Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance


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

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 12:38

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

This limits the growth potential of the player. More easily, future players mean that they cannot be stronger than the current player when they have all the resistance one by one. This makes their victory *more* difficult.

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 13:20

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

sdynet wrote:This limits the growth potential of the player. More easily, future players mean that they cannot be stronger than the current player when they have all the resistance one by one. This makes their victory *more* difficult.


Exactly opposite is true. Instead of using rings of slaying/AC/EV/Str/Dex new players choose extra rF+ and rC+ because they see that their resistances are not maxed yet.
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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 14:15

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Exactly opposite is true. Instead of using rings of slaying/AC/EV/Str/Dex new players choose extra rF+ and rC+ because they see that their resistances are not maxed yet.


You're right in the early game. However, in Elven Halls, Vault, Depth, Realm of Zot(not to mention in Pandemonium, Hell), the fire/ice damage is more fatal. ac? is it always guaranteed to reduce damage by 17%? 2pip is guaranteed. 3pip guarantees a 30% reduction in damage. hmm... If the number of AC/EV/Str/Dex is 8-10, I will seriously think about it. If the item has that level, it might be worth thinking about wearing it. Otherwise, I would choose a guaranteed 17-30% reduction in damage.

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 14:55

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

sdynet wrote:You're right in the early game. However, in Elven Halls, Vault, Depth, Realm of Zot(not to mention in Pandemonium, Hell), the fire/ice damage is more fatal. ac? is it always guaranteed to reduce damage by 17%? 2pip is guaranteed. 3pip guarantees a 30% reduction in damage. hmm... If the number of AC/EV/Str/Dex is 8-10, I will seriously think about it. If the item has that level, it might be worth thinking about wearing it. Otherwise, I would choose a guaranteed 17-30% reduction in damage.


Percentage reduction is not a big deal unless we are talking about orb of fire. Let's take fire giant, Bolt of Fire (3d25). That's about 37 damage on average without rF, 19 damage with rF+, 8 damage with rF+++. In many cases you can completely avoid damage due to EV or AC, then extra rF++ is useless.
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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 16:27

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:sdynet

Did you miss OP? It will be easier for new players to win if they stop paying so much attention to second and especially third pip.



It will be easier for new players to win that start paying more attention to the details of the game. It is nice that the game has depth, there are plenty of games that will wear out from boredom too quickly. Games that spoon feed victories to make people feel good suck. It may very well be the case that for many games, a newer player shouldn't try to get so many pips of resistance in a particular element, but it doesn't mean there is something wrong with the game. The freedom and creativity the player has is a strength of the game.

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 16:45

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Exactly opposite is true. Instead of using rings of slaying/AC/EV/Str/Dex new players choose extra rF+ and rC+ because they see that their resistances are not maxed yet.

As a casual player who occasionally plays on weekends and doesn't want to scrounge wiki articles in search for damage calculation formulas, how do I make an educated decision between two pieces of gear that occupy the same slot?

How do I make a decision between an EV ring versus an rF+ ring?
How do I make a decision between a +1 flail or a +3 mace?
How do I make a decision between leveling up Str vs. Dex?

I can pose 20 other questions in a similar vein.

The problem is not the resistances or the amount of pips you can have on your character. That's just a minor symptom of a much larger problem.


The overarching problem in this game is that it tells you fuck all about your character and the equipment you're wearing.

For the most part, all you get are vague qualitative descriptions that help you in no way whatsoever to make decisions.
Last edited by Scuka on Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 19:11, edited 2 times in total.

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 17:50

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Scuka wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:
sdynet wrote:Exactly opposite is true. Instead of using rings of slaying/AC/EV/Str/Dex new players choose extra rF+ and rC+ because they see that their resistances are not maxed yet.

As a casual player who occasionally plays on weekends and doesn't want to scrounge wiki articles in search for damage calculation formulas, how do I make an educated decision between two pieces of gear that occupy the same slot?

How do I make a decision between an EV ring versus an rF+ ring?
How do I make a decision between a +1 flail or a +3 mace?
How do I make a decision between leveling up Str vs. Dex?

I can pose 20 other questions in a similar vein.

The problem is not the resistances or the amount of pips you can have on your character. That's just a minor symptom of a much larger problem.


The overarching problem in this game is that it tells you fuck all about your character and the equipment you're wearing.

For the most part, all you get are vague qualitative descriptions that help you in no way whatsoever to make decisions.
I want to thank this post, but I can't do so in good conscience when your quote tags are that screwed up

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 18:46

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
sdynet wrote:You're right in the early game. However, in Elven Halls, Vault, Depth, Realm of Zot(not to mention in Pandemonium, Hell), the fire/ice damage is more fatal. ac? is it always guaranteed to reduce damage by 17%? 2pip is guaranteed. 3pip guarantees a 30% reduction in damage. hmm... If the number of AC/EV/Str/Dex is 8-10, I will seriously think about it. If the item has that level, it might be worth thinking about wearing it. Otherwise, I would choose a guaranteed 17-30% reduction in damage.


Percentage reduction is not a big deal unless we are talking about orb of fire. Let's take fire giant, Bolt of Fire (3d25). That's about 37 damage on average without rF, 19 damage with rF+, 8 damage with rF+++. In many cases you can completely avoid damage due to EV or AC, then extra rF++ is useless.



OOF, hell branches, and uniques are all currently balanced around rF+++ and such existing. That's not to say these things could not be tuned. However, if they are tuned you then have a scenario where the choices of what gear to wear are more straightforward/easy rather than less. Maybe that's desirable, maybe it isn't.

Certainly, transparency on how mechanics work would be useful. As a new player I leaned on a combination of wiki + bot + other players, though I'm still relatively new compared to most on this board (~6 months now). Enough that I still remember it clearly.

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 19:01

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

I think that OOF is currently balanced for rF+. At least they are way too easy with rF+++.

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Post Wednesday, 6th February 2019, 20:59

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

sanka wrote:I think that OOF is currently balanced for rF+. At least they are way too easy with rF+++.


They can certainly still kill you at rF+++. You need consumables to run (no guarantee of escape when using one either), are under constant threat of malmute, and a chunk of some of their magic ignores rF.

Let them do that much more fire damage and you greatly skew how blaster casters vs say stabbers perform against them for example. Considering the relative difficulty presented by them to these builds at present, if player nerf is a goal it would make more sense to nerf the blaster approach rather than the stabber, who struggles to have any answers aside from maybe maneuvering so an isolated OOF won't kill summoned mana vipers.

OOF is still much harder at rF+++ than even two ancient liches that are silenced also. Having a proper countermeasure that is significant and takes some sort of investment/tradeoff is a routine part of crawl.

Even beyond OOF, you have entire hell branches dedicated to damage types (fire, ice, negative in particular). Dropping these all to a single pip would also greatly impact what builds work in these areas.

If newbie trap is the problem in question that can be more easily mitigated.

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 05:31

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

There is no doubt that there is a long learning curve for this game. Some may view that as a detriment, but to others it is a blessing. I'm in the second group. There was a time when I looked at the code for details, but things kept changing. I can say to newer players that it is absolutely possible to play without doing this. You can learn through experience and get a feel for what you need to do. At the very least there is the school of hard knocks. One very enormous tool which probably isn't obvious enough is that you can examine some information about the monsters you encounter with the X and view keys. What abilities and gear you want to use are impacted greatly by what you are facing. If you don't know what you're up against, then how could you know what you ought to do? As for providing more information such as numeric spellpower and things of that sort, I think it ought to be an option if people want to see it, let it be toggled on/off. You could theoretically mirror a non wizmode game with a wizmode game to determine details if someone wanted to go to the trouble of it, so really what's the big deal to show less foggy stats.


