Luring (was: DCSS has a power creep problem)

[Lasty]

As far as I'm concerned, the main current balance-ish gameplay issues that need resolution are:
6) Energy randomization is a clunky solution to speed 10 chases.

I'd note that energy randomization is probably not a balance issue. That's quibbling, of course! I generally agree, particularly with 2, 3, 4, and 6.

I think energy randomization is a balance issue because it's a piece of the problem with luring, and as dpeg pointed out, luring is a problem. The spectrum of solutions to energy randomization that I favor would make luring less safe, thereby making less of a dominant strategy. Probably still dominant, but less dramatically so.

The solutions I favor are along the lines of "remove energy randomization but give monsters a (temporary|permanent) speed boost after they've been chasing you for a while".

[njvack]

Split from the power creep thread as this is definitely its own topic...

Another solution I think I've seen bandied around here would be to make moving towards an enemy faster than moving away from one. Communicating that might be tricky, though.

[dpeg]

Hey, cool topic, Lasty

What I had in mind was something different: a monster that's following you shouts from time to time (waking other monsters and telling them where you are).
I agree that energy randomisation is something like a wrong solution for the problem.

It's good to hear as many ideas as possible, as it is not as if this was a new issue.

[njvack]

The thing about shouting is that it partly encourages you to lure the monster *farther* so dangerous stuff can't hear the shouts either. Maybe if a shouting monster temporarily had a status rather like sentinel's mark, so other monsters would path to it even if they couldn't hear it?

[dpeg]

njvack: Yes, I really mean the shouting to the flavour for "(more) monsters now know where you are". I don't mind the hivemind component of this too much, either. They're all out there to get you anyway

[sanka]

There is already a monster that tells other monsters where you are in the game, and in my experience it does not work very well. It makes Vaults much more tedious because occasionally you need to retreat a lot. (In my opinion the vault monster that is interesting is not the one that marks you or calls in enemies but the one that closes the doors.) I do not mind it if it is a unique mechanic in a branch but I do not think it would work well all game.

Also, currently it is very important to know that you need not to fight every monster, and you must be able to run for example from an early ogre or orc warrior. I think it can be a little bit hard to distinguish running away and luring. Separating packs and using movement to create safe fights is very important in DCSS, and I am really curious how you want to make luring not the best strategy and preserve this.

Neverthless I think that what would work best is to make every monster move just a little bit faster than the player (maybe smaller difference that is possible now), but without any randomisation (and only for movement, not for other actions). I do not think that centaur or spriggan are fixable, but you may have some idea.

[tabstorm]

Why not just shrink maps to like, 2/3 their current size, or spawn more monsters awake and wandering around (but unaware)?
Energy randomization dosen't accomplish anything except confusing people imo.

[milski]

You could just make monsters never move at the same speeds as the player; split auts down to 0.05 and make monsters always either slightly faster or slightly slower than the player.

This has the disadvantage of being a massive rework and rebalance of the game and completely arbitrary, but the advantage of not being clunky and difficult to communicate visually.

[Jarlyk]

I'm not so sure that luring is the real problem. Any tactic that trades off turn-count for safety is going to be 'optimal' when not speedrunning; in general, these are also going to be more tedious to play, since it means you're spending more turns/time positioning. Similar tactics include pillar-dancing or digging/using kill-holes (those these are still fairly time-efficient.) Also consider that not having as much access to such tactics is part of what makes Nagas and/or Chei interesting to play; it's worth considering whether 'nerfs' to luring end up being an indirect weakening of the severity of slow movement conducts.

