Crawl .20: Home of the Frog Dog

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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

cheetah7071 posted:

Sometimes you get shafted for multiple floors early enough in the game you don't have any escape options, adjacent to an ice beast with multiple other enemies a few squares away in a layout that doesn't even allow luring them to a hallway

Yes, and then you die. This is part of the roguelike staple.

One could conceive a game where such deaths (player dies without blame and fault) cannot happen. I claim such a game would be much worse. It's a fact that the margin for these events in Crawl is pretty low (even if you don't HOM around), and I'd say it's too low: I think the game depth would be higher if the game would try a bit harder, and be somewhat less forgiving. But that's probably a niche opinion.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 22:24

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 17:44

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

Internet Kraken posted:

Games aren't fun just because they are hard; they have to be fair too. A game that is difficult just because its extremely cruel and unfair in its design is gonna be unappealing for a lot of people. I'm sure there's a niche for that kind of stuff but its definitely not a big one.

Crawl is actually pretty drat fair unless you're playing a truly awful combo. Once you get past the first few floors, any death is almost always your fault. The game can be very difficult with the situations it creates but you usually have the tools to either deal with those situations or avoid them. Its really frustrating to die past the early game, but I vastly prefer losing a win streak to a mistake I know was my fault versus a D:1 adder. The former means there is room for me to improve my play and not have that happen again. The latter is just a middle finger with nothing to be learned from it.

Nowhere did I imply that Crawl should dish out "haha, you're dead" nillywilly.

My point is that some amount of unavoidable deaths can be actually healthy. Let's look at the extreme case: the game is designed so that every death comes from a player error. Because there's no human game master, but just source code, there has to be a lot of leeway in the player's favour. (I think this argument is spelled out in the philosophy section of the manual.) Now if the game is not as strict, and random situations can lead to death, than that can be (a) exciting and (b) gives players an opportunity to excel. To take a drastic example: if there were more shafts, and they could shaft you deeper, then that would lead to more deaths (including a portion of unavoidable deaths), but better players would get out of this more often. Whether to do this or not --in other words, would this be fun?-- is a subjective decision. A game could work either way, there is no objective, official definition of fun.
Myself, I don't mind knowing in advance that the game probably won't be won, and I like dying to Oh poo poo moments or mastering them, so I have a penchant for a more risky Crawl.

By the way, this point is mentioned in the Pas-de-FAQ, but there's no answer. As far as I see it, how far to go on the safety/risk scale is at the discretion of the/any current devteam.

dpeg fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Dec 23, 2016

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 22:50

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

brainwrinkle posted:

Wizards are inspired by Lord of the Rings and overlap with Tengu. Thus they must be cut.

This is impeccable logic. I'll do what I can.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2016 15:48

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

tweet my meat posted:

I wish beogh granted you an ability to more command your orcs a bit more precisely. Stuff like recalling a specific orc or designating an area for your orcs to form up inside would be insanely helpful. It can be done manually, but it's a really annoying and tedious process.

The Beogh ally interaction can definitely be improved. There's one rule: no commands to individual orcs!

That sounds like the most natural solution but it will open the gates of imperial micromanagement. (I know that currently you can resort to a lot of micromanagement to achieve close results, but that's not the same as enabling said micromanagement through the game UI.) We have to be smarter than that.

Beogh is sort of my invention (shared with jpeg), and I feel responsible. We are definitely interested in ideas for how to improve the orcish experience: if you can think of some useful global commands/stances/whatever, please tell us. (A note on the gifts: yes, these are individual commands, but by design they're rare. That's fine; what I can't have is stuff like "go there", "stand here" for single orcs.)

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 00:52

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

tweet my meat posted:

Would recalling individual orcs fall under that single orc command umbrella? A lot of times I've been herding my pack near stairs trying to get just one orc with me to train it up. The targeted recall would be the one thing that would streamline the play the most I think.

I was aware of players trying to reduce the orc army to around five. I think specifiying that number could be good. Of course, even if you say "one", that's not the same as what you want here. I need to think about the "this orc only" thing.

