|
Floodkiller posted:It might be that we're talking past one another. I'm arguing for the design of a curse system that has function and purpose, not desirability. The entire point of the design of curse systems is to create a risk/reward scenario for swapping out gear for something unidentified in the hopes that it is better. It works hand in hand with identification systems as well, which is why I say it is important that ?ID is removed (or at the very least, made rare) for it to work. The reason why remove curse and identify are plentiful in current Crawl is that I don't think the numbers have been properly brought down after all the auto-identify patches. Curses used to be relevant in Crawl because being cursed and being a good or bad item was not mutually exclusive; you had to go through a Nethack-esque identification process or burn a scroll of identify to find out (and optimal play was and still is to use ?ID on consumables first). As equipment, weapons, wands, and jewelery were all adjusted to auto-ID, identification and curses lost their teeth. If you don't want to revert back to Nethack style identification, you have to add the teeth a different way to make the systems relevant again; my proposal is to do that by severely reducing or eliminating identification sources (while leaving in auto-ID on equip/use) and making players weigh risk/reward when equipping gear, with a semi-rare scroll to bail them out every now and then (but not enough to completely forget about the system). I don't know why relevance is even a criteria here. Crawl is a sprawling mess of a game, and a very old one at that. You're never going to make into a good game that adheres to your design philosophy, and it's not necessarily improving it by pruning features that don't adhere to that philosophy.
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2017 23:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 03:23 |
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:I don't know why relevance is even a criteria here. Crawl is a sprawling mess of a game, and a very old one at that. You're never going to make into a good game that adheres to your design philosophy, and it's not necessarily improving it by pruning features that don't adhere to that philosophy. Crawl is much closer today to its design philosophy than it was several versions ago. It's a slow process but is getting there.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2017 23:38
|
|
|
Removing ?id and thus requiring people to either waste (sometimes rare) potions to find out what they are or risk drinking the wrong thing at the wrong time only really has the effect of making the player feel bad for no good reason. If you want to auto-id potions when picked up, then sure ( I imagine you don't).
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2017 23:45
|
|
|
Floodkiller posted:It might be that we're talking past one another. I'm arguing for the design of a curse system that has function and purpose, not desirability. The entire point of the design of curse systems is to create a risk/reward scenario for swapping out gear for something unidentified in the hopes that it is better. It works hand in hand with identification systems as well, which is why I say it is important that ?ID is removed (or at the very least, made rare) for it to work. The reason why remove curse and identify are plentiful in current Crawl is that I don't think the numbers have been properly brought down after all the auto-identify patches. Curses used to be relevant in Crawl because being cursed and being a good or bad item was not mutually exclusive; you had to go through a Nethack-esque identification process or burn a scroll of identify to find out (and optimal play was and still is to use ?ID on consumables first). As equipment, weapons, wands, and jewelery were all adjusted to auto-ID, identification and curses lost their teeth. If you don't want to revert back to Nethack style identification, you have to add the teeth a different way to make the systems relevant again; my proposal is to do that by severely reducing or eliminating identification sources (while leaving in auto-ID on equip/use) and making players weigh risk/reward when equipping gear, with a semi-rare scroll to bail them out every now and then (but not enough to completely forget about the system). Changes to the ID game have certainly affected ?ID but curse has always been pretty seperate from that. The only real serious overlap was when you did something like try to identify the enchantments on every broadaxe in the game to find one with +2/+2 and using too many ?rc would force you to slow down that HOM behaviour. Fortunately changes to the game have made that strategy mostly obsolete. dpeg posted:I agree. Like some others, I believe that (a) currently, the curse minigame is very boring outside of Ashenzari (the most interesting aspect are cursing artefacts) and (b) that there is potential for a much better mechanic. For the latter, I think it's crucial to extend the notion of "curse" beyond sticky, i.e. cannot unwield. Floodkiller's ideas are interesting, I've been toying with cursed items being innately double-edged.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2017 23:45
