Crawl .20: Home of the Frog Dog

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LordSloth: Mar 7, 2008; Disgruntled (IT) Employee

People, the answer is simple: bring back nausea and make all chunks tainted except for hill orcs, ghouls, kobolds, and ogres. Why the gently caress would eating a giant cockroach raw be healthy? :btroll:

Also, turn remove curse into a wand, start every character with one, make rare. :troll:

LordSloth fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:45

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# ? May 14, 2024 18:46

Speleothing: May 6, 2008; Spare batteries are pretty key.

If I take the Trove that eats piety, can I never gain piety with that God again? It's been two floors and I'm still sitting at 0 stars.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:50

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

Speleothing posted:

If I take the Trove that eats piety, can I never gain piety with that God again? It's been two floors and I'm still sitting at 0 stars.

You can get piety back.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:52

LordSloth: Mar 7, 2008; Disgruntled (IT) Employee

Which god? If it's Ru, you'll need new offers. Otherwise you should start gaining more...

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:52

Speleothing: May 6, 2008; Spare batteries are pretty key.

It's Dith, so I guess its just a matter of waiting

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:55

Fitzy Fitz: May 14, 2005

I don't know where you got the idea that there's unlimited Ash piety but not scrolls. They're both limited by the exact same thing: floor space. The change would largely just move the burden to your piety meter rather than your inventory.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 17:57

Decrepus: May 21, 2008; In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.

Floodkiller posted:

The monkey's paw solution to this is making ammo always mulch, and I don't know how much ammo drops/starting ammo totals would be increased to compensate.

I went to abyss:5 and was tab o tab o tab o tab p like a madman killing things and trying to pick up my arrows. Then someone watching said "you could probably just punch the poo poo" so I did that and then went home. The End.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:09

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

Fitzy Fitz posted:

I don't know where you got the idea that there's unlimited Ash piety but not scrolls. They're both limited by the exact same thing: floor space. The change would largely just move the burden to your piety meter rather than your inventory.

If it helps, rather than unlimited vs. limited think of it as renewable vs. non-renewable. Piety is like chunks: play the game and you'll get a reliable and plentiful supply. Scrolls are like permafood: you have no guarantee of when your next bit's coming so you have to plan according to your current supply. If you base cursing on piety you remove that element of strategic planning, and that element happens to be central to the god's design. You also end up with a really weird design conflict because piety gain is based on how much of your inventory is cursed, so you end up in a catch-22 where you have to spend piety to gain piety. That has to be addressed. You essentially have to gut the god and start from the ground up to make this viable, and for what benefit? Saving a single inventory slot? Who cares, you have 52 of them.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:19

Heithinn Grasida: Mar 28, 2005; ...must attack and fall upon them with a gallant bearing and a fearless heart, and, if possible, vanquish and destroy them, even though they have for armour the shells of a certain fish, that they say are harder than diamonds, and in place of swords wield trenchant blades of Damascus steel...

Thug Lessons posted:

The entire point of Ash is that you have to rely on a limited resource to swap equipment. You might as well remove the cursing mechanic entirely if you're tying it to an unlimited resource like piety, and if you remove the cursing mechanic you might as well just remove Ash.

But Ash piety is just as limited as remove curse scrolls. The only effective result of costing piety on remove curse would be to make the ability to change equipment less random and more predictable. I agree that solution wouldn't be ideal, but the limitation would fundamentally remain unchanged. Yes, you could pan scum or abyss scum for piety, but you can also scum for remove curse and I don't think either of those behaviors should have a serious impact on design decisions.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:23

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

Heithinn Grasida posted:

But Ash piety is just as limited as remove curse scrolls. The only effective result of costing piety on remove curse would be to make the ability to change equipment less random and more predictable. I agree that solution wouldn't be ideal, but the limitation would fundamentally remain unchanged. Yes, you could pan scum or abyss scum for piety, but you can also scum for remove curse and I don't think either of those behaviors should have a serious impact on design decisions.

