Abyss Ambulator
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Re: Can we tone down the number of two-headed ogres
In the case of deep troll packs I would not mind removing them or not, it would not change depths much.
Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.
Abyss Ambulator
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duvessa wrote:bel wrote:the claim that "you don't have to fight them all at once" is simply ridiculous: using that logic, there is no point to any pack in the game.
I think this is pretty much true for slow packs, and to a lesser extent for melee packs in general.
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sanka wrote:I thought that she would agree that the game would be better if all (or almost all) slow packs were changed, for example, to make them faster, or make them not a pack [...]
sanka wrote:[..] or give them some ability so you cannot run away so easily and cannot separate them so easily, or maybe change their pack behaviour so they do not cripple themselves, or considering any other change that makes them less annoying.
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Abyss Ambulator
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Abyss Ambulator
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Berder wrote:It is just a fantasy that you will not fight more than one speed-10 enemy at a time. You will. If you have to stairdance, you will. If you are in the open without a killhole available, you will. If you got shafted or stuck away from stairs and the level is uncleared, you have to fight where you are or risk a dangerous teleport, and if you walk away you risk waking up more things. If there are fast monsters mixed in with the speed-10 ones, walking away means you can take a lot of damage, and fighting where you are means you will get surrounded by the speed-10 ones.
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When you have to fight multiple ones at once for some reason a centaur pack is not much different than a yaktaur one.
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enum band_type
{
BAND_NO_BAND = 0,
BAND_KOBOLDS,
BAND_ORCS,
BAND_ORC_WARRIOR,
BAND_ORC_KNIGHT,
BAND_KILLER_BEES,
BAND_CAUSTIC_SHRIKE,
BAND_SHARD_SHRIKE,
BAND_FLYING_SKULLS,
BAND_SLIME_CREATURES,
BAND_YAKS,
BAND_UGLY_THINGS,
BAND_VERY_UGLY_THINGS,
BAND_HELL_HOUNDS,
BAND_JACKALS,
BAND_HELL_KNIGHTS,
BAND_GNOLLS,
BAND_WIGHTS,
BAND_CENTAURS,
BAND_YAKTAURS,
BAND_INSUBSTANTIAL_WISPS,
BAND_OGRE_MAGE,
BAND_OGRE_MAGE_EXTERN,
BAND_DEATH_YAKS,
BAND_NECROMANCER,
BAND_BALRUG,
BAND_CACODEMON,
BAND_EXECUTIONER,
BAND_HELLWING,
BAND_DEEP_ELF_KNIGHT,
BAND_DEEP_ELF_HIGH_PRIEST,
BAND_KOBOLD_DEMONOLOGIST,
BAND_NAGAS,
BAND_GUARDIAN_SERPENT,
BAND_WOLVES,
BAND_GREEN_RATS,
BAND_HELL_RATS,
BAND_DREAM_SHEEP,
BAND_GHOULS,
BAND_DEEP_TROLLS,
BAND_DEEP_TROLL_SHAMAN,
BAND_HOGS,
BAND_HELL_HOGS,
BAND_VAMPIRE_MOSQUITOES,
BAND_FIRE_BATS,
BAND_BOGGARTS,
BAND_BLINK_FROGS,
BAND_SKELETAL_WARRIORS,
BAND_DRACONIAN,
BAND_PANDEMONIUM_LORD,
BAND_HARPIES,
BAND_ILSUIW,
BAND_AZRAEL,
BAND_DUVESSA,
BAND_KHUFU,
BAND_GOLDEN_EYE,
BAND_PIKEL,
BAND_MERFOLK_AQUAMANCER,
BAND_MERFOLK_IMPALER,
BAND_MERFOLK_JAVELINEER,
BAND_ALLIGATOR,
BAND_ELEPHANT,
BAND_REDBACK,
BAND_JUMPING_SPIDER,
BAND_TARANTELLA,
BAND_POLYPHEMUS,
BAND_VAULT_WARDEN,
BAND_DEATH_KNIGHT,
BAND_JIANGSHI,
BAND_FAUNS,
BAND_TENGU,
BAND_SOJOBO,
BAND_SPRIGGANS,
BAND_SPRIGGAN_ELITES,
BAND_ENCHANTRESS,
BAND_SPRIGGAN_DRUID,
BAND_SPRIGGAN_RIDERS,
BAND_PHANTASMAL_WARRIORS,
BAND_THRASHING_HORRORS,
BAND_RAIJU,
BAND_FAUN_PARTY,
BAND_NAGA_RITUALIST,
BAND_NAGA_SHARPSHOOTER,
BAND_SALAMANDERS,
BAND_SALAMANDER_ELITES,
BAND_MONSTROUS_DEMONSPAWN,
BAND_GELID_DEMONSPAWN,
BAND_INFERNAL_DEMONSPAWN,
BAND_TORTUROUS_DEMONSPAWN,
BAND_BLOOD_SAINT,
BAND_WARMONGER,
BAND_CORRUPTER,
BAND_BLACK_SUN,
BAND_VASHNIA,
BAND_CEREBOV,
BAND_GLOORX_VLOQ,