Darox posted:

One thing I'd really like from allied commands is a way to change their aggression. Currently they seek out enemies when you first summon them or after someone makes an attack, but I'd really like it if you could give orders to be defensive or aggressive. When defensive they would stick around you and only attack enemies in range, and while aggressive they would always seek out enemies in los immediately, with a neutral command to preserve current behavior. Having those toggled commands would save a lot of hassle with attack and retreat commands.

Sounds good to me, I'll bring it up!

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 01:16

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

Mr. Lobe posted:

Does anyone feel like they've ever lost because they overused their consumables? Because I feel like every death I've ever had in this game has, in one way or another, been a consequence of me not using the resources I had and taking unwarranted gambles because of stinginess.

Yes, that exists, but it's much more rare. For me, it only comes up on weak combos (only ones I like to play these days). But the general advice should always be: Use your stuff! Live now, die later

# ¿ Jan 3, 2017 22:12

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

Development is not focused around tournaments or top players. It's even unclear to me how people arrive at this conclusion, but it's just not true.

HE removal: this is not about power. If we would have thought that HE is too weak or too strong, then the answer would be to buff or nerf, respectively. (If we would have cared at all, because species aren't intended to be equal in power.)
Instead, this is about differentiation. Hold on, for you may strongly disagree: [i[we[/i] think that HE is not different enough from neighbouring species. If you look over the history of DCSS, you will see that the standards for "is varied enough" have been risen increasing all the time.
Finally, there are two new species tested out right now: frogs and dogs. You're totally entitled to mourn your HE and feel that froggies and doggies are at best a cynical replacement, but try to look at it with the eyes of new players: with which set of species will they get more out of the game?
About pull request to add HE back: don't do it, please. Nothing will happen, and it'll just lead to wasted effort and further frustration.

Singularity: you know this psychological effect how it feels much worse if you find 10$ on the street and have to part with 5$ rather than just finding 5$? In a sense, Singularity has never existed. It was tried out, and found to be absolutely, unrepairably overpowered. For most things removed, you could (and people do) say: "why not think a bit harder about how to replace it?" That's true, but it is hard. So if you really think that Singularity should be a Crawl spell, make ideas how to improve it. This has happened., and be persistent. You may even have to make a thread on the tavern or something to keep the idea alive.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 15:40

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

WEEDCAT posted:

I had an idea for Demigods a while back that might make them more interesting to the average player, admittedly this is just a concept and I haven't examined what it would take to balance and it will be complicated with so many gods in the pantheon.

Introduce the unique racial ability to Denounce an established god. Destroying the god's altar gives a themed power at the cost of suffering the god's wrath. I think the wrath should be permanent and the power should grow a little each time it hits and is survived but there might be a better way to handle this.

Since meaningful choice is a theme of the development process this could be a way to introduce some to Demigods, also it would be badass to defy a bunch of gods and use your own power to survive their combined wrath (if you are allowed to Denounce more than one god, haha.)

I absolutely love this idea, and it's something I wanted for Lugonu for a long time. In fact, there was an actual code branch for this, but my design was too clumsy. (In the old system, players could gain Lugonu piety by desecrating altars. But there are too many altars for this to be fun, a restriction is needed. I have a new concept, of course...)

The bits about permanent wraths applies as in your proposal. I hope to live to see altar desecration in Crawl, what's a video game without it?!

dpeg fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jan 8, 2017

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 18:11

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

Zarick posted:

This is kind of a bad analogy. Keeping with your example, we found $10 and had to part with $10. Singularity was added and then removed totally.

As I see it, we did get something out of it, because we learned how a high level Tloc spell cannot work. I admit that's a pretty peculiar way to look at it. Perhaps you got my point anyway: trying something out and then removing it (Singularity, Pakellas, Djinn) seems to hurt a lot. I can relate, but on the other hand, how should we try things then?

Internet Kraken posted:

Okay, this is totally bullshit.

