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People like theglow that have played this game for literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours should be able to beat it reliably. That doesn't mean the game is easy. That means the game is a properly designed single-player experience. Single-player games can't constantly scale in difficulty to match your skill like multiplayer games do through matchmaking. If Crawl is actually a fairly designed game, then a skilled player should be able to beat it 100% of the time if they play properly and make all the correct decisions. People like that are very much the exception though. Even the best players don't win every single game. Its especially baffling that a thoroughly average player like Dpeg thinks the game needs to be more difficult. I think the way you are supposed to make the game more "difficult" for veteran players at this point is to offer them new challenges. New species to win with. New gods to play with. Adding more options we can pursue from the start of the game gives us new ways to play it that we aren't familiar with. Mastering those new additions may not be difficult (understanding a gargoyle is much easier than an octopode), but its always a new experience for us to learn. The important thing here is that adding this content doesn't make the game harder for new players to pick up at all. Its a way to make things more enjoyable for everyone. Devs are currently of the position that bad content is worse than no content. To a certain extent I agree; if you go back to the ancient versions of Crawl, there was tons of pointless content that didn't add anything to the game and was poorly designed. That's almost entirely been pruned out though. At this point I feel the game is very streamlined and would benefit far more from the addition or revision of content rather than the removal. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Nov 10, 2017 |
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Nov 10, 2017 22:58
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Internet Kraken posted:People like theglow that have played this game for literally hundreds upon hundreds of hours should be able to beat it reliably. That doesn't mean the game is easy. That means the game is a properly designed single-player experience. Single-player games can't constantly scale in difficulty to match your skill like multiplayer games do through matchmaking. If Crawl is actually a fairly designed game, then a skilled player should be able to beat it 100% of the time if they play properly and make all the correct decisions. People like that are very much the exception though. Even the best players don't win every single game. Its especially baffling that a thoroughly average player like Dpeg thinks the game needs to be more difficult. Winning 100% of the games you play is fine, but the important question to answer off of that is, 'Why'. If it's because given perfect knowledge of the ruleset of the game, the decision tree is narrow, then it's a problem. If it's because despite a wide and ambiguous decision tree, the player tends to make good decisions regardless, then that's very healthy as it would be a strong indicator of depth in the systems. It is my opinion however that the decision tree is narrow most of the time. quote:Adding more options we can pursue from the start of the game gives us new ways to play it that we aren't familiar with No matter what you'd do to the systems, this will have to be part of it to some degree, but to make this work for a game that's around for literally more than a decade, the systems themselves have to offer a lot of depth. For an extreme example, we can look at Destiny 2: You can add a dozen more classes to the game, but that doesn't fix the issue that veteran players will be able to explore the entire pool of possibilities with those classes in a short amount of time - the support systems just don't offer anything to build on. Conversely, adding a character to a game like Dota 2 has wild implications and mastery of that one hero could represent months of effort. It's not a totally fair comparison because Dota 2 is multiplayer and gets a lot out of that by itself as you mentioned, but a single player equivalent might be something like Path of Exile. Adding a handful of skill and support gems to a game can completely change the way people think about the game, experimenting and discovering new stuff for months if the gems are especially well designed. The new gems aren't what make that work though, it's the supporting systems that enable all of that. It's that kind of system design that games like Crawl would do well to embrace.
