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The reason the devs say they want balance tends to be matters of creating more interesting choices. But from that perspective, the idea of forcing an ogre to choose between weapon types instead of just letting them use clubs by default is not appreciating the level at which decisions are being made there. Like, if I'm picking Ogre as a race, it's because I want to make a character that is good at what I expect ogres to be good at, i.e. hitting really hard and having a lot of HP. Making Ogres worse at how hard they can hit basically does nothing but making it harder to get the things I want out of an Ogre, because with worse M&F, then what am I going to use an Ogre to do? Probably something a lot of other races that are much better at doing already, often without the many unhappy drawbacks about playing an Ogre. I mean, is there some other reason people would pick Ogres that I'm not appreciating?
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Mar 24, 2017 06:23
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it's honestly to the point where i appreciate cool, actually fun systems to play with so over time my crawl playing has heavily dropped off and my time has been spent way more with games like caves of qud that err more on the side of letting players goof off than trying to curate some sort of theoretical 'perfectly balanced machine' which will never be possible
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Mar 24, 2017 06:57
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I'd have to agree, the game is, honestly, balanced enough as it is. More than it needs to be, really. The desire to make it a perfectly balanced game is causing questionable development decisions and I think it's a fool's errand to try and pull that off. Like I used to play Crawl a ton!! Now I haven't played it regularly since like .17, and I only played .18 a handful of times. It just wasn't as fun of a game as it used to be, really. Edit: Honestly, this is a single player game. From a certain standpoint and one that I usually hold, game balance is completely unnecessary in single-player games. Sure it's nice to have, but it absolutely should not dominate every choice people make. Sometimes you get handed the most ridiculous randart in the world and that makes the game significantly easier, like that one time I found a Wiz rF+++ rC+ Int+6 Str-4 ring. Should those moments be removed from the game in the interest of balance? Absolutely not, the game would become infinitely less fun. mdct fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 07:01
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The thing is for all these attempts at balancing, at the end of the day the game is still significantly easier when you just run minotaur of Trog and mindlessly mash everything to paste. Is that something that should be changed? If Trog was to be added now he would never get in. He's stronger than Wu Jang Whatever. But balance doesn't touch him because he's been around for ages and even the devs won't touch a cow that sacred. From an objective standpoint, Trog is one of the most unbalanced things in Crawl. But despite never playing Trog his existence doesn't bother me. Why? Cause there are dozens of other gods and species I can play with instead. The game doesn't need to be perfectly balanced in every single way. Its fine for some things to be stronger than others. What matters the most is if the game is still fun to play. And it usually is, but some of these changes can definitely get in the way of that. If something gets changed for the sake of balance and it simply makes the game less enjoyable, it shouldn't go through.
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Mar 24, 2017 07:42
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If it wasn't for MiBe, the crawl player base would be 1/10th of its current size. I think all this banging on the devs especially by two main culprits is stupid and counter productive. I mean, I don't disagree with the sentiment. I actually am finding the game less fun these days, and have not won a non MiBe since wand of heal wounds got removed. But bottom line, these were the devs and that was the philosophy before I came on board and started playing, and if I don't like it, I might complain a bit, but then it's better for all involved, if I stay away. I'd suggest you two do the same. I'm going to unsub from this thread and take a bit of a crawl break until I decide I miss it and want to have another go. Maybe playing other RLs will make me better.
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Mar 24, 2017 10:09
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Unimpressed posted:If it wasn't for MiBe, the crawl player base would be 1/10th of its current size. actually it's fine to air grievances over things, including dpeg being a whiny loving baby. even though i disagree with gammafunk on nerfing claws, he's cool about it. simply going 'complaining and conflict in any form is bad and i must self-exile' is just being weird
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Mar 24, 2017 10:38
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If there were a way to keep the modern Crawl UI but go back versions, I'd do it, but the dev/s working on that stuff have improved the game so much, like, leaps and bounds
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Mar 24, 2017 11:08
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Mighty Dicktron hit the nail on the head re: my feelings on malmut. Even if the actual changes in my playstyle and effectiveness are minimal, it feels super bad to have an enemy attack affix a permanent malus on my character, especially unavoidably or near-unavoidably so. If I get malmutated with anything beyond, like, str-2, I'll start chugging mutation potions until it's gone, even if that's suboptimal, because it really bugs me that they're there and I didn't really have much chance to avoid them outside of carefully managing LoS. I think crawl could do with a bit of wide user research and qualitative data gathering outside the usual crawl survey regarding stuff like this; opinions here and in the Tavern are well and good, but given the tone that's come up, something is clearly going wrong, and I think data would be more persuasive to reticent devs than arguments that they can easily discard on grounds of tone.
