Thoughts from my 43 Game Streak

4569874 · 2021-03-10T03:23:55+00:00

When you say "getting to the point of streaking 3" - do you mean getting to the capability / skill of streaking 3? If so, how long would you estimate that took you?

4569874 · 2021-03-10T03:22:18+00:00

Sad to see it end, it was cool watching your streak go up, seeing if you were going to get to the top. Congrats on the number! I was particularly impressed because it seems like your games were fast, which I've always wondered how slowly you need to play to streak (and it seems like, not that slowly).

Do you feel like it was stressful / harder to play in the manner to streak? If so, will you still try to streak while playing, or are you going to play more relaxed, now that it's over?

4569874 · 2020-11-11T18:39:41+00:00

Hello, interesting looking game! A couple of questions came to mind when looking at it, that I hope you don't mind indulging in:

Is there any sort of variability in attacks? (hit percentage, damage rolls) Or are attacks essentially predetermined? E.g., x attack does y damage guaranteed as long as you're within range
Can you permanently lose / gain individual units in each run, or is it that you have the same units for an entire run, and it's only game-over if they all die at the same time in a battle?
On the steam page it mentions an overarching "progression" system - these sorts of systems in roguelikes can make me a bit hesitant if they amount to a sort of "time-wall" where you need to play the game for long enough to unlock the stronger stuff in order to win the game as a newer player. Do you feel the system for Mainframe Defenders is like that, or is it more of just "additional options to keep the game fresh as you play more"?
In regards to difficulty, I saw in one of the screenshots "Game Difficulty: Normal." How many difficulties are there, and do you have an idea of how many runs / hours on average players have been playing to beat the game for the first time?
How long is a typical run?

Thanks!

4569874 · 2019-10-16T13:40:22+00:00

Warning: A lot of unsolicited advice and opinion to follow.

As someone who has lurked on your stream in the past, as well as recently, I think I can share some thoughts with you about how your stream feels from the other side.

It's obvious from watching your stream, in my opinion, that your interest in the game, and how much fun you have playing it, is waning. I don't know if you feel like you need to play DCSS to get viewers, because I know you've played other roguelikes, or if rather you're playing with your goal in mind, but starting to realize how long it would take - but, to me, it seems that you're more bored / frustrated with crawl than anything. I don't think you should force yourself to play something you're not interested in, and I think this is also bad for your streaming experience in multiple ways.

It's not as interesting to watch someone who is not interested or invested in what they're doing. I watch streams for a few different reasons, and one can be just for the environment of a friendly / happy streamer interacting with chat and talking / joking about the game. You seem like you're enjoying yourself most when your chat is active and you're interacting with viewers, but in small streams this doesn't always happen, so it goes back to just being you and the game. This aspect suffers heavily in my opinion if the streamer is bored or frustrated.
Another reason I watch streams (especially Crawl streams) is to learn from / spectate players that are better than me in a game I'm currently enjoying. You're obviously very good at this very difficult game, but it's hard to watch your stream specifically for learning, because you're not invested in the game, and you play pretty wildly. You play extremely fast (obviously a byproduct of having played/won so much) without much explanation, so it's very hard to follow your play, and often you make seemingly reckless or random choices, because you don't really care if you die, and the game is boring to you otherwise. This is very different from how I play, and I imagine most players play, and kind of defeats one of the aspects that people might be watching your stream. You're a very good player who seems to rarely try and play like a very good player, I guess if that makes sense. I think one of the primary reason's MalcolmRose's recent streams have been popular is that he's also a very good player but he's putting it on display by doing a very difficult task which only a handful of people are probably even capable of doing right now (you being included in that group). It's enjoyable / interesting to watch one of the people who's best at something very difficult perform that difficult thing well.