Just asking for the game to be simplified and made easier is a double edged sword. So you reach winning the game sooner, only later to discover that it isn't the destination that matters, but the journey. It's much easier to find things to become bored with quickly than it is to find things with lasting replayability.

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 05:39

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

If some monsters/branches are balanced around rF++/rC++, they are very hard with just rF+/rC+ and are slightly easier than expected with rF++++/rC+++. I believe in both cases it is not a good thing. If orb of fire is balanced around rF+++, it is a very bad thing as it makes winning with just rF+ extremely hard.
Having just rF+ and balancing all monsters around it is optimal I believe.
Removing just 3rd pip and balancing some monsters around that is worse than optimal but still better than current situation and requires less dev work.
Last edited by VeryAngryFelid on Thursday, 7th February 2019, 05:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 05:42

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Note that we don't have any items which make iron giants or other very scary monsters suddenly deal just 20% of their damage. Such suggestion would be rejected as ridiculous and yet this is what we have with fire/ice monsters.
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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 17:10

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Note that we don't have any items which make iron giants or other very scary monsters suddenly deal just 20% of their damage. Such suggestion would be rejected as ridiculous and yet this is what we have with fire/ice monsters.


Your comparison example misrepresents the tradeoffs in crawl!

You have AC, GDR, blocking, and evasion for iron giant's physical attacks...even silence for iron shot. With these you could survive near an iron giant for a long time, your expected damage/turn compared to not having them can approach 20% or maybe even less. Reflection can actually cause damage to the iron giant. With enough of this stuff you have a reasonable chance of killing one by standing in one place doing nothing...not the best example of a situation to counter-example the utility of rF+++.

These are not all in play for some sources of elemental damage. AC can matter for example, but OOFs don't care about silence and their fireballs don't care about blocking. Hell effects don't care about these either. Some of them also don't care about evasion, another damage mitigation that is very relevant to your iron giant example.

The situation is actually the reverse of what you say; removing the higher pips of elemental resist would create a scenario where big damage is uniquely limited in mitigation. This may or may not be a bad thing, but it's best to keep the reality of this in mind. Right now there are more countermeasures to iron giants than OOFs or tormentors.

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 18:53

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

sdynet wrote:I'm afraid this will make the game more difficult. Not everyone plays games like you play chess. Not everyone cares about the winning rate and the winning streak. Even now, DCSS is difficult. Don't make it any more difficult.
Always be mindful of newbies.

I don't think this is the right attitude - crawl should be fun to make progress in and get better at long before you see your first "you win" screen. It's already failed if that's not true for some amount of new players. The new player who will never be satisfied with something less than a "you win" screen will probably not enjoy crawl no matter what. Difficulty is not a major concern of mine, I don't care if it gets harder or easier, but let's not needlessly constrain design decisions by whether they make the game harder or easier. Information overload is a huge issue and simplifying things, even if it makes it harder to get the game to say "you win", will help new players overcome the initial hurdle of learning how all the game systems work.

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 19:23

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

TheMeInTeam wrote:They can certainly still kill you at rF+++.

This is really hard to imagine. It's like getting killed - in zot - by a deep elf blademaster that drank a potion of resistance. Other than holding down the 's' key, the only explanation I can come up with is holding down the arrow key attacking with something like a rapier.

TheMeInTeam wrote:You need consumables to run (no guarantee of escape when using one either), are under constant threat of malmute, and a chunk of some of their magic ignores rF.

Malmutate is not a big deal in Zot. It's also MR resistible. Other than that, there is nothing an OOF can do that ignores rF.

TheMeInTeam wrote:Let them do that much more fire damage and you greatly skew how blaster casters vs say stabbers perform against them for example. Considering the relative difficulty presented by them to these builds at present, if player nerf is a goal it would make more sense to nerf the blaster approach rather than the stabber, who struggles to have any answers aside from maybe maneuvering so an isolated OOF won't kill summoned mana vipers.

I don't understand this. Regarding the premise, who is suggesting increasing the amount of damage OOFs do?

TheMeInTeam wrote:OOF is still much harder at rF+++ than even two ancient liches that are silenced also. Having a proper countermeasure that is significant and takes some sort of investment/tradeoff is a routine part of crawl.

Yes, on the face of it a hasted cacodemon is a bigger threat than a shadow dragon; however, being silenced has inherent drawbacks on the player that rF+++ does not. Regardless, what is the relevance of the comparison? Are you suggesting that the game is better if for every enemy there exists a so-called proper countermeasure to not just manage but trivialize that enemy?

TheMeInTeam wrote:Even beyond OOF, you have entire hell branches dedicated to damage types (fire, ice, negative in particular). Dropping these all to a single pip would also greatly impact what builds work in these areas.

This is not true at all except possibly for Cocytus. Besides, extended is not subject to the same design philosophy as the main game - it's a set of optional bonus levels, it can and should be mercilessly hard, and it really doesn't belong in discussions that affect the main game.

TheMeInTeam wrote:If newbie trap is the problem in question that can be more easily mitigated.

It's not the only factor that the OP's proposal would improve, but regardless, if you think it is easy to mitigate perhaps you could share your suggestion to mitigate it?

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 20:13

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:If newbie trap is the problem in question that can be more easily mitigated.

It's not the only factor that the OP's proposal would improve, but regardless, if you think it is easy to mitigate perhaps you could share your suggestion to mitigate it?

One alternate to the OP that I can think of that would mitigate extra pips being a newbie trap would be to display the net percentage reduction of damage rather than just showing pips.
Of course that could also be done in conjunction with the OP, with no loss of usefulness.
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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 20:49

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Seriously, half the noob traps in the game can be removed entirely if we just get numbers.

Resistance confusion? Give us %dam reduction numbers.
Weapon types? Give us damage numbers in the combat log, let us swing a +4 mace vs a +1 flail and compare directly.

We could even go so far as to put numbers in the skill and spellpower descriptions, along the lines of "Each level of Fighting gives this character X more HP and yadda yadda" and "Each ten points of spellpower grants 1d2 additional damage", so on and so forth.

Proper communication allows players to make educated decisions.

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Post Thursday, 7th February 2019, 21:09

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

This is really hard to imagine. It's like getting killed - in zot - by a deep elf blademaster that drank a potion of resistance. Other than holding down the 's' key, the only explanation I can come up with is holding down the arrow key attacking with something like a rapier.


Just need more than 1. They can still hit for ~20 with rF+++ (with one attack variant ignoring multiple usual defensive measures), and it is not trivial to run from them. This is still more DPS than anything else there for characters with good AC/EV/SH, barring ancient lich magic which has a few hard counters.

Malmutate is not a big deal in Zot. It's also MR resistible. Other than that, there is nothing an OOF can do that ignores rF.


It usually isn't, but can end your run if you get teleportitis and can't be rid of it fast enough.

I don't understand this. Regarding the premise, who is suggesting increasing the amount of damage OOFs do?


If you remove extra elemental resistance, you globally increase potential damage of monsters that rely on elemental attacks.

Yes, on the face of it a hasted cacodemon is a bigger threat than a shadow dragon; however, being silenced has inherent drawbacks on the player that rF+++ does not. Regardless, what is the relevance of the comparison? Are you suggesting that the game is better if for every enemy there exists a so-called proper countermeasure to not just manage but trivialize that enemy?


The purpose of my statement was to refute the mistaken notion from VeryAngryFelid that having 80% damage reduction against a particular enemy as a result of what is likely multiple pieces of equipment is an outlandish thing that should/would be rejected as a matter of course. The fact of the matter is that this is possible against nearly all enemies through one means or another, with torment being the most rare resist to get down to 20% damage (Kiku ability).