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Mar 24, 2017 11:38
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You can pick a god and exchange * for enough allies to kill the unique pan lords and hell lords. The entire endgame is demons which a lot of poo poo doesn't work against. Ogres are too powerful.
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Mar 24, 2017 12:03
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l - the ring "Vocafeba" (right hand) {rPois rF+++ rC+++ Int+5 Slay-4}
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Mar 24, 2017 13:11
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Article on Crawl on Rock Paper Shogun: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/23/making-dungeon-crawl-stone-soup-with-253-cooks-and-no-head-chef/
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Mar 24, 2017 13:19
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Could somebody check the map style weightings for regular dungeon levels? I'm sick of seeing the predictable and boring "four almost identical quadrants with a round room in the middle of each of them" design. In my current game D:1, 2 and 4 are that same stupid design 
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Mar 24, 2017 13:41
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HisMajestyBOB posted:Article on Crawl on Rock Paper Shogun: quote:Cut lair to 4 levels, cut lair branches to 3 levels quote:The game is too easy  Instead of screwing characters who are already on the bleeding edge, why not look at the easy races/gods instead if you genuinely believe the game is too easy.
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Mar 24, 2017 14:12
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weirdly chilly pussy posted:Could somebody check the map style weightings for regular dungeon levels? I'm sick of seeing the predictable and boring "four almost identical quadrants with a round room in the middle of each of them" design. In my current game D:1, 2 and 4 are that same stupid design They show up too often and are way too huge. Exploring them is a good way to get OoD spawns.
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Mar 24, 2017 14:12
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Stop making the game harder
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Mar 24, 2017 14:18
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Game is too easy guys
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Mar 24, 2017 14:54
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Captain Monkey posted:I'm probably on ignore from all.the devs by now because I disagree with them a lot, but what is the point of a perfectly balanced game? Like, what do you get out of it when even -fun- is less of a consideration than the almighty balance? Like, why make it? It's a bad goal because things being different is fun and good. Trolls only being good at one thing is fine because there are a couple dozen other races who are good at other things. Homogenization of races in the name of balancing them or to "provide choices" is insane as you already made a choice as to what species you selected. They are even ranked by ease of use which explicitly implies they are not balanced and not intended to be. A felid is weaker than a minotaur. A hill orc prefers axes while a merfolk prefers pointy sticks. This is ok. This is good. imo just don't play trunk unless you like these dumb changes as they aren't really adding anything cool mostly just removing poo poo and homogenizing things in the name of "balance". Wuxia god was cool but they are loving that up too so there really isn't a reason to play it.
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Mar 24, 2017 15:06
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Goodpancakes posted:Game is too easy guys Sorry couldnt hear you, too busy clearing my fifth zig without breaking a sweat Seriously though, the suggestion to add more mutations is awesome. I would love the idea of having so many goddam ones that like the one guy said, each run felt unique with the stuff that could applied to you. How about instead of just straight up -2 strength ones you had a mix of -2 + 1 dex or "Your skin changes a pale-yellow colour (+rCorr -rPoi)" basically whatever you could think of. That said, malmutate is still hosed beyond repair currently and (usually) getting a permanent malus just because you didn't react or get lucky with a shining eye or Nexotqwasecq doing something else on their turn is super lovely. And can anyone explain why *Contam exists on armour/weapons beyond either a penalty for not burning an identify scroll on it first or having cancellation potions? There is no interesting choice with the *Contam malus. Either it's the greatest piece of armour/jewelry that you would never use anything else in its place or it gets thrown into the trash-heap. That's all there is. FulsomFrank fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 15:25
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You could up the overall number/variety of mutations but only include a small random sampling in each game. That would add more overall flavor to the game, increase per-game randomness, and encourage higher level mutations because there are only so many in each game.