|
|
|
Double-edged curses? Hmmm. Brainstorm right now. What if cursed items generated with one or two extra properties, in addition to one or two negative properties, including maybe *sticky. Removing the curse destroys the linked positive trait. Kind of a partially fragile artefact. Or something else playing off the ideas of cursed artefacts being powerful, not just the equivalent of prank garlic-flavored gum. So, for instance, a non-artefact amulet of inaccuracy might always generate with exactly one random pip of resistance. For artefacts, maybe something like the vampires tooth would grant holy vulnerable and be sticky LordSloth fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Feb 16, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2017 23:51
|
|
|
SKULL.GIF posted:Crawl is much closer today to its design philosophy than it was several versions ago. It's a slow process but is getting there. I'm not so sure. Crawl's design philosophy is fairly broad, so you can always make a case, but the main bias I see is mainly towards features that are popular, (pruning elves and dwarves aside), and quality-of-life improvements. We're talking about whether ID scrolls are meaningful choices, but stuff at a much more fundamental, like most combat, doesn't involve meaningful choices. Or the fact that the way damage is calculated consists of feeding twelve different numbers into a Rube Goldberg machine. People get really heated about the changes one way or the other but it still feels like basically the same game to me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 16, 2017 23:52
|
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:I'm not so sure. Crawl's design philosophy is fairly broad, so you can always make a case, but the main bias I see is mainly towards features that are popular, (pruning elves and dwarves aside), and quality-of-life improvements. We're talking about whether ID scrolls are meaningful choices, but stuff at a much more fundamental, like most combat, doesn't involve meaningful choices. Or the fact that the way damage is calculated consists of feeding twelve different numbers into a Rube Goldberg machine. People get really heated about the changes one way or the other but it still feels like basically the same game to me. Some actual points I can bring up: "no no-brainers" triggered some removals, for example of item weight and item destruction. There are still mechanics in the game that aren't very good at triggering meaningful choices (right now we're talking about id and rc) and people are quick to jump at the conclusion "removal is best to deal with this no-brainer" (the tavern crown is particularly strong at this). However, you can also address such problems without removals, like acid damage (was: meaningless, obnoxious permanent damage, is: meaningful tactical liability) or the current change to mutation potions. The game has also been moving towards the goals of no grinding, better interface and clarity, in my opinion. You say "combat doesn't involve meaningful choices". What do you mean by this? I am very, very interested in an answer. (The other part about damage is a clarity issue and definitely secondary from my point of view.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 00:09
|
|
|
dpeg posted:Fair enough. You will understand that we developers disagree -- this is a psychological necessity, otherwise our work of the last ten years would've been a random walk, or worse. Most fights in the game don't actually matter because the player is never really threatened. There are meaningful fights, but they tend to cluster towards the beginning of the game. Just to take an extreme example, I RTA speedrun this game and can really just mash keys through the vast majority of the fights in about an hour, (admittedly with one of, if not the, strongest combo in the game). I don't think that's a problem that's ever going away, and to a certain extent it's not a problem at all. It's not necessarily better or worse for me to be able to mash through the game in an hour, or half an hour, or two hours. It's just a matter of perspective. But regardless I'm certain it's never going to be the case that I can't mash through anything because the game's choices are always meaningful, not in DCSS.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
ChickenWing posted:Alternatively, give it teeth again. Re-introduce contam/poison/degen chunks, hand out less permafood. Even if you sharply cut permafood food still wouldn't matter in the vast majority of games. Why should crawl have food? It already has other timer mechanics like piety decay and OoD spawns to push players forwards, even if food was changed to be meaningful. Buane posted:Hi I am a very new player. About ~100 games under my belt. Have never progressed past XL15. Here is my experience with food: it has felt proper and balanced and slightly meaningful the way small mechanics in roguelikes sometimes feel. Occasionally I'd run out or/low on food and would need to make decisions. More often than not it wouldn't be a problem. Some species had food mechanics of their own but because I am unbelievably bad at the game I've avoided them thus far. LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Feb 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 00:42