Note that rF+++ also has drawbacks. In fact it is implied to be a "newbie trap", which is impossible if wearing rF+++ did not have significant drawbacks.

This is not true at all except possibly for Cocytus. Besides, extended is not subject to the same design philosophy as the main game - it's a set of optional bonus levels, it can and should be mercilessly hard, and it really doesn't belong in discussions that affect the main game.


That's silly. Virtually any mechanic change will influence the main game and extended. There is a difference between difficulty and changes to a game that centralize/trivialize decision making.

A core premise of the OP's reasoning was that +++ resists are unclear but are also beginner traps. This discussion has apparently shifted to the concept that +++ provides too much damage mitigation - a non-trivial change to reasoning! Something can't be both a beginner trap and too strong at the same time. It might be one or the other depending on context, but that suggests using it is a *meaningful choice* in the game.

If you reduce the +++ to +, it will trivialize gear choice to at least a degree...and despite initial assertions otherwise there is clearly some incentive to utilize +++ sometimes and not other times.

It's not the only factor that the OP's proposal would improve, but regardless, if you think it is easy to mitigate perhaps you could share your suggestion to mitigate it?


Have the UI provide sufficient information such that an unspoiled player can anticipate the relative benefits of gear in advance. This seems to go against some of the stated design intentions, and I disagree with those particular ones. Nevertheless, it's an option and would do more to mitigate newbie traps than what amounts to a rework of resistances and likely multiple enemies/areas.

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 05:47

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

TheMeInTeam wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Note that we don't have any items which make iron giants or other very scary monsters suddenly deal just 20% of their damage. Such suggestion would be rejected as ridiculous and yet this is what we have with fire/ice monsters.


Your comparison example misrepresents the tradeoffs in crawl!

You have AC, GDR, blocking, and evasion for iron giant's physical attacks...even silence for iron shot. With these you could survive near an iron giant for a long time, your expected damage/turn compared to not having them can approach 20% or maybe even less. Reflection can actually cause damage to the iron giant. With enough of this stuff you have a reasonable chance of killing one by standing in one place doing nothing...not the best example of a situation to counter-example the utility of rF+++.

These are not all in play for some sources of elemental damage. AC can matter for example, but OOFs don't care about silence and their fireballs don't care about blocking. Hell effects don't care about these either. Some of them also don't care about evasion, another damage mitigation that is very relevant to your iron giant example.

The situation is actually the reverse of what you say; removing the higher pips of elemental resist would create a scenario where big damage is uniquely limited in mitigation. This may or may not be a bad thing, but it's best to keep the reality of this in mind. Right now there are more countermeasures to iron giants than OOFs or tormentors.
Oof is expected to be the most dangerous monster in the game, it should not become trivial with some gear. And yes, it becomes trivial with rF+++ and high ac/ev (AC works vs both fireball and bolt of fire, EV works vs bolt of fire). 20 damage from max roll is neglectable comparing to some spells of ancient lich or torment even with rN+++. If some characters have no chance vs oof without rF+++ (which I doubt), the monster can be rebalanced. I am not sure why you complain about hell effects and monsters from extended, they are expected to be very powerful and also can be rebalanced if really needed (Cerebov).

Edit. There is a new thread with "Blown up by Boris (98 damage)
... with an orb of destruction
... on level 3 of the Vaults", go find something like for that for oof even with just rF+.
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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 18:38

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

OOFs ARE one of the most dangerous monsters in the game. Only stuff that is consistently more dangerous are things like greater mummies, pan lords, and hell rune guardians. Some of these are still less dangerous.

It's not a fair comparison to bring up ancient liches or Boris. These can be silenced, or you can simply walk away from them (maybe using yara's or a net on liches if they haste). They are not 15 speed monsters that can double-tap you as you attempt to return to the stairs, and they are not immune to everything but air/cold (while resisting the latter). They are slower, easier to kill, and have multiple counter-options to their damage, even more so than OOFs.

While torment is a kind of cheap damage source intended as such anyway, even that has lich form, statue form, and kiku as options to mitigate damage beyond just rN+++. None of the enemies that inflict it have the same kind of speed + damage rate. They're different monsters with different purposes.

This is still strange BTW. Are you taking back that rF+++ is a newbie trap then, instead arguing it's too strong? It doesn't take a big mis-step for OOF damage + others to be lethal in Zot:5 despite rF+++, especially if there are more than one. For a character that can't output damage rapidly, what is their alternative counterplay?

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Post Friday, 8th February 2019, 22:23

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

TheMeInTeam wrote:Just need more than 1. They can still hit for ~20 with rF+++ (with one attack variant ignoring multiple usual defensive measures), and it is not trivial to run from them. This is still more DPS than anything else there for characters with good AC/EV/SH, barring ancient lich magic which has a few hard counters.

Ah, so that's what you meant when you said OOFs can kill you even with rF+++; you meant multiple OOFs. As you probably know, in crawl, fighting multiple depth-appropriate non-pack monsters is supposed to be a big deal no matter how prepared you are - it doesn't mean the monster is at the upper limit of difficulty.

And the rF+++ DPS is definitely not more DPS than anything else there. If you just look at fast enemies, most of them will usually hit harder: electric golems, death cobs, orb guardians, maybe storm dragons.

TheMeInTeam wrote:It usually isn't, but can end your run if you get teleportitis and can't be rid of it fast enough.

You may be technically correct, I am not sure how low the minimum time is between contracting teleportitis and having it trigger. But considering the usual amount of time it takes teleportitis to kick in, the relative quickness of fighting an OOF, and the abundance of potions of mutation in the game, if that actually happened I would be really interested in seeing how.

TheMeInTeam wrote:If you remove extra elemental resistance, you globally increase potential damage of monsters that rely on elemental attacks.

That's only true for entities that would have had extra elemental resistance. The concern you raised about balance was that summons are not very effective against OOFs compared to other strategies and you didn't want the gap to widen. Obviously, it won't, because summons are not affected by the proposal. I think you knew this and knew that the concern was false when you decided to raise it.

TheMeInTeam wrote:The purpose of my statement was to refute the mistaken notion from VeryAngryFelid that having 80% damage reduction against a particular enemy as a result of what is likely multiple pieces of equipment is an outlandish thing that should/would be rejected as a matter of course. The fact of the matter is that this is possible against nearly all enemies through one means or another, with torment being the most rare resist to get down to 20% damage (Kiku ability).

I was asking you about your suggestion at the core of your argument: that having potential to trivialize select enemies is good for the game. Your answer is that you didn't mean to say that having it is good, you're just saying it exists in some cases and is not bad. Maybe my question was too vague, so let me be specific: Do you think it is good for the game if the player has the potential to trivialize any given enemy by wearing a specific gear combination, and if so, why?

TheMeInTeam wrote:Note that rF+++ also has drawbacks. In fact it is implied to be a "newbie trap", which is impossible if wearing rF+++ did not have significant drawbacks.

The drawback of rF+++ (which is the opportunity cost of constraining your gear to get it, and usually manifests in the loss of some AC and/or EV) is significant but it is much smaller than the drawback of being silenced (not being able to use scrolls, god abilities, or spells). The reason that rF+++ is a newbie trap is because it presents itself to the player in a way that makes the benefits appear to be worth the drawbacks, when they generally are not. If there was a silence ego on body armor that presented itself to the player as a really great thing, then it too would be a newbie trap (of course, this is probably impossible because unlike rF+++, silence's drawbacks are obvious in nature and no one would believe that it's generally good for you). This is kind of related to what Siegurt and PseudoLoneWolf were saying about numbers - players can't know how much the loss of AC/EV to get those resistances matters, unless they wizmode test or pay long-term scientific attention to the variables in play. And as duvessa said, this is true even with a pip cap of 1.