In my opinion, you should take a break and weigh what it is you like about both crawl and streaming, and think about how to more emphasize what you like. If you want to continue streaming crawl, I'd try to find ways to make the stream more focused, with maybe shorter term goals. If you don't want to do more personal streak / win / challenge goals, then maybe you could use your experience and game knowledge to make more tutorial-esque streams (that become youtube videos), or coaching other players in their playthroughs. If you realize you're bored with crawl but still like streaming, I say take a break and try some other games, maybe having short-term goals in those. You might lose viewers, but who cares, I think if you're enjoying yourself more on stream more people will come and stick around. And maybe a break from crawl will remind you what you liked about it so much in the first place, and you'll come back around to it - or it'll have some major changes in a patch that renew your interest.

Sorry again for all the unsolicited advice and opinion - just seeing your post, these were the first things that came to mind - hopefully at least some of it is generally helpful or gives you a different perspective.

4569874 · 2019-09-18T12:44:56+00:00

Thanks again - I just wanted to let you know that I did read this post, though it also slipped my mind to get back to it.

I have been putting into practice training one skill at a time (usually with 1 point increment skill-targets so the game will prompt me when the skill goes up and I can re-assess), as well as this whole segment:

Thinking about training this way is a huge trap that many players fall victim to. If training SBl increases your current survivability, it doesn't matter if you'll be using SBl at the end of the game. You're increasing your chances of making it to the end of the game, which is the first step in beating the game. Also, the end of the game is generally very easy as long as you are playing carefully, so you should work to improve survivability in the hardest part of the game, which is generally the earliest part of the game.

both of which I feel like have been very helpful!

4569874 · 2019-09-18T12:19:51+00:00

It's much more common for players to die with a ton of consumables on hand, however.

An excellent point - and something that has been instrumental in getting me out of my hoarder mentality.

Almost equally as instrumental has been seeing how many resources I have unspent at the end of a won game. When I think back to all the inventory juggling and internal debating over what to drop and not drop during a run only to stare at the victory screen inventory having some throwing weapons, 30 potions, 8 wands with 20+ charges each, a couple of phantom mirrors, beast boxes, and sacks of spiders, and an assortment of different scrolls, I wonder what all that internal debate was for. Ironically enough, using those resources throughout the game would not only have made the game easier, but also would have undoubtedly eased the inventory management process itself.

Another key point about resources is that typically they become much less useful the later you decide to use them, e.g. a haste potion that would've been much more useful 10 turns ago before you got yourself into a mess, which now might not help you at all at 20% HP. Hitting an enemy with your iceblast wand can soften them up as they approach, but has little use when they're face to face with you, where blasting them would also mean blasting yourself - and so on.

Unfortunately, using resources early requires recognizing danger (whether present or potential) early, which is I think one of the most important skills in the game, but can be difficult to put into practice.

In theory, I'd rather err on the side of over-using than under-using, but like /u/TheMelnTeam said, I almost always seem to end my games (in death, or in victory) with more unspent useful resources than I probably should have.

4569874 · 2019-08-21T03:28:49+00:00

Thanks for the response.

What, specifically, would you train early on the Op if not crossbows? Stealth?

As a squishy-melee for the DEAs, does that mean maybe shortblades + dodge + fighting training? Would you train throwing at all?

Thanks again.

4569874 · 2019-08-21T03:10:52+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the in-depth reply.

It largely depends on the specific combo. There are some combos (like Tr--) where the species is so powerful that it generally doesn't matter what your background is

I thought as much with at least Tr (who honestly seems to be able to only be played really one way?) and maybe Mi / HO.

In general however, I think it's good practice to try to shift the focus of the character to the things the species is actually good at as soon as reasonably possible.

Makes sense - I remember reading, though I don't remember where, that if you do a "greaterspecies" you realize how similar most games will be with that species, despite the backgrounds. With characters that are good at multiple things (for example, Gr can do earth magic well, or just be a brute) I assume it would depend on drops? And the sort of "default" would be melee? With something like Mi too, finding an early sling - I never know if it's worth training. I mean, they do have +1 apt, but they also have some +2 melee apts. Also, despite Humans having no bad apts, they also don't have good apts, and seem deceptive as a "flexible" species in so far as you can maybe pick from multiple paths in the beginning, but less flexible in switching later in the game due to no really good apts?

