DCSS TrunkWatch™: No More Haste Spell

[njvack]

Leaving this here:

Haste isn't an effect that should be available in unlimited spell form, and works much better as a consumable. The wand is also potentially not great due to the existence of recharging, but the spell is a much worse offender so is a good change to start with!
-MarvinPA

[VeryAngryFelid]

Thanks, devs!

[Sar]

step 2: remove the wand
step 3: bring back itemdest

[dowan]

step 2: remove the wand
step 3: bring back itemdest

step 2.3333333 introduce a crappy artefact named "itemdest"
step 2.6666666 remove that artefact

That's the only way I can agree with you Sar. And even then... itemdest wasn't a very good artefact, do we really need it back?

[VeryAngryFelid]

step 3: bring back itemdest

Why? To nerf melee characters and buff ranged ones?

[VeryAngryFelid]

  Code:

A mummy comes into view. Its curse makes you unable to use potions until you kill it.

[archaeo]

let's not act surprised that Sar loves item destruction, I'm pretty sure Sar : itemdest :: archaeo : food

[Rast]

Cool, now can we remove monsters who spam slow effects?

[tedric]

DCSS TrunkWatch™

i don't think you know what that "TM" symbol means, yo

[njvack]

Dude you gotta REGISTER THAT SHIT, I'ma infringe ALL DAY LONG

[tabstorm]

Semi-trolling but semi-serious question: How is casting haste before engaging in melee substantially different from casting a bolt spell in induced tedium? There are a few instances where you'll cast haste without enemies in view, but these are mostly fixed vaults where you know what's coming, like going downstairs to Tomb:2 or Tomb:3. Both replicate a consumable (bolt wands vs. haste wands). Both are pretty much no brainers, you're going to cast Haste or Bolt when enemies come into view. All that's left is that bolt spells directly damage the enemy and haste dosen't. Are all spells that aren't direct damage spells tedious? What about bolt spells? Aiming bolt spells can get pretty annoying.

[Sar]

I don't see word "tedious" anywhere in the commit and when Haste removal was discussed, "tedium of recasting Haste" was pretty much never brought up as an argument since contamination system makes sure you only cast Haste when you actually want the effect.

[tabstorm]

Sure, but that was the argument against all the other charms, no? And the wand, which was left untouched, is much more powerful than the spell, which was typically something you'd only get for extended or in the late game where you have nothing better to do with all your excess XP. You have effectively infinite haste with the wand, as in, enough charges to use haste in any situation of real consequence. I don't really have a problem with either...

[Shard1697]

Well, with the spell you can use it in every situation, not just situations of real consequence.

Either way I have a problem with both, and would appreciate the wand being removed as well in the near future(hopefully).

[VeryAngryFelid]

I don't see word "tedious" anywhere in the commit and when Haste removal was discussed, "tedium of recasting Haste" was pretty much never brought up as an argument since contamination system makes sure you only cast Haste when you actually want the effect.

I.e. before entering any Pan floor, re-entering Tomb etc. I casted haste about hundred of times in a 3 rune game because why not?

[dpeg]

Haste has been nerfed several times (effect reduced to 50% speed increase, contamination, spell level increase). In the end, this power is universally useful, and it is therefore not good to be infinitely available. With a consumable (potion), things are much better because then the decision is real. The wand is also a basically unlimited source, and I'd expect it to go, too.

If both wand and spell are gone, then we could make the haste effect stronger again (I think that "double speed" is easier to explain to players). Also: monster buff!

And of course: haste removal = Cheibriados buff!

[Siegurt]

Haste has been nerfed several times (effect reduced to 50% speed increase, contamination, spell level increase). In the end, this power is universally useful, and it is therefore not good to be infinitely available. With a consumable (potion), things are much better because then the decision is real. The wand is also a basically unlimited source, and I'd expect it to go, too.

If both wand and spell are gone, then we could make the haste effect stronger again (I think that "double speed" is easier to explain to players). Also: monster buff!

And of course: haste removal = Cheibriados buff!

And don't forget Mumy nerf!

[dpeg]

Siegurt: True. That's a given! Wherever this ship steers, mummies will draw the short end of the stick

[goodcoolguy]

Well, with the spell you can use it in every situation, not just situations of real consequence.

Either way I have a problem with both, and would appreciate the wand being removed as well in the near future(hopefully).