TheMeInTeam wrote:That's silly. Virtually any mechanic change will influence the main game and extended. There is a difference between difficulty and changes to a game that centralize/trivialize decision making.

I see that you want to discuss the ramifications on extended in this GDD proposal and you think it is silly not to. Just so you know, new players don't make it to extended, and most old players choose not to go to extended; the players interested in extended are the middle players trying it for the first time or few times, and some highscore enthusiasts.

TheMeInTeam wrote:A core premise of the OP's reasoning was that +++ resists are unclear but are also beginner traps. This discussion has apparently shifted to the concept that +++ provides too much damage mitigation - a non-trivial change to reasoning! Something can't be both a beginner trap and too strong at the same time. It might be one or the other depending on context, but that suggests using it is a *meaningful choice* in the game.

Nobody said that wearing rF+++ gear was too strong of a strategy - it is generally a weak strategy, which is why it is a newbie trap (I say generally because sometimes you get it for no opportunity cost, such as if the game generates +5 boots of rF+++). This is because the set of monsters that it trivializes is very small, while the set of monsters it makes deadlier (because you usually have a high opportunity cost and give up AC/EV for those resistances) is very large.

The reason that the damage mitigation it provides may be too much is not because it's overpowered, but rather because it makes certain monsters boring/trivial, which is a bad thing when those monsters would otherwise be very challenging/exciting. OOFs and venom-dagger-Sonja are good examples, and there are many enemies with an ability duplicated in a different element (or an ability modified to do partial-elemental damage) to prevent this, such as Azrael, which is a lot of extra work in monster design for no real added depth.

TheMeInTeam wrote:If you reduce the +++ to +, it will trivialize gear choice to at least a degree...and despite initial assertions otherwise there is clearly some incentive to utilize +++ sometimes and not other times.

I guess this is the core of your argument that you didn't mention before - gear decisions. I would say that the additional pips after the first have so little value that the gear decisions you perceive don't really exist to an experienced player. These "decisions" are what I and others are calling newbie traps.

TheMeInTeam wrote:Have the UI provide sufficient information such that an unspoiled player can anticipate the relative benefits of gear in advance. This seems to go against some of the stated design intentions, and I disagree with those particular ones. Nevertheless, it's an option and would do more to mitigate newbie traps than what amounts to a rework of resistances and likely multiple enemies/areas.

This would be nice, but unless you have a more specific idea, nobody has put forward a feasible way to improve the defense information given to the user. The complexity of the damage and accuracy formulas are such that you can't accurately quantify a general benefit from defenses.

The OP's proposal would not need any enemies or areas to be reworked.

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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 00:36

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:This would be nice, but unless you have a more specific idea, nobody has put forward a feasible way to improve the defense information given to the user.

Maybe you missed this upthread?
Siegurt wrote:One alternate to the OP that I can think of that would mitigate extra pips being a newbie trap would be to display the net percentage reduction of damage rather than just showing pips.

Changing the +'s to a literal number with a percent sign after it would increase clarity, and reduce the newbie-trapness of the additonal pips somewhat, at no expense of accuracy or communication.

Personally, my only counterargument to the OP is that it (relatively) increases the value of things like rings of evasion and protection (which were already pretty good) and makes "filling up" your resistance slots much faster and easier. As you go through the game and acquire one-off resistances from various sources (Some races even start with them), you negate any pressure on the "easy to obtain" resistance slots, as you flat out don't need and can't use them. It relegates a larger number of items to "completely useless" when they used to just be "better than nothing". I'm not confident that this particular sort of loss is enough to outweigh the straightforwardness gained, but it *is* something that's lost.

I would suggest that jewelry protection items would probably want to be rarer in the paradigm where any one item always maxes out a given category, you'd also want to reduce the odds of the properties showing up on artifacts (Which means artifacts are going to be even more similar to each-other than by just lowering the number of possible pips) Otherwise you end up filling up all your resistances partially through a 3 rune game, and the equipment game just becomes "solved" noticeably earlier. Presently you definitely get decreasing likelihood of better equipment as you go, but I personally find that in a 3 rune game, it's not until I'm nearly done and ready to move into Zot that I've pretty well exhausted any hope of finding a useful upgrade, I would be slightly sad if that point got moved back to somewhere between your first and second rune.

None of that means the OP is flat out bad or shouldn't be done, or that the challenges are insurmountable, it's just that doing as the OP suggests shouldn't be the end of that story, and will short-term at least make the slightly game less interesting.
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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 01:58

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:Ah, so that's what you meant when you said OOFs can kill you even with rF+++; you meant multiple OOFs. As you probably know, in crawl, fighting multiple depth-appropriate non-pack monsters is supposed to be a big deal no matter how prepared you are - it doesn't mean the monster is at the upper limit of difficulty.

And the rF+++ DPS is definitely not more DPS than anything else there. If you just look at fast enemies, most of them will usually hit harder: electric golems, death cobs, orb guardians, maybe storm dragons.


Orbs of fire on Zot5 are pretty difficult to not pull as a pack, and along with a lot of other things at once. Orc priests often come in packs, so would you say the only thing that matters is their individual danger when balancing them? I'd rather fight all those other enemies before an OOF for a variety of reasons. They blink, are damaged by various brands (vampiric, holy, etc.), you could blink and slam a door shut on a dragon... It's pretty limited what you can do to Orbs.

...Mutations can absolutely get you killed. How is that even in question? Slamming potions gives you no guarantee you won't make the set better and you might make things worse.

stormdragon wrote:I guess this is the core of your argument that you didn't mention before - gear decisions. I would say that the additional pips after the first have so little value that the gear decisions you perceive don't really exist to an experienced player. These "decisions" are what I and others are calling newbie traps.


I have plenty of experience and I don't consider additional pips to be worthless. An experienced player doesn't necessarily pick one set of gear and wear it for every branch and encounter. Experience teaches you the value of planning, preparation, and adapting as the game progresses. A good player can leverage strengths and minimize weaknesses dynamically.

stormdragon wrote:I see that you want to discuss the ramifications on extended in this GDD proposal and you think it is silly not to. Just so you know, new players don't make it to extended, and most old players choose not to go to extended; the players interested in extended are the middle players trying it for the first time or few times, and some highscore enthusiasts.


I could care less about highscores, I've won many times, and I play extended almost every game.

stormdragon wrote:This would be nice, but unless you have a more specific idea, nobody has put forward a feasible way to improve the defense information given to the user. The complexity of the damage and accuracy formulas are such that you can't accurately quantify a general benefit from defenses.


This isn't true at all. There are several displays in the game which can show numbers instead of ++++ symbols. Additionally, it has been suggested that because of the complexity of various formulae in calculating damage, that the game show the numeric amount of damage which is delivered or received and let players get a more refined notion from that.

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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 04:47

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:I see that you want to discuss the ramifications on extended in this GDD proposal and you think it is silly not to. Just so you know, new players don't make it to extended, and most old players choose not to go to extended; the players interested in extended are the middle players trying it for the first time or few times, and some highscore enthusiasts.


