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Dee Ehm
Apr 10, 2014
Now that the depth of abyssal banishment is determined by Enemy HD or whatever can we make the different floors of the abyss different in threat level, and not just threat concentration?

Like, Abyss 1-2 should still be scarier than the floors the monsters that sent you there are from, of course. But save the special nasties for deeper and darker levels.

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Fhqwhgads
Jul 18, 2003

I AM THE ONLY ONE IN THIS GAME WHO GETS LAID
Trying a DsGl that's not Ru and was planning on going Makleb but my first two mutations were powered by death and claws. Would Makleb's HP on kills be good to stack over PBD or should I consider going unarmed Chei since I'll have regen and get claws 3 eventually?

Edit: A: claws 1, nightstalker 1, powered by death 1, sturdy frame 1 so far :ohdear:

Fhqwhgads fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Jan 21, 2016

SirSamVimes
Jul 21, 2008

~* Challenge *~


Mystery Prize posted:

The Abyss is such a stupid loving mechanic. Play as carefully as you want and the game can still decide to poo poo on you by throwing an orc with a dagger of distortion at you.

It's an instant death sentence early-mid game unless you get REALLY lucky and find a portal out, and having a random chance of just losing your run to a single successful banishment spell/distortion brand hit seems really terrible to me.

Why can Abyss:1 have Wretched Stars, and T1-2 demons? Like, c'mon now.

If you get in melee range of an orc with a distort dagger you aren't playing carefully.

Dee Ehm
Apr 10, 2014

SirSamVimes posted:

If you get in melee range of an orc with a distort dagger you aren't playing carefully.

This is a joke right? I turn the corner into an orc club to the face all the time.

Dee Ehm
Apr 10, 2014

Fhqwhgads posted:

Trying a DsGl that's not Ru and was planning on going Makleb but my first two mutations were powered by death and claws. Would Makleb's HP on kills be good to stack over PBD or should I consider going unarmed Chei since I'll have regen and get claws 3 eventually?

Edit: A: claws 1, nightstalker 1, powered by death 1, sturdy frame 1 so far :ohdear:

Qazlal + Powered By Death Demonspawn is really fun, IMO. You get a great invo aptitude, and plenty of dudes to kill to get a huge regen stack going.

Those are some great muts though, pretty much any god will work. Nightstalker and Powered By Death are pretty much the two best tier 2 muts, claws are great, sturdy frame is great.

Zarick
Dec 28, 2004

Dee Ehm posted:

This is a joke right? I turn the corner into an orc club to the face all the time.

The frequency of "I turned a corner and got hit by an enemy with a distortion weapon and banished on that first hit" has to be so low it's pretty much negligible. Most people who get banished by them I'll wager fight it out in melee despite knowing better.

Fhqwhgads
Jul 18, 2003

I AM THE ONLY ONE IN THIS GAME WHO GETS LAID
I didn't think about doing another Quaz run. Claws and Clouds could be fun, and with this set of muts I might try extended this time if I survive.

Zarick posted:

The frequency of "I turned a corner and got hit by an enemy with a distortion weapon and banished on that first hit" has to be so low it's pretty much negligible. Most people who get banished by them I'll wager fight it out in melee despite knowing better.

It's much more common for me to turn a corner and take a faceful of giant rock from cyclopes, killing me instantly.

Not My Leg
Nov 6, 2002

AYN RAND AKBAR!

Zarick posted:

The frequency of "I turned a corner and got hit by an enemy with a distortion weapon and banished on that first hit" has to be so low it's pretty much negligible. Most people who get banished by them I'll wager fight it out in melee despite knowing better.

I'd guess that most aren't "he has distortion, but I'll chance it" so much as they are *Tab Tab Tab Tab* "what the gently caress!" Because even with the information available I don't pay enough attention to weapon brands.

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh

Zarick posted:

The frequency of "I turned a corner and got hit by an enemy with a distortion weapon and banished on that first hit" has to be so low it's pretty much negligible. Most people who get banished by them I'll wager fight it out in melee despite knowing better.
or just being too lazy to hit x and check weapons

PleasingFungus
Oct 10, 2012
idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off
Let's be fair: an optional force_more when a distortion weapon comes into view would be nice. (Sort of tricky technically, though.)

apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Fhqwhgads posted:

It's much more common for me to turn a corner and take a faceful of giant rock from cyclopes, killing me instantly.

Between banishment, paralysis and just being hit in the face really hard, crawl has a surprising amount of ways for you to autoexplore into instadeaths (or near insta-deaths). The odds are still small, like I've only had like 2-3 deaths like that in all of my time playing crawl, but I'd be surprised if any regular player hasn't run into that at some point.

