Player magic resistance feedback

[Pereza0]

Proposed this in a thread that got locked, anyway here I go again.

Usually, casting spells on monsters and watching the kind of feedback you get ("struggles to resist", "is unaffected"...) is a good way to get an idea of how good your spells are when you cast them on monsters.

However, when spells are cast on the player, you either get "You resist" or you are affected by it. Wouldn't it be nice if the output changed if you resisted it without problem or if it was just lucky given your MR, like with monsters? Maybe there could be some sort of additional output too, when you are affected because of some bad luck, despite having good resistance ("The spell catches you off guard an affects you!", "You almost resist!") but with better and more consistent phrasing of course.

This is probably not an issue at all for more experienced players, but it might help those who are not. What do you think?

[onton]

Proposed this in a thread that got locked, anyway here I go again.

Usually, casting spells on monsters and watching the kind of feedback you get ("struggles to resist", "is unaffected"...) is a good way to get an idea of how good your spells are when you cast them on monsters.

However, when spells are cast on the player, you either get "You resist" or you are affected by it. Wouldn't it be nice if the output changed if you resisted it without problem or if it was just lucky given your MR, like with monsters? Maybe there could be some sort of additional output too, when you are affected because of some bad luck, despite having good resistance ("The spell catches you off guard an affects you!", "You almost resist!") but with better and more consistent phrasing of course.

This is probably not an issue at all for more experienced players, but it might help those who are not. What do you think?

You can only have a decent comprehension about mosters' MR after several tries - so you can figure it out statistically. The mosters rarely have more than one or two possibilities to ffect the player, you can tell noting when an orc wizard tries to confuse you and fails by any margin - it could just be an unlucky dice roll.

By the way, the thumb rule with MR against dangerous spells (confuse, banish, para) is "more is better and even more is even better and still you should try to have more"

[Psieye]

It's a simple messaging tweak to add a bit of flavour. I don't see the problem, possibly besides "does it pass the cost/benefit check for programmer time?"

This would be no different from dodging messages like "closely misses" vs "completely misses". It's not meant to be a tool to do statistical analysis to figure out some stat (that you can ask the bots for anyway).

[Pereza0]

I think it would be legitimately useful though. Say a player presses "@", sees it says he is very resistant to hostile enchantments and stops worrying about magic resistance. Maybe when he fights a caster and sees that he is barely able to resist the effects most of the time he will realize "very resistant" isnt actually very resistant depending on the circumstances

[Blade]

I agree with Psieye here. It would be somewhat useful occasionally and be more consistent with dodging and such, but it may not be worth the time it would take to develop.

[Psieye]

I think it would be legitimately useful though. Say a player presses "@", sees it says he is very resistant to hostile enchantments and stops worrying about magic resistance. Maybe when he fights a caster and sees that he is barely able to resist the effects most of the time he will realize "very resistant" isnt actually very resistant depending on the circumstances

Uh, that's actually a really round-about way of trying to figure out monster HD and the formula for how that translates into monster spell power (including per-spell modifiers). That's what you really want to know ultimately. If you can calculate (modified) spell power for the incoming hex, you then feed it into the following formula:

(MR + 100) vs (spell_power + 1d100 + 1d101)

[Pereza0]

I think it would be legitimately useful though. Say a player presses "@", sees it says he is very resistant to hostile enchantments and stops worrying about magic resistance. Maybe when he fights a caster and sees that he is barely able to resist the effects most of the time he will realize "very resistant" isnt actually very resistant depending on the circumstances

Uh, that's actually a really round-about way of trying to figure out monster HD and the formula for how that translates into monster spell power (including per-spell modifiers). That's what you really want to know ultimately. If you can calculate (modified) spell power for the incoming hex, you then feed it into the following formula:

(MR + 100) vs (spell_power + 1d100 + 1d101)

Well, that is obviously more straightforward, but involves formulas, HD and knowledge bots something that players that don't know about or dont want to use spoilers have to know about. Having that sort of feedback allows players to develop an "intuition" concerning how good their MR is in different situatons.

It can't be too hard to write considering it already has monster/dodging counterparts.

[njvack]

That said, I totally ignore both the monster and dodging counterparts. It's information that seems like it should be tactically relevant but doesn't seem to be -- I gain most of my "do I need more EV" information from whether or not I'm actually getting hit and most of my "is EH out of its league" information from whether or not my target goes to sleep. I don't care when stuff almost goes to sleep.

Were I to change monster hexes, the thing I'd like to know is what the hex was. Knowing whether I just resisted banishment or confuse is pretty important.

[ebarrett]

The main issue here is that the "improved" feedback would still be a lot less useful than the current available information you can put together from knowing roughly how much MR you have and the general threat level that enemy hexes pose in your current location; if anything it could fool players into misinterpreting how (un)safe their current MR situation is whenever the monster casting a hex at them gets an exceptional roll in the "wrong" direction.