Does this mean the game after 3rune? Then this is not true. :)
This depends on the player's nationality and inclination. Most Korean players consider the 3rune clear a minimum victory, and most try for the 15rune clear.
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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 06:27

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Note that mutations are irrelevant in this thread as rF+++ does not make you get less mutations, your attack is still unchanged (in best case for opponents of OP, in worst case attack can be increased if you use a ring of slaying instead of second ring of rF+).
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Post Saturday, 9th February 2019, 19:41

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

svendre wrote:Orbs of fire on Zot5 are pretty difficult to not pull as a pack, and along with a lot of other things at once. Orc priests often come in packs, so would you say the only thing that matters is their individual danger when balancing them?

Orc priests are actually generated in packs, orbs of fire are not (they're just noisy).

svendre wrote:I'd rather fight all those other enemies before an OOF for a variety of reasons. They blink, are damaged by various brands (vampiric, holy, etc.), you could blink and slam a door shut on a dragon... It's pretty limited what you can do to Orbs.

I would say that electric golems may or may not be more dangerous than OOFs depending on the character, and for the others I agree with you. I was specifically addressing a claim about damage.

svendre wrote:I could care less about highscores, I've won many times, and I play extended almost every game.

I stand corrected. Thank you for your concrete counter-example :)

svendre wrote:...Mutations can absolutely get you killed. How is that even in question? Slamming potions gives you no guarantee you won't make the set better and you might make things worse.

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The orb of fire glows yellow. Strange energies course through your body. A pair of horns grows on your head! _The +2 helmet of Saih {+rage rf++} falls away!

I agree that it can conceivably happen, but it's extremely unlikely (which is why that entry made it into the learndb). About half of bad mutations are basically benign. If you get a bad one, potions of mutation are guaranteed to remove at least 2 mutations, and the ones added are weighted to on average improve your mutation set (though you're right that this aspect isn't guaranteed). So if you have no mutations, get malmutated, then drink a potion of mutation, you are likely to be stronger than before the malmutate (because the bad was removed, you get some random, then one positive).

On the other hand, if you get really lucky and have a great set of mutations (scales and whatnot), then potions of mutation are less good on average, and then I agree malmutate is relatively threatening. But most characters are not so lucky to have that "problem".

Regardless, the only reason for talking about malmutate was because of the allegation that rF+++ does not trivialize OOFs and we need rF+++ to balance them. Well, maybe trivial is too strong of a word and I was wrong on that front, but with rF+++ OOFs are extremely low threat for zot, like a hasted cacodemon, so we do not need rF+++ to balance OOFs.

svendre wrote:I have plenty of experience and I don't consider additional pips to be worthless. An experienced player doesn't necessarily pick one set of gear and wear it for every branch and encounter. Experience teaches you the value of planning, preparation, and adapting as the game progresses. A good player can leverage strengths and minimize weaknesses dynamically.

To an extent, yes, it is location dependent. Let me give an example. suppose I had 4 leather armors, one at +0 and rF+++, one at +1 and rF++, one at +2 and rF+, and one just +3, and I had no other source of rF. In D and most places, it would be a close call between the latter two armors. In lair I would absolutely prefer the +3. I would consider wearing one of the former two in a volcano, but nowhere else. Tangentially, I would hold on to the rF+++ one for pseudo-tactical usage, so that if I see a sleeping fire enemy - fire elemental or something - I can take a step back, change clothes, and then fight it, then change back to whatever my regular armor is (this is not the kind of gear choice I was talking about, but since you mentioned different gear for different encounters, I guess this is what you refer to). To me, the only real (non-obvious) decision was between the +2 rF+ leather versus the plain +3 leather. That choice would not be removed by the proposal.

Before you say that I'm underestimating resistances, let me give another example, if I had four rings: AC+5, AC+5, AC+4 rF+, and rF+++, then I would usually wear the first two, I would drop the third, and carry around the fourth. In this case, the fourth is better despite having 4 less AC than the third, because rings are easily swappable; unlike body armor, I'll never be stuck at low AC, so I may as well use the most specialized option when I need it. But again, to me this is obvious and not a decision.

Would you choose differently?

svendre wrote:This isn't true at all. There are several displays in the game which can show numbers instead of ++++ symbols. Additionally, it has been suggested that because of the complexity of various formulae in calculating damage, that the game show the numeric amount of damage which is delivered or received and let players get a more refined notion from that.

I saw Siegurt's suggestion about show elemental resistance numbers. The problem is that when choosing gear, you're mainly comparing resistances to AC/EV, and players don't know how much AC/EV are worth (unless using fsim or observing the game scientifically), so they don't have the information needed to compare. AC/EV/SH are the defenses I was talking about that we don't have any ideas on how to better convey to the user. You and Siegurt use "defenses" to include "resistances", so I guess I used the wrong word, sorry.

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Post Sunday, 10th February 2019, 00:25

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:I saw Siegurt's suggestion about show elemental resistance numbers. The problem is that when choosing gear, you're mainly comparing resistances to AC/EV, and players don't know how much AC/EV are worth (unless using fsim or observing the game scientifically), so they don't have the information needed to compare. AC/EV/SH are the defenses I was talking about that we don't have any ideas on how to better convey to the user. You and Siegurt use "defenses" to include "resistances", so I guess I used the wrong word, sorry.

Ah, it was just unclear in the context of talking about rF+ what you were talking about in that sentence, yes, you're correct we don't have a better way to present AC/EV/SH information.

The amount of protection those things provide is additive, or stochastic, rather than multiplicitive, so it would be, in fact, very very difficult to compare rF+ to AC+5 (for example) in an absolute sense (Even worse is trying to compare EV to resistances), as they have very different sorts of defensive effects, and have different degrees of effect against different types of attacks. It gets even weirder when your choice is between say rF+ and MR+.

I guess I'm just saying that without a major change to the way all defenses (including resistance) works (to make them use numbers that could be directly compared), it's always going to be hard to communicate information in a way that lets players easily make the right choices, irrespective of how many pips of resistances we allow. In the near term at least, using percentages would let new players get a real sense of how much extra resistance they are actually getting from pips.
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Post Sunday, 10th February 2019, 03:45

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:To an extent, yes, it is location dependent. Let me give an example. suppose I had 4 leather armors, one at +0 and rF+++, one at +1 and rF++, one at +2 and rF+, and one just +3, and I had no other source of rF. In D and most places, it would be a close call between the latter two armors. In lair I would absolutely prefer the +3. I would consider wearing one of the former two in a volcano, but nowhere else. Tangentially, I would hold on to the rF+++ one for pseudo-tactical usage, so that if I see a sleeping fire enemy - fire elemental or something - I can take a step back, change clothes, and then fight it, then change back to whatever my regular armor is (this is not the kind of gear choice I was talking about, but since you mentioned different gear for different encounters, I guess this is what you refer to). To me, the only real (non-obvious) decision was between the +2 rF+ leather versus the plain +3 leather. That choice would not be removed by the proposal.

Before you say that I'm underestimating resistances, let me give another example, if I had four rings: AC+5, AC+5, AC+4 rF+, and rF+++, then I would usually wear the first two, I would drop the third, and carry around the fourth. In this case, the fourth is better despite having 4 less AC than the third, because rings are easily swappable; unlike body armor, I'll never be stuck at low AC, so I may as well use the most specialized option when I need it. But again, to me this is obvious and not a decision.

Would you choose differently?


It's hard to give you any real answer without the complete picture. In general, I tend to wear heavier armour than leather, even if it is branded. My preference is to get resists from rings or other pieces of armour besides the body slot. There are a few reasons, one is that the body slot determines GDR. I don't usually try to cast higher level spells until I have armour skill up decently. With those rings, I would likely use the {AC+4 rF+} and {AC+5}. I would ditch one of the AC+5 rings, and I might keep the rF+++ ring for a swap, depending on what I had on the rest of my gear. I wouldn't likely swap for individual encounters that much unless they were uniques. One of the main reasons would be in case there were a fire bonus vault spawning (like in the lair).

