6 ms·

Big fan of DCSS, but this doesn't surprise me. After getting a few all rune wins I stopped playing largely because it is so opaque. Even after spending a LOT of

Big fan of DCSS, but this doesn't surprise me. After getting a few all rune wins I stopped playing largely because it is so opaque. Even after spending a LOT of quality time with the (sometimes incorrect) wiki and in-game lookup system, I realized I would never have an intuitive sense of the effects of my choices wrt stats, skilling, weapon and armor choices, and so on. I watched some of the best crawl players in the world play to see how they approached these very common situations and even there I didn't see as much consensus as I hoped to find given common scenarios. Part of the joy of being human is understanding systems and working with them efficiently to achieve goals. Good luck doing that with crawl. You can sort of achieve this by dumping a lot of time and building up intuition via experience, but you still won't be able to say why you chose this over that for all your choices. I found myself getting into scenarios, wondering, which choice is better along one particular dimension? STR vs DEX? This armor vs that? What are the trade-offs? The only real way to find that out would be to dump the game at its current state and then simulate both choices against a suite of enemies to see how it plays out at least in 1v1 situations, never mind when handling many enemies. It's frustrating playing a game with so many numbers yet the output of the systems they feed into are so opaque. It's really unfortunate because although it already feels like a gem of a game, it could be soo much better if the interplay of the various combat / character systems wasn't so ridiculously complected. I would love to see some of the sensibilities of the Factorio team applied to crawl's UI and underlying combat/character systems.

eeegnu 5y ago
It's worth noting that at least in recent versions, the in game formulas have been getting simplified. For instance armor used to give you both AC and GDR (guaranteed damage resistance), whereas now GDR is a direct function of AC regardless of its source. Similarly DEX now more directly influences Evasion, whereas before it was artificially capped to give very diminishing returns past ~25 DEX, and now allows you to get very high Evasion.
- dota_fanatic 5y ago
  That's good to hear. I hope they keep going down that path. To refer to another game, in any of the Soulsborne games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, ...) by From Software, as you level up you get to contribute points towards stats which affects your ability to wield weapons and how much damage they do. You don't even have to equip them, the game gives you a diff of what your new damage will be along various dimensions (physical, magic, etc) as well as how your "equip load" is affected just by inspecting it. Although this doesn't necessarily mean you can understand the difference between a really heavy, highly damaging weapon vs a fast weapon, by reading a wiki or by playing through once or twice you'll have a very good base understanding of what different weapons bring to the table and how your character drives those strengths/weaknesses. With DCSS? Well... how much damage you do is going to depend on whether or not you're wearing a shield (what size?), what kind of armor you're wearing if any, how much you've trained for that weapon class, how much STR you have, what bonuses it has, and what bonuses you have from gear. Then RNG will play a significant role on top of that. Maybe RNG applies twice, once for your swing, once for their defense? It's been too long, I can't say confidently. I realize it's challenging for the interface design because everything is already tight but I'm sure there's a solution. If I equip this armor/weapon/jewelry, how fast will I be attacking compared to now? What will my damage distribution look like before enemy resistances? Same with allocating stats, please give feedback in the form of derived data that is closer to the thing I care about (surviving).
- harpiaharpyja 5y ago
  I don't think the problem is complexity as much as it is opaqueness. I have played other games that are also very complex but yet still very enjoyable because the complexity is open to be examined.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    The opacity is a remnant from the game as it was designed twenty years ago, which took cues from roguelikes of the day such as NetHack (which is famous for its opacity). The developers of Stone Soup have spent a few decades improving the interface with the goal that you shouldn't need any external wikis or resources to win: all info should be in the game itself. For example, a relatively recent-ish change is that you can inspect enemies and see a list of all possible spells that they can cast, along with estimates of the damage that each spell will do. A much older feature is the in-game help menu, which is impressively thorough and will give you a high-level overview of every monster, spell, stat, ability, item, god, level, status effect, and so on (although it's not necessarily super-detailed when it comes to obscure things like calculating damage; simplifying these calculations is the only way to go).
tsywke44 5y ago
That actually sounds nice. Compared to most other "competitive” games, where there is an optimal meta way of playing it, and doing anything else is basically trolling and instant loss
- gambiting 5y ago
  Isn't this what this is though? There are certain builds where if you follow them to a T, then the game is "easy" and you win almost always. If you just experiment then yeah you can win by some crazy stroke of luck, but most likely you will just have a bad time. I had the same experience in Caves of Qud(which is great btw) - there are some builds that really really really work, and others which are unwinnable.
  - lmohseni 5y ago
    There’s a great YouTuber named Ultraviolent4 who plays lots of “unwinnable” or maybe just really odd combinations, and watching his games really improved my own.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    No not really. Very few builds will let you win the game easily. Situational awareness is required. Relatively few enemies in the game are just melee brutes. Most of them occupy some niche that requires you to think. They can confuse your character, or lock all the doors, or summon, or irresistibly cut your health in half, etc. An exceptionally fortunate character, say, a kung fu octopode transmutated into statue form and wearing 8 magical rings of power can probably karate chop their way through 99.9% of the game without much of a worry, but may still lose in a 1:1 slug fest with certain lords of hell. There are easier builds and there are harder builds, but if you aren't good, you will lose. Case in point, the bug described here effectively doubled damage output and win rates were still pretty low.
    - kibwen 5y ago
      Although it's worth noting that there are different degrees of "winning the game". Only three runes are required to win, but maximizing your score and prestige will require you to get all fifteen runes. If you're just going for a three-rune victory, then there are more-or-less "safe" builds. For example, a Minotaur of any melee class, or a Berserker of any species that isn't completely inept at melee can reliably win a three-rune (not a guaranteed victory obviously, you still need to know what you're doing, and most importantly when to run away), although these characters are going to have a very hard time in the extended endgame without some sort of pivot.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
slingnow 5y ago
Sounds like the game isn't made for you then. This would be like attempting to play Go, and complaining that it's nothing like Chess because the optimal move generally isn't obvious even after 10,000 hours of play. And then loosely tying it into "part of the joy of being human" instead of simply stating that "this is my preference".
- gnramires 5y ago
  Yes, there's an interesting distinction here. Although I'd say it's more like Chess than Go, in the sense the mechanics are really simple in Go, while Chess has specific rules for each piece and you should memorize openings and quirks to get an edge (Go is much more about generalization). In reality, both Chess and Go and all board games are fairly simple, you can learn all the rules in a few sittings and then just focus on strategy. In roguelikes, often learning the system is the point (or a point) of the game. The fun, at least to me, is in dealing with the unknown and discovering how it works and what works. Nethack (a classic roguelike) takes it to the extreme -- a bit too much in fact, because an essential game mechanic is an obscure passage you'd have to deduct (Elbereth). But the fun is there: you grab a potion and have no idea what happens if you drink it -- maybe you will be killed instantly, maybe it will make you into a god -- it's not just "which of those effects am I going to get?". You have to rely on previous knowledge, as well as expectations from similar games and what you know about the game. But isn't that quite common IRL? Like, okay figuring out what you should be eating has a science to back it (albeit quite extensive): you read the most effective diets, what risks it reduces, you health, your weight and need to make a decision. Already not very simple strategic decision. And then you need to take into account satisfying your tastes, how often diet fads reverse (is eating butter healthy? go figure), how to do it when sharing a meal with other people, and so on. The unknowns are as significant as skillful strategic planning. The same could be said to running a company: you need to manage uncertainties in a vast decision space, with opportunities like calling for partnerships, merging, buying other companies, spending on uncertain research, and much more. You slowly acquire domain-specific knowledge (with help from the vast literature, plus a few insights of yours) and use that to in turn reduce and manage uncertainties and plan ahead (here your model of other players and capability to find the 'best move' -- least risky, greatest payoff, more robust -- will shine).
hinkley 5y ago
The term common in MMOs is theorycrafting, and it gained particular momentum in an era where some common games allowed for addons that could export telemetry data. Contrived or common scenarios could be mined (Monte Carlo simulations if you will) to determine how patterns lined up with theories.