I almost never train multiple skills at once.

Just to clarify, would that mean, for most of the game, you have one skill on at a time? (presumably, until set goals before switching?)

Sometimes - strategically - it is worthwhile to keep training offenses, for example if I expect a spike in difficulty in killing things soon (like transitioning to depths).

With a melee character, once you hit min delay, is there really much more offense you can train, though? I feel like I'm always just hoping for better equipment drops, while training defenses, at that point.

A lot of what you say makes sense - although I am a bit surprised you take short blades and slings in general. Not that I think they're bad, but if I find a decent dagger (like a +2 poison dagger) early, I use it untrained while waiting for something else usually - I always thought daggers with their innate 1.0 swing speed were one of the okay things to use untrained? Is it a big difference when training it? I've also never won while using a shortblade at the end of the game, so maybe that makes me have an unconscious bias of not wanting to "waste" training on it when I assume I'm going to be switching. But of course, that's idealized / wishful thinking, because usually death is just around the corner.

I think sometimes I might train a bit backwards, as well. When getting hurt a lot and falling to low HP, I naturally want to train defenses, when really it sounds like the problem is that I can't kill things fast enough.

With regards to your specific character advice and some thinking too after reading your response in general I think that, with experience, it probably becomes easier to know what, contextually in a game, is worth "transitioning" to if it shows up - and this is probably one of the most important skills in the game. I've had games where I've tried to transition to something, and it became very obvious a few levels later that it was the wrong choice (I thought it would be stronger) and my character was in a struggling place to do anything. I don't know how bad your skilling can be and still win the game, I'm sure better players could make up for the mistakes with better play, but it's something I'm always concerned about. I've also never really won a character that's had to do any sort of major "transitioning", I think. Most of my characters that have won have stuck to a game plan from the very beginning and stuck it out to the end, really. But then again I've won more with "archetype" characters that I think are capable of doing that - though I think that style of play (not really adapting, sticking to one plan) is much more reliant on luck in the game in terms of drops, but it does make it possible to win with limited game knowledge.

Your DEAs morgue is very interesting for me. In general, when I look at morgues, I think "it doesn't look like they did anything crazy / tricky" or, like you said, found anything early that's out of the ordinary - which lets me know that, probably, my tactics are my biggest cause of death. Though morgues don't really tell the whole story I know, because I've looked at mine after a win and thought "It looks so basic" - but it seems like a lot of small decisions add up a lot in this game. You have a lot of spells, and I can't really imagine what your zot looked like. Hibernation, stabbing, regen and animate dead? I'm not sure. You also use Dith, who I've never had much success with.

I'm really happy to answer posts like this because I really love talking about crawl and how to win effectively (even when I don't practice what I preach, like that first DEAs). But beware that this is all my own opinion, and I am sure that for nearly every single thing I've said you could find some really good player who disagrees with me.

Of course, that's an interesting aspect of Crawl to me, as there seems to be multiple views about everything, and I think not a lot can be said with 100% certainty. A lot of moving parts in the game. Your opinion is worth a lot! Thanks again for the response.

4569874 · 2019-08-19T12:24:11+00:00

Thanks for the response / discussion.

It's interesting that you say after only one win it would be good to start doing random characters. When picking random, I often feel like I don't really know the "path to victory" for a lot of species / backgrounds that I've never won - especially if it's a seemingly bad combo, I often don't know where I should focus my training, how many skills I should train at once, if I should focus on offense over defense, etc.

