Patrol routes - partial luring/kiting amelioration


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 247

Joined: Friday, 5th August 2011, 13:18

Post Thursday, 13th October 2016, 16:02

Patrol routes - partial luring/kiting amelioration

This is pulled from a larger post I started, inspired by the mud/vines thread, about addressing luring/kiting from an AI standpoint, but I felt it would be better to put out one solid idea and see how it sounds.

It's not intended as a cure-all for the (presumably undesirable) behavior of kiting/luring/pillar dancing, but one step to ameliorate it from a different and less artificial angle.

What if some percentage of monsters had set patrol routes around the dungeon?

It would introduce more risk to long-duration behavior like pillar dancing and kiting, and to some percentage of short duration, but frequently-repeated behavior like luring.

It would also make crawl harder by increasing the frequency of adds during fights and while resting in general. I see that as tactically interesting.

The big issues I see are that it might just replace one boring behavior with another, because now the player is incentivized to go down the stairs and hit 5 until all the patrols that could come through that room have done so. Explore the next room, repeat again.

A couple possibly solutions here:

- This might make the food clock relevant again, and we wouldn't need any more "remove food!" threads. Especially if some patrolling monsters only start to do so after a randomized delay, or after they wake up.

- Patrols could generate after the level is initially entered, perhaps slightly more frequently than random spawns now. Remember, to make pillar dancing more dangerous, it doesn't have to be penalized every time the player does it, just enough to make it risky over the course of the game.

For this message the author minstrel has received thanks:
dowan

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 3037

Joined: Sunday, 2nd January 2011, 02:06

Post Thursday, 13th October 2016, 17:52

Re: Patrol routes - partial luring/kiting amelioration

It would be better to simply not generate the patrolling monsters in a specific position on the level, and instead generate a list of patrolling monsters that will randomly spawn out of thin air at the edge of the players LOS. If realism is important (it's not), then they can be generated only on the edges of LOS facing unexplored territory or stairwells. Patrolling monsters would be unaware of the player but start with a destination that would path them through the player if the player doesn't move to avoid them. Probably they should de-spawn if they get far enough away from the players LOS and are not actively hunting the player, returning to the list to be spawned again the next time the game needs a patrol.

This is already more-or-less how monster spawns work in the Abyss. The game can draw from the patrol list at random intervals involving either turns passed or tiles explored, or additionally when some event of significance happens. Once the patrol list runs out of monsters, the level auto-maps itself instantly and all items on the floor get added to the stash tracker.

For this message the author KoboldLord has received thanks:
minstrel

Spider Stomper

Posts: 247

Joined: Friday, 5th August 2011, 13:18

Post Thursday, 13th October 2016, 18:46

Re: Patrol routes - partial luring/kiting amelioration

I'd support that. I get a gut reaction against the notion of Abyssifying the main dungeon, but other than that I can't see why that wouldn't be just as effective and provide the same experience of stuff wandering in from outside LOS and disrupting boring behavior. The only effective difference would be that the original proposal would result in distant doors being opened or traps triggered with greater frequency the longer the player stays on the level, but that's tangential.

Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 714

Joined: Saturday, 5th December 2015, 06:56

Post Friday, 14th October 2016, 04:53

Re: Patrol routes - partial luring/kiting amelioration

Interesting idea, I think it would need serious testing though. I can see a lot of unintended consequences happening from this proposal, like it being an indirect buff to fast regenerating species/backgrounds. But i do like the idea of monsters generating just outside LoS to punish someone who is luring/kiting monsters over the same safe terrain over and over.

Return to Game Design Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 31 guests

cron
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group.
Designed by ST Software for PTF.