|
|
|
ThugLessons: There's a huge difference between "no meaningful combat for MiBe" (say) or "no meaningful combat at all". The former suggests that Mi and/or Be should be nerfed. The latter suggests that general mechanics should be changed (such as AC, monster damage etc.). By the way, I agree that Crawl throws too many pointless encouters at the player. Incidentally, there have been attempts over the years to address this: overly similar monsters have been conflated and underachievers have been purged or spawned earlier. As a player with a bunch of wins, but not very good, I often find myself stretched to my limits in the rune battles. (I don't player overly strong combos.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 00:46
|
|
|
Thug Lessons posted:But regardless I'm certain it's never going to be the case that I can't mash through anything because the game's choices are always meaningful, not in DCSS. The following is strictly my opinion, not any official stance: I don't think this is a problem, and in fact I think it's actually a good thing that there are opportunities in Crawl where you can plan ahead and build to trivialize the game. If Crawl was always bone-crushingly difficult even if you played flawlessly, requiring high focus and thinking for every combat, then very few players would win it. Having some slack is nice. Because of that slack, a lot of characters get much more room to play instead of being pressured into a small few approaches to the game. Crawl supports characters from MiBe to TrCj with a whole lot of in between. Play something like a HaEn or KoSk and avoid going one of the power gods and see how much more carefully you have to take every fight. Unless, of course, you're shrewd and experienced enough to set up your dominoes just right that when the time comes you can flick it all down and sail through the rest of the game. But even that has risk and payoff! This also means that a monster that is ignorable for one character might require a careful approach and consumable use for another character. This is good! It helps playthroughs and characters to feel different and distinct. If a hypothetical monster was equally difficult for all types of characters then, while it might stand out for being difficult, it doesn't exhibit much variety.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 01:02
|
|
|
SKULL.GIF posted:If a hypothetical monster was equally difficult for all types of characters then, while it might stand out for being difficult, it doesn't exhibit much variety. See: Extended.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 01:06
|
|
|
Entropy Weavers are probably the closest thing to a monster that every single build hates. Smite targeted corrosion is no joke.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 01:23
|
|
|
And even then that has gotten slightly better over the versions, in Tomb and in the Hells at least. Pan tries with the demonspawn and the occasional Holy plane but it tends to get washed out by the demons that are also present. Abyss has come a long way from its origins as a water/lava soaked amorphous hole too but as it's a valid third rune choice I don't consider it extended anymore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 01:25
|
|
|
The only thing that I really feel Pandemonium needs right now is somebody much more creative than me who feels like designing a lot of new floor-wide vaults for it and not just the lords. Even the holy vault that cribs obvious features like the dragon cave after a moat of water brings a lot of life to the branch. Putting aside larger and smaller vaults, the floorgen for Pandemonium ends up feeling pretty generic, lacking the variety of the branches that come before. Sadly, the less interesting Pan is, the less motivation there is for anyone to put something together. As a new player, I designed a failed Ijyb vault or two, because I saw that part of the dungeon a lot. Even now, I don't dip into Pandemonium that often even if I'm alive to make it there.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 01:59
|
|
|
Abyss is my go-to rune for the usual "oops I got banished in Elf:3" thing that happens when you can't get enough MR, at least there's only confuse to worry about in elven halls afaik.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 02:00
|
|
|
LordSloth posted:The only thing that I really feel Pandemonium needs right now is somebody much more creative than me who feels like designing a lot of new floor-wide vaults for it and not just the lords. Even the holy vault that cribs obvious features like the dragon cave after a moat of water brings a lot of life to the branch. Putting aside larger and smaller vaults, the floorgen for Pandemonium ends up feeling pretty generic, lacking the variety of the branches that come before. In general we're welcoming of more talented vaults designers. Most of the previous talent has moved on or been swept away by Life. There are a couple people submitting vaults still, but there's still a lot of unfilled design space here (and a lot of vaults that aren't up to scratch that aren't being removed because there isn't enough competition).