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Nov 10, 2017 23:15
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Well you're flat out wrong about Crawl having a limited decision tree because the entire appeal of it, to me, is that it has a very broad one. There are tons of different options you can pursue for your character in Crawl. From the start of the game you specialize with your background, but from there most species can branch into tons of different paths. You have many different options for equipment, spells, and gods that can completely change how you approach situations in the game. The RNG element ensures that while the general progression of all Crawl games is usually similar, you will face different challenges on each character. This is what makes Crawl good to me; the vast amount of content you can explore and play in different ways. Usually the counterpoint to this is that some of these options are "suboptimal" and thus should never be taken. The problem with this view point is that proponents of it grossly exaggerate how bad these options actually are and usually have no experience with it themselves. Also Crawl is in a unique position as a roguelike with an RNG component; you don't always have every choice available to you. Sometimes you have to go with an option that would be considered mediocre in another context but is your best choice at the moment. Crawl only has a narrow decision tree if you ignore all that and grossly simplify the game. Not that any of this is actually relevant since the changes the devs have made in recent versions, for the most part, have not expanded this hypothetical decision tree at all! They've actually aimed to reduce it by removing content. As an example removing rMut from the game did not expand my decision making at all; it narrowed it by giving me less options to deal with malmutate. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Nov 10, 2017 |
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Nov 10, 2017 23:39
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Internet Kraken posted:Well you're flat out wrong about Crawl having a limited decision tree because the entire appeal of it, to me, is that it has a very broad one. There are tons of different options you can pursue for your character in Crawl. I think we are talking about different things :P. When I say 'decision tree', I'm talking about a single decision you make that optimizes your chance of success given a specific circumstance. I'm not talking about choosing a style of play. I'm talking about whether or not you want to take another whack at Sigmund or whether you think your chance of survival would be better reading a TP vs quaffing Heal Wounds vs something else.
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Nov 10, 2017 23:44
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]Sure in the context of Sigmund standing in front of you about to kill you, your decision tree may be very narrow. But that's ignoring the wide array of actions that led up to that moment. What did you do when you first saw Sigmund? Did you weigh your odds against him in combat and engage him? Did you block LOS during his advance? Did you try to avoid him entirely? Were you doing something that generates noise to attract his attention? All of these things interact with each other to form the gameplay of Crawl. Ultimately we're just bumping sprites into each other until one dies, but the tapestry of choices and options behind it is what makes it interesting. I don't think this is something the devs can change either without completely rebuilding the structure of the game, and I don't think they are aiming to do that either. Still, even in the context of this example, the devs recent changes have not done anything to broaden the decision tree here.
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Nov 10, 2017 23:53
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Right - at it's most verbose level, every action you take is a result of reaching some conclusion at the end of a discrete decision tree. Obviously in actual play, players will take 'bulk actions' and not evaluate literally every move, but the concept is one that's important to frame correctly and all that. The absolute easiest way to do this is to tie actions to resources. Casting actually does this exceptionally well right now. Melee does not and doing so without introducing some pretty radical changes would be a neat trick. It's an idea where talking about the abstract is a lot easier than actually proposing strong solutions to the problem, but I think there is room to make it happen.
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Nov 11, 2017 00:03
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Bring Back Boulder Beetles
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Nov 11, 2017 01:17
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What's that D&D monster that is a spider with a human torso? We should add that as a species. But instead of a spider its a boulder beetle.
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Nov 11, 2017 01:20
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Centaurs should be able to wear two pairs of boots
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Nov 11, 2017 01:23
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The charging mechanic was fun and made for interesting interactions. If you want to make it a bull or something, fine whatever, but having to jump out of the way of something, especially if you were already engaged in a fight, was fun. Orb weavers got left in even though they're just a more irritating version of the same idea.
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Nov 11, 2017 01:29
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:When I say 'decision tree', I'm talking about a single decision you make that optimizes your chance of success given a specific circumstance. I'm not talking about choosing a style of play. I'm talking about whether or not you want to take another whack at Sigmund or whether you think your chance of survival would be better reading a TP vs quaffing Heal Wounds vs something else. Internet Kraken posted:the wide array of actions that led up to that moment. What did you do when you first saw Sigmund? Did you weigh your odds against him in combat and engage him? Did you block LOS during his advance? Did you try to avoid him entirely? Were you doing something that generates noise to attract his attention? All of these things interact with each other to form the gameplay of Crawl. Ultimately we're just bumping sprites into each other until one dies, but the tapestry of choices and options behind it is what makes it interesting. This is some rich conversation. I think that autoexplore exacerbates the problem of shallow/deep decision tree stuff: IK is absolutely correct about the importance of all the actions that lead up to a confrontation with a deadly threat, and autoexplore has a tendency to drop players in situations that are several crucial turns deeper into bad poo poo than manual exploration. Even once you've learned to control encounters, you have to learn to recognize when you're about to overextend yourself -- which happens several turns before an inexperienced player would recognize they've done it. I think crawl balance assumes that players have already learned how to read encounters and tries to add challenge to the parts of the encounters that come afterwards. This is especially brutal for characters who fight in the open/away from staircases/near unexplored terrain. Think about what happens when someone posts a YASD from one of those three situations: veteran crawl players are always ready to leap out of the woodwork and say "you dumb gently caress, look at the bad decisions you made."