The way that all existing piety-based abilities work is that you can essentially deploy them whenever you want, as much as you want. Eventually spamming too much Finesse/Trog bros/whatever will deplete your piety, but you can do it frequently and at will. Ash weapon swapping isn't supposed to be frequent and at-will. It's supposed to be a rare strategic decision you make based on your resources. I suppose you could depart from all existing piety-based abilities and have it cost a whole boatload of piety, but that has its own problems. There's really no reason to change the system because it works fine as it is and the only benefit you get by changing it is to save a single inventory slot.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:33

Decrepus: May 21, 2008; In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.

Devs please reduce the inventory to 27 spaces.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:36

Cerepol: Dec 2, 2011

Decrepus posted:

Devs please reduce the inventory to 27 spaces.

You really only need room for
You cloak
Armour
Boots
Gloves
Hat
Weapon
Weapon/shield
Ring x2
Amulet

So 10 slots please reduce to 11 slots and also bring back encumbrance

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:45

ChickenWing: Jul 22, 2010

When people say "remove food remove mutations remove id remove cursing etc" what I hear is "I don't like playing roguelikes, please develop warcraft: the dungeon crawl instead"

If the RNG is to giveth, the RNG must also taketh away

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:54

Fitzy Fitz: May 14, 2005

Thug Lessons posted:

If it helps, rather than unlimited vs. limited think of it as renewable vs. non-renewable. Piety is like chunks: play the game and you'll get a reliable and plentiful supply. Scrolls are like permafood: you have no guarantee of when your next bit's coming so you have to plan according to your current supply. If you base cursing on piety you remove that element of strategic planning, and that element happens to be central to the god's design. You also end up with a really weird design conflict because piety gain is based on how much of your inventory is cursed, so you end up in a catch-22 where you have to spend piety to gain piety. That has to be addressed. You essentially have to gut the god and start from the ground up to make this viable, and for what benefit? Saving a single inventory slot? Who cares, you have 52 of them.

I don't really buy the rest, but I do agree that spending piety would be awkward before you've earned much of it.

It's not a pressing issue. The scroll system works, but it's been changed several times and would be more intuitive if it didn't have a weird item tie in.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 18:55

FulsomFrank: Sep 11, 2005; Hard on for love

Cerepol posted:

You really only need room for
You cloak
Armour
Boots
Gloves
Hat
Weapon
Weapon/shield
Ring x2
Amulet

So 10 slots please reduce to 11 slots and also bring back encumbrance

Christ I forgot about that. (not) Good times playing that meta game. Encumbrance disappearing was such a huge QoL improvement.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:00

Cerepol: Dec 2, 2011

FulsomFrank posted:

Christ I forgot about that. (not) Good times playing that meta game. Encumbrance disappearing was such a huge QoL improvement.

Spriggans could carry like 4 breads before being over encumbered cause they were like 9 weight each

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:08

apple: May 18, 2003; Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Tried a DrVM, first time doing VM since poisonous vapors was introduced and drat they feel really powerful now. It's only level 2, it takes away a lot of the risk of relying on sting's poison chance to succeed, it's smite targeted and it synergizes really well with ignite poison.

code:

 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.20-a0-656-g9b0dcd9 (webtiles) character file.

1564575 bananaken the Cloud Mage (level 27, 309/309 HPs)
             Began as a Black Draconian Venom Mage on Feb 15, 2017.
             Was the Champion of Vehumet.
             Escaped with the Orb
             ... and 3 runes on Feb 16, 2017!
             
             The game lasted 08:21:23 (102223 turns).

bananaken the Cloud Mage (DrVM)                   Turns: 102223, Time: 08:21:23

Health: 309/309    AC: 23    Str: 14    XL:     27
Magic:  39/39      EV: 24    Int: 38    God:    Vehumet [******]
Gold:   2072       SH: 13    Dex: 13    Spells: 1/59 levels left

rFire    + + +     SeeInvis +   a - +9 trishula (holy)
rCold    + + .     Gourm    .   (armour unavailable)
rNeg     + + +     Faith    .   i - +3 buckler {rC+}
rPois    +         Spirit   .   k - +0 hat "Boduir" {Int+9}
rElec    +         Reflect  +   q - +4 dragonskin cloak
rCorr    .         Harm     .   h - +2 pair of gloves {Str+3}
MR       ++...     Rnd*Rage +   r - +1 pair of boots "Vadoveni" {rN+}
Stlth    +.........             R - amulet "Keuhuu" {Reflect Int+4 SH+5}
Regen    0.7/turn               c - ring of Hofynt {+Fly rElec rPois rF+++ Str-2}
MPRegen  0.3/turn               Q - ring of the Sky {rN+ Int+2 SInv}