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Post Monday, 11th February 2019, 19:09

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

stormdragon wrote:Ah, so that's what you meant when you said OOFs can kill you even with rF+++; you meant multiple OOFs. As you probably know, in crawl, fighting multiple depth-appropriate non-pack monsters is supposed to be a big deal no matter how prepared you are - it doesn't mean the monster is at the upper limit of difficulty.

And the rF+++ DPS is definitely not more DPS than anything else there. If you just look at fast enemies, most of them will usually hit harder: electric golems, death cobs, orb guardians, maybe storm dragons.

You may be technically correct, I am not sure how low the minimum time is between contracting teleportitis and having it trigger. But considering the usual amount of time it takes teleportitis to kick in, the relative quickness of fighting an OOF, and the abundance of potions of mutation in the game, if that actually happened I would be really interested in seeing how.

That's only true for entities that would have had extra elemental resistance. The concern you raised about balance was that summons are not very effective against OOFs compared to other strategies and you didn't want the gap to widen. Obviously, it won't, because summons are not affected by the proposal. I think you knew this and knew that the concern was false when you decided to raise it.

I was asking you about your suggestion at the core of your argument: that having potential to trivialize select enemies is good for the game. Your answer is that you didn't mean to say that having it is good, you're just saying it exists in some cases and is not bad. Maybe my question was too vague, so let me be specific: Do you think it is good for the game if the player has the potential to trivialize any given enemy by wearing a specific gear combination, and if so, why?

The drawback of rF+++ (which is the opportunity cost of constraining your gear to get it, and usually manifests in the loss of some AC and/or EV) is significant but it is much smaller than the drawback of being silenced (not being able to use scrolls, god abilities, or spells). The reason that rF+++ is a newbie trap is because it presents itself to the player in a way that makes the benefits appear to be worth the drawbacks, when they generally are not. If there was a silence ego on body armor that presented itself to the player as a really great thing, then it too would be a newbie trap (of course, this is probably impossible because unlike rF+++, silence's drawbacks are obvious in nature and no one would believe that it's generally good for you). This is kind of related to what Siegurt and PseudoLoneWolf were saying about numbers - players can't know how much the loss of AC/EV to get those resistances matters, unless they wizmode test or pay long-term scientific attention to the variables in play. And as duvessa said, this is true even with a pip cap of 1.

I see that you want to discuss the ramifications on extended in this GDD proposal and you think it is silly not to. Just so you know, new players don't make it to extended, and most old players choose not to go to extended; the players interested in extended are the middle players trying it for the first time or few times, and some highscore enthusiasts.

Nobody said that wearing rF+++ gear was too strong of a strategy - it is generally a weak strategy, which is why it is a newbie trap (I say generally because sometimes you get it for no opportunity cost, such as if the game generates +5 boots of rF+++). This is because the set of monsters that it trivializes is very small, while the set of monsters it makes deadlier (because you usually have a high opportunity cost and give up AC/EV for those resistances) is very large.

The reason that the damage mitigation it provides may be too much is not because it's overpowered, but rather because it makes certain monsters boring/trivial, which is a bad thing when those monsters would otherwise be very challenging/exciting. OOFs and venom-dagger-Sonja are good examples, and there are many enemies with an ability duplicated in a different element (or an ability modified to do partial-elemental damage) to prevent this, such as Azrael, which is a lot of extra work in monster design for no real added depth.

I guess this is the core of your argument that you didn't mention before - gear decisions. I would say that the additional pips after the first have so little value that the gear decisions you perceive don't really exist to an experienced player. These "decisions" are what I and others are calling newbie traps.

This would be nice, but unless you have a more specific idea, nobody has put forward a feasible way to improve the defense information given to the user. The complexity of the damage and accuracy formulas are such that you can't accurately quantify a general benefit from defenses.

The OP's proposal would not need any enemies or areas to be reworked.


- It is not self-consistent to simultaneously reason that something "trivializes a threatening monster" and that it is a "newbie trap". You can swap gear, in fact some gear is designed to be swapped quickly.

- When discussing builds, the most relevant ones to take a hit from this are stabbers. The gist is that rF+++ nerf creates an asymmetric scenario where builds that can kill OOFs and other high-powered elemental monsters fast are much less effected than builds that don't have a means to do so. Summoners also take a hit from such a nerf, because they need to use a back-up, non-summon plan and that usually involves eating more attacks than alternative builds. Blaster casters and characters with +9 longbows are much less impacted.

- With rF+++, OOFs still do more damage than any other monster in Zot:5 in most practical 1v1 encounters. The more stuff you add the more dangerous it is, true for all monsters. But OOF is also the hardest monster to run from in the area by a wide margin (orb guardians 2nd, but not scary unless berserked). Even with rF+++, it would be foolish to take them lightly. If you're not on/near stairs, 10 turns is a long time to wait on a random TP.

- In terms of enemies, I like the idea of variety - not all enemies trivialized by the same gear. If you're prepared, it's comparatively easy (but mistakes can still kill you). If you're not, it's a lot more dangerous. This makes the consideration of what to wear per areas significant. Compare to simply having a pip in each thing and then making out on general defensive stats.

- On the topic of "newbie trap", the argument seems to be that people put too much weight on elemental resists. However, broadly speaking newbies also know that higher AC/EV/SH are good. I'm not sure it's fair to assert that a typical newbie has a meaningful ability to distinguish between 2 AC and 3 EV, rF+ vs rf+++, and so forth. The game doesn't tell you that you get 50% and 80% reduction or something, and it doesn't tell you how much damage you're expected to mitigate from a standard hit via AC. More of this stuff is always better if you have no opportunity cost, and comparing between it won't be fixed by messing with pips - the game would need to actually dictate the consequences of these choices. Using it as a basis for making only 1 pip rather than 3 is a red herring in that sense.

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Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 09:18

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

TheMeInTeam wrote:- With rF+++, OOFs still do more damage than any other monster in Zot:5 in most practical 1v1 encounters.


Can you please stop repeating this? Any monster in Zot 5 is way more dangerous than oof which deals 25 damage max to 0 AC character, it is weaker than hasted Death Yak (30 max damage per attack). That's not counting turns which are "wasted" on malmutate.

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Blown up by an ancient lich (100 damage)
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Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 16:56

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:- With rF+++, OOFs still do more damage than any other monster in Zot:5 in most practical 1v1 encounters.


Can you please stop repeating this? Any monster in Zot 5 is way more dangerous than oof which deals 25 damage max to 0 AC character, it is weaker than hasted Death Yak (30 max damage per attack). That's not counting turns which are "wasted" on malmutate.

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  Code:
Blown up by an ancient lich (100 damage)

Note that while OOF is definitely much weaker when facing a char with rF+++, it's not quite *that* weak, it may do up to 25 max damage per attack, but attacks 1.5x as often as a Death Yak, and does it at range, and fireball ignores SH/EV, so it still outdamages a Death Yak by a wide margin, which makes it significantly more dangerous than a Death Yak, although I would agree that it's not the most dangerous thing in Zot, also if you merely have rF++ instead of rF+++ the danger goes up noticeably. (I think they aren't the *least* dangerous individual critter in Z:5 though, I suspect that's a draconian)

I would argue that even with only one pip of fire resistance, you probably won't die to a lone OOF on Z:5, unless you're playing a fairly brittle character to start with (or like charge them from max range or something equally tactically stupid). Having multiple pips of rF makes it so that you're not likely to die to a lone OOF even *with* a brittle character. The robust character isn't likely to die to a solo OOF in either state, and both sorts of characters are subject to being overrun by too many critters no many how pips or rF they have (obviously it happens more rapidly if you're more brittle).