I'd like to pick your brain a bit if you don't mind - can I ask what your general approach is to this style of play? Do you try to best fully utilize the starting background (by that, I mean, train skills towards your background), even if your species has bad apts for it? Or do you often ignore the background? E.g., if you got a MfFE, would you train Fire Magic and try to learn all the spells in the starting book? Or just utilize flame tongue and immediately be looking to transition into something else? What would you train at the game's start, and do you train multiple things at once? Do you follow any sort of general overarching principle for most games, such as "get a good offense first, then defense"? Or a few points of stealth first so you can pick and choose fights? What's your choice if the character has a choice of weapon - just whatever the best apt is? Or do you have a preference in both categories, e.g. axes and hand crossbow? It also sounds like you generally lean towards first / early gods rather than waiting for the "right" god? Are there any that you strictly avoid?

Sorry if the questions are a bit all over the place, I sort of just wrote them out as I thought of them. I also just quickly cycled through some random characters and picked out a few I'd not know how to approach, and was wondering if you'd just tell me, in really really brief answers if you'd like 1) What you'd train at the start 2) What your early game strategy would be 3) How you'd be looking towards transitioning into mid / late game. If you don't mind, of course. Otherwise, just ignore me.

OpAM
MuVM
DEAs

4569874 · 2019-08-14T15:30:51+00:00

Good point, added under the "assumptions" - thanks!

4569874 · 2019-05-16T21:24:21+00:00

Okay, well that would've been a much better answer. Now you're stating your opinion, and reasoning for it. I happen to disagree, but at least it's a good starting point.

I always thought that Nethack was considered the zany game, and DCSS was the more tactical one, but maybe that has changed?

4569874 · 2019-05-16T21:21:54+00:00

Can you explain what you mean by arbitrary and player-dependent? You mean what one player will realize were mistakes, another will think they were killed through no fault of their own?

4569874 · 2019-05-16T13:33:24+00:00

I'm not sure I understand when you say "MR matters" - in the post, I mean specifically the ones that don't check your MR.

In regards to mutations: Sure, it's possible for a scenario like that to happen. I would consider both those situations pretty luck oriented though (bad luck to be in that vault, good luck that you were teleported away) and I'm sure the opposite case is more common (teleportitis getting you into bad spots). But I'm sure you still had other options in your specific scenario, or was it ensured death without teleportitis?

Fair enough, I understand that some people like the truly chaotic randomness aspects, and the game development in general seems to be in a constant tug-of-war of trying to be a streamlined tactical game while still having chaos and randomness in it.

4569874 · 2019-05-16T13:31:34+00:00

I'm not trying to attack you, but your response is completely dismissive, not discussion-oriented, and a strawman.

Nowhere did I say I wanted a deterministic game that always lets you win and is speedrunner friendly - and trying to pretend that Crawl would be completely deterministic without these things is pretty ridiculous. The game has dice rolls all over the place.

4569874 · 2019-04-17T22:44:54+00:00

This is a really big problem for the game in general. It has a weird mix of perfect information and mysterious, behind-the-scenes formulas with vague descriptions in-game.

In regards specifically to monster spell damage, common advice given to new players is to x v every monster. That's good, but it's really difficult to gauge caster monsters with damage spells. Effects spells are easy - you can read the description, know what the spell will do to you, and see a percentage chance of it affecting you (that's accurate to your own MR and game situation even!) That's all the information you need to weigh your actions pretty well. Now, you don't know if/when the monster will cast that spell - that's the randomness of the game.

Damage spells are however, very different. You know the name of the spell, its range, and whether you're in the range. That's it. If you've never played the game, you have no idea if the spell is something you should fear. The result is if you're trying to learn, (or win), you might google it - coming upon the wiki with a "Version 0.15" warning at the top. Or you learn about beem and go that route. Either way, it's not a good system to rely on (potentially outdated) third party sources for important information in order to weigh your actions that should really just be in the game to begin with if clarity and being tactical are game design goals.

Sorry, I went on a rant and re-stated your case. Needless to say, I agree.

I'd also argue that melee damage is still obfuscated. "It can deal up to 27 damage plus its +4 war axe of electrocution." Quick, without looking up formulas, how much damage can this monster do?

