should be "balanced" i.e. it cannot be close to Trog in power.

[goodcoolguy]

I'm pretty sure the frail 1 thing does not counterbalance the advantage of immediately getting an ally in early dungeon or the development of that ally into something that essentially plays as much of the game for you as you want it to. The only thing I can think of that might make hep a reasonable crawl god is sharing damage with the ancestor as with spectral weapon, though this would require an additional ability to despawn the ancestor. As it stands, I think hep is stronger than both Trog and Fedhas, unless you get Trog from the berserker background.

[CypherZel]

I agree with the statement that it was a bad argument but I still feel as though the nerf was just put in to add difficulty but there was no flavour link between the God and the nerf. I also feel that the nerf wasn't needed because hep was never considered too strong by most players and there are other gods you would expect to be nerfed before hep

I think devs want Trog to stay as easy mode for new players (Berserker) but every new god should be "balanced" i.e. it cannot be close to Trog in power.

And this annoys me because it feels like there's goals trying to be balanced at once and players who actually play the other 80% of the game get shafted

[Sandman25]

And this annoys me because it feels like there's goals trying to be balanced at once and players who actually play the other 80% of the game get shafted

I agree with you but it has been discussed many times, devs like shafts because they believe it makes games more interesting.

[CypherZel]

And this annoys me because it feels like there's goals trying to be balanced at once and players who actually play the other 80% of the game get shafted

I agree with you but it has been discussed many times, devs like shafts because they believe it makes games more interesting.

Lol was actually thinking of calling this post terrible design choice 2.0 but I feel someone might get offended. I don't want to offend devs or seem like some sort of entitled consumer because I'm not, they make the game the way they want and I am a fan. I still have an opinion on their work though

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I could be wrong, but I imagine when Sandman reads 'shafted' he thinks of the trap that moves players to lower dungeon levels, and when Cypher writes 'shafted' he means 'negatively affected'.

I can't actually comment on Hep, never tried. I spectated some of the Hep-acifist challenge though. The ally did definitely just chew through the game while the player watched, hid or tanked, depending on the situation. Given the need to have the ally be strong, otherwise why choose the god, it's quite hard to see what a reasonable and flavour drawback might be. Sure just reducing HP increases difficulty, but it does feel tacked on.

Allies are generally stronger than all other strategies in crawl and permanent ones even more so. Perhaps the ally could only come out in certain situations, like after suffering a big hit, or with a certain amount of tension? It would be quite a different god though.

[wheals]

Unpopular but right opinion: the fake languages are unfunny garbage.

At least they are optional.

For now

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Unpopular but right opinion: the fake languages are unfunny garbage.

At least they are optional.

For now

Ah, is it time for a mandatory unique fake language for each species, gently modified by backgrounds?

[Sandman25]

Ah, is it time for a mandatory unique fake language for each species, gently modified by backgrounds?

Fortunately it won't happen with non-English versions, you cannot use a single word as subject, verb and adjective in many languages.

[BabyRage]

"fake_lang = butt:100"

I did that and it changed every word into butt! 10/10 amazing.

[Rast]

So hep has frail 1 and trog has nothing???

Trog's conduct is one of the harshest in the game. Probably only Chei and Qazl are worse.

Ah yes, the conduct that forces you to wear the best armour and not waste xp on bad skills.

[Arrhythmia]

YOU are unfunny garbage

This is also true.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

So hep has frail 1 and trog has nothing???

Trog's conduct is one of the harshest in the game. Probably only Chei and Qazl are worse.

Ah yes, the conduct that forces you to wear the best armour and not waste xp on bad skills.

Definitely, wearing heavy armour is often powerful and players can be seen branching into magic too early.

On the other hand, there is a lot of XP available and training costs spiral intensely. Increasing armour skill above 20 instead of getting blink and RMsl castable is almost always silly. There are also races that don't benefit as much from body armour as most and of course some can't wear it at all.

But hey, to each, their own. You enjoy your MiBe, nothing wrong with that.

[CypherZel]

[quote="CypherZel"]So hep has frail 1 and trog has nothing???

Trog's conduct is one of the harshest in the game. Probably only Chei and Qazl are worse.

Ah yes, the conduct that forces you to wear the best armour and not waste xp on bad skills.

Definitely, wearing heavy armour is often powerful and players can be seen branching into magic too early.

On the other hand, there is a lot of XP available and training costs spiral intensely. Increasing armour skill above 20 instead of getting blink and RMsl castable is almost always silly. There are also races that don't benefit as much from body armour as most and of course some can't wear it at all.

But hey, to each, their own. You enjoy your MiBe, nothing wrong with that.[/quote]

There is something really wrong with that, joking but seriously it's so powerful and so simple and easy at the same time, and new players in my opinion don't gain much skill in playing other characters, especially mages. New players mostly play Fi anyway so just remove Be

[minstrel]

Had a thought on the drive in this morning regarding this and I figured it was worth a level 3 necro to the topic.

Assuming the issue with Hep is that it's too easy to turn your ancestor into a wire-guided meat missile, having a frail mutation seems like it will actually make the problem worse - IE a player with fewer HP is less likely to want to wade into battle with his ancestor.

What if instead, the ancestor was forced to stay within 1, or 2 squares of the player, going into walk-toward player mode if it gets out of range? Now all the backgrounds still have their intended niche, but the player has to assume a more reasonable level of risk.

[goodcoolguy]

This would make zero difference to the power level of the god. The good ally has ranged and los effects that make its position mostly irrelevant. What it would do, though, is make it massively more fiddly and annoying to play. The issue in power level is not that it melees monsters to death while you do nothing (see Yred for that niche), it's that it spams spells that instantly kill monsters. Sure, some people like to split hairs on the difference between confused or paralyzed and dead, but this is where you have to start from if you want to understand how the god plays.

Hep gets a lot of things right mechanically, but it's just totally broken in terms of general power. A much better idea would be to regard Hep as an experiment and change Yredelemnul to be less ally spam oriented and more single-good-ally the way Hep is. My recommendation is remove permanent ally gifts under Yred and make the whole thing revolve around the Enslave Soul ability. Make the spectral whatever respawn, maybe retool the drain life and pain mirror things to work for your ally too. This has the advantage of keeping the number of gods under control and fixing an annoying-but-often-strong god to be closer to just very strong.

[minstrel]

Unless you're blinking around constantly, I can't see how forcing your ally to be nearby in order to attack is massively more fiddly (any more so than micromanaging summons' targets already is). But if "send buddy to kill, retreat, rest if it dies, repeat" really isn't an/the issue, then no need for the restriction anyway.

By the good ally, I'm guessing you mean the Hexer? I have the least experience with that one, but assuming it's irredeemably OP (anything that spams status-effects tend to be), maybe it should go. The other two are fun and not overwhelmingly powerful (the caster is strong at high level, but far less so than Spellforged Servitor with a good spell set).

As for removal vs. reform, as a long time player of Mages on the original Everquest (blasty caster with a permanent elemental ally) I enjoy the single strong ally concept, so I'm offering suggestions on the former.