Preventing stairs cheating

[Mithril]

But the other suggestion means players will never be able to use stairs as a means of escape and that doesn't feel right to me.

I on the other hand like it. It will cause a thrilling, claustrophobic feeling when you are in tough fight.

Not sure what an uncertain/difficult use of stairs cheating contributes. If it is easy to cheat you can abuse it. If it is very difficult or uncertain you cannot rely on it anyway.

Also, some classes like summoners or alchemists that can place themselves out of danger while letting others fight could likely still abuse stairs cheating. Stand on the chairs, let your monster fight, if any hostile gets 2 steps from you, flee, rest, return put a summoned monster between you and the enemy, if your monster is killed, flee again, repeat.

[edge2054]

Also, some classes like summoners or alchemists that can place themselves out of danger while letting others fight could likely still abuse stairs cheating. Stand on the chairs, let your monster fight, if any hostile gets 2 steps from you, flee, rest, return put a summoned monster between you and the enemy, if your monster is killed, flee again, repeat.

This is easily fixed by having the do not travel flag shared via companions as well as the within X squares following you thing.

Anyway, the last thing I'm going to say on this subject is that I've had to leave Trollshaws and come back after a level repop because to much stuff spawned near the entrance (granted I could have stair scummed but I chose not to). If I was a new player and saw something like that and then found out I wasn't allowed to run because a mold was in LOS of the stairs I may have gotten frustrated and shelved the game.

Point being, what's exciting for you may be a real turn off to someone else and if there's a balance that can be struck between preventing exploits and keeping gameplay options open then a balance should be sought.

[Gwai]

The traditional model of a rogue-like involves the fact that can cheat if they want to enough. Partly it's because it's almost impossible to stop every method but also it's that they're fools if they do. Most stair scumming is cheating and boring. However, there are acceptable times, like the one edge mentions, where I think it's ok. Do we really need to bind what people can do so much?

[Zonk]

The traditional model of a rogue-like involves the fact that can cheat if they want to enough. Partly it's because it's almost impossible to stop every method but also it's that they're fools if they do. Most stair scumming is cheating and boring. However, there are acceptable times, like the one edge mentions, where I think it's ok. Do we really need to bind what people can do so much?

I feel like I should say this - recently there's been quite a few threads that want to make the game harder just to make it challenging.

This isn't necessarily bad BUT like Edge post suggests...too much 'default' difficulty might turn off/drive away novice players, or it might frustate them.

Since I'm a fan of giving players options/choices...

what if staircase limitations(and a few others) were based on difficulty level?

Easy/Average: Can stair dance just like now.
Nightmare: Can go up/down stairs only if there's no one around and you're fully healed.
Insane: Can go up/down only if ALL monsters on the level were killed .
(These are merely examples. Basically - higher difficulty, higher/more severe restrictions. We can also adapt the many interesting ideas suggested before).


This way people who want challenges/mechanically imposed limitations get them(remember, you can always CHOOSE not to abuse stairs, no one's forcing you), and those who don't...don't :

[Mithril]

Also, some classes like summoners or alchemists that can place themselves out of danger while letting others fight could likely still abuse stairs cheating. Stand on the chairs, let your monster fight, if any hostile gets 2 steps from you, flee, rest, return put a summoned monster between you and the enemy, if your monster is killed, flee again, repeat.

This is easily fixed by having the do not travel flag shared via companions as well as the within X squares following you thing.

Anyway, the last thing I'm going to say on this subject is that I've had to leave Trollshaws and come back after a level repop because to much stuff spawned near the entrance (granted I could have stair scummed but I chose not to). If I was a new player and saw something like that and then found out I wasn't allowed to run because a mold was in LOS of the stairs I may have gotten frustrated and shelved the game.

Point being, what's exciting for you may be a real turn off to someone else and if there's a balance that can be struck between preventing exploits and keeping gameplay options open then a balance should be sought.