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Nov 11, 2017 01:36
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Internet Kraken posted:What's that D&D monster that is a spider with a human torso? are you saying arachne should become a boulder beetle
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Nov 11, 2017 01:53
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Haven't played in months but all the bitching made me load up 17.2 again local. Had a FoFi on lvl 1 found a ring of slaying +6, took one step, fell in a shaft, landed on d2 next to Grinder, paralyzed, dead.
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Nov 11, 2017 02:44
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Scaramouche posted:Haven't played in months but all the bitching made me load up 17.2 again local. Had a FoFi on lvl 1 found a ring of slaying +6, took one step, fell in a shaft, landed on d2 next to Grinder, paralyzed, dead. Game is too easy, 
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Nov 11, 2017 04:28
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Scaramouche posted:Haven't played in months but all the bitching made me load up 17.2 again local. Had a FoFi on lvl 1 found a ring of slaying +6, took one step, fell in a shaft, landed on d2 next to Grinder, paralyzed, dead. How'd you get paralyzed as a formicid? Ants are supposed to be immune to it. someone awful. posted:are you saying arachne should become a boulder beetle I mean if you want Arcachne to roll over you that's your business.
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Nov 11, 2017 04:36
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Canine Blues Arooo posted:Extremely well-reasoned and well-written post about Game Difficulty Posts like this are single-handedly the best thing about this thread. My thanks for making the effort! I think you may have forgotten a crucial aspect about Crawl difficulty - RNG. I'll try and make a more detailed post later, but the short of it is that I think that one of the main reasons why super-vets find it orders of magnitude easier than newbies is because there's a ton of RNG filling your System Knowledge bucket. Which the game does very little to expose / goes out of its way to hide. Super-vets intuit the presence and extent of each RNG roll far more than a newbie or even a semi-vet, and therefore can make far better decisions turn-by-turn. Especially crucially, they can spot with far higher accuracy when they're safe and when they're suddenly in danger of death. Imagine if the game automatically force_more messaged whenever you inputted an action and there was a > 0% chance you'd die on your next turn after that action was resolved. I'd bet good money the newbie win rate would be MUCH higher. The super-vet win rate would increase as well, but not by nearly as much. (I'm not actually proposing that btw!) RNG by itself isn't a bad thing, but when it has the potential to be unreasonably swingy, and the extent of its swinginess is deliberately hidden, and is so prevalent, you can't fault people for thinking the game's unreasonably difficult.
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Nov 11, 2017 12:02
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I think you could argue execution is a part of turn based games like roguelikes, but it's entirely down to how crufty the control system is. Crawl has one of the best Interfaces I've seen in a roguelike - compare to nethack's mess of extended commands, adom's amazingly obtuse inventory system, or dwarf fortress' well, anything. Being able to hit the right command without consulting a manual is a fairly big part of the success rate. To me, dark souls has this problem too, I can't remember all the various combos of controller buttons to do various things. 
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Nov 11, 2017 21:03
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I️ have hundreds of hours in this game and still have a below 1% winrate despite having all the knowledge to play optimally, because playing optimally in this game involves a lot of behavior I️ find boring as hell (and Hell). My preferred play style is mashing tab as a fighter of Gozag because I️ find the loot roulette to be very fun. It’s rare that a god makes me break from Gozag. Usk was one of those gods. WJC was another. Maybe what I️ really want is a crawl themed clicker game.