I don't know that that's an argument for or against having mutiple pips of resistance, to me singling out OOF combat for talking about how many pips of resistance we should have is a sort of dead-end conversation, picking apart a single instance out of many when talking about a general thing like this is a bit wearying.

Multiple pips of resistance add complexity, the question I have is: Is it good complexity (that adds variation and/or tactical depth to the game) or useless complexity (that adds cognitive stress or tedium without contributing) I personally feel like the additional resistance pips are in a bit of a grey area where there's *some* benefit and *some* cost, and so the answer to whether the benefits outweigh the costs actually going to change from person to person, because there's a good bit of opinion as to how important those benefits and costs are.
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Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 07:16

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Assuming oof spends 1/3 actions on malmutate it has the same speed as non-hasted death yak.
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Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 07:21

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

I am looking at http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Zot:5:
Ancient lich has Lehudib's Crystal Spear (3d48)
Electric golem deals 60 damage in melee, is faster than oof (16) and has Lightning Bolt (3d20) at range. That 60 electric damage can be reduced only to 40 by rElec and ignores half of your AC.
Orb Guardian deals 45 damage in melee, has almost the same speed as oof(14) and is often accompanied with moth of wrath which changes that 45 to 101 (+50% damage and +50% speed, speed becomes 21!)
Killer Klown deals 30 melee damage, has almost the same speed as oof(14) and can paralyse/distort etc. you
Dragons and draconians are much more dangerous than oof too especially when they come naturally in packs:
golden dragon has melee 80, for instance. Draconian shifter can prevent your blinks/teleports etc.
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Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 07:52

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Killer Klown [...] can paralyse/distort etc. you

Are you sure about that?
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FeEE{HOIEMiAE}GrGlHuWrGnWrNaAKBaFi{MiDeMfDe}{DrAKTrAMGhEnGnWz}
{PaBeDjFi}OgAKPaCAGnCjOgCKMfAEAtCKSpCjDEEE{HOSu
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Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 07:58

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Sprucery wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote:Killer Klown [...] can paralyse/distort etc. you

Are you sure about that?


No, I am not. My bad.

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Special damage type used by Killer Klowns. Per attack randomly: strong poison, pain, drain speed, fire, cold, elec, antimagic, acid

 In 0.23, they have a throw {klown pie} ability and no longer have klown melee, getting a well enchanted and probably branded {club} instead.
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Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 16:26

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:- With rF+++, OOFs still do more damage than any other monster in Zot:5 in most practical 1v1 encounters.


Can you please stop repeating this? Any monster in Zot 5 is way more dangerous than oof which deals 25 damage max to 0 AC character, it is weaker than hasted Death Yak (30 max damage per attack). That's not counting turns which are "wasted" on malmutate.

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  Code:
Blown up by an ancient lich (100 damage)


I will keep saying it, because it's true.

Ancient liches, dragons, and orb guardians can *potentially* deal more damage for example, but in practice with decent tactics/countermeasures they do less consistently. Two of them you can simply walk away from if seen on edge of LoS as any 10 aut species or faster.

I would rather see an orb of fire than two berserked orb guardians, but barring combo scenarios it's more trivial to fight or escape any single monster on Zot:5 compared to OOF, even at rF+++. Below that, the differential quickly swings towards OOFs being obviously the most dangerous enemy.

Electric golems are pretty rough too, but are both less common and don't have anything ignoring evasion/burn turns to blinking or moving even more often than OOFs. With rElec I take less damage to them than OOFs 1v1

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Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 22:37

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

If changing the way player resistances works makes a single monster too dangerous, it is also possible to rebalance that monster. I think the "please consider OOF damage if rF changes" point has been pretty well covered in this thread.
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Post Thursday, 14th February 2019, 07:13

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

TheMeInTeam wrote:I would rather see an orb of fire than two berserked orb guardians, but barring combo scenarios it's more trivial to fight or escape any single monster on Zot:5 compared to OOF, even at rF+++.


I see, you either have no idea what you are talking about or you have some irrational fear of oofs like I had for fiends. 2 monsters when each deals 67 damage with speed 21 to you seem less dangerous than a single monster which deals 0-25 damage with speed 15. In any case it does not make sense to continue discussing this with you.
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Post Thursday, 14th February 2019, 15:00

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:I would rather see an orb of fire than two berserked orb guardians, but barring combo scenarios it's more trivial to fight or escape any single monster on Zot:5 compared to OOF, even at rF+++.


I see, you either have no idea what you are talking about or you have some irrational fear of oofs like I had for fiends. 2 monsters when each deals 67 damage with speed 21 to you seem less dangerous than a single monster which deals 0-25 damage with speed 15. In any case it does not make sense to continue discussing this with you.


I think you just aren't understanding his point of view (which I happen to share). You're omitting a bunch of other factors in your assessment. I'll name a few:

Orb guardians are susceptible to a variety of tactics that OOF are more resistant to. For example you could use a simple wand of paralysis and get one stuck in a corridor then do whatever you like. They don't have an area of effect attack like orbs, so summons would be an easier method of escaping from them (or just killing them). You can use a vampiric weapon against them, as well as a number of other brands. They have weaker resists so this includes a ton of different spells as well. Two berserked orb guardians does not mean they can both hit you at once if you are in a corridor. An OOF could blast you behind something in a corridor. The fact that they are berserked also means that the berserk can wear off eventually, leaving them with a slow effect (and thus easier to kill). OOFs can attack at range, guardians cannot. So, you could just blink around each time a guardian gets near you. That tactic will likely only get you killed against an OOF. The OOF's speed doesn't wear off, they just keep coming, and unless you manage to escape on stairs or via lucky teleport, if you get low on health against them - you must resort to more extreme measures to try and stay alive.

Etc. etc. etc., I could go on and on...

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Post Thursday, 14th February 2019, 15:14

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

svendre wrote:I think you just aren't understanding his point of view (which I happen to share). You're omitting a bunch of other factors in your assessment. I'll name a few:

Orb guardians are susceptible to a variety of tactics that OOF are more resistant to. For example you could use a simple wand of paralysis and get one stuck in a corridor then do whatever you like. They don't have an area of effect attack like orbs, so summons would be an easier method of escaping from them. You can use vampiric weapon against them, they have weaker resists so this includes a ton of different spells as well. Two berserked orb guardians does not mean they can both hit you at once if you are in a corridor. The fact that they are berserked also means that the berserk can wear off eventually, leaving them with a slow effect (and thus easier to kill).

Etc. etc. etc., I could go on and on...


I have been in Zot 5 as well... No way you are going to fight most orb guardians in a corridor, there are about dozen of them right near the orb and they have speed 14, just 1 less than speed of orb of fire. With rF+++ the highest damage attack by oof is expected to deal you 12 (twelve) damage on average (assuming 0 AC character!), that's ridiculous to compare to even a single berserking orb guardian. Vampiric will not help much here, it just cannot heal 120+ damage per turn which you get from a single berserking orb guarding.
Just take a look at current tournament. Orb guardians killed more characters than orbs of fire did. Last deaths: orb guardian:
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             Began as a Deep Dwarf Fighter on Feb 14, 2019.
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             ... on level 5 of the Realm of Zot. 
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oof:
  Code:
 Began as a Halfling Earth Elementalist on Feb 13, 2019.
             Was the Champion of the Shining One.
             Killed from afar by an orb of fire (26 damage)
             ... with a fireball
rF++ and AC 47.
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Post Thursday, 14th February 2019, 15:33

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Hey folks, if you have more discussion on how much damage various monsters can do and how best to deal with them, that's probably a good topic for Advice. I'd split the thread and move the posts but it's pretty messy.
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Post Thursday, 14th February 2019, 15:56

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

I just feel this needs to be said sooner rather than later. Can the lot of you please stop derailing the entire thread, please?