@: flying
A: breathe lightning, unfitting armour, big wings, stinger 1, talons 2, berserk
1, dopey 1, low mp 1, robust 2, electricity resistance, cold-blooded, AC +13
0: Orb of Zot
}: 3/15 runes: barnacled, abyssal, gossamer

http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/bananaken/morgue-bananaken-20170216-175729.txt

Thanks to int items I became a 300HP deep elf basically

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:12

Internet Kraken: Apr 24, 2010; slightly amused

I remember following Jiyva and constantly getting over-encumbered because she was swapping all my str with int.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:16

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

ChickenWing posted:

When people say "remove food remove mutations remove id remove cursing etc" what I hear is "I don't like playing roguelikes, please develop warcraft: the dungeon crawl instead"

If the RNG is to giveth, the RNG must also taketh away

Food, ID, and curse are barely mechanics anymore anyway. Either make them more important, or just do away with them.

Also every time someone says 'you just want WoW' it makes them sound retarded.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:26

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

The ID and Curse problem could be solved by just seriously nerfing Identify and especially Remove Curse drop rates, and making Ash cursing (but not uncursing) a piety ability.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:32

apple: May 18, 2003; Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Outside a few corner cases food barely does anything. For spellcasters I will admit I treat staff of energy as a high value item but in practice it just saves me from having to butcher and eat chunks more often (but having that QoL improvement allows me to play better than having some extra spellpower).

What food costs do really well is to turn high level spells and even stuff like berserk into a newbie trap because they'll nosedive right into those abilities/spells and spam them too often.

e: The game still needs a way to push you onwards of course, the threat of dying somehow for waiting tens of thousands of turns without progressing needs to be there with or without food.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:32

Cerepol: Dec 2, 2011

fool_of_sound posted:

The ID and Curse problem could be solved by just seriously nerfing Identify and especially Remove Curse drop rates, and making Ash cursing (but not uncursing) a piety ability.

Remember when you could bonus ID things? That felt good RNG was looking favourably upon you.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:34

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

fool_of_sound posted:

The ID and Curse problem could be solved by just seriously nerfing Identify and especially Remove Curse drop rates, and making Ash cursing (but not uncursing) a piety ability.

It's definitely not that simple. I assume we're in agreement that the curse system works fine up until Lair, but you can't sustain that balance indefinitely just by playing with the drop rates. Instead you'll ruin the early game's curse system by hamstringing them on ?rc, making every equip a life-or-death decision, and shift the tipping point of "I have enough ?rc to not care about it anymore" from around Lair to some arbitrary point later in the game.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:42

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

apple posted:

Outside a few corner cases food barely does anything. For spellcasters I will admit I treat staff of energy as a high value item but in practice it just saves me from having to butcher and eat chunks more often (but having that QoL improvement allows me to play better than having some extra spellpower).

What food costs do really well is to turn high level spells and even stuff like berserk into a newbie trap because they'll nosedive right into those abilities/spells and spam them too often.

e: The game still needs a way to push you onwards of course, the threat of dying somehow for waiting tens of thousands of turns without progressing needs to be there with or without food.

Contradictory statements.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:43

Sage Grimm: Feb 18, 2013; Let's go explorin' little dude!

apple posted:

e: The game still needs a way to push you onwards of course, the threat of dying somehow for waiting tens of thousands of turns without progressing needs to be there with or without food.

Well there's the OOD spawns which..has a habit of not being all that effective in preventing the waiting game from being a thing. And then being too much for those occasions that a Manticore appears on D:7 when exploring normally. Or the fact that spawns start to slow at 3000 turns and then eventually stop after 15000 turns total on a level.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:50

apple: May 18, 2003; Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Thug Lessons posted:

Contradictory statements.

