Stairscumming?

[Rectifier]

I do not think this mechanic should change unless it becomes a serious issue, which I do not believe it is right now.

In any case, to sum up what I've seen in this thread:

Stairscumming by itself is:
not interactive
awkward for positioning, aka getting surrounded or luring enemies to the stairs, waste of time and effort
its boring
inefficient, obviously if you have to use a plan c strategy to win, you did something wrong

What its good for:
characters with a difficult start (cursed)
allowing the legitimate possibility of 'challenge' characters who have an exceptionally difficult start (yeek zerker woo!)
new players who lack in-game knowledge of other tactics
does not severely punish new players who make mistakes (im sure there are those who tried attacking The Mouth, used the stairs to escape, thought for a moment, and go kill the real targets)
certain encounters/achievements impossible with stairscumming, forces players who relied on it previously to try new things!
stairscumming is boring so most people try to figure out quicker/better ways to play

Bad stuff:
pisses off hardcore players, those noobs should play the real way!
some players consider any scumming "cheating" and "gives an unfair and unneeded advantage" <-- this line is about perception, does not reflect my opinion or the statistical truth, blah blah
its a pain to design layouts/write code to eliminate stairscumming
the simplest method to stop stairscumming leads to insta-gibs, aka the 1 turn method, which are undesired by noobs and hardcore players alike
there will be those players who will abuse this, just like any other game mechanic, regardless of how boring or how little benefit it actually gives compared to intelligent play or build or items

[Mithril]

The main issue is that scumming changes what should be the most exciting part of the game, the boss fight(s), into a trivial exercise. I think this somewhat lessens the whole game.

I know, you can voluntarily avoid doing this, but if it is no disallowed by the game it is not really cheating. At least that is how most players, especially new players, will see it, which will lessen the enjoyment of the game.

[Rectifier]

...What boss fight are you talking about?

[Mithril]

...What boss fight are you talking about?

All boss fights where stair scumming works. Which applies to most of them.

[Rectifier]

I disagree, the only time I would use stair-scum is early game where bosses either do very little damage (dat norgos) or way too much (reknor with bad luck).
An early trap for stair-scummers is the assassin lord encounter, which is easily avoidable, but if you want that achievement...you get my point.
Honestly with the power/saves revamp I don't see players getting away with scumming nearly as much. Like if someone used stair-scum instead of actively looking for a decent shield rune or regen inscription. If they get hit by a nasty debuff and have their initial rune/inscription, odds are they'll die and may not even get a chance to run up the stairs because of the debuff.

And this is nothing compared to save-scumming lmao.

[bricks]

I find that while I avoid stair-scumming, I generally have to use the lesser "teleport scum" strategy. More balanced but basically the same boring tactic. I kinda hate teleport/phase door for this reason.

[Rectifier]

Teleport is okay because it'll get you a few turns to rest, and phase door, assuming its low level, is hilarious if it works in your favor.

Its really just a form of kiting, and that's been around since the beginning of warfare in my opinion.

[tiger_eye]

As someone who has never stair-scummed successfully (I tried once, but died on the way to the stairs ), my perception and lack of concrete knowledge of stair-scumming is biased accordingly.

I do think perception matters. Roguelike players can be a finicky bunch, and if the optimal way to play or fight a boss is to stair-scum, then, well, somewhere Al Gore is crying .

Rather than using one turn upon entering a level, another option is to use a turn while leaving a level. Hence, if an enemy is adjacent to you as you leave, it will get one last crack at you. This wouldn't stop all stair-scumming, but it would prevent the worst stair-scumming abuses. I had looked into doing this a while ago, and I recall thinking it wasn't trivial to do. However, I now think it would be easy to do.

Also, "teleport scumming" is completely different: (1), it only works (well) in mostly-empty levels, and (2) the opponent also gets to recuperate, healing and having its talents and debuffs cooldown (which doesn't happen when stair-scumming).