The problem is in thinking there's a difference between using something in every situation vs. "only" in situations of real consequence.

There's displacement going on here. The problem is with the situations that exist but don't matter, not with conveniences that make them go more smoothly. There's a bias that denies the situations don't matter in any deep sense, preferring to believe that they can be "fixed" by removing conveniences. You might as well make the game harder by removing tab.

As long as you can use an effect every time it matters whether you do or not, that is the same in terms of balance as if you could use it all the time.

[papilio]

Then Regeneration spell should also be removed for consistency. It is also 'always-should-be-active' buff, without any penalty here.

Also, Repel/Deflect Missiles are 'always-should-be-active' buffs as well. Reworks could be needed?
Possible way is to buff effect (DMsl only) and nerf duration (nerf both, similar to abjuration)

[Cimanyd]

And of course: haste removal = Cheibriados buff!

And don't forget Mumy nerf!

Wait, doesn't that make this spell removal a Trog (and therefore Berserker) buff? Why would you buff Trog?!

[VeryAngryFelid]

Semi-trolling but semi-serious question: How is casting haste before engaging in melee substantially different from casting a bolt spell in induced tedium? There are a few instances where you'll cast haste without enemies in view, but these are mostly fixed vaults where you know what's coming, like going downstairs to Tomb:2 or Tomb:3. Both replicate a consumable (bolt wands vs. haste wands). Both are pretty much no brainers, you're going to cast Haste or Bolt when enemies come into view. All that's left is that bolt spells directly damage the enemy and haste dosen't. Are all spells that aren't direct damage spells tedious? What about bolt spells? Aiming bolt spells can get pretty annoying.

If casting a bolt allowed you to easily escape/kite 99% monsters and increased damage by 50% from all sources for many turns, it would be removed too. Haste is a meta-spell, it affects duration of other actions. Swiftness slightly affects movement only (and has a serious drawback), Finesse affects melee/launchers only (and costs high amount of piety of a single god you must worship for that), Haste is a spell which optimally should be cast in every fight unless the fight lasts less than 3-4 turns. And contamination does not mean much, before extended you can just retreat and press 5 a couple of times, in extended you will be mutated anyway (I started using haste much more often there after removal of rMut, I am not going to keep mutations from benemut anyway and potions of cure mutations are much more common now).

[lethediver]

Well, with the spell you can use it in every situation, not just situations of real consequence.

Either way I have a problem with both, and would appreciate the wand being removed as well in the near future(hopefully).

The problem is in thinking there's a difference between using something in every situation vs. "only" in situations of real consequence.

There's displacement going on here. The problem is with the situations that exist but don't matter, not with conveniences that make them go more smoothly. There's a bias that denies the situations don't matter in any deep sense, preferring to believe that they can be "fixed" by removing conveniences. You might as well make the game harder by removing tab.

As long as you can use an effect every time it matters whether you do or not, that is the same in terms of balance as if you could use it all the time.

If this post means what i think it means (shorten crawl, remove popcorn and cut down down on the number of monsters/XP so the encounters that do remain are all non-trivial) then that's awesome and i'm all for it.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

why would you think it means that? he's saying that if you let the player have something powerful in the situations where it matters, you may as well let them have it all the time, which will make the nonmattering situations go more smoothly

[Sprucery]

Haste has been nerfed several times (effect reduced to 50% speed increase, contamination, spell level increase).

Haste used to be level 8.

[lethediver]

why would you think it means that? he's saying that if you let the player have something powerful in the situations where it matters, you may as well let them have it all the time, which will make the nonmattering situations go more smoothly

Ah. I guess i thought this line "The problem is with the situations that exist but don't matter" - was about removing trivial encounters themselves, not about automating as much of trivial encounters as possible.

If we really want to make those encounters go as smoothly as possible - why not just have the player rack up bonus XP while autoexploring and only have him fight large groups and/or red names? And then from that logical next step, take it even further and just eliminate lots of monsters from the game so players arent vegging out and o-tabbing during 99% of the time during play.

[goodcoolguy]

Haste is a spell which optimally should be cast in every fight unless the fight lasts [more] than 3-4 turns.

This is totally wrong. If you have gotten spellhaste online and the significance of the investment is such that it is "optimal" to use it every time a fight lasts more than 3-4 turns, you have made serious strategic error.