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 02:09
|
|
|
Is there a guide to making vaults somewhere? It's one of those things where people might have ideas but never do anything with them, since they have no idea how to translate it into a proper vault submission. (And I'm not just saying that because I had a pan vault idea pop into my head over the past few posts.  )
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 02:31
|
|
|
Haifisch posted:Is there a guide to making vaults somewhere? It's one of those things where people might have ideas but never do anything with them, since they have no idea how to translate it into a proper vault submission. This is all the basic documentation. There's also a Visual Vault Editor located here, but it requires a browser with Java and hasn't been updated for a while. Edit: Also of note that you don't have to recompile Crawl while testing your vaults and making changes; you only have to make your change and restart Crawl, and it will grab the updated vault information. Floodkiller fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Feb 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 02:50
|
|
|
SKULL.GIF posted:The following is strictly my opinion, not any official stance: It's also just plain fun to have easy fights. I like going through Orc:1 after Lair and just annihilating the entire thing. In terms of ID, the tension is definitely felt way more in the early game: 'oh gently caress I got myself in a bad situation, can I save myself by reading all my scrolls', that sort of thing. And I like finding a shop that sells inacc or degen or something, buying it, and seeing a stack of it in my inventory that I can toss. I do agree that lategame it's basically pointless (and so is cursed gear), but I think it's worth fixing, maybe with the 'everything IDs after a rune' that dpeg mentioned. Also this is unrelated but I like that Crawl's monsters pull both from general mythology and Crawl's own original lore, and that all the gods are completely original. It feels very thematic. vOv fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Feb 17, 2017 |
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 05:07
|
|
|
Internet Kraken posted:Entropy Weavers are probably the closest thing to a monster that every single build hates. Even their melee is brutal on squishy characters. I've lost deep elves at over 60% health to going up the stairs next to an entropy weaver.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 05:27
|
|
|
What if cursed was just replaced with fragile? And poo poo like inacc just doesn't generate
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 05:46
|
|
|
ash as god of fragility is a neat idea obviously, you'd give inacc *contam 
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 05:56
|
|
|
Tried lesser beckoning for the first time and it makes worshiping Chei a lot nicer, you barely notice movement penalties when you can use lesser beckoning and temporal distortion to set up most of your positioning.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 05:56
|
|
|
If I'm not affected by stasis, and don't have any -Tele indication, what would cause my Tele to fail 3 times? The log just said some message about feeling stable and now I'm not teleporting anymore. I already hosed died so no rush.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 06:06
|
|
|
Roctavian posted:What if cursed was just replaced with fragile? And poo poo like inacc just doesn't generate You'd have to pickup duplicate rings/amulets, including in portal vaults, in any game in which you might worship Ashenzari later. Decrepus posted:If I'm not affected by stasis, and don't have any -Tele indication, what would cause my Tele to fail 3 times? The log just said some message about feeling stable and now I'm not teleporting anymore. I already hosed died so no rush. Starting another teleport (they toggle). Were you in snake with naga using Teleport on you?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 06:10
|
|
|
Here's my dumb thoughts: Agree that chunks are dumb and should be removed. Sometimes I play spriggrans just so I don't have to give a poo poo about corpses and it's like a little vacation. By extension i suppose food is kind of pointless now and probably should go away. Agree that IDing items and cursed items don't matter either. The only time I give the slightest poo poo about cursed items is when the very first dagger my caster start characters pick up is a -4 cursed and I'm like welp. The only drawback to not using ID scrolls is that I waste potions in the early game and maybe avoid drinking a pot of degen, which like the only thing I wouldn't want to drink? I just don't see the point of it, can sort of dig it around wand usage I suppose but I feel like it should be more of a choice. Maybe make IDing something make the item slightly better? Maybe wielding a +4 dagger of flame would only be a +2 dagger until you IDed and and 'understood' how to use it. I don't know. Put in more 'double-edged' items. Potion of degneration is a good example of something no one gives the slightest poo poo about so why does it exist. Make it so that it does something interesting, but has the DRAWBACK of affecting your stats for an extended time. Like, hey, I desperately need +% HP for this battle I'm in, but I'll pay for it later. Lignification and ambrosia are good examples of good pots imo, though lig could probably have a few better use cases if it was improved slightly. An 'easy' fix for cursed items is to make them sticky, but not permanently so. Maybe have it so a cursed weapon (not necessarily a BAD weapon) took much longer to unequip. So you're making a choice to wield it knowing you can't easily switch out. What's that? A hydra appeared and you're wielding a cursed scimitar? Lol shoulda thought of that ahead of time. I think this would be useful because I find it kind of dumb that I fill my inventory with a slew of weapons/rings for different situations, but it's not like switching them around is bothersome. Rings of flight for example, you just go through the effort of putting it on, evoking it, and removing it. It's dumb. Switching out to a certain resist set should be something I have to at least marginally commit to as well, IMO. More things to say but post is long enough to where no one will read it anyway so I'll hold off.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 06:45