I think the cleanest way to discourage tedious strategies is to introduce incentives for keep turn count low. Timed portals sort-of do this (and I do notice that play a little bit less conservatively when I want to get to a portal), but I think there's room to expand on this idea. For example, if you're familiar with the game XCOM: Enemy Within, one of the things they added in the expansion was the notion of timed "Meld Canisters" in each mission that expire if you take too long to reach them; Meld was an important resource, so being overly conservative and using tedious repetitive over-watch tactics on every mission would thus gimp your capabilities in the strategic game. I'm pretty sure this was added in direct response to the fact that these tactics were dominant in the original release, especially on high difficulty settings where the best way to be safe from RNG was to play extremely conservatively. You still had to be careful to win in the expansion at high difficulty, which did mean sometimes letting the meld go when it was too risky to go for it, given the tactical situation on the ground.

The game currently attempts to motivate forward progress using hunger, but this is tricky to balance and it rarely winds up being a major constraint. It also has OOD spawns to discourage really scummy behavior, but that doesn't really impact moderate inefficiency like luring.

What if there were instead an incentive to be more turn-efficient? Suppose that the game spawned more loot than it currently does, but over time that loot is slowly destroyed, like Jivya randomly does. This could also encourage diving to get good loot from deeper levels while it's still there, but that might not be such a bad thing, as that's another interesting tradeoff in risk/reward. You could gate this at certain checkpoints like, say, only start the loot decay timer for the branch when you first enter it. I think this would create some interesting decisions when it comes to how much you want to risk to possibly get better items that would then reduce your risk. The hard thing with this kind of proposal is that it's tricky to balance for backgrounds that have naturally slower starts.

Not sure if this is a great proposal, since it could dramatically change the dynamics of the game, though I'd argue anything that makes luring less useful is also a pretty big change, since that's such a fundamental tactic for safe play.

[dpeg]

I'm not so sure that luring is the real problem. Any tactic that trades off turn-count for safety is going to be 'optimal' when not speedrunning; in general, these are also going to be more tedious to play, since it means you're spending more turns/time positioning. Similar tactics include pillar-dancing or digging/using kill-holes (those these are still fairly time-efficient.)

I agree with everything except your first sentence. Something that effects every single encouter is a very big problem, in my opinion. You are right that luring, kill-holing and pillar dancing are three different similar issues, but I believe that luring is worst.

In my games, I have to resist the temptation to lure (or to give in, depends on character), and it always feels bad, either way. Kill-holing and pillar dancing also feel cheap, but come up much less often.

Also consider that not having as much access to such tactics is part of what makes Nagas and/or Chei interesting to play; it's worth considering whether 'nerfs' to luring end up being an indirect weakening of the severity of slow movement conducts.

This is overgeneralising: Nagas and Cheibriados are interesting because they remove fleeing. I am fine with keeping the ability to run from battles; I want to reduce the usefulness of luring monsters away from groups.

To be clear: I propose that running away (i.e. having a monster on your trail, whether in sight or not) makes the level worse by alerting more and more monsters. This would make running away less universally useful, but still possible.

I think the cleanest way to discourage tedious strategies is to introduce incentives for keep turn count low.

Abstractly, you are right. But Crawl is too big to execute this elegantly, in my opinion. (This is a reason why any food clock is bound to be problematic in Crawl.) I like the idea of rewarding less conservative play (and portal vaults were indeed partly motivated by that; however, note that all such features tend to boost the strong, and cripple the weak).

[Jarlyk]

I agree, "boost the strong and cripple the weak" is a major problem. The worst case would be to make slow (but safe) progress early, only to be left too weak to finish because you missed out on too many tools you'd need to deal with later challenges. A game like crawl should kill you for your mistakes quickly.

Regarding the alerting monsters while chasing concept, one response to that would be to abuse the mechanic to lure a bunch of monsters to one staircase, then take another stairs and pick off the stragglers who didn't join in. If luring becomes more dangerous by attracting attention, it might actually increase the incentive to play musical stairs, since it would naturally tend to clump them toward your escape stairs.

[asdu]

To be clear: I propose that running away (i.e. having a monster on your trail, whether in sight or not) makes the level worse by alerting more and more monsters. This would make running away less universally useful, but still possible.