BAND_LOM_LOBON,
BAND_MNOLEG,
BAND_DEATH_SCARABS,
BAND_HOLIES,
BAND_ROBIN,
BAND_SPARK_WASPS,
BAND_RANDOM_SINGLE,
BAND_JOSEPHINE,
BAND_HOWLER_MONKEY,
BAND_MELIAI,
BAND_ANCIENT_CHAMPIONS,
BAND_SALTLINGS,
BAND_DANCING_WEAPONS,
BAND_MOLTEN_GARGOYLES,
NUM_BANDS // always last
};
Abyss Ambulator
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sanka wrote:To avoid blinking out. Or just teleport.
Stairdancing is the most strange here, since I use this tactic exactly to avoid fighting multiple monsters at once. But the other examples also do not seem as valid.
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Berder wrote:sanka wrote:To avoid blinking out. Or just teleport.
Not that wise if you are capable of fighting the pack, you might land somewhere worse. You can trust me when I talk about safe tactics.
Berder wrote:Stairdancing is the most strange here, since I use this tactic exactly to avoid fighting multiple monsters at once. But the other examples also do not seem as valid.
If you don't agree that stairdancing involves being adjacent to several enemies at a time... I don't know what to tell you. Seems like common sense. Luring an individual monster up the stairs is not really "stairdancing" but just luring it up the stairs. Stairdancing is when there are many monsters and you repeatedly go down and then up the stairs to lure up a small group at a time.
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sanka wrote:Berder wrote:sanka wrote:To avoid blinking out. Or just teleport.
Not that wise if you are capable of fighting the pack, you might land somewhere worse. You can trust me when I talk about safe tactics.
I trust you. But if you are capable of fighting a whole pack at once, then surely they are very weak enemies, aren't they?
So I considered the case when you are *not* able to fight all of them at once. I did not considered a pack of rats interesting enemies.
Of course you can simply use some strong options, like a god ability or consumable to fight all of them anyway. But the point is, if you only need to do it if you land in the middle of them, they are really lame enemies.
Berder wrote:Stairdancing is the most strange here, since I use this tactic exactly to avoid fighting multiple monsters at once. But the other examples also do not seem as valid.
If you don't agree that stairdancing involves being adjacent to several enemies at a time... I don't know what to tell you. Seems like common sense. Luring an individual monster up the stairs is not really "stairdancing" but just luring it up the stairs. Stairdancing is when there are many monsters and you repeatedly go down and then up the stairs to lure up a small group at a time.
May bad. I thought you speak about *fighting* multiple monsters at once, not occasionally being adjacent to 2-3, although many times you can avoid it too by waiting or going to an other stair or something.
When I face a slow pack where individual monsters are strong, so I cannot kill 2 of them at the same time, it's quite easy to just separate all of them by stair dancing.
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Abyss Ambulator
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Berder wrote:First of all, I never said anything about landing in the middle of them. I don't know why you assumed that. The scenario is that you are stuck in the middle of no-man's-land due to a shaft, a teleport trap, a monster that teleported you, you teleporting yourself, or just poor autoexplore, and a pack notices you, perhaps from edge of LOS. You're forced to fight, or do something else risky such as teleport.
Second of all, no, there is no reason to assume they are weak enemies. You may be able to kill them only by burning a lot of consumables. Or you may not be able to kill them and be forced to teleport dangerously.