As far as distortion stuff goes, it's not hard at all to keep an eye out for it during the early game, but maybe the UI could be improved a bit to alert the player about it with an additional message that prevents tabbing further (or make it an RC file option; if it is already then it should be enabled by default). edit: PF beat me to it :v:

apple fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jan 21, 2016

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging
Yeah, "it's fairly unlikely for this known random fuckover to happen" is kind of a bad argument when the discussion centres on the fact that the random fuckover is, in actuality, a random fuckover :confused:

Zarick
Dec 28, 2004

In a game that has random elements, getting randomly hosed over is going to happen sometimes. As someone mentioned, turning a corner into a cyclops throwing a boulder at you is a random fuckover, that doesn't mean cyclopes throwing boulders is bad design. If a game has random elements and bad things, sometimes bad things will happen randomly.

Admittedly, getting Abyssed early game does kinda suck but it's rare, can sometimes be avoided, and can sometimes be escaped, just like a lot of out of depth things you can run into.

resistentialism
Aug 13, 2007

A piddle of xp in stealth can keep you much safer from being obliterated in the first turn you see something, even if it's not good enough to get you to stab range. You also have to be paying attention, though, and notice when you need to walk away without trying your luck.

vOv
Feb 8, 2014

Autoexploring into lovely things feels so much worse than manually exploring into lovely things, even if it's something like a Zot trap that you would've run into anyway.

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging

Zarick posted:

In a game that has random elements, getting randomly hosed over is going to happen sometimes. As someone mentioned, turning a corner into a cyclops throwing a boulder at you is a random fuckover, that doesn't mean cyclopes throwing boulders is bad design. If a game has random elements and bad things, sometimes bad things will happen randomly.

Admittedly, getting Abyssed early game does kinda suck but it's rare, can sometimes be avoided, and can sometimes be escaped, just like a lot of out of depth things you can run into.

As far as I'm aware, there is no skill that raises MR, as opposed to the skills that raise AC, EV, and health. Autoexploring into an early boulder and dying sucks but at least you can kind of think, "well, maybe I should have invested my XP differently." Autoexploring (or teleport trapping, or falling down a shaft, etc) into an early banisher and getting Abyssed is something you sometimes can't do a drat thing about, and that's Bad, and I think we should maybe have a conversation about tweaking that a tiny bit :shrug:

Mystery Prize
Nov 7, 2010

Angry Diplomat posted:

As far as I'm aware, there is no skill that raises MR, as opposed to the skills that raise AC, EV, and health. Autoexploring into an early boulder and dying sucks but at least you can kind of think, "well, maybe I should have invested my XP differently." Autoexploring (or teleport trapping, or falling down a shaft, etc) into an early banisher and getting Abyssed is something you sometimes can't do a drat thing about, and that's Bad, and I think we should maybe have a conversation about tweaking that a tiny bit :shrug:

Also, as far as I am aware, the distortion brand hit banish doesn't check MR. I had MR+++ when the Orc tagged me with it.

PleasingFungus
Oct 10, 2012
idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off
there's a reasonable discussion to be had about the pros and cons of banishment's current design, but centering the discussion around what everyone acknowledges as an extremely rare corner case doesn't seem very useful, to me.

Mystery Prize posted:

Also, as far as I am aware, the distortion brand hit banish doesn't check MR.

correct. (but it does check ev and sh, of course :) )

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging
The extremely rare corner case is experienced at least once by a good number of players and is disproportionately frustrating and unfair, and eliminating it is a good starting point for getting accurate feedback from the playerbase re: making the rest of the Abyss Experience consistently fun and challenging :colbert:

Mr. Vile
Nov 25, 2009

And, where there is treasure, there will be Air Pirates.
Would it be possible to add a one turn grace period where an enemy can't act when you first come into view of them? Seems like that would prevent all the "turn a corner, instant death" happening. Makes sense from a thematic point of view as well, they don't know you're wandering around the dungeon and they're going to be surprised when they first see you. Once an enemy has seen you once you're fair game even after losing them and them finding you again, of course. That at least gives you a chance to be cautious if you know Erlocha is lurking around a floor somewhere.

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging
That would impact the game's balance quite a bit, especially for ranged characters and blasty casters. Assuming I'm interpreting your suggestion right.