This could itself be exploited for luring by drawing alert enemies to a stair and then re-entering the level from another.
Also where do you draw the line between running/luring/repositioning to better terrain/kiting? Should a CeHu have Qazlal on by default and/or incorporate in his tactics knowledge of how many steps he can take in between shots? If one needs to keep running for a while in dangerous territory (e.g. V:5 with a few titans/storm dragons/liches on his tail) would he get marked even though he might be busting his ass burning consumables to stay alive?
Even as someone who would probably very rarely trigger any anti-luring measures, I don't really want a sort of mark-lite in my games.

I think that the problem would be best solved with normal game elements (smaller levels and more patrolling enemies as suggested sounds great imo, also more fast enemies) rather than by replacing a weird ad-hoc mechanic with another.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

I find myself experiencing disagreeable emotion when I read conversations on this topic because they're held on flimsy yet abnormally widely-accepted foundations, so I'm going to try to not say much, and I'll forego the difficulty argument that is inevitably and annoyingly brought up at this point.

Crawl's AI and noise system is fine-tuned, advertently or not, to enable and encourage degenerate luring.

Crawl should not require spoilers - that is a design goal. Contexts suggest mechanics. Who would naturally think that letting enemies come to you is almost always the best move? There's no reason to even suspect that something like this should work, or that the AI is designed for bad gameplay. It may look preferable to move towards enemies to block up killtunnels with yourself. You meet bands, engage them in range or melee, and monsters seem to group together and swarm you. It looks, acts, and quacks like group AI. You think that what you see is what you get. You don't know that when a monster notices you, and shouts, it may as well have evaporated on the spot with a bang, as far as its peers are concerned.

Let's see what must happen for a non-spoiled player to discover luring in its currently known form. You have to hypothesize that 'group clustering AI' is an illusion, with the same ingenuity with which scientifically-minded ancients doubted that the earth is flat, or that the earth is orbited by the sky. In testing this theory you must happen to lure far enough for combat noise and random wandering not to spoil the experiment. Furthermore, you have to reject competing explanations, like 'pathfinding AI got lost' for stragglers (which does happen). Yet some claim that luring is an intuitive tactic, similar to using corridors to make sure only 1 monster attacks you at a time. Well, that's nonsense, as I've explained.

Crawl should undo its pro-luring features, and design around the result. I can think of more elaborate systems but here's one simple, direct hack that I think will work well: make monsters shout every turn, unless they haven't noticed you (I assume Mark is not enough for monsters to "really" "notice" you) or are asleep/silenced/paralyzed/engulfed/etc. (This wouldn't display in the message bar of course, 'X shouts' when something sees you would become 'X starts shouting'.) At least, starting bands won't break themselves apart by sending off random members to chase you.

Some silent monsters are OK to keep, I think. It's easy enough to see with wights and river rats that they don't alert each other. They facilitate small-distance luring and serve to vary the game's pace if you can easily fight 1 or 2 before you rest and continue to break members off that pack.

[duvessa]

You have to hypothesize that 'group clustering AI' is an illusion

not sure why that would help, since group clustering AI isn't an illusion

[kuniqs]

Make crawl into a kung-fu movie: monsters make a square circle around you and fight you 1 at a time. Crimson imps give taunting boosts to both you and your enemy.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

You have to hypothesize that 'group clustering AI' is an illusion

not sure why that would help, since group clustering AI isn't an illusion

What are you talking about? I know there's the Herd flag and monsters swap or make way for each other. But that's limited; if it wasn't an illusion, you wouldn't be able to lure and split packs as you do now; you'd just relocate the entire pack from one place to another.

[duvessa]

You have to hypothesize that 'group clustering AI' is an illusion

not sure why that would help, since group clustering AI isn't an illusion

What are you talking about?

mon-movetarget.cc

[kuniqs]

1) Disable combat noise
2) Make it so things do not shout immediately when they notice you. If you kill it fast enough, you make no noise.