I'm not sure what you mean? I think of food costs being a newbie trap because you shouldn't berserk or spam fireball through every single quokka you see but it might be tempting to. Once you have that basic realization there's really nothing interesting going on.

e: and to be clear, when the newbie trap is "sprung" I don't think of it being a good thing either, if anything it's frustrating because you will die to a secondary, kludgy HP bar.

apple fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Feb 16, 2017

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:51

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

apple posted:

I'm not sure what you mean? I think of food costs being a newbie trap because you shouldn't berserk or spam fireball through every single quokka you see but it might be tempting to. Once you have that basic realization there's really nothing interesting going on.

First off I don't think that's true. Intermediate and even advanced players still get caught out by berserk and spell hunger. But even if it were true that it was trivially easy to avoid any sort of consequences that's still not the same thing as consequences not existing. It's trivially easy to avoid red-level miscast effects but that doesn't mean the game would be played the same way if you removed them.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:57

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Thug Lessons posted:

It's definitely not that simple. I assume we're in agreement that the curse system works fine up until Lair, but you can't sustain that balance indefinitely just by playing with the drop rates. Instead you'll ruin the early game's curse system by hamstringing them on ?rc, making every equip a life-or-death decision, and shift the tipping point of "I have enough ?rc to not care about it anymore" from around Lair to some arbitrary point later in the game.

I mean I pretty much invariably have at least 8ish Identify/Remove Curse by Temple. You really don't need to immediately ID everything you come across, make some strategic decisions (or just take risks, hell)!

Thug Lessons posted:

Intermediate and even advanced players still get caught out by berserk and spell hunger.

They do????

# ? Feb 16, 2017 19:59

Decrepus: May 21, 2008; In the end, his dominion did not touch a single poster.

apple posted:

e: The game still needs a way to push you onwards of course, the threat of dying somehow for waiting tens of thousands of turns without progressing needs to be there with or without food.

If "extra" monsters didn't spawn to be farmed wouldn't it make waiting around pointless? I always have plenty of food. You can even find food laying on the ground in pandemonium so it's not like you will run out. Eating a bread because I am walking to my stash and back to pick up a ring or eating some bread before switching floors just has no impact.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:04

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

fool_of_sound posted:

I mean I pretty much invariably have at least 8ish Identify/Remove Curse by Temple. You really don't need to immediately ID everything you come across, make some strategic decisions!

You're over-estimating how many you have. This sort of anecdotal reporting is useless, and worse than useless if you don't know what you're talking about.

quote:

They do????

I consider myself a fairly advanced player and I definitely sometimes have to eat a fruit to keep casting, or end up doing a berserk that backfires.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:05

LazyMaybe: Aug 18, 2013; oouagh

ChickenWing posted:

When people say "remove food remove mutations remove id remove cursing etc" what I hear is "I don't like playing roguelikes, please develop warcraft: the dungeon crawl instead"

If the RNG is to giveth, the RNG must also taketh away

There's plenty of roguelikes that don't have those features(or equivalents), though. And food is at least supposed to function as a timer mechanic in games like brogue, sil, the original rogue etc. it doesn't even do that in crawl.

Thug Lessons posted:

I consider myself a fairly advanced player and I definitely sometimes have to eat a fruit to keep casting, or end up doing a berserk that backfires.

just because you "sometimes have to eat a fruit to keep casting" does not mean food is a meaningful or worthwhile mechanic. and berserk backfiring rarely has anything to do with food instead of being out of position

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:06

Johnny Joestar: Oct 21, 2010; Don't shoot him?

...
...

food used to be more of a thing in crawl in the past because it was overall more crufty in ways, but it seriously has fallen to the side as this barely hanging on vestigial thing. even races that are supposed to have issues with food really don't at all.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:08

Sage Grimm: Feb 18, 2013; Let's go explorin' little dude!

I'm the guy that hangs in the balance of berserking while Hungry because I figure the thing I'm killing is going to let me chunk up its corpse. :v:

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:09

apple: May 18, 2003; Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Thug Lessons posted:

First off I don't think that's true. Intermediate and even advanced players still get caught out by berserk and spell hunger. But even if it were true that it was trivially easy to avoid any sort of consequences that's still not the same thing as consequences not existing. It's trivially easy to avoid red-level miscast effects but that doesn't mean the game would be played the same way if you removed them.