Anyway, raising your Stealth a large amount yields a somewhat similar result some of the time :v:

Darox
Nov 10, 2012


I want to complain about Kiku, aka the God I am frequently disappointed by but still worship regularly. Specifically, his first two book gifts. I hate how random they are. The first book isn't that bad, since sublimation & corpse rot are guaranteed, but the split between pain/skeleton and regen/vampirism is a little annoying. The real offender is the second book though. Dispel Undead and four random spells pulled from a huge list of wildly variable necromancy spells. Each type of potential Kiku worshipper will have very different desires for their spell set. Worse, some of those spells overlap in function; If you get animate dead and simulacrum you're going to be disappointed. It'd be nice if animate dead was added as a default, giving the book 6 spells. It'd also be nice if 'only good in zigs' corpse armour was removed from the pool. (e: It would also be nice if it considered spells you have already found. Wasting one of your giftbook slots on something you already have is just frustrating)
I still worship Kiku because the final reward is fixed & good, their punishment isn't too bad, and the first book usually has at least one useful spell, but man does it suck to find out your gifts are filled with useless spells instead of stuff you need. Other gods obviously have random elements as well, Vehumet might never give you chain lightning or Trog might be stingy with the executioner axes, but Vehumets gifts are all super focused (Force Lance is not Fireball but they are both damage spells) and the other gods effectively have infinite rerolls, so this is a pretty Kiku specific problem.


On a slightly related note I think the change to undead summons was lame. It'd be much cooler and keeping with the original feel of undead summons if you went with something similar to summoning limits. "You can only sustain 3 permanent minions with this spell" type deal. If you exceed the limit the weakest skeletons crumble quickly, and this way you can make spell power meaningful, by increasing the minion cap and/or the duration of excess minions.

PleasingFungus posted:

Let's be fair: an optional force_more when a distortion weapon comes into view would be nice. (Sort of tricky technically, though.)

You can almost get there by forcing more on the message "of distortion" but that doesn't help if you first encounter the hypothetical DistOrc in a pack, since it will just say 'x orcs come into view' without listing their gear.

Darox fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jan 21, 2016

apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders
It might be a little complex to implement correctly, but how about giving enemies an "alert" flag that is flipped when you encounter them for the first time? It would be something like this:
  • Enemies are all not alert by default
  • If you are detected by an enemy, alertness flag is raised
  • Once this occurs the flag is permanent.
  • Raising this flag causes the enemy to be "startled" and take no immediate action upon, but they will gain energy for their next actions proportional to the amount of time you spent traveling to that tile leading to the encounter (or the amount of auts you spent performing some action while the monster wandered into LOS).

Yeah this would still affect game balance, but I'm not worried about the monster side, I'm more worried about conveying this effect to the player since stuff like double turns are meant to be used to break stalemates in stairdancing and that kinda stuff. Using energy like this means the player would need to know about this somehow since being smacked twice by an ogre because you turned around a corner and poked at him expecting 1 hit sounds disastrous in the early game.

Alternatively, monsters could just get something else in return that offsets the grace period but is either: 1. easy to convey to the player 2. doesn't need to be conveyed to the player.

Implementing some form of this would eliminate almost all form of auto-explore deaths, the only exceptions would be shafts but I'm not convinced those need changing anyway.

Fhqwhgads
Jul 18, 2003

I AM THE ONLY ONE IN THIS GAME WHO GETS LAID
I think a lot of this sounds like engineering a bomb to kill a gnat. Turn-corner distortions or boulders to the face aren't a common threat. And inattentiveness (I think weapons of distortion are already colored red in the text on webtiles so there's already a visual warning but most people otab right through it) shouldn't be met with gameplay changes, really.

apple
May 18, 2003

Jose in the club wearing orange suspenders

Fhqwhgads posted:

I think a lot of this sounds like engineering a bomb to kill a gnat. Turn-corner distortions or boulders to the face aren't a common threat. And inattentiveness (I think weapons of distortion are already colored red in the text on webtiles so there's already a visual warning but most people otab right through it) shouldn't be met with gameplay changes, really.

Eh, I think as long as the end result in gameplay is minor enough, doing some slightly technical work in the background to prevent deaths no one wants in the game seems worthwhile. I'm not saying my suggestion would achieve that, but I'd love for auto-explore deaths to be removed at some point.

As far as distortion, force_more for distortion in the RC file would be a UI change and that seems ideal to me, tbh.

Floodkiller
May 31, 2011

As frustrating and Nethackish a delayed death spell/effect is (especially when you aren't given time to respond), the reason why banishment is probably not in the plans to be changed is because most of the solutions to it either severely nerf the mechanic to the point it no longer matters anywhere (instead of just the point in the game where it is problematic) or cause more confusion than the current mechanic. I mean, all you have to do is compare it to something similar, like Malmutate, and...

Never mind, nerf it into the ground and burn it alive in a pit of agony.