[Sar]

Who would naturally think that letting enemies come to you is almost always the best move?

Anyone who ever gave it a thought?

[duvessa]

if you run into your brother's room with a hammer, it's really hard to hit him in the cock with it. but if you wait outside his door until he opens it and has his guard down, it's really easy. so i think the tactics for luring monsters are very intuitive

[Tranquil Suit]

if you run into your brother's room with a hammer, it's really hard to hit him in the cock with it. but if you wait outside his door until he opens it and has his guard down, it's really easy. so i think the tactics for luring monsters are very intuitive

I see you've read Sun Tzu's Art of War.



IMO, luring isn't an abusive tactic per se. But right now it is due to the lack of cohesion of enemies.

Monsters are spawned in groups, right? Give the group some cohesion (based on monster' intelligence).

If one monster in a group sees (or hears) you, he doesn't just shout, he shouts the player's location (or source of noise), and the shout (with your location) is then reverberated throughout the group as possible (that is the rest of the group isn't too far away).

[Sprucery]

Just make all members of the group chase you if one of them does. A simple idea, but I have no idea how hard this is to code.

[Tranquil Suit]

Just make all members of the group chase you if one of them does. A simple idea, but I have no idea how hard this is to code.

That would kill luring completely and be unrealistic. Monsters don't have walkie talkies. If you manage to split up a group, that should count for something.




Coding: Group id isn't too hard. Communication withing a group is harder, but far from impossible. Regrouping, that may be harder. Unless they have a default location to return to.


Good luck, dev.

[duvessa]

I'll say it for the third time, groups already have AI to keep them together. Yes, it's still possible to separate individual creatures - otherwise the group could get bogged down even more easily than they already do - but they already try to stay together.

[Tranquil Suit]

I'll say it for the third time, groups already have AI to keep them together. Yes, it's still possible to separate individual creatures - otherwise the group could get bogged down even more easily than they already do - but they already try to stay together.

Waaay too insufficient (the proficiency of the AI to keep them together)

[HardboiledGargoyle]

IMO, luring isn't an abusive tactic per se. But right now it is due to the lack of cohesion of enemies.

Monsters are spawned in groups, right? Give the group some cohesion (based on monster' intelligence).

Thing is, the player should have no reason to distinguish between clusters of enemies as they appear, and groups in terms of how they were generated on the level. Everything is united in desire to kill you, e.g. yaks and orcs, even if they're spawned independently. Which is why I think it would make sense for monsters that track you to shout continuously. It basically translates to monsters yelling "alarm! alarm! over here!" without being able to give away your position, nor communicate remotely, and you can kill them to make them stop.

Groups may have a leader to come to for regrouping, and I think the game has some of that already, but that's a luxury mechanic. We're talking about dirty basics here.

[Hurkyl]

if you run into your brother's room with a hammer, it's really hard to hit him in the cock with it. but if you wait outside his door until he opens it and has his guard down, it's really easy. so i think the tactics for luring monsters are very intuitive

Alas, if this were crawl, then your brother will keep his guard up after chasing you through the door so you don't gain the advantage.

You get the advantage in crawl because when he alerts his girlfriend, rather than following him out to fight you 2v1 she instead searches the bed and then tries to track you from there while ignoring your brother.

[njvack]

Waaay too insufficient (the proficiency of the AI to keep them together)

In Crawl, there can only be one creature on a square at a time, so things like corners will tend to make groups have "odd" behavior -- they can't *all* take the shortest path to the player so they spend turns pathing around each other. So as you lure groups around terrain, they tend to elongate and get separated. If you make the group leaders hang back with the rest of the group, it means they'll fall behind relatively fast, so walking away from the whole group is easier than it is now. And since ranged combat exists, it's even easier to kite the leader of the group, because they'll spend a bunch of time waiting for the pack's stragglers instead of walking towards the player.

And once they've lost sight of the player, it would be a odd to have them just stay clumped together -- if nothing else, it makes avoiding the whole pack a lot easier.