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Mar 24, 2017 15:36
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Darox posted:
I think "the game is too easy" is dpeg's idiosyncratic view and not representative of what most of the devs feel. As for cuts in length, in principle they are a good thing. The game is certainly too long. They could be damaging to certain types of characters if they result in the a big loss in experience, but I've seen several devs post here and elsewhere that they are quite sensitive to that issue. Luceid posted:actually it's fine to air grievances over things, including dpeg being a whiny loving baby. even though i disagree with gammafunk on nerfing claws, he's cool about it. simply going 'complaining and conflict in any form is bad and i must self-exile' is just being weird This is the definition of an unproductive post. It's fine, good in fact, to criticize the game and the direction of Crawl's design. The design philosophy document shouldn't be a sacred, immutable text, nor should the developer's interpretation of it never be subject to change or reappraisal. Making well reasoned points explaining what you don't like about the game can only help to make it better, if by nothing else than shaping discourse over future development. Name calling and saying the game sucks, without even attempting to understand the reasoning behind the dev teams' decisions, doesn't help anyone and only lowers the attention devs are likely to pay to our entire community. I respect most of dpeg's posts and like his presence here, but I also think announcing he's dropping out of the thread in response to someone who posts like Donald Trump is a weird overreaction. I can't see how it's helpful in any way to just bring that up out of spite, though. A lot of people are posting about balance and how there is too strong a focus on it. I tried to write my thoughts on this tonight, but couldn't quite get out what I want to say. If I can get it together to write an effort post (probably not, honestly, I have extremely limited spare time recently) I'll do so. But in short, I think these posts show a misunderstanding about balance. At a macro level, balance is simply making sure all the game's systems work the way they're supposed to. Without any attention to balance at all, the game would simply not function. It would either be impossible to complete or trivial. Severe lack of balance still leads to awful situations in games, like magic being completely useless, one specific weapon skill being necessary to complete the game without agony, multiple character concepts being almost unplayable compared to others, which are trivial, etc. In these cases, players effectively have limited choices in how they can play the game if they want to enjoy it. Crawl development concerns itself with these macro level concerns, meaning it attempts to give players choices by making sure the mechanics function the way they're intended to. It doesn't concern itself with micro level concerns like, say, ARPG development does, where flavor of the week builds are constantly adjusted in respect to others in order to create a sense of equality between choices. I think if you're going to post about balance changes in Crawl, it's important to be clear on this difference. You could argue that certain changes attempting to give more options have only succeeded in ARPG style micro-balancing in which they arrange options around. Or you could argue they don't in fact add options, but instead remove them. But you can't criticize attempts at balance in the first place without understanding the motivation for making them.
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Mar 24, 2017 17:23
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Heithinn Grasida posted:Crawl development concerns itself with these macro level concerns, meaning it attempts to give players choices by making sure the mechanics function the way they're intended to. It doesn't concern itself with micro level concerns like, say, ARPG development does, where flavor of the week builds are constantly adjusted in respect to others in order to create a sense of equality between choices. just lol *lowers M&F aptitute because GSC Ogre build is a "no brainer" in order to create more equality between choices*
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Mar 24, 2017 17:37
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HisMajestyBOB posted:Article on Crawl on Rock Paper Shogun: First - this article is really cool, and it's neat to see a little niche community-developed game like this get coverage on a widely popular site like RPS. However - I really don't understand the rationale on cutting the length of all the typical 3-rune branches (lair, lair branches, depths, vaults) even further. If it came with new XP waiting to make the amount of XP in the shorter branches roughly equivalent, I could kind've understand it - but my guess is it won't, and XP already feels really tight in a 3-rune game for any hybrid character. And what's up with the constant desire to make the game harder? It's hard. Really loving hard. I've been playing for two years, and have 5 wins across 219 games - 2.28%, which is still slightly higher than the average (and all on pretty easy Species/Background/God combinations). Granted, maybe I just suck, but the early game is already so difficult as a spellcaster that I rarely play them, even though they're way more fun than meleer's by midgame. What's the rationale that leads one to draw the conclusion that what the game really needs is more difficulty?
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Mar 24, 2017 17:55
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rj54x posted:First - this article is really cool, and it's neat to see a little niche community-developed game like this get coverage on a widely popular site like RPS. Because people with 5000 games played can win most of the time if they play extremely cautiously.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:01
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Have the devs considered making extended actually fun, for all the people who want more challenge?