eeegnu 5y ago

It's worth noting that at least in recent versions, the in game formulas have been getting simplified. For instance armor used to give you both AC and GDR (guaranteed damage resistance), whereas now GDR is a direct function of AC regardless of its source. Similarly DEX now more directly influences Evasion, whereas before it was artificially capped to give very diminishing returns past ~25 DEX, and now allows you to get very high Evasion.

dota_fanatic 5y ago
That's good to hear. I hope they keep going down that path. To refer to another game, in any of the Soulsborne games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, ...) by From Software, as you level up you get to contribute points towards stats which affects your ability to wield weapons and how much damage they do. You don't even have to equip them, the game gives you a diff of what your new damage will be along various dimensions (physical, magic, etc) as well as how your "equip load" is affected just by inspecting it. Although this doesn't necessarily mean you can understand the difference between a really heavy, highly damaging weapon vs a fast weapon, by reading a wiki or by playing through once or twice you'll have a very good base understanding of what different weapons bring to the table and how your character drives those strengths/weaknesses. With DCSS? Well... how much damage you do is going to depend on whether or not you're wearing a shield (what size?), what kind of armor you're wearing if any, how much you've trained for that weapon class, how much STR you have, what bonuses it has, and what bonuses you have from gear. Then RNG will play a significant role on top of that. Maybe RNG applies twice, once for your swing, once for their defense? It's been too long, I can't say confidently. I realize it's challenging for the interface design because everything is already tight but I'm sure there's a solution. If I equip this armor/weapon/jewelry, how fast will I be attacking compared to now? What will my damage distribution look like before enemy resistances? Same with allocating stats, please give feedback in the form of derived data that is closer to the thing I care about (surviving).
harpiaharpyja 5y ago
I don't think the problem is complexity as much as it is opaqueness. I have played other games that are also very complex but yet still very enjoyable because the complexity is open to be examined.
- kibwen 5y ago
  The opacity is a remnant from the game as it was designed twenty years ago, which took cues from roguelikes of the day such as NetHack (which is famous for its opacity). The developers of Stone Soup have spent a few decades improving the interface with the goal that you shouldn't need any external wikis or resources to win: all info should be in the game itself. For example, a relatively recent-ish change is that you can inspect enemies and see a list of all possible spells that they can cast, along with estimates of the damage that each spell will do. A much older feature is the in-game help menu, which is impressively thorough and will give you a high-level overview of every monster, spell, stat, ability, item, god, level, status effect, and so on (although it's not necessarily super-detailed when it comes to obscure things like calculating damage; simplifying these calculations is the only way to go).