There's a number of ways how to try to transport ideas. Hint: your approach is dysfunctional. Also, why do you use the adverb "totally", isn't "bullshit" a noun?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 18:21

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

Alright, I am sorry about missing the Singular suggestions. I guess I've been relying on Tavern for this kind of feedback (no offense to you folks, that's what GDD --the design tavern subforum-- was intended to be about), and neglected it here. It's also noteworthy that Tavern has a different set of obsessions compared to this place

Heitsinn: I think I see what you mean about species variance. Perhaps we've been doing this for so long that our standards don't connect to the player base anymore? On the other hand, I think there *is* more value (replayability or whatever) in having DE+Op over DE+HE, say. As far as gimmicks go, I have the feeling that gimmicks of DS and Op are intuitive and popular. Sure, there's a bunch of species trying hard to push the envelope, but who wouldn't?

I hope that the Council God makes it in. The latest incarnation is a lot of fun, try it on CBRO! If we're lucky, 0.20 has one more god and two new species (so a net gain), and Crawl keeps getting fatter, like roguelikes do.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 13:40

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

I am very much interested in actual feedback on the dynamical monsters thing. ("actual" = from CBRO games, not from hypothesising how bad it'll be)

The effect itself is very straightforward, to make coding and testing easy: bonus to movement speed, and various monster numbers increased. NO additional xp, of course, and the effect will not time out.

This is intended to trigger decisions, and for this to work, characters will have to bite it. For the good cause. There are more elaborate concepts (not by me), but that's somehow a stepping stone.

And as usual: if you do not lure, because you're cool and/or a newb, you won't even notice the change

(That was mostly a joke.)

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 01:23

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

Speleothing posted:

I guess that's why we're losing the good wands, HEs, and Ogre M&F apts ACD have to deal with dpeg - because the good dev left.

I can never tell if this is supposedly funny. Whatever, I hate you too.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 01:45

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

Internet Kraken posted:

What the gently caress is being accomplished with this

You do realize luring is done by weaker characters that can't take head on fights yet? Are you saying people should never play anything outside of power combos that can just steamroll everything they run into right away? Why on earth is luring a problem in the first place?

What kind of loving answers do you expect by loving around like this? Am I responsible for your lack of intelligence, creativity and manners? HELL NO!

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 01:46

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

redneck nazgul posted:

So if you're going to give monsters a buff to movement speed and other non-XP numbers, how are you determining that? Is it just movement or is there a "Has moved X spaces without taking Y damage" component?

It's a chance depending on time spent seeing you. There are a whole lot parameters, of course: when to start the timer, the chance, the actual effect, and then some more.

quote:

Let's say I play a SpVM: I'm going to kite things because A: poison and B: I'm faster than they are. If they're getting faster and tougher as I kite them, it's completely counterproductive for me to use my race/starting spells to my advantage.

This is to say nothing of bats/phantoms/imps/unseen horrors whose attack pattern is a mixture of movement towards/away from the player.

Like I said, this discussion is a lot more productive with actual feedback at hand, for example because it makes a difference whether the monster speed boost happens on 1%, 10% or 90% attempts. And for a spriggans, whether monsters get a bit faster or a lot faster.

The branch is a proof of concept. If this goes anywhere, then, like any bigger change, it will cause follow-up changes.

I guess I should advertise the whole thing completely differently: Naga buff! Chei buff!!

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 02:18

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

IronicDongz posted:

they asked a question dude. it's not really clear what the answer is because luring is not a "problem" to 99% of the people playing this game
lure and stairdance like a motherfucker, cross fingers whenever fighting tarantulas next to other monsters

They asked two rhethorical questions and added a statement. They started with "What the gently caress is accomplished with this" which does not read like a question to me. Perhaps I've been living for too long in academia and/or polite society, but if you want answers, try to pose questions.

If "luring is not a "problem"", how does the change hurt? We are the 99%? On a scale of 1-10, how willing are players to try out new things? How willing to bash attempts?