[Pereza0]

misinterpreting how (un)safe their current MR situation is whenever the monster casting a hex at them gets an exceptional roll in the "wrong" direction.

Hmm yes I thought of this, and yes, I think it should work differently.

Instead of saying something like "You completely resist, you are the boss" when you get a lucky roll it should say something like "Oh wow I would have never bet on it but you managed to resist what the hell "

instead of just seeing how good your roll was, it should compare the roll you got with the most probable roll given the characters MR and the power of the spell. That way it can tell you when you got lucky despite having bad chances, when you got unlucky despite having good chances, when you failed because you had no chance at all and when you just shoved all the spell. I agree it should also tell you what the hell is what you are resisting.

[onton]

misinterpreting how (un)safe their current MR situation is whenever the monster casting a hex at them gets an exceptional roll in the "wrong" direction.

Hmm yes I thought of this, and yes, I think it should work differently.

Instead of saying something like "You completely resist, you are the boss" when you get a lucky roll it should say something like "Oh wow I would have never bet on it but you managed to resist what the hell "

yeah, i meant totally what ebarett has said. And having loads of unclear message for a roll failing by a whatever large margin and those meassage should also reflect whether a 50d2 is 100 which is ok or 1d100 became 100, which is "Oh wow..." Too many things to consider and what does this "oh wow" message indicate? That a char should put his MR stuff on to be more resistant which is obvious.

[Lasty]

50d2 is way less likely to be 100 than 1d100. 50d2 is strongly biased to be around 75.

[onton]

50d2 is way less likely to be 100 than 1d100. 50d2 is strongly biased to be around 75.

Sure. I just wanted wo say there are way too many things to consider when creating those messages and the return is, uh, underwhelming.

[Pereza0]

All you need is the most likely roll and the players roll , the the "dice" used to determine the outcome are always the same, so determining the lillikness of a roll should be pretty easy. The feedback should only tell the outcome (whther it affects the player or not) and what were, roughly, the chances of that outcome. The player, for example, doesnt care if his roll was very good if a mediocre roll would have been enough in the first place, he only really cares about the chances of resisting or not resis, he wants to know how likely a good outcome is. The dodging code could also be changed to work similarly. Im pretty sure its feasible, I might even give it a shot in the future when Im not drowning in exams

Sorry about screwed up words, typing on a phone

[rebthor]

Were I to change monster hexes, the thing I'd like to know is what the hex was. Knowing whether I just resisted banishment or confuse is pretty important.

So this.

[byrel]

Were I to change monster hexes, the thing I'd like to know is what the hex was. Knowing whether I just resisted banishment or confuse is pretty important.

So this.

This would be nice. I have been surprised numerous times that something could banish me, even after killing dozens of them. It isn't obvious that, say, erolcha, can banish until in one game you're sent to an early demise. Sure there's both the learndb and the badwiki, which are fairly reliable about such things. But they're a nuisance unless I know I need to know. Learning the capabilites of a monster without experiencing them would be quite handy. OTOH, it's probably unrealistic; how do I (the character) know what spell he just cast? Unless I'm widely versed in arcana, I can't tell. All I know is Trog will like it if he dies! TABBBBBBBBB!

[galehar]

It's an interesting idea, but I doubt it's feasible. Concretely, how would you phrase it? "The monster struggles to resist but it seems it would usually have an easier time resisting"? You cannot convey the actual and average margin of resistance in the same phrase. And doing only average might be slightly more useful to spoiled players, but it would be completely misleading to others. If the monster always "easily resists", newbies will deduce that there is no way to overcome the monster's MR.

[Pereza0]

I would remove the "struggles to resist" portion of the output, which just tells you your roll was almost good enough to work, but does not really give any useful info apart from that.

A caster would realize soon enough that there are various degrees of resistance if there are different outputs, if a monster "resists with mild ease" while another monster "is completely unnaffected by the effects of your spell", anyone will realize which monster has more chances of falling for it, furthermore, if a player checks its magic resistance he will know how well he does against previosly unseen monsters.

I dont think phrasing is particularly difficult here, but even if it was,i wouldnt say it takes priority over valuqble output

As it is right now, a player might think he has chances of affecting a monster due to a lucky roll or two,when he doesn't and might die for it, take your pick.

[njvack]

Ultimately, I kind of feel that something like Brogue's best, worst, and average-case scenarios in monster descriptions would make some kind of sense; however, Crawl is so much more complex than Brogue that I don't know it would be practical. And I don't know if Crawl wants to make monster abilities explicit anyhow; maybe that's something players are supposed to memorize. (For what it's worth, I think players should not be expected to memorize this; knowing how to react to a monster's abilities is more interesting than being able to remember them all.)