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Nov 11, 2017 21:50
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my winrate is better than average but I still throw a lot because I play crawl as a casual chill game for when I don't wanna do anything too involved(aka, the kinda fastpaced not turnbased games I usually play)
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Nov 11, 2017 22:00
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Why is this game worth almost 2 billion points? https://crawl.project357.org/morgue/edsrzf/morgue-edsrzf-20160320-213950.txt And the player: http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/players/edsrzf.html And for what it's worth, I still enjoy playing Crawl. I do miss things that have been removed, but overall I thing the game is significantly better than it was a few years ago. The Tomb changes are the ones I probably disagree with the most. Extended is such a slog and Tomb has always been the worst of it. Greater Mummies are loving awful. Without being able to stairdance to get away from their summons, I'll stick to 14 rune games from here on out. Crawl has become much more accessible to new players over the last few years. The learning curve isn't so steep. Having all of the info about monsters, items, and deities available in game without having to navigate the help menus is probably the best set of changes made.
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Nov 12, 2017 08:40
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Weren't the Tomb changes allegedly part of a larger overall, where removing stair dancing was phase 1, and then phase 2 was never planned out so gently caress it?
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Nov 12, 2017 09:00
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Zaodai posted:Weren't the Tomb changes allegedly part of a larger overall, where removing stair dancing was phase 1, and then phase 2 was never planned out so gently caress it? I don't think the dev responsible ever said it was intended to be part of a larger rework. Now, you might assume it would be a part of a larger rework because its such a lovely change that doesn't address the core issues that made Tomb so miserable. If everyone was resorting to the boring strategy of excessive stairdancing to clear Tomb, that's indicative of a major problem with Tomb itself. The solution there isn't to just remove the stairdancing, but rather to actually address the things that make it so miserable. The repetitive enemies, the unavoidable curses, the insane damage that can only be negated by very specific builds. Of course you could just ignore all that and make the branch harder without actually making it any more fun. That's always an option. A really dumb one, but that's the one they picked. EDIT: To be perfectly clear, I do think removing stairdancing improves the design of Tomb but it doesn't actually make it morefun. ]That's actually a huge deal to me because extended is entirely optional, so if it isn't fun to do then why do it? Well you could do it for the challenge but Tomb's narrow list of enemies that deal unavoidable torment damage means that the number of builds that can handle it is pretty narrow, and removing the safety of stairdancing narrows that list down even more. I'm someone that liked to regularly run 15 rune games and Tomb was always a part I hated, but it was at least a relatively safe clear if you knew what to do. Now its just so deadly on top of still being tedious that I can't muster the energy to do it anymore. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 09:15
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Internet Kraken posted:I don't think the dev responsible ever said it was intended to be part of a larger rework. Now, you might assume it would be a part of a larger rework because its such a lovely change that doesn't address the core issues that made Tomb so miserable. If everyone was resorting to the boring strategy of excessive stairdancing to clear Tomb, that's indicative of a major problem with Tomb itself. The solution there isn't to just remove the stairdancing, but rather to actually address the things that make it so miserable. The repetitive enemies, the unavoidable curses, the insane damage that can only be negated by very specific builds. Oh. I gave them too much credit. 
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Nov 12, 2017 09:30
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So the key to making ghouls fun is taking chei and using weapons. I found a really dumb scimitar around the time I decided I wanted swords over claws, and never looked back it was plenty good to kill 12-16-headed hydrae with. In Slime I found Gong, which combined with chei made Leech a better choice for Vaults/Depths. A Ziggurat provided boots of the assassin, to get some nice distraction stabs (from Haunt/DChan). http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/rchandra/morgue-rchandra-20171112-085859.txt code:
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Nov 12, 2017 10:19
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for as long as the minotaur berserker exists, i will refuse to believe crawl devs actually make changes to even out the game's challenge levels
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Nov 12, 2017 15:46
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cheetah7071 posted:Centaurs should be able to wear two pairs of boots Formicids should be able to double up on gloves.
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Nov 12, 2017 19:07
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Octopodes should be able to wear scarves on their mantles.