[Dekar]

I'm stairscumming when I have to, but I would gladly see it gone as long as the game gets rebalanced accordingly.

[Grey]

Make traveling between levels cost a turn.

Guarantee that no enemy will be generated within LoS of the stairs up and we've got a deal. The biggest issue with adding a time cost to level transition is instagib on entrance. I personally got horrendously effing sick of that with T2.

I'd like to see this anyway. It's silly when you end up walking straight into a packed room in Dreadfell through the stairs. There should be a guarantee of no enemies generated within 6 squares of the player, just to make the start of any level fair.

Healing/resetting talent CD and removing timed effects from actors on a level when you leave would probably be the closest I could see to an ideal solution. No chance of instagib and the amount of advantage you get from it wouldn't be quite so excessive. It'd still be abusable (You could pick off an enemy in a crowd, go up, heal, repeat), but not quite as abusable.

It would stop the boss abuse, which I think is the real thing that annoys people.

Note that it's not just some elitist thing of veterans saying no one should do this. It's a basic game design problem of making a boring tactic optimal, thus making the game inherently boring for those that choose to play that way (which is many). For the same reasons monster and item respawning were removed - they encouraged boring play, and the game should avoid that.

[greycat]

I'm stairscumming when I have to, but I would gladly see it gone as long as the game gets rebalanced accordingly.

That. As long as there are bosses who can wipe the floor with you, there will be a need to use every trick available to try to beat them.

[darkgod]

Please list bosses which you think it's plain impossible to beat them without stairscum so they can be adressed

[Frumple]

The half-formed bone giant is a common target, as is the yeek bosses (especially the ritch one). The former, at least, can be bypassed. They're not necessarily impossible to beat without scumming (especially not with particularly powerful builds or lucky item drops), but stair abuse can speed things along a tremendous amount (I.e. killing the bastids instead of re-rolling a dozen times until you get lucky.)

Some classes literally cannot kill the wierdling beast when they naturally first encounter it (I.e. around level 12-14) -- the beast's healing completely surpasses their capability to damage it. Stairscumming is the only way around that, that doesn't involving leaving and coming back later (Note: That is a really long trip back to the bottom of lake Nur.). Again, it's not impossible to do without stair abuse, but it saves a helluva lot of time to just abuse and get it over with.

Some farportal bosses cannot be killed by basically anything without stairscum abuse -- they two-three turn kill you and can chase you down after teleportation faster than you can recover, or due to some combination of talents and resistances are simply unkillable for your build. Recalling out is an option, but the portal breaks so damn easily stair abuse is highly encouraged. Occasionally random uniques suffer from the similar problems (Re: Shell shield ghoul I reported over in the bug subforum).

The grushnak orc barracks are freaking deathtraps (for all that I love them). Some classes get bent over the knee of the other prides starting areas (Ditto the love, they're nice additions, just freaking deadly.), too.

The random/classed uniques can (sometimes) be avoided, but only with foreknowledge -- a player just exploring parts of the game (Say reaching mid/late game for the first time) will be crushed, unless they stair abuse. The rest can't be. There's probably more situations where stairscumming is basically necessary for certain classes/builds, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head.

[betamin]

Please list bosses which you think it's plain impossible to beat them without stairscum so they can be adressed

There is a problem also with bosses that are beatable with some effort but are made trivial via stairscumming.

Maybe you should include an extra difficulty level or mode in where you can't go up/down in levels in front of enemies or where they heal when you're gone?

Great game by the way

[Dekar]

The Escape from Reknor boss also needs a hit with the nerfbat.

Weirdling Best, while being level 20 gets stairscummed by level 12-14 characters because
-guaranteed easy access to stairs
-heals far too fast and at the same time has no space to escape to, to "reset" fight, unlike the Master fight where you can teleport away.
-grants access to the chest! Its just so handy. Why else would you fight such a powerful boss with an underleveled character?