But in any case, for Erolcha, something like:

  Code:

She can conjure a stone arrow, which could kill you in 4 hits.
She can conjure a poisonous sting, which could kill you in 40 hits.
She can instantly translocate short distances.
She can conjure a bolt of lightning, which could kill you in 3 hits.
She can attempt to banish you to the abyss. This attempt is very likely to succeed.


might be a reasonable approach.

[byrel]

But in any case, for Erolcha, something like:

  Code:

+She can whack you with a big stick, which could kill you in 2 hits.
She can conjure a stone arrow, which could kill you in 4 hits.
She can conjure a poisonous sting, which could kill you in 40 hits.
She can instantly translocate short distances.
She can conjure a bolt of lightning, which could kill you in 3 hits.
She can attempt to banish you to the abyss. This attempt is very likely to succeed.


FTFY. It might be nice to give a clue about melee capabilities (max damage at least) at the same time. I would check this on unfamiliar Uniques. Just today I got more than half my health taken away in a single bolt of fire from Harold, who I thought was pure melee, and I still remember a YASD on an impossibly lucky start I had from underestimating a Cyclops in melee.

[Pereza0]

Hmmm that looks good although I might change a couple of thongs.

Id remove the whole X can kill you in 3 turns, since its quite scary and very unlikely.

I would only include a couple of spells, only the one it uses thebmost or the most characteristic one so it doesnt spoil all the fun (its all mumbo jumbo to new players anyway)

[byrel]

I don't think monsters have a spell they use the most. I think the probabilities are usually even across the board... And 'unlikely' only means it will happen. To me. And if I stand next to Cyclopses with less than 35 hitpoints I will die. If not this Cyclops, then the next one, or the one after that. I saw a recent post of someone who was oneshotted by an arrow trap at ~30 hp. So it would be nice to know (read: have in the game interface somewhere) that I shouldn't walk on arrow traps at leass than thirty HP unless desperate. Because it will eventually kill me.

[Pereza0]

So it would be nice to know (read: have in the game interface somewhere) that I shouldn't walk on arrow traps at leass than thirty HP unless desperate. Because it will eventually kill me.

The game prompts you when you walk on a trap that might kill you....

Its when you have not found it when it might mean trouble

[Pereza0]

I don't think monsters have a spell they use the most. I think the probabilities are usually even across the board... And 'unlikely' only means it will happen. To me. And if I stand next to Cyclopses with less than 35 hitpoints I will die. If not this Cyclops, then the next one, or the one after that. I saw a recent post of someone who was oneshotted by an arrow trap at ~30 hp. So it would be nice to know (read: have in the game interface somewhere) that I shouldn't walk on arrow traps at leass than thirty HP unless desperate. Because it will eventually kill me.

Im talking about spells. Obviously a melee character is going to hit you every turn since they have nothing better to do, but casters don't try to vanish you to the abyss every turn, orc priests don't smite you every turn.....

[rebthor]

I saw a recent post of someone who was oneshotted by an arrow trap at ~40 hp. So it would be nice to know (read: have in the game interface somewhere) that I shouldn't walk on arrow traps at leass than forty HP unless desperate. Because it will eventually kill me.

FTFY.
It happened to me and to mumra recently.

And I agree that you need to plan for worst case scenario.

[Galefury]

Those are bolt traps. Arrow traps do only up to 15 damage, if I'm reading the source correctly.

[njvack]

Id remove the whole X can kill you in 3 turns, since its quite scary and very unlikely.

Getting the Orb and escaping is a matter of never saying "it pretty unlikely this monster will kill me next turn."

Scaring players is never a bad thing, as long as you're scaring them with truth. It's worth knowing that while Banishment sucks when you meet Erolcha, she can also sometimes spam LCS at you and hit for 60 damage a shot. That's an even bigger problem for most characters.

I agree that it'd be good to indicate a melee danger in this same display; however, that gets pretty far off the magic resistance feedback topic. Really, so do conjurations; my bad.

[Pereza0]

I also think it removes something pretty important, that is assessing new threats. When approaching an unique, for example, you usually have to be pretty careful and have a reliable means of escaping. You can attack the unique a couple of times and see how hard it hits and what are its abilities, then you have to decide whether to run away or try to kill him.

Having all that information removes all the excitement of meeting new monsters and uniques. Even if you already know every monster in the dungeon, every time you play with a different class-race combo you have to reassess the threat a lot of already known enemies pose again.

Back to the magic resistance feedback then?

[rebthor]

Those are bolt traps. Arrow traps do only up to 15 damage, if I'm reading the source correctly.

You are correct. Sorry for the confusion.