@VeryAngryFelid OP'd about the third pip of resistance being a problem for players new to DCSS. What became apparent was an underlying issue: not enough directly available information to help said players make better decisions. I agree wholly that some aspects of the game can (and should) be more readily explained in the game, rather than requiring so much reliance on external resources like the wiki, learndb and whatever else. I do not agree with this thread becoming a dispute about hypothetical scenarios where completely different defensive values govern the combat, tactical comparisons, personal grievances against OOFs, and the like.

A resistances overhaul or some kind of information change within the game is fine by me, fuck the rest of this waffle. (Sorry if you're from Belgium)
Split things off if the individual aspects each deserve the attention. If a thread needs to exist about "the most dangerous enemy in Z:5", "(re)balance OOFs", "rX+++ makes these enemies trivial" - make one. Seriously, are you trying to get a lock on this?

And @njvack ninja'd me. Well played.
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Post Friday, 15th February 2019, 05:55

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

My main point is that having 3rd pip in the game is bad. Displaying its precise effect in game will help but is not enough.
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Post Thursday, 21st February 2019, 21:27

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
TheMeInTeam wrote:I would rather see an orb of fire than two berserked orb guardians, but barring combo scenarios it's more trivial to fight or escape any single monster on Zot:5 compared to OOF, even at rF+++.


I see, you either have no idea what you are talking about or you have some irrational fear of oofs like I had for fiends. 2 monsters when each deals 67 damage with speed 21 to you seem less dangerous than a single monster which deals 0-25 damage with speed 15. In any case it does not make sense to continue discussing this with you.


That isn't what I said. It's true that there's not much point in discussing if I'm going to be quoted/interpreted as saying things I didn't.

Split things off if the individual aspects each deserve the attention. If a thread needs to exist about "the most dangerous enemy in Z:5", "(re)balance OOFs", "rX+++ makes these enemies trivial" - make one. Seriously, are you trying to get a lock on this?


That isn't the intention, no. It emerged as a tangent from the point that there *is* some high pure elemental damage in 3 rune runs whereby carrying and using more resists on equipment can outcompete alternative gear. OOFs were the obvious example, but not the only one. Apparently extended isn't supposed to count, but I still disagree with that notion as well. Since inventory slots are finite and some equipment can't be changed rapidly, this *does* influence gear decisions, including what to carry.

Resists are actually more intuitive than AC, despite that the latter has fewer beginner pitfalls. AC can significantly reduce elemental damage, see how many unspoiled newbies guess that fact, or the non-intuitive exceptions. If we're going to talk beginner traps in evaluating rF+++ vs +6 AC, the effect of the latter being obfuscated is a much larger offender.

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Post Friday, 22nd February 2019, 18:00

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

sdynet wrote:
sanka wrote:I honestly think that a one pip=50% reduction system would be easier for new players because for new players clarity is way more important. Crawl is not hard for new players because they do not play it like chess, optimizing every single command. It is hard for them because they have no idea what matters and what does not, they have no idea how the game actually works.


Well, Do you think Newbies lose between 100 and 500 games because they don't understand this system? Currently, players understand the concept that it is advantageous to gain resistance even if they do not know the exact number. When they win their first victory, do they win because they are fully skilled in tactics? Ladies and gentlemen, did you already have the ability to score Winning streak on your first victory? Of course you are better than you were at first. But I think many of the resistance you got lucky helped. You may not be aware of it, but your argument is very harsh on the Newbie.

Newbies will do things like wear a +0 randart helmet with rF+++ when they already had rF somewhere else, rather than just getting a +2 helmet of intelligence, which would probably be much better for them. Newbies also tend to under value things like a +3-4 ring of evasion/protection, which are actually very strong rings (I tend to think a +6 ring is "splashy" enough that newbies realize they're good).

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Post Friday, 14th June 2019, 05:23

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

Newbies will do things like wear a +0 randart helmet with rF+++ when they already had rF somewhere else, rather than just getting a +2 helmet of intelligence, which would probably be much better for them. Newbies also tend to under value things like a +3-4 ring of evasion/protection, which are actually very strong rings (I tend to think a +6 ring is "splashy" enough that newbies realize they're good).


So isn't the real problem the opacity of defensive stats?

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Post Sunday, 16th June 2019, 17:30

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

sooheon wrote:So isn't the real problem the opacity of defensive stats?

I think this is basically it, yes. When it comes to AC, EV, resists, you name it.

Consider a new player against a hypothetical monster.

Player examines it, and finds it can hit for up to 32 damage (average 16), and that it can cast a fireball that deals up to 32 fire damage (average 16).

How safe is the player? A veteran player would know, more or less.

In a simplified (and clarified) system, however, our new player can look at that and say "I could have 24 AC, and AC reduces damage by 1, so the monster would hit for up to 8 damage, and will do an average of 0 damage. Or, I could have 25 EV, and EV increases the chance to dodge by 1%, so the monster would hit for up to 32 damage, and an average of 12 damage."

(Note, I'm not saying that's how it works now, or that we should switch to such a system, or that it would be balanced, or anything like that, just using simple numbers for clarity)

In the current state, the new player doesn't have a clear idea of what that AC or EV might mean, let alone what the tradeoffs between them might be, and that's without getting into GDR and resists.

Now incorporate the rF argument from above and it gets even more complicated. Does EV allow the player to dodge the fireball some of the time? Or reduce the damage from it? Does AC reduce damage from it? How about GDR? How much does each pip of rF help? After all, a reasonable new player would assume that rF+++ is three times as good as rF+.

Even if you add a percentage to the rF - say, 25% - does that mean our hypothetical player will be susceptible taking 75% of that damage (up to 24 damage)? Or would that 24 AC mean that the fireball can't harm the player at all?

Veteran players figure out rough ideas of how dangerous these things may be under any given circumstances. Players can dive into the code, learndb, the wiki, etc., and get some idea of how these things work. But ideally, a new, unspoiled player would be able to quickly tell just how valuable a second or third pip of resistance might be, and able to quickly compare it to, say, an extra point or two of AC. With the current design, so much is obscured that it's basically impossible to tell the relative values of different items, stats, resistances, etc., unless you've spoiled yourself, or played the game enough to intuit it.

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Post Saturday, 22nd June 2019, 19:47

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

All this talk about OOF damage and no one mentions their extreme tankyness. They are still quite dangerous with rf+++ as fighting one usually means you are fighting a bunch of other shit because they are loud af and you cant lure them very far.

As far as rf is concerned, you never want to make significant tradeoffs in offense/ac/ev for extra pips. Potion of resistance exists.

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Post Sunday, 23rd June 2019, 19:51

Re: Remove 3rd pip of fire/cold resistance

gameguard wrote:All this talk about OOF damage and no one mentions their extreme tankyness. They are still quite dangerous with rf+++ as fighting one usually means you are fighting a bunch of other shit because they are loud af and you cant lure them very far.

As far as rf is concerned, you never want to make significant tradeoffs in offense/ac/ev for extra pips. Potion of resistance exists.


That's because we were scolded for discussing OOF in the "rF+++ to rF++" proposed change thread. I personally left off with "and on and on and so forth", but you are sort of correct. Potions of resistance wouldn't be of much help to get from rF++ to rF+++ if rF+++ didn't exist, so maybe they need to go too :P
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