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Nov 12, 2017 19:11
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taqueso posted:Octopodes should be able to wear scarves on their mantles. Yeah, I was arguing this since they and Felids are two of the species that really used r-missiles. and now they're hosed out of it completely.
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Nov 12, 2017 19:37
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Ugly John posted:Try the new Gnolls in the current trunk before they get beaten down. They're the thing keeping the game interesting for me at the moment, even if I still suck with them. I'm gonna pop in to say that I'm about to ascend my first one and that they could probably use a stat nerf to balance out the fact that after the midgame-hump you  at all of your options. Like they are basically the only race (other than maybe merfolk) right now that I would suggest starting out a skald with since you can slap on some actual armor without tanking your spellcasting.
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Nov 12, 2017 22:09
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Zore posted:Yeah, I was arguing this since they and Felids are two of the species that really used r-missiles. I was arguing this because it'd be adorable.
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Nov 13, 2017 01:31
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Thalamas posted:Why is this game worth almost 2 billion points? IIRC that was a one time glitch and it's not worth the trouble to go into the database to re-score properly.
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Nov 13, 2017 02:51
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Lawman 0 posted:I'm gonna pop in to say that I'm about to ascend my first one and that they could probably use a stat nerf to balance out the fact that after the midgame-hump you Didn't they already get a stat nerf? Thank you Canine Blues Arooo for returning the crawl thread to its former glory 
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Nov 13, 2017 03:18
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Pacra posted:Didn't they already get a stat nerf? Dunno? Anyways I won that gnoll. code:Initial Gnoll Impressions: They own big league once you get past the mid-game hump of not being able to do poo poo effectively. Play them as hybrids always when you get a chance, would probably never not use a shield with them to be honest. Very much my jam because I love adapting to whatever I find, for example this is the game where I finally figured out that darkness is actually worth learning!
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Nov 13, 2017 04:27
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jon joe posted:I️ have hundreds of hours in this game and still have a below 1% winrate despite having all the knowledge to play optimally, because playing optimally in this game involves a lot of behavior I️ find boring as hell (and Hell). My preferred play style is mashing tab as a fighter of Gozag because I️ find the loot roulette to be very fun. It’s rare that a god makes me break from Gozag. Usk was one of those gods. WJC was another. Maybe what I️ really want is a crawl themed clicker game. Are you my thread twin? Minus the clicker stuff everything you wrote sums me up.
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Nov 13, 2017 15:24
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Well, here we go. I hope this revision goes through, I honestly believe it's one of the most interesting and not too watered down, and it fixes the problems flagged by the devs.
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Nov 13, 2017 18:00
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SteelNeuron posted:Well, here we go. Gave this a read through, and I like the changes! My main issue with the god when I tried it last was Whirlwind tabbing, which seems to be fixed with making it do less damage than a standard attack but turning it into a guaranteed escape/reposition tool (which coincides with Wall Jump going back to free aim but losing the speed of hopping away from everything in sight). Hopefully this version gets merged and sticks! Edit: I also like the Serpent's Lash change to encourage more combat usage over escape usage, but not getting rid of the latter. Floodkiller fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Nov 13, 2017 |
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Nov 13, 2017 20:32
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Edit: Quote is not edit.
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Nov 13, 2017 20:34
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SteelNeuron posted:Well, here we go. That looks promising! I'd love to test it if it goes up on a webtiles server somewhere. Perhaps Hellmonk would like this version as well. Edit: A pretty ridiculous but fun hellcrawl thing I ran into: haste is a permabuff (like all other buff-type spells) that reserves some of your max MP, but it's a level 9 spell. This means you're unlikely to get it until late in the game but that's also when it's really valuable since the Orb run has you running through hell to escape. apple fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Nov 13, 2017 |
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Nov 13, 2017 23:01
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Lawman 0 posted:
I feel the same. Really enjoying the gnoll
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Nov 14, 2017 01:07
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please adopt hellcrawl's spooky skellie race into regular crawl  
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Nov 14, 2017 01:33
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