The dpeg & SA incompatibility: (1) juvenile jerks vs old fart? (2) US vs Germany? (3) highschool vs highschool teacher? Whatever it is, communication with you guys sure is hard.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 02:35

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

LordSloth: Thanks for the fish! It could've been fun while it lasted.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 10:22

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

Whaleporn posted:

Make some of them 'bad with benefits' like blurry vision perhaps making you invisible for a short period after reading a scroll.

Double-edged mutations can indeed by interesting. I'll try to collect ideas.

However, the real question, in my opinion is: does mutation X affect how you play? From this point of view, strictly good mutations are actually worse than strictly bad mutations. I've seen Lemuel (the guy with the many vaults) play Zot:5 with berserkitis, and it was very interesting and different. (He won.) Having yet another AC+2 or resistance on the A-screen matters less.

I realise there's a big divide about what's "fun". To me, it's about decisions (rather than plain character power, I guess?). I hope that the current changes to the mutating potions makes for more interesting decisions, and also more interesting mutation sets. We'll have to see.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 01:18

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

Social Studies 3rd Period posted:

Can I get your honest thought re: teleportitis?

Like, I can more or less work around a lot/most other bad muts. But teleportitis at least feels like a gently caress you, especially if it's in a 'poo poo, what was I supposed to do there?' situation. (And I hate saying 'there was nothing I could have done!!')

Honestly, personally, I just hate Teleportitis, I think.

First, teleportitis has an annoying interface price because whenever it kicks in, you have to re-focus. (This is also true for scrolls of teleportation, but there it's less bad, because you initiated them.) I don't mind so much the danger (see below), but I really dread having to play slower because of this. At least, the recentish change to teleportitis (only carry out the teleportation if you land next to monsters) has improved the interface a little bit.

About the danger: yes, teleportitis is hell on branch ends. I am probably less annoyed than you, but I care little about players deaths (including my own). In other places, I found it to be more annoying than harmful.

But anyway, an actual idea. The core concept (you suddenly get thrown into a dangerous situation) is something I like. After all, I also suggested to import shafts from Nethack

I once proposed to make the mutation slightly less harsh by announcing the teleport (as if you read a scroll). It is not clear how interesting this would be, because in most cases it'll be obvious whether you want to read a scroll to cancel it. But that way you have a tax on a very limited consumable. Before axing the mutation, I'd like to try that out. By the way, this would also somewhat address the interface bit.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 01:59

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

Panic! at Nabisco posted:

Since we have a couple devs in here, I'd like to ask: why were transmuters reworked? I'm not angry or anything, I'm just curious, because they're very different from how they once were. If the answer is that status effect clouds were way too powerful (and they were), now that clouds work differently re: LoS, is there any chance we could see them coming back? I really liked the idea of distilling status potions from corpses and flinging them at enemies as my main offense.

The combo of Fulsome Distillation + Evaporate was really cool. Unfortunately, it was also broken: you could get Mephitic Cloud equivalents for much cheaper. (And MC is a great spell by itself.) It would also be broken in 0.19.

In the end, having unlimited, xp-cheap bombs is always problematic. I think the effect could be saved, but a god would work much better than spells. This wouldn't help your old-school Transmuters, of course, who were defined by having FD+E available very early.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 03:01

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

Panic! at Nabisco posted:

I wouldn't mind at all if it were a higher level effect, or a god thing; it was very much playstyle-defining, so I could totally go for either of those. "How I play prior to temple" isn't a tremendously big issue for me anymore. Modern transmuters would work super well with it as a god effect, actually. Thanks for the response, by the way!

e: Man I am actually very into it as a god effect, a god of alchemy with some various effects on potions and a cheap invocation that let you turn them into bombs. Maybe potion reversal.

Hey, glad you like the idea. Hurry up with a cool god concept, the penultimate letter is about to be taken by the council god (I very much hope the god goes into 0.20), so there's only P left. You may not even have to worry about a name

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 03:23

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

Thug Lessons posted:

There are many, many gods that grant the ability to go around limited resource caps. Trog and Oka for unlimited weapon acquirement, Ely for unlimited healing, and Sif for unlimited mana and spell books, to name a few. There's nothing stupid about it conceptually, at least not any more than those gods are stupid.