Social Studies 3rd Period
Oct 31, 2012

THUNDERDOME LOSER



Why not just give the monster banishment spell a one turn charge? That way you have at least a chance to react in some way. (And, just like if you don't notice a monster carrying a distortion weapon, it's on you for not noticing them starting to cast distortion, I guess?)

Not My Leg
Nov 6, 2002

AYN RAND AKBAR!

C7ty1 posted:

Why not just give the monster banishment spell a one turn charge? That way you have at least a chance to react in some way. (And, just like if you don't notice a monster carrying a distortion weapon, it's on you for not noticing them starting to cast distortion, I guess?)

I don't think explore into banishment (or anything else) is actually a problem, but if it is, just make banishment not castable on the first turn a monster comes into view. That would solve any perceived problem without also radically changing balance by taking away first turn moves altogether.

Also, in more than 1,000 games I'm not sure I can say with certainty that I've ever been autoexplore banished on literally the first turn an enemy came into view.

Superterranean
May 3, 2005

after we lit this one, nothing was ever the same
Or make banishment instead create one or more squares of Clouds Of Banishment, like calcifiying dust? You can escape it with blink or luck with fog or a fan of gales or just by moving immediately, but it's obvious that you are standing in a cloud of poo poo and you need to gtfo.

HATECUBE
Mar 2, 2007

Half of Dracula posted:

I won my first game ever! Believe in him with all your heart, and Okawaru will provide the answers. Throwing is really strong lategame! Nothing feels as good as cracking Ancient Liches in half with javs of returning.

gratz

just got my first win, too. feels good man.

http://pastebin.com/PghXc8mR

code:
 Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.18-a0-1089-gaeddbbb (tiles) character file.
 
1960216 HATE the Skullcrusher (level 27, 153/167 HPs)
             Began as a Gargoyle Berserker on Jan 21, 2016.
             Was an Elder of Trog.
             Escaped with the Orb
             ... and 3 runes!
             
             The game lasted 03:06:33 (54685 turns).
 
HATE the Skullcrusher (Gargoyle Berserker)         Turns: 54685, Time: 03:06:33
 
Health: 153/167    AC: 64    Str: 39    XL:     27
Magic:  23/23      EV: 28    Int: 12    God:    Trog [****..]
Gold:   7459       SH: 39    Dex: 20    Spells: 0 memorised, 26 levels left
 
rFire  + + +      SeeInvis .    n - +13 eveningstar {vamp, +Fly rC+}
rCold  + + +      Gourm    .    t - +15 Maxwell's patent armour {-Cast -Tele rElec MR+ rCorr}
rNeg   + . .      Faith    .    p - +8 large shield
rPois  8          Spirit   .    W - +3 hat of the Maze {rPois MP+9}
rElec  +          Dismiss  .    b - +2 cloak {rC+}
rCorr  +          Reflect  +    V - +2 pair of gloves of Yredelemnul's Outrage {Str+2 Dex+4}
SustAt +          Harm     .    T - +0 pair of boots "Poocsiul" {rC++}
MR     +++..      Rnd*Rage +    A - amulet "Forget-Me-Not" {Reflect +Fly rPois rF+++ Slay-3 SH+3}
Stlth  .......... NoTele   +    N - ring of Ejoimoics {+Fly rF+++ MP-9 Int+3}
                  NoCast   +    P - ring of Grontol {SustAt rElec Dex+5 Slay+3}
 
@: mighty, agile, resistant, flying, very slightly contaminated, hasted,
invisible, very quick, extremely resistant to hostile enchantments, extremely
unstealthy
A: big wings, berserk 1, blurry vision 1, clumsy 2, deformed body, deterioration
1, frail 1, negative energy resistance 1, electricity resistance, unbreathing,
petrification resistance, no device heal 1, rot immunity, subdued magic 1, AC
+20
a: Stop Flying, Berserk, Trog's Hand, Brothers in Arms, Burn Spellbooks,
Renounce Religion
0: Orb of Zot
}: 3/15 runes: decaying, serpentine, silver
 
 
You escaped.
You worshipped Trog.

Can Of Worms
Sep 4, 2011

That's not how the Triangle Attack works...
Help, I'm dying of laughter
code:
A beastly little devil appears in a puff of flame.
Sigmund zaps a wand.
Your hound evaporates and reforms as a boggart!
Casting: Call Imp
Confirm with . or Enter, or press ? or * to list all spells.
A beastly little devil appears in a puff of flame.
Your boggart casts a spell.
Your orc warrior hits Sigmund with a trident!
Your orc closely misses Sigmund.
Your crimson imp blinks!
Your boggart gestures wildly while chanting.
Your boggart blinks!
Sigmund zaps a wand.
Your orc warrior evaporates and reforms as a steam dragon!
Your crimson imp blinks!
Your orc hits Sigmund but does no damage.
Sigmund zaps a wand.
Your orc evaporates and reforms as a hobgoblin!

heard u like girls
Mar 25, 2013

Imo make the first Distortion hit a guaranteed blink.