|
|
|
Would the devs have any interest in full floor Pan vaults based on other branches of the game? Sort of a rune Lair or whatever floor pulled whole hog into the never ending expanse of Pandemonium. Of course they would require a few old enemies made new by the chaos and evil of Pan... (Mostly asking if a good number of new monster entries would be OK, cause I wouldn't want to make maps in that style and then just fill them with the same old demons)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 06:47
|
|
|
If chunks are removed as a food source, please let them still generate when things explode. Gibbing would be much less satisfying without them. I agree it's tedious to butcher and eat three times a floor as a game mechanic. On the other hand, eating your enemies is cool and funny and should stay at least for the more monstrous races.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 06:56
|
|
|
Uh a hornet on D:3 is OOD as all hell right?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:01
|
|
|
Did monster AI get changed again recently? It feels like pulling enemies in by making noise can be done in a much controlled manner due to monsters losing interest more quickly or something. I basically did one of the Elf:3 vaults by having a slow trickle of enemies come out of the entrance instead of the entire vault freaking the hell out because you farted near the entrance. It's stuff like that which made killholes attractive but now you can just hang near the entrance until you thin out the numbers.. which is good I guess? It makes the elementalists anti-killhole gimmick a bit redundant though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:03
|
|
|
Monster AI hasn't been touched in months, no.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:05
|
|
|
No, you might just be getting vaults that make them get stuck in rooms(and eventually give up) while trying to find you.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:06
|
|
|
Who wrote the Desolation of Salt? Get them to redo pan imo, Desolation ownsGreyjoyBastard posted:Edit: also I remember where your username came from
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:07
|
|
|
This is the vault I got: I was yelling a lot in the two spots at the top of the screen with all the corpses
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:10
|
|
|
SpMo with short blades is not a completely terrible combo I feel strong as hell until I see an adder, at which point I die like a horse that just thought of ants (I'm gonna try and go for Qazlal on one and basically turn off every skill except Invo once I get Qazlal and see if I can get to a 3 rune that way)
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 07:14
|
|
|
Merge potions of Haste and Degeneration. When you drink one you go super fast for a while but then your body and mind are burnt out by the strain. If you drink another it extends the haste but also adds to the after-haste drain. Before doing this, bring back Singularity.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 08:08
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:Merge potions of Haste and Degeneration. When you drink one you go super fast for a while but then your body and mind are burnt out by the strain. If you drink another it extends the haste but also adds to the after-haste drain. Before doing this, bring back Singularity. What's so great about Singularity?
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 08:22
|
|
|
On another topic, I've never felt like Crawl combat is particularly easy or mindless but that's because I almost exclusively play casters or caster hybrids and so I'm always having to think about which of my special moves would be best in a situation and whether I can afford to pay their prices. I lost my most recent character because I sublimated my blood too vigorously in Orc:2 and didn't notice that a cyclops had moseyed into the corner of the screen. So, if you actually wanted to make MiBe melee powerhouses not mindless, I think you'd want to make a Dark Souls-esque stamina bar spent to empower or outright allow attacks, or else weaken bump attacks but put in special attacks that cost mana, or otherwise turn fighting with an axe into a similar resource preservation/verb deployment challenge to fighting with fireballs. Attorney at Funk posted:What's so great about Singularity? It's insanely cool to have a capstone power where you conjure a black hole.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 08:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 03:23 |
|
|
Or start stealing out of Sil's book. Or just play Sil, because there's more than one roguelike out there, more are being made every year, and you don't have to play crawl if you don't want.
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2017 09:47
|
|