Saying "pack AI should be better" is easy, finding an actual way to make do it without making the pack easier to handle is a lot harder.

[TeshiAlair]

Why not have pack behavior scale off of stealth? Unstealthy people basically cannot lure to save their skins, but stealth users can usually pick them off one by one. It's more thematic as well.

[dpeg]

TeshiAlair: While it is thematic, it's still not good gameplay.

Luring would be alright if it happened a few times in a game. But you face hundreds of monsters. That's why I think it should have nothing to do with Stealth.
Note that Stealth would continue to provide these benefits: (1) you can more often choose whether combat will take place. (2) you can sometimes stab. (3) you can shake of monsters following you more often.

[Ceann]

I don't really see how luring in a problem. Sometimes tactically it is the only thing you can do, or you need to run away to regain magic, or this ogre hit you twice in a row and you have 15 hp left.

So lets give monsters that can chase you until you starve to death while food is meaningless to them, a speed buff so you can make sure they kill you?

Increasing monster speed would only make the lives of Felid or Spriggan more difficult as well as casters. Melee won't really care much because you either have beserking or Makleb and you just mow all the stuff down anyway, if anything you might force them to use teleport scrolls a bit more. Gods are much more uneven in regards to what advantages they provide than someones tactical choice on how to move on the map so they don't get killed.

If you want to suggest alternate strategies and how to incorporate those I would like to hear about them, but looking at luring and removing it as a tactical option seems to be incorrect. If people are luring they obviously feel that there is a reason to be luring,otherwise they wouldn't do it.

The more things you remove the less ways there are to actually play the game as people get forced to play a particular way.
So I don't see how luring the problem, or that someones opinion that "its the problem" is correct. I am sure that there is a wide variety of players who play in certain ways and enjoy playing the game in a certain way. If people want it to be harder, why not add difficultys that give monsters more HD or increase their speed etc. and you get a score multiplier in return.

[dpeg]

The more things you remove the less ways there are to actually play the game as people get forced to play a particular way.

The rest is also not correct, but I wanted to mention specifically that choice removal can lead to more, and more meaningful, choices.

[Jarlyk]

... I wanted to mention specifically that choice removal can lead to more, and more meaningful, choices.

This is a key point. If you have lots of choices, but one choice is clearly superior, then you don't really have lots of choices unless you deliberately choose not to make the clear 'best' choice. Sometimes that's okay (as people, in practice, will often forgo the 'best' choices for the sake of making things interesting), but it's not an ideal situation to be in.

Personally, I'm not unhappy with where the dynamics are at currently, as I play sufficiently sub-optimally that these tactics don't become too tedious. My win rate would be higher if I lured more, but I can accept that sometimes I take unnecessary risks and get killed for it. If I ever want to play more 'seriously', I'll probably try my hand at turn-count speed-running, since that's likely to be a much meatier gameplay experience than maximizing win-rate by employing effective-yet-tedious tactics. For now my main goal is to just die less due to simple stupid mistakes.

I do think there's still some room for new/updated mechanics that encourage more efficiency without going to the full extreme of speed-running (since that involves skipping a bunch of content.) In order to appeal to those whose goal is consistent win-rate, it would need to be something that makes the efficient behavior actually safer than the existing luring tactic, which is a tall order given the way the game's mechanics work currently. Crawl is very much balanced around a series of smallish encounters interspersed with resting, especially when you consider conjurations-based builds that are constrained by MP. At the same time it has a lot of mechanics that can escalate smallish encounters into larger encounters than you want to tackle, so necessarily the safest tactics are going to resolve around avoiding those escalations. It's often even worse with conjurations, in fact, as casting noise means luring is even more important if you don't want to get overwhelmed.