Hmm, I really don't think ability/spell hunger is impactful like that but the most I can do is talk a bit about my experience throughout my games:

I'm pretty sure I haven't had a starvation death happen even as a new player (admittedly I had help from a kind soul), and the closest I've had to a starvation death recently was when death cobs attacked your hunger level. Everywhere else I've sloppily managed stat allocation, spell training and casting and what it really boils down to is that I don't use my "best" attacks against trivial monsters. That's literally it.

Of course I don't have any data to back up that this is what other players experience and I'll concede the point if a quick search through their database prove that my experience is not the norm. I'd do it myself but I don't know how to search for that kinda thing. :shobon:

Sage Grimm posted:

Well there's the OOD spawns which..has a habit of not being all that effective in preventing the waiting game from being a thing. And then being too much for those occasions that a Manticore appears on D:7 when exploring normally. Or the fact that spawns start to slow at 3000 turns and then eventually stop after 15000 turns total on a level.

Yeah, OOD spawns can be hit or miss. A better "clock" would be nice, whether it be rebalancing hunger or some other "doom clock" with better metrics for determining you've been stalling for too long

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:12

fool of sound: Oct 10, 2012

Thug Lessons posted:

You're over-estimating how many you have. This sort of anecdotal reporting is useless, and worse than useless if you don't know what you're talking about.

Uh no, I'm not. There are little numeric indicators on the inventory sheet that tell me the number I possess. Perhaps it is you, random non-psychic internet fuckwit, who is underestimating how many I have!

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:12

Internet Kraken: Apr 24, 2010; slightly amused

I sometimes get caught starving when using spells with high hunger but you just eat a single fruit to solve that problem so its just like missing one turn. Not really a big deal.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:12

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

IronicDongz posted:

There's plenty of roguelikes that don't have those features(or equivalents), though. And food is at least supposed to function as a timer mechanic in games like brogue, sil, the original rogue etc. it doesn't even do that in crawl.
just because you "sometimes have to eat a fruit to keep casting" does not mean food is a meaningful or worthwhile mechanic. and berserk backfiring rarely has anything to do with food instead of being out of position

I'm not sure hunger costs are meaningful, but I am sure we can't possibly have a productive discussion about whether it's meaningful from the framework of "actually it does literally nothing except for complete noobs".

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:12

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

fool_of_sound posted:

Uh no, I'm not. There are little numeric indicators on the inventory sheet that tell me the number I possess. Perhaps it is you, random internet fuckwit, who is underestimating how many I have!

I'm being "a dick" because you're talking out your rear end. Characters do not have an average of 8 ?rc by D:4-7. It's just not true.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:14

Thug Lessons: Dec 14, 2006; I lust in my heart for as many dead refugees as possible.

apple posted:

Hmm, I really don't think ability/spell hunger is impactful like that but the most I can do is talk a bit about my experience throughout my games:

I'm pretty sure I haven't had a starvation death happen even as a new player (admittedly I had help from a kind soul), and the closest I've had to a starvation death recently was when death cobs attacked your hunger level. Everywhere else I've sloppily managed stat allocation, spell training and casting and what it really boils down to is that I don't use my "best" attacks against trivial monsters. That's literally it.

Of course I don't have any data to back up that this is what other players experience and I'll concede the point if a quick search through their database prove that my experience is not the norm. I'd do it myself but I don't know how to search for that kinda thing.

I don't think starvation is particularly meaningful. What I do think is arguably meaningful is the tactical effects of spell hunger, but that's not really something you can just run a quick search on.

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:16

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# ? May 14, 2024 18:46

Dr. Fraiser Chain: May 18, 2004; Redlining my shit posting machine

Sometimes I'll load up a crawl game again and after butchering and eating chunks through the first 5 levels I just get loving sick of the tediousness. I don't have to do it as often as I do I am sure but god drat is that a boring set of button presses. Stand on top of corpse, butcher, eat chunk, kill repeat. Ugh. Get rid of it

# ? Feb 16, 2017 20:19

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