The main problems, as I understood them (I was involved with neither creation nor removal of the god):

(1) The god's focus was extremely narrow: it boils down to a single skill. It is true that Crawl has other narrow gods (Trog, Vehumet) but they don't come close to Pakellas.

(2) The magic potions. From what I understood, that was just broken.

Now, (2) could easily be dealt with. The god got kicked because nobody had a compelling concept for (1), and that sounds like it'd be a full-fledged redesign anyway. There have been god proposals for "god of rangers", "god of poison magic" and so on all the time. These are not good: ideally, a god is skew to playing styles, so that it does something for a bunch of different characters, instead of being a power boost for one type of build. (Yes, I know that Trog is precisely that. Trog is cool. I like Trog.)

Short answer: yes, removal of the yellow wands makes Pakellas less broken but does nothing about the narrow scope.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 04:09

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

Heithinn Grasida posted:

I'm not sure if dpeg means a single play style, a single character archetype or a single skill on the skill screen. Kiku is focused on a single skill on the skill screen, but is useful to a broad variety of character archetypes and play styles. I never played Pakellas, so I don't how definitive of your play style the god was, but I suspect dpeg's point is that the god pushed you towards a very narrow range of character archetypes. Most characters worshiping Pakellas would end up looking the same, which is presumably not desirable and quite different from the situation with Kiku. Again, I don't know whether or not that's true, I'm just attempting translation.

I meant single play style. Basically what you said.

Gods like Ashenzari or Makhleb are very versatile: you can basically slap them onto any character, and it will work. Gods like Trog and Vehumet are much more narrow, but we're fine with this because bashing things to death or shooting things to death are supposedly fun if you play Crawl. Nemelex and Kikubaaqudgha use single skills, it's true, but N provides a whole buffet of effects and K can be used on many more characters than pure necromancers.

I really feel bad for Grunt -- we should've discussed this beforehand

Anyway, the last batch of gods added is so strong, in my opinion: Ru, Hepliaqlana, Uskayaw, hopefully Ieah Jiao too. "Strong" does not refer to power, but to design and flavour.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 05:17

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

fool_of_sound posted:

To the devs: do you think you could add a little readout to the bottom of armors that says something to the effect of: "At your current skills/stats, you will lose X evasion, Y stealth, and Z accuracy from the encumbrance of this armor. The math behind it is impossible and I hate having to put stuff on to see how it will affect me.

Yes, this is a good idea. I always thought we should have something like this. Not sure about the best style. I considered

code:

Currently: AC 15, EV 12, Stealth: +++++....
With this: AC 22, EV  4, Stealth: ++.......

This doesn't include accuracy (which is important), so that'd need another line. I'll bring this up in ##craw-dev.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2017 03:30

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

Mu. posted:

I haven't played Crawl in about 5 years, but I picked it up again recently.

Hey! You're not forgotten. Welcome back

Hope you enjoy your stay...

quote:

Formicid: I do not think I have been more frustrated in this game than when I played a formicid. I believe they are the worst species in the game. ... Eventually I realised that my mistake was trying to build hybrids while worshiping these extremely bad new Gods, when the truth of course is to lean on your earth aptitude as a pure spellcaster and worship Sif Muna, the best god in the game. ... This species is too hard. The devs don't know what they're doing.

Absolutely! But did they ever know??

I love Fo but I'm a sucker for despair. An excellent addition, in my opinion. I'm sure by "worst" you mean power, not design.

Vs is also pretty cool to play, in my opinion. Currently running one of SteelNeuron's new Council God with one rune, trying to convince people to add it to trunk.

quote:

In all seriousness I am once more hooked on Crawl and even though it is a very different game now than it was Back In My Day I think the vast majority of the changes are positive.

This is all nice and dandy, but SA etiquette demands that you at least notionally complain about removal of either "rMut or HE or Singularity (a spell you've never seen).