Berder wrote:No, it's not, unless the stair happens to be in a corridor. How can you say this? You go downstairs and, say it's a yak pack, you'll be adjacent to 2 or 3 or 4 yaks, which will all come up with you.
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Berder wrote:I think that as you learn to play more safely
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Berder wrote:Lure lure lure lure lure enemies back into a safe area before fighting. I can't stress this enough. This even applies to trivial enemies, since their noise could attract others, or others might be wandering nearby.
duvessa wrote:there are no threatening monsters in depths
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bel wrote:That is no different from any other monster encounter in Crawl. It is always "optimal" to lure every monster every time. There's nothing special about Deep Trolls here.
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bel wrote:That is no different from any other monster encounter in Crawl. It is always "optimal" to lure every monster every time.
bel wrote:duvessa wrote:there are no threatening monsters in depths
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Abyss Ambulator
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akaean wrote:i disagree that only Bee and Centaur packs are interesting.
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Berder wrote:Just to draw one image. Imagine you are in in depths in the open and you see a troll pack and a caustic shrike. What do you do? You kill the caustic shrike ASAP because you cannot run from it.
Berder wrote:If you only bring up 1 at a time, you are more likely to go downstairs and find yourself surrounded by 6.
Berder wrote:Draw another image. Consider the vault in depths consisting of metal walls in a maze of concentric circles with the downstairs at the center. There are no width 1 chokepoints, if you encounter a deep troll pack, you're just going to fight it, and as you fight you are going to have at least 2 adjacent to you. There are also plenty of fast monsters (caustic shrikes, spriggans, liches that haste themselves, etc). As mentioned you can't run from a speed 10 monster or a speed 10 pack at the same time that a fast monster is fighting you.
Draw another image. Same concentric circle vault, you spot a deep troll pack and don't think you can fight it all at once. You retreat, a good decision in this case. Meanwhile a couple of the deep trolls haste each other. Do you keep walking? Of course not, you have to kill the hasted ones before you can keep going. Do you teleport? Unless you've already cleared most of the level, that is a quick way to die in this vault. Now suppose an ancient lich appears around the corner from another part of the maze. What now? Your HP is already low or you wouldn't have been running. It's not wise to fight an alich in that condition. This is the risk of running; more things may discover you. Now you probably have to burn a scroll of blinking and/or a potion of haste to get away. It was forced in this case, you didn't do anything wrong, but the troll pack still ultimately caused you to spend your most valuable consumables.
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Berder wrote:It was forced in this case, you didn't do anything wrong, but the troll pack still ultimately caused you to spend your most valuable consumables.
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No, I move away many squares first because both the troll and the shrike are probably part of packs and it is better if the rest of the packs don't see me.
I would only be seeing an entire troll pack come into LOS at once, let alone alongside a caustic shrike, if I was autoexploring (obviously suboptimal) or walked into a teleport trap.
Only if I don't know that I can disperse the monsters below the stairs by simply waiting for a while on another level.Berder wrote:If you only bring up 1 at a time, you are more likely to go downstairs and find yourself surrounded by 6.
I don't do any of this because I'm spoiled so I know that vault has no good terrain, so I lure the monsters out of it instead of charging into it, and I certainly don't go into it if I haven't already cleared the rest of the level, so even if I did run in and then out, an alich wouldn't appear as I was leaving it (remember, new monsters don't generate anymore in most branches including Depths).
Yes, sometimes you'll step on a teleport trap or shaft, and sometimes you'll just play lazy and explore into a pack or voluntarily fight lots of monsters at once, and yes, I know that I almost always play lazy. Even supposing that a monster is interesting in 5% of encounters (a massive overestimate for Depths deep trolls), does that justify the other 95% of the time where it is just harmless, annoying "popcorn", as we call it? Shouldn't we aim to have monsters that are interesting in 100% of encounters, or at least as close as possible to 100%?
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sanka wrote:bel: I think you overstretched your logic somewhere again. At least I cannot follow. Who claimed that everything is pointless? And how scepticism is involved at all?
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Plantissue wrote:One can also not argue seriously under the assumption that perfect play would mean you will always survive, nor that you always will be able to face packs monsters one on one, especially when troll packs can have ranged attacks, dig and haste.
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