[Psieye]

This is totally wrong. If you have gotten spellhaste online and the significance of the investment is such that it is "optimal" to use it every time a fight lasts more than 3-4 turns, you have made serious strategic error.

If you have access to spell haste, then it is 'optimal' to use it if you are doing nothing more than walking across an empty room to the stairs. You get back the turn you invested in casting it in just three steps. You may not need it to cross that empty room, but it lets you cross that empty room faster and therefore better. Spell haste is infinite, so you don't need to save it for actual emergencies.

I think his point was "if you've invested EXP to get haste online before you've established sufficient killdudes skill, you're doing it wrong". Derived from a literal interpretation of "you gotta haste every fight that lasts more than 4 turns".

[stickyfingers]

I think goodcoolguy meant that it's better to have it barely castable, and in such situation the miscast chance outweights the benefits of using it in trivial fights.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I think goodcoolguy meant that it's better to have it barely castable, and in such situation the miscast chance outweights the benefits of using it in trivial fights.

in this case it is not me who made a strategic error. haste is really similar to blink, you want to have it reliable for emergencies.
I think he meant that it is not optimal to cast haste to kill popcorn but I am not sure about it, it is still good to be hasted after losing 1% hp if something dangerous comes in view.

[goodcoolguy]

Psieye is correct. If you are using the word "optimal" to refer to one behavior over another when neither has any impact on the outcome of the game, you are misusing the word. If you are playing a character for whom emergency situations are so frequent that the normal amount of emergency bail out items is not enough to pull you through, you're either not playing crawl (e.g. you like playing 200% monster hp homebrew nonsense, like a certain poster here) or you've built your character wrong (or your tactics suck, but I doubt that's what makes people say this).

"X feels easier" or "obviously X is stronger than not-X" is consistently poor reasoning when you can max out your odds of winning at 100%. You have to ask whether it's possible to be meaningfully more powerful in the first place and for a lot of things that become available primarily late in the game, the answer is often that it's not possible.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I love how certain poster is talking about 100% win rate being a thing. If you are already hasted, you can survive that Ancient Lich who's going to paralyze you as its first action and summon a couple of f(r)iends next.

Edit. Also it's fun to see certain poster referring "normal" amount of something like it's impossible to be unlucky with rng.

[dowan]

Wait? You don't win 100% of the time? You're really not supposed to be here then, this place is only for crawl pros.

There is no such thing as 100% winrate over any meaningful amount of games, there are unavoidable deaths and not only is it known, it's considered a good thing (by mr coolguy himself according to previous posts).

Now i"m going to make statement with no specifics that's very open to interpretation, and you all guess what I mean by it. When I see one I like I'll let you know that's what I meant. It works for psychics and con artists (two words for the same thing) why wouldn't it work here?

Pressing the 'z' key is always a mistake, and you are vastly decreasing your win chances if you press it.

[Olithium]

I don't care about this one way or the other; due the the fact that I generally suck at spellcasters; and I'll never see the day where this spell will be used anyways; but I just gotta wonder; what will happen to monsters that cast haste as spells? By what game logic, could it be explained, that even the orc wizard can cast this coveted, yet occult magicks.

Would it be like the Orb of Destruction, that it's simply too complex of a spell for a lowly adventurer, despite the aforementioned orc wizard that pretty much mastered it?

or maybe it's something else entirely:

Spoiler: show

"Lo! For it is the Order of the Haste! The dungeon's order of various species of the dungeon's spellcasters, that take a oath to only teach the titular magic, haste, by word of mouth, rather that of writing. They decree that any written passages that breaks this oath is heresy; they vow to burn and deface any written works that break it."

[goodcoolguy]

Wait? You don't win 100% of the time? You're really not supposed to be here then, this place is only for crawl pros.

There is no such thing as 100% winrate over any meaningful amount of games, there are unavoidable deaths and not only is it known, it's considered a good thing (by mr coolguy himself according to previous posts).

Now i"m going to make statement with no specifics that's very open to interpretation, and you all guess what I mean by it. When I see one I like I'll let you know that's what I meant. It works for psychics and con artists (two words for the same thing) why wouldn't it work here?

Pressing the 'z' key is always a mistake, and you are vastly decreasing your win chances if you press it.

I think you're confused. I basically don't believe in unavoidable deaths outside of the very early game. I've never seen one and I've seen a lot of crawl.