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 23:59

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

I love Battlesphere like the next guy, but let me just mention that Conjurers went to town without that spell for years.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2017 04:28

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

Interesting discussions. We once had a more serious attempt at food removal. Ultimately, nothing happened because everyone agreed that something should be done but we never agreed on hard vs soft solution. Soft solution: just remove all food. Hard: only have permafood (this is an attempt to make food an actual clock). Since then, all food changes have been about convenience. I recently suggested (and there's even a pull request by Doesn't) that killing monsters should have a chance to leave a corpse (as now) or else have a chance to produce chunks. This way necromancy use would be unchanged, and the 'c'hop command could be removed. The proposal didn't get traction -- I think there's another food change in the making.

Floodkiller posted:

People call for removing food, identify, and remove curse because the current systems have no teeth. They feel like legacy systems more than interesting mechanics in their current implementations.

Curses in their could be interesting if remove curse was rarer or less powerful (maybe one scroll per piece of equipment). However, it only really exists for non-Ash worshippers in the desperate beginnings of the game where you wield/wear anything for an advantage because you can't spare identifying it.

Remove Curse/Curses- Change negative properties on artifacts to be referred to as curses (if an effect is on-hit, give it a similar on-remove effect in addition , ex. *Confuse gives you confuse for 50-100 turns on removal). Turn the current armor/weapon cursing system into a negative property/curse (*Sticky) that leaves you unable to unequip the item normally. Give magic items (as in blue items, including all jewelery) a chance to generate with a single curse, regardless if the item is negatively or positively enchanted; mundane equipment should never generate with a curse. Amulets/rings with negative unequip effects/generate sticky cursed are given that effect as a curse (maybe mark Faith's as *Holy and add that to the pool that can generate on other items/artifacts without the piety rate bonus).

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.

A few words about the id-minigame: I am against removing it because it does provide choices in the very early game when you have not so many other decisions, such as what to use. The basic tension is between use-id and scroll-id (there's also monster-id, shop-id and emergency use). I am absolutely interested in hearing more ideas about how to add such decisions. My modest contributions were the ability to use id-scrolls on decks (that's moot now, I think) and the wand charges thing (I believe that was a good change).
It's clear that the id-minigame peters out at some point. This is natural because more and more items will be identified. Unless somebody comes up with a really cool idea for how to keep it alive, I like the idea that picking up your first rune identifies stuff.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 23:33

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

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.

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.

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: 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

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

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

fool_of_sound posted:

My first successful 15 runer. After I got an absolutely insane run of benemut plus torment resistance I couldn't help but give it a shot.

---Slime is cool and interesting, but I think the difficulty is a bit too focused on the Acid Blobs. Acid Blobs genuinely make me more nervous than Tier 1 demons, which is a bit odd, and the only other normal slime enemies I really worried about were Shining Eyes. Do you think you could add back the diggable walls after killing the Royal Slime? Racing the monsters for the loot sucks.

Congratulations on the win! Hopefully you finished the exercise mentally unharmed

On Slime: I suggested, and I'll keep suggesting, that the slime rune makes you immune to acidic walls. It's a thematic, localised (only affects one branch) effect. It never got much traction, and it's not really urgent, but I will mention it from time to time.

fool_of_sound posted:

---Tomb was the least fun part of extended, even with negative resist 3 and 50% torment resist. Tomb 2 and 3 are basically just long, tedious exercises in stair dancing followed by (for me) an Immolation scroll bomb. The enemies are interesting and fine overall, but I feel like the layout needs a redesign to make the engaging it fun at all. Having to deal with death curses doesn't help, and just punctuates the stair dancing with frequent rests.

---Hell was actually pretty high-pressure and fun, though hell effects need a rework. Contamination on random proc is dumb, the stat damage/rot effects were mildly frustrating, and damage procs were uninteresting and largely nonthreatening. Overall, I fell that hell effects should have more emphasis on pressuring players in moments of safety, or taking situations that are under control and adding wild elements to them. Seeing a couple of new tier 1/2 demons pop up during a fight was tense and fun.