I can still imagine how it can be abused. Another scenario. You are an archmage/archer/other distance user who have encountered the big bad boss and you have quickly used some magic means to move to the stairs. Some distance away in the corridor you see or sense the boss. You use your talents that cost most mana and stamina to hit from a distance. When you run out you use the stairs, rest, move back and and continue. If you can phase/teleport him away do that. Otherwise, when he is 5 steps away (or whatever the condition is) you stop using damaging spells and wait for him to reach you. Now use the stairs a final time, rest, and cast every improving spells you want on yourself. Return.

Or if you are a fighter. You fight with the boss which has the same speed as you five steps away the stairs. When your hit points or stamina gets low you retreat to the stairs which you use, rest, and return. In effect a very large increase of your stamina and hit points.

I doubt there are newbies giving up after one early death. Furthermore, newbies to roguelikes most likely do not know if a situation is dangerous or that one can stair cheat or stair scum so the situation seems hypothetical. If we should prevent a newbie from possible getting turned off by dying early, then there are lot of things that one should change, such as preventing any challenging fights or really any chance of death in the beginning. Maybe have defenseless rabbits as monsters on the first level or something.

More generally, I find it, um, unheroic if one constantly retreats to the stairs when one encounters a tough fight, as well as weird that the monsters do not follow you.

[Gwai]

Well said, Zonk. This game's already hard as heck. I know some people have won, but I sure as heck haven't* and now everyone keeps making threads about how the prides are too easythe this is too easy and so is the that? I know that I'm not nearly one of the best players around here, but am I really one of the worst? Because if I'm not, then many people haven't won yet and I'm not sure why we're desperately trying to make this game impossible.


Mithril, who says all adventurers are heros? Maybe yours are, b ut some of mine are quite content to be cowardly scum. They know that adventurers don't live long and only dream to be the cowardly scum that saves the world.

*At least not since beta6 or so when the game was much shorter indeed!

[darkgod]

I agree that the game should not be punishingly painful to newbies, I just made bill & the shade easier following this idea.
However stair scumming encourages boring gameplay, which will eventually turn off people too.

Why should the situation be abusable just because you happen to be near a level changer (remember it's not always stairs) but not when you are not ?
This really feels wrong, and just because your classic RL game encourages boring play does not mean we should to. You might have noticed I try to make people's lifes easier and more fun, not more boring

I still think an in-combat status should be computed, or allow monsters to follow you between levels.

Gwai, I not not approve of making the game uber hard, not on normal difficulty at least. I am a bad player myself, probably worse than most of you, and I want to have a fair chance. But stair dancing is really not a tactic, it's just an abuse of the game system. If that is the only way one can kill a monster, then the monster should be changed.

[Mithril]

The traditional model of a rogue-like involves the fact that can cheat if they want to enough. Partly it's because it's almost impossible to stop every method but also it's that they're fools if they do. Most stair scumming is cheating and boring. However, there are acceptable times, like the one edge mentions, where I think it's ok. Do we really need to bind what people can do so much?

Yes, I cannot stop myself if it is too easy to abuse.

Anyway, many people likely do not see it or understand it as abuse (why should they?) but as a game feature but will regardless get bored by the game being too easy. Obviously you can always cheat by various means, but then you should at least know you are cheating and there should be some inconvenience to doing it (like the hassle of copying save files).

[edge2054]

Alright, I said I wouldn't comment again but I think my suggestion earlier got misinterpreted.

I think the X turns without damage or attacking before changing levels thing should only apply to world map travel.

For the rest of the level creatures should simply follow you. Rather then using creatures with in X radius of the player just have any creature targeting the player follow. Have the pathfinding algorithm calculate number of turns to the stairs and return that as how many turns the player has until the creature pops in. (With the obvious exception that no_move creatures shouldn't follow.)

This gives the player the option of running to another level and *if* they're on the first or second level the option to run back to the wilderness if they're not being pursued by creatures with more speed then them.

Yes I realize that everything is open to abuse and players can find loopholes in any system. However... the system I'm suggesting will make it very hard to stair scum and pretty much impossible to stair scum bosses (because you won't make it back to the wilderness map from level dungeon level 5+, most of the dungeon will have respawned meaning you'll have guys following you from the previous level and guys between you and the stairs to deal with.)