Superterranean posted:

Or make banishment instead create one or more squares of Clouds Of Banishment, like calcifiying dust? You can escape it with blink or luck with fog or a fan of gales or just by moving immediately, but it's obvious that you are standing in a cloud of poo poo and you need to gtfo.

Fan of Gales blowing banishment clouds on your enemies LOL that sounds ridiculous i like it

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Darox posted:

On a slightly related note I think the change to undead summons was lame. It'd be much cooler and keeping with the original feel of undead summons if you went with something similar to summoning limits. "You can only sustain 3 permanent minions with this spell" type deal. If you exceed the limit the weakest skeletons crumble quickly, and this way you can make spell power meaningful, by increasing the minion cap and/or the duration of excess minions.

I like this.

Mystery Prize
Nov 7, 2010
Is the "Your movements are slightly less encumbered by armor" Demonspawn mutation a Tier 3 or Tier 2? I swear it's a T2, but that would mean I would have 3 T2's (along with Spines and Powered by Death)

Sage Grimm posted:

If it's just -2 encumbrance I think that's only a Tier 1.
It's -2, -4, -6, 3 levels.

rchandra posted:

It sounds like a body/scales type to me.
Ah, I hadn't thought of that. Makes sense.

Mystery Prize fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jan 22, 2016

Sage Grimm
Feb 18, 2013

Let's go explorin' little dude!
If it's just -2 encumbrance I think that's only a Tier 1.

rchandra
Apr 30, 2013


Mystery Prize posted:

Is the "Your movements are slightly less encumbered by armor" Demonspawn mutation a Tier 3 or Tier 2? I swear it's a T2, but that would mean I would have 3 T2's (along with Spines and Powered by Death)

It sounds like a body/scales type to me.

World Famous W
May 25, 2007

BAAAAAAAAAAAA

Mystery Prize posted:

Is the "Your movements are slightly less encumbered by armor" Demonspawn mutation a Tier 3 or Tier 2? I swear it's a T2, but that would mean I would have 3 T2's (along with Spines and Powered by Death)
Ahh man, I got that once as a kobold with a benefit mutation a good minute ago. Has it been moved to DS only mutation lists? I'm looking through the commits but not finding a good search term to find out.

Mystery Prize
Nov 7, 2010

World Famous W posted:

Ahh man, I got that once as a kobold with a benefit mutation a good minute ago. Has it been moved to DS only mutation lists? I'm looking through the commits but not finding a good search term to find out.

Nope, it's not a demonspawn-specific mutation; they can get it as one, though.

dpeg
Jul 18, 2008
As far as I see it, you should never go to SA to look out for useful feedback or even interesting ideas; I certainly don't

megane posted:

My favorite Charms suggestion was to remove the magic school altogether and distribute the effects to items / gods / other schools / whatever. Some Charms spells are fine, like Battlesphere; it could just be Conj/Summ with no other changes. But others are weird pseudospells that you cast out of combat and want to have on all the time, like Regen or rMsl. Even ignoring the need to recast them, they're super weird; spell power is all but meaningless for most of them, half of them are dull "+X AC" kinda things, and in many cases knowing the spell is just like having an infinite stack of some consumable. They'd work better as equipment or consumables, in my opinion. In fact, they already do: amulets of Regen, potions of haste, the unrand amulet that gives you rMsl, etc. are all really cool items that are really just Charms You Don't Have to Cast. Just make more of those kind of thing and dump the idea of buff spells completely.
This is the most solid description for Charms I've seen. Spells are much harder to get right than consumables, so I definitely see where Megane is coming from.

As a rule of thumb, spells that are *not* about battle situations should carefully explain their existence. Many fall flat. Thankfully, stuff like Dig and Alter Self and divinations is removed, but there are some problematic ones still around.

I think it is possible to keep/make enough Skald-type spells, and I think every single spell such as Regeneration could be reworked into a works-only-in-combat type. But easier to go to items and consumables.

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Unimpressed
Feb 13, 2013

On the (eternal) subject of unavoidable deaths. Just turned a corner, ran into bloody Sigmund two squares away. Take a step away from him, get confused, try to step away from him, die...

On another note, does anyone have a short outline of how they get a TeCj off the ground?

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