In more general terms, I'd like to see:
---Less reliance on Torment in extended. Almost all dangerous extended enemies use it, and tools exist to allow them to make use of other threats. MR or elemental resistance stripping, for instance, followed up with Confusion or Petrification.

---I really don't like Malmutation just in concept, but if it's going to stick around, take it off Neqoxec please. They're way too common to have a way of permanently mangling your character. Give them the temporary mutation power that the demonspawn corruptors have instead.

Quite reasonable. I wondered how Tomb would feel if the stairs were locked in some form. Never dared to air this idea but it might the whole thing actually more fun.

I am absolutely fine with wrecking characters through malmutations, and also with crippling mutations, but I agree that nexoqecs need a close look.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2017 17:40

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

I thought it's obvious but I should better have said it: when I speak of locking Tomb staircases, I am aware that followup changes are necessary, such as thinning the monster sets. Anyway, this is just a random thought to make Tomb less obnoxious (even if more deadly) by the guy who already brought the runelock to you.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2017 03:02

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

Serephina posted:

So, uh, does anyone else see the similarity to Sil's combat perks with the new god? Lunge and Whirlwind are basically Sil's Charge and Flanking. I mean I get that there are only so many ways of spicing up meele combat in a RL, but still

Well, axe cleaving was already a direct lift from Brogue.

I don't see a problem here: I am confident that these games do not converge to some roguelike clump, identical in gameplay with just different name tags.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 01:54

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

FulsomFrank posted:

Antmen are pretty fun buddy. Until you get cornered after playing tab-master and realise you have no way to escape.

You can always go down. Just keep shafting!

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 21:09

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

Goffer posted:

Fr: Someone (maybe me at some stage if I figure out all the git protocols) needs to update the summon canine familiar spell in some of the following ways:

1. Make the summon a permanent summon / a stair follower
2. Let it earn experience by killing
3. Make its experience persistent through death/resummoning
4. Cause pain to the player (1dmaxHP/2 of the summon?) each time it dies, so players look after it.
5. Maybe make it appear at the edge of the players vision so it's not useful as a hasty battle summon

It just seems like it's lacking something in its current form. Something to differentiate it from being just another ignored low level summon, it might make the dungeon trip less lonely and gives you something to invest in early/mid game.

This is not spell stuff. Permanent summons are problematic even on gods.

4. is worrisome on its own: do you really want characters to die because they had this summon?

I think there's some untapped potential with summon spells, but they have to be temporary, in my opinion.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2017 04:49

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

Clouds operating out of LOS is, just like summons out of LOS (anyone remembers heteroy's Stone of Earth stunt in the Elf vault?), cool if you discover it yourself. In this case you'll be unhappy if evil devs take if away from you. However, these mechanics lead to suggestions and then to degenerate, but standard gameplay. So they're removed. It's always like this.

So out-of-sight clouds won't come back. (This is one of the "gameplay >>> real life" situations.) The interface could be more clear about this, of course.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2017 17:35

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

fool_of_sound posted:

@the devs: it would be cool if the mutation code was edited to make mutations more likely to level up existing mutations instead of granting new ones. It would give both positive and negative mutations a lot more character imo.

I agree! Mutations climbing up to level 3 more often would be nice, both for good and for bad mutations.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 00:41

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

Kaedric posted:

Petition to have monk background do more with Gozag than let you save 20 gold pieces.

Unless something has changed recently, Monks get to waive the Gozag service fee. Which usually is more than 20$.

(Just tested: still works.)

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 14:29

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

Goodpancakes posted:

You could rework the spell school into something entirely different where this won't happen. I.E. you would need to hit an exp threshold with spellcasting/charms before it's usable at all, (maybe even flexible /threshold is higher or impossible in plate) Not a percent failure.

But if you do this, you break the standard assumptions about spells in Crawl. (Which by the way, is already true for the concept of permant effects with permanent MP costs.)