I think the strategic benefit I proposed (more items) is a non-starter for the "crippling the weak" reason dpeg mentioned. There would be a similar problem with something like providing an XP bonus for 'chaining kills' to encourage more efficient killing with fewer delays for luring. This means you would somehow need to provide a tactical benefit to not luring, but I can't see a clear way to do this without heavily favoring builds based on sustained combat with less resting, at least with the way noise currently works.

[Siegurt]

Fwiw I like having luring as a tactic in the game, but I feel like it should have more of a cost.

Without a cost it is optimal to lure everything, since worst case you have broken even, and best case you have drastically reduced your risk.

However removing luring as an option completely means you still only have one optimal positioning choice, it is just weaker than luring (that is to get to a choke point asap)

A better option would be to have at least one *meaningful* choice to compete, which means luring needs a cost. Lured creatures shouting all the time nullifies the conduct completely, which just moves the problem elsewhere without solving it.

One suggestion might be for turns spent moving with creatures in los, has a chance to wake up sleeping creatures elsewhere on the level and set them wandering, without directing then to you like shouting does. This would mean that luring a few times would probably be fine and a good idea when faced with risky situations, but the more you did it, the more likely you were to get yourself into trouble (if waking existing creatures isn't strong enough, a chance of firing up the ood timer prematurely would be a stronger response along the same lines)

To be clear that is in line with my personal stance that crawl is better with some luring, and it being a meaningful choice than it is with no luring at all. (I am also of the opinion that the current state of affairs, where luring has a minimal cost that almost never outweighs it's benefits, is still better than a game with no luring at all)

[Ceann]

The more things you remove the less ways there are to actually play the game as people get forced to play a particular way.

The rest is also not correct, but I wanted to mention specifically that choice removal can lead to more, and more meaningful, choices.

So can you please elaborate more on what these other choices are? If what I stated was wrong, explain why it is wrong.


If as suggested people start moving to choke points, then that becomes the most optimal way and then you are back at square one. The problem then becomes "everyone is using choke points". It would make more sense to provide incentives to being reckless rather than detriments to being safe.

[dpeg]

Siegurt: Interesting points. I agree that limited luring is interesting, but I find it very hard to achieve limited without getting all.

One suggestion might be for turns spent moving with creatures in los, has a chance to wake up sleeping creatures elsewhere on the level and set them wandering, without directing then to you like shouting does. This would mean that luring a few times would probably be fine and a good idea when faced with risky situations, but the more you did it, the more likely you were to get yourself into trouble (if waking existing creatures isn't strong enough, a chance of firing up the ood timer prematurely would be a stronger response along the same lines)

(Emphasis mine.) That sounds alright but restricting to LOS between player and monster means that luring would still take place, only out of sight. This is possible.

I think this can circumvented: a monster is *lured* (an internal flag) if it keeps chasing you. We can make this as hard or as forgiving as we like. Examples: (a) if the distance gets closer, don't count as luring (the monster achieves something); (b) if the monster loses you, not luring either; (c) only count as luring once the monster has made X steps (so that going to a nearby choke point would not trigger luring).

In any case, the game could get a reasonably close idea of when the player is luring, I think. The question is what happens then. There are some proposals, and I would like to add another one:

1. The monster shouts (without losing an action).
2. The monster gets a speed boost.
3. Wake up asleep monsters on the level.
4. Relocate a monster from elsewhere on the level "on the other side of the player" (there is a direction monster-player). Keep its status (awake, asleep).

[Lasty]

If we're talking about possible penalties, lemme derail my own derail thread a little further. I've been thinking about a concept of a "doom clock", a bad-things-timer that generally increases over time and increases more under certain circumstances. The doom clock was originally conceived as a way to replace food -- instead of having starvation push you forward, the doom clock does. As with food, certain actions (god abilities, berserk, spellcasting) could cause the timer to build up, and others (entering a new level) could cause it to go down. Hypothetically, luring could cause it to build up faster, or it could just build up fast enough in general that the time lost luring is a serious threat.