tsywke44 5y ago

That actually sounds nice. Compared to most other "competitive” games, where there is an optimal meta way of playing it, and doing anything else is basically trolling and instant loss

gambiting 5y ago
Isn't this what this is though? There are certain builds where if you follow them to a T, then the game is "easy" and you win almost always. If you just experiment then yeah you can win by some crazy stroke of luck, but most likely you will just have a bad time. I had the same experience in Caves of Qud(which is great btw) - there are some builds that really really really work, and others which are unwinnable.
- lmohseni 5y ago
  There’s a great YouTuber named Ultraviolent4 who plays lots of “unwinnable” or maybe just really odd combinations, and watching his games really improved my own.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  No not really. Very few builds will let you win the game easily. Situational awareness is required. Relatively few enemies in the game are just melee brutes. Most of them occupy some niche that requires you to think. They can confuse your character, or lock all the doors, or summon, or irresistibly cut your health in half, etc. An exceptionally fortunate character, say, a kung fu octopode transmutated into statue form and wearing 8 magical rings of power can probably karate chop their way through 99.9% of the game without much of a worry, but may still lose in a 1:1 slug fest with certain lords of hell. There are easier builds and there are harder builds, but if you aren't good, you will lose. Case in point, the bug described here effectively doubled damage output and win rates were still pretty low.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Although it's worth noting that there are different degrees of "winning the game". Only three runes are required to win, but maximizing your score and prestige will require you to get all fifteen runes. If you're just going for a three-rune victory, then there are more-or-less "safe" builds. For example, a Minotaur of any melee class, or a Berserker of any species that isn't completely inept at melee can reliably win a three-rune (not a guaranteed victory obviously, you still need to know what you're doing, and most importantly when to run away), although these characters are going to have a very hard time in the extended endgame without some sort of pivot.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

slingnow 5y ago

Sounds like the game isn't made for you then. This would be like attempting to play Go, and complaining that it's nothing like Chess because the optimal move generally isn't obvious even after 10,000 hours of play. And then loosely tying it into "part of the joy of being human" instead of simply stating that "this is my preference".

gnramires 5y ago
Yes, there's an interesting distinction here. Although I'd say it's more like Chess than Go, in the sense the mechanics are really simple in Go, while Chess has specific rules for each piece and you should memorize openings and quirks to get an edge (Go is much more about generalization). In reality, both Chess and Go and all board games are fairly simple, you can learn all the rules in a few sittings and then just focus on strategy. In roguelikes, often learning the system is the point (or a point) of the game. The fun, at least to me, is in dealing with the unknown and discovering how it works and what works. Nethack (a classic roguelike) takes it to the extreme -- a bit too much in fact, because an essential game mechanic is an obscure passage you'd have to deduct (Elbereth). But the fun is there: you grab a potion and have no idea what happens if you drink it -- maybe you will be killed instantly, maybe it will make you into a god -- it's not just "which of those effects am I going to get?". You have to rely on previous knowledge, as well as expectations from similar games and what you know about the game. But isn't that quite common IRL? Like, okay figuring out what you should be eating has a science to back it (albeit quite extensive): you read the most effective diets, what risks it reduces, you health, your weight and need to make a decision. Already not very simple strategic decision. And then you need to take into account satisfying your tastes, how often diet fads reverse (is eating butter healthy? go figure), how to do it when sharing a meal with other people, and so on. The unknowns are as significant as skillful strategic planning. The same could be said to running a company: you need to manage uncertainties in a vast decision space, with opportunities like calling for partnerships, merging, buying other companies, spending on uncertain research, and much more. You slowly acquire domain-specific knowledge (with help from the vast literature, plus a few insights of yours) and use that to in turn reduce and manage uncertainties and plan ahead (here your model of other players and capability to find the 'best move' -- least risky, greatest payoff, more robust -- will shine).

hinkley 5y ago

The term common in MMOs is theorycrafting, and it gained particular momentum in an era where some common games allowed for addons that could export telemetry data. Contrived or common scenarios could be mined (Monte Carlo simulations if you will) to determine how patterns lined up with theories.