I don't know how many times I have to say it: There are actual examples of people achieving 100% winrates over large numbers of games. The reason strong players don't literally always win is that playing to win in this game is horrible and unfun.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I basically don't believe in unavoidable deaths outside of the very early game. I've never seen one and I've seen a lot of crawl.

Some unavoidable deaths may mistakenly look like avoidable ones. When you think "I should have teleported away", you don't know that you would land on adjacent tile. When you think "I should have retreated", you don't know that there was Sonja waiting for you around corner. When you think "I should have casted Blink", you don't know that it would be a miscast and so on.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I don't know how many times I have to say it: There are actual examples of people achieving 100% winrates over large numbers of games. The reason strong players don't literally always win is that playing to win in this game is horrible and unfun.

I think you should repeat it until you realize that the chance is 99.99% and not 100% so there is always room and sense for improvement.

[goodcoolguy]

I basically don't believe in unavoidable deaths outside of the very early game. I've never seen one and I've seen a lot of crawl.

Some unavoidable deaths may mistakenly look like avoidable ones. When you think "I should have teleported away", you don't know that you would land on adjacent tile. When you think "I should have retreated", you don't know that there was Sonja waiting for you around corner. When you think "I should have casted Blink", you don't know that it would be a miscast and so on.

I don't agree that long strings of moves that do nothing create unavoidable deaths in practice. Again, I don't believe you can die unavoidably in a way that unfolds over numerous turns outside of the very early game. I could see something like getting hit with distortion on rounding a corner in a corridor and being banished at xl 7 leading to an unavoidable death, but I've never actually witnessed such a thing. I can construct scenarios that are vanishingly improbable and that I've never seen happen, but I think it's splitting hairs to talk about the difference between 100% and 99.99% in a game few people play more than 10,000 times.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Do you remember how we reached to current situation? You mentioned that it does not make much sense to play optimally i.e. cast Haste in every fight because you still can have 100% winrate anyway. Then you mentioned that nobody is having 100% win rate because it requires unfun play. Now you are talking about hair-splitting. No wonder we are confused. Either you are already playing optimally and then casting Haste is a nice substitute (for me it is less annoying than other tools of optimal play like luring and pillar dancing), or you don't play optimally and then casting Haste really helps because you can meet something dangerous.

Spoiler: show

As anecdote, I almost died due to optimal play yesterday. I was a flying Tengu with castable Tornado above lava with 2 packs of Deep Trolls in view (they couldn't attack me) and I pressed . many times to restore mana, then killed some trolls, pressed . many times again, killed some trolls again and so on. Eventually a Titan showed up from a corner and almost killed me (I was lucky to survive 2 turns at 1 HP). You see? I didn't need the Haste in that fight but having it active would improve my chances vs Titan

[Sprucery]

I don't think I've experienced an unavoidable death after the early game either. But I'm pretty sure they can exist. For example, you don't always find MR+ items. Therefore, it's quite possible to be paralysed the moment you see a paralyser. What happens then is not in your control. But how rare such an event is, I don't know.

[goodcoolguy]

Do you remember how we reached to current situation? You mentioned that it does not make much sense to play optimally i.e. cast Haste in every fight because you still can have 100% winrate anyway. Then you mentioned that nobody is having 100% win rate because it requires unfun play. Now you are talking about hair-splitting. No wonder we are confused. Either you are already playing optimally and then casting Haste is a nice substitute (for me it is less annoying than other tools of optimal play like luring and pillar dancing), or you don't play optimally and then casting Haste really helps because you can meet something dangerous.

Spoiler: show

As anecdote, I almost died due to optimal play yesterday. I was a flying Tengu with castable Tornado above lava with 2 packs of Deep Trolls in view (they couldn't attack me) and I pressed . many times to restore mana, then killed some trolls, pressed . many times again, killed some trolls again and so on. Eventually a Titan showed up from a corner and almost killed me (I was lucky to survive 2 turns at 1 HP). You see? I didn't need the Haste in that fight but having it active would improve my chances vs Titan

The point is that it does not make sense to make a comparison between two things as being more or less optimal when the outcome of both is the same.

The important thing about your anecdote seems to be that you didn't die.

[BabyRage]

Sorry I don't get it. If I use auto explore and autofight on d:1 I will probably not die, yet it is considered optimal to use manual explore in early game. By playing optimally you have to use every advantage that the game gives to you. Therefore it is always optimal to have haste on if you can, because it can make a difference in some hypothetical situation AND there is never a situation where being hasted is bad for player. This is just a common sense really. Am I wrong?