As for the functionality of the clock, it would replace the OOD timer as well as traps. As it goes up, scarier monsters will spawn, and they'll spawn more often and in less convenient places. As it goes up bad effects will happen (ala traps and hell effects). If you keep the clock at a reasonable level, the effects would be like a normal floor w/o much in the way of OOD monsters, but as it increases you'd see considerably worse stuff happen than does now, providing a strong incentive not to let the clock run.

This is all purely speculative. I'm not yet sure how to reconcile the clock w/ crawl inventory, or whether doing so is needed.

[ontoclasm]

So can you please elaborate more on what these other choices are? If what I stated was wrong, explain why it is wrong.

Suppose there are five weapon types in a game. One weapon type, rifles, is vastly better than the others in every way; the others are all pretty well balanced. It may at first glance seem like this provides a choice, but it absolutely does not; there is one correct choice and the others are all traps, placed there to distract you or to confuse those who lack the skill or knowledge to make the decision correctly. The term for this is "the illusion of choice,"* and humans are very, very bad at recognizing it; we will feel better about "choosing" rifles when we see that there are other "choices," even though we didn't really have any meaningful freedom at all.

Now suppose we remove rifles wholesale. This decreases the number of choices, in a sense, but in fact you've gone from one real choice to four. Rebalancing the stand-out choice is also an option, of course, but may not be possible for whatever reason.


*this can also occur when two or more effectively-identical choices are offered under different names; we feel like we've made a decision, when it fact it didn't matter.

[ydeve]

Like Siegurt said, making it harder or not possible to lure the way you're describing with 1),2), and 4) don't discourage luring but rather make it no longer an option.

3) Is much better. It provides a cost while still allowing the activity

[dpeg]

ydeve: It's not so easy. For one, there needs to be player feedback. And secondly, I don't agree that this is good enough to keep luring in check. Especially if you don't care about asleep monsters much, then you can and should still lure to your heart's content.

[Ceann]

So can you please elaborate more on what these other choices are? If what I stated was wrong, explain why it is wrong.

Suppose there are five weapon types in a game. One weapon type, rifles, is vastly better than the others in every way; the others are all pretty well balanced. It may at first glance seem like this provides a choice, but it absolutely does not; there is one correct choice and the others are all traps, placed there to distract you or to confuse those who lack the skill or knowledge to make the decision correctly. The term for this is "the illusion of choice,"* and humans are very, very bad at recognizing it; we will feel better about "choosing" rifles when we see that there are other "choices," even though we didn't really have any meaningful freedom at all.

Now suppose we remove rifles wholesale. This decreases the number of choices, in a sense, but in fact you've gone from one real choice to four. Rebalancing the stand-out choice is also an option, of course, but may not be possible for whatever reason.


*this can also occur when two or more effectively-identical choices are offered under different names; we feel like we've made a decision, when it fact it didn't matter.

The premise here seems to be that there is an ignorance about choices. I understand the idea that you are trying to impart but I don't feel that it is applicable across the board. I feel as though some races and strategies can require kiting or luring early in the game, because really once you get a bit stronger the need to do this is lessened.

So anyone playing stealth should have to wade into a room with 4 or 5 enemies and just duke it out? Why bother playing stealth in the first place.

If a caster runs out of magic and has to run, he should just die instead? Or have the entire dungeon chase him? As a melee you can just run to a choke point and hold the tab key.

How does this prevent stair dancing from becoming the "new" optimal way or a difference way from becoming the best way? It doesn't.

If the game was based on everyone playing one race and a particular skill set then sure this would make sense.

Your argument makes no sense, you do not actually list what these other options are, I am sure out of the other options you can list, one of those will be the optimal one as well, everyone will just do that. If you have a rifle, a sword, a knife, a stick or your fists and you take away the rifle, then everyone just uses the sword.

You are thinking about the problem and not the solution.