As to the newbie frustration, I was specifically referring to people who play Roguelikes. If I download a new RL and it's not just hard but 'unfair' I probably won't keep playing it. Also I'm not talking about one death here. Spawning in the Trollshaws is possibly one of the more difficult spots in the game.

You take a single step out and sometimes will get two or three trolls coming at you with no safe spot to fight them one at a time. Yes, often times these situations are survivable without leaving the dungeon but other times they're not. I say if the player can recognize the danger and bail before engaging let them. Once they've taken damage or attacked though they should be committed.

[Susramanian]

Just wanted to clarify some things, since I suspect that I'm the one being referred to when you mention people calling for a harder ToME.

I don't want it to be harder; those wizards at the end are deadly. I just wanted to take the parts that are boring due to overleveling and bring them in line with the difficulty of the rest of the game. This isn't really pushing the difficulty upward. It's just shoring up the boring stuff.

It is true that I called for more difficult orc prides, but really what I was calling for was switching the roles of the orc prides and side content. Currently the side content is brutally difficult, and you have to level up in the prides to do it. I just want it to be the other way around. So again, I'm not really calling for ToME to be more difficult. I'm just calling for a rearrangement

[Mithril]

As to the newbie frustration, I was specifically referring to people who play Roguelikes. If I download a new RL and it's not just hard but 'unfair' I probably won't keep playing it. Also I'm not talking about one death here. Spawning in the Trollshaws is possibly one of the more difficult spots in the game.

You take a single step out and sometimes will get two or three trolls coming at you with no safe spot to fight them one at a time. Yes, often times these situations are survivable without leaving the dungeon but other times they're not. I say if the player can recognize the danger and bail before engaging let them. Once they've taken damage or attacked though they should be committed.

If you not talking about a novice to roguelikes then I very much doubt that they would get turned off by a quick death from a hard start. That is common is many roguelikes were low level characters frequently die quickly and unavoidably. Anyway, you can also die some distance away from stairs by one the trolls blocking your retreat to the stairs. If this really is a problem it seems easier to just make level 1 of Trollshaws super-easy.

More general is the question of if one should be allowed to retreat when first entering a dungeion level. This may well be a special case. You may go back up stairs if this is the first thing you do when entering a level. If you do anything else, leave the stairs, summon a monster, or whatever, then you are committed and cannot leave before you are out of the combat situation as per DG's "in combat" conditions.

Alternatively, that monster can follow you up the stairs is also a good solution to the abuse problem.

[Mithril]

Alternatively to being allowed to leave as the first action on a new dungeon level would be to make the entry location "safe" such as not allowing any monster within a radius of, say, 7 steps, or no monster sees the character (that is, the character arrives in a "no combat" area).

[Repton]

If I'm in danger of being surrounded, then I retreat to a safe narrow area where I can fight things one-on-one.

If I enter a new level and I'm immediately surrounded ... then I can't retreat? Or I can retreat, as long as I make no other action? Seems like my best course then is to retreat, rest for a long period, and then re-enter in the hope that the level will regenerate without npcs near the stairs.

Regarding escaping to the world map -- I say that this is not a big deal. It might give players a small advantage on the first level of each dungeon, but so what? They've got to fight through all the other levels without that advantage, and bosses don't turn up on level 1.

[darkgod]

Agreed repton

So maybe all that is needed is that npcs follow you ? which is only logical anyway.

[Mithril]

If I enter a new level and I'm immediately surrounded ... then I can't retreat? Or I can retreat, as long as I make no other action? Seems like my best course then is to retreat, rest for a long period, and then re-enter in the hope that the level will regenerate without npcs near the stairs.

Alternatively, in order to avoid waiting for a whole dungeon level regeneration, the entry stairs only spawn in corridors which should be safer. Or no monster are allowed to initially spawn near the entry stairs. Or no monster are initially allowed to spawn in a position where they can see the player.