[goodcoolguy]

Actually, using autoexplore early in the game increases your odds of dying very significantly.

Playing optimally means to play in such a way that your odds of winning are maximized. In crawl, these odds max out at 100% usually within an hour of beginning the game, very often less, after which time strategic decisions you make no longer have any impact and the only constraint is that you have to continue to use tactics that are reasonably responsive to what's going on in the game. You're basically in zombie mode. This is the central problem of crawl today.

People mistakenly take your definition and talk about how it "feels" like such and such is making their character more powerful, say spellhaste, when in reality the game's outcome is already determined. The thing is zombie mode can feel more or less automatic. People worry that if it feels too automatic, something is unbalanced, but in fact they are really encountering the dissonance of a game that takes four or five hours to play out but which is essentially over in one hour. What really feels wrong is that confrontation with reality.

[dowan]

If you're just going to argue from the point of view that the game has a 100% win rate after the extremely early game, your advice and commentary isn't applicable to any real people. What's the best level 3 spell? It doesn't matter, you already won if you can cast a level 3 spell. Should I wear plate or dragon armor? Doesn't matter, you won.

Real people get into trouble even when they have level 6 spells castable. They do autoexplore and find themselves in sticky situations.

[lethediver]

Goodcoolguy, why havent your arguments been focused on making mid/late game shorter and more interesting then? Seems like just having charms be always-on would be a marginal improvement compared to the immensity of the actual problem.

[BabyRage]

Actually, using autoexplore early in the game increases your odds of dying very significantly.

Playing optimally means to play in such a way that your odds of winning are maximized. In crawl, these odds max out at 100% usually within an hour of beginning the game, very often less, after which time strategic decisions you make no longer have any impact and the only constraint is that you have to continue to use tactics that are reasonably responsive to what's going on in the game. You're basically in zombie mode. This is the central problem of crawl today.

People mistakenly take your definition and talk about how it "feels" like such and such is making their character more powerful, say spellhaste, when in reality the game's outcome is already determined. The thing is zombie mode can feel more or less automatic. People worry that if it feels too automatic, something is unbalanced, but in fact they are really encountering the dissonance of a game that takes four or five hours to play out but which is essentially over in one hour. What really feels wrong is that confrontation with reality.

So in other words, optimal play exists only in early game. Anything beyond early game, including haste spell, cannot be measured as optimal or suboptimal because it doesn't matter. This is ridiculous but I'm not going to argue.

I'm just kinda curious to see your online stats. You sure must have a very high winrate since your odds of winning are 100% after first hour.

[dowan]

Well that's not entirely fair, we do usually talk about things in term of optimal play here even knowing almost nobody does all the little 'optimal' things. But it's still a good point to talk about design from. However in this case I think the 'only early game matters' meme is going a bit extreme, and I don't think there's any evidence to support the claim, while I have tons of personal experience that says otherwise. I mean, why do we even have threads talking about the best way to handle V5 if nobody loses there without trying to?

[VeryAngryFelid]

I'm just kinda curious to see your online stats. You sure must have a very high winrate since your odds of winning are 100% after first hour.

Well, there is another possible explanation also. There is online account goodcoolguy, it played a single game and died in 32 minutes as XL 11 MiBe. I am sure it is possible to believe "only first hour matters" if you are playing like Demise and win in 41 minutes

[dowan]

Why is this thread in advice anyway? Shouldn't this be in GDD? Or was NJVack hoping people would discuss how best to use our now limited supplies of hasting?

[goodcoolguy]

Goodcoolguy, why havent your arguments been focused on making mid/late game shorter and more interesting then? Seems like just having charms be always-on would be a marginal improvement compared to the immensity of the actual problem.

They are. Remember that thread about reducing the amount of experience in the game by removing lair? See my advocacy of hellcrawl? I am totally consistent on this point.

As for goodcharms and food, these are among the few areas where you can improve crawl without getting into game balance and xp progression issues no one seems to want to touch. No food, no charms recasts and similar changes that affect only user experience as opposed to game balance at least make the game go faster, which is crucial in a game this long.

As for record sniping, as I say over and over and over, people, myself very much included, do not play a super optimal game most of the time. Like... getting killed by a player ghost and you guys are acting like that's something that would actually happen to someone who is trying... lol