The other options need to be more appealing but the problem is that unless you are going for score the entire point of the game is to stay alive. People are going to do the most optimal thing to stay alive, no matter which way it is done. So it really seems that the argument is really that "luring keeps you alive too well". But the solution of negating stealth or speed advantages of a particular race means nothing to a MiBE who just berserk and kills everything anyway.

[dpeg]

Ceann: It's a given that changes imply follow-up changes. We're talking about a very basic rule, so any change would have substantial impact. Being afraid of changes because of this leads to stagnation. A laundry list of rhetorical questions is not going to help.

[kuniqs]

I wonder where's the difference between luring and tactics (fighting in a corridor)

[ontoclasm]

You asked how removing a choice can lead to a better variety of real options; I explained. I intentionally didn't mention luring.

Yes, if you remove the best option, it may be that the remaining ones are still unbalanced. But that's not necessarily the case; you can keep removing/nerfing the best one (or improving others) until they're close enough that there's a real choice. Having two options, both (almost) equally viable and attractive, is better than having 50 options, one of which is far and away the best.

As to whether this applies to luring, stair-dancing, etc., all I'll say is this: I'm playing Crawl. I see a (non-trivial) monster. No further information is provided. What should I probably do? The answer is: avoid it, or drag it a sizable distance away -- upstairs if possible. The fact that this answer is so very, very, very often correct is not necessarily a problem; if you're playing Halo, say, and you see a monster, the solution is almost always "shoot it," and that's fine, because Halo is a game about shooting things.

Should Crawl be a game about luring monsters away?

[dpeg]

kuniqs: A valid question! I think it's about distance: One is reducing number of adjacent monsters (tunnel, chokepoint, killhole); you don't necessarily have to go far for this. The other (luring) is about increasing distance (the more, the better).

In my games, I am a lot more offended by my unwillingness to lure even though I know I should than about going to a good fighting place. Perhaps this is because that one is really more interesting: terrain, other monsters matter more. Luring is strictly about spotting a monster, and getting it to follow you to where you came from until you can safely fight it one on one.

[Ceann]

Ceann: It's a given that changes imply follow-up changes. We're talking about a very basic rule, so any change would have substantial impact. Being afraid of changes because of this leads to stagnation. A laundry list of rhetorical questions is not going to help.

Neither does saying "there are other options" and not actually listing any of them.
I am not afraid of changes, I just fail to see why luring is a problem, or what circumstances it is a problem.
Luring is essentially the same thing as kiting for casters/ranged early game. So I don't really see this as anything but a nerf to those strategies.

Its not as though I watch people play and see "rampant luring" taking place. Id like to see a reason why this is a problem other than then the starting posting say "because someone said so".

[ontoclasm]

Its not as though I watch people play and see "rampant luring" taking place. Id like to see a reason why this is a problem other than then the starting posting say "because someone said so".

It takes a long time, and it's dull...

but it's effective, so you have to do it or suffer consequences.

This is not a good combination.

v if it wasn't clear this applies to stair-dancing too

[o_O]

stairdancing is both more tedious and more effective then luring, so any solution should not just mak you stair dance packs instead of lure packs. I favor pack hive minds - if one sees you they all see you, but then you require pillar dancing to string out a pack and stair dancing to separate it, so more work for a similar result. :/

[Ceann]

Its not as though I watch people play and see "rampant luring" taking place. Id like to see a reason why this is a problem other than then the starting posting say "because someone said so".

it takes a long time and it's dull

but it's effective, so you have to do it or suffer consequences

this is not a good combination

v if it wasn't clear this applies to stair-dancing too

I don't really see anyone lure other than maybe occasionally, with like a largely populated room and then it is only to go back to a choke point. I don't think anyone does it with the intention of turn count wins unless they have to do it, as you mentioned, or suffer the consequences, which is usually death.

Consequences + lure = you live
Consequences - luring = you die

So remove the consequences that for you to lure and no one will need to lure. Removing luring seems like it would just cause more deaths. Is this just to force people to use more consumables then or what?

[dpeg]

I am very fine with more deaths.