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Mar 24, 2017 18:07
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I think the game is very close to ideal in terms of difficulty and no one is actively wanting to make the game significantly harder. The sense I get from talking with dpeg is that he does want the game to be harder, but in minor ways and mostly in terms of pressuring the player forward and into more uncomfortable situations. fool_of_sound posted:Have the devs considered making extended actually fun, for all the people who want more challenge? Yes, in fact that's my personal big project that I've been sporadically working on. No, torment and damnation isn't going away.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:09
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I would love to see a trunk with the shortened branches but 1.5x XP from all monsters. It would be fun to play around in.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:17
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SKULL.GIF posted:Yes, in fact that's my personal big project that I've been sporadically working on. No, torment and damnation isn't going away. My only gripe with torment and damnation is that they're the only sources of concern for most 15 rune characters, this is not even counting "zigbusters" or builds that are only scratched by massive death curse spam. It's easy to point this out and not come up with a solution but I think improving on that end would be by far the biggest improvement to extended. FWIW doom hounds can create some pretty "oh poo poo" moments if they manage to debuff you and super strong uniques like serpent of hell can be spooky, they just comprise a tiny fraction of extended. E: OH yeah, honorable mention to the demonspawn enemies that can sap, those can be legit scary as a blaster mage apple fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 18:17
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SKULL.GIF posted:Yes, in fact that's my personal big project that I've been sporadically working on. No, torment and damnation isn't going away. I'm 100% cool with that, though I think torment is overused. Giving high end enemies Vulnerability+status effects or resistance stripping would give it more variety. And I'm really glad someone is looking at it.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:23
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Given that poison isn't completely resistible anymore, I always thought it was strange that extended didn't have more enemies with access to poisoning you. I think it would fit right in, really. I think that alone would vary up the threats some.
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Mar 24, 2017 18:26
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Mighty Dicktron posted:Given that poison isn't completely resistible anymore, I always thought it was strange that extended didn't have more enemies with access to poisoning you. I think it would fit right in, really. How often do you struggle against green deaths? They are technically a Tier 2 demon that's all about the poison, but I'm way more scared of cacodemons in the same tier for Malmutate and corroding attacks.
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Mar 24, 2017 19:06
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Floodkiller posted:How often do you struggle against green deaths? They are technically a Tier 2 demon that's all about the poison, but I'm way more scared of cacodemons in the same tier for Malmutate and corroding attacks. They should learn poison vuln probably.
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Mar 24, 2017 19:09
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Floodkiller posted:How often do you struggle against green deaths? They are technically a Tier 2 demon that's all about the poison, but I'm way more scared of cacodemons in the same tier for Malmutate and corroding attacks. I don't think anyone has ever lost a character to a green death.
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Mar 24, 2017 19:24
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Most of the recent green death kills are in Abyss or that one Swamp ending (swamp_vile). Maybe they should be... buffed? 
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Mar 24, 2017 19:34
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SKULL.GIF posted:Most of the recent green death kills are in Abyss or that one Swamp ending (swamp_vile). Give them smite targeted poison resistance stripping that takes them like 3 turns to cast or something.
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Mar 24, 2017 19:38
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Yeah, I'm saying that poison is basically ignorable in extended and that it's a non-threat. I think it could be an appreciable threat and that would vary extended up a little, is all. Note: doing this in a way that doesn't just make extended more frustrating would necessitate scaling back the other threats a little. Going hand-in-hand with "don't make the game harder".
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Mar 24, 2017 19:58
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HisMajestyBOB posted:Article on Crawl on Rock Paper Shogun: Is there a way to vote dpeg off the dev team, or at least force him to stop trying to "balance" the game loving hell EDIT: "Its too easy" says the man that has played over 2500 games and only won 48 times. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 20:40
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Internet Kraken posted:Is there a way to vote dpeg off the dev team, or at least force him to stop trying to "balance" the game This is an overreaction. dpeg's direct contributions to Crawl are almost entirely vaults and emails to crawl-ref-discuss with suggestions for things to think about implementing or problems that need further thought. Anything that comes from him that gets into the game is filtered through the rest of the dev team. You might as well advocate for the entire dev team to be removed. Fortunately, there's a way to do that! You can fork Crawl!
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Mar 24, 2017 21:13
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Stop removing experience, playing hybrids sucks enough already. The XP curve is extremely tight and unforgiving and if you don't level your skills EXACTLY THE RIGHT WAY it's incredibly easy to gently caress yourself over and not have enough power to survive your first rune branch. It's lame E: also the repeated response to criticism being "play old versions" and "make your own fork" is not good either, considering. You're a good egg otherwise, tho, skull.gif someone awful. fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 21:15
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Why do you guys want experience in lair so much? There are 28 floors of hell and the infinite realms of pandemonium and the abyss to scum. :crawldev:
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Mar 24, 2017 21:33
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Give green deaths a corrupted version of summon forest, and give the vines in the corrupted forest flaying.
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Mar 24, 2017 21:43
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