Some effects are just not meant to be spells. Often, they can be salvaged in other form: consumable, god power, item property -- all of these have been done.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 19:30

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

Nuclearmonkee posted:

But delete Beogh because racisms

What? Who? Why?

If there's ever a dev concensus that a single species god doesn't work anymore, then I'll argue for opening up Beogh. In such a way that at sufficiently high piety, you become an honorary orc. Hopefully that's not necessary, I like my video game racism pure and unbridled. (I don't like players called Niggerkiller, and I really think we should do something about it.)

# ¿ Mar 3, 2017 00:04

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

Heithinn Grasida posted:

My personal, very pessimistic projection for the future of WJC: It will last about two versions before people like minmay convince the dev team with well reasoned, albeit pernicious arguments that it detracts from decision making and doesn't suit Crawl's design.

I hope not!

While I definitely see where minmay is coming from, I believe he falls into his usual trap of overly negative thinking (some negative thinking is generally good). The typical instance goes like this: "feature X has this drawback, so it's not good, so it couldn't ever be good, so let's remove/not implement".

I'll use cleaving because (a) I've just won a BaFi who found and clung to the Obsidian Axe (yay me!) and (b) because it's related to martial arts as combat moves. You could say that cleaving removes choices because of the following reasons: when adjacent to more than one monster, you'll attack all of them anyway; i.e. the choice of who to target is gone. Secondly, you don't want to be adjacent to more than one monster anyway, so you really should play like you don't have cleaving (implying that axes are shoddy because they trade some base damage for the attack move cleaving).
However, that's not a very fair assessment because there are choices that are genuinely new, i.e. only come up on axes: sometimes, you want to reposition so that you have the most important enemies at your side. Sometimes you don't want to attack because some adjacent weakling provides cover. Cleaving itself has minor impact on brand priorities and usefulness of berserk etc. And terrain assessment: there are situations where you cannot prevent being surrounded: these situations are different for an axe user than for users of other weapons.
The verdict --is axe cleaving a good addition-- therefore is more subtle. If we think that cleaving is not quite good enough (design, not power), then we could tweak the rules before resigning to removing the feature. (Note: I suggested to import cleaving from Brogue, and I am very happy with it, although inevitably I see scope for improvement.)

I am saying all of this because the WJC moves may work out similarly. (I guess all this should really go into the relevant tavern thread but I cannot bring myself to do that, and I know that SteelNeuron reads this as well.) My main beef with the current moves is that wall jumping makes escaping so drat easy. It is already very easy in Crawl, and I already hate luring, so unlimited wall jumping does not sound like a move (ha!) to me. Moreover, I don't think that slightly more auts for walljumps is a good idea: very hard to assess for players, and not fun to lose a game because someone got a second attack due to the jump taking one turn + 10%. I believe that walljump should be held in check through a simple rule (some have been mentioned here, or on the tavern), like no jumping when not adjacent toa monster (before and/or after the jump, various design possibilities).

There's also the issue that repeated whirlwinds shouldn't be stronger against a single opponent than plain tabbing. However, these issues can be dealt with through continuous playtesting and design, and that's why I disagree with the minmay conclusion (not with the report itself, though, that's at the very least interesting reading) and hope Heithinn is not right. (For comparison: Pakellas got removed for lack of breadth. WJC and its issues are completely different.)

dpeg fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Mar 6, 2017

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 17:03

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 17:44

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

re: WJC

I think that additional noise depending on the move and body armour type is a good idea. I've played WJC on stabbers and it worked very well, so I wouldn't want to lose that.

Also thought a bit about potential rule changes for walljump. I think the following restriction is the most interesting one: you have to be next to at least one enemy *after* the jump. With this rule, it also makes sense to apply Cool Stuff to the jump. I know that SteelNeuon wants walljump for fleeing purposes, but that's the part of the god I dislike most. Fleeing should be expensive. As in: cost piety. For example, allowing arbitrary walljumps during the Heaven effect would be fine with me.

dpeg fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Mar 8, 2017

# ¿ Mar 8, 2017 18:57

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