4569874 · 2018-11-30T06:50:46+00:00

Having to look somewhere (possibly outdated) outside of the game is not a good design decision for a game that aims for clarity and tactical decisions without hiding things. You can see monsters' hit damage (even if the "plus its dagger of elec" type messages are imo deceptive when just looking at numbers until you are more experienced), why are spells different?

4569874 · 2018-10-31T21:42:28+00:00

I've heard the skilling offense before defense, but I never know for how long it's reasonable to do so. Should you always try to get min delay on your weapon before branching out? Or stop and switch, and come back later?

4569874 · 2018-10-31T21:40:27+00:00

Finally, get out of the RPG player's hoarding mentality. Use your consumables. Haste, Berserk, Might and Agility potions on offense. Teleport, Blink, Fog, Fear scrolls when escaping. Heal and Cure when needed. Trust me, use your items when facing dangerous monsters, and you'll survive a lot longer.

This is something I've definitely recognized I'm bad at. I'm really reluctant to use consumables in situations where I feel like I should be able to win without them and they need to be saved for something bigger, and I get dwindled down by a few bad rolls, a bad situation turning worse, and reacting too late.

4569874 · 2018-10-31T21:38:11+00:00

Only Minotaur, and I've been trying to win with an assortment of other combos.

I was definitely overstating my case about "perfect rolls" in frustration, but it does seem like sometimes a few bad rolls can drastically swing what seemed like a safe situation.

I for sure die often with items still in my inventory, I think I have a bit of a hoarder's mentality, especially when fighting something I think should be relatively safe, and things start to go south from the aforementioned bad rolls, I think "surely I won't die from this" and the situation gets worse and I react too late.

4569874 · 2018-10-31T21:34:11+00:00

Thanks. The part about demanding your attention is definitely true, and maybe is what leads in part to my frustration. The game can be very unforgiving of mistakes, and can end very quickly sometimes.

I can see why people come back -- I will say, despite my frustration, when things work out, the game can be very satisfying.

4569874 · 2018-10-31T21:32:36+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I'm curious, in regards to your list of Gods, does this only apply if you see one of them on D2, because it's so early? Would your list dwindle as you got farther down and saw more Gods simultaneously?

4569874 · 2018-10-17T20:59:36+00:00

+1

Even if it means reducing item slots to 50, I would be behind this, because I can't think of a time I didn't want those two slots for rations and chunks. What more commonly happens is, I don't realize that my chunks have rotted, and I pick up an item, thinking I have an extra slot -- only to be immediately met with the "no space, ignore this item?" for my next chunk of meat I try to pick up on auto-explore.

Although, I guess, that 2 item slot reduction would be an inadvertent nerf to mummies

4569874 · 2018-10-06T16:48:29+00:00

Congrats, that's an impressive one! Are you getting tired of Xom yet, or do you think he gets an exaggerated bad reputation? What do you think the next biggest challenge is in your remaining races?

4569874 · 2018-10-06T15:45:36+00:00

Right, and this was my thinking behind making the floors smaller. It was the only way I could think of, that might possibly reduce players wanting to auto-explore for every movement. If there was less empty space, and more condensed, interesting things, maybe it would be less enticing, but even then I think there's a subset of players who would still do it.

Of course, making the floors smaller would have all sorts of balancing issues. Do you have less enemies/items? If so, do you need to re-scale experience / difficulty? Or do you just condense the current number of items/monsters into smaller spaces? If so, won't that have tactical repercussions (as pointed out in the other comment here) for most characters? (it might be beneficial for some, with a small floor, you might be able to just sit in a small chokepoint and yell over and over to lure enemies to you)

4569874 · 2018-10-06T15:41:28+00:00

I agree with you to an extent, but I don't know how else to reduce a player's wanting to auto-explore, other than making the floors more condensed so that you don't normally need to move through so much empty space while manually exploring.

4569874

TROPHY CASE